Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [7]
Dennis and Wolfe mumbled a couple of dubious “aye, sir”s. Their faces dimmed at the unsparkled welcome.
Then Dennis suddenly yelped and threw both arms into the air. There went the rum tot. Dennis staggered, then looked down at a brownish tentacle twined three or four times around his ankle. A meter downdeck was the source, a squashy, squiddy creature with mammal eyes and nothing else mammal.
“Hi, George Hill,” Captain Bateson grumbled, irritated that his show had been stolen. “Don’t worry, Mike, he won’t hurt you. He’s just imitating the color of the carpet and wants you to appreciate it. So tell him it’s nice.”
Clasping the bridge rail, Dennis staggered again, but John Wolfe’s chuckle shamed him into gulping, “Uh … it’s nice. It’s nice, George. Real … carpety.”
Around them, the rest of the bridge crew laughed. On the deck, George Hill clicked and blinked those two big black eyes, and shifted on the coiled nest of his other tentacles.
“So,” Wolfe commented, “we’ve got an octopus?”
“Look again,” Bush said. “He’s a decapus. Ten. We don’t think he’s even aquatic. Just looks like it. He doesn’t have any suction cups on his things there. We think he’s a constrictor.”
Bateson nodded. “Considering what he did to the cheese sandwich I tossed him the other day.”
Pointing at the carpet, Wizz Dayton corrected, “We call him a deck-a-pus. Get it? Deck?”
“Where’d you get this guy?” Dennis asked. “What a grip—”
“Don’t know what planet he’s from, or we’d put him back there,” Bateson said. “Rescued him and a whole boatload of other exotics being transported illegally for sale as pets and for various voodoo medicines and aphrodisiacs. Some people will believe anything.”
“Who’s he named after?” Wolfe asked.
“Revenue cutter captain from way back in the scuppers of time,” Bush supplied.
Bateson laughed. ” ‘The scuppizz of toyme.’ Love that accent, Gabe.”
“All right, men,” Bush said, “retire to Deck 4, Cabins 4-C and F, and square away your gear. Report back to the bridge in fifteen minutes. We’ll give you a crash course in border ship bridge design.”
“Aye, sir,” the two chimed, but then Mike Dennis couldn’t extricate his ankle from George Hill’s coil.
“George Hill, turn loose,” Bush said. “Turn loose. Turn loose of him, George!”
Clicking some kind of answer, George Hill uncoiled his tentacle from Dennis and placidly transferred it to Captain Bateson’s ankle as if keeping a mooring.
Bush gave Dennis and Wolfe a nod of encouragement, and wished they could spare a couple inches of height to add to his own five-foot-nine frame. He hated skewering his neck to talk to Gullivers.
The two lieutenants headed for the lift, and Bateson leaned toward Bush. “Skinny. That’s what you get with replicator food. See why I keep a galley with the real thing?”
” ‘Preciate that, sir. ‘Specially the shrimp. Where I come from, shellfish deprivation’s been known to cause severe depression.”
“Excuse me—Morgan?” Wizz Dayton spoke from the communications board, but didn’t turn. He was squinting at his readouts, not looking very happy.
Bateson and Bush instantly dropped their conversation. Wizz never interrupted anyone without a good reason. Now that he’d interrupted them he suddenly went silent again, staring into his readouts as if puzzled.
“What’ve you got, Wizard?” Bateson prodded when the communications officer fell silent after calling.
Dayton’s bushy brows went down. “I was monitoring the Enterprise’s subspace emissions, but just now …” He shook his head and poked at his controls with both hands. “Just now all my comm systems went silent. No malfunction, sir. Not on this side, anyway.”
The captain stepped to the rail. “What could blank out your systems? Did the starship backfire?”
At mention of the Enterprise, Mike Dennis and John Wolfe paused inside the just-arrived lift. Dennis held the controls to keep the lift door from closing. Bush raised a hand to confirm that they should stay here for a moment, just a moment.
“The starship’s long gone already. Warped out three minutes ago.” Dayton plucked at his