A/N: Whew! The holiday weekend really screwed up my writing schedule, which is why this took so long. My apologies to my patient readers. In my defense, at least this one is lengthy, no? Hopefully we're now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure every line of dialogue in this chapter is drawn directly from the Star Trek 2009 film. I did not write them, they did not start in my brain, I take no credit for them whatsoever. Nor am I making any money from this; all characters and related are property of a number of corporate entities and were invented by Gene Roddenberry. I'm just having a little fun.

Beta: Many thanks to mhgood, my incomparable beta.

Spock reassured himself that his speed and efficiency were a product of his training, and not of his nerves. He was well-trained and generally predisposed to avoid nerves, as he was well-trained and predisposed to operate efficiently. He read the mission transmission, now propagated to the PADDs of all relevant command staff, impassively, analyzed the mission parameters, internalized the statement of facts, and successfully compartmentalized the name of the planet under consideration. The fact that the peculiar and entirely unforeseen seismic activity in question happened to be taking place on his home planet, where his mother stood, lived, breathed, had no effect upon his efficacy.

In fact, he only paused once in the discharge of his duties, near the end of the list of linguistics cadets he had been assigned to deploy, on a name that sang like music through his mind. The computer assigned most cadets automatically, reserving for the supervising officer the task of deploying the difficult-to-categorize, the corner cases. The exceptional. He paused for nearly double his typical length of time--12.4 seconds, as opposed to his measured 6.3 average--eyes switching between the few ships that still required communications experts after the rest of the cadet population had been dispatched. It was unfortunate that he had been tasked with supervising the linguistics students instead of the computer scientists.

She wanted the Enterprise.

He shouldn't know that fact; it should not influence his decision. He only knew of her preferences because of their affair.

She was the best of her class, by far. The Enterprise required the best of the fleet.

He was rationalizing because he wanted her there, with him.

The Enterprise would be foremost on any hypothetical front line.

He was rationalizing because he wanted her safe.

They would know.

He assigned her to the Farragut without further analysis of his motivations or of the decision's implications. There were many additional duties to which he must attend.

23 minutes later he was on the ground in Hangar 1, finalizing the list of engineering supplies for the Enterprise, when a familiar voice interrupted his thoughts. He should have predicted this.

"Commander, a word."

He did not look up, as he would not for any other cadet who interrupted him. "Yes, Lieutenant."

"Was I not one of your top students."

This was not a question. Her phrasing was more clipped than usual. He responded in the measured tone he always used with her -- with anybody -- in public. He also kept walking, as he was expected in Bay 5 in 43 seconds. Not in the least dissuaded, she followed immediately behind, and her clacking boots emphasized every step.

"Indeed you were."

"And did I not, on multiple occasions, demonstrate an exceptional aural sensitivity and, I quote, 'an unparalleled ability to identify sonic anomalies in subspace transmission tests'?"

She was, with high probability, quite emotionally disturbed by her assignment. It was unlike her to reference his private words in argument against him in a public setting. He thought it best to ignore the behavior; they had no time, and this was not the place, for a discussion on the subject. Moreover, the question was trivial to answer.

"Consistently, yes."

"And while you are well aware that my unqualified desire is to serve on the USS Enterprise, I'm assigned to the Farragut?"

She turned to him as he stopped and looked to her face, and her voice lost the measured evenness to which she so carefully adhered publicly. Her eyes were wide. She was angry. She was right to be angry; she was the best in her class, she could expect the best assignment. He stood silent for the briefest of moments, trying to explain, trying to remember his reasoning. He sought to keep his voice at a volume sufficient for her to hear him but too low to allow passers-by to discern his next comment.

"It was an attempt to avoid the appearance of favoritism."

They both heard the mid-sentence pause. Understanding passed between them. They both knew he was in the wrong. It was a rare situation.

She did not argue, she merely spoke with a firmness. She was a strong woman. He admired this about her. "No, I'm assigned to the Enterprise."

It was the work of seconds to adjust the assignment on his PADD. "Yes, I believe you are."

"Thank you."

37 minutes after this conversation, having boarded the transport reserved for the bridge staff, he himself was on board the Enterprise. He had not seen Nyota since their exchange in the hangar, and he did not look for her. In truth, he was not seeing the faces of any of the airmen he passed; he merely processed the words and data that flowed to him in a constant stream, from the PADD that seemed to always contain an unread communication, from the engineering managers summarizing their preparations, from the ship-wide communication system that broadcast system-wide progress reports. From the command station where he reported for duty to the science labs to the engineering deck, he checked off tasks one by one, and mentally observed, with a small degree of satisfaction, that he was entering the turbolift to report to the bridge four minutes ahead of schedule.

Pike, a captain under whom he had served in the past, and for whom he held the highest regard, did not acknowledge this fact, of course (efficiency was its own reward, his childhood conditioning chirped), but merely greeted him, politely, as Spock walked with purpose to his station and reported the status of the engineering deck as he had collected it three minutes previously. Ahead, the stars were framed by the viewscreen; around them, other members of the fleet were visible--the Farragut, the Hood, the Odyssey--and he imagined the crew of these no less critical vessels undergoing the exact same preparations as his own. The fluidity of the system, when it worked, was simple, logical, even beautiful.

He turned from the view to the Captain as he began to properly issue orders.

"All decks, this is Captain Pike. Prepare for immediate departure. Helm, thrusters."

The pilot manning the helm was not the familiar McKenna, with whom Pike (and Spock, by extension) had served on their previous deployment. Instead, the young pilot Sulu appeared to be at the controls; Spock remembered him from previous exam administrations. By his recollection, Sulu was an intelligent and capable officer. He was also comparatively inexperienced and young, and unlikely to have operated a vessel of this size and complexity. Spock turned from his controls, which did not currently require his attention, to focus on the task of warping. The pilot's responses were measured and accurate.

"Moorings retracted, Captain. Dock control reports ready. Thrusters fired. Separating from spacedock. The fleet's cleared spacedock, Captain, all ships ready for warp."

"Set course for Vulcan."

Spock experienced a mild uptick at the sound of his home, all while watching the young pilot key in the necessary sequences for warp. He had memorized these prior to his first engagement aboard a first-class starcraft. Enable the primary power connection to the STL engines and the external thrusters. Switch on the auto-control to maintain even pitch, roll, and yaw with regards to the ship's center of gravity, and its relation to the dock. Engage the secondary and tertiary systems for stability fault-tolerance. Initialize the calculations for the course (this would be trivial; calculations to common federation locations were cached).

"Aye aye, Captain. Course laid in."

"Maximum warp. Punch it."

Engage the internal inertial dampeners so that the crew would not suffer the ill-effects of a jump to warp. Enable primary and secondary power to the warp cores. Disengage the external--

Perhaps not.

The warp cores revved impressively as the other ships jumped away around them.

"Lieutenant, where's helmsmen McKenna?" Pike was barely suppressing his irritation; Spock predicted that sarcasm would come next, as it did in 84% of such instances.

"He has lungworm, sir. He couldn't report to his post. I'm Hikaru Sulu."

"And you are a pilot, right?"

The pilot appeared to take this statement in good humor, though his anxiety was apparent in his smile. "Very much so, sir. I'm a, I'm not sure what's wrong, here."

"Is the parking brake on?" Pike was drawling, here, understandably annoyed at the time lost compared to the rest of the fleet. Starships did not have parking brakes; they did not need them. The external dampeners were the closest analogue; the pilot must be suffering nerves to not have made the connection.

"Uh, no...I'll figure it out, I'm just--"

Under normal circumstances, Spock would have let the issue progress naturally, but the urgency of the situation spurred him to intervene, quietly. "--have you disengaged the external initial dampeners?"

Sulu reached for the control in question, though he did not otherwise acknowledge the suggestion. "Ready for warp, sir."

"Let's punch it."

Minutes later, the young Russian human was announcing the parameters of the mission to the rest of the ship. Spock made a mental note to tune the voice recognition software at the Ensign's station as soon as time permitted; it was unreasonable and unsafe to allow delays to arise from something as simple as an particularly strong human accent. Meanwhile, he double-checked the calculations he was running against the known physical parameters of Vulcan. Although the lack of information made it very difficult to predict or understand the situation on the ground, the computer could churn away quite easily on possible causes and scenarios regarding the observed seismic activity. It was possible that such calculations would be useful in their mission, and the console's cores would lie idle otherwise.

He experienced a nagging in the back of his mind as he refreshed his memory as to the mission's parameters, however. The situation was unusual to a worrisome degree. He attempted to dismiss his rather illogical unease as being due to the fact that the planet involved was his home.

He was therefore not at all expecting the interruption that came at that particular moment. A pounding of feet, shouting. Nyota?

"Captain! We have to stop the ship."

Kirk?

Three cadets, identifiable as such by their uniforms (Nyota, and a member of the medical staff, by his insignia) and their faces (Kirk), bounded onto the bridge. Kirk himself was not in proper dress, which was to be expected, as he had been grounded pending the conclusion of his academic disciplinary hearing and most certainly was not legitimately deployed aboard the Enterprise. In actuality, he appeared quite ill, as sweat was pouring down his notably flushed face and one of his pupils was distinctly more dilated than the other. All three had been running, though by their postures, the most likely scenario was one in which Kirk had been headed for the bridge (where he quite notably did not belong) and the other two had been giving chase. Nyota's eyebrows were pinched, and her apparent concern deepened when she turned to him and appeared to take in his raised eyebrow.

This was turning into a very peculiar sequence of days.

Pike adhered to his reputation as a mercifully straight talker and vocalized exactly the question that was rolling through Spock's mind. "Kirk, how the hell did you get on board the Enterprise?"

The doctor standing beside Kirk spoke, now, and Spock recognized his voice from the most recent administration of the Kobayashi Maru. A friend of Kirk's? He seemed not to cow to the cadet's charms, which was fortunate. There perhaps existed someone besides Nyota in the Cadet class who was not enamored of the man. The doctor was well-mannered and respectful, and attempted to explain, talking over Kirk as much as possible, given the mayhem.

"Captain, this man is under the influence of a severe reaction to a vaccine--"

Kirk interrupted, waving his hands, which appeared oddly...swollen? "Bones, Bones please--"

Bones? Who was this man? Spock again noted Nyota behind him, still breathing heavily from the chase; he wondered how she had become involved.

"He's completely delusional. I take full responsibility."

Kirk spoke again, louder. "Vulcan is not experiencing a natural disaster. It's being attacked by Romulans."

The words sent a chill through the room and up Spock's spine, before he instinctively suppressed the reaction. Fortunately, Pike remained rational.

"Romulans? Cadet Kirk, I think you've had enough attention for one day."

In that respect, no one could possibly disagree. Pike continued.

"McCoy, take him back to medical. We'll have words later."

"Aye, Captain."

How had the cadet come aboard? The doctor must have assisted. He could not have been legitimately assigned to the Enterprise. In the interest of being thorough, Spock scanned through the cleared crew logs, and then the logs of cadet flight status, to verify this fact. Kirk, meanwhile, had not been dissuaded in whatever crazed mission had brought him pounding into the bridge in the first place.

"Captain, that same anomaly--"

"Kirk!" The Captain's voice was sharp and exasperated. They all spoke at once, now, over one another, as Spock interjected simultaneously.

"Mr. Kirk is not cleared to be aboard this ship, sir."

Kirk turned his attention to Spock. "Look, I get it, you're a great arguer, I'd love to do it again--"

"I can remove the cadet." This would be a trivial and mostly harmless procedure; he should have thought of it as soon as the man had stormed onto the bridge.

The cadet remained particularly insistent. "Try it! This cadet is trying to save the bridge."

"By recommending a full stop mid-warp during a rescue mission?" The insanity of the proposal was lost on no one.

Kirk remained adamant, however. His persistence might have been admirable, if only it could be properly applied. "It's not a rescue mission. Listen to me. It's an attack."

Hatred was illogical and unVulcan and completely inappropriate. Spock remembered his father's words as though they had been spoken yesterday, and not years previous. Hatred was unbecoming, his mother whispered, much more softly, as though she were standing right behind him, and not still on a planet they were taking too long to save.

He swallowed it, articulating slightly more precisely. "Based on what facts?"

There was a long, distinctly uncomfortable pause across the bridge. Spock was not the only individual who had mentally formulated this question, though he had been the first to actually ask it. Kirk, with all the attention, appeared to collect himself.

"That same anomaly, a 'lightning storm in space,' that we saw today, also occurred on the day of my birth, before a Romulan ship attacked the USS Kelvin."

This sentence flashed through Spock's mind like a floodlamp brought into a darkened room, illuminating the shape of the whole of the situation, comprised of pieces that he had failed to put together himself until this very moment.

Kirk turned to Pike. "You know that, sir, I read your dissertation."

He was a remarkable showman. He continued.

"That ship, which had formidable and advanced weaponry, was neither seen nor heard from again. The Kelvin attack took place on the edge of Klingon space, and at 2300 hours last night, there was an attack. 47 Klingon warbirds destroyed by Romulans, sir, and it was reported that the Romulans were in one ship, one massive ship."

This was news to Spock. Did Pike know of it? His answer was uninformative, though he sounded skeptical. "And you know of this Klingon attack how?"

Kirk looked at Nyota, of all people. This might explain her presence here, three decks above her post. She looked ill-at-ease, keeping her eyes straight ahead. "Sir, I intercepted and translated the message myself. Kirk's report is accurate."

It was odd that she had not mentioned it over the last meal they had shared, though he himself had deliberately avoided talk of work.

Kirk summarized. "We're walking into a trap, sir, there are Romulans waiting for us. I promise you that."

Romulans with advanced weaponry, against a fleet staffed almost entirely by inexperienced cadets? The situation had deteriorated rapidly, and the nagging concern for the safety of his people was blossoming. Spock had processed and analyzed the new information, with a quick answer for Pike's questioning look. "The cadet's logic is sound. And Lieutenant Uhura is unmatched in xenolinguistics, we would be wise to accept her conclusion."

She glanced at him, in gratitude, perhaps, and relaxed her shoulders, slightly, but visibly. She had been agitated.

Pike was a steady and intelligent captain and changed gears immediately. He turned to the communications officer. "Scan Vulcan space; scan for any transmissions in Romulan."

"Sir, I'm not sure I can distinguish the Romulan language from Vulcan."

Remembering this later, Nyota would roll her eyes. Spock was not an eye-roller, but if he were, he would have joined her.

Pike, who had never had any patience for incompetence, turned to Nyota. "What about you, do you speak Romulan, Cadet..."

"Uhura. All three dialects, sir."

She did. Her accent on the third was uncannily native.

"Uhura, relieve the Lieutenant."

Nyota let out a breathe with a near-smile that betrayed her pleasure in her sudden promotion, despite the circumstances. He was pleased that her skills were being recognized and properly utilized at the appropriate juncture. "Yes sir."

Uhura donned her headphones and began a full-frequency scan. Meanwhile, Pike turned to the officer at the inter-fleet communicator. "Hannity, hail the USS Truman."

Hannity's brows furrowed, though her tone suggested she was confused more than concerned. Her words, however, heightened Spock's sense that all was not well. "All the other ships are out of warp and arrived at Vulcan, but we we seem to have lost all contact."

This statement seemed to have the same effect on Pike who, despite his calm and efficient orders, wore an expression of concern on his lined face. Uncertainty was often worse than knowledge of danger in terms of psychological effect on the anxiety of the average humanoid, and Pike was no exception.

Nyota's words added to the situation's gravity. "Sir, I pick up no Romulan transmission, or transmission of any kind in the area."

Kirk, who had remained blissfully silent for what was bordering on three entire minutes, felt the need to add, bluntly, "It's because they're being attacked."

Spock remembered precisely how much he admired Pike when the captain glanced at the cadet with an expression of unmitigated annoyance, before he looked back at the viewscreen with what could be nothing but concern. His next command was ominous. "Shield's up, red alert."

The beat after Pike's last command hung in the air for an interminable stretch. Relativity, that most basic of physical principles, was an astonishing thing. So much could change in four and a half minutes, such that they could stretch for what felt like hours. This rendered the pilot's next statement much more jarring: "Arrival at Vulcan in five seconds."

Kirk's logic was sound, but there remained a non-trivial probability that he was wrong.

"Four."

Spock's eyes, like those of everyone else on the deck, were glued to the blue haze of the view screen.

He was not a wisher or a believer in luck or the gods, but he held quite a fervent a preference for a universe in which Kirk was wrong.

"Three."

His hands gripped the console in front of him, instinctively bracing for possible impact.

Let him be wrong.

"Two."

Spock felt Kirk's eyes on him, and turned to meet the gaze, hard, apprehensive.

Then they came out of warp.

His mind, in a rare and uncharacteristic attention lapse, blanked for just the briefest of moments at the sight of the ruination, so bright and ugly and chaotic, so illogical in its shape and scatter, so unlike the tidy, mathematical destruction he had been programming for so many years (the physics of true space battle were too complicated to simulate efficiently, though he wondered now if he could, really, do it justice. This turmoil seemed to abide by no physical laws, even if the scientist in him knew this could not be the case). And his first true feeling, before his hands rushed out to steady himself against the sudden bucking of the ship and his thoughts pounded in and he returned to the matter at hand, before he remembered his position and his calm in the face of any such suddenly dangerous and uncertain conditions of war, was a deep and abiding gratitude that Nyota had had the intelligence and fortitude and motivation to seek him out, to find him, and to talk sense into him on the subject of her ship assignment.