I do not own Star Trek 2009, Supernatural, NCIS or NCIS: LA.
To the faithful readers: Welcome back! You're a patient, crazy, lovely lot to come back after many months…sorry about that. I could spiel on about my life issues, but that would bore you. It's not why you're here. New story, new twists, new characters, that's why you're here. Hang on for the ride!
To those just discovering the Impala 'verse: Hooray! I hope you enjoy this new story. I try to post a chapter a week. Just FYI – I'm fond of cliff-hangers. You were warned.
Enterprise
The USS Enterprise was humming sedately through space on her way home from what her captain would call the perfect run. It hadn't been boring and it hadn't been the usual brand of hair-raising terror. Protecting the pretty ambassador had had just the right spice of excitement without any death or serious injury and Captain Jim Kirk had managed to look heroic enough to steal a kiss from said ambassador at the end of it all.
Yes, he thought as he stretched in his command chair, it had gone very well indeed. The bridge was humming quietly with the pleased buzz of a relaxed but attentive crew and Kirk was turning his attention towards the disturbingly tall stack of PADDs requiring his attention when Uhura responded to the trill of her console and Kirk paused, his stylus hovering over the requisitions order as a strange ripple of dread ran down his spine.
He shook it off, frowning at himself. There was no reason for that dread. No one had wanted him dead in months. No one had gone missing lately. He knew exactly where the usual culprits were – Los Angeles was in space dock for a cosmetic refit (a too-influential diplomat had complained about thin carpet), Washington was babysitting a science expedition in the stable section of the Neutral Zone and the Impala was on a routine run back from the inter-universal star gate.
No reason to feel queasy at all.
But he set the stylus down and watched his communications officer with the intensity of a hawk.
She frowned, eyebrows drawing together in mild confusion. "I beg your pardon?" Uhura asked, her voice puzzled. "No, we haven't been in contact with the Impala. We're on our way to Starbase 3 to pick up a cargo of agricultural supplies." Uhura glanced up, waving her captain over as she continued speaking. "No, Admiral, we haven't. What's this all about, if I may ask?"
Kirk picked up the spare earpiece she handed him as the rest of the crew tried desperately to hide the fact that they were blatantly eavesdropping. "Admiral Cartwright," Uhura mouthed silently.
"Admiral," Kirk broke in. "How can the Enterprise help you today?" he asked with careful civility. No point in resurrecting their feud, especially when both sides had been working so hard at keeping the peace.
There was a crackle of silence in which Uhura swallowed hard and Kirk felt the worm of dread wriggle from his spine into his stomach. "Admiral?"
Cartwright sighed. "Best to wait until I have the Impala on the line as well," he growled, stress making the old man's voice uncharacteristically deep. "Lieutenant?" A soft murmur from the communications lieutenant on his end of the line carried through and Cartwright cursed. "What do you mean, they're still out of range? Hell. We need to get started on this now. Keep trying to reach them. In the meantime, we're going to carry on. Audio only – it increases the security of the connection." Kirk heard Cartwright take a deep breath. "Lucifer escaped," he finished bluntly.
Kirk felt the breath whoosh out of his lungs and his hand gripped the chair below him so hard it creaked.
"He what?" Uhura croaked, ignoring protocol in shock.
Kirk marshalled his thoughts. "When and where was he last seen?"
"Three hours ago in his cell," Cartwright snapped. "The fools over at super-max thought that even though Lucifer had already succeeded in the impossible, there was no way he'd make it off Pluto. Thus they delayed informing the Admirals. Pike's busy pulling them up on charges of criminal negligence and sheer stupidity as we speak. I contacted you as soon as you came into range. I've been trying to keep the trail warm for the past hour but I'm having the damndest time figuring out where to start. It's as if some cosmic being just yanked the bastard straight out of his cell."
Without prompting from her captain, Uhura's long nails clattered over her keys, rerouting power from Chekov's secret tri-D chess game and boosting her Scotty-issue communications console to reach the Impala.
"Enterprise will be at the prison in," Kirk glanced over to Spock, whose sharpened hearing had caught the whole conversation.
"Four point six hours at warp 9," the first officer replied calmly.
Kirk repeated the information mindlessly, already thinking six steps ahead. He cut off the conversation with Cartwright, who promised to send all the evidence via data-pack. "Spock, I want that data analyzed as soon as it arrives, is that clear?" Kirk snapped. The Vulcan stared calmly at his captain, silently reminding the volatile human that he needed to be thinking clearly in order to have any chance of catching up with Lucifer at all.
Settling into his command chair with deliberate care, Kirk accepted his first officer's pointed look and scowled unseeingly at the viewscreen. "I had hoped super max would hold him," Kirk muttered. "And he manages to bust out three hundred and seventy two days after we tossed him in there. Uhura, do you have hold of the Impala yet?"
The pretty lieutenant commander shook her head in consternation. "They're not answering my hails and they should be in range," she reported, her voice carefully professional.
"Damn, damn, damn," Kirk muttered. "Uhura, get Bones up here please."
Spock had just started in on the evidence analysis when Dr. McCoy stormed onto the bridge. "Jim, please tell me this is one of your twisted, juvenile attempts at humour," the doctor growled. "Do not tell me that sociopathic, moralistically bankrupt, sadist bastard is on the loose."
Kirk rubbed his forehead, feeling the headache building already. "All right Bones, I won't."
"Oh hell," McCoy breathed, his face paling. "Impala?"
"MIA," Kirk replied shortly.
"Washington?"
"Babysitting – that's actually a good idea. Uhura, tell Cartwright I want Gibbs on this as well. He's got more investigative experience than we do and he's damn devious to boot." The pretty communications officer nodded. "Chekov, I want you charting the Impala's course trajectory. We'll leave the investigation to Gibbs and start tracking down Winchester. Again."
"Why does this always happen to them and not us?" Kirk wondered to himself once they were under way.
Impala
"Sam, what do you mean the damn pixie ate through our communications lines?" Dean demanded, temper making his voice loud and tone short.
Sam glared back, grease smeared across his cheek. "I mean your bastard brain-child born of a drunken night with alpha shift just chewed up our communications array like you inhale cheeseburgers! Go try and catch it before it decides to snack on your precious command chair!"
Dean bit back a snappy retort. Technically it had been Sam's fault. Sam shouldn't have let him get into it with alpha shift. He vaguely remembered a drinking game, a dare and something about Tinkerbell. When he had woken up with a pounding headache the next morning, a sparkly little winged pixie-robot had been darting around pulling Sam's girly hair and generally making a nuisance of itself. The thing had been funny but harmless until its little metabolism got revving and it discovered a distinct taste for fiber-optic cables.
Good thing nothing drastic was going on in the universe today, he reflected grumpily as a team of pixie-hunters dashed by him, chasing the pest with home-made butterfly nets. It would be awkward if they had to respond to an emergency like the one on Beta 9. Alpha shift had been on break until their particular brand of expertise was required and like the good kids they were, they had showed up on the surface promptly.
Every last one of them had been dressed like zombies, fresh from their secret themed dance party in the Impala's hold.
The memory of Admiral Komak flushing a bright shade of bluish purple made Dean chuckle in spite of his irritation.
Six hours later, the pixie was furiously beating her little fists against an old-fashioned glass mixing bowl. Shari had cleverly set up a simple trap baited with delectably frayed fiber-optic cables and when the pixie knocked over the arm holding up the bowl, she had been trapped under the bowl.
Sam, Dean, alpha shift and most of the bridge crew heaved a huge sigh of relief. At least the pixie hadn't demonstrated any of alpha shift's more…drastic prank tendencies. The Repli-Tribble incident* caused a fresh shudder to rip through Dean's heart and would for years to come. "Dean, I want it deactivated," Sam said militantly.
Alpha shift squeaked in dismay and the pixie froze. Dean was about to say "Hell yes," when he made the mistake of glancing over. Bionic, brilliant blue eyes swam with fake tears, the pixie's wings drooping. The only thing that could possibly be sadder than the chastened pixie was the collective power of alpha shift. Sam had clearly been passing on his puppy dog talents.
Dean blew out a resigned sigh. "If you can figure out how to tame the damn thing, it can have a glass bubble. Once it demonstrates that it is useful and non-destructive, I'll think about keeping it, understand?"
They bobbed their heads in understanding as Sam scowled. "Come on," Dean muttered out the side of his mouth. "At the very least, they'll be distracted and you can fix the communications system without them getting into the acids again."
"Dean, if I could have a word?" Ellen's voice was syrupy sweet and Dean briefly considered making a break for the life pods. The pixie had torn through every corner of the ship, including sick bay and engineering. Both Bobby and Ellen were pissed at him after Sam had told them that the security tapes damned Dean for having the pixie idea in the first place.
Sam wiggled his fingers in gleeful farewell and Dean cursed his traitor brother. "Coward," he tossed lamely, hoping against hope that Sam would be shamed into accompanying him.
Sam rocked back on his heels, an unholy grin stretched across his face. "Realist. No point in going down with the ship. You're the captain, after all. Have a good chat with Ellen!"
Dean snarled at his brother and stomped off.
The pixie fiasco had been corralled, the irate CMO appeased and the ship was in the middle of a quiet night shift when Sam's battered console shrilled a strident alarm. Sam, who used night shift to get his sensitive work done, frowned and picked up the call immediately. "USS Impala, Commander Winchester."
"Winchester! Where the hell have you been?" Gibbs growled, tension rippling through the veteran captain's voice. That tension caused the hairs on the back of Sam's neck to stand on end.
"We had communications trouble," he explained, "but nothing we can't handle. What's wrong?"
"Get me your captain and yesterday!" Gibbs snarled and sensibly, Sam realized the anger wasn't directed at himself.
"Dean's on his way. Do we need to go to red alert?" he asked.
"Yes."
Sam sucked in a breath and punched the code into the console.
Alarms blared, lights flashed and the silent ship sprang to action, ensigns and commanders alike tumbling out of their bunks, the engines automatically revving up to full throttle. The infirmary immediately poised for lock down and Dean's booted feet hit the floor running.
He preceded Ash onto the bridge by a bare nanosecond, the pilot hot on his captain's heels. "Sam, situation," Dean barked.
"Don't know, Gibbs wants to talk to you first," Sam replied crisply, tossing his brother a private earpiece.
He watched Dean's face close off as Gibbs talked. Sam knew. Oh hellfire and brimstone, he knew. There was only one reason Gibbs would keep Sam out of a conversation like this.
Lucifer was on the loose.
Dean's stone-hard expression only confirmed Sam's worst fears. "Understood," Dean growled. "You keep investigating. We'll find the Enterprise." He paused when Gibbs clearly disagreed. "Yes, I know that's what Jim told you before he disappeared but everyone knows one of us goes missing and the other does the rescuing. No, last time doesn't count. You didn't bail us out. Enterprise bailed us out and you bailed them out. Big difference. Thank you, Sam tells me I'm a moron on a regular basis. No, it doesn't seem to be sinking in. I will not wait for the LA. They can catch up. Impala out." He cut the connection.
"No one on this bridge is stupid. Everyone knows what's going on," Dean snapped, striding to his command chair. "Strap in, fire it up and get ready for a rough ride. We have an Enterprise to find."
Washington
When Captain Winchester hung up on Gibbs, the Washington's bridge crew held their breaths. The only people who dared to try and hang up on Gibbs were, well, Kirk and Winchester.
The silver-haired captain clenched his jaw for a moment before forcibly relaxing. "Stupid, idealistic idiots," he sighed. That was as close as Leroy Jethro Gibbs would get to admitting that the stupid idealistic idiots had been right. "McGee, what've you got?"
The computer genius shrugged. "Nothing." Gibbs glared at his navigator, who wilted under his captain's heated glower. "Seriously boss, I've got nothing except a mild sulphur residue which both Ducky and Abby confirm as nothing more than sulphur. And it wasn't even a surface residue. It was a mildly elevated sulphur count in the air. Lucifer didn't touch the locks from the inside or the outside, no one broke through the walls and there is no way in hell anyone hacked any computer because super max deliberately does not have more than the bare minimum in the way of electronics. Even if someone had put the vid feeds on a loop, there would be evidence of exiting. The keys to super max cells only work once and Lucifer's cell didn't have a key for that day."
Gibbs scowled. "You're telling me there isn't a snowflake's chance in hell of Lucifer getting out."
"Boss, he was buried under fifty metric tons of steel pretending to be a door with a six inch gap in it through which his meal pellets were dropped. The pneumatic pistons required to lift that door could not be manipulated by human, Klingon, Vulcan or Romulan force. You'd need a forklift to move it and even then, the hallways are too narrow for heavy machinery. The water pipes are two inches in diameter and the toilet pipes four inches. There are no windows and no ventilation shafts. There is one small auto-bot that cleans up but it is removed from the cell once a week and immediately melted out of existence by a Vulcan guard, who is changed every rotation and only comes into contact with the prisoner once in a lifetime." McGee shifted uncomfortably.
"And yet he got out," Gibbs said half-sarcastically and the navigator slumped. "Good job, McGee," and the captain's voice was brusquely sincere. "We've got a clear picture now. I think we're going to have to look further afield than your standard professional prison break. Abby?"
"I have a thousand possible ways of breaking out of that prison," the peppy engineer bubbled over the comm, "but I admit most of them involve a major frontal assault, a photon torpedo and the end of the universe. Leave it with me, I'll reach out to some people I know. In the meantime, I'd keep my sensors peeled for that sulphur."
Everyone on the bridge blinked. Why did their crazy engineer give a rat's ass about the sulphur? "Care to explain?" Gibbs asked drily.
"Well, it's just a little hinky," Abby sounded thoughtful. "Major Mass-Spec has never let me down," Tony snorted and then ducked. You never knew if Abby had really gotten rid of those hidden paint-ball guns. "Watch it, Dinozzo. Major Mass-Spec may be an antique but he's aged like fine wine and he's never let me down yet."
"Abs," Gibbs reminded. "Hinky?"
"Right, well, you know that sulphur has a half-life of like, eighty-seven days in the atmosphere before it goes poof?"
"Yeah, so?" Gibbs prompted, hoping to get to the point sometime before senility caught up with them.
"Well, this sulphur is two thousand, three hundred and sixty seven years old, give or take a few months. It's atomically impossible and I can't explain it."
"If that's what you call a little hinky Abs," Tony interjected again, "I don't think I want to find out what you call a lot hinky."
"A lot hinky is you dressed in sequined drag dancing the Macarena on McGee's lap," she shot back without skipping a beat. "But seriously Gibbs, there's something freaky about that sulphur."
"I'll let Winchester know," Gibbs mused. "In the meantime Abs, you and McGee keep looking at the evidence. We'll turn back and try to pick up the trail. LA should be in the area to back up the Impala."
Unknown location
"Pay up, boyo," a gravelly voice demanded and the tall figure known as Lucifer sneered, almost refusing and then stepped back in wary respect as the voice's owner let his sharp teeth show in a wicked smile. "I don't give a damn what you do next as long as I get my payment."
"Yes, yes," Lucifer drawled, inhaling sharply with unparalleled pleasure. The air was clean, clear and crisp, fragrant with pine and dirt. Prison had been good for him. The sheer dullness had let his manic brain run wild and now - he crouched to gently stroke a pretty pink daisy - he had a better appreciation for his regained control over life and death. "I don't understand why you want that one though," he mused. "He's not that interesting. Compared to the others, that is."
The smile widened. "Because he's the only one who escaped and succeeded in living life to the fullest."
Lucifer raised an eyebrow. "So?"
"It was the perfect trap. Even if they got away, they wouldn't be free. But he is. I want to know why. I'm just a little curious. And irritated. So you're going to bring me my prize, you twisted Romulan mongrel or I swear by the stars and stones I'll throw you straight back into super max and add a few of my…friends to spice things up."
Lucifer shrugged fluidly. "Sure. We can lay another one of those traps you're so fond of. You can have him and I'll get my revenge. I can do whatever I damn well please." His prison-thinned face twisted into a rictus of poisonous hate. "After all, I've just escaped hell."
The wicked smile grew to diabolical proportions. "I think we're going to get along just fine."
Lucifer grinned back.
Sure they would. Right up until they tore each other apart, limb from limb.
Lucifer was looking forward to it.
*See The Prank Defenders, chapter 17 if you dare