A/N: I'll admit, I don't have a lot of experience writing fanfics involving canon characters... count it as one of my own foibles. I don't think I'd been planning on publishing this one at all... but its gotten to the point it's one of the longest stories in my "non-work" writing folder, and I figured, what they hay, might as well share.

On that note...

Disclaimer: I do not own the Star Trek franchise, or its characters. I make no profit from this work, only a bit of enjoyment from borrowing them for a time.

Trigger warnings: This is a McCoy centric-fic, thus, expect descriptions of trauma, medical emergencies, surgery, etc throughout. Also, medical handwaving on my part. I've researched, and plucked terms/usage from Memory Alpha and TOS, but still. Don't take anything I say as medical advice on anything.

PS A/N: It's been a while since I first started this fic and began posting it. I will finish it. I've been rereading and editing to make what's currently up better. So, new readers and old, please enjoy!

McCoy worked the dermal regenerator over yet another red-shirted klutz. How Scotty hadn't worked through the lot of his subordinates yet, or scared them until they requested transfer to another ship, was beyond him.

"Just about... done. There. Nurse Chapel, would you be so kind?"

She took the regenerator and offered him his medical tricorder to double check results. Rats. Missed a spot. And knowing this particular vain ensign, McCoy would be serving up a cocktail of antidepressant hypos for a year if there one was bit of scar tissue left on his porcelain face.

"Bridge to Doctor McCoy, please respond."

"Nurse, if you could get that," Leonard grumbled while picking at the stubborn spot over the man's cheek. "I have my hands full."

"Of course, Doctor."

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. Young, fit, girl-next-door beautiful, and her chipper spirit unflappable, whether facing off plagues, fires, or even vain engineers. One couldn't deny she had a certain appeal, and if he were the kind of man to break regs, well, those kind of regs, he'd have already asked her out to coffee. As it is, in such close quarters, and the occasional subspace message from his divorce lawyer still chasing him down this far away from Earth, he couldn't get up the gumption if he wanted to. Chapel's hand fluttered over the comm unit on the wall before pressing the button to answer the hail.

"Nurse Chapel here. The Doctor is busy with-"

"Tell him to finish up. We've just received a distress call. I want him up here on the bridge. Lieutenant Uhura is having some difficulty with the UT. We've got no idea what we're going to be facing."

"Aye, Captain," McCoy shouted to be heard from the biobed. "Just finishing up a quick-"

"Now, Bones."

The doctor let out a frustrated huff as the comm closed down.

"Do you think you can finish this up, Nurse Chapel? Sounds like the Captain's gotten himself in a pickle."

"Of course, Doct-"

"No! You can't leave me in the hands of a simple nurse!"

"That's enough, Ensign Jacobson! It's just a little dermal regeneration at this point, and Nurse Chapel is more than qualified. If there are any reoccurring issues, we can always do corrective surgery."

Blasted children. I can already tell you're going to be one of those ones asking for cosmetic surgery for each new wrinkle and line on that flawless face.

He sighed, slipping out of his scrubs while Chapel changed her gloves and took over.

"If you need to sedate him for the rest, I won't blame you," he whispered to the more than competent nurse, before heading to the turbolift.

The quiet hum of the lift broke into the harnessed chaos of the bridge. He hovered around the door, listening in to Uhura's responses.

"So? What's the hoopdela?"

She flicked her eyes up to him, then over to the Captain.

"Jim?"

"Hmm? Sorry," the big blond said from where he bent over Spock's viewer. The hobgoblin nowhere to be seen. "Uhura, put that line back up, will you?"

"Aye, Captain." She flipped a few switches, and a variety of voices overtook the din of the bridge. Leonard flinched at the volume.

"Don't understand a word of it."

"I turned off the UT," Uhura grumbled. "The signal was overloading the computer."

"Sensor's still down," Pavel Chekov grumbled from his station. "Scotty vorking to wepair as ve speak."

"Aye. Signal is cycling through twelve different languages. The translator was programmed for five of them. The rest are garbling the system. The signal goes through all of the messages and starts right at the beginning again."

"Are they all saying the same thing?" McCoy guessed.

"That's what Spock thought at first, but the ones the UT could handle are each different. It's like they're working off of an incomplete language database."

"And where would our walking computer be now?"

"Asswisting wit sensor wepairs, sir," Chekov supplied helpfully.

"How do we know its not some plot to incapacitate us, hm?" McCoy suggested.

The Captain rolled his eyes and grinned. "It overloaded sensors, not everything else. We've still got weapons, engines, and deflector shields. Don't be so pessimistic, Bones. We just need a direction to head in."

"So, what did all these disruptive messages have to say?"

"'Urgent' was the most common word, occurring in all of them," Uhura replied, flipping off the audible signal again. "Two instances of 'life support,' three either referencing 'fire' or 'plasma.' There's reference to the Ratarian god of death. Pleas for 'help,' 'assistance,' or 'aid' in all that we can decipher."

"God of death?" McCoy repeated dumbly.

"It might be a metaphor, Bones," the Captain said with a switch to retract Spock's viewer. "There's also a couple words about water, or a river."

"So, no idea what's happened? How many injured?"

"Or where they are."

"Engineering to Bridge," a disembodied even voice called over the comm.

"Yes Spock?" Jim replied after a quick flick of a switch.

"I believe I've successfully rerouted power from impulse engines to sensors, using the deflector dish to collect-" McCoy phased out a little bit while the Vulcan spoke. Couldn't the hobgoblin just say, "Hey, I think I fixed it. Give it a shot while I'm down here, will ya?" But, then again, "simple" isn't a component in Vulcan DNA.

"Send out those probes, will you Chekov? Getting a triangulation with just the deflector dish is going to be damn near impossible."

"Heow meany Keptin?"

"Two will be sufficient, Ensign," Spock answered for Jim over the comm. A few more buttons and switches and two bright lights shot out in separate directions on the main viewer.

The whole bridge went silent as they waited for-

"Telemetry coming in, Captain." Uhura pressed her earpiece close, habit warding off extraneous noise even while everyone kept quiet around her. "I've got a location now. Over a light year away. Heading one-hundred and five mark forty-seven."

Jim grinned in his usual shit-eating way.

"Make a course, Sulu. Warp six-point-five. Get us there yesterday. Shields up too. We don't know what we're going to be facing."

"What'll that be, Jim? Two days?"

"One point two two eight-" McCoy flipped the comm panel to Engineering off, silencing the Vulcan and earning a smirk from the Captain.

"Well I guess we don't need you quite yet after all, Bones. Shall we give you a call when we get close enough for sensors to pick up our friends?"

"Mm."

"Alright, alright, back to your sickbay. Sorry to have bothered you."

McCoy nodded a little, turning his back on the chaos that had taken over the bridge.

"Send a message along to Starfleet, would you Lieutenant? Let them know we're responding to a distress call of unknown origin. And the coordinates. Oh, and Bones." McCoy turned one last time. "Meet me in the mess for dinner, would you? Hopefully I'll have some more details to brief you with."

"Sure, Jim."

He felt a bit of a smile tug at his lips before stepping back into the turbolift and selecting the floor for his sickbay.

A whole lightyear, the distance echoed in his mind. A distress call that could knock out a sensor array from that distance... not exactly a good sign.

The floor settled and he returned to his office. Chapel had the place cleared of idiotic engineers. A curious expression on her face; polite enough that the blonde wouldn't ask.

He sighed. Might as well tell her, she'd probably be the one assisting with most of it.

"Looks like we have our first general distress call, Nurse. There's been some computer disruption, so I'd like to get some kits ready to go. If we end up having to organize a boarding party, I want every medical officer prepared for whatever it is we're going to find over there."

"Of course, Doctor McCoy."

Thankfully, Probably because of the Vulcan down in the deep, no more of Scotty's minions found their way up to medical the rest of the day.