Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

The gun went off.

The explosion of sound surprised her more than the crushing jolt that hurled her to the deck.

Jim Kirk leaped to his feet. The gun went off a second time, the sound cutting through the cacophonous disorder on the bridge. The bullet smashed into him, engulfing him in a nova-bright haze of pain.

Mordreaux stepped backwards into the lift and the doors closed, a moment before Spock reached them. The science officer did not waste time trying to force them open. He leaped back down the stairs, past Commander Flynn struggling to her feet, and slapped the paging switch.

“Dr. McCoy to the bridge immediately! Trauma team, emergency nine!”

Spock knelt beside Jim Kirk.

“Jim...”

The bridge was in chaos around them. Blood spattered deck and bulkheads and glistened on the illuminated data screens. The security commander, her hand clamped over the wound in her shoulder, gave orders crisply over the intercom, deploying her forces to apprehend Mordreaux. Blood dripped between her fingers and sprinkled the floor beside Spock, like rain.

The second bullet had taken Kirk full in the chest. His blood gushed fresh with each beat of his heart. That meant at least that his heart was still beating.

“Spock...” Jim fought his way up through massive scarlet light, until he forced enough of it away to see beyond it.

“Lie still, Jim. Dr. McCoy is on his way.”

Spock tried to stop the bleeding. Jim cried out and fumbled for Spock’s wrist. “Don’t,” he said.

“Please...” He felt the blood bubbling up in his lungs.

The wound was too deep, too bad, to quell by direct pressure. Spock ceased the futile effort that only caused pain. Jim felt himself gently lifted, gently supported, and the sensation of drowning eased just perceptibly.

“Is anyone else hurt? Mandala...?”

“I’m all right, Captain.” She started up the stairs again.

“Commander Flynn!” Spock said without glancing back.

“What?”

“Do not summon the lift—Dr. McCoy must not be delayed.”

She needed to get below to help her people: she needed to, it was like an instinct. But Spock was right. She waited, swaying unsteadily.

“Mandala, let me help you.” Uhura’s gentle hands guided her around and a few steps forward before she balked.

“No, I can’t.”

“Mandala—”

“Uhura,” she whispered, “Uhura, if I sit down I don’t know if I’ll be able to get back up.”

“Lieutenant Uhura,” Spock snapped, “page Dr. McCoy again.”

Spock did not want to move Jim without a stretcher, but if it and Dr. McCoy did not arrive in another thirty seconds he was going to carry Jim Kirk to sick bay himself.

“What happened, Spock?” Jim whispered. “This was supposed to be... a milk run.” A light pink froth formed on his lips. The bullet had punctured his lungs. His breathing was irregular, and when he tried to draw breath, pain racked him.

“I don’t know, Jim. Please be quiet.”

Jim was slipping down into shock, and there was no more time to lose.

The doors opened and McCoy rushed onto the bridge.

“What happened? Oh, my god—” He saw Flynn first and started toward her.

“Not me,” she said. “It’s the captain.”

He hesitated only a moment, but saw that the blood covering her uniform shirt and spattering her face and hands and hair concealed a high and non-critical shoulder wound; he hurried to Kirk’s side.

Flynn walked into the lift and the doors closed behind her.

McCoy knelt beside Jim.

“Take it easy, Jim, boy,” he said. “We’ll have you in sick bay so fast—”

Kirk had never been so aware of his own pulse, throbbing like a thunderstorm through his body.

“Bones... I...”

“Quiet!”

“You were right. What we talked about... I was going to tell Hunter...”

“You’ll still be able to. Shut up, what kind of talk is this?” McCoy waved the tricorder across Kirk’s body. Jim’s heart was undamaged, but the artery was half severed. The sensor showed a pierced lung, but that was obvious without any mechanical information. The essential thing was to get him on oxygen as fast as possible, then hook him up to a fluid replacer, a heme carrier: he was bleeding so badly that oxygen starvation was the biggest danger.

“Where is the trauma unit?” Spock said, his voice tight.

“On its way,” McCoy said, defending his people though he was angry himself that they were not yet here. But he knew he could save Jim Kirk.

“You’ll be okay, Jim,” he said, and this time he meant it.

But there was something else, a danger signal from the tricorder. McCoy thought immediately of poison, but the readings were in the wrong range. He had never seen anything like this signal before. “What the devil...”

Jim thought he had blood in his eyes. A shimmering cloud passed across his vision.

“I can’t see,” he said. He reached blindly out.

Spock grasped his hand, holding him strongly, deliberately leaving open all the mental and emotional shields he had built during his long association with human beings.

“You will be all right, Jim,” Spock said. He put his right hand to Jim’s temple, completing the telepathic, mystical circuit linking him with his friend. Pain, fear, and regret welled out into him. He accepted it willingly, and felt it ease in Jim. “My strength to yours,” he whispered, too softly for anyone to hear, the words a hypnotic reminder of the techniques he was using. “My strength to yours, my will to yours.”

McCoy saw Spock’s eyelids lower and his eyes roll back till only a crescent of the whites still showed. But he could not pay any attention to what the Vulcan was doing. The lift doors opened and the trauma team rushed in with the support equipment.

“Get down here!” McCoy shouted. They hurried to obey.

They hooked up the trauma unit and oxygen flooded Jim’s body. His starving nerves spread new agony through him. He gasped, and blood choked him. Spock’s long fingers clasped his hand. The pain eased infinitesimally, but Jim’s sight faded almost to pure darkness.

“Spock?”

“I am here, Jim.”

His friend’s hand pressed gently against his temple and the side of his face. Jim felt the closeness, the strength that was keeping him alive. He could no longer see, even in his mind, but in some other, unnamed way he sensed the precision of Spock’s thoughts, their order twisted by Jim’s own pain and fear.

Jim Kirk knew that he was going to die, and that Spock would follow him down the accelerating spiral until he had fallen too deep to return. He would willingly choose death to try to save Kirk’s life.

James Kirk, too, had one choice left.

“Spock ...” he whispered, “take good care ... of my ship.”

He feared he had waited too long, but that terror gave him the strength he needed. He wrenched away from Spock, breaking their contact, forsaking Spock’s strength and will, and giving himself up alone to agony, despair, and death.

The physical resonance of emotional force flung Spock backward. His body thudded against the railing, and he slumped to the floor. He lay still, gathering his strength. The deck felt cool against the side of his face and his outflung hands. The echoes of Jim Kirk’s wounds slowly ebbed. Spock opened his eyes to a gray haze. He blinked, and blinked again: the nictitating membrane swept across the irises, and finally he could see. Spock pushed himself to his feet, fighting to hide his reactions.

Jim’s body now lay on the stretcher of the trauma unit, hooked up to fluid and respirator, breathing but otherwise motionless. His eyes—his eyes, wide open, had clouded over with silver-gray.

“Dr. McCoy—”

“Not now, Spock.”