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spacedogfromspace) wrote2025-01-19 10:04 pm
[Fanfic] The Eighty-Fifth Weekly Meeting of the Redshirts (Trektober 2024)
The Eighty-Fifth Weekly Meeting of the Redshirts
Trektober 2024
Down in the engineering depths of the Enterprise, a secret meeting is conducted.
Fandom(s): Star Trek TOS
Character(s): Uhura, Scotty, Hendorff, Janice Rand
Tags: N/A
Rating: General Audiences
Content Warnings: N/A
Word Count: 616
Type: Oneshot, Standalone
Collection: Trektober 2024
Trektober Day 25
Prompt: "Redshirts"
Nyota acted casual as she wandered down into engineering. She had a PADD in her hand with a document open, and was staring down at it as she walked, but she was only pretending to read. The truth was that if she looked busy, nobody would stop her in the corridor and ask her where she was going.
When she got to engineering, she slowed her pace, pretending not to linger by a certain door. Once she was certain that the coast was clear, she rapped on the door.
The door opened a tiny crack. "Password?" Said a voice from within.
"Bubblegum tree," Nyota answered.
The door opened the rest of the way and she was whisked inside, the door quickly shut and locked behind her.
Nyota saw that she was the last to arrive— Janice and Hendorff were already there, and of course, so was Scotty— after all this was his office (or rather, it was the broom closet that Scotty annexed).
"There you are," Janice said, looking relieved. "We were starting to worry that you'd been compromised."
Nyota smiled. "Not this time. Just got trapped listening to one of Chekov's stories."
"Well, now that everyone is here, the meeting can start," Hendorff said.
"Aye," Scotty agreed. "Motion to begin the eighty-fifth Weekly Meeting of the Redshirts?"
"Seconded," Hendorff said.
"Thank you," Scotty said. "Alright, on the agenda today is the same thing that's been on the agenda every week for the past eighty-four weeks: Cribbage and booze. The real stuff."
With an air of ceremony, Scotty unlocked a safe that sat below his makeshift desk. Inside was the stash that the club replenished whenever they got shore leave. A stash that nobody else knew about.
While Scotty poured liquor into glasses for the four of them, Janice took out a crib board and a deck of cards, setting them up on the table. She started to shuffle the cards.
Scotty passed out their drinks, and sat down at his customary spot across from Nyota. "Alright, low man crib," Scotty declared, as he did every week.
Janice finished shuffling and plunked the deck of cards down in the middle of the table. She cut a bit off the top of the deck, and showed the card on the bottom. A ten. Scotty went next, revealing a five. Hendorff produced a two, and thought he had won the crib, when Nyota pulled an ace.
"Ha!" Nyota said, elbowing Hendorff. "My crib."
They played their game with the same teams as they always played with: Scotty and Nyota vs Janice and Hendorff. They kept a running tally of wins on a little white board tacked to the wall of the closet-cum-office. At the end of three games— and several glasses of liquor —three more tally marks were added to the board, two for Janice and Hendorff, and one for Nyota and Scotty. The overall tally was pretty close, Hendorff and Janice were only three wins behind.
"Better watch out," Janice said cheekily after their second win. "We're going to catch up to you."
"In your dreams," Nyota said, a slight slur to her speech.
At the end of the night, the glasses went back into the little replicator from whence they came, the crib board and its deck of cards went back onto a shelf, and the four of them sneakily left the office, heading back to their own quarters.
Their version of sneaking was that of drunk people's. They stumbled down the corridor, giggling all the way, and were not very stealthy at all. But they made it back to their quarters and to their beds, and none of them could wait for next week's meeting.