This story is a collaboration between myself and KayEm2. We sincerly hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoy writing it.

Neither of us own Star Trek

1.

Ensign Scott muttered a curse under his breath as he lay in the Churchill's auxiliary maintenance tunnel and slid open the end access panel. It was a simple enough repair - the lighting circuits for B Deck needed replacing - but accessing them from the furthest reaches of the engineering hull's lowest deck was a different matter. Which was, of course, why the green Ensign had been sent to sort it out.

Scotty sighed, and shone his wrist-light into the hatchway, which had clearly been designed with the discomfort of junior engineers in mind, and picked out the rogue circuits. Naturally, they were in the middle of a tangle of connections, and would take him a while to disconnect. "Nothing's ever simple," he growled.

He knew from past experience that the work would be slow, cramped and hot, so before he got started he peeled off his uniform jersey. It was against regulations, but no-one was likely to be wandering down here just to check that he was properly dressed.

Pulling the tools he would need from the tool case he'd brought with him, he raised his arms over his head to place them inside the maintenance space, together with the replacement circuits, then rolled onto his back and carefully edged his arms and shoulders through the hatchway.

He'd been working steadily for a half-hour or so when he felt something - someone - brush his legs. Someone female, to judge by the giggling, though he couldn't make out who. Scotty tried to back out of the hatch when a pair of hands gripped his ankles.

"Oh no you don't," said a sultry voice. "I have you right where I want you."

"Who goes there?" He asked in a nervous chuckle, thinking that someone must be playing a game with him.

Another giggle was her only reply. Scotty tried to lift his head high enough to peer out the hatch and identify his captor but all he could make out were her hands. Soft feminine hands cuffed at the wrist in Science blue. Hands that were now tugging off his boots.

"Hey!" He exclaimed.

"Relax, I'm not going to take off with them," she replied keeping her voice low and even.

The mystery girl pulled off his socks and Scotty realized if he could keep her talking he might be able to identify her.

"At least give me a clue as to who ye are."

The hands began to massage his feet one at a time. The pads of the thumbs gently pressed into the arches of his feet and moved in a circular motion back and forth over the ball and heel. Scotty fought against a moan.

While one foot was being worked, he felt his other foot resting on the cushion of a supple thigh and knew she must be sitting on the floor. He tried very hard to concentrate on her voice as she answered, quietly echoing into the hatch, "You know me well, yet you chose not to know me at all."

"And what kind of clue is that, lass?"

She did not answer. Instead, she grasped each heel and pushed slightly against the ball, stretching his feet in a flexing motion and rotating them at the ankle. Then she pulled the top of his feet towards her body forcing his feet to point and rotated each one again in the opposite direction.

Scotty thought about the clue she had given, but being too distracted to think clearly, he came up empty. By now his neck began to ache from the position he was trying to maintain and he pushed his arms under his head for support. The new position gave him a better view, but only of her hands which were now massaging each toe.

Her gentle hands were small and square at the palms with long fingers that were smooth at the joints and rounded at the tips. The unpolished nails were well cared for and clipped short at the fingertips. She slid them over the sole of his foot, using her thumbs this time to massage the metatarsus.

And then he noticed it. A small freckle on her left hand between her thumb and index finger.

Scotty smiled to himself thinking he had her now. He would wait patiently for her to finish her little game and if he couldn't get her identity when she let him out of the hatch, he would search every hand on the ship until he found that freckle and the person it was attached to.

Scotty thought it odd that someone would ambush him with a foot rub. But he had to admit it felt quite good to his tired feet and he began to relax. He imagined as the massage continued, what it would be like to confront the mystery girl when he discovered who she was. He watched her hands move slowly and deliberately over his feet, making sure each one received equal attention. Before he knew it, he was thinking about what else those lovely hands could do.

Scotty imagined them sliding up his legs to his waist and slipping under his black regulation undershirt. He imagined the hands being as soft and cool on the rest of his body as they were on his feet. His mind wandered to a huge bed with crisp clean white linens, the hands roving over his body, lightly touching every place he craved to be touched. It had been awhile since he rested in the arms of a woman. As his thoughts became more sexual in nature he felt a twinge in his groin and whimpered. Suddenly embarrassed, he lifted his head off his arms to look down at his feet and found that the hands were gone.

Not knowing how long he had laid there, Scotty shimmied out of the hatch hoping to catch the mystery girl before she got away. But instead of finding her, he found the compartment empty, his boots sitting neatly next to the hatchway, socks tucked inside.

Damn! He thought and he sat down to put his socks and boots back on, wondering what the hell just happened.

Over the next few days, Scotty found himself acutely aware of just how often an engineer ended up on his belly in a crawl-space, or on his back under a console. Every time he pulled a panel and started to work on a piece of equipment he found himself half-expecting - and hoping - that his mystery lady would return.

He also found himself taking an unusual interest in the hands of any woman in science blue - which for him was a change from checking out certain other parts of their anatomy. Trouble was that the Churchill - though not a big ship - was a Science Vessel. Which meant that, of the 180 crew, only about 30 were not wearing blue.

Even by ruling out all the men, and any woman with officer braids on her sleeve, that still left about fifty females, including the Xenobiologists, Medical Staff, Analysts, Chemists, Physicists, Lab Assistants, and a half-dozen scientific specialist posts that Scotty had barely heard of before he started his search through the personnel manifest.

He cringed as he read Ensign Spears' name on the screen, and remembered that embarrassing business in the Rec. room when he'd grabbed Spears' arm as she was returning her empty food tray to the cycler. She'd had traces of chocolate on her left hand and he'd mistakenly thought... well, anyway, it wasn't her. Though unfortunately she now seemed to think that he was interested in her, and kept making puppy-eyes at him, which had made for a certain amount of teasing from the other junior engineers. His roomie, Stevens, had been particularly annoying about it, and had even gone so far as to invite Spears and her friend Angie Peters to sit at their table for lunch the previous day.

At least he could rule out Peters - and the other fifteen Africans and African-Americans, plus the six Asians, three Hispanics and the Andorian. Blue his girl definitely wasn't.

That still left 24 possibilities.

Scotty sighed, and scrolled through the manifest one more time. It was no use. He needed more clues. The question was; would she give him the chance to collect any?