Student Captains – Chapter 3

An innocent redshirt walked by the guest quarters. He only needed a signature from another officer when a loud noise came from where the kids were. Frankly, this was worrying. He peered his head in as the door opened and in to his face came a pillow, flung at at least warp six. The redshirt flew back, his face knocking in to the wall and all the screaming and fun stopped as the peered over the guy.

Some kids poked at him. He twitched. This slowly became a game. "Who's poking the dead guy next?" one yelled.

"He's not dead you idiots." Ginger said, sounding annoyed, and in fact she was. Getting hit in the face at least nineteen times by eight year olds having a pillow fight was not her idea of a wake up call. "I want to snitch on you guys so bad…" she said, taking a pulse to see if a fluffy flying object had put him in to a coma. He was sitting in a fairly unnatural position and since she was a doctor, it was her job right?

George, (Sulu's tag-along) and Jay, (Kirk's buddy) made their way through the crowd. "Is he okay?" George asked.

"I don't know. He's breathing but he's unconscious. From a pillow."

"Let me rephrase. Will he be okay?"

"Maybe." George shot Jay a look.

"You threw it?" Ginger said, eyebrows raised, but not in surprise.

"Well…we were just doing-"

"I don't care. Wait'll Kirk hears about this." She said.

"No! Please don't tell!"

"Oh, I am so beyond begging kid. " Ginger responded, enjoying the ransom.

"Please!" he looked like a puppy who was too full of himself.

"Lets just see how it turns out." Ginger said before ordering kids to get the pillow out of the guys face, remove all feathers and get back in to their quarters, then threaten that if she got whacked one more time, they were all going to receive a broken wrist. The kids went back in, except George and Jay who stayed out hesitantly. "Just go. I don't want you any deeper than you already are. And your lucky I'm not-"

"I know I know…" Jay responded, clearly used to this.

They left before Ginger punched the communicator. "Ginger to Sickbay."

"McCoy here. What? Can't you see it's six o'clock in the morning?!" Bones said gruffly.

"Duh. But, I woke up to go to the bathroom and there's some guy in a red shirt knocked unconscious on the floor!"

"What?"

"You heard me. Get down here now!"

Xxx

Everything eventually worked out for the kids throwing pillows. A lot of the screeching came from Kenneth, Spock's tag-along. The kid had one heck of a case of A.D.H.D, but still, he was really smart. Except it wasn't so easy to agree with that when he hung around you neck and knocked down the game of 3-D chess the Vulcan had previously been playing. Hard to control was the king of understatements.

This was exactly the kind of thing Spock was not used to. And did not like. At all. There had been times where he had risked his life, thrown soup on the wall, displayed emotion enough to convict him in a court case, but he would trade that in if he didn't have to deal with a monkey that was coincidentally shaped like a human boy.

The previous day had been a nightmare when he wasn't contained or fascinated by something. A flask of Kalimstraoxide, also known as an extremely explosive material had been tipped over. Even so, only a drop had spilled. That drop blew up an entire experiment.

Kirk was not good with kids either, but when he was around, Jim's effect on little mister attention span of a goldfish was better than a logical Vulcan. Kirk could manipulate him pretty well in to thinking holding a piece of paper was extremely important to the task at hand. Spock caught on and the hell that broke loose previous was much more manageable.

But back to Kenneth's smart side. He could recite the entire table of elements, then tell you anything about each of them. Backwards. In pig Latin. He was homeschooled up until Starfleet so the social awkwardness was noticeable. He didn't go very well around other kids his age, but Ginger did have a certain tolerance, as did a kid named tom, Mellissa (who would make a bunch of little contests Kenneth found intriguing.) and finally Carrie who was quiet and equally as smart, although she didn't showcase it with hysterics and craziness. Spock would easily trade with Uhura.

Putting Jay and Kenneth in a room was a bad idea. While Kirk and Spock played chess, Jay ended up swearing at Kenneth because Kenneth had bit him, and to make it worse, Kenneth was now crying. Nice job guys.

Kenneth also had his own little assortment of toys. He had some little cars and other things. Ones that brought Spock to his grave were the things that made noise. Endless, horrible noise. Badly, he had gotten the urge to death grip this child, just to shut him up for a precious moment.

"Spock, what's 275 to the fifth power divided by 9378 multiplied by the square root of pi?" Kenneth asked energetically, another way of trying to test his buddy.

"Sixty-four to the twelfth power point one nine two." Spock replied, nonchalantly, but a tad of annoyance lingering in his voice, just as well as challenging. Maybe this could become an occupation of time. Something the captain would call a game. "What would 705 times 946 be?" he asked back, continuing to fiddle with the device he held in his hands.

"666930. Eeeasy! Gimme a harder one!" Kenneth demanded.

"9382 to the 59th power."

"umm…" Kenneth sat for a minute, before coming up with an incredibly long number.

"Divided by 19?" Spock asked, again with little effort.

"8372759!" Kenneth shouted excitedly.

"Incorrect. The correct answer would be 8372759 point 988153."

"I was close!" the boy protested.

"But it must be exact."

Kenneth pouted a little before the game continued.

XXX

Jim stepped through the doors of Sickbay, much to Bones's alarm.

"Whoa-my…what happened to you?!" The doctor said to a totally wasted Captain Kirk.

Kirk darted his eyes quickly over to the charismatic kid following him. Jay walked in, sniffed the air and decided he didn't like it. He hated the smell of a doctor's office. He also really hated doctors. Isn't that great!

"Can we go?" Jay whined, tugging at Kirk's shirt.

"No." he said adamantly. Bones walked across the room to his whisky cabinet, and pulled the bottle carefully disguised as some sort of anti bladderal inflammation toxin, before pouring his beat friend a glass. Ginger then appeared in the door way.

"Oh great." She sighed before making a beeline across the room and aiming for the other part of it, escaping the company.

"You're staying." Bones growled as he caught her t-shirt.

"Why?" She said, angered that she had to stay with two people who were just a step up from maggots on her 'to-talk-to' list.

"Just sit down." He said, pulling her in to a chair.

Kirk finished off the rest of the crude drink as McCoy continued to do paper work. "There's some alien space craft off deck seven and we're not aloud to bring it on. It's small enough. Actually, it's tiny. But we can't!" he said, annoyed about the kids.

"Yea Jim, lets beam aboard an alien space craft! What a great idea!" he said, voice thick and rich with sarcasm.

"But nothing's happened in weeks!" he complained, trying to sound as adult as possible in front of Ginger and Jay.

"Why could you possibly want to bring aboard something that could kill everyone on here?" Ginger said, going over to the little refrigerator hidden in the bowels of sickbay.

"Honestly Jim, if another redshirt dies, that's going to look horrid on my record." Bones rolled his eyes before refilled Kirk's glass and soon after, his own.

"Well at least there would be some action!" He protested.

"I wanna see someone get hit by a lazer beam, I dunno about you guys." Jay said, supporting Kirk. Sadly, Jay had no good points to offer and was sort of going more against Jim then with him.

"I don't care if you kill us all. As long as you get sued, fine by me." Ginger said, popping the cap of a grape soda buried beneath the endless collection of whisky. "By the way, is this even legal?" she referenced the stash.

"Shuddup."

"Lenny."

"Shut up you brat!"

"Alright Lenny." She grinned mischievously. Ah, the wonders of being a younger sister.

Xxx

Later than night, after Ginger had silently checked in on the crew and went to bed, the members continued talking.

"I can't stand another day. And it's only been two!"

"C'mon Jim, they're not that bad." McCoy actually admitting he liked Ginger? Jim rolled up his sleeve, revealing a little bite mark to Bones. "Nevermind." No such luck.

"Kenneth is extremely hyper active. To an extent most unappealing." Spock commented, also exhausted and annoyed.

"That monkey of yours? Ha. You got stuck with a kid on a sugar high." Bones laughed at Spock's misfortune.

"I do not necessarily see why it is funny, especially that the child following you around appears to have a small piece of metal on her nose." And hence the nose ring was addressed.

"Says the monkey trainer."

"You call Kenneth a monkey right? Well Jay's a vicious lion. That kid is going to kill me. I think he actually wants control of the enterprise! Did you see this?" he showcased his scar on his arm.

"Yea, we all did. And it's beautiful. So please, show it again." McCoy said, annoyed with Jim's fishing for sympathy.

"It hurts really bad!" the captain said defensively, openly admitted he had been hurt by an eight year old child.

"Oh, should I kiss it for you?" Bones shot back, now more pissed off then ever.

Kirk just shot him a look.

"Aye, well Arney's pretty smart. He's can take a phaser apart and put it back together. Pretty impressive for a lad his age. Of course when I was that young, I could take apart a pinball machine, but I ain't braggin'." Mr. Scot happily inquired more about his buddy.

"Carrie is excellent at everything up at the desk here." Uhura chimed in. "She also has read a lot of literature. She read 'Back Again'! That book was written by Hyfo Delaropa! That's a Romulan philosopher!" Uhura was clearly pleased that she could have a full length literature circle with her tag along.

Pavel and Sulu were busy talking about their days with eachother, not bothering to listen in on Kirk's complaints. They already heard enough of that.

But, as much as they all complained or whined about the experience, it still wasn't that bad for them to interact with kids. Uhura certainly thought so. But Kirk didn't.

Sorry. I'm going to do more with Pavel, Sulu, Uhura and Scotty later. Nao, I just REALLY needed to focus on Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Hope you like it!