When trouble alights on a minor rescue mission, the crew is forced on a clumsy romp across the galaxy with some interesting new passengers, followed by a supremely heinous warship bent on their disappearance. Scotty-centric.
A/N: I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a trekkie. Can you really access magnetic constrictors by yanking them out of the inside chamber? Can you see the ramscoops from the VIP bridge? Can a planet really be Class H with a Class M atmosphere? Who knows?! Not me! If you are a trekkie and want to point out my errors, go ahead, I like input.
Don't own anything from the Star Trek universe.
Rated for future possibilities. This might get bloody, but it probably won't get very steamy.
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A Savage Place
Ch. 1
Scotty winced, and involuntarily drew his hand from the insides of a jungle of wires and circuits. He plunged it straight back in, knowing full well that he was going to get shocked again. The magnetic constrictor seemed to be bent on ruining Scotty's good reputation, as he'd been puttering with it for the past three hours and still hadn't finished. This was okay; he'd told Kirk it would take five hours, at most.
"Alright, ye big bempot, I'm done haverin' aroond with ye," he muttered affectionately, and yanked the entire upper board off the inside chamber. "Keenser, would ya get me one 'o those giant body bolts an' a grip lock, please?" His assistant rummaged for a moment before handing over the requested equipment with, Scotty noticed, not a small amount of cynicism etched on his face. Keenser's face was not an easy thing to read, but spending six months alone with the little creature had forced Scotty to become proficient in face-reading.
"What?" he grumped. Keenser feigned innocence, shrugging. "Ye think I'm goin' overboard?" he asked, only half-serious. Keenser rolled his eyes. "Right then, ya wee dunt, keep yer sub-chief opinions to yerself. Get me that welder torch, please."
Keenser snorted. It was an amused snort, though, not a mocking snort. Scotty had also learned to trust the snorts of his assistant. Keenser was smart. It had taken him a while to figure that out, but the wrinkly alien hadn't made it easy - always climbing about on the infrastructure and snorting and staring.
The welder torch appeared by his side, and he pulled on his helmet and one glove.
"Right. If this doesn't do it, I'm loosin' me touch..." He positioned the torch and switched it on. Flying sparks immediately lit up the inside chamber of the nacelle they were in, something that was duly noted by an occupant of the VIP lounge, who watched through the window…
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"Heavens, what's he doing in there, Jim?"
"Hell if I know." Jim Kirk was concentrating on a project of his own, and wasn't about to be distracted. He held his breath and carefully maneuvered the next card into place. Backing away, he allowed himself to breathe, proudly admiring his creation. His friend sighed.
"Jim, I think you're obsessed. In my opinion-"
"Your medical opinion?"
"Yes, in my medical opinion, I'd say you've got a problem. Just accept the fact that an engineer's gonna be better at making card castles than you are, alright? That's what Scotty does, he tinkers with stuff like that. He knows how to manipulate the laws of physics. You can spend all the time you want trying to make a better castle but I assure you, you'd be better off using your time elsewhere." Bones gave the card castle on the table a once-over. "I'd have to say, though, that's your best yet."
"Of course it is. I used a deck and a half. Look, it's got turrets. I've never seen Scotty use turrets."
"Yeah… he uses keeps and baileys and galleries instead. Your turrets sure put them to shame."
"I don't need your sarcasm," Kirk stated, and took up another card. "You're squashing my muse. What's a bailey?"
"Perhaps you should use your spare time reading up on architectural terms before you go around challenging the chief engineer to card castle competitions."
"Your constant stream of stinging remarks is going to blow my castle down. Shhh." Kirk may not know what a bailey was, (or, admittedly, a gallery), but he was bent on using up the second half of the second deck of cards. Ideally, he'd be able to use a third deck, but his castles usually collapsed before he got to that point. But today, it might happen. Today he was taking his time. He had two more hours before Scotty would be done fussing with the warp core, or whatever he was doing, and by that point he hoped to have this castle done.
Kirk's concentration was broken by the sound of the monitor screen flashing to life, Uhura's voice coming out of the speaker.
"Captain, I'm picking up a distress signal from the rocky planetoid we've had to starboard. It's weak but it appears to be fresh." Kirk sighed, abandoning his project.
"I'm coming to the bridge," he said, and started over, McCoy in tow.
"That's not a federation planet, is it?" asked the doctor.
"No, it's not even named yet. We don't know what class it is. Chekov," he said into his radio, "how far are we from the nearest starbase?"
"Eleven-point-seven-zero-eight lightyears, Keptin," came the ensign's voice. Kirk thanked him, and momentarily had burst into the bridge and taken up position in The Chair. Uhura brought up visuals of the planet, the sound of the signal ticking away from her computer.
"That is one god-forsaken little piece of rock," murmured Kirk. The planetoid was barely symmetrical, colored a drab grey-brown and sporting a fair amount of pockmarks. "Huh. That's weird. Spock?"
"It appears to be a Class H planet, habitable, with a Class M atmosphere of slightly high levels of oxygen," replied the Vulcan.
"Good. Any signs of life picked up on that thing?"
"Yes. There are three crude structures gathered near a small ship that appears to be Orion in origin."
"Orion?" groaned Kirk and Uhura. "Man, that's awkward. Uhura, the signal's not Orion, is it?"
"No, it's unidentified."
"Well, crew, looks like our green-skinned friends are getting into some shenanigans. Let's go bust up the party." Sulu swiveled in his chair, and gave Kirk a confused look, much like Chekov was.
"Wait, what's going on?"
"Orions," started Kirk, "as you know, are non-Federation, highly dubious green-skinned beings. They're the Galaxy's black-market, not that official records would tell you so. On record, they're neutral; they don't want to join the Federation and have to act all ethically, but they don't want to be on our bad side, because they know we'd kick their asses. They like to conduct decidedly fishy business out in non-Federation-explored areas. They're big into the slave trade; I'm guessing that's what we've run into. A little temporary base for their transactions. We're gonna go down there and bust things up."
Spock raised an eyebrow, but kept his mouth shut. He was quickly learning to translate the Captain's slang.
"Which brings us," Kirk continued, "to the landing party. Bones, you're coming. Spock, you're immune to female Orion pheremones, you're in too. So are you, Uhura, and we might need your language skills, we don't know who they're keeping down there. And I have, ah, experience with female Orions. Scotty!" he yelled into his radio, before Bones could make a snide remark. Unfortunately Scotty didn't reply.
"Experience, Jim?" asked the doctor. Uhura's smile was a bit twisted as she swiveled in her chair to face McCoy.
"Yes, my roommate back at the Acadamy was Orion. Remember Gaila?" McCoy rolled his eyes, an I knew it plastered across his face, and Spock's eyebrow advanced even further up his forehead.
"Mister Scott!" Kirk tried again, with determination.
"Yes, Captain?"
"How's your, uh, project going?"
"Just finished, Captain. Sorry I didn't reply ta your first call, me hands were full of ship guts. Constrictor's good as new, we can warp 8 without it rattlin' aroond."
"Great. Good job. Good timing. We just got a distress signal from a rocky planetoid we're approaching. We figure there's an Orion slave business base down there. Bones, Uhura, Spock and myself are going down there. You're the commanding officer. We'll be in transporter room 1 in fifteen."
"Right, Captain."
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Scotty was in the transporter room in eight minutes, having joyfully abandoned the mess that the nacelle had accumulated during its repair. He proceeded to check the connections, drives, nuts, bolts, vents, and light fixtures until the landing party arrived. Transporting people was something he usually looked forward to, mostly because it actually involved human contact, which was something that his job didn't call for all that much. Unfortunately, having acquired the position of chief engineer meant that he was now spending the majority of his work doing all the delicate stuff deep inside the ship, and the task of transporting people had been passed on to one of his personnel.
Fortunately, McCoy was just paranoid enough about transporters that whenever he had to beam somewhere, he would put up a fuss if anyone but Scotty was at the controls.
"Alright, Scotty. Chekov says we're good to go. See if you can beam us down to just behind that big bouldery thing," Kirk said, pointing at the zoomed-in chart on Scotty's screen. "We could be seconds, could be hours."
"Right, Captain."
"Okay, folks, let's go." The four of them stepped onto the platform, and, McCoy looking a wee bit antsy, stood at the ready.
"Good luck," Scotty called, and activated the pads. Kirk gave a limp salute before disappearing in a flamboyant swirl of blue, along with the other three. A second later, they established radio contact.
"Chekov, ye got them on screen?" Scotty asked the intership radio.
"Aye, sir."
Well, that had gone uneventfully, as usual. Scotty took the opportunity to pull out some engineering magazines. He'd fallen behind on reading them since the beginning of this particular mission. You'd think sailing over to the Hromi Cluster would be about as boring as watching paint peel, but he'd managed to be kept quite busy. While nothing of interest had happened outside of the ship, the Enterprise seemed to have taken on the hobby of playing practical jokes on her chief engineer.
In the back of his mind, he worried a bit about his fellow officers down on the surface of the planet. The Orions down there would probably bitterly 'agree' to break up their operation after Kirk had told them off, and the officers would come back aboard, perhaps with a few newly-freed people in tow, depending on what was really going on down there. Busting up Orion operations was somewhat of a ho-hum occurrence for some of the older crews out there. Sulu and Chekov, up on the bridge, were giving him updates on what the monitors were telling them, and nothing had gone astray as of yet.
But still – anything could happen in space, however much he hated to admit it.
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A/N… which will, sadly, be verified in the next chapter.