Delta Vega | Monday FT

[kirked]

Fumes of a far different and more pungent kind attended the interior of the outpost where a relieved Jim had his first welcoming contact with artificial heating since walking away from the transport pod.

"What are we looking for here?"

The elder Spock was leading him down a seemingly endless corridor lined with steaming, occasionally clanking conduits, pipes, and other poorly maintained subsistence paraphernalia. If the outpost's communications equipment existed in a similar state of disrepair, Jim thought as he walked alongside his guide, it was no wonder that the elder Spock had been unable to deliver any kind of warning to Federation authorities in time to save Vulcan.

"You will see soon enough," the old man assured Jim in reply to his question. "Though I have been aware of this particular individual's presence here for some time, there was no reason to pursue further contact. Until your arrival. That has clarified for me how the time stream is struggling for resolution. Hopefully we can be of assistance. Sometimes the hand of Fate can use a hand itself."

Jim didn't try to hide his confusion. "I don't follow you."

"That is quite correct," Spock told him. "You precede me."

Jim considered how best to reply to this, decided that he was still too cold to think clearly, and held his piece. At least, he did until they turned a corner and found themselves confronting one of the outpost's personnel. The small, dark alien eyed them uncertainly.

"My name is Keenser. Can I help you?"

"Are you the station chief?" Spock asked him.

The alien looked them over, then came to a decision. "No-this way."

As they followed their diminutive guide, Jim found himself wishing he was back on the Enterprise. Even as a prisoner. Wishing, however, would get him nowhere. The wizened Vulcan who had saved him from becoming an indigenous predator's snack just might. It wouldn't get him back to the ship, of course. They were well and truly stuck on Delta Vega. But having hiked a small portion of this planet, he had already decided that anywhere under cover was a better alternative.

The rest of that staff appeared to consist of a single individual. Leaning back with his feet propped up on a console, the Starfleet officer was sound asleep. Approaching without hesitation, the alien tapped one boot.

"Hmm," the lanky human mumbled.

Keenser stepped back. "Visitors."

Peering out from beneath his cap, he glared at the pair and essayed a salutation that to his way of thinking, no doubt, constituted a polite greeting.

"You realize how unacceptable this is?"

Jim swallowed his instinctive reply while he took a moment to identify the raspy terrestrial accent. Initially through globalization and then via stellarization many such locutional variants on standard English had long since withered away. But not all. Some traditional Earth cultures were too fond of their linguistic distinctions to surrender them completely. And a few were too stubborn.

Scottish, Jim finally decided. Definitely Highlands Scottish.

"Excuse me?"

Spock was staring at the clearly annoyed officer. "Fascinating…"

Jim was more than slightly confused. "What?"

Ignoring him, the officer slid out of the chair and straightened. "I'm sure it's nae your fault, and I know ye lads are just doin' your job, but could ye nae have come a wee bit sooner?"

"I beg your pardon?" was all Jim could think of by way of a reply.

The officer was pacing back and forth in front of them. "I mean, six months I've been livin' on nothing but Starfleet protein nibs and the promise of a real food delivery! It's pretty clear what's going on here, isn't it? Punishment! Ongoing! Without me havin' recourse to so much as an appeal. For something that was clearly an accident."

"You're Montgomery Scott," Spock declared abruptly.

Jim turned to the elder Spock. "You know him?"

"Aye, that's me," the officer admitted readily. "‘Scotty' to me friends. You've got the right man." He gestured expansively. "Are there any other hardworking and equally starved Starfleet officers around?"

Visibly offended, the alien looked up at him. "Me."

Scott glared down at him. "You eat nothing. A bean, and you're done for a week." His eyes were a little wild now. "I need food." He turned back to the two visitors. "And now you're here. So-thank you." He tried to see behind them. "Where is it?"

"You are in fact the Montgomery Scott who postulated the theory of transwarp beaming." Spock spoke without mentioning anything about food.

Scotty eyed Spock warily. "How d'ya think I ended up here? Too smart to waste and too reckless to trust: that's how they described me at the-well, it wasn't a court-martial, exactly. They couldn't find a suitable regulation with which to charge me. So they resorted to callin' it a straight ‘transfer.' Woulda been better if they'd ‘transferred' me to a jail on Earth. Or at least to some half-civilized world. Anything'd be better than this." With a wide sweep of his arms he encompassed his entirely functional and unadorned surroundings. "Look at this place, willya? A man kinna even deteriorate in the company of his own species!"

His eyes fastened on Jim. "But then, you're too young and innocent to know about anything like that, laddie."

Jim did not smile. "You'd be surprised at what I know. What did you do to get yourself posted to this vacation paradise?"

Scott grew animated. "I got into a debate with my instructor on the issue of relativisitic physics as they relate to subspace travel. He seemed to think the range of transporting a, say, roast turkey, was limited to a few hundred kilometers. So I told him not only could I beam a bird from one planet to an adjacent planet in the same sys tem, which is no big deal anyway, but that if I were so inclined I could actually do it with a viable life-form. Long-range transwarp beaming is supposed to be impossible." He snorted. "Difficult maybe, but not impossible."

"Says you," countered Jim.

"Says I, aye." The engineer glared back at him. "My mistake was in attemptin' a practical demonstration. Unfortunately, for a test subject I chose Admiral Archer's prize beagle." He shook his head sadly. "Shoulda scanned the little mutt's ident implant first, I suppose."

Kirk's expression changed to one of surprise. "I know of the admiral-and his dog. What happened to it?"

Scott looked away. "I'll tell ye when it reappears. I'm convinced it will, one of these days." His voice dropped to a mumble. "Somewhere. Somehow. If I'd known it was the bloody admiral's I would've been more careful." He perked up. "Sweet dog, though. Nice ears. I feel guilty."

Spock moved closer. "What if I told you that your theory was correct? That it is indeed possible to beam from a fixed point onto a ship that is traveling at warp speed? And that you only required the correct field equation for the continuous recrystallization of dilithium while transport is in progress? And availability of sufficient power for the transporter being used, of course."

Scott carefully regarded the Vulcan. "Haven't been out of touch that long. If such an equation had been discovered and verified, I'd 'ave heard." He shook his head in disagreement. "Delta Vega's out of the loop, but not completely out of touch. I keep up as best I can. Otherwise I'd go crazy here. And I haven't heard of any such development."

"The reason you haven't heard of it, Mister Scott, is because you haven't discovered it yet."

Surprised yet again, a startled Jim turned to his rescuer. Simultaneously, Scott narrowed his gaze as he took a much closer look at the Vulcan he knew only as a hermit and occasional visitor to the outpost in search of supplies.

"And how would you know something like that?" he finally inquired. "You said ‘yet.' Heard ye plain as day. Come from another time, do ya? From the future? Brilliant! Do they still have sandwiches where ye come from? Piece an' jam? Mince an' tatties? Cockaleekie soup?"

"What's he talking about?" Jim asked. This time it was Keenser and not Spock who responded.

"Food."

"I'm not gonna believe anything anyone says without something more than their word to back it up," Scott declared challengingly. "Personally I think you're full of month-old haggis, but I'm so bored here that I'm willing to listen to anybody's tale, no matter how tall. So let's see if ye can support your whimsy with something more than talk." He punctuated the challenge with a lopsided grin. "That's ‘logical,' ain't it?"

"Indeed it is, Mister Scott." Spock regarded their surroundings. "If you will allow us access to your shuttlepod I will gladly show you what a genius you actually are."

Scott hesitated. Leaning over, his assistant conversed with him in excited tones. There followed an animated conversation whose exact content Jim could not decipher but whose gist he could gather from the amount of energy expended. The squat alien was expressing his doubts about the visitor's request in no un certain terms while Scott continued to vacillate. In the end, curiosity won out. Or maybe, as the engineer had indicated, it was just boredom.

The old shuttle's transporter pod was not exactly primitive, but it was basic. It was also constructed to industrial-strength standards, having been built to handle heavy supplies as well as individuals. Whether it was powerful enough to send a pea, let alone a primate, across the necessary spread of subspace remained to be seen. What Spock had in mind was considerably larger and more complex than any vegetarian component.

Scott indicated the control console, stepped back, and waved grandly. "Have at it, future man."

Sitting down at the console, Spock accessed the necessary files and began typing, his fingers moving far faster over the controls than should have been possible for someone of his advanced age. Numbers and symbols began to fill the formerly blank monitor. There was no hesitation, no pause in his work. The Vulcan was not composing: he was dictating.

An increasingly serious Scott looked on approvingly. The Vulcan might be full of imploding mind-meld, but he could certainly input. He was at the console for only a minute or so before he rose and stepped aside.

"Rapid," Scott commented quietly. "That's impressive."

"Your equations for achieving long-range transwarp beaming-Mister Scott."

Scott eyed him doubtfully, then began to study the monitor. He studied it for longer than it had taken the Vulcan to input the information. As he pored over the symbols and figures his expression progressed from confused, to dumbfounded, to one of utter delight.

"Carry the omega-twelve to the fourth-imagine that! Never occurred to me to think of space as the part that's moving. No wonder I could never resolve the central string! I was looking at it from the perspective of the beamer instead of the beamed." He peered down in wonder at the quietly unassuming Vulcan.

"Point of fact," Spock told him forthrightly, "it did occur to you." Spock began inputting an entirely different string of queries.

"What're you doing now?" The engineer's voice was still tinged with wonder and disbelief. "Adjunct equations?"

Spock did not turn from his work. "On our way here, Captain-Lieutenant Kirk-you informed me that your current acting captain intended to set a course directly for the Laurentian system with the intention of rendezvousing there with the rest of Starfleet."

Kirk nodded. "That's right. Knowing-him-I doubt that once his mind is set on a course of action he would be unlikely to change it."

Again, Spock did not quite smile. "Yes. He sounds quite fixed in his ways. I can sympathize."

His tone turned wholly serious once more. "Prior to departing for that destination he detoured briefly to deposit you here. It is therefore not difficult to extrapolate the Enterprise's logical and most practical vector between Delta Vega and Laurentia." His fingers continued to work the console's inputs.

Scott frowned. "‘Enterprise'?" He looked over at Kirk. "Had its maiden voyage already, has it? Well, well, ye must've done something right to be assigned to that ship, boyo."

Jim swallowed and looked away. "It's a little complicated."

Scott was daydreaming. "She's a well-endowed lady, that's for sure. Love to get me hands on her ample nacelles-if you'll pardon the engineering parlance."

"This will be your chance, Mister Scott." Spock continued to work the console.

Scott stared at the back of the Vulcan's head. "You're serious about tryin' this, aren't you? What am I thinking-of course you're serious. Vulcans don't believe in practical jokes."

He shook his head slowly. "Even if I believed ye, that I'm the genius who wrote that code-and I've plenty o' confidence even in a version of meself that hasn't happened yet-we're still talking about slingshottin' onto a ship travelin' at warp speed that by now is a considerable distance from here. And one without a properly activated receiving pad or engineering team awaitin' us. It'll be like tryin' to intercept a bullet with a smaller bullet. Blindfolded. While ridin' a horse." He grunted. "No-it'll be like tryin' to hit a grain of sand with a bullet. While they're both travelin' at angles to one another. In a tornado. While they're both-"

Spock interrupted. "Ease off on the similes, Mister Scott, or you will exhaust your arsenal before you depart." He sat back from the console and contemplated the complex information he had entered. "I calculate no more than a four-meter margin of error provided transport is energized within the next ten minutes-local time."

"That's all well and good," Scott concurred, "unless you rematerialize four meters outside the ship, or in a solid slab of metal. Not that I'm buyin' this technical twaddle for one minute, you understand."

Spock considered briefly, then returned to working the console's inputs. "Agreed. Therefore I determine that the aft engineering bay is the best option. A large open space, no unpredictable airlocks, located well within the ship in an area with which you will be familiar. And most importantly, one with a remote access point that will allow you to override the helm and redirect the ship's course." For a second time he sat back, satisfied with the work he had done, and turned to regard the engineer.

"Well, Mister Scott? You said you have confidence in yourself as well as in your future selves. Do you have confidence enough to put your abilities to an actual, practical test?"

Scott considered the question. Then he broke out in a wide, wild grin. "At the hearin' about the dog they said that unless I straightened up I was going to the dogs. Aye, Mister Pointy-ear, let's do it! What's the worst that can happen? That I spread meself all over a wide corner of the cosmos? Better to go out in a flash than a footnote." He looked over at Jim "And you, Lieutenant-Kirk, was it?"

Kirk nodded. "I don't have any choice, Mister Scott-Scotty." The engineer didn't chastise him for employing the nickname. "There's far more at stake here than you yet realize. And I can't do anything about it if I'm stuck here on this planet." He smiled thinly. "No matter how convivial the company or engaging the surroundings."

Only one of those present protested the chosen course of action. It was clear that the alien did not want his human associate to leave. Excited at the prospect of not only escaping the backwater that was Delta Vega but at the chance to acquire actual proof of a notion with which he had been toying for years, Scott gently reassured his fellow officer that all would be well. Unable to sway his friend, the alien responded understandingly but with obvious regret.

As the Vulcan rose from the console chair, Kirk confronted him uncertainly. His attitude toward his savior was still a confused mix of gratitude, awe, and uncertainty.

"You're coming with us?"

"No, Jim. May I call you Jim?"

"Sure, I guess." Coming from this elder incarnation of Spock it sounded…odd. Odd, but nice, Kirk decided.

"My destiny lies along a different path," the Vulcan told him. "You must make your own without me. The situation in which we find ourselves is unprecedented and fraught with potential danger. My presence as you seek to determine your future would present complications whose consequences cannot be foreseen and which, I feel, are best avoided."

It was not the response Jim had been hoping for. "Your destiny can wait. He won't believe me. Only you can explain wha-"

Spock cut him off. "Under no circumstances can the one to whom we are referring be made aware of my existence. You must promise me this."

Jim struggled to keep up with the possible ramifications while simultaneously trying to persuade his rescuer to change his mind.

"You're telling me I can't tell you I'm following your own orders? Why not? What happens if I do?"

Spock moved closer. "Trust me, Jim. Above all, this is the one rule you cannot break. To stop Nero, you alone must take command of your ship."

Kirk's expression was grim. "Over your dead body?"

"Preferably not," the elder Spock replied. "There is, however, Starfleet Regulation Six-nineteen."

When Kirk failed to respond, the Vulcan sighed knowingly. "Yes, I forget what little regard you had for such things. Six-nineteen states that any commander who is emotionally compromised by the mission at hand must forthwith resign his command."

Kirk frowned uncertainly. "So I need to emotionally compromise you?"

"Jim," the elder Spock told him gravely, "I just lost my planet, my whole world. I am emotionally compromised. What you must do is get me to-show it."

Jim considered this. Quietly, carefully, and intently.

"Hmm."

An equally intent but far more ebullient voice sounded behind him. "Aye, then! Live or die, laddie, let's get this over with! The Enterprise has decent food service facilities, I'm guessing."

Whistling to himself, the engineer headed for the transporter pad.

Jim started to follow, then looked behind him. "You know, coming back in time, changing history, informing someone in the past about what's happened in the future-that might be construed by an impartial onlooker as cheating."

"A trick I learned from an old friend." Stepping back, the elder Spock retreated toward the transporter console. Before taking the seat, he raised one hand with the fingers separated into pairs. Kirk took up a stance on the pad beside the whistling engineer.

"Live long, and prosper," Spock told Jim.

Then he sat down and activated the transporter. Both men dematerialized. When, where, and whether they would be reconstituted he did not know for a certainty. He knew that Montgomery Scott's equations were valid. Spock could only hope that his own computations were applicable.

If they were not, if they were off by more than the four meters he had calculated, then nothing else would matter. Ever.

[NFB, NFI. Taken from the ST novelization. Takes place shortly after this]