Ship of the Line Read online

  “Well, I must say . . . that is a thing of beauty.”

  A study in motion. A swan in starshine.

  Riker had heard that description of a starship before, but he couldn’t remember where. Probably one of those moments of wonder that trundled down from person to person, father to son.

  The Enterprise-E. There she was.

  Olympian and stunning as it rested in the welcoming arms of open space, the new starship looked as if it were going warp five standing still. This new Sovereign-class ship was a creature of motion, as if her designers had been leaning forward when they made the design. There was still the traditional Saucer Module, inspired by the most original H. G. Wells science fiction and found to be ironically servicable, but unlike that on the Enterprise-D, this ovoid saucer was turned so that its longest diameter ran with the fore-and-aft line of the ship instead of against it.

  As he looked at this ship now, Riker had a hard time imagining any other design, even though he had flown another design for the better part of his career. The main body of this new ship was mounted directly to the aft underside of the saucer—there was no birdlike neck as previous designs had possessed, but the familiar V-shaped design had been cherished. The two snake-headed warp nacelles still rose like wings above and behind the main section. The hull plating was not white, as early ships were, but instead was a pattern of flannel blues and dove grays, making the ship look as if it were made of buffed pewter.

  Hundreds of lit rectangular cabin windows on the saucer section were mounted up and down like wheel spokes, each pointing inward toward the bridge. The windows on the main section, however, were turned on their sides to follow the hull lines. Backlit by the Christmas-tree glitter of the boxdock, the starship looked as organic as the narrowed eye of a god.

  Riker felt supremely privileged. He hadn’t been in on the launch of the Enterprise-D, or any other starship for that matter. He’d participated in the launch of a hospital ship once, and accidentally happened upon the launch of a matched set of recon sweepers, but that was all. Until this moment, looking out at the new ship, he hadn’t realized what he’d missed. Judging by the spectator pods and media coaches that hovered at the ordered distance around the boxdock, the whole Federation understood the significance of this new starship.

  He felt a little guilty as the pod he and Picard were using to approach the ship was cleared by the harbormaster. Unlike all those spectators, he and Picard could go right through the restricted postings and pilot up to the starship itself. Only officers, crew assigned to the ship, and the construction and maintenance personnel were allowed in.

  He glanced to his left. “Captain?” he prodded. “Here she is.”

  “Yes. Very pretty.”

  An inward groan rattled through Riker’s chest. The captain simply stood there and eyed the ship sidelong as if unwilling to commit. Minutes ago Picard had questioned his relationship with the old ship. Now he was being belatedly loyal to the Enterprise-D.

  Luckily, they couldn’t see the whole starship anymore, but only the glossy hull plates rolling by as the pod came up close to the rim of the saucer section and angled its way automatically toward the airlock. Now the rivets, bolts, carvel plating, and construction stencils were up close and intimate, no longer looking like a ship at all, luckily.

  Riker turned away from the captain and punched the clearance to dock. The pod would nuzzle itself in. He found himself wishing the thing were manual so he had something to do besides the two of them standing here being aware of each other.

  The pod’s docking cuff hissed, the security clamps chunked into place, and the airlock pressurized with a nearly living breath. Automatically the airlock port slid open, and before either Riker or Picard could escape, a smiling wraith flew toward them.

  “Welcome aboard, Captain!” Deanna Troi said.

  Riker grinned. Troi looked glad to see the captain here, finally. Her Grecian features were etched along narrow jaw and cheekbones, her large black eyes were prominent than in years past, her dark hair shining.

  The captain seemed unmoved by her enthusiasm. Even irritated by it.

  “Good morning, Counselor,” he drawled. “Thank you for your eagerness, but I’d rather—”

  “Jean-Luc . . .” a sultry voice interrupted, clearly to keep him from finishing his sentence.

  Riker stepped out of Doctor Beverly Crusher’s way as she moved across the deck and slipped her arm into Picard’s.

  “Beverly,” the captain greeted her.

  “Welcome aboard,” the doctor said. “How are you feeling?”

  The captain sighed. “You’re being custodial.”

  “That’s my job.”

  “Captain! Captain, good morning!”

  What was this—a mass mugging?

  Riker stepped more out of the way. Engineer Geordi La Forge, his dark features and his cybernetic eyes shining with emotion that shouldn’t have been showing there, plowed between the two women and grabbed the captain’s business hand and started pumping. La Forge was the same age as Riker, yet there was a perpetual boyish cheer in him that always made Riker feel like the big brother.

  “And Engineer La Forge as well,” the captain grumbled. “How totally unexpected. All right, where’s—”

  “He’s right behind me, sir!” La Forge turned and craned down the corridor, where along came a familiar face. “Data! What took you so long?”

  “I was distracted by the wonderful music coming from the rec area,” Lieutenant Data said. His metallic-gold face was animated with delight. “Someone is in there playing Smoky Mountain music. I love Smoky Mountain music! It is so downhome and toe-tapping. Do not you all love it too?”

  “You all . . .” Riker echoed, and glanced at Troi.

  For years Data had been an ideal android, completely cool, a little curious, but seldom ruffled. Recently, though, he had been given a strange invention for a walking computer to possess—emotion. A chip in his positronic brain gave Data something that Riker had thought unprogrammable. How were feelings, reactions, sensations, needs, programmed into a machine?

  Well, apparently it had been done. How well, nobody knew yet. The chip could be turned on and off at Data’s will, but he pretty much left it on and indulged in a mosaic of appreciations denied him until lately. Fear, humor, disgust, cheer—all these things had eluded the unflappable android, even more steely than a Vulcan, because Vulcans possessed underlying emotions. Data hadn’t had any . . . or at least, not many.

  Riker never quite believed Data was exactly the mechanical box he was reputed to be, or in fact that the medical computers said he was. There had always been something in there which was more than just a circuit trunk with legs. The rest of the crew liked him. Riker liked him. While certainly it was possible to gain affection for objects or vehicles, homes or mementos, somehow Riker knew Data wasn’t any of those.

  Now Data was as human as any of them, as emotional, and about three times more naive. He’d been through a longer working lifespan than any of them. A decorated full commander in Starfleet, second officer on one of very few cruiser-class starships, Data was seeing the universe for the first time, through the eyes and with the emotional balance of a child.

  “The irrepressible Commander Data,” Captain Picard drawled out, nodding wearily. “I suppose there’s something to be said for banjos, fiddles, and—what would be appropriate? Harmonicas?”

  The two women nodded, and Riker threw in, “Yee-haw, sir.”

  Picard groaned at him. “Now, what is this? What are all of you doing aboard this ship? Don’t tell me you’ve signed on already.”

  “Just hedging our bets,” Beverly Crusher said, pulling him a few steps forward, away from the transporter room doorway. She gave him a little shake, the kind only very old friends can get away with. “Don’t gripe.”

  “We’ve been waiting to show you the ship,” La Forge added. “It’s a very streamlined design, sir. Some atmospheric capabilities, too. When the Enterprise-D crashed, St
arfleet decided to step up the completion of this ship, and they let us all sign in on the work.”

  “How gracious of them.”

  “The ship’s got advanced long-range sensors, almost thirty percent longer-range than any ship before, and extended warp capabilities at about a forty-two percent upgrade.”

  Data nodded, his mouth opening every few seconds as he tried to get his two cents in. “Yes, sir, she also has an upgraded galactic-condition database, isolinear matrix chips with a memory capacity of three-point eight kiloquads with tripolymer sealant over the refractive surfaces as standard protection, improved warp-field control which allows for a greater Z-axis compression, improved hardware efficiencies, and quantum torpedoes. We’re very proud of the bonny lass. If you’ll come this way, please . . .”

  As Data led the way down the corridor, Picard looked at Riker and mouthed Bonny lass?

  Offering only a shrug, Riker motioned the captain before him. Troi and Crusher each took an arm and angled the captain into the open corridor of the big ship. Riker and La Forge followed.

  The corridor was glossy and smelled new, but wasn’t particularly bright. Easier on the eye than previous Starfleet intraship corridors, it was perhaps too subdued. The braces and doorframes had a certain streamlined liquidity, sculpted beyond function into an art form.

  Riker followed Picard as they and the others strode directly through the lower body of the ship to the main engine room. Here, nostalgic red double-door panels parted for them, and their welcoming committee of one was right inside the entrance. Riker smiled when he saw who met them here. Ah . . . “bonny lass.” Of course.

  A rotund silver-haired gentleman with a black mustache and ruddy cheeks, looking as if he were an out-of-place organgrinder in a street festival, came sauntering toward them with a smile bright as piano keys.

  “Captain Picard, welcome aboard, sir.”

  “Captain Scott!”

  “Sir, welcome aboard the new lass!” The famous engineer’s highland roll added a melody to his voice. “Hope you’re as well as I look.”

  “Well, thank you, I think I can come up to that.”

  “Been avoiding us, sir? We expected you a month back. Poor Data’s been just twitchin’.”

  Riker poked in between Data and La Forge. “How did you get assigned here, Captain Scott?”

  Montgomery Scott’s sparkling dark eyes flickered at him. “Pulled a string or two, lad.”

  “I’ll bet you had to turn down ten other assignments,” La Forge offered.

  Scott glanced at him. “Twenty-three.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Picard said. “We thought you’d given up warp engineering and—”

  “Retired? Oh, I did, I did.”

  “But . . .”

  “Gave it up for Lent, sir, right along with a diet of greens. I did some lecturing here and there, then took a few engineering courses to familiarize m’self with this century’s technology, got recertified and, poof, here I am.”

  Picard leered at him ever so briefly, then looked at Scott again. “You’re a lousy liar, Captain. You couldn’t stand to see an Enterprise built without your fingerprints on it. It’s not many men who get to leave their influence on six generations of ships and actually work on three of them.”

  “May be the case, sir,” Scott said, “but the fact is we didn’t know this ship was going to be an Enterprise until after . . . eh . . .”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Scott, I know my ship crashed.”

  Scott’s eyes went from sparkling to sympathetic, and he got that organ-grinder look again. “Sorry, sir.”

  “So, just which strings did you have to pull to get this plum of an assignment?” Picard asked. “As if I didn’t know.”

  “Oh, well, Captain Bateson and I are long-time friends, and I mean long-time friends, after all, sir.”

  “You don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ Scotty. You’re a captain too, and your commission date—”

  Scott waved a hand. “Ah, don’t remind me how old I am. And I wouldn’t know how to call a ship’s captain anything other than ‘sir,’ give or take a few choice adjectives now and then.”

  The famous engineer, a man brought forward through time by a quirk of science instead of nature—the transporter—seemed supremely at home here. Riker was glad about that. Montgomery Scott had been confused and out of place when he had first been rescued from transporter stasis, but apparently his talents hadn’t been buried by misfortune. He’d found his way. Riker admired him for his resilience, but found Scott’s ability to fit into this starship somehow annoying at a time when Riker and his captain were having trouble finding their own places.

  He glanced at Picard. The captain wasn’t looking forward to the tour. His face was grim behind the forced smile, his eyes lightless, his posture stiff.

  The engine-room panels parted again, and for an instant Riker thought they’d be offered a little distraction, but no such luck. The person who came in at the center of a clutch of ensigns was hardly to be any relief.

  Morgan Bateson.

  He hadn’t changed that much in these past three years. Hardly at all, in fact, Riker noticed. Still had the neat musketeer’s beard, not so different from Riker’s. Bateson’s sandy hair might’ve receded a finger’s width. The uniform was updated, which was a bit startling—somehow Riker had expected to see Bateson still wearing the black trousers and maroon jacket of Starfleet past.

  Bateson had his eyes down at a padd he was just taking from a junior officer as he strode in and paused in the middle of the wide deck.

  “—and make sure those tests are run under full radiation bombardment. Doesn’t do a bit of good to test under ideal conditions, since you’ll never fight in ideal conditions.”

  “Aye, sir,” one of the ensigns said, and all the younger officers veered off in various directions, leaving Captain Bateson standing alone, checking off details on a PADD’s screen.

  “Hm,” Bateson grunted, shook his head, then wrote something more.

  The moment was surreal—no one said anything. Bateson didn’t notice them as he stood there in the middle of the engineering deck, writing. No one moved. Everyone expected someone else to move or speak. Montgomery Scott shifted once, and La Forge peered over his shoulder briefly at Picard, but that was all.

  Just before bones started cracking, Bateson finished writing and stepped off toward the starboard side, then instantly noticed the crew off to port.

  “Well—what’s this? Captain Picard! What a nice surprise!” Bateson plowed toward them with his hand extended and pumped Picard’s enthusiastically. “Beautiful, isn’t she? Quite a ship Starfleet’s got here. How long have you been aboard?”

  “Less than five minutes, Captain,” Picard said. “She’s lovely.”

  Bateson’s animated bearded face shifted instantly from joy to sympathy—how did he do that?

  “I’m so very sorry about your starship,” he said. “A great adventure with a great ending, though. Your crew made a safe planetfall, at least.”

  “ ‘Fall’ is one way to put it,” Picard said.

  “Oh—sorry.” Bateson shook his head at his social goof and said, “If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes for your tour, I have to pass along these schematics to the engineers aboard the Roderick. She’s being built in the other dock. They’re just installing her warp core and phaser banks now and they need some numbers. Got to have some fighting ships ready, you know, with the Klingons making so many angry noises these days.” Bateson angled an eyebrow mischievously and added, “We don’t ignore Klingons where I come from. Come on. I’ll show you the specs.”

  They walked off—two captains talking about a ship, their favorite subject.

  Riker and the two women stood there in the middle of the engineering deck, and a sudden sense of ill ease crept between them. Riker felt it, and tried to play it down. Have either of you had lunch?”

  But neither the doctor nor the counselor bought his effort. Neither answered. Both
continued gazing after the captains, who had paused downdeck, on the other side of the wide engine room.

  Folding her long arms, Crusher said, “It’s eerie the way those two get along. Every time they get together, it’s like they haven’t even been apart. Worries me.”

  “Why does it worry you?” Riker asked.

  She raised one shoulder. “Bateson’s a little obsessive.”

  “About what?”

  “Anything he’s thinking about at the moment. He’s been all over this ship. He’s micromanaging everything, and he’s got the ship littered with his own crew from the Bozeman.”

  “Mmm . . .” Riker uttered. “He said he would make it his cause in life to give them a future so they wouldn’t fixate on the past. He was involved in this ship’s commission, right?”

  “Right. He found out a new ship was being built, and figured that was one way to get in on the ground floor of something.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. He’s trying to jump start a whole new life for himself and his crew.”

  “That’s the problem,” Troi suggested. “It’s as if he’s still running a crew of forty. This ship crews over a thousand. He’s the one who arranged for the ship to be built way out here, at Starbase 12. It gives him a psychological advantage. Everybody in the sector lives in the light of Morgan Bateson’s success against the Klingons. It’s given him quite an edge.”

  “Ah.” Riker looked from one to the other. “Alright, ladies, let’s hear the other half. What do you think is going on?”

  Crusher glanced at Troi. Then Troi admitted, “We think he’s jockeying for command.”

  “What do you think about this?” Crusher asked, pulling on Riker’s arm. “Is Bateson qualified to command a ship like this? He can’t be.”

  “I don’t see how,” Riker offered. “He was ninety years out of date three years ago. Three years isn’t enough to catch up. At least, I don’t think so.”

  “Command of this ship is going to Captain Picard,” Troi said. “Everyone says so. And you saw how Bateson treated him. Even Bateson knows the captain deserves this command.”

  Crusher eyed Riker then and suggested heavily, “Maybe Bateson’s jockeying for first officer.”