Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [59]
Even then, Riker did not announce himself, knowing there was a point of no return. He’d passed it already, but still …
“Oh—Will!” Bateson turned and his animated face beamed. “Welcome aboard. I appreciate your deciding to accept my request. It’s not an official long-term stationing. I’m sure you haven’t had time to make up your mind about anything permanent yet. You don’t mind if I call you ‘Will’—”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Excuse me.” Bateson tapped his combadge, one of the little innovations that had come along during those ninety years he skipped. “Bridge to Main Engineering. Captain Scott, Engineer La Forge, Commander Data, join us up here, please. Bridge to IM Pulse Engineering. Engineer Perry, Engineer Hamilton, please join us on the bridge. And tell Gabe to get his carcass topside pronto. Captain out.”
Without waiting for acknowledgments, the captain took Riker’s arm and strolled with him around the upper deck, talking as they walked. “I know what you’re thinking. How could Morgan Bateson, a man ninety years behind the technical times, possibly be effective as master of the most up-to-date ship in the fleet? Right?”
“Uh … well, sir, to be honest—”
“I always want you to be honest. I’m counting on that. I won’t learn anything from polite deceptions.”
“All right, sir, if you say so.”
“I do. And you know as well as I do that I don’t need to be technically expert at every detail of this ship. Nobody really can be, you know that. A captain is much more than that. That’s why we have ship’s department heads. The captain decides what needs to happen, the department heads make it happen. Finding myself ninety years behind the tech times, I need extra help on the bridge. I have officers who take command when I’m off watch, of course, but they’re in the same boat I am. Oh—that would be a good joke if I’d timed it right, but I didn’t.”
“No, sir.”
“My original crew and I know the lay of space like the backs of our hands. Spatial bodies don’t alter that much in ninety years. On the cosmic timescale, we hardly missed anything. What I need is an on-call spacemaster. Essentially a pilot. You’ve been recommended for your own command and turned it down. Now, I know you were holding out for command of the Enterprise, and I suppose you rather hate my guts right now. In spite of that, I’m going to gamble on your decent sense of duty and ask you to serve for a few months, to usher me and my men through the shakedown period. What do you say, Will? Are you too bitter to do what’s good for Starfleet?”
Riker paused, managed to disengage his elbow from Bateson’s grip, and turned to the captain.
Annoyed, he said, “I believe I’ve already answered that question with my presence here, sir.”
Bateson nodded his conciliation. “All right, noted, of course. You’ve got me there. I just had that speech all worked out and I didn’t want to waste it.”
“Understood, sir,” Riker dismissed. “And it was a first-rate speech too.”
“Thank you, I thought so … did you know where that phrase comes from?”
“Sorry?”
” ‘First-rate.’ It’s from the Royal Navy. They used to rate their ships, first, second, third … ironically, third-rate didn’t refer to lesser quality. It referred to the construction, arming, and duty of a type of vessel.”
“I didn’t know that, sir.”
“Oh, yes. Lots of our modern slang comes from the sea. ‘Down the hatch,’ ‘lower the boom,’ ‘keel over,’ ‘devil,to pay,’ ‘toe the line,’ ‘taken aback,’ ‘show your true colors’ … what else? ‘Son of a gun,’ ‘the con,’ ‘lay off,’ ‘cut and run,’ ‘above board,’ ‘sickbay’—”
“The brig,” Wizz Dayton contributed. “It’s from Trafalgar. A kind of ship Nelson used to stuff his prisoners into. I know that from when I got thrown into one after shoreleave.”
“And you deserved it too,” Bateson reminded Dayton. Then his eyes narrowed and got mischievous. He pointed at Riker’s face, at the neatly trimmed beard. “You know, we have a problem. One of us is going to have to shave this D’Artagnan imitation. Either that, or everybody aboard