A/N: 1.) Obviously I don't own anything in Star Trek. 2.) Let me know if I'm overusing curse words, especially with Bones. 3.) I am extremely open to constructive criticism. If there's something you think could have been done better, do let me know. I will not take it personally unless you're cursing it at me.

Chapter 1

Silence. A sphere of nothingness surrounded Ritha as she curled into a fetal position and covered her head with her arms to protect her vital areas. Silence bled into a high-pitched ringing in her ears that bled into a backwash of sound as though all noise on the engineering deck of the Enterprise was being sucked through a breech in the hull into the eerie quiet of space. Screams of engineers pinned beneath the wreckage of machines or in the direct path of the nutonium spewing from a cracked engine block exploded through the backwash of noise until her head was threatening to split in half.

Then there was the sound everyone on the engineering deck most dreaded as someone cried "Scotty's down!" Her heart was like the hooves of the Budweiser Clydesdales on parade down a paved road as she uncurled herself and rolled up onto her knees to scramble for the intercom that had direct access to Sickbay.

"We need medical teams in engineering. Scotty has been hit by leaking nutonium, and we have casualties."

"Evasive maneuvers!" Somehow, Captain Kirk's voice penetrated the chaos of engineering as people raced to try to get the systems back online. "Scotty, we need more power. Divert all auxiliary power to our forward shields. Sound the general evacuation of all living quarters and pump that energy into our impulse drive."

"Scotty isn't here!" she shouted again since the captain obviously hadn't heard it the first dozen times it had been shouted or simply had too much going on to process that engineering had taken a direct hit that had put its CO out of commission.

Metal groaned against metal when the Enterprise lurched starboard, causing damaged braces to buckle under the stress. A series of catwalks gave way and crashed into the engine block with enough force to break the mountings holding it to the floor. Ritha shouted until her throat was raw for people to get out of the way, but there simply wasn't enough time for men and women to move before the block toppled over, crushing half a dozen engineers beneath its weight and splitting the nutonium reservoir. Chemicals spilled across the floor in a wave that burned anyone it came in contact with.

Panic was right there on the edge of overwhelming her like bile that was sloshing around where the interior ends of the clavicles almost touched. Moving wrong seemed as though it would send her into a non-functional state. Ritha gouged her fingers through her short hair and tried to think of what to do and how to give Kirk the power he needed to keep the Enterprise from being blown out of deep space.

"Get as many wounded into the decompression chambers as you can!" shouted Bones when he came running onto the main floor of engineering with a team of medical officers.

Right. The decompression chambers. They would protect the wounded from the nutonium and its corresponding gasses. "You heard him! And put your oxygen masks on so this shit doesn't burn your lungs."

Yanking a mask out of Scotty's main console, she dodged around scurrying engineers to make it to their downed CO. He was bleeding heavily from a gash on his forehead, had sustained burns on most of his face and chest, and his right arm was bent awkwardly. Ritha gently tugged the mask over his face to protect his lungs from the nutonium and then turned an expectant glance to Doctor McCoy. He was Doctor McCoy! How many times had the entire crew heard that he was capable of fixing anything with little more than a roll of duct tape and a hypospray?!

Bones crouched next to Scotty and whipped out his dreaded hypospray to pop the Scotsman in the neck and said, "I'll take care of him. Now, get back to your station."

Her fingers curled in the material of Scotty's uniform shirt. "I don't know what to do," she admitted in a voice that was barely heard over the cacophony.

"Do your job," he responded. Steady, blue eyes bored into her for all of two seconds before he returned his attention to Scotty.

"Engineering, where's that power?!" Kirk shouted over the intercom again.

"It's hiding inside my anal cavity, because dragging it out of my ass is pretty much what you're asking me to do!"

"Scotty's had a lot more clutter than just power hiding in his ass, so get to yanking, Ensign Monroe, and do what you're being paid to do," Bones snarked.

They were all fucking nuts. There were more nuts on this ship than a damned peanut farm on Planet Cashew in the Pecan Galaxy. Ritha shoved to her feet and tore across engineering to return to the main console that had miraculously survived the collapsing catwalks. The captain wanted power. Well, she had one suggestion for him; get every female crew member currently on the rag hooked up to the engines via conductor cable and take away their chocolate. Wait, that might overload the engines and cause an explosion.

A few taps on the touch screen console diverted power from the living quarters to the shield generators. Power from the holodeck and other entertainment facilities was sent to the engines to increase the speed of the impulse drive, but if the captain wanted more power than that, he'd have to suck a rotten egg and blow on the ship systems.

"You've got every single ounce of spare power on this ship, Captain. Use it wisely. You lot, once you're through moving the wounded, break out the mini generators. Put three of them on the engine and another two on the environmental systems."

The last thing they needed was for the environmental systems to crash and stop producing oxygen and filtering carbon monoxide. All the fires breaking out on the ship were going to be a serious drain on their oxygen levels. Speaking of fires, Ritha grabbed up a welding kit, strapped the power pack onto her belt, and fired up the torch while running for a buckled door that had part of a catwalk lodged against it. Trying to cut the catwalk away would be stupid and time-consuming, so she climbed under it and started burning a hole in the door itself that quickly granted her access to the containers of fire retardant and neutralizing foam for the spilled nutonium.

Another dangerous lurch of the ship sent her sliding into metal wreckage. She took the impact on her right side, felt something in her side pop that was followed by a jolt of pain, and shoved free to hand out the canisters she was carrying. Blue spray soon spewed from the canisters. As soon as it came in contact with the nutonium, it turned white and expanded into foam that would deactivate the acidic nature of the chemical and prevent anyone else from getting burned.

A sharp booming sound when the port nasaille took a hard hit yanked a yell from her. All she could do was drop into a crouch and cover her head again. So many people were screaming at her. So many individual expectations were waiting on her to bark another order since no one else had stepped up to the plate in Scotty's absence. What the Hell did they expect her to do? Bones and his roll of duct tape would do a better job of holding the ship together.

Someone suddenly yanked her out of the way in time to keep her from being turned into a stain on the ground when another catwalk came down. She found her nose mashed up against a man's chest and her body flattened against a wall, which only added further abuse to what she suspected was a broken rib.

"Goddamnit, either pull your head out of your ass or get the Hell out of engineering, 'cause I ain't got time to keep you from being my next patient!" Bones shouted.

"I'm sorry," she said in a slightly plaintive voice.

"Don't be sorry. Just get your head in the damned game. I'm not gonna tell you again. Scotty hand-picked you from dozens of applicants despite your shaky record because he believed in you. My suggestion is that you don't let him down or you'll find yourself shipped back a desk job at HQ ."

Scotty believed in her. He thought she had the potential to be as good an engineer as her father. Ritha dragged in a quivering breath and nodded. "You won't have to tell me again, Doctor McCoy. I got this." She added a thumbs up for emphasis.

"You damn well better, Ensign Monroe. Now get your ass moving like you're not being paid by the hour."

As soon as he stepped out of the way, she dropped a hand to her side and then took off again. The panic was still lodged firmly between her clavicles. No inspirational speech or self-help guide would make it go away, but thoughts of what would happen to her sister, a doctor whom Bones had no doubt left in charge of Sickbay, if she fucked up was motivation enough to beat it back for now.

***

"Nurse Chapel, get a hydrocarodin dressing on these burns and hook Scotty up to ECMO. His lungs took more damage than I hoped," Bones ordered. "The rest of you start transporting the stable patients up to Sickbay so Doctor Westin can take over their treatment."

At least things weren't crashing to the floor anymore. There was still plenty of moaning and screaming going on from the wounded, but the battle seemed to be over with, a fact that was proven when Jim made an appearance in Engineering. However, Bones didn't look at Jim when the captain stopped to have a word with Ensign Monroe: He looked at Ensign Monroe. Since when wasn't staring at a gorgeous blonde preferable to Jim's ugly mug?

He really tried to come up with something snarky about her inability to stay focused in a high pressure situation and her lack of experience, but some kind of psychological issue was obviously the root of her problems. Scotty had seen something in her when he'd gone to bat with Jim to get her transfer approved despite the fact she'd turned down two promotions and had been described by her last CO as unmotivated but willing to please. Whatever Scotty had seen in her, it wasn't her boobs. Everyone knew Scotty was a boob man, but it would be generous to say Ritha's were a B cup.

Assessing her on the Jim Kirk Fuckability scale was just distracting him from his patients, so he turned away from the pair to continue with his work. Damned Klingons. They'd had to fight three War Birds to save a Malduban vessel that had made the mistake of trying to gain access to a planet the Klingons had declared theirs. Now they would end up being stuck drifting through space for a week just so enough repairs could be made for them to limp into a Federation dry dock where they would spend a month making the Enterprise space-worthy. A month after that, the Enterprise would get broken again. Honestly, he had no idea why Admiral Pike didn't fire the lot of them.

"How's he doing?" Jim suddenly asked from behind Bones.

Bones didn't have to ascertain who the captain was talking about. It was obvious. "It's touch and go, but he's holding stable right now. His lungs sustained chemical burns. I'll treat them with steroids to speed up the growth of healthy lung tissue, but it's too soon to say for certain."

"Shit, if you're actually explaining your treatments for him, that means it's 'he could die' bad. How many casualties?"

"Twenty-three so far. Most of them were during the collapsing catwalks and that damned engine block that fell over. I bet that hobgoblin is still kicking, though." He couldn't come right out and ask if Spock was all right lest he ruin his reputation, so he had to beat around the damn bush to get Jim to divulge what he wanted to know.

"He's kicking like a mule at a bestiality convention. Uhura was flung out of her chair and hit her head on the edge of a console, so he won't be all right until she wakes up and reassures him that she's all right."

"Goddamnit! I'll be up in Sickbay as soon as I get the rest of these patients stable and transported. I'll take a look at her to make sure she doesn't have any swelling in her brain or breaks in her skull."

"Westin is a competent doctor, you know. You even said so yourself. She already checked for all that, and the results came back negative."

"Since when has competent been good enough to treat you, the hobgoblin, or Uhura?" he demanded in his best irritable tone. It was quite simple actually. No one but him was qualified to do more than preliminary exams on the damned catastrophes waiting to happen. Scotty would have to be added to that list now too.

"Control-freak," Jim muttered with a good-natured smile.

"Psycho," Bones shot back.

"Is that your official diagnosis, Doctor McCoy?"

"Damn straight. One Starfleet vessel attacked three Klingon War Birds. If that isn't psychotic, I don't know what is."

"One Starfleet vessel defeated three Klingon War Birds," Jim retorted. The captain's chest puffed up with pride.

Bones somehow managed to keep his sour expression fixed firmly on his face instead of revealing the pleasure at having maneuvered Jim into focusing on their victory rather than the amount of damage the Enterprise had sustained and the number of lives lost. Most people wouldn't know it if Jim slapped them in the face with his emo stick, but the captain took the job of being responsible for every life on this ship very seriously. If he couldn't be made to focus on the victory, he would focus on the number of casualties.

"Just make more work for me. Now, get out of my triage and give someone a field promotion to clean this shit up before Scotty wakes up and has an aneurysm when he sees how much damage his baby took."

"Well, you know how I love driving you nuts, and for your information, I already gave a field promotion to Monroe. She needs the experience to qualify for a promotion before HQ puts her on a desk job."

"Monroe is going to be in charge of engineering?" Could he help it if there was a small amount of dread in his voice.

"Yeah, so I suggest you, being the CMO and having the final say over all things medical, recommend she sees Spock for counseling."

Bones' back went rigid. "Why Spock? I'm the acting psychologist on this ship. If she needs counseling, I'm the one who should handle it."

"Last I checked, it's unethical for a psychologist to fuck the brains out of his patient, and given the way you were staring at her when I first came into engineering, you're going to end up fucking her brains out."

"Am not!" Well, that was a damned mature response. He didn't get flustered often, but Jim managed to fluster him every damn time the captain tried to bring up his sexuality, or lack thereof.

A dishwater blonde brow popped up in a perfect imitation of Spock's Eyebrow of Doom. "Point and match to James T. Kirk."

"You can take your assumptions and go do something useful with them. I'm busy."

Grumbling something about nosey captains, Bones returned to his patients and proceeded to ignore Jim. Ignoring him was the best way to annoy the captain, and right now, Bones definitely wanted Jim to be annoyed.