Speaking in quiet, even tones, he brought her up to date about the doom that now hung suspended, like some cosmic sword of Damocles, over Cordian Prime.
T’Pol sat on the low sofa near his desk, her back ramrod‑straight as she stared pensively through the ready room’s viewport at the warp‑smeared stars beyond. Archer remained standing, watching her uneasily.
“Seventy‑two hours,” she said finally, her gaze remaining light‑years away as she continued to consider the ramifications.
He nodded. “More or less.”
“And neither Admiral Gardner nor Legate Hanshev will sanction our involvement in trying to prevent it.”
He chuckled, but without any real humor. “That’s a wonderfully understated Vulcan way of summing up the situation.”
Her only reaction to his good‑natured jibe was to turn away from the stars and fix her gaze upon his.
“What are you planning to do, Captain?” she said.
He sighed. “That depends on what my exact options really are. How soon can we reach Cordian Prime at maximum warp?”
“Approximately forty‑nine hours.” Her answer revealed that she, too, had been giving the subject of Coridan Prime a great deal of thought ever since it had first come up eleven days earlier.
“So I might actually be able to do something to stop this,” he said, cautiously allowing a small flame of hope to kindle itself in his breast. “Assuming that the Romulan attack arrives later rather than sooner, that is.”
“And also assuming that Enterprisecan successfully locate and intercept the attacker. Of course, in order even to make the attempt you will have to violate Admiral Gardner’s direct orders. For the third time, I believe.”
“I wasn’t keeping score,” Archer said. He could see now that he really had no choice at all, or at least no good ones. Meekly following Gardner’s orders simply wasn’t an option. His career in Starfleet was important to him, but it couldn’t compare to the billions of lives that would be forfeited should the Romulan attack succeed.
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 youthink 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 Enterpriseresponded 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. “ Howfast 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’ve never seen any natural phenomenon that could break the warp barrier.”
T’Pol rose from the science station, where she had been hunched over her hooded scanner a moment earlier. “The object is moving at nearly warp five,” she reported.
Slightly less than Enterprise’s maximum speed. So there was still at least a theoretical possibility of intercepting it.
“Can you identify it?” Archer said.
T’Pol briefly consulted her scanner’s display once again, then said, “Negative, Captain. This ship’s configuration and warp signature match nothing currently in our database, including anything known to be used by the Romulans.”
Damn,Archer thought. This ship must have come from some Romulan client world whose ships we’ve never encountered before. These sneaky sons of bitches really can do a fine job of covering their tracks.
Archer turned back toward the helm. “Travis, how soon can we engage the intruder?”
Mayweather glanced down at his console. “Approximately two minutes and fifteen seconds, sir.”
Glancing back toward the science station, the captain saw T’Pol shaking her head bleakly as she anticipated his next question. He slammed his hand on the intercom button on his chair. “Archer to Burch.”
“ Burch here, Captain,” answered the interim chief engineer.
“Lieutenant, I want you to give me all the power you’ve got.”
“Aye, sir.”
But even as he listened to the escalating whine of the engines and felt the increasingly agitated quaking of the deck beneath his boots, he knew he was engaging in a useless exercise. Enterprisesimply wasn’t going to reach Coridan Prime in time to stop what was coming.