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“We’re receiving a distress signal.” Uhura chimed.
The entire command crew visibly perked up. Patrolling the Neutral Zone was incredibly important and also shatteringly boring interspersed with sudden adrenaline spikes of near misses. A rescue mission would be a welcome reprieve.
“Tell me more, Lieutenant. I want all the juicy details.” Jim rubbed his hands together.
“Quinjet looks to be privately owned, primarily used as a cargo ship. They claim that an engineering miscalculation led to the loss of their left thruster and water processing facilities. They are sending a broadband request for aid while they complete their repairs.” She frowned at the screen. “There are no other ships in range.”
“That falls under our jurisdiction then. Can’t have anyone dying of thirst, right Spock?”
“Yes, Captain.” He intoned with the bland indifference that meant he was just as eager to Jim to be doing something.
“Hail them.”
Seconds later, the screen flickered to life. A blond haired man with a square jaw in an absurdly bright blue shirt appeared. Behind him, two scruffy men in sooty clothes argued with a lot of hand gestures while sparks flew at odd intervals from a side panel.
“Greetings Enterprise, I’m Captain Rogers.”
“Hello, Captain Rogers, this is Captain Jim Kirk of the Enterprise. We received your signal and are headed to your location.”
“Thank you.” Rogers smiled gratefully and Jim went a little weak around the knees. “My engineer says the repairs could take up to a week and we’re down to rationing water. It was getting dire.”
“I didn’t say a week!” One of the arguing men looked up. “Two days, Steve!”
“You said that three days ago, Tony.” Rogers snapped, then flushed. “Sorry, Captain Kirk. Tempers are starting to run a little short around here.”
“No need to apologize. Tell your crew they can relax, we’re on our way.”
“Captain!” Someone yelled off screen, “Something has caught aflame and threatens our bathing facilities!”
Rogers flinched.
“We’ll see you shortly, Captain Rogers. Kirk out.”
“We’re in visual range, sir.” Uhura called out a few minutes later.
“On screen.”
There was a moment of awed silence.
“Red and gold for a ship.” Sulu whistled. “That’s some kind of ugly.”
~
“She’s beautiful.” Scotty said mournfully into his dinner.
“It’s a privatized ship, they’re bound to have the latest upgrades.” Jim pat his arm.
“You don’t understand. It’s not market stuff. Their engineer built that damn thing from nuts to bolts, there isn’t one wasted inch and it’s all curves and elegant lines.” Scotty sniffed. “I’ll never betray my lady, but I came damn close.”
“Aw, don’t be jealous.” Tony plunked down next to Scotty. “I’m just naturally this amazing.”
“Then how come you lost an entire engine?” Jim lifted an eyebrow.
“Sometimes experiments are a failure.” Tony pointed his fork at Jim. “But without them, you never get anywhere. Try try again, that’s my motto.”
“You might want to clear that with your Captain first.”
“He’s not my Captain.”Tony shrugged. “Just a Captain.”
“He’s your ship’s Captain.” Jim pointed his own fork right back at him.
“Is he?” Tony turned to shout across the mess. “Hey, Steve, are you my Captain?”
“You don’t own me!” Steve yelled back then returned peaceably to his conversation with Bones.
“O, Captain, my Captain.” Tony shrugged. “We’re not exactly military, kid.”
“Don’t call me kid.” Jim stabbed into his spaghetti.
“You got it.”
Scotty sobbed something about the warp drive into his pasta and this time it was Tony who patted him on the arm.
~
The lab was quiet, the Alpha shift long gone to bed leaving behind only a skeleton crew. It was usually a very productive time for Spock, but found himself somewhat distracted by his companion.
Dr. Banner worked with the steady intensity that Spock had observed in other highly intelligent humans. Even Jim was capable of it, bending his complex mind to problems with blistering focus that jarred with his normal scattershot attentions span. So that was not what was distracting Spock from his calculations.
There was something about the doctor that Spock could not quite grasp. It was the way that working with him felt familiar as they moved data back and forth between their PADDs attempting to calibrate the Quinjet’s remaining engines to compensate for the damage. It was the doctor’s clipped words, steady hands, the way he shied away from the physical camaraderie of the rest of his crew and how he preferred to sit in Spock’s lab than eat in the mess. It was the way that Dr. Banner acted much like a Vulcan.
“You are an unusual human.” Spock told him when their work was finished.
“You are an unusual Vulcan.” Dr. Banner replied and there was nothing insulting about it.
~
When the woman in the black catsuit walked into Rec Room 6, the gathered crew members fell into a shocked silence. She universally ignored them, walking with heady grace to a small table. Pavel had been about to make a move across the chessboard, but let his hand fall away as she approached.
“Ensign Chekov?” She asked.
“Yes, is there something I can help you with?”
“My name is Natasha Romanov.” She looked mildly at Pavel’s opponent, who suddenly had somewhere else to be and fled. She slid into the abandoned seat. “They say you’re a prodigy.”
“No.” He didn’t smile, but everyone heard the amusement in his voice. “I am Russian.”
“As I thought.” No one saw exactly where she pulled the bottle from, though the theories later got very colorful. The label was small, but Chekov took a long time to read it. “Will you drink with me, cousin?”
“I would be honored.”
She produced two shot glasses and broke the seal open on the bottle. Those close backed away, eyes watering. Pavel accepted his with a smile.
“To Mother Russia.” He touched his glass to hers and they drank.
And drank.
And drank.
An hour later, they had killed the bottle between them. Neither appeared to be at all drunk, but their accents had thickened to the point of inscrutability. They were also playing darts. Most sensible people had fled the room to escape Pavel’s terrible aim.
~
“Explain it to me again.” McCoy pinched the bridge of his nose.
“He shot me with an arrow!” Cupcake whined. “Come on, Doc. Just patch me up so I can find this guy and punch him in the face a few more times.”
“Who uses arrows anymore?” Not seeing any alternative, he numbed his Chief of Security’s arm and then gently extracted the arrowhead. It was a clean cut, the arrow had been sharp and luckily, a simple classic head. “What the hell did you say to this guy?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You have go to stop provoking people before you cause an interplanetary diplomatic incident.” McCoy sealed the wound. “Now get the hell out of my infirmary.”
He couldn’t say how he knew someone had appeared behind him. McCoy had always had good instincts that way.
“Whatever he said to you, we all apologize on his behalf. We’re not entirely sure how he managed to graduate.” He said in lieu of turning around. "Though he is really good at hitting people over the head."
“I heard people call you Bones.” A compactly muscled man appeared his peripheral vision and damn if he didn’t have a quiver on his back.
“You can blame the Captain for that.” He disinfected his hands. “There’s an old Earth nickname for doctors, sawbones. It’s mostly from that. What do they call you?”
“Clint.” He sat down on the edge of the biobed, finally giving Bones a good look at him. Normal enough, despite the weird black leather getup and the arrows. “I’ve also heard rumors that your bedside manners could curdle milk.”
“I don’t believe in babying people. I’m a doctor, not a nursery school teacher.” McCoy looked him over. “Why do you bring it up?”
“Well.” Clint frowned then pulled up his shirt where an ugly bruise throbbed red and purple. “I normally wouldn’t bother with it, but I think he might have bruised my kidney.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Bones picked up his scanner. “That’s got to be a few hours old already.”
“I thought it was ok until I started pissing blood.” Clint shrugged.
“I hate every goddamn person on this ship.”
“You remind me of someone.” Clint suddenly smiled and McCoy thought the expression suited him. “Could you cover your left eye for a second?”
“No.” Bones checked the scan. “You’re an idiot. Left this any longer and you’d have a motherfucking kidney failure.”
“It’s kind of uncanny aside from looking nothing alike.” Clint laughed. “It’s almost endearing. I could like you, Bones.”
“I would like you a lot more if you shut the hell up.”
~
“It has saddened me to be without coffee lo these many days. I had never tasted the nectar before coming to Earth and it has become most addictive. ” Thor explained with a loop of his large hand, the one not occupied with programming the replicator.
“You’re not Earth native? I never would have guessed.” Uhura lied smoothly. Jim had sicced her on Thor almost immediately, charging her to figure out where the hell the guy had come from. So far, she had ruled out every intelligent species she knew based on his wide dietary preferences and complete ignorance of everything not directly related to his ship and crewmates.
She was coming to think that it might all be an elaborate practical joke.
“I am well traveled.” He took up the mug filled with hot black coffee and drank it down like water. She winced on his behalf. “It is good to see the universe, isn’t it?”
“I’ve always liked it.” She agreed, picking idly at the few remains of their enormous lunch. Thor had left little behind. “Before I decided to join the Federation, I backpacked through Europe for a summer.”
“Ah, a most portentous journey. Did you travel alone?”
“Most of the time. My sister met me in France for a week.”
“You must have met many dangers.” Thor was the first person she’d heard that made that sound like a good thing. Her mother had wept on the phone every time she called, begging her to come home.
“A few. I learned self-defense before I left. Only had to use it once.” She grinned. “And a few times on the Captain since then.”
“I knew you must be a mighty warrior.” He nodded solemnly. “For you remind me of a dear friend, who similarly is a woman and not very large, but can defeat men many times her size.”
“I would like to meet her.” She said then regretted it when a shadow passed over his face.
“I’m so sorry.” She covered his hand with hers. “I should know better. There were so many people lost last year. Was she in the Fleet?”
“No. Not in the Battle of Vulcan. She has been lost to me through space and time along with many others for a long time before that.” He squeezed her hand very very gently and it was still bruisingly hard. “There is too much grief now, in the stars.”
“Yes.” She closed her eyes against his suddenly ancient face and the pain in her chest. “But we go on.”
"Aye." He let go, but stay close to her and she could smell the odd odor of him, all spice and sunshine. "That is our burden and our joy."
~
“It appears you’re almost ready to leave us, Captain Rogers.” Jim looked over the PADD. “Just a few last questions and an extraction of my Chief Engineer to go.”
“That’s good news. We’re grateful for the hospitality, but we’ve got work to do.” Rogers smiled. “Crew gets restless waiting around.”
“You know what’s funny?” Jim leaned back in his chair in a way that always made Spock glare at him. “We never did get around to finding out exactly what your work was exactly.”
“Oh this and that. We do what Stark Industries needs us to do.”
“Must be pretty dangerous. The Quinjet is just bristling with weaponry.”
“Dangerous area to be working in.” Rogers shrugged.
“There’s also an anomalous attachment to your warp drive. Scotty is making love to it right now. It’s labeled ‘Hide and Go Seek’.”
“Tony is a little in love with the label maker.” Rogers wasn’t smiling anymore. “Was there something you wanted to ask me, Captain?”
“It took me longer than it should, considering you’re not really hiding it very well.” He grinned, the shark grin he’d perfected in the mirror for certain diplomatic situations. “Whatever took out your engines was no wiring error. It had serious blasting power. You’re carrying advanced weaponry including a suspected cloaking system that Scotty can’t even open let alone replicate and no one’s better than Scotty. That's a war starting and ending piece of tech in the wrong hands.
"Stark Industries has no interests in the Neutral Zone. I spoke with a Ms. Potts, who assured me that the Quinjet worked purely in a delivery capacity despite the fact that you have no cargo. All that and more leads me to one conclusion:
“You’re the vigilante group known as the Avengers.”
“They’re a group of reckless individuals.” Rogers face hadn’t moved a muscle through Jim’s deductions. “We’re a group of merchants.”
“Merchants with more muscles and scars than most mercenaries I’ve met.”
“We come from diverse backgrounds. If you’re done with your wild theories, Captain, I should be getting back to my ship.”
“Captain Steve Rogers and Commander Thor Odinson, formerly of the USS Buchanan. Status: Presumed Dead at the Battle of Vulcan.” Jim read off the PADD. “Agent Natasha Romanov and Agent Clint Barton of Section 17, Status: Missing in Action, Presumed Dead. Dr. Bruce Banner, Status: Convicted Felon, Escaped from Moon Prison Alpha, Presumed Dead. Anthony Stark of Stark Industries, No Current Status, but his company is working on having him declared dead. There’s a lot of zombies on your ship, Captain Rogers.”
“We have our reasons.” He tapped his chest. “Tony, beam-.”
“I’m not going to report you to the Federation.” Jim said quickly. “I just thought you should know, that we think you’re awesome.”
“Awesome.” Steve repeated flatly.
“Look, this isn’t the Federation speaking, it’s Captain Kirk and his motley crew of tired twenty-somethings, ok? We’re too tied to rules to do what you’re doing, but we wish we could. That raid on the station alone...or man, that time you saved those colonists? We want to do the crazy heroics more often then we can without starting a war. There's a group of us that get together to watch the news vids of Avengers exploits. It's really cathartic. You guys are totally our superheros.”
“Are we?” Steve’s smile was small, but there. “Well. That’s something worth dying for.”
“You there Cap?” Tony asked tinnily over the comm.
“I’m here. Beam me over.” Steve saluted Jim. “Thanks again, Captain.”
“No, Captain. Thank you.” Jim returned the salute as cleanly as he knew how and watched him demateralize.
Then he whooped and punched the air and raced out onto the Bridge.
“I was totally right.” He crowed. “We met the Avengers.”
No one had the grace to look surprised, but everyone cheered. Except Spock, but he did look pleased around the eyebrows and mouth. After all, he was the one who had initiated the news viewings.
"They must have wanted us to know." Uhura said when everything was mostly quiet again. "Did they know we wouldn't turn them in?"
"Because we're not so different, really." Jim settled back into his chair with renewed energy. "And if things were reversed, they would have done the same. Scotty?"
"Captain?"
"Warm up the warp drives, we've got a patrol to be getting on with."