Ship Olympics Event Three : Team Blonde Ambition

[fringedweller]

Title: A Woman For Combat
Creator(s): esme_green
Universe: WW2 AU for AOS characters
Word Count: 2611
Rating: PG
Summary: Ace cryptographer WAC Lieutenant Rand meets Captain Kirk during assignment to England during World War Two.
Disclaimer: Team Blonde Ambition don't own anything recognisable in this fic. Please don't sue us, we only have our shiny team comm!






Janice Rand's first impression of Captain Jim Kirk was hardly complimentary.

She had almost reached the door of the office he'd been assigned when she heard raised voices. Stopping short, she decided it would be best to wait discreetly until the captain had finished his business.

"...stay off the damn thing!"

"You worry too much, Bones. It's doing fine."

"It's not fine, and if you don't stay off it you'll be in a wheelchair!"

"I'll die of boredom before it comes to that."

"Listen, kid, the only reason they haven't shipped you States-side is on my say so. I guaranteed them you'd make a full recovery."

"And you'll be proven right, just like you always are."

"Anyone else would've been invalided out within days of an injury like this."

"But they like me." The voice was clearly teasing.

"For reasons passing understanding, Pike thinks you're a genius tactician, despite the fact you nearly kill yourself every time you go out."

"Sweating me in, Bones? I didn't know you cared."

The man called Bones grunted. "Stay the hell put in that chair. Push Pike's paper for him at that desk and don't move, for any reason. I'll be back at 1900 to get you to bed."

"What if I need coffee?"

"Make your new adjutant get it for you."

Janice sighed, but straightened her shoulders. Time to make an entrance.

"Right, they've given me some whiz kid cryptographer, Lieutenant Rand..."

No better time than this, Janice thought, stepping into the room and standing at attention. "Lieutenant Rand reporting for duty, sir."

The two men's jaws dropped. The dark-haired one, who was standing over the desk, glanced down at the paperwork.

"That's WAC Lieutenant Rand, Captain," he said with barely concealed amusement.

Janice was used to this reaction by now and concealed her annoyance automatically.

"You're kidding," said the blond man in the chair.

Hardly complimentary.

Bones recovered first. "Lieutenant, I'm Doctor McCoy. The captain is injured and under my personal care. You'll need to do all his fetching and carrying for him. Do not to allow him out of that chair until I return at 1900."

"Doctor," Jim said sharply.

"Just making sure my orders are clear."

"I outrank you."

"Technically, you don't." McCoy leaned over and murmured in his ear. "And now I'm going to leave you to try taking your foot out of your own mouth."

"I could do that if I wasn't in this cast," Jim murmured back.

Bones barely rolled his eyes but straightened. "Captain. Lieutenant." With a nod to the pretty young blonde, he left the room.

The girl-Lieutenant Rand, he told himself-was still standing at attention.

"At ease, Lieutenant," he said, shifting a bit to try and get comfortable in the damn army-issue office chair. "So you're a cryptographer, are you?"

"Yes, Captain. Stationed with the 6669th assigned to the Fifth Army."

Jim felt his eyebrows raised. "North Africa?"

"Yes, sir."

If this was one of Eisenhower's WACs, it was unlikely Jim could do better. The General was demanding at the best of times, and wouldn't keep anyone around, female or not, unless they were competent.

"How long have you been in England?"

Her eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. "Fourteen hours, thirty-three minutes, sir."

So she had a sense of humour.

"Any other skills?" he asked.

"I started as a clerk-typist with General Clark, so I have experience plotting troop movements, tracking delivery of supplies, and monitoring combat actions."

"And, presumably, you can type."

"Yes, sir."

His eyes fell to the magazine he'd been reading. "Like this?" He held it up for her to see.




Her expression didn't change, but her eyes sparkled with amusement. "Exactly like that, sir."

"Okay." Jim allowed himself a small smile. "Let's see what you can do."

Captain Kirk swiftly made up for his initial less-than-complimentary response. General Pike had him planning small tactical operations to infiltrate enemy lines and his desk was fairly buried in intelligence reports and maps and communiques. Kirk put her to work immediately, tasking her with the same responsibilities any male adjutant would expect.

Janice was so engrossed that it seemed like the first day flew by. As they bent over a map of Belgium, discussing a series of communications regarding the resistance movement there, she fairly jumped when she heard a drawl from the doorway.

"That's enough for one night, Jim."

Captain Kirk looked up and frowned. "We're nearly done."

There was no way on earth they were nearly done, and Janice was sure her expression reflected that, because Doctor McCoy looked her up and down and said, "No you're not. But you're going anyway."

"Bones-"

"Out." McCoy was already rounding the desk. "Leave now and I won't have the lieutenant tell me how often you tried to put weight on that leg today."

Kirk allowed himself to be hauled out of the chair. "You're a mean man, Bones."

Janice grinned. "He was very good, Doctor."

"That's my girl," Kirk said, leaning onto the crutches Doctor McCoy had supplied. "Be back here first thing tomorrow, Lieutenant. We've barely made a start."

She stood at attention. "Yes, Captain."

"I knew you weren't done." Doctor McCoy's voice trailed down the hall, still chiding, as they left.

Janice looked around the bare-bones office and considered what they'd need to make it into a functioning tactical centre, made a shopping list, and then went to scavenge it all from wherever she could find it.

Her reward was the look on Captain Kirk's face the next morning when he saw behind his desk the cushioned leather chair and footstool she'd, er, repurposed from the officer's mess.

"Lieutenant, remind me to give you a raise," he said, lowering himself into the chair and letting Doctor McCoy fuss as he elevated the captain's leg with the footstool.

"Yes, Captain." She smiled, handed him the reports they'd been working through the previous night, and got down to work.

As the weeks passed, Janice met the strangest mishmash of assorted military personnel, all of whom dropped by Kirk's office with increasing regularity.

There was the acting Company Commander, Spock, a tall, dark, silent man who had been Captain Kirk's XO until Kirk's injury.

There was Sulu, a man of Asian origin, who'd served as a lieutenant from one of Kirk's platoons and frequently came by just to joke around with the captain for a few minutes.

By far the most boisterous visitor was Scott, from the Royal Engineers, who had, perhaps appropriately, the thickest Scottish accent Janice had ever heard.

The visitor who raised Janice's eyebrows was Chekov, who looked about fourteen and was definitely, definitely Russian. Between his age and his accent, the fact he wore the insignia of a US Army First Lieutenant seemed deeply suspicious, but once she got used to his way of speaking, she realized he was some kind of boy genius.

And then there was one of the other WACs on base, Lieutenant Uhura, a communications specialist who seemed to come by almost daily to drop off reports Kirk had requested.

Finally, of course, there was Doctor McCoy, who seemed to hover even more once the captain had graduated from crutches to a cane.

Janice took all this in stride, but still had a pretty good idea that she was missing something. It was hard to miss when she'd enter the room and suddenly everyone would stop talking.

Kirk always recovered first, and Janice never asked because of course there were things she wasn't cleared to know, but about two months into her posting the surreptitious conversations seemed to increase in frequency. Sometimes even Doctor McCoy would be there, arguing with Spock and Captain Kirk in hushed tones.

Always, though, when she came into the room, the conversation ceased.




Given the sheer volume of intelligence briefings and encrypted communiques she'd seen since she started this assignment, Janice was naturally curious, but did her best to put it out of her mind.

It was 1600 and Janice balanced a plate of sandwiches and two mugs, wheedled specially from the mess, as she hurried back down the hall. For some reason, dropping Captain Kirk's name meant food and hot coffee whenever she asked.

She slowed as she neared the door, hearing raised voices.

"I've been waiting for this day my whole life..."

Kirk's response was muffled.

"This day of reckoning is-"

The voice was cut off with a thump, as though the speaker had been punched emphatically in the gut.

More angry cries, and the sound of fighting.

A gun skittered across the floor and out into the hall.

Later, Janice would be told that the whole incident took maybe fifteen seconds. To her, it was like an eternity.

Dropping the food, she scooped up the gun, caught a glimpse of two unfamiliar figures and Captain Kirk from the doorway.

One of the figures had followed the sound of the gun sliding across the cement and suddenly loomed in front of her, a big meaty hand closing over her wrist, crushing hard-

Janice squeezed the trigger and shoved, and he collapsed. Striding into the office, she saw Kirk using his cane but definitely favouring his injured side.

The other figure spared a quick glance her way. Janice didn't hesitate.

Lifting her arm, she took aim, just as she'd been trained to, and fired again. The man dropped like a stone.

It took her a moment to remember to let the gun fall to her side again.

"Good work, Lieutenant," came Kirk's voice.

Giving herself a mental shake, she forced herself to face him. "Who were they, sir?"

"POWs. They've been in detention for over a month now. Guess they managed to escape."

"They didn't sound German," she said, realizing even as she did how ridiculous she was being.

"Australian by birth, but not by inclination," Kirk said.

She nodded.

And then other people were in the room, and someone had tactfully relieved her of the gun, and everyone seemed to be slapping her on the back, and Scotty was swearing he'd put a helmet on her and take her up to the front, and she nodded and agreed until the Head Nurse turned up and bustled her back to the womens' barracks, wrapped her in a blanket, and made her a hot pot of tea.

"I'm fine, Nurse Chapel," Janice said, once she realized the blonde nurse wasn't about to leave.

"No, you're not," Nurse Chapel said. She tilted her head and studied Janice for a few moments. "But you want to be alone. I'll let you have your way tonight, but not tomorrow. Understand?"

"Yes, nurse."

Chapel squeezed her shoulders and left.

Jim Kirk's instincts were almost never wrong. He leaned against his cane and tried to act as though he weren't spying on the women's barracks.

Half an hour after Bones' nurse had left, Janice emerged and headed back towards their office. He waited another ten minutes, then followed.

When he reached the office door, he paused, taking in the sight of her as she concentrated on the map in front of her.




"Working, Lieutenant?"

She started at the sound of his voice, but looked up. "I wanted to finish some things up, Captain."

"I was just going for a walk," he said deliberately. "Let me offer you some company."

She studied him with that serious gaze of hers, then nodded.

They left the base at a strolling pace and headed up a winding English country path.

After ten minutes of silence, he said what he had come to say. "First time?"

They walked a while longer into the falling night before she said, "Yes."

Jim let the silence settle again before he said, "It's always like this, your first time."

"How do you handle it?" Her voice was strained, and tugged at Jim in ways he knew would do no good right now.

"With the boys out in the field, I usually get them drunk, get them l-er, find them some companionship." He could tell she noted his hasty correction by the way the corner of her mouth quirked.

"Distraction," she said.

"Yes," he agreed.

"Does that work?"

They'd climbed to the top of a small, rolling hill, and Jim sat himself down under a tree, so that he could lean against the trunk.

She followed suit, but stayed too far away for them to accidentally brush shoulders.

"No," he admitted.

She nodded, and it seemed like defeat.

"Janice," he said, and she looked over, probably at the shock of hearing her given name. He nodded upwards. "Look at the stars."

She obeyed.

"You know what you're seeing right there? A window to the universe."




"I guess it is," she replied.

"It stretches out into infinity, in front of your eyes."

After a moment, she nodded.

"What we're fighting for, Janice, is something bigger than you or me. So much bigger. You'll need to make your own peace with what you've done, and you'll do that in your own way." He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. "But look up at the stars and remember--the reason you joined up, the reason why you did what you did today--they're part of something much bigger than you."

She blinked hard, but nodded again. "Yes, Captain."

He let his hand fall.

After another minute, she said, "I'd like to be alone, if that's all right."

Jim nodded and climbed to his feet. "Understood, Lieutenant."

He made his way noisily down the hill, but waited out of sight at the bottom, standing guard for another two hours until she finally came down and went home.

When Jim Kirk left, it was without warning. She'd been dismissed at 1900, but when she reported for work the next morning, he was gone.

Off base, whereabouts classified.

Having worked with him for months, she had a fair idea where he might be, not that the knowledge helped her any.

She was reassigned as a cryptographic code clerk and began working closely with Lieutenant Uhura. It was interesting work, though receiving reports lacked thrill when you didn't have context or details and hadn't had a hand in planning the mission.

Still, though, she worried.

And then Jim Kirk returned as he'd left...without warning.

Janice was heading to her barracks after a twelve hour shift in the communications office when she heard her name shouted across the grounds.

Halting, she stared at him as he bounded over, somehow hale and hearty and happy. "Janice!" he said again.

Belatedly she stood at attention. "Captain."

"Aw, don't be like that, Janice" he said. "We're not on duty; I'm not your CO anymore..."

"How was France?" she interrupted, because she'd been dying to know.

"Not bad." He grinned. "You guessed."

She snorted. "It wasn't that much of a mystery."

"Come to dinner with me and I'll tell you everything."

Her jaw dropped. "Captain-"

"Janice," he said warningly.

"Jim," she relented.

"That's better." He took her arm and hooked it through his. "We should definitely visit France once they're back on their feet. It's a beautiful place."

He looked over at her and grinned, and looked like nothing more than a carefree boy.

Janice Rand looked him up and down, and made her decision.

His grin got wider.

"Bet you've been bored without me," he said as they started walking again.

"Well, I haven't had to shoot anyone to save your ass," she admitted, faintly amazed that she was able to tease him that way.

"We are definitely going to tell that story to our grandkids," he said.

"Grandk-mmph"

Jim had tugged her sharply behind one of the storage sheds and was kissing her hard, so she saved the rest of her questions for later.