Work Text:
“Lieutenant!” Uhura waved her hands above her head, trying to distinguish herself in the daily hustle and bustle of people hurrying through the main shuttle departure station at Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco. “Lt. Heisenberg!”
At last the young, floppy brown haired lieutenant caught sight of her standing by the Galileo shuttlecraft.
“Commander Uhura…sorry it took me so long to get here.” Heisenberg answered quickly in an apologetic greeting. “I only received your com message a few hours ago.”
“It’s okay, Scott. I wasn’t expecting you to show up within the first hour of my signal. You were on shore leave.”
“I had to catch the late night trans-Atlantic shuttle. I barely made it to the station before the departure time.” Heisenberg grinned a little bit, his cheeks flushing as he remembered the excitement of the last few hours, the rush through towns and hamlets to get to his destination point, the surge of pride that he had felt when he had realized that he, Scott Heisenberg of Boring, Oregon, was now deemed important enough to be summoned by Starfleet for duty while he was on shore leave. “Boy was the conductor mad at me for hopping on at the last second…”
“Trans-Atlantic shuttle?” Uhura smiled politely, trying to remember that she needed to be patient with the enthusiastic engineer. “If I’d known that you’d been in Europe, I would have waited until it was morning there to signal you. Where’d you go?”
“Norway,” Heisenberg answered as he started throwing his bags into the cargo storage section of the Galileo.
“In mid-September?” Uhura helped him to stow the rest of his gear. “No offense, Lieutenant, but that seems a little crazy. Isn’t it already starting to get cold there?”
Heisenberg secured the last of his bags in the compartment and then sealed the shuttle door behind them. “Actually Hell’s still pretty warm this time of year, Commander.”
“Excuse me?” Uhura exclaimed, startled by the young man’s bluntness.
“Hell, Norway. That’s the name of the town that I went to…you know, for their annual blues music festival?” Heisenberg gave Uhura a nervous sideways glance. “You didn’t think that…that I was making a vulgar joke, did you?”
Uhura gave him a quick, reassuring wave of her hand. “No, of course not.”
Heisenberg straightened up, his body language taking on a pedantic air. “Did you know that in its everyday usage the word hell means ‘luck’ in Norwegian?”
“I’m a communications officer, Heisenberg,” Uhura responded dryly.
“Yes you are…” The façade of the university professor that he had assumed evaporated. His shoulders slumped, suddenly deflated by his failed attempt at being witty with her, as if he were a blow up doll that had unexpectedly sprung a leak. “…so of course you did. Right. Sorry.”
She cleared her throat quietly, moving quickly towards the shuttle pilot’s chair. “Well, let’s get moving. Mr. Scott is expecting you.”
Heisenberg sat down in the other chair in the front of the shuttle’s cockpit. “I was meaning to ask you about that. My orders weren’t to report to Commander Scott until next week. That’s why I went on shore leave in the first place…”
“Yes, he’s sorry that he had to cancel your leave, but the shakedown cruise turned up a few more problems than anyone was expecting,” Uhura sighed in disgust as she flew the Galileo out of the departure station. The Enterprise-A was brand new (or so Starfleet had told them), but half of her systems didn’t work right, and the other half didn’t work at all. The entire situation was ridiculous. “And since the captain’s only about a fifth of the way through filling all of the crew positions, and since you’ve officially been appointed as Mr. Scott’s junior assistant chief engineer…”
Heisenberg nodded, understanding. “…the senior assistant chief engineer, whoever he or she is, volunteered me to give up my remaining shore leave over his or her own in order to help speed along the repairs.” He’d been drafted.
“In a nutshell, yes. I hope you’re not too put out about it,” Uhura said with a touch of sympathy. Just because Scotty preferred work over shore leave, it certainly did not mean that every engineer in Starfleet felt the same way – especially when it came to working under a mechanical genius like Scotty, who had established quite a reputation for himself throughout the fleet for the kind of gusto that he naturally expected out of his engineering team. It wasn’t easy to live up to the standards of a miracle worker.
“It’s fine, Commander.”
Uhura continued, unconvinced. Heisenberg was most likely just saying that in an attempt to get into her and Scotty’s good graces. “Mr. Scott assured me that the repairs would only take a week and a half. Two weeks tops. And it’ll probably take far less time than that in actuality, since he has a tendency to inflate repair time estimates.”
“It really is fine with me, ma’am.” He looked over at her, grinning like a well-meaning idiot…or at least like a well-meaning, but sweetly naïve, junior officer. “In my book, being on the Enterprise working is much better than being on shore leave in Hell.”
Uhura laughed, shaking her head now. “You and Mr. Scott are going to make quite the pair, I can see that already. Just try not to make the little people under you suffer too much.”
Heisenberg laughed for a few seconds, enjoying the playful banter, before his mood turned somber again. “But seriously, it’s like heaven for me to serve on a starship. I want to thank you for recommending me to the Captain for the position.”
“It was the least I could do after what happened that night, Lieutenant.”
“I guess. I mean, you did stick a phaser in my face, right?”
Uhura glanced over at him, her facial expression as serious as his own now. “The phaser might have been the catalyst, but you earned your spot on the Enterprise fair and square thanks to your own actions.”
“Commander, I walked backwards into a closet,” Heisenberg said sheepishly. “That’s all.”
“You did the right thing at the right time, Scott. It’s not always an easy thing to do, to ‘own the day,’ as the Klingons might say. Not everyone has the ability to seize the moment like that. When the time came you did, and it made a world of difference to the Captain, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy.” She smiled at him, a radiant beam of reassurance to calm his obvious case of the nerves. “You’ve got the talent. Now just work hard, stay in the Captain’s good graces, and you’ll do fine.”
-----
Heisenberg sat down on the edge of the transporter pad platform, taking a short break. He leaned forward over his legs and took a deep sniff of the air that wafted above the coffee mug in his hands, letting the scent of the hot beverage revive him. The sound from the red alert klaxon going off didn’t even prompt a reaction from him beyond the acknowledgement that the alarm was trilling loudly: given that they were in space dock, it was probably just some random bug in the ship’s security system.
He had never been so tired in his entire life. He, Mr. Scott, and a handful of engineering teams on loan to them from the Engineering Division of Starfleet Headquarters had been at it for three weeks now, making repairs on the ship. They’d fixed the glitches that they’d been having with the shield generators, the weapon systems, and the main deflector dish. They were making progress, without a doubt, but there were still a lot of problems that needed tending to – none of the transporters were working, communications were spotty at best, and the secondary computer processors kept developing computational faults, which made using ordinary things like the turbolifts a dodgy proposition.
He’d been working alone most of the time. The non-commissioned officers had taken to avoiding contact with him and Mr. Scott whenever possible, because running into one or both of them at the end a grueling eighteen hour day meant that they’d probably end up with one last errand to do before going off duty. When he had asked a random petty officer about the unusual behavior, the petty officer had explained that she was trying to prevent ‘getting a case of the Scotts’ – as if he and Mr. Scott together constituted some sort of sexually transmitted disease that was going around the ship!
Personally, he didn’t mind working alone; it kept his mouth from getting him into trouble. And he really liked the idea of being considered a natural extension of the Chief Engineer: together they were team Scott’n’Scotty. (Yes, he knew it should really be Scotty’n’Scott, but that didn’t roll as trippingly off of the tongue.)
The problems with the communications systems and the computer processors were minor in his eyes, but the transporters…it was a blow to his pride that he couldn’t track down the precise source (or sources) of the malfunctions. Junior assistant chief engineering officer was actually only his secondary position on the Enterprise. His primary duty on the ship was that of the head transporter chief. He was supposed to be an expert on these systems. And he was an expert on these systems, for crying out loud, but he was as stumped right now as a first year Academy cadet trying to operate the targeting scanners for the first time.
He had just turned back to his diagnostic equipment when Scotty entered the transporter room. “Any luck then, laddie?”
Heisenberg shook his head morosely. “None, sir. There’s some sort of power drain in the system. I can get the test cylinders through the molecular imaging scanner cycle and Heisenberg compensators without a hitch, but by the time I try sending the pattern through the matter stream so much energy has leached out of the system that the annular confinement beam loses integrity and the pattern disintegrates.” He ran a hand across a stubbly chin, scratching at the itchy hair growth. “I really can’t figure out where the problem is.”
Scotty looked at the repair and diagnostic equipment strewn haphazardly about the floor. From the chaotic spread of tools on display alone, he was quickly able to deduce all of things his new junior assistant had already tried. “That’s because you’re bein’ too traditional, Mr. Heisenberg.”
“Sir?”
“You’re treatin’ this transporter like a piece of equipment.” Scotty smiled wistfully. “But it’s not a compilation of hardware and software subroutines, laddie. This transporter is a lassie, and you’ve got to treat her as such. Ya canna just use the rulebook with her. Ya need to be creative with your touch if ya want her to respond back appreciatively.”
Of course! Throw out the rulebook and every Starfleet safety procedure in an attempt to get the transporters working again. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Heisenberg said sarcastically to himself. “Yes, sir. I’ll start devising something completely mad then, shall I?” Oh bugger, there went that mouth of his again! He bit down on his lower lip before he could say anything else that could be taken for insubordination to his new boss.
“Aye, mad – that’s the ticket, laddie. Find the right tool for the right job!”
Heisenberg sighed. Mad like a miracle worker, apparently. “Aye aye, sir.”
“But it’ll have to wait. Uhura’s taken the Galileo to Yosemite, and I’m going to need ya in the shuttle bay to help with landin’ procedures when the Captain and Mr. Spock return from their shore leave.” Scotty had turned and was already charging out the door. “Let’s go, Junior.”
Junior, as in Scotty Junior: it was the nickname that the repair teams had unofficially dubbed him with, and apparently Scotty had overheard it somewhere. ‘Junior’ might not be the coolest nickname in the world, but it was still a significant improvement over his previous epithet of ‘Mr. Adventure.’ Heisenberg dropped the hyper-spanner in his hand and quickly followed after his boss.
“So…the Captain and Mr. Spock went camping together in a national park?” He said off-handedly after he had caught up with the Chief Engineer. “That’s nice.”
“Dr. McCoy went with them too,” Scotty answered curtly, as though he was trying to deflect him away from a highly suspicious situation. “Nothin’ unusual about that.”
“Oh, no sir. Not at all,” Heisenberg said quickly. “I just meant that…well, everyone knows about the Captain’s reputation with women…so I guess I was just surprised that he didn’t pick someplace a little more urban for his shore leave.”
Like maybe Amsterdam’s Red Light District, for example.
Scotty stopped short in the hallway and stared his subordinate directly in the eye. “Would ya like a piece of friendly advice, laddie?”
“Ah…okay.”
“A bright young junior officer who has been newly promoted to full lieutenant and who is startin’ in a new postin’ on a starship would be wise not to be speculatin’ about his Captain’s behavior,” Scotty said sharply. “Captain Kirk is a very famous man who doesn’t like all the attention that fame brings him. It does him good to get away from the crowds and go to someplace quiet like Yosemite with a few of his closest friends. Where the Captain chooses to go on shore leave, and who goes with him, is not the concern of a junior assistant chief engineering officer. Your concern is the transporter room. Am I clear about that?”
Heisenberg swallowed anxiously as Scotty finished his lecture. “As transparent aluminum, sir.”
“Good.” With that question of propriety cleared up, Scotty went charging down the corridor again, leaving a startled Heisenberg behind in his dust. “Well come along then, Junior. Let’s not be waitin’ for the dilithium to decrystalize. Move with a sense of urgency!”
Heisenberg took off at a half-run, his heart racing with excitement in his chest as he wondered if the pace of life on the Enterprise was always going to be this frenzied. “Aye, sir!”
-----
Jim flew impatiently down the steps that two crewmen had set down in front of the Galileo’s side egress, still annoyed that he’d been forced to return to his ship on a shuttlecraft instead of using the much faster transporter system. He glanced back over his shoulder at one of the two crewmen, giving him a hard stare of disapproval.
The lieutenant in question had a rather disheveled appearance: his uniform was wrinkled and soiled with dirt and sweat, his face was unshaven, and there were dark bags of exhaustion under his eyes. God only knew when that junior officer had slept or ate last…or showered for that matter, based on his oily appearance and noticeable body odor.
Say, wasn’t that officer that Mr. Adventure that Uhura had recommended to him? What had been his real name again? Hausburgher, wasn’t it? The one that was responsible for his ship’s transporters? The transporters that weren’t currently working?
Well, whatever. There wasn’t time for him to demand an explanation from some new faced red shirt. He turned his attention back ahead of him, saw Scotty approaching from the control room.
“All I can say is that they don’t make them like they used to,” Scotty quipped amiably at him for a greeting.
Jim adjusted the camping gear that he was carrying over his shoulder, shifting the bulky weight around. “You told me you could have this ship operational in two weeks. I gave you three!” He pointed a finger accusingly at his Chief Engineer, half scolding and half teasing the miracle worker. “What happened?”
Scotty grinned, taking the question for the joke that it was meant to be. “I think you gave me too much time, Captain.” He shook his head slightly, his attention already moving back to the repairs that his lassie needed. Oh those starship captains – so impatient, just like little children. Everything was ‘now, now, now’ with them.
Jim walked into the turbolift. “Very well, Mr. Scott, carry on.”
“Aye, sir.” Scotty turned, raised his voice over the sound of a loud metallic pounding that was coming from one end of the shuttle bay. “How many times do I have to tell you: the right tool for the right job!” He shook a power decoupler over his head.
McCoy laughed as he entered the turbolift behind Jim. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier…”
“Le-uh-le-uh-level?” The computer stuttered as the turbolift doors closed behind Spock.
Oh boy…Jim sighed to himself. “Bridge.” This was going to be a fun mission: ‘fun’ in quotations, of course. He could tell already.
“I could use a shower,” Jim said quietly, playfully, at his bondmate as the turbolift started humming.
“Yes,” Spock answered, demure as ever when it came to crafting a public response to his bondmate’s physical demands. It was one of their little traditions, having sex at the start of each new mission. Jim always told him that it was for ‘good luck.’
Completely illogical, of course, but there was no point in arguing with tradition.
McCoy rolled his eyes at the superficial attempt at subterfuge that was going on between the two men. Jim and Spock didn’t need to act all coy around him. He’d been their bloody best man at that confounded secret Vulcan wedding ceremony of theirs, after all! Why exactly did he hang out with these two idiots again?
-----
One look. One backwards look over his commanding officer’s shoulder. One quick, backwards look directed at him, Scott Heisenberg, which had told him that he had officially landed himself on his Captain’s shit list.
Almost twenty-four hours later, and he was still feeling the burn from that look on his freshly shaven face. And deservedly so! He was on the Enterprise to operate the ship’s transporters, but those idiotic contraptions still weren’t working due to the mysterious power drain.
The deck plating shook beneath him as the ship jumped into warp. He steadied himself with a hand as he worked on one of the secondary power relays in a corridor junction near the shuttle bay.
A quiet sigh. His career on a starship had been short, but memorable: he’d gotten to visit a strange new world, at least. He hadn’t gotten to step on Nimbus III, of course, but he had seen it out the window. And he’d successfully avoided some angry Klingons now too! That was pretty good; certainly not your average, run-of-the-mill day in Starfleet. He’d have a good story to tell later to anyone who would be willing to listen.
But he was already anticipating the transfer orders that were going send him back into oblivion. After all, why shouldn’t the Captain transfer him? He might have gotten onto the Enterprise because the Captain had claimed he owed him a favor, but that wasn’t reason enough to keep him there. He was failing miserably to uphold his primary duty, no more useful at the moment than any other nameless red shirt – the ship’s newest Lieutenant Dunsel.
An ignominious fate for the late Mr. Adventure. So much for Team Scott’n’Scotty.
“You there!” shouted a gruff voice. “Engineering lackey!”
Engineering lackey? A surge of anger coursed through Heisenberg’s veins. Who on the ship had the nerve to be so rude? He was a full lieutenant, and he was still the junior assistant chief engineering officer at present, and therefore deserving of at least a modicum of respect from his crewmates!
He began to stand up, turning away from the open maintenance junction and the secondary power relays that had been giving him a headache, determined to give whoever it was a piece of his mind. And found himself face-to-face with a phaser that was directed squarely between his eyes by an ugly bald man with bad teeth.
“Show us the way to the brig,” the bald man demanded of him. Dear God, but did that guy’s breath stink!
He finished standing up slowly, carefully, with his hands raised above his head. What a disturbingly familiar pattern this was becoming in his career… “Okay, okay!”
And that was when he looked behind the dog-faced baldy and saw that the Captain, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy were there too, and under guard by some equally rough-shod looking men. The Captain, under arrest? The legendarily resourceful Capt. Kirk, outwitted on his own ship? It didn’t seem possible. It couldn’t be possible.
Who were these hooligans?
And he, Scott Heisenberg, was the one who was going to lead these bandits…these terrorists…to the brig. They were going to make him put his own Captain in the brig. If he hadn’t been on Kirk’s shit list before, he certainly was now. But what could he do differently? If he tried to fight his captors, he’d only get himself phasered for his troubles. He knew that Kirk would want him to fight, to show some initiative. But there were too many men for them to overpower. It would never work. They’d just phaser him and get somebody else to lead them to the brig.
He started leading the group down the corridor, his hands still held up in the air as nervous perspiration rolled down the sides of his forehead.
“How are you, Lieutenant…?” Kirk asked quietly, fading off because he still couldn’t remember the name properly, and didn’t want to risk calling the engineering officer by the wrong name.
“Getting tired of having phasers pointed at me, sir,” Heisenberg answered back in a half-hearted attempt at levity. Then he rolled his eyes to himself, mentally kicking himself for his stupidity. Yes, brilliant. He was under arrest. The Captain and First Officer and Chief Medical Officer were under arrest. And his mouth thought that this was a good time to make a joke. Absolutely brilliant.
“No talking!” The bald man jabbed his phaser rifle into the small of his back.
He glanced back briefly over his shoulder, wondering how his commanding officer would react to his latest witticism.
Kirk was looking steamed. Rightly so. Hello shit list, nice to be on you. The Captain’s jaw was squarely set and there was a brilliant fire burning in his hazel eyes. But after a second, Heisenberg got the distinct feeling that, while Kirk was feeling some frustration with him, most of the Captain’s ire was actually being directly squarely at the ship’s First Officer. Yes, Capt. Kirk was clearly downright furious with Mr. Spock for some reason.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy stepped into the brig, helpless and at the mercy of their captors. Heisenberg made an apologetic gesture to the three senior officers as he initiated the security force field behind them.
The ugly bald man was looking at him again. “I’ve just locked the force field with a fractal encryption code. I wouldn’t try to disengage it.” A sickening smile formed itself around hideous teeth. “The results would be very nasty for anybody standing at the control station, if you catch my meaning.”
Heisenberg nodded. He understood. Oh boy, did he ever understand: fried death for the individual who entered the wrong code.
Kirk shot him a final angry glance before he left the brig: Fix this, Lieutenant!
“Now, why don’t you just get back to those repairs of yours, son?” suggested baldy.
“I will, thanks!” Heisenberg said in a falsely cheerful voice, trying his best to sound like a stereotypically clueless and useless red shirt.
The man gave him a last, departing butt in the back with his phaser rifle.
He didn’t need any further encouragement to start running back the direction he had just come. But rather than going back to his repairs, he started desperately searching the corridors for somebody. Anybody who might be able to help him. He’d love to be able to use the ship’s communication system to get in contact with one of the ship’s other senior officers: Scotty or Uhura preferably, but he’d take Sulu or Chekov right now too, even though he had never met either man. But, seeing as how the Captain had been taken unawares by terrorists, it stood to reason that the bandits were crawling all over the ship, making the use of the ship’s communication system a very unwise idea.
He passed through another set of corridors, his search becoming more frantic. True, there was less than a skeleton crew aboard the Enterprise right now, but now, when he really needed somebody to be around, everybody seemed to have vanished, down to the last man!
Another corridor, another corner…and he almost ran head-on into Scotty. “Sir!” he squeaked in surprise.
The Chief Engineer raised a startled hand to his chest, covering his heart. “Heisenberg!” Scotty hissed back at him. “Keep your voice down, laddie!”
“Mr. Scott, I’m so glad that I found you.” Heisenberg smiled in relief, wiping a hand across his brow. “The Captain – he’s been locked in the brig. Along with Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy.”
“I know.”
“And we can’t get him out. The lock’s been encrypted. It would take forever to write a search algorithm to find the right fractal pattern.”
“I know that too.”
“Well,” Heisenberg implored in a dismayed fashion, “what are we going to do about it?”
“You’re going to go back to that secondary power conduit that you were repairing near the shuttle bay, and you’re going to overload it.”
“Sir?” he asked, terribly confused by his boss’s order. “I’ve been trying to correct that power flow for a whole day now. If I overload it, it will trip the circuit boards in the transporter room and fry most of the isolinear control chips. We’ll never get the transporters working again if that happens!”
“That’s a problem for a different time, laddie.” Scotty placed a comforting hand on his subordinate’s shoulder. “Right now I need you to overload that power conduit, so that when I crawl into the service area behind the brig, I’ll be able to safely set off a round of explosives that will destroy the rear wall without setting off a plasma fire that would regrettably incinerate our trapped senior officers and myself.”
“Aye, sir,” Heisenberg responded miserably. “One overloaded power conduit, coming right up.”
Man, was he ever on the Captain’s shit list.
-----
“Scotty,” came Uhura’s hushed voice over the intercom and down into the transporter room, “you’ve got to see this!”
“I don’t have the time,” said Scotty as he crawled out from under the transporter pad platform. “I promised the Captain I’d get this transporter working and I’m not about to let him down.”
The intercom went quiet, though Uhura kept the channel from the bridge to the transporter room open, so that way Scotty would be able to stay informed as to the happenings on the bridge.
“Alright, Junior, let’s try her again…”
“Aye, sir. Testing the power flow…” Heisenberg tapped in the appropriate diagnostic sequence into the control panel as he reviewed their situation to date:
Status update – they’d managed to free Kirk, Spock, and McCoy successfully from the brig…and had fried the isolinear control chips in the transporter room, as predicted. The ship was overrun by Mr. Spock’s half-brother, Sybok, and all of his nut-ball disciples. Crazy half-brother, that was. But hey, who didn’t have a crazy half-brother or two who had joined a fringe religious cult out there, Heisenberg asked himself as he adjusted one of the flow regulators.
Okay, nobody had a person like that in their family. Except, apparently, for Mr. Spock.
And this fanatic had taken the ship through the galactic energy barrier that existed at the center of the galaxy, and now they’d found a planet there, which Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Sybok were now exploring. A planet that shouldn’t exist circling a star that shouldn’t exist, because theoretical physics held that at the center of the Milky Way galaxy was a massive black hole, not a star system. So score one for fantasy, score nil for science on that one. And Sybok was claiming that this planet was a place called Sha Ka Ree, which Scotty told him was supposed to be equivalent to the mythical garden of Eden. So score two for fantasy, score still nil for science.
Science was having a really hard day today. Heisenberg could hardly believe the situation that he found himself in. There was only one way to properly describe their mission thus far: bat shit insane! Undeniably so.
Heisenberg grinned a little bit to himself. He’d always dreamed of going on a great, exciting adventure, and boy had Starfleet delivered on its promise to help him explore strange new worlds! He was in his element with all of this boldly going happening all around him. He was literally breathing in the heroics, drunk on the thrill of it all. Nothing could defeat him today…
…except for possibly the transporter systems. Together he and Scotty had replaced every single damaged isolinear chip. By every right and law of physics known to humankind, the transporters should be working. But they weren’t. They still had this power drain leaching through the annular confinement beam, which rendered the transporters completely useless. Science was having a really hard day today.
“Nothing, Mr. Scott.” Heisenberg pounded a fist into the control panel in frustration.
Scotty looked at the transporter bay, as though he were silently scolding the ship for misbehaving. “Oh lassie, dear bonnie lassie…you’re too fine a lady to be protestin’ like this.” He ran a hand over his mouth, the gears turning in his head. “Alright, Junior me lad, let’s cross circuit the primary power matrix with the secondary flow.”
“Mr. Scott, that’s completely unsafe!”
“Aye, but we’re gonna do it anyway, Heisenberg. Now snap to it.” Scotty clapped his hands in encouragement at his junior assistant.
Mad. This was all completely mad. The situation was mad, his boss was mad, what he was doing to the poor transporter room hardware was mad.
Ten minutes later, the sweat running down his face, the adrenaline rushing through his veins, Heisenberg finished making the last of the cross connections, just as the Captain signaled from the planet.
“Scotty,” Kirk’s voice crackled urgently through the intercom, “please tell me the transporters are working.”
Heisenberg nodded to his boss, silently signaling to him that he had finished his work. Scotty leaned over the control panel, checking the diagnostic screen. “She’s got partial power, sir. I might be able to take two of you.”
“Beam up Spock and Dr. McCoy. Now.”
The ship’s First Officer and Chief Medical Officer materialized on the transporter pad.
“Alright Mr. Scott,” said Spock as he stepped down from the platform, “now beam up the Captain.”
Suddenly the ship shook and a shower of sparks fell from the electromagnetic focusing units that hung from the ceiling above the individual pads. The senior officers ducked for cover, while Heisenberg was left cowering behind the control console.
Of all the moments of bad timing available to them in the universe, the Klingons had decided to pick that moment to show up and fire their disrupters on the Enterprise. The unfortunate result unexpected attack was a tragedy as far as Heisenberg was concerned: it had fried the cross circuiting between the primary and secondary power matrices. The transporters were down again.
Spock looked directly at Scotty and him, Lt. Scott Heisenberg. “Get those transporters back up, Mr. Scott. The Captain’s life depends on it.”
So, no pressure there or anything. Heisenberg swallowed down his nerves.
“I will be on the bridge…” Spock said superfluously. Because, you know, it wasn’t obvious to everyone in the room that was going to go to the bridge to try and get a handle on the situation.
Scotty nodded to Spock and McCoy as they left the transporter room, then looked somberly over at his assistant. “Well, that’s all she wrote. For all of Mr. Spock’s wishes, there’s nothing to be done. The Captain’s on his own now.”
Heisenberg ran his fingers through his messy brown hair, feeling like he’d somehow failed. No, scratch that. He’d failed for sure. He was the transporter chief, his Captain was in dire straits, and he couldn’t rescue him by beaming him out of there like it was his job to do. He leaned up against the wall, let his back slide down the matte gray surface, and sat down on the floor beneath one of the equipment supply shelves.
“Lt. Dunsel…” he muttered to himself, defeated, his eyes falling shut.
-----
Five minutes later, the ship shook again as the Klingons fired another shot at the Enterprise. Up on the bridge Spock and General Korrd had tried to negotiate with the Klingon commander, Klaa, for a cease fire…and Klaa quite obviously had not believed Spock and Korrd when they had told him Kirk was on the planet’s surface.
One of the Heisenberg compensators that had been sitting on the wall shelf fell from its precarious position as the ship quaked and hit poor Heisenberg right on the top of his head.
“Laddie,” Scotty asked him urgently as he helped him back up, “are ya alright?”
“Mr. Scott, I’ve got it!” Heisenberg shouted victoriously.
“Got what?” Scotty said while running his hands over Heisenberg’s head, checking for abrasions and blood.
Heisenberg batted his superior’s hands away from his scalp, and flapped his hands excitedly in the air around him like a human hummingbird. “The solution to our problem, sir!”
“What are ya talkin’ about, Junior?” Scotty frowned. Clearly Heisenberg had a concussion, or was in shock…either way, the young man clearly wasn’t thinking straight.
“I can get Mr. Spock and General Korrd over to that Klingon ship. The Klingon captain will have to listen to them once they’re over there. He’ll have to…”
“Laddie,” Scotty said, his concern for the young man growing. How hard had that piece of equipment hit him? Heisenberg was going on about beaming Spock and Korrd, when he should be thinking of a way to rescue Kirk from the planet’s surface. “The transporter power system is trashed, ya know that. There isna a way to fix it in time to make a difference. We couldna beam the Captain up, even if we wanted to.”
“Mr. Scott, only the transporter’s regular power system…the secondary system…is damaged. The primary one…the ship’s primary power from the warp drive – it’s still perfectly fine.”
“Aye, but the transporters canna draw from the primary system. The energy ratio coming from the warp plasma is tuned too high for the equipment.”
“Sir, if you go back to Main Engineering and adjust the power flow from there, I’ll be able to channel just the right amount of power from our warp engines to get the units operational again. You’re right: we can’t get the Captain by tying into the primary systems. We just wouldn’t have the range when we’re powering the units this way. But we would have the range to get Spock over to that Klingon ship, don’t you see?”
Scotty shook his head. He was impressed by his subordinate’s creative thinking, but there was still one major problem that they would have to tackle for any of this to work. “You’re forgettin’ about the Klingon shields. They’re still up; we canna beam through them.”
Heisenberg paced quickly back and forth in front of the transporter control panel. “Well…I’ll narrow the annular confinement beam and redirect it through the main deflector dish. If I can adjust the targeting scanners to pinpoint the weakest point on the Klingon shield grid, then I should be able to initiate transport if I can compress the data stream into a tight enough packet through the Heisenberg compensators!” He stopped pacing, a victorious look shining bright as the sun on his face.
Scotty’s jaw dropped open. “Laddie, are ya daft?” Nobody had ever tried anything like what Heisenberg was proposing. Hell, nobody had ever even theorized anything like what his junior assistant had just dreamed up. “Ya won’t be able to beam out Spock and Korrd with this stunt – but ya will blow up the entire transporter room, that much I can guarantee!”
Heisenberg looked his superior directly in the eye. “Sir, two days ago you told me that if I wanted the transporters to respond to me, I’d have to start treating them like a lady and start coming up with solutions that were completely mad.”
Heisenberg grinned, licked his lower lip. Mad like a miracle worker. “Sir, we’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying this. It’ll work because it’s so completely barking mad. This ship, Mr. Scott…our lady – she loves excitement, and this is about as exciting as it’s ever going to get. I’m sure that it’ll work!”
He had never been so sure of anything in his entire life. Science said that it would never work, but then again science was having the worst day of its existence. Fantasy, on the other hand, was having one hell of a once-in-a-lifetime kind of moment. Heisenberg clapped his hands on Scotty’s shoulders and spun him towards the door. Time was of the essence. “Go Mr. Scott! Move with a sense of urgency!”
-----
Up on the bridge, Uhura monitored the line that was opened down to the transporter room. “Transport…successful.” She reported her news, stunned, to Commander Chekov, who had been left in command.
Chekov sighed in relief. “Vell done, transporter room. Wery vell done indeed.”
The sound of a loud explosion ripped through the intercom.
Chekov straightened back up, having flinched instinctively at the noise. “Transporter room?”
Uhura tapped at the controls of her console. “Lt. Heisenberg, are you there?” No response. “Scott!” She shouted into the intercom, the picture of a red shirt’s mangled and exploded body parts coming into her mind. Oh God, they’d killed another one…
-----
Using the manual release hand tool, Scotty managed to force open the doors to the transporter room once the fire suppression system had deactivated itself. Smoke poured into the corridor, but the fire had been put completely out. “Laddie!”
McCoy rushed into the transporter room first, his med kit in hand, but he highly doubted that there was going to be anyone or anything left to treat. The transporter bay had been completely demolished by the explosions that had ricocheted through the room. The transporter control console was lying in three separate hissing pieces on the floor, destroyed when the surges from the warp engines had overloaded the system. There was a mountain of rubble where a wall once stood that had separated the transporter room from the auxiliary equipment storage locker. And there was no sign anywhere that he could see of Heisenberg, not even a separated limb.
Scotty dove into the room too, waving his hand in front of his face, coughing as the smoke in the room burned his lungs. He went immediately over to the mountain of rubble laid and leaned down. “Dr. McCoy, over here!”
The two men started shifting rubble, throwing it every which way…because sure enough, Lt. Heisenberg was buried under the ruined remains of the locker wall, and was still alive and somehow conscious. Scotty knelt down, gently cradling his hands under Heisenberg’s head while McCoy scanned him with his medical tricorder. “Laddie, are ya alright?”
A faint grin came to Heisenberg’s face. He coughed a few times, spitting up a small amount of blood. “That was awesome!”
McCoy pressed a hypo filled to the brim with painkillers to the injured red shirt’s neck. “Son, you have some serious thrill issues. We’re going to have a few counseling sessions, you and I, once you get back on your feet.”
Scotty brushed off some of the debris that still laid on Heisenberg's torn and bloodied uniform. "How did you survive?"
Heisenberg coughed again. More blood. "Simple, sir. After I initiated the transporter cycle, I ran to hide in the closet like any sensible man would have done."
-----
Two sets of uniforms were strewn every which way around the floor in Jim’s quarters. The second that Jim and Spock had returned to the Enterprise from the Klingon ship, Jim had pulled Spock urgently by the hand through the decks and gone immediately to his quarters.
Bridge? What bridge? Situation report from Chekov? Overrated. Chekov could handle pretty much anything at this point in his own career. And Jim knew that the ship was fine. He was here, on her, wasn’t he? So the only logical place to go was to his quarters, his husband in tow behind him. There was nothing in the universe like escaping from a life threatening situation to get him all riled up and in need of some serious fucking.
Panting and gasping after a third climax, Jim wrapped his arms around the naked form of his bondmate, and pressed his lips once again against Spock’s. “Have I mentioned today that I love you?”
Spock sighed contentedly as Jim proceeded to spoon him. His brown eyes looked around his spouse’s quarters, which they’d half demolished in the process of their latest sexual interlude. Well, maybe not half demolished, but the damage was considerable. “Yes, several times as a matter of fact. The last occurrence was 27.6 seconds ago, as you experienced orgasm.”
“And have I thanked you for saving my ass on the planet?”
“Yes, but I cannot claim the entire responsibility of your rescue.”
Jim rolled his eyes, feeling suddenly annoyed at his husband. “If you think that I’m going to thank Gen. Korrd and his imbecile subordinate Capt. Klaa, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Fucking Klingons. They were nothing but a set of intergalactic criminals, every single last one of them…
“T’hy’la, whether you want to acknowledge the truth or not, you would not be laying here in this bed without the assistance which the Klingons rendered to us today,” Spock said patiently.
Jim folded his arms stubbornly across his chest.
Spock rolled over, so that he could look his bondmate in the face. “And there is one other individual to whom we are both greatly indebted. Without his bravery, it would not have even been possible for myself and Gen. Korrd to speak with Capt. Klaa in person in the first place.”
Jim studied his spouse’s serene face intently with his hazel eyes. “Oh yeah? And who might that be?”
“I believe his name to be Lt. Scott Heisenberg.”
Jim’s jaw fell slack. “Mr. Adventure?”
Spock stared back blankly at his bondmate, unsure how to react to Jim’s statement.
Jim started laughing. Of all the unlikely people in the universe, it was the shy, nervous, and retiring Mr. Adventure of Boring, Oregon who had helped to save his and Spock’s skin. Twice. “Well, how are we going to reward our studious transporter chief?”
-----
Having been released from sickbay, Heisenberg stood proudly to one side in the ship’s observation lounge. The Captain had just finished pinning a shining red triangle pin to his chest: the Starfleet Citation for Conspicuous Gallantry.
After Kirk and Spock had each offered him their words of praise and moved on to speak with other officers gathered in the observation lounge, Scotty and Uhura drifted over to him. Uhura extended a glass of champagne to him. “Congratulations, Lieutenant. Your award is well earned.”
Heisenberg grinned, accepting the champagne flute. “Thanks, ma’am. I’m just glad that Dr. McCoy let me out of sickbay in time for the Captain to give it to me at the reception.” He gestured towards the numerous Klingons who were intermingling with members of the Enterprise crew. His Academy friends were never going to believe him when he told them about this! Hobnobbing with Klingons: that was something that nobody else in his graduating class had ever done before. “I would have been terribly disappointed to miss this. I still can’t believe that the Captain decided to host this little get together!”
Uhura just smiled at the young officer. She knew perfectly well how her commanding officer reviled anything and everything to do with the Klingons. And on a normal day, he’d never let a Klingon onto his ship, even if his pants were literally set on fire and letting the Klingons come over was the only was to extinguish the flames. Kirk would much rather have his ass burned to a smoldering crisp. It was so sweet that the still innocent Lieutenant hadn’t made the connection that Kirk had invited the Klingons over just for his sake, because the Captain knew that seeing Klingons in person would make Heisenberg practically pee himself in excitement.
“Aye, it is pretty amazing,” Scotty chuckled to himself. “And the day isn’t done for you yet, Laddie.”
Heisenberg’s eyebrows lifted, giving his boss a questioning glance. “Sir?”
Scotty held out his free hand. “How does Lieutenant Commander Scott Heisenberg sound to you?”
Heisenberg blinked several times. Had he heard that right? He was getting a promotion? He’d only been promoted to full lieutenant a month ago, and now his new starship’s Chief Engineer was giving him another promotion?
Uhura giggled quietly, and leaned over to whisper into the Scotsman’s ear. “I think he’s gone into shock again, Scotty. Should I summon Dr. McCoy?”
At last Heisenberg was able to collect enough of his scattered wits to shake Scotty’s hand. “That…that sounds really good to me, sir.”
Scotty nodded at the man whom the enlisted personnel had teasingly dubbed ‘Scotty Junior,’ giving his namesake a firm handshake and a look of fond approval. “The rank is appropriate, since you’re to be the ship’s new senior assistant chief engineering officer.”
“I…I re-really don’t know what to say,” Heisenberg responded, now stuttering in his excitement. “But what about the old senior assistant?”
“Ya mean the one who decided to send ya to the ship instead of coming himself when I needed help with all those repairs in space dock?” Scotty released his subordinate’s hand. “He would be the ship’s new junior assistant chief engineering officer. There’s a lot he needs to learn from your example about showing up to work with a smile when you’re needed.”
Heisenberg nodded happily, overwhelmed by the sheer joy of this day. He’d gone to a strange new world, survived a battle with the Klingons, and received an award for meritorious conduct and a promotion to boot. The only dream he hadn’t managed to fulfill today was banging a really hot alien chick, and at this point he wasn’t expecting the universe to provide him one on a silver platter. Torrid alien sex could wait for another day…
He smiled humbly. “I hope you don’t mind the fact that you’re going to be missing your new senior assistant for a few weeks, do you, Mr. Scott? Dr. McCoy has put me on temporary medical leave in order to recuperate.”
Scotty smirked at him. “I promise I’ll wait until you’re back before we start tackling the damage that you’ve caused to the transporter room. I know how much ya like working with those systems.”
“Oh…you really don’t have to do that just for me, sir.”
“I do, laddie. I really do.”
“So Scott,” Uhura asked politely, “are you going back to Norway for your medical leave?”
Heisenberg shook his head once. “No, Hell’s frozen over.”
Uhura coughed, choking a bit on the sip of champagne she had been taking.
“The town got hit by a freak blizzard,” Heisenberg explained quickly. “Besides, I didn’t really like how the musicians played the blues there all that much.”
Scotty picked up the questioning where Uhura had left off, since she was still trying to regain her breath. “So where have ya decided to go then?”
The gaze of Heisenberg’s eyes drifted over to the doors of the observation lounge. The most amazing Klingon female he had ever seen had entered the room just ahead of Chekov and Sulu. She was the only Klingon female he had ever seen, but there could be no doubt that she was the most exquisite Klingon female in existence. Look at the size of the muscles in her arms!
“Laddie?”
Heisenberg finally managed to tear his eyes away from the figure of that captivating woman. “Oh…ummm…Fucking.”
There was a stunned silence where there should have been some kind of response from one or both of his superior officers. Heisenberg glanced at Scotty and Uhura, read the looks of surprise that were present on both of their faces. “Fucking…it’s a scenic little hamlet in northern Austria…for the early winter skiing season? You’ve never heard of it?”
Scotty and Uhura just shook their heads at him.
“Oh. Right then.” Heisenberg took a sip of champagne as his ears turned a distinctive fuchsia in color.
“Pardon me…” said a strong sounding female voice, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had just befallen their small little gathering. “…but I was told that the individual responsible for beaming the General and your First Officer to my ship could be found in this room.”
Heisenberg looked up from his champagne flute, his eyes practically bugging out of his head. The Klingon female that he’d been ogling was now standing right in front of him.
Uhura smiled politely. “Yes, he can be. Who wants to know?”
“That would be me.” The woman bowed her head slightly. “Commander Vixis, First Officer of the IKS Okrona.”
Scotty gestured towards his subordinate. “Then here is the man that you’re looking for: Lt. Scott Heisenberg, Transporter Chief of the USS Enterprise.”
“You?” Vixis looked appraisingly at the diminutive, skinny, pale faced man with the floppy brown hair and bright red ears who stood in front of her.
“Me,” Heisenberg managed to half-croak out loud after a few wild beatings of his heart.
Vixis nodded, and smiled a bit, which was pretty terrifying for Heisenberg to see. Those sharp Klingon teeth were something else. “I would really like to know how you managed to send a transporter beam through my ship’s shields. If we could go somewhere more private?” Vixis gestured towards the doors leading out of the observation lounge.
“Uh, sure. I could tell you about that. I don’t think that the Captain’s classified that information…”
Vixis turned, heading without another word towards the exit.
Uhura gently shoved Heisenberg in the direction that the Klingon female had gone. “Go, Mr. Heisenberg. Enjoy Austria for us.”
Scotty gave Uhura an amused wink, as both of them had heard plenty of rumors over the years about the rigors of Klingon sexual practices. “We’ll alert Dr. McCoy in sickbay to be expecting ya afterwards.”
“Ya know,” Scotty said to Uhura after Heisenberg had drifted out, dazed, from the observation lounge, “I feel a little bad that we didn’t warn him about what to be expectin’ from her.”
Uhura waved a hand dismissively in the air. “Don’t worry, Scotty. He can handle it. He is Mr. Adventure, after all.”
-----