Star Trek XV – Now and Forever

Chapter Six

Using the first aid kit Dr McCoy wisely kept in the ready room, often so that he could provide basic treatment to Kirk in the too many occasions when their Captain had got hurt during a mission and still rebelled against his CMO by refusing to go to sickbay, Uhura did what she could to clean the cuts that covered Spock's bruised face, courtesy of the Klingons that were currently in command of the Enterprise. Meanwhile, Mitchell was still on babysitting duty together with a very reluctant Yeoman Rand.

'I assure you this is not necessary,' the Vulcan said showing he was every bit as careless as Kirk when it came to his own wellbeing.

'Yes, it is,' Uhura told him using some gauze to carefully apply some antiseptic on his split lip. Disposing of the used tissue, she took the dermal regenerator, feeling a little uneasy when she saw the two Klingon who were guarding the room getting closer to them and readying their huge rifles.

'It's just a medical tool!' she said impatiently using their language, 'step back, you're scaring him!'

They followed her gesture with their eyes which landed on little Jimmy. Mitchell had been successful in keeping him distracted but the new commotion managed to get his attention away from the funny faces the officer was making at him and, keeping his huge blue eyes fixed on the two warriors, he climbed down from his chair, escaping from Mitchell's grasp before the poor man could do anything to stop him.

'Jimmy!' he exclaimed.

Ignoring him, the boy started walking towards the two Klingon, observing them with the fearless curiosity typical from his age. He had got within touching distance when Uhura decided he was close enough and, with one swift move, she scooped him in her arms, taking him away from the warriors.

'It's dangerous,' she tried explaining to the toddler, 'don't get too close or they will hurt you.'

'Hurt?' the kid asked her while she sat back down on a chair next to the one occupied by Spock.

'Yes, sweetie,' Uhura explained to him, 'and we cannot let you get hurt, do you understand?'

Jimmy nodded once and then, as if he'd just realised someone was missing, he said:

'Where's Mummy?'

Uhura, along with the rest of the people in the room, felt their heart sink.

'Mummy is not here now,' she explained, 'but she'll be back very, very soon, I promise.'

'Mummy work?' he asked her looking very serious.

'Something like that,' Uhura replied flashing him a smile, 'but while she's gone, we're all here to look after you,' she explained, 'my name is Nyota. Ny-o-ta,' she repeated, 'why don't you try saying it?'

'Notah,' the kid obliged.

'That's close enough,' Uhura accepted then, pointing at Spock, she said, 'this is Commander Spock.'

'Pok,' the kid tried then, staring at the Vulcan, he pointed at himself and said, 'Jimmy.'

Spock looked at a loss about what to do but then, prompted by a silent look from Uhura, he said:

'Hello, Jimmy.'

'Hello Pok,' the kid replied sounding happy then, turning to Uhura, he repeated her name, 'Notah.'

'That's right,' she said ruffling his soft blond hair; 'you're a very smart boy, aren't you?'

Jimmy grinned at her making his resemblance with his father even more pronounced and, judging by the slight eyebrow twitch she saw on Spock's face, the Vulcan was thinking the same exact thing.

Just then, the kid pushed himself away from Uhura and started trying to climb into Spock's lap.

'No Jimmy,' Uhura said doing her best to stop him, 'Spock is hurt.'

'Hurt?' he asked again, his little smile gone and seriousness returning to his features.

'Yes, sweetie,' Uhura patiently replied, 'he's hurt and if you…'

The little boy interrupted her sentence by getting out from her grasp and, just as he'd originally planned, he stepped onto Spock's lap. While it wasn't visible, Uhura suspected the Vulcan was inwardly panicking.

'Pok no hurts,' the boy said balancing himself on top of Spock's legs while grabbing one of his shoulders with one tiny hand. With the other, he went to touch one of the greenish bruises that had appeared on the Vulcan's face. Uhura observed wide-eyed the moment when, leaning forward a bit, Jimmy placed a light kiss on it.

'I think he's kissing it better,' Uhura hurried to explain fearing this would confuse Spock.

'I am aware of this human custom,' the Vulcan calmly said while looking at her, 'it is often performed by human parents when their offspring becomes injured. I have experienced it once before.'

Uhura realised that Spock was speaking of his own mother and, for a wild moment, she allowed herself to imagine a little Spock getting a scrapped knee and Amanda kissing it better. It was an unbelievably adorable picture.

'I see,' she replied trying to keep her emotions off her voice.

'Jimmy sleepy,' the boy suddenly announced rubbing his eyes with his fist as if to make a point. Uhura went to pick the kid up but then, to their surprise, he just snuggled himself against Spock's body and, making sure Teddy was still there, he placed a hand on top of the Vulcan's chest as if he wanted to feel his heartbeat. Then, he closed his eyes and a few moments later, the boy was fast asleep.

'Fascinating,' Spock muttered, lowering his gaze to study the kid.

Giving up her attempt at healing Spock, Uhura limited herself to stare at the strange, yet utterly heart-warming picture she had before her. Something in it made Uhura forget everything that was going on around her: her fellow bridge crewmembers that feared for their lives; the two deadly Klingon who threatened them and even the fact that their ship had been hijacked for only goodness knew what evil purpose.

For a few precious minutes, she could only see Spock and the little boy in his arms.

'Nyota,' the Vulcan called her using a tone just above a whisper. She just stared at his human eyes and waited for him to continue, 'long ago, when we were still pursuing an emotional relationship, I calculated that according to our psychological profiles and based on our different cultural backgrounds, we had ninety seven point eight percent likelihood to form a successful parenting team.'

Uhura felt her eyes widen with surprise finding it hard to process what she'd just heard.

'Spock…'

'I am fully aware that the circumstances have varied since then,' he continued, 'but this specific statistic has remained unchanged. I merely wished to convey this information to you.'

Uhura was about to ask him what she could do with it when Jimmy woke up with a start, as if he'd just had a really bad nightmare. The room filled with trepidation as they all watched the boy frantically glancing around himself, becoming visibly upset when he couldn't find what he was looking for.

'Mummy!' he shouted all of a sudden.

Spock tried to calm him down the best way he could but the toddler had become inconsolable and soon, he crunched his little face and before anyone could do anything to prevent it, he burst into tears while he continued calling for his mother becoming even more upset when she failed to show up.

'Jimmy, 'Uhura said taking him up in her arms rubbing his back in what she hoped was a soothing manner, 'sweetie, mummy is not here, she's…'

'I want Mummy!' the boy insisted.

'I know, baby, I know,' a desperate Uhura said, 'but she's not here right now…'

'Mummy!' Jimmy wailed again, his sobbing getting louder and louder as he became more distressed.

'Guys,' they heard Yeoman Rand speaking over the boy's anxious cries, 'look at them…'

Spock, Uhura, Mitchell and the others glanced at the two Klingon warriors who, for some bizarre reason, were holding their heads as though as they were terribly sore. Spock was the first to understand that something in the frequency of Jimmy's crying was causing them physical pain.

After exchanging a quick look with Mitchell, the two of them got up from their chairs and, while Uhura hurried to get Jimmy out of the way, they launched against the two warriors, easily knocking them off their feet. Before they could realise what had hit them, they found themselves at the wrong end of their own weapons. Mitchell was going to pull the trigger when Spock shook his head and said:

'We shall not harm them.'

'But Commander…'

'We will temporarily disable them,' Spock said and, before Mitchell could ask how, the Vulcan took care while crouching next to the two fallen Klingons and, after applying a nerve pinch on one of them, the other was forced to see his fellow warrior become as limp as a wilted flower. Then, with surgical precision, Spock repeated the exercise on the other Klingon who quickly became as unconscious as the first.

'What do we do now?' the tactical officer asked him.

Spock never answered the question for, right at that moment, the entire ship jolted up in such an unpleasantly abrupt way everyone instantly identified it as an unexpected drop from warp. The sudden movement sent them all to their knees and Uhura had a lot of trouble trying to keep Jimmy in her grasp. On the plus side, the whole incident had managed to make him stop crying.

'Retrieve the weapon,' Spock ordered Mitchell, 'and follow me. The rest of you will remain here.'

Knowing their time was limited to seconds, both officers hurried out of the room, catching the other three Klingons who currently occupied the bridge by surprise. Spock trained the Klingon rifle on their leader while Mitchell kept the other two under his own control.

'Stand up,' Spock ordered the Klingon.

Slowly getting up from near the Captain's chair, the warrior threw a death glare at the Vulcan.

While this happened, Uhura decided to, for the first time in her life, disobey a direct order. She hurried to Yeoman Rand and was about to hand Jimmy over to her so that she could go and help Spock when the younger girl took a step back and, nervously glancing at the little boy, she asked Uhura:

'Why are you giving him to me?'

'You pick,' Uhura snapped at her, 'take care of Jimmy, or go and fight the Klingons.'

The answer to that was obvious and a moment later, Rand found herself with the boy in her arms.

On her way out, the Communications Officer grabbed one of the knives that Spock had taken away from the unconscious Klingons, then, she joined Spock and Mitchell at the bridge, just in time for the moment when one of the two Klingons Mitchell was guarding, launched himself at him.

'Move!' she shouted at Mitchell while she threw the blade at the Klingon, stabbing him square on his chest.

As the warrior fell onto the ground, the two others glanced at each other and, a moment later, a quick but deadly confrontation ensued. Uhura hurried to take cover while Spock fired his rifle on the leader, killing him instantly. Mitchell dodged a blast from the only surviving Klingons but then, as if they had agreed on it, both he and Spock fired their weapons on him at the same time.

He dropped dead and, after all the noise, an eerily quiet fell upon the bridge.

'Sorry,' Uhura said breaking the silence.

'Don't be,' Mitchell hurried to say, 'you saved my life!'

'Yes, but…' she said looking at Spock who was staring at the three dead Klingons with a worried frown creasing his brow, 'you wanted to keep them alive, didn't you?' Uhura asked him.

'I did,' he confirmed, 'but in the face of their aggression, defending ourselves was only logical.'

'I'm glad you think that, sir,' Mitchell said with a cheeky grin.

'As we still need to regain control of this ship,' Spock commented coolly, 'your happiness is quite irrelevant, Lieutenant.'

Meanwhile, Kirk and Sulu had long left the Reliant behind as they dashed to what McCoy had pessimistically deemed their certain deaths. In spite of that, the Captain had clearly overheard the doctor when he offered Chekov his "legendarily steady" hands in order to improve their chances at restoring the transporter's functionality sooner rather than later.

'Sir,' he heard Sulu's voice through the speaker in his helmet, 'we have enemies at ten o'clock.'

Glancing to his left, he saw the same six Klingon warbirds that had been surrounding the Enterprise. Alas, his beloved ship was nowhere to be seen. Removing this troubling thought, Kirk concentrated his energies on the not too large piece of floating rock on which they were meant to land.

'Fifteen hundred meters,' he told Sulu.

'Aye, Captain,' Sulu replied.

A moment later and with a very violent thud, the two of them managed to touch down without breaking their necks or anything else. Practice did make perfect, Kirk thought darkly as he pushed himself up.

'Now what?' Sulu asked him.

'This way,' Kirk replied pointing at the black prefab structure he'd spotted during their flight.

With next to no gravity, they had to keep using their suit's boosters to keep their feet stuck to the ground and, between this and trying to approach the Klingon base unseen, they took an absurdly long time before they made it. Thankfully, there was no one guarding the place, making it obvious to Kirk and Sulu that their enemies seemed to share McCoy's notion that coming in the way they did was so utterly mental that no one in their right mind would try to do it.

Their loss, Kirk thought.

Walking around the small, one floor building, they finally found an entrance and, releasing the door, they stepped into what looked like a depressurising room. The door they had just passed through slammed close and, a moment later, they saw another one opening, revealing a badly lit long corridor.

'Come on,' Kirk encouraged Sulu.

Carefully and having withdrawn their phasers, they walked along the passage, keeping their eyes peeled for an enemy that never came. Feeling sick with worry, they started hurrying their steps until they found what looked to be the entrance to another room. Again, there was no one guarding it.

'Where is everyone?' Sulu asked him not daring to raise his voice too much.

'I have no idea,' Kirk replied sincerely.

'Captain…'

'Come on, Sulu,' he repeated, 'we need to find her.'

Pushing the door's button, it slid open revealing an even darker room and it was only using a torch he'd found onboard the Reliant that he managed to spot the medium sized dark brown crate used to transport the Genesis device. He also saw that the container was open and, what was even worse, empty. The sight made him feel cold with fear as he contemplated the terrifying chance that they had come all the way here for absolutely nothing. Then, he heard a muted noise in the shadows.

'Carol?' he dared to ask.

He got no answer, instead, the sound became a little louder.

Sharing a quick glance with Sulu, the two of them circled the crate and, just there, lying on the ground facing the wall looking way too still for comfort, Kirk got visual of the mother of his child.

'Carol,' he repeated rushing towards her .

'Captain Kirk,' she said weakly.

'It's Jim,' he corrected her softly while he helped her sit up.

'But…'

'I was being a jerk and I'm sorry about that,' he told her with a sad smile, 'are you hurt? Did they…'

'Yeah,' Carol replied, 'they got upset I wasn't working fast enough. Think they know about pain,' she explained with a dry chuckle, 'they haven't tried giving birth to a four kilos baby without anaesthetic.'

Hearing this made Sulu and Kirk feel slightly faint.

'I'm sorry,' the Captain said, 'it's my fault that…'

'What are you doing in here?' she asked him sounding miserable rather than happy to see him.

'We're rescuing you, Carol,' Kirk said stating what he thought was the obvious.

'Go,' she said instead, 'we need to go right now.'

'Why?' Kirk heard Sulu asking her.

'If it's the Klingon…' the Captain said.

'No,' she interrupted him sounding anguished, 'it's not them.'

'Then, what is it?' Kirk asked her.

'It's the device,' Carol replied looking like she was being crushed with regret, 'they ordered me to rebuild it so that it would reverse the terraforming process but…that's not what I've done.'

'What have you done?' Kirk dared to ask.

'I've built Genesis so that it sets up a chain reaction that will destroy everything in a ten mile radius,' Carol explained and, before Kirk could even ask, she said, 'in no more than fifteen minutes from now.'

Unless Chekov performed a miracle, they were royally screwed.

To be continued…