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1) Prompts are not exclusive. There is no limit on the number of people who may write about a prompt, and there is no need to claim prompts.
2) Post responses in the comments and include the lead character and your prompt in the subject line. If you choose a long prompt, you may use just the first few words.
3) Responses may be any length from a proper 100-word drabble to a multi-chapter epic. If the story is too long for comments, you may post it elsewhere and comment with the link.
4) There is no time limit for this challenge. I will return to index the responses in a week or so.
5) Please leave feedback, respond to feedback, and pimp this post around.
6) If your response is rated NC-17 or would require a content warning (for rape, graphic violence, etc.), you may post it in the comments here but you must include the relevant rating or warning in the subject line. (Mod, if you were going to decide something different, please let me know.)
Edited to add: Responses were indexed on 9/26/09. If you still want to write, go ahead! I will add new responses to the index in a week or so.
1. We are just too pretty for God to let us die.
Gaila by
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azephirin2. Do you know what the chain of command is here? It's the chain I go get and beat you with to show you who's in command.
3. It's a real burn, being right so often.
Jocelyn McCoy by
igrockspockUhura by
jncar (external link - 2400 words)4. [I] may have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.
Mandana by
rubynye5. Yessir, Captain Tight Pants.
6. The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
7. Gotta say, doctor, your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous.
8. Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
9. Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense.
Gaila by
igrockspock (external link - 2000 words)10. I can kill you with my brain.
11. Goin' on a year now and I ain't had nothin' twixt my nethers weren't run on batteries!
12. Sir? I'd like you to take the helm, please. I need this man to tear all my clothes off.
13. If you can't do somethin' smart...do somethin' right.
14. Have you ever been with a warrior woman?
15. If I'm gonna wear a dress, I want something with some slink.
16. Well, I guess death will solve the issue to everyone's satisfaction.
Amanda by
possibly_thrice17. You're talkin' loud enough for the both of us, ain't ya? I've met a dozen like you. Skipped off home early. Minor grift jobs here and there. Spent some time in the lockdown, but less than you claim. And you're what? A petty thief with delusions o' standing? Sad little king of a sad little hill.
Number One by
fisher_queen (external link)18. Now they see sky, and they remember what they are.
Winona by
rubynye19. [That makes us] big damn heroes.
20. Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back!
Amanda Rogers by
alara_r21. I'm gonna go to the special hell.
Christine Chapel by
fringedweller22. That's why I never kiss 'em on the mouth.
23. I swear… when it's appropriate.
Christine Chapel by
velvetmouse (external link - 876 words)24. Sometimes, something gets broke...can't be fixed.
25. The next time you decide to stab me in the back, have the guts to do it to my face.
Carol Marcus by
merisunshine3626. And I work. I… function like I'm a girl.
Christine Chapel by
izzyfics27. It took me years to cut this piece of territory out of other men's hands, to build this business up from nothing.
Romulan Commander from The Enterprise Incident by
tinmiss193928. There's nobody can help you.
Christine Chapel by
igrockspock (external link - 4800 words)29. So here is us, on the raggedy edge.
30. I aim to misbehave.
31. I am a leaf on the wind...watch how I soar.
32. She's tore up plenty, but she'll fly true.
Winona by
skipsGaila by
ashen_key33. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughtta fall down…tells ya she's hurtin' 'fore she keens…makes her a home.
34. I don't care what you believe. Just believe.
Joanna McCoy by
rockinhamburger35. Please, God, make me a stone.
Gaila by
(warnings: violence, attempted rape)Uhura by
dafnapAmanda by
snowlight 
September 21 2009, 00:01:22 UTC 2 years ago
32. She's tore up plenty, but she'll fly true. (Winona Kirk)
Winona knows there are sometimes when a ship isn't going to fly. When it's just going to sit there like a sitting duck and the crew better hope with all their might that another ship is going to be in the area to save their ass. Sometimes you're saved and sometimes you aren't. Winona is always saved, even when she doesn't think she should be.Her ship, her baby, the USS Lexington is beat up, her engines aren't functioning at their normal level and Winona knows they've seen many better days. But she's working, chugging along slowly to the closest ship or starbase after Winona and the rest of the engineering crew fixed her up the best they could. They'll get out of there soon enough, just like she did.
Hearing George die over her communicator tore her heart into little tiny pieces as she stared at their newborn son. It felt like a fight day after day just to deal with it all. By the end, she felt like her ship does now, beat up and wondering if she could fix herself. She still occasionally feels that way, but it's getting better after 25 years. She functions just fine, no random bouts of crying everywhere, nothing to show that she still misses George every day and still feels like someone beat her up on occasion.
She sighs and realizes that even when she or her ship is torn up plenty, they will always fly true.
September 21 2009, 02:33:44 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 32. She's tore up plenty, but she'll fly true. (Winona Kirk)
Fly on, Winona, fly on. *cheers*2 years ago
September 21 2009, 00:06:27 UTC 2 years ago
16. Well, I guess death will solve the issue to everyone's satisfaction.
The pain, at least, surprises her.She is being chaperoned on her way down by the collapsing earth, her acceleration so precisely matched that she might merely be suspended at the heart of an expanding cloud of shredded sandstone, except for the hot wind filling her throat. And it hurts. There's grit in her hair, gnawing her scalp, and grit between her spread, aching fingers, which she thinks she may have broken, scrabbling at the cliff's merciless face in that first precious second, and grit in her eyes. Amanda has not cried in decades; her body adapted reluctantly to the desert, but adapt it did.
In this fall, here, at the last, she weeps without really paying attention, viscous salt-thickened tears drying on her lower lids.
Blunt fingers of air and pressure and heat and speed peel her skirts off and her skin with them. Her nakedness, she sees, when she tucks her chin into her chest and casts her half-blind, half-drowned eyes along the length of her self, is the raw ripe red of a newborn. Which is, she thinks, unjust. She is not Vulcan's child, to be pulled back into its glowing womb, ending as she began. Her soft disintegrating flesh -- it was not made for this, this absorbing dust derived from alien bones, this agony of inverted birth.
It doesn't matter as much as it could.
She folds her arms close across her bare bleeding breasts and her legs against her flayed belly, holding in the ache enough to allow a measure of amusement at the position's fetal irony, one more parallel added to the list. To allow also a measure of relief, as she waits for terminal velocity, swollen, vital organs flattening inside her.
September 21 2009, 00:49:53 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 16. Well, I guess death will solve the issue to everyone's satisfaction.
This hurt almost too much to bear, probably because it's so beautifully written.2 years ago
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September 21 2009, 00:48:12 UTC 2 years ago Edited: September 21 2009, 00:51:52 UTC
3. It's a real burn, being right so often (Jocelyn McCoy)
He shouldn't have had so much whiskey at the party, no matter what a self-righteous old bitch her mother was. She'd been handling the woman stone cold sober for the last twenty-seven years; he could have survived one night.He should have come home earlier, never mind the idiot kid bleeding on the operating table. She and Jo -- alive, responsible, and uninjured -- shouldn't have to play second fiddle to some idiot fourteen-year-old who got drunk and stole a hoverbike. Night after night, she shouldn't be the one to cook dinner for a picky two-year-old, drag her into a bath, and read her a bedtime story all the while listening to how badly the girl wanted her daddy. How unfair that a toddler could make her feel so inadequate and unwanted when her father was so good at doing that all by himself.
And he should have listened to her, never mind that she'd had a bit too much to drink herself. He should have looked past all the cruel words pouring out of her mouth to hear all the hurt behind them. He should have told her what had happened the night his father died because it wasn't fair to ask for her understanding without sharing his pain. She wasn't backing down because she was right dammit, and Leonard McCoy had never been wrong a day in his life, and it was time for him to face the truth. So she kept fighting, late at night when Jo was in bed, and she was exhausted and he'd had a drink -- or sometimes the other way around -- over things she swore would never matter to her: who washed the dishes last, whose turn to feed the dog, whether making the bed in the morning was really necessary, and what constituted spending too much money on Starbuck's.
She was right about it all; the judge admitted it even if Leonard wouldn't, and now she has the house, the car, and ninety-five percent of the money in their joint credit account to prove it. Jo doesn't ask for her father so much any more, and the house feels more like home now that she can call it hers instead of pretending to share it with someone who's never there. Still, sometimes when she settles into the big bed alone, she remembers the night he'd left for good -- he'd slammed the door so hard the walls had shaken, and Jo woke up screaming -- and she wonders if she should have been right a little less often.
September 21 2009, 01:08:14 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 3. It's a real burn, being right so often (Jocelyn McCoy)
I really love this picture of them; for one thing, it's a lot of the various fanon elements about the McCoys' marriage that I happen to like all together in one piece, and they're very cleanly and credibly sewn together, to boot.2 years ago
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September 21 2009, 02:18:26 UTC 2 years ago
35. Please, God, make me a stone (Gaila) (Violence, attempted rape)
She is twelve the first time she sees the courtyards of the palace; twelve and gawky, with a hint of grace. She is strong, flat-bellied and flat-chested, but she is twelve and she cannot stop the noise of admiration that escapes from her lips, just as she cannot stop the slap that follows it.
Discretion, Gaila. It is not seemly to be too easily-impressed. When you make a noise, do it for effect.
She nods, and agrees, and looks straight ahead, but she drinks it in anyway - the Courtyard of the Courtesans, where there are statues of the mistresses of kings, carved of marble and accented with gold and obsidian. The sun lights them in reds and ambers. Gaila studies them from the corner of her eye as she follows her teacher to the hall where she will be presented, and echoes their posture.
***
She is fifteen the second time she sees the courtyard; her face is painted, and the earrings and necklace she wears are like those adorning the statue of Konu, mistress to Tet the Second. Her teacher believes that like Konu, Gaila is destined for great things. Gaila has studied the life of Konu, and hopes her teacher is correct.
For the last time, her teacher takes her by the chin and studies the angles of her face, and then nods once, sharply, and abandons her beneath the statue of the woman whose jewelry she is wearing, with several other girls her own age. Throughout the courtyard, similar scenes are taking place - some of the girls are weeping quietly, but Gaila knows it is important to be in control.
Men come and talk with her, and she repeats what she has been told to say. This one is Gaila, she says. I am a dancer, and I can make kah'la beer, and I have been instructed in other arts, though I have not yet practiced them.. They nod and look at her appraisingly, and assess her physically. Her breasts are bruised by the time one of them nods twice and makes the appropriate signal. That night, she practices the arts.
***
Gaila is sixteen, and sixteen, and sixteen again when she crosses the courtyard to dance at the festivals of the palace; the man who chose her is a member of the nobility, and likes to show off his things. He likes to share them, too, and the days after, dancing is much more difficult.
It is an honourable thing, to be so prized, but the statue of Konu does not appear to be stiff, and has no bruises. From the courtyard, a few stars can be seen, unhindered by the glow of the lights. She keeps her head lowered properly, but she can see them through her lashes.
***
Gaila is seventeen when her man, still generous, lends her to a friend who has been bemoaning how lonely he will be while he is away from Orion. She is perplexed - it has never been for so long before, and she will miss her sisters in the women's quarters. The friend's craft is small, and she sits in the cockpit with him, in the only other chair, and listens attentively as he describes the many great beasts he has killed, and she makes noises of admiration. He seems to be pleased by this.
She is weary of his stories by the time they land. She offers him beer, and suggests that they retire, as she knows that he will want to give his all to the hunt tomorrow.
He grabs her.
She is on the ground before she knows it, and lets slip a protest - there is no art in this, will he not allow her to perform for him? He cuts her off with his fist - there is blood in her mouth, and something hard rolling around on her tongue, and dimly she realizes that it is one of her teeth. He is scrabbling at her clothes, confused by an unfamiliar fastening, and her hand finds a stone and clenches around it, and with all of her dancer's strength she drives it into his temple. He falls atop her and does not move again.
She runs for the ship. She cannot go back to Orion. The ship's voice speaks to her, and she asks it for somewhere far, and the helm complies. She is nearly out of air when the Vulcans find her, but she still nearly takes the captain's head off with the stone.
September 21 2009, 02:23:36 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 35. Please, God, make me a stone (Gaila) (Violence, attempted rape)
This is the story I wanted to write when I read the prompt, and oh, god, you do it so terribly well. Your Gaila, she's so good and exploring her in your words makes me so happy. It's ridiculous.2 years ago
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September 21 2009, 02:48:56 UTC 2 years ago
1. We are just too petty for God to let us die (Carol Marcus)
Saavik told her it was fast, that David didn't feel any pain at all.If that isn't the truth, then Carol doesn't want to know.
* * *
When she first discovered she was pregnant, she hurried out of the tiny apartment she and a roommate shared to hail a cab. The wet, chilly air of winter bit into her skin. Her hair was a loose and messy cloud of gold about her face, and it wasn't until the hovercab was speeding through the streets that she had realized that she still had her slippers on.
Of course, this baby meant that she would have to rescind her application for that 3-year exploratory mission she'd had her heart set on. But that was okay, Starfleet wasn't all about being in space, there were a number of opportunities in the labs that would keep her happy. And Jim loved being out there in the great beyond with all of his heart, but he had seemed happy here in San Francisco during his few weeks of shore leave—hadn't he?
That's what she told herself as she ran her credit chit through the little scanner in the hovercab and sprung lightly to the ground.
They were so happy together, so perfect. With Jim's infectious charisma and Carol's untethered genius—she could only imagine what their child would be like.
The turbolift up to Jim's apartment couldn't go fast enough. He had given her the security code to his place and she slipped in under cover of darkness. She shed her clothing piece by piece as she tiptoed back to his room, her toes sinking into the soft carpet underfoot. Her heart was full to bursting.
“Computer, lights. 100 percent.” Her skin was flushed with anticipation, her breasts rising and falling with each breath.
In the bed lay Jim, the long perfect curve of his back disappearing into the rumpled sheets below. Next to him was another figure, a cascade of thick dark hair tumbling over the pillow.
Jim sat up and blinked in confusion, his captain's instincts sharp even here. “Carol?”
She froze—even if she were dressed, she could not have felt more naked.
“Oh God. Jim, how could you--?”
She turned and ran from the room, ignoring the Jim's voice calling after her.
* * *
Carol watches the footage of the Genesis Planet's destruction over and over again. Maybe if she looks close enough, she will be able to see her little boy.
Her baby and her life's work gone, all in a moment.
And yet, she remains.
September 21 2009, 03:27:05 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 1. We are just too petty for God to let us die (Carol Marcus)
oh god I just realized I totally misread the prompt...*headdesk*. I am going to say it still applies though, cuz Carol and Kirk are pretty people. urgh.2 years ago
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September 21 2009, 03:34:16 UTC 2 years ago
26. And I work. I…function like I’m a girl (Christine Chapel)
Christine was competent. More than that, she was excellent at her job—never faltering in the face of whatever space threw her way. She was the one left to order around the scared medical staff after the first hit of the Narada, comforting those alive, and disposing of the many bodies of those who were not. Her heart broke when the few Vulcan survivors entered sickbay, but she never stopped working, never stopped moving and administering and breathing. She kept this leadership role during the entire mission, especially as her acting CMO (made so by the many deaths on the ship) was needed on the bridge making the decisions with the crazy man responsible with saving them all.In other words, she worked her ass off, but rarely needed the recognition. Only sometimes did she grit her teeth when Doctor McCoy once again demanded hyposprays and a dermal generator and now. If he would look up from his dark haze of depression and anger, he would realize that she had already organized his supplies, they were two inches from his hand, and that she was a person, a woman, and not part of the scenery.
He rarely saw anyone clearly unless they were a patient needing his direct care or if they were named Jim Kirk.
So it was understandable that three months into their five year mission, she snapped.
He came up behind her, startling her from her reverie. “Nurse Chapel! You should be finishing paperwork, not staring idly at the chronometer.” He waved his hand dismissively at her resulting glare, used to receiving them even if she never gave a voice to her emotion.
“Actually, my shift ended an hour ago when you were in your office.” She really needed to stop gritting her teeth—soon she would do enough damage that couldn’t be fixed even with modern medicine—but this man was so infuriating. “And I do work—as much as any person or girl in your sickbay.” She nodded arrogantly. “More, even.”
His mouth quirked up at that and she realized for once that the doctor was seeing her, the person, and not the nurse or the subordinate.
He touched his hand to hers, briefly and lightly. “I never doubted your competence, Christine.” He turned on his heel and headed back to his office, pausing in a long stride to turn around and say, “And get some sleep—you’ve earned it.”
Damn straight she had. And maybe he wasn’t as blind as she thought.
September 21 2009, 13:57:48 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 26. And I work. I…function like I’m a girl (Christine Chapel)
This is awesome. No-nonsense, confident, exasperated, AWESOME.2 years ago
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September 21 2009, 04:12:29 UTC 2 years ago
9. Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense. (Gaila - 1/3)
Admiral Halverstaff whacks the screen at the front of the room with her pointer. The sound resonates across the silent classroom."This is your Bible," she intones. "Read it, memorize it, know it, love it."
Automatically, their personal padds begin downloading the data on the central screen. Starfleet Regulations for Space and Planetary Personnel, it says in crisp block letters.
That night, she and Jim sit on her bed and try to make sense of it. They need all of five minutes to see that Starfleet's bible is broken.
"How could you ever expect to notify Starfleet Command if you're kidnapped by hostile forces?" she asks, tapping regulation 240.9 with a neatly filed fingernail.
Jim doesn't answer, just hands her a padd open to Hostile Ground Engagement Regulation 3409.2.
"All vehicles must be searched at ground security checkpoints. If a vehicle does not stop, first fire a warning shot into the air. If the vehicle stops, two security personnel shall step outside the security barrier to commence inspection," she reads.
"There's no way," Jim says. "People would die if they did this. Any real hostile would ignore the warning shot and plow straight into the barricade."
"Or shoot you while you were busy firing into the air," she adds.
"I'm taking this up in class tomorrow," he says, determination in his eyes.
They both fail the next morning's simulations: her because she tried to follow the rules and everyone died, him because he saved everyone by breaking them.
"Permission to speak freely, sir?" Jim asks.
"Denied," Admiral Halverstaff responds crisply, and both of them ignore it. The conversation ends with raised voices and red faces all around, and Gaila and Jim spend the night cleaning the faculty lav with toothbrushes. "Till I can see my face shining in the goddamn toilet bowl," the Admiral had commanded with none of her usual composure. The next night they repeat the task, Gaila because staying up all night cleaning the bathroom had made her fall asleep in class the next morning, and Jim because he'd sneaked in so she wouldn't have to do all herself.
September 21 2009, 04:13:18 UTC 2 years ago Edited: September 21 2009, 04:13:49 UTC
Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense. (Gaila - 2/3)
This is how the semester goes, worse for Jim than for her. She, along with the other 99% of their class, follow the rules, lose the simulations, and plan to do it differently if they get their own ships one day. Jim beats them with solutions the brass doesn't want to admit they'd never thought of before, and they deduct points for breaking petty rules because they can't admit their black sheep cadet knows better than they do.The night before finals, she sits up with his best friend, waiting for him to come home from running a hundred laps around the quad.
"He should stop doing this," she says.
"He needs it," McCoy answers. "Do the kid good to care about something once in awhile."
His eyes look a little hollow when he says that, and Gaila looks away to watch Jim's solitary figure sprint in the distance. He's running as fast as he can, just to prove a point, and she wonders how much longer he can hold out. Earlier, security had had to clear the quad; everyone had known the admiral was wrong, and six cadets had been running with him while twenty more cheered him on.
"I can't do it," Gaila says. She feels like a traitor, watching Jim run while she stands in the warmth of the dorm. She should be there with him; she'd known that he was right. But she is weak. However precarious Jim's position is here, he is not a former pirate. Her admission had been controversial enough -- Starfleet had no reason to believe she'd entered her profession unwillingly, especially since she'd been so good at it -- and she cannot afford to give them an excuse to expel her.
McCoy looks at her with compassion in his eyes.
"You don't see me signing up for command," he says, which is not precisely true since he takes tactical classes with Jim sometimes.
"The admiralty's a bunch of idiots," he continues. "You want out, I don't blame you."
"I'd rather not answer that," she says, and he's grateful that he doesn't push her.
Later that night, she sneaks into one of the engineering bays with a fake identicard she'd made at the beginning of the term.
"You can take the girl out of the pirate ship, but you can't take the pirate ship out of the girl," she thinks as the doors hiss open. There'd be hell to pay if anyone caught her here, but the admiralty's all asleep at two a.m. She powers up the simulator, tapping in the authorization codes she'd hacked two weeks before. She sets it for third year simulations, one after another. Warp core breach, emergency ejection, photon torpedo hit to main engineering bay. The first she solves easily -- it's just a matter of diverting a strong enough ionic pulse from the axillary generator to make a temporary static containment field. In the second sim, the ejection mechanism won't engage, but she'd seen that coming, and she manages to beam out the most dangerous bits of the warp core in time. The third one she has to run a few times before she figures out she'll have to crawl inside the warp core and shut it down herself. The gamma radiation kills her seconds after her fingers press the button, but the ship's safe. According to the computer, she figured it out faster than most of the third years, but she chastises herself anyway. If this had been a real battle on a real ship, they'd all be dead because she'd been too preoccupied with saving her own skin.
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September 21 2009, 05:00:05 UTC 2 years ago
34. I don't care what you believe. Just believe. (Joanna McCoy)
She's old enough, by now, to understand why he left. More importantly, she's old - and mature - enough to accept that it wasn't anyone's fault (though there was a time she worried and maybe even believed it was hers). She understands, most days, why it all happened the way it did. She no longer blames him, or her mother, for what transpired all those years ago.
However, for a long time she didn't really like him that much. Strangely, the emotion she recalls more vividly than the dislike is the guilt. She's not sure she'll ever forget how guilty she felt for disliking her own father. It wasn't an easy admission to make back then, or even now; in fact, for years she pretended everything was fine. She told her friends he was out exploring the universe. She tried to make it sound awesome and inspiring, neglecting to add that he'd completely missed her pre-teens in the process. She told them he was off discovering new worlds. She went out of her way to make it sound so damn heroic, never mentioning the fact that he'd missed her sixteenth birthday, and her high school graduation, entirely.
She feels, even now, the bizarre need to protect him from any animosity (and that includes animosity from herself). Her mother disliked him enough as it was; he didn't need anyone else thinking him a failure, or negligent, or uncaring. Mostly because they're untrue facets of his character.
She actually believes in her heart of hearts that he loves her. Now that she's older, perhaps wiser, she can see in his actions, and in his words, just how deeply he loves her, has always loved her. It may have taken some time to realize it, but she knows it's true. She loves him, too.
And just as importantly, she believes, really believes, in her grumpy, crotchety, loving old man.
September 21 2009, 05:16:50 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 34. I don't care what you believe. Just believe. (Joanna McCoy)
Aw! That's so sweet, and also probably very true.2 years ago
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September 21 2009, 05:18:48 UTC 2 years ago
35. Please, God, make me a stone. (1/2)
**She thinks he looks sad, and he might be sad, but maybe she's just projecting. He is breaking up with her so he should be sad, someone in this room should be capable of it and if it's not her...
She's projecting.
"I am sorry," He tells her. His voice, she thinks, carefully modulated so that he does not offend, as if it is a kindness. It's not what she wants and she's ashamed of what she wants these days, she wants too much, not the least of which something she can never ask of him and still be who he is. She'd hate him for it if it wasn't what she--
There's a word for what she feels for him, for how she fell for him, she's sure of it. There's a word for it but it's not coming to her now and for the first time in a long time, she finds herself at a loss, inarticulate. It has been awhile. Maybe this is what she deserves.
He's sorry and she might be too. "There is just too much to do," she provides for him, the least that she could do. He thanks her and there is no pretense of control in his voice, then, and Uhura hates that the destruction of his home planet, the genocide of his people and the death of his mother is all that it takes to get her to recognize the pitch.
**
They save one world, lose another, and Uhura tries not to find that funny, the cosmic math of it: untold billions died, and untold billions saved and how two impossible numbers might as well cancel each other out. Two weeks into this new reality, mundane already for having been lived, and Uhura is critically aware that this is exactly what the Starfleet counselors exist for, provided to alleviate, this realization: they are still here.
There's a dullness to it, and it almost makes it seem easy to manage if she thinks of it head on, if she acknowledges the existence of lack. It gives the pain a boundary she can feel out, isolate, and tuck away.
Rationally, she realizes, she must be in shock too, so maybe this is why she feels, mostly, numb. If she is numb because of the shock, the lack of guilt for finding her work interesting and valuable, and worthwhile, that can't be so bad, can it? Despite instigating first contact, despite seeking to teach and spread knowledge, Vulcans had prided themselves on decorum, on secrecy, and for the first time in centuries they finally had no choice but to share. Specialized dialects, conjugated verb forms, ancient religious texts outlining a history once forbidden from off-world access, from the Federation, from the pads of her fingers that certainly do not shake in anticipation.
Well. It isn't so difficult now (they are so beautiful, she could cry. for all the wrong reasons, she could cry.)
It's another coping mechanism, one of too many now allowed to take root. She's not anything special or particularly cruel: she is coping, she must be.
**
Uhura had told Spock, once, in the months ago that now feel like years, decades and centuries: she'd kill a man, a few men, in hand to hand combat and armed only with the sharpened edge of her PADD, to get her hands on the Kir'Shara. Spock had blinked at her for a few beats, and then:
"You are exaggerating."
"Perhaps." She smiles because she had found that Spock had the tendency to take jokes like these ("these": threats of physical violence, threats to the Starfleet honor code, etc.) quite seriously without visual clues of good humor. So she learns to smile wide, to tilt her head and keep her eyes steady so that he doesn't have to ask; so he doesn't have to feel two steps removed from a conversation because he doesn't have the tools to understand.
"Ah, I shall inform planetary defenses to stand down, then."
Uhura blinks and stares and then realizes--
"Huh." He has rendered her inarticulate. She doesn't know what to think about that.
He does not grin, but Uhura is on to him. There is no upturn of lip or crinkling of skin around his steady eyes, he is the same now as he was before but this time Uhura is so on to him. She is, she totally is, she swears.
**
September 21 2009, 05:25:54 UTC 2 years ago
35. Please, God, make me a stone. (2/2)
**It feels exactly what it is: a piece of carved stone, dusted with bits of itself sloughing off thanks to time; it is a constant across M-class worlds that even Vulcan stoicism must bend to. The dust coats the tips of her fingers, fine and gold-tinged, and might almost be pretty, if she had anyone around capable of commenting as such. As it is just her and a research contingent of quiet, focused Vulcans, she doesn't entertain the thought for long. She is careful and doesn't let it happen again, running the tricorder a strict six centimeters from the edge, and committing the priceless artifact of now triple-the-incalculable-worth to the Federation databanks.
When she is finished, she lets a Vulcan elder set it gently back into a case, back into stasis, and back out of sight.
Only later, back in the quarters provided for her and with her clothes in a pile on the floor outside of the refresher, does it hit fully. Digging out the granules of dirt from under her fingernails under the sonics and Uhura realizes, suddenly exactly what they are. Her knees clatter against the metal as she scrambles to the floor, trying to grab at the specks of dirty before they are pulled into the bowels of the ship, reduced into basic components, meaningless as they are interchangeable. It's too late, of course it's too late. This is a state-of-the-art ship and designed for efficiency in mind and of course she's too late.
The last of Vulcan, and she lets it get sucked down the drain. Her knees hurt from where they had hit hard, and her hip aches, and she is naked under the spray of pressurized air, and she shouldn't be cold, the tech doesn't allow for it but--
She shivers and she needs to cry and she can't and, dully, she thinks there's the word, the one she was looking for, right there on the tip of her tongue all that time, how had she been too stupid to see it: shock.
**
When she first gets the assignments, her first thought is to find Spock. They aren't supposed to be what they used to be to each other, but she goes to his quarters anyway. They are still friends, yes, but even that can't explain the gift he has given her. It shouldn't.
He says, simply, "You were well suited for the task."
Uhura doesn't know what to say.
**
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September 21 2009, 17:07:27 UTC 2 years ago
20. Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back! (Amanda Rogers)
They're proud people. Not one of them wants to admit to the child whose existence has been a mere eyeblink to them that they wish they were more like her.But they don't need to admit it. That's the thing about being continuous, being a unity with other independent hearts and minds. She already *knows* what they're thinking, because they're too broken by what they have had to learn to do to be able to hide it from her.
Five billion years in which hostility was never more violent than vicious arguments, back-stabbing, and arranging for people's deaths by majority votes taken while the proposed victims weren't there. Five billion years in which an attempt by one Q to kill another would always end in failure, and worse, injury to both parties, including the attacker. They have plenty of experience at hate, but none at killing one another.
When the enemy Q teleport into the rebels' camp, Amanda fires before any of them, on her side or the enemies' side, can bring themselves to do it. A small part of her is ashamed of how much easier it is for her to kill than it is for her comrades in battle. But, after all, the enemy are the ones who orchestrated her parents' deaths, the ones who tried to hate her to death for being a contaminant. And she'd never have planned a life in Starfleet if she'd been a pacifist. If someone is trying to kill her, she has no problem with the concept of returning the favor.
The enemy perceive her with horror. Her compatriots perceive her with a kind of awe. She's the smallest, weakest, least experienced Q in the Continuum... and she's also the deadliest in combat, because she doesn't *need* to hate in order to bring herself to kill. She doesn't need to be so overwhelmed by rage and pain that she's half-blinded by it before she can pull the trigger. She can be calm, and rational, and fully aware that these are sentient beings with lives and thoughts and hopes and dreams... and she can still pull the trigger, because she knows intellectually that their hopes and dreams have no room for her in them.
September 21 2009, 22:21:15 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 20. Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back! (Amanda Rogers)
<3sorry, higher brainfunctions not aviable right now. Also, this will be added to headcanon.
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September 22 2009, 00:30:14 UTC 2 years ago Edited: September 22 2009, 01:43:35 UTC
17. You're talkin' loud enough for the both of us, ain't ya...(Number One)
Title: Captain's MastFandom: Star Trek AOS
Characters: Number One, Jim Kirk, Pike in passing, Finnegan in passing.
Summary: Number One lays down the law.
http://fisher-queen.livejournal.com/277
September 22 2009, 02:39:15 UTC 2 years ago
1. We are just too pretty for God to let us die. (Gaila) — 1/2
More than once, she's been certain she was about to die, but this is the first time she's been sure she's already dead.As it happens, she's wrong again.
"Lieutenant Gaila?" says a female voice, and her eyes blink open. She's in a bed. There's a pretty blond woman standing beside it, smiling like she's happy to see Gaila.
This doesn't look like any kind of afterlife, not that Gaila ever really believed in one. This looks more like...a hospital.
"Am I...not dead?" Gaila asks after a moment. She tries to sit up, but it hurts, and the woman catches her before she crashes back down onto the mattress.
The woman lowers her gently back down and takes a seat in the chair next to the bed. "You're very much alive," she says, "but you were badly hurt. You've been in an induced coma for several weeks. You're going to be fine—you're just going to have to rebuild your strength after being in bed for so long."
Gaila carefully doesn't think about the irony of that statement.
"I don't understand how I'm not dead," she says. "And who are you?"
"I'm sorry; I'm Christine Chapel. I'm a nurse. We have a friend in common—Nyota Uhura."
"Nyota!" Gaila exclaims, and tries to sit up again; again, she fails, and collapses back into Christine Chapel's surprisingly strong grip. "Is she—"
"She's fine—not a scratch on her. May I let her know you're awake? She's been here every day—she'll be very relieved."
"Every day?"
"Her and Jim Kirk. I'm sure he'd like to to know, too, if it's alright with you."
"Oh," says Gaila. "Uh, yeah. That's— It's alright with me."
"I'll comm them right now," Christine Chapel says. "And Dr. McCoy is going to want to look at you." She smiles again, and maybe it's a trick of the light, but it's suddenly apparent how tired she looks—stress lines at the corners of her soft lips, dark circles underneath her striking green eyes. "It's good to see you again, Lieutenant Gaila," the nurse adds, and then leaves.
This is all well and good, but Gaila still has no idea how she got here.
September 22 2009, 02:39:35 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 1. We are just too pretty for God to let us die. (Gaila) — 2/2
Bones McCoy bolts in a few minutes later, haggard and red-eyed and basically looking no better off than Christine Chapel. Gaila knows his qualifications, but it's categorically impossible for her to think of him as Dr. McCoy: She's known him for too long as Jim's roommate, cranky and protective and far too attractive to have sex as seldom as he does. He's careful as he examines her, scanning her with the tricorder and checking her limbs, lungs, pulse, and skull with light fingers. When he seems to be satisfied, Gaila asks, "Can you tell me how I got here?""You don't remember?"
She shakes her head.
"You were in an escape pod," Bones says. "Somebody had sedated you—there was a hypospray jab in your neck and an anesthetic in your system."
"I don't— I think I would remember getting to an escape pod."
"I'm pretty sure you didn't get yourself there. Like I said, you were sedated, and—well, we can discuss the extent of your injuries later, but you had a broken pelvis and spinal fractures. It seems unlikely that you made it to the pod on your own."
"I didn't want to," Gaila whispers. "I was trying to fix the warp cores. To get us out of there, because I knew the whole crew wasn't going to make it to the shuttles. I remember— I remember feeling the ship get hit again, and that's it. I guess I must have fallen?"
"You fell, and from my best guess, about half the engineering rig came down on top of you. Somebody pulled you out and threw you in a pod—at least, that's the best I can figure."
"So are there others, from the Farragut..." Gaila trails off.
Bones sits down, and she finds herself reaching for his hand. He sighs. "Not many. Most of the shuttles either didn't make it to launch or else got shot to pieces as soon as they did. Because you stayed behind, you got out fairly late in the game, probably late enough that the Narada had bigger fish to fry by then."
It strikes her as a simple truth: "I shouldn't be alive," Gaila says.
"Hell," Bones says, closing his other hand around hers, "I wouldn't be alive—none of us would—if Jim Kirk hadn't managed to provoke a Vulcan into throwing a temper tantrum and firing his fool ass onto an ice planet. But I do believe"—and now he's looking at her seriously—"that you were not intended to escape a brothel and the damn Orion Syndicate just to get taken out by some unhinged time-traveling Romulan on a mining ship."
Suddenly, unexpectedly, uncontrollably, Gaila starts laughing. Bones stares at her, but doesn't drop her hand, and when she finally calms down, she says, "I'm sorry. It's just...of all the ways I ever expected to die, an unhinged time-traveling Romulan on a mining ship really wasn't it."
"And you were right," Bones tells her. "Kirk and Spock blew the unhinged Romulan to kingdom come, and here you are in San Francisco."
"We are just too pretty for the gods to let us die," Gaila says solemnly.
This time, Bones laughs, pleased and genuine. "Lord knows you are, Miss Gaila." His comm beeps, and he glances down at it. "That's Christine—Lieutenant Uhura's here. I'll send her on in and leave you alone—we can talk another time about what needs to happen over the next few weeks."
Probably a lot of therapy, physical and otherwise—Gaila decides to put it out of her mind for the moment. She squeezes Bones's hand before he gets up, and he gives her one of his rare smiles before leaving to let Nyota in.
Somehow, miraculously, they are alive.
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September 22 2009, 10:47:20 UTC 2 years ago Edited: September 22 2009, 11:35:27 UTC
32. She's tore up plenty, but she'll fly true. (Gaila)
The clans of the Orions share but three things: space, species, and business acumen. Everything else is up for negotiation. Sometimes, this negotiation is with words, sex, marriages, money. Sometimes, it is with violence, and it is the threat of this that has sent the Dar-Paresh to the edge of Triad Twenty-Four.Violence they sough, and violence they find confirmation of; when the first blast hits, Gaila careens into the far wall. For a moment she is stunned, sprawled out over the curved floor with Tarka's body pinning her legs. Then there is another blast, and another, and that third shakes the scout vessel hard enough that she can hear the joints groan. Gaila Iley, Gaila the Gully, the G’lly Rat, is fifteen, and a slave, but she is an engineer before all of that, and this is her fucking ship!
So Gaila shoves her former crewmate off her, pulls herself to her feet, grabs her toolset, and runs.
Two separate propulsion components, each with four different units, all spinning around the centre spine, and she’s reached the engine room at the very end of that spine. One system is down and out, maybe salvageable, maybe not, but the ship can run on just one, and that’s starting to falter.
Oh, no.
Not her ship.
Gaila starts to work, pulling wires here and connecting them there, all the fancy names her owner beat into her vanishing because she doesn’t even need to think about it. She knows what to do. She cuts off the power to the down system, diverting all to the propulsion system so they can warp-
Shit, not quite enough.
“ENGINES?” The sound crackles with the broken speakers.
“SHE’LL FLY!” She hollers back. “TURN THE SHIELDS OFF, WE NEED THE POWER.”
The pause seems to be a year, an eternity, before she hears, “DONE!” It takes two seconds, and her scream of “NOW!” barely seems out of her mouth before the engines whirl and roar and warp them away.
Gasping, Gaila slowly lets herself fall to the floor. Eyes still closed, she reaches out and strokes the wall next to her. “That’s my girl,” she murmurs to the ship, “that’s my girl.”
September 22 2009, 19:18:12 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 32. She's tore up plenty, but she'll fly true. (Gaila)
Fly, Gaila, fly! Oh, this made me cheer aloud.2 years ago
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September 23 2009, 01:04:15 UTC 2 years ago
27. It took me years to cut this piece of territory (Romulan Commander from The Enterprise Incident)
AN: The TOS episode The Enterprise Incident features a female Romulan Commander who is never named. In a novel I haven't read she was named Liviana Charvanek. I'm appropriating the name because...characters need names!For all their sanctimonious rhetoric, the Federation is just another superpower with too much time on its hands. They are at the mercy of their own vanities, just like everyone else.
It is true that the Neutral Zone has stood for one hundred years. The treaty holds both parties in line and it is often seen as inviolable. Liviana, however, has seen for herself the strength of inviolable contracts. She has seen the longevity of formal oaths. These carefully negotiated agreements only last as long as the status quo. When the balance of power changes, only whim and the weather dictate how long a contract will last. Whether between great empires or fragile hearts, promises are made to be broken. It is not her way and it is not supposed to be the way of her people, but it is true far more often than not.
Today, a Starfleet battleship skulks in her neutral zone and a Starfleet captain prowls in her ready room. Someone is playing a dangerous game and she doesn’t know the rules yet.
Liviana has read her history books, both of the Star Empire and the Federation. She has also risen through the ranks of the greatest military force in history. The Star Empire loves talent and connection, and does not suffer fools at all. The Romulan Guard has found that the solution to an aristocratic military is simple—high attrition rates. Those who do not survive to command cannot bring shame upon their families or fail the Empire.
Despite what history may say later, Liviana is not stupid. She needs more information. She needs to know the rules of this game or she will lose everything.
The human has finally stopped raving about equipment malfunctions, and looks at her with eyes that are full of madness or shrewdness. A Starfleet battleship skulks in her neutral zone and a Starfleet captain pouts in her ready room. This is not the start of a good day. This is the start of an intergalactic war.
September 23 2009, 01:34:26 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 27. It took me years to cut this piece of territory (Romulan Commander from The Enterprise Incid
I remember her! I adored her. I'm all nostalgic and delighted now.2 years ago
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September 23 2009, 08:43:55 UTC 2 years ago
35. Please, God, make me a stone. (Amanda Grayson)
Did Heaven Look OnThere were shades of lime and spring green in the little garden as a reminder of her girlhood home. After all the years spent away from Earth, however, she had grown accustomed to the crimson stones and black sands of Vulcan. This planet may be severe and reticent, but it was a part of Sarek and a part of Spock. Thus to not love it, as the lady liked to say, was quite illogical.
When Spock was very young, during the evenings the mother and the son often sat on the balcony, reading books to each other in the crimson sunset. She read him stories like The Snow Queen in Standard, even though he'd never seen natural snow. He read her The Songs of Seleya in Vulcan, showing her the pictures when she couldn't understand his words. Both of them repeated after the other softly, trying to pronounce the syllables right in their second tongue.
On that day, as she ran through the heart of the crumbling mountain into the apocalypse, Amanda Grayson prayed she wouldn't have to let go of her son's hand. She prayed, to whatever god what was willing to listen, for the strength of Mount Seleya's sacred stone.
September 24 2009, 02:57:33 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 35. Please, God, make me a stone. (Amanda Grayson)
Heartbreaking and really nicely written.2 years ago
September 23 2009, 14:17:35 UTC 2 years ago
3. It's a real burn, being right so often. (Uhura, Reboot)
Title: A Day in the Life of an Overachieving Communications OfficerCharacters/ships: Uhura, ensemble, established Spock/Uhura
Summary: Uhura being a BAMF on the job and with her crewmates. What it says in the title.
Word Count: about 2,400
September 25 2009, 00:19:08 UTC 2 years ago
23. I swear… when it's appropriate. - Christine Chapel (Reboot universe)
Title: Lady-likeAuthor:
Character: Christine Chapel, Reboot universe; mentions of past Chapel/Korby, implied Chapel/McCoy
Rating: PG-13 for, well, swearing
Prompt: 23. I swear… when it's appropriate.
Word Count: 876
Notes: Written for the Best Damn Drabble Fest in the 'verse at
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Lady-like
September 25 2009, 04:01:32 UTC 2 years ago Edited: September 25 2009, 04:06:37 UTC
28. There's no one can help you (Chapel)
Title: Nobody to Help Me (But Myself)Author: igrockspock
Summary: She's the only one who can do this mission. She's not a nurse anymore; she's a soldier.
Characters: Chapel, Kirk
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, attempted rape
So not a drabble. 4800 words right here.
September 26 2009, 21:26:23 UTC 2 years ago
4. [I] may have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one. (Mandana.)
Mandana dances a little as she stands before the console, swinging her shoulders and delighting in Oren's eyes. He has deep eyes, dark as space, and she has seen them burn with black rage at perceived injustices, at slights to his honor, but today she sees contentment welling in their depths as he watches her spin to display the progress of her expanding belly.She whirls again so her hair flares, to show him she no longer feels ill, and he looks pleased and apologetic both. "I'm sorry for the delay," he tells her, "but the Borg cache is an incredible find. I hope the High Command will remember us well when they secure it..." He pauses, unblinking, regarding her for a long moment as he does sometimes when they're in bed, and she feels warmed all over. "I promise I will be home long before the child is born."
"I know you will." Then she remembers the news, leaked from mouth to ear despite the official silence on the matter. "If they evacuate us off-world I'll leave a note here on my destination if I have any time to spare."
"Wherever you go in this galaxy," Oren says, eyes dark as the night he travels through, "I will find you, my wife." Mandana smiles, pressing her hands to her waist, above her heart. "But I must go now. Be well."
"And you also, husband. Give Ayel my greetings." Watching his face fade from the console screen, Mandana finds herself squinting at the reflections, and glances up; there's a harshness to the afternoon light, and when she looks to the window the sky is growing incredibly, impossibly bright.
September 27 2009, 09:43:13 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 4. [I] may have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one. (Mandana.)
YAY YOU WROTE ITand, oh so shockingly, it is brilliant. Unh, the last line.
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September 26 2009, 22:16:05 UTC 2 years ago
21: I'm gonna go to the special hell.
It was no secret that Pavel Chekov was an athlete. A lot of the Enterprise crew had been at the Academy stadium to watch him become the youngest cadet to ever win the marathon, and it was common knowledge that he trained daily, between six and seven am Ship Standard Time. He used running machine three in the gymnasium on deck ten, and would power through solidly for a full hour. When he was running it was as if the world fell away; whatever his focus was on, it wasn't the bare deck plating he faced or the hum and thrum of the busy gym around him.That was...useful.
It was getting harder and harder for Christine to ignore the length of his legs, the pertness of his backside. She would follow the trail of a drop of sweat as it trickled down from his hairline and dipped beneath the collar of the thin cotton shirt he wore. His body wasn't heavily muscled in the way she usually preferred, but there was something so elegant about his litheness that she wanted to reach out from her training station and just glide her hands over the sheen of perspiration on his skin.
She should be better than this. She was almost twice his age, after all. He was barely more than a child.
Definitely a place in the special hell, she concluded, watching him stretch lazily at the end of his run. But if it meant that she got to see him bend and twist in those scandalously tiny shorts each morning?
So worth it.
September 27 2009, 00:09:34 UTC 2 years ago
Re: 21: I'm gonna go to the special hell.
That was fun! Now I want a sequel where we find out if Chekov knows she's admiring him, and if either of them ever acts on it :)2 years ago
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September 27 2009, 15:54:05 UTC 2 years ago
1/2: 18. Now they see sky, and they remember what they are. (Winona.)
Winona can deal with her mother's anger. Children piss their parents off, it's what they do, and she and Mom had some epic battles during her adolescence. What she can't deal with, what makes her eyes ache with burgeoning tears, is watching her mother look at her with fearful eyes, watching her mother's hands twist together because she's too upset to realize she's wringing them. She bites her lip and turns away, looking out the window, looking at the sky.This time of year, this time of day, it's a bright arc of blue infinity, as if lit by all the stars, not just Sol. Winona woke up to that sky one morning and simply knew as it filled her eyes that the nightmares had lost their grip on her, that she had to get back up there.
Knowing for herself, of course, is one thing. Convincing her mother is another. Winona sets a hand on the smooth white paint of the windowsill and tries again. "Mom, I know you think I'm being impulsive, but I've thought about it, I really have. I can do more out there than I can here. Not just for me, for the boys."
Mom's "Don't lie to me, Winona," is sharp enough to open a thousand childhood scars. "And don't lie to yourself. Your children need their mother."
They need a mother who's not dying by centimeters under the sky, Winona thinks. If she says that her Mom will accuse her, rightly, of melodrama. George understood this... but George is gone, and she feels her mouth twist on that thought. Instead she says, "They need a home, which they have here, with you. And they need everything I can earn for them in Starfleet."
"If you want a job, Cochrane Tech would kill to have you--"
"No, Mom." Winona presses both hands on the windowsill, feeling the hard wood bite into her palms. "Not Cochrane Tech, not anything down here. Everything I'm trained to do is up in space." The life Winona worked for, the life she built with George, it's up in space. She can't have it back, she can't have him back, but she can have enough, she can have more than quarterly science journals and the conversation of people who wouldn't know the Main Sequence from Main Street.
"What about what you were born to do? What about staying alive for the people who need you?" Winona feels like her heart is opening under her mother's razored words, like she's bleeding into her chest cavity, but she can't fail to hear her mother bleeding just as badly, or worse. She can't not remember stepping off the shuttle holding Jim, the way her mother had wrapped them in shaking arms, kissed her hair and muttered, "You're alive, Winnie, you're alive," even though all she could do was cry, because George isn't.
George understood space, the way Winona's parents never did, the way no one around her does. She's being selfish, she knows. She also knows she has to be. "Ten years ago I told you I wouldn't die," Winona offers, meaning it as rueful agreement.
Her mother doesn't hear her. "Well, I imagine George told his mother that, too."
Winona winces, and the window rattles under her fist. "You don't get to say that to me. Not when I watched him die." Behind her, she can hear her mother's rough breathing. "To save everyone. To save Jim, and me."
September 27 2009, 15:55:17 UTC 2 years ago
2/2: 18. Now they see sky, and they remember what they are. (Winona.)
Four harsh breaths, and Mom says slowly, "I'm... I'm sorry, Winona. You're right. That was uncalled for."Winona takes two deep breaths of her own. "You're right, too." She turns to face her mother, who is wiping her eyes, and feels hot tears slip down her own cheeks. "I can't promise I'll come back. But I can tell you I'll do my damndest. I have two boys to come back to, and a husband who died to save me. And you, Mom. I have you."
Mom nods, and sobs, and tears are sinking into all the lines of her face, deepening them. Winona knows she's aged her mother, and she sobs too, and runs across the kitchen to her arms. "Winnie," Mom gasps into her hair. "Winnie, girl. You have to go?"
"I have to go," Winona chokes out into her mother's shoulder. "My commission, my career, my life. It's up there. I have to." It's what George wanted for me, she doesn't say, because she's trying not to hurt her mother more, but she knows he wanted her to have the sky.
So does her mother, nodding against her hair. "Okay, then. Okay." She pushes Winona back just far enough to look at, and Winona tries to smile with her mouth crumpling under her tears, watches her mother's mouth twist identically. "I don't like it." Winona nods. "But you need to, so, okay. And I don't have to tell you to make me proud. You do. You always do."
"Thank you, Mom," Winona replies, and her mother manages a teary smile before clutching her tightly one more time.
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October 6 2009, 04:42:00 UTC 2 years ago
24. Sometimes, something gets broke...can't be fixed. (Gaila & Uhura)
Title: SkinCharacters: Gaila, Uhura, mention of past Spock/Uhura
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~1400
http://snowlight.livejournal.com/69
October 20 2009, 17:44:50 UTC 2 years ago
#2: Chain of Command (Mirror!Winona)
"Goddamn it," Winona swore, impatiently wiping steam-soaked hair out of her face and glaring down the breach in the Yorktown's engine. "K'ly, get me a welding torch, now."The young Haruban stared at her, ears pinning to the sides of her head. "But Lieutenant, orders were to evacuate --"
Winona swung around, reaching for the front of K'ly's shirt. "Get me a torch." She didn't care about orders; the matter/anti-matter chambers for the drive were still sealed but only barely; the steam soaking their uniforms was just water, for now. And if they didn't get the engines back on-line, the hull breach one deck above them was going to be the least of their worries.
She pushed the felinoid away, and turned back to the engine before K'ly had dropped to all fours. The other two engineers left were ensigns, only a little older than Sam.
"It won't take much to seal this up." She pointed behind them. "I need a plate, and it's going to take both of you to lift."
They stared at her.
"Do you two know what the chain of command is? Go! Or I'll find one and beat you with it!" Goddamn, her boys followed orders better than this; she had to take a step forward before the two ensigns moved.
The ship rocked under them, she swore again; but this time the hull didn't reverberate. A miss, then. Nearby explosions were bad enough, and then K'ly was back and pushing the laser torch into her hands. When K'ly saw the other two struggling with the heavy replacement plate she finally caught on to what Winona had in mind.
They were singed as well as soaked by the time the breach was welded shut, but it was enough to get the Yorktown moving again, and there was too much other work to do to bother pulling anyone's agonizer.
October 22 2009, 20:55:55 UTC 2 years ago
Re: #2: Chain of Command (Mirror!Winona)
I SO hoped someone would write this one, and I love what you did with it.2 years ago
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