Title: Take Us Out (1/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek TOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: Leonard finds himself in a situation that quickly goes from bad to worse, and it turns out he is the only one who can fix it.
A/N: Well, it’s kinda been on my mind all weekend that there needs to be more adventurous McCoy fic. Who says Kirk and Spock get to have all the fun?
Or read at AO3

When Leonard volunteered to go along for the ride, he thought he would be coming back. That’s a normal expectation, he has to remind himself later, trying not to feel like the galaxy’s biggest idiot while he looks out of the shuttlecraft window at the latest port of call.

“To expect is to forget that the unexpected can happen.”

Leonard twitches in his seat, only stalled from stealing a glance at the speaker by his pride. “This is kidnapping.”

“Is it?”

“You’re damn right it is!” Leonard snaps back, leveling an intense glare at his reflection in the window. “You’ve kidnapped Starfleet officers. Why you want your head on the chopping block is beyond me but let me tell you, you damn fool, you’ll be lucky if you get a life sentence at Rura Penthe! When my captain—”

Leonard’s captor interrupts the speech to sigh, clearly turning his attention elsewhere, to a man dressed in a standard-issue security uniform picking beneath his nails with a penknife. “Must we continue to listen to this drivel?”

“I asked if you wanted me to knock him out.”

“I see now why you did.”

Leonard slams his fist down against his seat’s armrest, rattling the metal shackle binding him to it. He makes a sound of disgust. “If you think I’ll cooperate with you, you’re out of your cotton-pickin’ mind.”

“Would you let her die, then, good doctor?”

Leonard inhales sharply, hating that he can’t answer that and not reveal his weakness. Not that that matters, he thinks sourly, when the bastard knows good and well he can’t fault a patient for another man’s actions—even if that man is the deranged husband of said patient.

“She would have gotten all the help she needs at the Starbase Nine without this—this barbarism,” Leonard reasons. “For god’s sake, we let you go with her!”

“And I am forever grateful to your captain for that altruistic act—although I cannot say I believed for a moment your Starfleet Command would adhere to the same principles once we were in custody. After all, what did I have to bargain for amnesty? To ensure my wife receives the treatment she must have?”

Leonard’s stomach sinks. “I guess that makes me your new bargaining chip.”

“This predicament need not turn ugly for you, Doctor McCoy. I only ask that you help preserve my wife’s life until I can release you.”

But the doctor is shaking his head. “It can’t be that simple. It never is.”

You killed two security officers and turned another, Leonard doesn’t say, though the accusation sits heavily on the tip of his tongue. There’s a good chance without the addition of that remark he has already made the situation worse for himself. Knowing his thoughts aren’t private has prompted him to speak his mind at every turn.

“Ah, I see…” A steady gaze fixes intently on Leonard. “You fear that I will—how did you label my method of persuasion?—perform a ‘brainwashing’ upon you. That I will wrest away your free will and secure your compliance as I have done to some of your more simple-minded officers. Hm.”

Betazoids only smile at someone else’s expense, Leonard decides with a near-shiver.

His captor hmms for a moment longer before continuing. “I admit I have considered playing inside your mind. At the very least, I could rid you of that penchant for incessant chatter.”

Leonard’s fingers subconsciously tighten on the edge of the armrest, a retort flying unbidden out of his mouth. “Well, what’s stopping you?”

It isn’t meant to be a joke but the Betazoid looses a good-natured laugh anyway. Then the telepath lifts his arm and motions to the eerily calm-faced officer standing to the side watching them. “You may stun him now.”

“Yes, sir.”

As the young lieutenant Leonard once saw Jim address with a fond regard flips his phaser on and levels it at Leonard’s chest, the doctor’s eyes burn.

Damn it, he thinks with heartfelt regret. I might have come up with a plan.

A voice in his head agrees. I know, Doctor. That is why you must sleep for the time being.

Being stunned in no way induces a natural sleep. Leonard would argue the point but a terrible shock courses through his body, rendering him momentarily mute with pain before shutting off his brain entirely.

The Betazoid watches the human slump to the side, the tendrils of thought captured from that mind dying like withering leaves. The subsequent silence, despite any of his protestations, which envelops the cabin unsettles him. From the small area in the back of the shuttlecraft, where his wife lays feverish, is nothing at all, except a sense of failure. But that failure is all his own. At the peak of health, his wife would have had control over her emotional projections; now, because her control has weakened nearly to the point of non-existence, she chooses to live with an empty mind. Like a shell or a husk. That hurts him the most.

The humans could have saved her. They chose not to, sending her instead to a Federation-operated facility because of him. Because he is, unlike most of his peaceful race, a criminal.

How ironic that even as they sentenced her to die while he watched, one of their own begged to come aboard and make certain she survived until the shuttle docked and he was taken prisoner for what truly amounts to petty theft.

No, how hypocritical. For that, this doctor will pay a price. He has not decided exactly what he wants to extricate as payment but he assures himself it will surpass his own personal suffering.

Guarding his own mind carefully takes a concerted effort while actively in control of the other minds he had commandeered. But he grows more adept at it as time passes, the strain he feels minimal. The red-shirted officer and shuttle crew bow to his will rather easily.

If his psionic abilities had been acknowledged for what they were, would he be here now, combing through the less civilized reaches of space with his mate? It is precisely those abilities which made it possible for him to hide the arrival of the shuttle at that starbase from its own patrol until the craft could be refueled. It is his strength, his skill, that brokered freedom in a desperate situation.

He and Nola have traveled as far as they could, as far as this tiny vessel is able to take them before it must be abandoned. Here, in this little known spaceport by the Neutral Zone, he and his wife will find another way to survive.

For her sake, of course, he has no choice but to take the doctor with them. It’s a small consolation that he can be rid of the others. They are a burden.

Suddenly, a hint of alarm skitters across the surface of the pilot’s thoughts, causing the Betazoid to still his mind and twist around in his seat.

“What is it?”

“Sir… I’m picking up a signal from another ship.”

Annoyance scratches at him. “This is a port filled with ships.”

The pilot’s mind turns shy with nerves. “We’re—we’re being hailed, sir.”

He freezes the idiot’s hand with a thought and tears himself out of his seat’s straps to see the console for himself. The ship’s computer is oblivious to his power; it does not lie when it says there is an incoming transmission. He allows his finger to hover only momentarily over a blinking blue button.

Releasing the pilot from the icy hold of his control, he gives an order he doesn’t dare allow the human to defy. With shaking hands the pilot enters a sequence of commands into the computer. The sequence is accepted and placed on stand-by.

“Now,” Leonard McCoy’s captor says, resettling himself into the co-pilot’s seat, “answer that hail.”

“Of course, sir” comes the immediate reply.

Fear lingers in the back of his mind but it is not his own. He is long past fear.

When the computer screen of the shuttle leaps to life, James T. Kirk leans forward in his seat, unaware he has bent the buckle of the strap over his shoulders with the pressure of his hands.

“Captain Kirk,” a familiar voice echoes in the cabin of the shuttle Galileo, “I can feel your distress from here. How may I assist you?”

For once, Jim is too angry for words.

Spock must sense this, for the Vulcan speaks in Jim’s stead. “Mr. Auron, please be advised you are under arrest.”

“Arrest?” Laughter filters through the speakers. “But you released me from your brig yourselves!”

Spock’s eyebrow might have twitched but his voice stays inflectionless. “Your transfer to a penal colony was not pardoned, Mr. Auron, merely delayed so that your wife might receive the medical aid we did not have the means to provide before her condition became critical. It was a plea you made of us, one which the Captain, in his compassion, granted.”

Something in the Betazoid’s face shutters closed. “You granted me nothing—quite the mistake on your part.”

“Where are my men?” The words burst out of Jim, his tolerance for any verbal byplay gone.

“Your men? I believe they belong to me.”

Auron beckons someone off-screen. A face, Lieutenant Yarrows’ face, leans into view. He looks the same, unharmed—except for his eyes. In those eyes is nothing remotely resembling the cheerful young man who transferred to the Enterprise seven months ago.

For a moment, Jim doesn’t feel like he can speak. Then he manages, “What did you do?”

The Betazoid smiles at them. “Nothing. They defected.”

“Mind control, Captain,” Spock supplies too softly.

Jim knows. Even if he doesn’t want to believe it, he knows and that makes him sick. “My Chief Medical Officer—I want to speak to him.”

“Hm. Did you not find him at the starbase, Captain?”

A momentary intense fear grips Jim. They hadn’t found McCoy—which had done nothing to alleviate Jim’s grief as he identified two bodies in the morgue on the starbase. The starbase’s commanding officer had looked sympathetic but offered no comforting words. He had understood, as Jim did, nothing could truly ease that kind of guilt.

What terrible mistake had he made? Jim had thought to himself then. He thinks the same thing now, hating the glint of triumph he sees in the Betazoid’s midnight eyes.

“We both know where he is.” Jim’s voice gains an authoritative edge that has terrified lesser men. “I won’t ask again, Auron. Put McCoy on.”

Auron looks away, the slight downturn of his mouth causing a severe wrench to Jim’s gut. “I suppose one could say the doctor is… indisposed at the moment. He had many things to say, most of which I did not care to hear. How do you stand him?”

A sensation inside Jim alternates between hot and cold. He clings to that last statement, assuring himself, Bones is alive.

If this were the Enterprise and not a small survey shuttle, he would have already called down to the transporter room to get a lock on McCoy’s signal. But his ship might as well be parsecs away, not simply hovering at the edge of their communication range. As it stands, he or the Enterprise shouldn’t be in this part of the galaxy at all.

That can’t matter. Jim has had flimsier excuses to come this close to the Neutral Zone. Saving his crew—even if only one of them—is a solid reason to risk the wrath of Command. He believes he can find a way around that wrath.

“Are we in transporter range of the Enterprise?” he asks Spock, momentarily flipping the communications channel to mute.

“Mr. Scott relayed a message before we attempted to hail the craft. The ship’s long-range scanners have been blocked by a signal scrambler we can only assume Auron procured at some junction during his journey. I have confirmed the readings with this vessel’s computer. Captain…” Spock pauses. “To transport any living matter from the shuttlecraft would be, at best, ‘a blind guess’ on Mr. Scott’s part. I would not recommend it.”

Jim shakes his head slightly. “Can he beam someone on board?”

Spock is silent for just a second too long.

Sitting back in his seat, Jim punches the frequency to re-open the channel with the other shuttle. “Here are my terms, Mr. Auron. If you surrender now and there is no more loss of life or damage done to the hostages, the Enterprise will personally escort your wife back to Starbase Nine for treatment. You, on the other hand, will stay in my brig until a trial can be convened.” He draws in a deep breath. “Believe me when I say this is the nicest offer you’ll get from me.”

For a brief moment, Jim thinks Auron’s silence means the deal is being considered. But then the Betazoid smiles at them on the screen.

“You cannot bargain with a desperate man, Captain Kirk.” The smile becomes cold, much too cold to signify anything good. “Have your second-in-command scan this vessel.”

Spock is already far ahead of that order, and Jim can only wait for an explanation, fearing the way the Vulcan stiffens abruptly in the co-pilot seat.

“Spock?”

“A moment, Captain. Galileo to Enterprise. Mr. Scott, I have sent you my readings. Please confirm.”

“Aye, Mr. Spock. I just got ’em, hold on and let me—” All of a sudden Scotty lets loose a curse, one Jim recognizes the tone of, though not the actual word. His Chief Engineer sounds urgent when his round of cursing dies out. “Captain, he’s set himself to overload! In a matter of minutes—“

Spock overrides Mr. Scott’s harried explanation, turning to address Kirk in a flat tone. “I estimate denotation in three minutes and forty-two seconds. We will be caught within the range of the explosion if we do not leave in less than a minute, Captain.”

Jim’s fist lands with a solid thump on a bare spot of metal between two control panels. “Are you mad?” he demands of the Betazoid.

“Captain, we cannae—you need to—” Scott’s voice filters in and out through a second speaker. “Damn you, lad, get those transporters back online! Capt’n, I repeat, you need to pull out now!“

Jim’s other hand rises to grasp the edge of the console, knuckles turning bloodless. “Auron, you’ll kill all of us—yourself—your wife!”

“Does that mean you are afraid to die, Captain?”

“Two minutes and fifty-nine seconds until denotation,” Spock intones to Jim’s left. “Only ten seconds remaining to turn back in the Galileo, Captain. Nine. Eight. Seven…”

“Scotty, transport Mr. Spock to the ship.”

Spock’s head jerks in Jim’s direction, the countdown faltering. “Mr. Scott, delay that order. Captain—Jim, I will attempt to reason with Mr. Auron once you board the Enterprise.”

“Who’s the captain here?” But Jim’s amusement is fleeting. “No arguing with me, mister. I’m not leaving anyone behind.”

“And the Vulcan won’t leave without you. Wonderful, we’ll all go together!” chirps the Betazoid through the open channel.

Two minutes—that’s all they have. He could hold out until the end but this doesn’t feel like a bluff. Not when the only person Auron cares about on that stolen shuttle is likely his wife. According to McCoy’s prognosis, he has good reason to believe she won’t stay alive much longer.

And Jim’s pride is not worth a life. “What do you want from me?”

“Turn your ship around, Captain, and go back the way you came.”

Jim allows for a pause. “Let my men go, and I will.”

“Hm. Perhaps we can reach an agreement after all. I could release them at the port, if you choose not to interfere with my escape.”

“You left two cold bodies at the last station, Auron. How can I trust you not to harm them?”

“There can be no trust between us, James Tiberius Kirk. Of course, in another minute that will be a moot point. Make your choice.”

Jim’s already made it. He takes a moment to just breathe. Patching through to the Enterprise on the same line with Auron, he gives his order. “Kirk to Enterprise. Mr. Scott, prepare for rendezvous with the Galileo.”

“Aye, Capt’n.“

He can’t blame Scotty for sounding so uncertain. “Kirk out.”

The Betazoid doesn’t gloat quite as much as Jim expects him to. “Well chosen, Captain. My pilot is correcting our… engineering failure as we speak. I hope you won’t feel too unkindly towards me for forcing your hand. You see, it is a simple matter for my wife and I. Either we live together or die together.”

The communication line cuts out, and on the shuttle screen the other vessel fires its thrusters in preparation to depart.

Jim quickly hails his ship. “Scotty.”

“Sir?” Jim hears a sudden, sharp inhalation. “Och, I’m not gonna like this, am I?“

“We might not be able to go after him at this moment but, given time, someone will. ” Jim feels the moment his Vulcan friend catches on to his half-hatched plan. “Beam me on that shuttle before it gets out of range, Mr. Scott. That’s an order.”

Spock, with something akin to alarm in his dark eyes, reaches for Jim’s arm as if to physically bind him to his seat, saying, “Captain—!”

Jim doesn’t hear the rest of what Spock has to say, for the familiar effect of the transporter takes over, causing a buzzing in his ears that spreads to his limbs. Then, seconds later, he is standing near the cargo hatch of a different shuttle.

By a wall, a woman with pale features in a dark dress is lying upon a small cot. As though she senses his arrival, her eyes open, their irises a startling green—the first Jim has seen of her supposedly half-human heritage.

“You must stop him,” she whispers, “if you can.”

She says no more, closing her eyes again as a shadow fills the open archway between this cabin and the next. The figure in red, weapon posed, is Lieutenant Yarrows. His eyes glitter almost preternaturally at Jim through the low lighting.

“You have made a mistake.”

Jim knows it isn’t Yarrows speaking even as words flow from the young man’s mouth. “As of now, one of your hostages is a ‘Fleet captain, Auron. I would say you are the one who should be afraid.”

There is an echo of laughter. It takes Jim a moment to realize it is a sensation in his head and not a sound in the room. Jim’s hands ball into fists, and he concentrates hard, letting his breath even just as Spock had taught him once upon a time. A handful of seconds pass, or ten minutes. Jim would never be certain. At last the laughter slides away, leaving behind a faint side effect not unlike the jarring clash of metal against metal which inspires a moment of vertigo.

Jim opens his eyes (only then aware he had closed them) and feels imbued with a deep satisfaction. He lets that linger in his voice. “I won’t be so easy to take.”

Before they had boarded the Galileo, Spock had insisted on a precautionary measure which had seen to that. He’ll have to remember to thank the Vulcan for the strong mental shielding because it seems to be holding up well against an experienced telepath.

A voice from behind Kirk startles him. “Sadly, Captain, while you may have thwarted me in one way, you are still vulnerable in another.”

Jim barely has time to spin around and catch a glimpse of the displeased visage of the Betazoid before the blow aimed at the side of his head knocks him out.

Next Part

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