Montgomery Scott was restless. As a rule he was not a man given to sitting, unless there were technical journals to read. Sitting in the center seat on the Bridge did not give one much time to read. Sitting in the center seat while the Enterprise did little but cruise effortlessly through space - and while there was an alien technology waiting to be explored - was pure torture. He shifted and tried not to look bored and annoyed. He glanced at the clock and saw that it would only be another hour or so before he could declare his Bridge duties fulfilled and return to his first love, Engineering.
He had just begun wondering how badly it would affect the crew if a senior officer slipped off duty early when Daphne suddenly cried out as if she had been stabbed through the heart. In the time it took Scott to spin around in the chair, Uhura had already crossed the short distance to the science station. Daphne was bent over, one arm held tightly over her waist, her head resting in her other hand. Scott leapt up and joined Uhura.
"Daphne?" Uhura asked, "What's wrong? Someone call sickbay!" She called the last sentence over her shoulder and several crewmen scrambled to obey.
Daphne looked up into her friend's chocolate brown eyes, her own filled with sudden terror.
"Spock," her voice was ice," Our mind link…. It's gone."
"Gone how?" Scott demanded.
Uhura spun around and rushed back to her communication station. Before she regained her seat she was calling Mr. Spock to the Bridge.
Daphne looked helplessly up at Scott. "I don't know how," she sounded lost; her hands were now clenched between her knees and the pale skin of her face was stretched white over the bones beneath. "It's just gone as if it never existed, turned off like a light."
"Had it ever happened before?" Scott's tone softened in the face of her obvious distress.
"No," she whispered, staring now at Uhura and registering the horrifying fact that
Spock had not answered.
"Could Spock do that?"
"Turn it off? I don't know. Possibly," she looked up at the Engineer then, "He'd have to have a very good reason for doing it without warning. He'd know what the effect on me would be." She paused, swallowed. "The effect on him would be worse. The mind link with a bond mate is vital to Vulcans. Once established, it is almost as necessary as air."
Uhura had switched to summoning Captain Kirk, who was also, heart wrenchingly, not answering.
Scott faced the Bridge. "Where were the Captain and Mr. Spock? Were they together?"
"They were in the cargo bay with the wreckage we salvaged," Sulu answered, tensely.
At that moment McCoy burst onto the Bridge. Seeing Daphne still hunched over with Scott hovering at her side, he figured out the problem pretty quickly.
"What happened?" The Doctor was already waving a medical scanner over her . It told him that she was going into mild shock.
"She's lost the link she has with Spock," Scott said, grimly.
"Well get him up here!" McCoy snapped, as he applied a hypo to her arm.
"We're trying." The short, stark syllables, rolled in a heavy burr, were bitten off abruptly.
McCoy rested a shaking hand on Daphne's shoulder for support as the hypo took effect, but his soulful eyes met Scott's eyes and held them. Behind them, Uhura's attempts to raise either the Captain or First Officer continued to return only silence.
Scott walked resolutely back to the center seat and hit the communications button.
"Security!"
"Thomson here, sir."
"Get down to cargo bay two and check it out. We've lost communication with the Captain," the Engineer's Aberdeen accent had gone thick with the stress. Suddenly boredom seemed like a very pleasant state to be in.
"Aye, sir."
For long tense moments there was no sound on the Bridge but for the rhythmic beeping and whirring of the ship's automatic systems. No one dared to even breathe. Hot tears swam in Daphne's eyes but Star Fleet training and empathic discipline kept them from falling. Uhura had given up calling the Captain and Spock.
Then a sound and fury erupted from the comm system as if the Gates of Hell had opened in the depths of the ship. The automatic intruder alert blasted to life; phaser fire, screams, incoherent shouting and a noise like repeated thunder; and over all that Thomson's voice ordering her team to fall back.
Daphne leapt to her feet and bent over the science console.
"Intruders on board ….. unknown life form….humanoid…..weapons not registering." If she was conscious that this was most likely the beings who had killed her husband and brother there was no sign of it in her voice.
"Red alert!" Scott ordered and the claxton wailed to life, "Seal the Bridge."
"Now wait just a damned minute!" McCoy burst out, "You can seal whatever you want after I'm in sickbay."
Scott once again locked eyes with the Doctor but then nodded, "Get there as fast as you can. Garrovick!"
"Sir!" The red-shirted young man by the lift doors straightened to attention.
"Get the doctor to sickbay and then report to your security chief."
The intense young man, son of a starship captain, nodded.
As McCoy and Garrovick rushed into the turbolift a new voice came over the comm system, almost inaudible among the explosions and shouting.
"Bridge! Tankris here. We're pinned down defending the turbolift outside of Cargo 2. No information on location of Captain and First Officer… never made it inside the bay. Intruders….whole platoon…..fifty, maybe more…..some kind of armor, reflecting phaser fire. Phasers useless. "In the background they could hear Thomson screaming to hit them with everything they had. Tankris' breathless voice went on, "Internal shields also useless. They have…projectile weapons.. deadly. We're going to need something that kicks like a Mississippi mule to stop them….." Her transmission was cut off in a hail of thunder and ended in a scream.
Silence reigned on the Bridge once again and Scott was painfully aware that everyone, even the ones who weren't looking at him, was waiting for him to speak. Uhura recovered first, ordering additional security teams and beginning the general distress signal that would be sent even if it would take much too long to reach Fleet headquarters.
"Guns," Sulu said suddenly, drawing the attention. He swiveled his chair to face Scott. "My first love might be plants and rapiers, but I also collect antique guns. That's what they're using. It stands to reason if that is the level of their technology, then simply projectiles are what we need to stop them."
Scott was frowning, his engineer's brain scrambling for a way to manufacture antique firearms in the next five minutes. Daphne rescued him.
"We don't need the actual weapons. There are any number of explosives we can make in the lab, and the means to deliver them," she said. The terror had left her eyes, burned out by an angry fire.
"Can you deliver the instructions from here?" Scott asked.
"I'd rather work from the Science labs," she answered. "The ones on Deck 9 have everything we'd need to make explosives."
"I'd rather keep the corridors clear, lass," Scott softened the order, but it was an order nonetheless.
"The ductwork," Uhura said, and now everyone was looking at her. She shook her head as if it should be obvious, "There's a reason the Captain made us all memorize the internal structures of this vessel. The ductwork from this Bridge leads in any number of directions once it starts branching off. Daphne should be able to get to Deck 9 and drop down through the vents on the ceiling at any point she wants."
Daphne was both elated and dismayed. While she was very anxious to get to the lab, the idea of crawling through endless miles of narrow ductwork froze her claustrophobic soul. Angrily she shook it off. Stop it; she thought fiercely, People have been saying you are your father's daughter all your life. There's still one Kirk alive on this ship. Time to prove it.
She squared her shoulders and waited anxiously for Scotty to approve the plan, knowing he had little choice.
"All right," he said finally, "But not alone, no one travels alone."
A blue shirted crewman at Life Support stood immediately. Daphne nodded approval. Kelowitz - calm, steady, smart and well trained. "Sir! Permission to accompany the lieutenant? I transferred to Biology from Security."
Scott nodded. Two security guards were already opening the vent in the floor. Another was pulling headlamps from the emergency supplies, which Daphne and Kelowitz donned before disappearing in the cold metal veins of the ship.
Scott watched them vanish and then turned to Uhura. "Are the intruders sending any sort of signal?" If a whole ship full of these beings was on its way, Scott wanted to be prepared, though he hadn't figured out yet exactly how they had gotten aboard to begin with.
Uhura's hands danced over her board, her concentration intense. "None on any channel that I can find."
Scott looked once again at the helm, and found Sulu and Chekhov bent over each other and whispering urgently. Scott's stomach churned like an ocean wave. Whatever the two of them were cooking up, it was bound to be more trouble.