Author's Note: Um well, this is my first attempt at a ST fic. I'm still not entirely comfortable with the characters (because aha, they don't belong to me!), but I hope you enjoy!
It was utter chaos. The sounds of phaserbeams sprinkling on scattered debris filled the air. It had been an ambush, and the damn sons of bitches had picked out the weakest target. Like animals, they'd separated it from the pack and pounced. The kid was lucky to be alive, Bones thought bitterly as he tried desperately to stem the flow of blood now pouring from a wound on Chekov's shoulder. The ensign was very pale and his hair was matted with blood. Bones managed to wrap a bandage around thick gauze over the knife wound, and quickly proceeded to address the less fatal injuries littering the kid's limp body. Like fucking animals, he thought grimly.
Outside was like a scene from those old war movies Bones liked to watch sometimes. He had stepped out once to survey the scene and to scan the area for any casualties. Fortunately there had been none, but he was unlikely to forget the first view of real battle he'd ever seen. He was a doctor, a healer, and he'd never been in a real close combat situation. It was terrifying, dirty and sickening. As soon as he had left his medic tent, the smell of the battle had filled his nostrils, making him gag. It was the smell of blood; not the metallic, salty smell of human blood, but an entirely new odor that the enemy emitted. It was hardly a battle really; it was a massacre.
And they fucking deserve it, Bones thought as his surprisingly steady hands sewed up a long gash on Chekov's stomach. Going for a kid, so obviously a kid, he was small even for his age. Alien or not, no species could excuse that kind of behavior. Chekov squirmed weakly as Bones hooked up a make-shift catheter. The kid was losing blood fast, and Bones silently thanked his own paranoia for bringing along universal samples. Jim might call him a boy scout, but being over prepared came in handy that 2% of the time you needed it to.
Outside, the once frequent zings of lasers had diminished. Bones wondered if the fight was over already, it seemed too soon. Chekov was still convulsing a little, wriggling in unconscious discomfort as Bones operated on him. The doctor gave him a mild sedative hypo and soon the Russian whiz kid was still. His breathing was still regular, thank god, and the bleeding had died down a bit. Bones wiped his forehead with his arm. Yeah, the kid was going to be ok.
"How is he?" Jim's face, shining with sweat, appeared through the flap of the medic tent.
"He's gonna be fine, but it was close," McCoy stripped off his gloves, not taking his eyes off his patient. "Is everyone else ok?"
Kirk nodded solemnly. "Everyone on our side, anyway."
For some reason, the way he'd phrased it made Bones' stomach lurch. With one last glance at Chekov's vitals (all stable, with no indication of change), he exited the tent and emerged back onto the battlefield.
It was eerily quiet now, compared to the cacophony of combat that had filled the air minutes ago. The crew of the enterprise were scattered throughout the field, collecting themselves, all unscathed. And a few yards down, past the hulking chunks of stone and metal that had once constituted homes for the aliens, lay the very still figures of the enemy. They were dead, all of them. Dead before they could kill.
Bones made his way past his fellow crew members and gazed at the carnage the Enterprise had wrecked. If it wasn't for the skinny Russian kid clinging to life in the tent 20 feet back, he would have felt badly. But these monsters had attacked, unprovoked, a child. He was just a child…
Bones stared, almost unseeing, at the scene before him. It was a few minutes before he registered what he was looking at, and in that time, Jim had lumbered up beside him.
"I know you don't like looking at this sort of thing," Jim started quietly, placing a reassuring hand on the Doctor's shoulder.
"He was a child…" Bones said quietly, and Jim squeezed his shoulder slightly.
"I know, but he's going to be ok-"
"No," the doctor was speaking very softly, something that was not common for him. And then he pointed. Jim followed his friend's finger to a small, a very small figure lying dead on the field.
"Jim, that was a child," Bones wasn't looking at the captain, his eyes were fixed on the alien enemy that lay motionless before him.
"Bones, how can you -" Kirk started, but before he could finish, the doctor had turned to face him, his expression livid.
"You can tell," he spat. "Just like they should have been able to tell, you should have too." With that, Bones wrenched himself from Kirk's comforting grasp and ran down the gentle slope towards the alien, the child.
Kirk watched as the doctor knelt beside it, checked everywhere he could for a pulse, tried to bandage a wound on its face, lifted it gently.
Without a word, the doctor carried it past Kirk, past the rest of the crew, into the medic tent. He placed it on a bed beside Chekov.
It was lucky to be alive. Bones wondered if it was small even for its age.