star trex xi fic: name the stars (chapter one) [mccoy/chapel, r]
name the stars (chapter one). star trek xi, r, 2959 words (this section).
The smile falls away from her lips and the last she sees of the Enterprise is his face, his eyes fixed on hers, his mouth opening to speak.
{index.}
{previous.}
chapter one.
…Here is the river, and here is the box, and here are
the monsters we put in the box to test our strength
against. Here is the cake, and here is the fork, and here's
the desire to put it inside us, and then the question
behind every question: What happens next?
{snow and dirty rain; richard siken.}
The morning begins quiet and slow. It’s really an unfavorable omen; Christine should know that by now.
It had been like this last week, just before things went to hell in a handbasket and Kirk showed up in her sickbay with an inhibition-reducing, highly-transmittable alien infection and a badly fractured leg and a team of bounty hunters on his heels wreaking havoc through the ship. That’d been a fun day.
But now it’s approaching the start of alpha shift and she and McCoy are leaving the mess together when McCoy is hailed by the captain over his communicator. “I need to see you in my ready room,” is all Kirk says shortly, and McCoy raises his eyebrows and nods in the general direction of the bridge while Christine takes a last juicy bite out of a Fergalian pear and discards the core.
“Well, come on, then,” he says. “It should only be a minute, he’s probably just looking for more sympathy on that leg of his.”
“Which you’ll provide in abundance, of course,” Christine says drily around a messy mouthful of fruit as they enter a lift, and he snorts and takes a swipe with his thumb at the sticky juice on her chin.
“Yeah, well,” he says. “He says I set the damned thing crooked. I say, osteo-regenerator aside, it hurts when you break a bone and then run around on it all day, and he should be used to it by now.”
“You’d think,” Christine says brilliantly, scrubbing at her face with the cuff of her sleeve to hide the bright flush that’s risen in her cheeks, and the lift opens and he gestures for her to step out first.
She arches an eyebrow at him; he shakes his head at her.
“And they say chivalry’s dead,” she teases him, going on ahead, and when they turn the next corner Kirk’s door opens readily to McCoy’s typed command.
Kirk’s sitting over his small desk, his bad leg propped up on a chair. “Hey, Bones,” he says, and though his voice is casual his face is tight and his eyes flick up and over McCoy’s shoulder to Christine for a moment; she crosses her arms almost defensively, but he doesn’t object to her presence, just waves them both in.
“Priority one distress call was just patched through,” he says as the door slides shut behind them, and under his fingers a recording comes up on the screen over his desk. “I don’t know if you remember it, but our second year at the Academy, they discovered a new Class M planet - completely uninhabited, though I guess there were clear signs of civilization and industry in the very recent past. Sit.”
“Ranaulma’ar IV,” Christine says, sitting obediently. “The ghost planet.”
“I remember something of it,” McCoy says grudgingly. “What about it?”
“That there’s Doctor Rucha Maji,” Kirk says, nodding at the pleading woman frozen on the viewscreen behind him, her mouth half-open and eyes wide. “Admiral Van Graan’s prized anthropologist, they served together on the Endeavour back in the day. She was assigned to the planet with a team of engineers and researchers to one of the deserted cities to figure out the place, find out what happened. It’s pretty far out here, so updates have been sporadic at best and non-existent for the past few weeks.”
“Which is where disaster strikes and we come in, I suppose,” McCoy says, voice resigned.
Kirk just nods back to the viewscreen and lets the recording play from the beginning.
Doctor Maji is sitting in what’s clearly her office, the architecture clean and sparse, a standard hastily-constructed cookier-cutter Starfleet base. It’s a wreck, though; what furniture is in the room is upturned and broken, and there’s a violent spray of what looks horrifically like blood across one clear wall. Her hands flutter agitatedly as she talks. “I’m sending this transmission on the morning of Stardate 2258.302. We just lost another of our men to it - ” She swallows convulsively, and Christine’s throat closes up in sympathy. “There’s only six of us left here, we’ve lost nearly all of our team since they disturbed it, since they woke it up, something’s disabled our transport crafts and Kohl, I think he’s lost his mind, he’s saying things about making sure it stays with us, that it won’t leave the planet - ”
“Kohl’s her head engineer on the project,” Kirk mutters out of the corner of his mouth.
“ - Please,” Maji finishes, and numbers flash briefly on the corner of the screen. “Please, someone come get us, I’m sending you our coordinates. We only have fifteen hours till sundown, but I know we won’t last out the night, for God’s sake, help us.”
There is a loud banging sound offscreen, and Maji starts in terror, and the transmission flickers to an end.
“So,” Kirk says.
“My God,” Christine says.
“Sounds like one of those awful pulp horror movies you love so much,” McCoy says. “What’re you planning on doing?”
“We’re going to pull them now, but the thing is,” Kirk says almost hesitantly, and Christine’s back straightens and she pays attention; as long as she’s known Kirk he’s never been one to approach things in anything but a perfectly straight line. “The thing is, it’s kind of a delicate situation. We’re going into geostationary orbit around the planet now, but I’ve got to keep it quiet - van Graan has a lot invested in this excavation, he’s the one who just sent along the call to me personally. I can’t go down there myself, but I need people I can trust to keep their mouths shut. I’ve got Kostya, one of the guys from archaeology and anthropology, he’s done a bit of research on the place himself and he knows what’s what, and I’ve got a good pair of people from security. But Bones, you saw that blood yourself. I want a medical officer down there.”
Christine goes cold, and though she doesn’t say anything she just looks at McCoy. His face is grim and wary.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Jim,” McCoy says, but at that moment Kirk’s communicator goes off and he flips it open, looking irritable at the interruption.
“Go,” he says.
Uhura’s voice over the communicator is tense. “Captain, there’s a coolant leak down by the warp core,” she says. “Five officers injured. They’re looking for Doctor McCoy.”
“Well, there you go, Jim,” McCoy says, lifting his hands away from the table and heading for the door. “I’m not going anywhere for a good while, and I’m not sparing any other doctors for this racket. Just send a handful of security officers down there and fetch back any wounded, then we’ll start talking.”
Kirk lets out an aggravated sigh and sits back heavily in his chair. “If the situation’s as bad as my gut’s telling me, I don’t want any landing party heading down there without medical officers,” he says, and then his eyes fix on Christine thoughtfully as she follows McCoy out. She shifts under the sudden scrutiny. “What about you, Nurse? Bones here trusts your judgement, and I know you’ve been stuck onboard for more than a month. Want to have a look for me?”
“Oh, hell no,” McCoy says instantly, hand holding back the door, and Christine looks between the two men, between her Captain and her direct superior, and her chin goes up and impulsively she says,
“Sure, why not?”
McCoy’s face is surprised, and something in Christine twists furiously; she’s got her pride, after all.
“What? You go on these things all the time, I’m not allowed to have an exploring itch?” She shrugs one shoulder eloquently. “It’s not your decision to make anyway. And he’s right, going down there into a possible crisis situation without medical personnel doesn’t sound all that bright to me. I can help.”
“It is absolutely my decision,” he says, stepping close, “you’re my staff and the only reason I go off on these fool missions of Jim’s is so everyone else doesn’t end up maimed or diseased or dead - ”
She thinks saying something like your xenophobia is showing again or for God’s sake, do you really think so little of my abilities that I can’t keep myself alive planetside for five minutes would probably not be conducive to achieving her goal, but she opens her mouth anyway and steps even closer and then Kirk is standing up and sidling between the two of them, limping on his bad leg, his hands stretched wide pacifyingly.
“All right, kids,” he says, “I think by now we’ve established by now that I’m the last guy anyone should go to for mediating conflicts in a rational and non-violent manner but so help me I will sit you down and play counsellor and solve this thing with words, lots and lots of touchy-feely words all over the place.”
Christine looks at McCoy mutely. His face doesn’t relax, tension written clearly in the tautness of his hands and neck and the quick rise and fall of his chest. His eyes though, are shadowed, and she can’t quite read them.
“Fine, go,” McCoy says finally. “Whatever happens, it’s on your own damn head.”
“Just in and out,” Kirk tells her, sitting back in his chair. “Let us know what’s going on as soon as you can, then we’ll beam all your asses out of there.”
“Yes, Captain,” Christine says.
Kirk smiles ruefully as he props his leg back up again. “You know I’d be down there myself if I could.”
“Believe me,” she says, “I know that, sir.”
McCoy is close behind her when she leaves. “Don’t you try and make him feel better,” he says, but she cuts him off -
“Oh, for the love of God, McCoy,” she says crossly, turning down the corridor to the transporter room. “It’s got to be done, it might as well be me as anyone else.”
“Fine. I’ll go. You stay here. Anybody can handle a few burns, they don’t really need me for it.”
She swings through the open doorway just in time to see Kostya Levin and the security officers, Blake and Medina, disappear in a blaze of light and scattering particles. She turns back to McCoy as she straps her satchel across her chest and snags a communicator.
“I’m just doing my job,” she says tiredly, and she can see his pulse jump in his throat. “Why’d you even hire me if you can’t trust me to do that much?”
He opens his mouth, and then closes it. “Sleeve up,” he says gruffly, and she obeys; he injects a subdermal locator into her forearm and adds a little more gently, his hand lingering on her bare skin, thumb pressed into the underside of her wrist, “And you know I trust you, I just don’t want to have to sort through the miles of paperwork to figure out which of those numbskulls down there is fit to replace you if you go get yourself killed by some crazy-ass scientist or a Lovecraftian denizen of the deep.”
“What a softie,” she says, but she smiles and when he lets go of her arm she feels strangely bereft. “You need to get down to sickbay, take care of the idiots from Engineering,” she adds, but he waves her words off as she steps up onto the now-empty platform.
“Be quick,” he says, crossing his arms. “Try and come back alive.”
“Energize,” she says, standing at the ready, and she tilts her head at McCoy mischievously, saying “Wish me luck?” as light swirls bright and brilliant around her. She’s joking, but at the same time she means it, and the smile falls away from her lips and the last she sees of the Enterprise is his face, his eyes fixed on hers, his mouth opening to speak.
There is a brief head-spinning moment of nothingness before the world reforms new and strange and solid under her feet again.
“Ugh,” Christine says, putting her hand to her head to steady herself. Her ears are ringing, and she’s not quite sure her stomach is in the right place; times like these, she can sympathise with McCoy’s distaste for transporter tech.
“Hey,” Blake says cheerfully, poking through a box; they’ve been put down in the outpost storage room, stacked high with supplies and well-packed artifacts and specimens, but weirdly the walls and ceilings are almost entirely made of transparisteel to let in a maximum amount of sunlight, opening onto a dun-coloured dimming sky and a grim craggy landscape of rocks and sharp drops. Christine looks up; the light is fading far faster than any sunset she’s ever seen.
“We’re getting some kind of electromagnetic interference here,” Kostya says; the holographic blueprint he holds out in front of him flickers dizzily in and out of coherency. “Our communicators keep cutting out.”
“Environmental?’
Medina makes a face and takes his phaser off his hip. “I really doubt it,” he says. “Looks like someone’s trying to get an EM field generator online.”
“Well, that’s not good,” Christine mutters, and they all whip around when a woman’s voice calls from down the hall.
“I’m down here,” they can hear her say faintly, and Blake and Medina lead the way in that direction. Christine follows behind Kostya, looking at the sky thoughtfully. The orange sun is hovering just above the horizon, just on the verge of disappearing.
When they find Doctor Rucha Maji, she’s sitting in the office from the distress call. It looks even more wrecked than it had before; the furniture has been swept back against the clear walls, and the whole place is rigged up with hot crude lights, hanging from the ceiling, lining the floor.
“You’re from the Enterprise?” Maji says. Her hands are visibly shaking, with fear or relief, Christine can’t tell. “Thank God. Get me the hell out of here.”
“But where’s the rest of your team?” Blake asks, squinting and shadowing her eyes.
Doctor Maji’s face is bleak. “There’s just Kohl and I left,” she says, and the power flickers. “And that’d be Kohl,” Maji adds, looking miserable.
“Well, why isn’t he here?” Medina demands. “I don’t think, given the circumstances, it’ll matter if you leave the lights on - I thought you guys just wanted out.”
Maji laughs, and there’s a note of frantic hysteria beneath it. “He doesn’t want to go anywhere,” she says, “she doesn’t want me to go anywhere, he doesn’t want you to go anywhere…”
Medina frowns. “So, what, he turned out the lights? What does he think that’ll achieve”
Doctor Maji shakes her heard, her eyes bright with terror. “He’s built a field inducer,” she says, “that will not only stop your ship from beaming any of us off this planet, but drain the internal power supply of this station and cut all the lights.”
Christine stares. “But why would he want to do that?”
“Doctor Maji,” Christine says sharply. “What’s going on here?”
The power goes out just as the sun dips completely past the horizon.
Doctor Maji’s jury-rigged lights keep running, but the rest of the building has fallen into darkness; Blake goes to the door and peers down the pitch-black hall, but Maji stands, looking petrified -
“Don’t,” Maji says, voice low with warning. “Whatever you do, do not step out of the light. Not a toe.”
A high-pitched humming fills the air, a murmuring that rises and rises in volume till it fills the air around them until it hurts to hear. Christine fingers the strap across her chest and tries to breathe deeply, in and out, feeling her blood rush to her limbs with panic.
“Chyort,” Kostya says desperately, his hands over his ears, “kakogo chyorta,” and he backs away into the middle of the wide circle of the light, grasping hard at Christine’s elbow.
“What the hell is that,” Medina says, looking back at them confusedly before he peers again into the empty blackness. “Bugs?”
“Don’t,” Maji says again, pushing past Christine, “what did I tell you, don’t - ”
Medina steps into the shadows, and he jerks like someone’s pulled him with all their strength; his head snaps back and his arm flails and before he has time for more than a terrible cut-off grunt he is gone into the darkness. There’s a horrible screeching, ripping noise, like a million teeth tearing into flesh at once, a billion insects buzzing in some kind of sick harmony, and Blake has her phaser out, her eyes wide and uncertain, and Kostya’s shouting something beside Christine but she can’t hear him over the noise and she can’t see anything of what’s happening in the shadows.
She steps forward for a closer look, shielding her eyes from the glare of Maji’s lights, and it’s like moving through water, moving in slow motion; she knows she’s calling Medina’s name but the sound is muffled and distant by the time it reaches her ears. The smell of blood and viscera chokes the air, and she gags, but heedless of Kostya at her side and Doctor Maji’s firm grip on her wrist, tugging at her, keeping her away from the darkness, she stretches her other hand out to pull Medina back -
The noise lets up suddenly, and there’s a moment of hideous, shocked silence before his broken skeleton collapses back into their ring of artificial light and crumbles into a fine dust.
{next.}