Jim rubs at his forehead. "You're saying we need a battery."

McCoy holds his hand up. "What I'm saying is that if we move the crew from the cave and bring them to the ship, we can hook them up to our warp core and reroute the power to stand in for the energy from the rocks they're currently drawing on. Maybe it'll give us something."

Jim rubs a knuckle under his eyes. He's in his undershirt, not even his command uniform and the sight of it is odd here on the bridge.

"Give us what?" he asks.

"I don't know." McCoy's hands feel too empty. He's not sure he got his socks on right, because they feel bunched up in his boots. Good God was he was motivated to leave that room. The wedge of fabric between his toes is an unfortunate casualty of the moment, and the fact that his foot will be bothered by it or not, he's more than certain it was worth it. "We still need to be able to scan them. But that might be possible out here, away from those rocks."

"What about from orbit?" Sulu asks. "If we load the crew up, we could fly out of here and get away from the interference."

"If we can move them, even," Jim says. "What do we do, put them all in the cargo bay?"

That sounds particularly gruesome. The Franklin's cargo bay isn't half of what the Enterprise's was, and that'd be not exactly a spacious fit. McCoy can too well imagine the sight of all of those bodies stacked up haphazard and ungainly. Still, though. It's not that mine, and that's something.

"We could," McCoy says. "Hell, if we do that, we could just take them all back to Yorktown."

And then he could really do something with them, in that hospital they had there. More advanced than even the facilities he had on the Enterprise, and considering what he ordered after its - her he can nearly hear Jim correct him - last refit, that's saying something. He'd demanded a laundry list and then some, unsure of what they'd find out here. That had been years ago now, and what Jim had dragged them to had needed each and everything McCoy could think of. This, now, is just more of the same.

And they could be going, done with this planet, back in Federation space, and McCoy could have his damn life back, private quarters included. He doesn't look over at Spock. Whatever insufferably logical destination that brain of his arrived at, McCoy wants no part of it. He wants off this rock, a working operating room and biobeds, and for Spock to stick the thought of the two of them back where it came from.

"If we do that, we'll need electrical hookups," Scotty says. "And I'll need some time to reroute the ship's power."

"And we've got to have a way to monitor their vitals as we move them," McCoy says.

"I can compile the data into a central readout," Chekov says. "The displays here are very crude, but the interface is serviceable."

"I'll let the security teams to expect some more activity," Uhura says. "The last thing we'll need is another firefight, since it'll take awhile to get everyone out."

"Great," McCoy says. Outside the porthole, the night is still black. "Let's get started."

"Wait," Jim says.

"Wait?" McCoy asks. He shakes his head. "Jim, the longer they're in there-"

"-We'll start with one," Jim says. "Not all of them."

"One?" McCoy asks. "One?"

"We don't know what we're doing yet."

"We're rescuing them from a goddamn mine," McCoy says. His head still hurts. And exhaustion is beating at him, the steady drag of it making his head swim. "I'd say that's pretty simple, now isn't it."

"You're talking about moving our crew in an unknown state, when we don't even know this plan will work." Jim frowns, his eyes creasing. He's turning the idea over, but McCoy doesn't have much patience for anything other than an emphatic yes and a hand moving the first of them. That'll be that much sooner they'll be out of here, and McCoy's ready to go.

"What're you going to do, leave them there?" he asks.

"Maybe." Jim's frown deepens. "Maybe we should."

"Great, Jim, we'll just let them be in there and we can hang out here, continuing to have a good long think about what to do," McCoy says. "Let me know when you come up with a better idea."

"Bones."

That mine is wrong in a way that crawls across McCoy's skin. The planet is, and the mine is the worst of it. Jim can be as calm about it as he likes, but McCoy's getting the crew out, and fast.

"We're here now," McCoy says. "And we have the time, the people, and a place to put the crew. Sulu's right- we can be up in orbit soon enough."

"I just think…" Jim bites at his lip. "What if we're wrong? We can start with one and go from there."

McCoy huffs out a laugh. Jim Kirk, cautious as his grandmother.

"Sure, Jim, that's perfect, one at a time, slow as can be. Maybe we can have them draw straws for who gets to get saved," McCoy says. "Let the others know we just didn't have a chance to take them, too."

"It's when we get them out," Jim says, "Not if. We're not talking about an 'if' here."

"You sound real sure about that," McCoy says.

"Bones." Jim steps closer. "This idea - it's a good one, but those are lives we're talking about. Our crew."

McCoy rocks backwards. "You think I don't know that?"

"I'm just saying, let's not go head first into this," Jim says. He puts his hands on his hips. His hair is a mess. "I just want to be careful, which frankly I thought you'd agree with."

"Don't play God, Jim. Get them all out of there."

"Bones," Jim says again. "Listen."

"And if we're going to be frank, Jim, then-"

"-Let's not rush this," Jim says.

"The sooner we're back on Yorktown-"

"-We're going back to Yorktown, just first-"

"-We need to know what the problem is, so that we can-"

"-If you'd listen, you'd know that I-"

"-Get them back, Jim-"

"-Which we will do when-"

"-And get them off this hellscape of a -"

"-Stop." Jim presses his lips together. "Now."

McCoy presses forward. "Jim-"

"-You're all dismissed," Jim says. Out of the corner of his eye, McCoy sees Uhura cross her arms. They're all watching and McCoy should probably care, but mostly he wants ice for his head, clean socks, and to have at least half the crew moved by morning. Two thirds, if Jim would shut his damn trap and start working.

"Captain?" Sulu asks.

"Just- go. Outside. Somewhere." Jim points towards the door. "Doctor McCoy, you stay. Spock, you too."

When they've gone, Jim takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them, his jaw is set.

"You can be mad at me," he says slowly. His voice is low. "But what I say goes. Understood?"

McCoy shifts on his feet.

"This is the only time I've ever heard you argue for anything but the utmost caution when it comes to the crew's health," Jim says. "So you can explain your reasoning, or you can go back to bed and we'll discuss this in the morning."

Bed is the absolute last place McCoy wants to go. He raises his eyes to the ceiling. Prudence, McCoy can hear in Spock's voice.

"Don't you start now," he snaps at Spock.

"Captain, the Doctor is correct that efficiency will alleviate any further detrimental effect-"

"-See, Jim-"

"-That we are unable to detect because of the interference to our scanners. However," Spock says. "Care must be taken."

"We will get them out of there," Jim says. "I promise."

McCoy probably shouldn't scoff but he does anyway.

"Seems like you've promised a lot of things, Jim. This sounds like just another one of them."

"You're tired," Jim says. "And you're being unfair."

"Me?" McCoy asks. "Me? Goddamn it Jim, get your ears checked, do you know what those words even mean?"

"And a bit of an ass," Jim says, ignoring him. "The crew is coming back home with us. And if you'd like to talk to me, you can find a time that isn't in the middle of the rest of the senior staff."

"Well, I'm honored to still have the chance to talk to you face to face," McCoy says. Jim doesn't flinch at the sarcasm in his tone, just steadily stares back at him. "I didn't know opportunities would be so damn fleeting."

"That's enough," Jim says softly and walks to the door, leaving McCoy behind.

In the corridor, Sulu and Uhura stop talking too abruptly for the subject to be anywhere close to benign. Scotty raises both eyebrows and looks between McCoy and Jim.

"Everything all right?" he asks.

"We're starting with Chapel," Jim says. "She's nearest the front so she's easy to get at, she seems like she's still in good condition, and when she's back with us, she'll be helpful as we deal with the rest of the crew."

McCoy's knows Jim well enough to recognize an olive branch when he sees one, though this isn't exactly the type of appeasement he particularly wants. But isn't that the rub of it, he hasn't gotten a single damn choice about any of this in so long he's not sure what he'd do with freedom over his life that didn't come in the form of orders, assignments, and a list of duties. He raises his hand to his face. He's so tired.

Scotty claps his hands together. "Alrighty then, Commander, let's do this."

McCoy turns to Spock. "What?"

"Your-" Uhura points to McCoy's wrist. She's smiling. Just a little, but it's there. Good thing someone's having a fun time tonight. "Nice shirt."

Twin stripes winking up at him from his cuffs in the gray light of the corridor. He stares at his wrists. "Hell."

Sulu's grinning too when he grabs McCoy's shoulder. "Should have known you always wanted to be the one left with the conn."

McCoy's too impatient for their good moods, though he knows enough to recognize the thrill of having something to do. Lifts the spirits, it does. Another mission and McCoy might have that same grin. As it is, the late hour grinds into him and he only rolls his eyes and follows Sulu out the hatch and into the dark of Altamid's night. It's still humid as all get out, and the day's dust hangs heavy, no breeze to blow it along, which makes the stick of the air all that much worse. McCoy wipes his hand over the back of his neck and in the light cast by the ship, his palm comes away sweaty.

"Doctor?" Spock asks quietly.

McCoy turns and waits. Spock's collar isn't laying flat against his throat. It's instead very slightly mussed, much like the rest of him. An edge of disarray that McCoy would really rather not look at right now.

"What is it?" he asks when Spock only offers up that annoying brand of silence he does so well.

"Are you well?" he finally asks.

"I'm stuck on this damn planet, and I have every intention of getting off of it," McCoy says. He frowns. He's pretty sure he didn't mean to answer. "No."

"You do realize that the Captain shares your goal."

McCoy tosses his hands up. "Do I look like I care?"

"Not particularly."

"Then there you have it," McCoy says and starts towards the mine. Spock is quiet as he follows, and it's about damn time McCoy had some peace to work in. He's had enough talking for today, and he sure as hell doesn't need any more.

…

"Easy does it," McCoy says. There's only thirty extra people standing around trying to help. He can too clearly imagine Chapel rolling her eyes at the scene. Find something to do, she would say so that he wouldn't have to. "Set her down gentle now, you hear?"

The biobeds on the Franklin are antique, at best. Useless more like, though McCoy punches at the readout all the same. It spits a line of nonsense at him and he smacks it off.

"Chekov?" he asks, but he can't find that head of curls in the crowd around him. "Good God. Get out of here. Get. You and you, too. Go."

Ensigns scatter, though not fast enough. Ops, half of them are, and McCoy never wanted the Engineering department taking up his entire sickbay but Scotty's holding a goddamn coil of wire and splicing Chapel into an newly rigged outlet. His nurses knew enough to not clog up space like this, but he's only got a handful of his old team here and three of them are bent over Chapel all ready.

"Laughlan," he says. Frowns. "Landridge?"

"Lavigne," the one by Chapel's feet says. She straightens. "Sir."

"Lavigne, where the hell is Mr. Chekov?"

"I'm not sure, sir," she says.

"Find him. Now."

"This is what you do with this?" he hears and spins around - everyone needs to go - but it's Jaylah there, her fingers trailing along the edge of an empty biobed.

Which could be holding another crew member.

McCoy closes his eyes. When he opens them, Jaylah is standing over Chapel. Gently, she touches her blonde hair.

"Morning," he offers. Or afternoon, could be. Probably is by now.

"I thought this room was for sleeping, maybe," she says. "All these beds."

"Medicine." He waves towards the mass of wires. "Of a sort."

Jaylah fingers a limp lock of hair. "You will fix her?"

"'Course." He taps at his tricorder. Chekov was here a minute ago. McCoy cranes to see out the door that leads down the corridor. "Soon as can be."

"The others?" Jaylah asks.

McCoy shakes his head. "Waiting on the good captain's word."

He feels for Chapel's pulse and runs his tricorder over her. That reading is at least accurate. Mostly. Which is something, considering the mess the rest of his diagnosis equipment is giving him.

"Say." He lowers his tricorder. "You have any family in there?"

"No."

That's better, maybe, considering. Though he won't say that out loud, not to the set of her shoulders. "The others. The ones like you, that Jim wants to get out off the planet. You know them?"

Her wad of spit lands halfway between them. He feels his eyebrow rise. Across the biobed, one of the other nurses - Navares, he's pretty sure - looks up.

"They are vermin." Her ponytail drags across her back as her head shakes. "Your Starfleet. Wanting to help them. It makes no sense."

He signs. It must be afternoon, he's certainly tired enough. "It's what we do."

"Where were you when we were here alone, wanting help to come from the sky?"

The sun streaming through the porthole is reflecting off the screen of his tricorder. He tips it so it's in the shade again. These old ships and their windows. McCoy got good and sick of staring at stars and warp trails, and that's without goddamn holes cut in the walls of his sickbay. Here, the sun glints too bright. Jaylah's sun, briefly, for the time she spent here, however many years that was.

He sinks back onto his heels. "Where are you from?"

"Urq'u'an." She spins on her heel, a squeak against the decking. "You call it Lambda Caeli III. It is a terrible name."

"Yeah." He flicks his tricorder of and then on again. "It is. You going to go back there?"

"No." A muscle flexes in her jaw. So human, but so many that they have met are. It was strange at first, adjusting to xenobio after so many years of human physiology. The small differences that added up to so much of the same.

"You headed to the Academy? Jim said you might be."

"I go there and I end up here, rescuing thieves and murderers."

"Or you come here and you get to return folks to their families." Probably poor logic, but Spock isn't anywhere to be found. Neither is Chekov. "And anyway, we're not getting very far with the thieves and murderers, if you haven't noticed."

"You come earlier, you return my family to me." She paces the length of Chapel's biobed. "Instead, you are at other planets, with other people. You were busy with your missions, your orders, and we were here dying."

Navares looks up. Next to him, Hohstadt does too. McCoy scowls at them until they keep working. Small crews do that, that over eager interest in each other's conversations. The best thing about working on the flagship was having enough staff that there was enough news and gossip to keep everyone satisfied without digging up more.

He sighs. This is Jim's job, and Spock's, trying to explain what the hell it is that they're doing flitting from planet to planet, one after the next. McCoy's in charge of surgeries, vaccinations, and apparently trying to make sense of the knots of wires that are keeping Chapel both alive and apparently unconscious.

"We try," he says. "We came back, didn't we?"

"You will save your crew?"

"Yes." He wants to shake his tricorder, or give it a good whack against the side of the bed for all the help it is. "We'll recalibrate our equipment, figure out what's wrong, and then we'll fix it."

"And then we go."

"That's the plan."

"And I can have my own room again."

"Lord, do I hear you on that one," he says.

It's probably coincidence that he turns around and finds Spock in the doorway. McCoy hunches his shoulders up. He has enough going on today.

"Mr Chekov is working on the scanners," Spock says. He tucks his hands behind his back. McCoy tries to remember the last day he hadn't seen Spock stand like that. Maybe on Yorktown, but no, Spock was ubiquitous then and he's always like that, isn't he, those hands clasped at the small of his back. So before that, some mission that Spock was assigned to that McCoy had the good fortune to miss.

"Great," McCoy says. "And he'll be done when, exactly?"

"Unclear." Spock moves closer. "How is Nurse Chapel?"

"The same. I think. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to know if we had a single piece of equipment on this damn ship that actually worked."

"Mr. Chekov estimates a day's work," Spock says.

"A day?" McCoy asks. "Are you serious? No, don't answer that. A day meaning the rest of today, or a day meaning a day from now?"

"I did not inquire into the specifics."

McCoy tips his face up towards the ceiling. "The one and only time."

"Are you intending to stay here until the calibration is complete?"

"Yes," he says automatically. No. He isn't. Chapel is as fine here as she was in the mine, and if McCoy has learned anything, it's that waiting for patients to wake up is the worst kind of watching paint dry.

"I can be here, sir," Lavigne says. McCoy didn't see her come back in, but there she is beside Spock. He needs a drink of water and a decent night's sleep. Alone. In his own bunk.

Chapel normally is the one who stays with their patients. McCoy eyes Lavigne. For all he knows, they were friends. He isn't in the habit of socializing with his staff. He has Jim for that, and more often than not, Spock hangs around too, especially of late. Fatlot of good that's gotten him. Maybe he should have spent more of his time loitering around sickbay and getting to know his nurses.

"What training do you have, anyway?" he asks.

"Emergency xenomedicine."

"Wonderful. Chapel's human."

"I-I know, sir."

Spock is hovering too close as always, his boots in McCoy's line of sight. There's less dust on them than there should be considering how long it took them to get Chapel out of the mine, but Spock is like that, neatly pressed lines in his trousers even all the way out here.

"Doctor McCoy, regulations dictate that medical staff must be relieved at the conclusion of their shift due to exhaustion, which often leads to-"

"-Get out of here, Spock-"

"-Irritability, among other issues."

"I can monitor her," Lavigne says.

"Conveniently, so can I," McCoy says.

"Doctor," Spock says and if McCoy doesn't know better, he sounds a bit exasperated. You're being stubborn just because you can be, Jim had told him once. He'd said it with a smile, though McCoy had still flinched at it, the words laced through with the sun soaked counters of what was once his kitchen and Jocelyn standing there with her mouth pressed tight. He snaps his tricorder shut. Of everything to dwell on today, that's not a memory he particularly wants to dredge up.

"Fine," he says. See? he asks of the Jim and Jocelyn in his head. "I want a full report every hour. To my padd, you hear? And keep an eye on these biolevels, would you?" Even though Lavigne nods, McCoy still reaches across her and taps at the screen. "It gets below fifteen percent and you call me. I don't care what time it is, or how much you think you can handle it."

"Yes, sir."

"And if you have trouble with any one of them, anything at all, I want to know about it. Don't call the Captain, don't call Mr. Scott, you call me. Immediately. And-"

A warm hand under his arm tugs McCoy away. Lavigne swallows.

"I'm going," McCoy says and Spock lets go when he twists his arm away. "I just need to tell her that-"

"Your directions were sufficiently detailed." Spock is once again eye to eye with him. McCoy can still feel his grip.

"I don't tell you how to do your job," McCoy mutters.

"You do. Quite often, in fact."

McCoy ignores him in favor of walking away. Spock, the insufferable man that he is, simply follows him down the corridor. McCoy is sure as hell not going back to their quarters, so he ducks into the rec room instead. He tosses his padd on the counter and pushes the heels of his hands corner of it. A real stove. Unimaginable on the Enterprise. Maybe he can request one for the new ship, though the thought of a new version of that white tin can just makes him close his eyes.

"Have you eaten?" Spock asks.

"What? No." McCoy rubs his hand over the back of his neck. "I was waiting for Chekov to finish up."

"Were you able to discern anything of Nurse Chapel's state in the meantime?"

"That she's unchanged. But without a real scan, I don't want to try anything."

"We came here to bring the crew's' bodies home. Considering the circumstances, you are performing quite admirably."

McCoy huffs a laugh at the stove. "Are you being nice to me?"

"I am stating the obvious."

"Oh." McCoy brings his head around, chin towards his shoulder so he can raise an eyebrow at Spock. "Is that what that was."

But the quip he's expecting Spock to return doesn't come. The quiet is that much more noticeable for it. So is how Spock steps towards him. Spock's chest rises as he takes a breath.

"Doctor," Spock starts and just the word makes McCoy's stomach flip over. McCoy stares at the stove again, hunches his shoulder against the words he knows are coming. "I would like to say that last night-"

"-Don't mention it." McCoy lifts a hand in a wave that hopefully is more casual than it feels.

For a moment he's sure Spock will plow onwards anyway with that goddamn tenacity the man has, but then Spock nods. Once, crisply. McCoy looks away from those brown eyes.

"Very well," Spock says.

"Anyway." McCoy clears his throat. He's not sure what he was going to add after that. He pushes away from the stove and adjusts his shirt. He needs to change. He needs to not suddenly think of Spock's long fingers sifting over his scalp and how nice that had felt, to have his hair softly played with.

It's Spock and McCoy doesn't have to dig too far down to know what kinds of bad decisions can crop up under the type of stress this week has brought.

"I should get back," he finally says.

"You are supposed to be off duty."

"We're supposed to be on leave on Yorktown."

Spock moves closer again. He tilts his head like he does sometimes. Earnest, almost, that look is.

"You did not eat breakfast. Nor dinner last night," Spock says.

McCoy grabs his padd. "I'm fine."

"Jim asked me to speak with you," Spock says and McCoy draws up short, the step he was going to take towards the door turned into an awkward half shuffle. "He wished for me to pass along his apologies."

"Did he now." McCoy smacks his padd into his palm. "Next thing we know, he'll be passing me a note in math class."

Spock's eyebrow rises. McCoy has half a mind to tell him to put the damn thing back down again.

"Did you two talk things out?" he asks when Spock seems happy to continue just standing like that.

"I do not know what you mean."

"No, then." McCoy taps his padd against his palm again and then busies himself flicking it on rather than watch Spock watch him. There's no update from Lavigne but there's a new message from Scotty, an intraship memo that Uhura must have ensured passed along sometime between the other eighty tasks she's probably simultaneously doing. Always was the smartest of them all. Even corrects Spock sometimes, and isn't that a sight to see.

"What the hell is a reserve phase transducer?" he asks, scanning through the note. Then he holds up a finger. "Don't answer that, Spock, I don't want to know. You'd think I was a doctor, for as much sense as this all makes."

Useless. He squints at the message. There are teams back with the rest of the 'Fleet who specialize in this. His expertise tends more towards overeager captains and their irritating XOs, though maybe McCoy should consider diversifying, given the way things are going.

Spock's hands brush past his own when he takes McCoy's padd.

"I was using that," he says.

"Poorly," Spock says and McCoy has to lean over the man's shoulder to keep reading. How absolutely irritating he is.

"Sir?" someone asks and McCoy jerks backwards.

Sulu is in the doorway, looking back and forth between him and Spock. McCoy takes another step back.

"Mr. Scott sent me to find you, Doctor."

"Now?" Spock asks.

"I didn't mean to disturb you." Sulu's eyes shift between them again. "But McCoy, you're needed on the bridge."

"Alright." McCoy takes another step away from Spock. "And you weren't. Disturbing us."

"Ah, two for the price of one," Scotty says when McCoy reaches the bridge, Spock a constant step behind him. Jim's already there, bent over a padd with Uhura and Chekov.

He looks up at McCoy. McCoy looks away.

"Mr. Chekov, any progress?" McCoy asks, but it's Scotty who steps forward.

"I've got some bad news, sir," he says, rubbing his palms together with none of his customary bounce.

"Is the crew all right?" McCoy asks. "Is Chapel?"

He shouldn't have left. Not for the chance at a break and not for a damn chitchat with Spock.

"Aye, Doctor." Scotty sighs. "It's the ship, sir."

"The Franklin?" Jim asks. "What's wrong with it?"

"Captain," Scotty says, and then, "Jim. Whatever those rocks are, Chapel was pulling more than a wee bit of power from them. If we continue to have her hooked to the ship, I cannot promise that it won't drain too much from the power cells."

Jim steps around Uhura. "What are you saying, Scotty?"

"With her here… Even with the improvements we made to the thrusters at Yorktown and the modifications to the impulse engines, that's only for getting out of the atmosphere. Finding our way through that nebula to get back home… Sir, that's another thing entirely. These old ships, they don't have the power of the new ones."

Home, McCoy thinks, is entirely further away than the other side of that nebula.

Jim braces his hands on Uhura's console. "So you're saying we can't take off."

"With just Nurse Chapel, maybe. Maybe, Captain, and I mean that. With the rest of them. Jim, there's hundreds of our crew here. We just… we can't, sir." Scotty holds his hands out then lets them fall back to his sides. "Even if we got them all hooked up, had the ports and the capacity for that, the pull on the dilithium supplies would be- by the time we're done, we wouldn't be able to- to turn the radio on, Sir. We'd be sitting in the dark, no lights, and protein bars because the replicators wouldn't come on either."

Jim leans further into his hands. "Those rocks have enough power. We'll load those up."

"There's only so much cargo room," Scotty says.

"And add that weight, with the atmospheric friction," Sulu adds. He looks tired, bags under his eyes. He should be on a playground with his kid and his husband, but instead he's tapping at his console even though he's already grimacing at the calculations that spring up. "It's not possible, Captain."

"Is there a shorter way out of the nebula?" Jim asks and even though Chekov shakes his head, he plows onward. "One that might put us out further from Yorktown but at least get us out of here?"

"I am sorry sir," Chekov says, "But no."

"If Mr. Scott is correct, there's no way through if we don't have sufficient speed," Sulu says. "Those meteors are moving too fast for us to dodge, even if we do pull free of Altamid's gravitational force."

Jim's hand covers his mouth. "So what are our options, then? Take off, head back to Yorktown for help, and come back again?"

"If the crew is still here when we get back. If nobody gets to them while we're gone," Uhura says, her head tipping in the direction of the cave. "And if there's another ship that can make it out here."

"Which there isn't. Until the-" Jim waves towards what ostensibly is Yorktown. Spock could probably correct him, but he's just standing there, McCoy's padd still in his hand. "That other Enterprise is done."

"Hell of an original name," McCoy says and his fingers itch where Spock touched them.

Jim's tongue darts over his lips. "Lieutenant, what are the chances of getting a message off to the rest of the fleet?"

"Minimal, sir." Uhura's shoulders drop. "Likely impossible."

"Let's try."

She turns, already sinking into the seat at her console. "Of course."

For a moment, Jim hangs his head. "So it's either leave them here or leave all of us here."

McCoy's throat tightens. It doesn't release even when Jim straightens.

"Well, we're not leaving them in that cave," Jim says, "And we're not heading back without them. We'll keep trying to get our scanners calibrated, see what we can do, and we'll figure the rest of it out."

"How?" McCoy asks. He waits, but in the wake of the buzz of conversation, silence settles like a too thick blanket over the room. "Jim?"

"We've gotten out of sticky situations before, right, Bones?" Jim asks, those bright blue eyes so wide that McCoy can barely stand to look at him.

McCoy threads his way through the crew and makes for the corridor. Jim follows him through the halls of the ship and then outside, where the sky is just off from the right shade of blue.

"Bones, listen," Jim says. "This is hardly the worst thing we've seen ourselves through."

"I don't know Jim, is it? Is it so goddamn fine that a madman stuck a bunch of wires into our crew while they're hanging up like sides of ham?"

"Bones…"

"You know what the real rub is?" he asks and when he stalks towards Jim, Jim leans backwards. "This is absolute hell here, Jim, our crew trapped in there, and us trapped here, and it's somehow - somehow, Jim - not the damn straw that broke the camel's back and had you putting a foot out the door."

McCoy lifts his shoulders and feels that familiar pull of pain. He needs his kit from the Enterprise. He could scan his own back with it, find what it is that twinges like that. He needs sickbay and biobeds and his staff - his Chief Nurse - to deal with the lines of unconscious bodies in that cave. Hell of a thing to look at, all of them hanging there and nothing he can do for them.

"Can't you get mad at Spock for wanting to leave too?"

McCoy laughs out a harsh bark. "I'm just saying, Jim. It's a hell of a lot to want to stick around, when you of all people don't."

"I do," Jim says, but McCoy starts walking and Jim's forced to call after him. "Bones, c'mon, just listen, give me a-"

"-Why don't you tell Spock and he can tell me. Explain it all to him. Wonderful. Great plan, Jim. Nearly as good as the one you're going to come up with to get us off this rock for the second goddamn time."

"Bones! Stop, come on."

"I can't be here." He backs up, a boot scrape over the gravel. The collar of his shirt is too tight. Choking at him, really. "I have to go."

"Where?" Jim asks, his voice raised over the distance McCoy has put between them. McCoy pretends those yards across the mine camp are far enough he can't hear, not with the breeze of this goddamn planet whistling across the camp, the chatter of birds above them, and the billowing dust that blankets everything here, a fine coating over the situation they've found themselves in. Again.