
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/111889.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Star_Trek_(2009)
  Relationship:
      Nyota_Uhura/Other
  Character:
      Nyota_Uhura, Original_Characters, James_T._Kirk, Christopher_Pike, Gaila_
      (Star_Trek)
  Additional Tags:
      Child_Abuse, Drugged_Sex, Gang_Rape, Alternate_Universe_-_Dark
  Series:
      Part 3 of The_Riotverse
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-09-04 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 14129
****** So Don't Let It Kill You ******
by jane_potter
Summary
     Uhura's life is never about winning. It's always about not letting
     somebody else win. Not surrendering. Not letting them beat her,
     figuratively or literally. This is a good thing, because life's not a
     game. There are no time outs, no rule books, no umpires, and nobody
     wins. They just survive. Or not.
Notes
     Inspired by OtakuLibra's comment that Riotverse Uhura and Gaila
     needed to be more BAMF than they usually are. It took me by surprise,
     because I originally intended to go with just the usual level of
     badassery, but I realised that they really did need to be more than
     that. It's really given me a chance to explore a facet of the
     Riotverse that doesn't show from Kirk and Spock's POVs. I also drew
     inspiration from 's excellent post on slut-shaming and 's meta about
     the Trek_twenty-third_century, as well as various other meta posts on
     female strength in fiction. Quite obviously, this is the most
     difficult thing I've ever written.
***** Five to Sixteen *****
Uhura's life is never about winning.
It's always about not letting somebody else win. Not surrendering. Not letting
them beat her, figuratively or literally.
This is a good thing, because life's not a game. There are no time outs, no
rule books, no umpires, and nobodywins. They just survive. Or not.
That's fine with Uhura. By the time she's nineteen, she's learned that breaking
the rules is a strategy much more to her liking, anyway.
5.
Her father tells her bedtime stories. They all start with, "Once upon a time,"
and it isn't until many years later that Uhura realises the great wisdom
inherent in this tiny, cliche childhood statement. The universe is too large,
too diverse and too infinitely full of possibilities for the most insignificant
of molecular flickers to have even a chanceof happening exactly the same way
twice, let alone entire lives and plotlines like the ones her father sits on
the edge of her bed and spins. But when she's five, Uhura doesn't know this
yet. Her world is very, very small.
Once upon a time the world was a vast, limitless place, and its enormity was so
far beyond the conception of the people who lived upon it that some of them
thought it was possible to simply fall off the ends of the planet called Earth.
They couldn't fathom that anything could lay so far beyond the limits of what
they knew. Then the world began to shrink: oceans became navigable, mountains
passable, skies conquerable. Distance became all but irrelevant. Even time
slowed, for where once it had taken weeks or months to deliver twelve or
fourteen paragraphs of writing crammed onto a fragile sheet of wood pulp,
entire conversations could take place across the globe in six directions in
less time than it took to brew a cup of tea. Humans made their planet shrink
until the very marrow and mass of it was insignificant to their casual everyday
whims.
Then, one dark day, instead of the princess arriving to save the prince from
his tall tower (even back then Uhura didn't want to hear about girls who
couldn't save themselves), the aliens arrived. (Close enough.) And the humans,
on their tiny shrunken planet, looked up at the galaxies hovering around the
edges of their conceivable world and realised for the first time that not only
were the stars notthe end of the map, but that there had already been maps
drawn of the stars back when humans were still inventing dragons to fill in the
blanks at the margins of their parchments.
And for a while everything was impossibly, overwhelmingly huge. But distance is
a challenge, and allliving beings have a desire in some form or another to
overcome challenges. So humans-- and Vulcans, Andorians, Tellarites, Betazoids,
Klingons, Romulans-- shrunk the universe, or what little they all knew of it,
anyway. They cast out their ships like fishing nets and hauled in lightyears
and galaxies worth of stardust, linking everything in together tight with
outposts and starbases and satellites and colonies, reeling in the universe
little by little.
Maybe one day they'll feel a pull on the net, and find some other corner of the
universe trying to haul in from another direction, and the maps will explode
once more.
But not yet.
For now, Uhura's world is small.
10.
Fu Marcosa-17 sits in the middle of Union space, about mid way between Earth
and the border zone. They're a halfway point, a pit stop for thousands upon
thousands of thirsty, lonely spacers and Starfleet officers who come looking
for good alcohol and "good company" (whatever that means), not necessarily in
that order. Uhura knows every one of her 9,208 neighbours on the starbase, as
she has known them since the day of her birth, but the hundreds of hard-eyed
strangers who stream through the mezzazine and entertainment decks every day
still intimidate her. She doesn't like their uniforms or the way they always
travel in packs, marching shoulder to shoulder with their hands on their
phasers even when off duty. Walking home from school can be an unnerving
experience, particularly when the lifts that she usually takes are inoperative
and she has to walk across the mezzazine to get to the lifts on the other side
of it.
"Hi," she says slowly, to the stranger standing in the middle of her living
room. Somewhat uncertainly, Uhura puts her shoulder bag full of school PADDs on
the floor beside the door and doesn't take her eyes off the man. He looks lost
and has luggage at his feet. She thinks vaguely that maybe there's been a mix
up with his apartment lock chits; sometimes it happens in the starbase's
mainframe that addresses or door codes get reissued and some newcomer winds up
with a set of chits telling him that somebody else's home is his. "I live
here," she tells him, in case this is the situation. "My name is Uhura."
The man's expression doesn't change, except to grow more bewildered.
Uhura is relieved when her mother appears from the bedroom opposite the front
door, a half folded blanket in her hands. "He doesn't speak Francohili," she
says, shaking out the blanket. There's a frown between her eyebrows, drawing
them in tight.
"Oh," Uhura says, then repeats in polite Standard, "I'm Uhura. I live here."
"I live here too," he says, looking at her a bit like Uhura's teacher does when
zhe thinks Uhura is being stupid.
From that day on, he does. His name is Tom (what kind of name is that, Uhura
wonders) and he's her mother's half-brother's brother, or her uncle. Pretty
soon he gets a job as security in the public mezzazine. He also gets Uhura's
bedroom, because a backwater starbase like Fu Marcosa-17 doesn't provide
apartments bigger than two chambers, a fresher and a kitchen/living room to
anybody below J deck, and he gets time in the fresher and a portion of her
family's monthly water ration, and he gets a share of her mother's patience and
her father's time, and Uhura's world gets a little more crowded as she moves
her bed into the storage closet next to the front door.
She doesn't like Tom any more than the other strangers in her life. He doesn't
call her 'station trash' or 'dumb backwater bitch', and he doesn't look at her
with hard military eyes, but the expression in his eyes-- whatever it is-- is
equally unsettling and he gradually starts wearing his phaser around the
apartment for longer and longer each day after work. He watches her constantly.
Finally, Uhura can't stand to be in the same room as Tom when her parents
aren't around, and she doesn't even know why, but instead she shuts herself in
her closet each day after school, jams the lock with a bit of wire and stays
there until her father comes home from work too.
School runs late one day; Uhura has to stay and finish putting the language
settings of all the desks and boards in the classroom back to Standard. Her
teacher doesn't believe it was an accident, but honest, it was. Uhura had only
set her owndesk to Francohili. How was she supposed to know that a glitch in
the computer system would end up bouncing it to every screen in the classroom?
The chronometer says that it's long after suppertime already. Uhura runs, her
school bag banging against her leg, but when she gets to the escalators leading
down to the mezzazine, she finds it packed, thronging with Fleet officers
taking their shoreleave. "Dammit," she says in Francohili, glancing around
quick to make sure nobody noticed. They haven't; they just brush past her on
their way down the escalators.
A lump chokes her throat. She can't go down there, not even to get to the lifts
on the mezzazine floor right below her. There's too many people, too many red-
shirted soldiers and yellow-shirted officers, and they might arresther, or--
"Uhura. What are you doing here at this time of night?" Tom grabs her elbow too
hard, pulling her away from the escalators. "Your parents have been worrying
about you for hours. You're late."
"I'm sorry, I-- I thought Zhis Caph commed them to say I had to stay at school,
I--"
Still holding her arm, Tom walks away down one of the corridors, and Uhura has
to struggle to keep up with his pace. "Zhe did," he snaps. "Your parents are so
mad. You're such a bad girl."
"What? No, I didn't mean to--" Uhura trips and nearly falls over. Tom wrenches
on her arm to keep her upright. Involuntary tears spring to her eyes. "I'm not-
-"
"You're a terrible girl. They're furious with you."
Uhura gulps for breath against the sudden weight in her chest. No she's not, no
she's not; she doesn't want to be a bad girl, she always goes to school on time
and doesn't spend her credits on the entertainment decks and doesn't ever go up
to the level above C deck because daddy told her not to, and so she doesn't,
she doesn't ever.
She doesn't recognise the corridors Tom leads her down. They get into a lift
and come out somewhere else, and Uhura's never even been in this part of the
starbase and she's lost. Bewildered, she tries to catch a glimpse of the deck
plates at corridor junctions as they pass, but they don't help. She doesn't
know where they are.
"Stop," she begs, trying to dig in her heels without getting dragged over.
"Please. I'm not a bad girl. Can we just go home?"
"No," Tom says, frowning at her. His unsettling eyes stare for a long time,
until Uhura miserably twists her arm again in his grip. "I told you, they're
mad at you. You have to be punished."
Punished? Her father's never had to spank her, not even once! Uhura's not-
- she's not a--
Tom pushes her into a public fresher, out of the empty hallway. Uhura's trying
not to cry, gulping back sobs in her chest. She's nota bad girl.
"I'm sorry," she says miserably, tears shiny and blurry in her eyes. "I'm
sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to--"
"But you've been very bad. Everybody's mad at you, Uhura. You can't just get
away with this, you know. You have to be punished."
Uhura starts to cry in earnest. Her heads nods up and down without her even
thinking about it, big wrenching sobs shaking her whole body, her shoulders
sinking in with shame and humiliation. She barely feels Tom push her up against
the wall until her back hits the tiles. Something cold and sick knots in her
stomach as he unzips her pants, his fingers brushing her stomach.
He puts his hand on her privates. Uhura feels like she might throw up.
"I'm so sorry," she sobs, burying her face in his starchy stiff security
uniform because she can't look at Tom, can't stand to see his face. "I'm sorry,
I'm sorry, sorry, sorry..."
When it's over, Uhura's tears are all cried out and she's swaying on her feet,
numb and light-headed with exhaustion. She fumbles to pull her pants back up,
cringing away from her uncle's stare.
"We don't have to talk about this any more," Tom tells her. "Now we can go
home, and your parents won't be mad any more. You don't have to bring this up,
all right? As long as you're a good girl. You want to be a good girl, right?
Uhura can't nod fast enough, her breath still coming all hitchy and fast.
"So don't tell anybody about this. They don't have to know how bad you are."
The banging on the fresher door makes Uhura jump, her whole body shaking with
fright. "You donein there yet?" yells a voice outside. "Come on, man, hurry
up!"
Tom takes Uhura's arm again and she lets him, her wrist hanging limply in his
grasp. Her school bag weighs heavily on her shoulder. In the hallway outside
the fresher, a woman in a blue Starfleet uniform is standing and waiting
impatiently with her arms folded over her chest.
She stares at Uhura curiously, but says nothing. Uhura doesn't meet the woman's
eyes.
Her father picks her up in an enormous hug the moment Uhura walks in the
apartment door, kissing her cheek and telling her how glad he is that she's
safe and okay, he didn't realise Zhis Caph wanted her to stay at school
thatlong and he was so worried. He's not mad any more.
12.
In math class one day, Uhura realises exactly what her world is. Fu Marcosa-17
is a tiny little point on the Cartesian plane of the universe, and thousands of
ships on parabolic courses run through it, all of them intersecting for only
the briefest moment before curving away untouched, unaffected. She may touch
thousands, millionsof arcs that sweep past her on their way to or from the
greatest things in the universe, but she will never be a part of those arcs
save for the millisecond during which they pass through her fingers.
Uhura is on the intersection point of it all, but nobody cares about her point.
That's just where they draw their courses by. As the universe is graphed, she
is not part of it. She is the map.
13.
Uhura stretches out her legs to get the cramp out of her calf, and her toes hit
the bulkhead at the end of her bed. She looks down at them ruefully, pushing
the balls of her feet against the closet bulkhead and forcing her knees
straight. Her muscles protest their long position bent up as a desk on which to
finish her homework.
Alone in the tiny, comfortable shelter of her room-- which she hardly thinks of
as a closet any more-- Uhura takes a moment to study her legs as they are
stretched out before her. They've gotten long, lately, every part of her
getting slimmer and taller. Her bed's a little too short, now, her shoes a
little too small. The girls at school sneer and say Uhura must be half Vulcan,
all gross bony limbs and spidery height. They pull on their eartips and push
their eyebrows up into grotesque faces when she walks past them.
Uhura kicks a leg up into the air before her, almost managing to point her toes
directly up at the ceiling. She studies it curiously. She runs her fingers down
the smooth chocolate line of her calf and knee, where everything has become
strangely curvy. These legs almost don't belong to Uhura. They're starting to
look like the legs of the models in magazines and billboards on the mezzazine,
and she's not sure she recognises them.
"What the hell iswrong with you?"
The shout reverberates through the bulkhead of Uhura's room. She flinches and
lets her leg fall, tucking her knees back up close to her chest and scooching
back into the pillows at the head of her mattress even though the words weren't
directed at her. She turns up the light pod on the shelf next to her head by
another 10%, brightening it until the whole closet is full of yellow
illumination and all of the knicknacks on the wall of shelving gleam. Uhura
tries to go back to her homework.
"It's alie, I told you, Inever--"
"Can't believe you'd be sostupid as to--"
"I didn'tdo anything!"
The bulkheads are thin, and Uhura's room is right next to the living area,
where Tom and her mother are standing and screaming at each other. They've been
at it for the last two hours.
Tom's been fired from his job. A woman filed a complaint against him, claiming
that he'd forced her into a storage nook and pointed his phaser at her while he
touched her breasts, and that he'd said he'd have to arrest her and put her in
the brig for stealing if she didn't let him do it. Almost as soon as the
complaint was logged, seven other women immediately filed their own claims.
The whole starbase knows about it. School for Uhura had been horrendous that
day. Every time somebody leaned over and asked her was thatyour uncle? and
why'd your parents have to go and bring apervert onto our starbase? she had
biten her lip and looked down at her desk and said nothing. She had barely
heard Zhis Caph's lesson with the way her heartbeat had been echoing in her
ears.
"--exactly shit likethis that got you kicked off the last station! Now you've
gone a brought it here, what are we gonna do, huh? What am I supposed to do for
you now?"
"You're mysister! You can't possibly believe I'd--"
"Sistershit! Just because my father went and remarried your whore of a mother--
"
Uhura wants to throw her PADD aside and cover her ears, but she's heard enought
shouting fights to know that it won't help anything. At least her homework is a
distraction. She can ride out this storm, the way humans used to when the Earth
was huge and they dared to venture its raging oceans in fragile wooden ships.
She will not let herself cower.
When the dust settles, the starbase's mastrigate rules that there isn't enough
evidence to convict Tom of anything. A total of eighteen complaints are swept
into the trash and ignored. Tom doesn't get his job back, though. He doesn't
leave, either.
Now he just stays at home all the time.
14.
Uhura doesn't stay at home if she can help it. She goes to school so early that
the mezzazine stores aren't even open, and she comes back late at night
smelling of the perfume and sweat of her classmates' parties, because those are
the only excuses she has to stay out. Her parents don't understand it. Her
father's disappointed and her mother calls her a slut. Then they fight over it-
- over Uhura. So Uhura stays out even later.
There's definitely more than twenty-three people here, Uhura thinks dizzily,
pushing her way through the crowd. The entire apartment-- whoever's place this
is; she doesn't know-- is packed with people, far more than just their class.
The music is loud and throbbing, a techno beat that probably fills the whole
deck with its bass. But this is Q deck, far below Uhura's apartment on K, and
all the other apartments in the dingy grafittied corridor are partying too,
anyway.
Uhura squirms past a knot of blue-skinned engineers drinking what smells like
genuine kerosene, its fumes making her momentarily light headed. Her too-tall
shoes are pinching and she's not having fun; she wants to go home. Where are
her classmates?
Across the room, she spots four girls that she knows. They're sitting on a
couch in the corner, sprawled together in part of the impossible number of
people crowded on the too-small piece of furniture, and giggling as they gulp
from beer cans. Uhura's eyes narrow. Every one of the men on that couch is so
much older.
"Famija, we should go now," Uhura says, coming to a stop in front of the couch
and drawing herself up to her full height. Sometimes the imperious look works
to establish at least momentary dominance over her classmates.
Instead, the entire group bursts into laughter. One of the girls takes her
fingers and pushes her eyebrows up, and Uhura's face burns hot, humiliated to
be insulted like that in front of so many other people.
"You alien bitch-queen," one of the other girls laughs. To the man whose lap
she's sitting on, she says, "She's half Vulcan, but they didn't want her.
Vergia."
"I am not!" Uhura snaps.
"Even the creeperswouldn't fuck you," taunts the girl, using the starbase's
pigin word for the tentacled Sulamids who work in engineering.
Uhura scowls and scoffs. "I'm totally not a virgin," she lies.
"I can tell," one of the men says. He reaches out and slaps Uhura's ass before
she can dodge. "Unh! Fuck yeah, that's been banged. Who wouldn't?"
She cringes inwardly with disgust at the same time as she feels a strange flush
of pleasure, proud and flattered to be found attractive.
"I want to go now," she tells her classmates, trying to ignore the others.
"Oh my god, are you kidding me? This shit's just getting started, sit down!"
"I--"
The man loops an arm around Uhura's waist and pulls her down on his lap. Her
shriek of surprise makes the others howl with laughter again. They only get
louder when she struggles and kicks.
"Here, here, have a drink," one of the girls says, still sputtering with
laughter. Glitter drips from her eyelashes as she pushes a can into Uhura's
hand. "Oh my god, have a drink, you'll like it."
"I'm not a virgin," Uhura insists, haughty with embarassment, and takes a long
gulp of the beer to prove it. The group roars with approval.
*
The next morning, she wakes up in bed in an empty and unfamiliar apartment with
no pants and blood between her thighs. Too hungover to feel anything besides
the pain splitting her head in two, Uhura searches in the mess of bottles and
cups on the floor until she finds a pair of pants-- not hers-- under a dresser.
She does her best to wipe the crusty gunk off her thighs before she puts them
on.
Uhura can only be grateful, blearily, that the chronometer on the wall says
it's breakday and there's no school. She stumbles out of the apartment, wincing
in the light, and tries not to draw attention as she limps down the grimy
corridor. She's eight doors down from where she last remembers being. Music is
still pounding from some apartments, their doors jammed open to let clusters of
wobbly-drunk people vomit in the corridor.
Apparently she had sex. She doesn't remember it.
The entire starbase knows what happened before Uhura does. At first she doesn't
understand why, but by the time she reaches a public fresher on M deck, eight
people have pointed her out to their friends or followed her with accusing
stares. She fixes her hair in the fresher mirror, squinting at her haggard
reflection as she finger-combs knots out of her hair. There's puke in it, which
she washes out in disgust. Her stomach is doing somersaults. Her hands shake
violently, splashing disinfectahol all over the counter.
Outside the fresher, a small knot of people are standing clustered around
someone's vidcomcam, staring at the screen. One of them spots Uhura coming out
and points at her, shrieking with laughter, "You're totally right, it is her!"
Uhura runs.
Her legs are trembling and her lungs are burning painfully by the time she
reaches K deck. Struggling to breathe normally, Uhura forces herself away from
the wall and steps out of the turbolift on shaky legs. She nearly crashes right
into somebody.
Three of Uhura's classmates from the night before reel back from her as though
struck. One of them makes excessive brushing movements at her clothes. "Look
out, famija, it's the slut."
Uhura's ears roar. The questions stick in her throat-- What happened last
night? andAre you guys totally hungover too? and Whose apartment was that?
Bewildered and hurt and in too much pain to think, she hurries past them. They
press back against the corridor bulkheads and cough-gag and giggle.
Uhura tries to be quiet as she keys in the code at her apartment door. It
swishes open and she staggers in, then stops dead. Both of her parents are
standing right in front of the door, her mother holding a PADD in one white-
knuckled hand, but it's the sight of Tom sitting on the couch-- bodies pressed
together on the couch, her long legs thrown over somebody's lap and somebody
else's hands running up them-- and staring at her with his piercing eyes that
makes Uhura's stomach churn.
"What," says her mother slowly, harsh-voiced with fury, "is this?"
The PADD is full of pictures, spam posted to every chat board and com number on
the starbase.
Uhura. Uhura's body sprawled out on somebody's bed, her knees wide open.
Uhura's body with her pants around one ankle, a man halfway on top of her.
Uhura's body half naked, spread open so that the blood between her thighs
shows. Uhura's body with her head turned to the side, vomiting on her own hair.
Uhura's body on the floor with a semi circle of bare feet around her. Uhura's
body with somebody else's hand between her legs, wiping gunk from her vagina
with her own panties.
Uhura starts to scream.
*
"You have a lot of choices to make, Nyota," the counselor says, her jaw hairs
waving delicately over the PADD she's reading.
"It's Uhura," Uhura says, and is ignored. Counselor Jxrpex "call me Jenny" Xro
already thinks that 'Uhura' is a construct that she's assembled, a shield to
hide behind in order to avoid the consequences of her actions. Uhura doesn't
listen to a thing Xro says, because after all Xro hasn't listened to her often
enough to know that Uhura can pronounce her real name perfectly well.
"Life is all about choices. Do you think you've made good ones, so far? What
kinds of choices are you going to make in the future?"
Uhura stares long and hard, unable to believe her ears. Xro blinks back at her
with big placid eyes.
"I didn't choose to be raped," Uhura says at last, very calmly and slowly, and
then she grabs the edge of Xro's desk, flips it over on her, and walks out of
the office.
She makes a lot of decisions in the time it takes to walk back to her
apartment.
She chooses not to be a woman who shrinks away from stares, from men, from
life-- from anything. Ever.
She chooses not to let her rapists win.
She chooses not to let Tom's stare affect her when she walks in the door, grabs
a travel bag from under the kitchen sink and packs her clothes into it,
ignoring every word he says.
She chooses not to be a backwater hick with a life going nowhere on Fu Marcosa-
17 for a single moment longer.
She chooses to walk into the shuttle bay with her entire life in the bag slung
over her shoulder, buy a ticket and get on the first shuttle to Earth.
16.
Uhura's credits only take her as far as the docking yard in Cairo. On Earth the
laws are different than in space, so the moment Uhura steps onto the tarmack
she's suddenly underaged again for the first time in years. She can't get a job
until she turns fifteen. She can't buy synthehol until she is eighteen. She
can't even get back on the same shuttle she arrived in without a parent's
permission, at least until she turns sixteen.
By the time she's old enough to buy another shuttle ticket to somewhere else,
Uhura doesn't want to. She's settled in Nairobi by that time, with her own
little apartment and a steady job that pays enough to feed her. The United
Stated of Africa suit her well. People come from all over the world to see
Nairobi, where obelisks and skyscrapers stand side by side. The searing heat
and wide expanses of harsh, vibrant desert are sensory luxuries that Uhura
never takes for granted. She visits wildlife preserves on some weekends and
sees animals roaming free and plants blooming that she's never even heard of.
And, though she knows that all of the pyramids are just copies of Egyptian
monuments, built after World War III, the sight of the great triangular
sentinels standing dim and purple on the evening horizon never cease to amaze
her.
Uhura's apartment is on the very outskirts of the city, part of a long
rectangular row of sandstone boxes sunken halfway in the sand so that the lower
rooms are cool in the heat. It's considered pauper's lodgings by modern
standards, but she couldn't possibly love it any more than she does. After a
lifetime of gleaming metal everywhere and a constant, sterile climate, the
roughness of the sandstone bulkheads-- walls-- and smooth grooves in the walk-
worn floors and cracks in her roof's plaster are gloriously tactile
imperfections. From her upstairs bedroom window, covered by a fluttering blue
scrap of curtain, Uhura can look out and see Nariobi gleaming turquoise and
green and silver below.
Every evening at four o'clock (Twelve-hour Earth time, what a strange concept.
She'll never get used to it), Uhura boards a shuttle bus into the city. She's
learned by then that taking a window seat near the door helps her not to panic
at the press of people, but she still has to clutch the edge of the seat and
breathe deeply for a bit. Forty-three minutes later, she disembarks near the
city centre and walks six blocks to a bar called the Gentleman's Freckle (What,
Uhura thought the first time she saw it). Two minutes after washing her hands
and putting on her apron, the post-work rush starts to arrive.
It's bad tonight. By six o'clock, she has to take a break and duck out of the
dim, crowded room. She crouches in the back cooler for a couple of minutes,
clutching her tray to her chest and struggling to breathe evenly.
Don't let him win, she tells herself, forcing herself to stare unblinking into
the eyes of her own reflection on a jar of olives. She is all she's got,
anchoring herself through the storm. Don't let him win don't let him win don't.
Let. Him. Win.
Stepping out of the cooler, she brushes a stray lock of hair back from her face
and nods calmly to another waitress passing in the hall. The sweat beading at
the edges of her hairline could easily be from the heat of the packed bar.
Oh, fucking perfect, Uhura thinks, when she sees the customer that's taken a
table in her section in her absence.
"And what can I get for you tonight, missa?" Uhura asks the woman, smiling
through her teeth.
The woman has her nose literally in the air. She blatantly looks Uhura over,
and then her nose rises another centimetre and her expression goes haughty.
Fucking figures that she wouldn't even remember Uhura from last time, or the
time before. "San Cristobal on the rocks."
"Sure," Uhura says, and turns on her heel to check her other tables. She knows
from experience that she won't get a tip no matter how good her service is.
"Her again," the bartender mutters as he mixes Uhura's drink order. Uhura's
lips pinch in agreement.
By the time she serves the drink, the woman is gone. Uhura looks around and
spots her on the dance floor, her arms around a Starfleet officer in command
gold. Elitist bitch. Uhura's seen her turn her nose up at dozens of other
beings. She leaves the drink on the table and moves on.
Fifteen minutes later, an angry shout calls Uhura back to the table. The woman
points furiously at her drink, untouched and sitting in a pool of condensation.
"You watered this down."
Uhura blinks in surprise. "Missa, you let it sit. The ice melted."
"This isn't what I ordered. I'm not paying for it." She sits down at the table,
crosses her arms and looks away from Uhura. "Replace it."
Infuriated more by the woman's tone than her request, Uhura takes the untouched
drink back to the bar and orders another. She and the bartender trade filthy
looks.
Uhura delivers the new drink to another empty table. The woman's on the dance
floor again, this time with somebody in red. Uhura doesn't care. She's got
better things to do.
On her next round of her section, she nearly drops an entire tray of cocktails
when somebody grabs her arm and yanks her to a stop. A handful of people
applaud her save of the tray. Outraged, Uhura whirls around.
"This is wrong. Again," the woman snarls. "Get me another one."
"You let the ice melt," Uhura tells her. It's a struggle to stay civil,
particularly with the noise and pressure of the room bearing in on her. "If
you'd like, I can bring you the ice in a separate glass so you can put it in
when you're ready to drink it."
The woman gives her a disgusted look. "That is nothow drinks are served!"
Uhura stomps off without another word. She delivers the cocktails and takes
another three orders before returning to the bar.
"Put the ice in another glass," she says.
Typically, the table's empty again.
The third time Uhura gets called over, she's had enough.
"There, missa, I told you," she snaps, before the woman can say anything. She
points at the glass full of half-melted ice. "There's your drink, there's your
water, take it or leave it. You've already cost the bar more than it's worth."
"You bitch," the woman says. Uhura's blood runs cold. "How dare you speak to me
like--"
Uhura slams her tray down on the table with an enormous bangthat makes half the
bar go quiet. Teeth bared, she says deadly soft, "Get out. If you everspeak to
me again, I will pick you up and throw you out of here myself."
"You little bitch, you think you can--"
"You spoke to me," Uhura snarls, leaning down until she's inches from the
woman's face.
The band has stopped playing. Uhura's words ring loud in the silence.
Dumbstruck, the woman leans back in her chair and looks around the room as if
expecting assistance. Uhura's manager is sitting in the corner at the bar, just
watchingthe whole thing with a grin and a whiskey in her hand. Two tables over,
the Starfleet officers look on in silence.
Quietly, the woman gets up and leaves.
The band's drummer hits a resoundingbadum-tish! sting on his kit, and the whole
bar bursts into laughter and starts to applaud. Flushed red with anger and
embarassment, Uhura picks up the drink and waves a hand in awkward gratitude
and goes to hide for a while in the back room until she stops trembling.
She manages to survive the rest of the night. People in her section leave
enormous tips; people outside of her section ask the bartender to pass on their
credits to her. Everybody spends the rest of the night grinning whenever they
see Uhura. There are three spontaneous rounds of applause when she delivers
drinks.
By closing time, the bar's all but empty, save for one Starfleet officer
sitting alone in a corner. Seeing that the other waitresses have already left,
Uhura is forced to go over despite the wary twist in her stomach.
"Missa, we're closing."
"I know." She looks Uhura straight in the eye and holds out her hand.
Nonplussed, Uhura hesitates a moment before shaking it. "That was some show
tonight, Nyota."
"Uhura," she corrects immediately, before she can process the woman's words.
"How did you--"
"Uhura. My apologies. I asked one of the other girls." The officer gets to her
feet and straightens out her tunic, and the movement makes Uhura notice the
many, many stripes of silver braid on her gold sleeves. "Are you happy here?"
"I-- what?"
"Are you happy here. Is this what you want to be doing for the rest of your
life? No education, no money, serving drinks illegally in some bar?"
"I..." Uhura looks at the floor and fights the urge to run. Her breath's
starting to come too fast. It's true that she's not really allowed to work in a
bar yet, and she's been getting paid under the table for a long time, though
she can't fathom how this woman knew that. Oh god, please not jail, not--
"Starfleet needs women like you-- strong women. I think you could have a lot of
talent, too. Think about it-- free education, free lodgings, free food... a
chance to see the world, changethe world..."
It takes Uhura every ounce of strength in her body to gather up enough spit to
ask, "And if I don't?"
The officer shrugs and turns to leave. "Then you don't."
She starts to walk out without another word. Uhura stares after the officer,
dazed. What hits her most isn't the fact that she's safe, not going to jail,
not blackmailed into joining the Fleet. It's the fact that she's not even
important enough to bother blackmailing. She's not worth ten more seconds of
this tough, powerful woman's time.
"Where--"
"There's a registration office just down the street," the officer calls over
her shoulder, not looking back. Then she's gone.
In a trance, Uhura picks up the last of the empty glasses and takes them into
the kitchen. She's putting them in the fresher, listening to them clink against
each other loud in the silence, when her manager comes into the room.
"Man, what a night," Tipella laughs. Uhura jerks upright, startled. Tipella's
more than tipsy, she's loose on her feet. "Christ, Nyota, I didn't know you had
the balls. That was awesome! Kudos."
"That was bullshit," Uhura says. Her heart is beating fast in her chest. She
can taste all the suppressed anger of months in the back of her throat.
Tipella's an alcoholic, and not a very functional one at that, and Uhura's
finally had enough.
Tipella looks at her in shock.
"That," Uhura repeats slowly, "was bullshit, and my name is Uhura, and if you
were sober enough to do your job that would have never happened!"
Tipella jerks an unsteady finger at the door. "Go outside and cool off," she
orders roughly.
"You're damn right I'm going," snaps Uhura. "But I'm not ever coming back."
She makes it all the way to the street outside before she realises she's
forgotten her purse. Half crying with laughter, Uhura has to ask the bouncer to
go inside and get it from the bartender for her.
Riding high on the greatest feeling she's ever had in her life, Uhura walks
straight down to the registration office and enlists. Starfleet it is.
***** Eighteen and Nineteen *****
18.
Training at Starfleet Academy is the best experience of Uhura's life.
California is greener and lusher than she ever thought any place could really
be, outside of hothouse botanical gardens. The brochure pictures weren't
retouched at all, to her shock.
She hasn't finished high school when she enlists, but it doesn't matter. Four
intense months in a pre-Fleet education facility that is usually attended
insteadof high school have her caught up enough to enroll in her first semester
classes.
Her adviser insists that Uhura get rid of her slangy starbase accent, so she
takes Fleet Standard 101. Within two weeks the pidgin cant is gone. By the time
the semester is over, Uhura has learned the rudiments of five other languages
from her classmates, who come from all over the universe. She immediately signs
up for a full load of language-based classes. She picks up proper French and
Swahili, not just the post-Eugenics War Francohili dialect that is her first
language.
Instead of taking advantage of the optional semester-end summer trip to Orion
Prime, she takes classes over the summer. When her classmates come back, Uhura
has three more courses under her belt and a note of recommendation on her
record. By her second year, the entire xenoliguistics department knows Uhura.
She TAs in Klingon 304 just one semester after she herself takes the class. She
is granted full access to the language archives in order to write a
particularly ambitious research paper on the etymological connections between
Vulcanir and Rihanna, something that many scholars want to understand but few
want to attempt because of the scarcity of material available from behind both
the Vulcan Blockade and the Neutral Zone. After Uhura publishes the paper, the
department head makes her archive access permanent.
She may write Vulcanir better than almost anybody else in Starfleet, but she
can't speak it beyond a rudimentary level. Her vocal cords simply aren't
capable of it. So, during the second summer break, Uhura spends a week in
Starfleet Medical getting secondary vocal cords surgically implanted. She can't
speak for a month afterwards. By the end of the break, however, she can manage
the most complex of guttural tone shifts and poly-consonant combinations.
Starfleet gets Uhura to demonstrate her linguistic abilities in one of their
promotional vids for the service. Shortly after, a movie studio hires her to do
voiceovers for a Romulan character, and her performance draws critical acclaim.
Almost immediately, two other studios call, asking her to do dubs for other
actors that can't handle alien speech. Only classes prevent Uhura from pursuing
voice acting farther, but she wouldn't trade her education for anything. She
still has time to coach a number of actors in xenolinguistic performance on a
by-line basis, though. And the singing lessons she had to take for the Romulan
movie turn out to be an invaluable asset; during long-term "trapped"
simulations, Uhura's ability to sing boosts crew morale by 37%.
This is her calling. She is going to speak to foreign diplomats and alien
kings, speak foradmirals and prime ministers.
Starfleet Academy is Uhura's haven. She makes friends, real friends, who are
her age and who share her interests and who, somehow, love spending hours
hunting through endless dusty paper volumes smuggled out of the Blockade in
search of a single Vulcanir character with a hook or loop that compares to
another single Rihanna letter just as much as Uhura does.
She also gets the first real psychological counselling she's ever had. The
sessions take months and they're the bitterest part of those years in
California, but when Uhura's eighteen she goes on her first date ever and
enjoys the whole thing purely on the merit that she's not terrified. After
Jessica drops her off at her dorm with a squeeze of her hand and a smile, Uhura
goes inside her room and presses her cheek against the door and cries in utter
relief. She still can't stomach the idea of sexual contact with men-- maybe
never will-- but she can handle large crowds and loud noises and being yelled
at by male commanding officers without having a breakdown.
With eight commendations on her record, four wildly celebrated papers to her
name and three years' worth of education packed into two, Uhura is selected for
a semester of accelerated-track officer training aboard the Farragut.

19.
Serving aboard the Farragutis the worst experience of Uhura's life.
It's a Syndicate ship. When Uhura boards, this means nothing to her except that
most of her crewmates will be Orion. She's far from the xenophobe it would take
to be bothered by this. In fact, she looks forward to the opportunity to study
the etymological development of military and naval slang in Low Orion, as
opposed to the sexually oriented dialect commonly spoken by Orions outside of
Starfleet.
Uhura is serving with a temporary rank of lieutenant for the duration of the
training, as though it were an extremely extended simulation. Only eight other
students are boarding with her, six "ensigns" and two "lieutenants". The rest
of the crew are students from universities on Orion, save for the senior
officers, who are actually officers. It's a bit intimidating at first, the rush
of chirps and clicks that resound in the corridors during boarding, the foreign
body language that flows in the clusters of chatting Orions students. Nobody
shrugs or nods or waves; instead there are twitching noses, winking eyes, and
booted toes tracing circles on the floor.
The nine Academy students have cabins together in one hallway. They double up,
granting Uhura the single in a subtle gesture of respect for her vaguely known
past that she finds surprisingly touching. Despite herself, she finds the smell
of the Farragut's recycled air vaguely comforting. Earth air might have all
kinds of tones and tastes that are never found in space, but she will always be
most familiar with climate-controlled, carbon-scrubbed shipboard oxygen.
Launch goes well. Uhura doesn't conduct the Farragutfrom spacedock, but she
gets to watch it from her station at the back of the bridge. For a long moment
after the inertial dampeners disengage, the Farragutfloats, her nose wheeling
gracefully about to face open space. The star clusters of their destination
come into view on the main monitor, and Uhura's heart leaps. Then everything
smears into white blurs at 240 times the speed of light and the captain
twitches his nose approvingly at the pilot.
At the end of their first ever shift on board a starship, the Academy students
retire back to their cabins as if they're walking on clouds, all of them nearly
giddy. Uhura can't stop grinning as she strips for sleep.
Five hours later, the lights in the corridor go out and a mob of howling demons
descends on their cabins.
Cold hands rip Uhura from her bunk kicking and screaming. In the dark, somebody
grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks her head back, prying her teeth from the
wrist she had sunk them into. A wad of fabric is shoved into her mouth and
another one bound over it. She tastes foot odour. A blindfold goes across her
eyes. Her hands are tied behind her back.
Trembling and half dressed, the nine of them find themselves lined up in the
middle of the corridor. Uhura only knows the others are there because the arm
pressed against her own is too warm to be Orion, and she can hear Fatima
sobbing hoarse prayers in her native language. Reynolds is sniffling.
"So these are our new playthings!" shouts a man in Low Orion, the common
dialect. The word he uses for 'playthings' translates most literally to 'meat
holes'. The crowd roars, filling the corridor with deafening noise. Uhura
flinches. Amelie starts to cry.
"Look how cute they are." The man is walking up and down the line. Uhura hears
the crack of flesh on flesh, and Erin's voice crying out immediately
afterwards. "You know how poorly Starfleet trains their recruits, no? How are
they ever to serve--" --'serve' with connotations of sexual submission-- "--
properly aboard an Orion ship? I say we break them in!"
The mob screams. Then the riotous uproar resolves into something even more
horrifying: a slow, steady chant. "Break them in! Break them in! Break them
in!"
"Which one? This one? I don't want this pink-skin. This one?" Fatima lets out a
shriek. "Too small," the man laughs. The crowd is still chanting, speeding up.
"I think it's one of the lieutenants. Which one of them will it be? This one?
No, I know."
"Break them in, break them in--"
A hand lands on Uhura's cheek, fingers pinching her lower lip. She flinches.
"Breaktheminbreaktheminbreakthemin--"
"The precious, decorated xenolinguist! She must have a talented tongue."
The mob explodes in a roar of approval. A cold hand grabs Uhura by the elbow
and drags her forward. Somebody kicks the back of her knee and it collapses out
from beneath her, sending her to the deck.
Her chest has seized cold and still, everything going icy silent beneath her
ribcage. Blood flows from the inside of her bitten cheek.
Somebody rips off her blindfold, tearing out the hair caught in the knot. The
corridor lights are at barely 5% and the mob is waving flashlights, the flares
of light bouncing off the writhing mob of nearly naked green bodies
disorienting Uhura. Squinting, she can make out the eight others being forced
to their knees, teary-eyed and terrified as their blindfolds are removed as
well.
The speaker grabs her chin, turning her face up to him. His features are hidden
in the darkness.
Calmly, coldly, Uhura says, "Your halfbreed mother fucked a diseased goat and
cried when all she got out of the deal was you."
The crowd whistles and chirps their laughter. He slaps her across the face.
Glowering, Uhura whips back around and spits the blood from her bitten cheek on
his feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees her human classmates staring
wide-eyed at her, frightened beyond belief.
They need an anchor. They need a leader. She is a lieutenant of Starfleet, and
she will notbe afraid.
"Put your mouth to better use," the man suggests. From behind Uhura, a number
of cold hands grab her face. She lets out a feral warscream, high up in her
surgically altered vocal cords, and bites as many fingers as she can. Still,
eventually the number of hands overwhelms her. They pry apart her clenched jaws
and shove something between them-- a gag. A rubbery polymer gag with channels
that fit over her top and bottom teeth, blunting her teeth and holding her
mouth wide open.
The man already has his pants open, jacking his erection. Eagerly, he grabs a
handful of Uhura's hair and jerks her forward.
"Look at this, Starfleet! Watch!This is your commanding officer!"
He forces his cock past her lips, ramming straight to the back of her throat
with a brutal grip in Uhura's hair. She chokes immediately, tears overflowing
and running down her cheeks. Gagging with every brutal thrust, Uhura strains
her jaws against the gag, trying to bite down even a little, and fails. He
drags her down on his erection, the head of it pushing at Uhura's spasming
throat until it finally gains way. Slowly, in obscene grunting thrusts, the
Orion forces his cock down her throat until Uhura's nose is crushed up against
his pelvic bone.
"She's half Orion," the man groans, to a general titter of amusement. "What
amouth. Look at this hair, look at it. So soft--fuck, whore, suck it good. This
one's got Orion blood. Bet it was her mother."
"Bet it was her father!" someone else shouts. "Human pig of a mother couldn't
resist him even if she wanted to!"
Even louder laughter.
Finally, he orgasms in her throat. Howling triumph, the Orion throws her down
on the floor. Retching and choking for breath, Uhura curls into a ball on the
deck. Oily-sweet semen drips down her chin. She can feel her classmates' eyes
on her, horrified, but pray god it's dark enough that they can't see her tears,
her cringing-- pray to any power or grace in the universe that they can't see
this degradation.
"This could be you!" the man yells. He reaches down and rips the gag out of
Uhura's mouth, then kicks her. "Say it, linguist. Tell them."
"Go fuck yourself on ateral'nuntil it comes out your horse-sucking mouth."
The boot slammed into her stomach makes her wheeze. "Say it!"
"This could be you," Uhura rasps, her voice shredded raw and deep. She
struggles to her knees, hands still tied behind her back, and her face is
covered in tears and drool and semen but through the darkness she stares fire
and steel at where her classmates' eyes should be. "And you would survive it
too."
The kick to her kidneys is worth it.
The Orion grabs another fistful of her hair and jerks her head to the side.
Uhura takes a sharp breath but keeps her control. A cool flatness strokes the
side of her face-- then narrows into the edge of a knife. She hears Reynolds
yelp, and assumes the dark silhouettes looming behind her classmates are other
Orions, also with knives.
"Kill us and Starfleet goes to war with your entire planet," Uhura bites out.
"Kill you? No. If you kept slaves you'd know what branding was, pig."
The deep slice to her cheek burns like fire, blood pouring hot and wet down her
throat immediately. Reynolds starts to swear and Erin lets out a muffled
scream.
"We're done--done! Put them away, they're all leaking. Sleep well, humans. See
you at work tomorrow."
*
After the Orions throw them back into their cabins and disperse, the corridor
lights come back on. Trembling from head to toe, Lieutenant Reynolds is the
only one brave enough to step out of his room again. He buzzes at their doors,
goes from room to room and makes sure everybody's-- fuck. They're not okay. He
makes sure nobody's catatonic, anyway. Uhura can't come out of her room, she
can't, but she shoves a handful of hairpins at Reynolds and tells him to make
sure the others know how to jam their locks.
Uhura doesn't sleep. She seals her door and sticks a hairpin in the lock, then
locks herself in her fresher and turns the sonic on so high that it makes her
skin raw. Standing naked in the sonic stall, she's got her toothbrush in her
hand at the same time, scrubbing furiously and spitting down the drain,
applying more toothpaste and brushing again and again and again.
An hour later, she finally stands in front of her mirror, dressed in full
uniform. The cut on her cheek has finally stopped bleeding, half scabbed and
puffy, the fibres of her muscle gleaming in the wound. In one hand Uhura hold
her ponytail, silky and gleaming; in the other she has a tiny penknife. She
lifts the knife to her scalp, hesitates, and holds it there.
Look at this hair, look at it.
With a sharp breath, she starts to cut-- and stops. A few strands float to the
fresher floor.
Seized by sudden rage, Uhura whips around and throws the knife at the wall so
hard that it chips the tile, ricocheting off and clattering to the floor. She
stares at herself in the mirror, wild-eyed and wounded. A hunted animal stares
back. Uhura puts one shaking hand against the plexiglass, pressing down on the
reflection of her cut cheek so hard that her capillaries whiten.
"What doesn't kill you," she whispers to herself, in her horrible raw grating
voice, "makes you stronger. So don't let it kill you. Don't. Don't you dare.
And don't ever let them win."
*
At 0530 hours, Uhura is the one who buzzes her classmates' cabins. All of them
still shaky and red-eyed, they answer tremulously only after her firm, steady
voice comes through the comm. It doesn't matter that she only reminds them all
to report for duty on their scheduled shifts. What they really see-- really
needto see-- is Lieutenant Uhura giving orders, strong and confident, looking
as regal and fierce as a tribal warrior queen in her uniform the same shade of
blood red as the open wound on her cheek.
She marches to sickbay and comes to attention in front of the CMO, a
weatherbeaten older Orion with only one eye. "Sir," she says quietly, low-
voiced, "I need a word with you in private." Uhura uses High Orion, her careful
words free of absolutely any sexual connotations.
In his office, he applies his tricorder to her wounded cheek. It burns and
itches more than any healing Uhura can remember. "What did you want,
Lieutenant?" He uses a word for 'want' (there are twenty-two) that carries
suggestive undertones.
"Sir, last night eight of my classmates and I were assaulted in our rooms by a
large group of people. I was r-- s-s-sexually assaulted-- f-forced to perform
fellatio-- and kicked. All of us received deep facial wounds."
Uhura is so proud of how her voice barely shakes. She thinks of Africa, of
lionesses fighting hyenas away from their cubs and zebra mares striking out at
prowling coy-dogs with their razor-sharp hooves.
The CMO switches his tricorder off and stares at her for a long time. "Yes?" he
says at last, slowly. "And so...?"
Uhura's heart freezes in her chest. She can't breathe.
"Nothing," she manages to croak at last.
As she's leaving sickbay, Uhura catches a glimpse of her reflection in a
shining piece of equipment. Her eyes sting with sudden tears, hopeless and
horrible and gut-wrenchingly miserable.
The wound on her face is now a scar, knotted and raw and ugly. It stretches in
a long, livid line from her swollen cheekbone almost down to her jaw. He didn't
heal her, he markedher.
Uhura strides back to the rooms, blue-hot rage and sheer stubborn refusal to
break in front of these people keeping the tears at bay, and applies
disinfectant and medical foil to her classmates' faces herself.
*
It's three more weeks before Uhura is due to make her first report to Admiral
Hotep. The Farraguthas already made berth at the first supply stop on their
training tour, a terraformed moon that offers fresh food and new bodies which
most of the crew has already beamed down to enjoy.
Uhura's classmates are all locked in their rooms instead-- rather, in Fatima's
room. Uhura's vidcam stands propped up on her desk next to the comm screen. On
it, she can see all of them clustered together on the bed and floor, writing
reports or essays in dead silence. They can see her on Fatima's vidcam if they
look up at it. They all have a system well established now; nightly work is
completed in a group in one person's room, or two if they must. Vidcams are
used to link their rooms at all times; at night the volume must be turned on so
that a scream through the speakers will wake the rest of them. It hasn't been
necessary yet, but they live in fear. Uhura wishes she didn't have the single
room, now.
Uhura's comm screen beeps. She answers the call immediately, her stomach a
terrified knot. Tears flood to her eyes without warning at the sight of the
admiral's face, blue-eyed and slightly pockmarked from childhood acne, the
familiar tough face that congratulated her strength years ago in a tiny bar in
Nairobi.
"Admiral Hotep," Uhura greets, voice wavering only slightly.
"Cadet Uhura. How is everything going? Well, I expect."
"No, sir," says Uhura. Her chin starts to tremble. "Please, sir, we need to be
returned to Earth immediately. The nine of us. We're in danger," she adds
desperately.
"What's this about, cadet? The Farragut's nowhere near the border, you're in no
danger."
"No, sir! We're in danger aboard the ship. The crew, sir, I--" Uhura's vision
goes blurry. She bites her cheek and tears spill down her face but her burning
eyes stay fixed hard on Hotep's face. "We were attacked, sir. I was sexually
assaulted. By the crew."
Hotep closes her eyes and looks away from the screen. She's silent for a long
time. Uhura twists her hands in her lap, nails biting into her palms-- she's
been growing them out. The better to claw you with, my dear. Finally, Hotep
lets out a harsh breath and looks back at Uhura.
"This is a difficult thing for you to do, Cadet Uhura, but you have to stay. We
can't recall you to Earth. You're the most exceptional students in your year,
do you understand? I'm sure all of you can perform admirably."
"I was raped, sir!" Uhura cries, horrified. "Please, admiral, p-please, I--"
"Lieutenant, listento me!" Hotep's voice is a whipcrack, cutting across Uhura's
growing panic. Uhura falls silent, trembling from head to toe. The admiral
called her by rank despite the fact that it's not official, and that, more than
anything, gives Uhura the strength to control herself.
"Do you know how many men are serving in government positions right now,
Lieutenant?" Hotep continues, now more softly. "How many males, I mean. None.
Not a one over the rank of lieutenant on Syndicate ships. Male captains serve
only on Starfleet ships with one-hundred percent human crews. There are no men
over the rank of captain in Starfleet. There are no men on the cabinets,
councils or senates of any country on Earth, no male presidents or prime
ministers for the last hundred and twenty-two years. Every single government in
the worldis run by women-- women like you and I."
"Yes, sir," Uhura agrees unsteadily. She knows this. She doesn't understand
where Hotep's going with it.
Visibly frustrated, Hotep snaps, "Use your head, Uhura! Orion females secrete
pheromones. Over time, they develop a mind-controlling effect on men, all men,
our species and theirs. They've never been afraid to use them, even before we
signed the first treaty. By the time we figured out what was happening, they'd
nearly taken over the planet-- you know that, don't you? You knowwe can't have
men in power. It's just not possible."
"Yes, sir. But I don't--"
"We need women, Lieutenant Uhura. Powerful women. Think of this as training-
- the worst training you'll ever endure, but necessary training. They can't get
to you with biochemistry, and they can't kill you as long as Orion wishes to
remain allied with Earth, so they'll try other things to break you. Don't
letthem, Lieutenant. You're stronger than that. You have to survive it. You are
the future, do you understand? You're the future of Starfleet, of Earth. You're
a survivor, I knew that the day I saw you in that bar."
No you didn't, Uhura thinks numbly.You saw cannon fodder. Raw materials at
best. Get a thousand recruits andone of them's probably gonna turn out to be
worth something. She wonders how many other girls the admiral has given this
speech to. Wonders who gave it to the admiral.
"Yes, sir," her mouth says, while inside Uhura's really sitting collapsed in a
pile of wreckage and shattered hopes. "Thank you, sir. We'll do it, sir."
Hotep's ice-blue eyes pierce her. "I'm sure you will, Lieutenant. Finish this
tour well, and I'm sure I'll be pinning those stripes on you for real."
The comm goes blank before Uhura can salute.
She stares at it for a long time.
The warrior queen looks back at her from the screen's reflecting surface, her
proud cheek carrying the mark of suffering survived.
Who was she kidding when she signed up for Starfleet? What was she thinking-
- that a phaser could make her any stronger? Or that a rank could make others
respect her enough to keep her safe? Propaganda. Lies. If she had to ask these
people to grant her power, how could it ever reallybe hers?
"Don't let them kill you," Uhura hears herself say. It doesn't sound like her
voice. It doesn't feel like her body that gets up and walks to the door and
enters Fatima's room.
They look up at her from the floor and the bed, anxious and scared, seeking
reassurance from Uhura and promises of rescue from the admiral. Instead, she
reaches over and switches off Fatima's vidcam. There will be no record of this,
not anywhere.
"As of this moment," Uhura says, "I no longer consider myself an officer of
Starfleet. If you value your lives, I suggest you do the same."
*
The nine of them get permission to beam down to the moon within an hour. Shore
leave is three days long. By the time anybody realises they've hopped a cargo
ship headed for Tarsus IV, they're long gone.
19.
All those years, all those lightyears, and Uhura hasn't gone anywhere. She's
right back where she started, serving drinks to traders and thugs on some
backwater starbase off all the major shipping routes. All she managed to do was
trade down from Union space to pirate space, from her tiny, sun-filled
apartment in Nairobi to the crampled steel coffin she calls home now.
She turns nineteen today. Just look how far she's come.
Uhura clears empty glasses off a table, nearly losing one as the table wobbles
alarmingly. She catches it in time and swears in Klingon. Cheap aluminum junk-
- yeah, they look attractive (maybe twenty years ago, when retro space-glam was
in again) with the assortment of holographic menus and translucent coloured
tiles displayed beneath the tables' clear surfaces, light shining through from
below, but they don't last through one barfight. And it's about sixty barfights
later, now.
"Can I get a refill, here?" asks a baby-blue Cardassian in the midst of
shedding his scales all over the floor, holding up his chalice.
"Can I get your money, here?" Uhura retorts, holding out her scanner. He swipes
a chip, transfers credits, and Uhura obligingly fills the chalice from the
flask of ridiculously expensive Saurian brandy she's been carrying around in
her apron pocket. It's payment-by-the-cup, that's how good the vintage is.
"What's this?" he demands, plucking at the red bandana tied around Uhura's left
elbow. She jerks back out of his grip with a glower.
"None of your fucking business."
"Humans," the Cardassian mutters into his cup as Uhura stalks away.
It's her mourning colours. The only eight friends she had left in the universe-
- all dead. She wears their blood on her arm.
Tarsus IV was the biggest fuck-up of her life. Arriving there via cargo ship
had been straightforward; it had taken nearly all the credits they had, but the
nine of them had managed to bribe the captain into carrying them as far as he
could. The shipment had ended up being supplies to a little farming colony
called Tarsus, way out near the edge of Vulcan space-- Free Space, the captain
called it.
Free from what? Uhura had asked him, to bitter laughter.
The Union, he'd said, pocketed her credits, and spat on her feet before walking
away.
Tarsus had been beautiful, blue and green and golden with ripe wheat. The nine
of them had helped to unload cargo and ended up standing on the tarmack of the
landing pad, watching as the ship soared away into the stratosphere.
And who the hell are you? a voice from behind them had called.
Uhura and her classmates had turned around. They'd all ditched their uniforms
long ago, leaving them in nondescript blacks. Runaways, Uhura had replied
calmly, her chin tipped high. Free people. We'd like to speak to the governor.
Will you take us to him, Mr...?
The man had wiped his greasy hands off on a rag, staring at them for a long
time as the wind ruffled shaggy sun-kissed blond hair over his blue eyes.
Twenty-something, handsome, with a farmer's tan and a body built to hard,
honest work. Sam Kirk, he'd said finally. This way.
Governor Kodos had not been what Uhura had been expecting of an authority
figure. Plump, friendly, clad in clothing as equally work-worn as the rest of
the colonists'-- and male. She'd never met a man in power before.
We're a little out of the way to be dealing with the Union, he'd chuckled,
leading them on a tour down the town's cobblestone streets. Grass had been
springing between the cracks, every inch of the planet bursting with life.
Chickens had pecked calmly at the stones while lazy mongerels napped in the
sun; children had run playing in the streets. That's not to say people haven't
tried to attack us-- they have. Never directly. A couple shipments of fungally
contaminated grainseed, mostly. But it's never been a problem. Say what you
want about Vulcan scientists, but they're thorough. Every single strain of crop
we've planted here comes right from their labs, and they genetically engineer
blight-protection into everything. At first it was just cheapest to buy from
Vulcan: they're closest. But it ended up saving our lives. Talk about lucky
breaks, eh?
The others had been happy-- happier than Uhura had ever seen them. The
colonists had been happy to have eight more pairs of willing hands.
You're welcome to stay, Uhura, Kodos had said. We don't have to put this on the
colony records.
No. No, I just-- I have to go. I don't-- I can't. I've... I can't explain it.
I'm just the kind of person who... wanders. I can't settle. It's never worked
for me.
Goodbye, Lieutenant Uhura, Amelie had whispered, her arms around Uhura's neck.
God, you're just-- you're so strong. The way you can just pick up and go-- no
fear-- I wish I could be like you.
Uhura still remembers the admiration shining in Amelie's eyes, the respect on
her classmates' faces as they saluted her one last time from the tarmack just
before the shuttle had lifted off.
Eighteen days later, the Union ships had arrived. Tarsus IV had been burned to
the ground.
Uhura had immediately stopped travelling-- too dangerous to risk somebody on
the next transport recognising her face from the wanted holograms. She'd set
down roots in the starbase she'd been on at the time, getting lodgings and a
job. By night she pours drinks and cleaned tables in a bar where it's too dark
for people to recognise her through the distorting shadows of too much makeup;
by day she hides in her apartment with the doors locked and never pokes her
nose out.
She turns nineteen today. Just look how far she's come.
"Waitress," drawls a male voice in Standard. Between his fifth and sixth drinks
by the sound of it, Uhura judges wearily. "Can I get another of these?"
He's really too young for her to serve him, but those are Earth laws. Out here,
Uhura's more likely to get in trouble for not selling him what he wants. She
hands over another bottle of beer to the young man, who's sitting with his feet
on the table, chair tipped back on two legs. He smirks at her. Uhura curls her
lip.
All blond hair and baby blue eyes, he's a handsome enough kid-- if she gave a
damn. She doesn't. He's also fifteen and arrogant as hell, from the look of
things.
"Anything for you?" she asks the other man at the table, an older man with a
distinct air of authority about him. He's far more to her liking, quiet and
dignified, with silver threading his hair at the temples and crow's-feet of
experience at the corners of his eyes. Looks like a man who deserves to carry
that disruptor rifle slung over his shoulder.
"Actually, I've got a proposition for you," he says, with an easy smile.
Uhura's breath hisses between her teeth. "You can buy the brat a little
experience from somebody else," she snaps, "because I don't want your money."
The older man throws back his head and laughs.
The kid, however, lets out an outraged, "Hey!" and lets his chair thud back
down onto four legs. Bright blue eyes narrow at Uhura, spitting with anger, but
he gives her an ugly, leering smile. "You know, you're not exactly doing
yourself any favours in that uniform sack."
"And I'm not doing youany, either," Uhura snarls back.
"That's enough," the older man barks, wiping the smirk from the kid's face. His
voice is deadly. "Jim, get the fuckoutside and wait for me there."
For a moment, Jim looks like he's going to argue. Then he gets to his feet and
slinks out of the bar, casting a filthy glance over his shoulder at the older
man.
The guy looks back at Uhura, his expression apologetic. "As if I wanted to
support his idiotic sexual obsession," he says. "That's not it at all. I'd like
to take you on for a cargo run, just a quick jaunt out to Vulcan. Thirty
credits, half up front and half at the end. Virtually danger free. No sexual
favours at all, you have my word."
"Oh yeah?" Uhura sneers. "What else could you want?"
"Your incredible talent with languages," the man says bluntly, dead serious. "I
didn't look at you and see a whore, tonight. I saw a woman speaking seven
different languages to beings from all over the quadrant without batting an
eye. I could use that."
"For a cargo shipment?" she says skeptically.
"Different kind of cargo than you're thinking." He shrugs casually, but his
pale eyes are like steel as he watches that sink in. "Freed slaves. Problem is,
none of my people speak Orion or Andorian, and I'm not betting on the odds that
this group speaks Standard. Communication difficulties are trouble that's
easier to just avoid."
Uhura studies him for a long time, so long that he reminds her, "Thirty
credits. When we're done, I'll even buy you a ticket for a shuttle back here,
if that's where you want to go. All I need is two weeks of your time, three at
the most."
"And what I need is a permanent job," Uhura replies, folding her arms over her
chest. She's gratified at the surprise that crosses his face. "Long-term, and
secure. Same wages the rest of your crew make. My own cabin, or one with a
female at the very least. And you'll supply me with a functioning phaser that I
will be permitted to carry at all times."
"You drive a hard bargain," he says slowly, contemplating her. His fingertips
tap a staccato pattern on the table. "Tell you what. We'll see how this run
goes, and if we're still getting along at the end of it, I'll give you that
job. You any good with computers?"
"I can repair my own equipment."
"Good enough." He tosses a credit chip on the table and gets to his feet. "Our
shuttle's in the shipyard, pad 37. Is an hour long enough for you?"
Uhura slides the chip into her pocket before replying. "I'll be there."
She doesn't bother telling the manager that she's quitting. He'll get the
message when she never shows up again. Before Uhura leaves, though, she runs
the chip under her scanner to check its contents, and her knees nearly buckle.
Six and a quarter credits. Four months' worth of rent. That's not her payment,
that's her tip. This guy reallywants her to like him.
*
But by the time Uhura reaches her apartment, she's got doubts, misgivings that
never came to mind when faced with that wise, trustworthy face and the promise
of more money than she's ever had at one time. Everything she owns fits in one
bag, and the apartment's pre-fab steel walls are left bare. Good thing rent was
due in just another two days.
She walks to the shuttleyard, her hair streaming out in the cold night wind,
but with every step she goes slower and slower. When she finally gets within
sight of pad 37, the small group of people waiting there visible in the dull
yellow light shining from overhead, Uhura's given herself more reasons to stay
than go. She stops walking and stands there in the cold wind, unable to make
herself cross the last fifty metres of tarmack.
Somebody at the shuttle notices her and tells the others. They turn to look at
her. One of them starts to come over-- the older man. Uhura just stands there,
paralysed by indecision, as he approaches. She needs money but she wantsto run.
"Everything all right?" he asks, stopping with a respectful five foot distance
between them.
"I can't go with you," Uhura says, before she can think about it. The man's
eyebrows rise, his gaze drifting pointedly to the bag over her shoulder. "I
just-- I can't. Who was I kidding, saying yes? Jump on a ship with a bunch of
complete strangers? Please. Even you have to know that's stupid of me."
"Lieutenant, I give you my word that nobody will lay a hand on you."
Uhura scoffs. "Oh, your word. Right. I'm sure that'll mean so much to me when
I'm getting--" She stops dead. "Lieu-- lieutenant?" she repeats hoarsely,
unable to believe her ears.
The man's eyes are kind, gentle in the softened creases of his work-worn face.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, of course. Your kind of technical skill and the way
you give orders, I figure you're not an ensign, but with your age, you couldn't
be much higher than lieutenant. And you've done service on a Syndicate ship-
- you've got the scar from that hideous initiation ritual."
He indicates his cheek, adding, "I had mine erased years ago."
Uhura's hand rises without thought to touch the livid scar on her own cheek.
She stares at him.
"Why should I trust you?" Uhura asks, very softly.
Without replying, he pulls a vidcomcam from his belt and starts to punch
commands into it. Quite unexpectedly, he asks, "Ever watched any
FuckedStarfleet vids?"
Uhura is aghast. "Of course not," she hisses, revolted. It's a popular porn
series featuring Starfleet officers, often being whipped, tied in stress
positions and otherwise humiliated. It's known as 'non-con' on the web.
Apparently millions of people like to see Fleet personel getting it handed to
them. Few seem to know-- or care-- that the stars aren't actors and more
importantly they're not acting, that most of the time they're actual officers
being rapedin the Syndicate's sick version of appropriate disciplinary
measures.
He offers the device to her, a video playing on the screen. Uhura refuses it,
about to turn and walk away right then, but the expression on his face stops
her. Reluctantly, she takes it. It's hard to make herself watch.
A young man in a command gold shirt and nothing else, the stripes of a
lieutenant junior grade on his sleeves. He's kneeling on the floor with his
arms bound above his head, while his legs are forced apart by the spreader bar
between his knees. The sound is muted, but he's crying out-- screaming, by the
agonised gape of his open mouth and the tears running down his face. There's a
machine between his legs, a fake cock slamming in and out of his body with
brutal speed--
--and that face might be twenty years younger, might be contorted with agony,
but it's the same man standing before Uhura right now.
"Why would you keep this with you?" she asks in horror, handing it back.
"I don't," he says grimly. His face is dark as he switches the device off
without looking at it. "It's on the net, free. Everybody can see it."
There's a silence, horrible and heavy. Uhura looks at the ground, unable to
speak.
"So," the man continues quietly, "when I tell you that you'll be safe aboard my
ship, Lieutenant, you know I'm telling the truth. Anybody touches you without
your permission, and I'll put them out the airlock myself. But if you'd rather
not come, then that's your choice. By all means, stay. I understand that."
That's what decides Uhura. "No," she says. "No, Captain--?"
"Pike. Christopher."
"Captain Pike. I want to come with you, sir."
He gives her a long, measuring look. "All right, then. Lieutenant...?"
"Uhura. Just Uhura. The rank's not necessary."
"We don't have much in the way of official ranks, but between you and me, it
might put a little obedient fear into the rest of my brats. They could use an
officer barking orders down their backs."
Uhura chuckles a little, encouraged by Pike's smile. "I can do that, sir."
"I'm sure you can, Lieutenant. Now come and meet the crew."
*
The Number One is small but fast as hell. They arrive at the destination to
pick up their cargo within three days. The crew works with practiced
efficiency, yet they're not so close-knit that they exclude Uhura (and Pike
wasn't kidding, they're either criminally young or batshit crazy, sometimes a
scary amount of both). They're a little wary of her, sure, but that's fine.
They haven't seen Uhura contribute yet. She's about to earn her keep, and maybe
their trust.
In a narrow corridor, Uhura is checking the food supplies stored in overhead
compartments, double checking they have enough for all their extra passengers
on the rest of the trip. As she's working, Jim Kirk sidles up to her, blue eyes
so big in his teenaged face, giving him a gaunt, feral look that has nothing to
do with weight.
"So," he says, "it's Uhura, right?" It's the first time he's spoken to her
since she joined the crew. He's spent the whole trip so far just staringat her
from afar, but with a hard, assessing expression, rather than any kind of
sexual leer. It gave her the first inkling as to why this fifteen year-old
childmight be Pike's first officer.
"Just Uhura," she says coldly, preempting the inevitable question.
"Yeah? Why's that?"
Uhura gives Kirk a dispassionate look, her posture regal. "I'm from a
matriarchal African clan dating back to the 2000s. Near the end of World War
Three, the men of the clan went off to fight back the army advancing on Egypt
and all ended up dying before they reached Kenya. During raids and skirmishes
when enemy forces tried to take the city as their own because of its
fortifications, villagers would scream, 'Uhura!' Instead of one woman, they got
twelve, all carrying laser rifles and Songye war axes."
He looks genuinely impressed. It makes Uhura wish she wasn't lying through her
teeth. As far as she knows, her family comes from Massachusetts-- or maybe it
was Mexico. She can't remember. But Kirk doesn't need to know that. It's as
good a story as any.
"If you'll excuse me," Uhura says, shutting the overhead compartment, "I have
work to do."
"Yeah," agreed Kirk, already retreating back to the bridge. His eyes are
piercing. "Make sure they're not scared, will you?"
It's a surprising request-- not "keep them quiet" or "get them aboard fast",
but "make sure they're not scared". That's when Uhura realises for the first
time that she may actually come to respect this arrogant, unpredictable child
officer.
She goes down the gangway to the main hatch, mentally preparing herself. The
Number One's interior shines a bright pool of white light out into the dark,
deserted grassy field that they've landed on. At the bottom of the loading ramp
is a cluster of humanoids, keeping close together and circulating a bit, like a
pack circling to keep its members tight together. They're unlike any slaves
Uhura has ever seen, their raw animal instincts running too close to the
surface, their teeth a little too ready to draw blood. Pike and the wild-eyed
alcoholic CMO are standing some distance away, talking to the captain of the
other ship that's sitting nearby.
Uhura catches Pike's eye and he nods. She takes a deep breath and walks down
the ramp.
The first person to meet her eyes is a girl-- a green girl with bright red hair
and a fierce, defiant look on her face. And at the nape of her neck, bared by
the short, ragged fringe of her shorn-off hair, is the metal socket that the
Union surgically implants on all their slaves. Uhura wonders how much it hurts
to rip out all the circuitry wired into the spinal cord, the tracking device
and punishment electrodes that need to be removed before a slave can run away.
An Orion. It gives Uhura momentary pause, but she steels herself and looks past
the skin and the memories of oily-sweet semen in her mouth. They are no longer
merely the enemy. This woman is as much a victim as Uhura-- even more so, in
fact. Her survival is now in Uhura's hands.
"This one's name is daughter Nyota Uhura, called Uhura, and this is the free
shipNumber One. It is that we are here to transport you to Free Space, inside
the Vulcan blockade, where there is safety for you all. It is that all
crewmembers of this ship are now dedicated to making sure that you are never
abused or harmed again. Is it that I may know the name of the one before me?"
The woman studies her for a long time, her eyes sharp and critical. She didn't
survive through subservience, that's for sure. There's something feral about
her, too much like Kirk for comfort. Eventually, however, she deigns to reply
coolly, "This one's name is daughter Shaixor Stithus-waa, called Shaixor."
Uhura closes one eye in respect. "It is that Daughter Shaixor is welcome aboard
this ship, as are all the rest. I will show you to your quarters, where it is
that I wish to learn the names of all before me."
And quietly, regarding her with equal measures of wariness and respect, these
wild, broken-edged people file onto the ship in an obliging single line. Pike
looks at Uhura with open appreciation, the other captain with a gape of
disbelief.
Uhura is nineteen, and responsible for the lives of twenty-three people.
Just look how far she's come.
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