Chapter 6

McCoy hadn't really considered how this would work until he started doing it. If he thought he was going to get all the way round the ship in the air ducts then he only thought it for a minute, crawling hurt, far too much and within a few metres he came across the first obstacle. It was dark, not much light filtered through the grates, and in his agony he wasn't paying too much attention until he flailed his arm out to drag himself forward again and his hand met thin air. He pulled himself forward a bit and found himself gazing down a shaft that was about a metre square and went straight down. McCoy couldn't see the bottom. He knew if he were to fall it would be three decks from his current position in G deck to the bottom of the dish part of the ship on I deck, but that was still an awful long way and had the potential to be deadly even without his diminished condition. There were no rungs, nothing to hold onto, just shiny sheet metal. Any hopes of using the ducts to get around unseen died. The alternative, he realised, were the Jefferies tubes which would give him access to the whole ship, unfortunately the only access point was back in Med Bay which was about to be swarming with bad guys. Besides, they'd been designed by a crazy man, McCoy groused, without the schematics or someone like Scotty who knew the ship better than he knew the back if his hand, then he could spend the rest of his life wandering lost in the labyrinth of tunnels.

He was about to abandon the tunnels when more shouting and footsteps could be heard just on the other side of the wall. He decided he didn't need to go very far, just far enough that he was unlikely to get caught. The tunnel continued on beyond the gap, if he could get a bit further on then he could leave these stupid dangerous tunnels, he told himself as he edged himself out over the void. He wiped his clammy hands on his uniform pants before pushing himself a bit further out until his chest was hanging out over the gap. He reached out a shaking hand across the void, grasped for the far ledge and missed, his trembling fingers touching the edge but slipping away. Huffing with the effort he edged his abused body out a little further. He spewed a litany of curses as summoned the strength to keep himself straight, using his abdominal muscles to keep himself from falling down the hole. This time he managed to get a firm grip and planted both palms firmly on the other side. He now had to shuffle forward in a press up position to get across. His arms trembled under the strain, it was something he found easy in the gym but with broken ribs and lung and skin damage, it pulled on everything that hurt. He took deep breaths and pushed the pain aside. He was almost there when the toe of his boot slipped.

His left foot skidded out behind him, he'd kept the well-worn boots because they'd been comfy but they had nearly no tread left. He barely had time to think 'oh shit!' before his foot disappeared, causing him to bash his shin on the edge of the hole. Unbalanced, his arms couldn't take the extra weight and they collapsed. His broken chest bashed into the floor of the tunnel and he was unable to hold back a cry of pain, feeling his other foot go from under him too. And then he realised he was slipping, sliding backwards into the hole. He tried to secure his hand but his palm slipped. As it shot out from under him he realised, too late, that his palm had slicked on blood that he'd been trailing all through the tunnel, he twisted as he flailed for a hold and then suddenly he was falling.

As he fell backwards his shoulders slammed into the wall of the tunnel, it forced all the air from him and he heard a crunch, feeling a flare of pain as one of his ribs gave. He threw out his shaking arms and slammed his hands onto the walls of either side of him. It slowed his decent but didn't stop him. He pulled up his legs and stuck his feet out, jamming them into the corners of the shaft. He continued to slide, but it slowed him and eventually he managed to put enough pressure through his hands, feet and back to wedge himself and come to a halt.

He cursed again. Everything hurt so much. He looked down and gulped, he'd fallen a long way but he still couldn't see the bottom. He must have fallen the length of a deck because he was suspended just above another cross-section. Had he fallen any further his footholds would have disappeared and he would have probably ended up falling all the way to the bottom. Tentatively he brought his feet down to the lip of the next horizontal tunnel so that he was straddling the hole. Thankful for being blessed with long legs, from there he managed to crouch down, grab the sides of one of the entrances and pulled himself back into the hole.

He scrambled away from the edge and then lay on his back panting. He fumbled in his bag for a hypo but he struggled to get a grip on anything. Frustrated with himself he had to concentrate to get his hand to hold steady enough to grasp the hypospray and inject it into his arm. He felt the effects instantly, clearing his head and easing the pain down to something almost negligible. It didn't take the shake out of his hands and his heart was pounding out of his chest, a side effect of too much adrenaline, but at least he'd have the strength to get moving again. He wasted no time, knowing that he wouldn't have long before it wore off. He scrambled to his hands and knees and crawled forward, reaching the next grate which lead out into one to the corridors on H deck. He watched through the grill for a moment to check there was no one there but the coast was clear so he drew himself up and kicked the panel out.

Whomever designed this ship must have foreseen this exact disaster, McCoy mused, why else would they have chosen to place Communications directly underneath the Med Bay? Still, it was the only damn thing to go right so far, he grumbled as he used the bio scanner to allow him access. Once inside he breathed a sigh of relief. Communications was restricted access only, they'd have to break the door down like they had in his office in order to get in. He'd never actually been in here before, it was just a row of computer terminals. He sat down at the nearest one and woke it up. He placed his thumb on the biometric scanner and the screen came to life. His fingers flew across the keys as he composed his message. 'Urgent SOS. USS Enterprise boarded by pirates. Command crew captured, rest of crew escaped in pods to nearest habitable planet. At least 7 fully armed pirate vessels. Enterprise shields and warp capabilities offline. Intentions towards command crew unknown, injuries sustained but full extent unknown. Lt Cmdr McCoy.' He attached their current co-ordinates and sent it out to whomever was reading Federation channels.

It would be ideal if he could get the coordinates for the planet that the rest of the crew was sent to, if nothing else, at least he could get them rescued, but computers weren't his forte. He tried looking back over the action logs for the bridge, he wasted precious moments trying to find the right folder in the senior officers shared data file but eventually he found the file marked with the current stardate. He grinned in triumph as he clicked it open but it didn't last long with what he found. The last entry was a communication two minutes and thirty-seven seconds long with another ship. Whatever the ship was it wasn't displaying a Federation code. At first he assumed that they had just been communicating with their own ships until he noticed that the communication had been long-range. It took him a few minutes to bring up a log of known ship codes and scanned through them. It wasn't there, but as he scrolled through rapidly something similar caught his eye. It wasn't quite right but the first few letters were the same. McCoy checked back again and confirmed what he should have suspected, the corresponding code related to a Romulan warbird.

He noted down the co-ordinates that the message had been picked up from before he clicked on the playback. The display came up with a split-screen, one side showing the pirate captain sat in Kirk's chair, laying back into it, one leg slung lazily over the arm. The other image was a cold looking ship with a grim looking Romulan female. Her head was shaven which accentuated her pointed ears and ridged forehead. She had a pretty face, McCoy mused, but severe looking, he wouldn't want to end up in her clutches. She was wearing all the regalia of a Romulan commander, dark uniform, garish sash across her chest.

"Commander L'Ren." The pirate sneered. McCoy leaned forward in his seat to study the screen, knowing their body language would tell him almost as much as their speech. The Romulan looked angry and impatient, no surprise there. The pirate was trying his best to look relaxed but there was something about the way his jaw was set and his eyes kept darting to something off the screen. He looked unnerved by something and McCoy realised with a smug sense of satisfaction it was perhaps himself that had managed to unnerve him.

"Rydan," the Romulan commander greeted with a raised eyebrow. "You've taken your time, but I see you have the Enterprise at last. Everything go according to plan I hope?"

"Of course." The pirate, Rydan oozed a kind of swagger.

"Then where is he?"

"He's in the brig."

"One starship captain was no trouble for you I assume? I want him brought here so I can see him. I need proof."

"A few of his most loyal crew stayed with him, but they were nothing we couldn't handle. If you want them too, I'll make you a good deal."

"How many?"

"The Vulcan, some hot chick, and three others."

"Are they harmed? You don't get the full amount if I can't use them."

"They're all in one piece. A few scrapes that's all. They're certainly in better shape with me than they will be with you." He grinned.

That elicited a sly smile from the Romulan too. "They'll be begging for your brig when I'm done with them. I need to see them before I negotiate a price for the others."

Rydan clicked his fingers at someone off-screen and then the view of the bridge was taken over with CCTV footage from the brig. The view was from a camera in corner of the ceiling and gave a view of the whole room. McCoy leaned forward intently. His eyes scanned the group, immediately seeking out Kirk. The captain was pacing back and forth, full of energy. McCoy caught a glimpse of the phaser burn on his arm but the way that he was waving his arm around animatedly as he walked and talked to the others showed that it wasn't really being affected by it. Spock was sat up straight in his thermal undershirt, taking in whatever their captain was saying, he looked fine. Sulu was slumped against Uhura at the back of the room. He appeared to be asleep on her shoulder. She sat beside him with her ankles crossed out in front of her, a comforting hand resting on his leg. It was hard with the dark uniform and the camera angle to see where he was injured, the best he could do was hope that the fact that he had no blood marring the yellow of his uniform meant that if had not been a wound to his torso. Scotty and Chekov were also sat together on the floor. Scotty, from his hand gestures appeared to be discussing something with the captain, but he kept his other arm slung across Chekov's shoulders. The youngest crew member looked haunted. He had blood on his face which someone seemed to have wiped off. McCoy looked for the injury before he realised that the blood was his own.

It was such a relief to see his crew mostly healthy. He wanted to watch further, he was sure that Kirk was scheming and he liked to think if he watched long enough he'd be able to work out what it was. But the screen switched back to Rydan in the bridge. He was grinning confidently now. The Romulan was still stony-faced but nodded her approval.

"Payment for the captain is what we agreed upon. I'll give you half that again for the rest of the crew."

"Now hold on a minute, I'm offerin' you five others, they're all officers, they'll all have intel. They're worth more than that!"

"I have Captain Kirk. I have no use for the others."

"Ah!" Rydan held his finger up to stop her. "You haven't met Kirk have you? He won't break easily. But his weakness is his crew. You'll need to use them to get to him."

The Romulan paused a moment, thinking it over. McCoy could tell from the irritation that ghosted across her face that she'd already thought of that, and her annoyance was likely to come from being made to haggle. "I'll give you the same for the others that I've giving you for Kirk. Any more and my superiors will consider your greed to not be worth our time."

Rydan grinned. "Done. We're on our way to the agreed rendezvous. I'll hail ya when we're almost there."

She nodded. "We'll be waiting." She clicked a button and the screen went blank. The recording had finished. McCoy began to type frantically again.