Welcome back. The waiting for rescue begins, and the Enterprise is on its way. But it's not looking good for our missing officers.
"What are you doing?" McCoy asked. Spock was standing in front of him, a stack of clothing in his arms.
He raised one eyebrow. "I am changing into my uniform," he said, extending the stack of clothes to McCoy. "Here, this is yours."
Spock had already changed into his uniform pants and undershirt and went back to the storage compartment towards the rear of the shuttle.
The Doctor hesitated. "Wouldn't it be better to wear our environmental suits?" he asked. "They might keep us warm longer than the excursion jacket, and they have a separate oxygen supply."
"That might be true," Spock said, while he put on the excursion vest, "but both the temperature control and the oxygen supply system of the suits contain sensitive electronic parts that the energy output of minerals might interfere with." He slipped on the excursion jacket and turned around. "The results could be deadly."
McCoy threw him a disgruntled look but eventually changed into uniform as well.
Considering they didn't even know if the ship had received their distress signal, they would probably be waiting a while before they got picked up. In that time, maintaining the shuttle's interior temperature could fall victim to energy conservation procedures. Hypothermia was foremost on his mind. That was why he had favoured the EV suit, but if Spock advised against it, he would do well in following said advice. He might not know a lot about the exact makeup of Starfleet issue environmental suits, but he did know that Spock's advice was usually good.
After he had zipped up his jacket, and put the EV suit back into its designated storage compartment, he joined Spock in the cockpit.
"You think these will do us any good?" he asked, tapping the Starfleet insignia over his left breast. Under it, every excursion jacket carried an emergency transponder.
Spock frowned and shook his head. "Unlikely," he said and turned his attention back to the console. "Galileo to Enterprise, this is Spock. Can you hear me? Please respond, Enterprise."
Just as before, only static answered.
McCoy leant back in the co-pilot seat and frowned. "I'm sorry, Spock. I should have noticed that the suit's communicator was broken."
"It is irrelevant now, Doctor," Spock said. "Galileo to Enterprise. Come in, Enterprise."
Static.
"We might have still been able to leave if I hadn't thought you were just giving me the silent treatment," McCoy continued.
Spock didn't answer, busy with the shuttle's communicator. "Galileo to Enterprise. Please respond."
Unsurprisingly, there was only static.
Spock faced McCoy at last. "We might have, but we can't know that. As I said, it is irrelevant now."
"Dammit, Spock, I'm trying to apologise."
"There is no need to do that, Doctor," the Vulcan answered, with a raise of an eyebrow. "We cannot change what happened. It is illogical to feel guilt over circumstances you can't change."
McCoy nodded, smiling quickly at the Vulcan. Spock was right, of course, they could not change what had happened. Maybe being stuck with Spock of all people had its advantages. Where others could have rightfully blamed him, he didn't. And even if McCoy never would admit it, Spock's practical logic was a reassuring constant at times like these.
A beep coming from the computer shook him out of his thoughtful silence. For a second, he dared to hope the Enterprise was hailing them, but Spock's facial expression said otherwise.
"What is it now?"
A red light was blinking on the console. Spock tore his eyes away from it and looked at the Doctor almost apologetically. "The shuttle's power supply is compromised."
"So, it's gonna shut down completely?"
Spock nodded. "Yes. One after the other, its systems will fail."
"What about the temperature?" McCoy asked. He didn't dare ask what he really meant, namely if they were going to freeze to death.
"Eventually, the temperature regulation will fail as well. But even now, the shuttle cannot maintain the current temperature," Spock said. "I expect the temperature to decrease steadily from now on."
McCoy nodded grimly and folded his arms over his torso, as if in anticipation of the cold.
Spock turned his attention back to the compromised communicator. "Spock to Enterprise, please respond. We require assistance."
No one answered, and McCoy turned away from the Vulcan's futile attempts at reaching the ship. Instead, he walked towards the back of the shuttle, to take inventory of the emergency equipment.
While he was busy, Spock's voice continued to come from the front of the shuttle, reciting the same phrase like a broken record.
"Spock to Enterprise, come in please."
The only answer he ever got was the rustling of static.
McCoy took the small stack of blankets out of the emergency supply compartment, and set them to the side of the shuttle, for future use. Next to them, he placed the emergency ration pack and the water pack. He left the distress beacon packed away. With all that interference, it would do nothing to help. After hesitating a moment, he took out two sleeping bags and spread them on the other side of the shuttle.
He looked over his shoulder towards Spock, and after closing the hatch to the storage compartment, approached him with a first aid kit.
"I'm fine, Doctor, it's only a bruise," he repeated, as McCoy scanned him with the medical tricorder. "Spock to Enterprise, come in please."
"Let me treat it, Spock, before the medical equipment is broken as well," the Doctor sighed, too tired for arguing, and gently turned the pilot seat to get better access to the Vulcan's head.
Spock silently accepted the interruption to his work and leant back in his seat. When McCoy had finished, he closed the medkit and brought it back into storage while Spock returned his attention to the communicator.
"Spock to Enterprise, come in please."
This time, after the obligatory moment of static, he did not try again.
"Given up so soon?" McCoy asked sarcastically as he returned to the cockpit.
"The communicator has failed as well," Spock said drily.
"Oh, don't worry, I'm sure you'll find something else to keep you busy."
Spock shot him a look of faint exasperation. "Are you sure you do not have anything else to do besides delivering sarcastic commentary to my activities?"
"Absolutely sure," McCoy said without even pretending to think about it. "Look around, it's not exactly a funfair down here."
Spock raised one eyebrow at the Doctor's idiomatic language. "Indeed," he said and turned away to take a look at their makeshift accommodations.
From outside the shuttle, a noise that made the Doctor's skin crawl reached his ears. A soft cracking could be heard now and then, as the ice on the asteroid was being thawed by the closest star and quickly frozen again.
"This whole situation seems ironic," he said after a while if only to drown out the crunching sound from outside.
"How so?"
"Well, because this is not the first time we've been stranded in a shuttle with the name of Galileo, is it?" McCoy said, waiting for Spock's reaction.
"Indeed, it is not," the Vulcan said, "I fail to see the relevance to our current situation, however."
"Call it superstition," McCoy grumbled, "but it feels like bad luck." He got up and stepped closer towards Spock. "That mission was your first command. I would hate for this one to be your last."
"As would I," Spock said calmly, exuding confidence as ever, but also doing nothing to dispel McCoy's growing anxiety.
For the first time today, McCoy had realised they might not make it out alive. A feeling of dread hit him as he thought about the possibility of freezing to death on this solitary rock in space. But he quickly shook himself out of this depressive imagination. The chances of that happening had to be pretty low. They, meaning Spock, would either still find a way out at the last minute, or Enterprise would find them. That was how it always worked.
The mood on the bridge was tense, apprehensive. It had been five hours since they had received the garbled distress signal, and they had been on the lookout for their missing friends ever since. Just as feared, the shuttle had indeed continued to evade their sensors. And the fact that they might have found a reason for that did nothing to lighten the mood.
Hunched over Spock's science station, Pavel Chekov had noticed that the asteroids that carried those very minerals the officers had been sent to explore were reflecting their directed scans, or at least prevented their sensors from penetrating areas around large deposits of the mineral. A natural cloaking device.
As grim an outlook as this meant for finding the shuttle with their sensors, it narrowed down the possible locations of the shuttle significantly. After the discovery, Kirk had ordered the search to be restricted to asteroids with large deposits of the disruptive mineral. If they couldn't find the shuttle on sensors, it must be somewhere where sensors could not penetrate. Simple logic, Spock would say.
Still, they were combing the belt practically blind, despite following the shuttle's ion trail. The trail was growing faint and was already partially dispersed. Jim recalled an old fairy tale where two children had left a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way. Hadn't the crumbs been eaten by birds, and the children devoured by a witch? No, they had lived, hadn't they?
Following this proverbial trail of breadcrumbs, they scanned their surroundings by sight, as they had little hope for their sensor scans to turn up anything before they were right on top of it.
Kirk looked around the bridge. Everyone's eyes were fixed on the viewscreen, intently looking out for the missing shuttle.
For all the suspense of the situation, Kirk noted with pride, no one showed any signs of undue haste or lack of composure. On the contrary. An air of grim determination permeated the bridge. If they failed - and Jim didn't yet dare to think about that possibility - it would not be due to negligence, but simply bad luck. As if it wasn't already unlucky enough that the distraction mission had turned into a rescue mission.
Doctor McCoy zipped up his excursion jacket, having neglected to do so before. It was getting cold. He knew that in the course of their projected stay in this icy exile, it would get colder by the hour until the temperature inside the shuttle was even with the temperature of space. But they would be either dead or rescued by then. McCoy was hoping for the latter option.
He looked around the shuttle. With them having prepped the cabin for a longer stay, and the ship hopefully on its way, there was only one thing to do.
"Well, good night, Spock," he said as he shuffled into the sleeping bag closest to the wall.
"Good night, Doctor," the Vulcan said from his perch in the pilot seat.
Spock watched McCoy for a while after he had closed his eyes. He had drifted off quickly, and soon, his soft snores filled the room.
He had not asked after their exact chances of survival, and so, Spock had not told him.
Their chances were dismal. Spock did not count himself a pessimist, but with their systems being unreliable and failing one after the other, their prospects were bleak. There was only one certainty in their future: they were going to die, sooner than any of them had planned.
Spock walked towards his sleeping bag next to the Doctor. He did not go to sleep, though, but sat on his makeshift bed to meditate. With the temperature being well below the Vulcan optimum already, this endeavour was destined to be unusually uncomfortable, but he would have to deal with it. He settled into a light meditation next to the slumbering Doctor, trying to block out the beginning cold.
To be continued...
Thanks for reading, thus far. Feel free to tell me how you liked it! Do you think they'll be rescued soon?