Battlestar Galactica x Star Trek XI fic: Rising Sign (pt. 2/8)
Title: Rising Sign
(2/7)
Characters/Pairings: Starbuck, Kirk, Bones, Spock. (Kirk)/Kara/McCoy.
Rating: R for language.
Spoilers for Trek XI and BSG up through "Maelstrom," lots of references to the entire series.
Huge, huge executive-producer-credit style thanks to flowrs4ophelia; I fear the term "beta reader" doesn't quite cut it for her level of contribution to this. (Yeah, yeah, I got your dashes...)
Summary: Loosely in response to this prompt at st_xi_kink. In short: "When Kara Thrace flies through the wormhole near the end of Season Three, she finds Earth-- but not the Earth that Galactica's been searching for. Instead she finds herself hailed by a ship calling itself the USS Enterprise."
Author's Note: There is a pretty big reference to TOS in this chapter...Hopefully it's not confusing to those who haven't seen it.
...Part One...
Once Kara was given her own room, a modest guest space close to the ship's kitchen, it usually only felt bothersome in its emptiness. The general rumor mill caught on from how often she was seen hanging around Kirk's cabin, even though a lot of the time she was there just to be surrounded by a place that seemed lived-in rather than lonely. The sex was a by-product of spending a lot of time with someone who was basically the only person in this bizarre universe she could currently call a friend, and it was already dwindling off in frequency almost as if Jim had a good reason to think it was a bad idea but would hate to put her through the awkwardness of bringing it up.
As for domestic romance, the crew had the wrong idea. Even though Kirk had never quite managed from the start to talk to Starbuck in a professionally inquisitive manner, like a captain should be talking to a passenger in an unexplained situation like this, their conversations were like something between roommates getting to know each other, just sometimes occurring in a lazy afterglow while tangled in Jim’s undersized comforter.
“Motorcycle accident,” Jim was explaining as Kara traced a fingernail over a scar above his shoulder blade. “I swerved to avoid something and basically fell on a mailbox, it’s not a very impressive story...”
She chuckled quietly. “They couldn’t fix you up?”
He shrugged. “I lived out in the country and I was pretty far from any hospital. I guess I didn’t think it looked that bad.”
“Huh. It’s weird to imagine you so...rural.”
He laughed at that for a second. “So what happened to you?...Come on, I’ve noticed it.”
She dismissed it with, “I got shot in the stomach.”
He sat up, wryly scrutinizing. “You’re a shitty liar, Thrace. It’s okay, I was just curious.”
She sighed, stiffened herself a little and said, “I was captured and...kind of experimented on. It’s a long story.”
“...God...It’s like a horror story every time you tell me this stuff.”
She was cringing just a little. “I keep forgetting it’s all ‘one god’ with you guys.”
“What?...Oh, that’s right.” Jim looked vaguely perplexed. “We’re not like that, you know, I can assure you there are some polytheists on board...”
“That’s not the point. Forget it.” Kara rubbed a hand over her still sleepy eyes, “And yeah, it kind of was a horror story, be glad you weren’t there. As for how safe it is here, I’ve got a good handful of opinions about how far your technology has gone, but hey, I’m just a guest, so...”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Jim asked, nearly laughing. “And don’t act like my job’s easy, you haven’t even been here a week.”
“Come on, it’s tame around here,” Kara teased.
“No, it’s not,” he was really laughing then, cockily, demonstrating his opinion by playfully smothering her back into the blankets, threading his fingers tightly around hers.
“Off,” she grumbled, and when he didn’t move, she snickered and quickly managed to roll him over onto his back with the help of a feisty knee to his stomach. He grunted as she wrestled his arms down.
“Hey-” he wriggled one arm free, but then she was just sitting up, poised comfortably with her thighs sitting above his, arms crossed.
“You’re pretty close with your crew, right?” she demanded. “You trust them?”
“Yeah, I think you could say that.”
“The one with the ears?”
“You know his name, Starbuck. And...yes, definitely him.”
“What would you do if he pulled out a phaser one day and tried to kill you?”
“I wouldn’t do anything, I would be dead,” he said with a crooked smart-ass expression. She dug a mean pinch into his ribs. “Seriously, what kind of question is that? It wouldn’t happen. Unless...”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Unless there was some kind of impostor. Or if something was wrong with him. And then, well, Bones would look at him, and then...probably after a few other things go wrong in the same day...we’d figure it out. And as for how I’d handle a mutiny, if my crew starts rebelling against me, I must be doing something seriously wrong.”
Kara just rolled her eyes. “You guys really aren’t used to not being able to fix things.”
“...Most of the time, maybe.” Then he added, “Except for this thing with you...but we’re on it. We’ll figure something out.”
Kara let out a sigh, biting her bottom lip. “You know-”
“Nuh-uh. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Even with how very smart you guys are,” she said with an exaggerated tone of delicacy, “I’m not stupid. The chances of finding some way to send me back just by studying your little readings on my lucky wormhole...”
“Are slim. But Spock’s a genius, and he’s working on it.”
“Spock said the chances were obsolete. He’s only doing this because you asked him to.” She shook her head down at Jim. “Or out of scientific interest. Whichever. Meanwhile, I can tell there are things you’re supposed to be doing that you’re holding off on doing.”
“Helping a passenger is a legitimate reason to hold off on mission work.”
“Yeah, maybe I’m sick of being a passenger. Hanging around here...eating your food and frakking you isn’t my idea of an occupation.”
Jim smiled dryly up at her, pulling her down and attempting to wrestle her back over, but at the last second she managed to pin him down again, playfully muttering, “Weakling!”
“As annoying but also...exciting it is that you could probably kick my ass...” Kara responded to that by shimmying lower against him and gripping his hips. “You should get off me before you make me late.”
She shrugged and threw herself onto her back next to him, and he slid out of bed.
Later when things were pretty idle, he showed her around the routines on the bridge. She had a lot to say about how stupid it was to design the ship so that the most crucial officers were always at a location that was so vulnerable to attacks; Spock had turned away from his post to cock an eyebrow, and Sulu just said, “Chekov’s been complaining about that for years.”
“...Captain.”
“Yeah?”
Spock was primly turning away from his station again. “There is an incoming vessel that appears to be Klingon.”
A slow second of instinct before Kirk said, “Hail them.”
“Sir, I don’t think I need to remind you of the message we received about the incidents of unprovoked attacks on well-equipped-” Uhura acknowledged that Kirk indeed didn’t, and added the fractured, “We should be sure that they-”
“Yes, I know. If we need-”
The first thing Kara registered in the next moment was a sudden pain in her gut when the banister on the elevated level dug into her, the ship rocking violently forward, chairs rolling away from stations, and Kirk slamming his hand on something nearby to balance himself.
“RED ALERT! SHIELDS!”
Kara’s eyes widened, scanning the bridge around her and feeling an instinctive jittering in her spine that she couldn’t place into any helpful motion; Kirk took a flicker of a moment to tell her, “Get somewhere safer.”
“Captain, we’re being hailed.”
“Viewscreen.”
And then there was some ugly guy panneling into translucence against the backdrop of stars through the front window, and Kirk was somehow being civil and ripping him a new one at the same time after it was suggested they hand over a bunch of crap Kara had never heard of. But she assumed it was pretty valuable, given his knee jerk of adamance, and remembered that the crew had confessed themselves unable to replicate her any new clothes because of a temporary energy shortage, one which they hadn’t considered a big problem at the time, but it was increasingly evident to her that perhaps the Enterprise had just been found with her pants down.
A mean blow to the shield shuddered them a little sideways, this one toppling Kirk straight back into Kara, and then somebody was confirming a fat load of critical damage to what was left of their shield protection. And the captain barked, “Evasive maneuvers” before shoving Kara back by the elbow.
“Chekov: torpedoes. Starbuck, you’re not supposed to be here.”
Her call sign made her snap into pure instinct, and she definitely heard him that time. She turned and ran out of the bridge.
Five minutes later shields were lagging into useless percentitudes that had Spock shaking his head instead of reading them out loud; Kirk stood on the top level with his jaw set tightly. “Hail them.”
“...Captain?” Sulu quickly reported, “Somebody just opened the landing bay...”
“What!?” Kirk snapped, then seemed to know what the answer was already; he yelled, "Report!" as Chekov stirred over his screen.
“I think it's her-But I lost it...”
“THERE!” Sulu was shouting, pointing so far across the distance on the screen as if the small vessel was a barely traceable insect of a shape. But Kirk didn’t need the buzzing red alarms and another rough knock to the ship to realize he really didn’t have time to deal with anything else.
“Uhura-”
And then as soon as Sulu picked it up he was practically roaring the interruption: “Captain, their engines are half gone.”
Kirk’s total shock, along with the stunned reactions around the bridge, only took over for a second before he commanded with a practically gleeful edge, “Take them out!”
It only took a couple torpedoes to make the other vessel incapacitated, and when a relieved sigh began to pass over the crew members, Kirk just took a stunned lean into the back of the captain’s chair before turning and loudly saying, "What do you think, Mr. Spock? Can we keep her?”
The slight peel of laughter was interrupted by Chekov’s look of seriousness as he turned around in his chair. “Sir, the smaller wessel’s readings indicate it is damaged, but I cannot get specific data...”
Jim’s face fell a bit just before Spock turned to quickly confirm, “I am still picking up life signs, but her heart rate indicates extensive loss of blood...”
After Jim sternly ordered Scotty to tractor-beam the Viper back and alerted McCoy, he managed to sigh after he and Uhura shared a look of astonishment, “If she got hit in that tiny thing, she is damn lucky to be alive.”
.
.
.
.
Hours later, the pilot drowsily came to in an enclosed sick bay bed, blinking and immediately groaning at the damage her senses could assess on her entire body. With her knowledge of the medical technology on board, it was easy to assume that before she’d been treated it was probably far worse. With some grim wonder over that, she demanded details from the nearest nurse who hadn’t yet even realized she was awake.
As soon as word reached a couple other people that she was revived, Jim was eagerly coming in to see her, smirking proudly.
“Hey,” he greeted. “You are one hell of a woman, you know that?”
She gave him a tired smile and he reached out to affectionately muss up her already sweat-stained locks. With a mischievous look, she said, "I bet you're dying to know who let me out of the garage..."
"I bet you'll never tell," he returned in knowing annoyance. McCoy came scowling up to both of them, nudging Kirk to the side.
“Congratulations, Miss Thrace,” the doctor grumbled, unkindly. “You have all but destroyed your right knee for the third time. I guarantee you if you were back home you’d never walk on it again, so be happy you’ve only got 36 hours of recovery time ahead of you. And how is your pain?”
Kara noted the familiar but also perplexed look that Kirk gave between her and Bones before she mumbled, “Manageable.”
“I’ll be right back.” The curtain rings whined after his exit and Jim was already laughing by then.
“What the hell is his frakking problem?” Kara demanded with a look of distaste.
Jim shrugged and said, “He's probably thinking you're gonna be about as much trouble as I am. If he gets back and hits you with a hypospray without asking first it probably means he likes you.”
She sighed and her head squirmed against the pillow a little; Kirk got up and pushed it more comfortably under her neck, and she quietly asked, “So how’s the damage?”
“To your leg?”
“No,” she replied.
He understood, and with a look at her lower body seemed to imply that it should be obvious. “You just barely swerved away from a blast that was big enough to take out a small vessel. It probably sent you in a tailspin...Her nose is completely gone, the body is slightly crushed in like a can, and we had to wrench some of it apart to get you out...”
She closed her eyes against the gloom setting into her, just muttering, “Yeah.”
Kirk squeezed her hand for a second, his voice unusally thinned with sympathy. “I’m sorry about your girl.”
“Oh, now,” she replied with a raising of an eyebrow. “Who says it’s a girl?”
Then McCoy swept back through the curtain, expressionless as he wielded pain medicine in one hand and a sedative in the other. Before Kara knew it she was pricked with something that made her mind go fuzzy, scowling over at an amused Kirk until the drug took her under.
.
.
.
.
Her eyes clicked open to find sick bay a lot darker than usual. This may have been a courtesy to her, as she was currently the only one in medical; the officers who’d suffered injuries had all been sent away by the end of the day the attack happened. A couple of them had caught her awake to come in and offer her a grateful handshake, and she reflected bitterly that that was the extent of any excitement that had happened while she’d been stuck here. Kirk hadn’t had time to chat, but he came in at one point to lend her his PADD, which she mostly found herself too woozy to concentrate on. Because of her isolation and boredom, she was left to her wandering thoughts, which simply couldn’t carry on long without creeping into morose reflection.
She lay silent in the dark of the room for a long time, her ears absorbing the noise of a musical hum from afar and latching onto it until it idly dropped off. Maybe twenty or thirty minutes after that, her curtain twitched, then opened. The lamp above her turned on to the dimmest possible level to reveal her hand rested over her mouth underneath a chasmic sadness in her eyes which only faded slowly upon McCoy beginning to go through the records hanging by her bed.
She finally mumbled, “What happened to Danny?”
“He’s not the night nurse anymore,” Bones replied absently, then cast her a direct look for just a second before adding, “He gets into trouble.”
A noise rose from Kara that might’ve been a scoff if she’d had the energy. Her look of desolation hadn’t wiped completely from her features, and he was making no pretense about whether he’d noticed.
McCoy sighed, tucking his notes underneath his arm. “Is there anything I can do besides pretend to buy that you just need another dose of painkillers?”
She looked directly at the ceiling, eventually answering, “Yeah, actually. You can talk to Kirk for me.”
"...Yeah?" Bones slowly took a seat in the chair next to her bed.
“You need to convince him that he can’t help me.” Kara shook her head slowly. “He can’t fix this. I’m stuck here...Accept that you all can’t explain this and move on.”
With a quiet grimace Bones replied, “He’s gonna hate it.”
“Yeah, he’s spoiled like that.”
Bones smiled quite heartily. “With what? Luck? That’s just Jim. He might consider himself lucky he can keep you around, though.”
Kara kind of cringed. After a moment she switched to asking, “What was that stupid song?”
He blinked, passively said, “Well, sorry, I thought you were out like a light. It’s, uh, ‘Moonshiner.’ Something my grandfather used to play on the harmonica. Very old folk tune, like that sailors used to sing, you know like-” He halfheartedly pantomimes a motion like somebody swinging a bottle back and forth in rhythmic mirth, but then stops dismissively. “Well, maybe you don’t know.”
“Yes, we had sailors,” she said with an eye roll and also a smile. “You make it sound sad, though.”
“Well, there’s more than one version. Here, I’m gonna check your leg...” He stood up and she knew the drill now, already lifting up to flex her knee in and out while he was at it with the tricorder. He didn’t miss the suppressed wincing when she first moved it. “Dammit, girl, you’re supposed to tell somebody if you’re in pain.”
As he fumbled to find the right hypospray, she sighed in mild annoyance.
“This looks good, though. You should be fine to go early tomorrow. Also, I’m giving you a protein supplement, since you’re still about as undernourished as you were when we found you.”
Shortly after he dosed her gently to the neck, two sets of footsteps came marching in. Bones widely opened the curtain to see Spock and Kirk, both apparently taking duty, and sighed. “I guess it’s a good thing I’m not in my pajamas?”
“We need you,” Kirk routinely informed. “Bridge just reported a vessel they identified as-what was it?”
Spock supplied, “A DY-100 class starship.”
“What?” Bones replied blankly.
“That means it’s early twenty-first century, at the latest,” Kirk explained. “Also, there are people on board...We’re getting no life signs except for heartbeats. No breathing, but they’re definitely alive.”
Before getting up Bones had to cast a look at Kara, who was looking between all three of them in drowsy befuddlement. He sarcastically mumbled, “Can’t wait to see this...” before stretching up to leave.
As they sifted out of medical bay, her tiredly quiet “Be careful, boys” was only heard by Kirk, who merely turned an affectionate smirk before he headed out.
.
.
.
.
“Where am I?”
“You’re in bed,” Bones growled slowly, "holding a knife, at your doctor’s throat.”
Hovering still over the man who had just been pretending to be asleep before snatching him by the collar and pressing one of the shiny brand new scalpels to his Adam’s apple, Bones felt considerably more angry than afraid. Cause what a shit way to buy the farm. And he wondered about Thrace, then worried about Thrace, and focused probably in vain on not bringing the man’s attention to the possibility that someone was sleeping in the enclosed bed next door.
“...Are we alone?”
Well God dammit. “No. But you clearly don’t know a quick way to kill a man, and I’ll be damned if she isn’t gonna make it out of here before I’m done bleeding on your shirt.”
The corners of the man’s mouth twitched slyly; then a violent pluck of light shot into the side of his head, and he thunked slack against the headboard.
Bones looked up, agape, and saw Kara standing between him and his office. Wielding his phaser.
Wide-eyed, he bent back down to feel for a pulse, then in a moment nearly shrieked, “What the HELL?!”
“What?” She shrugged, looking only a bit jolted. “I was looking for something to read and-”
“He’s dead!” Bones roared. “There are only four settings, how hard can it be?!”
Kara gestured with the phaser under a look of matching irritation. “He was about to cut your throat, Bones, I wasn’t gonna stop to read the owner’s manual!”
“Woah, okay, who was what?” Kirk had picked a good time to wander into medical, and now he stopped at the sight of Kara holding the phaser, eyes widening when he looked at the body lying next to McCoy.
“She just killed him,” Bones provided bluntly.
Kirk let out a sigh, followed by a scolding whine of just, “Starbuck...”
Then he turned to march off, presumably to record one of the more euphemizing captain’s logs of his career.
McCoy and Kara exchanged a long look while he took in a long breath, his hands rested at his waist. Finally he left it at the afterthought of "Y'know, only Jim calls me Bones."
She walked by on her way back to the bed, handing him the phaser with a dainty motion and looking a little chagrined. "Whatever you say, Doc."
...Part Three...
(2/7)
Characters/Pairings: Starbuck, Kirk, Bones, Spock. (Kirk)/Kara/McCoy.
Rating: R for language.
Spoilers for Trek XI and BSG up through "Maelstrom," lots of references to the entire series.
Huge, huge executive-producer-credit style thanks to flowrs4ophelia; I fear the term "beta reader" doesn't quite cut it for her level of contribution to this. (Yeah, yeah, I got your dashes...)
Summary: Loosely in response to this prompt at st_xi_kink. In short: "When Kara Thrace flies through the wormhole near the end of Season Three, she finds Earth-- but not the Earth that Galactica's been searching for. Instead she finds herself hailed by a ship calling itself the USS Enterprise."
Author's Note: There is a pretty big reference to TOS in this chapter...Hopefully it's not confusing to those who haven't seen it.
...Part One...
Once Kara was given her own room, a modest guest space close to the ship's kitchen, it usually only felt bothersome in its emptiness. The general rumor mill caught on from how often she was seen hanging around Kirk's cabin, even though a lot of the time she was there just to be surrounded by a place that seemed lived-in rather than lonely. The sex was a by-product of spending a lot of time with someone who was basically the only person in this bizarre universe she could currently call a friend, and it was already dwindling off in frequency almost as if Jim had a good reason to think it was a bad idea but would hate to put her through the awkwardness of bringing it up.
As for domestic romance, the crew had the wrong idea. Even though Kirk had never quite managed from the start to talk to Starbuck in a professionally inquisitive manner, like a captain should be talking to a passenger in an unexplained situation like this, their conversations were like something between roommates getting to know each other, just sometimes occurring in a lazy afterglow while tangled in Jim’s undersized comforter.
“Motorcycle accident,” Jim was explaining as Kara traced a fingernail over a scar above his shoulder blade. “I swerved to avoid something and basically fell on a mailbox, it’s not a very impressive story...”
She chuckled quietly. “They couldn’t fix you up?”
He shrugged. “I lived out in the country and I was pretty far from any hospital. I guess I didn’t think it looked that bad.”
“Huh. It’s weird to imagine you so...rural.”
He laughed at that for a second. “So what happened to you?...Come on, I’ve noticed it.”
She dismissed it with, “I got shot in the stomach.”
He sat up, wryly scrutinizing. “You’re a shitty liar, Thrace. It’s okay, I was just curious.”
She sighed, stiffened herself a little and said, “I was captured and...kind of experimented on. It’s a long story.”
“...God...It’s like a horror story every time you tell me this stuff.”
She was cringing just a little. “I keep forgetting it’s all ‘one god’ with you guys.”
“What?...Oh, that’s right.” Jim looked vaguely perplexed. “We’re not like that, you know, I can assure you there are some polytheists on board...”
“That’s not the point. Forget it.” Kara rubbed a hand over her still sleepy eyes, “And yeah, it kind of was a horror story, be glad you weren’t there. As for how safe it is here, I’ve got a good handful of opinions about how far your technology has gone, but hey, I’m just a guest, so...”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Jim asked, nearly laughing. “And don’t act like my job’s easy, you haven’t even been here a week.”
“Come on, it’s tame around here,” Kara teased.
“No, it’s not,” he was really laughing then, cockily, demonstrating his opinion by playfully smothering her back into the blankets, threading his fingers tightly around hers.
“Off,” she grumbled, and when he didn’t move, she snickered and quickly managed to roll him over onto his back with the help of a feisty knee to his stomach. He grunted as she wrestled his arms down.
“Hey-” he wriggled one arm free, but then she was just sitting up, poised comfortably with her thighs sitting above his, arms crossed.
“You’re pretty close with your crew, right?” she demanded. “You trust them?”
“Yeah, I think you could say that.”
“The one with the ears?”
“You know his name, Starbuck. And...yes, definitely him.”
“What would you do if he pulled out a phaser one day and tried to kill you?”
“I wouldn’t do anything, I would be dead,” he said with a crooked smart-ass expression. She dug a mean pinch into his ribs. “Seriously, what kind of question is that? It wouldn’t happen. Unless...”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Unless there was some kind of impostor. Or if something was wrong with him. And then, well, Bones would look at him, and then...probably after a few other things go wrong in the same day...we’d figure it out. And as for how I’d handle a mutiny, if my crew starts rebelling against me, I must be doing something seriously wrong.”
Kara just rolled her eyes. “You guys really aren’t used to not being able to fix things.”
“...Most of the time, maybe.” Then he added, “Except for this thing with you...but we’re on it. We’ll figure something out.”
Kara let out a sigh, biting her bottom lip. “You know-”
“Nuh-uh. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Even with how very smart you guys are,” she said with an exaggerated tone of delicacy, “I’m not stupid. The chances of finding some way to send me back just by studying your little readings on my lucky wormhole...”
“Are slim. But Spock’s a genius, and he’s working on it.”
“Spock said the chances were obsolete. He’s only doing this because you asked him to.” She shook her head down at Jim. “Or out of scientific interest. Whichever. Meanwhile, I can tell there are things you’re supposed to be doing that you’re holding off on doing.”
“Helping a passenger is a legitimate reason to hold off on mission work.”
“Yeah, maybe I’m sick of being a passenger. Hanging around here...eating your food and frakking you isn’t my idea of an occupation.”
Jim smiled dryly up at her, pulling her down and attempting to wrestle her back over, but at the last second she managed to pin him down again, playfully muttering, “Weakling!”
“As annoying but also...exciting it is that you could probably kick my ass...” Kara responded to that by shimmying lower against him and gripping his hips. “You should get off me before you make me late.”
She shrugged and threw herself onto her back next to him, and he slid out of bed.
Later when things were pretty idle, he showed her around the routines on the bridge. She had a lot to say about how stupid it was to design the ship so that the most crucial officers were always at a location that was so vulnerable to attacks; Spock had turned away from his post to cock an eyebrow, and Sulu just said, “Chekov’s been complaining about that for years.”
“...Captain.”
“Yeah?”
Spock was primly turning away from his station again. “There is an incoming vessel that appears to be Klingon.”
A slow second of instinct before Kirk said, “Hail them.”
“Sir, I don’t think I need to remind you of the message we received about the incidents of unprovoked attacks on well-equipped-” Uhura acknowledged that Kirk indeed didn’t, and added the fractured, “We should be sure that they-”
“Yes, I know. If we need-”
The first thing Kara registered in the next moment was a sudden pain in her gut when the banister on the elevated level dug into her, the ship rocking violently forward, chairs rolling away from stations, and Kirk slamming his hand on something nearby to balance himself.
“RED ALERT! SHIELDS!”
Kara’s eyes widened, scanning the bridge around her and feeling an instinctive jittering in her spine that she couldn’t place into any helpful motion; Kirk took a flicker of a moment to tell her, “Get somewhere safer.”
“Captain, we’re being hailed.”
“Viewscreen.”
And then there was some ugly guy panneling into translucence against the backdrop of stars through the front window, and Kirk was somehow being civil and ripping him a new one at the same time after it was suggested they hand over a bunch of crap Kara had never heard of. But she assumed it was pretty valuable, given his knee jerk of adamance, and remembered that the crew had confessed themselves unable to replicate her any new clothes because of a temporary energy shortage, one which they hadn’t considered a big problem at the time, but it was increasingly evident to her that perhaps the Enterprise had just been found with her pants down.
A mean blow to the shield shuddered them a little sideways, this one toppling Kirk straight back into Kara, and then somebody was confirming a fat load of critical damage to what was left of their shield protection. And the captain barked, “Evasive maneuvers” before shoving Kara back by the elbow.
“Chekov: torpedoes. Starbuck, you’re not supposed to be here.”
Her call sign made her snap into pure instinct, and she definitely heard him that time. She turned and ran out of the bridge.
Five minutes later shields were lagging into useless percentitudes that had Spock shaking his head instead of reading them out loud; Kirk stood on the top level with his jaw set tightly. “Hail them.”
“...Captain?” Sulu quickly reported, “Somebody just opened the landing bay...”
“What!?” Kirk snapped, then seemed to know what the answer was already; he yelled, "Report!" as Chekov stirred over his screen.
“I think it's her-But I lost it...”
“THERE!” Sulu was shouting, pointing so far across the distance on the screen as if the small vessel was a barely traceable insect of a shape. But Kirk didn’t need the buzzing red alarms and another rough knock to the ship to realize he really didn’t have time to deal with anything else.
“Uhura-”
And then as soon as Sulu picked it up he was practically roaring the interruption: “Captain, their engines are half gone.”
Kirk’s total shock, along with the stunned reactions around the bridge, only took over for a second before he commanded with a practically gleeful edge, “Take them out!”
It only took a couple torpedoes to make the other vessel incapacitated, and when a relieved sigh began to pass over the crew members, Kirk just took a stunned lean into the back of the captain’s chair before turning and loudly saying, "What do you think, Mr. Spock? Can we keep her?”
The slight peel of laughter was interrupted by Chekov’s look of seriousness as he turned around in his chair. “Sir, the smaller wessel’s readings indicate it is damaged, but I cannot get specific data...”
Jim’s face fell a bit just before Spock turned to quickly confirm, “I am still picking up life signs, but her heart rate indicates extensive loss of blood...”
After Jim sternly ordered Scotty to tractor-beam the Viper back and alerted McCoy, he managed to sigh after he and Uhura shared a look of astonishment, “If she got hit in that tiny thing, she is damn lucky to be alive.”
.
.
.
.
Hours later, the pilot drowsily came to in an enclosed sick bay bed, blinking and immediately groaning at the damage her senses could assess on her entire body. With her knowledge of the medical technology on board, it was easy to assume that before she’d been treated it was probably far worse. With some grim wonder over that, she demanded details from the nearest nurse who hadn’t yet even realized she was awake.
As soon as word reached a couple other people that she was revived, Jim was eagerly coming in to see her, smirking proudly.
“Hey,” he greeted. “You are one hell of a woman, you know that?”
She gave him a tired smile and he reached out to affectionately muss up her already sweat-stained locks. With a mischievous look, she said, "I bet you're dying to know who let me out of the garage..."
"I bet you'll never tell," he returned in knowing annoyance. McCoy came scowling up to both of them, nudging Kirk to the side.
“Congratulations, Miss Thrace,” the doctor grumbled, unkindly. “You have all but destroyed your right knee for the third time. I guarantee you if you were back home you’d never walk on it again, so be happy you’ve only got 36 hours of recovery time ahead of you. And how is your pain?”
Kara noted the familiar but also perplexed look that Kirk gave between her and Bones before she mumbled, “Manageable.”
“I’ll be right back.” The curtain rings whined after his exit and Jim was already laughing by then.
“What the hell is his frakking problem?” Kara demanded with a look of distaste.
Jim shrugged and said, “He's probably thinking you're gonna be about as much trouble as I am. If he gets back and hits you with a hypospray without asking first it probably means he likes you.”
She sighed and her head squirmed against the pillow a little; Kirk got up and pushed it more comfortably under her neck, and she quietly asked, “So how’s the damage?”
“To your leg?”
“No,” she replied.
He understood, and with a look at her lower body seemed to imply that it should be obvious. “You just barely swerved away from a blast that was big enough to take out a small vessel. It probably sent you in a tailspin...Her nose is completely gone, the body is slightly crushed in like a can, and we had to wrench some of it apart to get you out...”
She closed her eyes against the gloom setting into her, just muttering, “Yeah.”
Kirk squeezed her hand for a second, his voice unusally thinned with sympathy. “I’m sorry about your girl.”
“Oh, now,” she replied with a raising of an eyebrow. “Who says it’s a girl?”
Then McCoy swept back through the curtain, expressionless as he wielded pain medicine in one hand and a sedative in the other. Before Kara knew it she was pricked with something that made her mind go fuzzy, scowling over at an amused Kirk until the drug took her under.
.
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.
.
Her eyes clicked open to find sick bay a lot darker than usual. This may have been a courtesy to her, as she was currently the only one in medical; the officers who’d suffered injuries had all been sent away by the end of the day the attack happened. A couple of them had caught her awake to come in and offer her a grateful handshake, and she reflected bitterly that that was the extent of any excitement that had happened while she’d been stuck here. Kirk hadn’t had time to chat, but he came in at one point to lend her his PADD, which she mostly found herself too woozy to concentrate on. Because of her isolation and boredom, she was left to her wandering thoughts, which simply couldn’t carry on long without creeping into morose reflection.
She lay silent in the dark of the room for a long time, her ears absorbing the noise of a musical hum from afar and latching onto it until it idly dropped off. Maybe twenty or thirty minutes after that, her curtain twitched, then opened. The lamp above her turned on to the dimmest possible level to reveal her hand rested over her mouth underneath a chasmic sadness in her eyes which only faded slowly upon McCoy beginning to go through the records hanging by her bed.
She finally mumbled, “What happened to Danny?”
“He’s not the night nurse anymore,” Bones replied absently, then cast her a direct look for just a second before adding, “He gets into trouble.”
A noise rose from Kara that might’ve been a scoff if she’d had the energy. Her look of desolation hadn’t wiped completely from her features, and he was making no pretense about whether he’d noticed.
McCoy sighed, tucking his notes underneath his arm. “Is there anything I can do besides pretend to buy that you just need another dose of painkillers?”
She looked directly at the ceiling, eventually answering, “Yeah, actually. You can talk to Kirk for me.”
"...Yeah?" Bones slowly took a seat in the chair next to her bed.
“You need to convince him that he can’t help me.” Kara shook her head slowly. “He can’t fix this. I’m stuck here...Accept that you all can’t explain this and move on.”
With a quiet grimace Bones replied, “He’s gonna hate it.”
“Yeah, he’s spoiled like that.”
Bones smiled quite heartily. “With what? Luck? That’s just Jim. He might consider himself lucky he can keep you around, though.”
Kara kind of cringed. After a moment she switched to asking, “What was that stupid song?”
He blinked, passively said, “Well, sorry, I thought you were out like a light. It’s, uh, ‘Moonshiner.’ Something my grandfather used to play on the harmonica. Very old folk tune, like that sailors used to sing, you know like-” He halfheartedly pantomimes a motion like somebody swinging a bottle back and forth in rhythmic mirth, but then stops dismissively. “Well, maybe you don’t know.”
“Yes, we had sailors,” she said with an eye roll and also a smile. “You make it sound sad, though.”
“Well, there’s more than one version. Here, I’m gonna check your leg...” He stood up and she knew the drill now, already lifting up to flex her knee in and out while he was at it with the tricorder. He didn’t miss the suppressed wincing when she first moved it. “Dammit, girl, you’re supposed to tell somebody if you’re in pain.”
As he fumbled to find the right hypospray, she sighed in mild annoyance.
“This looks good, though. You should be fine to go early tomorrow. Also, I’m giving you a protein supplement, since you’re still about as undernourished as you were when we found you.”
Shortly after he dosed her gently to the neck, two sets of footsteps came marching in. Bones widely opened the curtain to see Spock and Kirk, both apparently taking duty, and sighed. “I guess it’s a good thing I’m not in my pajamas?”
“We need you,” Kirk routinely informed. “Bridge just reported a vessel they identified as-what was it?”
Spock supplied, “A DY-100 class starship.”
“What?” Bones replied blankly.
“That means it’s early twenty-first century, at the latest,” Kirk explained. “Also, there are people on board...We’re getting no life signs except for heartbeats. No breathing, but they’re definitely alive.”
Before getting up Bones had to cast a look at Kara, who was looking between all three of them in drowsy befuddlement. He sarcastically mumbled, “Can’t wait to see this...” before stretching up to leave.
As they sifted out of medical bay, her tiredly quiet “Be careful, boys” was only heard by Kirk, who merely turned an affectionate smirk before he headed out.
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“Where am I?”
“You’re in bed,” Bones growled slowly, "holding a knife, at your doctor’s throat.”
Hovering still over the man who had just been pretending to be asleep before snatching him by the collar and pressing one of the shiny brand new scalpels to his Adam’s apple, Bones felt considerably more angry than afraid. Cause what a shit way to buy the farm. And he wondered about Thrace, then worried about Thrace, and focused probably in vain on not bringing the man’s attention to the possibility that someone was sleeping in the enclosed bed next door.
“...Are we alone?”
Well God dammit. “No. But you clearly don’t know a quick way to kill a man, and I’ll be damned if she isn’t gonna make it out of here before I’m done bleeding on your shirt.”
The corners of the man’s mouth twitched slyly; then a violent pluck of light shot into the side of his head, and he thunked slack against the headboard.
Bones looked up, agape, and saw Kara standing between him and his office. Wielding his phaser.
Wide-eyed, he bent back down to feel for a pulse, then in a moment nearly shrieked, “What the HELL?!”
“What?” She shrugged, looking only a bit jolted. “I was looking for something to read and-”
“He’s dead!” Bones roared. “There are only four settings, how hard can it be?!”
Kara gestured with the phaser under a look of matching irritation. “He was about to cut your throat, Bones, I wasn’t gonna stop to read the owner’s manual!”
“Woah, okay, who was what?” Kirk had picked a good time to wander into medical, and now he stopped at the sight of Kara holding the phaser, eyes widening when he looked at the body lying next to McCoy.
“She just killed him,” Bones provided bluntly.
Kirk let out a sigh, followed by a scolding whine of just, “Starbuck...”
Then he turned to march off, presumably to record one of the more euphemizing captain’s logs of his career.
McCoy and Kara exchanged a long look while he took in a long breath, his hands rested at his waist. Finally he left it at the afterthought of "Y'know, only Jim calls me Bones."
She walked by on her way back to the bed, handing him the phaser with a dainty motion and looking a little chagrined. "Whatever you say, Doc."
...Part Three...