Title: We Have a Stun Setting?

Series: Captain's Log, Redacted or, The Ongoing Saga of Well that's not going in the report

Characters/Pairings: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, various.

Word Count: (this bit) 5900

Rating: T for movie-level violence, language, and occasional other adult themes which will be warned about in advance

Series Warnings/Spoilers: My readers probably know by now that anything in TOS is fair game to be integrated here, but usually no knowledge of the OS is necessary to understand the story. Specifics will be footnoted and specific warnings issued as needed.

This chapter warnings/spoilers: One specific but brief throwaway spoiler for Beyond. Spoilery plot point of sorts I stole from the TOS episode Piece of the Action, which is one of the most delightfully lighthearted and amazing episodes of the original series. Watch it. It's no more ridiculous than some moments in STID, and there's 20s gangster costumes.

Summary: Never let it be said that First Officer Spock of the U.S.S. Enterprise makes the same error twice. Post-STID, he has become quite an expert at…heavily editing, the official reports which make their way back to Starfleet Command from uncharted space.

"We discovered that the political situation on planet L-4326-A was slightly less stable than we had been led to believe from our First Contact briefing (due we were told in the council chambers to very lucrative offers from the Klingon Empire to the primary insurgent faction).

This led to a brief period during which the Enterprise was out of contact with the landing party (see transfer of command to Lieutenant-Commander Montgomery Scott, Acting Captain's Log 2548.9). The landing party was retrieved in its entirety less than six hours later, with the position of Planet L-4326-A remaining in a state of complete political unrest despite even the most unique of efforts from the Enterprise to re-negotiate terms. Official recommendation: Further investigation by a non-exploratory starship better equipped for a planet at war

Related Documents: Medical Report 7119: Landing Party Injuries; Terran-Parallel Cultures and Predicted Outcomes of The Coup Mentality Among Underdeveloped Species by Xenosociological Department II, U.S.S. Enterprise; Captain's Log 2550.5: Unofficial Recommendation to [directly quoted] 'Just Let the Damn Klingons Have This Psycho Planet, Then' by Captain James T. Kirk, currently on Medical Leave."

While he's used to them having pretty bad luck by now, he's not used to his senior staff almost getting killed wholesale on one single mission thanks to equal parts Federation misinformation and political unrest on a Second Contact mission that was supposed to be a freaking cakewalk.

And he's pissed.

He kicks aside a pile of broken timber and stares in consternation at the rubble beyond, only now visible out of the dust cloud. There's no way just the two of them are getting back to the council chambers that way, even if that was the wise move. Which it isn't, and he knows it, but the rest of his team is in there dealing with God knows what, assuming they're still alive to deal with it, and he should be in there, damn it all to Dante's seven hells.

Behind him, he hears a muffled scream of frustration and turns around in time to see Uhura duck under the wild swing of one of the natives who'd betrayed them, clock him over the head with his own phaser rifle, and deftly snatch the dagger out of his belt as he falls, stuffing it down the front of her dress as she stalks back toward him, looking murderous.

It's equal parts hilarious and scary.

"We have to go," he says, gesturing at the remains of the corridor between them and what until five minutes ago had been some of the most ornate, vaulted council chambers he's ever seen.

She looks for a second – only a second – like she's going to argue, and then nods, always the officer before the partner of one of the officers likely buried on the other side of the rubble.

"There's no way we get out of the capital, or even out of the building, without being recognized, Captain," she says unnecessarily, before starting to root around the four natives they've dropped in the fracas. "Any native who's sided with a renegade Klingon is going to shoot a Starfleet officer on sight, especially if those bombs were meant to completely derail the treaty negotiations."

He nods absently, trying to figure out what indications there had been of the impending betrayal. He's usually better at this, suspecting something like this.

"It's done, just stop thinking about it. I specialize in communication, and I missed the signs too. If there were any."

Finally, he sighs in agreement, tears off his yellow tunic and tosses it (or what's left of it) away, leaving just the black under-tunic. At least he won't have that 'Fleet bulls-eye on his back while they try to run for it. Uhura throws a dark, somewhat gross and scruffy jacket of some kind at him courtesy of a dead native he doesn't even remember choking out in the initial fight for their lives after hell broke loose. She then walks a few paces down a cross-hallway and yanks down what looks like a lightweight wall-covering.

He shrugs the nasty thing over his shoulders – way too tight and it smells vaguely of incense and probably cow manure – and then realizes she's covering her head and hair like the native women do, not just tearing things off the walls for therapy. He stares in fascination as she deftly twirls the remaining fabric around her 'Fleet uniform until it's covered in some kind of weirdly legit-looking sari-like garment oddly similar to the native garb.

"Huh. Not bad."

"Not trying for a fashion statement here, but thank you. What about a working communicator?"

"I have mine and it's functional, but the signal's not getting through."

"They're probably jamming all comm grids. This was too well-executed not to be planned for weeks ahead of our arrival."

"We've got to get somewhere we can hole up and try to break through the block, then. We have to contact the 'Fleet and let them know what's happening down here, and get our people out somehow without breaking the Prime Directive."

Because the treaty didn't get signed, General Order One is still technically in effect; he can't interfere with the society at all. That means he can't stop their conflict, he can't try to gain a cease-fire, he can't even beam a search and rescue team back down in safety – they'll be mowed down just like the first ones, and he isn't allowed to retaliate. Technically, he should get out, call the 'Fleet, and leave the planet to the Klingons, wherever they may be. That's not happening, so…

How is he going to pull this off?

"I can probably hotwire a comm to the low-frequency intra-comm aboard ship if we get out of the capital and away from any other interference, Captain. But I can't bypass anything while we're in range of any other low frequency signals."

"We need to get going then."

"What about the rest of landing party?"

His lips tighten. "They know what to do, Lieutenant. This is a war zone now, and we have a responsibility to the Federation to get word out before any other actions can be taken." He also has a sneaking suspicion they were specifically targeting the Federation representatives, too, or at least taking advantage of the chaos to do so, at the instruction of their Klingon instigators; so they need to make sure someone in the group gets out to pass on that knowledge.

"Yes, Captain."

He knows the reversion to the titles is her way of keeping herself grounded in duty, not personal business; they've all resorted to the tactic at one point or another throughout the years. He returns the favor with a curt nod as he picks up another of the phaser rifles and slings it over one shoulder, then pockets a small hand weapon of some kind which he'll have to figure out how to use later. He can already tell he got a solid knock to the head in addition to whatever's going on in his mid-section so his aim probably isn't going to be 100% as it stands; the more weapons he has, the better their chances will be.

"Right, let's get moving. If we can hole up somewhere, great, but judging from that noise…" They've been hearing what sounds suspiciously like ground-to-air artillery for the last twenty minutes, ever since that first blast went off and brought what sounded like the entire government building complex down around their ears.

He can only pray that it didn't literally, all come down. It was sheer chance that he and his Communications Chief had been in a different room down the hall trying to nail down a communications barrier issue with one of the council members after the dinner festivities had concluded. Otherwise, they'd all have been in the inner chambers when what he assumes was a bomb went off. They'd heard what sounded like the entire roof being blown off the building and then it literally just…crumbled. Which is overkill, since between one thing and another it's not likely the treaty negotiations would have continued tonight regardless. There was no need to bury his landing party – his family – under a mountain of stone pillars and timber.

Whoever in Command was responsible for their briefing? Telling them that the 'mild political unrest' the First Contact team had reported was supposedly totally under control? Is a dead man when he gets back to the ship.

If he makes it back.

Three hours, two narrow escapes, a ten-minute scuffle with insurgents and one very awkward incident where they had to pretend to be a couple making out in an alley to avoid being recognized later (he's never hated having blue eyes so much, they're very definitively not native), he's able to hotwire and then steal what amounts to an ancient motorbike that probably shouldn't be carrying more than a child's weight, judging by the dangerous-sounding moaning coming from the engine by the time he brings it to a gravel-spraying stop outside the city at the edge of the spreading forest. Trees and woodlands actually cover 80% of this planet, a weird scientific anomaly that had fascinated the xenobotany teams from the beginning.

Unfortunately, it's this very fact that's the cause of the insurgency, probably; the unrest is due to the tree-dwelling population realizing that there's a much easier way of life and wanting to be part of it in the cities. Tthe Klingons wanting to mow down the trees to get at the trilithium deposits below the planet's crust. And, of course, the snobby inhabitants of the cities not wanting any part of the 'apes' who have always dwelled apart in a different way of life.

Tale as old as time, and as unfortunately short-sighted as Terra's population had been for so many decades. He hopes this world doesn't almost destroy itself before figuring out how foolish they are for segregating people simply because they're different.

"How, exactly, did you manage to not kill yourself on Altamid?" he hears from behind him as he struggles out from behind the tiny control panel, his passenger having long since slid off with remarkable alacrity and much muttering about his driving skills.

"Everybody's a critic." A last yank and he nearly goes flying off the tiny bike, arms pinwheeling to stay on his feet. "And besides, I doubt this thing was meant for two people. Maybe you should lay off the iced mochas."

A snort, weary with exhaustion and what he knows has to be pain, but she smiles knowing what he's doing; neither of them need to be thinking about what they've left behind right now. "Just toss me that communicator."

"Not until you own up to whatever hit you in that last fight right before I swiped this thing," he counters, and shrugs when she glares at him in the twilight. "Stop trying to be a hero, Lieutenant."

"I'm fine."

"Damn straight you are, Spock's a lucky man. But that's not what I asked."

"Oh my God, you are so annoying."

"Also correct. And you know I can totally out-annoy you, so spill it. Don't make me order you to report, Lieutenant."

She rolls her eyes, and flops down with a barely-concealed wince to sit against one of the nearby trees. "I don't know. Left shoulder. It's not dislocated, but it's wrenched at least. Don't you dare touch it, I will castrate you."

He laughs, and ignores her, crouching to try and get a look in the light of the tiny flashlight on the communicator. The wrap-thing she was wearing got long since discarded, a safety hazard flying in the wind on that motorbike, and he can't see much swelling through her uniform dress, but when he just barely touches her upper arm he nearly does get a swift kick in an awkward place for his pains, just from her reflexive flinching.

"Okay, okay, got it, stop touching now. You're right, it's not dislocated. But you've probably torn something, if it hurts that much. Sure the arm's not broken? Collarbone?"

"Not collarbone at least, I'd have felt that. That last idiot just slammed me into the ground, he didn't twist my arm or anything. I landed wrong, that's all. It can move, I just would rather not."

He nods, and starts taking off the soft jacket he'd stolen from the guard at the council chambers. "Good thing it's your left, at least."

"I suppose. Look, the temperature's dropped at least fifteen degrees, you don't – ugh, why do I bother."

"No idea. Besides, I'm not cold. Superblood, remember." The stomach-ache he's been trying to ignore is helping with that, actually; he's starting to sweat a little in fact. He finally gets the jacket torn into two pieces and then two more, enough to tie together and then sling the arm close to her body to at least prevent it moving around. "Sorry, DIY was never my strong suit, that'll have to do for now. Now, get this thing working," and he tosses her the comm from his pocket, "and maybe we can all still get out of this mess in one piece. You need me to be your hands?"

"Not yet, but I might at some point." She can still hold the comm with her immobile hand, and starts fiddling with the back casing with her right. "Give me a few."

"You got it. I'm going to go recon, yell if you need me before I get back."

Already engrossed, she nods but doesn't really pay attention when he slips away, takes a peek down both sides of the road, climbs to the top of the nearby knoll and looks out over the grassy countryside they just sped across, fleeing the destruction he can still see in the distance over the planet's solitary city. Even in the dying light the flashes and crashes of artillery are clearly visible and audible.

Whatever happened, the rest of his people are still in the thick of it, somewhere. Surely, if they were…if the worst had happened, wouldn't he feel it? Somehow? Surely Fate wouldn't be cruel enough to take almost everyone he loves from him like this in one fell swoop, after all this. They've been through way too much for what amounts to an amateur terrorist cell to succeed where insane dictators have failed.

He flinches at what looks like a huge lightning strike but what he knows is just air-to-ground weaponry, and shakes his head, stomach roiling. Come to think of it…it probably wasn't a good idea to chug that goblet of ceremonial wine to begin the treaty negotiations without triple checking what was in it, especially now that they know the natives never intended to keep the treaty.

Given the suspicious nausea he's starting to feel…yeah, that might have been his worst mistake all night.

Shivering, he hurries back down the hill and across the small path to the tree-line, keeping a watchful eye out for any straggling insurgents.

He steps on a stick as he rounds a tree and finds himself with a phaser about two inches from some portions of his anatomy he'd really like to keep in functioning order.

"Holy – put that down! Geez." He edges sideways as she glares at him, then lowers the weapon. Even with one good hand, she's still just as dangerous as any of his Security men. "How's it coming?"

"Slowly, but I think I can break into the Engineering low-frequency channel here in a minute. Assuming it's not in-use, though."

"When is it in-use?"

"When someone's in the Jefferies tubes, the signal's usually too patchy in there so they go to mobile comms. Usually only when repairs are being made."

"There's no reason to be doing those while in orbit, so hopefully we'll get through."

"What exactly do you plan to do, Captain?"

He glares back in the direction of the warring city. "Oh, I am going to raise hell, Lieutenant. They pissed off the wrong starship captain. And I'm going to make sure both they and the Klingons know."

It's another hour before Uhura manages to finally splice the comm into one of the low-frequency Engineering channels, and another ten minutes before someone realizes it's not just static and gets it transferred to Scotty, who's currently with Sulu on the Bridge trying to make sense of what's happening on the planet below. They're beamed up with little enough trouble, and Jim sends her straight to Sickbay (meaning he corrals two helpful yeomen who are able to drag her off since she only has one good arm, despite her very vocal and he suspects insubordinate protests in at least three languages) while he heads for the Bridge, for now ignoring the growing indications that yeah, he really shouldn't have drunk something he didn't have one of his people scan in depth first. Especially given that the natives obviously don't want them around, not that he knew that at the time. Refusing would've been the height of rudeness and might have derailed their negotiations, but at least he wouldn't have gotten freaking poisoned. Again.

What is he, 0 for 3 now?

He steps out of the turbolift and snaps out an irritated "Somebody better give me a report, STAT!" that has way more bite in it than anybody on this Bridge deserves.

From the once-over his helmsman gives him as he scrambles out of the chair to vacate it, he's obviously being forgiven on the grounds of wow you look like hell, sir. From the corner of his eye, he sees whoever's manning the Ops station lean over and say something to the ever-present yeoman, who hurries into the turbolift.

"Captain, we can't establish contact with anyone in the landing party, nor is anyone on the planetary council answering our hails."

"Are you picking up signals from anyone's comms, Mr. Sulu?" he asks quietly, not loudly enough for most of the Bridge crew to hear.

"No, sir, not even with their manual calibrations." Sulu nods over at the Engineering station, where Scotty and Chekov are bent over the console discussing something. "Captain…"

He scrubs a hand over his face, closes his eyes briefly, then opens them again. "Go on."

"Sir, we can't even pick up life-sign readings. And we should be able to do that even if they're jamming comms transmissions, bio-scans are on a totally different frequency system."

His stomach turns again, and not from the poison probably working its way slowly through his system. "You've tried patching in the xeno-medical mainframe for precise readings?"

"Aye, sir."

"And you tried scanning for Vulcan life-signs? Human signs are pretty similar to the natives, they might just blend together."

Sulu's eyes are a little wild with controlled panic. "Yes, sir."

"Is it possible the heavy artillery over the city is disrupting the bio-scan signals?"

"Aye, Captain," Scotty's voice comes from his left, and he glances up to see his CE moving toward them, eyebrows drawn. "But I canna lie to you, Captain, it is a very small chance indeed. If anyone on the landing party…well, sir, we should really be picking up something. Sir."

His hands tighten on the armrests of his chair, loud enough the synthetic leather creaks in protest. "Hail the council again, Mr. Scott."

"Sir – "

"Now."

"Aye, sir." Scott nods to the young lieutenant at the Comms station, and a few switches get flipped. "Channel open, sir, but we have no indication of reception. I dinna believe they are even receiving."

Behind him, the lift opens to reveal the same yeoman, who hurries up to him with…bless her, a spare uniform tunic, at least he can stop looking like he showed up to the Bridge half-dressed.

"Maybe their communications array has been knocked out or jammed too," Sulu suggests.

"Thank you, Yeoman. I don't care what the reason is, Mr. Sulu, I want our people out of there and us out of this star system in the next thirty minutes or there's going to be hell to pay, but there are so many regulations dictating how much we can't go back down there or interfere with their stupid war." He tugs the hem of the tunic straight and glares at the viewscreen for a few moments, weighing how big a hole he wants to dig here. "Mr. Scott, get down to Engineering."

"…Aye, Captain." Scott's too good an officer to question him, only tosses the padd he's carrying at the nearest redshirt and darts toward the lift, deftly skirting a science tech on his way.

He presses the comms switch. "Bridge to Security."

"Security, Lieutenant Marple here."

"Lieutenant, gather two squads of your people and Medical who have search and rescue experience and report to Transporter Room Two in fifteen minutes."

"Roger that, sir."

"Captain, regulations aside, you're not thinking about beaming back down into a war zone!"

"Not as such, no," he replies calmly, pressing the comm again. "Mr. Scott, are you in Engineering?" He glances up, and motions for Sulu to take his seat again. The young man nods and snags Chekov by the arm as he passes, both of them replacing the two at the front console a moment later.

"Aye, Captain. What exactly d'ye have in mind?"

"Are you capable of modifying one of our phaser banks to a stun setting?"

Half the Bridge crew turns to stare at him, and he makes a shooing motion with his hand for them to get back to their work.

"Ehm…I don't see why not, sir. 'Twill take a few minutes, though, sir."

"You have ten. Get moving."

"Aye, sir." He hears what sounds very much like creative Andorian swearing before the comm cuts off.

Behind him, the lift door opens and disgorges his Communications Chief, arm tightly angled and bound across her chest to prevent any movement.

"Why are you up here?"

She merely raises an eyebrow at him, and then boots the Comms lieutenant out of her chair with a single look. The young man wisely scrambles to a seat three consoles away and waits for orders.

"Ugh. Fine. Try to hail the council again. Tell them this is their final warning before I move on to a more drastic form of diplomacy."

"Aye, sir." She flicks a switch and adjusts a couple of knobs, which the kid next to her watches intently. Adjusting an earpiece with her single good hand, she cocks her head for a moment to listen. "Captain, I doubt anyone's even on the other end of this, I'm getting too much interference for it to be an open and functional channel."

"See if you can patch into any of the public networks and get that message across, it may save my neck later if I can prove we broadcasted it and it was just ignored." He wipes sweat off his forehead, tugs the collar of his shirt away from his neck. The pain in his stomach's getting worse, and he feels way too warm. They need to get out of here fast, so he can crash in Sickbay without freaking anyone out.

"I'll do my best, sir."

He flashes her a quick smile of gratitude and then hauls himself to his feet with a weary grunt, pounds the switch for Engineering with a fist. "Scotty, report."

"One phaser bank, locked and loaded on neural stun, sir. Wide beam dispersal only though, sir, I canna give you any kind of aiming precision. And it will probably not keep a human out for longer than, say, ten minutes at most, sir."

"Even better. Now then, Mr. Sulu, Mr. Chekov."

"Keptin?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Stun every living thing in that city and its airspace."

"Sir…isn't firing on a planet, even with ship's weaponry at a non-kill setting…y'know…illegal?"

He half-turns and fixes the Security lieutenant who's spoken with a look. The poor guy's already getting more than one elbow from his peers, who are either facepalming or rapidly making themselves scarce in the wreckage.

"Lieutenant…Barclay, is it? Recently promoted from one of the phaser crews, correct?"

"Aye, Captain." The young man straightens to attention. "I worked in search and rescue on Colony Seventeen, sir, that's why Mr. Giotto pulled me for this mission, sir."

"Well, Lieutenant, you know your regulations. It's quite illegal. In fact, it's also illegal to modify a starship's weaponry to a stun setting like we just did in order to commit the illegal action of firing on the planet." The young man's eyes widen. "Any other questions?"

"Uh. Negative, sir."

"Excellent. Now move your ass, we have people to find in this hell-hole."

"Yes, sir!"

"He won't be a problem, Captain," Marple mutters as he passes, hauling an emergency pack over one shoulder. "I'll see to it."

He smiles despite the situation. "I wasn't worried, Lieutenant. About that, at least." Worried about the fact that they've not been able to get a signal reading from any of the landing party, yes. They're close enough to the former council chambers, he should be picking up something from the landing party's emergency transponders if they were able to activate them. Granted, there could easily be interference on the ground, and they could have been damaged in the building collapse.

Or none of them could have survived the collapse.

He swallows hard against a sudden rush of nausea that's only half caused by the toxin which he suspects his increased activity is making spread quicker. He should have said something before now; the emergency kits all carry standardized anti-toxins but he's allergic to one of the primary components, that's why Bones carries his own personal kit everywhere they go. The Jim Kirk Special, he'd laughingly called it once – but it's saved his neck multiple times.

That kit's buried under six feet of stone and timber on the other side of this massive wreckage of what was a beautiful council hall with thirty-foot high vaulted ceilings. Buried along with its owner, his First Officer, and five other personnel from Sciences and Communications.

His wrist-comm chirps, squawks a scratchy, garbled something he can't understand due to interference, and goes dead again, like it has been this whole time – their comms don't work. It chirps twice rapidly, then a second later again; obviously someone trying to communicate knowing the grid is down.

Likely that means the first rescue party, having beamed down a good ten minutes prior to his second, has found something – someone, he corrects himself firmly. He breaks into a sprint the last hundred meters and rounds the corner after clambering through the hole in the debris his Engineering team are still shoring up securely to find someone in a dusty maroon uniform being given oxygen by the Medical team while there's a flurry of excited red-shirted personnel behind them running around like ants on a potato chip.

"Lieutenant," he manages to gasp out – he's in better shape than this, this is embarrassing - as he skids to a stop, crouches in front of the young Corrollian officer from Comms. Corrollian nervous systems are much more quick to recover from stun forces, of course he'd be wide awake now; all three eyes blink in recognition at him from over the oxygen mask. They'd expected humans to just be groggy right about this time, and the natives should take another ten or fifteen minutes to come around; by then they should have their people out – one way or another – and be long gone.

"He's actually fine, Captain, we heard a loud banging and found he was trying to chisel his way out of what looked like a sort of pocketed cave-in," the nurse overhead says, shaking her blonde head. "Bumps and bruises, nothing extremely serious."

"That's great to hear," he manages between heaving breaths. Lieutenant Den'Rho grabs his arm and shakes it, reaches up to remove the oxygen mask.

"Leave that on, are you crazy!" The screech overhead is so Bones-like he has to laugh, the sound almost hysterical as he still is trying to catch his breath.

There's a commotion behind him and he turns on his heels, to see a flurry of activity near the site where he assumes they'd yanked out the young Comms lieutenant. A couple of blue-garbed dust and debris-covered figures emerge – actually under their own steam, his people are alive! – and then…two more, coughing and covered in a fine layer of dust, and then a couple of redshirts supporting another between them…wait, are all of them…

He scrambles to his feet despite a sudden bout of dizziness and manages to close the gap between the now whooping Security team, skids to a stop in front of his still somewhat dazed-looking First Officer and totally half-asleep Chief Medical Officer – who are both completely unharmed, from the look of them, just recovering from the effects of a mild neural stun.

"Ehh, to hell with it," he decides aloud, and jumps at both of them in a one-armed-each hug.

Bones yowls in his ear, obviously still feeling the stun effects, and Spock actually does this weird squeak-and-flail thing that's hilarious enough that it wakes up the rest of his Science team because they all start laughing.

"We thought you were dead," he murmurs, low enough that the rest of the crew can't hear. Finally he steps back, swallows hard. Tries to pull himself back together, ignores the way the room's started to tunnel down to just this little group; adrenaline drain, obviously. "Anyway, I'm not arguing with a miracle. But how did everyone survive that? That room was so small, we were sure everything had just been obliterated inside."

McCoy's more awake now, obviously, because he pinches his forehead with one hand and stabs a pointing finger in Spock's general direction with the other. "If the Enterprise ever starts a baseball team, Jim? Y'got yourself a pitcher. Right here."

He blinks. "Do what now?"

"Captain, it was freaking amazing," Rodgers from Xenobio pipes up dreamily, still leaning heavily on a much-amused Engineer.

"What was."

"He nerve-pinched that blasted dignitary and then ran down the room and threw the fricking bomb up into that damn bell tower to let it explode, Jim."

He stares at his First in amazement, and receives a bored eyebrow in return.

"Those ceilings –"

"Are fifteen-point-four meters high. It was purely a matter of calculated physics, and as you are well aware I possess a much greater strength than that of an average human," Spock says, in a tone that clearly states he cannot believe the stupid humans are impressed by this. "Such an act funneled much of the explosive force upward into the six-inch synthesteel walls of the bell chamber, while at the same time granting the landing party an additional few seconds in which to act prior to the collapse of the chamber."

"During which you'd of course calculated the one place most likely to have an air pocket when the support beams collapsed."

"Naturally."

Jim shakes his head, still reeling. "You're amazing."

Spock's ears turn a weird shade of olive. He then pales, and looks around, as if only just remembering something.

"She's fine, Spock," he says, putting out a remonstrating hand. It's shaking a little, but thankfully no one seems to notice. "She's on the Bridge trying to break the comms lockdown."

He receives a grateful look, and his First relaxes again, looking only inestimably weary. The room suddenly does a lazy spin around him, and he sways, pinching his nose to try and steady his vision.

"Jim?"

"How're you doing from the stun force, Bones?"

"I'm fine, Jim, why?"

"And we got everybody out okay?"

"Aye, sir," Marple calls from a few feet away. "All present and accounted for. Beginning return to beam-out coordinates."

"Oh, good. Spock, tell Sulu to take the ship out of orbit and book it out of this system, yeah? I'll be in Sickbay having my stomach pumped."

The look of alarm on Spock's face is quickly superseded by Bones's WTF Jim and why did you not say something until now growl. He starts backing away from the mounting explosion that's about to happen, and watches in amusement as a half dozen blue-shirts skitter away before their stalking CMO like frightened birds.

He's got some serious medical issues going on, some serious explaining to do to Starfleet Command, and a totally botched mission to chalk up in their roster…and yet he's still probably the happiest he's been in a long time.

Funny how that works.