(no subject)
Title: Discord
Characters: Montgomery Scott, Eris
Summary: It's never wise for a mortal man to attract the attention of the gods...
Rating: PG
Notes: This is a little vignette inspired by a thread in which Scotty unintentionally caught Eris' attention, was told that it was best to ignore her... and has no idea that he is in fact pretty much screwed over now.
It started as small things, occurances that could be explained away by the usual bustling activity of Engineering. Important tools started to go missing. His favorite spanner was nowhere to be found, and though he could have sworn he'd tucked it away into his toolbox, it stubbornly refused to be there. That was annoying in and of itself, but when his best screwdriver set went missing to, he very nearly turned the entire engine room upside down looking for them.
He didn't find them, but he noticed other things out of place. Wrong. Small things, again, things that were easily overlooked. A pair of goggles left under a vent, in a corner no one would think to look in. One lonely glove, on the edge of a command console. He resigned himself to the fact that people forgot things sometimes and put them away.
Those were the little things. A few days later, he was still missing his spanner, had found two of his screwdrivers and the other glove, but now his arc welder was acting up and he'd discovered a sudden and unexplainable lag in the helm control relays.
By the end of the week, he was nearly at his wit's end, trying to keep up with the sudden deterioration of order in the engine room.
The main generator that powered the life support systems was scheduled for routine maintainence; Scotty ordered the backup generator turned on and the main generator shut down. The backup genny would keep life support going for a few days, at least, if the main went out. Maintainence would take a day, at most. Scotty oversaw the operation himself, checking each connection, each relay, each piece of machinery, leaving nothing to chance. The generator was completely shut down, cut off from the rest of the ship.
He left one of his lieutenants to check over the main switchboard, to make sure none of the breakers were in danger of frying. While the lieutent was busy doing that, Scotty pulled out a bundle of wire, checking them for heat damage and wear. The genny was dead. That was important. There wasn't a live wire in the thing right now. It should have been perfectly safe.
Even hours later, he still wasn't certain what had happened. One minute he was examining wires for heat damage and the next...
It seemed that just for a moment, time stopped, slowed to a crawl. He felt it before he saw it, felt the hairs on the back of his arms stand up, saw a blinding flash of light as something sparked, sending an arc of electricity coursing through the generator.
There was a reason mechanical engieers called electrical engineering 'witchcraft'.
He'd never seen electricity act like that. It shouldn't have acted like that. The last thing he remembered was seeing it arc from point to point on the generator, bounding across the insulated outer skin as though it belonged there. Another blinding flash of light, and then--
He woke up in Medical, stiff and sore and tender and feeling like his skin was a couple sizes too tight. He tried to slip out and head back down to Engineering, but McCoy caught him before he'd even made it two steps out of bed and the next thing he knew the world had gone black again.
The second time he woke up, he felt a little less like hell, and after a few minutes of laying and staring up at the ceiling, memory trickled back and he remembered why he was there in the first place. This time, he managed to sneak back down to Engineering without getting stopped.
The main generator was dead. They had a matter of days to get it up and running again before the backup genny failed. If pressed, they might be able to rig a solar sail - but only if they managed to find a solar system to stop in. Out in deep space, that option was limited.
Engineering was in a state of controlled chaos, with crew darting back and forth, swarming like ants around the generator, dismantling, reassembling, working as they always did without complaint. Scotty flexed his hands once or twice - they still felt tight - and then joined in the fray. No one could tell for certain what had caused the electrical 'storm'; there seemed to be no evidence of it, apart from the fact that the generator was now completely dead. No one even seemed to know why it had failed.
He had just finished running new wire when he stopped to take a breather; a flash of movement drew his attention away from the generator, and he glanced up. The lieutenant from earlier was watching him, and he noticed that she appeared unharmed, or at least as though she'd come away from the incident much better off than he had. He opened his mouth to ask her a question, but she turned and left before he could remember her name to shout over to her. He shrugged, and went back to work, rejoining the chaotic hustle and bustle of the crew.
It wasn't until much, much later, back in the quiet of his own quarters, that he realized the lieutenant's eyes had been yellow and red...
Characters: Montgomery Scott, Eris
Summary: It's never wise for a mortal man to attract the attention of the gods...
Rating: PG
Notes: This is a little vignette inspired by a thread in which Scotty unintentionally caught Eris' attention, was told that it was best to ignore her... and has no idea that he is in fact pretty much screwed over now.
It started as small things, occurances that could be explained away by the usual bustling activity of Engineering. Important tools started to go missing. His favorite spanner was nowhere to be found, and though he could have sworn he'd tucked it away into his toolbox, it stubbornly refused to be there. That was annoying in and of itself, but when his best screwdriver set went missing to, he very nearly turned the entire engine room upside down looking for them.
He didn't find them, but he noticed other things out of place. Wrong. Small things, again, things that were easily overlooked. A pair of goggles left under a vent, in a corner no one would think to look in. One lonely glove, on the edge of a command console. He resigned himself to the fact that people forgot things sometimes and put them away.
Those were the little things. A few days later, he was still missing his spanner, had found two of his screwdrivers and the other glove, but now his arc welder was acting up and he'd discovered a sudden and unexplainable lag in the helm control relays.
By the end of the week, he was nearly at his wit's end, trying to keep up with the sudden deterioration of order in the engine room.
The main generator that powered the life support systems was scheduled for routine maintainence; Scotty ordered the backup generator turned on and the main generator shut down. The backup genny would keep life support going for a few days, at least, if the main went out. Maintainence would take a day, at most. Scotty oversaw the operation himself, checking each connection, each relay, each piece of machinery, leaving nothing to chance. The generator was completely shut down, cut off from the rest of the ship.
He left one of his lieutenants to check over the main switchboard, to make sure none of the breakers were in danger of frying. While the lieutent was busy doing that, Scotty pulled out a bundle of wire, checking them for heat damage and wear. The genny was dead. That was important. There wasn't a live wire in the thing right now. It should have been perfectly safe.
Even hours later, he still wasn't certain what had happened. One minute he was examining wires for heat damage and the next...
It seemed that just for a moment, time stopped, slowed to a crawl. He felt it before he saw it, felt the hairs on the back of his arms stand up, saw a blinding flash of light as something sparked, sending an arc of electricity coursing through the generator.
There was a reason mechanical engieers called electrical engineering 'witchcraft'.
He'd never seen electricity act like that. It shouldn't have acted like that. The last thing he remembered was seeing it arc from point to point on the generator, bounding across the insulated outer skin as though it belonged there. Another blinding flash of light, and then--
He woke up in Medical, stiff and sore and tender and feeling like his skin was a couple sizes too tight. He tried to slip out and head back down to Engineering, but McCoy caught him before he'd even made it two steps out of bed and the next thing he knew the world had gone black again.
The second time he woke up, he felt a little less like hell, and after a few minutes of laying and staring up at the ceiling, memory trickled back and he remembered why he was there in the first place. This time, he managed to sneak back down to Engineering without getting stopped.
The main generator was dead. They had a matter of days to get it up and running again before the backup genny failed. If pressed, they might be able to rig a solar sail - but only if they managed to find a solar system to stop in. Out in deep space, that option was limited.
Engineering was in a state of controlled chaos, with crew darting back and forth, swarming like ants around the generator, dismantling, reassembling, working as they always did without complaint. Scotty flexed his hands once or twice - they still felt tight - and then joined in the fray. No one could tell for certain what had caused the electrical 'storm'; there seemed to be no evidence of it, apart from the fact that the generator was now completely dead. No one even seemed to know why it had failed.
He had just finished running new wire when he stopped to take a breather; a flash of movement drew his attention away from the generator, and he glanced up. The lieutenant from earlier was watching him, and he noticed that she appeared unharmed, or at least as though she'd come away from the incident much better off than he had. He opened his mouth to ask her a question, but she turned and left before he could remember her name to shout over to her. He shrugged, and went back to work, rejoining the chaotic hustle and bustle of the crew.
It wasn't until much, much later, back in the quiet of his own quarters, that he realized the lieutenant's eyes had been yellow and red...