"Bones," Jim greeted him with a grin. The briefing room held the top members of the bridge staff, along with a couple others. McCoy's eyes passed over the screens littered with various images of the disintegrating ship and readouts of so many types and kinds he couldn't pick out a single string of data to decipher.
"Jim."
"Come, sit. Chapel made me promise to make you eat while you were here," he said with a grin, motioning to the platter of nutritious replicated food cubes sitting before his accustomed place.
McCoy glared first at him, then the celebration of color. "Why do I get the feeling this is payback for all the hyposprays I've had to administer the past couple months?"
Jim's not-at-all-innocent grin stood answer enough.
McCoy huffed, plucked up a handful of the barely appetizing, uniform chunks and stuffed them in his mouth.
"Alright, we're all here." Jim slapped his hands together, a bit to gleefully for McCoy's tastes, and rubbed them while surveying the assembled officers. "Spock! Why don't you start us off with your findings."
The Vulcan gave a bare nod, queueing up a handful of videos to play on the screens while he spoke.
"As the last of their computers failed, there are no further deterrents to our systems. Mr. Scott and I have facilitated repairs to our scanners. Full readings are, however, impossible because of background radiation levels-"
"Your best assumptions then, Mr. Spock."
"Of course, Captain. As you can here, here, and here," He flicked a long finger up, indicating glowing points of heat. "The ships engines are destroyed. Based on the radiation levels alone, I believe that they were based on a nuclear energy source. Without systems to supply coolant, or an outlet for extraneous energy, the nuclear reaction created a... how did you put it Mr. Scott? A Snowball effect?"
The Scotsman nodded, solemnly. "Aye. like Chernobyl, Fukushima, or Indian Point. Best we can tell the engine suffered a complete meltdown, then internal shielding bounced all that energy back and forth around in there with no place to escape until the hull began to fracture from the stress. Here," Scotty tapped a screen, zooming in on a portion of the ship, and switching the view to infrared, dialing back the sensitivity until they could see a range of colors, instead of intense, white heat. "Is where we think the cooling systems were. Large, empty tanks. As ye can see here, Captain, there's a tear in the hull, but none of the heat escaping like we see here, and here." He highlighted these regions. "I think it might be a torpedo blast. Or the like. Metal is curved in, not out like ye'd think ye'd see in an internal explosion."
Spock nodded again, shifting everyone's attention back on him. "If this were the cooling reservoir, then as the fluid escaped, there would be little chance of repair. Shutting down all systems might give a chance, but-"
"Leaving the pur bird dead in the water," Scott pipped in.
"Quite."
"So, why no escape pods?" Jim scanned through some of the visual light images. "Why stay in that oven and not escape?"
"No signs of a lifeboat, Captain," Scott offered. "Not that we can tell much at this point, anyway, but I went over the scans with a fine toothed comb. No sections of the ship, that I can see, designed to detach with life support systems."
Everyone contemplated in silence as each wallowed in their own pool of information. The computers placidly continuing to show their readouts, the snippets of video on loop.
"Any signs of other victims?" McCoy had to ask.
Mr. Scott shook his head. "No sir, not that we could see. But if anyone was caught close by, they could be burnt to a crisp by now. Two days we took to get to these pur people. Who knows how many lost in the mean time."
"Once that ship cools down enough, I want a thorough search of the whole thing."
Scott and Spock exchanged one of those looks. "Captain, I realize your people haven't used nuclear power for two centuries, but that is no excuse for the oversight. Even if there was a way to cool the rods, if one assumes they were using uranium as your people once did, cooling it with mechanical pumps and fresh water until they were cool enough to handle would take years. The Enterprise does not have that much fresh water to spare."
"So... what do we do with the ship?"
His first officer quirked an eyebrow. "There is not much we can do, Captain. The distress beacon has not drawn any of its own people, we can surmise that we are far away from wherever its point of origin is. With a nuclear engine, rather than a matter-antimatter warp drive, it might have been in space for a very long time."
"What if," Uhura spoke up. "We use our tractor beam?"
"What, and tug along that slagged piece of metal along behind us while we continue our mission?"
She refused to back down to Sulu's incredulous blurt.
"It's her home, Jim. Not much left of it, but we don't know what the living quarters are like. Something might still be salvageable. How would you feel if Enterprise went up in smoke and you got rescued by some passing ship of strangers? Would you want them to just leave your ship behind and drag you off to who-knows-where?"
"Her home?" Jim asked, looking at McCoy for clarification.
"My patient's species isn't something we've encountered before," McCoy replied. "No real evidence for male or female, at this point in recovery. There's a..." How to explain a cloaca without the conversation taking a very strange turn, especially while trying to keep his patient's privacy? "certain level of non-gender specific material. For all we know, the species could have both sets of plumbing."
"But her eggs?"
McCoy smiled. "Women aren't the only ones who care for their young. And as Mr. Scott just pointed out, there might be remains on the ship we can't detect right now. No telling that they're even biological relatives; it's not unheard of to have a stranger jump in front of a bus to save a baby in a stroller."
The Captain weighed things himself for a few moments. "Mr. Scott, would it be possible to tug along that ship?"
"It's small enough. We couldn't bring it into the warp field until the radiation levels evened out."
"And how long 'til your patient is well enough to tell me where she, or he, is from? I'd feel a lot better if we were delivering the whole parcel back to its own people."
"That's going to be a bit more... complicated, Jim."
He heard Uhura swallow audibly. McCoy spared her a glance, before giving his report. He described the wounds with as little detail as possible, in deference to the delicate stomachs in the room.
Of course Jim looked the greenest of the lot.
"The details of the your treatment plan, while I am sure are very fascinating," Spock interrupted, "Are not very pertinent for this meeting. Perhaps you had best inform us about what you've deduced about the patient."
McCoy nodded, glad enough to change the subject. "Not mammalian, of course. Two eyes, four limbs in the regular configuration." He had to work to not take notice of Spock's lifted eyebrow. "Regular for us, you green-blooded... What I'm trying to say, is not all that different, in the grand scheme of things."
"The face doesn't look all that 'regular' to me," Uhura added.
"What do you me-" Jim croaked to a stop as McCoy brought up a medical status photo. "Oh god."
"I've done some preliminary bone regeneration since this was taken, but considering the circumstances I will keep a detailed record of the progress, until we find this specie's own doctors."
Unlike the rest of the bridge staff, Spock studied the photo, rather than cringed away, or stare gape mouthed. Without the usual humanoid emotional expressions, none could guess what ticked inside that funny skull.
"Forward facing eyes speaks of predator ancestry. Have you done a scan to check for ratio of cones to rods?" McCoy shook his head at Spock's question. "I recommend it when your patient is more stable. Longer face that I remember from when your patient assailed me earlier. Dentition would suggest primarily carnivorous diet. Lungs, I assume?"
McCoy nodded. "Yes. With thickened valves and parabronchi, for lack of a better comparison. The atria are at perhaps eighty percent intact. It looks like a set of valves right before the lungs closed off, like the human gag reflex, keeping most of the damage up in the throat. I'd say that this species shares more similarities to Earth birds, if you'd like an easy comparison. Four lung sets, organized to absorb oxygen on both inhalation and exhalation. The trachea was damaged beyond repair, but the lungs themselves are in amazingly good shape, considering."
"Perhaps due to having eight lungs. Were the first set effected by the fire to a greater degree than the others?" McCoy nodded. "Fascinating. So, a space faring avian. Primitive engine. Weak shields, if any. I believe, Captain, that we have enough information to begin a search. We need to investigate within this immediate vicinity for a class M planet, most likely either covered in water and dotted with islands, or rain forests and mountains. Might I suggest a search pattern?"
At the captain's nod Spock bent over the computer, pulling up star charts and beginning to plot out the most efficient path to start.
"I would suggest leaving the stranded ship here, so we can achieve warp speeds," he stated without inflection. "Perhaps a buoy system, to warn any approaching ships that it is too dangerous to approach?"
As he, the Captain, and Scotty started discussing details, Uhura turned to him.
"I haven't been able to get anything worked out with the UT yet."
"I've excised enough tissue now that it wouldn't be much help anyway. No chance understanding someone without a voice box."
She frowned a bit, then brightened up again.
"An even better idea. She's... still got fingers, right?"
McCoy nodded.
"Give me a few hours. I know just the thing."
In a few minutes the meeting dissolved informally as each crew member fell into their own area.
"Jim?"
"Hm? Oh, sorry Bones. Dismissed. I'm sure you want to get back to your patient. We'll get her sorted."
McCoy opened his mouth to object to the pronoun again, then dismissed it. Who knows, Uhura might be right.
He picked up his various PADDs, stood with a groan, and headed out to the mess. Might as well get a real meal while he could.