Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek 2009 or anything else connected to the Star Trek franchise.
Warnings:
Slash Spock/Kirk
Mentions of rape
Swearing
AU fic
POSSESSED
Chapter 9 – Confronted
Time was slowly eating away as they search deeper and deeper into the archives and further out into the stars. They had found next to nothing about the Narada and the Romulans involvement in aggravating the war. They did, however, find two things that would not have been possible without Uhura's talented tongue.
They had found a Romulan transmission intercepted by an Earth vessel buried deep in the archives; one that was recorded a year before war broke between Vulcan and Earth. Its original translation held nothing of interest but Uhura ,brilliant as she is with languages, noticed it was quiet off and translated it herself. The new translation revealed two things; a crazy unexplainable event and a name.
The event was what could only be described as a lightning storm in space, just inside the neutral zone and verified by an Earth colony outpost that recorded similar fluctuations in the area at the time the Romulans indicated. The name was Nero, Captain of the Narada.
Neither of these two things proved anything to do with the third party attacking Earth colonies and transports, but it did reveal something about the elusive ship that was reported to have orchestrated the attacks and that was better then nothing. Whoever these Romulans were, they were very good at covering their tracks.
Jim rubbed his forehead as he turned to check on Spock and Uhura's progress. They made an amazing team when it came to finding and analyzing data, something he would never have predicted at their first meeting. The look she had directed at Spock when Jim first introduced him properly still made him cringe, and he was positive that if McCoy hadn't laid a restraining hand on her arm she would have clawed his eyes out then dumped his body in a Le'matya nest to hide the evidence. The others' reactions weren't much better.
He'd been forced to confiscate Sulu's sword and Scotty's favorite wrench. Their knuckles had turned white as they gripped their weapons of choice whenever Spock had stood anywhere near him the first day, making it a necessity to prevent them from ending his life violently. Chekov was silent through the whole ordeal and silence was never a good sign when it came to the young genius. You could never know what he was plotting in that brilliant mind of his.
It had taken over a month for his old team to grudgingly accept Spock and effectively work with him while withholding the need to maim him for standing too close to Jim. That had been a big problem in the beginning as the Vulcan was granted only limited access to the computers and so had to work with someone at all times to ensure he could get the information he needed. He was also the only one with full access to Vulcan databases and the others had to go to him for any information of that sort. For that first month Jim, and a reluctant McCoy, became liaison between their team and the Vulcan, until one by one they realized Spock had no ill intentions towards their Captain and approached him on their own.
Now it was like that hostility hardly ever even existed; his old platoon had accepted the Vulcan into the fold. There were still some incidents when Spock became too familiar with him in front of the , but they were slowly learning to let that slide. The protectiveness his platoon showed towards him made Jim feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Especially the protectiveness from Uhura, who he had met in dubious circumstances, and he was never sure she had completely forgiven him.
Jim blinked, realizing he'd been staring at Spock's back for the last few minutes. They hadn't really had a chance to continue their physical relationship since the team was formed and, because there really was no need to dig himself a deeper hole where the Generals opinions of him were concerned. He wasn't sure what he even wanted to now thathe didn't need to appease the companionship deal, but they had continued to play chess from time to time when they had an evening free from research. There was no denying their relationship, whatever it was, had shifted now that they were working together in Jim's domain. Now that he was technically Spock's commanding officer, the Vulcan had started to treat him less like an odd puzzle to solve and more with a restrained respect, treating Jim while on duty like he would a council member. Spock's change in behavior, which Bones said it was something only he noticed, annoyed him at first but he slowly came to understand it was the Vulcan's way of showing how much he truly valued and trusted Jim's command. It, however, never stopped him from voicing his own opinions when he thought the captain was wrong.
"Captain," Spock spoke, catching Jim slightly off-guard. He'd been caught staring and the twinkle in the Vulcan's brown eyes betrayed his own amusement as Jim's cheeks flushed a light shade of pink in embarrassment. Uhura hid a smirk behind a data pad, knowing in that one gesture, there was something neither of them would ever admit to.
"Yes, Spock? You found something?" Jim asked, covering any lingering embarrassment at being found out as he rose from his own computer console in their assigned lab to move over to Spock and Uhura's workstation.
"We have found a reference in a Starfleet report dated from 2.4 years ago to a clocking device utilized by a Romulan Warbird class ship that had breached the neutral zone when it attacked a remote Earth outpost," Spock reported, turning back to his own console as Jim moved along side to read over his shoulder. Uhura stepped to his other side, "Very little else was included in the report, only that it was unknown for how long the Romulans had been utilizing the device or when it may have been developed."
Jim looked over the report, reading the finer details. Starfleet was a small space fairing organization that liked to send out vessels to explore unknown space. At the moment, it mostly lingered on the outskirts of Earth Space, the war preventing them from moving too far from home. The fleet had originally been formed as an exploratory and peace-keeping armada charged with exploring the unexplored and defending the federation and its allies when necessary. That had all changed when two key members of the federation went to war. Starfleet took a back seat to the Earth Military powers and in the 40 years of war, its strength and funds had dwindled to almost nothing. Exploring new planets and star systems had at one point been a fleeting fantasy of Jim's, but the war had squashed any dreams he might have had of such freedoms. No one enrolled in Starfleet if they could enlist in the army to aid their planet.
"So your saying the Romulans attacking Earth shuttles and settlements could be using a cloaking device," Jim summarized, joining the dots quickly, "That would explain the radar not picking the ship up when they attacked the transport shuttle and why I didn't see it until it was on us."
"That would be a sound assumption," Spock inclined his head in agreement.
"But," Jim frowned in thought, trying to remember exactly what had happened in the attack when the Romulan had appeared, "They didn't fire until they were uncloaked. Which would mean that they might not be able to use their weapons when cloaked."
"If that's true, we could use that to our advantage if we can find away to track them when cloaked," Uhura put in, following the Captain's line of thought.
Jim was silent for a moment before he turned, marching over to Scotty who had turned from his console, where he had been working on ways of increasing the range of the base's telescopic scanners, to listen in, "Scotty, you ever seen, heard about or worked on anything that could be used to disguise an entire ship from sight and radar?"
The Engineer thought for a moment before replying in his Scottish brogue, "Aye, there have been some testing with those type a technologies. But ta cloak an entire ship in flight from scanners and tha like would take a tremendous amount of power."
"So not being able to use weapons while cloaked would be a likely side effect of what ever device they employed?" Jim asked eager for confirmation.
"Aye, I would say so," Scotty nodded.
"Well that's something then," Jim nodded, coming to a decision, "Scotty I want you to catalog any data, prototypes, tests and the like that relate to the cloaking of vessels or structures up until now."
"Aye, sir," Scotty nodded, turning back to his console to get straight to work on his new task, while keeping on ear on the continued conversation going on behind him.
"You think the device could be used to cloak a building as well?" Spock stepped up beside, him taking note of Jim's wording.
"If it can cloak a moving ship, why not a building/" The captain said, turning to the Vulcan, "And if that's the case, then maybe they have an out post some where close by on a moon or an outlying planet."
"We have not been able to find any anomalies in scans of the immediate solar system that would indicate anything of the sort," Spock said indicating Chekov sitting at his own console equipped with long range sensors as he mentioned 'we'.
"But you wouldn't if they are cloaked," Jim pointed out, moving back over to his own console leaning over his computer while working the problem over in his head, "We just need to find a way of detecting them, but how can we search for something when its cloaked to show nothing at all?"
Spock's eyebrows dipped towards his eyes, something stirring at the Captain's words, "While it is vast and open, space is not empty. It is filled with not only various particles of debris; it is also filled with energy usually radiated from the closest sun and gravitational forces of the present planets."
"What are you getting at Spock?" Jim questioned him, the others looking on in interest at the developing conversation between their officers.
"When we scan space we find things that we dismiss as normal phenomenon when searching for anomalies that could be identified as foreign ships," Spock continued a light shinning in his eyes, "However if something is cloaked them, it mimics non-existence."
"So, in the vast openness of space it would come up as nothing on the scanners and not even processed," Jim's lips started to widen into a maniacal grin, "But if we actually scanned for nothing then we could find a cloaked ship, like a black hole anomaly in space."
"It would be logical for the method to work in this instance," Spock's lips twitched as Jim came to the same conclusion.
"Chekov, Sulu," Jim said, turning to his two techs easily following the Vulcan's theory, "Can you calibrate your scanners to search for nothing?"
"Sure can Keptain," Chekov answered for both of them, Sulu nodding beside him.
"Then get to it," Jim ordered, grinning. They were finally getting somewhere. After 4 months of nothing, they may have found the key to finding the Romulan insurgents and could now be one step closer to taking the bastards down.
"Jim?" Spock spoke quietly as the rest of the team got to work, Uhura taking a seat at her own console to help in the scans.
"Yeah?" Jim smiled up at the Vulcan.
"The discovery of this device maybe a key piece of evidence that can be used to convince both our councils of the existence of the third party of Romulans forcing this war," the Vulcan said.
"We can only hope," he murmured back, knowing that even if they couldn't actually find the Romulans base or carrier ship, they could gather enough evidence that would at least convince the Earth council not to punish Jim for his part in delivering the treaty and the staged prisoner exchange.
POSSESSED
"Hey Bones," Jim greeted striding into the ward. McCoy, once he wasn't need as a buffer between the rest of the platoon and Spock, had pronounced he was a doctor not a research analyst and opted to return to his duties in the ward until they had found anything useful. Jim just thought it was an excuse not to have to sift through decades worth of data to attempt to find the most obscure references that might have something to do with Romulans attacking Earth civilians.
"You find anything yet?" It was the same question Bones had asked every time he'd seen Jim since they started looking for the Romulan insurgents.
"As a matter of fact," Jim grinned as he followed the Doctor down the length of beds, "We have."
"Oh really, and what might that be?" The doctor inquired, not looking up from the chart he was studying as he stopped in front of a soldier laid up with heat exhaustion, something that was unfortunately a common ailment even with all the warnings and provisions the army provided to soldiers going anywhere in the harsh Vulcan desert.
The captain leaned his hip against the empty bed next to the one the doctor was checking, arms folding across his chest, "A cloaking device," he replied casually.
"Huh, well ain't that something," McCoy said, his disinterest showing when he put down the chart and moved to the next occupied bed.
"Come on, Bones," Jim's grin dropped to a smile as he continued following the Doctor, "It's good, we finally have something we can use to prove how they have been staging their attacks without being detected and possibly a way of tracking them!"
"Well that will be useful," Bones wrote something on the chart, stylish clacking against the digital screen as he put it back in its holster and moved again to the next bed over.
"You're not listening to me are you?" he trailed behind the doctor changing from amused to indignant.
"I'm sorry, Jim," McCoy finally looked up at him an amused gleam in his eye as he placed the final chart back in its holster, "What was that?"
"Bones!" Jim whined as they left the ward in the direction of the Doctors office, pausing only for McCoy to hand over to the nurse in charge.
"You eaten?" McCoy asked entering the code for his office door to swish open, well aware of Jim's eating habits when focused on a challenging task.
Jim nodded, entering behind the doctor to take his usual seat in front of the desk, "Spock's been making sure I eat with him if I forget."
The doctor snorted pulling two glasses and his ever-present bottle of whiskey from the desk, "At least that Hobgoblin's good for something."
"Glad you approve," Jim said dryly, accepting the glass McCoy handed him. He still didn't know where he kept on getting his alcohol; the military frowned heavily on the consumption of alcohol on any military base, but McCoy as far as he knew had never had a problem.
"So, what's this you said about a cloaking device?" The doctor asked settling down in his own chair, glass in hand.
Jim relaxed into his chair, sipping at the amber liquid in his glass regaling the story about how Spock and Uhura discovered reference to the Romulan's cloaking device and their theories about it. He may have embellished it here and there to make it more exciting, but the main gist didn't change.
"So you might be able to find the bastards," McCoy stated, finishing off his drink.
"Yeah," Jim grinned, "If Chekov and Sulu can find a patch of nothing out there somewhere then according to Spock the probability of it being them is 87.98%, and I'd say that's pretty good odds."
"Well it better work, cause you don't have much longer til your deadline runs out," the doctor informed him, solemnly pouring himself another drink.
Jim leaned forwards placing his empty glass on the desk, "I'm well aware of the time we have left and we are going to find them and take them down."
"You say that..." McCoy started but a beep at his console had him turning to his computer to answer the call, "McCoy here, what is it?" he said gruffly, annoyed at the interruption.
"Doctor," replied a familiar voice, "Is the Captain with you?"
"Yeah, Spock he's here, what do you want?" the doctor shot at him, spinning the console so Jim could see the Vulcan on the screen.
"Hey Spock what's up?" Jim asked, him tone brightening.
"We have found them," Spock's simple statement had both Captain and Doctor lunging from their seats heading for the lab.
POSSESSED
"It's freezing!" McCoy growled, pulling his coat tighter around him as they trudged through the snow. Sun reflected off the icicles, making them glisten like the star in the vast beyond above them, where you could just see the shadow of a planet hanging amongst the clouds rolling over the horizon.
"Bloody hell Bones, it was only an hour ago that you were complaining it was too hot," Jim shot back, tricorder in hand as he mapped out their route across the frozen tundra.
"You know me, I'm never happy," He growled again, pulling his hood further around his ears before tucking his gloved hands under his armpits.
"Oh I don't think that's true," Jim grinned stepping over an ice bank, "I remember that one time with that Andorian stripper…" He trailed off.
The others grinned, "What Andorian would that be?" Sulu chimed in, adjusting the straps of his backpack, following the Captain's path. They had to bring decent sized survival packs in case anything went wrong as it wouldn't do them any good to be lost in the frozen landscape without proper supplies.
"Tell me why we have to park so far away again?" the doctor grumbled, ignoring the question as a frigid breeze cut through him, raising goose flesh under his thermals.
"It was necessary to ensure the Romulan base would not detect our approach," Spock told him matter of factually, reading his own tricorder wearing almost double the amount of layers as anyone else.
"You can't tell me your not cold coming from a desert planet," McCoy grouched louder, the snow crunching under heavy boots as they made their way towards the curving horizon.
"As a Vulcan I am able to control my body temperature," Spock stated not looking up, continuing at the Doctor's snort of a reply, "And I am wearing the appropriate amount of clothing I require to do so."
"Oh, so if I had pointed ears and a sunny disposition then I would be all snuggly and warm too?" McCoy shot back, flicking snow in the Vulcan's direction with his shoe. He still didn't trust the pointy-eared bastard as far as he could throw him and he wasn't pleased he had to come along on such a dangerous mission. With Jim leaning more and more on the Vulcan for advice, he was just waiting for the inevitable to happen and be forced to pick up the pieces and sew them all back together again, if it was even possible. The others didn't seem to have the same views; they trusted Jim and his judgment too much at times, and this was one of those times.
"It is unlikely," Spock replied stepping to the side to avoid the flying snow, eyes staying forwards. He was quite aware of the Doctors dislike towards him, but the mission came first.
"This is not so different from Russia in the winter, is nice," Chekov grinned, enjoying himself as he almost skipped through the snow behind Sulu.
"You would think that," McCoy murmured, eyes moving to watch his feet. Jim smiled down at his tricorder, happy the young Russian had butted in, breaking up the mounting fight between Spock and his medic. He had had to step in more then once to prevent them from biting into each other over the last couple of months. Even when McCoy was acting as mediator between Spock and the rest of the platoon he'd been on the controlled side of hostile towards the Vulcan. He had hoped his friend would warm up to the Commander eventually, but it hadn't happened. He'd tried to talk him around but Bones was just too stubborn to let it go. What Spock had done to him was something the doctor would never forgive, it didn't matter how many times Jim had told him he'd moved past it. The others were much more understanding, at least in the sense they trusted him when he said Spock was a good guy and wanted to end the war as much as him.
"Well, snow is a nice change from sand," Uhura smiled, hoisting her pack up higher. Uhura, Jim smiled, had been a bit more wary then the others in the beginning when it came to Spock but she had warmed up to him the more they'd worked together and he has glad for that. He would not be surprised if she was the one to help sway the others in Spock's favor.
"Tis that," Scotty agreed smiling even though he's teeth chattered.
"How far out are we?" Sulu asked, stride lengthening to walk beside his Captain.
"We're getting close, about 1 kilometer out just over that ridge," Jim said checking the readings on his tricorder before pointed to a low beam of snow and ice blocking the horizon.
"1.28 kilometers," Spock put in as he steered Jim away from a crack in the ice indicting for the others to be careful.
Delta Vega was an uninhabited planet of snow and ice following the orbit of Vulcan around their systems sun, a short distance to travel for any decent star ship. Which made it a perfect place for a group of Romulan insurgents to make a base. There was even an abandoned Starfleet outpost available to settle in, which now didn't seem to exist anymore. At least not according to planetary scans.
"So how are we going about this?" Sulu asked as they paused at the top of the ridge laid out in the snow, their grey and white patterned issue snow gear blending into the landscape.
Jim shuffled forwards on his elbows, stomach dragging across the ground while pointing to a bare patch of ice and snow just 500 meters in front of the ridge. The air seemed to shimmer in certain patches as the wind tried to blow snowflakes where they didn't want to go. It could have been just a trick of the light, but they knew better.
"There is where we need to go, you've seen the old Starfleet schematics," Sulu nodded, the others following Jim's words, "Because of the cloaking we can't know what modifications have been made, but we have to hope they didn't find the need to change too much. But we also don't know how long the base has been in their hands so they could have demolished the whole thing and rebuilt something else."
"Ok, so we know that already," Uhura smiled, urging him to continue. Their Captain had briefed them fully before they left the shuttle, but he always liked going over the plan one more time before they entered hostile territory.
"Right, just reminding you we're going in blind," Jim smiled back pulling his tricorder forwards, "The perimeter of the nothingness extends past the schematics by 20 meters so once we are inside that we will have to recognize possible threats quickly before we are detected. Because we're going in blind, we don't know what kind of weapons or defense grid they have in place so we need to stay on our toes. You guys know what you have to do once we're in but be careful I don't want anyone to get ahead of themselves."
They all nodded, listening intently, keeping one eye on their surroundings.
"The schematics show a service entrance on this side of the building so that is our target. Once we are inside the building, we find any insurgents and take them down. Our next priority is to gain access to any computer systems and information. We need to know who they are, if they work for the Romulan Empire or not, and why they are here. Once that's achieved we disable the cloaking device and signal Earth base. You all have your extraction units."
They all nodded again, hands going to a sleek black device in their belts. The device was a beacon of sorts and when switched on would allow the closest Earth vessel or base to beam a soldier out of a hostile situation. It could also be programed to transport a soldier to their last known safe checkpoint. They were designed with a low fluctuating frequency that could get around most jamming devices. The only downside was the same as any transporting device; it didn't work underground. Their devices were programed to lock on to the transporter in the shuttle they had flown to the planet, which would automatically beam them out when activated. Each was a tune to their bio-frequency so a hostile could not get a hold of it and use it to infiltrate Earth facilities. This also meant if they lost it they had to wait on someone finding them and beaming them out manually which could mean death in a warzone.
"Ok, everyone ready?" Jim eyes met with each member of the platoon, understanding their resolve and their affirmative, he looked to Scotty last, " You have your rig ready?"
"Aye Sir, but as a told ya I dunno how long it's gonna last, we have maybe 10 minutes," Scotty said grabbing a switch on his belt, a cord uncoiling from a slit in the base of his pack.
The engineer had rigged a small cloaking device that would cover them on their approach to the Romulan base if they stayed close together. It however was his first prototype and he couldn't determine exactly how long the battery pack taking up most of the space in his backpack would last. He also couldn't be sure it would even work, but it was better then running up to the invisible building and being shot down by invisible guards.
"Then we better make it quick," Jim grinned, pulling his feet under him as he crouched ready waiting for everyone to do the same, "Now Scotty," he ordered. The device gave out a small electrical impulse before a shimmer past of them, "Lets go."
The soldiers, in practiced formation, rifles drawn as they ran, sprinted down over the edge of the ridge towards the invisible structure in front of them, the sound of snow crunching under boots being swept away by the wind whistling around their ears.
POSSESSED
AN: Another chapter up and will be lots of action in the next. Hope you enjoyed it.
Thank you so much to those who reviewed the last chapter, totally love you for it. And a big thanks to HyenaGreyScale once again for being my beta. You Rock! :D
Please, Please, Please REVIEW.