Fic: Two Summers, 2-10
The Enterprise has stopped by on a planet that has been hit with a series of earthquakes. The plate tectonics are arranged such that one major earthquake-which scientists had been predicting would happen for a long time, but never knew actual dates and times-set off a chain reaction of volcanoes, more earthquakes, and tsunamis. It was as bad a natural disaster as Jim has ever seen, and he’s seen a bunch now.
He’s got teams of security guys organized to do help out on rescue efforts, Bones is planetside with Chris and the rest of the medical staff to help the sick and injured. The scientists are assessing and making reports of the damage. Communications is busy connecting people with their friends and relatives, arranging transport off planet, coordinating to bring in more help. His command officers, natural leaders that they are, help sort through the rubble, clear the ground. Engineers join in the effort to make sure a half collapsed building either stays up or goes down in a safe way. Everyone on the ship helps out. Everyone makes do with four hours of sleep, wolfing down protein bars and chugging black coffee. There’s so much to do, not enough time to do it. They know they’re going to be called away to another mission because the Enterprise is a military ship, not really meant for rebuilding efforts. So they squeeze every minute for what it’s worth.
Spock, in these missions, preferred not to work with the native aliens who were affected. They were often the first Federation response to the scene, so Spock preferred to organize the relief efforts such that when the Enterprise left, someone could easily pick up the reins from there. Not that there was any way to make this kind of mission neat and orderly. If Jim’s learned anything about these natural disaster missions, it’s that they are, as a rule, messy. Nature not only fucks the lives and land, but makes difficult any attempt at centralizing efforts. Perhaps it’s meant to be that way. Things get cleared away, picked up, rebuilt, in spurts, here and there. Jim thinks of the chaos of ants trying to rebuild. They climb all over each other, it seems like nothing’s getting done. But it is.
He thinks that the grief is a different quality too. On one hand, grief is grief because death is death, whether it comes as a bullet to the head or caught in a quake. On the other hand, death from natural disasters is massive and widespread. Everyone in the area is affected, everyone knows someone who’s been critically injured or killed. Sometimes Jim loses crewmembers during relief efforts. A second tremor hits that tears down the rest of the buildings, an accident happens in the wrecked terrain. Jim makes sure that everyone goes through training to be prepared for these missions, but things happen. Death doesn’t stop because the disaster stopped.
This time, Jim’s going into the mission with Nyota and Sulu, not Spock. They’ve already extensively discussed organizational paradigms and what works, what doesn’t. Both Nyota and Sulu want to work closer with the people and with the Enterprise rescue teams, instead of taking on this administrative role that Spock created for himself. Jim finds himself in the unenviable position of coordinating all the efforts.
It’s way fucking harder than Spock made it look. Way way fucking harder.
First, there’s the language part of it. People under severe emotional stress? Yeah, they tend to revert to their native language. Babble in it. Cry, sob. Jim’s good at xenolanguages, comparatively speaking. But not that good.
Second, the question of priorities. With a limited amount of time and, let’s be honest, resources, where do you concentrate your efforts? Where you do you place you people so that they can make the most impact? His scientists gather reams and reams of data, sends them to Jim practically raw. He’s not Spock. He can’t sort through it with Vulcan speed and decide that after they extract these people from the rubble, they’re moving North where a fire’s broken out in a densely populated area, then beaming another group to another part of the planet to help evacuation efforts.
Third, the emotions. Spock went on emotional lock-down on these missions because he could and because it was necessary. When everything’s a tragedy, when everyone is suffering, things like prioritizing are inhuman. Pulling most of your teams out of one area to send them to another, even though there’re still people-or god help him, children-trapped until the wreckage is a very cold type of mathematics. Spock could do it because he was strong. Jim is doing it because it’s his job. He’s coping.
Fourth, the emotions. People come up to him and shove babies into his arms, pleading with him to take them to the hospital. He does the best he can, but the Medical Department’s always spread too thin, the Sickbay’s always overflowing with priority-as in going to die if something doesn’t happen soon-patients. Jim doesn’t know which is worse, the fact that he can do nothing about it, or the fact that this kind of stuff slows him down, eats into his time when he needs to be looking over data, making decisions, trying to manage parts of the show.
Fifth, the emotions. Natural disasters are ugly, both in the wholesale death and the wholesale destruction. In helping the planet’s governments deal with the issues, Jim finds that he spends half his time in polished government offices, talking about Federation aid and logistics, of all things. He wants to be on the ground, he wants to be part of the effort, not looking over it with a detached eye.
Sixth, the emotions. It comes as a relief, it comes as a rend, when they get their next mission assignment. Jim has to tell his people to wrap up whatever they’re doing, even if they’re in the middle of some critical project. They’re moving out. They’re leaving things half finished, abandoning these people to their destruction and their grief, with no closure. He doesn’t think any natural disaster provides closure, but this. Sometimes it feels like cutting and running, no matter how many times they do it.
What was once impersonal becomes very personal in the process of helping people. His crew are exhausted. They always start out resolved to help and be professional, not to get emotionally invested. But they are, by definition, emotionally invested. They feel torn up by the things they saw. The veterans don’t express it, but it haunts their eyes. Bones especially hates it, abandoning patients like that. Dumping them back planetside and never being able to follow up on their condition.
And Jim. Jim stands in limbo. Emotional lockdown, just like Spock. He hates it, the way it’s gotten easier to shove his emotions into a closet so that he evaluates this-a natural disaster-in lists and logistics. There’s a certain safety to numbness, but there’s a certain suffocation too.
Sometimes he wonders if Spock never got involved with helping the people because he never got involved in rebuilding Vulcan. He chose to stay on the Enterprise instead. Jim realizes he never asked Spock about it.
And it suddenly hits him that Spock’s decision, as much as it had its rewards, had its costs.