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The heel of Ortegas’ boot catches him in the shin for what has to be the one-hundred-thousandth time since their imprisonment and he’s had enough. It’s not his fault the Trelledorians didn’t buy their cover story; Chris happens to think he’d done a very convincing job pretending to be completely infatuated with Ortegas. She’s the one who blew their cover somehow.
When she lifts her foot to kick him again, he launches a preemptive strike.
“Ow! Hey!” Ortegas glares at him and bends at the waist to rub her calf where he kicked her back. “Jerk.”
“You’re the one who started it,” Chris complains.
“You’re the one who got us thrown into this cozy little prison cell,” Ortegas complains right back.
“You couldn’t even pretend to be in love with me for two nanoseconds,” Chris says.
Ortegas gives him an unamused look, eyebrows nearly climbing off her forehead and into her hairline. “Really,” she deadpans.
“Really,” Chris replies snarkily.
“Aw, is your male pride wounded?” she asks, in a baby voice that makes his skin crawl. Thankfully, she quickly switches back to her normal, generally non-irritating voice. “Sorry, Captain, but you’re not my type.”
“You’d make a terrible actor,” Chris says.
“Luckily for me, I didn’t go into acting,” she quips back, leaning against the wall. “Any idea on how to get out of this?”
“Hell if I know,” Chris says, toeing at his stripped utility belt. “They took all the useful stuff.”
Ortegas sighs and sifts her fingers through her short, spiky hair. “You could fake an illness.”
“…and then we’d be promptly vaporized once they ran a body scan and realized I was faking it,” he says, pointing out the flaws in her plan.
Ortegas sighs. “I suppose you have a point,” she mutters, shooting him eye-lasers.
“I usually do,” he says, but he can’t even manage to sound properly smug.
“Well,” says Ortegas, “maybe Uhura and La’an have realized we’re missing and they’re currently kicking Trelledorian butt on their way to rescue us.”
Chris makes a skeptical noise. “Maybe.”
Ortegas throws her hands up and makes an exasperated noise. “Well, besides that, I got nothin’.”
Chris sighs and slumps back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting like a petulant child. “I hate this. This is the worst.”
“Imagine how I feel,” Ortegas snipes at him.
Chris glares at her; Ortegas glares right back. They really need to get out of this miserable cell and back on the Enterprise before they take each other’s heads off.
As if summoned by the gods, Uhura and La’an race up to their prison cell, gasping and panting for breath. Uhura is wielding some sharp, very scary knife-laser Chris has never seen before. La’an is covered in sludgy black goo.
“What happened to you two?” Chris asks.
“Long story,” Uhura wheezes.
“Don’t ask.” La’an wipes black goo off her face.
Uhura presses a button on her dangerous-looking tool and begins to slice through the thick metal bars. “We don’t have much time.”
“How’d your date go,” La’an asks, teasingly.
“Don’t even start,” Ortegas snaps.
“It could’ve gone better,” Chris says.
Both Uhura and La’an chuckle. Chris look over at Ortegas and shrugs.
It probably could have gone better. But, he suspects, it might have gone a lot worse had he been stuck with anyone else.
Oretgas reaches out, as if reading his mind, and bumps her fist against Chris’s, her mouth curving in a smile.
Maybe the mission wasn’t a complete failure.