Apparently the 'large ones' were used to their slaves doing as they were told, because the two guards they had on duty were asleep on the job.
They were leaning against the platform in the middle of the village of huts, both with eyes closed and heads bowed. She could hear the heavy breaths as they slept, could practically see the dreams running through their minds. So it was no problem to sneak out of the hut she occupied and make her way towards her ship. Near silently, still, because she was terrified to wake them and be thrown somewhere dark and damp and sealed off from the rest of the world. That couldn't happen.
She was at the edge of the camp when she heard the alarm sound.
They weren't as trusting as they had seemed. Soon she heard the two guards clicking at each other, rather loudly to be heard from this distance and over the blaring of the alarm. She picked up her speed, hoping she was going in the right direction, and not running farther into what had appeared to be an expanse of nothing. The landscape around her flew, and with a jolt she realized she really was faster. Much faster. And when she pushed herself for more, it came, easily. She couldn't help the gleeful smile as the wind whipped her face and made her eyes stream with tears. She could do this. She could. She was ready.
She'd have to return to save the people who had helped her.
But she pushed that thought aside as the blinding shot of a phaser flew past her, barely missing her right shoulder. She just had to make it to her ship, get it up and moving. Get back to the Enterprise. Save the Captain. She could do it.
Another shot. This one was too close, she could feel the heat as it passed her ear. She put her head down and pushed her body more, feeling her lungs scream as she panted. The adrenaline was helping, but there was still only so far she could push herself. And she had no idea how far that was, with the atmospheric changes in her body.
She pushed herself harder. She couldn't be caught. To hell with the damage to her own body, she could be healed. A dead Kirk could not.
She felt it as something snapped in her calf. She kept going. The pain was making her whole body tense, but she couldn't stop. Because her ship had just become visible over a bluff, and she had to make it there and get it up before they could catch her. So she went faster, but the feeling in her body was pure agony. It was fire up her legs and in her lungs. Just to the door. Just a few more steps. Just get inside, get the ship in the air, and she'd be out of their reach. Then she could move on to other problems.
She heard a crackling in the ear piece she'd forgotten she had, that had been hidden in her ear so the natives had completely missed it. She couldn't respond to the voice, could hardly understand what was being said. And the excitement she would have felt before was drowned out by the fire that was consuming her.
She slammed against the metal of the small shuttle, her hands making imprints as she did and her wrists howling in agony. But she slammed the door open, closed it just as a shot flew past her and embedded itself in the opposite wall. The controls. Just get to the controls.
She heard them outside, attempting to open the door that she'd locked from the inside. And she prayed to whatever powers be that the shuttle would start up as it was supposed to, that it wouldn't be stuck.
Relief flooded her as she heard the purr of the engine, felt the slight vibration under her feet. And one more button and it shot upwards, away from the two creatures that had followed her.
She sank into the chair, every part of her body protesting, screaming in agony, but she was alive. And with a few more buttons, a few more levers, she was orbiting the small planet.
The small medkit on the shuttle couldn't possibly cure all the damage she'd done to herself, but it was a start. And once she at least had her legs bound in bandage and a splint on her wrist, she laid on the floor of the shuttle. Her breathing still hadn't slowed from the frantic panting, which was concerning. But Dr. McCoy could figure out what was going on with her once she was back on the Enterprise. Her concern had to be getting there with the serum. A panicked search found all six little containers still resting in the pocket of her pants, safe and sound.
She let herself set for a while, just letting her body readjust itself from the adrenaline fueled race of moments ago. And then she remembered the communicator.
It was an effort to lift her arms, but she did so, pressing against her ear to hit the button for the communicator. And in a quiet voice, surprisingly strained, she asked, "Is anyone still there? This is Ensign Mia Carpenter. I'm aboard my shuttle. I'm not sure how much fuel I've got left, but I'm going to try to make it back."
She stopped the communication, laying back in the chair in the hopes that someone would get in touch with her before she started the trip to the Enterprise. She could float in orbit indefinitely, but once she chose to leave, she had to make it or be lost.
But after a few minutes of silence, she decided it was time. She used the navigation panel to figure out where she'd last seen the Enterprise, and then she started moving.
She jumped when she heard a voice crackling in her ear.
"Ensign Carpenter? Are you there? Are you alive?" She recognized that voice; Carol Marcus, another science officer.
"Lieutenant!" Her voice was a little too excited, and the accompanying jump forward in her seat caused her to hiss in pain. But someone was there. Someone had her back.
"Carpenter, are you alright?" Concern.
"I overdid it, I think, that's all." The understatement of the century, but it didn't make any sense to concern the officer before she could do anything. Besides, that was small talk that she didn't have time for. "Lieutenant, has the Enterprise moved at all?" If she was going the wrong direction, she needed to correct it now, or she wasn't getting back. These shuttles were meant to get people off of a non-functional ship and to the nearest planet. They were never intended to make a return trip, and getting out of the atmosphere alone had burned a lot of fuel.
"The Tyrant – excuse me, Captain Briggs – has been trying to, but he's run into sabotage."
Mia wanted to ask who Briggs was, but her brain ran faster than her mouth. Of course, a replacement for the downed Captain. Because apparently Spock wasn't good enough in his state. Or Sulu. She frowned, wondering what had happened up there, but now wasn't the time to ask.
"So if I have enough fuel – which I doubt – I should reach you in an hour or so. Can you be there to let me in?"
"How much fuel do you have?"
Mia looked doubtfully at the console that displayed the fuel guage. "Less than a quarter of the tank." It had been full when she'd left the first time. Unless this gave a bad reading... She wasn't making it back.
"Then just don't move anymore. Let me... I'll get back in touch with you shortly. Stay where you are." And then the communication crackled to an end, leaving Mia hoping her kind of friend had a better plan than she did at the moment.
In the days that had passed while Mia Carpenter was on planet, Spock had gotten better, Kirk had gotten worse, and Bones was bored out of his freaking mind.
There wasn't anything he could do for Kirk, except keep giving him the injections that slowed his body down to near death. Spock was up and about, kind of; he could walk around for a half hour, at the most, before he needed to return to his bed and catch his breath. But every time he could, he was up, pacing circles in the floor as he tried to come up with a plan, something they could do from the confines of the medbay. And every time he came up with nothing, and had to go back to his bed gasping in pain because he wouldn't listen to the doctor's orders.
"Spock, sit down." It was a tired argument by this point. Spock had been pacing for 27 minutes exactly, and he was having a hard time continuing.
"Movement is imperative to the thought process, Doctor."
"And being alive is also pretty damn important." But there wasn't anger in the words anymore. There couldn't be, because he was so tired of the argument. He was so tired of being helpless.
"If we could just get out of here - "
"And do what? Run around until we get caught again? There's nothing we can do until everyone's up to snuff and ready, like I've said a thousand times before. And we can't get out of here unless our guard lets us. Which they haven't been inclined to do thus far. So sit down and rest for an hour, then you can do it all over again."
Spock sighed, nodded, and hobbled over to the bed. Which was mildly surprising to Bones, who had expected more fight out of the Vulcan. But, then again, there were only so many times they could have the same argument.
Bones felt his gaze drift to the lone window in the medbay, where space twinkled like the sky on Earth. He knew the stars were more than the twinkling, pretty things that his mother had told him once upon a time, that they weren't ancestors or past kings as movies had tried to insist. He lived in space, for crying out loud, he knew better. But it was still comforting to think of them as such. To believe they were harmless things, meant to watch over and protect, to decorate an otherwise bland night sky. And if he stared long enough, it was easy to forget his life. Forget all the awful, all the adventure, everything that space had brought to him, and pretend once more...
"Doctor." Spock's voice brought him back to the Enterprise again. He shook his head and looked at the Vulcan, who was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed across his chest. "I believe something is happening."
And when Bones pulled his mind completely back to the present and looked out the door, he could see people running. Mostly they were people who were loyal to the Tyrant, if only because they had too much to lose otherwise. After all, disobeying a Starfleet appointed officer could lose them their careers, and none of the rebels aboard the ship could feel any resentment towards those. A few had never liked Kirk or the way he commanded his ship, and they weren't going to remain on the crew once everything was back to normal, no one had any doubt. But there was Chekov, and instead of running with the rest he slipped into the Medbay with a grin on his face.
"She is back. Carpenter is back."
Bones grinned at Chekov before his eyes went to Kirk. "Just a little longer, kid. Just stay with us a little longer, and I'll get you back up and going." And then he returned his attention to Chekov.
Spock spoke before Bones could. "The Tyrant will put her under arrest. You must get the serum from her, and get it back here. As quickly as possible."
"Yessir." Chekov saluted and ran back into the flow of people.
Bones and Spock looked at each other, feeling the relief resting around their shoulders like a blanket.
"We will save him, Doctor. We will get the Enterprise back." Spock paused, watching the doors. "We have to."
Those last three words held more emotion than McCoy had ever heard from the Vulcan, and they were probably the most motivating three words he'd ever heard.
As soon as she'd stopped speaking with Mia in her bedroom, Carol Marcus had hesitantly pulled the door of her room open and peeked out. There weren't any guards, because they thought her door was locked, and she couldn't leave until they came to get her. What they didn't know is the lock was broken a long time ago in a particularly rambunctious night with Kirk, and maintenance had been too busy to fix it.
The memory hurt a little, knowing the most rambunctious thing Kirk could do at the moment was die, but she didn't let herself think about that. Because if she was successful, they could save him. She just had to keep telling herself that. They could still save him.
She crept down the hallway, making her way to the Transporter room. The Tyrant truly didn't have many guards here. He just had control of the ship, and Starfleet's backing. If not for that, he wouldn't have anything. If people weren't afraid of being blacklisted, they would have kicked him off the ship a long time ago without a second thought.
Scotty was sleeping at the console, probably because Engineering had become a permanently loud, moving place. After all, they had to find the missing part of the Enterprise to get her going, and no one was supposed to rest until they found it. Clearly Scotty wasn't concerned about that. Which was fortunate for the science officer.
"Scotty. Wake up." There wasn't time to be polite, so she shook him and stepped back as he flailed to wakefulness. He frowned when he saw Marcus in front of him, her hands on her hips. But before he could say anything, she informed him, "I need you to beam Ensign Mia Carpenter aboard. Now."
"She's... Ye know very well I cannae beam 'er up from the planet-"
"Then it's a good job she's not on the planet. She's in the escape shuttle, can you locate it?"
Scotty rolled his eyes as he turned to the console. "Can I locate it?" His voice was a falsetto as he began punching in commands, and soon enough he'd found the shuttle and the small blip of person that was the Ensign.
Marcus pulled out the communicator. "Beaming you up, Carpenter. Do you have what you went down for?"
A pause, and then "Yes ma'am."
"Good. Standby."
At that moment, Scotty pressed the button, and soon she appeared in front of them in a beam of light. And then the alarm started going off.
"Quickly, let's go." Marcus barely made it to the woman before her legs gave out and she cried in pain. But she pulled the serum out of a pocket and pressed it into Marcus' hands as soon as she was on the floor.
"Get this to him." She said quietly.
"Of course." She was able to take the few steps to Scotty and hand off the serum before guards poured into the room. And in moments, she was handcuffed, as was the poor, injured Carpenter, and they were hauled off to cells in the brig.
Scotty wiped a hand across his forehead, where sweat had beaded with the thrill of it all.
"Well damn."