Unshielded

Summary: Exposure to an alien beverage strips Spock of all his mental shields and Vulcan controls. Bereft of his normal defenses, can he, mcCoy and Kirk survive until he's back to normal? And what happens, when that which is hidden and controlled is left exposed?

Chapter One: Problematic Diplomacy

He hated diplomatic protocol. Really.

Leonard McCoy studied the bio-monitors above his sleeping patient, adjusted one, then huffed in exasperation and moved across the room to get a drink.

It was supposed to have been a routine mission, and an easy one. Trade discussions with a newly established warp-flight culture. There had been ambassadors already, customs had been made note of, rules taken special care of, proper dress provided. And the people themselves had been reported as friendly, hospitable people, cheerful and welcoming. Mostly philosophical types. They were eager to discuss trade, and just about everything else that came their way.

They had embraced the diverse landing party with positive delight, wanted to be made aware of every little cultural difference they could ask about. Spock had been a favorite, between his radically different upbringing as a Vulcan, and his espousal of the IDIC philosophy, which the natives had found absolutely fascinating.

It had been going absolutely perfect, textbook perfect, until the after-dinner drinks. Their hosts had provided a beverage (he couldn't pronounce the name) for everyone to drink. A sort of relaxant, quasi-alcohol mix, with a strange brew of local fruits and spices in it. It was, in their host's words, meant to 'relax one, and open their mind to the world around them'. Pleasantly warm and sweet on the tongue. He'd put a sample in his tricorder and verified it was safe for humans. Spock had put a sample in his tricorder, and verified that all components were safe for his biology as well. As near as he could determine.

Consumption of his own glass had verified that it acted as a relaxant, and perhaps a mild euphoric of some kind, but it didn't seem to cloud his senses. He'd felt fully alert, but relaxed, and the thought had occurred to him that this planet could make a tidy sum selling the stuff as a medicine. How many times had he wished he had something like this on hand, instead of a standard relaxant that put most of his patients to sleep?

And then it had gone wrong. Really wrong.

The first warning he'd gotten had come when he'd heard Spock's breath hitch, just a little, and then the First Officer had set his cup down. The next thing he knew, Spock had keeled over, doubled up with his hands over his ears, over his head, like he'd just been caught in an explosion, or simultaneously developed the mother of all migraines. He'd never seen Spock react like that to anything other than a fairly traumatic meld, and that not often.

His readings had revealed brainwaves all over the place, a K3 indicator off the charts, high respiration and heartbeat. If Spock had been human, he'd have said the man was having a panic attack, or a stroke.

Even stranger, Jim had tried to catch Spock, to support him. Spock usually accepted Jim's touch, but he'd jerked as though someone had prodded him with a red hot poker.

The clencher though, had been when Spock looked at him, eyes full of pain that he'd never seen in the Vulcan before, and murmured "Doctor...please..."

At that point, he'd yielded to his instincts and shot Spock up with the strongest pain-killer and knock-out drug combination he had on hand. Spock had gasped, then collapsed. Jim had begged leave of their hosts, who had been horrified and only too willing to delay discussions so Spock could be treated, and beamed them all up to the Enterprise.

Now Spock was lying in a drugged stupor in the diagnostic bed. The tests, what could be run of them with the patient unconscious and drugged out of his mind, had been run. And the results weren't encouraging.

A door chime informed him he had a visitor, seconds before Jim Kirk came into the room. "Bones. How is he?"

"Unconscious. I'm keepin' him under for the time being." He poured a second glass of bourbon and handed it to the captain.

"Any idea what happened?" Kirk knocked back a third of the drink, eyes on the unconscious figure across the room.

"I've got some ideas, nothin' concrete." He sipped from his own glass. "Turns out, none of the components in that little relaxant cocktail of theirs would be harmful to any of us, including Spock. Not separately at least. Likewise, near as I can tell, none of those in any combination should be harmful to a Vulcan, or a human. So, finally, I played a hunch. And I was right."

"And? What happened?"

"Dunno exactly, but it's something to do with that blasted mental and biological control of his. See, his brain chemistry, and some of his other functional chemistry, isn't exactly human or Vulcan. Kind of a weird mix of the two. Turns out, that little drink of theirs has slightly different effects on Vulcan versus human biology, and Spock got the effects of both." He grimaced. "Near as I can tell...you remember that one fever?"

"The one...the Vulcan one?" Kirk eyed him, and McCoy nodded.

"And you remember the Omicron Ceti spores?"

Kirk grimaced. "I could hardly forget, Bones."

"I thought you would. Well, as near as I can tell, what's happening to Spock is roughly what would happen if you combined those two conditions into one."

Kirk winced. "Combined...those two conditions? Bones...what would that do to Spock?"

"Can't say for certain, except that it's made his brain go haywire. He's calmed down a little since we brought him to Sickbay, but I've never seen Spock have a reaction like that. His K3 indicator was insanely high when I first brought him up here. As bad as when he gotten taken over by that Denevan parasite. I've got him stabilized, but the only person who could really tell you what happened, or what that party cocktail did to him, is Spock himself, and I didn't want to wake him until I'd gotten him a little more relaxed."

Kirk nodded and took another large swallow of his bourbon. "Is it safe to wake him now?"

"Might be. But I'd prefer to let him sleep the drugs off naturally. For one thing, I don't want to risk anything else in his system that might interact and cause additional side effects. I wouldn't have given him the pain killers if I hadn't thought he was gonna have a stroke before we got him back here." McCoy finished his own drink.

"All right. Call me when he gets close to waking, will you? I've got to go make my report. And I need to tell our hosts that we may be delayed in returning, due to his condition." Jim finished his cup and set it on the table.

McCoy grinned. "Spock won't thank you for stalling negotiations on his behalf."

Kirk returned the smile with a wry one of his own. "It's not my idea, Bones. In this culture, they consider it the highest priority to take care of one's kin and friends. It's one of their ruling tenants. As far as they're concerned, Spock is part of our family, so it would be seen as heartless to leave him. Besides, in their culture, recompense is required for the injuring of another. They won't talk trade on a general scale until I tell them whether or not we'll require recompense for Spock."

McCoy snorted. "If their little joy-juice hadn't landed the hobgoblin in my Sickbay, I could really like these folks."

"Well, I'll see if they have anything to undo the effects of that stuff when I call them." Kirk cast one last look at the sleeping figure in the bio-bed, then left the room. McCoy watched Spock's monitors for a moment, set an alarm to notify him if it looked like Spock was regaining consciousness, then headed into his office. If the natives didn't have something to counteract that stuff, then he'd need to work on whipping up a solution of his own, and he wanted to get started before Spock woke.

Author's Note: And...here we go. Next time...Spock wakes up.