Fic: "The Needs of the Few" (14/23)
Title: "The Needs of the Few"
Canon characters/Pairing(s): Kirk & McCoy, Pike, Finney
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,158
Warnings: Foul language, political situations, military stuff.
Summary: As cadets on a summer internship, Kirk and McCoy are supposed to keep their eyes open and their mouths shut. As far as Bones is concerned, that’s just plain wrong on Jim Kirk, but Jim seems determined to follow orders and fall in line for a change. After all, they’ve both seen enough trouble in two years at the Academy, and this is the Peace Mission of Axanar. However, when a mystery starts to weave itself around the mission, and the senior officers don’t seem interested in investigating, how far can Kirk and McCoy let it go?
Notes: We're on a roll now!
Previous chapters: One, Two, Three, Four(A), Four(B), Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen
Chapter 14
“What the hell just happened?” Leonard demanded as soon as he found his voice again. He’d been frozen in place as he stared at the smoke billowing upwards from all over the city, just standing in the middle of the quad as the aftermath of well over a dozen explosions darkened the sky. The science facility was untouched, but beyond the research campus, the devastation had to be immense. “Rhexen, what just happened?”
The Araxian folded his hands solemnly in front of him. “We are speaking with one voice, McCoy. We have been held out of the talks, and barred from our own halls of Parliament. Democratic elections have been sabotaged. Our leaders are not our own people. Our Department of Peacekeepers has become a tool of oppression. Even our way of life is being taken from us, all in the name of rejoining the Araxians with the Axanar. We could not stand idly by and allow this to continue.”
Leonard could only stare at him in disbelief. Revolution. A political coup. A civil war. People were dying all around him, and underneath his complete sense of shock, one thought solidified, hot and heavy in Leonard’s mind: Jim was right. “It’s an illegal government... and you... you’re trying to overthrow them,” he stammered.
Rhexen nodded, then turned and looked up at the closest column of smoke, and spoke with an odd mix of both remorse and satisfaction. “And that would be the remains of the Department of Peacekeepers.”
Leonard shook his head, still not quite able to accept what was happening. This was too much to swallow. “There has to have been another way!”
“Do you think we have not tried other ways, Terran?” Rhexen’s voice was heavy with regret.
“Then you should have tried them again! How many innocent people were just killed, huh?” Leonard was snarling - almost yelling - at Rhexen, but diplomacy be damned. They were in the middle of a battle. Diplomacy was the last thing on his mind, far behind the hundreds or thousands of lives that had just been destroyed. “How many?”
Rhexen, to his credit, actually managed to look slightly apologetic, but his response was contrary. “Very few Araxians, and their loss pains us all. We took great care to evacuate our people from our target zones. But if some were lost, they were Araxian, and would have wanted it this way.”
“What way? Killing innocent bystanders? Destroying your city?” Leonard was beside himself with fury. There were hundreds of ways to solve conflict. Hell, there was an entourage of diplomats from all over the Federation just down the goddamned street! Someone should have come forward. Looking at the smoke and hearing the distant screams, he knew that those options had been destroyed in a blast of fire.
“Not the whole city. Not our research facilities, our medical clinics, our homes, our schools... they are safe. We targeted only those locations which were held by the Axanar. Bastions of their power over our population.”
Leonard felt his eyes go wide. “Parliament.”
Rhexen nodded. “I regret deeply any Federation losses.”
“Goddammit! Hererra, come with me!” Without the slightest hesitation, Leonard turned towards the smoke, away from Rhexen.
“Stop!” Rhexen’s shout made him freeze. “Do not interfere! It is too dangerous!”
Leonard spun back around. “Dangerous, my ass! I’m not the one who just blew up half a city. I’m a doctor, dammit! You said Jethan wanted to help people. What do you think I do, huh?”
Rhexen looked at him with palpable sadness. “I respect you, young Terran. Do what you must, but be cautious. Those who interfere are at risk.”
Leonard nodded uneasily. “Yeah. I kinda figured that.” With that, he turned and started running towards the edge of the research campus, clutching his medkit like a security blanket. Hererra was right on his heels. When they reached the main gate, the contrast between the unblemished campus and the main street was painful to see.
The building across the street was decimated, reduced to crumbling vestiges of walls and rafters, spewing smoke like an oversized chimney. Windows were blown out, debris was strewn everywhere. Leonard could scarcely take it all in.
The building was a total loss, but Leonard quickly focused on what might still be saved.
“Hererra, over there. We’ve got casualties.” On their own side of the street, debris had hit pedestrians. A vehicle had rolled on its side, and it looked like people were trapped inside. “Did you take the First Responder course?”
“Yes, but I... I don’t remember... I’m not -”
“It’ll have to be good enough. Start triaging.” Without another look at Hererra, Leonard ran over to the closest casualty and pulled out his tricorder.
The Araxian was lying on his back, half in the road, half on the sidewalk. His arm was bent at an angle that couldn’t be natural, and his eyes were closed, but he was breathing. “Hey, can you hear me?” Leonard asked as he scanned.
Two bleary eyes opened. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“I’m a doctor... a medic. I’m here to help.” He had no idea where to manually find pulses or other telltale biosigns on an Araxian, but he’d saved several sets of baselines in his tricorder when he’d shadowed Jethan for the day. The tricorder was telling him that this guy was in bad shape.
Just like hundreds of other Araxians all over the city. Axanar. Araxians. Did it matter?
Leonard pulled out his comm unit and flipped it open, hoping to whatever powers might take pity that he’d be able to get through to the ship. “Doctor McCoy to the Athena.”
He waited for a reply. Too long. Just when he was about to hail again, a response came through.
“Athena to Doctor McCoy. Reports have come in from every main landing party, and we’re evacuating people now. Why aren’t you with the rest of the cadet group?”
“That doesn’t matter!” Leonard snapped. “Hererra and I are near the biosciences research campus and Peacekeepers building. They’ve blown up the Peacekeepers’ building and we’ve got casualties! Requesting emergency transport for patients only.”
“Denied. We’re evacuating crew members and Federation diplomats. We don’t have the facilities to take local casualties aboard the ship.”
“What? Good God, man, these people are dying!”
“Araxian medical services have been activated city-wide. We’re coordinating with them, but the situation is still unstable. You and Cadet Hererra are to activate your comm signals for transport and standby to beam up.”
“But there are casualties here, and -” He looked around. Other than the dead and dying, the street was deserted. “- and there’s not a damned medic in sight. I’m staying until medical personnel arrive.”
“Request denied. We will open a transport window for you shortly. Prepare to beam up.”
Leonard flipped his comm unit closed and grumbled under his breath, “Like hell I will.” How could they evacuate him, but not an injured soul? Bastards. Reaching into his med-kit, he pulled out a neurovascular regen unit - his own design, finally permitted for limited field use - and fixed it to the Araxian’s head. A minute later, a bone was set, and a stabilizer unit was fixed in place. It was a pathetic treatment, but it was better than nothing.
He moved on to the next. Dead. Then the ones in the vehicle. One dead, one unconscious.
His comm buzzed, but he ignored it. He wasn’t beaming up. Not until medical help arrived for these people.
“Hererra, how’s it coming?” Leonard called out.
“I put a tourniquet on one,” came the hollered reply from about fifty or sixty meters down the street. “His leg was gone below the knee. The last two were already dead, sir.”
The kid looked pale and terrified, and Leonard didn’t miss the fact that a fellow cadet had just called him sir. Rank or not, he was the doctor on the scene; he was in charge. He’d been responsible for lives before... but that had been in surgical wards. This was completely different. He was a leader in a battlefield, and the only doctor at a mass casualty disaster. They couldn’t stop. Not when lives could still be saved.
“Come over and help me get this guy out of the car.”
Carefully, they managed to pull the unconscious Araxian out of the vehicle and lay him out on the ground. He was a mess of internal injuries, and Leonard only had three vascular stabilizers left. Applying two, he was able to stop the worst of the bleeding, but without surgical intervention soon, the guy wasn’t going to make it. There wasn’t much Leonard could do for him in the field. He stood and surveyed the disaster scene that surrounded them, then looked at Hererra.
“Have you checked the people on the side of the street closer to the Peacekeeper building?”
Hererra shook his head. “I haven’t gotten to that side yet. I figured the ones who were most likely still alive were on this side of the street.”
“Makes sense, but we need to check all of them. I’ll work on this guy, and you run over there and see what you can find.”
Hererra nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m a doctor, not a sir,” Leonard grumbled to himself as the cadet took off. Really, he couldn’t expect too much from the kid. Hererra was a bioscience specialist. He worked with tissue samples in tidy little capsules and microbes under imaging scanners... not flesh and blood and bone, broken under his hands. Not like this. And this? This was a mess.
He leaned over to begin setting the first stabilizer when a sharp crack ripped through the air, echoing off building walls and freezing Leonard’s blood in his veins. He looked up just in time to see Cadet Hererra, almost all the way to the other side of the street, clasp his hands over his chest. He spun around on wobbly legs, giving Leonard a brief, too-clear view of the vivid red oozing down his gray shirt. The man took one haunted look at Leonard before keeling forward.
“Hererra!” Leonard jumped to his feet, but as he started towards the cadet’s prone body, another shot rang out, slicing the air between them and kicking up dust where the projectile struck the street. A warning shot.
Leonard looked around desperately. He had no idea who was shooting, or from where, but he couldn’t let himself be scared off. “Goddammit, I need to go help him!” he yelled, before taking a tentative step forward.
Another weapon burst, this time an energy weapon, shot down and struck Hererra’s body. A wisp of smoke rose from Hererra’s back, and Leonard didn’t have to be told that the weapon had been set to kill.
Between the stillness of the street, the blood rushing in his ears, and the far distant sound of sirens and screaming, something inside Leonard shut down. Smoke continued to pour from the building, choking the air around him, but it didn’t matter because he couldn’t breathe anyway. He stood frozen, staring at the lifeless body in the street that had been Cadet Hererra only seconds ago, and let the cold facts wash through his veins like ice.
He’d ordered Hererra towards the building.
That’s why Hererra was dead.
There was nothing he could do. With the shame of abandoning the dying people in the street and leaving his fellow cadet’s body clashing with the rapidly growing fear for his life, Leonard pulled out his comm unit and activated it.
“Leonard McCoy to Athena. One to beam up.”
*********
He materialized on the transporter platform aboard the Athena.
One of the medics that he vaguely knew from Sickbay ran up to him, tricorder out, but he waved the guy off as he walked down the stairs. Or maybe walked was the wrong word, because his feet felt like lead and his legs were clumsy and unsteady. His ears were buzzing strangely.
A Lieutenant was directly in front of him, and Leonard finally realized the guy was all but shouting at him. He could only hear one word.
Hererra.
It was hard to speak, and all Leonard had was a one-word answer.
“Dead.”
The Lieutenant was saying something else, but Leonard kept walking. Out of the transporter room and into the corridor. The medic was hovering at his elbow, but didn’t touch him. He moved on autopilot, letting his feet take him to the familiar doors of sickbay.
Then the doors slid open, and there was chaos. Groaning and crying patients created a discordant but familiar maelstrom of sound with the strained voices of doctors and nurses and the beeping of equipment. The stench of smoke and dust and blood mingled in the air, thick and vulgar. Instinct took over.
“Doctor Brex!” Leonard called out, storming into sickbay. “Where do you need me?”
A familiar head of brown hair popped up over a treatment bed in the main bay. “McCoy! Thank the fates you’re alright. Treatment bay three. Projectile weapon wound to the upper leg. It’s under stabilizers but it needs repair.”
“I’m on it.”
Leonard ran over to the scrubs locker and pulled off his filthy gray uniform shirt, tossed it aside, and tugged on a standard scrub top. He almost faltered at the sight of his crumpled uniform on the floor, struck by a sudden vision of Hererra’s body crumpled on the ground, but forced himself to shrug it off. This was a crisis. There were lives to be saved.
A quick run through the sonic sterilizer blasted the grime and contamination from his body, but his mind painted images of alien blood, oozing from dying bodies on the street. He couldn’t do anything to help them now. He shuddered, grit his teeth, and hurried over to treatment bay three, where a living man was lying on the biobed. Someone who could be saved.
It was one of the cadets - that security cadet Jim had introduced him to, and Leonard felt guilty at the fact that he couldn’t remember the kid’s name. At the same time, another thought slammed him.
Jim.
If this guy was onboard, that probably meant Jim was onboard. But if this cadet - Liu, his brain finally supplied - was injured, that meant Jim’s group had taken fire.
Leonard pushed that thought to the back of his mind. He had an injured patient. “Cadet Liu?”
The kid’s head popped up weakly, and despite his injured state, his gaze was lucid. “Doctor McCoy!”
“Hey, relax there, kid. Rest your head. How bad is the pain?” Leonard was already grabbing the tricorder from the bedside and getting a closer scan.
“Forget the pain,” Liu bit out. “Did the rest of the team get back? Nobody will tell me anything.”
Leonard swore his own heart stopped for a second. “They didn’t all beam up at once?”
Liu shook his head. “They evacuated the worst injuries directly to sickbay first. They were going to beam up the rest of them after that. Regular transport. But I can’t say for sure.” He looked down towards his own leg. “For some reason, they thought they should send me up with the injured folks.”
“Couldn’t imagine why,” Leonard said, giving in to sarcasm. Then, before he could stop himself, he asked, “Who else was injured?”
Liu nodded in understanding. “Lieutenant Kim, energy weapon. They got her out first. Goldberg had a cut on his arm, but he wasn’t too bad. Buhari got hit with some shrapnel, but it didn’t look too deep. And I know you want to know... Kirk just had a scratch, so they beamed me up before him.”
Leonard nodded. That meant Jim might still be down there, but he was probably already aboard the ship.
“Actually...” Liu continued, “I got shot out in the open. Kirk had already made it to cover but... he came back for me. Carried me to the building. While they were shooting at him.” A pained look took over his expression, and Leonard figured it wasn’t from the injury. “McCoy, I’d be dead if it weren’t for Kirk.”
Leonard’s mouth went absolutely dry. “That’s Jim for ya.” Goddammit, Jim, you’d better be okay! But he didn’t have time to fixate on that. Jim could take care of himself. He was good at that. Hell, he was probably already down in the rec room with the other cadets, telling war stories. In the meantime, Leonard had a job to do. He grabbed a hypospray from the tray, snapped a vial of sedative into it, and calibrated it to put Liu out long enough to repair the damage.
“He’s a good man,” Liu said softly.
A strange sensation jolted up Leonard’s spine. “Yeah. He is.” No time for sentiment. Injuries to repair. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have a large artery and several major muscle groups to patch up, so you’re taking a nap.” He reached over and pressed the hypospray to Liu’s arm, then turned around and began gathering up equipment.
“Doctor McCoy?”
Leonard looked back, vascular fusion tool and laser guide in hand. “Yes?”
“Where’s Hererra?”
Leonard hoped to whatever gods were listening that his expression didn’t waver. “Resting,” was all he could come up with.
Liu nodded and blinked. Yawned. Then said, “Good. Y’know... his brother was security. Said he didn’t want t’be a redshirt, like his brother. Promised his mom he’d come back.” Liu blinked again, then his eyes flickered shut.
Leonard stared at him. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew he was going to have to file a full report on Hererra’s death. He also knew he wouldn’t be blamed, not really. He was going to get enough blame from himself. Still, as long as there was a living man to be healed, Leonard couldn’t let himself be caught up in those who were dead and gone. They could mourn later.
And find Jim.
He growled to himself and set to work.
*********
Jim was living on borrowed time, but that was nothing new. He’d been doing that since the day he was born. What really had him on edge was that he knew his whole team was living on borrowed time.
He’d checked the chrono on his comm with a compulsion bordering on neurotic, and less than ten minutes had ticked away. There had been no more heart-stopping rounds of weapons fire, no more explosions. In fact, it had been eerily quiet.
Jim had kept an honor guard near Finney’s body. His gut ached, but it wasn’t bad. Adrenaline was keeping him going. It was only a matter of time before somebody showed up. He just had no idea whether it would be a rescue party or a group of hostile locals. Waiting was a gamble. A horrible gamble. Jim had played enough poker in his life to know when to fold. They needed to get out of there. The problem was that he wasn’t just gambling with his own cards this time. Besides that, he had his orders.
“Hey Blues!” Johan’s voice echoed from somewhere above him.
“Plato?” Jim stood and craned his neck, squinting and searching the shadows above him. “What did you find?”
“Something that looks like bad news. There’s a room up here, off the catwalk. It’s some sort of control room, and... the Araxian technology is a bit different, but I think these are transmitter devices.”
An odd feeling began churning in his stomach. “What sort of transmitters? Is it anything we can use to boost a signal to the ship?”
“Maybe. But... I think these are designed for explosives.”
Jim felt his eyes go wide. “Stay there!” he called out. “I’m coming up to take a look.” Not that he had any chance of doing more than Johan. Maybe they should ask Hodges. Johan had been absolutely right - there was a damned good reason they called her Gadget. She could figure out anything made of wires, conduits, and energy matrices. Still, he had to look first. He was in charge.
He looked down at Finney’s body and said sadly, “I’m sorry, sir,” but he’d only taken three steps when a distant sound froze him on the spot.
Gunfire. And then, much closer, the familiar sound of phaser fire.
“Wilcox! What are you seeing up there?” Jim yelled.
“We’ve got incoming hostiles, Kirk!” she yelled back, her voice echoing and muffled from the front of the building.
Without even thinking, his feet were carrying him towards her. “Can you hold them off?” he asked as he entered the front room.
Wilcox was ducked behind the wall, popping up and firing out into the daylight before ducking down again. “I don’t know. They were approaching, and must have seen me watching them. They fired first,” she said before jumping up and shooting again. “They’re coming closer.”
“Fuck,” Jim hissed.
It was a final decision: stand and fight, or get the hell out of there.
It was a decision he should have made before, but now he had no choice. He’d known what he should have done all along. They should have gotten out of there when they’d had a clear chance at it. Now, they’d be lucky to escape with their lives. At least now he knew what to do, and he only had one word.
“Evacuate!” Jim yelled, knowing that the rest of the team, deeper inside the building, would hear him. “Wilcox, give me the phaser! Go!”
Without hesitating, Wilcox slapped the phaser into his hand and darted into the depths of the building. Jim quickly popped up into the open window to let loose a round of phaser fire, and it gave him a good look at the three Araxians running towards the building, all with weapons trained on him. Damn, they were getting close. One of them squeezed off a shot that hit the wall just below him, sending out a burst of concrete and dust, and Jim barely managed to duck back down as a hail of weapons fire struck the wall.
There was no way he could fight off three of them. With the desperation of a man being chased by death itself, Jim ran after Wilcox.
“Everyone evacuate!” he yelled into the shadows of the building. “Out the back door! Everyone go! Move, move, move!” He was breathing hard, ducking around stacks of shipping crates. “Don’t wait for anyone! Get to the back door, activate your homing signals, and get far enough from the building for beam-up!”
Behind him, Jim heard the sounds of the hostiles entering the front of the building.
In the dim light of the storehouse, Jim could see Johan moving down the stairs. Ahead, a flash of daylight temporarily blinded him as the back door opened and shut, and Hodges was gone. Wilcox followed her a second later.
Nadeau stopped just inside the back door. “Where do we rendezvous, Kirk?” he shouted.
“On the fucking ship, Nadeau!” Jim yelled back as he ran.
Nadeau was gone, and Jim watched as Johan emerged from behind a tower of crates. “Hurry, Blues!” he yelled, hesitating instead of running.
“Don’t wait!” Jim ordered. “Go, go, go!”
Behind him, the voices were louder. Johan was turning on his heel and making a break for the back door. Jim was hot on his tail. Everything felt too slow and too fast all at once as Jim’s breath wheezed in his chest and his whole world narrowed to that doorway.
Escape. So close.
A bolt of light - an energy weapon blast - ripped past him through the air and struck Johan squarely in the lower back.
Jim’s momentum carried him forward, and he caught Johan, rolling with him and cushioning his fall. The impact of landing on the hard floor knocked the wind out of Jim, and he lay there for a moment, unable to move. The pain in his gut had redoubled. Johan was lying half on top of him.
There were three weapons aimed at his head.
Out of pure reflex, Jim twisted as much as he could to shield Johan with his body, although he had no illusions that he could do anything to protect Johan, or himself, from three armed assailants.
He braced himself for the inevitable, but then, to his surprise, one of the weapons lowered slightly. Jim saw the face of one of his attackers staring down at him. Then, with an unexpected tone of regret, the Araxian said, “I apologize that you have become involved in our revolution, Federation Terrans, but it appears that we must now take you hostage.”
*********
To Chapter 15
Canon characters/Pairing(s): Kirk & McCoy, Pike, Finney
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,158
Warnings: Foul language, political situations, military stuff.
Summary: As cadets on a summer internship, Kirk and McCoy are supposed to keep their eyes open and their mouths shut. As far as Bones is concerned, that’s just plain wrong on Jim Kirk, but Jim seems determined to follow orders and fall in line for a change. After all, they’ve both seen enough trouble in two years at the Academy, and this is the Peace Mission of Axanar. However, when a mystery starts to weave itself around the mission, and the senior officers don’t seem interested in investigating, how far can Kirk and McCoy let it go?
Notes: We're on a roll now!
Previous chapters: One, Two, Three, Four(A), Four(B), Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen
Chapter 14
“What the hell just happened?” Leonard demanded as soon as he found his voice again. He’d been frozen in place as he stared at the smoke billowing upwards from all over the city, just standing in the middle of the quad as the aftermath of well over a dozen explosions darkened the sky. The science facility was untouched, but beyond the research campus, the devastation had to be immense. “Rhexen, what just happened?”
The Araxian folded his hands solemnly in front of him. “We are speaking with one voice, McCoy. We have been held out of the talks, and barred from our own halls of Parliament. Democratic elections have been sabotaged. Our leaders are not our own people. Our Department of Peacekeepers has become a tool of oppression. Even our way of life is being taken from us, all in the name of rejoining the Araxians with the Axanar. We could not stand idly by and allow this to continue.”
Leonard could only stare at him in disbelief. Revolution. A political coup. A civil war. People were dying all around him, and underneath his complete sense of shock, one thought solidified, hot and heavy in Leonard’s mind: Jim was right. “It’s an illegal government... and you... you’re trying to overthrow them,” he stammered.
Rhexen nodded, then turned and looked up at the closest column of smoke, and spoke with an odd mix of both remorse and satisfaction. “And that would be the remains of the Department of Peacekeepers.”
Leonard shook his head, still not quite able to accept what was happening. This was too much to swallow. “There has to have been another way!”
“Do you think we have not tried other ways, Terran?” Rhexen’s voice was heavy with regret.
“Then you should have tried them again! How many innocent people were just killed, huh?” Leonard was snarling - almost yelling - at Rhexen, but diplomacy be damned. They were in the middle of a battle. Diplomacy was the last thing on his mind, far behind the hundreds or thousands of lives that had just been destroyed. “How many?”
Rhexen, to his credit, actually managed to look slightly apologetic, but his response was contrary. “Very few Araxians, and their loss pains us all. We took great care to evacuate our people from our target zones. But if some were lost, they were Araxian, and would have wanted it this way.”
“What way? Killing innocent bystanders? Destroying your city?” Leonard was beside himself with fury. There were hundreds of ways to solve conflict. Hell, there was an entourage of diplomats from all over the Federation just down the goddamned street! Someone should have come forward. Looking at the smoke and hearing the distant screams, he knew that those options had been destroyed in a blast of fire.
“Not the whole city. Not our research facilities, our medical clinics, our homes, our schools... they are safe. We targeted only those locations which were held by the Axanar. Bastions of their power over our population.”
Leonard felt his eyes go wide. “Parliament.”
Rhexen nodded. “I regret deeply any Federation losses.”
“Goddammit! Hererra, come with me!” Without the slightest hesitation, Leonard turned towards the smoke, away from Rhexen.
“Stop!” Rhexen’s shout made him freeze. “Do not interfere! It is too dangerous!”
Leonard spun back around. “Dangerous, my ass! I’m not the one who just blew up half a city. I’m a doctor, dammit! You said Jethan wanted to help people. What do you think I do, huh?”
Rhexen looked at him with palpable sadness. “I respect you, young Terran. Do what you must, but be cautious. Those who interfere are at risk.”
Leonard nodded uneasily. “Yeah. I kinda figured that.” With that, he turned and started running towards the edge of the research campus, clutching his medkit like a security blanket. Hererra was right on his heels. When they reached the main gate, the contrast between the unblemished campus and the main street was painful to see.
The building across the street was decimated, reduced to crumbling vestiges of walls and rafters, spewing smoke like an oversized chimney. Windows were blown out, debris was strewn everywhere. Leonard could scarcely take it all in.
The building was a total loss, but Leonard quickly focused on what might still be saved.
“Hererra, over there. We’ve got casualties.” On their own side of the street, debris had hit pedestrians. A vehicle had rolled on its side, and it looked like people were trapped inside. “Did you take the First Responder course?”
“Yes, but I... I don’t remember... I’m not -”
“It’ll have to be good enough. Start triaging.” Without another look at Hererra, Leonard ran over to the closest casualty and pulled out his tricorder.
The Araxian was lying on his back, half in the road, half on the sidewalk. His arm was bent at an angle that couldn’t be natural, and his eyes were closed, but he was breathing. “Hey, can you hear me?” Leonard asked as he scanned.
Two bleary eyes opened. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“I’m a doctor... a medic. I’m here to help.” He had no idea where to manually find pulses or other telltale biosigns on an Araxian, but he’d saved several sets of baselines in his tricorder when he’d shadowed Jethan for the day. The tricorder was telling him that this guy was in bad shape.
Just like hundreds of other Araxians all over the city. Axanar. Araxians. Did it matter?
Leonard pulled out his comm unit and flipped it open, hoping to whatever powers might take pity that he’d be able to get through to the ship. “Doctor McCoy to the Athena.”
He waited for a reply. Too long. Just when he was about to hail again, a response came through.
“Athena to Doctor McCoy. Reports have come in from every main landing party, and we’re evacuating people now. Why aren’t you with the rest of the cadet group?”
“That doesn’t matter!” Leonard snapped. “Hererra and I are near the biosciences research campus and Peacekeepers building. They’ve blown up the Peacekeepers’ building and we’ve got casualties! Requesting emergency transport for patients only.”
“Denied. We’re evacuating crew members and Federation diplomats. We don’t have the facilities to take local casualties aboard the ship.”
“What? Good God, man, these people are dying!”
“Araxian medical services have been activated city-wide. We’re coordinating with them, but the situation is still unstable. You and Cadet Hererra are to activate your comm signals for transport and standby to beam up.”
“But there are casualties here, and -” He looked around. Other than the dead and dying, the street was deserted. “- and there’s not a damned medic in sight. I’m staying until medical personnel arrive.”
“Request denied. We will open a transport window for you shortly. Prepare to beam up.”
Leonard flipped his comm unit closed and grumbled under his breath, “Like hell I will.” How could they evacuate him, but not an injured soul? Bastards. Reaching into his med-kit, he pulled out a neurovascular regen unit - his own design, finally permitted for limited field use - and fixed it to the Araxian’s head. A minute later, a bone was set, and a stabilizer unit was fixed in place. It was a pathetic treatment, but it was better than nothing.
He moved on to the next. Dead. Then the ones in the vehicle. One dead, one unconscious.
His comm buzzed, but he ignored it. He wasn’t beaming up. Not until medical help arrived for these people.
“Hererra, how’s it coming?” Leonard called out.
“I put a tourniquet on one,” came the hollered reply from about fifty or sixty meters down the street. “His leg was gone below the knee. The last two were already dead, sir.”
The kid looked pale and terrified, and Leonard didn’t miss the fact that a fellow cadet had just called him sir. Rank or not, he was the doctor on the scene; he was in charge. He’d been responsible for lives before... but that had been in surgical wards. This was completely different. He was a leader in a battlefield, and the only doctor at a mass casualty disaster. They couldn’t stop. Not when lives could still be saved.
“Come over and help me get this guy out of the car.”
Carefully, they managed to pull the unconscious Araxian out of the vehicle and lay him out on the ground. He was a mess of internal injuries, and Leonard only had three vascular stabilizers left. Applying two, he was able to stop the worst of the bleeding, but without surgical intervention soon, the guy wasn’t going to make it. There wasn’t much Leonard could do for him in the field. He stood and surveyed the disaster scene that surrounded them, then looked at Hererra.
“Have you checked the people on the side of the street closer to the Peacekeeper building?”
Hererra shook his head. “I haven’t gotten to that side yet. I figured the ones who were most likely still alive were on this side of the street.”
“Makes sense, but we need to check all of them. I’ll work on this guy, and you run over there and see what you can find.”
Hererra nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m a doctor, not a sir,” Leonard grumbled to himself as the cadet took off. Really, he couldn’t expect too much from the kid. Hererra was a bioscience specialist. He worked with tissue samples in tidy little capsules and microbes under imaging scanners... not flesh and blood and bone, broken under his hands. Not like this. And this? This was a mess.
He leaned over to begin setting the first stabilizer when a sharp crack ripped through the air, echoing off building walls and freezing Leonard’s blood in his veins. He looked up just in time to see Cadet Hererra, almost all the way to the other side of the street, clasp his hands over his chest. He spun around on wobbly legs, giving Leonard a brief, too-clear view of the vivid red oozing down his gray shirt. The man took one haunted look at Leonard before keeling forward.
“Hererra!” Leonard jumped to his feet, but as he started towards the cadet’s prone body, another shot rang out, slicing the air between them and kicking up dust where the projectile struck the street. A warning shot.
Leonard looked around desperately. He had no idea who was shooting, or from where, but he couldn’t let himself be scared off. “Goddammit, I need to go help him!” he yelled, before taking a tentative step forward.
Another weapon burst, this time an energy weapon, shot down and struck Hererra’s body. A wisp of smoke rose from Hererra’s back, and Leonard didn’t have to be told that the weapon had been set to kill.
Between the stillness of the street, the blood rushing in his ears, and the far distant sound of sirens and screaming, something inside Leonard shut down. Smoke continued to pour from the building, choking the air around him, but it didn’t matter because he couldn’t breathe anyway. He stood frozen, staring at the lifeless body in the street that had been Cadet Hererra only seconds ago, and let the cold facts wash through his veins like ice.
He’d ordered Hererra towards the building.
That’s why Hererra was dead.
There was nothing he could do. With the shame of abandoning the dying people in the street and leaving his fellow cadet’s body clashing with the rapidly growing fear for his life, Leonard pulled out his comm unit and activated it.
“Leonard McCoy to Athena. One to beam up.”
*********
He materialized on the transporter platform aboard the Athena.
One of the medics that he vaguely knew from Sickbay ran up to him, tricorder out, but he waved the guy off as he walked down the stairs. Or maybe walked was the wrong word, because his feet felt like lead and his legs were clumsy and unsteady. His ears were buzzing strangely.
A Lieutenant was directly in front of him, and Leonard finally realized the guy was all but shouting at him. He could only hear one word.
Hererra.
It was hard to speak, and all Leonard had was a one-word answer.
“Dead.”
The Lieutenant was saying something else, but Leonard kept walking. Out of the transporter room and into the corridor. The medic was hovering at his elbow, but didn’t touch him. He moved on autopilot, letting his feet take him to the familiar doors of sickbay.
Then the doors slid open, and there was chaos. Groaning and crying patients created a discordant but familiar maelstrom of sound with the strained voices of doctors and nurses and the beeping of equipment. The stench of smoke and dust and blood mingled in the air, thick and vulgar. Instinct took over.
“Doctor Brex!” Leonard called out, storming into sickbay. “Where do you need me?”
A familiar head of brown hair popped up over a treatment bed in the main bay. “McCoy! Thank the fates you’re alright. Treatment bay three. Projectile weapon wound to the upper leg. It’s under stabilizers but it needs repair.”
“I’m on it.”
Leonard ran over to the scrubs locker and pulled off his filthy gray uniform shirt, tossed it aside, and tugged on a standard scrub top. He almost faltered at the sight of his crumpled uniform on the floor, struck by a sudden vision of Hererra’s body crumpled on the ground, but forced himself to shrug it off. This was a crisis. There were lives to be saved.
A quick run through the sonic sterilizer blasted the grime and contamination from his body, but his mind painted images of alien blood, oozing from dying bodies on the street. He couldn’t do anything to help them now. He shuddered, grit his teeth, and hurried over to treatment bay three, where a living man was lying on the biobed. Someone who could be saved.
It was one of the cadets - that security cadet Jim had introduced him to, and Leonard felt guilty at the fact that he couldn’t remember the kid’s name. At the same time, another thought slammed him.
Jim.
If this guy was onboard, that probably meant Jim was onboard. But if this cadet - Liu, his brain finally supplied - was injured, that meant Jim’s group had taken fire.
Leonard pushed that thought to the back of his mind. He had an injured patient. “Cadet Liu?”
The kid’s head popped up weakly, and despite his injured state, his gaze was lucid. “Doctor McCoy!”
“Hey, relax there, kid. Rest your head. How bad is the pain?” Leonard was already grabbing the tricorder from the bedside and getting a closer scan.
“Forget the pain,” Liu bit out. “Did the rest of the team get back? Nobody will tell me anything.”
Leonard swore his own heart stopped for a second. “They didn’t all beam up at once?”
Liu shook his head. “They evacuated the worst injuries directly to sickbay first. They were going to beam up the rest of them after that. Regular transport. But I can’t say for sure.” He looked down towards his own leg. “For some reason, they thought they should send me up with the injured folks.”
“Couldn’t imagine why,” Leonard said, giving in to sarcasm. Then, before he could stop himself, he asked, “Who else was injured?”
Liu nodded in understanding. “Lieutenant Kim, energy weapon. They got her out first. Goldberg had a cut on his arm, but he wasn’t too bad. Buhari got hit with some shrapnel, but it didn’t look too deep. And I know you want to know... Kirk just had a scratch, so they beamed me up before him.”
Leonard nodded. That meant Jim might still be down there, but he was probably already aboard the ship.
“Actually...” Liu continued, “I got shot out in the open. Kirk had already made it to cover but... he came back for me. Carried me to the building. While they were shooting at him.” A pained look took over his expression, and Leonard figured it wasn’t from the injury. “McCoy, I’d be dead if it weren’t for Kirk.”
Leonard’s mouth went absolutely dry. “That’s Jim for ya.” Goddammit, Jim, you’d better be okay! But he didn’t have time to fixate on that. Jim could take care of himself. He was good at that. Hell, he was probably already down in the rec room with the other cadets, telling war stories. In the meantime, Leonard had a job to do. He grabbed a hypospray from the tray, snapped a vial of sedative into it, and calibrated it to put Liu out long enough to repair the damage.
“He’s a good man,” Liu said softly.
A strange sensation jolted up Leonard’s spine. “Yeah. He is.” No time for sentiment. Injuries to repair. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have a large artery and several major muscle groups to patch up, so you’re taking a nap.” He reached over and pressed the hypospray to Liu’s arm, then turned around and began gathering up equipment.
“Doctor McCoy?”
Leonard looked back, vascular fusion tool and laser guide in hand. “Yes?”
“Where’s Hererra?”
Leonard hoped to whatever gods were listening that his expression didn’t waver. “Resting,” was all he could come up with.
Liu nodded and blinked. Yawned. Then said, “Good. Y’know... his brother was security. Said he didn’t want t’be a redshirt, like his brother. Promised his mom he’d come back.” Liu blinked again, then his eyes flickered shut.
Leonard stared at him. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew he was going to have to file a full report on Hererra’s death. He also knew he wouldn’t be blamed, not really. He was going to get enough blame from himself. Still, as long as there was a living man to be healed, Leonard couldn’t let himself be caught up in those who were dead and gone. They could mourn later.
And find Jim.
He growled to himself and set to work.
*********
Jim was living on borrowed time, but that was nothing new. He’d been doing that since the day he was born. What really had him on edge was that he knew his whole team was living on borrowed time.
He’d checked the chrono on his comm with a compulsion bordering on neurotic, and less than ten minutes had ticked away. There had been no more heart-stopping rounds of weapons fire, no more explosions. In fact, it had been eerily quiet.
Jim had kept an honor guard near Finney’s body. His gut ached, but it wasn’t bad. Adrenaline was keeping him going. It was only a matter of time before somebody showed up. He just had no idea whether it would be a rescue party or a group of hostile locals. Waiting was a gamble. A horrible gamble. Jim had played enough poker in his life to know when to fold. They needed to get out of there. The problem was that he wasn’t just gambling with his own cards this time. Besides that, he had his orders.
“Hey Blues!” Johan’s voice echoed from somewhere above him.
“Plato?” Jim stood and craned his neck, squinting and searching the shadows above him. “What did you find?”
“Something that looks like bad news. There’s a room up here, off the catwalk. It’s some sort of control room, and... the Araxian technology is a bit different, but I think these are transmitter devices.”
An odd feeling began churning in his stomach. “What sort of transmitters? Is it anything we can use to boost a signal to the ship?”
“Maybe. But... I think these are designed for explosives.”
Jim felt his eyes go wide. “Stay there!” he called out. “I’m coming up to take a look.” Not that he had any chance of doing more than Johan. Maybe they should ask Hodges. Johan had been absolutely right - there was a damned good reason they called her Gadget. She could figure out anything made of wires, conduits, and energy matrices. Still, he had to look first. He was in charge.
He looked down at Finney’s body and said sadly, “I’m sorry, sir,” but he’d only taken three steps when a distant sound froze him on the spot.
Gunfire. And then, much closer, the familiar sound of phaser fire.
“Wilcox! What are you seeing up there?” Jim yelled.
“We’ve got incoming hostiles, Kirk!” she yelled back, her voice echoing and muffled from the front of the building.
Without even thinking, his feet were carrying him towards her. “Can you hold them off?” he asked as he entered the front room.
Wilcox was ducked behind the wall, popping up and firing out into the daylight before ducking down again. “I don’t know. They were approaching, and must have seen me watching them. They fired first,” she said before jumping up and shooting again. “They’re coming closer.”
“Fuck,” Jim hissed.
It was a final decision: stand and fight, or get the hell out of there.
It was a decision he should have made before, but now he had no choice. He’d known what he should have done all along. They should have gotten out of there when they’d had a clear chance at it. Now, they’d be lucky to escape with their lives. At least now he knew what to do, and he only had one word.
“Evacuate!” Jim yelled, knowing that the rest of the team, deeper inside the building, would hear him. “Wilcox, give me the phaser! Go!”
Without hesitating, Wilcox slapped the phaser into his hand and darted into the depths of the building. Jim quickly popped up into the open window to let loose a round of phaser fire, and it gave him a good look at the three Araxians running towards the building, all with weapons trained on him. Damn, they were getting close. One of them squeezed off a shot that hit the wall just below him, sending out a burst of concrete and dust, and Jim barely managed to duck back down as a hail of weapons fire struck the wall.
There was no way he could fight off three of them. With the desperation of a man being chased by death itself, Jim ran after Wilcox.
“Everyone evacuate!” he yelled into the shadows of the building. “Out the back door! Everyone go! Move, move, move!” He was breathing hard, ducking around stacks of shipping crates. “Don’t wait for anyone! Get to the back door, activate your homing signals, and get far enough from the building for beam-up!”
Behind him, Jim heard the sounds of the hostiles entering the front of the building.
In the dim light of the storehouse, Jim could see Johan moving down the stairs. Ahead, a flash of daylight temporarily blinded him as the back door opened and shut, and Hodges was gone. Wilcox followed her a second later.
Nadeau stopped just inside the back door. “Where do we rendezvous, Kirk?” he shouted.
“On the fucking ship, Nadeau!” Jim yelled back as he ran.
Nadeau was gone, and Jim watched as Johan emerged from behind a tower of crates. “Hurry, Blues!” he yelled, hesitating instead of running.
“Don’t wait!” Jim ordered. “Go, go, go!”
Behind him, the voices were louder. Johan was turning on his heel and making a break for the back door. Jim was hot on his tail. Everything felt too slow and too fast all at once as Jim’s breath wheezed in his chest and his whole world narrowed to that doorway.
Escape. So close.
A bolt of light - an energy weapon blast - ripped past him through the air and struck Johan squarely in the lower back.
Jim’s momentum carried him forward, and he caught Johan, rolling with him and cushioning his fall. The impact of landing on the hard floor knocked the wind out of Jim, and he lay there for a moment, unable to move. The pain in his gut had redoubled. Johan was lying half on top of him.
There were three weapons aimed at his head.
Out of pure reflex, Jim twisted as much as he could to shield Johan with his body, although he had no illusions that he could do anything to protect Johan, or himself, from three armed assailants.
He braced himself for the inevitable, but then, to his surprise, one of the weapons lowered slightly. Jim saw the face of one of his attackers staring down at him. Then, with an unexpected tone of regret, the Araxian said, “I apologize that you have become involved in our revolution, Federation Terrans, but it appears that we must now take you hostage.”
*********
To Chapter 15