Ten

“You want another dose?” Chekov said defiantly. “Be my guest!”

The landing party was under siege, beset by leeches. Chekov swept his hypospray before him, holding off a pair of creatures (which had been attacking in tandem) with a fresh green burst of repellent. Her back to him, Darwa released a tight, controlled burst from her own hypo at yet another leech, which had just lunged from the fog. Spitting furiously, the creature turned tail and fled back into the swamp . . . at least for the moment. A coppery aroma hung in the air before dissipating into the pervasive mist.

“Hey!” McCoy protested. “Go easy on that stuff! It’s coming straight from Spock’s veins, you know!”

While the security team fought a losing battle against the relentless predators, McCoy tended to Spock, who was stretched out on the ground, his head and shoulders resting against a hollow, fungi-encrusted log. The landing party was making what felt like its last stand in an open clearing atop a boggy spit of land about the size of the transporter room back on the Enterprise. The animal attacks were coming ever faster and more frequently, as though every leech in the vicinity had been drawn by the lure of the exotic new prey. All hope of making further progress through the swamp—and reaching the source of the distress signal—had been abandoned as a lost cause. It was all about survival now, and probably for not much longer.

“Don’t tell me, Doctor,” Chekov replied. “Tell our persistent new friends.”

Darwa checked her own weapon, which was the only other hypospray they had managed to scrounge up, leaving Spock and McCoy essentially unarmed. She frowned as she squinted at the device. “I’m almost out.”

“Again?” McCoy exclaimed. “Already?”

She shot him a pained expression. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I’m trying to conserve it, but . . . ”

“I know, I know.” McCoy didn’t want to take out his frustration on Darwa and Chekov, who were doing their best to keep the party alive against ridiculous odds. It wasn’t their fault that they were all stuck in this hellish fix, with Spock’s blood being the only thing keeping them from going the way of Fisher and Yost, but he had already refilled the hypos more times than he cared to count, and a couple of extra vials to boot. “It’s just that . . . we’re killing him, damn it!”

Spock was in bad shape. McCoy didn’t need a medical scanner or tricorder to know that his patient badly needed a transfusion, as opposed to donating even more of his blood to the cause. Spock’s gaunt face was ashen and his pulse was disturbingly thready, especially for a Vulcan. Severely weakened by his ordeal, he kept sliding in and out of consciousness. Ordinarily, McCoy recalled, injured Vulcans could use a unique form of self-hypnosis to increase blood flow to their most vital organs in order to stave off death and promote healing, but that did little good when McCoy kept stealing that very same blood for a radically different use. Apparently there were limits to even Spock’s superhuman stamina. McCoy could have lived without discovering that.

“Do your duty, Doctor,” Spock whispered hoarsely, rousing himself for the moment. None of them had eaten or drank anything for who knew how long, adding to the stress on Spock’s body—which had to be severely dehydrated by this point. His eyes were bloodshot, streaked with green. His voice was as raspy as an iron file. He tried to sit up. “The needs of the one—”

“Save your breath.” McCoy pressed his hand against Spock’s chest to keep him lying down. “I’ve heard it all before and I sure as heck don’t need to hear it again. You listen to me, Spock. You are not playing martyr again, not on my watch. And don’t expect me to carry your blasted katra this time around, you got that? No more heroic death scenes for you.”

“It is not a matter of heroism, Doctor. Merely logic.”

“Logic alone is not going to keep any of us alive, Spock. Not this time.”

Spock grimaced. “You may be correct, Doctor, as much as I am loath to admit it, and yet . . .”

His voice trailed off as his eyelids drooped. His head sagged forward onto his chest. For a heart-stopping moment, McCoy feared that they had lost him, but closer observation revealed that he was still breathing shallowly, his chest slowly rising and falling. McCoy placed his fingers against Spock’s carotid artery, checking his pulse the old-fashioned way. To his dismay, it was down to 112 beats per minute: high for a human but dangerously low for a Vulcan. And his blood pressure, which was practically nonexistent at the best of times, had to be sinking as well. The smell of copper offended McCoy’s nostrils. A wet green stain, seeping through the shoulder of Spock’s filthy tunic, was an unpleasant reminder that Spock’s wound was still bleeding intermittently, making his periodic blood donations even more insane.

We’re draining him alive, McCoy thought, just to buy us a few more hours at most.

He glanced up at the sky—or what he could see of it. The open glade meant that at least there were no worrisome branches overhead, offering camouflage and extra avenues of attack to the leeches, but the unearthly fog offered little to no visibility. For all he could see, the fog extended entirely up into the explosive storm clouds that had brought Galileo down in the first place. The phantasmal mist covered the landing party like a shroud, only slightly prematurely. We’re dead, unless Jim comes through for us in time.

As if anyone could find us in this infernal morass.