The officer's interviews proceeded with a mixture of pathos and hilarity.

"Why serve on a mostly-human ship, commander?" was Ryan's first question to Spock.

Spock was not impressed. "Why would I not?" he asked in reply.

Ryan moved on. "As first officer and science officer, what are your primary duties?"

"To give you a complete list of duties pertaining to both departments would take thirty-four minutes, fifteen seconds," Spock replied. "Suffice to say, as first officer I facilitate the captain's decisions, and as science officer, I oversee the science department."

"What projects have you got going on currently, then?" Ryan asked.

Spock lifted one eyebrow. "I personally am overseeing seven different projects in computer science and starcharting. The Enterprise has thirty-seven different laboratories, ranging from biology to theoretical physics, and as I do not micromanage my scientists, I could not say with any accuracy which projects are currently on-going at-" he made a point of checking the chrono, "-0813 in the morning."

Elle stifled a hysterical giggle into her chai latte.

Spock's expression softened as he met her gaze.

Ryan cleared his throat. "What is your favorite part about this job?" he asked.

Another eyebrow lift. "Vulcans do not play favorites," he said, and relented. "Thoguh I would say the most satisfactory part of this job is the discovery of new planets, civilizations, phenomena, or worldviews. It is most, fascinating."

Elle almost choked, trying to keep silent.

Oscar turned to give her a Look.

Ryan cleared his throat. "And how do you like serving under Captain Kirk?"

"Captain Kirk is a most satisfactory commander," Spock replied promptly. "I have no complaints."

"High praise, from a Vulcan," Ryan said.

"Indeed. Our langauge does not go to emotional extremes."

Ryan stuck to asking questions about science, which Spock answered. He was sweating by the time Spock left. "Does that guy ever open up?" he asked, wiping his brow with a colorful bandana.

Elle thought about all their quiet times in the labs, his steadfast nightmare-watch, and their study of Vulcan language, and smiled. "Just wait until you meet Dr. McCoy."

Ryan sighed.

Bones came in, looking both grumpy and professional as usual with his blue lab coat on. "Well, let's get this over with," he said, plopping down in the chair. "I've got a scheduled patient in an hour and I need time to review his chart."

"Can I ask-"

"No."

Elle snorted.

"Dr. McCoy, you're a surgeon, physician, psychologist, and a renowned exobiologist," Ryan said. "Do you find this overqualifies you to be the chief medical officer of a primarily human crew?"

Oh. Oh no. Elle cringed in expectation of the oncoming rant.

Dr. McCoy did not disappoint, his blue eyes blazing in indignation. "Over-qualified? Over-qualified?! Who set up your list of questions, I'll scalp 'em and see how over-qualified they find me- what kinda fool question is that? I'm the Chief Medical officer in charge of four-hundred thirty crew subject to stress and disease from all corners of the galaxy! When do I not use any of those hats, is the real question!"

"Well, when?" Ryan asked, who clearly had a death wish.

"To date, never," McCoy retorted. "Every day brings new challenges not only in the medical field but in exobiology."

"So your department comes under Mr. Spock's?"

"Nominally," McCoy said grudgingly.

"Is it hard, keeping up with the ailments of four-hundred people?"

"Not hard, no," McCoy replied. "I have an excellent staff of doctors and nurses, and our crew is one of hte highest-rated in terms of general health and wellbeing."

"This ship is also subject to the strangest and most dangerous missions," Ryan said.

"That's why we insist on keeping our people healthy," McCoy said, his tone scathing. "I'm not allowing anyone to go do their jobs with foggy brains or depressed immune systems."

"How do you do that?" Ryan asked.

"It starts with a balanced diet and necessary exercise, as well as appropriate and engaging recreation," Bones said, slipping into his teacher-doctor mode. "Recreation is a huge part of a starship's community, encompassing off-duty hours as well as interpersonal relationships. That leads into psychology, each person's individual sense of fulfillment, contentment, and forward motivation."

"What else does your job entail?"

McCoy huffed. "I'm a doctor, first and foremost, which means that whoever we come across in space, if they're in need of a doctor, we're going to offer our help. Our medical staff is constantly taking continuing education and training to keep up with advances in medicine, especially exobiology and those species that are newer to the Federation, in case we encounter them. One day we could be treating a case of athlete's foot, the next we could be dealing with a completely new strain of bacteria or viral infection. We could be facing a child or an adult colonist, or a member of a species we have absolutely no medical information on. Those in psychology also work with Linguistics and Communication in the case of first contacts to decipher and interpret language, body kinesthetics, and underlying worldviews that might make the difference between peace or violence."

Elle resisted the urge to applaud.

Scotty's interview was a mixture of hard brogue and technobabble, Chief Giotto's was terse and to the point, and Lt. Uhura's was also full of technobabble and psychology.

"I'm starting to get the feeling everyone on this ship is a genius," Ryan said, leaning back in his chair and stretching.

Elle snorted. "How else do you get postings on a starship?"

-/\-

"Here we are, in the heart of the Enterprise's scientific laboratories, where dozens of skilled scientists work on the leading edge of science and technology..." Ryan trailed off as he and the camera turned to face a console covered in sticky notes and small plastic action figures. "What is this."

Elle picked up the nearest action figure. "Space Naruto, I think," she said, examining the tiny modeled spiky hairdo.

"Is this allowed?" Ryan asked, aghast.

Elle read over the sticky notes. They were gibberish. "Programmers. They're a special breed." She picked up the rubber duck off the floor and set it upright in the center of the console. "Just cut past this." She made all the other action figures bow to the rubber duck. "It's fine."

The documentary crew were all staring at her.

"Look," Elle said tiredly, "you try rewriting an alien programming system based on musical tones in ten days and see how you fare."

"Good point," Ryan said. "Anyway. Rolling?"

"Rolling," Oscar confirmed.

"The Enterprise hosts many labs, and today we are privileged to be spending some time in one of the astrophysics modules. Follow me." Ryan walked towards Astrophysics Lab 2, the one Spock privately thought of as his children.

The camera and mic followed Ryan, and Sam-the-assistant followed the camera, and Elle followed Sam. By the time they all got into the lab, got the camera at the best angle to catch all the action, the inhabitants of Astrophysics Lab 2 were back to their usual routine.

Which was... sit at a console, flick holographic readouts around, swap consoles, rinse, repeat.

"Is this all they do all day?" Oscar asked Elle in a whisper, angling his head away from the boom mic.

Elle nodded. "Unless we're near a supernova or something."

"Can we do that?" Atesh whispered.

"No," Elle said. "You missed it, we already did that."

"Can we recreate it?" Atesh asked hopefully.

Elle sighed. "Ask about entropy in the Lesser Magellanic," she said.

Ryan angled his head sharply. "What?"

"Ask about our mission regarding entropy readings in the Lesser Magellanic," she repeated. "It was one of our latest scientific breakthroughs. Just do it."

Ryan cleared his throat and approached the nearest crewman. "Excuse me, Ryan Daniels with the documentary crew. Your name, lt?"

"Selina Kapoor," the lieutenant replied. "What can I do for you?"

"I was told your team was leading during the mission regarding entropy readings in the Lesser..."

"Magellanic, yes sir," Lt. Kapoor said, eyes lighting up. "We were testing the mass inversion drive, I'm sure you've heard of it-"

"Yes, it made the news-"

"-And we were getting some interesting results. Mayri, can you pull up the readings from the inversion drive, thanks. And of course, being the Enterprise, we had to investigate-" And they were off.

Elle grinned and patted herself on the back.

-/\-

"This feels like fishing," Elle said, as Ryan and co set their team up in a good spot in the main Rec Deck.

"That's because it is," Ryan said, and set out a bowl of freshly-replicated donuts. "And here's the bait."

"You know your stuff," Elle said, amused.

"Hey, like I told Captain Kirk, this isn't our first Star Fleet gig." Ryan leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, a patient fisherman personified.

Elle threw herself into a beanbag and closed her eyes for a nap.

When she woke up, a lieutenant had taken the bait. He'd gone for a maple bacon bar, and was being mic'd for sound.

"Your name and rank?" Ryan asked.

"Sanderson, Lt JG, ops," Sanderson replied.

"What do you do?"

"I'm a runner, sir," Sanderson replied. "I run cables through the infrastructure of the ship."

"Do you like your job?"

"Yes, sir. I have a good team, good supervisor." Sanderson fidgeted.

"Can you tell us about your greatest adventure as a cable-runner?" Ryan prompted, offering him another maple-bacon donut.

Sanderson took the offer. "Well, sir, there was the time we were taken over by a fearmongering alien. The alien itself triggered each person's greatest fear, in order to manipulate them for its own ends. My greatest fear was being trapped in the Jefferies Tubes, so in my altered state I covered myself in peanut butter. I don't know why I thought that would work, I should've gone for oil. Much more lubricating on the uniform."

Ryan stared. "...you, you realize we fact-check these interviews, right? You can't just lie to the camera?" he asked, distressed.

"He's not lying," Elle piped up. "We had to sterilize the whole section. Three people have nut allergies."

Ryan's eyebrows went up. "Ookay."

Sanderson took a bite of donut, his green eyes painfully earnest.

"And after that mission?" Ryan asked.

"Well, everybody went to counseling," Sanderson replied. "And I don't like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches anymore. Sir."

Ryan sighed. "Thank you for your time, liuetenant. What are you going to do on your night off?"

"Water polo," Sanderson said. "We're competing against Constellation next starbase rotation."

Ryan waved a hand. "Dismissed."

Sanderson took his donut and fled.

The yellow alert chimed, soft and gentle, barely heard over the racket of the rec deck on full swing.

"What was that?" Ryan asked, turning to look at Elle, as did the camera.

She reached out to the tabletop, brought up the computer interface, and accessed the alert. "It's fine," she said. "Don't worry about it, Geology just lost their rocks." She gave them a hard look. "Don't put any strange rocks in your pockets."

"Okay."

Elle glared at them. "I'm serious. Do not put anything in your pockets that's not yours. In Star Fleet pockets are a privilege, not a right."

"You have pockets," Sam pointed out.

She scowled. "I have security training. Do not. Pick up. Strange Items."

"Yes ma'am."

Oscar panned over to the opposite side of the room. "Is that a jazz band?"

"Yup."

-/\-

"And what does IT on the Enterprise consist of?"

"Well, most days it consists of datapad maintenance, and on the fun days, upgrading system algorithms to-"

There was an almighty crash behind the lieutenant commander as the Rube Goldberg Club lost control of their domino tower. "TIMBERRRRRR," one of them yelled, ducking and covering as the dominos effected all over the place, knocking over support struts and delicately blaanced plastic cups.

Elle shrieked as the flood of ping-pong balls came directly at the documentary crew and her beanbag.

Long story short, Oscar and his camera went down sideways.

"Are they like this all the time?" Ryan asked, off-screen.

-/\-

After lunch, Elle gave up all pretense of liasing with the documentary crew. She settled herself with Simba in her lap, a bowl of chips, and was completely ready to watch the fun.

Oscar, during a break, wandered over to pet the tribble. He offered the tribble a chip but Elle smacked his hand away.

"Don't feed the tribble," she ordered.

"What? Why not? Are potatoes poisonous to it?" he asked, alarmed.

"No," Elle said. "If you overfeed it, it has a litter of tribblets. And then they breed exponentially."

Oscar's eyes widened. "Space rabbits," he said.

"Yup."

-/\-

"-typical day, we receive thirty to forty requests for specialized or customized items the main replicators aren't programmed to handle," Lt. Commander Chanax was saying.

Scotty came up. "Excuse me, gentlemen, I need to steal away our mission consultant. Elle?"

"Keep rolling," Ryan murmured.

Elle ignored the camera and mic as they swung towards her. "What's up?"

"We need ye to go into the crawlways, lass, turns out Geology's missing rocks were some sort of carapaced critter in hibernation. You're the only one who can slide through this crawlspaces with any speed, if you wouldn't mind."

Elle sighed. "Why did they build the crawlspaces so small anyway?"

"Great Bird only knows, lass."

She bolted the last bite of sandwich and sighed. "All right, let's go."

"Wait!" Ryan said. "Can you take a camera with you?"

"Mr. Daniels, there's sensitive equipment in those crawlspaces, I willnae have a camera bumpin' along in there," Scotty protested.

Sam pulled a tiny camera out of the jumble of equipment. "What about something strapped to her forehead?"

Elle stared at the single lens. "You want me to wear a GoPro?"

Sam held it out. "Would this work, Mr. Scott? We could blur out everything on the sides, we just need shots of the actual capture."

Scotty sighed. "What do you say lass?"

"Sure," Elle said dryly.

So that's how she found herself shuffling through crawlspaces, a small camera mounted on her forehead like a Klingon pimple. "It's making my head hurt," she said. "Scotty, where am I even going?"

"All the way down t'the end, and to the left," Scotty said.

Spock's voice came in on her earpiece. "It seems to be seeking heat sources," he said. "It's highly probable it will head for engineering."

"I'm going to seal off the secondary hull," Scotty said hastily. "I am not havin' another tribble-pocalypse."

Elle sniggered. "Good idea. Can you seal this section off so it won't go anywhere else?"

"Doing so," Spock replied.

There was a series of faraway thunks as bulkheads and hatches dropped and sealed.

Elle crawled around a junction and saw a metamorphic rock scuttling around the next corner. "Oh, I just saw it," she breathed. "Coming up on it."

"Make sure your phaser's on stun," one of the geology people told her. "Don't hurt it."

"No duh," Elle whispered, and sped up.

She cornered it against a hatch cover. "Easy, little rock," she soothed. "Easy, little guy, I'm not gonna hurtcha."

It stared at her, two glowing eyes under a rocky carapace. It looked like a crusty version of an armadillo without the little snout.

She stared at it. "Now what?" she whispered. "I don't wanna just stun it. What if it makes it angry?"

"If you can project a feeling of calm, you may be able to befriend it," Spock said.

"She's not telepathic enough for that," Scotty said. "Is she?"

Elle reached out to the rock. "If I get my fingers bitten off, Bones can reattach them right? Here, rocky rocky."

"Do not-" Spock started, alarmed.

Elle showed the rock her loosely curled fingers, let it examine her hand. "Just like a little feral cat," she whispered softly, "nice and slow... we're gonna be friends, right?"

The rock let out a scraping sound and scuttled towards her at full speed.

She let out a yelp as it hit her right in the stomach.

"Elle! Medical team to Jefferies Tube 34-B!"

"Elle! What's going on!"

Elle stared in amazement as the rocky armadillo slid right into her hoodie and stayed there. "Uhhh, I caught it," she said. "I think."

"Are you all right?" Scotty demanded.

"I'm fine. It crawled into my hoodie." She couldn't move, terrified to jostle it and find out if it had teeth.

"Fascinating," Spock murmured. "Remain calm, and proceed to the nearest exit."

"No duh," Elle said again, and slowly tilted forward again on her hands and knees. The creature, nestled in her hoodie, didn't protest. She started crawling.

Spock, Scotty, Kirk, the documentary crew, and half the Geology Lab were waiting for her when she dropped out of the crawlspace. "Where is it?" the head geologist asked.

Elle carefully slid her hoodie off, keeping the creature wrapped up in the warm fleece. "Here you go."

"Fascinating," Spock said again.

Kirk was doing his level best not to laugh. "Good work, Miss Wilcott," he said formally.

Elle gave him a two-fingered salute. "Thank you, captain." She suppressed a shiver. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to find another sweater."

"That's it?" Ryan asked. "An alien creature got loose aboard the Enterprise and that's it?"

"Well unless it starts spitting acid or we discover a deadly chemical compound it emits, then yes," Kirk said. "Welcome to Tuesday on the Enterprise."

-/\-

The observation deck.

"Here, you feel the enormity of what Star Fleet officers face every day. The emptiness of space, and the vastness of the galaxy..."

Commander Stabby hoovered quietly around the corner, jingling to itself as it scooted under chairs in search of crumbs.

Ryan stopped monologuing. "Is that... a vacuum. With a knife?"

Elle popped her gum. "Yeup."

"Why?"

"Why not?" she retorted.

Oscar panned to catch Commander Stabby in pursuit of a ball of Caitian hair-tangles. "Isn't that dangerous?"

"It's after hours, no one's going to be in here," Elle said. "And in the words of Captain Kirk, if you don't have the situational awareness to get out of the way of a bright orange droid with bells strapped to it, you deserve to get shanked in the ankle."

Commander Stabby passed her and beeped a hello. It swept away out of sight.

-/\-

"Well, that was the most interesting week I think we've ever had," Ryan said, shaking hands with Captain Kirk. "Thank you, captain, for this enlightening look at the Enterprise's inner workings."

"I look forward to seeing the finished project," Kirk said politely.

As the documentary crew beamed away to their connecting transport, everyone in the transporter room heaved a sigh of relief.

Elle leaned into Kirk's side. "That was exhausting. I hate civilians."

"You are a civilian," he reminded her and kissed the top of her head. "Thank you for liasing with them."

"Had to," Elle said. "The amount of people who fell for the 'free donuts' trick was embarrassing."

Kirk snorted. "Maybe we'll run a workshop. How to resist interrogations providing free pastries."

"I do not think it would be successful," Spock said, deadpan.