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Technical Difficulties
Chapter 13: Of Traps and Trysts
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Jim was holding up tolerably well, considering that he only had the use of one arm, his torso, and his neck to create himself a safe haven in the barracks of the Sealion. After trying to alleviate most of his pain and bleeding with customary first-aid he found in the bathroom, Jim was raring to go.
There wasn't much to think about; most of the work was just moving this thing over there, and that thing over here. Building a mini-fort was like breathing to Jim; surrounding it by a maze of beds was equally easy. He had enough layers of broken off pieces of metal and solid chunks of the bulkhead to craft his ultimate hideaway, which he placed at the heart of the fort, which was slightly off-center to the heart of the maze. Just in case, he set up a few fake forts that, when triggered, unleashed deadly traps. The maze itself was set up by layers of turned-over beds, too high to pass over and too tough to blast through. They were also light to move, and easy to permanently fix in place with the help of a phaser. These beds were perfect as maze barriers.
The traps were by far the trickiest to set up and drag away from unharmed; Jim made sure that each one was essentially unique, even though all were made from basically the same materials.
One was one of those classic traps Jim had always seen in older cartoons: there was a piece of bait placed strategically in the loop that would tighten around the victim's ankle and pull him upwards once he took the bait. Now, Jim had a very select few options to choose bait from, but decided on a damaged phaser; even if Finnegan got his hands on it, he wouldn't be able to use it. The loop, instead of rope, was an extremely useful piston cord, much like the one Jim already had at his belt holding up his tibia, but made by a different manufacturer. Clearly it was not Starfleet issued; Jim had had some problems assembling the trap because the cord was clearly hostile, and would respond to any heat by means of sharp spikes popping out all along the length. When he thought about Finnegan on the receiving end of this particular trap, Jim decided that no amount of trouble it took assembling, it was worth it.
The second trap was more complex, and took more time in assembling than Jim had expected. He supposed that having only one hand really cut down on time. This one was, in effect, a mantrap. It encased the sumbitch in the pit left by the crash in the floor. Jim had almost fallen in it, and had had quite a few ideas from his near downfall. First, he grabbed a few circuits and assembled a basic shield emitter module to cover the hole. He then threw some metal panels on top of the force field. Setting up a motion/pressure sensor up to the machine, Jim made sure that if Finnegan took a single step onto the middle of the pit, he would fall to his injury or death onto the spikes below.
The third trap was a premeditated explosive. Jim set up a great many bombs around the lining of the floor, the walls, and even managed to get a few on the ceiling in a specific area. He connected them all, so that if one was triggered, every single bomb would go off and hopefully take out Finnegan, if not from the explosions themselves, by then the shrapnel or the falling debris. These bombs were extremely sensitive to light, of which Jim made sure he had none emitting. He thought that if Finnegan ever walked past this particular section of the maze, he would be critically wounded at the least.
As for his actual fort, Jim made it so that the maze didn't actually intersect with it. Instead of actually giving the prick a chance to logically find him, even the tiniest chance, Jim rigged the game. He let Finnegan think that he would be able to get to Jim if he figured out the maze, when in truth the maze was a farce, and there was no end to it. Except in the traps Jim had set. Ready to live in his fort for a few more hours to a few more days, Jim made sure to fill up his resources in food, medical supplies, any extra objects that might pass for weapons, some blankets and clothes, the works. He got the last necessary resources from the extra storage and dragged himself back to the center of the maze, checking over his work as he bit down on his bloodstained blanket.
There, all was finished now. Jim hunkered back into his sanctuary, closing the maze behind him. He had taken approximately thirty minutes to set everything up, and he had surmised that Finnegan would at least reach the cockpit in ten.
There was still one more issue to work out: his injuries, which were obviously quite severe. Having pushed himself this far, Jim knew his body desperately needed attention or it would quite literally start falling apart. Groaning with fatigue, Jim grabbed his medical kit and went to work, dabbing the worst places with disinfectant. Then, he applied thick creams to halt bleeding and cover the wounds effectively so that no stray bacteria would end up in there. He could barely look at his left leg, and the gaping hole where his tibia had once been, but he knew that he had to cover it or risk serious infection, not that he was assuming he wasn't already exposed. After that, he had to patch his left arm back together into a nice arm-shaped mass, with tiny chips of bone sticking out and bloody gore in every direction. After that, Jim cleaned off all the blood. He finished by bandaging the skin firmly, but not too tightly, basically all over his body. Blood collected in the gauze, soaking through, even though he had cleaned himself multiple times and had effectively stopped most of the bloodflow. He would change bandages in another ten minutes or so. There. That was all he could do with his limited knowledge of medical procedure.
All that was left was to wait. Jim's head fell back, and for a moment he rested.
Then he heard the barracks doors issuing open. Jim's eyes flicked open.
Finnegan was here.
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Adrenaline shot through Spock like wildfire, and his body thrummed like a warm engine. It was all he could do, with Jim in his head, to keep still and school his facial features into a calm, normal expression. Surely once this was over some fine-tuning would be necessary for their mental bond to allow a more comfortable safety catch onto their connection. Perhaps the stress of a first bond coupled with Spock's low metal defenses and Jim's haywire emotions at this time all contributed to the negative effects experienced. But Spock didn't have time for that at the moment.
He had to, quoth Jim, "play politics."
The messages from Starfleet that came in at first were all technical procedure, simple messages that basically said, 'we received your message,' 'we're thinking about responding soon after we talk about it,' and 'how exactly did this happen?' Spock knew that their answers right now would determine the judgment of the council, and so he was exceedingly careful in his word choice, even more so than usual. He was not about to stain the prestige of Jim, the Enterprise, or anything connected with the situation. Except perhaps that of the traitor Finnegan.
So Spock gave a concise yet informative response of his own that desperately called for assistance in the form of, perhaps, another starship or two. The crewmembers needed transportation back to Earth, the Enterprise's brig was not functioning properly to detain Finnegan, and the remains of the Enterprise needed to be brought back to the space station. Impulse engines could get the ship off of the ground, but a tractor beam from another ship could get the injured ship back in no time at all with little danger to the crewmembers aboard needed for the impulse.
Starfleet did not respond immediately. Another ten minutes later, they sent a message that said, 'we're thinking about what you said, and it's very interesting.' Spock sat down in the captain's chair and checked the ship's status again. The bridge crew calmed down in the momentary lapse in action. Everyone did their normal jobs. Spock's limbs were tightly wound over the smooth surface of the chair, and his forehead was furrowed in either stress, pain, or thought. Everyone assumed it was thought.
Then the Enterprise received the first response from the Martian Coalition. Spock shifted his focus. The Martian Coalition was perfectly outraged that a Starfleet vessel would crash land in the beautiful Martian deserts, a famous tourist site for hundreds of years, and that the Martian Coalition was supposed to allot precious resources to help clean up the mess. Spock assured the representative that Starfleet would reimburse any expenses paid for the assistance given to help the survivors. Besides, if the Coalition decided to refuse to extend aid, the bad press would be humiliating. Irritably, the Coalition finally decided to come to their aid.
Spock's tension relaxed partially. One obstacle had been systematically passed; the Enterprise would begin to receive assistance in approximately ten minutes from the local teams from the planet's best base facilities. However, there was still one more obstacle to face: the ruling of Starfleet. This determined everything.
"Commander Spock, Starfleet Council hailing signal received."
Spock paused for a millisecond before responding. He prepared himself, his mind flashing through all steps taken for the operation, filling in the details, logically concluding causes and effects, keeping in mind all previous decisions of Starfleet high command, and concluding on all possibilities for Starfleet's choice of action in this particular situation. "Open the channel, Lieutenant."
"Yessir."
The viewscreen flicked on.
The entire council sat around their oval table, sternly taking in the blackened and bloodied bridge and its similar crew.
Spock stood proudly before the captain's chair, his arms behind his back, looking unflinchingly and unwaveringly into the onslaught. It hadn't been the first time the Enterprise had called on the High Council, but it was the first time Spock had ever needed to take them on without the Captain.
Though, of course, the Captain was there in spirit.
Spock stood a little straighter, and his eyes narrowed.
((()))
Chapel had finished setting necessary parameters for the limited supply of nurses to follow. They were all diligently working on either transporting the injured to Sickbay, treating onspot to the critical, treating in Sickbay, or fetching more medical supplies to those who were on the onspot duty. Of course, she had allowed for shift switches and breaks for everyone. In fact, she had just sat down to her very own break after working non-stop for what seemed like an eternity when her medical emergency beeper went off.
Without a moment's hesitation, she answered. "Nurse Chapel here."
"This is Commander Spock. Nurse. It is imperative that you immediately aid Doctor McCoy. He is injured. Currently, his position is within the transporter room."
"Yessir, right away, sir!" In haste, Chapel grabbed all of her essential supplies, before stopping to make sure she had everything conceivable. After a pause, she opened her desk to grab a few more items that were rarely used but had their charms. You never knew when one of these was going to come in handy, and Chapel thought that she would take no chances with the Doctor's life. She certainly wasn't going to make a foolish medical mistake on the very doctor she aspired to be like! Besides, she thought of him like a family member.
She slung the tricorder over her body, and her medical bag over her shoulder. Then she set off for the transporter room, as fast as her high heels would allow her to go, dashing with all the speed her legs could muster. There were a few obstacles to overcome to reach the transporter room; there were a few levels of Jefferies tubes to climb, and some of the connecting tubes were severely damaged. Using her surgical laser cutter, Chapel managed to cut just enough for one person to squeeze through debris to reach the next expanse of tunnels. Her uniform got a tiny tear up the side, but that was all.
Down the next flight, there was quite an awkward moment when Lieutenant Kingsley, an engineer who got his fingers burnt and mashed by circuitry almost constantly, was coming up the tube, presumably to get to the mangled tube above her. Not only was it extremely close quarters, they had to squeeze their bodies past each other; his breath ghosted over her lips. Chapel blushed. There was a moment when they both stopped; she thought of the rip in her uniform; he had certainly seen it. She blushed even more, and though she hadn't been able to meet his eyes at first, now she couldn't look away.
But she really needed to move, to get down to Chief Medical Officer McCoy. He was in serious medical emergency, and here she was, flirting. Shifting her weight, looking at her feet, Chapel kept moving down the tube.
And if Kingsley had looked a little disheartened, well, they were in the middle of a shipwide emergency. It wasn't her fault that she couldn't spend all day mindlessly gazing into his eyes and playing footsie.
As she thought about it more, she realized that it was really odd; usually, Chapel refused point-blank to become in any way romantically inclined towards any member of the crew, and in the middle of an emergency no less! Shaking her head, Chapel turned her attentions towards more important matters.
Like saving her Chief Medical Officer, for a start.
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Stepping into the hangar, Finnegan knew he was in the right place. Not only did all the blood trails lead here, the floor was covered in scarlet. Layers of the stuff covered the ground, the bottom layers dry and the top layers still wet. That was only what he could see directly in front of him, because the rest of the room was swallowed by what seemed to be a fort, made of what seemed like infinitely many propped up beds.
Smirking, Finnegan tried to kick one of the beds over. Hopping up and down, holding his throbbing toes, Finnegan cursed at Kirk under his breath. Melding the beds to the floor, he would.
Flicking his gaze back and forth, Finnegan found an opening to Kirk's annoying maze. It was tough to find, hidden behind a curtain of dangling circuits and sharp metal points. But Finnegan cleared a path for himself and headed on in to find and kill the bastard.
He tripped over a cord.
((()))
Scotty was still manually sawing off those stinking blighters of circuit casings when Chapel arrived on the scene. After fighting with the sparks of Silver Lady richoting off from the decoupler, he had given up on trying to break apart the outer layer in an elegant fashion. Right now, Scotty was trying to ease her through a tantrum, as he ripped away covers from the console in an unorthodox fashion.
He had never treated her so roughly before. Maybe it was because she was disobeying him so rebelliously, but Scotty was never so annoyed with her jealous behavior until now. Hands that had previously caressed her every nacelle were now tearing off her console covers with an animalistic ferocity, almost. Well, not that angry. Scotty assumed that, perhaps, it was the burns on his fingers that made it seem like he was being a bit more rough than he actually was, because of the black, dried blood crusting itself in between his webbings along with the pain influenced his movements to be jerky and slightly spastic. As he worked more and more, so did his performance suffer.
Every so often, his glance would flicker from his circuits and alight on the Doctor, lying motionlessly across the room. Blood had continually spread from his head wound into a puddle that Scotty had tried to halt in vain. There was a ripped piece of some cloth Scotty had blindly grabbed and ripped into long, thin shreds wound around the Doctor's head, but it didn't seem to be doing any good. Scotty had never been very good at applying any sort of medicinal aid, except to machines. He supposed, theoretically, that a living being was just an extremely intricate machine with chemicals and living matter making up its parts, but then he'd never really studied the interactions between the specific compounds and resulting reactions nearly as closely as those made by metallic machines.
This was one of those times when Scotty regretted not taking that comparative engineering and medical classes back in high school. It might have come in handy. Maybe he could read up on it when this was all over and done with, assuming they all survived. He lamented his medical ignorance again, contemplating his burning fingers and the body over there.
The Doctor. It wasn't the body. The good doctor wasn't dead.
Another spark surged from the console and zapped Scotty on the knuckle.
"Daemn!" He brought it up to his mouth and sucked on the burn. After a second of thought, he returned to his toil on the Silver Lady. Hacking away at her covers, Scotty made progress little by little, even if She wasn't in the mood.
The door issued open. Nurse Chapel rushed into the room with two very heavy-looking bags, and quickly assessed the situation.
"Chief Engineer Scott – !" This was just standard good manners, acknowledging the other person in the room. Chapel said it distractedly, her full attention really on the wounded man lying on the ground.
"Aye, milady, Scott here."
"Commencing medical procedure on Chief Medical McCoy now."
"Aye, understood."
Fiddling with the primary connectors, Scotty burned his hands again as his eyes drifted towards Nurse Chapel working over the Doctor's inert form.
"Oaew!" He cried. "Infernal blighter! Son of a licentious muck-eating pullet!"
Chapel glanced over her shoulder with one eyebrow raised.
((()))
Jim grinned maliciously when he heard the screams of pain from his hideaway. Certainly it was Finnegan, with all the crap pouring out of the capturee's mouth about how he was going to kill Jimmy-boy for this, just you wait. Jeez, even his insults were cliché. Like he was some ham actor from the 20th century or something.
When a silence fell, Jim held his breath, straining to hear Finnegan rustling about. A shing! of metal cutting through the air, and a thud of Finnegan hitting the ground. Jim could visualize exactly what was happening; Finnegan had a knife in his boot, and he had grit his teeth against the pain to reach up and grab it, only to cut himself free. Damn. He had escaped the first trap. At least a leg or two was damaged by the Piston Cord of Sharp, Retractable, and Malevolent Spikes. There's always a silver lining…
Jim started at the sound of a phaser going off, and he saw the red light diffuse atop his highest barrier.
Finnegan had set his weapon to kill.
His gaze hardening, his jaw tightening, his remaining fist clenching, Jim tried to stop his body from shaking with rage.
Finnegan might hear.
Jim closed his eyes and tried to center himself.
Spock.
He focused on Spock.
What was he doing?
He was sorting through his mind to perfect his responses to the Council. Jim swelled with pride and unconditional support.
Sending a constant flow of charisma and strength through the bond, Jim got a brush of thanks in reply.
((()))
She took a deep breath and prepared herself, slowly slipping on surgical gloves, fingering her choice of tools.
Chapel secured McCoy's head, made sure it couldn't move by shooting his neck with numbing muscle relaxant, and then his jaw. Using a primary scanner, she went level by level through the damage, first the damage to the external skin, then deeper and deeper, each layer more and more complicated, especially when she passed the cracked skull. After she saw the cracked skull, she took out another scanner to keep a close eye on the progress of the sharp points of calcium within the brain, and another to keep tabs on the rest of the body, more specifically the spine, as Chapel went to work at surgically removing the splinters of skull from McCoy's brain.
After removing the last piece, she sighed in relief. Just then, the alarm on the body sensor went off with a vengeance. She started violently, grabbing it with her spare hand to read the results. Ah, it was nothing. The sensor had picked up the flickering of pain from McCoy's nervous system when she had accidentally nudged that very region with her surgical tool while retrieving the skull piece.
Carefully snapping the correct neurons together, Chapel finished the hardest part of the operation. Now all that was left was to stitch up the external damage. Her shoulders relaxed minutely as she took a moment to go through all of the steps in her head once again. She was not going to mess up a single part of this; Chapel was determined to be absolutely perfect and thorough.
With a glance, she caught Scotty staring over at them from behind the console. She hid a small, sad smile at his obvious distress; she had never seen the Chief Engineer so flustered, and certainly never seen his fingers in such a terribly burned state. He was the one who discovered the Doctor and reported it; that was certain.
Another interesting note: Chapel knew that Scotty had always been the quickest worker with machines Starfleet had ever known. And right now, as of this moment, he had been trying to fix the same transporter circuit for the past twenty minutes at least; ever since Chapel arrived, anyway.
It was suspicious.
Very suspicious.
At any other time, she would have probably be filled with fiendish glee. But at this moment, this moment of uncertainty and obvious emergency, she couldn't bring herself to do it if she wanted to. It was just sad. Terribly, terribly sad. Chapel bit her lip, and her eyes welled up.
She never wanted to see her lover like this.
She would probably break, too.
((()))
Spock's response came tumbling from his mouth, as easily as honey. It was perfection in its address, its material, and its conclusion. There was no other report he had ever made that was as astonishingly spectacular. Not only was his rhetoric as sparkly as glitter, Spock also managed to describe the bravery of the crew, the ingenuity of the Captain, and the dastardly behavior of Finnegan perfectly, without inferring even in hindsight such claims as the incompetency to be kidnapped and to let such a mad traitor on board in the first place.
After he had finished, Spock regarded his audience. The Council members were all open-mouthed in some sort of shock, before the Admiral at the center stammered out, "Thank you for your concise report, Commander, we shall discuss the options available and send aid as soon as possible."
Spock inclined his head.
The screen clicked off.
Spock sunk down into the command chair. In relief.
((()))
Chapel was still grimly assessing McCoy's scan results when he woke up.
Blearily, his left eye, still halfway acquainted with the floor, slowly cracked open. Bones smelled blood in the air, the injured must have been lying around untreated for over twenty minutes or more, giving enough time for the blood to dry and give off odor as new blood continued flowing from the wound.
Bones' eyelashes drifted back and forth, swishing back and forth, flicking past the pool beneath him, collecting droplets of blood in his lashes, which shone like new rain, sliding down back into the scarlet reservoir, weighing down his eyelids.
All he could see was red, through his closed eyes. Light was shining mercilessly, cutting through his body's defenses and penetrating his feeble shield of an eyelid.
With another zap of Chapel's numbing medication, Bones went back under.
Chapel slowly worked on his scalp with her dermal regenerator.
((()))
Jim glowed in Spock's relief, and his body relaxed into the bloody blankets wrapped around him. He was careful, though, to not make a sound. There was no way he would help Finnegan find him, no way in hell.
If it had been before, though… Jim thought about how he used to be, before Spock, before the crew, before the Enterprise, before Bones. Before, he would have. He would have let Finnegan find him, he would have baited him. Jim knew exactly what would have happened; he would never have left the supply room, he would never have climbed through the vent, following Spock's advice. Jim would have tried to fully engage Finnegan in some sort of macho display of arrogance, tried to duel him to death.
He would have put his life on the line for his pride. And he probably would have died. But why would he be here in the first place if he didn't have Spock and the crew and the Enterprise? He would have been dead long ago.
Spock had personally saved his ass on so many missions he might have lost count if he hadn't had to do all that paperwork to get Spock all those damn awards. And every single member of his crew was so incredibly devoted to him, and he was right back, that there was never any question of sacrifice; he had always depended on them, and they on him, during tough times. And the Enterprise herself, the Silver Lady, was still as dependable as ever, even when she was halfway destroyed.
Before Jim had Bones, he had had nothing. When he had a friend, he had himself. When he got his crew, he was more than his own selfishness. He didn't just protect his crewmen because he was personally attached to them, like he did with Bones; no, he protected each and every one of them because he loved them unconditionally, without any slant in his own personal favor. Because he was their captain, and they were his crew, because they trusted him, and he trusted them. Because they loved him, and he loved them.
And whenever the Enterprise lost a man, Jim would personally grieve.
And he knew that whenever he put himself needlessly into danger, his crew suffered the same worry that he did when he sent crew on dangerous away missions.
So Jim had stopped doing irrationally dangerous things, unless the situation called for it, of course. Unless it included saving another crew member, for example. But it was a change. Not a small change, exactly. It was the addition of so many changes he had underwent throughout his time as captain, so many new responsibilities, so many new methods of working out problems, so much. Jim had changed. He was no longer an inconsistent, inconsiderate, innately selfish being anymore; Jim was the Captain. He was the Captain, and his crew followed him.
Jim had always been a genius, he had always had the gift, the talent for leadership. But he had never had the right mindset, exactly; he was always too selfish, too forceful, too shut inside, that nobody would follow.
Now he had something to live for, something important, something pushing him forward, letting him strip himself of all selfishness and help him reform.
His crew.
Jim was going to live for them, he was going to live, no matter what this bastard Finnegan had to say about it.
Even if he had to cower in this hole he'd built for himself, waiting out the tiger. He would not attempt some foolish stand at bravery, because he was above that now.
And Spock was there, to comfort and help him through it.
And it should be over any time now.
Whenever the transporter is ready.
The Enterprise should be beaming him out right about now.
He heard an unsavory sound.
Finnegan's laughter.
And it was coming closer.
((()))
Scotty once again reigned in the impulse to drop the circuitry, throw his decoupler to the floor, and dash across the bloody room to the good Doctor's side. Shake his shoulder, or summat like that. Make sure he was still fully functioning.
He watched the nurse's hands slowly draw across the wounded's forehead, halting the bleeding with new skin, layer by layer. Another spark from the circuitry cut into his hand again, and he yelped. His brow furrowed in consternation, and he brandished his wrench like the finger of a disapproving parent. "Naew, Lady, summat must be dun abaewt yeh, wha' with yer bad behavior an' all."
He kept watching until McCoy's head was fully covered with skin again. Not a wound in sight. But there was still blood covering the Doctor's face, uniform, and the entire floor. Scotty's usually rock-steady hands were slighting shaking, still.
Nurse Chapel pulled out a stack of towels or summat like that, and began to carefully wipe all of the blood away from his face. She lifted him with the crook of her arm, turned him over, cleaned him off. Something about the scene, to Scotty anyway, was eerily, scarily domestic. Maybe it was the whole wiping a walloping amount of blood away from his face was the disturbing part; it wasn't the usual thing wives wiped off their husbands' faces; you'd expect a bit of grime, or some sauce from some messy food or the other.
But maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was the whole bloody thing. Maybe it was the fact that the good Doctor had bled so bleeding much that it needed five flabbergasting towels to absorb all of it.
But then the Doctor twitched in response to Chapel zipping him a bit of something through one of those fancy medical shots, and he groggily opened his eyes. She started working on something else, maybe putting some blood back in that Doctor's arteries.
Something tight in Scotty's chest relaxed. His fingers loosened around his decoupler and his wrench; he looked down at them for a moment, and something clicked.
Humming, Scotty's fingers flew into the heart of the console and danced elegantly through the infinitely complicated circuits.
((()))
"Chief Engineer Scott, beam-out is necessary at this point in time."
"Aye, Commander, th' repair is nearly complete. Jes' need a few tweaks. An' don't we need a Security team for the kidnapper, then?"
"Yes, a team should be arriving momentarily. Disregard any superficial repairs, Lieutenant Commander. Make all haste."
"Aye, sir."
((()))
Damn, thought Jim frantically. Damn, he figured out my maze, he figured out that I wasn't at the center, damn, he's coming closer, I know it, he's got clamps or something, some sort of device he can use to get over the beds, damn, damn, damn.
Taking a logical and silent breath, Jim tried to follow Spock's example and control his erratic emotions. Even if Finnegan had somehow gotten around his ingenious maze, Scotty would beam him out of here in no time. Yeah, in no time. Spock had just relayed to him that all the transporter needed was a few 'tweaks,' and a Security team needed to arrive, and all that. Then, Jim hoped, then, he would be safe.
Bones would be there on the other side, with his evil hypos, caustic bedside manner, and sincerely concerned expression. He would be there, and he would make everything fine, he would patch up everything, like this whole nightmare hadn't even happened. Like Jim had never had to wrench off a bulkhead from his unresponsive arm, like Jim had never had to rip his bone from his body to use as a lever. Ha, all of that would be gone.
Then Finnegan spoke. He didn't raise his voice at all.
Like he knew exactly where Jim was, like he knew how eerily close he was.
He was right outside the wall of Jim's shelter.
"Hey there, Jimmy boy…" The Irishman whispered.
Scraping the metal face of the tall, sharp, and jutting scraps surrounding Jim like a teepee made of eruptions of sheets of thick serrated knives, making a circle around the whole thing with the tip of his weapon, Finnegan was looking for a weak point.
And he found one. A small crevice, allowing a sliver of darkness. With a twisted grin, Finnegan stuck the point of his phaser to the hole, before whispering, "Game over, Jimmy," and firing a blast.
Not only did he get in another shot, Finnegan's gunshot blasted a sizeable chunk out of Jim's last safe haven. Greedily, Finnegan shoved all of the smoking metal out of his way, giving him a way to maneuver most of his upper torso into Jim's stronghold.
He was inside, his hand was reaching in toward Jim. There, it was there, going straight for his throat. This crazy bastard wanted to strangle him. Jim was waiting, phaser pointed straight at Finnegan's heart, even with a smoking, singed hole in his remaining shoulder. Jim's phaser was shaking despite his efforts as Finnegan's hand closed around his neck.
Just as Jim's eyes began to glass over from the pain, the hand curling around his neck, and the inability to fight back, he pulled his trigger with his remaining strength. It hit Finnegan's knee, and he howled in pain like an animal. Staggering a bit, but not relaxing his grip, Finnegan took the gun in his other hand and slowly, with malicious eyes, lined the phaser up perfectly to Kirk's temple.
Swirls of white, skittering at first, then gathering strength, enveloped them both.
The shock returned the light to Jim's eyes, as Finnegan started in confusion and then astonishment. His grip slackened, and his eyes began to dart around as he realized the consequences; his chin trembled.
"Now it's really game over, bitch!" Jim grunted smugly, and chopped the gun from Finnegan's tremulous hand right before it dematerialized.
The last thing he saw made him give up a shit-eating grin. It was the look in Finngean's eyes. That's when he knew. Really, really knew.
He was safe. He had made it.
Triumphantly.
As thoughts flew back and forth in his head, transporting from one place to another, on the brink of the limbo of nothingness, all Jim could think about was his crew. He was going back to them. He was going back to Bones, back to Scotty, back to Uhura, back to Sulu, back to Chekhov, hell, even back to Giotto. But most importantly.
Spock.
As his body broke into tens of trillions of particles in a cloud of gold, Jim closed his eyes and smiled.
((()))
Stabbing through the pilot controls with his fingers, Slistas controlled the makeshift shuttle he had created from the walls of the transporter room by pushing his energy into the circuit workings. Inputting a very specific, familiar course, he set off for the colony.
It repeated in his mind like a mantra.
Colony XI.
His eyes pulsed light, narrowing and focusing, widening and unfocusing, switching colors from pure white to yellow to red to white to green.
Colony XI.
He ground his sharp, metallic teeth, letting an awful scraping sound fill the air, like the sound of fingernails on chalkboard.
Colony XI.
He remembered everything.
Now, now was the time for vengeance.
((()))
End of Part 13
tbc
((()))
Author's Note: Waaaaaah things are just heating up! You thought it was all over, didn't you? Haha, I've tricked you! No, things are just about to get good here in a minute! We've just barely finished the second climax of this story, and there are many more to follow until the end of this arc alone! Kekeke, I feel so amazingly evil.
Did you guys get really freaked out at any point during this chapter? Any moment when you were just like, "OMG OMG LIK JIM IS GONNA FREAKIN DIE GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE JUST DIE FINNEGAN YOU BASTARD" kind of moments? Because I know I for sure as hell did. The entire time I was writing it, actually. That's probably why I took so long to get this finished; I had to do this in tiny installments over a period of a really long time because of all my internal torment. Yeah.
And Behold, the tiniest bit of progress in the Scones for you all! :)
By the way, how awesome is Chapel? I feel like she's really learning a lot from Bones, and she's getting to be more and more capable in my eyes. Like, dude, she totally learned that bone-plucking trick thing from Scotty's surgery, don't you think? And what's this new moderately OC guy she might be crushing on? Didn't Chapel like Spock? And didn't she have a fiancé? Yeah, yeah. Well. Artistic license. Spock can't be the only guy she crushes on. Anyway in the new movie we only saw her for a moment and she hasn't had any interaction with Spock AT ALL and well she would have known that Uhura and Spock were involved and would have backed off and blah blah blah. This is my take on it. And come on, like she wouldn't have dated a few guys on board. She's a beautiful gal, and she does have needs. I would get pretty lonely on a starship with no boyfriend, too. And, well. I'm not really a Spock/Chapel fan in the first place. I saw her liking him, but… I don't think for a minute that it was EVER reciprocated. Wow, this note is really freaking long. Guess I'll wrap it up.
Review, and I shall write faster. That's not a threat, it's a law of nature.
(Plus, goddamn, I have more than 6000 words on this one. BOOYAH!)