Reboot Ficlet
(Icon courtesy of rslfan1992)
Good grief, but I'm out of practice!
Anyway...this is more or less a response to yahtzee63's DRABBLE ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER Star Trek Reboot Challenge. It comes closest to answering the prompt "Scotty, isolation."
If you're a real (or really old) Old Skool Trek fan, you'll see whay I couldn't resist this particular scenario.
Title: "Stranger than Particles"
Author: HawkMoth
Characters: Scotty, Keenser
Rating: G (?)
Summary: There's more to Delta Vega than meets the eye.
Note: I'm playing fast and loose here with two timelines. I'll have more to say if comments warrant!
Disclaimer: Star Trek and all related elements, characters and indicia © Paramount Pictures / Bad Robot / Spyglass Entertainment 2009. All Rights Reserved. All characters and situations-save those created by the authors for use solely on this website-are copyright Paramount Pictures / Bad Robot / Spyglass Entertainment 2009.
Please do not archive or distribute without author's permission.
For taraljc, just because.
******
Delta Vega was icy cold, and the outpost more than dismal. That much was evident within minutes of their arrival, unceremoniously transported in from orbit after being handed a few PADDS by the security squad, and informed that their luggage and supplies would follow immediately. Within a few hours, it was also turned out to be the most boring place in Federation space (outside of Glasgow on a Sunday morning) and utterly lacking in decent food supplies.
It didn't take much longer for Montgomery Scott to also figure out that tenure here could easily drive someone round the bend.
Oh, aye, if you passed the battery of psych tests every cadet went through, and sat through the mandatory first and fourth year lectures about the dangers of "space madness," you were supposed to be ready for anything the galaxy could throw at you. (It also helped if as a plebe you paid no mind to the stories senior cadets would pass on in hushed tones at bull sessions: starships that returned to base on autopilot, with all hands vanished; colonizing vessels that disappeared without a trace; space stations found mysteriously adrift with one lone survivor too traumatized to tell what happened....)
Besides, engineers were supposed to be practical and unflappable.
But really talented engineers also had good imaginations, which helped when dealing with quarks, charms and strange particles; warp drive and transporter theory. And any really talented Scots engineer who had relatives known to have the Sight knew some things still defied scientific explanation. He'd grown up listening to tales about lairds and ladies whose spirits lingered in piles of ancient stone, warrior spirits still fighting on old battlefields, and creatures lurking in the depths of lochs.
Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties...
Beasties there were, as the briefing notes explained, improbable things roaming through the ice, but "most likely unable to penetrate the perimeter of the station." That was a comfort. Scott's nerves were on edge those first days anyway, getting used to the cavernous facility, learning to live with the strange lighting that couldn't be adjusted despite all his tinkering.
Point of fact, just about every system was banjaxed beyond his expertise, even with Keenser's help. The air exchangers couldn't handle the sharp tang of the processing machines, the EC had never been properly adjusted for long-term occupation by sentient beings, and communications were dodgy at best, although there had been sincere reassurance from the powers that be that in a genuine emergency, the distress beacon would work.
So as soon as he and Keenser learned all they could about their new "home," (Starfleet training: "Know your environment and stay alive."), and how to dress in layers to keep reasonably warm, there was not much else to do but settle in for the long haul.
Things that go bump in the night...
At first it was flickering shadows that might have been caused by the cocked-up lights, little noises that could be just the creaking of equipment. He'd hear something that was likely the wind leaking in through the outer hatches, but almost sounded like not-so-distant voices. Not often, mind, but often enough to make him scratch his head.... Keenser never seemed to notice, so Scott kept his mouth shut. Considering the overall state of the outpost, it was a wonder it didn't all come crashing down around their ears.
He supposed some of it could be chalked up to the isolation, the tedium, or even food deprivation. Nice of Starfleet to provide a basic beverage unit programmed to supply water, tea, coffee and various fruit juices, and enough protein nibs to last...well, indefinitely, though there had been vague promises of food deliveries on a semi-regular basis. But you got a better variety of rations with at least some taste even on a long-range shuttlecraft. Or even in a rehab colony.
Officially, Scott wasn't in prison. Officially, he was supposed to be monitoring the completely-without-need-to-be-monitored automated lithium-cracking operations that made Delta Vega somewhat important to the Federation, while reflecting on the sins that had landed him in exile.
Well, he didna really spend much time brooding on the pitfalls of academic hubris, although he was a wee bit sorry about Porthos VI--or was it VII? But he was a yappy little beggar, and the Admiral had other blue-ribbon pups to console him. Scott spent more time thinking about what had actually gone agley with his transporter theory, trying to isolate the missing factor, hoping for a serendipitous breakthrough while messing about with computer simulations.
Otherwise he was occupied with keeping Keenser out of mischief, and actually monitoring the ongoing operations, on a regular enough basis to feel dutiful. He was required to transmit bimonthly reports, ostensibly to make him feel useful, but mostly intended to let Starfleet know they were still alive. (As time went by, he got nervy enough to include carefully worded requests for those promised food deliveries.) All that, plus sleeping and what passed for eating, should have been enough to keep his mind off a few random, if uncanny, incidents.
But as time passed, he really began to wonder....
One day, he walked by a heavy-duty cable lying where it should across the floor, then not two minutes later found it draped across a console, with a strange kink in one loop. He would have blamed wee Keenser, but he had been nowhere in sight.
Another afternoon, he was trying to pass some dull hours by using the external sensors to watch the wind carve new shapes in the endless ice fields. It was also a good idea to occasionally track the movements of the local fauna, which were fiercely territorial. As a particularly strong blast whipped its way around the outermost structures of the base, Scott could have sworn all the glittering whiteness disappeared, revealing a blue-black desert strewn with rocks and dotted with dry-twigged shrubs. He blinked, and the screen showed the usual view again, as if it had merely been one of the usual system glitches.
A few nights later, he awoke with the mouth-watering scent of Kaferian apples in his nostrils. He usually dreamed about scones and jam, or his Aunt Aggie's cockaleekie, not exotic alien fruit. Och, it was enough to drive a man to drink, had there been drink at hand.
He had to settle for weak tea and protein nibs in the morning, over which he attempted to formulate a few theories.
Suppose the outpost had been rigged, and he and Keenser were guinea pigs in an experiment to see how long their wits would last when subjected to isolation and seemingly inexplicable manifestations? How soon would they crack and beg for relief?
However, many such tests and scenarios had been conducted decades ago prior to the earliest deep-space missions. And surely their exile was punishment enough, and an eventual reprieve had been promised. Scott had his pride, and didna fancy reporting to Starfleet that Delta Vega might be...haunted.
So that left his first and most obvious conclusion: the outpost was a fey place to begin with, more than likely to play havoc with even the soundest of minds. Right, he could live with that, and thus far none of the weirdness had caused any harm.
He did take one bit of action, by calling up the history of Delta Vega, including the logs of the various times the outpost had maintained any staff. But it was all as dull and dry as the auld kirk newsletters his great-great granny used to keep. No one had enjoyed their service here, not even the mining experts who had established the facility. There had been no mysterious deaths or disappearances to leave a psychic imprint behind.
So as days turned into weeks and weeks into months, Scott did his best to ignore anything out of the ordinary that didn't present an outright threat to their survival.
Then one day Keenser, to whom nothing was out of bounds, refused to go into one of the storage areas when they needed new power cells for the sensors. When Scott investigated, everything seemed quite normal at first. Then he heard something, like the buzz of angry hornets, growing louder the longer he stood there, until he suddenly recognized it as the sound of a force field being pushed to the max. It gradually faded, leaving Scott confounded as Keenser stared at him mournfully from a safe distance.
"Didja hear something, you wee scunner?"
Keenser's eye stalks shifted, the equivalent of a blink. "No," he piped up after a moment. "Did you?"
Poor little fellow. Guilt by association, simply for having been Scott's assistant on the dread day, had landed him here. Still, without his companionship, exile would have been far more dismal and unendurable. And maybe he would have been seeing and hearing things a lot more often.
"No," Scott finally answered, waving a hand. "Away with you. Go be useful somewhere."
Keenser gave a little shrug, scurried off, and that was that.
Several weeks passed without incident. Then one evening, while Scott was catnapping at a console in the main chamber, he heard a voice, clear as bell, quite nearby.
"Kelso's dead."
He scrambled upright, fully awake in a nanosecond. Had he been dreaming? He'd known a Kelso at the Academy, but as far as he knew, Lee was alive and well and serving on the Yorktown. He cocked his head, listening with all his might. And then he heard a different voice, ringing with the power of someone in command:
"You will inform Earth Base that this entire planet is to be subjected to a lethal concentration of neutron radiation."
That brought Scott to his feet. What planet? This one? He hurriedly checked all the scanners and sensors, internal and external, but allowing for the limited range and constant power fluctuations, nothing seemed amiss.
He shook his head. Och, what blethers. Hardly anyone referred to Starfleet HQ as "Earth Base" anymore. Maybe it was time to consider a new theory--temporal shift hauntings! Spirits and bugbears from another dimension! Oh, aye, and maybe he could write a paper about it someday.
Idjit! Better to concentrate on his transwarp problem, dream about food, and just put up with the weirdness, until their eventual deliverance.
***
He was paying no attention to the sensors the day they registered massive gravitational waves on the edge of the system, and then more specifically in the direction of Vulcan. Changes in the seismic readings a few days later seemed nothing more than the usual disruptions caused by ice slips or avalanches. When Keenser told him it seemed that a ship was passing nearby and that a shuttle might have landed, Scott only muttered, "Well, it's about bloody time."
And when the sensors showed definite human life signs outside the southwest access tunnel, he just waved a hand and told Keenser to escort their guests in.
In six months, he never had imagined deliverance would arrive in the shape of a brash, mouthy young human and a surprisingly friendly, time-travelling old Vulcan. But as their tale unfolded, with more and more mind-boggling revelations far stranger than anything he'd experienced here, Montgomery Scott knew destiny when he saw it. Time to dree his weird, as Great-Granny would have said.
As he stepped into the transporter pod beside Kirk, he regretted not having an extra moment to brief that nice Mr. Spock about Delta Vega. Aye, but Keenser would do that. And if he survived this mad venture, with the elegant transwarp solution etched forever in his mind, maybe he'd have two papers to write.
******
(If you didn't recognize the ST:TOS connection, please mention it in your comment.)
Good grief, but I'm out of practice!
Anyway...this is more or less a response to yahtzee63's DRABBLE ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER Star Trek Reboot Challenge. It comes closest to answering the prompt "Scotty, isolation."
If you're a real (or really old) Old Skool Trek fan, you'll see whay I couldn't resist this particular scenario.
Title: "Stranger than Particles"
Author: HawkMoth
Characters: Scotty, Keenser
Rating: G (?)
Summary: There's more to Delta Vega than meets the eye.
Note: I'm playing fast and loose here with two timelines. I'll have more to say if comments warrant!
Disclaimer: Star Trek and all related elements, characters and indicia © Paramount Pictures / Bad Robot / Spyglass Entertainment 2009. All Rights Reserved. All characters and situations-save those created by the authors for use solely on this website-are copyright Paramount Pictures / Bad Robot / Spyglass Entertainment 2009.
Please do not archive or distribute without author's permission.
For taraljc, just because.
******
Delta Vega was icy cold, and the outpost more than dismal. That much was evident within minutes of their arrival, unceremoniously transported in from orbit after being handed a few PADDS by the security squad, and informed that their luggage and supplies would follow immediately. Within a few hours, it was also turned out to be the most boring place in Federation space (outside of Glasgow on a Sunday morning) and utterly lacking in decent food supplies.
It didn't take much longer for Montgomery Scott to also figure out that tenure here could easily drive someone round the bend.
Oh, aye, if you passed the battery of psych tests every cadet went through, and sat through the mandatory first and fourth year lectures about the dangers of "space madness," you were supposed to be ready for anything the galaxy could throw at you. (It also helped if as a plebe you paid no mind to the stories senior cadets would pass on in hushed tones at bull sessions: starships that returned to base on autopilot, with all hands vanished; colonizing vessels that disappeared without a trace; space stations found mysteriously adrift with one lone survivor too traumatized to tell what happened....)
Besides, engineers were supposed to be practical and unflappable.
But really talented engineers also had good imaginations, which helped when dealing with quarks, charms and strange particles; warp drive and transporter theory. And any really talented Scots engineer who had relatives known to have the Sight knew some things still defied scientific explanation. He'd grown up listening to tales about lairds and ladies whose spirits lingered in piles of ancient stone, warrior spirits still fighting on old battlefields, and creatures lurking in the depths of lochs.
Ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties...
Beasties there were, as the briefing notes explained, improbable things roaming through the ice, but "most likely unable to penetrate the perimeter of the station." That was a comfort. Scott's nerves were on edge those first days anyway, getting used to the cavernous facility, learning to live with the strange lighting that couldn't be adjusted despite all his tinkering.
Point of fact, just about every system was banjaxed beyond his expertise, even with Keenser's help. The air exchangers couldn't handle the sharp tang of the processing machines, the EC had never been properly adjusted for long-term occupation by sentient beings, and communications were dodgy at best, although there had been sincere reassurance from the powers that be that in a genuine emergency, the distress beacon would work.
So as soon as he and Keenser learned all they could about their new "home," (Starfleet training: "Know your environment and stay alive."), and how to dress in layers to keep reasonably warm, there was not much else to do but settle in for the long haul.
Things that go bump in the night...
At first it was flickering shadows that might have been caused by the cocked-up lights, little noises that could be just the creaking of equipment. He'd hear something that was likely the wind leaking in through the outer hatches, but almost sounded like not-so-distant voices. Not often, mind, but often enough to make him scratch his head.... Keenser never seemed to notice, so Scott kept his mouth shut. Considering the overall state of the outpost, it was a wonder it didn't all come crashing down around their ears.
He supposed some of it could be chalked up to the isolation, the tedium, or even food deprivation. Nice of Starfleet to provide a basic beverage unit programmed to supply water, tea, coffee and various fruit juices, and enough protein nibs to last...well, indefinitely, though there had been vague promises of food deliveries on a semi-regular basis. But you got a better variety of rations with at least some taste even on a long-range shuttlecraft. Or even in a rehab colony.
Officially, Scott wasn't in prison. Officially, he was supposed to be monitoring the completely-without-need-to-be-monitored automated lithium-cracking operations that made Delta Vega somewhat important to the Federation, while reflecting on the sins that had landed him in exile.
Well, he didna really spend much time brooding on the pitfalls of academic hubris, although he was a wee bit sorry about Porthos VI--or was it VII? But he was a yappy little beggar, and the Admiral had other blue-ribbon pups to console him. Scott spent more time thinking about what had actually gone agley with his transporter theory, trying to isolate the missing factor, hoping for a serendipitous breakthrough while messing about with computer simulations.
Otherwise he was occupied with keeping Keenser out of mischief, and actually monitoring the ongoing operations, on a regular enough basis to feel dutiful. He was required to transmit bimonthly reports, ostensibly to make him feel useful, but mostly intended to let Starfleet know they were still alive. (As time went by, he got nervy enough to include carefully worded requests for those promised food deliveries.) All that, plus sleeping and what passed for eating, should have been enough to keep his mind off a few random, if uncanny, incidents.
But as time passed, he really began to wonder....
One day, he walked by a heavy-duty cable lying where it should across the floor, then not two minutes later found it draped across a console, with a strange kink in one loop. He would have blamed wee Keenser, but he had been nowhere in sight.
Another afternoon, he was trying to pass some dull hours by using the external sensors to watch the wind carve new shapes in the endless ice fields. It was also a good idea to occasionally track the movements of the local fauna, which were fiercely territorial. As a particularly strong blast whipped its way around the outermost structures of the base, Scott could have sworn all the glittering whiteness disappeared, revealing a blue-black desert strewn with rocks and dotted with dry-twigged shrubs. He blinked, and the screen showed the usual view again, as if it had merely been one of the usual system glitches.
A few nights later, he awoke with the mouth-watering scent of Kaferian apples in his nostrils. He usually dreamed about scones and jam, or his Aunt Aggie's cockaleekie, not exotic alien fruit. Och, it was enough to drive a man to drink, had there been drink at hand.
He had to settle for weak tea and protein nibs in the morning, over which he attempted to formulate a few theories.
Suppose the outpost had been rigged, and he and Keenser were guinea pigs in an experiment to see how long their wits would last when subjected to isolation and seemingly inexplicable manifestations? How soon would they crack and beg for relief?
However, many such tests and scenarios had been conducted decades ago prior to the earliest deep-space missions. And surely their exile was punishment enough, and an eventual reprieve had been promised. Scott had his pride, and didna fancy reporting to Starfleet that Delta Vega might be...haunted.
So that left his first and most obvious conclusion: the outpost was a fey place to begin with, more than likely to play havoc with even the soundest of minds. Right, he could live with that, and thus far none of the weirdness had caused any harm.
He did take one bit of action, by calling up the history of Delta Vega, including the logs of the various times the outpost had maintained any staff. But it was all as dull and dry as the auld kirk newsletters his great-great granny used to keep. No one had enjoyed their service here, not even the mining experts who had established the facility. There had been no mysterious deaths or disappearances to leave a psychic imprint behind.
So as days turned into weeks and weeks into months, Scott did his best to ignore anything out of the ordinary that didn't present an outright threat to their survival.
Then one day Keenser, to whom nothing was out of bounds, refused to go into one of the storage areas when they needed new power cells for the sensors. When Scott investigated, everything seemed quite normal at first. Then he heard something, like the buzz of angry hornets, growing louder the longer he stood there, until he suddenly recognized it as the sound of a force field being pushed to the max. It gradually faded, leaving Scott confounded as Keenser stared at him mournfully from a safe distance.
"Didja hear something, you wee scunner?"
Keenser's eye stalks shifted, the equivalent of a blink. "No," he piped up after a moment. "Did you?"
Poor little fellow. Guilt by association, simply for having been Scott's assistant on the dread day, had landed him here. Still, without his companionship, exile would have been far more dismal and unendurable. And maybe he would have been seeing and hearing things a lot more often.
"No," Scott finally answered, waving a hand. "Away with you. Go be useful somewhere."
Keenser gave a little shrug, scurried off, and that was that.
Several weeks passed without incident. Then one evening, while Scott was catnapping at a console in the main chamber, he heard a voice, clear as bell, quite nearby.
"Kelso's dead."
He scrambled upright, fully awake in a nanosecond. Had he been dreaming? He'd known a Kelso at the Academy, but as far as he knew, Lee was alive and well and serving on the Yorktown. He cocked his head, listening with all his might. And then he heard a different voice, ringing with the power of someone in command:
"You will inform Earth Base that this entire planet is to be subjected to a lethal concentration of neutron radiation."
That brought Scott to his feet. What planet? This one? He hurriedly checked all the scanners and sensors, internal and external, but allowing for the limited range and constant power fluctuations, nothing seemed amiss.
He shook his head. Och, what blethers. Hardly anyone referred to Starfleet HQ as "Earth Base" anymore. Maybe it was time to consider a new theory--temporal shift hauntings! Spirits and bugbears from another dimension! Oh, aye, and maybe he could write a paper about it someday.
Idjit! Better to concentrate on his transwarp problem, dream about food, and just put up with the weirdness, until their eventual deliverance.
***
He was paying no attention to the sensors the day they registered massive gravitational waves on the edge of the system, and then more specifically in the direction of Vulcan. Changes in the seismic readings a few days later seemed nothing more than the usual disruptions caused by ice slips or avalanches. When Keenser told him it seemed that a ship was passing nearby and that a shuttle might have landed, Scott only muttered, "Well, it's about bloody time."
And when the sensors showed definite human life signs outside the southwest access tunnel, he just waved a hand and told Keenser to escort their guests in.
In six months, he never had imagined deliverance would arrive in the shape of a brash, mouthy young human and a surprisingly friendly, time-travelling old Vulcan. But as their tale unfolded, with more and more mind-boggling revelations far stranger than anything he'd experienced here, Montgomery Scott knew destiny when he saw it. Time to dree his weird, as Great-Granny would have said.
As he stepped into the transporter pod beside Kirk, he regretted not having an extra moment to brief that nice Mr. Spock about Delta Vega. Aye, but Keenser would do that. And if he survived this mad venture, with the elegant transwarp solution etched forever in his mind, maybe he'd have two papers to write.
******
(If you didn't recognize the ST:TOS connection, please mention it in your comment.)