Chapter Text
Part V: Across the Line
Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.
-T.S. Eliot; East Coker
Chapter 1:
Sunday, June 11th, 2243
The Lady Grey
On the North Atlantic
He didn’t get his sense of time back all at once; instead, consciousness was a series of moments and impressions, strung along by the sound of voices, and he might have been more worried about it, except Cor’s voice was the thread tying them all together, at least at first.
He didn’t have anything left in him to open his eyes, anyway, so he wasn’t sure how long it was. Only that it was long. He knew, vaguely, that he was being moved around and that things were happening around him, but finding even enough strength to acknowledge it was out of his reach.
He didn’t have anything left; he’d given it all.
Or-- almost all.
He was breathing yet; that, though, had been a gift.
He wasn’t cold, until he was again. Turned out a person couldn’t sleep and shiver at the same time, so there was some undefinable purgatory where he was too beat to be properly awake, but too cold to escape it. Breathing overwarm air didn’t stop the shaking, neither did whatever heated thing he was wrapped up in; he didn’t know how long that went on, either, but it was long enough that it felt like forever.
Then, finally, at some point there was no marking, he was gone again into a sleep so heavy that he didn’t even dream.
Scotty was a little more put together the next time he managed to find his way back to the world; enough to feel the ride of the Lady Grey, enough to know from that alone that she was safe. The rocking of the waves was less than it had been during the storm. He was sore straight through, like every muscle had been overworked. Felt warm enough, but it also felt tenuous, as if anything could take it away again.
Time was fragile.
Something was tickling his face.
He furrowed his eyebrows, then he managed to fight his eyes open for the first time since he’d been in the ocean and saw nothing but blond hair. It was more than he necessarily had in him to pick his head up, neck stiff and protesting, but he did; more yet, to process Cor’s relative position to his own.
Somehow, Cor managed to sleep in a chair with his arms tucked around himself and remain stationary despite the rocking schooner; he had his head on the bunk next to where Scotty’s had been.
So, this is what it feels like, Scotty thought, but he wasn’t sure what this was or what exactly he was feeling. Only that it was important.
Unable to keep his nails into consciousness, he put his head back down, pressed his brow to Corry’s crown regardless of the tickle, and fell back to sleep again, if a bit easier.
Cor was gone when he woke up the time after, what felt like a fair piece of time after; he thought he was maybe delirious when he found himself looking at Sean Kelley, sitting with the chair back at the table.
“They’re pack animals, you know. Family animals,” Sean said, hitching Corry’s blue blanket up tighter around his shoulders, after a moment where they just stared at one another. “Wolves, I mean. I grew up in Montana; at dusk, you could hear them singing.”
It wasn’t a non sequitur, exactly. It was more than Scotty knew how to process. He took a deep breath -- aware again of what that felt like -- and let it out; felt how much it weighed to do that, too. “‘M nae sure ye’re ‘ere,” he said, mouth not wanting to work right; still, he felt it was necessary to let Sean know that he might not actually be real.
Sean didn’t seem to care whether he was real or not. “World War III was the best thing for them,” he said. “Even though Colonel Green’s army devastated Bozeman. And Livingston. Even with the radiation. They didn’t have to survive so many of us anymore.” He closed his eyes; in the soft light of the cabin, his face was shining with tears. “We go and pick up a tray from a cafeteria, but they have to fight every day to eat. Or for space to live. For everything.” There was a beat, then he opened his eyes and said, “I jumped.”
Scotty still wasn’t sure he wasn’t dreaming -- or hallucinating -- Sean sitting there. But he said, “Me too.” Solidarity for a feeling, he thought.
“I know.” Sean freed his arm from the blanket and scrubbed his forearm across his face, voice tight. “It’s terrifying, isn’t it? I don’t know how to even-- say how horrible it was. How lonely. You know?”
Scotty thought about the black, growling mountains of water. “Aye,” he said, closing his eyes again; if Sean was the product of delirium, it probably didn’t matter so much anyway.
Sean was quiet for a moment, then said, “No one jumped after me.”
It didn’t sound like a lament, so much; more like a man putting some kind of realization together.
“I woulda.” Scotty didn’t need to think about it; whatever bad blood had existed between them before just didn’t seem important now. But it wouldn’t have ever, he knew. He would have jumped after Sean, or anyone else; it would have never occurred to him not to.
This was, though, the first time that he realized that. He didn't know what that changed, if anything.
Sean made a sound like a laugh, if a laugh could be that fractured. “I know you would have. I would have jumped for you, too. I guess I kinda did, in a way. I guess we both kinda did. But that’s not what I meant.”
There was no understanding that right now; there would have to be a time later for it. Scotty hummed back something of an acknowledgment, even as the rocking of the Lady Grey and the tenuous sensation of being warm and too heavy to move was pulling him away again.
Right at the edge of gone, he heard Sean say, “Now I know why they call you Wolf.”
It was the next morning altogether before Scotty would have considered it fair to classify himself as fully coherent. Mostly because he woke up very aware of every bit of abuse he’d put himself through and was desperately craving a cup of coffee.
It also turned out that Sean Kelley was not a hallucination; he found that out because Sean was still there when he woke up properly, still feeling a bit shaky, but otherwise clear-headed and capable of fighting off gravity in order to get up.
Sean apologized for borrowing his clothes, a rather surreal greeting; Scotty didn’t actually care, because he was in someone else’s Academy sweats, someone who was a size up from him, and he hadn’t the first memory of when or how that happened. But he did shoo Sean out so he could get dressed in something he could wear out on deck.
When he got up there, feeling as if it had been a lot longer than it had since the last time he’d seen daylight, he was a little surprised that they were moving forward; down below, he hadn’t quite put it together. But the sails were set and the Lady Grey was bowing along, though not very swiftly.
The ocean that had nearly ended them all before was oddly gentle now, nothing but rolling swells.
Even with his storm coat on -- he’d left that behind on the gun deck before he’d jumped, and was grateful that someone must have returned it to his cabin -- being outside had him shivering here or there whenever the wind hit him wrong. But he managed to dodge the inevitable questions from everyone who laid eyes on him by asking where Cor was.
Apparently, no one wanted to get in the way of whatever discussion they were expecting to happen there.
As he looked at his best friend, standing there up on the foredeck, Scotty could understand that sentiment. But he took a deep breath and headed forward nonetheless.
He still didn’t know what to say when he got there. Cor glanced over, and it was clear enough from his face and the shadows under and in his eyes that the whole thing had taken a hell of a toll on him. Then Corry looked out forward again; he gave a half-shake of his head, seemingly entirely to himself.
It was quite awhile before he said anything; when he did, though, his voice was uneven and filled with bewildered hurt, “I could have killed you.” He knotted his jaw, then, and narrowed his eyes at the sea before adding, “I gave you an order that could have killed you.”
Scotty wasn’t sure what he could say to that; of all the things he’d been expecting Corry to say, that hadn’t even been a possibility. But he thought carefully about his answer before saying, “I followed it knowin’ it could. And I woulda gone even if ye hadn’t given it.”
It was the truth. And, he thought, it should have been some reassurance; it wasn’t fair for Cor to carry that on his shoulders, anyway. There needed to be a command decision at the time, someone needed to do the work; anything less, and they might have all died there.
Corry shook his head, eyes scanning the horizon; then he asked, “How would I have lived with that?”
And any answers that Scotty thought he tentatively had dissolved, just that fast.
He opened his mouth to try to offer something-- but there was nothing there. Because it wasn't a question about command decisions or duty or what work needed done; it wasn't a question of necessity. At least, it wasn’t any straightforward one.
It wasn’t the kind of question that could be papered over with platitudes or philosophy or self-sacrifice, either; it couldn’t be answered because there was no answer. He hung on the end of the question and tried to imagine what he’d be feeling, if their positions were reversed; if he’d been the one giving the order.
If he’d been the one who’d found that rope and realized.
The invisible hand that grabbed his heart was nothing but ice, cold and sharp enough that it caught his breath short.
"I'm sorry," he said, because it was all he could say. Not for diving, he didn’t actually regret that, but--
But Scotty had felt it, before he dove, that other world that he wasn't a part of, looking through to the one that he still was, then. That other world, the one where you no longer had certainties. Where you only had questions that couldn’t ever be answered.
And then, he had made a choice and became a part of it.
Except, he didn't go alone. When he'd crossed that invisible line, his best friend had stepped across it with him. Had given up a place in the world they both knew and understood, and stepped into something else.
And neither of them could ever go back again.
"I'm sorry," he said again, and it came from his soul.
There was no deference in the reply. Corry just looked over, resolute.
"I'm not."
"I didn't know what was going on until it was too late," Sean said, looking far more put together, though just like the rest of them, he likewise looked like he was still exhausted. "I can't really tell you much about the system they've got set up, but I know that it jams your frequencies, then sets up a kind of 'ghost' of your signals so that anyone monitoring thinks you're safe and somewhere else."
It was early afternoon before anyone aboard the Lady Grey felt capable of gathering to discuss strategy; by then, it had been a day and a half since the storm had ended, and even then, it seemed no one was in particularly good shape. But it couldn’t really be put off any further, so Corry quietly passed word around for all of the people in charge to meet in his cabin.
It was tight with all of them stuffed in there, and there’d probably never been a more unlikely group gathered, but it at least allowed them to properly exchange information face to face without having to bring two whole crews in on it.
"Why the Wildstorm, though? I mean, hell, you've got a ship going down and you don't stop?" Lewis sounded more than a little pissed off about it, leaning on the wall with his arms crossed.
"I--" Sean sighed, rubbing at his forehead, hunched a little over his own knees from where he was sitting on Cor’s bunk. "I don't honestly think they believed it. I mean, visibility was awful. The only reason I even saw you guys myself was because you had your emergency lights on, and I think they thought it was all a ploy so that they'd stop and you could fire on 'em."
"Which means they knew about the guns." Corry shook his head, holding his coffee mug close to his chest.
"Well, yeah," Sean said, smiling for the first time since he'd come aboard, though it wasn't in humor. "Did you genuinely think no one would catch wind of that? Everyone knew about it."
Maya, the Wildstorm’s captain, piped up there dryly, “Can confirm. Some teams were running betting pools about it.”
"We wanted to think we got away with it," Scotty piped up, getting a chuckle from the majority of the group gathered there, though he didn't feel his own deadpan humor right then. "The power o' wishful thinking."
"Wait. If they didn't know what was going on with the Wildstorm, why did they jam her transponder too?" Lewis asked, after a few moments where they were all chewing it over.
Sean shook his head, plainly exasperated. "I have no idea. I really didn't know anything. We picked up you guys trying to call the Wildstorm, and we picked up them calling for help, and I tried to get everyone to heave to and help out. But they refused, and Keith just said to keep going. And everyone did."
It was a small comfort that Keith O'Sullivan would probably be facing a whole lot worse at the end of this than the Lady Grey's commanders, but Scotty would take it. "So, what we're sayin' is that he committed high seas mutiny, Harrison committed high seas treason, and we're about to go and commit high seas piracy. And that's all we really know."
"Succinctly," Corry replied, with a wan smile.
“Which makes us, by far, the most cut-throat senior class of engineering cadets ever to darken the Academy’s doorstep,” Lewis said, bobbing his head to the side and sounding just a wee bit proud of that fact.
Maya snorted, shaking her head. “Speak for yourselves.”
"So, what do we do now?" Albright asked, having been staying in the background and watching the discussion in rapt fascination.
Scotty shrugged. "We go on." He couldn’t really see any other alternative; they were still being jammed, anyway, so unless they figured out how to crack through that, they were still on their own out there.
Though, he did have to agree with Lewis: They really were a mercenary lot.
"The Queen Mary's gonna round the corner, if she's running full and by, probably tomorrow morning. Given our hull damage, though, we can't really risk running all out. She'll hold, but she won't take too severe a beating." Corry handed his coffee cup off to Scotty, standing and pacing around, even though he only had about two strides to do it with. "I guess we could try modifying some tricorders to see if we can't break through her jamming and call Starfleet about what happened. I can't imagine that the Wildstorm's crew wants anything more to do with the water, let alone high seas warfare."
“You’ve got that right,” Maya said, shaking her head again. “Look, personally I’m not going to stop any of you from doing your-- I don’t know, white whale chasing, but yes, please, leave my crew out of it.”
"Trying to get through to Starfleet would be the smart thing to do," Lewis said, sighing. "We'll probably still get into some trouble for having cannons onboard, but if we don't use 'em--"
"That's a shame," Albright muttered, though he didn't sound like he was too against the idea of giving up the fight.
Scotty listened to them, absently taking a sip of the coffee he was holding before making a face at it. Then he shoved it back at Corry as he paced by, though he didn't bother saying anything about it. "All in favor o' not fighting?"
Sean, not surprisingly, put his hand up; Maya’s was up a split second later. And after a moment or two, Lewis and Albright followed suit, though clearly a lot more reluctantly.
Cor took his coffee cup back and stopped pacing, raising an eyebrow at Scotty. But he kept his hand down.
"Good." Scotty stood up, tossing a dry half-smile to the other four. "That way, when we see this through, ye've all done the right and proper thing by tellin' us it was a bad idea."
And with that, he walked out.
With two of the Wildstorm's boats, plus the regulation number of their own, Scotty figured that taking one and doing a little work on it couldn't hurt. It wasn't like he was making it unusable; if they really needed to abandon ship, it'd still function as a lifeboat. But it would also serve as something else, in the meantime.
Something a little more unorthodox.
The Lady Grey had a small compliment of extra booms and gaffs. The idea being that if anything happened to one of them, she could be repaired at sea. She also had a full suit of extra sails, and any number of extra coils of line.
Scotty had commandeered a good portion of the forward deck, having chased off pretty much anyone who would get in his way, and was in the process of building a miniature Lady Grey. If there was one thing that he had figured out about sailing, it was that getting an idea of scale on the ocean wasn't an easy thing; there were any number of ways to fall for a trick of the eyes. And a trick was exactly what he was engineering.
"C'mon. If I'm gonna be called on to do any fancy sailing, I've gotta know what the plan is."
Corry had been watching and occasionally helping with this little endeavor. He'd already guessed that it was a decoy, but he hadn't managed to guess what purpose the decoy was going to serve.
"I need to know where she'll be, and when," Scotty replied, stepping in the little main mast he'd created out of one of the Lady Grey's spare gaffs.
"I don't know if I can give you exact coordinates," Cor said, as he helped from the other side of the boat, starting to hook up the standing rigging to the mast. "I can take a bunch of really good guesses, but that's about it."
"It'll have to be good enough, then."
"Then what?"
Scotty focused on the task at hand for a minute or two, then glanced up. "We're gonna lay in wait. Douse our lanterns, send out our decoy here, and we're gonna wait until she's close enough to breathe on, preferably in the dark."
Both of Corry's eyebrows went up at that. "Night attack?"
"Boardin' attack. I'm not about to go firin' on her while she's manned. But if she's lookin' at a decoy--"
"Then she won't be looking at us. And at night, without our lanterns?"
Scotty narrowed his eyes, looking off at the sea past Corry and the Lady Grey's bulwark. "We'll be the Ghost."