Chapter Text
Jim’s decision is wholly logical. Had he not made the compromise of leaving McCoy, Dara, and King behind to care for the injured man and continuing without them, the situation would have surely turned more dangerous. McCoy is decidedly stubborn—this Spock knows well—and Captain Neko appears no less so.
Nonetheless, it is a compromise that Spock does not like. They have already been separated from Nyota, Gaila, and Manheim. Given the apparent dangers, this is not ideal.
It is, however, unavoidable. They must uncover the truth of what has occurred—and that will not be found above.
Jim walks ahead of him, Elsha to his right. Neko remains at the front of their procession. She leads them with single-minded focus down further walkways, stairs and shorter tunnels, until they near the ground below.
They’ve reached the last long staircase when Neko curses and breaks into a run. Spock tilts his head, moving faster to keep pace as the others follow suit around him.
Ahead, Jim stops, sucking in a breath, while Elsha chokes and turns an alarming shade of off-teal. She stumbles off the stairs and starts throwing up to the left of them.
Spock frowns. Lieutenant Elsha is an experienced Security officer. She is not weak-stomached, by any means. Anything that so disturbs her must be horrifying indeed.
Determined to see, Spock jumps the two metres off the side of the walkway. Landing with a faint clang, he freezes, his throat tightening. Before him lies a grisly battlefield, all that remains of the thirty-seven crew members—excluding Roguv—who accosted the Enterprise away-team earlier. Pools of green and blue blood of varying shades drench the ground, dripping through the corrugated metal, interspersed with corpses.
There aren’t many. Not enough to be all thirty-seven missing, though several have been thoroughly dismembered, making an exact count hard to estimate. Perhaps eight or so?
Spock restarts his count, focusing on associating the body-parts with each other. What could have done this? What manner of creature tears through bodies like they were paper? Why?
Nyota is downstairs… Spock pushes the thought aside, recounting the bodies. This time, his total is nine.
To his left, boots clang against metal and someone brushes his side. Jim.
Without a word, Spock meets his horrified eyes.
Jim doesn’t speak either, lips pressed into a colourless line as he goes to check on Elsha—who’s now dry-heaving. He wraps one arm around her shoulders, gently rubbing at her back, murmuring something inaudible to her.
‘This…what could have done this?’ Neko’s first mate, Solara, chokes out, her eyes wide. ‘Captain, this is…’
‘I know.’ Neko’s words are cold. She turns, eyes landing first on Spock, shifting to Jim and Elsha. Some emotion flickers in her eyes at the sight of the latter. ‘Kirk.’
Jim straightens, keeping an arm around Elsha, as he glares at Neko. ‘What? You can’t seriously think this was us?’
Neko pauses, tilting her head. ‘No,’ she says finally. ‘I do not.’
This makes Jim start. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘That…good. That’s good.’
‘Even if it were possible,’ Neko says. ‘This is not Starfleet’s style.’ She turns, giving the gruesome spectacle another once-over. ‘It is clear to me that there is something else entirely at work here. We must regroup, immediately.’
Jim draws himself up, releasing the now-calmer Elsha. ‘I would agree, however…’
He glannces at Spock who inclines his head in agreement. The time for keeping the rest of their crewmates’ presence a secret is past. At this point, it is far more dangerous for Nyota, Gaila, and Manheim to be alone without any warning of what has occurred than for Neko and her crew to know of their presence.
‘There’s one thing I have to admit,’ Jim says.
As her eyes narrow dangerously, Neko’s fingers wrap around her disruptor.
Jim shows no trepidation. ‘There are three more members of my away-team in this station,’ he says, inclining his chin and meeting her eyes.
Neko growls, stalking towards him. ‘You lied to me?’
Jim scoffs. ‘Oh, get over yourself, Neko—like I was going to expose my crewmates to you unnecessarily. They were downstairs translating the captain’s log we found. This, though.’ Jim pauses, his gaze drawn back to the bloody ground. ‘This changes things. Right now, I’ve got three people downstairs who have no idea there’s something else here with us. They need to be warned.’
Neko stalks forward, until she’s practically nose-to-nose with Jim. ‘And why would I let you do that?’
Jim holds his ground. ‘Because you’re a captain too.’
Silence. The two glare at each other for a few moments longer before, finally, Neko grits her teeth and runs a hand over her braided hair. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘But you’re not going alone. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you. Solara, Chani,’ she continues, turning to her crew. Both her first mate and a young Orion stand up straighter. ‘Go back upstairs. Tell the rest what’s happened. As soon as Roguv can be moved, go back up to the bridge and wait for us there.’
Solara and Chani both nod. Solara shoves the bag of collected PADDS to one of the others, who quickly returns them to the Enterprise crew members, before she and Chani turn and head right back up the stairs they’ve just come down. Neko spins, sending Jim another glare. ‘Lead the way, Captain Kirk.’
Nyota sits on the desk, legs crossed, as she frowns down at her PADD. To her left, Gaila’s loading up further logs, sending them each to Nyota. Manheim’s leaning on the wall by the door, ready to pull his phaser at the slightest provocation.
Tapping her stylus against the side of the PADD, Nyota frowns deeper. This language has plenty of similarities to Polythemian which has helped her build up a decent lexicon. The universal translator is hard at work, picking it all apart.
While it’s taking time—too much time, Nyota can’t help but think—slowly, she’s managing to translate it. Thus far, all she has are reports of supply deliveries. Not terribly helpful to figuring out what happened here, but it all adds to the translator’s understanding.
Nyota absently rocks back and forth as she thinks. If she cracks the date, she can at least find the most recent logs. Without that date, the files’re all over the place…
Someone pokes her in the leg and she jumps, fumbling to keep hold of her PADD. ‘Gaila!’ she snaps as Gaila breaks out in gales of laughter. ‘Don’t do that!’
Unable to stop laughing, Gaila sucks in desperate gasps of air. Over by the door, Axel “Dead Man” Manheim is also cracking up and making no attempt to hide it. Truly, Nyota’s losing her touch—she should be too scary for people to laugh at like this.
She glares at them. ‘I hate you both.’
‘Sure.’ Gaila brushes away tears of laughter and pats her on the shoulder patronisingly. Nyota comes this close to trying to bite her hand. ‘Anyway, I was trying to get your attention for a reason. Look.’
Nyota scowls, shifting closer. Immediately, all annoyance flees her body. ‘Are those audio files?’
In answer, Gaila taps on one, letting it play.
Two speakers come out of the desk, as a voice starts talking. The language is, well, exactly what Nyota would’ve expected from the written version. The similarities with Polythemian are obvious, though there are differences, especially with pronunciation.
Crucially, however, it’s nothing at all like the distress call Nyota picked up. The one that brought them here in the first place.
She sits forward, frowning, setting the translator to work on translating the audio as she does so. ‘Are the other files in the same language?’
Gaila shrugs. ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’
Manheim leaves his post by the door, coming over to listen more closely, as Gaila plays several more of the files. All of them are in that same language.
Once Gaila’s played about seven of them, Nyota stops her. ‘That language,’ she says slowly. ‘That’s not the same as the call we picked up.’
Gaila and Manheim both turn to her, frowning. Of course, neither of them heard the original call.
‘It doesn’t sound anything alike?’ Gaila asks.
‘Not a bit,’ Nyota says. She seeks out the right file on her PADD and lets it play—at a low volume. The scream erupts out, piercing the air, making every atom in Nyota’s body go on alert. It is, if anything, even more unsettling here and now, in the middle of this abandoned space station. It’s unsettling enough that Nyota stops it before it finishes. ‘See,’ she rasps out past a suddenly dry throat.
Gaila has gone waxy, while Manheim instinctively crosses himself. ‘That’s what we came here for?’ he asks.
Nyota nods. ‘I listened to it carefully,’ she says—even though, in this moment, she can’t imagine how she managed to listen to that awful noise as many times as she did. ‘It’s definitely a message, spoken in a language that we’ve never encountered before. I assumed it’d be this station’s language but…’
But it isn’t.
‘So…why, exactly,’ Manheim says, ‘did we pick up that unholy scream and go, “Yeah, that sounds dead fun, we should go mess with that” and not “Well, that’s a blaring red alert, let’s go to the other side of the galaxy instead”?’
‘It’s a distress call,’ Nyota says. ‘It’s our job to respond to distress calls.’
Manheim scowls, crossing himself again.
Gaila jumps in before he says anything. ‘Regardless,’ she says. ‘It’s definitely not the same language as the audio logs. Must’ve been sent by someone else.’ She swipes the screen. ‘I’ll send all of these audio files to your PADD, Nyo. You can set the translator on them. Meanwhile, I’ll search for any other files that fit more with what the original distress call sounded like. Give me a…’
She’s interrupted by the buzzing of Manheim’s communicator. Manheim flicks it open. ‘Manheim here.’
‘Manheim, it’s Kirk,’ says the oddly tinny and distorted voice of Jim. ‘You need to watch out. We’re not alone here, there’s something else on the station.’
Manheim frowns. ‘The life signs, sir?’
‘…other than that….’ Jim’s voice is interrupted by bursts of static, blocking out his words intermittently. ‘…found dead….no visual…on our way down…stay….you are…’
The communicator splutters one last time before Jim’s voice is fully overtaken by static.
‘Captain. Captain! Jim!’ Manheim tries to call him back, but to no avail. Only continual white noise responds.
Nyota tries her own communicator, as does Gaila. Neither of them gets through to Jim.
Dropping hers back down onto the desk, Nyota runs a hand over her face. ‘Interference is too strong. That didn’t sound good. They’re coming back down?’
‘Seems like it.’ Manheim crosses his arms, frowning deeply. ‘Maybe we should go meet them.’
‘First,’ Nyota says. ‘We need to finish downloading everything off the computer. There might not be another chance. Gaila?’
‘On it.’ Gaila sets back to work with renewed fervour.
‘Uhura? Lieutenant Uhura, come in.’ Jim lowers his communicator, frowning. No answer. Not from Uhura and not from Gaila either. The few words from Manheim are the only sign the other three received his call at all.
Neko crosses her arms. ‘Signal’s spotty in this place. You didn’t notice?’
Jim shoots her a glare. ‘And you didn’t mention it?’
Neko shrugs. ‘You got through for a second, didn’t you?’
Jim sighs, flipping his communicator closed and sliding it into his pocket. ‘At least they know we’re on our way.’ Hopefully. Jim’s not sure how much of his message made it through.
He glances at Spock and Elsha, who’re both making their own attempts to break through to Uhura’s team. Spock’s not showing his worry—he never does—but he’ll be feeling it.
Elsha takes the lead as they continue. While she has no weapon—their phasers have not been returned—Missy wasn’t wrong in her recommendation. Jim’s had a few practice bouts with her in the Enterprise gym; she’s a badass with or without weapons. She’s the logical choice to go first. If, that is, whatever killed Neko’s crew is possible to fight.
Jim really hopes it’s possible to fight.
According to the blueprints, they’re still in the long cylindrical structure that stretches from top to bottom of the station’s sphere. Ten flat decks extend out from said cylinder—at a rate of once every ten of the cylinder’s floors—on all sides, forming circles around it. The Captain’s quarters where they left Uhura and the others lie about three decks—or thirty cylinder floors—down from their current position.
Jim keeps close behind Elsha. She has the map too but Jim was the one to lead them up here. He remembers the route and—occasionally—has to nudge her in the right direction.
As on the way up, the corridors are bizarrely laid out—ending at dead ends, or rooms that serve as dead ends, or rooms that lead to other rooms that bring you out in the same corridor you started in, or long stairwells that don’t let out on every floor (you need to find the right stairwell for the right floor if you want to get anywhere at all). Some doors don’t lead anywhere—they’re either for decoration or for the gleeful increasing of Jim’s already sky-high blood pressure—and other doors that lead out into thin air. It’s like the architects were intentionally designing as impossible a layout to navigate as they could. This, itself, doesn’t include the many—many—areas that have been wrecked; ceilings caved in, collapsed floors, broken life-support leaving whole corridors and rooms without breathable air. Altogether, it makes for the most frustrating, least enjoyable expedition Jim’s ever been on, his thoughts continuously buzzing as he goes, burning in his mind—thoughts of Uhura and Gaila and Manheim, who might already be dead for all he knows, might already be torn apart and discarded in pools of their own blood and…
Jim digs his PADD stylus into his palm—a few beads of blood popping out of the skin—the pain something to grasp onto, to fix on and thus stop his spiralling mind short.
Despite the station’s best attempts, Elsha shows no sign of annoyance or confusion. She keeps her expression blank, never showing a drop of hesitation or concern to the pirate crew that’s on alert for any sign of weakness. Jim’s immensely proud of her.
They come out of yet another stairwell into a mess-hall—one of several on the way up. Tables and chairs fill much of the floor space, tables fixed in place and chairs overturned.
Elsha leads them across, heading for the door on the opposite wall. As she nears it, it groans and starts sliding open.
Speeding up, Jim reaches her side as everyone tenses around them.
The door finishes opening and out steps a tall Orion woman in her late forties. She’s muscular and scarred, clothes dotted with green blood, leaning heavily on the wall as she goes.
Neko gasps, pushing past Jim and Elsha. ‘Vairra! You’re alive! Did any of the others make it out too?’
Vairra’s expression doesn’t shift as she meets her captain’s eyes. ‘I…I don’t know,’ she says blankly. ‘I don’t remember.’
Neko stops short, a couple of feet back from her. ‘You…don’t remember?’
Vairra tilts her head to the side. ‘Did something happen?’
‘You were with the others, stripping the engine,’ Neko reminds her, frowning. ‘There was an attack. You must’ve escaped. How?’
‘I don’t remember,’ Vairra repeats.
‘Captain,’ Spock murmurs, drawing closer to Jim and Elsha. ‘Aside from several minor lacerations, she is uninjured according to my tricorder readings.’
So what’s made her forget?
Jim frowns. ‘Could the attackers have mind-manipulation abilities?’ he asks, keeping his own voice quiet. It’s not the first time they’ve encountered something like that—Landru on Beta III, Sylvia on Pyris Seven, and more—and it would explain the memory loss. It might even explain the inability of both the man who originally called Neko and Bones’ patient to describe their attackers.
‘Perhaps,’ Spock says.
‘Why kill the others?’ Elsha asks, not moving her gaze from Vairra. ‘If it has those kinds of abilities, surely it could’ve stopped the fight?’
‘That, we’ll have to figure out.’ Jim eyes Vairra carefully. ‘Stay on your guard, both of you.’
While they’ve been talking, Neko has checked Vairra over, frowning. ‘You should head upstairs,’ she says. ‘I don’t like the look of that blood and you seem confused. This lot—’ she thumbs over her shoulder at Jim ‘—have a doctor with them, he’s up treating Roguv. Go to the Engineering room, head up the walkways to the tunnel up to the bridge. They should be along the way.’
Vairra tilts her head. ‘Yes, sir.’
Jim doesn’t take his eyes off her as she leaves, side-stepping their group and heading for the stairwell the rest of them came through. There’s something not right about her. He doesn’t like the idea of her going near his three crew members upstairs. It’s not up to him though, so he doesn’t say a word. He glances at Elsha, who takes his unspoken order with a nod and moves.
Roguv is worsening. He’s sweating, his cheeks turning the colour of white-oak leaves—significantly darker than the natural mint-green he had earlier. Both would be clear signs of fever, if Leonard couldn’t already feel the heat emanating off him.
Leonard grinds his teeth, glancing at Dara who’s holding Roguv’s hand and talking to him in low tones. She meets his eyes without stopping talking, tilting her head to the side a touch—she’s worried too.
He leans forward, trying to focus. Around them, the pirates are complaining to each other. None of them are happy to be staying here much longer; all the more since Solara—Neko’s first mate—and a second crew member named Chani returned with the news that their crewmates downstairs have been massacred. By what, no one knows.
Under orders to return to the bridge as soon as Roguv’s ready, the pirates are increasingly impatient—irritated mutters are growing all around. Well, Roguv’s not moving until Leonard says so and the lot of them can stuff their whining down their own throats and choke on it for all he cares.
Roguv’s broken tibia, at least, is set. It’s not the source of his fever, though.
That leaves the wound seeping blood through the bandage Dara’s pressing against it. Gently nudging Dara aside, Leonard examines the wound more closely. It’s deep—whatever did it cut through several layers of fat and muscle. No organs are damaged, which is a relief. It’s spotted with debris—the black he noticed earlier as well as bits of fabric. The wound is already turning mottled and black at the edges.
Well, he’s found the source of the fever at least.
After giving Roguv the Orion-appropriate antibiotic from his medkit, Leonard sets to work cleaning the wound with quick steady hands. Dara passes him what he needs when he asks for it, while also talking to Roguv to keep him calm and steady through the pain. Leonard’s extremely grateful he suggested she should come along.
As Leonard cleans, his frown deepens.
While the fabric is easy enough to remove, the black dirt’s not coming out. His best attempts aren’t budging the stuff. It probably needs debriding—and he does, at least, have a scalpel in his medkit with which to do the debriding—but there’s an awful lot of the stuff all scattered around the wound and the thought of trying to perform the surgery, minor as it is, here in such unsanitary conditions is unpleasant to say the least.
Especially given the wound’s still bleeding. Cutting into it would make that a whole lot worse.
Coming to a decision, Leonard begins dressing the wound. He hasn’t got what he needs to do anything much for it, beyond covering it and keeping any more dirt from getting in it. In a fully stocked sickbay, this injury would be no problem. As he doesn’t have a fully stocked sickbay, he’ll make do.
The pirates continue to mutter around them. Leonard pays them no heed. King’s between them and the rest, he’ll keep them at bay.
As Leonard fastens the bandage, King tenses. ‘Someone’s coming,’ he murmurs.
Dara frowns, her dark eyes flicking downwards and widening. ‘Another Orion?’
Leonard follows her gaze, as Roguv does the same. Sure enough, down below them is a vaguely familiar tall female Orion, buff enough to bench-press Leonard with one hand, slowly making her way upwards.
Roguv’s eyes widen in recognition. ‘It’s Vairra,’ he says, much louder than Dara and King were speaking. ‘Vairra’s coming!’
‘Vairra?’ Solara strides over to the handrail, frowning over the side. Her eyebrows shoot up, a genuine if small smile lighting up her face. ‘It is! Vairra, up here!’
Vairra raises her head and changes direction, heading right up towards them.
‘She was with the crew stripping the engine,’ Chani says. ‘How can she be alive?’
‘Not a clue,’ says Solara, ‘but there she is. Damn, she’s drenched in blood. Hexilius, Donan, with me.’
Solara heads for the stairs, followed by the two crewmembers she named. All three go straight for Vairra, greeting her with clear excitement.
Leonard eyes her. Something’s weird about her reactions. When the others greet her, she responds a few seconds late. Like she’s merely mimicking the way she thinks she should be responding. A trauma reaction, maybe? She did just survive the brutal massacre of her crewmates.
Leonard files the thought away, watching closely.
Together, the three make their way back up. Vairra’s gaze lands on Roguv as they arrive.
‘You’re alive,’ she says. Her voice is monotone.
Roguv struggles to sit up, face flushing an even darker green, eyes wild. ‘Are you alright? Did anyone else escape? How did you get away? Are you…’
He cuts himself off, sucking in a breath and collapsing in on himself.
‘What’s wrong? Roguv, I need you to tell me what you’re feeling,’ Leonard says, squeezing his shoulder.
Roguv’s eyes are closed as he fights for breath. ‘Burning,’ he gasps. ‘It’s burning.’
Leonard snatches up his hypospray, filling it with an appropriate painkiller. ‘Dara, hold him steady.’
‘This is the Starfleet doctor?’ Vairra says.
Solara confirms this as Leonard ignores them both. Dara has hold of Roguv, who’s bent double, hands over his ears. Carefully, Leonard places his hypospray against Roguv’s neck and injects.
Roguv collapses in on himself, sobbing under his breath.
‘What did you do?’ While Vairra’s voice is blank, it’s grown louder like she’s trying to express anger and doesn’t quite know how. ‘Why is he in pain?’
‘I gave him a painkiller,’ Leonard says. ‘It should work soon.’
The sooner the better. The poor guy’s still crying, hands holding his side. This’s the fastest-moving infection Leonard’s ever seen—if they don’t get him proper medical attention soon, he’s not at all confident Roguv will survive.
Vairra tilts her head to the side. ‘It does not appear to be helping.’
‘Give it time,’ Leonard says—not exactly optimistic himself. The painkiller is fast-acting. Roguv shouldn’t be crying in pain this long after having it. He grinds his teeth. ‘His wound is already infected,’ he admits. ‘I’ve done what I can but…’
He finds himself meeting Solara’s gaze. She eyes him, then Roguv, then Leonard again.
‘There’s a sickbay on the station,’ Vairra says.
Leonard stiffens. ‘There is?’ Well, of course there is. He should’ve realised that. ‘Where?’
‘Captain said to go back up to the bridge,’ Solara says.
Leonard glares at her. ‘I know that, but this man needs better treatment. He’s already running a fever and there’s not much more I can do without proper equipment.’
Solara scowls, not saying a word. Instead, she stops and considers, eyeing her crewmates as she does so. She looks at Roguv, examining him closely. He’s buried his face in his hands, Dara has her arm around him—still trying her best to soothe him. ‘Alright,’ she says. ‘Here’s what we’ll do. Chani, take a couple of the others and head up to the bridge, tell them what we found below. Rest of us’ll head to the sickbay so the doctor can treat Roguv. Move it!’