Salvage

Salvage: to rescue or save, especially from wreckage or ruin

The transporter barely finished processing, the tingle and dizziness lingering and distorting Spock's vision, when he saw what he had come for. The single guard next to him remained frozen in transport for a few seconds longer. Spock moved long before the guard gasped.

A few steps from where they'd materialized, Jim Kirk lay stretched out on the surface below them like a sacrificial offering. He was naked, covered in blood, and unmoving. Though the area was dark, Spock could see what the Boraiths had done to Kirk in the past two weeks while he'd been captive. A familiar surge of rage coiled in his belly. He tasted it in the back of his throat, tightening the muscles along his jaw. Vulcan discipline was never out of reach. Not since that moment on the bridge, only months earlier when his father's command had stopped him from killing the man he'd now come to save. He'd spent months deepening his training, anchoring himself to the ancient disciplines and banishing his human half as much as possible. But that seemed a lifetime ago as he felt anger rise. His jaw remained locked as he tore his gaze away from Kirk and quickly scanned the area. The ship's scanners had indicated they were alone. But for how long, he was not certain. They had to move fast.

"Sir?" Kranz, the guard said, unsure.

Emotion was radiating off Kranz, but Spock didn't have time to acknowledge. He took a step forward and dropped to his knees, pressing his fingers to the side of Kirk's neck. A pulse – faint and fast. The skin was hot to his touch, and Kirk didn't so much as flinch. His eyes were closed – one red and swollen shut. Cracked lips and sunken cheeks were evidence of his suffering, but not as much as the rest of his body. His arms were outstretched and marred with deep cuts. Thick layers of dried blood caked the pale skin. Along his torso was strategic cuts and puncture wounds, some older and already healing, others showing the tell-tale signs of infection.

Kranz, a drawn phaser in one hand, walked around to the other side of Kirk while Spock reached for his communicator.

"Enterprise."

"Scott here. Did you find him?"

"Affirmative. We will need medical assistance."

"Standing by. I'll get a lock on your coordinates."

Spock studied the rest of Kirk. His chest barely moved, and Spock's acute Vulcan hearing detected a pervasive rattle in his captain's lungs. They should have arrived sooner. Bureaucracy had delayed them – special requests, council meetings, the futile maneuvering through ambassadorial channels. It had all added up to a refusal to allow Starfleet to attempt a retrieval of Kirk. Intergalactic incident they had cited, a violation of the Prime Directive. Spock was breaking a dozen Starfleet orders by being here.

Kranz had also dropped to his knees, nervous and jittery. If they were discovered by the Boraiths, they would join Kirk as a captive. "Sir, he's attached."

Spock followed Kranz's gaze to Kirk's hand. The floor beneath them was smooth gray metal, and Spock saw now that Kirk's outstretched arms had been fastened into place by a single, thick bolt through the center of each palm.

"Mr. Spock," Scott's voice echoed through the air. "We cannot transport. We're getting an error in our readings on the Captain. He's connected to some type of alloy. Can you move him?"

"Negative, Mr. Scott. He is attached the floor. Can you extract him for transport?"

Pause.

"That'll be dangerous. We might only get part of him."

"Time is of essence, Mr. Scott."

"Stand by."

Spock looked at the guard. "Can we free him?"

Kranz had been studying the bolt and shook his head. "I'm not sure. It's like its one piece."

Spock examined Kirk's hand and tried to see beneath the bloody flesh, carefully moving stiff fingers. There was little give. The bolt had secured him tightly to the flooring. The very thing that made the planet of interest to the Federation – and why Enterprise had been ordered to explore – was the mineral elements. The indigenous people had found a way to manipulate the elements into material that was almost indestructible.

"Can we use our phasers?" Kranz asked.

Impossible without severing Kirk's hand. And even if they could narrow the beam, there was no guarantee phasers would cut the strange material. Spock reexamined Kirk, ensuring that no other fasteners existed. If they had bolted Kirk's hands, would they have bolted him elsewhere? He slid his hands beneath Kirk's back and felt the open wounds that ran along the spine. But no attachments.

Kirk moaned and stirred. His lips moved, but no sound came out. His eye fluttered. The brilliant blue iris was only a slit. Spock leaned in.

He'd drifted off, slipping into the blissful darkness where he was free of pain. He couldn't remember if he'd slipped away with him - his tormentor - near as pulses of pain ripped through him, or if he had finished with Kirk leaving him alone as was often done. The sessions were getting shorter, or maybe he was remembering less. Were they getting tired of him? It had seemed, in the beginning, that they wanted something of him. Now it was as though he were entertainment.

What is done with a prisoner no one wants?

He rested in the silent darkness, just barely conscious. He'd learned in the past few days to stay beneath the surface where the pain was numbed. Not that he could feel much of his body. It throbbed in a way that felt almost like his heartbeat, so that he couldn't distinguish one pain from another, until the whole of him was a single bone-deep ache. He'd forced his breathing to slow, taking shallow breaths that disrupted his broken ribs as little as possible and allowed the pain to linger in the background. It wasn't so bad if he didn't move.

Searing pain along his back jerked him into consciousness. He moaned, despite himself. It's what he wanted, what he worked so hard to get Kirk to do. He felt someone close. He liked to be close, liked to lick the blood off Kirk with his warm, thin tongue. Sometimes he'd feast on Kirk that way and Kirk would see his animal lust, strutting out hard beneath the furry belly.

Fuck him.

Kirk struggled to open his eye. It was too late to pretend. He knew Kirk was awake. He always knew. Kirk couldn't see much. His one uninjured eye saw only blurry images. Not even. A watery grayscale landscape. Still he blinked and tried to focus, because, even though he was pinned to the surface, he'd be damned if he was going to die with a whimper. He thought he heard voices, but his hearing wasn't so good anymore, either, so maybe it wasn't voices. Maybe it was them. Their language was more like dissonant screeches and off-key chatters, like a murder of crows.

A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. A murder of crows. How appropriate.

The voices – no voice – was soft. His vision focused some and he could just distinguish the familiar features of someone he thought he'd never see.

Spock.

No, that couldn't be right. Spock was on the Enterprise and Enterprise had left. Hadn't they? It was just his mind playing that game again, the game of him being free.

His back was on fire, the nerves ignited, and he couldn't get enough air into his lungs. Think, he commanded himself. Academy training. Every command-track cadet had been through it – how to respond to torture. Resist don't antagonize. Gather all the information you can, you still have a job to do. It was fucking laughable now. A cough grew deep in his chest, wet and thick.

Hold it together, Kirk. Don't give in. The cough would make things worse. But the urge to cough persisted, and his body surrendered. His ribs grated and burned as the weak coughs racked him, leaving him breathless and with a familiar taste of blood at the back of his throat. It was only a matter of time now. He'd known he'd been bleeding for a while, but he kept taking one breath after another.

"Are you fucking stupid, Kirk?" It was his drill sergeant, Owens, standing four inches from his face and expelling sour breath and saliva onto him. "No one told you to move."

Kirk had stood, feeling hamstrung, during the heavy-fire drill. Salvos were streaming in, exploding on the open field where Kirk and his small team had been assigned. But men were down and Kirk had made a run for one of them and dragged him behind the line. His fellow cadets called him a hero. His superiors called him dangerous. Owens called him a showoff.

A hand to his cheek was tender and warmer than he expected. His touch was cold and cruel. What was this new game?

Muffled sounds. He couldn't make out the words. Something like don't or dare, but he couldn't be sure. He wanted to move away from the touch, but he couldn't get his body to cooperate, so he retreated into the shadows of his mind like a wounded animal gone to ground to lick its wounds. It would have been easier if he'd died, but like Owens had said, he was fucking stupid.

Something touched his mind – a cool, peaceful presence – and all the confusion and distorted thoughts cleared away for a moment. It was like coming out a noisy, crowded room into an empty one. The pain dulled and for the first time in days he could think clearly. In the sudden silence, he heard a voice.

"You are safe."

The words made him want to laugh. Maybe he did. He felt a kind of surprise within the other. Silence. And then one word.

"Jim."

In that instant he knew who had spoken and whose hand was on his cheek.

Spock. With that realization came a different kind of fear. Enterprise was back and that meant danger for his crew.

"Be at peace. The ship is safe."

The presence retreated and the noise – and pain – within him returned, redoubled. He tried to focus and saw the blurry outline of a blue uniform. Shit. No hallucination. Spock had found him. Instead of relief, he was filled with dread. This was exactly what the Boraiths wanted.

"What in blue-bloody hell is taking so long?" McCoy demanded.

Scott looked up from his console with a weary expression. "We're working as fast as we can, Doctor."

Every muscle in McCoy's body was taut and the small transporter room had become claustrophobic over the past hours. He'd waited here with Spock to get a clear signal on Jim's exact location, then they'd waited for Jim to be alone, and now that they'd found him ….

McCoy looked at the time. Ten minutes. Spock had said it would take two. The entire rescue mission, planned out by the command crew in secrecy, was predicated on time.

"Get in and get out," Scott said, looking down at the crude diagram.

Sulu nodded. "The scans show a lot of activity around him, but last night he was alone for a few hours."

"That's our vindow!" Chekov said.

Spock remained silent and unobtrusive. He'd argued for Kirk's release through bureaucratic channels for weeks until finally he had assembled the command team to plan Kirk's rescue – without Starfleet approval. Without even a whiff of official sanction to justify their intentions, they'd put their plan under intense scrutiny, carefully detailing each move, before taking action. But it would only be Spock and one guard who would transport down.

"Like hell, you're going down there without me," McCoy said. "Jim maybe hurt."

"More than likely he is, Doctor, but any medical attention he needs will have to wait until his return to the ship."

McCoy spent the next hour arguing, but Spock's mind was made up and there was nothing McCoy could do. Still, he had stayed with Spock, following his every move, pacing the crowded transporter room until Spock had stepped up on the transporter pad and uttered the words that would free Jim: Energize.

Eleven minutes.

Jim was the only human they had been able to locate on the planet. That meant the rest of the original landing party was dead. But the damned Boraiths had kept Jim alive. He was valuable to them alive.

That was the single thought McCoy clung to, his one crumb of comfort, in the long nightmare. A dead hostage was no good. That also meant that Jim had likely been tortured. The Boraiths had made it clear from the first moment that they were aggressive and hostile to outsiders. They'd attacked the landing party shortly after the group had materialized on the planet. Rainier had been killed and Kirk had ordered an emergency beam out but it was already too late. Everything went south, and the landing party had disappeared into the hands of the Boraith. McCoy kept seeing the image of Rainier's body on the transporter pad, soaked in blood, his head almost severed from the deep cut along his throat. If they had done that to Rainier, what had they done to the others? To Jim? But McCoy refused to go very far down that path. He would deal with situation, whatever it proved to be, once Kirk was on board.

"Scott," Sulu's voice from the bridge filled the room. "They're moving."

Scott frowned. "Who's moving?"

"The Boraith. They're moving toward the Captain."

"Give them something else to do. We need more time."

"Aye, aye."

McCoy slapped his hands on the transporter console. "Just beam him up!"

"I can't, Doctor! It's not like hauling in a lot of fish."

Chekov, who had been working calculations on the wall display, spoke up. "I got it! Ve can narrow the field, isolate the material and feed it back to the transporter."

"Laddie, that's never been done before. We could scramble him rather than transport him."

The console communicator beeped. It was Spock.

Scott wasted no time. "Mr. Spock, you're about to get company."

"I am aware, Mr. Scott. What is your status?"

Scott locked gazes with Chekov. They quickly shared the solution with Spock. It required transporting Kirk separately.

"We have few options," Spock said.

"This could kill him," McCoy warned.

"If he stays here, he will certainly die."

Scott nodded to Chekov, who quickly programed the transporter.

Twelve minutes.

McCoy looked at his medical team who stood waiting in the corner with thee empty gurney. He'd brought everything he could think of if a full resuscitation was needed. The rest – fluids, blood transfusion, life-support – would have to wait until they reached Sickbay. Enterprise had the best medical technology in the Fleet. M'Benga was standing by in a surgical suite. The corridors had been cleared and the turbo-lifts locked. Nothing would delay them. They just needed to get Jim on board.

Energize! McCoy wanted to scream, even though he knew it could mean Kirk's death. At least his friend would be back home and not left to be dismembered on an alien planet. His hands tightened on the medical scanner as if it were a lifeline, and he could taste both fear and frustration in the back of his throat.

Scott nodded at Chekov. They were ready. But Scott suddenly hesitated, his fingers still on the controls.

Vulcan hearing was superior to most known species. Spock heard the Boraiths chatter at the far end of the corridor and knew their time was up. He looked down at Kirk. The single blue iris stared at him, unfocused. The fever and blood loss had taken its toll on the normally vibrant young man.

"That kid doesn't know how to quit," McCoy had said to him after he'd expelled Kirk from the ship for insubordination.

In Spock's brief history with Kirk, it was the one fact he knew to be consistent about the captain.

The blond hair was matted with blood and sweat, and he was barely recognizable as the arrogant, self-confident captain who commanded the best ship in the Fleet. And yet, as Spock had touched his mind, the Vulcan knew the spirit and intelligence and drive that were uniquely Kirk's were all still intact. It was, Spock surmised, what had kept his captain alive this long.

"I captain cannot cheat death," he'd told Kirk. But from what Spock had seen in Kirk's mind, the young captain had.

He wanted to reassure Kirk. McCoy would instinctively know what to say, how to comfort Kirk in his pain. But Spock had no practice in such matters and so could only wait for the transporter to take Kirk.

Kranz maintained his firing stance, a white-knuckled, unwavering grip on the phaser in his hand, which he had pointed at the door. They were alone for now. There was nothing to shoot. But that status was about to change. It took all Spock's discipline to shield from the emotions that filled the chamber.

"For Christ's sake, beam him up before it's too late!" McCoy's voice came through the communicator.

The Boraiths were getting closer.

Spock raised the communicator to his lips. Just as he opened his mouth, the transporter encircled Kirk.

McCoy held his breath and stared at the transporter pad as the transparent image of Jim flickered in the beam. The faint silhouette of a prone, outstretched body ghosted the pad. But the image was not quite complete. Jim's hands were missing. The pit of McCoy's stomach turned to a hard block of stone.

It will be okay. It will be okay. The mantra played over and over as he stared at the missing hands.

"Reverse!" Scott shouted.

The image disappeared again, and McCoy took a shuttering breath and felt the blood drain from his face.

In seconds, the transporter whined as it tried to re-materialize the mass in its beam. The ghost image returned – complete with hands – flickered twice, and finally materialized, complete, on the pad.

"Got him!" Chekov shouted.

Jim's body lay motionless on the platform. McCoy was already moving even before the first odor of blood and infection hit him. His eyes first went to Jim's hands and quickly registered the five-centimeter hole punched in the center of each palm. He had to strongly repress a surge of bile. He forced himself to focus on Jim's face as a nurse read off the vitals from her tricorder.

"B/P is 72/40. Pulse is 168, weak and thready. Respirations are 28 and shallow. Temperature is 104.2 degrees." She looked at McCoy her eyes distraught, at odds with her calm, composed tone. "O2 saturation is 93.3%."

Only one of Jim's eyes was able to open and it was half-lidded and unfocused.

"Welcome back, kid. We've got you." McCoy said, putting a gentle hand to the side of the battered face. "Get some oxygen on him and let's move."

The gurney team hoovered close. He looked down at his own scanner which was lit with a dozen alerts: fever, dehydration, infection, bacterial invasion, internal bleeding, fractures, collapsed lung...

They needed to get him to Sickbay.

He moved aside and motioned to the orderlies. The gurney moved into position and they quickly slipped their hands beneath Jim and transferred him to the waiting gurney. He cried out – weak and guttural – at the movement, but he made no attempt to move on his own. His body was strangely motionless.

The orderlies whispered their apologies. One wiped away a tear once Jim was secured to the gurney.

"Let's move!" McCoy barked. "He's critical!"

As he rushed out of the room, he heard the transporter engage again. But he didn't have time to learn if Spock and Kranz had made it back alive.

His entire focus now was on trying to save Jim. He looked down at his friend as they raced down the corridors.

What the hell did they do to you, Jim?

Two weeks of worrying, running medical scenarios in his head, dreaming about this moment when Jim came home, and now suddenly he was filled with dread. Nothing had prepared him for this. For the first time, he wondered if he could save Jim?