//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: The Survivor // Story: The Warp Core Conspiracy // by Unwhole Hole //------------------------------// The situation in the transporter room was already desperate by the time Kirk and Spock arrived. The transporter technician was hiding behind his control desk as the transporter pad erupted with burning light and rays of violet energy. The entire room was shaking, and the transporter was releasing an unhealthy whine as something was repeatedly phasing in and out of existence. “Captain, get back! I can’t get it through, the buffers, they’re overloading--” Kirk was at that point nearly knocked to the ground as Scotty shot past him, shoving the technician out of the way, himself totally ignoring the radiation and surges of electromagnetic radiation around him. “Scotty!” cried Kirk. “What’s happening?!” “You asked for a miracle and I’m delivering! Whatever we’re pulling through has a signature that’s taking the bandwith—ack, we’re burning out the coils—damn it, I have to manage the pattern buffer synchronization manually!” As technical as that statement sounded, it was punctuated with Scotty using an auto-drill to remove two of the screws from the transporter control panel and tearing it free and tearing it off the remaining two screws by hand. “But—but that’s suicide--” “Don’t tell me things that’re wrong!” Scotty reached his hands into the machines and began to make the adjustments, pulling wires and re-configuring them. One of the buffers erupted in flames, and the image over the pad began to fade. “Scotty, we’re losing her!” A look of great pain came over Scotty’s face, and he let out a long groan as he stepped back. “I’m sorry, girl, I wish there was another way!” With that, he pulled the fire suppression can from the wall—and slammed it hard into the circuits of the transporter system. The pattern buffers exploded, taking most of the transport pad with them. The lights burst, and Scotty and the technician were thrown back. Kirk and Spock, unable to enter the room from the distortion, were mostly unharmed but partially deafened and slightly irradiated. Kirk dropped to the floor to where Scotty lay. His arm had been burned by the blast, and the technician had taken shrapnel but not severely. “Scotty!” “Damn my bloody incompetence! Captain, I’ve broken the transporter!” “Never mind the transporter, you’re burned--” “Never mind the transporter—NEVER MIND THE TRANSPORTER?!” Scotty popped up with such force that Kirk was nearly thrown back. “Captain, you can’t just say something like--” “Captain,” said Spock, largely amused. “Spock, what is...” Spock was pointing. Kirk looked, and saw something he was not at all expecting. The pilot of the ship had survived. She lay on the center of the burned and still flaming transporter pad, flat on her side. She was small. Barely the size of a human child, but proportioned differently in a way that Kirk could not understand until he realized to his great surprise that she was a quadruped. Her body was covered completely in a military flight suit, which was partially burned and marked with a patch depicting what Kirk supposed was a flag—a flag of two winged unicorns circling an unadorned sphere with a rocket rising upward from its surface. In his surprise, he barely noticed as McCoy entered the room. He had not been summoned, but he hardly needed to be. Whether from the scent of burning transporter or his own doctor instincts, McCoy had clearly sensed that he was needed. Upon seeing Scotty and the transporter technician, McCoy pointed. “Nurse, get those burns looked at.” He put his hand on Kirk’s shoulder. “Jim, are you alright?” “I’m fine, but she’s not.” McCoy looked down at the creature on the transporter pad and froze. He turned angrily toward Kirk. “Jim, I’m a doctor, not a veterinarian--” “Technically,” said Spock, still totally calm, “a veterinarian is, in fact, a type of doctor.” “Don’t give me your Vulcan sass, Spock! Why are you even here anyway?!” He knelt down beside the creature, deftly manipulating the release hinge on her helmet and pulling it off. Her skin was covered in pale, cream-colored fur, and her hair was long and red and violet in color. The creature inside had her enormous eyes closed, but even at a distance, Kirk could recognize her face as distinctly equine. Equine with a spiraling horn emerging from her forehead. McCoy seemed largely unfazed by the presence of a badly injured unicorn. “Bones, have you ever--” “You know I haven’t, Jim, and it doesn’t matter.” He looked up, his expression grim. “I can’t tell what she is, or how many hearts she’s even supposed to has, but whatever vital signs she has are dropping and dropping fast. She’s hurt, bad. I need to get her to sick-bay. NOW.” “Bones, can you save her?” McCoy picked up the unicorn and held her, prepared to rush her to the infirmary—but despite his apparent annoyance, his eyes seemed uncertain. And to Kirk, that was itself terrifying. “I have no idea what she even is, Jim. For all I know we’ve already lost her. But I’ll try my damnedest. You know that.” Kirk nodded, and McCoy set off. This was indeed a First-Contact situation. Kirk knew that. He also knew that it could not possibly have gone worse.