Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

Prime Universe, Space, Stardate 6770.15

The Enterprise had had run-ins before with the multiverse and doubles. The Mirror universe, of course, but there had also been two versions of a man named Lazuaus—one sane and one not—who had nearly ripped space and time apart. Then there was the time that a transporter accident split Kirk into good and evil halves. Once, Kirk had been forced out of his body into that of a woman bent on taking the ship, and more than one person had tried to fool them into dropping their shields using Kirk’s voice or likeness. Hell, they’d been in a universe of backward-flowing time only a week before. But this, Lieutenant Commander Scott considered, waiting with his hands on the transporter controls, was the first time they had truly come face-to-face with themselves. 

And so far in this disquieting event, Scotty was the only one who had looked into his own eyes, although that was about to change. The closest he’d ever come before had been watching people flinch away from him in the Mirror Universe, thinking they were seeing the madman who was the Chief Engineer there. It had taken a while to shake those terrified looks from his heart, and talk himself into believing that he could never be that man.

This other lad, though, the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise-A, who looked like his sister—well. There were differences, of course. It was like looking at two dilithim crystals; always the same thing, but the surface covered in different facets turned in different directions. There were pieces he didn’t recognize at all. And then there were glints of his own might-have-beens. Missed opportunities, bullets dodged. Bullets taken.

Still, for all that the pattern of their lives was differently woven, somewhere deep inside the core of self they were fundamentally the same person. And, Scotty considered, this encounter might be harder to reconcile than the encounter with the Mirror, because standing there were his own strengths, his own weaknesses, his own failings. Worse, it was wrenching to look into your own eyes and see pain and despair. He could imagine well enough what had put it there.

It was all a question for priests and poets, not engineers.

Scotty set aside his troubled musings when Captain Kirk walked into the transporter room, with Spock at his side. “Energize, Mr. Scott,” Kirk murmured. Scott pulled the lever and the black-clad figures of the other Scott and Spock appeared. The two Spocks cooly studied one another for a moment as though there was nothing soul-altering about this.

“How can we help you, Commander Spock?” Kirk asked simply.

“We need to travel across dimensions into the past to assist Commodore Kirk,” the Vulcan answered, stepping down from the pad. “But our Enterprise is too damaged for such a trip.”

“But ours isn’t,” Kirk surmised with a nod, immediately acquiescing. “How do we accomplish this? The Enterprise has traveled through time before. However, shifting universes with intention and precision is not in our repertoire.” 

The other Scott spoke, and there was something strange and hesitant in his voice. “There is a substance we have been able tae manufacture that fractures spacetime. But I need a stable warp core tae do so.”

Kirk looked over at his Scott, who blew out a breath and then shrugged reluctantly. “So long as you’re not punching holes in my warp core, laddie,” he warned the other man, who laughed humorlessly.

In a near-repeat of what they done aboard the Enterprise-A, Kirk gestured and the other officers followed them through the corridors of the Enterprise to Engineering. People stepped aside in the halls to let the group pass, eying the alternate universe men curiously. Both Spocks were impassive, of course. The guest Scott reached out several times to trail his fingers along the bulkheads. He was feeling it too; for all their differences, the voice of the two ships was almost disquietingly similar.

“Show us what you need us to do,” Kirk said, waving them into main engineering. The group followed the Chief Engineer to his office, and the other Scott moved toward the computer.

The man’s hands hovered over the console, hesitating, something holding him back. “Mr. Spock …” he whispered, in some kind of agony. “We give them this, and we will close this causal loop. What came from here comes from us. I’m killing your people, their blood on us, on me. And apparently it always has been, as I’ve long feared.”

The Spock clad in black looked levelly at his officer. “The destruction of Vulcan is not the doing of anyone in this room,” he said firmly. The other Spock looked up sharply, his gaze deeply troubled, but the first officer of the Enterprise-A continued: “And if we must trade the lives of billions to save trillions … it is only logical. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

Scott leaned heavily on the console for a moment, not able to lift his head to meet the eyes of anyone in the room. Then he sighed and his hands moved, sketching a formula on the screen. “This is red matter, gentlemen,” Spock said evenly, gesturing at Scott’s formula. “It has the power to move us through time, space, and the multiverse. With your permission, Captain. We need half a cubic meter of it, held in a magnetic bottle. Mr. Spock, if you will assist me with the time and space calculations necessary to deploy it, the Commanders Scott can work on synthesizing it. We have little time; the Enterprise-A grows ever weaker.”

“Do it. If I can help, don’t hesitate,” Kirk said, and walked out of the office for the bridge

The Spock who didn’t yet know he would one day be Ambassador Spock and cross universes carrying the very substance they were making today, leaned over the equations with his counterpart. “Earth of the late 20th Century?” he asked. “And you are certain of the date? And certain that your Kirk is there?”

“Quite certain,” Spock answered. “It is a date of historical significance for the fate of my universe. And events of that date have shifted, since last I checked the historical record. The Commodore is there.”

“Come on, lad,” said the Chief of the Enterprise, poking his dejected counterpart in the side. “Needs must,” and they headed toward the core.

It was a strange thing, working beside yourself. Efficient, certainly, with instructions quietly murmured and immediately understood. But they couldn’t be mistaken for one another. Not hands, or face. Not accent, which slid through the tones of Scotland differently and spoke of a different road through childhood and beyond. Neither of them said it, but it all felt intensely familiar, like they had met before.

Scotty’s  engineers were hovering near, ready to help, but also bursting with curiosity. Wondering, perhaps, if they could glean anything about their chief from his double.

The two men stood, tense and quiet, monitoring as red matter was pulled into existence. “Its got the hair standin’ up on the back of my neck,” the chief of this ship finally admitted.

“It scares me. More than anything,” the other one said, then shook his head and looked away, because staring intently at it wasn’t actually necessary to its synthesis. The silence stretched out again, and the visiting chief glanced at his counterpart, who was glaring at the red matter, entirely square jawed. And if one of them might be a tad too taciturn, the other was a tad too garrulous, and his brain was itching besides.

“They say ‘ayuh’ in Scotland, in your universe?” he asked, and Scott blinked, and smiled very, very faintly.

”Did I say that?”

”Other ship.”

”Well, they don’t say it in Scotland, unless my brother from Maine happens to be there. It’s a long story. And I wasn’t going tae ask about the New Yorkin your voice.”

”Long story,” he echoed, and shifted the subject to more common ground. “Yeh have a bonnie Enterprise.”

Scott tilted his head up at his ship. “A graceful lady, for certain. A jealous heart, though. She’ll take as much as you’ll give her.”

The other engineer nodded. “You pace the deck at night, because sleep is hard. Listening tae her voice,” he said, closing his eyes, head cocked to hear something high. “Heartbeat,” he continued, and dropped his chin, like he was feeling sounds through the soles of his feet. “Yeh sometimes find yourself breathless, because you’re breathing in time with the warp core, and it’s not quite fast enough for a man.”

“Hm,” Scott grunted in agreement. “That’s an uncomfortable level of being known, lad.”

The other Scott thumped himself in the chest, above the Starfleet arrow on his black uniform. “We’re the same, all of us, straight down the middle.”

Scotty frowned, because he could hear the undercurrent of despair in the other man’s voice. One terrible version of them had apparently orchestrated the destruction of everything. And the trouble, of course, is that he could imagine it. He knew the places where he was weak. He feared himself, in anger. If he let go of the honor with which he had always lived his life—desperate or enraged or just past caring—aye. They had it in them. But—

“If we had the time, laddie, to compare life stories, I expect we’d be astonished where we overlapped, and baffled where we didn’t,” Scott said softly. “But at the end of it, I’d be proud of you.”

The other man leaned shakily on the console in front of him, then turned his head, and looked Scott square in the eye. It was the first time either one of them had done it. “And it would be my entire honor, sir, tae be you.” He glanced up at the red matter. “Job’s done, Chief. Let’s finish the rest of it.”

At that report, Spock asked Kirk to beam Nyota Uhura aboard. The request seemed a little unusual to the officers of the Enterprise, but was, of course, granted.

Kirk sent his own Uhura to greet her in the transporter room. Lieutenant Uhura took one look at her double, and pulled her into her arms for an enveloping hug. Lieutenant Commander Uhura laughed. “Thanks, I needed that,” she said ruefully.

“Oh, I know,” the Enterprise’s communication officer said with a twinkle in her eye.

“Good thing I’ve always liked myself,” Nyota said with a smile.

“What’s not to like?” Uhura agreed, and led the other woman to the bridge.

The three guests stood together, a little awkwardly without stations to attend, and Kirk hailed the Enterprise-A. The waiting face of Sulu appeared, sitting in the center chair.

“With your permission, Captain?” Spock asked politely.

“Of course,” Kirk said.

Spock stepped forward and faced the screen, his hands folded behind his back in the familiar Starfleet parade rest. “Lieutenant Commander Sulu, regardless of how long this takes us from our perspective, we will return here within ten minutes,” Spock said. “If we have not returned by minute eleven, you must assume that we have died or become trapped forever. Your orders are then to take the Enterprise back to our universe in Jupiter orbit at the time of the appearance of the Weapon, and destroy it by any means necessary.”

“Understood, sir,” Sulu said heavily. “Godspeed, and good luck.” The screen went dark and the Enterprise-A moved away to a hundred thousand kilometers.

“Mr. Sulu, Mr. Chekov,” Kirk said, addressing his own helmsman and navigator. “Are you clear on the necessary maneuvers?” The men murmured their acknowledgment. “Execute,” Kirk ordered. Torpedos, and singularities, red matter and black holes: the Enterprise leapt forward, crossing universes, space, and centuries. Then the multiverse twisted, and the Enterprise spun wildly into existence. “Report!” Kirk barked as the lights flickered and gravity re-stabilized.

“We’re okay,” his Chief Engineer answered in relief, checking his board.

“My instruments are reading the twentieth century,” Spock reported. “We are behind Earth’s moon. Presumably in the correct universe, as I am detecting a subtle variation between the cratering of that body and those which our historical maps say should be there.” 

They had expected to be alone behind the Moon, but alarmingly, they were not, and snapped to action as the silver lines of another ship abruptly appeared. “Red Alert!” Captain Kirk called sharply, and the amber lights blinked on as the alarm sounded. “Evasive, Mr. Sulu!”

“That is an Enterprise,” the black-clad Scott said, grimly certain from where he stood near the lift, a guest keeping out of the way of the bridge crew. A quick command from Spock’s science station brought the hull of the other ship into focus: ISS Enterprise, it said.

“Shit,” Uhura breathed, her voice pitched for her Spock and Scotty’s ears only, although the other version of herself shot her slightly chastising look.

Unexpectedly, the Terran Warship didn’t respond to their presence. No maneuvers, no weapons targeted. The ship wasn’t dead but …

“It is entirely unmanned,” the first officer said, and gestured at his station, inviting his counterpart to look and confirm.

“Indeed,” said the other Spock, raising an eyebrow in surprise. “No lifesigns at all.”

“Stand down to yellow alert,” Kirk ordered, and frowned. “As I think we’ve mentioned to you, we were once dragged into the Terran Universe. A transporter incident caused several of us to switch places with our mirror counterparts.” Kirk pointed at the screen. “And the ship we were sent to was not that one. The ship we were pulled to was identical to the one we are standing on …  I’ve never seen a ship that looks like that.”

“We have,” Scott said heavily. “Her twin was our first Enterprise, torn apart in an ambush.” The bridge crew frowned unhappily at that revelation.

“I’ve been on that Warship,” Uhura said, her voice cracking with despair, and then more softly to Scotty, who grimaced unhappily. “You too.”

“Is there more than one Mirror Universe?” Kirk asked, leaning back in his chair. “Does half the multiverse belong to the Terran Empire, and half to the Federation? One Mirror for us; a different one for you?”

“That seems possible,” said the black-clad Spock.

“What the hell is it doing here?” asked McCoy angrily, gesturing to the silent Warship.

“That’s a good question,” the Captain said, and turned to the guest Spock. “You asked us to come here. Did you expect this?” 

“I did not,” Spock admitted, and he looked over at his own crewmates, puzzled and concerned. “A Terran Warship here. The ISS Enterprise, on this day, of all days. Is there anything in your memory that this stirs, Nyota?”

Uhura shook her head, but frowned. “Not on this particular day. But Jim said that he remembered someone shouting his name that one Fourth of July, do you remember, which changed Edith’s original fate? Leonard saw some dark version of Kirk that scared the hell out of him. And Edith too, right before our first Christmas. We know he was here. But that was a decade ago.”

“I thought I saw him ‘98,” Scott admitted, arms folded across his chest. “Two years before this ‘now.’ A bit before …” he glanced over at his other self, and didn’t finish the sentence. “If you’ll recall, I wasnae doing particularly well, and I was half convinced I was just seein’ things, but there was this shadow skulking around the university, tailing me. I’ve got some missing days in my memory that I dismissed at the time as just being very unwell, but knowing what I know now, I think there is a possibility that he grabbed me for a while. After that I burned my notes on red matter, and started tae take steps tae ensure that that knowledge wasnae on Earth anymore.”

The Captain looked levelly at his guests. “Commanders, what are we talking about?”

Spock pressed his fingertips together. “Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy, Ms. Uhura, Mr. Scott, and I spent over a decade trapped in this time. Our own timeline had been disrupted by the Mirror Universe, and on several occasions it appears that J. Tiberius Kirk the Terrible was here personally, making further attempts to manipulate our history. Unfortunately, the death of a specific individual was required to repair our timeline. On this precise date, that occurred in what we believed had been an accident, and the timeline corrected. The presence of the Warship Enterprise, at this time and this place, is both baffling and disquieting.”

“Who had to die?” Kirk asked with a frown.

“The love of our Jim’s life. A very kind woman, barely remembered in history, named Edith Keeler,” Nyota said sadly. 

Kirk choked, and was on his feet. “Edith Keeler?” he asked urgently, and then collapsed bonelessly back into his chair as suddenly as he’d been on his feet, running his hand down his face to hide his eyes. McCoy reached out and gripped the Captain’s arm.

“It’s the late twentieth century, not the 1930s. It can’t be her,” McCoy murmured.

“The death of an extraordinary woman, required to save the future? Of course it’s her,” Kirk said in grief. He took a deep breath and shoved it away. “My past, my Edith, isn’t relevant here. We have the conjunction of a critical date in your history, the Guardian apparently sending your Commodore to this time, and our enemy’s personal presence in the form of an evil James Tiberius Kirk. This feels both momentous and  … orchestrated. What does it mean, ladies and gentlemen?”

“I’ll tell you one thing it means,” said the Chief Engineer of this ship, and he thumped the engineering console emphatically. “There is an empty ship, with no crew, sitting right there. A warp core for the taking,” he said, looking at the alternate version of himself. “To blow to hell down the gullet of a superweapon. Maybe yer crew and yer ship don’t have tae die after all, laddie.”

Scotty smiled slowly, hope kindling in his eyes. “Aye. We can steal her!” he said fiercely.

“She’ll be booby-trapped,” Uhura cautioned from the communications station.

“She’s the Enterprise,” Scotty said confidently. “I know that ship. Besides, if someone set traps, you know damn well that Montgomery Fucking Scott did it, and there are two of us here who know that man’s mind perfectly. And you’ve been aboard her, Nyota—you remember being aboard her.”

This ship’s Spock shook his head. “Her shields are up. Short of seriously damaging the ship—which is not advisable if you intend to take her into battle—we cannot get aboard her.”

Scotty gestured emphatically at the screen. “That ship is why we are here, I’m certain of it.”

Captain Kirk nodded, pursing his lips. “I don’t disagree. At the very least, it is an extraordinary opportunity. We have an empty Enterprise, running automated with her shields up. Brought here, presumably, by a Terran Kirk. And if I know James Tiberius Kirk—and I do—he has a way of getting back aboard his ship.” Kirk looked around at the assembled officers, then stood decisively. “We have to find him.”

Kelvin Universe, Earth, Stardate 2000.300

Of all the places the Guardian could have sent them, Commodore Kirk was not prepared to be standing in his 20th Century home in Virginia—the home he had shared with Edith. She wasn’t here, but he felt surrounded by her all the same. Her coats were in the closet, a book she’d been reading on the counter, her favorite coffee in the pantry. He knew that he could go upstairs and fall into their bed. But he wouldn’t; he couldn’t; he mustn’t. Today was the day that Edith had to die, or the Empire would overtake this universe.

Unless.

“Bones,” he said slowly. “What if we are here to save her? Maybe a universe where the Terran Empire exists is a better alternative to the death of trillions. Maybe that’s the test that the Guardian meant. The sacrifice. The universe that we know gone, but existing in a way that won’t bring the multiverse down around it.”

McCoy rubbed his nose and shrugged. “That doesn’t feel right to me, Jim. You say that, and it doesn’t feel settled in my soul. We can’t fixate on her. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we are here today, but maybe it isn’t just her. If it was just about installing the Terran Empire in our reality, would the Guardian have sent the others on missions too?”

Kirk felt his heart sink; McCoy was probably right.

“That said,” McCoy continued, “whatever we are here for is probably in proximity to her. Where is she, and earlier you, today?”

“Right now we’re at a bed and breakfast at Virginia Beach,” Kirk said. “Our favorite one. A two hour drive.”

“Where is everyone else?” McCoy asked, tapping his lips. “The crew? Scotty is … unavailable at the moment, obviously. I think I’m in Georgia today. Nyota and Spock?”

“Kenya,” Kirk said, shaking his head. “We’re on our own with whatever this is. Edith and I took my car, but hers is still here. Let me find the keys.”

He knew exactly where her keys were—in the drawer beside Edith’s side of the bed. He climbed the stairs, overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all. Then, their room; their bed. He trailed his fingers across the quilt and opened the drawer. He took the keys, then hesitated and pulled a necklace from the drawer. It was her most prized possession, her grandmother’s locket, with their wedding picture inside. He opened it, his fingers trembling, then pocketed it.

“Let’s go, Bones,” he said to McCoy, who was standing in the door looking at Kirk with concern. They walked wordlessly to the garage. Kirk’s hands hesitated in the wheel of the vehicle; it had been some time since he’d operated one, but the muscle memory kicked it. He started the car and backed it onto the street.

The two men barely spoke as 20th Century America passed by outside their windows. Kirk stopped half a block away from the quaint little bed and breakfast; it wouldn’t do for Edith to look out the window and see her car.

“Jim, you can’t talk to her,” McCoy said urgently, grabbing his arm before he opened the door. “Whatever else we are here to do, we have to protect the timeline. Jim, are you listening to me?!?”

Kirk wasn’t; his gaze was locked on something across the street. “Look, Bones,” he said softly. There, directly adjacent to the B&B, another Kirk was sitting in a little sports car.

“Earlier you?” McCoy asked, puzzled.

“No. Earlier me is in there,” Kirk gestured at the building, “making love to my wife for the last time. That is not me. That is Tiberius Kirk, the Terran Captain.”

“What the hell?” McCoy whispered.

“I don’t know,” Kirk said grimly. “But he’s why we’re here.”

The door to the bed and breakfast opened a moment later, and Kirk watched with a look of hungry, grief-struck longing that twisted McCoy’s heart in pity. A happy and oblivious Jim and Edith Kirk had just walked out, arm in arm.

Kirk closed his eyes in pain; it was taking everything he had not to run to her. When he opened them again, the Terran Kirk was staring directly at him, eyes narrowed. The earlier Jim and Edith were just pulling away for their last drive. The Terran grinned manically at Kirk, then gestured, a mocking ‘follow me’ before speeding after the couple. 

“Buckle up, Bones!” Kirk cried, and followed.

Ahead of them all, Jim and Edith were in no hurry, driving lazily along a scenic route. The Terran wasn’t pushing them, holding back a half mile. Last in the unintentional parade, Kirk’s heart was pounding, abruptly furious he sped up and clipped the Terran’s bumper. That Kirk resisted the slide, then hit his brakes, the two cars now engaged in a deadly chase. The Terran pulled aside Kirk, the cars grinding into one another.

The Terran rolled down his window. “I’m here to save her, Jim. Are you here to kill her?” he mocked, yelling over the rushing wind, then jerked his wheel. 

“Jim!” McCoy cried in panic as they spun out. Kirk white-knuckled the wheel, barely controlling the skid into the shoulder of the road. “We’re losing them!”

The Terran abruptly floored his gas, speeding ahead. He was on Jim and Edith’s bumper moments later, and jerked around to pass them. The Terran leaned into the horn of his car, and around the next corner, and the car that would have killed Edith Kirk swerved, the startled driver snapping awake just in time to avoid their deaths.

With sinking, horrifying certainty, Kirk knew what had to happen next.

When he’d chosen Edith’s life, those years ago, he had known he was choosing pain for Scott. But he hadn’t known what that pain would look like, until he watched it intensify, unrelenting, unstoppable. Scotty had absolved Kirk of his death; the man would never blame someone else for his decisions. But when Starfleet’s greatest engineer had put a scrap of paper in his pocket—a phone number beside the name ‘Capt. James T. Kirk’—and then shot himself in the head, his last rebuke had been abundantly clear: you chose my pain.

And when Kirk had chosen Edith‘s life all those years ago, he knew he was choosing agony for trillions. He’d had no conception of what that could look like. He did now; he had literally heard the screams of worlds and systems at the moment of their deaths.

He couldn’t choose that again. He would save them from becoming the Empire first, and then try to save them from annihilation, whatever the cost.

The needs of the many, Spock might say.

And so he pushed his car to its limit, whipping around Jim and Edith to smash violently into the back of the Terran. Behind them, unable to avoid their fates, Jim and Edith piled straight into them. All three cars flipped, tons of metal tumbling together before finally grinding to a halt, the wreckage smeared over a quarter mile.

Kirk and McCoy crawled out of their car, both of them bleeding and stunned. Kirk staggered, and then ran toward the other cars. J. Tiberius Kirk the Terrible was lying on the pavement, what was left of him—dead. Jim Kirk’s body was nowhere; whisked back to the future by the Guardian, as had always occurred. Kirk had believed, until this moment, that he would never have a day more awful than that one. But today—today was far, far worse; he’d murdered the love of his life for the survival of everything else. It was the logical decision, the required sacrifice. He would never forgive himself.

“Edith,” he cried brokenly, pulling her from the wreckage, and cradled her body in his lap. McCoy, breathless and limping, knelt on the ground beside them, slack-jawed and helpless.

“Jim,” Edith whispered, coughing, blood on her lips. “Oh, Jim. You’re hurt.”

“Shhhh,” he murmured, weeping, and traced her lovely face with the pads of his fingers. “Don’t try to speak, my love. Just rest. Rest. I’ll hold you, the pain will be gone soon.” She looked up at him, fading by the moment.

And then the familiar and unexpected sound of a transporter beam filled the air. McCoy jerked upright, pointing his phaser at the materializing figures, expecting Terran henchmen here to avenge Kirk.

“Spock?” McCoy asked, puzzled and vastly relieved as his great friend resolved, plus a number of other Starfleet officers he didn’t recognize.

Kirk didn’t look up at Spock. “We can’t do this,” he said brokenly. “Don’t tempt me with this. She has to die. They bury her on Earth. Beside her … husband, who is actually that damn mirror bastard.”

“No, Jim,” Spock said, coming to stand beside him. “All that is required is that she does not affect the twenty-first century. The timeline has changed. According to the historical records, they bury ‘Jim Kirk,’ but they never find Edith.”

“Spock …” Kirk whispered, barely able to believe it, and there were tears running down his face as he held Edith’s hand.

“Stop arguing and move out of my way,” McCoy shouted, and he smiled down at his dear Edith. “You are going to be just fine, darlin’,” he soothed.

“Bones?” Kirk asked urgently. 

“Seriously, Jim?” McCoy grumped. “I’ve spent this whole damn mission resurrecting people, and you’re fretting about a car crash?” Another doctor came up beside them with a medkit in his hand. McCoy glanced over at him, and then did a double take. “You have got to be kidding me,” he sighed.

“Hi there, Leonard,” said the other doctor. “Nice to finally meet you. Let’s get her back up to the Enterprise.”

Kirk reluctantly let her hand go, and stepped aside. “Who are our friends, Spock?” he asked, puzzled.

“Jim Kirk,” said someone in what seemed to be a type of Captain’s uniform, extending his hand.

“Yes?” the Commodore said, accepting the handshake, still puzzled.

“No,” the man said, a little mischievously. “I’m Jim Kirk.”

The Commodore stared at him. “No,” he whispered in wonder, his eyes pinging between Spock and the captain.

“The Guardian sent the Enterprise to Ambassador Spock’s universe,” Spock explained simply.

The Commodore locked his eyes on his counterpart’s face. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I can see that now.”

“Commodore, the Terran Warship Enterprise is in orbit around Luna,” Spock continued. “Shielded but empty, which provides a significant opportunity if we can commandeer that vessel. Tiberius Kirk must have had a way to return to his ship. I am going to examine his body.”

Spock withdrew, leaving the Kirks alone to study one another. “Edith Keeler,” said the other Kirk slowly, his eyes deep and sad. “I knew an Edith Keeler once.”

“Edith Kirk,” said the Commodore softly, and the Captain sighed.

“Who is Ambassador Spock?” the Captain asked at last.

“I think you already know the answer to that,” the Commodore answered, and the Captain nodded slowly, the muscles in his jaw clenching. “How much do you know about our mission?” the Commodore continued.

“The super weapon that is destroying the multiverse and your suicidal plan to destroy it? Quite a lot.”

Commodore Kirk watched as Spock straightened over the top of the Terran’s body, a device in his hand. “Today is a day of miracles,” he breathed. “I’m wondering if we might just have another.”

They beamed away just before the 20th Century authorities arrived at the terrible accident scene to discover the news of Edith Kirk’s apparent death, which would set the fate of the future. Once aboard the Enterprise, the Kirks immediately checked with the McCoys; Edith was already out of her brief surgery and doing well, although still unconscious. The Doctor of this ship ran his dermal regenerator over the Commodore and McCoy, muttering unhappily about using vehicles as projectiles.

“You’ll be sore but fine,” he said. “I can’t do anything for your torn shirt, though, Commodore. You’ll have to borrow one of Jim’s.”

“I haven’t worn gold since the Earth was destroyed,” Kirk admitted quietly.

“Well, we are going to save it today,” McCoy answered evenly, holding out the change of clothing. Kirk nodded and pulled the slightly strange Captain’s tunic over his head, then held Edith’s hand until he was paged back to the transporter room. He looked up at his Bones, who looked over at the other McCoy.

McCoy rocked up onto his toes, and smiled kindly. “Gentlemen, you have a mission to complete. I’ll watch over her. She’s in good hands.”

“Nice being able to be in two places at once,” Bones said, and followed the Commodore out of the room. They had to backtrack once, slightly lost, but a kid who simply had to be Chekov directed them the correct way to the transporter room.

“It’s a personal transporter,” Scotty was saying admiringly, poking at the tech they’d pulled off the Terran’s body.

“I hate tae give anyone in that universe credit, but that is clever,” the other Scotty said ruefully. 

“Can it get us aboard that Warship?” Commodore Kirk asked urgently.

“I think so,” the Chief of this ship shrugged. The two chief engineers fiddled with the thing for a few minutes, and were able to tie the Terran personal transporter into the Enterprise’s main transporter. “That will do it,” said Lieutenant Commander Scott in satisfaction. “It’s modulating perfectly with what must be a preset flicker in the shields. The next cycle though is in 90 seconds, and we’ll be able to slip through.” 

Eight of them—two Kirks, Spocks, and Scotts, plus one McCoy and one Uhura—took their places on the pad, and 90 seconds later materialized in a darkened transporter room of the hibernating ship. Even in the dark, the fierce Terran emblem was viable on the wall.

They flicked on their flashlights. “We must be cautious,” warned the Commander Spock in black before anyone could move, lifting his tricorder. “The ship is unmanned, but we must consider the high likelihood that it is riddled with defensive traps. Move carefully and slowly, scanning as you go.”

“I think...” started Captain Kirk, “...Commodore, if you agree ... most of us should work our way toward the bridge. The Misters Scott head to Engineering, to try to get power back on.”

“I do agree,” Commodore Kirk said, and the group gingerly stepped down from the transporter pad. The Scotts headed aft, toward Engineering, and the rest of the group went forward toward the Bridge.

Spock was right; there were traps everywhere. Trip wires to poisonous gas, explosive pressure plates, airlocks rigged to blow sections open to space. The Scottys reported a false floor panel just before main engineering that dropped directly into an open EPS conduit, and an antimatter bomb on the warp core that started a countdown the moment they walked into Engineering but that, fortunately, was disarmed by a simple numeric code—the Scotts’ birthday. They brought the power up just as the other six stepped onto the bridge.

The slide of the door onto the bridge triggered the final trap. A hologram of J. Tiberius Kirk flickered into existence in front of the viewscreen. He was sneering at them. “Whoever you are, you’re very clever to make it this far. But this is the Warship Enterprise, and you are not welcome here. I’m not going to kill you; I want you alive so I can execute you myself. But believe me, if you still have minds left by the time I get to you, you’ll be begging to die. It’s called a reality bomb. Enjoy your trip to hell!”

A device dropped from the ceiling and then rotated midair, red matter viable for a moment within its components. There was no time to escape; the reality bomb exploded in their faces, twisting multispacetime. Aboard the ISS Enterprise, the souls of the skeleton crew were smeared across all the realms of possibility—not just in two universes, but all of them, fracturing their consciousnesses across infinite might-have-beens of past, present, and future. It was far more than any human or Vulcan mind could bear, and utterly disabled them all. They were adrift, helpless in the waves of potentiality.

….

In one universe, Spock folded his hands in front of his body. “Thank you, ministers. I humbly accept your invitation to the Vulcan Science Academy,” he said, and his father almost looked pleased.

….

In another possible version of reality, Khan grabbed Scotty by the front of his tunic, nearly jerking him off his feet. “We dug you off that backwater iceball because we assumed you had some minimal mental capacity. Solve this” he spat at the engineer.

“You can tell Marcus to go fuck himself, ‘John,’” Scott growled, glaring balefully at the tyrant from the past.

Khan stepped right into the Engineer’s face, backing him against the wall. “I don’t care about your problems,” he oiled dangerously. “I don’t care about what you snort up your nose, or how drunk you have to be to sleep, or who fucks you over a trash bin in a dark alleyway.” He slammed his palm against the wall, and Scott flinched. “Figure this out, or I will break your neck. Do we understand one another?” 

….

The possibilities continued to flick by, ever faster.

“I don’t know, Dad,” Jim Kirk said, sitting on a rock. He drank some water, then hitched his pack onto his back; miles to go get before their next campsite. “I’m not sure Starfleet is the way I should go. It just doesn’t tug at my heart like it does yours.”

George Kirk put his hand in his son’s shoulder. “You’ll find your way, Jim, and I’ll be proud of anything you choose to do.”

….

“He’s a professor,” Nyota said as they walked across campus. “It’s really inappropriate.”

“It’s just dinner,” Gaila cajoled. Nyota rolled her eyes at her roommate. 

“And sex,” Nyota said.

“Presumably,” Gaila shrugged. “Come on! Commander Spock is gorgeous, in that stoic Vulcan way.”

“No!” Nyota cried. “Not talking about this anymore.”

….

He knew what had happened to him, even through the consuming pain. He could feel the life support system, heavy on—inside—his chest. He knew that Pike was sitting near him. He knew that he would never recover from what the delta radiation had done to him. He was a mind trapped in a body, forever.

”I’m so sorry, Spock,” Pike said brokenly, but Spock could not answer, beyond the desperate double-flashing of a light. 

….

The pilot of the cadet shuttle frog-marched him out of the head. “I told you people, I don't need a doctor, damn it. I am a doctor!” McCoy cried.

“You need to get back to your seat,” the pilot said firmly.

“I had one, in the bathroom with no windows.”

“You need to get back to your seat, now.”

“I suffer from aviofobia, that means fear of dying in something that flies,” McCoy complained. “One tiny crack in the hull and our blood boils in 13 seconds. A solar flare might crop up, cook us in our seats. And while you’re sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles, see if you're still so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding. Space is disease and danger, wrapped in darkness and silence.”

The pilot stuffed him into a seat, alone in a row. McCoy looked around at the withering gazes of the other cadets, and abruptly felt more alone than he had since his wife had packed up their daughter and walked out of his life.

….

”Baba, that shuttle you three were supposed to be on crashed,” Nyota said, walking into the room.

”My god!” her father said in shock. “Thank god for your mother’s intuition.” He shook his head. “Well. It didn’t happen. Miracles, big and small, turn the world. How were your classes at the university?”

”Wonderful,” she said with a smile, and put the close call behind her; she couldn’t imagine a world without her parents and brother.

”So, that puts the Starfleet talk to rest?” he father probed gently.

“Bibi will be disappointed. But yes,” she said, and gave him a hug. “The University of Nairobi is home.”

….

Spock was old. So very old; nearly everyone he’d ever cared about was dead. And now, in the wrong universe, in a past that wasn’t his, he looked up at the sky and watched as a world—his world—was consumed by the singularity. He thought the Kolinahr would have purged him of this pain. But the minds of billions of Vulcans cried out in death, and in this moment, he wished he could have had a lifetime of rich feeling to combat his despair.

….

“Uhura … USS Farragut.”  said the officer calling out emergency assignments to the cadets. Nyota’s heart sank, but there was nothing for it. For now, she had a job to do. I’ll fight for a posting on the Enterprise later, she promised herself. She didn’t know she’d be dead in an hour, and never get the chance.

….

He was fourteen, and his mother was dead, and he didn’t even know the name of this shitty station at the edge of the Empire. His sister had gone weeks ago, sold to a pimp for two days of drugs, snorted in one. He wondered if they’d fed her today.

He stole what was left of his mother’s drugs off her already-rotting body. He was shaking with the need for it, but it was probably a bad batch, so he’d have to be careful. Maybe cut it with something else.

Monty was fourteen years old, aching in hunger and withdrawal, and wondered where he’d survive the longest: the brothel or the shipyard.

….

“Mother!” Spock cried, just barely close enough to catch her hand as the cliff tumbled out from beneath her feet. They materialized on the Enterprise, side by side, and he fell into her arms.

….

“I’m sorry, Spock, did you say humpback whales?”

….

Scotty dug through the smoldering wreckage of his engine room, filled with smoke and groaning cadets.

“Peter!” he cried, pulling his nephew out from the pile of rubble. “Oh, god, laddie,” he groaned. His nephew, who had been so proud to be a Starfleet engineer, to serve aboard the Enterprise, and who had stood especially tall under Admiral Kirk’s inspection. The boy was dead. His sister would never forgive Scotty, but then, Scotty would never forgive himself.

….

Kirk was dying on the wrong side of the radiation shielding

….

Uhura was dying on the wrong side of the radiation shielding.

….

Scotty was dying on the wrong side of the radiation shielding.

….

Spock was dying on the wrong side of the radiation shielding.

“Sir, he’s dead already,” Scotty cried desperately, both McCoy and Scott holding Kirk back from opening the door and flooding the compartment with deadly radiation. Kirk looked into Scott’s face, and then McCoy’s.

“It’s too late, Jim,” McCoy whispered in grief. Kirk’s shoulders slumped in defeat, and he stumbled toward the shield.

“Spock!” he cried brokenly, fumbling for the comm.

Spock forced himself to his feet and straightened his uniform then staggered toward Kirk’s voice. Already blind from the radiation, he bumped into the shield.

“Ship … out of danger?” Spock croaked hoarsely.

“Yes,” Kirk said.

Spock nodded. “Don't grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many … outweigh …” he choked, unable to continue.

“...the needs of the few,” Kirk supplied.

“Or the one,” Spock managed, almost losing his feet. “I never took the Kobayashi Maru test … until now. What do you think of my solution?”

“Spock!” Kirk begged. Spock collapsed to his knees, and Kirk with him.

“I have been, and always shall be, your friend,” Spock gasped, and pressed his hand to the glass in the Vulcan salute. “Live long, and prosper.”

Kirk pressed his own hand against the glass, longing to touch him. Spock settled painfully to the ground, and then turned his face away so Jim would not see the moment of death in his face.

“No,” was all Jim could say.

….

“Visitor,” the guard said curtly, and dropped the force shield. Uhura sat up in surprise and a little dread, and held out her wrists for the handcuffs required when she was outside her cell. No one had visited since the former senior line officers of the Enterprise had been sentenced. Admiral Marcus, Kirk, and Spock would spend their lives here. Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu would be in prison for at least two decades—following an illegal order was nearly as bad as giving it. They were just lucky to be in a Federation facility and not in the Klingon dilithium mine at Rura Penthe.

In truth, the better punishment may have been for them to fight in the terrible war they had started, but others were paying that awful price.

Nyota stepped into the visitor’s lounge, and very nearly stepped straight back out. Sitting on the couch, in a grim black uniform and with Captain’s bars on his shoulders, was Montgomery Scott. He was wearing the awful new Starfleet Emblem on his chest; not the arrow of exploration, but the sword of war. 

One officer, just one, had defied Kirk. Scott had walked off the ship over magnetic variations in torpedoes and the unreasonable demands of a Captain bent on avenging Admiral George Kirk. Spock would always—and had—followed Kirk to hell. Nyota couldn’t help but wonder if history would have been different if the Enterprise’s intractable second officer had been aboard when Kirk had given the fateful order to fire at the Klingon homeworld.

Scotty stood up when she arrived, moving stiffly. When he turned toward her, her heart clenched to see that the right half of his face had recently been replaced from his brow to jaw, still raw and joined to his own flesh with metal implants. His eye was cybernetic and the wrong color, and his arm looked bionic. She wondered if the damage extended down his body. “Hello, lass,” he said gently, then raised his voice to address the guard. “You can take off the cuffs and leave us, lieutenant.”

“But sir …” the guard protested. “Aye, Captain,” he said nervously at Scott’s fierce scowl. He clicked off the handcuffs and stepped out of the room.

“You alright, Nyota?” Scott asked.

“I should be asking you,” she said, a little angrily, and gestured at his rebuilt body. “I didn’t know you had been hurt.”

“Aye,” he said, scratching at his new face. “We had rather … a large explosion on the bridge. The new bits are McCoy’s work, just before they pulled him off the Enterprise and back tae Starfleet Medical.”

“Did you lose anyone?” Uhura asked. “In the explosion?”

“Aye,” he said, jaw clenched. “I’ve lost rather a lot o’ people since becoming Captain of the Enterprise. Sometimes I dinnae even know their names yet, but when we go intae battle we lose people every time.” He shook his head at her stricken expression, and sat heavily. “I’m nae here tae try tae upset you, or tae throw blame on any of yeh. They’re slapping repairs on the Enterprise and I had a day or two. I just … wanted tae see yeh.”

She sat beside him and bumped his shoulder companionably. “In that case. Hi, Scotty,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’m sorry I wasnae at any of the hearings. I just couldnae,” he said softly. “By all rights, I shoulda been standing in the dock beside you.”

“You are the only one of us who did the right thing,” she protested.

“Because Kirk pissed me off. My pride got hurt and I left in a huff. I shoulda been on that ship.” Scotty rubbed his face again, the manufactured parts obviously bothering him. “The irony is … I’m about to do far worse than you,” he said softly. “All you did was lob some torpedoes at an uninhabited zone. But I’ve been playing with doomsday machines since I was a kid. Just for fun; just for the intellectual exercise, yeh understand?” he said a little desperately, and turned his body away from her, not wanting to see her face. “My orders are tae commit genocide tae save the Federation. How are those orders legal, and Kirk’s were nae legal?”

She reached out and soothed a hand down his back. And yes, she could feel the uneven line of bionics down his spine; the explosion had nearly ripped him apart, it seemed. “The Enterprise started the war. I guess it’s right that she should end it,” she said softly.

“Opening a singularity in the core of Q'onoS willnae end anything,” he sighed, and stood. “Do you ever wake up in the morning, and for just a moment you think you were in a universe where none of this happened? Where we are heroes and not villains?”

“Every morning,” she admitted, staring at her hands. “Every single one.” She looked up at him. “I forgive you, Scotty, if you will forgive me?”

“Neither one of us can offer that tae each other,” he said. He shook his head. “If there is a hell, we’re in it, and past absolution. Goodbye, Nyota,” he said, and walked away from her, leaving her to her well-deserved misery.

….

Vulcan rage, human despair, and bad luck in one wild punch had put a piece of bone through the other boy’s brain.

A six year old could not be convicted of a crime, but he could be ostracized forever, and he hid behind his mother, shaking in terror.

”I’m taking him back to Earth,” Amanda said icily. “Don’t follow us, Sarek.”

….

Edith lifted her hands placatingly. “Jim,” she begged shakily. He was holding a phaser, pointed directly at her chest. And although she didn’t know what a phaser was, or that it was set to kill, she certainly knew what a gun was.

“Edith,” he said brokenly. “I’m so, so sorry. You can’t live. The future requires … requires your death.”

“Jim, I thought you loved me.” She was weeping now, so afraid of his man whom she had loved, and who was suddenly completely insane. “Put the gun down. You’re sick, we can get you help.”

“I do love you. So very, very much. I love you. Edith, I love you!” Kirk cried, and pulled the trigger.

….

“Spock,” Kirk said softly, catching his sleeve before the Vulcan could leave the observation dome. “I will do whatever you need.”

Spock’s jaw was clenched, and he was sweating, his blue tunic damp. “Do not mistake this, Captain,” he said, humiliated and defeated. “It is nothing more or less than sex. I will be biologically compelled. It will be repeated. Uncontrolled. Uncontrollable.”

“If you’re trying to talk me out of it, that isn’t the way to do it,” Kirk teased gently, but Spock didn’t respond. Jim ducked to catch Spock’s downturned eyes. “Spock, this is only an offer, gently proposed. If you are not interested in me …”

“That is … not a problem,” Spock confessed hoarsely, and groaned, his face in his hands. “I know this is not offered in pity, but in kindness. I understand the logic in having a friend assist me through this time. And yet. Jim. I find that I wish you loved me.”

“Spock,” Kirk whispered, then repeated his own words back to him. “That is not a problem. This isn’t pity, or kindness, or logic. Let me show you, now, before the pon farr begins. Everything you wish, Spock,” Jim said, and finally took his hand.

“And what you wish,” Spock insisted urgently, looking down at their intertwined fingers.

“Yes,” Kirk laughed. “Fine, and what I wish. And then later, when biology has its demands, you may know it is still done for love. Logical, is it not?”

“That sounds very … logical,” Spock admitted.

“Completely,” Kirk agreed, then raised his voice. “Computer, lock the door. Command override Kirk-six-one-alpha-two. Cancel all other overrides.”

“Confirmed,” the computer acknowledged, and the lock switched shut on the observation dome; even McCoy and Scott couldn’t open it now.

“Spock,” Kirk whispered, and closed his eyes and brought their foreheads together. “Tell me yes. Tell me this is what you want, and I’ll give you the universe. Everything I am. If you will have me.”

“Yes, Jim,” Spock said in wonder. “ Yes.”

….

”No, he fell. Didnae yeh, Montgomery?” his father said to the police officer. “These kids, always running around. He’s all the time trespassing around in the junk yard. Troublemaker. Fell off a shuttle. What can yeh do?”

“You the one stealing converters?” the officer sighed, and gestured at his arm. “Well then, maybe yeh deserve that, aye?”

Monty glared at the ground, letting his broken arm stoke his rage. He imagined telling the truth, but then his father’s heavy hand was on his shoulder, the threat more than implied in that iron grip.

”Aye, sir,” he lied.

….

“Well,” McCoy said, tugging at his collar. “I suppose the only good thing is that we won’t have to wear these damn uniforms ever again.”

Chekov nodded sadly. “You’re thinking the dishonorable discharge.”

“We stole a starship, laddie,” Scotty snorted. “We’re going tae prison.”

“We did save the Earth,” Sulu protested.

“After the part where we stole a starship,” Scotty replied. 

“I wouldn’t do a thing different,” Uhura insisted firmly. “Mr. Spock is out there sitting in the observation seats. Alive. Spock. I’d do it again.”

“Aye,” Scotty said.

“In a heartbeat,” McCoy agreed, and the others nodded.

Kirk looked up. “My friends, I thank you,” he said softly. “If I don’t get a chance to say it, let me say it now. Serving with you has been the honor of my life.”

The door opened and a lieutenant walked in. “Admiral, Captain, Commanders. They are ready for you.”

“I guess we face the music,” Kirk said with a nod, and his crew followed him out the door.

….

Scott stiffened when she put the blade to his throat, its razor edge drawing a thin line of blood across his skin.

“Don’t go for your knife or I’ll cut your head off,” Uhura said conversationally from behind him, pressing a hand between his shoulder blades, and he lifted his chin as the blade dug a millimeter deeper into his neck. “I’ve just killed everyone else standing between me and the Captain’s chair.”

“I dinnae want the Captain’s chair,” he insisted immediately.

“And yet, you are the second officer.”

“An arrangement of convenience with Kirk. Who is dead now,” he pleaded.

“Very dead,” she agreed. She could feel his pulse racing beneath her blade and sweat on his back soaking through his shirt. “Tell me why I should let you live, Scott.”

“I’m a damn good engineer,” he answered swiftly

She let him turn around to face her, but didn’t shift the knife pressing just above his carotid artery. “You could be better,” she challenged. “You suppress your genius. You hold back. I can get a perfectly serviceable engineer—one that doesn’t come with problematic whispers from the crew about why I let Kirk’s second officer live.”

He laughed unhappily. “I had my back tae yeh. I didnae know that you’d already moved against the others; I hadnae heard yet, and either my allies hadnae heard either, or you’ve already turned ‘em. You had me dead. So you tell me: why am I still alive?” he challenged.

She lowered her knife and studied him. His blood was dripping onto his collar from the superficial cuts on his neck. “Because when you are at your best, you are nothing less than the finest engineer in the fleet,” she admitted at last. “Because I know you really don’t want the Captain’s chair. Because … I don’t know,” she shrugged, and lifted the knife again and pressed it above his heart. “I really should kill you. You are a serious problem for me. They’ll assume I gave you something to convince you to stand aside, that you have some kind of hold on me, or that you bribed me for your life. All of which is weakness.”

“Do what you have tae, Captain Uhura,” he said wearily. He rubbed his eyes, then turned toward the panel he’d been repairing, his back to her, although his hands were trembling.

She drew a feather-light line down the center of his spine with the tip of her knife, from the nape of his neck down. He shuddered violently at its touch. “Do you want to die, Scotty?” she whispered into his ear.

He took a shaky breath. “Sometimes,” he answered. “And other times I desperately want tae live.”

“What do you want now?” she asked him. She reached around him to the front of his throat, his congealing blood on her fingers, and squeezed experimentally. He swallowed hard.

“Doesnae matter,” he said hoarsely.

“You’re alive because I can’t bring myself to kill you,” she breathed into his neck. “I don’t know why.

He turned again to face her again, in her very arms this time, her knife between their bodies, and looked across into her eyes. He touched his bleeding neck, then reached out and smeared a line of his own blood down the center of her lips.

“I’m yours, you know,” he growled. “What you ask of me, I’ll do. Warp nine tae the edge of the universe? Done. Worlds destroyed? Which ones do yeh want crushed beneath your feet, Captain? You want me on my fucking knees when you spread your legs in the Captain’s chair? My pleasure, and yours.” He reached between them and grabbed her knife, the blade cutting into his palm. “You want my heart? I’ll cut it out and hand it tae you.”

“Why?” she challenged him, lifting her chin.

“I dinnae ken,” he spat angrily.

“You are mine,” she said, pleased, and ran the flat of her knife down his jaw. “I want all of that, Scotty. Except your heart. That I’ll take myself, in my own time.”

“Aye, Captain,” he said fiercely.

….

There was no way around the Prime Directive. And for all that Commander Spock begged Pike, in his way, the Captain had been immovable in the certainty of his decision, and Commander Kirk died in the volcano to save the species. Somehow, unexpectedly, Jim had sounded so at peace in his final moments. A Kirk, dying to save others, fulfilling his birthright and destiny. 

That didn’t make it easier on the people who had loved him. It sunk deeply into Pike, and there were whispers that he’d be taking the promotion he’d long been resisting. Whether Spock would take command of the Enterprise when Pike moved on was an open question. Nyota and Spock had taken their grief out on each other, sniping at one another in the halls when they weren’t having despairing and desperate sex that was entirely off-balance without Jim. They hadn’t found anything approaching stability until McCoy had barged in on them one day, half drunk and cursing, and kissed them both.

Not long after, Scotty walked in on the three of them while they were together in an engineering supply closet. “For God’s sake,” he’d muttered, turning away in exasperation.

A week later, Scotty presented Nyota with the clearance codes for the shuttle they’d confiscated from Harry Mudd, and a targeted electroplasma surge key that would drop the hanger shields.

“Come with us?” Nyota asked him hopefully.

“And leave the Enterprise?” he scoffed. “No way in hell.” He kissed her forehead. “Be well, Nyota.”

There were rumors that a second Klingon War was on the horizon; if it happened, he’d be in the middle of it, no question. She cupped his face in her hands, and he smiled at her. “Be safe, Scotty,” she told him gratefully, and knew in her heart she’d never see him again.

Two hours later, they stole the shuttle in a mad caper, headed for a new kind of life. She grinned fiercely at Spock and Leonard as they warped away, giddy with the possibilities. They all knew, of course, that after a very token resistance, Pike and the Enterprise had simply let them go. And at the first port outside of Federation space they painted the bow of their shuttle and home with its new name: the SS Jim Kirk.

….

He knew he wasn’t trying anymore. It was too much; he wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer. He wasn’t holding on, in fact—his friends were holding onto him, and he was trapped here until he could get them to let go.

Which is why Scotty’s answer had been no, for almost year. No, no drinks with McCoy. No Christmas at the Kirks. No camping at Yosemite. No check-in dinner with Spock and Nyota when they got home from Kenya. Certainly no nights at their apartment. He’d closed the door in their faces when they showed up anyway. No Spock, not close enough to touch him. Because Spock already suspected, but he didn’t know.

(Later that night, when he checked to see if they were gone, he thought he caught a glimpse of some dark version of Kirk skulking in the shadows. He’d checked the deadbolt, and burned every note he had on red matter.)

He was a little surprised they kept inviting him to anything. It made him angry. It also made him shaky with relief. He could be inconsistent if he wanted to be; that’s all he ever was, here in this godforsaken universe.

The latest invitation was to a fundraiser at the Kirks’ home. And Scotty couldn’t stand politicians, but Edith had called him and told him it would mean a lot to Jim if he came, even if just for a few minutes. He said no, and not just to drive them off. This week he really couldn’t get out of bed. Everything felt numb and distant, other than the clenching, maddeningly constant ache of his nonexistent hand, which refused to be anything but omnipresently agonizing. He was too sick to drag his arse from New York to Virginia, he told her, and it was true.

Then Nyota had called, and Leonard, and finally Spock, all of them so gently and solicitously concerned that it would have made him angry, if he was capable of something quite so exhausting as anger. Beyond longing for non-existence, all he could muster was self-loathing, and it wasn’t much, but it was just enough to get him up and on a train.

Because if they weren’t going to let him go, then he would have to pry them off.

There was a barber shop outside the station, and after ten minutes of indecision Scotty finally talked himself into a haircut and shave before checking into a soulless hotel and asking the front desk to call him a taxi. He was probably supposed to be in a tux, but there was no way he could tie a bow tie one-handed. Black slacks and a leather jacket would have to do; his professor uniform. He tied his arm tight to his side in a sling. The damn thing hurt too much, and drew too many pitying looks, to do otherwise.

He stood in front of the mirror and practiced what he thought were probably the right expressions to go with a party. He remembered enjoying these sorts of things, once. The taste of good scotch, of being able to move around a room and draw people to him with a funny story or a fierce debate. The feeling of friends nearby, in and out of the stories and jokes, grinning at each other. Of the interesting stranger, whose glance lingered a little too long to be accidental, the pleasure of an evening that ended sweetly with sex. He remembered feeling all of that, but couldn’t remember what any of it actually felt like. 

If he hadn’t already asked for a cab, he wouldn’t have made it to the party, but the front desk called to tell him it had arrived, and he crawled into the back seat with a sigh.

“Nice place,” the driver whistled some time later.

“Aye,” Scott said, shaking himself. He hadn’t realized they had arrived at Jim and Edith’s gorgeous house.

The event was already in full swing when he got there, but his friends noticed his arrival. Nyota and Edith kissed his cheeks, Kirk shook his hand, McCoy slapped his back. Spock simply inclined his head, god bless the Vulcan. 

The politicians noticed him too—the Kirks’ mad-scientist friend who was infamous for periodically blowing up the agreed-on rules of the universe, and causing fist-fights during physics conferences and scientific shouting matches on CNN. After twenty minutes, trapped by some giggling deputy secretary of transportation who had apparently audited his theoretical physics class and understood none of it, Scotty couldn’t take it anymore.

Edith found him in the garden, smoking a joint. “Scotty, that’s illegal in this century,” she chided gently. “There are a lot of journalists here. People from the Department of Justice. ‘Drug Fest at Candidate’s Fundraiser’ is not a headline I need.”

“I’ll put it out. It’s fine.” He looked up at the sky so he wouldn’t have to look into her eyes, and sighed. “You can see the stars here a little better, at least. New York City is jus’ impossible. Big Dipper, there, yeh see?” He pointed to the sky. “Follow the line north, tae Polaris. Couple stars over from that … the star of the planet Vulcan. Spock will be born there. The Klingon Empire is there,” he said, gesturing. “Romulus over there. Big nebula, just there. If it was darker you’d be able to see it. They’ll build a huge station just outside it. McCoy once called it a ‘snow globe in space.’ We had a spot of trouble in that nebula, lost a lot o’ good people. But on the other side there are these massive creatures who live inside of stars, can yeh imagine? Star whales.”

She looked up at the faint stars. “I’ve heard the five of you tell plenty of stories,” she said softly. “About your ship, and your shipmates. Drunken escapades in ports of call. And it is easy to hear those stories and think ‘Navy vets.’ I’ve known plenty of those. But that’s the first time any of you, even Jim, has pointed at the stars, and said ‘I’ve been there.’ You were astronauts,” she said in wonder.

“I’m glad I got tae see the stars,” he answered vaguely. He ran his hand over his eyes. “I’m keeping yeh from your guests. I’m sorry.”

She patted his back, letting her hand linger. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said gently, trying to catch his gaze. “Please stay?”

“You know I cannae,” he said, looking up at her at last, and she closed her eyes in pain.

”We will miss you,” she whispered. “So very, very much.” She glanced up at the stars, then once more at him, and turned away.

He watched her go, then put his hand back in his jacket pocket and closed it around the contents. Two joints to ease the pain, enough cocaine to get him through the party, and the means to end his life. Tonight, perhaps.

Vaguely, distantly, it was almost as if he could hear himself, back when he was happy aboard the Enterprise. For some reason, the voice was doubled in his ears. They should have found him pathetic and pitiable. Their acceptance and grace was unexpected. Fight for another hour, laddie. Just one more. And then in another hour, decide again.

Slightly lifted, he took his hand out of his pocket and headed back to the party, determined to summon a spark of his old cheer for the sake of his desperately worried friends. One last time for them, if not for himself.

….

Nyota looked up from the freezing floor as her captors came into the room. Time for pain again, it seemed, she sighed to herself.

“We know you are Starfleet,” the Klingon said without preamble, dragging her to her feet by her hair.

“I’m not,” she said with a disbelieving laugh, although she was struggling to keep her balance. “I really, really wish I could tell you otherwise. Maybe you’d stop breaking my ribs.”

What she really wanted, of course, was to see Spock, Kirk, and the security officers. They’d come to the Klingon homeworld for the criminal Harrison, but he’d slipped away when the Klingons had shot down their little non-regulation ship and taken them prisoner. She hadn’t seen her compatriots since then, although she suspected that she had heard their screams. And that they had heard hers. 

They were abandoned here. Starfleet wouldn’t—couldn’t—come for them, not without triggering a war. If Scott had been in the command seat on the Enterprise when they were taken, she knew he would have brought the ship across the neutral zone, and damn the consequences. But Scotty had resigned and walked away from the ship without even saying goodbye. Sulu had been the one in the command chair, and although his fury could match the Scotsman’s, it was colder. Sulu was less impulsive and more measured, and although it would have broken his mighty heart, she knew Hikaru had ordered the Enterprise away.

“ghaHvaD ja’chuqchugh je tlhobnISLu,” the interrogator said, amused.

“Shakespeare?” Nyota sighed. “Really?”

“You have not seen Shakespeare until you have heard it in the original Klingon,” her torturer insisted. “You protest too much,” the Klingon repeated. “If you truly were a simple merchant, you would have broken by now. You would have told us what we wanted, in the futile hope of sparing yourself more pain. Only a true Starfleet officer would continue to hold to the fiction that you are not a Starfleet officer. Particularly when the alternative is war.”

Uhura spread her hands wide, the movement pulling terribly on her injured body. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “I’m not a Starfleet officer. Torturing me will never change that answer.”

“No,” the interrogator said, almost rueful and admiring. “We had not expected such honor from humans, nor such will. But we are changing our tactics.” She gestured, and they dragged Spock into the room, his body mangled and broken, but still alive, and he lifted his head slightly to look at her through ruined and swollen eyes. Nyota desperately took back her wish, her stomach nearly emptying itself of bile in horror, because she knew what was about to happen. She did not want to see Spock. She absolutely did not.

This isn’t happening. It can’t be! 

The interrogator smiled benevolently. “We will not touch you again, Nyota. You may be assured of it. But How long will he scream, I wonder, before you change your answer?”

….

Kirk never did find Chekov, or the alien woman. They must have ejected too early and burned in the atmosphere, or too late and crashed into the ground. He wandered the planet that had killed his ship, carefully dodging the drones and the thugs. He found the saucer of the Enterprise without too much difficulty, hoping that there might be scanners still to find someone—anyone—but it was entirely unpowered. A few days later the deadly swarm ships left the planet again and never returned. He barely dared think what that might mean, and made his way over a period of weeks toward the tower they had come from.

The crew had been there. Hundreds of them, all dead; dessicated and sucked dry. He’d retched and screamed, and run away. And then returned.  It took him months to bury them all, to write their names on stone plaques. He knew he would never get the smell of their rotting corpses off of him. But then, he didn’t deserve to. He returned, sometimes, when he was especially lonely, and would talk most often to the graves of Nyota and Hikaru.

Kirk’s uniform fell to pieces, and he scavenged supplies when he could, but also stole them from other marauders when he had to. He and a fierce black-and-white woman had an uneasy truce, and mostly left one another alone.

Two years later he found a portion of the Enterprise’s secondary hull—main engineering. He knew better than to hope that anyone had survived, and no one had. He found some welcome supplies, but also seven more bodies to bury. Seven of his engineers who had been trapped aboard with no way off the ship. He could and did imagine what their final minutes had been like. Six of the seven he had no way of identifying, lieutenants or ensigns whose bodies were well past recognition, which Kirk buried under the name “Unknown Enterprise Engineer.” But the seventh was a lieutenant commander. There had only been two of those aboard the Enterprise, and only one an engineer. Kirk hadn’t wept in some time, but he did then, and left Scotty’s body on the ship, where he would want to be.

He once stumbled across the black-and-white woman’s corpse. He wondered what had happened to her, and went ahead and buried her too after taking everything of use off her broken body.

It took him ten years to find Spock and Bones, high in the mountains. It looked like they had survived initially, but then died together. Kirk had considered lying down and dying beside them. In fact, he did lie down, with that very intention. For days he’d stared at the sky, slowly starving. And then, in a dream, he’d heard their voices: 

Captain, this is not logical.

Dammit, Jim, get the hell off the ground!

He sighed, so very alone, and did as they asked. The next time he slept, he dreamed that none of it had ever happened, and he almost believed that it was possible.

….

Spock was old. So very old, and yet Jim Kirk was still beside him. Beyond hope, he’d survived death and the Nexus, a living miracle again. As usual, as always. And who else but Kirk would have boarded the Jellyfish with him to try to save Romulus? They’d done it. Of course they had; failure was not possible when Jim was with him. Not unexpectedly, however, it had cost them their lives—or it would soon now, as the life support in their little ship failed.

They rested together on the floor, strength gone as the oxygen decreased, Kirk’s head on Spock’s shoulder, and Spock’s heart bursting with both sadness and gratitude for this end.

“If we weren’t already about to be dead, Scotty would kill us for this,” Kirk murmured vaguely.

“Yes,” Spock agreed dryly. “He will undoubtedly be upset about losing the ship.”

Jim chuckled; that wasn’t what he meant, of course, and Spock damn well knew it. “We’re not here, you know,” he said.

“What?” Spock asked, puzzled, sitting up slightly.

“We’re not here,” Kirk murmured, drifting, and then frowned, his gaze focusing in confusion. “Why did I say that?”

“We’ve said that before,” Spock said, and his head was spinning. “On New Vulcan, in the dreamscape with Scott and Nyota, fighting our memory of Hades.”

“Our … what? Where? New Vulcan? Spock, nothing like that ever happened,” Kirk said woozily.

Spock sat up abruptly, and Kirk reached for him plaintively. “It did. Somewhere, somewhen, to a version of us. We are here, Jim, you and I, this is our end in our time.” Spock staggered to the controls of the ship and looked at his reflection, wavering and doubled in the glass. “But we are not alone. You are not here!” He cried out to two other versions Jim Kirk and Spock as they existed in another place. Spock collapsed to his knees, and then crawled back to Jim.

Kirk stared at Spock, both of them gasping now, and then something in his expression changed. “Spock!” he said urgently with his last breath, the minds of other Kirks catching the last fading flickers of this one. “You are not here! Fight this and escape, for the sake of this reality, and all the others!”

….

Suddenly dizzy, Scotty instinctively put down the kitchen knife he was holding, aware that he’d be chopping his fingers instead of onions if he kept on. He ached in all the places he usually ached, and yet the pain was so unexpected that it took his breath away.

I’m on Earth, he thought in shock, and he was. The light and the heat, the vista out the window … not San Francisco. Not New York. Not Scotland. Africa. Kenya. Of course Kenya. He’d lived here with Spock and Nyota for years; he didn’t know why he felt so surprised. He blinked, and Nyota was standing across the counter from him, trying to catch his gaze.

“Did you need something, Scotty?” she asked softly, touching his fingers, and he looked down at her hand, and then back up into her face. She didn’t look quite right; not quite like Nyota. He caught a glimpse of his own face, reflected back at him from the chrome fixtures of the kitchen, and his face didn’t look right either. Which was completely insane, but then, that wasn’t unusual. He suddenly felt like multiple people. And his unstable brain, damaged but capable of self-assessment, was very annoyed. Great. This is new.

He’d been an Engineer, once. A damn good one, especially at his height aboard the Enterprise after the Klingon War, five years under Pike and another five under Kirk. Midway through his last mission he’d cracked the mathematics that had plagued him since his youth— space was the thing that was moving! But shortly after those discoveries the Terran Empire had kidnapped him off of the Enterprise and tortured him for months, trying to steal the formulas locked in his mind. They hadn’t killed him, but they’d come close, and Spock … the mirror Spock had shredded his mind into confetti. By the time they got him back—his Kirk and Spock and Uhura, bent on rescue with phasers blazing—his physical and psychic injuries had been profound.

McCoy had grimly placed him straight into a stasis coma for the final months of the mission, the procedures Scott needed far too complex for a Starship. He had a distant impression of Nyota singing to him, and had no idea if it was before or after McCoy put him under. He had a red-tinged memory of waking in searing agony between many surgeries on Earth, and then a soft grey one of being on Vulcan, with Nyota and Spock and a half-dozen strong Vulcan telepaths trying to piece his shattered mind back together, with very limited success. 

The Vulcans had wanted them to stay indefinitely, appalled and horrified at what had been done by one of their own, even from another universe. It had taken Scotty a long time to find the way to tell them he wanted to go home; Nyota had finally been the one to break through his devastating aphasia. Unlike spoken words, the language of mathematics hadn’t left him; he’d written (x−a)^2 + (y−b)^2 = r^2, over and over—the formula for finding the center of a circle.

“Home,” she had finally interpreted one day, and he’d wept in relief. At home Nyota and Spock could hold him and stop the nightmares. At home he could have tea with his sister and nephew and granny. At home he could sit on the beach with Hikaru and Ben and Demora, or share a drink with Leonard, or listen to Pavel tell him an outrageous story. At home, Admiral Kirk could come by and talk at him for hours about the refit to the Enterprise. At home, he could just be broken, and although it grieved the people who loved him, they accepted it.

But none of that was right, he thought in confusion. That’s nae what happened, Scotty insisted to himself. They tortured and killed me, over and over, but used the transporter tae restore me. I’m fine. As if that was less horrific. Or, no. What the hell? None of that had happened either.  

Fantastic, he grumped at himself, I’m apparently three people who cannae decide on their life history.

“Scotty,” Nyota said again, achingly gentle, cupping his face in her hands. She was smoothing her thumbs over his temples, and he blinked at her, completely baffled. “Are you with me?”

I’m fine, he wanted to tell Nyota; what came out instead was: “I’m in th’ wrong universe.” Which was the most fluid thing he’d said in years.

No I’m not, shut up, he thought at himself.

Nyota gaped at him. “I don’t know what you’re trying to say, my dear,” she finally said.

“Exactly what I jus’ said,” he insisted, his voice incredibly rusty but apparently intent on proving he was completely mad with the longest sentence he’d spoken in ages. “We’re no’ supposed tae be here, Nyota.” Although he had no idea where they were supposed to be instead.

She stared at him, as though she almost felt it too.

He abandoned the onion he was supposed to be chopping and went hunting for a padd, the equations spilling off his fingers as he sat at the kitchen counter. Space is the thing that’s moving, he thought fondly.

“Scotty,” Nyota was calling urgently. “Scotty!!” His head was heavy with universes and superweapons and reality bombs. “Scotty!!!” Nyota shouted sharply, and he focused on her with difficulty. “What the hell is going on?”

I need your help for the sake of everything, he tried to say, but the words were gone again, and he looked across at her in despair. He was abruptly, profoundly weary, and starting to tremble. He’d done too much for one day, and his shattered body and mind couldn’t take it. I’m sorry, he thought, and wasn’t sure which one of himself was apologizing.

Nyota stepped into him and wrapped a firm arm around his waist to keep him upright, then put her other hand on the head of a little boy. “Selek, go get your father,” Nyota murmured, and the boy dashed from the room. Nyota and Spock’s son, he deduced—or possibly remembered—unsurprised by the swell of love that accompanied the thought. The boy was back a moment later, and pressed his head against Scotty’s leg.

“Nyota!” Spock called, striding into the room, pausing to take in the scene. “What has happened?” His face didn’t look quite right either. Alternate universe, Scotty told himself vaguely.

“He spoke,” Nyota answered softly. “A complete sentence. He said he was in the wrong universe, started writing equations, and now he’s disoriented and shaking. I don’t know, Spock.”

Spock took the padd that was still in Scotty’s hand. Scotty frowned down at his empty fingers, then spasmodically clenched and unclenched his fist. Young Selek put his fingers over Scott’s hand, stilling him. The lad was just a toddler still, but so, so like both of his parents.

“This is red matter,” Spock said as he looked over the equations, his voice as shocked as it ever got. “The multiverse equations.” He gazed at Scotty, and there was something fractured in his expression. “I did not know you still had this in your mind,” he said quietly.

Scotty shrugged, the slightest movement of his  shoulders. Of course it’s still there, he wanted to say. The multiverse was at stake. He had no idea how he knew; he just knew. “Multiverse,” he managed, then pounded the table in frustration. But the movement knocked him out of Nyota’s supporting grip, and he would have hit the floor hard if Spock hadn’t caught him.

“There is no need to spend your strength on this,” Spock said sadly, and brushed against his shattered mind with fingers to his head. “Sleep.”

He woke later in his bed, sometime in the evening after sunset, with the feel of Selek against his chest. Since the baby had learned to walk, he often curled up beside Scotty to sleep, a habit no one was inclined to discourage. There were voices coming from the kitchen, and it took Scotty a moment to place them. Kirk and McCoy. Scott sat up carefully so as not to disturb the sleeping tot. He grimaced; his body ached terribly. 

“We can rule out a stroke or aneurysm,” Leonard was saying. “I would normally think speaking was a good sign, but it’s nonsensical. I’m afraid it’s more likely that he’s backsliding into a confusional or minimally conscious state again. We need to get him to Starfleet Medical, but depending on what’s happening, I can’t promise you he’ll ever come home. These things just don’t take straight lines. Between what those bastards did to him, the brain injury and the psychic damage layered on top of the issues he’s always had, we’ve been lucky to have any of him at all.”

“We knew, from the moment we brought him back from the mirror universe, that we weren’t getting Scotty back, not the way he was,” Jim sighed. “The brilliant Starship Engineer is gone, but he’s seemed stable and at least reasonably content these last years.”

“Until today I would have agreed with you,” Spock answered. “But unexpectedly, the Starship Engineer is still within him. He wrote a page of complex and groundbreaking equations. Equations that are not identical to the last time I saw them; there were considerable refinements and improvements. We have long known that he had a once-a-generation mind. We have a responsibility to science, and to Scott himself, to help him communicate that again.”

Leonard was shaking his head sorrowfully, but Nyota spoke first. “Spock, he’s coming apart,” she said, aghast. “The gifts of his mind never brought him happiness or peace. Let him be.”

Scotty stood stiffly and walked into the kitchen, and the conversation stopped, bland expressions and hearty smiles plastered on their faces. Scotty just shook his head at the lot of them and the smiles dropped. He collected a glass of water and drank half of it down, then dipped his finger in the water and started tracing an equation on a paper napkin.

“The multiverse equations,” Spock said gravely, and Scott nodded. Spock glanced at Nyota, who shrugged in tearful frustration.

“You are trying to tell us something? Or ask us something?” Spock asked.

He nodded.

“Related to the multiverse?”

He nodded again.

Nyota rubbed her forehead. “Scotty, no offense, but the multiverse can go fuck itself.”

Scotty shook his head; a fucked universe was the problem exactly. He could usually communicate with Nyota, even with his deep disabilities, because he rarely had anything complicated to say: food, sleep, help, pain, fear, love, Selek, Spock. But charades wasn’t going to get them anywhere with this.

Scotty’s vision was swimming again. Lord, he was in bad shape. Worse than usual, he realized, with sudden dread. Whatever the hell this was was putting terrible pressure on the shaky infrastructure that the Vulcans had managed to rebuild out of the wreckage of his brain. The whole thing was threatening to come down, he understood with sorrow. His wasn’t much of a life anymore, but he’d fought hard to be able to live it. He knew, with sudden and complete clarity, that he was about to lose everything. He was falling; reality was fading. Spock’s hands were on his head, Nyota’s on his face stroking away his tears, and they were reaching hopelessly for his rapidly receding mind.

The shattered versions of ourselves give us something to hold onto, the overlapping iterations of Enterprise crew intuited. The dying, the damaged, the despairing. Jagged edges. Traction. Slows us down for long enough to realize that we are not here.

Spock abruptly straightened, blinking rapidly, and looked around the room as if confused to find himself there.

“We are not here,” he said solemnly, and Kirk and Uhura’s gazes snapped up to his face as he repeated words they had all said to break out of a nightmare they’d once all lived together. “This is real, for a parallel version of ourselves, but we are not here,” Spock repeated urgently.

“Reality bomb. Warp field!” Scott managed, reaching for Nyota’s hand as the last moments of present consciousness slipped away forever from this version of himself. 

“We’re on the ISS Enterprise ,” Kirk cried grimly. “Fight through this! We’ve got to get out!”

….

Spock turned to the screen, his fingers pressed together as he waited for the computer to put the next test question to him.

“If a collapse of multispacetime has occurred in magnitude sufficient to result in cross-universal incursions, the subspace damage can be resolved through the application of a warp field at a factor of eight, for a period of two point four-six seconds,” Spock answered evenly.

“No question pending,” the computer said crossly.

….

“Scotty, I need warp eight!” Kirk shouted into the comm.

“I cannae give yeh warp eight!” Scotty cried back desperately.

“The universe depends on it! Just do it!”

….

“So, let’s say you’re going warp eight,” said the very pretty woman, leaning over her drink. Ny … something. Nyta? Whatever her name was.

“Okay,” Kirk agreed, definitely buzzed. Fine. Drunk.

“For ... 2.46 seconds,” she continued.

“A very short trip,” he slurred.

“How far have you gone?”

“A fair bit,” he answered, and she pouted at him. He waved vaguely. “Three hundred and seventy millionish kilometers. Earth to Jupiter-ish.” He grinned at her. “Am I plotting a course?”

“If you’re in orbit around the Earth you’d probably better,” she said with a frown. “Warp eight in a star system is incredibly dangerous. So many things to run into.”

“Wait. What?” Kirk asked, sitting up.

….

“Course laid in sir,” McCoy said.

“You are a pilot aren’t you?” the Captain teased his best helmsman.

“Apparently I am today,” he teased back.

“Very funny, Mr. McCoy. Punch it.”

….

Reality narrowed and focused, finally centering on one place and time. On the bridge of the Warship Enterprise, two currently co-existing but blessedly separate versions of James T. Kirk pushed themselves off the floor.

“Holy shit,” Commodore Kirk said shakily.

Captain Kirk rubbed his face. “I don’t disagree. Mr. Spock and … Mr. Spock, are you alright?”

The two Spocks were sharing a long and solemn gaze. “We are physically unhurt,” one of them answered, and they both moved to a duty station on the bridge to check the readings.

“Dr. McCoy and Commander Uhura?” Kirk asked.

“I think I may need to schedule an existential crisis for sometime next week,” McCoy answered, looking down at the helm where, somehow, he was sitting.  

Uhura laughed shakily. “That makes two of us.”

The two Kirks both moved toward the center chair, and then both stuttered to a halt. The Captain gestured at it. “You’re the one without a ship just now, Commodore. Please, I insist.”

The Commodore nodded and reached for the comm in the arm of the chair. “Scotty, are you okay?”

“Did anyone else jus’ have a truly disturbing encounter with infinite possibilities, or was that jus’ us?” one of them answered from Engineering, and it was honestly impossible to tell which one it was.

“A trap; a reality bomb,” Spock answered. 

“Invented by myself, no doubt. Fucking bastard.”

“How long were we in that, Mr. Spock?” Uhura asked.

“Ninety-six seconds,” one of them answered.

“We lived all that in ninety-six seconds?” Captain Kirk marveled. “And all of that was real? Somewhere, in some universe, all of that that has happened, is happening, will happen?”

“The very smallest encounter with eternity,” Spock answered gravely.

“As suggested, we’ll all have to schedule our mental breakdowns for another day,” the Commodore said, sitting in the center seat. “I take it we went to warp, Scotty?”

“Aye sir, warp eight.”

“Where are we, exactly?” Kirk asked.

“Between Mars and Jupiter,” Spock answered.

“Enterprise is hailing us,” said Uhura from the communications board. “They’re concerned.”

Commodore Kirk glanced at Captain Kirk, who answered the hail. “Sorry about that, Mr. Sulu. Minor glitch.”

“Some glitch sir,” Sulu said. “Do you need assistance?”

“I don’t think so, Sulu, but standby,” Kirk answered. “Assuming we don’t hit another … glitch we’ll get you the calculations soon to work our way back to our universe and the Enterprise-A. We have a job to finish.

Prime Universe, Space, Stardate 6770.15

Sulu’s eyes flicked to the chronometer. “Nine minutes,” he said wearily. Sixty seconds more and Spock’s deadline would expire, and he would have to take the Enterprise-A back into their universe alone to try to fight the Weapon. “Anything, Mr. Chekov?”

“No sir,” Chekov said sadly. Then: “wait! Getting a massive surge on scanners! Two ships?!?”

“Which ships?” Sulu said urgently, spinning the command chair toward the science station that Chekov was manning in Spock’s absence.

“Enterprise and … ISS Enterprise !” Chekov cried urgently. “The Terran Warship!”

“Shields!” Sulu cried, but a moment later they were being hailed.

“It’s okay, Sulu. This is Commodore Kirk.”

Sulu snapped upright, his face grim. “Due respect, sir: prove it.”

There was a pause. “The seven of us once had a perfect day on a California beach, just before we deployed. Demora’s naming and blessing day. The joy on your face was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

Sulu sighed in relief. “You okay, sir?”

“We’ve had a bit of a day, I’ll tell you that. But as you can see, we managed to get our hands on an extra ship. We are planning to stuff her down the throat of the Weapon, and blow them both back to hell.”

Sulu grinned fiercely. “Aye, sir!” he said.

It didn’t take long to set the plan and get everyone where they were supposed to be. Red matter set, calculations made, battle strategy formulated. The only hitch was when Commodore Kirk tried to talk Captain Kirk into staying behind; after all, this wasn’t their fight. 

“Like hell, Jim,” the Captain answered evenly.

Aboard three ships called Enterprise, three different commanders settled into the command chairs. Captain James T. Kirk looked at his resolute crew, all of whom agreed they couldn’t leave this fight to their doubles. Commodore James T. Kirk looked at Spock, the only other person aboard the Warship. Commander Montgomery Scott looked at the other versions of his ship on the screen, both of them presently in better shape than the Enterprise-A, then back at Uhura, who opened a channel.

“Sirs, we’re not doing great over here,” Scott said, a hard admission. “Now or never.”

“Fire the red matter torpedo,” the Commodore ordered, and the three ships headed into a battle for the fate of everything.

Kelvin Universe, Jupiter Orbit, Stardate 2269.205

In Jupiter orbit, the three versions of the Enterprise abruptly appeared and swooped over the Jovian moon Ganymede to position themselves between the gas giant and the Weapon. Sulu spared a glance toward the Galilei Observatory as they roared over the top of it, and prayed that Ben and Demora would survive this.

The Weapon, which had been locked onto Jupiter, turned lazily toward the approaching ships, bringing around its terrible weaponized maw, capable of crushing planets to rubble. On the Enterprise, Captain Kirk gripped the arms of his command chair. “Shields,” he ordered. “Weapons, standby. Standby transporters too, in case we have to pull out as many people as we can off the Warship or the Enterprise-A.”

On the USS Enterprise-A, Scott hit the comm to the transporter room. “Mr. Chekov, you keep locked onto the Commodore and Mr. Spock,” he said urgently. 

“We’ll need to keep close,” Chekov said tensely. “And drop shields at the last moment.”

“Shield control tied intae your console, laddie. We’re going down the gullet with the Commodore, Scott confirmed. “Mr. Sulu?”

“Line of sight, sir,” said Sulu tightly, his hands moving swiftly over the controls. “And the moment I get confirmation they are back aboard, I’ll punch us to warp to get us out of there.

“Here it comes, gentlemen,” the Commodore said. “Let’s kill the bastard. Execute!”

The Enterprise immediately started attacking the Weapon, dancing around it, swift and deadly. The Enterprise-A and the Terran Warship jumped forward in formation, both at full impulse, headed down its throat.

The Weapon powered up, its maw glowing red and deadly as a molecular disruption beam began churning. “We won’t stand against that for long, much less the Enterprise-A ” Spock said to Commodore Kirk. The Warship jerked violently as the edge of a beam swept across the bow, and behind them the Enterprise-A suddenly pitched up to avoid a direct hit that likely would have destroyed the damaged ship.

“You stay behind us, Mr. Scott,” the Commodore warned grimly. “Close as you can; we’ll deflect as much as we can with the Warship’s shields. Captain Kirk, anything you can do to disrupt those weapons would be much appreciated.”

“On it, Commodore,” the other Kirk said. The Enterprise swooped in toward the generators, and the Weapon, still running only on auxiliary power rather than the nearly-infinite power that would come from consuming Jupiter, started to have trouble holding the beam. It shot off an unexpected volley of torpedoes toward the Enterprise, which had to maintain position to protect the other ships even as deadly fire roared across its shielding.

“Report!” Captain Kirk snapped.

“Shields down 37 percent,” Spock responded.

“Hull breaches on decks four and twelve,” Uhura reported crisply. “Damage control teams enroute.”

“Commodore, let’s get this done!” Kirk called tensely into the comm.

“Warship is crossing the boundary, Enterprise-A is right behind us!”

Another volley of torpedoes hit the Enterprise, and its weapons fire stuttered for a moment; enough for the Weapon’s disrupter to sweep the Enterprise-A solidly broadside. The ship rolled hard with the hit, power clearly gone to major systems.

“Scotty!” the Commodore shouted.

“... still with you. Keep going sir!”

The two ships finally slipped inside the Weapon, leaving the Enterprise outside to try to keep it away from Jupiter. Inside the Weapon, a wave of automated drones rolled toward the intruders, not unlike t-cells in an immune response, burrowing through the shielding. They pulled away from the Warship, apparently reading it as friendly, or at least familiar, but doubled up on the Enterprise-A.

“Yeh need tae be within a thousand meters of the reactor, sir!” Scott called urgently, and Kirk and Spock pressed the Warship forward.

“Six thousand meters,” Spock reported. “Fifty-five hundred. Five thousand meters. Sixty seconds until optimal positioning.”

Kirk nodded, and turned away from the helm to the Warship’s engineering station. “Scotty, I’m going to start overloading the reactor. It goes without saying that once we kick this off, there is no stopping it. Please be ready to transport Mr. Spock and me off.”

Scott didn’t acknowledge for a moment. “ Sir,” he said tensely, “we’re having serious problems with these drones …” the comms cut out for a long beat, then hissed back in, heavy with disruption. “... goddamn … transporters! Sulu, take the conn!”

“Scotty?” Kirk called urgently. “Enterprise ?” He turned toward his first officer. “I think they just lost transporters,” he said grimly.

Outside the Weapon, Lieutenant Uhura pressed her earpiece close to her face. “Captain, I’m having a difficult time with the comms through the Weapon’s hull, but I the Enterprise-A may have just lost transporters,” she reported.

“Scotty?” Captain Kirk asked tensely of his Engineer. “Could we beam the other Kirk and Spock out?”

The Engineer shook his head. “We cannae get a lock through the hull.”

“Can we get in there?” Kirk asked, turning toward Spock.

“Unlikely, Captain. Without an outside attack on the disruption beam, I calculate an 86 percent chance that we would be destroyed. Moreover, without our continuing attacks, the Weapon would consume Jupiter. If that occurs before the Weapon can be disabled, there is no chance of success. It will be too powerful at that point to destroy by any means.”

“They’ll have to do what they must,” Kirk said.

Inside the Weapon, the Enterprise-A was buckling as the drones started buzzing through its hull. There was no time for the Chief Engineer of the ship to think about it; he was sprinting full speed down the corridor. He slid sideways into transporter control, where Chekov had the padd half apart.

“It’s the emitters on the hull,” Chekov said, hands flying as he put components back together. “The drones are interfering with them. Thirty seconds until the Warship is in position.” Scott didn’t spare any breath for a response, but spun on his heel and headed for the access shaft down the hall.

Aboard the Warship, Kirk called his Starship with a calm he did not feel. “We are at thirty two seconds until detonation. What is our status?”

“Standby,” Sulu said tersely.

“Anytime now,” Kirk said, standing to circle the bridge, his eyes fixed on the reactor looming ever larger on the screen. Fifteen seconds. “Gentlemen, beam us aboard.” Ten. He looked over at Spock, who reached for his arm. Five.

And the transporter grabbed them.

“I’ve got them!!” Chekov screamed, smashing the comm, and with a quarter second to spare, Sulu took the ship to warp.

Kirk and Spock materialized, their Enterprise under their feet. They barely had time to take in Chekov’s supremely relieved face before the ship heaved violently, knocking them all flat, groaning from the massive shockwave of an exploding warp core in extreme proximity.

“Come on!” Kirk whispered to his ship, his face pressed to the deck. “Hold together, old girl!”

Somehow, when the shaking ended, she was still in one piece. The engines were laboring heavily and the superstructure creaking dangerously. Scott was in the hallway outside the transporter room, and when he saw them he heaved a sigh of relief, “I’m going tae Engineering,” he said urgently, pushing past them for the lift without pausing for permission or acknowledgement.

Kirk, Spock, and Chekov raced to the bridge. “Is it dead?” the Commodore asked without preamble when they arrived.

Sulu stood, relinquishing the command chair. “I’m honestly not sure, sir. Our scanners are down, along with most everything else.”

Kirk glanced at Uhura, who hailed the Enterprise. “Jim, we’re blind. Did we kill it?” Kirk asked urgently.

The other Kirk nodded back at him on the screen, and gestured at his Spock. “Zero power readings,” Spock recited. “Zero heat emissions. Its hull is seriously compromised. It is neutralized, Commodore.”

The Commodore sat shakily in his command chair, reeling in sudden exhaustion from the last day. Two days. Two years. “Captain Kirk,” he said gratefully. “You have our deepest thanks.”

“Commodore, it was our honor.”

“I don’t know if it’s really ‘Commodore’ anymore,” Kirk said in wonder. “I don’t get promoted until about two weeks from now, after the Earth was destroyed.”

“Well then, Captain. It suits you,” the other Kirk said with a smile. 

The Captain of Enterprise-A smiled a little tearily. “What is next for you, Captain?”

“Home for us,” Jim Kirk said. “We’re at the end of our mission too. I think we all have a lot to process. To think about. This has all been … well, bizarre, Jim, and that is saying a lot.”

Still in the wrong uniform shirt, but grateful for the rightness of gold Captain’s bands, Jim Kirk nodded. “Live long, friends. Prosper.” His eyes flicked to the other Spock. “Until we meet again. I think you have your red matter, and your equations to get you home?” he asked, glancing back at his Spock, who nodded.

The Captain of the Enterprise settled back into his chair, and his senior staff stood around him, unknowingly echoing the photo that Ambassador Spock would bring with him back to this universe in his future and their past. “We do. Be well, Enterprise,” he said, and the screen went dark. In space, the ship from the other universe maneuvered away, and then disappeared into a halo of light. 

“Captain,” Uhura said, the title coming more easily off her lips than ‘Commodore.’ “We’re being hailed by Starfleet command.”

McCoy had made his way up to the Bridge, with Edith Kirk at his side, who was staring around in shock. “Ya think?” McCoy said sarcastically.

The puzzled and drawn face of Admiral Komack appeared. “Enterprise,” he said slowly. “Two questions. First, what in god’s name just happened in Jupiter orbit? And second, how the hell did you get here? You’re, ah, very early.”

“From our perspective sir, we’re very, very late,” Kirk sighed. “And it took us a couple of tries to get this right. You’ve all been dead more times than I care to admit, and we have a bit of a story to tell.”

“I’m quite sure you do,” the Admiral said, more than a little shocked. “You look to be in bad shape, Jim. I don’t dare guess what you’ve faced. Can you make it home or do we need to send a rescue?”

“We’re coming, sir,” Kirk said firmly, and glanced at his wife, who was standing near Spock and gazing in wonder at the swirling clouds of Jupiter. Komack nodded, and the screen went dark. Kirk exhaled in shaky relief, then toggled the comm.

“Scotty,” he called cheerfully. “Are you on fire?”

“Of course I’m on fire,” Scott complained. “When am I not on fire down here?”

“Well, put it out, it would be embarrassing to have to be towed to Spacedock.”

“Over my dead body, sir.”

Kirk laughed, then looked around his bridge, at the stalwart, brave faces of his crew. “Mr. Chekov, I believe that Ben and Demora Sulu may need a ride home. If we’ve got anything left in our transporters, please beam them aboard and then bring them up to the bridge. I need you on the helm, Mr. Sulu,” he said apologetically. “Once we get your family aboard, set a course for Earth, at whatever speed Mr. Scott can give us.” Kirk looked up at his wife, and offered her his hand. 

“Welcome to the Enterprise, and the future, my dear,” he said.

“Was that really Scotty you were talking to on your,” she waved vaguely. “...thing?”

“It was,” Kirk said, and watched her face. 

“I don’t pretend to have a real grasp of any of this,” she admitted. “But I distinctly remember going to his funeral.”

“And he was actually dead there for a few years. But then again, my love, so were you. And everyone else. But we fixed it. Let’s just say … the universe is wild and strange.”

She laughed, a little shakily, and leaned into his shoulder. “Is the future always like this?”

“Hardly ever. What do you think of the view, by the way?”

“My god, Jim,” Edith whispered. “That’s Jupiter!”

He smiled at her, and held her hand a little tighter. “Wait until you see the Earth.” He reached into his pocket and handed her the precious locket he’d pulled out of her bedside drawer earlier that day—and hundreds of years ago. She gasped and looped it around her neck. A moment later the Sulus swept into the bridge, Ben’s eyes wide while Demora talked at warp speed about the space battle that had just raged over their heads. Hikaru kissed them fiercely, and then he and Chekov turned back to the helm.

“Engineering says half impulse, sir,” Sulu said, and settled his daughter into his lap. “Two hours to space dock.”

Kirk leaned back in his chair. He pressed a kiss to Edith’s palm, then took a cleansing breath before looking into the brave faces of his crew. “Steady as she goes, Mr. Sulu. Half impulse for home.”