A/N: This chapter is a monster. I'm sorry it's so long - we had to get through the first half to get to the second half. You'll see what I mean.

Beta Love: MHGOOD. That is all.

Disclaimer: Much dialogue and some plot is borrowed, lovingly, from the movie, but it's not mine, I don't own it, I make no money from it. I'm just playing. Don't sue me.

"Emergency evasive!"

Spock hurtled from his position near the captain's chair back to his console, where he could be of service, a bare moment after the orders started firing. He could not, however, stop himself from glancing back over his shoulder at the viewscreen, catching glimpses of Vulcan, his home, his only home, on which he had not laid eyes in nearly seven years, shining like a sun behind the carnage.

The wreckage of one of the starships--the Defiant?--filled the screen like death's shadow. There was no avoiding the smaller detritus--metal, equipment, vacant transporter pods drifting morbidly, bodies--that floated like so much space dust. At their current speed, a tremendously skilled pilot would be unlikely to avoid tearing off the entirety of the Enterprise's upper decks. Sulu, in that respect, did an admirable job, though the sound of the partial collision that ensued raised the hairs of everyone on the bridge who had them.

The ship monitors shouted reports, one over the top of the other. Damage to the forward holds. Loss of power to the rear of decks nine and ten. Stress fractures in the nacelle containment hulls. The Enterprise rumbled under the strain, but the noise and the rattling vanished into the background as Spock turned, again, from his computer, which was attempting to make sense of the universe despite an abrupt and unexplained lack of uplink to the main Starfleet computational and data servers.

Spock turned, in fact, at Pike's sudden and notable silence in the midst of the damage and environmental updates. Shock once again overtook him (and his eyes even widened, ever so slightly; he could sense an unfamiliar muscle tightening) at the sight ahead, of an enormous entity, black and shining, tendrils eerily snaking into space from a central hull. The single largest space-bound entity Spock--or, likely, anyone--had ever seen. The architecture, all drama and darkness, was unambiguously Romulan, though not of any Romulan design he had ever studied or observed.

It was horrifying.

His console's screams brought him back to his senses. "Captain, they're locking torpedoes."

Pike's response was immediate. "Divert auxiliary power from port nacelles to forward shields."

The Enterprise was equipped with the most powerful shields that science and interstellar cooperation could produce, but they fluttered and ruptured like tissue under the weight of the missiles. Structural integrity reports kept streaming in: explosions on decks five and six, starboard. Spock mentally tallied. Auxiliary Medical.

The uplink beacon failed, once again, to connect to the Starfleet data servers. This was illogical in the face of the damage they had suffered; the dishes were located on the underside of the starcraft, with auxiliary fail-safes installed at rear port. They had sustained aggressive forward and topside damage, but the beacons themselves should have remained untouched. Spock initiated shallow scans of the enemy ship for any possible explanation for the loss of connectivity; his standard system analysis had yielded no illuminating information.

Pike barked. "Get me Starfleet command."

This scan, at the least, was successful, and Spock answered the call before Nyota could. The news he delivered on behalf of his console was ominous. What could a pulse jammer be doing in his planet's atmosphere? "Captain, the Romulan ship has lowered some kind of high-energy pulse device into the Vulcan atmosphere. Its signal appears to be blocking our communication and transporter abilities."

Pike called for weapons. This was logical, if, in all likelihood, futile. There was nothing else to be done.

Not until Nyota's voice rang above the preparations. She had adapted to her promoted position with a grace that was satisfying to observe. "Captain, we're being hailed."

A distinctively Romulan face filled the view screen, tattoos and all. Green-tinged skin and the ears were all that testified to the ancestry this barbaric man shared with Spock's people.

"Hello."

Pike spoke with confidence that was only slightly colored by confusion. "I'm Captain Christopher Pike. To whom am I speaking?"

The Romulan's response was oddly casual. "Hi Christopher, I'm Nero."

Spock turned back to his console; the sudden reprieve allowed him to devote more careful attention to his surveillance duties. Besides, he could essentially quote, verbatim, what Pike would say to the Romulan: his words were prescribed by protocol, and Spock knew the protocol by heart.

He turned at the sound of his name, registering that the Romulan, Nero, had disavowed connection with the Romulan Empire.

"...stand apart. As does your Vulcan crew member. Isn't that right, Spock?"

This comment was unexpected. Spock, contrary to standard procedure in these instances, where he would typically defer to his commanding officer, arose from his seat to address the Romulan. "Pardon me, I do not believe that you are I are acquainted."

"No, we're not, not yet. Spock, there's something I would like you to see."

Spock struggled to process this statement. This man was not like admittedly few others of the Romulan race with whom Spock had been acquainted. Nero's eyes glinted with a peculiar sort of insanity, and his words did not fit into a sensible whole. His last comment was ominous in the way of a madman's; a madman at the helm of the most powerful starship anyone had ever seen.

Nero continued. "Captain Pike, your transporter has been disabled. As you can see, by the rest of your armada, you have no choice. You will man a shuttle, come aboard the Narada for negotiations. That is all."

This was not a good idea.

Pike stood as all eyes turned to him, the viewscreen flickering off.

Kirk spoke first, vocalizing a thought that many of the command deck were likely to be thinking. "He'll kill you, you know that."

For the second time in the span of 10 minutes, Spock found himself agreeing--not simply agreeing, but vehemently agreeing--with the logic of the insufferable cadet. "Your survival is unlikely."

Kirk cut in. "Captain, we gain nothing by diplomacy. Going over to that ship is a mistake."

Their words overlapped, fit together, flowed; they spoke as though from two parts of one sentience. "I too agree, you should rethink your strategy."

Pike ended their suddenly synergistic train of thought, almost dismissively. "I understand that. I need officers who have been trained in hand to hand combat."

Several seconds later, with Sulu and and Olson, Enterprise's eminently capable Chief Engineer, in tow, Spock, Pike, and Kirk--skilled in combat, his records had said; superb abilities, Spock remembered--were moving quickly down the hall to the turbolift leading to the shuttle deck. Pike was outlining a particularly audacious strategy for survival and victory over the Romulans who manned the enormous ship. If they survived this particular situation, Spock would need to analyze this plan and the thought process that led to it. What about Pike's history and psychological makeup led him to this strategy, involving these crew members, over the span of the 1:47 seconds that had passed between when he learned of the Romulan blockage of transmissions and right now, as they walked down the hall?

Aside from the fact that Pike was, in fact, boarding a shuttlecraft, and that he was sending down three men via space jump to settle the issue of transport capability, the strategy was relatively straightforward. Spock's role in it was particularly so: as second in command and in the captain's (temporary, under the best of circumstances), he was promoted, tasked with overseeing ship maintenance and making necessary military decisions, such as whether and when to fall back.

He was well prepared for this responsibility.

He was not well prepared for the Captain's final statement. "Kirk, I'm promoting you to First Officer."

At least Kirk possessed the presence of mind to sound surprised. "What?!"

Spock attempted to understand what the Captain could possibly intend. Kirk was a cadet, and a cadet on academic probation. He was not posted to the ship. First Officer was a position of responsibility, particularly in a time of war. Why, then, would the highly respected Christopher Pike promote an inexperienced, behaviorally challenged cadet in the presence of so many of Starfleet's best, seasoned officers?

This, Spock concluded, must be an instance of human humor. There was no other logical explanation. "Captain? Please, I apologize, the complexity of human pranks escape me."

Pike's response was not encouraging. "It's not a prank, Spock, and I'm not the Captain; you are."

Kirk caught his eye, at this point, looking almost...amused? Spock furrowed his eyebrows, in an effort to make sense of the new assignment. What in the universe did Pike see in the cadet that he did not? And moreover, what sense did it make to promote to First Officer a man one had just assigned to space jump to a platform guarded by Romulans of indeterminate arms?

He was vaguely aware of Pike making an offhand remark about needing to be collected after transport abilities were reinstated, before the captain caught his eye one last time. "Careful with the ship, Spock, she's brand new."

And with that, and a whish of the turbo's doors, the captain was gone.

Spock wasted no time returning to the comm deck, mentally enumerating tasks as he went. They needed to organize and clear the space jump and transport to the Romulan ship, with the requisite supplies. Space jumps were dangerous, and required precise cooperation between the command staff and the jumpers in order to ensure the safety of the airmen involved. In this case, there was no room for error.

The next important task would be to determine the state of the ship, tally any damage and casualty reports, and reassign staff to tend to the damage and injuries as necessary. These corrections would need to be prioritized based on who was injured and what had been damaged or destroyed in the attacks; defense shields should be repaired first, as well as offensive capabilities. Life support systems needed to maintain redundancy in order to maximize fault-tolerance; the redundant systems could save their lives in the event of an evacuation. The evacuatory system needed to be placed on stand-by in order to speed the order, if necessary.

Once the ship had been tended to, they needed to provide support, if necessary and possible, to the airmen on the planet below, initiate diplomatic contact with the Romulans in an effort to secure the release of the captain...the list went on.

And they needed to find out what was happening to Vulcan. Vulcan. Vulcan.

He deliberately smoothed over the thought, crowding it out with the other details at hand. If the command staff was surprised to see him take the captain's seat, thinking hard, they said nothing.

Step one, Medical. He punched the button on the captain's comm. "Doctor Puri, report."

The voice of Kirk's associate shot back at him, the sound of flames and crashing and mayhem nearly drowning him out. "It's McCoy. Doctor Puri was on deck six; he's dead."

This was inauspicious. "Then you have just inherited his responsibilities as Chief Medical Officer."

The cadet's response from the other end of the comm link was sarcastic; Spock had only recently begun to regularly discern human sarcasm. "Yeah, tell me something I don't know."

It appeared that the medical decks in question were still ablaze, and thus there was nothing else to discuss with the medical team before the flames were out. Spock dispatched additional crew from the engine bay to assist. The space doors in compartments 13-27 had sealed automatically with the loss of the upper section of hull, and the newly fitted robotic hull generators were crawling the surface of the ship. He could not order a full repair, as doing so required use of the forward energy reserves and would slow them in the case of sudden evasive maneuvers, but a thin patch would defend the inner hull lining in the case of an additional attack.

Fortunately, the transport bay had been unharmed, and outfitting the space jumpers and manning a shuttle was trivial to arrange. Ensign Chekov cleared them to launch himself, looking over his shoulder for Spock's approval, eyes wide. He granted it with a slight nod.

"Commander, you are cleared from the USS Enterprise..."

Spock questioned this portion of the plan, as he questioned Pike's resolve to travel to the Romulan ship. Kirk and the Chief Engineer were reasonable choices for a dangerous combat mission, but it seemed illogical to send the pilot down as well, training or no. Sulu would have to live, for the sake of the Enterprise. Not to mention the planet below them.

Once the issues of ship repair and emergency system deployment had been addressed, and the transport had been launched--the work of several orders--and in light of the lack of communication, scan, and transport capabilities, there was not much to do in the captain's chair but keep an eye on the Romulan ship's weapons status and wait for reports from Chekov and the away team on their progress.

Answers would come with time. Patience and logic are two sides of one unified consciousness.

Chekov kept him updated. "Away team is entering the atmosphere, sir. Twenty thousand meters."

The Vulcan upper atmosphere was quite harsh, given the planet's proximity to the sun, and prone to high winds and powerful updrafts. Spock's nerves did not penetrate his facial expression. This did not mean he did not experience them faintly, in the back of his mind. He glanced around the control room and saw tension in the shoulders of all his staff, as they listened to updates from the air below.

His eyes fell on Nyota last; he did not allow himself longer than a brief glance, no longer than the look he had given any other member of the staff. She was concentrating fiercely on the subspace noise, pitifully weak in the absence of the amplification provided by the transbeaming satellite system. It likely sounded like static, but she scanned the channels all the same, flipping switches to find a transmission sequence of use. Her eyes met his, and though she did not smile nor acknowledge him with more than a nod, he felt a flash of gratitude for her presence.

Kirk shouted above a powerful wind. "Kirk to Enterprise. Distance to target, five thousand meters."

Chekov and Kirk alternated then, with Olson and Sulu chiming in with their progress. Forty-six hundred meters. Forty-five hundred meters.

Chutes should be pulled, soon, or they would not experience a sufficient updraft to slow their speed and land on the platform with precision and without bodily harm.

Three thousand meters. Two thousand meters.

The console bleeped as Sulu pulled his chute, followed closely by Kirk. The man's bravado had not extended to stupidity.

The same could not be said for Olson. Fifteen hundred meters.

Certain bipedal, humanoid life forms shared a susceptibility to the adrenal hormones, helpful in a survival sense in that they conferred power and strength in the event of a physical altercation and speed when flight was necessary. Vulcans were given to its effects, powerfully so, in fact, and humans too; Cardassians perhaps less so; Klingons not at all.

Sometimes its effects did not amplify in the interest of survivability. Perhaps the most mentally trying aspect of a command position was the fact that nothing could truly be done from the comm; one must sit and listen and wait, realizing that the Chief Engineer was lost to his own sort of madness. Frustration was an unVulcan emotion, as was sorrow.

The crewmembers on the away mission were tracked via transmitters attached to their person, and the beacons that tracked them chimed at regular intervals, each at slightly varying pitches. Olson, in the throes of his excitement, had clearly pulled his chute too late; Spock did not need a status update to determine this. Typically, however, a chime would continue even after vitals had been lost, altering its pitch and frequency, so the body could be recovered, if possible. In Olson's case, 6.7 seconds after the (far belated) chute pull, Olson's chime ceased entirely, as though the man, the chute, and the transmitter had all been entirely vaporized. This was fascinating; there had been no sounds of struggle. What sort of device were the men landing on? What was its purpose in the Vulcan atmosphere?

Chekov reported the obvious. "Olson is gone, sir."

Spock began to enumerate backup plans for the perfectly plausible eventuality that none of the three airmen made it to the platform, or that they failed in their task. The Enterprise could, conceivably, once the temporary repairs were completed in approximately--he glanced at the monitor to his left--four minutes and twenty-two seconds, sever the connection between the platform device and the Romulan ship. The difficulty would be in launching missiles with sufficient accuracy to destroy the device without alerting the ship to their intentions, or--

Chekov cut in. "Kirk has landed, sir."

So long as Kirk and Sulu were on the platform, their battle cries and gasps and grunts echoing throughout the otherwise rapt bridge, there was no logic in further preparing a secondary plan. A full-on attack on the other ship would prove futile; he would be forced to wait.

Wait, and hope that Pike's faith in the pilot and Kirk were well-placed.

Every shout from below took an age. The silence with which they were otherwise engulfed was maddening. What was the platform doing in the atmosphere?

Triumphant shouts from below, and Nyota's voice, interrupting his concentration. "The jamming signal's gone. Transport abilities are reestablished."

Chekov, now: "Transporter control is reengaged, sir."

Finally. His orders were concise. It was beneficial to be Captain. "Chekov, run gravitational sensors, I want to know what they are doing to the planet."

"Aye Commander. Ach, Keptin. Sorry, Keptin."

Chekov's fingers flew as he processed the readings. The navigator's reputation as a prodigy was clearly deserved; he calculated with little help from the computers. Under different circumstances, Spock would have had a moment to be impressed.

However, the madness truly began with Kirk's voice, wreathed in static, from his position in the Vulcan atmosphere. "Kirk to Enterprise. They just launched something in the planet in the hole they just drilled. Do you copy, Enterprise?"

The consoles were screaming in dismay and confusion over the readings sent by the various planetary sensors. Spock mentally acknowledged that his current position as Captain was disadvantageous--his typical post at the Science Officer's chair lent him immediate access to relevant data. Here, he had to wait, in a state of painfully heightened anticipation. The pause before Chekov spoke was interminable.

His words themselves were perhaps even worse than the waiting. "Gravitational sensors are off the scale. If my calculations are correct, they're creating a singularity...that will consume the planet."

Mother.

This news, and the translation his brain was having a difficult time processing, was rendering it very difficult for Spock to continue to concentrate on his job. Instead, he asked for clarification. Slowly, and with disbelief. Chekov was telling him an impossible thing. "They are creating a black hole in the center of Vulcan?"

Chekov's answer was devastatingly concise. "Yes."

Spock felt his tenuous grasp on his emotions loosen, almost physically, before being gripped by, for the briefest of instants, fear. His next question felt surreal. "How long does the planet have?"

Chekov answered, sadly. "Minutes, sir. Minutes."

Mother.

The decision was made before Chekov finished his sentence. He was out of his chair, once again in full command of his emotions, his logic, his capacities. They needed to evacuate. Many Vulcans would not survive. The Vulcan High Council should be preserved. They would be in the Ark, meditating in the face of the unexpected and powerful seismic disturbances their home was experiencing. They would not hear the call to evacuate, and they would be too far from transport to heed it. His mother would be there.

He had to go. There was no one else.

He spoke and walked simultaneously, dropping the natural meter that usually tempered his speech. "Alert Vulcan command center to signal a planet-wide evacuation, all channels, all frequencies. Maintain standard orbit." He would have to operate quickly to beam everyone aboard before the singularity posed a danger to the ship, or his efforts would be for naught.

He felt and heard, but did not see, Nyota leave her command to follow him. "Spock, wait. Where are you going?"

Even under duress, her confusion did not audibly emote more than an understandably powerful professional concern. He could see, in the tension in her forehead, her true question. This was emphasized by the blatant violation of protocol involved in her abandonment of her post and in her address of him by his name, and not his title. Perhaps the breach was less obvious in light of Kirk's continuous poor behavior on the command deck, but it seemed that no one else on the staff took note. He was grateful for this. Still, he could not bring himself to reprimand her; he told himself to do so would call attention to her peculiar behavior, would make their interaction more noticeably strange. He told himself it was only logical to leave it aside.

Though, in truth, if it had been anyone else, he would not have answered.

"To evacuate the Vulcan high council. They are tasked with protecting our cultural history and my parents will be among them."

She did not want him to go, though she would not, ever, attempt to stop him. That was not her way. She was confused, worried. He read this in the way she blinked and stammered over her response. "Can't you beam them out?"

He failed to maintain eye contact as he spoke the devastating truth that drove him. They were all going to die if he did not go. "It is impossible. They will be in the Katric Ark; I must get them myself."

She looked at him with understanding and did not speak again. He would have to express his gratitude to her for her stoicism when he returned.

"Chekov, you have the con."

"Aye."

He was in need of a supply belt and a phaser; he could not in good conscience beam to the planet unarmed. Rummaging and some stern orders at the supply captain got him his way, though he was forced to divert his path to a rather roundabout route to avoid the damaged and space-bound portions of the equipment holds.

As he jogged, he heard the voices from the con: Sulu shouted; Kirk howled. They were falling. The transporter staff struggled to save them. Chekov, with what sounded like a loose communicator mike that bounced with his steps, shouted, and shouted. And ran. His footsteps rang in the inner lining of Spock's skull.

Spock held his communicator in his ear until he had completed 85% of the walk from equipment to the transporter room, at which point the discordance became intolerable.

He did not hear the swish of the doors to the transporter room above the crash of Kirk and Sulu hitting the floor. Chekov had beaten him there, manning the console, looking vaguely pleased.

Kirk and Sulu merely appeared sore.

Spock was not displeased to see them back alive. He did not have time for pleasure, however. He merely issued orders as he assumed a defensive posture on the transporter platform. "Clear the pad. I am beaming to the surface."

Kirk was not Nyota; Kirk shouted his opposition to this plan immediately. "The surface of what. Wait, you're going down there? Are you nuts? Spock, you can't do that!"

Kirk was not Nyota; Spock felt no need to explain himself to an inferior officer. Instead, he issued a firm command to the computer, which could not, mercifully, put up an argument. "Energize."

He felt the ground materialize beneath his feet as he maintained his defensive crouch, and had to remind himself to wait the requisite half-second for his weight to connect properly with the soil before looking up.

He knew the way well enough that he did not have to think to find it. This was fortunate. He was a pulsating wave of focus--his mind processed his surroundings and the crumbling mountainside on autopilot. He felt the variance of the of the planet's destruction through his boots, the different frequencies distinguishing themselves to him like music. A typical Vulcan earthquake wave operated at a frequency no greater than 30 Hertz; the average Vulcan could usually hear them, though humans frequently could not. The waves tearing apart the mountainside varied between 20 and 135 Herts, each distinct but overlapping, each roll disintegrating another portion of the range, sending boulders flying like children's toys.

His feet pounded against the dusty rock as his brain carried on without him. If the waves ranged planetwide from an epicenter deep at the core of Vulcan, the planet's structural integrity could hold together for no longer than several minutes. Chekov had been right.

He did not register the burn in his lungs or his legs as he heaved himself through the dusty corridor to the statue at the center of the Ark, though he knew, somewhere, that he had never run so fast in his life.

His mother looked up at him in unabashed surprise. "Spock?"

There was no time for the propriety required by an unexpected intrusion into the elder's gathering. Instead, he merely spoke the truth, with as much authority as he could muster. "The planet has only seconds left, we must evacuate. Mother, now!"

She did not ask questions. No one did. She took his proffered hand and ran with him, and not a moment too soon: the Ark was coming apart around them. The statues collapsed around them, and shouts of fear and alarm and pain filled the air with the dust.

It was one hundren and twelve meters from the place of prayer to the entrance of the cave. It was another three point four meters to clear the rocky overhang to a location where Chekov could easily target and beam them up. The roaring of the crumbling mountainside almost drowned the sound of those who did not make it--too elderly, or too unlucky, to escape their planet's demise. Spock heard one, two, three shouts, and when he reached the ledge, released his mother's hand and quickly spun to tally their losses, the missing spaces glaring at him reproachfully. He did not need to count to know how many, and who, they had lost.

He turned back to his mother, whose normally gentle face was a mask of anxiety.

"Spock to Enterprise, get us out now." Even a human could hear the urgency of the request, despite the Vulcan within him that tempered the proportion of his desperation that was audible. They were so close to safety, though beneath his feet the ground rumbled with ever-increasing power, suddenly as insubstantial as sand.

Chekov's voice in his ear brought promises of sanctuary, mere moments away. "Locking on you, don't move, stay right where you are." The lights of the transporter rays wove around them all, rendering them vaguely fantastic, and relief flooded through him. He felt the elders, the protectors of his culture, standing around him and knew they were gazing upon their crumbling home with horror and dismay. He would have too, if his eyes hadn't been locked on the silhouette of real reason he had come down so quickly to save them.

He would have nightmares about the six seconds that followed for the rest of his life.

In his dreams, she would look up at him and her eyes would be heavy with contemplation and fear and sorrow.

Chekov's voice would break in at this moment, as it did in reality, promising freedom, redemption: "Transport in five, four-"

His mother's eyes would catch his and she would look him dead on, full of a sudden wisdom, as though she knew what was coming. In his dreams, he knew too.

"Three, two--"

How had she ended up so close to the edge? They had exited the cave together, first. He was only trying to save her. Again, later, when this moment came back to him, unbidden, he had time. Decades. Eons of time to reach and grab her and hold her hand, and let Chekov bring them back together.

In reality it all went by much too quickly.

She disappeared then, as the mountainside fell away beneath her, gone with the ash and the rock and the disintegration of his home. His shout could be heard by the Old Ones, perched in their heavens, and his arm shot out of its own accord, to catch her.

"MOTHER."

Spock could hear Chekov in his headset, trying desperately to rectify the oversight, but even the miraculous young genius could not perform two statistically improbable miracles in so short a period of time.

(Somehow, in the rage that burned in him for years, he always managed to avoid placing blame on the child. Even in his fury, Spock knew that it was not Chekov's fault.)

But in his dreams, though he always had the time, always had the foresight, always, always left with her small hand in his own, safe and warm and loved, always, when he landed on the transporter pads safe on the solidity of the Enterprise with a quiet hum and a swish, she was always gone. Every time.

He scarcely mourned or even registered the true collapse of Vulcan, which took place two minutes and seventeen seconds after his feet once again touched metal aboard the Enterprise. His world had already been destroyed.

A/N: Reviews?