Trigger Warning: Remember how I said there'd be descriptive medical trauma in this fic? Well it starts up here, and its not disappearing any time soon.
A day and a half later, McCoy refused to use decimal places anywhere that didn't use a base-ten system, Really, what bloody idiot would take the time to figure out point two two eight of twenty four- nevermind, the good Doctor stood on the bridge, waiting with the rest of the crew to get close enough for visual.
Between Spock and Scotty, they'd gotten enough of the sensors up to work out the basics of the ship. Well, "basic" as far as the computer-banks had no clue. No record of a similar configuration. Distress beacon still going. No other ships in the area. Stuck far between two star systems with nothing close to an M-class planet within days travel at low warp. No chance for a safe emergency landing. No one near by to come to the rescue. Other than one Constitution class starship with sensors so full of data from this wreck she couldn't see the stars in the dark.
"Sensor's showing critical damage across all systems," Spock said from his place, face-down in his viewer. "Reading areas approaching thirteen-hundred Kelvin."
"Shields? Lifesigns? Any other vessels?"
"No other wessels within sensor range, sir," Chekov reported.
"Possible lifesigns..." Spock ruminated. "Difficult to tell with the interference."
"No way I'm letting any of my medical teams onboard with that heat," McCoy grumbled. "Not even Spock's green blood could handle that."
"Considering it is fifty-seven point seven-seven degrees from the boiling point of copper, I have no inclination on going onboard either. Perhaps with your superior iron-based blood, with its boiling point of eighteen-hundred and eleven Kelvin, you would be better suited to going on the rescue team."
McCoy pushed back the growl he felt threatening at the tilt of one sharp Vulcanian eyebrow.
"Can you hail them, Lieutenant?"
All eyes fell to Uhura.
"No, sir. I've been sending replies in every language in the Universal Translator for the past three hours."
The bridge fell silent as a single small star on the viewer grew in size, resolving into nothing more than a glimmer of white in the dark.
To McCoy's inexperienced eye, the ship reminded him of a giant, white scarab beetle. The image only solidified by the shattered top layer, pulling away, with cracks of glowing heat shattering the surface. What very well could have been retractable wings, or a sail of some kind, peaked out from the carapace. Wreckage scattered in a comet's tail behind the disabled vehicle.
"No one could survive that, Jim."
"It is logical to deduce that there are areas of the ship with supplementary shielding, Doctor. Otherwise there would be no way that the distress signal would persist for this long a duration. Or their computers were designed to handle the higher heat. If that is the case, it stands to reason that the beings within either are capable of handling a similar temperature, or that there is significant interior shielding."
"If they're built for that heat, transporting them to the sickbay might very well kill them," McCoy mused.
"Well we've got to try," Jim declared, stepping in between the two officers. "Chekov, are we within transporter range? If we can't get a lock on remaining lifeforms and beam 'em over, there won't be much reason for all this fuss."
"Aye, Keptin. Approaching now."
"Head down to transporters. Care to join him, McCoy? Or do you want him to beam the survivors right to your office?"
"I'd rather walk them in on gurneys, thank you."
Captain Kirk gave a curt nod, dismissing Chekov and McCoy.
"Jim, I had a thought. Mind if Uhura joins us? If anyone's got a chance or working out a language, it'll between her and the UT."
He nodded again and the Lieutenant joined them in the turbolift down.
"Are you sure you can beam them onboard safely?" Uhura asked, once the lift doors were closed.
"Should be easy enough," Chekov replied. "Stationary target. Wery easy, compared to what Kerk jumps lately."
Uhura smirked.
As the lift steadily plummeted, McCoy took a moment to call to his teams, telling some to prep and others to meet him in the main transporter room with the gurneys. He ordered the usual trauma kit and warned his teams to be ready for anything from cuts and bruises to radiation sickness and catastrophic decompression injuries.
Without fail, three beds lined the hallway leading up to the transporter room, four men and women standing at the ready in crisp, clean steriles for each hovering unit. Ready and game for a bit of excitement. A cursory glance as they passed told McCoy they'd loaded for bear; in a pinch, he'd probably be able to deliver an Amtherillerite right there. He nodded his approval and followed the kid in. Sensor data streamed down from the bridge, blinked red and orange across the screens and worrying the techs standing ready.
"Looks like only one alive," Chekov said after a long look at the readings.
"Well then bring him aboard, by god."
"I... yes, sir."
The Doctor waited, watching while Chekov fought to capture a clear signal of the lone survivor.
"What's taking so blasted long?"
"Teough shields, sir. Having twouble getting through."
"I thought those systems were down."
"Physical shields, sir. Some ceramic-metal alloy. Iz disrupting ze signal. Give me a moment."
Chekov hunched over the console, a study in complete concentration, but soon enough the transporter pad flared to life in its usual twinkle of light and pop of sound. One moment a blaze of light, the next, a charred ball of flesh, flailing and undulating on the pad.
"Damn!" The medical "switch" flicked on in his mind and McCoy rushed up to the creature. Tricorder at the ready, sensor sweeping over the writhing charred mass.
"Third and fourth degree burns throughout. Broken bones to the... extremities," He didn't quite know if he should say "legs" or "arms" yet. Anyone this burned could be any kind of being.
He ached to administer painkillers, but he had no idea if there would be adverse reactions. The sad reality, with a burn victim this far gone, most of the pain-sensitive nerves would be deadened by now anyway.
One of the nurses handed him sterile gloves, which he dragged on and gently rotated the body, putting the creature on its back. A long groan of pain made him flinch.
"Let's get it up on the gurney. We need to begin debridement and start administering fluids stat. Watch for hypovolemia. Get fluids and plasma prepared. I want to do a deep scan before we give anything."
The team surrounding the first gurney team moved as a smooth, well lubricated unit, moving the body up onto the hovering unit with minimal jostle and quickly falling to with their duties.
Chekov remained statue still, his eyes saucer large while they passed. "Go tell the Captain, kid," McCoy groused. Why the hell Starfleet let in a seventeen year old... He sighed and caught up with the swift parade moving towards the sickbay.
The communications officer stayed with them, leaning close to their patient, but careful not to touch. Or let her eyes wander for longer than a moment or two.
"Deep scans first," McCoy decided. "We need to get saline, or the equivalent. Simmons, you get to work replicating plasma."
"Aye, sir." The young woman ran ahead to get the specialized scanner for that. First she'd need to collect a blood sample; if they could manage but a single drop they'd be able to replicate enough to hydrate the whole soul.
The sight of charred muscle and bone worried the doctor. Simmons had a challenge ahead of her finding that one drop intact. Without excising past damaged issue, anyway, and they needed an option well before they got to that stage.
"Alright, Uhura. Get back up to the bridge," McCoy declared, once they passed the sickbay doors. "Don't need another body in here getting in the way."
"But... she's talking, Doctor."
For a moment, McCoy could do nothing more than blink up in incomprehension.
"Talking?"
He looked down at his patient. He could hear breathing, who wouldn't? Sounded like the death rattle written for time immemorial throughout literature.
"Yes. Rotating languages, just like the distress call."
"You mean, that was – him? – on the signal?"
"No, that one was a synthesized voice. This... it's a one word rotation. Ova. Eggs. Over and over, just the word egg or eggs or children."
McCoy's eyebrows flew up to his hairline.
"Shit."
His eyes flew over the charred body again. The way that the dorsal side had been burned to the bone, while the ventral... still burned to perdition, but just there, and there, small scraps of fabric, or skin, flecked the blackened flesh.
He flung off his gloves in a hurry and ran to the comm panel.
"McCoy to Captain Kirk!"
"What is it Bones? How's our guest?" Apparently Chekov hadn't made it up yet.
"In a bad way, Jim. But Uhura says this one keeps mentioning children. And there's signs it was protecting something with it's body. Spock, you said lifesigns weren't clear."
Silence over the comms.
"Jim, you've got to get Chekov back to the transporter pad. If this thing's children are over there, unprotected-"
"I hear you, Bones. Get back on your patient. We'll come up with a solution. Don't worry."
A medical alarm sent a cold thrill up his spine. He ran back to his patient without even pausing long enough to turn off the signal. He wrenched on a full body sterile suit and another pair of gloves. The triage medical team that had brought the wounded entity in had already switched out for one of the teams waiting.
Already in sterile suits and respirators, they moved the gurney into a tented area around biobed one. Everything sterile, right to the air. Even if they could get this poor thing through the first round of debridement, and hydration, shock, surgery after surgery of grafting and regeneration, there was every chance that infection from the slightest bug would do away with her... him... it.
"I'd... I'd like to stay close-by."
McCoy glanced up at Uhura as he lifted the thin antimicrobial sheet to enter the tent. He frowned.
"I don't need some curious hanger-on."
"I'm not... That's not it, Doctor McCoy. I just want to be helpful anyway I can. We still don't know the language. The best... the only thing I can do is try."
He huffed and pointed toward the storage area. "Go scrub and suit up. Don't touch anything. Keep your respirator mask on."
Uhura swallowed twice, her eyes stuck on his patient before snapping back to him. She nodded and went to follow his orders.
"Saline is non-toxic," one doctor piped in. McCoy stepped up behind the young ensign, double checking his findings on the tricorder. "Readings indicate higher concentration recommended, but the 300 mOsm/L we have on hand is within tolerances."
"Find a vein and start hydration. Simmons! Any luck with the synthesizing?"
"The proteins are sequencing, sir. Another twenty-five minutes."
McCoy groaned. "State of the art medical facilities and I'm stuck waiting for plasma."
"At least we're not using maggots for debridement anymore."
"M-m-maggots?" All eyes flicked up to a pale-faced Uhura, then back to their patient.
"Yes, Lieutenant," McCoy said. "They did a very good job, back in the day before medical scanners and the like. The little bugs only ate dead flesh. Left them to their work, they'd eat everything without blood flow, then a little hose down and you'd clean them all out and be left with nice pink flesh. The big downfall, other than making sure you had a fresh supply on hand when you needed them, is that they only eat organic materials. Here, I think we've got a bit of fabric here. Resistant stuff. Hydrate under that bit, would you?"
"Can't you give her something? Anything? With those moans, she's got to be in a lot of pain."
McCoy closed his eyes a moment. "Our guest is beyond a lot of that, Uhura." He bent back to the excruciating work a moment longer before curiosity took him. "Still saying eggs?"
"Save the eggs," she replied. "I think."
Uhura's words seemed to increase the struggles. The doctors around the biobed all placed a gentle hand down on charred tissue, trying to still their patient without restrains. Struggling against hard cordage would make the wounds worse. A biobarrier would stop them from treating the poor broken body.
"Do you think you can tell our patent that we're trying to treat the wounds?"
"I don't..."
"Oh just talk to the thing. 'We're here to help,' or something else simple."
She sighed and started a long string of various languages.
Simmons gasped.
McCoy moved up to where she stood.
Deep within the charred black mess, two pale yellow eyes flew open, pinned straight left, towards the communications offer. The groans reduced to a short, painful pant. After a few musical notes left Uhura's smooth lips, a strange, raspy note escaped their patient.
"What-"
"Eggs. Where are the eggs," Uhura responded.
"Tell our guest we're working on it. And calm down."
She grimaced. "I'll try." Again, she whistled, a longer slower set of notes this time.
The charred body bucked; the responding twittering garbled, turned guttural.
"I'm sorry sir, it's not either of our languages," she said, backing away so the doctors could take over. "I got 'Where are my-' before she switched again."
"I believe you can tell your patient that they are here."
McCoy tensed. Just outside of the foggy film that surrounded the biobed, Spock's silhouette hovered.
"Lieutenant?"
"A... Aye sir."
Uhura's voice twilled out again, and this time none of the seven doctors could hold the body down. The blackened, broken thing shoved past the lot of them, tearing through the mesh as if it were nothing but tissue paper, revealing a Vulcan sheathed in a reflective radioactive shielding suit.
McCoy stood amazed as the creature snatched away... something from the Vulcan, before flinging him bodily away. The snarl that escaped those ruined lips did not need translation. Nor did the scream of pain before the body collapsed in on itself.
Every ounce of fatherhood in McCoy recognized that protectiveness, the way the creature fell down, yet around the container Spock had brought in. Protecting whatever laid beneath it with its crumpled, destroyed body.
McCoy approached, hands outstretched. His mind reeling at all the surface area, all that open wound touching, being contaminated by, the floor. Carpet. Damn. How the hell did carpet get approved in a medical area? No way that could be sanitized properly.
"Easy, easy there. We're just trying to help. Let me take a look."
McCoy glanced out of the corner of his eye at Uhura, desperate for her to translate. She cooed and twilled, pausing hard here and there, searching for the right word.
The creature snarled in return.
"I think she's saying something... but it's making no sense, sir. Something about fire from the sky, and water from metal. ...and the eggs of course."
McCoy nodded. "Someone hand me my medical scanner."
He felt the familiar metal and composite through his gloves. He lifted it to show it. "See? I'm just going to take a scan. Just like I did to you earlier. Just the same. It won't hurt them. I'll scan myself first, see?"
He ran the medical tricorder over himself, then the patient, before waving it over the small bit of the container he could see.
A haggard voice asked a question in a language none could decipher. Whatever it saw in McCoy's eyes, however, convinced it... or perhaps it was exhaustion causing the body to sink off to the side.
Regardless, McCoy reached in and scanned. And looked.
Eggs. They were indeed eggs. Each a bit bigger than his fist. The scanner meshed their lifeforms, unable to scan one at a time, unable to differentiate between them. No wonder they couldn't tell them from the adult during the initial scans.
"We need to take care of them. They're too hot. They're in distress." He didn't want to say that some of them were already cooked. Not too much even a modern doctor can do for that.
"Robinson. Get Robinson, would you?" He shouted behind him.
"The OB/GYN?"
McCoy fought to keep from rolling his eyes. Did a damn good job of it too.
"Closest thing we're going to get, right now. Hurry!"
A couple of them scurried off. Idiots. One screaming CMO and they forget they have comm channels throughout the ship.
Luckily, it seemed that most of his staff lollygagged in the adjacent rooms, waiting to see if they could be of assistance.
"Robinson, excellent. Get one of the incubators ready. Ninety-nine-point-five degrees."
"That seems a tad extreme, Doctor," he heard Spock say. McCoy didn't spare him a glance.
"Fahrenheit, Robinson. If you set that blasted incubator to ninety-nine Celsius or Kelvin I'll have you demoted to sanitation officer."
"Of course, Chief," the older man said with a smile.
McCoy waited, eyes still on his patient, while he heard the clatter of the incubator being set up behind him.
"There we go, all done. Why that temp?"
"Just a hunch, Robinson, just a hunch. Now, we've got to get your little ones in there, to cool off, okay? Your skin is full of heat and radiation. You've done a fine job protecting them up 'til now, but you've got to let us take care of them. You're doing them no good right now."
Uhura'd long since given up translating. The uncomfortable silence of his entire medical team and half the bridge staff staring at him didn't help the sweat trickling down the back of his neck.
Broken, battered, blackened hands, if they could be called that, clenched a moment, then released.
"There, that's it. Robinson, bring the incubator over here. Simmons, take the tricorder. Alright, I'm going to pick up your eggs, nice and slow. Robinson is going to take excellent care of them. And we'll keep the incubator nice and close, okay?"
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when McCoy finally slipped his hands between charred flesh and still steaming hot ceramic and came back with a blackened, cracked egg between his cupped palms.
"Thank you," McCoy whispered. Not sure what he was thanking for... trust maybe?
He was grateful for his years of surgical experience as he transferred the ruined little egg to Robinson's gloved digits; even with adrenaline running rampant through his system, his hands didn't transfer a single tremor through to the delicate calcium shell.
The patient growled the moment the eggshell touched the new doctor.
"Okay, okay. I understand. It's okay if I touch, but not anyone else, hm? That's okay. Robinson, over to the far side, please? See if you can get a good individual scan in and close the lid between each one. Don't want the air chilling them too fast."
He stood, tucking the dead little thing into the corner of the incubator, covering it with a fold of cloth.
McCoy retrieved each one, letting Robinson scan them while they were separate, watching the older man's eyes flick left, or right, telling him to place each egg on the side with the first dead one, or off to the right where the growing pile of live ones rested. Each he covered in a separate little cloth. Careful to cover injured parts, where he could.
Maternal, or paternal instincts, didn't matter. Protectiveness of young translated very well across species.
When the last of the little lives were safely in the incubator, McCoy nodded for Robinson to close the lid.
"Wait until their temperature has stabilized. And we've gotten this one back up on the table. I think having the incubator next to the biobed will keep our patient calm, don't you?"
Robinson grinned at him a moment. "Good idea."
"Wait 'til we test my hypothesis before ya go pattin' me on the back, hmm? Come on kids, let's get our patient back up. We've got more sanitizing to do. And someone put getting this carpet up on the to-do list for the engineers! I can't believe I left it this long. They're in here often enough, they can do a bit of work too."
While the other doctors worked to get their patient back in place, McCoy spared a glance at the Science Officer.
Still in the radiation suit, helmet off now, at least. If it wasn't for his green Vulcan blood, McCoy would've sworn he saw sweat glistening on that smooth, stiff upper lip.
"What happened to that being too dangerous for even Vulcan blood, hmm? Something about fifty degrees to copper's boiling point?"
"Fifty-seven point seven seven, Doctor. But as you suggested, it seems parts of the ship were more heavily shielded. After Chekov reported in about the health of your patient, I surmised that with additional shielding, I could attempt a beam in, for a considerably shorter duration, of course."
"Mmhmm. Why does it sound like a rather illogical thing to do to me? Our first officer, on egg-retrieval."
"Why Doctor. You of all people should know that of all the crew members, I am the most suited for a hot environment. And with first contact with an unknown space-faring species on the line, it was simply logical to do everything possible to instill a good first impression."
"Of course, Mr. Spock. However could I have doubted you. Doctor Phillips? If you would be so good as to check over our green-blooded hero-"
"Doctor McCoy, your time would be better spent elsewhere, I am quite-"
"I agree. My time is better spent elsewhere. That's why Phillips will look after you. On that note."
He nodded his head in thanks to the Vulcan, and returned to his first patient.
Several off-duty doctors and nurses rallied around the chaos their patient had caused. Helping switch out sterile scrubs, gloves, respirators. Some reaching up and attaching a fresh sheet of bioscreening material. Others passing sanitizing radiant lights over every available surface that wasn't their patient, in an attempt to return everything to a clean state of being.
"Biobed one is too compromised. Do what you can, but get biobed two ready. I want to finish ventral debridement and move our patient over for dorsal. With the amount of damage, and foreign tissue, its quite possible we'll have to make the switch several times. Robinson, incubator up here please."
The charred remains of their patient calmed the moment the glass tapped the side of the biobed.
"Careful there."
"Aye, sorry. Not used to such delicate erm... patients."
McCoy fought down a little smile. Robinson'd get his sights on newer and stranger things yet soon enough.
"Come on, everyone. Fast as we can."
Fast meant nothing, compared to accurate. Diligent. Persistent. Hour upon hour they methodically cleaned one square centimeter after another. They couldn't even begin regenerative efforts until the full damage had been ascertained. After the first hour, he was grateful that the eggs had been rescued. They seemed to bring a measure of peace to their patient. Or stubbornness.
They had to clean, and dig, and cut away until they revealed tender, live flesh. Not frequently enough, they found living nerve clusters, often by chance and with a sharp edge.
A sharp hiss of pain, a spike in the blood pressure, and a sharp glance to the eggs in their case were the sole response each time.
Quiet words of praise, complimenting strength or stamina, came to McCoy's lips. It felt strange having a conscious patient with no way to communicate. He felt a bit of shame with each chunk of flesh he had to bisect; each digit he had to remove. They could be regenerated later, but for now... for now, if he left one bit of dead flesh, it would turn to gangrene, and this poor shocked body would never recover. No immune system. Not with so much surface area destroyed.
Educated hands wrapped each exposed bit of flesh with a sterilized mesh weave, covering the opened wounds, holding moisture against the barren flesh, but not much past that yet.
Torturous hours later, a halo of blackened matter surrounded their patient. McCoy ached to begin treating now, do everything he could to begin the healing process, but this was just the beginning, the first half.
"We have to turn you over now," McCoy said. Uhura appeared at his side, describing what they needed to do in the stuttering voice of someone who fought for each word she needed.
The skeletal face stared at them. Over an hour ago, McCoy had removed two sets of destroyed eyelids from the eyes that were still perfect in the horrific face. Serendipity had graced their patient with inner and outer lids, both blistered and charred now from radiation and open flames, but they'd served well to keep the delicate ocular organs protected. Lips, cheeks, every bit of soft flesh but those eyes gone now. Worse on the right side. As if someone had hit the poor creature with a water balloon filled with acid. Removing the bone-matter from that side of the face had been hardest. Some sections so damaged that even the marrow, the delicate spongy calcium in the nasal passages, had to be removed with a laser scalpel.
Their patient couldn't even speak now. Couldn't ask for clarification. The occasional groan or hiss the sole accompaniment to the dry rattle of breath. McCoy'd removed his patient's tongue just before the laser scalpel of a fellow doctor slipped away the ventral side of the vocal cords.
One hand reached out towards them. Two digits remained on that hand. McCoy hesitated in completing the amputation of the other. It was done. Well done. No chance at recovery, but the fine webbing of exposed nerves held him off for now.
Those two fingers, wrapped in that composite weave, touched McCoy's palm, the tap of solid bone against his meaty, covered skin, before reaching for the incubator.
"Wait-" but McCoy stopped himself. If he were in this position, he knew that he'd assume every moment was his last. Hell, he'd hope it was his last. He'd probably be screaming for them to put him out of his misery by now.
"We'll take care of them. They're safe and sound. They're going to stay right by your side, even if you can't see them, okay?"
The sharp bones touched him again, before flopping on the biobed.
"Alright, come on everyone. Let's go ahead and move over to bio two while we're at it. Chapel, get bio one cleaned off and sanitized. We'll return to it for further treatment. Careful, careful. There."
A dozen hands settled the decimated body down on the second bed, skilled hands rotating it mid-air, so that the clean ventral surface wouldn't be contaminated by the remains on the first.
A long, painful groan stopped everyone in their tracks.
"Robinson. The eggs, quickly."
The doctor wheeled the incubator around as quickly as he could without jostling them. Brought it close enough that the ruined hand could reach out and touch the smooth glass again.
With a sigh, their patient relaxed onto the smooth surface of the bed. The others flocked and fretted, but McCoy smiled. He had his eyes on the scanner's display panel above their patient's head.
"Asleep. Okay folks, work harder. Probably won't get much time like this. Robinson, what treatment plans do you have for the little ones?"
"External temps have stabilized enough to start weighing in on treatments. Radiation poisoning is the main concern. ...Any ideas on how to deal with that through a hard bit of calcium?"
"Take a look in the Denobulan database on my private terminal. I know I've seen something in there, but I've got my hands full. I'm remembering a detoxing wash… for beta level burns and physical fire. The customary hyronaline treatment should work just fine for our adult patient, but the eggs, I'm not so sure about. They might have been shielded enough that as long as we give them time to outgas... they'll hatch alright."
"I'll go take a look."
McCoy nodded him off, his mind more interested in the mess over the patient's back. Large sections blistered and crumbled away at the first touch. A boon and a pain, since it meant that every blister that crumbled left a million tiny particles in its place.
He fought the urge to flay the body down to the bone. He'd end up doing as much anyway, but he needed to save as much of the tissue as possible.