Chapter 46: Spock

At the science officer's station, Mr. Spock tried to make something of the distorted readings his sensors were receiving.

"Spock, can you find him?" asked Kirk.

"The energy readings are sporadic and indeterminate, but they could indicate extreme radial acceleration under full impulse power. Port side, aft."

"He won't stop now," Kirk said. "He's followed me this far; he'll be back. But where the hell from?"

Spock considered. "Admiral," he said. "Khan's intelligence cannot make up for his lack of experience. All the maneuvering Reliant has done, bold though it may be, has occurred in a single plane. He takes advantage neither of the full abilities of his ship nor of the possibilities inherent in three degrees of freedom."

Kirk glanced back at him and grinned. "A masterful analysis, Mr. Spock. Buffy, all stop."

Buffy decelerated the ship to zero relative motion. "All stop."

"Full thrust ninety degrees from our previous course: straight down."

"Ninety degrees straight down," said Buffy.

"Mr. Chekov, stand by photon torpedoes."

"Aye, sir."

The Enterprise plunged downward into the shadows of the nebula.

The Enterprise hovered within the Mutara Nebula's great dustcloud. The ship was blind and deaf. Jim Kirk forced himself to sit quiet and relaxed as if nothing worried him. It was the biggest act of his life. The ship was badly hurt; every score of Reliant's weapons had touched him as painfully as any physical blow. And in truth, he had no idea what Khan would try next. He could only estimate, and guess, and hope.

At the helm, Buffy glanced at him with a questioning expression.

"Hold steady, Buffy," he said.

Buffy nodded once and turned back to her position. Chekov never moved.

Kirk glanced around the bridge and saw that David had returned. He gestured to him. The young man came down the stairs and stopped beside the captain's seat. "How's Sulu?"

"They don't know yet," David said. "His hands are a mess-he'll be in therapy for a while. If he lives. They wouldn't say. He might have brain damage."

"You got to him fast," Jim said. "He'd be dead if you hadn't. You gave him the one chance he had. Whatever happens- David, I'm proud of you."

To Jim's surprise and shock, David reacted with a curse. "What the hell right have you got to be proud of me?" he said angrily. He stormed back to the upper level of the bridge and stood scowling with his arms folded across his chest. He ignored Jim Kirk's gaze.

Jim turned back to the viewscreen, angry and hurt.

"Stand by photon torpedoes," he snapped at Chekov.

"Photon torpedoes ready, sir."

Buffy glanced at Jim feeling the irritation and foolishness he now felt about trying to make peace with David and being rebuffed.

"Buffy. Accelerate. Full impulse power at course zero and plus ninety. Just until the sensors clear." That would get them out of the worst of the dust. "Then all stop."

"Aye, sir," Buffy said, and executed the command.

The artificial gravity was holding, but at a level tentative enough that Kirk could feel the acceleration: straight up. The viewscreen was still dead, but as they rose out of the gas cloud it slowly cleared.

The roiling mass of dust and gases draped away from Jim Kirk's ship like the sea around the flanks of a huge ocean mammal. They rose: and Reliant lay full ahead.

"Mr. Chekov-!"

"Torpedoes ready, sir!"

"Fire!"

Chekov fired.

The torpedoes streaked away.

In the pure silence of hard vacuum, the torpedoes touched the enemy ship and exploded. Reliant's starboard engine nacelle collapsed, spun, tumbled, and gracefully, quietly, exploded.

Reliant responded not at all. The ship drifted steady on its course.

"Cease fire," Kirk said. "Look sharp."

The bridge crew reacted with silence, watching, waiting. Too soon to be certain...

"Match course, Buffy," Kirk said.

Buffy obeyed: The Enterprise followed Reliant, maneuvering slightly till their relative speeds were zero, and Reliant appeared dead in space.

"Our power levels are extremely low, sir," Saavik said.

Kirk switched the intercom to the engine room. "Mr. Scott, how long before you can get the mains back on-line?"

"At least ten minutes, sir, I canna send anyone in till after decontamination."

Kirk glowered and snapped the channel off. "Commander Uhura, send to Commander, Reliant: Prepare to be boarded."

"Aye, sir."

Her long, fine hands moved on her instruments.

"Commander, Reliant, this is U.S.S. Enterprise. Surrender and stand by for boarding. I repeat: Stand by for boarding."

Spock kept a close eye on his instruments and waited for a reply from Reliant. Perhaps Khan had been killed in the final barrage. Perhaps. He did not believe it. The engines, both impulse and warp, were destroyed, and the bridge had been damaged, but he saw no evidence of a break in the hull in that area.

"Enterprise to Reliant," Uhura said again. "You are to surrender your vessel and prepare for boarding by order of Admiral James T. Kirk, Starfleet General Command."

Nothing.

"I'm sorry, sir," Uhura said. "No response."

Kirk stood up. "We'll beam aboard. Alert the transporter room."

Spock's attention was drawn to an odd energy pattern on one of his sensors. He focused and traced it: Reliant. "Admiral, Reliant is emitting the wave form of an energy source I have never before encountered."

David Marcus, from his place near the turbolift, frowned and hurried to the science officer's station. He leaned over to look at Spock's sensor.

"My God in heaven," he said.

Spock raised one eyebrow.

"It's the Genesis wave!" Marcus said.

"What?"

Marcus turned toward Admiral Kirk. His face paled.

"Khan has Genesis!" David Marcus said. "He's armed it! It's building up to detonation!"

"How long-?"

"If he kept our programming... four minutes."

"Shit," Kirk said. He leaped up the stairs and slammed his hand against the turbo-lift controls. "We can beam aboard and stop it! Mr. Spock-"

"You can't stop it!" David cried. "Once it's started there's no turning back!"

Kirk rushed back to his place and stabbed the intercom buttons. "Scotty!" He received no answer but static. He spoke anyway. "Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we've had it!"

The intercom crackled. No reply.

Spock watched all that occurred. He knew what Mr. Scott would say if he could even be reached: Decontamination would take at least another six minutes, and the only humans capable of surviving the radiation were otherwise occupied, Buffy at the helm. Dawn, if McCoy let her out of bed would be helping with the wounded. He knew, from studying the Marcuses' data, the incredible velocity of the Genesis wave, and he knew the speed his ship could go under damaged impulse engines. It was no match.

"Scotty!"

Spock made a decision.

"Buffy!" Kirk said. "Get us out of here, full impulse power!"

"Already on it, Jim," said Buffy as the Enterprise spun one hundred eighty degrees in place and crawled away from Reliant.

When the doors to the turbolift opened, Spock stepped inside.

Spock entered the engine room. Scarlet warning lights flashed through it, bloodying the forms of its crew. McCoy knelt in the middle of the main chamber, trying to save the life of an injured crew member.

The rest of the crew struggled to put more power to the impulse engines, knowing- they must know- that their efforts were useless. When the Genesis wave began, it would spread until it reached hard vacuum, engulfing and degrading every atom of matter within the Mutara Nebula, gas or solid, living or dead.

Without speaking or acknowledging his presence, Spock strode past Dr. McCoy to the main reactor room. He touched the override control.

"Are you out of your Vulcan mind?" McCoy grabbed Spock's shoulder and dragged him around by sheer force of will, for certainly the doctor's strength could not match Spock's.

Without replying, Spock looked at the doctor. He felt detached from everything: from the ship, from their peril, from the universe itself.

"Only Buffy and Dawn can tolerate that in there and even then, they would be sick for days afterwards. Dawn is definitely in no condition."

"And Buffy is currently at the helm," said Spock.

"Which means their unavailable and no other human can tolerate the radiation in there!" McCoy cried.

"But Doctor," Spock said, feeling a certain terribly un-Vulcan affection for the man who opposed him, "as you yourself are fond of pointing out that I am not human."

"You can't go in there, Spock!"

Spock smiled at Dr. McCoy. "I regret there is no time for logical argument, Doctor," he said. "I have enjoyed our conversations in the past."

With that peculiarly human atavistic instinct for danger, McCoy drew back, knowing what he planned. But Spock was too quick for him. His fingers found the nerve in the junction of McCoy's neck and shoulder. He exerted pressure. McCoy's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed. Spock caught him and lowered him gently to the deck.

"You have been a worthy opponent and friend," Spock said. He laid his fingers against the side of McCoy's face. He experienced the undisciplined energy of the doctor's mind. "Remember."

He finished the coding for the manual override of the reactor room and stepped into the screaming radiation flux.

At first it was quite pleasant, like sunlight. Spock moved toward the reactor. The radiation increased, and his body interpreted it as heat.

He reached toward the damping rods. An aura of radiation haloed his hands; the rays spread forward, outward, even back, penetrating his body. He could see his own blood vessels, his bones. It was fascinating.

He drew the rods from their clamps; the radiation caressed him like a betraying lover. Radiation sang in his ears, almost blocking the cries of Scott and McCoy, on the other side of the radiation-proof glass, shrieking at him to come out.

"Captain, please-!" Scott screamed.

Spock could feel the very cells of his body succumbing to the radiation. He wiped the perspiration from his face and left a smear of dark blood on his sleeve. Mottled hematomata spread across his hands.

Pain crept from his nerve ends to his backbone, toward his mind, and he could no longer hold it distant.

He flexed his fingers around the manual control that would bring the main engines back into use. He strained against it, and the wheel began to turn. His tortured bones and flesh opposed the control under which he held himself. He could feel his skin disintegrating against the metal, which grew slick with his blood.

"Dear god, Spock, get out of there, man!" McCoy pounded on the window.

Spock smiled to himself. It was far too late.

The main engines groaned, and protested, and burst back into use.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The bridge main viewscreen showed Reliant receding, but slowly, so slowly.

"Time!" Jim Kirk said again. It could be no more than a minute since last, he had asked: they had a few seconds left and no more.

"Three minutes, thirty seconds," Saavik said.

"Distance from Reliant."

"Four hundred kilometers," Buffy said.

Jim glanced at David. Meeting his gaze, his son shook his head.

"Main engines on-line!" Buffy shouted.

"Bless you, Scotty," Kirk said. "Buffy-go!"

Buffy had already been ahead of Kirk as she shifted the engines into warp speed without any proper preparation.

Reliant dwindled to a speck in the viewscreen.

The speck became light.

The Genesis wave hurtled toward them through the nebular dust, dissolving everything in its path. They watched. Buffy forced one more warp factor out of the straining ship, and it plunged from the nebula into deep space.

The huge collapsed cloud began to spiral around the nexus that had been Reliant. It quickly coalesced, shrinking behind them.

Kirk watched, awed. "Reduce speed," he said softly.

Buffy complied. The new planet stabilized in their sight.

The turbolift doors opened, and Carol Marcus came onto the bridge. She did not speak.

"Carol, my God, look at it..." Kirk opened a channel to the engine room. "Well done, Scotty," he said. He glanced over his shoulder at the science officer's station. "Spock-" He stopped, looked around the bridge, and frowned. "Where's Spock?"

Buffy looked back at Kirk and then lowered her eyes. "Better get down there," she said.

"Where?" Kirk asked not really wanting the answer.

"Engineering," Buffy said. "Chekov take the helm."

Buffy and Jim sprinted for the lift.

They pounded down the corridors of the ship. They met Dawn who was still in the hover chair. As they entered Engineering, they found it was a shamble: every emergency light flashing, sirens wailing, injured crew members moaning as the medical team tended to them.

"Spock-?" Kirk asked.

Scott and McCoy, near the impenetrable glass panels of the reactor room, turned toward Kirk, Buffy and Dawn with horror in their faces. Jim forced his way past them to the hatch control.

Scott dragged him away. "Ye canna do it, sir, the radiation level-"

"He'll die!" Kirk said as Buffy and Dawn watched as tears began to fall down their cheeks at the emotions of the people who had known Spock the longest that knew that Spock was dying from radiation poisoning.

McCoy grabbed his shoulders. "He's dead, Jim. He's already dead."

"Oh, God..." Jim pressed against the heavy glass window, shielding away reflections and light with his arms and hands.

On his hands and knees, trying to stand up, Mr. Spock hunched beside the door.

"Spock!" Spock barely raised his head, hearing Jim's voice through the thick panel. He reached for the intercom, his hand bloody and shaking. "Spock..."

"The ship...?" Spock's face was horribly burned, and the pain in his voice made Jim want to scream with grief.

"Out of danger, out of the Genesis wave. Thanks to you, Spock."

Spock fought for breath.

"Spock, damn, oh, damn-"

"Don't grieve. The good of the many..."

"... outweighs the good of the few," Kirk whispered. But found he no longer believed it; or even if he did, he did not care. Not this time.

"Or the one." Spock dragged himself to his feet, and pressed his bleeding hand against the glass.

Jim matched it with his own, as if somehow, he could touch Spock's mind through the glass, take some of his pain upon himself, give his friend some of his own strength. But he could not even touch him.

"Don't... grieve..." Spock said again. "It had to be done. I of only three people could do it. The others could not do it, not in that moment anyways. Therefore, it was logical... I never faced Kobayashi Maru." His voice was failing; he had to stop and draw in a long shuddering breath before he could continue. "I wondered what my response would be. Not... I fear... an original solution..."

"Spock!"

Saavik's voice broke in over the intercom. "Captain, the Genesis world is forming. Mr. Spock, it's so beautiful-"

Infuriated, Kirk slammed the channel closed, cutting off Saavik's voice. But Spock nodded, his eyes closed, and perhaps, just a little, he smiled as he motioned to Dawn and Buffy and they moved beside Jim. "Jim, T'Lin, T'Lekus ," he said calling Buffy and Dawn by the Vulcan names given them by their adopted mother T'Pol, "I have been, and always will be, your friend. I am grateful for that. Live long, and prosper..."

Buffy and Dawn held up their hands in the Vulcan salute as Spock's fingers clenched into seared claws; the agony of the assault of radiation overcame him. He fell. "Live long and prosper," they said, "Spock."

"Spock!" Jim cried. He pounded the glass with his fists. "Oh, God, no...!"

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

The ship's company assembled, in full dress, at 0800 hours. Saavik took her place at the torpedo guidance console and programmed in the course she had selected.

Accompanied by Carol Marcus, David Marcus, Buffy, Dawn and Dr. McCoy, Kirk came in last.

The ship's veterans, the people who had known Mr. Spock best, stood together in a small group: Sulu, Uhura, Dr. Chapel, Chekov, Scott. They all watched Kirk, who looked tired and drawn. He stood before the crew of the Enterprise, staring at the deck, not speaking.

He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and faced them.

"We have assembled here," he said, "in accordance with Starfleet traditions, to pay final respects to one of our own. To honor our dead..." He paused a long time. "... and to grieve for a beloved comrade who gave his life in place of ours. He did not think his sacrifice a vain or empty one, and we cannot question his choice, in these proceedings.

"He died in the shadow of a new world, a world he had hoped to see. He lived just long enough to know it had come into being."

Beside Kirk, Buffy and Dawn tried to control the emotions they were feeling and keep from breaking down, but failed. They stared straight ahead, with tears spilling down their cheeks.

"Of my friend," Kirk said, "I can only say that of all the souls I have encountered his was-" he looked from face to face around the company of old friends, new ones, strangers; he saw Buffy and Dawn crying as they felt the emotions of the entire crew for the loss of one of their own, "- the most human."

Kirk's voice faltered. He paused a moment, tried to continue, but could not go on. "Lieutenant Saavik," he said softly.

Saavik armed the torpedo guidance control with the course she had so carefully worked out, and moved forward. "We embrace the memory of our brother, our teacher." Her words were inadequate, and she knew it. "With love, we commit his body to the depths of space."

Sulu moved from the line. "Honors: hut."

The ship's company saluted. Mr. Scott began to play his bagpipes. It filled the chamber with a plaintive wail, a dirge that was all too appropriate.

The pallbearers lifted Spock's black coffin into the launching chamber. It hummed closed, and the arming lock snapped into place.

Saavik nodded an order to the torpedo officer. He fired the missile.

With a great roar of igniting propellant, the chamber reverberated. The bagpipes stopped. Silence, eerie and complete, settled over the room. The company watched the dark torpedo streak away against the silver-blue shimmer of the new world, until the coffin shrank and vanished.

Sulu waited; then said, "Return: hut."

Saavik and the rest returned to attention.

"Lieutenant," the admiral said.

"Yes, sir."

"The watch is yours," he said quietly. "Set a course for Ceti Alpha V to pick up Reliant's survivors."

"Aye, sir."

"I'll be in my quarters. But unless it's an emergency..."

"Understood, sir."

"Dismiss the company."

He followed by Buffy and Dawn left the room.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Buffy closed the door of her cabin behind her and leaned against it, desperately grateful that the ceremony was over. She wondered what Spock would have thought of it all: the ritual, the speeches... He would have said it was illogical, no doubt.

Buffy and Dawn unfastened their dress jackets, pulled them off, and pitched them across the room.

"Brandy?" said Dawn. She had gotten a bottle of brandy from Jim.

"Just this once," said Buffy. "In toast to Spock."

Dawn nodded as she poured them each a shot. "To Spock!" she said and then they both drank the shot.

The door chimed.

"Come," said Dawn.

Savvik walked through the door. "Captain Spock told me that you two were the adopted daughters of Ambassador T'Pol. And that he considered you his friends."

"That's true," said Buffy.

"Then I too would like to consider you a friend," said Savvik.

"We would be happy to think of you as our friend," said Dawn as she smiled at Savvik.

"I know the two of you have never taken the Kobyashi Maru. But can I ask have you two faced death?"

"Not in the way you do," said Dawn. "But we have by watching for the last two and a half centuries those we care about grow older while we remain the same age. Watch them die while we can't. Spock is not the first and sadly won't be the last we watch die."

"Admiral Kirk told me that how we face death is at least as important as how we face life," said Savvik.

"That's true," agreed Buffy.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

On the bridge of the Enterprise, Sulu checked their course and prepared for warp speed. The viewscreen showed the Genesis world slowly shrinking behind them. Buffy, Dawn, McCoy and Dr. Marcus, senior, watched it.

The bridge doors opened. Saavik, in the captain's chair, glanced around. She stood up. "Admiral on the bridge!"

"At ease," Kirk said quickly. David Marcus followed him out of the turbolift. "Hello, Bones, Buffy, Dawn. Hi, Carol..." He took Carol's hand and squeezed it gently.

"On course to Ceti Alpha, Admiral," Saavik said. "All is well."

"Good." He sat down. "Lieutenant, I believe you're acquainted with my... my son."

"Yes, sir." She caught David's gaze. He blushed a little; to Saavik's surprise, she did too.

"Would you show him around, please?"

"Certainly, sir." She ushered David to the upper level of the bridge. When they reached the science officer's station, she said to him, softly, straight-faced.

McCoy leaned on the back of the captain's chair, gazing at the viewscreen. "Will you look at that," he said. "It's incredible. Think they'll name it after you, Dr. Marcus?"

"Not if I can help it," she said. "We'll name it. For our friends."

Jim thought about a book Spock had given him. He was remembering a line at the end: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known." He could not quite imagine Spock's questing spirit finally at rest.

Carol put her hand on his. "Jim-?"

"I was just thinking of something... Something Spock tried to tell me on my birthday."

"Jim, are you okay?" Dawn asked. "How do you feel?" Not that she didn't already know but she wanted him to admit it to himself.

"I feel..." Kirk thought for a moment. The grief would be with him a long time, just as it would Buffy, Dawn, McCoy or any of the rest of the crew that personally knew Spock, but there were a lot of good memories, too. "I feel young, Dawn, believe it or not. Reborn. As young as you."

Author's Note: Next Chapter starts Search for Spock