Kobayashi Maru - Michael A. Martin [136]
But he still had his nagging doubts. For one thing, it just wasnt like Terix, a man who clearly did not give his trust easily, to be so sloppy. But not only had the Scoutship Drolae apparently not been rigged to explode in the absence of a special surreptitious abort code, the sturdy little vessels com system had actually allowed him to maintain constant surveillance over the subspace frequencies being used by the Romulan fleet, apparently thanks to Terixs simple failure to log off of the com console just prior to disembarking for the Taugus raid.
But most fortunate of allnot to mention most suspicious of allwas the fact that this blunder had left Trip with access to many of the fleets highest-security channels.
As he initiated his sublight approach to the steadily growing sapphire planet, rehearsing the verbal report he would make to Valdore all the way, some of the chatter he was hearing on the secure com channels began to both intrigue and frighten him. For starters, the Romulan fleets technology division appeared to have just made an unspecified but apparently significant breakthrough in following up on the late Doctor Ehrehins warp-seven stardrive research.
Trip wasnt at all sure what that meantlet alone how they had managed it without Ehrehinif the news turned out to be anything other than a hopeful rumor. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, he thought. After all, somebody else would have built the first airplane back in the early twentieth century if Orville and Wilbur had decided to throw in the towel early.
The other messages he intercepted soon afterward began to chill him to the depths of his soul. Disciplined-sounding voices familiar to anyone with military training, regardless of language, had begun speaking in clipped, determined phrases of fleet movements. Large fleet movements, which were being discussed only on what Trip had identified as the highest-security channels to which he had access. All of the fleet movements were apparently covert.
And all of them were headed away from Romulan space, proceeding in the general direction of the core Coalition worlds.
Two specific destinations, which he assumed were Romulan place names for Coalition locations, had already recurred frequently enough to draw Trips attention. Isneih, Seichi. He hadnt heard either name before, so he couldnt translate them readily into their English equivalents. But he imagined those places wouldnt be hard to locate using the data files on the Drolae s nav computer. After activating the autopilot, he immediately set about doing just that.
Isneih. A supermassive white star located about nineteen light-years from another marker, which Trip had already designated as Earths solar system.
Trips heart raced as he compared his own mental star map to the one displayed on the nav console. The Calder system, he thought, his spine chilled as though suddenly exposed to a total vacuum. Thats getting a little too close to Andoria and Vulcan for comfort.
With Calder pinned down on the map, it took only another few moments to locate the Romulan fleets other frequently mentioned objective: Seichi.
His stomach abruptly went into freefall. Alpha Centauri. Only a bit more than four light-years from Earth.
A proximity alarm interrupted Trips grim musings, forcing his attention back up to the forward windows. The space in front of them was quickly growing very crowded, and not merely because the Drolae was fast approaching Romulus.
A flat, horseshoe-crab-shaped Romulan bird-of-prey had just dropped out of warp directly between him and the looming planet. The rapidly approaching vessel was oriented so that the glare of Eisn, the bright yellow sun around which Romulus and Remus orbited, provided garish