by Peter David
“Battleship.”
“Hardly. Jason, Stiles. Pull that spreader all the way out of the bridle and discard it. Don’t be tidy. Six minutes.”
“Six, aye.”
“What kind of ship are you, then?” Hashley asked again.
“We’re a combat support tender. Some people call us a ‘floating star-base.’ We’re a heavy-laden, multipurpose vessel made to support more specialized Starfleet vessels. We carry structural and weapons-repair specialists, materiel, fuel, ammunition and dry stores. We can resupply a ship on the fly or right in the middle of active engagement, like we’re doing now. One of our jobs is to quickly make operational any ready-reserve ships on standby. We did that to Lafayette last week.”
“And now she needs you again!” Hashley’s eyes flew wide. “Right in the middle of a fight! How do you do something like that!”
“With step-by-step processes. Being fast is a matter of survival, not just success.”
“You must’ve been busy lately, with all the trouble that’s been erupting.”
“We’ve been nonstop for months,” Stiles agreed. “Wish we knew why all these skirmishes were erupting—”
“I know why! Do you want me to tell you? I know all about it!”
Stiles leered briefly at the man, sure he didn’t actually know more than Starfleet frontliners, but disturbed by Hashley’s confident claim.
“Crossfire! Incoming!” Ensign Ashikaga shouted from the tactical sensors.
“Detonate!” Stiles authorized, and the shots lanced out before the sound his words had died.
At the weapons console, Matt Girvan fell on his controls instantly, obviously expecting the authorization to fire while there were extravehicular crew out there. He’d been ready to defend the CST, despite the attempts by Lafayette and Majestic to protect the wounded destroyer and her rafted repair ship. Phaser fire blew from the Saskatoon, cutting across the paths of two streams of disruptor fire that actually were meant to hit the Majestic but had missed. The shots detonated in mid-space—good work, though the power wash and the stress of opening fire rocked the CST and caused the umbilicals to sing through their hull mounts. The inside of the ship whined freakishly, buffeted by the power wash.
“Oh, what happened?” Ansue Hashley’s arms flew wide as the deck rocked. “Did we get shot?”
Not a direct hit, but the wash did enough damage to fritz several of the monitors. Two went completely dark, and a half dozen flashed and became garbled, losing the view of the rivet team on the destroyer’s nacelle strut.
His ears aching, Stiles crossed to the portside monitors and called over the whine. “Check the men!”
Horrified by the shouts and calls rattling over the comm from the repair team, he fixed on the nearest monitor, which showed a closeup flurry of elbows and parts of suits, but didn’t give a clear view of any one person.
Frantic for a wide view, Stiles muttered, “I’d really like a look.”
“I’m getting green on all the life-support signals,” Travis said with undisguised relief. “The body of the ship deflected the wash.”
“Lucky angle. I hate to fire when I’ve got men out.” No one paid any attention except Ansue Hashley, whose eyes somehow got even wider at the declaration. Stiles punched the nearest comm link. “Rivet squad, running out of time. Minute and thirty left.”
“Shouldn’t you be out there, Mr. Lightcudder?” Hashley asked. “If you’re in command?”
“No, they don’t need me out there.”
“Maybe there’s something I can do….”
“Not right now, thanks.”
“Stiles, Bolt. Strut cradle’s secure, riveted, and caulked. Main injector’s flowing and the sliding bulkhead is jury-rigged over the cofferdam and—Monks, is it glazed? Yes, it’s glazed and chemical-bonded. Ready to retract the caissons and the davit.”
“A whole minute early!” Stiles whooped. “You guys are singing! Back inside before we get another visitation.”
He stood back to listen to the tumble of orders as the rivet team handled their own reshipping. This was when all the hours of brain-frying drills paid off.
“Mr. Stiles, this is Sattler. We saw the crossfire. Do you need assistance?”
“Don’t worry about us, Captain. Your ship’s the important one here, not ours. Soon as I get my men aboard, we’ll shove off and you can do your job with those Romulans. Congratulations on your first combat rafting.”
“You’re a piece of work, Mr. Stiles. Now I know where you get your reputation.”
“All lies. Stand by, please.”
Travis met his questioning gaze as if cued in psychically. “The caissons are boarded, davits coming back in, and all hands will be aboard in another few seconds.”
“Ready on the umbilicals. Prepare to shove off,” he called through the ship, not bothering with the comm.
“Ready one!”
“Ready on two!”
“Ready four!”
“Release four.”
“Release four, aye!”
“Slack one. Helm, swing out on number two.” Yikes, he sure had to find out that kid’s name soon. Always happened when they got a new batch of trainees. “Hey, I said slack one!”
“Slacking one!”
“Haul away, four.”
“Hold it!” Jeremy suddenly called from three compartments back. “Four’s fouled.”
“Hold all lines!” Stiles poked his head through the hatch, but didn’t actually leave the bridge. “What’s the story?”
“Looks like the retractor’s jammed. Must’ve taken a hit we didn’t notice.”
“Disengage the line.”
“Cut and run from our end?”
“Right, let it float. We’ll pick it up later if we can. It’s not fouled onto Lafayette, is it? Because we’ll have to go out again if it is. They can’t trail a line into battle.”
“No, line’s free. It’s our retractor housing.”
“Cut it.”
“Aye aye…” They all waited until a loud chunk boomed through the ship’s body. Then Jeremy spoke again. “Line’s detached. We’re clear, Eric.”
“Ship to ship.” He watched while the communications kid tapped in, then looked at the screen displaying the nearby plates of the destroyer.
“We’re clear of rafting, Lafayette. Bear off laterally. When you’ve cleaned up the mess out there, we’ll reprovision you and the Majestic.”
“Excellent job, Saskatoon. Bearing off. Shields up. And thanks again, double trouble.”
“No problem. Good work, Mr. Perraton, Mr. White, everybody.”
He turned to the main screen as, with nothing less than heart-stirring dynamism, the great shining gray form of the destroyer peeled off at quarter impulse and drove into the swarm of Romulans.
“This is wondrous!” Ansue Hashley hopped on his toes and spread his hands wide. “You should be in the headlines!”
“Nah, no headlines. This is nuts-and-bolts duty.”
“But you should get recognition for this kind of wonderful thing!”
“Do without food and bandages for a while. Helm, hard over. Come full about and give them room to fight. I don’t want the destroyers to have to protect us.”
“Hard over, sir.”
“I could write an article!” Ansue Hashley insisted. “I know some people where I could send it! You do such a vital, glorious thing!
Stiles watched the screens, deliberately not looking at him. “It’s vital, not glorious. Headlines are for the Lafayette and the Majestic.”
Shuddering as its great engines vibrated, the muscular combat tender turned on an axis and hummed away from the center of the dispute, leaving the cloud of Romulans and the two Federation ships behind in a sparkle of weapons fire.
“Secure the ship, Travis,” he said casually, knowing that the actual activities were hardly casual. Punching the comm, he added, “Clones, Stiles.”
“Bolt and Bolt, Ship Riveters-at-Large. Would you like an appointment, sir?”
“Wow.”
“Bailiff, shoot that man.”
As the laughter of relief and satisfaction rippled through the CST, Stiles turned like an old-time gunfighter and hooked his thumbs in an imaginary holster belt.
“Okay, Mr. Hashley…what’s your story?”
“Oh! Me—yes!” Ansue Hashley stuck out a computer cartridge. “I watched while they composed this. It says right on here to report to Mr. Lightcudder and give this to you. Is it all right to?”
Stiles pushed the card into the nearest terminal, which clicked, and flipped, but nothing came up on the monitor above it.
“Where is it?” he wondered.
From the tool alley, Greg Blake called, “It’s back here, Mr. Lightcudder.”
“Uh…yeah, would you pass it back up here, please?”
“Certainly, Mr. Lightcudder.”
The screen flickered once, then a message came up on it—printed, not vocal. Obviously somebody didn’t want this read aloud by anybody, including the ship’s systems.
“Mmm…explains…almost nothing.” Stiles looked at the printed message, sensing Travis and the bridge guys looking from behind him. “You don’t deal much with Starfleet, do you, Mr. Hashley?”
ATTENTION MR. LTCDR
EYES ONLY DO NOT BROADCAST
HOLD ITEM TOP SECURITY
“Not even the name of the ship in the message,” Travis said as he came up behind Stiles. “What item?”
Stiles cocked a hip and glared at him until Travis uttered, “Oh…right.”
They both turned to Hashley, who looked back and forth between them again and again.
“Smuggling?” Stiles asked.
“Oh, transporting. I’m an agricultural broker. Usually, anyway. Well, I used to be. Sometimes I take other cargo. Well, most of the time. Well—”
“What other cargo?”
“Anything anybody wants. Mostly stuff the Romulans want. Most of the time I don’t even know what’s in the crates and casks. I don’t ask much. I’ve been running the same twenty-light-year relay for the past seven years. The Romulans had laws that said I shouldn’t be doing it, but they were liking what I did. They could’ve stopped me any time, but they bought what I had and paid me to move more. If the patrols stopped me, they usually settled for a quarter of my cargo.” Ansue Hashley smiled, and suddenly looked like a carved pumpkin. “I give very generous bribes.”
How could you hate a jack-o-lantern?
“First of all, ‘Lightcudder’ isn’t anybody’s name. Those letters mean ‘Lieutenant Commander.’”
Hashley blinked as if he’d been slapped. “But aren’t you…the captain? Oh, no, did I make a terrible mistake?”
“No, you didn’t make a mistake. Combat support tenders are piloted by lieutenant commanders, officered by lieutenants, and crewed by chief, ensigns, midshipmen, and able crewmen. Most of these young people are here for experience and training. CST duty is considered good experience because of the active labor, tactical judgment, and hands-on ship handling. You also get a taste of battle situations without actually having to fight. Not usually, anyway. So I’m not ‘Captain Lightcudder.’ I’m Lieutenant Commander Stiles.”
“Oh…oh, goodness, oh, my goodness, I made such a big mistake…. Stiles, Stiles, I won’t forget again. Oh, I’m so sorry….”
“No, no.”
“But I feel just awful, horrible—”
“It’s not important. What is important is how you got transferred here without my knowing about it, and why the Lafayette would do that.”
“Oh, I’m top secret! At least, my location is.”
“Why?”
“Because the Romulans are trying to kidnap me.”
As Travis finished his immediate duties and came down to the center of the squatty bridge to stand behind him, Stiles folded his arms and insisted again, “Why?”
“Because I know too much. I’m the one who knows why the Romulans have been skirmishing with the Federation on all the border fronts. You said you didn’t know, remember? But I do.”
Stiles glanced at Travis, who made a subtle shrug with just his eyes.
“The Lafayette slipped you on board here to sort of shuffle the cards so the Romulans wouldn’t know which ship you’re on?”
“Yes! Also to get me out of the line of fire. The Federation doesn’t want me to be a scraping goat.”
“Well, how do you feel about telling me this big secret that suddenly makes my ship a target?”
“Oh, I feel fine about it! I know everything. I know why the Romulans are panicking.”
Hashley stepped closer and poked Stiles in the folded forearm, and his eyes got big as golf balls.
“Poison! The whole Romulan royal family! Every single member of the emperor’s bloodline, no matter where they are, all over the empire. They’re all dying!”
“What?”
Astonished, Eric Stiles sank back on the edge of the helm. His feet felt molded to the deck. His arms wouldn’t unfold.
“We haven’t heard anything about that!” Travis blurted, glancing custodially at Stiles, then back at the funny agricultural broker who had been dropped on them.
“It’s a big, huge secret,” Hashley went on. “The Romulan royal family is trying to keep it secret. They don’t want anybody to know their empire’s leadership could all be dying, one by one. It’ll be just a mess if such a big weakness gets discovered, even if only by people inside the empire.”
Behind Stiles’s shoulder, Travis asked, “And they think the Federation’s behind the…the whatever’s killing them?”
“Poisoning,” Hashley said. “Or maybe an engineered virus—anyway, it’s something definitely artificially constructed. A hundred and ten members of the royal family have died already, and all the others are infected. I’m the only Federation citizen running the Neutral Zone, so they know I’m smart and I know why they’re attacking Federation ships.”
Stiles swallowed a hard lump and registered that his feet were suddenly blocks of ice. That didn’t sound right. Nobody cared that much about one Federation guy running cargo, and Hashley sure wasn’t the only one.
“What’s this thing they’ve got?” he asked. “How does it manifest itself?”
“They’ve got a blood disease. First they get real weak, real suddenly. Then their arms and legs start hurting. Pretty soon they can hardly walk and breathe. It’s infected every single member of the emperor’s bloodline. It’s specialized to the blood of the royal family, so they know this is a mass-assassination attempt. It’s supposed to be a secret, but I found out about it, so they tried to kidnap me.”
“The Romulans?”
“That’s right. And the Majestic came in and rescued me, and they were trying to get back to Federation space with me when the Romulans attacked them. They beamed me to the Lafayette to confuse the Romulans, and now the Lafayette beamed me to you, to keep confusing them. Now they don’t know where I am.”
The bridge fell to an uneasy silence.
“Aren’t you kind of…blabbing a lot, Mr. Hashley?”
“Oh, yes! That way I’m never the only one to know anything!”
“Pretty cavalier about it, aren’t you?” Travis commented.
Hashley shrugged his round shoulders and showed the palms of his hands, then abruptly clapped them together and drew a sharp breath. “Stiles! Are you Eric John Stiles?”
“Well—”
“I remember you! You’re Eric John Stiles the Hero! You got the Medal of Valor eight years ago!”
“Ten,” Stiles mumbled.
“Eleven,” Travis corrected, and he took Hashley by the arm in a stern manner. “We don’t talk about that around here very much, Mr. Hashley. He’s just our lightcudder and that’s how we keep it.”
“Oh, I’m so happy to be here and meet him, though!”
“Mr. Hashley,” Stiles interrupted
, “is there anything you’re not telling us?”
“Me? No! I’d tell you anything I knew. I don’t want to know any secrets, not ever. Secrets can get you killed. I never want to be the only one—”
“Okay, okay.” Stiles pushed himself off the helm and uncracked his tingling arms from around his ribs. “I’ll keep you in protective custody until I can communicate with somebody about you…if you’ll just…quiet down a little. We’ll assign you a bunk…Travis, uh…get some crew up here to clean up all this broken plastic and chips.”
“Oh, I’ll do it!” Hashley dropped to his knees right where he was standing and began swiftly plucking the residue of damage off the deck and stuffing it into his pockets. “I love to help. Sitting in quarters while everybody else is working, that’s just not for me. I’m an action kind of man.”
“Yeah…Travis, take us back over the Neutral Zone border and…hold position in case they need us again. I’ll be in my quarters.”
With icy hands clenched, Stiles paused in the dimness of his quarters and closed his eyes. The computer had clicked and whirred, but it had provided only poor answers. A thousand memories shot back as if rocketing from yesterday instead of—what was it, now, fourteen, almost fifteen years ago? Didn’t seem so long.
The door chime sounded.
For a moment, he thought of not answering.
“Yeah.”
The panel opened and Travis looked in. “Hey, Lightcudder. Can I interrupt?”
“Sure.”
Travis came all the way in, carrying a steaming cup of hot chocolate and a particularly concerned expression he was trying to disguise as something else. He stood at the door for a moment as it closed behind him.
“You all right, Eric?” he asked.
Warmed by the solicitous effort, Stiles tried to appear relaxed by brushing the remains of his breakfast toast off his desk chair. “Eh, I guess so. Sit down, Travis. And I, in my infinite wisdom, shall sit also.”
He slumped into the chair, and put one boot up on the edge of a drawer that wasn’t quite closed and his elbow up on the desk.
Depositing the hot chocolate on the desk near Stiles’ resting hand, Travis sat down on the bunk. The quarters were too small for two chairs, so the bunk was almost constantly rumpled, being used more often as a couch than a place to sleep. “Ship’s secure. Jeremy’s handling the damage we took—it should be repaired in about twenty minutes. And Ansue Hashley’s crawling around the chambers sucking up damage with the shoulderheld vac.”