Title: Second-Best Destiny
Series: Star Trek AOS/TOS/TNG, but set in the Rebootverse
Characters/Pairings: Spock, Kirk, Q, various. Background only Spock/Uhura
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: (this chapter) 4100

Warnings: Brief (apparent) character death, movie-level language. Spoilers for various TOS episodes and movies, mainly The Wrath of Khan and Generations. Minor spoilers for various TNG episodes including Sarek and Unification. All references to any of the three universes has been footnoted.

Summary: "Whatever our lives might have been, our destinies have changed." – AOS Spock, ST:2009 With their universe threatened by the Q Continuum, AOS Kirk and Spock are forced to confront their place in it - with painfully personal results.

Title comes from the deleted voiceover scene from the original 2009 movie:

"You once said being a starship captain was my first, best destiny. And, if that's true, then yours is to be by my side." – TOS James Kirk in absentia, original reference to ST:II, The Wrath of Khan.

A/N: This story was written eight years ago for a BigBang fic exchange on LiveJournal, back when only one movie had aired and I still didn't quite understand the characters. I was happy with the result then, but as this is still one of my favorite stories and I do think I now understand the characters much better, I decided to pull it down and do a complete re-write.

The plot hasn't changed, but I hope my writing quality has. I have ended up rewriting basically the entire thing, and am nearly finished now. I've expanded the 'verse of the story to accommodate the timeline canon, as it was originally set one year into a then-prospective five-year mission, and added minor now-canon plot points such as Spock and Uhura's relationship, as at the time of the original only one movie had aired and most canon was only speculation. I hope to do the same to its very ill-thought-out and incomplete sequel at some point in the near future.


Chapter Nine

Someone in a red shirt helps him back to his feet and keeps moving without pause, making a dive for a sparking console at the port side of the Bridge. His ears are still ringing from where he hit the edge of the floor, and why the hell are those seat harnesses not automatic when something like this happens.

"Damage report! And get a fire crew up here now!" His bellow cuts through the chaos that's erupted, and from behind him he hears the staccato chirps that indicate said damage reports are pouring in from all over the ship.

"Shields at seventy-four percent and dropping!" someone shouts over the red alert klaxon, off to his left somewhere.

The haze is slowly dissipating, but he doesn't cancel the order for a fire crew; those suppressant systems are tied into the drainage systems and if they've ruptured pipes in the drainage systems the suppressants might very well be kaput also.

"Damage reports coming in from all decks, Captain," Uhura's calm voice reaches him through the ringing in his ears, and he nods without turning around, eyes on the viewscreen where the menacing figure of a Romulan Warbird lingers. "Extensive damage to the aft decks. Aft shields buckling."

"Lieutenant, sound the evacuation alarm for affected decks."

"Already done, sir."

"Sealing off decks eight and nine due to imminent hull rupture," Spock's voice comes from his right, crisp with tension.

Another blast sends all of them scrambling to hold onto their stations as the ship lurches sickeningly under the blow.

"Evasive maneuvers!"

"Yes, sir!"

He knows Sulu's doing the best he can, but they're no match for a Warbird in terms of maneuverability, just due to their sheer comparative size. Another blast rocks the Bridge, and three full seconds of stomach-churning nausea indicate clearly that the inertial dampeners are now flickering, hurling the gravity levels aboard into a series of spikes before they finally level out.

"Shields at forty-three percent, sir! Aft shields at eighteen percent!"

"Evasive pattern alpha-seven, Mr. Sulu." That will at least turn their most affected areas away from another direct hit. He pounds the armrest comm. "Scotty, where are my warp engines?"

"Captain, with all the ionic interference from that blasted blue star disrupting the intermix formula, we have t'actually clean the Cerulean system before we can jump to maximum! And as it is, I'm holdin' everything together down here with a bucket o' bolts and a prayer!"

Well, that's fabulous.

"Lieutenant Uhura, any response from the Romulan ship?"

"None, sir."

"Keep trying them." He braces himself as another blast rocks the ship under his feet.

"Sir, should we return fire?"

"We can't, Mr. Sulu, not unless we want to risk going down in history as firing the shot that actually starts a war between the Federation and the Romulan Empire."

They still have no confirmation that it's actually Romulans inside that ship, and even if they did, his hands are tied here. If they can't get out of the danger zone in another minute or two there won't be much choice left, he will have to defend the Enterprise even at the cost of an interplanetary war.

"Shields at thirty-five percent, Keptin," Chekov warns.

"What the…check the navigational systems, there's something wrong here. Try to get me a diagnostic, Pavel, now."

"Mr. Sulu?"

"I don't know, Captain, she's just…sluggish, suddenly. No recorded loss of power from Engineering, though." The young pilot's fingers dance over the controls, searching for the source of the power drain.

"Captain." Spock's voice, hitherto relatively calm under fire but now tight with tension, pierces the chaos of damage control and slices right to the heart of the Bridge. "A foreign program has been introduced into the Enterprise's central processing units. Systems sluggish and growing more so. Our shields have been compromised to the extent that certain non-organic materials could have been transported aboard with the aid of a sophisticated field modulator."

Ice creeps down his spine. "Not –"

"Nothing organic, as of yet, but most certainly a technological virus of some kind. A highly sophisticated one, to be able to so rapidly assimilate into our own technology." Spock glances again at the console, then steps over to peer into the scanner readouts at his elbow. Finally he turns back around, face grim. "The Enterprise's central computer appears to be shutting down, sir."

"It…what?"

"Inexplicably, the core processes of the central unit appear to be shutting down completely."

"Well stop it! I don't care what systems you have to abort to do it, but divert power and stop the shutdown or we're dead in space here!"

Spock doesn't bat an eye. "Aye, sir. Ensign Chekov, your assistance if you please."

"Sir." The young Russian throws his station to the nearest replacement and dives under the library console as Spock begins pulling up encoding windows.

"Manually bypass the central circuits if possible to isolate the uninfected areas, Ensign. I am capable of rewriting the most vital programs from memory if an entire memory wipe is necessary…" His First Officer's fingers are fairly a blur of motion, and for a minute there is only silence as the two geniuses speed through a series of failsafes in an effort to check the virus running rampant through their supercomputer.

"Need the help of an experienced hacker?" Jim asks to break the tension, only half-joking.

"Negative; it is not skill that is required at this juncture but rather speed. The virus is spreading too rapidly to successfully recreate the necessary firewalls for containment." Spock's voice is muffled in his scanner as he watches sensor readings, both hands typing furiously without looking at the screens.

A sick feeling claws its way upward from the pit of his stomach, crawling in a nauseous string up the back of his throat.

"Captain, I've lost all navigational control," Chekov's replacement speaks up nervously.

"Shields are nearly non-existent, sir," Ramon, the Engineering lieutenant at station, adds, a tinge of panic flickering in his voice as nervous fingers hover over the unresponsive controls.

He hears a Russian expletive from under Spock's legs, and grips the armrests of his chair.

"Lieutenant Uhura, get me reports from all central systems aboard," he speaks up after a tense moment, but his Comms Chief is already turning toward him.

Her face tells him the bad news before the actual words are spoken. "Sir, systems are still functional all over the ship but they are no longer in our control," she reports quietly.

"Captain, I've just lost all control of the warp coil intermix chamber, I cannot move a bloody thing down here! She's shutting down as we speak, and there's naught any of us can do to stop it!"

"Sir, manual piloting has been disabled," Sulu adds his voice reluctantly to the mix.

"Voice override, Captain's authorization alpha-one-one-zero-alpha-one!"

"Access denied."

"Get out a distress call before we lose communications too!" he snaps. "And try again to hail that ship, Lieutenant."

"Aye, sir." But a moment later she shakes her head, silently telling him the result of both actions.

"Spock?" You're my last hope here…

His XO straightens up at last, and though probably most of the crew would never be able to tell Jim can see the tension in his posture. "Captain, I have managed to isolate the life-support systems under a protective firewall…but all else has been disengaged from our control."

"How is that possible? You can't at least splice and patch a temporary fix to hold us until we can get out of the system?"

"We have isolated the code, Keptin; this is not the problem now. The virus has apparently locked out all commands other than those from the Auxiliary Control bridge, sir," Chekov reports dismally as he scrambles back to his feet, shaking his head. "If we could reach one of the auxiliary consoles, it might be possible to override there, but we cannot bypass infected areas from these terminals here."

"In essence it seems to be a most remarkably advanced jamming lock, Captain."

"Exactly, Keptin. We can possibly break with time and effort, but not from here on the Bridge now that commands have been locked out."

"Why the – oh, no. Transporter capability?"

"No longer under our control, Captain," Spock replies evenly.

"Sir, I'm picking up weird energy readings in the lower decks," an ensign calls out nervously, her voice ringing shrill in the deathly silence that follows.

He has just enough time to panic before the biohazard alert shrieks a warning.


Time stops, or at least slows to that particular, mind-numbing crawl that can only make the impact of death when it hits that much more painful.

It's almost elegant, how simple it is – the tactician in him recognizes that even above the building panic – and yet so absurdly simple, he should have seen it coming. After all, he knows firsthand how hacking a ship's defense systems can be the key to an unwinnable situation.

But there is zero time for self-recrimination; he should have foreseen this, and yet he didn't – and the entire ship is about to pay for that costly mistake.

Readings from Auxiliary Control indicate a transport took place there, something too small to be human or Romulan or even any other species they recognize – size and shape indicating a canister of some kind. And given that the colonists on Cerulea died from inhalation of what they assume is a gas or virus…

When Spock quietly reports to him that it's clear from the overwriting going on in their computer core that the ventilation shafts to the AC Bridge are about to open, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what's happened.

"Can we beam it back out?" he finds himself calling above the clamor, voice strangely steady.

"Negative. All transporter functions have been locked."

"Uhura, hail them again."

"Sir, I have been, consistently. Our communications channels are now jammed, even the intra-ship comm isn't functioning."

No way to signal an evacuation, then, even if they had the time – which judging from these readings, they don't. The majority of his crew are still rushing about their business, totally unsuspecting of the wholesale disaster about to happen.

No way to beam the canister out, no way to go to warp, no way to shut down the ventilation system, no way to even signal a surrender now to the Romulan Warbird hovering off their port bow. In less than ten minutes, if the readouts for the destruction of their core's safety programs are correct, the AC Bridge's ventilation shafts will open, spreading the virus throughout the ship in a matter of minutes. All lockdown measures have to be enacted now from Auxiliary itself, and if that were possible he knows he would have heard from Scotty by now.

Those vents can only be closed and locked – or vice versa – from within the AC Bridge itself.

And no one can step foot in there without dying in under sixty seconds, by the hand of whatever contagion has decimated the Cerulean colonies. A lucky minute at most, is all they would have. And no human, now matter how quickly he moves, would be able to perform the re-coding necessary to break the computer lock before succumbing in agony, finally dying.

Wait.

No human can, no.

Nausea suddenly swamps him in a sickening wave, and it must show on his face because Uhura takes a step forward, asking him if he's all right.

Painfully ill, he places his hands on the dividing rail to steady himself. The image of a glass wall flickers into his memory, seen through clouded vision fast going dark from radiation, hands pressed futilely against it, can't touch the person on the other side, a terribly all-encompassing feeling of grief and guilt and pain…

"Captain." Spock's voice, close in his ear, and a hand on his arm shaking him vigorously.

He starts, inhales a breath like a drowning man, and forces the memory back into its dark corner. There will be new nightmares to take its place, in very short order.

He knows what he has to do.

"Walk with me," he whispers, and enters the lift without looking back.

He knows, somehow, that Spock would realize he was the recipient of the command and would follow; and sure enough, ten seconds later the doors close on the Bridge as they begin their descent.

"Captain?"

The inquiry is gentle, obviously guarded, but he can't quite answer yet, because if he does he's sure to lose his nerve and possibly his lunch right here when he has to be Captain over anything else. He can't do this, can't ask Spock to do this; but they are all going to die, all seven hundred and sixty-three of them, the whole ship, and – (1)

"Jim, please. What is it?"

He starts, and blinks up into earnest dark eyes.

He will never forgive himself for this.

"Spock…" He slams a hand on the override button, halting the lift with more force than necessary. "Spock, we're in trouble."

"I am aware, Captain," is the reply, devoid of any dry humor that might have appeared at another time.

He's half-afraid he is going to start hyperventilating if he finishes this, but he has no choice.

"Spock," he swallows viciously around the object stuck in his throat, "someone has to get into the Auxiliary Control Bridge and retake the ship. We both know we've tried everything else that can be done in this amount of time."

Spock nods slowly; no doubt he's already run through every possibility in the two minutes they'd had since discovery of the virus, and has likely discarded all of them as invalid or impossible.

"Someone has to get in there, Spock," he says through clenched teeth. "Someone who can enter the right codes with the right clearance in the amount of time he would have before the virus kills."

"The virus kills on average within thirty seconds; that has been proven, Captain," Spock reminds him.

"I know. It…it kills a human, within thirty seconds. And no human, however fast, can release the computer in thirty seconds."

Dread settles deep in his stomach, curling upward to wrap cold tendrils around his heart. They only have five minutes now; nowhere near long enough to get into one of the EV suits stored three decks below Auxiliary Control. And while there are breathing masks on each deck for precautionary purposes, the only ones on the AC Deck are within Auxiliary itself, inaccessible within the storage compartments that are at present sealed due to the computer lock.

Spock isn't the most brilliant CSO in the 'Fleet for nothing; it doesn't take him long to connect the dots.

The picture they make is going to haunt Jim for the rest of his life.

"There is no guarantee that I will have much longer than thirty seconds, Captain, if that," Spock finally speaks, voice far more controlled than it should be under such a sentence.

He's closed his eyes by now, unable to look at the man he is betraying so completely, so heartlessly.

"I will have somewhat longer, due to the differences in the Vulcan respiratory and nervous systems – but I know not how much longer, Captain. There is no guarantee I would succeed in releasing the computer before succumbing."

Bile rises in his stomach, burning an acidic streak of fire all the way up to his throat.

"I…I need you to try," he finally manages to choke out.

Silence.

"You're the only one aboard who even has a prayer of succeeding," he whispers, eyes still clenched tightly shut against the pain that burns behind his corneas. "If I could do it, I'd do it in a heartbeat – but I can't. Not this time." He opens his eyes finally, and meets the calm dark gaze. "Spock, if you can save this ship, the seven hundred people aboard her…I need you to take that chance."

"Understood, Captain." There is no accusation in the tone, no indication that his First had just calmly accepted a painful, agonizing death sentence – one that guarantees he will not even live long enough to see if his sacrifice has been successful in saving his crewmates. No bitterness that his Vulcan blood and heritage are this time going to cost him his life, through no fault of his own.

No reproach for the man Destiny supposedly said would be his closest friend, knowingly sending him to his death.

"Computer, resume lift functions. Auxiliary Control Deck."

How can he be so calm about it?

Blinking, he swears softly as one of the stinging tears he's been fighting to suppress stealthily trickles out from behind an eyelid. They've both lost so much, why do they have to lose this too? He slaps furiously at the moisture, dashing it away before his First can see; emotional displays are the last thing Spock needs to focus on right now.

He knows – oh how he knows! – what it feels like to be aware that you're walking to your death, in a Hail Mary gesture you can only hope saves the people you love.

Gods, Uhura is never going to forgive him. Not for this.

"Jim." A cool hand closes around his wrist, gently tugging his hand away from his face. He blinks his eyes clear to see Spock's calm features a few inches from his own. "This is the only logical solution. You cannot blame yourself for making the correct choice to save the Enterprise."

"I don't think that knowledge is going to help me ever forgive myself, Spock."

"You must, Jim. The Enterprise requires you at full capacity to escape this situation. You cannot permit emotional distractions at this time."

"That's not going to be possible. Damn it all, why couldn't it be me?" He shakes his head, trying to pull his mind back from the abyss it's reeling above – because Spock's right. He's always right.

Spock's eyebrows flicker in dark humor. "I can assure you, Captain. I would much prefer this scenario to a repeat of past events." He holds up a hand briefly to stall Jim's protests. "Besides. To know that you – that the Enterprise and all aboard her will be saved by virtue of my sacrifice, makes that sacrifice quite worth the expenditure."

The slight slip isn't lost on him, but he is fast losing control of any rational thought as the chime of the lift begins to count down the floors to the Auxiliary Control Deck, which has already been evacuated by a Code Blue, a biocontaminant alert.

"If I could only have just –"

"No," Spock says gently, stilling him with a firm hand on his shoulder. "No regrets, Jim."

Nodding, he swallows hard. Twice. And then Spock releases him, steps backward toward the door as the lift slows.

"I'll get us out of here, I swear it," he vows, forcing dark determination in to steady his voice. "It won't be in vain, I promise you that, Spock."

"Since our mission began, I have never doubted you, Captain, even when you most doubted yourself," Spock replies, eyes directly fastened upon his face in a rare gesture of warmth. "You may yet doubt your own potential, and Starfleet in its ignorance may as well – but your crew never has. You are a skilled and highly capable commander, one who will make his mark in history. To serve under you has been a privilege and an honor."

Okay, so he really is crying now, although it's relegated to two tears seeping out the corner of one eye than the all-out bawling like a child he really feels like doing.

"Spock…" he whispers hopelessly, as the lift grinds to a halt – too soon, far too soon! "I'm so sorry."

"Regret is illogical, Captain," is the quiet reminder, and Spock raises a hand in the familiar ta'al. Their eyes meet once more, and for the first and last time he gets a glimpse of a small, affectionate smile on his First's impassive face – the smile Old Spock always offered him, the one he had wished for so long to see on his own Spock's lips.

"Please tell Lieutenant Uhura…" For a second the mask slips, and Jim nods earnestly.

"I will. I promise."

The doors open onto the empty deck, eerily deserted and lit by ominous flashing blue lights.

"Live long and prosper, Captain," Spock says, and the next instant he's gone around the corner.

The doors close, sensing no one in the doorway, and Jim stares at them for a moment, hand still upraised in farewell. While he'd like nothing better than to give in to the crippling guilt that has his lungs in a vise-like grip, he has only one minute, two tops, before Spock is in position before the Auxiliary Control Bridge doors. If he's successful in his mission, they will have to warp out of here like a bat out of hell, and even then it'll be tricky going with that Warbird.

Also, punching the tritanium wall of the lift as hard as he can? Not a good idea.

But by everything he holds dear, in any universe – someone is going to pay for this, as soon as he can get his ship out of danger. Fists clenched, he scrubs his sleeve across his throbbing eyes, takes a deep breath and glares at the control panel before him.

"Bridge."


Footnotes

Chapter Nine
(1) The TOS NCC-1701 had a crew complement of 432; 430 plus Kirk and Spock. Based on the visuals we receive of the AOS Enterprise (ie. Engineering being at least twice as large, the Bridge having far more personnel on it), I personally believe the ship to be considerably larger in this world, with a crew complement to match.