Quick warning before we start on our grande finale: until now the M has been there mostly for sexytimes and swearing, BUT! I've gotta say that that changes here. There is some violence and it ain't pretty (unless, you know, you're into that sort of thing. BUT NO REALLY there are itty bits of gore *hugs the boys*).
Okay. I shall wait to gush and stuff until the very end ;D I just hope this was worth the wait, and that you guys enjoy the read!
PS THIS IS THE LONGEST CHAPTER OF EVER
Chapter Twenty-Three: Veritas Vincit
...How to get them to the Starbase, though?
The timing's wrong. Of course the timing had been fucking wrong, someone (Stavok, Stavok) had to have planned this much earlier, had to have wanted this for a very long time. Maybe over a year.
Maybe since Jim and Spock had failed to save his planet.
Stavok had to know the Enterprise was the only ship in the Quadrant, so why not simply issue a Priority One distress call? But of course, not only did that require the Commodore's authorization codes as well as a vocal confirmation, but once they got there and realized the call was a fake they'd leave immediately again, so there wasn't enough time to carry out the plan. Whatever the plan was, exactly.
So Stavok must have looked through Jim's records, searching for any weakness he could dig up, a reason for the Enterprise to stay in Starbase Theta for at least several days.
And he'd found Spock.
And so the trial had been arranged. Jim had wondered whether it was someone in the Admiralty, remembered considering whether he knew someone who hated him enough to want his reputation destroyed, when all along this could have been accomplished by sending an anonymous message to the right source; because even that would warrant a minimum investigation and once the pattern had been found the investigation turned serious. Then Tersal II had happened and it was deemed urgent.
A perfectly executed plan, without a doubt.
Jim still didn't understand how Leila fit into all of this. Maybe she and Stavok had been allies from the start. Maybe not.
"The Vulcan Stavok arrived before any other reporters, and was assigned quarters with the rest of the press. Special section of Deck 16, if I'm not mistaken."
"Has D'Ko-Han found...?"
"You've been here since she left, she'll call if she discovers anything relevant there."
"What about his ID? Did he have fake credentials?"
"He had no credentials, doctor."
"How was he not asked to present identification? That's ridiculous!"
Jim looked at McCoy harshly. "He's Vulcan. Right now that's the most simultaneously intimidating and sympathized species in the Galaxy, with the power of mind-control. What do you think happened?" He turned back to Emerett, pitched his voice slightly louder to be heard over all the other conversations happening around them in the crowded office. "There are at least two men I saw with him. Humans. They had equipment, cameras, things I assumed were part of his job."
"Descriptions?"
Jim struggled to remember. "Both were dark-haired, late thirties, built, one was maybe early forties. He was of average height, crooked nose, pale. The other was shorter, darker skin, stubble. That's... I've only seen them a couple of times."
"Someone circulate those descriptions for me please!" Emerett called.
"On it!" came a voice from behind Jim, possibly belonging to the Commodore's assistant, Dervin.
"Stavok was outside the courtroom when the gravity settings failed. He must have helped Leila take Spock before gravity was re-stabilized... maybe that's why those three reporters died in the struggle," Jim added.
Uhura moved the comm from her ear long enough to say "Do we have pictures from that? Anything that might help?"
"All their picture-drives were wiped, unfortunately, and security cams for the entire corridor were out."
McCoy blew out an exasperated breath. "Of course they were."
"Every single reporter was stunned, aside from the three dead, two are concussed and in the Hospital Deck."
"We need to work on locating Spock," Jim declared. Every time he spoke he felt this detached little tingle of surprise that his voice sounded so very rational and reasoned. "If we do that, we'll find Stavok."
"The locator system is dead. All of it. I've got my best techs on the problem, but so far there's been no improvement."
"Can it—"
"Sulu says they've cleared decks 15 through 18," Uhura interrupted, holding the communicator away from her ear again. "No sign of Spock, Leila or Stavok." She turned away from them then and resumed speaking into the comm.
"Decks 9 and 10 were priority, right?"
"Of course, but they were clear as well. They're nowhere near the Main power lines, or the main generators, and the Hatches remain perfectly functional and untouched."
"Time?" someone in the background said to the room at large, and Jim listened for an answer.
"One hour, thirty-eight minutes left."
"Coordinating a thorough search like this means we've got a good chance of finding them," Emerett said to Jim. He still looked kind of condescending, like he was waiting for Jim to break, to cave under the pressure, young Captain James Kirk finally defeated by a phaser to the chest and a broken heart.
Jim didn't really care what Emerett thought of him so long as the man did his fucking job, so he just nodded a curt thanks. "Yes. But I'm not leaving him to chance. Something's going to happen very soon, something that..." You will soon see but be strong, I learned to control the pain long ago... "Any second now, something is going to happen, and we need to be ready when it does."
"Mr Spock told you this? Telepathically?"
"Yes."
There was a tiny silence (they couldn't afford long silences, not now) and then; "You're sure you can't reach him—"
"I'm sure," he said. It made the Commodore turn away from him to look over his shoulder.
"Lieutenant Dalle, is there anything you can tell us about Ensign Kalomi that will help this investigation?"
Mara Dalle had been standing behind them with a permanently shocked expression on her face, pink lips parted as they had been since she'd been told of Leila's involvement.
"I don't... I don't know." Mara blinked, and Jim saw her visibly force herself to appear professional and in control. "She seemed so sweet, I don't... I met her three months ago when we were assigned to work together and there was never a hint of... I couldn't tell you, I didn't even know she could handle a phaser. All I know is that her dad was also a scientist, and she grew up in a colony on Omicon Ceti III, I think. She has friends here, or at least people I assumed... but I guess she lied to us all."
You will soon see but be strong, I learned to control the pain long ago...
The words made Jim's gut roll with nausea. Right now, at this very moment, Spock was most likely being tortured.
"What motive could she have for wanting us dead?" Jim asked flatly.
"I have no idea."
"Think."
Mara flinched a little, looked away from Jim when she spoke next as though that would make it easier to organise her thoughts. Fine. Whatever worked for her.
"She was... she liked Mr Spock, I know that. But, well, I figured it was just a crush, she herself said it was so stupid when it was clear that... uh," Mara stopped. Then she gave Jim a darting, almost frightened glance, and he wondered whether there was still blood somewhere on his person, and whether he looked like a scary robot again, like the last time Spock had been hurt and Lucas had been the one shying away from him. He hadn't bothered to change out of his dirty bloodied dress-uniform, bullet-hole and all.
"Look, she said it was stupid to like Mr Spock when it was clear that the person Mr Spock wanted was you."
You will soon see but be strong, I learned to control the pain long ago...
See what? See what, Spock?
Jim felt in two places at once, drained and electrically charged both, a study in contradictions. The waiting was killing him. He felt like he'd breathed in acid a second time.
"Are you saying she took Spock away... from Kirk?" this was Uhura again, with a desperately incredulous look on her face.
Mara shrugged, eyes wide. "What do I know? It's just... why would she otherwise?"
The timing was ridiculously perfect.
Mara asked the question and it happened as though Stavok had been listening carefully to their conversation in order to plan the exact moment when it would have the maximum effect.
Jim saw it out of the corner of his eye, blurry and easily overlooked if you weren't paying attention; the small holo-screen mounted on the wall right next to the door to Emerett's office flickered, blinked out.
And then switched back on.
Strangely (impossibly) calm, Jim thought; that's quite a feat of computer hacking. He's probably managed it on every screen in the Starbase.
And then he was striding over to see the live video feed and if people were stupid enough not to immediately leap out of his way then he was going to take the fastest path regardless because everyone knew that the shortest distance between two points was a line that connected Jim's eerily blank mind to that small screen.
Slowly, others seemed to notice something was wrong, and a gradual sort of silence took the room.
"What's..."
"Is he...?"
"What the hell is that?"
It was an arm.
Not a severed arm, just... There, on the screen, was the badly-angled shot of a nondescript floor and, resting on it, a limb that the camera frame cut off above the elbow. The lighting was bad, but the hand was pale and the dim glow lit it up well enough.
The long, tapered fingers weren't half-curled in unconsciousness. Instead, they were splayed on the floor (it was a dark floor and in that light it looked black, like every floor in every fucking Deck in this place). Palm up.
Jim tasted blood in his mouth, and wasn't sure for a few moments whether he'd bitten the inside of his cheek or it was just the phantom flavour of his busted lung coming up again. It turned out to be the former.
"You will have killed Captain James Kirk in one hour and twenty-nine minutes."
The voice didn't come from the tinny speaker of the monitor. It rang earsplittingly loud through the general comm system, on every Deck of Starbase Theta.
Yes. Jim knew right then that this image could be seen on every screen, that everyone would know. If they'd been hoping to prevent mass-panic, that hope was gone now.
"You will do so in hope that your lives will therefore be spared. The threat to hatches T-6 to W-9 was fallacious in order to cause a distraction, however, I have the clear means of obliteration with equal efficacy. And twelve-hundred hours, you will die if you have failed to do as I say."
There were no civilians here, but what could prepare over a thousand Starfleet officers for the threat of imminent death at the hands of a crazed killer whose motives still remained strange?
"It would be wise for you to choose to believe this, and not hope, illogically, that I do not possess the ability to carry it out."
Stavok sounded much as he had every other time Jim had spoken with him. Cool, aloof, detached. More than inhuman, more than robotic. Flat. No inflection, no intonation.
Jim cursed himself for the millionth, helpless time for not seeing it sooner. Spock never sounded like that unless something was seriously, grievously wrong. Not even Sarek had ever sounded like that, and he didn't have the excuse of being half-Human like Spock did.
"Commander Spock's life will also be spared if Captain Kirk complies, and he shall do so because he wishes to see Commander Spock live more than he wishes to live himself."
True. Yes. All true.
"In one hour and twenty-nine minutes, Captain Kirk will be dead at Starfleet's hands."
Important. What Stavok was saying was important, every detail another clue. Jim tried to listen, focused his mind again wholly on the immediate crisis at hand. Why not just dead?
What matters is how we die, Jim, not that we do—
He was starting to piece it together...
"Since the majority of humanoids here are Earthmen, I believe proof of the veracity of my intentions is required."
And suddenly his focus was gone, derailed like a speeding train wildly veering off the tracks as Jim froze. No. He'd known it must be coming but he'd managed to block it out, to maybe hope he was wrong, and now it was going to happen and those were Spock's fingers he'd kissed with his lips and his hands, how could he allow this to happen?
The words seemed to take a couple of seconds to sink in for the rest of the room. And then... "No, oh God," someone gasped. Probably Uhura.
You will soon see but be strong, I learned to control the pain long ago...
Another shape appeared on the screen. It was dark, more shadow than anything, but the glint of silver was enough for Jim to discern what it was.
FYI, I have a knife in my belt, Leila had said, scowling petulantly.
The blade flashed again in the low light and then delicately rested on the pad of Spock's index finger.
Someone was digging nails into Jim's arm, hard enough to bruise. Uhura, it was Uhura, standing beside him with tears streaming down her face.
On the screen, the black shape moved and the blade lovingly traced the pad of Spock's thumb. Beads of dark blood welled up at the point but Spock's fingers never even twitched. Then the knife lifted, sudden and unexpected, out of frame, and for a second Jim dared to hope.
And that was when the blade was brought down ruthlessly fast. It sank into Spock's palm with a sickening fleshy sound and blood started to flow freely, dark and thick and running between his fingers onto the floor and this time there was a spasm, a minimal reflex that at least revealed that the body attached to that arm was still alive.
Jim's whole body locked to conceal the shudder that racked through him. Obviously, it was too dark to tell whether the blood was green but that was a stupid detail. He knew.
"Who's working on this?" a harsh voice said, jarring in the stunned silence. It was Emerett. "We're Starfleet officers, not untrained civilians. Who's analysing the lighting? Working on higher picture-quality to narrow down search-grid areas? Who's tracking the signal? It's got to be broadcasting from somewhere, come on, people!"
It broke the spell effectively. Movement started again around Jim, and then, somehow, somehow Jim looked away from the screen and tried to get back to work. He was vaguely aware of the looks, but that didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore.
"Jim, I think you should sit down."
McCoy clapped a firm hand on his shoulder and Jim coughed, deep and racking as though his lungs had filled with blood in the past few minutes.
"I—no, Bones I told you—"
"Sit down, Kirk," Emerett snapped. "You look like a corpse."
"I—"
The room blurred and, out of the corner of his eye, he could still see the flickering screen. Gods, wasn't there a point where he was allowed to say it was too much? He couldn't breathe, and they wouldn't let him help, and it was fucking too much but he didn't care, he didn't care and he wanted to do this, to be here—
"I'm not kicking you out, Captain Kirk, just asking you to sit in a chair for five minutes before you pass out and are of no use to us anymore."
"You got shot in the lung, dude," someone said, a security guy Jim didn't know. He sounded kind of awed.
"Can I get something for him?" Mara asked McCoy quietly. "I can page the Sickbay or something."
"Thanks, kid, but I've got this." Jim's CMO took out the two hypospray needles he'd already used, reloading them after a quick resterilization. Jim felt a sharp pain in his neck and then, blissfully, the throbbing in his head eased somewhat and his vision cleared.
"Better?" McCoy asked.
"Yeah." Jim blinked a little, then set his jaw. "Yeah, much better. Thanks, Bones."
"It's my job," the doctor said with a shrug.
Jim nodded at him. "Thanks anyway." Then he clapped his hands together once. "All right. Here's what I want." He raised his voice a little, and directly in response, the hubbub quieted. "I want search teams to focus on areas that can't be reached from the public access terminals. I want someone to ask each Department Head for a report to be sent in exactly fifteen minutes detailing every single technical anomaly they have experienced in the past two weeks." When it became obvious that he was waiting for them to comply, a flurry of movement started up again. "Then I'd like someone to go through Leila Kalomi's personnel files and psych evals and make a profile. Someone else needs to create a profile for the Vulcan Stavok, and especially focus on his recent history and family's involvement in the destruction of Vulcan-that-was. Assuming this feed—" he didn't turn to the screen, didn't even glance at it "—is streaming everywhere, I want people working on taking it down. We don't need to make the panic worse."
Satisfied that every command had been taken down by someone, Jim motioned to Emerett, McCoy and Uhura. The Commodore didn't look pleased by his sudden resume of control over the situation, but again, Jim could not possibly care any less about Emerett's emotional state at this moment. "I'm going to try and track Stavok's hack into the comm system from the Science Department. He'll have accessed the general shipwide announcement feed, for sure."
"I'll come with you," Uhura said immediately, but Jim shook his head.
"No. Yellow-alert means all non-essential Decks are shut down and this thing's gonna go to red any second; I need you here." He could tell she was angry and frustrated and wanted to move, do more than work through the comms, but this hack was a matter of computer engineering, and much as Uhura knew about tracking transmissions, her expertise lay in languages and inter-vessel frequencies, not the software of the system itself.
"Fine. But you can't go alone, he might still kill you if he gets the chance—"
"He won't," Jim said with absolute certainty. Even as he locked his legs and squared his shoulders he felt the brief high from the drugs start to wane, but it had given him enough of a shock to snap him out of his desperation. He was back in it now. "Wasting someone on protecting me is dumb. And useless."
"How do you—"
"I just do." He was the Captain, after all. Explaining his reasoning behind every order was wasting time. "I'll call this office as soon as I get a signal, but there's at least four more people involved here, so one location won't mean the day is saved. And killing Spock is not an empty threat; he's gonna do it."
"I still don't understand why Leila took Spock at all, it makes no sense—"
"We can knock ourselves out trying to figure out the why's later, I'm sure," Emerett said. "Go if you must, Captain Kirk."
Jim gave him a curt nod and exchanged a charged look first with McCoy and then with Uhura, both of whom seemed about to say something potentially melodramatic that Jim had no time for.
"Find him," Uhura settled for finally.
"Yeah."
And he was sprinting out.
x
He pelted down corridors and encountered plenty of people with too many questions for Captain James Kirk, ranging from "How are you alive?" to "Was it really Commander Spock's hand on that video?". It was less of a panic than he'd feared, and much more organised than he'd hoped. Teach him to trust his fellow officers, apparently.
He had no time for any of them, however, and a hasty explanation called over his shoulder was the best he could do before running off again, turning a corner, boarding a turbolift. His communicator rang the second the doors closed, when he was still typing his destination—during a Yellow Alert automatic routes weren't operative, and they switched to manual.
"Kirk here."
"Keptin!"
"Chekov?"
"I know why they took Mr Spock ahead of schedule," Chekov blurted without further introduction. "At least, I know of a possible!"
"Tell me," Jim commanded instantly. "Every idea helps."
"What if they cannot destroy the base until after midnight? And that is why they needed another threat to hold over our faces?"
Jim stared at the communicator in his hand blankly, and didn't bother to correct Chekov's little misunderstanding with the expression. "Specify."
"I am assuming they have means of escape and will not die if the base is destroyed, yes?"
"Yeah, that's the working theory."
"Well, I was wondering... why midnight? Why such a long time for us to put up a sort of plan, some defense? And then I was thinking that, as you know, there are several shift-changes around twelve-hundred hours. And the Starbase's clock does operate under Terran day-night schedules. At midnight there are at least three systems I can think of that will alter from night- to day-programming; perhaps that is why they gave us so many hours before the deadline. Perhaps that is why they took Mr Spock, as well. And perhaps that is enough for us to narrow down what they could have sabotaged."
Jim was stunned. It made perfect sense.
"That is brilliant thinking Chekov, yes!"
"You agree?"
"Of course I do!"
The lift had reached the Science Department and Jim noted that the turbolift network was a perfect example of a system that changed in the day-night schedule, since at nighttime there were fewer operating lifts in an effort to increase energy-efficiency.
"It's still a theory but it's all we've got and it's a damned good one," he rasped into the comm as he broke into a run again. "I want you to tell this to Commodore Emerett—call his office directly and if you can't reach it, Uhura's working through multiple comms, and if not just get yourself up there—"
"I can do that!"
"Good, then page Scotty as well, I want you working with him on this—"
"Way ahead o'ye, Captain!" Scotty's voice sounded distant but firm, and Jim felt the burden constricting his lungs ease a little. He wasn't alone. It did him good to keep being reminded of that.
"Great, then call me when you know more!"
"Will do, Captain!"
Deck 6 was relatively empty, but not deserted. Jim knew some of the experiments were time-sensitive, and plenty of officers not on call for security reasons were willing to risk working during a yellow alert. The only area that had been completely locked down was the greenhouse-like Main Laboratory after Security gave it the all-clear.
Jim ran into the Computer Lab, and it was empty. Main Control would have been ideal to work from but it was more important to focus on getting the locator software back on track, and he could do this from the auxiliary access from the Computer Lab anyway.
It wasn't a particularly large room, but the low thrum of power from the machines gave the air a strange buzz. It wasn't as brightly lit as the rest of the Base and something about it felt... comforting. Jim had always been good at computers, since he was a little kid and they became his favourite pastime. In this room they were lining the walls and piling on the desks, datapads and older models even heaped on a corner of the lab where clearly someone was taking them apart, probably to reuse spare parts.
He went directly to the principal terminal and sat down on the chair. It didn't take long to access the basic coding, but it was going to be hellishly difficult to find the spare line that would have glitched at the unauthorized access, because Stavok had once again somehow managed not to trigger the security system and that meant the line of code could be anywhere. And the longer it took to get a location, the less likely it was that Stavok was still there.
Jim ignored the treacherous voice that reasonably informed him that this was most likely a waste of time, and got to work. He had some time left.
x
It wasn't just slow work, Jim thought not long after. It was too-slow work. He simply, realistically couldn't make it in time and it had been a shaky enough lead to begin with.
Without actually stopping the search, Jim attempted to multi-task and scan the data while trying to come up with another way. Yeah, the locator program was the best bet, but it wasn't fucking working. There had to be something else.
He couldn't search out Spock's mind, that was clear. He was useless. Psi-null. Human.
For what felt like the millionth time since it had happened, Jim replayed Spock's last words to him in his mind, remembered the way it had felt to hear Spock's thoughts in his head.
It is the manner of our deaths, that is what we had not considered
Losing you... I—losing—Jim, t'hy'la... ask Nyota what it means
It had been reminiscent of the mind-meld, in that Jim had lost his hearing and sight again...
Suddenly he sat bolt upright.
At the time it had seemed irrelevant given what he was hearing, but he'd seen something for a second, hadn't he? A sort of pulsing light.
Throat tight with tension, Jim called up the video feed of Spock's hand on the computer screen.
And pressed play.
Spock's skin was glistening with dark greenish blood and by now the cuts had formed a spidery pattern that spread like a grotesque web from the center of his palm to the tips of his fingers, almost like a starflower Jim remembered from a childhood visit to a neighbouring planet on the Alpha Quadrant.
Jim's stomach gave a protesting lurch at the sight and he felt bile rise, but he forced himself to see past the ravage done to Spock's skin. Mustering his willpower, he rewound the video.
The cuts seemed to heal, the knife sliding over them and leaving pale unblemished skin behind.
Finally he was back to the start and Spock's pale hand appeared as though glowing, despite the fact that the light was too low to see anything else. Jim increased the density of the picture and then the lighting condensation by three-hundred percent. He leaned forward, eyes narrowed, and stared hard at the image before him.
In seconds he was rewarded by the intermittent, incredibly faint fluctuation of light.
He'd seen that in only one place before.
And now he knew where Spock was.
x
The comms were dead.
The comms were all fucking dead. Sometime in the past twenty minutes, Stavok or one of his minions must had set up a Base-wide jamming frequency and Jim didn't have time to try and figure out a way of calling Uhura to ask for help.
Public-access panels were useless, even to send a written message, because they were still playing the stream of Spock's video and there wasn't... he couldn't spare any more than seconds, it really wasn't...
Jim didn't meet anyone in the ridiculously short run to the greenhouse. It would have been convenient to send someone to get help, but life was a bitch and in the eerie silence (interrupted only by the sound of the yellow alert still ringing) Jim felt cut off from the rest of the universe.
So yes, it was reckless and stupid and unexpected and stupid some more, but maybe it was just insanely, impulsively Human enough that it would work, and Stavok wouldn't see it coming.
He was going to go in alone.
The doors were locked, obviously, and they were glass-panelled so it seemed like there was no one inside when one looked through. But Jim knew better.
Leila had been working in a little dark room with plants that emitted a glowing, pulsing light when Jim had followed her inside and tried to be helpful about her little crush on Spock.
Overriding the lock was actually a piece of cake, and Jim felt like his blood had been replaced entirely with pure adrenalin, and Spock was in this gigantic enclosure and Jim was going to find him or die trying.
The light panels above were still streaming fake sunlight at a setting eerily similar to the Earth sunset, and then varying in coloration and intensity according to the different corridors; just as Jim remembered from his last visit here. The vine-like towering plants that shot up to the ceiling cast their own purplish tint to the already orange-and-red shades that made the place seem even hotter than it was. The warmth immediately stuck to Jim's skin, making his temples sweat.
The place really did seem to be completely deserted.
Jim took out the phaser from his hip and moved as silently as his boots allowed. He was almost certain that there would be at least a couple of thugs standing guard somewhere around here, and they might be under orders not to kill him but he'd be of no use to Spock incapacitated.
If Chekov's theory was correct, Jim now had about an hour before Stavok could blow up the Starbase.
He walked cautiously past the rows of working tables, entering the area with the isles of plants. It wasn't entirely silent: the faraway sounds of the Yellow Alert were still audible in here, and some of the flowers themselves were... rustling. Beeping. Humming. He remembered a particularly nasty one making this loud honking noise the time Spock brought him all the way down there to talk. Thankfully there was none of that going on right now.
The first corridor was empty and Jim didn't spare it more than a cursory glance.
The second one was not.
He felt the force-waves of a phaser shot barely miss him and ducked, then rolled immediately and saw another shot pierce the air where his chest had been seconds before. He fired blindly and missed, heard something crash which meant that he'd hit a shelf and made too much noise and now there were two guys coming at him. One was the taller "camera man" he'd seen with Stavok that first day, the other Jim didn't know, but he was wearing a security uniform, and there went that hope.
"It's Kirk!" Redshirt yelled, and an instant later Jim shot him full on in the stomach, stunning him on the spot.
The other guy was smarter and had already taken cover behind a particularly densely populated shelf.
"Are you suicidal?" the guy asked, sounding almost genuinely concerned.
Jim edged around the row of black-and-red spiked Rosa Reci specimens and slid silently into the next row, keeping his eyes on the outline of his opponent's shadow against the floor one corridor down. The fact that he could see it meant fake-cameraman stood right on the corner.
Good.
Neither of them spoke again because giving away your location to trashtalk was stupid (something Jim had learned the hard way, but he'd been young and that was another story). But before either of them could move again there was a strange clicking sound that Jim wasted precious seconds on trying to match to a plant... before realising it was a new set of footsteps.
"What the hell is going on?"
Shit. That was Leila's deceptively sweet voice, and a moment later her steps abruptly halted. "What the... is he dead?" she called. She sounded vaguely irritated.
"Don't think so!" The guard called back. "It was Kirk! It is Kirk—"
"What?"
"He's here, I lost him but he's around somewhere—"
"He's around somewhere? Fuck you, Havers, you useless piece of shit. Kirk... he came alone?"
"Seems like it."
Jim stepped back, away from the corner, and tried to think. Stunning one of them without revealing his location would be tough, but he had to find a way to do it. If Leila hadn't asked the guard to cover her post it meant one of three things: someone else was there to do it, Spock was... too out of it to need a guard, or Stavok was here.
"Kirk?"
Leila's voice rang out smooth and clear in the thick air.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are... or I'm gonna cut off Mr Spock's hand." Her tone was steel-hard by the end of that sentence.
Jim wasn't going to fall for it.
"Amazing, that didn't work?" The guard said mockingly. "He's a Starfleet Captain, Kalomi." There was a yelp not long after. "Ow, son of a—"
"Shut up, Havers."
He heard more steps, then the sound smoothed and he couldn't distinguish it over the low ambient noises around him. Dammit.
Jim couldn't see through his shelf, but he ducked down and edged backwards, hoping he remembered the layout right and could find the little black room anyways. End of the third row to the right, he was sure of it. The only problem was that right now Jim was hiding in the second row to the left. And they would find him soon enough.
"Which way did he go?" Leila whispered, and Jim nearly jumped to hear her voice so close. She must be exactly on the other side of the shelf.
She got no answer, or most likely the guard (minion, tech, whatever—Havers) had pointed.
There were a few tense seconds of shuffling sounds and confusing stillness, and then Jim saw the sliver of fabric at the end of his isle and didn't wait for Havers to get his arm around and shoot—he fired first.
The shot grazed but didn't impact enough of the man to stun him, so Jim sprang to the side and shot again without hesitation, this time missing because Havers had thrown himself to the side just in time.
And then Leila was there, in the same all-black get up Jim remembered (gravity boots and all), her hair in a high ponytail swinging as she fired as well. Jim heard crashes and sizzling dying flora behind him as he leapt out of the way, then ran to the opposite side and threw his whole weight against a beautiful display: densely petaled blue flowers growing directly out of a panel of greenish solution, their dark roots making spiderweb-like images inside the glass. He already knew these things were bolted to the floor, but he'd been counting on the delicately thin plexiglass to shatter... and it did.
He felt the sting of cuts against his arms and shoulders and his eyes watered when dirt and droplets of green liquid flew at them, but he landed sprawled on the next corridor, and wasted no time in getting his breath back.
"Kirk!"
He ignored Leila's shout and fumbled to aim his phaser at the shape at the end of the row; it was Havers again, and this time he went down and didn't get back up.
Two down, one to go.
Jim tried to struggle upright, annoyed with his body for failing him now when he realised moving was suddenly much harder than he'd hoped. The cuts stung but the worst was the way he could barely draw air into his lungs before hacking up a red-tinged ugly-looking phlegm. The time for physical discomfort was later, he berated himself. Later.
"You look like shit," Leila said, standing next to Havers' unconscious form, and raised her phaser.
"Never better," Jim grunted, adjusting his own grip on his weapon. He was acutely aware that they weren't exactly on equal enough grounds to be at a stalemate; Leila was agile and uninjured and could still move if he shot her first. Jim, on the other hand, was struggling to keep his mind alert as it was. And he knew he couldn't trust his legs to get under him fast enough.
"Drop the phaser, Kirk. I wasn't kidding about chopping off Mr Spock's hand, you know." Leila walked slowly closer, her aim unwavering. "We need him alive for dramatic effect, we don't exactly need him whole. In fact, dicing him a little would probably help the cause."
"What fucking cause is that?" Jim spat.
"Baby, I don't do the evil monologue thing."
Jim staggered to his feet, dripping and trickling shards of glass onto the squelching blue-green mess on the floor.
"Then why haven't you killed me yet? I couldn't help note your phaser is set on stun. And you so kindly missed my heart earlier today and all."
Leila rolled her eyes. "Drop your phaser, Kirk, and I'll explain."
He had no other choice, and there was a chance that the mechanism had jammed; the shot to Havers had jolted a strange kick-back that was slightly alarming. Plus she needed to stall until the deadline; needed him to stay put and not be a bother. And he needed to know more and confirm his suspicions.
The phaser clattered down.
"Good boy. Now stay put, okay?"
Jim raised his hands helplessly and cocked his head to the side. "Don't got much choice, sweetheart."
"Right." She sighed. "So have you figured it out yet?"
Jim decided not to play dumb. "Most of it. I have no idea what your motivation is, but I'm sure you've got a legitimate reason for being totally nuts."
"Being—? You're really something, huh?" Leila asked, an incredulous little laugh making her voice shake. "You're about to die. Spock is half out of it already, and on the same dying boat as you are. And you're still gonna call me nuts? I have a gun!"
Jim shrugged, although his chest hurt. "Apparently I'm suicidal. How long before the deadline?" he asked her.
"Soon enough," she replied, still half-disbelieving.
Jim estimated it was about forty-five minutes away. If only he knew what was going to happen, or had a way to communicate with the outside if he managed to get her to tell him.
"We're locked in here, by the way," Leila said, like an afterthought. "Locked and invisible. Not even the override you used to get inside is gonna raise any alarms. Plus, the comm jamming signal is coming from somewhere else, so don't think you can disable it."
Jim had expected as much on both counts.
"And how do you expect to get me killed by Starfleet officers before then?" he asked.
"I think that given the circumstances, we're gonna go with plan B and just blow shit up. Plan A was good in theory, but Stavok sucks at anticipating Human emotions. He thought they'd be a bit more logical. He was lucky I caught him stealing that Cribalia Morte's petals. Hardly anyone knows it can be ground up into a powder and used as acid poison, see." She snorted. "Stavok thought they wouldn't risk a thousand lives for the sake of your pathetic one. Guess he learned nothing from studying your files, huh?"
"I never—"
"Don't lie to yourself, Kirk. You can't honestly tell me that if I gave you a choice right now you'd pick anything but Spock."
Jim was quiet. He needed her to keep explaining, so he didn't answer. Leila rolled her eyes again, and started walking towards him.
"I still can't believe how long it took you to realise killing you ourselves was never the goal."
"Well, I was starting to think you were the dumbest killers alive," Jim said. She stopped when they were still a few feet away, gun ready, and snorted.
"Failing was the point, you dipshit. It never occurred to you until now that the reason all those attempts before were never successful was that they were never meant to be? A couple of little accidents, that's all it took for everyone to think you were in danger. That you were to be protected. That someone was after one of you, any of you, better both but never none. That this person meant to kill you without reason. That they were dangerous." She smiled faintly. "Insane, even."
She came a little closer and, possibly for the first time, she looked like a real psychopath.
"Gods, you're stupid, maybe I should be Captain of the USS Enterprise instead of you. On your knees," she added, gesturing with her phaser. "You've got somewhat of a reputation for freakish pain tolerance."
Jim complied and let some of the pain show on his face. "I thought Spock was the one you fancied," he cracked weakly. More weakly than he felt.
Leila was unfazed, although Jim caught a flash of anger twist her features. "I thought you did, too."
"Well, if you want we could each stand at a different spot and ask him to walk toward the one he wants, how about that?"
"Oh, he's in no shape to walk," she shot back, and Jim flinched, the words a blow just like she'd known they would be.
"So the trial was Stavok as well?" he asked.
"Duh. Although several people had already noted a few irregularities, apparently." Leila's arm lowered slightly so that it wasn't aiming at his chest so much as his crotch, but the gesture was unconscious and it gave Jim hope of distracting her. "It was kind of a perfect reason to get you here. I mean, it's the nearest Starbase within thousands of light-years, so Stavok knew where they'd send you when he called Admiral Comack and expressed his anonymous concerns. Your mission-plan is confidential, but not impossible to hack into."
"Stavok is a pretty good at computers, huh?"
"Almost as good as you, apparently."
"Where do you fit in?"
At that, she pursed her lips and didn't answer.
"Fine. Why all the near-misses, then? Why only pretend to want to kill us?"
Leila glared. His previous question had made her angry. Duly noted. "I thought you said you'd already figured it out."
"I wanna hear you say it," he said sweetly. It only seemed to make her angrier.
"James Kirk and Mr Spock." She let out a long, shaky breath. "Heroes. Saved the Earth, all that." Her eyes were hard. "Well, now you're victims, too. Your starcrossed romance turned you into tragic heroes. When Stavok told me what he'd planned I have to admit that I considered it, but didn't really expect just how much the trial would help; make you even more popular, more well-known and well-loved."
Leila dropped to her knees as well and dug the phaser into Jim's sternum, hard.
"Help what?" Jim asked, voice thin.
"Help us. Help the public see your deaths as the worst possible atrocity Starfleet has let happen since the destruction of Vulcan."
"You wanted our deaths to be a 'win win' kinda deal?" He already knew the answer—had suspected it since the threat had been made.
"We wanted you dead and we wanted Starfleet shamed, discredited and ridiculed. So what could possibly be more perfect than this? We could have killed your ourselves, sure."
The recent bloodied scar from Jim's wound throbbed angrily when Leila pressed the phaser even harder into his chest, and he felt blood trickle down.
"But if it's Starfleet that kills you... Starfleet that ends your lives because Starfleet was powerless to do otherwise? After you've been repeatedly put in danger, warned of the risks and attacked multiple times, all of it right under Starfleet's nose? Then it's Starfleet's fault. Starfleet's failure. Starfleet's incompetence. There's scandal. Uproar." Another shadow of a grin, as though she was imagining it right now. "Starfleet is discredited. Shamed. You're dead. And there's not even a need for mass murder. So really it's a win win win."
She sighed. "Or, you know, it would have been if the stupid Commodore had had the fucking guts to shoot you in the head and you hadn't found us all on your own. Plan A was really prudy on the bloodshed. Now I'm afraid we'll have to settle for..." she raised three fingers. "You dying," she lowered her ring finger. "Starfleet looking like the bumbling incompetent fuckers they are," she lowered her middle finger, "But... oops. The mass murder thing is kinda still happening. And just so we're clear, before you die remember this: Plan B? Is entirely your fault."
They must have forty minutes left, maximum. How the hell were Leila and Stavok going to get away in time?
"Why do you hate Starfleet so much? I mean, I guess Stavok's motive is really obvious, but you? I don't understand you."
Her eyes clouded, reminding Jim of thunder. There was no thunder in space.
"Vulcans weren't the only ones to die that day, Kirk," she whispered. "Or have you so readily forgotten the thousands of officers that got there less than five minutes before you did?"
Jim didn't let the stab of pain that memory brought show on his face.
"Boyfriend? Girlfriend?"
"My father, you son of a bitch," she spat. "The only relative I have on Earth is a distant cousin whose name I can't remember. My father was science officer at the USS Farragut and he died and you lived and that is all the reason I need for wanting you dead."
"I lost friends that day, too—"
"Don't," she said. "Don't you dare compare... don't you dare try that sympathising crap with me. I'll go back in there and tear his lungs out and bring them to you, do you understand?"
Jim understood that she was mad with grief and she was going to kill Spock unless he was very careful.
"So why'd you take Spock before me?" he asked, gentler than was his norm. "I thought you wanted us both to die."
"There's many reasons," she answered, or rather didn't.
Jim was perfectly aware of the fact that it was convenient for her that he was asking questions, that she was keeping him distracted from the time and keeping him from either running away and alerting the whole Starbase or running to Spock and trying to rescue him, therefore getting himself killed ahead of schedule.
He knew this, and was using it, too.
"Did you think Spock was prettier than me?" he said, mocking.
Leila moved the phaser from the center of Jim's chest to the neat hole in his dress-shirt from her previous marksmanship earlier in the day, where his scar was still bleeding, despite the dermal regenerator McCoy had obviously applied.
A shot from this range, even a stunning one, would be really bad. Go-into-shock-and-die bad. They both knew it.
"Hanging an invisible, highly unlikely threat over your heads wasn't gonna work, we knew that," she explained, her voice quieter. "Stavok asked me what would scare the Humans until midnight. And I said torture always scares us Humans. Plus, Spock has such gorgeous hands, and Stavok said I could have him." She grinned then, and it was this unhinged, frighteningly delighted expression. "He promised I could keep him the entire time, and I wanted to have some fun. Waiting for ten hours playing the fluffy puffy little girl is boring."
Jim blinked at her, and kept his mouth shut.
"Sadly, they were taking down the video now anyway, and Stavok said enough. Right when I was getting to the good parts, too."
Jim's eyes snapped to her gloves and he saw it; a little smear of green blood that sent more life into him than anything else could have at this point, better than the drugs or the adrenaline. Proof, evidence, hard fact that Spock was metres away from him and still waiting to be saved.
"Mostly, though? I took him because we needed the Yellow Alert," she said, obviously not having noticed Jim's gaze.
"Huh?" He hadn't expected that, but it was hard to tear his eyes away from Spock's blood. "The Yellow Alert? Why?"
"Well, the Red would have worked too, of course."
He looked back up at her face and knew suddenly that now was the moment. In a couple of minutes he would need to make his move, but getting her to tell him this was vitally important, and the only way he could save the Starbase and everyone in it.
"What have you done?"
"Think, pretty boy, think. What systems change from day-to-night scheduling and during a crisis? There are only two, Kirk. Surely you can figure it out."
Yes.
Jim could.
Oh God.
"You hacked into the turbolift network," he said, voice thick with blood and throat raw.
"Yup."
He used the lifts every day, they all did, but he'd never thought... a few well-placed bombs and that was it. The end. The cold death.
Leila's face was inches from his.
"Bet you hadn't thought of that," she said cruelly. "It's kind of genius, though. Stavok is real smart. See, diverting a turbolift from one of it's pre-approved automatic routes would have triggered the system, and it's too well-designed to change, too risky to have those things meet at such high speeds. Now all we gotta do is tell it where we want it to go, 'cause the Yellow Alert switches to manual control. And at night there are significantly less lifts in operation, so no premature crashes that would ruin the big ka-boom."
Stavok couldn't be doing that from here. Stavok wasn't here, then, which meant he couldn't be blocking Spock's telepathy anymore, but that could only be because... if Spock didn't need to be watched when Leila had come out to see what the noise was, then Spock must be...
Unconscious, a voice in Jim's head swore viciously. Spock is unconscious. You would have felt it if he was gone. You would have felt the rip and tear in some way. You'd know.
Jim grit his teeth and felt himself implode with the effort of keeping still. Unconscious. They must have knocked Spock out, or he'd knocked himself out, Jim's smart First Officer, he must have done because he was alive. He had to—he was alive.
If Spock was unconscious inside the black room then Leila was just a guard, for all Jim knew under the false illusion that Stavok would come back for her when it was time to get into a shuttle.
"How the hell do you plan to get away?" he asked, to keep her talking, to try and process this and figure out a way to stop it.
"Don't you worry about me, sweetheart," Leila answered. "I'll be just fine—"
Her fingers loosened, the gentlest little bit, and Jim knew it was then or never.
He snatched the phaser out of her hands and Leila's instinctive press of the trigger was too little too late; the shot went up to the ceiling and then Jim had wrestled it out of her grip, twisted back and shot her in the chest without a second thought.
The setting had been changed.
He realized it instantly when the impact knocked his shoulder backwards, not a lot—phasers were designed so much better than the brutal guns invented centuries ago to perforate the flesh—but enough that he knew the kick was stronger than it should have been.
Either during their brief but brutal struggle or a little before, the setting had been changed to 'kill.'
And Leila was unmistakably dead.
Her huge blue eyes were wide open and gaping; her hair in its unarrayed ponytail tinged with blood when her skull had cracked against the floor. She had fallen backwards and was sprawled ungracefully because there was nothing graceful about death and she had been so ridiculously young.
Jim didn't spare her more than a glance. He had half an hour, tops, to save a thousand people. He couldn't spare her more. There was still a hollow sinking in his stomach, the taste of bile now to go along with the taste of blood in his mouth, a disgustingly familiar mix that he always felt when he killed someone. It didn't happen often, but it happened.
He ran even though it made his head spin to see colours blur by so quickly.
The black little room was tucked at the end of the row just as he'd remembered, and the door was closed but Leila hadn't used any entry codes the last time. It was a science lab, these were the scientific samples the scientists used. It wasn't even locked. The moment Jim stood close enough the door hissed open, sliding to the side.
"Spock."
He couldn't remember ever feeling like this, although he surely must have the last time he saw Spock nearly die (the poison, the way his head lolled and Jim thought Spock was gone and nearly went with him right there where he stood).
"Oh fuck." His voice broke and he dropped to his knees beside Spock's body.
The Vulcan was lying still and pale on the floor, and his left arm was intact. His right was a surgical mess, and still bleeding.
Stop the bleeding, the voice in Jim's head said. He knew basic things. He knew things. Some things. He had to—he had to stop Spock from dying and to do that he had to stop that precious, precious unique Human-Vulcan blood from flowing.
Stop the bleeding and then get him out of here... lift him up, oh God Jim how are you going to do that?
No. He couldn't doubt... he'd find a way. He'd do it. He could collapse later. Pain was for later.
Jim.
No. He wouldn't listen to that voice, he could do this. He—for Spock, and for everybody else, too, he had to do this, only how was he going to find Stavok now?
Jim.
Spock's shirt had been torn around the bicep, so it looked like he was wearing a strangely lopsided T-shirt. Jim tore off his own sleeve with surprising ease and used it to clumsily wrap around Spock's bleeding hand and forearm. Bones would do this better, he'd scold Spock even if Spock was unconscious and couldn't hear and then Bones would get Spock better, I'm useless—
Jim.
It was only then that Jim realised the voice calling his name didn't belong to him.
"Spock?" he whispered, twisting to lean over Spock's face.
The Vulcan's eyes were open.
"Jim."
"Spock."
Spock blinked, almost dazedly, and a wave of relief crashed over Jim so powerful he was dizzy with it.
"Thank you, fuck, thank you thank you for being alive you idiot," he panted, breathless and barely making sense and so stupidly relieved, and kissed Spock on the lips quick before slamming down the barriers again and retreating into himself once more. "Where is he? Where's Stavok?"
"There is not much time."
Spock's voice crackled like dry leaves, and Jim knew he sounded like he'd been screaming for hours, and they were both kind of incredibly fucked up but they were alive and goddammit they were going to stay that way.
"Where is he, Spock?"
Spock's eyes were strangely vacant.
"He controls the turbolifts—"
"I know, where is he? Can you sense him?"
"No. He purposefully... weakened me."
The way Spock said that sent a chill down Jim's spine.
"There's gotta be a way to find him," he said. "Comms are down and the jammer could be anywhere if its range has been amplified."
Together they got Spock propped up and then sitting, Jim tucking Leila's phaser into his waist to slide a hand around Spock's shoulders and help Spock cradle his bloodied hand against his own chest. Finally Jim knew he had to say something.
"Spock. Did he... you're not... you're not like this because of your hand, are you?"
Spock shook his head. "No, but you are alive."
And that was the end of his explanation.
The strangest thing was that Jim understood him perfectly, and for once knew that he couldn't argue.
"Can you walk?"
"Yes."
Jim moved back to let Spock stand up by himself, figuring his Vulcan could use the space, terrified his suspicion was going to be right... but Spock's good hand shot out and latched onto Jim's already ragged shirt, immediately preventing him from going too far.
"Please," Spock said, voice quiet and strained. "Please wait."
"I..." Jim was speechless. "Spock..."
"You are alive," Spock repeated, and slid his hand up from Jim's chest to his face in a jerking, hesitating move that was very uncharacteristic of him. For the briefest moment, Jim thought he felt something (a starved, half-dying, weak thing) shudder through him, lapping up heat and comfort. Then it was gone and Spock's eyes looked less jarringly blank. "How much time is left?"
"Minutes, I don't know how much. A bit more than twenty. I don't know."
And then they were running. It felt like the end of the world, but also like they were past exhaustion, past putting an effort into every step. Spock paused to pick up the stunned security man's phaser and caught up with Jim in seconds, and then they were outside, out into the deserted corridor of the Science Deck and the Red Alert sirens blared too-loud and stunning.
"Where do we go?" Jim shouted over the sound.
"There are a finite number of places he can be," Spock replied, pitching his voice perfectly. "We must rejoin the others."
"But the turbolift—!"
"Will still be functional. We must alert the others."
Jim nodded, and deliberately took Spock's unhurt forearm to drag him down the corridor.
They reached the lift and got inside, directing it to the Deck where the Commodore's offices were with bloodied fingers, smearing the gleaming screen with red and green.
When it was done Spock tugged Jim's sleeve and Jim crushed their mouths together, and it was barely kissing, more like breathing hotly into each other and just clinging, holding on now that they could. Alive, the air was charged with the word, but nothing could make them forget that it was closely followed by 'fornow.'The digital watch on the panel said they had fifteen minutes before midnight.
The lights inside the lift were red.
And they should have known.
Later, Jim would try to take the blame, and McCoy would curse their battered bodies and Uhura would curse their adrenaline-high; Scotty would try to justify it by their emotionally wrecked state, Chekov would say they were Human, da, and Sulu would call them ridiculous for feeling guilty, but Spock...
Spock would simply say that they should have known.
Stavok was somewhere with remote access to the turbolift controls.
Stavok had control of every turbolift, and knew when one had been activated. Knew where it started from and knew where it was going. They should have stopped to think about it for a second, and they should have known.
"Spock," Jim choked, struck by the realization. "Spock, we're not going to the Commodore's offices, we're—shit, fucking, shit."
The doors opened.
And Stavok was standing right outside.
"It has been done, Captain Kirk, you are too late," the Vulcan said immediately. "Drop your weapons, they will not serve you now. You cannot stop this."
Jim stepped away from Spock's embrace and drew his phaser.
"Watch me," he snapped. And shot Stavok without further preamble.
The phaser-shot rebounded and crashed right over their heads, inside the turbolift. A sort of shimmer in the air told Jim all he needed to know once he looked for it, and realized a force-field had been built around the door. It was standard procedure for any entrance within fifty meters of a hangar.
"There is, of course, a force-field beyond this door that you shall not be able to cross," Stavok said redundantly.
Jim didn't know this Deck. The corridor they had ended up in was different from the others; its floors were panelled and the ceiling was much lower than in any other... but. They were definitely near a hangar; the force-field was proof of that and Stavok clearly planned to escape. Either a hangar or the Docking Bay itself, which had a well-equipped computer room from which the Vulcan could have accessed the turbolift network's controls, so Jim was inclined to suspect the latter.
"Where are we?" he asked anyway.
Stavok ignored him and took out a phaser of his own from under the black folds of his robe. It looked clunky, and not standard-issue, clearly modified. With their luck, modified so it could get past the force-field, somehow.
"Leila Kalomi is dead," Jim said. Stavok had absolutely no reaction to that news; his pitch-black eyes didn't even flicker in acknowledgment. "She was, what, twenty-two? Are you seriously this unfeeling?"
"She was an unexpected ally I encountered here by chance, but no longer of use once I had familiarized myself with this Starbase's system and utilized her acting abilities to simulate another attempt upon Mr Spock's life."
Stavok shot a single blast into the wall behind them, and the damn thing got through all right, and left a scorch mark the size of Jim's palm.
"Drop your weapons."
Stavok regarded them calmly.
"Your determination not to see Commander Spock die outweighed Miss Kalomi's very own desire to live, or so it seems, Captain Kirk. I am Vulcan. These are facts about you that do not in any way concern me."
"You know nothing about me," Jim snapped, empty words but he didn't like this, didn't like this at all and didn't know what to do, he needed time to come up with a plan.
"That is what you believe," Stavok breathed out. That was all that could be said about his expression. "Yet it took insultingly little time to know this about you, James Tiberius Kirk."
Only then did Stavok's eyes leave Jim and lock on Spock's.
"Spock. Drop your weapon, else I shoot Captain Kirk and make you watch him die."
"End this, Stavok. It is irrational." Spock's voice was... oh. He was speaking in Vulcan.
"Nirsh," Stavok replied indifferently. No. "Your little Human boy does not sense a fraction of how much you hurt at this very moment because he is blind and deaf and mute to the things of the mind, Spock. He cannot fathom at our depth, cannot imagine what we daily force our bodies and minds to endure just as he cannot grasp what we felt the day Vulcan ceased to be."
Even now, even saying this, his face was blank. Jim felt disgusted.
"Nobody mourns the survivors, Commander. But the day Vulcan died every true Vulcan died with it. Even those of us who weren't there to perish with our families."
"Kirk tried to save the planet," said Spock. "Without him Nero would not have been stopped. Allow him to live out his days."
Stavok glanced at Jim, as though evaluating him. And finding him wanting.
"Yes, that is why he is allowed to die with honour. His name shall be remembered; surely that is the goal of every Human. The illogical desire to leave a mark, a record of his acomplishments. This I will permit."
Spock took a threatening step forward, and slightly in front of Jim. Becoming the main target.
"You have lost yourself to your emotions." This was spoken in Standard again, and like the greatest insult.
"On the contrary, Mr Spock. It is you who are blinded by them. You are half-Human and in love, and it is sickening."
But the reason behind Stavok's actions was far from unemotional. Revenge. Why did these things always come back to revenge? Had Nero not done the same? Did Stavok not see he had become no better than the insane Romulan who had destroyed his planet? Was this what grief had done to him... grief and the pain of millions of severed bonds?
"Why have you brought us here, Stavok?" Jim demanded, at the same time pulling Spock back so they were at the same level. "If you're going to kill everyone anyway, why bring us here?"
Stavok looked at him for a moment. "I see no need to explain my actions to you. Now drop your weapons and raise your hands above your heads."
Jim looked at Spock and they exchanged a wordless glance. Then they both let their phasers go (twice in one day, Jim thought exasperatedly) and raised their arms.
"Step forward."
Jim blanched.
"We can't step forward. Force-field."
"Step forward," Stavok repeated, aiming his phaser at Spock's chest.
Jim did so without further complaint, bracing his body for the shock of getting thrown back...
Nothing happened, and he nearly stumbled a little. What the hell? Stavok waited until they were both outside and then, with the gun still pointed at Spock's chest, asked them to walk forward.
"How did you disable that so fast—?"
"Be quiet. My ability to redirect a simple circuit should not confuse you so. I can shoot Mr Spock's remaining functional hand and still have him walk."
"Do that and I'll make sure you never walk again," Jim snarled. But he did as Stavok ordered because he had no way of fighting. Not yet, at least.
Jim and Spock walked down the narrow, low-ceilinged corridor side by side, Jim darting looks at Spock when he could because he'd understood most of Stavok's little speech, and he was extremely afraid of what Stavok could have done to Spock's mind. Feebly, he even tried to imagine calling out to Spock, mentally... but it was like yelling himself hoarse inside a padded soundproof room. He didn't know if Spock was hearing him or not, felt not a tingle of recognition or acknowledgment from Spock.
Spock wasn't ignoring him, however. He might not be able to communicate telepathically, but every time Jim winced or coughed or wiped pinkish saliva from the corner of his mouth Spock was there, watching carefully and intent, cataloging every problem. A soft touch or a gentle whispered word and they'd both feel better.
The bloodied green mess that was Spock's right arm had soaked through the makeshift bandage Jim had done too-quickly, but it looked to have stopped bleeding. At least the thing wasn't dripping emerald, as far as Jim could tell.
"How much time left?" he called over his shoulder to Stavok.
He got no response, but estimated a meagre ten minutes were left at the most.
They reached a large pair of metallic, reinforced double-doors that nearly went up to the ceiling and Stavok made them pause to type in the key. His fingers flew over the controls and Jim quickly considered and then discarded trying to take him on now; it would do no good to get himself killed.
A shimmer that said the force-field was deactivated, and the doors opened.
"Walk," Stavok commanded. And they walked into the Docking Bay.
Here the ceiling was ridiculously high, even higher than the greenhouse's dome, and the space felt huge. Signal lights lined the floor forming the takeoff path, and were now blinking intermittently red because the Red Alert was still going on. Jim counted the shuttles automatically (fifteen of them; ranging in size and model from a solid Galileo 9 to the small and near-retired Ulissess-3 line) and noted that one had already been prepped to go, and faced the gigantic Docking Bay doors. How the hell was Stavok planning on opening them without someone at the...? Unless. He must have someone at the booth.
Jim turned around and tried to locate the control booth. What had Stavok told the person up there? Did he or she even know they were signing their own death warrant? The lights were on, proving his theory, but all he could distinguish from this distance was a vague outline. Had this person also lost someone because of Starfleet Command's mistake? Wanted him dead even though Jim didn't even know their name?
A few, eerily quiet moments later, Jim realized they had a much bigger problem right now. Aside from the obviously huge problem of dying in less than ten minutes.
The Bay was full of shuttles of every size and model imaginable, but empty of people. Jim had been dreading that—Stavok would need to have everything ready and he'd either killed everyone inside or stunned them but there couldn't be any workers to mess up his escape—but it still felt like yet another blow. Security cameras must have failed here as well. Comms must still be dead.
They were alone, and as of right now there was literally only one door between them and dead space.
"Walk to the center."
There was no way they had more than five minutes left before things blew up. Stavok needed to get a move on if he wanted a clear take-off, not to mention clearing the blast radius.
"Are you taking us with you?" Jim asked, although he knew the answer to that, too.
"No. You are here to die, James Kirk."
"I will not let you kill—"
"Be quiet, Mr Spock, you are shaming your tainted heritage," Stavok cut in. He still sounded so weirdly polite about it. It was freaking Jim out. "There is not much time, but I will finish this as it should be."
"What—?"
Stavok raised the phaser and pointed it at Jim.
"Commander Spock, we knew each other as children, but do not expect sentiment from me. You shall now walk three steps back."
Spock's hand shot out and wrapped around Jim's wrist. "No."
"You stink of hope," Stavok said. For the first time, his voice was starting to change. In its icy coldness, it was gaining edges. "If you still hope to be rescued, you will do as I say, or watch James Kirk bleed to death on this floor."
Spock let go of Jim as though burned, and took three steps back.
"Very well. Now. Kirk."
Jim clenched his hands into fists and felt the begginings of panic claw at his consciousness. He was trying, he was, but he was out of ideas. Out of plans. This had come down to a gun and him and Spock and nothing to do.
"Your mind is small and cannot contain grief such as mine," Stavok assured him. But Jim knew he was wrong. Could feel the impending events like a gaping black hole ready to swallow him and smother him with pain, knew what Stavok was going to do and couldn't imagine anything more. It was going to rip his heart out.
"This is worse than death for you." The unnerving way his face looked so calm had Jim near shuddering. "You are Human. You cannot comprehend what I have endured. But this... this comes close."
"No," he said. "No, you—"
Stavok raised his arm towards Spock's head and Jim moved in the path of the shot, but Stavok exhaled and shot him in the knee.
"Jim!"
Pain exploded at the impact and Jim's leg buckled, no control; he crashed to the floor. "Spock—"
Spock's whole body was angled toward Jim, as though desperate to go to him, but Stavok's phaser was still levelled at Jim and the sick bastard knew how to get Spock to do what he wanted.
"Watch," Stavok told Jim, merciless.
"No!"
He twisted helplessly to try to reach Spock, to stop this, he had to stop this—
Stavok raised his arm again—
"Jim—"
"NO!"
And then there was a noise.
Jim whipped his head around.
The lights of the control booth were off.
Yes!
"Gotcha," Jim whispered.
Stavok whirled at him. "What did you say?"
"They know we're here. They found us." He grinned widely, shaking, his whole body trembling. "And they found you."
As if on cue, there was a loud, strange crackle, and then a firm voice boomed through the speakers.
"Drop your weapon!"
It sounded like D'Ko-Han, the Deputy Chief of Security. Jim loved Orion women.
Stavok hesitated.
But not for very long. Jim saw his grip clench and the phaser was raised to point at Spock's forehead.
He fired.
Spock had dropped to the ground and the shot grazed his temple instead of shattering his skull but Jim cried out anyway, and then Stavok shot again but Spock had thrown himself to the side, missed it, and then he was leaping through the air and he and Stavok fell together. Jim tried to lift himself up but his leg and his lungs and his throat wouldn't let him, and Spock was too fast anyway. He'd broken Stavok's nose in a flurry of punches and finally nerve-pinched him to unconsciousness.
"Holy... whoa," Jim croaked.
Spock looked at him, breathing hard.
"Talk about adrenaline rush. I think this was your mother-lifting-a-hovercar-off-her-child moment."
"Jim."
Spock was at his side instantly. His wet, bloodstained hand came up to help prop Jim upright and his good arm was around Jim's shoulders.
"Don't do that—idiot, you'll hurt yourself—" he coughed, a dry, racking thing.
"Stop talking," Spock hissed at him. "I... you are alive. You are alive." The Vulcan closed his eyes, and Jim stilled suddenly and stared up at him, aware that Spock had never let him see him like this before. "You are alive," Spock repeated, and shuddered, once.
Jim knew perfectly well that the Bay doors were seconds away from bursting open with possibly ninety-percent of the people he knew, but he didn't care. He reached up and pressed his lips to Spock's, who responded eagerly a second later, almost desperate for it, in fact, hands cradling Jim's head and clutching him by the hair. His tongue traced Jim's lips and Jim parted them instinctively, warmth, life, alive, safe, together, t'hy'la mine mine mineminemine...
Jim thought that he could, at that moment, have taken on a hundred Klingons in hand-to-hand combat and won, which would have been a record and pleased people. And then Spock gently but surely pulled away, leaving both of them panting hard.
Jim didn't understand.
"Why did you stop?"
"I hypothesized that you might wish to breathe," Spock said carefully.
"Breathe?" Jim was indignant. "That's ridiculous."
He thought I don't need to breathe when I'm with you. And then Oh, God.
Well! PLOT PLOT PLOT PLOT 100% PLOT! (... but with schmoo at the end because, well, SCHMOO :D)
:D
:DDDDDDDD
Obviously there are MANY loose ends to tie up, which shall be done in the very long lastest chapter aka epilogue-ish thing. I promise. There's still the outcome of the trial to be decided, and the boys need to heal (ALL THE H/C), and aftermath... stuff *is annoyingly enigmatic*
I would like to thank the epic FallChild92 for the incredible beta job she has done throughout the fic, and without whom this would be unintelligible and 200 percent less awesome. I would also like to thank Alienas and Gracie-19 for their wonderful support and being so great, always *hug* And for the millionth time, I will never tire of this, I would like to thank all of you, readers, and especially those of you who've taken the time to tell me what they thought of the story, which parts they liked best and worst, and helped too with their concrit and occasional threat to my life, my uni proffesors, etcetera *grin* It always made me smile.
LLAP!