Title: The Boy and the Sea Dragon (5/?)
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.
Previous Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Part Five

McCoy comes back to awareness with a groan, his body vehemently protesting when he shifts position. There is nausea, a burning sensation in the middle of his chest, and slow response-time of aching muscles. It’s the after-effects of being stunned by a phaser; he recognizes the symptoms. At this point, Leonard cannot classify his injuries well, knows only that the throbbing is a sign that he must be alive.

It’s then that Leonard’s brain becomes alert enough to draw conclusions.

He sits up with a gasp. “Spock!” The name resounds with the memory of horror before he’d been sent into oblivion.

A warning bell begins to sound insistently over his head on the bio-console. That brings a familiar face to his side in an instant—Nurse Chapel. She says “Len!” with evident relief and pushes him back down into the biobed. Christine tells him, “It’s alright, Doctor. You’re fine.”

Leonard thinks that everyone must have gone insane. “Fine?” He slaps at her hand in irritation. “Chris, Spock stunned me! That traitor—that—” There are little words to describe how betrayed he presently feels.

Christine worries her lower lip, and McCoy puts his rage and hurt to the side to ask, “What happened? Where’s Jim?”

“The Captain and Mr. Spock are gone, Len.”

The words are so hushed that they could be a whisper. He automatically wonders who she doesn’t want to overhear this conversation. Leonard tries to peer around the curtained area but Christine is successfully blocking his view. He rolls to his side, ignoring the stinging in his legs and arms, and shrugs off the nurse’s poor attempt at restraining him. McCoy limps from his Isolation unit (why is he in Isolation for being stunned?) and into the main patient area of the medical bay.

He starts shivering the moment the cold air hits him. For all the silence and unsettled atmosphere he senses, Leonard might have walked into a graveyard. The four security officers—the ones that had followed Spock and McCoy into the creature’s quarters—are each resting comfortably on a biobed. They show no signs of distress and injury; in fact, their monitors have normal stats, those that he can see. Leonard reaches for a PADD chart and scrolls through the medical log of Lieutenant Omo. His hand is lightly shaking before he is halfway through the report. Christine gently takes the PADD from him.

“All of you were brought in at the same time. We separated you from the others because you showed signs of recovery.”

Leonard steels himself. “Who—?”

“Mr. Spock—and the Captain. A passing ensign in the corridor heard the shout of one of the security officers, actually saw the Captain corner the man and—take him down. Luckily, Ensign Garis had the sense to hide until Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk left the area.”

“What do you mean, Chris, by ‘take him down?'”

She hesitates. “Accordingly to Garis, Kirk simply touched the officer and he dropped like a stone.”

“Into a catatonic state? Jesus!”

“We’ve tried… everything, Len. Their bodies will cooperate, react to pain or outside stimulus, but it’s as if they are on automatic pilot.” Christine wraps her arms around herself. “When you look into their eyes, there’s nothing there.”

Leonard mutters, “Like something locked away their souls.”

She nods. “Dr. M’Benga’s orders are to keep them sedated.”

McCoy nods his approval. They stare at each other for a span of four heartbeats before Leonard wonders aloud, “Why me, Chris? Why was I only stunned, instead of—” He swallows hard. “Either Spock or Jim could have easily disarmed me and taken me down too.”

“They didn’t.” Her eyes say I don’t know why, Leonard, but I am grateful.

McCoy spends a silent moment checking over the status of each officer, a frown firmly in place, before he paces to his office, tapping a finger against his mouth. His legs protest the sharp movements and desperately want to fold, so McCoy settles himself into a chair to be safe. How ironic, he thinks. Not a few hours ago, Jim sat in this chair, full of woes. No doubt, the kid—stranger—had been feeding him shovelfuls of crap. And McCoy was dumb enough to be strung along into a trap.

Christine enters the CMO’s office with M’Benga. Leonard does not protest when Geoff runs a tricorder over him and tries to determine Leonard’s discomfort. McCoy isn’t allowed to skip the details or refuse the low-dosage pain medication Christine administers into the side of his neck with a gentle depression of a hypospray. The relief is almost instantaneous.

More clear-minded, though weary, Leonard stays in a sitting position for a while, sorting through the past events. It takes time before he can will himself not to live in the moment that Spock turned on him. The professional detachment that he depends on is hard to find. Leonard remembers the way that Spock watched Jim, asked for his orders and…

Received them, obviously. Leonard accepts the painful possibilities. With a sigh, he finally levers himself from the chair (and his hurt-misery-denial). Christine is completing the standard vitals report on their new patients.

He waits until she approaches him. “Spock said something strange to me. He said that there were two entities besides Kirk.”

“How can that be?” she wants to know.

“It can’t,” he replies. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Mr. Spock wouldn’t lie.”

“That’s right, Spock wouldn’t. We can safely assume that that wasn’t Spock. I’d bet my eye-teeth whatever thing is here, it is havin’ a real ball watching us figure out its game.” He hides his trembling hands by crossing his arms.

Christine replaces the last PADD in its proper place. Her words are quiet. “We may be working blind, Leonard, but—”

He nods and finishes, “—it’s obvious I’m the one who’s been picked to play.”

McCoy enters the Bridge to find Sulu uneasy in the Captain’s chair. The pilot automatically reports that neither the Captain nor the First Officer have been located on the ship. Chekov explains that the ship’s sensors do not identify humanoid life-forms on the planet which the Enterprise still orbits. McCoy takes a long look at each drawn or pinched face. They feel as he does.

How are they going to get Jim and Spock back?

Leonard tells the navigator, “I need you to pull up the security feed from around the time that Spock escorted Jim’s guest out of Sickbay.”

Nyota is grim-faced, her dark eyes worried. “What do you suspect, Doctor?”

“I’m not sure yet, darlin’. But if Spock is as hoodoo-ed—” Or worse, he doesn’t say. “—as Jim, then we need to figure out when it happened. Spock was alone with the creature, wasn’t he?”

Chekov mutters over the security console. They wait with bated breath until he announces “I’ve found it! Wait…”

Leonard leans over his shoulder. “What is it?”

“You can see here that Mr. Spock takes the thing—” They watch the creature scuttle across down the corridor slightly behind the Vulcan’s back. People make a wide berth for the strange pair to pass. “—to its room but…” Chekov’s words die out as he enters a series of rapid commands into the computer. A new scene pops up and together they watch from the viewpoint of inside the quarters. The door slides open with Spock silhouetted in the entrance, the creature nothing more than a shadow behind him. Then the screen blacks out.

“What the Hell?”

“The feed fails at this point, Doctor.” Chekov turns a worried angular face to McCoy. “I have checked the connection and it is fine.”

“So it’s definitely screwing with us at every turn. Damn it!”

“Sulu!”

McCoy jerks his head towards Nyota. She adjusts her earpiece and says, “I’m picking up a transmission. I—wait, it sounds like—” She curses loudly, then, and hastily wrenches the earpiece away with a grimace. They can all hear the shrill noise which shrieks from the unit. Uhura’s face is pained when she looks at McCoy. “For a moment, I thought I heard Spock.”

Leonard stares. “What was he saying? Was he trying to establish communication with the ship?”

“It cut out too quickly, Doctor, but I can trace it. Hold on.” She turns her back to them. “It came from… the planet. It came from the planet!” She sounds as unhappy and confused as Leonard feels.

Sulu punches a button on the armrest of the Captain’s chair. “Sulu to Transporter Room, report.”

“Mr. Scott, here.”

“Scotty, has the Captain or Mr. Spock used the transporter?”

“Nay, lad. I’ve got me eyes peeled for those two. ‘Sides, we’re on lockdown here. I’d know if one of ’em tried to use their codes to get through the door.”

McCoy circles around to stand beside the chair. “Scotty, we picked up a signal from the surface.”

There is a moment of silence. “If they’re down there, Doctor, they coulda used a shuttle.”

McCoy looks to Chekov who replies quickly enough, “All shuttles docked and inactive.”

“It makes no sense,” Leonard says half to himself. “The ship says there is no one on the planet and yet it can’t locate Jim or Spock aboard. God-damn it, they’ve got to be somewhere!”

Sulu says quietly, “We should assume that the Enterprise is under hostile control.”

McCoy answers with a kind of grim determination. “Yes. And that means we’ll have to complete a manned search of the ship and the planet.”

When they do find the missing Captain and First Officer that will be a whole other—much bigger—mess to handle. Leonard’s gut foretells that the outcome will be unpleasant for all parties involved.

Next Part

Related Posts:

• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (14/14) – from December 7, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (13/14) – from December 6, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (12/14) – from December 2, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (11/?) – from November 27, 2010
• The Boy and the Sea Dragon (10/?) – from November 25, 2010