Fic: Tectonic Shift (1/7) (PG-13, Star Trek XI)
Title: Tectonic Shift (1/7)
Pairing(s): Kirk and Uhura friendship, some Uhura/Spock, implied prime!verse Kirk/Spock (Pre-K/S/U, if you squint.)
Rating: PG-13, for naughty words.
Disclaimer: Belongs to Paramount, I believe. Not to me. If it were mine, I couldn't abuse it like this, and therefore I'm glad it isn't.
Warnings: Naughty words, TOS canon used in twisty ways for the Reboot!verse, manipulation of a certain not quite canon Enterprise fact, and a lot of talking.
Notes: I started out trying to write a K/S/U fic, but couldn't seem to get around the fact that Uhura seemed to have a lot of issues with Kirk, almost to the point of disliking him personally, so this happened instead. I'm still not sure how, but it has eaten up a good six weeks or so of my summer. It is complete in 7 parts, betaed, and will be posted as I edit and find the time to post, probably every one or two days. My thanks go to harmony_bites for answering all of my canon questions, holding my hand when the hour struck neurotic o'clock, and for pointing out that flaw in the ending that she made me rewrite. And of course, thank you to renitaleandra for providing me with access to her mad beta skillz. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone.
Summary: Kirk and Uhura finally hash out their differences. Too bad it takes a natural disaster to get them to do it.
One
Jim was lying in a pile of rubble.
And not just lying on a pile of rubble. Lying on a pile of rubble, covered in dust, with ringing in his ears and the taste of plaster and alien champagne in his mouth. He also hurt everywhere, in a sore, achy way that left him wondering what had happened and where the hell he was and why he was lying on the pile of rubble.
Something above him creaked.
Jim peered into the shadows and could just make out what appeared to be more rubble, hanging over him ominously. It looked as if someone had simply dropped a few support beams over the room then heaped plaster and huge slabs of concrete on top and called it done. It didn't look terribly safe, and seriously, what the hell was going on?
"Oh, thank god. You're awake."
A shaky and anxious Uhura was suddenly in his field of vision, hands hovering over him like a pair of swallows that couldn't decide where to land. "Are you okay? You've been out for a while."
She matched the ceiling and the rubble and the dust. The sleeve of her dress uniform was torn at the shoulder, and she had made an attempt to brush herself off, but white dust was still coating her hair and skin and clothes, and had caked in a cut on her forehead. Jim took a moment to appreciate the fact that even looking like the victim of a natural disaster she was still smokin' hot.
He gave her a cocky grin. "I'm always okay. You?"
She nodded. "I'm fine. You broke my fall."
"Ah. Good." Jim thought about that for a second. "What fall?"
Uhura's lips pressed together, and her brows dipped inward, and will wonders never cease, she was actually worried about him. "You don't remember the earthquake?"
Earthquake? That was kind of a big thing to miss. Which meant he probably hit his head, which meant another concussion. Great. Wasn't Bones just going to be ecstatic about that? "Uh, apparently not."
"Well, do you know what planet we're on?"
Jim really had to think about it. He remembered mountains and a purple sky and traveling by shuttle craft because the mountain valley where the capitol city was located played havoc with communications and transporter function.
"Elagabalus VI? To renew the Federation treaty."
She nodded. "We were attending the welcoming reception-"
"And the floor collapsed beneath us."
It was suddenly all there: the ground shaking and the screaming and being too far away from the entrance to get out before the ceiling came down and the ground opened up to swallow him whole. Someone had been nearby, and he'd grabbed them out of instinct or panic or both, and as they fell, he had twisted his body so that when they landed, he would be on the bottom. And hey, look, it had been Uhura he'd grabbed, and that was great, because she was one of his favorite people whether she liked him or not, but his mind strayed to his crew, to Bones and Sulu and the ensign from sciences whose name was nigh unpronounceable for everyone but Spock. He wondered if they had made it out, and if so, did they make it out without injury? If not, was there someone to patch them up or send them back to the Enterprise--
"I think you have a concussion." Uhura's voice dragged him out of his spiraling thoughts.
He blinked at her. He couldn't do much for the others in their landing party, alive, injured, or otherwise, but he had at least one crew member left alive, and he was going to make sure she stayed that way.
"Probably." He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers at her, turning on his most charming grin. "Help me up?"
That got an eye roll. Uhura got to her feet and took his hand, but when she heaved, and he shifted to pull himself up, his vision went white in the sudden agony that flared in his left shoulder. It drowned out all other sensation; all that seemed exist was agony and more agony with a dollop of excruciating agony on top. But that kind of pain wasn't really anything new. He gritted teeth against it and rode it out as always, reminding himself that it was only pain and pain would go away if he waited long enough, and eventually it did, rolling back like the ocean retreating from the shore.
When his brain began registering other input again, Jim found Uhura hovering over him, looking very, very worried. It was actually kind of heartwarming. "What is it? Where are you hurt?"
"I'm okay, mostly, but I think my shoulder is dislocated." He tried to move his shoulder, to lift it a little off the floor to see if he was right, only to be rewarded with another ripple of blinding agony for his effort. He took a couple of deep breaths as he rode it out again, and found himself wishing Bones was there to jab him with a hypospray full of some kind of coma inducing pain killer before he shoved his arm back into the socket. But he wasn't here, which meant Jim was going to have to get his arm back into the socket on his own.
Fun. An earthquake and self-applied medical care. Nothing like a natural disaster to spice up your first diplomatic mission.
"Okay," he said when the pain had retreated enough. "Let's try that again."
"Is that a good idea?" Uhura had that concern face on again, and he could totally get used to that.
"Not a lot of choice right now." He glanced significantly at the tottering beams and slabs of concrete delicately balancing above them. "Go a little easier this time."
Her expression said she was still unsure, but she took his hand again without comment. She pulled more slowly this time. There was more of that white hot agony, but it didn't overwhelm. Even so, Jim couldn't keep back the cry of pain as she helped him into a sitting position.
"Did I hurt you?"
His head was throbbing in tandem with his shoulder now that he was sitting up, his stomach was rolling, and there definitely seemed to be a knot rising on the back of his head when he went feeling around. So, yeah, definitely a concussion.
"No," Jim said, looking her straight in the eye and lying for all he was worth. "I'm okay."
He managed to get his feet on his own, waving Uhura off when she moved into help. His head swam once he was up, and he stood there, cradling his arm to his chest, trying to convince his body that remaining upright really was nonnegotiable. Uhura's hands were hovering around him again, and his shoulder was screaming so loudly he couldn't think, but there was a wall over there, nice and solid and exactly what he needed. Before he let himself think about it too much, or let Uhura stop him for that matter, he stumbled through the rubble, braced his dislocated shoulder against the wall and pushed.
Uhura's cry of surprise and horror echoed his own roar of pain, but as soon as the shoulder was back in the socket, the pain rolled back to a respectful distance, and he was able to think again.
And Uhura, he discovered, was channeling Bones.
"What is wrong with you!" She had him by the good arm and was herding him towards a nearby bench. "There are less deranged and disgusting ways to do that, you know. Here. Sit."
She pushed him down onto the bench, and he slumped against the wall, breathing heavily. Uhura brushed at his clothes and hair, grumbling about how stupid he was, and she'd had first aid and knew how to reset a dislocated shoulder, and my God, was he just into pain or something because there were better ways to get a fix that didn't involve scaring the hell out of her. She sounded mad, but underneath the anger was worry, and he suddenly realized that she was fussing over him, Uhura was fussing over him, and he couldn't help but grin as he blocked her hand when she went for his hair again.
"Uhura, stop. I'm okay." She gave him a skeptical look, but stopped fussing. "Really. I've had worse. Like, there was this one time I was trying to pick up this hot xenolinguist when four meat head cadets decided to beat the shit out of me."
She smirked. "Maybe you should have stuck to farm animals."
"Maybe, but what can I say? I've always liked variety."
The precarious debris above them selected that moment to interrupt their banter, raining rubble and dust on their heads. It wasn't very much, but they flinched and ducked anyway, shielding their faces with their hands.
When it was done, Jim eyed the crisscross of support beams as he brushed debris out of his hair, wondering how long they would hold back the tons of rubble hanging over them. "Is it just us?"
Uhura followed his gaze. "Yes, but-"
"But what?"
She didn't reply, just stood there stock still, staring upwards silently, and suddenly every instinct Jim had was screaming that there was something wrong. Her expression was blank, her eyes unfocused and distant; the woman who had just been joking with him mere seconds ago was nowhere to be seen, replaced instead by, well, he didn't know what exactly, but she was doing a fine job of scaring the hell out of him.
"But what, Uhura?"
"There was screaming for a while, from above." She was whispering, which made her behavior that much more disturbing. "Just, screaming, and I couldn't do anything to help them. But they've stopped now. I haven't heard anything since."
That sounded completely terrifying. Maybe it was selfish of him, but he was glad he'd been out for that. He wasn't sure he wouldn't have done something stupid, on the off chance the screaming had belonged to Bones or Sulu or Ensign Unpronounceable Name. Not that he wouldn't have traded places with Uhura in an instant, just so she wouldn't have had to listen to it, because it had clearly terrified the hell out of her in ways falling through the floor hadn't.
Right. They needed to get out of this death trap as soon as humanly possible, because if he wasn't mistaken, Uhura was having a flashback, and it had nothing to do with the earthquake.
Jim pulled his communicator from his belt and flipped it open with a flick of his wrist, only to have the cover flip right off the hinges and clatter to the floor while the body made a pathetic high-pitched gurgling noise before it fell silent.
Fantastic. He had busted his communicator in the fall. Good thing Uhura had one, too.
Jim tossed the broken communicator into a nearby mound of debris. "Uhura, did you try to hail the ship?"
She didn't reply, just continued to stare up at the debris with that blank expression.
"Uhura?"
Still no response.
"Lieutenant?" he snapped in his best command voice, and her eyes tracked back to him, glassy and distant. "Did you try hailing the Enterprise?"
Her eyes drifted over his head to the wall. "The mountains are made of cavilite, remember?"
Jim sighed. Right. Cavilite ore. It would have been the bane of transporters and communicators everywhere, but it was so rare as to only exist in small deposits on Elagabalus VI. Of course, that was only fortunate if you weren't trapped on Elagabalus VI inside a mountain range riddled with the stuff. It had caused sporadic reception on their communicators above ground, and being underneath a few tons of rubble wasn't going to help any. And no communicators meant no transporter beams. So. Next question.
"Okay, then do you know where we happen to be?" He looked around the room. It was some sort of basement, with rough hewn stone walls that sparkled with black cavilite. What little light they were getting was coming from track lighting rimming the room, probably on an auxiliary system, since the wall sconces were dark. An information podium encircled by a scatter of colorful brochures stood on one wall, next to an entrance way that opened like a mouth on impenetrable darkness. Glossy, three dimensional posters papered the walls, showing the Elagabalans in strange dress, eating and working and doing other day to day things. "Because this doesn't seem to be a part of the parliament house."
"It's the Elegabalus VI Reenactment Museum." Animation was bleeding back into Uhura's face, and Jim tugged on her wrist, guiding her gently down onto the bench next to him. "Part of it lies under the city."
"Yeah?" he said, just to keep her talking, to make sure she came back from whatever nightmare place she'd been visiting.
"The original city was built inside the mountain range throughout a network of caves. It's usually open to the public four days a week for tours and reenactments, but a part of it is being renovated, so it has been closed the last two months." Jim raised an eyebrow at her rather specific knowledge of the museum. Uhura rolled her eyes and conjured out of nowhere one of the colorful, multi-page brochures scattered on the floor. Well, she seemed to be back to her old self, or getting there, anyway. "I read the brochure while you were out."
"Right." He gestured towards the gaping black hole in the wall. "So that?"
"Leads into the underground city. There were only four entrances. This is one." Uhura opened the brochure and studied it. "The other three are spaced out along the network at about two miles each."
"Right." Jim's eyes automatically went to the dome of debris over their heads. So at least two miles to the nearest exit. An hour's walk, more or less. Not fun, but doable, and certainly preferable to staying here and waiting for the rubble to bury them. "We should get going."
"I had a feeling you were going to say that." Uhura didn't look too excited.
"Well, this exit is blocked, and I don't trust all that rubble not to come crashing down on our heads." On cue, the debris groaned and shifted, raining down more dust and rubble. They ducked and shielded their faces. "See?"
"Yeah." She took a deep breath, brushed brusquely at her dress jacket. "Okay. Let's do it."
"Does that thing have a map?"
She nodded, and folded it out from the back of the brochure to demonstrate.
Jim clapped his hands together. "Great. Perfect. A map, a way out-" He glaced at the mouth of the cave. It was so dark that it was like looking into the black of space, but not nearly so inviting. Jim wasn't thrilled about walking a couple miles in that kind of dark. "But no light. See a light panel anywhere?"
Uhura didn't reply, just stood and walked into the darkness of the cave where she was suddenly and miraculously illuminated by watery yellow light. It seemed the same track lighting giving them light here also lined the floor of the cave, marking out a path into the darkness.
"Oh," Jim said. "That's convenient."
"That's also why I'm going to be in charge of the map." She glanced upwards nervously, and Jim wondered if that blank look was going to make a return. "We should get going before the ceiling collapses."
Jim scowled at her in mock indignation. "Hey, who's the captain here?"
Uhura didn't answer, just flashed her eyes at him in annoyance and started down the passage, hips swaying, long ponytail swinging.
"I could write you up for this!"
Her voice came echoing back at him. "Have at it, Captain. Now come on, before I have to dig you out of that rubble."
"Yes, ma'am," Jim muttered, amused, and got up to follow, just as the lady ordered.
On to Part Two
Pairing(s): Kirk and Uhura friendship, some Uhura/Spock, implied prime!verse Kirk/Spock (Pre-K/S/U, if you squint.)
Rating: PG-13, for naughty words.
Disclaimer: Belongs to Paramount, I believe. Not to me. If it were mine, I couldn't abuse it like this, and therefore I'm glad it isn't.
Warnings: Naughty words, TOS canon used in twisty ways for the Reboot!verse, manipulation of a certain not quite canon Enterprise fact, and a lot of talking.
Notes: I started out trying to write a K/S/U fic, but couldn't seem to get around the fact that Uhura seemed to have a lot of issues with Kirk, almost to the point of disliking him personally, so this happened instead. I'm still not sure how, but it has eaten up a good six weeks or so of my summer. It is complete in 7 parts, betaed, and will be posted as I edit and find the time to post, probably every one or two days. My thanks go to harmony_bites for answering all of my canon questions, holding my hand when the hour struck neurotic o'clock, and for pointing out that flaw in the ending that she made me rewrite. And of course, thank you to renitaleandra for providing me with access to her mad beta skillz. However, any mistakes are mine and mine alone.
Summary: Kirk and Uhura finally hash out their differences. Too bad it takes a natural disaster to get them to do it.
One
Jim was lying in a pile of rubble.
And not just lying on a pile of rubble. Lying on a pile of rubble, covered in dust, with ringing in his ears and the taste of plaster and alien champagne in his mouth. He also hurt everywhere, in a sore, achy way that left him wondering what had happened and where the hell he was and why he was lying on the pile of rubble.
Something above him creaked.
Jim peered into the shadows and could just make out what appeared to be more rubble, hanging over him ominously. It looked as if someone had simply dropped a few support beams over the room then heaped plaster and huge slabs of concrete on top and called it done. It didn't look terribly safe, and seriously, what the hell was going on?
"Oh, thank god. You're awake."
A shaky and anxious Uhura was suddenly in his field of vision, hands hovering over him like a pair of swallows that couldn't decide where to land. "Are you okay? You've been out for a while."
She matched the ceiling and the rubble and the dust. The sleeve of her dress uniform was torn at the shoulder, and she had made an attempt to brush herself off, but white dust was still coating her hair and skin and clothes, and had caked in a cut on her forehead. Jim took a moment to appreciate the fact that even looking like the victim of a natural disaster she was still smokin' hot.
He gave her a cocky grin. "I'm always okay. You?"
She nodded. "I'm fine. You broke my fall."
"Ah. Good." Jim thought about that for a second. "What fall?"
Uhura's lips pressed together, and her brows dipped inward, and will wonders never cease, she was actually worried about him. "You don't remember the earthquake?"
Earthquake? That was kind of a big thing to miss. Which meant he probably hit his head, which meant another concussion. Great. Wasn't Bones just going to be ecstatic about that? "Uh, apparently not."
"Well, do you know what planet we're on?"
Jim really had to think about it. He remembered mountains and a purple sky and traveling by shuttle craft because the mountain valley where the capitol city was located played havoc with communications and transporter function.
"Elagabalus VI? To renew the Federation treaty."
She nodded. "We were attending the welcoming reception-"
"And the floor collapsed beneath us."
It was suddenly all there: the ground shaking and the screaming and being too far away from the entrance to get out before the ceiling came down and the ground opened up to swallow him whole. Someone had been nearby, and he'd grabbed them out of instinct or panic or both, and as they fell, he had twisted his body so that when they landed, he would be on the bottom. And hey, look, it had been Uhura he'd grabbed, and that was great, because she was one of his favorite people whether she liked him or not, but his mind strayed to his crew, to Bones and Sulu and the ensign from sciences whose name was nigh unpronounceable for everyone but Spock. He wondered if they had made it out, and if so, did they make it out without injury? If not, was there someone to patch them up or send them back to the Enterprise--
"I think you have a concussion." Uhura's voice dragged him out of his spiraling thoughts.
He blinked at her. He couldn't do much for the others in their landing party, alive, injured, or otherwise, but he had at least one crew member left alive, and he was going to make sure she stayed that way.
"Probably." He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers at her, turning on his most charming grin. "Help me up?"
That got an eye roll. Uhura got to her feet and took his hand, but when she heaved, and he shifted to pull himself up, his vision went white in the sudden agony that flared in his left shoulder. It drowned out all other sensation; all that seemed exist was agony and more agony with a dollop of excruciating agony on top. But that kind of pain wasn't really anything new. He gritted teeth against it and rode it out as always, reminding himself that it was only pain and pain would go away if he waited long enough, and eventually it did, rolling back like the ocean retreating from the shore.
When his brain began registering other input again, Jim found Uhura hovering over him, looking very, very worried. It was actually kind of heartwarming. "What is it? Where are you hurt?"
"I'm okay, mostly, but I think my shoulder is dislocated." He tried to move his shoulder, to lift it a little off the floor to see if he was right, only to be rewarded with another ripple of blinding agony for his effort. He took a couple of deep breaths as he rode it out again, and found himself wishing Bones was there to jab him with a hypospray full of some kind of coma inducing pain killer before he shoved his arm back into the socket. But he wasn't here, which meant Jim was going to have to get his arm back into the socket on his own.
Fun. An earthquake and self-applied medical care. Nothing like a natural disaster to spice up your first diplomatic mission.
"Okay," he said when the pain had retreated enough. "Let's try that again."
"Is that a good idea?" Uhura had that concern face on again, and he could totally get used to that.
"Not a lot of choice right now." He glanced significantly at the tottering beams and slabs of concrete delicately balancing above them. "Go a little easier this time."
Her expression said she was still unsure, but she took his hand again without comment. She pulled more slowly this time. There was more of that white hot agony, but it didn't overwhelm. Even so, Jim couldn't keep back the cry of pain as she helped him into a sitting position.
"Did I hurt you?"
His head was throbbing in tandem with his shoulder now that he was sitting up, his stomach was rolling, and there definitely seemed to be a knot rising on the back of his head when he went feeling around. So, yeah, definitely a concussion.
"No," Jim said, looking her straight in the eye and lying for all he was worth. "I'm okay."
He managed to get his feet on his own, waving Uhura off when she moved into help. His head swam once he was up, and he stood there, cradling his arm to his chest, trying to convince his body that remaining upright really was nonnegotiable. Uhura's hands were hovering around him again, and his shoulder was screaming so loudly he couldn't think, but there was a wall over there, nice and solid and exactly what he needed. Before he let himself think about it too much, or let Uhura stop him for that matter, he stumbled through the rubble, braced his dislocated shoulder against the wall and pushed.
Uhura's cry of surprise and horror echoed his own roar of pain, but as soon as the shoulder was back in the socket, the pain rolled back to a respectful distance, and he was able to think again.
And Uhura, he discovered, was channeling Bones.
"What is wrong with you!" She had him by the good arm and was herding him towards a nearby bench. "There are less deranged and disgusting ways to do that, you know. Here. Sit."
She pushed him down onto the bench, and he slumped against the wall, breathing heavily. Uhura brushed at his clothes and hair, grumbling about how stupid he was, and she'd had first aid and knew how to reset a dislocated shoulder, and my God, was he just into pain or something because there were better ways to get a fix that didn't involve scaring the hell out of her. She sounded mad, but underneath the anger was worry, and he suddenly realized that she was fussing over him, Uhura was fussing over him, and he couldn't help but grin as he blocked her hand when she went for his hair again.
"Uhura, stop. I'm okay." She gave him a skeptical look, but stopped fussing. "Really. I've had worse. Like, there was this one time I was trying to pick up this hot xenolinguist when four meat head cadets decided to beat the shit out of me."
She smirked. "Maybe you should have stuck to farm animals."
"Maybe, but what can I say? I've always liked variety."
The precarious debris above them selected that moment to interrupt their banter, raining rubble and dust on their heads. It wasn't very much, but they flinched and ducked anyway, shielding their faces with their hands.
When it was done, Jim eyed the crisscross of support beams as he brushed debris out of his hair, wondering how long they would hold back the tons of rubble hanging over them. "Is it just us?"
Uhura followed his gaze. "Yes, but-"
"But what?"
She didn't reply, just stood there stock still, staring upwards silently, and suddenly every instinct Jim had was screaming that there was something wrong. Her expression was blank, her eyes unfocused and distant; the woman who had just been joking with him mere seconds ago was nowhere to be seen, replaced instead by, well, he didn't know what exactly, but she was doing a fine job of scaring the hell out of him.
"But what, Uhura?"
"There was screaming for a while, from above." She was whispering, which made her behavior that much more disturbing. "Just, screaming, and I couldn't do anything to help them. But they've stopped now. I haven't heard anything since."
That sounded completely terrifying. Maybe it was selfish of him, but he was glad he'd been out for that. He wasn't sure he wouldn't have done something stupid, on the off chance the screaming had belonged to Bones or Sulu or Ensign Unpronounceable Name. Not that he wouldn't have traded places with Uhura in an instant, just so she wouldn't have had to listen to it, because it had clearly terrified the hell out of her in ways falling through the floor hadn't.
Right. They needed to get out of this death trap as soon as humanly possible, because if he wasn't mistaken, Uhura was having a flashback, and it had nothing to do with the earthquake.
Jim pulled his communicator from his belt and flipped it open with a flick of his wrist, only to have the cover flip right off the hinges and clatter to the floor while the body made a pathetic high-pitched gurgling noise before it fell silent.
Fantastic. He had busted his communicator in the fall. Good thing Uhura had one, too.
Jim tossed the broken communicator into a nearby mound of debris. "Uhura, did you try to hail the ship?"
She didn't reply, just continued to stare up at the debris with that blank expression.
"Uhura?"
Still no response.
"Lieutenant?" he snapped in his best command voice, and her eyes tracked back to him, glassy and distant. "Did you try hailing the Enterprise?"
Her eyes drifted over his head to the wall. "The mountains are made of cavilite, remember?"
Jim sighed. Right. Cavilite ore. It would have been the bane of transporters and communicators everywhere, but it was so rare as to only exist in small deposits on Elagabalus VI. Of course, that was only fortunate if you weren't trapped on Elagabalus VI inside a mountain range riddled with the stuff. It had caused sporadic reception on their communicators above ground, and being underneath a few tons of rubble wasn't going to help any. And no communicators meant no transporter beams. So. Next question.
"Okay, then do you know where we happen to be?" He looked around the room. It was some sort of basement, with rough hewn stone walls that sparkled with black cavilite. What little light they were getting was coming from track lighting rimming the room, probably on an auxiliary system, since the wall sconces were dark. An information podium encircled by a scatter of colorful brochures stood on one wall, next to an entrance way that opened like a mouth on impenetrable darkness. Glossy, three dimensional posters papered the walls, showing the Elagabalans in strange dress, eating and working and doing other day to day things. "Because this doesn't seem to be a part of the parliament house."
"It's the Elegabalus VI Reenactment Museum." Animation was bleeding back into Uhura's face, and Jim tugged on her wrist, guiding her gently down onto the bench next to him. "Part of it lies under the city."
"Yeah?" he said, just to keep her talking, to make sure she came back from whatever nightmare place she'd been visiting.
"The original city was built inside the mountain range throughout a network of caves. It's usually open to the public four days a week for tours and reenactments, but a part of it is being renovated, so it has been closed the last two months." Jim raised an eyebrow at her rather specific knowledge of the museum. Uhura rolled her eyes and conjured out of nowhere one of the colorful, multi-page brochures scattered on the floor. Well, she seemed to be back to her old self, or getting there, anyway. "I read the brochure while you were out."
"Right." He gestured towards the gaping black hole in the wall. "So that?"
"Leads into the underground city. There were only four entrances. This is one." Uhura opened the brochure and studied it. "The other three are spaced out along the network at about two miles each."
"Right." Jim's eyes automatically went to the dome of debris over their heads. So at least two miles to the nearest exit. An hour's walk, more or less. Not fun, but doable, and certainly preferable to staying here and waiting for the rubble to bury them. "We should get going."
"I had a feeling you were going to say that." Uhura didn't look too excited.
"Well, this exit is blocked, and I don't trust all that rubble not to come crashing down on our heads." On cue, the debris groaned and shifted, raining down more dust and rubble. They ducked and shielded their faces. "See?"
"Yeah." She took a deep breath, brushed brusquely at her dress jacket. "Okay. Let's do it."
"Does that thing have a map?"
She nodded, and folded it out from the back of the brochure to demonstrate.
Jim clapped his hands together. "Great. Perfect. A map, a way out-" He glaced at the mouth of the cave. It was so dark that it was like looking into the black of space, but not nearly so inviting. Jim wasn't thrilled about walking a couple miles in that kind of dark. "But no light. See a light panel anywhere?"
Uhura didn't reply, just stood and walked into the darkness of the cave where she was suddenly and miraculously illuminated by watery yellow light. It seemed the same track lighting giving them light here also lined the floor of the cave, marking out a path into the darkness.
"Oh," Jim said. "That's convenient."
"That's also why I'm going to be in charge of the map." She glanced upwards nervously, and Jim wondered if that blank look was going to make a return. "We should get going before the ceiling collapses."
Jim scowled at her in mock indignation. "Hey, who's the captain here?"
Uhura didn't answer, just flashed her eyes at him in annoyance and started down the passage, hips swaying, long ponytail swinging.
"I could write you up for this!"
Her voice came echoing back at him. "Have at it, Captain. Now come on, before I have to dig you out of that rubble."
"Yes, ma'am," Jim muttered, amused, and got up to follow, just as the lady ordered.
On to Part Two