Oh, what a horribly ironic thing to say. Thanks to the mind-meld with the future version of Spock, Jim knows exactly what might-have-been if Nero hadn't been around to ruin billions of lives. But that's a whole different can of worms to open, so he just smiles a little and says, "Yeah, small mercy."

"Captain Pike was hurt too badly to retake command, so my field promotion stayed. Most of my crew kept their field ranks too, but because ninety percent of the crew is fresh out of the Academy, Starfleet hasn't made a habit of giving us tough missions yet. It's like one really long shakedown cruise."