Fourteen

The leech came at McCoy, bounding across the foggy glade. The creature had gotten past Chekov and Darwa and was charging at the unarmed doctor, who found himself staring straight down the maw of the monster. Rings of saw-like teeth threatened to burrow into McCoy’s flesh and bone. A serrated tongue flicked hungrily, waiting for a taste of fresh blood and viscera. Saliva dripped from its mouth, betraying its intentions. Its breath reeked of blood.

“Doctor!” Chekov hollered from a few meters away, where he was driving back another leech with a spray of repellent. Similarly occupied, Darwa stood guard at the other end of the clearing. Chekov risked looking away from his own defensive efforts long enough to spare an anxious glance at McCoy. “It’s coming for you!”

No kidding, McCoy thought, unable to look away from the oncoming predator. Time warped, subjectively, so that every terrifying second felt like a nightmare playing out in slow motion. Heart pounding, McCoy groped frantically for a convenient rock or stick, but he found nothing that could realistically stop the monster for more than an instant. He clutched a broken heartbeat reader like a baton, knowing that it might as well be a tribble when it came to serving as a weapon. Spock stirred beside him, only semiconscious and looking worse than ever. McCoy took some comfort from the fact that Spock at least was safe from the leech’s sanguinary appetite, thanks to his ridiculous Vulcan blood.

Wait a second, he thought. What if . . .

Moving fast, McCoy grabbed the supine Vulcan and pulled Spock over on top of him, using the dying man as a human shield. The coppery smell from Spock’s wounded shoulder invaded the doctor’s nose and throat, even as he prayed that the odor would be even more repulsive to the charging leech—and that the monster would not simply tear through Spock to get its actual human target.

“Doctor?” Spock whispered. He blinked and shook his head groggily. “What is—”

“Not now, Spock! Just sit tight and cross your fingers!”

McCoy braced himself for the worst, but the leech slowed to a halt less than an arm’s length before the two men. Peering over Spock’s bleeding shoulder, McCoy watched tensely as the creature swung its grotesque head from side to side, its extended tongue tasting the air, as though puzzled by the mixed stimuli it was detecting. The leech crept forward warily, emitting a confused whine. Six pairs of bulging black eyes examined its prospective prey. Impatient paws scratched at the muddy soil. The creature’s primitive, non-mammalian features offered no hint as to its next actions. McCoy remembered reading somewhere that leeches had multiple brains, spread along their entire length. Who knew what they were thinking now?

Go away, you ugly bloodsucker, McCoy railed silently. I’m a doctor, not an entrée.

Spock raised his hand before his bleary eyes, seemingly oblivious to the ferocious predator right in front of them. “Are my fingers crossed, Doctor? I am having some difficulty focusing.”

The leech came closer. Its tongue reached out, grazing McCoy’s forehead. It felt sticky and scratchy against his skin. McCoy swallowed hard. His dry mouth got even dryer. The leech stopped whining. It leaned back on its hind legs, poised to strike.

So much for this brilliant idea, McCoy thought.

A hypospray hissed, only centimeters away, and an effusion of green spray misted between McCoy and the leech. The aerosolized repellent was so close that McCoy sputtered and turned his face away, his gorge rising at the thought of what the spray really was. The leech screeched furiously as it reared up on its hind legs and pawed at the contaminated fog in disgust. Its tongue retracted into its mouth.

“Get away from them!” Chekov yelled, brandishing his hypospray like a phaser pistol. He practically jammed the improvised weapon down the monster’s gullet before spraying the creature again. “You heard me! Get lost! Vamoose!”

Choking and gagging, the leech tumbled backward onto its segmented spine, then righted itself and scurried away from its intended victims, rejoining the pack of other leeches prowling through the fog. McCoy gasped in relief. His heart raced as though dosed with cordrazine.

That had been a close one.

“My apologies, Doctor,” Chekov said, checking on McCoy and Spock. He helped ease Spock into a more comfortable position, propped up with his back against the log. “The creature got past me. There are just too many of them.”

“You think?” McCoy let Chekov help him to his feet. The smell of Spock’s blood hung in the air and clung to McCoy’s filthy garments, which were nearly unrecognizable at this point. They were more mud than fabric by now, and spackled with bits of leaves and vegetation, so that it looked like he’d been marooned on the planet for weeks, not merely several hours. The doctor’s heart rate was still elevated but not quite as severely as before. He sucked in the thin, dank air. “Thanks for the timely rescue, by the way. I’d like to hang on to my own blood, at least for a little longer.”

Chekov kept his guard up, searching the fog for the next attacker. “Any time, Doctor. Just doing my job.”

Above and beyond, McCoy thought. The seasoned security chief had come a long way since joining the first Enterprise as a green young ensign. McCoy appreciated Chekov’s heroic efforts but feared that they had gained merely a brief respite. The landing party was nothing but leech bait at this point, and badly outnumbered to boot. The swamp echoed with the menacing squawks and screeches of the monsters, drowning out the steady drone of the flying insects, while more and more shadowy figures could be glimpsed through the fog, circling the landing party. The only question was which would run out first: Spock’s blood or the humans relying on it.

“You know, a Fabrini fortune-teller on Deep Space 4 once told me that I’d live to a ripe old age and even make admiral someday,” McCoy said. “Suddenly, I have my doubts.” He shook his head ruefully. “Of all the ugly, uncomfortable, and just plain miserable places to finally cash in my chips . . .”

Darwa fell back to join them, and the three humans formed a tight cluster around Spock. McCoy looked for a way out but saw only fog, muck, and the vague outlines of too many leeches. Resigned to his own demise, he felt sorry for the others, including Spock. Even if the monsters left Spock alone, the dying Vulcan was too debilitated to last long on his own. Blood loss and exposure would kill him just as surely and mercilessly as any leech.

“Well, it was nice knowing you,” Chekov said, clearing thinking along the same lines. He gave Darwa a quick thumbs-up. “Excellent work, Lieutenant. Consider yourself commended.”

She kept up a brave front. “Thank you, Commander. I suppose this is the wrong time to ask you for a little extra shore leave next month, to attend my cousin’s wedding on Tilton VI?”

“We get through this,” Chekov promised her, “and I will personally make your travel arrangements.”

“I’m going to hold you to that, Commander.”

A leech tried to come at them from the side, but Darwa still had her Starfleet reflexes and training. She slipped past McCoy to intercept the creature, spraying it in the face before it got too close. She did so automatically, almost numbly, as though it had already become second nature to her.

“I think you’re getting the hang of this, Lieutenant,” McCoy said.

“Yeah.” She reached into her pants pocket for a spare vial of blood, reloading the hypo while remaining on high alert. Sweat ran down her face. “Lucky me.”

“Doctor?” The commotion seemed to bring Spock out of his stupor. Sagging eyelids lifted, as did his head. He sounded a bit more lucid than before. Bloodshot eyes surveyed the ominous scene, taking in the details as he attempted to bring himself up to speed. He struggled to sit upright. “The creatures?”

“Converging for a banquet,” McCoy said, not mincing words. “And we’re the main course.”

McCoy knew better than to be encouraged by Spock’s apparent turn for the better. In his experience, the dying often rallied shortly before the end. He couldn’t explain it, but he had seen it more than once. It was a human thing, and Spock was half-human after all.

“Do not lose hope, Doctor.” Spock lifted his eyes to the murky heavens. “Help is on its way.”

McCoy was skeptical. “And what makes you say that?”

Spock shrugged, then winced as the gesture aggravated his injury. “Call it . . . a feeling.”

“A feeling?” McCoy snorted in disbelief. “Well, now I really have heard everything. Guess I can call it a day.”

“Sarcasm, Doctor, is hardly conducive to morale. I advise you to work on your bedside manner.”

Chekov interrupted their banter. “Look sharp! Here they come again!”

Sure enough, at least three leeches broke from the fog, making another pass at them. One for each human, McCoy thought. He was starting to get the impression that the predators did not ordinarily hunt in packs, but were making an exception in this case.

And they were learning fast.

The embattled castaways relied on teamwork as well. “I’ve got the one on the left!” Chekov shouted. “You take the right!”

“And the middle one?” Darwa asked.

“Whoever gets it first!”

McCoy wished for a hypospray of his own, even if part of him still hated the very idea of using a medical instrument as a weapon. He tugged on Spock’s arm. “Quick! Crawl inside the log. It might buy you time . . . if help really is on the way!”

A fourth leech lunged from the back of the clearing, taking advantage of the fact that the security team was otherwise engaged. It keened triumphantly, a sound McCoy was heartily sick of. It would almost be worth being taken down by one of the beasts if it meant not hearing that ear-grating caterwauling ever again.

“I have a better idea, Doctor. Keep back.”

Spock startled McCoy by rising to his feet. McCoy would not have thought the moribund Vulcan capable of standing, let alone walking under his own power, but apparently he had underestimated Spock’s constitution and/or cussedness. Stepping over the log, Spock staggered forward to block the craftier leech. He tore the blood-soaked dressings from his shoulder, causing the wound to bleed afresh. He threw out his arms and faced down the creature. Splattered in mud, pale as death, he looked more like an apparition than a Starfleet officer. Perhaps some gaunt, forbidding specter out of Vulcan mythology.

“No,” he croaked, every word an effort. “You will not have them.”

McCoy had no idea what was keeping Spock going, except maybe that inexplicable hope he’d mentioned before. The doctor stared in horror at the nerve-racking tableau before him. “For Pete’s sake, Spock, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Whatever is necessary, Doctor.”

Wailing unhappily, the blocked leech backed away from Spock, but it did not retreat entirely into the fog. It looked from left to right, searching for the best route past the bleeding Vulcan, who stood stiffly like a scarecrow between it and McCoy. Spock’s legs quaked visibly, threatening to buckle before long. His labored breathing made McCoy’s own chest hurt.

Hyposprays hissed and sputtered behind McCoy, who heard Chekov and Darwa shouting to each other as they waged their own life-or-death battles. Unable to tear his gaze away from the momentary standoff between Spock and the leech, he could only listen in on them.

“Commander!” Darwa yelled over the screeching of the monsters. “There’s no stopping them! It’s no use!”

“Keep fighting, Lieutenant!” he urged her. “The captain would not give up, so we can’t either!”

McCoy admired their spirit, but a good doctor knew when there was no saving a patient. The landing party’s prognosis was a terminal one, and the duration of their lives was clearly measured in minutes, not hours. They had fought the good fight, but this was the end. He hoped Kirk wouldn’t risk any more brave men and women in a fruitless attempt to rescue them.

At least Jim and the rest are safe back on the ­Enterprise. That’s something, I suppose.

A blinding white light suddenly shone from above, piercing the fog and turning the perpetually misty twilight into day. After untold hours tromping through the gloom, the incandescent glare came as a shock to McCoy’s eyes. Shielding them with his palm, he squinted upward, half expecting to see a heavenly staircase leading up to eternity. He had always heard about people going “into the light” but had thought that was just a quaint, archaic expression.

Then Copernicus came into view, its forward searchlights blazing before it. The force of its thrusters rustled nearby leaves and branches and caused the taller trees to sway. Kirk’s amplified voice boomed from the shuttlecraft.

“Ahoy, landing party! Stand by for rescue.”

The sudden appearance of the shuttle, with its bright headlights and blaring noise, panicked the attacking leeches, which turned tail and scattered in all directions, abandoning their prey. The sheltering fog absorbed the creatures as though they were never there.

If only, McCoy thought.

“It’s Copernicus!” Chekov shouted jubilantly. “They found us!”

Hurling away an empty hypospray, he hugged Darwa, who was grinning from ear to ear as well. It wasn’t entirely professional, but McCoy doubted that anyone would object under the circumstances. He’d be jumping for joy himself if he wasn’t so damn exhausted.

“Well, I’ll be a Mugato’s uncle,” he said. “How in blazes did they find us?”

Spock turned slowly, painfully, toward McCoy. “I believe, Doctor, the appropriate human response is, ‘I told you so.’ ”

“I think I liked it better when you were delirious.”

“That hardly seems in keeping with your Hippocratic—” Spock began, before his legs gave out and he crumpled to the ground. An anguished moan escaped him.

McCoy raced to his side.

“Spock!”