[ There's a policy, it turns out, for Starfleet: when you are officially declared MIA, they notify your next of kin. James doesn't exactly know why Sam has him down instead of their father, but the last thing he's expecting when hears the chime on his PADD alerting to an incoming message is to see his brother's picture with that status splashed across the bottom like an afterthought.

Sam's missing. He doesn't know what to do with the information at first; the thought spinning through his head for a good minute, on loop, unhelpful, panicked. He has to--there's one person who'll know more, one person he trusts. Someone he can ask what the hell Sam was doing on an away mission anyway--but when he hails La'an on her PADD she doesn't answer. He calls twice. Three times. Nothing. She doesn't answer.

Neither does Pike. Or Una. It's not until he reaches Uhura that he finds out the truth: M'Benga. Sam. La'an. Ortegas. Colonists. Crew of the Enterprise and the Cayuga. They're on a Gorn ship and the Enterprise, against Starfleet orders, is in pursuit.

To say he steals a runabout from the Spacedock where the Farragut is docked for repairs would be--technically accurate. However, Jim likes to think he's borrowing it without permission and will return it with apologies once he gets his Security Officer and his brother back. Not that La'an is his security officer--it's just that she's also not not his security officer.

It's complicated.

The point of the matter is he's going to get her back, dammit, alongside his brother; she's not going to die on some Gorn breeding planet if he can do literally anything about it. And maybe once she's back, safe and in one piece, he'll wonder why the potential loss of her sits right in the same place as the potential loss of his brother.

To his credit, Pike just gives him a look when he requests a transport onboard and then reads him in to the rescue plan.

He doesn't remember much of it: it comes in flashes--the smell of the planet, the screams, the noises of the Gorn and phaser fire, the frightened look on the faces of crew they found and were able to beam out. It goes well for a while, and then it goes horribly, and then, somehow, with Pike's damn luck they manage to scrape out something close to a win.

They get their people back. They get away. The Enterprise lives to fight another day. She's bruised and bloody, but she's not out for the count.

Jim's not on planet when they find the group that La'an is leading, he's back on the ship, soothing the people he can as they get on board, using what skill he has in field medicine to triage crew and colonists as they're beamed up. He's on the pad when Sam comes up--looking ten years older than the last time James saw him but breathing, alive and mostly uninjured. Surprisingly uninjured. He'll deny it later, over a cocktail, that he cried when he hugged his brother and told him the next time Sam scared him like that he'd kill him, but in the moment he doesn't actually care who sees.

But their reunion is cut short by the fact that the pad needs to be cleared and people are still coming--he loses himself to work but he never stops looking for her. His heart does something incredibly uncomfortable when the ensign running the transporter says that's the last of them--until he catches sight of Una who just nods toward the door and mouths 'medical bay'. He doesn't know how she knows, doesn't question it, he just starts running.

He nearly collides with Chapel when he skids through the door, eyes tracking over the beds--those in stasis to keep the eggs from hatching, those covered in blood from the wounded, those with the sheets pulled up over a crewman's face--until he spots her: sitting up, alive, breathing. It takes two strides to make it to her, another to invade her space as his hands fall to her arms, skimming up to her shoulders, fingers skirting over the wound, careful not to touch ]

I don't know that I gave you permission to nearly die on me, Lieutenant. [ It's not his best opening gambit, but it's all he can manage. Trying for charm and failing with the fear that laces through his voice ] We're going to have to have words when you're not actively bleeding.