Fic: Uncharted Territories, NC-17, McCoy/Chapel, Chapter Twelve
Title: Uncharted Territories
Rating: NC-17
Author: fringedweller
Pairing: McCoy/Chapel
Beta: The amazing seren_ccd
Warnings: Sex and violence, but only for the deserving.
Word Count: 50000
Disclaimer: Nothing recognisable is mine, and trust me, I'm making nothing from this!
Notes: Written for het_bigbang.
Christine had been born and raised on Earth, and had never dreamed of living on a frontier planet. Arriving at Lintallia, the main dilithium producing planet and home of the secret Section 31 base, had really opened her eyes to how pioneers lived.
The only building with any level of modern technology was the dilithium ore processing plant, which had to have the very latest machinery to keep production levels at a competitive rate when compared to other plants. Starfleet had been responsible for building that, and no expense or technological update had been spared. The rest of the town was built from a strange mixture of natural wood and stone, hastily built by teams of builders who used local materials to create basic accommodations. These were considered the better houses; others still lived in pre-fabricated settlement pods which were essentially sturdy tents. They were waterproof and had good insulation, but they were used mainly by those workers who bought a claim, mined it quickly and moved on. Those that came to Lintallia to live permanently and raise families tended to live in a permanent house, once they had mined enough ore to afford to build one.
The houses lacked what Christine would consider the basic technology - climate control, automatic dust and dirt disposal, food replication units and laundry units that cleaned, dried and pressed clothes. They had indoor plumbing, but septic tanks sat under each house’s yard. They had food refrigeration and freezing, but no automatic dishwashers. Those that stayed at home to look after the children had their work cut out for them; it was as bad as living in the twentieth century.
There was a small school that catered for children of all ages, with extra lessons being taken by subspace by the older children who needed specialised teaching. The settlement had a bar and an entertainment centre, where movies would be shown and parties held. There was a shop that got stocked once every six weeks on the supply run, and you could get post delivered there if you were willing to wait the months it could take to get to you.
Christine worked at the small medical centre in the settlement, and lived in a Starfleet pre-fabrication pod that all nurses assigned to the settlement were given when they arrived. Basic was clearly Starfleet’s watchword; there was a bedroom, a bathroom and a combination cooking and dining area. The furniture was the same drab grey as the walls, and none of it was comfortable.
The medical centre had a nurse and a doctor, who was shared between three or four settlements on three or four planets. There was no beaming technology in the settlement, so the doctor used a Starfleet shuttlecraft to make the short hops between planets. Those Academy flight lessons suddenly seemed to Christine to be very important after all.
Technically, both she and Dr Ramirez worked one eight hour shift five days a week and had the sixth day free, but in reality they were both always on duty. If someone urgently banged on your door in the middle of the night and told you that someone had nearly severed his leg with a plasma cutter, you didn’t tell him to come back in six hours.
Such emergencies weren’t common, and Christine spent most of her day with basic nursing chores - monitoring medication for patients, conducting routine tests and dealing with the small everyday injuries people got - sprained ankles and strained backs. She had a few expectant mothers, including one of the miners, and kept a careful eye on their progress. Children needed their shots and harassed parents needed a kind person to talk to.
She got on with the doctor well enough, but she was nearing the end of her two year rotation and was obsessed with leaving the place. Christine knew she had two years to go before she was free of it, and tried not to let the thought depress her. She had an important job, and she needed to complete it as soon as possible.
It took time, though; she didn’t have the authority to command every person in the town to turn up to her clinic, and she didn’t fancy her chances at fighting burly miners to the ground and forcing them to give her blood samples.
The children were easy to get samples from. It was incredibly unlikely that they’d be spies anyway, given their ages, but everyone had to be cleared. Luckily, the children all needed vaccinations, so Christine was able to use her fancy new equipment to take a genetic sample as she immunised the children and chatted with their parents.
Most of the parents had missed a shot or two in their lifetimes, so Christine offered them a booster while they were escorting their children. Most readily agreed, and some even volunteered to show their dubious children that getting an injection wasn’t a big deal. Their willingness made them unlikely spies, who would be wary of any unnecessary medical treatment, but Christine ran their samples through her computer back in her pre-fab pod each night anyway. Each time, the computer told her that the settlers were exactly what they claimed to be. Mostly human, with some Tellerite, Caitian and one or two other species. Thankfully, none of the settlers were Betazoid or from any other race with empathic abilities. Christine had been the recipient of some training with the psychologist and her team in suppressing emotion, but not really enough. That should have come in her fourth year of training, which was actually her first year of service.
She took her opportunities when she found them. Whenever somebody came in for an injury or to refill their medication, she managed to take a sample. When she got called up to the ore processing plant because somebody had hurt themselves too badly to be moved, she sampled the victim and anybody else she could spot with an injury, no matter how small. Never a shrinking violet at the best of times, Christine found new reserves of forcefulness and authority when corralling men who wanted to ignore burns and cuts and go back to work.
Night after night, the small computer in her pod spat out negative results. No Romulan spies found. After a few months of living in the settlement, she’d managed to survey about sixty percent of the population and she’d found nothing.
Her Section 31 contact had remained anonymous, as her coded message from Admiral Marcus that she’d picked up at Starbase Seven had told her they would. The message said that they’d make contact when Section 31 required an update on her progress, and in an emergency she could rely on her contact to aid her as best they could.
The night the contact revealed themselves to Christine there was a party at the entertainment centre in the town. The orbit of the planet created a six-day week and no real change in seasons, but all the cultures represented in the settlement had some kind of seasonal celebration back on their homeworld. There had been an agreement that there’d be a shared party in honour of whatever they were missing at home, and just about everybody crammed themselves into the entertainment space and the bar next door. The party spilled out into the scrubby ground outside the buildings, and there were bonfires and barbeques and fake snowmen and Christmas trees all mixed haphazardly alongside other, more alien, celebrations.
Christine had joined in with enthusiasm, and had spent most of the day helping to create paper chains to loop around trees that had been cut down and dragged into the centre for decoration. Now she had a glass of something that in no way resembled eggnog but had a very hefty alcoholic kick to it, and was finding out just how popular a single woman on a settlement made up largely of single men could be.
She’d let McCoy go, because she knew that asking him to wait two years for her wasn’t fair, but it didn’t mean that she’d stopped loving him. It had taken her long enough to admit it, and now that she had, she just couldn’t think of anybody else. Part of her hoped that he’d make the sensible decision and move on. She’d been nothing but trouble for him really, keeping him at arms length and dodging all of his attempts at creating something real between them. He deserved somebody better, somebody who wouldn’t have to lie about herself all the time.
Part of her hoped that he didn’t forget her, that he kept on loving her. It was selfish and wrong of her, but she didn’t care. Her secret dream was to do her duty, be reassigned to the Enterprise and fall off the radar of Section 31, never to be reactivated again. Then they could be together and actually try to turn their relationship into something more than just unbelievably good sex.
So that was why she had dodged her way out of another welcoming group of drunken miners and ducked outside for a bit. She wandered through the outside decorations, nodding to a few people she’d met and picking up another glass of not-nog from a small bar that had been set up. A loud clang of bells announced that it was time for all the children of the settlement to receive presents, something that the human children expected from Father Christmas, and the non-human children demanded to be included in.
Most of the settlers wandered off to watch the present-giving, but Christine decided to stay outside on a bench near one of the bonfires. She’d stuffed some hastily bodged together ‘stockings’ - surgical support bandages sewn together at one end - with some sweets she had ordered from the last supply run and had left them with the pile of presents for the children inside the entertainment room. Just about everybody had donated something for the kids, and there would be some very happy young people going home in a few hours.
“Not going to watch the little darlings opening their presents?”
The voice came out of the gloom and surprised Christine, who thought she was alone.
“No,” she said. “Too crowded and noisy.”
Her mystery speaker moved forward into the light, revealing a man she’d never seen before. He was dressed, like everybody else, in his ‘best’ clothes, clothes that were reserved for parties and not for everyday working. He was of average height and had tanned skin and dirty-blond hair, but he was pretty non-descript. If pressed, Christine wouldn’t be able to describe any distinguishing feature. He was the most average man she’d ever met.
“I don’t think I know you,” she said politely. “I’m Christine Chapel, the Starfleet nurse.”
“I’m Jeff Barnaby, one of the engineers at the ore processing plant. Lieutenant Barnaby, to be precise, but don’t stand, Ensign Chapel,” he said, as she started to rise. “We’re off-duty here.”
“I thought that I had met all the Starfleet personnel here,” Christine said, frowning as she reviewed her mental list of known Starfleet officers and enlisted men. “I asked all Starfleet to report to me for compulsory health checks four weeks ago.”
“Ah,” said the man quietly, sitting next to her. “But like you, I have a different mission here. To everybody here I’m a private contractor, hired by Starfleet to help run the plant. They don’t know I’m Starfleet.”
Christine stiffened. This was her Section 31 contact?
“That’s right,” he said softly. “Admiral Marcus assigned me as your contact. He wants your preliminary findings. I’ll send them through our subspace communication array.”
“Everything’s on the computer in my pod,” Christine said softly.
“Let’s take a walk,” he suggested. “You can give the data to me to send, and fill me in on your progress on the way.”
The streets of the settlement were empty. It was the perfect time to make contact, Christine thought. If anybody did see them together, they’d assume that they were making the most of the alcohol and the evening and sneaking off for some private fun.
Not this man, Christine thought, looking sideways at him as they made the way to her pod. Thoroughly unremarkable in every way, which was probably what made him very good at his job. She’d had enough of unremarkable men, though.
They entered the pod and he looked around in distaste at the basic level of decoration as she accessed the computer terminal and started the long safety protocols that allowed her to access the information.
“The things we do for our Federation,” he said, poking the uncomfortable couch dubiously.
“It’s better than some assignments,” she shrugged, downloading her data onto a chip. “There’s not really anything to report. I’ve managed to survey just over sixty percent of the population, and none of them show any signs of genetic manipulation.”
“That’s what Marcus is looking for?” Barnaby asked intently.
“That’s what they think is happening,” Christine said. “But so far I don’t see any evidence of it. I think it would be one or more of the miners, if it is happening. None of the miners with families show any evidence of not being exactly who they say they are, so I need to get access to the single men. But none of them are too keen to stop working and get their injuries seen to. They’d rather patch themselves up and keep on working.”
“They are all about their profits,” Barnaby said, nodding his head in agreement. “There are other ways to get genetic samples other than by getting them into your medical centre. You are single, right?”
“Yes,” said Christine, feeling as though she was lying. “Although I really don’t think that fucking my way through the miners is the right way to be getting genetic data from them.”
“It’s the easiest way,” Barnaby said, shrugging. “It’s not like they’re going to turn you down.”
“I’ll keep it for a last resort,” Christine said firmly.
He accepted the data chip and left, leaving Christine to ponder the problem of the rest of the miners. Sleeping her way through them was not an option she cared to countenance - who knew how many STIs there could be lurking amongst them. Although, she pondered, that could be a way in to the group, if she was willing to be less than ethical about her actions.
She was a spy. Ethics didn’t always apply.
It took her a few days to get her calculations right, another day to synthesise the compound, and another two to work out the computer code necessary to alter a Starfleet issue replicator’s programming. The next day in the medical centre, she pulled up a list of miners who were registered with the settlement and tallied it with her list of those she’d already had the chance to sample. All of the men were listed as single, and they were all between the ages of twenty and forty. Mining was a young man’s game, it seemed.
She went up to the ore processing plant at lunchtime, with a bag full of medicine. One of the engineers, a Starfleet officer, had a little boy who required daily doses of a drug that helped regulate his heartbeat. Surgery was only an option when he was older, so he needed the drug to stay healthy. The medical centre had an abundance of the medicine, and Christine decided to deliver his next week’s batch to his mother in person rather than drop it off at their home.
“You didn’t have to go to this trouble, Ensign,” the mother said when she turned up. “Danny’s still got a few days’ worth at home. Tom could have picked this up later in the week with the kids.”
“I was due a visit here anyway,” Christine lied. “I know that a lot of miners haven’t had their health checks, and sooner or later most of them come through here with their ore. I’d hoped to catch some.”
“They usually drop by at the end of the day,” the engineer said, checking the medicine carefully. “Although there are probably some around the place now. You’re welcome to wait in the break room. They all go there to get a cup of coffee while we weigh in their ore and calculate their payment. There’s probably a utility room somewhere you could use if they want privacy.”
“Thank you,” Christine said gratefully. “Is there a replicator in the break room?”
“Food only, but if you’re looking for chocolate, go nuts,” the engineer told her. “It’s another three weeks until the supply ship gets here, and the replicator is better than nothing.”
“I didn’t realise how much I took living on Earth for granted!” Christine said, smiling, and the engineer thanked her again for the medicine before directing her to the break room. Luckily it was empty, so there was nobody to see her attach the Section 31 blocker to the wall. The device, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, disrupted camera and microphone signals. She deliberately walked in front of the camera as she fussed with a table and chairs, and set up her diagnostic equipment. She allowed the camera to record footage of her intent on her PADD, then she triggered the remote commands to the blocker that disrupted the cameras. Anyone watching them on a security feed would just see her working at her PADD in an empty room. It would only work for a few minutes, so she had to move quickly.
The housing of the replicator came off neatly, revealing the maintenance panel underneath. Technicians had to be able to tinker with the machine’s delicate coding as replicators were notorious for falling victim to electrical shorts and other problems. They were lifesavers on board starships and on bases far away from regular supply routes, but they were also probably the most hated piece of equipment for maintenance issues.
Christine was able to override the unit’s security system, as this had been one of the very tasks that her computer teacher at Section 31 had been able to make sure she could do. Once she had access to the system she programmed in a very specific set of instructions that added a tasteless compound to every item of food and drink that the replicator produced. She was proud of the compound - it was her own special invention. It was carefully created to create a harmless but itchy skin rash in human males, while being harmless to human females. She was working on the assumption that engineering a Romulan to look like a human was easier than getting them to look like a Tellerite, of which there was only one that she hadn’t been able to sample.
She was in and out of the replicator housing in just under four minutes, and was sitting back at her PADD when the blocker switched back to a live feed for the security cameras. She stayed for a few hours and caught a few miners who ambled in for a coffee, and she was able to persuade them to stay long enough for a quick scan with her tricorder. They all checked out, so she went back to the medical centre and began preparing for the influx of patients she knew she would receive. She also sent a message to the inboxes of all the miners so far untested, delicately reminding them that STI testing was a good idea as untreated minor symptoms, such as, say, skin rashes, could lead to much nastier complications later.
A lot of the miners had recently taken shuttles to a nearby planet for some “R and R”; the whole settlement knew that a legal brothel had been set up there, so it wasn’t surprising that most of the single men, trapped in a town with very few available people, made use of the workers there. All the sex workers were scrupulously monitored for their health and wellbeing, Christine knew, and she felt a little guilty for implying blame on their behalf.
Over the next few weeks, just about all of the single miners showed up at her clinic with a variant of the rash. It was easily treated with topical cream, but Christine replicated some placebo tablets that were very similar to the standard STI treatment regimen for the men to take as well. She gave a lecture on sexual health as she took genetic sample from the miners, who took it in good stead. A quick glance at their medical history showed that this was not a new experience for most of them, and the nature of their “illness” made it unlikely they’d talk about it with anybody. Thanking human nature for its weird hang-ups, Christine ran the samples through her computer and came up with absolutely nothing.
She’d now surveyed all but two members of the settlement and she’d found nobody that showed any signs of genetic manipulation. She returned to the ore processing plant and reprogrammed the replicator, as she didn’t want an influx of panicked miners with a rash that wouldn’t go away. In the weird sort of luck that hits you sometimes, she was onsite when the red alert sirens went off and an explosion rocked the building. She ran from the room towards where smoke seemed to be pouring from a door that had been blasted open. She was stopped by one of the Starfleet engineers.
“The explosion causes toxic gas to be vented,” he told her, hustling her back down the corridor. “We need to evacuate.”
“I have my medical kit,” she told him. “I can help.”
“Set up outside and call for Dr Ramirez,” he instructed, and just about threw her out of the building into the fresh air. Christine got the doctor on her communicator, and reported the explosion. Once that was done and the doctor was on her way, she began organising the miners and Starfleet personnel milling about the outside of the building in confusion.
There were cuts and bruises and smoke inhalation to deal with, all of which she could manage with the contents of her med kit that she’d brought with her as cover. Pretty soon the real injuries began to come out of the building, and all she could do was stabilise those affected by the toxic gas until Dr Ramirez arrived with the medi-shuttle and the required equipment. Civilians and unaffected Starfleet personnel with basic medical field training took over the minor injuries while Christine and the doctor worked on the more serious cases.
News of the explosion soon spread, and lots of people turned up to see if they could help, or to check on friends and family. The only other doctor in the system was told about the explosion and he managed to get there in twenty minutes, pushing his medi-shuttle to its limits. Together they were able to help save four of the five people who had been most severely affected by the toxic gas. They lost one person, who was one of the two people left unsampled on Christine’s list. She got a sample anyway, for analysis later. The other unsampled miner was at the plant, and by insisting that he was checked out despite his protests that he hadn’t been in the building, Christine finally managed to get all of the settlement’s population.
It took her some days to get a chance to run the analysis as she had to deal with all the non-serious injuries caused by the accident. The two doctors had sent a distress call and were taking the very badly injured patients to rendezvous with the nearest ship who could transport them to a starbase, leaving Christine stranded on the planet to take charge of the settlement’s medical issues. Just to add another layer of crisis to her life, not one but two of the pregnant women went into labour within days of each other. Thankfully their pregnancies had been text-book, and both babies were kind enough to engage in the correct position and not get their cords tied around their necks. Dr Ramirez was just within distance for a video feed, and she coached both parents and nurse through the delivery. Christine had assisted at several births, but she had never delivered a baby before. Now she had two under her belt.
“Only one more, and you fulfil the requirement for medical school,” Ramirez told her over a fuzzy and static-y video connection. “All you need is three and you’re free to specialise wherever you want.”
“Two down, one to go,” Christine joked, then left to check on the new arrivals to the settlement before registering their births on the official documentation. Strictly speaking, that wasn’t her job, but there wasn’t a town registrar here so she did the job.
She worked far past her hours that day, and groaned with relief as she was able to lie on her uncomfortable bed. Then she caught sight of the computer in the corner of the room and groaned. The last results of the sampling had to be analysed and sent to Admiral Marcus via Lieutenant Barnaby.
That thought made her pause. She hadn’t sampled Barnaby.
Admiral Marcus had been quite clear - somebody in the settlement was spying for the Romulans. She’d gone through all the civilians and the Starfleet personnel, and nobody had been anything other than what they claimed to be. But she hadn’t sampled Barnaby - she’d just assumed that because he was Section 31, he didn’t need to be tested. He wasn’t the only member of Section 31 here, either. This location hid a Section 31 research and development base. There had to be other people on the planet that didn’t show up on the settlement lists.
She sat up in horror. If there was a spy here, he or she had to be a member of Section 31. That meant a double agent, one that had successfully passed themselves off as human long enough to fool Section 31 into recruiting them.
She had to test Barnaby. If his test came back negative she could voice her suspicions to him about the rest of the concealed team. If his test was positive, she knew that he was the spy.
Her stomach turned. How was she going to get a genetic sample from Barnaby? He was too clever to fall for the replicator trick, and he’d never turned up for his basic health screening. She paced back and forth as she considered her options. Whatever happened, she had to get a message back to Section 31. They had to know that the only possible Romulan spy had to be a member of their organisation, but the only way to get the message was through Barnaby himself.
She remembered his conversation, about getting genetic samples from the miners through sex, and sighed. Unless she were to drug him and get the sample, it seemed the only way. Analysis took days, after all. She couldn’t keep him unconscious for that length of time without somebody noticing his absence, and if he were really Romulan she had no idea how basic sedatives would work on him.
Grimacing, she set to work on encoding a message to sit amongst the data on the settlement’s population. Although her surface message informed the admiral that there were no Romulan spies on Lintellia, the message underneath was an urgent warning about the likelihood of Section 31 infiltration.
Once the data chip was ready, she had to use the pre-arranged system to alert Barnaby that he was needed to convey the data to Earth. He had given her a small communicator the first time he had collected data from her, and that communicator was locked to a special channel monitored by him. All she had to do was activate it and he’d come to pick up the next data chip.
She prepared herself mechanically as she waited for him to arrive; she took a shower and changed into her best civilian clothes. She wore makeup, and even sacrificed a few sprays of perfume from her half-empty bottle. She’d even applied a lubricant up inside her, so that her lack of attraction to Barnaby wouldn’t be that noticeable.
She hated the thought of what she was about to do; it smacked of desperation. She’d never traded her body for anything before - even her arrangement with McCoy, back at the beginning, had been about mutual pleasure. She was going to use her body to extract information from a suspected spy. By having sex with him she could well be saving the Outer Territories from Romulan attack and the Federation from all-out war with the Empire. This was an act of aggression on her part, not passivity.
Knowing all of that didn’t make her feel any better, though.
Barnaby arrived within forty minutes of the communicator being activated, and looked at her appreciatively as he entered the living area of the pod.
“You’re looking good, Chapel,” he said, his eyes raking up and down her body. “Special occasion?”
Christine tried her best to appear artless and unconcerned. The best lies, she’d been taught, are the ones that contain the most truth. Her micro expressions and her body language was less likely to give her away if she was telling as much truth as she could.
“I just felt the need to be different for a while,” she said. “It’s been crazy here - first the explosion and then the births and all that on top of managing all the other injuries with Ramirez being away on the patient transport. I wanted a little indulgence tonight.”
“And what makes tonight so special?” Barnaby asked, pulling off his jacket and throwing it loosely over the back of the sofa. He threw himself down in an armchair, uninvited, and leant forwards slightly, towards Christine.
Christine shrugged, letting the wide neck of her tunic slip off her shoulder, revealing its bare, creamy skin to Barnaby’s gaze.
“I could give you some bullshit lines,” she told him, moving closer to him. “But you’re too smart to see through them, so I’m just going to be honest.”
She stood before him, making him look up at her. Her breasts caught his attention in particular, probably because she had dispensed with her bra.
“I’ve been here for almost a year, and I haven’t had sex with anybody during that time,” she told him, using her best matter-of-fact voice. “I didn’t know who I could trust.”
“Go on,” Barnaby said, his eyes flicking between her breasts and her mouth.
“Then it occurred to me when I was compiling the data chip,” Christine said. “You’ve got to be in the same position as me, alone out here in the middle of nowhere, not knowing who you can trust.”
“It’s not easy,” Barnaby admitted. “Most of us in the research base are men, and I’m not interested in that. The only woman is only interested in women, so, we’re all a bit stuck.”
“Not even on one of those cold, lonely nights?” Christine teased. “All of you out there in the middle of nowhere, with nobody else around to...lend a hand?”
She’d moved closer now, pushing her distaste for the act down deep into the corner of her mind, pretending that the bland and utterly forgettable man in front of her was really Len McCoy. She sat straddling his lap, and let her hand rest suggestively on his crotch.
“No,” he gasped, and she slid her hand up and down, trying to elicit some response from him. She could feel the beginning of an erection forming. Much like Barnaby, it was eminently forgettable.
“So, you’d be amenable, then?” she asked coyly. “I didn’t know if you’d be interested.”
“I’m very interested,” he leered, and grabbed hold of her breasts. She tried not to wince. She’d left her bra off so this whole business could be over more quickly.
She pulled her tunic top off and let Barnaby pounce on her breasts as she writhed in his lap, trying to hurry the whole affair along. He wasn’t an inconsiderate lover, she thought charitably; every so often he’d ask “Is this good?” or “You like this?” and each time she breathlessly indicated that she was enjoying every second. It was much like sex with Roger, she thought. Part of her mind could detach and float away while her body responded to his mechanically.
Now there was a difference between Roger and Len, she thought as she rose from the chair and urged Barnaby towards the bed. Sex with Len had been so...vital. She’d never detached from the experience because she never been able to. All of her senses were caught up.
Barnaby pushed her to her back, but she flipped to her front, pushed her backside in the air and told him in a breathy voice that she enjoyed this position a lot more. It had the benefit of being true, as well as meaning that she didn’t have to look at him as he thrust into her. He really didn’t seem to mind the change in position at all, and thrust away with small groaning honks of noise. Christine buried her head in the pillows, all the better to hide her snorts of laughter at the ridiculous noises he was making.
She rested her weight on one arm, and reached down to touch herself. Barnaby’s hands were glued to her hips and he didn’t seem likely to remember that she’d need a bit of help getting off. She took a deep breath and tried to remove Barnaby from her mind. It wasn’t him and his average cock trying to bury himself into her, it was Len. She thought of the time they’d snuck back to his shared quarters, where they’d had to be quick because Kirk was due back from classes. She hadn’t had to get herself off as the force of his thrusts from behind her had rubbed her against the side of the mattress in such a way that she’d come before he did, loudly and explosively.
The memories helped, and she managed a brief but real orgasm before Barnaby let out one final ridiculous honking noise and collapsed onto her. She could feel the semen leak from her as Barnaby shifted and pulled out of her, and she grimaced at the thought of the STI repression medication she knew she’d be taking just in case he was infected with something.
She tolerated some awkward cuddling before she excused herself to clean up in the bathroom. She’d secreted her specialised tricorder there, and it was a matter of seconds for her to start the genetic scan. She had a thorough sonic shower, but she suspected that she’d be back in there later to use the water shower.
When she came out of the bathroom, wearing a robe, Barnaby was already mostly dressed.
“I have to get the data chip up to the base,” he said, faux-apologetically. He didn’t offer to return later and Christine didn’t ask him to.
“Of course,” she said, smiling at him. “Thanks for sticking around and helping me out.”
“You’re very welcome,” he said, oozing a smile at her. “Maybe next time I could stay a little longer.”
“Maybe,” Christine said, escorting him to the door. Never, she vowed internally.
Rating: NC-17
Author: fringedweller
Pairing: McCoy/Chapel
Beta: The amazing seren_ccd
Warnings: Sex and violence, but only for the deserving.
Word Count: 50000
Disclaimer: Nothing recognisable is mine, and trust me, I'm making nothing from this!
Notes: Written for het_bigbang.
Christine had been born and raised on Earth, and had never dreamed of living on a frontier planet. Arriving at Lintallia, the main dilithium producing planet and home of the secret Section 31 base, had really opened her eyes to how pioneers lived.
The only building with any level of modern technology was the dilithium ore processing plant, which had to have the very latest machinery to keep production levels at a competitive rate when compared to other plants. Starfleet had been responsible for building that, and no expense or technological update had been spared. The rest of the town was built from a strange mixture of natural wood and stone, hastily built by teams of builders who used local materials to create basic accommodations. These were considered the better houses; others still lived in pre-fabricated settlement pods which were essentially sturdy tents. They were waterproof and had good insulation, but they were used mainly by those workers who bought a claim, mined it quickly and moved on. Those that came to Lintallia to live permanently and raise families tended to live in a permanent house, once they had mined enough ore to afford to build one.
The houses lacked what Christine would consider the basic technology - climate control, automatic dust and dirt disposal, food replication units and laundry units that cleaned, dried and pressed clothes. They had indoor plumbing, but septic tanks sat under each house’s yard. They had food refrigeration and freezing, but no automatic dishwashers. Those that stayed at home to look after the children had their work cut out for them; it was as bad as living in the twentieth century.
There was a small school that catered for children of all ages, with extra lessons being taken by subspace by the older children who needed specialised teaching. The settlement had a bar and an entertainment centre, where movies would be shown and parties held. There was a shop that got stocked once every six weeks on the supply run, and you could get post delivered there if you were willing to wait the months it could take to get to you.
Christine worked at the small medical centre in the settlement, and lived in a Starfleet pre-fabrication pod that all nurses assigned to the settlement were given when they arrived. Basic was clearly Starfleet’s watchword; there was a bedroom, a bathroom and a combination cooking and dining area. The furniture was the same drab grey as the walls, and none of it was comfortable.
The medical centre had a nurse and a doctor, who was shared between three or four settlements on three or four planets. There was no beaming technology in the settlement, so the doctor used a Starfleet shuttlecraft to make the short hops between planets. Those Academy flight lessons suddenly seemed to Christine to be very important after all.
Technically, both she and Dr Ramirez worked one eight hour shift five days a week and had the sixth day free, but in reality they were both always on duty. If someone urgently banged on your door in the middle of the night and told you that someone had nearly severed his leg with a plasma cutter, you didn’t tell him to come back in six hours.
Such emergencies weren’t common, and Christine spent most of her day with basic nursing chores - monitoring medication for patients, conducting routine tests and dealing with the small everyday injuries people got - sprained ankles and strained backs. She had a few expectant mothers, including one of the miners, and kept a careful eye on their progress. Children needed their shots and harassed parents needed a kind person to talk to.
She got on with the doctor well enough, but she was nearing the end of her two year rotation and was obsessed with leaving the place. Christine knew she had two years to go before she was free of it, and tried not to let the thought depress her. She had an important job, and she needed to complete it as soon as possible.
It took time, though; she didn’t have the authority to command every person in the town to turn up to her clinic, and she didn’t fancy her chances at fighting burly miners to the ground and forcing them to give her blood samples.
The children were easy to get samples from. It was incredibly unlikely that they’d be spies anyway, given their ages, but everyone had to be cleared. Luckily, the children all needed vaccinations, so Christine was able to use her fancy new equipment to take a genetic sample as she immunised the children and chatted with their parents.
Most of the parents had missed a shot or two in their lifetimes, so Christine offered them a booster while they were escorting their children. Most readily agreed, and some even volunteered to show their dubious children that getting an injection wasn’t a big deal. Their willingness made them unlikely spies, who would be wary of any unnecessary medical treatment, but Christine ran their samples through her computer back in her pre-fab pod each night anyway. Each time, the computer told her that the settlers were exactly what they claimed to be. Mostly human, with some Tellerite, Caitian and one or two other species. Thankfully, none of the settlers were Betazoid or from any other race with empathic abilities. Christine had been the recipient of some training with the psychologist and her team in suppressing emotion, but not really enough. That should have come in her fourth year of training, which was actually her first year of service.
She took her opportunities when she found them. Whenever somebody came in for an injury or to refill their medication, she managed to take a sample. When she got called up to the ore processing plant because somebody had hurt themselves too badly to be moved, she sampled the victim and anybody else she could spot with an injury, no matter how small. Never a shrinking violet at the best of times, Christine found new reserves of forcefulness and authority when corralling men who wanted to ignore burns and cuts and go back to work.
Night after night, the small computer in her pod spat out negative results. No Romulan spies found. After a few months of living in the settlement, she’d managed to survey about sixty percent of the population and she’d found nothing.
Her Section 31 contact had remained anonymous, as her coded message from Admiral Marcus that she’d picked up at Starbase Seven had told her they would. The message said that they’d make contact when Section 31 required an update on her progress, and in an emergency she could rely on her contact to aid her as best they could.
The night the contact revealed themselves to Christine there was a party at the entertainment centre in the town. The orbit of the planet created a six-day week and no real change in seasons, but all the cultures represented in the settlement had some kind of seasonal celebration back on their homeworld. There had been an agreement that there’d be a shared party in honour of whatever they were missing at home, and just about everybody crammed themselves into the entertainment space and the bar next door. The party spilled out into the scrubby ground outside the buildings, and there were bonfires and barbeques and fake snowmen and Christmas trees all mixed haphazardly alongside other, more alien, celebrations.
Christine had joined in with enthusiasm, and had spent most of the day helping to create paper chains to loop around trees that had been cut down and dragged into the centre for decoration. Now she had a glass of something that in no way resembled eggnog but had a very hefty alcoholic kick to it, and was finding out just how popular a single woman on a settlement made up largely of single men could be.
She’d let McCoy go, because she knew that asking him to wait two years for her wasn’t fair, but it didn’t mean that she’d stopped loving him. It had taken her long enough to admit it, and now that she had, she just couldn’t think of anybody else. Part of her hoped that he’d make the sensible decision and move on. She’d been nothing but trouble for him really, keeping him at arms length and dodging all of his attempts at creating something real between them. He deserved somebody better, somebody who wouldn’t have to lie about herself all the time.
Part of her hoped that he didn’t forget her, that he kept on loving her. It was selfish and wrong of her, but she didn’t care. Her secret dream was to do her duty, be reassigned to the Enterprise and fall off the radar of Section 31, never to be reactivated again. Then they could be together and actually try to turn their relationship into something more than just unbelievably good sex.
So that was why she had dodged her way out of another welcoming group of drunken miners and ducked outside for a bit. She wandered through the outside decorations, nodding to a few people she’d met and picking up another glass of not-nog from a small bar that had been set up. A loud clang of bells announced that it was time for all the children of the settlement to receive presents, something that the human children expected from Father Christmas, and the non-human children demanded to be included in.
Most of the settlers wandered off to watch the present-giving, but Christine decided to stay outside on a bench near one of the bonfires. She’d stuffed some hastily bodged together ‘stockings’ - surgical support bandages sewn together at one end - with some sweets she had ordered from the last supply run and had left them with the pile of presents for the children inside the entertainment room. Just about everybody had donated something for the kids, and there would be some very happy young people going home in a few hours.
“Not going to watch the little darlings opening their presents?”
The voice came out of the gloom and surprised Christine, who thought she was alone.
“No,” she said. “Too crowded and noisy.”
Her mystery speaker moved forward into the light, revealing a man she’d never seen before. He was dressed, like everybody else, in his ‘best’ clothes, clothes that were reserved for parties and not for everyday working. He was of average height and had tanned skin and dirty-blond hair, but he was pretty non-descript. If pressed, Christine wouldn’t be able to describe any distinguishing feature. He was the most average man she’d ever met.
“I don’t think I know you,” she said politely. “I’m Christine Chapel, the Starfleet nurse.”
“I’m Jeff Barnaby, one of the engineers at the ore processing plant. Lieutenant Barnaby, to be precise, but don’t stand, Ensign Chapel,” he said, as she started to rise. “We’re off-duty here.”
“I thought that I had met all the Starfleet personnel here,” Christine said, frowning as she reviewed her mental list of known Starfleet officers and enlisted men. “I asked all Starfleet to report to me for compulsory health checks four weeks ago.”
“Ah,” said the man quietly, sitting next to her. “But like you, I have a different mission here. To everybody here I’m a private contractor, hired by Starfleet to help run the plant. They don’t know I’m Starfleet.”
Christine stiffened. This was her Section 31 contact?
“That’s right,” he said softly. “Admiral Marcus assigned me as your contact. He wants your preliminary findings. I’ll send them through our subspace communication array.”
“Everything’s on the computer in my pod,” Christine said softly.
“Let’s take a walk,” he suggested. “You can give the data to me to send, and fill me in on your progress on the way.”
The streets of the settlement were empty. It was the perfect time to make contact, Christine thought. If anybody did see them together, they’d assume that they were making the most of the alcohol and the evening and sneaking off for some private fun.
Not this man, Christine thought, looking sideways at him as they made the way to her pod. Thoroughly unremarkable in every way, which was probably what made him very good at his job. She’d had enough of unremarkable men, though.
They entered the pod and he looked around in distaste at the basic level of decoration as she accessed the computer terminal and started the long safety protocols that allowed her to access the information.
“The things we do for our Federation,” he said, poking the uncomfortable couch dubiously.
“It’s better than some assignments,” she shrugged, downloading her data onto a chip. “There’s not really anything to report. I’ve managed to survey just over sixty percent of the population, and none of them show any signs of genetic manipulation.”
“That’s what Marcus is looking for?” Barnaby asked intently.
“That’s what they think is happening,” Christine said. “But so far I don’t see any evidence of it. I think it would be one or more of the miners, if it is happening. None of the miners with families show any evidence of not being exactly who they say they are, so I need to get access to the single men. But none of them are too keen to stop working and get their injuries seen to. They’d rather patch themselves up and keep on working.”
“They are all about their profits,” Barnaby said, nodding his head in agreement. “There are other ways to get genetic samples other than by getting them into your medical centre. You are single, right?”
“Yes,” said Christine, feeling as though she was lying. “Although I really don’t think that fucking my way through the miners is the right way to be getting genetic data from them.”
“It’s the easiest way,” Barnaby said, shrugging. “It’s not like they’re going to turn you down.”
“I’ll keep it for a last resort,” Christine said firmly.
He accepted the data chip and left, leaving Christine to ponder the problem of the rest of the miners. Sleeping her way through them was not an option she cared to countenance - who knew how many STIs there could be lurking amongst them. Although, she pondered, that could be a way in to the group, if she was willing to be less than ethical about her actions.
She was a spy. Ethics didn’t always apply.
It took her a few days to get her calculations right, another day to synthesise the compound, and another two to work out the computer code necessary to alter a Starfleet issue replicator’s programming. The next day in the medical centre, she pulled up a list of miners who were registered with the settlement and tallied it with her list of those she’d already had the chance to sample. All of the men were listed as single, and they were all between the ages of twenty and forty. Mining was a young man’s game, it seemed.
She went up to the ore processing plant at lunchtime, with a bag full of medicine. One of the engineers, a Starfleet officer, had a little boy who required daily doses of a drug that helped regulate his heartbeat. Surgery was only an option when he was older, so he needed the drug to stay healthy. The medical centre had an abundance of the medicine, and Christine decided to deliver his next week’s batch to his mother in person rather than drop it off at their home.
“You didn’t have to go to this trouble, Ensign,” the mother said when she turned up. “Danny’s still got a few days’ worth at home. Tom could have picked this up later in the week with the kids.”
“I was due a visit here anyway,” Christine lied. “I know that a lot of miners haven’t had their health checks, and sooner or later most of them come through here with their ore. I’d hoped to catch some.”
“They usually drop by at the end of the day,” the engineer said, checking the medicine carefully. “Although there are probably some around the place now. You’re welcome to wait in the break room. They all go there to get a cup of coffee while we weigh in their ore and calculate their payment. There’s probably a utility room somewhere you could use if they want privacy.”
“Thank you,” Christine said gratefully. “Is there a replicator in the break room?”
“Food only, but if you’re looking for chocolate, go nuts,” the engineer told her. “It’s another three weeks until the supply ship gets here, and the replicator is better than nothing.”
“I didn’t realise how much I took living on Earth for granted!” Christine said, smiling, and the engineer thanked her again for the medicine before directing her to the break room. Luckily it was empty, so there was nobody to see her attach the Section 31 blocker to the wall. The device, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, disrupted camera and microphone signals. She deliberately walked in front of the camera as she fussed with a table and chairs, and set up her diagnostic equipment. She allowed the camera to record footage of her intent on her PADD, then she triggered the remote commands to the blocker that disrupted the cameras. Anyone watching them on a security feed would just see her working at her PADD in an empty room. It would only work for a few minutes, so she had to move quickly.
The housing of the replicator came off neatly, revealing the maintenance panel underneath. Technicians had to be able to tinker with the machine’s delicate coding as replicators were notorious for falling victim to electrical shorts and other problems. They were lifesavers on board starships and on bases far away from regular supply routes, but they were also probably the most hated piece of equipment for maintenance issues.
Christine was able to override the unit’s security system, as this had been one of the very tasks that her computer teacher at Section 31 had been able to make sure she could do. Once she had access to the system she programmed in a very specific set of instructions that added a tasteless compound to every item of food and drink that the replicator produced. She was proud of the compound - it was her own special invention. It was carefully created to create a harmless but itchy skin rash in human males, while being harmless to human females. She was working on the assumption that engineering a Romulan to look like a human was easier than getting them to look like a Tellerite, of which there was only one that she hadn’t been able to sample.
She was in and out of the replicator housing in just under four minutes, and was sitting back at her PADD when the blocker switched back to a live feed for the security cameras. She stayed for a few hours and caught a few miners who ambled in for a coffee, and she was able to persuade them to stay long enough for a quick scan with her tricorder. They all checked out, so she went back to the medical centre and began preparing for the influx of patients she knew she would receive. She also sent a message to the inboxes of all the miners so far untested, delicately reminding them that STI testing was a good idea as untreated minor symptoms, such as, say, skin rashes, could lead to much nastier complications later.
A lot of the miners had recently taken shuttles to a nearby planet for some “R and R”; the whole settlement knew that a legal brothel had been set up there, so it wasn’t surprising that most of the single men, trapped in a town with very few available people, made use of the workers there. All the sex workers were scrupulously monitored for their health and wellbeing, Christine knew, and she felt a little guilty for implying blame on their behalf.
Over the next few weeks, just about all of the single miners showed up at her clinic with a variant of the rash. It was easily treated with topical cream, but Christine replicated some placebo tablets that were very similar to the standard STI treatment regimen for the men to take as well. She gave a lecture on sexual health as she took genetic sample from the miners, who took it in good stead. A quick glance at their medical history showed that this was not a new experience for most of them, and the nature of their “illness” made it unlikely they’d talk about it with anybody. Thanking human nature for its weird hang-ups, Christine ran the samples through her computer and came up with absolutely nothing.
She’d now surveyed all but two members of the settlement and she’d found nobody that showed any signs of genetic manipulation. She returned to the ore processing plant and reprogrammed the replicator, as she didn’t want an influx of panicked miners with a rash that wouldn’t go away. In the weird sort of luck that hits you sometimes, she was onsite when the red alert sirens went off and an explosion rocked the building. She ran from the room towards where smoke seemed to be pouring from a door that had been blasted open. She was stopped by one of the Starfleet engineers.
“The explosion causes toxic gas to be vented,” he told her, hustling her back down the corridor. “We need to evacuate.”
“I have my medical kit,” she told him. “I can help.”
“Set up outside and call for Dr Ramirez,” he instructed, and just about threw her out of the building into the fresh air. Christine got the doctor on her communicator, and reported the explosion. Once that was done and the doctor was on her way, she began organising the miners and Starfleet personnel milling about the outside of the building in confusion.
There were cuts and bruises and smoke inhalation to deal with, all of which she could manage with the contents of her med kit that she’d brought with her as cover. Pretty soon the real injuries began to come out of the building, and all she could do was stabilise those affected by the toxic gas until Dr Ramirez arrived with the medi-shuttle and the required equipment. Civilians and unaffected Starfleet personnel with basic medical field training took over the minor injuries while Christine and the doctor worked on the more serious cases.
News of the explosion soon spread, and lots of people turned up to see if they could help, or to check on friends and family. The only other doctor in the system was told about the explosion and he managed to get there in twenty minutes, pushing his medi-shuttle to its limits. Together they were able to help save four of the five people who had been most severely affected by the toxic gas. They lost one person, who was one of the two people left unsampled on Christine’s list. She got a sample anyway, for analysis later. The other unsampled miner was at the plant, and by insisting that he was checked out despite his protests that he hadn’t been in the building, Christine finally managed to get all of the settlement’s population.
It took her some days to get a chance to run the analysis as she had to deal with all the non-serious injuries caused by the accident. The two doctors had sent a distress call and were taking the very badly injured patients to rendezvous with the nearest ship who could transport them to a starbase, leaving Christine stranded on the planet to take charge of the settlement’s medical issues. Just to add another layer of crisis to her life, not one but two of the pregnant women went into labour within days of each other. Thankfully their pregnancies had been text-book, and both babies were kind enough to engage in the correct position and not get their cords tied around their necks. Dr Ramirez was just within distance for a video feed, and she coached both parents and nurse through the delivery. Christine had assisted at several births, but she had never delivered a baby before. Now she had two under her belt.
“Only one more, and you fulfil the requirement for medical school,” Ramirez told her over a fuzzy and static-y video connection. “All you need is three and you’re free to specialise wherever you want.”
“Two down, one to go,” Christine joked, then left to check on the new arrivals to the settlement before registering their births on the official documentation. Strictly speaking, that wasn’t her job, but there wasn’t a town registrar here so she did the job.
She worked far past her hours that day, and groaned with relief as she was able to lie on her uncomfortable bed. Then she caught sight of the computer in the corner of the room and groaned. The last results of the sampling had to be analysed and sent to Admiral Marcus via Lieutenant Barnaby.
That thought made her pause. She hadn’t sampled Barnaby.
Admiral Marcus had been quite clear - somebody in the settlement was spying for the Romulans. She’d gone through all the civilians and the Starfleet personnel, and nobody had been anything other than what they claimed to be. But she hadn’t sampled Barnaby - she’d just assumed that because he was Section 31, he didn’t need to be tested. He wasn’t the only member of Section 31 here, either. This location hid a Section 31 research and development base. There had to be other people on the planet that didn’t show up on the settlement lists.
She sat up in horror. If there was a spy here, he or she had to be a member of Section 31. That meant a double agent, one that had successfully passed themselves off as human long enough to fool Section 31 into recruiting them.
She had to test Barnaby. If his test came back negative she could voice her suspicions to him about the rest of the concealed team. If his test was positive, she knew that he was the spy.
Her stomach turned. How was she going to get a genetic sample from Barnaby? He was too clever to fall for the replicator trick, and he’d never turned up for his basic health screening. She paced back and forth as she considered her options. Whatever happened, she had to get a message back to Section 31. They had to know that the only possible Romulan spy had to be a member of their organisation, but the only way to get the message was through Barnaby himself.
She remembered his conversation, about getting genetic samples from the miners through sex, and sighed. Unless she were to drug him and get the sample, it seemed the only way. Analysis took days, after all. She couldn’t keep him unconscious for that length of time without somebody noticing his absence, and if he were really Romulan she had no idea how basic sedatives would work on him.
Grimacing, she set to work on encoding a message to sit amongst the data on the settlement’s population. Although her surface message informed the admiral that there were no Romulan spies on Lintellia, the message underneath was an urgent warning about the likelihood of Section 31 infiltration.
Once the data chip was ready, she had to use the pre-arranged system to alert Barnaby that he was needed to convey the data to Earth. He had given her a small communicator the first time he had collected data from her, and that communicator was locked to a special channel monitored by him. All she had to do was activate it and he’d come to pick up the next data chip.
She prepared herself mechanically as she waited for him to arrive; she took a shower and changed into her best civilian clothes. She wore makeup, and even sacrificed a few sprays of perfume from her half-empty bottle. She’d even applied a lubricant up inside her, so that her lack of attraction to Barnaby wouldn’t be that noticeable.
She hated the thought of what she was about to do; it smacked of desperation. She’d never traded her body for anything before - even her arrangement with McCoy, back at the beginning, had been about mutual pleasure. She was going to use her body to extract information from a suspected spy. By having sex with him she could well be saving the Outer Territories from Romulan attack and the Federation from all-out war with the Empire. This was an act of aggression on her part, not passivity.
Knowing all of that didn’t make her feel any better, though.
Barnaby arrived within forty minutes of the communicator being activated, and looked at her appreciatively as he entered the living area of the pod.
“You’re looking good, Chapel,” he said, his eyes raking up and down her body. “Special occasion?”
Christine tried her best to appear artless and unconcerned. The best lies, she’d been taught, are the ones that contain the most truth. Her micro expressions and her body language was less likely to give her away if she was telling as much truth as she could.
“I just felt the need to be different for a while,” she said. “It’s been crazy here - first the explosion and then the births and all that on top of managing all the other injuries with Ramirez being away on the patient transport. I wanted a little indulgence tonight.”
“And what makes tonight so special?” Barnaby asked, pulling off his jacket and throwing it loosely over the back of the sofa. He threw himself down in an armchair, uninvited, and leant forwards slightly, towards Christine.
Christine shrugged, letting the wide neck of her tunic slip off her shoulder, revealing its bare, creamy skin to Barnaby’s gaze.
“I could give you some bullshit lines,” she told him, moving closer to him. “But you’re too smart to see through them, so I’m just going to be honest.”
She stood before him, making him look up at her. Her breasts caught his attention in particular, probably because she had dispensed with her bra.
“I’ve been here for almost a year, and I haven’t had sex with anybody during that time,” she told him, using her best matter-of-fact voice. “I didn’t know who I could trust.”
“Go on,” Barnaby said, his eyes flicking between her breasts and her mouth.
“Then it occurred to me when I was compiling the data chip,” Christine said. “You’ve got to be in the same position as me, alone out here in the middle of nowhere, not knowing who you can trust.”
“It’s not easy,” Barnaby admitted. “Most of us in the research base are men, and I’m not interested in that. The only woman is only interested in women, so, we’re all a bit stuck.”
“Not even on one of those cold, lonely nights?” Christine teased. “All of you out there in the middle of nowhere, with nobody else around to...lend a hand?”
She’d moved closer now, pushing her distaste for the act down deep into the corner of her mind, pretending that the bland and utterly forgettable man in front of her was really Len McCoy. She sat straddling his lap, and let her hand rest suggestively on his crotch.
“No,” he gasped, and she slid her hand up and down, trying to elicit some response from him. She could feel the beginning of an erection forming. Much like Barnaby, it was eminently forgettable.
“So, you’d be amenable, then?” she asked coyly. “I didn’t know if you’d be interested.”
“I’m very interested,” he leered, and grabbed hold of her breasts. She tried not to wince. She’d left her bra off so this whole business could be over more quickly.
She pulled her tunic top off and let Barnaby pounce on her breasts as she writhed in his lap, trying to hurry the whole affair along. He wasn’t an inconsiderate lover, she thought charitably; every so often he’d ask “Is this good?” or “You like this?” and each time she breathlessly indicated that she was enjoying every second. It was much like sex with Roger, she thought. Part of her mind could detach and float away while her body responded to his mechanically.
Now there was a difference between Roger and Len, she thought as she rose from the chair and urged Barnaby towards the bed. Sex with Len had been so...vital. She’d never detached from the experience because she never been able to. All of her senses were caught up.
Barnaby pushed her to her back, but she flipped to her front, pushed her backside in the air and told him in a breathy voice that she enjoyed this position a lot more. It had the benefit of being true, as well as meaning that she didn’t have to look at him as he thrust into her. He really didn’t seem to mind the change in position at all, and thrust away with small groaning honks of noise. Christine buried her head in the pillows, all the better to hide her snorts of laughter at the ridiculous noises he was making.
She rested her weight on one arm, and reached down to touch herself. Barnaby’s hands were glued to her hips and he didn’t seem likely to remember that she’d need a bit of help getting off. She took a deep breath and tried to remove Barnaby from her mind. It wasn’t him and his average cock trying to bury himself into her, it was Len. She thought of the time they’d snuck back to his shared quarters, where they’d had to be quick because Kirk was due back from classes. She hadn’t had to get herself off as the force of his thrusts from behind her had rubbed her against the side of the mattress in such a way that she’d come before he did, loudly and explosively.
The memories helped, and she managed a brief but real orgasm before Barnaby let out one final ridiculous honking noise and collapsed onto her. She could feel the semen leak from her as Barnaby shifted and pulled out of her, and she grimaced at the thought of the STI repression medication she knew she’d be taking just in case he was infected with something.
She tolerated some awkward cuddling before she excused herself to clean up in the bathroom. She’d secreted her specialised tricorder there, and it was a matter of seconds for her to start the genetic scan. She had a thorough sonic shower, but she suspected that she’d be back in there later to use the water shower.
When she came out of the bathroom, wearing a robe, Barnaby was already mostly dressed.
“I have to get the data chip up to the base,” he said, faux-apologetically. He didn’t offer to return later and Christine didn’t ask him to.
“Of course,” she said, smiling at him. “Thanks for sticking around and helping me out.”
“You’re very welcome,” he said, oozing a smile at her. “Maybe next time I could stay a little longer.”
“Maybe,” Christine said, escorting him to the door. Never, she vowed internally.