ST Characters: Don't own 'em, can't claim 'em, just love 'em!
This is just mindless drivel. As usual, please R&R!
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Could This Day Get Any Better?
The full moon shone brightly on the warm summer beach. Softly undulating waves caressed the sand in their timeless rhythm. Ruth! ...softly undulating...softly caressing... Oh, Ruth! Undulating (oh!)...caressing (Ruth!)...the tide, rising, rising...the waves, stronger, overwhelming. The pounding of the waves rose relentlessly in his ears until it could not be ignored. The waves rose and crashed around the two lovers, and Kirk found himself, with Ruth still in his arms, flung inexorably into the cold maw of a mounting storm. Under the violent water, Kirk felt conflicting currents tug at his body. His arms were numb; he could no longer feel Ruth. With every moment without air the ringing in his ears grew louder, and the wave carried him with unbending fury down, down, to be dashed against the rocks...
Kirk caught his breath and sat up with a start on the floor, bedclothes twisted around him. The intercom was buzzing insistently and he groped for it with one hand. "Kirk here. This better be good!"
Sulu stared blankly for a second (but only a second) at the disheveled, bleary-eyed face of his captain and the pillow he was still hugging fiercely. "Oh, it is, Sir. I mean...I wouldn't say it is good, but, well, it is important, Sir, and you know we wouldn't have bothered you for anything trivial, and this was so unusual we thought you should know in case..."
"What IS it, Sulu? What ARE you babbling about?" Kirk disengaged himself from the pillow. "Give it to me straight. I can take it."
Sulu cleared his throat. "Well, Sir..."
"Oh hell!" Kirk slammed the pillow onto the bed. "I'm on my way." He slid hurriedly into his pants and rumpled shirt worn the day before, sniffing critically. Oh well, no one would notice...
As the turbolift doors opened to deposit Kirk onto the bridge, Spock jumped out of the center seat to take up his customary position to the right of the chair.
"Thank you Mr. Spock."
Spock's nostrils flared involuntarily as Kirk passed by. "Musk, Captain?"
Kirk cast Spock a look that might have caused Hell to freeze, but had no effect on the Vulcan, who merely raised an eyebrow. Kirk settled into his chair and looked at the forward view screen, where a large, cloudy mass loomed imminently. "Status report, Mr. Spock," he snapped. "What's going on here?"
Spock faced the captain solemnly, hands folded behind his back, and took a deep breath. "A temporal space/time anomaly has converged, Captain, creating a distortion in the marginal Doppler shift patterns of a nearby gaseous energy mass, causing spatial gravitational pull of dynamic static proportions to occur exponentially within the time/space continuum, creating a spiral gradient at our present coordinates."
"Huh?" Kirk stared blankly at his first officer.
"The Enterprise is stuck."
"Stuck by what, Mr. Spock?"
"I believe I have already explained that; however...Mr. Chekov?"
The navigator, startled, looked up from the magazine he had been reading. "Sir?"
"Mr. Chekov. May I remind you we are on Yellow Alert. What is that you are reading?" Spock held out his hand.
Chekov reddened and looked guiltily from Spock to the captain and back, handing the magazine to Spock. As the Vulcan took it, the centerfold flipped out and his eyes widened considerably. "Fascinating!"
"Let me see that, Mr. Spock!" Kirk reached for the magazine, and Spock handed it over.
"As I was about to say, Captain," Spock intoned, "Perhaps Mr. Chekov would explain our present situation to your satisfaction."
Kirk was still looking at the magazine. "Hmm?"
"Captain." Spock was starting to sound impatient.
Kirk looked up. "Oh yes, of course." He tucked the magazine under his chair cushion and turned toward Chekov. "Mr. Chekov, please explain the phenomenon."
"Aye, Sir. As I understand it, Keptin, the space/time flow of thees area of space has been deesrupted in such a vay as to cause deestortion in the spatial and elemental mass of a nebula, vhich ve vere approaching for research purposes. Thees deestortion has affected the gravitational pull of time as vell as space and ve are caught in its flux..."
The captain shook his head. I should never have gotten out of bed, he thought. "Which all means?"
"The Enterprise is stuck, Sir." Chekov replied.
"Stuck, huh?" We'll see about that, Kirk thought, as he punched the intercom button on the arm of his chair. "Mr. Scott!"
"Aye, Sir!"
"Give me full forward thrust! See if you can break us out of this with one massive burst!"
"Aye, Sir, I'll try, but I dinna think it'll work! We're gettin' a power drain down here that nothin' can stop! If we dinna find a way to stop it, we'll be dead in space in 2 hours! Dead in space!! If I gie ye the thrust ye want, Sir, that'll cut the time down to 10 minutes!"
"Understood, Mr. Scott." Kirk rubbed his forehead. "Forget the massive thrust. Keep trying to stop that power drain." He punched the arm of his chair and stood up. "Mr. Spock, come with me. We're going to get answers now! Something has to be draining our power and we're going to find out what it is!"
At that moment, as Kirk took a step toward the turbolift, the emergency lights came on and the Red Alert klaxon blared wildly. "Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!" the computer warned loudly.
Kirk turned to Spock. "Where is it?"
"Captain," Spock replied, "the inaccuracy of your phrasing leaves much to be desired. If I am to give you a correct analysis, I must know what 'it' is to which you refer. For instance, if we take..."
"Spock!!!"
The first officer eyed his captain inquiringly. Kirk's face had turned a fascinating shade of red.
"Spock," Kirk's voice took on a strained quality, "you know very well what I mean. Where – is – the – intruder!"
An indignant lift of his brow betrayed the offended Vulcan. "Really, Captain. You might have said so in the first place."
"Spock --- PLEASE!!"
Spock cleared his throat. "According to my sensor scans, there seems to be an abnormal energy flux of extremely high magnitude in turbo shaft number 1."