chaseasteroid (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chaseasteroid) wrote2010-11-30 09:22 pm
chaseasteroid) wrote2010-11-30 09:22 pm
Entry tags:
[Star Trek] Refit (1/?)
Title: Refit (1/?)
Author:chaseasteroid (AKA ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
racheldeet)
Pairings: Chekov/Sulu
Rating: PG
Summary: Pavel had grown up in the cold, where clouds did not form as easily and the lights of the city were distant. Stars had always been easy to see from there, even if the sun was not fond of visiting.
Notes: Sort of a sequel to "Under Construction."
0300 hours. Pavel rolled over in his bed, forcing himself to stop staring at the clock. He couldn’t sleep when he knew Hikaru was still on-planet, outside the realm of things under the confident control of Jim Kirk. Not that Kirk didn’t control the landing parties, too, but they did not fall into the quiet hum of routine the way life on the ship did. They were anomalies, and they were outside Pavel’s scope of firsthand knowledge, and they kept Hikaru out of their bed some nights. All in all, boldly going was starting to sound like an awful lot of trouble.
Every now and then when he did manage to sleep, he'd be started awake by the sound of his communicator chiming — soft, just loud enough to wake him, not loud enough to make him think it was something work-related. He'd wonder, at first, what had woken him, then roll over to check it — always hoping he'd open his eyes to see Hikaru next to him, instead finding a message from him, just to keep Pavel from worrying. He worried anyway, but it was the thought that counted.
But tonight, there was no message.
He thought little of it at first, being still early in the morning, but as the night wound toward the ship's dawn, and he pulled himself out of bed to dress, he began to long for it. Still, it did not mean anything, not yet, so he took himself to the mess for breakfast, then to the bridge. Hikaru's replacement at the helm neither smiled, nor said hello. It irked him to no end, and always put him on edge. Oddly, it was Spock who eased it, taking the Captain's chair a few minutes later.
"Status, Mr. Chekov."
"Weapons on standby, energy levels optimal, no unusual activity." His screen had been split in two, to allow him to monitor both the science station and his own while Mr. Spock had other duties.
"Thank you." Spock swung the chair to look at the helmsman, who stuttered as he read the report, obviously unused to being on the bridge. Pavel tweaked a setting on his station to keep from laughing at it. Everyone made mistakes, but after six months of work on the ship, most of them had gotten used to Spock's straightforward corrections — which seemed rude, at first, until you realized he was not trying to pass judgment. He wanted the ship running as well as she possibly could, and anything below that needed to be adjusted. That was all there was to it. As long as one remembered that, it was easy to accept the corrections without taking offense. Those who hadn't spent a lot of time on the bridge, though, weren't aware of that.
When the message did come, it wasn't to Pavel's comm, and it wasn't from Hikaru. It was from Kirk.
"Party has been attacked and split up. Send no one else to the planet, beam no one out." He sounded exhausted. "We will contact when we have rendezvoused and are prepared to beam up. Kirk out."
Pavel was very, very still at his station, but his heart had begun to pound, and he could feel the blood rushing through his veins. There was nothing he could do, for the moment, except refuse to panic. More information would come in time. His job was to stick to his orders, he knew. Without thinking, he pulled up a map of the heat signatures on-planet, and superimposed the locations of the away team's communicators on top of it. They appeared to all still be attached to their owners, at least. That was a very good sign. But then, why had the others not called in yet? It was possible Kirk had ordered radio silence, of course, but that was something he normally would have noted when he filled the Enterprise in.
"I have the coordinates of the away team," he informed Mr. Spock. A moment later, he put it on the viewscreen. Spock studied it, and when he was satisfied with Pavel's assessment, ordered that it be kept there for the foreseeable future.
"We need this closely monitored," he said. "Should any one of the away party be injured, this is how we can help them be found."
Pavel closed his eyes and counted to three. He couldn't think about it too closely. Hikaru was fine, as far as he knew. He was not allowed to worry until he knew something different. Still, the silent affirmations did nothing to keep his hands from shaking just a tiny bit on his controls. No one else noticed. He would keep it that way.
With three tasks now in front of him, he was able to stay busy. There were scans to be transferred and reports to be written about them for the science station, to be sent to Starfleet with the next data surge. He kept one eye on the heat signatures, moving slowly across the earth, moving further and further from each other. There were other heat signatures — the planet's inhabitants, they assumed — who were spread out in a pattern consistent with tracking someone who had run. Groups followed each of their team.
The yellow dot marking Hikaru's communicator and, Pavel assumed, heat signature had not moved since he had begun to monitor it. His heart sank a little.
A harsh alarm sounded when the first of the communicator signals dropped off the map. Pavel quickly tried to identify the heat signature that had been attached to it, but to no avail. It was lost in a swarm of them.
"Someone has been captured," he said. "Mr. Riley, it seems."
"It might be appropriate, Mr. Chekov, to say a prayer," Spock said.
That sent a definite shiver down Pavel's back. "Sir?"
"I do not mean anything, Mr. Chekov. As you say, just in case."
He had to wonder if Mr. Spock could hear his heart racing from across the bridge. Those ears had to be good for something, after all. But Spock was done with him, focusing on his own report on current circumstances for Starfleet.
There was a moment of silence, and then a tap on his shoulder. "Take your break with me," Lt. Uhura said, smiling gently at him.
He wanted to say no, and stay at his post until he knew what was happening. But at the same time, he knew he needed it, and he was able to listen to sense rather than be stubborn. They hovered until replacements came, then made their way to the turbolift.
"Pavel, you're white," she said, a firm, warm hand on his shoulder.
He looked at his reflection in the mirrored part of the turbolift. He looked tired, but that wasn't terribly unusual. "I'm okay," he said. "I think I need some lunch."
"That's a good start," she agreed. The turbolift hissed to a stop, and they both made their way toward the mess. It was mostly empty, the ship on yellow alert since the day before, but Lt. Uhura made him sit while she fetched food. "You really do look like you're going to fall over."
"I didn't sleep well," he admitted. "And I'm worried about Hi--Mr. Sulu."
"I figured."
He squinted at her a little. "You did? Why?"
"Pavel, I know you two think you're being really coy and cute, but I don't think there's anyone on the bridge crew at least who doesn't see what's going on."
He just stared at her while she sipped at her tea. When she opened her eyes, she giggled at his face. "You didn't — you really did think no one knew."
"Are we going to be reprimanded?" They were doomed. They'd done their best to keep their relationship out from under Mr. Spock's nose; they could trust that Kirk understood that inter-personal relationships happened, but Spock was a stickler for his duties.
"No." She patted his hand. "I promise. I wasn't trying to give you something else to worry about, sorry."
Pavel took a deep breath and let it out slowly, counting to five as he did. A little bit of the tension in his neck seeped away, "It's okay," he sighed. "I just worry. I know that we're not supposed to be with coworkers…"
"Have you met the captain?" Nyota asked, wrinkling her nose. "He might say something if you did something stupid like start making out on the bridge, but he's not going to have you sent home when he's sharing his bed with the CMO."
Pavel blinked. It was common knowledge that the captain and Dr. McCoy were a pair, but it had not occurred to him before, related to his worries of being caught. Still, it was a very good point, and he had to admit that it made him feel better. "Thank you," he said softly. He finished his meal, which he had been picking at through most of this conversation, and pushed his tray into the recycler. "I should return to the bridge."
"I think you should go see Dr. McCoy," Nyota said. "You're too pale."
"I am of no use in sickbay." He didn't want to come right out and say I'm fine, because she would see through that like a piece of transparent aluminum. A little stress had never killed anyone, that he knew of, and as soon as he had Hikaru back at the helm, it would ease.
She looked for a moment like she wanted to argue with him, but then seemed to decide it wasn't worth the time. She disposed of her own tray, and patted him on the back before brushing past him. "Just make sure to take a break here and there," she said, which, really, made him feel more like he was getting a lecture than anything else. He raised his chin — he was proud of himself, and he thought, rightly so — and went back to the bridge.
* * *
Sometimes, being a botanist came in useful beyond the obvious identification of poisonous plants. Hikaru was hunkered in the trunk of a tree that grew large enough to fit three men within it — but it tapered, at the base, and became hollow. From here he bided his time, and listened closely to every sound of the forest. He wanted to be sure that the locals, which appeared to have very sensitive hearing, did not hear him when he asked for a beam-out. His breathing had been disguised by the crunch of fallen leaves, at least, but now he was more scared than anything else. The goal, he knew, was to get back to the ship and inform Commander Spock of what was going on, so they could extract the other members of the away team without incident. He knew at least one of them had been taken prisoner. As to what the aliens' motives were, he had no real idea. None of them did. They hadn't even known there were aliens until they had been ambushed just after dawn.
Hikaru had, from time to time, admitted to hating his job. If someone had asked him at this moment, he would have sworn that he had no intentions of renewing his enlistment when his duty was done.
The first of the phaser blasts echoed inside the trunk, and he jolted harshly, almost knocking his head. They were far enough away that he was still out of danger, but he hunkered down, partly out of instinct. A phaser could definitely penetrate the trunk of the tree, so being below the ground line was safer.
There wasn't any further firing, but he heard footsteps...and saw the unmistakable shiny black boots of a Starfleet officer. Without thinking, he tugged on them, and Jim Kirk came tumbling down on top of him.
And socked him right in the eye.
"Easy!" Hikaru hissed, rolling to protect his face. "It's me!"
Kirk was still for a minute, then jerked away. "Sorry." He leaned against the wall, then seemed to realize where he was. "What the hell is this?"
"These trees grow up and out, then cannibalize the middle of their trunks to get the energy to make their roots spread. They can have roots for ten square miles —"
"Without the botany lesson, please?" Kirk cocked his head, like he was more amused than annoyed.
"A perfect hiding place."
"Thank you." Kirk plopped to the floor of the hideaway. "Location of the hostiles?"
"They passed two or three minutes ago. Bet that shot draws them back, though."
"I called the ship, ordered them not to send anyone else down or beam anyone up."
"They have Riley."
"That's why we're not beaming out." Kirk shook his head. "I'm not about to walk out of here without trying to get the rest of our crew back. Especially when I'd have to tell my yeoman that I'd left her boy behind."
Hikaru nodded. Janice Rand, though young and lower than Kirk on the food chain, scared the hell out of the captain for some reason. He could sort of see why, with her hair being more than ample enough to hide a weapon in, but at the same time there was a cognitive dissonance that came when he saw her bossing Kirk about. If Kirk lost her boyfriend, she would definitely be a force to be reckoned with.
"We better make sure we find him," Hikaru said. And then he put a finger up to his lips, to signal Kirk to stay quiet. He heard footsteps.
There was only a moment of silence, before they were both grabbed by the scruff of the neck and hauled upwards.
* * *
The last two of the communicator signals disappeared from Pavel's screen, and he slapped the console, too angry to hold it in. "Kirk and Sulu have been captured," he reported. "Impossible to pinpoint now in order to beam them out."
Spock shook his head. "He ordered us not to, under any circumstances. We have followed our orders, ensign. Try to restrain yourself."
Pavel was not foolish enough to argue with Commander Spock, though he had quietly suggested, more than once, that it would be of more use to all of them if they obeyed Kirk's last order and beamed the clump of two up. From there, they would at least have their tactical genius to guide them. Now, they were blind. As much as they might all trust Mr. Spock, even he had no idea what, specifically, had happened below.
Spock swung in the chair. "Lt. Uhura, please notify the department heads that we will be holding a briefing in thirty minutes."
"I'm not sure you should wait that long," she said, earpiece pressed firmly into her ear with a finger. "I'm receiving a hail from one of the communicators, but it is definitely not our away party."
"Put it on speaker. Mr. Chekov --"
"Identify the source of the transmission." Pavel was on top of things, when he put his mind to it, no matter what the situation. He was able to push the thoughts of what Hikaru might be going through out of the way, and focus on his job for the moment. "Ten kilometers from where the party was forced to disperse."
From the speakers, there came a garbled noise that might have passed for language for some other race, but did not quite sound like anything discernible to humans. Nyota was frantically poking at her station, and finally, the sound hummed once, like static, then flared back to life in Standard.
"People of the USS Enterprise," the voice said. "We welcome you to our planet, though we are disappointed that you did not choose to abide by our laws. We have taken some of your people for the time being. They are not prisoners, and will not be harmed without giving you a due chance to save them. The rest of your team has been sent to a location north of where we are, which I am sure you are monitoring, and may be beamed up using your own technology."
Spock shook his head, as if denying the voice that could not see him, but said nothing for the time being, as the monologue had not yet finished.
"We request that a handful of people be sent to the planet's surface. The following people, and no others, to be specific: Doctor Leonard McCoy," the alien managed to butcher the name in a way that the universal translator couldn't repair, "Pavel Chekov," an even worse pronunciation, though it was obvious who was being spoken of to everyone on the bridge, "and Janice Rand. If you do not do as we have requested, we can and will ban your ship from our orbit, and keep your friends as true prisoners. Please do not put them through that."
There was a brief pause, as if to let this information sink in. "There's more," Nyota said softly, and Spock did not turn to look at her. He remained focused on the spot where the transmission had come from, and listened.
"We have been informed that there is a 'chain of command' that must be followed," the alien said. "To that end, we would like to give your 'captain' the opportunity to speak to you, and inform you that what we have said is the advisable course of action."
A moment of silence, then, "Spock, do as they say. They don't want to harm us. These are protections to keep the..."
He was cut off before he could finish, but it was clear that these measures were not localized to the Starfleet visitors alone. The transmission cut out, and there was a stunned silence on the bridge for a moment.
"So they speak a language we know," Nyota murmured.
And then all hell broke loose.
"Mr. Chekov, you are the senior-most officer with any sort of combat training. Assemble the away team, make sure they are armed appropriately. Lt, send the coordinates this transmission was sent from to Mr. Scott, and send for someone to take Mr. Chekov's place at the helm, as well as for someone from sciences. I would like to have a full bridge while we are dealing with a crisis." Spock folded his hands in his lap, voice and body calm though they were, as he said, definitely dealing with something that could be classified as a crisis situation. He glanced around at the rushing bodies, and then nodded toward the helm. "Mr. Octivan, please fly the ship."
Octivan, who had been staring at Spock as if he had not known that the vulcan was capable of giving orders so briskly and precisely, jumped a little and returned to his station. Pavel was not sure how safe he felt, knowing that half of the bridge crew looking out for them would be people who had never flown them through a real crisis before. He tried to remind himself that most of the senior officers had only seen their first crisis less than a year ago, but it seemed more and more like it was another lifetime past.
He rushed to the transporter room, and did not let himself stop to think of what this meant. Not until he was checking the phasers, making sure they were set properly, and handing them to McCoy and Rand.
Lord, he realized, suddenly, I'm in charge of an away mission. Pavel was not sure if he should be excited, or terrified, so he settled for a little of both.
McCoy did him the favor of breaking the silent tension, though. "This is the worst idea I've ever heard of," he grumbled. "I hope Jim knows what he's doing."
Pavel agreed wholeheartedly. They mounted the transporter pad, and Pavel nodded to Scotty.
"Best of luck to ya," Scotty said, then tapped the keys to send them down.
Author:
chaseasteroid (AKA racheldeet)Pairings: Chekov/Sulu
Rating: PG
Summary: Pavel had grown up in the cold, where clouds did not form as easily and the lights of the city were distant. Stars had always been easy to see from there, even if the sun was not fond of visiting.
Notes: Sort of a sequel to "Under Construction."
0300 hours. Pavel rolled over in his bed, forcing himself to stop staring at the clock. He couldn’t sleep when he knew Hikaru was still on-planet, outside the realm of things under the confident control of Jim Kirk. Not that Kirk didn’t control the landing parties, too, but they did not fall into the quiet hum of routine the way life on the ship did. They were anomalies, and they were outside Pavel’s scope of firsthand knowledge, and they kept Hikaru out of their bed some nights. All in all, boldly going was starting to sound like an awful lot of trouble.
Every now and then when he did manage to sleep, he'd be started awake by the sound of his communicator chiming — soft, just loud enough to wake him, not loud enough to make him think it was something work-related. He'd wonder, at first, what had woken him, then roll over to check it — always hoping he'd open his eyes to see Hikaru next to him, instead finding a message from him, just to keep Pavel from worrying. He worried anyway, but it was the thought that counted.
But tonight, there was no message.
He thought little of it at first, being still early in the morning, but as the night wound toward the ship's dawn, and he pulled himself out of bed to dress, he began to long for it. Still, it did not mean anything, not yet, so he took himself to the mess for breakfast, then to the bridge. Hikaru's replacement at the helm neither smiled, nor said hello. It irked him to no end, and always put him on edge. Oddly, it was Spock who eased it, taking the Captain's chair a few minutes later.
"Status, Mr. Chekov."
"Weapons on standby, energy levels optimal, no unusual activity." His screen had been split in two, to allow him to monitor both the science station and his own while Mr. Spock had other duties.
"Thank you." Spock swung the chair to look at the helmsman, who stuttered as he read the report, obviously unused to being on the bridge. Pavel tweaked a setting on his station to keep from laughing at it. Everyone made mistakes, but after six months of work on the ship, most of them had gotten used to Spock's straightforward corrections — which seemed rude, at first, until you realized he was not trying to pass judgment. He wanted the ship running as well as she possibly could, and anything below that needed to be adjusted. That was all there was to it. As long as one remembered that, it was easy to accept the corrections without taking offense. Those who hadn't spent a lot of time on the bridge, though, weren't aware of that.
When the message did come, it wasn't to Pavel's comm, and it wasn't from Hikaru. It was from Kirk.
"Party has been attacked and split up. Send no one else to the planet, beam no one out." He sounded exhausted. "We will contact when we have rendezvoused and are prepared to beam up. Kirk out."
Pavel was very, very still at his station, but his heart had begun to pound, and he could feel the blood rushing through his veins. There was nothing he could do, for the moment, except refuse to panic. More information would come in time. His job was to stick to his orders, he knew. Without thinking, he pulled up a map of the heat signatures on-planet, and superimposed the locations of the away team's communicators on top of it. They appeared to all still be attached to their owners, at least. That was a very good sign. But then, why had the others not called in yet? It was possible Kirk had ordered radio silence, of course, but that was something he normally would have noted when he filled the Enterprise in.
"I have the coordinates of the away team," he informed Mr. Spock. A moment later, he put it on the viewscreen. Spock studied it, and when he was satisfied with Pavel's assessment, ordered that it be kept there for the foreseeable future.
"We need this closely monitored," he said. "Should any one of the away party be injured, this is how we can help them be found."
Pavel closed his eyes and counted to three. He couldn't think about it too closely. Hikaru was fine, as far as he knew. He was not allowed to worry until he knew something different. Still, the silent affirmations did nothing to keep his hands from shaking just a tiny bit on his controls. No one else noticed. He would keep it that way.
With three tasks now in front of him, he was able to stay busy. There were scans to be transferred and reports to be written about them for the science station, to be sent to Starfleet with the next data surge. He kept one eye on the heat signatures, moving slowly across the earth, moving further and further from each other. There were other heat signatures — the planet's inhabitants, they assumed — who were spread out in a pattern consistent with tracking someone who had run. Groups followed each of their team.
The yellow dot marking Hikaru's communicator and, Pavel assumed, heat signature had not moved since he had begun to monitor it. His heart sank a little.
A harsh alarm sounded when the first of the communicator signals dropped off the map. Pavel quickly tried to identify the heat signature that had been attached to it, but to no avail. It was lost in a swarm of them.
"Someone has been captured," he said. "Mr. Riley, it seems."
"It might be appropriate, Mr. Chekov, to say a prayer," Spock said.
That sent a definite shiver down Pavel's back. "Sir?"
"I do not mean anything, Mr. Chekov. As you say, just in case."
He had to wonder if Mr. Spock could hear his heart racing from across the bridge. Those ears had to be good for something, after all. But Spock was done with him, focusing on his own report on current circumstances for Starfleet.
There was a moment of silence, and then a tap on his shoulder. "Take your break with me," Lt. Uhura said, smiling gently at him.
He wanted to say no, and stay at his post until he knew what was happening. But at the same time, he knew he needed it, and he was able to listen to sense rather than be stubborn. They hovered until replacements came, then made their way to the turbolift.
"Pavel, you're white," she said, a firm, warm hand on his shoulder.
He looked at his reflection in the mirrored part of the turbolift. He looked tired, but that wasn't terribly unusual. "I'm okay," he said. "I think I need some lunch."
"That's a good start," she agreed. The turbolift hissed to a stop, and they both made their way toward the mess. It was mostly empty, the ship on yellow alert since the day before, but Lt. Uhura made him sit while she fetched food. "You really do look like you're going to fall over."
"I didn't sleep well," he admitted. "And I'm worried about Hi--Mr. Sulu."
"I figured."
He squinted at her a little. "You did? Why?"
"Pavel, I know you two think you're being really coy and cute, but I don't think there's anyone on the bridge crew at least who doesn't see what's going on."
He just stared at her while she sipped at her tea. When she opened her eyes, she giggled at his face. "You didn't — you really did think no one knew."
"Are we going to be reprimanded?" They were doomed. They'd done their best to keep their relationship out from under Mr. Spock's nose; they could trust that Kirk understood that inter-personal relationships happened, but Spock was a stickler for his duties.
"No." She patted his hand. "I promise. I wasn't trying to give you something else to worry about, sorry."
Pavel took a deep breath and let it out slowly, counting to five as he did. A little bit of the tension in his neck seeped away, "It's okay," he sighed. "I just worry. I know that we're not supposed to be with coworkers…"
"Have you met the captain?" Nyota asked, wrinkling her nose. "He might say something if you did something stupid like start making out on the bridge, but he's not going to have you sent home when he's sharing his bed with the CMO."
Pavel blinked. It was common knowledge that the captain and Dr. McCoy were a pair, but it had not occurred to him before, related to his worries of being caught. Still, it was a very good point, and he had to admit that it made him feel better. "Thank you," he said softly. He finished his meal, which he had been picking at through most of this conversation, and pushed his tray into the recycler. "I should return to the bridge."
"I think you should go see Dr. McCoy," Nyota said. "You're too pale."
"I am of no use in sickbay." He didn't want to come right out and say I'm fine, because she would see through that like a piece of transparent aluminum. A little stress had never killed anyone, that he knew of, and as soon as he had Hikaru back at the helm, it would ease.
She looked for a moment like she wanted to argue with him, but then seemed to decide it wasn't worth the time. She disposed of her own tray, and patted him on the back before brushing past him. "Just make sure to take a break here and there," she said, which, really, made him feel more like he was getting a lecture than anything else. He raised his chin — he was proud of himself, and he thought, rightly so — and went back to the bridge.
Sometimes, being a botanist came in useful beyond the obvious identification of poisonous plants. Hikaru was hunkered in the trunk of a tree that grew large enough to fit three men within it — but it tapered, at the base, and became hollow. From here he bided his time, and listened closely to every sound of the forest. He wanted to be sure that the locals, which appeared to have very sensitive hearing, did not hear him when he asked for a beam-out. His breathing had been disguised by the crunch of fallen leaves, at least, but now he was more scared than anything else. The goal, he knew, was to get back to the ship and inform Commander Spock of what was going on, so they could extract the other members of the away team without incident. He knew at least one of them had been taken prisoner. As to what the aliens' motives were, he had no real idea. None of them did. They hadn't even known there were aliens until they had been ambushed just after dawn.
Hikaru had, from time to time, admitted to hating his job. If someone had asked him at this moment, he would have sworn that he had no intentions of renewing his enlistment when his duty was done.
The first of the phaser blasts echoed inside the trunk, and he jolted harshly, almost knocking his head. They were far enough away that he was still out of danger, but he hunkered down, partly out of instinct. A phaser could definitely penetrate the trunk of the tree, so being below the ground line was safer.
There wasn't any further firing, but he heard footsteps...and saw the unmistakable shiny black boots of a Starfleet officer. Without thinking, he tugged on them, and Jim Kirk came tumbling down on top of him.
And socked him right in the eye.
"Easy!" Hikaru hissed, rolling to protect his face. "It's me!"
Kirk was still for a minute, then jerked away. "Sorry." He leaned against the wall, then seemed to realize where he was. "What the hell is this?"
"These trees grow up and out, then cannibalize the middle of their trunks to get the energy to make their roots spread. They can have roots for ten square miles —"
"Without the botany lesson, please?" Kirk cocked his head, like he was more amused than annoyed.
"A perfect hiding place."
"Thank you." Kirk plopped to the floor of the hideaway. "Location of the hostiles?"
"They passed two or three minutes ago. Bet that shot draws them back, though."
"I called the ship, ordered them not to send anyone else down or beam anyone up."
"They have Riley."
"That's why we're not beaming out." Kirk shook his head. "I'm not about to walk out of here without trying to get the rest of our crew back. Especially when I'd have to tell my yeoman that I'd left her boy behind."
Hikaru nodded. Janice Rand, though young and lower than Kirk on the food chain, scared the hell out of the captain for some reason. He could sort of see why, with her hair being more than ample enough to hide a weapon in, but at the same time there was a cognitive dissonance that came when he saw her bossing Kirk about. If Kirk lost her boyfriend, she would definitely be a force to be reckoned with.
"We better make sure we find him," Hikaru said. And then he put a finger up to his lips, to signal Kirk to stay quiet. He heard footsteps.
There was only a moment of silence, before they were both grabbed by the scruff of the neck and hauled upwards.
The last two of the communicator signals disappeared from Pavel's screen, and he slapped the console, too angry to hold it in. "Kirk and Sulu have been captured," he reported. "Impossible to pinpoint now in order to beam them out."
Spock shook his head. "He ordered us not to, under any circumstances. We have followed our orders, ensign. Try to restrain yourself."
Pavel was not foolish enough to argue with Commander Spock, though he had quietly suggested, more than once, that it would be of more use to all of them if they obeyed Kirk's last order and beamed the clump of two up. From there, they would at least have their tactical genius to guide them. Now, they were blind. As much as they might all trust Mr. Spock, even he had no idea what, specifically, had happened below.
Spock swung in the chair. "Lt. Uhura, please notify the department heads that we will be holding a briefing in thirty minutes."
"I'm not sure you should wait that long," she said, earpiece pressed firmly into her ear with a finger. "I'm receiving a hail from one of the communicators, but it is definitely not our away party."
"Put it on speaker. Mr. Chekov --"
"Identify the source of the transmission." Pavel was on top of things, when he put his mind to it, no matter what the situation. He was able to push the thoughts of what Hikaru might be going through out of the way, and focus on his job for the moment. "Ten kilometers from where the party was forced to disperse."
From the speakers, there came a garbled noise that might have passed for language for some other race, but did not quite sound like anything discernible to humans. Nyota was frantically poking at her station, and finally, the sound hummed once, like static, then flared back to life in Standard.
"People of the USS Enterprise," the voice said. "We welcome you to our planet, though we are disappointed that you did not choose to abide by our laws. We have taken some of your people for the time being. They are not prisoners, and will not be harmed without giving you a due chance to save them. The rest of your team has been sent to a location north of where we are, which I am sure you are monitoring, and may be beamed up using your own technology."
Spock shook his head, as if denying the voice that could not see him, but said nothing for the time being, as the monologue had not yet finished.
"We request that a handful of people be sent to the planet's surface. The following people, and no others, to be specific: Doctor Leonard McCoy," the alien managed to butcher the name in a way that the universal translator couldn't repair, "Pavel Chekov," an even worse pronunciation, though it was obvious who was being spoken of to everyone on the bridge, "and Janice Rand. If you do not do as we have requested, we can and will ban your ship from our orbit, and keep your friends as true prisoners. Please do not put them through that."
There was a brief pause, as if to let this information sink in. "There's more," Nyota said softly, and Spock did not turn to look at her. He remained focused on the spot where the transmission had come from, and listened.
"We have been informed that there is a 'chain of command' that must be followed," the alien said. "To that end, we would like to give your 'captain' the opportunity to speak to you, and inform you that what we have said is the advisable course of action."
A moment of silence, then, "Spock, do as they say. They don't want to harm us. These are protections to keep the..."
He was cut off before he could finish, but it was clear that these measures were not localized to the Starfleet visitors alone. The transmission cut out, and there was a stunned silence on the bridge for a moment.
"So they speak a language we know," Nyota murmured.
And then all hell broke loose.
"Mr. Chekov, you are the senior-most officer with any sort of combat training. Assemble the away team, make sure they are armed appropriately. Lt, send the coordinates this transmission was sent from to Mr. Scott, and send for someone to take Mr. Chekov's place at the helm, as well as for someone from sciences. I would like to have a full bridge while we are dealing with a crisis." Spock folded his hands in his lap, voice and body calm though they were, as he said, definitely dealing with something that could be classified as a crisis situation. He glanced around at the rushing bodies, and then nodded toward the helm. "Mr. Octivan, please fly the ship."
Octivan, who had been staring at Spock as if he had not known that the vulcan was capable of giving orders so briskly and precisely, jumped a little and returned to his station. Pavel was not sure how safe he felt, knowing that half of the bridge crew looking out for them would be people who had never flown them through a real crisis before. He tried to remind himself that most of the senior officers had only seen their first crisis less than a year ago, but it seemed more and more like it was another lifetime past.
He rushed to the transporter room, and did not let himself stop to think of what this meant. Not until he was checking the phasers, making sure they were set properly, and handing them to McCoy and Rand.
Lord, he realized, suddenly, I'm in charge of an away mission. Pavel was not sure if he should be excited, or terrified, so he settled for a little of both.
McCoy did him the favor of breaking the silent tension, though. "This is the worst idea I've ever heard of," he grumbled. "I hope Jim knows what he's doing."
Pavel agreed wholeheartedly. They mounted the transporter pad, and Pavel nodded to Scotty.
"Best of luck to ya," Scotty said, then tapped the keys to send them down.