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༄ chapter nine
-ˋˏ OLSON IS GONE ˎˊ-
SPOCK was in the Captain's chair, a place Vera didn't think suited him in the slightest. That place was meant for Chris, who had left, along with Kirk, Sulu, and Olson. Vera wasn't completely sure when or if she would ever see her godfather again, a thought that place a weight in her chest, her heart a tattoo against her ribcage as she waited for the report from the air crew, who had been sent to Vulcan to reestablish communication.
"Doctor Puri, report," Spock said, speaking into the comm. Though he would never be the same in the Captain's chair as Vera had remembered Chris and Verenia being in her youth, their faces stern and focused, she couldn't help but admit that the First Officer certainly knew what he was doing, his voice even more monotone than it had been before, as if he were placing his Vulcan instincts above all else.
The static of the intercom sounded back to the bridge, followed by the highly recognizable Southern accent of Leonard McCoy, "Puri was on deck six, he's dead."
"Then you have just inherited his duty as Chief Medical Officer," Spock replied, not taking a second thought at the idea that his crew-mate was dead. Vera, however, stood still beside the chair, staying true to Chris' command, her face scrunched in worry.
However much she loved space, it was still an endless void that both amazed and terrified her, and she wouldn't wish a space death on even her worst enemy, which were not hard to come by at Starfleet. The Chief Engineer may have made her uncomfortable in her few minutes with him, but that was nothing compared to the suffocating discomfort (torture) of a space death.
McCoy scoffed, his voice garbled over the sound of the static, indicating that the intercom he had been using was in some way damaged, "Yeah, tell me something I don't know." Vera chortled, consistently impressed with how steady her memory of McCoy had held up over all of the years they spent apart.
They hadn't known each other well during her days at Starfleet Academy, but Leonard McCoy was not the type of person easily forgotten, being very distinct with the way he spoke, his accent, and the way he looked, which, if Vera had to say, was a bit like the stereotypical version of a lumberjack, but with more Southern charm. It was a shame when she'd discovered that he had divorced his lovely wife and left his young daughter, moving to a Starfleet station in Iowa. His ex-wife, a top-notch lawyer and international relations analyst, was a figure Vera knew more well, and had stayed in contact with, thus her knowledge of their split and then reunion.
Spock, in response, looked at Vera, annoyed, "Don't you have anything else to do, Lieutenant Commander? You are Chief Engineer."
Vera shrugged, "Chris told me to stay here."
He furrowed his eyebrows. "You decided to take that literally?" He asked, clearly still on the fence with whether of not he wanted to treat the deserter with respect.
