Prolia Labour Camp - Present
He dragged his sticky tongue over his brittle lips, trying to alleviate the pain his blistered and chapped lips were causing him, but did not succeed. There was no moisture whatsoever left in his mouth. Breathe through your nose, to keep your oral mucosa from drying out any further, he chided himself, but when he closed his mouth and took a deep breath through his nose he immediately had to gag on the foul smell of the thick air laden with the stink of sweat, feces, and decaying bodies.
There was nothing in his stomach to throw up, though, so his body only convulsed in dry heaves that made his already painful headache intensify exruciatingly.
Dehydration, his mind uselessly provided, as well as oxygen depriviation. The ventilators had been shut off only a few hours ago.
Being killed by one of these violent and primitive brutes suddenly did not seem so unappealing anymore. It was quicker than slowly suffocating on stinking air, or literally drying out.
However, the last fight between the slaves had been hours ago. Yaniah was organizing them, calming them, chiding them when they did something she thought wasn't appropriate behaviour. She reminded him of his primary school teacher, Mrs Brook. Lenny, it is not nice to chew gum in class! Stop tilting on your chair! Stop hitting your head on the wall! It is not nice to kill the man next to you with a stone. He laughed mirthlessly. So, this is where I'll die.
"Lenny?" she asked him, shaking his frame gently, but persistingly.
He only realized he'd dozed off when he looked into her grey, concerned eyes.
"Wha ...? No' 'Bones' anymore?" he asked, forcing his tongue to work properly.
"It was his name for you, so I'm not going to steal it," she said, nodding gravely, as if it mattered.
"Too bad. Then I guess I'm never going to hear it again," he said bitterly.
Her eyes went big. "Why?" she asked frighteningly innocent.
He sighed. "Yaniah, do you really think we'll come out of this alive? We'll die in here. Of thirst. Or we'll suffocate, or we'll die of some disease that is spreading from the dead and decaying cadavers." His voice had become louder with every word until he had finally shouted the last two words at her. Illogical waste of energy, he realized. Not only did his headache increase yet another notch, but also did Yaniah not deserve his emotional outbreak.
"You give up?" she asked him, and she sounded reproachful, her eyes were boring into him now.
"Yes," he said matter-of-factly. What was the point of lying to her?
"You mustn't do that, Lenny!" she said. And there she was, all Mrs. Brooks again. "Didn't you tell me you loved Jim?"
"Yes. So? Why are you reminding me?" he asked her petulantly.
"Didn't you also tell me that love is bigger than any of us?" she asked, ignoring his growing impatience and frustration with her and continued to lecture him: "The love you feel for Jim, is bigger than your thirst, your pain. If you give up and die, you'll let it die as well."
"So? Who cares?" he mumbled, suddenly imagining Jim in sickbay, recovering from his head injury with Spock at his side. As long as Spock is there, ...
"Jim will care!" she said, looking at him intensely. "How easy it is for you to give up now! What makes you think that Jim will be alright, knowing that you gave your life for him? If you did love him, then you would not give up now. It's selfish."
My god! I've created a monster, he thought, smiling a little. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. They felt dry as well, as if there was a fine film of sand under his eyelids. "Yaniah, why do you care? Don't get me wrong, I admire you for that. But to me, it's a mystery what keeps you going."
"Love," she said, blushing a light shade of green, "you said it comes unexpectedly. And it did. I love the people of Meriah." She stopped to look at the huddled mass of people around her. "I find comfort in the thought of experiencing something that is greater than my own existence," her voice became more quiet with each sentence until she was whispering: "It frightens me, my own existence. I wasn't used to ... feeling, thinking ... to being. It frightens them also."
Her eyes roamed around the room. "Those in charge stole the freedom, the personality, the very thoughts of everyone who is a slave! But they are captives as well. Captives of Meriah's system. They can't break free either, even though they must know about the cruelty of their doings. Delihan tried, but was killed by those he wanted to free. Meriah is a planet of doomed people. They all must learn ... to love. Must learn that there is something that is ... bigger than we are."
McCoy watched Yaniah who had edged closer to him, and who was repeating the words that he himself had said to her only a few hours before, with awe. Their noses were almost touching, while he searched her intelligent eyes for an answer to all of life's questions. Although he had been the one who had planted the idea into her thoughts, she suddenly occured a thousand times wiser than himself.
"How?" he breathed.
There was a loud sound coming from the direction of the mill. A strong wind suddenly came through the open door, that brought in a lot of dust and made McCoy turn against the wall in order to protect his parched eyes.
The sound was familiar, but his brain could not quite identify it. The people in the room scrambled back at the the walls looking at the door, and then making room for a dark figure that was approaching. A bright light was shining through the door, as if from a searchlight.
The person held a flashlight and he could not make out his face. A Meriahni official? Someone who wanted to negotiate?
Yaniah got to her feet when the figure in the room strode towards the controls. A whirring sound suddenly brought recognition for McCoy. It was a tricorder! And the sound from the outside originated from a shuttle engine. The person at the controls was moving in a swift, efficient, controlled and suddenly very familiar way. He recognised him by his movements first, even before he noticed the blue uniform, the accurate haircut and the pointed ears.
"Spock!" he croaked joyously. It seemed unreal. But Spock was there, although he was ignoring him completely.
"You are from the Enterprise?" Yaniah asked the Vulcan who was focussing all of his attention on his tricorder.
The man continued to ignore her and she had to control herself to not reach out and touch him. He was trying to do something important she suspected and shooed a few curious gapers away.
McCoy finally succeded in getting his feet under himand hobbled on stiff legs towards Spock, when the latter suddenly turned around in a quick motion, grabbed McCoy's arm to put it around his neck with one hand while his other arm went around McCoy's waist.
"Doctor, we have no time! Me must leave immediately!" he said evenly to anyone who did not know the Vulcan, but McCoy heard the hint of haunted panic behind the controlled voice, which suddenly brought his heart to his throat.
"What? Spock! What is it?" he asked and instead of working with Spock to get themselves into the waiting shuttle as quickly as possible, he put all of his weight and remaining strength into the task of resisting him.
He didn't quite succeed, Spock still urged him forward, though he stumbled and McCoy felt the Vulcan's hands bruise the flesh on his hip and wrist where Spock was holding him.
"The Meriahn will use the energy field to destroy this prison. In approyimately 2.5 minutes the whole complex will ignite," Spock explained.
Before McCoy could process what he'd said, they were at the shuttle's hatch and Spock was about to push him inside.
McCoy stemmed both his hands against the opening, this time achieving to stop the Vulcan.
He turned his head to find Yaniah close by, looking at him, with an expression of shock on her face.
"Ignite? They're going to destroy this whole complex? Spock! All these people! Can't you ..."
"Doctor! We must leave now, or we, you and I, will die!" Spock was actually reasoning with him, but McCoy sensed he was only half a rational thought away from being nerve-pinched to unconsciousness. And Spock was a very rational guy.
So with a desperate movement he ducked away from the shuttle hatch, away from Spock and came to stand beside Yaniah who had assimilated the information Spock had given them already.
"Lenny, you must go!" she said.
"Come with us!" he said, pushing her.
Spock turned, already reaching a hand towards the doctor's neck. There was no time for yet another irrational discussion with the doctor.
McCoy saw it coming, and escaped, still pushing Yaniah, who was resisting him with all her strength.
"Let go of me! I can't leave, just as you couldn't leave Jim! You know why! Now go!"
He stopped, in shock, feeling Spock's hand on his shoulder again, half expecting to pass out, but Spock only drew him away from Yaniah to push him into the shuttle.
"Doctor, Jim needs your help. He's in a deep coma as a result from a severe head trauma," Spock said under his breath, as if it were a secret, and McCoy suddenly felt himself being manhandled into the co-pilot's chair.
He felt the rush of acceleration when the shuttle dashed through the mine's adits. And held his breath as he realized just what they were doing: flying a shuttle through an underground dilithium mine.
Thoughts, pictures, noises and sensations were all jumbled together in a massive confusion that occupied his brain when they were suddenly going up the vertical shaft where the conveyor cage once had been.
The next moment, there was open sky above them and he found a second to breathe as well as to register that his headache had gotten worse.
"Doctor, there's water in the back of the shuttle. I suggest you replenish your fluids," Spock said quietly, grabbing his shoulder and turning him so that he faced the back of the shuttle, and then gave him a gentle but still firm push.
He reluctantly did as Spock had suggested. He was thirsty as hell, but also annoyed by Spock's patronizing manner. He was doctor, for Chrissakes, he knew much better than that arrogant Vulcan that he needed fluids. Suggest my ass, he thought, becoming even more irritated.
Steadying himself with one hand on the back wall, he reached for a water container that was stowed away there, when a sudden jolt sent him to the floor and a blazing white light that came through the front screen blinded and momentarily stunned him. Spock had shut it out by deactivating the screen, a fraction of a second later and the shuttle was stabilizing.
"We're experiencing some minor atmospheric turbulances, doctor, I suggest you steady yourself."
Again, McCoy felt exaggeratedly irritated by Spock's remark, emotional stress, no doubt, some detached part of his brain provided. He pushed the button to activate the small view screen in the back, out of pure rebelliousness, I like seeing where I'm going, Spock, and you can't hinder me!
The blinding brightness was already gone, but what he could see, seemed unreal. A dome of golden light was under them, sparkling and glowing air. It was astonishingly beautiful. Then, droplets of liquid gold were raining down onto the surface as the dome slowly dissolved. Where they touched ground they bathed the area into bright, golden light, that increased in brightness with every drop that was added. What is that?
He saw they were putting distance between that place and themselves. He put a hand to his still hurting head, trying to remember the place they were obviously leaving, but he failed, and could not make sense out of the pictures he saw.
The golden light slowly dimmed as they were getting farther away. A flimsy mist of grey started to mingle with it. The mist became thicker and darker, until McCoy finally recognised what it was: smoke. A mushroom of black, thick smoke formed where once that beautiful golden dome had been, it started to consume his whole field of vision as it reached the shuttle that ascended into the atmosphere. What the ...? A bomb? Who would ...?
Then, memory came back with a force: the prison camp, thousands of people, slaves. Yaniah. Yaniah who had fallen in love with the people of her planet. Love is bigger than we are. He'd told her, and she had believed him. He searched the darkness outside of the shuttle. That's all that's left of the prison, of Yaniah, and of love. Hot, burning smoke, and ashes.
He banged his head against the screen in anger. Once, then again. But he couldn't feel the pain. Suddenly he realized he'd been holding his breath, and felt as if he was suffocating. With a violent intake of breath, he tried to press air into his lungs. The image of the smoke outside and the dry air in the shuttle caused him to start coughing. Other images began flooding his mind even as he struggled to catch his breath:
Jim, lying still on the concrete floor, not breathing. Delihan reaching out a hand to him, cutting into his mind, making him cough his lungs out. Oh god, his mind! The rapist had raped him again, and this time he'd even begged him to do it. Why couldn't he cope now? It had been his own fault, anyway.
He suddenly tasted blood, but had no idea where it came from, the taste of blood, the stink of the stale air in that prison. He couldn't breathe - the smoke! But the smoke was outside, not in here!
Still, it was impossible to draw in a normal breath. He panicked, he knew he was imagining things, but he couldn't stop. His own mind was drawing him into an abyss of smoke, fire and stink from which there was no escape.