Welcome to another story, I hope you like this one.
This story takes place in the late movie era, between "The Final Frontier" and "The Undiscovered Country", and I imagine Doctor Christine Chapel as having rejoined the crew at that point.
It's probably a bit darker, but who knows, maybe there's hope? No spoilers. ;)
Our Future Past
It was a quiet day on the ship. They were en route to an M-class planet where most of the crew would take shore leave, even if some of them had tried to resist.
Captain Spock looked around the bridge from his temporary position in command. The bridge crew consisted of just him, Commander Chekov, the new helmsman, and Commander Uhura. They had already left a portion of the crew at the planet some weeks ago to begin their shore leave, including Commander Sulu. The Enterprise was cruising languidly along to join them after having finished a short side-mission, and they did not expect any incidents.
Mr Chekov's voice broke through the companionable silence.
"Crossing into the sector of our destination now, Captain," the young navigator said.
"Estimated time of arrival?"
"ETA 1800 hours this evening, sir."
"Very well, Mr Chekov. Carry on."
It was, all in all, a routine shift. Uhura was humming slightly to herself while switching between frequencies and Chekov was flicking a switch now and then while quietly talking to their current helmsman. Most of their thoughts were already on the two weeks of relaxation that lay ahead.
"What are your plans for shore leave, Mr Spock?" the communication officer's voice reached Spock's ears. She had turned around in her chair, leaning leisurely against the backrest.
"Until this morning, I planned not to have shore leave," he said, baulking at having to talk about his private affairs.
"But?" Uhura prodded.
"The Captain convinced me to beam down and look at the local civilisation. He said I might be interested in the ancient temples in the capital."
"Ah, yes, Christine talked about those temples as well. You might see her down there."
"Undoubtedly. The doctors are scheduled to come with us, after all."
"Dr McCoy, too? Last time I talked to him, he didn't know where to go, or if he was going at all."
"The temples were his idea." Spock threw her a meaningful look. "His only regret is that we are not taking a shuttle."
"Of course it was," Uhura chuckled fondly and turned back to her station.
McCoy would not stop complaining about the transporter, even after decades in the space-faring business. The fact he had suggested they visit the temples together although the manner of travel triggered his phobia spoke to his desire to spend some quality time with them.
Ultimately, Spock's reasons for giving in to Jim's pleas had been the same. For all his protests that it was illogical to waste energy on recreational activities, he did enjoy spending time with his friends.
Suddenly, the ship gave a violent lurch, and the red alarm went off, harshly interrupting the peaceful atmosphere.
"Warp field compromised! It's breaking apart."
"Shut off the warp drive, reduce speed to half impulse! What's happening, Mr Chekov?"
"Spatial disturbance at portside! Massive gravitational pull!"
The red alarm continued to blare as the ship tilted to the side.
"Full speed to starboard!"
"Helm control not responding!" the helmsman shouted frantically over the sound of straining metal and tried to hold onto the console as the artificial gravity struggled to compensate.
"Navigation!"
"I can't get clear results, sir!" Chekov called. "We are being held by the gravitational forces of some sort of spatial anomaly; other than that, I cannot get clear sensor readings!"
The ship lurched violently once again, sending Uhura and the helmsman flying.
"We're being sucked in!" Chekov reported over the general noise. Some sparks flew from his console.
On the viewscreen, the stars vanished.
"Sucked in to where?" Uhura exclaimed, scrambling back into her seat.
Spock pressed a button on his chair, accessing shipwide communications.
"Attention all hands, we are currently being pulled into a spatial anomaly, brace yourselves!"
"Impulse drive overheating, helm still not responding!"
"Shut down impulse power!" Spock called to the helmsman.
"But sir…"
"Do it!"
"Aye, sir!"
They cut all power to the engines. Their forward movement continued, the ship's structure protesting audibly.
"We've lost shields! Debris ahead!"
They felt the impact as soon as the navigator had spoken, and several shocks reverberated through the ship.
"Impulse power! Evasive maneuvres!"
"I'm trying!"
The helmsman entered the commands into the console, and nothing happened.
"We've lost deflectors!"
Another, even more violent blow shook the ship and Spock grasped the armrests of the captain's chair. Then, it stopped.
"We've cleared the debris field, sir," Chekov announced.
"Engines stop. Status?"
Pavel Chekov frowned at his readings. "We seem to have been sucked into a fold in space. It stretches ahead, and I detect gravitational swirls and several debris fields."
"Damage report?"
Spock turned to Commander Uhura who was listening intently to the chatter in her earpiece.
"We've lost shields, weapons, and the deflector, sir. Hull breaches on Deck F, with structural damages to Decks E, F, and G. Considerable damage to crew quarters on Decks E and F, and minor damages to sickbay below. Hull breaches in engineering, structural integrity impaired. Antimatter containment is stable, and emergency bulkheads have engaged. Impulse drive is functional."
"Casualties?"
"Eighty-seven and counting, sickbay is still receiving new patients, most from engineering. We've lost almost half the engineering crew, and an unknown number in the crew quarters." Uhura paused abruptly, then looked directly up at Spock as her eyes widened in shock. "Sir, Mr Scott is dead, and there's no report on the Captain's whereabouts."
"Understood." Spock took a deep breath. "Mr Chekov, can we reverse?"
"Reverse?"
"Can we fly out the way we came?"
"Negative, the gravitational forces of the anomaly are pulling us ahead. Our thrusters can't even hold position. The pull is too strong. We can only go one way." He shrugged and pointed ahead.
"Well then, ahead, Mr Chekov. Very carefully."
"Aye, sir."
Spock threw a short glance at Uhura who was still listening to the casualty reports coming in and then pressed the intercom button of his chair.
"Spock to Kirk. Come in, Captain."
No one answered.
After a second of deliberation, Spock disengaged the chair's safety clamps and stood up.
"You have the conn, Mr Chekov. Appraise me of any changes in our situation as they occur," he said, while moving towards the turbolift.
"Aye, sir."
The turbolift door swooshed shut behind his back. Spock closed his eyes and sighed heavily in a momentary lapse in his carefully constructed control.
"Deck E."
The lift set in motion and Spock faced the door. Jim's quarters were on Deck E.
When he stepped outside the lift, the first thing he saw was darkness, penetrated only by the headlamps of the first responders and urgently shouted commands.
"Take that one to sickbay, nurse, quick! And then come up again, with a new batch of hypos and pressure bandages!" a familiar voice cut through the dark.
Then, the lights flickered on again, revealing technicians and engineers bustling about, and a medic here and there applying first aid. The corridor was strewn with injured people, some lucid, some obviously beyond help.
Dr Chapel was kneeling next to two crewmembers some steps down the hallway. The one she was treating was sitting up against the wall, evidently semi-conscious.
Spock crouched down next to her.
"Doctor."
"Hold his head."
Spock fixed the injured man's head while Dr Chapel closed a deep gash on his forehead.
"Are you injured?" she asked without looking at him. "Thank you, you can let go now."
Spock released his hold on her patient and wiped his hand on his uniform pants to get rid of the blood that had trickled on his fingers.
"I'm not. Have you seen the Captain?"
The Doctor pressed a hypospray against the crewmember's arm and turned to her commanding officer.
"He was one of the first to be taken to sickbay, Spock." She spoke calmly, but her face betrayed the severity of the situation.
"I understand, thank you."
He nodded curtly and regarded the intercom above them for a moment. But he suppressed the urge to hail sickbay and inquire after the Captain's situation. This was not the moment. He would know soon enough how Jim was doing.
Just as he decided to go ascertain the situation on the deck below, the intercom beeped.
"McCoy to Spock. Come in, Spock," McCoy's voice came from it, barely reaching over the background noise of a far too busy sickbay.
Spock rose from his crouching position and pressed the intercom's button. Dr Chapel stood up as well, listening.
"Spock here. What is the situation of the Captain?" he asked, anticipating the reason for the Doctor's call.
McCoy was silent for a moment, then answered in a thick and muffled tone.
"Spock…He's dead."
Spock didn't answer, but hung his head silently, pressing his lips together in a frown. Christine had to resist the temptation to touch his arm and settled for watching him carefully.
"I'm sorry, Spock," McCoy said after another pause.
"Knowing you, you did everything you could," Spock said quickly. "Thank you, Doctor," he murmured and disconnected the call.
"Spock…," Dr Chapel started.
"Can you help them?" he asked, and pointed at the two crewmembers.
"Well, this one, yes," she answered while indicating the one they had just treated. "The lieutenant over there is beyond anything I could do. Whatever we hit destroyed valuable medical supplies."
Spock inclined his head and turned to leave.
"What did we hit, Captain?"
She thought she detected a flinch as she addressed him as 'Captain'. But it must have been a play of the light. Vulcans did not flinch.
"The spatial anomaly seems to be a fold in space. We hit some of the debris."
"Debris?"
"I assume by vessels that have been trapped in here before us, destroyed by debris, gravitational swirls, or other fatal events."
"Oh." Chapel didn't know what to say to that, or what she had expected. This certainly wasn't it.
Spock nodded grimly. "Carry on, Doctor," he said and walked away without another word, Christine's concerned look boring into his back.
The situation that presented itself to Captain Spock one deck below was the same, if not worse. The ship's saucer section had been hit the hardest on this deck, and the sounds of emergency repairs permeated the stuffy air. He turned to go but caught a faint movement in the corner of his eye.
"Sir…" A cough interrupted the crewmember's plea.
Spock looked around as he approached the injured woman slouching against the wall. No medical personnel was in sight at the moment, and he slung one of her arms over his shoulders and helped her limp to the lift.
"Are you in much pain besides your leg?"
"Just my head and my leg hurt, sir. I feel a bit dizzy."
"I'll take you to sickbay, Ensign," he said, glancing at her rank insignia. "What's your name?"
"Hopkins, sir. Susan Hopkins. I work in security."
She coughed again and her grip on his shoulder tightened.
"Does it hurt to breathe, Ensign Hopkins?" Spock asked her as the lift doors slid open on Deck G and they slowly made their way towards sickbay.
"Not much," she answered and shrugged, although her expression and ragged breathing still seemed to say otherwise.
"Sir?"
"Yes?"
"The anomaly…are we going to escape?"
"We're on our way out, Ensign."
"Very good. I'm looking forward to that shore leave," she murmured as they stepped into sickbay.
Spock left Hopkins in the care of a nurse and turned his attention to McCoy.
"Are you alright, Spock?" the Doctor asked, with much fewer reservations than Dr Chapel to take him by the arm.
"I am uninjured. You?"
"Just bumped my head a bit, I'll be fine," he said and led his friend over to the closest bed where a shrouded figure lay.
"He wouldn't leave the compromised area of the deck, trying to get as many people out there as possible until the emergency bulkheads came down," McCoy continued. "He was injured by the electric discharge of an exploding panel. He died shortly later in sickbay, his heart couldn't take it, and he had some nasty burns."
He turned to Spock and looked him up and down. He seemed to be physically unharmed but it was obvious he was not up to a conversation.
"If you want a moment…I'll leave you to it, I'm busy," McCoy murmured and left.
Spock stepped closer to the head of the bed and looked down at the sheet loosely concealing the corpse beneath. He took the shroud with both hands and pulled it down over the face.
If he had been prone to human sentimentality, he would have said that even in death, James Kirk's features held the determination and charisma he had proven in life. But Spock knew it was only the limpness of a dead body that pulled his mouth into a smile. It was a grotesque facsimile of an expression that had been full of life only hours ago. If anything, all the determination and charisma had vanished from the shell that was Jim's body. The dead did not have determination. And they certainly had no charisma. This body, Jim's corpse, was as devoid of charisma as the shroud he was covered with, and nothing separated him now from the other dead, except the memory of the soul it had held.
No, Jim was gone. Everything he had been, apart from the body and uniform he had embodied, was gone. He would never again grin up at him from the other side of a chessboard, his eyes would never again lit up with joy at something he had said, he would never again huff at the banter between his friends, or explain the intricacies of human behaviour to him. The times they shared had come to a stop, persisting only in the form of treasured memories.
Spock raised his hand and gently laid it on his Captain's head. For never having done it while he had been alive, it was a strangely automatic gesture.
"Goodbye, Jim," he whispered.
He carefully placed the shroud back over the face that had been his dearest friend's, turned on his heel and left sickbay.
McCoy made a move to stop him, but then he saw the Vulcan's face and let him go.
The bridge crew was silent upon Spock's arrival and they remained silent as he took the centre seat again.
Then, Commander Uhura stepped down from her station and stood in front of him.
"Is it true, Mr Spock?" she asked quietly.
"Yes," he said, not looking at her but the dark viewscreen over her shoulder. "I've been to sickbay. Captain Kirk - Jim - is gone."
Uhura nodded sadly and then resumed her post. She had hoped the comm chatter she had picked up was wrong. Spock's expression upon entering should have been proof enough.
From behind, Chekov barely reacted, but his shoulders slouched imperceptibly and when he adjusted course some seconds later, Spock could see that his face was a mask of grim composure.
Just as the shift began, it ended quietly. But the peaceful and jovial atmosphere seemed to have been days ago instead of only hours. A slight rumbling shook through the ship now and then as it flew close to the gravitational eddies the anomaly was scattered with.
The bridge officers barely spoke; no one knew anything sensible to talk about apart from the customary status update on the ship's position, and the latest on the repairs and list of casualties.
Both were equally dismal. The repairs barely achieved more than patching up microfractures, and as the hours dragged on, the number of casualties had climbed to one hundred and sixty. Most of them were fatalities, and a handful remained in critical condition. Spock had an unwelcome suspicion that even more would join that number before they'd escaped this anomaly.
To be continued...
Thanks for reading, and I hope you liked it so far. Please review if you feel like it and tell me how and if you liked it!