Fanfic: Starship Elyssa Chapter 4. part 2

[kiyda]

_+_+_

When the colors had begun to die, Roads could see clearly that the ship she had beamed inside was clearly more sleek and beautiful than her own. In a way, hers was more practical, but theirs was polished and clean with all the white, antiseptic, and uniform appeal of the future. Ahead of her, she was surprised to see the blonde young man before was not waiting to meet her. In his absence, another blonde was waiting, but a female one in a red dress with blonde hair. Next to her were two red shirts, both working on the beaming controls. Immediately, the woman stepped up.

“The Captain is incapable of meeting you here. He asks that you meet him in sick bay,” she explained. Roads began stepping down toward the yeoman.

“What’s your name?”

“Yeoman Janice Rand.”

Roads smiled. “Nice to meet you, Rand. Lead the way.”

Rand returned the smile and turned to lead the way. The rest of the crew were attempting to follow when a Scottish voice rang out.

“It‘s you!”

Five women stopped, but one, brown haired and freckled, turned as the person who held the accent stood up. He moved around the controls toward Teixeira who was staring at him like a pedestrian might at an approaching vagabond.

“Fancy meeting ye here!” he said to her. His short brown hair was high up his forehead and looked to be pushing late twenties or early thirties. His blue eyes twinkled with some kind of energetic quality and his smiled broadened like he had just found the toy at the bottom of his cereal box.

Chief Engineer Texeira stared at him long and hard before her jaw dropped and recognition swept through her.

“Scott?…Scotty?” she asked hesitantly.

“Yeah, ye silly gerl, who’d ye think it was! By the way, love whut ye’ve done with the hair, and ye’re in engineering, huh? Figured ye’d play for our team. Where are ye now? Lieutenant?” asked Scott, eagerly. Texiera smiled but every sound in her voice sounded like nervousness.

“What’re you doing here, Scott, I thought-”

“Hey.” Roads voice came into their world and interrupted their random conversation. The two long ago aquaintances looked up to her voice. Teixeira nodded and chose to end it.

“I go to go,” she admitted.

“Aye, a’course, me too, as well, oh, and by the way,” he finished as she started walking away, he added quietly, “I still have the hat.”

Teixeira stopped and gave him a quizzical look over her shoulder, not sure if she heard him correctly. He paused and gestured to his head and then headed in the opposite direction. The Elyssa Engineer turned around as she continued following her group down the hall, concerned, confused, and honestly hopeful.

True enough, they found the blonde haired Captain sitting on a medical bed, having a tall slightly built man wrap his wounds with gauze. The Captain was without a shirt, with white gauze patched up on his left side and clearly under some replicating machinery. He looked up when he saw the women enter the medical bay. The Captain gave a low whistle.

“Bones, don’t look now but we have intruders, and they happen to be a crew of beautiful women,” Kirk said to Bones in a low tone. Of course, the man he called Bones didn’t even look up to observe the approaching party. He sneered.

“Shut up, Jim. I don’t want to have to treat any more wounds of yours today, there’s a line behind you, you know.” Roads overheard the threat just barely, the whistle before pretty clearly, but nonetheless, chose not to comment at all. Yet her next sentence came out rather brokenly.

“We- Captain-” Road began, but Kirk was quick.

“How may I help you, Captain?” asked Kirk, with all the charm of Don Juan, Casanova, and James Bond combined. He also said it with all the annoyance of a conversation between an animal and its parasite. He seemed just as annoyed as he was pleased by her presence and the form of it on his ship. Just standing near him, Roads could feel all of his confidence, sexual power, and attitude at once. Or his arrogance, perversion, and temper. Roads couldn’t tell between these two sides, however, she knew she didn’t like this situation, and she didn’t like the effect it was having on her.

For one thing, Kirk was handsome. It wasn‘t hard to look at him from across the screen, but now, right in front of him, his features were having a direct effect on her. He was Caucasian, light skinned, slightly bristled, possibly from the stress they caught him. He had thick eyebrows, soft lips and a big smirk on his face. His short hair was thick and defiant like grass, and his blue eyes caught hers in a trap. She found it hard to let go of his stare.

“It’s Catherine,” she breathed out suddenly, unaware she had given him permission to talk to her so informally.

“Or Roads, you can call her Roads,” piped up Blair. Roads instantly gave the Orion the death glare who was grinning like a school girl. Evidently she had picked up on Roads pheromones just by standing near her and could read them like the newspaper.

Today’s headline: Jim Kirk is attractive. Which you didn’t have to read to know.

Kirk gave the Orion a perplexed expression. “Really? Rhodes? Like the Ivy League?”

“No, Roads, like the highway or the streets,” explained Blair. Roads attempted to divert attention immediately by suddenly remembering to introduce her party.

“This is Commander Blair, my first officer. And this is Ensign Konei, and Chief Engineer Teixeira.”

“Pleasure to meet you all. Captain Roads, you’ve of course met Janice Rand, my Yeoman, and other there, is Spock, my First Officer, and this surly looking beast over here is CMO Leonard McCoy,” Kirk replied, and as soon as he finished, the good doctor took the liberty of running a medical tool down his spine causing him to wince. “Geez, Bones.”

“I am not surly. You are just an ass, and I’m not going to go along with it.”

Roads gave them both hard looks. Should she even put into words what was going on here? No. So she cleared her throat and attempted to address the situation professionally since she seemed to be the only one among the two captains to do so.

“There are two ways of which we can proceed. One, you can cooperate. You and me will go over the damage of the ship with my party. Two, if you so choose not to cooperate, my crew will have a go at it by themselves, and they‘re a thorough bunch, they‘ll comb this place top to bottom, inside and out,” explained Roads. Kirk tilted his head, thinking.

“We’ll meet up with my Chief Engineer, he’ll show yours around,” said Kirk. “I’m sure Spock can determine the damage along with your first officer and Ensign, wait, are you Vulcan?”

Konei perked, like a cat.

“Yes sir.”

“Huh.”

Roads wanted to know what the hell that ‘are you vulcan, huh’ was all about, but refrained from asking.

“So you and me will go over other damages, that way we can survey the damage faster without fail,” explained Kirk.

“Fine.”

“Fine. Am I discharged, Bones?” asked Kirk suddenly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Sit your fine ass down, I still have three more gashes in your back to repair!” barked the doctor. Roads wasn’t going to comment on that either.

“Spock?”

“Minimal injuries, Captain,” explained the other man. He suddenly stood up from the medical table, pulling his blue shirt down over his black shirt. He had already been tended to for minor cuts and bruises. He was tall, with broad shoulders, and short, very orderly kept black hair. His pointy ear features possibly stood out the most and Konei, for once, looked like part of a set.

“Good. Will you take Teixeira to the engineering deck and show the other two the damages?” asked Kirk.

“Certainly. Officers, come with me,” he requested, as he began leading the way toward the exit. The women gave their Captain a curious look before following the tall Vulcan. Roads watched them leave, her arms folded, concern expressed in her up turned eyebrows. When she turned back around, she caught Kirk looking at her. This disturbed her, even more so when he didn’t shy away.

“So what exactly did you do?” he accused her. Roads stared at him.

“Excuse me?”

“Those Klingon war birds were going to kill us, they even had a little death countdown, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five -”

“Ha! A countdown? Wow, talk about cliche-”

“They had an entire planet to conquer, they completely outmatched us, we were about to be blown out of the sky, my head was about to roll, and then out of nowhere, three seconds in, you show up!” Kirk exclaimed.

“I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary,” explained Roads.

“You did something.”

“I talked to head of the main ship.”

“But that can’t be all you did. Not once in Klingon History or Federation History, has a Klingon ever backed down from being talked to.”

“You’re accusing me of something here.”

Kirk leaned in closer to her and kept his voice low, low enough that only Roads and rats could hear him. “If it turns out that you have been playing for both sides from the beginning, I will personally see to it that you are court marshaled, arrested, and sent far, far away to a penal colony where you are never heard from again.”

Roads was silent for a moment, but only a moment, and then she spoke up. Her voice was like a clear sound, like a gust of wind blowing all kind of murky fog away.

“Bones?” She had immediately picked up the nickname.

“Not you, too,” protested McCoy.

When Roads was sure the good doctor was looking, and he was, she launched her left fist into Kirk’s right cheek bone. His body twirled from the impact, colliding with table, eventually causing him to fall backward and hit the floor. Kirk grappled against the steel table, leaning on his forearm to stand up. He groped his face like it had been removed. He gave his assaulter a confused hard look.

“Wow,” was all he could muster.

_+_+_

Spock found the nearest computer locator and spoke into the receiver.

“Computer locate Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott,” he spoke smoothly, and immediately he had Teixeira’s attention.

The computer went through a variety of blue prints before zooming in on a location, showing a red blip meaning Scott’s location. With that, he quickly dismissed the application and turned to continue in the direction toward the lift. In the lift, Spock let his opinions known.

“Although the Captain may find your presence a nuisance here, it is a benefit to the crew moral that you are willing to assist us. Our damages are not the most catastrophic we’ve had, but they do make us incapable of repairing them by ourselves entirely,” explained Spock in a deadpan tone. Blair shifted, tucking a piece of red hair behind her ear.

“Good to know. Beginning to think there we might be forced to walk the plank,” Blair admitted.

“Your pirate metaphor is inaccurate, for if we made you walk the plank, you’d be dead,” Spock replied calmly as the lift reached the appropriate deck.

Blair smiled to herself as she exited the lift. “Are you positive you wouldn’t shoot us into space?”

Spock raised an eyebrow, but followed the other women as they emptied from the lift. He led the rest of the way, the hallways becoming wider, filled with bronze pipes and silver wired crosswalks, passing a stream of engineers, winding their way against the traffic of other engineers. All the while, Teixeira was admiring the layout of the deck, the alacrity of the crew, and the chaotic organization of the progress toward rebuilding. She was also admiring how much it was falling apart from the inside.

“Lord,” she said with a bit of a southern drawl to it, “What in the hell did you do to this ship?”

“The Klingons followed the ship into warp drive when it abandoned the Captain and I on planet. In so doing, it later attacked the ship with an unknown weapon, infecting our system with viruses,” explained Spock, he stopped in front of a man who was standing next to a young officer. “Mr. Scott.”

“Not now, I gotta git this ship in-” Scott turned around to deal with the Vulcan, spotting the same woman he had been talking to earlier.

“Mr. Scott, Starfleet command has ordered us to receive a survey of the damage. This is Chief Engineer Teixeira who will be overseeing the repairs in questions. You are required to show her the damages in the engineering department,” and with that, Spock walked away, the two other women trailing behind him. Blair waved to Teixeira before leaving.

“Well, lass, we meet again!” his voice laced with amusement. Teixeira didn‘t know whether to see that as a good or bad thing, but seeing as how he was smiling and they were stuck together for the time being, she was going to take that as a good thing.

“That we do,” she said. “So you’re a Chief Engineer.”

“And, ye’re a Chief Engineer.”

“You know what this means, don’t you?”

“That I do.”

_+_+_

Spock took Blair and Konei through the halls to another lift, all the while, the silence filling the void. Blair felt vastly uncomfortable, but she doubted Konei felt the same way. Here she was, finally a part of a party that was the majority, even if it was just one man. As the counselor and psychologist of the ship, she wondered how this mission would effect her loneliness as a member of an endangered species. As a friend, she wondered what Konei thought of Spock.

A second later, the lift stopped, and the exited. Spock stopped by a computer locator. He ran through the same process, but this time Blair was leaning around him, admiring the swiftness of the computer and his quickly moving fingers.

“Who are you locating now?” asked Blair.

“I’m not locating anyone; I am extracting files from my the main computer to show you the immediate damage of the ship so far,” The tall Vulcan explained. Another blue print appeared. “This is the damage of the ship. Currently, the warp drive is out, and two engines had exploded. The warp core appears to be in an inactive state. During a fruitless chase, the outer shell of the left wing was hit, which happens to be in the main cargo bay. We haven’t done a count yet on supplies missing. We’ll also need to do a head count, check back with McCoy over crew injuries, and reorder shift changes according the remaining members of the crew.”

“What kind of fucked up battle was this?” asked Blair, confused. Spock looked up.

“Initially it was a diplomatic mission.”

“Your efforts seem to have failed,” commented Konei quietly from behind. They were the first words she had spoken since they had arrived. Spock rose his eyebrows, as he turned his head; his emotional expressions seemed to be just as limited as Konei’s.

“Illogically so,” he said in agreement. He spotted someone about to pass them, and he stopped him. “Riley.”

The young man in a gold uniform froze and turned around immediately.

“Yes sir?” he asked with a little sarcasm.

“Cancel anything you were about to act on. You are now accompanying Commander Blair to the Cargo Bay. There you two will go over the supplies lost. Ensign Konei and I will go over the head count and reports from the medical department.”

Officer Riley took one look at Command Blair and any intentions he had of protesting were gone. They were shot into space just like his heart. His mouth which had fallen open to complain now hung as he stared at the red-headed Orion. Blair hadn’t been ogled at in a long time, she turned red and cleared her throat to fill the silence that had cleared between the four of them.

“Okay then. Riley lead the way. Konei. Com Roads in about an hour with some kind of general idea,” Blair gave one last order as she stepped toward Riley to stand beside him.

“You’re asking me to report information based on insufficient facts in an insufficient, approximate amount of time,” summed up Konei, some distaste coming out through her voice.

“I know. All things you hate. But she’ll want to make sure you’re alive and stuff,” explained the red headed Commander. Konei nodded.

“Affirmative, Commander.”

_+_+_

“Ow! Bones!”

Kirk’s face was healing under replicating equipment as he laid flat on his back on a medical table. Beside him next to his feet, Roads sat as her hand was being wrapped with a bandage by a nurse.

“Shut up! It’s your own damn fault,” Bones griped as he moved the equipment over Kirk’s body. He was moving levels in order to match with Kirk’s readings.

“How is this my fault-”

“Shut up, Captain,” snapped Roads. The lovely nurse with blonde, almost white hair was speedily repairing Road’s wrist. Apparently the force of the blow was enough to sprain her wrist, twisting it uncomfortably.

“I can’t believe you broke your wrist. That’s pretty epic,” commented Kirk. Roads scoffed.

“Yeah, that’s the last time I want to hit you,” replied Roads angrily. Quietly, she added, “I don’t want to make a habit of using force to assert my authority.”

The nurse was the only one who heard her but said nothing. She finished, examining her work one last time before departing. “Anything else, Doctor?”

“That’s it, Nurse Chapel. Tend to the other hundred patients,” ordered Bones. Chapel smirked, an expression Roads would never thought to see on the young woman‘s face. The nurse gave a knowing nod to the doctor who returned it with his eyes.

“Doctor McCoy,” someone called the doctor’s name, young, male and worried. Since the call of his name sounded like it needed his undivided attention, he headed toward it. Left alone, Kirk spoke up in the quiet between them.

“So,” he began. “You know Pike.”

Roads form became rigid, but she didn’t speak. He rolled his head to the side, gauging her reaction.

“It wasn’t hard to figure out. The man watches me like a hawk,” Kirk relayed to Roads. “He asked you to come bail me out.”

It was partly true, although it’s not what she signed up for. Roads was just asked to come, she didn’t think anything of it. She was just doing her job. She was just trying to meet Pike’s expectations of her. Nonetheless, none of this reached her lips because Kirk was all too ready to continue the conversation by himself.

“How do you know Pike? You must’ve been a student at the academy. Did you take his class? How come I’ve never seen you before?”

With all of his intrusive questions, Roads answer was as simple as a shrug and a mysterious smile as it crossed her lips. He couldn’t see it, but he knew the smug little curve was there. It came out through her voice. “Maybe you just weren’t looking for me before.”

Kirk studied the back of her head, wishing his hands could reach so far to turn her around. Unable to summon her face to read her emotions accurately, he nudged her with his foot.

“Hey.”

“I would appreciate it if you didn’t nudge me,” she replied with all the sternness of a high school librarian. Kirk couldn’t help the little impish thrill he got out of making her angry, so he nudged her again.

“What?” she snapped, turning around to glare at him.

“Did you study at the San Francisco Academy?” he asked.

“Yeeees!” she said sarcastically, her emotions overflowing her professional mask. “What are you on exactly?” she asked, getting up from the foot of his bed and walking over to the machinery hovering over him. “What exactly does he have you under? Did he hypo you with a shot of something illegal?”

“Bones is the best in the Fleet.”

“Yeah, that’s what every Captain says of their CMO,” corrected Roads, going over his stats as she dragged her finger over his PADD screen. “I think you’re clear. You’re skin charts say 88% healed.”

“That’s more than enough, help me get this crap off of me.”

Roads helped move the equipment off his topless form with his fingers wrapped around the metal edges. She moved out of the way just in time as he snapped up and pulled both legs over the side. He began yanking off all wires and remaining attachments.

“I need to change. Meet me on the bridge in ten minutes,” Kirk ordered, not bothering to put on his bloody, torn up garment from before. Roads bristled. She started slipping on her coat, giving him this condescending look.

“I appreciate that you think you can order me around like a member of your crew. And, it would be almost amusing if it wasn’t so insulting that you think my time is expendable. The time and energy of my crew is not superfluous, especially right before shore leave. We need to take care of this as quick and painlessly as possible. So yes, ” she reprimanded, each long arm going into the sleeve, pulling the zipper up over the academy turtleneck, “I’ll meet you at your bridge.”

_+_+_

Part 3

http://kiyda.livejournal.com/293837.html#cutid1