Kirk swore under his breath. He had been mere feet away from the transporter pad, when he had gotten the call from Starfleet to lay low and let their negotiators take a crack at the situation before he went rushing in and causing more chaos.
He leaned his head back against the hard white wall of the corridor outside the transporter room, and took a deep breath before standing up straight again.
"I should've just gone in after him, screw regulation. I've done worse, and what can their 'negotiators' do to fix it? They're just wasting time, and it's my fault..." Kirk thought, a dark look creeping up on his normally jovial features.
Nonetheless, he returned to the bridge, and sat in the captain's chair.
"Chekov, see if you can use Mr. Spock's signal to map out the surrounding territory, I want to know where they're keeping him" Kirk ordered.
"Aye sir!" Chekov chirped, tapping furiously on the console. There was a moment of silence whilst Chekov punched the commands into the computer, and another while the computer processed the data.
Chekov pulled the resulting map onto one of the many display panels around the bridge.
"Here, sir, it seems as if all of their population is being housed underground. Not only that, but they've installed shielding panels into the topmost layer of the soil. Zhat explains why there was no trace of them when we scanned the planet." Chekov rambled.
"This wasn't supposed to be a first contact mission, sir, but it's turned out to be. If they've shielded their society and shifted completely underground, I suspect we're dealing with a rather paranoid group, sir" Sulu added.
Kirk swore softly under his breath, and regretted sending his first down with the away team that much more. It was one thing to deal with a new species, but it was entirely another to deal with one soaked in paranoia and distrust.
He should've been more careful, he was getting reckless again. He thought he'd learned his lesson in the incident with Nibiru, but he thought he was slipping again.
"Any word from Starfleet's negotiators?" Kirk asked,
"Negative, sir" Sulu responded.