Star Trek Big Bang: On A Day Like This [4/7]

[oxymoronic]

Title: On A Day Like This
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/McCoy
Length: ~42k.
Rating: NC-17 for sex.



Master Post: Mix & Art
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven
At AO3

Bones shakes him awake the next day; he fusses over his pulse for a moment, and helps him to his feet. “Go out with Chekov to the shuttle,” he mutters in an undertone. “I don’t trust any of the others to make sure he’s okay.”

Jim sits next to Chekov by the fire. He’s eating the largest breakfast out of the group and looks slightly guilty about it. “I worked in a garage for a summer a couple years back at home - do you want me to try to give you a hand?”

Chekov nods, finishing his food and throwing the wrapper onto the fire. “That would be good.”

Alex walks out with them to the shuttle, seeing as he is, after all, the pilot, and once inside Chekov starts working on the console straight away. Jim starts off by clearing away some of the snow around it; it’s heavy going, seeing as the snow’s constantly settling and undoing the last five minutes’ work, but Jim manages to figure out a clever enough routine to get access to the engine. The metal around it at the front took the impact when they crashed, and it’s crumpled in on itself, but the engine’s set further back and other than where the fuel tank got clipped it’s unharmed. Jim checks the cables at the back are connected up to the main console, attempts to bash the metal back into shape so it’s not so dented, and, after fixing the notch in the fuel tank, puts a barrel and a half in from the store inside the shuttle. He finds a toolbox beside the fuel shipment and starts working on the busted door; the work takes up his hands but not his head, and he remembered last night where he knew Chekov’s phrase from.

When he was - well, probably around Alex’s age - he found, in his mother’s study, a report a couple pages thick sat on her desk. It was odd, he remembers, because it had the Starfleet logo watermarking every page, and the general rule in their house was that Starfleet had nothing to do with them and they had nothing to do with Starfleet. His mom’s handwriting was scrawled in neat little pencil in the margins and between the lines; he’d scanned these first and realised she’d been making corrections, verifying facts. Then, seeing as she was off-planet and Frank was at the supermarket, he picked it up, took it to his room and read the whole thing.

The ship lurches underneath him, sending his toolbox sliding down its length; Chekov’s slowly restoring the systems, one by one, and the four metal feet have slid out from under its belly, one at each corner, propping them above the level of the snow. Under his feet, a clunk vibrates along the floor, and the access ramp slides out; the computer tries to slide the door back, but Jim’s got half of it off its hinges while he fixes it. Alex sticks his head out, sees Jim working on the door, mutters something to Chekov and disappears back inside again.

The report had turned out to be a dissertation, sent for verification by a cadet - Pine, maybe? Pike? He stills for a moment, frowning. Pike was the guy who tried to recruit him, and he’d mentioned a dissertation - it’s obviously a small world. In any case, it spelt out the whole mysterious attack that had led to the death of his father. Later, his mom would try and describe it to him, but he’d shrug and say he already knew about it; she wouldn’t question how. It was a weird phrase he specifically remembered from the report; the anomaly, an impossibility, vaguely resembled a lightning storm in space, and concealed a large, complex craft the computers were incapable of identifying. His mother hadn’t corrected that sentence.

Thinking back, it sounded pretty similar - could it be the same ship? What the hell has it been doing for twenty-seven years to only now start blowing up planets? Come to think of it, how the hell could it do that anyway? Jim remembers his mom’s visit to Romulus, just before she died; there wasn’t anything particularly advanced about their technology, and nor were the people particularly violent - well, not to the extent of the Klingons, in any rate. With a kick, Jim pushes the door back in place, and it slides with a faint wheeze. It’s violently cold outside, and Jim pulls it to again - it doesn’t quite meet in the top-left corner, but it’s serviceable for just a shuttle run.

There’s a familiar crackle running when Jim enters the cockpit; Chekov’s got the radio working, and is sat in front of it, deathly white. “They confronted him - the fleet, in the Lorentian system,” Chekov says, quietly. “They were destroyed.”

Jim feels a little sick. “All of them? Your ship, too?”

Chekov shrugs. “I don’t know,” he murmurs, miserable. “They don’t say.” He sighs, and pushes his fingers into his forehead. “I was too late.”

There’s an awkward moment. Jim realises he’s almost accustomed to the deaths Chekov reports; feeling uneasy, he shatters the silence. “Is the ship ready to go?” Jim asks Alex, and in response Chekov flicks a switch on the dashboard; the ship, beneath them, hums into life. He smiles at Chekov, claps him on the back and walks back through to the main area, sticking his head out to look up at the sky. “I don’t think there’s any point waiting for the weather to clear - Alex, check all the seats are ready and harnessed. I’m going back to the cave.”

He grins at Cassie as he walks back in; she yells, jumps on him and does a weird little dance. Around the cave, they start rushing to pack away their things, managing mostly to stuff their sleeping bags back in their cases and roll them up inside their hammocks. Jim does both his and Bones’, seeing as the latter is fussing over their food supplies and the medkit, and chucks him the bundle as he walks over. The others move out towards the shuttle in single file, holding hands, led by Cassie and Jack and Sébastian bringing up the rear. Then it’s just Bones and Jim, standing in the cave, and Jim’s hit with a sudden wave of nostalgia.

“It’s almost like home, huh?” he murmurs to him, grinning.

Bones rolls his eyes. “Hell of a home,” he mutters, glowering. Their eyes catch for a second; then he’s watching Bones walk out of the cave and disappear into the snow. Jim casts about one more time, douses the fire and follows him.

Bones finishes a headcount just as Jim climbs in. “Full compliment,” he announces, and reaches round to pull the door to; it wheezes again and doesn’t quite click home. “Whose workmanship was that, I wonder?” He grins at Jim’s foul look and Jim skulks off into the cockpit, where Cassie, Chekov and Alex are tightly crammed in.

“Ready when you are,” Alex confirms, and Jim walks back through, standing by the partly-open door to watch their cave disappear into the snow.

It’s only half an hour’s flight in the shuttle before they’re out of the storm basin and speeding above the ice plain, and an hour before they reach the cracked ice, the furthest point Jim and Bones had made it to. He notices Bones watching out the window, a little pale, and wonders whether he’s thinking about the thing that chased them - but he keeps looking up to Jim and pretending he hasn’t; Jim meets them the last time and Bones hastily glances away. He supposes the last time he was here he did nearly die - it just seems stupid to worry over, seeing as he’s still alive.

The other side of the plain sees thick white snow back on the ground; there’s hills and crests all around, and Jim knows that even if they’d made it this far they’d have got hopelessly lost. The shuttle’s computer has a map of the area - a sketchy one, and there are more than a few wrong turns and near-misses - and then they’re skimming along flats, approaching the base that’s now clearly in sight, nestled in a semi-circle of ice cliffs and a lot of snow.

They bring the shuttle down a little to the left of it, and a green… thing comes out to meet them; it glances once at them beadily and then begins to walk back inside. Chekov, adamant that that isn’t Montgomery Scott, takes it as an invitation and marches off after him; Jim looks amusedly at Bones and follows.

Inside, it’s pretty cold, but at least it’s not outside - even better, there’s a room off to the left full of freeze-dried ration packs that most of them welcome heartily. Away from the group, Chekov’s attempting to talk to the thing that brought them here; it’s staring back with blank eyes, saying nothing, and Chekov peters off, dispirited. The thing raises a hand, points a short, pudgy finger at Chekov, Jim and Bones in turn, beckons ominously and marches off; Jim looks at Bones, shrugs once and follows.

The main room is huge, full of steam and contains what looks like the shell of a shuttle in the centre. The green thing leads them to a console in the middle, whacks the sleeping man with a spanner and trundles off to the other side of the room. The man wakes with a shout, and looks between Jim’s tattered, bloodsoaked t-shirt and jeans, Chekov’s grubby yellow uniform, and Bones’ grubbier red one. “Who the hell are you?”

“Montgomery Scott?” Chekov asks, bobbing a little with excitement.

“That’s me,” he replies, a little cautiously.

“Excellent! We must begin work at once!” With that, he catches hold of Scott’s arm, pulls him to his feet and drags him, protesting, over to the shuttle in the centre.

Jim notices then that Scott wasn’t sat at the console on his own; when he’s dragged aside, an incredibly old Vulcan is revealed a few feet away, perched on a chair and looking quite unsettlingly at Jim. He stands and splays his fingers in the customary salute. “Ambassador Spock,” he says softly, by means of an introduction.

Jim nods. “Jim Kirk.” An odd expression flickers in Spock’s eyes - Jim had forgotten about the whole no-emotion thing the Vulcans had going on - and he nods in reply. Bones introduces himself; Spock nods, again, but his eyes don’t leave Jim.

“C’mon,” Bones mutters to his right. “Let’s go make sure Mr Scott ain’t being molested all over the dashboard.”

They notice, once they’re inside the shuttle, that things have calmed down considerably - presumably Chekov stopped geeking out for long enough to explain what he wanted Scott for. They also notice that it’s not really a shuttle; it appeared to be one from the outside, but inside it’s an empty shell, three walls lined with consoles and one covered by two weird, cupboard-like spaces Jim realises are probably beam pads.

“It’s very flattering you came all this way,” Scott’s saying, his expression earnest, “but I still can’t get that equation to work. There’s something - wrong with it.”

Spock’s crept up behind them, which is completely unnerving; Jim looks over and notices it looks like he’s trying very hard not to say something. “Together,” Chekov announces, beaming, “we will make it work.” And despite Scott’s best attempts, he won’t hear another word against it.

Jim, Bones and Spock leave them to it; Jim wanders back outside and sprawls on a chair by the console. Bones sits down next to him, yawning widely; Spock takes a third chair, still staring oddly at Jim. Eventually, he breaks what Jim had considered to be quite a comfortable silence. “There is a lot I have to tell you,” he murmurs, softly, “and there is not much time.” He starts fiddling with his sleeve, splaying his fingers and leaning towards him. “Please, it would be easier to - ”

“Wait a second,” Bones commands, steely-faced. “You are not practicing any weird Vulcan mindfuck on him, not when he’s - ”

“There are no maleffects, Doctor,” Spock murmurs, appearing a little confused.

“I don’t care,” Bones snaps. “You’ve got something to tell him, you can damn well tell me too.” He pauses. “And,” almost as an afterthought, with surprising vehemence, “I’m not a doctor.”

Spock does have something to tell him. It’s probably the longest and most outrageous story Jim’s ever heard - Spock is from the future, and not just the future, a parallel universe’s future where he and Jim are best buddies, he’s captain of the Enterprise, no less - well, he used to be, because he’s dead now. Nero’s from there too - which, Jim supposes, does explain how he has technology none of them has ever seen - and, a hundred-odd years in the future, Spock fails to stop the destruction of Romulus by a supernova. Nero shows up, and as Spock tries - will try? - to destroy the supernova, they get pulled into a black hole, dragged back in time and Nero blows up his father. (Jim feels his fingers curl up into fists.) Spock arrives twenty-odd years later (though it’s mere heartbeats to him) - which, Jim realises, does explain the huge time gap between the Kelvin and Vulcan - to find Nero waiting for him to whisk him off here and blow up Vulcan in front of his eyes, helpless to do anything but watch. Talk about poetry.

Spock scans their incredulous faces and lets out a small sigh. “If you had let me perform the mind-meld, I would have been able to show you that this is the truth.”

“More like make us think it is,” Bones mutters, darkly.

The thing is, the more Jim thinks about it the more it seems to make sense - there’s little bits that slot in place remarkably well with what he already knows. There is, however, still one huge problem.

“But, seriously,” he says, frowning, “time travel?”

“I understand it is difficult to accept,” Spock replies.

It’s true that no one has ever made it through a black hole - no probes, certainly, and ships that have entered it have never shown any survivors; the general consensus is that they show the ultimate absence of anything, a vacuum that could not possibly sustain life.

Time travel is… improbable - but not impossible.

“Hold on a minute,” Bones interjects. “It makes sense for him to destroy Vulcan - an eye for an eye and all that bullshit - but what’s he got against the Earth? And, come to think of it, Tyrellia?”

“That,” Spock sighs, “even I cannot comprehend. The complexity of my heritage could offer some explanation for Earth - but it is unlikely Nero is aware of it. Perhaps the transition through time has confused his mind, or the grief at the loss of his planet has driven him to insanity.”

Jim drums his fingers absently on the counter. “Is there any way he can be stopped?”

Spock looks grave - either a major lapse for him, considering the no-emotion thing, or just his general state of being. “He possesses technology Starfleet is incapable of defeating - that much has already been proven on more than one occasion. The material he uses is called Red Matter. It is of Vulcan origin; I had planned to use it against the supernova which destroyed Romulus, but Nero gained control of it after he seized my ship. It is particularly volatile material and would be easily destroyed, but gaining access to it will not be easy.”

Jim nods. These days, nothing is. He backtracks through Spock’s lengthy description. “So,” he concludes slowly, “the problem isn’t beating him, it’s getting there in the first place.” He glances at the stripped shuttle, and hopes Chekov and Scott think up something.

The others have productively spent their time eating half of Scott’s rations and loudly deciding where they’re going to sleep - Delta Vega’s Starfleet base is pretty deserted, but it does contain a dorm room of fifty beds in case one professor decides to be particularly vindictive to their class and delegate them a field assignment there. Jim thinks about the map they have of the area sat on their shuttle’s hard drive, and feels a little guilty.

He and Bones naturally get worst pick; people have crowded to the door or the window, leaving the area in the middle untouched, and Jim drops himself down on one bed, and Bones does the same (albeit a little more elegantly) to the right of him. Scott appears to have his own sleeping quarters, as does the green thing (which Scott seems to call Keenser), to which Jim feels a little relieved.

Chekov doesn’t look subdued when he enters the dorm, picking a bed a few along from Bones’, but definitely thoughtful - Jim takes it as a good sign and leaves him to it, wandering around the base for exploration’s sake until he finds Scott again in the main room, sipping something hot from a flask and frowning at a viewscreen. Jim moves off, meaning to leave him to it, but Scott waves him over, and he takes a seat beside him and drinks from the proffered flask, which turns out to be tea.

“You must be pretty smart,” Jim says after a sip, handing back the flask, “if you can do half the things Chekov seems to think you can. How did you end up on this asshole of a planet?”

Scott looks incredibly guilty. “I, eh, had a disagreement with an Admiral over some simple relativistic physics. He seemed to think that the range of transporting something like a grapefruit was limited to about a hundred 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. Well, I ended up using Admiral Archer’s prized beagle as a test case.”

Jim raises an eyebrow. “What happened to it?”

“No idea. I’ll tell you if it ever turns up.” He shifts in his seat a little. “I do feel guilty about that.” He sighs and glances at Jim. “Look, I realise that there’s a lot riding on me and the kid working something out, but that equation - it’s just theory. I haven’t been able to get it to work for years, so I don’t see why it’s suddenly going to change now.”

Because it has to, Jim thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He knows how unlikely it is, too.

Bones is still sitting awake when Jim re-enters the dorm room; a few of the beds are silent, though, so Jim doesn’t raise his voice above a whisper, and Bones does the same. He’s itching for a change of clothes and a shower - the latter, whilst being offered, is only available ice-cold (as the heating’s botched up again) and Jim’s not sure he’s that desperate yet. He sits on his bed, sliding off his shoes, and tries to pick out Bones in the moonlight.

“How’s the stomach?”

Jim shrugs. “I’m alive.” To be honest, it’s starting to throb again, but Jim’s pretty sure he’s lived through worse.

There’s a pause as they both get into bed, and Jim stares absently at the concrete ceiling. “I really didn’t think you were going to be,” Bones mutters through the dark, “when I had to operate on you in that goddamn cave.”

“Yeah, well, I am. Thanks to you.”

Scott’s looking cheerful when Jim walks in in the morning - no overnight breakthrough with the trans-warp beaming, but there is a place for their motley band of refugees. “I just finished speaking to a friend over in Risa where they’re collecting the survivors. They’re sending a shuttle over this afternoon.”

The others seem pretty excited by the prospect - probably just for the fact that they’ll get off this goddamn planet - but Jim wants to stick around, just because he feels like he should help. He’s part of this, in some weird, fucked-up way - and so, it seems, is Bones. Spock had, after all, spoken to him like he knew him, though there had been no mention of him in Spock’s grand tale of the life he could have had.

He searches out Spock after he’s spoken to Scott; he’s overseeing the others’ preparation for the shuttle’s arrival tomorrow (a group which, Jim notes with interest, doesn’t include Bones). He goes to stand next to him, and Spock greets him warmly. “I wanted to ask - in this world that you come from… I knew my father?”

“Yes,” Spock replies, nodding sagely. “He was your inspiration for joining Starfleet.” The unfairness rips through Jim, and he fights the urge to bitch and whine. Nero took away his whole life from him - “but,” Spock continues, as if reading his mind, “you should not dwell on what you do not have, but what you have in its place.”

Jim scowls. He has a comparatively-shitty childhood with a heartbroken mother and a stepfather who, well, he wasn’t that bad, but he doesn’t have a planet, thanks to Nero, he’s an orphan, thanks to Nero -

There’s Bones, though.

There’s always Bones.

“I know the equation for trans-warp beaming,” Spock says, a tad suddenly. “Being from the future does have its advantages.”

Jim stares at him. “Why the hell haven’t you given it to him before?!”

Spock looks at him, slowly. “I would have thought that much was obvious. Consider, Jim; I would be rendering his life’s work meaningless. I would be taking away any achievement as he himself would not be making it - consider how that would make him feel.”

Jim’s first instinct is to say fuck it - especially seeing as it turns out the fate of the whole goddamn universe rests on the use of that equation. But, then again, there’s a small voice understanding what Spock has to say.

“Couldn’t you… break it to him gently?” Spock raises an eyebrow. I’ll take that as a no.

“I can try.” He paces across the dorm room and out of the door; Jim follows at a run, and watches as Spock approaches Chekov and Scott, who, heads bowed, are furiously discussing a set of test results on a small console. Jim stares in amazement as Spock interrupts them quietly, and then, in a long, monotonous speech complete with hand-waving illustrations, talks. Scott’s face transforms from incredulity to outright shock, and then he bolts back inside the shuttle, which lets out a long whine of angry protest. Seconds later, he jumps back out of it, arms raised, looking ecstatic.

“It works! Fuck me, it actually works!” Jim sprints forwards in the room; Scotty’s shaking his head in disbelief. “I mean, I’ll have to recalibrate the whole machine, which’ll take time, but…” Spock very nearly smiles, and looks at Jim. Scotty tugs Chekov and Jim to one side, and starts gesturing wildly, trying to explain. “See, it suddenly occurred to me - what if it’s space that’s moving? And - ”

“That’s great, Scotty,” Jim interrupts, “but seriously, I don’t want to know.”

The console to Jim’s left makes an angry screech; they all jump as Scott jogs over, pushing a message up on screen. “Ah, the shuttle’s arriving soon.”

“I’ll go tell the others,” Jim murmurs, and gets out of the room.

The next hour or so is filled frantically by trying to get everyone ready - it’s hardly like they’ve got a lot of possessions, but people keep floundering over trivial things and it ends up taking a while to get them sorted. Jack, strapping up a handmade bag containing a sweater and a self-assembled washkit, works quietly beside Jim. “You’re not coming with us, are you?” she asks, softly.

Jim shakes his head. “No.”

“There are some of the others, you know,” she murmurs, “who want to stay behind and help with Pavel’s plan.” She grimaces. “Most, though, just want to get out of here. Then again, I’m not sure the refugee camps are going to be much better.”

“Tell them no one’s staying behind,” he mutters in reply, and drops the radio he’s fixing onto the nearest bed. “This thing is too dangerous for anyone to get involved - ”

“Except you,” she points out, eyebrow raised.

“Except me.” And, he thinks to himself, Bones. Hopefully.

The shuttle arrives not long after; they round everyone up outside and start climbing eagerly on. Some of the men hesitate, looking back at Jim, but the Starfleet lieutenant who’s come to collect them insists they go on. Jim hangs around the back of the line, desperately trying to think of a reasonable excuse; then, he sees Bones skip the queue and start talking rapidly to him, occasionally gesturing at Jim. Eventually, the lieutenant nods, and Bones marches back down the line, grabbing his arm with a gruff “c’mon.”

“What did you tell him?” Jim asks once they’re standing in the door of the base, looking back up as the shuttle starts firing up its engines.

“That I’m a med student commissioned here to study the local wildlife. Thankfully, he didn’t check for ID; the uniform was enough.”

“And me?”

“Oh, you’re my assistant.” He glances at Jim wryly. “Think nurse, without the uniform.”

Jim opens his mouth to reply (euphemistically, naturally), but spots Cassie and the younger Alex staring out of the last window at them. He raises his hand and performs a mock-salute, two fingers flicking from against his forehead into the air; Alex grins a little cheekily and Cassie nods, waving once. He has a little pang of regret; he wishes he’d said a better goodbye.

Then Chekov barrels into them from behind, jabbering about Scott’s theory, and the shuttle’s soaring into the wintry sky.

They walk back to the main console; Chekov shoots off back inside the shuttle to Scott who, if the loud, Scottish swearing is anything to go by, is frantically working inside. “A Scot called Scott,” Jim muses, smiling. “What do you reckon the odds of that are?”

Bones shrugs. “Nowadays, the odds of just finding a Scot are probably a million to one.”

There’s someone missing - Jim glances around, frowning. “Spock’s gone,” he thinks aloud, his frown deepening.

He comes this close to yelping when a gruff voice between his legs answers. “He went on the shuttle.” Just when Jim’s mind is running through some rather disgusting possibilities it turns out to be Keenser, who slides out from under the console, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “He said he had something to do.”

Once he’s got over the shock of Keenser being able to speak, Jim feels a little annoyed. Spock’s a connection to a life he didn’t have… a life he desperately wanted to learn more about. It never happened, he reminds himself quietly. It’s probably better not to think about it.

Scotty finds them pilfering from his food supply, but doesn’t look all that bothered by it. “It’s working,” he breathes, looking a little awed. “Of course, it’s still calibrating in the map, but it’s working - working!”

“Calibrating in the map,” Jim echoes; it sounds like a load of computer crap to him. “How’s long’s that going to take?”

Scotty shrugs. “Eight, nine hours? Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

Jim nods. Nero could destroy a lot of things in nine hours, but after those nine hours, Jim could destroy Nero.

After the food’s warmed up, Bones surveys him, an eyebrow raised. “Y’know, any good psych could have a field day with you.”

“They’ve tried,” Jim mutters. “Believe me.”

Bones eats a little more freeze-dried ravioli, pulls a face, but keeps eating more. “Still,” he asks, softly, “you’re not doing this out of some fucked-up revenge, are you? ‘Cause that’s all kinds of wrong.”

Jim thinks about his parents - for his father, a valiant death was still, in the end, a death, no matter how many wings of children’s hospitals got named after him or medals got sent home. For his mother, well, it was just plain wrong. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “Yeah, it is revenge. It just happens to be saving the universe, too.”

Jim’s fucked.

Literally, it’s over the cheap plastic table he’d broken at the age of fifteen, dropping Frank’s truck’s suspension unit onto it, slick with grease and slipping through his fingers. The table had been one of his favourite parts of his first room, back when they’d spent a year in Delaware; he’d liked the soft coolness of it against his fingers and the roughness of the doodles he’d created over the years.

Figuratively, it’s because Bones is the one fucking him.

Jim starts awake, his breath knifing cold into his throat, and through the dark his eyes find Bones’ back, sleeping in the bed next to him.

Congratulations, he thinks to himself bitterly. You actually managed to make things even more complicated than they already are.

Jim finds some suspiciously good coffee in the supplies room and wanders around the base, warming himself up and trying very hard not to think about an ever-growing list of things. Bones doesn’t even have to be awake for him to know this is going to be awkward.

Scotty’s bent over a bench when he walks into the main room, whistling to himself amiably, and Jim wonders if he’s pulled an all-nighter. Chekov’s beside him, half-heartedly watching whatever he’s doing across the work surface. Scotty grins at his approach, and reveals his work with a flourish. “Buttonhole microphone,” he declares, smiling broadly. “And the earpiece to match. Mr Chekov here spent the night telling me about this plan of his - and, well, I figured these might come in handy.” He leans over and flicks the microphone already attached to Chekov’s chest, earning himself a filthy look on Chekov’s part.

“Yeah,” Jim agrees, sliding the microphone in circles around the bench. “Will they work over the long distance, though?”

Scotty looks appalled. “Are you doubting my mechanical prowess and expertise?”

Jim holds a hand up in defeat. “I was just asking. I didn’t know they could, that’s all.” He jabs his thumb back towards the stripped shuttle in the middle. “Is it ready?”

“She’s looking pretty good,” Scotty confirms, beaming. Bones slumps into the room, looking rumpled and irritable, and he stands opposite Jim across the workbench. Scotty’s frowning to himself; a puzzle he can’t work out. “I’ve been trying to work out who to send - I’m not supposed to leave the base - ”

“I’m going,” Jim says, and attempts to emphasise in his tone that this is Not To Be Disputed.

Scotty doesn’t get it. He snorts, shaking his head. “In case you’ve forgotten, you’re a civilian. I can’t let you go charging off after Nero, my superiors would have a field day.”

“I’ll go,” Chekov pipes up beside him, but then it’s Bones’ turn to snort.

“You’re just a kid.”

“I’m higher up in Starfleet than you are,” Chekov retorts, a little testily.

“Well, you can’t go on your own,” Bones mutters back, more than a little grumpy over Chekov’s remark.

“Which,” Jim intercedes, “is why I should go with him.”

“Unnacceptable,” Scotty pronounces. “Impossible.”

With Jim’s incredible powers of deduction, he can see this isn’t going anywhere.

He has to get on that ship.

“You can’t go because you have to stay here, no one else can operate the damn thing - Bones can’t go, because…” He thinks wildly, but there’s nothing coming up.

“I might be needed here?” Bones suggests, imbued with the customary sarcasm, and Jim jumps on it.

“Exactly!”

With twin expressions of complete incredulity, Scotty and Bones stare at him.

“Come on,” he mutters, trying not to whine, and turns to Bones. “Please.”

Bones throws his hands up in defeat, but Scotty stands his ground; when he begins to protest, Bones looks him squarely in the eye. “Shut up.”

It seems to do the trick.

They all tramp into the shuttle; Keenser, perched on top of a shelf, refuses to budge, and watches beadily as Scotty starts scanning the consoles, plugging in information with swiftly-moving fingers. After a minor, whispered tussle with Chekov, Jim attaches the microphone to his shirt and fixes in the earpiece.

“Hold on a second,” he mutters, and sits back from the console, his palms slapping down onto the screen, looking dispirited. “How the hell am I meant to find that ship?”

Jim’s stomach drops. “You mean there’s no way of tracing it?”

Scotty shakes his head. “If it was Starfleet, yes, I’d be able to search for its coordinates as easy as anything, but as according to my computers the ship doesn’t even exist yet…”

“So what do we do?”

Scotty shrugs. “We wait. Until something comes up.” He gestures at the radio.

By the time they hear anything over the longwave, Nero could be out there destroying more planets, and it’ll be far too late. The idea is pretty much unbearable - to have the ability to stop Nero but to be completely incapable of doing so.

“What other choice do we have?” Bones mutters, the question rhetorical. He settles himself in a chair; to his right, Jim does the same.

They wait.

Jim can’t imagine doing this for more than one day; spending the rest of his life sat here praying for a sight of the ship, anywhere, staring at the metal grille and willing it to make a sound. Naturally, it doesn’t work.

They don’t, however, have to wait until the end of Jim’s life, though it’s arguable that if they had to wait much longer the daggers Bones is throwing with his eyes would have turned all too real. Halfway through the afternoon, the faintest crackle across the speakers mentions a brief sighting of the ship in the Mariah system - it’s not much, it’s not much at all, but -

“Is that enough?” Jim shouts, jumping to his feet. “Can you track it with that?”

“Wait - ” Scotty frantically gestures for silence, then, “yes!” Just as the radio announces the ship’s return to warp, a green light flickers up on Scotty’s screen. “Locked and loaded,” he beams.

“Scotty,” Jim replies earnestly, “you are a genius.”

Chekov, to his left, looks slightly affronted.

Jim settles himself in the beam mat to the left hand side; Chekov stands to his right, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Across the shuttle, Bones is staring at him with an oddly constipated expression. “Don’t - ” he starts, and his forehead crumples into a frown. “Don’t - die.”

Jim grins. “I’ll try my best.”

Scotty punches the button.

When they materialise, Jim gets an odd creeping shiver shooting up his spine; once his brain’s defogged and got over the dizzying transport he realises it’s because he’s ankle-deep in dubiously-coloured water, and he swears, jumping clear, the unbearable squelch of wet socks seeping through from near his feet. Slightly less dramatically, Chekov steps out behind him. Jim pinches the mike sewn into his collar; “Scotty, can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” his earpiece replies, its tone definitely Scottish. “I take it you’ve both arrived in one piece?”

“Yup.” He grins at Chekov, shakes a little water out of his shoe and stares determinedly down the corridor. “C’mon, we’ve got ourselves a universe to save.”

Ten minutes of shuffling espionage later, and they find themselves back in the same place that they started. “Fuck me,” Jim mutters, most unprofessionally. “Nobody told me this place was a freaking labyrinth.” Chekov, beside him, looks equally lost. “What we need,” Jim murmurs, frowning, “what we need is a map, or something.” He snorts. “But the chances of coming across one of those are - ”

“A million to one,” Bones helpfully supplies in his earpiece.

“Thanks.”

“I’m here all week.”

But, at the other end of the hall, Chekov’s smile is suddenly getting wider and wider. Jim jogs over, peering at the section of wall Chekov’s staring at, and his eyes widen suddenly. “You are fucking kidding me.”

“Un-be-fucking-liveable,” Bones swears, and Jim’s smile increases. The thing carved into the wall does in fact look remarkably like a map - from the looks of things it’s showing access points to - who’d have thought it? - the ventilation shafts. The irony fills Jim with inexplicable glee. He hurriedly sets about trying to read it, only to realise with a gut-punching wrench of dismay that -

“It’s written in Romulan,” he mutters into his microphone, and Scotty swears profusely through his ear, making it sting.

(Unbeknownst to Jim, Bones’ face twists in a wry smile, galaxies away. “Where’s a pretty lady when you need one?” he murmurs to himself.)

“What are the odds of one of us being able to read Romulan?” Jim mutters, and it’s meant to be rhetorical, but Chekov suddenly grabs his arm and shoves him aside, fingers scrabbling across the map.

“I can do that,” he whispers, his eyes turning glassy. He turns to Jim with a face flushed with excitement. “I can do that!”

Jim stares at him in utter disbelief. A million to fucking one.

“Where would they keep it?” Chekov wonders aloud, frowning slightly and leaning back, scanning across the whole display. “A cargo hold? A storage bay? … there is this,” Chekov murmurs, prodding his finger at part of the map. “The label, I think it translates… secure?”

Jim shakes his head, still reeling a little, and shrugs. “I… Well, it’s the best we’ve got so far.” Chekov does a double-take, spotting another point on the map, and then spends a minute planning the route, closes his eyes to memorise it and sets off at a quiet run; Jim follows. Every single tunnel they run through looks exactly the same, but Chekov doesn’t waver in his direction, his face set in determination. They pause briefly in a supply closet, scanning for something - anything - they can use; Jim lifts a small hand phaser, and Chekov a handheld that turns out to be busted. “Where did you learn to read Romulan, anyway?”

Chekov shrugs, scanning the hallway outside for passers-by. “I read ahead on my studies; I had nothing to do. I was bored. Besides,” he adds as they step into the corridor, “it’s almost like Russian. If you squint.”

The vaguely labelled secure room turns out, in fact, to be completely deadlock sealed, security card operational only. When they realise as much Chekov’s forehead clears and he nods - apparently, it all makes sense now. Jim manages to surprise-attack a Romulan heading for the room and palms his pass, which they swipe through the reader and walk inside, the door sliding shut behind them.

The ship in the middle of the room is one of the weirdest he’s ever seen, looking like some unfortunate breeding accident between a bird-of-prey and a jellyfish, and Jim’s never seen anything like it.

There’s a lurching shudder under their feet; the ship’s dropped out of warp. An icy cold spreads across Jim’s stomach - the Red Matter in that ship; is Nero planning to use it to destroy another planet? Are they already hanging above the next victim? There’s no way of telling - it’s not like the ship’s well ventilated and frequently dispersed with handy portholes. Still, something as big as that drill - Jim reckons he’d be able to at least hear it working underneath him. It occurs to him there’s another sure-fire way of testing it; he drops his head to next to the microphone and whispers, “Bones?”

“What?!”

“Just testing.”

Chekov drags him over to a computer console. They’re set slightly in an alcove, out of sight of the guards patrolling around Spock’s stolen ship - because, he thinks a little miserably, it’d be too much to ask for it to be unguarded - but at this end of it Jim has to duck behind an oil barrel to keep out of sight.

“You need a distraction,” Chekov mutters, fingers pacing over the keys, “a diversion.” He punches a key, suddenly, and across the other side of the room a corridor blows up. Jim stares at him as every single guard floods the chamber and runs, panicking, over to the site of the explosion. “Unstable material,” Chekov murmurs, looking sombre, his eyes flashing with amusement, “dilithium.” Jim starts making his way over to the now-deserted ship, expecting Chekov to follow, but he doesn’t; he grabs Jim’s arm and they halt in the middle of the bay. “The Romulans, they took my captain as hostage,” he explains, looking solemn. “I have to do something. I know where the prison cells are - ” Well, that explains his hesitation at the map. “ - and it will not take me long. I’ll meet you back on Delta Vega?”

Jim nods, claps Chekov on the shoulder for good luck, and the two of them peel apart. Jim takes advantage of the panicking guards to slip easily up the ship’s ramp; its blazingly-white interior is a painful contrast to the Romulan’s dingy green, and he blinks, suddenly blinded. The main room is circular, with the opaque Red Matter held silently in the middle, and the steering area branching off in front of him. “Computer, what’s your manufacture date and origin?”

“Stardate 2387, commissioned by the Vulcan Science Academy,” it tells him in a cool, female voice. More evidence to be filed in the neat little box. Computers can be reprogrammed, he reminds himself. He’s done more than a few himself.

He turns back to the column of Red Matter hanging gloopily in the middle. There’s a lot of power in those cubic feet - a lot of death, too. He presses a hand to the lukewarm glass, and it’s strong and thick under his fingers. There’s no way he can fly the ship out of here unnoticed, and besides, it really would be the perfect revenge if a black hole opened up in the middle of Nero’s ship. But how is he meant to get the stuff to react? A bomb would do the trick, but even if by some miracle he happened to find the components lying around, would he find the materials to make a self-destruct? A timer?

The thought hits him slowly, sizzling like lemon juice, burning, running down his throat. He leans into his mike again. “Bones,” he murmurs, “is Chekov back with the captain yet?”

“Negative,” Bones replies, and then pauses. “Jim, what are you thinking?”

Jim never gets the chance to answer, because there’s a very angry Romulan pointing a gun straight at his face.

It’s the Romulan he stole the pass off before, he realises, who appears to be in some position of authority; at his shout, the guards flood back up the ramp and look infuriated to find Jim in there. “Drop the weapon, human,” he spits, eyes flashing theatrically.

Jim curls his fingers round the phaser. He can’t afford to lose it, especially seeing as it’s already slotting into his plan. “Nero?” he asks, and the Romulan suddenly looks irritated.

“No,” he mutters, rather petulantly, “I’m not Nero. Why does everyone always think that?”

“You all look the same to me,” Jim mutters, a little smile playing round his mouth; the Romulans don’t like this at all; they all shuffle a little further into the ship and look more menacing.

“I’ll say it again, human; drop your weapon.” Jim casts about, thinking - he just has to buy them a little more time -

There’s a mad scuffling and swearing in his earpiece, and Jim’s certain there’s more than two voices coming through. “Bones, is that Chekov and the captain?”

The Romulans stare at him, clearly thinking he’s gone mad, and then the lead one spots the buttonhole mike on his front. “Remove it!” he yells, and Romulans start flying at him left, right and centre. Somewhere in the fray one of them gets through and tears out a considerable chunk of Jim’s shirt, also taking the mike - the others back off a bit when Jim brings up his gun and sends one smoking to the floor, but the damage has been done. Still, they don’t know about the earpiece, and it thankfully still seems to be working.

“Yeah, that’s them back now - Jim? Jim, promise me you’re not going to do anything stu - ”

Jim points his phaser directly at the tank containing the Red Matter. “Fuck you,” he spits at the Romulan, and pulls the trigger.

The result is remarkably anti-climatic. The phaser blast rebounds off the casing, flips straight back at Jim and sends him scrambling to the floor, avoiding it only narrowly. It reverberates a few more times off the walls - the Romulans don’t even flinch - and eventually, it fizzles and dies. Reinforced glass, he realises. I should’ve guessed as much. The Romulan walks across to him, stamps on his hand and he hisses, dropping the phaser with a clatter. It’s kicked away, and another Romulan seizes him from behind, dragging him to half-balance on his feet. The first Romulan leans over, grabs hold of his neck and pushes his head up, glaring at him with disgust, his phaser worming into Jim’s stomach. Jim’s legs start to writhe underneath him; his windpipe’s not exactly designed to take the weight of his body, and he can feel himself choking, feet haywiring underneath him, desperate to find purchase.

“We should take him to Nero,” a Romulan by the door voices, uncertainly, and Jim watches the flick of annoyance across the other’s face.

“Yes,” he spits, “we should.”

He kicks Jim down to his knees; Jim kneels there, wheezing, staring up at the Romulan above him. The Romulan, pushed just that little bit too far, jams the phaser against his forehead and pulls the trigger - but it never hits him. By the time it’s left the barrel Jim’s flying across space in a million pieces, faster than light, and reassembling back in the belly of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Part Five