The bridge of the training vessel "Discovery" was chaos as alarms sounded, lights flashed, and tempers ran high in the utter state of emergency. What was intended to be a short mission to run some supplies to a trading outpost and return to school had become a disaster and now all lives aboard the Discovery were in danger. They knew from the beginning it would be a struggle, having been assigned positions that none of them could successfully perform, but accepted their assignment in optimism and set out.
The ship's captain, Blake Richards, was a young man whose family original came from Earth but fled to the farthest reaches of the galaxy for reasons they never told. He wanted to be in control, but never would have accepted the title so readily if he knew what the position really meant. He had no qualities of a captain, and now his entire crew hated him more than they ever had. He had no other strategies once they were attacked than to hide in his quarters and wait to die with the rest of his crew. His second in command had already been killed, and with no one to help him he couldn't face his crew any longer.
Left on the bridge was a young Antirian man named Taro, a human woman who went by Tanner, and a nomadic traveler who had been nicknamed "Rain" as his fellow crewmembers had difficulty pronouncing his name. None of their equipment was working, sparks short circus plagued their worst nightmare while they frantically worked to remedy the situation.
"I'm just getting static!" Taro screamed over the chaos to Tanner as she lay under a navigations computer attempting to reattach some wiring. He had a manual in the chair beside him, shouting the text to her as she tried to rewire the system enough to get power to their communications systems to send a distress signal.
"Keep trying Taro, let me know when you get something!" she growled response before kicking a communication's panel and yelling into it.
"Engineering, do you have an update?!"
"No updates you want to hear! Everything's failing! Everything!"
"Zarus listen to me! You have to do SOMETHING or everyone is going to die!" Rain snapped as she continued to work. Tanner could see on the screen beside her as her pale-blue skinned friend fell into hysterics while the other two engineers tried to repair some of the seemingly-endless damage to their engines.
Her only response was to kick Rain as hard as she could while listening to the hopelessness that poured into the bridge through the communications screen. "Well what do you want Tanner?" he demanded but wasn't given a chance to respond as Taro's project momentarily yielded more than static.
"This is…. T. Kirk…. sig….respond!"
"HELLO! HEY! I-I GOT A RESPONSE! HEY! S-STAY ON THE LINE! STAY WITH US!" Taro screamed while trying to clear up the transmission. "Switch me! Get that navigations system online if you can! Rain's gonna use it to send a signal they can track us with, if he can!" Tanner ordered and fell beside the communications station.
"This is the training vessel 'Discovery' requesting immediate assistance!" she shouted as if quoting a textbook while Zarus cried through the communications in the background and Rain and Taro argued over alarms that threatened to drown them all out entirely.
"Discovery this Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise, we have received your message. We are on our way to your location, what is the nature of your emergency?"
Just as Tanner went to answer the ship violently shook and for a few seconds all power went out. As the lights came back on the end of another transmission came through with urgency lacing the Captain's voice.
"...covery, acknowledge!"
"We're here! We were… O-our systems, everything's fried! Our life supports are failing we are losing power," Her voice trailed off in disbelief as the communications panel short-circuited.
Drifting in space without the slightest control of their fate what was left of the crew surrendered to despair. Some held one another and cried, others took their anger out on the equipment around them, and some simply sat in shock. "How much of that message do you think they got?" Tanner questioned blankly.
"I'd say they got to 'life supports' before the transmission dropped." Taro answered softly
The door to the bridge opened to reveal Zarus, sweaty and exhausted. The tribal markings of his people reflecting the red alert lights as he sat slowly joined his fellow "officers".
"If we had the right tools and a real engineer, we could've made it." he shrugged weakly and sat on the ground among his fellows moments before the power went out for the last time, sealing them on the bridge.
"Help's coming," Tanner smiled hopefully in an attempt to comfort him but he waved it off and began to cry.
"It's gonna explode. We live in luck and bad luck right now. The whole thing, is going, to explode."
Tanner's breath left her as the room seemed to stand still. The very air around them stiffened for a moment before the emotions took over once again. She looked up at Rain who was seated calmly in the Captain's chair, uncharacteristically calm, while pulling a recorder out of a compartment beside him.
"Captain's log, star-date… I'm not even sure anymore. I'm not really a captain either but ours is locked in his quarters and his second in command is dead so… so that happened. This is really just to let everyone know what happened here. The 'Discovery' was meant as a training vessel for young crews from the Academy like us to train to be on a real starship. For our test we were sent on a short interplanetary mission to deliver some supplies to a colony. When we sent the message that we had arrived with the supplies, we were attacked.
We've sent a distress call out, of all vessels to rescue us from total failure and death the 'Enterprise' has responded. We've all read about the Federation's gem, and if they get here in time we will be home soon. If not… I love you Mama. Pop.
"Varain K'shari, signing off. It was a good voyage."
As Rain's recording ended and the log was secured to his person Zarus gave a weak laugh. "So that's how you pronounce your surname." he commented blankly.
"It's been a good voyage." Tanner agreed quietly while recalling the ups and downs and accepting that no one would be leaving the ship alive. Tears slid down her face as Taro held onto her like she was the last life preserve he had. Outside the doors they could hear other crew members shouting in the absence of the alarms but even that eventually silenced. Soon they sat in the dark, fearful of the end they couldn't prevent.
"Sir! Their reactor core, she's gone critical!" a heavily accented voice suddenly echoed from outside the bridge. The voice didn't belong to anyone on board the Discovery, and left the crewmembers that heard it to question if they had become delusional. The Bridge stayed silent as all trapped inside listened for new voices, all hoping for rescue but afraid to accept the possibility.
"Mr. Spock, get that door open! I want the crew and passengers of this vessel aboard the Enterprise on the double!"
"Yes, Captain."
As the three men exchanged orders and acknowledgements in the hall Taro held his breath and stared at the doors. He muttered under his breath a prayer native to his people for the door to open. Though the time that passed seemed far too long the doors finally sprang open to reveal a tall man with blank features and pointed ears staring back at him.
Overcome with emotions, he cried out in relief and ran to the man, threw his arms around him. He knew that his actions would offend the Vulcan that was reluctantly, and patiently waiting to be released but didn't care at the moment as he wept his thanks before being pulled away to follow the other evacuees of his crew.
"Yes, quickly we haven't much time." the man instructed once the overly emotional man was out of sight. Zarus pulled Tanner to her feet as Rain took and pushed her to follow.
"That's the last from the bridge, Captain." their rescuer reported once they joined a man dressed in gold, standing as stoic in the chaos as his blue-clad officer that stood beside them.
"Captain Kirk?" Tanner questioned as the tears continued to escape her eyes. The reality of being rescued was beginning to hit her but so was the weight of knowing that not everyone was able to be saved.
"In the flesh. Stand still, we're about to beam aboard the Enterprise. Don't worry, it doesn't hurt."
Tanner closed her eyes like a frightened child. Transportation of this sort wasn't something she had read and studied, but never experienced. When her eyes opened she was in a small transporter room surrounded by her crewmen as well as countless medical staff from the Enterprise. Bodies were being carried out, nurses were evaluating wounded as they writhed and cried from their injuries. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. That, or her body seemed unresponsive when she willed herself to move.
"No, not possible," Zarus whispered as his eyes landed on the body of a woman with burns covering all that he could see. "Ta'sa, Ta'sa please," he pleaded before continuing his desperate attempts to revive her in their own language. If it weren't for their identical markings she would have hardly been recognizable but anyone left standing from the Discovery knew that he had found his sister.
"Don't look, just don't look," Rain instructed while keeping his back turned and his eyes closed. He sat defeated in the same spot he had appeared in, struggling to find some sort of peace in the tragedy that surrounded him while crewmen of the Enterprise tried to coax him from the transporter pad.
The transporter room had turned into a warzone as the medical staff ran around administering medications and bandages as quickly as the safety of their patients would allow. The Discovery's doctor was among them, frantically working over an injured crewmember. She didn't understand how to use the equipment brought by the Enterprise's medics, but was trying everything she could to mimic them as they saved lives around her.
"Don't you kids have any doctors on board?!" a dark headed man with an irritated southern drawl demanded over the triage as he moved to take over from her, seeing she was losing the patient, but she wouldn't move her attention from the woman she was working on.
"I can be a doctor, Juna stay with me ok? Stay with me please Juna. P-please don't die, don't die ok? Please don't," She broke down into hysterics and was pulled from the situation by a nurse when the man demanding doctors announced that Juna was lost, but her cries still echoed alongside the others.
"Julian died when we got over here too. He fell from some equipment, got cut up real bad." Taro explained to Tanner and Rain as they stood in horror trying to block out the onslaught of emotions that surrounded them.
"She was with him?" Rain questioned.
"Mmhmm, Araya held his hands. Tried to save him, kept saying she'd save him, and asking him to stay with her like she did with Juna trying to use the equipment this ship's doctors had. It wasn't like in the books when they close their eyes all peaceful like. He just kept looking at her, and then his eyes were just… I-I don't know. Empty.
Neither Tanner or Rain could think of a reply as they thought of how much pain Araya was suffering. Standing beside some of the crewmen of the Enterprise Araya could have been mistaken for a child. She was the youngest member of the Discovery's crew, surpassing her peers in rank and grade by her brilliance in science and botany, but she wasn't meant for medical. Seeing others in pain always hurt her, and often she would cry for her friends if they were suffering. Being responsible for healing others, and now failing to do so and watching them die, was a fate unimaginable for her.
"Hey look, there's our 'captain', probably talkin' himself up to a real Captain." Rain scoffed, turning the attention to a dusty-haired young man that stood with his hands behind his back awkwardly conversing with Captain Kirk. They couldn't hear the conversation but knew that it had to be about the 'great lengths' he went through to save the Discovery, and how he 'gave his all' when in reality he was locked in his quarters hiding. At the end of their talk Kirk placed his hand on the younger captain's shoulder in support and let him walk away from the chaos.
"A live bomb would make a better Captain than that useless bag of trash." Rain grumbled while Tanner turned her back and slid down the wall behind them to rest in a defeated heap. Surrounded by so much tragedy she began to think that maybe rescue was worse than death.
"Alright everyone, let's get you settled in. Dr. McCoy will take good care of our wounded friends, there's no need to worry. Now, let's get the rest of you taken care of." Captain Kirk announced as several of his crew began to usher the healthy survivors to spare quarters. The arrangements were two to three in each room but even then no one felt crowded. The crew of the late Discovery were seemingly mesmerized by the sheer grandeur of the Enterprise. It was to them more of a small city than a starship and what was more impressive was the crew itself. Everyone seemed to come from elite training in their fields. The Discovery's crew was hardly trained at all.
"Ms. Tanner, you will be staying here. Gentlemen, the quarters just down the way will be left open for you. If you need anything, anything at all, please don't hesitate to ask. Once you're settled in I'd like to have a word with your officers about this attack, if that's all right." Captain Kirk announced at the end of the tour and assigning of quarters. The group around him nodded and murmured various agreements and stumbled into their rooms.
The moment Tanner's door closed behind her she fell to the floor as the weight of the universe crashed down upon her. Similarly her fellows felt the same weight collapse their bodies as well. Taro found a small table in the room he had been given and sat down, curling his legs into himself and praying for everyone around him. Zarus was laying down on his bed in the corner staring at a wall as tears poured from his eyes. Rain had found his way to the ship's gym area and was focusing all of his anger and pain into an old fashioned heavy bag. The young woman who had been assigned as the Discovery's medic, Araya, sat beside the wounded in sick bay while watching Dr. McCoy work, hoping that one day she could save lives as he did.
For many would-be crewmen this was the moment that had them deciding if they would stay a crew, or find a peaceful life elsewhere.
Oddly enough, for many of them the choice was to stay if the others stayed. Though the emotions of loss and grief ran high, the fear of losing their crew seemed to be at the front of everyone's minds and the obvious emotional state of the Discovery's crew had Captain Kirk announcing that he would see its officers in the morning after a good healthy rest. Doctor's orders.
As the Captain walked from the newly assigned quarters he thought of the situation he was in. Of course their scheduled rendezvous with another ship to take aboard Earth's ambassador couldn't be compromised, and he was already on a strict schedule as it was. Stopping to land the Discovery survivors was simply not an option. Unfortunately this meant that they would have to stay aboard the Enterprise until its diplomatic duties had been settled, which would take weeks by the current estimate.
He took his place on the bridge and observed the debris of what once was the Discovery vessel as they set their course for the rendezvous point. The bridge was eerily quiet as each crewmember went about their duties in silence. The tragic rescue had even the most diligent and experienced among them in a state of unease while most were downright shaken to their core.
Shaking the unease from himself the Captain turned his eyes to the helm and nodded his command. "Mr. Sulu, get us out of here."
"Aye. Sir."
