Archive of Our Own

Captain's Log, Stardate 2259.37

After answering the distress signal from the USS Constellation, we discovered the ship floating dead in space with only its captain, Commodore Decker, remaining aboard. Astrometrics additionally reported that we were in the vicinity of Tau Tauri, a star system logged as containing five planets, including one M-class; current readings show only five clouds of asteroid-sized rubble now orbiting the star.

Upon rescuing Decker from the wreckage of the Constellation, he told us that his ship was attacked by a large hostile object of unknown origin. He had beamed his entire crew to the M-class, hoping to save them, but the planet was destroyed shortly afterward. The object then left the system. Our preliminary theory is that this object is some kind of planet-killer, a doomsday weapon created outside the Alpha Quadrant; it consumes everything in its path, possibly for fuel.

The Commodore has been kept aboard the Enterprise for treatment in Sickbay; Lieutenant-Commander Scott and I have beamed back aboard the Constellation to prepare it for towing to a Federation starbase.

***

"Oh, fuck," Scotty yells, interrupting Jim's work on the helm console.

"What?" Jim says. "What?"

"I've just got the short-range sensors back online in time to find that the buggering thing's come back for seconds!"

Jim tears across the bridge, shoving Scotty out of the way to read the display in front of him. The thing is just on the edge of the sensors. It's gigantic. Planet-sized. He grips the back of the nearest chair to keep himself upright. "Fuck."

The comms station beeps, and Scotty runs to patch the signal through the main screen. Only the audio comes through; the viewscreen itself is dead.

"Captain," Spock says. His tone is calm, but clipped.

"Spock!" Jim says. "Talk to me. We've got it on the short-range but that's all."

"Captain, it is on a direct course to intercept the Enterprise. We have little chance of deactivating the weapon without first provoking an attack upon the ship."

Jim digs his fingers into the cushion of the chair. "Beam us back," he says. "We'll have to abandon this ship and run."

Spock doesn't respond.

"Hello?" he calls.

Scotty fiddles with the comms panel. "No signal," he says. "We've been cut off."

Jim drops into the chair he was just hanging onto, rubbing a hand over his face. He knows what this could mean. But it doesn't mean that. It can't. He takes a deep breath. "Scotty. I need you to try to fix the impulse engines while I keep working on the bridge controls."

"Aye, Captain." Scotty takes off for the closest Jeffries tube access to climb down fifteen decks to the engine rooms; the turbolifts are still non-operational, too. Non-essential systems.

Jim sets to work on the bridge stations, relying half on his Starfleet engineering courses, half on his well-developed mechanical skills, and half on intuition and hope. He gets internal comms online and manages to stabilize the life support, and is working on making the short-range sensor images project to the main viewscreen (the viewscreen's video is gone beyond salvation; no other way to see what they're looking at) when the comm activates, crackling with static but still audibly projecting Scotty's voice from the captain's chair.

"Captain."

"Tell me something good," Jim says, ripping out a wire to bypass some fried circuits in the sensor relays.

"I can get impulse back online." His tone has a 'but'.

"All right," Jim says. "Give me the bad news."

"The impulse drive control circuits are gone, so I'll have to use the warp control circuits to do it. You didn't want to be able to steer or warp, did you?"

Jim stops what he's doing and looks up at the ceiling, desperate. "If we can move on impulse, I guess I don't care which direction. I mean, I'd prefer it to be away from the planet-killer."

"I'm working on it," Scotty says, cutting the feed.

Jim says nasty things under his breath as he finishes the panel he's working on. The short-range sensors appear on the main viewscreen, showing the tableau in wide, glorious detail. The planet-killer is nearly on top of the Enterprise. They seem to be exchanging fire.

"No!" he shouts, and throws himself at the comms station. He tries every channel he can think of to get ship-to-ship, failing on all of them. Then he rips off the panel and starts digging through the underbelly of wires, splicing things and plugging things into other things, stealing memory from the dead tactical console, all to boost the Constellation's signal strength. They're sitting ducks out here.

"Enterprise! Enterprise, come in. This is—" He cuts himself off, scowling. Nothing.

Then he leans forward, paging Engineering instead. "Scotty!" he says.

There's a pause before Scotty answers. "What?"

"Impulse engines!"

"Give me five more minutes!"

"We don't have five more minutes!"

Scotty cuts the transmission again.

Two minutes later, he calls back. "I've got your impulse engines. Basic manoeuvrability."

"Thank fuck!" Jim yells, jumping out of the comms chair and jumping the steps to reach navigation. He abuses what's left of the navigation systems to aim the ship toward the Enterprise and pushes the engines as hard as they'll go. Fifteen minutes to cross that distance. And then... then he doesn't know.

"I'd kill a man for some weapons," he says out loud.

"Well, I've got one phaser array about recharged for you," Scotty answers over the forgotten comm link.

Jim whips around, startled. "Are you kidding? Scotty! If we survive, you're getting a commendation, a raise, and a big bottle of Romulan ale."

"Thank you, sir. I'll just power those up, then, shall I?"

"And firing," Jim says, training the array on the planet-killer and releasing a burst of fire.

He watches the sensors intently; the barrage hits the planet-killer, pausing its advance on the Enterprise. Then the deck under his feet lurches, nearly knocking him flat. He peers up at the viewscreen; the impossibly large blob is creeping steadily into the sensor range. It's approaching them now, instead.

"Captain, the ship's caught in a tractor beam!" Scotty yells.

"Bring us about!" Jim yells back. "Give her all she's got!"

"I am!" Scotty says.

Jim starts messing with navigation, setting them on a retreat trajectory, but the planet-killer is gaining on them. It seems to be moving nearly at light speed while they're caught sluggishly in the pull of its tractor beam, being slowly reeled in. Jim watches helplessly as the distance between them shrinks and the shape on the sensors fills the screen.

Then they're not being pulled anymore, and Jim blinks up at the viewscreen. The Enterprise, instead of getting out of Dodge once it was free, has advanced again, attacking, and diverted the weapon's attention from the Constellation. Jim maintains their retreat vector and runs back over to comms to try and hail his ship again.

Uhura picks up and he nearly cries into the microphone.

"Lieutenant!" he barks.

"Patching you through to the chair, sir," she says briskly.

"Spock!" Jim says, not bothering to keep the relief out of his voice.

"Captain Kirk," answers a voice which doesn't belong to Spock.

Jim sits back in the chair. "Commodore Decker?"

"Captain, I've assumed command because your first officer refused to engage."

Jim sputters. "You mean it was your brilliant idea not to go while the getting was good?" He remembers after it's out of his mouth that he's speaking to a superior.

"We have a duty to deactivate or destroy the weapon, Captain." Decker's voice is hard.

"We have a duty to the 1100 people on my ship to keep them from dying pointlessly," Jim snaps back. "You have to retreat!"

"You don't give me orders, Captain."

Jim takes a deep breath. "I'd like to speak to my first officer, sir."

There's a pause, during which Jim can hear yelling in the background. The bridge of his ship sounds like chaos. "Very well," Decker says, and a second later Spock is on.

"What the fuck is going on, Spock?" Jim blurts.

"Our weapons have no effect, Captain. I recommended we withdraw but the Commodore ordered to continue the attack. We have taken heavy damage from the planet-killer's energy weapons, severely depleting our shields and disrupting the warp drives, transporters and external comms. We are currently once again being held by a tractor beam which is drawing us toward the weapon's centre, where we will most likely be consumed for fuel. In addition, I believe that the Commodore is in violation of Starfleet Regulation 619 and should be relieved of command."

Jim believes that this particular violation occurred quite a while ago, and they're in new, uncharted territory of crazy now. "Agreed, Commander. Relieve the Commodore of command, on my orders, have him admitted back to Sickbay, and order Mr. Sulu to take immediate evasive action. We'll attempt to make our way over to you."

"I receive and acknowledge your orders," Spock says, closing the comm link.

Jim is starting to wonder what to do about navigation when Scotty comms him. "We've got a wee bit of the shields up now, Captain. How are we doing?"

"I made contact with the Enterprise. Decker's gone cuckoo and tried to engage the planet-killer. Spock's relieving him now; we're going to tow this ship as planned and get the hell out of here to regroup."

"Outstanding. I could use a drink."

The ship-to-ship cuts Scotty off again. "Captain," Uhura says urgently. "The Commodore eluded Security on the way to Sickbay and now a shuttle's gone missing."

"What?" Jim snaps. "Goddammit! Hail him!"

"Palmer just did, sir. We've got a line open. He's on a trajectory to collide with the planet-killer."

"Captain," Decker's voice cuts in, far too calm.

"Commodore, what are you doing with that shuttle?" Jim demands.

"I let them all down, Kirk. I tried to save them."

"Turn about right now and get back to the Enterprise!"

"I'm going to ram this shuttle right down its throat. Hope you won't miss it."

The feed is cut.

"Commodore!" Jim yells into the empty silence of Decker's dead ship.

"We lost him, Captain," Uhura says.

"Fuck!"

Spock's voice comes over the line again. "Captain, I regret to inform you that we can read no lifesigns from the Commodore. He has flown directly into the weapon's interior and self-destructed while inside. While no evident damage was done to the weapon, Lt. Sulu reports a decrease in its power emanations. A link is possible."

Jim leans back in his chair, staring at the viewscreen, and considers this. Scotty reappears on the bridge and wanders over to his chair, dirty and slightly singed-looking.

"Captain, transporters are operational. Shall we beam you and Mr. Scott back aboard?"

Jim shakes himself out of his thoughts. "No," he says, and ignores the indignant look Scotty gives him. "Spock, how big of a blast could we get from overloading the Constellation's impulse engines?"

"Ninety-seven-point-eight-three-five megatons," Spock answers.

"Oh no. Oh, no no no," Scotty says, horror dawning on his face.

Jim looks at Scotty calmly. "Would that do it?" he asks, addressing both of them.

Scotty gives him the finger.

Spock says, "Am I to infer that you plan to overload the engines in an effort to destroy the weapon? Its hull is impervious to phasers and photon torpedoes, Captain. I estimate only a 1.3% chance of this plan succeeding."

"I'm not going near its hull," Jim says. "I'm going to shove this ship right up its ass and then overload the engines."

"You are? How're you planning to survive this, then?" Scotty demands.

"You can beam me back before it explodes. We'll make a delay trigger."

"Captain, I cannot guarantee that even such an explosion at its presumed weakest point would be sufficient to disable the device. Additionally, the transporter is not yet fully operational. There is a chance of failure during such a small window."

"You're nearly as insane as Decker was!" Scotty insists.

Jim glares at him, and he shuts up, but still looks angry.

"We don't have a better plan," Jim says. "So this one is going to have to work. I trust you two to pull off your parts; you'll have to trust me to pull off mine."

He and Scotty have a silent battle of wills, which he wins.

"Fine. I'm taking apart tactical to make your delay trigger. Give me fifteen minutes."

"Continue evasive manoeuvres in the meantime, Enterprise, and get ready to beam Mr. Scott aboard."

While Scotty works on that, muttering under his breath the whole time, Jim coaxes the ship into a collision course with the planet-killer, going on half-impulse for the time being. The thing is still ignoring them in favour of the Enterprise but the computer estimates collision in thirty minutes.

"All right," Scotty says eventually, getting up and coming over to him with a device the size of a loaf of bread in his hands. He sets it down on the captain's chair and points at two wires, sticking up out of the rest. "It's hooked wirelessly into the controls down in the engine room. Splice these together to start it, and then you've got sixty seconds to get out."

"Fantastic," Jim says, and hails the Enterprise. "Mr. Scott is ready to beam out."

"Acknowledged, Captain." Uhura says. "Give us one minute's notice to beam you out, as well. Good luck, sir."

Scotty dematerializes with his arms crossed, glaring at Jim for all he's worth. Jim gives a jaunty wave and as soon as he's gone, heads back over to navigation to bring the ship up to full impulse.

"ETA ten minutes, Enterprise," he says.

"Sir, there's been a malfunction with the transporter. It died after beaming Scotty back," Uhura says. There's a pause. "Chekov has gone to help. He reports that they should have it back up in a couple of minutes."

"He'd better," Jim mutters, his eyes on the display in front of him. He counts down the minutes nervously.

With three minutes to go, the weapon's tractor beam seizes the Constellation again. The time to collision shrinks rapidly as Jim looks between the display and the delay trigger. "I have to turn it on," he says finally. "There's no time."

"Wait just a bit longer."

"I can't." Jim twists the wire ends together; a light on the trigger turns on and begins to blink. "One minute, Enterprise."

"Dammit, Captain," Uhura says.

Thirty seconds pass. The outline of the planet-killer swallows the viewscreen; he's less than 1000 kilometres away from it. "It would be really nice if you could beam me up now, Scotty," he says, fighting to keep his voice calm.

"Almost there," Uhura says.

"So am I."

With five seconds to go, he is surrounded by light.

"Jesus!" he says, the second his feet are on the transporter pad. "Good timing!"

Then everyone in the room is thrown sideways.

Alarms start going off; Jim hauls himself back to his feet and takes off for the nearest turbolift. The bridge is chaos when he gets there. This is not the successful end to a mission he was hoping for.

The planet-killer shows up clearly on the viewscreen in all its glory; the hull is a ring of dull, scorched metal surrounding an open mouth, glowing orange with the energy of the core. It's thousands of kilometres away and still fills most of the screen. Jim thinks of all the life lost to that core, sucked in and combusted for energy.

"Report!" he barks as he makes his way to the chair.

Spock gets up immediately. "The Constellation's engines detonated as planned, but the blast was not enough to destroy the weapon," he says, his voice calm as ever. "It has just engaged its tractor beam again and is likely about to fire upon us. We cannot sustain another direct hit from its energy pulses."

Jim can only stare blankly at nothing for a moment. It didn't work. A 97 megaton nuclear blast couldn't even disable this thing, let alone destroy it. What the hell is he supposed to do now?

He drops into his chair. "Chekov, all power to forward shields. Sulu, evasive manoeuvres," he commands. He flips the switch for Engineering on the arm of his chair. "Scotty."

"Aye."

"How much speed can you give us?"

"We've got full impulse but that's it, I think. I've only just made it back from the transporters. Did you get it?"

"No," Jim says shortly. "Let me know if you make any progress."

Spock is standing just behind his chair. "The weapon's ability to consume ships and stellar objects as fuel renders its energy nearly unlimited, even in the weakened state of its power emanations. Even at full impulse, we will make little progress against the tractor beam, and will have completely depleted our fuel within seventeen hours."

"Is there any way to escape the tractor beam with what we've got in less than seventeen hours?" Jim asks.

"There is not."

Jim calls Scotty again. "What have we got for incendiary devices?"

"Nothing sufficient, Captain."

Jim swears under his breath and taps a nail on the edge of the panel. "The warp cores," he says suddenly.

"Captain?" Spock says, looking alarmed.

"Scotty. There's no way of achieving warp right now, is there?"

"No, sir. Like I said, just impulse. The warp accelerators are fucked."

Jim takes a deep breath. "All right. We're going to get in a little closer to the thing and bring the ship about, and then you're going to eject the warp cores into the mouth of the weapon. Hopefully we can ride the blast out and even carry the speed for a while."

"Captain," Spock breaks in, "I must protest this plan."

"And provide us with a better one?" Jim asks tiredly.

Spock's lips thin into a line. "The warp accelerators can be repaired. Ejecting the cores will strand us here indefinitely. We are forty parsecs from Earth, three parsecs from the nearest inhabited star system, which is not Federation-affiliated, and far too close to the Neutral Zone."

Jim turns his chair a little to meet Spock's eyes. "What are we going to do, fix the accelerators in the next seventeen hours and run? Leave this thing to eat systems full of defenseless people? Spock, Decker was right about one thing. We have to stop this thing, at any cost. It's as weak as we can expect it to get right now, and Starfleet doesn't have the resources to come back out here and blow it to kingdom come before it has time to refuel itself. It's us or nothing. At least the crew of this ship can still have a shot at surviving if we're stuck out here on impulse until someone gets our distress call."

Spock stands a little straighter, but says nothing in response.

Jim twists his chair back toward the viewscreen. "Do it, Mr. Scott."

For a moment, he wonders if Scotty will even answer him. "Aye, Captain," he says finally.

"Eject the cores on my command," Jim says with far more confidence than he's feeling. "Sulu, bring us about. Cut the engines to one-quarter impulse on my mark... mark."

The ship is abruptly sucked toward the gaping mouth of the planet-killer; Jim watches the hole expand on the viewscreen until Sulu swings the ship around to face outward, toward the reaches of empty space where the planet-killer has yet to swallow the light of the stars. Alarms start going off on consoles all over the bridge.

"Do it now, Scotty!"

Even more alarms go off.

"Cores have been ejected, Captain," Scotty says tightly.

"Everybody brace yourselves!" Jim yells over the noise on the bridge, about one second before the cores meet the weapon behind them and the ship jerks like it's been smacked by a giant hand. It's unfortunately a familiar feeling; this is almost exactly how it felt when they had to eject the warp cores to escape the black hole, during the fight against the Narada.

"Direct hit!" Lt. Breen shouts from Tactical. "The planet-killer is destroyed!"

"We're moving almost at light speed, Captain!" Sulu yells, trying to keep the ship stable.

"Casualties reported in Decks 8 through 15—sorry, make that 8 through 20, Captain!" Uhura calls.

Scotty's voice comes over the comm again. "Impulse engines are nearly overloading! I think we've lost half the hull plating; there's fires all over the place!"

"Captain," Spock says from the Science console, "there was a breach in the hull in the secondary water storage chamber. The atmospheric shields were unable to activate and we have likely lost the entire contents of the chamber."

Jim takes a deep breath.

***

Bones is the last one into the conference room for the senior staff meeting; more than likely he was patching up burns until the last possible minute. Jim sits up straighter and fiddles with the handle of his coffee mug; he's on his fourth cup in the last three hours. Since the adrenaline crash, he's realized he hasn't slept in two days, with one thing and another. It'll be a while yet; he'll go talk Bones into giving him a stimulant later.

"All right," he says, looking around the table. "Uhura. You first."

"Intraship comms are still functional but our subspace transmitters have been fried. We lost two of our best techs in a fire on Deck 7 but we estimate recovery of subspace transmission abilities within the next two days, if we can get someone in a suit to go look at the external components." She hesitates. "We're still counting Gamma personnel but so far Comms reports three dead and thirty wounded, mostly burns."

Jim makes a note on his PADD. "Bones?"

"We started a triage centre in the shuttlebay for the less serious cases, but there are a lot of burn injuries, Jim. Two died in their beds within the last hour. I lost Nurse Lafleur in the fires."

Jim nods and makes another note, gripping his stylus tightly. "Scotty."

"Seventeen dead, forty-three seriously injured and one missing, Captain. We think she was checking the secondary water tank when the hull was breached. Aside from that, we've got fires all over the bloody place, mostly contained now. The impulse engines are stretched to their limits but the dilithium should last quite a while yet. We're working on reactivating the reflector shields and we've sealed off the area around the hull breach until we can get the atmospheric seals to work properly again."

Jim desperately takes a gulp of his coffee and winces; it's gone cold on him. "Spock, what have you got for me?"

Spock straightens a little and glances down at his PADD. "The secondary water storage contained 1.5 megalitres of water. This is a 30% loss of our water supplies. Provided there is reasonable conservation of the remaining stores and given the inevitable 2% loss due to inefficiency by the recyclers and usage by the crew, the water we still have should last for 11.7 months.

"The fires throughout the ship have caused further problems. I have a team working with Mr. Scott to determine the level of damage to the outer hull and findings should be available within the next ten hours. Meanwhile, the fires have destroyed 45% of the arboretum, short-circuited approximately a third of the CO2 scrubbers, and have likely damaged one third to one half of the carbon compound stores for the replicators."

Everyone stares at Spock for a long moment. Jim rubs at his eyes. Losing the arboretum and the scrubbers is not good for the air supply. Not good at all. "Can we fix the scrubbers?" he asks tiredly.

Spock inclines his head. "Some have been badly damaged by smoke and heat but I believe that we can restore 75% of our former capacity. However, current oxygen levels on the ship are below ideals due to the decompression incident and the fires; if we had not lost the secondary water storage I would recommend electrolysis to create oxygen molecules, but I have no recommendations in its absence."

Scotty pipes up. "There're some storage areas we could empty and seal off, pump the air from them into the rest of the ship."

Jim taps a staccato on the table with his stylus. "I want a report in the next two hours with recommendations on areas to seal off. And get botany working on the arboretum. Maybe we've got more plants in the labs or something that we can spread around. I'll try anything."

"Personnel are limited," Spock says. "Science currently reports twelve deceased and a further twenty confined to Sickbay or quarters with injuries."

Jim looks down at his PADD. Over a hundred people dead, incapacitated or missing so far, and that's not even counting Security, which he still has to hear from. "Well, we're stuck. Get everyone who can stand unaided to help with the most urgent projects, until we get the crisis contained a little more," Jim says. "And rationing starts now, as much as possible. We'll set up an actual schedule once we've got more precise numbers to work with. Right now, our top priorities are treating the injured, putting out any remaining fires, and the oxygen issue. Questions?"

Everyone is silent.

Jim hauls himself to his feet. "Dismissed."

***

They get five volunteers from Engineering and Comms to go outside the ship and look at the subspace antenna; Jim and Uhura confer (after he informs her that under no circumstances can she go, being his chief comms officer) and eventually choose Lt. Var from Comms for the job.

"This is just a reconnaissance expedition," Jim says as Var is zipped into the suit. "Right now, we only want you to look at the antenna and report back. There's a mic in your helmet with a feed to the bridge and you'll have a still camera, too."

Var nods as the helmet is lowered over her head and secured. She snaps off a quick salute, takes the camera, and carefully turns in the bulky EV suit to climb the ladder to the airlock. Uhura shuts it behind her and when the light beside the door turns green, enters her code to depressurize the lock. They watch through the porthole as Var attaches her safety tether inside the airlock and then hits the external door release to float out onto the outside surface of the ship.

Jim and Uhura jog back to the bridge, leaving two ensigns to guard the airlock. Jim settles into his chair, resting his head against the back of the seat. Spock stands to his right.

"How are you doing, Lieutenant?" Jim asks through the open comm link.

"Suit is operational, Captain. Making my way to the port side to assess the antenna."

"Keep us apprised. We're hanging on your every word." The sooner the subspace is fixed, the sooner they can call Starfleet for some parts and a tow home. The whole bridge is quiet, listening to Var's breathing through the comm link.

"I've reached the—oh, for fuck's sake!"

Jim sits up in his chair. Var sounds pissed, and for an Andorian woman to be swearing—in English, no less—means absolutely nothing good. "Lieutenant, what's going on?" he says, his voice strained.

"I... The antenna's gone! It's just gone! It was thirty-five metres high and now there's a one-and-a-half metre melted stump."

A pall settles over the bridge. Jim lets out a deep breath through his nose. "Get photos of what's left and come back, Lieutenant. Get a couple of the hull while you're out there, for Scotty."

"Aye, sir."

Jim pages Engineering. "Scotty. My ready room in ten minutes." He stands up. "Uhura and Spock, with me. Chekov, you have the conn."

Ten minutes later, they're hooking up Var's camera to the projector in the ready room and staring at the photos. Scotty barges in and stops dead in the doorway, staring at the image on the wall.

"That can't be the subspace antenna," he says, looking pale.

"That is what is left of it, Mr. Scott," Spock answers.

Var's description was accurate: about a metre and a half of melted, charred metal is all that's left of it. Charring and distortion of the hull plating around the antenna base indicate the massive heatwave that ripped across the ship from the detonation of the warp cores.

"What do we do with this?" Jim asks, gesturing helplessly at the picture.

Uhura cocks her head to the side. "That much will get us ship-to-ship transmission within a radius of about half a light-year."

"We can practically wave at them from that distance. Can we fix this?"

Scotty sits down heavily in a chair. "That antenna was duranium, and so's the hull plating that's bloody melted around it. I can't even fathom how it got so hot as to melt in the first place. You know what kind of temperatures that would require, even for something so thin as an antenna?"

Jim can imagine. "We need to call Starfleet. Can we jury-rig something? To boost our signal?"

"We are forty parsecs from Earth," Spock reminds him. "The antenna would need to be thirty metres high to transmit any kind of signal that far."

"We're only ten parsecs from Starbase 343," Jim counters. "We don't need to make it all the way to Earth."

"Very well. We will still require a ten-metre antenna and excellent signal strength."

Jim looks at Scotty and Uhura. "Can we do ten metres?"

They seem to have a conversation with only their eyes. Then Uhura turns back to Jim. "We'll get back to you on that."

"With good news, I hope," Jim says, unhooking the camera from the projector. He tosses it at Scotty. "More hull pictures on there, too, taken just for you."

"Thanks, Captain." Scotty turns the camera around in his hands.

Jim dismisses the meeting; he's the last one out of the ready room, and he nearly runs smack into Bones, who looks exhausted and pissed off.

"When's the last time you slept?" Bones demands.

Jim thinks, then lies. "Had a nap a couple hours ago."

Bones cocks an eyebrow. "You have two choices. You can come quietly to your quarters where I'll pour you a drink and tuck you in. Or we can do it the hard way."

"Bones, I don't have time to—" But Bones produces a hypospray from nowhere, brandishing it, and Jim puts up his hands defensively, taking a quick step back.

"I'll come quietly," he says. Medicated sleep lasts for hours, but he can get up and sneak out after a quick nap if Bones thinks he's cooperating.

"What would you like for your bedtime story?" Bones asks as they walk to the turbolift.

"How about, 'Captain Kirk and the Three Orion Girls'?" Jim asks as the turbolift doors close and then open again on Deck 5.

"You're a disgusting specimen of humanity, Jim."

"You wouldn't have me any other way." The banter is almost relaxing; Jim presses his thumb into the sensor to unlock his door and precedes Bones into his quarters, making a beeline for the desk drawer where he hides his whiskey. "Drink for you too? You don't look like you've slept any more than you think I haven't."

"I've got rounds and then a nap, once I've put you down," Bones says. "Okay, just a little one."

Jim grins and pours them each a measure, then flops down on his couch. Bones sits on the chair opposite. They sit in silence for a while, sipping their drinks and staring into space, but then Bones sets down his glass.

"How are you?"

"Peachy," Jim says. "A little owly, maybe, from all the coffee. Spock gave me his coffee water ration."

"What a saint," Bones retorts. "Now stop evading questions from your doctor and give me a real answer."

Jim freezes, and then fidgets a little, and then stares into his drink.

Bones waits, because Bones is a bastard.

"We've got no subspace," Jim says finally.

Bones slumps his shoulders and rubs a hand over his face.

"We're working on a fix. For that, and for everything else that's fucking wrong." Jim rubs at his forehead and downs the rest of his drink.

"We've lived through crises before," Bones says. "Our first time on this ship was a crisis of epic proportions. And that wasn't just because you were here."

Jim snorts humourlessly, and jiggles his leg, staring at his knee. "I keep thinking about Decker," he says finally, and then quickly takes a gulp of his drink that burns its way down his throat.

"Decker needed to be in a quiet room with no sharp corners," Bones retorts.

"He lost his entire crew while trying to protect them," Jim snaps back. "And he had experience."

The silence that follows rings through Jim's cabin.

Bones sits forward in his chair and speaks carefully, quietly. "That won't be you."

"I should be so lucky, Bones. We've already lost over a hundred people. And Decker went out bravely, at least."

"Decker committed suicide because he was crazy with grief and guilt."

Jim looks up at the ceiling and changes the subject. "You know why I joined Starfleet?"

"Pike dared you."

"That's not why. Pike got me thinking about it, but that's all he did." Jim still can't look at Bones, and he wishes they'd both had another half-bottle each before he started confessing this. "I was an adrenaline junkie. Okay, I still am. But I was worse back then. I didn't even have the excuse of protecting a crew and the Federation, then. And I thought, 'Hey. My dad went out in a blaze of glory. His name went down in history. Why not me?'" Jim rubs his hands over his eyes, and then lets his arms drop back to his sides.

"I wanted to live fast and die young and Starfleet seemed like a good way to do it. Now I know I was a fucking idiot and pulling a kamikaze suicide like Decker is the best I can hope for. More likely, I'll get captured and killed by some hostile species, or get discharged and die in some veterans' nursing home, or fuck, starve and choke stranded out here on this ship, surrounded by the crew I couldn't save."

He feels brave enough to look at Bones again. That was a mistake; Bones is giving him that look. The look he gave when Jim told him about the Corvette, or when he saw that x-ray of Jim's arm with all the ancient fracture lines in it.

Bones stands up abruptly. "Go to bed. Try to be less maudlin when you wake up."

"No promises," Jim says, stumbling to his bed and flopping down on it, still in uniform right down to the boots.

Bones drags Jim's desk chair over to sit beside the bed and picks up a PADD he can reach the library network on.

"What're you doing?" Jim mumbles, voice obscured by the pillow under his cheek.

"Making sure you sleep."

Jim can't summon the energy to be angry, and drifts off instead.

***

Jim regains consciousness with a dry mouth and a wet pillow. He rolls onto his back, grimacing, and wipes at his chin.

"Computer, time."

"1837."

"Fuck." He's been out for over three hours. Goddamn Bones and his mother hen tendencies. He levers himself upright, rubbing at his face. It's not clear if he feels better or worse, having slept a little.

His door whooshes open and Bones walks in. "Mornin', sunshine," he says. "I was just coming to check on you, make sure you weren't in a coma." He drops back into Jim's chair, spinning it slightly back and forth. "Just finished my rounds."

"Yeah?" Jim says.

"One more dead. Lt. McKenna from Ops."

Jim buries his face in the pillow at the news. He wants badly to go back to sleep, so he can wake up to find this is all just a dream. Instead, he swings his feet over the edge of the bed. "You shouldn't have let me sleep that long."

"Yeah, starship captains always work best when they haven't slept in two days." Bones produces a hypo and stabs him in the neck with it while he's still too drowsy to react.

"Goddammit, you asshole!" Jim snaps, jerking away too late and rubbing at his neck. "Who gave you a medical license?"

"Someone very wise," Bones replies, putting the hypo away. "That was a shot of the stimulants you've been hounding me for. Now that you've had some REM sleep, you can actually have them. Scotty and Uhura are looking for you. Make sure you eat something before you go back to work; you need to watch your blood sugar."

"Yeah, yeah." Jim gets off the bed and grabs a clean uniform on his way to the bathroom. The drugs are clearing his head already. "You better sleep, too," he says over his shoulder before he shuts the door.

He doesn't hear Bones' reply; he dumps the clean clothes on the counter and strips on his way to the shower. The sonics clear a little more of the fog out of his head (or maybe that's still the drugs) and he feels almost alive by the time he's dressed again for duty. Maybe he'll even be a good boy and swing by the officers' mess for a snack before he goes back to work.

Coincidentally, Scotty and Uhura are in the mess, heads bent over PADDs as they mutter at each other. Jim gets a sandwich and some water before he joins them. "I hear you're looking for me," he says as he sits down.

They look up in tandem. "Yes," Uhura says, shoving her PADD at him. "Here's our design."

He takes a monster bite of his food as he looks at the file. A duct tape job if he ever saw one, but as high-quality as they're going to get. "Timeline?"

"Should be eight hours to put the components together if I can assemble the team to do it," Scotty says, "and maybe one or two for installation. We'll have to put the stuff on a shuttle to get it outside, most likely."

"This'll boost us enough to call the starbase?"

"Fingers crossed," Uhura says.

"Right now, that's good enough for me. You're cleared to use whoever and whatever you need to do it. Excellent work, guys." Jim inhales the last bite of his sandwich and chugs the rest of his water before standing. "I'll be on the bridge."

Uhura peers up at him. "Captain... I hope you're taking care of yourself."

Jim grins disarmingly. "I've got Bones to do that for me. Anyway, I'll have lots of time to do things like eat and sleep once we're out of the woods. Keep me updated," he says as he leaves the mess.

The sandwich fights with his stomach as he walks down the hallway; maybe he ate too fast. He's rubbing absently at his stomach when the turbolift doors open. Spock raises an eyebrow at him from inside the lift.

"Jim."

"Spock," Jim acknowledges, walking into the lift. "Are we both going to the bridge?"

"It appears so. Dr. McCoy informed me that you were sleeping."

Jim scowls. "Had a nap. Under duress."

"Humans require at least six hours of uninterrupted sleep per day to function with efficiency. It is wise to ensure that these needs are met, especially in high-stress situations such as we currently find ourselves in."

Jim is pretty sure he's already got a mom, and she was never as militant about his health as his crew seems to be. "Is that so?" he says. "I'll keep that in mind."

"I have no doubt that you will, Jim," Spock says as the turbolift opens.

Jim shakes his head at Spock's back, but can't help smiling a little as they step out onto the bridge.

He's barely settled into the ass-groove of his chair before reports start coming at him.

"Impulse holding steady at 90%, Captain. Still on course for the Feloran system."

"Long-range scans are clear, Captain."

"Good," says Jim, as Yeoman Rand appears in front of him.

She holds out a PADD. "Ops tells me that all fires have been contained, Captain. Here are the reports on the damage."

Jim steels himself before accepting the PADD. "Thanks, Yeoman. Dismissed."

He skips as quickly as possible over the updated casualty tallies (he still can't deal with this) and gets to the damage summaries. The descriptions and accompanying photos don't add up to anything good; he rubs at his temple as he goes through them. The arboretum is half-gone; swaths of charred stumps and scorched soil cut through it. Botany is working on the rest and will have reports within the next few days. A grand total of 43% of the CO2 scrubbers have been damaged; half of those are beyond repair, either due to being lost in the fires or not having the right replacement parts onboard. Spock's estimate of 75% recovery was close, but high, from the looks of things. An entire wing of the crew quarters on Deck 7 was gutted, right down to the scorched support structure. The surviving residents from that area will have to be shuffled around; Jim forwards that to the quartermaster.

Finally, worst of all, oxygen levels in the entire ship are 3% below minimum safety guidelines; Spock's got a team crunching numbers and making graphs but the preliminary picture isn't a good one. Jim will have to save worrying about that until they've fixed the surviving CO2 scrubbers and Spock's given him the projection of exactly how quickly the 900-some people left aboard can expect to have trouble breathing.

Hopefully they'll be able to fix the subspace within the next day and he won't have to worry about any of this, because they'll be rescued by the Starfleet outpost at Starbase 343. Jim leans back in his chair and stares at the starscape on the viewscreen until someone from Medical rouses him with another casualty report.

***

It takes Uhura and Scotty's team seven hours to build the bits of their subspace antenna, and another hour to load it all into a shuttle along with an assembly crew. Jim would like to be hovering in the shuttlebay to supervise and wish the crew luck, but he has to be on the bridge for Alpha shift so he sends Spock and Uhura in his place.

"Shuttle's loaded, Captain," Uhura says over the comm. "We're clearing the bay for launch."

Jim sits up anxiously in his chair. "Thanks, Lieutenant. You and the Commander get back up to the bridge when they're clear."

Spock, Uhura and Scotty have just walked out of the turbolift when the shuttle radios the bridge. "This is the assembly team," says Lt. Var.

"We hear you, assembly team; keep us updated," says Jim. Spock comes over to stand silently beside his chair.

"Landing shuttle." There's a pause and some mechanical noises. "We've successfully landed on the hull of the ship, and we are now depressurizing the shuttle and releasing the rear hatch. Ensigns Walker and Huo are removing the antenna components."

"Be careful with those, now!" Scotty calls.

"Take it easy, Scotty," Jim says. "Carry on, Lieutenant. Let's get this over with."

The installation proceeds apace and they switch the assembly team's channel to Uhura's console; Scotty sits over there and answers occasional questions from the team as they work. He also gives them shit at intervals. Jim leaves him to it.

Jim looks up at Spock, who arches an eyebrow back.

"Think it'll work?" Jim asks.

"We will know for certain within ninety minutes."

"Spock, your refusal to give answers you're not a hundred percent sure of can get annoying sometimes."

"My apologies," Spock replies, inclining his head a little. "I will endeavour to engage more in wild speculation in future, if you believe that it will aid me in the execution of my duties."

Jim rolls his eyes. "Go to your station."

There's a minute quirk at the corner of Spock's mouth. "As you wish."

As soon as Spock leaves him to go back to the science station, Jim almost regrets dismissing him, because the shift is another three hours and he has only damage reports to read while he's stuck on the bridge; they get depressing. But they also have to be gotten through, so Jim sighs and picks up a PADD.

By the time the team finishes the antenna, Jim is desperate for some good news. He flips the switch on his chair comm again to talk to the team outside.

"Great work, everyone. Stand by while we do a preliminary test."

He looks over his shoulder at Uhura as he says this, and she gives him a nod of acknowledgement before turning back to her station to activate the subspace antenna. She spends several seconds frowning at her screen, entering commands briskly. Then she turns around to frown at Jim.

"Oh god," he says, "what is it?"

"I can't get the signal to work."

He feels hysteria bubble up in his chest and suppresses it ruthlessly. "Can we fix it?"

"Give me five minutes," she says, and turns back to her station. She opens a private channel with the assembly team and speaks intently as her fingers keep flying over the terminal. Scotty picks up the secondary earpiece again and jumps into the conversation.

Jim picks up his PADD again and reads the same sentence five times without recalling a word. Spock is turned in his seat, watching the Comms station.

Finally, Uhura leans back in her chair. "Okay," she says. "Attempting to transmit our distress call to the starbase." She taps a few more commands and stares at her screen for a moment. Then her shoulders slump, and it's all Jim can do not to throw his PADD across the bridge.

"It... the transmission failed," she says, turning her chair toward him again. Her face is open and helpless, caught in disbelief at her own failure, and he never wants to see that look on her face again. It doesn't belong there.

"You tried everything you could think of?" Jim asks, although the answer could never be anything except 'yes'.

"Everything," she says, her voice tinged with desperation. "The antenna isn't working correctly; our signal's not strong enough and not projecting far enough. Our range is probably falling at least three parsecs short." She pinches the bridge of her nose. "We'll have to start back at the drawing board."

"Fuck," Jim says. "All right. Call the team back. We'll regroup."

"Captain," Chekov says. "There is a strange reading appearing on the short-range sensors."

"Radiation?" Jim hazards.

"No, sir; definitely not. It is almost as large as a ship but extremely fuzzy, like a shadow. I only caught it by accident."

Spock pipes up. "It is not unprecedented for scanners to show false images. Feedback from other equipment, solar flares and scanner malfunctions are all logical explanations for such readings."

"Shuttle's lifted off from the hull, sir," Uhura cuts in.

"Yes, sir," Chekov says in his I'm-not-insubordinate-just-smarter-than-you tone. "But I do not believe that any of those things will sufficiently explain this image."

Sulu leans over and says something quiet which Chekov shakes his head at. "I am going to slightly recalibrate the scanner and see if that causes the image to vanish," he says.

"Go for it, Mr. Chekov," Jim says generously, heading off the geek showdown at the pass. Spock gives him a blank look but says nothing.

"I have adjusted the wavelength of the scanner," Chekov says after a minute. "The outline is still there. It is most strange."

Jim wavers for a moment, wondering whether to encourage his healthy sense of paranoia. "Still sounds like interference to me. Just make a note in your log," he says finally. "Carry on, Mr. Sulu."

"Aye, sir."

Chekov gives a sudden start, saying something rude and anatomically impossible in Russian. "Captain, that shadow was a Klingon—"

"Captain, I've just lost contact with the shuttle!" Uhura says.

Jim jumps to his feet. "What the fuck is going on? Chekov!"

Chekov's fingers are flying over his console. "It was a Klingon warbird, sir! It was cloaked!"

"Captain," calls Breen at Tactical, "the warbird has weapons trained on us. They just fired on the shuttle."

Jim closes his eyes slowly, painfully. "The shuttle's gone?"

"Aye, sir."

"Sulu, Chekov. Power to forward shields; turn the phaser arrays on them and fire at will."

The bridge shakes; Jim grabs the arms of his chair.

"Shields are at 65%, sir," Sulu calls.

"Evasive manoeuvres, Mr. Sulu. Keep firing."

The bridge is rocked again; an alarm goes off and is silenced.

"Shields down to 40%, Captain. We can't take much more of this firepower."

"And we can't escape," Jim finishes.

"Our phasers aren't making much of a dent, sir."

"Fire photon torpedoes."

"Captain," Chekov says urgently, "there are two more warbirds appearing on the outer ranges of the sensor."

They become visible on the main viewscreen as soon as Chekov says that. "Oh god, of course they brought friends." Jim jumps out of his chair to pace. "The torpedoes won't last. What else have we got?"

"There's the tachyon cannon," Scotty says.

"It won't be enough; it takes too long to recharge," Jim says. "We'd take out one, maybe, if they stood still, and that'd be it." They take another hit and Jim grabs the back of Breen's chair to stay upright. "Sorry, Ms. Breen," he says, and goes back to pacing.

"The cannon can be modified," says Spock.

"In the next two minutes?" Jim asks.

"Captain, we've just disabled the main weapon on one of the Klingon ships," Sulu says.

"Well, that's a good start." Jim stops in the middle of the bridge. "We need to take out three Klingon warbirds in one go, and we need to do it now. Who's got an idea? It doesn't have to be a good one; I will take any kind of idea."

There's a minute of silence.

"They're targeting the warp nacelles," Sulu reports.

"The deflector dish!" Chekov says loudly.

Jim spins on his heel to look at Chekov. "What about it, Mr. Chekov?"

Chekov would probably turn his chair around and flail if he wasn't busy firing on Klingons while talking.

"The deflector dish can be easily modified via the ship's computers to serve a secondary purpose. We can use it to invert and amplify the tachyon beam to fire on the Klingons. The resulting firepower should be explosive."

Jim runs that scenario through his head quickly. "Do it," he says. "Spock, do you know how to do what he's suggesting?"

"I believe so." Spock turns around and starts typing.

"Let us know when you're ready to fire the tachyon," Jim says. "We only have the charge to try this once, remember."

They're going to need split-second timing to drop the deflector shield and fire the tachyon without taking fire from the Klingons. Jim sits down and digs his fingers into the armrests of his chair as he watches the viewscreen, seeing the way the warbirds cluster together briefly.

"Mr. Chekov," Spock says, still typing, "is the tachyon prepared?"

"I will fire on your mark, Commander."

"Acknowledged." Spock types a final line of code. "Mark," he says, executing it.

The deflector shield drops as the dish moves. Chekov fires the tachyon and they watch as the red pulse is fired into the midst of the Klingons. Two ships are obliterated. One takes heavy damage from the beam but stays intact; unfortunately it's not the one they disabled the main cannons on. Jim watches in horror as the ship fires on the Enterprise, unprotected by her forward deflector shields, as weak as they are.

Jim is thrown back into his chair; everyone else on the bridge who can't grab a console in time is shaken onto the deck. Alarms start going off and Scotty tears off for the nearest Jeffries tube. Jim looks around. Spock has stayed in his seat and is typing again, trying to get the deflector dish back into place; Uhura is picking herself up off the floor; Chekov presses a button and fires a barrage of photon torpedoes at the last Klingon ship. He takes out its weapons; it immediately jumps to warp, leaving them behind.

"Report!" Jim yells. "How bad was that hit?"

Uhura has her earpiece shoved back in her ear. "They took out the base of one of the warp nacelles and blew out half of Deck 22," she says. "It took 1.4 seconds for the atmospheric shield to activate; the deck experienced explosive decompression from the hull breach."

Jim feels sick. "Find out how many crew were on that deck. Call Sickbay and tell them to prep for any survivors of the decompression. Spock, I want a full report of our losses."

"Affirmative," Spock says.

"You have the conn," Jim adds, before stalking to the turbolift. He's fairly sure he's about to throw up.

***

Captain's Personal Log, Stardate 2259.56

It's been almost two weeks since the Klingon attack and the only good development is that they haven't come back to finish us off yet. We haven't been able to fix the subspace and we're stuck flying on impulse engines, especially since they blew out the starboard nacelle. The shields are depleted. With nothing but impulse engines left, we're ten years away from the nearest inhabited system and thirty years from the nearest starbase. Our oxygen's been projected to last maybe a year and our remaining food and water only eight months, even with rationing. We're praying for eleventh-hour miracles, either a rescue from a passing Federation ship or a breakthrough on the subspace. Unfortunately, we've lost a lot of good engineers and we're stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say, crew morale sucks.

At first, I spent a lot of time obsessing over the choices I made that got us here, and whether I should have made different ones, in hindsight. Maybe I made the wrong play, sacrificing the warp cores to destroy the planet-killer. Maybe more of the crew would still be alive, and we'd be at the starbase for leave and repairs right now if I'd left the cores intact and we'd been able to fix the accelerators. Maybe I should have listened to Chekov sooner. I've thought about these things over and over, but I'm not sure what else I could have done. Does that mean I did the right thing, or am I just unimaginative?

Lately I've been thinking more about that other me, the one that old Spock knew. I still have some of old Spock's memories of that Jim Kirk, and the things they did. Now I wonder what he would have done in my position, and if he would have done it better, saved more people. I don't know what the difference is between him and me. Is it nature versus nurture? Was it just that he was a more experienced captain? Would he have been able to pull off these stunts without heavy losses?

Maybe I'm just lucky to be alive. Maybe that's the win in this scenario.

***

Jim stares blankly at his terminal screen for a moment before powering it down. Getting maudlin again, as Bones would say. He leans back in his chair and stretches, slowly, before hauling himself to his feet. It's 0230 ship's time, but he makes his way down the corridor to Bones' quarters anyway and presses the buzzer.

Bones answers quickly, because of course he was still awake. He and Jim stare at each other for a second and then he steps aside, allowing Jim entry. Jim aims for the couch as Bones aims for the liquor.

"Insomnia again, Jim?"

"I'm just a night owl, Bones; you know that."

"Not when you work at 0800."

"Things are quiet on the bridge these days." Jim takes the proffered drink and stares into the glass as Bones settles into the other side of the couch. "But I do like quiet better than red alert."

Bones sighs. "Jim, I know you have to maintain optimism in front of the crew, but it's not like optimism works on me anyway. You can relax."

"It's not a front. We'll fix this," says Jim. He takes a sip of his drink.

"Okay. Any good ideas recently?"

"The department heads are encouraging the whole crew to present anything they come up with. Christ, there's 912 people on this ship and most of them are geniuses; we should be able to find one good idea among them."

"Here's hoping," Bones says, raising his glass to the ceiling before drinking again. When he lowers the glass, he tips his head back against the couch. "We're up to two suicides this week," he says after a while. "Found the latest this morning, in her quarters. Lt. Huang, from Chemistry."

"Fuck."

Bones shakes his head. "It's getting bad, among the lower ranks. Chapel's stepped up to do some crisis counselling; she's a trained psychologist."

"What, really?" Jim missed that in her file.

"She uses her scary shrink powers to win arguments with me all the time. It's terrifying. But, Jim. What are we going to do about morale?"

Jim sighs. "We'll have to work a miracle." He knocks back the rest of his drink, but doesn't get up to leave. He and Bones sit in silence a while longer.

***

Jim gets kind of drunk after his bridge shift, alone in his quarters, and somehow decides it would be a good idea to lie sprawled out on the carpet, staring at the ceiling. He's tired and loopy and as maudlin as ever, and his brain is stuck on an endless cycle of self-blame and wild speculation. He keeps coming back to his alternate self, that older, more capable man who rarely seemed to lose his cool, and whose plans always seemed to work.

That guy had a different relationship with Spock, too.

Sometimes, Jim looks at Spock and remembers the images of old Spock's life that he saw during their mind-meld; they resonate in his head. A life-defining friendship. That's nearly an understatement; the snippets Jim saw of their life, of their time on the Enterprise, spoke of an epic partnership. They were everything to each other, it seems.

Jim and his Spock... well, they haven't had any more brawls. They get along. Jim suggests doing something slightly insane, Spock questions his sanity or offers an alternative, they maybe debate for a few minutes, and then Jim goes off and does whatever while Spock gives him the Eyebrow. It's civil, it's more or less professional, and Spock even uses his first name when they're not on duty, but Jim knows in his gut that it's definitely not what old Spock had with his Jim.

Maybe that's it. Maybe that's the missing link, the difference between Jim and that other Jim—the reason one sinks where the other swam. Well, then Jim has no idea what to do about it.

The door to his quarters opens. Jim lifts his head off of the carpet and squints, and of course, it's Spock. He flops his head back down as Spock enters his cabin.

"How'd you get in?"

"I have been attempting to comm you but you have not answered. I was concerned that something might be amiss, so I overrode your door's security. May I enquire as to what it is you are doing on the floor?"

"Thinking."

"You have been drinking."

Spock can probably smell the alcohol. "Yeah. I was earlier," Jim says, realizing vaguely that he's sobered up a lot already. How long has he been lying here?

There's a pause, and then amazingly Spock is walking over to Jim, stepping carefully around his splayed limbs, and sitting down cross-legged on the floor, not far from Jim's head. "Are you thinking about our predicament?"

"I guess. A little. I do try not to dwell on it a lot, especially when I'm drunk. It's surprisingly counter-productive."

"You do not believe that a solution is forthcoming?"

Jim glares upwards. "There's always a solution, somewhere. We just haven't found it yet. We have to be patient."

"This is the same motivational lecture which you have been administering in various contexts for the past fifteen days."

"Oh, shut up. What do you want me to do, cry about it?"

"Certainly not," Spock says. "That would likely be less productive than lying inebriated on the floor of your cabin."

"Don't knock it till you've tried it," Jim says. "I have a comfy floor. One of the perks of being the captain."

"I am sitting upon the same floor and the evidence I have gathered so far does not support your claim. Captain."

Jim laughs, and then immediately feels guilty for doing it. He blinks up at the ceiling again and then rolls his head to look at Spock. "Did you break into my cabin to tell me something?" he asks.

"It is not important right now," Spock says. He stands up and offers Jim a hand up from the floor.

"Okay," Jim says. "Thanks." He's not sure if he's thanking Spock for helping him up or breaking into his cabin like a crazy person, or what.

"I will see you on the bridge in the morning, Jim," Spock says, and leaves.

Jim stares at the door for a minute and then goes to his desk. He feels just about sober again and refreshed enough to think.

***

Jim jerks awake at 0600 to the sound of his alarm going off. He rolls back a few inches, hits his chin on his desk and realizes he fell asleep in his chair.

"Computer, alarm off," he groans, and it stops beeping at him. He sits up straight, stretches out his back, and then looks down at his desk. He was sleeping with his cheek pressed against a piece of teslin with pencil scribbles all over it; his PADD is pushed toward the back of the desk surface, full of doodled schematics. His terminal screen is showing files from the ship's library on old subspace antenna designs from the NX era of starships. He spends ten minutes figuring out what the hell he was working on and then forwards the good parts to Scotty before going to take a shower.

He's dressed again and pulling on his boots when his terminal beeps; there's a long, rambling message from Scotty with a lot of equations in it, which is reassuring. It's only a vague stab at an answer and it needs a lot of work done before they can feel optimistic, but it's something. And he did it, too.

"Take that, universe," he says, and walks out into the corridor to begin another day of looking like he has his shit together.

***

Spock is at his station when Jim walks onto the bridge; Jim stops in his tracks as he remembers the night before. It's kind of surreal, when he thinks about it: he was thinking about how he practically had no relationship at all with Spock, and then Spock walked in as if on command. Broke into his cabin, actually. To make sure he was okay. And then sat on the floor with him and made him laugh and then left like it was no big deal and he did it all the time.

Maybe their relationship is better than Jim thought, and he hasn't been paying attention.

"Good morning, Captain," Uhura says from his right.

Jim jumps, returns the greeting, and goes to his chair.

Every spare moment's thought for the rest of Alpha shift is on the subject of Spock, sitting at his station or giving occasional reports or making short trips to the labs for meetings. Jim thinks about how he's been brooding over the differences between them and their counterparts; about how he's noticed Spock's eyes will narrow a little when a human would be smiling, and how he raises his eyebrow when he's amused by something.

After dinner, Jim goes back to his cabin and paces for ten minutes before saying, "Well, what the hell," to a blank wall and going to knock on Spock's door.

It opens promptly; Spock is dressed down to his blacks and raises an eyebrow at him. "Good evening."

"Can I come in?" Jim says impatiently, and walks right in when Spock gives him room. There's a cup of tea on the desk; Jim can faintly smell the spice in it from where he's standing. Spock was reading something on his terminal.

"Can I help you with something?" Spock asks. Anyone else would be sarcastic when they said that, but Jim smiles, because this is Spock's version of, 'What's up?'

Jim looks around the room and then lets Spock lead him over to the couch. As soon as he drops onto the cushion, it's like some switch flips in his brain and he's actually going to do this.

"I had a mind-meld with the older you," he blurts out, looking down at his hands in his lap.

"You shared this information with me several months ago, when you learned that I knew of his existence in this universe," Spock answers, prompting him to get to the good part.

"I didn't tell you that he shared more with me than just the info about Nero and the supernova."

Spock is silent; Jim almost wants to see his face, but not so much that he feels brave enough to look.

"Other stuff got through, I guess by accident. He was in a hurry and just sort of, I don't know, shoved everything in." Jim licks his lips before continuing. "He served on another Enterprise, right? With another me. I have a bunch of his memories of that, now."

"Interesting." Spock is the king of understatement.

"Those versions of you and me had a really close friendship. Just this... truly epic partnership, you know? And he was surprised that you and I didn't have the same thing going on. He thought we could do that."

"He shared something similar with me, though only through words. Are you concerned by the fact that you and I have not achieved such closeness?"

Jim leans back into Spock's couch and stares at a sculpture on the coffee table. "The thought may have crossed my mind," he admits.

"We have only known each other for a year. They served together for more than one five-year mission."

Still totally not the same thing, but Jim can't express that in words that will make sense to Spock, so he doesn't even try. Instead, he says, "I still wonder if that's the missing piece in this whole equation."

"Jim," Spock says tersely, "look at me."

Jim really, really doesn't want to, especially now that he's being told, but he cooperates anyway. Spock is looking back at him intently. He looks serious most of the time, but this expression is so grave that it makes his regular face seem lighthearted.

Spock opens his mouth, looks thoughtful, and shuts it again, searching for something in Jim's face before he actually speaks.

"Jim. There is no missing piece. What happens in one timeline does not have any bearing on what may occur in another. I am not exactly the same Spock as my counterpart and you therefore cannot be exactly the same Jim as yours. Your upbringing was affected by Nero's incursion to our universe and so you are likely to always make different choices based upon that. You are not bound by what came before us, nor am I. Failing to remember this can only cause problems."

"How did I get to be captain of the Enterprise in both timelines if there's not some similarity between us?" Jim demands. "How did you get to be my first officer, out of all the ships in the fleet? Half the crew's the same! It has to mean something!" He sits upright, feeling a bit of a blood rush in his head but ignoring it. "They got themselves out of situations like this more than once, by some miracle or other. Why not us? What did they have going for them that we clearly don't?"

Spock opens his mouth, shuts it again, and studies Jim for a minute; Jim tries not to squirm under his gaze. Finally, he says, "I am sure it cannot be so simple."

"Well, what if it is?" Jim shoots back. "Do you know for sure?"

"Of course not."

"Well, then," Jim says, although frankly he's not sure anymore what he's getting at. The back of his neck is prickling and he's having trouble sitting still.

Spock isn't letting the issue drop, though. "How are we to test this hypothesis, if one can even designate it as such? We cannot suddenly decide we are the best of friends."

Jim looks at Spock and a thought crystallizes in his mind. "I have an idea," he says slowly.

Spock tilts his head questioningly.

Jim shifts over on the couch until they're side by side, and when they make eye contact again, Spock blinks but then suddenly seems to get it. "Jim..." he starts, but Jim leans in very cautiously and kisses him, lightly.

When he backs off again, Spock's eyes are half-shut.

Jim grins, giddy with success. "You were saying?" he asks, and leans in again.

Spock kisses back this time.

***

The bed is hot when Jim wakes, or the other person in it is. He opens his eyes. There's a pointy ear right in front of him; he blinks. And then he pushes himself away.

They're in Spock's bed. Spock is still asleep, the blankets pulled up to his chin. He's rolled over enough to steal most of them, in fact. He makes an incoherent noise and rolls over some more now that Jim's not pressed up against his side.

Jim doesn't know if he was expecting to wake up with a new lease on life or something; maybe that he'd sit bolt upright in the bed with the solution to the subspace problem trumpeting through his brain. The only thing trumpeting through his brain this morning is the fact that he fucked his second-in-command last night because someone who looked like him in another universe might have done it, and what was he thinking?

Come to think of it, what was Spock thinking, going along with it? What was his motivation? Desperation? Space madness? Taking advantage? Trying to comfort Jim? Do Vulcans do comfort sex, meaningless or otherwise? Jim feels a week-old tension headache start to creep up on him, and squeezes his eyes shut. Then Spock shifts and sighs and Jim opens his eyes again.

"Jim," Spock says sleepily. Jim feels weird that he gets to hear Spock talking like that.

When Jim doesn't respond, Spock orders the lights to 30% and sits up in the bed. "Jim," he says again, and his voice is normal, calm, controlled.

Jim finally feels like he can turn around. His eyes catch immediately on the sight of Spock's bare chest above the sheets. He's leaning forward a little with his arms hooked around his knees, so normal and relaxed. Jim's brain has a little disassociation fit and he quickly looks up at Spock's face.

"I'm sorry I talked you into having sex with me," he says in a rush. "Well, sort of talked you into it. I guess there wasn't much talking. Just tongue. But anyway—"

Spock has his eyebrow raised as he talks over Jim. "You did not 'talk me into' anything, with or without unconventional usage of your tongue."

Jim feels his cheeks get hot, and the fact that he's blushing about having sex is so embarrassing that he's pretty sure his whole face goes even redder. He looks down at the bedcovers. "I think this must fall pretty squarely into the category, 'seemed like a good idea at the time'."

"Possibly," Spock says.

"Why did I think sex would fix everything? Sex never fixes anything, that's the first rule," Jim mutters to himself.

But Spock hears it anyway, because he snorts softly. "Be that as it may, it has happened. It is nearly 0600; would you like to use my shower?"

Jim shakes his head and gets up to start looking for his pants. "I'll use mine," he says, grabbing them off of the back of the couch. "See you at breakfast?" he asks, trying to keep the hopeful note out of his voice.

Spock nods and gets out of bed to go into his bathroom.

Jim checks the corridor before setting forth on his walk of shame. Not one of his better ideas. He's going to thank his lucky stars that things aren't already weird with Spock about it, and hope that his luck holds at least in this.

***

Captain's Personal Log, Stardate 2259.97

Today marks two months to the day since the incident with the late Commodore Decker and the USS Constellation. There's a story in the old Christian Bible about a guy who had to build a boat to weather 40 days and nights of rain. I've had to weather 60 days and nights of constant shitstorming, and my boat's been broken the whole time.

Morale definitely hasn't improved overall, although Chapel's counselling seems to be doing some good with the worst cases and we've been able to identify and work with a lot of high-risk crewmembers. More than I'd like there to be, but given the circumstances, I guess I can't blame them. At least Scotty managed to rebuild the shields. The subspace project is still going as well, but I'm less confident about results on that front. Uhura and Scotty have spent most of their free hours working on it, I'm pretty sure, and I have to say that if the two of them can't brainstorm a solution, I'm skeptical that there is one within our means. We may have to think outside the box a little more, or refocus our resources on other projects instead.

On a more optimistic front, at least I'm still talking to Spock. We both have a lot more free hours lately, since Bones won't let either one of us work doubles anymore, so we've been hanging out. We started playing chess a couple times a week; I think he's surprised that I can kick his ass at it. So that's something. It's good to focus on the highlights; silver linings and stuff.

Spock asked me again today about no-win scenarios, and whether this counts as one. I told him he was being a downer and to shut up, which got me the Eyebrow. But then I thought about it a little, and no, this really isn't a no-win scenario. I mean, I could get Spock to calculate the insanely low probability of a Starfleet ship stumbling across us blindly at any random point in the Alpha Quadrant, but I find that irrelevant. There are other factors at play, here: we're the flagship, so they'll miss us, and they got our last subspace data transmission from the survey mission about a week before we made it out to this neck of the woods and ran into Commodore Decker. Odds are that someone will eventually come out this way to see what happened to us, and we haven't moved that far from where we started.

I've definitely learned something from this ordeal, though, and it's this: in the end, we're still almost 900-strong Starfleet-trained officers and crew, the best of the best. We're still here, the ship still moves, and we have life support for a while yet. There's time for something to happen. That's a win.

***

Jim logs off of his terminal and leans back in his chair to stretch. He gets to his feet smoothly and kicks off his boots as he starts to make his way over to the bed. It's been another long day in an endless series of them, but he had a nice game of chess with Spock this evening that helped him wind down.

Just as he reaches down to turn back his covers, the comm beeps.

"Kirk here," he says, jogging back over to his desk.

Lt. Palmer looks back at him. "Captain, I apologize for interrupting your evening."

"Sure thing, Lieutenant. What's going on?"

"Sir, the long-range scanners are picking up another ship."

Jim is instantly awake and on edge; his nerves sing with it. "Friendly?"

"I think it might be Federation, but it's still too far away to tell."

"Get Uhura, wherever she is. Keep scanning the other ship. If you can determine that it's friendly, broadcast our distress beacon on all frequencies." Jim stands up, leaning toward the terminal. "I'll be on the bridge in five minutes. Kirk out."

He dives for his boots, trying to pull them on and make it to the door all at once. He decides as he stumbles into the hallway, still kicking his heel on over his foot, to see if Spock's in his cabin on his way to the turbolift.

THE END