The Boy and the Sea Dragon (4/?)

Date:

2

Title: The Boy and the Sea Dragon (4/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Kirk, Spock, McCoy
Summary: On an away mission, Captain Kirk encounters an old friend he hasn’t thought of in years. Unfortunately, their meeting is less than fortuitous and bodes ill for the rest of Jim’s crew.
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Part Four

Jem-me.

Jim paused in his walking, eyebrows drawn together in concentration. Then the Captain resumed movement. His phaser was in a steady hand and his body language radiated alertness.

Jem.

Kirk stopped again, this time calling out, “Identify yourself!” He has experienced the sensation of being followed since he took a turn around a crop of rocks and inexplicably lost sight of his team. Now there is a large stretch of flat dusty ground and little else. His communicator spits static.

Jim is no idiot. He has been in a similar situation that ended in a two-day stay in an underground prison run by angry little people that looked like dwarves; the final result was some uncomfortable (unfortunately deadly) injuries and an unhappy First Officer and Chief Medical Officer who watched him like hawks for the next three away missions.

Kirk whirled around at the sound of a dislodged scattering of stones, and stared. To his left was a cliff which had previously been miles of dirt.

So whatever is stalking him wants to play games.

With slow determination, Captain Kirk approached the edge of the cliff and peered over. He waited tensely for the feeling of a presence at his back. Instead, he was greeted with the sight of a small speck of a figure on a beach. Jim opened his mouth to speak, and in that split second, he felt a sense of disorientation and leapt back from the edge so that he wouldn’t fall.

He would later swear that he felt his entire body shift. An instinctive backwards leap somehow transformed into an impromptu shift of molecules, and Kirk blinked his eyes to find himself on the beach. From his new position, the cliff towered overhead and the roar of the ocean was loud in his ears.

He whipped his phaser on the mark not fifteen feet away before he realized what—and who—he was looking at.

The thing greeted him. Jem, it said, a whisper in his mind.

Kirk’s knees weakened and he widened his stance to keep from dropping to the sand. His brain took a moment to work through the unlikelihood of this creature’s identity and yet concluded that it could be no other. He was instantly taken back to a time when he was young; the fascination of then roared to the surface and became the fascination of now.

“You can’t be here,” he said dumbly.

It hunkered down on all fours and proceeded to crawl toward him. Jim resisted the urge to backpedal, a grown man’s caution overriding a youngster’s curiosity. He stared at the long-fingered hand that reached out to him.

Is it touch-telepathic like a Vulcan?

He would have said yes before today. Now that it has lured him here—however impossible—he had to reconsider his assumptions.

It spoke, then, without physical contact.

Hello, child.

“I’m not a child” was the automatic response. Then Kirk added, “I don’t understand. Sp—my first officer confirmed that there were no substantial lifeforms besides micro-organisms and vegetation on this planet. You can’t be here.”

We meet again, friend.

“You can’t be here!” he reiterated with intensity. Kirk trained his phaser on the creature. “Whatever you are, you have no right to invade a man’s memories. You have no—”

PEACE!

The word echoed like a shot.

Kirk lowered his weapon, opting to reach for his communicator. It refused to establish contact with the ship or the people who should have been with him. Anger rose in place of the certain dread that his crew might be in danger. “I don’t remember you being so deceptive, friend,” Jim told it. “What have you done with my people?”

It dropped its hand, resigned that Jim would not touch it.

I have waited long. I have followed and waited.

He swallowed hard. “What do you mean? You’ve been following me? But… you live in the ocean.”

Jem-me remembers his friend from the water. There is water, here.

The creature turned his head first right and then left as if to say See? Familiar, isn’t it? The surroundings, however, did not fit on a hot and dry planet which had few bodies of water. It felt pleased, that much Jim understood, like it had fulfilled a task asked of it. Only Jim hadn’t instructed, asked or otherwise had contact with this creature since he was nine years old. Confused and unnerved seemed like apt descriptions for his emotions right then. He watched as it settled back on its legs and tilted its head.

Sit, it said.

He sat without meaning to. When it reached for his face, his arms were too heavy to lift to stop it. The touching of their skin was numbed with cold and Jim wanted badly to protest, because he didn’t remember it being this forceful. In fact, in that moment, his mind could recall little except for a sudden sense of peace, falsely fed into his very core. His body was relaxing, reminiscent of the many times he had, as a child, felt no fear when visiting this dragon of the sea. In the end, Jim’s body betrayed his last struggle against a will not his own.

“Well?” McCoy asks. “I have all shift and the next if necessary, Jim. Let’s hear that explanation.”

Kirk momentarily bites at his lower lip and leans back into the chair. “I—It’s fuzzy, sometimes,” he admits. “But I am sure that it asked me for permission to, uh, hitch a ride.”

Leonard’s eyebrow goes up. “Hitch a ride? Where, exactly?”

Jim shrugs.

“You aren’t helping your case here, kid. We don’t ‘give rides’ to every damn thing that wants on this ship.”

McCoy reaches out to touch his long-time friend and is startled when Jim flinches and says, “Don’t.”

“Jim?”

The Captain shoves a hand through his short hair. “I don’t know, Bones. I can see the memory of what happened in my head, but it doesn’t… feel like it is real. Does that make sense?”

“Too much,” says the doctor grimly. “It’s got some kind of power that we can’t begin to measure; power that kept us from getting to you and power that affects you even now.”

The man opens his mouth as if to speak but quickly shuts it with a grimace. Kirk stands, then, and pivots away. “He wants to talk to me.”

Leonard leaps between Jim and the door to his office. “Hell no, Jimmy. You shouldn’t go anywhere near it unless someone—a lot of us—are with you!”

“Bones,” his voice sounds strange as he absently tries to step past the doctor, “I have to go. He says it’s important.”

“Jim! Goddamn it! Wait, I’m coming with you!”

But Jim is no longer listening, and by the time McCoy can grab his previously abandoned hypospray of sedatives, the Captain has disappeared from Sickbay like a ghost.

Leonard hollers to a wide-eyed Christine on his hasty exit, “Comm Spock! Tell him that Jim is in trouble!”

McCoy rounds the corner of a corridor used for diplomatic guests on Deck 42 at the same time that Spock appears in the opposite direction with a security team behind him.

Thank God Spock’s always prepared, Leonard thinks as he meets the group halfway. Out loud he says, “That blasted thing is leading Jim around by the nose. He walked out of my office like a damn zombie.”

“I have secured this level, Doctor. The ship’s computer indicates that both the Captain and two unknown entities are residing in the guest’s quarters.”

That stops Leonard dead in his tracks. “Two?” he repeats with dread.

“Affirmative.”

He and Spock take a quick measure of one another. They seem to reach the same conclusion: Jim needs rescuing. NOW.

When they step up to the door simultaneously, Spock asks the doctor to allow him to proceed. The doctor replies that a certain hobgobin can go stick his oversized ego in a bucket of cold water if he thinks that Leonard McCoy is going to hide behind him like a girl. The Vulcan simply maneuvers the CMO slightly behind his right shoulder and hands him a phaser. McCoy scowls and transfers his loaded hypospray into his other hand. Dually armed, Leonard is hot on Spock’s heels when they burst into the creature’s living quarters.

There is no one but Jim to greet them. The Captain is stiff-backed in a chair placed directly in the center of the room.

Leonard starts forward with “Jim” but Spock interrupts with “Captain, do you require assistance?”

“No,” Jim answers and smiles.

“That’s not Jim,” McCoy bites out. “I’ll be damned if that’s Jim.”

“Perhaps,” agrees the Vulcan. The security officers have squeezed themselves in around the sides of the room, but still remain in the background. Spock watches the man in front of them with sharp speculation. “Captain, are you under duress?”

“Of course not, Mr. Spock” is the flat reply.

Spock takes one step forward. “We will leave on your command.”

“The Hell we will!” rages McCoy.

“Doctor,” the First Officer states without preamble or bothering to turn around. “The Captain’s orders must be obeyed.” He is still watching Jim as he speaks.

Leonard stares at the back of Spock’s head, trying to decipher what the crazy Vulcan is telling him. “Sure, Spock,” he suddenly agrees. The doctor makes a show of tucking his phaser into the back of his pants. “Whatever Jim wants, Jim gets.” His look is black when he glares at the man in the chair. The red-shirted officers appear uneasy and uncertain of what game is currently being played; they are neither willing to relinquish their weapons nor make a threatening move against their Captain.

The Vulcan lowers his weapon and walks in a half-circle approximately five feet from Kirk. McCoy decides to circle in the other direction. They stop when they are both perfectly aligned with Jim’s rigid shoulders.

Spock speaks, then. “Jim,” he asks softly, “a direction, if you will.”

Leonard is most certainly confused and valiantly attempting to appear otherwise. What in God’s name is Spock talking about?

Kirk says, “Starboard.”

McCoy realizes belatedly that starboard is, in fact, a real direction; in another second after that, his brain fairly shouts that he, Leonard McCoy, is on the starboard side. The Vulcan’s phaser arm comes up swiftly and Leonard only has time to choke out a shocked “Spock!”

The First Officer fires at the CMO.

Next Part

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About KLMeri

Owner of SpaceTrio. Co-mod of McSpirk Holiday Fest. Fanfiction author of stories about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

2 Comments

  1. dark_kaomi

    No! Bones! Oh god what is going on? What did that creature do? WHY IS SPOCK ATTACKING MCCOY!? THIS DOESN’T MAKE SENSE! Jim, fix this!

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