Mine (A Reboot Fic) Chapter 2: Fear of Falling Pt. 1
She woke up in a pod, with alarms blaring into her ears. Her shoulder ached dully, and she ordered the computer to tell her where she was while she unwrapped her hand, flexing it. It hurt, but not too much, which meant that just the right amount of adrenaline was beginning to pump through her system. The computer advised her to remain in the pod until help arrived, since the planet, Delta Vega, while being Class M and able to support human life, was unsafe.
She summarily ignored the advisement, pulling the emergency cold-weather gear out of its small compartment and packing it into a bag before free-climbing to the top of the 20-foot hole she found herself in. Once she got to the top, she scouted direction and put on her parka before starting on her 14 kilometer trek to the outpost, where she could complain to her heart’s content with some sympathetic person who had also gotten the short end of the stick by being stationed in the ass end of nowhere.
Part of the way there, it began to snow, and she trudged along, amusing herself by trying to make a log, even though she didn’t technically know the exact stardate, at least not enough to pinpoint it. She stopped her rant about treatment of prisoners when she heard something from behind her. She turned to see a draukolas chasing her. She began to sprint, hoping for shelter, since she’d been marooned with no weapon or other means to protect herself, and fighting one of these bad boys was a lot different than going head to head with a Romulan. A hengrauggi came out of nowhere, obliterating the draukolas before turning to chase her itself. She managed to outrun it by literally falling down a cliff, but got scored by the claws before finally making it into an ice cave. It followed her of course, and latched onto her right ankle, dragging her closer and closer to its gaping mouth. She tried kicking at the tongue-like appendage, with no luck. Suddenly a man with a torch stood in front of her, and the Hengra let her go, shrieking in fear and pain from the appearance of fire.
She lay back, gasping for breath, as the man turned around. It was an old Vulcan, who looked stunned. “You are a Kirk?”
“Jemima T. Kirk, at your service,” she replied breathlessly. “Do I know you?” She couldn’t really remember all of the foreign dignitaries she’d met, although this guy looked more like a well off hermit than a political figure.
“I have been, and always shall be, your friend,” the Vulcan said quietly. “How did you find me?”
“Look, who are you?”
“I am Spock.”
“Uh-huh, and I’m the tooth fairy.” He shook his head and led her to a small campfire, where she settled in to warm her hands and feet. He seemed to have expected someone different, and part of her felt ashamed of that for some reason, like she was supposed to be someone else for him. She felt inadequate, even though he was clearly insane.
“It is remarkably pleasing to see you, Jemima,” he said amiably, and she reflected that at least he had remembered her name.
“It’s Jem, or Jim,” she corrected absently, turning slightly to warm her left side, even though it felt like it was on fire; her ribs must have cracked again during her fall. Her back was burning from a combination of pain and hengra poison, but she had bigger fish to fry at the moment.
“Jem, then. It is indeed pleasing to see you, especially after the events of today.” She stood as quickly as she dared; this man was creepy and part of her would rather take her chances with the draukolas and the hengras.
“Look, sir, I appreciate you saving my life, really I do, but if you were Spock, you’d know that we aren’t friends. At all. You hate me. You marooned me here for mutiny.”
“You are not the Captain?” This seemed to mildly distress him slightly, and she backed away a few paces. Vulcans were stronger and faster; better to have space to run.
“No, you are. Captain Pike was taken hostage.”
“By Nero.” The certainty in his voice stunned her; who was this guy that he knew about Nero?
“What do you know about him?” she asked, intrigued despite herself. If he really knew anything at all, the information she could gain far outweighed his possible crazy, at least in her mind.
“He is a particularly troubled Romulan.” He stood. “Please. Allow me.” He approached her, one hand inverted and outstretched, fingers in a specific spacing. “It will be easier.”
“What are you doing?” she asked, panic nearly getting the better of her curiosity again. He kept moving though, not giving her a straight answer.
“Our minds. One and together,” he said, as if she should have understood him. His fingers pressed against her face, and he spoke again. “My mind to your mind.” [i]My thoughts to your thoughts.[/i] What followed was an information dump that left her heaving for breath with the emotional turmoil that accompanied it once he was done. She suddenly knew exactly what had happened to cause Nero’s insanity, and what part this Spock played in it. The pain and grief at the loss of Vulcan were her undoing, and she sobbed helplessly against him for a long few minutes, embarrassed when she pulled away.
“So you do feel,” she finally said, as he gently wiped her remaining tears away.
“My apologies. Emotional transference is a side effect of the mind meld.”
“Coming back here, you changed all our lives,” she gasped, mind still reeling from the intense emotional backlash of their connection.
“We must go,” he said instead of reacting to her comment.
“Wait. Where you came from… Did I know my father?” she asked.
“Yes. You often spoke of him as being your inspiration for joining Starfleet. He proudly lived to see you become Captain of the Enterprise.” There was something he wasn’t saying, but she let it go.
“Captain?”
“A ship we must return you to as soon as possible.”
They extinguished the fire and made their way to the outpost, where a small armadillo-like creature met them at the back entrance and led them into a large room, one corner of which was dominated by multiple terminals and a man leaning back in a chair, sleeping to the soothing sounds of some ball of fur in a cage. Jim was curious about the animal, but kept herself on track as the smaller creature woke the man up with a sharp prod.
“What?” As soon as the man sat up, he got an ugly look on his face. “You realize how unacceptable this is?” he hissed in a Scottish brogue, and Jim just wanted to grin, but stopped herself just in time.
“Fascinating,” Spock said in a tone of wonder.
“What?” she asked him, only to be interrupted by the engineer.
“Okay, I realize you’re just doing your jobs, but could you no’ have come a wee bit sooner?” the man asked. “Six months, I’ve been here, living off of Starfleet protein nibs and the promise of a good meal! And I know exactly what’s going on here, okay? Punishment, isn’t it? Ongoing, for something that was clearly an accident.” He was becoming increasingly incensed, and Jim wondered if all engineers were crazy, at least once they left the Academy, or if she was just lucky in her acquaintances so far.
“You are Montgomery Scott,” Spock said, and she felt like she was watching a tennis match.
“You know him?”
“Aye, you’re in the right place. Unless there’s another hardworking, equally starved Starfleet officer around.”
“Me,” the little thing said, and she was briefly amused by the argument that ensued.
“I’m talking about food! Real food. But, you’re here now, so thank you. Where is it?”
“You are, in fact, the Mr. Scott who postulated the theory of trans-warp beaming?” Spock asked, seeming to be used to the man’s obsession with food.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he replied. “How do you think I wound up here? I had a little debate with my instructor on the issue of relativistic physics and how it pertains to subspace travel. He seemed to think that the range of transporting something like a grapefruit was limited to 100 miles. I told him that I could not only beam a grapefruit from one planet to the adjacent planet in the same system, which is easy, by the way, I could do it with a life form. So, I tested it out on Admiral Archer’s prized beagle.”
“I know that dog,” she said She’d found the poor thing wandering on Academy grounds and put up flyers to get it back home. “What happened to it?”
“I’ll let you know when it reappears. I don’t know, I do feel guilty about that.”
“What if I told you that your transwarp theory was correct, that it is indeed possible to beam onto a ship that is traveling at warp speed?”
“I think if that equation had been discovered, I’d have heard about it,” Scott answered promptly.
“The reason you haven’t heard of it, Mr. Scott, is because you haven’t discovered it yet.”
“I’m so- Eh… Eh…” Scott stood. “Are you from the future?”
“He is. I’m not,” she supplied helpfully.
“Well that’s brilliant! Do they still have sandwiches there?” Spock assured him that they did, but apologized that he had no form of sustenance on him, and all she had were more protein packs. They eventually persuaded them to let them use his transporter, with the understanding that he would be coming back to the Enterprise with her.
“The notion of transwarp beaming is like trying to hit a bullet, with a smaller bullet, whilst blindfolded, riding a horse,” he complained, even as Spock was busy typing into the terminal. “What’s that?” he asked as Spock stood.
“Your equation for achieving transwarp beaming.” Scotty sat down in front of the terminal, Keenser (the other engineer) settling in beside him to study the screen.
“Well imagine that!” Scotty said, gobsmacked. “It never occurred to me to think of space as the thing that was moving.” Jim followed Spock over to the controls.
“You’re coming with us, right?”
“No, Jemima. That is not my destiny. You must take control of your ship; no one can do it for you. It is doubly hard for you now, than it would have been if - “ He cut himself off. “I cannot come with you.”
“The other Spock is not gonna believe me,” she protested.
“Only you can explain what the hell’s happened.”
“Under no circumstances can he be made aware of my existence.”
“You mean I can’t tell you that I’m following your orders? Why not? What could happen?”
“Jem, this is one rule you must not break. To stop Nero, you have to do this by yourself.”
“How? By killing you?”
“Preferably not,” Spock said, the ghost of a smile hovering at the corners of his lips. "There is Starfleet regulation 619. 619 states that any command officer who is emotionally compromised by the mission at hand must resign said command.”
“So, you mean I have to emotionally compromise… you guys?”
“Jim, I’ve just lost my planet. I can tell you, I am emotionally compromised. You must get me to show it.” It was weird, talking about Young Spock like they were both the same person, which, she guessed genetically, they were.
“Aye, then lassie, live or die, let’s get this over with,” Scott said, breaking the moment. She joined him in the transporter frame, and watched with subdued fondness as he pushed Keenser away gently. “You cannae come with me. You cannae come with me, go on.”
She leaned over the side of her frame, toward Old Spock. “You know, coming back in time, changing history? That’s cheating.”
“A trick I learned from an old friend,” Spock said, with a wistful look on his face. He then held up the ta’al, which was impossible for her to do, so she just waved as she stood up.
“Live long and prosper.” The lights of the transporter beam took over her sight, and when she reappeared, she immediately stop breathing and began pounding. She was surrounded by water and a metal something-or-other.
“Kirk! Kirk!” She continued to beat and nearly breathed in water when she was dragged into a horizontal pipe by the water pressure. Scott ran across the room, away from her, even as she screamed without opening her mouth as she shot through the clear pipes. Suddenly she was falling, and landed hard, on the floor.
“Are you alright? Kirk are you alright?” Scott said loudly.
“I’m fine… Wet, cold, and have a headache, but I’m good.” She stood up and leaned against him as a wave of dizziness hit, before starting to run through Engineering to get to the exit and up to the bridge. They were cornered on a scaffolding, and led straight to Spock. Both of them were soaking wet, and Scott had lost his hat somewhere, and she made a mental note to actually formally protest her treatment at his hands.
When they reached the bridge, Spock turned to Scott. “Who are you?”
“I’m with her/He’s with me,” they replied in unison.
“We are traveling at warp speed. How did you manage to beam aboard this ship?” His tone was angry, short. A plan emerged in her mind.