James T. Kirk had been within the technical atmosphere of Kronos for all of maybe twelve minutes, and already she absolutely hated it.
Uhura took one second to flick an errant strand of glossy black hair back into its severe ponytail. To most people, it would have simply seemed like an absent-minded gesture, but Jim knew her better than that. Uhura never fidgeted. So to see her worriedly finger-combing her hair and straightening her leather jacket made it blatantly obvious how nervous she really was.
"You sure about this, Lt?" Jim asked in a low tone. Her own heartbeat was painfully accelerated, a cocktail of all kinds of endorphins and adrenaline raging through her system like a bull. Some sixth sense ached in her gut–this was not going to end peacefully, she knew it.
Uhura tossed her a quick glance, screening Jim's intent behind the question. She lowered her hands from her ponytail and went with a helpless shrug. "Not many options left," she replied.
Jim sighed and flipped open a compartment in the shuttle. Five phasers were carefully stored inside, each nestled in a velvet-lined indent. She took one out, the light metal alloy feeling abnormally cool against her sweat-slick skin, and fflipped the setting on it to lethal with barely a second of hesitation. The Klingon patrol had no way to connect their shuttle to Starfleet, after all. If everything went to hell and they had to use the phasers, Jim would rather them be able to incapacitate an enemy for good than simply buy a snatch of time.
She pressed the primed weapon into Uhura's hands. "Good luck," she whispered. Uhura flashed her an appreciative smile and tucked the gun into the back of her pants. She brushed hands with Spock, their connected eyes saying everything that wasn't communicated aloud, and then turned to face the shuttle's exit. The guttural Klingon chanting, containing both threats and orders, had faded at some point into plain background noise to Jim. But as she watched Uhura square her shoulders and assume the cocky attitude of a space pirate, she felt all of it crash down on her ears again. She kept the door open after Uhura stepped through, ready to burst into a sprint to her aid at the slightest hint of peril.
Then she took her place beside Spock, tossing him his own phaser. "Here goes nothing," she whispered.
From her place inside the Shuttle, peering out through the horizontal peephole, she could barely hear the harsh barking of Klingon being thrown between Uhura and the leader of the patrol. For the hundredth time, she wished she had taken that language course at the academy. No doubt she could learn it in a few weeks, of course, but she never cared enough to try. Now she was regretting that mistake deeply.
She saw Uhura jerk back, and then lift several feet into the air, a meaty hand curled around her slender neck. Her finger was already moving over the trigger of the phaser as she dashed down the shuttle's ramp, heart in her mouth.
Looked like they would be going out in a blaze of glory, then.
Her aim was steady despite the fact that her knees were shaking with adrenaline. Flashbacks of weapons class, a mandatory part of the Starfleet regime, were ghosting through her muscle memory and prompting her to swing her phaser in tight, controlled arcs. She knew she was a good shot–as several Klingon warriors fell underneath her quick taps to the trigger, her assumption was only reaffirmed.
Spock did his best to flank her position as they slowly gained ground away from the shuttle, but the arrival of another Klingon warbird bristling with fresh soldiers forced him to abandon their advancement in the interest of watching Jim's back, a fact that did not go unnoticed by her.
Up ahead in the ashy gloom, Uhura seemed to be holding her own well enough. Jim never remembered seeing Uhura at any of the martial arts classes but damn did she move like oil on water.
A heavy weight suddenly punched her in the back, right between the shoulderblades. An involuntary gasp of pain escaped Jim's mouth as she rolled forward, sent careening into the dirt by the force of the blow. She flipped her position just before the leering soldier sat on her hips and drew his fist back for what could have very well been a finishing blow, had Jim not squirmed her leg out from under his and retaliated with a very solid kick to the throat. He choked; Jim took advantage of the moment to scrabble for her phaser and shoot him in the chest. The force of the phaser beam knocked the body off her. She was on her feet again in seconds, a bit splattered in Klingon blood and very determinedly not thinking about it.
The fight dissolved after that in her mind into a series of bruises, punches, shots, and thoughts like "OW-OW-OW-OW-" and "Oh shi–" At some point she lost the phaser and was slowly being overtaken by the wave of Klingon soldiers, although she was proud to say she lasted this long. Not many people could best a single Klingon in hand-to-hand combat anyway, and here she was, a simple human woman decking it out with the best of them. Blood was running into her eyes from a gash on her brow, blocking her vision. She couldn't see Spock or Uhura anywhere in the chaos and could only hope they hadn't been killed already. The anxious thought fueled her frustration and anger. She took a fist to the jaw and sent one right back.
A humongous soldier loomed out of nowhere and bodily threw her to the ground. Her skull bounced and her vision seemed to vibrate in pain, too stunned to move as the blurry form aimed a high-powered disruptor at her face. At least I won't feel it, she thought to herself, even though she was gnashing her teeth. It was odd that she wasn't crying or frozen with fear at the sight of her imminent death. Rather, it simply angered her even further. She couldn't die now. She didn't have time to die! John Harrison was still prancing through the rock formations of Kronos without having faced any retribution for his acts of manslaughter.
Teeth bared in defiance, she moved to kick the soldier's knees in, but the beam of a phaser interrupted her before she could carry out the maneuver. The enemy was hurtled sideways by the blast. Jim stumbled to her feet and wiped the blood off her chin, expecting to see Spock.
Instead, she saw a man in a great black leather duster, wielding a miniature pulse cannon like it weighed nothing more than a plastic fork. Her jaw dropped against her will as the mystery man took down the hovering Klingon spacecraft vessels with well-placed shots from the hand-held cannon, then ditched the cumbersome artillery for hand-to-hand combat.
If she thought Uhura moved gracefully, then this guy fought like buttered silk with drizzles of chocolate.
A hand touched her upper arm and eased her down into a sitting position; Jim became aware of a throb in the back of her head and the feeling of hot blood slicking its way down her skull and neck. Her eyes burned from dust and blood but she couldn't blink, couldn't break her frozen stare.
This was John Harrison, in the flesh. The predatory aura flared off of him in waves, every muscle taut and one neuron away from snapping into movement. Every kick landed like a missile, every punch blurred like a comet. Even his dodges and grapples hinted at power in every twitch.
Jim felt a cold flip of something in her stomach. It wasn't quite fear, but it was certainly filled with wariness. Her anger had blinded her, she realized; she had arrogantly assumed capturing John Harrison would be easy.
He casually threw the limp body of the Klingon–the seven foot tall, armored, combat-experienced Klingon–whose neck he'd just snapped off to the side like one threw away a piece of trash. Another smooth movement scooped up the fallen Klingon's disruptor; a flick of the thumb had it primed and ready with the sights configured on their shocked faces.
"How many torpedoes?" was his question (read: demand) as he stalked towards them at a quick pace. Jim automatically observed how he held the gun with perfect posture, as naturally as a trained soldier.
"Stand down." Spock's apathetic voice gained a hint of steel as he levered his own phaser towards the black maelstrom of death approaching them. A quick blast from Harrison's disruptor knocked the phaser out of Spock's grip.
"How many torpedoes?" Harrison demanded again, nearly shouting. His eyes locked onto Jim's. Blood filled her mouth again. The number swirled in her brain but she couldn't force it out past the lump in her throat, a ball-and-chain of unmeasurable fury and unquenchable sadness. "The torpedoes, the weapons you threatened me with in your message! How many are there?"
Spock delivered her a look of puzzlement (or as puzzled as a proper Vulcan could express) as the silence stretched the moment. "72," he answered slowly after a beat. Harrison shot him an inspecting look so quickly that Jim almost missed it before he threw down his gun.
"I surrender," he said shortly. He did not sink to his knees or raise his hands in submission, but he did kick the dropped weapon out of his own reach.
Light pressure from Uhura's fingers knocked Jim out of her daze. She swallowed and instinctively began pulling herself upwards, repressing the grunts and groans that her body screamed to let out. Her head swayed with vertigo and nausea churned thick and strong in her stomach, but she forced her head high and shuffled forwards, doing her best to hide the pain in her abdomen from where she'd been stomped on at one point in the fight. Spock and Uhura held back, obviously unsure of her intentions.
Harrison met her stare with a cool, unflinching gaze. His irises were strange, too bright and unnaturally gleaming in the dim, like two chips of flinty ice.
She took the time to delicately wipe away a stream of blood from her bruised brow with the back of her hand.
"On behalf of Christopher Pike, my friend,"– inspirationfatherparent– "I accept your surrender." It hurt to deliver the words, even though spoken stiffly. She turned away, grappling inwardly with the uncontrollable surge of emotion and pain ripping through her body like razorblades, the despair and the rage and loss and how dare he–
She turned around and her fist was flying before she could stop herself. She didn't want to stop herself. She wanted to beat Harrison's face in, wanted it to crumple and fold like wet paper underneath her bloody knuckles. His head snapped to the side from the force of the hit, but no bruise blossomed or skin split, even though she'd packed the punch with every iota of strength she possessed. His expression barely altered; he stared at her flatly, emotionless and health-wise undamaged. The ineffectiveness of her hit enraged her further; letting out an animalistic snarl, she punched again and again, and when that didn't work, she dug claw-like fingers into his shoulders and pulled him in close in order to slam a knee into his kidneys, a hit that would have downed or perhaps even lethally wounded a lesser man.
He didn't even flinch.
She was just contemplating a crotch shot when Uhura finally spoke up. "Captain!"
Ignoring her friend's worried call, Jim dug her hands into the wild shock of black hair and yanked Harrison's head down in order to lessen the height distance between them. Her next punch collided with his cheekbone solidly and with perfect form.
She'd been in too many barfights to count, but never had she fought like this, with so much savage intent and willingness to hurt another living being.
"Captain!" Uhura's scream finally broke Jim out of her bloodlust. The pain of Jim's injuries came crashing down upon her once again, her stomach, back, and head all screaming in agony. Hunched over the pain, she stared off into the distance. Her fists were bloody and throbbing. There was going to be one hell of a set of bruises decorating the knuckles in a little while; already they radiated the painful heat that precluded swelling and coloration.
Her body was wracked with fine tremors. She was emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausted. And yet Harrison had simply taken the hits without a single protest or retaliation. Her eyes dragged upward slowly, settling upon his features with a very distant look in her eyes.
He tilted his head, examining her with a sudden newfound interest. There was more emotion in his face than she'd witnessed yet so far, but it was borderline cruel; a thin mouth pulled back slightly in amusement.
"Captain," he repeated a bit breathlessly, eyes widening just a tad mockingly, but the rage had already settled back into her bones. She couldn't pull it back out right now even if she wanted to.
Instead, she turned away from him, limping painfully past a horrified Uhura and silent Spock. Flutterings of guilt at Uhura's shocked expression and her own shameful loss of self-control were already at work exacerbating the knot in her stomach. She knew the two had never seen her like that before, and her surge of viciousness had repulsed them on some level.
"Cuff him," she rasped through a split lip, and staggered slowly back to the shuttle.
Harrison's amused smirk followed her all the way there.
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