13

There was a blade of some sort headed towards her back. Though her would-be assailant was light on their feet (not surprising once one considered the type of scurrying alien that occupied the frozen moon) they were careless, not unsheathing their weapon before proceeding upon this course of action, rather calculating their moment and only then revealing Hell's grim fury, allowing the Ensign's highly trained ears and ever-present sense of survival to identify the tinny slide of metal. Nyota had less than a moment before the weapon met precious giving flesh below her ribcage, or, more likely given the nature of her outerwear, the delicate thin skin of her slender throat. There was no time to mentally curse at her ill-timed naivety but to simply continue walking down the poorly lit corridor and wait for the murderer to strike—this was no assassination, no promotion would occur through her death only the disposal of unwanted and assuredly lethal information.

She had been warned, felt her own hackles rise at the thought of the blue skinned beings whom had come to appear as ancient carnivorous monsters in her imagination, but the events of the morning and her actions therein had led to this encounter, and as she couldn't go back—wouldn't—Nyota had to come out the victor here and now. She had come too far to lose now.

She shifted to the left fast, throwing her arms up and angling her torso away from the long curved dirk that was built for penetration rather than slashing and was currently occupying the space her kidney had been mere seconds before. The Andorian hissed through his razor teeth—despite Empire propaganda the sexes were easily differentiated—and instead of making another stabbing motion like expected immediately made a grab for the dagger secured to her leg, intentions clear that he wished to unarm her before adding a selection of holes to her body. Nyota's knee rushed up to meet his face as her arm came down in a sharp chopping motion. Unfortunately instinct had made her raise the same leg the Andorian wanted, and as both actions made contact it gave him the backward momentum to rip the band off and throw her protection back down the hallway from where they came.

There was no time to stand and wait for his next attack; Nyota jumped forward with another kick, kneecap, kneecap, solar plexus, but the Andorian evaded, fast on his feet and not appearing to search for a retreat. His dirk came forward—the shining item much nicer than anything Nyota would have thought to find among the workers possessions—forcing her to move back. Her coat was a noticeable impediment, an added weight where the Andorian had none but she doubted he would give her time to remove it. This wouldn't do. If Nyota hoped to have any chance of retaliation she would need to get in close to the bastard and that meant the very definite risk of a punctured organ.

Scotty and Gaila would be waiting for her in transport with the safety gear if the engineer and Orion could be trusted at this point. If not then there were only two possible scenarios Nyota could picture: either the couple had beamed out alone, or, like herself, they were defending themselves against Andorian co-conspirators. At least that was whom Nyota felt she was fighting, an Andorian under the influence and thumb of one Captain Christopher Pike.

14

Before

She works on Gaila's contraband data files late at night much as she had watched Kirk's vids, door triple locked and blanket wrapped around her shoulders to keep out the bone-deep cold. Her mind feels open again for the first time in almost two years as she devours the broken distorted fragments, letting her education come to the fore-front of her exceptional mind to transcribe and memorize. It is Romulan in nature—Nyota works too closely day in day out with records of her Empire's combatants to not recognize the thick structured strokes—however the essence of the message evades her. It is a supremely frustrating process when the majority of what she can decipher is no more than greetings and small talk. . .And gems? Minerals?

"Romlastha," she whispers to herself, sometimes repeatedly, rolling the vowels slowly and staring a firey hole through her console screen. Her layers of rage have morphed into the desire found in self-righteous indignation. The presence of a communiqué between Pike and some Romulan agent is enough proof to pass on to Empire superiors if Nyota only wished to cast dispersion on the Captain's illustrious career, if all she wished was to see the Captain reprimanded or possibly transferred. (She doubts this extreme would happen in any event; Pike did not become Captain without garnering many friends in high places, and all she currently has is suspicion, not even the credible appearance of Pike's name—though she would bet her front teeth the block-lettered Romulan 'C' refers to none other than the merciless Captain.) No, none of this truly matters any more.

Nyota needs to find what she what not supposed to see.

Romlastha alone is not damning. There are numerous knowledgeable translators employed by the Emperor for the specific purpose of translating Romulan messages—the Terran Empire and the Romulan Empire have been warring too long for this calling to be overlooked—and while she is conversant in all three dialects this alone could not keep her from the flagship if Pike were afraid of her xenolinguistic abilities.

Nyota's duties suffered minimally. Not in quantity, no no never that, but as she delved deeper into the syntax, piecing words and sentences together from the corrupted hard copies, her paid work became more wearisome, more unsatisfying than it had ever been, and—though minimal—this dereliction was noticed. It was brought to her CO's attention.

"Ye cannae go—go—Och Christ Gaila! Don't stop! Yea, yea. . .Ye cannae go woolgathering Uhura, not at this juncture!" Nyota had stood in his quarters, arms folded, averting her eyes while Gaila rode Scotty like a pony. Perhaps it was the couple but she did not find their coitus half as spellbinding. Janice Rand would have said she had yet to form an emotional attachment. Nyota would have responded that her psychobabble was ridiculous and that there was no room for attachment in the Empire—as well Janice knew. Nyota had no attachments. But there were no more behavioural reports brought to Scotty's notice.

It shouldn't be so difficult! The thought is unreasonable of course. She is a xenolinguist, not a trained code breaker, and with the terrible state of these files there is definitely more code than report about them. That does not stop Nyota from finding ways to curse or blame herself in some small way. She has yet to listen to the scrambled transmissions—refuses to in fact, like a punishment she presses upon herself for not discerning the initial Romulan messages. In a fit of experimental desperation Nyota places five pieces of script together like some ancient puzzle, and, with a dash of her stylus, sends the section twirling upon her console vidscreen. What would the Romulans want with a Captain of the Empire? Besides unconditional surrender. Besides a first class war ship—like Pike would ever give the Enterprise over to the Romulans. She sighs and rubs her eyes. What would a Praetor want with him? No, no, fuck! I'm not asking the right questions!

Looking back down on her console, Nyota gives a start and ever so slowly smiles. Rather than the vertical block writing of Romlastha she has been focusing on, she is suddenly staring at disjointed horizontal script. The mind boggles! Her enthusiasm is renewed. Smoothing a jagged edge here, curving rather than abruptly stopping a line there: Nyota leans back on her cot and cannot help the maniacal grin that threatens to split her face in half. It is absurd to be outwardly happy at the information she has just stumbled upon, but that is exactly what draws Nyota to a pique of smugness. The Romlastha had been interwoven with another written language and she cannot believe the fish-bone-in appearance script was made to fit so seamlessly with the Romulan. Genius. Utter genuis.

As admiration fades away however, concern sits in. It is clearly Andorian script she has deciphered which has several conotations that need considering. Are Pike and his Romulan contact purposely using Andorian to conceal their intent? Is it Pike alone creating this "double language" to outwit Empire transcribers? "You're being watched you know." Nyota pulls her blanket tighter around her slim form. She had known, had felt it. . .

What if there was no Romulan contact at all? What if there was merely Pike and thousands of Andorian rebels?

15

Gritting her teeth and hissing like a scalded cat, Nyota reached forward and lunged at her attacker. He was cagey, aware, and there was no time to wait him out in a vain hope for help—there was clearly none. He was prepared for this little coup and she most certainly wasn't, but that didn't mean Nyota was without options. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and in the flicker of a moment, while the Andorian's dirk went through the flesh of her outer thigh, Nyota screamed and ripped off the man's two antennae. Resin-like blue blood splashed her face as the Andorian dropped like a stone, his body a mass of convulsions whilst his internal equilibrium short-circuited, and she watched with deep panting breaths his legs jiggle and shake against the floor, a blue smear below his mutilated head.

It wasn't until he stopped moving that Nyota realized she still held his antennae within her white-knuckled fists. She dropped them quickly and hurried towards the transporter room without a backward glance, her Terran red blood rolling down her leg with each painful step.

16

Before

"Where do you come from?"

Nyota glances sharply at Gaila, caught off guard, before returning to her translation. Now that the languages have been determined and several distortions have been linked, Nyota must use her considerable talents to decide what exactly it is that Pike or his contact is trying to say. She does not like Gaila's question and is thus vague.

"I'm a Terran, Gaila. You know that."

The Orion makes a moue of disappointment then scuffs her bare feet on Nyota's floor—even the green woman's toe nails are red. . .but this is a fact that should not bear notice. Gaila meanders around Nyota's small quarters; it is something else the Ensign does not like but there is no point in ordering the annoyance away now when Nyota had practically welcomed her earlier. Nyota hadn't drawn a weapon after all. But the woman is obviously bored and shows it in her petulant tone.

"Then tell me about Terra, pretty! Tell me about you!" She flounced back over to the cot and shook out her hair. "If Monty's right about that abandoned hunk of space trash headed this way, the three of us will need to feel comfy quickly. We'll be there for a while." Nyota had been surprised when the Orion had come offering free intel, gathered by herself and Scotty, information Nyota had believed she would have to miraculously garner if the three of them were ever to leave this frozen moon. Apparently the fuck buddies had done their own homework: there was an unoccupied craft heading towards the moon's atmospheric space. All life control functions were offline, there was no sign of engine power, but, as apparently Scotty had said, it wasn't all bad. He could fix it. Eventually. Nyota didn't know which was worse: an indeterminable amount of time on a confined vessel in dead space, or the rest of her life (as short as it may very well be) on the station looking over her shoulder.

"There's not much to tell," she mutters, absentmindedly biting her stylus. She is stuck on a verb and would rather focus on that than giving Gaila any more power over her. Throw? Shove? "I grew up, I left. And now I'm here." The green woman suddenly, inexplicably, cuddles into her side. If she thought Nyota was going to share her wrappings she was crazy. "Get off me." Gaila rubs her chin into Nyota's shoulder and the Ensign rolls her eyes while the Orion not so subtly smells her.

"Then tell me about your lovers, how they touched you and moved you again and again," she purrs before dropping her head unceremoniously onto Nyota's back with a groan. "You never stop reading! Great Goddess, don't you know what those warlords of yours are up to yet?! You need to dig us out of this rut!" Nyota's brow creases in a flare of indignant anger, ready to finally start that fight and break the status quo. She coils herself to give the Orion a push off her bed when her eyes widen and dart back to the padd. Dig. DIG!

"Christ Gaila, that's it!"

Now it's Nyota's turn to pace, in fact it's frantic, and her expression travels wildly between excitement of discovery and hopeless despair. To whom can she send this sort of intelligence? By the time the Emperor receives it Nyota, Gaila, and Scotty will be dead; all that will result is Pike's torture and subsequent death for stealing from the Empire--if the message reaches the correct hands—and then the Empire would absorb all the illegal credits. No. It wouldn't be illegal then. They would just take it.

"What is it?"

"Digging Gaila!" Nyota shoves the padd under her pert green, calling up other translated sections. It's painful to keep her voice a whisper through gritted teeth. "Pike and the Andorians are mining dilithium and pocketing the profits!" She has spent too much time searching for a Romulan connection. There's no safety in screaming or crying and there isn't time even if it was. "Pike must have been doing this for years!" She needs to listen to the audio transmission now! "Get up! Go watch a vid or something!"

Nyota situates herself on Gaila's vacated spot and gets to work removing the heavy distortion layered upon the supposedly scrambled audio. The volume of her ear piece is on the highest level, the static almost deafening, but it cannot be helped; not a nuance can be lost or scrapped as sub-space radiation. She's listening for spoken Romulan now; it's virtually impossible for a Human tongue to produce the extra vowels and consonants required in Andorian speech patterns—God knows she can't do it, and if she can't there's no way in hell Pike can—but traditional Romulan is a first year Starfleet course, mandatory in many tracks, and if the Captain and the Andorians are writing it Nyota will bet they'll be speaking it.

It's like peeling Terran vegetables, scraping away the rubbish until what's left is delicious and whole, and as night turns into the early hours of the morning what Nyota finds is orally delicious and completely unanticipated. It's not traditional Romulan. It's High Romulan, the language of the Praetors. And, like the Romlastha, it's not alone.

Nyota's exhausted when she finally looks up from her bent position—and can't believe she was so stupid as to leave Gaila to her own devices for so long.

Jim is giving it to Len on the console, the volume turned down and Gaila practically embracing the screen, head dipped close to hear the successive grunts and moans that Nyota knows off by heart, and a green hand reaching out to caress the bruised image of Jim's bare back. Nyota's jaw tightens as Len comes. She hasn't watched these tapes in a while.

"I think he's very delicate," Gaila murmurs as Nyota approaches the Orion's place on the floor. Nyota knows Gaila isn't speaking of the doctor but she still chokes out a laugh. It doesn't sound happy.

"He likes redheads."

"You hurt the other very deeply, didn't you? Yet. . .they both worry for you."

We hurt each other. The words are on Nyota's tongue but she cannot say them. It would mean guilt. It would mean regret. To admit either threatens all forms of stability. Instead she snaps the console off and sighs deeply.

"Is it possible to get a personal message to a Flagship undetected?"

". . .Like these men have sent to you?"

"Focus Gaila! A message from here to a Warp-8 Empire Flagship undetected. Can it be done?" The Orion's lips curl and she looks Nyota slowly. In the broader scheme of the universe, it's a wonder Nyota has yet to succumb to Gaila's charms, and she knows it.

"What did you find in that transmission I located for you?"

"Pike's using Romlastha as a base Gaila, but I don't think there are any Romulans involved," she looks at her padd with a quizzical expression. "It may mean nothing at all but there's Vulcan interwoven with the High Romulan—"

"I'm hearing a lot of blah blah blah."

"Well how about this then," Nyota rears up, giving Gaila a hard poke in the arm and pointing viciously at the screen. "Mister Delicate may be able to use this and right now—" Oh Christ she wants to throw up and wants to scream and can do neither. "—he's the only way I can see of bringing down Pike and keeping my career in the Empire!" It shouldn't be that important and she somehow thinks that Gaila is justified in regarding her as if Ceridwen tentacles are slowly creeping through her long ebony locks, but it is important, it has always been important, and Nyota still wants her due.

17

She had to slow down once the hallway to the transporter room was reached. Not only does her leg hurt like a son-of-a-bitch there are three more dead Andorians in various splayed positions and phaser fire burns on the wall. Since there seems to be no sign of physical combat Nyota can only assume that Scotty and Gaila were more prepared than she and had enough sense to collect the curved dirks after their attackers fell—something that a now weapon-less Nyota wished she had had the presence of mind to do. However, it isn't everyday that one rips an actual appendage from a living breathing being so the Ensign is willing to cut herself a minimum of slack. She won't dwell. Can't.

Leaving space between herself and the blue hands, outstretched in final supplication to the beyond, Nyota traversed the hallway and tentatively pressed her side against the transporter door. It was locked. She clenched her jaw and, with surreptitious looks over her shoulder, began to whisper.

"Gaila! Gaila, are you there?" There was blood soaking into the insulating fibres of her boot. "Scotty? I—"

Her head jerked up, and in the passing of moments Nyota felt her heart stop cold and choking and start again at the speed of streaming neurons. There is the heavy, dull, hammer of possibly hundreds of angry alien feet headed her way from somewhere on the station and the time for secret motivation is at an end.

"Open the door!"

Beating her hands against the unyielding material, a horrible rush of thought flies through Nyota's head. They've left her. She's figured out the incendiary messages. Her name would be the only one connected to it all. She's helped Scotty and Gaila achieve their dream of escape and taken on all the viable risk herself--Fuck!

"SCOTTY! OPEN THE GODDAMNED DOOR!"

There's a beep and a screech of rusty sliders, but the door opened like a mythological cave and Gaila's green arm splattered blue shot out to haul Nyota inside. She's about to start in on the pair, but neither the Orion nor the engineer own appearances of satisfaction. They looked desperate. "What is it?" she panted, thankful for the barrier closing behind her. Gaila moved to engage the locking mechanism as Scotty shook his head from behind the controls. It takes Nyota a second to see the slaughtered Andorian behind the console.

"The blue bastards 'ave ruined everythin'! Transporter capabilities are offline—"

"Then fix it—"

"It cannae it done! Christ, d'ye nae listen?!" Nyota is stopped by the CEO's vehemence and Gaila's restraining hand. The man was enraged, his face an inferno. "They've shut down central heatin' which'll mean the end o' our poor wee human bodies soon enough and—and Gaila—" Nyota watched him watch the green woman—who wore a long hooded cloak over not much else—then brush a hand through his sparse hair. "We've no access to engineerin' or life support an' they've murdered those poor sots up on Platform 6. . ." Ah. The poor excuse for security guards that doubled as zookeepers towards the Andorian masses, agonizers ever ready. There was little sympathy to be felt.

Oxygen tanks and survival suits had been dropped in the corner, now worthless. Just like their chance of escape. She heard a gasp and Gaila's hand tightened around her wrist.

"Your leg. Uhura you're—"

Nyota shrugged her aside and limped over to Scotty with a barely contained scowl and cold sweat running down her back.

"What do we have then?"

He grimaced and smacked his hand down bitterly on the console as the sound of thumping feet escalated.

"Communications operatin' to adequate efficiency if ye'd like to send out a last will an' testament." Gaila gave a rather creative homeland curse and hauled out a phaser and bloodied dirk from beneath her cloak, bracing herself alongside the door.

"Don't say that! I can't believe you'd say that!"

"Well what d'ya want me to do?!"

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Nyota punched at the controls, opening all frequencies. "Code AAO, all Empire spacecraft—"

"Are ye outta yer mind?!" Alpha Alpha Omega was a distress call, and in the Empire was akin to pleading mercy from ravenous dogs catching the scent of fear. "It's nae like there's anyone out there but—"

"We've run out of options," Nyota stated, placing a palm firmly on the console as she began to lose feeling in her hip. Her leg could give out at any moment. The three of them jerked as one as a war cry echoed outside and Nyota knew the first wave of Andorians was coming down the hall. "Transfer what power you can! We're going to die anyway. Here it's a certainty but I'd rather hedge my bets on a possibility than give up entirely!"

The door shook with the vibrations of several moving objects and the pounding simply continued, the roar of combined voices in an alien tongue enough to scramble Nyota's already frayed senses. No! No, you have to do something! She reached out with her free hand and pulled Scotty to the console. "DO IT!" She didn't watch him configure wires, instead she continued her open transmission while Gaila prepared for Armageddon at the door.

"All Empire spacecraft, respond! Code AAO. Code AAO. All Empire spacecraft, respond!" Sparks appeared out of nowhere on the upper left portion of the door. "Respond! RESPOND—!" A crackle of static and then a voice sounded as clear as a bell.

"Substation Juno III, this is I.S.S Enterprise responding to a Code AAO—"

"Christ man!" Scotty shouted. "Get us the hell outta here!"

"Shut up!"

"Substation Juno III, we've been ordered to affect transport for one Lieutenant Uhura. Please confirm."

She knew that Scotty and Gaila were sharing looks but Nyota refused to debate semantics at a time like this.

"Uhura here. Transport for three Enterprise."

"We have orders for only one Lieu—"

"Transport for three right now Enterprise or there won't be a body for your Captain to question you about!" She gestured violently for Gaila to come away from the door. "That's my order!"

"But Lieutenant—"

A section of the door bent in precariously and cry of success rose up with it. The structure wouldn't stand another minute under such a barrage.

"Now Enterprise!"

". . .Yes Lieutenant. Life signs locked, prepare three to beam up."

"NOW!!"

The door crashed open and in rushed a sea of blue.