A/N: Thanks to everyone who's shown interest in this story. Sometimes I think my interpretation of Bones comes off as too snarky. If anyone has any thoughts on this, let me know.

Chapter 5

"Damnit, I'm a doctor not a security officer, Jim," Bones spat when the captain included him on the list of those Starfleet personnel going to the factory.

"Cupcake couldn't prepare an entire security team in the time I gave him. We need all the phasers we can muster. Besides, you took combat training at the Academy and don't all you Southerners love your guns more than your wives?"

"And we have a bias against Pepsi and bleed sweet tea. What's your point? Loving guns doesn't mean we want to rush into a location and get our heads blown off because our fearless leader doesn't have a shred of a plan."

Jim clapped him on the shoulder and returned, "Not having a plan has kept us alive for all these missions. If we start planning things now, we'll end up with holes where there shouldn't be any."

"You've already got holes where there shouldn't be any. There's one right between your ears."

"And yet you love me anyway. What's that say about you?"

"That I've got as much sense as a headless chicken that refuses to curl up in the cooking pot."

The captain paused, his brow knit together as though contemplating something. "I can't decide if that means you have good sense or crappy sense. If I were a chicken with its head cut off, I wouldn't help out by curling up in the cooking pot for humans."

Bones was content to let Jim continue wondering about that. All doctors swore an oath to protect, prolong, and uphold life. He'd been on missions before, had fired phasers before, had even killed to defend his crew before, but each time was another scratch on the Hippocratic Oath he upheld. But this was Jim asking. He'd followed Jim into Hell. He would follow him into Hell again at the asking.

The last person he expected to see getting off a shuttle outside the Federation building was Ensign Monroe, who wasn't due to arrive until later in the day. Thank God she wasn't wearing the normal Starfleet skirt that accompanied a woman's uniform but was sporting a pair of black trousers instead. The blue lubricant staining her face, hair, and uniform said she'd come directly from her work in Engineering. Of course, the sight of her brought back the not-so-subtle offer she'd left ringing in his ears the last time they'd spoken. Jump her bones indeed.

"What are you doing here, Ensign Monroe?" Jim asked. "You're supposed to come on the next transport to look at the city infrastructures."

"The demolitions expert you wanted is laid up in Sickbay, Sir."

"And you're certified as a demolitions expert and can replace him?"

"Of course not, Captain. I'm sharp as tack but didn't receive any kind of demolitions training. However, I do understand all the stress points in buildings. If they've hidden bombs in the factory, I can point you in the right direction by telling you where they would do the most structural damage. I'm also certified in advanced hand to hand combat."

"All right, you can come. Cupcake, you got those phasers I asked you to bring?"

Breath whooshed out of Bones' lungs when Jim agreed to take her along. It wasn't that he disliked her, but if she froze in the middle of combat and Jim got hurt protecting her… He didn't want to finish that thought. Everyone deserved a shot to prove themselves. Everyone deserved a second chance. Extending that courtesy to Ritha was just a little more dangerous than someone who wasn't overcoming a track record of flightiness.

"I was twelve, Bones," she said in a voice softer than the tone she normally used. "There was a bad storm happening when thugs sent by a rival corporation broke into our apartment. At first, my father refused to hand over the plans to a turbine engine he was contracted to design. No matter how hard they hit him, he refused, so they started beating me. That's when he caved.

"Sometimes all I can remember is the thunder, the shouting, and the helplessness." She paused and squeezed her eyes closed as though caught in the grips of those memories. "So yeah, when there are loud noises I sometimes feel like I'm twelve again and forget to function. That's why I've turned down promotions, to try to keep myself from being given any command responsibility."

"Talk to Spock. There are therapies that can help you deal with it in a healthy way."

"I thought you were in charge of psychological duties on the ship."

"Yeah, but I can't keep myself from thinking about stealing your bones." He flashed a small grin and rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment, but before he could say more, Jim was shouting for the team to load up.

***

Whose idea was it again to access the plant through old school sewer tunnels that ran beneath the building? A pile of roaches crunched beneath Ritha's boot in a sickening squishing sound. Rats skittered across the narrow platform alongside the sewage ditch and disappeared around a bend when their lights illuminated an area. The worst, though, was the smell. Supposedly the sewage tunnels hadn't been used in several decades. Could have fooled her, because the scent of rotten sewage made her want to gag.

The next time she got the bright idea to volunteer for a mission, someone needed to crack her over the head with a twenty-four millimeter socket wrench. Shower, aisle three. She didn't voice her complaints when no one else was complaining and kept up with the group's progress through the tunnels. Another wriggling pile of roaches crunched under foot, and her eyes squeezed closed when she thought she felt something drop down the back of her uniform shirt. It's all in your head, Ritha, she said to herself. It was all in her head until Cupcake, whose real name she knew to be Paul Brighton, ground the heel of his palm against her back. Something squished into her skin.

"I don't wanna know," she whispered.

"No, you don't," he whispered back.

The cockroach moisturizer Paul had just introduced her to was forgotten the instant Captain Kirk stopped in front of a rusty ladder beneath a manhole cover. A nod from Spock, whose hands were full of a portable schematics finder, was all they needed to know it was show time, so Ritha eased her phaser from its holster and glanced down at the charge to ensure it had full power. There was no turning back when Kirk, being the hothead he was, insisted on climbing the ladder first to slip into the factory.

She followed Bones up when it was her turn and immediately took cover behind a large turbine where she craned her head to get a look at the interior of the factory. The layout was simple. One giant room was crammed with various machines, conveyor belts, and pallets loaded with crates, providing plenty of cover for any enemies within. Along the opposite wall were positioned several large bay doors and docks for the loading and unloading of hover vehicles. The back wall was dominated by a series of metal stairs leading to a glass wall through which she could see an office area. Said stairs also led to a series of catwalks suspended in the upper section of the warehouse.

Finding the alleged terrorists amidst all the clutter was going to be challenging. There were so many places for them to hide that would nullify any element of surprise. She flinched when a loud bang came from the direction of the stairwell and echoed through the factory interior. A moment later, a pair of men, carrying a crate between them, climbed the stairs toward the office. She wasn't an expert by any means but would be willing to bet that crate contained an explosive device.

Her glance shot to the captain to see if he was preparing for action yet, but Kirk seemed to be content to hold his silence for the time being. She discovered why a moment later when the pair of men made a series of whistles that were responded to by whistles in other areas of the factory. The end of the brief exchange was punctuated by Spock holding up seven fingers, which she presumed was to indicate the number of enemies they were facing. Seven against six were pretty even odds, she figured, especially considering the six Starfleet personnel were highly organized and trained.

Spock was the one who moved first when he stood up and walked around the industrial grinder he'd been hiding behind to say, "By Federation Regulation A29.32, you are hereby ordered to surrender yourselves into custody for questioning."

There was a moment of silence in which all activity in the factory stopped. It was broken when one of the men shouted, "Scatter!"

All Hell broke loose. Ritha bailed out from behind the turbine when men rushed their position, because it was either move or be caught in a cramped area where fighting was ill-advised. A roll brought her in range of one of the terrorists and gave her the opportunity to take a shot at him with her phaser. The phaser should have stunned him. It impacted on his chest right where she wanted it to, but he didn't so much as flinch. Two hundred pounds of angry man was suddenly charging her.

"Phasers are no good!" Jim shouted from across the factory.

Really? She hadn't guessed that at all. Rather than bracing for impact, she spun out of the way at the last moment and brought her doubled fists smacking against the back of the man's neck. A move like that should have snapped his neck or at least flung him forward on his face and given her the opportunity to put distance between them. The blow did neither. In fact, he didn't even seem phased by it, and she didn't have the chance to get that much-needed distance.

His meaty hand snatched her by the shoulder before she could get away. Desperate not to get flung across the room like a rag doll, she slammed the heel of her palm against his face with enough force it snapped his head back, but he didn't release her. Not even when she sent her knee crashing against his soft stomach could she stop the inevitable. The man threw her away from him hard. Her short flight was put to an immediate halt when she smacked into a solid wall of metal and found herself in a heap on the floor.

Pain made her ribs ache, made getting up a little more difficult, and made finding her feet precious seconds slower than she needed to be. Blue eyes flew wide when the enemy grabbed up a length of rebar from a pile of scrap metal. Getting hit with that would mean broken bones or death, so keeping her own head on her shoulders was more important than playing hero when Jim shouted for Bones to get to Spock.

Ritha dropped to the floor and rolled under the nearby conveyor belt. Popping up on the other side proved just as dangerous when another terrorist hit the control housing not two feet from her. The control panel lit up as it came out of its sleep state, giving her a truly awful idea, but by that point, the man she'd been facing off against had rounded the machine to join the one quickly recovering from his recent impact.

"Paul, cover me!" she shouted to the chief security officer.

"Don't get any crazy ideas. Those are reserved for Cupcake Junior."

"I think crazy is called for in this situation."

The brief exchange ended with Paul rushing the two men--like that was any less crazy than any plan she could come up with--and Ritha diving around them to get to the control panel. She punched in a series of commands on the touch screen to override all previous settings and then slapped her hand against the start-up icon. The conveyor belt kicked on in a hum that was quickly drowned out by the groaning of the heavy metal blades activating. A truly awful idea indeed, but it was their fault for not surrendering when Spock had asked them to.

Paul was under pressure trying to hold them both off, so a roll took her up onto the conveyor where she blasted one of them with her phaser. The blast didn't hurt, but it sure did get his attention. He jumped up on the conveyor with her. Her brow knit for all of two seconds when she noticed a scratch on his cheek. Clear, blue liquid leaked from the gash. Spock's green blood proved not everyone in the universe bled red, but something in her gut didn't think it was normal.

She was poised to dance out of the way when the terrorist charged her, because all she had to do was stay out of his grasp until they got close enough to the blades for her to plan to be effective. Disaster struck. The sudden bang of metal against metal startled her just long enough for a solid shoulder to ram into her gut and fling her onto her back. He was on top of her a second later. Trying to throw him off and keep his hands from closing around her throat was a desperate struggle she had no time for. Guttural swishes of blades sweeping back and forth got louder with every second that was wasted.

There was zero time and little reserve left in her tank. Summoning the remnants of her strength, Ritha whacked him on the underside of his nose and was treated to a rather satisfying crunch of cartilage and bone giving way. It proved just enough of a distraction for her to unbalance him. She shoot to her feet, spun around the enemy, and delivered a kick to the center of his back that had him stumbling forward. He realized the danger too late to stop himself from being sucked into the blades.

Morbid fascination kept her from squeezing her eyes shut to avoid the sight of his body being mangled up inside the blades. Skin was shredded. Blue blood exploded inside the housing like a grape being popped underfoot. Metal broke… The conveyor she was standing on came to a shuddering halt when pieces of a metal skeleton became lodged in the path of the blades and activated a security stop override. A metal skeleton? Self-preservation bade her not move any closer to the blades to get a better look, but she'd be damned if there weren't broken and mangled pieces of metal skeleton inside that grinder chamber. Metal?

Shouts from the others who were still engaged in fighting kept her from standing there gawking while her brain tried to process what she'd just discovered. Pockets of fighting were still carrying on, so it wasn't like she could stand there with her thumb up her ass. Freaking robots! They were supposed to be fighting organic life forms, not flipping robots!

***

Bones grunted. One of Spock's legs was precariously positioned on his shoulder, the other stretched out to the side to accommodate Bones' body between them. Another frustrated sound escaped him as he thrust his weight against the underside of the thigh propped on his shoulder while simultaneously twisting the leg in an attempt to find just the right position to slide home. No dice. Spock's muscles were just too damn well-developed. They wouldn't unclench enough to allow Bones to complete the maneuver.

To make matters worse, Spock was staring at him with those big brown eyes of his all full of curiosity and trust. He wasn't blinking. Just staring silently. Damn that Vulcan control of his! Just once, he wanted Spock grunting, sweating, and swearing just like the rest of them.

"Quit looking at me, damnit!"

"Where else would you prefer I look, Doctor?"

"I don't know. Just stop watching me! This is uncomfortable enough as it is without you staring at me like I'm a juicy piece of Vulcan whatchamacallit. And don't roll your eyes at me, Goddamnit."

"A Vulcan does not engage in such a human display of annoyance as rolling one's eyes. Is there a more preferable position than this one? Perhaps if I were to turn over…"

"No! And you were thinking about rolling your eyes at me."

"I knew there was something funny about the way you two stare at each other," Jim suddenly said from behind them. "I just didn't expect this."

Another groan escaped him, because this was something the captain would never let them live down. He eased his grip on Spock's leg and snapped, "Oh shut up, Jim. I'm trying to pop his hip back into socket, something that would be a Hell of a lot easier if you weren't standing there cackling."

"Me? Cackle? It's just a shock when you round a corner to find two sweaty male bodies entwined together."

Ignoring Jim was best in a moment like this, so Bones blocked him out in favor of giving it one more go. He twisted the half-Vulcan's leg, leaned his weight onto the appendage, and then thrust hard against it. The leg gave suddenly and was followed by a popping and grinding sound as bone finally slid into place. Relief made him weak, because he hadn't wanted to administer sedatives and muscle relaxants in the field. He eased Spock's leg back to the floor and then got away from him as quickly as possible.

"Need a cigarette?" Jim asked.

The look he gave Jim could have melted an iceberg it was so hot with annoyance and anger. "Spock, you need to stay off your feet until the inflammation decreases. That means I don't want you running around this factory giggling like a schoolgirl just because you have a new toy to play with."

"Doctor McCoy, contrary to what you believe, I am capable of controlling any fascination I may have at the discovery that the alleged terrorists are androids."

"Well, I'm not," Jim said. "Did Tobra deliberately keep this information from us? Or did he honestly not know robots were being employed to attack their infrastructure? I'm leaning toward the former. How do you not know the people attacking you are robots? A normal person wonders why the enemy they're fighting is ten times stronger and a thousand times harder to kill."

"And the geeking out begins," Bones muttered. He gave Spock an anti-inflammatory and a mild pain killer before gathering up his medical kit.

"Jumping to conclusions is uncalled for here when their lack of law enforcement technology and experience with terrorist activity can account for being unaware of the true nature of the alleged terrorists."

"I think you can drop the 'alleged' now. If it smells like a terrorist, plants bombs like a terrorist, and tries to blow up food plants like a terrorist, it's a terrorist."

"Did you forget to take your anti-snark medicine today, Bones?"

"Gee, you know, I think I might have forgotten in between attending meetings, getting dragged through sewers, and having my head almost turned into a baseball by androids. I've got two dead security officers, one who's going to need the vertebrae in his neck stabilized, and a crazy engineer who almost got herself mangled. On top of that, I had to leg-rape a hobgoblin."

Bones would admit to being a little surprised when Jim gripped his shoulder instead of coming up with another joke and even more surprised by the comfort he took in the contact. Spock could have been killed. Jim could have been killed. What worried him more than that was the fear he'd felt when he'd seen Ritha trapped beneath one of the men and barreling toward blades that would have sliced her and diced her like an onion. No woman was supposed to be anywhere near as important to him as Jim except Joanna, and she didn't count because she was his daughter. He was grateful Jim didn't make a big deal out of the touchy-feely moment.

"Spock, does the level of Istabul technology allow for the making of androids?"

"It is conceivable. However, such technological advancement should have been disclosed on their application for Federation membership."

"Let's get our wounded and dead out of here. Monroe is body-bagging the android you dropped with a crane for further study, and it looks like we need to pay another visit to President Tobra. I want some answers. If he knew about this and failed to warn us so we could properly prepare, there'll be Hell to pay."

"Such a meeting should wait for a few days to allow us to study these androids and determine just how advanced they are," Spock said.

"No, we're going straight back to the Federation building and dragging him out of bed if that's what's necessary. I want to see him right-the-fuck-now."

And as per usual, Bones had to step in and be the mitigating voice between Spock's logic and Jim's visceral emotions. "Give it until tomorrow morning, Jim. Let Spock and the other science officers and engineers have tonight to study the damn things. One night, Jim. You can keep a lid on it for one night."