Yuulik’s legs couldn’t keep up. The bulk of her precious environmental suit only weighed her down under M-class gravity. The two Kazon brutes who dragged her through their raider had her by the armpits.  She kept tripping so many times, they resorted to fully carrying her the rest of the way. She retracted her face plate for the sole purpose of screaming at them.

“Stop. No, I said stop!” Yuulik shouted. The two Kazon ignored her. They didn’t even slow their trudge down the passageway, no matter how much Yuulik struggled.

Yuulik regretted lowering her face plate. The foul smell of the narrow passageway matched the grimy textures of the wall panels. Half of the overhead lights were burned out, making it impossible for Yuulik to make sense of where they had come from or where they were going.

She shrieked, “You go straight to Quantum Hell! You don’t have to do this. We did everything you wanted. We gave you the coordinates for the last five locations that Kazon wreck had travelled before it died in Underspace. We’re useless to you now!”

“Trabe,” the Kazon said, spitting in her face.

Yuulik groaned, recoiling from him. He hoisted her higher and then tossed her into a brightly lit compartment. Yuulik’s ankle twisted under her, and she collapsed to the deck. No one expressed concern for her. She could taste the rust where her face had collided with the deck.

“That was a Trabe ship,” the Kazon said, correcting her, which stung more than being flung to the floor.

The Kazon stepped aside and two more rowdy compatriots shoved Nune in after her. Free-falling, Nune collided with Yuulik and then rolled onto the deck beside her. The hard casings of their environmental suits clacked and thudded in all the commotion. Worse, Yuulik got the wind knocked out of her by the impact. It took her almost a minute to regain a steady pace of breathing.

“You did good work,” another Kazon said. “Your reward is more work.” He palmed a panel on the wall, and the doors slammed shut.

Still halfway breathless, Yuulik struggled to sit up again.  She looked to Nune.

Compared to Taes’s determination, Calumn’s oblivion, Flavia’s hard edges, Ache’s get-er-done-ness and Nova’s brilliance, Nune was the soft one.  Nune represented everything Starfleet was meant to hold dear and to protect.

“Are you– are you okay?” she asked, gasping between every other word.

Nune rolled onto his shoulder, and he whispered to her, “Is he still breathing?”

His whisper came out as an intense hiss. Calumn had stunned one of the Kazon when they swept Yuulik and Nune into their shuttle.  Another Kazon had gunned Calumn down with a phaser rifle.

“…Is Calumn still alive?”

Blinking at Nune, Yuulik bluntly said, “Your face is red. Why is your face red?”

Before he could answer, she swiped through the control options on her gauntlet. The Kazon had taken their phasers and tricorders, but their EV suits were fundamentally interlinked.

Once she accessed the vital signs from Calumn’s suit, Yuulik said, “His breathing looks shallow, his heart rate is slow, but his heart’s still beating.”

Nune’s body noticeably sagged — a release of tension. There was hope. If Calumn was alive, Nelli could still treat him.

Then she blinked heavily at Nune.

“How long have you been sleeping with Calumn?” she asked.

He just shrugged at Yuulik, not denying it, not elaborating. Judging by the way his eyebrows rose and the crow’s feet deepened around his dark eyes, it looked like Nune was asking, ‘Can you blame me?‘

“I knew it,” Yuulik said, but she whispered too. It was enough for Nune to understand the powers of her perception. She didn’t have to bully him into submission when he was already emotional.

She explained, “He’s always finding reasons to touch you. And you went into Klingon mode when they shot him, huh?”

Nune’s lips flattened, and his eye-line dropped to the floor, diffidently.

“I didn’t want you to see me like that, Yuulik,” he said softly.

“Why not?” Yuulik asked, challenging any attempt at guile. “I always lose my temper in front of you. I guess it’s your turn.”

His voice went dark when he said, “I already had too many turns,” but Yuulik didn’t know what that meant. When he perceived injustices, Nune occasionally popped off in senior staff meetings, but that’s what Yuulik loved about him.

“If you’re with Calumn,” Yuulik asked, simply nosy now, “Did you break up with Laken, or are you still dating Laken?”

Nune finally looked at Yuulik again, looking at her impishly.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We haven’t found a definition of ‘relationship’ compatible with Betazoid and Romulan understandings of the word.”

Yuulik squinted at him. That sounded like a lie by omission.

She asked, “So, when was your last date?”

“I don’t know; maybe last week?” Nune said, practically whining. He huffed, “Yuulik, you always do this. You interrogate me about my personal life and then tell me nothing of substance.”

Yuulik riposted, “That’s because I don’t have a personal life.”

Lying on his side, Nune looked so defeated. Even after she distracted him from his worry about Calumn, his energy levels dropped more. He drooped his head down, pressing his cheek to the deck.

Flatly, Nune asked, “Then why does your long-distance ex-girlfriend, from when you were a cadet, keep crying to me about you?”

Yuulik’s mouth dropped open agape. It was such a foreign feeling to her to have no comeback at the ready. No retort, no theory behind the nonsense he was talking about. All she could feel was heat in her chest and the intensity of being seen as anything other than a scientific giant. She hated this.

Finally, Yuulik deflected by asking, “My what?”

“Nova,” Nune said.

Pouncing up to her knees, Yuulik demanded, “Why’s she talking to you about me?”

The colour drained from Nune’s face.

“Yuulik, we’re in trouble. We’ve gone to warp speed. I can feel the vibrations in the deck!”

Yuulik pushed herself to her feet, slapping her palms onto the floor. She howled like a wild animal and ran for the only door in the compartment. She patted around the door’s perimeter, physically searching for a locking mechanism, and then she pounded her fists against the door, bellowing for their release.