Fic: "Engines of War" (1/?)
Title: "Engines of War"
Betas: taverl
Canon: ST:XI, STID
Canon characters/Pairing(s): Kirk & McCoy, Spock, Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7,329 for chapter 1
Warnings: Foul language, political situations.
Disclaimer: Gene Roddenberry is God, Paramount Pictures is Pope, and this is the blasphemy of a wayward faithful. My geeky spirit is rich, but my purse is empty.
Summary: Admiral Marcus’s push for weaponization didn’t appear out of nowhere. Across the Federation and at home on Earth, a terrified population is calling for increased defenses and a stronger front through Starfleet. It will take a year to rebuild the Enterprise, but when the job is done, what will the ship and her mission come to? After he lost so much, after he learned the high price of warfare and militarization, Jim Kirk isn’t about to let them destroy everything he believes in, no matter what it costs him.
NOTES: Nothing in STID contradicted what I did in my Academy Series, so guess what? This is a continuation of my Academy Series, building on the new movie. It’s the “missing year” of STID, between the USS Vengeance crashing into San Francisco and the Enterprise launching on her five-year mission.
This story includes canon from ST:XI, STID, other Star Trek movies and series, and my own Academy Series, as well as some commonly accepted fandom concepts. This does not contain canon from any published Star Trek books or comic books.
And now... on with the show!
Engines of War
Chapter 1
That was how it ended.
With the ship and the world spinning out of control, one man had made an impossible decision.
The end of an era and a legend and an idiot with a goddamned hero complex.
After everything Jim had done, after everything he had accomplished and survived, he’d finally come up against the real no-win scenario. The crazy kid had learned what it meant to be a captain: to put everyone else first. And damn him, but it had been the only possible decision, and that’s all there was to it. Jim had walked into the warp core chamber knowing that it was the end.
And Leonard McCoy - Bones, dammit - hadn’t been there.
He’d been in surgery on a critical patient, and he’d distantly heard someone paging him about a radiation victim in engineering, but he’d shouted off the nurse and told them to send a medic if there was one available. There were enough critical patients, and one was the same as any other. He could only focus on the dying body on the table in front of him, not some other dying body halfway across the ship.
If he’d known it was Jim... he didn’t want to consider what he might have done. Abandoned his post? No, he was a doctor, and he wouldn’t consider the possibility that he might have abandoned a patient who could be saved just to get one last look at a patient whose life was over.
But it wasn’t over.
There was his best friend in a goddamned body bag, lifeless and covered in radiation burns, and Jesus Christ, Leonard couldn't imagine a more awful way to go... but then, on the desk in front of him, a previously dead tribble was now moving and purring, and inspiration struck. No clash of cymbals or sense of eureka, but a sudden change of gears that felt like grinding and squealing; an ancient train trying to switch tracks.
He sent out the comm to the bridge, brain reeling and heart thudding unevenly. Everything was moving too fast, but not fast enough. They emptied one of the cryo pods. One team was putting the genetically modified popsicle into a drug-induced coma, and Leonard was cradling Jim's head himself as they settled the body of their friend and captain into the cryo unit.
It felt like his own blood was turning to an icy sludge as he watched the cryo cycle rapidly lower Jim's body temperature to just above freezing. His breath stopped as the program activated a field that instantaneously absorbed the body's thermal energy, allowing a freeze so rapid that the ice crystals were too small to cause damage to sub-cellular components. Leonard had studied the technology in med school, but it wasn't used very often, and never on human beings anymore.
Now, Jim was dead and frozen in front of him, and he was gambling on a molecular biology discovery that he didn't understand and the efforts of a half-Vulcan he barely tolerated to bring his best friend back.
“Doctor McCoy?”
Leonard didn't respond. He couldn't. He was staring at Jim's face, frozen in both time and temperature, and the rest of the world could fuck directly off.
“Doctor McCoy... they can't get Khan.”
That shook Leonard out of his stupor. He spun around to face the medic who had been monitoring the transmissions from the bridge. “Are you kidding me?”
“They're sending Lieutenant Uhura down after Commander Spock,” the medic said nervously.
“Lieutenant Uhura?” Leonard snapped. “Why the... good Lord, why the hell can't Chekov beam their sorry asses back here? That little whiz-kid can do just about anything with a goddamned transporter, so why not this? Hail the bridge again! This is our only chance to -”
“Doctor McCoy.” Doctor Carlson had stepped out of isolation room two, pulling off her gloves angrily. She had been putting the other genetically modified guy into the induced coma.
“Is that one alive?” Leonard demanded, pointing towards the isolation room and not really listening to her in the slightest.
“We lost him.” Carlson replied flatly. “Too much tissue degradation in cryostasis, and... shit, McCoy, we aren’t even sure if we’ve got the reanimation sequence right!”
“Yeah, I thought we might lose him. But we’ll get the sequence right for Jim.” Leonard turned back to the medic, feeling another surge of desperation. “And I thought I told you to hail the bridge again!”
“For the... Leonard!” Carlson snapped at him. “Pull yourself together!”
“What?” Leonard finally took a good look at his colleague, and he stopped. Seeing the typically level-headed Doctor Carlson seething at him was almost enough to break him out of his mindless anger. “I... Meg, that's my best friend in that damned pod, and the only way we're going to get him back out of it is if we get Khan back on this ship alive. I've patched Jim's carcass back together enough times, and I'm not giving up on him now!”
Carlson shook her head in frustrated disbelief. “Listen to yourself!” She stepped into his personal space and locked eyes as he grabbed his upper arms and gave him a shake. “Captain Kirk is dead, Leonard. We're not gods, we're doctors. If we somehow manage to work the technology to revive him, then let's all pick a random religion and burn some damned incense in appreciation. But in the meantime, we've still got a sickbay full of patients, and there are at least a hundred other casualties on this ship that are still alive. We need to focus on that until we get to space dock.”
The harsh reality was sharp and biting. Carlson was right - in the chaos, dozens of people had died, and easily a hundred more were injured. Casualty reports had come in from all over the ship, and the less-injured were putting their first aid skills to use, caring for those who could survive for the short term without real treatment while the worst casualties had been flooding every available inch of sickbay. Jim was his friend, but he wasn't the only person onboard.
“You're right,” Leonard finally said, although his voice was rough.
“I know, and I'm sorry about that. But...” Carlson looked back over her shoulder at the isolation room. “Fuck, Leonard, does it need to be Khan? We've got a whole ward full of these super-humans. So we lost one of them, but we could try the next one, and this time, we’ll make sure we’ve prepared for it properly. One of them has to survive reanimation. Why not blood from that one?”
“I thought about that, actually,” Leonard growled. “And it's simple: we haven't tested any of the others. We know Khan's blood works, but...” He shook his head in frustration. “I did an undergrad paper on the genetic mods used during the Eugenics wars. Every soldier was modified differently, based on the tasks they were expected to perform. We have no idea if any of these other frozen freaks has the same traits in their blood as Khan. For all we know, he could have been the only one with that trait. You just lost that one because of tissue degradation, right? There's a damned good chance that his blood didn't have the regenerative traits that Khan's did, and I'm not gambling on the chance that the others might... not when we know Khan's does.”
“We have time to test them,” Carlson challenged.
“No, we don't,” Leonard pushed back, swallowing down another surge of anxiety. “Those pods are old, Meg. We haven't tested them, either. We have no idea how good the cryo-stasis is. The last person who went into that pod is dead on your table right now, isn't he? And he’s a super-human who probably went in alive. Jim... Jim wasn’t either of those things.” He forced himself to take a deep breath. “We don't have time.”
“Leonard...”
“But for now, you're right. We've got patients, and we can't do a damned thing for the captain until we get Khan back aboard.” He squared his shoulders. “Let's get back to work.”
For a moment, nobody moved. Then, without a word, they all hurried back to whatever tasks they'd been handling before Jim's body had arrived in sickbay. But before Leonard went back to the spinal regen he was working on, he looked down at the pod that held Jim's body. Then, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his jaw for a moment, he gathered himself together and forced himself to walk away.
*********
Leonard was waiting in the transporter room with a medic, six security personnel, and a stretcher when Spock materialized with Khan’s body slung over his shoulder like a sack.
“Is he alive?” Leonard demanded, shoving the stretcher towards Spock.
“Indeed he is,” Spock answered, ignoring the stretcher. “We must hurry, doctor. We will arrive at Space Station One shortly, and unless we act quickly, and we will miss our window of opportunity.”
“Opportunity?” Leonard asked in confusion, but Spock was already out of the transporter room, and it was all Leonard could do to hurry after him.
*********
As soon as the ship docked at Space Station One, a top security team took custody of Khan, who was being held in a drug-induced coma, as well as 71 cryo pods. In the chaos, it had been easy allow the oversight. Nobody needed to know that one cryo pod was hidden away in isolation room one. And if one of the augments was thawed and dead... well... they’d figure out an explanation for that later.
At the same time, a flood of emergency personnel had rushed aboard the ship. Serious casualties were taken to the undamaged medical facilities aboard the space station. Uninjured and minimally injured crew members were evacuated to Earth. Soon, everyone was gone except a skeleton crew consisting of essential engineering personnel and bridge officers.
Naturally, the captain was a bridge officer. And if the captain was being treated for his injuries aboard his ship, didn’t that just make sense?
No, it didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.
Leonard was trying not to think about how he’d explain this mess. He couldn’t even explain it to himself in any way that didn’t make him sound completely off his rocker. He had work to do, goddammit, and he wasn’t about to let himself get distracted. Not now. Not while there was still hope. He wasn’t going to let that slip away. If he was going to succeed, he couldn’t let Jim’s body off the ship.
Leonard had ensconced himself in his lab as soon as the other casualties had been evacuated, and was just settling down at his lab bench when Spock appeared. Leonard's first instinct was to snap at the Vulcan and tell him that he didn't have time to put up with the inevitable lecture of logic or whatever the hell Spock was there to do. But then... he saw Spock's face.
Spock's eyes were swollen, and his face was flushed green. His outward composure was calm for a human, but for a Vulcan, it looked as though he was barely holding himself together. Then, when he spoke, his voice was rough. “How is he?”
Leonard took a slow breath, trying to steady himself. “What do you think, Spock? He was exposed to enough radiation to kill him a hundred times over, and he's lying in a centuries-old cryo unit.”
“I am aware of that. I attempted to calculate the odds of successfully reviving the captain based on your proposed treatment, but as this situation is without precedent, I was unable to do so.” Green-rimmed eyes blinked.
Leonard raised an eyebrow in surprise. Spock was looking for reassurance. “I wish I could give you some good news, but I’ve got no idea. Before I even think about using this stuff, I need to fraction the blood sample to isolate the essential components and test it on tissue cultures.”
“The process was fairly simple with the tribble, was it not?”
Leonard felt a flash of irritation. “I wasn’t trying to bring the tribble back from the dead, Spock! I was just testing a platelet fraction to see if it had any effect on necrotic tissue. Jim wanted fast answers about Khan’s unusual ability to heal so quickly, so I cut some experimental corners. It worked beyond my wildest expectations, but I still don’t know what worked. I need to know what the hell was going on at the molecular level, and whether it will work on human tissue. And... and it wasn’t my friend! I didn’t need to be as careful with the tribble because it was just a damned tribble that had died in the xenozoology lab anyway, but dammit man, I can’t do that with a real patient! I still don’t even know what component of the blood is actually responsible for the regenerative properties, and I’m not using this stuff on Jim until I know.”
Slowly, Spock nodded. “Understood, Doctor. I believe that approach is most logical, if we are to have any chance at reviving the captain. But at the moment, we have another situation. Starfleet Command is demanding to speak to Captain Kirk.”
Instantly, Leonard felt his stomach drop like a brick as he jumped out of his seat and hissed at Spock. “Shit. What did you tell them?”
“Nothing of significance. I told them that Captain Kirk was unavailable, and that I needed to ascertain his status in sickbay.” Spock’s face was so carefully neutral that it gave away more than it hid. “I wished to speak to you before revealing further information. It... seemed prudent. The Captain was initially removed from command of the Enterprise as a result - whether direct or indirect - of my revealing information that he did not want revealed. As this situation has no precedence, there are no protocols.”
Leonard stared at Spock in disbelief. “Every crew member death needs to be reported within one hour, or as soon as conditions are safe,” he said, rattling off regulation.
“And as the captain is currently in cryostasis, he is not technically dead.” Spock’s eyes were determined.
Leonard sucked in a sharp breath at the idea that he and Spock were collaborating on a scheme of this magnitude. “We shouldn’t do this,” he said, as much to himself as to Spock.
“Possibly not.”
“We’re playing God.”
“One could logically argue that all technology does so.”
“You and your pointy logic,” Leonard grumbled to himself. He looked at the analyzer on his workbench, and then over at the door of isolation room one. “If we told them, they’d take him away from us. There’s no way they’d let us try this. It goes against every standard of medical practice in the book. We’d never even get the chance to see if it would work.” It was rationalizing, and he knew it. Then he glanced back at Spock, feeling oddly disconnected. “How many other people know?”
“Commander Scott, Lieutenant Uhura, Doctor Marcus, the two security officers who retrieved the captain’s body, several other officers and crew members who were in sickbay at the time, and your medical staff. They are all exceptionally loyal, and there is a 94.8% probability that they would not reveal the captain’s actual status to others, even if pressed, were we to instruct them to maintain secrecy.” Then Spock hesitated.
“What?”
“While I find myself irrationally inclined to take all possible efforts to safeguard and revive the captain, I should state that the consequences of this course of action can not be anticipated.”
Leonard raised an eyebrow in surprise. Now that was an interesting statement coming from the hobgoblin. “You’re saying that you want to do this, but you have no idea what will happen.”
“Affirmative.”
Leonard sighed. “Well, I have no idea what will happen either... for any part of it. It might not even work. Maybe we won’t be able to revive him. And maybe we’ll get hung out to dry for this. But sometimes, you’ve just got to take a chance. If we don’t try, then that means we gave up on him, and there’s no chance of getting him back.”
“Then this would be the most logical course of action” Spock stated, but Leonard thought he heard a question there.
For a moment, Leonard looked at him, then said, “Spock... when you were in that damned volcano, Jim asked me what you’d do if your positions were reversed. I told him that you’d let him die. And yeah, Spock, that would have been logical, but logic isn’t the only thing we’ve got. Sometimes, you’ve just got to jump in with your eyes closed and hope you land safely. There are always consequences, but you know what?” He took a half step closer to Spock, almost chest-to-chest. “Damn the consequences.”
At that, Spock mirrored Leonard’s raised eyebrow in reply. “Fascinating.”
“Shut up.” Leonard stepped back and grabbed his PADD off the workbench. “Do you still have Starfleet Command on the line?”
“Admiral William Yee is currently waiting for my response on a secure channel.”
Leonard nodded. “My office. Follow me.”
Sickbay was perversely quiet as they walked from the lab to Leonard’s office. All of the patients were gone, except for a couple of engineering officers who had bumps and bruises but needed to stick around to help fix the damage to the ship. Doctor Carlson was working on one of them, and M’Benga on the other. The two remaining nurses and the three medics were cleaning up, restocking supplies, and looking like they needed some help themselves.
They’d have to wait.
Leonard sat at his desk as the door slid shut. “Stand behind me, Spock.”
“What are you going to say, Doctor?”
Leonard hesitated for a moment, then looked up. “Only what they need to know.” Then he settled himself back in the chair. “Bring up the channel.”
“Computer,” Spock intoned, “access the currently-active Priority One channel to Admiral Yee at Starfleet Command.”
“Accessing.”
An unfamiliar face filled Leonard’s computer screen. “Commander Spock, and... Doctor McCoy, is it?”
“That’s right, Admiral,” Leonard replied as smoothly as he could. He was suddenly far more nervous than he’d thought he would be. “Spock tells me that you want to speak to the captain?”
“If at all possible. I’m sure you can understand the need for a rapid debriefing, given the circumstances. The city took heavy damage, gentlemen, in addition to the damage to the Enterprise. We’re also at a loss to explain how Admiral Marcus was able to hide his weapons program so thoroughly that he constructed a ship without the knowledge of the rest of Starfleet’s leadership. Yee’s expression was adequately apologetic.
“Yeah, I’d like to know that myself,” Leonard said with a blatant undertone.
Yee’s mouth tightened. “I’m sure you would, but that’s not why we’re calling. Marcus sent Kirk on this assignment, and we need to know what Marcus told Kirk.”
“I understand, Admiral, but I’m afraid you’ll have to get your answers from Commander Spock today.” Leonard braced himself. “The captain was injured when the ship’s gravity went haywire, and then... he was exposed to a pretty severe dose of radiation from something that broke down in engineering. He’s out cold right now and in isolation, and we’re keeping him there until we’ve rebuilt his bone marrow and given his body time to heal.”
To his credit, Admiral Yee looked appropriately sympathetic to the description of Jim’s injuries. “That’s horrible news, but if I might ask, why was he not evacuated with the other casualties?”
Leonard felt a drip of sweat trickle down the back of his neck. “There was no need at the time. The isolation wards in sickbay weren’t damaged, and I’ve got everything I need to treat him right here. I’m his primary physician, and I need to stay with the ship as long as we have essential personnel aboard. Besides, at the moment, moving him would just cause more problems.”
Yee’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I see. And I understand the medical need to keep him in isolation, but can we speak to him by commlink while he’s in a sterile room?”
“Maybe when he comes around, but like I said, Admiral, he’s out cold, and if he woke up right now, he’d be in unimaginable pain. Unless it was a matter of life or death, I wouldn’t wake a patient in his condition. I understand that he might have important information, but it would be medical malpractice to subject a patient to that, and he wouldn’t be coherent enough to give you any information anyway.”
Yee’s mouth twisted in frustration. “Fair enough.” He looked up at Spock. “Commander, did Captain Kirk tell you much about Admiral Marcus’s plans?”
“Indeed he did,” Spock said smoothly. “Additionally, I was witness to the full sequence of events, and was present with Captain Kirk when Marcus gave us this assignment. As I said before, I can provide a detailed report of the Admiral’s activities and other aspects of this incident. There is no need to rouse the captain sooner than medically advisable.”
“That will have to do for now.,” Yee said, nodding slowly. “But as soon as Kirk is strong enough to give a report, we need to speak with him.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Spock answered. “In the meantime, the doctor should return to his duties. May we continue this discussion from the ready room?”
“That would be best.”
Spock nodded. “Computer - transfer this channel to the computer terminal in the captain’s ready room.”
“Transfer complete.”
The computer screen went dark, and Spock turned to Leonard with a curious expression on his usually placid face. “You did not lie.”
Leonard swallowed thickly. “I might as well have lied, Spock. They’ll certainly see this as a lie. Jim is dead, and we haven’t reported it. We won’t be able to maintain this farce for long.” He looked down at his hands, slack and useless on the desk in front of him. “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it soon. They won’t let us keep him on the ship forever.”
“Indeed they will not,” Spock agreed softly. “Based on protocols, a ship with damage this severe will be removed from service for complete repairs as soon as possible. Even portions of the ship which are serviceable will be shut down.”
“How long do you think we have?”
“The most likely time frame for removal of all personnel will be eighty-two-point-seven hours, although we may be asked to clear the ship in as little as twenty-four hours if a Starfleet engineering crew is assigned to take over the decontamination of the core and complete systems shutdown. If you insist that the captain is not ready to be moved, we may be able to extend it, but I can not predict how long of an extension we might obtain.”
“Yeah.” Leonard signed. “I need to get back to work.”
“And I must go placate the Admiral.”
Leonard shot Spock a bemused look. “Was that a joke, Spock? A sign of red blood running through those veins of yours after all?”
“No, Doctor. I was merely stating the obvious in parallel to your statement of needing to return to work.”
Leonard snorted, then stood with a groan. “Of course. Couldn’t let you start growing a sense of humor. You might be allergic to it.”
Spock, in response, merely inclined his head and turned on his heel towards the door of the office. However, as it slid open, Spock took one step back, allowing it to slide shut again. “Doctor.”
“Yeah?”
“You said that I would have let Jim die, rather than to violate regulations, had he been in the volcano instead of me. That may have been true a week ago, but...” He met Leonard’s eyes. “I do not believe that would be true now.”
Leonard felt his jaw drop, but before he could scramble his brain together to say something, Spock was gone. Slowly, he leaned back in his chair, staring at the door, and wondering what the hell had happened.
*********
It wasn’t the platelets. It was the proteins.
They weren’t exactly enzymes, and they weren’t exactly prions, but Leonard had found the components of Khan’s blood that had made the guy so damned resilient. He had a set of proteins floating around in his plasma that went like gangbusters on any cellular membrane that had been ruptured due to trauma, repairing any cells that weren’t damaged beyond recognition, and even accelerating the rate of connective tissue fiber regeneration. Even more interesting, the proteins themselves seemed to self-replicate, almost like prions, when more of them were needed to get the job done. It didn’t seem to prevent essential apoptosis. In fact, another enzyme-prion seemed to act like a cellular hit-man, taking out faulty cells with severely damaged DNA or overwhelming organelle damage. Another seemed to accelerate cell replication by enhancing the action of the ribosomes, and Leonard would be damned if he could figure out how it worked in time to save Jim before Starfleet got too nosy.
All of those proteins worked in a way that was compatible with almost any carbon-based, multicellular organism. If someone injected these proteins into any organism with common biology, from tribbles to Tellarites, it would work on any of them.
It was ingenious. It was incredible. And it was terrifying.
In a small tube in Leonard’s hands, he was holding a crude serum containing a set of proteins that would render a person all but immortal. Not completely, of course. Based on his preliminary studies of the serum on human tissue cultures, it didn’t have the capacity to regenerate lost body parts or to completely stop the aging process, but it would stimulate cells to regrow small areas of lost or necrotic tissue and to slow several factors in the aging process. It would repair deformities. It would extend life, possibly to double the expected life span.The implications were staggering.
“Are yeh gonna use it, laddie?”
Montgomery Scott was leaning against the doorframe of the lab, looking as bleary-eyed as Leonard felt.
With a sigh, Leonard tilted his head, inviting Scott to sit down before he fell over. “How can I not?”
Scotty settled himself with a grunt. “Simple as anything. Yeh put the thing in the recycler and walk away.”
“And you know I can’t do that.”
Scotty gave him a deeply sympathetic look. “Aye. Neither could I.” He glanced out through the door of the lab into the main part of sickbay. “I’ve been delaying them as much as I can without rousing suspicion, but I cannae do it for much longer. We’ve been at it for about thirty hours, and they’ll likely expect results by tomorrow. Once I finish the complete shut-down and decon of the core, I’ll have to hand the ship over to the engineers from spacedock.”
“And with no further reason to keep essential personnel aboard...”
“Right, McCoy.” He settled back into his chair. “We’ve all been through a lot with Jim, but you’ve been with him since you arrived at the Academy. I can’t imagine what it must feel like for yeh to see ‘im there. It was awful enough when I found him.”
“I...” Leonard looked up at Scotty, suddenly feeling an uncomfortable pressure in his chest. “I’ve wanted to ask you this since yesterday, but we’ve both been too busy. When... when you found Jim... why didn’t you keep trying to reach me? They only told me that there was a patient with critical radiation exposure. They didn’t say who it was.”
For a moment, Scotty froze, but then he leaned his elbows heavily on Leonard’s desk and sighed like a man who had picked up the world when Atlas dropped it. “They didn’t say who it was because I didn’t tell them. Partly because I couldn’t let the crew know what’d just happened to the captain. Not like that. Not over the comm. But also... because I know yeh, laddie. It was too late to save him from the radiation -”
“I would have wanted to see him one last time.” The admission was soft and harsh at once.
Scotty’s eyes widened slightly. “I know, McCoy. I know. But... you’re the man who came to me for help investigating the shuttle crash that almost killed Jim back at the academy, even though you knew that if I’d reported yeh, it could’ve ended your career.”
“It could have ended your career, too,” Leonard said flatly. “And you went along with it.”
“Aye, that I did. And I don’t regret it. Not one bit. I did it because I felt it was good and right to help you solve yer friend’s mystery, and I dinnae like the smell I was gettin’ from the whole mess. But you? You did it because you couldn’t turn the lad down, even if he didn’t know you were helping him, and even if it would have killed yer career in the process. You’d’ve done anything for Jim.” Scotty gave him a level gaze. “McCoy... there was nothing you could do for him.”
“I could have been there, dammit!”
“And done what? Dropped everything else, maybe even another critical patient? We were already in a crisis, and too many of the crew were injured.”
Leonard bristled. “I wouldn’t have abandoned another patient.”
“You would’ve thought about it, and you can’t tell me that it wouldn’t have ruined your ability to focus on the patients you could save.”
For a long moment, Leonard sat in silence, picturing what Scotty had described, over and over again. Finally, he let his head droop forward in defeat. “You’re right.”
“Of course I am,” Scotty said sadly. “Just because I work with the guts of ships instead of the guts of people doesn’t mean I don’t understand a thing or two about human nature. You’d follow that man anywhere. And although we haven’t known him as long, we all would.”
“I know.” Then Leonard looked at the vial of serum in his hand. “I still don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I start to think that maybe this is going too far, and I wonder if I would do this for any other patient. But then... I go to check on the cryo unit, and every time, I look at his face through the viewport, and it’s like he’s just asleep, and I’m just working on yet another cure for the latest scrape Jim Kirk got himself into. The line gets really blurry really fast.”
“What would Jim want you to do?”
Leonard opened his mouth, but shut it just as quickly when he realized that he didn’t have an answer.
Jim was a man who had cheated death more than once, and who would rewrite the rules so that he could beat the unbeatable. He didn’t believe in no-win scenarios, and if it was anyone else in that cryo pod, he would insist on trying anything and everything to bring them back.
But Jim was also a man who knew his own mortality, and had accepted it. People said he acted as though he thought he was immortal, but really, it was quite the opposite. To Jim, life was precious, but part of what made it precious to him was that it was so terribly fragile, and so horribly temporary. That’s why he went out on a limb so often - because to give anything less would be an insult to what he felt life should be. And if the price of living fully was dying sooner rather than later, then at least that meant he’d given it his all.
Jim would have accepted his death.
Leonard wasn’t ready to do that yet.
“I don’t know. But I know what I have to do.”
Scotty nodded slowly. “Then we’re with yeh, McCoy. Jim is a bloody piece of work, but he’s what makes this crew. We need our captain.”
“And I need my friend.”
“Aye.”
Leonard stared at the vial for another minute, then reached over and toggled the comm switch. “McCoy to Spock.”
“Spock here.”
“You said you wanted to know when we were ready. So... get down here. We’re about to get started.”
“On my way. Spock out.”
Scotty pushed his chair back from the desk and stood slowly. “I’ll be getting myself back to engineering. We’re about to start phase three of shutdown and decontamination of the core.”
“Okay.” Leonard nodded vaguely, still staring at the vial. “Good luck down there.”
“Thanks, McCoy. You too.”
“Thanks.” Leonard watched him leave, and when the door slid shut behind the chief engineer, he sighed. “Thanks,” he said again. “I’m gonna need it.”
*********
It was easier to put someone into cryostasis than to take them out. Even if you started with a live body, the cryo process would put a stop to all essential physiological functions. When you thawed out the body, it would technically be dead until you restarted all those functions again. That restart sequence was the tricky part, and between checking his tests on Khan’s blood serum, he’d been running computer models of the cryo reanimation sequence based on every historical reference he could find. They had a plan, and a better than 85% chance of initially reviving him.
Then, of course, there was the small matter of reversing an obscene amount of radiation damage before Jim died of it again.
The whole thing definitely had Leonard’s stomach tied up in knots. At least it was almost enough to distract him from the ethical dilemma that had been eating at him for the past thirty-two hours.
Almost.
“M’Benga, are you ready with neurostim?”
Geoffrey looked up from the panel just long enough to nod. “Powered up and ready to go.”
Leonard nodded. “Carlson, have you got the cardiopulmonary bypass primed?”
“It’s looking good.”
“Xiao?” He looked over at the pulmonary specialist. “Ready with respiratory support?”
“Yes, doctor.”
“Okay. Let’s get him out of there.” With hands that were far more steady than his nerves, Leonard activated the thawing cycle. “Spock, give me a temperature readout every five degrees until the last ten below the thaw point, then give me a degree-by-degree countdown.”
“Yes, doctor. Current temperature is 90 kelvins and rising at a rate of 15 kelvins per minute.”
“Dammit, Spock, give it to me in degrees Celsius.”
Spock gave him a very pointed eyebrow raise. “That system is much less efficient at ultra-low temperatures and -”
“Spock.”
“The temperature is now negative 181.3 degrees Celsius.”
The next several minutes dragged on, and Leonard was pretty sure they were all barely breathing until Spock gave the final countdown. Leonard’s hands actually did shake as he switched over from the automated process to the manual field manipulation that would almost instantly pull Jim’s body temperature above the freezing point of human blood.
The room was absolutely silent, and then, one green light came on at the head of the pod.
“Get him out of there!” Leonard slapped the trigger for the locking mechanism on the pod’s hatch, and the lid obediently flew open. “Gentle! Be gentle! Spock, lift from the left side. Right there.” Leonard slipped his hands under Jim’s head. So cold... so damned cold. “On three! One... two... three!”
Jim’s body was deposited on the biobed, and Leonard tried not to cringe. The radiation burns stood out in stark contrast to his horrific pallor, and, of course, he wasn’t breathing. Technically, he wasn’t alive. It was so completely wrong.
Everyone had been thoroughly briefed on their role in the resuscitation, so there wasn’t any need to speak beyond simple commands and coordinating movements. The room was oddly quiet despite the atmosphere of tension and possibly desperation.
Leonard was working on the cardiopulmonary bypass with Doctor Carlson, while M’Benga set up cerebral neurostim and monitoring sensors on Jim’s head. Within five minutes, Jim’s entire blood supply was being routed through a machine where it was oxygenated, cleansed, mixed with blood replenishers and nutrients, and returned to his body with enough pressure to keep it circulating. It was nowhere near as grotesque as the old-fashioned techniques that originated the concept, but it was still something Leonard didn’t like having to do to a patient... even a dead one.
When he finally looked up again from setting up the bypass, he found himself briefly amazed by the efficiency of his team. “Neurostim?”
“Active at ten percent and ready to increase the levels on your order,” M’Benga replied.
Leonard looked up at the respirator equipment. “Did it go smoothly?”
“As smooth as it could be, doctor,” Xiao said. “Elasticity is poor, but we’re already measuring trace oxygen absorption. We won’t know about carbon dioxide until his metabolism starts again, but he’s got lesions and damaged alveoli from the radiation burns in his lungs. Without the bypass, he wouldn’t be able to get enough oxygen anyway.”
“Well,” Leonard said, reaching for the equipment tray, “let’s see if we can get some of those lesions to heal up.” He grabbed the vial that he’d been contemplating too much over the past few hours, and without letting himself hesitate, he fixed it to one of the infusion ports on the bypass machine.
They watched in silence as the straw-colored serum drained into the machine, mixing with Jim’s blood where it was pumped back into his body. Seconds stretched into minutes. Leonard had no idea what he was waiting for. It wasn’t as though there was an established timeline for improvement in this process. He had no idea what to expect.
“Geoffrey... increase neurostim at a rate of two percent per minute until you reach fifty percent.”
M’Benga made the adjustment without a word.
“Signs of cellular metabolism?”
At the monitor station, Carlson pulled up a new readout screen. “Nothing yet.”
“Come on, Jim,” Leonard whispered to himself.
“Leonard,” M’Benga said suddenly, and there was a different tone in his voice. “I think I’m seeing some electrical activity in the medulla oblongata. I can’t be sure... it could just be that the pulses from the stim are being carried down.”
Leonard spun around and looked down at the neuro monitor screen. “Dead nerve cells don’t relay electrical impulses. Tighten the scan. Focus the sensors on the synapses in the brain stem.”
At first, it barely looked like an echo of the artificial electrical impulse being transmitted by the stim unit, but then, it got stronger. “I think we’ve got something,” Leonard said, trying not to let himself feel any real hope yet.
“Doctor McCoy,” Xiao spoke up. “I’m getting traces of CO2 in the gas mix. Lung elasticity is increasing.”
Leonard’s jaw fell slack for a moment as he took in the possibility that it might actually be working. “He’s metabolizing?”
Xiao pointed to a rise in the graph representing carbon dioxide concentration. “He might be blowing off some of the CO2 that was still in his tissues, but -”
“It’s better than nothing. Carlson, prep the full cardiac kit. We’ll start less invasive, but we might have to go to direct stimulation to get his ticker restarted.”
It was an unnecessary order; she was already activating the device and calibrating it. “How long should we wait?”
Leonard sighed. “I don’t know, Meg. We’re flying blind here. We don’t want to try restart his heart too soon if the tissues are still too damaged from the radiation. And hell, we don’t even know if this will work at all.”
“Well, something is working, Doctor McCoy,” Xiao chimed in. “CO2 levels are still increasing, and lung elasticity is still improving. I’ve worked on smoke inhalation victims enough times to know that elasticity doesn’t improve that quickly from burns. Something unusual is definitely happening.”
“We’re getting feedback on the neural sensors,” M’Benga said. “It’s definitely not just an echo.”
Leonard looked up at the biobed’s main readout. So far, nothing looked out of place on a large scale. Blood pressure was only measurable because of the pressure from the bypass. Oxygen saturation was good, but again, wholly artificial. “Get me a cellular scanner. I want to see what’s happening to his cell membranes.”
The device was placed in his outstretched hand, even as he was still staring numbly at the biobed readout. Shaking himself, he activated the scanner and pressed it to the inside of Jim’s forearm.
He blinked. Twice. And his jaw fell just a bit slack.
The cell membranes were knitting together at a remarkable rate. It should have been impossible, but the activity from the proteins was obvious. There was widespread cell destruction as well, and that would likely continue for a while, as the other parts of the serum sought out the cells with severe DNA and organelle damage and destroyed them. That would probably get progressively more ugly for a few days, but that was expected. In the meantime, cells and tissues that should have been dead and gone were knitting themselves back together at the cellular level in front of Leonard’s eyes.
“Un-fucking-believable,” he breathed. “Carlson, get the cardiac pads ready. I think we’ll be ready to shock his heart in about five minutes.”
“I’m on it.”
Leonard was still looking at the incredible cell regrowth under the scanner when he heard a beep.
Then another beep.
He looked up. “What the devil -”
“We’ve got a rhythm!”
Leonard looked up at the unexpected readout on the biobed’s main screen. “Carlson, did you shock him?”
“No! It just started on its own.” Carlson’s expression was wavering between stunned and ecstatic.
“Leonard, we’ve definitely got independent brain activity,” M’Benga said. “It’s spreading from the brainstem through the cerebellum. And... yes, I’m seeing signs of independent activity in the cerebrum.”
Leonard stared at his colleagues, and then down at Jim, who was still looking pale and damaged and fragile, but... dear God, he was alive.
“Congratulations, doctor,” came a steady voice by Leonard’s ear. Leonard startled to see Spock standing just behind him, giving him an unreadable look. “You’ve done it.”
Leonard swallowed. “I didn’t do anything, Spock. Someone else did. I just rode their coattails.”
“Were it not for your quick thinking and skilled actions, this would not be possible.”
Leonard stared at Spock for a moment, then across at the biobed readout. A steady cardiac rhythm was beeping, and all indicators of biofunctions were active. “I know,” Leonard finally said. “And I’m still praying that we’ve done the right thing.”
“Praying, doctor? I was not aware that you were a religious or superstitious man,” Spock said curiously.
“Spock, I just raised someone from the dead. If there was ever a time to pray, I think I’ve found it.” He sighed, and then, not caring what anyone else thought, he stepped closer to the biobed and wrapped his hand around Jim’s. The skin was still cool beneath his fingers, but it felt like human flesh again. Gently, he pressed two fingers against Jim’s pulse point, feeling the steady thrum of life coursing through veins.
“In my book,” Leonard continued, “life is better than death. I’ve spent my entire career trying to hold back the tide of death against the impossible odds of one to zero. I’ve beaten those odds for the first time in my life, and there’s a real chance that we’ll have Jim back, hale and whole.”
“Then logically, you would believe that this is good,” Spock stated, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“That’s just it... I’m not sure.”
*********
( To Chapter 2)
Betas: taverl
Canon: ST:XI, STID
Canon characters/Pairing(s): Kirk & McCoy, Spock, Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 7,329 for chapter 1
Warnings: Foul language, political situations.
Disclaimer: Gene Roddenberry is God, Paramount Pictures is Pope, and this is the blasphemy of a wayward faithful. My geeky spirit is rich, but my purse is empty.
Summary: Admiral Marcus’s push for weaponization didn’t appear out of nowhere. Across the Federation and at home on Earth, a terrified population is calling for increased defenses and a stronger front through Starfleet. It will take a year to rebuild the Enterprise, but when the job is done, what will the ship and her mission come to? After he lost so much, after he learned the high price of warfare and militarization, Jim Kirk isn’t about to let them destroy everything he believes in, no matter what it costs him.
NOTES: Nothing in STID contradicted what I did in my Academy Series, so guess what? This is a continuation of my Academy Series, building on the new movie. It’s the “missing year” of STID, between the USS Vengeance crashing into San Francisco and the Enterprise launching on her five-year mission.
This story includes canon from ST:XI, STID, other Star Trek movies and series, and my own Academy Series, as well as some commonly accepted fandom concepts. This does not contain canon from any published Star Trek books or comic books.
And now... on with the show!
Engines of War
Chapter 1
That was how it ended.
With the ship and the world spinning out of control, one man had made an impossible decision.
The end of an era and a legend and an idiot with a goddamned hero complex.
After everything Jim had done, after everything he had accomplished and survived, he’d finally come up against the real no-win scenario. The crazy kid had learned what it meant to be a captain: to put everyone else first. And damn him, but it had been the only possible decision, and that’s all there was to it. Jim had walked into the warp core chamber knowing that it was the end.
And Leonard McCoy - Bones, dammit - hadn’t been there.
He’d been in surgery on a critical patient, and he’d distantly heard someone paging him about a radiation victim in engineering, but he’d shouted off the nurse and told them to send a medic if there was one available. There were enough critical patients, and one was the same as any other. He could only focus on the dying body on the table in front of him, not some other dying body halfway across the ship.
If he’d known it was Jim... he didn’t want to consider what he might have done. Abandoned his post? No, he was a doctor, and he wouldn’t consider the possibility that he might have abandoned a patient who could be saved just to get one last look at a patient whose life was over.
But it wasn’t over.
There was his best friend in a goddamned body bag, lifeless and covered in radiation burns, and Jesus Christ, Leonard couldn't imagine a more awful way to go... but then, on the desk in front of him, a previously dead tribble was now moving and purring, and inspiration struck. No clash of cymbals or sense of eureka, but a sudden change of gears that felt like grinding and squealing; an ancient train trying to switch tracks.
He sent out the comm to the bridge, brain reeling and heart thudding unevenly. Everything was moving too fast, but not fast enough. They emptied one of the cryo pods. One team was putting the genetically modified popsicle into a drug-induced coma, and Leonard was cradling Jim's head himself as they settled the body of their friend and captain into the cryo unit.
It felt like his own blood was turning to an icy sludge as he watched the cryo cycle rapidly lower Jim's body temperature to just above freezing. His breath stopped as the program activated a field that instantaneously absorbed the body's thermal energy, allowing a freeze so rapid that the ice crystals were too small to cause damage to sub-cellular components. Leonard had studied the technology in med school, but it wasn't used very often, and never on human beings anymore.
Now, Jim was dead and frozen in front of him, and he was gambling on a molecular biology discovery that he didn't understand and the efforts of a half-Vulcan he barely tolerated to bring his best friend back.
“Doctor McCoy?”
Leonard didn't respond. He couldn't. He was staring at Jim's face, frozen in both time and temperature, and the rest of the world could fuck directly off.
“Doctor McCoy... they can't get Khan.”
That shook Leonard out of his stupor. He spun around to face the medic who had been monitoring the transmissions from the bridge. “Are you kidding me?”
“They're sending Lieutenant Uhura down after Commander Spock,” the medic said nervously.
“Lieutenant Uhura?” Leonard snapped. “Why the... good Lord, why the hell can't Chekov beam their sorry asses back here? That little whiz-kid can do just about anything with a goddamned transporter, so why not this? Hail the bridge again! This is our only chance to -”
“Doctor McCoy.” Doctor Carlson had stepped out of isolation room two, pulling off her gloves angrily. She had been putting the other genetically modified guy into the induced coma.
“Is that one alive?” Leonard demanded, pointing towards the isolation room and not really listening to her in the slightest.
“We lost him.” Carlson replied flatly. “Too much tissue degradation in cryostasis, and... shit, McCoy, we aren’t even sure if we’ve got the reanimation sequence right!”
“Yeah, I thought we might lose him. But we’ll get the sequence right for Jim.” Leonard turned back to the medic, feeling another surge of desperation. “And I thought I told you to hail the bridge again!”
“For the... Leonard!” Carlson snapped at him. “Pull yourself together!”
“What?” Leonard finally took a good look at his colleague, and he stopped. Seeing the typically level-headed Doctor Carlson seething at him was almost enough to break him out of his mindless anger. “I... Meg, that's my best friend in that damned pod, and the only way we're going to get him back out of it is if we get Khan back on this ship alive. I've patched Jim's carcass back together enough times, and I'm not giving up on him now!”
Carlson shook her head in frustrated disbelief. “Listen to yourself!” She stepped into his personal space and locked eyes as he grabbed his upper arms and gave him a shake. “Captain Kirk is dead, Leonard. We're not gods, we're doctors. If we somehow manage to work the technology to revive him, then let's all pick a random religion and burn some damned incense in appreciation. But in the meantime, we've still got a sickbay full of patients, and there are at least a hundred other casualties on this ship that are still alive. We need to focus on that until we get to space dock.”
The harsh reality was sharp and biting. Carlson was right - in the chaos, dozens of people had died, and easily a hundred more were injured. Casualty reports had come in from all over the ship, and the less-injured were putting their first aid skills to use, caring for those who could survive for the short term without real treatment while the worst casualties had been flooding every available inch of sickbay. Jim was his friend, but he wasn't the only person onboard.
“You're right,” Leonard finally said, although his voice was rough.
“I know, and I'm sorry about that. But...” Carlson looked back over her shoulder at the isolation room. “Fuck, Leonard, does it need to be Khan? We've got a whole ward full of these super-humans. So we lost one of them, but we could try the next one, and this time, we’ll make sure we’ve prepared for it properly. One of them has to survive reanimation. Why not blood from that one?”
“I thought about that, actually,” Leonard growled. “And it's simple: we haven't tested any of the others. We know Khan's blood works, but...” He shook his head in frustration. “I did an undergrad paper on the genetic mods used during the Eugenics wars. Every soldier was modified differently, based on the tasks they were expected to perform. We have no idea if any of these other frozen freaks has the same traits in their blood as Khan. For all we know, he could have been the only one with that trait. You just lost that one because of tissue degradation, right? There's a damned good chance that his blood didn't have the regenerative traits that Khan's did, and I'm not gambling on the chance that the others might... not when we know Khan's does.”
“We have time to test them,” Carlson challenged.
“No, we don't,” Leonard pushed back, swallowing down another surge of anxiety. “Those pods are old, Meg. We haven't tested them, either. We have no idea how good the cryo-stasis is. The last person who went into that pod is dead on your table right now, isn't he? And he’s a super-human who probably went in alive. Jim... Jim wasn’t either of those things.” He forced himself to take a deep breath. “We don't have time.”
“Leonard...”
“But for now, you're right. We've got patients, and we can't do a damned thing for the captain until we get Khan back aboard.” He squared his shoulders. “Let's get back to work.”
For a moment, nobody moved. Then, without a word, they all hurried back to whatever tasks they'd been handling before Jim's body had arrived in sickbay. But before Leonard went back to the spinal regen he was working on, he looked down at the pod that held Jim's body. Then, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his jaw for a moment, he gathered himself together and forced himself to walk away.
*********
Leonard was waiting in the transporter room with a medic, six security personnel, and a stretcher when Spock materialized with Khan’s body slung over his shoulder like a sack.
“Is he alive?” Leonard demanded, shoving the stretcher towards Spock.
“Indeed he is,” Spock answered, ignoring the stretcher. “We must hurry, doctor. We will arrive at Space Station One shortly, and unless we act quickly, and we will miss our window of opportunity.”
“Opportunity?” Leonard asked in confusion, but Spock was already out of the transporter room, and it was all Leonard could do to hurry after him.
*********
As soon as the ship docked at Space Station One, a top security team took custody of Khan, who was being held in a drug-induced coma, as well as 71 cryo pods. In the chaos, it had been easy allow the oversight. Nobody needed to know that one cryo pod was hidden away in isolation room one. And if one of the augments was thawed and dead... well... they’d figure out an explanation for that later.
At the same time, a flood of emergency personnel had rushed aboard the ship. Serious casualties were taken to the undamaged medical facilities aboard the space station. Uninjured and minimally injured crew members were evacuated to Earth. Soon, everyone was gone except a skeleton crew consisting of essential engineering personnel and bridge officers.
Naturally, the captain was a bridge officer. And if the captain was being treated for his injuries aboard his ship, didn’t that just make sense?
No, it didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.
Leonard was trying not to think about how he’d explain this mess. He couldn’t even explain it to himself in any way that didn’t make him sound completely off his rocker. He had work to do, goddammit, and he wasn’t about to let himself get distracted. Not now. Not while there was still hope. He wasn’t going to let that slip away. If he was going to succeed, he couldn’t let Jim’s body off the ship.
Leonard had ensconced himself in his lab as soon as the other casualties had been evacuated, and was just settling down at his lab bench when Spock appeared. Leonard's first instinct was to snap at the Vulcan and tell him that he didn't have time to put up with the inevitable lecture of logic or whatever the hell Spock was there to do. But then... he saw Spock's face.
Spock's eyes were swollen, and his face was flushed green. His outward composure was calm for a human, but for a Vulcan, it looked as though he was barely holding himself together. Then, when he spoke, his voice was rough. “How is he?”
Leonard took a slow breath, trying to steady himself. “What do you think, Spock? He was exposed to enough radiation to kill him a hundred times over, and he's lying in a centuries-old cryo unit.”
“I am aware of that. I attempted to calculate the odds of successfully reviving the captain based on your proposed treatment, but as this situation is without precedent, I was unable to do so.” Green-rimmed eyes blinked.
Leonard raised an eyebrow in surprise. Spock was looking for reassurance. “I wish I could give you some good news, but I’ve got no idea. Before I even think about using this stuff, I need to fraction the blood sample to isolate the essential components and test it on tissue cultures.”
“The process was fairly simple with the tribble, was it not?”
Leonard felt a flash of irritation. “I wasn’t trying to bring the tribble back from the dead, Spock! I was just testing a platelet fraction to see if it had any effect on necrotic tissue. Jim wanted fast answers about Khan’s unusual ability to heal so quickly, so I cut some experimental corners. It worked beyond my wildest expectations, but I still don’t know what worked. I need to know what the hell was going on at the molecular level, and whether it will work on human tissue. And... and it wasn’t my friend! I didn’t need to be as careful with the tribble because it was just a damned tribble that had died in the xenozoology lab anyway, but dammit man, I can’t do that with a real patient! I still don’t even know what component of the blood is actually responsible for the regenerative properties, and I’m not using this stuff on Jim until I know.”
Slowly, Spock nodded. “Understood, Doctor. I believe that approach is most logical, if we are to have any chance at reviving the captain. But at the moment, we have another situation. Starfleet Command is demanding to speak to Captain Kirk.”
Instantly, Leonard felt his stomach drop like a brick as he jumped out of his seat and hissed at Spock. “Shit. What did you tell them?”
“Nothing of significance. I told them that Captain Kirk was unavailable, and that I needed to ascertain his status in sickbay.” Spock’s face was so carefully neutral that it gave away more than it hid. “I wished to speak to you before revealing further information. It... seemed prudent. The Captain was initially removed from command of the Enterprise as a result - whether direct or indirect - of my revealing information that he did not want revealed. As this situation has no precedence, there are no protocols.”
Leonard stared at Spock in disbelief. “Every crew member death needs to be reported within one hour, or as soon as conditions are safe,” he said, rattling off regulation.
“And as the captain is currently in cryostasis, he is not technically dead.” Spock’s eyes were determined.
Leonard sucked in a sharp breath at the idea that he and Spock were collaborating on a scheme of this magnitude. “We shouldn’t do this,” he said, as much to himself as to Spock.
“Possibly not.”
“We’re playing God.”
“One could logically argue that all technology does so.”
“You and your pointy logic,” Leonard grumbled to himself. He looked at the analyzer on his workbench, and then over at the door of isolation room one. “If we told them, they’d take him away from us. There’s no way they’d let us try this. It goes against every standard of medical practice in the book. We’d never even get the chance to see if it would work.” It was rationalizing, and he knew it. Then he glanced back at Spock, feeling oddly disconnected. “How many other people know?”
“Commander Scott, Lieutenant Uhura, Doctor Marcus, the two security officers who retrieved the captain’s body, several other officers and crew members who were in sickbay at the time, and your medical staff. They are all exceptionally loyal, and there is a 94.8% probability that they would not reveal the captain’s actual status to others, even if pressed, were we to instruct them to maintain secrecy.” Then Spock hesitated.
“What?”
“While I find myself irrationally inclined to take all possible efforts to safeguard and revive the captain, I should state that the consequences of this course of action can not be anticipated.”
Leonard raised an eyebrow in surprise. Now that was an interesting statement coming from the hobgoblin. “You’re saying that you want to do this, but you have no idea what will happen.”
“Affirmative.”
Leonard sighed. “Well, I have no idea what will happen either... for any part of it. It might not even work. Maybe we won’t be able to revive him. And maybe we’ll get hung out to dry for this. But sometimes, you’ve just got to take a chance. If we don’t try, then that means we gave up on him, and there’s no chance of getting him back.”
“Then this would be the most logical course of action” Spock stated, but Leonard thought he heard a question there.
For a moment, Leonard looked at him, then said, “Spock... when you were in that damned volcano, Jim asked me what you’d do if your positions were reversed. I told him that you’d let him die. And yeah, Spock, that would have been logical, but logic isn’t the only thing we’ve got. Sometimes, you’ve just got to jump in with your eyes closed and hope you land safely. There are always consequences, but you know what?” He took a half step closer to Spock, almost chest-to-chest. “Damn the consequences.”
At that, Spock mirrored Leonard’s raised eyebrow in reply. “Fascinating.”
“Shut up.” Leonard stepped back and grabbed his PADD off the workbench. “Do you still have Starfleet Command on the line?”
“Admiral William Yee is currently waiting for my response on a secure channel.”
Leonard nodded. “My office. Follow me.”
Sickbay was perversely quiet as they walked from the lab to Leonard’s office. All of the patients were gone, except for a couple of engineering officers who had bumps and bruises but needed to stick around to help fix the damage to the ship. Doctor Carlson was working on one of them, and M’Benga on the other. The two remaining nurses and the three medics were cleaning up, restocking supplies, and looking like they needed some help themselves.
They’d have to wait.
Leonard sat at his desk as the door slid shut. “Stand behind me, Spock.”
“What are you going to say, Doctor?”
Leonard hesitated for a moment, then looked up. “Only what they need to know.” Then he settled himself back in the chair. “Bring up the channel.”
“Computer,” Spock intoned, “access the currently-active Priority One channel to Admiral Yee at Starfleet Command.”
“Accessing.”
An unfamiliar face filled Leonard’s computer screen. “Commander Spock, and... Doctor McCoy, is it?”
“That’s right, Admiral,” Leonard replied as smoothly as he could. He was suddenly far more nervous than he’d thought he would be. “Spock tells me that you want to speak to the captain?”
“If at all possible. I’m sure you can understand the need for a rapid debriefing, given the circumstances. The city took heavy damage, gentlemen, in addition to the damage to the Enterprise. We’re also at a loss to explain how Admiral Marcus was able to hide his weapons program so thoroughly that he constructed a ship without the knowledge of the rest of Starfleet’s leadership. Yee’s expression was adequately apologetic.
“Yeah, I’d like to know that myself,” Leonard said with a blatant undertone.
Yee’s mouth tightened. “I’m sure you would, but that’s not why we’re calling. Marcus sent Kirk on this assignment, and we need to know what Marcus told Kirk.”
“I understand, Admiral, but I’m afraid you’ll have to get your answers from Commander Spock today.” Leonard braced himself. “The captain was injured when the ship’s gravity went haywire, and then... he was exposed to a pretty severe dose of radiation from something that broke down in engineering. He’s out cold right now and in isolation, and we’re keeping him there until we’ve rebuilt his bone marrow and given his body time to heal.”
To his credit, Admiral Yee looked appropriately sympathetic to the description of Jim’s injuries. “That’s horrible news, but if I might ask, why was he not evacuated with the other casualties?”
Leonard felt a drip of sweat trickle down the back of his neck. “There was no need at the time. The isolation wards in sickbay weren’t damaged, and I’ve got everything I need to treat him right here. I’m his primary physician, and I need to stay with the ship as long as we have essential personnel aboard. Besides, at the moment, moving him would just cause more problems.”
Yee’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I see. And I understand the medical need to keep him in isolation, but can we speak to him by commlink while he’s in a sterile room?”
“Maybe when he comes around, but like I said, Admiral, he’s out cold, and if he woke up right now, he’d be in unimaginable pain. Unless it was a matter of life or death, I wouldn’t wake a patient in his condition. I understand that he might have important information, but it would be medical malpractice to subject a patient to that, and he wouldn’t be coherent enough to give you any information anyway.”
Yee’s mouth twisted in frustration. “Fair enough.” He looked up at Spock. “Commander, did Captain Kirk tell you much about Admiral Marcus’s plans?”
“Indeed he did,” Spock said smoothly. “Additionally, I was witness to the full sequence of events, and was present with Captain Kirk when Marcus gave us this assignment. As I said before, I can provide a detailed report of the Admiral’s activities and other aspects of this incident. There is no need to rouse the captain sooner than medically advisable.”
“That will have to do for now.,” Yee said, nodding slowly. “But as soon as Kirk is strong enough to give a report, we need to speak with him.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Spock answered. “In the meantime, the doctor should return to his duties. May we continue this discussion from the ready room?”
“That would be best.”
Spock nodded. “Computer - transfer this channel to the computer terminal in the captain’s ready room.”
“Transfer complete.”
The computer screen went dark, and Spock turned to Leonard with a curious expression on his usually placid face. “You did not lie.”
Leonard swallowed thickly. “I might as well have lied, Spock. They’ll certainly see this as a lie. Jim is dead, and we haven’t reported it. We won’t be able to maintain this farce for long.” He looked down at his hands, slack and useless on the desk in front of him. “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it soon. They won’t let us keep him on the ship forever.”
“Indeed they will not,” Spock agreed softly. “Based on protocols, a ship with damage this severe will be removed from service for complete repairs as soon as possible. Even portions of the ship which are serviceable will be shut down.”
“How long do you think we have?”
“The most likely time frame for removal of all personnel will be eighty-two-point-seven hours, although we may be asked to clear the ship in as little as twenty-four hours if a Starfleet engineering crew is assigned to take over the decontamination of the core and complete systems shutdown. If you insist that the captain is not ready to be moved, we may be able to extend it, but I can not predict how long of an extension we might obtain.”
“Yeah.” Leonard signed. “I need to get back to work.”
“And I must go placate the Admiral.”
Leonard shot Spock a bemused look. “Was that a joke, Spock? A sign of red blood running through those veins of yours after all?”
“No, Doctor. I was merely stating the obvious in parallel to your statement of needing to return to work.”
Leonard snorted, then stood with a groan. “Of course. Couldn’t let you start growing a sense of humor. You might be allergic to it.”
Spock, in response, merely inclined his head and turned on his heel towards the door of the office. However, as it slid open, Spock took one step back, allowing it to slide shut again. “Doctor.”
“Yeah?”
“You said that I would have let Jim die, rather than to violate regulations, had he been in the volcano instead of me. That may have been true a week ago, but...” He met Leonard’s eyes. “I do not believe that would be true now.”
Leonard felt his jaw drop, but before he could scramble his brain together to say something, Spock was gone. Slowly, he leaned back in his chair, staring at the door, and wondering what the hell had happened.
*********
It wasn’t the platelets. It was the proteins.
They weren’t exactly enzymes, and they weren’t exactly prions, but Leonard had found the components of Khan’s blood that had made the guy so damned resilient. He had a set of proteins floating around in his plasma that went like gangbusters on any cellular membrane that had been ruptured due to trauma, repairing any cells that weren’t damaged beyond recognition, and even accelerating the rate of connective tissue fiber regeneration. Even more interesting, the proteins themselves seemed to self-replicate, almost like prions, when more of them were needed to get the job done. It didn’t seem to prevent essential apoptosis. In fact, another enzyme-prion seemed to act like a cellular hit-man, taking out faulty cells with severely damaged DNA or overwhelming organelle damage. Another seemed to accelerate cell replication by enhancing the action of the ribosomes, and Leonard would be damned if he could figure out how it worked in time to save Jim before Starfleet got too nosy.
All of those proteins worked in a way that was compatible with almost any carbon-based, multicellular organism. If someone injected these proteins into any organism with common biology, from tribbles to Tellarites, it would work on any of them.
It was ingenious. It was incredible. And it was terrifying.
In a small tube in Leonard’s hands, he was holding a crude serum containing a set of proteins that would render a person all but immortal. Not completely, of course. Based on his preliminary studies of the serum on human tissue cultures, it didn’t have the capacity to regenerate lost body parts or to completely stop the aging process, but it would stimulate cells to regrow small areas of lost or necrotic tissue and to slow several factors in the aging process. It would repair deformities. It would extend life, possibly to double the expected life span.The implications were staggering.
“Are yeh gonna use it, laddie?”
Montgomery Scott was leaning against the doorframe of the lab, looking as bleary-eyed as Leonard felt.
With a sigh, Leonard tilted his head, inviting Scott to sit down before he fell over. “How can I not?”
Scotty settled himself with a grunt. “Simple as anything. Yeh put the thing in the recycler and walk away.”
“And you know I can’t do that.”
Scotty gave him a deeply sympathetic look. “Aye. Neither could I.” He glanced out through the door of the lab into the main part of sickbay. “I’ve been delaying them as much as I can without rousing suspicion, but I cannae do it for much longer. We’ve been at it for about thirty hours, and they’ll likely expect results by tomorrow. Once I finish the complete shut-down and decon of the core, I’ll have to hand the ship over to the engineers from spacedock.”
“And with no further reason to keep essential personnel aboard...”
“Right, McCoy.” He settled back into his chair. “We’ve all been through a lot with Jim, but you’ve been with him since you arrived at the Academy. I can’t imagine what it must feel like for yeh to see ‘im there. It was awful enough when I found him.”
“I...” Leonard looked up at Scotty, suddenly feeling an uncomfortable pressure in his chest. “I’ve wanted to ask you this since yesterday, but we’ve both been too busy. When... when you found Jim... why didn’t you keep trying to reach me? They only told me that there was a patient with critical radiation exposure. They didn’t say who it was.”
For a moment, Scotty froze, but then he leaned his elbows heavily on Leonard’s desk and sighed like a man who had picked up the world when Atlas dropped it. “They didn’t say who it was because I didn’t tell them. Partly because I couldn’t let the crew know what’d just happened to the captain. Not like that. Not over the comm. But also... because I know yeh, laddie. It was too late to save him from the radiation -”
“I would have wanted to see him one last time.” The admission was soft and harsh at once.
Scotty’s eyes widened slightly. “I know, McCoy. I know. But... you’re the man who came to me for help investigating the shuttle crash that almost killed Jim back at the academy, even though you knew that if I’d reported yeh, it could’ve ended your career.”
“It could have ended your career, too,” Leonard said flatly. “And you went along with it.”
“Aye, that I did. And I don’t regret it. Not one bit. I did it because I felt it was good and right to help you solve yer friend’s mystery, and I dinnae like the smell I was gettin’ from the whole mess. But you? You did it because you couldn’t turn the lad down, even if he didn’t know you were helping him, and even if it would have killed yer career in the process. You’d’ve done anything for Jim.” Scotty gave him a level gaze. “McCoy... there was nothing you could do for him.”
“I could have been there, dammit!”
“And done what? Dropped everything else, maybe even another critical patient? We were already in a crisis, and too many of the crew were injured.”
Leonard bristled. “I wouldn’t have abandoned another patient.”
“You would’ve thought about it, and you can’t tell me that it wouldn’t have ruined your ability to focus on the patients you could save.”
For a long moment, Leonard sat in silence, picturing what Scotty had described, over and over again. Finally, he let his head droop forward in defeat. “You’re right.”
“Of course I am,” Scotty said sadly. “Just because I work with the guts of ships instead of the guts of people doesn’t mean I don’t understand a thing or two about human nature. You’d follow that man anywhere. And although we haven’t known him as long, we all would.”
“I know.” Then Leonard looked at the vial of serum in his hand. “I still don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I start to think that maybe this is going too far, and I wonder if I would do this for any other patient. But then... I go to check on the cryo unit, and every time, I look at his face through the viewport, and it’s like he’s just asleep, and I’m just working on yet another cure for the latest scrape Jim Kirk got himself into. The line gets really blurry really fast.”
“What would Jim want you to do?”
Leonard opened his mouth, but shut it just as quickly when he realized that he didn’t have an answer.
Jim was a man who had cheated death more than once, and who would rewrite the rules so that he could beat the unbeatable. He didn’t believe in no-win scenarios, and if it was anyone else in that cryo pod, he would insist on trying anything and everything to bring them back.
But Jim was also a man who knew his own mortality, and had accepted it. People said he acted as though he thought he was immortal, but really, it was quite the opposite. To Jim, life was precious, but part of what made it precious to him was that it was so terribly fragile, and so horribly temporary. That’s why he went out on a limb so often - because to give anything less would be an insult to what he felt life should be. And if the price of living fully was dying sooner rather than later, then at least that meant he’d given it his all.
Jim would have accepted his death.
Leonard wasn’t ready to do that yet.
“I don’t know. But I know what I have to do.”
Scotty nodded slowly. “Then we’re with yeh, McCoy. Jim is a bloody piece of work, but he’s what makes this crew. We need our captain.”
“And I need my friend.”
“Aye.”
Leonard stared at the vial for another minute, then reached over and toggled the comm switch. “McCoy to Spock.”
“Spock here.”
“You said you wanted to know when we were ready. So... get down here. We’re about to get started.”
“On my way. Spock out.”
Scotty pushed his chair back from the desk and stood slowly. “I’ll be getting myself back to engineering. We’re about to start phase three of shutdown and decontamination of the core.”
“Okay.” Leonard nodded vaguely, still staring at the vial. “Good luck down there.”
“Thanks, McCoy. You too.”
“Thanks.” Leonard watched him leave, and when the door slid shut behind the chief engineer, he sighed. “Thanks,” he said again. “I’m gonna need it.”
*********
It was easier to put someone into cryostasis than to take them out. Even if you started with a live body, the cryo process would put a stop to all essential physiological functions. When you thawed out the body, it would technically be dead until you restarted all those functions again. That restart sequence was the tricky part, and between checking his tests on Khan’s blood serum, he’d been running computer models of the cryo reanimation sequence based on every historical reference he could find. They had a plan, and a better than 85% chance of initially reviving him.
Then, of course, there was the small matter of reversing an obscene amount of radiation damage before Jim died of it again.
The whole thing definitely had Leonard’s stomach tied up in knots. At least it was almost enough to distract him from the ethical dilemma that had been eating at him for the past thirty-two hours.
Almost.
“M’Benga, are you ready with neurostim?”
Geoffrey looked up from the panel just long enough to nod. “Powered up and ready to go.”
Leonard nodded. “Carlson, have you got the cardiopulmonary bypass primed?”
“It’s looking good.”
“Xiao?” He looked over at the pulmonary specialist. “Ready with respiratory support?”
“Yes, doctor.”
“Okay. Let’s get him out of there.” With hands that were far more steady than his nerves, Leonard activated the thawing cycle. “Spock, give me a temperature readout every five degrees until the last ten below the thaw point, then give me a degree-by-degree countdown.”
“Yes, doctor. Current temperature is 90 kelvins and rising at a rate of 15 kelvins per minute.”
“Dammit, Spock, give it to me in degrees Celsius.”
Spock gave him a very pointed eyebrow raise. “That system is much less efficient at ultra-low temperatures and -”
“Spock.”
“The temperature is now negative 181.3 degrees Celsius.”
The next several minutes dragged on, and Leonard was pretty sure they were all barely breathing until Spock gave the final countdown. Leonard’s hands actually did shake as he switched over from the automated process to the manual field manipulation that would almost instantly pull Jim’s body temperature above the freezing point of human blood.
The room was absolutely silent, and then, one green light came on at the head of the pod.
“Get him out of there!” Leonard slapped the trigger for the locking mechanism on the pod’s hatch, and the lid obediently flew open. “Gentle! Be gentle! Spock, lift from the left side. Right there.” Leonard slipped his hands under Jim’s head. So cold... so damned cold. “On three! One... two... three!”
Jim’s body was deposited on the biobed, and Leonard tried not to cringe. The radiation burns stood out in stark contrast to his horrific pallor, and, of course, he wasn’t breathing. Technically, he wasn’t alive. It was so completely wrong.
Everyone had been thoroughly briefed on their role in the resuscitation, so there wasn’t any need to speak beyond simple commands and coordinating movements. The room was oddly quiet despite the atmosphere of tension and possibly desperation.
Leonard was working on the cardiopulmonary bypass with Doctor Carlson, while M’Benga set up cerebral neurostim and monitoring sensors on Jim’s head. Within five minutes, Jim’s entire blood supply was being routed through a machine where it was oxygenated, cleansed, mixed with blood replenishers and nutrients, and returned to his body with enough pressure to keep it circulating. It was nowhere near as grotesque as the old-fashioned techniques that originated the concept, but it was still something Leonard didn’t like having to do to a patient... even a dead one.
When he finally looked up again from setting up the bypass, he found himself briefly amazed by the efficiency of his team. “Neurostim?”
“Active at ten percent and ready to increase the levels on your order,” M’Benga replied.
Leonard looked up at the respirator equipment. “Did it go smoothly?”
“As smooth as it could be, doctor,” Xiao said. “Elasticity is poor, but we’re already measuring trace oxygen absorption. We won’t know about carbon dioxide until his metabolism starts again, but he’s got lesions and damaged alveoli from the radiation burns in his lungs. Without the bypass, he wouldn’t be able to get enough oxygen anyway.”
“Well,” Leonard said, reaching for the equipment tray, “let’s see if we can get some of those lesions to heal up.” He grabbed the vial that he’d been contemplating too much over the past few hours, and without letting himself hesitate, he fixed it to one of the infusion ports on the bypass machine.
They watched in silence as the straw-colored serum drained into the machine, mixing with Jim’s blood where it was pumped back into his body. Seconds stretched into minutes. Leonard had no idea what he was waiting for. It wasn’t as though there was an established timeline for improvement in this process. He had no idea what to expect.
“Geoffrey... increase neurostim at a rate of two percent per minute until you reach fifty percent.”
M’Benga made the adjustment without a word.
“Signs of cellular metabolism?”
At the monitor station, Carlson pulled up a new readout screen. “Nothing yet.”
“Come on, Jim,” Leonard whispered to himself.
“Leonard,” M’Benga said suddenly, and there was a different tone in his voice. “I think I’m seeing some electrical activity in the medulla oblongata. I can’t be sure... it could just be that the pulses from the stim are being carried down.”
Leonard spun around and looked down at the neuro monitor screen. “Dead nerve cells don’t relay electrical impulses. Tighten the scan. Focus the sensors on the synapses in the brain stem.”
At first, it barely looked like an echo of the artificial electrical impulse being transmitted by the stim unit, but then, it got stronger. “I think we’ve got something,” Leonard said, trying not to let himself feel any real hope yet.
“Doctor McCoy,” Xiao spoke up. “I’m getting traces of CO2 in the gas mix. Lung elasticity is increasing.”
Leonard’s jaw fell slack for a moment as he took in the possibility that it might actually be working. “He’s metabolizing?”
Xiao pointed to a rise in the graph representing carbon dioxide concentration. “He might be blowing off some of the CO2 that was still in his tissues, but -”
“It’s better than nothing. Carlson, prep the full cardiac kit. We’ll start less invasive, but we might have to go to direct stimulation to get his ticker restarted.”
It was an unnecessary order; she was already activating the device and calibrating it. “How long should we wait?”
Leonard sighed. “I don’t know, Meg. We’re flying blind here. We don’t want to try restart his heart too soon if the tissues are still too damaged from the radiation. And hell, we don’t even know if this will work at all.”
“Well, something is working, Doctor McCoy,” Xiao chimed in. “CO2 levels are still increasing, and lung elasticity is still improving. I’ve worked on smoke inhalation victims enough times to know that elasticity doesn’t improve that quickly from burns. Something unusual is definitely happening.”
“We’re getting feedback on the neural sensors,” M’Benga said. “It’s definitely not just an echo.”
Leonard looked up at the biobed’s main readout. So far, nothing looked out of place on a large scale. Blood pressure was only measurable because of the pressure from the bypass. Oxygen saturation was good, but again, wholly artificial. “Get me a cellular scanner. I want to see what’s happening to his cell membranes.”
The device was placed in his outstretched hand, even as he was still staring numbly at the biobed readout. Shaking himself, he activated the scanner and pressed it to the inside of Jim’s forearm.
He blinked. Twice. And his jaw fell just a bit slack.
The cell membranes were knitting together at a remarkable rate. It should have been impossible, but the activity from the proteins was obvious. There was widespread cell destruction as well, and that would likely continue for a while, as the other parts of the serum sought out the cells with severe DNA and organelle damage and destroyed them. That would probably get progressively more ugly for a few days, but that was expected. In the meantime, cells and tissues that should have been dead and gone were knitting themselves back together at the cellular level in front of Leonard’s eyes.
“Un-fucking-believable,” he breathed. “Carlson, get the cardiac pads ready. I think we’ll be ready to shock his heart in about five minutes.”
“I’m on it.”
Leonard was still looking at the incredible cell regrowth under the scanner when he heard a beep.
Then another beep.
He looked up. “What the devil -”
“We’ve got a rhythm!”
Leonard looked up at the unexpected readout on the biobed’s main screen. “Carlson, did you shock him?”
“No! It just started on its own.” Carlson’s expression was wavering between stunned and ecstatic.
“Leonard, we’ve definitely got independent brain activity,” M’Benga said. “It’s spreading from the brainstem through the cerebellum. And... yes, I’m seeing signs of independent activity in the cerebrum.”
Leonard stared at his colleagues, and then down at Jim, who was still looking pale and damaged and fragile, but... dear God, he was alive.
“Congratulations, doctor,” came a steady voice by Leonard’s ear. Leonard startled to see Spock standing just behind him, giving him an unreadable look. “You’ve done it.”
Leonard swallowed. “I didn’t do anything, Spock. Someone else did. I just rode their coattails.”
“Were it not for your quick thinking and skilled actions, this would not be possible.”
Leonard stared at Spock for a moment, then across at the biobed readout. A steady cardiac rhythm was beeping, and all indicators of biofunctions were active. “I know,” Leonard finally said. “And I’m still praying that we’ve done the right thing.”
“Praying, doctor? I was not aware that you were a religious or superstitious man,” Spock said curiously.
“Spock, I just raised someone from the dead. If there was ever a time to pray, I think I’ve found it.” He sighed, and then, not caring what anyone else thought, he stepped closer to the biobed and wrapped his hand around Jim’s. The skin was still cool beneath his fingers, but it felt like human flesh again. Gently, he pressed two fingers against Jim’s pulse point, feeling the steady thrum of life coursing through veins.
“In my book,” Leonard continued, “life is better than death. I’ve spent my entire career trying to hold back the tide of death against the impossible odds of one to zero. I’ve beaten those odds for the first time in my life, and there’s a real chance that we’ll have Jim back, hale and whole.”
“Then logically, you would believe that this is good,” Spock stated, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“That’s just it... I’m not sure.”
*********
( To Chapter 2)