Student Captains – Chapter 2
Disclaimer: I don't own the star trek characters, but I DO own their buddies.
Bones McCoy made little effort to get through the crowd to Ginger. He didn't want to be here, and no kid was going to make him want to more. Especially not a kid with a nose ring.
She found him, but with a lot of delay. "Lets get this over with." She muttered under her breath.
"Come on, lets get out of this mad house." Bones said to Ginger as they weaved through the various people and finally got out to the hall. "So," he said a little awkwardly, "what are you studying?"
"I'm trailing you aren't I?" Ginger had a relatively low voice. It didn't come out snotty, but it the sarcasm was genuine.
"Doctoring?"
"Hello captain obvious!" she said as they walked down the hallway. "Where to?"
"The Medical Bay. Where're you from?" He asked, trying to make a little bit of an effort with her.
"Minnesota." She replied, hands in jean pockets, her dark green T-shirt sagging a little.
They entered the doors of Sickbay. All the beds were clean, no dead redshirts –good- and nothing scattered on the floor…oh crap. Slightly open was the good Doctor's whisky drawer. Strictly for doctoring purposes! He had left it open since he was feeling so sorry for himself to have a teenager tag along.
She saw it. She nodded her head a couple times and laughed. "Wow. Really?"
'Think fast, bones, think fast!' McCoy thought as his face fell and it was very obvious, but he still thought he might be able to cover it. "It's for patients in delirium. It…knocks them out." Ginger walked over the drawer and gently pushed it closed.
"Right." She smiled deviously. "Look, I'm Thirteen, soon to be Fourteen. I'm not a little kid like the rest of these midgets. I didn't want to be here and from the rum, clearly you didn't want to either." Ooh she was good.
"Well I guess you do know the first thing about doctoring." He smiled just slightly, knowing that the weight was off his back a little. "You ain't drinking any of that." He said, his Georgian accent really thick on his tongue.
"Trust me, I don't want to." She responded, making a little face that if you showed it to anyone, they would say, 'she just ate something morbid.'
"Good."
"So Lenny,-"
"What did you just call me?" Bones said, dreading his first name. Especially a pet name from an adolescent.
"You got a problem, Lenny?" Ginger said, provoking him just a little more.
"Do not call me Lenny. If anything you refer to me as Dr. McCoy." McCoy replied, some anger building in his voice. If this were a redshirt, or maybe a nurse, they would lay off. Not this chick.
She smiled deviously. Just hook and reel it in. "I'm fine." She said.
He gave her the Doctor stare. Ginger just smiled more. "What about you, Lenny?"
"How many siblings you got?" he asked totally out of the blue, letting the blue return his red face to a normal human complexion.
Ginger knew exactly why Leonard McCoy had asked. "One older brother, my friend."
Back in Georgia, McCoy had a younger brother. It was the war that raged on and on until Bones had graduated from med school. Back and forth, either verbally or physically. His brother was a year younger, but that didn't give him much advantage since his brother was his same height. Leonard was a shorter kid then most. Rough housing on the field in front of his house under that big oak tree. Good times, good times. Well, except for when his brother cracked his arm. That cast lasted a good six weeks. But casts are not to shabby for fighting. They're rock solid.
If she was a younger sister, Bones knew immediately this was going to be a very long nine days.
XXX
After a little more arguing, some showing Ginger around the sickbay, and more frustrating nicknames, they went to mess hall to eat dinner. There had been instructions sent through the intercom. You were to sit with your buddy, but you could sit anywhere. At least he could talk about the situation. Boy did he hate the federation.
Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Pavel, McCoy and their buddies all congregated at a fairly large lunch table. Ginger was not enjoying the experience considering she was paired up with some snarky old doctor, and now she was sitting a lunch table with kids at least two years younger than her. Displeased, she sat down at the table.
"So, how's the day going, everyone?" Kirk tried to sound relatively cheery.
"It was awesome! I got to see ectoblastic dilithium gasses and the effects of nuclear engineering on interior flooring!" Kenneth, Spock's buddy, announced, rather excitedly. Spock was rather proud that a nine year old earther had memorized that and caught on, but he was disgruntled to find the child was extremely loud and annoying.
"Kenneth, we are in an enclosed room. You are to keep the volume of your voice-" Spock prodded, only to be interrupted.
"l know!" he shouted, then stopped talking all together.
"Hey cutesy." Kirk's tag-along Jay said to Ginger. A series of things happened. First, Jay received a kick from Jim under the table, McCoy snickered under his breath and Ginger and Kirk exchanged glances. Hers saying, 'are you serious?' and the captain's sheepishly saying, 'sorry.'
The most disturbing part of that was Jay was in 3rd grade as they found out later in the night. He was the youngest kid on the expedition.
They got up, two at a time, and used to food generator to get whatever they wanted for dinner. The kids had to be shown how to use it, although Scotty's buddy had already taken one apart, and put it back together again. He knew it inside and out, rather literally.
Scott got a large sub sandwich while his buddy just got a bowl of broccoli and cheddar soup.
Kirk got up with Jay. You could see him scolding the little kid on the way to the food creator. Kirk came back holding a large steak and a medium sized salad, and Jay held in his grubby hands a giant piece of triple chocolate cake.
When they got back to the table, Jim took the cake from the child, replacing it with the salad. "First you have to eat your vegetables before you get to have dessert."
"But captain-"
"No buts. Eat." Jay picked at it a little with his fork, before proclaiming he could not, nor would not eat it. "No cake for you." Kirk responded nonchalantly before cutting and chewing another piece of juicy tenderloin.
McCoy and Ginger exchanged glances before getting up. "What do you want?" he said, looking through the catalogue of foods.
"I dunno. Um, I'll get a hamburger." Ginger replied, not too enthusiastically, but interested in the mechanism that automatically produced what you want. At home they still had cooking, but these things were all over the market, especially on the monogram vision.
Bones placed two chips in the machine, pressed a button and out popped a regular sized hamburger with all things you could possibly want on it off to the side. He himself got beef barley soup.
By the time they got back, the subject had fallen to something involving other planets' ambassadors, Latin, and tomatoes.
Chekov got a shish kabob and Melissa got a hot dog. "He's got a funny accent." Melissa said, pointing to Pavel. He remained silent. This girl was scaring the vodka out of him.
Finally, Spock got up with his bouncy child Kenneth. Spock got some Vulcan fruits and Kenneth got a Peanut Butter and Sardine sandwich with an ice cream sundae. "Hey, how come he gets dessert?!" Jay yelled, at the unfairness of it all. Nobody answered him, and he quietly continued to eat his leafy greens.
About five minutes later, Sulu and Uhura joined them. Uhura had an African dish and Carrie just got some chicken noodle soup. Sulu got a slab of salmon and George ate a char burger with a disgusting amount of catsup.
The conversation shifted uneasily sometimes, considering the kids needed to be part of it. George and Sulu seemed to be getting along fine. It turned out George had been in a fencing tournament prior to coming aboard, also Scotty and Arnold had spent the day cracking things open and rewiring an ancient device called a toaster. Uhura and Carrie were a good pair. The Bluetooth headset was right up her alley.
XXX
After a long, rather awkward day, all the kids were sent to the quarters to brush up and go to bed. Lights out was fairly early. That meant time to make her move. Ginger slipped out of bed and approached the door silently, placing her hand on the side and it quietly opened just a little, letting no light in to the room. She ran in to the elevator and went to the bridge. Time to listen in.
A man wearing a red shirt walked past. "Aren't you supposed to be in bed?"
"No, I lost something I left in sickbay." She replied smoothly.
"Oh, would you like an escort?" He asked.
"No, thank you." She replied with a sweet smile. "I can find things myself." He walked away. Score!
Through the door you could hear the crew talking about the day.
"Kenneth was a most fascinating child. He does show high standards of intelligence, but intellectually he is challenged." The Vulcan said, praising the kid who was so crazy.
"Jay's a different story. That kid's getting smooth on the crewmembers!" Kirk chimed in.
"He laid his grubby eyes on Ginger. Teach him some manners would you?!" Bones yelled.
"It's not my fault. His parents need the teaching."
There were some more good things that came, some bad things. McCoy was clearly angry with the nickname and confiding to his friends wasn't helping. They began calling him Lenny. Overall, Ginger was contented with the night, even though she had come here completely against her will. Her parents made her. Going on the Linear with all this toddlers would be a nightmare. At least she didn't have to be in charge of them all…but that left Jay. She was so not taking orders from that…ew. The idea just made her want to throw up.
"Keptin, Melissa is um…very exubewent." Chekov said.
"Pavel, it's easy to tell you're scared of her. Just say so." McCoy leaned back on the enterprise railing.
"Me? Scared of…a child?" Chekov didn't make a smooth recovery.
It was off topic now. All she wanted to hear was what the crew thought of the experience. Although she didn't want to be here, she decided to make the best of it. Now, back to the guest quarters to get some sleep.