She shoved him back to the sturdier countertop until he had a grip on the surface.

"What do you mean?"

"I never planned to remove anyone other than Marcus," he grunted, shifting his weight against the table edge. "I owe you no explanation."

"Maybe not, but you do owe me. I'm letting you not be handcuffed to a table, so, that's one thing," Her reply was cold. His face was colder.

The Enterprise chose that particular moment to give a very nasty jerk.

Wendi grunted as her knees hit the floor hard, and she threw out her palms to catch her upper body from slamming into the smooth ground. A quick glance upward told her that Kahn had merely knocked against the wall, and was still on his feet.

"The hell!" she exclaimed, climbing nimbly off the floor and reaching for the same table as he; and not a moment too soon, for a moment later, the ship gave another admirable shudder.

Wendi's hands fumbled with the PADD attached to her belt and jerked it loose, radioing for Kirk but receiving no answer. The intercom system crackled to life and the infuriatingly calm and collected voice of the First Officer filtered through the nearly empty Med Bay.

"Attention all personnel, I regret to inform you of a technological malfunction. We will divert immediately to the nearest habitable land mass for repairs. I would ask you all to remain calm-"

A scuffling was heard as Spock's voice was briefly cut out before Kirk's voice replaced his.

"Everyone, get to your stations and arm yourselves. There are intruders on this ship! Stay away from Engineering 1! I repeat -"

The transmission was cut as the entire ship was plunged into darkness.

It was silent in the Med Bay, save for the sound of her breathing and the almost noticeable flutter of her eyelids as she blinked furiously against the sudden black. Not even the commotion sure to be going on outside made it past the soundproof doors, and Wendi suddenly became very aware of the Augment radiating a soft heat only 12 inches or so away from her.

Her chest tightened as she reached for her PADD and hit the screen repeatedly until it lit up; the only light in the whole Recovery Ward. She blinked against the harsh light, waiting for her eyes to adjust before turning it on the space before her.

The glow fell on empty air.

Khan was gone.

Her nerve endings went haywire as a cold shock of adrenaline and fear raced through the veins in her body, rippling through the muscles until they were rigid as stone and clenching her lungs tight, her breath nothing more than shallow gasps.

She moved silently around the table the Augment once occupied as the light from her PADD screen faded away, straining her ears against the deafening silence that seemed to press down on her already shattered nerves with crippling force.

The room seemed larger than before, the walls farther, but edging inwards at every second. Every tiny sound was louder than it should have been; each footfall, each inhale, each cardiac throb.

Her creep forward only moved her a few inches at a time, but her pace remained cautious at the prospect of being locked in this room with an extremely dangerous man and his extremely versatile mood swings. In retrospect, she thought to herself, this would have made a brilliant horror film.

A creak somewhere off to her left sent blood pounding into her ears as she fought to control her breath like her trainer had taught, and her journey slowed even further, moving her towards the sound at an angle with tiny controlled, movements. All that was missing was the icy hand closing around her throat.

At some point, her muscles began to ache from their tensed position, but she couldn't relax them as she continued. Nearer and nearer to sudden death.

And then a dull, red light filled the space.

She could see him a few meters ahead, his fingers inside of a small panel on the wall that she hadn't even known existed. He turned to her slightly, narrowing his eyes at her stance.

"Emergency power." He explained as if it were obvious, removing his hand and closing the panel with a creak that matched the one she'd heard earlier. "The outage must have blown the main fuses."

Wendi relaxed a bit, her breath leaving her in a whoosh as she laid an arm across her stomach.

"Jeez, dude. You scared me. How did you do that?" she said blankly, swallowing against the pulse in her throat.

"Superior vision," he replied, making for the door at the opposite end of the room.

She followed him, shaking her head as she went. "Okay. Cool. Where are you going?"

"You are required in the Engineering quadrant."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't just walk around out there, you'll get shot or something!" Wendi sprang into motion, galloping to match his pace as his stride brought him nearer and nearer to the door.

"What would you suggest, then, Miss Jackson. That I remain unsupervised against your Admiral's wishes during an attack, or that I simply am killed in the crossfires of tensions running high? I am under the influence that the latter would make a simpler report."

She frowned and weighed the loss of her job against finding him a phaser. Termination of her position could result in termination of her life; she knew too much. Allowing him a weapon was too risky.

"Stay here," she said simply.

His face darkened.

"I will not remain chained like a domesticated pet."

Wendi raised her weapon and flicked the barrel away from Stun.

"I wasn't asking."

For a tense few seconds, he just raked his eyes over her, and she imagined him speculating every pressure point on her body that he could cripple before killing her. Every artery, every vein laid out like a map for him to see.

Then the cupid's bow of his lip turned up in a slight grimace that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

"Kirk would disapprove."

She blinked.

"Kirk and I are different people."

That same ominous half smile melted and the air suddenly seemed a whole lot thinner as he closed the gap between them by an inch.

"Do you think I fear death?" he murmured emptily.

Her phaser made a soft click as she rotated the barrel and a small beam of light erupted from the end.

Khan crumpled into a heap at her feet like a gently pooled ribbon.

Before his unconscious body even hit the ground, she was prying the powerless door open and ducking into the hall, hoping he'd follow her orders…and that if he didn't, she'd at least have time to land a good stomp on his crotch.

Her weapon wasn't like anyone else's on the Enterprise. Hendrix had ensured its stunning capability was powerful enough to knock a 200 pound life form into la la land for at least 4 hours. She was betting on at least half of that for Khan.

The corridor was in pandemonium. A flurry of lab coats with colored blobs of face on top whizzed past her as she fought the flow, all shrieking at the top of their lungs in the eerie half light.

"Damn lab rats!" she cursed under breath. "Can anyone tell me what's going on?!"

A short, blonde man tripped at her feet and sent his glasses into her shin. She retrieved them, ducking to his level and grabbing the shoulder of his uniform, crinkling the starched fabric into her fist, and rejoicing at the red shirt beneath. He was straight from Engineering. "What's happening?!"

His frantic eyes flitted across her face in confusion, sweat beading across his forehead. "What. Is. Happening."

"A- a breach!" he panted. "The Captain couldn't even see them! Their ship didn't appear on the radar, they just were there and they beamed right through the shields! Downstairs! They're wrecking everything- we won't be able to fly!"

"Who are they? What do they look like?"

The poor man shook his head helplessly. "I don't know! I didn't see them! I just ran!"

Wendi exhaled an exasperated breath, letting him go and hoisting him to his feet, tucking the glasses into his clammy palms.

"The botany lab has emergency locks!" she told him, pointing. "Round up everyone you can."

In an instant, he had vanished into the crowd, screaming her instructions though they could barely be heard over the cacophony of noise echoing around the metal hall.

Wendi set off, shouting about the botany lab all the way to the emergency stair well and hoping someone heard.

The bar over the door had a passcode lock. No power. "Bloody hell!" she grunted, prying at the lock with all her might. It was no use. It was stuck, and no lift would work without electricity. Talk about design flaws.

Raking a hand through the loose strands of her braid, Wendi gave a humorless kick to the heavy metal, cursing and rubbing her boot in frustration before sucking in a breath and slamming her heel down on the weakest part of the bolt. To her relief, it snapped.

It was several flights before the belly of the ship and Wendi was immensely out of breath by the time she shouldered the last entrance open and nearly fell into the ruckus that was the engineering room. She stuck her hands on her knees and gasped for a moment.

Through the tension of sparking machinery and scrambling crew members, a large bang sounded in the distance, followed by a few cries and even louder shouts.

The whole area was a wreck. Equipment was charred and broken, wires hung loosely from the walls and ceiling, having been torn from their positions by gunfire or something else, and the disrupted electrical currents sparked ominously from the frayed ends. Smoke from small electrical fires burned slightly at her nostrils, stinging her lungs and reminding her of a bad habit a member of her troop once had. Ironic that he had been killed by an atom blaster. All they found was ash.

So far, there was no sign of the intruders announced over the PA system, but the further she followed the trail of debris, the louder sounds of phaser fire became.

As she rounded another corner, the plated metal floors gave way to standard metal grating, and a huddled mass of bodies could be seen underneath a control panel. One of them was wearing a yellow shirt.

"Where have you been?!" he shouted, peering at her from under his arm.

"Lifts are down!" she retorted, standing to full attention at the mussed figure of her Captain limped to her side through a herd of frantic redshirts, sporting a bleeding lip and a ragged looking shoulder. "What happened to you?"

"There are 10, I'm guessing humanoids, in black and they've got these guns that can do freaky shit," he grunted, dragging her by the wrist toward their hiding place. "It is literally the worst Daft Punk revival I have ever seen."

"What's Daft Punk?" she asked, crouching low.

An explosion sounded somewhere to their left, and Kirk covered his head before gesturing for her to cover him as he raised himself over the top of the barrier and fired rapid shots in the direction he figured it had come from. "Never mind. I've got Chekov on thruster repairs and Spock is covering him, but I think it's the manifold!" Kirk yelled to the direction before him as several smoldering cyborgs jetted away from the wreckage ahead. "Get upstairs!" he shouted to them.

"Why do you think it's the manifold?" she asked, craning her head over the top of the board in hope of seeing their attackers. 2 flashes of blue erupted onto the wall near her skull and she ducked back down, blinking against the imprints left in her corneas.

"The thrusters are loud enough, but when they aren't on, I can still hear the manifold! Right before they attacked, it was just quiet."

"And they're that way, I'm guessing." She muttered, peering around Kirk at a mass of twisted metal that was once a salvage arm. Her eyes narrowed. The light was dim at the other end of the room, but she couldn't make out any movement. They were good.

Chances were, she could make it to the other side unscathed, but once she was behind their hiding places, she would be in plain sight. "What do we have to do to get the shields back up?"

"They are back up! The Enterprise is in emergency shut down. All energy reserves are being directed toward protecting the outside."

Wendi cursed as a bolt of energy zinged past her head, leaving the beginnings of an electrical burn along her cheekbone. "Shit! Are you alright?"

"Fine, I'm fine." She waved him off, gesturing wildly for the ground officer to Kirk's right to duck.

Wendi chewed her lower lip, thinking fast.

"Wait, everyone on the Enterprise is integrated into the ship's bio-recognition system, right? That's how they get through the doors and stuff."

"Yeah, so?"

"So these guys are an irregularity! Even if we can't track them, the ship would be able to single them out if you ran a search specifically for blank spots, right?"

"Yeah, technically, but what good is that going to do? There's nothing to lock on to, they would literally appear like holes in the air. At least we'd be able to see where they were, but that's all….unless…"

Wendi gestured at him to hurry up as a beam of energy passed ridiculously close to a pair of twin engineers further to their right.

"Unless?"

She watched a light flick on behind his eyes.

"Unless they've still got their last beaming coordinates locked into their DNA."

"What?" Wendi demanded, but the captain had already melded to the wall and begun a hasty retreat. "Be careful!" she called to his back.

"Stop bossing me around!"

Kirk raced to the bridge as if the hounds of Hell were nipping at his heels, reassuring what crew he passed along the way.

"Spock! Report!" He panted into his handheld, skidding around a dim corner and up into the emergency stairway.

"Thrusters seem to be fully functional, Captain." Came the monotone reply.

"Good. Send Chekov to look at the manifold (I can do zat!), and everyone you don't need to Engineering 1! Wendi is down there with a ground team, but theses freaks need to stay in Block 3, do you understand! This is containment protocol 12!"

"Wendi Jackson, sir? Are you sure that's wise?"

"What? Of course I am! Just do what I said!"

"Yes Captain."

Kirk was halfway to the bridge when he rounded and a darkened bend and nearly took Sulu to the ground. His officer looked to be in fine shape, if not a bit winded.

"Captain! I've been directing the crew to the upper levels, I'm sorry I didn't go straight to the basement-"

"It's fine, that's great, brilliantly done!" Kirk interrupted, spinning him around and shoving him in the right direction. "Come on, I might need you!"

Sulu listened intently as Kirk explained the plan to him, sprinting stalwartly alongside his friend as a blip came from his PADD.

Only a moment later and a young boy's lilting accent crackled from Kirk's PADD; "Engines are almost back online, Capitan! It was ze manifold!"

"Amazing! Chekov, you are amazing! Remind me to kiss you when this is all over!" Kirk cried into his PADD, before slamming into the powerless Bridge door, jarring the 2 metal plates out of their tracks, and wrenching it apart with Sulu's silent help.

"Eh…alright…Captain."

He ignored the voice at his waist and hurried toward his desk screen, tapping Wendi's call icon twice in impatience.

Spock clipped his phaser back to his belt, winding through the hidden hallways used mostly by grease monkeys on his way back to Block 3.

This was the most irksome and expensive event since the damage done by the Vengeance a year prior. The new Admiral would have their heads.

Spock hoped idly that Wendi Jackson was less useless than she seemed, or the whole ship would be lost.

He ducked into the cargo bay and wound through the sealed crates of lab equipment, passing close to the plexiglass on the far side and idly staring out into space. His body jerked to a halt.

Barely visible between 2 orbiting asteroids was an enormous, sleek looking recon-vessel. It was black enough to blend with the absence of sky, but against the jagged brown of a passing asteroid, it could be seen.

Spock went for his PADD, signaling Kirk, but receiving the hum of a busy line. He must have been on call with Chekov.

Instead, he hit another name, huffing through his lips before setting off at a brisk trot.

"What up, pointy?"

"Charming, Ms. Jackson. Are you free from combat enough to converse?"

"Wouldn't have answered if I weren't. Actually, hold on."

Some tinny potshots bounced around in Spock's ears and he tapped his foot 12 times in impatience before Wendi came back online. "Alright, what's going on?"

"I'm afraid we have a problem."

"Jim!"

"I'm at the Bridge and Chekov is at the manifold!"

"Great, got a plan?" The voice said, raising in volume to overshadow the sound of phaser fire in the background. "Spock found their ship, starboard side! It's huge! If our shields go down, we're literally going to have one second before their canons blow us to planet X."

"Of course I have a- what?! I didn't see a ship on the radar!"

"It's invisible somehow. Spock only saw it because he looked out a window."

Sulu's eyes were dark when they met Kirk's. "You have to tell Chekov not to restart the manifold yet! Once the lights go on, they'll know what we're doing!"

"So?" the blue shirted officer intervened, leaning over the PADD so that he could be heard. "We can warp our way out of here, put a quarantine field around Block 3, cripple their ship before they even realize what's happening, then pull them out one at a time, interrogate them as per regulation."

"You have a quarantine field? I thought those were outlawed 5 years ago."

Jim shot Sulu a look who shrugged sheepishly in return.

"The law said we couldn't buy new ones, but it didn't specify what to do with the ones we already had. There are 2 in storage up here."

"That's so convenient, it's almost cliché. Excellent work!" Jim smacked him hard on the back while tapping the line still open on the side of the screen.

"Chekov, are my engines running?"

"Almost! I just need to…" A small, frustrated grunt escaped through the speakers. "Yes! Powering up, Captain!"

"Great! I'm going to keep the lights off. Stay out of sight for a while, alright? Well done, kid!"

He ended contact with his engineer and grinned as his desk display began to glow. "Alright, Wendi, we've got power! You're in the dark until further notice. I'm sending Sulu down with a quarantine field, but you're going to have to evacuate as many as you can without getting killed, got it?"

The man beside him snapped into action, running to some location Kirk was unaware of while he maintained the darkness on the lower level of the ship.

"Roger that, Captain! Mind telling me why you're keeping the lights off?"

"Harder to see," he explained distractedly, typing furiously into his computer system.

"No offense to your logic, but they nearly took my head off from the inside of a tinted helmet. I don't think they have a problem seeing in the dark."

"Not for them, for the Enterprise!" he replied, dragging 2 fingers down the display. "It's about to get cold down there. Beaming leaves residual energy that lasts for like 2 hours after you land! That's why you feel like you've got a fever-"

"I know that, Kirk! (Dammit!) Why does it- oh…oh! You can look for heat signatures!"

"Damn straight!" he grinned into the air. "The lights heat up, and blur the scan, that's why I'm leaving them off, but if you lower the temperature, a regular person's body heat should do the same." he pulled up the security cameras and singled out the overlay he wanted.

The previously dark screen became a myriad of colors, registering not only the life forms in the basement, but electrical fires and discharge from weapons. He could see clearly the crouching form of Wendi, and the 10 or so other officers that had been brave enough to stay and fight, and across the room, the violently lit patterns of their assailants. "I can see them! Wendi, I'm a genius! Holy shit, this is totally going in the log!"

"Jim, you're lovely, but if we die while you're bragging I will haunt your pants zipper for eternity."

"Starfleet uniforms don't have zippers," he replied smugly, and a grainy laugh punctured the tense air. "Just wait for Sulu."

"Holy balls, it's freezing! You've got one hell of an AC, how far down did you put it?"

Jim frowned a thin line and blipped over to a side screen.

"I just turned the automated heating off. What you feel is outer space sucking the energy out of the room."

"Isn't space like 455 below?"

"I won't let it get that far. Any sign of Sulu?"

Kirk waited with baited breath for her response, which didn't come immediately. He watched her rapidly cooling body turn and move back along the hallway a ways, peering around the corner as red hot energy shots bounced dangerously close to her exposed form. He let the breath whoosh from his lungs as she was joined by a warmer signature.

"Got him. What do we do."

Jim sat in the Captain's chair, leaning forward determinedly and studying the scene while the 2 found safe spots behind broken metal that he couldn't see on screen, but knew was there.

"I need to know if there's anything obstructive between you and them," he spoke quickly, adjusting the cameras as much as possible to try to see anything compromising. "If there isn't, you can try to slide it between their feet without them knowing."

"It's completely clear, we can-"

The muffled sounds of a deafening crash echoed into the empty bridge and Kirk's eyes danced over the screen, trying to formulate what had happened. No one appeared to be injured, and the smudges of life had only moved a tiny bit.

"What the hell was that?" he demanded, fighting the growing sense of frustration of being unable to see.

"One of the generator covers fell, and said generator is hanging about 5 feet down. We're firing through a 3 foot gap."

A frown crept over his face, tugging the cocky smile down.

"Any hope of throwing it?" he asked, though the answer was known before the question left his mouth.

"They'll see it."

The Captain let out a forced breath through pursed lips, raking his hands through his short hair and planting his elbows on the table. This was bad. If that field found its way back to his crew's side before it detonated, they would be trapped, and the whole ship would fall to the mercy of those bubble headed freaks.

He'd been forced into situations like this before; caught between a violent death and great sacrifice, but he'd always seemed to come on top. Always seemed to weasel his way out of the worst consequences, but now…

"Wendi…"

"Yeah, C-c-c-captain?"

Kirk clenched his jaw at the tremor in her voice and hoped it was from the cold. "How long does it take for the field to detonate after activation?"

"5 s-s-seconds, s-sir."

Sulu. That was Sulu's voice.

"I can't-" Jim swallowed and cleared his throat. "I don't know how to do this. I'm all out of ideas. There's no passages to get behind them, and I can't see anything since I'm not with you. Just… stay there. Spock should be there soon, and I'll be right after, and we can just hold them off for as long as we can."

"Kirk, have you l-lost your shit?" Wendi cried through the speaker. "These c-c-c-clowns have us c-c-ornered! If w-we don't d-d-do something, we're d-dead!"

"I don't know what to do!" he countered, feeling the undesireable pull of desperation in his voice. "If they shoot that thing in the air, it will kill all of you. We tried it once in training, it's like a damn grenade. If they throw it back, you're screwed. If one of you dive bombs it behind enemy lines, you're dead. Wait for me. I'm coming to help. I'll round up whoever I can and-"

"I threw it."

Every ounce of calm in Kirk's body went into his voice as he stared down incredulously at his PADD, as if the woman on the other end would somehow feel his eyes through the machine, and said "You did what?"

"I threw it and it made it over. Now we just have to- oh SHIT."

Wendi frowned at the depressing tone of Kirk's voice and handed the PADD to Sulu, rubbing her arms and snatching the palm sized disc from its resting place at the officer's side.

"What are you doing?!" he hissed, but it was too late. She hit the purple center button, which flashed a few times before beginning the countdown. It was out of her hand before it had the chance. "Wendi!"

"I threw it." She said as Kirk neared the end of his monologue from the other end, watching carefully for glowing purple among the blue flashes still scorching holes into the walls behind her at a continuous rate.

Heart pounding against the rush of adrenaline and icy cold, she could barely hear the disbelief in her friend's voice. "You did what?"

"I threw it and it made it over," she explained, scanning the horizon and counting in her mind. 2..3… "Now we just have to- oh SHIT!"

There it was, soaring back between the dangling generator and the twisted metal on the ground with only 2 seconds before it enveloped them in an impenetrable fence of energy. With a quick curse, she launched herself over the only barrier between her and the line of fire.

Somewhere in her peripheral, she could hear Sulu's angry shout while the cold bit angrily at her exposed face, and balls of heat scorched her skin where they passed near. One foot up on the jagged piece of torn tin and she was in the air, 4… fingers closing tightly over the humming machine before casting it away, 5… closing her eyes as a flash of violently bright light and heat erupted against her body, throwing her somewhere hard and ripping her forcefully from consciousness.

Muffled voices, the smell of burning flesh, and then nothing at all.

A/N Sorry for the delay, thanks for sticking with me. Chapters will be on speed order to make up for the gap. I forfeited my summer to continue school, and I'm feeling the repercussions of the exhaustion pretty badly. Regardless, I've got a few days off before my competency exam, so I can write a bit more between study breaks. Thanks and thanks again. The plot thickens.