Chapter Text
Captain’s Log, Stardate 2262.365 … three two one. Stardate 2263.1. New year. Happy? Hard to say. I hope it is a happy one for the Enterprise, although I won’t be here to see it.
“Ah, there he is!” McCoy said, putting a glass of gin in the Captain’s hand. “You’re late, Jim. You missed the countdown.”
Other than a skeleton crew of Gamma shifters, the rest of the crew was packed in the rec room. Since they were only a few days out from Yorktown no one was hoarding their liquor; plenty to buy on the station, so they could drink it all tonight, and they were. The senior staff was tucked into a corner of the room, and had saved a seat for Kirk.
“Sorry, I was finishing the log,” the Captain said. “I didn’t know that it mattered that much exactly when old Earth made it around the sun again.”
“Boooo,” Chekov heckled, to laughter.
“All right, all right,” Kirk said with a smile. “I’m the stick in the mud.”
“Scotty, pass over more of that scotch,” McCoy said. The engineer reached lazily behind him, comfortably drunk, and handed it over.
“Oi, Leonard, thanks fer keepin’ us alive las’ year,” Scott said. “It wasnae an easy task.”
“You’re not the only miracle worker,” McCoy answered, and Scotty tipped his drink to that. “Sulu, did I hear that Demora and Ben are going to be at Yorktown when we arrive?”
Sulu grinned. “They are. In fact they are already there. It’s taking everything I have not to secretly push us to warp eight so we can get there sooner. Two days is feeling like an eternity.”
“Anyone else have plans for the station?” Uhura asked.
“There is a small colony of Vulcans there,” Spock answered from the other side of the table, where he was drinking his fermented tea. “I am hoping to spend some time meditating in their presence.”
“Sounds thrilling,” McCoy said, rolling his eyes.
“Restful and rejuvenating, I hope. What are your plans, Nyota?” Spock asked solicitously.
The two of them, who in other years would have been cuddled side by side, were carefully distant from one another and unfailingly polite. And so very, very clearly pining, so obviously aching. If the situation didn’t feel so tremulous, any one of the rest of the group would have shoved them into a room with a plea to just fuck it out, already. But not after the year they’d had. Nyota answered Spock, her tone carefully light. “Some sightseeing. A massage. Getting my hair done. Also lunch and shopping with Mira Romaine, when she isn’t busy having sex with with Scotty.”
“I forgot Mira was stationed on Yorktown,” Chekov said. “That’s Scotty’s wacation sorted.”
Scotty shrugged, not disagreeing. “What are you going tae do, wee man?”
“I am still making plans.”
“It isn’t a competition to see how many people you can sleep with, Pavel,” Uhura sighed.
“You say that, and yet there is an actual pool. Winner gets a bottle of scotch, a box of condoms, and some porn.”
“So you’re saying I get to spend my vacation running STD tests. Great,” McCoy grumped.
“What are you going to do Bones?” Kirk asked.
“I dunno, Jim. Usually I just follow you around scraping you out of trouble.”
Kirk shook his head. “While we’re in communication range with Earth I have a bunch of meetings with Starfleet.”
“The STD tests sound more fun.”
The group lapsed into comfortable silence, nursing their drinks, buzzed, drunk, and half asleep while the crew partied around them. Nyota stood at last, nudging Scotty to his feet, and collected a few of their crewmates. The crowd quieted because they knew it meant a song. She pulled the guitar out from behind the piano and plucked the first notes. “You know the one,” she told them. Her little group of singers smiled and immediately joined in:
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
“Do you know the other verses, Scotty?” Uhura asked, still strumming the chorus.
“Och, now yer going tae put an old, drunk Scotsman tae shame. I havenae been home in a long time. Aye. It’s a song about old friends, long since gone their ways, back together fer one night tae share a drink for times long past,” he explained, and sang when she came back around to the verse:
And surely ye'll be your pint-stoup
and surely I'll be mine
And we'll tak' a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
sin' days o’ auld lang syne.
We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
sin' days o’ auld lang syne.
“And th’ last verse,” he said, while she improvised a bridge. He finished the drink he’d been holding. “It’s an important one, so I’ll sing it closer tae standard than Burns wrote it.”
And there's a hand my trusty friend!
And give me hand o' thine!
And we'll take a right good-will draught, for auld lang syne.
Nyota finished on the chorus, her silver voice ringing in the stars:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
The music faded off, to murmurs of approval from the crew. This was the end of the evening, they could feel, with Alpha shift starting in six hours and a diplomatic mission still to perform over the next two days. Eyes turned to the Captain, who stood and raised his drink. “You are all incomparable. I hope you know that,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “I hope you know what an honor it has been to serve with you. Happy New Year, crewmates.”
Captain’s Log, Stardate 2263.2 …. If the universe is truly endless, then are we not striving for something forever out of reach? The Enterprise is scheduled for a reprovisioning stop at Yorktown , the Federation's newest and most advanced starbase. Perhaps a break from routine will offer up some respite from the mysteries of the unknown.
Lieutenant Mira Romaine always thought that she had the best office on Yorktown station, overlooking the central transit core from space, but never more so than now.
“Wow,” her assistant gasped. “We’ve had plenty of ships in. Even starships. But that is impressive. A Constitution-class heavy cruiser, up close! I wish we could see the serial number on the nacelles from here. I wonder which one it is?”
“That, Ensign Kim, is the Enterprise,” Mira said admiringly.
“Oh, come on,” Kim pouted. “How would you know?”
“I served aboard her Jin-Ae! Didn’t I ever tell you that story? I have some friends aboard, and some insider information. They’ve been out in deep space. Way out. We’re their first glimmer of the Federation in almost two years.”
“Friends aboard?” Kim asked. “Or a friend.”
“Well ….” Mira hedged. “Friends for certain. But there is someone special. He’s obviously been away for a long time. It’s mostly casual, but we’re going to dinner tonight.”
“Sailor rolling into port. Bit more than dinner I’d think,” her friend teased. “Some handsome lieutenant?” Mira shrugged. “Not a lieutenant. A commander? Or … lord Mira, not Kirk?”
“God, no,” Mira said, wrinkling her nose. “The chief engineer,” she admitted.
“Good with his hands, then.”
Mira choked. “God, Jin-Ae.”
“You didn’t say no,” she cackled.
“Not having this conversation!” Mira said, and turned eagerly for the door. “I’m leaving now.” It wasn’t hard to find the Enterprise crew, in their vibrant Starship colors, in contrast to the usual Starbase grey. She spied Scotty almost immediately across the terminal, talking to Captain Kirk. Even at that distance, Kirk seemed a little subdued. Scotty apparently agreed, and patted the Captain on the shoulder before turning away.
“Scotty!” Mira called to him, and he beamed at her, quickening his pace.
He hesitated for a moment when she got within reach, brain glitching on the kiss-hug-handshake? conundrum that she knew would hit him after years apart. Fortunately, she’d already worked it out, and reached up to pull him into a kiss, to his obvious delighted pleasure.
“Welcome to Yorktown,” she said with a smile.
“She is beautiful, but not so beautiful as you,” Scotty said.
She laughed and punched him in the shoulder before taking his arm. “Are bad pickup lines all you’ve got? Compare me to the Enterprise, then, and I’ll know you mean it.”
“Give me a break, I’m outta practice,” Scotty complained.
“I’m very glad to hear that,” Mira said, and gave him an expectant look.
“You’re as beautiful as the Enterprise , and that’s as far as I can ever go,” he teased.
“I will take that,” she said, and they walked arm in arm for a few minutes. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I have the perfect restaurant picked out. The vegan offerings are all entirely fresh, grown here. Meat and dairy are pre-frozen, but real.”
“I’m starving,” he said fervently. “We’ve been scraping the bottom of the barrel. All synthesized food for two damn years. I’ve made progress on programming chocolate ice cream and chicken soup, but the rest of it may as well be gelatine blocks.”
She winced in sympathy. “Let’s feed you before you fade away,” she said.
Two hours later they were both stuffed, but still lingering over drinks. Scotty had insisted on seeing the chef, three times, to tell her she was brilliant.
“... so the Captain calls back two minutes later. Two minutes,” Scotty was saying. “And he’s shouting ‘Scotty get me outta here!’ but the surface is crawling with something. So I get him back aboard. And he’s fighting off these people. They’re wee, literally half a meter at best. And he’s torn his shirt …”
“Oh my god. Again,” Mira giggled.
“And he’s lost his boot. And I cannae help myself. I turn to him and ask ‘How’d it go?’” They looked at each other and lost it to laughter. Mira took a sip of her wine, caught his eye again, and they both went undignified with another round of giggles.
“I damn near invited him tae dinner tonight,” Scott admitted when he got himself under control. He caught the eye of their server, who brought the check.
“Oh, lord, Scotty,” Mira complained.
“I know, I know. It’s just …” he sighed. “We got the shite kicked out of us last year. I know I wasnae good at calling, but believe me, a hell of a lot of it wasnae worth hearing. Brave starship Captain, but I think he’s feeling lost.”
“Think he’s okay?” Mira asked, worried, as they stood to go.
“I honestly dinnae think he is,” Scotty admitted.
“Are you okay?” she asked softly.
“Me? Sure, I’m fine.”
She gave him an appraising look. “Take a walk with me, Scotty?” she asked.
“Anywhere. Lead the way.” He wrapped an arm around her, and she could feel him uncoiling in relief. He had in fact been very bad at calling and writing, but Nyota Uhura less so, and Mira knew more than he thought she did. She knew he’d been dead for twelve minutes, and she knew that he’d spent many weeks at both the start and end of the year in sickbay. Not that she expected him to tell her about any of it. She leaned into him, and above them, Yorktown’s sky was phasing to night, the blue fading away into an astonishing vista of stars.
“That’s very pretty,” he said. “Hell of a bit of engineering too.”
“I’ve stood under these stars more than once, and wondered where you were,” she told him, feeling grateful to have him beside her. “How are Spock and Nyota?” she asked as they strolled.
“Ah, that one’s hard,” he sighed. “Taking a break. Not that either of them want tae.”
“Oh no,” she commiserated.
“It’s ...” he sighed. “We ran intae this alien, and he was a demon. Just straight evil. And the two of them got taken, along with the Captain. The experience was brutal in ways that I dinnae have the words or heart tae say. They are terrified of hurting each other more. Which, of course, means they’re hurting each other more.”
“Think they’ll work it out?”
“I hope so,” he said. They’d stopped in front of a high rise and he looked at her quizzically. “Where’s this, then?” he asked.
“My apartment,” she answered. “Come in. Have another drink,” she said, and traced his lips with her fingers before leaning in for a kiss. “Stay the night.”
He smiled down at her. “I can do that. If you’re sure?”
“So sure,” she breathed, and pulled him with her through the door.
It had barely swished closed behind them before she had his tunic and undershirt over his head, kissing him full the moment it was off. He caught the fastener of her dress with his fingertips, and slid it down her body. She stepped out of it and went to work on his belt.
He groaned when she got her hand around him, then backed her into the flat, kissing her until they hit a surface—her bed, and they tumbled into it together. He bracketed her with his arms, lips on her neck, and she pressed up against him through the clothing they hadn’t quite got off yet.
There was a half-awkward fumble for everything else—stockings and bra and socks, trousers tossed haphazardly, a condom from her bedside drawer, some toys and lube placed playfully in reach. And then—fingers and tongues and lips, drawing each other with low, urgent, heat, letting effervescent static replace thought.
They paused for a breath, and she traced his face with the tips of her fingers, then leaned down to press her lips against his. “Oh, god, Scotty,” she whispered brokenly, and he knew she could feel it in him. There was something shattered within him that he couldn’t fix, parts of himself that he couldn’t reach anymore.
He knew that Mira understood exactly what that felt like.
She sat up, on her knees with him beneath her, and trailed her hand down him; chest, belly, lower. He reached for her hip, then brushed her with his thumb, and she caught her breath. He glanced between their bodies, and then looked back into her eyes, the invitation in his gaze. She shook her head and kissed him tenderly, then rolled them so he was above her.
“What?” he asked, puzzled
”You need to control this moment,” she whispered to him. “Trust me.” Her fingers tightened on the back of his neck, then her body around him, and she was right. She scraped her fingernails up and down his back, holding him everywhere, and he tried not to weep.
“Come on, Scotty,” she breathed into his ear, then surged up to kiss him urgently. “Stop thinking.” She pressed her forehead to his, then lifted her hips and hooked a knee over his shoulder. He gasped, hands moving to support her, and she rocked up into him, setting an urgent, rolling rhythm. “Come with me,” she begged, and he followed, letting her take them both somewhere the pain couldn’t find them, at least for a while.
Ungodly beeping at 0600 woke them. “Did you set an alarm?” she grumbled at him from under the blankets.
“Nae,” he answered blearily. “That’s a communicator.”
“I don’t have one. They just page me if they need me, or leave a padd message,” Mira said.
“Damn,” he groaned, “that means it’s me,” and went searching for his trousers, which she’d thrown somewhere. He dug the communicator out of the pocket and glanced at the message face. “Immediate recall tae the ship,” he sighed.
Mira buried her head under the pillow. “I thought you were here for at least four days?”
“We are,” he said, and collapsed back into bed beside her. “Deuterium and anti-deuterium stores are critically low, and that transfer will take at least four days. Which means we’ll be back, whether the Captain likes it or no’, or we willnae be warping anywhere a few weeks from now.”
She snuggled into his side and kissed his chest. “Just stay, it probably isn’t important.”
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back while she trailed her lips up his neck. “Emergency recall of the Federation’s flagship after one day in port? Aye. Probably nothin’ important,” he agreed with a groan, tracing small circles on her lower back.
“Is the Enterprise going to leave without her chief engineer?” Mira asked, levering up on an elbow to look down at him.
“I dinnae imagine so.”
“In light of the emergency, you can multitask,” she said, padding naked to the bathroom. “You can shower and give me an orgasm.”
He lifted his head. “You are a very bad influence,” he called.
“Hurry, big emergency,” she shouted to him, and started the water.
“The ship, or the sex?” he asked, amused, stepping in behind her.
“There is only one of those I care about right now, Scotty!”
After, he toweled off and got dressed while she reclined nude in the bed, enjoying the view of him. “We could do this every day, you know,” she told him, making sure he had a good view of her. “The Yorktown shipyard would take you in a heartbeat.”
“Aye, well,” he said noncommittally, and leaned down to kiss her. “Dinnae bother tae see us off. Go back tae sleep. I’m sure we’ll be back in a few days,” he said, and walked out the door for what he didn’t know was the final voyage of the USS Enterprise.
Inquest Report re: Destruction of USS Enterprise. Reconstructed Transmission, Stardate 2263.3. USS Enterprise, final communication, as follows: Yorktown, ..terprise … if you can hear... attack. Nacelles and secondary hull… boarded … crew losses … rutural integrity [unintelligible] percent and falling. ...ayday mayday mayday. Abando… repeat, aban...
At the last second, the stolen swarm ship piloted by McCoy and Spock swooped in and saved Kirk from a certain and horrible death in the vacuum of space. Scotty slumped in relief and put his head down on the control console on Yorktown’s bridge, feeling abruptly weak as two days of adrenaline leached away, its metallic taste heavy and nauseating in his mouth.
“Are you alright, Montgomery Scotty?” Jaylah asked him.
There was a sudden commotion as Commodore Paris arrived in the command center. “What in the name of god just happened?” she snapped. “What was that attacking the station, why is the long lost USS Franklin, of all things, parked in the lake, and what happened in the air circulation system?! Commander Finnegan, report!”
The operations commander of the station opened his mouth, then closed it, struggling to process, much less find the words. “I’m honestly not sure ma’am,” he admitted at last.
Scotty climbed wearily to his feet. “Taking your questions in order ma’am,” he said. “The station was attacked by a swarm that we were able tae disrupt before it tore the station apart; the Franklin is a very long and strange story; and we just barely kept an ancient doomsday weapon from getting intae the air system and destroying every living thing on Yorktown.”
Paris squinted at him, frowning. “I know you,” she said slowly, taking in the vintage Starfleet jacket over the top of a dusty red modern starship duty tunic. Her eyes flicked to his face in recognition. “You’re Scott. The chief engineer and second officer of the Enterprise.”
“Aye, ma’am,” he said softly.
“Mr. Scott,” she said, and there was dread in her voice. “Why are you here, and where is the Enterprise?”
He’d already said the words, on the planet. He already acknowledged it, although he hadn’t accepted it. But this, right here and right now, was the first report to Starfleet, and fate was making it his responsibility to say it.
“The Enterprise has been destroyed, ma’am,” he said, and his voice sounded far away. He felt the awful grief of it lurking, threatening to overwhelm him, and shoved it back. “Torn tae pieces yesterday morning by the same swarm fleet that came for Yorktown. The distress call was a trap.”
Paris went very, very still. “Mr. Scott, where are the crew?”
“Aboard the Franklin. What’s left of them.”
“How many?” the Commodore asked urgently.
Scott knew exactly how many. He’d beamed them aboard the Franklin, twenty at a time. He’d counted every one of them. But until this very moment, he hadn’t let himself think of it; could not think of it, not if they wanted to save millions on Yorktown and beyond. “Less than half, ma’am,” he managed, and the strength went out of him. He reached for the back of the chair, suddenly shaking, breathing hard, and someone grabbed him under the arm. “Oh, god.”
The operations center went silent, the officers frozen in sympathetic horror. Somehow—he wasn’t sure how—he was sitting in the chair again, and the Commodore was crouched in front of him. “Breathe, commander,” she said gently. Her face had aged ten years in three seconds, lined with grief. It was, after all, her order that had sent them to their deaths. “Where is Captain Kirk?”
“I’m here, ma’am,” Kirk said from the door, flanked by McCoy and Spock. He was bloody and pummeled, but standing. He walked forward and put his hand on his engineer’s shoulder. “Half, Scotty?” Kirk asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Scott twisted to face him. “There wasnae time, sir.”
The Commodore spoke, still kneeling beside Scott, struggling herself under the pain of it. “I have a number of questions, gentlemen. But I will ask only one: is this station in danger?”
“Not anymore, ma’am,” Kirk said tiredly.
Paris stood smartly, fully in command of the situation. “You are all to report to Yorktown Hospital immediately,” she said, then turned away. “Commander Finnegan, send a medical team to the Franklin to collect the remaining survivors, and assign a disaster response team. We need to start with a list of who is alive, who is dead, and who is missing. Communications Officer, I need a gold channel to Starfleet Command …”
Around them, Yorktown’s bridge bustled to life, while the dispossessed Enterprise officers stared at each other, suddenly useless.
“Come on, Montgomery Scotty,” Jaylah said, hauling him to his feet. “You too James T. You heard the command of your Ma’am.”
The crew was already gathering in the plaza, bloody, dazed, being pulled out of the Franklin one at a time by the efficient Yorktown officers. The word was passing swiftly around the station: the Enterprise was dead. A medical team beelined straight through to start triage, while six other officers stopped each person to ask name and rank, starting the work of framing a terrible loss.
On a wall of the plaza, where civilian news streamed from Earth, a ticker was starting to run, news readers pausing, their faces grave: We are just receiving reports of an attack on Yorktown station, which is home to over two million people. It is also believed that the Starfleet flagship Enterprise has been destroyed. Our viewers may recall that the Enterprise was the sole surviving ship after the battle of Vulcan almost five years ago and single-handedly prevented the destruction of Earth shortly after. No word at this hour on casualties...we are now getting video footage from Yorktown…
McCoy grabbed Scotty by the shoulder and squeezed it before they plunged into the chaos. “Don’t forget to get yourself to medical. I haven’t worked this hard on your brain just to have you skip two days and end up back where we started,” he said, and then snagged Kirk and Spock. “I’m taking these two yahoos to triage because you just know they both are bleeding internally.”
“Aye. Take Jaylah too, she got beat up pretty bad,” Scotty said and started moving through the crew, his words flowing as they reached out for him, relieved to see one of their commanders: hold onto that arm son it’s broken, yeh okay Matthews? nae, I havenae seen Josie, I dinnae ken if there will anything left to recover from the ship, nae they definitely willnae be putting the ship back together, Miguel get tae a doctor right now lad! Paulie can you get everyone lining up to talk tae the recovery people? I’m sure you’ll be able to call yer mam in a few hours, I havenae seen her lad, I’m sorry I havenae seen him, aye I transported out everyone who was there, the hull burned up in the atmosphere laddie that wasnae survivable, I think they are organizing some food, I dinnae ken, Shawna’s dead son, aye they’ll probably send us back tae Earth ...
“Scotty,” Uhura said, grabbing him in the swirling chaos. “Have you seen Spock?”
“Aye. McCoy took him to triage. You okay lassie?”
She shrugged helplessly. “Maybe. You?”
“I havenae a clue.”
“Name?” a Yorktown lieutenant asked him, padd balanced in his hand.
“What?” Scott asked, distracted by the sight of Sulu holding his daughter and weeping on his husband’s shoulder.
“Your name, rank, and department,” the lieutenant said, louder and more slowly, and Scott focused with difficulty.
“Scott, Montgomery. Lieutenant Commander. Chief Engineer.” The lieutenant nodded and ticked a box, then put a green band around his wrist. “That report is live, sir, to a searchable database. Your loved ones will know you’re safe.
“Too many of those are never going tae be marked safe,” he said sorrowfully, looking at the officer’s pad.
“I’m very sorry, sir,” the lieutenant said crisply, and moved on.
Scotty paused in the middle of the plaza. The shape of the Franklin loomed overhead, with the damaged curve of the Yorktown’s translucent hull beyond, orbited by still-burning debris. He felt the reality of it, which he’d been holding outside himself, finally settle in. The sounds around him felt distant, brittle. Even the beat of his own heart seemed false, and he abruptly wished it had ended on the Enterprise. That’s nae what you want, a corner of his brain supplied rationally. That’s two days without meds talking. No food, no sleep. Trauma. Shock.
Someone was singing softly, and it brought him back. Nyota. Some ancient Earth hymn, sad and mournful. The voices that only days ago would have joined her couldn’t now. He didn’t have the heart, and the rest were dead.
He knew how death felt. To say that he remembered it wasn’t quite right. Not remembered, not exactly. But the final moment of passing was a part of him. Nomad had hit him, hard. And then... no sight, no sound, no feeling, no consciousness, just the last distant whisper of self, curled deep in the final electrical flickers of mind. No fear, and then he’d simply stopped existing.
Half the crew.
“...Scotty!” Someone was touching his face, looking urgently into his eyes.
“Mira,” he managed, and she wrapped her arms around him.
“You weren’t here for a second. Are you hurt?”
“I dinnae think so.”
“Is that a ‘no’ or a ‘I have no idea?’” she pressed him. On his shrug she propelled him toward the medical tent. “Everyone is supposed to get checked anyway. Scotty … is the Enterprise really gone?”
He nodded his head, and she held him tighter.
“Doctor McCoy,” Mira said when they arrived at triage, and wrapped him in a hug too.
“Mira Romaine, you are a sight for sore eyes,” McCoy said kindly.
“You are no’ supposed tae be working, Leonard,” Scott chastised him.
“My patients are lined up out the door. Do you honestly think I can sit my ass on a biobed?” he scanned the engineer and frowned. “Can you give us a minute, Mira?” McCoy asked.
“I see Nyota, I’ll be right back,” she said, giving Scotty’s hand a squeeze.
“How are the Captain and Mr. Spock?” Scott asked, rubbing both hands through his hair and then down his face.
“Jim is under observation for a head injury. Spock is in surgery.” McCoy made an adjustment to a hypo before pressing it to Scott’s neck. “This will make you feel a little less dissociative and suicidal.” He glanced at Scott. “Right. No protest means you’re thinking of it.”
“Doesnae everyone kind of want tae die right now?” he sighed.
Jaylah, who had been sitting four beds away and resisting the hapless nurse who was trying to scan her to ensure that the atmosphere was appropriate for her unknown species, also apparently had excellent hearing. She had Scotty by the front of the shirt in about half a second.
“Montgomery Scotty you cannot,” she hissed at him. “I too have considered death. It is not the answer. We have survived. We are alive. You cannot!”
He smiled faintly at her. “I willnae,” he said. “My brain sometimes whispers lies tae me. Medicine helps, but I havenae had any for longer than usual. I know the sound of the lies, and can wait it out until the medicine makes me feel better. Now, lassie, will yeh please sit still and let the nurse make sure our air isnae going tae poison yeh?”
She let go of his shirt. “If you promise to stay I will let them.”
“I promise, lassie,” he said, and then spoke quietly to McCoy. “A passing thought, that it would have hurt less tae die with my ship.”
“Okay,” McCoy said, accepting the answer, and glanced up as Mira came back to stand beside them. “How the hell did you strain your shoulder, by the way?”
“Fell off a cliff,” Scotty answered.
McCoy sighed, and left the answer alone. “Rest, food, sleep.” He handed across a vial and a hypo. “The usual meds, plus a painkiller and a sedative.
McCoy turned to the next patient, and Scott slid off the biobed. Before he could move to go, he found himself face to face with another earnest young Yorktown officer.
“Are you being admitted to the hospital sir?”
“Nae,” Scott answered.
The officer handed him a packet. “Key card to a room in officer’s quarters, quartermaster ticket for clothing and toiletries, meal pass for the mess hall. You’re the second officer, sir?”
“I … was.”
“Communicator then sir, as well, in case they need you. Report to Commodore Paris in her office tomorrow at 1100 to begin debrief.”
Mira took the supplies from Scotty’s unresisting fingers. “We’re not doing any of that tonight. Come on,” she whispered, and led him to her quiet apartment.
She made him eat a sandwich, and drink a cup of tea and a liter of water. Then, as he’d once done for her, she took him into the bathroom and stripped his uniform off him. It smelled of sweat and fear, smoke and dirt, dying starship and old starship. He wouldn’t be wearing starship red again for a very long time, Mira considered sadly, and put him in the shower.
He sighed and turned on the water. “Can yeh give me twenty minutes?” he asked
“I’ll be right here,” she whispered, kissing him gently. And then she sat on the other side of the door with tears running down her face while she listened to him sob.
Stardate 2263.67. My son has arrived on New Vulcan with the woman he loves. She will not be the mother of his child. And yet, she is the reason the child will be born. It is most curious. And most human.
It was a dream, a nightmare, and she knew it was, but that didn’t stop it from coming. She stepped into a dark room, and it was unmistakably a dungeon. Not a prison, not a camp. A dungeon, smeared with blood and excrement. “They’re all dead,” Sulu said dully, looking up at her.
“What?” Uhura asked, her brain moving slowly. Words; what were words? They must mean something, but her mind couldn’t parse it. Think Nyota!
“Dead,” Sulu said, and when she turned around she was on the Enterprise, staring across at Kirk as the saucer separated, but he was dying, pounding helplessly on the glass as his body was consumed by the ravenous darkness.
Scotty was suddenly standing next to her. “The ship is dead,” he said in despair, his face lit by approaching flames. “Me too.”
“No, Scotty, you’ve got to get off,” she told him urgently, but he was gone and she was back in the dungeon.
“Dead,” Sulu repeated, except he was a desiccated corpse, laid out alongside Chekov, and McCoy, and the rest of the crew, dead in the halls, hung from the ceiling, devoured by darkness.
“Nyota,” Spock said, looking at her with pained confusion, and they were back on Hades’ world, hurting each other.
“No, Spock, please,” she sobbed while Kirk’s reanimated corpse stood over them. Blood dripped off their ravaged bodies and pooled between them. Someone was screaming, and it was Scotty, forced to watch, fighting against ropes that tied him to the command chair while the ship was torn apart and flames took him.
“Spock, oh, Spock!” she cried but suddenly he was Krall.
“Where’s Spock!?” she wailed.
“I’m Spock,” Krall said, releasing the weapon and watching curiously as it consumed her, “and I always have been.”
She screamed and screamed; it was all that was left of her, and she’d never stop.
“Forgive me, Ms. Uhura,” a gentle voice said in her mind. “You are most distressed. Wake!”
She opened her eyes and, terrifyingly, her brain couldn’t parse it. Where? The question echoed. And then the answer: New Vulcan. Spock? No. Sarek.
“I think, sir, you ought to call me Nyota,” she gasped shakily, looking up at the gracefully curved ceiling of Sarek’s guest room.
“Perhaps,” he answered, holding up a robe for her, his eyes politely averted. “Forgive me for waking you at this early hour. Your dreams were terrible, and I believed that you would not wish to continue in them.”
She nodded gratefully and walked into the New Vulcan predawn, struggling to shake off the nightmare. She could make out the mammoth red rock spires in the distance, dark shapes against a just-lighting sky. It was dry and cool, almost cold, but the air spoke of the heat that the day would bring. The last time she had been here, on an early voyage of the Enterprise, it had been little more than a dusty refugee camp. It had changed since then, grown more graceful. It was not Vulcan. But it was New Vulcan, and was coming to encompass the hopeful promise of that word.
“I'm sorry I disturbed you,” she told Sarek.
He inclined his head. “You are not the first person I have pulled from their nightmares this night. Spock cannot be disturbed, not in his state, but each of you of the late Enterprise had night terrors. We know such fear, on New Vulcan. We have seen horrors ourselves. But human grief, like human love, is raw in the profundity of its loneliness.”
She frowned. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, sir.”
He folded his hands behind his back. “Allow me to explain. There are many things about humans that puzzle me. Among them is this: humans speak of sex often. They watch it for entertainment, they boast of it, they consume it in its many varieties. And yet, the moment it becomes holy, a manifestation of love —“ Sarek paused. “There. You see. You looked away. To even speak of it is to intrude. It is puzzling to Vulcans. For us the act is deeply communal.”
“You’re a telepathic species; we’re not,” Nyota shrugged. “For humans, an act of love belongs only to the person given it. Private unity.”
Sarek looked into the distance, to the rising suns. “And yet, from the Vulcan perspective, there is no such unity at all. My beloved Amanda always left her mind open to me, enfolding me, although she did not realize it. But I could not reciprocate, and it grieved me. To comfort me, she insisted that in those moments she felt a closeness and a belonging that she felt in no other time.”
“She was right,” Nyota said.
“Ah, but do you not see? Even as she claimed that connection, her mind remained deeply, profoundly alone. If those are the times when you feel bonded, how alone must you be in the other moments of your lives?”
Nyota frowned. “I don’t know that I agree. We don’t feel bereft,” she answered him. “Humans can’t know with certainty what others feel. Perhaps that’s why we are so emotional. We have only words and action to guide us. We show our love with tender pleasures, with sacrifice, with naked vulnerability, with trust. When that is reciprocated, Ambassador, we know we are not alone. And that knowledge is enough.”
“An act of faith,” Sarek said.
“Yes,” Nyota agreed slowly, thinking on it. “For humans, love is always an act of faith. Sex is one thing, but that kind of faith isn’t something for just anyone to consume. And to intrude uninvited would be a violation.”
Sarek paused, gathering his thoughts. “This experience will not be that way. It will be shared in a manner that you have not experienced. And I am concerned, in light of your dream this morning, and those of your friends. How much of that dream truly happened?”
“All of it, in one way or another.”
“The sexual violence?” he asked gently
“Yes,” she said. “My dream also had elements of a brain injury I experienced earlier, and a layer of death from the later loss of the Enterprise, but otherwise that is how it happened.”
“Then I am much concerned. There are ways in which this may be reminiscent of that. Not in intent, or force, but the borrowing of body and soul. I fear for you, for Spock, for your companions. The pon farr does not have to be accomplished in this way.”
“This is the only way for a child,” Nyota said.
“Yes,” Sarek answered.
“Then this is the only way. To speak honestly, sir, I have hopes that this will be healing.”
“Speak to your friends one more time,” Sarek asked. “For it to be so, they must also be sure. Speak soon; the time draws near.”
Nyota had looked on many stars, but a twin sunrise from the surface of a planet was a rare pleasure, although deeply alien. And, she considered, as she walked, perhaps a fitting metaphor for their purpose here on Vulcan. Two bodies; one light.
Kirk and Scotty were where she had left them the night before, in a guest house adjacent to Sarek’s home. They looked tired, and it was obvious that Sarek had also pulled them from their nightmares.
Her question set Kirk pacing. “You want to know if we’re completely sure about this. Okay. Let me just make sure I understand the logistics,” he said, counting it off on his fingers. “First, and key to this foray into Vulcan sex and reproduction, is Saavik. A Vulcan woman who is bonded to her husband, and has no desire to break that link. But her husband was irreversibly injured in the fall of Vulcan. He is a mind trapped in a broken body, with no possibility of children. Then there is Spock, fertile at any moment now. But he is bonded to you, and inconveniently for the endangered species, you’re human.”
“And uninterested in being pregnant,” she supplied.
Kirk nodded. “But the mental bond is critical to the reproductive aspect. So to work around that, the four of you will share your consciousnesses. Two bodies—Spock and Saavik—making the baby, but four minds participating. As far as Saavik is concerned, her husband is inhabiting Spock, and as far as Spock is concerned, you are inhabiting Saavik.”
“Essentially we are,” Nyota said.
“I’m an openminded pansexual, and so is Scotty, but you’ve got to admit it’s a little strange,” Kirk sighed.
“A limited human view, apparently,” Nyota said. “According to our host.”
Kirk rubbed his eyes. “Please don’t ever tell McCoy that Ambassador Sarek of New Vulcan considers me sexually puritanical, I’d never live it down,” he groaned, then continued. “Adding to the complexity, the four of you each need someone on the outside, grounding you, or you run the risk that you won’t return to yourselves. Saavik and her husband each have their friends. Me for Spock. Scotty for you. We aren’t participants, exactly. Anchors.”
“Yes. Your participation should be limited to emotional transference.”
“You say that as if it is any less intimate.” Kirk ran a hand through his hair. “It is just me, or does this seem a tad overcomplicated?”
“It’s been done before. Not often, and not with humans, but it has been done.”
Scotty was looking out the window, arms crossed as he gazed across infrastructure he’d built years before with his own hands. “What I need tae know, Nyota, is whether you are really okay with this.”
Nyota stepped over and leaned into him, her head on his shoulder. In the distance she picked out the high communication tower where they had once stood, working side by side, before they had truly known each other. Ambassador Spock had spoken of extraordinary friendships to come, and she understood now what he had meant.
“I’ve been examining this since Spock proposed it four days after we lost the Enterprise. And I’m at peace. But the two of you got pulled into this last week. You have to be sure too.”
“If Spock is sure, I’m sure,” Kirk said firmly.
“Aye,” Scotty answered, looking over at her. “If you’re sure I’m sure.”
“An act of faith?” Nyota asked.
“Seems like that’s all I’ve ever got,” Kirk answered.
“Very human,” she said with a smile, and Kirk looked curiously at her.
There was a gentle knock on the door, and it was Sarek. “It is time,” he said.
The two human men exchanged a glance. And if they were nervous and a little fearful, they were also willing. She hoped it was enough, and inclined her head. Six Vulcans immediately came through the door, and Nyota had to agree with Kirk’s assessment. Over complicated she thought ruefully as they were washed and dressed in white ceremonial robes, then led into an inner chamber.
Spock was there.
He sat to one side of the room, and Saavik on the other, beside her husband. She was young, much younger than Nyota had thought she would be, and so was her husband, despite his ruined body. Nyota went to Spock, and reached for his hand, stroking two fingers down his. He lifted his head, and he was trembling, his eyes strange with fire and need. She kissed him, careful not to push too far. She sat beside him, and the complex work of making the necessary mental connections began, assisted by a group of strong Vulcan telepaths.
Her bond with Spock had been made long ago, but they checked and strengthened all the same. An insult, she knew, from the way Spock stirred, but she didn’t mind. Despite the distress of his condition, Spock was as he ever was. Deep waters; a placid surface with churning depths. His mind was aligned and precise, but for the first time she realized that it was by training and not inclination. The true Spock was infinitely curious, unfailingly good, and deeply passionate. She loved him more than she ever had.
Then their anchors. They gestured Kirk forward, and he took Spock’s left hand while Spock reached out with his right, into the mind meld. She hadn’t expected to feel Kirk, but she became aware of him through Spock. The boy she’d first met in a bar in Iowa—for a boy he had been—was long gone. His spark of mischief and of danger remained, but he was a rock. More than that. A mountain, towering from his heights to the depths of the bedrock buried deep in his heart. Unmovable, unforgettable, extraordinary. Captain James T. Kirk, straight through, and she realized with a sense of wonder that he was the foundation of Spock’s soul. A quirked eyebrow from the telepaths; she wondered if it was good or bad.
Then Scotty, and he smiled at her and took both her hands, neither of them capable of a mental connection without help. Two telepaths touched their faces, making the link. Scotty’s mind was entirely different from Kirk’s or Spock’s. It swirled and moved, lit by mathematics that illuminated every corner of the universe in a piercing light. But there was a vast, black chasm here as well, gashed into him. Some of it looked old, its edges smooth, but there were also newer, ragged, clearly irreparable fissures, and she mourned to see how profoundly it had shattered his bright and cheerful mind. Even so, while Scotty was not and could not be the rock that Kirk was, his feet were unerring on a path that he seemed to summon effortlessly into existence. More eyebrows from the Vulcans, including Spock.
Unexpectedly she felt herself being reflected back in each of them. Go ahead and look, she felt from Spock. It was not how they saw her, or how she saw herself; it was how she was. To her surprise, her mind was the most ordered of all. If Kirk was heights, and Spock was depths, if Scott was light and dark, her mind was breadth. She was connection, and communication, and understanding, reaching out endlessly. Curious, quick, clever, kind. Unafraid to go as far as she needed to understand the world and, more, the people in it.
“It is unorthodox but stable,” someone said, and they were talking about the four of them.
And then the Vulcans built a bridge across, so that Saavik’s husband could share his bond with Spock. Whatever that felt like, it was kept from Nyota. And then another, so that Nyota could share her bond with Saavik. She felt the first stir of human emotion in that, and yes, it was jealousy, but also fear that her faith was in vain and the bond wasn’t real. That Saavik would laugh sympathetically at her for presuming Spock’s love.
It is real, said many voices, and she had to close her eyes because her brain needed to borrow her frontal cortex to navigate this. Spock took Saavik’s hand, and Nyota felt it as though it were her hand. He kissed lips, and Nyota couldn’t tell whose lips were kissed. She reached out to touch him, and wasn’t her hand. Then a body moved, and it may have been hers, but not under her command.
The terror of it sliced straight through her, through Spock, and deep into Kirk and Scott. None of them had their eyes open, but the observing Vulcans did, and all four of their heads snapped back as one as though struck, each of them crying out in fear.
“What is this?” someone asked with deep concern.
“Nightmares,” Sarek said sorrowfully. “They must try to cross this together.”
The four of them faced each other across Hades’ torture chamber. There was blood on the floor, red and green. His mocking, malevolent laughter echoed through the vast hall, but worse was the distant, primal screaming that they knew was their own raw voices.
You are not here, four Vulcan voices said inside their minds: Saavik, and her husband, and their anchors. Also, outside, with their waking ears, Sarek and the telepaths spoke as well. You escaped this place. What was done then was done in pain and evil and hate. What we do now is done with free will and tenderness and love. You are not here.
“I’m afraid,” Nyota and Spock told each other simultaneously.
“Don’t make me do this,” Kirk and Scott begged.
You are not here.
“We aren’t here,” Nyota said shakily, and reached for Spock. “You are touched because I wish to touch you,” she said, with her hands on his chest.
“We are not here,” Spock agreed, and kissed her tenderly. “You are kissed because I wish to kiss you.” Spock reached for Kirk. “Jim. We are not here. You are not hurting me. You are strengthening me. I stand beside you, as I always stand beside you, because I wish it. I am now and shall always be your friend.”
“We aren’t here, Scotty,” Nyota murmured, and caught his face between her hands so he would look at her. “The things before your eyes are not tortures, but acts of love.”
You are not here.
“It’s the truth,” Spock said, certain.
“How can you know?” said Nyota, and Jim, and Scotty.
You may know by the words and actions of those you love. Have faith that you are not alone, and you shall not be.
“We are not here,” they agreed together, and Hades’ realm dissolved. The nightmare would never leave her, not entirely, but Nyota knew, with distant, shaky relief, that she would always be able to escape it.
On New Vulcan, although her body remained on the other side of the room, Nyota reached for Spock through another’s hands. She understood that in that moment that Saavik also reached for her husband, his body unbroken for these moments in the form of Spock.
Satisfied that what had been a precipitous situation was now stable, the telepaths and Sarek withdrew to another room. The four anchors remained. Whether the Vulcans watched, the humans did not know, for their eyes were closed—a very human reaction to an immense act of faith.
Nyota accepted the strangeness of it. Of soul outside of body, of a body not hers moving against Spock in every familiar, intensely erotic way that she’d always known. Of an awareness of another, weeping with the joy of being enfolded again by her own beloved. Of pleasure pooling urgently, even as she was both untouched and most tenderly touched.
Let go, Nyota, let go, Spock, the Vulcans said kindly in her mind, and Nyota could see that the two of them were still holding themselves separate, still aware of the difference between self and other. Her attention was turned, gently, to Jim and Scotty, present in that soulscape. Perhaps it should have felt intrusive, but there was nothing in them aroused or voyeuristic, nothing embarrassed or dismayed. They were still points, and with them waiting to protect them and bring them home, she could let go. Spock could let go.
And so they did.
When it ended, the bonds slowly dissipated into a gentle afterglow. The friends of Saavik and her husband lifted them wordlessly and carried them away to another room, to sleep and wake beside each other. Nyota curled beside Spock on a bed he had—and had not—shared with another. They too would sleep and wake entwined.
Kirk and Scotty looked at each other, and stood. And if there were tears running down their faces, neither man mentioned it. They stepped outside, into starlight. “It’s night,” Scotty said, astonished. “How the hell is it night? Wasnae it morning?!”
“That apparently took longer than we thought,” Kirk said.
“Yes,” Sarek said simply, coming to stand beside them. “I will have food and drink brought to your lodgings, and you must rest. You may stay as long as you desire, but Spock and Nyota will remain alone together for many days yet.”
“Is there anything you still need of us, sir?” Kirk asked Sarek.
“No,” Sarek said. “You have our deepest gratitude. The child was conceived; we sensed it. The first on New Vulcan.”
“That is extraordinary, Ambassador. Thank you for letting us be a part of this.” Kirk hesitated. “I think we may sleep easier after today.”
“I believe you shall. Captain Kirk, Commander Scott,” Sarek raised his hand. “Live long, and proper,” he said, and withdrew.
Kirk put a hand on Scotty’s shoulder, leaning on him, searching unsuccessfully for the words to say, and Scotty looked over at Kirk.
“Am I allowed tae say ‘holy shit,’ now sir?” Scotty asked with a shaky laugh.
“Holy shit, Scotty,” Kirk agreed fervently, and waved a finger between them. “You and I are going to change out of this Vulcan pajamawear, and then go get very drunk.”
“Aye, sir,” Scotty said gratefully.
“And then sleep for two days and find a shuttle back to Earth, I guess.”
“I’m no’ going back tae Earth,” Scott confessed.
Kirk squinted at him. “Excuse me? Just where the hell are you going, then?”
“Yorktown,” Scott answered simply.
“The Enterprise,” Kirk guessed reverently, and Scotty nodded. “In that case, Mr. Scott, you and I are going to get very very very drunk. Where do you think they keep their liquor?”
Scott shrugged. “I have a bottle of scotch in my room. Also, McCoy bought a case of bourbon two weeks ago and I make it a point tae steal a bottle of it from him every time he does, because it makes him crazy.”
“You are a smart man, Scotty. The Vulcans agree. Did you see the look on their faces when they figured out that you are a once-in-a-generation mathematical genius? Which, by the way, I didn’t know either.”
“You people really walk around yer whole lives without all that goin’ on in yer heads?” he grumbled. “No wonder I’m flat mad and cannae sleep. You, sir, by the way, are some sort of fixed monolith of the multiverse upon which history turns, so you cannae get away from incredulous Vulcan eyebrows either.”
“It’s Nyota who was really impressive in all this,” Kirk said softly.
“Aye,” Scott agreed. “She is always the most impressive person in the room.”
“Strange new worlds,” Kirk said with a laugh. “I just didn’t think we’d find them in Earth’s oldest friends, or with ours. Right. Drinks, Scotty. All of them. Now.”