Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [6]
“Don’t know,” Bateson admitted. “Never met one.”
His mustache flecked with beads of rum, Lieutenant John Wolfe tucked his chin as if he were being made the butt of a joke. “You’ve never met a Klingon, sir?”
“Not in person. Only in battle.”
“How are they?”
“Predictable. And when they try to be unpredictable, they’re even more predictable. Now, boys, before you square away your gear, let me give you a short course in border patrolling. Have you heard anything about this service?”
Mike Dennis glanced at John Wolfe, and neither wanted to speak, but as senior of the two apparently Dennis was pressed into service. “I’ve heard, uh … they call you ‘Bulldog Bateson,’ sir.”
Bateson cleared his throat and uttered, “Ummm-hmm,” and Bush caught some amusement at the new officers’ discomfort. At least Dennis had the nerve to admit what he’d heard.
“You two know each other?” Bateson asked.
“No, sir. Just met,” Wolfe said, as he glanced around the tight bridge and its two cramped decks, styled generally like any other Starfleet ship, except smaller and more utilitarian.
“Not exactly a starship, is it?” the captain stated. “That’s right. It’s not. Tell ‘em, Gabe.”
Bush took one step forward. “This is a Soyuz-class border cutter authorized by the Starfleet Border Service. You may consider us, in a way, descendants of the United States Coast Guard, which in turn derived from the 1915 merging of the Revenue Cutter Service and the Lifesaving Service. In fact, the first United States naval commission went to Captain Yeaton in 1791, the master of a revenue cutter. The historic tag ‘cutter’ is picked up from the early days of the British Revenue Service, which actually used cutter-rigged sailing ships. If you want to know what that is, look it up. The United States Revenue Service used schooners rather like the fast Baltimore Clippers, but they were still called ‘cutters,’ and we still call ourselves that today. It keeps us tied to our long tradition of coastal security, and we’re proud of it.”
“Verily,” Wizz Dayton confirmed from updeck.
With a nod, Bush added, “And this is no office building. No three eight-hour watches. Here we run standard military four-on eight-off. We dog our watches on the Bozeman. That provides seven watches instead of six, so crew members stand different watches instead of the same watch every day. The duties of a border cutter are smuggling patrol, towing, traffic control, buoy and lightship maintenance, import-export regulation, tariff and trade-law enforcement, and aid and rescue. Oh, one thing that always surprises new men is that we tow with heavy duty clamps.”
“Clamps?” Wolfe repeated. “Why not just use tractor beams, sir? That’s standard—”
“Why use energy that has to be replaced when you can use a clamp that doesn’t?”
Oh, that moment of superiority felt wicked.
“That’s right,” Bateson said. “You’ll also learn to set your whole being to short-range calibrations. Everything we do is short-range. We’re not a powerpack, we’re not a showboat, and we’re never going to be in a history book.” He made a gesture toward the main screen, where the great starship was just now pulling around a planet to clear herself for light-speed. “But we’ve got one thing that makes us equal to the Enterprise herself. You’re wearing it.”
Clinging to his tiny brass shot glass, Dennis gazed at him as if he liked what he was hearing, and Wolfe looked down at his uniform as if seeing it for the first time in quite a while. Bush understood how they felt—he too tended to forget sometimes.
“Ships are like people, boys,” Captain Bateson continued. “They have jobs, specific jobs. This is a border cutter. That’s all it’s meant to be. The dream of this ship is not great exploration, not making headlines or even delivering cargo. This ship wants a secure border and a stable Neutral Zone. As her crew, that’s all we should want. We’re cogs in a bigger machine. If a cog stops, the machine fumbles. We’re a working ship, not a glory factory. We’re not the knights. We’re the castle guard. If you wanted