A Kestrel for a Star (Star Trek fanfiction)

Chapter 22

Despite the fact Kez was used to porting over large distances in the blink of an eye, nothing could have prepared her for the feeling of transwarp travel. When they materialised in the open engineering bay it was all Kez could do not to wretch her stomach up. Kirk was in no better state. Even though he could feel Kez's knuckle-white grip on his own hand, he felt woozy and foggy in the brain. But as both figured materialised fully and staggered on the deck, there was a sense of relief between the both of them that they were still intact.

"Are we alive?" Kirk laughed as he bent over, gasping for air. But Kez seemed to be focused on something else.

After a second she turned her worried gaze on him, "Where's Scotty?"

They looked around anxiously and suddenly realised that Scotty had materialised – in one of the spaceships cooling tanks. It was all Kez and Kirk could do to watch in horror as Scotty moved with the pressure of the fluid in the pipe like a worm in a tube.

"Get him out!" Kez shouted suddenly as she began running underneath the pipe, looking for a door or hatch that she might open to get Scotty out.

"You're the porter! You get him out!" Kirk shouted back, feeling his heart race and, taking an alternate approach, moved towards a control panel and began tapping in reams of code which all flashed as errors.

"I can't, not with the pressure in the pipe as large as it is. Isn't there an override function?" Kez shouted as she came to a stop, watching Scotty's puffy cheeks become a pale colour and his eyes grow alarmingly wide.

"I don't know the override!" Kirk grumbled, concentrating hard, trying to block out the external pressures so that he could focus on getting the manual function code right. Hopefully, then he would be able to open up one of the hatches in the pipe.

"Manual control; enabled. Pressure; calculated. Emergency pressure released; located." Kirk mumbled to himself as his fingers worked the control panel in front of him.

Kez watched in horror as Scotty made his way down the pipe further and towards the distributor pump where he would be inevitably torn to pieces.

However, at the final moment, a valve released its pressure and in turn, ahead of Scotty, a panel came away from the underside of the pipe fell away and unceremoniously dumped a couple of hundred gallons of water onto the deck and one waterlogged engineer.

Kez slid up to Scotty and checked his vital signs; pulse, airways and reaction to pain. Kirk joined them just as she pinched Scotty in the arm. He flinched away, "Ouch, lass! I'm okay! . . Soggy, but okay."

"Thank God." Kez leant back on her heels and sighed, "There is no way no one has noticed our arrival."

Kirk nodded in agreement, clutching Kez's shoulder for support as he tried to calm his rapidly beating heart, "I entered at least twenty wrong codes which all raised error warnings so I'm assuming they'll have security coming for us. Preferably I want to get to Spock of my own volition rather than being dragged there by some over-psyched cadets."

Spock watched the monitor as Chekov frowned over the controls.

"Keptin, we're detecting unauthorised access to one of the auxiliary cooling tank control boards." He clicked another control and brought up the second screen, "Appropriate codes were not entered. There are thirty-two errors on record."

Spock raised an eyebrow, "Send a security team to check it out. Tell them to take sidearms. Set them to stun."

Just as security entered the lift and the doors closed, there was a deep cracking in the air. Uhura stood and McCoy squinted as three figures appeared on the bridge of the ship. Uhura couldn't contain her relief to see that her best friend had survived the suicidal decision she had made to port out of a starship at warp. Kirk was with her, looking as rugged as ever and then a shorter, older man, who looked drenched and was dripping water onto the deck around where he stood.