"Not the optronic, the duotronic!"

Jim's hands were spread in the air over a mess of Scotty's toolbox, daintily reaching as if the man would have an outburst the very second he touched another wrong tool. "I mean, they kind of look similar, right? The couplers—"

"Well, now I understand your mistake," Scotty yelled from where he was spread under the power console. "Except that they look nothing alike."

Jim met eyes with Uhura who was tightly trying not to laugh, grimacing in a mix of exasperation and amusement. Scratching the back of his neck, he said, "Listen, are you sure you can't get away from here for just a little bit?"

Scotty just gave out a long sigh, almost not bothering to say anything. "Bring me back a souvenir, 'ey?"

"Are we really going back to the bar again?" Uhura groaned when they were in the corridor, but her unwillingness was almost simply boredom this time.

"I'm not making you do anything," he said with a huff of a laugh.

"Yes, but you have that pout..."

"Nope." He covered his mouth. "There. Pouting neutralized. I am disarmed."

But it was—with the assumption of a successful retrieval of McCoy followed by a successful transporter miracle, knock on wood—their last night in the horrible place, so why not? She even had a preferred beer at the bar by now. She was on her third drink by the time they'd been there a couple hours, her and Jim having escaped to a not particularly luxurious but very empty back patio area with a wooden bench. And she was giggling at something when she stopped herself.

"Are we having fun?" she asked in horror. With their t-shirts and the reasonably comfortable jeans she'd found at the bottom of her drawer (somewhere under the blessed uniform pants she'd found which were way too tight-fitting but at least pants) it really felt like shore leave.

Jim moved his mouth around in consideration. "One of my closest friends is stuck in the slam, our engineer is getting three hours of sleep a night ensuring we are not exiled for eternity in bizarro-land..."

"And we're screwing around."

"Well, you can't blame me this time."

"No," she said. After a minute of examining her glass, she sighed. "You know what. I am very homesick. I don't get like that, but..."

"Heh. Well, I'd take Iowa over this rock, but I can't really say the same."

"Sure you can. I don't mean...I mean the Enterprise."

"...Oh." Jim blinked, and gave a self-conscious shrug as she looked over.

There was a pause before she sighed slightly grudgingly and said, "I took the position when you offered it because I didn't care as much as you might think about being among the best crew in Starfleet. If I'm going to be spending years on a ship with the same crew, what I care about is being with the best people."

He was giving her a squinting, not quite offended look and realizing, "Wait. You expected us to bomb. No, you expected me to bomb..."

"I don't know that I expected it to be a disaster; at that point it was all pretty unpredictable, and I think the entire crew was really into that. And you seem to think that I don't like your style of command, but the thing is you're really the only captain who has a style of command. Maybe you get on my nerves, but this crew isn't really lacking in personality, so maybe they need someone like you. And by the way, I was lucky." She gave a shrug. "The best people also turned out to make the best damn crew in the entire Federation, and I am just as proud to be a part of it as you are, so you can take your transfer requests and—"

"Thank you," Jim interrupted, an awkward smile on his face, clearing his throat as if to get past the simple lack of smugness in his current state.

"You know, you're not that bad," she observed, "when you're one of the only people I know."

Jim snickered. "Well, you've always got our friends upstairs..."

"Isn't it kind of weird how McCoy's handling everything?" Uhura asked with a laugh threatening to break out.

And Jim grinned, like it was something he'd forgotten to bring up. "Oh my God. Thing is, that's just Bones. His whole neurosis makes you think he'll be a wreck in these situations, but when the shit really hits the fan, that's when he's kind of in his element, you know?"

"It's almost like—Our McCoy really belongs here and—"

"What, and they got the nice one?" And it wasn't that funny, really, but they didn't recover for some minutes from laughing so long until their stomachs ached.

"So, tell me." Uhura finally composed herself to ask, "How are things with Marlena?"

"Oh," he groaned. "Her and the other me, it must be pretty serious. In their own definition, of course, I don't even know..."

She gave something like a snort.

"We have a tribble," he whined. "And it's mean."

Snickering again, she shook her head almost sympathetically. "So have you just been faking headaches all week or what? You know, she has been giving me some looks, though..."

"Well, gossip's over warp 10 anywhere you go."

Uhura shook her head again and gave out a kind of shudder of annoyance.

"What, are you concerned about your reputation, when it's not even yours?" Jim challenged. "I mean, all things considered. It doesn't matter..."

"I just feel like you're going to use it as some kind of fodder after we get back, that's all."

"Use what? That it seems possible that some screwed-up versions of ourselves may have done the deed once or twice? I have a better sense of humor than that." He rolled his eyes over a sip of beer. "I mean, look at it this way. Wouldn't it be worse if some perversion of an existing relationship seemed to be going on here? Like if it was somebody you actually loved." He cut himself off at the last with a comically twisting expression of how that sounded, and Uhura's face was equally uncomfortable.

"Hey look, I don't—"

Putting out a hand and laughing awkwardly, he tried to interrupt, "No, you don't have to—"

"I don't, like...un-love you."

Jim nearly spit out his beer laughing. He even clapped his hands a few times. "Oh my God. Did my top-notch communications officer just say 'un-love'?"

"I'm drunk, okay?"

"You're killing me, Lieutenant. God, look at those two. I think they're about to take it to the cage, what do you think?"

She tilted over, also having noticed the two pugnacious men who had just made a racket near the back door. "Hmm. I think Scrawny's got the passion on his side, he looks like somebody just insulted his mother."

"No. No way, he's getting pounded."

He slowly turned his head as he sensed an expectant look on Uhura's face. She smiled in an Am I really about to say this? way. "If Big Boy loses, you're sleeping in your quarters tonight."

"Yeah?"

"And if he wins, I'll take the floor."

For a second he looked like he was going to be too much of a gentleman, shrug off the offer. But then he reached his hand out for a shake. "You are on."

They caught their share of stares when Uhura had convinced Jim to let her sit on his shoulders to see over the crowd despite his repeated bitching of "You're not even that short!" But when the fight riled up they were clumsily bouncing in their cacophony of opposite enthusiasms until she practically fell off of him. But they managed to get close enough to the cage to get in a loud cursing turn of spectating before Big Boy pounded surrender on the mat floor. Uhura was lifting her arms and crowing shrilly right in Jim's face, and it was very out of character and completely adorable, so he couldn't really be a sore loser.

"You are drunk," he concurred with her expired comment as they left the transporter room later. "You better not be hungover tomorrow."

"I never get hungover."

"Yeah, you wouldn't. You're just magical like that."

Letting out a stifled laugh, she shoved his arm. "What does that even mean?"

"I don't know. I'm going to go read in bed. Next to my uncomfortably attractive not-girlfriend."

"Hey." She stopped walking next to him, thinking through something. "Everything's going to be okay, right?"

"Nobody has any reason to use the transporters for all of tomorrow afternoon," Jim recited. "I have a perfectly good alibi for yanking Bones out of the brig, even if it's suspicious, nobody important is going to catch on until we're long gone, I swear. Security guards don't ask shit, trust me."

He'd been assuring everybody else of this already. She sighed, nodded her head. "I know...I'm not that worried about it."

"I'm kind of freaking out, actually."

"Really?"

He cocked an eyebrow, mock-enigmatic and cocky, then laughed. "No."

She just rolled her eyes and turned to walk off, not knowing whether he was kidding.

With a little snicker he called with a drawn-out sweetness, "Nighty-night."

.

.

.

Uhura woke to the comm bell at 0600, blinking away a surprisingly good rest, checking the chronometer and sitting up.

"Huh?" she answered.

"We are so fucked."

"Scotty? Oh God, what happened?"

"Did you just wake up?" he asked, his voice frantic. "There's a fucking mutiny on and you're asleep."

Then she snapped out of bed. "What."

"Yeah. The captain's been thrown in the brig—somebody was monitoring all the computer activities, thought that our research looked suspicious—'course they're just using it as a reason to lock him up, they don't seem to really care—But if we're aiming for the window I'm still knee-deep in warp chords for the next—"

"Jim's in the brig!?" Uhura nearly screamed, her eyes going wide as they checked the time again. She was pacing, snatching up her uniform and undressing as she went. "We're on in thirty minutes, Scotty!"

"I know."

"Okay, okay, just—Oonf!" She grunted as she fell over trying to wrestle into one of her mile-high boots. "Keep doing what you're doing, stay focused on getting us that window, I'll—God, I'll comm you when I know what's going on."

It was easy enough to guess who had probably jumped on the opportunity to bring on trouble, but she knew she couldn't fool herself into thinking there was anybody who had any loyalty to the captain anyway. It was a gamble, but it left her only one option.

After a frantically impatient wait on the turbolift, she sprung into a quick pace on deck C, scanning around the labs until she spotted the shapely brunette with those deceivingly innocent big doe eyes, her hair bouncing as she only passingly looked up at Uhura's approach.

Continuing with her work, Lieutenant Marlena Moreau offhandedly muttered, "Aren't you supposed to be on the bridge?" Her voice was like ice and honey at the same, sweet and deliberate.

"Aren't you, I don't know, a little upset that your captain is in line to test the new airlock seals?" Uhura demanded, matching if not surpassing the other's coldness.

"I think you should know better than anyone," she said without looking up, but with a lift of her eyebrows, "that he's not really my captain anymore."

Uhura's head knocked back as she let out a long groan. She made a gesture of trying to calm herself down, finally catching Moreau's direct glance as she insisted, "Look. I am not sleeping with him."

"Oh, please," Moreau said. "All your little hang-outs on shore leave? You know, on top of the fact that he's turned down sex every single night this week—"

Uhura interrupted her with an incredulous little laugh at her frankness, resolving quickly to return it: "Look, the CMO's in the brig, it's perfectly likely he's having...issues. He's got a lot on his mind, it happens..."

"Did you really come down here to chat with me about the possibility of the captain having erectile dysfunction?"

"Okay, so, say that the captain and I are involved in this torrid affair, despite the fact that there's no room for promotion and it does no good for me, okay; and this just happens to be perfect for Sulu and Chekov's little agenda because they need you to play along by being too pissed off at him to try to do anything about it...?"

There was a new glint in Moreau's eyes, and Uhura was surprised to see she'd struck something. She gave Uhura a pursed, tense look.

"He was the one who brought it up to me," Moreau admitted.

"Sulu."

"Yeah." And suddenly they were shaking their heads at each other like two scowling slighted wives. She added, "The fucker."

"Okay, this is what I need you to do," Uhura said. "Since you're supposedly not a sympathizer, you can go down to the brig, pretend you're going to kick dust in his face or whatever. And slip him this."

She handed her a communicator. Moreau looked at it uncertainly. "And then what?"

"I don't know, hopefully he's got half of a plan already. That's why I need you to do this, alright? And I need to get out of here before any of the wrong people see us talking."

She walked off, hoping the quick end to the conversation would decrease Moreau's likelihood to overthink her way back into suspicion. She just held the communicator she'd linked to the other and Scotty's close in her grasp.

She was stepping through the corridors so anxiously that she ended up rounding a corner right into a tall solid body, practically stumbling back from the brief collision with a small sense of panic, hoping she hadn't offended anyone's dogged impatience. Instead she quickly realized it was Spock, and an unease came into her features as she steadied herself against the wall. But the too-familiar-looking Vulcan hardly gave her a blink before walking around her, looking like he had rather pressing matters to attend to.

"Lieutenant?"

Her eyes widened in response to the tiny voice on the communicator. "Captain," she hissed back in relief.

"Did I ever tell you how completely in love with you I am?"

"Later, Jim!—"

"Listen, this is what you have to do," he immediately instructed. "Go talk to Spock."

She looked around, stole into a small unoccupied maintenance room and then spoke louder into the communicator. "I'm sorry, did you seriously just tell me to—"

"Please, please, believe me. The guy might help because he doesn't want command."

"Doesn't want—Oh, come on."

"Look, we've been talking and I've been feeling him out all week, and he's basically just Spock with a very different definition of what's logical. And for him, being second-in-command is a very powerful and very safe place to be in."

She had her hand up wiping her still morning-frazzled hair out of her eyes, letting out a long dubious sigh that Jim could definitely hear.

"Lieutenant?" he prodded. "Please try?"

She kind of shrugged, then clipped off, "If it's an order, it's an order."

"Oh, don't be like that..."

But she'd said her last, already heading back out into the corridor with her comm turned down. She asked the computer to locate the commander and was told he was the only person in the observation deck.

When she quietly entered the deck a few minutes later she found him standing looking out the window, his hands clasped behind his back. Like some old film villain standing at a fireplace, she couldn't help observing. She found she was biting her bottom lip in dry amusement at this, and then jumped back in a short gasp when the commander spoke and only completed the picture by seemingly already knowing it was her standing there.

"Lieutenant, I would very much appreciate if you would clarify what happened to the landing party last week," Spock said smoothly, his measured tone colored with one of impatience that she wasn't used to hearing. He only then turned around, fixing her with an expectant glance that left her unsure of whether she should feel uneasy about him.

Uhura found she didn't know where to begin, so he interrupted.

"The decidedly unorthodox research that has been uncovered with the ship's computers which was brought to my attention earlier suggests several possibilities, one of which would explain the rather...erratic behavior the captain has been displaying as of late."

"Yeah, so," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Jim blew it."

"It was not until earlier today that I suspected there was in fact a problem with all four of you, and not only—"

"So are you and Kirk pretty much besties? Everywhere?" she asked, squinting in her half-sarcasm. "Because you might want to worry about what's probably going to happen to him if this mutiny is successful, which it will be if you're just shut in here...What are you actually doing in here?"

Spock gave a patiently slow look off to the side. "I am enjoying a view of the Golden Tassel nebula, and avoiding being in the way, Lieutenant."

With a wince she argued, "But if you don't want command, why wouldn't you value a better captain, I mean—"

"Captain Kirk is only a more ideal captain because he is taller than Sulu and therefore more likely to block something from hitting me," the commander said. "The captaincy is as a rule quite inconstant aboard this ship, a fact I might expect you to have realized from your year of service, Lieutenant."

Those last words were heavily suggestive, and she had her lips pressed together before she quietly replied, "Unless I don't have a year of service here."

With a familiar tilt of his head, she almost expected something like "Fascinating" to come out of his mouth, but instead he stepped farther forward, reached his hand up...

"Woah." She batted his arm away at the wrist, shaking her head in a scolding way without really thinking about it. "Nuh-uh, no."

Clearly, the concept of consent as a complication of mind melds was something foreign to him: She couldn't decide whether he looked terrifyingly angered or more like a little kid that had had its toy taken away. He sort of looked down at his hand and back up again, confused and considering, and she just went with not feeling threatened because it seemed to have worked so far.

"Look, we don't have time to explain things to you, and you just need to trust that we need to get to the transporter room so we can get out of here. There has to be something you can do to help us, unless you want to lose four members of your crew—"

"I have no desire to die," he interrupted simply. "And they will attempt to kill me. This is not a complicated explanation for my refusal to offer assistance."

Taking in and letting out a frustrated breath, she turned to leave, already preparing to ask Jim what the hell she should do now.

"However," Spock said slowly, from where he was returning his eyes to their examination of the yellowy nebula, "should one of you somehow become aware that a set of powerful firearms are hidden in the locked department of the desk in the captain's quarters, I see no reason that that should have anything to do with me."

With her eyes just now widened a bit, her stance frozen for a second, she hesitated and then swiftly continued her way out of the room.

.

.

.

McCoy was pacing.

"And here I was so impressed with you for being chill under pressure," Kirk was saying from where he sat against the wall with his glance lazily turned to the ceiling. He was clasping the communicator up to his ear where it was hidden behind that stupid badass leather cuff thing he had on, wishing he just had a damn sleeve to slip it under. He sighed. "Bones, stop it."

"Stop what? Freaking out over the fact that a wrench the size of Texas just got thrown into any semblance of a plan we had?" Bones demanded a bit too loudly with a half-stomping halt. "Man, what is she doing?"

"Shh. Jesus, Bones—" The tiniest hiss of a masculine tone came from the communicator, and he spoke into it. "What's your progress?"

McCoy looked down expectantly, unable to hear the other voice at such a low volume.

"Okay, we just. We just need to...get there. No, we don't know where she is cause—Well, I'm busy talking to you right now—"

"—even touch that fucking comm button I'm gonna blow your brains all over this deck."

The rising noise of that half-unheard threat made McCoy and Kirk shift up and over, wide-eyed, trying to see what was happening at the entrance to the brig.

"Yessir, I understand, but—"

"Open up the cell." There was a tapping noise of impatience. "Come on, are you—!?"

"I—I don't know how, they changed the codes in case people wanted to be loyal, look, I got nothing against the captain, I just—"

There was a drawn-out little roar of exasperation. "Fine. Go hide in the closet or something, I better not see your face again."

"Yes, ma'am," came the nearly matter-of-fact reply laced with surprise that she was even letting him get off that easy.

When she appeared where they could see her just outside the cell, Uhura took in the look of them as if getting her bearings on the situation. Then she said, "Back up."

Jim realized what she was doing and yanked McCoy back with him before a crackling short blast blew into dust around the door, happening so fast that they were blinking through the thin cloud before they realized the barred door was loose enough to kick open.

"Thank you, Uhura," Jim said in a flat and official tone, which was somewhat overthrown with the added "You're officially a badass."

"Uhura, what—" McCoy was squinting incredulously. "What are those?"

Also taking in the very large weapons, one of which Uhura had just used while the other was slung by a strap holster over her shoulder, Jim let out a sort of giddy noise of uncertainty.

"They're Kirk's, apparently. Spock tipped me off. And before you ask, yes." She nodded at Kirk knowingly. "They can go automatic."

"Oh shit oh shit..." Jim reached for the other one as she handed it over, turning the bulky thing over and over trying to get a feel for all the settings. McCoy went a little wide-eyed and grabbed at the barrel.

"You wanna watch where you're pointing the damn phaser bazooka?"

"Safety's on, but I cant figure out—Do you know if it has a stun setting?" Jim asked Uhura. She just shrugged with a defeated look, like she hadn't been able to figure it out for sure. Clearly neither of them were eager to go taking out members of a crew they recognized from their daily lives, even in self-defense.

Jim was still fiddling with the thing when they heard "It's the green one, man. On the side."

"Oh." Jim smiled. "Thanks, Paulson."

"Where's Scotty?" Uhura asked, half-reaching for her communicator. "I haven't—"

"He's ready to go. We just all need to get to the transporter room without it looking obvious that's where we're going. Cause if they cut off that power we're screwed."

They all thought about that with unsure expressions, McCoy finally saying, "What would they actually expect you to do?"

"I don't know. We're stopping a mutiny, supposedly, so we'd need to start making some ugly examples of all Sulu's friends. But we don't really know who those people are, besides anyone who tries to stop us from...from whatever we're doing."

They let out little sighs of heavy scrutiny; Uhura's arms were crossed over her chest in thought as she exchanged expectant looks with both the others.

Finally Jim made a dismissive motion, putting on a What the hell kind of look. "Alright, let's just shoot our way over there."

"Oh, this is hip," McCoy grumbled.

"Bones," Jim began with a look at the two weapons that were resting on the floor in front of them. "What was your score on the final simulations again?"

McCoy just guffawed.

"Uhura?"

"Oh." She neutrally replied, "Thirty-nine."

"So she'll—" Jim's face whipped over in Uhura's direction. He demanded, "Thirty-nine?!"

With a not very confident grimace, she assured, "I was never that good in practice. I'm just—I mean, I'm a good test taker, you know?"

"Motherf—" Jim cut off his instinctive cursing, just bit out, "You tied with me at final sims, that was you? That instructor swore I'd get a perfect but I was hungover that day, God, I'm still fucking irritated about that."

"Oh, poor, poor Jim," McCoy said with a roll of his eyes. "Can we work on getting the hell out of here?"

Uhura had already sort of hesitantly went for one of the guns, while Kirk took the other.

"Alright," Jim declared, "we should be all feral and demanding, make a lot of noise, be scary enough and nobody will bother wondering what the hell we're doing."

.

.

.

"Be cool. Be cool. Don't move!"

Apparently too panicked to really take in what Uhura was yelling, the first lone security officer that spotted Kirk walking through the hall had a moment of nervous indecision before pulling out his phaser. Nyota raised up her rifle and pulled the trigger, evoking a jolting snap of a blast that more or less bitch-slapped him into unconsciousness with a pretty huge beam.

"Woah," Jim exclaimed. "These must knock you out like beer before liquor..."

"How dumb could these people be?" McCoy exclaimed on their way galloping to the turbolifts.

"I don't think surrender is much of an instinct to them," Jim said. "If we tried—"

His voice cut off as he gave Uhura a warning yank on the arm, being the first to see somebody come around the corner as if she'd been hiding there, and plucking the officer off with a quick blast before she realized she'd been spotted. They waited while McCoy helped himself to the security-issue phaser and then were running again, packing themselves into the first turbolift and smacking the button to close the door.

"We can't do turbolifts the whole way—"

"You're right," Jim said in agreement with Nyota. "We should get off before they have the chance to trap us between decks, but I'll give it at least a few."

"So we have to get to the ladders?" McCoy asked with a wince.

"Never thought I'd wish for stairs on a starship," Jim said dryly. "They're just splendid for shooting."

"Yeah," Uhura smiled. "Remember that one setting we weren't tested on, with the spiral staircase—"

"Oh, that was fun, wasn't it?"

"If only we'd had the class together, I'd know whether I could really take out more than you can."

Jim blinked, and slowly looked over at the communications officer.

"Lieutenant."

"Captain?" she replied almost demurely.

"Are we competing?"

She looked like her instinct was to roll her eyes at the suggestion. But then she muttered, "Well, it would make it feel like a test..."

Then the doors hissed to a stop where Jim had commanded them to, and phasers were held at the ready. They pulled silently around the walls with quick checks down both corridors. When they were paused in the momentarily quiet section of the deck, Uhura mumbled, "I never thought about how everything being so round isn't very good for stealth?"

"I was thinking the same thing," the captain replied with an annoyed contemplation of the gradual curve of the hall that had little opportunity for something to actually duck or hide behind. "You know what? You've got the better ears..."

"Okay." Uhura bravely nodded and peeled around in front before Jim could ask gently, and they began their brisk walk down towards the ladder entrance, keeping to the rounder wall. Kirk covered the thresholds as they passed, while McCoy kept checking behind them.

They were only a few rooms away from the hull surfaces when a bustling cluster of voices came up, doubtlessly a group emerging from one of the smaller rec rooms, and now coming towards them.

Jim muttered, "Uhura, can you—?"

"Six," she said, and sure enough it was that exact amount that appeared around the bend; she was already aiming and taking down the far right officer, spurring an outburst of motion from the rest. Jim snapped off two of them in a row while Uhura took out a second; the last one had actually ducked behind the nearest computer console to get out his phaser. There was an expectant pause as all four waited with weapons wielded, one that became long, and then nearly ridiculous.

"You know we're only stunning?" Kirk yelled.

"Fuck yourself, Kirk!"

Jim made a noise of impatience, gave a motion to Uhura, and then took a direct stomping approach to the console; no sooner had the man appeared aiming at Jim than he'd gone straight to the floor under Nyota's fire.

"So we split that one?" Jim joked as they took off at fuller speed now, McCoy making it to the compartment door first and wrenching it open. He was still in the process of getting onto the ladder when Uhura gave some warning whisper and they all then heard the pattering approach of very purposeful steps. Jim hissed, "Go go go go..."

It became an awkward writhing process of rushing through the uncomfortably placed entrance to negotiate the leg space between the ladder and the wall beneath, but they all got in and shut the compartment behind them, hopefully before anyone saw them.

"What now?" McCoy demanded as he started crawling up and up, followed by Jim and Uhura who had to try not to bang the weapons too loudly against the wall.

"Up," Kirk replied simply. "And...if nothing happens first, just get off as close to the transporter room as possible."

"This ladder is so far to starboard, though," Uhura groaned.

"I know." Jim just said, "Faster, Bones?"

They made it up to E deck and listened closely until they were as sure as they could ever be that nobody was directly outside, and then quickly kicked out of the compartment, awkwardly wielding as quickly as possible. With McCoy crawling out first, he made it out standing and nervously checking around, and Uhura was up above Jim almost out of the gap when he heard McCoy yell, "Ah shit!"

Before he knew it, Uhura had taken up the arm that was hoisting her out in order to direct and shoot with her gun, which had resulted in a horrifyingy haphazard sideways lock of her legs atop Jim's shoulders; he was exclaiming a muffled "Mmmhmph!...hurr!" and she was yelling at him to help her up already, for God's sake, while he scrabbled with the impossible task of doing this without touching anything, for Christ sake, but dammit she was probably winning their little game up there with only the upper half of her body, so he settled for a firm push up on her thighs; she came spilling up a bit faster with the help of a quick yank on the arm by McCoy, who helped her from tripping to the floor. Jim ducked out and looked, started shooting at another cluster of officers that were appearing from down the hall.

"Should we take the long way around?" Uhura asked when he finally had a moment to pull himself out and hit his feet to the floor. He thought about it for a second, and it was really the only hope of a diversion they had now.

"Alright, yeah," he nodded, and they took off, taking speed over stealth now. When another couple officers appeared from hiding behind a threshold it was more of a free-for-all than before, harder to tell who was even shooting down who.

Then when they were halfway to the transporter room, they heard Sulu shouting, along with a building cacophony of other voices, far down in the direction they'd come from. It made the three momentarily look back in a pause of dread.

Kirk was being ironic, of course, when he turned to Uhura and asked, "How many?"

She took in a breath, returning in a similar tone: "A lot."

They gave a look at the nearest storage room as if contemplating trying to hide momentarily, but with a check at the nearest chronometer, Jim just shook his head at the other two, and they started running.

A blast licked just past them that had them flattening to the wall, Jim winding up the farthest back and chucking off an automatic line of fire that made a woodpecking mess of noise; Uhura and McCoy were covering forwards, and finally Jim had taken off enough people to cut back into running, but he said to both of them, "I think they split up. Sulu's probably taking some numbers around to cover the trans room."

McCoy cursed, and Kirk was getting onto the communicator. "Scotty, you're getting company, can you—?"

He cut himself off when a figure neared around, but then he lifted back his gun. It was the first officer, who clearly did not wish to be interrupted from simply heading by them to wherever he was going to mind his own business.

"You." Jim immediately walked up to Spock, pointing a finger at him. "You gonna remember what I talked to you about?"

"I told you that I would consider it," he replied almost boredly, and he kept walking. Jim returned his attention to Scotty's voice on the comm line.

"They're surrounding us and the transporter room, I think," he was quickly explaining. "We're totally fucked if we—"

"You're on this floor?" Scotty replied. "You know the shortcut?"

"The—Oh, shit, Scotty, can you access the tank controls where you are?"

"Emptying, sir."

And then in a flinch of motion, Jim walked up to the opposite wall, ticked down a setting on his rifle, and fired off a clean blast into the slightly curved corner at the bottom of the wall.

"Jim, what in the hell!?"

Jim was then stomping and kicking and kicking again, denting in the damaged surface, and when he got through to see what was under he hissed, "Yes, yes, it's the same, it's the same." Turning to the doctor who had come up behind him, he pointed at his phaser and said, "Pack it in and hold your breath, Bones."

"Oh..." Uhura was wincing in dread but already turning on her safety and making to follow after when Jim smoothly careened his body down to go through the torn hole; he seemed to go falling down a slide-like surface, and the two followed fluidly.

Seconds later the three heavy splashes came before their bodies were swamped under into the cold; water was pushing all around, crystal-clear but heavy and sluggishly pulling them down and farther down, juggling them too thoroughly for anyone to get their bearings of which direction was which.

Just when one of them gave the first bubble-cough of not being able to breathe, a suctiony motion kicked in, with a promising speed to how they were gliding and gliding to the bottom...

When Uhura got to the hole that was about five feet wide, she felt her ankle slap smartly against it just as she was heavily pushed past it, and fell: After a short slapping drop she was painfully knocked on top of a body, and then immediately felt another roll in just next to her as the final splash of escaping water came surging over and out and puddling across the floor.

Jim grunted underneath her as she dug into him to get up and standing. "What was that?" she asked breathlessly. But when she looked up she saw that the side of the tank was labeled "EMERGENCY WATER STORAGE."

"Uh," McCoy harrumphed, after they'd all recovered from slight coughing fits. "So that's where they keep it."

"Pike could never stress it enough," Jim said. "'Know your ship.'"

"That's drinking water?" Uhura asked. She was examining up and down her arms as if she had been worried about the stuff containing any kind of chemical deposits.

"In case of malfunctions, yeah," Jim said as he finally stood up behind the other two, moving as if he might have messed up his back a little landing on his gun. "And we lucked out. You don't wanna know what the other tank on this level has in it. Anyway: Computer, seal tanks."

As the hole they'd just fallen through slid into a locked surface, Uhura grinned. "You need the maintenance lift to get in here?" They all knew that that particular turbolift required a password in case of ship intruders.

"Yeah, and Scotty will have hacked it if his head's on straight," Jim said as they moved across the room and got into the rather cramped turbolift, and slapped the button. He was scrutinizing the way Uhura was walking, and as soon as the door closed McCoy was muttering a question about her ankle.

"It feels like it's fractured," she said with a wince. To Jim she said, "I think I deserve an extra point for that."

He snickered shortly. "Yeah, okay." It was a very short ride up to where they would open to the transporter room, and as it whirred to a stop, he said, "Alright, people. Be very careful about using these guns, we can't be doing a lot of damage."

The door hissed open to reveal, predictably, a number of officers with phasers trained on them. All three of them were ready with their own weapons, and Jim shrugged and stated, "Ours are bigger, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Yeah, only we're not stunning like a bunch of little girls. Who's got more to lose?" This all came from Sulu; he was standing across the room, his arms crossed and empty as if he fancied himself already graced with a minion that could spoon-feed him if he wanted. He was right next to a very annoyed Scotty who had a couple phasers trained on him.

Jim's grip flinched for a moment as if he was about to reconsider that thing about stunning, but only flinched.

"Good swim, Captain?"

Sulu rolled his eyes in Scotty's direction briefly before continuing. "It's done, Kirk. Give it up. I don't know what the hell you all thought you were going to do with the transporter, but we're more than eager to beam you right out into the cold..."

Sulu snapped a finger, which was apparently a signal for somebody to hand him a phaser, and he started directly marching over to them. "And why don't we start our bargain with the lovely little communications officer, huh? Put down your weapon, baby. All of you."

There was a pause of irritation before they all complied, the heavier guns going down with grudging throws. Sulu came up and stopped in front of Uhura, his demeanor resembling a gently thoughtful hesitation. But then in a sudden scooping motion he had his hand viced around her arm, started pulling her forward.

Maybe in one of their heads, maybe in Jim's, they had a plan. Maybe one of them was waiting to carry out something that would create a diversion, a threat, something, but however they were going to get out of it, it didn't really matter a couple seconds later.

Sulu's downfall was the entirely unexpected, shrill growl of long-suffering scorn that resulted from his foot clumsily skimming down and stepping on Uhura's ankle. It sent everyone, including Sulu, into the briefest attention limp of confusion, which was long enough for her to land a rather reflexive and furious kick hard into his shin with her perfectly good foot. He buckled over with a doltish shout, she kicked his phaser out of his hands so that it went skidding over to where Jim or McCoy could easily get it, and the two of them had already managed to snatch up their weapons again during the distraction and fire off a few clean blasts to knock out a good enough handful of Sulu's aids for the rest to drop their weapons in surrender.

After a second of backing up and regaining her calm, Uhura turned with a considering look. And she cut a hard punch right into Sulu's face.

A second later he was phased and unconscious, and Uhura was pushing her hair behind her ears, groaning in annoyance, finally looking at the flustered officers that were left and saying, "What the hell are you all looking at?"

They cast looks at each other.

"Back to work, or it's the agony booth," Kirk shouted, playing along. "Playtime's over."

Clearly completely astonished that they weren't being killed or even tortured, the three remaining clambered out of the room, while Scotty hurried over to the transporter console and the rest went running up to the pad.

"Twenty seconds, hell—!" Scotty quickly set up the automatic calculations and followed the rest up to the pad.

"—You weren't counting the entire time?" Jim demanded.

"What, were we going to say, 'Excuse us, we're running a wee bit late'?"

"I'm not a fan of futility, Scotty, you should know that."

"Spoken like a true captain," Uhura muttered.

"Hey!"

Uhura was about to clarify that she wasn't being sarcastic, but then the transporter engaged.

.

.

.

"So how many?"

She was the first to bring it up, and Jim's face lit up in recollection. "Count of three?"

After they called out their numbers simultaneously, Uhura grappled the air in agitated defeat while Jim started laughing smugly, her almost kicking the floor of the transporter pad but all the while still laughing in good humor and grumbling, "By one point?"

Scowling at Jim's rather childish triumph and already having forgotten that they'd been contesting, McCoy demanded, "What the hell are you talking about?"

Jim and Uhura were clutching a handshake then, and he was grinning wide and pointing at himself. "I am officially the best shot in Starfleet...Except for this guy, probably."

Spock had finally arrived at the transporter room, and he was lifting quite an eyebrow at the over-giddy demeanors of possibly both Jim and Nyota as they all came down the stairs. There was a lengthening moment of quiet as Jim stopped in front of Spock, a somewhat embarrassed smile forming up his face.

"Hey," Jim said warmly, trying not to laugh at himself. It was in an awkward but sincere reference to just before they'd left, when he finally admitted, "I, uh. Missed you."

Spock exchanged a look with Uhura, and the expression he gave Jim then was both aloof and amused. He said in a rather schooled tone, "Lieutenant Uhura, your absence was most...unfavorable, in many respects. There was practically nothing to admire in your counterpart. As for their captain. He was particularly unruly, petulant, loud, obscene, and entirely without reservation or dignity."

Jim gave the briefest sidelong glance to Uhura that seemed to mean, Here it comes...

"I cannot honestly return your sentiment, Captain, as it was in actuality as if you had never left."

The two men stared each other down, knowingly, until a yeoman called for Spock's help with something and he said, "Excuse me a moment."

He left Uhura laughing, and Kirk holding a little half-cringing half-amused smile that he finally broke to say, "I told you he was gonna give me a hard time."

"Oh, he missed you," she assured him with a little pat on the arm.

"He's gonna do this for days," Jim said in a little sing-song mutter.

"Hey, you," McCoy pointed at Uhura as he came by. "Sick bay."

"In a few minutes," Uhura replied tiredly.

She and Jim lingered in the transporter room a few more minutes while Chekov rattled off about thirty-eight questions to them. Spock apparently was needed to finish the negotiation with the Halkans he'd evidently had to take care of by himself, and before he left the room he looked back at Jim and Nyota; he seemed to pause at the sight of them grinning together, and Jim kind of shrugged back at him, and Spock's eyes took on a just slightly more welcoming warmth before he turned to leave.

That night while the ship was traveling to the nearest leisure planet for the "proper shore leave" Jim insisted Scotty was going to take if no one else was, a particularly lively dinner party occurred in the mess hall. At one point, when she was sitting where she couldn't help blocking the punch bowl, Sulu came up while chatting with Chekov and tapped her on the shoulder. In his customarily monotone friendliness he muttered, "Honey, could you fill this up for me?" Uhura had just stared at his cup for a second before abruptly standing up out of her chair and hugging him.

"Wha—?" Sulu returned her hug with total puzzlement, finally just accepting it with amusement and saying, "I missed you too."

And besides some weird things like that which didn't make sense to anyone else, references were hardly ever made to the week spent in that odd reality. Jim and Nyota seemed to have an unspoken agreement that a couple things were best left between the two of them. It certainly made no sense to Spock that whenever Jim attempted to tease her now, she would rather randomly work the topic of the Starfleet Academy's annual Lab Fair into the conversation until the captain was biting his tongue.

And no one ever had a clue whether Kirk and the senior communications officer were really friends, because they would still get into those at times rather heated disagreements. Only sometimes, when their disputes were particularly out of hand and out of place, like the bickering that would inappropriately break out in the corridors when one or both of them knew they badly needed to go and cool off for a few minutes, Uhura would perhaps suddenly press her lips tight together, point out a stern finger and just say, "Unlove." Like it was some kind of reminder to him and to herself.

And Jim would bite back anything he was about to say, and she'd go seething off down the hall, and he'd yell, "Yeah, yeah, you too." And he'd walk off smiling.