Fire and Ice
It was an established military tradition that didn’t lose much mileage with time: if you were any good at your job, you eventually ended up flying a desk.
Apparently, this kind of thing crossed species; the Vulcans did it, even when it seemed counterintuitive, the Klingons insisted that the best warriors were the best strategists, and it was pretty damned obvious that the Romulans ate up bureaucracy with their breakfast cereal. For humans, they just sort of wore you down for a long time, made suggestions here and there, and waited until you were fed up with whatever you’d been doing before they made you a real offer. If they liked you well enough, it was a seemingly good offer that you really couldn’t refuse. Like being in charge of Starfleet Medical.
Despite her experience with it earlier, the position had changed some, and this had never been a job Beverly Crusher had imagined for herself when she had been young. It was definitely not all it was made out to be in the job description. Just because no one used paper anymore didn’t mean there wasn’t such a thing as paperwork. And just because thumbprints or retina scans had taken the place of signatures didn’t mean it wasn’t still a strain to have your eyeball read sixty times a day. Beverly thought she’d gladly trade security clearance for never seeing blue meta-laser scan light again.
Besides, security clearance meant you knew too much, and she’d never thought that she’d have more access than Jean-Luc Picard. But when it came down to medical emergencies on Trihydra III, she knew every last centimeter of every citizen that had died of the Corellian flu, down to the genome. It wasn’t pretty, and what was worse, she couldn’t tell anyone about it, couldn’t even reference it in a communiqué to Deanna or a note to Wesley. As for Jean-Luc...she didn’t talk about work to Jean-Luc. He’d know without her saying a word. He always did, except when it was about that one thing.
Beverly rubbed her forehead with two fingers, the area of her sinuses just above the bridge of her nose. She had a headache coming on, slow and sure, and she kept seeing light afterimages from the last time she’d been scanned. Never mind that she didn’t have set hours, she still had five more reports to go through and sign off on before she could try to get home.
She tapped the open file glyph on her PADD and began to skim through the opening lines. Just as she nearly snorted with derision at Lieutenant Corbergh’s proposed study of Tellarite neural receptor delay (there were already three in progress elsewhere, including one on Tellar Prime itself), the fire alarm went off.
At first, it didn’t really register, because the fire alarm never went off, the containment systems were that good, but then the comms went into effect, declaring that this was not a drill. Which didn’t make any sense to Beverly at all, unless someone had broke into the containment systems, and they hadn’t had that kind of act of outright terrorism happen on Earth since the war.
That was about when adrenaline set in. She thrust her PADD into the pocket of the labcoat she'd taken to wearing again, and burst through her office door, hitting the corridor at a full clip and nearly slipping on the extinguishing foam already set down. Somehow, she could feel the heat, though maybe it was just psychosomatic, and she ran faster, the sounds of terror, once so familiar, now strange to her ears and almost distant. The lift was nearly packed.
“Commander?” She turned to see Ensign Davies, her assistant, looking smudged and out of breath. “We need to get you out of here, sir,” he said, standing near a waiting turbolift. It was packed tightly with clearly only room for one, and there were how many people still on this floor?
“I’ll get the next one,” Beverly said. “I promise. Damn the protocols,” she added as she saw him start to protest. “Now go.”
She pushed the ensign past her and into the lift before the doors closed, then turned and headed for the next Jefferies tube (oh, damn the architects who’d thought that’d save space in the new building) before he decided to do something stupidly heroic like manhandle her into the lift.
The odd warmth wasn’t her imagination, though; there were flames and they were close. In fact, she’d nearly run into the inferno before reaching the doors to the tube. Kicking open the emergency panel, she yanked out the mag pulls and set them firmly on the safety doors, then yanked hard, a few centimeters at a time. After a too-long minute of effort, she squeezed through the small opening and reached out for the duranium rungs of the ladder--
They weren’t there.
Beverly’s weight had shifted enough that she fell forward scrabbling for a handhold, too startled to cry out, waiting for the moment when she’d hit the bottom of the shaft, face first. So it was a little surprising when she hit a large drift of snow instead, much sooner than she’d anticipated hitting, say, the next tube junction. It was bright out, and her eyes opened slowly after having been squeezed shut in reflexive anticipation of inevitable gravity.
It was probably telling of when and where she came from that the first thing that she said had nothing to do with God or an afterlife, or that she didn’t look excessively surprised. Instead, she wrapped her arms around herself, tugging in the labcoat against the cold, and scrambled to her feet, ranting at the skies.
“Q, damn it!”
But unless Q was an exceptionally loud snowbird, or the soft roar of the ocean, he wasn’t there.
Late tags welcomed. Please to be helping her get to the compound or a hut before she freezes.
Apparently, this kind of thing crossed species; the Vulcans did it, even when it seemed counterintuitive, the Klingons insisted that the best warriors were the best strategists, and it was pretty damned obvious that the Romulans ate up bureaucracy with their breakfast cereal. For humans, they just sort of wore you down for a long time, made suggestions here and there, and waited until you were fed up with whatever you’d been doing before they made you a real offer. If they liked you well enough, it was a seemingly good offer that you really couldn’t refuse. Like being in charge of Starfleet Medical.
Despite her experience with it earlier, the position had changed some, and this had never been a job Beverly Crusher had imagined for herself when she had been young. It was definitely not all it was made out to be in the job description. Just because no one used paper anymore didn’t mean there wasn’t such a thing as paperwork. And just because thumbprints or retina scans had taken the place of signatures didn’t mean it wasn’t still a strain to have your eyeball read sixty times a day. Beverly thought she’d gladly trade security clearance for never seeing blue meta-laser scan light again.
Besides, security clearance meant you knew too much, and she’d never thought that she’d have more access than Jean-Luc Picard. But when it came down to medical emergencies on Trihydra III, she knew every last centimeter of every citizen that had died of the Corellian flu, down to the genome. It wasn’t pretty, and what was worse, she couldn’t tell anyone about it, couldn’t even reference it in a communiqué to Deanna or a note to Wesley. As for Jean-Luc...she didn’t talk about work to Jean-Luc. He’d know without her saying a word. He always did, except when it was about that one thing.
Beverly rubbed her forehead with two fingers, the area of her sinuses just above the bridge of her nose. She had a headache coming on, slow and sure, and she kept seeing light afterimages from the last time she’d been scanned. Never mind that she didn’t have set hours, she still had five more reports to go through and sign off on before she could try to get home.
She tapped the open file glyph on her PADD and began to skim through the opening lines. Just as she nearly snorted with derision at Lieutenant Corbergh’s proposed study of Tellarite neural receptor delay (there were already three in progress elsewhere, including one on Tellar Prime itself), the fire alarm went off.
At first, it didn’t really register, because the fire alarm never went off, the containment systems were that good, but then the comms went into effect, declaring that this was not a drill. Which didn’t make any sense to Beverly at all, unless someone had broke into the containment systems, and they hadn’t had that kind of act of outright terrorism happen on Earth since the war.
That was about when adrenaline set in. She thrust her PADD into the pocket of the labcoat she'd taken to wearing again, and burst through her office door, hitting the corridor at a full clip and nearly slipping on the extinguishing foam already set down. Somehow, she could feel the heat, though maybe it was just psychosomatic, and she ran faster, the sounds of terror, once so familiar, now strange to her ears and almost distant. The lift was nearly packed.
“Commander?” She turned to see Ensign Davies, her assistant, looking smudged and out of breath. “We need to get you out of here, sir,” he said, standing near a waiting turbolift. It was packed tightly with clearly only room for one, and there were how many people still on this floor?
“I’ll get the next one,” Beverly said. “I promise. Damn the protocols,” she added as she saw him start to protest. “Now go.”
She pushed the ensign past her and into the lift before the doors closed, then turned and headed for the next Jefferies tube (oh, damn the architects who’d thought that’d save space in the new building) before he decided to do something stupidly heroic like manhandle her into the lift.
The odd warmth wasn’t her imagination, though; there were flames and they were close. In fact, she’d nearly run into the inferno before reaching the doors to the tube. Kicking open the emergency panel, she yanked out the mag pulls and set them firmly on the safety doors, then yanked hard, a few centimeters at a time. After a too-long minute of effort, she squeezed through the small opening and reached out for the duranium rungs of the ladder--
They weren’t there.
Beverly’s weight had shifted enough that she fell forward scrabbling for a handhold, too startled to cry out, waiting for the moment when she’d hit the bottom of the shaft, face first. So it was a little surprising when she hit a large drift of snow instead, much sooner than she’d anticipated hitting, say, the next tube junction. It was bright out, and her eyes opened slowly after having been squeezed shut in reflexive anticipation of inevitable gravity.
It was probably telling of when and where she came from that the first thing that she said had nothing to do with God or an afterlife, or that she didn’t look excessively surprised. Instead, she wrapped her arms around herself, tugging in the labcoat against the cold, and scrambled to her feet, ranting at the skies.
“Q, damn it!”
But unless Q was an exceptionally loud snowbird, or the soft roar of the ocean, he wasn’t there.
Late tags welcomed. Please to be helping her get to the compound or a hut before she freezes.