So far, your first landing party mission was pretty uneventful. Not that uneventful was a bad thing. You'd heard about some rather eventful landing party missions with heavy fatalities before, so you'd be just as glad to have a boring landing party mission.
You finished up your tricorder readings and approached Spock, who was conversing with the captain.
"Excuse me, Mr. Spock, sir?" you said quietly. "I don't want to interrupt, but I'm afraid this could be important."
Kirk and Spock stopped speaking and both turned to look at you.
"Go ahead, ensign," Spock said.
You weren't entirely comfortable explaining in front of the captain, whom you had literally no faith in, but it seemed to be a choice between this or not speaking at all.
"Sir, my tricorder reads nothing out of the ordinary to the north, but it reads a severe magnetic storm to the east. The storm is rapidly spreading this way, and I predict that we have only ten minutes and fourteen seconds before it will cancel out communication with the Enterprise and prevent the use of the transporter for an unknown time span."
"What did you read for the west and the south?" Spock asked, scrutinizing you carefully.
"Nothing, sir," you admitted. "Nothing at all. My theory is that some sort of force field is preventing readings in those two directions."
"That does seem to be logical, (L/N)," Spock agreed.
"Thank you, sir," you said, briefly meeting his eyes for the first time.
He had brown eyes the colour of melted chocolate, and they were quite . . . beautiful. You couldn't deny it. You sort of stared into them in a daze until the captain's voice snapped you back to reality.
Dammit, focus, (Y/N)! you scolded yourself. Who cares what colour your commanding officer's eyes are, damn you?! Focus!
You dragged yourself back to your surroundings.
"- less than ten minutes left," Kirk was saying. He looked at Spock. "Where are Lieutenant Wilson and Yeoman Sanders?"
"They set off in a southwesternly direction in order to investigate a peculiar reading from Wilson's tricorder," Spock said. "Their plan was to check in with us via communicator after an hour."
"How long have they been gone?" Kirk asked, frowning. "We've been down here for two hours."
"They should have checked in ten minutes ago," Spock admitted.
Kirk's communicator beeped before he had a chance to respond.
"Enterprise to Captain Kirk."
"What is it, Scotty?"
"There's a massive magnetic storm spreadin' your way, captain. If we're goin' to beam ye back up, it's got to be soon."
Kirk looked up at you and Spock, then glanced over his shoulder at the remaining lieutenant commander from the engineering department.
"Spock, I'll beam aboard with Miss Abakumova," he said. "You take Ensign (L/N) and go find Wilson and Sanders."
"Yes, captain. Ensign, come along."
