Ice Trap by L.A. Graf

Author:L.A. Graf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek

McCoy knew there was no way he could outrun the cascading flood, particularly with the unconscious first mate limp in his arms. He turned, Nuie protected by the curve of his body, and met the onslaught of inrushing sea with the broad of his back. The biting, rotten-fish odor of brine stung his nose. Water colder than imaginable washed around his hips, making his legs as unresponsive as logs. The sodden weight of his clothing dragged at him, making it hard to stand. His injured hand screamed a throbbing litany of pain as saltwater scoured it like old-fashioned steel wool.

The water surged past and ran down the corridor to meet the panicked rush of crew erupting from their quarters and elsewhere aboard the ship. Their shouted cries and queries flew about like erratic ammunition.

Someone grabbed his arm. "Dr. McCoy! What happened?"

"I don't know." He shook his head, shoulders sagging under the combined weight of Nuie and their water-soaked clothing. "There was a call to the bridge. Nuie " He shifted the Kitka's heavy form. He needed to get him to sickbay and check his vital signs, if he wasn't dead already. "Then everythingSomebody said something about an icequake "

A wealth of profanity greeted that information. "Where's Captain Mandeville?" someone else asked.

"I don't know." Captain Mandeville? Where was Kirk? For the first time, McCoy noticed the water had subsided from around his legs, sloshing about his ankles as though he were a child wading in the Chattahoochee. He turned as best he could, Nuie dragging at his arms. The door to the bridge was closed and Kirk wasn't in sight. That meant

"Oh, dear God!" McCoy slammed to his knees on the hard decking, cradling Nuie, forgotten, in his arms. He stared at the door like it was the final epitaph on the headstone of a friend wrongfully taken, and felt a cold deeper than Nordstral's sea take hold of him.

"Dr. McCoy?"

Dammit! It was just like Kirk to make certain everyone was safe, then stay behind to face the danger by himself. McCoy knew it would get Kirk killed one day, but not yet, dear Lord, please not yet

"Dr. McCoy!"

Someone tugged McCoy's sleeve. He felt an irrational urge to bite them for their trouble. "There was water coming in." He struggled to get up, and finally managed with the helpful aid of a hand under his arm. "I don't know why. I think we hit something. Captain Mandeville went to take care of it. Captain Kirk got us off the bridge " He felt more exhausted than he ever had, as though the fighting spirit had just been sucked out of his bones like the winning kraken sucking down the loser's vitals. How could he go back to the Enterprise and tell everyone that Kirk was dead?

"They're still in there? Flooded bridge!" The Soroya crewman looked grim as she turned and started issuing orders. McCoy stared at the closed-up bridge.

"Dr. McCoy?"

He suspected the query had been repeated several times before he heard it.

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