Content warning: permanent injury

Chapter 8: The second mission begins

Year Eight: 2265

Captain's log, Stardate 2265.66. We have been unconsciously—or, if I'm being honest, perhaps even intentionally—avoiding it, but Commanders Spock and Scott rightly insist that we have put it off for too long, and that it needs to be done before we enter deep space. Sometime in the next 48 hours, we will have an all-hands evacuation drill. I confess, I'm not looking forward to hearing those sirens. And I dare say that the other 128 veterans of the former Starship Enterprise onboard this ship will agree with me.

Nyota Uhura awoke in the very early morning to the feel of Spock's lips on her neck. Unexpected, although not remotely unwelcome. He brushed her mind for consent and, finding it, pulled her atop of him, hands skimming her sleepwear down her legs, fingers dipping, impatient to bring her sleepy arousal to meet his. He clutched her hips and pulled her forward onto his chest, the better to reach her with his clever lips and tongue.

"Spock," she laughed shakily, shattering as he touched her with his usual deft precision.

"You are precious to me. Always. Always," he murmured against her. It was the last time they would speak all day. In retrospect, she should have known what was coming.

It was 1700, just after the transition between Alpha and Beta shift. Spock seemed to have disappeared, which happened several days a week when he needed to work through Beta, although he usually let her know he'd be late. Nyota was debating between grabbing take-away from the mess hall or finding someone to sit with. She'd just decided on take-away and a quiet evening working on the communications duty roster when the sharp three-tone chime of an all-hands drill sounded, followed by the soul-dropping siren of the abandon ship. The alert started to cycle: drill tone, abandon ship, drill tone, abandon ship.

She stepped immediately into the hall outside their quarters. Sulu, their neighbor, grimly caught her eye. And then the power faded, followed immediately by the gravity, which rolled unevenly through the ship.

"Shit," Sulu muttered.

Uhura heartily agreed, stumbling over a sudden gravity shift in the middle of the hall. Not just a drill. A scenario. Officers were pouring out of their quarters. Alpha-shifters, half out of uniform. Gamma-shifters, who had mostly been asleep, pulling on trousers and boots.

At the far end of the hall, bulkheads were dropping, simulating hull breaches. A third alarm started, indicating an imminent warp core breach. She knew that somewhere below, from main engineering, Spock and Scott had just been designed as "deaths" and were orchestrating the drill. "I hope you died badly," she grumbled angrily at them when power on the deck cut out completely.

"Let's go!" she barked through the hall, lit now only by emergency lighting, her strong voice carrying authoritatively. "Escape pods, station one! This is a drill! Do not eject, or Scotty will have your hide. Go! Go!"

Sulu was shouting encouragement from the other end of the hall, and it was going well until someone started screaming. Nyota battled upstream toward the sound and found one of her communications staff curled up on the ground. She thought, for a moment, that he was part of the drill, a simulated casualty, until she looked into his eyes.

Panic. Pure panic. And he wasn't the only one. Some were holding themselves together a little better, but couldn't let go of the wall.

"Pete, get up!" she shouted at him. Two of his friends were kneeling next to him, and they looked up at her in confusion.

"Evacuate!" she yelled at them. "Leave him!" Her feet came off the floor; there went the gravity.

Abandon ship. All personnel evacuate, the computer continued pleasantly.

"Use the handholds!" she shouted at flailing crewmen. Someone was vomiting. The drill was breaking down; she could feel it. There were going to be a lot of simulated deaths, including her own, and most of those deaths were going to be people who'd survived Altamid. Maybe, she considered distantly, you only ever had one evacuation in you.

The radiological alarm sounded. Anyone in the secondary hull was now 'dead'; there were seconds left until the core breach. Nyota looked helplessly down the corridor. Her friends, her neighbors, her crew. If this was real, we'd be dead.

The alarms stopped. Lighting switched on abruptly, blinding them briefly. The gravity alarm sounded, warning to watch position and overhead objects as the gravity slowly came back online.

"Stand down the drill," the Captain's voice came over the comm. "Secure pods and return to stations. Thank you." Perhaps only Uhura heard the thread of tension in his voice.

By 2200 hours, the officer's mess was full of Alpha shifters who should have been thinking about sleep, Gamma shifters who sure as hell couldn't have gone back to sleep and were waiting for their shift to start, and Beta shifters whose shift commanders had taken one look at their eyes and dismissed them for 24 hours. They were, nearly to the person, veterans of the last ship called Enterprise.

The drill had been a failure with a dismal fifty-nine percent evac rate. They'd spend the next two weeks training in the basics and then, as Kirk had said, more than a little frustrated, 'obviously doing this again.'

Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov were slumped wearily at one table, sipping at black coffee they shouldn't be drinking at this time of night, but it was better than the alcohol they knew they really shouldn't be drinking. The Captain and First Officer wouldn't be here tonight, they knew instinctively. Enterprise's officers needed permission to fall apart, and Kirk and Spock knew perfectly well that their people would never do so in front of the ship's top commanders. So tonight, they would stay away.

Ordinarily, McCoy would have been here, grumpy and prickly and somehow comforting. But the drill had gone very poorly. There had been three inadvertent pod launches, which won the sheepish officers a solid tongue lashing from Scotty once they were brought back aboard, to say nothing of bumps and bruises. The evacuation scramble had also yielded a couple of sprained ankles and wrists, some cracked ribs and two mild concussions. Worst, though, there were at least twelve people with anxiety reactions so severe that they were likely facing medical discharge. 'If they can't get through an evac drill, they can't serve in space,' McCoy had reported grimly to the Captain. There were many others struggling from milder post-drill anxiety reactions. McCoy more than had his hands full.

It was not surprising, though, when Scotty rested a hand on Sulu and Chekov's shoulders, then dropped into the chair beside Uhura. He offered her an upturned hand, which she took gratefully. "That went badly," Uhura breathed.

"Talk tae me," the ship's second officer said simply.

"I executed the abandon-ship, last time," Sulu sighed. "I was sitting there in the chair. I could happily go the rest of my life without ever hearing that alarm again."

"Da. And without standing in another escape pod," Chekov said glumly. "The sight of the Enterprise crashing into the planet through that window was the worst thing I have ewer seen."

Nyota leaned into Scotty, and he pulled her under his arm. "We didn't really realize our losses until we got to the planet," she said softly, the words flowing from her. "Trying to do a count by division and shift, and we didn't even have most of the shift lieutenants to do the count. Not a single commander had made it out. You were dead, Scotty. Keenser could barely bring himself to say it, but he was completely sure. McCoy..." She breathed shakily, the next word terrible. "...Spock. And hundreds of other officers and crew. Missing faces everywhere."

"I was the senior officer," Sulu murmured, and there were unshed tears glistening in his eyes. "And we lost three other people after we got to the surface, murdered by Krall."

"Martine, Tomlinson, and Syl," Uhura whispered.

"Yeah," Sulu said, staring at the table.

Scotty hadn't said a word, letting them talk until they were done. When it became apparent that they were, he spoke softly. "None o' you made it off the ship today," he said quietly. "All three of you were classified as deaths. Mind telling me why?"

"There were people having panic attacks in the corridors, Scotty," Sulu said quietly. "Our people, from before. From Altamid. Not many, but a few couldn't even move."

"Aye," Scotty said. "And?"

"We couldn't leave them," Chekov said softly.

Scott looked levelly at all three of them. "Are you going tae make me say it?" he asked gently.

"No, Commander," Sulu sighed. "It's our duty to get off the ship."

"And you well know why, better than most," Scott said. He touched each of their hands lightly, calling their attention to his eyes, then gestured to the room. "If we lose the ship, they'll need you." Scotty looked fondly at all them, the shade of his own trauma from this and the other day in his face, then stood, squared his shoulders, and headed to the next table of despondently huddled officers.

Sulu looked at his friends, then stood resolutely and headed to another table. Chekov nodded firmly and followed. Uhura took a deep breath, pushed to her feet, and slid into a table next to some of Spock's science officers.

"Talk to me," she said gently.

Captain's log, Stardate 2265.90. Back in deep space, on the other side of the Yorktown nebula, picking up where we left off two years ago. We're stretching our legs on some old-fashioned stellar cartography, and have already picked up something usual—a star on the verge of supernova. We are enroute for a closer look.

The sleek new Enterprise slipped in next to the gigantic star. The ship was the tiniest speck beside the vast fusion behemoth that was entering its last days—maybe its last hours.

"This is as close as we dare come, Mr. Spock," Sulu reported. "It would give us time to react to any large flares. Or the sun just going up in a nova."

"If it does you shall be the first to know," Spock said dryly.

"Good idea," Sulu said, amused.

"Are we sure this is actually safe?" McCoy asked, lurking at the Captain's shoulder for no reason in particular, other than that sickbay was quiet.

"We'd have whole tens of seconds to go to warp," Kirk said easily, which didn't assuage McCoy in the least. Kirk gestured at the screen. "Have at it, Mr. Spock. Readings to your heart's content."

The bridge crew quietly examined the massive star on the view screen, dimmed so they could observe it. It was a red supergiant. Billions of Earth's sun would fit inside it, but it was much cooler and much younger than Sol, for all that it was at the end of its life. A million years old, at best.

"This star is definitely nearing a supernova stage," Spock reported. "More helium than hydrogen at the surface. Throughout the star I'm reading oxygen. Carbon. Nitrogen. Silicone."

"Iron?" Kirk asked.

"Not yet. Not quite yet. When it does, it will have only moments remaining. It is quite extraordinary." What went unsaid was that the readings were particularly valuable in light of the Romulan supernova, which they knew would occur in less than two centuries, although the Romulans were still claiming it was a hoax. It was something that Spock would have to contend with on some future day in his long life.

"Captain," Uhura said, puzzled. "I'm picking up something from the star. Not a transmission, but sound waves. And not just those that would be naturally occurring. These are regular. Repeating. Organic. Almost like speaking, or a song."

"Put it on speaker," Kirk said, and a haunting, lyrical sound filled the room, deep and mournful.

"That sounds like something living," the Captain said.

"It is," Spock said, straightening from his station, and if it was possible for him to sound awe-struck, that's what he sounded like. "I am reading the presence of massive organic beings from within the star.

"That's impossible," Kirk whispered.

Spock's hands moved steadily at his station for a moment, and then he glanced up at the bridge's viewscreen and brought up an image.

"Star whales," Uhura said reverently, and everyone on the bridge was on their feet, transfixed by the sight. It was as good a description as any, something truly wonderful and strange; something no one had ever considered, much less seen. But there was also a very obvious serious problem facing the vast, graceful creatures swimming through the surface of a sun.

"Living beings in a star about to go supernova," Kirk sighed sadly. "The most amazing thing I've ever seen, and they are going to die. Any guesses, Mr. Spock and Ms. Uhura, about whether these are animals, or whether they are advanced thinking beings? Can we talk with them? Do they know the danger? Can we help them?"

"Unknown, sir," Spock answered.

"I'll see if I can tell whether this is a language," Uhura said, and pressed her earpiece to her ear and closed her eyes in concentration.

"Can we stop a supernova, Spock?" Kirk asked, staring hard at the screen. "Your counterpart from the other universe seemed to think it was possible. Is it possible?"

"With red matter, perhaps." Spock answered slowly. "But as far as I am aware, there is no one in our universe who has started working on that substance." Spock paused. "Although. Perhaps I am incorrect in that assumption. I once saw some extremely unusual mathematics written on the board in Mr. Scott's office."

Scott was summoned, and boggled at the beauty of the star whales, like the rest of them. The moment, however, his commanding officers said the words "red matter" and "supernova," he turned wordlessly on his heel and walked back onto the turbolift.

"Huh," Kirk said, nonplussed, exchanging a look with Spock and McCoy before heading for the lift himself. Scotty hadn't gone anywhere, but was leaning face first into the wall. "Can you join us on the bridge, Commander?" the Captain said lightly, but it wasn't a request.

"I appreciate that you think this kind of miracle is something I can pull off," Scotty sighed, following his Captain. "But this is beyond us."

"It wasn't beyond the other universe," Kirk challenged.

"Maybe, maybe not," Scott argued. "Ambassador Spock didnae actually succeed in preventing the supernova. And, tae be frank, I fail tae see how creating a black hole is any less a disaster for a solar system than a supernova. Unless red matter wasnae actually supposed to create a black hole but a …" Scott said, cutting himself off abruptly, as if something had just occurred to him that he didn't like.

"A what?" Kirk pressed.

Scotty sighed. "An energy portal intae another dimension, like that damned thing we ran intae on that ghost planet a few years ago, except in reverse. Pulling energy intae our universe. Put that at the heart of a star and you might be able to give it enough ongoing energy to combat the energy loss from iron fusion and the collapse of the core."

"Have you been working on it?" Kirk pressed.

"Working on what?" Scott asked, intentionally obtuse. On Kirk's look, he flushed, whether in anger or fear it was hard to say. "Have I reverse-engineered the superweapon that destroyed Vulcan? No, sir," he answered. "We dinnae know enough about the interaction between our universe and the other. It's entirely possible that the weapon came from our universe; that would explain why it drilled back here when it was deployed. So no. I'm nae going tae touch that particular destiny loop, lest I be any part of the reason billions of Vulcans died."

"He's got a point, Jim," McCoy said.

Spock interjected. "There is nothing beyond Mr. Scott's speculation, and mine, as to what red matter is. No formula. No testing to determine if it would be safe for the universe. No way to fabricate it. No way to store it. No way to deploy it. And no time; it would be the work of decades, if not more."

"Okay," Kirk said. "So how do we save them? Can we move them?"

"They are vast," Spock answered. "Each individual is the size of a moon."

"Transporter?" Chekov suggested reluctantly.

"Something the size of a moon? Tae another system? Nae, wee man," Scott said.

"You're telling me this is impossible?!" Kirk asked, and he was angry. Scott, Chekov, and Spock looked helplessly at one another. "That is unacceptable; figure something out, gentlemen!"

"Jim…" McCoy started, jumping in to soothe the irate Captain and defend his crewmates.

"I don't think you are going to have to," Uhura interrupted abruptly. "It's a language, and they are singing a migration song."

"How certain are you?" Kirk asked her urgently.

"Very," she said. "Look!" On the screen, the vast creatures were exiting the star. It looked slow, but they had to be moving at thousands of kilometers a second as they moved outside the surface of the star. Uhura put their song on the speakers, and translated softly:

— we go. Like our fathers. From Light to dark. For the sake

of our children. We breathe the last warmest

breath and then

into the cold. We go—

They poured out of the star, thousands of them, then millions, shining brightly, still lit by the incredible energy of starlight. Each unfurled a mammoth membrane from their bodies. A sail, to catch the solar winds. Spock's hands tapped on his station, making calculations. "With the push from the supernova and sails to catch the solar wind, they will approach approximately one-half the speed of light," he murmured. "And the nearest star is only 4.8 light years away."

"From inside a star to across the vacuum of space," McCoy said in wonder. "That is one hell of an evolutionary development."

"Can I try to send them a message, Captain?" Uhura asked.

He nodded. "What should we say?"

Uhura paused, thinking. "How about 'we are small creatures who live in the black. We see you and are amazed. Blessed journey.'"

"Send it," Kirk said, and his communications officer went to work, manipulating the Enterprise's systems to send a sound wave through the very thin shell of material surrounding the star; just enough to carry sound.

"Sending," she said.

A few moments later, the star whales seemed to pause. They had no eyes or faces, but it seemed that they were startled and looking around.

"The song has changed," Uhura said. They are asking:

—what? Where? Creatures

in the black? How?—

Kirk sat bolt upright; this was communication and first contact. "Send this: 'we are small creatures. We came to see the end of the star. We did not know you were here. We are amazed by you.'" Uhura sent it, and one of the star whales moved toward them.

"Careful Sulu," the Captain murmured. "Don't let it get too close; I don't think it can see us, and would easily crush us."

"Aye sir. They are actually moving very fast, beyond us. Should I follow?"

"Yes, at a safe distance."

The star whales sang at them:

—life?! In the black? Oh!

we would stay

We would speak with you

For a time. But we cannot

linger. We cannot. We must go!—

"Send this." Kirk said. "'we know. We will not keep you. But we will watch where you go, and find you again.'"

— run! Quickly, the time comes—

"We are very fast; do not worry for us. Safe journey to your new home."

—find us again

Please—

"We shall."

The star whales turned, moving very quickly already under their sail power. "They are traveling at full impulse speed," Sulu said in wonder, "and accelerating."

"Sir," Spock interrupted urgently. "Iron fusion in the star has commenced. It has seconds."

"Sulu," Kirk said tensely.

"I'm on it, sir."

"The star whales? Are they far enough?" Kirk asked.

"I believe so. The shockwave ahead of the nova should accelerate them," Spock said.

"Spock, are you getting your readings on the star?" Kirk asked.

"Of course. The core has collapsed. And rebounded!"

— we go!— The star whales sang with fierce joy.

— we go!—

"Mr. Sulu!" Spock said urgently.

"Warping now!"

On the screen, now at maximum magnification behind the warping ship, the leading edge of the nova hit the star whales. Their sails caught its ferocious currents and, as Spock had predicted, accelerated them to half light speed. Physics took over; they were ahead of it and would remain so. They were safe, and headed on their long voyage.

"What is their heading?" Kirk asked softly.

"The nearest star," Spock answered. "Less than ten years to their new home."

Kirk looked around his bridge, and the awe-struck faces of his people. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we are here," the Captain said, unabashedly wiping the tears off his face. He would have been embarrassed, once, to weep on his bridge, but had long ago embraced what discovery did for his soul.

"That was beautiful," Uhura murmured.

"Good job, Ms. Uhura," Kirk said. "That was an extraordinary first contact."

"Nice tae stand here useless, for once, and watch 'em save themselves," Scotty said. "Glad I was up here tae see it, sir. Mr. Spock, perhaps another day, when you've had a chance tae look at the data, we can talk about how tae stop the next supernova."

"Red matter," Kirk said ruefully. "You're working on it, aren't you?"

"Of course not, sir," Scotty lied smoothly, heading for the lift. "If I was, I'd have tae report it tae Starfleet."

"Right," Kirk said with a sigh.

"Star whales!" McCoy enthused. "Their biology must be incredible. Do you think we'll see them again? I'd love to study them closer."

"Next five year mission, Bones," Kirk teased him, and laughed at the look on McCoy's face. "Mr. Spock, do you have all the readings you need on the supernova and the star whales?"

"Yes, sir," Spock said.

"Very well. Mr. Chekov, Mr. Sulu, continue on our original heading, warp four. Let's see what's next!"

Captain's Log, Stardate 2265.357. The Enterprise is cruising through a largely empty section of space. We have gone days with little on our sensors, and it seems we may go many weeks more. We have taken advantage of the opportunity for routine maintenance, for drills and for training. There is a fine balance, though, and also some advantage to letting the crew find their own ways to fill the moments between their duties. I keep cautioning people, however, not to tempt the universe with the word 'bored.'

Scott jerked awake face down on the deck, with no memory at all of how he got there, ears ringing, and someone shouting at him over the comms. He moved to push himself upright, but collapsed back to the floor.

"Ah, hell," he breathed, looking down at himself, and rolled shakily to his back.

Keenser was beside him, also flat on his back, looking woozily at him. After two more tries Scotty managed to push himself to sitting. His head swam nauseatingly, and a darkly overwhelming pain clawed up his left arm, threatening to put him under again.

"You have got to get that tied off or you are going to bleed to death," Keenser whispered.

"Aye," Scott agreed weakly, hauling himself across the floor to where an emergency medkit was stowed. He fumbled with the kit, struggling to open it one-handed. He pulled out a tourniquet, but couldn't get beyond that.

"You are not going to get that on your own. Come here," Keenser said. His voice, barely audible to human ears in the best times, was breathless now. Scott crawled to his first assistant, medkit under his good arm. Once there, Scotty paused to examine Keenser's body, punched straight through with shrapnel down his right side, his guts oozing thickly blue under his cracked exoskeleton.

"You can't help me," Keenser said, ever steady even agony, reaching up to his injured friend with his rocky hands. "But I can help you. Give that to me before all your damn slippery red blood runs out on the ground."

Scott made a choked, agonized sound as Keenser mercilessly cinched the tourniquet tight, below his elbow and above the shredded space where his left hand had been. The bleeding slowed and Scotty turned abruptly away from his friend to vomit. He wiped his mouth against his shoulder, breathing hard, trying to pull himself together, then turned back to Keenser.

"We need the medbay," Keenser groaned.

They really did. Scattered over several meters were four other injured engineers, also caught in what had clearly been a violent explosion. From the splattered viscera that Scott knew didn't belong to him, it was disturbingly clear to the chief that, despite the severity of his injury, they were all hurt far worse than he.

He leaned against a console and closed his eyes to gather his strength, his heart pounding hard and uneven, and the darkness took him.

"Tell me this is what you really want," Mira Romaine was challenging him, eyes flashing as they walked through her favorite Yorktown garden. "Look me in the face and say it. That it's what you want, not that you're doing this because you think you know what I want."

He shook his head; he couldn't say it. "God, Scotty," she sighed, exasperated. "You think I don't understand? That I don't know you are about to put a starship on your back, and five hundred lives on your shoulders? You think I don't know that you'll work five shifts in six, and that you'll forget to eat and sleep, much less send a message to your girlfriend? You think I don't understand a five year mission? I know sometimes your voice will be a thousand light years and two weeks away on the other end of a choppy subspace message, but I'll take that. Your voice, telling me about the things the Enterprise has discovered. Complaining about Kirk, and idiot lieutenants, and synthetic tea." She leaned in and kissed him with aching tenderness. "Your voice, telling me how you'd touch me if you were here, and mine back, telling you the same. God. Please, Scotty."

He pulled her closer, shuddering under her touch. "Okay," he said. "Okay, okay. I'm nae strong enough tae tell you no."

"We already did this," she told him, pressing a lingering kiss to his lips before pulling away to walk beside him. "I talked you into giving us a chance. Then we went home, one more time, to our bed. And in the morning you got up, and put on a red shirt, and flew away on the Enterprise."

"I know," he said. "It's just that it doesnae hurt here, with you."

She leaned into him and threaded her fingers through his, and looked down at their hands. Her right, his left. "You have to wake up now, Scotty. The atmosphere is venting. The warp core is down, and your people are dying. You are too. You have to figure this out. Wake up, Scotty."

"...wake up Scotty!" Keenser growled at him.

Scott opened his eyes back into the ravening pain, grabbed the edge of the console with his right hand, and hauled himself to his feet, wrecked left arm tucked hard against his body. He staggered, fighting to stay awake. "Report in," he called hoarsely to his people.

Only two answers came back, weak and pained. "Here, sir."

"Dinnae move," he ordered, and checked the board. Warp was offline from an emergency intermix shutdown and the main warp plasma conduit was blown to hell all over his engine room and through his people's bodies. Impulse was fine; he tapped two commands to transfer the ship's power to the fusion backup, then turned his attention back to their nearer plight. The bulkhead doors had dropped, trapping the six of them in the section nearest the warp core control where they had been working. Which meant hull breach.

Scotty finally turned to the comm, which had been shouting at them in the Captain's voice the whole time.

"Scott here," he groaned, sitting down heavily in the chair. He curled forward through another wave of agony and pressed his forehead to the control panel, breathing hard.

"Scotty. Thank god. What the hell happened?"

"I dinnae ken sir. I've been unconscious." Scott said, eyes closed. "We've had an explosion down here."

"Are you okay, Scotty?" the Captain asked sharply.

"No, sir," Scott managed. "I've got five critically injured people, and I seem tae have misplaced my left hand."

" ...Acknowledged," Kirk said tightly. "Hang in there." In the background, Scott could hear Uhura urgently deploying a medteam.

"Bulkhead doors are down, sir," Scott sighed, and sat upright again to check the instruments. "So we have a hull breach in the section. Must be a small one or none o' us would be breathing down here. I assume no one has been shooting at us?"

"No, we just were torn out of warp without warning," Kirk said.

Spock's voice joined in. "Internal scanners are showing two breaches in your section, Mr. Scott. Small; less than five centimeters each, and directionally aligned. I postulate that we have flown through something that the deflector did not catch."

There wasn't much that the deflector wouldn't catch. Unless of course it was something that Scott had theorized might happen, had written an entire bloody paper to Starfleet Engineering about ... Scott shook his head against the darkness edging rapidly into his vision, then examined the data. The breaches were also aligned with the badly-damaged branch of the warp plasma conduit coming straight from the reactor. He paused a moment to make sure his voice was steady. "I have a theory. I think we warped through a microscopic singularity. Mini-black hole. It went straight through Plasma Conduit A, which blew up in our faces."

"As unlikely as such an encounter would be, your theory fits the preliminary facts, Mr. Scott," Spock said. "Including faint spacetime distortions at what would have been the event horizon."

"That's just unlucky," Kirk complained.

"I disagree, sir," Scott said, agony raw in his voice despite his best efforts. He put his head down again, the thought of the alternate possibilities draining away his remaining strength. "A meter fore and it woulda gone through the reaction chamber and none of us would be here tae talk about it."

Not unexpectedly, the life support alarm chose that moment to sound, the vacuum of space starting to win over the system's ability to compensate.

"Scotty," Kirk said urgently. "You have got to get those breaches sealed." Scott did not answer.

"Scotty!" Kirk yelled into the comm, then spun toward Uhura. "If 'misplaced hand' means what I think it means, he might not be conscious anymore. Scramble an EVA team to get those breaches sealed from the outside."

"EVA says fourteen minutes," Uhura said, her voice tight.

"I have six men and women in Section E1 who don't have fourteen minutes!" Kirk snapped. "And we can't beam them out, correct?" Kirk asked.

"No, sir," Chekov said, though he was flipping through his padd anyway, trying to think of a solution. "There is a shield that drops around a sealed section with the bulkhead to shore up structural integrity."

"But doesn't seal a hull breach?"

"It does, for a while," Chekov said. "But it cannot stand up to a wacuum for long. One of Mr. Scott's frequent complaints and something on which he is working."

"Jim," McCoy's voice came over the comm. "The goddamn bulkheads are down. I can't get to our people, and the environmental alarm is screaming at us down here. Atmosphere in their section is venting fast."

"Stand by, Bones," Kirk said.

The minutes ticked by into the pindrop-silent bridge until Spock spoke. "Sir," he said, his voice gently regretful. "Sensors are reading a full vacuum in Section E1."

"Acknowledged," Kirk murmured, closing his eyes. The silence on the bridge turned grim.

"EVA reports the hull is sealed," Uhura finally said six deadly minutes later, her tone very carefully controlled.

"The techs are bringing up the atmosphere in there as quickly as they can," McCoy reported, his voice clinical. He knew perfectly well what he was going to be walking into. "Okay. Bulkheads disengaging. Stand by."

Kirk rubbed his eyes and face, waiting for the terrible confirmation they all knew was coming.

McCoy abruptly called up. "I need Chekov and Spock and whomever else knows anything about transporters down here now! Your goddamn chief engineer has done something, but I don't have a goddamned clue what. I think they're alive but I don't dare touch this thing."

"Sulu, you have the conn!" Kirk shouted, bolting for the lift with Spock and Chekov.

Section E1 was a mess, scorched by superheated electroplasma, pocketed by shrapnel, and smeared with what was unmistakably pulverized body parts. Several colors of blood pooled on the deck where six bodies had lain. A human-colored streak crossed the space several times; clearly Scotty moving around the room. No bodies now, though; just a portable cargo transporter laboring heavily in the middle of the room, tied hurriedly into the power system under the main warp control console.

Chekov swallowed past his rising gorge, then turned to the transporter with shaking hands. He wiped Scott's blood off the controls with his sleeve. "Okay okay okay," he said to himself. "Rematerialization subroutine disabled. He's locked the pattern buffers into a diagnostic mode … rerouted the matter array through the pattern buffer … he's using the phase inducer to keep the patterns intact … you are crazy Scotty!" Chekov yelled angrily at the machine where the crew's bodies looped impossibly as pure energy and data. He looked up at the Captain. "I am going to try to pull out Meester Scott first. That way if there is a problem with the others he can help. But if I get this wrong, this will kill him. I will kill him. Right now."

"They were dead without this, Lieutenant," Kirk said gently. "He weighed the risk, and took it."

"Okay," Chekov breathed, and punched the rematerialization sequence.

Scotty grimaced hard as his body reformed roughly. "Good job, laddie. How long?" he gasped.

"Twenty-nine minutes," Chekov said shortly. "New record."

"Let's get them tae beat me," he said, staggering toward the controls.

"Scotty, sit the hell down," McCoy snapped, starting forward to grab him. "You're going to bleed to death."

"I'm about tae be the least of your worries," Scott said, looking grimly at the Doctor, and then turned his attention to Chekov, who was sweating hard. "Gently, lad. One at a time. Matter stream, pattern, reintegrate …okay, good. Slow, slow, slow ….."

"Traumatic amputation is the light injury?" McCoy muttered balefully, hesitating as he looked hard at Scotty. "I hate space."

"Doctor," Spock said, stepping forward, clamping both hands down on the trembling engineer's arm with Vulcan strength. "I have him. Is pressure alone sufficient?"

"For now. Hard as you can, don't let up, no matter how much it hurts him," McCoy directed, then moved back to scramble a full emergency medical response, snagging the Captain to assist. Scott clenched his jaw and his remaining fist, forcing a pained breath through his nose, but otherwise kept his focus on the transporter.

It took four tense minutes, Scott calmly murmuring instructions to Chekov as though his breathing wasn't going ragged with shock. Each crewman gasped back to existence on the deck, tended to immediately as the medical staff struggled to stabilize them and rush them to the medbay. Scotty was right; they were all critical. Keenser, the last, had no sooner materialized when Scotty collapsed.

Chekov grabbed him, and Spock and Chekov lowered him to the ground. "You goddamned son of a bitch," Chekov said weepily, taking a fistful of Scott's shirt. "You goddamned fucking son of a bitch. I've never been so scared."

"I knew you could pull us out," Scott said weakly.

"Good job, Chekov," Kirk murmured, then pulled the Lieutenant up and passed him back, knowing that someone would tend to the shaken young man. When he turned back, Spock was kneeling with merciless precision on Scott's arm.

"How you doing, Scotty?" McCoy called, hands full of a rapidly crashing Keenser.

"Going tae close my eyes for a minute," Scott gasped, shaking hard.

"I'd rather you didn't," McCoy said.

"Too late, Bones," Kirk said, and grabbed a medical tricorder from McCoy's medbag. "How many liters of blood should he have?"

"Five and a half."

"He's a little low," Kirk hedged.

"Ya think?" McCoy growled, still working to stabilize Keenser. "Keep doing what you are doing, Spock. You don't happen to see his hand lying around there somewhere, do you Jim?"

"Some …. pieces, I think," the Captain said, eying the grisly fragments around the room.

"Looks like he gets to join the dubious ranks of Starfleet's chief-engineers-with-prosthetic-limbs-club," McCoy sighed. "There are at least three of 'em. Four now. I'm going to make him fill out the occupational safety paperwork on this one, it's a goddamned pain in the ass."

The fiercely skilled Nurse Chapel pushed through the crowd of engineers who were hovering worriedly just outside the damaged section. "Don't you have work to do?" she chided, and knelt down beside the chief. "I think he would say 'stop staring, the lot of you, and get back to it.'"

McCoy was following Keenser out straight to surgery, but paused very briefly beside Chapel, eyes flicking to her open tricorder. "Get the tourniquet off and a stasis cuff on his arm. Nerve block in his shoulder; two units of whole blood to start and more as necessary. Bring him up when his blood pressure stabilizes."

"Yes, Doctor," she said, already working, the Captain and Spock beside her. "He's last on the triage list," Chapel explained softly. "Organs and brains take priority, especially when we only have two surgeons. But make no mistake, this is exactly as bad as it looks. I think I can get him stable but he's in very real danger until I do. Captain, grab the stasis cuff. Don't get your fingers inside it or they'll be worthless for an hour. We need to do three things almost simultaneously. Captain, you'll cut this tourniquet; Spock, release pressure on his lower arm, and move up here, under his armpit, where there is an artery. And I'll get the cuff on, which should stop the bleeding as soon as it seals, although they are always fiddly to fit. He's already in serious shock; we have seconds, and it's going to be a hell of a mess. Questions? Ready? On three; one, two, three." Their hands moved, steady and quick, blood soaking through their sleeves as Scott paled further, nearly grey.

"Okay, Spock, let go, but be ready for compression again if he starts to bleed … stasis field is holding." Chapel quickly ran a line into Scott's other arm, and instructed the Captain to hold the bag of transfusion blood in the air. Then she pressed three hypos into Scott's shoulder in quick succession, deep into the nerves, and even unconscious, he visibly relaxed as the pain faded. "I'm taking him upstairs now," she said at last as his color improved, and pushed the antigrav gurney under him.

Chekov had reappeared, still looking shaken, and was moving through the mess in Engineering. "Clean up first, I think?" he said with a sigh. "Then we see about repairing the conduit. Maybe by then Meester Scott can talk us through restarting the reactor. He's the only person on the ship qualified to do it."

"Mr. Chekov," Kirk said gently, stripping off his ruined outer tunic and rinsing the blood from his hands in the emergency eyewash station. Spock was doing the same. "Spock and I will take care of this. It's going to be bad. There are going to be … identifiable pieces of our friends. You get showered and changed."

"Nyet, sirs. I will do this," Chekov said firmly, bending to pick up Scott's watch. "Still works," he said faintly, not looking too closely at the fragments he shook out of the band. Kirk clasped his shoulder.

"Then let us begin," Spock replied.

It was deep in Gamma shift when Scotty woke up again with a soft groan. "Gently, gently," Nyota murmured to him from beside his biobed. She'd arrived in the medbay many hours earlier, on an urgent call for everyone rated EMT1, a medical certification Uhura had picked up after Altamid. Christine Chapel, who was badly needed to assist with the ongoing surgeries, had swiftly put her in charge of four unconscious engineers still waiting their turn, held together with stasis bandages. All apparently not quite as urgent as the others, although it was difficult to imagine why. "Just monitor them," Chapel had instructed. "The sensors will alarm if anyone's condition deteriorates."

Uhura and the three other EMTs had cut off blood-soaked uniforms and cleaned up the engineers as best they could without interfering with the medical equipment. They also took care of several burned crewmen, who had arrived quietly and reluctantly in sickbay. Three other plasma conduits had burst downstream from the main explosion, the result of the strain on the entire EP system.

And as the hours ticked by and the gravely injured engineers slowly came out of surgery, the temporary med staff also monitored the machines keeping them breathing. All of the medbay was grim and hushed, with the sounds only of beeping monitors and the occasional pained cry.

"Gently," Uhura said again to Scotty who was thrashing restlessly. "Don't try to move. She pressed a button beside him, delivering a heavy dose of pain medication, and he relaxed marginally. "The medical staff is still working on the others. They said you can have some ice if you're thirsty."

He nodded faintly, and she spooned a piece into his mouth.

"The hand is definitely gone, isnae it?" he asked thickly around the ice, not wanting to look for himself.

"Yes," Nyota said gently, and held up her own arm to illustrate, circling mid-forearm with her fingers. "I'm so sorry, Scotty. Left hand and wrist. They couldn't find any pieces big enough to try reconstruction. And the reason you still hurt so badly is that they haven't had a chance to look at you at all. The others are still in surgery."

"Lose anybody?" he asked heavily, accepting another piece of ice.

"No. Charlene Masters is still very touch and go, though."

"Most of her brain was on the floor," he said quietly. "And Paulie's. And Keensers guts. DeSalle and j'Ahuja, I couldn't tell, just too much blood." He closed his eyes, and Nyota thought he was gone again until he said: "I cannae hear the warp core. Cold shutdown?"

"That's what Spock and Chekov say," she answered. "They knew you'd ask. I also sent a message to Mira. There is about a six hour subspace lag to Yorktown through bad interference, so a real conversation is impossible, but she'd already had a premonition you were hurt."

"She gets that sometimes, since her mission with us." Scott said weakly.

Nyota nodded, and gentled a hand across his brow. "She told me to tell you that she loves you. Go back to sleep, old friend, with that thought in your mind."

Captain's Log, Stardate 2265.361. Some days, you warp through a singularity and end up with a broken engine room, a bizarre new theory of transporter stasis, two crewmen with traumatic brain injuries, three with holes punched clean through their bodies, and a chief engineer who blows off an entire damn hand. Other days, you find yourself floating through an actual cloud of alcohol. Space is strange.

"It's a cloud of alcohol, Bones!" Kirk said cheerfully, waving his morning coffee as they walked through the Enterprise's bright corridors toward the bridge. "Alcohol, in space. Distilled by the universe!"

"Methanol!" McCoy argued. "Which will poison you. And not the fun kind of poisoning. The 'go blind and die' kind."

"And yet, it is still tempting," Kirk said with a wink.

"Bad enough with the still down in Engineering, pumping out swill just half step up from industrial strength solvent," McCoy grumbled.

"There is not a still in Engineering," Kirk said, shaking his head. "Scotty would never have that. Flammable liquid under heat and pressure, tubing to explode through his people and the antimatter holding tanks? No way in hell…..It's in hydroponics."

"I am going to pretend I don't know that," McCoy sighed.

"That's what I do," Kirk said easily. "So does Scotty. Part of a long and noble tradition of ignoring the harmless antics of the junior engineering lieutenants, as long as they bring spirits to holiday parties."

"Harmless my ass," McCoy grumbled as they stepped onto the turbolift.

"Speaking of engineers …" Kirk started, his voice serious, and McCoy sighed.

"Still down six of them, including the chief, obviously, with two in sickbay. Masters still hasn't woken up, and I don't know if she ever will."

"She's only twenty-four," the Captain said sorrowfully.

"A fact that ages Scotty about a million years every time he sits with her," McCoy said. "Keenser needs to stay completely immobilized for two more weeks. Takes a hell of a lot to puncture his exoskeleton, and a hell of a long time for it to fuse. The others are more or less healing, although between you and me, I can't get Scotty's pain under control. Phantom limb pain is a son of a bitch to treat until you can redirect the brain with a biomechanical prosthesis. He'll barely miss the original once I tie the new hand into his nervous system, but we're still three weeks and two more surgeries out from even getting started, and right now everything is just hard."

"I got to be on a conference call with Commodore Paris and about half of Starfleet Engineering and Medical yesterday. Lots of fun with a six hour subspace lag, I'll tell you that." Kirk rolled his eyes. "They were pissed as hell about everything, but mostly about Scotty."

"Damn chiefs keep blowing their limbs off," McCoy grumbled. "Scotty is number four."

"Number five," Kirk corrected ruefully. "Happened on the Chandrasekhar about six months ago, and the Hawking two weeks ago. So you can imagine how well our incident report went over when it rolled in."

"Goddamned engineers," McCoy grumbled.

"That seems to be Medical's position too," the Captain agreed. "And how are you doing, Bones?"

"Twenty nine straight hours of surgery, followed by six patients in critical care. Draggin' a bit," he admitted. "Takes a while to bounce back from days like that."

The doors slid open, and the men stepped onto the gleaming bridge. The atmosphere was light with the friendly camaraderie among the senior officers.

"Good morning, Captain," Spock murmured. "Doctor."

"Morning, Spock, all," the Captain said cheerfully. "Scotty," he called out warmly to the engineer, who was leaning against Chekov's station.

"I hear we are flying through a cloud of alcohol, sir," Scotty said, gesturing to the screen with his remaining hand. Still far too pale, arm immobilized tightly across his chest in a sling, but jovial.

"No," McCoy said, crossing the bridge to thump him in the shoulder, somewhat more gently than he might have otherwise. "No, no, no. You are not on duty except for we-are-all-going-to-die warp core related emergencies. Which this isn't."

"I'm no' working," Scott complained. "I'm standing on the bridge talking with my mates about stellar swally. If you think that has anything tae do with my job, we need tae have a talk about just what it is you think I do."

"You're wearing a uniform," McCoy argued.

"It's all I have to wear."

"I know perfectly well that you have a number of other completely stupid shirts. Also, you have grease on your sleeve," McCoy challenged.

"The shirts are pretty bad," Chekov agreed, as Sulu and Uhura snickered.

"Oi!" Scott swatted Chekov on the back of the head and glared at them all in mock offense. "'Stupid shirts'? I spend my blood, sweat, tears, and flesh keeping you all alive, and the thanks I get is insults about my clothes?"

McCoy lifted an eyebrow worthy of Spock. "And the grease?"

"Aye, well, I may have nipped down tae Engineering this morning to help the lads in Gamma shift with one or two things," Scott said hurriedly. "He's grouchy today," he continued over his shoulder to Kirk, leaning back to avoid McCoy's sputtering.

"Grouchy?!" McCoy started.

"He's mad about the alcohol cloud," Kirk confided.

"I hear," Chekov said slowly, "it would taste like rum. Ethyl formate would give it the flawor."

"That's very interesting, laddie. She's a pirate then, the universe is. Makes sense."

"And a woman?" Uhura said, amused.

"Gods, universes, and starships are always women," Scott answered reverently. "It's the way things are; I dinnae make the rules." He grimaced faintly and shifted his arm uncomfortably. "And speaking of swashbuckling women, Brinkhoff and Castillo down in chemistry say that if we scoop up a wee bit of the cloud, they can convert it from methanol to ethanol. Something less likely tae kill us immediately, and more likely tae just kill us slowly as we die of liver cirrhosis over the next fifty years."

"For the love of …!" McCoy exploded. "First, Scotty, you aren't touching alcohol while you are still on triptacederine. Second, Brinkhoff and Castillo are only about half as reckless as you, which is still a good four times too much for my liking. And third, you pull a stunt like that, so help me I will bolt your new hand on backwards in surgery."

Scotty patted McCoy placatingly on the shoulder and shot Kirk a look. "All I'm saying is that, if anyone were inclined tae see what the universe has brewed up for us, the good lasses in chemistry are amenable."

"Probably better pass, Scotty," Kirk said regretfully.

"Lost opportunities," Scott sighed, then rubbed the back of his neck, the already-faint color in his face suddenly draining from an ill-concealed surge of pain. He headed wordlessly for the turbolift.

Kirk caught him by the door and looked seriously into his face. "Don't make me order you to stay away from Engineering, Mr. Scott," he said quietly.

"Aye, sir," Scott said, resignedly chastised, and left.

"Is it just me, or is he more mad-scientist than usual recently?" McCoy asked. "I mean, that thing with the transporter?"

"Yes," Chekov said darkly. "I still can't decide if I want to hug him or punch him for that. Did you know that he thinks that, if you can maintain power and the phase inducer doesn't fail, you could hold a person in transport indefinitely?"

"That's exactly what I'm talking about," McCoy shuddered.

"He's always been that way, Bones," Kirk shrugged. "First time I met him, he jumped onto a transporter pad to try out transwarp beaming on the word of a time-traveling Vulcan and some pretty math. And a couple hours later he detonated a warp core into a black hole."

Chekov spoke up. "Once, Scotty and I were wery wery drunk at a bar on that shore leave world. That one shore leave, you remember the one …. anyhow, there were these two wery pretty women. Maybe women. I don't know. They had quite a lot of hands, and they were wery pretty, whatewer they were. So Scotty and I are wery drunk, and one of our new friends is in his lap, and I'm not quite sure where all their hands are, but Scotty is enjoying it all wery much, and at the same time, on the back of a napkin he is writing the maths for a way to destroy a star system, 'in case we ever need it.' And then he goes off with both of the wery pretty people for," Chekov waved a hand. "Diplomatic relations, and I am left alone at the table needing to dissolve the napkin in my drink because you cannot be leaving the plans to a functioning doomsday device in a bar."

"The gravity disruptor," Kirk said knowingly.

"Nyet, melt the ice caps," Chekov said, puzzled for a moment before he looked up in horrified realization.

"Ah hell," Kirk said. "He's got two plans."

Sulu raised a hesitant finger. "And the planetary magnetic field destabilizer."

Kirk rubbed his face. "Remind me to never let him off the ship, ever again, for any reason. Point is, Bones … he's always been this way."

"Which usually saves lives," Uhura reminded them.

"Yeah," McCoy said, and paused, weighing his next words. "Look … he'll be fine, but right now he is somewhat less okay than he seems to be."

"We know that, Bones," Kirk said.

"Don't worry," Uhura added gently. "We'll keep an eye on him."