Tales from the Captain’s Table Read Online Free

been staying. I had seen his pictures—woodcut engravings and painted portraits, actually—all over the lobby and the lounge.
    This guy had kidnapped me thinking I was Fegrr’ep Urr’hilf. And now that I understood what had happened, I realized that between my beard and my minor surgical alterations, I really did bear a better-than-passing resemblance to Urr’hilf.
    Great, I thought, considering the unpleasant reality of the rope that still bound my wrists behind my back. How pissed off is this guy going to be when he realizes how badly he’s goofed?
    But I had an even more immediate concern than my personal safety.
    “I assume I’m the only hostage you took from the beach today, eh?” I asked Captain Torr’ghaff, taking care to avoid provoking him. Hoping it would make my impersonation of Fegrr’ep Urr’hilf more believable, I tried to appear more than a little frightened.
    “You are correct, heh,” Torr’ghaff said.
    I heaved a sigh of relief. So Deanna is probably safe, I thought. Along with the rest of my shipmates. They’ve got to be planning some sort of rescue, tech restrictions or no tech restrictions.
    Torr’ghaff walked slowly around me and my pirate escorts, evidently scrutinizing me carefully. Had the difference between my height and Urr’hilf’s that he had mentioned before really given me away?
    “You aren’t dressed the way I expected either, neh,” he said finally.
    I shrugged. “I don’t wear my stage outfits while running on the beach, heh” was all I could think of to say.
    He seemed to consider this for what felt like an eternity—time always stretches when both your arms are tied behind your back and a man who carries a lot of cutlery seems to be considering carving you into chum and throwing you into the ocean—before shrugging.
    “You’d better hope your people deliver a ransom far richer than you appear to rate just now, eh?” he said at length. The cutthroats flanking me laughed. One of them half-hummed and half-brayed a discordant melody that I assumed to be one of Urr’hilf’s.
    “Captain!” shouted a voice from almost directly overhead. “A ship! Heading right for us!”
    Everyone who stood on the pirate ship’s gently swaying deck or crawled in its rigging, perhaps two dozen nasty pieces of work in all, turned toward where the man in the crow’s nest pointed.
    Approaching far more quickly than should have been possible for a wooden sailing ship, especially on such a calm day, was a three-masted wooden frigate, her turquoise-skinned Pelagian crew visibly busy on the top deck positioning and loading cannons. Hoisted over the mainsail was a skull-headed banner, which I took to be the local equivalent of the Jolly Roger.
    As the frigate heaved to, I began to make out some of her markings. I was surprised to see that they weren’t written in Pelagian. They were in English.
    The ship alongside us was the Enterprise.
     
    “Forgive my interruption, Riker, but I believe you told us that the Enterprise was in drydock, light-years away from Pelagia.”
    Before Riker could answer, he saw a look of sudden comprehension dawning on Picard’s face. “Of course. The holodeck program I’d saved from the Enterprise -D . It was on the Calypso II ’s computer.”
    Riker nodded, grinning. “I guessed that was the work of Commander Keru, the Enterprise ’s former stellar cartographer. He had more experience with holographic imaging than anyone else who’d come with us to Pelagia. He also had spent a fair amount of time during his two tours of duty on the Enterprise running pirate holodeck scenarios. I learned later that once Deanna had discovered I was missing, she rounded up the troops and ordered Keru to outfit the Calypso II ’s hull with dozens of small holoemitters. Keru found the wooden frigate simulation program in the yacht’s memory banks, and used it as a rough-and-ready disguise.”
    “I’m impressed,” Klag said. “Not at the holographic trickery—any fool