Furious denial flared in Jim's eyes, bright and hot enough to be seen even in the dim blue light. Spock strode across the distance between them and stopped practically on top of him. For a moment their gaze locked and held. Jim knew Spock would not lie to him, would never lie to anyone much less him, about such a thing.
Jim turned and faced the door, swallowed once and then marched towards it with determination in every step. It opened so slowly that he finally put a hand on one panel and shoved.
They stepped out into madness.
The corridor outside the cargo bay was strewn with red uniformed bodies. The pristine white walls were washed in dark red, dried blood and ugly black streaks; scorch marks left by phaser fire. Jim walked through the horrific scene like a man in a dream, slowly, step by cautious step. The security division had been killed with some kind of projectile weaponry. Their bodies were riddled with holes and covered in dried blood. As he passed each one he gave it a name.
"Evans…Ching….Tankris, she just transferred to security….Cordova," he stopped walking and hunkered down beside one body and whispered, "Thomson."
He stared at what remained of his chief of security. She had died in a pool of blood at the end of the hall, in front of the doors to the turbo lift. She must have been scrambling backwards, firing the whole time. Her phaser rifle was drained of power. She had died heroically, defending the Enterprise against …. Against what?
What had happened in the brief time he and Spock had been trapped inside that foggy bubble with the cylinder?
Spock was bent over the body of Lt. Capra, studying the readings of his tricorder as if the machine were surely malfunctioning.
"Captain," he spoke softly, "They have been dead for twenty seven hours."
Jim had tried to close Tomson's eyes; it bothered him that no one had done so already. But they were dried open and would never close again. He looked up at Spock, breathing slowly.
"How is that possible?"
Spock stood and came once again to stand close beside him, offering the comfort of his presence if not his words.
'Unknown, though perhaps…" he paused, "Captain… Jim!" His sharper tone caused Kirk to make eye contact with him again, dragging his gaze to look at Spock, to focus on him and not the hellish vision of the corridor. "Do you remember the effect we were subjected to? The bubble we appeared to be trapped in?"
Jim nodded and Spock went on, "It would seem we have been trapped inside some kind of time warp, frozen if you will, while outside the bubble time continued to pass at a normal rate."
Jim struggled to comprehend. He gestured listlessly at the death and destruction. "So all this happened while we were trapped in some kind of non-time?"
"It is not logical and I have no way of proving it, but at the moment it is the only possible explanation for our current situation."
"Then what time is it? They've been dead for twenty seven hours, that doesn't mean we were gone for that long. We could have been trapped for weeks in that thing, " Kirk wondered, "When are we exactly?"
"Unknown. My tricorder is still registering the time it was when we were trapped. But if we have been trapped for weeks the Enterprise, with no crew to sustain her, would be drained of all power and it is not. You have an antique timepiece in your quarters?" Spock reminded him, "It should register the current star date."
Jim nodded again. He stood, assuming the air of command even if he was left with only his First Officer. "All right. Then we go to my quarters first, figure out when we are. Then to the Bridge to see if we can get into the logs for the last twenty seven hours."
"Agreed," Spock answered. "But first, Captain. Look at the phaser burns on the walls. Starfleet security is too well trained to score the walls like this. There seems to be no marks that would have been in their actual line of fire. There is no technology of which I am aware that would reflect phaser fire. Even our shields simply absorb it."
"Then whoever did this has some way to reflect phaser fire?" Jim looked horrified all over again.
"We have seen the phenomenon before. The creature we call the gragonoth has the ability to do so; and we have never found that creatures' home planet or determined any place of origin at all."
Jim shivered. The gragonoth was one of those things in space everyone hoped never to meet; a mindless thing of grasping tentacles and sharp teeth, impervious to phasers, lethal and almost always deadly. At least one Federation ship floated endlessly in space even now, its crew dead and no one willing to risk the wrath of the gragonoth that now feasted on them. Jim knew of it firsthand. It had been the Enterprise that had been sent to find the vessel. He had nearly lost the mission team he had sent to investigate, including Chekhov and Spock.
But gragonoth did not carry projectile weapons, or leave intact bodies behind.
"The gragonoth can also move through internal shielding," Jim remembered, "Are you telling me that whoever got on board this ship could do the same thing?"
Spock paused for so long Jim wanted to shake him. He took a deep breath. His First Officer's ability to calmly assess a situation, no matter how long that might take, was one of his strongest assets.
"The possibility exists," Spock said finally.
Anger roiled up in Kirk for the first time since this entire bizarre thing had begun to unfold. Over the initial shock, he was suddenly simply furious. Spock watched the heated flush of fury rise up in his face and the struggle for control flash in his eyes.
"Jim," Spock's voice was a life line, pulling him back.
He glanced at Spock and nodded once.
"Let's go find out what happened to my ship," he said, with grim determination.