Chapter One
"It's very quiet, don't you think, Spock?"
Spock listened carefully to his surroundings. Bugs chirped and chittered from the arms of the dense green forest surrounding them. But other than that, there was nothing.
"It is very strange, Captain," Spock answered. Especially since the only reason why ther were on Alyssan was to discuss a peace trety between it and another neighbor planet, Samalis. They had been sent by Star Fleet on a very obscure order to an equally obscure section of the galaxy. Without further directions, they simply followed their orders. Somehow, Spock had been expecting a welcoming comitee. But there was no one here, excepting his Captain and himself, of course.
"How odd." Kirk said. "They told us to meet them at these coordinates...but there's nobody here."
"Perhaps they were off." Spock suggested.
"Perhaps," Kirk replied, sounding doubtful. "Anyway, let's find this town. We're supposed to be close."
The two began walking, looking up to the treetops. The Alyssians were tree people, and much of the planet's land was covered with trees. A large chunk of this greenry had been destroyed, however, by Samalis's nuclear warheads.
Soon, they came to a very distinct path. Kirk glanced at Spock before leading the way.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Kirk asked. He looked up to the canopy above, at the light filtering down through the dense green leaves and, amazingly, catching in Kirk's hazel eyes, his dirty blonde hair.
"Indeed." he answered. At this, the Captain smiled.
Wordlessly, they continued on. For some while, neither said a anything, eyes focused on the treetops. Spcok became quite distracted, and so was unable to immediately pick up on a very disturbing fact.
The bugs had stopped chirping.
A sense of foreboding knotted itself into his mind.
"Captain..." he began, but by then, it was too late.
BOOM!
Spock felt himself being flung backwards. He tried to buffer his fall with his arms, but failed and landed hard on his spine. For a while, he was disoriented, unable to see, unable to move, unable to hear over the loudness of the ringing in his ears.
Images danced across his vision. Ash, everywhere. Fire, smoldering where the dirt had once been. Painfully, he sat up. He put a hand to pounding forehead, and, finding it wet, held it in front of his eyes. A dark green painted the tips of his fingers.
The realization brought him back to attention. Slowly, he began to run through what had happened. It was quiet. He had called to the Captain...
Just how far had he been ahead?
Ears still ringing but able to see clearly, Spock stood up.
"Jim?" he called through his dizziness. "Jim, can you hear me?"
"Spock..."
The voice was very strained. Alarmed, Spock approached it as quickly as he could. Soon he became dizzy again and was forced to stop. "Jim?" he called out again.
This time there was no answer.
"Jim?" he tried once more. But this time, he didn't need an answer. If he hadn't looked down, the Vulcan first officer would have tripped over him.
His captain was unconsious, lying sideways in a pile of ash stained the color of his own blood.