Work Text:
Technician Ferguson comes into the room pouting about how his planned shore leave on Argelius II had been canceled until further notice. Twenty minutes into a weekly routine test of the Enterprise's dilithium crystals, he's still pouting. So Lieutenant Masters decides to use one of the tactics she knows works against a young, eager assistant when he gets into a pouty mood: distraction.
"Heard any new ship gossip?"
"Hmm… yeah," he said, his face slowly widening into his usual happy-go-lucky grin. "Oh yeah! I've got one for you."
"Tell me." Her main source of ship gossip is Ferguson— he just has a particular talent for coaxing juicy rumours out of people. Honestly, she probably shouldn't be encouraging it; ship gossip is one of those things that had a penchant for twisting itself into some wonderfully outlandish tales, like all the ones about that unexpected diversion to Vulcan a few months ago— Mr. Spock dying of some mysterious disease that for some unexplained reason could only be cured on his home planet, and that he'd beamed down to meet up with his secret wife, except that wife had spurned him once she saw Captain Kirk.
Spock with a wife?
Of course, she's also been the subject of few of those outlandish tales. If ship gossip was to be believed, Lieutenant Masters had deliberately set the energizing circuit on fire because she was in love with that hobo who'd been running around the ship stealing dilithium crystals and insisting that was actually his world-destroying enemy. Utter nonsense.
No, you couldn't rely on ship gossip. And still, she wonders what Ferguson's secret to coaxing it out of people is.
"So the new yeoman, Tankris? As the tales would tell it, she was seen canoodling with—"
"Ensign Chekov?"
"Yeah—wait, how'd you know?"
"Lucky guess? Okay— it's just that it seems that every other week, there's some ship gossip about Mr. Chekov, uh, canoodling with female yeomen. Except that one time when it was Dr. McCoy— I mean with a female yeoman, not Mr. Chekov. And that other time with Mr. Scott."
"I thought that one was a lieutenant from the history department?" Ferguson asks. "The one who ran off with the 20th-century dictator. Or, no, wait a minute—"
"No, I'm pretty sure it was a yeoman. Still, I thought it was the Captain who had the reputation as the ladies' man." Masters shrugs, making a few adjustments to the equipment. Just another routine report— she could probably do it in her sleep. "Also, who the devil uses the word 'canoodling' these days?"
"That," Technician Ferguson says, "is a very good question."
"Mhmm. So, aside from Mr. Chekov's rather active love life, any other interesting gossip?"
"I've got another one for you. So you know how Mr. Scott's been on medical leave the past two weeks?"
"A concussion," Masters says. "As I… understand it, there was an explosion that threw him into a bulkhead."
"And as the tales would tell it—and I got this from a reliable source—he now resents all women. Because it was a female crewmember who caused the explosion, doing crazy unauthorized experiments with the—"
"No, they were authorized." She pauses for a moment, before quickly adding "Well, according to my source, who I trust is also reliable."
It'd been bound to come up sooner or later—but it seems that the identity of that female crewmember hadn't yet made it into the ship gossip. And for that, she considers herself very lucky.
"Weren't you the one who also burned down the energizing circuit last year?" is what a rather unimpressed Captain Kirk had asked her during the briefing to determine exactly what—or who—had been the cause of that explosion. She'd gently reminded him of the fact that it'd been some hobo tampering with the equipment that had caused the short-circuit.
In the end, there was no disciplinary action needed. There'd been no negligence or carelessness on her part; she'd taken every precaution, gotten all the proper permissions. She'd done everything right, and knew exactly what results to expect.
However, rather than the expected results, she'd ended up with a rather unexpected kaboom.
Mr. Spock and Mr. Scott had been there with her supervising her crazy authorized experiments. All three of them had been thrown into a bulkhead. She and Mr. Spock had both gotten away relatively uninjured; Mr. Scott hadn't.
As for Mr. Scott's resentment of women… well, that was true. In the two weeks since the accident, he'd resented women. He'd also resented men. He'd resented everybody. And while Lieutenant Masters remembers how Dr. McCoy had mentioned therapeutic shore leave at the accident briefing, she somehow suspects that the choice of Argelius II for that shore leave hadn't been entirely for its therapeutic benefits.
After all, the Captain does have a reputation as a ladies' man.
For once, Ferguson says nothing, instead giving his best impression of a Spockian Raised Eyebrow before turning and adjusting a dial. When the lights suddenly go out, he snatches his hand back as though it's been burned. "Oh!"
"That shouldn't have—" Masters begins, stepping forward and adjusting the dial herself. This time, the intercoms blare to life with maniacal laughter.
"RED JACK! RED JACK! RED JACK! RED JACK!" a voice screams.
She and Ferguson look at each other. "You know, I don't think that was anything we did," he says after an awkward moment or two.
Masters sighs. "Probably Kevin Riley again. A few months before you came aboard, he did something like this. Except he was 'singing.'"
"Why do I hear quotation marks around that word?"
"Because it sounded more like a very distressed cat. He also turned off the engines."
"All hands, this is the Captain. Stay at your posts. Remain calm. Captain out," comes Kirk's voice over the intercoms.
"I don't know about you, Ferg, but I am feeling considerably less calm after hearing him say that," Masters says as the maniacal laughter starts up again.
"Yeah. Me too."
They remain calm and continue to try to do their work. The maniacal laughter continues. Then the life-support systems go out. Then they start to receive ominous threats.
"CAPTAIN! YOU'RE WASTING YOUR TIME! YOU AND ALL ABOARD YOUR SHIP ARE ABOUT TO DIE!"
"Actually, I retract my earlier statement," Masters says. "That's probably not Kevin Riley."
Technician Ferguson is beginning to look a little consternated.
Just then, a nurse comes in with a hypospray. "Captain's orders," he says, pressing it against Ferguson's arm.
In an instant, the look of consternation on Ferguson's face disappears and he breaks into a wide grin—one that's a bit much even for him, especially given the present circumstances.
Masters does her own Spockian Raised Eyebrow as the nurse comes over to her and presses the hypo into her arm. Any concern about the maniacal laughter or ominous threats still reverberating through the ship's intercoms vanishes as a warm, pleasant feeling spreads through her bloodstream.
"YOU CANNOT STOP ME NOW, CAPTAIN! IT WILL DO YOU NO GOOD! I CONTROL ALL…"
But Masters is already beyond caring. After all, she has work to do.
Everybody had been told to stay at their posts. Ferguson had fallen asleep on the floor, but he's still at his post, so she just leaves him there. Her post is… the report. Yes, she did her work well. Now she needs to take the weekly report she made to Captain Kirk on the bridge.
For some reason, it takes her a bit longer than usual to find the turbolift. Some idiot had put it on manual. She can't remember how to take it off manual. Oh well, she'll just use it on manual. Take the turbolift to the bridge. She's on the bridge, but the Captain's chair is empty. No Captain Kirk. Where's Captain Kirk?
"Where's Captain Kirk?" Lieutenant Masters asks.
Lieutenant Sulu spins his chair around, grinning back at her. "You know, I'm not sure! He was here a while ago, him and Mr. Spock and the malfunction talking all gloomy. But who knows where they went."
"I've got a report for him. About, about…" She looks down at her report, trying to remember what it's about. "A weekly routine report for Captain Kirk. I'll wait here for him."
"Pie!" Lieutenant Leslie suddenly yells from the engineering station. "Listen to this, Charlene— it was the ship's computer that was saying all those stupid things about how we're all gonna die horribly…" He falls into giggles.
"But you already died horribly!" Sulu says.
"And then I lived!" Leslie spreads his arms wide. "But Spock told the computer to compute pi, and now it's not saying those stupid things anymore."
"I hope it computes some pumpkin pie." Lieutenant Hadley never grins. He's grinning now. "I love pumpkin pie."
Lieutenant Masters eyes the Captain's chair. "I've always wondered if that chair is as comfortable as it looks."
"Why don't you try it?" Sulu says. "Captain's not here, after all. He'll never know."
"I think I will." She sits in the Captain's chair. It's very comfortable. She could get used to a chair like this. She looks up at the viewscreen. It shows a planet called Arg, argeel… a planet. She leans one arm against the armrest like Captain Kirk does, feeling very captainly. (Is that a word?)
Lieutenant Masters feels she should also make a poetic speech like Captain Kirk does. She has to think for a while about what her poetic speech should be about. Then, slowly, she grins, and says:
"This is Captain Charlene Masters of the starship Enterprise. This is, uh, a very comfortable chair." It's a brilliant poetic speech… almost Masterful! (A pun!) She starts to giggle as she takes in the sheer cleverness of her mind.
Everyone else on the bridge's gone quiet, and they're all staring back at the turbolift. Guess they don't much like her poetic speech. Hmph.
"All right… Captain Masters," comes a familiar voice from behind her, "you're relieved of command. Oh, and also given a reduction in rank back to Lieutenant. Understood?"
"Understood, Captain." She suddenly frowns. "…do I have to leave the chair?"
"I'm afraid so, Lieutenant. What are you doing on the bridge?"
"Goodbye, chair. You were very comfortable." Fondly petting the armrest of the Captain's chair, she gets up to let Kirk take her place. She holds out her report for him to sign. "I've got the weekly Captain Kirk for report. Here."
"The… weekly Captain Kirk. I see." Kirk glances up at her with narrowed eyes before reading over the report. Then, corners of his mouth twitching upwards, he twists in his chair to look up at the Vulcan peering over his shoulder. "Your thoughts, Mr. Spock?"
Mr. Spock raises an eyebrow. "Fascinating. While Lieutenant Masters' dedication to her duties is admirable, it would appear that her reaction to the tranquilizer has impaired her ability to complete them. I would advise that she wait until the drug has passed through her system before running the tests on the dilithium crystals again."
"You heard him, Lieutenant. I don't want to see another report before twenty-four hours have passed. As a matter of fact"— Kirk hands back the report, pats her arm, then presses one of the buttons on his very comfortable chair—"all hands, this is the Captain speaking. All nonessential duties are to cease until 0800 tomorrow. Captain out."
"An excellent poetic speech, Captain!" Masters says, earning a Spockian Eyebrow Raise from both Mr. Spock and the Captain. (The Captain's is far less impressive.)
"I'm not doing anything essential," a female nurse says, then lies down on the floor and falls asleep. Leslie starts to giggle again. Sulu spins his chair in lazy circles.
"Since I am doing essential duties," Lieutenant Hadley says, "can I have some pumpkin pie?"
Kirk takes a long, slow breath as he glances around the bridge at the giddy crew. "Mr. Spock, I believe that this is going to be the longest five or six hours of my life."
"Indeed, Captain," Mr. Spock says, "I would like to reiterate my suggestion that you take this opportunity to relax."
"Beam down to the planet by myself? And leave you here alone to deal with this bunch?" Kirk shakes his head. "No, no, I couldn't do that."
"I said nothing about beaming down to the planet, Captain."
"That… oh yes. My mistake." He jumps up from the chair, face splitting into one of those Kirkian Charmer Smiles which is exactly what gave him that reputation as a ladies' man. He even bats his eyes. "Why, Mr. Spock, I never thought you'd ask."
If Mr. Spock is at all astonished with his captain's sudden urgency to get off the bridge, he doesn't show it; his face remains impassive as ever. "Very well."
The moment the doors to the turbolift shut behind Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, someone begins to whistle a few notes of some ancient 20th-century love song. Lieutenant Masters takes another glance at the Captain's chair… then slides back into it.
"You sure that's a good idea?" Sulu asks.
"Captain's not here," she says. "He'll never know. Don't worry, I'll get out before he comes back."
But it is a very comfortable chair. It certainly wouldn't hurt to close her eyes for a few minutes…
That day, Lieutenant Masters also learns the secret of Technician Ferguson's talent of coaxing juicy rumours out of people: he bribes them with real coffee.
Yeoman Tankris is all too happy to accept a cup of that precious commodity in exchange for some information about the cause of the computer malfunction. Her story would sound ludicrous almost anywhere else: Jack the Ripper being an energy being that fed upon terror?
But on this ship, where you might get ancient Greek deities, or godlike teenagers, or ancient planet-destroying superweapons floating through the cosmos, or—most difficult to believe, even though she'd witnessed it personally—Mr. Spock going into a shouting rage and throwing a bowl of soup against the wall…
…well, it's just another one of those usual Enterprise Weirdnesses.
"So this dead guy, he…" Tankris falls into giggles. "He had a knife to my throat! I guess I shoulda been scared or something, but—"
She doesn't finish her sentence. Instead, she suddenly gets up and rushes across the room to where Ensign Chekov had just walked in. She embraces him, and he embraces her back. They both head to a corner of the recreation room to get snuggly with each other.
"Told you," Ferguson says with a grin. "Canoodling."
Lieutenant Masters also grins herself: Yeoman Tankris hadn't even touched her coffee. She takes it for herself.
It'd been over an hour since Captain Kirk had returned to the bridge to find her soundly asleep in his chair. After an unsuccessful attempt to rouse her, he'd simply scooped her up in his arms. It was then that she'd suddenly woken up, made a rather undignified screech, accidentally headbutted him in a rather undignified manner, then ended up in a rather undignified heap on the floor.
All in all, it was a rather undignified incident, and the only thing she could do was quickly apologize and make a somewhat dignified retreat.
The best thing to do, she reasons, is to keep her head down for the next little while. No more crazy experiments (authorized or not), no more poetic speeches, no more falling asleep in the Captain's chair. Just follow her orders and do her duties.
And while she was planning to follow the order she'd received about not delivering another report before tomorrow, there's no reason she can't get started on it in advance. At the very least, she can take a look at the report she'd attempted to turn in; if she's lucky, she mightn't need re-run all the tests.
However, instead of the neatly aligned columns of figures usually included in a routine weekly report of the ship's dilithium crystals, she instead sees, in atrocious handwriting:
Weekly Report by Lieutenant Charlene Masters:
- The coffee in the synthesizers is TERRIBLE!!! It tastes like raw sewage and industrial waste and every time I drink it I get sick in my stomach. It's AWFUL.
- Install some seatbelts or safety harnesses or something!!! I am very tired of being thrown into walls every time the ship gets shaken around.
- Why do all the female crewmembers have to wear these DUMB miniskirts? Not all of us have nice legs!!! (Also, the stupid uniforms keep tearing.)
… precisely the kind of thing one wouldn't hand to the ship's captain if they wanted to avoid attention for a while.
"Ferg," she says. But he's busy gazing over at the canoodling couple, something like infatuation in his eyes. "Ferguson," she repeats, a bit louder.
"Huh?"
"We'll have to run the tests again tomorrow. I, uh, messed up the calculations."
"Oh. Okay." He lets out a very dramatic sigh. He's not always the most subtle with his emotions; right now, he may as well be holding a flashing sign saying 'IN LOVE!'
"Uh, you got your eye on Yeoman Tankris or something?"
He suddenly looks at her as though she'd suddenly grown pointed ears. (She just hopes that they never encounter some Enterprise Weirdness that results in that.) "Wait, what? N-no, I mean— Ensign Chekov…"
"Chekov?" This time, she stares at him as though he'd grown pointed ears. "You… mean you have your eye on Pavel Chekov?"
Judging from the way his face goes red, Technician Ferguson does has his eye on Pavel Chekov.
"I mean, his accent is cute," he finally says with a small grin.
"His accent? That…? I'm not even sure it's real," Masters says after a long sip of coffee.
"Well," Ferguson says in a conspiratorial whisper, "there is a rumour that when he gets wery, wery exhausted, he starts talking in an American accent. But nobody I've spoken to has ever actually seen that happen, so…"
"Well, you know how ship's gossip goes. You can't rely on it."
"Not even your 'reliable source' who told you that those experiments were authorized?" Ferguson asks in a rather pointed manner, but before Lieutenant Masters has a chance to come up with some answer that doesn't forever link her name with the rather unexpected kaboom that had thrown Mr. Scott into a bulkhead, he's off on another track of mind. "Besides, if we're going to be talking about fake accents… have you ever heard Captain Kirk speak?"
"…what?"
"I mean… have… you… ever heard… Captain Kirk speak?" Ferguson asks again.
"Well, yes. I've even had one or two conversations with him." She rather empathetically looks over his shoulder. He doesn't seem to get the hint.
"The way… he talks… doesn't it…sound… a bitstrangetoyou?"
Well, when he puts it that way, it does sound a bit strange to her. But she merely shrugs. "I haven't paid much attention."
Someone clears their throat.
Technician Ferguson freezes. He slowly turns his chair around to see Captain Kirk looking down at him, arms folded. He suddenly remembers there's someplace else he needs to be.
Impressive. She hadn't known the boy could move at warp nine.
She looks up at Kirk with a small smile, a small shrug, and her best 'sorry-my-friend-is-occasionally-an-idiot' look. He simply sits down across the table from her, glancing down at her cup of coffee.
She makes a point of taking a long sip of it.
"Masters," he says.
Oh. She braces herself. As Captain of the Enterprise, Kirk is fair—but also strict. He can't be entirely pleased with her behaviour of the last few hours, especially only a few weeks after she'd put his chief engineer in Sickbay. A reprimand in her service record. Relieved of her commission. Maybe even court-martialed!
"Tell me, Lieutenant… do I… really… soundlikethat?"
She just barely manages to avoid spitting out her coffee, or choking on it. Instead, she somehow manages to swallow it in a normal fashion, before going for what she thinks is the most diplomatic answer: "As I said to my assistant, I haven't paid much attention."
"I see." Kirk nods thoughtfully. "I wanted to talk to you about your report."
"I've rescheduled the tests for tomorrow. I'll have a new report to you within forty-eight hours, if there's no further complications."
"I trust you'll do your usual excellent work." A slight smile flickers across his face. "Now, about your report."
"My report." It takes a few moments for the meaning to sink in. "You mean the report I attempted to turn in earlier."
Kirk nods again. "In which you made several very salient points."
She's not entirely sure how to respond to that. So instead, she just sits there and gapes at him.
"I'm afraid there's not much to be done about the lack of safety restraints—not without a complete refit, and I imagine Starfleet Command would want to do a hundred studies beforehand. As for the coffee… it's probably a lost cause, but I'm going to assign you a special project: see if you can find a way to upgrade it to something a little better than raw sewage."
That's it. There has to be still a few tranquilizer molecules floating around in her bloodstream. Or maybe she's taken one too many blows to the head after being thrown around the ship. Or gone space-happy from too many exposures to Enterprise Weirdnesses.
Or maybe, just maybe, Captain Kirk is seriously taking into consideration the complaints she'd made while high as a kite.
…no. She's gone space-happy.
As she considers her new fate, Captain Kirk continues on. "…Mr. Spock for any assistance you might need. Uh, Lieutenant? Are you still with me?"
"I— I think so," she stammers out. "Something about the coffee and Mr. Spock's assistance—"
Kirk gives her an odd look. "We'll… go over it again tomorrow. But there's one other thing you ought to know. You don't have to wear the miniskirt if you don't want to. There's no regulation that actually requires it."
"But every female on this ship—"
"Every crewmember aboard a starship has the option to request an alternate uniform." Kirk frowns when he sees her puzzled expression. "You didn't know?"
"Captain, I don't think anyone knew."
"That would certainly explain the… I'll put out a memo to the crew." He pauses a moment to rub his chin. "Of course, this means that Scotty will want to wear a kilt with his uniform."
"Mr. Scott is feeling better, then?" she ventures, cautiously.
"I think you'll find that recent events have made him far less resentful," Kirk says with a slight, knowing smile. "But in the future, would you mind being a bit more careful with your explosive experiments, Lieutenant Masters?"
Several people turn to look.
Lieutenant Masters is still trying to think of a response when there's suddenly a loud thump from a certain corner of the room. She twists around in her seat. Ensign Chekov and Yeoman Tankris have both shifted from a vertical position to a horizontal one, on top of a table, and are partway through the process of removing several articles of clothing.
Captain Kirk gets to his feet, strolls over to them, and says in a very quiet voice, "Ensign, Yeoman— the recreation room is not an appropriate place to conduct experiments in human biology."
For the second time, Masters is impressed by the ability of human biology to move faster than light. Kirk returns back to his chair and slumps into it, muttering something about young people and their complete lack of shame.
"I know what you mean," she says. "I thought the observation deck was the usual location for this type of canoodling. At least I know of at least three times I've gone there and found the door locked."
"Locked? Oh, yes, I've… heard." Kirk gives her a very odd look that she can't quite decipher. "Also who the devil uses the word 'canoodling' these days?"
"That," Lieutenant Masters says, "is a very good question."