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