Title: Difficulty Engaged (3/?)
Author: klmeri
Fandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairing: Kirk/Spock/McCoy
Summary: During leave, trouble thwarts a good plan and causes Kirk and Spock to accelerate the timeline of their McCoy-centric agenda. But true to form, McCoy is already playing by a set of rules they don’t understand.
Previous Parts: 1 | 2

McCoy sits back, noting the ominous creak of the chair that had been unearthed from one of the junk piles for him to use and feeling lucky that it held his weight through the last procedure. His gaze slides over his patient a final time, confirming she’s still breathing, before settling on the flickering light from an old standing lamp nearby.

“If she makes it through the next twenty-four hours, the prognosis isn’t too bad,” he says quietly. The tiredness in his own voice stirs him some, prompts him to massage a cramped back muscle, the result of being stuck in a hunched position for too long. “Her recovery needs to be monitored.”

Across from him, Ruti says nothing.

Leonard surmises, “So that’s a no to relocating to a medical facility. I can see how much she matters to you. Is remaining hidden really worth risking her life?”

“I told you, Doctor, that her life will be over should my cousin find us. And he will check the local wards.”

“Then he knows she is injured,” Leonard replies sharply. “Because he’s the one who hurt her?”

“The less you know, the better.”

“Not from where I’m sitting.”

“He will kill you too and think nothing of it.”

“Sounds like a real gem,” mutters the doctor. “Believe me, I fully understand there’s danger here but, lady,” he says, his irritation on the rise again, “you seem to have forgotten that you’ve already dragged me into it.”

“Master will kill her,” a gruff voice comes from behind McCoy.

“Chee, silence!” Ruti barks, snapping to her feet.

Leonard twists around to stare at Chee. “Did you say Master?”

Chee grunts, which seems to be his way of agreeing. “Master’s wife,” he says, pointing to McCoy’s patient, “has betrayed him. We left with her, therefore we will die too.”

“Be silent.”

It isn’t the frightening undertone to Ruti’s command that has Leonard coming out of his chair. No, it’s Chee’s instantaneous reaction. In concern, Leonard rushes to the fellow, who has grabbed his head and doubled over. Just when he’s within an arm’s reach, Chee straightens up, breathing hard, fighting the visible trembling of his limbs that betrays his fear. The hardness of Chee’s gaze draws Leonard up short, a slap of a warning to Leonard. He shouldn’t try to touch this person, his captor, who is an unpredictable one at that.

He asks despite his reservations, “Are you okay?”

Chee grunts, pivots around and marches from the room.

Leonard stares after him awhile before turning to Ruti. Her blank expression gives nothing away, which doesn’t surprise him. He has to wonder, though, how Chee can look at Ruti with such hatred and yet follow her orders. He doesn’t even retaliate when punished for not obeying.

Then McCoy’s gaze drops the unconscious woman breathing shallowly, miraculously alive despite the severity of her internal injuries, and knows the answer. Ruti and Chee don’t like each other but they tolerate their current situation for her sake.

Who are you? he wants to ask. He doubts she is merely a runaway wife with supposedly ruthless, homicidal husband.

“You say she needs to be monitored,” Ruti interrupts his thoughts.

He starts to nod, only to realize why she brought that fact up. “You said you would let me go.”

Ruti moves around the makeshift sickbed. “My Lady is not yet saved.”

He closes, wishing for some privacy to mourn the dashed hope of leaving but knowing he won’t have any privacy for quite some time. Doesn’t matter, he decides, opening his eyes to find Ruti standing uncomfortably close, staring directly into his face. His patient needs a medical professional to look after her, and there’s no one better to do so than the doctor who already started her treatment.

“Damn it,” he says, “you’ve got me.”

“I know,” his captor replies solemnly. “You choose well on your own.”

Oh, he doesn’t like the sound of that. “What happened to Chee just now, you caused that.”

“Yes.”

“Are you planning to inflict some torture on me too?”

“I do not wish to.” Ruti draws back, then.

He hears the rest left hanging between them, unspoken: But I will hurt you if necessary.

“So what do we do now?” he asks.

She looks past him, seeming to measure the troubles which lay in store for them behind that little room. “We find a way to leave.”

His stomach tightens uncomfortably. “Leave the port? Do you have a ship?”

“I have a means to a ship.”

The way Ruti stares at him makes him feel sick. He backs up. “You’re crazy if you think I’ll let you take the Enter—”

“Not your ship,” she cuts in, seeming annoyed. “What would I want with a Federation starship?”

Relief makes Leonard momentarily dizzy. He drops a hand to the top rung of the chair—and one of the chair legs finally snaps in half and the whole thing tilts. Startled, he stumbles sideways with it until a large hand grabs his shoulder and shoves him upright again.

Chee has returned.

“Thanks,” Leonard says, then frowns when Chee doesn’t let him go.

“The container is here,” Chee tells Ruti.

“You paid them extra?”

“Yes. But they will not ask questions no matter the amount of payment.” Chee bares his teeth. “I told them I would split open their heads if they did.”

Leonard looks between the two, his paranoia kicking into full gear. “Wait a minute. We’re leaving now?”

Ruti inclines her head.

His temper sparks. “I only just finished patching her insides back together! That woman needs to rest!”

Ruti seems amused by his hollering, as if he is a child throwing a petty tantrum.

“You two are out of your goddamn minds,” he snarls.

“You have two options before you, Dr. McCoy. The container can hold two people, but you will undoubtedly find the enclosed space not to your liking.”

“And the second option?”

“Chee and I will escort you through the station.” She steps around him, following that with a warning. “The second option is the more dangerous of the two because it will tempt you to act foolishly. If you are foolish, Doctor, you are dead.”

Yeah, no. There is no way in hell is he will willingly climb into a box. It might as well be his coffin. “I choose the danger,” he says.

Chee lets go of him, and Ruti indicates Leonard should follow her. He looks back into the room only once, to a disconcerting sight: Chee, despite his roughness and meat-headed manners, very carefully collecting the mysterious Lady into his arms as though she is the most precious object in the galaxy.

But then again, Leonard supposes she must be special. There’s no telling the kind of crimes Ruti and Chee have committed so far on her behalf. Kidnapping is likely the least damning of them.

“With me, Dr. McCoy,” Ruti calls, and for a nanosecond, Leonard could swear her voice is in his head as well as his ears.

He obeys.

Spock’s homemade scanner works eerily similar to any standard-issue tricorder. Jim commends him on that as they embark on their manhunt. Spock, per usual, is diligent and untiring in his inspection of their surroundings; the problem, however, lies with Jim. At times, he finds himself distracted by a growing complaint, one which he doesn’t want to share with Spock quite yet. It’s a nagging, an itch at the back of his neck he calls a ‘red alert’.

As the signal pinpointing McCoy’s whereabouts becomes increasingly more exact, so does Jim’s feeling that trouble lies ahead. During their second year at Starfleet Academy, Jim had told Bones about this sensation he sometimes experiences, Bones had snorted and said it sounded like an arthritis flare-up. “But you’re not an old man yet, Jim, so I guess we’ll call it intuition,” his friend joked.

Yet Kirk’s nose for danger has proven itself over the course of his captaincy, preventing some major disasters. After only a handful of instances of seeing Kirk’s intuition in action, McCoy started taking his remarks seriously.

But red alert or otherwise, it seems like a silly thing to tell a Vulcan, especially one who is prone to requiring proof to substantiate a claim intangible in nature.

Jim would say to Spock, “My gut tells me we’re headed into trouble.”

Spock would likely reply, “Guts do not speak or experience feelings, Jim. When was your last physical?”

Kirk breathes steadily through his nose as he cuts a corner ahead of Spock, who is busy scanning the shopping district’s crowded plaza, which to Jim seems more like an uncoordinated, open bazaar. His red alert has turned from an annoying itch to an unrelenting sting. He doesn’t question the impulse to draw Spock to one side of the bazaar under a modicum of shelter.

A simple pitstop, Jim tells himself. That’s all this is. “Spock, I don’t see McCoy yet.”

“He must be here.” Spock slides a finger across his padd, then lifts his head like a dog catching a scent to look in a specific direction. “Calculations show—”

Kirk snaps to attention at a flash of color, the shade of blue very familiar. He grabs Spock’s shoulder without thinking. “There!” An instant later, his joy turns to unease. “Hold on. Bones isn’t alone.”

Spock lowers the padd to his side. “It would seem so.”

For a moment, Jim can only see the daintiness of McCoy’s companion, the delicate way she lifts a hand to halt McCoy and another companion at the juncture of two market stalls.

Too late, he thinks, upset. They have found Bones too late, and now the best friend he’s been secretly in love with for years has found someone more interesting.

“Jim.”

Jim drags in a breath, plastering a tiny smile on his face as he faces Spock. “Looks like Bones made some friends.” He doesn’t like the way Spock is watching him, as though Spock knows the sour turn of his inner thoughts.

But he hasn’t failed. They haven’t, Jim reminds himself firmly. Failure isn’t to be contemplated until Leonard McCoy tells one or both of them to take a hike and keep any romantic aspirations to themselves.

His smile widens slightly with a hint of mischief. “Why don’t we go over and introduce ourselves?”

Spock raises an eyebrow. “As fellow officers or romantic rivals?”

Jim grins. “That’s what I like about you, Spock. You’re so subtle.”

“Jim, do you understand the meaning of—”

He barks out a laugh. “What I said and what I meant aren’t—you know what, Spock? Never mind.” Jim fixes his attention on the man across the plaza. He starts forward, skirting around people in his path to McCoy, Spock at his heels. “I’ll explain it to you later, or Bones will.”

As if hearing his name, McCoy faces away from his companions, his gaze skimming a shaded area past the market. Even from a distance, the set to McCoy’s mouth is recognizable—and is what makes Jim’s pace falter, then halt him altogether.

Spock stops too, looking first to Kirk then to McCoy. “Jim?”

Suddenly that red alert makes too much sense. “Spock, something’s wrong. Bones doesn’t look like that unless—” Jim bites off the rest of his explanation, swallowing it uncomfortably. “Something’s wrong,” he repeats adamantly, spurred now by his own startling observation to step in McCoy’s direction once more.

This time, it’s Spock who stops Kirk where he stands, taking a light hold of his arm. “A moment,” murmurs the Vulcan, still staring ahead of them.

Jim wants to snap that if Bones is in trouble, they might not have a moment, but something in Spock’s dark eyes arrests him, rallies the trust which naturally accompanies being with Spock or McCoy. How it’s become ingrained in him to place everything he is behind those two sometimes baffles him; but he does so without hesitation, without thought, simply because they ask it of him.

This time is no different. Jim stills under Spock’s hand, waiting.

Words begin to issue from Spock in monotone, an explanation or ritual or simply the Vulcanian way of marking an event of importance. Jim doesn’t know which, but what he hears causes him to pay close attention.

“The awareness is always guarded. To draw back that veil is to invite in the chaos of the untrained, or those with little power. Every surface thought, every whim, becomes pitifully transparent.” Spock draws in a sudden breath, an act so uncharacteristic that Jim tenses.

Spock’s voice becomes strained. “Jim, there is so much information. Too much. It blinds!”

Kirk’s heart begins to pound. When he shifts on his feet, Spock’s grip turns suddenly painful.

“Stay,” the Vulcan demands. “You must—my anchor—to resist.”

Jim isn’t certain he understands what Spock needs of him but he grows still again. “Be careful,” he whispers, chilled by the prospect of Spock being crushed by the deluge of minds within the plaza.

Spock gives no indication of hearing him, echoing whatever internal process he is working through. “Where, where? Too many. Where is—” His grip on Jim relaxes. “There he is. Obvious. Sunlit. A beautiful compassion. But I sense… unhappiness. Agitation. Fear.”

In that moment Jim appreciates more than ever how well-trained Spock is as a telepath and how strong he must be to make use of his ability in any capacity beyond physical touch. He swallows hard. “Why is Bones afraid?”

Spock turns quiet, as if teasing out an answer from tangles of information. “The fear is not for himself.”

Of course not, thinks Jim, though he is relieved. “Then there is an injury or a threat to someone under his care.”

“Indubitably.” Spock starts to sound more like himself. “However his current predicament came to be, his sense of duty ties him to it.”

“It’s up to us to untie him then,” Jim states firmly. “I won’t have my chief medical officer in danger.” It seems crazy but Jim could swear Spock squeezes his arm ever-so-briefly in agreement. “Spock, what about the other two?”

“I sense more agitation and fear from the male. Deep anger. Thoughts of violence.” The Vulcan stiffens, then.

Jim presses into his first officer’s silence, “What is it?”

“Most unusual,” Spock finally intones. “There is an emptiness in the mayhem. A void where there should be a mind. The female next to Dr. McCoy is mind-shielded.”

“Another telepath.” That thought gives him a solid explanation for his uneasiness. He decides, “Enough, Spock. Pull back.”

“I could—”

“No, you’re lucky not to have attracted her attention by now. Stop. That’s an order.”

Spock blinks and after a moment releases Jim’s arm. He turns to Jim with his usual composure, expectant.

Jim checks, “Are you all right?”

“Of course.”

He eyes the Vulcan speculatively but doesn’t press further, instead choosing to indicate the humanoids across the plaza with a measure of grimness. “Thanks to you, we have the information we need. Enough to know those two are not McCoy’s friends. We intervene now, or follow them.” He looks to Spock.

“The violence simmering in the male needs only an excuse to be unleashed.”

“And by confronting them, Bones could be caught in the crossfire even if his companions have no ill intentions toward him.” Jim’s gaze finds McCoy again, judging the doctor’s profile. “I’m loathed to jump in blind.”

“Is that so?”

Jim cuts a narrowed gaze to Spock. “What are you insinuating?”

“I merely made a remark, Jim.”

Jim’s gaze narrows further, but when Spock simply stares back, he ends up being the one to back down. Huffing and rolling his shoulders to loosen tight muscles, Kirk dismisses that lost battle (it’s a moot point since he rarely wins any argument with Spock anyway) and continues his musing aloud. “Why hasn’t Bones called someone for help? Where are they going? And what will happen to Bones when that destination is reached?”

“Obviously the answer is to follow them.”

“Yes, it is,” Jim says softly, “but not without backup. Contact the ship, Spock. I want a team of our Security on the ground.”

As Spock flips his communicator open, he says, “You do not wish to involve the port authorities. You do not trust them?”

“I trust my crew more.” Jim jerks his chin in the direction of an archway between two shops not directly in the line of sight of McCoy or the pair with him. “Let’s go.”

Spock calls the Enterprise while they retrace their steps, taking an inconspicuous route around the perimeter of the plaza to the vantage point of Kirk’s choice.

Related Posts:

• Difficulty Engaged (11/11) – from June 29, 2020
• Difficulty Engaged (10/11) – from June 28, 2020
• Difficulty Engaged (9/10) – from June 21, 2020
• Difficulty Engaged (8/10) – from June 12, 2020
• Difficulty Engaged (7/10) – from November 29, 2019