Tuttenbeck is called upon to save Star Fleet's latest ship and arrest a renegrade.

With apologies to the BBC Light Programme. I proudly present USS Tuttenbeck, the pride of Starfleet and the antithesis of boringly efficient Federation Starships.

The Startrek Universe is the property of Paramount, though they might not want this bit of it.

The stories are my own and any other sad but kind person that wishes to join in the fun.

Without a murmer a cup containing hot coffee appeared in the replicator. Not a remarkable feat to many starship crews. But for Parbold having the two appear simultaeneously, without having to beg or perform strange mating rituals with the device was nothing less than amazing. In the four months since Chief Catchen had installed the modified Ferrengi device it had not failed once and he was still taking childish delight in trying different voice commands. The challenge now, to find a command it would not accept.

He was about to try the more perverse demand for a hot Irish Coffee Ice Cream when Crewman Williams' voice interrupted. "Leading Crewman Williams yer, Lieutenant. Your panel is flashing."

"Well I dun rightly know, Sir. But it's got an interesting beat an' lots of pretty colours."

Parbold sighed. He had forgotten that Williams was not by any stretch of the imagination clever and that he (Parbold) still struggled with the dubious command structures used by the Klingon sourced panel. There was nothing else for it, he would have to go upto the Bridge.

The small guilty voice of his conscience told him that the Bridge was where he was supposed to be during his watch and not playing with his replicator. Particularly as the Captain was on an away mission.

The much larger part of his mind told it to shut up. There was little for anybody to do when the ship was orbiting Maggies.

One look at his communications panel on the Bridge was enough to have Parbold struggling for his Klingon to English pocket dictionary. He had never seen the messages either.

Normally the few sub-space messages Tuttenbeck received were on one of three topics: Private messages for Chief Catchen, 'Your supplies are here'. The second were, 'Where the hell are you? I want to kill you,' from irate fathers or husbands trying to contact Lieutenant Corbett. The third came very occasionally from Star Fleet for Commander Geroff. The first type had to be forwarded immediately and with great importance, he had learnt. Star Fleets presence in this sector revolved around Chief Catchen and several dozen of his immediate family. The second could be dealt with as convenient. The third were dealt with suitably. Every fifth message was acknowledged to stop complaints, all the rest were deleted.

Whatever it was, this message was not one of those. Twenty minutes of literal translation came with:

"Cowardly. Putac Roosevelt, It is a good day to mad dog, snivelling worm watchers."

Whoever had installed the communications devices aboard Tuttenbeck had less idea of how to translate Klingon and Federation speech than Parbold and his little book, and an even lower opinion of Starfleet. The only thing he could be sure of was that it was a Star Fleet code. A few more translations gave a more understandable result, though somewhat less desirable.

"You should have come down with us, Lieutenant!" Geroff was in a pleasant mood. Maggie must have cracked her 'Special Crate' of real Earth Rum. "What do you want?"

"I doubt it worries us. We pick up all sorts or rubbish out here thanks to the boundary," Geroff opined. "Just chuck it in the bin."

"This one was in our sector," Parbold began to explain. "From the USS Roosevelt. They think they are under attack."

"That the new tub they launched a few months ago?" Geroff asked mildly, still uninterested. "Supposed to be the fastest, most modern and powerful in the fleet? First in a new line of infinitely capable superships, that will launch the Federation into the exploration of worlds beyond its boundaries. ‘To go in peace, where nobody has gone before’. Multiple Phasor and Torpedo mass launching turrets, able to dispense sixty torpedoes in a single salvo. Capable of taking on any threat the galaxy has to offer, upto and including the massed ranks of the Borg fleet single handed without the crew gaining a scratch?"

"That sounds like the one," Parbold agreed, visualising the public announcement of the ship’s launch the previous month.

"Then they hardly need us then. Do they, Lieutenant?" Geroff suggested reasonably. "All we have is one dodgy tube and a phaser bank that overheats!"

"It was most specific, Sir!" Parbold protested. "They are appealing for help from any ship in the sector."

There was the sound of a muffled curse, then ‘Pour it back in the bottle Mag’s. I’ll take it with me. The spare Gumbo too, might as well drop it off,’ before a much crisper. “They’ve probably broken a fingernail on some touch screen. Still, I suppose we ought to go and look. Get us lined up, Lieutenant. But don't tell them we're coming.”

“Good grief. No!” Geroff gasped. “If they are in a shooting war, the last thing we want to do is bimble up when they are still throwing torpedoes about. You never know what the damned things are going to hit.”

“Very well,” Geroff sighed. “But no flashing lights and klaxons! Mr Parbold, you had better go and help Gorsh to bring them up.”

Parbold was surprised by the order, until he remembered that on some older ships the shields were controlled from Engineering. All the same he had thought that even the Tuttenbeck would have had that simple modification done at some point in her career.

There was a light flashing on a control panel and Gorsh was peering at it short sightedly.

“I am a warrior!” Gorsh announced drunkenly turning to meet the Lieutenant. To prove the point he took a swipe at the console beside him with a hyper-spanner, and missed. “I should not be wandering the ship like a candle bearer!”

“All we need to do is activate the shields,” Parbold placated, wondering what should prompt the strange behaviour from the Klingon.

Gorsh looked at him curiously, as if seeing him for the first time. “Come!” he demanded ominously. “We shall start at the back.”

He handed Parbold a heavy set of gloves then led him into a long cubicle that ran behind the main power distribution panels.

“You will pull the red handles. I will pull the blue ones. The operation must be completed in sequence,” Gorsh decreed.

Mystified, Parbold gripped the first of a dozen large red metal levers and pulled it down until it engaged with the contacts with a heavy clonk and brief spark. Then watched as Gorsh followed with an equally large blue one. “What happens if we don't do it in sequence?” he asked.

There was a flash as half million megawatts of power suddenly found a new path to travel. The lights went out a moment afterwards, swiftly followed by a wailing scream and a crash as crewman Williams, halfway down the companion ladder lost his footing in the sudden darkness.

There was another flash as the engineer returned the handle to its starting place. “Perhaps the lights go out?” He suggested as light was restored.

“We cannot lose a shield. The circuit isolators have welded shut,” Gorsh admitted, a thin pawl of smoke hanging over him. “It is why we must manually divert power.”

It was with a whole lot more circumspection and care that Parbold finished the task of pulling the remaining handles.

Captain Harry Kim leaned back in his reclined Captains chair feeling very embarrassed. He was the Captain of 10million tonnes of the Federations newest ship. So new the doors still squeaked. It was the most powerful and capable in the known galaxy and he had goofed.

The simple 'arrest a criminal' task handed down from Star Fleet, had become a nightmare. The minor task, even in comparison to normal shakedown cruises (especially Voyagers), had led to a four day streak across the heavens into part of the Federation he had not known existed, until now, and into a short single sided battle, his ship on the receiving end. Nor did he have the excuse of having been whisked down the plughole of some temporal anomaly, mass abduction by aliens, or even interception by some fabulously powerful and threatening alien entity. Not even Admiral Janeway would be able to get him off of this one. Things could not get worse, he decided.

“There is a vessel approaching, Captain,” Lieutenant-Commander Bridges announced formerly from the tactical station.

He was relieved by the negative answer. “It bears a Federation beacon, USS Tuttenbeck, Sir!”

“Perhaps Star Fleet had a deep space tug out this way hauling a mining rig, Sir?” Bridges suggested hopefully, obeying the command.

“What is it?” Kim asked at last, twisting his head this way and that to try and find something identifiable amongst the twisted wreckage that appeared on the screen.

“I think at least part of it may be a Miranda, Sir?” Lieutenant Gwadol suggested uncertainly from the Conn, peering at it backwards from underneath his arm.

“Perhaps they've tangled with Gor-rath?” Another voice suggested hopefully. A statement that allowed the occupants to relax in a little more comfort. Somebody else had been battered as well.

“We are being hailed, Captain,” Bridges interrupted, replacing the unconvincing view of the outside of the Tuttenbeck on the viewscreen, with the just as unconvincing view of the inside of Tuttenbeck's bridge.

“Who, or what are you?” Kim stammered at the balding figure of Geroff, relaxed in his Axminster covered chair.

“Oh. Hello, old chap!” Geroff responded happily. “If you must know. We are the law in these parts. Now just what seems to be the problem?”

Kim was flummoxed. He had thought the signs of scorched and torn hull plating would have been a fair give-away of the problem. Then took a second look at the external view of Tuttenbeck and decided that Geroff could just possibly think that was how a ship looked in its prime. “Half our weapons systems are burnt out. Our tri-axial warp drive is out of line,” he began.

Geroff glanced at an out of sight monitor. “Don't see why,” he said after a moment. “It looks as if you've still got everything, even those great flapping nacelles,” he said referring to the variable geometry warp generators. “Just asking to get knocked off, they are. Still I suppose we can lend you our Chief and Senior Engineer, as you are short of skills, mmhh? Besides, there is no Fleet tug within a week of here that can tow your great lump.”

“Klingon spy,” Kim replied. “He stole the plans for the ship. He has got to be stopped!”

Before Geroff answered, he picked a PADD from the coffee table beside him and peered at it. “Let me get this straight,” he said waving the PADD at Kim. “It says here, in the official press release. Your weapons, shields and sensor systems are three times more powerful than a Nebula class ship and your top warp speed is in excess of Warp 10. And you are asking me, in a vessel that couldn't burn your paint and can only just break Warp 7, to chase around after a thief, bringing him to justice. Remembering of course that you've chased him all the way from Earth in the Federations most powerful ship and he thwacked you? Not much of a plan is it?”

Kim had to confess silently it did sound pretty dumb, but put a brave face upon it. “And you've a better one?”

“Much better,” Geroff agreed, “I leave you here and you can have another go when he comes back! Win or lose you'll be out of my patch. There are only a couple of ways in and out of this sector at warp speeds and you are in the middle of both. There are the Tramp routes, of course, but it doesn't sound as if he's stupid enough to try them. And if he is, then I'll pick up his remains in a year or two. How does that sound?”

It did not sound like a better idea at all to Kim. “How long before he's back?” He managed through gritted teeth.

Geroff shrugged. “Couple of hours?” He hazarded, before turning to address the pockmarked lieutenant at the helm. “Now I think as we've managed to get the shields up, we will dock to transfer the chief. I think docking port 4 ought to be a reasonably close fit, Lieutenant.”

Before the screen flickered back to the external view of the Tuttenbeck, Kim distinctly saw the young dark haired officer at the rear shut his eyes, cross himself and offer a prayer, as the helmsman gave a gleeful cackle and cracked his knuckles. “Docking port 4. Aye, Sir!”

The whole bridge watched mesmerised, as the Tuttenbeck turned, banked and otherwise manoeuvred to bring her aft most docking hatch in line with the Roosevelt's. An operation that for some reason required the Tuttenbeck to pass close underneath the larger ship's saucer, just infront of her engineering section, then up, whilst turning, to finally back onto the main docking port located on Roosevelts neck. A manoeuvre that was complicated enough without the Tuttenbecks obvious inability to travel forwards in a straight line.

“They're gonna hit!” A tense voice squealed as Tuttenbeck's warp nacelle scraped the deflector dish.

There was an audible sigh of relief as Tuttenbeck lurched clear again for another pass.

“Did that chap just shoot at us?” Geroff asked mildly, pointing at the ominous view of a Klingon Vor'Cha cruiser. Only one of Tuttenbeck's periodic and unpredictable sideways lurches had saved them from being impaled upon by a salvo from the warships disruptor cannons. “Rather unfriendly of them wasn't it? After all it's the big lump of scrap behind us they want. Tell them that would you, Mr Parbold. Tell them I'll buy them a drink if they stop. If they don't, we'll stop them with our secret weapon.”

“I don't think they are particularly interested, Sir,” Parbold observed a moment later, gripping the console tightly as three more bright stars emanated from the Klingon.

Once more Tuttenbeck launched into a shuddering side step, this time prompted by the far less predictable Corbett.

“Said something about, 'Sit still and die snivelling Targs'. What secret weapon, Sir?” Parbold asked again.

Geroff sighed before hitting the baby alarm that formed most of Tuttenbeck's intercom. “How is the gumbo, Chief?”

“Well start spraying it out the doors,” Geroff suggested, then turned to Corbett. “Now I want you to imagine that you knew how to fly a starship Lieutenant,” he suggested patiently, “and zig-zag across that Klingon's path.”

“Oh and by the way. Don't let them hit us!” Geroff added as an afterthought.

If Parbold had been asked, he would have admitted he was confused. Gumbo's main threat lay in the vastness of Maggies servings, or at least so he had thought. Why Tuttenbeck should want to lay a thin trail of it across space defied his imagination.

Aboard Roosevelt confusion did not enter the vocabulary. The battered old wreck was leaving a trail of something dark brown and slimy from various openings, like some senile diarrhetic slug.

“Vegetable oil, alcohol, saturated fats, meat by products, hundred-fifty types of seasoning, chilli peppers, onion..” Lieutenant Bridges diagnosis of the contents of the slime did not help.

It certainly did not meet the description of the secret weapon that Parbolds short discussion with the Klingon warship had suggested.

On top of that, the Klingon was continuing to approach, through the streamers of brown slime, with the obvious intent of finishing off the still crippled Roosevelt, having given up on trying to hit the a-fore mentioned erratic senile slug.

“What are they waiting for?” Kim hissed in exasperation as it came to a gentle halt less than 5000 metres away.

They continued to watch as slowly the lights on the warship started to wink out.

Geroff's cheerful voice boomed out. “You should find them quite docile in an hour or so, when the emergency system runs down. So do what ever you wanted to do and bugger off. There's good chaps. We'll send Hammit's tug out after you when we get back. But if you've any sense you won't be here for that. Toodle-pip.”

Geroff looked back over his shoulder at him and grinned. “Ever wondered what cold gumbo is like?” he enquired. “Horrible sticky stuff. Gets into everything and glues it up solid. Takes weeks with a steam jet to shift it!”

“It blocked the Klingon warship's weapons, sensors and bussards,” T'Rizz explained more clearly. “They are blind and without power for weapons.”

“But shouldn't we stay to explain who beat the Klingon's. So you can be rewarded?” Parbold protested in righteous indignation. “They could say anything!”

“I hope they do,” Geroff admitted. “Can you imagine what it would be like with that plonker on my ship! Frightful. Far too straight for my liking. Fancy a drink?”

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