(no subject)
Title: A Coordinated Effort (3/?)
This is a rush job; I'll put up a real link later.
Beta shift on the Enterprise, and Chekov is alone at his console with Scotty’s voice crackling through on the speaker, firing off excited questions about the upgrades he wants to make to the ship’s power grid. Between the thick Scottish accent and the amazing speed (did he boost the warp capacity of his own mouth?), Chekov loses him, his hands desperately chasing down the answers on his console as more questions pile up around his ears, each more incomprehensible than the last.
“Hold on, hold on,” Chekov pleads, eyes and fingers flickering across the screen as Uhura shakes her head at them from her station with an amused smile. “Mr. Scott, please, hold on, slow down, I am not so quickly, please to slow down.”
His English slips when he is flustered and naturally this flusters him more.
“And d’you think we could try and augment th’ distribution capacity on th’ portside cable matrix?” Scotty continues, oblivious to the panic on the other side of the connection. “Because if we can, I think I could divert th’ excess to boost…what’s that, laddie?”
“He says slow down, Scotty,” laughs Kirk, whose hand is suddenly on Chekov’s shoulder as he leans over his console to examine the screen. “He doesn’t know the resistivity of salimnium off the top of his head.” (Here, Chekov’s brain interrupts to protest because actually he does, but he bites his lip and keeps his mouth shut about it.) “Now, what are my favorite funny-speaking geniuses up to today?”
Chekov ignores the crack and lets Scotty take the question since he’s not sure he knows the answer yet; he’s just trying to find the plans to the auxiliary grid and a list of the available materials in the storage bays and repair reserves. He likes these projects with Scotty, the ones where afterwards he can dump himself into bed and feel like he has been tied to the back of the Enterprise and dragged along at Warp 8 for a week, where he can sleep through the night and feel like he belongs on the ship the next morning as she hums along more efficiently than ever. Sometimes, though, he wishes he could belong on the Enterprise not just because of what he can do, but because of who he is.
“Well, carry on,” Kirk says, clapping Chekov on the back as he retreats to his chair. “If our course is set right, we should be arriving at Starbase Eighteen in a little over two days. Keep occupied until then.”
Chekov is setting himself to ignore the first part of Kirk’s sentence, if our course is set right, as if he could mess up the coordinates to something as routine as a Starbase, because Kirk probably was not even thinking about the meaning of the words; probably it was just a way to start a sentence for him.
“Sir, our course is correct,” says Sulu flatly, out of the blue. Chekov turns his head to at him in surprise, and the pilot’s eyes flick over for a moment, meeting his. There is no smile there, but Sulu gives him a tiny nod, as if recognizing something they both know, something private but important. For a moment, the bridge feels tense, everyone waiting to see how Kirk will respond, but after a few seconds the captain laughs and smiles and breaks the moment between the helmsmen, who look away from each other.
“’Course it is,” he says, winking at Chekov. “You wouldn’t get us lost, Ensign.”
“No sir,” replies Chekov dutifully.
Scotty chuckles on the other end, bringing them back to the task at hand.
“All right, laddie, so have y’figured out if we have th’ means to split th’ secondary cables? Or will I be needin’ to poke around at th’ Starbase for somethin’ when we get there?”
“Mr. Scott, I am still not so sure the wires will sustain full power if you split them,” Chekov responds cautiously, though already he is looking into ways to do it, tapping away at the screen. He slips easily into the task, sinking into the familiar feel of the glass beneath his palms, the warmth of the controls under his fingertips, their comforting blips and flickerings. He is running calculations on Scotty’s proposed improvements, and already discovering some snags, but usually when the physics does not add up, Scotty just invents some new physics and everything works in the end although no one is quite sure how, including Scotty.
Before he knows it, the first four precious hours of work time have dissipated into space somewhere, and people are slipping out for lunch. He is ravenous, and he can practically feel Dr. McCoy breathing down his neck and snarling that he’s “too damn skinny,” but he hates leaving with a group because he does not have the courage or the grace to ask to join one of their tables. Also, he does not like to leave at the same time Lieutenant Sulu leaves, because if he does, the ship’s controls lie completely in the hands of two lesser officers; it feels irresponsible. Of course, this happens anyway, when they are both off duty, but the lunch hour rests within Chekov’s duty hours so he still feels responsible. So when Sulu gets up to leave, his replacement slipping into the empty seat without so much as a glance at Chekov, the ensign overrides the growling of his stomach and decides to wait.
The bridge empties of faces Chekov can name, fills with half-strangers. He can hear Scotty munching on something through the communicator but doesn’t know if he’s actually on lunch break yet; Scotty eats a lot. Whatever he is doing, though, it is making Chekov even hungrier.
“Ensign Chekov,” cuts in a voice after about a half hour, and he looks up to see Mr. Spock standing beside him, hands behind his back.
“Yes sir,” he says immediately, sitting up straighter and hoping his stomach won’t make the kind of growly noise it has been making for the past fifteen minutes. Spock is one of the few people on the bridge who treats him like a full adult, and he works hard to live up to this.
“Might I suggest you break for lunch soon?”
“Commander?” Chekov asks, startled.
“You have been staring at Mr. Scott’s electroflux equation for several minutes now,” Spock informs him, raising an eyebrow. “As I find it most unlikely that you are having trouble with such a simple formula, I must conclude that you are distracted. Hunger would seem a logical cause.”
Chekov feels his face turn red; he hadn’t realized he had ceased to be at all productive. Still, he doesn’t want to leave the bridge without a pilot he knows at the controls, as if he would be abandoning the ship. He hesitates, fidgeting in his seat.
“If you would like, I could request Dr. McCoy’s opinion on the matter,” says Spock knowingly. He almost makes it sound like it’s not a threat, but Chekov gets the point.
“No, no, Commander, I will…I will go to lunch,” he concedes, rising from his seat and clicking his data pen into place on the console with a sigh. Spock nods and turns away from him, leaving the ensign to make his way to the lift alone.