"Picard to Elle."

Elle sat up, turning off the candy-matching game and stretching over the sofa to tap the interface. "Elle here," she said. "Yes, captain?"

"We've received a communique from HQ," he said, an odd tone in his voice. "Our next mission."

Elle waited a moment. "Uh, and?" she asked.

"And I can't open the file without you present," Picard said. "If you could come to my ready room, please."

"Yes, sir." Elle put her shoes on and left her quarters, still putting her hair up into a ponytail. When she entered the ready room, Picard was standing by his fish tank, murmuring to the lionfish. "Sir?"

"Anything you'd like to tell me?" Picard said casually, offering her a cup of tea.

"Uhhh," Elle lifted her hands in a shrug. "It's too early for Borg, sooooo, I don't know."

"Hm." He sat down and opened the message, Elle peering over his shoulder.

Her jaw dropped. "They found the Jenolen!"

"The, what?"

"Scotty!" She threw her arms around Picard and hugged him tightly. "That's like two years ahead of schedule!"

He patted her on the arm, still scanning the message. "The USS Jenolen, distress signal... from seventy-five years ago?"

She beamed at him. "Yeah! Scotty and another officer are trapped on a Dyson sphere in the transporter buffer! In the show you don't find them till like two years from now but I figured we could do better, maybe save the other person trapped in there as well. And Star Fleet came through! This is awesome!"

"You're saying Montgomery Scott is still alive?" Picard asked.

"Yup." She scanned the rest of the message. "And we're gonna go rescue them."

"Now hold on," Picard said, "a Dyson sphere? The message said nothing about a Dyson sphere."

"Well in the episode you didn't register it until you were almost on top of it," Elle pointed out. "And then subsequently got sucked into it. I think this time around we'd better not go into the Dyson sphere."

"But a Dyson sphere is so highly improbable," Picard said, shaking his head.

"We can throw a whole load of probes into it," Elle suggested. "But we gotta get Scotty out first."

Picard met her gaze. "Captain Montgomery Scott," he said. "Is still alive."

"Are you surprised?" Elle asked, smiling.

"No."

She kissed his cheek. "Trust me, this is not the most impressive thing he's going to do."

"I bet," Picard said dryly, and stood up. "Come along, then. You get to debrief the others."

"Awesome."

-/\-

The news of their rescue mission was met with a mix of incredulity, gentle reminders that he may not have survived this whole time, and from Wesley, absolute hero-worship. "Engineer Scott," he enthused, clinging to Geordi's sleeve. "We're going to meet him."

"Yeah, yeah," Geordi said good-naturedly. "Never meet your heroes."

"Especially not Leah Brahms," Elle said dryly.

He whipped around to face her. "Wha-"

"Nothing, nothing, I said nothing," Elle said, batting innocent eyelashes. "But no seriously, Wes, you are going to love him. He's like, breaking the laws of physics personified."

"Awesome."

Geordi glanced between the two of them, despairing. "I'm gonna have to watch you like a hawk, aren't I?"

Riker slung an arm around Geordi's shoulders. "Don't pretend you're not gonna wanna hear all the stories first hand, Geordi, come on."

Geordi just made a face.

Elle laughed.

-/\-

The Enterprise coasted into the sector where the distress signal of the USS Jenolen originated. "We have entered a massive gravitational field, captain," Worf reported, frowning.

"The Dyson sphere you were talking about?" Picard asked, turning to look at Elle.

"Probably."

Data spoke up. "There are no stars or other stellar bodies listed on our navigational charts. However, sensors indicate the presence of an extremely strong gravitational source in this vicinity." He put up a dark grey sphere on the screen. "I am having difficulty scanning the object. It appears to be approximately two hundred million kilometres in diameter."

"That's nearly as large as the Earth's orbit around the sun," Riker breathed.

"Why didn't we detect this before now?" Picard asked. "Surely something this big..."

"The object's enormous mass is causing a great deal of gravimetric interference. That might have prevented our sensors from detecting it before we dropped out of warp."

"Fascinating," Picard murmured. "A real Dyson sphere."

"I have located the Jenolen, sir. It is impacted on the surface of the sphere. There are no life signs. However, there are several small power emanations, and life support is still functioning on minimal levels."

"There they are," Elle said, gleeful.

"Worf, with me," Riker ordered, standing up. He tapped his comm. "Bridge to sickbay, away team is a go."

"Acknowledged. My team will meet you at the transporter room," Dr. Crusher replied.

Riker nodded and he and Worf got in the turbolift.

Elle paced up and down the bridge as they waited for word. "I hope they get Franklin, too." She got to the end of the bridge, turned on her heel, and paced in the other direction.

Picard snagged her arm on the way past. "Why don't you take Worf's station and try to get the sensors to give us something more conclusive than static," he half-ordered.

She grinned sheepishly. "Yes, sir." She stood next to Worf's replacement, Lt. Henessey, and peered at the sensor readouts. They were not encouraging. Maybe if she tightened the beam, tried to pierce through an airlock, or a window? Were there windows in this Dyson sphere? That was a solid no. Eesh. No starlight? Rather depressing.

"Away team to Enterprise. We have Captain Scott and Lt. Franklin. Medical team beaming back." Riker sounded worried.

"Acknowledged," Picard said. "Keep us apprised."

"Aye, captain. Riker out."

Elle looked at Picard.

He gave her a slight smile. "Well? Get to sickbay."

"Yes sir!" She bolted for the lift, and power-walked to sickbay, dodging any crewmen who got in her way. She stopped outside of sickbay doors and took a deep breath. Scotty's been in a transporter buffer for seventy-five years, cool your jets Elle. He's going to be disoriented. Relax. You're the expert on both time travel and Scotty here. Focus. She took another deep breath, and entered sickbay.

Nurse Ogawa tilted her head toward the private wards. Elle gave her a grateful smile and headed on through. Dr. Crusher and two other nurses were standing around Scotty and another lieutenant, Franklin? who were unconscious on the bio-beds. Elle edged forward cautiously. "Are they gonna be okay?" she asked.

Dr. Crusher gave her a sympathetic smile. "They're going to be fine. Lt. Franklin's pattern degraded a bit over the years so he's going to need some nice new kidneys, but he's going to be okay. And Captain Scott is pretty much whole. They had whopping headaches and stomachaches, so we sedated them and are just giving them some nutrient drips while they sleep their migraines off. They'll be fine when they wake up."

Elle nodded slowly and stepped over to Scotty's bedside. He looked older, and it was jarring to see the old movie-style uniform. "Can I sit with him?"

"Of course." Dr. Crusher wrapped an arm around Elle's shoulders and gave her a kiss on the head. "You can keep an eye on them for me."

Elle dragged a comfy chair over from the corner and sat down to make a list of things Scotty would need to catch up on. And relatives. He didn't have any kids, but his nephew (the one who hadn't died in Wrath of Khan because there was no Wrath of Khan) had a whole clan full of descendants. Elle consulted the list. One niece, who had a nice Scottish brogue, and was in Star Fleet. And of course Scotty's nephew was still alive on Earth. "Oh man, we gotta tell Bones'n'Spock," she realized.

Scotty groaned and put a hand to his forehead.

"Computer, lights down twenty percent," Elle ordered. She leaned forward, heart pounding. "Scotty?"

He opened his eyes and turned to look at her. "Lass?"

She reached out and took his free hand. "Hi, don't worry, you and Franklin are fine."

"Enterprise?" he asked.

"Yes."

He squeezed her hand and closed his eyes again. "You were right, lass, I shouldna have tried to retire." He sighed. "Gonna take a wee nap..." he fell asleep again.

She stared at him, surprised. Did I tell him his future? Probably. She shrugged. "This is probably a fixed point," she told the unconscious Scotty. "You'll be fine." She checked on Lt. Franklin and sat back down.

Lt. Franklin woke up a half-hour later. He came to, flailing. "Scotty!"

Elle jumped up and her PADD fell to the floor. "Whoa, hey, relax, it's okay. You're on a Federation ship, you're safe." She smiled at him and held out a hand to pat his forearm. "It's okay."

He sat up and looked around, eyes flickering over equipment. His gaze paused on Scotty, on the row of green vital signs, and finally traveled to Elle. "You're a civilian."

"Yes I am." She smiled at him. "My name's Elle. You're on the Enterprise."

"Oh."

"How's your head?"

"A little dizzy," he said.

"You were in the transporter buffer for a long time," Elle said gently. "Some of that is to be expected. You ever seen Star Wars? Carbonite sickness? Like that."

"Least I'm not blind," Lt. Franklin muttered, proving that his pop culture memories hadn't gone with his kidneys.

"Excellent."

"How long were we in there?" Lt. Franklin asked.

Elle grimaced. "Ah. See, there's the rub."

His eyes narrowed. "How long?"

"Seventy-five years." She gave him a weak smile. "Welcome to the twenty-fourth century."

Lt. Franklin stared at her, his eyes widening to the size of moons. "That's impossible."

"Not really. We call Scotty a miracle worker for a reason."

Lt. Franklin frowned, confused. "You, know Scotty?"

She grinned conspiratorially. "I'm also from the twenty-third century. I've been here for almost a year."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. Temporal thing."

"Ah." He leaned back against the bio-bed and contemplated existence for a moment. "You said your name was Elle?"

"Yeah."

He stuck out a hand. "I'm Frank."

She shook his hand and stopped mid-shake. "Your name is Frank Franklin?"

He sighed. "My parents thought it was hilarious. And I'm named after my grandfather."

Elle laughed. "Nice."

-/\-

Frank went back to sleep, and Elle sat down to wait some more.

"So I wasn't dreaming," Scotty's voice said, rousing Elle from her third episode of Portraiture Challenge. "We really did end up in the future."

She smiled at him. "Yes. Sorry. Welcome to the club."

He sat up and smiled at her. "It's good to see you, lassie."

Elle smiled at him, suddenly emotional. "You too." She gave him a hug. "It's only been a year, for me, but-" She pressed her face into his shoulder.

He squeezed her in a tight hug and pressed a kiss to her hair. "Aye."

She pulled back after a few moments, giving him a damp smile. "Lt. Franklin woke up earlier for a few minutes, I broke the news to him."

He nodded. "And you'll be our guide in this new century, I assume?"

"Yup. I've had experience adjusting to this century." She handed him the datapad. "You're gonna love this century, Scotty, the technology is amazing."

He stared at the datapad. "To borrow a phrase, fascinating."

A/N: Sorry for the cliffhanger-ish ending but it is peach canning week and this is my first year doing it solo, I'll see y'all next week.