Chapter 19

A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice.

-Bill Cosby (so true - Cat)

Caitlin's POV

"129 years from now, a star will explode and threaten to destroy the galaxy. That is where I'm from Caitlin. The future. A star went supernova. Consuming everything in its path. We promised the Romulans that we would save their planet. We outfitted our fastest ship. Using red matter we would create a black hole which would absorb the exploding star.

We were on route when the unthinkable happened. The supernova destroyed Romulus. We had little time. Spock had to extract the red matter and shoot it into the supernova. As we began our return trip were intercepted. He called himself Nero, Last of the Romulan Empire.

In our attempt to escape, both of us were pulled into the black hole. Nero went through first. He was the first to arrive. Nero and his crew spent the next 25 years awaiting our arrival. But what was years for Nero was only seconds for us. We went through the black hole. Nero, was waiting for us. He held us responsible for the loss of his world. He captured our vessel and spared our life. For one reason, so that we would know his pain. He beamed us here so that we could observe his vengeance. As he was helpless to save his planet, we would be helpless to save our own." Rebecca explained the whole story with sadness hiding in the tone of her voice.

I looked over at Jim to see him and Spock done with the mind meld thing. Jim was gasping for air and looking as if he was about to vomit as he got up and ran to the other side of the cave. "Billions of lives lost because of me, Jim. Because I failed." Spock said "Forgive me, emotional transfer is an effect of a mind meld"

"So you do feel." I said astonished by the revelation.

"Yes." Spock simply told her like he was use to it.

"Going back in time you changed all our lives." Jim stated as though he was going over something in his head.

"James, Caitlin. We must go. There is a Starfleet outpost, not far from here." Old Rebecca told us standing up to head for the entrance of the cave with Old Spock in tow.

I quickly got up and followed them, but Jim just stood there "Come on Jimmy, adventure awaits!" I called out to him trying to get him out of his head.

"Wait." Jim said making the Vulcans stop and look behind them "Where you came from… Did I know my father?"

Spock look over at Rebecca and they stared at each other for a moment as if the had some type of telepathic conversation before he answered "Yes, You often spoke of him as being your inspiration for joining Starfleet. He proudly lived to see you become Captain of the Enterprise…" Spock paused letting the information settle in before continuing.

"Captain?" Jim questioned more to himself than to anybody in particular.

"A ship we must return you to as soon as possible." Spock, who choose to ignore Jim's question finished and walked ahead of everybody.

So we made a kind of long trek to the starfleet outpost which only seemed so long because of all the snow being thrown in our faces. We all had to put our hoods up trying to keep the snow off of us. Finally we made to the outpost, from what I could see it was just a giant metal building almost blending into the background. I ran up to the door and pulled it open as fast as I could and hastily walked into the warmth.

The hallway was very ominous in my opinion, it was dark, damp and the lights on the ceiling were flicking it kinda reminded me of horror movie or like an abandoned school hallway. I got really excited mostly because I loved horror movie, partly because it was a new place I could explore and hopefully not explode like that one time back in my own time period. "Hello" I heard Jim yelled. You could hear his voice echoed off the empty walls.

After waiting a moment and very reluctant to move any farther we hear what sounded like footsteps echoing towards us. The person or should I say thing come close enough for us to see him. He was tiny and green with a weird shaped head. He motioned for us to follow him down the hallway.

We came into this room that was covered in machine parts and filled the silence with the whirring of machines. There was a shuttle that looked a little worse for wear. On further inspections I noticed a man sitting at a desk writing something down on a piece of paper he was wearing a red starfleet shirt, he had brown hair that was obviously falling out and he was shorter than Jim. He turned to look at us and said "You realize how unacceptable this is?"

I heard Jim mumble 'what' and Spock Prime mumble 'fascinating.' "Okay, I am sure you're just doing your job, but could you not come a wee bit sooner? Six months I've been here. Living off Starfleet protein nips and a promise of a good meal. And I know exactly what's going on here, okay? Punishment, isn't it? Ongoing. For something that was clearly an accident." He continued on with his rant.

"You are Montgomery Scott." Spock prime stated.

"Unless there's another hard-working equally starved Starfleet officer around." He replied

"Me" The weird little guy said

"Keenser, Shut up" Scotty said "You don't eat anything, you can eat like, a bean and you're done. I'm talking about food, real food, but you're here now. So, thank you, where is it?" He asked looking so hopeful poor guy.

"You are in fact a Mr. Scott, who postulated the theory of transwarp beaming?" Spock questioned.

"That's what I'm talking about. How'd ya think I wound up here? I had a little debate with my instructor on the issue of relativistic physics and how it pertains to subspace travel. He seemed to think that the range of transporting something like a like a grapefruit, was limited to about a 100 miles. I told him that, I could not only beam a grapefruit from one planet to the adjacent planet in the same system, which is easy by the way. I could do it with a life form. So, I tested it on admiral Archer's prize beagle." He ranted.

"I know that dog, what happened to it?" Jim asked.

"I'll tell you when it reappears. I don't know, I do feel guilty about that." He replied to Jim

Suddenly, my attention got pulled towards the tribble that was in a cage in his desk. The tribble was a tiny, pink little fluff ball that made a cute purring sound. Somehow in ways I do not know we convinced Scotty and that little alien dude to get us back on the enterprise. Unfortunately Spock Prime and Rebecca Prime as I now call them could not go with us due to the slight chance they could destroy the space-time continuum if they were to meet the Spock and Rebecca of this universe, excuses, excuses.

So we all beamed aboard and decided to keep it a secret, it would be fun. But of course Scotty had to beam himself into a water tube thing causing us to panic and in the process of getting him out we alerted the crew to our arrival.

"Yeah, once again I hate you Jim" I growled out as we were being chased by red shirts.

"Love you too, Cat, but now's not the time for confessions" He joked. Scotty lead the way as we through the maze of the engineering room. We kept running hoping we could out run the group of red shirts that was right behind us. Sadly they planned this and had another group cut us off so we were trapped. The guy in front of us held out his phaser and told us "Come with me… Cupcake!" I think he added that last part just for Jim, how sweet.

So we walked through the long corridors of the enterprise and made our way back to the bridge. "Surprise" I cheerfully yelled when everyone saw us.

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?

- Ernest Hemingway

Review

- Rebecca