Chapter 9

How cold? How cold? Minus 30, that's how bloody cold!

The storm and its blanket of clouds had been blown away, leaving their tiny portion of the planet surface open to the freezing sky. The dazzling, blinding sunlight made no difference. It struck his face – the only uncovered part of his body – but he felt no heat from it.

It could be worse. At least there's no wind.

He had donned two jackets, two pairs of gloves, two pairs of socks. Still the cold cut him to the bone. The hard work of shoveling a path through the powdery snow to the small incline where Chekov wanted to take his readings hadn't helped. It had warmed him up, yes, but sucking in the freezing air had been a shock that would not let up. His toes had been the first to go numb, and soon after that his fingers in the wet, frozen gloves. When the work was done, the sweat froze almost instantly to his back and he had started to shiver.

As soon as the path was dug he had sent the other men back inside. It was just Chekov and him on the tiny snow hill, some hundred meters away from the shuttle. Squinting, he followed the ribbon of the path to the hole at the end. No sight of the shuttle. It was entirely snowed in and they had had to dig a tunnel to the surface.

He looked up.

A moment of panic. A cosmic sky, enormously wide. It threatened to suck him up, blast him into space.

He swallowed and cursed, shivering, the muscles in his arms and shoulders shaking with exertion as he held up the heavy sextant up for the Russian. He was aware again of the pain in his side. Having nothing else to do here but stand, waiting, nothing to distract his thoughts or his body, it was quickly becoming unbearable.

"Hold it steady, please, Keptin!" Chekov said in his high voice. The Russian didn't seem the least put out by the cold. There was nary a shiver on him!

Kirk clenched his jaw. "Sorry," he mumbled.

Strange, how well his voice carried in this eerie silence, this nothingness. It was all just sight now, which made it even stranger, because all there was of sight was whiteness and brightness. His face hurt from squinting so hard. His head hurt and he was getting dizzy - but then he also hadn't eaten since a quick bite during the negotiations at the camp. A shower of black spots traversed his vision. The pain in his side became a stab.

Either I'm gonna pass out or throw up.

Concentrating hard, he scoured the landscape of nothingness for dark spots. But the snowblasted sastrugi cast no shadows, nor did the pressure ridges, or the three foot walls of the path they had cut. Even the massive mountains rising out of the crevassed plain at a distance hard to estimate – five clicks? – were fully lit, blasting him. The only shadow was deep in the hole that led to the shuttle.

Again, the tug of the sky.

"Got it!" Chekov cheered.

Kirk almost dropped the heavy tool. Chekov walked over and took it from him. They started back right away, Chekov first. Kirk was glad for the hard-won path now. An hour ago it had been so powdery and slick they had sunk down into the snow up to their waists, which had necessitated the path in the first place. Now the snow bore a hard crust on which his hands found much needed support.

Then, down into the grave.

He stumbled into the airlock. Chekov caught his arm, pretended it was nothing.

They closed the small ramp and opened the hatch to the back corridor. Kirk welcomed the warmth. Then, within a minute, he rushed to shed his extra layers. The cold had been bad, but the sudden temperature change was just as brutal. He was seeing spots again, white ones this time, and the acid bile rose to his throat. He steadied himself against the bulkhead.

"Are you okay, Keptin? You'll go see Doctor McCoy?" Chekov asked, almost apologetically.

Kirk cursed inwardly. The young man must have noticed his distress all along, and now he had even felt it necessary to express his concern.

"Yeah," he joked, standing straight. "Knowing McCoy, he probably has some brandy! Are you alright?"

Chekov smiled broadly. "It's like home, Keptin!"

"If you say so, Pavel," Kirk said, mimicking Chekov's smile, but knowing his smile wasn't reaching his eyes. "Run your computations, Mister Chekov. We'll convene as soon as you have our position."

As he waited for Chekov to leave he desperately tried to think of a place on the shuttle where he could have some privacy to pull himself together, to throw up so he could reset his body. There were two lavatories...

But Chekov wasn't moving. He purposely waited for Kirk to step out into the narrow corridor first. The Captain had no choice but to turn right, into "Sick Bay".

000000000

"You got some brandy, Bones?"

"Jim! I just had Fry and Argyle in here!" McCoy exploded, barely keeping his voice down. "What were you thinking sending them out there? Argyle's toes and fingers have first degree frostbite, and Fry came very near to being snow blind! We just don't have the equipment to protect us, Jim, we-"

McCoy ground to a halt. Kirk was just standing there. The Doctor, exhausted even though he had stolen a short nap after Rick's operation, noticed for the first time how sickly pale the Captain was. The man was even gripping the edge of the desk.

"How long were you out there, Jim? And when was the last time you slept? Or ate?" the Doctor demanded.

He regretted the unintended tone of frustration – but he was so damn tired himself – when Kirk looked him in the eye with a vulnerability he rarely showed. There was a great sadness there, a disappointment.

In me? McCoy thought, his alarm mounting.

"You've not slept," he concluded softly, wanting to make peace, "since the crash-no, since your last off-duty on the Enterprise. And you haven't eaten. And you were out there all this time."

"Yeah," Kirk sighed.

As if that were all, he started to turn away.

McCoy couldn't believe his eyes. A panic gripped him.

"Hold it!" he ordered, softly but also as commanding as he had ever spoken.

Kirk stopped in his tracks.

McCoy did what he should have done the moment Jim Kirk stepped into his Sick Bay. He looked at the man, not the Captain. He noticed the clenched fists around mottled fingers, the minute shivering, the stiff, off-balance posture. He swept the sensor over the slumped shoulders, down the back underneath the drenched shirt.

What he saw alarmed him. But worst of all, he got no protest.

"I couldn't strap in," Kirk explained quietly. "I hit the console on impact. I was unconscious for a short while. I feel like throwing up."

"That's the body's reaction to extreme pain and exhaustion," the Doctor grumbled, dragging a chair over. "Sit down, Jim." He knew he had to take care to keep his anger, fear, and pity out of his voice.

Kirk hesitated, glanced at the curtain.

That man'll be the death of me, McCoy thought, annoyance grating upon affection.

"Chang's guarding it. No one's gonna walk in on us. Sit down, please Jim."

Kirk gingerly sat down, possibly for the first time in 20 hours. He allowed McCoy to pull up the sodden gold command shirt, then peel away the black undershirt.

The Doctor couldn't believe it. The purple, blue and green bruise on the Captain's right side extended from the tenth rib up to the collarbone, from the sternum to the back.

How had Kirk concealed this kind of injury? How had he been physically able to manage this disaster, organize their lifeboat, shovel a path though three feet of heavy snow, brave that cold? How was he even functioning at all?

McCoy suddenly realized what it meant for Spock to be out of action.

He ran his scanner and his fingers, very gently, over each rib.

"Well, you're lucky. Looks bad, but it's mostly just bruised, except for two small fractures. I'll tape those ribs. Let me get Chang."

"No," Kirk said firmly, starting to rise from his chair in alarm. It drained his face of what color was left. He sat back, wincing. "No, Bones," he repeated through clenched teeth.

McCoy could see he was going to waste both their precious energy and it wouldn't make a difference, except perhaps make the Captain walk out without accepting any treatment at all.

"Alright, alright," he muttered. He walked to the sideboard, picked up a pair of scissors, hesitated. "Am I right assuming that you didn't bring a change of shirt, Jim?"

Despite the difficulty he was in, Kirk smiled.

McCoy put the scissors down again. "Let's take them off, then. Gently does it."

Kirk gritted his teeth as they carefully removed the shirts. McCoy kept a close eye on the Captain's face, bone white and beaded with sweat. He began shivering almost uncontrollably as soon as he was bare-chested. McCoy quickly draped a blanket over his shoulders and upped the cargo hold's temperature.

Then he pulled over a chair for himself and the wheeled table with what he needed. He kicked down the brake on the wheels, so the damn thing wouldn't roll on the slanting floor. He reached for a hypo.

Kirk caught his hand.

"Wha-? It's a painkiller, Jim!"

"How many doses do you have left, Doctor?" Kirk whispered. "Forty? Thirty?"

"Well," McCoy began. They had gone through a lot of the painkiller in the past twenty hours, as there had been a lot of minor injuries. "Thirty, perhaps?"

"And you need them for Spock and Ricks and- I'll be alright, Bones, save your medicine."

"But we'll be out of here in a day or so, Jim!" McCoy blurted out.

Kirk's eyes on him were hard and stern. McCoy was grateful he didn't share what he was thinking.

"Alright," the Doctor gave in. "Let's lift your arm up, rest it here, on my shoulder."

Kirk groaned as McCoy raised Kirk's right arm, but it was the last sound out of him throughout the painful procedure. The Doctor taped the ribs, bandaged the chest for extra support. When he was done he gently lowered Kirk's arm, then straightened.

He found Kirk in an eerie, open-eyed trance, the pain barely controlled behind unfocused pupils. McCoy gave him a moment, holding his shoulder, afraid he might fall off the chair.

Kirk groped for consciousness, focused.

"Better now?" McCoy asked.

Kirk nodded.

"I don't see why help shouldn't come soon, Jim," McCoy tried gently.

Kirk regarded him with such unfathomable sadness, McCoy had to look away.

"If you'll help me into my uniform, Bones," said the Captain after a second. "Chekov must have our position by now."

In turmoil, if not horror, McCoy helped Kirk dress. The Captain rose painfully and his steps to the curtain were uncertain, but then again, McCoy still wasn't used to the tilting floor either.

Kirk stopped, turned and looked at the closed curtain behind the Doctor.

"Ricks?"

McCoy shook his head. "I don't know, Jim. He's still critical."

"Spock?"

"A severe concussion. No bleeding in the brain as far as I can tell, but then the brain scanner is rigged. He's in a regenerative coma. He's on his own."

Kirk nodded. He straightened, composed his face to one of calm determination. He parted the curtain. When he passed through into the main cabin, all those who were not resting looked up and were reassured by their Captain's poise.

"Keptin?" Chekov had risen from a crate where he had been sitting, waiting. "I have our coordinates."