Chapter 43: Spacelab

The Enterprise limped to Regulus I, its crews working nonstop to repair the damage done by Khan. By the time they reached Spacelab, with the help of Spock and a mind-meld Buffy had managed to pull herself together. She now knew how Dawn had done it for at least the last hundred years anyways. Not only had T'Pol's mind-meld forced Dawn to go through Pon-Farr every seven years like a Vulcan, but it had also given Dawn the clarity she needed to deal with the emotions she felt.

The space station maintained complete radio silence all the way up to when Sulu slid the Enterprise into orbit around Regulus I.

"Orbit stabilized, sir."

"Thanks, Mr. Sulu. Commander Uhura, would you try again?"

"Aye, sir. Enterprise to Regulus I Spacelab, come in, Spacelab. Come in, please..." She received the same reply she had received to every one of the many transmissions she had made in the hours since Dr. Marcus's original call: nothing. "Enterprise to Spacelab, come in, Spacelab. This is the U.S.S. Enterprise. Please respond..." She turned to Kirk. "There's no response at all, sir."

"Sensors, Captain?" Kirk asked Spock.

"The sensors are inoperative, Admiral," Spock said. "There is no way to tell what is inside the station."

"And no way of knowing if Reliant is still nearby, either," Kirk said.

"That is correct, Admiral."

"Blind... as a Tiberian bat," Kirk said softly. "What about Regulus I?"

"Class D planetoid, quite unremarkable: no appreciable tectonic activity. It is essentially a very large rock."

"Reliant could be hiding behind that rock."

"A distinct possibility, Admiral."

Kirk opened a channel to the engine room. "Scotty, do we have enough power for the transporters?"

"Just barely, sir." The engineer's voice sounded tired and lifeless.

"Thanks, Scotty," said Kirk. "I'm going down to Spacelab."

"Jim," Dr. McCoy said, "Khan could be down there!"

"He's been there, Bones, and he hasn't found what he wants. Can you spare someone? There may be people hurt."

"I can spare me," the doctor said.

"Buffy?" said Kirk as he turned toward her. "Are you all right too?"

"Thanks to Spock I can handle it at least for now," Buffy said.

"I beg your pardon, Admiral," Saavik said, "but general order fifteen specifically prohibits the entry of a flag officer into a hazardous area without armed escort."

"There is no such regulation," Kirk said. "But if you want to check out a phaser, Lieutenant Saavik, you're welcome to join the party. Mr. Spock, the ship is yours."

"Aye, sir."

"You and Mr. Scott keep me up-to-date on the damage reports." He got up and started for the turbolift.

"Jim, Buffy-" Spock said as Kirk and Buffy turned to looked at their old friend. "- be careful."

Buffy and Kirk nodded, with a grin, and left.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Buffy and McCoy materialized inside the station's main laboratory. They had their phasers drawn. Buffy despite being able to fire energy from her body now, she knew she would need to learn exactly how that worked before she tried firing off a blast. She didn't want to accidentally hurt someone.

Jim materialized beside them, at an angle, and Saavik behind them, so they formed a small protective circle.

"Hello!" Jim yelled. "Anybody here?"

The station replied with the echoes of abandonment and silence.

Saavik went to the main computer and turned it on. She spoke to it, but it did not answer her, a sure sign of a badly crashed system. "Very little remains in any of the computers, Admiral," she said after working with it for a few moments. "The on-line memories have been wiped almost clean." She loaded the single remaining file, started it running, and watched it for several minutes.

McCoy pulled out his tricorder and scanned the immediate area.

"I'm feeling something," said Buffy. "I think someone maybe alive."

"Sir..." Saavik said.

"Yes, Lieutenant?" Kirk replied.

"This is extremely odd. Only a single program remains. It is very large. It is... unique in my experience." She stood back so Buffy, Kirk and McCoy could look at the screen display. "I can make nothing of it."

Buffy felt the puzzlement coming from Kirk, McCoy and Savvik as she laughed. "It's a video game," she said as she looked at the sizzling, sparking, colorful graphics.

Kirk laughed. "If that's all Khan found when he got here..." He shook his head. "Phasers on stun. Move out. And be careful."

Buffy moved cautiously down the hall. The lights were very dim, the shadows heavy. Spacelab was enormous; it supported and housed several hundred technicians and support personnel. Most of them were on leave now, but there still should be eight or ten people here. So where-?

Buffy heard a scratching noise. She turned slowly. A white lab rat, free in the hallway, blinked at her from a dim corner, scrabbled around, and fled, its claws slipping on the tiles.

Buffy continued. She glanced into the rooms she passed, finding nothing but offices, a small lounge, sophisticated but familiar equipment for a number of fields of study. So far nothing about whatever she had felt when they first beamed in.

She opened a door. Beyond, it was dark. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. She took a step inside. No strange sound, no strange sight-why was her Slayer senses going off? The she realized why they had tripped. The smell: sharp, salty, metallic. She smelled blood.

Buffy turned, and a cold hand gently slapped against her face. "Lights!" she called out.

The sensors responded to her voice. She looked around and saw the hanging bodies.

Buffy pulled out communicator and flipped it open. "Jim..."

"Buffy?"

"I found five bodies," she answered as she looked at the five people. A Deltan and four human beings that hung upside down from a ceiling strut. Each one's throat had been slashed.

"I'll be right down."

"Oh, my God..." Jim said from the doorway. He and McCoy both stared up, horrified. Behind them stood a calm Savvik.

McCoy approached the nearest body, that of a tall black man. His own blood obscured his face. The man next to him had been tortured. He took tricorder readings on all the bodies and recorded their position and surroundings. Three of the people had bled to death, one had died of shock, and the Deltan... he could detect no cause for the Deltan's death.

Buffy walked carefully across the blood-thick, sticky floor, and lifted Vance Madison. His body lay limp in her arms, and the rope around his ankles slackened. "Jim, cut him down."

Kirk complied.

They lowered the five bodies and found sheets in which to shroud them. Three were Project Genesis scientists, and two were service personnel.

"They even killed the galley chief," Kirk said. His voice sounded stunned.

"The bodies are almost cold," McCoy said. "But rigor hasn't set in yet. Jim, they haven't been dead for very long."

Jim looked around the blood-spattered room. "Carol..." he said.

The search party returned to the main lab.

Buffy heard a noise. She gazed around the lab, finding nothing. But the small sound came again and this time emotions as well. Someone was scared.

"Buffy?" Kirk asked noting that she had stopped moving.

"Someone's here," she answered. "They're scared."

Savvik took out her tricorder and began scanning. It wailed plaintively. She followed the signal to a large storage locker. As Buffy, Kirk and McCoy joined her, she reached out and opened the door.

Two more bodies fell out and sprawled at their feet.

Kirk started violently. "My God!"

"Dawn!" shouted Buffy having recognized one of the bodies.

McCoy knelt down and inspected them with his medical tricorder. "He's alive, Jim," he said, there was no reason to say Dawn was alive since she physically wasn't supposed to be able to die for several more centuries.

Behind them, the Spacelab's communications screen glowed on. "Enterprise to Admiral Kirk, come in, please," Uhura said. "Please respond."

"This is Clark Terrell, Jim," McCoy said. "I've served with him."

Dawn moaned.

McCoy frowned at the readings on his sensor.

Buffy knelt down next to Dawn and supported her wife's shoulders. "Dawn, do you hear me? Dawn, wake up, please."

"Admiral Kirk!" Uhura said. "Please respond."

"Saavik, tell her we're all right, for gods' sake."

"Please acknowledge our signal, Admiral." Uhura's tone became more urgent.

"Some kind of brain disturbance," McCoy said as Saavik hurried across the lab and opened a channel to the Enterprise. "It's drug-induced, as far as I can tell."

"Saavik here, Commander Uhura. We're all right. Please stand by. Saavik out."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Uhura said with relief. "Enterprise standing by."

Saavik left the channel open and returned to Buffy, McCoy and Kirk. Reliant's Captain Terrell was beginning to regain consciousness, and Dawn was almost awake. She opened his eyes and stared blankly at Buffy.

"Dawn, can you hear me?" Buffy said. "What happened?"

"Buffy..." Dawn whispered. She took a deep breath that turned into a sob. "Oh, God, Buffy-" Her voice failed her, and she cried.

Buffy held Dawn. "It's all right now, Dawn. You're all right. Go on, don't worry; you're back with me now."

Terrell moaned and tried to get up. McCoy hurried to him.

"It's Leonard McCoy, Captain." McCoy shook him gently by the shoulders. "Clark, do you remember me?"

Terrell's expression was that of a man faced with such horror that he had lost himself in it. "McCoy..." he said slowly. "Leonard McCoy... yes. Oh... yes..."

Buffy saw that Dawn was struggling to sit up and helped her. "Jim, Buffy- it was Khan! We found him on Ceti Alpha V..."

"Easy, Dawn. Just tell us what happened."

"Ceti Alpha VI was gone. My fault..."

Buffy, McCoy and Kirk glanced at each other, frowning slightly.

"Khan captured us. He-he can control people, Buffy! His creatures-he-" Dawn began trembling. She clamped her hands over her ears. "My head-!"

McCoy came over and checked Dawn over with the medical tricorder. "It's all right; you're safe now."

Dawn's words came all in an incomprehensible rush. "He made us say things-lies-and made us do... other things, but we beat him; he thought he controlled us, but he didn't; we beat him, we were strong..." She was shaking so hard she could no longer speak. She turned into Buffy and buried her head in her wife's shoulder, hiding her face to cry.

Kirk glanced over at Terrell, who maintained the composure of oblivion. "Captain, where's Dr. Marcus? What happened to Genesis?"

"Khan couldn't find them," Terrell said with dreadful calm. "He found some of the scientists."

"We know that," Kirk said sharply.

"Everything else was gone. He tortured them. They wouldn't talk; so, he killed them. The station was too big for him to search it all before he took Reliant and went to kill you too."

"He came damned close to doing that," Kirk said.

"He left us here," Dawn said. She raised her head. Her face was wet with tears. "We were... no longer any use."

"Does he control all of Reliant's crew?" Saavik asked.

"He stranded most of them on Ceti Alpha V," said Terrell.

"He's mad. He lives for nothing but revenge," Dawn said. "He blames you for the death of his wife... Lieutenant McGiver."

"I know what he blames me for," Kirk said. He sat with his eyes focused on nothing for some moments. "Carol's gone, but all the escape pods are still in their bays. Where's the transporter room in this thing?" He glanced at Saavik.

"Even the Spacelab specifications were erased from the computer, sir," she said. "However, the Enterprise should have a copy in its library files."

They contacted the ship, reassuring Commander Uhura and Mr. Spock that they were all right, and had a set of plans for the station transmitted down. Even the decorative printed maps of Spacelab, which ordinarily would have been displayed in its reception area, had been torn down and destroyed.

In the transporter room, Kirk inspected the console settings.

"Dawn, did he get down here?" asked Buffy.

"I don't think so, Buffy. He said searching such a big place was foolish. He thought he would make the captives talk."

"Somebody left the transporter on," Kirk said. "Turned it on, used it, and left it on- and no one still alive remained to turn it off."

Saavik figured out the destination of the settings. "This makes no sense, Admiral. The coordinates are within Regulus I. The planetoid is both lifeless and airless."

"If Carol finished stage two, if it was underground," Kirk said thoughtfully, "- she said it was underground..."

"Stage two?" asked Savvik.

Kirk suddenly pulled out his communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise."

"Enterprise, Spock here."

"Damage report, Mr. Spock?"

"Admiral, Lieutenant Saavik would recommend that we go by the book. In that case, hours could stretch into days."

"I read you, Captain," Kirk said after a pause. "Let's have the bad news."

"The situation is grave. Main power cannot be restored for six days at least. Auxiliary power has failed, but Mr. Scott hopes to restore it in two days. By the book, Admiral."

"Spock," Kirk said, "I've got to try something. If you don't hear from us within-" he paused a moment, "- one hour, restore what power you can and get the Enterprise the hell away from here. Alert Starfleet as soon as you're out of jamming range. By the book, Spock."

Uhura broke in. "We can't leave you behind, sir!"

"That's an order, Spock. Uhura, if you don't hear from us, there won't be anybody behind. Kirk out." He snapped his communicator closed and put it away. "Captain, Dawn," he said to Terrell and Dawn, "maybe you'd better stay here. You've been through a lot-"

"We'd prefer to share the risk," Terrell said quickly.

"Very well. Let's go."

"Go?" McCoy exclaimed. "Go where?"

"Wherever they went," Kirk replied, and nodded at the transporter.

Saavik realized what he planned. She went to the transporter and set it for delayed energize, being careful not to alter the coordinates. Kirk and Buffy stepped up onto the transporter platform. Terrell and Dawn followed, but McCoy stayed safely on the floor and folded his arms belligerently.

"What if they went nowhere?"

Kirk grinned. "Then it's your big chance to get away from it all, Bones."

Dr. McCoy muttered something and stomped up onto the platform.

"Ready," Saavik said. She pressed the auto-delay and hurried up beside the others.

Spacelab dissolved; around them, darkness appeared.