A/N: Y'all, this chapter fought me like nobody's business. I don't know why, but I wrestled with this thing for like three weeks. But anyway, have some epidemic, like we don't have enough of it goin' around.

"Priority Medical Alert. Priority Medical Alert."

That is not what one wishes to hear at 0300 in the morning. Elle opened her eyes and glared at the blinking red light on the computer. "Computer, read alert," she said, and yawned.

"Alert is as follows: Possible epidemic alert: Rigelian fever. 2 crewmembers have already come down with it. Please see attached timeline for possible exposure. Those who made contacted in the affected areas of the ship must institute Level-1 quarantine procedures. If you have any of the following symptoms report to Sickbay at once-"

"Cancel verbal alert," Elle said, eyes wide. She pulled the list up on her PADD and stared at it. Both of the lieutenants worked in Security; Elle hadn't been with anyone from Security for the last two weeks, since the Khan Incident. The mess hall indicated was one of the lesser-used ones; Elle preferred the larger one with more hustle and bustle.

"Okay," Elle said, scanning through the list of symptoms. "I don't think I overlapped with them at all. And I don't have any of these symptoms, so I think we're fine..."

The comm beeped again. "Priority Medical Alert. Update: 3 more crewmembers has tested positive for Rigelian fever. All non-essential personnel and civilians are now restricted to quarters until further notice. Meals will be provided through the transporter or through medical-grade sterile fields. Repeat. All non-essential personnel and civilians are now restricted to quarters until further notice."

Elle gaped. "Are you kidding?"

"Restate query," the computer said, non-helpfully.

Elle frowned and went back to the reading of the disease. Once you started showing symptoms, you had twenty-four hours to administer the antidote. "Twenty-four hours?" It had already been six hours. Eighteen hours... "Computer, what's the cure for Rigelian fever?"

"The only known cure for Rigelian fever is ryetalin," the computer replied.

There was no ryetalin in stock. It was too rare and too specific in need; nobody needed it, until everybody needed it.

Elle gulped. On a ship there were only two things that truly doomed a crew, be it on the water or in space. Fire, and disease. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide in either case. "Bones must be frantic," she realized.

There was no way she was going back to sleep. She couldn't. She just sat there and watched the little number counter on the screen. It went from 5 to 12 in three more hours.

"This is an episode, or a novel, or something," Elle decided. "There's no way the show wouldn't cover an epidemic, that's too much drama not to." She turned off the computer console and went to sit on the bed, legs folded underneath her as she closed her eyes.

Focus. Imagine the surface of a lake. Still all the ripples... now dive... In her mind's eye, she went through the episodes of Star Trek. She found The Naked Time, from both the original series and the Next Generation. Not it. She pushed it away. The mutated children's fever from Uhura's Song... no. This epidemic was only on the Enterprise, not on colony worlds. She pushed it away.

"Yes, there's something wrong. The ryetalyn is no good. It contains irillium, nearly one part per thousand."

"Irillium will render the antitoxin inert and useless."

...garbled faces on a garbled screen. Tiny Elle wiggled with excitement and missed the next part.

"Jim, what if all the ryetalyn on this planet contains irillium?"

"Go with Flint. Keep an eye on procedures."

Elle's eyes snapped open, her vision sparkling with stars as a headache bloomed to life. "Flint," she said aloud. "The immortal human." She shook her head, wncing as her temples spiked with pain. "Ow. Note to self, do not throw yourself out of meditation next time, stupid-head." She rubbed at her forehead and whacked the comm with the other hand. "Elle to Captain Kirk."

"Kirk here." That was fast, he must've been awake. "Please tell me you have something, Elle."

"Yes, captain. This is an episode."

"All right. Lay it out for me."

"There's ryetalin on a planet in the Omega system, enough for everyone to receive the cure. But a six-thousand-year-old human lives there and he's prickly about having company so we have to deal with that. And you can't go down to the surface or fall in love with his perfect android who becomes human."

Kirk made a noise that sounded like a cross between a wheeze and a hairball of outrage. "WHY WOULD I THINK OF ROMANCE IN AN EPIDEMIC?" he demanded, maxing out the audio speakers.

"I don't know, it was the sixties," Elle protested.

He sighed. "All right. The Omega system, you said?"

"Yes."

"Okay. If you don't have anything else I have to set a course. Stay alert so we can check in for clarifying details. If you feel any symptoms, comm Sickbay right away, understood?"

"Yes, sir." Elle signed off the comm and sat back. The counter in the corner of the screen flipped up to sixteen. She turned off the screen.

-/\-

The update came in the next hour. Tne Enterprise would reach the Omega system in eighteen hours.

Give it eighteen hours for transit, another four hours for gathering the ryetalin and making the cure, two hours to disperse it to everyone.

Elle's eyes widened. That meant it was already too late for at least five people, maybe ten. She buried her face in her pillow. It wasn't fair.

-/\-

A bowl of oatmeal and a bowl of fruit beamed into Elle's quarters at 0700, with regards from the kitchens.

Elle ate the splodgy oatmeal and the bowl of fruit with a foreboding sense of doom.

The feeling didn't go away. She had no essential task, no permission to leave her quarters. She resembled a hamster in a cage as she migrated from the couch, to the bed, to the floor, to the desk, to the couch, each second knowing that crewmembers were getting sick, that the timer was ticking down.

Eighteen hours had never felt so long.

By the time they reached orbit around Holberg Nine One Seven G, two-hundred and thirty people had been confirmed with Rigelian fever.

"Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Lt. Mendelson will go down to the planet to gather the ryetalin," Kirk said over the video conference.

Lt. Mendelson was a historian who'd taken a single course in Security. Elle snorted. If Flint really was down there, and he really was a six-thousand-year-old human, the captain was taking no chances.

"If scans are correct and the ryetalin is on the surface, we will be back in four hours," Spock added.

"And if there really is someone down there with processing facilities, hopefully even less time," McCoy said.

"Then go ahead," Kirk said. "We'll hold the fort."

"Aye, sir."

"Elle, stay a second."

Elle waited as everyone but the captain logged off the video conference. "Yes, sir?"

He looked solemn, his eyes shadowed from too much caffeine and no sleep. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Fine, I guess. Worried. Why? Can I help?"

"We're running out of personnel," Kirk said.

Elle turned white. "Like, dead, or-"

"No, no, I'm sorry, just sick." He frowned. "But Sulu's just come down with it, and every single one of our pilots is already sick. We're down to basically skeleton crew, and five people already are showing symptoms. They'll stay at their posts until Spock reports in from the surface, but we need someone to sit on the helm."

Elle almost choked. "WHAT."

"I have to stay focused, I can't babysit the console. Sulu's been training you, hasn't he?"

Elle sputtered inarticulately. "On the, the, on the video game simulator, not an actual ship, I can't even get my shuttle license yet-"

"The simulator that Sulu used to run against the Klingons during our prototype testing?"

"Yeah..."

"Elle, that's become the primary flight simulator at the Academy. If you've run it for longer than eighty hours, you can pilot the real Enterprise just fine. And according to my chart, you've run it well over three hundred hours." He sounded amused.

Elle blushed hotly. "Sulu put a rainbow road on there, I've been trying to beat that level."

He huffed a tired laugh. "Then you're qualified to babysit the console in orbit around a planet." He grinned at her, eyes twinkling with full Kirk charisma. "Don't tell me you wouldn't want this opportunity? To fly the Enterprise?"

"Don't smirk," Elle grumbled, unable to stop herself from grinning. "Of course I do. But if we die its your fault."

"I'll take full responsibility," he promised. "Signal the transporter room when you're ready. We're doing site-to-site beaming to reduce the risk of infection."

"Understood." She bit her lip. "Are you sure?"

"Well it's either you or one of the nurses."

"Ah." Elle took a deep breath. "Okay."

He nodded. "You have two minutes."

"Yes, sir." Elle turned off the computer. She grabbed the pillow off her bed, shrieked into it for a full twenty seconds, and put the pillow down. "Okay. I can do this. Needs must, right? It's an epidemic. I can stare at a console for a few hours, it's not that hard."

She put her shoes on, tied her hair out of her face as per regulations, and commed the transporter room.

"Energizing in three, two, one," Chief Kyle said.

Elle materialized on the bridge. Only Kirk, Chekov, and Lt. M'Ress, Uhura's shift relief, were on the bridge. Scotty was down in Engineering with the few remaining holdouts.

Kirk grinned at her and steered her over to the helm. "Have a seat."

Elle sat gingerly in the helm. Her feet dangled and she was still too short to see the full board. That was awkward.

Kirk smothered a laugh. "You can adjust it to your height," he said. "Lever's under the chair."

She made minute adjustments until she was ready to go.

Kirk patted her on the head. "There you go. Now just holler if anything flashes."

She gave him a shaky thumbs-up and contemplated the console. Everything was at standard levels for geosynchronous orbit, positioned over the largest deposit of ryetalin. The only finicky point was that Holberg Nine One Seven G was more of a planetoid, not an actual planet, so there were gravity wells to take into account. The computer handled this, but it was always good to keep an eye on it.

Lt. M'Ress sighed after a moment. "I do not like this feeling," she said. "It makes my fur stick up."

"Only a few more hours, lieutenant," Kirk said.

"Yes, sir." Lt. M'Ress side-eyed Elle in a friendly fashion. "We haven't met yet, ensign...?"

"This is Elle," Chekov said, "our resident civilian."

"Oh," M'Ress said. "You're the one they were talking about. I thought you looked a little young for a human crewmember. You're just a kit."

Elle grinned sheepishly. "Yes. Hi. I saw you at the party the other day but I didn't get to say hi."

"A pleasure," M'Ress said. "Are you going to become a pilot?"

"I don't know," Elle said, "I haven't decided yet. Maybe."

"You said you wanted to be an archaeolist,' Kirk said.

"That was last week when we were reading King Solomon's Mines," Elle said, waving it away. "My childhood dream was to become an astronaut, but..." She gestured to the main viewport. "I kind of already accomplished that."

"When I was four, I wanted to be a ballerina," Chekov said wistfully.

Kirk smiled. "Did you ever take lessons?"

"For a couple years, but I changed my mind to Star Fleet when my uncles finished their tours and came back with amazing stories."

They chatted about childhood dreams ("I wanted to be a farmer for exactly zero days of my life," said Kirk, which surprised absolutely nobody), and then they drifted into silence.

Elle swept the board again. All green, no differences. She glanced across to the nav and sensors and sat up. "The planet's giving off some pretty big power signatures," she said.

"They must've found your mysterious Mr. Flint," Kirk said, getting up to check the board himself.

The comm board beeped. "Enterprise here," the captain said, when M'Ress signaled channel open.

"Spock here, captain," Spock said. "We have met a person named Flint. He has allowed us the use of his laboratory and processing facilities to refine the ryetalin. It has no trace of irillium or any other mineral that may render it inert."

"Time factor?" Kirk asked.

"Two hours, captain."

"Very well. Anything else?"

"No, sir. Just some interesting decor."

Kirk nodded. "Keep us apprised. Enterprise out."

Elle chewed on her lip. "I hope he and Mendelson are recording everything they can get their eyes on." And Spock hadn't mentioned any girls at all. Was Rayna the product of the sixties' television? Or was Flint really working on creating the perfect companion?

"Two hours," Kirk said, shaking his head. "It'll be down to the wire."

-/\-

One hour, forty minutes later, Spock, McCoy and Lt. Mendelson beamed back up, along with three canisters full of processed ryetalin. McCoy and canisters beamed directly to sickbay, Spock and Mendelson directly to the bridge for debrief.

Spock saw Elle sitting at the helm and both eyebrows went up.

"How'd it go?" Kirk asked. "Any problems?"

"None," Spock said. "The inhabitants of the planet are Flint, several droids, and a woman named Rayna who is his adopted daughter. Once he was assured of our sincerity, Flint was everything gracious. There were several fascinating artifacts however, which will make for further study."

"Brahms," Mendelson whispered reverently. "And Da Vinci."

Kirk smothered a grin. "Once the crisis is past I'll expect a full report."

"Yes, sir."

Elle shot finger guns. "Noice."

Within two hours, every single person on the Enterprise received the cure for Rigelian fever. Out of the four-hundred and fifty-seven crewmembers, only fourteen did not catch the fever.

Seven dead, forty-one still in critical condition.

"It could've been worse," Kirk said soberly. "It could've been a lot worse. Excellent work, Doctor McCoy. You and your staff deserve the highest of commendations."

"Darn tootin'," was McCoy's elegant response.

The captain closed the channel to sickbay and turned to Elle. "And you, are now relieved of duty. You may go have dinner."

Elle stood up and gave a casual salute. "Cool. Let's never do that again."

Chekov laughed. "Now we will have you study for ops stand-in, yes? Or perhaps engineering?"

"No," Elle protested, "it's too much responsibility, I need a nap."

Kirk laughed. "Go on."