Gold Keys Comics continued its Star Trek adventures, with The Flight of the Buccaneer, its twelfth issue, which hit comic spinners for November of 1971. Len Wein once again served as the storyteller, Alberto Giolitti continued to work as artist, and George Wilson painted another cover.

This one ends up just being a silly pirate story. Pirates are sailing the star systems, and they even have treasure maps.

Sulu, on a ridiculous looking semblance of the bridge, is submitting the captain’s log as the Enterprise pursues a space cruiser to Tortuga VI. The cruiser makes it to safe harbor, while Kirk, Spock, Scotty (who finally looks like himself) and McCoy prepare for their Starfleet sanctioned mission.

They’ve got their disguises and arrive on Tortuga VI seeking out Black Jack Nova. He apparently has one half of a map that will lead them to the spoils of a dilithium heist. And they are going to get it back!

The whole thing is silly and is a very stereotypical pirate story… set in space.

Kirk and company pair up with Nova, who will only keep them around long enough to serve his purpose. They join him aboard his ship, the Windjammer, and ahoy! they set off for treasure.

But things aren’t going to go smoothly. One of Nova’s men overhears Scotty and Spock talking about their plan! They’re Starfleet! But before the scallywag can reveal the truth to his Captain, Kirk outs his own men!

They are forced to walk the space plank, which in this case means they are ejected into space with suits that won’t last very long.

While the Windjammer continues on its way, leaving the two men adrift, Enterprise, which has been using the cloaking device from The Enterprise Incident, sweeps in and beams them aboard.

And now, Enterprise must get to Windjammer’s destination, Taos IV and find the dlithium before the pirates!! Apparently they can’t scan for the dilithium, it’s masked somehow. So Spock and a security team (no longer using the landing party utility belts) beam down to search for it.

There the bump into the sole inhabitant of the planet, one Ben Cannon, who has been left there for far too long.

The team set up an ambush for Nova’s men, which means that Kirk gets to square off against Nova mano a mano!

Fisticuffs follow, but it’s a well-aimed throw of Kirk’s electron cutlass (?!) that ends up bringing Nova and his shuttle down!

And where’s the dlithium? Well, it seems Cannon was the former captain of the Windjammer, marooned there by Nova – he dug up and hid the dilithium in scan-proof containers!

The Enterprise roars away from Taos IV, and a quick discussion follows on the horrifying marvel that piracy can still exist. Spock remarks that humans tend towards violence, but McCoy gets the last word in, with a threat.

This one was definitely not my favorite story so far. And while it’s great that Wein is tying in this Trek with the televised version, the story is a little too simple and childish.

The Human Adventure continues next time when the Enterprise encounters a Dark Traveler!