Ship of the Line
Page 30
“Yes. The last line of defense. He’s stationed there, at Earth’s solar system.”
“With Gabe and the whole crew?”
“Yes, they’re still together,” Picard said.
“Like us. Just lucky, I guess.”
“Very lucky, but by design. Bateson always knew his own mind. So did James Kirk. I admired that. When the Enterprise-D was destroyed, I fell into a dangerous pattern of not accepting what I wanted all along. I wouldn’t accept that my life had been irrevocably changed by being one of the very few captains of a Starship Enterprise. I accept that now, and I take it as a solemn charge. I know that I want nothing else, and nothing more.”
Riker’s face beamed with warmth and satisfaction, though under the circumstances he apparently couldn’t bring himself to smile.
Yet there was eminent pride in the decision they had made to ignore caution. This just wasn’t the time for that.
“We’re all with you, Captain,” Riker told him. “Any action you take, we take with you.”
“Thank you, Will. You’ll never know what that means to me.”
“And to us, Captain. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll take the conn and clear for action.”
“Acknowledged. Carry on. Notify me the moment we come in sensor contact with the Borg.”
“Sir, it’ll be my pleasure.”
In the back of the ready room, the door panel breathed open, then shut again, and the room fell quiet.
Thinking of victory, Jean-Luc Picard strode to the replicator and dumped his hot tea into the disposal. Charged to the core and ready to spark, he squared his shoulders and drew a long sustaining breath.
“Tea, Earl Grey,” he ordered, then stopped and thought, and a smile broke out on his face.
“Cancel,” he said. “Tea,” he said again, “Japanesse Green, chilled, with ginseng and honey.”
None But The Possessed
Memorial to our ship,
sunk off Hatteras, Dec. 9, 1996
Port-of-callers asked the way,
looking for three sticks and a big oak body,
shrouds and spars and scuppers and tars,
listening for words that sound funny.
They’d turn in at Fort Yngve’s ensign,
toward the brown deck and black overcoat,
right on past the lubbers who gasped,
“That’s a damn fine castle,
and a hell of a moat.”
Overwhelmed and scared of the helm,
sixty-seven years of green crews
flinched at the shouts—“Cast off! Haul away!”
and then the stronghold moved.
Up went the wall of iron-red main,
heads’ls, the fore, and then some,
and her mizzed boom groaned on the starboard reach
over the great black transom.
Trees dream of being this someday,
of making those gaff-rigger sounds,
like her sienna sails calling, “Flap, flap, snap!”
as she shuddered her big shoulder down.
A tempered Clydesdale of a ship,
draft horse of Baltic trading,
she embraced both masters and timid first-glancers
who asked, “Do all these ropes do something?”
She the witchcraft and we the possessed
shook off blows from Fell’s Point to Norfolk.
We must have loved her pretty good
to go so far for such discomfort.
Potomac, Chesapeake, Downeast coast,
the Stream and the Gulf and the swollen Old Man,
the Key jetty and Thimble Shoal—
we asked and asked. She said, I can.
She worked away the century till arrogance
shoved her deep in Prideful water.
We beg the depths, “Treat her like a lady.
We’re proud we ever had her.”
Our bullhearted cradle Alexandria.
strong and forgiving and pliant—
Our spirits sail her still, and always will.
May she be a reef as mighty
as she was a schooner valiant.
D. Carey
Deckhand and watch leader
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Ship of the Line · Diane Carey
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Far Beyond the Stars · Steve Barnes
What You Leave Behind · Diane Carey
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Equinox · Diane Carey
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