Kirk heard the shuttle engines and thrusters come completely online as the two Cambronese soldiers took protective positions on the far side of the platform. Lieutenant Bishop was the first to return fire, although both of them quickly realized their position would not allow them to actually hit their targets. Instead, they could only try valiantly to provide enough protective cover fire to give Spock and the Princess adequate time to get the shuttle off of the ground.
The thrusters began to lift off, just as one of the soldiers placed a well aimed shot at the rear of the craft. Sparks flew as the shot destroyed an electrical component, and Kirk quickly deduced that a mere blanket of cover from the ground would not last. Heedless of the danger, he made a spot decision to charge the solders. If nothing else it would be a decent enough distraction to buy Spock a few more precious moments to get airborne.
Lieutenant Bishop must have seen the reflexive twitch of his muscles and made the same decision, for as he tore through the protective undergrowth into the open clearing he could hear and feel her directly behind him. The pair tore through the grassy field, their phaser fire repeatedly slamming into the concrete edge of the landing pad currently used as a makeshift bunker by the soldiers. One dared to raise his head above the concrete to assess their oncoming position and was immediately rewarded by a direct blast to the face from Bishop's weapon, the impact cleanly knocking him off of his feet.
The swirl of air from the shuttle's thrusters eventually reduced the accuracy of their aim as they continued to pound their way towards the remaining soldier. Their shots began to skew far and wide while increased dust and debris flew around them, momentarily forcing them both to cover their faces protectively. Seeing a moment of advantage, the second soldier eased his way out from the far side of the pad and tried to flank them from the right. Kirk caught the movement out of the corner of his periphery and with two quick blasts to the chest the man was down.
The air around them calmed somewhat as the shuttle continued to rise. Kirk watched for a few moments more to ensure that Spock had indeed safely cleared the surface of the planet before turning back to Bishop.
"We've got about a two kilometer hike to the beach," he declared stonily. "Let's get out of here before any more of your associates show up. The rest of them will have seen that shuttle leave which makes us sitting ducks here."
Bishop took in his flaming blue eyes and the angry countenance of his face as she followed him back into the safety of the forest. "Captain Kirk, I realize you're upset about all this, and I'm sorry," she began.
"Upset?" he roared, turning again to face her, almost nose-to-nose. His voice had dropped dangerously low. "Your planet's little coup d'état almost got my first officer and I killed. It almost got you and your princess killed! Why the hell shouldn't I be upset?" Then, as an afterthought occurred to him, his eyes narrowed. "Why aren't YOU more upset?"
"Because I didn't know that was going to happen either!" she thundered back, incensed at his accusation and rising to shove him squarely in the chest to put a distance buffer between them. His intrusion on her space while he barked at her in anger made her extremely uncomfortable.
"I'm sorry it happened," she barked, her green eyes fiery with suppressed turmoil and anger. "I'm sorry you and Commander Spock were put in harm's way, and I appreciate everything you've done to help us. But I lost a lot of friends today too and now I know I can't trust any of them that are left. Krianna is safe now with Commander Spock, but I'm on my own and it's a very long way home."
At that she turned her back to him and began forging a path in the general direction of the beach, leaving him behind. Her emotional outburst had calmed his anger somewhat, getting at least some confirmation that she hadn't been a part of the whole messy ordeal, but it now offered more questions than answers.
"How could you not know what was happening?" he asked in strained, albeit a much calmer voice when he caught up with her. He only heard a resigned sigh and almost missed the way her shoulders drooped slightly, and only for a brief moment, before she fully drew herself back up. She pushed aside a large tree branch, letting it swing back to ungracefully hit Kirk in the face.
"Thanks, for that," he cursed, pushing the branch away and finally drawing alongside her steady gait.
"You're welcome," she offered with just a hint of a smile. Yet the emotional outburst had already calmed and her steely outer facade had now dropped fully back into place. Her eyes were currently preoccupied performing a continual survey of their surroundings as they walked, ever alert for signs of an ambush.
"If someone was planning an attack to kill the Princess I would be the last one to know," she offered quietly, with just a hint of her previous fire. "My loyalties have always, and will forever be, to her crown only and to that of her kingdom."
Kirk nodded his head in acknowledgement, offering only a token, "I figured as much." They walked in uncomfortable silence for quite some time, making fairly good time as they traversed through the underbrush, until he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
"What is it?" she whispered. He held his finger up to his lips, indicating she should be silent in order to hear. It only took a second for him to realize he had heard exactly what he thought he heard; footsteps crunching through the underbrush behind them.
"Scotty," he whispered into his comm, waving at Bishop to take cover as he did the same.
A brief pause, followed by, "Cap'n?"
"Can you scan the area around our current location? We've got company behind us and we need to know how many."
"Right, give me a second..."
Kirk's hand was sweating on his comm, the crunching getting closer by the second.
"Looks like two to the south, and two to the southwest, maybe 50 meters away."
"Thanks, Scotty," Kirk cut off any potential response by shutting off the comm. He waggled two fingers at Bishop, pointing to the south, and another two at the southwest. She nodded, understanding his meaning, and readied her weapon.
Within minutes, the first two Cambronese soldiers came into view. Kirk glanced at Bishop, whose jaw was set with determination. At this point he could easily read the look on her usually stoic face: it didn't matter now what uniform they were wearing. Kirk and Spock were her only allies; all others were assumed to be enemies.
The soldiers passed by, allowing Kirk and Bishop to leave their hiding places and sneak up from the rear to attack. Their luck finally ran out, however, when Bishop's boot ground into a particularly crunchy piece of undergrowth and both patrols spun around and raised their weapons at the pair.
Kirk grabbed the soldier's gun, pushing it into the air as it was fired. He kneed the man's stomach, then wrenched the gun out of his hands and slammed it into his face rendering him unconscious. Bishop had a bit more trouble, taking a blow to the face before finally felling her opponent with a kick to the groin followed by a phaser blast to the chest.
"The other two will have heard that," Kirk surmised. "We'd better get out of here." She nodded her agreement and the two resumed their trek at a quicker pace, pointing in a more northeasterly direction to stay ahead of and avoid the other two patrols. They continued for several minutes, still not in visual range of the beach, before Kirk finally turned his communicator back on to ask for another distance estimate.
"...there, Cap'n? Please answer me!" came Scotty's frantic voice over the device. The hairs on the back of Kirk's neck began to stand up and the sound of the other man's distraught voice.
"Scotty! What's..."
"They're right behind you, Cap'n! A full patrol! You're gonna have to make a run for..."
Scotty's sentence was cut off as phaser blasts suddenly fired in all directions, exploding the surrounding foilage. Kirk had turned to run with Bishop when her usually commanding voice screamed out, "Captain!" and he suddenly felt her body plow into him, tackling him broadside.
"Argh!" she yelled painfully, landing roughly on top of him as they rolled behind a large tree. She gasped for breath, eyes opening and closing quickly and blinking back tears even as she scrambled off of him and took a defensive stance to return fire.
"Bishop!" he yelled over the phaser fire, taking in the gaping, bleeding wound in her upper arm as he too returned fire. Her left arm now hung, limp and useless at her side, blood streaming down her elbow and fingertips to pool into the grass below.
"How far away from the beach are we?" she yelled painfully, blinking her eyes again in an attempt to see clearly through the colorful fog of shock.
"Scotty, how much further?" Kirk demanded into his comm.
"Cap'n, the beach is no more than thirty meters ahead. But you're gonna have to completely submerge for me to be able to transport you both, and you're gonna have to make a large target."
"What?" he roared, unable to hear his engineer over the constant volley of phaser fire.
"You're gonna have to make one big target for me to beam up, not two, so get real close and get all the way under the water!"
Kirk looked at Bishop, her sweaty face becoming more pale by the minute. "Allright, Scotty, we're gonna make a run for it. Keep on our position and the second we hit that water beam us the hell outta here or we're gonna have more holes in us than even Bones can plug."
"Aye, Cap'n."
"You ready?" he asked the stoic woman beside him, noting the crimson pool was becoming scarily deeper by the second.
She nodded in return. "I count five soldiers, two to my right and three on your left. If we come out firing and keep firing we should have a good chance to make it."
"Okay, let's do it."
They both rose to their feet behind the protection of the tree, and after a silent count they backed away and began firing behind them as they broke through the remaining edge of the forest. Blasts tore through the trees and shrubs all around them, but none found their mark. Kirk silently thanked the Cambron military system for not training their soldiers to be better marksman. He turned to quickly pull off a few more lasting phaser blasts to ward off their pursuers and by then the beach was in range.
Bishop's arms and legs were pumping beside him, somehow keeping up with his frenetic running pace despite her wound. "Bishop!" he yelled, hoping to caution her for what he knew was coming. "This is gonna hurt like hell!"
"I know!" she yelled back as they hit the freezing cold water. She had already thought about how the mixed blessing of higher salinity would ultimately take them back to the safety of the Enterprise, and had tried to prepare for the assault of fresh pain that would come when her wound filled with the same salt water. She was unprepared, however, for the searing, mind numbing shock that filled her eyes with tears and effectively knocked the wind out of her when she submerged. Desperate to breathe, her body reacted involuntarily and shot back to the surface to drink in precious gasps of air.
"NOW, Scotty!" Kirk yelled into his comm, his head bobbing momentarily on the surface next to hers as phaser fire began to rain down upon the water. He grabbed her around the waist with one arm and around the shoulders with the other before dragging them both under the surface again. He held her tightly to him, the merciless piercing pain in her left arm causing her to return the gesture with equal strength with her right. She could feel the swirling lights of the transporter begin to wrap around them as she desperately dug her hands into the fabric of Kirk's shirt. Pulling his chest closer to her face to muffle her silent screams of agony, the waves of anguish were finally too much to bear. As the lights grew brighter and brighter, her mind became more and more hazy until finally all was black.
Kirk could feel the moment Bishop lost consciousness. He gripped her tightly, not wanting her body to kick her back to the surface, and felt her agony as she frantically clung to him for dear life. She unceremoniously buried her face into his chest, silently suffering an agony he could only imagine. He felt the gentle tug of the transporter just as her body went completely slack, her hands and arms terrifyingly relinquishing their death grip hold on his shirt and torso. For a few moments he was suspended, alone in time and space, and could only clutch her limp body even closer to comfort them both.
After what seemed like an eternity, he felt the familiar push as gravity deposited him unceremoniously on top of Bishop on the transport pad with a loud 'thud'. He was still clinging tightly to her limp body as he regained his bearings.
Spock had been waiting for them in the transport room since Mr. Scott had briefly lost contact, and quickly moved to assist his Captain, still unsure whether or not he had been wounded. "Jim!" he exclaimed, alarmed at the quantity of blood quickly pooling on the transport pad.
Kirk's wild eyes scanned the room. He knew Spock would be there, knew he would have had knowledge of their situation and been tracking their every move and communication. Right now, though, that's not who he needed.
"Bones!" he began to yell. "Where's Bones? Bishop's hurt!"
Untangling his limbs from hers, Kirk desperately tried to lift her, only to find he suddenly lacked the strength. "Let me assist, Captain," Spock offered, deftly lifting Bishop into his arms as McCoy burst into the transport room.
"What happened?" the doctor demanded, quickly assessing both Kirk and Bishop and the blood on both of them before waving Spock ahead with her to the sick bay.
Kirk's teeth suddenly started chattering, and he felt extremely weak. He tried his best to walk, but he began to weave and was unsteady on his feet, his legs finally giving out from under him. "Bones...what...?" he began, but the older man cut him off as he put one of Kirk's arms around his shoulder to assist him.
"Extremely high levels of sodium plus freezing water plus magnetically charged atmosphere equals one a hell of a transport ride," McCoy offered. "You'll both be feeling this for a few days, Jim."
"Bishop," Kirk managed to mumble, barely aware of the brightness of the hallway as they passed. "Bones...she's shot."
"Yes Jim, I know," the doctor replied, mouth set in a firm line.
"No...no, she's shot...I mean she got shot, not me..." McCoy regarded his Captain warily, momentarily wondering if perhaps Kirk was allergic to salt water. At his friend's continued look of confusion Kirk finally stopped dead in the hallway and put his hand directly on McCoy's chest to gather his bearings and attempt to form a coherent sentence.
"Bishop got shot. Instead of me. Pushed me outta the way. Woulda killed me. Woulda got me right here," he removed his hand from Bones' chest to form a fist and pounded it against his own sternum. "Make sure she's okay first."
McCoy's eyebrow rose at his friend's revelation as well as the implied order from his Captain. "She'll be fine, and I'll take good care of her," he promised.
Kirk nodded wearily, knowing she would be in the best and most capable hands, and as he was carefully deposited onto a biobed he finally closed his eyes.
************Please review!*******************I would like to know your thoughts on the story thus far!*********