Chapter 2:

Tuesday, April 18th, 2243
H&W Shipyards, Berth #22
Team C Headquarters
Belfast, Ireland, Earth

Even streaked in white and black, charred amidships, she was still beautiful. There was an almost ethereal quality to the Lady Grey, lit in the dimmed lights of the berth, not even half completed. It could have been simply the way the lights reflected off of the fire-suppressant grimed on her frame, or maybe it was the way that the black soot complimented the white, but to Scott, it was because she just had that quality. She was like one of those beautiful women who seemed to take no effort on being that way, but happened to be lit by some sort of internal light.

Even like that, she made him catch his breath.

Stepping into the slip, he palmed the switch to bring the lights up and bring into sharp relief her lines. This was the first time he had managed to get away from Security, the campus doctor and the Harland and Wolff managers; the first chance he had to go back to his ship and see her.

Corry stepped in a moment later, looking around and frowning to himself over the mess. There was white powder everywhere, blanketing the tools and mixing with the grays and blacks of ash, but it was a far sight better than boiling smoke. "It'll take forever to-"

"Shhhh..." Some moments were better left to silence, and this was one of them. In another twenty minutes the rest of the team would be there and they would have to go back to work. It probably was going to take a long time to get everything right again, not only on the schooner but in the slip itself... just not in this moment.

For now, Scott didn't want to say anything or hear anything, he just wanted to look at her. He had been so certain that she was gone, unrepairable and destined for dust - to know that she wasn't was kind of indescribable.

Seized on inspiration, he half-dragged Corry with him towards the front of the ship. Corrigan had never seen her from her bow, dead on, and before anyone else was there to break the silence, the Scott was determined to show him.

Corry allowed himself to be pulled along, though he was still eyeing the damage from the fire. Mentally he made notes, surprised in a lot of ways how all of the research he had helped with in the beginning of the project came back now, when he needed it. Of course, he had researched shipbuilding like he had medicine, with the same sort of intensity but less obsession, and he shouldn't have been too shocked to know it would all come back.

When they finally stopped, he was still turning the repair ideas over in his mind right up until he happened to glance up.

All thought left him, leaving behind nothing but awe. Logically, his mind might have told him that she was far from finished, but there wasn't a whole Hell of a lot of logic in the sheer power she almost radiated. What was there was just amazement... God, she looked like she could just slide out of the berth and into the water. In his mind, he could picture the jibs and staysails, the bowsprit, the masts far above that.

"Jesus..." was all Corry could really say. It was the only thing that expressed it.

Scotty nodded with no small amount of empathy, though not looking away from the schooner. Finally feeling that it was all right to speak again, he mused, "I wonder if all shipwrights felt like this."

"I don't know," Corry answered, softly, afraid to raise his voice. "It's a shame if they didn't."

"Aye... it is." Taking a few careful steps forward, Scott traced a careful hand down the wood, not particularly caring about the stain that came with it. "Poor lass. I'm itchin' to find who did this."

"Think we'll be able to finish her in a month and a half?"

Scotty turned and gave his roommate a wry grin. "D'ye think we have a choice? 'Course we're gonna finish her in a month and a half... even if I have t' use my entire savings hirin' people to help."

A deeper voice interrupted the two tenors, "It may come to that."

Corry and Scotty exchanged a glance and stepped out from in front of the ship. Barrett stood there, hands behind his back, giving no indication how long he had been listening. Smiling somewhat, he continued, "I certainly hope not, but if it does, I won't stop you from hiring anyone you need."

"Thank you, sir," Scott replied, neatly, unfazed by the new arrival. "Any word from Security on the saboteurs?"

"None." The professor shook his head, grimly. "The tapes from the external cameras are missing, there aren't any prints to be taken... I don't believe they have a clue."

"I have a few," Corry said, with a slight smirk. He had been working on it in his head almost as much as he had been working on the repair. "I tried to tell Security, but I don't think they believed me."

"O'Sullivan and his lot." Raising an eyebrow, Scott looked over at his roomie. "Right?"

"On the money."

Barrett frowned, looking around for a moment before eyeing the two cadets again. "You do realize that it won't be acceptable if you decided to take justice into your own hands."

"Us, sir?" Scotty replied, innocently. "Oh, no sir. We wouldn't do that."

"Not in a million years," Corry added, just as innocently and turning up the charm to be on the safe side. "We have far too much work to do to spend time plotting vengeance."

The commander's eyebrow went up, automatically. "Gentlemen, do yourselves a favor and don't even think about it. I'll mention it to Security myself, and perhaps that will prompt them to look further into it, but if you know what's good for you, you'll heed my advice. Theories do not make evidence, and you may find yourself in more trouble than it's worth." Taking a deep breath, he finished, "Now you'd best get to work... with the restrictions, you've got to make the most of your time."

When the rest of the team arrived, they did indeed get right to work... they only had from six-thirty in the morning to seven at night now, with the hour restriction that the shipyards had placed on the entire class's schedule. It was half amazing they hadn't kicked Starfleet out of the shipyards altogether.

Albright, in all of his quick thinking, had rigged up a pump and the Lady Grey got her first taste of salt water from Belfast Lough. Three cadets manned the hose they used to spray off the mess that had caked on her, while Jansson supervised a team of five working on recreating the damaged ribs with what little wood they had stashed in the mold loft. The rest were set to work carefully tearing out the damaged ribs and crossbeams under Lewis's watchful eyes.

Scott and Corrigan spent most of their time on the comm link... the former because he was still under doctor's orders not to do anything strenuous, and the latter for the sake of haggling the best price for the wood they had to reorder.

"What do you mean, fifty credits a board?" Corry asked, doing the best he could not to pace in front of the comm box in the mold loft too much. "We're ordering it in bulk, here!"

"Fifty is bulk!" the voice on the other end said. "Since y'all happen to be a bunch of students, though, I might be willin' to take it to forty-five."

"And if I call Southwest Oak Express, they can give it to me for twenty." Exchanging a conspiring grin with Scott, the older cadet put on his best lawyer voice, "I might have to wait two more days for my lumber, but it's a more fair price."

"Nobody sells oak for twenty a board," the other man shot back, though he didn't exactly sound too confident in himself.

"They do if they have their own nursery." Faking a yawn, Corrigan leaned on the wall beside the box. "I'm in a hurry, though, so you give it to me for twenty-three a board, and I'll take it."

"I'm not goin' lower than forty."

"And the best you'll get out of me is twenty-five."

"...thirty-eight."

"Twenty-five and the highest praise we can sing. Great word-of-mouth advertising there."

"How much did y'all say you were orderin'?"

Corry glanced over at Scott, who puzzled over it for a moment before grabbing the drawing board and writing down a number. Nodding, Corry tried to sound casual as he said, "We'll need an order of five thousand board feet, cut to..." pausing for the moment it took his roomie to write down the length, he continued, "twenty-five feet each. Just to start."

It was a pretty respectable order. "Twenty-five credits happens to be damn low for quality wood like ours."

"Maybe so, but since we're building a ship, we'd be more than willing to tell everyone who provided the wood for such a handsome craft."

"Twenty-eight."

Corry sighed heavily, then let it remain quiet for rather a long moment. Then, putting on a slightly defeated aire, he finally gave in. "All right, it's a deal. I'll have the credits sent to your accounts receivable in four hours, you'll have the coordinates for transport, and that wood had better be here by tomorrow morning." Thumbing the off button, he grinned. "How was that?"

"Less'n what we paid for our first stock," Scotty admitted, trying not to grin back. "We'll have to do all of our own cuttin' and trimmin', but with a little good luck..." He shrugged. "Who knows?"

"Eh, we'll be fine."

"Speakin' o' wood, though... who the Hell is Southwest Oak Express?"

"I dunno," Corry said, lightly, shrugging as he pulled out his notepad with the comm codes for the rest of the businesses they needed to contact. "Apparently, neither did he."

Scotty chuckled, shaking his head. "If ye happen to get everyone down, we might not be too far over budget."

Corry keyed in the next set of codes, sparing a glance at Scott to ask, "How much do we have left?"

"After this? Probably close to thirty-thousand. Professor Barrett's gettin' our account upped to make up for the sabotage, but it won't be by too much."

"Guess we'll just have to be frugal." Corrigan leaned back on the wall as the comm connected. "Iron Works Intergalactic? Yeah, I'd like to speak to your manager in charge of sales..."

So ended the first day of work on the schooner Lady Grey after her brush with fire. Scotty didn't want to leave... not this early, not so soon after he'd gotten there. What he really wanted to do was some actual work on her, but he wasn't quite back to normal himself yet. Not physically, and not quite emotionally either.

Better, but not there yet. Shaking his head, he tossed one last longing glance at the ship on her cradle, mentally telling himself that with all of the added precautions she would be all right without him. She would still be there in the morning, and if something did happen, he was bound to know.

Locking the door and only half-listening to the chatter of the rest of the crew walking away, he tried not to shiver at the memory and failed. The smoke was bad, and the heat, and so was most of the hazy aftermath, but it was remembering her desperate scream that sent chills down his spine. If he'd been too late, she might not be there. If he'd been too late...

The tap on his shoulder dragged him back to the present, and he blinked out of his daze, looking over at Corry. "Hm?"

"You okay?" Corry asked, not quite able to mask the worry in his voice.

Corry had gotten almost frightfully protective, and Scott wasn't sure what to make of it. It was kind of unnerving, to have someone watching over his state of well-being. He wasn't even sure of what to make of Corrigan himself yet, let alone that... that being worried about thing. "Aye. A bit tired, maybe."

"Be careful. Last thing you want is to end up on medical leave." Nodding, Corry put his hands in his pockets, starting down the wide road for the main gate.

"Yes, mother." Scott followed, clasping his hands behind his back as he walked. Usually he would be sarcastic, or at the very least snappy when he imitated his roommate, but right now, he could only manage a mix between distracted and tired. "Wonder where we can find ourselves a saboteur."

Corry shrugged, looking up at the sky. "I don't know. I think he's rooming in the Stranmills Road Dormitory."

"I don't think he was th' only one, though..." Frowning, Scott tried to piece together what little he could remember. Really, the whole damn night was a mess to him - parts were very clear and parts were almost nonexistent. "Someone yelled, I remember that, 'cause they were tryin' to take my head off with somethin' or another... not the same person, though."

"Recognize the voice?"

"Nu uh."

"Hrm." Corry pondered on it for a few steps. "What exactly do you remember, anyway?"

"After gettin' into it with ye?"

Wincing, Corrigan nodded. "Yeah."

"Walkin'. Ended up down here, and I remember thinkin' I'd just up an' sleep in the slip." Stopping, Scott closed his eyes and tried to call up as much detail as he could. It wasn't something he wanted to remember, let alone talk about, but maybe without so much distraction, he could piece it together again. "I keyed in the code on the main gate, an' got about halfway up the road here when..."

"When?" Corry prompted, having paused in his walk himself. He really wanted to hear this... wanted to know what had happened in something more than vague terms.

"I dinna know how t' explain it." Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Scott tried to put into words something he didn't really even understand. "It was... well, it was like somethin' was wrong. Felt wrong. Like it did when ye found out about yer Dad.

"An' I wondered what it was. What coulda caused it, 'cause it was jus' there suddenly. So I'm tryin' t' hear it, or smell it, or see it, an' then I caught a whiff o' the smoke."

Corrigan crossed his arms, listening. It wasn't often that his roommate actually let it be known what went through his head, just like it wasn't often anymore that his accent got away from him. Either or was a sign that he still wasn't back to an even keel again.

"She screamed." Scott was pretty sure Corry would think he was insane, but now that he'd started down this road, there wasn't any way to go back. Not opening his eyes, he continued, "She was screamin', the Lady Grey. I dinna remember much about the rest, jus' that bloody wail, up until somethin' hit me.

"I dinna see 'em, but I heard 'em, an' I was jus' tryin' t' breathe. Someone shouted, an' I jumped back... musta been when they sliced my head open, but I dinna remember that either. Got back up, an' I was gonna beat the Hell outta 'em, then she screamed again an' that was that. Up till after ye pulled me out's all sorta blank... somethin' about the panel, somethin' about the backup, an' then after we were back out, everythin' clears up till I blacked out."

"Screamed?" Corry asked, eyebrows up. If it were anyone else telling him all of this, he wouldn't believe them... but he believed Scotty. It was hard to imagine a ship screaming, but if anyone would hear it, that man would.

"Like... like a scream, but not..." Sighing heavily, Scott was plainly exasperated and upset with the whole thing. "Just there. It was all that was there."

Corry chewed on the thought for a minute, trying to imagine what it must have been like. But after a moment, he just said, "I can't imagine."

"Not entirely sure ye want to."

"Guess we'll have to make sure that nothing like this happens again before we can finish her." Corry grinned slightly, trying to take the edge off. "Not to mention, we have ourselves some badguys to walk the plank when she is done."

"A pair o' regular pirates, eh?" Scott had to smile at that mental image.

"Ayuh. Maybe I can be Blackbeard..."

"Ye'd have to do somethin' with that hair. Blackbeard wasn't blond."

"Just ruin my wicked ambitions," Corry said, though he was still smiling. "Well, Wolf, we can't all have really cool names like you."

"I earned that, fair an' square."

"I still think it shoulda been something closer to 'puppy' or 'cub', but if you insist."

Scott sighed heavily, and with annoyance so thick it couldn't be anything other than joking and said, "Ye're such a bastard."

Corry looked almost content as he replied to the old barb, "I know."