Liar, Murderer, Smuggler: Act I

The entire senior crew had assembled in the briefing room. If it hadn't been for the fact that Scotty simply was too upset to take a seat, Diana most likely would have been the one standing in the corner of the room. Instead, the Chief engineer paced in tight, quiet circles as he tried to keep his distress in check.

It seemed as though every time the Enterprise crew thought that they could take a breath, something else cropped up. While she hadn't met the woman, Jaylah apparently held a special place in the crew's hearts, but most especially with Mister Scott. Since the incident on Althea, he had been much cooler towards her. She had a feeling that had to do with the danger that Jim had been in, but he had never outright told her. But, nevertheless, she was concerned. Diana could feel the worry coming off of him in waves, and it pained her that she could not do more to help ease him.

The crew assembled, Diana watched as the captain stood and brought up a display of very fine print text before he spoke. It became quite clear that he was reviewing the text for any details he might have missed, but that he must have already known the bulk of the information.

"Jaylah was scheduled to graduate from Starfleet Academy on Stardate 2264.52, nearly three weeks after we last docked with Yorktown." His voice was even, every bit Captain Kirk and every bit presenting the most calming, confident presence he could for his crew. It was a trait that, in hindsight, she now realized should have been another hint that Steve and Jim were similar for a reason. Not that she had really had time to process what that would mean. Without spending more time with Jim off-duty, she still wasn't sure how they would proceed. She knew the truth of how she felt about Jim, but she wasn't sure she could act on it. And with this crisis, there was no sign that they would resolve that any time soon. "She received her official posting, but never arrived for the ceremony. As a result, the Academy filed a missing persons report when she didn't turn up in her rooms a few days later."

"Well, it's not like she'd be the first cadet to sleep through graduation," Doctor McCoy remarked, but from the way he was frowning, she got the impression he was using it to cope with his own concern. "Doesn't seem very like her, though. Girl seemed pretty excited to go to the Academy."

"And I'd like to think she would have been excited to know she was scheduled to come to the Enterprise." Jim said in agreement, looking through the display one more time before looking back up at the staff. "The Academy officially has no idea where she is. However, the fact that she received a posting but I never received transfer orders suggests that someone intercepted the communique. Otherwise, I would have received those and the subsequent withdrawal when she didn't formally accept."

"Now, hang on a minute," Scotty had stopped pacing, the timbre of his voice deeper and with even more of a brogue than normal. "Ye're telling me Starfleet knew they had a cadet bail on a posting to the fleet's flagship, then someone in Starfleet made sure ye didn't know she'd gone missing?"

"That would certainly be indicative of foul play." Spock said, voicing what they all were thinking.

Jim scrolled through the text before him, but again, Diana had the distinct impression that he was looking for details. He already knew the broad strokes. "A few days ago, the Republic was on its way back from Coridan when they intercepted an Orion pirate vessel, as well as what was left of a slave ship. Jaylah's communicator transponder, along with an academy uniform that had been badly damaged, were found in the wreckage of that slave ship. Now, according to the Republic's chief science officer, the wreckage was at least a week old and there was nothing to suggest how the uniform got there."

Uhura was aghast and visibly shaken. "You're saying the Orion Syndicate has her."

"He's sayin' it's a definite possibility." Scotty replied, balling a hand into his fist. "The thievin', sick bastards, in a week they could have sold her already! She could be dead, Jim - "

The captain held a hand up to silence him. "I'm not saying that, Scotty. But, there's a lot here that's not adding up." Jim surveyed his team's reactions as he continued with his suspicions. "A cadet goes missing after getting posted to the fleet flagship and no one questions it? Then, when her belongings are found halfway across the quadrant, it doesn't even hit a security alert."

"Combine that with the fact that a Romulan warbird had our bloody command codes, and ye've got the start of another Section 31." The name was unfamiliar to Diana, but the way that the rest of the staff bristled at it gave her pause. It told her the situation could quickly become dire.

Jim leaned forward, bracing his hands on the table before he spoke again. "I don't want to jump to conclusions, so bear in mind that we have a lot of questions and no answers." He pointed at the table, as if to refocus the group. "But, if it hadn't been for you, Scotty, we wouldn't have known she was missing at all. So, whoever's responsible for this got sloppy."

"Och, I didn't do nothin'." Scotty huffed. "I was sent a standard automated transmission that got caught in a subspace relay until we got close enough to it. If I'd just checked in with her more..."

Diana sat up a bit. The captain looked like he was about to speak, but when she caught his eye, he held back while she turned to Scotty. "Why did you receive the message? I understand that she is a former ally, based on how all of you react to her, but why are you her emergency contact? As opposed to the captain or… or her family." It was both a question out of personal curiosity, but also one of diplomatic need. Something told her that if this woman had befriended the chief engineer and been assigned to the Enterprise, she was quite brilliant. Oftentimes, brilliant people became targets.

"Ah." Scotty's frown vanished for a moment as an expression closer to bashfulness replaced his concern. "Well, Jaylah's got no family 'cept us. We found her after her parents had been killed. She saved us, but, I, ehm, I may have gotten close with her. We kept in touch when she went to the Academy. I suppose she just thought if she had someone to go to in an emergency, it'd be me."

"I see." Diana was touched by his clear affection for her. It made wanting to find her all the more important. "Then, perhaps you have insight we don't. Maybe she was working on something while at the Academy, something that could have distracted her, or caught the attention of someone who would wish to do her harm."

"If it is indeed a case of a Starfleet security breach, perhaps she mentioned individuals you were unfamiliar with or did not behave appropriately, Mister Scott."

Scotty went ashen as the thought clearly crossed his mind. "I… I dinnae. She did send a message that she was meetin' with some admirals, and I'd never heard of them before. But, ye don't exactly meet admirals when you're a cadet unless ye've done something exceptional or something terrible. It was about the holo-emitters she'd developed, the way they worked behaviorally. She wasn't exactly specific."

"Then, I have to assume that there's foul play involved, and i just called in all my favors with Commodore Paris to get this far." DIana could tell Jim was holding something back. But, what? And why? "Now, we don't know much about the Orion Syndicate, but we do know their slave trade is incredibly lucrative and any alien female would be seen as an exotic prize." There was something in the way Jim specified gender that made Diana's stomach turn and her temper slowly begin to rise. "I've asked crewman Savi to come to the briefing room, and she should be here any minute. But, if we expect to do anything about this, we need need to know our enemy."

"They use the name of the great hunter, yet they trade in slaves." Diana finally spoke. It wasn't intentional that the crew talked around her, but there were hundreds of species in and out of the Federation. This was not one she had studied in depth. She only knew that they ran illegal dilithium mining operations, hence why they were referred to as pirates. "Surely, that must be against the Federation's charter."

"It is." Jim replied. "But, they're not part of the Federation. The Orion Syndicate runs out of its own set of colonies in the Beta Quadrant, and their pirate ships span most of Federation territory. When we run into them, we absolutely detain them if we suspect they're doing something illegal, but we're not a military organization. We don't make it a habit of assuming the worst of people." Jim pushed off of the table and stood straight once more.

"Then why hasn't Starfleet sent a ship before now?" Sulu asked beside her. The helmsman had been quietly considering the situation with the others.

Jim sighed, his eye meeting Diana's for just a moment before he looked down at the table. "I have no earthly idea."

He's lying. She had caught that subtlety with him months ago, and now she was sure there was a reason her stomach was swimming. He knew why they wouldn't send a ship, but he didn't feel comfortable telling the crew.

"But, I do know that we're going to get her back. I've spoken with Commodore Paris, and we believe that a small undercover operation would be able to extract Jaylah from the slave operations."

"Then, I will go with you." Diana said, staring the captain down for a moment. She had a feeling the more she learned, the more righteously angry she would become with this Orion Pirate Syndicate, but first, she had to make sure Jim knew she would not be taking no for an answer.

"Thank you, Diana, that's what I was hoping you would say. Because, based on the ship wreckage, the Republic had a fairly good idea where that ship was going." Jim brought up a star chart on the table's display. After a moment, a projected course of the ship started to dot across the map. "The Borderland."

"Oh my good lord…" Scotty muttered behind Diana. "The Verex III outpost. Admiral Archer said he nearly lost almost a dozen of his crew back on the NX-01. I remember him teaching that lecture at the Academy." The Scotsman seemed chilled. His jaw was set, and it was closest she'd ever seen to him looking… haunted. "We've got to save her. If they sell her to a Klingon, she'll disappear into the Empire and we'll never find her." When Scotty turned to face Jim, his eyes were glossy with unshed tears as he considered Jaylah's fate. "Jim, ye've got to do something and fast. Let me go with you."

Jim shook his head. "Absolutely not, Scotty. I need you here on the Enterprise, and you aren't exactly accustomed to undercover work."

"Then I'll go." Uhura said, almost as if to dare Jim to tell her no.

Before he could say one way or the other, Sulu rose his hand. "Me, too. You need combat experience."

Jim immediately shook his head, waving them both off. "No, no, I appreciate that, but when I meant small, I actually meant… miniscule." He said without much flare. "The fact is, I don't need a communications expert because Orions primarily speak standard, and I don't need additional combat experience if I have Diana with me."

"With you?" McCoy echoed, his eyebrows shooting up almost to his hairline. "You just got back from one near death experience and now you want to go on another one?" The doctor shook his head, scowling. "Typical."

"It'll be fine, Bones." Jim said, attempting to placate his surly best friend. "Diana can take care of the both of us, believe me." When Spock quirked an eyebrow, clearly ready to add his color, Jim shook his head. "No. Decision's made. Diana agrees to go, so the two of us will go. What I need from everyone else is to prepare. We need an extraction plan, in case something does go wrong. Diana and I will need a ship, currency to trade with - maybe the confiscated latinum we logged from the Ferengi cruiser a few months back - and Bones, I need you to figure out a way to make Diana look like one of them. Less... distracting."

Diana glanced down at her Federation attire, then back up at him. "I can blend in."

"He ain't talkin' about your clothes, sweetheart. Your complexion's a little pink for them." Leonard said, still clearly not thrilled by the proposition. Diana wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but she simply furrowed her brow in confusion and held back on satisfying her curiosity. She had no intention of leaving the briefing room until she could speak to Jim in private and find out what he was hiding from the crew.

The doors to the briefing room opened with a whoosh as a science officer Diana recognized stepped into the room. The remarks from the doctor made much more sense. The green-skinned, red-haired Orion woman was part of the botany team, and if Diana remembered correctly, she had had… a rocky friendship with Pavel before he left the ship. "Captain, Commander." She nodded to the two most senior officers, clearly a bit rattled by the sudden call before the senior staff. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes, just a moment." Diana glanced around the room, then caught the fond expression on Jim's face before he motioned to the rest of the staff. "You have your orders. I will check in with each of you shortly, and Bones, I'll send Diana to sickbay right after we're done here. Lieutenant Uhura, if you could stay behind along with the ambassador, please. You listened to your roommate more than I did… Galiana?"

Uhura bristled. "Galia."

Jim winked at her. "See, exactly." The brief smile he gave her indicated there was a joke Diana was missing. The captain turned his attention to the others. "Dismissed."

Diana rose with the others, but her intent was not to leave. Instead, she moved to Mister Scott, drawing his attention. "Scotty, I promise we will find her. However, I'd like to know more about Jaylah before we leave."

Scotty nodded, still quite distraught. He opened his mouth to speak, but had to clear his throat when nothing came out. Finally, he managed, "Of course. You need anythin', just let me know."

Diana gently touched his shoulder, a moment of comfort before he finally left the briefing room.

Once the chief engineer left, it was just Uhura, herself, crewman Savi and Jim.

"Crewman, please have a seat. The Ambassador and I have a few questions to ask you about your time on the Orion colonies." The dynamic in the room changed significantly. Jim's tone, his body language, had suddenly shifted from the open, but somewhat authoritative captain to that of a friend. And most importantly, it didn't escape her notice that he had made a point to mention that Diana wanted to know answers to his questions.

For a brief moment, Diana found herself reminded of another time and another place. Paris, helping the French authorities shut down an underground prostitution ring. There was a way that other women banded together, even if they had male partners, to comfort and soothe the survivor of whatever abuse had been perpetuated.

He wants her to feel safe… Diana realized as she made her way back over and slowly took a seat. Even though she was careful to keep her godly abilities to herself, she could still sense the trepidation from the younger woman. "Hello. I don't believe we've formally met." Diana held her hand out to the woman. "I am Ambassador Diana Prince. The captain and I believe you can help us find someone." It had been easy to slip into the assumed role of partners, as if she and JIm had discussed it previously and not only decided on the task five minutes before.

Unfortunately, she wasn't entirely sure what Savi needed to feel safe from, but given what they had heard thus far, it was enough to make her uneasy.

"Of course, anything I can do to help." Savi shook Diana's hand, then immediately put her hands back in her lap as she looked around. "I just… don't know what I can do." The way the group had settled, Uhura was on one side of Savi, Diana on the other. She noticed that Jim had significantly distanced himself to nearly the opposite end of the briefing room.

"The survivor we picked up on Altamid, Jaylah." That was Nyota, gently easing Savi into the facts of the situation. "We think she may have been taken by an Orion pirate ship and is on her way to be sold to auction."

Savi's expression immediately went from nervous to stricken. She wore her heart on her sleeve. "No, oh… oh, no…"

"We were hoping you could tell us what you can about your time within the Syndicate, Savi." Jim said from his position behind them. Diana didn't spare a glance back at him, but his voice suggested he was trying to be as soothing and gentle as possible. "I know it's not polite to ask, but, the ambassador and I need as much detail as possible to be able to blend in."

"You want to know about when I was a slave…" Savi said, looking up at the captain with wide eyes that spoke of deeper pain and terror than Diana would have thought of such a young woman. "I was young, I-I might not remember anything to help - " She was terrified. She had been ambushed.

Diana leaned forward, slipping the girl's hand into hers. She would discuss Jim's recklessness afterwards. For a man who clearly felt so deeply and wanted to help so many, he had allowed his personal feelings to cloud him from this: simple, raw fear of victimhood. She couldn't decide if that was a slight influence from his newfound clarity regarding Steve. Steve made decisions without much discussion, and it often meant moments like these. "You do not need to do this, sister. If it truly upsets you, I will not force you to face those demons."

Savi squeezed Diana's hand in response, and finally turned her attention from the captain back to her. When their eyes met, Savi seemed to steel herself. Diana hoped she found courage through the simple gesture. "No… it's fine. I'll tell you. That's why I came to the Federation. To escape, so that other people would know and wouldn't go through it. I don't want to see Jaylah hurt, and I don't think she'd be able to handle how it is there. The auctions, the slavers…" The way her eyes flicked to the captain suggested more than he probably wanted to hear, but it was enough for Diana.

Diana turned back to the captain. "Jim, can you leave us with her, please? I can find you before I head to Sickbay, but I think this would be best done…" She glanced from him to Uhura, then back. "With a smaller group."

For a moment, she thought he might argue, as he looked both perplexed and annoyed that he was being pushed out of his own briefing. She tilted her head, non-verbally reminding him that his track record with winning arguments against her was still not in his favor.

So, he nodded and cleared his throat. "Of course. Take all the time you need."

Once the captain had left, Savi's demeanor didn't change much, but Diana could tell that she was less scared than before when she started to speak.

"I suppose the first thing to understand is that… you can be a slave as young as 14 years. You're called a lodubyal, and your slave contracts are for 21 years." Savi's words spilled from her lips as if Dionysus himself had loosed her inhibitions with wine. "After that, you can retire or become a madam where you train others. That was my mother. She had only started as a madam, so we went from outpost to outpost a lot. It was… difficult to know where we would be. One time, we got separated on the auction floor and I nearly ended up in the pens. She snuck me out when I was 13, because she was afraid I'd end up like her…"

Over the course of the next hour, Diana heard every gritty detail of the Orion slave trade. The way women were sold for everything from sexual pleasure to menial drudgery. How ships from various cultures were raided so that any crewmember could be sold, male or female, child or adult. She had to listen to Savi describe how one of her older sisters was deemed too difficult to sell and had been... cannibalized by other traders. Her stomach swam as Savi recounted the depravities of this mysterious pestilence right under the Federation's noses.

When the young crewman was through, Diana was shaken and filled with a righteous fury that would only be quenched with justice for not only Jaylah, but this girl as well.

And she desperately needed to see Jim.

As promised, Diana found the captain as soon as she was done speaking with Uhura and Savi. He had gone to his quarters, presumably to file some sort of report.

Unfortunately for him, meeting with Savi had only galvanized Diana while reminding her how ignorant men could be at times. Now that she knew of the horrors Savi had faced, she couldn't help but want to rage at him for asking her to tell such intimate details without any preamble or warning.

When the doors to his quarters opened for her, Diana blew into the room like a force of nature before she spotted him at his desk. "For a man who wishes to help people, who prides himself on his empathy and heroic nature, you are a fool."

Jim glanced up at her, dumb confusion written all over his face. The expression would have been charming if she had not been so vexed. "Excuse me?"

"She is a victim, and you asked her to tell us of her life without any consideration for how that might affect her!"

Jim rose from his seat, furrowing his brow as he made his way over to her. "Don't you think you're being a little harsh? She's a Starfleet officer, she can handle answering a few questions."

"The Orion Syndicate sold her mother into slavery. She narrowly avoided the same fate while her sister was eaten by their own kind because she was deemed too difficult." Diana was not known for pulling her punches, and she saw no reason to do so now. "Tell me, Jim, would you have wanted to tell your commanding officers of such atrocities in your life when all you wish to do is forget them? Those are scars that never disappear, never fade. And you didn't give her the courtesy of a warning! The slavers that beat her and would have held her aloft in the auction house were all men!"

As she berated him, she could see Jim's expression shift from disbelief to guilt and self-reproach. When she took just a moment to breathe, he held his hands up in surrender. "Diana, I had no idea! None of that was in her record, I expected her to just give us the high level details!"

"If that is the case, then why did you put yourself on the other side of the room?"

"Because she's a crewmember and I didn't want her to feel pressure from her captain. Since she was in Starfleet, I assumed she had escaped, and we know so little about what they do." She tilted her head, brow still twitching in anger, but he continued on. "Diana, please, believe me. I swear, if I had realized those were her circumstances, I would have handled it completely differently." He reached up to rub his eyes in distress. "Ah, shit. I was so focused on Jaylah, I should have asked." Turning away from her, Jim sighed and tried to put some distance between them. "I will… go apologize to her myself before we leave. Upsetting her was absolutely not my intention."

An uneasy silence fell between them as Diana resisted the urge to further berate him and Jim did a wonderful job of doing it to himself. As she watched him slowly pace the length of his quarters, specifically the area dedicated as his office, she felt her anger melt away. He was clearly upset with his own actions, and she knew that he had chosen to hide something from the crew, which meant he carried more weight on his shoulders than she knew. But, not for the first time since they had returned from Argelius IV, Diana found herself wondering if this was an oversight… or perhaps a way that Steve's memories had subtly changed him. If that was truly what happened.

In truth, Diana still wasn't sure who she was watching. She had barely been able to see Steve, had no time to say any of the things she had always wanted to. Yet, by the grace of the gods… he was there in front of her now. With a new lease on life and no need to be beholden to his demons.

So, why did she feel like Jim was allowing himself to indulge in Steve's old habits?

"You are not being entirely truthful with me. Or with the crew." She finally said, careful to keep the anger out of her voice, but not at the expense of her own authority. Diana was older than anyone on this ship, and she did not appreciate secrets. She never had.

"I have no idea what you're talking about - "

"And that is how I know you're lying." She said simply, crossing her arms over her chest. "You only say that to me when you don't want to tell me the truth. I don't even need the lasso to compel you, that is your tell."

He turned to face her, looking up at her with those intensely blue eyes that always seemed to catch her off-guard. This time, she was struck with how concerned he seemed. Not that he was caught, but by what he was hiding. "You're better off not knowing."

"I have killed the God of War." She replied, undeterred. "I can handle an inconvenient truth."

After a moment, an almost exhausted chuckle escaped him. "Yeah, I remember…" The way he said it gave her the impression that it had honestly slipped his mind. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe, as he said, the memories were beginning to fade. Or perhaps, they just didn't occur to him immediately. As he had mentioned to her before, it gave them both the same level of nostalgia. "But, I had every intention of telling you before we left the ship. I just wasn't sure how."

Diana tilted her head as she regarded him. They had spent months carefully getting to know one another. It pleased her, even if it frustrated her, that she had begun to tell when he was trying to protect her. She tried to remind herself that she was part of his crew, and if it was a secret he kept from all of them, it was out of respect, not to be condescending. "Jim. What is wrong? You do not get to lecture me on trust, then hold back. Even if you felt you couldn't tell the crew, at least tell me."

The poignant reminder that he had spent the better part of a very chaotic week holding a grudge against her did the trick. Nodding, Jim made his way over to his desk and leaned against it, arms crossed, contemplating what he clearly needed to say. In quiet moments such as this, she found herself examining his features all over again, idly considering details that she had been reluctant to really admit she noticed. The way he combed his hair back, the way the uniform hid a more muscled body than he let on.

Stop it. She told herself, filing those thoughts away for another time. There was a crisis at hand, and it was no time to start reminiscing of how they kissed… even if… that was exactly what she was doing…

The subconscious was inconvenient. It enjoyed recalling precisely the most inappropriate of thoughts at the worst times. She was certain that was a universal truth.

"I told everyone that I had to call in all my favors with Commodore Paris, and that's true. But, what I didn't tell them was that I don't have authorization to do this mission at all."

Diana was stunned. "I don't understand. Why wouldn't you be able to do this?"

"The Orion Syndicate runs too closely to Klingon territory," Jim sighed, clearly perturbed. "Between the dilithium we need on Coridan getting pounced on by the pirates and the tensions with the Romulans, Starfleet doesn't want to stir up any 'unnecessary tension' with the Klingons."

Diana could tell it bothered him greatly. Another poignant reminder that Jim was still himself. She imagined that in time, she would stop second-guessing the occasional quirk of behavior. "You could have told the crew. I'm sure they would have backed you."

"I know, but I didn't say anything, because if this goes south - and it very well could - they have a degree of plausible deniability." Jim's voice was heavy, burdened with the clear guilt at putting his crew in that position. "They can tell Starfleet Command I ordered them to do it, and that means I'm the only one who goes down." Jim looked up at her, smiling tightly as he uncrossed his arms, bracing his hands on the edge of the desk. As if he was chatting about the weather instead of treason. "I had a feeling you'd volunteer, but that's why I turned Uhura and Sulu down. I can't have them caught in the wake of this if it goes badly. You're an ambassador. They will give you diplomatic immunity, you might get a slap on the wrist. I could lose the Enterprise." He went quiet for a second, his gaze drifting off to nowhere in particular. He chuckled in dry amusement. "Which, in a way, is fitting, because I had to lose her to meet Jaylah. She's worth it, and she didn't even realize it."

Diana had never been prone to jealousy, but for a brief moment, she was reminded that Jim Kirk was naturally charismatic, flirtatious, and had a reputation amongst his crew. For the first time, she found herself wondering how far that had extended with the woman in danger.

As quickly as the thought struck her, though, Diana brushed it aside. She was still more concerned that he had chosen to take this burden on himself. She stepped closer to him, reaching out to rest her hand on his shoulder, smiling softly. "Thank you for telling me." With the same sweet tone that she thanked him, she continued on with a level of straight-faced teasing that would have made Kal proud. "But, now that I know you have absolutely no permission to do this, I am coming with you. Because you are absolutely going to get yourself killed if you go alone."

Jim outright laughed as the jibe sank in. "Oh, really?" He stood up to his full height, eye to eye with her. "You know, I happen to be an accomplished diplomat, and I've gone undercover countless times. I can handle this."

Diana grinned, glad to see his bravado was back in rare form. If this was how their arguments would go in the future, she looked forward to more of them. It was a far cry better than the way she had kept him at arm's' length, or even worse, the way she had pushed Steve or Bruce away. "Oh, I'm sure. Quite accomplished." She echoed, teasing him.

"So far, you have, what, two official missions on the books? I have dozens." Jim said, rakishly grinning at her. "And you've not gone undercover yet. I have."

"That means I have a 100% success rate, so I am perfect." Diana shot back, smiling in spite of herself.

Jim's gaze turned a little less amused, a little more genuine. "Well, you are that." The remark was as easy as breathing for him, and it reminded her for a moment of how close they were. In their conversation, they had somehow drifted to nearly touching each other. It would have been very easy to lean forward, to kiss him again, to feel the way he kissed. It was different, less hesitant, than Steve.

The fact that she found herself comparing the two yet again reminded her that she had not yet put some of her doubts to rest. It seemed all too easy to fall into a pattern with Jim that felt wonderful and comfortable… but somehow felt unfair to Steve. Even if he was there in spirit… she wasn't sure she could let herself go as far as she wanted.

Instead, she cleared her throat and took a step back, smiling. "We have a mission to plan for, Captain."

If he had any objections, he didn't voice them. Instead, he just nodded and slipped into the comfortable friendliness she associated with Captain Kirk while he was on-duty. "You are absolutely right, Ambassador. I am fairly certain it's time to make you green as the grass."

"Yes, and I am a bit uneasy by the notion, so I would appreciate the company while he explains the procedure." She motioned to the door with a tilt of her head.

Jim nodded and motioned for her to head that direction. "I completely understand. You're not the only one who has to have changes done."

"Oh, are you going to be green as well?" She asked as they stepped out into the corridor.

"No. Sadly, it's not uncommon for non-Orion races to trade in slaves. So, I need some other physical attributes changed to make me look a little more non-human." He motioned to the bridge of his nose. "But, the sooner we can get this done, the sooner you and I can leave." He shrugged. "That's of course, providing we have an appropriate ship in the cargo bay."

Diana let Jim's talkative nature carry them both away. She had a feeling that before this mission was over, they would be wishing for the simple moments of levity again.