Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

Chapter 2:

Wednesday, June 14th, 2243
The Lady Grey
On the North Atlantic

The fog wasn't planned, but it couldn't have been any better if it was.

The Lady Grey had drifted through the peasoup haze that had risen from the sea only a short time before the Queen Mary was due to arrive. Running under jibs and staysails only, she crept through the water rather than bounded; all those on deck, only enough to keep her under control, didn't speak above whispers.

They had been playing something like chess for the better part of twenty-four hours, sailing the Grey into position, adjusting her course when needed. After the decoy was finished and outfitted with running lamps, Scotty had put some of his improvisational talents to rigging a tricorder and communicator to try to track the Queen Mary, despite all jamming. The tricorder for its detailed information, the communicator for its range. It had taken him hours, some of those spent growling under his breath at not having enough tools for the job, but he'd finally done it.

They could have probably used it to contact Starfleet. But they didn't. Regardless of their guests, Team C -- who had started this -- was determined to see it through.

But when it came down to it, only two people on that team planned to take the fall for the rest.

More probably would have. They were a loyal lot. But part of loyalty was knowing when not to ask for it.

The decoy looked the part, even if she didn't have the size. She set sail into the fog, this little boat that mimicked a schooner, complete right to her port and starboard running lamps, and her masthead light. Still tethered back to the schooner, of course, but that one thin line wasn't enough to destroy the illusion.

The fog, in the approaching dawn form, was starting to ease up. With any luck the distortion of it, as well as the sometimes strange perspectives at sea, would convince the Queen Mary that the Lady Grey was just half-drifting aimlessly in her path.

The real Lady Grey was dark, silent and invisible. If the decoy was a phantom, a trick, then she was the real ghost. Team C, absent only a handful left to sail the Grey, were waiting in the lifeboats already launched from her side, still connected to the falls to keep them from drifting off. They were all counting on the element of surprise in this venture; counting on the Queen Mary not seeing them, but seeing their decoy. Counting on the other crew not to even knowing they were there until it was too late.

The order had been passed for absolute silence before they went down in the boats. All vital communication took place via whispered relay, and that was it.

That left the quiet moments before the attack for reflection. Most of the Grey's crew of cadets were a mix between determined and giddy; it was exciting, if nothing else. While the danger of the storm had put a razor's edge on what had originally been a daring coup, nearly everyone still felt that it was a chance to do something outlandishly bold, possibly fun and certainly well-deserved.

Especially since they'd basically come to the conclusion that Starfleet just couldn't afford to court-martial all of them.

Corry sat shoulder to shoulder with his best friend, occasionally casting a look at the tricorder whenever Scotty uncovered the screen he had his hand over to check it himself. Other than that, though, Corry didn't say anything.

They hadn't done much talking in the past few days; it seemed like neither was exactly sure of what could be said. But they kept silent company anyway.

It still felt like they were in the water, though. It was a feeling that Cor hadn't been able to shake, despite his best efforts. He had tried to find something funny to say, or even something serious, but he kept running into an invisible wall; he couldn’t feel anything definable as humor.

For that matter, he wasn't exactly sure what all he felt. He only knew that he felt shaken to the very bottom of his heart.

He only knew that he felt angry.  And helpless.  And lost.

"How would I have lived with that?"

When his father was sick, he knew that he was afraid and desperate, so he threw himself into trying to fix it, and while that had been the wrong thing to do -- at least, the way he did it -- it had given him space to find his way back without feeling helpless. After the fire, he was miserable and more than a little regretful, but he dug deep and he apologized and he set to work making things right again.

But this was the first time he'd ever had to genuinely look at that question. Not the question of what he would do to prevent the bad things from happening, but how he would live with it if he couldn't.

The fact that he didn't even have an idea of what the answer would be to that question--

Scotty shivered beside him briefly, probably a chill brought on by the fog, and Corry glanced over. Despite the look and quick nod he got back -- "I'm all right." -- it still bothered him. It was hard enough to grapple with the actual events; what it took to save Scotty, not only from the water, but the fire before that.

But he also was trying, and failing, to grapple with the miserable question of how he could have lived with it had he not been able to do either of those.  And the-- the self-directed anger for having been the one giving the order that could have killed his best friend. 

And finally, soul-deep rage towards those who'd set up both situations.

He didn't regret following Scotty into the fire, or the water. He never could.

But someone was gonna regret both of those happening in the first place.

He gestured to the tricoder and then looked at the screen when it was shown to him. It was just about the time to go, and he asked Scotty, "Ready?"

"I'm ready," was the quiet answer.

Corry nodded, unsmiling, then started whispering the orders down the relay.

"What is it?" O'Sullivan asked, having been practically dragged up on deck from his hammock. He squinted into the dark and the slowly lifting fog, trying to get a clear idea of what exactly he was supposed to be looking at.

The fact that the faintest edge of gray, dawn light had just started rising made it even more difficult.

It looked like a ship; a masthead light, a port and starboard running light, and the vaguely defined phantoms of white sails. But there was no way that it could be; they were in the lead, by far. And the Lady Grey was crippled.

"Looks like a ship to me," Maggie said, quietly. "But--"

"Shit!"

The single yell came from aft from the lone lookout; the Queen Mary had taken in sail and she had barely been moving to begin with, her steel hull making it harder for her to make use of the very light air, so posting more than one lookout seemed pointless. O'Sullivan couldn't guess at why they’d be yelling.

And then chaos broke loose.

Swarming over the sides and pulling themselves over the bulwark and through the scuppers were people, dark shadows in the still-dim light.

What was worse, though, was that Keith recognized some of them even then.

"Bleedin' hell," he muttered, and got ready to fight.

When the Grey's crew came aboard the Queen Mary, the world went mad.

Over twenty bellowing cadets scrambled aboard with makeshift grapples, hitting the deck with wailing war-cries, going from the bulwark to leaping on anything that moved, sometimes to the point of tackling each other.

Corry dodged two fists, one flying body and nearly ended up knocked back over the bulwark by another not two seconds after his feet hit the deck. "Cripes!"

"Reminds me of a barroom brawl," Scotty commented, both eyebrows up, as he neatly sidestepped whoever it was who had nearly plowed Corry overboard, having gotten aboard first. "Little more messy, though."

"You people are crazy!" that body said, then got to its feet and ran aft.

"Can you imagine this with swords and muskets?" Cor asked, having to dodge out of the way of one of their own teammates giving chase to whoever it was that just questioned their sanity.

"No, not really." Scotty shook his head and consulted his tricorder after looking up, no doubt making sure that he wasn't about to get ran into, decked or anything else. "I'm gonna try'n find whatever they're jammin' us with."

Corry nodded, then caught a glimpse of O'Sullivan across the deck swinging on Albright, who mercifully ducked in time. The gray light was beginning to rise at the same time as his own blood was. "I think I'm gonna do a little payback."

Scotty picked his head up to follow the look, then frowned, eyebrows drawn in a worried look. "Be careful. He throws a mean right."

"So do I." Cor bared his teeth in a smile that felt nothing at all like humor and started across the deck. He was just about to pick up speed and do a little body-checking when Maggie ran into him with a startled cry, trying to flee Jerry and Lewis.

"Corry, what are you doing?!" she asked, frantically, grabbing onto his arm and looking for all the galaxy like a damsel in distress from one of those old movies he collected. "This is-- this is--"

"Deserved," Corry answered, as he pulled free then took her arm, though not very hard, and held her there for Lewis and Jer. "Here, guys, one arsonist for the plank."

Maggie looked aghast; then, when she realized she was caught good, she started cussing at Cor even as the other two guys got a hand each on her arms.

"Love you, too, Mags." He gave her a sardonic smile and a mock salute, and then kept on going.

It was a clever little rig. Likewise tricorder-and-communicator based, just like his own modification, but much larger and more powerful. Overall, Scotty counted three different cannibalized tricorders, two communicators (likely one each for them and the Wildstorm), and the damned thing used the Queen Mary's mainmast as a sort of giant antenna.  Probably, if he could see inside that, he’d find out exactly how.

Despite the fact that he was in the guts of the enemy's ship, despite the fact that the rig had put roughly fifty lives in genuine danger, he had to take time to admire the work itself.  Whoever had come up with it and implemented it had a flare for improvisation he could appreciate, one engineer to another.

The sounds of the madness taking place up on the main deck were pretty well muffled down in the hold of the Queen Mary, though he could hear a couple of really good brawls going on up there.  He was sort of surprised at himself for how little he wanted to get involved, too; it felt like any prior taste for violence he might have had lurking in his soul was firmly snuffed out in the North Atlantic a few days ago. Not that he still wasn't capable of a fist-fight, if it came down to it; he’d defend himself if he had to.

But the act of not fighting was still so new that Scotty wasn't sure exactly how to live with it yet.

Corry, on the other hand--

He frowned to himself, even as he studied the contraption in front of him. He didn't want to disable it yet; once it was shut down, Starfleet would realize that the Wildstorm was gone and that no one was where they were supposed to be, and it was a sure bet that they would be there in very short order.

But that wasn’t what was really preying on his mind.

Scotty couldn't blame Cor for being a little off-balanced, and he certainly couldn't grudge any righteous anger, but the idea that the same leap into the water that had saved his own life might have cost Cor something that made him-- made him Corry was more than a little upsetting.

That his best friend could have given up something vital, just to protect him.

He’d tried to shake it off, but it was a persistent worry that had been dogging him for days.  Even after the firm reassurance that Corry wasn’t sorry about how things had played out.

Out of the two of them, Corry was the big-hearted, optimistic one who had been practically sickened by the rage that had gotten ahold of him before the fire; he sure didn't spend his life with his fists up, ready to take a swing at anyone or everyone the way Scotty had before.

And while they'd both been adrift and somewhat distant, still trying to find where they stood in this world, that grim look that Corry had been wearing earlier bothered Scotty.

He looked at the contraption again, and then shook his head. He could come back and deal with this later; whatever else, it couldn’t be his priority. Then he turned around--

--and Harrison was holding a phaser.

"It's too late," Harrison said, voice shaking, practically crying from fear. "It's too late."

Keith O'Sullivan was one tough fighter. He'd managed to stun Joe Albright pretty bad with one blow, and he'd managed to knock down a few other cadets immediately after. Even while the rest of the Queen Mary’s crew was being taken down right and left, he was still on his feet.

He was just finishing up with another one when he turned around and got slammed across the face hard enough to put him on his knees.

Corry shook his hand, eyes narrowed as he looked down on the other cadet. "I owed you that one."

O'Sullivan smirked, spitting blood on the deck before he looked up, wavering a little, then jerking his chin upwards. "Ain't you I was after, Corrigan. But if ye're that worried about yer little boyfriend, it's not me you should be lookin' out for."

"What d'you mean?" Cor asked, scowling.

"Harrison lost it when ya boarded. I'm bettin' he went to get that phaser we had hidden below-decks."

"Ye really don't wanna do anything stupid," Scotty said, keeping his hands out to his sides, and holding still otherwise. Harrison looked like he was about two seconds from having a major panic attack, and the idea of what he could do in the grip of that panic was chilling. "It's one thing to do a bit o' sabotage, but phaserin' someone--"

"Maybe we can make a break for it. Starfleet won't do anything to me if I have a hostage." Harrison nodded, a bit manically. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this. You know that, right? I mean, no one was really supposed to get hurt."

"Aye, I know." Scotty was a little surprised to find that he believed that. But that didn't take away the fact that he was pretty sure that Harrison was desperate enough or frightened enough to hurt or kill now, though. "Why don't we-- why don't we come up with some idea, and maybe then we'll all get out o' this in one piece, aye?"

Harrison shook his head, as the tears ran down his face. "It's too late. You know? It's too late."

"John--" It'd be a damnable thing to die just when you're really starting to grasp what it is to be alive. Scotty shook his head, trying to stay calm and cool about this himself. But for some reason, he couldn't get the thought out of his head that if he died like this, after all of this--

There was a roar of the likes that he had never heard before, and the reason he was alive to begin with ran into Harrison so hard that they both rebounded off the bulkhead. Even as fast as Scotty could be on his feet, he barely had time to process what was happening before Corry was snarling at Harrison, now pinned and half-stunned on the deckplates.

Cor didn't say anything; hit the other cadet with already bruised, bloodied knuckles, and he was radiating rage. Not like the rage he'd had when he and Scotty had it out, not that cold anger, but something else, and it was-- was--

This was it. This.

If he would have died like that, something else in someone else would've died with him. And if his life was saved in the Atlantic by not fighting, then this was his moment where he had to fight again. But not for his life, or for his right to breathe, or in plain defiance of the universe, but for something that his best friend was a swing of a fist from losing.

"Stop," he said, and it was a sharp note he couldn't remember ever using before now. "Corry, stop."

"I'm sick of this," Cor snapped, but even with his fist drawn back again, and his eyes narrowed on Harrison, he held still there. And even with the anger in his voice, there was an edge of desperation under it. "How the hell are we ever gonna be okay, when these things keep happening?! And this little-- little fuck-up didn't even care. He coulda killed you, and it never woulda even mattered to him!"

That was some language Scotty never heard out of his best friend before, and it was enough to make him fall silent for a moment. He didn't know what to say. What could he say? He didn't have the answers that they both once did, before that line was crossed, even if he was starting to get that those answers then were rarely the right ones.

But he needed to say something, and was desperate enough to say something.

"I know you," he said, and drew in a deep breath. "I know you. And this-- this isn't worth what ye'd give up. The part o' you that ye'd need to let go of, it's not worth it."

Corry tightened his grip on Harrison's coat, not taking his gaze off the other cadet, who was clearly terrified, quivering. "I'm tired of us getting knocked down! We're still in the water.” There was a beat, then he bared his teeth. “I want to."

"That's why ye shouldn't." Scotty shook his head, hard, trying to keep the frantic feeling he had digging a sharp point into some spot just below his breastbone from getting into his voice.

"He deserves it," Cor said, but he was wavering, his mouth twisting and tears spilling down his face.

Still in the water. He was right. They were still in the water, but this time--

"Don't pull me out o' the dark, just to go there yerself." And it was a plea, and maybe defiance, and certainly desperate.

The universe never stopped for heartbroken pleas or primal defiance, but maybe it paused when you answered one of its infinite, unanswerable questions.

"What if I couldn't have saved you?" Corry asked, and he was the one fighting for oxygen, here and now at this time, looking to Scotty for an answer he probably didn't believe existed.

And Scotty gave it to him.

"You already have."