Kobayashi Maru - Michael A. Martin [165]
Trip didnt want to do anything that might abort the rescue op Archer was sure to attempt. But he also knew that Earth could afford the loss of the Kobayashi Maru including everyone and everything aboard herfar better than it could afford to allow one of her NX -class starships to fall into Romulan hands.
Gotta get a warning to Enterprise, he told himself as he discreetly activated the consoles main actuator.
“Dont bother trying what I think youre trying, Commander, Sopek said from behind him. “That station is only a backup environmental-systems monitor. I put you at that particular station only to keep a somewhat closer eye on youand so you wouldnt succumb to the temptation to try to patch into our subspace transmitter.
Trip allowed himself a few moments to read enough of the pictographs on the console displays to confirm what Sopek had just told him. Then he allowed his hands to fall limply to his sides.
Shit!
But there had to be some way to use the console to get a message out to his former captain. As bad as things had frequently gotten at times during his long sojourn in Romulan space, he had yet to find himself facing the truly insurmountable odds of a no-win situation.
Several agonizingly long minutes passed, like ice boulders slowly rolling down a hill in reluctant deference to Tritons skimpy gravity. Once he realized that neither Sopek nor any of his increasingly busy crew seemed able or willing to invest much attention in him, he resumed his quiet exploration of the console before him. He made no attempt to move furtively, since that would probably attract more of the unwelcome attentions of the disruptor-toting guard whose eyes he could already feel drilling into the back of his head like laser-powered asteroid borers.
But he did try to hide his triumphant smile from view after the answer finally came to him.
FORTY-SEVEN
Enterprise NX-01, Gamma Hydra sector
“L EAVING SECTION ELEVEN , C APTAIN , Mayweather said. “Entering section ten. Contact with the Kobayashi Maru on long-range navigational sensors.
“Very good, Travis, Archer said, wincing slightly as he leaned forward on his chair. Despite the lingering pain in his side, he found the movement hard to resist, as though by gaining a few additional centimeters of proximity to the main bridge viewer, he might make any lurking hull-breach hazards more apparent and avoidable. “Steady as she goes. And keep scanning for gravitic mines or anything else that might sink us.
“The sensors are already tuned to maximum resolution enhancement, Captain, said TPol, most of her attention apparently riveted to the hooded scanner on her science station.
“Tactical systems are also running everything through a pretty fine sieve, Captain, said Reed, who stood at the aft tactical array, entering commands and studying representations of power curves and marching columns of figures. “Phase cannons and photonic torpedoes are ready as well. Ill be damned if I let anything bigger than a Ping-Pong ball get within ten thousand klicks of us.
Despite his lingering mixed feelings about the unauthorized actions TPol and Reed had recently taken, Archer was nevertheless grateful for the restoration of the core of his alpha-watch crew. The entire bridge crew seemed keenly aware, as he was, that this far away from any human-inhabited world, rescue was a commodity that was strictly BYOBring Your Own. All Starfleet personnel, from midshipmen up through the admiralty, recognized this sobering fact.
But in the case of the vessel toward which Enterprise now hurtled, rescue was indeed on the way. The master and commander of the S.S. Kobayashi Maru has got to be the luckiest freighter captain in the history of maritime disasters, Archer thought.
Despite the remoteness of this region of space, Archer was already somewhat familiar with the portion of it that Enterprise had just entered; it lay well inside the boundaries of a not-yet-ratified “neutral zone that Vulcan and Andoria had recently jointly proposed as a buffer zone between