Ghosts in machine - part two (final)
Title: Ghosts in the machine - part two
Characters: Scotty, mainly.
Rating: UK 15 (bit more violent than part one)
Summary: Second and final part of the story. The engineers prepare for the Klingon attack
Disclaimer: Trek's not mine, nor (unfortunately) is Scotty, though some of the other characters are.
Comments? Feedback? Maybe a 'hello'? Please?
Link to Part one
Part Two
The station rocked and lights flickered as the first Klingon disruptor bolts found their mark.
“Shields holding, sir,” Hill reported “And back-ups on stand-by.” He pressed switches and checked underneath the console before continuing his report. “I’m afraid we lost external scanners though.”
“Great. So we’ve no way of knowing whether rescue’s coming,” said Scotty, from his seat at the console opposite.
“’Fraid not. I could try bypassing…”
Scotty shook his head. “There isn’t time. In any case…” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s better not to know.”
Hill nodded understanding, and Scotty switched his own attention back to the monitor screen in front of him, which was feeding through pictures from various parts of the station. He could see Angelus and Tallamy putting the finishing touches to what they called their ‘Klingon Harvester’ - a series of rotating blades from the agricultural equipment store, mounted halfway down the central maintenance shaft, and controlled via a simple cable system that was wired into the main console. The turbolifts had all been sabotaged, the cars set to plunge at top speed to either top or bottom of the shafts if any non-human entered them; and everyone had been issued with two fully-charged phasers. Additional power packs, of which there were hundreds in the store-rooms, had also been charged up in readiness, and distributed along the maintenance shaft and piled behind the control room console. Twelve phaser-rifles had been stacked there too, with the Staff Quarters earmarked as their last bastion - though Scotty knew that if they needed to retreat that far, the battle was already lost.
Another barrage of Klingon fire shook the room, and Reinhardt muttered something in German under his breath as he grabbed the edge of the console for support. "What do you want us to do with these hull plates?" he asked, pointing to the loaded trolleys that floated on anti-gravs just inside the doorway.
"We need to build a redoubt in here," said Scotty, crossing the room to help lift one of the inch-thick two-foot-wide panels, and heaving it into place between the console and the maintenance shaft access. "Fix them in place right across here, so that if the Klingons do break through we have something to duck behind. Overlap them till they’re four feet high." He knew it wouldn't hold for ever against Klingon disruptors, but it would likely buy them a little more time before they had to retreat to the Staff quarters. He'd already rigged the console so that he could trigger it to explode when the time came.
Ngaio spoke up, as he followed Scott's lead and heaved another panel into place. "Crenelations on the top, sir?"
"Aye, why not? If there's enough panels."
"Trust me," said Reinhardt, wiping a sleeve across his sweating forehead, "There are enough hull plates in that store-room to build a wall round the entire station!"
"Bit late for that," said Scotty, as the room shook again, "We’ll have to make do with what you’ve got there - I need to get the nacelles in place now. We'll just have to hope the screens hold." He moved back to the console, and accessed the transporter controls. He’d toyed with the idea of beaming one of the nacelles into the airlock to block it permanently, but had agreed with Angelus that if he did that the Klingons would just keep firing at them from space - and eventually, that tactic would get through the shields and it would kill them. At least this way they had a fighting chance, albeit a slim one. “The two main corridors are blocked,” he confirmed, hitting the internal comm switch so that everyone could hear him, “And I estimate less than half-an-hour before the Klingons arrive.” In the meantime - he couldn’t help but smile at the irony - he had a maintenance shaft to go and inspect.
=======================
“I suppose you do realise that none of these modifications is listed in that file?” said Rachel. She had finished fixing a force-field generator frame to the shaft walls, and was busy connecting the circuits to the conduit that ran above their heads. Similar frames had been wired up at 10-yard intervals all along the shaft, each on an independent circuit. In between them, engine parts and spare hull plating had been bolted at right-angles to the walls to create a series of bulwarks for the engineers, and an obstacle course for the Klingons. Nunez’s gas-grenades had proved to be impractical - there was no way in the time they had available to seal off enough of the air ventilation to keep the gas contained - so instead they had taped sacks of flour to the overhead beams, half-way between the force-field frames, together with remote detonators.
“I’ll have to complain to the publisher,” Scotty replied, looking around to check that everything they’d thought of was in place, and wondering whether there was anything else they might do. He pushed a hand through his hair and rubbed his neck. “There isn’t time to test any of this - or practise what we’re going to do!”
Rachel lifted her circuit-connector clear of the conduit and fumbled with the power transmitter as she tried to twist it into place. “Hey - we’re Starfleet engineers, since when did we test stuff?” Her voice was brittle, and she was having trouble getting the connections hooked up - the more she tried, the worse they shook and refused to co-operate. “Dammit!”
He took the transmitter from her, held her other hand still, and pushed the connections into place. Rachel squeezed his hand in silent thanks, and she looked so scared and vulnerable that Scotty wished with all his heart that he could tell her that everything was going to be alright. But a series of thuds and clangs from the direction of the airlock told him that the Klingons had docked with the station, and would be forcing their way in very shortly.
"Oh, the hell with it," he muttered, grabbing Rachel's arm and steering her into one of the nearby cross-tunnels that they had blocked with heavy machinery. He leaned her back against the tunnel wall and kissed her with desperate passion, allowing himself to forget the danger they were in for just a few sweet seconds, while she clung to him and returned the kiss with Interest added. "That's just in case there isn't a 'later'," he said, pulling away, and running his thumb across her still-parted lips. He forced a smile, "And if there is a later, I'll come fetch my tonsils back."
The smile she gave him looked as nervous as he felt, but she managed to return the quip: "What, you don't think mine are a fair swap?"
There was another clang from the airlock, and the maintenance shaft suddenly seemed to be full of determined-looking engineers all moving into their agreed defensive positions. Scotty looked back at Rachel. “Make sure your phaser’s set on ‘kill’,” he said, “If the Klingons get back up - we won’t.”
She nodded, and he stepped back into the main shaft and walked slowly to the end nearest the airlock, double-checking connections and personnel as he went. The engineers had taken up positions in pairs behind their makeshift bastions, alternately left and right of the corridor, with three bulwarks between each force-field generator.
Angelus looked up from checking his phaser settings as Scott passed. “Ever heard of the Alamo?” he said.
Hill stood up from his own bastion a few yards away before Scotty could reply. “Don’t be daft - everyone died at the Alamo! Ever heard of Agincourt?” he countered, his chin lifting a little as he spoke.
“How about Loudoun Hill?” offered Scotty, to blank stares. “Bannockburn?” He sighed. “Agincourt it’ll have to be, then. ‘Cry God for Harry…’”
“…Starfleet, and St George,” Hill finished.
Scotty acknowledged the re-write with a nod and a grim smile, and looked back along the tunnel, at the people who appeared to think he knew what he was doing. “Everyone remember the plan?” he asked, and heard the ‘aye sirs’ echo back.
"I hate this part," said Nunez, as Scotty took up position next to him, behind the foremost bulwark.
"The waiting? Aye - but try to remember that the longer we wait, the more time the Sherman has to come back and rescue us." Always assuming that the signal got through, he thought. There was no way of knowing.
Behind him, a clicking noise indicated that someone was moving their phaser settings from 'kill' to 'heavy stun' to 'stun' and back again.
Click - click - click - click..
"For God's sake, put it on 'kill' and leave it there!" Scotty snapped, not bothering to turn around to see who it was.
"Sorry, sir." Murray's voice. "Just nervous, I guess."
Silence descended as they all strained to listen for sounds in the airlock, but if the Klingons were cutting through, they were using something that couldn't be heard through the walls that separated them.
"Maybe they went away when we didn't answer their knock?" murmured Hill.
"Fat chance," Angelus growled.
"Shut up, the pair of you!" Oh Lord, I sound like Nogura.
Silence.
Click - click…
"Murray!"
"It wasn't me, sir."
He didn't find out who the new offender was, for at that moment they all heard the smash of the internal airlock door crashing open. Shouts in Klingon, muffled by the shaft wall, were followed by the sound of falling bodies and what might have been a disruptor firing.
"Hey, Werner, I think they found your trico-triticale," called Nunez, as more thuds, and what were probably curses, sounded from the other side of the wall.
Precious minutes ticked by, accompanied by what sounded like barked instructions and low-intensity disruptor fire - presumably the Klingons' answer to the scattered seeds.
"Get ready," Scotty called, "They'll be coming through that wall at any..."
The side wall of the maintenance tunnel blew in with a deafening crash, and if the first Klingons through it had not slipped on another scattering of trico-triticale, they might have had the immediate upper hand. As it was, the Starfleet officers had an extra few seconds to gather their wits before Scotty yelled, "One!" and he and Nunez stood up together and fired.
"Two!" he yelled, ducking behind the bulwark as Hill and Murray stood and fired.
"Three!" Angelus and Ngaio's turn.
"One!" He stood with Nunez and fired at the Klingons coming through the gap in the wall, ducked before any of them could return fire, and yelled "Two!" then "Three!"
So far they had taken down every Klingon that came into the shaft, but Scotty knew it would not take them long to realise they needed to widen the gap in the wall. He counted off three more shots, then yelled "Four!" which was the cue for his first three lines of defence to move back while the next two officers stood up and fired. As the six of them ran through the first of the force-field generators, he shouted: "Cease fire! Force-field!"
He heard a snap and hum as the force-field was switched on, and turned to see the wall beyond it disintegrate, right next to where he'd been standing just moments before. He knew the warp nacelle that was now part of the main corridor on his left would prevent the Klingons blasting in any more of the side wall, but in any case the gap was wide enough now for them to come through half-a-dozen at a time.
A dozen, more, Klingons poured into the maintenance shaft and began to fire their disruptors at the force-field.
Scotty signalled to the Ensign at the back of the tunnel. "Now, Zhang!"
On cue, the sack above the Klingons' heads ripped open, and a split-second later the falling flour dust was ignited into a sheet of burning flames that engulfed everything on the other side of the force-field.
"Bloody hell!" Tony Hill's exclamation was an apt description of the scene in front of them, and Scotty sympathised with Murray, who covered her eyes and announced that she felt sick.
"Well, don't throw up on me," said Angelus, who was standing next to her - though he sounded equally shaken, and a moment later he put a hand on Murray's shoulder and added: "Will you be okay, Carol?"
She took a deep breath and nodded, though Scotty noticed she avoided looking along the tunnel. "Yeah. Them or us, right?"
"Right." Angelus looked across at Scotty. "And now we've really annoyed them."
Scotty nodded, pulling his gaze away from the piled bodies. "There are plenty more where they came from," he said, "They'll be regrouping now they know what they're up against, so make sure you're all ready when that force-field comes down." He took a spare power pack from the bulwark beside him, and pushed it into the phaser he'd been firing. "Four, five and six - fire on my mark," he said as he moved to stand behind the three designated firing positions.
The Klingons returned as the smoke cleared, and they stepped over the bodies of their comrades and fired their disruptors at the force-field screen. As it went down, the paired Starfleet engineers repeated the alternate fire routine till Scotty judged it too unsafe to continue and ordered them back behind the next force-field. This time though, the Klingons feinted a forward move, and the explosion of flour dust merely scorched the floor and walls of the tunnel. Disruptor fire caved the next force-field in seconds, and Scotty fired his own phaser and yelled for covering fire from Bulwark Ten as the technicians at Seven, Eight and Nine retreated.
"Ten" meant Rachel, and Zhang who was preparing to ignite the next flour-bomb, and it took Scotty a moment to realise that there was no phaser fire coming from that side of the tunnel. Tallamy went down with a scream before he reached the comparative safety of their position, and Hill ignored Angelus' warning cry to leave him, and ran to help. He took a disruptor bolt full in the chest, and fell across the threshold of the force-field frame.
"Dammit, I told you to fire!" Scotty yelled at Rachel, firing his own phaser with one hand and helping Angelus pull Hill toward them with the other. "Zhang, put the force-field up!"
"But Tallamy..."
"Now!"
The Klingons were so close that the lead one bounced off the force-field as it snapped on, but at least that meant that the next explosion of ignited carbohydrate was effective.
Scotty dropped to his knees and wiped his sleeve across his forehead.
"Hill's dead," he heard Angelus say, "Tallamy too."
"I know." He couldn't - dared not - think about that now. There were only three force-fields left between the Klingons and the control room, and he could hear gutteral orders already being issued to the next wave of warriors. With a supreme effort of will, he got back to his feet and looked around to see whether anyone else was hurt. Then he looked again. "Where's Rachel?"
Nobody answered, and no-one seemed able to meet his gaze. He checked the floor, fearing she was injured, but there was no sign of her. "Ensign Zhang," he said, "Where's Lieutenant Halton?"
Zhang stared at the floor, and it was Murray who answered. "Lieutenant Halton dropped her phaser," she said, "And ran."
Scotty stared at her as though she'd started speaking in Vulcan. "She wouldn't..."
"She did, sir." It was Nunez. "We all saw her. I'm sorry."
Scotty shook his head and turned away, leaning against the humming force-field frame. "I can't deal with it now," he managed, unsure of if he'd be able to deal with it at all, regardless of whether they got out of this mess or not. He pointed with his phaser at the next wave of Klingons who were gathering at the end of the tunnel, "We need to get back behind the next force-field. Nunez," he turned back to the Ensign, "Put your phaser on overload. Zhang - when I give the order, lower this screen. Nunez, throw the phaser when the force-field goes down, and get yourself back behind the next one with the rest of us. Ready?"
The concussion from the resulting explosion knocked them all off their feet, and futzed the force-field they'd retreated behind, forcing them further back up the tunnel toward the control room, and leaving only one more force-field screen between the Klingons and the engineers' hull-plating redoubt.
"Gods, they can't keep coming," said Angelus, as he shoved new power packs into his phasers, "Can they?"
As though in answer, the comms system beeped, and Scotty sent Nunez to climb over the redoubt wall to answer it. "This is Commander Korv," growled the voice that came over the speakers, "You fight like cornered Quatlh, human pugh, but know this: the Quatlh is always slaughtered in the end. You may have overcome our trainees and cadets - but now we will ready our elite warriors to finish you. Surrender now, and I will give you a quick and painless death." There was a pause, as though he expected a reply, then: "You have three of your minutes to decide."
"He wants to finish it quickly," Angelus interpreted, "Why?"
"Do you think maybe the Sherman's coming?" said Zhang, voicing a hope that Scotty hardly dared contemplate.
"Maybe," he said, "What it does mean is that we have two minutes and forty-five seconds to sort out our next move." He checked his phasers were charged up and put them back on his belt to give himself a moment to think. "I want us all in the control room now, behind the redoubt. Zhang, you can control the force-fields from there?"
"Yes, sir,"
"Get the last one working, and see if you can coax any of the others out of retirement. Lieutenant Angelus - now's the time for you to man the controls for your Klingon Harvester, I think? The rest of you - grab all the spare phaser power packs and the phaser rifles and get behind the redoubt." He looked over the hull-plates toward the door to the Staff quarters, then met Angelus' steady gaze. "I'll be back," he said.
He knew he didn't need to tell anyone where he was going.
=======================
He found Rachel in his temporary quarters, sitting on the unmade bed, her knees drawn up to her chest and her face hidden. She looked up as she heard the door open, terror on her features, and he realised she thought the Klingons had broken through.
He halted, halfway across the room, and folded his arms. “You ran.” Strange, he thought, that his voice sounded so calm and measured. But then, he wasn’t so much angry as disappointed.
“Of course I bloody ran!” She scrambled off the bed and stood up, taking a few paces toward him. “I was scared witless!”
“So was everyone else. Including me. If we’d all run, we’d be dead right now. Just like Hill and Tallamy.”
She gasped, and he realised she had not even known that the two men had been killed. “It wasn’t my fault!”
Scotty thought it probably was, but she was crying, and he couldn’t bring himself to actually say so. In any case, it wasn’t his place to judge - it would be for a Court Martial to decide the rights and wrongs, and apportion any blame. Assuming that any of them lived that long. “You deserted your post. In the face of the enemy.” He felt torn up inside, but it had to be said. “You know what that means?”
“It wasn’t my fault!” she repeated, and he wondered whether she was trying to convince herself or him. “I wasn’t trained for this!” She pointed toward the control room, “This… hand-to-hand combat stuff! It’s security’s job!”
“But they’re not here, are they, Lieutenant? We are!” He realised he’d raised his voice, and willed himself to return to a more reasonable tone. “Rachel, a good engineer should always be able to improvise, whatever the situation.”
“Even if we’re just about to die?”
He nodded. “Especially if we’re just about to die.”
He watched as she scrubbed the tears from her face and pushed back her hair, wondering if he had ever really known her at all. Rachel moved closer to him and rested a hand on his folded arms. “Please Scotty - don’t look at me like that!”
“You’re a Starfleet Officer,” he reminded her, “And you… ran.” He shook his head, and made to pull away, but she gripped his wrist and slid her arms around him as he hesitated.
“Don’t hate me,” she said, “I couldn’t bear it.”
“I don’t hate you,” he said. He held her tight, making a conscious effort to commit to memory the warmth of her body against his, the way she breathed, the scent of her hair, and the exact shade of blue in her eyes. Then he pushed her away, holding on to her hands as he went on: “I love you. But I expect I’ll get over it. Given time.”
He let her go, turned around and walked back to the control room redoubt. Just before the door slid shut he could hear her begin to sob.
=======================
Maybe the others had decided there were more important things to worry about. Maybe it was the look on his face as he picked up the one remaining phaser rifle and adjusted its setting to ‘kill’. Either way, no-one saw fit to ask Scotty about Lieutenant Halton as he took his place behind the trititanium plates of their redoubt. “Report,” he said to Angelus, while he looked around to see for himself what the situation was.
Angelus had stationed himself and Zhang at the console, and had put an internal view of the maintenance shaft up on the main viewscreen. “Ensign Zhang has managed to get two more force-fields back on line, giving us three altogether. The Klingon Harvester is on stand-by, and I can switch it on as soon as they start moving past it. There are also two more flour bombs in the shaft that we haven’t used yet. It will take them a little time to get past that lot.”
Scotty nodded, his eyes fixed on the Klingons he could see on the screen, grouping at the far end of the maintenance shaft. They too were now armed with some kind of rifle, and he was sure that the resulting battle was going to be short and bloody. Still, given that he’d just had his heart ripped out and stamped on, perhaps they’d be doing him a favour.
The Klingons began to advance up the tunnel toward them, disposing of the first force-field screen with no more than a couple of shots from their disruptor rifles, and Scotty turned to Angelus. “At your discretion, Simon.”
The spinning blades descended from the tunnel roof and emerged from two side-tunnels. Scotty couldn’t see how many Klingons they actually killed before a barrage of disruptor fire disintegrated them, but the tunnel walls were smeared crimson for fifty yards, and he counted five Klingons retreating back to their ship with limbs missing.
“Ew, Gods, is it okay to look?” Murray had crouched down and covered her eyes when she heard Scott’s order, though she still looked queasy as she looked up at him.
“Pull the view back, Simon - we need to see this end of the tunnel now anyway,” he said, extending a hand to help haul Murray back to her feet. “Them or us, Carol, remember?” he said, quietly.
“I remember - but if I didn’t have a problem with the sight of blood, I’d have gone into medicine,” she replied, checking her phasers and carefully not looking at the viewscreen.
“They’ve got wise to the flour,” said Nunez, watching the monitor as the Klingons fired disruptors at the tunnel roof to set off the explosions from a safe distance.
“That’s it then,” said Ngaio, as the penultimate force-field flickered and died and the warriors marched on, “Here they come.”
=======================
Scotty had hoped that the Klingons would emerge from the control room end of the tunnel in manageable numbers, but instead they had blown out a section of wall leading in to the main corridor, and were now coming at them from two directions - the shaft entrance, and the main door. Bits of ceiling were falling around him, the smell of blood and singed clothing filled the air, and the sound of weapons fire whined in his ears. His entire existence had now been distilled into two simple actions: ‘aim’ and ‘fire’, and he did them repeatedly, seeing Klingons go down as he pulled the trigger, only to see more take their place. Sooner or later, he knew, they would bring up a disruptor cannon, or a percussion grenade, and that would be the end of him and everyone standing with him.
But in the meantime, he had a job to do: stay alive.
So he aimed again, and fired.
The wall panel to his left disintegrated as it was hit by disruptor fire, showering shards of metal across the defences, and hurling Reinhardt, who was closest to it, into Scotty, knocking him over.
“Werner!” Scotty rolled to his knees and, seeing Angelus step forward from the console to snatch up the dropped phaser rifle, took a moment to check on Reinhardt. The young technician’s jersey was shredded, his left arm was covered in blood, and there were metal shards in his shoulder. Scotty pulled off his own jersey and wound it around Reinhardt’s upper arm, even though he knew the gesture was probably futile since they would all be dead in a few minutes anyway.
“Give me a phaser,” said Reinhardt, “And prop me up against the console. I can fire when they try to come over the top.”
“Werner…”
“Please - I don’t want to just lie here and get shot.”
It was only a few yards to the base of the console, though Scotty was sure that every inch of it was agony for Reinhardt. Handing him one of his own phasers, and with a brief word to the technician to hang in there, Scotty pulled the second phaser pistol from his belt, checked the charge and stood up.
And then suddenly the Klingons stopped. Scotty could see them in the corridor and the maintenance shaft, scores of them, but they weren’t moving forward any more.
“What are they waiting for?” Reinhardt said, in the sudden silence.
“Their Captain maybe,” suggested Angelus, “He probably wants to lead the final assault himself.”
The comm whistled, and Scotty strode to it, switched it on and said: “If you think we’re going to surrender, you ghuy’cha’, you can…”
“Belay that, Lieutenant Scott.”
“Commander Nogura?” Scotty could see his own astonished smile of relief reflected on every human face in the room. “Och, it’s good to hear you sir!”
“Stand by to lower your screens, Lieutenant. We have a heavy cruiser off our port bow ready to see that the Klingons get home safely - and we will be within transporter range in ten minutes.”
=======================
They were already wheeling Reinhardt out of the door in the direction of sickbay when the transporter room solidified in front of Scotty. Seeing Nogura waiting by the transporter console, he waited for the other five officers to step off the padds ahead of him then, as the medical team began to fuss round them, he moved forward to hand the XO a copy of the station’s log, pulled from the central console just before he beamed up.
“I’m sorry, sir. We made a bit of a mess down there. I can’t guarantee that all the station supplies and materiél are undamaged.”
Off to his right, he heard the transporter room door hiss open as medical staff ushered their charges out, and he caught a muttered “Two entire nacelles? Geez…!” before the door closed again.
“Commander, I need to get this man to sickbay,” Scotty heard Doctor Piper say, before Nogura could say anything - though it wasn’t till Piper put a hand on his arm that he realised the CMO was referring to him.
“I’m alright, Doctor.” Scotty held up a hand, which was coated in Reinhardt’s blood. “This isn’t mine.”
“Maybe not, but that stuff all over your face is.” Piper reached up, brushed Scotty’s fringe aside and gave a grunt. “You’ve got a cut right across here, and there’s a metal splinter still in it. Damnation, now it’s bleeding again! Do as you’re told, Lieutenant. Sickbay.”
“But I’m supposed to report to the Captain. Regulations state…”
“Regulations be hanged.” Nogura held up the tape Scotty had given him. “The Captain and I will need some time to review this before you make your report, Scott. In any case…” He looked Scotty up and down “…you’re improperly dressed. Now cut along to Sickbay and get yourself cleaned up. Report to me in an hour for debrief.”
“Yes, sir.” Scotty turned to go, but halted mid-step when he caught sight of the ship on the external monitor screen. He forgot Nogura, Doctor Piper, and the blood running down his face. For a moment, he forgot to breathe. “A Constitution-class starship,” he sighed, “I’ve only ever seen them on schematics. She’s…” He reached a hand toward the monitor screen as though he could reach out and touch the other ship. “She’s beautiful.”
“She’s the Enterprise,” said Nogura, and Scott read in the Commander’s face that he understood exactly why the engineer had been stopped in his tracks “And she’s going to escort the Klingons back to their own border, so take a good look. It may be a while before you see her like again.”
“Maybe one day I’ll see her from the inside,” said Scotty, dreamily.
“Goddammit, Lieutenant, am I going to have to carry you to sickbay?”
“What? Oh, yes, Doctor, sorry.”
He let Piper guide him toward the door, but it seemed Nogura hadn’t finished. “Oh, Scott?”
“Commander?”
Nogura gave him a nod that hinted at respect. “There aren’t too many officers who could have done what you did today.” He glanced at the external monitor, his face thoughtful, then back at Scotty. “You might just have what it takes, Lieutenant. But for now, while you’re in sickbay? - get that haircut.”
This time, Scotty understood. In the end, it all came down to discipline. He returned the XO’s nod in kind. “Yes, sir.”
=======================
Stardate 1324.6
The electrical hum of the Jeffries Tube on Deck 12 was still mocking him, but this time Scotty had it on the run. He prised off the rogue cover, threw it down the Jeffries Tube into the corridor, and slid a new cover into place, then lay back and closed his eyes, listening to the sound of perfection.
“Hey, Scotty?”
He opened his eyes and slid out of the Tube, collecting the imperfect cover from the floor as he saw Sulu and Uhura approaching.
“We’re en route back to earth,” said Sulu, “ETA half-an-hour. We came to invite you for a drink - celebrate my transfer to Helm.”
“That is - if you’ve exorcised the ghosts in the machine?” said Uhura.
Scotty handed her the sensor array cover as he fell into step beside them. “I’ve got the Jeffries Tube humming like a choir,” he said. “But the ghosts in the machine?” He looked back over his shoulder as they reached the turbolift. “Those, I have to live with.”