She feels a wave of heat slam into her body and her feet are knocked out from under her. She clambers up, finding her knees will barely support her, she looks around through stinging eyes; something is in the air, smoke. There's a gash on her upper thigh, something wet dribbles down her knee. She hits the button, signaling for the crew in Engineering to grab oxygen masks. She takes one herself, straps it on and flips the switch. Thirty minutes of air. That's all the time she has to get this place under control. When she turns to face her deck, she nearly freezes. What was once a hive of catwalks, shining machinery and eager, newly recruited engineers is now a melting pot of debris. Out of two-hundred, fifteen are struggling through the wreckage. Without another thought, she hits the comm.

"Gaila to the bridge-"

"They're gone," comes a voice, she turns,

"Commander!" she runs to the Chief Engineer, he's pinned, and blood seeps from his uniform. "We have to get you to sickbay." She finds her voice is surprisingly calm.

"No. There's no time. I saw what hit us, Ensign, there's a hull breech, too big to take care of. You need to get the rest of the crew out."

"But sir-"

"Gaila listen to me," her commander takes her hand in his claws, the gills on his neck carefully expanding "Get them out. No one else knows the codes to the security hatches. There's only a little time, get to the control panel on the seventh level, there's a few shuttles still activated, take whoever you can find and get the hell out of here."

"Sir we have to-"

"That's an order Ensign. It's up to you now."

"But the captain- sir we have to-"

"The bridge is gone, get to the controls. You can contact any remaining ships to beam you aboard from the shuttles. Go!" he wheezed. She squeezed his hand, and got to her feet,

"You down there, to deck seven!" she shouted. The small group, some being carried, looked up at her

"There's no way out, the doors won't respond!" someone shouted back

"Use the ladder, my level is still operative." They manage some barely functioning because of their wounds.

"We should leave them," one said

"Absolutely not," Gaila quips, "We all go, or we all die here." They're wasting precious time, but Gaila refuses to leave them behind. Once the last of them is on her level, she punches in a ship-wide alert, to any and all survivors to head to Engineering.

They clamber through wreckage, over bodies, limbs poking out at angles they weren't meant to. Gaila is shaking; she knew she started out with fifteen survivors, why does it look like only eight? The person she is helping walk isn't in her arms, where did they go? She looks around and around, she can't understand until someone tells her they were blown away, from the last hit. The ship shudders, they're being pummeled, and Gaila can see on the two functioning monitors through their cracked screens, it sputters, the computer warns their shields were down to fifteen percent. She curses out loud.

"Here comes a big one," someone shouts.

"All down!" this time she felt herself thrown clear from one end of the walk to the other. Something lands on top of her, she's not sure what it is, but she's pretty sure she's bleeding. Her legs are throbbing; her uniform smells like burnt flesh. She can see bluish tint on her uniform. Someone else's blood. Where did that come from? She realizes the thing on top of her is the Gorn that was helping carry wounded. His arm is gone; his leg is hanging on by threads. He's dead; she can see his lifeless eyes. That's where the blood was from. She manages to wriggle out from under him, seeing her hand is bleeding. She rips off the collar of her uniform and wraps it around her fingers, not bothering to see how bad it was.

"Your head-" someone says.

"Never mind it," she replies, finding her tongue feels thick in her mouth. Why can't she speak properly? "We'll try ship-to-ship transport; we'll never get to the shuttles this way." She tears a few wires out of the control panel, hot-wiring the screen up again, and is able to direct the rest of the energy to communications. It was pointless to try and save the shields at this point. "Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Ensign Gaila of the Farragut; we need transports ship-to-ship, to anyone hearing this, please respond. There are survivors on deck seven, deck thirty-two, and deck fifteen; there are six of us in Engineering. All need medical attention. Respond." There was nothing but dead air. "Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Ensign Gaila of the USS Farragut. To anyone hearing please respond. We require ship-to-ship transporting, we require medical attention-" before she could finish over the crackling comm, they hear a garbled voice reply:

"This is the U.S.S. Enterprise, standby for transport."

"Energize." Gaila feels the world swimming, before she has a chance to wonder, she feels her middle tingling. Looking over her shoulder, she sees they are being broken down, just as the hull in front of her eyes is cracking, blinding light takes her vision, and she feels herself rematerialize on the Enterprise. Her knees give way; the floor is slick with something, too many colors to tell, green, red, purple, blue. Blood of the cadets, of her Commander, she's covered with it. Oddly enough, Gaila is reminded suddenly of that ancient horror movie that she and Uhura watched once, about the girl and the pig blood. There are audible gasps from the crew around her. A pair of strong arms catch her, a worried face appears, goes blurry and then disappears, the world black.

She comes to, groaning.

"Good to see those pretty eyes again." She hears a familiar voice. Warm hands are holding her face, supporting her head as a pillow is situated beneath her neck. Regrettably, the warm hands leave her after a moment.

"Len, s'that you?" she slurs.

"Yeah sugar." She can see Leonard McCoy standing over her, the room feels bright; someone is wheeling a cart full of something past him,

"Where am I?"

"Enterprise. They got your message just before the Romulans got to you."

"Everyone else-"

"We got almost all of them. From what Jim told me, we got everyone on the decks you gave us but thirty-two, too much radiation damage; it would have flooded the transporter room. Substantial damage to almost the entire ship, barely a handful was saved, compared to what the ship originally started out with."

"How many?" she asked, McCoy shook his head,

"Now, you don't-"

"Tell me Leonard."

"Less than a hundred." Gaila shook her head, omitting a whimper. She's in pain, she realizes for the first time. Pain she can't describe. She feels over her head, her hands feel skin graft patches and bandages, and suddenly, as she drags her fingers through her hair, she realizes that it's been cut off, there's nothing there.

"Wh-what happened?" she asks,

"Sugar," he says gently, "We had to cut your hair. It was crawling with spots of radiation. It would've got to your skin. But it'll grow back, made sure it was done nice 'an even." He said. She's too tired to cry. Leonard, bless him, kisses her forehead, stroking her head. "I promise Darlin', it'll grow back, and it'll be just as long an' pretty as yesterday." He eases her carefully up so that she can be fed. "You need your fluids." He says, when she tells him she's not hungry. The nurse who comes to feed her becomes upset with her, because she won't eat.

"Well starve then!" she snaps, and sets the food down.

"Go on and take a break Nurse," McCoy tells her, "You've had a long day. Think we all have."

"Thank you sir," she mumbled, embarrassed now, and leaves Sickbay for the mess hall. Leonard takes the edge of Gaila's bed, picking up the small tray.

"Now," he says authoritatively. "You're going to eat all of this broth, even if you hate it." She shakes her head.

"Can't eat." She mumbles,

"Why not?" she shrugs willing herself not to cry. If she cries, her face will hurt even more than it already does. She can feel the bandages on her face crinkling every time she twitches. Something heavy is covering one of her eyes, gauze probably. "Tell me what you saw honey." He says gently, he's put down the bowl, and taken her hand, not her right hand. Something is wrong with that one for some reason. She tells him, tells him about how she saw the chief engineer pinned to the wall, pinned in such a way that if what was holding him there moved, he'd fall into two pieces. She tells him about seeing her crew drop away, struggling beside her one moment, dead the next. She tells him about the Gorn, who'd been helping her hoist an Ensign up, how he'd died, his blood soaking her uniform. McCoy doesn't tell her there was more of Gorn's blood and skin on her uniform than anyone else, he figured she'd had a rough time. He lets her cry for a while, which isn't long, her eyes are too swollen to push out any more tears.

"What about us?" she asks. "What's going to happen to us?"

"We have to pick up the pieces." He shrugged. "It's a sorry-ass job, sometimes I think I'd rather be in their place. But what doesn't kill us makes us stronger."

"Can't…" she groaned "this can't have happened, how could this happen?"

"It did." He said sternly "You look around; go on, look, you look at what they did to us." She looks, sees the medical bay is full to bursting. There are people lying on make-shift beds on the floor, nurses monitoring them, changing bandages, stabilizing patients. The place reeks of medicine, blood, burnt flesh and singed clothing. She can hear people groaning, weeping, there's a man on her left, all he can do is cry, supplies are low, and he can only have a limited amount of painkillers. Amid the nurses and doctors scrambling over patients, the place is swimming with a team of engineers, frantically working to keep the auxiliary power in Sickbay up and running. "This is affecting all of us," McCoy said, his voice startling her from her thoughts "every one of us is hurting, and we're all bleeding, somehow or another. This is what happened to us," he said, "And you'll survive it, just like the rest of us. It's up to us now to keep moving forward." She takes a deep breath, shutting her eyes and nods. She's still tired, so he gives her a shot to help her sleep; she's gone in a matter of moments, the drug helping her into a dreamless state. McCoy knew it was probably a small waste, but he couldn't let her have bad dreams yet. Not if he could help it.

Hours later…

"Gaila I'm gonna change your bandages, so you lie still." McCoy is back again, she's eaten and a nurse had to help her sit up so she could relieve herself in a small pot. If that wasn't humiliating enough, she then threw up all over the poor nurse. Reaction to the medicine in her system, plus it had been almost forty-eight hours since her pheromone suppressants. Already a wounded man had tried to jump her. McCoy had quickly given him a tranquilizer and a nurse laid him back down.

"We'd better give you your shot." He said. "Wouldn't want the CMO getting frisky with a patient." He said and she laughs a little then. Now he's pushing back the blankets, the material catches on the gauze. With great care he peels away a blood-soaked bandage on her thigh. He swears to himself. "Stitches are holding," he said, when she asked what was wrong, "But the blood isn't quite clotting yet. Your species takes a regrettably long time to heal."

"I thought the medical spanner took care of that cut." She said

"It was too deep; we had to close it up the old fashioned way."

"So…so I'll have a scar?" she asked.

"More than one." He said, glancing at her. She certainly didn't want to cry about something so stupid, but she couldn't help it.

"I'm sorry." She murmured when a few tears had fallen. "What a selfish thing to cry about."

"Your legs will still be beautiful." He said. "If you like I'll tell you every day." She smiled a little. "And so will your face, and your arms, and your hands. Besides, you still have the best tush in Starfleet." He said

"I didn't hurt my- oh." Seeing him wink at her, she laughed a little then. As he cleans her leg up, another bed is wheeled in beside hers. She can see now that it's Captain Pike. McCoy had operated on his spine, removing the parasite that had controlled him. He'd been waiting in post-op for almost two hours. Seeing who her bedmate is, Leonard winks at her.

"Here's someone to keep you company." He said, Pike was already watching, he'd been awake for some time now.

"What's your name Ensign?" he asked her,

"Gaila." She replied, she winced suddenly, hissing a curse at Leonard as he applied a stinging ointment.

"Sorry Darlin'." He said, glancing at her, and then flicked his gaze over to Pike. "She was aboard the Farragut. Saved all those people."

"Did you?" Pike asked and she nodded. "You pretty beat up?" she nodded. "Scars?" she nodded again. "Good." He said, she looked at him, shocked, even Leonard gave a disapproving look. "Something for you to remember. You wear them with pride Ensign Gaila. You'll remember that you saved people today. You shouldn't ever feel ashamed of them." He said, and Gaila shrugged a little.
"I'm working on it sir." They talk for a little while, they'll both need physical therapy after their wounds close up, for now they can only lay and feel the medicine working inside them, knitting broken and cracked bones back together, hypo-spanners whirring. Pike tells her jokes and makes her laugh, and Gaila feels well enough to flirt with him a little. Pike is smiling as she does so, and tells her once they're out of physical therapy; he wants to take her to dinner. She nods that she'd like it very much and promises to hold him to it.

Uhura visits her, she laughs a little when Gaila asks her if she would help her do a little grooming. She nods yes and pulls across the curtain. She plucks her eyebrows and clips her nails, managing a manicure and pedicure, before McCoy pulls the curtain back and tells them Sickbay isn't a beauty parlor. Uhura merely caps the bottle of bright red nail polish, having painted Gaila's nails. She wriggles her rather Christmassy looking toes, delighted to see herself presentable again. McCoy is smiling, and she knows he's not mad. He doesn't leave Sickbay at all, he's almost always there, he takes his meals with her, tells her stories that make her laugh until tears come out of her eyes. Kirk visits, and brings her a whole bouquet of flowers, apologizing for what he did on the Kobayashi Maru; he kisses her gently and sits with her on his first break in forty-eight hours. After half-an-hour, she sends him to his quarters, telling him to take a shower and go to bed. Chekov brings her a little fidget toy that bends and curves, like a three-dimensional puzzle.

"It was inwented in Russia." He says, pleased. "I made this one myself." She thanks him, and she is grateful. Lying in a bed all day is incredibly boring. Now she'll at least have something to do. Sulu stops by to bring her a few sweets, her very favorite Earth candy, wonderful little almonds in sweet sugar coating, colored all sorts of pretty shades. They share them, crunching noisily. He promises to bring her lemon drops later, another shared favorite. In the late evening, Commander Spock visits her, to her surprise.

"Nyota could not return this evening, she regretted not being able to see you again, so she has requested that I come and 'visit you'." Gaila smiles, touched that the Vulcan came to see her, even when he could have been resting,

"Well, thank you, Commander, but you really didn't have to, I'm sure you're tired and need to sleep."
"Nyota's request was not my only reason for coming. I too wished to see how you were coping. She tells me you are under much stress, which is only natural, considering the turn of events that transpired over the past forty-eight hours. I wish to commend you for your efforts aboard the Farragut." He says, his hands clasped behind him. "You proved invaluable to the crew. I shall see to it that the Captain gives you a recommendation."

"Thank you Commander."

"Was there any ship in particular you wished to be stationed?" he queries, she can see Leonard in the background lifting his eyebrows

"I don't know just yet." She shrugs her shoulders, wincing in pain. "I think that it would be up to my superiors."

"Your evasion of the question leads me to believe you wish to acquire a post not easily achieved."

"Well, doesn't everyone want to be aboard the flagship?" she asks slowly

"The Enterprise." Spock realizes, lifting an eyebrow.

"I didn't want to ask, it feels like cheating." She says "I'll accept your letters of recommendation, but no more." She decides at last. "I'd like to earn my post."

"You will most likely be given the station at any rate." He said, "Only without my suggestion, it may take months. I find it illogical to take a difficult course to your goal, when an easier one has been presented-" Spock sees out of the corner of his eye Doctor McCoy rolling his eyes, clearing his throat. "-But of course if that is your wish, then I shall adhere to it." He suddenly stops, looking at her carefully. "The Captain informed me that they shaved your hair off, that you were upset over it."

"It was necessary." She said. "Exposure to radiation."

"You are fortunate it was only your hair that you lost." He says, "Nyota has instructed me to comment on your features and tell you that you are still physically appealing, and your scars are nothing to be ashamed of." Gaila stares, had this Vulcan, Mr.-Uptight-Smarty-Only-Gets-Into-Uhura's-Pants just give her a compliment? She smiles then

"Thank you Mr. Spock, that's very sweet of you."

"I am merely repeating what Nyota has instructed me to say."

"Good man." Doctor McCoy laughs; Spock raises an eyebrow at him, and then turns back to the Orion.

"Do you require anything else?"

"No thank you Mr. Spock. And thank you for stopping by."

"If you require anything, Nyota has instructed me to inform you that she will be free tomorrow morning for breakfast."

"Thank you; please tell her to come by all means."

"I shall. Good evening." With that he turned on his heel and left, McCoy gave her a look.

"Well-well-well Sugar, you got quite a fan club going. A make-over, candy, flowers, letters of recommendation to Starfleet's flagship, and a compliment from the Vulcan too." She smiled at this. "Well if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. What are you doing for dinner?"

"You know you don't have to stay here with me." She said, and he gave her a mock-shocked look,

"Me? Staying here for little old you? Perish the thought." His eyes are teasing. "I'm going to clean up, and I'll be back with your dinner."

"I'll be here." She said, and folded her bandaged hands over her lap. As Leonard shut the curtain behind him, she thought her herself the simple truth in what she'd said. She was here, and by the Gods she was going to live.