Fic:: Boat Song [Star Trek reboot]

[raven]

thistlerose is running a Scotty fest, because Scotty is amazing and much under-appreciated, probably because, as she puts it, he's always in Engineering making sure the ship doesn't explode.

This is my contribution. An unsurprising amount of it was shimgray's idea.

Fic:: Boat Song
by Raven
PG, Star Trek (reboot), gen, 1200 words. Why Montgomery Scott is sitting on the edge of a pier at eleven pm on a day on which he has thrown up not less than fourteen times, being barked at by seals.

---

It's been one hundred years since Earth's sub-planetary sovereigns finally conceded most of their power to the world government. It was a slow process, evolution not revolution as the textbooks say, and the celebration is accordingly muted; some celebratory addresses by notable leaders, special editions of a few political science journals, and some new initiatives that come in laminated brochures and on shiny touchscreens: witness "Let's Connect: A Final Push", expanding the availability of transporter technology to the last few million of the Earth's inhabitants. All of which goes to explain, in some distant and getting-increasingly-unreal way, why Montgomery Scott is sitting on the edge of a pier at eleven pm on a day on which he has thrown up not less than fourteen times, watching the sun dip into the glorious red-orange-blue sea, and being barked at by seals.

"Have a drink, mate," calls Ffion, from the boat. "Someone went up to get us some beer from a pub in town."

Scotty – he was being called Scotty his first week of undergrad, and it's got so he thinks of himself that way – briefly considers the idea of letting anything save air past his lips ever again, swallows hard and decides against it. "You carry on," he calls, with difficulty, and puts his head between his knees. The last of the sunlight is pleasantly warm on the back of his neck. It's been a long day.

After a while Ffion comes to sit beside him, and he's aware of her presence although he can only just see her with his head upside down. "Best get yourself somewhere to sleep," she says kindly. "There's a couple of places up the hill, but it's going to be standing room only soon, no one's allowed to leave the island."

"That's good," Scotty says, as scathingly as he can manage, "as I've not any intention of getting in that bloody boat ever again. Remind me why we couldn't fly?"

"Yeah, because you would have wanted to fly a three-man hopper loaded with five people, all their kit, enough transparent aluminium to build, I don't know, another three-man hopper, all the conductive coils required for a six-person freight-enabled transporter pad and a dog across two hundred miles of open water?"

"I wouldn't have been sick fourteen times."

"You weren't sick fourteen times."

"Believe me, I had nothing better to do than count."

She chuckles, refusing to take offence, and grabs his hand. "Come on, Scotty," she says, cheerfully, and he grunts his way to his feet and follows her. Before they slip into the cobbled streets of the town, he stops and takes one last look at the sunlit harbour. The water is still that particular clean clear blue, and the houses on Bressay, across the sound, seem close enough to touch. It doesn't seem at all threatening, he thinks, as Ffion leads him away.

It turns out that the pub where the others got the beer also has a couple of rooms to let above the main bar, and Scotty signs himself up for the night without looking at them – a bed and a bucket in close reach are all he wants – but before he can stagger up the stairs, a couple of mates from the engineering school have called him down, Lily telling him he's a boring sod and Ki'jhanna waving her antennae seductively. Before he knows it he's agreed to a quick dram and then a lot of happy, shouting people come in from the twilight and it turns out this is the weekend of the annual Lerwick folk music festival, and a couple of very nice women with harps are taking to the tiny stage. It'd be rude not to stay just for a bit, so Scotty takes a sip of his drink, all heady volatiles laced with welcoming burn, and settles in.

It's midnight by the time he falls into bed, Ffion giving him the last push he needs to get through the door.

At three o'clock, the storm hits.

Scotty wakes up slowly through the amber haze, thinking vague thoughts about reaching for the bucket and then all at once his eyes snap open at the sound of the crash of water. Without even thinking about it he's going for his boots, his clothes, his coat and hat, and heading out through the front door, letting it bang shut behind him in the gale. He stumbles across rain-glazed cobbles and sheer wet ground, and pushes against the wind every step of the way until he reaches the harbour. The light is dim grey – simmer dim, he remembers; this far north the sun is just below the horizon – and the vista is transformed, water smashing into the harbour pilings with a hard, oceanic violence. With his hair standing on end and his boots unlaced, Scotty stands there thinking about stresses and surface tension and metal fatigue, extreme weight and pressure and how things break, and once he starts he can't stop shivering.

He stays there five minutes, maybe ten, watching the storm, the occasional lightning fork out to sea, the interference patters between waves that gather and rise and crash. Then he blows warm air on his hands and turns back towards the pub.

It's lit and buzzing quietly as he approaches – guiltily, he wonders if it was the door slamming that finally woke everyone else – and it's comforting, watching the lights come on as people stumble in in their pyjamas. No one speaks very much; it's as though there is an agreement that they will endure the storm together, in silence. Scotty smiles at Ffion, who looks surprised that he's up and walking, and finds himself a spot near a window, somewhere where he can watch the storm.

"It was on a night like this my daughter was born."

Scotty turns; the old lady to his left is still intent on staring at the glass, and it takes him a moment to be sure she was talking to him. He freezes, unsure of what to say.

"Boats dashed to pieces on the rocks, planes lost in the fog. Time was you had to bear it." She glances at him, and he recognises her as one of the musicians from the night before, looking smaller and older without the buoying effect of music and golden light.

"There are some light flyers that can..." Scotty begins, but she holds up a hand.

"Some. Not enough. It took a long while for the world to remember us."

Scotty nods, still unsure of what to say.

"You're one of the wee ones up from Edinburgh, aren't you?" she says.

Scotty wants to say he's not a wee one, he's nineteen, but something stops him. "I'm at university there," he says. "In the engineering school. The transporter pad is my summer project."

She's still looking at him. "It's good work."

Scotty nods. It's not the time for the little spiel, the government-issued documents about connecting people, about complete integration. It's not the time to talk about the long nights he spent, working on his application; how pleased and proud he was to be doing real work as an engineer one year into the degree. Instead he smiles, shyly, and says, "Thank you."

She nods, looking out at the rain. Scotty keeps on smiling, reaches out to pat Arnold, Ffion's enormous Labrador, and doesn't say anything.

He sits by the window until the storm has quite blown itself out, and there's a clear blue light in the sky. Then he goes back up the stairs, throws open the window to let in the clean, washed-through air, and falls asleep in the quiet. After an hour or two he gets up to make sure the bucket is still there, and then he sleeps through till morning.

end.

Comments

[wildestranger]

Liked this a lot. I am fascinated by your world-building.

[raven]

Thank you so much! :)

[rhivolution]

Bless, it's about the Shetlands, and about Scotty and of course TPTB would take ages to get tech up there. Lovely work, aye.

[raven]

*grins* Thank you!

[happydork]

"Believe me, I had nothing better to do than count."

Heeh!

I really liked this. Your world-building, as ever, is a delight.

[raven]

*happyface* Thank you!

[glinda]

Ha yes, I reckon I threw up as many times as Scotty on the ferry back from Shetland (we did catch the tale end of a hurricane in my case) myself.

*draws hearts round the story*

Its Shetland and transport links and folk music and sense of place and oh how I can believe it would take them a hundred years to sort out transporter links to the islands. Also Scotty is awesome in this.

[raven]

*grins* Me, I threw up three times. This after having been ASSURED it would be fine and dandy and even fun, ahahaha it is a hollow laughter. So glad you liked this!

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is gorgeously atmospheric. I love this look at young Scotty. Thank you so much for writing it! ♥

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

awww, yay. Thank you so much for running the fest!

[amine-eyes.livejournal.com]

Oh lovely work! I especially like the look at the history etc :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

[medie]

Oooh I love this.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[secretsolitaire.livejournal.com]

This is lovely.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

aww, thank you!

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

You are an excellent science fiction author (and I mean 'sf' there as an intensifier, not a diminutor). I love this look at life on Earth in the mid 2200's, and at young Scotty just starting out. This is gorgeous.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! I'm really glad you liked it.

[tau_sigma]

YOU ARE AWESOME. I, yeah, similar to the last comment I left re: dark night and lonely, I am kind of lost for decent words. Just, I really like what you write. Please don't ever stop.