Chapter Text
Captain's log: stardate 4526.6. The Enterprise received a subspace transmission from an Andorian freighter at 09:30 this morning. A transport carrying a Federation survey team crash landed on the planet Pâton Mir, an uninhabited planet in the Remault system being considered for colonization. Six of the fourteen members of the team were found dead on arrival, assuming as a result of the catastrophic crash. While not always the most pleasant of peoples to deal with, the Andorians rescued the remaining eight survivors and are en route to Starbase Laurel 7 in sector 41 to transfer them to the medical facilities and the morgue. It is as of yet unclear just why the transport crashed, but Mr Spock's preliminary scans indicate ionic turbulence, suggestive of a storm front. The Enterprise has been ordered by Star Fleet to reroute to Pâton Mir to retrieve the transport's black box and salvage any equipment.
I explained to Admiral Wainwright that the Enterprise is scheduled to rendezvous with the USS Ginsburg in thirty-six hours at Starbase 867 to transfer very time-sensitive biological samples, any delay could result in the entire crop spoiling before its delivery to the Terra-forming colony on Eldorado Prime. Since this mission is routine in nature, Mr Spock has volunteered to pilot a shuttle to Pâton Mir himself. It should take no more than sixteen hours to offload to the Ginsburg, after which Mr Chekov has plotted a course to pick up Spock, the black box and any materials he has been able to salvage.
Kirk watched as the Galileo swooped gracefully between the warp nacelles and out into open space.
Spock had been unusually pensive and distant since they'd departed Station K7. He was more reclusive than normal, skulking off to his quarters promptly upon being relieved from his scheduled duties, not emerging again until the following morning.
Kirk didn't want to say that Spock was being a prick, but his First Officer was being a prick to the nth degree. It'd been a relief for everyone when he'd volunteered to go solo for this quick side mission; it wasn't exactly within regulations for Spock to go on his own, but with how irritable and standoffish he'd been the last couple days, regulations could be skirted around.
Kirk had the sneaking suspicion that a certain Vulcan had a very guilty conscience about the plight he'd forced upon all of those poor Tribbles.
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"Computer, estimated time until ionic storm front reaches Pâton Mir at its present speed and trajectory?" Normally that was the sort of calculation Spock was able to make himself, but at present he was preoccupied with plotting the course and speed of the Galileo.
And he'd already been distracted before he'd even sat in the pilot's chair.
'Working. Leading edge of ionic storm front will enter upper atmosphere in three point two three hours.'
Three point two three hours.
Good.
Tapping the last of his commands into the navigation console, Spock engaged the auto-pilot, pressed another button to lower the cabin's lights slightly and leaned back into the chair. "Computer," he commanded the machine again, "access Commander Spock's music archive, file number 1006, albums Argue With A Tree, Foiled Live, Ugly Side and Things We Do At Night. Play in chronological order." Spock watched the star field slip by outside as the raspy, gravely voice of the singer floated through the air inside.
Not for the first time, Spock was grateful that the Captain and Mr Scott had allowed him to download an abbreviated version of his expansive personal music collection into all the shuttlecraft's databases. The archive was extensive enough that almost every genre of Terran music was represented and it could still take weeks to make it through its entirety; his master playlist stored on hundreds and hundreds of data tapes could take years to complete. It wasn't just his executive privilege that allowed him the luxury of passing the time by listening to music in the shuttle, he'd granted permission for any crewmen to access the files whenever the shuttles were being utilized.
The monotony of the doldrums between solar systems traversed via shuttlecraft was draining, exhausting even, despite the constant monitoring of the navigation displays and the ambient background music had prevented more than one piloting crew from falling asleep at the consoles.
Spock was indifferent to the monotony, to the mundane. It often allowed for his mind to mull over whatever mathematical equation his junior officers had deemed unsolvable, or logistical nightmare Mr Scott and his engineers were attempting to solve, to calculate whatever opposing astronomical odds it would take to get the ship out of whatever danger it was facing, or wrestling with the illogic of tamping down the not-entirely-unwelcome emotional attachment he was developing to Nurse Chapel.
He reclined further back into the chair, hiked his right leg up to prop it against the console, leaned forward again to stretch out the muscles of his right hip. He'd been in the gym yesterday when Mr Riley's ion mallet slipped from his hands as he was struck mid-swing, sending it careening through the air to ricochet off the bulkhead and into Spock as he'd been rolling out of the navorkot maneuver of Suus Mahna. The Captain and Dr McCoy were close to banning Parrises Squares from ever being played on the Enterprise again, he'd been the seventh injury from the game in the four months since it had been introduced. Minor as it was, Spock acknowledged that McCoy was, indeed, correct and that he'd have a nasty bruise and soreness in the muscles.
With the auto-pilot engaged, the normal whirs and blips from the instrument panels were silent and nothing else filled the air except the sounds of Spock's own breathing and the music from the comm panel.
/I wish I could go to sleep and wake up with amnesia,
And try to forget the things that I've done/
He swung his leg back down off the console, sat up ramrod straight in the chair. "Computer," he barked at the unit. "Pause playback. Amend previous request." He thought for a moment, running through the pre-programmed catalogue and the amount of time left he had to travel. "Access file number 1801, miscellaneous performances. Play audio recordings of Queen Live Aid, 2022 Super Bowl halftime show, 2007 Super Bowl halftime show, Nirvana Unplugged, keep Things We Do At Night."
Trying to forget what he'd done was exactly what he'd been trying to do for two days.
He was a murderer.
No amount of meditation could calm the reeling in his mind that he had been the one that had given the order to Mr Scott to beam the Tribbles onto the Klingon ship. Every Vulcan and Human voice in his head was screaming that he'd condemned the innocent creatures to violent, painful deaths.
Pests they were, yes. But they were still living and breathing entities deserving of humane treatment and he'd sent them away to be slaughtered.
Every moment these last two days not spent pondering, postulating, calculating or hypothesizing left his mind to conjure up ever-increasing horrific scenarios in which those poor Tribbles were being tortured.
It was complete and utter bullshit that Dr McCoy teased Spock that he didn't have an imagination. He most certainly did have one, a very over-active one, and it'd been running rampant. Spock was well aware that he was being what Lt Uhura classified as a "certified grade a asshole" since departing Station K7; when the opportunity arose for a solitary mission, he'd practically jumped at the chance to get away from all those scrutinizing, accusatory glances, even if those glances were just figments of that imagination.
All indications that this side mission to Pâton Mir were that it would be of such a routine nature that he'd be able maintain a semi-meditative state while performing his duties, that he'd be able to "reset," as it was, his guilt and anxiety over his cruel treatment of the Tribbles.
At least he hoped that would be the case.
Spock reclined back in the chair again, letting Freddie Mercury's siren song wash over him. Not for the first time he wondered what it would be like to actually be at Wembley Stadium to witness this in-person. With the intermix formula he and Mr Scott had created, it was possible, of course; he and Uhura, his fellow insatiable music connoisseur, had even gone so far as to devise a covert plan should the opportunity ever arise. But he, Captain Kirk and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise already had thick files of violations stored at the Department of Temporal Investigations' records section that self-indulgence was both highly illogical and out of the question.
Spock was brought out of his musings by the alert of unexpected turbulence. He disengaged the auto-pilot, brought the lights back up to their full illumination and studied the displays before him. The ion storm front had gathered strength and speed, the Galileo was on a direct intercept coarse with the leading edge.
"Shit!" he muted the music, calculated a new trajectory, tapped the new coordinates into the navigation console. "Galileo to Enterprise. Galileo to Enterprise. Come in Enterprise." The ship was likely out of range of the shuttle's shorter transmitting capabilities by now. He refused to let the memory of the last time he called for help from this shuttle to surface.
"Galileo to Enterprise. Come in Enterprise."
(A/N: Lyrics are from Blue October's Amnesia.)