Two Captains

Chapter 11

"We need to get you changed." Bones says as we drag Jim to the med bay.

"I don't feel right, I feel like I'm leaking." Jim says.

"Damn, it's that pointy-eared bastard." Bones says, looking ahead of him. Amid the crowd of people on the Enterprise we see Spock, facing us but looking a different direction.

"All decks this is Captain Pike, prepare for immediate departure." Pike's voice sounds over the speakers. "Helm, thrusters."

"Of course my Godfather's captain of the ship I snuck on..." I mutter.

"What was that?" Bones asks.

"Nothing." I answer.

"Did you know Pike was captain of this ship?" He asks.

"I heard he was going to be but I wasn't sure it was official." I answer. "Guess it is."

"Yeah I guess so." He answers.

"Where are we?" Jim asks as we enter med bay.

"Medical bay." I answer.

"This isn't worth it." Jim says.

"A little suffering's good for the soul." Bones says.

"Hi how are you?" Jim says to a passing nurse. She ignores him. "My mouth is itchy, is that normal?" He asks Bones.

"Well those symptoms won't last long." Bones says as we seat Jim on the end of a bed. "I'm going to give you a mild sedative."

"Oh I wish I didn't know you..." Jim says.

"Don't be such an infant." Bones says, and injects another hypo-spray syringe.

Jim cries out in pain for a second and then looks at Bones and I.

"How long is it supposed to...?" He passes out in mid-sentence, falling backwards onto the bed.

"Unbelievable." Bones rolls his eyes.

"Well that was...interesting." I say to Bones, standing next to Jim and leaning against the wall, my arms folded over my chest.

"It was many things." He says, smiling.

"I'm glad I didn't let you give those symptoms to me, otherwise I would've turned out like him." I gesture to Jim.

"Not really."

"What do you mean?" I look at him. "Doesn't everybody act like this?"

"Yeah." Bones nods. "Except you're a hell of a lot more attractive than he is."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.

"I think you're really hot." He says quickly, his cheeks slightly reddening. "And I have a kind of crush on you..." He says quickly, then looks at me.

"What?" We say in unison.

"I didn't say anything. Did you?" He says.

"I didn't, you did." I say. "How long have you...you know...felt this?"

"Since I met you." He looks at me, then looks away a second later. "I gotta go." He says, and starts walking away.

"Bones." I grab his arm, stopping him. "You don't have to go."

He shrugs away from my grasp. "Tell me when Jim wakes up."

He walks away.

"May I have your attention please..." A guy with curly hair and a heavy Russian-accent says on the ship-wide mission broadcast, I look at the screen at the wall in front of me. "At twenty-two hundred hours, telemetry detected an anomaly in the Neutral Zone. What appeared to be a lightning storm in space. Soon after Starfleet recieved a distress signal from the Vulcan High Command that their planet was experiencing seismic activity. Our mission is to assess the condition of Vulcan, and assisst in evacuations if necessary. We should be arriving at Vulcan within three minutes, thank you for your time." He signs off the broadcast.

Bones comes back into the room right when Jim suddenly bolts upright.

"Lightning storm..." He says, nearly out of breath.

"Holy..." I look down at Jim's hands.

"Aah, Jim you're awake. How do you feel?"

"Um...Bones..." I gesture to Jim's hands and Bones looks down at them. He raises an eyebrow.

"Good God, man!" Bones says.

"What?" Jim says, then looks down at his hands, then cries out, holding them up in front of him. "What the hell is this?!"

"A reaction to the vaccine, damn it!" Bones runs over and starts talking to a nurse, ordering her to get something. Jim rushes over to the screen where the guy had done the ship-wide mission broadcast and starts replaying the message, then fastforwarding through it.

"...Appeared to be a lightning storm in space." The guy says just as Bones examines Jim.

Jim literally grabs Bone's face. "We've gotta stop the ship!"