Christian

The Troll was making a run through sector 7, near Barber’s Star. We’d picked up a sweet load of salvage that included some rare minerals, and a colony on Barber IX had offered us a great price. The problem with Barber’s Star is that it had a really anomalous gravity well, forcing us to drop out of warp well outside the system, and cruise to the colony on impulse.

Meaning we had time to kill.

But we still needed to be fairly alert. This system was very near the Federation-Klingon border, and while it wasn’t a contested system, you definitely had to be on your toes. Barber IX had had more than its fair share of Klingon raids in the past, until Starfleet had built a heavily-armed outpost station in orbit.

“You know,” I said into the dreary-yet-tense silence on the bridge, “there was a story back in the academy that I think was about this system.” Buzz and Shandra knew I’d been through Starfleet Academy, although I’d quickly discovered that Starfleet life wasn’t my cup of tea after serving as a junior Communications ensign for a couple of years.

“Oh?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah, apparently back in ‘82 there were a bunch of Klingon raids in this area. The USS Christian was out here on patrol, and was lost.”

“Lost?” Shandra asked, perking up. She loved war stories.

“The story goes that they were one of the tightest-run scouts in the fleet at the time. Captain Jamie Dawson. But they were jumped by three Klingon raiders. She was just a scout ship, so she wouldn’t have stood a chance,” I said. “But that’s not what makes the story interesting. Apparently after she didn’t check-in for several days, they dispatched a frigate out here. All three of the raider ships were found dead in space, and those suckers were light cruisers. There’s no way a Starfleet scout ship could have done that kind of damage.”

“And the Christian?” Buzz asked.

“Not a sign of her. The whole crew was declared Missing, Presumed Killed in Action.”

“Creepy,” Shandra said. “On that note, do we know which ship is on patrol around here now?”

“USS Powhatan,” Buzz said, “although it’s a big patrol area and she’s mainly concerned about the border. We probably won’t run into her.”

“I’m not sure running into her would be a bad thing, right now,” Shandra said. “Hey, heads up–sensors are picking up contacts.” She paused for a moment, reading her console. “Shit,” she said quietly.

I could hear Buzz sit upright in his retrofitted command chair. “What?” he asked.

“These are Klingons,” she said tensely. “Four of them.”

I started laying in a pattern of evasive maneuvers, and slapped the distress beacon into life. I heard Buzz lunging for the jury-rigged console to his left, enabling the quasi-legal military-grade shielding he’d incorporated into the Troll. “Buzz, they’re jamming the beacon. And we’re being hailed.”

“On screen.”

“Federation ship,” snarled the dark-visaged Klingon captain who appeared on our screen. “Lower your shields and prepare to be boarded. You cargo belongs to the Klingon Empire and if you are lucky you will live to tell your descendants of this day.”

Buzz kicked the back of my chair. “Nothing, boss,” I said quietly. “We’ve got salvage phasers with a range of under a hundred meters, and even those are useless unless we open the bay doors. Plus, even with those shields they can wipe us out in thirty seconds.” The Troll didn’t have a power plant capable of running those shields for long, especially under a four-ship barrage.

He steamed for a moment, glaring at the screen. “Fine,” he said tightly. “Shields down.” He stabbed the console, killing the heavy shields. “We won’t resist–”

“New contact!” Shandra said. She closed the channel with the Klingons, and displayed a vector plot on the main screen. We were in the middle, roughly surrounded by the four raiders. A new blip was swinging in from “below” us.

“Is that the Powhatan?” Buzz asked.

“No, the signal isn’t strong enough. If it was them, we’d know,” she said. “And it doesn’t look big enough, to be honest.”

“Another Klingon, then,” Buzz said. “Talk about overkill. Get that captain back on the–”

“No, it’s not. The vector’s all wrong. This one’s headed in hot,” she said. “Plus, look at this.” The main screen flipped to show a visual, but all we could see was a glowing red ball.

“What the hell is that?” Buzz asked.

“It’s their shields,” I said. “They’ve got them modulated so tightly they’re reflecting photons. The shield’s opaque.”

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Buzz said.

“You can’t,” I whispered. The ship was moving fast, close to full impulse speed, and the Klingons were just starting to react. The closest raider started to peel off and engage when the stranger fired what must have been the brightest, hottest phaser I’d ever seen. Like, frigate-class megaphaser bright, although this ship didn’t look large enough to mount that kind of weaponry. The bright blue beam smashed through the raider’s shields and obliterated the ship in a single shot.

“Holy crap,” Buzz whispered.

The stranger wasn’t done. The other three raiders had started moving, but the stranger was pulling off impossible maneuvers. In seconds, two more raiders had been cut down by those incredible phasers. The last raider managed to get on the stranger’s tail, but the stranger simply pulled “up,” executed something like a spaceborne Immelmann, and came about face-to-face with the raider. Another bright phase beam drilled the Klingon ship right down the middle, and the stranger flew through the debris.

It all took less than a minute. I was shaking.

“Jesus Christ,” Shandra whispered. I think she meant it.

“I’m trying to hail it,” I said, “but I’m not getting any confirmation that they’re even listening.”

The stranger pulled up directly in front of us, not fifty meters away. And she dropped her shields. I’d been half expecting some bright, shiny experimental battleship with an NX designation on her hull. What we saw instead was an old scout-class ship, like a Hermes class or something. There must have been thirty holes blasted clear through the ship’s saucer section, and her single warp nacelle seemed to dangle from a barely intact pylon. Still visible on the battered hull was USS Christian.

This was the tomb of Jamie Dawson and his crew.

We had no idea what to do, and I think all three of us were simply too scared to speak. I know I was. And then it got weird. The Christian didn’t fly off. She didn’t raise her shields. Instead, she began to fade. The outer hull went all smoky and translucent. Then the bulkheads. As we sat there trembling, the last thing that slipped from view were the bones of Jamie Dawson and his crew, still garbed in ragged Starfleet uniforms, staring solemnly at the Icelandic Troll.

Sailors have been telling each other stories for centuries. The Flying Dutchman, the Mary Celeste, and the Barnum’s Pride have scared superstitious men and women for a long, long time. There are stories of the Pale Rider, and the Lady by his side. But the story that most chills my spirit, because I swear to God it’s true, is the tale of Dawson’s Christian and her crew.