The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [95]
A sharp staccato beeping commenced at that moment, and it took Leydon a full second to realize that it was coming from her navigation board. A heartbeat later she had found both the source of the alarm and, thankfully, her ability to speak.
“Captain, our subspace navigation beam is detecting a small metallic object, dead ahead,” she said, feeling as though she’d been caught with her pants down, and on her first day on the job, no less. Concentrate on the task at hand, she told herself. Then hands trained on a dozen flight simulators moved automatically. And almost before she realized she had done it, she had manually entered the slight course correction necessary to avert the possibility of a catastrophic multiwarp-speed collision.
“Analysis!” Archer said. Leydon turned long enough to see that he was sitting ramrod straight in the seat at the bridge’s center, and appeared to have taken no notice of her greenhorn’s lapse.
“It is a small duranium-encased object,” T’Pol said as she looked intently into the scanner display on her console. “Approximately half a cubic meter in size, massing at approximately twenty-seven kilograms. It no longer poses any collision danger.”
Leydon grinned to herself.
“Could it be some sort of mine?” Archer said.
“Tactical sensors read negative for explosives, fissiles, or antimatter,” Reed said. “I read electronic circuitry of some kind inside the casing. It might be a log buoy from one of the ships that was lost here last month. But I’d still recommend handling it carefully.”
“Noted,” Archer said. “Let’s beam it aboard and have a look.”
“The device already appears to have sustained some damage,” T’Pol said. “The transporter could cause further damage to whatever electronics are inside it.”
“Or maybe trigger a disguised weapon,” Reed said.
Leydon watched Archer stroke his chin thoughtfully as he stared at the starfield displayed on the forward viewer—without appearing the least bit seasick as a consequence.
Archer turned toward Leydon and addressed her directly. “I have another baptism of fire for you, Ensign.”
“Sir?” Leydon said, swallowing hard.
“Activate the grapple-retrieval system, Mister Leydon. If jostling this thing makes it go ‘kaboom,’ then we’ll probably know about it before you drag the thing aboard.”
She nodded mutely, then transferred as much attention and energy as she could muster to the console before her.
And tried like hell to ignore the ever-so-slight tremor in her hands.
“Well, it’s definitely Tellarite,” Malcolm Reed said. He listened to his voice as it echoed across Launch Bay 1, which he had evacuated as a precaution just before Ensign Leydon had finished grappling the charred and pitted metal object aboard.
Very carefully, Hoshi Sato reached across the worktable on which the device sat and drew a small data module from inside its open duranium cover. Fortunately, the component hadn’t sustained enough damage to prevent its successful connection to a small adaptor unit that relayed its contents to a nearby viewscreen.
After watching the blunt Tellarite script scroll past for a few moments, Sato said, “It’s the log buoy from the Miracht.”
“What happened to them?” Reed wanted to know, his anxiety levels rising very quickly; after all, the Miracht was supposed to be one of the most advanced, powerful vessels in Tellar’s fleet. Regardless, he held out the hope of learning something useful from the buoy—something that might help Earth fend off the Romulan threat.
“The captain seems to have been in a serious hurry to get this buoy launched, so whatever happened must have hit them pretty fast. It’s possible that all this exterior damage was caused after launch by whatever attacked the Miracht, but that’s all just speculation on my part.”
Reed’s spirits fell. “So we still don’t have any hard information. Just