Chapter Text
One problem at a time. Leonard kept a sharp ear on Spock as Jim helped him lie down. The other, he kept on the witch. He didn't know where the distrust came from. He'd never met a malicious witch--not even his own maker.
Vengeful, yes. But never evil for evil's sake. And little Lovorka had been an absolute sweetheart. Still, Leonard couldn't help but be viscerally aware of Jaylah. He'd just told Scotty he couldn't imagine a worse case scenario than being unmade and here he was, standing within reach of the boiling cauldron. It was as terrifying as being an inexperienced scuba diver facing a shark for the first time.
Jim wrapped around him and gently tugged until Leonard was pressed against the outer shell of Jim's soul. Stars and blackholes pressed against Leonard's side, glowing with smears of blues and oranges, pinks and greens. Warm and soothing, and sounding of worry-relief-got-you. Leonard planted his feet and resisted Jim's insistent tugging. As much as he'd like to sink against Jim and let his soul-sound block out the world, they didn't have the luxury just now.
One problem at a time.
Jaylah and his misgivings could wait.
Spock could not.
"Spock--hey, stay down." Jim ordered.
"No, Captain. We must focus our efforts on helping the crew." Spock protested, trying to leverage himself up onto his elbows.
Jim pushed him back down, "Let's get you patched up first, okay? I'm gonna need you around to help with that."
Spock raised an eyebrow, "I do not appreciate your efforts to pander to me, Captain."
"It's not pandering, Spock. I'm being serious."
Leonard turned away and tuned them out, continuing to dig through Jaylah's medical supplies. It was well-stocked with traditional bandages, and salves and ointments made from herbs, plants, and animal products. There was a bottle of fever reducer, a jar of cough syrup, boxes of dried bark for pain relief. She even had a setup for turning gelatin from animal skin and bones into homemade pill capsules. Leonard paused. His maker had done the same thing. Lovorka had not.
She'd tried, certainly. But Lovorka's gifts lied in charms and sigils rather than agricultural husbandry.
But it looked like Jaylah had been forced to branch out and become proficient. She even had sugar distilled from animal milk to sweeten her pills with.
Leonard grabbed the protoplaser and moved to kneel next to Jim.
"These things are from the dark ages." Leonard sighed.
"Bones."
"Not really. Don't worry this'll stop the internal haemorrhaging." Leonard said, inputting the correct settings before holding it over Spock's face. "Close your eyes."
"Captain's Log, Stardate 2262.18. The mission was a routine investigation..."
"Krall," Manas said as he came up behind Krall, "we searched the wreckage. Kirk must've hidden it--"
"Captain." Krall reminded.
"...Sir?"
"Captain Kirk, Manas. He may be a naive fool, but he is still a captain." Krall said as he selected another recording. "He did not become one by being incompetent." He'd seen that much from spying on the Federation.
"The further out we go, the more I find myself wondering, 'if the universe is truly endless...'"
"All we have is his crew." Manas growled, fists clenching with frustration. Krall understood. He felt it too. The tightness sitting under his ribs, the jitters in his legs that demanded he move and act .
One goal.
For nearly a hundred years, they'd worked towards one goal; steadily learning the ways of Altimid and the technology left behind. Yet without the abronath it remained so far away. The mounting frustration had drove him to rewatch Captain Kirk's logs. Know thy enemy. They'd backed Captain Kirk into a corner, and animals were never more dangerous than when they were trapped. Krall smiled to himself. The years had turned him into an accomplished hunter.
No, he did not fear Captain Kirk, but he wasn't going to underestimate him either. That way failure lie. And Krall was not a failure. But Krall wasn't learning anything new. Recording after recording, Captain Kirk remained the same: a pathetic boy.
The only thing different between each recording was Captain Kirk's waning optimism. His disillusionment with space was something Krall understood. Afterall, it'd happened to him, too. Day after day, sailing on the same ship, looking at the same walls, wearing the same uniform, drinking the same coffee. The rut of day-to-day operations wore on a man harder than the psychologists warned them about.
Until taking a space walk without a suit started looking like a fun idea.
Another thing that never changed was Captain Kirk's loyalty to his crew. Several of his logs touched on how certain crew members were doing. Ensign Visk with a cracked rib. Lieutenant Ryans with walking pneumonia. And Bones--always Bones--right there in the background. Oh, not literally, of course. But Captain Kirk never said, 'Ensign Zemke's staying in Medbay for observation.' He always said, 'Bones is keeping Ensign Zemke for another day for observation. His reports indicate he'll be back to active duty within the week.'
Apparently, this unity disease had infected them all; not just Lieutenant Uhura.
All the better, really. It made getting information easier.
He already knew who he needed to torture.
"Then we will break the crew." Krall grinned. "Kill them one by one if we must."
"One for the abronath and one for Kalara." Manas asked. Krall turned away from the computer and walked past Manas, making his way towards the holding cells.
"No." Krall said, "Kalara's failure was her own."
Unity was a weakness that Krall did not have.
He would not break over the sudden loss of one soldier.
Leonard's heart roared, the sound trapped firmly inside his chest lest it find Spock. The sudden horror and rage did their best to tear him apart from the inside. He'd heard his Humans die before but not like this. This was agony. This was prolonged and drawn out. Leonard stood staring out the viewport, eyes locked on the horizon where Krall's base hid, breathing harshly with his fists clenched.
Just spin the soul. Get his stone hide--his wings --back and go .
But that wasn't what Gargoyles did. They did not leap from their church walls to pluck people out of the jaws of death. They sat. They watched. They endured. And they protected the people standing behind them. It was up to the poor souls trapped in the killing field to find a way out.
Leonard hated it.
"Tell me where it is! Now!" Krall demanded, fingers curled claw-like in the back of Lieutenant Sulu's neck as he kept him on his knees; the energy transference device in Krall's gauntlet slowly drained him, keeping him on the knife edge of agony without tipping him over into shock and numbness.
The crew of the Enterprise stood tense and angry around him, but they stayed still like good little sheep; too afraid to risk Lieutenant Sulu.
Leonard couldn't move.
"We should wait until we're absolutely sure." Scotty said.
"No," Jim argued, "we have to get the crew back now. Chekov has the coordinates that can lead us to Krall's base, so we go!"
His hands were numb, his heart was howling; the rage so intense that he was close to crying. But he couldn't move. He was frozen. His soul was sitting on its little pedestal just waiting for him to give it a turn and he couldn't.
"With respect, sir, how do we even know that Krall's currently at his base? Or that the crew's there? All we've got is a jumbled mess of Federation frequencies. For all we know they could be the comm units from the Franklin 's crew. Krall does scavenge tech. No offense, lassie." Scotty asked. Leonard's rage ticked up a notch; claws digging into his hands, his wings shifting under his skin.
"There is no offense."
"Stop! Stop! Let him go and I will give you what you want!" Syl screamed.
"No, Syl, don't!" Sulu ordered. It was painful--indescribably so. It was sharp and biting, and breathtaking. It felt like his bones were on the cusp of breaking and his tendons were about to snap, his skin ready to split open but all of that paled in comparison to keeping the crew safe. As long as they were safe, he could take it. He had to take it, because, deep down, it wasn't just about the crew. It was about Ben and Demora, and his resolve to see them again.
So, it didn't matter what Krall did, Sulu swore he wouldn't break. He would not abandon them. He would not abandon himself or his morals. And if those morals were taken from the ancient samurai bushidō* then that was simply more proof that Jim's datastick was real . It was his only explanation for why they resonated with him stronger than the morals his parents tried to raise him with.
I was a samurai . Sulu thought, taking the truth of it into his heart and locking it up where no one could touch it. I am a samurai.
He grit his teeth against the pain even as Syl stepped forward and opened up the 'fingers' that curled around her head, revealing the Teenaxi artefact. This 'abronath' that Krall had such a raging hard on for. As soon as Manas took it from Syl, Krall dropped Sulu.
Leonard sighed, feeling sick with relief. And then sick at himself for freezing. He reached for the little pedestal housing his soul just to prove that he could . If he wasn't made of stone he'd be shaking, knees weak and lungs stuttering with each breath. As it stood, Leonard remained solid and seemingly unaffected even as the argument behind him sounded like it was coming through water.
"Mr. Chekov," Spock said, "can you reconfigure the search parameters in order to compensate for this formula?" Spock asked, handing Chekov the padd he'd borrowed from Jaylah.
"Aye, Commander, but what is this formula?"
"It is Vokaya. A mineral unique to Vulcan which emits low-level radiation." Spock said.
Immediately Leonard's attention snapped back to the Franklin .
"I will have to filter out all other energy emissions." Chekov warned.
"Naturally." Spock said.
"Spock," Leonard forced out through aching teeth, finally turning away from the view port, "what the hell would a Vulcan mineral be doing way out here?"
"Where are you going with this?" Jim asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously. His arms waved around as they felt for the empty spots between Spock's words. God, but they really did look like spectral tentacles; made up of stars and comets and black matter.
"Lieutenant Uhura wears a Vokaya amulet which I presented to her as a prank against Doctor McCoy."
" What?!" Leonard screeched. "You gave her radioactive jewelry? As a prank?!"
"The emission is harmless, Doctor, but its unique signature makes it very easy to identify. If Mr. Scott needs confirmation on the crew's exact location, we can use the necklace."
Leonard breathed in, then breathed out. Then a sudden thought crossed his mind.
"You gave Uhura a tracking device." Leonard said, deceptively mild.
Spock suddenly looked like a man who was screaming on the inside; eyes wide in his pale face, his chest stilled as he stopped breathing. Then, he rebooted himself with a deliberate inhale, "That was not my intention." he said.
"Yeah," Jim drawled, "the intention was a prank."
"And a show of respect and trust," Spock defended, "the necklace is my mother's."
"I'm glad he doesn't respect me." Leonard said to himself, turning away to face the viewport again. Behind him, he heard Spock raise an incredulous eyebrow. And wasn't that a swift kick to the gut. He could hear Spock but he failed to notice the radioactive rock sitting pretty around Uhura's throat.
"I am detecting a very trace amount of Vokaya." Chekov admitted.
"Does the location match the coordinates for the comm frequencies?" Spock asked.
"It is a match, sir."
"Satisfied?" Jim asked Scotty.
"Aye. Am now." Scotty said, a new flare of determination leapt in his soul, making his adventurous fiddle jump in tempo.
"Can we beam them out?" Jim asked.
"No." Chekov said dejectedly, "There is some geological interference that is blocking the transporter signal."
"Scotty managed it?" Leonard asked. He didn't pretend to know anything about transporters or how strong their signals were but he couldn't imagine a canyon more rocky than the ancient road he'd taken Spock down.
"Aye, but I was shooting from my hip, wasn't I?" Scotty said. "And I had to do it one at a time, you'll remember. I don't imagine Krall is just gonna sit back and wait for everyone to be out."
"Well then," Jim said, "I guess we're gonna have to go in there and break them out the old-fashioned way."
"You cannot go to this place." Jaylah interjected, "Everyone who goes there, he kills."
"You..." Jim trailed off as his eyes lost focus, seeing something Leonard couldn't, "You've been there before? You've seen it?" Jim asked, coming back to himself. Jaylah's silence was answer enough.
"Well, why didn't you say something, lassie?" Scotty asked.
"Because I know you will ask me to take you there." Jaylah said, "If your friends are there, then they will die, just like my family. And I will not go back to that death place!"
Camps. Leonard bit his lip. Krall's operation stank of the same evil as Hitlar's camps. Only, instead of working people to death, Krall was using them as cattle to give himself pseudo-immortality. And Jaylah's soul had the same fear-horror-sorrow-hopelessness that he heard whilst digging his tunnels.
If only he had the time to dig another.
"Aye, but if you've escaped, then you can show us the way in and the way out." Scotty pressed.
Jaylah stood from the Captain's chair and rounded on Scotty, "No! This is not the deal we made, Montgomery Scotty. If you choose to do this, you are on your own." with that, she spun heel and stormed off the bridge.
"Wait--"
"Let her go." Jim ordered, thrusting his arm out and bodily blocking Scotty from following.
Scotty scowled, but sighed and subsided.
"She's lost people too, Scotty." Jim said sympathetically.
"I know." Scotty murmured.
Leonard bit his tongue and made the executive decision not to tell them how close they just came to losing Sulu.
Eavesdropping probably wasn't the best idea, but neither was Scotty's. In Scotty's defense, they really didn't have time to waste waiting around for Jaylah to compartmentalize her trauma. Something happened--Jim knew something happened--to cause Bones to go unusually still where he stood vigil at the viewport. But whatever it was, he wasn't willing to talk. And that alone put Jim on edge.
So, no, he couldn't fault Scotty for cornering Jaylah, but he would judge him for it.
"Look," Scotty breathed. Jim leaned against the wall. "That's our friends out there, lassie. All right? We cannae just leave them behind. Now, we're going after them one way or another, but we could really use your help. We just...need you to be brave, is all." Scotty said gently.
"When we were in that place," Jaylah began dispassionately. Detached from reality. If Jim concentrated, he could feel her silhouette shift backwards to hover behind Jaylah as she dissociated. "Krall would come and take someone. There were screams. I can still hear them. And we would not see that person again. We did not know who would be next. My father planned an escape. But we were seen by the one they call Manas. My father fought him so I could get out. He was brave and Manas killed him." Jaylah exhaled a shaky breath, "What you want," she said, "is impossible."
Scotty huffed a laugh, "Oh, believe me, lassie, with this crew, nothing is impossible. It's just very difficult." But when Jaylah stayed silent, unmoved and unconvinced by Scotty's optimism and attempt at humor, Scotty cleared his throat and continued, "My wee granny used to say, 'Ya cannae break a stick in a bundle.' And that's what being part of a crew is all about. We never give up on eachother."
"...Is that what you believe in, James T.?" Jaylah asked. Jim wasn't surprised he'd been made, only that she'd let him linger so long before calling him out on it. Jim moved, turned the corner and entered the room properly.
"Yes." He said, conviction singing in his bones. "And if you decide to lead us in, you'll do it as one of us, and I guarantee you we'll get you back out; because Scotty's right. We don't leave people behind."
"The digging machines uncovered a tunnel that goes into the crater. That's how I got out." Jaylah said, gesturing to the topographic map she'd pulled up; mountains and rivers rose and fell against the backdrop of the usual blue of the projector. Leonard snorted to himself; simultaneously amazed and dumbfounded at how far Humanity has come. Even though the map stayed on the table rather than hover in the air, it was still 3D. Amazing work for its time, yet, today, it was ancient enough that Leonard knew Spock, Jim, Chekov, and Scotty were taking the information with a grain of salt: fundamentally untrusting of the display simply because it was old.
Leonard remembered a time when such maps were drawn on paper and the only indication of depth were the contour lines following the shape of the mountains.
The sophisticated mining equipment of Altimid's Persia was big enough to show up as little dark spots. Leonard was amazed they still worked. But, then again, so did everything else they left behind so, perhaps he shouldn't be. Witchcraft was terrifying like that.
"So that'll be our way in." Jim decided. "An away team will beam to the other side of the tunnel, follow it to Krall's base, get inside the building and break out the crew."
"Captain," Chekov said, "we still won't be able to beam anyone out. The crater is too deep."
"What's the range?" Jim asked.
"Here." Chekov said and reached over the table to point to a spot 189 meters up. Leonard's eyes narrowed. That was one hell of a hike to be making under fire.
"Okay. How many people can the Franklin beam at a time?" Jim asked.
"With a wee bit of modification, 20 max, but I'm not sure how long it would hold." Scotty said.
"Bones, Mr. Chekov, Jaylah, you're with me on the away team. Mr. Scott, modify that transporter and then do everything you can to get this ship operational." Jim ordered.
"Captain," Spock said, "Mr. Chekov's technical acumen makes him more valuable aboard the Franklin with Mr. Scott. It is thereby logical that I would replace him."
"Oh, really?" Leonard drawled, faux casually and dangerously calm. Only a fool would think he was relaxed. His entire focus zeroed in on Spock. His gaze grew heavy and pinned him in place. "Why is that, Spock? After I just got you back on your feet."
"He's right, Spock." Jim said before Spock could open his mouth to argue. "A brain bleed is nothing to sniff at. You're staying here to help Scotty and Chekov is coming down with the rest of us."
Spock's face didn't move. Despite that, his frustrations wafted off him as discordant Vulcan lute notes. On the other hand, Chekov--his fearless orphan, his strong Captain--was radiating determination and focus. Leonard had to close his eyes and breathe for a moment as the memories of both iterations of his Russian threatened to overwhelm him.
You'll keep an eye on him? Jim asked, wrapped around Chekov's shoulders. The jokes about Jim and Scotty sharing custody suddenly didn't seem like such a joke anymore.
I will.
"We won't pass unseen." Jaylah said into the silence. "Krall's soldiers are everywhere."
"We need a diversion." Chekov said.
"I think I have an idea." Jim said, eyeing Jaylah. Jaylah met the look with a lifted eyebrow.