Exchange: simple capture of material by a player; specifically, can refer to the exchange of a rook for a minor piece
The better part of an hour later, they came over a rocky hill to see a plume of smoke dissipating gradually into the air of the valley below. A smallish crater lay before them, white-hot but now cooling debris lying wedged into the ground in its epicenter.
"No life-signs, Captain," Anderssen said quietly, tricorder whirring.
"Right." He took a deep breath and set off down the hillside, careful to not dislodge enough shale to cause an avalanche and break his neck from sheer stupidity. Slithering gravel and various grunts behind him told him that his decimated crew were doing the same, and within moments they were on level ground headed for the crash site.
His heart sank into his shoes when he got close enough; the glint of smooth metal and shattered transparent aluminum was enough to tell him it was a crashed escape pod and not mere shrapnel from the Enterprise's explosion.
He swallowed, slowing. And then the smell hit him with the force of a photon torpedo.
The acrid, scorching odor of electrical fire, sharp and biting – and the even more nauseating smell of charred flesh.
Behind him, he heard Greco's quiet gagging and Sulu's murmured Japanese invective.
"Spock," he managed, gesturing helplessly, and silently begged the Vulcan to understand.
The Vulcan nodded without hesitation. "Your tricorder, Lieutenant," Spock said quietly.
Anderssen surrendered the instrument without a word of protest, making no move to draw nearer the wreckage. Spock moved, silent and intent on his readings, toward the wreckage, circled it, and stood for a moment, peering at the still-smoking heap of shrapnel, most of which had been burned away on entry or shattered upon impact. He then crouched beside a large piece of metal, and after examining it from inches away then shrugged his sleeve over his hand. Thus protected from the heat by the flame-retardant material, he reached out and in one smooth tug yanked the portion of metal upward, flinging it a foot away from the rest.
Jim saw the blinking lights of singed but still-functional emergency electronics, and his heart sank. Up until now, he could just delude himself into considering it an accident; ten seconds before self-destruct all the escape pods launched themselves automatically. If it weren't for the smell of burning flesh, he could happily ignore all else and hold to the hope that it had just been an empty pod which had malfunctioned and crashed beyond recognition.
But that horrible blinking red light told him that the computerized functions of the pod were still in working order, built as they were for records to withstand even the most violent of crash landings.
Spock's eyes watched him, as he moved slowly forward to crouch beside his First. The Vulcan said nothing, waiting for his decision.
Without giving himself time to think about it, he shot out a hand and pressed the retrieval button.
"Escape pod XXIC, U.S.S. Enterprise, ejected Stardate 2264.6, the flat computerized voice intoned. He belatedly realized he wasn't breathing, and inhaled. "Reason for ejection: internally-triggered shipwide self-destruct. Time of jettison: twenty seconds before destruct. Status of pod: navigational system malfunction, resulting in premature forced landing. Status of occupants: No survivors."
From his peripheral, he saw Spock's lips tighten in what had to be the same sick anticipation which was threatening to deprive him of control over his stomach's contents.
The computer's drone continued. "Occupants of pod: Ensign Petra Xanthos. Ensign C. J. Pha'ast-Movato. Lieutenant Lucia Marcella. Medical Assistant Tanya Bodine. Lieutenant-Commander Leonard McCoy."
Gravel skittered under his feet as he lost his balance and sat, hard, staring at the steady red light which indicated the recording had finished processing, glowing evilly at the end of the gray tunnel which had suddenly become his field of vision. Weird, but now that he knew, he somehow wasn't feeling much of anything, just a sort of numb sickness that spread from the inside out, turning his heart and then everything else into a kind of icy stone, dead weight within him. He wasn't crying, wasn't screaming, wasn't really feeling much of anything, wasn't even hearing or seeing much, either, for that matter…just this nauseating nothing which encompassed him in a grey cloud, thick and smothering and thankfully blotting out all else for just a few blessed moments…
A sharp pain, a jarring slap to the face, threw his body out of its comfortable limbo, and he gasped, choking on shards of stench-permeated air…when had he stopped breathing?
Blinking, struggling helplessly for oxygen, he saw the worried face hovering in his immediate vision and finally recognized it. Sulu. Of course; Spock had never again, since that day over five years ago, raised a hand to him – refused categorically, even under medical circumstances. It was all he could do to get the Vulcan to spar with him, and even after five years he still hadn't convinced Spock to not 'go easy' on him.
"Captain. Jim. Seriously, man, snap out it." Filtering the words through the cotton-packed tunnel in his ear, he finally registered the conversation, and fought his way back to full awareness. Sulu's creased forehead slowly relaxed as comprehension dawned, and the young navigator sat back an inch or two out of Jim's personal space bubble. "That's it – you with us?"
He nodded, realizing he'd come close – dangerously close – to zoning out on what could be his last remaining crew. "Sorry," he rasped, struggling back to his feet. He pointedly ignored Spock's outstretched hand in doing so, and refused to feel remorse over the fact.
He drew up to his full height, breathing out a slow and measured breath to calm his nerves and try to banish the reek of charred flesh. At least now he knew.
He hoped, oh how he hoped, that the crash had been quick, or that her occupants had been unconscious from the force of entering the atmosphere too quickly. Bones was scared enough of being in space with nothing but a sheet of metal separating him from the void – if he'd been aware of what was coming…
He caught himself just in time before his stomach, roiling unpleasantly, decided to rebel entirely against his strict orders to remain where it was. Firmly forcing the wave of nausea back with a scrape of fist across his mouth, he looked up, and met the worried, equally grief-filled gazes of his straggling team.
"Sir, are you all right?" Chekov asked quietly.
"No, Ensign," he answered, hands clenched, because he'd never yet lied to his crew and he wasn't about to start now. "No, I am definitely not. But…I am going to make whoever is responsible for this pay, and pay dearly. Commander Spock."
"Yes, Captain." Spock's manner was all business, a reassuring presence at his elbow, one constant in a chaotic mess of variables which his brain was struggling to process.
"I want to know what happened here," he said, jaw clenched, tone stony-calm. "Because we both know there's no way the Enterprise self-destructed without internal sabotage. It simply isn't possible."
"But, sir!" McDonnell protested. "That would mean one of us blew up our own ship!"
"Improbable as it sounds, Mr. McDonnell, I cannot conceive another explanation for the bypassing of two voice-only authorizations and at least three dozen failsafes to prevent this exact eventuality," Spock replied with a calmness which slowly seeped into all of them as he spoke. "I cannot countenance any crewman deranged enough to even initiate the self-destruct, nor of one genius enough to be able to carry it out – even I would have struggled to counteract all the internal failsafes – and yet, there is no other way the self-destruct could have been triggered."
"Perhaps remotely?" Chekov suggested.
"It would still require knowledge of both the captain's and my security codes, and the ability to override the voice or retinal recognition requirements."
"Is there any possibility it was just – well, just a freak accident?" Anderssen asked.
"None," Spock responded promptly. "No such accident has ever been recorded in star-travel history, and certainly never with this class starship; much less with a newly refurbished flagship. The failsafes are, as I said, too numerous and too complicated to be overridden by anyone other than…" he trailed off for a moment, just a moment, but it was enough to raise the hackles on Jim's neck.
He knew that look. Spock had an idea. A horrible, wonderful, awful idea – and one which he wouldn't share with the class until he found evidence to back it up.
"Anyone other than a considerable technological programming genius with an ability which exceeds even my own, coupled with years of experience aboard this ship and under this command team," the Vulcan finished after only that fractional pause.
"I can't believe that of anyone in my crew," Jim protested faintly. "Such a computer rating would have shown up in records, and I know my crew's records. I would have remembered that, given that you and I, Scotty and Chekov, are the only people on board with an A-7 rating."
"Nevertheless, it is the only solution possible, based upon the facts as we know it. We have no way of verifying its accuracy until we discover the identity of the being behind the self-destruct trigger."
"And if we find out who it is, I can guarantee you won't be short of volunteers to see he doesn't live to see court martial, Captain," Greco interjected, his honest face flushed with heat and anger.
Jim shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off the headache. His skin crackled. Awesome, alien sunburn. It was the least of his worries. "We can't dwell on that now," he said quietly, hand dropping back to his side. "We're going back to that unscannable area, and just hope and pray there's something there which will help us locate the survivors, or at least help us pinpoint where Lieutenant Uhura's party is on the surface. At the least, we will set up a base camp and make plans for immediate survival tactics."
Murmurs of agreement sounded from the semi-circle, and he nodded, swallowing forcibly on the lump in his throat brought on by another look at the remains of the crashed escape pod. "Anderssen, tune your tricorder to pick up signs of vegetation and see how close we are to one of those rivers; what field packs you all had won't last us more than another day and we'll need water at the least. Keep checking in with Lieutenant Uhura and see if you can get a better idea of where we all are topographically. Greco, McDonnell, I want you to take over the transmitter, keep replaying my recorded comm-loop and see if we can eventually make contact with someone. The escape pods, if they were able to jettison before the explosion, will be coming to rest on the planet in the next six hours. If Scotty's out there, I know he'll somehow be able to rig an escape pod or something into a transmitter as well as a receiver." The three men nodded. "Sulu, work with Chekov and his tricorder, using your botanical knowledge. We're going to need food."
"Aye, sir."
"Da, keptin. We will confer with Lieutenant Anderssen."
He nodded. "Right, then." After casting one more glance at the smoking ruin ten feet away, he then turned his gaze resolutely back toward the jagged hills beyond. "Let's move out."
His men moved into formation, tactfully leaving him behind for a moment with Spock. The Vulcan was standing silently at the side of the obliterated pod, head bowed.
Biting his lip, Jim risked one more look at the wreckage, and saw a shred of charred blue cloth caught on the edge of a nearly-melted shard of metal. He sucked in a wet breath of foul air, blinking to clear his vision.
"Captain, I…I am sorry," he heard sound gently in the stillness, and the sheer stilted humanity of the expression as opposed to the usual Vulcan phrase touched him more than an embrace would have.
"You have an idea of who could be behind this, Spock, I know you do," he responded in a low tone, brittle with grief and pain. "You had better decide here real quick to tell me your suspicions."
"I give you my word, if I had more than a…I believe you would say, a bad feeling about the matter, I would. As it stands, I would prefer to investigate the possibility further before asking you to again relive this ordeal in excruciating detail."
Ah. He hadn't thought of it like that. He gave the Vulcan a thin smile. "Granted. You have until tonight, Spock, and then I want your hunch. I have more confidence in your guesses than in anyone else's facts." Déjà vu flickered through him like a chill, and then vanished. He shook his head to rid himself of the sensation. "I'm flying blind here, Spock, and I need something to work with."
"Agreed. I simply need a short period of time in which to review the facts and correlate missing details."
"I'll see what I can do to get you space to meditate when we make camp; you have to be needing it by now. Spock, do you…what should we do, about them?" His voice cracked on the last word as he gestured at the smoking remains of the escape pod, but not until then; he was quite proud of the effort it had taken.
"We will return when we are stronger in number, and in more control of our surroundings," was the calm reply, delivered with infinite gentleness. "We can do nothing for them without resources, and it would be the wishes of the crew that you make the living your priority rather than the deceased."
He nodded sadly. "Of course you're right as always, Mr. Spock. Let's catch up with the others."
At the top of the rise, he looked back at the wreckage, and wished for just a few seconds that he'd at least apologized about the last Sickbay incident, even if he didn't think he was really to blame. Though now, he'd be only too glad to be back in that cubicle, being yelled at by an irate Chief Medical Officer.
Now, never again. He'd lost his ship and his best friend, in addition to his most important mentor and twelve hundred other crewmen – all in the space of a few hours. Was this what Q had meant, when the deity had said he'd lose everything he held dear, at an incalculably high price?
Did that mean he'd failed his tests before he even realized he was taking them?
Clenching his jaw, he turned from the smoking wreckage, and moved with resolution to the top of the hill. Spock was waiting patiently for him just over the rise, and studiously refrained from commenting on the solitary tear that scorched its way down his sunburned face.