I had just wanted to do up a cool reboot rewrite of the TOS episode 'Turnabout Intruder', in which a woman called Janice Lester gets revenge on Kirk for jilting her at the Academy by switching bodies with him and taking over the Enterprise, causing a court martial of the crew and a mutiny in the process. It turned into a 50 (handwritten) pg beast with some Spirk tucked in for good measure (but not til later).
This was my baby for quite a while, so I hope you all will enjoy it as much as I do/did.
Disclaimer: Star Trek isn't mine. Doubt it ever will be, but a girl can dream.
Warnings: some language and violence in later chapters; Spirk in later chapters but not explicit.
"Captain, we are safely in orbit around Camus II."
"Excellent, Mr. Sulu," Cpt. Kirk tells his pilot, then spins his chair to the right to face his first officer, "Spock, let's go. Uhura, alert the transporter room. Sulu, you have the conn."
Kirk and Spock leave the bridge and head down to Medical, where they add Dr. McCoy to their landing party, then make their way to the transporter room. Scotty and two security officers are waiting for them. Scotty greets them warmly, saying, "Five to beam down, sir?"
"Yes, indeed, Mr. Scott."
The men take their places on the platform and when all are situated on their respective pads, Kirk, barks out, "Energize!" to the operators. His body is enveloped in a familiar tingling sensation as he and the four others are disassembled into atoms and perfectly deposited on the planet below. The Enterprise had received a distress call from the small scientific outpost on Camus II only a day before, as soon as they had passed within communication range of the planet. A Dr. Coleman claimed that some sort of illness was killing the personnel one by one, until only he and one other were left, and would the Enterprise please come save them from this disease. How could Kirk refuse them?
The away team follows their captain and Chief Medical Officer, the latter pulling out his tricorder to make sure they weren't at risk of being infected. Kirk keeps an eye out for trouble, knowing how it loves and will more often than not find him. Spock and McCoy seem oblivious to danger, absorbed in their tricorders and instrument readouts. Kirk and the two security officers have their phasers out and ready. He won't let anything happen to his friends and crew. Not today. He quickly surveys their surroundings.
Camus II was, according to Federation archeologists, the site of an immense, thriving, and very advanced civilization that one day simply vanished, leaving their enormous city entirely abandoned. The outpost had been set up to continue further studies on the planet in order to determine why the civilization had vanished so completely. Nothing appeared wrong with the planet. The vegetation is still fully intact and healthy. They left no reports of a great disaster or epidemic. The archeological post had apparently saved time upon arrival by setting up in the remains of the buildings. Kirk notes the buildings are not particularly tall but instead take up a great deal of space on the ground; the tallest is only three stories. Each one is covered in thick vegetation that has crawled up the walls.
"Well, I can't find anything suspicious out here," McCoy states, lowering his tricorder, "If it's a sickness got 'em, it didn't come from nature… unless something contaminated the food or water, but I'd need to examine that to be sure, Jim."
"We'll do that when we find 'em. Spock, you got a life sign reading yet?"
"I am still attempting to lock on to an exact location, though all immediate evidence suggests they are very close."
"How many?" Kirk and McCoy ask together.
"Two. One male and one female… Human… and the male is approaching."
"Must be Dr. Coleman," Kirk mutters, "the guy that called us for help."
"Or it could be someone else entirely," McCoy growls, "someone who laid a trap…"
"Spock, Greenley, Redfeather, set phasers to stun. Be sharp."
His orders are met with a trio of affirmatives and the buzzing of the phasers being set. Wind rustles through the vine leaves on the abandoned buildings, whistles through broken and empty windows. Kirk feels his heart pounding in his chest. He turns to Spock, who motions to a nearby door that leads into a smaller building. Kirk nods in response. Spock's readings show the male approaching the door, and he will be there soon. Kirk tightens his grip on his phaser and notes Spock does the same, both preparing for a fight.
The battle never comes. The male on the readout is indeed Dr. Arthur Coleman. An archeologist of fair talent, he stands before them with hunched shoulders, close cropped white hair, and skin tanned and spotted from years of digging in the suns of many systems. His long, thin face bears an expression of relief as he extends a bony, gnarled hand out to the captain, saying, "Oh, thank God you're here! Yes, thank God! I was beginning to think you wouldn't come in time, that me and poor Miss Lester would die here! Please hurry, Miss Lester is in a bad way."
"You wouldn't be talking about Janice Lester, would you?" Kirk asks.
"Yes, do you know her? Oh, not now, sir, please just help us. Follow me…"
Kirk frowns slightly, following the hunched shoulders and ushering his team to follow him in turn. Janice Lester had once been a promising Command cadet at Starfleet Academy, the same year as Kirk. Just after their second year, however, she mysteriously disappeared, and it was largely presumed she had been kidnapped. Her parents offered a fantastic reward, and Starfleet launched a massive search alongside several police departments, but she couldn't be found. Just as inexplicably as she vanished, she reappeared, seeming no worse for wear. She could not recall where she had been or who had taken her, but she knew she had been kidnapped. No evidence could be found to nail down a perpetrator, and so no arrests were made. Starfleet put her through mandatory psychiatric evaluation before she resumed her studies in order to determine if she could handle the stress of being a command officer. She failed spectacularly, according to rumor.
Janice Lester was deemed unfit for duty and was quietly discharged from the Academy. Starfleet helped her get a position in her university of choice in whatever field she desired, so she chose archaeology and anthropology as her majors, adding on a minor in xenological studies, and quickly obtained both her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania respectively. Now it seemed she contracts with Starfleet for archaeological digs across the Federation. Kirk tries to remember her face. He does remember that he liked her very much. She would have made a great captain one day had those kidnappers not damaged her so badly.
The five men follow Coleman into the ancient building. No walls are there to break up the interior into rooms, making it look enormous compared to the outside. The floor is covered in a faded and broken mosaic of designs that can just barely be distinguished. Their booted footsteps echo off the walls, and Kirk can hear pieces of the ceiling crumbling onto the small tiles. It's sad to think the building is falling to bits around them.
Coleman leads them to the rear of the building and opens a trapdoor in the floor Kirk is sure he never would have found; even Spock seems surprised by it.
"Miss Lester is down here, where it's dark and cool. I burned the other bodies to avoid their disease spreading, but I guess I was too late for Janice," he tells you sadly.
McCoy responds quietly, "I'll go down and have a look at her, then call the Enterprise. Lead the way, Dr. Coleman."
"Of course, Dr.-…?"
"Forgive me. My name is McCoy. Leonard McCoy."
The doctors disappear down the trapdoor, and a few minutes later, McCoy calls for Kirk. The captain follows the steps down into a dimly lit room filled with scientific equipment. Several rooms shoot off from this one. McCoy calls again, and Kirk follows his voice into one of the smaller rooms. This one is even more dimly lit than the first, and his eyes take a while to adjust. The walls and floors are simple packed earth. What appears to be the sickroom contains two rows of six cots and an ancient machine Kirk presumes is diagnostic. He approaches the two doctors and the young woman resting fitfully on a cot.
Janice Lester looks small, frail, and pallid, very sickly in comparison with bright and cheerful personality at the Academy. Her short, dark hair is a mess of sweaty tangles, her face shining with perspiration. Eyes move frantically beneath her lids. Muscles twitch under her skin. Kirk feels very sorry for her.
"You stay here with her and Coleman, Jim," McCoy says softly, "I've got to go up and call the ship. Can't get a signal down here. I need to get Miss Lester up there and run a full diagnostic. I'll be right back."
McCoy hurries out and back up to the main level. Kirk turns his attention to Lester. He is surprised to see a pair of grey eyes staring blearily up at him. She parts her cracked lips and rasps out, "Jim… that you?"
"Yeah… yeah, Janice, it is," Kirk replies, "I'd say it's good to see you again, but not like this."
"So… you're a… a captain already… knew you had it in you."
"You did, too, you know."
"Still do, Jim. If I… if I would've had more time to… to readjust… they just wanted rid of me…"
That strikes Kirk as odd, but he tells her, "No, they didn't want rid of you. They did all they could, but… you didn't come back the same. You weren't predictable anymore. You just weren't ready then."
Her gaze darkens as she says, "So you think they were right in drumming me out?"
"Well, I mean, I don't really know, Janice. I wasn't there. I don't know what happened to you or in your eval or-"
"No! You think they were right!" she cries, suddenly hysterical, "You think I'm crazy!"
"Janice, Janice, no. Please, Janice, just calm down. I didn't mean to upset you, okay? I'm… I'm sorry. Please, just calm down."
He reaches out to calm her. His fingertips graze her shoulder. His world goes black. When he wakes, he is strapped to a table with Lester grinning over him, her hair hanging lank about her shoulders. She looks completely mad.
"I'm going to prove they were wrong about me, Jim," she hisses, "We found this old machine the ancient inhabitants left behind. You know what it does? It transfers life-energy from one body to another. Know what that means? It means that I can walk around in whatever body I want… like yours."
Kirk struggles vainly against his restraints, wondering where the hell McCoy is. Didn't he say he would be back by now? Lester chuckles at him.
"I am going to do exactly what I want with your body, Jim, and there is nothing you can do to stop me. Coleman, strap me in. Can't have him escaping once he's me."
"As you wish, Janice," the old man replies slowly.
He pushes and pulls and wriggles fiercely, trying to escape his bonds. Why aren't McCoy and Spock here to help him? What's taking them so long? Are they under fire? Are they hurt? Are they-?
Lester barks out a command, and Kirk blacks out again.
xXxXx
"So sorry, Dr. McCoy," Coleman says, "Didn't mean to shut the door on you. Forgot you wouldn't be able to find it again. Thankfully, Janice is no worse."
McCoy lets out a huff, telling him, "Well, you're lucky. She's in bad shape. I've had my team set up a nice room for her away from prying eyes. I've gotta go get Redfeather-"
"I'll help you, doctor," Kirk states, emerging from the shadows, "Don't need to get anyone else to help."
"Alright, Jim, help me find a stretcher…"
Janice Lester is mercifully unconscious. They find a good stretcher after a quick search, and Lester is so light that McCoy feels they are barely carrying anything but the stretcher. Spock is waiting for them at the top of the steps, along with Greenley and Redfeather.
"Doctor, is everyone well?" Spock asks flatly; McCoy knows he was a bit worried.
"Besides Miss Lester? Yeah, they're alright. Coleman just shut the invisible door by accident. Here, you lead the way, Spock. Me and Jim got this handled."
Halfway back to the transport point, McCoy is starting to feel the extra 120 pounds of dead weight he and Kirk are hauling across the deserted city. Kirk is strangely quiet. McCoy remembers that Kirk knew Lester at the Academy before her strange disappearance, so he makes nothing of it. Spock calls up to the Enterprise to beam up seven where five had been sent down, and McCoy is relieved when he is transported in one piece and not fused with the stretcher.
Nurse Chapel is waiting for him with a hover stretcher. McCoy and Kirk carefully deposit Lester onto the next stretcher, and McCoy and Chapel take her up to medical, Coleman on their heels. Lester is placed in a private room, away from regular Enterprise patients in order to better assess her mental and physical state. Once she is settled in, he allows Kirk and Coleman to enter.
"How's the patient?" Kirk asks.
"Unconscious. Think she'll make a full recovery. I'm gonna order another round of more in depth tests and set up a rotation for the nurses-"
"I'd like to help, Dr. McCoy," Coleman interrupts, "I… we've been through a great deal together, Janice and I, and I'd very much like to be there for her."
McCoy sizes the other man up. He's an archaeologist, not a medical doctor… but he was pretty smart to recognize disease and trying to prevent its spread. Coleman does seem to care for the girl. After a moment, McCoy agrees, "Alright, you can sit with her, but if anything goes downhill, you call for medical personnel the second it happens, got it? Here, lemme get ya a comm to the nurse's station…"
A nurse comes in before he can leave, handing him a datapad with test results from the body material they could recover from the dead Camus II scientists. He is stunned.
"Dr. McCoy? What is it?"
"Why, your crew didn't die from disease, Dr. Coleman."
"What? Of course, they did! I watched them deteriorate with my own eyes! One at a time!"
"They deteriorated, yes, but from disease. They all died of celebium poisoning."
Coleman resembles a goldfish, opening and closing his mouth, unable to formulate a response. McCoy huffs, continuing, "And that I find particularly odd because Miss Lester is not suffering from celebium poisoning. In fact, I can find nothing at this time that would explain her illness. Now, there could be something immediate scans have missed, so we're gonna go in for some more in depth tests shortly."
Coleman continues to gape. McCoy huffs again, grumbling, "Go in and sit with her while I go get yer damn comm…"
xXxXx
"Listen, Coleman, you better stay here and keep him out of the way," Lester hisses, motioning to her own unconscious body lying on the biobed.
It's strange to hear Lester's words come out of a strange man's mouth, but this was what she wanted. Coleman asks flatly, "How would you like me to do that?"
"However you would like. Personally, I want you to kill him. That way he can't come back and fuck this up."
"Oh no, Janice, I couldn't kill him, no when he hasn't done anything wrong… and that's… that's you laying there. Oh, I couldn't do it, dear girl-"
"Watch it, old man," she growls, "Another slip like that, especially in front of someone, and I throw you in the brig. Do you understand me?"
Coleman's only reply is "Yessir," calm and quiet. Vivid blue eyes narrow, eyes so unlike Lester's even with her crazed fire behind them, and she says, "Good. Keep him… her out of the way."
McCoy returns with the comm unit, grumbling about incompetence. Lester slaps a grin on Kirk's face and greets him, "There you are, doc. Thought you got lost."
"I didn't, but my nurses seem to have done. Anyway, Coleman, here's a comm for ya. Anything you need, she starts goin' downhill, you call for help and we'll come runnin'."
"Of course, Dr. McCoy," Lester says, "I'm sure Coleman with take very good care of Janice."
The grin Lester wears on Kirk's face is terrifying. It's unfortunate McCoy doesn't see it.
My first semester of grad school is done so hopefully I will be able to update on a regular basis. Hope you all will enjoy it!