The Good That Men Do - Andy Mangels [141]
Archer wished fervently that Trip was at his side right now. It was only after his chief engineer’s departure that he had begun to appreciate how reliant he’d become upon his old friend, particularly when truly difficult decisions loomed directly ahead.
Then he glanced at T’Pol’s Starfleet-blue collar, where three bright commander’s pips glinted beneath the ready room’s white overhead lighting.
He looked up into her eyes, which were set into an attentive yet inscrutable Vulcan mask.
“What do you think I should do, T’Pol?”
Her answer came after only a moment’s hesitation. “While there’s still any chance at all of success, I believe you should do what you’ve more than likely intended to do since before this conversation even began.”
Archer felt a grin begin to spread itself slowly across his face. “That’s the ‘logical’ decision you’d make if you were in my place?”
Something not quite identifiable disturbed the tranquil surface of her features, like a tiny pebble tossed into a still pond. “Captain, some things are… larger than logic.”
He smiled at her. “I promise not to spread around what you just said.”
T’Pol nodded in quiet dignity, then rose from the sofa. She walked directly past him and came to a stop at his desk, where she placed her hand beside the desktop comm button.
She turned and regarded him with a deferential expression. “If I may, Captain?”
He made a simple be-my-guest gesture toward the desk.
She punched the comm button. “T’Pol to Mayweather.”
“Mayweather here.”
“Ensign, bring the ship about. Set a course for the Coridan system. Maximum warp.”
“Aye, Commander.”
In for a penny, in for a pound, Archer thought as he and his first officer moved toward the ready room door. Both of us.
Whatever happened, they would face it together.
Forty-Four
Sunday, February 23, 2155
Enterprise Nx-01
“THERE!” Malcolm Reed cried.
Archer turned his command chair toward the tactical station, watching his armory officer’s intense expression as the lieutenant moved his hands rapidly across his console.
“Put it up on the screen, Malcolm.”
Looking forward over Travis Mayweather’s shoulder toward the main viewer, Archer saw a computer-rendered diagram of the ten planets of the Coridan system. A deceptively delicate red line was rapidly inscribing itself across the diagram, beginning outside the system, from the general direction of the Romulan Star Empire.
As the line grew, extending itself forward, the gentle parabola it described put it on a direct course for the most populous world in the system.
“No answer to our hails, Captain,” Hoshi said, seated at her communications station on the bridge’s port side. “No sign of an identification beam. No navigational beacon, either. Whoever they are, they don’t want anybody to know they’re coming.”
Belligerency confirmed, Archer thought, gripping the arms of his command chair tightly as he studied the tactical diagram on the screen. This was the engraved invitation to war that Admiral Gardner had evidently been waiting to receive. The attack on Coridan Prime had come, just as Trip had warned him two days earlier.
“Intercept course, Travis,” Archer said. “Maximum warp.” He felt in his gut that they were probably too far away to stop the attacker, but that wasn’t going to stop him from trying.
“Aye, Captain,” Mayweather said as he hastened to enter the appropriate commands into the helm console. The vibration of the deck plates suddenly intensified, growing more urgent as Enterprise responded obediently to the ensign’s spurs.
“That thing is moving fast,” Mayweather said, studying his console’s readouts. “My navigational sensors are still having trouble clocking it accurately.”
Archer rose from his command chair and faced Malcolm again. “How fast is it going?”
Reed consulted his displays. “It’s definitely superluminal. If I hadn’t been scanning for it in the subspace bands, I wouldn’t have been able to make sensor contact with it at all.”
“So it’s definitely a ship,” Archer said. “I