Kobayashi Maru - Michael A. Martin [76]
SIXTEEN
Friday, July 18, 2155 Enterprise NX-01, near the Draylax system
T HE AFTER-BATTLE REPAIRS , which mostly centered on Columbia s rather extensive but thankfully nonfatal damage, had made for a long day that had challenged the combined engineering teams of both Enterprise and Columbia . And now, despite the lateness of the hour, Jonathan Archer found that he couldnt sleep. Lying on the bed in his night-dimmed quarters, he felt a desperate need, almost a physical hunger, to talk to someone about his current problem with the Klingons.
At least someone other than Porthos, whom he noted was still watching him in the semidarkness, his large black eyes alert as he lay on the pillow in the corner he used for sleeping. Though he knew he was anthropomorphizing, Archer couldnt help but read the beagles vaguely quizzical expression as one of canine concern about the current pensive state of his human.
Still recumbent, Archer reached across the bed to the small com panel mounted on the wall nearest to the bed. He hesitated as his fingers made contact with the button.
Archer paused for a moment. While he certainly had the authority to interrupt his senior officers off-duty activities when circumstances warranted, even in the dead of ships night, he didnt consider his personal feelings of isolation and loneliness to be sufficient cause. And despite the unprecedented emotional closeness he and his first officer had come to share over the past few months, he hadnt forgotten the ingrained tendency of Vulcans toward a certain standoffishness. He also knew how emotionally stressed TPol had been lately, perhaps as much by Trips feigned death as by the need to keep the truth behind it concealed from all but a small handful of her crewmates and friends. Considering all shed been through since shed first set foot aboard Enterprise, she deserved to be allowed to continue doing whatever she needed to do in order to keep body and katra together.
He resigned himself to dealing on his own with the Klingon problem.
He sat up with a sigh, and Porthos regarded him with an expectant look and a wagging tail for a moment before launching himself into Archers lap. Scratching the dogs head behind the right ear, he said, “Porthos, how do you feel about trading jobs with me?
Porthos tipped his head and whined, and his swiftly wagging tail abruptly dropped out of warp.
Archer chuckled. “Sorry. Youre way too smart to fall for that. Get some sleep. One of us should.
He patted Porthos near the rump, and the dog jumped back down and returned to his sleeping corner while Archer finally gave up on the idea of slumber entirely. Sometime during the few minutes it took Archer to doff his bathrobe and don his standard blue duty uniform, the beagle had closed his eyes and drifted off into what looked like a bottomlessly deep slumber.
Archer looked on wistfully as the sleeping animals paws jerked three times, probably in response to the appearance of a sprawling dream-pasture, a wish granted by some merciful canine Morpheus. Until he got to the bottom of this mess with the Klingons, he seriously doubted hed be able to follow Porthoss wise example.
Moving quietly, he crossed the small room to his desk and took a seat in front of the computer terminal there. He entered his personal com access code manually, along with a particular subspace frequency, and then drummed his fingers on the desk for several seconds while the screens ship status updates vanished.
Archer ceased his drumming when a blood-red Klingon trefoil emblem appeared, standing out starkly against a background as black as space itself. A moment later, the alien sigil was replaced by the scowling visage of a middle-aged male Klingon dressed in a warriors battle armor. For an absurd moment, Archer wondered whether everybody on QonoS dressed like that, right down to the receptionists in the lobby