//------------------------------// // Chapter 7: The Burdens of a Starfleet Doctor // Story: The Warp Core Conspiracy // by Unwhole Hole //------------------------------// The Enterprise had entered what more-or-less functioned as its night-cycle. Circadian rhythms were difficult to replicate on a Starship, so the difference between “day” and “night” was more or less arbitrary. It did, however, tend to correspond to when the Captain was sleeping. McCoy, however, did not sleep. At least not much. Part of his insomnia was dependent on the fact that he was, in fact, in a Starship. Even though the Enterprise was perhaps the most advanced starship ever to be produced on Mars, it would still sometimes release an odd creak as the metal flexed, or suddenly shudder due to inconsistencies within the inertial dampeners. There were fans and vents that kept him up all night—and caused him to wake up suddenly if they ever stopped, because that either meant the air conditioning had turned off or life-support had failed completely. That, or the fact that he more often than not got woken up by red-alerts, explosions, horrific medical emergencies, klingons attacks, or possibly tribbles. Tribbles were by far the worst. So, instead, he visited the infirmary. Not for any particular purpose, but to inspect that everything was going well—that things were clean, organized, and any patients present were not dead. Or, on the best days, when he was all alone and there were no patients at all, he just sat there, alone. He entered while holding his nighttime coffee, detecting the smell of modern medicine and hearing the beeping of machines that drowned out the sound of whether or not the vents were prognosticating imminent suffocation. No crew patients were present, so he crossed to a separate area where his most recent patient resided. Nurse Chapel was there, adjusting some of the sensory equipment. “Doctor,” she said, not at all surprised that he was present. “Just finishing the midnight check.” She pointed at his coffee. “You should drink less of that, especially at night. That’s probably the cause of your insomnia.” “Who’s the doctor here? I’ll cure my insomnia the next time I get to sleep in a real bed, on ground, and without a breen assassin trying to stab a pitchfork through my duodenum.” “Did that actually happen? The breen are clearly the least aggressive race in the whole galaxy.” “How should I know, I was probably sleeping when it happened.” McCoy sipped his coffee and looked at his patient. The surgery had been a success, at least as far as he could tell. The patient was sleeping quietly, curled up on the bed. Her vital signs had stabilized, although there was still substantial internal damage that he was mostly sure would recover in time. Seeing her sleeping, he was amazed by how small she was, at least compared to a human. “She looks so peaceful,” said Nurse Chapel, taking her last notes for the day. “I heard stories about unicorns when I was a little girl...I had never figured they might actually be real.” She sighed. “I suppose it will be the last interesting case I see.’ McCoy frowned. “Why’s that?” Chapel seemed confused. “Because you were dismissing me. For that.” She pointed at the holographic generator, which had been unplugged and shoved to the side. McCoy glared at the abomination, and sighed. “Well, considering the patient was ultimately put on a path toward full recovery, I can say I can’t even remember what I might have said during the operation. So I don’t think I ever said that.” He pointed at the generator. “But if that thing ever turns on again, I swear I’ll have Scotty beam it straight into hell.” “I don’t think our transporter goes there, doctor.” "Believe me, I wouldn't be surprised if it did one of these days." McCoy sighed. He was indeed tired. The surgery had been arduous. The pony, however, was safe, and that was what mattered. Chapel approached the unicorn with a blanket. “She looks so small and so soft,” she said. “To think, such a little creature like this was piloting that ship. She seems so fragile and frail...” She reached out to touch the unicorn’s mane. Without warning, the unicorn’s eyes opened. Their irises were brilliant violet, and in that instant, every machine measuring her brainwaves suddenly exploded in plumes of sparks—and every Geiger counter on the ship clicked to maximum. Chapel was knocked back by a blinding explosion of violet light. McCoy raised his hands to protect himself, but instead felt his arms suddenly twisted almost to the breaking point of his shoulders, and then his whole body being crushed by some unknown and unseen force as he was lifted off the floor. He looked down at the pony, now sitting up, her enormous eyes glaring at him and her horn coated with shimering plasma. Before he could speak, something closed around his neck, cutting off his breathing. He tried to grab for it, but he could not move. He felt himself being bent, as if he was about to be snapped in half. The pony spoke, or released some kind of sound. It was a combination of neighing, squeaks, and occasional series of clicks. McCoy opened his mouth to try to speak, but felt a wave of light pass through his head. The effect was an almost immediate seizure, with his legs and arms struggling against the invisible force holding them. “Where am I?!” demanded the pony, suddenly in English. “Who are you?! How many times have I been probed?!” Nurse Chapel rushed forward, a hypo-spray in hand. The pony saw this, and Chapel suddenly stopped—or was stopped. Then she was sent upward, her body striking the ceiling with so much force that McCoy was sure he heard something inside her snap. McCoy was suddenly lowered so that he was eye-level with the pony who was now standing on the bed. “You’re the aliens that took me,” she said as McCoy felt a pressure on his skull that began to grow greater and greater. A pressure that would crack him like an egg—with the only consolation being that with the world already going black from his strangulation, he would not be around to feel it. “You took me from my ship, you did experiments on me, I don’t know why I’m here and what you’re FOR.” Her face was contorting with rage, but silver was already beginning to drip from the corners of her mouth as she resisted coughing. “Do you think you can do whatever you want to me? DO YOU?!” Her power was starting to weaken slightly as she reopened her internal wounds, and McCoy put the last of his strength into freeing one of his arms. He got free, and grasped her by her tiny neck and threw her to the side. She landed hard against the holographic projector that had been set near the bed, suddenly activating it. The hologram flashed into existence. “Please state the nature of your medical emergency.” “GAH!” cried the unicorn, with a squeak. “GHOST!” She dove off the table, her telekinetic force releasing everything in the room that she had been lifting. McCoy fell to the floor, coughing and gasping for breath, and Chapel fell to the ground and did not move. “Ah,” said the hologram, staring at Chapel. “You may have broke a bone. Or several. If so, I am prepared to immediately start removing them.” McCoy did not even have the strength to argue with him. The pony, however, was cowering, peeking over the edge of the bed and staring horrified at the hologram. “Ghost?” “No. I am an M-6 Multitronic Computation Unit with a prototype personality matrix and portable type-three holographic display head. Now with 33% more Asenian subroutines. I am the future of doctoring.” “Like hell you are!” gasped McCoy, slamming his fist on the power button to turn off the projector. He stood up, glaring at the pony. “Because of course you have psychokinesis, because why the HELL not?” “Stop yelling at me, you’re the one who abducted me!” “We didn’t abduct you, you horsey idiot, we saved you!” McCoy helped Chapel up. She coughed, and he immediately began a medical scan. Despite doing this, he continued to yell at the unicorn. “I’m a doctor! This was my nurse you were just brutalizing, and this is an infirmary!” “infirmity?” The pony looked around. “Where? Why?” McCoy helped Chapel up. “Because you were almost dead when we managed to transport you out of the wreck.” The pony’s expression darkened. “Injured? How? What were the nature of my injuries?” “You had severe internal burns that left you with internal bleeding, bones cracked in a way I’ve never seen before, and your marrow was downright cooked. Your brain was shutting down. I had to perform surgery. ” The pony paused, looking distinctly disturbed. “That injury is called a reave. It’s fatal.. I can’t...I shouldn’t...the ship, I...” She stepped back, taking several heavy breaths but seeming to calm down. “The field...was breaking down. I cast a shield spell at the last second, but it was too much, I..." She looked down at herself, running her hoof over her underbelly and then looking at her sides. “But wait, if you did surgery, where is the scar?” “There isn’t a scar,” snapped McCoy, administering treatment to Chapel. “What do you take me for, some sort of medieval barber-surgeon? Your epidermis is probably the only part of you that's even close to any other living thing in the galaxy. I regenerated it for you. You're welcome.” The pony looked around. McCoy, having finished with Chapel, slowly approached her. “I’m Leonard McCoy,” he said, slowly. “Do you have a name?” “Moondancer. I’m sorry I tried to pop you, I...panicked. But wouldn't have anyway, so that's a good consolation I guess.” “It isn't. And Jim didn’t tell me that you had enough psycokintic force to tear apart my sickbay.” McCoy looked at the debris round him, where the beds themselves had been torn from their now-bent frames and most of the equipment had been shattered. He sighed. “Do you...have my personal effects?” she asked, blinking. “What? Oh, sure.” McCoy opened a case and gave the pony back what she had been wearing when he cut if off her. She immediately grasped from it a pair of large glasses and an elastic; she tied back her hair from her eyes and put the glasses on, blinking up at McCoy. “Dang,” she said. “That’s what you look like? Please tell me you’re a lady alien.” “Sorry, miss. I’m a male human.” “Dang it,” hissed the pony. She cleared her throat. “Sorry. My ship lost integrity. I remember that part. That wasn’t your fault, I watched it happen. You did chase me, though.” “You’ll have to talk to the Captain, but what that over-talkative little Russian boy tells me we knew that your ship was in trouble and were trying to catch up.” Moondancer nodded. “Right. That makes sense. You saw the breakdown before I did and tried to help, I spooked and blew my life’s work to pieces. Because of course I would.” She sighed. “Well, I need to make a report to the Princess, then. Thank you for healing me.” She turned her head and started looking around. McCoy followed her as she walked to the far end of sickbay. “We can’t send you back yet, you’re not in any state to travel,” he said, firmly. “You’re still injured and, frankly, we can’t figure out a way to get you through the transporter. It did almost as much damage to you as you did to it, and we don’t want to repeat that if at all possible.” Moondancer was hardly paying attention. She was looking up at a corner of the ceiling. “Interesting. We're in orbit. And she's on Equestria. Probably for the gala.” “Are you listening?” “Not even slightly.” Moondancer raised her horn, and it flashed with violet light. McCoy attempted to jump back as the circle closed around him—and as he suddenly lost all sense of direction, gravity, and contact with everything near him in a brilliant flash so bright it shoved him entirely out of everything and into something more similar to nothing at all—and birthed him back out a small hole of the universe again into something somewhere else. With a deafening snap, he and Moondancer reemerged. McCoy, disoriented, nauseous, confused and angry, flopped about on the floor for a moment before, gasping and sweating, he grasped Moondancer’s shoulder and pulled himself, shaking, to eye-level with her. “If you—if you EVER even THINK about doing that to me—again, I swear to whatever horse-gods you have, Hippocratic Oath be damned, that I’ll SQUEEZE THE JUICES CLEAN OUT OF YOU!” “Ahem,” said a voice. McCoy turned to find that he was in a large, high-ceilinged, nauseatingly ornate room in almost total darkness—and that there were also ponies there. The largest of them was a mottled black-and-blue colored pony with nearly luminescent cat-like eyes, flanked by a tall purple unicorn with a broken horn and a fatter blue unicorn with a bell. She had apparently been engaged on receiving an address from a winged orange pony in a uniform and being measured by a cream-colored non-unicorn pony when McCoy had arrived. The mottled pony continued. “Did you just threaten to wring forth the juices of our beloved subject?” “Would you excuse me? I’m having a confidential conversation with my patient about her medical future and chances of survival. Getting my atoms splattered across the universe was one thing but that—that—don’t just teleport a man when he isn’t expecting it!” He stood up and brushed himself off. He turned to face the tall winged-unicorn. She looked at him, apparently ambivalent, but when he was fully standing a strange expression crossed the faces of each pony present—the large mottled one especially. Her face darkened, her eyes widening. “HOW DAREST THOU?!” She screamed. McCoy jumped back, still confused as to where he was—and as his mind reconnected with his body, he realized that he might have found himself in a horrible situation much more suited for Kirk—or at the very least Spock. “Excuse me?” “HOW DARE YOU ATTEMPT TO BEGUILE YOUR PRINCESS!? This—this affront to the very core of our being, to our holy purity, that you would dare to provide temptation to a divine creature such as ourselves! HOW DAREST THOU, I say, HOW DAREST?!” “I don’t—I didn’t—you’re a really tall horse—” “TEMPEST, this alien is attempting to seduce your princess! Have him hung AT ONCE! Have his clothes rended from his body and have him flogged! No, WHIPPED!” She smiled and giggled to herself. “Yes,” she said softly. “Whip him well and thoroughly...” She paused. “Unless, alien, you would rather plead for your princess to take mercy on you, perhaps to let you whip her instead...” Moondancer cleared her throat, and the Princess turned her attention to her. “Moondancer,” she said, standing. She was not at present wearing her armor, and therefore was a Princess in the nude. “It pleases us greatly to see that you were not atomized. Have you been treated properly, with a minimum of probing? Has this filthy alien attempted to seduce you as well, or has your preference for the soft and tender flesh of mares insulated you from his wiles?” Moondancer bowed. “I am unharmed, Lunar Empress. Due to my own failure, the Prototype became unstable in flight and the containment field collapsed. It is only because of their efforts and because of the heroic efforts of this doctor that I survived.” There was a murmuring from the other ponies. “Doctor? He’s a doctor?” The wings of the orange pony extended outward with sudden force. “We see,” said Luna. “Then the hideous one was telling the truth.” She faced McCoy. “For having saved our beloved subject, you are excused from your crimes against our holy chastity. The whipping has now become optional.” “Um...thank you?” “Unfortunately,” continued Moondancer, “the Prototype was destroyed in the process. I am sorry. I have failed you, and I have failed the Moon.” “Not all hope is lost, young Moondancer. The far more deformed alien has indicated that fragments of our work still exist. He proposed redeeming his uncouth actions against us by assisting with retrieving them for reconstruction.” Moondancer lifted her head. “Then I will see to the salvage operation personally.” “Yes. You indeed shall. Tempest. Her flight suit was clearly damaged and she is currently nude before her Princess. This shall not stand. Resupply her.” The enormous unicorn stepped forward with a briefcase in her mouth. Moondancer took it, levitating it by the handle, and nodded to the armored pony. Then she bowed and, with a sudden and deafening pop, vanished, having apparently teleported back to the Enterprise. This, of course, left McCoy alone and stranded in a room with five alien women. He immediately regretted having refused to be teleported ever again. “As for you,” said Luna. “You may rejoin your compatriots. Unless you would prefer to accept your voluntary punishment. I have prepared a flog just in case. It is stored in my bedchambers. Unless you would have us proceed directly and forthwith to dungeon.” “I would...rather not?” “We see. We were too busy anyway. There is a dance to be danced and efforts that need to be coordinated. We shall summon one of the ridiculous powdered guards to allocate you to wherever it is you are to be distributed.” “I can do it,” said the orange pony, suddenly. “Princess, the briefing is done, and I need to...um...press my dress uniform anyway, I can take him to my—HIS—room.” “Of course. How helpful of you, Command-General Spitfire.” The orange pony walked up to McCoy. Too close to McCoy. She looked up at him with an expression on her face that McCoy definitely did not approve of, her wings spread out to their maximum extension. “Wow, you’re really tall. Hey, you’re a doctor.” She spread out one of her muscular wings to its fullest, fully displaying her vibrant feathers and the silky down beneath them. “I’ve been having an ache in my wing joints, and I’m worried it might be arthritis...maybe you could check my joint flexibility?” McCoy thought that was a straightforward request. “Well, sure, that should be straightforward, but I don’t have a medical tricorder, so I’d have to do it manually--” “That’s even better!” The blue unicorn suddenly shoved her out of the way, striking a pose. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is, ONE: great, TWO: powerful, THREE: Trrrrrixie. There is no losing scenario. Also, I’m a member of the royal court, did you know that? If all you’ve ever seen naked is Moondancer you’re missing out, I can give you a Great and Powerful lesson on unicorn anatomy.” “Trixie, go away--” “You go away! He needs to inspect my wings too!” “You don’t have wings, Trixie!” “Not yet! But I’m a member of the royal court, if I keep moving up, I’ll get a pair before those gray hairs take over the rest of our mane!” "Your WHOLE MANE is GRAY!" "It's WHITE! Trixie's mane is WHITE! TRIXIE IS NOT FAT!" McCoy stared at this, growing increasingly unnerved. He started to wish that he had just ignored the vents and actually stayed asleep. Sleep on a planet would be nice, but impossible if accosted by numerous colorful horses.