Fic: "Crossfire" (3/19)
Title: “Crossfire”, Part 3
Author: Mijan
Series: ST: XI
Character/Pairing(s): Kirk&McCoy, Pike, Scotty
Rating: PG-13
Author’s Notes: This story is part of the Academy-era story arc, which includes “Convergence” and “And All the King’s Men.” “Crossfire” is a direct sequel. Several things in this story will not make sense unless you’ve read AAtKM first.
Summary: Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy are on top of the world at the academy until it all comes crashing down around them. Trapped in their own mystery of politics, sabotage, and possible murder, it quickly becomes impossible to know who to trust. Worse, Jim might still be a target. With a dangerous criminal on the loose and Academy leadership not doing enough, Jim and Bones have to get their lives back together and find out what happened... before it happens again.
*********
CROSSFIRE, Part Three
It didn't seem right that life would go on buzzing around him, Leonard thought as he grabbed a tray in the mess hall Thursday morning. He had classes all day. Jim was on the other side of San Francisco Bay at Starfleet Medical, unconscious, and either alone in a room or being taken into and out of surgery to do follow-up repair work, and Leonard had goddamned classes.
And just how was he supposed to concentrate? Cellular Biology of Non-Mammalian Humanoids - oh yeah, that was important when his best friend was on life support. Later, he had Interspecies Cultural Exchange... and sure, as a doctor, he'd have to learn how to demonstrate a bedside manner for sentient beings from all over the quadrant, but right now, there was only one bedside where he wanted to be. Basic Piloting and Engineering... the required idiot-course for the non-engineers and non-pilots who had to live and work on those goddamned death traps they call starships.
"Hey, are you just going to stand there?" an impatient male voice came from behind him. "You're holding up the -"
Leonard turned and offered the young human cadet the most devastating glare he could muster.
The kid went pale. "Sorry sir... I... uh. Apple." He reached around Leonard, grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl on the breakfast bar, and hurried away as fast as he could.
Leonard watched him go, and glanced at the line that was backing up behind him. He didn't care to substantiate anything with words, so he lowered his eyebrows - I dare you to mess with me today - and continued down the bar at his own pace, gathering whatever food didn't turn his stomach. He didn't much care what he ate. It would all taste like sawdust anyway.
A couple of minutes later, he was sitting at a table in the far corner of the mess hall, working his way through a bowl of oatmeal, and half-listening to the news from the holovid screen on the wall. Nobody tried to sit with him, and he was grateful for that. In the mornings, the only person he could tolerate before his second canteen of coffee was Jim. That chair across from him had never looked emptier, and he'd never been less inclined to fill it.
Maybe he should skip his classes, he mused as he absently stirred his oatmeal. Could anybody blame him? Pike said he'd get the classes waived. But then, if he didn't go to class, what would he do all day? Go for a long contemplative walk through the city where something on every fucking block reminded him of Jim? Go over to Starfleet Medical and pace the hallway outside Jim's room until he drove Nurse Aldrich crazy and she hunted him down with a sedative? Try to review his next set of prototypes for his research project and start the modifications needed for the first round of live tests, expected to begin next semester...
Leonard dropped his spoon against the side of his breakfast bowl with a sharp clank. His devices had already had their first live test. Untried, not ready, never cleared for use on humanoids, and he'd used them on Jim. Jim, of all people. At the time, he'd felt that he had no choice, but he'd used unapproved and untested devices on a live patient. Suddenly, what little appetite he'd had vanished, and he pushed back from the table, trying to remember to breathe evenly.
He'd be forced to delay the project. Sure, the first emergency use of the devices had actually been at least partially successful... but he'd broken every medical trial protocol in the book by using them like that. Jim wouldn't be the only one facing an investigation. Maybe they'd take extenuating circumstances into consideration, as well as the fact that the devices hadn't failed, but there was no guarantee. And then, even if they didn't cancel or delay the project, he wasn't going to be able to stomach it for a while, because he wouldn't be able to look at the damned things without seeing them pressed to Jim's forehead, drenched in blood. The image began to resolve itself in his mind, and he shook his head in an attempt to clear it. He couldn't keep thinking about this. Not now. He needed a distraction.
Willing himself to think about anything else, Leonard forced himself to look at the holovid screen and actually pay attention to the news.
The installation of an updated weather control grid in Southeast Asia was proceeding on schedule, and the yearly monsoon season would be properly regulated. Good news, Leonard though with some sense of detached relief. He grabbed his canteen of coffee - not the replicated sludge they served in the mess hall, but the brew he'd made with his own machine and real coffee beans and Thank you, Captain Pike. The coffee brewer Pike had given him after last year's fiasco had gotten more than its fair mileage, and Leonard suspected it would be set on overdrive until this current debacle was over. Vaguely, he wondered if Pike had learned anything new in the investigation, but Leonard forcibly pulled his thoughts back to the newscast.
A Therbian delegation would be presenting a series of lectures on vivo-biochemistry at the Federation Life Sciences complex in Brazil. Leonard took another slow sip of coffee and wondered if he could get the notes from the lecture. The eighty-seventh annual Young Physicists Nanotechnology Expo would be held in Toronto this year. Leonard smiled - it was amazing what kids were creating these days. The Federation's credit system was being recalibrated to adjust for the confirmation of three new planets and their sentient inhabitants into the membership. Starfleet was vetting four engineering groups who were presenting new impulse drive designs for the next set of engine refits for the fleet.
Leonard got a slight twinge in his gut and held his coffee cup tighter as the woman on the screen continued to talk.
"This couldn't come at a better time, or perhaps a worse time, for Starfleet. While the refit of the fleet's warp engines began almost two years ago, there has been constant debate about the newer impulse engine design. For months, engineers have been discussing possible instability issues in the current design of sub-warp engines. Although there had been no significant documented problems to motivate a new selection in sub-warp drive technology for the continued refits, that may have all changed. The first fatal training accident in three decades has been confirmed by Starfleet Academy."
Unable to take his eyes from the screen, Leonard reached over and put his canteen on the table before he dropped it.
"Following an engine malfunction and complete systems failure, a training shuttle carrying two cadets crashed into the surface of Mars while doing a routine set of piloting maneuvers. One cadet was killed in the accident, and the other is in stable but serious condition at Starfleet Medical. Their names are being withheld for privacy reasons."
Leonard's hands clenched into fists in his lap. Not a fucking moment of peace. No, here it was, plastered brazenly all over the news vids. Those bastards sure as hell better keep Jim's name private, he thought vehemently.
"The cause of the engine malfunction is still under investigation, but Starfleet officials have noted that the upgrade in engine systems is long overdue."
The woman kept talking, but Leonard didn't want to hear it. Not a word of it. A simple engine malfunction? No, Jim had said sabotage. He saw something in the engine, and this newscaster's uninformed, speculative, simplistic media blurb wasn't going to gloss over the fact that something big had happened.
"In the immediate aftermath of this crash, a statement attributed to the group Terra Prime has been received by news sources, claiming that this crash is further evidence that human beings should not be traveling into space. However, they have not claimed responsibility for causing the crash, leading to speculation from various analysts. After last year's attempted bombing at Starfleet Academy, verbal threats have been issued several times, but no actions have been taken. For more on that story -"
No, Leonard definitely didn't want to hear another goddamned word of that story, thank you very much. Speculation. Yeah, they could speculate all they wanted to, but not until Jim was awake and alert and had said his piece, and goddammit, Jim. With a growl and a lurch, he was out of his chair, ready to grab his tray and bolt from the mess hall, but instead, he almost collided with a cadet who had apparently been standing right next to his chair.
Leonard backpedaled and almost tripped over his chair, glaring angrily at the petite Asian woman. "What the - don't sneak up on a man!" He quickly sidestepped and straightened himself up, noting that it wasn't just the cadet he'd nearly collided with, but three others standing off to the side who were watching him with some sort of anticipation. Not feeling particularly cordial, the only thing he could think to say was, "What the hell do you want?"
"We know you're friends with Jim Kirk," she said, and there was something disconcerting in her voice.
Leonard felt his shoulders clench, just a bit. "Yeah, I am." He shot her a skeptical look. "But you don't know me, so what do you care?"
She looked back over her shoulder at the other cadets - another human female, a human male, and an Andorian Thaan- then turned back to Leonard and took a bracing breath. "I'm Cadet Okoru. We're the rest of Kirk's flight squad. We were in the other two shuttles yesterday." She swallowed, and for the first time, Leonard noticed that her eyes were red and puffy, set in a face that looked too pale and drawn with lines of tension that looked too old for a face that young. "They told us that Tambe didn't make it, but that Kirk was alive. They wouldn't tell us anything else. We... we thought you might know... how is he doing?"
The fire went out of Leonard's argument so fast he almost felt like he was physically deflating. Grimacing, he looked over at the chronometer on the wall - 0718 hours. More than forty minutes before his first class. With a sigh, he nudged out the chair next to his own with his foot, jerked his head towards the table as a blunt invitation, then sat down.
It was almost instinctual - sit down with the friends and family of the patient and give them the news, for better or for worse. Tell them about their loved one. Distance himself from the emotions of the situation so that the other people could cry in either sorrow or relief. However, when the other four cadets were seated, the emotional distance between himself and his patient didn't appear. It couldn't. Not with Jim. So Leonard leaned his elbows on the table, looked around at the tight, weary faces of Jim's squad mates, and lied through his teeth.
"Jim's fine."
*********
He wasn't sure why he said it, not really. Maybe he knew that Jim wouldn't want people to know how bad it was. The kid did hate looking vulnerable in front of people, after all, and he had an insane tendency to brush off everything as nothing. He was just doing what Jim would want him to do. Perhaps it was because Leonard was still stuck on the idea of sabotage, and if Jim had been targeted by anyone, if it got out how weak he was, someone might try to finish the job before Jim could wake up and testify... Goddammit, what did he see in the engine of that shuttle? Maybe it was because Leonard still didn't really know how bad it was - wouldn't know until Jim woke up - and if he admitted how bad it might be, it would make it too real... too fucking real.
Either way, after fifteen minutes of downplaying the severity of Jim's injuries - yes, he's injured, and recovery will take a while, but he'll be fine - and listening to brief stories about Jim's antics as part of Nova Squadron, Leonard had to escape. These kids were certainly worried about Jim, and they really seemed to care about him, but they didn't know Jim. Not really. They knew the Cadet Kirk that Jim let the rest of the world see, and they were part of his team, and they were hurting. But they couldn't hurt the same way he did.
That first cadet, Okoru, seemed pretty shaken up, and he couldn't blame her - apparently she was the one who had asked whether they could safely complete the maneuver, and was still replaying that conversation in her head. And to add to the distress, she was the Assistant Squad Leader, which put her in charge now.
But really, they were all taking it pretty hard. The other woman, d'Eon, wasn't saying much, and seemed to be holding herself together by a thread. The Andorian, Thaleb, seemed more angry than anything else, but it seemed reasonable for an Andorian. He trusted his squadmates' abilities, and was convinced that Kirk and Tambe had been sabotaged - a heinous, cowardly act. It was all Leonard could do not to overtly agree with him. Freeman seemed lost for something to do; agitated and helpless. Hell, Leonard could certainly sympathize with that.
It didn’t help that random people kept looking at him oddly as he hurried across the campus to his first class. He couldn’t figure out why until he recognized the looks they were giving him: pity.
Fuck... they all know I'm friends with Jim. Leonard generally kept to himself, and he liked it that way, but Jim knew everyone. Everyone knew Jim. Most everyone liked Jim. And by extension, everyone probably knew that Jim's best friend was a cranky old doctor that he kept calling Bones.
By the time he made it to his Interspecies Cultural Exchange class, he felt like he'd been through a gauntlet and was happy to hide in the back of the class and pretend to listen to the lecture.
Nearly four hours later, Leonard emerged from his Cellular Biology lab with the distant knowledge that he hadn't really learned a thing that day. The comparative slides of alien epithelial tissues all blended together in his mind, and he needed to go hide from humanoid contact until his Basic Engineering and Piloting class. They'd just started the unit on propulsion essentials.
Leonard hated being anywhere near the damned shuttles and ship engines, but every officer needed to know the raw basics. At least the young Lieutenant who was teaching the engineering portion of the class seemed to love engines the same way Leonard loved medical science, and he could respect that. And really, if nothing else, it might give him some clue of what to look for if he helped Jim investigate this mess, so he might as well go to the class. It would feel useful, in some bizarre way.
Basic Engineering classes were held in one of the lab buildings directly adjacent to the hangar down on East Campus. Rather than work his way through the crowds in the mess hall or student center, Leonard decided to hide from the world down at the old Warming Hut. It was convenient. Plus, they made a decent chicken salad and a more-than-adequate cup of coffee.
His feet carried him down the paths from the Presidio to East Campus and out onto Crissy Field. The sky was gray, the wind had a bite to it, and the fog itself seemed to be seeping into his bones.
All I've got left is my bones. Jim had teased him for that. Jim.
Finally, he arrived at the Warming Hut, a building that had lived long past practicality, but still served hot beverages to wind-chilled beach-goers at the western end of Crissy Field as it had for almost three hundred years. He pushed through the squeaky door. The weathered floor and wooden construction looked odd in contrast to the modern buildings visible through the old glass windows. The air even smelled older somehow, a bit like the house he'd grown up in.
Patchy fog drifted across the bay as he stared out the old-style glass windows, and the dusty smell of real wood combined with the aroma of toasting bread, reminding him too much of something out of his childhood. And here he was, years later and so much distance away, sitting in San Francisco as a member of Starfleet... feeling just as small and clueless as he’d felt decades ago.
Only now, there was no safety net. No blissful ignorance of youth. There was only the cold glass and patches of fog spanning the gap between his seat in the Warming Hut and the venerable structure of the main building of Starfleet Medical, barely visible across the bay.
Leonard scowled down at the rest of his chicken sandwich as his last vestiges of appetite laughed at him and disappeared.
It was still too early for class, but at least he could head over to the Engineering lab and start reviewing shuttlecraft schematics. Loathesome topic, particularly right now, but he had to do it.
Depositing the rest of his lunch in the reprocessor unit, he pushed out through the door and bent his head into the wind. Even with the hill of the Presidio blocking the worst brunt of the weather, it was an unpleasant day - clammy and raw. He clenched his teeth and tried to ignore the chill as he hurried towards the gate to East Campus.
He almost didn’t realize that the security guard at the gate was talking to him until the man’s arm physically blocked his path. He looked up, blinked, and asked, “I’m sorry... what?”
The security guard blew out an exasperated breath. “I said that the hangar is restricted right now, Cadet. No access.”
Leonard blinked again, feeling stupid. “I’m not going to the hangar. I have class in the Engineering building in a half hour.”
But the guard shook his head, looking more irritated by the minute. “Sorry, Cadet. Haven’t you paid any attention to the campus-wide notices? All classes and flight sessions down here are cancelled. The whole complex is restricted until further notice for the investigation.”
Leonard felt his eyes go wide. Of course, you idiot, he thought to himself. “Oh... because of the crash, right?”
“They’re combing the hangar for clues as well as using the labs building for investigative work,” he said with a sarcastic nod, then shook his head again in amusement, “Well, at least there’s some sign that you haven’t been living under a rock for the past two days.”
In an instant, the mental fog lifted, making way for something sharp and angry. “No, sir. Not under a rock. But I’ve spent most of the past two days at Starfleet medical, trying to put the real damage from that crash back together. Body parts are a bit more touchy than glorified chunks of metal.”
The guard’s jaw dropped slightly. “Oh... I...”
“Yeah,” Leonard cut him off, feeling vindictive. The anger felt good. “So forgive me for forgetting that the rest of campus is more worried about the scraps from that flying tin can than the guy who was flying it.”
The slack of the guard’s jaw instantly tightened. “Cadet... we’re all worried about Kirk. I’m sorry.” His mouth twisted. “You’re his doctor?”
Leonard started to nod, but then shook his head. Sure, he’d worked on Jim as a physician, but that wasn’t a fraction of the truth. And friend didn’t cover it either. No, Jim had named him as next-of-kin. The kid was family. Leonard gave the security guard a grim look. “His brother.” It was the closest word he had for it.
The guard opened his mouth, but then snapped it shut again and gave a sympathetic nod. Leonard thought it might have been his imagination, but it looked like the guy’s eyes were a bit tight and strained. He nodded again. “I’m sorry,” he said, softer this time.
Leonard gave an uneasy tilt of his head. “Yeah. Me, too.”
Suddenly feeling uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t quite comprehend, Leonard turned on his heel and hurried off towads the main campus, feeling even more lost than before. It would be over two hours until his afternoon lab session. More empty time to fill. Too much time, and too much emptiness.
He was almost all the way to the bend around the path that would take him towards the main campus when he looked back at the hangar building. It was a massive structure that always gave him the chills... mostly because it was full of those deathtraps they called shuttlecrafts. It was no less chilling now - in fact, it was severely more unnerving - but this time, he also felt a desperate need to be there, at that very moment. There was an investigation going on behind the walls of that building... an investigation that should uncover the truth behind what happened to Jim. And whatever it took, damning anything and anyone that got in his way, Leonard McCoy needed to know.
Narrowing his eyes at the gray walls of the hangar, he nodded once, then walked away.
*********
The halls of Starfleet Medical were almost oppressively quiet as Leonard walked past the front admin desk. They knew him well enough that the woman at the desk just waved him through. He stopped at the nurse's desk in the intensive care unit and found Nurse Patel.
"How's he doing?" Leonard knew he didn't need to specify whom.
Patel looked up from the computer terminal, from which she was monitoring patient stats. "As well as can be expected. He had the spinal stabilization procedure as scheduled, plus some regen therapy during the day. Everything went very well. He hasn't destabilized, but he's been unconscious the whole time." She sounded detached and professional. Leonard knew that tone of voice - he used it with patients' families. He'd never realized how horrible it sounded from the other side.
"Details?" He squeezed his hands into fists, then forced himself to relax them again. "Come on, I know I'm not his doctor and I know I've been taken off this case, but at least tell me what's been going on as if I know more than the average lay person."
For a moment, she looked at him sympathetically, then let out a heavy breath. "I shouldn't be doing this," she said in an undertone as she tapped a few controls on her computer terminal, "but it's easier than answering a hundred questions. There, I've given you access to his chart. Read-only. On one condition."
"What's that?"
"Leave your med kit here at the desk."
Leonard wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her that no self-respecting doctor went anywhere without basic equipment. There was no reason on earth for him to leave his equipment behind. Besides, it wasn't as if he was going to treat Jim. He just always carried his med kit. And besides, if something went wrong, and Jim started to have some sort of complication, what was he going to do without... "Oh." Then again, maybe she was right. "Okay." He set his kit behind the desk, trying to ignore the hot flush of undefined emotions eating at the edge of his consciousness. "Anything else?"
"Yes... they took him off the sedatives an hour ago."
Leonard felt his heart jump as he pulled his PADD out of his bag and called up Jim's chart, skimming through notes and scans recorded over the past twenty hours. "Has he shown any signs of consciousness since then?"
She shook her head. "Sorry, Doctor McCoy. But these things take time."
"I know," he grumbled, quickly catching up with Jim's current stats, then finally looking back at the nurse. "Yeah, I know. But thank you for this." He held up his PADD meaningfully.
"Sure," Patel said with a note of resignation. "Just don't push my luck, okay?"
Leonard nodded firmly. "I owe you."
"You bet you do."
Turning away, Leonard took one last glimpse at his PADD before tucking it under his arm. He actually felt nervous approaching Jim's door. The previous night, when he'd sat by Jim's bedside until Nurse Aldrich had come in and threatened him with sedation if he didn't go home and get some sleep, he'd still been in something like a state of shock the whole time. None of it had quite seemed real. It was real now, and there was no way to avoid this reality.
And last night, Jim had been intentionally sedated - he was supposed to be asleep. But now, they'd stopped administering the sedatives, and those perpetually mischievous, eternally sharp eyes should be opened, waiting for him when he walked into the room. And the door to the room was opening, and Jim was there, but his eyes were closed, and he was silent. Too goddamned silent. Even unconscious, his face seemed tense, uneasy, troubled.
Leonard walked to the chair by Jim's bedside and sat down resignedly. "Hey kid."
Jim didn't twitch, but Leonard hadn't expected it. Still, he knew that familiar voices were helpful and soothing, even if a patient was unconscious. Besides, he needed to talk.
"Haven't been able to think straight all day. You sure do know how to make a man worry, you know?" He watched Jim's face with the absolutely futile hope that the kid would open his eyes, wink, smirk, blink, flinch... anything. No, his face was motionless. And bruised. God damn... the bruising on Jim's face... it was horrible. "You still don't know how to do anything in half-measure, do ya, Jim? I told you that bruises aren't a good look on you. That was a pretty spectacular trauma scene you caused. You can brag about it later, if you want. And you owe me a new set of scrubs."
Leaning against the side of the bed, Leonard folded his arms beneath his chin and looked up at Jim. Instinctively, part of him wanted to really check Jim's vitals from head to toe, try an extra round of regen therapy, see if there was anything he could do to make Jim wake up faster, but he knew that he shouldn't. Not this time. After a point, a patient needed nothing more and nothing less than pure rest. And waiting helplessly was maddening.
Leonard sighed. "Yeah, you've pretty much got me worried sick. I had to take a sedative last night to get to sleep. Not gonna do that tonight. Those were some nightmares I'd rather not relive. I'm probably not going to sleep right until you wake up. Hell, you can even wake me up in the middle of the night to pester me anytime you want." He felt his breath hitch, and had to look away, staring at his hands that he was clenching together furiously.
After a moment, he cleared his throat. "I'm sorry I sent you out like that yesterday morning, kid. I didn't mean it like that. God, I hope you know I didn't mean it like that. And you know you can always come to me. I hope you know that." He looked up again, feeling a pang of anxiety. "You have to know that."
Of course, Jim said nothing. Not even a twitch.
Leonard stared at Jim for a long moment, eyes tracing down to Jim’s motionless hand nestled at his side, and he suddenly felt an overwhelming need to squeeze it to reassure himself that Jim was warm and alive; to grasp Jim’s wrist so he could feel that pulse beneath his fingertips; to squeeze harder, and shake the kid until he’d wake up and complain about Bones snapping him out of a dream involving scantily clad Orion women. Anything to make the stillness go away, and to reassure himself that there was still life under that statue-like form lying on the biobed.
Of course, despite his wrung-out emotions, he was still a doctor, and the biobed readout should have been enough reassurance that Jim was alive and stable. Besides, the last thing Jim needed, physically at least, was for anyone to jostle him. His spine and pelvis were still too unstable. With a barely-patched radius and ulna, it was probably better if Leonard didn't put any pressure on Jim's arm, either. The artificial osteoblast cells that were rapidly rebuilding bone mass worked better if left alone and not disturbed between sessions with the regen field. Hands off. That was best.
The biobed was supporting Jim's respiration, stimulating soft tissue regeneration, regulating his blood pressure, monitoring his heartbeat... and all Leonard could do was sit there and watch helplessly, waiting. Somewhere behind those eyelids, Jim was in there. Maybe he'd open his eyes soon, maybe he wouldn't. Even modern medicine couldn't fix everything, couldn't predict everything.
And even modern medicine couldn't replace the human touch.
He tentatively ran his hand over Jim's arm. Then, gently, ever so gently, avoiding the osteo-immobilizer unit just above Jim's wrist and the IV in his hand, Leonard wrapped his fingers around Jim's and squeezed lightly. "It's okay, kid. I'll be here when you wake up."
Maybe it was his imagination, but Jim seemed to relax slightly, and Leonard thought he heard a soft sigh. It wasn't much, but it made something in Leonard's chest ache. "Rest easy, Jim."
Leonard lost track of time as he sat there. He rambled about classes and taking a trip to Georgia and maybe letting Jim drag him to the Sierra Nevada range on their next weekend of leave as he watched the sky slowly go dark outside the window of Jim's room. The colors of the sunset were hidden by the fog, and the bridge and Starfleet Academy across the bay were likewise shrouded, but at least the fog was familiar. It felt like a cocoon around the small ICU room, secluded from the rest of the world as darkness fell around them.
And then the door slid open, breaking the cocoon and startling Leonard out of his own personal fog. He shook his head as he dropped Jim's hand, blinking in surprise at the person standing in the doorway. "Wha... Commander Toland?"
"Relax, McCoy." Her voice was soft as she moved as if to step into the room, then hesitated. "I wanted to see how he was doing. May I come in?"
Leonard hadn't seen the woman in months, since his clinic and research schedule had taken him away from acting as duty doctor for training simulations. They were far from friends, but after what he'd learned about the past Toland shared with Jim, he respected her a bit more. And he knew that she had the same respect for Jim in turn. Then he frowned. "Wait... this is the ICU. Only family and people the patient had previously listed as contacts should be able to come in."
Nurse Aldrich’s face appeared around the edge of the doorframe. “That’s why I told her to ask you,” she said flatly, “and she knows I’ll escort her right back out if you want me to.”
Toland gave him a meaningful look.
"Oh." Letting out a slow breath, he finally nodded. "Sure, have a seat."
Aldrich nodded once in approval, then disappeared. Toland stepped up to the foot of Jim's bed, but didn't sit. "I won't stay for long, but I needed to check in on him myself. After last year... well, I can tell you that you and Captain Pike aren't the only people looking out for Kirk. I got the full preliminary incident report from the crash." Her jaw visibly clenched. "I'd say it's amazing he lived through it, but I think we've gotten to the point where we should never put anything past him."
Leonard glanced at Jim, then back up at Toland. "Yeah, that's about right."
"Has he woken up yet?"
"No." The word almost stuck in Leonard's throat. "He's not technically comatose, but... we'll see."
She grimaced. "Better than it could have been, I guess. I heard he wouldn't have made it at all without you."
A weak shrug was the best he could manage. "I was there. That's all."
"Well, a lot of us are glad you were there." A pained smile tugged the corner of her mouth. "I'm sure Kirk will be, once he wakes up."
"Yeah." The word felt like sawdust in his throat.
If Toland sensed his discomfort, she didn't draw attention to it. Instead, she nodded her head towards the door. "Has anyone else been in to see him?" There was an odd note to her voice; something was off.
"Not since I got here," he said slowly, suddenly uncertain. "But if they're having people like you ask my permission, I can't think of anyone else other than Captain Pike who could possibly have been allowed in. Why?"
Toland shook her head. "Just wondering."
Leonard didn't believe that for a minute. Toland was not a person inclined to mince words, waste questions, or resort to small talk. "Commander, what's going on?"
Her face was hard, but her eyes were worried. It was disconcerting. "I wish I could say, McCoy."
Oddly, that was something Leonard was sure she meant, even though he wasn’t quite sure why, but he was just as certain that it wouldn't do him a bit of good to call her on it. He let out a slow breath, considering what to say. "Do you want me to tell you if he wakes up?"
She opened her mouth, and the yes seemed to be ready to jump off her tongue, but suddenly, she shook her head. "Tell Pike, not me. In fact, don't tell Kirk I was here."
"Commander?" Leonard didn't like this. Not one bit.
For a moment, Toland looked at him, her face utterly unreadable, but then she pressed her lips together grimly. "I'm sorry, McCoy. I'm really sorry. And I only wish I could tell Kirk."
An unsettled feeling twisted Leonard's stomach. "Tell him what?"
She only shook her head, and patted the foot of the biobed. "Take care of him, okay?"
Leonard could only nod dumbly as she turned and walked out the door. It was a long time before he moved again, and then, it was only to wrap his hand around Jim's.
*********
"So... the lateral sensor array feeds information directly to the navigational computers via the... the... primary core relay?" Leonard's neck and shoulders were sore and bunched as he leaned over the engine schematic display panel in the theoretical engineering lab. He'd barely had a wink of sleep the night before, sprawled awkwardly in a chair by Jim's biobed, but he wasn't about to miss his appointment for this tutoring session. Not today. Not after the cancelled class from yesterday. He glanced sideways at the instructor for Basic Engineering, looking for some sign of approval that maybe he'd gotten it right.
The instructor was a young Lieutenant who didn't look old enough to be an assistant instructor for a general introductory course, much less the one of the two actual professors, but the man seemed brilliant, if unorthodox. He reminded Leonard of Jim in that way. Leonard liked the guy.
The Lieutenant also made a point of running extra instructional sessions for his academic units. Leonard had been the only one to show up for the extra instruction more than once, so it quickly turned to one-on-one tutoring sessions. It was a bit less nerve-wracking to deal with his own academic shortcomings when he wasn’t in a classroom full of snot-nosed cadets ten years his junior who made it look easy. And the Lieutenant didn’t make him feel like a fish out of water, trying to learn this stuff.
Now, if only this class’s flight instructor will help me as much as the engineering instructor, Leonard thought cynically, but he couldn’t count on it. They’d be starting to fly the shuttles soon, not just studying shuttle schematics, and Captain Sullivan would head up that portion of the course. He seemed nice enough, but that didn’t mean he was going to be able to spend time doing extra one-on-one flight training with aviophobic students. For now, Leonard would just take what he could get.
Still, the instructor shook his head and leaned over the shuttlecraft schematic, patiently tracing his finger along the diagram. “Nae, laddie, look again. The lateral sensors connect to the nav computers externally to the main core.” Lieutenant Scott's thick accent was oddly soothing, and it made this entire class easier to stomach. "If yeh look here, the core components, such as the primary core relay circuits, all communicate within this zone, inside the core itself. Ach, it would be a bit easier to show yeh on a real shuttle, but that won’t be happenin’ for a few days yet." The last bit came out with a faint growl that had Leonard raising an eyebrow.
Scott waved off the implied inquiry. “These theoretical labs weren’t designed for basic instruction. Just the best we can do for now.” Then he gave Leonard a thoughtful look. "You're a doctor when yer not sweating about being stuck around engines and space flight, aren't yeh, McCoy?"
Leonard nodded.
"Aye, then try to think of this like a man's brain." He placed his hand flat over the central computer portions of the diagram. "Here ye have the nav computer, internal engine processors, data core, life support regulators. That's all the central core... like a brain."
"And the nerve connections between different regions of the brain are like the primary core relay. Makes sense," Leonard said with a nod, starting to understand the analogy.
"Good. So if yeh have a set of sensors... say like yer hands... those signals travel to the brain by the major nerves, don't they?"
Leonard couldn't help but smile faintly. "So peripheral nerves... peripheral data relays."
Lieutenant Scott broke into a wide grin. "See doctor? We'll make an engineer out of you yet."
"God, I hope not."
"It's not so different from taking care of people, McCoy." Scott straightened up and looked away from the engine schematic diagram and gazed at the image of a Constitution Class starship set in a large frame on the far wall of the lab. There was a fond wistfulness in his eyes. "A ship has a personality. She's made of parts, yes, but since when is anything just the sum of its parts?"
Leonard felt the faint smile falter, remembering the brief unit on transporter system basics they’d covered last month. "Seeing as we could all be reduced to nothing more than sub-atomic particles and fed through a pattern buffer, I guess I'll have to agree with you."
"Aye," Scott said, and the expression on his face became almost reverent. "Treat a ship like a lady, and she'll always bring you home. You remember that now, yeh hear?"
But what if the ship doesn't come home? Gritting his teeth, Leonard stood back from the display panel and squared himself towards Scott. Enough with the regular coursework; there were more important issues to tackle. Bracing himself, Leonard cleared his throat. "I will. But that reminds me... I've got a question for you." He leaned heavily on the schematic display panel.
“Fire away, laddie,” Scott said invitingly. “That’s what a tutoring session is for, isn’t it now?”
Leonard took a breath. “Impulse engines,” he said - and apparently it was all he had to say.
Scott’s face changed abruptly, switching from his usual impish expression to something darker. “Trying to understand what happened on Wednesday?”
Not trusting his voice, Leonard gave a tight nod.
“So are a lot of folks ‘round here,” Scott said, quieter now. “It’s an ugly thing, McCoy. My heart goes out to those poor buggers’ families.”
Leonard flinched sharply, trying to block the images that threaten to come flooding back: Jim, motionless on a biobed, nothing like he should be. “Yeah,” he choked out.
“And then,” Scott continued, with an added sharpness to his voice, “those blasted engineering companies are back again, using this tragedy to press us into letting them refit our ships even sooner - as if Starfleet engineers aren’t already the best there are. They’re talking as if a cadet’s death was down to Starfleet incompetence. Bloody parasites.” He spat that last word with a smattering of vitriol.
“Yeah,” Leonard said again, almost feeling the bile rising in his throat, and he had to swallow it back.
“All right there, McCoy?” Frowning, Scott studied his face a bit closer. "This isn't just curiosity, is it? This is personal."
Leonard looked back at him tightly for a moment before nodding. "You're an astute man, Lieutenant Scott," he said roughly, then he paused and considered his options. It was a risk, but if Leonard had any skill whatsoever for reading people, he'd guess that Scott could be trusted. That’s why he’d meant to ask him about this in the first place. In the weeks that he'd been meeting Scott for extra instruction, just so he could keep up with this god-forsaken class about these goddamned death traps, he'd gotten the impression that this was a man who wouldn't be afraid to bend the rules for what he felt was right. Sometimes, he thought the guy would even bend the laws of physics to get around a problem. Jim would like him, Leonard thought wistfully. If anyone would be able to help Leonard start to unravel this puzzle, this was the man. Nodding to himself once, he went with his gut instinct. "Can you keep this conversation private?"
Eyes absolutely solemn, Scott held up his hand. "From one Scotsman to another."
Leonard snorted. "I'm from Georgia."
The other man shrugged. "Yeh never lose yer name, McCoy." His face became dead serious. "So what's eatin' you?"
Leonard took a bracing breath. "I may or may not know a bit more about the shuttle crash than most of the folks around here. And I may or may not be friends with the kid who survived it."
Scott's eyes went wide. "So you're the good doctor who's friends with Jim Kirk, aren't yeh? And don't look so surprised, McCoy. People talk. I should've put it together. Nae, I've not met the lad myself, but I can keep my ears open as well as I can keep my mouth shut. There are plenty of rumors. Is Kirk all right?"
Leonard nodded dismissively - the question was unavoidable, but it wasn't why he brought it up with Lieutenant Scott. "He'll recover, but it will take time. We've got a different problem that I’d like to solve right now."
"Yeh want to know what made the shuttle's engines fail," Scott filled in for him. Leonard nodded, but Scott shook his head. "Impossible, laddie. I can turn a ship's engines inside out and put them back together again in my sleep, but without the data from the flight recorder... and that's classified... there's no way to know."
"I've got it."
Scott's mouth dropped open with an unspoken question, eyebrows furrowing in confusion, a split-second before his expression morphed into a grin like the cat that caught the canary. "I won't ask how yeh got it, but I'm guessin' yer not supposed to."
"It wasn't classified when I received it," Leonard said dryly.
"Aaaah. So no classified materials were technically transferred, right? Then no rules were broken,” he said conspiratorially. “And... might I ask... is there a reason we'd be launching our own little investigation?"
Leonard opened his mouth, but held back. Really, he had no logical reason. There was an official investigation going on, and those people were far more qualified to figure out a mystery like this... but he couldn’t leave it alone. So, he fixed Scott with the most sincere, determined look he could muster. "Because I need to know what happened to my friend, I'm just not willing to leave it to chance that someone else might fuck it up." The unspoken implication, because I don’t even trust Starfleet’s best with anything that involves Jim, hung in the air.
A look of understanding crossed Scott's face. "Aye, I'll take it at that."
"We're still confidential?"
"I'd swear it on the Highlands themselves, and my last bottle of Scotch."
“That’s a pretty serious oath.”
“I’d give yeh nothing less, McCoy.”
With an odd feeling, something like hope, Leonard bent down and pulled his PADD out of his messenger bag. A moment later, he and Lieutenant Scott were bent over his PADD, whispering conspiratorially, intently watching every second of the flight recorder feed. Leonard relayed what he already knew, but it was all there in the PADD's internal database. Chain of events, the drops in efficiency, the involvement of the inertial dampeners, and the system-wide failure. It was like going over a patient's history, only with a shuttlecraft instead. Maybe this guy's right - a ship is a bit like a patient. Symptoms, complications, diagnoses. He watched Scott's eyes, and could almost see the calculations and theories spinning there. When the recording ended, Scott shifted, sighed, and looked dimly across the lab with an air of pained longing.
"I haven't got anything certain for yeh, McCoy... but I've got some ideas." His mouth twisted grimly. "And I don't like a damned one of them."
*********
(To Part Four...)
Author: Mijan
Series: ST: XI
Character/Pairing(s): Kirk&McCoy, Pike, Scotty
Rating: PG-13
Author’s Notes: This story is part of the Academy-era story arc, which includes “Convergence” and “And All the King’s Men.” “Crossfire” is a direct sequel. Several things in this story will not make sense unless you’ve read AAtKM first.
Summary: Jim Kirk and Leonard McCoy are on top of the world at the academy until it all comes crashing down around them. Trapped in their own mystery of politics, sabotage, and possible murder, it quickly becomes impossible to know who to trust. Worse, Jim might still be a target. With a dangerous criminal on the loose and Academy leadership not doing enough, Jim and Bones have to get their lives back together and find out what happened... before it happens again.
*********
CROSSFIRE, Part Three
It didn't seem right that life would go on buzzing around him, Leonard thought as he grabbed a tray in the mess hall Thursday morning. He had classes all day. Jim was on the other side of San Francisco Bay at Starfleet Medical, unconscious, and either alone in a room or being taken into and out of surgery to do follow-up repair work, and Leonard had goddamned classes.
And just how was he supposed to concentrate? Cellular Biology of Non-Mammalian Humanoids - oh yeah, that was important when his best friend was on life support. Later, he had Interspecies Cultural Exchange... and sure, as a doctor, he'd have to learn how to demonstrate a bedside manner for sentient beings from all over the quadrant, but right now, there was only one bedside where he wanted to be. Basic Piloting and Engineering... the required idiot-course for the non-engineers and non-pilots who had to live and work on those goddamned death traps they call starships.
"Hey, are you just going to stand there?" an impatient male voice came from behind him. "You're holding up the -"
Leonard turned and offered the young human cadet the most devastating glare he could muster.
The kid went pale. "Sorry sir... I... uh. Apple." He reached around Leonard, grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl on the breakfast bar, and hurried away as fast as he could.
Leonard watched him go, and glanced at the line that was backing up behind him. He didn't care to substantiate anything with words, so he lowered his eyebrows - I dare you to mess with me today - and continued down the bar at his own pace, gathering whatever food didn't turn his stomach. He didn't much care what he ate. It would all taste like sawdust anyway.
A couple of minutes later, he was sitting at a table in the far corner of the mess hall, working his way through a bowl of oatmeal, and half-listening to the news from the holovid screen on the wall. Nobody tried to sit with him, and he was grateful for that. In the mornings, the only person he could tolerate before his second canteen of coffee was Jim. That chair across from him had never looked emptier, and he'd never been less inclined to fill it.
Maybe he should skip his classes, he mused as he absently stirred his oatmeal. Could anybody blame him? Pike said he'd get the classes waived. But then, if he didn't go to class, what would he do all day? Go for a long contemplative walk through the city where something on every fucking block reminded him of Jim? Go over to Starfleet Medical and pace the hallway outside Jim's room until he drove Nurse Aldrich crazy and she hunted him down with a sedative? Try to review his next set of prototypes for his research project and start the modifications needed for the first round of live tests, expected to begin next semester...
Leonard dropped his spoon against the side of his breakfast bowl with a sharp clank. His devices had already had their first live test. Untried, not ready, never cleared for use on humanoids, and he'd used them on Jim. Jim, of all people. At the time, he'd felt that he had no choice, but he'd used unapproved and untested devices on a live patient. Suddenly, what little appetite he'd had vanished, and he pushed back from the table, trying to remember to breathe evenly.
He'd be forced to delay the project. Sure, the first emergency use of the devices had actually been at least partially successful... but he'd broken every medical trial protocol in the book by using them like that. Jim wouldn't be the only one facing an investigation. Maybe they'd take extenuating circumstances into consideration, as well as the fact that the devices hadn't failed, but there was no guarantee. And then, even if they didn't cancel or delay the project, he wasn't going to be able to stomach it for a while, because he wouldn't be able to look at the damned things without seeing them pressed to Jim's forehead, drenched in blood. The image began to resolve itself in his mind, and he shook his head in an attempt to clear it. He couldn't keep thinking about this. Not now. He needed a distraction.
Willing himself to think about anything else, Leonard forced himself to look at the holovid screen and actually pay attention to the news.
The installation of an updated weather control grid in Southeast Asia was proceeding on schedule, and the yearly monsoon season would be properly regulated. Good news, Leonard though with some sense of detached relief. He grabbed his canteen of coffee - not the replicated sludge they served in the mess hall, but the brew he'd made with his own machine and real coffee beans and Thank you, Captain Pike. The coffee brewer Pike had given him after last year's fiasco had gotten more than its fair mileage, and Leonard suspected it would be set on overdrive until this current debacle was over. Vaguely, he wondered if Pike had learned anything new in the investigation, but Leonard forcibly pulled his thoughts back to the newscast.
A Therbian delegation would be presenting a series of lectures on vivo-biochemistry at the Federation Life Sciences complex in Brazil. Leonard took another slow sip of coffee and wondered if he could get the notes from the lecture. The eighty-seventh annual Young Physicists Nanotechnology Expo would be held in Toronto this year. Leonard smiled - it was amazing what kids were creating these days. The Federation's credit system was being recalibrated to adjust for the confirmation of three new planets and their sentient inhabitants into the membership. Starfleet was vetting four engineering groups who were presenting new impulse drive designs for the next set of engine refits for the fleet.
Leonard got a slight twinge in his gut and held his coffee cup tighter as the woman on the screen continued to talk.
"This couldn't come at a better time, or perhaps a worse time, for Starfleet. While the refit of the fleet's warp engines began almost two years ago, there has been constant debate about the newer impulse engine design. For months, engineers have been discussing possible instability issues in the current design of sub-warp engines. Although there had been no significant documented problems to motivate a new selection in sub-warp drive technology for the continued refits, that may have all changed. The first fatal training accident in three decades has been confirmed by Starfleet Academy."
Unable to take his eyes from the screen, Leonard reached over and put his canteen on the table before he dropped it.
"Following an engine malfunction and complete systems failure, a training shuttle carrying two cadets crashed into the surface of Mars while doing a routine set of piloting maneuvers. One cadet was killed in the accident, and the other is in stable but serious condition at Starfleet Medical. Their names are being withheld for privacy reasons."
Leonard's hands clenched into fists in his lap. Not a fucking moment of peace. No, here it was, plastered brazenly all over the news vids. Those bastards sure as hell better keep Jim's name private, he thought vehemently.
"The cause of the engine malfunction is still under investigation, but Starfleet officials have noted that the upgrade in engine systems is long overdue."
The woman kept talking, but Leonard didn't want to hear it. Not a word of it. A simple engine malfunction? No, Jim had said sabotage. He saw something in the engine, and this newscaster's uninformed, speculative, simplistic media blurb wasn't going to gloss over the fact that something big had happened.
"In the immediate aftermath of this crash, a statement attributed to the group Terra Prime has been received by news sources, claiming that this crash is further evidence that human beings should not be traveling into space. However, they have not claimed responsibility for causing the crash, leading to speculation from various analysts. After last year's attempted bombing at Starfleet Academy, verbal threats have been issued several times, but no actions have been taken. For more on that story -"
No, Leonard definitely didn't want to hear another goddamned word of that story, thank you very much. Speculation. Yeah, they could speculate all they wanted to, but not until Jim was awake and alert and had said his piece, and goddammit, Jim. With a growl and a lurch, he was out of his chair, ready to grab his tray and bolt from the mess hall, but instead, he almost collided with a cadet who had apparently been standing right next to his chair.
Leonard backpedaled and almost tripped over his chair, glaring angrily at the petite Asian woman. "What the - don't sneak up on a man!" He quickly sidestepped and straightened himself up, noting that it wasn't just the cadet he'd nearly collided with, but three others standing off to the side who were watching him with some sort of anticipation. Not feeling particularly cordial, the only thing he could think to say was, "What the hell do you want?"
"We know you're friends with Jim Kirk," she said, and there was something disconcerting in her voice.
Leonard felt his shoulders clench, just a bit. "Yeah, I am." He shot her a skeptical look. "But you don't know me, so what do you care?"
She looked back over her shoulder at the other cadets - another human female, a human male, and an Andorian Thaan- then turned back to Leonard and took a bracing breath. "I'm Cadet Okoru. We're the rest of Kirk's flight squad. We were in the other two shuttles yesterday." She swallowed, and for the first time, Leonard noticed that her eyes were red and puffy, set in a face that looked too pale and drawn with lines of tension that looked too old for a face that young. "They told us that Tambe didn't make it, but that Kirk was alive. They wouldn't tell us anything else. We... we thought you might know... how is he doing?"
The fire went out of Leonard's argument so fast he almost felt like he was physically deflating. Grimacing, he looked over at the chronometer on the wall - 0718 hours. More than forty minutes before his first class. With a sigh, he nudged out the chair next to his own with his foot, jerked his head towards the table as a blunt invitation, then sat down.
It was almost instinctual - sit down with the friends and family of the patient and give them the news, for better or for worse. Tell them about their loved one. Distance himself from the emotions of the situation so that the other people could cry in either sorrow or relief. However, when the other four cadets were seated, the emotional distance between himself and his patient didn't appear. It couldn't. Not with Jim. So Leonard leaned his elbows on the table, looked around at the tight, weary faces of Jim's squad mates, and lied through his teeth.
"Jim's fine."
*********
He wasn't sure why he said it, not really. Maybe he knew that Jim wouldn't want people to know how bad it was. The kid did hate looking vulnerable in front of people, after all, and he had an insane tendency to brush off everything as nothing. He was just doing what Jim would want him to do. Perhaps it was because Leonard was still stuck on the idea of sabotage, and if Jim had been targeted by anyone, if it got out how weak he was, someone might try to finish the job before Jim could wake up and testify... Goddammit, what did he see in the engine of that shuttle? Maybe it was because Leonard still didn't really know how bad it was - wouldn't know until Jim woke up - and if he admitted how bad it might be, it would make it too real... too fucking real.
Either way, after fifteen minutes of downplaying the severity of Jim's injuries - yes, he's injured, and recovery will take a while, but he'll be fine - and listening to brief stories about Jim's antics as part of Nova Squadron, Leonard had to escape. These kids were certainly worried about Jim, and they really seemed to care about him, but they didn't know Jim. Not really. They knew the Cadet Kirk that Jim let the rest of the world see, and they were part of his team, and they were hurting. But they couldn't hurt the same way he did.
That first cadet, Okoru, seemed pretty shaken up, and he couldn't blame her - apparently she was the one who had asked whether they could safely complete the maneuver, and was still replaying that conversation in her head. And to add to the distress, she was the Assistant Squad Leader, which put her in charge now.
But really, they were all taking it pretty hard. The other woman, d'Eon, wasn't saying much, and seemed to be holding herself together by a thread. The Andorian, Thaleb, seemed more angry than anything else, but it seemed reasonable for an Andorian. He trusted his squadmates' abilities, and was convinced that Kirk and Tambe had been sabotaged - a heinous, cowardly act. It was all Leonard could do not to overtly agree with him. Freeman seemed lost for something to do; agitated and helpless. Hell, Leonard could certainly sympathize with that.
It didn’t help that random people kept looking at him oddly as he hurried across the campus to his first class. He couldn’t figure out why until he recognized the looks they were giving him: pity.
Fuck... they all know I'm friends with Jim. Leonard generally kept to himself, and he liked it that way, but Jim knew everyone. Everyone knew Jim. Most everyone liked Jim. And by extension, everyone probably knew that Jim's best friend was a cranky old doctor that he kept calling Bones.
By the time he made it to his Interspecies Cultural Exchange class, he felt like he'd been through a gauntlet and was happy to hide in the back of the class and pretend to listen to the lecture.
Nearly four hours later, Leonard emerged from his Cellular Biology lab with the distant knowledge that he hadn't really learned a thing that day. The comparative slides of alien epithelial tissues all blended together in his mind, and he needed to go hide from humanoid contact until his Basic Engineering and Piloting class. They'd just started the unit on propulsion essentials.
Leonard hated being anywhere near the damned shuttles and ship engines, but every officer needed to know the raw basics. At least the young Lieutenant who was teaching the engineering portion of the class seemed to love engines the same way Leonard loved medical science, and he could respect that. And really, if nothing else, it might give him some clue of what to look for if he helped Jim investigate this mess, so he might as well go to the class. It would feel useful, in some bizarre way.
Basic Engineering classes were held in one of the lab buildings directly adjacent to the hangar down on East Campus. Rather than work his way through the crowds in the mess hall or student center, Leonard decided to hide from the world down at the old Warming Hut. It was convenient. Plus, they made a decent chicken salad and a more-than-adequate cup of coffee.
His feet carried him down the paths from the Presidio to East Campus and out onto Crissy Field. The sky was gray, the wind had a bite to it, and the fog itself seemed to be seeping into his bones.
All I've got left is my bones. Jim had teased him for that. Jim.
Finally, he arrived at the Warming Hut, a building that had lived long past practicality, but still served hot beverages to wind-chilled beach-goers at the western end of Crissy Field as it had for almost three hundred years. He pushed through the squeaky door. The weathered floor and wooden construction looked odd in contrast to the modern buildings visible through the old glass windows. The air even smelled older somehow, a bit like the house he'd grown up in.
Patchy fog drifted across the bay as he stared out the old-style glass windows, and the dusty smell of real wood combined with the aroma of toasting bread, reminding him too much of something out of his childhood. And here he was, years later and so much distance away, sitting in San Francisco as a member of Starfleet... feeling just as small and clueless as he’d felt decades ago.
Only now, there was no safety net. No blissful ignorance of youth. There was only the cold glass and patches of fog spanning the gap between his seat in the Warming Hut and the venerable structure of the main building of Starfleet Medical, barely visible across the bay.
Leonard scowled down at the rest of his chicken sandwich as his last vestiges of appetite laughed at him and disappeared.
It was still too early for class, but at least he could head over to the Engineering lab and start reviewing shuttlecraft schematics. Loathesome topic, particularly right now, but he had to do it.
Depositing the rest of his lunch in the reprocessor unit, he pushed out through the door and bent his head into the wind. Even with the hill of the Presidio blocking the worst brunt of the weather, it was an unpleasant day - clammy and raw. He clenched his teeth and tried to ignore the chill as he hurried towards the gate to East Campus.
He almost didn’t realize that the security guard at the gate was talking to him until the man’s arm physically blocked his path. He looked up, blinked, and asked, “I’m sorry... what?”
The security guard blew out an exasperated breath. “I said that the hangar is restricted right now, Cadet. No access.”
Leonard blinked again, feeling stupid. “I’m not going to the hangar. I have class in the Engineering building in a half hour.”
But the guard shook his head, looking more irritated by the minute. “Sorry, Cadet. Haven’t you paid any attention to the campus-wide notices? All classes and flight sessions down here are cancelled. The whole complex is restricted until further notice for the investigation.”
Leonard felt his eyes go wide. Of course, you idiot, he thought to himself. “Oh... because of the crash, right?”
“They’re combing the hangar for clues as well as using the labs building for investigative work,” he said with a sarcastic nod, then shook his head again in amusement, “Well, at least there’s some sign that you haven’t been living under a rock for the past two days.”
In an instant, the mental fog lifted, making way for something sharp and angry. “No, sir. Not under a rock. But I’ve spent most of the past two days at Starfleet medical, trying to put the real damage from that crash back together. Body parts are a bit more touchy than glorified chunks of metal.”
The guard’s jaw dropped slightly. “Oh... I...”
“Yeah,” Leonard cut him off, feeling vindictive. The anger felt good. “So forgive me for forgetting that the rest of campus is more worried about the scraps from that flying tin can than the guy who was flying it.”
The slack of the guard’s jaw instantly tightened. “Cadet... we’re all worried about Kirk. I’m sorry.” His mouth twisted. “You’re his doctor?”
Leonard started to nod, but then shook his head. Sure, he’d worked on Jim as a physician, but that wasn’t a fraction of the truth. And friend didn’t cover it either. No, Jim had named him as next-of-kin. The kid was family. Leonard gave the security guard a grim look. “His brother.” It was the closest word he had for it.
The guard opened his mouth, but then snapped it shut again and gave a sympathetic nod. Leonard thought it might have been his imagination, but it looked like the guy’s eyes were a bit tight and strained. He nodded again. “I’m sorry,” he said, softer this time.
Leonard gave an uneasy tilt of his head. “Yeah. Me, too.”
Suddenly feeling uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t quite comprehend, Leonard turned on his heel and hurried off towads the main campus, feeling even more lost than before. It would be over two hours until his afternoon lab session. More empty time to fill. Too much time, and too much emptiness.
He was almost all the way to the bend around the path that would take him towards the main campus when he looked back at the hangar building. It was a massive structure that always gave him the chills... mostly because it was full of those deathtraps they called shuttlecrafts. It was no less chilling now - in fact, it was severely more unnerving - but this time, he also felt a desperate need to be there, at that very moment. There was an investigation going on behind the walls of that building... an investigation that should uncover the truth behind what happened to Jim. And whatever it took, damning anything and anyone that got in his way, Leonard McCoy needed to know.
Narrowing his eyes at the gray walls of the hangar, he nodded once, then walked away.
*********
The halls of Starfleet Medical were almost oppressively quiet as Leonard walked past the front admin desk. They knew him well enough that the woman at the desk just waved him through. He stopped at the nurse's desk in the intensive care unit and found Nurse Patel.
"How's he doing?" Leonard knew he didn't need to specify whom.
Patel looked up from the computer terminal, from which she was monitoring patient stats. "As well as can be expected. He had the spinal stabilization procedure as scheduled, plus some regen therapy during the day. Everything went very well. He hasn't destabilized, but he's been unconscious the whole time." She sounded detached and professional. Leonard knew that tone of voice - he used it with patients' families. He'd never realized how horrible it sounded from the other side.
"Details?" He squeezed his hands into fists, then forced himself to relax them again. "Come on, I know I'm not his doctor and I know I've been taken off this case, but at least tell me what's been going on as if I know more than the average lay person."
For a moment, she looked at him sympathetically, then let out a heavy breath. "I shouldn't be doing this," she said in an undertone as she tapped a few controls on her computer terminal, "but it's easier than answering a hundred questions. There, I've given you access to his chart. Read-only. On one condition."
"What's that?"
"Leave your med kit here at the desk."
Leonard wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her that no self-respecting doctor went anywhere without basic equipment. There was no reason on earth for him to leave his equipment behind. Besides, it wasn't as if he was going to treat Jim. He just always carried his med kit. And besides, if something went wrong, and Jim started to have some sort of complication, what was he going to do without... "Oh." Then again, maybe she was right. "Okay." He set his kit behind the desk, trying to ignore the hot flush of undefined emotions eating at the edge of his consciousness. "Anything else?"
"Yes... they took him off the sedatives an hour ago."
Leonard felt his heart jump as he pulled his PADD out of his bag and called up Jim's chart, skimming through notes and scans recorded over the past twenty hours. "Has he shown any signs of consciousness since then?"
She shook her head. "Sorry, Doctor McCoy. But these things take time."
"I know," he grumbled, quickly catching up with Jim's current stats, then finally looking back at the nurse. "Yeah, I know. But thank you for this." He held up his PADD meaningfully.
"Sure," Patel said with a note of resignation. "Just don't push my luck, okay?"
Leonard nodded firmly. "I owe you."
"You bet you do."
Turning away, Leonard took one last glimpse at his PADD before tucking it under his arm. He actually felt nervous approaching Jim's door. The previous night, when he'd sat by Jim's bedside until Nurse Aldrich had come in and threatened him with sedation if he didn't go home and get some sleep, he'd still been in something like a state of shock the whole time. None of it had quite seemed real. It was real now, and there was no way to avoid this reality.
And last night, Jim had been intentionally sedated - he was supposed to be asleep. But now, they'd stopped administering the sedatives, and those perpetually mischievous, eternally sharp eyes should be opened, waiting for him when he walked into the room. And the door to the room was opening, and Jim was there, but his eyes were closed, and he was silent. Too goddamned silent. Even unconscious, his face seemed tense, uneasy, troubled.
Leonard walked to the chair by Jim's bedside and sat down resignedly. "Hey kid."
Jim didn't twitch, but Leonard hadn't expected it. Still, he knew that familiar voices were helpful and soothing, even if a patient was unconscious. Besides, he needed to talk.
"Haven't been able to think straight all day. You sure do know how to make a man worry, you know?" He watched Jim's face with the absolutely futile hope that the kid would open his eyes, wink, smirk, blink, flinch... anything. No, his face was motionless. And bruised. God damn... the bruising on Jim's face... it was horrible. "You still don't know how to do anything in half-measure, do ya, Jim? I told you that bruises aren't a good look on you. That was a pretty spectacular trauma scene you caused. You can brag about it later, if you want. And you owe me a new set of scrubs."
Leaning against the side of the bed, Leonard folded his arms beneath his chin and looked up at Jim. Instinctively, part of him wanted to really check Jim's vitals from head to toe, try an extra round of regen therapy, see if there was anything he could do to make Jim wake up faster, but he knew that he shouldn't. Not this time. After a point, a patient needed nothing more and nothing less than pure rest. And waiting helplessly was maddening.
Leonard sighed. "Yeah, you've pretty much got me worried sick. I had to take a sedative last night to get to sleep. Not gonna do that tonight. Those were some nightmares I'd rather not relive. I'm probably not going to sleep right until you wake up. Hell, you can even wake me up in the middle of the night to pester me anytime you want." He felt his breath hitch, and had to look away, staring at his hands that he was clenching together furiously.
After a moment, he cleared his throat. "I'm sorry I sent you out like that yesterday morning, kid. I didn't mean it like that. God, I hope you know I didn't mean it like that. And you know you can always come to me. I hope you know that." He looked up again, feeling a pang of anxiety. "You have to know that."
Of course, Jim said nothing. Not even a twitch.
Leonard stared at Jim for a long moment, eyes tracing down to Jim’s motionless hand nestled at his side, and he suddenly felt an overwhelming need to squeeze it to reassure himself that Jim was warm and alive; to grasp Jim’s wrist so he could feel that pulse beneath his fingertips; to squeeze harder, and shake the kid until he’d wake up and complain about Bones snapping him out of a dream involving scantily clad Orion women. Anything to make the stillness go away, and to reassure himself that there was still life under that statue-like form lying on the biobed.
Of course, despite his wrung-out emotions, he was still a doctor, and the biobed readout should have been enough reassurance that Jim was alive and stable. Besides, the last thing Jim needed, physically at least, was for anyone to jostle him. His spine and pelvis were still too unstable. With a barely-patched radius and ulna, it was probably better if Leonard didn't put any pressure on Jim's arm, either. The artificial osteoblast cells that were rapidly rebuilding bone mass worked better if left alone and not disturbed between sessions with the regen field. Hands off. That was best.
The biobed was supporting Jim's respiration, stimulating soft tissue regeneration, regulating his blood pressure, monitoring his heartbeat... and all Leonard could do was sit there and watch helplessly, waiting. Somewhere behind those eyelids, Jim was in there. Maybe he'd open his eyes soon, maybe he wouldn't. Even modern medicine couldn't fix everything, couldn't predict everything.
And even modern medicine couldn't replace the human touch.
He tentatively ran his hand over Jim's arm. Then, gently, ever so gently, avoiding the osteo-immobilizer unit just above Jim's wrist and the IV in his hand, Leonard wrapped his fingers around Jim's and squeezed lightly. "It's okay, kid. I'll be here when you wake up."
Maybe it was his imagination, but Jim seemed to relax slightly, and Leonard thought he heard a soft sigh. It wasn't much, but it made something in Leonard's chest ache. "Rest easy, Jim."
Leonard lost track of time as he sat there. He rambled about classes and taking a trip to Georgia and maybe letting Jim drag him to the Sierra Nevada range on their next weekend of leave as he watched the sky slowly go dark outside the window of Jim's room. The colors of the sunset were hidden by the fog, and the bridge and Starfleet Academy across the bay were likewise shrouded, but at least the fog was familiar. It felt like a cocoon around the small ICU room, secluded from the rest of the world as darkness fell around them.
And then the door slid open, breaking the cocoon and startling Leonard out of his own personal fog. He shook his head as he dropped Jim's hand, blinking in surprise at the person standing in the doorway. "Wha... Commander Toland?"
"Relax, McCoy." Her voice was soft as she moved as if to step into the room, then hesitated. "I wanted to see how he was doing. May I come in?"
Leonard hadn't seen the woman in months, since his clinic and research schedule had taken him away from acting as duty doctor for training simulations. They were far from friends, but after what he'd learned about the past Toland shared with Jim, he respected her a bit more. And he knew that she had the same respect for Jim in turn. Then he frowned. "Wait... this is the ICU. Only family and people the patient had previously listed as contacts should be able to come in."
Nurse Aldrich’s face appeared around the edge of the doorframe. “That’s why I told her to ask you,” she said flatly, “and she knows I’ll escort her right back out if you want me to.”
Toland gave him a meaningful look.
"Oh." Letting out a slow breath, he finally nodded. "Sure, have a seat."
Aldrich nodded once in approval, then disappeared. Toland stepped up to the foot of Jim's bed, but didn't sit. "I won't stay for long, but I needed to check in on him myself. After last year... well, I can tell you that you and Captain Pike aren't the only people looking out for Kirk. I got the full preliminary incident report from the crash." Her jaw visibly clenched. "I'd say it's amazing he lived through it, but I think we've gotten to the point where we should never put anything past him."
Leonard glanced at Jim, then back up at Toland. "Yeah, that's about right."
"Has he woken up yet?"
"No." The word almost stuck in Leonard's throat. "He's not technically comatose, but... we'll see."
She grimaced. "Better than it could have been, I guess. I heard he wouldn't have made it at all without you."
A weak shrug was the best he could manage. "I was there. That's all."
"Well, a lot of us are glad you were there." A pained smile tugged the corner of her mouth. "I'm sure Kirk will be, once he wakes up."
"Yeah." The word felt like sawdust in his throat.
If Toland sensed his discomfort, she didn't draw attention to it. Instead, she nodded her head towards the door. "Has anyone else been in to see him?" There was an odd note to her voice; something was off.
"Not since I got here," he said slowly, suddenly uncertain. "But if they're having people like you ask my permission, I can't think of anyone else other than Captain Pike who could possibly have been allowed in. Why?"
Toland shook her head. "Just wondering."
Leonard didn't believe that for a minute. Toland was not a person inclined to mince words, waste questions, or resort to small talk. "Commander, what's going on?"
Her face was hard, but her eyes were worried. It was disconcerting. "I wish I could say, McCoy."
Oddly, that was something Leonard was sure she meant, even though he wasn’t quite sure why, but he was just as certain that it wouldn't do him a bit of good to call her on it. He let out a slow breath, considering what to say. "Do you want me to tell you if he wakes up?"
She opened her mouth, and the yes seemed to be ready to jump off her tongue, but suddenly, she shook her head. "Tell Pike, not me. In fact, don't tell Kirk I was here."
"Commander?" Leonard didn't like this. Not one bit.
For a moment, Toland looked at him, her face utterly unreadable, but then she pressed her lips together grimly. "I'm sorry, McCoy. I'm really sorry. And I only wish I could tell Kirk."
An unsettled feeling twisted Leonard's stomach. "Tell him what?"
She only shook her head, and patted the foot of the biobed. "Take care of him, okay?"
Leonard could only nod dumbly as she turned and walked out the door. It was a long time before he moved again, and then, it was only to wrap his hand around Jim's.
*********
"So... the lateral sensor array feeds information directly to the navigational computers via the... the... primary core relay?" Leonard's neck and shoulders were sore and bunched as he leaned over the engine schematic display panel in the theoretical engineering lab. He'd barely had a wink of sleep the night before, sprawled awkwardly in a chair by Jim's biobed, but he wasn't about to miss his appointment for this tutoring session. Not today. Not after the cancelled class from yesterday. He glanced sideways at the instructor for Basic Engineering, looking for some sign of approval that maybe he'd gotten it right.
The instructor was a young Lieutenant who didn't look old enough to be an assistant instructor for a general introductory course, much less the one of the two actual professors, but the man seemed brilliant, if unorthodox. He reminded Leonard of Jim in that way. Leonard liked the guy.
The Lieutenant also made a point of running extra instructional sessions for his academic units. Leonard had been the only one to show up for the extra instruction more than once, so it quickly turned to one-on-one tutoring sessions. It was a bit less nerve-wracking to deal with his own academic shortcomings when he wasn’t in a classroom full of snot-nosed cadets ten years his junior who made it look easy. And the Lieutenant didn’t make him feel like a fish out of water, trying to learn this stuff.
Now, if only this class’s flight instructor will help me as much as the engineering instructor, Leonard thought cynically, but he couldn’t count on it. They’d be starting to fly the shuttles soon, not just studying shuttle schematics, and Captain Sullivan would head up that portion of the course. He seemed nice enough, but that didn’t mean he was going to be able to spend time doing extra one-on-one flight training with aviophobic students. For now, Leonard would just take what he could get.
Still, the instructor shook his head and leaned over the shuttlecraft schematic, patiently tracing his finger along the diagram. “Nae, laddie, look again. The lateral sensors connect to the nav computers externally to the main core.” Lieutenant Scott's thick accent was oddly soothing, and it made this entire class easier to stomach. "If yeh look here, the core components, such as the primary core relay circuits, all communicate within this zone, inside the core itself. Ach, it would be a bit easier to show yeh on a real shuttle, but that won’t be happenin’ for a few days yet." The last bit came out with a faint growl that had Leonard raising an eyebrow.
Scott waved off the implied inquiry. “These theoretical labs weren’t designed for basic instruction. Just the best we can do for now.” Then he gave Leonard a thoughtful look. "You're a doctor when yer not sweating about being stuck around engines and space flight, aren't yeh, McCoy?"
Leonard nodded.
"Aye, then try to think of this like a man's brain." He placed his hand flat over the central computer portions of the diagram. "Here ye have the nav computer, internal engine processors, data core, life support regulators. That's all the central core... like a brain."
"And the nerve connections between different regions of the brain are like the primary core relay. Makes sense," Leonard said with a nod, starting to understand the analogy.
"Good. So if yeh have a set of sensors... say like yer hands... those signals travel to the brain by the major nerves, don't they?"
Leonard couldn't help but smile faintly. "So peripheral nerves... peripheral data relays."
Lieutenant Scott broke into a wide grin. "See doctor? We'll make an engineer out of you yet."
"God, I hope not."
"It's not so different from taking care of people, McCoy." Scott straightened up and looked away from the engine schematic diagram and gazed at the image of a Constitution Class starship set in a large frame on the far wall of the lab. There was a fond wistfulness in his eyes. "A ship has a personality. She's made of parts, yes, but since when is anything just the sum of its parts?"
Leonard felt the faint smile falter, remembering the brief unit on transporter system basics they’d covered last month. "Seeing as we could all be reduced to nothing more than sub-atomic particles and fed through a pattern buffer, I guess I'll have to agree with you."
"Aye," Scott said, and the expression on his face became almost reverent. "Treat a ship like a lady, and she'll always bring you home. You remember that now, yeh hear?"
But what if the ship doesn't come home? Gritting his teeth, Leonard stood back from the display panel and squared himself towards Scott. Enough with the regular coursework; there were more important issues to tackle. Bracing himself, Leonard cleared his throat. "I will. But that reminds me... I've got a question for you." He leaned heavily on the schematic display panel.
“Fire away, laddie,” Scott said invitingly. “That’s what a tutoring session is for, isn’t it now?”
Leonard took a breath. “Impulse engines,” he said - and apparently it was all he had to say.
Scott’s face changed abruptly, switching from his usual impish expression to something darker. “Trying to understand what happened on Wednesday?”
Not trusting his voice, Leonard gave a tight nod.
“So are a lot of folks ‘round here,” Scott said, quieter now. “It’s an ugly thing, McCoy. My heart goes out to those poor buggers’ families.”
Leonard flinched sharply, trying to block the images that threaten to come flooding back: Jim, motionless on a biobed, nothing like he should be. “Yeah,” he choked out.
“And then,” Scott continued, with an added sharpness to his voice, “those blasted engineering companies are back again, using this tragedy to press us into letting them refit our ships even sooner - as if Starfleet engineers aren’t already the best there are. They’re talking as if a cadet’s death was down to Starfleet incompetence. Bloody parasites.” He spat that last word with a smattering of vitriol.
“Yeah,” Leonard said again, almost feeling the bile rising in his throat, and he had to swallow it back.
“All right there, McCoy?” Frowning, Scott studied his face a bit closer. "This isn't just curiosity, is it? This is personal."
Leonard looked back at him tightly for a moment before nodding. "You're an astute man, Lieutenant Scott," he said roughly, then he paused and considered his options. It was a risk, but if Leonard had any skill whatsoever for reading people, he'd guess that Scott could be trusted. That’s why he’d meant to ask him about this in the first place. In the weeks that he'd been meeting Scott for extra instruction, just so he could keep up with this god-forsaken class about these goddamned death traps, he'd gotten the impression that this was a man who wouldn't be afraid to bend the rules for what he felt was right. Sometimes, he thought the guy would even bend the laws of physics to get around a problem. Jim would like him, Leonard thought wistfully. If anyone would be able to help Leonard start to unravel this puzzle, this was the man. Nodding to himself once, he went with his gut instinct. "Can you keep this conversation private?"
Eyes absolutely solemn, Scott held up his hand. "From one Scotsman to another."
Leonard snorted. "I'm from Georgia."
The other man shrugged. "Yeh never lose yer name, McCoy." His face became dead serious. "So what's eatin' you?"
Leonard took a bracing breath. "I may or may not know a bit more about the shuttle crash than most of the folks around here. And I may or may not be friends with the kid who survived it."
Scott's eyes went wide. "So you're the good doctor who's friends with Jim Kirk, aren't yeh? And don't look so surprised, McCoy. People talk. I should've put it together. Nae, I've not met the lad myself, but I can keep my ears open as well as I can keep my mouth shut. There are plenty of rumors. Is Kirk all right?"
Leonard nodded dismissively - the question was unavoidable, but it wasn't why he brought it up with Lieutenant Scott. "He'll recover, but it will take time. We've got a different problem that I’d like to solve right now."
"Yeh want to know what made the shuttle's engines fail," Scott filled in for him. Leonard nodded, but Scott shook his head. "Impossible, laddie. I can turn a ship's engines inside out and put them back together again in my sleep, but without the data from the flight recorder... and that's classified... there's no way to know."
"I've got it."
Scott's mouth dropped open with an unspoken question, eyebrows furrowing in confusion, a split-second before his expression morphed into a grin like the cat that caught the canary. "I won't ask how yeh got it, but I'm guessin' yer not supposed to."
"It wasn't classified when I received it," Leonard said dryly.
"Aaaah. So no classified materials were technically transferred, right? Then no rules were broken,” he said conspiratorially. “And... might I ask... is there a reason we'd be launching our own little investigation?"
Leonard opened his mouth, but held back. Really, he had no logical reason. There was an official investigation going on, and those people were far more qualified to figure out a mystery like this... but he couldn’t leave it alone. So, he fixed Scott with the most sincere, determined look he could muster. "Because I need to know what happened to my friend, I'm just not willing to leave it to chance that someone else might fuck it up." The unspoken implication, because I don’t even trust Starfleet’s best with anything that involves Jim, hung in the air.
A look of understanding crossed Scott's face. "Aye, I'll take it at that."
"We're still confidential?"
"I'd swear it on the Highlands themselves, and my last bottle of Scotch."
“That’s a pretty serious oath.”
“I’d give yeh nothing less, McCoy.”
With an odd feeling, something like hope, Leonard bent down and pulled his PADD out of his messenger bag. A moment later, he and Lieutenant Scott were bent over his PADD, whispering conspiratorially, intently watching every second of the flight recorder feed. Leonard relayed what he already knew, but it was all there in the PADD's internal database. Chain of events, the drops in efficiency, the involvement of the inertial dampeners, and the system-wide failure. It was like going over a patient's history, only with a shuttlecraft instead. Maybe this guy's right - a ship is a bit like a patient. Symptoms, complications, diagnoses. He watched Scott's eyes, and could almost see the calculations and theories spinning there. When the recording ended, Scott shifted, sighed, and looked dimly across the lab with an air of pained longing.
"I haven't got anything certain for yeh, McCoy... but I've got some ideas." His mouth twisted grimly. "And I don't like a damned one of them."
*********
(To Part Four...)