Chapter Text
Then…
“Why are you---? Stop. This is unlawful. It is one thing to appropriate my personal data and servers, but I cannot allow you to seize the files of my patients.”
Dr. Shanik's concern for her patients had compromised her emotional control.
A certain open empathy was necessary when tending to the needs of persons gestating offspring, so Tashsu Svaid politely ignored her outburst. And yet she persisted in the same vein, going so far as to put herself between the data servers and his officers. He could feel her outrage in the very air itself, palpable, unsettling.
“I must insist that you stand aside, Doctor," he told her. "Further interference may be cause for your arrest.”
She adjusted her countenance, but rather than a veil of calm and concession, she became a statute of judgement, staring him down. He met her confrontational gaze with his own unwavering one and after a moment's consideration, she stepped back, giving the officers just enough room to proceed.
“Aside from ethical considerations by which even the Health Ministry must abide," she said, watching the dismantling of her office, "you already have the medical files of Maat t’an su Lhai. You have my diagnosis, and its confirmation from the VMI in Shikahr. What's more, I have provided you with all information regarding her that she provided to me. If she is no longer at her residence or place of employment, you will find no hint of her whereabouts in anyone else’s private medical information. Unless you have cause to suspect my other patients are carrying infants with the same rare genetic disorder your actions are illogical.”
It would seem so to her, perhaps to any outside observer. But as lead tashsu for the Health Ministry’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency, Svaid knew far more than he could share with his own staff let alone a provincial obstetrician.
He attempted to offer her reassurance.
“Those patients that are due within the next ten days have been referred to Dr. T’Gra at the Tershaya Birth Center. The remainder will be required to delay appointments until we have vetted the data, at which time it will be returned to you – a matter of two to three weeks at most.” He held up a hand anticipating her protest. “Emergencies will be forwarded to the Jaleyl Medical Facility where both you and Dr. Gra have privileges. Be assured your patients will not suffer undue duress.”
“I suspect, Tashsu Svaid, that you have little experience with pregnant women.”
Now…
In the cavernous space of Enterprise’s docking bay the newly arrived replacement crew stumbled down a shuttle ramp on wobbly space-legs.
Some were deep-space exploration virgins, some were old hands, but all were super pumped to be on the NCC-1701 despite (or because of) its reputation for dangerous encounters and truly bizarre adventures. Word of the weird and wacky got around fast considering the limitations of subspace communications and had only added to Enterprise’s growing cache.
Christine stood yawning and stretching, a little disappointed none of her friends were there to greet her. She knew the Enterprise was in gamma shift, but even so, Erica was known to party into the wee hours and still be at the helm at 0800 sharp, annoyingly perky. The least she could have done was show up for Christine’s return.
Maybe no one knew she was coming in on this shuttle?
Unlikely. Nyota would have known. And Una. And Spock probably knew, but his absence was hardly surprising.
Bleah. I’m way too tired to deal with complicated feelings right now.
She adjusted her backpack and shifted her duffel to her other hand, debating which she wanted most – a shower or her bunk – before realizing she didn’t know where her bunk would even be. Her comfy cabin was someone else’s now. She’d have to wait for a room assignment with everyone else.
Crap! What if she had to double up? Bunk with a resentful stranger? Or one of these noobs?
The interior doors whooshed open, and everyone went stiff to attention before realizing it wasn’t the captain or the XO. Just a gamma shift admin officer with his yeoman.
Well, not just any admin officer. Lt. Willam Pudi. Buff and burly, thick neck, little head. He’d asked her out. More than once. She’d refused on the principle that she didn’t date people she worked with.
He spotted her. A shift in his demeanor suggested he’d heard rumors disputing her commitment to aforementioned principles.
Oh god. She was going to end up sleeping in a utility closet, wasn’t she?
She embarked on a desperate charm offensive.
“Billy!” she exclaimed in a tone so forcefully jolly the people next to her took a step back. “It’s so great to see you again!”
“Is it?”
“Of course. Who doesn’t wanna see a…” deep breath “…friendly face?”
The yeoman began calling out names and handing respondents their very own official Enterprise datapadds.
Please please call my name please…“Gosh. I feel like I’ve been away for years. How’ve you been?”
He didn’t look up from the datapadd in his hands. “I’m onboarding crew at two in the morning.”
His yeoman shot him a glance followed by a soft apologetic laugh to rest of the group. “This isn’t the official onboarding though. Don’t worry.”
“Why would they be worried, Finch?”
“Oh. I-I didn’t… I just meant…”
“Have I been less than professional? Created undo anxiety?”
“No sir,” squeaked Finch.
“Glad to hear it.” Pudi looked out over the group and smiled professionally. “Official onboarding is later this morning. 0830. Details are in the info-packets on your padds.”
Like the one Chrstine had not received. There’d be maps, ship’s rules and protocols, department supervisors and galley menus – which, admittedly, she did not need (well, maybe the new galley menus) – but also containing stuff like the biometric lock which everyone needed in order to get into, say, your assigned cabin.
“Will Captain Pike be there?” asked one of the starry-eyed noobs.
“Yes. Barring unforeseen ship’s business. And, uh, he’ll say it better when you meet him, but… welcome aboard everyone. Catch some zees. You’re gonna need ‘em. Dismissed.”
As her shuttle pals drifted towards the doors, a few glanced at Christine uncertainly, or spared her a sympathetic smile, but mostly they were anxious to get the hell out of there, steps speeding up the closer they got to those doors. No one looked back as they disappeared into the ship’s cheery interior.
Yeoman Finch seemed desperate to do the same, trying to look anywhere that was NOT two officers squaring off in front of God, and the weary shuttle pilot from Starbase 11. That guy, Lt. Henry – skinny, gray buzzcut, and oddly hairy knuckles – took in the scene, and decided he wanted no part of it. He muttered something about a temporary berth in lower decks and walked out.
She tipped her head back, groaned softly, then looked Pudi in the eyes.
His eyes narrowed. His smile slid sideways. He shook the datapadd in his hand like a bag of kibble.
“You don’t really need this, do you, Nurse Chapel? I believe you’re intimately familiar. With the ship.”
“I don’t know where I’m supposed to bunk. Lieutenant.”
“Aww. Can’t your boyfriend put you up?”
“I’m really tired. Can you be an asshole tomorrow?”
Yeoman Finch made a “meep” sound.
A couple of seconds ticked by. Pudi grunted, blew out a turbulent sigh that rippled from his pursed lips like a cross between a baby’s burble and an angry fart.
“Fine.” He made a show of examining some bit of information on the padd. “Seems you’re quartered in the same cushy cabin you had before.” He thrust the device at her. “Friends in high places, I guess.”
“Oh my god,” she snapped. “It’s near the medical bay, you dick.”
But as she marched away righteously, she also felt relief that she wouldn’t have to figure out where she was going. Her feet could just carry her there automatically. Soon, all those things that kept her restless and awake for the entire fourteen-hour shuttle trip would recede into oblivion.
Roger’s offer. Spock. Her place on the Enterprise. Spock. Mysterious chromosomal mutations. And Spock.
In her cabin, the same blank slab of a mattress greeted her. The way she’d left it for someone else had been left for her. Bedding in a neat stack at one end. Single pillow at the other. She blinked blurry-eyes, swore she could see the indentation of bodies. Her own. His. She didn’t bother with the sheets. Just stripped out of her travel clothes, laid herself out like a corpse and pulled a blanket up to her chin, asleep in seconds.
^^^
Angel Leitao didn’t use the gym if he knew the Twat Triplets would be there together, all at the same time.
Locker room etiquette went out the window then. Bare butts on benches. Mirror hogging. Roughhousing like they were goddam ten years old or something. Stupid bets on literally anything. And the constant, just fucking endless, pilot-specific technobabble spoken loudly at each other but in full awareness of who they were leaving out.
Not this morning though. And not simply because that old guy shuttle pilot from Starbase 11 was currently using the showers.
No. After a year building a rapport with the ship and each other, the pilot trainees were experiencing a crisis of trust.
Braced one-handed against the bulkhead, Angel wriggled a foot into a boot and snuck a peak from under the damp fringe of his hair.
All the machismo had gone out of Shula’s jaunty blue antennae as he stood scowling in the mirror, patting the cotton fluff of his hair. Rosalia Bon sat perched on the far end of the bench with a bottle of spray moisturizer aimed at her shins, staring into space like she’d forgotten what she meant to do with it. And in between was Jenty, hunched in on herself.
“It’s not like shit decisions are hereditary,” Jenty muttered. A continuation of an ongoing dialog Angel was catching the tail end of.
Bon came out of her fog with a little shudder, immediately pissed off. “No one disputes that. Ortegas wouldn’t.”
Jenty bristled but before she could counter, Shula singsonged—“We’re not-sup-poze-to-be-talk-ing-a-bout-it.”
Angel ducked his head to hide his reaction, pretty sure what “it” was.
Just then a cheerful little Bolian ensign wandered in with a bag of workout gear, and oblivious to the vibe, asked, “Talking about what?”
“Mind your business, Ensign,” Bon shot back.
“No need for that,” Sam Kirk admonished as he came around a corner.
Oh look. Xenoanthropologist playing white knight in a karate gi.
“If you don’t want people asking what you’re on about,” he continued, “stop going on about it.”
The shuttle pilot from SB-11 chose that moment to enter with a towel wrapped around his lower half. Everyone went very still, very self-consciously. “Well,” he said into the awkwardness. “That was certainly refreshing.”
Time to beat a retreat.
Angel grabbed his insignia badge and tricorder from his locker and slid his thumb across the keypad, reactivating the forcefield for the next guy. Most crew didn’t bother to actually lock the lockers, but Angel knew better than to trust people just because they were Starfleet.
^^^
Doctor Jospeh M’Benga leaned his head out from the exam table’s privacy screen, his grin immediate and sincere. “Christine! Welcome back.”
“Thanks.”
“Hold on.” He ducked back. She could hear a quiet exchange. A few seconds later an orderly appeared and soon had the patient, Ensign Ootis (aka Tootie), on a hoverbed headed towards OR 1.
Tootie was the only Saurian currently serving on a starship, but Christine knew better than to ask what was wrong within earshot of the the patient.
Joseph made what she assumed were surgical notes, only looking up to engage when she was standing right in front of him. He smiled again, but it was tentative.
“I was getting ready to call Esther to assist. Unless,“ he ventured with a hopeful quirk of his lips, “you’re ready to dive in?”
“You wouldn’t believe how ready.” She followed him to the sterilizing station. “What are we doing?”
“Removing a clutch of eggs before they’re viable.” His voice had that comforting, familiar low rumble that made the cilia in her ears quiver. “Ensign Ootis has had an unfortunate spontaneous parthenogenesis.”
Saurians reproduced sexually, but some females retained a kind of vestigial reproductive backup plan. Self-fertilized little clones of themselves.
“Yikes. Poor Tootie. Wait..." Christine seemed to recall a prescription. “Isn’t she on hormonal suppressants?”
“She is. Was. I think she simply forgot. It’s been a stressful year.”
And then some…
He handed her the surgical plan to look over and started walking, saying over his shoulder, “She’s mortified, so I’d like to take care of this quickly and quietly.”
Irritation flared suddenly, fizzing in her brain. “I’ve only been gone for three months. I think I can still remember medical privacy protocols for godssake.”
He paused midstride, and turned to stare at her, a little flabbergasted. “O-kay. I wasn’t implying otherwise.”
The fizz fizzled out. “Sorry. Caught some flack when I arrived. It still chaffs a little.”
“Should I ask who from?”
She shook her head. “Not important. It was a long trip,” she admitted.
“Are you certain you’re up for this?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
A few minutes later she was telling Tootie, “Everything’s going to be fine. You’re in good hands.”
^^^
Una made the decision based on time commitments.
First officer, executive officer, flight trainer and personnel officer investigating harassment complaints? She needed to delegate.
Laan gave her a well, duh look. “What do you need, Chief?”
“Do you recall an incident that happened during the war? Friendly fire maybe, or a tragic miscommunication. Took out a bunch of cargo ships.”
“Relief supplies headed to Dakka system?”
“That’s the one.”
“Automated freighters and a guide ship with three crew. All lost.”
“Yes. Do you know if anyone onboard the Enterprise is related to any of the three crew?”
“Not off the top of my head,” Laan chuckled. “But I can look into it.”
“I’d appreciate that. Let me know what you find.” Una reached to sign off, stayed her hand to add— “For my eyes and ears only though.”
A soft snort. “Yeah. Not my first rodeo.”