Consequences
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – 3rd Law of Motion
Jim was in a foul mood. Chief Giotto's laughter wasn't helping. Neither was Bones who was in full mother hen mode.
The day had started off well. Enterprise was doing spot surveys on a class M planet. There was a primitive pre-warp culture, but so far they had avoided contact.
Jim had taken advantage of the quiet to beam down and check on one of the parties. He had a good lock on their position on his tricorder and was walking in from the beam down point. He was hurrying towards them when he made his first mistake. Doctrine called for personnel to stop when checking tricorder reading. Jim hadn't stopped and was head down looking at the display when he heard the snick of the trap's trigger.
His jump at that sound meant that the trap hadn't gotten a good shot at him. But one arm of the treble hook had caught in the hem of his shirt. That had turned out to be the second mistake of the day. He was wearing the shirt that Scotty had given him for Christmas. It was a special micro-meta-aramid fiber created to be bullet proof, knife resistant, flame and fire resistant, and un-tearable. The ultimate in high tech ripstop material. Instead of tearing out of the shirt, the hook had instead lifted Jim about three meters above the ground and pinned his arms so that he could not reach the rope to pull himself up, or reach his knife to cut the rope. Worst he could not reach his communicator.
His communicator was in silent mode. This would have counted as Jim's third mistake of the day, but it was part of the doctrine for avoiding contact. Bad things happened when communicators made noise unexpectedly. Silent mode also meant that the communicator was not accepting voice commands. He was having trouble keeping track of the time but the communicator had vibrated twice while he was hanging. That meant that he had missed two fifteen minute comm checks. Uhura was probably guiding the cavalry in to rescue him. It was going to be embarrassing.
It was worse than he had figured. The cavalry when it arrived consisted of Chief Giotto, Bones and three red shirts. Working as a well oiled team, Giotto and the red shirts lowered Kirk to the ground. As he was being lowered, Bones had run a medical scan. The results hadn't made him happy, Jim was in stage 1 suspension trauma. Bones didn't want things to go from bad to worse so he wasn't letting Jim sit or lie down. Instead he had two of the red shirts supporting his shoulders while he walked slowly and painfully around the clearing.
Chief Giotto liked to get the facts of any incident quickly, in the field if it was safe and practical to do so. While Kirk walked the chief interrogated him. Jim was sure that this would show up in a simulation soon. After about ten minutes of walking Bones decided that it was safe for Jim to sit down. In the meantime he had examined the hook. It was old and rusty, so he prepared a hypo spray with a tetanus booster and antibiotic, no telling what was on that hook. There was a long scratch on Jim's back, Bones treated it with a dermal repair unit, after giving the captain the shot, none too gently.
Giotto's examination of the hook, line and trap design forced one conclusion. The trap was a basic Starfleet survival school design. The materials were standard Starfleet survival kit issue Since it hadn't been dismantled he figured that it had been constructed by some Starfleet member who had been marooned on this planet. This was bad news as it was possible that a Prime Directive breach had occurred. He was going to have to recommend a more intensive search of the area for wreckage. The realization that a Starfleet food trap had caught the captain and signaled a possible Directive breach stuck him funny and he burst into laughter.
As the beamed back up to the ship, Jim realized that the hardest task of the day remained. He had to tell Scotty that there were occasions when a ripped shirt was a good thing.
A/N
Bookdragon01 double dog dared me to write this – after my response to A Practical Gift.
Suspension Trauma is real and it can kill. Its related to the feeling that you get after swimming for a while and then climbing out.