The climb to Sickbay was grueling, requiring multiple twists and turns, backtracking and even - to Kirk's horror - almost getting lost in his own ship. At the upper levels, where his crew had taken a stand, there was little left that was recognizable. Getting into sickbay meant waiting for Spock to lift huge pieces of debris out of the way. At one point Spock had to hold most of a ceiling over his head while Kirk squeezed past to the other side, leaving his First Officer to duck out from under it milimeters before it crashed down again. One section of the ship was completely blocked by security doors and a warning light, weakly flashing a hull breach and loss of atmosphere.

Kirk concentrated on moving forward. His crew was dead. His ship was dying. The struggle kept him sane.

Sickbay itself had been spared some of the destruction suffered in other parts of the ship. It's hapless occupants had not. They found Chapel shot down, sprawled in the doorway to the biobeds. Everyone in the beds was dead, the readouts above their heads eerily silent, the arrows pinned to the bottom of the board. As with every place they had been, blood soaked the blankets and floors. It seemed every centimeter of the floor was covered by the bodies of those who had been brought there for help and met death instead.

As he had too many times before, Spock carried a fallen shipmate to a more dignified temporary resting place. Adding her bloodstains to the ones already covering his uniform, he put Christine on an empty biobed and covered her with a blanket. Resting his hands briefly on the edge of the bed he paused over her hidden form. Jim hovered in the doorway, waiting until Spock finally looked at him.

"All she ever wanted was to be loved," the Vulcan said, unexpectedly.

Jim swallowed the ache in his throat, for Christine, for the Vulcan hybrid who had learned to be so patient and understanding of the humans with whom he served.

"McCoy said she was the best head nurse he ever had but she had a knack for picking the wrong men, Spock," he said, comfortingly. "That wasn't your fault. In the end I think she understood and was happy for you."

Spock nodded and returned to his Captain's side. He was paler than usual. His skin was a sickly washed out greenish-gray. The stress was growing and Jim wondered if they should have stopped at some point to rest.

But where? There hadn't been a place on the ship that had escaped unscathed, no where that would have given them a respite from the carnage.

Unwilling but still driven as if by demons, they began to search sickbay for McCoy.

They found him in his office, lying on the floor by his chair, staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. There was a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. The wound had bled profusively, coating his face.

Too much...too much... Kirk collapsed finally, dropping into the chair in front of the desk as the lifeblood drained from his face and the last sliver of his soul shrank and died. He wasn't sure how long he sat there, gazing at nothing. He was vaguely aware that Spock had briefly vanished and then reappeared with a blanket. Jim knew what it was for, but he couldn't - god help him he couldn't - watch this time. He set his elbows on his knees and dropped his face into his hands, blocking the truth and the horror and fighting off the pain with all the strength he had left. Time seemed to slow down. All he could hear was his own labored breathing and the pounding of his aching heart.

When he finally looked up again, he found Spock sitting in McCoy's chair. Spock was studiously and dispassionately fixated on McCoy's computer screen. The concentration on his face was intense.

"Spock, for god's sakes," Jim murmured, for once unable to understand the Vulcan ability to remain unaffected no matter what the circumstances.

Dark eyes met his.

"He was recording his log. It was still running. It recorded everything that happened, with the invaders. The conversation is...fascinating," Spock's voice was hoarse. His tone asked for understanding.

And in a way Jim understood. Listening to it was a way to honor McCoy's last moments, to perhaps give their friend a chance to help them in their quest for answers. But silence was the only thing in sickbay, except for their voices.

"You're listening to it?" Jim asked, incredulous, "I don't hear anything."

"I changed the decibel level. I didn't want to disturb you," Spock replied.

Jim was struck numb for a moment , gaping at his First Officer in silence.

"I want to hear it," he said, finally, sitting up straighter in the chair.

"Jim," Spock said, in that voice that clearly said 'I don't think that's a good idea.'

"I want to hear it, Spock," Jim replied, in that voice that clearly said 'That's an order.'

They understood each other too well for Spock to argue. Spock however did not move instantly to obey the order. He stood and opened a cabinet on the wall, took out a glass and a bottle of amber liquid. He poured a very generous amount into the glass and set it on the desk before Jim.

Jim gave him a rueful look and then downed it in one swallow. Spock sat back down and returned the sound to its usual level, keyed it to play from the beginning and then leaned back with his fingers tented in front of him while they listened.

For most of his carreer Leonard McCoy had managed to escape the worst duty any doctor could face - combat triage. The last few hours had been hell, deciding who would die, who might live a few more miserable hours, holding out hope in the face of hopelessness. He had lost count of how many had been brought there, or stumbled in bleeding in dozens of places. He pronounced one more person dead, tossed bloody gloves into the waste receptacle and then staggered to his office and turned on the log recorder. He sat for a good two minutes just staring, gathering scattered thoughts and trying to find his voice. He sat wondering if it would even make any difference. There was a distinct possibility that the ship would fall to the invaders and be taken with them. No one from Star Fleet might ever hear this report. In the deepest part of his soul, McCoy had already accepted that at some point he himself would be slain.

And there as nothing he could do about it - nothing he could do in the face of such odds. His brilliant medical skills could not bring people back to life or cure multiple wounds from projectile weapons; especially not when they came through the door by tens and twenties.

He began to record his log entry of dead and dying in a voice so devoid of emotion he thought Spock might be proud of him. From outside his office he heard the door swish open and wondered how many more were being brought to him. The screams of horror brought him to his feet and rushing out into the foyer.

Two invaders in their camoflage armor, holding deadly looking rifles as if they knew exactly how to use them, stood menacingly in the center of the room. Chapel was frozen in the doorway to the biobeds, pale and terrified.

"Who is in charge?" It was a flat, mechanical voice, no doubt being generated by the Universal Translator.

"I am," McCoy said, standing his ground.

"Where is the Time Shaper?" The robot voice asked.

"What is the Time Shaper?" McCoy asked. He used every ounce of his Star Fleet and medical training. First, ask the patient for the symptoms. He began backing towards his office, luring them away from his panicked medical staff and injured patients. "We can't help you find something if we don't know what it is!"

"That which brought us here."

"If it brought you here then you should know where it is," McCoy said, too impatient to be sensibly frightened. "Didn't you have to program it?"

"Yes."

"Then it's a device of some kind?"

"Yes."

"It was in your ship when we brought it on board?"

"After you destroyed our ship. It would have survived."

"We didn't destroy your ship. We found it," McCoy's throat had gone dry and he longed for the bourbon he knew was in the cabinet behind him. "How would it have survived? How did you survive? There was nothing there when we found your ship!"

There was a long pause in which the invaders seemed to be communicating with each other. McCoy had the impression they were considering whether he really needed to know. Keep them talking, McCoy thought.

"The Time Shaper was given to us by the gods," was the eventual reply, "It survives."

McCoy's mind was racing. 'Gods' for some races were simply more advanced races. "Then your gods gave you the ability to travel through time? With this device?"

They were silent again for a time.

"Where is the Time Shaper?" It repeated.

"We think our Captain and First Officer have it. They vanished as soon as you appeared," McCoy said, taking a chance at sharing that information. His heart leapt. If this device sent people traveling around in time, Jim and Spock might still be alive.

"Where are they?"

The soulless voice grated on his frayed nerves. It was worse than talking to Spock.

"I told you," McCoy snarled, "They vanished. They probably activated this device without knowing they were doing it."

"Yes," the alien agreed. Neither seemed distressed by this probablity. "We will know this soon."

"How?" McCoy asked.

This time McCoy knew he wasn't going to get an answer. The alien raised the deadly weapon it had been holding loosely and fired it at point blank range.

"We will know this soon," the awful alien voice announced and Spock abruptly cut the transmission.

Jim had been concentrating on absorbing the information and listening once again to that beloved gravelly voice bravely facing down danger. He looked up at Spock in surprise, and then understanding dawned.

"They killed him after that, didn't they? They knew he couldn't tell them anything else."

"Yes," Spock said, bluntly."Then it is most likely that they killed everyone else in here."

Jim tried not to picture it but couldn't stop his racing imagination. He had seen what death at the hands of these invaders looked like. He wanted to stop it, but the image came anyway - the weapon raised to his friend's forehead, the explosion, McCoy falling backwards as blood poured down his face, the screams and panic that must have followed. Spock was right to have stopped the recording. Jim couldn't imagine living the rest of his life with those sounds echoing in his head. He regretted that Spock would. He dropped his face into his hands again and locked his mind against the pain and shock, grinding his teeth together.

"Jim," Spock's voice rumbled. He was becoming deeply concerned about Kirk's mental state. He had seen starship captains go mad over much less than this.

Wishing he could just become numb, Jim managed to look up.

"As we guessed, we were not held suspended in time, but thrown forward. They call the device the 'Time Shaper.' If it functions as I believe it does, we may be able to use it to return to the moments before any of this happened."

Hope flared like a match in a cave. Jim stopped breathing, waiting for Spock to continue.

"There is a hypothesis that all things are happening at the same time. We experience this in a linear manner. But if you imagine time as a string, one should be able to bend the string so that any point intersects with another point. I propose that this is the function of their time traveling device."

Jim exploded out of the chair so fast he knocked it over. For a moment Spock did fear for his Captain's sanity. He braced to stand, uncertain what would happen next. Determination blazed on Jim's face. Spock had seen that look before.

"I want them back," Jim stated it as a fact, "I don't care how long it takes. I don't care if you and I are both old and gray when it happens, I want them back."

Reasonably, Spock said, "It is an alien technology, Jim, one I am totally unfamiliar with."

"Then get familiar with it," Jim ordered, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. "The Universal Translator is still working on the language, based on what Uhura programmed into it. Spock! We can get them back."

Spock steepled his fingers again, joining the sensitive receptors in the tips and completing his own circuit, quelling with Vulcan discipline the unsettled emotions that were distracting his thought process. If he had any chance at all of doing what Kirk was asking he would need all the control he had ever been taught.

"Spock," Jim said, again, asking, pleading.

And just as he had every time Jim had asked him for the impossible, Spock nodded quietly and said,

"All right."