"Captain! Shields are down to 32%!"

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

"We've got nothing left, Captain, weapons are failing!"

"Hull breach on decks A through C, sir!"

The ship lurched sharp to port, knocking several people off their feet.

"We're not going to make it, Captain!"

"Captain, we must yeild!"

"Hard about!"

"They're targetting the bridge, Captain, prepare for – "

There was a sudden shower of sparks and a calamitous creaking of the bending of metal as the hull was struck hard.

Fumbling his way across the bridge, Spock felt both blessed and cursed to be apart from the fear he knew was filling each one of these officers. He could feel a warm trickle of blood down the side of his face but he knew he could not pause to clean himself off. This was a life or death situation and his minor injuries were of little importance. The ship lurched again, much sharper to port, and Spock found himself falling hard against the communication panel. He gasped in pain, but managed to pull himself back up to his feet. His side was throbbing but there was nothing he could do about it right now. After all they had been through to get here, he was not about to give up Enterprise to a band of rogue Klingons.

"It is imperative that we yeild, Captain!" Spock cried, clutching at his side.

The screen showed a Bird-of-Prey highly damaged, yet still functioning. He watched on as the Klingon ship was blasted with everything Enterprise had.

"That's it, Sir. Weapons are offline."

Spock looked around wildly and caught the Captain's eye. Jim was bleeding heavily from the mouth but stood strong in front of the captain's chair. In that moment, Spock stared the Captain down. In all these months since they had left, Spock had learned just how far Jim's tenacity could carry him. Spock knew that without force, Jim would not yield until the very last moment. What Jim had a hard time pinpointing was when precisely that last moment was.

"Captain!" Spock said, wincing as the effort stung his side.

Jim stood there for one moment longer, holding Spock's gaze. Gritting his teeth, he turned to face Uhura.

"We yield. Hail them!" Jim yelled, frustration colouring his voice.

To Spock's relief, the ship stopped its rocking as the Klingons ceased their fire.

"Giving up so soon, Captain?" a swarthy-looking Klingon came on screen, his hair dishevelled and lank on his shoulders.

"We yield, Toq." Jim said, wiping his arm slowly across his mouth.

"An honourable soldier dies, he does not surrender." Toq replied, baring rotted, pointed teeth as he laughed.

"I am not a soldier." the Captain replied proudly, his jaw smeared with blood.

"Nor am I." Toq replied. "Now, hand over the deuterium."

Jim shot a glance over at Spock. Spock nodded at the Captain slowly. He had a plan.

"If we give you our deuterium, our warp engine will be completely offline. It will take us years to get home." Jim said stubbornly.

"I am more than willing to open fire again, Captain. Garthan and I had a bet as to how much longer it would take to puncture your bridge. Your petty concerns mean nothing to me." Toq laughed, leaning forward in his seat. "Prepare to be boarded."

The image of Toq was replaced once again by the Bird-of-Prey and Jim's head fell forward slightly in defeat.

Spock immediately turned around and hit the communicator. "Mr. Scott, I need you to get to the transporter as soon as possible."

Whipping around, he pointed at three ensigns – Jones, Lucas and Ogilvie, "I need you to create enough interference that the Klingons can not transport aboard."

"Spock, who do you think you are?" Jim asked suddenly, walking forwards.

"Listen to me, Captain. It is our only chance of getting out of here with enough deuterium to take us back to the next refueling station." Spock said, walking quickly along the bridge to the turbolift.

"You do not give the orders around here." Jim growled.

"Captain, now is not the time to let your baser emotions get in the way of logic. Please set your frustrations aside and follow me." Spock said, stepping into the turbolift.

Jim followed, quickly, but for a moment Spock was worried that it was only so that he could punch him right across the jaw. "What do you have planned?"

The phaser point digging into the underside of his jaw, Spock watched as the barrels of deuterium were rolled carefully by the Klingon rebels onto the transporter pad. Jim was standing across from him, a phaser point held against his temple. Jim held his gaze, a fresh trail of blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth and mixing with the dry on his jaw. A small smile played at the corner of Jim's lips and, paired with the grotesque amount of blood caked on to his face and neck, and Spock found it entirely disturbing. He watched carefully as each barrel was rolled away, counting slowly in his head. Finally, the Klingon that was holding him at phaserpoint released him and headed towards the transporter pad. A quick word to his compatriot in Klingon and Jim's captor released him, too. Together, they disappeared onto their own ship.

Without wasting a second, they split up. Spock turned the corner quickly to where Scotty had been held up at phaserpoint behind the transporter controls. All around him, crew members were running to their battle stations, preparing for immediate evasive action. If this was going to work, the crew needed to be perfectly on their mark.

"Mr. Scott, report." Spock said.

"Locked and loaded, Sir. Awaitin' the Captain's signal." Scotty said, barely looking up from where his hands were flying across the control panel in front of him. "I can't hold this barrier for much longer, Sir."

"It is imperative that we cut off all transportation into and away from Enterprise. I trust you." Spock said, reading over Scotty's shoulder as calculations, vectors and diagrams flew up on the viewscreen.

"I can give you two minutes, Sir."

Spock waited, supervising Scotty's calculations, for Jim to call down from the bridge that the Klingons had left. As much as Spock tried to suppress his anxiety, his palms were perspiring and he could feel his heart racing.

Jim was supposed to have reported by now, Spock thought, clutching at the pain in his side.

"Mr. Scott." Spock said slowly, looking from the calculations up to where a sparkle was starting to appear in the transporter.

"Somethin's coming through, Sir! I cannae stop it!" Mr. Scott yelled, as the faint outline of an object began to rematerialize on the transporter pad.

"Get out of the way, Mr. Scott!" Spock said, grabbing Scotty with all the strength he could summon and throwing him out of the way into the hall.

Spock watched as the barrel rematerialized on the pad in a mix of shock and horror. The beeping was already coming loud and clear, echoing from the inside of the barrel that had just finished reappearing.

"Explosion in transporter room!" Spock yelled as loud as he could. Before crouching down behind the console, Spock had the time to shut the blast door to the transporter room.

The last thing he remembered was the fear he felt between the last beep and the boom of the explosion.


"Spock?"

The light was blinding. He tried to shut his eyes but he was not sure if he remembered how.

"Spock? Hey, buddy, can you hear me?"

There was a high pitched ringing in his ears. Paired with the light, he wished suddenly for the darkness he had come from.

"Spock?"

There were people around him. He could feel them.

"Come on, man!"

He propped himself up on his elbows. Colours were starting to pour into his vision and he could make out shapes.

"Heeeey!"

Blinking furiously, people's faces started to flood into his range of vision.

"Where am I...?" He said more to himself than to the myriad of people around him.

"Sick Bay. You've been here for days."

While his mind was foggy, he was starting to remember.

"An explosion." He mumbled.

"Yeah, you saved a lot of people."

"And banged yourself up, too."

Slowly, his name came back to him. "I am Spock."

"Yeah, good job."

Spock sat up and he was hit by a wall of pain so intense he cried out. There were suddenly hands all around him and something being jabbed into the side of his neck. The pain became manageable, but only barely so.

"You recognize me?" a stern-looking man in a lab coat said, leaning over him.

"I believe so." Spock responded, leaning back against the pillows.

"What's my name?"

Spock's eyes narrowed as he searched frantically for a name.

"Doctor..." Spock said slowly.

"Good enough." the man said, clapping him gently on the shoulder.

There was another man and a woman there. Both human. He knew that they had something to do with this place, but he could not pinpoint what. The woman had a hand clapped over her mouth and was avoiding looking directly at him.

The blond man sat down on the bed next to him.

"Jim." Spock said before he even realized he knew who this person was.

"Yeah." Jim responded, a small smile on his lips.

Jim was badly bruised and his left eye was swollen half-closed. Dark red gashes decorated his jaw and forehead.

"What happened to you?" Spock asked, adjusting himself on the pillows behind his back.

Jim looked up at the woman behind him and the doctor meaningfully. They both turned and left as if on cue.

"The deuterium, Spock. It exploded. There was a miscalculation." Jim said slowly.

"Deuterium..." Spock murmured, trying to recall the substance to which Jim was referring. He had a feeling he knew what it was but, at the moment, he couldn't remember. "A miscalculation seems improbable."

"At least the explosion didn't knock all of you out." Jim chuckled.

A silence fell between them and Jim ran a hand through his dark blond hair. "Do you really not remember anything?"

"I remember quite a lot, Jim." Spock said, looking down at his hands. Several of his fingers were bandaged and a dark green stain had spread from the palm of his hand onto the wrappings. "I am a half-vulcan-half-human by the name of – " He uttered a name so unrecognizably Vulcan Jim barely caught it. "Also known as Spock."

"I've never heard your first name before." Jim said with a small smile.

"It is quite unpronounceable for most species." Spock replied. "I remember most of my life and that I am currently serving on a starship. I would assume that this is the ship."

"Correct." Jim said slowly. "Do you know her name? Any names of the shipmates?"

"Negative." Spock replied. "I do not remember."

Jim's brow furrowed deeply and he began playing with the edge of Spock's sheet.

"Jim? Have I upset you?" Spock asked slowly.

"Naw." Jim said, smiling slightly. He looked as if he was about to say more but instead clapped a hand on Spock's leg and stood up. "I'd better leave you to rest."

"I would like to walk around the ship, Jim, if I might. It may help me to repair some of the affected neural pathways." Spock suggested, sitting up in spite of the pain in his side and his head.

"Spock, you'd better not." Jim said, moving forward.

"May I enquire as to why?"

"You might want to take a look at yourself." Jim said, passing Spock a mirror from the counter before turning and leaving the room.

Raising an eyebrow, Spock lifted the mirror to his face. The person that stared back at him was almost unrecognizable. A large part of the hair over his forehead had been singed off and large, forest green burn marks covered his forehead and the side of his face. He wondered absently how deuterium could have exploded in such a way as to cause these contusions as he traced the line where the back half of his right eyebrow used to be. He knew now why that woman had been so upset by his appearance.

"Don't worry, there won't be much scarring. Though I can leave some for you if you think it might help your chances with the ladies."

The doctor came back into the room, his hands in the pockets of his lab coat.

"No thank you, Doctor. I would appreciate a scarless recovery." Spock said, watching as the doctor prepared another hypospray.

"Yeah, no problem. You can get out of here tomorrow or the next day. In the meantime my name's McCoy." He shrugged and as an afterthought added, "Or Bones. But only to Jim."

"Yes. Dr. McCoy. I remember." Spock said, memories starting to take shape again as he spoke the name.

"Now, we've got a bit of work to do on that memory of yours. I'm going to give you a hypospray, but I don't imagine it will take full effect on the pre-frontal lobe of your brain for another three days. You damned vulcans are so resistant to everything this serum won't have much effect until then." Dr. McCoy sighed.

"This serum will restore my memories?" Spock asked, slightly skeptical.

"It should. I mean, when short-term memory loss occurs it's usually due to damage in the pre-frontal lobe. It should restore at least some of it. The rest you can learn through going back through your ever-so detailed notes Starfleet keeps nagging us about. Your logs are so damned detailed that Starfleet's about to write a list of regulations based on them!" Dr. McCoy grumbled.

"An honour." Spock replied, both eyebrows raised.

"Well, not really. But your logs are detailed enough that you should be able to catch up on some of the more elusive details the serum can't catch. I can have it uploaded to a PADD for you, if you want. I know you would never miss a day of work." McCoy laughed.

"Humour is a difficult concept." Spock said, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, you're fine." McCoy smiled, clicking his pen and sticking it into the pocket on the front of his jacket.

"I will take the PADD, however." Spock said.

"Well, I'll get an ensign to do it for you. You're not the only one affected by the blast. My Sick Bay's overrun with scrapes and bruises." McCoy said, walking to the door. "Oh, and Spock? Don't let Jim come back in here. I know you don't mean any harm by it, but Jim's kinda shaken up by the fact that one of his best friends doesn't remember the friendship."

Spock nodded slowly, admittedly shocked by the revelation.

"I don't know how much you remember, but he's fond of you. He's going to get his panties in a twist over this anyways, so I'm not sure how much you can really avoid that." Dr. McCoy said, loading up a hypospray cartridge and pressing it to Spock's temple. "After this you'll be knocked out for a good six hours. You might have some weird dreams, but I expect you'll regain some memory of the last months."

Spock nodded slowly and leaned back against the pillows. The hypospray was administered and Spock was sent reeling into the darkness of a deep sleep.


"Nero." Spock said quietly, sitting straight up in bed.

It was dark in the room and he was quite alone. It was sometime after 23:00 hours and the curtains were drawn. It was dark and he could not see outside of his room. He could suddenly feel a deep, heavy throb of pain surge out from his ribs. He realized how lucky it was that the fall had not damaged his heart.

He had been dreaming about something that he knew had happened years ago. He had a vague memory of the events. It involved a tattooed man named Nero. The name Narada also hovered on the edge of his tongue but he couldn't remember what it meant. He had a headache along with the pain in his side and on his face and the attempt to recollect his dream wasn't helping it.

He lay quietly for a few moments, trying to ignore the pain as it started to take over him. He needed another dose of painkillers and he was starting to feel frustration surge up inside him at the situation he was in. He knew he was of importance to this ship and here he was, about as useful to Jim and the crew as a plomeek. It was enormously frustrating. When he glanced down to the side table he noticed, however, that someone had brought him a PADD. It was, at least, a small consolation that he could bring himself back up to date on the goings-on on board the Enterprise.

He powered the machine on and began scrolling through the many logs he had been keeping over the past couple months. Dr. McCoy was right – he had been thorough. He spent the next hour or so poring over the logs from the earliest days of the mission. He was finding, however, to his disappointment that what he learned was slowly fading away minutes after listening to it. He found that he had to listen to the first log three times before he could hold onto all the necessary information. It was enormously trying.

Beep Beep.

"Spock?" Jim's voice sounded as the communicator in his room turned on.

"Yes, Jim?" Spock asked, clearing his throat.

"Did I wake you up?" Jim asked tentatively.

"No, I was studying my first officer's logs." Spock replied.

"You never cease to amaze me, Spock. A man with half a face and he's still studying." Jim laughed.

"That is illogical Captain. Had I only half of my face I would certainly have died." Spock replied, surprised.

"It's a joke." Jim said.

"Again, this humour. I do not understand." Spock said.

"Sorry. I know." Jim sighed.

"Captain, may I enquire as to the reason for your call?" Spock asked, gritting his teeth as another wave of pain washed over him.

"Yeah... I couldn't sleep. I kept picturing you all alone and I felt kinda guilty." Jim replied.

"Sir, I assure you that aside from the pain, I am perfectly comfortable being here alone." Spock said.

"The pain? Didn't Bones give you something for that?" Jim asked, concerned.

"Yes, but that was many hours ago. I believe I have fractured ribs." Spock said.

"Yeah, I know. Three, actually." Jim said.

"You have studied my medical records well." Spock observed, his hand moving to clutch at his swollen side.

"No, not really. It's kind of hard to ignore Bones' medical rambling when he gets going." Jim said.

"I see." Spock said. "Jim, are you alright?"

Jim was silent for a moment. "Yeah, I'm alright. I just... Ah. Nevermind. I'll come see you first thing tomorrow morning, okay?"

"Captain, Dr. McCoy instructed me to accept no visitors." Spock replied, remembering Dr. McCoy's words of caution from their previous conversation.

"I'm sure he did." Jim said, laughing. "Come on, I bet you could do with a grilled cheese sandwich. I'll bring you one for breakfast."

"Sir, I do not know what a grilled cheese sandwich is."

"Spock! Come on! I know they're your guilty pleasure. I see you up at night in the mess with them all the time." Jim laughed.

"I... Jim, I do not know what grilled cheese is."

Jim's laugh faltered. "I guess you don't."

"I apologize, Captain, this has upset you?"

"No, no. You're pretty worried about that. I know you've given up a lot for us – the crew – so I'll bring you a grilled cheese sandwich tomorrow and I promise you won't regret it."

"I am sure that I will not." Spock said, clenching his jaw against the pain.

"Oh, and I'll page McCoy to come and shoot you up again."

"Thank you. Is that all, Sir?"

"Yeah. That's all. Goodnight, Spock."

"Goodnight, Captain."