I do not own Star Trek 2009, Supernatural, NCIS or NCIS: LA
The Impala arrived to a scene of chaos. Debris and the ghoulishly silver puffs of gas leaked from six big holes in the Enterprise's saucer and lower body. Lights were flickering on several decks and the connection to Uhura was sketch at best. The bridge crew steeled themselves for the worst case scenario. "We're going to emergency beam you all over," Dean ordered over the comm.
Uhura shook her head over the scratchy connection. "Absolutely not, sir."
Dean raised his eyebrows. "I beg your pardon, Lieutenant?"
"Sir, we can't. We don't know where Gain or Starc are. At the moment, the Impala hasn't come in contact with either. You'd have to beam us over individually, affirming our identity as you went." She coughed lightly and someone offered her a mask that she waved off.
"Gain's loose?" Dean demanded and suddenly the cough made sense. "The remaining air's compromised."
Uhura tried to smile at him and failed. "It's been an interesting day."
Dean scowled. "Patch me through to Kirk." There was a pause.
"Winchester." Kirk's voice was breathless, there was no visual and clearly the Enterprise captain was working on six different things all at once.
"I'm going to start beaming people over. Infirmary first. I'll get Dr. McCoy to confirm every person's identity. We'll do it in batches of five and Jo will be standing by with a security team. If we can't confirm someone, we'll throw them in the brig." Dean finished up succinctly.
"Good. Do it," Kirk replied. "And don't let either of those rats onto your ship."
"Understood," Dean promised, hearing the anger and self-recrimination humming in Kirk's voice.
Enterprise
Kirk had taken over the hunt for the two missing agents and had arrived at his last option. "Cupcake," he said coldly, "station a full security team at the hold and the infirmary. Full identity check for everyone. Issue oxygen masks after they've been confirmed. Once everyone is either in the hold or the infirmary, we vent the ship." Cupcake saluted sharply, eyes hard.
"Spock," Kirk turned to his loyal first officer. "I don't care how you do it but get that poison out of the air."
"Understood, captain," Spock replied, his voice low and gravely with contaminant. The Vulcan had gone into the thickest of the toxin to drag out a fresh-faced ensign who was now in the ICU section of the infirmary. The infirmary was now on a closed oxygen loop, its heavy-duty scrubbers keeping most of Gain's toxin out. That would only last for five hours though. After that, even those scrubbers would overload with carbon dioxide.
"They're looking to destroy the ship," Kirk mused aloud, Sulu waiting patiently at his side. Chekov was still trying to untangle the ship's sealant systems – several stress cracks were creeping dangerously close to necessary, atmosphere-positive systems. Uhura was coordinating with the Impala and the rest of the bridge crew was obviously busy. Solid, dependable Sulu though, was at Kirk's disposal.
"Where would you go," Kirk asked, "if you wanted to rip the ship apart but needed to survive the event?"
"Life pods or shuttle. I'd say shuttle because the life pods are completely disabled. Additionally, we're on high alert – Gain and Starc should know they'll have absolutely no chance of making it onto the Impala," Sulu said confidently, dark eyes scanning the halls around them calmly.
"Shuttle," Kirk concluded.
Sulu checked his belt for a phaser and the nifty little expanding blade (Kirk still wanted one). "Ready, sir."
That was all Kirk needed.
Los Angeles
Callen stood in the door to the hold, hands up. His phaser sat in front of him on the ground, joined by the phasers of his security team. Moving with careful deliberation and carefully avoiding confronting the crazy gleam in Walker's eye, Callen pushed his men to sit down at the back of the crowd.
They'd met Hetty on their way down. Well, strictly speaking, they'd found a cute little data transmitter with a real paper and ink note attached instructing Callen to carry it somewhere Walker wouldn't find it.
Now he was praying the chip would do its job as he walked up to the madman. "Are you ready to listen?" Walker demanded. Callen noticed the shaking hands, the shadowed eyes. Walker was clinging to his last straw with a few fingers and when IO went down, they tended to do so in flames.
"I'm listening," Callen replied soothingly, carefully sitting down beside Sam, who was busy sending his captain 'are you insane' glares.
That was Walker's trigger. He paced back and forth spilling his rhetoric about how Starfleet needed to cleanse itself of filthy aliens. Callen deliberately did not glance over at the poor terrified Orion scientist quivering in his line of sight. Poor Dr. Haili was one of the friendliest, bubbliest people he'd ever met, but she had no stomach for violence, never went off-ship and if Walker tried to make an example of her – Callen shook that thought from his head.
"Come on Hetty," he muttered to himself as Walker's knees began to shake. Callen could practically see the pulse beating through Walker's skin. A question asked of Nate with his eyes had the doctor shaking his head almost imperceptibly. Walker was going to crash and when he did, the bomb would go off.
Scratch that. The home-made bomb would go off. Callen realized the thing had been cannibalized from either the Enterprise or the LA and in either case it didn't look like Walker particularly knew what he was doing. Yet another factor to add to this unstable situation.
Callen turned his attention to scanning the hold's darker corners and ventilation shafts. Sam would elbow him if he had to pay attention to Walker. No sign of Hetty, no signal to the captain – there! A small wink of silver, a mirror probably. Hetty liked the sneakiest, subtlest approach. If it wasn't high tech, it couldn't give you away, she always said.
Morse code. She wanted him to approach and knock Walker out. But – Callen squinted to make sure he got it all – don't let Walker get too excited. So a sudden drop in heartbeat was good but a sudden spike was bad. Callen waited until Walker wheeled on his heel and then with all the silence of a black-ops soldier, ghosted up behind the man and applied the bastardized Vulcan nerve pinch that had taken him a year to master.
Walker dropped like a stone.
Enterprise
Just before he and Sulu stormed the shuttle bay, Kirk got confirmation that the infirmary had been evacuated and they were working on the hold. Scotty was refusing to leave and had just found a rather nasty bomb wired into the warp cores. Kirk had considered ordering the excitable Scot off the ship but one of the hardest command lessons a captain had to learn was this: issuing an order you know won't be followed is a very bad idea. So he said nothing at all, to both Sulu and Scotty's astonished surprise, just checked out the shuttle bay and noticed that exactly two extra lights were lit up on the Newton.
Gesturing with quick, sharp motions, Kirk led a silent charge into the bay, slipping behind crates and barrels in time to hear Gain and Starc arguing viciously. Holding up a hand, he and Sulu crouched down to listen.
"Are you insane?" Gain demanded, her voice quiet but shrill, high with anger.
Starc growled, towering over the slight scientist. "I want the Federation dogs dead!"
Gain threw up her hands in frustration. "They will be dead! And the Enterprise will be a symbol of what happens when people cross us!"
"But they are not dead yet and the Impala, curse its arrogant captain, is already here, saving Enterprise crew members! We should make a break for it with the shuttle and blow the ship."
Kirk scowled and turned to Sulu. To his surprise, the pilot had a side panel on the shuttle pried up, fishing around in the wires of the shuttle with a small pair of wire nippers. A quick snip had the shuttle door sliding shut. A second pluck saw all the lights on the shuttle flicker, stutter and fail. Then Sulu pulled out his phaser, adjusted the setting to kill and shot the snot out of the entire wiring system.
Looking up with a cheeky grin, the Japanese-American pilot shrugged. "Paid attention to Scotty when it counted. My skills might be limited but they're usually helpful." Kirk threw his head back and laughed in relief, hearing Starc futilely pounding on the door of the shuttle.
"Why didn't you mention it?"
Sulu shrugged again. "Wasn't entirely sure I'd succeed. If I grabbed the wrong wire, well…" Kirk took a glance at the melted, ruined circuit board and frowned.
"Sulu, you would have either electrocuted yourself or blown this whole hangar to hell."
Sulu wilted just a bit and Kirk tried to decide if he wanted to throttle his clever pilot or thump him on the back in congratulations. He chose optimism. "I'm not saying I want you around as the expert on disabling shuttles, but I'm glad you succeeded. Now," and Kirk cracked his knuckles happily. "We can gas them and turn them over to Bones. He can keep them out the whole way back to Earth."
Sulu shuddered. "You're a cruel, cruel man Captain."
Los Angeles
By the time the Washington arrived to take on the wounded and donate 10% of their atmosphere, Walker was thoroughly chained and locked in the LA brig, actually foaming at the mouth as he ranted and raved.
Callen hadn't interrogated or even seen the man. He was busy trying to contain the situation, determine who was missing and who was dead and make sure that they didn't have to limp back to a star base on impulse power. Eric didn't like the idea of going to warp with the rec decks open wide and Callen agreed but couldn't afford to spend two weeks limping back to repairs. Neither option was good.
On the LA's big view screen, Gibbs eyed the tense LA captain with something approaching compassion. "Can't give you any more atmosphere, not with my personnel capacity at max," he said, "but I can get two repair ships out here within eight hours to patch up those decks." Callen was sceptical. Repair ships rarely ventured far from their star bases because they were giant, unwieldy, slow and staffed by civilians to boot.
The silver-haired captain leaned forward in his chair. "You need warp speed. You need a repair. I'll get it to you." Truth rang clear in every word and it sounded like something Callen himself would say, a promise he would make because it was the right thing to do.
"Plus," Gibbs said grimly, "repair ships are going to have to leave their star bases. Enterprise put out a massive atmosphere venting alert." Callen's blood ran cold. Los Angeles had been in trouble, but they hadn't been that desperate. And for Kirk to put out an alert like that, it had to have been bad.
"Have you heard from them?" he asked.
Gibbs shook his head. "Impala was responding. Between Kirk and Winchester they'll sort it out." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as well as Callen.
"Let's hope so."
Enterprise
Kirk had just finished dumping Starc and Gain in cells on opposite sides of the brig and turned Bones loose when his comm chirped. "Captain, I have successfully determined an appropriate filter for the toxin in the air," Spock reported with calm satisfaction. "I am sure you have captured the persons responsible."
Kirk grinned, feeling a figurative load fall off his shoulders. "I have indeed," he replied with buoyancy. "What's the Impala got to say?"
"They have departed with a maximum load. All the injured will be left at the closest star base. Impala will return with repair ships and an ambulance. Evidently Admiral Cartwright was unimpressed and tried to hinder aid efforts. However, Captain Winchester was most…emphatic."
Oh, Kirk was so going to be sorry he missed that. "All right Spock, let's have everyone meet up in engineering. And I mean everyone. It's time to figure out how we're going to untangle this mess."
Kirk was soon storming through his ship with Spock at his shoulder, sweeping through damaged sections and assessing shattered, sparking systems with a critical eye. The hydroponics had been hit by an explosion and was operating at less than 30% efficiency. Carbon dioxide would start to overwhelm the scrubbers. But on the flip side, they weren't carrying a whole ship's complement of crew. Additionally, the bridge was completely inaccessible and suddenly Kirk was acutely aware that the Enterprise was a sitting duck, dead and defenceless in space.
Not good.
Still, there wasn't a whole lot he could do about it. Scotty was still trying to keep the Enterprise from spilling vital air into cold, uncaring vacuum. At the very least, Kirk thought numbly as he helped Spock reinforce a cracking bulkhead, the injured were off the ship and the Impala had left a shuttle and life pods behind that could hold everyone should the worst case scenario come to pass.
To top off the good news, he mused with dry humour, they were in the middle of nowhere, the Corelians were completely disarmed and the Klingons or Romulans had absolutely no idea where the Enterprise was sitting.
"Picked a perfect time to get lost," he muttered to himself.
He saw Spock's amused eyebrow and knew the Vulcan understood completely.
Impala
"I don't give a damn about your budget restrictions!"
Admiral Cartwright blinked and opened his mouth to let loose but the infuriated captain beat him to it.
"Starfleet's flagship was the victim of extensive sabotage and now the lives of over two hundred people are at risk. Two hundred people who just endeavoured to save the planet. Now, you will patch me through to Admiral Pike or I will have you up on charges of attempted murder. Impala out."
Captain Dean Winchester was in fine form and deadly serious about the last threat. He was tired of being treated like crap because he or Kirk happened to rub the admirals the wrong way. They wanted someone to get the job done, they put capable people in place. "You don't see me sitting on my hands whistling every time IO loses control of their agents or when the Admiralty pisses off some crazy fundamentalist," he grumbled irritably. "No, the Impala runs off, gets beat to hell and saves the Admiralty from looking bad. Oh, and we happen to save a few lives along the way, keep planets from getting blown up, genocide, you know. Small peanuts. Not that Cartwright cares."
"We're being hailed by Admiral Cartwright," Sam reported.
Dean glared. "I don't want to talk to him unless he's going to be uncharacteristically generous."
Sam listened for a minute, tried to break into the rant several times and then simply said in tones of frigid steel, "We agree with our captain and we are not going to mutiny. Whether you give us permission or not. Impala out." He hung up with definitive force.
"How much shit are we going to be in for this?" Dean asked, not really caring.
Sam shrugged. "Depends on how pissed Admiral Pike is. I want to be a fly on the Admiralty wall when he finds out the Enterprise is down to 48% atmosphere. It'd be entertaining, to say the least."
Dean thought about it for a minute and then smirked. "Agreed. Let's just go on being our usual disruptive selves. If Pike kicks up a fuss, they won't notice if we shanghai the whole damned star base, let alone a few repair ships."
Earth – Admiralty
"You said you couldn't provide repair ships why?"
Admiral Cartwright looked flustered as his usually quiet and calm peer proved that he hadn't been a desk-flying officer for long at all.
Normally, Pike's wrath was a long-fused thing, difficult to ignite. He was a notoriously calm and composed individual who acted in a prudent, logical manner. Hell, most of the admirals thought their second-newest peer was a saint for handling the two high-octane captains of the Impala and the Enterprise.
But they had forgotten that like called to like and former-Captain Pike had been a terror in his own right.
"This Admiralty will provide every amenity the Los Angeles or the Enterprise requests. We will hold a fair but speedy trial of the individuals involved. And it will be my recommendation to the judge involved that given their prior history, the individuals involved be sentenced to solitary confinement on Pluto for the rest of their living existence. Any man in this room who attempts to hinder the Impala or the Washington in their relief efforts will answer to me. Am I understood?" Pike never once raised his voice and that was the truly terrifying part of the confrontation.
"We need to stop hampering our captains," Admiral Vance put in. "They are not children and contrary to certain individuals' beliefs, they are not idiots. Their track records speak for themselves: they are not perfect but they are damned effective." The newest Admiral's calming words reduced Pike's rage from a roiling boil to a heated simmer. "Pike, I think it would help matters along if you went out to Starbase 3 and streamlined the efforts."
Pike glowered at his ally, who met the heated admiral's eyes calmly. "While you do that, I will trust my own ships to assist. In the meantime, I will rework a few regulations and procedures so that this sort of situation never passes us by again. Perhaps all Constitution-class ship messages should automatically be expedited to their respective admirals." Vance tried not to hold his breath. Getting Pike to agree to anything at this point would be a battle unless he saw the immediate benefits that the Enterprise or Los Angeles stood to reap.
"Understood," Pike finally snapped out and stormed out of the room like a typhoon, leaving a room of shaken men behind him.
"Now then," Vance began, his own held-back anger coming to the forefront. "Because you held an unprofessional grudge against this organization's flagship, which happens to be in the habit of saving planets, Admirals and Starfleet itself, my ship is currently experiencing a 5% casualty rate and atmospheric loss. Would you care to explain yourself?"