Kobayashi Maru - Michael A. Martin [137]
Without warning, a disruptor beam lashed out from the warbird, scoring a direct hit that rocked the little scoutship and rang her hull like a colossal clapper striking an outsize cathedral bell. Fortunately, Trips flight harness kept him from being flung from the pilots seat.
He engaged the throttle, and wasnt a bit surprised when the warp drive failed to engage.
Swell. Terix, you sadistic bastard. You really did plan this all along, didnt you? Trip felt physically pinned down, as though hed just been literally caught in the steel jaws of a bear trap.
But he knew that even a trapped animal was anything but helpless. Few creatures were more dangerous than a wounded bear, after all, and Trip understood that he wasnt entirely out of options, trapped or not. He began entering commands into his partially disabled engineering console, beginning by punching up the fuel-containment subsystem.
His com console light flashed, signaling an incoming hail. A harsh male voice came over the speaker. “Scout vessel Drolae. You will heave to and deactivate your weapons. Prepare to be boarded, or vaporized.
Trip shut off the speaker, then extended his left arm toward the forward window in order to make a decidedly un-Romulan hand gesture. Though he seriously doubted that anyone aboard the other vessel could see it, it still felt damned good. Lets see how many of you I can vaporize right along with me, he thought as he returned his attention to the console before him and entered a new string of commands.
A moment later, a small screen before him began displaying the Romulan numerals that denoted the beginning of a final, brief countdown to oblivion.
Next, he began frantically working the com console, trying to open a channel to somebody, anybody, in either Starfleet or the United Earth government. He estimated he had only a few seconds at best before he was blown out of the sky, and he was determined to put his last moments to the best possible use.
Your plan all along was to let me almost get away with this, wasnt it, Terix? You wanted me to see what Valdore was about to do to the Coalition planets. Just as long as I couldnt actually do a damned thing about it.
Nothing. No subspace connections. And nothing evidently wrong with the Drolae s transmitter. The receiver, on the other hand, was suddenly awash in an oceanic wave of pure static.
He looked up at the approaching ship. Hes jamming me, he thought, despair at last beginning to zero in on him with all the force of a plummeting asteroid. Looks like Im not getting any warnings out to anybody.
It occurred to him then that he had parted company with his friends back on Taugus without disabusing them of the idea that the Klingon Empire now constituted the gravest threat to peace in the galactic neighborhood. Now he knew better. The most serious danger the Coalition now faced emanated from Romulus, rather than the Klingon homeworld. And he was the only one who knew thisand the location of the Romulans targetsto a bedrock certainty, other than the Romulans themselves. And the forward weapons tubes of the approaching bird-of-prey argued eloquently that the Romulan Empire would soon have the exclusive franchise on that knowledge, no matter what might happen to Charles Anthony Tucker III in the next few moments.
At least, Trip thought, until after its way too late for anybody in the Coalition to do anything about it.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Tuesday, July 22, 2155 Columbia NX-02, near Alpha Centauri
A DMIRAL G ARDNERS NEW ORDERS had arrived only about six hours after Columbia s repairs were completed; alone in her ready room, Captain Erika Hernandez received them with a heavy sense of fatigue. She knew she wasnt the only one who was feeling worn out at the moment, either. Like all of Columbia s alpha-shift bridge personnel, Lieutenant Russell Hexter and his beta-watch crew and Lieutenant Charles Zeilfelder and his gamma-shifters had been working far past their standard shifts for the duration of the