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iceminkTitle:Someday, and the Rest of Your Life
Author: icemink
Spoilers: This story begins at the very end of Star Trek XI so spoilers for the entire movie.
Paring: Spock/Uhura
Summary: When the Enterprise receives a distress call from a Vulcan rescue vessel, Spock finds himself confronted by his past, and he must choose whether to uphold Vulcan traditions or find his own way.
A/N: As I don’t have yet have a beta for my new Star Trek obsession this work is un-betad.
Rating: PG for most of it, but my stories have a tendency to end up NC-17
Previous chapters can be found here.
Nyota took a deep, grateful breath as the away team safely teleported onto the Nightingale. She had used teleporters all her life; she’d never been afraid of one till now. There had simply been too many recent near-misses, and one tragic accident. So teleporting in that same region of space when it was filled with anomalies that interfered with their instruments was mildly terrifying.
But she was a Starfleet officer. Even if she had never quite imagined her career going this way, she was just as trained to deal with rescue operations as any of her crew mates.
The mission itself was relatively simple and she hoped would be completed quickly. According to their best sensor readings there was still life support on deck 11 of the Nightingale. Mr. Scott had beamed them to the section of deck 11 that seemed to have the least interference. The away team would then try to find any survivors and bring them back to that spot, where Lieutenant Grayson would wait to have them beamed back to the Enterprise.
Within moments of their arrival Uhura spotted something and smiled. A communications panel. As the Captain repeated his orders to the other members of the away team she began to remove the panel.
“Lieutenant, what are you doing?” the Captain asked, annoyed. He probably assumed she hadn’t been listening, but she had. Being able to listen to one thing and do another was pretty much her job description.
“Just what you brought me to do, sir,” she replied unapologetically. “It should only take me a moment to. . . There.” She switched on the com system and her voice rang out across the ship. “This is the USS Enterprise rescue party. We have set up an emergency teleport point at Deck 11 Section 5. If possible please make your way to Deck 11 Section 5 for immediate transport to the Enterprise. If you are injured we will come and assist you.” Then she repeated the message in Vulcan.
She turned back to the Captain triumphantly, “Will that do Captain?”
“That’ll be just fine, Lieutenant,” Kirk told her, giving the kind of look he used to give her at the Academy when they were trying to show each other up. “Remember gentlemen, don’t loose your communicators, they are the only sure way we have of getting transported out of here. Lieutenant, you’re with me.”
Don’t loose you’re communicator she thought, fat chance of that. She was a communications officer, without some sort of communicator she would have felt naked. Even if it hadn’t been her only way off of the doomed ship, there was no way she was going to loose it.
However, the tool of the moment was the tricorder. She held hers out as she and the Captain set out in the opposite direction of the other team, searching for survivors.
The part of the Nightingale they were on, might still have life support, but there was not much to be said for the lighting. The lights seemed to flicker on and off continually. Nyota did not like to think what it would be like if they gave way all together.
The tricorder continued to beckon them ahead, promising with it’s own pulsing lights that somewhere up ahead there was more life. That she and the Captain were not the only living things haunting the halls of the Nightingale.
And then the corridor split.
The readings were clear. “Two life signs to the right Captain, and three to the left.”
“All right, Lieutenant,” he said glancing at the diverging passageway. She wondered what he saw. To her they looked equally grim and uninviting. “You take the right, I’ll take the left. Keep your com signal open, and be careful.”
“Aye, aye Sir,” she agreed. Being careful sounded like a really good idea.
Taking a deep breath Nyota began down her passageway alone. After only a few feet, the world went quiet. She could no longer hear the Captain’s footsteps. Only the buzzing of the lights, the electronic hum of the tricorder, and beating of her own heart.
You’re a Starfleet officer, Uhura. Keep it together, she scolded herself.
And then she did hear something. She moved forward faster until the survivor came into view. A Vulcan man, stumbling along the corridor towards her, using the wall as a support. He looked up and saw her.
She smiled. “This way,” she told him in Vulcan. “Just a little further down the hallway, take the passage on your left, and you’ll find the others.”
“You must come,” he told her.
“No, there’s another survivor down this hallway. Don’t worry, I’ll catch up,” she told him.
“No, you can not help her. You must come,” the man insisted.
“It’s just a little further that way, you’ll be fine,” she tried to reassure him.
“It is not logical for you to proceed in that direction. You must come,” he said again.
“I”ll be back, don’t worry,” she told him, and then began to move back down the corridor in search of the last survivor.
It didn’t take her long to regret that decision. Not when she was alone again in the corridor, the lights threatening to die at any second. Besides, if the Vulcan thought she couldn’t help the other survivor then what were the chances that she could?
Her communicator beeped, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin. The signal wasn’t for her. Some other survivors had made it to the beam out point and Scotty was brining them aboard.
How long had she been down here? It felt like and hour. She looked down at the chronometer on her tricorder. Only five minutes since she and the Captain had separated.
And then she heard a groan.
Uhura hurried on ahead, grateful to have finally located the last survivor in her section, grateful that she would be on her way back to the Enterprise soon.
The lighting was worse here, some of the structure of the corridor had collapsed, but Nyota could make out the form of a woman under the rubble.
“Are you all right,” she said in Vulcan, as she quickly began to scan the fallen woman with her tricorder. The injuries were bad, but not necessarily fatal if she could be gotten to sick bay quickly.
“You are human?” the Vulcan woman asked.
“Yes,” Nyota responded as she began to look around for something she could use to pry the wreckage off of the the Vulcan.
“That explains the illogical question, and your behavior. There is nothing you can do here. You should leave,” she tried to maintain the normal neutral Vulcan tone, but the pain in her voice was clear.
“I’m Starfleet,” Nyota argued. “I’ll be the judge of what’s hopeless.” At least that’s what she had meant to say. There wasn’t an exact word for hopeless. The word she had chosen might have been most accurately translated, ‘an illogical act, that is a waste of effort and should be abandoned.’ It didn’t sound as encouraging as she meant it to. “Mr. Scott?” she asked into her communicator.
“Scotty here.”
“I have a survivor, but she’s trapped, is there anyway you can beam her up?” she asked, even though she suspected she knew the answer.
“I’m sorry lass, her life signs are too weak, and you’re in a particularly bad spot. You’ll have to get her out of there.”
“Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay,” Uhura said to the woman, in case she’d understood the communications. Then she switched over to the Captain’s signal. “Captain, I have a survivor who’s trapped, I think the two of us can get her out.”
“All right, Lieutenant,” the Captain’s voice replied. “Give me a few minutes, I’ve found everyone over here. Hold on, Spock’s trying to contact me.”
“Aye, Sir,” Uhura responded. Just remembering that Spock was on the bridge watching over everything made her feel better.
“Spock?” the Vulcan woman asked clearly recognizing the name as Vulcan.
“Yeah, we have a Vulcan in our crew. He’s in charge up there right now,” Nyota told her smiling.
Then there was a loud metallic groan. Nyota wildly grabbed for something to hold onto as the corridor seemed to shift and buckle under them. She thought she could hear the sound of gas hissing somewhere and lights went out completely.
She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. The corridor wasn’t going to hold and deck 11 was the only deck with life support. If either the floor or celling cracked through to an adjacent level it could create a vacuum taking all the air, and sucking them into space.
She had to leave. Even if the Captain did show up, with no light other than her tricorder what chance did they have of getting the woman out. Even so, it seemed heartless to just abandon the woman, despite the fact that both her and the other Vulcan survivor had told her to.
As if reading her thoughts the woman said, “Go.”
She wanted to, she wasn’t supposed to die her, there was no purpose served in staying, especially if the Captain was really on his way. If he got too close and the corridor collapsed it could kill all three of them.
She turned on the emergency light on the tricorder and held it so they could see each other’s faces. “What’s you’re name?” Nyota asked. At least that much she could do. Let someone know that his woman had been here, that this was where she’d died. It wasn’t much, but it was all that Uhura could offer.
“T’Pring,” the woman said. “Tell Spock. . .”
Nyota did not hear the next words. For three heartbeats, the world just stopped. On the first heartbeat she considered letting T’Pring die, knowing that no Spock would never know. On the second, she hated herself for it. And on the third she knew exactly what she had to do.
“Mr. Scott,” she spoke calmly into her communicator. “I need an emergency transport,” she forced the communicator into T’Pring’s hands. “Now,” she yelled.
It only took a moment before the white light of the transporter beam encircled T’Pring, and then she was gone.
It wasn’t until the transport light vanished that Uhura realized the mistake she had made. She should have moved away the moment she gave the order to transport. With T’Pring’s body gone, the rubble that had trapped her fell, the wall shifted, and the hissing Uhura had heard became a roar.
The air dropped at least ten degrees. She screamed as something intensely cold grazed her cheek. The scream caused her to breathe in sharply and the and a cold so intense that it burned invaded her lungs.
Instinct caused her to jerk away, but it was Starfleet training that got her moving, that forced to struggle to her feet even though her throat and lungs felt like they were on fire.
Some part of her mind detached itself, the part that had been trained to deal with crisis. I’ve breathed in some kind of gas, she told herself. Something cold. She staggered onward, even though with every breath it felt like something was reaching down her throat and ripping her insides.
Phaser coolant? she asked herself trying to remember from her engineering training every possible gas that ran through a starship. Unfortunately, engineering had not been one of her strongest subjects.
She was making progress, at least she thought she was. There was light again, even if it still flickered on and off. Phaser coolant is toxic she reminded herself. I’d have passed out by now, or at least be vomiting my guts out.
As if on cue a violent coughing fit hit her forcing her to her knees. She tried to drag herself up again but she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, to get enough oxygen to make her legs work. The world was spinning around her and she could feel herself teetering on the edge of consciousness.
She thought she saw something move at the end of the passageway, but she couldn’t be sure if it was real, or simply the corridor falling away beneath her feet.
Author: icemink
Spoilers: This story begins at the very end of Star Trek XI so spoilers for the entire movie.
Paring: Spock/Uhura
Summary: When the Enterprise receives a distress call from a Vulcan rescue vessel, Spock finds himself confronted by his past, and he must choose whether to uphold Vulcan traditions or find his own way.
A/N: As I don’t have yet have a beta for my new Star Trek obsession this work is un-betad.
Rating: PG for most of it, but my stories have a tendency to end up NC-17
Previous chapters can be found here.
Nyota took a deep, grateful breath as the away team safely teleported onto the Nightingale. She had used teleporters all her life; she’d never been afraid of one till now. There had simply been too many recent near-misses, and one tragic accident. So teleporting in that same region of space when it was filled with anomalies that interfered with their instruments was mildly terrifying.
But she was a Starfleet officer. Even if she had never quite imagined her career going this way, she was just as trained to deal with rescue operations as any of her crew mates.
The mission itself was relatively simple and she hoped would be completed quickly. According to their best sensor readings there was still life support on deck 11 of the Nightingale. Mr. Scott had beamed them to the section of deck 11 that seemed to have the least interference. The away team would then try to find any survivors and bring them back to that spot, where Lieutenant Grayson would wait to have them beamed back to the Enterprise.
Within moments of their arrival Uhura spotted something and smiled. A communications panel. As the Captain repeated his orders to the other members of the away team she began to remove the panel.
“Lieutenant, what are you doing?” the Captain asked, annoyed. He probably assumed she hadn’t been listening, but she had. Being able to listen to one thing and do another was pretty much her job description.
“Just what you brought me to do, sir,” she replied unapologetically. “It should only take me a moment to. . . There.” She switched on the com system and her voice rang out across the ship. “This is the USS Enterprise rescue party. We have set up an emergency teleport point at Deck 11 Section 5. If possible please make your way to Deck 11 Section 5 for immediate transport to the Enterprise. If you are injured we will come and assist you.” Then she repeated the message in Vulcan.
She turned back to the Captain triumphantly, “Will that do Captain?”
“That’ll be just fine, Lieutenant,” Kirk told her, giving the kind of look he used to give her at the Academy when they were trying to show each other up. “Remember gentlemen, don’t loose your communicators, they are the only sure way we have of getting transported out of here. Lieutenant, you’re with me.”
Don’t loose you’re communicator she thought, fat chance of that. She was a communications officer, without some sort of communicator she would have felt naked. Even if it hadn’t been her only way off of the doomed ship, there was no way she was going to loose it.
However, the tool of the moment was the tricorder. She held hers out as she and the Captain set out in the opposite direction of the other team, searching for survivors.
The part of the Nightingale they were on, might still have life support, but there was not much to be said for the lighting. The lights seemed to flicker on and off continually. Nyota did not like to think what it would be like if they gave way all together.
The tricorder continued to beckon them ahead, promising with it’s own pulsing lights that somewhere up ahead there was more life. That she and the Captain were not the only living things haunting the halls of the Nightingale.
And then the corridor split.
The readings were clear. “Two life signs to the right Captain, and three to the left.”
“All right, Lieutenant,” he said glancing at the diverging passageway. She wondered what he saw. To her they looked equally grim and uninviting. “You take the right, I’ll take the left. Keep your com signal open, and be careful.”
“Aye, aye Sir,” she agreed. Being careful sounded like a really good idea.
Taking a deep breath Nyota began down her passageway alone. After only a few feet, the world went quiet. She could no longer hear the Captain’s footsteps. Only the buzzing of the lights, the electronic hum of the tricorder, and beating of her own heart.
You’re a Starfleet officer, Uhura. Keep it together, she scolded herself.
And then she did hear something. She moved forward faster until the survivor came into view. A Vulcan man, stumbling along the corridor towards her, using the wall as a support. He looked up and saw her.
She smiled. “This way,” she told him in Vulcan. “Just a little further down the hallway, take the passage on your left, and you’ll find the others.”
“You must come,” he told her.
“No, there’s another survivor down this hallway. Don’t worry, I’ll catch up,” she told him.
“No, you can not help her. You must come,” the man insisted.
“It’s just a little further that way, you’ll be fine,” she tried to reassure him.
“It is not logical for you to proceed in that direction. You must come,” he said again.
“I”ll be back, don’t worry,” she told him, and then began to move back down the corridor in search of the last survivor.
It didn’t take her long to regret that decision. Not when she was alone again in the corridor, the lights threatening to die at any second. Besides, if the Vulcan thought she couldn’t help the other survivor then what were the chances that she could?
Her communicator beeped, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin. The signal wasn’t for her. Some other survivors had made it to the beam out point and Scotty was brining them aboard.
How long had she been down here? It felt like and hour. She looked down at the chronometer on her tricorder. Only five minutes since she and the Captain had separated.
And then she heard a groan.
Uhura hurried on ahead, grateful to have finally located the last survivor in her section, grateful that she would be on her way back to the Enterprise soon.
The lighting was worse here, some of the structure of the corridor had collapsed, but Nyota could make out the form of a woman under the rubble.
“Are you all right,” she said in Vulcan, as she quickly began to scan the fallen woman with her tricorder. The injuries were bad, but not necessarily fatal if she could be gotten to sick bay quickly.
“You are human?” the Vulcan woman asked.
“Yes,” Nyota responded as she began to look around for something she could use to pry the wreckage off of the the Vulcan.
“That explains the illogical question, and your behavior. There is nothing you can do here. You should leave,” she tried to maintain the normal neutral Vulcan tone, but the pain in her voice was clear.
“I’m Starfleet,” Nyota argued. “I’ll be the judge of what’s hopeless.” At least that’s what she had meant to say. There wasn’t an exact word for hopeless. The word she had chosen might have been most accurately translated, ‘an illogical act, that is a waste of effort and should be abandoned.’ It didn’t sound as encouraging as she meant it to. “Mr. Scott?” she asked into her communicator.
“Scotty here.”
“I have a survivor, but she’s trapped, is there anyway you can beam her up?” she asked, even though she suspected she knew the answer.
“I’m sorry lass, her life signs are too weak, and you’re in a particularly bad spot. You’ll have to get her out of there.”
“Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay,” Uhura said to the woman, in case she’d understood the communications. Then she switched over to the Captain’s signal. “Captain, I have a survivor who’s trapped, I think the two of us can get her out.”
“All right, Lieutenant,” the Captain’s voice replied. “Give me a few minutes, I’ve found everyone over here. Hold on, Spock’s trying to contact me.”
“Aye, Sir,” Uhura responded. Just remembering that Spock was on the bridge watching over everything made her feel better.
“Spock?” the Vulcan woman asked clearly recognizing the name as Vulcan.
“Yeah, we have a Vulcan in our crew. He’s in charge up there right now,” Nyota told her smiling.
Then there was a loud metallic groan. Nyota wildly grabbed for something to hold onto as the corridor seemed to shift and buckle under them. She thought she could hear the sound of gas hissing somewhere and lights went out completely.
She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. The corridor wasn’t going to hold and deck 11 was the only deck with life support. If either the floor or celling cracked through to an adjacent level it could create a vacuum taking all the air, and sucking them into space.
She had to leave. Even if the Captain did show up, with no light other than her tricorder what chance did they have of getting the woman out. Even so, it seemed heartless to just abandon the woman, despite the fact that both her and the other Vulcan survivor had told her to.
As if reading her thoughts the woman said, “Go.”
She wanted to, she wasn’t supposed to die her, there was no purpose served in staying, especially if the Captain was really on his way. If he got too close and the corridor collapsed it could kill all three of them.
She turned on the emergency light on the tricorder and held it so they could see each other’s faces. “What’s you’re name?” Nyota asked. At least that much she could do. Let someone know that his woman had been here, that this was where she’d died. It wasn’t much, but it was all that Uhura could offer.
“T’Pring,” the woman said. “Tell Spock. . .”
Nyota did not hear the next words. For three heartbeats, the world just stopped. On the first heartbeat she considered letting T’Pring die, knowing that no Spock would never know. On the second, she hated herself for it. And on the third she knew exactly what she had to do.
“Mr. Scott,” she spoke calmly into her communicator. “I need an emergency transport,” she forced the communicator into T’Pring’s hands. “Now,” she yelled.
It only took a moment before the white light of the transporter beam encircled T’Pring, and then she was gone.
It wasn’t until the transport light vanished that Uhura realized the mistake she had made. She should have moved away the moment she gave the order to transport. With T’Pring’s body gone, the rubble that had trapped her fell, the wall shifted, and the hissing Uhura had heard became a roar.
The air dropped at least ten degrees. She screamed as something intensely cold grazed her cheek. The scream caused her to breathe in sharply and the and a cold so intense that it burned invaded her lungs.
Instinct caused her to jerk away, but it was Starfleet training that got her moving, that forced to struggle to her feet even though her throat and lungs felt like they were on fire.
Some part of her mind detached itself, the part that had been trained to deal with crisis. I’ve breathed in some kind of gas, she told herself. Something cold. She staggered onward, even though with every breath it felt like something was reaching down her throat and ripping her insides.
Phaser coolant? she asked herself trying to remember from her engineering training every possible gas that ran through a starship. Unfortunately, engineering had not been one of her strongest subjects.
She was making progress, at least she thought she was. There was light again, even if it still flickered on and off. Phaser coolant is toxic she reminded herself. I’d have passed out by now, or at least be vomiting my guts out.
As if on cue a violent coughing fit hit her forcing her to her knees. She tried to drag herself up again but she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, to get enough oxygen to make her legs work. The world was spinning around her and she could feel herself teetering on the edge of consciousness.
She thought she saw something move at the end of the passageway, but she couldn’t be sure if it was real, or simply the corridor falling away beneath her feet.
