Kirk jumped off the bio-bed and strode towards the intercom. He knew he was on sick leave, but he was also the captain of this ship, and he needed to know why they'd changed course and to where the hell they were going now! As a captain, he needed to know these things! He felt anger form in his gut, anger at his first officer, and he took a deep breath to quench it. It's not that he didn't trust Spock, just …
He reached out a finger to press the button of the intercom, when the room went completely dark around him. Talyor let out a surprised yelp, and Chapel also expressed her surprise with a whispered: "What the …?"
He pressed the button, but knew even before he spoke: "Captain Kirk to bridge," into the speaker on the wall, that the comm system was dead. He tried anyway, several times, but there was only silence in reply.
Kirk began to understand the idiom deafening silence as he strained to hear the constant humming of the engines, or the steady hiss of the ventilation system. Nothing. He turned around, trying to make out the contours of sickbay's inventory, but found it was absolutely dark, no light, whatsoever. Reaching out to feel any obstacle within his path he slowly, carefully walked to where he remembered sickbay's doors. Deafening silence and blinding darkness, his mind provided, while he felt his way. It's what he was right now: Deaf and blind. The ship had apparently lost power, even the emergency lighting didn't work. Life support was also down, except for artificial gravity. And they were drifting. Drifting somewhere off course, too, and he had no idea why. He was literally and in every sense of the word in the dark.
"What happened?" Taylor asked, still from his position near the bio-beds.
"I know as much as you do, Doc," Kirk said, barely able to keep his irritation from his voice. He'd finally reached the doors and of course they were shut fast. They'd need something like a crowbar to get them open. And then? The only people who might know what had happened to his ship were probably on the bridge, or maybe the engine room. Both were many decks away, and to get to either place would require climbing a lot of ladder spokes in a narrow tube. That would take time. Time they might not have. Did he really have a choice, though? "Where are your med kits, and mission equipment packs?" he asked, turning to where he suspected Chapel and Taylor.
The pack the medical personnel carried on away missions included several instruments which could be useful to them. A flashlight, for example. But what he wanted most at the moment, was a communicator.
"In the storage room," Chapel sighed. The room was well organized, easily reachable from any place in sickbay. If there was an emergency you didn't have to search for long to get the item you wanted. However, it had a door. A door that was now closed.
"There's also one in McCoy's office," Taylor said.
"Which has a door, also!" Kirk finished Taylor's sentence.
"McCoy was called to make a visit to the Romulan woman in the brig," Chapel said, and Kirk heard she was moving around, "I think he may have left the door open when he left."
"He has disabled the automatic closing mechanism, because … well, he just has," Taylor explained.
"What?" Kirk asked, a little worried. Why had Bones been called to the brig? And what did the power failure mean for the people on the other side of the force field that was holding the prisoner inside the cell? There should be an armed security guard in there, too, so even if the force field had failed … . Then again, Velal may have planned this, and all this time she may have been waiting for an opportunity to escape. But why would she have wanted McCoy in there with her?
"Well, when the door's closed we know he doesn't want to be disturbed, when it's open, we know it's safe to go in," Chapel said, chuckling a bit.
"And when he isn't there at all?" Kirk asked, smiling at his friend's peculiarities. There were still some that he didn't know about.
"Open!" Chapel shouted triumphantly already from within the small room. There was a noise as she stumbled over the chair, then a series of louder thuds and clanks as something, or rather a lot of things, fell on the floor.
Kirk blindly followed the noise and the following soft cursing of the head nurse, until he reached the entrance to Bones' office.
"Nurse?" he asked quietly, unsure about where to step. He didn't want to kick Christine in the head, in case she was crawling on the floor, trying to retrieve the things she'd just thrown off the desk.
Instead of an answer, the light cone of a flashlight greeted him, illuminating the clutter strewn all over the floor of the CMO's office.
"He's going to kill me," Chapel whispered unhappily.
Kirk stepped around the mess on the floor and grabbed the nurse's arm as she already stooped down to clean up.
"It's his fault. He shouldn't have left the pack open on his desk. Christine, I need a communicator. Did you find one?"
She straightened, half turning towards her captain, but then shining the light around on the floor. "This is the content of a med kit used on away missions. The communicator must have ..."
"Got it!" Kirk spotted it and bent over to retrieve it from the floor. "Thanks! Don't worry about the mess! Give Bones something to do when he reappears! We could use another flashlight, though! And something to pry open the doors!"
She nodded, and started to rummage around in the desk drawers.
"Kirk to bridge," he spoke into the communicator, hoping everyone on the bridge was safe and uninjured. He hadn't felt any blows or blasts that had rocked the ship, so there probably hadn't been any explosions, no damage to the hull. However, something abnormal, unpredictable must have occurred.
There was no answer. "Maybe they don't have a communicator with them, sir," Taylor who had finally found his way to McCoy's office as well stated.
"Well, there are some stored up there. But they're locked inside ..." Kirk started, but was interrupted.
"Scott to anyone!" the engineer's voice sounded exasperated.
"This is the captain," Kirk answered, a bit irritated that he had to answer to a call that was addressed to anyone. "What happened, Scotty?"
"Captain! It's good to hear you. I wish I knew. We're experiencing an almost total power failure. Luckily, the containment field around the reaction chamber is still functioning, as is artificial gravity, the rest … gone ... from one moment to the next."
"A malfunction?" Kirk speculated, and hoped it was. At least that would mean that it wasn't an attacker, or a trap, or an anomaly that could do further damage to the ship. At the moment they were without shields, weapons and engines, not a good position to be in when at someone's or something's mercy.
"Definitely not, sir," Scotty sounded offended, "all systems were functioning fine."
"They're definitely not functioning fine now, Scotty. When can you get everything online again?" Kirk didn't have time to be considerate of his chief engineer's pride right now. Scotty didn't seem to mind, though.
"Right now, our top priority are the life support systems. They should be up and running in a few minutes, sir. I planned to deal with the comm system after that, and then ..."
"No!" Kirk cut in quickly. "No, Scotty, we need the scanners fast, we must know what brought us into this situation. Also, our shields, weapons, and at least the impulse drive must be functional as soon as possible."
"Captain, we can't work on everything at the same time! I'm an engineer, not a magician!"
"Ah?" Kirk smiled, although Scotty couldn't see it. He knew his chief engineer was easily motivated by a little schmoozing. "Sorry, I sometimes forget. You've sure done magic to those engines before! But I guess, this is a more dire situation than before."
Scotty sighed. "Captain, I hope to have the scanners, shields, weapons and impulse engine online within the hour, but I can't promise anything."
"Just do your best Scotty. So far, that's always been enough. I hate drifting helplessly in space, it could be interpreted as an invitation to all sorts of felons!"
"Aye, we're on it …, now, sir."
The engineer said, and even before he'd stopped talking, Kirk heard the swoosh of the ventilation system coming to life. The sound was unusually loud, or it just seemed to be, in this nearly total darkness. Now, at least, we won't suffocate, he thought to himself. Aloud he said: "Good. I'll try to reach the bridge. Kirk out," and with that he pocketed his communicator.
"The bridge, Captain?" Chapel was standing next to him, handing him a pair of old-fashioned metal scissors, then shining at the door so Kirk could work on getting them open.
He took the scissors and tried to work them between the doors to apply a lever to pry open the door leading to the corridor. "Yes. Jeffries tube 21C should get me there."
Doctor Taylor sighed from somewhere in the background. Only Chapel was bold enough to actually comment: "Captain, crawling and climbing through the Jeffries tubes is strenuous to anyone. But in your condition ..."
"Thank you, Nurse Chapel, I'm aware of the risks, but I must know what's going on with my ship," he cut her off impatiently.
Chapel took a breath to steady herself. Then she went on: "With all due respect, sir, I don't think you are aware of the risks. If you strain yourself, your blood pressure will go up which will make you bleed inside your brain again. If that doesn't kill you right away, you're likely to fall off a ladder and break your neck. Then we'll be stranded with no power and no captain. But that won't be your problem then, will it?"
Kirk stopped fiddling with the scissors and turned to face Bones' head nurse.
"You've been taking lessons from Dr McCoy?" he asked, smiling arrogantly at her. He hoped to abash her, make her forget about his risky intentions, but without success - she probably couldn't see him properly.
Her face mirrored what he imagined to be his own expression as she gave him a superior smile: "Captain, after having made that disarray in Dr McCoy's office, I don't want to anger him further by letting you take that obstacle course through the Jeffries tubes. I for one, am very fond of my life, you know?"
He decided to put off the decision. "Well, Nurse, we'll see. First, we need to get these doors open. I'm sure people were injured when the power went out. Sickbay must be accessible to them."