allmhadadh

When it became perfectly clear to me that the original Scotty couldn't stay in the new universe, aboard the new Enterprise, without it slowly breaking his heart, I needed a solution. I didn't want a new character, though. I wanted the one I knew intimately, the one who I'd been writing for so long. So, I needed an answer. I needed a Scotty who could adapt to being in a new universe, without it breaking his heart. They're adaptable men, that particular breed of Montgomery Scott, but they're also intensely loyal to those they love. I needed a Scotty who hadn't found that yet.

Enter the Cadet.

Fierce, one step out of the proverbial wilderness, he was made of all of the same stuff as the original, with none of the polish and tempering experiences. There was no classifying this young man. He was sharp, smart, half-crazy, sweet, lost and feral. He was wise beyond his years in some ways, and far behind the curve of maturity in others. A strange, curious mix of utterly invulnerable, yet almost painfully vulnerable, all at once. He was mercurial; he could slip from one emotion to another, often in extremes, without a pause. Fluid and adaptive, holding no attachments, he was the answer.

( I had no clue that he would become such an amazing, intense, dare I say life-altering character. )

Their future is still very much in the air. They're early on in dating, and where they go from here is still uncertain. But looking back, considering that there was no way to know that they would have ended up together, I can't say that I dread it. Wonderful things happen, when you least expect them. Or, as Harold likes to quote: The universe tends to unfold as it should.

The Cadet's creation was almost an impulse. I could have never predicted what came of it, and I never stop being grateful that I took that impulse and ran with it. His interactions with others, and with Harold, have been insightful and given me a look deeper into not only the original Scotty, but also into humanity and myself. In the end, I got two young Scots out of it; I'll write more on my other later. But it still blows my mind how far it's all come, and I sometimes read back and marvel at this journey.

And I can't wait to see where it all goes.

To whomever sent me the balloons... thank you. ::blush!:: <3 Thank you, I am blushing and flattered and touched. And beaming. XD icon worthy, by far.

To the anonymouse who sent me the rose, and the paid time... thank you. You made a very, very rough few days much happier.

♥

When the sun is high
In the afternoon sky
You can always find something to do
But from dusk til dawn
As the clock ticks on
Something happens to you...

-Frank Sinatra, In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning


The thing that stuck most strongly with Scotty about October in New Jersey was the smell; it was musty and sort of sweet, in a way.  He couldn't quite get over it.  Then there were the leaves; even in the darkness of night, where there were bright enough lights, they showed in reds and golds and browns and still some greens.

Scotty had never given a whole lot of thought to environments, not like a naturalist would, but he decided that he really liked the fall.

Those leaves were slick underfoot, as they crossed through a band of trees between the walkway and where they parked.  Between the trunks, he could see the lights of the New York skyline across the way, but mostly Scotty focused on the ground underfoot.  It was chilly out; Harold had grabbed a blanket, and while Scotty wasn't feeling too cold, he still had to take some time to get genuinely readjusted to a non-climate controlled environment.  He figured the blanket was to keep warm... dawn was a good ways off.

"Tourists really seem to like this view," Harold commented, offhandedly, as they crossed over to Sinatra Park.  He didn't sound very enthusiastic himself, though.  Scotty couldn't entirely blame him -- while Aberdeen hadn't had much of a tourist industry, San Francisco had been crawling with them, and they were a bit annoying as they swarmed the Academy grounds taking holos or pictures.

Still, he figured that the view might be nice.  And they could spend more time getting to know each other.  He was still trying to wrap his head around the change in time, in culture, in everything; it wasn't so much that it was hard, but it was just unreal in a lot of ways.  And the world, at least so far, didn't look all that desperately different than the one he'd come from.  Cars, instead of skimmers.  Airplanes, instead of shuttles or a transporter pad.  Not very eco friendly, but then, matter/antimatter energy hadn't been figured out here yet.

Just from what he had stored in his own head, Scotty could have probably put civilization a whole century ahead.  But honestly, he really knew better, too.  And some part of him didn't really want to; it would only be taking from them what they would someday earn on their own.

For now, though...

The Manhattan skyline, burning bright even at this late hour in oranges and the occasional splash of some other color, came into view when they stepped out of the trees, and Scotty had to stop.

Just for a moment to breathe.

[Poll #1473964]

"Silent running."

The lighting levels faded; everything faded.  Half of the bridge consoles went black.  And throughout the ship, everything was powered down to essentials only, from the galley to the heads to the ship's weapons.  Outside, her running lamps turned off; no port or starboard lights, no hull illumination.  The Enterprise became a shadow.

Every bit of power drawn was one more bit of a signature for sensors to read.  And Scotty was well aware of just how good the sensors were on Constitution-class starships.  The Potemkin might still see them.  The biggest draw and therefore signature was the Enterprise's warp drive, but he didn't order it shut down, just idled.  A calculated risk; he wanted to be able to run, if he had to run.

Playing cat and mouse with two starships was a dicey proposition.  Evenly matched adversaries, with trained crews.  There were, overall, a number of Connies in service and they were stocked with the very best and brightest of Starfleet.  Scotty knew better than to underestimate the Potemkin; she was, in both crew and equipment, a very fine ship.

The Enterprise was finer, of course, but she was operating without any backup, a rogue ship being commanded by a rogue engineer, and only half her usual crew compliment.  Scotty wasn't the tactical genius Kirk was; what he knew of tactics came from some outside-the-box thinking, and a good number of years observing and learning from far more tactically-talented commanders.

The trick he stole now, though, wasn't learned on a starship, but at sea.  He just put it into four-dimensions and accounted for having a lot more mass, speed and potential to screw it up.

Part one had been to lay a thick, hard trail at maximum warp.  Scotty had asked more of the Enterprise than even he liked to; they had screamed through space at warp 9.5, all but hurtling the ship in a very specific direction.

Part two: Give the Potemkin something to do.  There was a nebula of decent density in that particular direction.  Scotty had barely ordered the Enterprise slowed down before they raised shields and shoved in.  It wasn't a lot of fun; the sheer turbulence from that had sent more'n a few people sprawling.  Once deep inside, he ordered all engines cut and allowed the Enterprise to drift right through to the other side...

...almost bow-first into a planet.

"Port side thrusters, full!" he'd barked, and thanked whatever higher power there might be that his crew didn't lock up and panic when faced with the proposition of running smack into a planet.  And the Enterprise herself groaned loud and hard at being asked to essentially pivot against the forces of momentum and gravity; luckily (and tactically) they had come out of the nebula not dead-on, but offsides the dense world.

In other words, Scotty was basically tacking a starship about like he would a schooner, and it was a wee bit clever and somewhat unorthodox and definitely crazy.

He felt as much as watched as the world swung away; they hit the upper atmosphere, and before they could be either drawn down or glanced off, he ordered, "Starboard thrusters half and aft thrusters full, fire."

Thrusters were very weak; they were usually only used for maneuvering in dry dock, or at .1 impulse.  They were not propulsion units so much as steering units, and he was asking an extraordinary amount of work out of them.  But they held; they strained, but they held.  The upside of pushing them so hard was that by the time the Potemkin caught up, any signatures they left would have dissipated into nothing.

"Orbit achieved," Osborne had said, voice shaking hard.

"Not for long," Scotty had replied. "Ready for maneuvers; tell me we're comin' up on the axis."

He could almost hear the ship and all aboard her holding their collective breaths.  He also thanked whatever higher power that he'd been gifted with talented, capable people, who really wanted to get their commanding officers back badly enough to go through with all of this.

"Axis in ten... nine... eight..."

"Ready port thrusters and impulse."

"...six... five..."

"Port thrusters full, hard about!"  And the Enterprise had screamed again, fighting her own momentum, gravity, physics and everything else.  The stars came back bright across the viewscreen.

"...two..."

"Full impulse, one second burst, mark!"

It was a jolt, but in that second, the Enterprise essentially shoved hard off of the planet behind her, breaking free and flying on momentum and some maneuvering alone towards the next planet in the system.  The crew breathed out.  Scotty chanced a look at them; they were all white knuckling their consoles, and a few were close to a panic attack.

He had took a breath himself, letting it out and he was not particularly shocked at how shaky it was.  "All done fer now.  At ease, just let her coast."

With any luck, the lack of an easy trail would convince the Potemkin that the Enterprise was hiding in the nebula.  Even if it didn't, though, they'd have a hard time finding her trail again.  He fully intended to coast her across this system, firing impulse only in small bursts when they had to break orbit, using the planets to maneuver, and thrusters like sails on a ship at sea.  Once they reached the other side, hopefully having shaken off the pursuit, then they could head for the rift again.

It was in the darkness, coasting between planets in a system and trying to gain some sea room that he ordered silent running.

It was as much like being a magician as it was being an engineer, and Scotty was not so sure he liked that sensation.  The arcane had never appealed to him, but he didn't have enough of the equation to see how he had taken it from a seeming flight of fancy to being actual testable theory.

And he knew that he likely wouldn't until he finished it properly in his own timeline.

( Read more... )

          I realized clearly that something extraordinary was happening. I was holding him close in my arms as if he were a little child; and yet it seemed to me that he was rushing headlong toward an abyss from which I could do nothing to restrain him... His look was very serious, like some one lost far away.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

He could not bring himself to attend the party, so Scotty did what he was apt to do as both an apology and a gesture of gratitude, and sent food.  He wasn't sure why he couldn't make himself attend, except that it seemed harder and harder to be here at all with each passing day.  He was not unaware of his reasons for coming aboard this ship, when he would have stayed on Risa and lived under a pier or roamed the planet finding odd jobs.  He was also keenly aware that those reasons had not truly mattered, in the end.

It matters, he had written on the bottom of Perera's theory, in ink, on paper.

Scotty now dwelled in a world where it seemed few things did.  It was not that he didn't care about the people here; there were a number of them he liked and wanted to do well by.  Captain Kirk -- both versions, even -- Commander Spock, Doctor McCoy.  Len Nimoy, who owned the Riviera he had taken refuge in since leaving Risa.  Harold Lee, who reminded him of the sand, and the suns, and his spot under the pier.  He still carried his shell in his pocket with him, a hidden talisman.  The people mattered, and he cared, but it didn't seem to be enough to overcome the oppression that had dogged him since leaving Risa, and had only lifted in dreams of the road.

He felt trapped.  Like the car, like something boxed into a cage.  It didn't matter if the cage sailed the stars -- he had no room to run, no places to hide and become invisible; no pier to take shelter under, no warm sand.  He had a beautiful car to visit, but she wasn't his either; her owner obviously loved her dearly, and Scotty quietly relinquished the building possessiveness of the Riviera he'd been gathering so long as he thought she was as lost as he was.

Regardless, he still went back to her; spent the rest of his day off on general maintenance and then cleaning.  Scraping cruddy build-up off of her engine mounts with a wire brush, oiling door hinges.  Then, he cleaned his own hands in the nearest public restroom and came back to wipe down her dash and interior, polish her up with a clean rag.  He would likely not stay another night with her; he told her this.  A quiet confession to a dash -- he loved her, and was grateful, but she was never his and her Len still needed and wanted her.  But he would check on her and care for her while he could.

He stayed one more night, though.  One more night smelling the miles and the road dust and the leather; smelling the years and distances.  Some place for a dream.

He set his PADD to wake him up before the morning watch, then curled up in the back seat to go to sleep.