"Kirk to Transporter Room - Scotty, can you beam him up?"

'We're havin' trouble locking on to his signal, sir.'

"Damn...is there anything you can do?" The sweat upon the Captain's brow, despite the cool air in the room, is very indicative of the tension within him. The same tension shared by all those present in the bridge.

'Ah, I'll try tweaking the targeting scanners.'

"Let's just hope it works. Keep me updated."

'Aye, sir.'

There is a thickness to the air of the bridge, a fog wrought by the overwhelming unease of the personnel seated at their respective stations. Within them, particularly the Captain, there bears a grimness in their frantic need to return to them he who is near lost - their First Officer. None can completely comprehend what had transpired in the moments prior to this happening, but it seems that the Vulcan had chosen to remain on the derelict vessel, possibly to test a hypothesis in regards to the repairs thereof.

Indeed, those small fires peppered within had been extinguished, and radiation leaks had been quelled, to offer some meagre gift of precious time for the evacuation's completion. It is quite feasible, however, that the Commander had found one final method to stave off the vessel's obliteration, the aftermath of which could deal a serious blow to this very ship. There is, however, one notion they can all be certain: the scene, at least in the case of the Vulcan, is dire.

"Captain,", Sulu swivels in his chair at the helm, "the Commander's life signs are fading, it's like he's -"

"Scotty, as soon as you get a lock, beam him directly to sickbay." The distressed Captain interrupts the helmsman, knowing what is was that he had almost uttered.

There is one word that he does not want to hear, not at this time, not ever. No matter how grave or critical the situation may be...

'...it's like he's dying.'

Hope, that tiny spark to which they all now clutch, must never be relinquished.

"Bones, how are you guys holding up?" Again, the frantic Captain taps a button at the small console on his chair, leaning over the furniture as he does.

'A few fractures and minor radiation burns, but nothing too serious.'

"And Uhura?" There is indeed no doubt that the Captain had previously been made privy to the Lieutenant's altering condition, and her subsequent admission to the ward thereof.

'She went into labour not too long ago, Jim'

"Have someone ready...we're beaming Spock directly to you."

'Alright, I'll have Doctor M'Benga on stand by.'

The following moments are indeed tense for those safely aboard the ship, with the Captain nearly pacing restlessly in his place at the bridge. All of their disquiet is awash within the enclosed space's air, the silence only disturbed by the mechanical trills of sensors and instruments. Within the almost ghostly silence, the final strands of their hope are near the edge of wilting away. This quiet interim is soon broken by the voice of the helmsman, whose chair once more turns to the view of his Captain.

"Sir, they got him."

At last, the air now seems a tad thinner with their collective minds almost exhaling with easement. Almost, indeed. Their First Officer's physical state is still somewhat unknown to them, as is the surety of his longevity. That latter fact will soon come to light by those stationed within the walls of the Medbay.

There, within the ward's sterile walls, he materialises, to the waiting eyes and arms of the personnel therein. His listless form arrives before them on the glossy flooring, in golden rings aglow like space dust trapped in sunburst's radiance. His unusually pallid appearance, the skin several shades paler than its norm, is for the medicos a grim insight into their comrade's terrible state. Of a life seemingly nearing its end.

When those glaring rings finally dissipate, the Vulcan is at once hoisted off the smooth flooring by M'Benga and a proximate nurse. Although the medicos are hasty in heaving the inert form to a close biobed, they are still thoughtful in their handling of him. In the briefest of moments, he is placed upon the sterile bed, parallel to that very biobed atop which the Lieutenant now lay. In the throes of birth, she glances agonisingly at the near-lifeless form; the form of he to whom her unborn child is fathered.

The very moment his limp figure is settled atop the mattress, the bed's monitors activate, and a distressing fact is unveiled. To the woe of all those within the ward, the Vulcan's heart does not beat, with no blood pumped to carry oxygen to essential organs; nor in turn do his lungs intake that vital air. At the medico's touch, his skin is a mere remnant of its former warmth, its colour and vigour all but faded into a cold visage of death itself.

The bereaved Lieutenant could sense, via their telepathic bond, a great many things in the length of time prior to her beloved's rescue: the fear he had attempted to veil; the pain his body had endured; the essence slipping away from him, like flames extinguishing. All of this conglomeration had perhaps initiated in her an early labour; in point of fact, several weeks before its estimated time. And now, in these anguished moments, she can descry a residual sorrow at the notion of their child drifting through existence without a father.

"Spock...", her pained utterance is a mere whisper, her contorted face and moistened eyes telling of her heartache. "I can feel him, Doctor...I can feel him slipping away..."

With eyelids pressed taut, she begins to weep, those anguished droplets clouding her sight and trickling down her temple. All of her hope, all that she had desperately clutched with her entire being, now seems vanished. To fade like dusk light into a dark void. Oh, how quietly she weeps.

"They're doing everything they can for him.", comes the gentle voice of the physician at her side. " You're doing great, Lieutenant. We're almost there."

Indeed, she is, and with her concentrated intermittent straining, the medico can now sight the emergence of a small head. No scream or yelp is sounded from her, as advised by the medicos; such a thing squanders the precious energy needed to propel the baby from the safe confines of the womb.

And yet, scream is what she so wishes to do.