Here is Chapter 4! Thanks to TheBaritone for a wonderful beta job!

As time went on, Danielle continued to excel in her work as an Engineer, quickly rising to Scotty's "right hand man." Things had been fairly quiet since she had arrived on the Enterprise, though, and she was getting a little tired of the daily monotony, especially since she was experiencing intermittent spasms in her hand that was limiting what she was able to do. Mr. Scott knew that she was bored, and when they came upon a seemingly dead Federation starship, the USS Zenith, he received permission to allow her to come along.

Besides herself, the landing crew consisted of the Captain, Mr. Spock, Mr. Scott, and a number of other crew members. They beamed over, not knowing what they would find.

Spock began his scans, "No life signs, Captain. It appears that we are alone."

"But what happened to them?" Kirk wondered aloud.

"It's so...eerie." Danielle said, under her breath, looking around.

"Aye..." Scott agreed.

"Spock, check the computer banks," Kirk directed, "It might give us some idea of where the crew went and how long this ship has been out here or where they might have gone. Scotty, Duvall, take Gates and Barnes and go down to engineering, see if there's anything down there that would force two hundred and fifty people out of here."

"Aye sir," They said in unison, and the two of them started down to the engineering deck.

When they arrived, everything looked normal, and they began their scans. There were some minor repairs that needed to be done, which they conducted, but there was nothing they could see that was all that wrong. Then Scotty found a problem.

"Duvall!" he called.

She came running from the other side of the room. "Yes sir?"

"Look here." He pointed.

She examined the wiring, "What the hell?"

"The ship, if we even turned on her impulse engines, she'd be..." He trailed off

"Proverbial toast," Danielle finished, then asked, "Think it can be fixed?"

"Aye," he answered, "But it'll take a steady hand. One wrong move and you're the proverbial toast. Hand me your clippers," he instructed.

She did as he said, and stood and watched as he carefully tried to make sense of the wires.

Scott had been meticulously rewiring the box for about two hours, and were about done, when suddenly, a blast hit the ship. It sent everyone flying and Danielle watched in horror as a spark of light flew out of the box and hit Scotty. Once she was able to stand back up she rushed over to him and checked his pulse. He was still alive, but unconscious.

"Kirk to Engineering!"

Danielle rushed to the wall comm, "Duvall here, sir!"

"What's going on down there, Lieutenant?"

"Scott's down, and I haven't assessed the damage from the blast yet." She paused, "What happened, sir?"

"Whoever took the crew here came back to finish the job," he replied, "The Enterprise took a few hits too. We can't beam anyone back."

Danielle was silent, trying to process, then said, "What are your orders, sir?"

He ignored her question, "Is Scotty still alive?"

"Yes sir, he's unconscious though and..."

"Duvall, we need to take action here, Can we get to warp?" He cut her off.

The line was quiet, "Duvall?"

"Comms are down sir, Crewman Blake chimed in, "We're blind and deaf." When he saw Kirk reaching for his handheld communicator, he added, "there's too much interference sir, I doubt you'll reach her with that either."

"Great," he muttered, then he got up and started for the door, "Spock, you have the conn. Blake, try to get communication reestablished at least with engineering. Preston, take the helm."

"Captain, where are you going?" Spock inquired.

"To engineering, Spock. I need to know what's going on down there if we're going to make it out of here alive."

"Captain, might I remind you that Duvall is a very capable engineer and that your presence may be more needed on the bridge." Spock said.

"Capable yes, but she's still in over her head down there, so unless one of you has some knowledge of engineering that I am not aware of, I need to go help her. He then turned to Blake, "How's reestablishing communication coming?"

"Still working on it sir."

"I don't care what you have to do, get communication back, that's an order." And with that he boarded the turbo lift.

Danielle breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the Captain walk through the doors.

"There are problems everywhere, captain, I got the shields up but we took a good hit down here before I was able to get them online. There's other things too; there's a coolant leak somewhere... I'm assessing the damage, but...

"Can we get to warp?"

She just stared at him.

"Duvall, can we get to warp?" He repeated.

"Technically we can, but I doubt we'd hold together for very long. The plasma intercooler..."

"How are the weapons?" He asked, cutting her off again.

"We have no weapons power at all. No phasers, no torpedoes, nothing."

Kirk was looking at the damage report that the computer had already generated. and Danielle continued. "I've got Barnes looking after Mr. Scott. and Gates is already working on tracking down the leak. But with the manpower I have, I don't think I can do this, sir."

"Well, it will have to work, Duvall..." Kirk stopped when he heard his comm(communicator) beeping. He picked it up. "Good job Blake."

"Thank you sir," came the reply.

He turned back to Danielle, "What needs to be done first?"

"There was a problem with some wiring... that's what Mr. Scott was working on and it has to be fixed before anything else."

"Then get on it," he ordered.

"I can't sir..." She protested, about to tell him about her hand.

"Lieutenant," he said sharply, "I realize that we are not on our own ship, things are different and you are scared, but I really don't want to die today, do you?"

"Well no sir, but..." She stopped when he grabbed her by the shoulders and stared into her scared face.

"Do not EVER tell me that you can't."

Before she could answer him, they heard Gates yell and something. Kirk and Danielle ran over to where they had heard it. found him lying on the ground. Danielle let out a small shriek.

Kirk bent down to check his pulse, "He's dead. His neck is broken."

Danielle stared at the body in horror. Kirk looked up at her; her face was white as a ghost and he could tell she was about to faint.

"No...NO, Duvall, do not pass out on me!" He stood up and grabbed her just as she was about to collapse.

She looked up, not at him, but past him, "There it is..." she said softly.

Kirk turned his head to try and see what she saw, "What?"

"The leak. He found it. I can fix that." She pulled away from him and started climbing the ladder to where the leak was. She looked down at the Captain, "Tell Barnes to finish what Scott was doing. He's been working under Scott; he'll know what he's doing."

Kirk got on his communicator right away and gave Barnes the instructions. It was not long until Danielle had finished the repairs. She climbed back down the ladder and grabbed her communicator.

"Duvall to Preston"

"Preston here."

"Okay, Preston I need you to keep the line open and listen to me and follow what I say to the letter..." She continued to give the helmsman direction(directions), and Kirk kept looking around. There were sparks flying everywhere. It didn't look like anything would work, let alone get to warp, but he chose to put his trust in the woman in front of him, who(the woman who) seriously impressed him with her sudden poise in what was probably the most stressful time of her life.

Eventually there seemed to be hope – they were at warp, and communications were still broken, were being reestablished with the Enterprise. Kirk couldn't have been prouder of the skeleton crew. Then it all came to nought when another blast hit them, knocking their shields offline, and then another one, severely damaging the engine, and throwing the two of them across the floor. When they came to their senses and got up, Danielle looked around. There was nothing she could do. She turned to the Captain, defeated.

"Go back to the bridge."

"No, I'm not going to leave you here," he said.

She stepped closer to him, "A captain should be on the bridge when he goes down, even if it's not his ship. So go. Go!"

She began to cry softly as he turned and walked away. She turned the other direction so as to not watch him leave-it was too hard. Then she heard him call, "Danielle!"and she turned back around. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Me too." She replied, tears still running down her face. For a few seconds they just stood there, across the room from one another, staring at each other through the sparks and small fires. Then she started walking toward him, saying, "Oh what the hell, we're gonna die anyway."

He watched her, quizzically, and when she reached him, she grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him in for a kiss. To her surprise, he kissed her back. They were so out of touch with everything except each other, that when they finally stopped, much to their chagrin, they were in the Enterprise transporter room.

Everyone in the room was standing there awkwardly, staring. Kirk pushed her away and cleared his throat and Danielle turned beet red and ran out so fast she almost left a trail of light behind her.

"Well...that just happened..." Uhura said under her breath. Kirk, Spock and the remaining crewmen stepped off the transporter pad, and Kirk gave her the "Shut up" eye.

Kirk directed Spock and the crewmen to med bay and McCoy immediately started tending to Mr. Scott. He got the injured engineer on a gurney and wheeled him out. Kirk then addressed Sulu, who stood nearby, "Status report?"

"Repairs are underway, sir," Sulu replied, following Kirk as he started to walk. "We took a few hits but nothing we couldn't handle."

"And the ship that attacked?"

"We tried hailing them several times, sir," Uhura responded, trying to keep up with the captain's fast pace. "There was no response."

"They kept firing. They seemed really intent on destroying the Zenith." Sulu added, "We didn't want to but we had to destroy them, sir."

Kirk turned his head to see them as he walked, "Thank you. Your actions today were commendable." Then he got back to business. "Uhura, get a message to the Duvall to report to Med Bay for or for an examination. I think she took the most hits over there."

"Aye sir."

Later that night, Kirk rang the bell to Danielle's room. He heard a faint, "Come in," so he walked through the door. He found her on her bed lying on her side with her knees bent, still in her messed up uniform. She had one pillow under her head and she was clinging to another as if for dear life. He could tell she had been crying.

"Lieutenant..." he said.

"Captain, I'm-I'm sorry," she sniffed, "I can't get up."

"You can't get up?"

"I can't move...I just...I can't. It's too much."

He knelt down by her bed so that his face was level with hers, "You did good today, Duvall. For your first landing mission, you got thrown right into the fire and you did excellent."

"Seriously?" She scoffed as a fresh wave of tears came over her. "A man is dead because of me."

"Hey, you do not get to take the blame for that. As the captain that death is on me if it's on anyone."

She continued as if she hadn't heard him. "And Mr. Scott...who knows if he'll ever be okay again? The only reason he was even messing with that box is because I couldn't because of my stupid hand."

"Scotty will be fine," he assured her, "And as your captain, I could not be prouder."

Slowly, Danielle started to sit up. She sat on her bed and looked at him, "I'm really sorry about the kiss. I put you in a really compromising position and I feel bad."

He smiled a little, "It's fine, we thought we were going to die and you just acted. It was actually very nice. I wouldn't have minded going out that way. But..." He paused, then continued, "If you'd rather forget about it, then consider it forgotten."

She smiled slightly back at him. "Okay," she said quietly.

He stood up, "I'm going to go. You get some rest and take care of yourself. But I need you in Engineering bright and early because you're in charge till Scotty's back on his feet."

"Yes sir."

He started toward the door. Danielle looked up, "Captain?" her voice cracked.

He turned. "Yes?"

"Please don't forget."

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