Keep Talking (ST:XI)
TITLE: Keep Talking
RATING: PG
NOTE: Written for yahtzee63's Star Trek Reboot Drabble Challenge #3, combining #77 (Uhura and McCoy, voice) with #42 (Spock/Uhura, every breath you take). Check out the prompts and join in!
DISCLAIMER: Paramount owns the Star Trek universe and everything it encompasses. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus derives no profit or material benefit therefrom.
Uhura's voice is hoarse, strained, cracking with agony and exhaustion, but she refuses to give up, to abandon her station. She's been there for hours, since shortly before what had begun as another routine away mission mutated into another waking nightmare. The team stumbled upon a Cardassian outpost - what are they doing so far from home? - shots were fired, and the cave they sought shelter in turned out to be highly unstable. The first collapse crushed Lieutenant Özer's leg; the second trapped the rest of the team in an impenetrable cul-de-sac of stone.
McCoy's been on the bridge for the past hour, waiting for the word from the surface that will guide his next step. Jim's down there now, along with a hand-picked security team, "negotiating" for his people's rescue before their air runs out. You don't screw around with Cardassians under any circumstances.
Uhura'd asked to be included, but Jim had ordered her to stay at her post. "Talk to them, Lieutenant," he'd told her, his voice like steel encased in silk. "Let them hear your voice. Give them a lifeline, something to hold on to." She hasn't left her post since he beamed down to the surface, her voice a constant stream of encouragement and comfort to the people trapped in the cave, their air supply dwindling with each inhaled breath.
McCoy paces the perimeter of the bridge, listening to her, monitoring her mental and physical state even as he keeps an eye on the readouts at Chekov's station. Two are already unconscious from hypoxia and Özer's been sedated, leaving only Spock as Uhura's audience, but McCoy suspects it's Spock she's been talking to all the time anyway. McCoy knows that, as a half-Vulcan, Spock can withstand oxygen deprivation longer than most humans, but no one's ever tested the limits of his endurance. He wonders how much longer Spock can hold out. How much longer Uhura can continue talking to him without breaking down.
He wonders if Jim can "negotiate" his way through the Cardassian blockade in time.
RATING: PG
NOTE: Written for yahtzee63's Star Trek Reboot Drabble Challenge #3, combining #77 (Uhura and McCoy, voice) with #42 (Spock/Uhura, every breath you take). Check out the prompts and join in!
DISCLAIMER: Paramount owns the Star Trek universe and everything it encompasses. This is a work of fan fiction, and thus derives no profit or material benefit therefrom.
Uhura's voice is hoarse, strained, cracking with agony and exhaustion, but she refuses to give up, to abandon her station. She's been there for hours, since shortly before what had begun as another routine away mission mutated into another waking nightmare. The team stumbled upon a Cardassian outpost - what are they doing so far from home? - shots were fired, and the cave they sought shelter in turned out to be highly unstable. The first collapse crushed Lieutenant Özer's leg; the second trapped the rest of the team in an impenetrable cul-de-sac of stone.
McCoy's been on the bridge for the past hour, waiting for the word from the surface that will guide his next step. Jim's down there now, along with a hand-picked security team, "negotiating" for his people's rescue before their air runs out. You don't screw around with Cardassians under any circumstances.
Uhura'd asked to be included, but Jim had ordered her to stay at her post. "Talk to them, Lieutenant," he'd told her, his voice like steel encased in silk. "Let them hear your voice. Give them a lifeline, something to hold on to." She hasn't left her post since he beamed down to the surface, her voice a constant stream of encouragement and comfort to the people trapped in the cave, their air supply dwindling with each inhaled breath.
McCoy paces the perimeter of the bridge, listening to her, monitoring her mental and physical state even as he keeps an eye on the readouts at Chekov's station. Two are already unconscious from hypoxia and Özer's been sedated, leaving only Spock as Uhura's audience, but McCoy suspects it's Spock she's been talking to all the time anyway. McCoy knows that, as a half-Vulcan, Spock can withstand oxygen deprivation longer than most humans, but no one's ever tested the limits of his endurance. He wonders how much longer Spock can hold out. How much longer Uhura can continue talking to him without breaking down.
He wonders if Jim can "negotiate" his way through the Cardassian blockade in time.