FIC: Divergence 13/?
Location Unknown: The Narada, year 2260
Jim Kirk silently scanned the murky cavern that formed the main body of the Narada. He had his back pressed to a wall (just the way he liked it), a phaser at the ready and two laser scalpels he’d grabbed from the Emergency Surgical Kit strapped to his thighs (to Bones’ many protests) - he was ready for anything at this point.
Darting forward, Jim ducked behind a dead console that had a good portion of its circuits gutted and quickly did a 360 for any threats. Nothing drew his attention. Jim held his hand up gestured “okay.” Seconds later, Bones dropped down behind him with a quiet sigh of relief. So far so good; no one had seen them beam aboard the ship and the area they’d landed in was deep enough in the belly of the ship that it was empty except for the occasional passing crewman. The only sound they heard regularly was low groans from the ship’s hull - creepy, and not the least bit helpful in livening up the place.
This wasn’t the way he planned on getting aboard the Narada. It had been a spur of the moment thing but not only did it get them onboard, it’d meant that he had at least saved a couple of lives. He’d take anything he could get with the mission they were on - no matter how many cheat sheets the other Spock had let them in on, Nero had access to things that he couldn’t begin to imagine. Like tech from those creepy aliens, the Borg, that Ambassador Spock had mentioned - hope I never meet them in some dark alley...
‘What now?’ Bones hissed.
He nodded over the console and upwards, ‘Computers, there.’
The doctor glared angrily at the terminal they were crouching behind, ‘Why can’t you use this?’
‘What are you joking, Bones? This piece of junk is dead.’ He hissed back, pulling a few of the loose wires out and dangling them in front of the man’s face to prove his point, ‘There’s nothing to hack!’
Suddenly there was a loud clang from above, making them jump. They both cringed and held their breaths until the sound of footsteps faded in the distance. As soon as they both mutually agreed it was safe, Bones grabbed him by the arm and grimaced.
‘Jim, I can’t do this! If this doesn’t give me a heart condition, I don’t know what will!’
‘Shhh!’
Immediately, the doctor froze and whipped his head around, trying to find the threat. Sensing nothing, the man shot him a frown. Jim shook his head and gestured for quiet. His Romulan wasn’t very good but he hadn’t been the Treasurer of the Xenolinguistics Club at the Academy for nothing. Holding his hand up, he mimed talking with his hands. McCoy raised an eyebrow but kept quiet; he tensed as he heard it too. Romulans - two of them - discussing whether or not to bother checking in on the - Jim frowned, incomplete-blood?
Spock, his mind yelled in excitement. Of course! Half-blood or half-breed was what they meant. It seemed that young Spock was onboard and if that was true then most probably, very likely… I’m on board! Jim allowed a sardonic smile to creep over his lips because heck, talk about confusing pronouns. He spun around and grabbed Bones by the shoulders. ‘Bones - the med kit - your tricorder - did you bring the-?’
‘Of course I did!’ The doctor growled, throwing him an insulted look with one impressively arched brow, ‘I’m a doctor, aren’t I?’
Ignoring Bones’ confused spluttering, Jim ran across the nearby gangway in the direction where the Romulans had come from. Behind him, he heard the doctor scrambling to catch up, hissing his name angrily all the while. Jim pressed himself against a bulkhead and gestured for the doctor to shut the hell up. Above them about ten meters, one of the Romulans lumbered slowly across one of the gangways to the other side of the ship. When it was clear again, he gestured for Bones to hurry over. The man dropped down against the wall near him, pale and tense. Jim glanced around the corner - there wasn’t anyone around and it seemed to be a storage area of some sort. Lots of drums of hazardous material - Jim frowned - but nothing that looked like a brig or quarters.
‘What are you looking for Jim?’
Sliding around, he cautiously approached, looking around warily to see if there were any security sensors. The walls were bared, circuits and wires on display. He was almost disappointed. ‘Bones, you got your medical tricorder with you?’
‘Well of course.’
‘How many life signs are there within say… 3D radius of 500 meters?’
The tricorder trilled softly. ‘Seven, four Vulcan - or Romulan, however you want to put it and three…’ McCoy’s eyes widened almost comically, ‘Three humans!’
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Open to me, James. Let me in.
At night, it was so dark around that it was like they were the only people on the entire planet. Flat everywhere, stretching on for miles and miles, the only thing he could see in the distance was the Shipyard. They build all the new stuff here… because it’s Earth: heart of the Federation - home of Starfleet Command - no place safer... agricultural historical preserves, my address in the galaxy is meant to be pretty good - I mean, well, everyone else gets shipped off-world...
There was an old 5cm astronomical telescope. It was an antique, like so many things in the house it belonged to their dad and belonged once to granddad’s dad. The first time James T. Kirk ever encountered the stars, he was five years old and - it was a summer’s night… no one could sleep… ‘Take a look, Jimmy…’ Mom carried me so I could look into the eyepiece and it was like… the Moon was so large it filled up the whole thing, so big it almost didn’t fit and… little holes on the surface like rice crackers, the good kind from … I thought it was a trick, I thought it was paper stuck on the other end and Sam was teasing me… it’s just like in a book, the pictures of the Moon…
The bed was more comfortable than the bed on the USS Douglas, and he was full from potato salad and reconstituted guava juice grown organically on the Mars Colony … see I got out of bed and woke up mom… that night, mom explained how far stars are from Earth and how huge they are… some stars are located many thousands of light years away and … light traveling on and on for thousands and thousands of… the word “infinite”… a word I learnt that week from Frank…
But it wasn’t the same “infinite” as in it would be great to have “infinite” Betazed cream cakes. I put my arms around my mom’s neck and held on tight because it was scary, all those lights from “infinite” stars traveling on and on, infinite… the kind that makes your head hurt...
Suddenly, aware of being looked at, James spun around.
Everything shifted. He was in a large dark hall, bathed in stripes of pale white sunlight filtered through the windows. This place was a school - where Vulcan children were taught the basics of history, mathematics, philosophy, language and - I hated this place… thirty-fifth attempt to illicit an emotional response from me…
Spock stood in stiff dark navy robes that reached all the way to the floor. ‘James.’
‘Spock!’
James started at the brightness shining in his eyes and spun around, confused. He was under an impressively large pale orange sky, standing on a terrace, and there was woman dressed in a long grey shimmery dress with a scarf tied around her head, watering a pot of red prickly ferns and - is she humming? It’s hot and dry. The woman put down her watering can and quickly trimmed the fraying edges of the plant with a small pair of shears. Something’s weird… I thought… wasn’t I just…? He shook his head and touched his own forehead, confused because he was on a ship, and it was dark, and - and -
Someone… someone needs me…
Her name was Amanda, and she was Spock’s mother. My human mother… he stared at her - how strange, she looked familiar and yet so different from Spock. She was 40 years old, her favorite activities were gardening and reading, her favorite flowers were the - her favorites flower were - Ascocentrum curvifolium, a species of Earth orchids, a monopodial plant from the old Earth nation of Thailand…and Earth roses; perpetual hybrid, tea hybrid, Rosa chinensis with Rosa gigantea with Rosa gallica with Rosa…
‘Hello? Hello is anyone there?’
James pulled back, breathless and disorientated. Squinting, he raised his hand to black out the light.
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There was a reason Leonard McCoy had never taken the Command Track even though he could have - he wanted to avoid situations like this. I’m going to be the first person under sixty to have a heart attack in a century because of Jim, crazy fool that he is… He shook his head a little to himself and held up his tricorder, a light sweat breaking out on his forehead and under his arms. Jim led the way, quiet, light-footed and actually surprisingly graceful - he’d actually always thought Jim was more the barge-in-shoot-first-ask-later but Jim seemed to like surprising him. Yeah a little too much… McCoy followed the younger man cautiously through the airlock door, glancing around the dark gloomy pit they’d managed to find themselves in.
One minute, he’d been minding his own business, keeping an eye on their navigations, musing on that paper he was writing in his spare time on the Vulcan simulpericardium (it was amazing, truly, after nearly two hundred years of contact with Vulcans that their medical databases on them were so poor - well, it may have been alright for the other lot at Starfleet but he was a damn doctor and he didn’t appreciate having to go on practically nothing every time Spock injured some weird Vulcan organ that didn’t even have a name) and the next minute, Jim swore under his breath and they’d dropped out of warp in the front of a battlefield!
It had taken Jim less than thirty seconds to make the suicidal decision to drop them out of cloak and head right on in front of the Romulan monstrosity. McCoy had protested (you bet your ass he did!), been yelling that the younger man was out of his idiotic mind when Jim set the ship on a self-destruct collision course, shoved him onto the transporter and hit energize. Needless to say, this hadn’t helped his aviophobia and he was seriously considering filing for incompetence against his Captain - citing probable insanity! Except he supposed they did get what they wanted so he shouldn’t complain too much, but still!
Dammit Jim! I’m a doctor, not a green-blooded hobgoblin who just blinks at every damn thing you throw his way! Have some mercy on my nerves and good God, I sound like my mother…
All his thoughts about Jim’s risk-taking behavior disappeared as an almost ominous feeling settled over him in reaction to their surroundings, which became progressively darker until it was just dim flickering lights overhead. This was no place for people and he would have never let a child spend time here; dammit, he was a grown man and this place gave him the willies! McCoy felt something in him twist a little at the idea of what the Romulan bastard could have done to Jim, the other Jim, the little one. If this crazy hunch turned out to be right and it was him and not some other poor hapless soul stuck aboard this Romulan monstrosity.
‘You got a reading still?’ Jim asked distractedly, a frown on his face as he examined their surroundings with a critical eye.
‘Yeah… it’s coming from in there, I think.’ McCoy said, pointing to one of the chambers that led off from the main ship body as he tried to translate his tricorder readings into something tri-dimensional.
The doctor looked up and felt further uneasiness settle along his guts like cold grease - good God in heaven, this place had something like thirty or forty decks and though they’d come down at least five levels, they hadn’t nearly reached the bottom; it reminded of him a labyrinth.
‘There’s two lifesigns, Jim - one Vulcan and one human.’ McCoy frowned at the display, ‘The Vulcan one is a little weak, so it’s probably from a lower level - can’t tell I’m afraid with my medical tricorder, it isn’t exactly made for this sort of thing, you know.’
Jim didn’t reply, cautiously walking down the quasi-corridor formed by several incomplete bulkheads. Following at a good ten paces behind, McCoy looked up and around. There was something off about this place. It was in the poor lighting, in smell down. McCoy took a deep breath and almost coughed - it was sour, like chemicals gone off their use by date. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn he was walking around a derelict vessel, completely devoid of life.
There were pieces of alien technology and spare parts strewn everywhere like no one could give a damn, and a thin layer of filthy water laid in puddles. If McCoy could venture a guess, he’d say that this was most likely rank overflow from some redundant environmental system. Jim didn’t seem to be surprised, and nonchalantly trudged through the mess. McCoy studied the naked walls, full of power couplings, random tubing and various live conduits-
Hello - what’s this?
Frowning, McCoy eyed the rope ladder strung up on the wall. A very strange thing to be hanging around on a cruiser - especially since it looked handmade too.
‘Jim- Jim, look at this.’
The younger man glanced at it with a troubled frown but made no comment. Finally they stepped into a barren room, similar to a cargo hold of some sort with all the various poles to the side perfect for securing cases against. It was a little better lit than the area they had travelled through, but not a damn lot better. McCoy frowned and turned in a wide circle. There was nothing here except for a raised dais with a hatched welded into it, like it was a built-in tank of some sort that went down into the level bellow. Stepping onto the raised dais, Jim looked to him.
‘Bones?’
McCoy held out the tricorder and squinted at the display. ‘Jim, it’s coming from here, I swear and-‘
He paused, and held his hands for quiet when Jim opened his mouth to ask another question. There it was again. He swore he could hear a child crying. No, there it was again. And it was coming from- McCoy turned slowly in a circle, trying to pinpoint the source. ‘Jim, I can hear a kid.’
Jim slowly turned as well, head tilted sideways in contemplation. Suddenly, the young man crouched down, placing a hand on the hatch he was standing upon and with a thoughtful look on his face, knocked hard on the metal dais. The sound echoed like a gong. Jim’s eyes met the doctor’s in surprise and he grabbed one of the handles and pulled. It didn’t even budge. McCoy raised an eyebrow as Jim shot him an annoyed look, hoisted his phaser and tried with both arms.
‘Shit, Bones.’ Jim grunted, ‘this thing is heavy.’
Clambering up and slinging the tricorder over his shoulder, McCoy rolled up his sleeves. ‘Here, lemme give you a hand.’
Together they managed to roll the hatch out of the way with a lot of grunting and huffing. McCoy crouched down and peered inside cautiously. It appeared to be an empty space and yet his tricorder couldn’t be that off the mark - could it? Jim dropped to his knees and nudged McCoy out of the way before he stuck his head in, causing McCoy to swear as he quickly grabbed a fistful of Jim’s shirt to stop him going head in first. Dammit Jim!!
The younger man didn’t even bat an eyelash at the sudden tug on his shirt. ‘Hello? Hello is anyone there?’
There was a long pause, and then suddenly there was a pale thin face looking up at them, bright blue eyes blinking in confusion.
‘Dad…?’
Leonard McCoy felt both of his eyebrows hit his hairline. It was a young boy, about twelve or thirteen maybe, in that smooth baby-faced stage just before the terror of puberty hit. Human, without a doubt, blond with bright arresting blue eyes but who the hell was he calling Dad?
‘Hang on, we’re coming okay!’ Jim quickly retrieved the robe ladder he’d seen and lowered it, looping the prepared end around two bolts sticking out from the dais. McCoy realized that everything appeared to have been prepared beforehand, deliberate… like damn fish in a bowl…
The younger man had barely reached the bottom before the boy embraced him and held on for dear life, his face scrunched almost painfully. Good God, is that…? Is that…?
‘Dad! Dad oh my God! Dad!’ The boy was sobbing, snot and tears everywhere.
‘Hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.’ Jim shot him an awkward look over the boy’s shoulder.
Leonard McCoy stared in positive disbelief: Jimmy Kirk in the flesh at 13 years of age and a good looking kid too with a mope of foppish dark blonde hair. And a nasty-looking black eye… just as I thought - damn them… McCoy growled under his breath darkly and quickly went down the rope ladder already running a mental list on what he needed to check the kid for. This was a damn mess alright! He wondered if there were actually enough derma-bandages in his bags for all those scrapes and cuts on the kid’s jaw and God only knew where else. McCoy quickly got out his handheld sensor, waving it over the kid.
‘Hey, hey, calm down now, we got you, we got you.’ Jim said soothingly before stepping back and cupping the boy’s face, plastering on his Captain smile, ‘Hey, hey, it’s alright, it’s going to be alright now, we’re going to have a doctor have a look at you okay-‘
The boy shook his head erratically, ‘No, no, I’m okay-‘
‘Hey! Calm down, it’s okay, it’s gonna be just fine.’
The stats were all over the place just as McCoy had expected - heart rate was too high, same with blood pressure but those would normalize; old fracture in the head and there was soft tissue damage in the left ankle that was still healing. He shook his head: potassium deficient, vitamin A deficient…. He narrowed his eyes darkly at one particular set of readings - another month of whatever diet these Romulan bastards had the kid on, and he’d be suffering from an ancient case of scurvy!
Damn them! Thank goodness I brought a vial of stokaline in the kit… the kid’s going to need three of those to get his multivitamins and minerals back up there… think I got some of those Vitamin C orange-flavored suckers - kid might like some…
‘NO!’ Jimmy Kirk yelled, pulling away so hard he stumbled into a wall with a smack. ‘Listen to me! I’m okay, but he’s not!’ Suddenly, the boy burst into tears and rushed over to one of the dark corners, yelling the last name McCoy had been expecting to hear: ‘Spock! Wake up! My dad’s here! He’s here with a doctor! Wake up dammit!’
‘Oh damn.’ Leonard McCoy muttered when he set his eyes upon the younger version of their First Officer. He’d always counted himself lucky that he had joined up with Starfleet during a relatively peaceful period, knowing that he wouldn’t have to deal with all the death and bullshit that came with war, but this- this was just…
Unacceptable… a part of him whispered furiously. Dammit he was a father, and just … shit!
Beside him, Jim froze at the sight. McCoy glanced at him worriedly, wondering if this was triggering anything for him. He’d seen the medical records, he knew what Jim had been through, and the sight of young Spock all roughed up and well, it couldn’t be easy on the younger man.
‘Please doctor!’ The kid pleaded, on his knees next to the young Vulcan. ‘You gotta help him!’
McCoy swallowed painfully, letting his eyes roam across the body being cradled in Jimmy Kirk’s arms. From the dark green smears down the front of that grey tunic, he could tell that there had been vomiting; most likely was a sign of internal bleeding, especially since the Vulcan boy was hunched over like he couldn’t stand the pain of straightening himself out, and that inner eyelid dimming the color of the iris and pupil wasn’t a good sign. The kid looked like he’d had the shit beaten out of him, and then some. There was a large clotting wound on the forehead, one of his eyes had swollen shut in a mass of green and purple, and the angle of his left arm was wrong.
Besides him, Jim glanced away, a distinctively spooked expression crossing his face.
McCoy approached slowly as a violent shiver traveled from the tips of his fingers all the way to his skull. Crouching down carefully, stepping over a limp wrist, McCoy waved his sensor over the limp form, holding his breath to avoid the smell of sour vomit and coppery blood.
Extensive damage, just as I thought… what the hell did those Romulan bastards -! Dammit! DAMMIT!
He straightened and took a deep breath - this was the worst, worst part of being a doctor…
Jim touched his shoulder, stepped closer. ‘How is he?’ The younger man whispered, a quick glance down to the young Vulcan sending a sharp flinch through him that would have worried McCoy if he didn’t have more pressing matters at hand.
The doctor glanced at down at the young Jim Kirk, who was murmuring something in a foreign language in the Vulcan boy’s ear and stroking that still pale face with the back of his fingers almost insistently, like he was trying to coax some kind of reaction out of him. Like the Vulcan is his damn teddy bear… Well, considering what they must have been through together it’s not surprising…
McCoy slung an arm around Jim’s shoulders and spun them around for a little more privacy. ‘I hate to tell you this Jim… but it’s bad, really bad.’
Jim gave him a hard look, ‘What do you mean bad, really bad?’
‘I mean really bad, Jim.’
When the younger man leveled him with that unrelenting obstinate glare that he put on whenever he had heard something he didn’t like and was going to try and hack through as soon as your back was turned, McCoy took a deep silent breath. He hated to be the bearer of bad news, but dammit, in the face of these kinds of injuries it was just-
‘If we get him back to a ship with proper medical facilities, then we’ve got a chance but…’ He said reluctantly, ‘But it’s not going to be long, Jim, before it’ll be too late… not if we stay here. Sorry, Jim…’
The younger man continued to glare, his expression completely unmovable.
Oh crap…
McCoy glanced away uncomfortably, ‘Look Jim, unless we get him back to the Enterprise, it’s just not going to- he’s not going to …’ make it, he finished silently.
Turning away from Jim, McCoy felt his eyes once again drawn to the sight before him through it made his stomach turn. Spock could be annoying, anal-retentive, and even be more annoying than his Aunt Gladys, but he was also a damn good officer and a real help in a tight situation. They’d all warmed up to each other, become friends, despite their intentions and motives otherwise. As much as he hated to admit it, the pointy-eared bastard had grown on him and yes, dammit, he understood what Jim was talking about when the younger man babbled about “basking” in the pointy-eared bastard’s presence, one of the pleasant side-effects of his Vulcan mental voodoo.
And dear God, McCoy closed his eyes - dear God, it gutted him watching a younger version of him dying like this. No one should die in this godforsaken hole, he thought vehemently, glancing around the dingy little cell that Jimmy Kirk and young Spock had called home for months.
Suddenly there was a nudge against his foot. Young Jimmy Kirk was looking at him expectantly, red in the face from crying, skinny arms straining to hold the young Spock’s body against his own. The nudge McCoy had felt was a bare foot stuck out to prod him so he - so he could get my attention but wouldn’t need to let go of his- his friend…
McCoy took a sharp breath, an overwhelming sense of being out of his depth hitting him right where it hurt.
‘Hey kid,’ McCoy said softly, crouching down placing a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder, ‘Come on, son, give Spock some peace.’
Shrugging him off with surprising viciousness, the boy glared at him. ‘Are you going to save him or aren’t you?’
McCoy felt his breath catch in his throat - this was without a doubt James T. Kirk. It was the same hard obstinate stare, that determination riding on hope and fury and a refusal to give in, give up, or let go. It was the look on the young Captain’s face every single time when they were in an impossible situation, between a rock and a hard place, and he’d prove to them once again why he was the youngest Captain in the entire fleet and it wasn’t just a fluke that first time, no ma’am - he was just that good.
Leonard McCoy felt guilt punch him in the ribs as he met the kid’s eyes squarely. ‘I’m real sorry, kid.’
The boy looked at him blankly for one long moment before he held Spock closer, a hand clamping protectively over one of the young Vulcan’s ear as Jimmy’s face twisted to the kind of fury that McCoy had rarely seen on anyone much less a kid. ‘SHUT UP! Don’t say that! He’ll hear you! Don’t say that! He’ll live! We were going to join Starfleet and - and there was this ship - and we were going to-’ The boy ran out of steam as physical and emotional exhaustion hit him at once, turning his face to an ashen shade that scared McCoy. The boy turned his face away into Spock’s shoulder and began to tremble.
‘I’m sorry, kid.’ He whispered with difficulty, his throat seizing up and making it hard to breathe. ‘Look, I can make him comfortable and… and I can make sure he won’t feel…’ Won’t feel what? The kid is going to be dying pretty soon! He’ll feel nothing at all soon enough so shit, what’s the point of what I’m doing...
McCoy closed his mouth, not sure what else to say. He looked up when Jim placed a hand on his shoulder.
‘Do something Bones, please.’ The younger man murmured with a slight a note of pleading underneath his calm tone.
‘Jim, I really-' he stopped at the look in the other man’s eyes.
Who the hell was he kidding? He was the Chief Medical Officer on the Enterprise and dammit, dammit, he had to try! Leonard McCoy took a deep breath, feeling the weight of that faith Jim and the rest of the Enterprise crew had in him settle in his gut, straightening his shoulders and spine. Getting down on his knees, he emptied every single thing he had in the med kit and set to work.
‘Spock, look, my dad’s not dead, he came back for me, and he’s got a doctor - you’re going to be alright.’ Jimmy Kirk whispered, not a question but a statement of fact, and clumsily cleaned the edge of Spock’s mouth with his sleeve.
McCoy clenched his teeth at the childishly tender gesture and continued picking through the vials… Now, where are the darn painkillers, the really strong ones you need for a Vulcan metabolism…
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The Neutral Zone, Epsilon Virginis: USS Enterprise, year 2246
It had been officially four hours since they had made contact with their target. Hikaru Sulu poised his fingers on the control for thrusters and hardly noticed the bead of sweat that slid down just two centimeters behind his right ear. His eyes burned into the viewer on his console. ‘We’re dropping out of warp in four… three… two… one.’
The streaking field of stars disappeared as they dropped out of warpspace, replaced by murky green gas coming in from every direction.
‘Warp engines on standby, cloak active, sir.’ Chekov announced tersely as the entire ship went to Yellow Alert, the usual bridge lights dimming to feed the cloaking device.
‘Slowly Lieutenant…’ Commander Spock murmured in a low voice from behind him.
Sulu nodded sharply. Yes, yes, he’d worked this out already: port side, 10 degrees - five seconds of thrusters, followed by two bursts from aft thrusters…
Sulu swallowed down his nervousness and turned to look at Chekov. The younger man gave him a quick glance and a nod. Smiling weakly, he turned his attention back to his console. Together and in concert, they edged the Enterprise into a tight orbit, skimming off the top of the gaseous giant. Perfect, just like last time.
‘Captain, we’re in position.’
part fourteen
next: Spock plans to lead an away team aboard the Narada, while Kirk and McCoy are discovered by the Romulans