Chapter Text
Landing on Rigel IV was complicated and made no less so by word traveling ahead of them.
Argelius’s government had issued a very broad-reaching arrest warrant for Scott; that was not too surprising, and even if Jim did file for an injunction, the Federation court would have wanted him held in custody. Coming out of warp meant picking up the Federation’s public broadcast, which Spock had intentionally routed to come up on the console for reading, thinking it would be both unkind and unwise to make Scott have to listen to it. The engineer had been hounded enough for one day; a reminder he was still being hunted seemed pointless and cruel.
Notably, though, there was no word in that broadcast whatsoever about Spock or the shuttle he’d taken.
None of the three administrators he’d stunned had seen him, but Spock knew instantly that his not being mentioned was a choice Jim Kirk had made. And one he would not be able to keep making indefinitely.
Spock did not assume, of course, that they were not being looked for. Just that it had not become a formal hunt by the Enterprise to encompass both he and Scott, and that so far, Jim was shielding his career, his identity and his actions from both the Argelians and their own superiors.
Rigel IV occupied a somewhat loose place in the Federation's structure; it was not a member world, but parts of it were under Federation oversight. Other parts were an economic free-trade zone. So, it was one of the relatively few places where Orion traders and Klingon market buyers could be found on one archipelago, and where Starfleet had recruitment offices and the Federation had embassies on another.
The lines, of course, blurred sometimes. As they often did.
Landing the shuttle was its own challenge; Spock had not had time to take less conspicuous clothing or to access his accounts and transfer credits to physical credit chips. Landing in Federation territory with a Starfleet shuttle would require him to signal identification and his purpose, but landing in the free trade zone would attract a great deal of unwanted attention and might result in a stolen shuttlecraft.
There was no easy answer, but decisions had to be made. So, reluctantly, he rousted Scott -- he doubted the man had been more than dozing, but still regretted the disturbance -- and asked if there was any quick way to modify the shuttle’s engine signature enough to confuse orbiting sensors. It only took Scott about fifteen minutes of tinkering to do just that; he used the shuttle’s own sensors as something of a scrambler.
Spock aimed for the nightside and then promptly brought the shuttle down in a (very quiet and controlled) crash landing into the ocean.
“Why’re we scuttlin’ a shuttlecraft?” Scott asked, just incredulous enough that Spock was pleased the man was engaged for the moment, given that was a very transient state right now.
“To evade the inevitable pursuit for as long as possible,” Spock answered; he had already packed everything that could be of use to them into the waterproof survival tote bag. All that was left after that was to leap, puncture the air bladders holding the shuttle up with a survival knife, and make for shore. “There’s no wilderness left on this world within which to hide it, absent the ocean.”
The water here wasn’t deep; deep enough, five and a half meters, but not so much so that the Galileo II would be unsalvageable. Spock had set the shuttle’s emergency Starfleet beacon to activate in two standard days, which was the amount of time he estimated it would take to get him and Scott hidden, accounting for possible setbacks. The salt water wasn’t going to do anything particularly kind to the shuttle’s electronics, but it would be repairable. In the meantime, they were in the middle of a kelp forest, which would further hide it from prying eyes.
It was a fairly long swim to land on the beach, but the sea was warm here, and the waterproof tote bag would also act as a life preserver if they needed a rest.
“Take this,” Spock said, passing the tote off to Scott, who stood at the side hatch looking beleaguered. A fair state for the man to be in, Spock thought; the past standard day had been hard on the engineer, and that after recovering from injury for weeks before it. “Are you capable of swimming?”
Scott did as he was told, clutching the tote in bandaged arms spotted red while he looked off as if in thought. Then he said, a little clumsily, “Rafts. I shoulda added rafts to the survival gear.”
“Can you swim?” Spock asked again, patiently; while time was counting down to when the Enterprise -- far faster than one of her shuttles -- came into orbit, he felt no need to rush a wounded and dazed man.
“Aye.” Scott shook his head, hard enough that it was obviously an attempt to clear it and not a negative answer; he winced and then straightened up. “Not sure how fast I’ll be, though.”
“Speed isn’t required,” Spock answered, opening the hatch; outside, the night air was balmy and the sky was clear above. The primary moon illuminated the calm sea surrounding them and their path to shore; the second one further out was an ocean moon itself and added dynamic colors to the environment that Spock could find pleasing even in this situation. “That tote will also serve as a flotation device. Should you run out of stamina, it will hold your head above water,” he added, turning back to the engineer.
All Starfleet officers and enlisted had to be able to swim; it was part of their Basic Training, the six month course that every direct enrollment went through regardless of future position. Spock knew how to swim before that thanks to his mother, though it wasn’t something he enjoyed. He had struggled with it initially, even in Basic, but now was proficient enough for this. Moreover, though, he had stamina his human colleague didn’t even in peak condition, thanks to his Vulcan heritage.
“Boots,” Scott said, after a moment of looking at Spock; he set the bag aside and sat down to pull his service boots off, then his socks, jaw knotted visibly at asking that much work of his forearms.
“I hadn’t considered that,” Spock admitted, following suit, as the shuttle bobbed gently in the mild swells. Once they had gotten them off, he took the tote long enough to pack both pairs of boots and socks in it, then pushed it back over. “Are you ready?”
“I don’t know,” Scott answered, after a beat, as both of them sat like matching chess pieces; the same team, the same postures, mirrored.
Spock looked at their feet, pale tinged pink and pale tinged green, then looked up and asked what was probably the more important -- maybe even most important -- question: “Do you trust me?”
In all their long years as shipmates, he’d never asked Scott that before; had never before needed to. They certainly trusted one another professionally, and there were layers where that had grown roots into their more personal lives regardless of intention, but the kind of trust he asked for now was well beyond that.
It was a deeper and altogether more dangerous kind.
He also knew, on some level, that he might be the only person still left aboard the Enterprise who could ask for it.
They regarded one another for a moment, Spock hanging on the end of the question mark, and Scott weighing it carefully. But then Scott just blinked and nodded once and said, “Aye, I do.”
Simple words, but heavy. Spock nudged the tote over further and said, “Jump, I’ll be right behind you.”
“Do you remember,” Spock asked, as they swam, “that mission to retrieve the downed probe pieces from Olara SR4?”
Their forward momentum was halting, but the tide was with them right now and would be for several hours. The stretch of beach they would land on, if all went according to plan, was quiet enough that it would not be watched closely, and even if someone spotted them, they might look like nothing more than people preferring to swim at night. There was a free-trade town beyond the scattering of residences there, then an array of other settlements along a road stringing between archipelagos like a necklace chain between jewels, which would eventually culminate in them landing in the free city Ahiri, which bordered the Federation city of Thanov.
Spock had not studied Rigel IV extensively, and he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to ask much more of his colleague than getting to land and under some sort of cover, but he did have an understanding of how to move around rougher areas and elements thanks to Captain Pike. And he did have enough information in the shuttle’s computer banks to plot their evasion strategy.
“The one where ye broke yer leg,” Scott answered, hanging onto that survival tote and not making much in the way of forward progress right now. “And almost froze to death.”
Spock hummed an acknowledgment. “If I remember correctly,” and he did, “the freezing was mutual, in no small part because you dove into the river after me.”
Scott pried his eyes open, pulling his chin off of the tote that was barely holding him up right now. “And we still didn’t find six percent o’ the damned thing.”
“Indeed. I remember the paperwork we were subjected to because of that six percent.” Spock treaded closer; the moon was low enough now to have turned a rich golden color. “More accurately, though, it was five point eight nine four percent.”
That got a surprised little laugh out of Scott, who then shook his head with a hint of a grin. “Leave it to you to have worked out the exact percentage we missed of a probe that was scattered across sixteen klicks, Mister Spock.”
Still, the laughter seemed to rally the engineer, who readjusted his grip on the tote and went back to kicking; even considering how merciless the past day had been, though, Scott typically had a kind of dynamism about him that was only rarely repressed, a kind of driven energy that manifested in anything from regular overwork, to the way he would rock from heel to toe and bounce slightly on the balls of his feet when otherwise stationary. That same dynamism wasn’t in evidence now, though, and Spock was concerned by that fact.
It could very well have been exhaustion, but if Spock were to lend any credence to intuition, he would venture it was something more malevolent at work on his colleague.
“It was fortunate that Chief Barry was willing to take on programming the scanners to ascertain that the five point eight nine four percent we didn’t find was all inert. While the advanced alloys were considerably beyond the native population’s development, their chances of finding them were minuscule,” Spock continued, keeping pace with Scott.
“Aye. She saved us havin’ to go back and find the rest of it.” Scott heaved out a breath. “Have we even gotten any closer to shore? It doesna seem like it.”
“We have. I could tell you with reasonable accuracy how far, but I would not be able to go into fractional percentages.”
“No, no. I’d rather ye didn’t.” A beat. “What has ye bringin’ up that mission, though? It was what, twelve years ago?”
Spock nodded agreement without offering a more precise amount of time; still, the answer was a little more complicated than he might have intended when he did bring it up, so he didn’t give it right away, choosing instead to analyze it.
He remembered the agonizingly painful shock of falling into a river when the bank gave way further back than it would have been expected to, landing amidst chunks of ice being chased by a rapid current. He remembered his leg getting trapped in a fork of some submerged obstacle and the spiral fracture that came of the torsion there, vicious enough to break even dense bones grown in higher gravity. He remembered clinging to the boulder that was holding the obstacle there, but also holding his head above the water.
Given Vulcan memory, all of that was recalled easily and with clarity, but the part which carried an emotional resonance wasn’t any of those.
It was then-Lieutenant Scott, assistant chief engineer of the Enterprise, taking only moments to eye the bank, eye the current, drop his pack and gear, and then leap into the river after Spock, landing in a tangle of branches and then, once he could breathe again, breaking free of them to come downriver to where Spock was trapped.
He did this despite Spock’s shouted attempt to order him not to; while they were the same rank, it was Spock’s mission and command. Both at the time and later, Spock chose to believe that Scott simply hadn’t been able to hear him over the roar of the water; both at the time and later, he harbored a secret suspicion that Scott had indeed heard him and just outright ignored the order.
Spock remembered the wrenching pain as the engineer managed to get him loose, some of that by strategic kicking, but given the other option was drowning, or freezing and then drowning, Spock could hold no judgment for it. And he remembered the teeth-chattering apologies, and the way the engineer towed him to shore, fighting the current, even though Spock was only able to help him when they reached the bank.
They both barely got out of it with their lives. But of the two of them, Scott was the one who had had hypothermia and had survived it in the past, and while he was struggling and stumbling, he not only got them out of the water, but then went back for his pack, brought it back and managed to set up the emergency shelter and heating elements in the trees despite nearly useless hands, just enough to get the two of them through until they could warm up and recover.
They stayed huddled, shivering close together, though with no skin contact, which would have been too much for Spock in that context; by the time morning came, they had finally stopped shivering enough to doze and try to recover some energy.
Spock’s leg was swollen and deeply painful, but he was able to endure the following first aid. Then Scott had spent the day with him drying clothes, setting up their regular, more elaborate camping setup and heaters and bridging the larger shelter to the emergency one, rather than forcing Spock to move from one to another. He kept a tricorder running to warn them if anything or anyone came in proximity and he slept intermittently between chores.
The day after that, the engineer had taken up the mission again solo, heading out and bringing back pieces of the probe, bringing back water for purification as needed, and never complained once about the doubled workload. For his part, Spock made their food and made Scott cups of hot tea from his own stock, which was quietly appreciated; after that, different small tea collections became a gift they exchanged every year on the anniversary of them first boarding the Enterprise.
Aside injury and a leap into the river, though, that mission was unremarkable. One of many, many away missions they had together, sometimes just them, often part of a larger group.
“I knew that I wouldn’t die there,” Spock said, finally; it roused Scott again, who was swimming but clearly taxed, and who may have forgotten he’d even asked the question. “Even when I was in the river, clinging to that boulder, I knew that I wasn’t going to die because I trusted that you would do everything in your power to prevent it.”
There was a quiet snort there, after a long moment where Scott was no doubt absorbing that. “That’s givin’ me a fair bit o’ credit there, Mister Spock. Especially since I’m pretty sure I made that leg worse by kickin’ it free.”
Spock could hear the twelve years past apologetic wince in Scott’s voice as he talked about it, too. Yet it still didn’t change the facts. “I made a full recovery, Mister Scott; the transient pain was necessary.” He thought, then just finished, “I don’t know if I can keep you from all harm in this, but I will do everything in my power to prevent it just the same.”
It was not their usual method of communication, but it was sincere and truthful nonetheless. And after another pause, Scott just said, quietly, “I know.”
It was gratitude, not necessarily agreement, but it was enough for now.