Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or any of these charaters. I am broke as all hell.
A/N: Thanks to everyone that stayed for this long. I seem to be picking up a small following, so that's good. Not any warnings in this chapter. It's a little fast at the end, but most of the important things are saved for the earlier part of the chapter. This is the end of Part I. There will be a small break between Part I and Part II as real life has caught up with me.
Shout outs: Nubianamazon -- without your help I wouldn't have even tried to write this crazy story. This story is dedicated to you.
Chapter 6
"Is also great and will suffice"
Spock didn't quite remember how he ended up in his bed with Uhura that morning, or how he acquired the unaccustomed scars. All that Spock remembered from the day prior was running after his Ashayam into the corn field and kissing her fiercely. His mind was a strange haze, something between lucidity and recollection, the kind of feeling after a night of drinking too much. Now he was in a transport vehicle with Stuvek and Jim traveling to the McCain-Palin facility. The bright Arizona sun was neither crisp nor daunting to Spock's senses; he was a fog, thick and muzzled as if he were the city of San Francisco himself. His mind couldn't quite remember what happened the day prior, and for a Vulcan that feeling was both foreboding and unsettling.
"There's the facility," Jim said, pointing to a burned out building. The McCain-Palin center was a burned out shell of a building. It jutted into the dead scenery of orange sand like a craggy ghost, stretching its blazing arms into the sky. It appeared as a black heap of rubble rather than a building, enclosed with a gate that had a burned down guard shack. It was becoming clearer to Spock that Rudy Santino was indeed not the culprit of the burning. Jim burst through the gate with the large truck they'd stolen from the empty transport station and drove right up to the burned shell. Carmel, Arizona was just as small and abandoned as Riverside had been, but with no quarantine stops. Either Starfleet had completely taken over the city or the virus had. Unlike Riverside, the dead didn't loom in the streets in abandoned cars and looted buildings.
The group stepped from the transport, all three of them blinking rapidly at the smell of old gasoline and sulfur. Jim's eyes started to water profusely, his head woozy and his ears ringing because of the intense odors. Spock pulled out the tricorder that he'd taken from the military shuttle dock bay and turned it on, hearing the tell-tale beeps. Spock ran the tricorder over the outside of the soot-covered building and was returned with obvious readings. Gasoline had been used to burn the building.
"The sheer size of this building would attest to the fact that Rudy Santino couldn't have done this," Jim said, clearing his throat and walking to what seemed to be the front entry.
"It appears to be sound, Jim," Spock said, reading the structural security from the tricorder. The building may have been burned, but it was far from collapsing; it seemed as if something was holding it up.
"After you," Jim said to Stuvek. The older Vulcan soundlessly stepped through the broken glass of the front door, hearing the remnant shards crush underneath his feet. Spock and Jim followed; the only sound the quiet humming of the tricorder as it recorded factual data about the building.
Stuvek moved gracefully among the labyrinth of burned, dead bodies, not stopping or looking back at his trail of men behind him. Jim periodically leaned in to notice the facial expression of the bodies, some of which were completely charcoal, and some of which were only slightly charred to the deepest layer of skin. All the bodies were burned almost past the point of recognition. Whoever committed the act was a pro, something they all knew Rudy Santino wasn't. The tricorder beeped hesitantly as Spock passed the small machine over the dead bodies. Spock's face wasn't easily readable to anyone but Jim, who noticed vindication and a slight twinge of disgust against the stern line of the Vulcan's lips.
"If this tricorder reading is true, these people were dead before they were burned. Apparently, there is a large detection of viral bodies contained in the sub-derma layers," Spock reached into his side satchel, and then reached down to the dead body, watching it crumble into nothing bust dust to be carried away into the Arizona wind. Spock piled a small amount of the human remains into a vial, closed the top, and put the vial back into his satchel. He would need this to study later.
"What virus, Spock?" Jim asked.
"Asperion-3, the mutated form; it seems as if they were infected and within minutes the virus overloaded their systems, resulting in death. Even the portion of the virus that McCoy and I studied at the lab wasn't this deadly."
Spock stopped staring down at his tricorder and looked at Stuvek, who was standing and waiting patiently at the turbo-lift, which was strangely still operational. Jim and Spock quickly joined the older Vulcan and descended to the lower-levels. The turbo-lift was operational, but slow, steadily taking them into the lower portion of the facilities. Stuvek seemed to know exactly what they were searching for, as he'd pressed the lowest level that they could reach four stories underground.
"Twenty-five years ago," Stuvek opened his mouth and spoke for the first time that day, "Starfleet started a joint effort with the Vulcan Science Academy to retain a cure for the Asperion-3 virus. It is unknown the origins of this virus, but it is well known that it spread amongst space merchants and bounty-hunters, eventually reaching every humanoid population in this portion of the galaxy."
"I believe we know the history," Jim stated.
"Ah, but do you? There were people who wished to leave well enough alone. The virus was too new, too fragile to study and too deadly to try and form a vaccine. The first vaccine was tested on the local population of Amerind, as they were highly affected by the virus. You will remember from your history books the strange deaths associated with Asperion-3 in this region of the country," Stuvek continued. Jim and Spock looked at one another, their eyes talking, remembering the tails that the Amerind told about the strangled deaths of their people.
"The Amerind Fatigue Syndrome that was Asperion-3?" Spock asked.
"Indeed. After that chaos, the project was shut down officially. Unofficially, this lab was kept open as a means of study for the vaccine. They tested the vaccine on one other population of people," Stuvek was quiet as the turbolift stopped and they all stepped out of it.
"Who did they test it on?" Jim asked, walking in front of Stuvek, phaser at the ready.
"Us, Jim," Spock responded, having put together the clues. Jim nearly dropped his phaser.
"What? When?" Jim asked.
"It was part of your vaccinations before you set off on your mission. A deadened version of the original virus was given to the crew of the Enterprise as a booster. It was obviously successful," Stuvek mentioned.
"If not unethical," Jim countered. Spock remained silent, his head having gone from clarity to haze once again. In the dark, water-soaked labs under ground, the smell of gasoline and death permeated each wall. The decrepit smell of mildew and weeks-old rotting razed flesh seeped into his senses stronger than a punch to the face. It wasn't the horrendous smell that almost caused Spock to drop his tricorder, it was the sounds of voices loud and thick yelling into his ears. The voices of dead souls, trapped to wander this facility forever. Spock paled and swallowed down a lump of the food he'd had for breakfast.
"Spock, are you alright?" Jim asked, touching his friend's shoulder and breaking the trance. Spock's coloring quickly returned to normal as he regained the control he was quickly losing. Spock simply nodded in response to Jim's question and walked ahead of the rest of the party to record more data.
Spock slouched closer to the large door, noting the similarities between the area in front of him and the area on the tape he'd studied of his father's death. There, in front of him lay the body of Rudy Santino, tipped against the wall and phaser gripped tightly in his dead hand. Right next to Santino was Sarek, the sooty symbol of the IDIC worn proudly against a thin portion of a Vulcan robe. Spock stopped, the voices growing more insistent, but the sound of his father's voice rising above the rest. Without hesitation, Spock reached down to remove the IDIC from his father's lapel, kneeling down and working with deft fingers.
A cool chill ran across Spock's body, gooseflesh rising on his strong forearms. Spock looked around, seeing everything gone gray and hazy. Stuvek and Jim were stilled in time, not moving an inch or speaking. Spock was in between worlds, as if he'd performed a meld.
"Spock," his father's voice calling his name stilled him. Spock swallowed and looked around.
"Father?" Spock asked the gray world but was returned with no vision of his father. Spock looked down to where his father's body had been, seeing nothing but clean, white floor. Everything was clean, in fact, as if he'd gone back into a time when the center was fully functioning. Spock noted the chronometer on the soot-free wall above him seeing the date March 25, 2260.
A man that Spock recognized as Rudy Santino poked his head from the glass-enclosed area, focusing on the area directly behind Spock's head. Spock tuned around to see his father with a number of other notable Starfleet brass following him. They'd all died almost a month earlier. Spock stared at his father's hazy visage as it moved confidently down the hallway and though Spock into the heavy door. It finally dawned on Spock that he was reliving his father's memories of his death. Spock swallowed.
A few moments later, a slow, looming pounding on the door and a frantic Rudy Santino emerged, from the clear glass guard area. He held his phaser at the ready staring down a hallway of death. Spock watched as Sarek, whose face was covered with pustules, grabbed Santino's leg
Asperion-3, we didn't know it could mutate this fast. Sarek's voice was strangled at the edge of death, Shoot me, please. Spock almost crumbled at the sound of his father's voice pleading. Rudy Santino backed away. Spock closed his eyes, knowing the rest of what happened. Voices insisted upon Spock and the Vulcan backed away, eyes closed, covering his ears.
"You must go to Vis Major. You must go to Vis Major. You Must Go To Vis Major. YOU MUST GO TO VIS MAJOR!" Spock was speaking.
"Spock!" Kirk was shaking him; his voice was caught in his throat. Spock looked down and he was holding his father's IDIC in his hand so tightly that the pen was drawing emerald blood from his palm.
"Did you see him?" Spock asked. Kirk had never seen his friend so out of his Vulcan mind.
"See who Spock?" Kirk asked. Spock shook his head, ignoring the question, willing himself and his senses to calm. A low rumble and high creak stopped any questioning that would have continued. The building started to shake, the structure started to crumble and Spock's tricorder started to beep. The turbolift fell from the sky, taking a portion of the crackled, old ceiling with it.
"We need to get out of here, the building has become unstable," Spock said, standing, seeming as if nothing had happened. Stuvek lead the way towards a small portion of stairs that led to the surface. As they ran, the building collapsed around them. Spock was reminded of that day three years prior to the implosion of his home planet, the similarities were uncanny. The only memory he held of his home planet and his ancestry was in his hand, as he ran to preserve his past, his present and his future. Stuvek pushed up a small overhead door leading to the surface. A hidden entry was covered by sand, the grainy earth spilling into their faces as they jumped into the blazing Arizona sun. The men moved quickly away from the building, watching the ground cave in around them, leaving a crater where the building used to stand, the sand slipping around, burying the burned dead.
"Call McCoy," Spock said, his voice strained, coughing sand from his lungs, "tell him that we'll be heading back within the hour."
Jim removed his communicator from his back pocket, clicked it opened and called for McCoy. The doctor was trudging slowly and quietly behind Gaila and Uhura through Starfleet's main base and was not happy to be interrupted. Everywhere around them lurked danger. Gaila had to shoot two looters as they were exiting the transporter, but gained two more phasers for the team. At the moment they were inside the main communication building, which was set up like a citadel in the middle of the campus.
"Jim, what is it?" McCoy said with annoyance.
"Is this not a good time?"
"It's never a good time when you're in danger. What do you want?" Bones asked.
"We found out everything we needed to find here in Arizona, we'll be heading to Frisco within the hour. Where are you?"
"We're at the citadel, trying to make contact with anyone we can," McCoy said, putting down his bag that he'd been carrying at a communications console.
"Be careful, I'll let you know when we've landed. Kirk out," that was all McCoy heard and then silence on the other end of the connection. He stared at the women in his party, who were quickly setting up a communications console. Gaila's long, BDU-covered legs were sprouting from underneath the console as Uhura who was also clothed in military fatigues and a tank top, tested to see if they could get a frequency.
"Come in November, Charlie, Charlie – 1701. Come in NCC-1701," Uhura's voice rang over and over as she tried to contact the Enterprise. She was returned with nothing, not even a whisper over eleven frequencies. They were starting to run out, when a faint signal caught Uhura's ears.
"I hear something, Gaila. See if you can get a better connection this frequency," Gaila worked her magic and the frequency began to come in clearer, it was a song:
War, children, is just a shout away, it's just a shout away!"
"NCC-1701, come in NCC-1701. Is anyone aboard the NCC-1701 Enterprise? Is anyone alive aboard the NCC-1701 Enterprise?" Uhura asked again.
"Lieutenant Uhura, is that ye, lass?" a very jumbled and slurred brogue responded over the console. Uhura nearly fell out of her seat with joy. Clutching her chest she responded.
"Scotty is that you?"
"I canna believe me ears. Am I still pissed?" Scotty asked. Tears threatened Uhura's eyes.
"No, it's me, and Gaila and Bones, we're in the Communications Citadel."
"Ye sound like an angel to me ears, Uhura. All of ye there, where's Jim n' Spock?"
"They're coming. Are Sulu and Chekov with you?" Uhura asked.
"Nay, I'm up here with Keenser and 'bout three other ensigns. We've been here since we heard about the virus. We programmed the replicator to make booze and figured if the world was gonna end, we may as well have a drink. We've been trying to contact everyone for days; this is the first time we've gotten through to anyone."
"Do you think you can locate Sulu and Chekov?"
"We already have, lass. They're in quarantine. I tried beaming them up from there, but there is a definite no-beam lockdown out there in the quarantine camps. Ye'll have to go get them yerself. But once ye get them out I should be able to lock on ye signals and beam ye all outta there."
"That's great news, Scotty. Stand by one hour and wait for our signal. Uhura out." Uhura looked at Gaila and gave her a nod and a large, grand smile. McCoy nodded his head.
"I'm going to head to the labs, pick up whatever I can salvage for the trip," McCoy responded.
"We're going to head to the arsenal, load up, and then go get Sulu and Chekov from the quarantine camps. You get on the horn with Jim; tell them all to meet back here at the Citadel. Gaila and I will be back within 30 minutes, any longer, you all leave us." McCoy nodded and swallowed, pulled Gaila towards him and kissed her cheek softly.
"We'll be back," Nyota said as she grabbed her satchel from the console and strapped it around her. Gaila did the same and followed Nyota out of the door, parting with McCoy as he went the opposite way towards the labs.
Uhura and Gaila started towards the arsenal, which was north on the campus on the way towards the quarantine camps. The camps were farther north than officer housing, where Uhura and Spock had lived before their cancelled wedding. The girls were moving swiftly, and as they passed through the office village, Nyota saw her old officer cottage which she'd shared with Spock and stopped. Her small home had been broken into again, the looters having broken the windows and pulled most of the electronics and clothing through the open windows and door. She walked closer, mesmerized by what her life had almost been, not feeling regret, but a sense of profound loss. There was nothing to show for her old life, and Nyota felts a lump swell inside of her chest. She started to breathe hard as she neared the doors, the feeling of hopelessness growing until she saw a gleaming white beacon, laying over the broken glass and the porch. She recognized the silken fabric and the tiny bits of lace. It was her wedding dress. She ran towards it, Gaila behind her trying to get her to stop. Uhura ran onto the porch and clutched the small garment to her chest, Gaila behind her, finally seeing what it was and understanding.
"I thought it was lost," Nyota said, tears streaming down her face. She folded the garment and put it in her satchel, "it's the only thing I left from my family."
Gaila, like a good friend, let her cry until she could compose herself and then helped her up.
"Let your past be your future, Nyota," Gaila said, smiling calmly. Uhura nodded.
"Let's get the hell out of here," Uhura said, wiping her eyes and running towards the arsenal with conviction.
She and Gaila made it to the arsenal and grabbed two more phasers for Chekov and Sulu, and one laser gun to affect an escape. The two women, trained in combat, made it quickly towards the quarantine camps, knowing that looters and guards were going to be their biggest problems. As they crept closer to the camps, they heard the rabble and din of looters, coming back for their umpteenth survey of the Starfleet camps. The vehicle motors rattled in the distance and Gaila readied their phasers and the laser gun, just in case, all set to kill. Starfleet may have been a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada, but it wasn't a naïve military inceptions; every one of the officers had been trained in self-defense techniques and hand-to-hand combat. Gaila and Uhura had been trained in Suus Mahna by Spock himself; if anyone was going to mess with these girls, they had another thing coming.
The transport vehicle pulled up in front of Uhura and Gaila, obviously full of looters and their stolen treasures. The vehicle stopped and a man, his face full of the pustules from the Asperion-3 virus poked his head from the window. He exhaled heavily, his body ready to give in and dry up.
"Don't go that way, ain't nothin' but death that way," the man wheezed.
"Seems like you're on that road yourself, mister," Gaila responded.
"I've been this way for weeks. The virus done killed everything it's gonna kill in Frisco. I came from Canada, and I'm headed to Alcatraz, there's supposed to be a colony of people like me, who got it but ain't dead. If you got the Dry Death, hop in with me, I'll take you along."
"Thanks, but we have to help our friends," Nyota responded.
"Ain't nothing out there but dead people. Save yourself," the man started up his transport and continued on his way. It was the last person either of them saw as they rounded the corner to the ghostly quarantine camps. The guards were dead; there were people dead in piles, a dark, deep, smoke circling above the camps and the smell of burning dead bodies. Gaila and Nyota slipped through the front gates and down towards the front areas, seeing nothing but smoke and dead bodies as they moved. They stalked through the smothered ground, stepping clear over the people that they new. There were people they knew from classes and from Starbases. Teachers that they'd had, they're faces dead and stilled in pain and agony.
"Gaila!" the green girl turned around, seeing hardly anything through the smoke. But the voice sounded familiar, a slight Russian accent.
"Gaila! Iz zat you?" Chekov said through the fog. Both Nyota and Gaila ran for his voice, through the fog and saw him standing behind metal bars, Sulu right behind him.
"Stand back," Nyota said, taking out her phaser and melting the metal bars so that the guys could slip through. As soon as they were freed, Gaila and Uhura explained the plan, gave the men their phasers and headed back towards the Citadel.
"McCoy, we have Sulu and Chekov, we're headed back to the Citadel now," Nyota said over the communicator.
"Fantastic. I found Chapel, Davis and Ripley at the labs. They're with me now. I also heard from Kirk, they'll be arriving in less than ten minutes and meet us at the Citadel. McCoy Out."
Everything was coming together as if God had planned it. Nyota, Gaila, Sulu and Chekov rounded the corner towards the Citadel to see Jim, Spock and Stuvek waiting for them. McCoy, Chapel, Davis and Ripley showed up last.
"Sulu and Chekov, just the people I needed to see," Spock said, eyeing his fiancé and nodded in appreciation of her good work of retrieving them she knew this look quite well; it was the look of a job well-done.
"Scotty, eleven to beam up, however you want to do it," Kirk said over the communicator.
"Aye Captain, it's good to hear your voice sir."
END OF PART I -- PESTILENCE
