The flight to the ship was quiet. Jim was stewing in his own chaotic reaction to the graveyard and the way he knew what all the complex and varied Praxidian body language meant, McCoy was watching him like a hawk, and Uhura was doing most of the flying.

When one of the ship's hangars loomed in the viewscreen, they left off their preoccupations and watched with increasing amazement. Huge portions of the vegetation and mounds of rocks and ice had been cleared away, giving the entrance the appearance of a portal into another world. That world was a vast and dimly-lit space of landing pads and alien shuttlecraft.

Uhura set them down on the same pad as the Praxidians. As they prepared to get out, she hesitated, and asked, "Captain, are we sure we can trust them?"

Jim had been wondering the same thing. "If my previous experience with them was any indication, definitely not, so keep your eyes open." He grimaced. "There's only three, but any one of them is probably five times as strong as all of us combined."

She pulled out her phaser. "So you're saying stun's probably not going to get us anywhere?"

"Doubtful."

She flicked the mode switch and locked it, and Jim took out his to do the same. McCoy made a face but followed suit.

They exchanged a look, and Jim led them to the shuttle hatch. He paused there, memories of the Dancer's destruction fresh in his mind all these months later, and felt in his coat pocket. There sat Pike's old pocket watch; he gripped it tight in his hand.

I can do this. It's going to be fine.

"Jim?"

He glanced back at McCoy, then out the shuttle hatch, and nodded. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and walked down the ramp.

The hangar yawned around them, packed with smaller craft that looked akin to the ones he'd seen escaping the Dancer as it fell apart. The Praxidian's current shuttle was significantly different, and rested a hundred or so feet from theirs. He kept his eyes off the script that identified it.

The General greeted them and lead them down a long, curving corridor to a lift. He had the sense they were traveling not just vertically, but also horizontally. After a silent and tense ride, they exited into what he recognized as a bridge.

The walls were almost entirely black display glass. A cluster of stations (for systems engineers, he knew) lined the wall opposite the viewscreen, and another-the assistant's station-sat just to the right of the captain's chair. The Assistant nodded to Uhura and showed her to it.

"This will allow you to access our communications systems. We have realigned the arrays to the best of our capabilities, but sending a signal through the halo remains difficult." With a swipe of her long-fingered hands she gave Uhura access, and they set to work.

"Well, as lifeboats go, I've had worse," McCoy murmured aside to him in a low voice, and Jim nodded in agreement. It was incredibly clean for a ship that had been sitting for a few hundred years.

After only a handful of minutes, Uhura said, "I think we've got something," and everyone moved to circle around the station. "The halo's degrading the signal." The two of them swept and tapped through the controls, processing and reprocessing the stream and sometimes pointing and nodding to one another. A tense minute passed before text began resolving on the panel. "Both ships made it clear," Uhura read, and smiled.

Jim and McCoy made no attempt to hide their relief. He recognized a similar reaction in the Praxidians.

Uhura and the Assistant had to keep adjusting the receivers to recover as much data as possible. "They received our transmission. There's still enough of a path out of the halo that they're trying to come up with a way through it." Her expression changed, and she straightened and looked over her shoulder at him. He knew he wasn't going to like what she had to say, and steeled himself.

"They don't think it'll be more than three hours before it closes completely."

He looked to the Engineer, then the General. "Is there anything we can do to help them?"

He saw the General gesture at her, and the Engineer said, "Once the upgrades are complete we will be able to bring the ship's AI online. This will give us access to basic system functionality."

"Like the computers?"

"Yes."

"Is there some way we can get a transporter signal through the path?"

The Engineer and the Assistant considered that. The Assistant replied, "Unlikely, though worth investigating."

He nodded to Uhura, and she began recording a response to send out. The Assistant and the Engineer saw to the upgrades, and Jim took to pacing. There was little in the way of functionality on the bridge, and he moved from section to section, looking but never touching. The General looked over at him now and then but otherwise seemed preoccupied with one of the sole active components near the captain's chair.

Jim paused at one of the few active wall panels. It was filled with calculations and sensor data, all in Praxidi script. This should have made it nonsense to him, but his intrusive, other self interpreted the numbers and phrases with ease; this was someone's first pass at calculating the amount of time left before the halo's path closed, prior to the white dwarf's nova, and a collection of readings of the path afterwards. He was disappointed (though maybe also reassured) to see the results were no different than what Spock and Chekov had initially shown him on the Enterprise and what Uhura had been able to glean from their shuttle's meager long range sensors: what had once been a reasonably stable tunnel with a predictable lifespan was now nothing more than a degrading maze of shifting pockets that broke apart and merged at random intervals.

He got the sense he was being watched, and noticed the Engineer looking away from him. Any reassurance he felt gave way to concern over how easy it was to read the data, and he moved to take a seat back by one of the empty stations. McCoy joined him.

"So. You were saying?"

Jim looked at him, then out over the alien bridge. "Sometimes I'll just, find myself somewhere, and I don't know what's happened for the last hour or so."

"What, like you're sleepwalking?"

"Yeah, but without the sleeping part."

McCoy ran a hand over his face. "You don't do anything? You just, go places?"

"Just to the observation deck." He shrugged at McCoy's confused look, and McCoy sighed.

"Well, until we can get you back on the Enterprise I can't do much except keep an eye on you and sedate you so you'll sleep."

Jim coughed a laugh. "No thanks-I want to wake up from these nightmares, not get trapped in them."

"Jim, you're exhausted, anyone can see that just looking at you."

"It can wait until we get back."

McCoy looked like he was gearing up for a doctor's speech, and Jim was about to cut him off when he noticed the Engineer was watching them.

"You really need to start giving a damn about your-what?" He followed Jim's gaze, and fell silent.

Jim put a hand on McCoy's shoulder. "Give me a second," he said, and got up. The Engineer looked away when he did so, but stayed put when he approached her.

He kept his voice low. "You were on the...other ship."

Her fingers worked. "Yes." She paused, then added, "I am Engineer Xorila," and looked at him again. Her nervousness at his proximity was acute.

"Xorila. What's happening to me." She didn't reply, and he had to work to keep his voice down. "Don't act like you haven't noticed."

She hesitated, and he realized she was struggling to find a way to describe what she saw. "I am not completely certain. I have never known of a Pilot that lived in another's mindspace after its service was ended. I have never even read of such a phenomenon."

It was one thing to have been thinking that to himself; it was another for one of the very engineers who'd done this to him to confirm it. He felt short of breath. "What?"

"You knew what the mosaic was before the General explained it." She paused, giving him a chance to deny it, and when he didn't she continued. "You knew this was a warship. You can read our script. You knew the plague was a weapon, not a natural disease. You are aware of our body language. Although it would be possible for some of these things to be imprinted on you from the Pilot, my observations of your condition suggest something much more significant is happening. Given you were once converted, it seems likely that the Pilot resides within you still."

The General had noticed their conversation and was getting up. Xorila started to continue, but was interrupted when the Assistant's station lit up with a flash. Uhura ran a hand over it. "We're getting a response."

The General stopped where he was. Jim was at the console in a heartbeat, and McCoy joined him. Xorila drifted closer.

Uhura held perfectly still as she listened, but Jim couldn't miss the sudden tension in her posture. Her voice caught as she said, "They can't get either ship through the outer entrance into the path."

Jim bit back a curse and turned away. "Is there any way we can get closer to them?" he asked the General.

"If the ships cannot get through, none of our shuttles, nor yours, would stand more than a fraction of a subcycle within what remains of the path, to say nothing of the halo itself should the path fully disintegrate. Their engines were not designed for it."

Jim started to pace. It was ludicrous; here they were on a perfectly good ship and-

He stopped.

Before he could think it over and almost certainly decide to not bring it up, he turned to face the General. "You said it was the plague that kept the crew of this ship from escaping, because it killed them all. Not that the ship was damaged." The General didn't respond, and Jim pressed on. "Can this ship navigate what's left of that path?"

Jim knew (or the Pilot knew, and so he did) that the General was giving him a cagey look. "I am curious as to why that matters, Captain Kirk."

"It can," Xorila confirmed. Jim saw, out of the corner of his eye, McCoy and Uhura glare at the General in unison. "The warp core is specially designed to make short, precise jumps. Hundreds in a brief time span, if needed." The General's nerve bundles writhed as she spoke.

"You still make ships like this, right? Is there one close enough to come get us?"

The Assistant answered that. "No. The closest vessel of this class, or one which is outfitted similarly, is at least a subcycle distant."

The General's hands worked, and Jim wondered how dearly they would pay for what they were revealing. "That is quite enough, Engineer, Assistant." Jim was sure everyone could hear the irritation in the General's translated voice.

"But there's this one. It can still fly, right?" None of the Praxidians contradicted him. "So if we could fly the ship we could get out of here."

The General gestured so sharply that Uhura's hand twitched towards her phaser, though she didn't take it up. "Whether or not it can fly is not at issue. Our ships are not flown by bridge crews or computers. The AI aboard our vessels would be insufficient to the task, and the individual who was intended to fly this ship is still aboard the Shadow Upon the Sand."

"Could one of you do it instead?"

The General flinched in surprise. "What would make you think that is even a possibility?"

He saw Xorila fidgeting out of the corner of his eye. "Can you or can't you?"

"It is not certain that we could, but our ability to do so aside, the one who flies the ship must be properly converted to do so. None of us are, and it would take too long to perform, even were we to forgo the necessary preparations, which would be monstrous." He made no attempt to hide the contempt in his bearing. "What we require is an extent Pilot, and we do not have one."

There's always a choice.

He took a deep breath. "Yes we do."

No one said anything for several tense seconds. McCoy recovered from his shock first.

"Are you out of your mind?"

The General looked from McCoy to Jim, plainly confused. Jim was only paying attention to Xorila, who was staring at him with awe and not a little fear. "Would you be able to use this ship's facilities to put me in there?"

Her nerve bundles twitched. "Yes."

"What is he talking about, Engineer?" It took Jim a moment to realize the General had bypassed the translation software and spoken directly in Praxidian. He saw Uhura's eyes narrow as she worked through the language. McCoy leaned over to her, and she murmured to him.

"Will I be able to fly the ship?"

She considered him, then said, "Yes."

The General looked at Xorila, then Jim again. Sudden understanding made his nerve bundles flare. "You were the Fifth Pilot of the Dancer in the Void." His fingers did a complicated dance, then he said to Xorila (letting the software translate again), "How is it that Pilot still exists?" Jim was sure he didn't imagine the accusation in the General's voice, and he wondered what fallout there had been surrounding the Dancer's loss.

McCoy snapped, "It doesn't matter how, he's not doing it." Uhura didn't look as angry as McCoy, but she was rigid with tension and her displeasure was obvious.

"The Pilot was never excised."

The General stared at Jim like he'd sprouted new appendages and heads. "Unbelievable."

McCoy put himself between Jim and the General and looked Jim straight in the eyes. "What's unbelievable is that he's even entertaining the idea."

"Bones," he hissed, and McCoy bit back something. Their staring contest ended when McCoy gave in and moved aside.

It was getting easier and easier to read their gestures. The General was calming down. He gave Xorila a thoughtful look, then said, "Very well," and she left down one of the halls. The General turned back to Jim. "It would be our honor if you were to serve as the eighth Pilot of the Twilight's Shining Teeth, Captain Kirk of the Enterprise, and we would be greatly in your debt."

"You have no idea," he said, and then he had to not be on the bridge, so he took a hallway without thinking much on where it might take him.