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

Chapter Text

Part I.

January 14th, 2248
(Twenty days earlier...)
The Horizon Sun

The third red alert in less than forty-eight hours was enough to make Scotty ponder, however tiredly, the absolute inconvenience of war. Never mind the politics. Never mind the loss of life, property and safety. It was also just damn bloody inconvenient. That alone was reason enough to think it wasn't worth it.

Being away from the front lines didn’t change the fact that it touched everything outside of the light of Sol; that no matter how life happened on an old freighter hauling miners, supplies or raw ore for processing, every part of it was still informed by war.

The Federation might not have started it, but hopefully it would finish it and soon. They were already going to be two months overdue getting back to Earth, by virtue of diverting around battle-zones and dedicated military corridors, by virtue of being redirected to do emergency transfers of supplies where newer freighters had been pulled for more critical military work, and Scotty was tired out. He wanted his leave time, he wanted to go back and spend too much time in Maine, sleeping in a recliner, and this nonsense was throwing a large spanner into that plan.

It wasn't that he liked the Klingons. He just didn't like the senselessness of war itself. It was a waste, all around; lives, property, time, credits, everything.

"Two frigates and three wardragons," Chalmers said, when Scotty made it to the engine room, darting through the door with only one boot tied. It was a habit to note what exactly they were being diverted for, as though that somehow made it seem more justified.

Scotty had stopped caring about that the last time they were deployed, but he didn’t even have the motivation to say anything about it, either.

"Aye," he acknowledged, pausing only long enough to tie his other boot before heading to the impulse control panel. He supposed he could have tacked on the 'sir' -- Chalmers was a lieutenant and the chief, despite them being the same age -- but formality had dropped by the wayside fairly early on. The Sun's entire engineering staff was a barebones four, where her optimum number would be fourteen; instead, there were three regular shifters, and Scotty just working whenever they needed him. Which was most of the time.

His 'official title' was engineering adviser.  His reality was that he was pretty much a glorified swing-shifter who didn't get to do much advising, but did get to do a helluva lot of overtime work.

In these situations, though, it was all hands on deck, everyone watching monitors and waiting to leap into action anywhere on the ship they might have to. Thatcher made it in next; fresh out of Engineering school, he was practically bouncing with frantic energy and enthusiasm even after a year of this drudgery.

There were times when Scotty wondered how he could think of the twenty-three year old as being too young when he was only just a couple months shy of twenty-six himself, but then he thought that maybe it was because of how Thatcher acted around him; he'd been a first-year cadet when Scotty was a fourth-year, and had therefore been around for what had happened with the Lady Grey and the fallout from that. And because of that, Thatcher had this rather peculiar notion that Scotty was some kind of-- of exciting daredevil, some rebel without a cause.

Scotty had been vaguely amused by that particular characterization at first, but only at first. Then it got a bit annoying.

"What's going on out there?" Thatcher asked, going and joining Chalmers as he monitored the warp drive's control panel. Mostly it was a precautionary measure; so long as they didn't get caught up in the battle, they'd be fine. Old as she was, the Sun was a decently maintained ship.

She wouldn't survive a battle, no, but as long as they kept her out of it, she'd make it home.

Scotty only half-listened as Chalmers gave Thatcher the same report, and Thatcher speculated excitedly on what the engineers on the frigates were doing. Scotty might have once done the same himself, but he had a feeling that it would just make him feel worse about the whole damn situation.

Finally, Cayo Perez made it in; an easy-going, mild-mannered Spaniard, he never seemed to take anything as being an emergency, even when it occasionally was. Scotty wasn't exactly all that friendly with any of them, but out of all of them, he got along best with the laid-back Perez.

Sometimes, he had to wonder if that was Corry's influence.

"I was having a good dream before this," Perez said, as he came over to the panel Scotty was working on and only gave it a quick, appraising look before crossing his arms and leaning on the wall. "My girl, a feast, a big bed." He smirked. "No cubes."

That was another thing they got along on -- both of them were mean cooks, and both of them hated the ration cubes that the synthesizer spit out.

Scotty snorted. "This ever comes to be, I'll expect ye to send me some of it."

"Not the girl," Perez said, with a grin.

"No, the food." Scotty shot him an amused sidelong look, then shook his head. "Though, ye know, if she had a choice between us, I'm sure she'd send ye a wedding invite as a consolation prize."

Perez made a face, despite looking ready to laugh. "Culero."

Scotty didn't need that translated; he just handed it right back without looking away from his panel again, "Twllt din."

"That's a new one," Perez said, after a moment or two. "I thought that it was 'toll-toine'?"

"Same thing, but in Welsh."

Perez snorted. "Asshole."

Chalmers didn't bother to stop them from insulting one another; after a weak little suggestion to stay professional on deck, he gave up early. Scotty glanced back to find the chief looking faintly exasperated by Thatcher's chattering on, and wryly reflected that maybe it wasn't just him who felt somehow too old for twenty-six. Maybe they all felt too old, another of those things to add to the list of why war was a miserable waste.

It wasn't that they had any major incidents, and there was only a handful of times when they could have really been in danger had things gone wrong. But living under the constant yellow alert and the frequent red alerts added a sort of tension into the atmosphere, on top of the marathon schedule. Getting more than four hours of sleep at a time was next to impossible. Because of the under-staffing, or the diversions, or the calls for all hands on deck, none of them got much in the way of real rest.  And days off were almost unheard of unless they were offloading or reloading on a large scale.

Scotty had to finally surmise that it had to be a bit like being a blue-water sailor, minus the brutal living conditions and scurvy. Survival was entirely dependent on the ship's survival; without the ship surviving, they were all dead.

So, no matter how tired they were, there could simply be no other option but to work anyway.

This incident was over fast by comparison; they were out of the area that was considered within battle-range. Battles in space could and sometimes did cover lightyears; the only way to avoid them was to give them as wide a berth as possible and push the engines.

"All right, we can stand down," Chalmers said, looking at the time on his watch. "Thatcher?"

"Sir?" the young man asked, looking eager.

Chalmers grinned. "Go get Scotty and I some coffee."

"Does that mean I can go back to bed?" Perez asked, while a slightly crestfallen Thatcher slumped off to go and do as he was told; Perez wasn't due on shift again until midnight, though given that it was only about 0900, he'd be back in the engine room any number of times before then, for whatever reason.

"Yeah, get some sleep." Chalmers smirked a bit. "While you still can."

Perez needed no further encouragement; he shot a wide, mocking grin at Scotty, then crabbed out the door before anyone could go changing their minds.

Scotty already knew that Chalmers sending for coffee was a sure bet that the chief needed him around to do something and wrote off the notion that he'd get to hit his own bunk for a few more hours. He didn't even bother asking, just finally took the chance to rub his eyes and then give the chief a grin. "So, what's first on the list today?"

His quarters were dark when he made it back to them, late into the afternoon. He'd dashed out leaving the lights on, but they'd turned themselves off automatically after a time; he palmed them back on, then leaned on his desk with both hands after the door closed, feeling just about every tired, aching muscle he had.

Chalmers, in a fit of worried inspiration, had wanted to double-check all of the safeties and connections on the impulse drive controls. That had been exhausting, dirty work; some of those panels hadn't likely been opened since the last time the Sun was fully refit, twenty years before.

The news was somewhat worrisome. While most of the connections were all right on first inspection, on a more thorough look they weren't capable of handling the kind of energy transfers they had been able to when they were new. Not even by half. It wasn't a critical thing now, given the amount of redundancy built into the system, but if they ever did get caught in a battle and needed to maneuver quickly while pushing the engines, it was likely that the safeties would blow, leaving them adrift.

Scotty had managed to boost the efficiency a little higher; replaced what connectors he could, given the very limited number they had as backups, created a few more new from materials on hand, and had cleaned the whole system out the good old-fashioned way -- by hand. It was all he could do without more time, tools and materials, and none of those things would be available until they made it back to Earth.

He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, finally relaxing a little bit. It wasn't that it was a stressful day, so much. Just a long day, to go with many long days on this run, especially since the war was heating up and more sectors were destabilizing. And those long days added up to long months.

And now a long year.

His last furlough on Earth had been a painfully short few weeks after forty-five weeks away, and he’d just about slept through the entire first three days, only really managing to navigate around the Corrigan family home half-awake, prone to falling asleep on whatever surface he happened to be sitting on, leaning on or otherwise. He didn't even make it out the front door until the fourth day and even then he’d felt kind of groggy.

This next furlough was shaping up to be more of the same, but at least he knew that no one in that family would blame him if he crashed as hard as he felt like he might.

After a moment where he strongly considered just crawling into bed and to hell with a shower, he grabbed some clean clothes and went to go and take one. He still nearly fell asleep upright; sonic showers weren't even close to as good as the real thing, but any port in a storm. It was something he’d pondered before: There was no denying, especially for an engineer, that the sonic shower was more effective and efficient. But one of his professors in the Academy had also quoted a study; ninety-four percent of all human households on Earth had water showers installed, not sonics, despite the effectiveness and efficiency.

He could only conclude, half-asleep, that it was the therapeutic value. The feeling of hot water, soothing tension and weariness, and the warm steam, and even that sudden chill on getting out of the shower before you dry off. No sonics could replace that; it was tangible and concrete and immediate and real.

One of the first things he was going to do when he got home was take a hot shower, a proper shower.

More than half asleep by the time he got back to his quarters, Scotty only barely registered that he had a message on his monitor, blinking for attention. He was expecting Corry to call soon; it had been a week or so, and Cor was having a time of it himself. Rachel was apparently trying to make a clean break from the rest of her family. And on top of that Abby had, in a manner that had left Corry reeling, broken off their relationship; not in a way that was unkind or anything, or maybe even permanently, but because she had told Cor she needed to deal with a few things.

Corry had been dazed by it. Scotty felt for him, too; it wasn't hard to see just how in love Cor was with the woman. But it had been a rocky relationship, even visible from a distance -- her constantly drawing back, Corry constantly trying to figure out what he was doing wrong.

Frankly, Scotty wasn't sure what to make of any of it. He was only sure that he'd do whatever he could to keep Cor afloat, in this or in anything.

Feeling that now-long-familiar stab of homesickness, he sat down and scrubbed at his eyes, then pulled up his inbox.

It only took him a second, even as tired as he was, to realize that it wasn't Corry writing to him this time. There were two messages, and feeling more alert by the second, he sat still for a long moment, trying to shake off the extremely uneasy feeling he had growing in his gut as he looked at the senders.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could already hear that protest to the universe that he knew from experience would never be answered.

"No."

After a very long moment where he just breathed, nearly having to remind himself to, eyes closed and jaw knotted, he finally steeled himself as well as he could and opened the first one.

From: McKenna & Co.
Aberdeen, Scotland, Earth

Mister Scott:

We would like to take this time after the notification of the death of your mother to offer our own condolences...

It was two hours after that when the Captain showed up to handle said notification.

But in the end, Scotty didn't really hear it anyway.