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The world smells and tastes of blood, but she is cold, numb. It spreads through her starting with her hands as they drop away from the controls.
Pressure pulling.
A flash of light and arms holding her.
.
.
.
The pain is sharp: too much, everywhere, tearing her apart from the inside. She wants to curl away and hide.
Then a wash of cold moves through her.
Nothing.
.
.
.
“...critlcal but stable…”
The words drift past her, into and out of memory like a ship at warp passing stars and worlds without notice.
.
.
.
She surfaces for a moment, glimpses of light and voices surrounding her.
“Starbase One prepped for transport.”
The lights and sounds fade away.
She is falling.
---
She feels herself begin to surface. A soft warmth on her arms, the fabric of her top moving slightly against her skin as she breathes.
There is someone talking, but it takes a moment for her brain to find the meaning.
“...vitals are steady. The sedation should be wearing off soon.”
“I’ll stay.”
The sound of a chair moving across the floor and a slight groan as someone sits down.
The sound is to her right. Her brain determines the position and she tries to turn toward it. Her body doesn’t respond. Still not fully connected, the command gets lost somewhere after it leaves her brain.
Her arms are heavy.
There is a warm feeling. A blanket covering her, but something deeper as well, chemical. Something masking the pain she can feel at the edges.
Medicated.
That thought alone takes effort, but she doesn’t remember why. The memory is lost.
Enterprise.
The end of the mattress moves slightly, a gentle hand against her arm. “Hey, Erica…I think she’s coming around.”
She opens her eyes, to a blur. It takes a few blinks for the image to clear. Light pouring in, unfamiliar. A ceiling and a window. Stars beyond.
Not Enterprise. She doesn’t know the place.
The memory hits her at once, the Gorn, fleeing in the ship, the moment she accepted she would die. The monitor on the bio bed sends an alarm.
The hand leaves her arm, pressing on the bed for support. A shape moves in front of her, a face slowly resolving.
Sam Kirk.
Recognition lands before context.
“Sam?” she asks, the word catching on her throat, quiet and rough.
Relief breaks across his face. One hand braces against the bed, the other moves to her shoulder. “Hey,” he says, softer now, “Welcome back.”
He drops back down into the chair and she turns to face him. “Easy,” he says immediately, hand gently holding her still. “They don’t want you to move too much yet. We’re on Starbase One. Medical.”
Starbase One.
She tries to line up the pieces, to remember anything beyond starting to pilot the Gorn hunter ship away. Her thoughts feel thick, disconnected, unreachable.
“...we…” Her voice catches, dry and rough. Sam helps her sip some water through a straw. “We got out?”
“Yeah,” he explains, quietly. “We got out. All of us.”
Her eyes close briefly. La’an, Joseph…
“Enterprise?” The word lingers as a question. She needs to know.
“The ship’s gonna need some love.” His voice drops down to a whisper, as if revealing a secret, “At one point Una crashed her into the Gorn ship.”
Even through the haze still clinging to her, she couldn’t help but laugh slightly, “Of course she did.”
The effort costs her and her eyes drift closed for a moment.
Sam keeps talking, low and easy, filling the silence. “They stabilized you on the Enterprise as much as they could, but Sickbay was…busy. Once we reached the base, they transferred some of us here. The surgery went well. You’ve been under a couple days.”
Days. The word lingers with her.
He’s still here.
Why is he-
The thought tries to form. She tries to think back, remembers him moving wrong back on the Gorn ship: a hitch, a stumble.
He was hurt too.
She should ask. The instinct is immediate, automatic.
Are you okay?
The words form in her head, but don’t quite make it out.
Her brain feels like it is running behind the moment, everything delayed a moment too long and by the time she gathers focus, the conversation has already moved past.
Sam is still talking, but the words sort of drift past.
She tries to speak, but doesn’t manage more than a mumble.
“Just rest,” he says.
She feels the meds, the injury pulling her back under.
She feels the blanket on her arms. The dark rises and she doesn’t fight.
Sam’s hand resting on her shoulder, grounding her, as she slips back asleep.
---
The air of the Enterprise is flat, the faint smell of ozone, a drift of plastic and sterile, clean air. Dry.
It is heavier here, standing outside Beto’s apartment in Colombia. Erica notices it the moment they leave the transport: warm, humid, carrying the smells of the streets outside, the first rain hitting the concrete, a floral scent of a flower she no longer recognizes, food frying in the stalls. It presses gently against her lungs, challenging her brain to refamiliarize itself with. Encompassing and present.
She stands for a moment at the base of the narrow stairwell, one hand on the railing, trying to present like she’s admiring the space, not bracing herself for the trek.
Beto pretends not to notice.
“Third floor,” he says, as if there is just a normal task in front of them and not an expedition. “Elevators have been ‘getting fixed’ since I moved in.”
“Charming,” Erica chuckles before tackling the first step. The journey is slow, measured. A tight pull along her side with each step. The fingers on her right hand are still aching after the regeneration. They feel foreign as she grips the railing to steady herself. Healing, not healed.
Beto matches her slow pace without comment.
But by the time they reach the landing on his floor her breath is a little short, but she keeps her face neutral, trying to slow the breaths down. Beto slips past, her bag in his hand as he unlocks the door.
He drops her bag on a chair before opening his arms wide, dramatically gesturing to the place, “Welcome to the glamorous life of an independent filmmaker.”
Erica stops inside.
The apartment is…Beto. Chaotic, but real, familiar somehow. A light panel leans against the back of the couch, a disassembled drone on the kitchen table, parts and tiny tools laid out with surgical precision, notes and sketches for some project pinned to the wall, crates and bags stacked up in messy piles.
There are plants too, reaching in from the open kitchen window, scattered around the place. It is alive. Familiar and yet…
She loved space, loved flying, but in some ways it couldn’t compare to Earth.
“...wow,” she began as she turned through the space, “Trying to embody the whole ‘creative genius who's not slept in days’ aesthetic.”
“It’s called a workflow,” Beto explained with a warm chuckle.
“Or fire hazard,” she counters as she pulls out a chair at the table to sit down, needing to rest from the travel. Her hands move to the broken drone. “What happened?”
“Field damage,” he explains, grabbing a replacement blade. “Worth it. You should see the shot: amazing until an impact snapped one blade, which caused the whole thing to careen to the side…”
“Repairable?”
“Yes. I mean, it's probably easier to get a new one, but this was the first drone I got for filming.”
Erica nods, understanding the memories it must hold. A quiet settles between them as Beto begins to work on the drone. She can’t help but admire the place he had made for himself, something stationary.
“I haven’t seen this place,” she says. It comes out more timid than she expected, suddenly falling out of family familiarity and becoming a visitor. “It’s great, very…you. How long ago did you move out?”
“Two years. After you joined the Enterprise. I mean, you’ve been busy, saving the quadrant.”
There’s no accusation in it, that almost makes it worse. She’d never really put it into words, but she practically ran away to Starfleet in the first place, barely came home to visit on breaks during the Academy. Then the war and joining Enterprise. But she had leaves, breaks that she mostly spent on the ship. At the time that was the solid ground under her feet that she needed.
He gives her a smile, but she can see him scanning her, making sure things are okay, as okay as they can be. The way he’s been doing since she stepped off the transport. “I’m good. Just tired.”
“I know,” he replies, too fast.
The silence stretches, the sounds of the street pressing in, people talking, laughing, the calls of birds, the light patter of rain against a window overlooking the street.
“Thanks,” she begins, “for all of…this. Coming to get me. Letting me stay.” A month, time and space carved out for her like it’s nothing.
He waves the comment away, “You’d do the same.”
“Yeah, well, my room on the ship is far less exciting. The major upside is that there are endless stars outside the window.”
“I will take that as a promise to let me visit the ship when you go back.” He stands abruptly, chair scraping against the tile floor. “I am going to swing by the restaurant down the street to pick up dinner.” As he heads for the door, he turns back, “I am holding you to that promise.”
Life settles into the space, surrounding Erica’s stillness. Outside a song plays, someone walking by talking far too loud, the sounds of something falling down. Life. Loud, messy, uncontained. Unconcerned with Starfleet or the Gorn or the fact that she had accepted that she would die and how awkward it felt coming back from that.
It didn’t matter. For the first time since waking up she didn’t feel like she was catching up. She was just here.
---
There is a breeze on the small balcony, voices from below as the evening traffic picks up. The sun drops below the horizon, bathing the streets in light before starting to fade away. She’s not yet left the apartment since she first arrived, but there’s a couple of food stands down below and the smells drift up invitingly. When she stops and listens, she can catch snippets of conversation. Across the way, in a facing apartment, someone lazily plays a guitar, strumming to whatever tune comes to him.
But there is also stillness, a quiet. On Enterprise there was always a hum, subtle, but the sound that the ship was alive. Without that hum she knew they were dead in the water. Still, in a way the ship should never be.
Back on Earth the hum was gone. Replaced with a different sort of life.
Erica picked her PADD back up from the table. Beto was gone for the evening, out filming a wedding. He picked up some empanadas from a stand along the street before leaving. They had long since cooled, untouched on the plate beside her.
MISSION LOG - USS Enterprise
Commanding Officer: Captain Christopher Pike
Her thumb scrolls through the report. She’d accessed them before leaving the Starbase. The words are familiar to her now.
The landing team was taken aboard the Gorn Destroyer Ship. The decision was made to leave a tracker and retreat.
She tells herself it is practical to know the logs.
She was unconscious, trapped in the digestion pod, cut off from the ship. She missed things. Reading the logs was just filling in the gaps.
Commander Chin-Riley suggested a controlled collision to get through the Gorn Destroyer’s shields to plant the wolkite beacon. Commander Chin-Riley successfully rammed the ship at full impulse…
Erica’s jaw tightens. It always does at that part. A controlled collision. She can picture the ship’s shields dropping as it crashes, Una calm at the helm…at Erica’s seat, deciding a Constitution-class starship was a good battering ram.
Erica wonders if she could have done it, suggesting that they intentionally cause a collision. She wonders about the bridge, the ship. She’d not seen the damage, waking up first on the Starbase and leaving soon after.
SCIENCE LOG - Lieutenant Commander Una Chin-Riley
Analysis of previous Gorn activity with Ensign Uhura suggested a correlation between specific solar flare events and Gorn hibernation cycles. Presence of X-class flares and supra-arcade downflows preceded previous hibernation cycles.
She didn’t know the science, but she could picture Una and Uhura working together to save them all. To save the Federation.
MISSION LOG - USS Enterprise
Commanding Officer: Captain Christopher Pike
It was determined that Enterprise could mimic a solar flare by creating a competing magnetic field to draw in particles by magnetizing the hull. There was a significant risk to the ship and its crew from radiation, but the risk to the Federation placed us with no other option.
She tries to picture it, the Enterprise becoming a star, drawing the Gorn ships to it. But there is something that always lingers with her when reading the report. Not a worry, she knows the crew made it out safely, rather a sense of loss: missing out as they did it without her. They almost lost the ship without her.
She scrolls through the other logs.
SECURITY DEBRIEF - Lieutenant La’an Noonien-Singh
Structures aboard the ship seemed to be digestion pods, designed to take living matter and break it down for energy.
She remembers them, the image forever seared in her brain. She flexes her right hand, fingers still tight.
Continues to reread, continues to relive it.
The sun has set completely, the sky beginning to fill with stars. The illumination of the PADD reflects off her face.
Gorn attacked Erica as she…
Erica scans ahead, the scar on her side pinching as she remembers. The world outside fading to silence, as she hears the ship, feels the warmth of the Gorn ship, remembers the smell…
She scrolls back through the logs, Spock, Pike, Una, Uhura... she’s read them all. Trying to find something. A feel of control and with control, safety.
If she knew what exactly happened, that blank space between accepting death and waking up wouldn’t feel so large.
Her thumb hovers over a report with her name on it. She clicks without thinking.
MEDICAL LOG: Erica Ortegas - Doctor Joseph M’Benga
Prior to arrival in the auxiliary sick bay Lieutenant Ortegas showed signs of hypovolemic shock as a result of…
Erica clicks away, still avoiding reading the report. She places the PADD down, letting the night encompass her.
She picks up one of the empanadas, cooled on the plate and slowly eats it. She knows Beto would be annoyed if she didn’t.
She wonders if the couple is dancing yet. Imagining the music and the lights of the wedding. She is tempted to scroll again, but leaves it down.
---
A week ago the stairs had been a challenge, now she can take them without stopping. Not fast, not careless, but continuous.
They’d gone out twice with Beto’s friends, a sound editor he collaborated with on a project, a lighting tech with the loudest most joyful laugh Erica ever heard, and a friend deep in some immersive documentary that Erica didn’t quite understand. She listened, smiled, added in light commentary and jokes where appropriate.
She’s good at it.
Good at looking like herself again.
Tonight it is warm in the apartment, the earlier periodic rain replaced with a warm front. The balcony doors open, letting in a cooling breeze, carrying with it life, and music, and a world beyond a Starship.
Uhura sits cross-legged on the couch, shoes kicked off, a glass resting on a coaster Beto had made from leftover set decoration used in a film school project. Condensation speckled on the surface, undisturbed for some time.
Uhura fits in, as she does anywhere, able to exist in anyone’s space, seeming like she was always meant to be there. She was stopping by for a couple of days on leave before returning to Kenya to visit her grandmother.
“...and then,” Erica says energetically, leaning back in the chair, PADD balanced on her knee, “Una decides the best move is to literally ram the Enterprise into the Gorn Destroyer. Iconic.”
Uhura smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Erica doesn’t notice. “It was the only option to place the beacon.”
“Oh, I am not arguing,” Erica says quickly. “I ran projections, it was expertly done. Damage was as minimal as possible in the situation. Risky, but sound.”
Erica pulls out the PADD, displaying a graph of radiation data from the ship. “And then Pike taking the ship between the stars, the stress and radiation alone. He could teach a class at the academy on that alone.”
Uhura watches her. Her smile drops a bit.
“I’ve been cross-referencing the damage reports on the ship with the logs from the systems themselves and Spock’s reports from the science. There was a 3 second window where the structural integrity drops…”
She stops looking down at the PADD for a moment, pulling up the details. The pause is small.
Uhura takes it.
“Erica,” she says gently.
Erica looks up from the report, “Yeah?”
It falls quiet for a moment; the sounds outside pushing in.
“You’ve explained the whole thing three different ways since I got here.”
Erica pauses, a beat. “It was a complicated situation.”
“I know.” There is no edge in Uhura’s voice, just warmth.
Erica shifts in her seat, the PADD suddenly feeling less enticing. “I just…I wasn’t there,” her voice drops, quiet. “It feels like I should know what happened.”
“Of course,” Uhura explains with a nod. “But…we weren’t on the bridge wishing you were there calculating angles, we were just hoping the four of you would come back.”
The words land with force. Uhura there, real. The data on the PADD, lines of numbers, time stamps, reports.
“I just want to know, in case anything happens like this again.”
“I get that, but the logs are not going to help. Your instinct is all you would need. You don’t need to be in charge of everything right now.”
Erica sets down the PADD screen dark: the words sitting with her. Something shifts in her, unspoken. “Tomorrow, I can take you on a tour of the city.”
“That would be wonderful.”
---
Beto doesn’t object when he finds a dismantled vintage hoverbike in his living room the next day, laid out on a tarp. Though he does wonder how Erica got the whole thing up to the third floor.
“Did it lose a fight?” he jokes, seeing the pieces laid out.
“Maybe a few decades ago. Apparently it was abandoned and just left in a storage room years ago.”
There is no urgency, no reports, no alarms, nothing depending on speed or success.
She takes it apart piece by piece, tracing the fuel lines, disassembling the stabilization system. By the end of the day there is no bike remaining, just pieces, worn down by time and use. Her right hand shakes. Not much, but she notices.
By the third day her hand is steady.
The work is quiet. Beto brings up replicated replacement pieces; she quietly reassembles and tests each step. The work is mechanical, understandable. If something doesn’t function, there’s a reason and she sticks with it until it is fixed.
At times Beto films, testing out his drone, its repairs finally done as well.
---
The last week seems to be a flash of time in front of her, something familiar already slipping behind. The view of the sunset on the balcony, the afternoon rain tapping on the window glass, voices from the streets. Sometimes she is down there as well, out in the world.
She’s moving now. Everything normal, healed: at least physically. Her hand still feels off at times when the memories surface. But the PADD has remained where she left it after Uhura visited.
One afternoon, grease staining her hands, she leans back and admires the work. The bike still needs time, but she can see its potential.
“Pike will let me have this transferred to the ship, right?” she asks Beto, not expecting an answer.
“He’ll let you,” Beto replies confidently.
“I am sure. Might have to keep it a secret from Una, though. Not sure how she would feel. Best to go straight to Pike.”
---
The end of the month sneaks up fast. She hadn’t thought about the Gorn ship for days, but the moment she thinks back to the Enterprise the memories slip back uninvited.
The morning comes warm and bright, with transportation waiting for an early trip to the port and then back out to the Starbase. Apparently the plans for the celebration for the Federations Anniversary has involved the crew of the Enterprise as well.
The hoverbike is carefully wrapped in the tarp next to her bag, someone would come to get it later.
Beto leans against the kitchen table, “You know, they have smaller souvenirs.”
“Yeah, but then how would I zoom around on an alien planet when they finally trust me in the landing party again.”
“But it doesn’t even work reliably yet.”
“Just give it time,” she joked before looking at him seriously. “Thanks?”
“For what?” Beto asked.
She gestured around, the room, the time, the month just being family and no one important. “All of it.”
Beto shrugged like it was nothing, like she didn’t arrive pulling herself up the stairs. “You did the work.”
“Sure,” she replied. “But you gave me space to do it.”
Beto pushes off the table, grabbing her bag before she can object, “I’ll walk you out. Plus, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks anyway for the Starfleet anniversary celebration. You will not escape the camera.”
“No promises,” she replies with a smile.
At the doorway to the street she pauses, taking in the final sights, smells, and sounds. Holding onto the memory before stepping onto the transport. “See you on the ship,” she calls down.
The doors close, and ahead, the hum of the Enterprise awaits.