"Chekov, where is the sixth heat signature coming from?" Leonard asked urgently, as Jim moved to stand next to him.
Chekov was silent for a moment. "Sir, I don't unzerstand. You're all togezer, yes?" Yeah, that was pretty much the signal Ensign Porter needed to start panicking and whirl around, looking for an invisible enemy. Hell, Jim looked freaked as well. Only Spock and Sulu remained grim-faced, and the latter reached for his sword, expanding the blade in a series of loud schlick-schlick-schlicks!
"Chekov, the only people assigned to come down here is Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Ensign Porter and me," Leonard told him.
"Vhat?!" Chekov said, startled. "Zen who is ze sixth—?"
"That would probably be the bad guy who'll eventually beat Jim up," the good doctor groused, eyes roving the room to take into account all the items he could use. It was pure luck that they had stopped at the weapons lab. At least here, Leonard could—
No, not Leonard. The doctor had no place here right now. To face a mutant, one had to be a mutant as well.
It was Reaper who had to come out and play.
"Thanks a lot," Jim pouted, but there was no mistaking that undercurrent of awareness in his expression, that there was an unknown being too close to them and it was most probably not friendly. "Chekov, can you track the signature?"
"No sir. All ze 'eat signatures are…'ow you say, clump'd togezer."
"All right, spread out," Jim ordered. "Sulu, you and Porter move to that corner. Spock over there, Bones there. Chekov," he added, moving to the last empty corner, "have five of the signatures moved?"
"Yes sir!" Chekov replied excitedly. "I ken see five dots against ze corners of ze room. The only signature remaining is in ze middle of ze room."
"Then it must either be one level or so above us or one level below us," Spock concluded. "What do we do, Captain?"
"We go the hell back to the Arc room and get back to the Enterprise," Leonard bit out firmly. "Jim, we don't know what's out there—"
"Bones, what's gotten into you?" Jim asked, confused at his behavior. "If it's a sentient being—"
"Jim!" Everyone was startled as Leonard's snapped, hazel eyes flashing as the near-by danger inspired him to rush his team back to safety. "Whatever's here has been here alone for two hundred years! Think about it! Why is it alone? What was that burnt up thing in the Arc room? Why was it burned to death? God damn it man! I'm a doctor, not an explorer, and even I know this doesn't bode well!"
"However strongly Doctor McCoy makes his argument, it is a logical assumption to make, Captain," Spock supported. "I believe it would be best to retreat and report our preliminary findings to Star Fleet. We may base our next move on their orders."
Jim agreed rather easily, Leonard noted, but he's not going to complain. Especially since they were far from being out of the woods. The corridors were filled with vents and passages that made it a tactician's nightmare, and while he remembered the facility's layout quite vividly, he didn't know how the creature thought, and how hungry it was after two hundred years of isolation, so this was still very much a dangerous situation to be in.
They needed a plan. A strategy.
"We'll have to clump together again outside the room," Leonard sighed.
"Why is that, Doctor?" Spock asked, patiently waiting for Leonard to explain his thought process.
"If the mutant makes a grab for any one of us, we can reach for whoever's taken and fire at thing," he expounded reluctantly. "We can save ourselves and injure it at the same time."
"Sir," Porter breathed, eyes wide with trepidation, "you're assuming we'll be taken?"
"We need to be prepared for the worst," Leonard replied easily. "With something unknown out there, we can't risk being optimistic about this. I, for one, don't want to jinx us." The ensign shivered visibly, and Leonard had to wonder why she had been assigned to the away party if she were easily ruffled.
Then again, this was supposed to be a simple recon mission.
And it didn't help that his other three companions were giving him odd looks—Jim, especially, looked like he'd never seen Leonard before. And that stung. He'd always tried his best to be as honest as he could, but Leonard... Well, he didn't know how to be Leonard McCoy without having John Grimm and Reaper hovering around the edges of his persona, so a lot of things went unsaid on his part.
"Jim, any other ideas?" he asked, in an effort to shove the spotlight away from him.
A moment of thoughtful silence passed. "I think I'll leave you in charge of this one, Bones," Jim decided, stroking the fire in Leonard's eyes.
"Goddamn it, Jim! This isn't the time to joke!" he growled.
"I'm not joking," Jim replied in a matter of fact tone—the one he uses just before explaining something that everyone missed, but actually made sense—with a small frown. "You seem to know what you're talking about, and to be honest I'm a little out of my depth here. If I'm going to get this team back on my ship in one piece, then I need your expertise."
Leonard wonders how Jim can hit a nail on the head so accurately. The kid had a talent for spotting strengths and how to utilize them effectively, though he supposed that's why he made a good captain, even before he formally received the Enterprise. So he gave up and gave in, because Jim was right, and Leonard wanted everyone to get back safely too.
"Fine." He struggled not to think about Sarge and the last team he'd been on. Olduvai was a curse. It had massacred them all—
Damn it—focus!
His eyes took in the room again, and he knew it would help to filch a few of the guns. Phasers in close quarter combat would be a bad idea, especially since he would insist on setting it to kill. One hit and anyone of them could die, and with Jim's luck… Yeah, twenty-first century guns would be more practical, if not logical, in this scenario. However, out of everyone in the party, he was the only one qualified and experienced to use projectile weaponry.
Shit. Porter with a gun? No fucking way. So Leonard with a gun, check. What else could he use?
Walking over to the racks, he made note of the small brown vials littering the tables, but found none of them usable against a mutant. There were no grenades—and even if there were, he probably shouldn't use them, what with the almost-nuclear bomb in the Arc room and all—but there were plenty of ammo and clips for the guns. So he grabbed two off the rack and laid them on the nearest bare surface to start cleaning them.
"All right," he said as he began to strip the first rifle, "here's what we'll do. Jim, Spock, you'll have your phasers set to the highest non-kill level. That way, if you hit us, we're not dead." He didn't attempt to play ignorant with the guns—now wasn't the time for rookie mistakes—and he spoke as he cleaned, all too aware of the slack-jawed looks his friends had as they watched him handle a twenty-first century weapon with ease. "Sulu, you've got your sword. If it tries to make a grab for us, cut its arms off. Don't make any attempt to stab it or cut its head off. You're in charge of protecting anyone injured. Porter, you're handling those vials," Leonard told her, nodding to the useless brown vials. "Grab as many as you can comfortably hold. If anything comes at us, you throw those vials at it. Understand?"
"What are in the vials?" Porter asked.
"Flammable liquid," he lied easily, finishing with the first gun and moving onto the second. "You throw it, I shoot it, it goes up in flames. Got it?"
"Yes, sir!" she said, looking relieved at her role. Definitely not away-party material.
"Where'd you learn to do all that?" Jim asked, watching him with no small envy. "Can you teach me?"
Hell no. "If you make it back to the ship uninjured, then why the hell not?" Leonard compromised. Maybe that would keep Jim from getting badly hurt this time.
Gearing up, Leonard found himself carrying his medical kit, two guns, several clips of ammo, and a phaser. It made him bulky and movement was stilted, but he'd had worse, and he could keep up.
Hailing Chekov, he asked if the signature had moved.
"Negatif, sir," Chekov answered. "All six signatures are still togezer."
Leonard eyed his companions. "I guess we're ready as we'll ever be." Porter shivered, but attempted to steel herself, so Leonard gave her credit for that. "Let's go."