This is a disclaimer.

in the walls

It was Scott who was first told about the cables; the Ensign who reported them made it sound as if they'd simply worn out, so he didn't take much notice of it and just told the lad to replace them. But when another one of his engineers approached him, two days later, and told him there seemed to be a problem with the cables on E-Deck, he sat up straight.

"I told Ensign Perry to replace those two days ago," he said.

Ensign Hall shifted a bit, a faint movement of her weight from one side to the other, but it was enough to show she was upset. "I. He did, sir. I was with him when he replaced the lot. But the computer indicates that there's something wrong with them, and I went up to check, and-"

She broke off.

Scotty frowned at her. "And?" he prompted.

"The thing is, I'm not sure it should be possible," she said. "I mean, do spaceships have rats?"

Scotty shot out of his chair as if he'd been prodded in the arse with a hot poker. Rats! If Jim Kirk got the slightest whiff of a rumour that there were rats on the Enterprise…

He shuddered to think about it.

But when he got up to E-Deck, there was no denying it. The cables had not somehow worn through. Nor had they had not been cut. They had been chewed through

"Rats!" Scotty said to Dr. McCoy three hours later, sprawled in a chair in his friend's office, waving a glass of Scotch mournfully. "Can you believe it?"

"I can not," McCoy snapped. "There are no rats on the Enterprise, Scotty. You don't think they keep this place cleaner than that?"

Scotty pointed the glass at him accusingly; the Scotch sloshed dangerously close to the edge. "You didn't see those cables," he said.

McCoy made a noise of pure, unadulterated disbelief, and picked up the bottle again. Scotty resolved to have a firm word with Maintenance tomorrow, and held out his glass.

He did actually drop by Maintenance the next morning. Started to explain, quietly and politely, that there might possibly be a problem on E-Deck that lay within their ability to rectify with the application of a scrubbing brush and some elbow grease. But Lieutenant Whatever-his-name-was who was heading Maintenance this week (it was always one of the Security guys, and it usually changed from week to week) gave his superior officer a look that managed somehow to be a combination of a deathly glare and a dead-eyed stare of sheer hopelessness, and Scotty let it drop.

There were no more problems with the cables, and Scotty soon forgot about the whole business.

But a week later, he left his sandwiches on a console and went to help Lieutenant Cho with a computer interface that was playing up, and when he came back to get his lunch, the sandwiches were gone.

Scotty found the paper they'd been wrapped in a few meters away, discarded in a corner.

This did not bode well.

McCoy, too, had mostly forgotten about the somewhat less-than-sober talk he'd had with Scotty, but on the same morning that Scotty's sandwiches went missing, he caught the tail-end of a conversation between Nurses Chapel and Tiller as he slouched into Medbay, clutching a cup of coffee and feeling grouchy.

"… find it anywhere," Chapel was saying. "It's like it grew a mind of its own and hopped off!"

Tiller snorted. "Sentient spare boots. What a threat to the Federation!"

"It's not funny," Chapel insisted. "My sister's puppy used to steal shoes when it was young, but this is a spaceship!"

Several hours later, Scotty burst into Medbay, looking mildly panicked.

"Well, it's not rats," McCoy said to him. "Look at that!"

He was pointing angrily at something in the corner, behind a biobed. Scotty went to look, and found himself confronted with a pile of damp towels and hospital gowns, scattered across the pristine white floor.

"It was the laundry," McCoy said. "Until something got into the bag and dragged it across the damn floor. If that's a rat, it's a pretty damn big one."

"But I spoke to Maintenance," Scotty said. "I knew it! Giant alien rats!"

McCoy rolled his eyes in an expression Scotty had previously thought the doc kept in reserve for use on the Captain.

Not that it ever worked.

"I," McCoy told him, "am going to talk to Jim."

Uh oh.

It was pure coincidence they met him on E-Deck, where the whole thing had started in the first place. Spock and Uhura were with him; they were probably going over the details of some alien culture briefing, or something.

"Jim, we have rats," McCoy announced. "Giant rats. Things keep getting – chewed on. Cables mostly, but Chapel says she can't find her left spare boot anywhere."

Jim stared at them in amazement. "Since when do we have rats? Bones, this is the newest, fanciest, most well-built ship in the Fleet. We do not have rats!"

"Well, what happened to my sandwiches, then?" Scotty demanded.

McCoy glared at him. "Something else, then," he said irritably. "Some kind of pest. Chewed cables, laundry bags toppled, boots missing – something's going on here."

"It sounds absolutely fascinating," Jim said. "Go talk to Maintenance."

"I already did, Jim," McCoy said blandly. Scotty didn't protest. He'd seen the doc manage Jim before; best to stay out of it.

Spock apparently didn't think so.

"You said the hypothetical rat stole your sandwiches, Commander Scott," he said.

"There's nuthin' hypothetical about it!" Scotty exclaimed. "My sandwiches are proof of that!"

"Then perhaps the creature, if such it is, can be caught by setting a simple trap for it and baiting it with food," Spock suggested.

McCoy rolled his eyes. "How very logical," he sniped.

"Yay," Jim said. "A career change! I always wanted to be an exterminator."

The problem with Jim, Scotty sometimes thought, was that you couldn't always tell if he was being serious or not.

There was something inherently ridiculous about the idea of five of the most high-ranking officers on the ship setting a trap for a giant alien rat with ham sandwiches. Scotty shooed his people out of an area of Engineering – the very same one in which he'd lost the first set of sandwiches – and put down a plate in a cleared area between two water pipes and a pile of boxes holding spare tools. Then he climbed over the pipes to crouch on the floor with the others.

Several hours later, everyone was starting to get cramps.

"This is stupid," Uhura hissed.

"You want your boots to be next?" Jim demanded, eyes bright in the dimness. The unabashedly gleeful look on his face was making Scotty a bit nervous.

"Why can't we sit in an office and watch through the security cameras?" she wanted to know.

"Because we might miss it!"

"The giant alien rat."

"Whatever it is," Spock interrupted firmly, "if indeed there even is an 'it' at all, we would have much less of a chance of catching it if we were hidden in the security office."

"I can't believe you're on his side," Uhura said.

"Neither can I," Spock replied, not missing a beat.

"I'm disappointed in you, Spock," Jim sighed.

"Which is all very well and good and logical, but I've lost the feeling in my legs," McCoy said.

Jim turned to grin at him, delighted. "A little suffering is good for the soul, Bones."

McCoy gave a long suffering sigh. "How long have you been waiting to use that line on me, Jim?"

"Years now, Bones. Years."

"Enjoy it while you can," McCoy muttered.

Scotty cleared his throat. "Oi! I think something's coming."

There was a general shifting of positions and a peering over the pipes in the direction Scotty was indicating. He was right; there was something coming. They could all hear the clicketyclick of – of claws on the floor, and a shadow creeping towards them, a floppy, bouncy little bundle trotting along with its nose to the floor, about the size of a –

"Puppy!" McCoy exclaimed. "It's a puppy!"

Jim whooped. "I knew it!"

"I concur, Dr McCoy," Spock said. "It does indeed appear to be a dog."

"Oh. My. God," Scotty said.

"What's it doing on the Enterprise?" Uhura demanded. "Jim!"

But the Captain had already jumped up and swung a leg over the pipe they were crouching behind. The puppy stopped a few feet away from him, eyes very wide, quivering with nervousness, and Jim bent to pick up a sandwich.

"Here you go," he said softly, crouching down and holding out the food. His voice was slow and gentle, coaxing the puppy onwards. "This is what you're after, isn't it, boy? You poor thing, you must be half-starved. All that time surrounded by metal and glass, all on your own… there you go. That's it. Come on. Good boy. Good boy. Well done. Here, take it. Go on. That's it." Jim drew back as the pup scoffed the sandwich he'd been holding, one hand hovering over the puppy's back, but making no move to touch him, just waiting for him to finish his meal.

"Why don't you just pick him up?" Uhura asked.

"You ever have a dog, Lieutenant? No? Well, you don't ever pet them while they're eating. They'll turn around and bite you. Think you want their food."

"Very informative and touching," McCoy said, "but it still doesn't tell us how that animal got onboard in the first place!"

Scotty cleared his throat. "Well," he said. "Erm. You see."

Jim gathered the puppy up into his arms and stood up to face his friends, smiling delightedly. "Gentlemen," he said. "Lady. Allow me to introduce you all to Tony. Also known as… Admiral Archer's beagle."

At the sound of his name, the puppy looked up at Jim and wagged its tail, hard; the others could hear the thump as it hit Jim's arm with enthusiasm.

"Fascinating," Spock murmured. "It must have rematerialized somewhere on board – surely it would have been noticed in the transporter room –"

"You know how much of this ship we're going to have to go over with disinfectant?" McCoy said. "Who knows long it's been running around! And it got into my Medbay."

"What I want to know is, who's going to look after it until we get back to Earth?" Uhura asked.

Scotty didn't say anything. Partly that was because he was a bit shocked at the damn dog's unexplained reappearance, and partly that was because Jim was looking down at the little pest with a rather sappy smile, and Scotty, much to his chagrin, didn't have a camera.

"Well," he said at last, rather mournfully, "I suppose it's earned those sandwiches."