Prologue
---Kirk---
Something's not right.
He could tell right off that something was amiss, but his disoriented mind was sluggish- unwilling to fully release him to consciousness. James T. Kirk struggled, unsuccessfully at first, to open his eyes. They were heavy, as if weighted with lead, much like the rest of his aching body. His body urged him to slip back into the sweet grips of darkness. Why was he awake anyways? Ah! There it was again- a small tickle on his arm.
Gathering all the energy he could muster, he batted blindly at his arm, banishing the crawling offender to the other side of the room. He was fairly certain that he didn't want to know what it was that had been crawling on him.
Jim finally managed to open his eyes and squinted up into the darkness. All was quiet, except for the sound of water dripping off in the distance. He began to shiver slightly, feeling the effects of the damp, slimy floor seeping into his uniform and right on down to his very core.
Blinking some more, his eyes began to adjust to the dark room. He became aware of a dim light emanating somewhere off to his left casting a soft bluish light into the heavy shadows of the room. Turning his head, he found the light source filtering through some bars on the far side of the room. Some time had past before his thoughts started to come together as he took in his surroundings.
He was in a cell… that's right. They had been captured! Jim jerked his head to the right to look for his companions. Bad idea! The room began spinning; a wave of nausea hit him causing him to promptly share the left- over's of his lunch onto the floor beside him.
After, a few moments the nausea passed and he every so slowly opened his eyes. Across the room from him he saw the unconscious forms of his chief engineering officer and chief medical officer. Alarmed at their stillness, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and began to crawl towards them.
Splat!
He closed his eyes briefly in sheer disgust as he moved his hand from the pile of puke. Wiping his hand on the back of his pants he continued onwards. As he approached, his panic began to lessen as he saw the movements of their shallow breathing. They were alive, for now.
What had happened? Where the hell where they? Ah yes. Now he remembered.
Star fleet had ordered the Enterprise to observe a trading ring at an outpost near the neutral zone. There had been rumor of some less than legal trading going on within the ring, and they had been ordered to capture the offending smugglers. Identifying the smugglers had been quite easy, detaining them… not so much.
The smugglers escaped into neutral space; however, the Enterprise managed to track them all the way to the Beta Quadrant to a small planet on the outskirts of the galaxy called Terran. A landing party was assembled and their mission was simple; Captain's orders "get in, grab 'em and go".
Obviously things did not go quite that smoothly.