In the dark, the walk back to the ship takes longer than McCoy feels like it should. And certainly a hell of a lot longer than he wants it to. It's all downhill, not the scramble of the afternoon, but picking his way over rocks he just climbed up is still no treat, not with only the moon to brighten the deep of the night. Twice, McCoy stumbles, but he's not concerned with his bruised shins through the padding of his pants. No, he's got a new friend walking beside him each step of the way, phaser in his hand, even if it's pointed towards the ground.
McCoy eyes it. His buddy doesn't seem to like that too much, shifting the phaser to his other hand when he catches McCoy looking, but McCoy doesn't particularly like being marched around as the clock ticks past midnight. And not by this bunch, all of them a head taller than McCoy and Jim both, the rags and robes they're swathed in doing little to hide the swell of muscles beneath their clothes. Whatever life they live out here, McCoy doesn't exactly envy them, not if it's turned them into this, silent and hulking and, when McCoy glances over again, given towards a hell of a glare of an expression on their gray, pale faces.
As the crag of the mountains turn to forest, the moon sets. They walk the last pitch in near blackness, and when they come to the mining camp, their arrival is heralded only by the sense of looming openness, the broad brush of air that means trees aren't hemming them in anymore. Instead, there's that particular vulnerability of being in a wider space. It must be the breeze that he feels on his face, even in the stuffiness of the night.
"Leave the guns here," Jim says into the silence. It's how he speaks when he's working. Concentrating. And a bit scared. McCoy's come to dread that tone. At some point, it stopped being odd to hear Jim speak with such gravity and instead just became a harbinger of what was to come. Most often a firefight and a mad scramble to beam out, though they're not going anywhere right now, no safety to be found in the distance of a ship in orbit.
Across the mine, the Franklin sits, glowing with a handful of lights.
"No," the woman says.
"Our security team isn't going to take kindly to you walking us in here like this," Jim says. McCoy eyes the rim of the mine, trying to pick out a red shirt in the blue black gloom of night.
"Your security team is on patrol on the far perimeter," the woman says. "They were here six minutes ago and will be here again in twelve more." She smiles. She's standing too close to Jim. McCoy's phaser is still on his belt just beneath the hem of his jacket, but he doesn't need to count the weapon's surrounding him. Too many for his back to not crawl with it, and he's never been one for shooting anyway.
"Your tricorders work," Jim says. He's so calm. Even looks a bit impressed. Uhura would be, and Scotty too. Probably they'd be halfway towards asking how, no matter how armed their new friends are. The two of them would be wondering aloud at calibrated frequencies and the particulars of interference signals. McCoy peers towards the ship. He can't quite judge the distance to it, the size of the Franklin too big for this parking lot they've landed it in. His strength has never been these kinds of tactics, these middle of the night adventures.
Give him a hypo, he thinks, not this hell.
"We know how to make use of our sensors," the woman says. She leans even closer to Jim. "We have been here a long time."
"We're offering clemency and transport," Jim says. "We're from the United Federation of Planets and we-"
"-Hush." She taps her phaser to her other palm. "That's enough, now."
She circles him, too slow. When she's done, eyes raking up and down his back, she walks over to McCoy. He doesn't let himself flinch, though his skin ticks. Instead, he stares right back at her as she examines him, the sewn together rags of her clothing, the dirt under her nails, her hair, twisted and tied up exposing a long scar on her neck.
"He talks too much," she says and points the butt of her phaser towards Jim.
McCoy licks his lips. "That he does."
"You are much quieter."
"Just enjoying the night," he says.
"I like you."
"Lucky me," he mutters.
"Bring me to your ship," the woman says and with a claw of a hand curled around his upper arm, McCoy can feel how strong she is. When she pushes, he's steered right around. "And then we will hear of your offer."
She shoves him and he tries not to trip over his boots. Dust kicks up behind him. His mouth feels gritty, dry. He has to clear his throat to call out towards the ship, "Hey!"
Probably not what he's supposed to yell, but protocol is well and good when he can remember it. He swallows and shouts, "It's us!"
Nothing happens. McCoy can feel the woman behind him. Then a shape, a movement of shadow near to the hull resolves itself into long legs and a too straight back.
McCoy takes a step forward. "Spock!"
What the hell he's doing awake, McCoy doesn't want to know. But it's Spock. Stargazing, for all he could guess, or something else equally, blithely logical.
When there's no hand grabbing him back and no sound of a phaser charging, McCoy walks forward. The crunch of all those boots against the gravel is loud, that stomp of all of them behind him. Uhura's with Spock, he realizes. There's no mistaking that ponytail, the hemline of her skirt, now walking out to meet them.
His stomach drops. Imagining what they might be talking about… maybe he would have preferred a longer march through the night.
By the time they reach the ship, more lights have winked on, and someone who sounds a lot like Sulu has appeared, calling out, "Is that them? Captain?"
"Thought we'd wander back," McCoy says when he's close enough to not have to raise his voice. "And we brought guests."
Uhura's the one who crosses to them first, a light jog across the crushed stone. "You made it."
She's in her uniform. Still, or again maybe. She should be sleeping. They all should be.
"Hi to you too," McCoy says when she only walks as far as Jim, where he's circled to the edge of the group near to one of the Franklin's landing struts. Probably some carefully calculated decision in that. McCoy's mostly thinking about his bed.
"Are you ok?" Sulu asks. McCoy can just make him out near the hatch in the Franklin's hull that they've been using like a front door. Should have put out a welcome mat, McCoy can't help but think, what with their newcomers.
Spock's hovering too far away to really easily speak too. And just standing there, stock-still like he does, hands loose at his sides. He has his eyes on Jim and McCoy blinks, looks away before his own attention is noticed.
"We're here," McCoy says to the woman and waves towards the ship. "If you want the details of our illustrious captain's grand plan, now's your chance."
But the woman is just examining the hull of the ship, and then Sulu and Spock both, standing there against it.
"We're here to offer you a way home," Jim says. Next to him, Uhura seems patently unarmed in this group. And though Uhura with bare hands is more than McCoy thinks this crowd might want to take on, he feels that lack of her phaser like it's his own, that unpreparedness for what walks out of the night.
He hates this. So, so much.
"Home," the woman says. "And how will you do that?"
"You've been marooned here," Jim says. "We want to right the wrong that Krall has done to you."
"Oh." She smiles. It's ghastly. "So kind."
"Where are you from?" Uhura asks.
"Not so far," she says. "Not so far as you."
"We want to help you," Jim says. He has a hand out. McCoy wonders if the woman recognizes it as the peace offering it is. It could be an insult to her family for all McCoy knows, an extended palm the one gesture not to be made.
But the woman just smiles again. "You are talking again, Captain."
"He can't help it," McCoy says. "Would that he could. For all of our sakes."
"For our sakes," she repeats, slowly. "Tell me. How do you know you are not the ones in need?"
"Kattel!"
McCoy jumps at the shout, his heart kicking into a higher gear than can be healthy. Though none of this is, nighttime jaunts and all these guns. Next to the jut of a rock pile, Jaylah stands with her staff in both hands.
"You," the women says.
"James T, do not speak with her." Jaylah slips from behind the rocks. Spock takes a step towards her, moving out of the shadows one pace and then two. "Kattel is not to be trusted."
Jim straightens, his shoulders drawn back and firm. "We're-"
"-Enough," the woman says. "Enough from you, Captain."
"We're offering a ride, in good faith. That's all," McCoy says when Jim's eyes cut towards him.
"On this?" Kattel asks. She walks towards the ship and Jim lets her go, turning on his heel as she moves past him. Jaylah's eyes follow her and even from this distance, McCoy can see how tightly she's holding her staff.
What a hell for her this must be. First Manas here, and then the lot of these folks. It's easy to forget how long Jaylah lived on board the Franklin. McCoy sees only the stamp of Starfleet, the antiquated design that is still echoed through modern ships, upgraded and tweaked but familiar in the bones of the space. Though he hardly has an eye towards what Jaylah changed in those years, all the ways in which she made the ship hers. He's not one to notice the particulars now is he, all those small details.
Kattel approaches Sulu and the open hatch beside him and McCoy tries not to grimace. He's not too keen on playing host to a group that just walked them here at gunpoint, though he's not exactly given a vote, what with how Jim lets her inspect the ship without calling out for security, a slow walk up one side of the hull and then down another, nor how she stops next to Sulu again, her eyes on the slice of light coming from the corridor inside.
Jim looks at McCoy. McCoy shrugs. Jim points his chin towards Kattel and raises his eyebrows and McCoy sighs.
"We can offer you a meal," he says and makes himself walk over to her. He glances back at Jim, who gestures both hands. McCoy wants to rolls his eyes. Damn Jim and his big mouth. And moreover, damn the fact that McCoy knows him entirely too well and is too capable of translating Jim's motions into something sensible. "I suppose you ought to leave your weapons here. Regulation, I'm afraid."
"You will offer us a meal," Kattel says, "And we will bring our weapons."
Over her shoulder, Jim shakes his head.
"No can do," McCoy says.
"She brings her weapons on your ship," Kattel says and her chin juts towards Jaylah. "Do you know what she has done with that stick of hers?"
McCoy sighs at that. Logic is for Spock, and even then - especially then - it's hardly McCoy's favorite.
"She's with us," he says.
"Do you know what she is?" Kattel asks. "Because you are a very, very trusting man, if you do."
"She," McCoy says, "is with us. And according to our overly accommodating captain, you could be as well, if you'd like to leave this here planet."
For a moment, McCoy is sure she'll just walk past Sulu. McCoy's not one for a fight, fists or phasers, but given the choice, he'd prefer landing a few rather than be pushed around on his own ship. Jaylah's ship. Edison's ship. Whatever.
But Kattel just shrugs. It's too human of a gesture and it gets under McCoy's skin, the ease of it.
"Leave your phasers," she calls to the others. She smiles at Sulu, leaning in close to him. "Even mine I will leave. Though do not think Jaylah will be separated from her staff."
When Kattel puts a heavy boot up on the rim of the hatch, Jim lets her walk through, his jaw set and eyes on her back.
"This a good idea?" McCoy asks him softly as she walks on board.
"Thought you wanted to get off this planet," Jim says and McCoy gets a hard clap on the shoulder.
He sighs and follows Jim. No, then. Though nights like these never do lead anywhere good.
Though once inside, McCoy immediately feels better. The air is replicated in here and there's not enough openings in the hull to let Altamid's swampy breeze blow through. The climate control chills his skin and cools the sweat on him, blowing away the stifling night he just hiked through. Twice.
But even with the lack of stick to the air, McCoy still feels hemmed in, what with all the extra bodies on board. He unzips his jacket to halfway down his chest. He'd head for his room and a change of clothes, but there's a knot of their new friends in the way and Jim is at Kattel's heels while she explores. McCoy would put money on the fact that he doesn't have much of a choice but to follow.
"Our rec room," Jim says when Kattel finds the door to it.
She ignores him. McCoy might just have to start taking notes, watching her step into the room and make a slow lap around it without a single glance towards Jim.
Baring a clean shirt, he'd settle for dinner- breakfast, maybe. Something hot. And a coffee, but he can't quite make it to the replicator, not when the group of Kattel's people cram into the room after her and the rest of the crew besides. Still, he tries anyway, edging along the side of the wall and circling the lot of them. One after the other, Kattel's people start poking at this and that. Jaylah, her back against a bulkhead, watches them, her arms crossed. Next to her, her staff leans against a control panel.
"You came back," Kattel says when Jim hands her a plate of food. "We watched you fly away."
She's looking at McCoy and he wipes his palm over his face. He's tired now- has been all night, but it's catching up with him in deep waves of fatigue.
"We did," McCoy says.
"No ship has left." She taps her fingers over the edge of the plate. "So many years here, so many ships crash. They are trash on this planet. Salvage, sometimes."
"How many?" Jim asks, but Kattel doesn't bother to look at him. From the plate, she lifts a cube of meat and holds it up to the light, pinched in two fingers. McCoy wonders what it is. Beef, maybe.
"Jaylah says you escaped like she did," McCoy says. "That Krall had you, but you managed to make your way out of those- the apparatuses he has."
"Like Jaylah did," Kattel echoes and bites at the meat. She smiles, her mouth full. "No. We are not like Jaylah. We do not run into the woods and hide. We fight Krall."
"He's dead," McCoy says. "Krall died attacking one of our stations. You're safe now."
"You have Manas here on your ship still," she says. "So we are not safe."
McCoy feels his eyebrows rise and a look at Jim tells him that he shouldn't have reacted. But Kattel is just eating, one piece of meat at a time held in her fingers and raised to her mouth. She's too calm, too unruffled.
"We tracked him to your ship. The one that burns." She smiles. "Then your people go in, and when they come out, they have Manas. Carry him here, dead we think, but we need to know."
"You were there?" McCoy asks. The words come out despite himself and he would bite them back, that he could. He can feel his own heartbeat, the rapid rise of it that catches him too fast. He doesn't look at Spock standing standing there next to the doorway.
They all were there. This group of them. Tracking them, him and Spock. Waiting. While they… Just waiting, outside, and then watching them make their slow way back to the Franklin.
McCoy can't unstick himself from that thought. Jim has his arms crossed, his eyes pinched and forehead creased, but it's Uhura who steps forward.
"What our crew does is none of your concern," she says. "If you'd like a way off this planet, we can discuss that. If not, then a meal and we can all be on our separate ways."
"Your transmission offered medical services," Kattel says. "Your doctor, where is she?"
Uhura turns to McCoy. It takes him a moment of her watching him to rouse himself.
"What do you need?" he finally asks.
"It is you?" she asks.
"'Fraid so."
"I will see your medical facilities." Her finger slick from her food, she taps at her elbow. "It hurts, no? You fix it."
"Great," he mutters.
McCoy slips from the room just for the chance to escape it. Spock's still next to the door. He steps back as McCoy passes through, and if Spock is looking at him, McCoy doesn't lift his eyes to find out.
In sickbay, Lavigne's eyes widen as McCoy walks in, followed by the lot of them, the group Kattel has in tow and Jim and Spock and Sulu and Uhura and Jaylah crowding in behind.
Lavigne looks harried, and only growing more so at the horde of them showing up here. McCoy well knows that feeling.
"What's the word, nurse?" he asks, relieving her of the tricorder and wishing the replicators in here were capable of something more than hypos full of antibiotics. If he can't manage coffee, he's sure a stiff drink would fix how this night is going. He rubs a finger into the corner of his eye. There's grit there that he has to blink away. He wants his bed and his pillow and the chance to pull the blankets up over his shoulders, his head, burrow in there and pretend that half of this hadn't happened. The whole of it really, the entire night that is now ending up with muddy boots on the floor of his sickbay and so many bodies packed in the small space that he can't turn around without elbowing someone's stomach.
It's Spock's stomach. McCoy edges away.
"The record of Chapel's vitals from since you left, sir," Lavigne says.
"Good on you, Nurse," McCoy says and grabs the padd from her. It takes him a moment to flick through it. Maybe he should have stayed here on the ship. Spock could have gone with Jim, hauled his own ass up that mountain and left McCoy in the relative peace of his sickbay. He belongs here, not negotiating with hostiles. He can nearly hear Chapel say the same, that sigh she would give him when Jim would call him to the transporter room on yet another half planned escapade.
"Manas is our patient," Jim says when Kattel approaches Manas' bed. His warning is in his voice, those low, slow words. McCoy wonders if Kattel hears them. And if she cares, even if she does.
Those guards are here, thank God. Both of them now towering over Manas' bed, their eyes tracking Kattel.
McCoy taps the padd into his hand, watching her, and tries to not let the crowd push him into Spock, that half an arm length from each other that they are.
"You have kept him alive," Kattel says and walks the length of Manas' bed. She circles the foot and passes Jim, pacing down the other side of the bed while her eyes rake over Manas. "You will heal him?"
"I don't discuss patient cases," McCoy says. He folds his arms over his chest. The padd bumps into his hip. "So I'm afraid you'll just have to wonder about that."
"Do you know what he has done?"
"I have an idea or two," he says. "But what's for certain is that you seem to especially like listing off other's resumes. Wanna share some details of your own?"
"Bones," Jim says.
"It's one thing to throw everyone else under the bus," McCoy says.
Kattel turns to him. "What is a bus?"
"Put your money where your mouth is," McCoy says. "And you can show me your elbow or you can find another part of the ship to spend your time in, ma'am."
"This man," Kattel says and that elbow of hers points towards Manas, prone there on the bed between them. "Why have you saved him?"
"Well now, that's none of your business."
"Is this what you do?" Kattel asks. "Your ships, you fly around, and save us? Save him?"
"I don't come up with the mission parameters," McCoy says. "Trust me on that."
"Trust you?" Kattel asks. "You treat him and you ask me to trust you?"
"I'll treat you, and you kept me up from a night's sleep." McCoy pats the empty biobed behind him. "Now let's see about that elbow and all be on our way."
"Your offer to take us from here," Kattel says. "You will bring Manas, too, no?"
"He's committed crimes against the Federation," McCoy says. "And he's one of ours. We'll bring him back to face justice."
"Justice," Kattel says. "This is not a planet that cares for justice."
"If you care for a chat about justice, how about you tell us how you did that, waking up like you did. We've got a lot of good crew out there and we want to take them back too, let their families know they're all right," McCoy says.
They've gathered quite a crowd, the two of them have. Not that the pack of them in the room exactly leaves sickbay all that spacious, but now McCoy can feel everyone's eyes on him and Kattel, dancing between them. Jim braces his hands braced on Manas' biobed and next to him, Uhura looks a little too alert. Spock's still hovering. Though of course he is, the man doesn't know how to do anything but stand right there, still a step too close to McCoy.
"If you wanted justice, you would give him to us," Kattel says. "Let us take him. Make him pay for what he has done."
Across Manas, Jim looks at McCoy, then Spock. Both of them seem so calm, but doesn't Spock always, that veneer of tranquility he wraps himself in, one layer at a time. Until it cracks into splintered fragments of anger and hurt that he can't quite sweep up. Though that won't happen now, McCoy knows, not with that set to his shoulders, the heavy tension in the room, how Jim's watching him, waiting for a solution to click between the two of them, unspoken half of the time.
And to think they both wanted to leave.
McCoy lets out a breath. "Let's talk about what you did to get out of Krall's devices he has in that cave."
"Let us talk about Manas' release," Kattel says. "You give us him, we tell you what we did."
"Our crewmates," McCoy says. "Nurse Chapel over there, we need your help to get them back to normal."
"I am thinking you do not listen so well, Doctor," Kattel says.
"We can offer you transport," McCoy says. "Not Manas, 'cause he's staying with us. But medical care. We'll take care of you and yours. Like we said, food, safe harbor, and a chance to go back to your families and homes. Surely you want that. Maybe it's not fair, not after what he's done, but it's the best we can do to right his wrong."
"Doctor," Kattel says. "I am home." She smiles again. "And if you do not give us Manas, we will take him."
"He's my patient," McCoy says, "And you'll do nothing of the sort."
A hand grabs McCoy's shoulder. It's too strong and he twists against it, but he's held tight. He looks down at it, cracked nails and dirt beneath them, those fingers pressing indents into the shoulder of his jacket. From the corner of his eye, he can make out the jut of a jaw and stringy hair. The same man who walked down the mountain beside him. McCoy shifts, but that hand doesn't budge. When Jim tries to step towards him, Manas' bed is in the way, positioned there between them.
"We have very little need for doctors," Kattel says. She's too calm for his liking. The grip on him is cutting of McCoy's circulation. His hand is starting to tingle. Numbness will follow, he knows. He jerks at the grip.
"Jim…" he says. Manas' guards have their phasers out, both hands wrapped around them and their legs spread. But there's no clear shot past Jim and Uhura and from how Kattel smiles, she knows it too. McCoy swallows.
"Let him go," Jim says and rests his hand on his own phaser.
"I'm not the problem here," McCoy says and tries to yank himself away again. There's still a phaser on his own belt too and if he can twist far enough he can reach it. Kattel against the lot of them is insane odds, unarmed and just standing there. But no matter how he wriggles at the hand holding him, he can't grab for his holster and that grip isn't budging.
"You can't be serious," he says. His shoulder is starting to ache. "Let me go. Look around you, you're outnumbered."
"You are treating Manas," Kattel says. A hell of a thing it must be, to not mind all those phasers trained on her. "And that is a problem."
"Listen," Jim says calmly. "We can work this out."
"You are too trusting, Captain," Kattel says. She smiles at him, ghastly with her cracked teeth and reaches into her pocket. "We are your guests here, no? Then you will not mind sharing."
"Hands out where we can see them," Jim says with a firmness in his voice that Kattel only continues to grin at. He draws his phaser and McCoy can hear the whirr of it powering up, the breath of the man holding him, the peculiar silence of everyone in sickbay, stock-still and too tense.
When Kattel pulls her hand back out, there's a stack of something small and round filling her palm. A handful of silver discs that glow with blue lights on their sides. She flips them over and around with an easy casualness, playing with them and still with that smirk on her face.
"Those are mine," Jaylah says, pushing off the wall.
"Silence," Kattel barks at her.
"You took them," Jaylah says.
"You left." Kattel flips them over again and then with a twist of her wrist, tosses them clear across the room.
"No, James T, she will-"
-And then there's four, five, six Kattels standing around them, those discs hovering in mid air, and each one of her still smiling.
"Outnumbered?" Kattel asks and all of her mouths move. "We will see about that."
"What are those things?" Jim asks. His fingers are flexing on his phaser. "Holographic projectors?"
McCoy feels a tug at his waist. A dirty, scraped hand pulls the phaser out of his holster.
"We're here to help," McCoy says. "Don't do this."
"Now it is your turn to be quiet," Kattel says and when the man behind McCoy tosses the phaser over, a half dozen of Kattels reach out and pluck it from the air, a phaser fitting into each of her hand.
"There's still only one of you," Jim says and takes a half step closer to her.
"But now I have your gun," Kattel says and raises the phaser to point it right at McCoy's chest.
Out of the corner of his eye, McCoy sees Spock move towards him. Don't, he wants to say because Kattel's hand is steady as anything. But the word sticks and all he can do is meet Spock's eyes. Brown and clear and wide. The hand on his shoulder tightens.
"We do not need a doctor, but we do want you gone," Kattel says, and her phaser flashes.
Too strong hands catch at him and he tries to push them off, but the deck's rushing up hard and with it, the sear of phaser burns across his skin. Somewhere, someone's yelling.