CHAPTER 29

McCoy's body hit the deck with a sickening thud. There was a charred mark in the center of the blue shirt, and Kirk could see that the edges still glowed where the material continued to burn.

"Bones!" Kirk screamed as he fired at the agent. The beam hit the side of the ship, ricocheted, and struck the bay wall. He fired again and heard an agonized scream. He'd hit Gray in the arm; the agent's phaser skidded across the floor. With surprising speed, the agent spun the cryo-unit around, positioning it between him and Kirk's next shot.

"Fuck!" Kirk hissed. With McCoy dead, he had no intention of letting the agent leave alive; he twisted the phaser setting from stun to kill. He didn't care anymore what Headquarters had to say; if Star Fleet supported Gray, he didn't want to be one of their captains anymore. They could fuck the warp core they rode in on.

"Spock," he shouted, desperate. "I can't get a clear shot! He's behind the unit!" For a moment, the bay was silent, and Kirk wondered if he'd lost two friends that day.

"I am unable to get a clear shot, Captain." The voice came from the control room in the rear of the bay. "However, I can lock the launch doors. It might prove sufficient to—"

Gray had disappeared inside his ship, pulling the cryo-unit in after him. "Lock it down! Lock the bay down!" Kirk screamed just as the deck began to vibrate. He covered his ears as the black ship's engines roared to life. Red lights flashed overhead and an automatic warning blasted from the speakers.

"Warning. Warning. Bay doors are locked. Please power down all engines. Attempt to engage doors will result in decompression. Warning. Warning."

Massive durasteel locks had snapped into place on either side of the bay door but the ship's engines cycled higher. With an almost delicate movement, the ship rose from the deck. It hovered nearly two feet off the floor and then rotated 180 degrees to face the bay doors.

"Spock! Stop him!" Kirk screamed, turning to face the control room. He saw Spock at the docking panel, his hands moving like lightning across the control board. Kirk could not hear, but he could feel the secondary safety locks falling into place.

Gray would have to be mad to—but the thought was lost as a high pitched whine stabbed Kirk's ears. He grunted in pain, tried to cover his ears, and realized what was about to happen a second before a white beam blew a round hole in the bay doors. The explosion was followed by howling wind as the air was sucked out into the vastness of space. It pulled at Kirk, tugged at his clothes, and the phaser slipped from his grasp as he stumbled forward. Behind him, the medical equipment began rolling toward the hole, the smaller of the two starting to lift from the deck. It was then that Kirk remembered McCoy, saw his friend's body sliding toward the frigid blackness, and dove for it. He hooked one arm around a thermo-pipe and the other around McCoy's chest.

And then the black ship fired again, the beam a larger spread, creating a hole big enough for the ship to fly through. Kirk screamed his remaining breath as he felt his chest muscles tear, like a rendering of thick silk deep inside him, but he refused to let go of his friend's body. They twisted and jerked like a fish at the end of a line as the black ship gracefully floated through the opening.

Pain and lack of air caused black spots to dance before Kirk's eyes, but he saw with horror the gauges on the rear of the ship begin to glow brightly. And then, with a bright flash, the black ship engaged warp drive.

They should have been burned up, turned into ash, and sucked out into space, along with all of the Bay and a good section of Deck 13. But there had been a faint shimmer over the breach as emergency shielding snapped into place, barely a second before the ship had engaged warp.

Kirk hit the deck with a hollow thump. McCoy's body landed somewhere off to his right. He knew someone had hit the switch to cycle air back into the Bay because he could feel the groan escaping his chest. Torn muscles seized in protest but he drew in another breath, trying to internalize this new, unwanted reality that he was forced to live in.

So it took a minute for him to realize that someone was shouting, someone was grabbing at him. Kirk blinked. It was Spock. When had Spock come? His face was paler than usual, more urgent than Kirk had ever seen it. The Commander's voice sounded strange, muffled and far away. Kirk pawed an ear to clear it and it came away bloody, a burst eardrum from the sudden decompression. The other ear was better though, and he tilted his head in the Vulcan's direction.

Spock's voice came across strained. "Jim! Jim, hear me—Leonard is alive! They're taking him to surgery!"

Alive? Alive! A profound joy spread through Kirk, followed immediately by sharp guilt. Aggie. . . where was Aggie? Kirk welcomed the pain then as he struggled into a sitting position, letting it wash over his mind and filter into focused rage. He stared at the space where bay doors had once been, where a ship had once been, where a woman had once been.

Captain Kirk looked at his Commander. "Get me to the bridge," he ordered. "Now."

"Sulu, report!" Kirk stumbled onto the bridge, still clutching his chest. The helmsman spun in his chair and gave a look of agonized frustration.

"Damn ship doesn't leave much of a trail, Captain. It's engines are powered differently than anything I've seen before. There isn't even an ionization trail, just displacement waves."

"Find me that ship!" Kirk barked, then turned to Uhura. "Anything?"

"Just in on a Priority One channel, Sir," she said, swiveling to face him. "For your eyes only."

Kirk snorted. Fuck Priority One; they all needed answers. "Play it!" he ordered, easing into the captain's chair. "Authorization number 744853Alpha9."

Uhura turned to her panel and punched in his authorization number. The stars on the main viewscreen flickered before being replaced by the haggard face of Admiral Archer. Uhura pushed a button and the message began to play.

"Jim, Archer here. Headquarters has received your messages regarding Agent 544 and his alleged mission to bring back the augment to Section 31. Jim, I've checked with everyone, Section 31 included, and there is absolutely no mission involving the augment. But I did discover that an agent went rogue yesterday with an experimental spacecraft."

Archer's image exhaled loudly then continued. "Jim, I learned a few things . . . they're a little bit above your pay grade, but we're in a bind: we need this agent detained and the vessel returned." His eyes shifted downward as though he were reading a file. "Agent 544's real identity is David McGivers. His service record is outstanding except for last year when he lost his only child." Archer looked back up at the screen. "You knew the woman, Jim. She was one of your people. Her name was Lieutenant Marla McGivers. She was the historian on your ship before she was killed by Kahn."

Kirk wanted to yell at the recording that McGivers was still alive on Ceti Alpha V, she'd chosen exile over a court-martial, but the recording continued as if hearing his thoughts.

"Command knows she's alive, Jim, but at the time Agent McGivers was on special assignment outside Federation boarders. His work was critical, and Command was afraid he'd abandon his mission to search for his daughter. They couldn't risk it so your logs were changed to reflect that the augment known as Kahn had killed Lieutenant McGivers in an attempt to escape. After that, he boarded the Botony Bay where a faulty power unit caused the ship to explode. No survivors, no revenge." Archer's lips twisted in regret. "That was the plan anyway. Guess it didn't turn out so good, but who knew that another augment would be discovered? Anyway, hope this reaches you in time, Jim. Good luck. Archer out."

Archer's image was replaced by stars. The bridge was deathly quiet. Kirk glanced at the chronometer on the armrest. Had the message arrived just a little sooner . . .

"Sir," Chekov said, his voice quiet. "Wiv the direction of Gray's—McWiver's—displacement waves, I calculated the most likely direction the ship took."

From the miserable look Chekov gave him, Kirk steeled himself. "And that is?"

"Somewhere in Quadrant Five."

Kirk slumped back in the captain's chair. Quadrant Five. They'd narrowed the ship to a quadrant containing over two hundred thousand systems, and that was only the areas that had been mapped.

"Sick Bay is calling for you, Sir," Uhura said softly. "Doctor McCoy is awake and asking for . . . well, Nurse Chapel thinks you should come down."

"I'm on my way," he said automatically but made no effort to move. What the hell was he supposed to say to Bones? That they were looking for her? Even if McGivers didn't kill Aggie—and Kirk's gut told him that hadn't been the agent's intent—the chances of ever finding her again were . . . statistically impossible.

Kirk inhaled deeply, using the pain it caused to focus his thoughts. "Lieutenant Sulu, set a course for Quadrant Five. Mr. Spock, you have the conn."

It was only after the turbo-lift doors slid shut that Kirk allowed himself to double over. He suddenly felt as though he were ten again, clawing out a shallow grave with his bare hands. But who was it for this time?

Aggie?

McCoy?

Or himself?

So….what ya think? Did any of you guess his real identity? Gray or McGivers, either way he's a real douche. And I never cared for Marla in the show, either. She was a snob.

lol

PLEASE REVIEW!

Cooper