by Peter David
“Great!” Stiles clapped his hands once, and startled the socks off his new helmsman. “That’s a relief. Ship to ship—Captain Sattler, good news. It’s not the nacelle that’s kinked. It’s only the strut. We’ll raft up right here and square it, but you’ve got to keep those stingers off us for a solid fifteen minutes. I have to put extravehicular crew on the skin of your ship and I don’t want anybody barbecued on your hull.”
“Commander, you fix my nacelle in fifteen minutes in the middle of this mess and I’ll owe you a big sloppy kiss and a crystal decanter of your favorite. We’ll put out the warning pennant and anybody who comes near your workers will feel the heat. There’s nothing like a movable starbase when we need one!”
The charming—oh, yes—and sultry voice of the destroyer’s captain made Stiles smile again. For a moment, he had trouble imagining her in a uniform. “I’ll take the kiss and send the decanter to my grandfather. Maintain standby communications and let us handle the rafting. Drop your shields on our mark.”
“Pennant’s flashing. Standing by for rafting approach. Do you intend to use tractors or umbilicals?”
“Both,” Stiles told her.
“Aren’t tractors faster?”
“Usually, but if we get hit and there’s a power failure, our ships would just drift away from each other and we couldn’t help each other. With umbilicals, we’ll be netted together no matter what happens.”
“Good thinking. Ready when you are.”
“Three…two…one…mark.”
“Affirmative, shields down. Approach when ready.”
Glancing at his bridge crew, Stiles said, “Okay, boys, we’ve got fifteen minutes! That’s two to raft up and thirteen to effect repair. Let’s clone that destroyer a new nacelle strut. Sound off.”
From deep through the body of the combat support tender, team leaders and section masters called off.
“Internal repair squad ready, sir!”
“Rafting hands ready. Umbilicals one, two, and four manned, magnetic tethers hot.”
“Rivet squad suited and ready, sir.”
“Caissons ready.”
“Gun team?”
“Weapons armed and ready!”
“Where are the evil twins?”
“Already in the airlock, Eric.”
“Beautiful. Lateral thrusters one half. Let’s move in.”
“All hands, brace for action rafting! Shields down!”
Ah, the chatter of activity. What a good noise.
Out there, not far away on the cosmic scale, a half dozen Romulan fighters darted around two Starfleet destroyers, one patrol cutter, and three merchant ships caught in the crossfire. Bursts of phaser fire, disruptor streams, glancing hits and direct detonations lit the fabric of black space like flashing jewels. There was a startling beauty about it, stitched firmly into the crazy quilt of hazard and excitement.
“Okay, you lot—tea time! Battle Cook Woody reportin’ f’duty, sah!”
Stiles rolled his eyes and groaned. What timing.
At the port entryway, Ship’s Mess Officer Alan Wood came rolling in as he always seemed to in moments of critical action, or did critical action always happen at teatime?
Stiles didn’t argue, as their in-house real-live London butcher distributed cookies, tea, and coffee to an obviously busy crew.
“There y’go. Two sugars, Trav. Told y’I wouldn’t f’get. Eric, sir, no caffeine for you, double cream, honey, and ye olde ginger snaps.”
“You always know what calms me down, Alan. And don’t call me ‘honey.’”
“Aye aye, dear.”
“Put the tray down and take over Jason’s driver coil balance, Battle Cook.”
“You got it.”
They were completely vulnerable now. Both the CST and the destroyer were shields down. These were the crucial minutes during which any enemy shot could cut all the way through any bulkhead or hull plate and take out anything inside, man or machine.
He glanced around at the bridge crew, peeked back through the infinity mirror of hatchways leading into the depths of the Saskatoon and its work areas, saw the unit leaders looking back at him from their various places, and satisfied himself that all segments were ready to work. He turned now to watch the two main screens, one always viewing forward, one always aft, and the sixteen auxiliary screens around the horseshoe. On the screens, shown from a dozen different angles, there was a hot battle going on at this edge of a small solar system. He stood beside the command chair, so seldom used that it held parts and charts and anything else they needed handy at any given time. He almost never sat in it. Should have it removed altogether.
“Watch your aft swing,” he told the helmsman. “There’s a solar current here.”
“I can do it manually, I think,” the helmsman boldly claimed.
“You think, sir.” Travis turned at the brash helmsman’s statement, reached across the auxiliary board on the upper controls, and tapped one of the pads. “I’ve got it. Stabilizers on.”
The young helmsman fumed, but said nothing.
Stiles glanced at Travis and shrugged. Kids.
He stepped a little closer to the helm, just to intimidate at the right level. If only he could remember the kid’s name.
“Okay, junior,” he decided, “this is your first battle rafting. Let’s do it right.”
The midshipman gritted his teeth. “Aye, sir.”
“Adjust to starboard on the transverse axis…watch your amplitude of pitch…not bad. Don’t let the roll go…quarter reverse on the port lateral. More thrust to port…less underthrust…never mind the bumpers, don’t try to be graceful….”
On the starboard deck, Travis clamped his lips to keep from laughing at the helmsman’s obvious annoyance with help he clearly needed. Stiles saw the effort, but any possibility of amusement for himself was lost in the sheer danger of what they were about to do. An action rafting was never routine, no matter how well-drilled the crew could possibly become.
When the CST and the destroyer were snugged up beam-to-beam and in line, and the CST had been raised to near-touching level with the Lafayette’s starboard nacelle, Stiles called, “Pass line two.”
“Pass two!” the response came from amidships.
On one of the small monitors, umbilical number two snaked out and grappled the attraction bracket on the high side of the destroyer.
“Capture two!” the line handler called.
Suddenly the destroyer heaved up on its port nacelle as a Romulan fighter veered in too close and opened fire. Bright light washed Stiles and everyone around him from all the starboard screens, a fierce shining glitter of destruction and raw heat.
“Whoa,” Stiles murmured, shielding his eyes. “Close one.”
Travis flinched at the proximity of death. “Lafayette, steady your position, can you?”
“We’re attempting to hold as steady as possible, Saskatoon ,” the other commanding officer responded. “That current came up under us just as that Romulan fired on us. Double whammy.”
“I know you’re taking fire,” Stiles interrupted, “but we only need thirty seconds to finish this. Hold still that long.”
“Understood.”
“Spring in closer now,” he said to the helm trainee. “Keep us trim. Work a little faster. Don’t overcompensate. Let the gravitational umbilicals do the heavy lifting.”
“Closing,” the kid said. “Twenty meters…fifteen meters…”
“Pass one.”
“Passing one!”
“Hold two.”
“Two holding.”
“Capture one!”
“Forward starboard thruster one quarter and shift down port bow 10 degrees.”
“Forward one quarter, port bow down ten, aye.”
“Pass four, hold one.”
“Passing four!”
“Hold one, aye.”
“Two and four, haul away.”
“Haul away two!”
“Haul away four!”
“I love skirmishes,” he effused happily. “That’s good! Cut thrust. Engine crew, stand by. Mr. Blake! Scan for stress.”
“Scanning, sir.”
As disruptor fire flashed on some of the smaller monitors, showing the ongoing space battle between another destroyer and those Romulan buzz-saws, Stiles nodded in satisfaction, even though Blake couldn’t see him. Greg Blake had known him since they were both fifteen years old. The “sir” was almost silly in that regard, but he knew his long-time crew threw it in for effect at moments like this. There were always impressionable midshipmen and junior officers serving on the CST, most of whom would move on after the grueling training they would receive here.
On the screen to his left, the streamlined body of the Destroyer Lafayette drew close to the lumbering CST, in fact close enough to touch if that viewport had been a window they could open. He saw the gleaming hull plates and the buttonhead rivets as clearly as his own fingernails.
“What a great way to live,” he muttered. “She gets all the glory and the headaches, she has to guess what the enemy’s doing—and on top of that she has to protect us in the middle of a battle. This is the best damn duty around.”
“You could ask for a date,” Travis suggested. “I bet she’d go, the way she sounds when she talks to you. Maybe if you grow your beard back—”
“I’m not dating anybody who outranks me,” Stiles commented, aware of the glances from Midshipman Zelasko at the comm station and the two little ensigns over at the engineering board. “Bad enough having a cocky Canadian first officer around. And the beard itched.”
Outside, close enough to smell the gunpowder, seven other ships were engaged in a spark battle, a border skirmish with hotheaded Romulans. These eruptions had been going on for months now, sparks of aggression that seemed like temper tantrums from isolated Romulan units. The empire kept claiming nothing was wrong, that these were just dissatisfied commanders venting their frustration, but Stiles didn’t believe it. Something was going on in the Romulan Empire that was causing rogue attacks. The Federation wanted to be prudent. Ignore acts of war. Avoid any one of these bursts turning into a lit fuse that couldn’t be put out by anything other than full-out conflict.
“Okay, Travis,” Stiles said when he was satisfied that the ships were as close as possible and the umbilicals were taut. “Go do that voodoo that you do so well.”
“Ten seconds and counting,” Travis responded, and hit a comm button. “Rivet team, hit open space. Signal when you’re on the davit boom.”
“Acknowledged,” one of the Bolt brothers responded. “Ready.”
“Launching.” Travis hit his controls.
The hiss of the airlock shot through the whole ship. There was no place on the CST to get away from that big sound as the lock depressurized and the repair crew sprayed out from the tender on a spiderweb of cables from the swinging davit, two men to a cable, a total of twelve men in space-worthy suits, each fully armed with a trapeze harness and a tool vest. Their job wasn’t to fight the enemy—it was to fight the enemy’s results.
The interior of the CST fell oddly silent, giving way to the bleeps and whirs of shipboard mechanical redundancy, and a symphony of eyes swept the wall-wide grid of screens. Dozens of angles, each fixed on some aspect of the repair job—only a few were dedicated to the fight that was still going on within phaser-striking distance of this oddly protectionless refuge.
Stiles settled back on his heels and listened to the critical exchange between Jeremy White, back in the engineering control room, and Travis here on the bridge, whose job it was to manage the rivet squad. In less than a minute, the two men had the rivet squad swung over on the external davits to the nacelle of the Lafayette, crawling all over it with their magnetic boots like a tidy infestation.
The open comm lines brought in the work as if it were happening right at his feet, bits of dialogue overlapping others as the squad split up to do a half dozen jobs in a matter of minutes.
“Got some burnoff plating infecting this binding strake.”
“I’ll help you.”
“Stand clear.”
“Two more centimeters.”
Travis talking at the same time: “Don’t crowd him, Zack. You’re too close to the welding stream.”
“I’m Jason.”
“Clone.”
“I need the spreader over here.”
“—swing that caisson under me, will you?”
“—and engage the thrusters so you’ve got balance—”
Then Jeremy’s voice from two sections back: “Mr. Evans, countersink those outer rivets before you caulk them in.”
“You sure, sir?”
“We always countersink. Maintains a flush surface.”
“What difference—”
“A big one at hyperlight. Morton, what are you doing? Move your arm so I can see.”
“Chocking the vertical bracket stringers?”
Stiles touched his comm button and interrupted. “Chock ’em in under the shell plating, Mr. Morton. Then caulk it with foam.”
“Won’t hold more than a week.”
“It only has to hold a day. Just double-secure the center of effort and wrap it up. You got nine minutes left.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
“Mr. Lightcudder?”
Startled by a completely unfamiliar voice only inches from his shoulder, Stiles cranked around and found himself face to face with a total stranger. Total! Never seen the guy before. Right here on the working deck!
Civilian. No uniform, no identifying patches or badges. Work clothes.
How could this happen?
It couldn’t, but here he was, grinning like a Halloween pumpkin. No escort, no nothing.
Oh—actually there was a nervous ensign standing at the bridge hatch-way, evidently having just brought the man in. Why hadn’t the ensign done the officer approach? The ensign shrugged as Stiles raked him with a glare.
The civilian was stocky, wearing a bulky tan jacket with big round buttons and a heavy neck scarf, which gave the man an illusion of being short. Actually Stiles looked him nearly in the eye, so he was at least five feet nine. He had a round face with flush-dots on the puffy cheeks, a halo of metal-shaving hair mounted behind his balding forehead, round brown eyes, round shoulders—the guy was round.
“Are you Mr. Lightcudder?” the round guy asked.
“What?” Stiles stepped back and got a better look. “Who are you? How’d you get on my bridge?”
The odd newcomer kept his eyes fixed on Stiles. “They just put me on board from the Lafayette. I was told to report to Mr. Lightcudder. My name’s Ansue Hashley and I’m so grateful for—”
“A civilian is transferred to my CST and this is the first I hear of it?”
Greg Blake strode by and handed him a padd on the way past. “Nobody likes to talk to you.”
“We avoid it,” Matt Girvan said from the engineering support station.
“Any of you know about this?” Stiles asked, swiveling a glance around the bridge.
Nobody did.
“Well, Mister—”
“Hashley. Ansue Hashley. I’m—”
“You’ll have to stand by a few minutes. We’re in the middle of an operation. Just park right there and don’t do anything and don’t touch anything.”
“I will, Mr. Lightcudder, I mean I won’t, and I’ll stand right here.” Hashley planted both feet and pointed a sausage finger at his boots.
Stiles glanced at Travis, who frowned and muttered, “Lightcudder…”
“Stiles, Jason. There’s s
ome kind of Charlie Noble sticking up here and it’s actually hot.”
Turning back to his job, Stiles twitched at the proximity of the stranger. “Hot? Electrically?”
“No, it’s actually radiating heat. In fact, it’s glowing.”
“That can’t be right….”
“No kidding. I don’t want to touch it.”
“No, don’t touch it. Jeremy!”
“Copy that,” Jeremy called from two hatches back. “Pretty weird, Eric. You want me to suit up?”
“Talk to the destroyer’s CE first. Have him tell you what that thing is and turn it off if he can. I don’t want a hole burned in somebody’s EVS.”
“Closing the breach now…two more centimeters…one more…hold!”
“Hold the crane!”
“Holding.”
“What’s all that they’re talking about?” Hashley asked.
Annoyed, Stiles quickly said, “Just shortcuts we take, Mr. Hashley. We have to get the Lafayette back into action so they can press the Romulans back.”
“Are they going to kill the Romulans?”
“Not if they can avoid it.”
“Isn’t this a battle?”
“No, it’s just a commercial blockade. Some hothead venting off at us.”
“But the Romulans attacked your patrols, didn’t they? Isn’t that an act of war?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“I thought we were having a war and that’s why they wanted me.”
“No war yet.” With his demeanor Stiles did his best to communicate that he was preoccupied.
“Rig a gantline over here. We’ll just horse the strut with brute force and tribolt it.”
“I love brute force. Gives me a sense of superiority.”
“—the magnetic coupling?”
“No, the spreader. I’ll hand it—”
“—the only way you’ll ever get any respect.”
“What kind of a ship is this?” Ansue Hashley looked all around. “It’s not a starship—”
Stiles watched the screens, told himself that he should ignore the man, then decided he would enjoy showing off a little. “No, not a starship.”
“Cruiser?”
“No.”