A/N: This story has been poking at my muse ever since I saw Star Trek Beyond last summer, and I've *finally* gotten it out. This isn't my usual fandom, but I hope some of my readers enjoy it anyway. Or some new ones. :) It's just a short five-chapter mission-gone-wrong fic with some h/c. Updates will post Sunday mornings and Wednesday afternoons.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything in this universe, just wanted to dip my feet in it to play. I've also borrowed some elements from another sci-fi show for parts of this story. Kudos if you recognize which one. Thanks to 29Pieces for beta reading!

Chapter 1

Captain's Log, Stardate 2264.93. The Enterprise is currently in orbit around a small, class M planet that appears to have advanced technological capabilities, warranting a first meeting with the Federation. However, despite our scans of the planet surface and its sprawling cities, we have yet to detect a single life sign. I've ordered a landing party consisting of myself, Cdr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Lt. Uhura to beam down and see if we can't make contact.

"Captain, it would be more prudent to adorn ourselves in the garb of the inhabitants so that we may blend in for the initial contact rather than risk alarming anyone."

Jim mentally rolled his eyes. "Which I would do, Mr. Spock, if there were any video transmissions to intercept which would give us a clue as to what they're like."

But there were none of those. There were no transmissions or signals at all on any frequency, as if the civilization on this planet hadn't developed past the equivalent of Earth's Victorian Age. But they knew that to be inaccurate, as the Enterprise had taken long-range images of cities with huge, magnificent skyscrapers made of glass and streets of polished marble. There were even what looked like a network of tracks for a monorail form of transportation. The one important image they'd failed to capture, however, was of any people.

Jim strode into the transporter room where McCoy and Uhura were already waiting. "Have the coordinates, Mr. Scott?"

"Aye, sir. We'll beam ya down just outside the city."

Jim ascended the short steps and took his place on the transporter platform, Spock right behind him.

"It's not too late for me to go back to Sickbay," Bones spoke up at his shoulder. "Chekov's still got that strange rash and should probably be monitored closely."

"Where's your sense of adventure, Bones?"

McCoy scowled. "Apparently with my sense of self-preservation—somewhere else."

Jim smiled at the familiar routine of his CMO trying to get out of away missions. It never worked, but that didn't stop Bones from trying. And, really, at this point in their five-year mission, he was only grousing for show.

With a grin, Jim gave Scotty a nod. "Energize."

The swirling gold lights that were characteristic of the demolecularization process filled Jim's vision until it went blurry and then dark. A moment later, the transporter room was gone, replaced with a dazzling vista of a river cutting through a forest on the left and winding through the center of the city on the right. Sunlight glinted off glass skyscrapers, nearly blinding Jim if he tilted his head up at the wrong angle.

He heard the whir of a tricorder, and turned to see Spock already taking readings. "Anything, Mr. Spock?" Jim asked.

"Negative, Captain. I am detecting no life signs in the vicinity."

Jim gazed at the road leading into the city, and shrugged. "Well, guess we try knocking on doors." He started off, the away team falling into step behind him.

The weather was actually beautiful, with a warm breeze wafting off the water. Sometimes it carried a whiff of something floral, maybe citrusy. And the scenery was rather pleasant. In fact, more people should have been outside enjoying a stroll on a day like today, and it prickled the back of Jim's mind with caution that there wasn't.

The city's streets were conspicuously empty. Not a single shop door was open, and the windows were coated in an opaque layer of dust. Everything had looked pristine and glistening from a distance, but now that they were up close, it was clear that this place had apparently been abandoned.

"Looks like a ghost town," McCoy uttered.

Jim roved his gaze around. There weren't any signs of destruction or attack to suggest why a city like this would have been permanently evacuated. He strode to the nearest building and searched for a door. There was a sliding glass panel, which swished open with the grating sound of dirt caught in the tracks. Jim arched a brow. Maybe the city had run on solar energy. As long as the panels and connections were intact, there was no reason simple operations couldn't function…well, he'd say indefinitely, but Spock would correct the exaggeration. Jim squinted to see inside the dingy space. It looked like a restaurant or eatery, with tables and chairs and a counter. Nothing else, though.

Jim stepped back outside. The others had begun to spread out, investigating other nearby structures.

"There aren't even any bodies," McCoy said, making his way back to Jim from next door. "It's like they just up and vanished."

"It is puzzling," Spock added.

Uhura was a block down, studying some signage. She'd been picked for this away mission in case the universal translators didn't cover everything. Seemed like her talent wouldn't be needed, though, since there was no one around to speak with.

"Let's split up," Jim decided. "Com if you find anything."

Spock nodded, and instantly pivoted to set off. McCoy leveled a disgruntled look at Jim.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

Jim spread his arms. "No one's here, Bones."

He huffed. "Yeah, but I bet you'd manage to find trouble even on an uninhabited planet."

McCoy spun around and marched away before Jim could come up with a retort to that. Honestly, things didn't always go wrong. Maybe a lot… But hey, if a starship captain tasked with seeking out new worlds wasn't finding trouble around every bend, then he wasn't doing it right.

Jim picked a direction and headed down a side street. Everything pretty much looked like everything else—undisturbed, vacant, abandoned. There were a few doorsteps with pots of dark green, fern-like plants that had thrived in this moderate climate despite the obvious neglect. The river glittered where it cut through the city, and Jim walked out to the edge of a bridge that linked to the opposite side. There were bridges spaced every fifty yards up and down the river. How many people must have lived here? And what had happened to them?

Jim turned around, deciding to head back since his search wasn't turning up much, and he barely caught the flash of green shooting toward him in time to duck. The phaser fire skimmed the top of the bridge. Jim whipped out his phaser gun and darted for the nearest cover behind a building. Guess this place wasn't as empty as they'd thought.

Jim risked peeking around the corner, and jerked back when another blast of plasma energy zinged past him. He pulled out his communicator. "Kirk to Away Team, I've got company."

"I am on my way, Captain," Spock instantly replied.

Jim flicked the signal switch again to open another channel. "Kirk to Enterprise."

There was no response.

He frowned and tried again. "Kirk to Enterprise, do you read? Mr. Scott!"

More phaser fire erupted, aimed his direction and getting closer. Jim snapped the communicator closed and stashed it back in its belt clip. Adjusting his phaser setting to stun, he slipped around the back of the building, trying to skirt around and come up behind whoever was firing at him.

He wasn't familiar with these streets, and apparently his assailant had predicted the maneuver, because when Jim rounded the last corner, he was met by a cloaked figure grabbing his arm and swinging him around into the wall. The phaser fell from his hand. Jim instinctively threw a punch. His attacker's head snapped to the side, his hood falling off. When he whipped his head up again, Jim froze, stunned by the grotesque figure before him. He was humanoid, that much was clear, but one whole side of his face was twisted with tumorous knots. He had one milky eye on that side and brown on the other.

"I mean you no harm," Jim said, even though the universal translator hadn't been able to sample the inhabitants' language in order to translate. He raised his palms in a non-threatening gesture in the hopes of conveying the message nonetheless.

The man let out a chuff that sounded rather hostile, and swung a fist at Jim's head. He threw his arm up to block, and followed through with an undercut to the stomach that punched the air from the guy's mouth in a grunted wheeze. Jim would almost feel guilty for beating up a disfigured man, if the guy wasn't trying to kill him first.

Jim caught a right hook in the jaw and slammed back against the wall again. He ducked under the next swing and spun around to kick the guy in his lower back, propelling him into the wall instead. Then he snatched up his phaser and fired. The attacker fell limp and slumped to the ground.

Jim took a moment to catch his breath. "Bones is gonna milk this for days," he grumbled to himself. He eyed the now unconscious man, half a dozen questions running through his mind that he wouldn't be getting an answer to any time soon.

A green phaser bolt shot past his head, exploding a window and showering Jim in glass shards. He ducked and twisted around to return fire, but Spock stepped out from a side street and delivered a Vulcan nerve pinch to the second shooter. Unfortunately, this guy didn't drop like Jim expected him to. Maybe the hunchback formation on his right side meant his nerves weren't in the normal place.

With a raging bellow, the shooter turned and swung his phaser rifle at Spock, catching the Vulcan across the face. Spock went down, and Jim leaped to his feet and started running forward. The shooter whirled back to him, but rather than raising his weapon to fire again, he bowed forward at the last second, catching Jim in the chest and using his own momentum to flip him up and over his misshapen shoulder.

Jim crashed into Spock just as the commander was attempting to get up, and they both went sprawling on the ground again. Jim's phaser clattered out of his hand. He scrambled to disentangle himself from Spock's equally flailing limbs, and gained his feet just as the attacker lumbered forward and swung a fist at his head. Jim blocked, but the impact vibrated painfully down his forearm. He threw a punch and got one in return that made stars momentarily burst across his vision.

Spock grabbed the assailant's arm and tried to wrench him off Jim. The guy let go alright, long enough to clap both hands over the Vulcan's ears that probably left Spock's head ringing. This guy was pretty strong for a half-cripple—Jim had noticed a slight limp to go with the hunchback, but it wasn't slowing the guy down much.

Jim attacked again, trying to get him in a headlock or something. That wasn't really feasible. They grappled, exchanging more blows before a beefy hand lashed out to close around Jim's throat. He instantly shot his hands to the fingers, trying to pry them away. He hadn't noticed how close he'd gotten to the bridge. Neither had the assailant, apparently, because when he lifted Jim off the ground to swing him to the side, the momentum carried them both over the edge and into the water.

The hand around Jim's throat vanished in the splash, and he coughed reflexively, which let water gush into his mouth. He clamped it shut and tried to swim back up, but the current was surprisingly strong, and he felt himself getting carried faster and faster. His head broke the surface long enough to gasp in a lungful of air, but then he was dragged under again and flung this way and that. His shoulder slammed into the side of the stone canal, and the cry of pain that escaped exchanged precious oxygen for water.

Jim kicked against the current, but then he collided with something else, and everything went dark.

McCoy had just heard Jim's message over the communicator—knew he'd find trouble—when he turned around and came face to face with the business end of a phaser rifle. And now trouble's found you, McCoy.

He raised his palms in surrender. Maybe they were just defending their home. The away team was a bunch of foreign, strange-looking visitors, after all. Though, where the hell had these people come from when sensors hadn't even detected them?

"Easy," McCoy said in a soft, level tone. "We come in peace."

The man holding a gun trained on him didn't respond. Where was Uhura when you needed her?

McCoy narrowed his eyes as he studied the figure in front of him. His skin was a mottled patchwork of brown, pink, and white, like the human skin condition vitiligo. That was a genetic susceptibility that once triggered became an auto-immune disease. McCoy knew nothing about this man's physiology, but he imagined the same principle behind the condition applied.

"Look," McCoy tried again. "We're peaceful explorers—"

The sounds of phaser disruptors firing echoed from a few blocks away. McCoy's stomach tightened. He had no way of knowing who was doing the shooting—and who was being shot at. But he had a good guess.

The man gestured with his phaser rifle and said a word McCoy didn't understand, but he caught its drift. He had a brief moment to consider fighting back, of trying to wrench the gun away from this guy, but then three more came from around a corner, two restraining Uhura's arms between them. McCoy suddenly liked his odds less.

Their gazes met, and though Uhura's was full of fiery defiance, she held herself in a somewhat subdued stance. McCoy frowned at the tear in her sleeve, the tattered edges of fabric blackened by phaser burn. It looked more like a graze than a direct hit, but McCoy wasn't given time to examine it. The barrel of the phaser rifle was thrust in his face and jerked to the side menacingly.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," he muttered.

With hands still raised non-threateningly, he slowly turned and let himself be prodded through the city. They stopped at the edge and waited, though McCoy didn't know for what. There was no sign of Jim or Spock, and McCoy couldn't help but worry at that.

He found himself studying their captors, and was bemused as he noticed each of them seemed to possess some kind of deformity or other. One was nearly bald save for a few wispy threads of hair hanging down his shoulders. Or maybe it was a she. It was actually a little difficult to tell. Another had ectrodactyly, a cleft hand that looked like a mutilated claw. And the last simply looked sickly with a grey tinge to his skin and sunken eyes. It was a rather strange array of genetic abnormalities, birth defects, and possible diseases. The doctor in McCoy wanted to offer assistance, though where to start? Plus, without the ability to communicate, any move on McCoy's part could be interpreted as hostile. He'd have to bide his time and hope that either the universal translators picked up more than a single word, or that Jim would come in guns blazing and rescue them, and they could go back to the ship before addressing the problem.

No such luck, on either.

A few minutes later, one more of the motley group came hobbling out of the city toward him. He made a few grunts of something under his breath, and then that phaser rifle was being jabbed at McCoy's chest and he and Uhura were being herded into the forest. McCoy had no idea what to make of Jim's and Spock's conspicuous absence. Had they managed to escape and hide? Or…had they been injured in a fire fight and left for dead?

McCoy tried to stop his train of thoughts from derailing into panic and fatalistic assumptions, but he was damn worried. He focused on Uhura instead. Her injury looked minor, but McCoy was able to center himself if he concentrated on being a doctor—watching her gait for signs of faltering, scrutinizing her face for indications of pain or shock setting in, and what not.

She walked with chin held up, however, and the visible tightness in her jaw could have been as much to do with indignation at being taken prisoner or her own worry for Spock, as it could have been from physical pain.

The trek through the forest seemed to go on forever, though McCoy guessed that in actuality, it was less than an hour, more than half of that. The thick canopy of trees finally parted at the base of a huge escarpment. A massive compound with multiple levels had been built into the cliffside, some sections jutting out further than others in panoramic discs.

McCoy paused long enough to take it in, and to feel the stirrings of dread, before he was shoved from behind to keep going. Their captors had barely spoken a word the entire time, and the march into the compound was eerily silent, for the inside was just as empty and dusty as the city had been. There weren't any signs that anyone besides these five "escorts" even lived here. If one could call it living, McCoy thought wryly as he swept his gaze over dark computer terminals and broken furniture. This place actually looked as though it'd undergone an attack or ransacking.

There was a functioning lift, and after being shuffled inside, McCoy felt it rise, bypassing a couple of floors before finally stopping. Then he and Uhura were led through another corridor until they came to what looked like the heart of the compound's control center—conduits ran back and forth across the ceiling in a complicated network that only someone like Scotty would be able to make sense of.

Underneath the ducts and cables was a row of barred cells that looked as though they'd been constructed haphazardly with panels of wrought-iron fence work and other pieces of metal welded together in a makeshift dungeon. McCoy and Uhura were brought in front of one and promptly divested of their gear. Two of the guards took their communicators and McCoy's medical bag, stepping back to examine them while the other two pushed the Starfleet officers into a cell.

A sixth figure stepped out of the shadows, and based on his austere posture and shrewd eyes, he was the one in charge. He had white hair and a pockmarked face, and what looked like an oxygen port in the hollow of his throat.

Uhura lifted her chin. "Who are you and what do you want?"

The leader didn't answer. McCoy figured it'd be pretty hard to negotiate with your captors if they couldn't understand a word you were saying. One of the minions moved forward and held out McCoy's medical bag to the leader.

"Hey, be careful with that."

The man in charge opened the bag and picked through its contents, then flicked a thoughtful look at them. He tapped a device on his wrist, and there was a staccato series of clicks before he began to speak in words that McCoy understood. Looked like somebody's translator was working.

"Which one of you is the doctor?" the leader wheezed.

McCoy took a step forward. "I am. And I'd like to treat my crew mate's injury, if you don't mind."

The leader regarded him for a prolonged moment, but then moved closer and passed the medical bag through the bars. McCoy slowly reached out to take it, then stepped back a safe distance and turned to Uhura as he pulled out a tricorder to run over her arm. She never took her eyes off their captors.

"We're peaceful explorers," she said. "Please, we mean you no harm. I am Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, and this is Doctor Leonard McCoy."

McCoy tried not to be distracted, though he felt the leader's eyes keenly on him as he got out the dermal regenerator.

"I am Selmar," the man finally spoke with a wheeze.

McCoy finished and zipped up his bag. He didn't know if this Selmar would demand it back, though he wasn't inclined to comply. But maybe they'd just gotten off on the wrong foot and this first encounter could be salvaged.

Selmar nodded to his guards, who moved to open the cell door. McCoy had the fleeting thought that they were being released, but two lackeys grabbed him by the arms and began hauling him out, while another pointed his weapon at Uhura so she'd stay put.

McCoy tried to wrench out of their grip as he was brought toward Selmar. The leader looked at him with a pursed moue.

"The two of us should have a chat," Selmar said. "Doctor to doctor."

McCoy frowned. Selmar was a doctor? Given the condition of his small contingent, maybe they needed medical help, which McCoy could offer in exchange for their freedom.

But as he was roughly led down the corridor, he suspected it wouldn't be so simple.