It could have been worse, Scotty reminded himself as he walked carefully, step by magnetically aided step, around the patch of buckled and marred hull plating. As ugly as the damage was, the hull had not been breached, neither here nor elsewhere on the ship. No lives had been lost. That had been a blessing, no question. Still, it was with effort that Scotty had to turn his attention away from the impact site to the task that had brought him out here.
Several meters ahead, a thick beam of solid duranium rose up from the surface of the hull at an angle—or, from another perspective, it extended down and away from the Enterprise’s underbelly, where Scotty now stood, reaching to the dorsal hull of the 814. This was one of six such struts that formed the connections between the two ships, in addition to the airlock and the warp plasma transfer conduits, and would ensure those connections remained secure for the duration of their joint mission. As Scott reached the strut, he grabbed the tricorder secured to his thigh with a gloved hand and scanned the welding seams, ensuring there were no flaws or weaknesses in the molecular bond between the hull plates and the struts.
“What is your judgment, Mister Scott?” came the voice of Chief N’Mi over his helmet’s internal communicator.
The engineer straightened up as he reached for the suit’s transmit control, positioned just over his breastbone. As he did so, Scott could see, out the high transparent top of his helmet, the figure in a Domain EVA suit moving hand over hand along the duranium beam, from the 814 to where he was standing. “Everything looks good and secure,” Scott answered his counterpart from the other ship, “though I do wish your people had been a bit neater.”
From about three meters up (or down), Chief N’Mi swung her legs down in a slow, weightless arc and planted her magnetized boot soles on the Enterprise. “Neater?” she asked.
“Right, look at this,” Scotty said, pointing to the uneven lines of what looked like melted and cooled candle wax that marked the joining of support to ship. “I know we’re under time constraints, and a molecular welder isn’t the most precise tool there is, but they could have used a wee bit more care.”
The visor of the Domain suit provided a more restricted view of the wearer’s face than the Starfleet version did. Still, Scott could clearly see that N’Mi was not particularly sympathetic to his grievances. “It’s only a cosmetic matter,” she told him. “These hull plates will need to be repaired or replaced in any case, once we reach Wezonvu and detach the ships.”
“Aye, I know,” Scott said, giving his shoulders a slight hitch underneath the silver-colored suit. “I just hate to see the old girl such a mess, is all.”
“Who is ‘the old girl’?” N’Mi asked.
Scotty chuckled. “The Enterprise. In our culture, we often refer to ships as ‘she,’ and assign feminine attributes to them.” He shut the flap of his tricorder and refastened it to his suit, then began slowly walking back toward the secondary airlock.
Following alongside him, N’Mi asked, “But you don’t really think of it as a living being, do you?”
“Not literally, no,” Scotty said. “Though in a sense, the Enterprise really is one. She’s got a beating heart in her warp engine . . . a mind in her computer banks . . . but her crew, they’re what gives her a soul.”
“In the Goeg Domain, a ship is just a ship,” N’Mi said. “Its engines and computers are just machines, and its crew . . .”
For a second, Scott was unsure if the comm link between them had been cut off or if the chief had cut herself off before finishing her thought.
“Is just a crew,” she finally added as they approached the airlock.
“Well, that’s a shame,” Scotty said, as he reached again for his suit communicator controls and signaled to have the airlock decompressed and opened. “As fond as I am of the Enterprise herself, it’s the people I get to work with who make it worthwhile.”
N’Mi had no reply to that, and as the hatch opened, he opted not to pursue the matter any further.
* * *
“Code 8-71,” called out the Domain technician, a female Abesian named Fexil, to the mixed team of Starfleet and Domain engineers working in the cramped lowest level of the Enterprise’s engineering section.
Uhura, standing just behind her, consulted her data slate and translated, “That’s a complete purge of the warp plasma conduit.”
“Are you joking?” That question came from Crewman Steven MacNeal, a young Centaurian who had just joined the Enterprise crew following their recent stop at Earth. “We just finished a code eight-whatever for a standard flush of the warp plasma conduit!”
“What reason would I have for joking?” Fexil asked, sounding exasperated by the experience of having to repeatedly explain her work methods to the Starfleet half of the detail. The Domain’s system of command and status codes, Uhura had learned, had stemmed from the beginning of their efforts to integrate their Defense Corps, with the intention of bridging any language barriers and establishing standards of operation. It was somewhat ironic that the ship’s senior communications officer was needed here in order to facilitate the use of those codes.
“What reason is there to have us do essentially the same procedure twice?” MacNeal protested.
“Code 8-71 is not the same as code 8-65,” Fexil told him, struggling to maintain her professionalism. “There are trace contaminants in both ships’ systems. They may not affect performance while that system is self-contained, but they could interact with other trace elements from the other vessel, and end up crippling both.”
“I understand that, but why not have us do a full purge to begin with?” MacNeal persisted. “Or better yet, why couldn’t we set up something to filter out those—”
“Mister MacNeal,” Uhura cut off the young Enterprise engineer with a stern look. “You need only to understand what your orders are, not why you are given them.”
MacLean looked as if he wanted to continue arguing his case, but muttered, “Yes, sir.”
“Mister MacNeal,” Uhura whispered into his ear, forcing him to turn back, “I don’t expect there to be any more ‘language barrier’ issues between you and First Lieutenant Fexil, am I understood?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” he said again. Uhura didn’t get to exert her authority often, but she clearly had a knack for it, as MacNeal was suddenly in a rush to obey her orders. With the distraction over, the rest of the team went back to the task at hand.
Fexil made a low, croak-like sound that Uhura took as a sigh. “I don’t understand how you manage to keep a ship of this size running with the way you do things.”
“I have to apologize for Mister MacNeal,” Uhura said. “I know Scotty made it clear to his entire team that they were to cooperate fully.”
“I’m not talking about just him,” Fexil told her. “Everything on this ship seems so uneconomical. Too many words, too much time to explain things to all these people,” she said, gesturing to the accessway they were now walking down, past other work teams.
“I suppose this is a bit of a culture shock for you,” Uhura said as she followed alongside the Abesian.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Fexil answered. “Are all Starfleet ships like this?”
“No, the Constitution-class starships are actually the largest in service,” Uhura told her. “The Oberth and Miranda classes are more comparable to your Class III as far as crew size is concerned, though you’ll find the same operating methods on those ships.”
Fexil shook her head, struggling to wrap her mind around such a thing. “It all seems so inefficient.”
“Efficiency is measured by a combination of factors,” Uhura said. “It may be quicker to issue a series of coded commands rather than to explain a process step-by-step, and I’m sure it works very well for routine operations. But we deal with so much that falls outside of the routine. In my experience, it’s usually better to tell people the result you want, and let them use their particular knowledge and skill sets to achieve that result. For example, Mister MacNeal’s i
dea for a warp plasma filter.”
Fexil fixed Uhura with a strangely wounded look. “Then you think his insubordination was justifiable?”
“The way he voiced his idea was out of line,” Uhura said quickly. “But the idea itself? You tell me.”
“Tell you?” Fexil asked, confused.
“You’re an engineer; what do you think?” Uhura asked. “Would a filter of some sort do the job of preventing any cross-contamination between the two ships’ systems?”
Fexil was caught flatfooted by the query. “I . . . well, possibly, I suppose,” she said tentatively, “if we had the time to consider it and design one . . .” She shook her head to dismiss the idea. “But we’re under time constraints. . . .”
“Fair enough,” Uhura said. “But in other circumstances, perhaps we could have been able to make the idea work.” Fexil considered that, while also considering, Uhura suspected, the practicalities of a plasma filter. “And, if it did work, that would serve to make Mister MacNeal more positive about his contribution to the solution.”
“And that’s relevant?” Fexil asked. “Whether he’s ‘positive’ while doing his duties?”
“Oh, yes,” Uhura said. “Morale is vital, especially during extended missions like ours, far from familiar space for months or years at a time. We find morale goes hand-in-hand with efficiency.”
Fexil gave her a look of skepticism. “Really?”
“Absolutely,” Uhura told her, and gave her an appraising look. “What do you do with your off-duty time aboard your ship?”
Fexil shrugged. “Sleep. Eat. Study technical manuals and reports.”
Uhura held back a small laugh, and wondered if that was a universal constant among all engineers. “Once we’re done here and you’re off duty, why not join me on the recreation deck? I get the feeling it would do you a world of good.”
Blinking, Fexil hesitated, but then she smiled. “If you say it improves productivity, I suppose I should give it a try.”
* * *
The name Enterprise had a long and proud history, going all the way back to the early eighteenth century. The last starship to bear the name was Earth Starfleet’s NX-01, commanded by the legendary Jonathan Archer. Two centuries earlier, the oceangoing aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise was the most honored ship in the United States Navy, and played a vital role in the Allies’ victory over the Axis powers during World War II. The first space shuttle was named Enterprise, though it had never left Earth’s atmosphere. As the prototype of Earth’s first generation of reusable orbiter vehicles, it had been used as a testbed.
Kirk was reminded of that shuttle as he looked out the Galileo’s forward viewport at his ship, now attached to the 814. For those early test flights, the space shuttle orbiter Enterprise would be carried atop an old-style jet aircraft, which would fly it to an altitude of some seven kilometers before releasing it and letting it glide, unpowered, back to earth. Here again, a nearly powerless Enterprise was secured to the top of another vessel, which they needed to rely on to convey them to their destination.
“Is something wrong, James?”
Kirk turned and looked up at Laspas, who was standing just behind him and Lieutenant Arex, the Triexian shuttle pilot. Lost in his reverie, Kirk had almost forgotten that his Domain counterpart had accompanied him in his visual survey of their conjoined vessels. The captain willed away his melancholia and answered, “No, no. Just . . . thinking.” He turned back forward again as Arex guided the shuttle around underneath the navigational deflector dish, and the bow of the Domain Starvessel Class III/814. “You don’t feel the same kind of connection to your ship I do, I suppose,” he said. Scotty had related part of his conversation with Chief N’Mi to Kirk earlier.
“I take pride in my vessel just as you do,” Laspas assured him. “I would be just as wounded if it were to be disabled, and my crew endangered, make no mistake.”
“Oh, I’m sure, Commander,” Kirk said, as Arex brought them in for another close pass underneath the Enterprise to examine the series of braces and tubes sticking out of her like some terminal hospital patient. “But . . . for me . . . for the Enterprise . . . it’s a little more. Do all of the Defense Corps’s ships go by numerical designations only?” he asked, turning back to the other man.
Laspas hesitated, and then answered, “Officially, yes. Our assignments to any one vessel rarely run longer than a cycle or two. I’ve commanded nine different starvessels since being promoted to commander rank. Giving proper names to inanimate objects, or forming any kind of attachment to them, is not something the Corps considers to be appropriate.”
Kirk thought he picked up something more in that answer than what Laspas actually said. “But unofficially?” he asked.
“Unofficially?” A tiny whisper of a smile curled Laspas’s lips. “When I was a boy, there was a popular series of historical novels about a fictional hero named Kawhye. He traveled the wilder regions of old Goega, riding his gaat named Windracer, fighting villains and saving the downtrodden.” Laspas shrugged his shoulders and admitted, “I may have, once or twice, in an occasional flight of whimsy, employed a literary allusion during one of my missions commanding 814.”
Kirk held back an amused smile. “But only once or twice.”
“At the very most,” Laspas insisted.
Lieutenant Arex chose then to interrupt, saying, “We’ve completed our circuit, sirs.”
“Thank you, Mister Arex,” Kirk said, and then asked Laspas, “What do you think?”
The Goeg dropped all hint of joviality, all business now. “Looks like all code zeros to me,” he said, which Kirk understood as the equivalent of “green lights across the board.”
Kirk nodded in agreement and said to Arex, “Take up position aft, Lieutenant.” The shuttle pulled away from the ships, moving to a point several hundred meters off their sterns. As it did, Kirk reached for the comm control on the instrument panel. “Galileo to Enterprise.”
“Go ahead, Captain,” Spock answered.
“Initiate transfer of full navigational control from Enterprise to the 814.”
“Acknowledged, Captain,” Spock answered. Over the open channel, he heard orders and reports being relayed by his bridge crew, and after a minute, Spock’s voice came back to inform him, “Navigational transfer complete.”
Laspas then tapped at his own communicator, hooked over his ear, and opened a channel to his own vessel. “814: standby codes 2-1, 2-2, and 2-3.” He paused as his orders were acknowledged, then said, “Execute.”
The impulse engines of both vessels began to glow, and as the Galileo maintained its station-keeping position, the dual starship began to pull away, heading out of orbit of Nystrom IV.
“Velocity at point-one impulse,” Spock reported. “Engine synchronization optimal. Umbilicals and supports maintaining. Structural integrity holding steady within acceptable parameters.”
“Code 2-3, positive five,” Laspas ordered, watching intently with Kirk through the forward ports.
“One-half impulse,” Spock said. “All systems nominal.”
As the two ships successfully carried out a series of tandem test maneuvers, Kirk found the dejection he had been feeling over the state of his ship lift. “Giddy-up, Windracer,” he whispered as he watched the Enterprise, riding atop the 814, gracefully complete its final operational drill.
Arex turned his long head to him. “ ‘Giddy-up’?” But even though the archaic phrase was no more familiar to Laspas than to Arex, the Goeg picked up on Kirk’s meaning and smiled broadly.
Kirk returned the smile as he tabbed the transmitter open again. “Galileo to Enterprise. Prepare the hangar deck for our return. Once we’re secure, signal the 814: we’re ready to ride.”
Five
In practically every civilization and culture ever encountered, this had been proven to be a universal constant: Rank has its privileges.
Laspas’s personal cabin aboard the 814, while far from luxurious by Federation standards, was
a marked contrast from the austere nature of the rest of the starvessel. It was located near the ship’s bow, with separate living and sleeping quarters, each with an exterior port affording a direct view of the stars slipping by at warp. A small corner kitchenette allowed for food storage and simple preparation, and Laspas occupied himself there by filling two heavy cups with steaming water and spooning a mixture of powdered bark and leaves into each. “Heenye,” he said as he turned back around to Kirk, a mug in each hand, and offered one to his guest. “Highest quality, grown in the Bliss Mountains on Goega.”
“Thank you.” Kirk accepted the proffered cup and took a careful sip. It tasted like a strong black tea with cinnamon, steeped in salt water—not particularly pleasant, but not so terrible that he couldn’t pretend to appreciate it. “Interesting,” he said as he turned to survey the rest of the living area. His eye landed on a row of matched antique-looking leather-bound books on a shelf set into the bulkhead beside the cabin door. He ran his forefinger over the alien text stamped on the spines, and then pulled one from its slot. On the rear cover—or, if the Goeg read right to left, then the front cover—was an illustration of a Goeg atop some sort of four-legged riding animal. “This wouldn’t be Kawhye and Windracer, would it?”
Laspas moved beside Kirk and gingerly removed the volume from his hands. “Yes. This was my father’s collection,” he said as he carefully replaced it on the shelf. “He’s the one who first introduced me to the series.”
“I’m sorry,” Kirk said. “I didn’t realize . . .”
Laspas quickly waved off his apology. “I shouldn’t even have them aboard with me—too much risk of their being lost should anything happen. But it’s nice to have this reminder of him. Besides which, I still enjoy the stories. Entertaining adventure tales with clear contrasts between hero and villain, good and bad.”
“Unlike real life,” Kirk commented.
“Yes, precisely,” Laspas said as he gestured for Kirk to take a cushioned chair in the center of the room. “You were telling me earlier about that one mission of yours,” Laspas continued, moving a second chair from his workdesk and sitting opposite the captain, “about the ancient computer that had enslaved an entire planet, that you convinced was acting against its own programming and caused its self-destruction?” Laspas shook his maned head in a gesture of awe. “That sounds like something straight out of a Kawhye story, if he had a spaceship instead of a gaat.”
Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity Page 8
