51: A Spock Fanfiction

Chapter 1: Welcome to Hell

"Shuttle craft to Captain Kirk," Spock said into the communicator on the dashboard of the craft he was piloting. He steered from the bay of the magnificent ship he had grown fond of, the U.S.S. Enterprise. As the shuttle craft piloted around the huge vessel, the Vulcan couldn't help but feel his eyes grow wide at the magnificence of the thing. Mankind truly did know how to create some magnificent things, even in spite of their apparent hatred of logic and rational thought.

"Kirk here. Is Scotty with you?" asked a voice coming from a speaker on the craft's dashboard.

"Ay, Captain," the engineer said from his place at Spock's side. "I'm getting my suit on as we speak." He was already wearing his space jumpsuit. All he lacked was a helmet.

"Captain, these repairs shouldn't take long," Spock informed Kirk. "May I once again register my disapproval of the fact that you decided to take us straight through an asteroid field, knowing that there was a very good chance our hull might be damaged from a collision with one of them? Now we have a damaged warp drive and drained power."

"Yes thank you, Mr. Spock. Thank you for your input. Think of this, though. If I hadn't brought us through that asteroid field, we would still be running from the Klingons."

"Affirmative, Captain, but at what cost?"

"Ready for spacewalk, Mr. Spock," Scotty said. He placed his helmet over his head, moved to the back end of the craft, and gave Spock a thumbs up. Spock pressed a button and a clear divider slid into place, separating the two men. More buttons depressurized Scotty's portion of the craft, and the door slid open, revealing the darkness of space beyond. The ship's engineer stepped out the doorway and pushed himself off of the craft with his legs. He contacted the side of the Enterprise with a gentle "thump" and attached a line to the ship's hull. Upon seeing him land safely on the hull of the vessel, Spock closed the door, pressurized the rest of the cabin, and slid the divider back down.

"Mr. Scott has successfully attached himself to the hull of the Enterprise, Captain," Spock informed the bridge. "All is going well."

"Excellent. Mr. Spock?"

"Yes, Captain?"

"There is one more thing. We're picking up some weird disturbances in the ship's energy field. It shouldn't be anything you have to worry about, but there appears to be a prominent presence of Exotic Matter in this area."

"Exotic Matter?" Spock arched an eyebrow. "Captain, Exotic Matter is often a product of-."

All of a sudden, the lights on the shuttle craft's dashboard began to blink as every single circuit on the craft began to short out. Then, just as suddenly as the beginning of the haywire electronics, the shuttle craft began to move. Spock tried desperately to engage the craft's thrusters, but the shuttle was being sucked backwards at too strong of a pull.

Then, terrifyingly, the shuttle craft's power went out. The cockpit was plunged into intense darkness, and Spock could hear a peculiar sound outside, as though the craft were hurtling through space at speeds very near the speed of light. His hair began to stand on end, and the thought that he had spent quite a bit of time getting it to lie flat that morning only to have some sort of bizarre gravitational field disrupt its perfect order annoyingly occurred to the Vulcan.

Humans would have been terrified in a situation like this, but Spock sat calmly in his seat. He realized that there was logically nothing he could do. The power was out, and the high speed of the craft made it impossible for him to maneuver anywhere at all. The least he could do was wait until the ride was over and see where it landed him. Wormholes were rarely predictable, and Spock knew he was invariably traveling through one.