A/N: Trying to get back into the habit of writing. Sorry it took so long since my last chapter, but I kept wanting to go back and reread/edit bits here and there (going to be going back and reposting old chapters with edits as I have internet enough to do so). There are still issues, I'm sure, but I'll keep trying to catch them. And from here on out, it's Grade A Fresh story. With life the way it is, I'm aiming for an every-other Friday update schedule.
Next chapter is dedicated to the late, great Leonard Nimoy. (Even though Spock really doesn't factor in much in this chapter, sorry.) His was the first influence on my young life that one could be different, embrace being different, and still have purpose, comrades, and deal a positive influence on the future. I know that's a bit of a cold eulogy, but... let's just say I'm a tad disconnected at the moment while I consider existence without our most logical half-Vulcan.
S'ti th'laktra
McCoy slipped his hand away, allowing Cygnus to stroke the limp form unimpeded.
"Do... do you want us to stay? To see the others?"
"Privacy," Cygnus choked out. "For now."
McCoy drew the privacy curtain closed behind him. A multitude of wet eyes and blotchy faces stared at him.
"Alright, people. We've got work to do. M'Benga, start organizing the reports. Freed and Markus, get the bone knitter. The fact it's not on the charger here means that there's a couple broken legs that haven't been seen to yet. Chapel, get a brigade started and get everything re-sterilized. Just because we had an emergency hit doesn't mean we can let these redshirts drip coolant everywhere. Where's Uhura gotten off to?"
"Your office, sir."
"Right. Everyone, back to your posts. I want the main bay cleared out, cleaned out, and ready for the landing party whenever they get around to finding those idiots and bringing them back up here. I'll be in my office."
McCoy locked his door behind him. Not exactly a common procedure, but-
"Stiff drink, or are you still on fruit juice?"
McCoy lifted an eyebrow at Uhura's offer. And her observation.
"Anyone else know I've been a teetotaler the past couple days?"
"Spock, maybe. No one else I know of."
She'd turned the lights in his office down to about forty percent. Legs folded under her in his office chair, the quilt from his sofa tucked around her and the two chicks still clinging to her chest.
"Gonna guess they're asleep?"
She nodded.
He hadn't checked his liver function in almost twenty-eight hours, but at this point, he didn't care.
The clink of the glass-on-glass woke both of the chicks up, but characteristic of their behavior, so far, they were silent and watchful, rather than full of tears and mischief.
McCoy downed three fingers of bourbon, grimaced at the burn, and swept Number One into his arms with barely a protest from Uhura, and none from the chick. Her soft, downy fur whispered across his cheek as he cuddled her close. The odd, peppermint-on-liquorice scent of her filled his nose. Her usual delighted coo at being hoisted into the air seemed to hold a sad, inquisitive note. Reading too much into the actions of a kid not even a week old, McCoy.
"How much did you hear?" He asked after settling his butt on the edge of his desk.
"Enough. I figured I'd be doing better work in here, trying to figure out what's going on with them."
"Find anything?"
"No, but I got your terminal back up, at least. Still can't connect to off-site databases, but I've been scouring the Enterprise's. All I found on osteoporosis was on geriatric cases, or cases from injury. Not newborns."
McCoy grunted, unsurprised. "Try keywords like brittle bone disease disease, Osteogenesis imperfecta... profound skeletal hypomineralization... osteomalacia... hell even hypophosphatasia. It's something genetic, if their whole species is suffering from it. Not just situation specific to what Cygnus and these kids went through."
What McCoy really wanted to do right now was just curl up in a ball on the sofa, maybe steal back his quilt, maybe even the other chick too for a good cuddle, and pretend to be napping so that no one outside the door bothered him for oh... maybe the next eight hours.
Instead he leaned against his back wall and watched over Uhura's shoulder as her nimble fingers and quick eyes filtered through his database at a speed to rival the automated search program. She queued up files, sliding them over to the second window without a glance, her mind obviously on picking up any relevant data before whittling it down.
"Damn, I wish I had access to a major cortex right now. We're so far out I can't do a call out without some major delays."
"That's hoping we get the communication relays up at all," Nyota grumbled. "If Scotty can't get things working on our end, we're going to be headed back for the last deep space station."
McCoy blinked at the back of her head. "Shit. You're right. If 'Fleet can't contact us, we can't contact them, 'regs say we've got to head back to the nearest base." He passed a hand through his hair, grimacing at the greasy feel. "How far away is it?"
"Warp eight?" Her fingers stilled over the glass panel. "A week. Not that Jim'd like to waste the dilithium on backtracking."
"And then another week at max warp back to here to pick the search up again," McCoy said, fingers swirling small circles in Number One's down. "How long do you think they'll let us keep searching for his people? You talk with with the Brass more than I do."
She chuckled sadly. "Get talked at, you mean. They haven't given a deadline yet. It helps that Jim and Spock have been taking it... slow. We've been scanning the areas we've passed, laying down beacons, charting local anomalies, and as much as these away missions to potential planets haven't given us anything but patients for you, we've been fulfilling our primary mission. To explore, meet new people, chart this part of the galaxy."
"You said 'yet.' I don't like the sound of 'yet.'"
Nyota nodded. "I don't either, Leonard. But it's there. This is the region we're supposed to be in, but the search radius Spock plotted out is taking us off course."
"Shit."
She turned his chair and put a gentle hand on his forearm. Concern lined her face. "Leonard, don't worry about it. Jim and Spock and I and everyone else are working on it. We're going to make it happen. We'll get Cygnus home."
"It's been over a month now, Ny. A month with no real leads. And us going around in circles. How the hell did his ship pop into existence a month away from his home?"
"We've been running around in circles," she said with a little smirk. "If we went in a straight line from here to where we found him, it'd only take a couple hours. Just keep doing what you do, it helps."
McCoy snorted.
"No, really! It does! There's been an increase in data requests from the VSA, a few medical and veterinary universities; your office is at the forefront not only of techniques to get Cygnus back in working order, but the treatments that you and Spock are working out to deal with all the brain issues is sparking interest back home!"
"The data on Spock's 'treatments' hasn't even gotten home yet, let alone had enough time to 'spark interest.'"
"Well, it will. And when the VSA has something to say about the matter, you know they'll be able to pull strings with the Brass and keep us out here for as long as we can. Maybe I'll talk to Cyg about what kind of resources his planet has... see if we can start opening up trade discussions?"
"He's an engineer, Ny, not an ambassador. He doesn't have the authority to do that."
"Well he's an ambassador now. He's the only representative of his planet we got, and we might as well make use of him."
McCoy sighed in defeat. "So, we make it strategically valuable to keep looking for his home, rather than just a good samaritan run."
"Exactly."
"Remind me never to get on your bad side, Nyota."
She grinned and swiveled his seat back around to start the search up again.
With each new entry she pulled aside, his brain catalogued and started pulling up different treatment regimens. If – when – they got the database link operational again, he'd need to do a hell of a lot of searching through the other various known species. Ideally, he'd test out several treatment methods before using it on his precious cargo.
And all of it'd take time. Time he doesn't have, if the hatching of Number Three and Number F- the latest one, indicated anything.
A week to get back to Deep Space Station Two. And how long for repairs? No, I'd be able to requisition one of their computers while Scotty and his team work. Damn it'll be a bear getting data and running it back to the ship. I could take over their medbay... It'll mean I'll need Scotty's clean-up crew to do a full decon.
Well, I guess not, since Cyg's got a full skin on now. Better safe than sorry.
A week. Damn.
And that's if we can get Jim and the hobgoblin back in one piece soon.
"I'm not seeing anything good, Leonard. Please tell me you're thinking up some more optimistic ideas back there."
"Trying to."
A week before I could even diagnose the problem. A week until I have data that might lead to a diagnosis, when this might very well be something new that no one's seen before off of his planet.
Damn.
A disease, a genetic disease, that an entire population suffers from. It's going to be a dominant gene... couldn't be a localized person-to-person mutation, otherwise there's no way it'd be something they all suffered from.
Why do all the girls have it though? Is it the same planetside, or just something this clutch is suffering from? Sex-linked chromosomal abnormality...
"We need to run a full DNA sequence on his species."
"Well, we have Cygnus, and the lab-"
"No, I mean his whole species. I don't have enough of a sample with just Cyg."
Her finger stilled again. "You don't have just Cyg, you've got the kids too. And the eggs. You can take a sample from them."
"Wide pool of data there," McCoy grumbled. He stroked the bit of fluff clinging to his lapel. "But better than nothing. Don't tell Cyg though, will you? I don't want to get his hopes up."
She nodded and bent back to her task.
One clutch. All closely related, so not much variation... but if their mother was from a different region than Cygnus, then at least there will be significant contrast between his genetic data and hers. If I code his first, then run an elimination protocol between their genetics and his, then I'll have a clearer idea of the mother... between all of them, I might be able to get a full code of her, actually. But if it is species-wide, and she's survived to adulthood, then there's got to be a clue there.
McCoy groaned and rubbed his temple. Maybe with another month and a Deep Space Station's supercomputers at my disposal.
...or one Vulcan with a specialty in genetics.
"Damn, we need Spock and Jim back here."
"Had an idea?"
He snorted. "Yes. Not a good one. And I don't have the right personnel on this ship, even if I did. Or enough resources."
"What do you need?"
"A wing and a prayer?" He suggested with an angry smirk twisting his lips.
Uhura leaned back in his chair again and met his eyes levelly.
"What do you need, Leonard? I'll find a way to make it work."
"I need a computer to analyze all of their genetic code. This machine?" McCoy tapped his in-desk screen. "Can analyze one human's genetic sequence in about half a day. That's without me trying to use it to write reports or do any of my other work. Problem is, that's with a human baseline to compare to and draw from to speed things up. I haven't even done a run to see how many chromosomes they have."
"Requisition astrometrics," she said without hesitation. "While we're in orbit, their computers aren't in use. And if our communications beacons are down, then their sensors are going to be down as well. They use the same conduits."
"If their sensors are don't, won't they be busy trying to fix them?"
She nodded. "Exactly. Just because their eyes and ears are down, doesn't mean that the brain isn't functioning. Massive CPU blocks ready to go. And if we do end up backtracking for repairs-" she tapped the little error code pulsing in the lower corner of his screen, informing him that his machine still couldn't connect with the outside universe "-then you can at least be making the best use of the time."
His mind kicked into low gear, fighting for momentum. "Yes. Yes! That could work. I just need a way to get our programs put on their systems-"
She waved him off and opened a channel to the bridge. "Hey, Scotty? Got a requisition for you."
"Cannae it wait, lass? We've got a bit of mess up 'ere!"
"When you've got the time, Scotty. It's important, but we want Kirk and Spock back safe first. Maybe send a few techs down to the medlab? We should be able to get it done with a little rewiring."
"Aye, lass. I'll see to it."
She closed the communication with a bit of a smile. "There. Knowing our good Chief Engineer, we'll have someone down in a few minutes."
"Think you can stay and help them set up?"
Her smile warmed, finally reaching her yes. "Thought you'd never ask."