Big Bang 2010 - If Wishes Were Horses 7/18
Title: If Wishes Were Horses
Author: fringedweller
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Primarily Kirk/Rand, with background McCoy/Chapel and Pike/One and others, het and slash
Warnings: None
Length: 3389
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything recognisable in this fic and I’m not making any money from it.
Notes: Beta by seren_ccd
Summary: All her life Janice Rand had wanted one thing - to figure out just what she was supposed to do with herself. She drifted into Starfleet on a whim, and to her surprise, found a niche to fill. But being assigned to the Enterprise brings with it a challenge to her neat and ordered way of life, and Janice is unsure as to how much she's willing to let James T. Kirk affect her. But since when has love ever been easy? And will Janice let her heart stand in the way of her career?
In the week that it took them to return to Earth, Pike spent progressively longer awake each day, Janice would arrive just after he had woken up and been through his examination with McCoy, and Kirk would arrive a few minutes later. There, in front of the two captains, Janice would start her run-down of the information that Kirk needed and Pike wanted. Although off duty because of his medical condition, Pike was still a captain and he had the right to be treated as such. He gave advice to Kirk, but no orders, trusting the younger man’s judgement.
In return, Kirk accepted all of Pike’s advice and acted on it immediately.
Between the three of them, they took an impossible situation and made it work; something that Janice later found that Pike had praised her for in her service record.
It was hard for Janice to see a man that she had so much professional admiration for reduced to an invalid; the vital, energetic man she had come to know and respect was so different, pale and drained in a biobed. He refused to leave on a medical transport that Starfleet Command had sent from Earth, despite McCoy’s appeals. As far as Pike was concerned, he could lie in a bed in San Francisco, or he could lie in a bed on his ship. For a ship’s captain, there was no competition.
Janice spent her time divided between the court that sprang up around Pike whenever he was conscious, a desk in the main administrative control hub and following Kirk around the ship as he personally visited every department and sub-section and listened to the officers and enlisted crew responsible for them. There wasn’t an hour in her day that was unaccounted for, and more than a few of them were double booked. Janice began to feel frazzled, but she reminded herself that she wasn’t the only one on board to feel pressured and busy; this was a tough situation for everybody. She’d just have to cope with her hectic work hours.
Getting Kirk to stop long enough to eat a meal was a job in and of itself; he seemed to be able to function on oxygen alone. But Janice already had one captain in sickbay, and she wasn’t going to let another end up there when she could do something about it. So, ignoring the fact that she wasn’t a waitress, she would turn up at regular intervals with food for Kirk and she steadfastly refused to leave until he had eaten it.
He had protested at first, but a quietly confident Janice had informed him that she was positive that either Commander Spock or Doctor McCoy would be happy to oversee the captain’s eating habits, and that she was sure that neither of them would feel compelled to made sarcastic comments or raise any eyebrows at him. Kirk had capitulated with bad grace, which lasted until he lifted the cover on the dish she had brought him and discovered a juicy cheeseburger and a pile of golden fries, with a heap of glistening onion rings and an unhealthily large helping of coleslaw.
“The mess staff appreciated you coming by this morning, captain,” Janice told him with a smile. “Not many officers would have taken the trouble to inspect the damaged equipment, let alone help strip it back and fix it.”
She kept him on a mostly balanced diet, after a consultation with the mess hall staff and a peek at his synthesiser records from the academy. Every so often a favourite dish or gooey dessert would appear, usually when he’d had a particularly gruelling day or something went wrong; an injured crewman died, a repair backfired, news of the more losses from the Battle of Vulcan seeped down the comm lines.
Janice couldn’t do much outside the lines of her job, but she could do small things to help Kirk, like organising the meals, finding him an empty room to sleep in, getting the quartermaster to provide daily sets of clean clothes, organising shaving gear and toiletries -a hundred and one little things that Kirk didn’t have time to do himself.
As captain’s yeoman, she went off-duty when he went off-duty, a fact that meant that Janice learned to survive on as little sleep as she could grab. Whenever Kirk released her, she’d crash a few hours before Pike woke up, and the cycle would begin again. She had been resorting to taking caffeine stimulants and snacking on high-sugar energy bars just to keep her going between the hurried meals she managed to fit in.
She was sitting in Pike’s room one day, waiting for him to wake up, when McCoy took a good look at her and frowned. He was running a tricorder over her when Kirk appeared, and McCoy immediately reached out and cuffed Kirk none-too-gently across the back of his head.
“Idiot!” the doctor fumed. “What the hell have you been thinking of?”
“What the hell have I done now?” protested Kirk, annoyed.
“You’ve been running your yeoman ragged, that’s what you’ve been doing!” McCoy thundered, loud enough to wake Pike and bring Nurse Chapel to the door of the room.
“Janice?” Kirk asked, puzzled.
“Yes, Janice, how many other yeomen do you have endangering their health because of you? No, wait, don’t answer that, I don’t think I want to know!”
“Janice, are you sick?” Kirk asked, stepping forward and grazing his hand along her arm before remembering himself and stepping away.
“I’m fine,” Janice said nervously, before McCoy interrupted her.
“You’re about a day away from passing out when you stand up, young lady. Tricorders don’t lie, and this one tells me you’ve been sleeping far too little, your iron count is dangerously low and you’ve been using caffeine stims to keep you going.”
Kirk looked stricken, Pike looked concerned and McCoy looked angry.
“You’re relieved of duty for twenty four hours, yeoman, and if your baseline readings haven’t improved at the end of that time, you’ll be off for another twenty four,” McCoy said with authority. Janice tried to protest, but she was overruled by two captains and a CMO.
“I’ll be fine for a day,” Kirk told her, gently unwinding her fingers from her PADD and taking it from her. “Go and eat something that isn’t wrapped in a packet and then go and sleep.”
“Chapel will go with you,” McCoy told her.
“Come on, yeoman,” Chapel said kindly, and guided her out of the room.
“I was just doing my job,” Janice said quietly as they left sickbay and headed for the mess.
“I know, honey, but you’ve been so busy looking after Pike and Kirk that you’ve stopped looking after yourself. That’s no good,” Chapel told her as they joined the late breakfast queue.
The head culinary specialist, recently released from sickbay after a nasty injury to her leg, greeted Chapel cheerfully. Chapel introduced Janice, and the woman’s eyes widened.
“Janice Rand? As in Maggie and Tara’s Janice Rand?”
“You know Maggie and Tara?” Janice asked.
The culinary specialist nodded grimly and looked her up and down, taking in the dark shadows under her eyes and the uniform that was hanging a little too loosely off her body.
“They’re good friends, and if they ever found out I let you get into this state, there’d be hell to pay. I saw what Maggie Gomez did to that Klingon with a frying pan, I’m no fool. Stop queuing, go and sit down. I’ll make you something special. Go on, shoo, the both of you!”
Confused, Chapel and Janice made their way to the seating area.
“Who are Maggie and Tara?” asked Chapel, curious. “And what did Maggie do with a frying pan?”
Janice sighed and started the story; by the time she had finished, the culinary specialist had appeared with a tray of food.
“My god,” Chapel said, in awe of the array in front of her. “I’ve never seen so much breakfast anywhere.”
“Tuck in,” advised the culinary specialist. “The next course is coming up soon.”
They feasted on eggs Benedict, with a hollandaise sauce so rich and tasty that Janice wanted to bathe in it. Then came a full plate of more eggs, sausages, bacon and fried potatoes, with grilled tomatoes and mushrooms. Janice thought that she couldn’t eat another thing, but when the specialist came back with a plate of delicious, flaky pastries stuffed with sweet fruit she found that she could manage one. And then another. None of the food came from a synthesiser; this was all real produce, kept fresh in the ship’s storage system.
Stuffed, Janice and Christine Chapel were on first name terms with each other by the end of the meal, and Janice had time to talk to Andrea, the culinary specialist. Janice recognised her from the photographs in the cafe, and Andrea joined them for a cup of coffee as Janice explained about the mural and how she had painted Andrea in a heated game of soccer on the wall of Maggie and Tara’s cafe.
“Soccer, eh?” Andrea said, obviously pleased. “I was on a team on my last ship. I was thinking about trying to start a league here, once we’re all settled.”
“I’d love to play,” Christine said eagerly. “I was on the team at university. Of course, that was a few years ago and I wasn’t eating huge breakfasts then.”
She looked at the uneaten food longingly.
“Is there any chance I could get this boxed up?” she asked. “I know a certain bedridden ship’s captain that’s lost a lot of weight recently and had been moaning about sickbay food.”
“As well he should,” Andrea snorted. “I don’t know why, but the synthesisers in sickbay produce the worst food in the ship. Not that anything can beat real food like this, instead of that synthesised rubbish, anyway.”
Moving quickly, Andrea whisked the remnants of their breakfast away and had it packed into storage containers. Christine caught Janice yawning; she had forbidden Janice to drink coffee and had substituted a tea blend that she swore helped you sleep naturally. Christine walked Janice to her quarters and fussed with the bedding as Janice changed back into her pyjamas.
“Sleep,” Christine instructed as she dimmed the lights. “I’m off duty in eight hours; I’ll call by then to collect you for another meal. If you get hungry in the meantime, eat something.”
“I will,” Janice yawned. “Thanks, Christine.”
She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, a combination of exhaustion and what her brothers used to call ‘food comas’. She woke an hour before Christine was due to collect her, and spent the time dashing off messages to her family and Maggie and Tara. She had sent short ‘don’t worry, I’m fine’ messages as soon as comm lines to Earth had been established, but this was the first time she had allowed herself to spend longer on her private communication.
She reassured her parents that she had never been in any danger, feeling only slightly guilty for the lie, and told Maggie and Tara that their extended family was looking out for her, as instructed. She thought about logging onto the captain’s feed and checking on how his day was going, but Christine arrived before she could access her data station.
“Don’t even think about it,” Christine warned, sweeping her up and bustling her down the corridor.
“My god, are you psychic?” complained Janice.
“No, just incredibly good at reading people,” Christine told her. “Leave it alone. The ship won’t fall apart without you for one day.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Janice said darkly. “You haven’t seen engineering’s damage reports. If nobody’s got an eye on the captain he’ll be down there with a plasma torch causing all sorts of havoc.”
“Then the chief engineer will take care of him,” Christine said firmly. “It’s time for you to rest and eat something.”
There was no way that Janice thought she’d be capable of eating anything after her huge breakfast, but on the mention of food her stomach actually rumbled.
They joined the queue in the mess again, but they were soon spotted by another culinary specialist and waved to a table.
“Andrea’s orders,” the young man said firmly, and that was that. Andrea seemed to rule the mess with an iron fist, and they were quickly served one of the best stir-fries Janice had ever tasted.
“Try the rice,” moaned Christine, in ecstasy. “It’s heavenly.”
They ate until they were stuffed, but the serving dishes they had been brought were still more than half-full.
“Does Andrea think we’ve got three stomachs?” Janice wondered idly.
“It would be criminal to let food that good go to waste,” Christine said. “Let’s save it for later.”
“Later?” Janice asked, wondering if she could possibly manage another helping now.
“I’m having a movie night in my quarters, and you’re invited. Sitting on my backside watching a vid screen always makes me hungry. Besides, the girls are coming over and they’ll be ravenous.”
“You’re having a party?” Janice asked, disbelievingly.
“Not a party,” corrected Christine. “Just a small group of friends making the most of their precious downtime. You have to learn to relax, Janice. We’re doing our jobs. If we’re needed, they’ll call us, but you have to make time for yourself. Now, go and smile at the lovely young man and ask for some storage boxes.”
Janice returned with the young man, a heap of boxes and dessert in the shape of chocolate pudding. Again, there was enough for a small army, and the two women left the mess hall weighed down with deliciously aromatic boxes.
Christine’s friends were all officers, which made Janice slightly uneasy for about five minutes until Gaila, the Orion computer engineer that the crew was holding responsible for single-handedly rescuing the ship’s mainframe after the Narada attack, announced that she was going to spend the evening braiding Janice’s hair.
“Orion women don’t have yellow hair,” she marvelled as she started a blissful scalp massage. “Do you mind if I play with your hair, Janice?”
“Go right ahead,” Janice told her, settling back against the small couch in Christine’s quarters. Gaila immediately started on a complicated pattern that looked for all the world like a chess board and Janice sat back and enjoyed it as conversation flowed around and above her.
The beautiful lieutenant from the bridge crew, Nyota Uhura, immediately branded Janice her new best friend when she pulled the tubs of food open and took a few mouthfuls.
“This is so much better than the usual stuff from the mess! Who’s your source?” she asked around large mouthfuls.
Again, Janice told the story of Tara and Maggie’s influence over the mess of the Enterprise. Uhura was impressed by Janice’s connections.
“They tell you that the bridge is the most important place on the ship,” Uhura said, lazily licking at a spoon. “But in reality it’s a toss-up between the mess and the laundry. I’m going to have to be very nice to Andrea.”
After some good natured bickering they settled on an old vid, one that Janice had seen a million times before but still enjoyed. All too soon the evening came to an end and the women left Christine’s quarters for their own beds. Despite doing nothing but eat and sleep all day, Janice found herself yawning as well.
“Go and sleep,” Christine instructed as Janice started to tidy up the room. “Leave those boxes, I’ll do that. We’ll meet for breakfast tomorrow, then I’ll take you down to sickbay for your physical. If you pass, you can go back on duty.”
“Thank you for this evening,” Janice said shyly. “It was nice to meet your friends.”
“Your friends now too,” Christine corrected. “You fed Uhura chocolate and let Gaila get girly with your hair. You’re in.”
“That’s all it takes?” Janice asked, taken aback.
“We’re pushovers,” Christine grinned, referring to three women already very highly respected on board for their technical skills, no-nonsense attitudes and formidable reputations. “Plus, you have a fondness for dumb action movies with lots of explosions and men who take their shirts off for no reason. Such good taste is rare.”
Janice laughed, and said goodnight, feeling pleased that she had settled in so easily with a group of people she had only known by their reputation. She slept all through the night and ate another huge breakfast with Christine and Uhura, then headed down to sickbay to be given the all-clear by McCoy.
“Proper rest periods,” he warned her. “And you’ve got to eat, woman.”
He sniffed the air suddenly. “Are those pancakes?” he said accusingly as Christine walked past their area with a tray. “Real ones, with flour and egg and whatnot?”
“They are,” Christine replied. “With a choice of both raspberry and caramel sauces.”
“For Pike?” McCoy demanded.
“Only the best for the captain,” Christine said regally.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could find some of those for me?” he asked, coming as close to begging as Janice had ever heard him.
“I’m sorry, there’s only enough for Captain Pike,” Christine replied, sounding anything but sorry. “Maybe tomorrow.”
She sashayed away, McCoy’s eyes glued first to the tray in her hands and then to the swing of her hips as she disappeared into Pike’s private room.
“Go on,” he said to Janice grumpily. “You’re fit for duty. But make sure you eat and go off duty when you’re supposed to.”
“Thank you, sir,” Janice said and went down to Captain Pike’s room where Christine was finally succeeding at getting him to leave the PADDs that Kirk and he were juggling and eat the pancakes.
“Janice, thank God you’re back,” Kirk said in a heartfelt tone. “I don’t know how you do your job. It’s impossible!”
Pike, mouth full of pancake under Christine’s eagle-eyed scrutiny, nodded.
Janice looked at the confusion of PADDS around them. Kirk told her that in her enforced absence, he had developed a brand new organisational system to deal with the barrage of information sent to the captain’s data feed.
“Did it work?” Janice asked.
“It collapsed after forty five minutes,” Pike said, with no little amount of pleasure. “He’s been chasing his tail ever since.”
“Well, why don’t you give these to me,” Janice said, collecting up the PADDs with a grimace. “I’ll try and bring order to the chaos. Sir, you have your morning briefing with the senior officers in ten minutes.”
“I’ll be on the bridge after that,” Kirk told her.
Janice took the PADDs down to the central room, uploaded their information to her data screen and began to piece it all together in a way that made sense. It took three hours, and she spent most of it cursing Kirk’s name.
At least he had remained on the bridge, as promised, and she caught up with him there to present him with his new schedule and to-do list for the day. He decided to work in his ready room, and she went with him to help. After an hour he stopped for lunch without being prompted, and synthesised two meals.
“Don’t argue,” he said without preamble. “Doctor’s orders.”
Sighing, Janice put aside her work and joined him for a meal. Then they started ploughing through the stacked-up paperwork again. The chime sounded through the ship for the change of duty shift, and Kirk stood up.
“Thank you, yeoman, that’ll be all for today. You’re off-duty now.”
“Really?” asked Janice, bemused.
“Really,” Kirk assured her. “Bones was quite firm about both of us stopping before we fell over. The hardest work’s been done, anyway. We’re nearly home, and the ship’s as fixed as we can make it without a drydock.”
“You’re going off duty too?” Janice asked suspiciously.
“On my honour,” Kirk promised.
Janice left that potential minefield alone and exited the ready room. When she got back to her quarters and checked her personal inbox she found messages from her family and an invitation from Gaila for a game of cards in one of the rec rooms. Pleased, she played the messages while brushing out her hair and attempting something different, in honour of Gaila’s fascination with her hair colour.
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Author: fringedweller
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Primarily Kirk/Rand, with background McCoy/Chapel and Pike/One and others, het and slash
Warnings: None
Length: 3389
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything recognisable in this fic and I’m not making any money from it.
Notes: Beta by seren_ccd
Summary: All her life Janice Rand had wanted one thing - to figure out just what she was supposed to do with herself. She drifted into Starfleet on a whim, and to her surprise, found a niche to fill. But being assigned to the Enterprise brings with it a challenge to her neat and ordered way of life, and Janice is unsure as to how much she's willing to let James T. Kirk affect her. But since when has love ever been easy? And will Janice let her heart stand in the way of her career?
In the week that it took them to return to Earth, Pike spent progressively longer awake each day, Janice would arrive just after he had woken up and been through his examination with McCoy, and Kirk would arrive a few minutes later. There, in front of the two captains, Janice would start her run-down of the information that Kirk needed and Pike wanted. Although off duty because of his medical condition, Pike was still a captain and he had the right to be treated as such. He gave advice to Kirk, but no orders, trusting the younger man’s judgement.
In return, Kirk accepted all of Pike’s advice and acted on it immediately.
Between the three of them, they took an impossible situation and made it work; something that Janice later found that Pike had praised her for in her service record.
It was hard for Janice to see a man that she had so much professional admiration for reduced to an invalid; the vital, energetic man she had come to know and respect was so different, pale and drained in a biobed. He refused to leave on a medical transport that Starfleet Command had sent from Earth, despite McCoy’s appeals. As far as Pike was concerned, he could lie in a bed in San Francisco, or he could lie in a bed on his ship. For a ship’s captain, there was no competition.
Janice spent her time divided between the court that sprang up around Pike whenever he was conscious, a desk in the main administrative control hub and following Kirk around the ship as he personally visited every department and sub-section and listened to the officers and enlisted crew responsible for them. There wasn’t an hour in her day that was unaccounted for, and more than a few of them were double booked. Janice began to feel frazzled, but she reminded herself that she wasn’t the only one on board to feel pressured and busy; this was a tough situation for everybody. She’d just have to cope with her hectic work hours.
Getting Kirk to stop long enough to eat a meal was a job in and of itself; he seemed to be able to function on oxygen alone. But Janice already had one captain in sickbay, and she wasn’t going to let another end up there when she could do something about it. So, ignoring the fact that she wasn’t a waitress, she would turn up at regular intervals with food for Kirk and she steadfastly refused to leave until he had eaten it.
He had protested at first, but a quietly confident Janice had informed him that she was positive that either Commander Spock or Doctor McCoy would be happy to oversee the captain’s eating habits, and that she was sure that neither of them would feel compelled to made sarcastic comments or raise any eyebrows at him. Kirk had capitulated with bad grace, which lasted until he lifted the cover on the dish she had brought him and discovered a juicy cheeseburger and a pile of golden fries, with a heap of glistening onion rings and an unhealthily large helping of coleslaw.
“The mess staff appreciated you coming by this morning, captain,” Janice told him with a smile. “Not many officers would have taken the trouble to inspect the damaged equipment, let alone help strip it back and fix it.”
She kept him on a mostly balanced diet, after a consultation with the mess hall staff and a peek at his synthesiser records from the academy. Every so often a favourite dish or gooey dessert would appear, usually when he’d had a particularly gruelling day or something went wrong; an injured crewman died, a repair backfired, news of the more losses from the Battle of Vulcan seeped down the comm lines.
Janice couldn’t do much outside the lines of her job, but she could do small things to help Kirk, like organising the meals, finding him an empty room to sleep in, getting the quartermaster to provide daily sets of clean clothes, organising shaving gear and toiletries -a hundred and one little things that Kirk didn’t have time to do himself.
As captain’s yeoman, she went off-duty when he went off-duty, a fact that meant that Janice learned to survive on as little sleep as she could grab. Whenever Kirk released her, she’d crash a few hours before Pike woke up, and the cycle would begin again. She had been resorting to taking caffeine stimulants and snacking on high-sugar energy bars just to keep her going between the hurried meals she managed to fit in.
She was sitting in Pike’s room one day, waiting for him to wake up, when McCoy took a good look at her and frowned. He was running a tricorder over her when Kirk appeared, and McCoy immediately reached out and cuffed Kirk none-too-gently across the back of his head.
“Idiot!” the doctor fumed. “What the hell have you been thinking of?”
“What the hell have I done now?” protested Kirk, annoyed.
“You’ve been running your yeoman ragged, that’s what you’ve been doing!” McCoy thundered, loud enough to wake Pike and bring Nurse Chapel to the door of the room.
“Janice?” Kirk asked, puzzled.
“Yes, Janice, how many other yeomen do you have endangering their health because of you? No, wait, don’t answer that, I don’t think I want to know!”
“Janice, are you sick?” Kirk asked, stepping forward and grazing his hand along her arm before remembering himself and stepping away.
“I’m fine,” Janice said nervously, before McCoy interrupted her.
“You’re about a day away from passing out when you stand up, young lady. Tricorders don’t lie, and this one tells me you’ve been sleeping far too little, your iron count is dangerously low and you’ve been using caffeine stims to keep you going.”
Kirk looked stricken, Pike looked concerned and McCoy looked angry.
“You’re relieved of duty for twenty four hours, yeoman, and if your baseline readings haven’t improved at the end of that time, you’ll be off for another twenty four,” McCoy said with authority. Janice tried to protest, but she was overruled by two captains and a CMO.
“I’ll be fine for a day,” Kirk told her, gently unwinding her fingers from her PADD and taking it from her. “Go and eat something that isn’t wrapped in a packet and then go and sleep.”
“Chapel will go with you,” McCoy told her.
“Come on, yeoman,” Chapel said kindly, and guided her out of the room.
“I was just doing my job,” Janice said quietly as they left sickbay and headed for the mess.
“I know, honey, but you’ve been so busy looking after Pike and Kirk that you’ve stopped looking after yourself. That’s no good,” Chapel told her as they joined the late breakfast queue.
The head culinary specialist, recently released from sickbay after a nasty injury to her leg, greeted Chapel cheerfully. Chapel introduced Janice, and the woman’s eyes widened.
“Janice Rand? As in Maggie and Tara’s Janice Rand?”
“You know Maggie and Tara?” Janice asked.
The culinary specialist nodded grimly and looked her up and down, taking in the dark shadows under her eyes and the uniform that was hanging a little too loosely off her body.
“They’re good friends, and if they ever found out I let you get into this state, there’d be hell to pay. I saw what Maggie Gomez did to that Klingon with a frying pan, I’m no fool. Stop queuing, go and sit down. I’ll make you something special. Go on, shoo, the both of you!”
Confused, Chapel and Janice made their way to the seating area.
“Who are Maggie and Tara?” asked Chapel, curious. “And what did Maggie do with a frying pan?”
Janice sighed and started the story; by the time she had finished, the culinary specialist had appeared with a tray of food.
“My god,” Chapel said, in awe of the array in front of her. “I’ve never seen so much breakfast anywhere.”
“Tuck in,” advised the culinary specialist. “The next course is coming up soon.”
They feasted on eggs Benedict, with a hollandaise sauce so rich and tasty that Janice wanted to bathe in it. Then came a full plate of more eggs, sausages, bacon and fried potatoes, with grilled tomatoes and mushrooms. Janice thought that she couldn’t eat another thing, but when the specialist came back with a plate of delicious, flaky pastries stuffed with sweet fruit she found that she could manage one. And then another. None of the food came from a synthesiser; this was all real produce, kept fresh in the ship’s storage system.
Stuffed, Janice and Christine Chapel were on first name terms with each other by the end of the meal, and Janice had time to talk to Andrea, the culinary specialist. Janice recognised her from the photographs in the cafe, and Andrea joined them for a cup of coffee as Janice explained about the mural and how she had painted Andrea in a heated game of soccer on the wall of Maggie and Tara’s cafe.
“Soccer, eh?” Andrea said, obviously pleased. “I was on a team on my last ship. I was thinking about trying to start a league here, once we’re all settled.”
“I’d love to play,” Christine said eagerly. “I was on the team at university. Of course, that was a few years ago and I wasn’t eating huge breakfasts then.”
She looked at the uneaten food longingly.
“Is there any chance I could get this boxed up?” she asked. “I know a certain bedridden ship’s captain that’s lost a lot of weight recently and had been moaning about sickbay food.”
“As well he should,” Andrea snorted. “I don’t know why, but the synthesisers in sickbay produce the worst food in the ship. Not that anything can beat real food like this, instead of that synthesised rubbish, anyway.”
Moving quickly, Andrea whisked the remnants of their breakfast away and had it packed into storage containers. Christine caught Janice yawning; she had forbidden Janice to drink coffee and had substituted a tea blend that she swore helped you sleep naturally. Christine walked Janice to her quarters and fussed with the bedding as Janice changed back into her pyjamas.
“Sleep,” Christine instructed as she dimmed the lights. “I’m off duty in eight hours; I’ll call by then to collect you for another meal. If you get hungry in the meantime, eat something.”
“I will,” Janice yawned. “Thanks, Christine.”
She was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, a combination of exhaustion and what her brothers used to call ‘food comas’. She woke an hour before Christine was due to collect her, and spent the time dashing off messages to her family and Maggie and Tara. She had sent short ‘don’t worry, I’m fine’ messages as soon as comm lines to Earth had been established, but this was the first time she had allowed herself to spend longer on her private communication.
She reassured her parents that she had never been in any danger, feeling only slightly guilty for the lie, and told Maggie and Tara that their extended family was looking out for her, as instructed. She thought about logging onto the captain’s feed and checking on how his day was going, but Christine arrived before she could access her data station.
“Don’t even think about it,” Christine warned, sweeping her up and bustling her down the corridor.
“My god, are you psychic?” complained Janice.
“No, just incredibly good at reading people,” Christine told her. “Leave it alone. The ship won’t fall apart without you for one day.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Janice said darkly. “You haven’t seen engineering’s damage reports. If nobody’s got an eye on the captain he’ll be down there with a plasma torch causing all sorts of havoc.”
“Then the chief engineer will take care of him,” Christine said firmly. “It’s time for you to rest and eat something.”
There was no way that Janice thought she’d be capable of eating anything after her huge breakfast, but on the mention of food her stomach actually rumbled.
They joined the queue in the mess again, but they were soon spotted by another culinary specialist and waved to a table.
“Andrea’s orders,” the young man said firmly, and that was that. Andrea seemed to rule the mess with an iron fist, and they were quickly served one of the best stir-fries Janice had ever tasted.
“Try the rice,” moaned Christine, in ecstasy. “It’s heavenly.”
They ate until they were stuffed, but the serving dishes they had been brought were still more than half-full.
“Does Andrea think we’ve got three stomachs?” Janice wondered idly.
“It would be criminal to let food that good go to waste,” Christine said. “Let’s save it for later.”
“Later?” Janice asked, wondering if she could possibly manage another helping now.
“I’m having a movie night in my quarters, and you’re invited. Sitting on my backside watching a vid screen always makes me hungry. Besides, the girls are coming over and they’ll be ravenous.”
“You’re having a party?” Janice asked, disbelievingly.
“Not a party,” corrected Christine. “Just a small group of friends making the most of their precious downtime. You have to learn to relax, Janice. We’re doing our jobs. If we’re needed, they’ll call us, but you have to make time for yourself. Now, go and smile at the lovely young man and ask for some storage boxes.”
Janice returned with the young man, a heap of boxes and dessert in the shape of chocolate pudding. Again, there was enough for a small army, and the two women left the mess hall weighed down with deliciously aromatic boxes.
Christine’s friends were all officers, which made Janice slightly uneasy for about five minutes until Gaila, the Orion computer engineer that the crew was holding responsible for single-handedly rescuing the ship’s mainframe after the Narada attack, announced that she was going to spend the evening braiding Janice’s hair.
“Orion women don’t have yellow hair,” she marvelled as she started a blissful scalp massage. “Do you mind if I play with your hair, Janice?”
“Go right ahead,” Janice told her, settling back against the small couch in Christine’s quarters. Gaila immediately started on a complicated pattern that looked for all the world like a chess board and Janice sat back and enjoyed it as conversation flowed around and above her.
The beautiful lieutenant from the bridge crew, Nyota Uhura, immediately branded Janice her new best friend when she pulled the tubs of food open and took a few mouthfuls.
“This is so much better than the usual stuff from the mess! Who’s your source?” she asked around large mouthfuls.
Again, Janice told the story of Tara and Maggie’s influence over the mess of the Enterprise. Uhura was impressed by Janice’s connections.
“They tell you that the bridge is the most important place on the ship,” Uhura said, lazily licking at a spoon. “But in reality it’s a toss-up between the mess and the laundry. I’m going to have to be very nice to Andrea.”
After some good natured bickering they settled on an old vid, one that Janice had seen a million times before but still enjoyed. All too soon the evening came to an end and the women left Christine’s quarters for their own beds. Despite doing nothing but eat and sleep all day, Janice found herself yawning as well.
“Go and sleep,” Christine instructed as Janice started to tidy up the room. “Leave those boxes, I’ll do that. We’ll meet for breakfast tomorrow, then I’ll take you down to sickbay for your physical. If you pass, you can go back on duty.”
“Thank you for this evening,” Janice said shyly. “It was nice to meet your friends.”
“Your friends now too,” Christine corrected. “You fed Uhura chocolate and let Gaila get girly with your hair. You’re in.”
“That’s all it takes?” Janice asked, taken aback.
“We’re pushovers,” Christine grinned, referring to three women already very highly respected on board for their technical skills, no-nonsense attitudes and formidable reputations. “Plus, you have a fondness for dumb action movies with lots of explosions and men who take their shirts off for no reason. Such good taste is rare.”
Janice laughed, and said goodnight, feeling pleased that she had settled in so easily with a group of people she had only known by their reputation. She slept all through the night and ate another huge breakfast with Christine and Uhura, then headed down to sickbay to be given the all-clear by McCoy.
“Proper rest periods,” he warned her. “And you’ve got to eat, woman.”
He sniffed the air suddenly. “Are those pancakes?” he said accusingly as Christine walked past their area with a tray. “Real ones, with flour and egg and whatnot?”
“They are,” Christine replied. “With a choice of both raspberry and caramel sauces.”
“For Pike?” McCoy demanded.
“Only the best for the captain,” Christine said regally.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you could find some of those for me?” he asked, coming as close to begging as Janice had ever heard him.
“I’m sorry, there’s only enough for Captain Pike,” Christine replied, sounding anything but sorry. “Maybe tomorrow.”
She sashayed away, McCoy’s eyes glued first to the tray in her hands and then to the swing of her hips as she disappeared into Pike’s private room.
“Go on,” he said to Janice grumpily. “You’re fit for duty. But make sure you eat and go off duty when you’re supposed to.”
“Thank you, sir,” Janice said and went down to Captain Pike’s room where Christine was finally succeeding at getting him to leave the PADDs that Kirk and he were juggling and eat the pancakes.
“Janice, thank God you’re back,” Kirk said in a heartfelt tone. “I don’t know how you do your job. It’s impossible!”
Pike, mouth full of pancake under Christine’s eagle-eyed scrutiny, nodded.
Janice looked at the confusion of PADDS around them. Kirk told her that in her enforced absence, he had developed a brand new organisational system to deal with the barrage of information sent to the captain’s data feed.
“Did it work?” Janice asked.
“It collapsed after forty five minutes,” Pike said, with no little amount of pleasure. “He’s been chasing his tail ever since.”
“Well, why don’t you give these to me,” Janice said, collecting up the PADDs with a grimace. “I’ll try and bring order to the chaos. Sir, you have your morning briefing with the senior officers in ten minutes.”
“I’ll be on the bridge after that,” Kirk told her.
Janice took the PADDs down to the central room, uploaded their information to her data screen and began to piece it all together in a way that made sense. It took three hours, and she spent most of it cursing Kirk’s name.
At least he had remained on the bridge, as promised, and she caught up with him there to present him with his new schedule and to-do list for the day. He decided to work in his ready room, and she went with him to help. After an hour he stopped for lunch without being prompted, and synthesised two meals.
“Don’t argue,” he said without preamble. “Doctor’s orders.”
Sighing, Janice put aside her work and joined him for a meal. Then they started ploughing through the stacked-up paperwork again. The chime sounded through the ship for the change of duty shift, and Kirk stood up.
“Thank you, yeoman, that’ll be all for today. You’re off-duty now.”
“Really?” asked Janice, bemused.
“Really,” Kirk assured her. “Bones was quite firm about both of us stopping before we fell over. The hardest work’s been done, anyway. We’re nearly home, and the ship’s as fixed as we can make it without a drydock.”
“You’re going off duty too?” Janice asked suspiciously.
“On my honour,” Kirk promised.
Janice left that potential minefield alone and exited the ready room. When she got back to her quarters and checked her personal inbox she found messages from her family and an invitation from Gaila for a game of cards in one of the rec rooms. Pleased, she played the messages while brushing out her hair and attempting something different, in honour of Gaila’s fascination with her hair colour.
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