Ship of the Line Read online

  Satisfied by that, feeling better that he was dealing not with a legend, but with a real Starfleet human being, Bush managed to unclench his knotted legs.

  James Kirk stood up and strode toward the viewer, stepping around his helm and the two officers sitting there. “We’ve taken the Enterprise out of the academy training program temporarily. Headquarters got word of a Klingon fleet mustering a few light-years from here, and we don’t know why they’re doing it.”

  “Yes, I know. I wanted to head over them, of course, but we’re still under repairs. I’m glad you’ll be there, Admiral, given your experience with Klingons.”

  “Doesn’t match yours, Captain,” Kirk offered magnanimously. “Records show you’ve had more hand-to-hand experience with Klingons in the last six years than any other single commander in Starfleet. They should be leaving me here as sector guard and sending you to the disputed area.”

  How nice of him to say that! The whole crew beamed with pride. Bush felt his chest swell.

  Bateson laughed merrily. “You’d have to lend me that starship too. The Klingon fleet wouldn’t be intimidated by a border cutter.”

  “So you say, but I know the Bozeman’s record. That’s a tough ship. Don’t give her up.”

  “No, to be sure. I’ve got my sector and my line of scrimmage and I know how to defend it. Can’t say that with your big roaming superfortress. Say, is our favorite battle-ax tinkerer still on board?”

  “Yes, and he sends his most blistering criticisms. He says you’ll fill in the blanks with the right expletives.”

  Bateson laughed with reverie. “Montgomery Scott, the galaxy’s foremost hindmost. Tell that spacedog I’ll be around to pick up after him once he dirties up that fancy upper-class engine room of yours.”

  “I’ll pass that along to him. That’s a refitted Reliant-class ship, am I correct?”

  “You are. It’s been redesignated as Soyuz class. Very compact, lots of power, no frills. Extra shielding, more weapons—not meant for science application as the Reliant class is. The Bozeman and the other four Soyuz ships are just knotted fists, and we pack a punch. Would you like to come on board for a visit?”

  “Can’t afford the time. We’re already late. Spock should be beaming over with your new officers right now. I’ll take you up on the visit when we’re done dealing with the Klingons.”

  “Give ’em hell, Admiral.”

  “They’ll get a tan, you can be sure. Kirk out.”

  As the screen flicked back to an outside view of the starship, Bush turned quickly to Bateson and asked, “Do you think he expects trouble?”

  Bateson’s slightly pouched gray eyes narrowed and his high brow puckered. He scratched his beard as if perpetuating a stereotype. “Wouldn’t bet either way. He seemed cool as a cat, but he’s in a hurry. Conflicting clues. He’s been on the Starfleet Academy faculty for several months—could just be itchy for open space. We’ll probably never know.”

  “Mr. Spock’s coming here,” Gabe Bush uttered, suddenly more self-aware than before. “It’s hard to believe. Captain Spock, I mean.”

  “Now, relax, Gabe,” Bateson said. “I know what you mean. He’ll always seem like the ideal definition of a first officer, no matter how high they promote him. You can’t help but compare yourself to that. Don’t forget, though, he was also science officer of the Enterprise, and that put him in the middle of more situations than the typical first mate would see. I think you and I have a much more conventional relationship, and that gives me some comfort. I wouldn’t want to be risking my first mate and my science officer all at once. So! I guess it’s convenient that you’re only my first mate, because I can risk you and not worry, right?”

  “Whatever weathers your helm, sir.”

  “All right, crew.” Bateson glanced around. “Put on your happy faces. We want the new men to feel at home. If you have any questions for them, feel free to ask after Captain Spock leaves.”

  “I got questions,” Wizz Dayton piped. “Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?”

  Instantly heads turned all over the bridge, and one came up from inside a lower trunk. Voices popped up from all around.

  “How do you know when to tune bagpipes?”

  “What’s the French word for ‘bouquet’?”

  “Was ‘dead reckoning’ ever alive?”

  “This ship is sick!” Bateson rolled his eyes and shoved to his feet. “And ‘dead reckoning’ was never alive. It comes from ‘deduced reckoning.’ The abbreviation was ‘ded.’ Now you know.”

  “Should’ve figured he’d know that,” somebody muttered as the double-door panels on the back of the bridge parted, and suddenly the chatter dropped off. They had company.

  Out from the lift strode Captain Spock, supremely Vulcan and elegant, somehow looking smarter in that uniform than anyone else, including the spiffy young lieutenants who followed him. Both young men were tall and slim, one slightly more so than the other on both counts, and the second had a dark moustache and a narrow face. Spock strode immediately to the center of the bridge as if he could’ve found it blindfolded, and extended a hand to Bateson. “Captain, good morning.”

  “Welcome aboard, Captain Spock,” Bateson said. “We’re especially honored to have you here, gentlemen. My first mate, Gabriel Bush.”

  “Mr. Bush,” the famous Vulcan replied. “The honor is mine. The Bozeman has earned a strong reputation keeping the integrity of the Fries-Posnikoff Sector.”

  Well, that wasn’t a cold voice at all! Bush felt his stomach uncrumple at the cracking of an old rumor.

  In fact, Spock was encouragingly pliant. Not stiff at all, he was rather relaxed and pacific. His Gothic features, a series of brackets and sharp angles, came together less harshly than Bush had expected. His sharply trimmed black hair had lost the gloss of youth, yet Spook carried now an accessibility that youth could not muster. Bush watched him and wondered if the legends had exaggerated. Like anyone else, execs tended to size each other up.

  That queasy feeling . . . happened every time somebody new came on board. Strange resentment of the intrusion . . . quick thoughts of how to prove he knew more than these two ever would, and how to hang onto the bond with officers who had died. The ship hadn’t lost anyone in over a year. This recent violation lay and burned.

  Now these two skinnies were here, eager to take the places of lost friends. As the faces of his dead shipmates rolled unbidden before Bush’s eyes, Captain Spock began speaking firmly, but quietly.

  “My condolences, gentlemen, on the loss of your science officer and your tactical lieutenant. I’m privileged to introduce your new second officer, Lieutenant Michael Dennis, and Science Specialist John Wolfe.”

  “Hello, boys.” Bateson stuck out a hand, and Tall and Taller knocked knuckles trying to take it.

  Bush let out a nervous huff. Bateson cast him a brief sympathetic look, then replaced it with a gentle smile.

  Not understanding, the two lieutenants were too new to smile, and Spock, well . . .

  “Sorry,” Bush uttered. He put out a hand to the stately officer. “Captain Spock, I feel as if I’ve known you my whole life. Grew up clinging with all my toes to your adventures and the admiral’s.”

  “Space adventures?” Bateson needled. “Way out on those New England docks? With all those sea tales to feed on? Shame on you.”

  “Oh, you bet, sir. Us Downeasters are always fishing for a good story floating in the foam. Doesn’t matter what kind of ship it happens on.”

  “Foam?” Spock asked.

  “Bush is a Gloucester boy, Captain Spock.” Bateson gave Bush a familar squeeze on the shoulder. “Long seafaring heritage. He can trace his family tree all the way back to the original Virginia colony. Had an ancestor in the British Navy on his father’s side, a first mate, wasn’t he, Gabe?”

  “In the Napoleonic Wars,” Bush confirmed. He turned away and gathered brass shot glasses from the upper deck where he’d tucked them behind a strut of the red bridge rail. Next,
the thermal decanter—and he began pouring and handing out rum tots.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bush,” Spock offered graciously, then took a tot. “Captain, I do not mean to be impolite, but the Enterprise is overdue in Benecia Sector.”

  “Of course,” Bateson said. “What’s the latest word on that?”

  “Several Klingon heavy cruisers have been seen massing just beyond the Neutral Zone, along with at least two dozen birds-of-prey. They have yet to make their intentions known or to communicate in any way.”

  Taking a sip of his rum so the others would feel free to do the same, Bateson shook his head. “If they’d concentrate as much on improving their own territory as they do on taking ours, we’d have two strong neighboring civilizations. They can’t seem to get that through their knobby skulls.”

  Spock’s black brows launched. “Not lately. Farewell, gentlemen.”

  He slugged his rum tot like a proper tar, nodded approval, and handed the empty cup back to Bush.

  “Best luck, sir,” Bush called, pleased for even the smallest chance to toss something into the meeting. “And the best to Admiral Kirk.”

  “I shall pass that along.” Nodding with personable warmth Bush would never have expected, Spock offered the new officers an encouraging look, then left the bridge without fanfare.

  “Don’t like Klingons, sir?” Lieutenant Mike Dennis asked as he turned to Bateson.

  “Don’t know,” Bateson admitted. “Never met one.”

  His mustache flecked with beads of rum, Lieutenant John Wolfe tucked his chin as if he were being made the butt of a joke. “You’ve never met a Klingon, sir?”

  “Not in person. Only in battle.”

  “How are they?”

  “Predictable. And when they try to be unpredictable, they’re even more predictable. Now, boys, before you square away your gear, let me give you a short course in border patrolling. Have you heard anything about this service?”

  Mike Dennis glanced at John Wolfe, and neither wanted to speak, but as senior of the two apparently Dennis was pressed into service. “I’ve heard, uh . . . they call you ‘Bulldog Bateson,’ sir.”

  Bateson cleared his throat and uttered, “Ummm-hmm,” and Bush caught some amusement at the new officers’ discomfort. At least Dennis had the nerve to admit what he’d heard.

  “You two know each other?” Bateson asked.

  “No, sir. Just met,” Wolfe said, as he glanced around the tight bridge and its two cramped decks, styled generally like any other Starfleet ship, except smaller and more utilitarian.

  “Not exactly a starship, is it?” the captain stated. “That’s right. It’s not. Tell ’em, Gabe.”

  Bush took one step forward. “This is a Soyuz-class border cutter authorized by the Starfleet Border Service. You may consider us, in a way, descendants of the United States Coast Guard, which in turn derived from the 1915 merging of the Revenue Cutter Service and the Lifesaving Service. In fact, the first United States naval commission went to Captain Yeaton in 1791, the master of a revenue cutter. The historic tag ‘cutter’ is picked up from the early days of the British Revenue Service, which actually used cutter-rigged sailing ships. If you want to know what that is, look it up. The United States Revenue Service used schooners rather like the fast Baltimore Clippers, but they were still called ‘cutters,’ and we still call ourselves that today. It keeps us tied to our long tradition of coastal security, and we’re proud of it.”

  “Verily,” Wizz Dayton confirmed from updeck.

  With a nod, Bush added, “And this is no office building. No three eight-hour watches. Here we run standard military four-on eight-off. We dog our watches on the Bozeman. That provides seven watches instead of six, so crew members stand different watches instead of the same watch every day. The duties of a border cutter are smuggling patrol, towing, traffic control, buoy and lightship maintenance, import-export regulation, tariff and trade-law enforcement, and aid and rescue. Oh, one thing that always surprises new men is that we tow with heavy duty clamps.”

  “Clamps?” Wolfe repeated. “Why not just use tractor beams, sir? That’s standard—”

  “Why use energy that has to be replaced when you can use a clamp that doesn’t?”

  Oh, that moment of superiority felt wicked.

  “That’s right,” Bateson said. “You’ll also learn to set your whole being to short-range calibrations. Everything we do is short-range. We’re not a powerpack, we’re not a showboat, and we’re never going to be in a history book.” He made a gesture toward the main screen, where the great starship was just now pulling around a planet to clear herself for light-speed. “But we’ve got one thing that makes us equal to the Enterprise herself. You’re wearing it.”

  Clinging to his tiny brass shot glass, Dennis gazed at him as if he liked what he was hearing, and Wolfe looked down at his uniform as if seeing it for the first time in quite a while. Bush understood how they felt—he too tended to forget sometimes.

  “Ships are like people, boys,” Captain Bateson continued. “They have jobs, specific jobs. This is a border cutter. That’s all it’s meant to be. The dream of this ship is not great exploration, not making headlines or even delivering cargo. This ship wants a secure border and a stable Neutral Zone. As her crew, that’s all we should want. We’re cogs in a bigger machine. If a cog stops, the machine fumbles. We’re a working ship, not a glory factory. We’re not the knights. We’re the castle guard. If you wanted something else . . . get over it.”

  Dennis and Wolfe mumbled a couple of dubious “aye, sir”s. Their faces dimmed at the unsparkled welcome.

  Then Dennis suddenly yelped and threw both arms into the air. There went the rum tot. Dennis staggered, then looked down at a brownish tentacle twined three or four times around his ankle. A meter downdeck was the source, a squashy, squiddy creature with mammal eyes and nothing else mammal.

  “Hi, George Hill,” Captain Bateson grumbled, irritated that his show had been stolen. “Don’t worry, Mike, he won’t hurt you. He’s just imitating the color of the carpet and wants you to appreciate it. So tell him it’s nice.”

  Clasping the bridge rail, Dennis staggered again, but John Wolfe’s chuckle shamed him into gulping, “Uh . . . it’s nice. It’s nice, George. Real . . . carpety.”

  Around them, the rest of the bridge crew laughed. On the deck, George Hill clicked and blinked those two big black eyes, and shifted on the coiled nest of his other tentacles.

  “So,” Wolfe commented, “we’ve got an octopus?”

  “Look again,” Bush said. “He’s a decapus. Ten. We don’t think he’s even aquatic. Just looks like it. He doesn’t have any suction cups on his things there. We think he’s a constrictor.”

  Bateson nodded. “Considering what he did to the cheese sandwich I tossed him the other day.”

  Pointing at the carpet, Wizz Dayton corrected, “We call him a deck-a-pus. Get it? Deck?”

  “Where’d you get this guy?” Dennis asked. “What a grip—”

  “Don’t know what planet he’s from, or we’d put him back there,” Bateson said. “Rescued him and a whole boatload of other exotics being transported illegally for sale as pets and for various voodoo medicines and aphrodisiacs. Some people will believe anything.”

  “Who’s he named after?” Wolfe asked.

  “Revenue cutter captain from way back in the scuppers of time,” Bush supplied.

  Bateson laughed. “ ‘The scuppizz of toyme.’ Love that accent, Gabe.”

  “All right, men,” Bush said, “retire to Deck 4, Cabins 4-C and F, and square away your gear. Report back to the bridge in fifteen minutes. We’ll give you a crash course in border ship bridge design.”

  “Aye, sir,” the two chimed, but then Mike Dennis couldn’t extricate his ankle from George Hill’s coil.

  “George Hill, turn loose,” Bush said. “Turn loose. Turn loose of him, George!”

  Clicking some kind of answer, George Hill uncoiled his tentacle from Dennis and placidly tran
sferred it to Captain Bateson’s ankle as if keeping a mooring.

  Bush gave Dennis and Wolfe a nod of encouragement, and wished they could spare a couple inches of height to add to his own five-foot-nine frame. He hated skewering his neck to talk to Gullivers.

  The two lieutenants headed for the lift, and Bateson leaned toward Bush. “Skinny. That’s what you get with replicator food. See why I keep a galley with the real thing?”

  “ ‘Preciate that, sir. ‘Specially the shrimp. Where I come from, shellfish deprivation’s been known to cause severe depression.”

  “Excuse me—Morgan?” Wizz Dayton spoke from the communications board, but didn’t turn. He was squinting at his readouts, not looking very happy.

  Bateson and Bush instantly dropped their conversation. Wizz never interrupted anyone without a good reason. Now that he’d interrupted them he suddenly went silent again, staring into his readouts as if puzzled.

  “What’ve you got, Wizard?” Bateson prodded when the communications officer fell silent after calling.

  Dayton’s bushy brows went down. “I was monitoring the Enterprise’s subspace emissions, but just now . . .” He shook his head and poked at his controls with both hands. “Just now all my comm systems went silent. No malfunction, sir. Not on this side, anyway.”

  The captain stepped to the rail. “What could blank out your systems? Did the starship backfire?”

  At mention of the Enterprise, Mike Dennis and John Wolfe paused inside the just-arrived lift. Dennis held the controls to keep the lift door from closing. Bush raised a hand to confirm that they should stay here for a moment, just a moment.

  “The starship’s long gone already. Warped out three minutes ago.” Dayton plucked at his board, his chin getting lower and lower as he bent more forward, as if to stare his board into working again. “I’m almost completely shut down here. Got . . . yeah, still got intraship, but it’s fluttery. I don’t like the feel of it.”