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Janice closes her eyes. "Breathe," she says. It comes out as barely a whisper, barely a spoken word at all, but it has the intended effect. She exhales, inhales, and her body takes over from there.
"Autonomic reflex, my eye."
Behind her, the captain groans. She scowls and scuttles backward just a touch. He's going to give them away―the man's never been quiet a day in his life, why would he start now―and that, all things considered, would be bad.
Biting her lip, she mentally apologizes and lays a hand over his mouth. Just for a little while. He just has to stay quiet for a little while.
She presses to the ground beside him, flat, hoping the brush will provide enough cover.
Her other hand, the one not pressed gently against her captain's mouth, is clutching a phaser. She's a good shot. A fantastic shot. A childhood spent on a backwater colony, far away from Romulan intrigue and Federation heroics, had seen to that. She can defend them. She can kill a Klingon if needs be―she's done it before―but she can't take on twenty of them.
She just needs to keep them hidden long enough. Long enough for Spock to find them. The Enterprise is up there, teams are sweeping the planet, but they're hampered by the same energy fields currently foiling the Klingons.
Janice exhales and feels it all the way to her toes. Just breathe. Just breathe. Jim will be fine. She'll be fine too, but that's not the point. She can't let anything happen to him. She'd think the same of the others, of course, it's her duty, but this is Jim. She can't help thinking of him that way. Somewhere along the line 'Captain' and 'Jim' became completely interchangeable―probably around the same time he started shifting back and forth between 'Janice' and 'Yeoman' and sneaking the occasional peek at her legs.
He always blushes when she catches him. James 'T for Tomcat' Kirk blushes for her.
She turns her head back to toward the Klingons, listening to them snap back and forth at each other. It's not something she should be thinking about here. Not something she should dare to consider at all, but it's keeping the panic at bay so she lets it.
'If we get out of this,' she tells the blushing image, 'we'll do something about that.' She'll do something about it. She's got an old bottle of Saurian brandy in her quarters. She's been saving it for something special.
Janice grins. Granted, near death experiences involving Klingons and/or Romulans hardly counts as special on the Enterprise, but what the hell?
It's Tuesday. Surviving to see Wednesday counts.