Chapter Text
The away team, led by Captain Kirk himself, was nearly done exploring the eerily quiet, abandoned alien vessel, which was slowly been dragged into a black hole, most likely the reason for it´s abandoned state.
The Enterprise had seen the ship appear on their scanners not too long ago, with no detectable live signs. Spock had scanned it several times, but since the scanners couldn´t be entirely trusted because of the space anomaly in it´s close vicinity, there still was a small possibility that there were crewmembers on board, possibly injured or otherwise needing help.
Or possibly hostile and just waiting to attack them, Bones had felt the need to add, when they were discussing it on the bridge, where the doctor was lucky to just be present since there wasn´t much up in the medbay at those stretches of time where the Enterprise just flew from one far location to the other. Apart from a few crewmen needing more of a talk than anything else, that is (it was interesting that for some, Jim included, those quiet times were more stressful than times of action, but Bones supposed that that was the downside of having an extremely explorative mind, always eager to seek new life and new civilization and what not).
Anyway, given the big size of the ship, Jim had called together a not too small away team, including him and nurse Christine, in case they found anyone needing medical attention. Everyone was armed with phasers for their own security, easing the doctor´s peace of mind, although Jim didn´t thought they would meet any trouble.
They had a deadline, OF COURSE.
The ship would reach the black hole, so they had to get the hell outa there before that if they didn´t wanted to be dragged in it themselves.
Even with the Enterprise holding the alien ship with it´s tractor beam, in exactly one hour and 38 minutes, starting from when they beamed in, the pull of the black hole would become so strong that they would have to cut the tractor beam and make it the hell out of the black hole´s vicinity so they wouldn´t get dragged in right along into it with the other ship.
The alien ship was too big for the Enterprise to drag it anywhere with more then impulse power but, given that it already had been pulled in a lot when they got to it, for now they could only slow down the progress. There was no rescuing it.
They had been on the ship for about an hour, leaving 25 minutes until they would start the evacuation (because who needs much puffer time when they had a Vulcan doing the math), meeting back at the transportation room in the centre of the ship. Jim had split them into two groups, one led by Spock, the other by himself. Bones was in Jim´s group while Christine accompanied Spock´s.
Bones wasn´t too happy with the mere ten minutes they would´ve left, but there was no arguing with Jim once he´s set his mind on something.
At least, the atmosphere on the ship was stabile and suitable for humans, so one they were beamed there and Spock confirmed that the air was breathable, they could take off their helmets, making it much easier to look around. Still, the bulky suits were rather inconvenient not to mention darn uncomfortable to wear for long and Bones had begun sweating in his one pretty quickly, automated climate or not. Also, you had to be pretty careful while walking, because it was much easier to slip in those suits then in regular uniform shoes or to lose balance because of their bulkiness.
They had already returned into the area closer towards the centre (they had begun exploring the more distant areas) when Bones stopped in his tracks, making the redshirt behind him bump into him with a startled little yelp.
“Damn, I´m sorry,” Bones said to the Ensign while Jim, being at the from of the group, turned around to see what caused the commotion.
“Jim, I´m afraid I´ve left my tricorder at the medbay,” he grumbled, angry at himself for such a stupid mistake. He had been distracted by all the alien equipment, trying to decide what would be worth taking with them back to the Enterprise and had left his own tricorder laying on a table.
Jim frowned, clearly evaluating if it was worth retrieving it.
“We can´t just let it here, they´re darn expensive and it´s the best one I have! Look, you can go on and I´ll just hurry back, get it and head straight back to the transport room, there should be more than enough time to do that, and be at the beam up point ahead of you, even,” he suggested, really not wanting to have to explain to Christine (and the rest of his team) why they had one precious tricorder less if he came back without it.
“Alright,” Jim sighed, still frowning a little. “But, if you run into any problems at all which could slow you down, I want you to turn around and go to the meeting point immediately, we have no time to come searching for you, are we clear?” he added seriously and Bones nodded, not wanting to cause any more trouble. He was angry enough at himself as it was.
“Crystal clear,” he said and turned around, loosing no time in heading towards the alien´s medbay.
The others kept on with the rest of their exploration and where soon out of sight, leaving Bones alone in the eerily quietness of the ship, which he hadn´t even noticed before, but was making shivers creep down his back now. It wasn´t right for a ship to be this empty, this cold... It felt rather like out of a nightmare, but Bones tried not to think too much about it and just kept on, walking as quickly as he could in the bulky suit without fearing to trip.
He reached the beginnings of the stairs (and ramp) leading a little ways down towards the area where the medbay and a cafeteria were positioned. Whoever had constructed that ship must´ve either been crazy, or possibly the aliens had just a thing for stairs and ramps, there were little stairs all over the ship, with no apparent reason.
Bones shook his head at such stupidity and began trudging down the steps, maybe a little too quickly, because he wanted to get back as early as possible and better not cause Jim and the rest of the team to need to wait for him. But above all, he was nervous with how little time they had left until the black hole would suck in everything left on the ship, living or not.
In fact, he shuddered just thinking about it.
The damn shuddering proofed to be a problem, leading him to lose his balance on those slippery-as-hell suit boots. Windmilling his arms, he wasn´t successful with regaining his balance and only managed to slip even more, falling down towards the stairs with a sick feeling.
Then his head must´ve hit an edge, knocking him out, because next thing he knew, his head was killing him with pain and he was laying on his back in a very uncomfortable position, his head a little more upwards, resting on the last step of the stairs, pounding dreadfully.
He moaned in pain and confusion, blinking his eyes open, one of them sticky with blood which must´ve run down from a bleeding head wound and tried to get back his bearings while the world whirled maddeningly around him.
Groaning in pain, he carefully and very slowly, straightened up into a sitting position, while trying to hold the sickness at bay.
Glimpsing down, he was relieved to see that his emergency med kid was still upon him, slung around his shoulder and resting on the ground near his hip. Dragging it on his lap with a groan and pulling it open, he pulled out a hypo filled with pain relieve. With trembling fingers, he pushed it into his neck and breathed out a deep sight of relieve when the pain lessened to a more bearable amount.
The hypo wasn´t the strongest and he would need another one when they were back, but it was doing his job for now, enough for him to keep going. He was still feeling pretty nauseous, but he had only a small range of medicine with him (there was only so much fitting into that small emergency kit), the most important ones, and curing nausea wasn´t in that category, so he would just have to deal with it for until they were back on the ship.
The Enterprise...
Now that he could think a little clearer again, he was filled with hot dread as he remembered their mission and time limit and took out his communicator with fear and trepidation, not knowing how long he had been unconscious. It could have been everything from a few seconds to God knows how long.
He hissed out a small “fuck” when he saw that he had been out for 5 minutes. If he still wanted to retrieve the tricorder, he would have to hurry a lot and he would have to do so NOW.
Jim had said to turn back if he hit any trouble and he guessed that knocking himself out might classified as such, but darn, he had already done enough by losing his equipment in the first place and if he returned empty handed apart from looking like having been in a fight, he would feel like the most stupid man the Enterprise ever had as a doctor.
Gritting his teeth together and pushing himself up from the ground, swaying a little on his feet until he took some deep breaths and his view stabilized again, he made the logical conclusion that thinking any longer about what to do would be even worse than just fetching that damn thing. Not to speak of the fact that his head, while no longer hurting as much, wasn´t too keen on doing any thinking right now and also it would feel wrong to turn around so close before his goal.
So, hustling forwards, he ignored the dizziness and nausea, just moving forwards the few meters of hallway and then into the open medbay. There, he looked around, nearly puking from the wave of nausea the movement caused, until he set his eyes on the little black tricorder laying in a corner of the room. A few more meters and he was holding it in his hand, gripping the edge of the table momentarily for support.
But he didn´t had any time to dawdle, so, giving himself another push, he stumbled back to the exit and then through the hallway until he was back at those utterly stupid stairs.
Sighing, he eyed the steps warily, just now noticing the puddle of blood on the last step. Darn, that was more blood than he was happy to see, no wonder was he feeling so lightheaded.
At least the stairs had a railing, which he now took into his free hand, thinking that he needed the extra support to help him get up the steps in more then a snail’s speed.
He carefully surrounded the puddle (it would be the non plus ultra, would he slip in his own damn blood) and huffed up the few stairs, happy when they were behind him and he had a flat ground to continue on.
Rubbing his head against the once again growing nausea, he gulped down heavily as he continued as fast as he was feeling able to, which, to his shame, wasn´t all that fast. He had underestimated how much his injury would slow him down, mainly because of that damn dizziness and nausea, making him feel like throwing up at any movement. Really, he was astonished that he had managed it without emptying his stomach so far.
At least, as far as he remembered, there weren´t any more steps between here and the transporter room, just a few hallways and turns.
Slowly making progress, he had made maybe half of the way, when he came to an unexpected turn, which he couldn´t remember and therefore wasn´t sure whether to go left or right.
“Damn those alien architects,” he mumbled under his breath, deciding to take an educated guess. “If nothing goes right, go left,” he told himself, turning in that direction and brushing some sweat and possibly blood off his forehead. He was huffing and sweating in his suit, which had turned from merely uncomfortable to borderline painful to wear, rubbing sore spots on his skin with every step he took. That was nothing against the sickness he felt, and constantly struggled to keep at bay, though.
The next corner, he took right, hoping it would get him back to the right direction. Damn, normally he was much better at remembering layouts, the hit on his head must´ve taken a toll on him, he thought grimly.
Blackouts often lead to disorientation and even some retrograde and anterograde amnesia, before and after the incident (while amnesia that was only before or only afterwards occur was extremely rare).
Jim would be pissed off already that he was taking his darn sweet time, he guessed, turning his mind back to the problem at hand. As if reading his mind, at that moment his communicator ringed with the annoyingly high priority tone it made for all calls coming from the captain.
“Yeah?” he grumbled into it, still struggling on with medium speed, feeling exhaustion and tiredness grow in all his bones. His BONES, hahaha.
“Why the hell are you taking so long, McCoy?” Jim asked, sounding irritated, but continued on without waiting for an answer from the doctor.
“I thought you wanted to be here long before us? Look, whatever the reason, you have to hurry up and get here ASAP, we can´t wait here much longer!” he urged, ending the call, again without waiting.
Well, that went well, Bones thought grimly, his spark of humour from earlier quickly turning into a sense of dread plus a fair amount of guilt for making them wait after he had been the one saying how crucial it was that they had enough puffer time left. And fear of that damn black hole, even if he wouldn´t tell that anyone, last of all Spock. He would think it was irrational to be afraid of something inanimate.
Sighing again, he more shuffled than walked through another corridor and into a more open space, and was mighty relieved when he recognized the spiral stairs to the left of the big, oblong room. Now at least he knew that he was on the right way and only had to pass through the long corridor at the end of the room and then enter the room near the end of it at the right side.
Glimpsing at the time again, he shuddered, seeing that time was indeed running short: there were only 5 minutes left until the black hole would suck them in!! Fuck those away mission, he would never accompany one again! He would rather curl up in his bed and refuse to go next time around, claiming that he was sick or something. Groaning, he put one tired foot after the other, trying to always fix a stable point in the distance with his eyes to help with the dizziness.
He guessed that at least half of their group, if not more, had already been beamed back, Jim wouldn´t let more people down here unnecessarily then Scotty would be able to beam up together in a few seconds. Most likely, it would only be Jim and Spock waiting for him. He knew that the Vulcan would insist on staying and waiting, just like Jim himself, no matter how pissed off he was about the fact that he had to.
But, being the good captain that he was, he always waited until every single crew member was back in the safety of the ship, before he would give anyone who deserved it a piece of his mind about how they fucked up and what they had to do better the next time. Not that he needed to do that very often, it was a ship full of geniuses after all, but shit happened and some people were more prone of making mistakes than others. This time, it would surely be his turn to get a dressing-down, after he had been treated in the medbay of course.
Not that he looked forward to embarrassing himself in front of his own team, he thought with a grimace. He must look real stupid to his team coming in like that, having managed to fall down and hit his head during a simple exploration of an abandoned ship. Others which came back injured from an away mission at least had a solid reason to, like being attacked by a Gorn or whatever.
There, the right entrance came into sight! He was so dizzy from relieve (ok, and also from his increasing blood loss), that he took the curve into the transporter room a little too quickly. Bumping straight into Spock, made his head scream in protest and his nausea overcome him in a wave so strong, that he only managed to stumble a step or two to the side before barfing right there on the ground, retching violently.
“Bones!” Jim cried out, sounding horrified, while Spock did the logical thing, stabilising him by grabbing his arm, keeping the doctor from keeling over from exhaustion.
“I´m..” he only managed to press out before another round of retching forced him to stop talking.
“Fuck, hold him steady,” Jim said to Spock, and took out his comm.
“Scotty, three to beam up asap, as soon as we´re on board, tell Sulu to get us the hell out of here and someone notify medbay, Bones is sick,” he shouted over the barfing and splashing sounds, which were making Bones all the more nauseous, even while he was emptying his stomach.
Still retching a little while the golden beaming sparks started engulfing them, he spit out once more and then took a few shaky breaths, trying not to spoil the ground on the Enterprise, where they just materialized in front of a worried looking Scotty.
Not that he saw much of him, mind you, the world was spinning way too much around him by now and he felt as horrible as he ever did in his life, but he could imagine how the Scotsman looked like.
Spock was still tightly holding his left arm, holding Bones upright easily while talking into his communicator and alerting medbay. Meanwhile Jim made sure that Sulu was getting his orders. Not three seconds later, a slight thrust indicated the cut of the tractor beam, leaving the alien ship to it´s demise, and the smooth vibration of the impulse power was felt shortly under their feet, before the familiar transition to warp was following.
Then, he felt Jim taking his right arm, softly taking off his medkid and pulling the tricorder out of his cramped hand. Bones was feeling increasingly close to fainting and was shaking like a leaf as Jim was leading him off his transporter pad, very slowly to not further increase his nausea. At least he had managed to stop throwing up, only breathing laboriously and somewhat erratically and trying not to break down in front of everyone.
“Just take deep and steady breaths Bones, you´ll be alright,” Jim told him softly but firmly, just like normally Bones would say it to him, having heard it so often from his CMO that he must know it by heart.
Bones refrained from nodding, waning to spare his poor head the movement, but let himself be led to a chair, sinking down on it in exhaustion. Closing his eyes, he heard Scotty call out “holy boggins, poor lad looks horrible and pale as a ghost, some doctor or nurse better come here, soon,” somewhere near him and just tried to concentrate on his breathing, despite feeling like death warmed over.
The next thing he felt was a hypo pressing against his neck and releasing it´s medicine with a slight hiss, while Jim still had a comforting hand on his shoulder, grounding him somewhat. Then the world around him turned completely black and he knew no more.