"Commander Scott, status?" Sulu's voice come over the

comm.

"We're nearly ready, lad." Scotty said. He dragged his

sleeve over his face. "Gie us a few minutes more. We hae

to reset the targeting after the modifications to prevent the

mu-spectrum radiation from confusing the inertial

compensators."

"Then you'll have to hand load them." Sulu said.

"Aye, lad," Scotty said, thinking, ~bright boy, that one,

shame he's wasting his life at the helm. I could make

somethin' of that lad.~ "That'll be the hardest bit."

"Keep me posted." Sulu said.

"I will do that." Scotty said. "Any word on Himself?"

"I'll keep *you* posted."

"Aye, thank ye. Engineering out."

He leaned back against the wall, taking full advantage of

one of the rare moments in which his personal supervision

was not only superfluous, it'd be a hindrance. No, with the

fiddly job of manually resetting the targeting underway an

extra body over there'd be more likely to cause a problem

than not.

It was a chance to watch his crews work, and even under

the circumstances Scotty didn't pass it up, his eyes narrow,

his gaze assessing. Given the fact that fully half the

people in Engineering were not from his crew, and there

were a fair number who'd just survived Starbase 34, he

would have been satisfied with competence. The smooth

excellence he saw before him warmed the cockles of his

heart. Non-engineers worked obediently to the clear and

simple directions of engineering crew. Engineers adapted

their tasks and knowledge to compensate for the lesser

comprehension of the non-experts among them.

~Aye, they'll do.~ Scotty thought.

~I just wish Himself was here to see and take pride in his

crew...~

"Fuck!" It was not a word that Scotty's crew habitually

used, even under pressure, or at least not when he was

around, and it echoed around central engineering. Scotty

turned and saw Madison scowling at a torpedo, his

expression - well, murderous was the only word that

Scotty could bring to mind.

He strode over.

"What's the problem, man?"

"No fucking problem." Madison said. He slapped the

torpedo casing and turned with a swagger. "She's good to

go, mate."

"Then what's the commotion?"

"Caught my bloody fingers in the catch, didn't I?"

Madison said, showing the scrape.

"Jesus, man, I thought ye'd either lost a hand or shattered

the guidance board in two!" Scotty said. He looked at the

torpedo, checking the seams on the lid were perfectly

flush, and then checked the scanner showing the torpedo's

insides.

"I shoulda remembered," Madison said, "Starfleet doesn't

use coarse language, do they."

"I wouldna go so far as to say that." Scotty said. "The

Merchant Fleet, however, uses words as punctuation that

many a Starfleet officer has never heard." He rotated the

view on the scanner. "Very nice work here, man, but why

hae ye cross wired the baffler through the dampener?"

"Cuts down on the compensation needed after launch."

Madison said. "I'm pretty sure the radiation won't affect it

after the manual resetting, but it doesn't hurt to make

certain. Plus it's quicker."

"Aye, I can see that, but man it's nae pretty." Scotty shook

his head sorrowfully. "Ye hae a quick mind but nae sense

of elegance. Now look here, if ye'd transferred the switch-

routing through the guidance system ye could hae -"

"Chief!" a Martinique Duval called and both men spun

around. "We're ready for loading!"

Madison opened his mouth to answer, then looked at

Scotty and laughed, a little rueful, a little bitter.

"That'd be for you." he said.

"Alright, get them moving, people!" Scotty shouted,

and the crews began to lift the torpedoes onto the

loading rails.

"How long will it take?" Madison asked.

"About fifteen minutes, if we're quick." Scotty said,

and saw Madison look at his chrono. "The captain'll

be back by then, man, don't doubt it."

"I hope you're right." Madison said. "I surely hope

you're right."

"Chief Scott, Chief Scott." Uhura's voice paged.

Scotty hit to comm. "Scotty here, lass."

"Sulu asks if you can hurry it up."

"If I could hurry it up, lass, I would hae done so!"

"Yes, I know, but we've - got company."

Scotty thought of crew on the sick list, of the phaser

banks powered down, of the torpedo launchers stripped

apart for the hand loading of their carefully modified

torpedoes.

"Company?" he asked.

"A Romulan warbird just dropped out of warp." Uhura

said.

"Aye, lass, we'll go as fast as we can. Scott out."

Scotty cut the channel and then said a word he'd never

have used in the presence of a lady like Uhura.

"There you go," Madison said. "It's easy once you get

the hang of it."

"Enterprise, this is the shuttle craft Mayru bearing

twenty five fourteen nine off your starboard, Captain

Kirk, Commander Spock and Lieutenant Larssen aboard.

If you are receiving this transmission, please

respond." Larssen set the comm to repeat and swivelled

her chair around.

They had come through the containment field more or

less intact, although Larssen knew she'd have bruises

where the belts had held her in her seat and suspected

from the way he moved that the captain did as well.

Kirk had set the course for the Enterprise and given

her instructions to keep them on target and then

unbelted and gone aft to see how Spock had come

through the turbulence. His eagerness to do so had

been palpable, despite his patience as he explained

the boards to her.

Now she kept one eye on the indicators that showed

they were still on course, and watched the captain as

he tried to help Commander Spock. The First Officer

was clearly in severe physical distress, and Larssen

guessed that if he were trying to battle with the

'thing' that she had faced in the body of a child, he

must be in mental distress as well. The captain

seemed to have exhausted the possibilities of the

medikit. He sat on his heels beside the acceleration

couch, talking to Spock as if the First Officer could

hear him. Perhaps he could.

She noticed a drift in numbers on one of her boards

and turned back to face forward. The portside engine

wasn't at full power. Larssen compensated with

manoeuvring jets, but the drift continued.

"Captain." she said, and a moment later heard Kirk

come up behind her. "Something's wrong with port-

side."

"Looks like a jam in the reinitialiser." Kirk said.

"That could easily have happened as we came through

the containment field."

"Can we fix it?"

"Not out here." Kirk said. He touched a few keys on

the boards and Larssen saw the line that indicated

their course swing wide, now forming a long arc that

missed the Enterprise completely.

"Sir." she said. "That new course doesn't meet up

with the Enterprise, sir."

"I know." Kirk said. He reached out and tapped the

display. "This is where the shuttle is going to try

to get to. But with the port engine going down,

tracking on that course will actually take us - here."

His finger covered the green dot that was the

Enterprise. "At least, that's the plan. Do you need

to take a break, Lieutenant? There's not a lot we can

do now except hope we get outside the blast zone

before they launch the torpedoes and then hope they

detect us and open the doors. You might as well get

some sleep."

"Thank you, sir," Larssen said, "I'll just use the

'fresher. I don't think I'll sleep for a while."

Kirk's eyes were on the boards, and his voice

studiously casual. "You had the closest contact of

all of us - except Spock."

"I suppose so, sir."

"What was it like?" Kirk asked. Larssen had no trouble

following his line of thought. She was the one source of

information that might tell him what was happening, what

would happen, to Spock. And what could she say? She

sank back into her seat.

"It can talk to you inside your head, sir." she said at last.

"And - and make you see things, feel things. Physically,

emotionally."

"But you got away." Kirk said, and Larssen heard doubt

that might or might not be there in his voice.

"Yes, sir. I believe I did." she said, and added, barbed:

"Although I suppose this could be some kind of more

sophisticated trick on its part."

"How likely do you think that is?" It was a captain's

question, the captain's face he turned to her, not the face of

a man concerned for his friend. Calm, inquiring,

assessing, and she knew that behind the eyes was the

question: will I need to shoot her? Will I need to shoot

them both? His self-control shamed, but did not surprise

her.

"Not very, sir." she said, struggling to ignore the nausea

that rose in her as she remembered. "It was very eager to

get hold of me, I'm pretty sure of that, and the ways it used

were ... blunt instruments, sir." ~Think like a scientist.

Think like an officer. The safety of the ship, the safety of

the captain, is at stake here. This is no time to indulge

yourself in self-pity, no time to let your fear interfere with

clear thought.~ " I don't think it was capable of - well, of

making me think I'd gotten loose of it, and then lying

dormant in my mind. That's just my opinion, sir, it may be

wishful thinking."

"The subsequent manifestations would seem to be

excessive if that were not the case." Kirk said. He turned

in his seat to look back towards Spock, and then checked

the display for their progress. "What concerns me is that

the Enterprise will fire on the Starbase, but this creature

will have hitchhiked off it, with us. The only reason for its

remaining on Starbase 34 was the presence of a host."

"I don't think Commander Spock is now that host,

Captain." Larssen said. "I think we would know about it."

"Unless it's gotten smarter." Kirk said.

"Captain," Larssen said, "We can play 'what if' until we've

second-guessed our way into immobility. My judgement

is that this thing doesn't have the sophistication, or the

forward planning ability, to set up something like that. It

was real short term when it talked to me. Do what I want,

I'll give you this. Don't do what I want, I'll hurt you.

That's a threat, blow it up. It must be able to get

knowledge from what it deals with, because it knew about

the Starbase phasers and it knew things about me, but I

don't think it's changing its fundamental nature."

"I agree with you." Kirk said. "We have to act on our best

judgement of the situation." He turned to look at Spock

again. "We're coming up on the limits of the interference.

We should be able to get a signal through."

"Is the comms interference the limit of the creature's

influence?"

"We presume so in the absence of other evidence." Kirk

said. "We're nearly outside the torpedo blast zone as

well."

"I'll take that break." Larssen said.

In the tiny 'fresher, she splashed water on her face and

tried to put her uniform at least partly to rights. Only if

you already knew could you have told that her torn and

dirty clothing had once been a regulation Starfleet

uniform. Larssen peered at her face in the mirror and

wondered if it was only if you already knew that you

could see the haunted look in her eyes.

~Are you in there, Loretta?~ she wondered. ~Like a

tapeworm coiled around my brain, invisible but growing

fat and fatter?~ She wiped her face again, squared her

shoulders and went out.

Spock heard her walk past him on the way to the co-chair.

He could hear her breathing. He could hear Kirk

breathing, hear both their hearts beating. He could not

open his eyes or move so much as a fingertip, but it made

no difference. The world was made manifest to him by

senses other than his own.

The entity lay over him like a blanket of lead. It had

abandoned attempts to win him over with temptations of

setting the past to rights and guaranteeing that the future

would be golden after he had steadfastly refused to

consider its promises. His training had equipped him to

differentiate quite clearly between physical and psychic

stimulus: his response to the creature had been curiosity at

its style and technique. It had one or two quite impressive

tricks, but they had foundered on Spock's unsparing

knowledge of his own self, his own nature. No foreign

mind could play games in the landscape of Spock's psyche

for very long without coming face to face with the owner,

undeceived and unamused.

Pain had been next, but Spock knew how to meet pain. It

was possible for the creature to cause him enough pain to

produce unconsciousness, shock, even death. It was not

possible for it to cause him to fear that pain, or to give in

out a desire to end or avoid it.

Now it sought to smother his resistance. Spock was

grateful it had taken the creature so long to work out this

tactic, as he expected it to prove to be the one that finally

overcame him. At least the delay had enabled him to

ensure that Kirk and Larssen were safely off the Starbase.

Although it took all his concentration to hold the balance

between exploiting the creature's senses for his own

purposes and blinding it to the actions of the others, he had

so far been successful. Even as the weight of exhaustion

pressed more and more heavily on his mind, he was able

to maintain himself separate to the creature and continue

to psychic legerdemain that had allowed them all to get

this far.

Not for much longer, though. He sensed the coils of the

creature's mind twining more and more tightly around

him, enmeshing him in a glistening black web that grew

tighter by the moment. The effect on his mind was the

same as a similar strangulation would have had on his

body: he weakened, he slipped inexorably towards

unconsciousness and death.

~I have five minutes,~ he thought beneath the blanket of

writhing tendrils, ~perhaps a little longer.~

He could not allow it to take his mind. The danger to the

captain, to the ship, was far too great. Before that could

happen he must deny it the possibility, deny it the host it

sought in him. Perhaps it would then attack another

member of the crew, and he regretted that, but it was a

preferable alternative to the entity marrying its own

powers to Spock's.

Not yet, though. There was no logic in taking the steps

that would end his life while there were still entire minutes

for the captain's plan to succeed.

Indeed, even as he thought this, he heard Kirk speak.

"Torpedoes away!" the captain said. "That's a full launch -

nice spread. They'll come close but not too close. Should

detonate in - one minute. We're coming up to the limits of

the blast zone."

The great weight that lay across Spock lifted. For a

moment it was as much as he could do to simply observe

the return of his customary swiftness of mind, and then as

the weight rose a little more from him, he gathered his

resources and turned his inner eye on the entity as it

withdrew. He expected to see that as they reached the

limit of its most powerful influence, it was withdrawing to

the Starbase to gather its powers. Thus it would be

destroyed.

He was appalled to discover he was wrong.