You did not break me
I'm still fighting for peace
Well, I've got thick skin and an elastic heart,
But your blade - it might be too sharp
I'm like a rubber band until you pull too hard,
Yeah, I may snap and I move fast
But you won't see me fall apart
'Cause I've got an elastic heart
I've got an elastic heart
Yeah, I've got an elastic heart
Elastic Heart – Sia
"I married a crazy person," Bones said from his spot next to her at the conference table. She called a senior staff meeting and left Gaila with the con.
"Am I crazy? Think about it, Bones. My dad is in the hospital. One of my moms is in the hospital. Jack is dead. Chenowyth is dead. Kane is dead. I'm so far beyond emotionally compromised it's not even funny. Yet, I was promoted a week early, given the flagship and sent on mission to shoot torpedoes, which Scotty can't scan, at the Klingon homeworld to kill one man," she said. "Marcus' own daughter is hiding her presence on this ship from him. He said it himself, this about Section Thirty-One. The torpedoes, Harrison, the KMA, all Section Thirty-One. They don't care if we die as long as they get whatever they're after."
"War with the Klingons," Uhura said. "I bet someone sabotaged the warp core. We're on the edge of the Neutral Zone. If we had shot at the Klingons, we'd be dead already."
"Marcus set us up to be martyrs," Jim said. "I wanna know why. I wanna know what he's hiding."
"So, what do we do?" Sulu asked.
"First, we're gonna open up a torpedo. Not because Harrison wants us to, but because they make Scotty uncomfortable. I need to know what the hell Marcus gave us," the captain told her officers. "Carol, can you do it?"
"Yes, captain," the woman in question said.
"I got a question," Bones sighed before looking at Carol. "Where do you fall in all this? You're here for something."
"I was assigned to the Advanced Weapons Development Group at FleetComm. My father gave me access to every program he oversaw, then I heard he was developing these prototype torpedoes. When I went to confront him about it, he wouldn't even to see me. That's when I discovered that torpedoes had disappeared from all official records," Carol told them.
"And then he gave them to me," Jim sighed.
"Yes. The little information I do have on them… they're in violation of half a dozen weapons treaties, at least," the weapons expert said. "We need to see what's inside them but that'll require us to take one apart. It's too dangerous to try and open one on the Enterprise, but there is a nearby planetoid, I can open up one there. I will need some help. The steadiest hands on the ship."
"Bones, you're up," Jim smiled.
"Oh joy."
"What are you reading?" Bones asked.
"Harrison's record. I think I know why he agreed to this mission," she told her husband as she rose from her seat. "How's your arm?"
"It's fine. I just can't believe that there was a person in the damn torpedo. I wonder who it is," he chuckled.
"I'm about to find out, wanna watch?"
"Sure."
They lapsed into a comfortable silence as they stepped into the turbolift. Jim ran her fingers along the bandage on Bones' arm but didn't say anything, there was no need. She was sure that they were gonna have some time to decompress after all of this was over. For now, being in the same space was enough. They walked to the brig together. Before they stepped inside, Jim took a deep breath. Dealing with Harrison was the biggest test of her self-control that she's ever had to take. Jim has multiple reasons to kill him but her moral code wouldn't let her. It's exhausting.
"Tell me about Donatu Five," Jim said to Harrison without preamble. She could tell by the look on Harrison's face that she just threw off whatever he planned to say.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he told her.
"On 2244.82, your mother, Lieutenant Commander Sara Harrison was killed in an explosion on the USS Miranda. It was a battle with the Klingons that we neither won nor lost. They withdrew and our ships limped home," she said. "You want a fight with the Klingons."
"No, they want to fight with us. It's not just Donatu. It's Temazi. It's the Marrat Nebula. Ajilon Prime…"
"Don't pull me and my dad into this more than you already have. You want a war, Marcus sent my crew out here to start it. What I don't get is why he's trying to kill you for following his orders," Jim said.
"You are much smarter than he gives you credit for," Harrison chuckled.
"I'm a tactician. It's my job to see connections that most people miss. Why are there three hundred year old frozen people in those torpedoes?" she asked.
"Their captain put them there," he told her. "Marcus needed to respond to an uncivilized threat in a civilized time but for that he needed a warriors mind, their minds. The men and women are a group of augments that Section Thirty-One found adrift in an unexplored region of space. My assignment was to wake them up and use their intellect and savagery to help him realize his vision of a militarized Starfleet," Harrison told her.
"Because of your background in anthropology," she said. "I assume that the Eugenics War and the origins of the augments is your specialty."
The Eugenics Wars were a series of conflicts were fought on Earth between 1992 and 1996. Scientists attempted to improve Humanity through selective breeding and genetic engineering that caused millions of deaths and nearly plunged the planet into a new Dark Age. Augments are a hold over from that time. Designed to be faster, stronger, longer-lived and smarter than a normal human, Augments were also aggressive, arrogant and ambitious, with a diminished sense of morality.
"They are," he nodded.
"So, what happened?"
"He woke one up," Harrison told her. "Khan Noonien Singh."
"You gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me," she blurted out.
"Who is that, Jim?" Bones asked her.
"Just the best of the tyrants. Khan considered himself a prince with power over millions. He conquered and killed anyone he considered unworthy," Jim told her husband. "He and his people were considered war criminals and exiled from Earth." She took a deep breath. "This just got exponentially worse."
"Spock, our ship?" she asked her first officer.
"Our options are limited. We cannot fire and we cannot flee," he told her.
So, Marcus got his pet augment to build him a starship. It was impressive, massive and terrifying, but still impressive. Apparently, he didn't take too kindly to Jim capturing Harrison instead of shooting torpedoes at the Klingons. The admiral gave her some BS about making a mistake and trying to fix it but she didn't believe him and he knew it.
They got within a few hundred thousand kilometers of Earth before Marcus knocked them out of warp. Carol tried to talk her father down. In the end, he just ignored her plea –and declaration of loyalty to the Enterprise crew- and beamed her over through their shields. If it wasn't for Gramps sneaking onto Marcus' ship, they'd all be dead.
"I might have an idea," Jim sighed. "Uhura, when you get Chief Pike back, patch him though to me."
"Yes, sir," the communications officer said, returning to her seat.
"Spock, you have the con," Jim said before stepping into the turbolift.
"Captain, I strongly object," Spock said from behind her. Stubborn Vulcan.
"To what? I haven't said anything yet."
"Since we cannot take the ship from the outside, the only way we can take it is from within, and as a large boarding party would be detected, it is optimum for you take as fewer members of the crew as possible. You will meet resistance requiring personnel with advanced combat abilities and innate knowledge of that ship. This indicates that you plan to align with Harrison, the very man we were sent here to destroy."
"I'm not aligning with him, Spock, I'm using him. The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
"An Arabic proverb attributed to a prince who was betrayed and decapitated by his own subjects," he said.
"Are we really gonna do this, Spock? You always tell me not to do the thing. I do the thing anyway. We win."
"We win after someone, usually you, gets hurt," Spock pointed out. "I will go with you, Jim."
"No, I need you on the bridge."
"I cannot allow you to do this," he said, grabbing her arm. If it were anyone else, she would've dropped him. "It is my function aboard this ship to advise you on making the wisest decisions possible, something I firmly believe you are incapable of doing in this moment."
"You're right! What I'm about to do, it doesn't make any sense, it's not logical, it is a gut feeling!" Jim took a breath. "I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, Spock. I only know what I can do."
"Tell me everything you know about that ship," she said to Harrison as soon as she stepped into medical, where she had security hide him from Marcus.
"Dreadnought Class, two times the size, three times the speed. Advanced weaponry, modified for minimal crew. Unlike most Federation vessels, it's built solely for combat," he told her.
"I will do everything I can to make you answer for what you did. But right now I need your help."
"In exchange for what?"
"Nothing. You killed a bunch of Starfleet officers, you're lucky I haven't stabbed you in the throat," Jim told him honestly. The man really has no idea how much she wants to kill him. "Look, you'll die when Marcus shoots us out of the sky. You might walk away if you help me stop him."
"You wouldn't really kill me," Harrison told her.
"She would," Bones said from one of the desks.
"Why do you have a dead tribble?" she asked, too confused to stop herself.
"I'm injecting platelets from the guy in the torpedo. His blood regenerates like nothing I've ever seen before and I wanna know why," her husband answered.
"Sounds fun," Jim sighed before she looked at Harrison. "You coming with me or not?"
AN: Harrison and Khan will be in the same room in the next chapter. I've never actually had them together in a story. Jim, Gramps and Carol might be in some trouble, or not.
Since Benicio del Toro was the first pick for STID's Khan, he's who I envision.
