Humanity should be our race. Love should be our religion. -Unknown
They weren't on an enemy ship, per se, but still…they'd rather not get caught lurking here in the engineering room of the Andorian vessel, downloading pertinent information for their next mission. While the Andorians were part of the Federation, this ship in particular was not privy to whatever special project that the Admiral and Section 31 had in mind, and therefore the possibility of just asking them for the information was not on the table. Captain Pike had not yet informed them why they'd needed to sneak onto this friendly vessel and steal information, even though Michael had asked several times. Maybe he didn't know, either. Michael glanced furtively around, then back down at the small handheld computer in her hands.
"Hurry, Spock," she urged. "I don't feel like spending my evening in the brig while Captain Pike negotiates our freedom."
"Unless you have something useful to suggest," Spock replied, typing furiously, never looking away from the holoscreen he had pulled up in front of him, "we should keep our conversation to a minimum."
"Besides," Michael continued, used to her brother's deflections, "Vulcans and Andorians have a history of hostility."
"Yes, I am well aware."
"Well, I don't want to see you get hurt. We've been lucky so far, but it's been fifteen minutes, I might remind you."
"Michael," he stated simply, finally looking away from his work. "I understand your impatience, and appreciate your concern, but I require your silence." He said this without heat, as he said almost everything. All Michael could do was sigh.
After another full minute she ventured, "Do you at least have an estimate of how much longer it will take for you to finish the download?" Finding the information had been simple work, but the download was taking forever. She glanced down the hall at some distant sound. "I have a bad feeling about this, especially if Section 31 is involved. Why not send one of their guys?"
"Because Captain Pike trusts us. Your 'bad feeling' is just the effect of a natural chemical reaction within your body. Your adrenalin level is triggering your fight or flight response. I consider your 'bad feeling' a waste of mental energy, since before the beginning of our task, we heard the Andorians themselves say they would not return until well past the midday meal." Even so, he looked up from his typing to peer at Michael and then down the hall, the tiniest sign of tension barely noted in the slight lift of his brow. Had he heard something she had not? Her 'bad feeling' worsened. She tried a deep, calming breath.
"I know how adrenalin works." What Spock said was true. They had shuttled up close to a discharge channel of the Andorian ship with thrusters on low to avoid detection, locked their tiny vessel into place, and crawled their way through the vents to the engineering room, where they had waited over an hour to take their chance at retrieving the required data. The two Andorians that had inhabited the engineering workspace had not been working on anything urgent or particularly useful, in Michael's opinion, and would unlikely be hurrying back.
But the sound of not so distant laughter caused her to whisper an emphatic, "Hurry!"
"Forty seconds," replied Spock, as his fingers flew over the screen in front of him. Michael practically danced, shifting her weight from foot to foot, ready to run if the need arose. She could hear footsteps heading their way. She turned from her brother to place herself firmly in front of him, stance protective, phaser out in front of her, willing him to finish, giving him a few more seconds…hopefully.
"Twenty seconds," he said, finally a hint of anxiety in his own voice. Michael couldn't help but shake her head at his hypocrisy, at how he constantly belittles her human emotions, knowing all the while he feels them, too. Michael weighed the options before her. Leave with the download only partly finished or stay and get caught? Neither was very appealing. Captain Pike would surely give them a dressing down for either.
"Lieutenant!" called a deep voice from some room that lead off the engineering core, causing both Spock and Michael to look straight up in panic.
"Sir?" This came from the Andorian engineer, the one who was supposed to be at lunch for at least another ten minutes, the one who had been heading their way.
"Ten seconds," Spock whispered.
"In my office for a moment, if you don't mind?" replied the deep voice. Michael and Spock hadn't even known someone had been that close to their little operation or perhaps they would've been a little more careful. As it was, they were utterly grateful for this small reprieve. Michael began powering down the computer as Spock started backing out of screens until he closed the whole thing down with a deep breath.
"Yes," she whispered, placing the stored information deep into her pack. "Finally. Let's go!"
Quietly, quietly, they eased back into the air vent, silently slipping the casing back into place and breathing a sigh of relief, just as the Andorian engineer came back to his workstation. They crawled steadily through the darkened vent system, the only light filtering in from the small slats in the grates leading to different rooms, and followed the bulkhead upward, back to their little shuttle.
Halfway there, and Michael thinking the mission was all but done, her thoughts already on evening plans and chores, the alarm sounded. The noise was dampened somewhat in their tunnel, but still that same adrenaline flooded Michael's veins again. They had been caught out.
"Red Alert. Red Alert," called the ship's captain on the overhead com. "Intruders on board. I repeat, intruders on board. All security, report to posts."
There was little room to turn and consult Spock, and no way to be heard over the sounds of the alarm without also alerting anyone standing in the vicinity. The only option was forward, until she came to a widening in the system, a place where the vents branched. She paused here a moment, turning on hands and knees to face her brother, to come up with a plan.
"Do you think someone heard us in the engineering room?" she queried.
"It is definitely a possibility," he replied, and since it was so dark, Michael decided to ignore the wry look on Spock's face. In his defense, he had told her to stop talking.
Suddenly the alarm blare went silent, leaving Michael's ears ringing. "Intruders, show yourselves," ordered the captain, again through the overhead com. "Your shuttle has been located and confiscated. There is no escape. Turn yourselves in."
Michael's eyes went round. "What should we do?"
"Since we are no longer covert, I suggest that we…" began Spock, but the metal of the vent was too thin for their combined weight and gave way with a metallic screech and a crash of bodies hitting the floor below. The landing was sudden, jarring and uncomfortable, but a quick inventory of injuries proved there was nothing but bumps, bruises, and hurt egos.
Rolling over to hands and knees, Michael told herself to get up, to help Spock, but he was already on his feet, pulling at her waist, telling her to get going.
"Hey!" came a voice from the end of the hall, followed by several pairs of footsteps.
"Move!" commanded Spock, and keeping hold of her hand, pulled her quickly through the winding passageways of the foreign ship. The Andorians remained hot on their heels, not more than a turn behind them, when more voices came from up ahead.
"We're trapped," Michael stated the obvious. Spock turned a few circles in place, finally settling his attention on a loose panel of the wall. He dug his fingers in-between the gaps and wrenched it open, backing into the space behind it and pulling Michael in, slamming the panel shut again just as the Andorians turned the corner and ran by.
The space was tight. If Michael had thought the vent was constricting, she now considered it a palace compared to a coffin. There was absolutely no place that Spock wasn't. It didn't matter. For the moment she was content to stand still, lean her forehead against Spock's chest, and catch her breath. They each were panting, and she could feel his heart beating swiftly. She felt extra protective and grateful for Spock's presence, more so than usual, with that same trickle of anxiety flooding her veins, but somehow doubled.
"Are you all right, Michael?" Spock asked, worry lacing his even tone, causing her to peer into his face. As she did so, she felt another rush of concern, and then she realized, as easy as she felt the twitch of Spock's fingers that were touching the bare skin of her side, that she was feeling his emotions as well as her own.
In his rush to grab her, Michael's uniform had become disheveled, forcing the shirt up just a bit, but his hand was there against her, and there was no adjusting her clothing in this tight spot. His mind wasn't an altogether unfamiliar sensation to her. She had grown up with Spock and he had often practiced his touch telepathy with her when they were children, but that was long ago, and he had since mastered Vulcan logic over his humanity. By fully cultivating his Vulcan nature, he had spurned his human emotions, dismissing them as weak. But these emotions she felt from him now were anything but weak.
She felt his worry over her safety percolate through their gentle bond, the brotherly protectiveness, and it pleased her. To know that he felt something for her, a connection to her, made her smile, even in that tight hole of a wall panel with Andorians searching for them. His expression stayed mostly unreadable, but she felt his rush of affection at the smile she directed his way. She searched his face, willed him to say something kind to her. He had been through so much. He had been lost to her for so long, and more recently, lost to himself. His traditional haircut had grown shaggy and his beard proved he was no longer the boy she had hurt in their youth. It softened his rigid Vulcan features. As she looked into his face, she could admit to herself that he had grown into a beautiful man.
Spock raised a corner of his mouth in a rare smirk. "You lied. You do like my beard."
Michael only shook her head, still smiling. "Don't read me so close. It's rude." She raised her hands from where they lay on his chest to hover over his cheeks. "May I?"
"You may." Michael pressed her fingertips into his beard, reveling in its softness, and in the tenderness that radiated threefold from Spock now that she was touching him in return. Her thumbs grazed his cheekbones as she moved to caress his neck. She sensed his contentedness at her touch, and she knew, vaguely, that he hadn't been touched by anyone at all in a very long time. Then, as she kept her eyes on his, she felt, at the edges of her perception, a twinge of something very unexpected…and far from brotherly.
Arousal.
Desire.
The way her body was pressed against his, but reversed, sort of like a film negative, an awareness of his physical perception.
His sudden desire to kiss her was so strong that she almost acted on it herself. The feeling rushed through her, growing stronger by the second, emanating from the places where their skin touched and it raced through her veins. "Spock?" Michael whispered, questioned, yearned. And she couldn't tell for sure at that moment if it was only all his desire, because she felt, she felt…
It lasted for only a short moment, before Spock took hold of her wrists, pulling her hands away from his face, ending their connection, and Michael felt utterly alone in her own skin. She knew Spock would hate that she had sensed so much emotion from him, which was ironic, because the line was awfully fine between hate and love. They should know better than anyone.
Still, there was a tenderness in his gaze, and his eyes roamed over her face even as he pressed a palm to his com. "Lieutenant Spock to Discovery," he said quietly, then directed at Michael, "I was going to say earlier that since there is no longer a need to be covert, nor a clear path to our shuttle, I suggest we contact Discovery directly and beam out."
"Discovery here."
"Please beam Commander Burnham and myself directly to sick bay," Spock calmly answered, even as Michael was still reeling from her recent revelation. Spock, whom she'd grown up with, who had been her foster brother, her competition, her colleague, her friend, and sometimes her enemy, had feelings for her. Feelings!
The transporter beam locked onto them just as Michael heard the pounding of boots coming back down the corridor they hid in. A second later she reappeared aboard the Discovery, still held in her brother's arms. He dropped his hands from her as if she had been hot to the touch. The sparkle she had glimpsed in his eyes was all but gone and was replaced with his mask of indifference. Spock stepped back and the doctor rushed into his place, already checking her readings with his tricorder, and Michael felt bereft, as if she had lost something dear as she watched her brother turn and walk away.