"Captain. Captain Kirk? Jim?" Spock's voice was the first thing he registered when he came to. That, and the sound of coughing. He opened his eyes, to find them blurry with tears and dragged his arm over his face, only to realise that the coughing was actually coming from himself.
He fought to keep his breathing under control. His throat itched, but he surpressed his cough reflex, looking at his left hand that had been bandaged. He then consciously took notice of Spock, who seemed to be alright, but there was dust and soot all over his clothes. He was kneeling in front of him, steadying him against an overturned table.
"Spock!" The word produced a cough again and Spock handed him a bottle of water, still steadying him.
"You've inhaled some dust and smoke. You've also cut your hand on the glass shards that came flying in the explosion wave, but Doctor McCoy has already tended to the cuts."
He took a sip of the water which did a lot to soothe his throat. Taking a look around, he saw the whole chaos that once had been this bar.
There was only emergency lighting. But he could see enough to know that not one chair or table in front of them was still standing at the place it was supposed to. Underneath the debris of wood, glass, and melted synthetic material the bar guests lay, you could hear them more than you could see them. No one screamed though, they were faintly moaning, or crying, but no one screamed.
"Where's Bones?" he asked, searching the room. McCoy had been sitting right next to him.
"Tending to the injured. He is unharmed," Spock reassured, then as an afterthought he added, "as far as I could tell."
Yeah, as far as you can tell. I got the message, Kirk thought. He looked to his other side, where Commander Tamulok had been sitting, and could only stare in disbelief at the massive metal beam that had fallen onto the table and seats just beside him, and had mercilessly crushed everything underneath it.
"Tamulok?" Kirk asked Spock.
"He must have been buried underneath that beam, Captain. My tricorder shows no lifesigns."
Kirk nodded, still a bit dazed. Romulan or not, he had liked him in a strange way. His death definetely was a loss for the Federation, since Tamulok had been willing to negotiate and mediate between the Federation and the Romulan Empire. Even if the talks had failed in the end, the experience would have been invaluable. Although the Romulans had been their enemies for a long time, Romulan culture and customs were still a mystery to the Federation. They had concealed themselves well.
Kirk could see Bones now. He was kneeling beside an injured man on the floor, who was moaning something, grabbing the front of his shirt. Bones looked up and around, finding Nurse Chapel kneeling at the side of an Andorian.
Kirk got his feet under him and dragged himself towards the nurse and her patient. He could see the man was trying to breathe around the dark blue blood dripping from his mouth. Christine turned him to his side, and the gurgling sound stopped.
"Get over here, nurse!" Bones shouted at her.
"Yes, doctor," she said, waiting another second, then with a slow movement, closed the eyes of the Andorian. That sickening sound had stopped, because the man had stopped breathing, Kirk realized, not because his breathing had gotten any easier for him.
"Miss Chapel, welcome back," he said tiredly, putting a hand on her shoulder.
"Captain. Thank you!" she looked up at him, surprised, seeing him for the first time, since her arrival.
"Nurse! I need you here, now stop tending to the dead and start helping those with a chance to live," McCoy barked, then unclenched the man's hand from his shirt, pressed a piece of gauze in his hand and secured it on the man's shoulder wound.
"Bones! You okay?" Kirk asked, trying to assess his friend's injuries. The front of his shirt was soaked in blood he realized, though most of it wasn't human.
"I am. You landed on top of me. I may have a bruised rib, but you took all the glass shards for me. You alright?" McCoy shortly glanced up at Kirk before turning his attention back to his patient.
Kirk nodded, watching Bones and Nurse Chapel work hand in hand, sealing the numerous wounds and cuts.
"What are you doing here, Christine?" he asked her, wondering. She had just arrived on the Enterprise, what could she have wanted in this bar?
"I came to look for Dr. McCoy, I wanted to inform him of Chekov's condition."
McCoy looked up at her with a hopeful smile. "Has he regained consiousness?"
Christine hestitated, "No, he ..."
"Why didn't you use your communicator?" It was Spock standing over her, cutting off her reply which was uncharacteristic for him and made Kirk's alarm go off.
"I couldn't reach him. He didn't answer his communicator," Christine said, somewhat defensively, she hadn't expected being interrogated by Spock.
Kirk took out his own communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise."
Nothing. He tried again, with the same result.
"Captain, I tried to call the Enterprise just after the explosion and once again a few moments ago, without success. It could be a malfunction in my communicator, possibly caused by the explosion. This would also explain why your communicator doesn't seem to be functioning now. However, it does not explain why Dr. McCoy's communicator did not work even before the explosion."
"Spock. I may have been ... distracted before," McCoy said, groping for his communicator, handing it to Spock.
"Are you saying, somebody sabotaged our communicators?" Kirk looked questioningly at his first officer.
"Miss Chapel, did you meet Dr. T'Plok on your way here?" Spock asked the nurse, examining McCoy's communicator.
"No. I haven't met her at all, yet," she said, remembering her surprise when Dr. Taylor had told her that they now had a Vulcan colleague. A Vulcan colleague that seemed to get along well with their boss.
"Spock? What are you suggesting?" McCoy asked.
"Tamulok. We need to find him," Kirk said, walking over to the metal beam lying on the floor.
"Find him? Jim, he was right beside you. There can't be much of him left," McCoy said, leaving his patient in Chapel's capable hands, following Jim.
"You may be right. But I suspect that there isn't anything of him left here," Kirk said walking around the heavy piece trying to move it.
"You mean he escaped?"
Kirk turned around. "The Orions. Where are the Orion slave girls?" he asked McCoy, who was again sweeping the grounds for more injured people.
McCoy shrugged. "Didn't see them. But how could he have escaped?" he asked, not comprehending the whole situation. What about T'Plok, and ... what was that with Chekov? He searched for Chapel again, finding her and walking to her side.
"A transporter, of course," Spock answered McCoy's question, standing beside his Captain, showing him his and McCoy's communicator. "They were sabotaged, Captain. We cannot raise the Enterprise, and I assume they cannot reach us."
"If our signal was lost, the Enterprise should have detected that, and the alarm should have gone off," Kirk said, balling his fist. He had fooled him. That Romulan commander had fooled him, although he'd always had an uneasy feeling ...
"Our signals are intact. Only communication is not possible," Spock said.
Kirk walked over to Chapel and McCoy, Spock following.
"So what about Chekov?" he heard McCoy say.
"He's had a seizure," the nurse answered, "Dr. Taylor had it under control, but since this was an unusual reaction, we tried to reach you," she said.
"A seizure? That is unusual. Unless, ..." McCoy looked up at Spock, "Dr. T'Plok. You asked about her. Why?"
"Nurse, give me your communicator," Kirk said.
Christine looked up, embarrassed. "I don't have one, sir. I'd just come aboard, and went to see Chekov straight away. I simply forgot to ..."
She stopped and, she and McCoy watched in disbelief as Spock and Kirk dissolved in a transporter beam.
"Now, Christine, you should know that it is your duty to carry a communicator whenever you leave the ship!" McCoy shouted at her, not because he was particularly angry with her, but because this whole situation was becoming more frustrating by the minute. When he'd regained consiousness he'd found himself under Kirk's body and for a second there, he had believed he was the only survivor of this attack. He soon had heard Spock's voice, calling for him and Jim, and had answered, relieved. Spock had been carrying an emergency medical kit, and after having given him a short once over, he had wordlessly handed it to him, so that he could examine and treat Jim, who fortunately had not been injured too severely.
Jim had been damn lucky, as usual, McCoy had realized, after having glanced to their left where the Romulan commander had been seated. Had Kirk been flung on top of Commander Tamulok instead of on top of himself, he would have died, too. Did you shield me on purpose, Jim? McCoy had asked himself then, feeling uncomfortable, angry and guilty. He'd probably never find out, though.
"I wasn't even on duty, yet." McCoy heard Christine say, and he looked at her. It was just like her to go to sickbay first, after having returned to the Enterprise after her leave. She had probably been concerned about Chekov, and then had volunteered to return to the starbase in order to find him. Him, who hadn't answered his communicator, because he had been drooling over some Orion slave girls. Talk about duty.
"Sorry," he quickly said, "Enterprise probably picked up their signals and beamed them out of here. Spock still had my communicator," he said looking around, "I wonder where the rescue team is. I mean, they must have noticed the explosion by now," he said looking around him, suddenly feeling very tired.
He was getting too old for this. Why couldn't he avoid getting into trouble, even on a simple shore leave? Well, it hadn't been that simple, he realized, for if he had wanted to stay out of trouble, he had been in the wrong company. Jim was a trouble magnet, and a Romulan was never safe to be around. And that T'Plok certainly had been a little bit strange. And Spock, well, Spock couldn't negate the negative kharma of the other three - actually he was the worst of them all.