Title: Burning Bridges
Series: Captain's Log, Redacted or, The Ongoing Saga of Well that's not going in the report

Characters/Pairings: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, various. Occasional background Spock/Uhura as I write only canon, but overall there's very little ship but friendship here, folks

Word Count: (this bit) 9900

Rating: T for movie-level violence, language, and occasional other adult themes which will be warned about in advance

Warnings/Spoilers: My readers probably know by now that anything in TOS is fair game to be integrated here, but usually no knowledge of the OS is necessary to understand the story. Specifics will be footnoted and specific warnings issued as needed.

Summary: Never let it be said that First Officer Spock of the U.S.S. Enterprise makes the same error twice. Post-STID, he has become quite an expert at…heavily editing, the official reports which make their way back to Starfleet Command from uncharted space.

A/N: For anyone following Insontis II right now, never fear, I have a couple chapters of it almost finished, but I need to nail down some plot before I can finish and post them, so here, have some random AOSness in the meantime. *hurls at you as peace offering*

Anything you recognize from TOS and the AOS movies does not belong to me, the rest of this crazy does.

"We experienced a slight mechanical malfunction which necessitated our dropping out of warp for a period of approximately forty-eight hours while the problem was located and rectified.

Relevant attached documents: Medical report 312: Personnel eligible for hazard pay due to aforementioned malfunctions. Also appended: Damage and expense report 4127: Bridge console repair; 4128: miscellaneous shuttlecraft supplies; and 4129: fire suppressant system."

"What exactly are we paying you for, if you can't even tell me why half my ship is becoming Delta Vega and the other half the Vulcan colony on steroids?"

"Technically, this is very much outside the typical officer's pay grade," Uhura points out dryly, not even looking up from the comms board. It's been going completely bonkers for the last three hours as the crew becomes very much aware, and not happily so, that this isn't some minor Engineering issue that's just one of the many fleeting inconveniences that happen with fair regularity on a ship this size.

The glare he sends her over his shoulder is totally pointless if she isn't even looking at him, but it makes half the shivering crewmen around her laugh nervously, so at least there's that. They have to grasp at straws here or they're going to end up biting each other's heads off for real in short order. He's already had to send four of the colder-blooded beta crewmen off the Bridge because they were turning a scary shade of pale, and he's going to give Spock about ten more minutes or one more honest-to-god shiver before he does the same.

"Sir, I swear I am doin' the best I can! But if the problem is buried in one o' the nacelles it's not something I can just see from a diagnostic. I won't know until the crews get in there to have a look-around in person!"

He rubs a thumb wearily between his eyes, and seriously debates whether or not it's damaging to his Captain's image to just break down and wear the freaking gloves most of the rest of his crew have subtly donned by now. "How long do you think that's going to take?"

"They're halfway through, sir. Another hour and it'll be a complete inspection. If we canna find the problem that way then it'll be movin' on to takin' apart the entire Environmental Control motherboards piece by piece to get at the couplings behind them, that's the only way to find the problem."

"And that's at least, what, a four-hour job?"

"At least, sir. There's no way to speed it up, the catwalks aren't wide enough to put more men up there than that."

"So in theory, we could be looking at a shipwide environmental emergency in five hours."

"Less than that, sir." Scott's voice is calm, but threaded with tension. "I'm getting regular reports from all over the ship, Captain, and the lower and upper decks are already at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Two hours and they'll be uninhabitable, even to the hardiest o' species. We have a problem, sir, an' no mistake."

He exhales slowly, trying his best not to shiver in front of his entire Bridge crew, who are all obviously eyeing his chair in trepidation now.

"Start taking apart the EC boards now, don't wait for the nacelle inspection. Worst case, we just lose an hour putting everything back together."

"Yes, sir."

"Then find me a solution that could vent the plasma from the escape shuttles, we may have to bunk a lot of the crew in the shuttles inside the bays for the night. At least they're insulated."

"I can tell you now, sir, ventilation won't be possible with the EC board down completely. However…worst case, we could always launch the shuttles for a few hours, the ship can run with a skeleton crew if she has to evacuate down to, say, 20% capacity? That'll let us shut down all but essential systems for twelve hours if worst comes to worst."

He nods absently, forgetting Scotty can't see him. It's not ideal, but it'll take the pressure off if they have to. Thank goodness he insisted on doubling the number of escape shuttles installed after Khan's rampage last year.

"Make it happen, Scotty. Report to me when you've completed shuttle inspections or if you find the problem before that, and we'll be in touch with an evac plan if it looks like we're going to come to it."

"Roger that, sir."

"Bridge out." He swivels his chair, looking around the Bridge. Shaking his head, he sighs. "Lieutenant Krythza, get to Sickbay immediately, stop trying to be a hero."

The poor young Katarran looks back at him, ears drooping, but obviously shivering far beyond reasonable tolerance. "But sir –"

"Lieutenant, I'm about to stop the ship and put the Bridge on autopilot, you're just the advance force." He manages a smile through teeth that are chattering himself. "Now go. Mr. Spock, you might as well go with him, you're next on the list."

"I assure you, Captain – "

"You'll be of more use to me in Engineering than freezing up here, if you want to remain on duty," he interrupts, not unkindly. "And Engineering is an almost literal furnace right now. You want to help, get down there and crack the whip on Scotty. Go on, get."

After only a moment's hesitation more, he sees something like gratitude flicker through his First's expression, and it's almost hilarious how quickly the turbolift doors close behind the two colder-blooded officers.

"Mr. Sulu, bring us to a full stop and put the engines on auto-pilot. The rest of you, do the same to your stations, then get below decks. If your cabins are in the safe zone, remain in them or in one of the warmer common areas until we make a shipwide announcement about an evac plan. If your cabin is not in a safe zone, report to Sickbay for temporary reassignment. Not you, Chekov, I need you in Engineering. Report to Mr. Scott for assignment to the EC crew. I'll see you get compensated when this mess is over with, I promise."

The young man's head bobs readily enough, likely just thankful to be on his way to a warmer area of the ship. A sprinkling of grateful replies ripples around the Bridge, accompanied by a cloud of chilly vapor particles in the increasingly frigid air as stations begin chirping to indicate shutdown mode.

He turns back to the Comms station, shifting slightly as he feels the ship's powerful engines begin to slow, a rumble deep beneath their feet. "Can you work that thing remotely from Auxiliary?"

"Not very well. It's already overloaded. I'm about to make an announcement for everyone to stay off the intra-comms for anything but non-emergency or medical reasons, that should help."

"I have to stay up here, there has to be a command officer on the Bridge even when the ship's on autopilot. Can I help sort things so you can work it from down there?"

She shakes her head. "I don't think so. And I'm fine, for now at least. Would like to go put on something more sensible than this ridiculous uniform dress, though."

He snorts. "Permission granted, and make an announcement that no one will be put on report for being caught out of uniform if it's medically necessary due to the Environmental Control malfunctions before you go. Make sure Spock's okay too, if you want, then come back when you can."

She nods in unspoken thanks, and puts the board on temporary hold before heading for the turbolift ahead of the primary crew force.

"And bring me a coffee when you come back!" he calls after her, only half-joking.

"Not your yeoman!"

She does bring him a coffee, bless her, and a thick fleece sweater from he has no idea where, when she returns in full insulated tactical gear twenty minutes later. The Bridge is deserted now, and it's a good thing too because the temperature's dropped another five degrees. This close to the apex of the saucer section, it's likely to become the coldest spot on the ship in the next few hours, and eventually they will have to leave, regulations be damned.

She's also brought a small portable heater from SS&R which she plops down in front of his chair, and a couple of blankets which are heavenly after the chill of the last few hours. She nods in acceptance of his totally sincere thanks and then sets back to work on the communications board, no doubt hoping to clear most of it before being driven off the Bridge. This sucks, but they're both officers who have been through worse conditions.

As whole, the Enterprise is a hardy crew, and not a one of the rest of them had complained before he kicked them off the Bridge, but there's no sense in anyone being unnecessarily miserable. And there's no point in them continuing to struggle through space with something major having knocked out the EC controls shipwide, so autopilot it is. He's in for a miserable night, because someone has to man the Bridge, but personally he'd rather be cold than hot, and he's definitely had worse than a mild case of hypothermia, though very few on this crew actually know that.

He huddles up in his chair, basically sitting on his legs and one of the blankets wrapped up and over his head like a weird hooded poncho-thing, and starts grumpily scrolling through the horrendously frightening number of Engineering reports that are being generated from the chaos happening aboard.

A silence falls, punctuated only by the various beeps and chirps coming from behind him on the comms board and the occasional murmur of a message being transferred with an audio comment.

The reports aren't encouraging; an hour later, the nacelle inspection's finished and they haven't found the problem yet, so they're continuing to take apart the entire EC system board by board. He knows with Spock breathing down everyone's necks down there the job will likely get done a little faster than it would normally, but given what he's seeing in the temperature indicators all over the ship they are running out of time either way.

He knows even before opening the Urgent packet from Sickbay that he's going to see a slew of Engineering personnel down with heatstroke and heat exhaustion; the bottom half of the ship is rapidly becoming unbearable for human tolerance.

Just as the upper half is becoming too cold for comfort.

"You about done, Lieutenant?" he asks, trying to keep his jaw steady and teeth not chattering.

"Just about. At least to the point I can finish from Auxiliary." He glances back to see her blowing on her fingers, even encased as they are in thin insulated gloves, before going back to typing with lightning-fast rapidity on two different screens in quick succession. "Not that it's going to be any more pleasant down there."

"Bones says Sickbay's already full of Engineering personnel down for the count. I'm counting on you to make sure we don't lose Scotty and Spock before this gets fixed. And I need it fixed. Before someone dies over something this stupid."

"Understood." She presses one final switch and then stands, gathering up a bunch of data-padds. Her eyes meet his over the stack for a moment, and a flicker of amusement at his huddled-up appearance flashes through them before fading to concern. "Don't tell me you're going to stay up here much longer. The temperature's dropping four or five degrees an hour, at least."

"If it drops much further, I won't have a choice but to call it, and take responsibility for waiving the regulations," he agrees. "I have no desire to be back in a cryotube, thank you."

A firm smack to the back of the head as she passes his chair. "That's not funny."

"It's a little funny."

Her laugh turns into a teeth-chattering snort as the lift doors close, and silence envelops the Bridge once more.

It's freaking creepy.

He spends an hour plowing through as much paperwork as possible, and then says to hell with his pride and sits on the floor instead of his chair, because he can sit like an inch from the small heater that way, smushed up against it like a cat on a vent opening.

And he's getting sleepy, which isn't a good sign. It's getting too damn cold. But he really isn't comfortable leaving the Bridge without a duty watch officer, that's a regulation he could seriously get in trouble for if something were to happen. If for some reason the lift systems were to go out, for example, and they were attacked, while the autopilot can be disengaged from Engineering there'd be no one on the Bridge to take command once it was removed. And while that's a very small possibility, he's learned the hard way that those tiny possibilities have an uncanny habit of following them around the galaxy and swooping in at the least opportune times.

He's not going to chance that until he absolutely has to. Call it overcompensation, call it overkill, call it the fact that he's no longer a stupid kid with delusions of grandeur due to an abrupt and very rude awakening to the fact that loss is much more real than even this crew had ever thought possible. But he's not going to risk anyone under his command, ever again, unless it's 100% necessary for the sake of a mission. If that means he himself has to deal with a little discomfort, well, that's just part of the job.

A sucky part of it, in cases like this.

Unfortunately, there's no crewman with command abilities he can even call up to spell him while he goes to warm up; Spock wouldn't last ten minutes up here with the temp where it is right now, and he needs Scotty to stay on the problem. Sulu is capable enough in a pinch but there's little point in pulling him back at this hour just because Jim can't suck it up and deal for a little while longer.

But he needs to not fall asleep, so he thinks he can be forgiven the blatant breaking of regulation when he in desperation pulls up the Enterprise music library banks and makes use of the formidable Bridge speaker system for some fairly heavy metal classical music it likely has never played in its entire colorful history.

Who knew the place had such great surround-sound?

What's of more concern, is the fact that there's an occasional weird little lurching sensation every so often that tells him EC might not be the only system having issues. If they lose the inertial dampeners too? They lose artificial gravity, they lose shields, they lose the ability to move and maneuver in space.

As it stands, they're temporarily sitting dead in space with only gravity and navigation functioning, as the two systems not part of the essential ones being taken offline with the core shut-off happening below, and it makes him very uneasy. But if something else was happening, Scotty would contact him, and it's not going to help anything for him to demand a report from people already working at their hardest capacity.

It does make his stomach sink just a little when the intra-comm whistles, though, and he scrambles up to depress the switch so quickly he almost cracks his head open on the stupid chair, legs nearly numb from sitting on them.

"Bridge." Ow ow ow. He flops ungracefully back into the chair, scowling, and glances at the origin indicator. Thank goodness, it's not Engineering. "You guys still alive down there, Bones?"

"We're startin' to break out the sweaters, but nobody's building snowmen yet," is the grumbled reply, and he tries not to laugh. "What in the name of all that's holy is that racket, Jim?"

Oh, the music. "Computer, reduce audio eighty percent. Sorry. Trying to stay awake up here."

"No kidding. That's why I'm calling you, my reports say that place is way below human tolerance levels now. You need to call it and leave, Jim, I'm not joking. You're chancing hypothermia here."

"I've got a heater, and I'm okay for now."

"Are you shivering?"

"Yes, I'm still shivering, and I'm not super sleepy right now. I know what hypothermia feels like, Bones. I've still got a little while."

"You're not out of there in an hour, I'm coming up there to get you, understand?"

"I'm totally fine with that." He shivers reflexively, very much missing the heater. "But I just can't leave until I have to, you know the kind of luck we have. And hopefully Scotty'll figure out what's going on before too much longer."

"He'd better. I'm out of beds in here now, we're turning conference rooms on either side of us into triage rooms, all the way down the hall. Mass heatstroke or hypothermia victims, even with the warnings Uhura made. We need this fixed, Jim."

"I'm well aware." He blows on his fingers, already starting to feel numb away from the heat. "How many of the crew have reported to Sickbay due to displacement?"

"I've examined upwards of two hundred and sent 'em on their way, but that's to be expected. Primary rec areas are still in a moderate zone and that's where they're congregating for now, but in another twelve hours only Decks 20-28 will be habitable, and those won't be comfortable for anything close to a humanoid species. We got a few of the cooler-blooded ones bunking closer to the engines but there's not a lot of wiggle room here for most of the crew."

"Understood. If they don't find the problem in another hour or so I'm going to start an evac to the shuttles. If you have anyone in a red zone you think would benefit from twelve hours in a heated shuttle run a report up to me in the next hour and I'll assign them first."

"How about if I don't see you in an hour I bring it to you and haul your ass off that Bridge before you turn into a popsicle."

"Or that." He laughs, a puff of ice-crystals in the chill. "Hey, Scotty's calling from Engineering, call you back." He clicks the other switch with the hand he's been sitting on, and replaces it with his half-frozen one. "This had better be good news, Mr. Scott."

"Well, it is an' it isn't, sir." Bless him, Scotty bears the brunt of his frustration more times than is fair and never loses his cool about it.

He sighs out his frustration. "Go on."

"We found the problem, sir, and only just in time too. Another two hours and she'd be beyond repair without a dry-dock to settle in while we were to take the whole aft compartments apart."

That chills him more than the atmosphere does. "What exactly could cause that much of an issue when we haven't seen a conflict in two weeks?"

"'Twas those faulty hydraulic couplings, sir, the ones the 'Fleet recalled six months past."

He sits up straighter at that, because engineering recalls are usually life-threatening matters and that particular one had been a Priority One recall, overseen and signed off on by both Scott and his First Officer. "Are you telling me we missed one in the recall? That's an oversight I will not tolerate, Mr. Scott."

"No, sir! What kind o' Chief Engineer do y'take me for!"

"One that was going to lose his job if you missed something that important," he retorts, with fast-dissolving patience.

"Aye, and rightly so, Captain. But we got them all replaced right enough, sir."

"So what was the problem?"

"The problem is that two o'the replacement couplings apparently had flaws as well, sir. Totally unrelated, as they're from a completely different outpost supplier and there've been no recalls about this particular batch that I've seen come across the Engineering boards."

He sighs. This is the kind of luck they have. "Spell this out for me, Scotty."

"Each coupling developed a fault, sir, which due to the heavy hydraulic strain shrank under pressure, causing a massive loss of power deep inside the primary environmental control units. The loss of power then caused a chain reaction of safety shutdowns throughout the environmental control system, which should turn off automatically once power is fully restored. It's not a programmin' issue like we thought, sir, purely engineering."

"So it's fixable, you just need to replace the faulty couplings."

"Well…in theory, Captain, yes."

"I don't like that 'in theory.'"

"Problem is, sir, we've no more of the correct size coupling available on board. 'Tis not a size we normally keep more than one or two spares of, and we used those after the recall. We're due to stock up at Starbase Twenty-Four."

And that's two weeks away at normal warp.

"Can you replicate the couplings?"

"Aye, sir, we've already diverted power to the replicating units, but it's a delicate piece of machinery and it'll take another twelve hours at least. That's the not-so-good news, sir."

"Twelve hours to replicate the pieces, and how long for installation?"

"We're prepping systems now, sir, to save time, but it'll take at least eight hours to install. It should really take twelve to sixteen if all safety measures are followed, but I can cut it down to eight. They're in the worst possible place, sir, and the whole kit an' caboodle has to come apart to even get at them, suspended right over the data processing core."

"Can you cut the time down to this eight hours without endangering the ship or crew?"

"Aye, sir, I can have an eagle eye out for one crew if I have Mr. Spock watching the other for safety precautions."

"Permission granted, but I want both of you off-duty until the couplings are finished then so you're on full alert."

"Aye, sir. Soon as I make sure everything's proceeding as scheduled down here I'll find him and take off for a while. Scott out."

Thirty hours, at least. More than another full day before the ship's back up and running, and it'll take another two hours after that to recalibrate the systems back to normal.

Not good.

He more slides than sits back down in front of the heater, muttering something extremely unflattering about the idiot who designed these ridiculously flimsy uniforms, and taps his fingers uneasily on the floor, debating.

Finally, with a huff of half-frozen particulates, he leans back to be heard over the hum of the heater.

"Computer, what is the closest Class-M planet?"

"Working." Even the computer sounds cold and cranky. "The closest Class-M planet is seventy-four-point-two-five parsecs' distance from the current coordinates of U.S.S. Enterprise."

At impulse power, they won't make it there anytime soon, but their shuttles are equipped with short-range warp drives that could make the jump in a matter of minutes. It's really against regulation to evac the majority of the crew, but another twenty-four hours could actually, legit kill people if the temperature continues to drop. And while they all know there's inherent risk in being out here, he'll be damned if he lets his people die from nothing more than a faulty hydraulic coupling.

This is really going to suck, though, because it means due to the autopilot already having shut down non-essential systems shipwide, for another hour all remaining power has to be diverted to the shuttle bays in order to permit depressurization and liftoff. All remaining non-essential mechanical systems will go offline as a safety measure, including turbolifts, during that time. He'll be definitively stuck up here for another hour, at least; even if he wanted to leave – which he wouldn't, because someone has to have a hand on the master autopilot overrides in case of tiny-possibility security issues like a jammed bay door and overloading engine – he won't be able to for quite a while here.

Might as well get it started now, then.

He sighs, and finally just picks up the heater to bring with him, tries to balance it on the back of his chair before deciding to hell with his precious command image. He plops down at the comms station and there, now he can set his new friend right beside him on the shiny durasteel counter surface.

Two buttons and he hears the static crackle indicating the shipwide comm is open.

"Attention all hands, this is the Captain speaking."

He never does get tired of saying that.

"I am taking responsibility for initiating General Order 13-C, a controlled shipwide evacuation via evac shuttle only, effective immediately. This is not a drill. All non-essential personnel, please proceed to your designated shuttle bays by Jefferies tubes and await further instructions. Department heads, report section evacuation complete to Engineering to begin initiating section shutdown."

He sees the board start lighting up with messages flying across the ship, and just as quickly winking out again; Uhura must still be in Auxiliary.

"Again, this is not a drill, this is a controlled evacuation of all non-essential personnel. This includes all Science departments with the exception of the First Officer and five ranking Medical officers. Communications. Operations. All Security with the exception of ranking officers. At this time we cannot afford to evac any Engineering personnel who are not already under observation in Sickbay, with the exception of non-humanoid species who will no longer be able to tolerate the shipwide temperatures during the next forty-eight hours."

A light is blinking insistently on the edge of the board.

"Let me reiterate, this is a controlled evacuation, gentlemen. There will be no chaos on this ship, and anyone attempting to incite it will be locked in the brig for the duration – and I've been told it's nearing volcanic temperatures in there, so I'd advise against it. We've located a Class-M planet only a short hop from our current location; think of this as an impromptu shore leave." He tries to keep his tone light, hard as it is with his teeth still chattering. "The ranking officer in each shuttle should report to Mr. Scott when the shuttle reaches capacity and await further instructions. The Enterprise will be in considerably more welcoming condition when you return, gentlemen."

He blows on his fingers for a second and then flips the switch under the light that's still blinking.

"Bridge."

"I am not evac-ing this ship with the rest of you still on board trying to fix this mess, Comms procedures or not," Uhura's voice crackles with both static and annoyance.

He laughs. "The thought honestly never crossed my mind."

"Good. And shut off cross-circuit board B, it shouldn't be running at the same time people are using the blue zone channels. That's why you're getting all that feedback."

He glances over, finds the correct switch and flips it. A moment later the static clears. "Thanks."

"How much longer are you going to stay up there? It can't possibly be at a safe temperature anymore."

"Soon as the lifts are back online again and the shuttles have jumped to warp, I'm out of here, I promise."

"Good. Spock's freaking out." There's a distant hubbub of what sounds like vocal protest, and he hears her laugh. "Mostly because he doesn't want to have to come up there in the cold to get you, so as soon as those shuttles clear the bays get out of there."

He laughs, watches the shimmer of durasteel fog with condensation. "You got it. And that heater's been a lifesaver, probably literally. You get a commendation in your file."

A snort. "Let's worry about getting out of this one before the heat corrodes the memory banks down here first."

"Done. Light a fire under Scotty for me."

"Already have. It's upwards of 39 degrees down here right now and still climbing."

"Jesus. That's no better than up here."

"It's a little better. We just have to stay hydrated and not overdo it. Look, I need to keep these channels clear while the shuttles fill. Check in if you start feeling sleepy, yeah?"

"Will do. Have Scotty ping me when the lifts are back online, though, in case I fall asleep."

"Aye, sir."

He signs off and unplugs to free up another channel, watches the messages fly across the board for a few minutes in lieu of anything more interesting.

And that's when karma apparently decides upon a more expedient method of making sure he doesn't fall asleep.

He picks himself up off the deck, all thoughts of a warm bed and hot chocolate long gone under that single-minded, fear-driven fury of what the hell just fired on my ship in the middle of uncharted space.

He leaves the primary shipwide comm line open because he doesn't really have a choice at this point, and the comms station erupts into sound behind him as he scrambles for Spock's viewing station, because he needs 360-degree sight around this vessel like now. And being a one-man Bridge crew doesn't bode well for their chances in whatever's about to go down.

"Engineering to Bridge, what the devil is going on up there!"

"If I knew we wouldn't still be on auto-pilot, now would we!" he hollers. "Get that disengaged, Mr. Scott!"

"Aye, sir, doin' it now, but it isna going to do us any good with all essential systems offline!"

That's what he was afraid of. Spock's scanners are showing a ship of some indeterminate origin lingering off their port bow, and a residual tachyon trail is showing where a phaser blast has just seared into their thankfully uninhabited-because-it's-reached-Saharan-temperatures lower decks. No proximity alert had sounded upon its arrival due to the auto-pilot and the essential systems being offline. They'd been a sitting duck, in other words. Or the ship could very well have been sitting there this whole time; they had dropped out of warp with so many malfunctions happening and the auto-pilot already starting that no one had noticed it. A rookie mistake, and one he might very well not live to regret here if he doesn't do something fast.

"I need you to get weapons back online, Scotty," he warns, as the ship rocks again under another blast.

"Impossible, sir. The EC board is still in a hundred pieces and it cannot be put together that fast! Bringing those systems back online with that circuitry exposed will detonate a nuclear reaction and blow the whole ship apart."

"Then get me engines so we can get the hell out of here!"

"Sir…"

Spock's voice breaks in, the always-present calm in chaos which he badly needs right now. "Captain, bringing any essential system online right now will produce the same result. This includes all weaponry, propulsion, and unfortunately the shielding systems as well."

Well that's not good. The ship quakes beneath him as another blast hits closer to her heart, and he pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration, making a dash back across the Bridge for the comms station.

"Unknown ship, this is Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise, representing the United Federation of Planets. We are on a peaceful mission and you are firing upon an unarmed vessel. Please identify and respond. Uhura, keep broadcasting that on every frequency with the universal translator."

"Yes, sir."

"Captain."

"Go ahead, Spock."

"Sir, the enemy ship has veered away from the Enterprise and is moving toward the departing shuttlecraft."

He swears under his breath as he sees corroborating visuals on the scanners. "What the hell do they want!"

"Unknown, sir."

"How long until the last one jumps?"

"At least another seven minutes, sixteen seconds."

Yes, of course. Escape shuttlecraft were never designed to depart and immediately jump to warp. They each have to be a fair distance away from each other and have to let the residual warp bubble collapse before the next jumps or risk their coordinates starting off hundreds of degrees in the wrong direction and overlapping bubbles creating temporal anomalies.

Uhura's voice cracks across the channel. "Sir, I've gotten no response from the enemy ship."

There's a flurry of indistinct noise, and then Scotty's panicked addition. "Captain, they're firing on the shuttles now!"

"Like hell they are," he growls, stumbling on still-numb feet down the steps toward the front console. "Navigation's still online because it's a separate essential system from the primaries, right?"

"…Aye, sir, but –"

"Then you worry about getting that board back together so I get everything else online stat, Mr. Scott. Uhura, open a channel to the evac shuttles."

"Channel open, sir."

He makes a controlled dive into the navigator's chair and begins firing up the nav computer. "Bridge to Evac shuttles, this is the captain. You've no doubt realized we have an unwelcome visitor, who may be causing you a little trouble before you make your jump. Your orders are to continue on course to the coordinates of the planet Mr. Scott has already sent to your nav computers. The Enterprise will rendezvous with your shuttles there in no later than 48 hours' time."

He slides over to the pilot's seat and begins punching in the commands for the thrusters, the only propulsion system online now. "If for some reason the Enterprise does not arrive at that time, you are to activate emergency distress beacons and await Starfleet's arrival or new orders. Now get moving as quickly as you can, gentlemen, and good luck." He punches the button to fire full thrusters, and feels the straining groan of the ship start to slowly try to break free of the stillness and gain inertia once more. She turns, slowly, and he spares a minute to blow on his fingers in an effort to gain feeling in them. Adrenaline's already making him sweat, but his extremities are freezing still.

The ship rotates slowly, and then gains a little momentum as he fires short thruster bursts in quick succession to get her moving again.

"Captain, what are you doing?" That's Sulu's voice, and he's supposed to be on one of the shuttles.

"Buying you time, Mr. Sulu. Unless you have a better idea of how to shield the shuttlecraft until you can warp out of here."

"Sir, the Bridge isn't shielded at all if the essential systems are offline!"

"Yes, well, buying time sometimes is just a fancy word for gambling, Mr. Sulu." He steers the ship with single-minded determination in a line between the enemy ship and the shuttles. Weirdly enough, the enemy ship appears to be content to hover in one position to fire, rather than moving – only a few parsecs from her previous position near the Enterprise's port bow. By shifting the ship in between the departing shuttles and flipping her nose and top toward the enemy vessel, he's put a temporary shield between them and freed up the last few to scramble out the back of the ship, from the bays between the nacelles, without being fired on.

"Cap'n, one good shot from that thing and it could blow the whole Bridge dome to kingdom come!" Scotty's voice is high-pitched with panic, and his accent's almost indecipherable.

"Like I said. Get those systems back online, Mr. Scott."

"Captain, interposing the Enterprise herself as a physical shield between the ships will accomplish little but to cause damage to the ship itself, as she is completely unshielded due to the power drains." Spock's words are calm, but the tone is threaded with tension.

"And you think those shuttle shields will hold up against unknown starship phasers? Not happening, Spock. We're a bigger target at least, and most of the crew's far enough below decks thanks to the temperature problems that even a hull breach will have minimal casualties if they get lucky. Sound the alarm to evacuate any remaining upper deck crewmen to Deck Five or below." He taps in another command to turn the ship so she's totally topside toward the enemy vessel. "So, how good are you at manually launching torpedos, Mr. Scott?"

There's a brief silence, and then a scuffle on the other end of the line. "We'll get right on it, sir. But it'll take a wee bit to recalibrate the homing device."

"Spock?"

"On my way. Mr. Scott, I will require three technicians and a programmer with a no more than 0.001% error record. Preferably Mr. Chekov if he can be spared at his post."

"On it, sir."

"I will meet you there, Meester Spock."

It'll get done in a quarter of the time, then, that's good. He can hold out that long up here, hopefully.

A blinding green light flashes dangerously close to the main viewer, and something explodes off to his right.

Well, he can hold out if they don't get a lucky shot into something vital. He's at least got their attention, that's for sure.

"Scotty, give me a countdown on those shuttles."

"Thirteen to go, sir, and just under three minutes remaining."

He cuts the thrusters; momentum will keep the ship in place now between the smaller targets and whatever this is. "Lieutenant Uhura, report."

"Nothing, captain. What I can't understand is why I'm not getting a reception report. Channels are open but I'm getting a bounceback signal instead of at least indication they've intentionally blocked reception. It could be that their species literally doesn't communicate by sound, is the only thing I can think of, or that their reception software is so far below our technology it's not registering any known frequency. And I've included the shortwave, local, and old 'Fleet frequencies just in case, sir."

Well that's just fabulous.

A sudden blast directly blinds the main viewer, and something explodes at his left, forcing him to duck behind the console edges to avoid a shattering spray of debris.

"Captain, are you all right?"

"I'm good, but I don't think this place is going to hold up under many more of those," he shouts over the alarm klaxons shrieking from the Engineering station. "Computer, shut off those freaking sirens!"

"Unable to comply."

"Are you kidding me right now."

"Invalid data. Please restate inquiry."

He hears a stifled laugh over the comm and the wailing is abruptly cut off a moment later, no doubt from Engineering or Auxiliary. "Thanks. Look, people, I need options and I need them now. I'd very much prefer not being blown off my own Bridge through our front window."

"Keptin, can you climb down the turboshaft?"

"I don't think so. The doors are sealed until the shuttle lockdown's lifted, so I'd have to break them open somehow, and even if I could do that my fingers and toes are still numb from the cold, I'm not sure I could actually hold on for a seven-deck climb on that ladder. Not unless it's absolutely the last option."

Another blast rocks the ship, and he slaps a button on the nav console to fire the aft thrusters and keep them turned toward the enemy vessel.

"Besides, until those shuttles are away someone has to stay up here and make sure we compensate for drift, you can't control primary navigation from down there once the core's been taken offline."

"Right, Cap'n, one torpedo ready for manual lock and fire in…"

"Two minutes, Keptin."

"Less than two minutes, sir. But what the devil d'ye expect to do with it, may I ask?"

"Get lucky, I hope," he says dryly. "Okay, earn your paychecks, guys. Give me a readout on this thing. I only have two hands up here and they're both full at the moment. Readings, stats, speculation, anything. What am I looking at."

Another blinding beam of light just barely misses the hull, and he winces reflexively, glad it missed that time. "Computer, dim viewscreen. And how the hell are they firing on us that fast!"

"Good question, Cap'n," Scotty's voice is slower now, obviously pondering that. "Hold a minute, Bridge."

"Spock to Bridge."

"Go ahead."

"Captain, while I more than agree with your assessment of the situation and in fact see little alternative to an aggressive defense at the moment, I would hesitate to completely destroy the enemy vessel without attempting to ascertain a motive for its unprovoked attack, or indeed who precisely is at the helm."

"And while I agree with you, Commander, if I have to choose between them or us it's not going to be us." He sighs, rubbing a thumb between his eyes to ward off the headache. "I only have one shot here, it's not like I can shoot to just disable even if we could make a good guess about their ship's construction."

"Agreed."

"So…" He exhales slowly. "I am open to ideas, but you probably have about sixty seconds to put them on the table before I have to pull a trigger of some kind."

"I had already formulated one such idea, Captain."

"Of course you did." He tries not to laugh despite the situation. "I presume it's already being put into action and this is your courtesy call, Mr. Spock?"

He hears an outright laugh from Auxiliary Control, and dead silence from his First's end for a moment.

"Look, just…I don't care, just loop me in here before –" He looks up just in time to see the enemy ship dangerously close on the viewer and a broad green light glowing from what has to be a phaser bank on her stern. He yelps, drops and ducks under the nav console, covering his head as around the Bridge multiple stations suddenly explode in a shower of sparks. Something large and heavy falls from the ceiling over by the port side turbolift, and he prays that cracking noise he hears isn't the main viewer because if it is, he's in big, big trouble.

Breathing heavily, he coughs out a lung of electrical-tanged smoke and scrambles back to the comms board. "Damage report!"

The shipwide channel's totally dead, obviously something's been damaged, so he hits the switch for Engineering. "Bridge to Engineering, give me a damage report!"

"Captain!" From Scotty's relieved tone, it's obvious that auxiliary had shown the impact up here very clearly. "Sir, it's mostly confined to the upper decks, nothing major. A few fires that're bein' put out, and some power surges down here but nothing that'll set back repairs. Pretty sure the Bridge directly took the worst of it, sir."

"Good." He coughs again. "What happened to the fire suppressant system up here?"

"Uh…it should be working just fine if needed, sir, I'm getting no reading otherwise?"

"Well it's needed, and it's not," he says dryly. "Can you at least vent this smoke for me? And get me Uhura or Spock, wherever they are now, the shipwide's not working."

"I'm here, sir." Another channel's blinking on the board, and he flicks the switch quickly, eyeing the fire still burning in the library console. "Auxiliary got evac-ed due to a brief coolant leak so I'm in Sickbay helping Spock finish patching in the Med mainframe to the remote scanning system."

"Do what now?"

"He thinks he can use the medical mainframe in conjunction with the Enterprise's library banks and scanning system to scan the enemy ship for life-forms."

"Two problems with that. One, what good is that going to do us?"

"Scotty was the one who noticed, he started tracking the time between each blast from the ship, sir."

"And?"

"The time between each phaser fire is precisely two hundred twenty seconds, sir," Spock's voice cuts in, a little muffled.

"Wait, each time?"

"Exactly. It's way too much to be coincidence."

"So you think the weapons systems, at least, are fired by artificial intelligence, if not the whole ship," he muses aloud, nodding to himself. "That would explain why it hasn't utilized any basic battle maneuvers and why it hasn't responded to hails. It's not programmed to."

"Exactly. It might just be a sort of border patrol ship for some remote culture, a guard dog, anything – we have no idea where we are, really, we just dropped out of warp unexpectedly into totally uncharted space."

"And if it's run by computer we can destroy it with a decent conscience for not destroying actual life. Nice job, guys."

"But you said two problems, Captain?"

"Oh, right…" he glances sideways, wincing. "The library console is kind of…on fire."

"It what!" Great, that's Bones, and this is what he was hoping to avoid.

"Well, in all fairness so is half the Bridge, but –"

"Captain, why has the fire suppressant system not activated?"

"If I knew, Spock –"

"Jim, bust down that turbolift door and get your ass off there, now."

"Dude, calm down. It's not a spreading fire, they're all contained. It'll burn out in a minute, and besides, if you didn't know, we're kind of in the middle of a space battle here!"

Another blast rocks the ship as if to add credence to his words, and he grabs the lip of the comms station for balance.

"If we're going to destroy an enemy ship without making contact then someone has to be on the Bridge assuming responsibility for that decision. Until that thing blows I stay, so." He bats at a spark that lands on the console. "Look, at least I'm not cold anymore."

He hears a flurry of commotion on the other end of the line. "Give us two minutes, Jim."

"Make it less if you can. You'll have to reroute through the auxiliary library banks, Spock. Comm me when you have confirmation of no life aboard."

"Yes, Captain."

"Bridge out. Mr. Scott, is that torpedo armed and ready?"

"Aye, sir. Just waiting on coordinates, sir."

"Divert all remaining non-essential system power to the nav computer for two minutes so I can compute them."

"Yes, sir. Captain, we're getting all kinds of warnings from up there, are you sure you're all right?"

"It's a little toasty now, but I'm fine, Mr. Scott. Everything should burn out in a minute or two, but that vent I asked for would be helpful."

"Aye, sir, workin' on it. But –"

"It's controlled from the EC board that's still in pieces, yes, I was afraid of that." He stifles a cough in his sleeve, and starts inputting computations in the nav computer. It would help if the air wasn't hazy, but c'est la vie. Especially their vie. "Coordinates sent."

"Acknowledged. She'll be ready to go on your signal, sir."

"Do we have any power to the engines yet at all?" Another wide beam glances off the side of the saucer section, so close to the Bridge he can feel the rumble of damaged plating being shredded from the hull not far beyond the walls of the dome.

"No, sir. But depressurizing all the unoccupied decks and the empty shuttle bays plus what's left in the thrusters should be enough to move us clear of the blast zone. Maybe. Ehm. I think?"

He rolls his eyes, waving a haze of smoke away from the console to see better. "It will have to do. Scan and make sure those decks are empty, then be ready to depressurize on my mark. Did the shuttles evac all right?"

"Aye, sir – all safely away, got confirmation a moment ago."

Well, that's one thing going right for them today.

The other comm channel snaps at him from the back of the Bridge, and he half-turns. "Computer, open channel. Bridge."

"Spock, Captain. Scans show conclusively that the enemy vessel is solely operated by artificial intelligence, and rudimentary intelligence at that; computer-generated, not classifiable as a lifeform."

He smiles. "Thank you, Mr. Spock. Computer, open all channels." With the shipwide down, this will have to do; he has to hope the remaining crew are within reach of a departmental comm. "All hands, this is the captain. Prepare for imminent collision conditions. I repeat, prepare for imminent collision conditions. This is not a drill."

He flicks the firing switch for the thrusters into ready position.

"Computer, close all channels. Open Engineering channel."

"Scott here, sir."

"On my mark, Mr. Scott, fire torpedo to the coordinates provided and immediately depressurize."

"Aye, sir."

"Firing commencing in three. Two. And one – fire torpedo, Mr. Scott."

"Torpedo away, sir. Commencing depressurization."

He flicks the switch to activate all thrusters and immediately starts navigating them away from the enemy ship, but the angled slant of their ungainly retreat is slow in starting, and he sees the blinding flash of the exploding ship on the main viewer well before it feels like they've even started moving.

But the calculations don't lie, and within a second the force drives them backward far enough that they only get spun out of control for a short distance, which he's able to stop easily enough from the nav computer; certainly preferable to being nuked due to being unshielded in close proximity to a detonating photon torpedo.

Once they've stopped slinging wildly through dead space, he huffs out a breath into the smoke-charred air and just stares for a second, hardly able to believe they got out of that without a scratch.

Behind him, one of the burning consoles collapses on itself, sending a spray of sparks everywhere.

Well, relatively speaking, without a scratch.

"Bridge to Engineering. Everything in one piece down there?"

"More or less, sir!"

"Nice job, Scotty. Park it here and get that board back together, will you?"

He hears a chorus of relieved laughs, not the least of which is his overworked Chief Engineer's. "Aye, sir, that we will. Repressurizing decks now, sir, and the lifts will be working in the next five minutes or I'll come up there meself with a rescue crew. I'll have a damage report for you shortly."

"Good." He coughs again, well out of hearing of the comm. "Bridge out. Kirk to Sickbay."

"Jim! My God, man, are you all right? The alarms goin' off down here say that whole place is on fire and the smoke levels are way above human safety levels!"

"Bones, seriously, stop overreacting."

"You went from sitting in a refrigeration unit to a room literally going up in flames, you do not get to tell me when I am and am not overreacting!"

"He has a point. Why are you still up there."

"Give Scotty half a minute to get the lifts working! Geez. Spock, be the voice of reason here, will you?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Thank you."

"I too would prefer you not remain on the Bridge in its current hazardous condition."

"Oh my God, I hate all of you."

He wheezes out a laugh that's borderline hysterical from relief, which is a huge mistake, because his body apparently decides that's its signal to try and expel one or both of his lungs right then and there. Ears ringing, he has a few woozy seconds to briefly wonder if it's actually possible to cough yourself into passing out before he finds out for himself.

Turns out, you can.

He screeches back into the land of the living nightmare looking at something closing chokingly over his mouth, and he has about ten whirlwind seconds of arm-flailing panic until finally one of his attackers that's not got him by an arm leans in through the haze of smoke, pulls off his own grotesque facial accoutrement, and thwaps him upside the head.

"For gods' sake, it's an oxygen mask, Jim!"

Oh.

He blinks through the smoke – wow, it really has gotten pretty dense in here, he didn't notice that before – and lets his shaking legs go out from under him like they've wanted to for the last however long it's been.

"Whoa, whoa, you stay standing until I know if I'm lookin' at hypothermia or smoke inhalation. Or both."

"Doctor."

"Fine, but you're carryin' him, not me."

"I have no objections."

"I do!"

"You lost the right to an opinion when you passed out before getting yourself off the Bridge. Sir. I told you not to make us come get you."

"Yeah, well. You're bossy," he mutters inelegantly, trying to get his eyes to stay open long enough to see the smoke slowly dissipate and turn into the stark white of a familiar turbolift.

"Ugh, it's following us in here. Computer, ventilation at twenty-five percent."

"Unable to comply."

"It hates me today," he observes truthfully, before yanking off the mask to expel a rough hacking cough that's forceful enough to yank his arm down from Spock's neck as he starts an ungainly slide down the wall, head spinning. But the oxygen has helped a tiny bit, and he can at least see straight, once the walls are back where they're supposed to be.

Walls that have three slightly hazy sets of worried eyes looking expectantly at him, like they just asked a question he was too out of it to hear.

"…Yeah, no," he rasps, brittle like broken glass, and shakes his head. "What?"

Uhura glances up at the other two and stands, moving to the wall comm to start punching in numbers.

He blinks some of the fog away and swats angrily at the medical scanner whirring by his neck like a particularly angry medical insect. "Seriously?"

"Get that mask back on."

"I'm fine."

"You want me to clamp it to your face?"

He snaps it back on, more because he would actually like to feel like his lungs aren't being sat on by something huge and heavy. "We hear from the shuttles? They arrive at the rendezvous? It shouldn't have taken more than twenty minutes at Warp Two," he says, fogging up the mask.

"I thought you might ask that, I'm checking now," Uhura's amused voice comes from overhead. "If I find out, will you go quietly?"

He smirks. "Maybe."

Spock's eyeroll is legit 100% human, but he looks a lot better than he had hours earlier, freezing on the Bridge. "Due to the lack of science personnel currently aboard, Captain, I took the liberty of borrowing a small technician team from Engineering to inspect the wreckage of the enemy vessel in an effort to determine its origins."

He nods. "Good. I hate to destroy another culture's tech but we literally didn't have a choice, not without shields and weaponry."

"Agreed. It likely would have continued to fire until all targets were destroyed, a directive in its master programming."

"Let me know what you find. And as soon as we have the engines back online, make –" He shoves Bones's hand away just in time to haul the mask off again and try his best to hack out a lung. "Okay, that hurts."

"You think? Next time, when I tell you to leave somewhere, leave! You'll be lucky to not end up with pneumonia from this, with the differences in temperature and smoke inhalation!"

He sighs, plopping the mask back on.

"Here we go. The transmissions got lost when the main board was fried in that last power surge. All shuttles reported in safe upon arrival, minor damage to two but nothing non-repairable and no casualties." Uhura shuts off the computer and turns with a smile, ponytail flying. She palms the door sensor and it opens on a deserted Deck Six. "Now no excuses, go."

"Somebody's got to make a report to the 'Fleet, this is going to put us behind schedule for restocking at Starbase Twenty-Four."

"I will see to the report."

He squints at his First in fairly well-deserved skepticism, and Spock has the grace to blush. "It will not be as…explicit, as those submitted in the past. Sir."

Now this he has to see.

"Well, Commander, I leave this mess in your capable hands then. Who knows, maybe you'll surprise me."

"It will not be submitted without your review, Captain."

He waves a careless hand, mostly because he's probably about to fall over from adrenaline rush-in-reverse. "Spock. I'm not worried."

But weirdly enough, he really isn't.

FYI, for anyone who cares about this kind of thing: Long-range shuttlecraft equipped with smallscale warp drives were a Thing in the TNG-era, and because the AOS is more advanced in many ways than TOS I've chosen the personal headcanon of having its refit after STID include the addition of long-range shuttles, just for the versatility they offer. Pretty much everything else here is made up.