Chapter Text
“Can it be fixed?”
Scotty looked up from the main control terminal of Engineering One, the readouts showing more red than green; a tidal wave of critical damage that he had too few people left to actually deal with. He sighed. “Maybe, Captain. ’Tis top priority after Sickbay and Environmental, though I cannae guarantee we’ll get beta engine up and runnin’. When we shot the cores inta the singularity, it overloaded most of the ship’s system, despite the failsafes. Fried a lot of what we need in order ta work.”
Jim nodded tiredly, bruised and swollen face half-hidden in shadow. Engineering One was dimly lit after the stunt they’d pulled against the Narada, the environmental systems running on half-power to conserve energy. Which meant it was colder inside the ship than it had been, but not as cold as the planet Scotty had been picked up from. Save for the hissing creaks and pops of damaged equipment, it was eerily quiet in the guts of the Enterprise. Scotty was trying not to think about that.
“Chekov says we’re maybe a week out from the nearest Starfleet station,” Jim said, voice raspy. “We need to reach it for repairs, because there’s no way in hell we can make it back to Earth in the condition we’re in. Can you at least give us enough power to make it to that station on impulse engines, one or both, since warp isn’t an option anymore? And can you do it without destabilizing other parts of the ship?”
Scotty rubbed a hand over his face, his eyes riveted on the control terminal. “Aye, Captain. Ye want a miracle, I think I can be yer saint.”
Jim nodded, the cockiness Scotty had gotten used to seeing nowhere to be found. The grim determination wasn’t an unwelcome replacement, if Scotty was being honest. “Good. I want an update every two hours. Send it to Spock as well.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Jim pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning against and made his way back over damaged walkways to the turbolift. He passed exactly one other person on his way there, the engineer struggling to get another control terminal up and running to deal with the overload that Scotty’s could barely maintain.
Goddamn it, Jim thought as he pitched himself into the turbolift and tapped in his destination. At least that engineer was alive. Too many others weren’t.
The turbolift doors opened a few moments later onto the bridge. Jim limped out and made his way to the captain’s chair, sitting down for the first time in a long while. “All right people. Status?”
It had been three hours since the Enterprise had escaped the singularity, the warp drive reactor cores somehow neutralizing what should have become a supermassive black hole. In those ensuing three hours, the surviving crew of the Enterprise had labored like dogs to keep the ship running and themselves alive. They were holding on by the skin of the ship’s external battle plating and that was pretty much it.
The Narada’s superior weaponry had damaged the Enterprise extensively, more than anyone had initially realized, because the Romulans knew just where to hit Starfleet’s flagship to make it count. Hindsight is fucking perfect, Jim thought bitterly as he rubbed at his bruised throat.
There were areas of the ship opened up to space, still leaking oxygen and debris even after they got the damaged sections sealed off. The environmental systems were struggling to compensate for the loss and Jim thought maybe he should have let Scotty finish giving him his third miracle before asking for a fourth. So far the damage crews had managed to isolate only 30% of the structural damage. The ship’s original crew of 960 was down to something like 517 and falling with every thirty minute update McCoy sent him.
Hell, at least the inertia dampers were still working.
“External communications are still down,” Uhura said. “Damage crews are telling me there is absolutely no way for them to fix the relay station. It took a direct hit. They can cobble something up for short-range, but long-range is out of the question.”
Her voice, usually rich with the tones of a hundred different languages in every syllable she spoke, was ragged and worn. Uhura had been systematically trying to contact every section of the ship since their escape, her constant hail of, “This is the Communications Officer. Report status,” a steady mantra that continued to fill the bridge.
“So you’re saying there’s absolutely no way for us to contact Starfleet and let them know we’re still alive out here,” Jim said.
Uhura bit her lip and nodded. “Yes, Captain. That is exactly what I’m saying.”
Jim sighed. “What about a distress signal?”
“We’d still need the relay station.” Uhura frowned tiredly. “We’ve got some shuttles that are still intact. They could possibly set off those distress signals, but their range is very, very limited.”
“How limited?”
“About ze length of half ze solar system back home, Keptin. Cannot be picked up by ship in warp,” Chekov said.
A length that could be traveled in mere hours by a ship under fully working impulse drives. Except all they had was a damaged starship and a week-long journey ahead of them, if they were very, very lucky.
“That’s not what I was hoping for, but it’s something,” Jim said. “Uhura, get a crew to work on that. I want every available shuttle powered on enough to send out a distress signal. If there’s even a chance it’ll bring someone out our way, then we’re taking it.”
“Yes, Captain,” Uhura said and bent her head to her current task.
“Chekov, Scotty says he might be able to get beta engine up and running. If he can, even at half-power, does that shorten our projected ETA at all?”
Jim watched as Chekov re-evaluated his navigational equations, muttering to himself softly in Russian as he finally got the computer to spit out the results. “Could shorten trip one day.” Chekov gestured sharply with one hand as he studied the screen. “Maybe two.”
“Fine. I want you to work with Sulu and Scotty on figuring out just how far we can push the Enterprise without risking what’s left of her engines.”
They were still travelling on the gravitational waves that the singularity’s explosion had hit them with. They still had alpha engine running, even if it was barely functioning on one-quarter’s worth of power. Their ability to decelerate was practically non-existent though, and they had coasted thirty-million kilometers outwards since the battle. Sulu had managed—somehow—to guide the ship with Chekov’s help into a vector that would eventually bring them on course for that Starfleet station.
“Okay, I need—” Jim began, but was cut off by Uhura’s hail.
“Captain, First Officer Spock wants to speak with you,” she said.
“Patch it through to the main screen.”
Internal communications was running on a limited ship-wide band; wherever Spock was on the ship, Jim was amazed there was even a terminal left to contact the bridge. The area surrounding Spock was a charred broken mess, the fire from a direct hit long since sucked out by vacuum. Spock himself was suited up for space, his face distorted a little bit by the curved plasglass of his helmet.
“Spock, what do you need?”
“Captain, we have sustained heavy damage to both Phasers One and Two. Phaser Three, where I am now, is completely destroyed. Repairs would be useless and I am authorizing the damage crews to seal off this area,” Spock said.
“What about our shields?”
“At the moment, access to that control station is still blocked. Damage crews are nearly finished cutting their way inside, but it will take time to assess how badly our deflector systems were damaged.”
Everyone on the bridge tensed a little at that report. Not that Jim believed the Narada would rise from the dead and come after them, but he, like everyone else, would breathe just a little easier once they had confirmation that the Enterprise could raise her deflector shields. He’d take 1% strength over zero any day of the week.
“Keep me informed on their progress and continue with what you’re doing, Spock.” Jim pushed himself to his feet, fighting down the groan that wanted to crawl out of his mouth. “I’m heading to sickbay to take McCoy’s next report in person.”
“Understood, Captain.”
Spock cut the connection and Jim headed for the turbolift again. “Sulu, you have the conn.”
“Aye, aye, Captain. I have the conn,” Sulu replied.
Jim supposed he should remain on the bridge, there was probably something in the Regulations that said he was to keep his ass in the captain’s chair, but they’d lost too many people for everyone to remain at a single station. People were multi-tasking like crazy because their lives were hanging on the fact that everyone needed to be in five places at once.
Jim, as the Captain, needed to be in about twenty.
Rubbing hard at his gritty eyes, Jim tapped in the code for sickbay and arrived in what had become the most crowded area of the Enterprise since they’d left Earth. Corpsmen were still dragging the wounded here and far too many of the people Jim walked over and past were covered with sheets, tarps and the bloodied remains of uniforms when the nurses had run out of body bags.
Sickbay was located in the dead center of the Enterprise, a place that was purposefully hard to hit in order to keep the wounded safe. Except, for all of the fast-paced technological advances Starfleet had engineered for their starships over the past twenty-five years, they still had nothing against what the Narada had battered the Enterprise with. It had taken a singularity to destroy that damn ship from the future, after all, and sickbay hadn’t escaped the battle unscathed. Nowhere on the Enterprise had.
Initially, Sickbay had lost power when it was one of the few places that could least afford to. Backup generators hadn’t worked because the ship-wide systems had nearly burned out during their escape. Scotty had given Jim his second miracle when he’d gotten the environmental system back up and running in sickbay within forty-five minutes, but not before McCoy lost too many people who could have—maybe, possibly—survived.
Walking into the main medical bay where all surgery was taking place since triage was happening in the halls, Jim was just in time to hear McCoy call out, “Time of death, eighteen oh five.”
Jim watched tiredly as McCoy stepped back from the biobed and let the attendants transport the body onto a gurney and out into whatever room or hall that hadn’t filled up with the living or the dead yet. McCoy stripped off his bloodied gloves, turning a little when he caught sight of Jim out the corner of his eye.
“Captain,” McCoy said, the drawl in his voice beaten down into something flat.
“Bones,” Jim said, tilting his head towards the CMO’s office. “Got a minute?”
“No.”
They both still entered the office and let the door slide shut behind them. Jim slumped against the wall while McCoy leaned against a desk that shouldn’t be his. He was Acting Chief Medical Officer, the same way Jim was Acting Captain. The same way nearly all the command crew was Acting in some way. Too many people had gotten field promotions; too many more would earn them posthumously.
“What are the numbers?” Jim finally asked.
“Four-hundred ninety-two, but I think we’re stabilizing.”
Jim’s entire body flinched at that total “Stabilizing how?”
“Stabilizing as in I’m pretty sure the damage crews and corpsmen with them are nearly finished digging bodies out of the hardest hit areas of the ship.” The clinical tone of McCoy’s voice was at odds with the bleak look in his bloodshot hazel eyes. “I don’t know, Jim. We’ll probably lose more.”
Jim nodded, unable to deny that fact. “How’s Captain Pike?”
McCoy ran a hand through his hair. “Alive. Mostly. I don’t know the full extent of what Nero did to him, all I know is that damned slug I pulled out of Pike’s brain isn’t something I’ve ever seen before.”
“Is he conscious?”
“He was. He’s not right now only because I put him so deep under he won’t wake up until after we dock somewhere safe. You’re still Captain, if that’s what you were worried about.”
“It’s not. I just wanted to know he was alive. That he was going to make it.”
“He’s one of the few who will, but I’ve got other patients to deal with aside from Pike.” McCoy stared at Jim with the assessing gaze of a doctor. “You look like shit, kid.”
Jim managed to dredge up a smile for the other man. It wasn’t pretty. “So do you.”
“I mean it.” McCoy pushed away from the desk and walked over to where Jim stood. Well, leaning. It was pretty much the same difference at this point. “Give me five minutes, Jim.”
“Can’t, Bones,” Jim rasped as McCoy reached out carefully touched the bruising around his left eye, fingers sliding down to rest at the corner of Jim’s mouth. “The ship’s barely running and I can’t afford to be out of commission right now.”
McCoy snorted tiredly. “Damn it, Jim. I’m not asking you to let me put you under. I know the ship needs her Captain. I’m telling you to give me five minutes with a tricorder and a few hyposprays so that you can keep doing your job.”
Jim closed his eyes as he leaned forward, pressed a hard kiss against the other man’s mouth. He tasted blood and salt on McCoy’s tongue, on his own; from sweat or tears, it was anyone’s guess. Exhaustion was dragging at his limbs, the adrenaline he’d been running on for the past two days long-since gone.
“I’ll let you check me over so long as you give me a stimulant,” Jim said when he pulled back, blue eyes dull in his face.
“Jim—”
“Stimulant, or I walk the fuck out of here right now.”
He would, too, because he was just that annoyingly stubborn. Jim had been in enough fights in his life to know that while none of the injuries he’d sustained since arriving onboard the Enterprise as a stowaway were life-threatening, they still fucking hurt. That didn’t mean he had the right or the time to sit on his ass in sickbay while the rest of his crew did their jobs and the jobs of the dead.
“One stimulant,” McCoy warned. “One, Jim. You’ve been up for over forty-eight hours already. I’m not risking you collapsing from complications of sleep deprivation and your wounds, got it?”
“Sure, Bones. Lead the way.”
McCoy made a mental note to inform his staff that if Jim came around asking for a stimulant when McCoy wasn’t present, to tell the Captain hell fucking no. Maybe he should have Chapel hide all the stimulants, just to be sure. He wouldn’t put it past Jim to go hunting for them on his own.
True to his word, McCoy kept Jim on a biobed no longer than five minutes, managing to get an initial assessment of his best friend’s biostats and not liking what he was seeing, all the while knowing there really wasn’t anything he could do to fix it the way he wanted to. Not right now, not when the ship and her crew needed the exhausted man sitting in front of him.
Bruising and swelling of the trachea; black eye and a hairline fracture of the orbital bone; contusions, lacerations and deep muscle bruising; fractured ribs; badly sprained ankle. The computer kept listing out everything that was wrong with Jim and McCoy bit down on the protests that sat at the tip of his tongue even as he stabbed a hypospray into Jim’s neck, shooting him full of painkillers and the requested stimulant.
“Let me wrap your ribs and then you can go,” McCoy said.
“It’s fine, Bones.”
“Yeah, until you puncture your lungs and drown in your own blood. Turbolifts have limited reach through the ship right now,” McCoy said as he glared at Jim. “My staff might not reach you in time and I’m not taking that chance. Chapel, I need you over here.”
Between the two of them, they got Jim’s ribs stabilized and wrapped. Bones managed thirty seconds of an osteoregenerator before Jim was shoving his hand away and sliding off the biobed.
“I have to get back out there,” he said, giving McCoy’s arm a brief squeeze. “Thanks.”
McCoy just nodded. “It’s my job.”
“And this is mine.”
McCoy watched him leave, Jim’s body held a little straighter in the illusion of health that the painkillers were giving the other man.
“Doctor McCoy?” Nurse Chapel said, leaning against the biobed Jim had just vacated. Her white uniform was blood-spattered, her hair a frazzled mess, but her eyes were still sharp and her hands weren’t shaking yet. “We’ve got Ensign Ramirez prepped for surgery.”
McCoy nodded, swallowed back a weary sigh, and got back to the business of making sure people survived.