(no subject)
Title: “Beyond the Stars” (2/5)
Characters/Pairings: Lestrade/Sherlock, Ensemble
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Word Count: c. 2,600 this part
Warnings: Language, angst, implied sexual content, injuries, violence, implied past alcoholism and drug use, AU
Spoilers: None
Summary: “You have a choice to make, Sherlock Holmes. Your friend... or your lover?”
Forty years ago, humanity left behind a dying Earth and fled to the stars. But life in space is fraught with danger, and some of it is found inside the very walls that are supposed to keep them safe.
Part One
John has been up for thirty-six hours when the ship gives a violent lurch, and at first he thinks it’s a trick of his overworked mind.
But he catches himself against a table and notices that half his staff has gone flying as well, along with equipment and a couple of patients.
Not a figment of his imagination after all, then.
He helps a little girl back onto her bed and is reaching out to give Sarah a hand up when the ship jolts for a second time, and they all go down again.
And then the lights go out.
-------
When the ship shudders and jerks, Lestrade is back in his cabin on a quick dinner break. Caught off-guard, he goes down hard and smacks his head against the sharp edge of a table in the process. He doesn’t lose consciousness, but for some moments he sits there, dazed, with blood dripping into his eyes from the gash on his forehead.
The pain subsides enough after a couple of minutes that his mind begins to clear, and Lestrade pushes himself to his feet. The main lights have gone out, and have been replaced only with dim emergency lighting that runs along the wall at his feet and at eye-level. The cabin has been thrown into shadows, and he navigates gingerly over to the door.
It doesn’t open.
“Bugger,” Lestrade hisses in agitation. He throws his entire weight against it, but it still won’t budge.
It’s then that he realises that the room is too quiet, and the floor beneath his feet too still.
The engines have stopped.
It takes Lestrade a full ten minutes to bring his intercom system back online, and even then it’s only partially working. He can’t call specific cabins, only general parts of the ship. A further twenty minutes pass before he reaches the correct room in Section 2--the auxiliary control room.
However, he expects Smith to answer and is surprised when one of his own people takes the call instead.
“Anderson?” he blurts in surprise as the man’s voice comes over the intercom. “What are you doing up there?”
“Running some tests for our last case, sir. Or I was, at least,” Anderson says wearily. “The computers up here are more powerful than at the Yard, you know that.”
“Where’s Smith?”
The pause is ominous.
“Dead. Smashed his head in when the ship got hit with... whatever it is that hit us. It’s just me up here, now.”
"Are you all right?"
"Fine, yeah. You?"
"Door's jammed shut," Lestrade says irritably. "Otherwise, yeah, fine down here as well. Can you tell what's going on?"
“Not really. Ship’s dead, sir,” Anderson says.
“And what exactly does that mean?” Lestrade demands.
“It means that somehow Protocol 47 got activated, and that everything’s shut down.”
Lestrade sucks in a breath. Protocol 47 was the ship’s last line of defense in a disaster. It effectively shut down the ship and sealed off the damaged areas from one another so that the problem - whatever it was - couldn’t spread.
“Can you see what activated it?” he asks.
He can almost feel Anderson shaking his head. “Not unless we can get the sensors back online. But I’m not an engineer, sir.”
“No,” Lestrade agrees, “but you’re the closest thing we have to one right now, and one of the smartest men I know. See what you can do. And is there any word from the main control room?”
He really means Is there any word from Mycroft? Anderson pauses too long before giving his answer.
“It’s gone dark, sir, all of it. They’re -”
“- dead up there, most likely, or severely compromised,” Lestrade finishes. “Either way, we’ll be getting no help from them. We’re on our own, now.”
---------------
Sherlock wakes to find that the world has gone vertical, and it takes him a moment to realise that he’s lying on the floor of his cabin. Gingerly, he pushes himself into a sitting position. He touches his forehead, and his hand comes away bloody. A quick inspection reveals also a busted lip and sprained wrist, all from him trying to break his fall as the ship lurched. All around the cabin, his things are scattered, and when he tries the door he finds that it won’t respond to his commands.
Dammit.
The intercom crackles to life.
“Hello, Sherlock.”
The voice is lilting and male, but otherwise unremarkable.
“What?” he groans irritably. “Who is this?”
“You don’t remember? Pity, pity. Did I really make so little of an impression?”
Sherlock says nothing, but his heart has begun to knock wildly against his ribcage. It’s been months since they last heard from Jim Moriarty, and an emotion he doesn’t want to name tugs at his throat. He should be feeling terror; trepidation. In truth, the chaos that is his mind has snapped into order, and the voice on the intercom chases away the white noise that claws continuously at his brain, day in and day out.
His mind is clear and sharp, focused for the first time since the bombs last April, and it is glorious.
“Moriarty, I presume,” he says, as calmly as he can manage. It isn’t much of a struggle. “What is it you want this time?”
“All in good time, my dear. I fear you’ve rather more important things to be dealing with at the moment.”
“Like what?”
“Your cabin there is leaking air like a sieve; I expect that is a little more important right now. And a bit more fun, yes?”
Sherlock glances around the cabin, but can see no sign of a breach.
“Oh, you can’t see them, my dear. What would be the point of that?” The man on the intercom giggles. “Micrometeoroids. Useful things.”
“This is your doing?”
“Shh, shh, darling, don’t speak, you’ll waste precious air. No, not exactly my doing. I simply saw an opportunity and I took advantage of it.”
“What is it you want?”
“I want,” the man drawls, “to see you dance. Now jump to it, sweet Sherlock, and if you complete this task successfully, I’ve another puzzle waiting for you. If you don’t--well, death cures boredom rather well, doesn’t it?”
And then he is gone, before Sherlock can even begin to form a reply.
----------------
An hour later, Lestrade has shed his outer jacket and rolled up his sleeves as the temperature in his cabin begins to climb. He’s had no luck opening his damaged door, nor with reaching anyone of importance. Every time he reaches out through the intercom, blind, to someone else, it is the same story. All over the ship, people are trapped in their cabins or the common areas, with no way of reaching the control room.
“Sir,” Anderson says, the intercom flaring to life and causing Lestrade to start, “are you still in there?”
“Talk to me, Dan.”
“Near as I can tell, we’ve got hull breaches.”
Lestrade blinks. “Breaches?”
“Yeah. Seems like we passed through a cloud of micrometeoroids. I’ve only got partial sensors, but it’s enough. These breaches are all over the ship. That’s why the seals activated.”
“Okay. And...”
“And if we can seal all the breaches, the ship will automatically recognise that the danger has passed and relinquish control again.”
Lestrade sighs heavily. “Right. What parts of the ship are affected?”
There is a lengthy pause, and Lestrade curses under his breath. Of course. That’s why his door had refused to open--it wasn’t damaged at all.
It had sealed itself shut.
“Shit.”
“There are twelve breaches in your cabin alone,” Anderson says finally. “You’re leaking oxygen, sir.”
“How long?”
“Six hours,” Anderson says, “but you’ll feel the effects long before then.”
Lestrade, no stranger to the dangers of space, nods. “Yeah, I know. Right, start getting the word out to as many people as you can reach. They need to find these breaches and seal them. Tell them to use whatever materials they have available to them. Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m clear up here. The Infirmary is safe, too, as is the Engine Room. We’ve got damage to nearly all the greenhouses, though, as well as to our water reserves. The Yard was hit hardest--we’ve got at least twenty-seven offices completely exposed to space, and we’ve lost some people up there already.”
The question Lestrade doesn’t want to ask but needs to know tugs at his tongue. Anderson answers it before Lestrade can figure out how to delicately frame it.
“All of the cabins on Level 2, Section 21 have been compromised,” he says quietly. “Not as badly as the Yard, but everyone there has about five hours to fix the breaches or find a way to break the seals on their doors. Otherwise...”
Lestrade nods to himself and tries not to think of Sherlock.
“Thank you, Daniel. Get the word out to them quick as you can, yeah? And keep working on trying to override the protocol.” Lestrade swipes the back of his hand across his forehead. “Any idea why it’s so hot in here?”
“Environmental controls are on the fritz,” Anderson says.
“Shouldn’t that make things colder?”
“It will, as time goes on. Right now they can’t figure out what the temperature truly is and are overcompensating. Eventually, they’ll shut down, and the temperature will drop quickly after that.”
“Great,” Lestrade mutters. “How’s oxygen looking, overall?”
There is a pause.
“If none of the breaches are fixed, the last of the affected areas will drain in twelve hours,” he says at last. “Those in the sealed-off portions will use up the rest of the air reserves in six months, unless we can get the oxygen system back online. But food and water will run out completely in three, so it might not matter.”
“The only way we can possibly survive this,” Lestrade says, more to himself than Anderson, “is to find and seal every last breach, so the computer will deactivate the protocol.”
He tosses aside the tool he had been using on the door and rubs a hand across his face in frustration.
“Damn, blast, and hell.”
---------------
The Infirmary is in chaos.
“Get this man into surgery, now!” John bellows. Sarah wheels him away, and John moves to the next cot. His next patient is a woman, burns covering almost the entirety of her body, and her skin peels off when he touches her arm. She’s unconscious, pulse faint to the point of nonexistence, and he grimly marks a black “X” on her forehead before moving on.
It isn’t long before all their beds are occupied and the cots full, spilling out into the corridor as they try to accommodate all the patients. They have been sealed off from the rest of the ship, along with Sections 100 through 197, cabins that are mostly comprised of families. The intercom still works, though, and cries for help are coming in from all over, though there’s little they can do about them all.
“John.”
Someone touches his shoulder, and he whirls.
“Oh, Molly,” he sighs. “Sorry, look, I know it hurts, but I’ve got to see to these other patients first -”
“No,’ Molly Hooper says quickly, interrupting him. She had been in the Infirmary when the disaster struck, John treating a sprained ankle she had got from falling down a short flight of stairs. “I want to help. Tell me what to do.”
John blinks at her. “I don’t think that’s a good -”
“Tell me what to do,” she repeats, firm. “I’d rather not see any more of these people pass through my morgue.”
He hesitates only a moment. Then, he hands her a burn repair kit, and sets her to work treating non-fatal injuries.
-----------------
The first thing Sherlock does is call Lestrade.
Or try, at least. The intercom is finicky at best, and though he can pin down Section 34, he keeps getting bounced to different cabins, none of which are the one he wants.
On his tenth try, though, the familiar West Country clip says, “Yes, what is it?”
“Do sound more grateful, Lestrade, I’m only going to save your life.”
There is a stunned silence.
“Sherlock,” Lestrade says finally, concern evident in his voice, “are - well -”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Sherlock says briskly. “Your cabin has been compromised, I take it.”
“As has yours.”
“Yes. So I need you to find some sugar.”
“What?”
Sherlock makes an impatient noise. Was he really going to have to spell it all out?
“Or salt, or pepper. Anything made of small grains. Quickly, I haven’t the time nor the air to spend arguing with you.”
As he speaks, he goes over to his cabin’s small kitchenette and pulls out John’s container of sugar.
“Found it yet?”
“Salt will do, you said?”
“Fine,” Sherlock says briskly. He takes a handful of sugar and says, “Throw it in the air.”
“I assume there’s a reason for that.”
Sherlock tosses the sugar towards the ceiling. Most of the grains rain down again immediately around his head, but a few start to drift toward the right side of the room before falling to the ground. He repeats the process, tracking the grains until a cloud of them disappear through the wall just next to his bed.
“Yes,” he says, brushing his fingers along the wall even though he knows he won’t be able to feel the micro-fissures. “The particles will be drawn to wherever the breaches are in your room and sucked out into space. It will help you figure out what you need to seal. If it doesn’t work at first, move to a different part of your cabin and try again.”
There comes a moment of silence.
“Looks like they’re near the wall by my office, but I can’t see anything.”
“You won’t be able to. Micrometeoroids, remember?” Sherlock says impatiently. “Find something to spread on the wall, anything that might be able to cover the holes.”
He ducks into his lab and emerges with a gelatinous substance he had been conducting experiments on just yesterday. The experiments had failed, but the new substance that resulted from them proved to be particularly adhesive. He starts to spread it along his wall.
“All I’ve got is toffee pudding.”
“That might do. Did you make it?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Lestrade asks, managing to sound indignant even in the midst of this crisis.
Sherlock smirks to himself. “Because if you did, it just might work. That could stick to anything.”
“Oh, shut it, you,” Lestrade says, sounding slightly amused. “You’re no help, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told. There’s a can of sealant in your desk, use that. It should be sufficient.”
“Why is there a can of sealant in my desk?”
“I was conducting an experiment. Are you going to argue with me, or are you going to let me save your life?”
“Can’t I do both?” There is a pause and a rustling sound. “Right, found it. Remind me to never let you in this cabin again, by the way.”
“Duly noted.”
As they descend into silence once again, Sherlock hears a soft click, and turns to see his door sliding open of its own accord.
“First test passed, it would seem,” he murmurs to himself.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” Sherlock says. “It’s just that I was successful. My cabin’s opened.”
“Get out of there, then, quick as you can,” Lestrade says quietly. “Get somewhere safe and lie low, do you hear me?”
“Yes,” Sherlock lies, and dashes from the cabin before he hears Lestrade’s reply.
The corridor outside is silent and dark. He can hear banging around the corner, fists raining against a door as the occupants inside try--and fail--to get out.
A display on the wall to his right lights up, and Sherlock turns.
Engine Room, it says, and then, You have ten minutes, Sherlock Holmes.
He runs.
------
Part Three
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Author's Notes: Sherlock's solution for finding the microbreaches is a modified version of a similar situation from Star Trek: Enterprise's "Shuttlepod One."