Star Trek - TOS - Battlestations Read online

  Star Trek - The Original Series - Battlestations

  Chapter One

  THE ENEMY SHIP cut across our port bow, forcing

  to heel off to starboard, but our captain gripped

  forward rail and refused to give more than a meter.

  "Keep her to," he said, the quiet of his vo

  somehow reaching us over the roar of the ship str

  ing.

  "Jim, this is crazy."

  "Don't swing off, no matter what your stoma

  says."

  Space overhead was bristol blue, the crashing ,

  even deeper azure and marbled by green swells a

  white foam. The older officers called it cadet blue.

  "Stand by to come about. Piper, stand by the bm

  stay. Bones, you take the foresheet. And watch yc

  head."

  "Don't worry. My head's not going anywhere."

  Below and around us white hull and green de

  tilted to a sickening forty-five degrees that buried I

  boom tips in brine and put us straight alongside a s

  gust of wind. The bowsprit bobbed in thirteen-f

  arches. We crashed against the waves, skating alo]

  side our enemy's beam for a moment of reasonle

  risk.

  I freed the backstay on the port side so it would]

  be in the way when the big main boom swung abol

  then slid down the inclined deck to the starboa

  backstay and got ready to pull it up tight once the s

  swung by. There, shivering, I awaited the order

  come about. With the ship at this hideous angle, my

  thigh cut into the rail. I was almost lying on my side.

  Just over the rail, an arm's-length away, the tree-trunk

  boom dug furrows into the seawater with every long

  dip of the schooner. Arching out and rising away from

  the water, the mainsali's bright white canvas tightened

  with air and became stiff as cast rhodinium. This was

  drama of the highest order, and my heart thudded

  testimony to the pure insanity I'd gotten myself into.

  Of course, I couldn't exactly decline the honor.

  This old ship had been bending to the winds for

  something like a century and a quarter on this planet,

  revived to splendor by the very fading of her own

  kind. Originally built as a nostalgic replica of a nine-

  teenth-century pilot schooner, she was a working ves-

  sel, not a yacht. That "y" word wasn't allowed on

  board. And there wasn't a winch to be found. Every

  line had to be hand drawn, no matter how heavy the

  load. The acres of canvas, caught to the masts by big

  wooden hoops and lashed with rope to the gaffs and

  booms, made a puzzle of stitched white overlapping

  rectangles and triangles overhead and together formed

  a great seagoing pyramid of sailcloth and rigging.

  Pretty. But sitting here in excitement's grip, with

  abused timber groaning under me and the booms biting

  the tops off eight-footers, it was hard to see the pretti-

  ness. Not even in the echo of ourselves as the other

  ship, a bluff-bowed ancient ketch two meters longer

  than our schooner, carved away from our starboard

  stern and came about for another match.

  "Here he bloody well comes again," uttered Mr.

  Scott at wheel watch, his Scots rumble getting thicker

  as tension grew. He was standing at the helm rather

  than sitting, gripping the spokes of the wooden wheel

  tightly, and narrowing his gaze forward. His eyes

  narrowed to dark wedges. His dark hair, matted

  against his forehead by spray, was laced with the first

  hints of silver. He wasn't watching the sails, though.

  2

  He was watching the captain. And the captain was

  watching the enemy ship.

  Amidships, Dr. McCoy squinted accusingly at the

  captain and held on tight to the foresheet. Wind tore at

  his hair and spray battered his face.

  Our bow [ifled high out of the water, coming into the

  air like some flying fish, until half her keel was clear of

  the sea. Almost immediately she crashed back into the

  chop like a descending guillotine, burying the fo'c'sle,

  burying thirteen feet of bowsprit and the whole bottom

  of the Genoa jib. I winced and drew my shoulders in.

  Heeled to starboard, the other ship was a mirror

  image of ours, except that her mast heights were

  reversed, her fore-tops'l wasn't flying, and her bow

  was bluff- instead of clipper-curved. When our captain

  first started talking about the enemy, I'd thought he

  was saying "catch"; one of many visits to his aft cabin

  library had set me right. She was the ketch Gavelan.

  We were out to get her, and she us.

  My hands cramped as I gripped the backstay line.

  Awaiting orders, i looked at the captain and wondered

  what he was waiting for. Fu[t sail in this kind of chop

  was crazy enough without waiting until the last second

  to execute a tack.

  He stood on the forward deck, his eyes hard and

  pinched at the corners. In a heavy brown sea jacket

  with the collar up he looked like a hoio on a tour spool

  from some planet-pushing travel agency His hair,

  sandy and shimmering on top, darkening at the sides,

  shone nicely but couldn't upstage that glare of his. I

  could see him trying to put his mind into the head of

  the other captain before making a decision. He wanted

  more than anything to be inside Gavetan's hold, se-

  cretly listening to what the other skipper was saying--

  more, though, he wanted to know what the other was

  feeling, thinking, breathing. He thought he could get

  there if he stared hard enough.

  "Come about," the captain said. "Now."

  Dr. McCoy let go of the foresheet a moment too

  soon, forcing Mr. Scott to haul hard on the wheel to

  keep from losing the fores'l into the waves. I held on

  as long as I could, but the ship wheeled and bucked,

  reversing herself in the water and cutting a pie wedge

  in the chop as she tacked. The rigging whistled over-

  head, the timber groaned, and the hoops grated so

  loudly I thought they were going to shear right

  through the mast.

  Barn--the fore boom elunked to port. The sail

  luffed, then filled and tightened. An instant later--and

  Mr. Scott ducked just in time to avoid a ringing head-

  ache--the main. The schooner twisted back in the

  water with the grace of a shorebird's glinting wing.

  "Haul in tight," the captain called. "I mean you,

  Piper. Put support on that main, then bring the sheet in

  close."

  I shook myself, skidded across the tilted deck and

  drew in the main until we were so close upon the wind

  that we threw up a sickle of spray with every dive of

  our prow. He was watching me. I could feel it. Oh, he

  was looking at the other ship, but he was watching

  me.

/>   "Closer," he said.

  I drew down harder, sacrificing three more finger-

  nails and one knuckle's skin.

  Plunging toward each other like two Gloucester

  packets of a different age, our two schooners glided

  through walls of spray. The tapered lines of the sails

  and weaving mastheads conjured images of wave

  troughs deep enough to hide entire ships. I leaned

  harder against the teak rail, plain scared. From two

  sides of an angle, we speared for each other.

  "Jim, I didn't come out here with you to become a

  damned South Sea walrus!" Dr. McCoy informed the

  captain, clinging desperately to the fore hatch and

  glancing wide-eyed at the oncoming schooner.

  The captain didn't respond. Even now, there was a

  distant tranquility on his face. '['his was his blood and

  beef--another man's peace was this man's boredom.

  When he wasn't wrestling the irabalances of interstel-

  lar space and intersystem politics, he was here, tasting

  death in the same seas our mutual ancestors called

  their own interstellar void.

  The captain of the other ship was no Rigellian slugfin

  either. Silver spume spilled over Gavelan's rail as she

  held tight into the wind and rocketed through jumping

  seas toward us. We were both pointed at the same

  square foot of ocean, and we both wanted to own it.

  Overhead, rigging whined. Tension buzzed through the

  halyards.

  l drew in a breath, held it, and closed my eyes. The

  captain said I should learn to hear the ship, so I could

  hear what was wrong when it happened. Sometimes he

  made me close my eyes and covet' my ears too.

  Feeling what's wrong, he called it. Even times like

  this--especially times like this---could teach.

  Sails moaned. Waves smacked the keel. Gaffs and

  booms creaked. The wind rushed inward, filling the

  main tight. On collision course, our two schooners

  sliced through the seas toward each other. When our

  ship's prow dug deep into the waves, met a trough that

  matched its shape, and phmged six feet deeper, the

  deck dropped out from under my feet. Only catching

  my elbow around the backstay kept me aboard. t

  heard Dr. McCoy yell something as my feet left the

  deck, wobbled on the rail for three hideous seconds,

  then skated off. Down I went for a ride across twenty

  slippery feet of green deck, on one knee, until the

  fisherman's sail-bag stopped me.

  "All right, lass'?" Mr. Scott bothered to call from the

  wheel.

  I took a moment to nod at him while I rubbed my

  knee. It was the wrong moment.

  "Get your feet under you, Piper," the captain

  snapped. "Prepare to come about."

  "Again?" McCoy complained. "What are you? A

  blasted porpoise?"

  "Lay alongside, Scotty," everybody's devil called

  firmly. 'Tm not going to let him work our windward.

  Piper, bring in the jib sheet two pulls. You left it too

  free."

  Always the cut. Always the barb. Why? Didn't he

  have enough laurels to sit on? Not ten people in a

  million had his status. Why pick on me?

  But as I glared at the captain, ire mixed with a stab

  of sympathy for him. Most humans could afford to

  cloak their flaws. A starship captain--the captain of

  any vessel, I was learning---constantly had his flaws

  thrown up in his face, with nowhere to deflect them.

  Not only could he see them, but he must see them

  displayed before all who wish to Iook--a galaxy ready

  to criticize. That would beat anyone into humility.

  Anyone but the strongest.

  If he could be strong, if he could bear his flaws and

  mine too, then I could at least haul my end of the

  halyard.

  Gripping the ship's rail, I got to my feet and moved

  carefully along the high side toward the bow. Battered

  by salt spray, the rail had gone from a burnished

  ribbon to a chipped ridge. It spelled work for deck

  hands. Like guess who.

  I loosened the jib sheet, cranked it in, feeling the

  pressure of the wind as we heeled deeply, and belayed

  it without another screwup. Just when 1 was breathing

  my sigh of relief, I made the mistake of looking at the

  oncoming Gavelan.

  "What--!" l choked. The other ship was so close

  I could almost count the planks in her hull. Wreathed

  in spray, she was crashing toward us out of a night-

  mare. I couldn't breathe anymore.

  The captain cupped his hand around his mouth.

  "Now, Scotty!"

  Mr. Scott closed his eyes and cranked the big wheel

  hard, then took a dive for the backstay to free it. The

  main boom began to swing. The sails, towering above

  us like wings, luffed for only an instant.

  The schooner hung in midair, shuddered as shock

  waves thrummed through her wooden hull, then dived

  like a seal. Her bowsprit carved across our enemy's

  bow and forced the other ship to fall off the wind.

  No one but the possessed would try such a move.

  The booms swung around and slammed home.

  Climbing the wave, the ship shook off a wash of green

  seawater, filled her sails tight, and heeled in.

  The captain leaned back. If he'd had a pipe, he'd

  have smoked it. "Fall off," he said. Mr. Scott stiffly

  complied.

  Dr. McCoy slumped down on the fore hatch. "Shore

  leave, my eye."

  I panted silently and got my footing on the deck. A

  few breaths later my thoughts came out in a mutter.

  "All we need is an aft phaser..."

  Gavelan was upright in the choppy water, fallen off

  the wind. Her sails luffed uselessly, flapping and shud-

  dering, in search of air.

  Turning to me, the captain raised both straight

  brows and queried, "Did I hear you say something,

  Commander?"

  Still out of breath, I blinked at him and tried to look

  steady. "Not me."

  His lips pressed flat. Kind of a grin, and kind of not.

  "Good."

  I watched, numb, as he walked casually down the

  long green deck, unaffected by the angle, and took

  charge of the wheel. Slowly now, he brought the ship

  about in a stylish tack that hardly let the sails flutter

  the last turn of the blade before coming abeam with

  Gavelan.

  Aboard the other ship, the skipper's familiar Mid-

  6 7

  Eastern features glowed in the sun behind a dark

  cropped beard. "Brilliantly executed, Captain!" he

  called. "I concede the match."

  "Accepted, Ambassador," the captain returned.

  "I'm looking forward to my lobster."

  "And you shall have it," our former enemy re-

  turned. Behind him, his crew, an unlikely collection of

  individuals, watched us coast by. "The best available

  in the next port of call. And my liquor cabinet is yours

  to raid.'

  "Faster than you can moor a dinghy."

  The ambassador roared with laughter. Gavelan

  caught the wind and fell in behind us
. Finally, finally,

  we were back on course.

  I watched our captain as he steered the ship with

  damnable leisure. San Francisco was long behind us

  and I still tended to stay on the other end of the ship

  from where he was. A respectful distance, it might be

  called. A little chicken was another way to put it. He

  always saw the imperfection, that halyard belayed one

  turn tess than the others, the backstay not hauled up

  tightly enough, the rope tied in a granny knot instead

  of a square knot . . and there was nothing in this

  .galaxy more soul-galling than coming up out of a hatch

  in time to see James Kirk correct your little error.

  James Kirk. An enigma in his midthirties. And here

  he was, commanding seventy-two feet of timber and

  sailcloth with every ounce the commitment he used to

  head up the multidepartmental city-in-space we call a

  starship. The whole scope of that became scarier to me

  with every minute I spent in his company. He wasn't

  an easy man to get to know. He guarded himself. Oh,

  he talked often enough, but he spoke little. Curiosity

  boiled up in me, enough to turn a Star Fleet command

  candidate into a petty snoop. Despite the integrity I

  was trying to imitate, I often found myself haunting

  the open aft hatch, hoping to---accidentally--catch a

  line or two of the conversation between him and

  McCoy and Scott during one of those quiet personal

  sessions. I seldom got more than a sniff of kahlua and

  coffee. In fact, the silence said plenty. My curiosity

  remained intact. So did the sting of knowing 1 wasn't

  yet welcome in that inner sanctum. I hungered more

  for it with every passing wind.

  And the mysteries about Captain Kirk seemed to

  grow deeper as I knew him longer. I looked away from

  him and leaned over the ship's rail for the dozenth time

  to see black letters outlined in hunter-green scrolls

  Edith Keeler.

  Letters no one would explain. I knew "Edith" was a

  feminine name on Earth, not very popular anymore.

  Since sailing ships had always been named after both

  men and women, knowing the name's gender nar-

  rowed my curiosity by 50 percent. The rest remained a

  darkness.

  It was nearly three o'clock, Earth time. I seldom

  knew what time it was, but as I came below, through