Chapter 5:

Friday, May 5th, 2243
Harland & Wolff Shipyards, Berth #22
Team C Headquarters
Belfast, Ireland, Earth

 

Open the seams, caulk between the planks. The wood didn't want to give now that it had dried and tightened to the frame of the schooner, but to make her as watertight as she would have to be to face the seas, it was necessary. Pull the wedges, let the boards settle on the cotton, tar and strands, let it dry and smooth it over.

The next seam. It was a progression, following behind the team who laid the final boards to rest on her stern and transom. There was a symmetry there; they all had a job and knew exactly how to do it.

In the old days, working outside, ships took a long time to build. Back then, there had been no lights or indoor berths big enough for these crafts, so builders had to work in the elements, all seasons. There had been no crafting devices so precise, no tricorders to standardize measurements, and there had been no Starfleet cadets so determined to either sail into glory or ruin.

The twenty-four gun schooner Lady Grey was something purely unique.

The team who worked on her had long since abandoned several of the historical practices they were originally using, turning to more modern ways of getting the job done faster. But even though they now cut the wood with precise micron torches, measured to the decimals of a millimeter to insure there would be no re-cutting needed, they still walked away with tar under their nails and calluses on their hands.

Scotty had managed to find a nice middle ground, and that just thrilled him to no end. Now, instead of trusting an old hand-saw with his timbers, he could use the technology that he loved so much to make the schooner that much better. After all, he was building her to last. He might end up failing the class and being held back another year, but he sure was going to have a nice legacy for it.

Her hull was almost finished. Taking a break from the work, one of the very few he allowed himself, he stepped back and trained a sharp gaze over her starboard side. Inside of the hull, another group of cadets worked on putting in her ceilings and bulkheads, and a team of three worked with Albright on the cannon problem. The bilge would be done just after the hull, maybe a day later at most. Her below decks would be finished a few days later, and then they could lay out her main deck.

Frowning slightly, he ran through the math again. For the most part, she would be all right with the guns on her first below deck, but if she heeled too terribly far over, those ports would be underwater.  She had a lot of freeboard for a schooner, but less than a ship that had been designed from the start to carry guns.

And the last thing he needed was for her to start taking on water through the gun ports -- one of the things he had to compensate for when he decided to turn her into a warship.  He couldn't very well turn around and start all over now.

Mulling the problem over, he paced up and down the length of her hull, trying to figure out a way to make those ports as watertight as possible. On a rough day, wind on the beam, she would heel a fair bit; one good gust could put those ports under, and it would take half the crew on the pumps to get the water out. Meanwhile, her center of gravity's been changed, as well as her righting arm, and if they ended up in a gale, she could well go down on that alone.

"I've been thinking," Corry said, pausing himself and jogging to catch up to his pacing roommate. "The recoil on those guns -- it's gonna be something serious."

"Mm hm," Scotty replied, not really paying much attention. He was worried about the guns, but he was more worried about the Grey's structural integrity.

Cor didn't seem to take any notice of the absent look, and continued cheerily, "Well, you know there'll normally have to be a bunch of guys on the breeching ropes, right?"

"Aye."  Well, no, he hadn’t known that, but he got the idea quickly enough.

"Well, what if we were to get a really strong rubber-type-thing, and set it up to be connected once the gun's run out? I mean, it'll have to be able to absorb the shock and not bounce the cannon through the hull, but I'll bet we can find something in the database we can use."

Scotty nodded, still working on the other problem. "All right, look into it and--" Blinking a few times, he stopped, thought about it, ran it over logically. "Corry, ye're a genius!"

"Am I?" Corry grinned, brightly. "I thought you'd like it."

"The gunports! Line the gunports with a seal, dog 'em down right good--" Jumping once in pure excitement, Scotty took off for the mold loft.

He was just at the top of the stairs when Jansson sang out, "Port side done!" and it was the sweetest sound in the world.

 

 

 

"Polaris-- and Etamin, and over there's Deneb." Pointing up at the spanned ceiling of the slip, Scotty was definitely in a mood that could only be described as 'out there'.

The foredeck of the Lady Grey had been started, and on a whim, the two roommates had climbed up there. It didn’t take Scotty too long to stretch out on the decking; seemingly on a whim, he started naming stars, pointing out where they would normally be if there was nothing between him and them but air and sky.  "Altair and Vega, o' course."

Corry sat against the bulwark, just listening. It was desperately late-- or early, however one looked at it, and the front of the slip was dark. They had two weeks and five days to finish the schooner; it was going to be so close to the wire that it was downright frightening. Her bilge was completely finished, as were the belowdecks, but it still felt nail-bitingly tight.

Day and night cadets worked in shifts, sneaking into the shipyards like bandits whenever the yards had been closed down to them. One small team would work solidly from 0630 to 1430, mostly composed of whoever could afford the personal leave time to cut class. The next team -- the majority of them -- worked from 0230 to 2000, made sure they were seen leaving, then at least a few crept back in and worked until curfew. And, from curfew at 2200 to 0630, the small graveyard shift worked.  Corry had managed to talk another ten people into joining the crew before all of those, most all of them underclassmen who wanted some rebel credibility, but it still didn't necessarily feel like enough for him.  Though, the number of them who were also sailors was definitely a boon, considering the race.

Working a full twenty-four hours in shifts required lots of illegal dealings (breaking and entering came to mind), and it required hacking into the security cameras to run a continuous loop of the night-time, empty shipyard, and it required lots of silence and sleeplessness, but the ends justified the means. At least, to Corry they did.

It was the only way they could hope to complete her, and so far it had worked fabulously. Between their shifts, they slept and studied for their other finals, and it wasn't uncommon to hear them shouting back and forth during legal working hours, quizzing each other in test preparation.

It was still going to be desperately close.

"D'you think we'll get her finished?" Corry asked, quietly, before he even realized it.

Not looking away from the imaginary stars, Scotty said confidently, "Aye, I think we'll be done in plenty o' time."

Cor nodded, though he wasn't convinced. Even with their extra hands, even as well as they had the system worked out, it was too close to call in his opinion. "How long do you think it'll take to step in the masts once we have the deck finished?"

"A day to get 'em in, another day or so to properly fit the collars and run the shrouds." Scotty shrugged, awkwardly, then went back to his imaginary stargazing. "Capella, and Regulus-- 'course, they all just have numbers we can use, but those sound so bloody impersonal."

"The sails and that should come in soon. I did order doubles for everything."

"Alioth, Dubhe, Markab..."

"You're really into that, aren't you?"

"Mm hm."

Corry looked up at the ceiling of the slip, halfway wishing he could see the stars that were being named. But it was raining in Belfast and all that was really up there were a whole lot of archways and ceiling plates. Shaking his head with a wry chuckle, he stretched out on the decking himself, putting his arms behind his head. "Orion's gone, I think."

Scotty nodded, almost solemnly. "Aye, up and runnin' from that scorpion. T'would be a miserable thing, bein' chased for all eternity like that."

"Yeah, I think it'd get old after so long." Corry pointed to a spot on the ceiling. "Big Dipper."

"Little to the left," Scotty corrected, good-naturedly, pointing in the right direction. Yawning, he added, "Right up there, and follow it to true north."

"True north is one degree off Polaris."

"Picky, picky."

Corry shook his head, closing his eyes with a smile. "You corrected me, it's only fair I return the favor."

"Eh, I just think ye're persnickety."

Corry gasped in mock horror. " Persnickety?! This from you? Yeah, you just keep thinking you're the head honcho, Pup, and I'll just keep pulling your fat out of the fire."

"Wolf. That's Wolf to you."

"Maybe Cub, maybe Pup, maybe even Mutt-- but not Wolf."

"Bastard."

Corry shook his head to himself with a grin. "That's me all right."

Steadfastly ignoring him now, Scotty just went back to his constellations. "Draco, Leo, Perseus..."

It only took him another three minutes to talk himself to sleep.

 

 

 

"Gun ready!"

The quiet Irish field had been singing softly in the wind before they showed up. The grass had danced in the breeze, the day had been gorgeous and the countryside was a perfect picture of peace and quiet. For kilometers around there was nothing but trees and grass, a cottage or two, and this lovely serenity that could permeate the body and revive the spirit of man.

Then they showed up and ruined it all.

"Run 'er out!" Corry barked, in a voice that would impress anyone who knew how he usually spoke. Standing there in his civilian clothes, striking a dramatic stance, he could have really been a pirate.

Albright, Jansson, Lewis and Sallee pulled on the tackles, bringing the gun up to the makeshift port that sat so oddly on the countryside. Scotty stood well behind the gun, while Balimer prepared to pull the cord and fire.

Corry grinned, just because he could. "Fiyah!"

BOOM!

The gun recoiled, perhaps going a little bit further back than intended, and though it didn't smack into Scotty full force, it still knocked him backwards into a patch of mud. The cannonball whistled through the air, thudding into the ground loud enough to be heard even at a distance of hundreds of meters.

"Bloody hell," the slightly surprised Scotty muttered, getting back to his feet and giving the gun a glowering look. "Reload!"

"We should check the recoil," Corry commented, pleasantly, beaming a smile at his less than thrilled roommate. "Seems she's flying back further than we thought she would."

Scotty growled, brushing the mud off-- or trying to. In the end, he only really succeeded in making himself dirtier. "Ye just figured that out, did ye?"

"Oh, come on. On some pleasure planets, a mud bath costs a fortune."

"Corry?"

"Yeah Scotty?"

"Shut up."

Corry snickered, watching as the inexperienced gun crew did their best to swab out the cannon, reload the powder and ball, and take up the tackles. It certainly took them long enough, but then, it wasn't like they weren't going to get better with practice.

Even learning how to do this much had taken some research; Corry, though, was an aficionado of old vids (the cornier the better) and so it hadn’t actually taken him long to scour all his favorite Federation archives for old naval movies.

A huge amount of information had been lost during World War III; the internet was the first major target by all sides of the conflict, and after an age of digitization and the destruction of physical books and materials considered obsolete, whole generations of knowledge were lost.  The Vulcans had succeeded in saving a surprising amount in their stealth reconnaissance prior to First Contact, but even they were only able to do so much. 

Even two hundred years later, the trauma that astronomical loss had caused lingered in humankind’s eccentricities: The cadets had data tapes, but they also had hardcopy books.  They turned in papers on paper, though sending them digitally was also an offered option.  Starships had analog consoles, rather than touchscreen, because it was far easier to isolate a circuit and repair it on the fly, leaving the rest of the console still functional.  Touchscreen PADDs were commonplace, but relatively few people trusted those with the truly important stuff.

Despite all of the loss -- in culture, in knowledge, in life -- that World War III had caused, though, there were still old copies of films; things preserved in their original format in archives.  Documentaries.  Fiction.  Since then, they had been re-digitized and were searchable, though this time, the originals were kept.

It was by digging those up that they started to learn how to fire a ship’s cannon; at least some common sense filled in the rest of the gaps.

If one could call building actual cannons any kind of common sense.

"Gun ready!" Albright hollered, a note of joy in his voice, presumably because his cannon was performing like he expected.

Cor gestured grandly to his roommate. "By all means."

"Run 'er out!" Scotty yelled, standing well to the side this time, hands clasped behind his back.  The gun crew was a little faster this time working the ropes; the cannon’s wheels squeaked a little bit, but performed essentially how they were supposed to.  Once the gun was back to the port, Scotty called out, “Fire!�

BOOM!

They watched the trajectory; it really was kind of impressive. And besides that, it wasn't easy to get a cannon, ammo and powder into the middle of nowhere -- it was kind of nice to see it hadn't gone to waste.

Corry waited until the ball hit the ground before saying, "Just a pointer."

Scotty rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Aye?"

"It's not 'fire', it's 'fiyah'." Nodding smartly, Corry took the next one. "Reload!"

"What's the damn difference?"

"Finesse, my backwards little Scotsman, finesse!"

“All right, Hornblower, whatever ye say.�

"Gun ready!" This time Jansson got to sing it out. Their time was definitely improving. Taking up the tackles, he looked back expectantly.

Cor struck another dramatic pose, mostly so he could needle his best friend. "Run 'er out!"

Shaking his head with a long-suffering sigh, Scotty watched the gun being pulled back to the port.  They wouldn't have another shot there, not with the way the wheels were digging ruts into the ground, but they could always move the whole ensemble over.

"FIYAH!" Corry bellowed, extra loud for good measure.

BOOM!

"I think it'll be impressive," Scotty mused, jogging over in all of his mud stained glory to help push the gun.  Corry, grinning enough that it made his face ache, headed that way to help himself by moving the makeshift port and setting it up in a new spot.

Albright was beaming as he helped pull the cannon into its new position. "So what do you think, Wolf? Good machinery?"

"The best," Scotty answered, honestly. "Ye've outdone yerself, Joey."

"Hey, I helped," Jansson protested, though not very strongly.

Corry finished dragging the makeshift port over. "All right, maties, back to work." Giggling somewhat maniacally, he could help but adding, "ARRRRRR!"

The other five cadets gave him a worried look, and he cleared his throat. "Sorry-- reload!"

"Arrrrr?" Scotty asked, stepping back to join him, one eyebrow raised in completely unnecessary judgment.

"Seemed like the right thing to say," Corry explained, turning a little red. "Besides, we need to get into the spirit of it somehow, right?"

"Oh, absolutely." Scotty was laying the sarcasm on with not just a trowel, but a bulldozer.

"Gun ready!"

"Run 'er out!" Scotty called, quite smartly in his own opinion.  When the gun was in place, he smirked and barked, "FIRE!"

BOOM!

"Fiyah, dammit, fiyah." Corry shook his head. "Amateur."

"Cor?"

"Yeah?"

"Feel free to take a long walk--"

"--I know, I know, off a short pier. Reload!"

It went on like that for another twenty minutes or so, one shot after another flying across to the hill on the other side of the small river below them. Their times were improving, as was their aim. They were feeling quite proud of themselves when something beeped insistently.

Scotty frowned, pulling his communicator out of his pocket and scraping the mud off of the case before flipping it open. "Scott here."

The voice came over the small speaker, calm but with an underlying edge of urgency. "You guys had better pack up your gun. If what I'm hearing through the grapevine is correct, Starfleet Security's being sent out to investigate some odd happenings right in your vicinity."

Corry swallowed hard, and the rest of them all edged in close to hear. Taking the communicator and ignoring the glare he got from Scotty, he asked, "When was this?"

"About ten minutes ago, so you'd better get moving post haste."

"All right, out." Corry flipped the communicator closed and shot an anxious look around the group. "We've got maybe three minutes to ditch this gun and get out of here."

"So what the hell're we standin' here for?!" Looking around frantically, Scotty was no doubt trying to figure out exactly how they would get a three hundred pound gun, plus all of the ammo and powder packed into the air van they had rented.

Albright immediately started pushing on the gun, but it wasn't in the direction of the van. "C'mon, we have to move!"

"Where're you going?!" Corry asked, looking between the gun and the van, the gun and the van.

"The river!"

"Oh shit!"

"Sounds about right," Scotty muttered, grabbing an armful of the gunpowder bundles and making for the river like a greyhound.

Jansson didn't even pause, just threw himself into pushing on the twenty-four pounder with Albright and Sallee. Balimer was flushed as he grabbed a cannonball and raced for the river as fast as twenty-four extra pounds would allow, and Corry was almost giddy as he followed the example.

About halfway down the hill, Jerry and Joe let the cannon go, and it headed for the water seemingly under its own power.

The sound of shuttlecraft engines in low atmosphere flying mode became evident.

Albright summed it up for all of them as he ran back and grabbed another two of the cannonballs, struggling with the weight. "Shitshitshitshitshit!!"

"Ohmigodohmigodohmigod," was Corry's chosen litany, as he ran back for more ammo. They only had another two left after that, but the sound of those engines had worked them into a frenzy.

Scotty grabbed those last two cannonballs, sliding on the wet grass. It clearly wasn't good luck he was having that day, though; the momentum, the slope and the added weight was enough to throw him completely off balance.  His feet slid right out from under him and he slammed down onto his back with a wheeze.

Corry was still catching his breath, but he reached out and gave Scotty a hand up.  At their feet, those two cannonballs were the only serious evidence left -- at least, provided no one went dredging the river or examining the hill on the other side too closely.

When the shuttle landed a dozen meters away, the whole group was back together.  And while they no doubt looked like they were up to absolutely no good, proving any wrong doing would likely take at least some effort.

"We've received a report about--" The first officer, one of those square-jawed-built-like-a-brick-outhouse-and-eats-nails-for-dinner-types, said without preamble. However, upon observing a group of cadets and their baby-faced, none too tall, filthy to the skin mascot, his voice trailed off.

"Report, sir?" Scotty asked, eyebrows up in pure, undiluted innocence; it was such an effective look that Cor had to choke down a snicker.

Blinking a few times, the man got his bearings. "--report about a noise disturbance in the area. What do you know about this?"

"It was me," Corry apologized, stepping up to his best friend's shoulder in an attempt to at least take part of the heat. "I had beans for lunch, sir."

The second officer, the one who looked rather like he would be the poor guy who ended up walking into a cave alone, phaser undrawn, to an untimely ending started snickering. He looked like he was only a year or two older than them. "You're telling us that it was--"

"Yes, sir, I am." Cor nodded smartly, elbowing Scotty when he started choking on his own laughter.

Lieutenant Eats Nails scowled. He clearly didn't like being joked with.  He shot a look back at Albright, still in his uniform, and so obviously fighting a laugh himself after Corry's comments. "You're a cadet-- are all of you?"

Joe just couldn't keep the quaver from his voice. "Yes, sir, Engineering Division."

"And you?" The older man leveled an icy glare back at Scotty, who probably couldn't have answered with a straight face even if he wanted to. "Name and rank."

Before he could stop himself, Scotty replied, gesturing to the cannonballs at his feet, "Montgomery Scott, Fourth Year Cadet and man in charge o' ball bearings. The official ball bearer."

"It's a good post for him, sir. He loves playing with balls." Corry knew he was gonna pay for that somehow, but it was such a perfect setup that there just wasn't any resisting it. "And I think it's better than being a pallbearer, if you know what I mean, sir."

That was it. Albright fell over, laughing helplessly. Jansson and Balimer were literally crying. Sallee was gasping for air between violent giggles. And poor Scotty, who had already had a hard time trying to keep from just breaking down, finally did, keeling over unceremoniously and laughing so hard he didn't make a sound.

Corry was the only one who fought back the temptation. "Really, sirs, we were just going for a nice walk in the countryside, and those beans caught up to me, and that was the end of it."

The five cadets and the younger security officer just howled harder.

Lieutenant Eats Nails growled. There wasn't much he could do and it seemed like he knew that.  He gestured sharply, no doubt trying to save face.  "Clear out, and get back to your campus."

"Oh, yes sir, absolutely, sir."

The older officer marched away. The younger one managed to wave to them, still laughing up a storm, and followed.

Corry started laughing himself, almost doubled over with the force of it, once it was clear they’d gotten away with it; he got to enjoy that for precisely fifteen seconds before Scotty reached out, snatched his ankle, jerked on it hard, and sent Cor sprawling into the mud.  Then he went right back to laughing himself into stitches.

One cannon, ammo and powder included, was a worthwhile sacrifice for that day.