If it Ain't Broke

by Rainy Days With Tea

Meet Aibhlinn Pope: doctor, permanent hermit, poster child of the Widows and Orphans of Starfleet. She's ornery, she's cocky, she steals the cheques off of hard-working pensioners. So what's a young, vibrant girl of twenty-two with no future and a far too detailed dalliance with the wrong side of the law to do? (Crossposted from AO3).

2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: Hello, all. With finals winding up and my stress level going exponentially with it, I decided to treat you with a double update. Technically, these are Chapters 2 and 3, but I was far too lazy to bulk up 2 with character development. So 2 and 3 became a monster chapter 2. This'll probably change after the holidays. But for now, enjoy that lovely cup of tea, and add any constructive criticism at the end.

---

Chapter 2

"Another One Bites the Dust"

Potter House was located in a more picturesque area of Starfleet Academy's campus. Located on a row of faculty housing, it was one of several old manor houses, acquired from the City of San Francisco during the early years of the Academy's growth period. When not engaged in classes, or performing their duties at Starfleet Medical, all members of the cadre in the professional medical fields had an office—shared or not—on "Advisor Row". Aibhlinn, as an affectionately titled "Hippy", had an academic advisor for both her core curriculum as well as her medical track classes.

Quite frankly, it was easier to visit her medical advisor than her academic advisor.

The old Victorian was lovingly restored, painted a fetching blue and cream. Ascending the stairs, Aibhlinn dutifully removed her cover and opened the old fashioned door. There was a fierce looking security officer positioned in what used to be the entry parlor, at a desk with security feeds streamed in realtime to one of three transparent screens. He barely looked up when Aibhlinn entered; she scanned her ident card and said: "Cadet Pope here to see Dr. Nejem."

The security guard spent a moment to page her academic advisor on an internal comm system. After a few moments of hushed conversation, the security guard hung up and looked at Aibhlinn, who had assumed parade rest out of habit, cover tucked smartly under her arm.

"You can go up, Cadet," said the guard, returning to his security feeds.

Aibhlinn nodded, but the guard was already entrapped in his duties. Steeling herself, Aibhlinn left the entry parlors and ascended the stairs; they creaked underfoot, beneath the carpet lovingly restored by the Academy's original architects. Taking the staircase at a wild turn was a cadet not much older than her, the victim of nepotism with a record nearly as wide as Aibhlinn's.

"Hey, Quinn," said Aibhlinn in halfhearted greeting.

The girl was too busy fighting tears and jamming her cover back on her head to reply. "I hate her," she spat out. Aibhlinn paused on the stairs, turning to watch Cadet Second Class Quinn Lee fly out of Potter House in a rage.

Nejem's in rare form today, thought Aibhlinn bemusedly.

Dr. Fatimah Nejem was located on the third floor, seconded in a tower like a princess from the fairy tales of old. Her door was half ajar, with a plaque placed on the door that proudly proclaimed both her name, title, and position on campus. Almost reverently, Aibhlinn ran her fingers over the embossed lettering of, "MD, Chairman of Oncology" and absentmindedly imagined herself one day having an office in Potter House. It would be in the back of the house, overlooking the Rose Gardens, tastefully decorated with decor from the eighteenth century seamlessly melding into the technology of the twenty-third.

"Are you planning on fingering the plaque all day?" came Dr. Nejem's voice measuredly.

Almost embarrassed, Aibhlinn tucked her hands behind her back as she entered, the strong, heady scent of freshly brewed Turkish coffee. It was enough to make her mouth water. Dr. Fatimah Nejem sat at a beautiful desk with an inset PADD screen. A stylus held in a beautiful olive skinned hand signed off on academic reports, and drew up diagrams and papers pertinent to her current caseload. She was an effortlessly beautiful woman, dressed in a neat blouse and pants. Her hospital lab coat was thrown over a receiving chair; her hair was hidden by a silken scarf, the remnant of a religion almost lost to obscurity. She studied Aibhlinn with deep brown eyes. One hand moved to the handle of the traditional copper cezve, already steaming with coffee.

"Dr. Nejem," said Aibhlinn, taking the seat unoccupied by the lab coat. "A pleasure."

Dr. Nejem seemed unbothered by Aibhlinn's appearance. "Çok şekerli, right?" she inquired.

"Yes, ma'am. You remembered."

The woman made a sound deep in her throat that might have been laughter, or might have been an attempt to clear a blockage.

"Well, your old lady hates anything touched by sugar, so it's not difficult to remember."

Aibhlinn almost choked on the froth of her coffee (it had a proper name, but she couldn't quite remember it at the moment). She never did understand the animosity between her medical advisor and her mother. Fresh out of Infirm, a limp heavy in her step, Aibhlinn had stood smart in her fresh reds before Dr. Nejem, who had ignored her for a record seven minutes. The woman finally cleared her throat and said, "Do you plan on just standing there, or will you speak at some point?" She was a fresh change from the honeysuckle sweetness of her academic advisor, who treated her with kid gloves and warned her constantly about toeing the line. With Dr. Nejem, all deeds committed outside of her fresh tenure with the Academy was as good as nonexistent. The woman cared not about her paraplegic father, obsessive mother, and the fact Aibhlinn hadn't spoken with Xue Pope in roughly six years.

Well, Dr. Nejem cared a little about her mother.

"I just got word back on your autopsy," said Dr. Nejem as she poured herself her own cup of coffee from the cezve. "Half the board wanted you brought up on charges of insubordination."

"Only half?" quipped Aibhlinn, lips smiling around the rim of her cup.

"And the other half was more than happy to fail you outright." Dr. Nejem's face gave no warning of the outcome. "Osteogenesis imperfecta still stands as a leading cause of death, after an additional autopsy was carried out."

Aibhlinn scoffed and placed her cup down on the provided saucer. "By a licensed physician, you mean."

Dr. Nejem regarded her young charge sternly. "And an unlicensed doctor was still able to get a tolerable grade on her first unsupervised review," said Dr. Nejem. "89."

That was more than acceptable, tolerable, or any other word that Dr. Nejem wished to tout. Autopsy reviews tended to garner heavily weighted grades toward cadet performance. Many who took it didn't average above 60 their first run around, and yet Aibhlinn saw the neatly marked score on Dr. Nejem's PADD.

"I suppose I should be proud of you," she said briskly. "Ol' Ironsides didn't get but a 66 her first time around. And I have the pleasure of corrupting her girl in all the right ways."

Aibhlinn had little to say on that matter. Her issues with her mother varied from Dr. Nejem's, but they still followed the trajectory toward outright scorn. True, her mother had been somewhat caring during her youth, but after her father's "accident", Xue Pope bottled herself up, became Dr. Ironsides, shunned all who interfered with caring for her recovering father. That included her own blood.

"Must've been some damn good corrupting," said Aibhlinn blithely. "Half wanted me failed and half wanted me courtmartialed. Someone was certainly singing my praises to the right choir."

"For once, not my doing." Dr. Nejem's scornful countenance returned with fury. "It was that damned meddlesome advisor of yours."

Sipping on her coffee, she tsked. "That D'Arcy."

"Where did he find you, Aibhlinn?" asked Dr. Nejem, sipping her own coffee through pursed lips. "Certainly not that eyesore your mother lives in with that sweet old man of yours."

---

Where indeed was she found? The Wicklow Mountains may have seemed imposing to any visitor, or someone who had never hiked in their lives. To Aibhlinn, they had offered safety. To her, they were nothing more than a large, twenty thousand plus hectacre security blanket. But when one found their way up the winding road of Tonelagee Mountain, they could locate the old, one story cottage, perpetually within the cloud line. It was nestled within a formerly overgrown clearing (If she thinks hard enough, she can remember the harsh bite of weeds against her skin as she clears out the clearing beneath the midsummer sun). It was possible it had been a part of a farm, or groundskeeper's cottage many centuries ago, and altogether forgotten by the United Federation Parks Service. Aibhlinn, after a long day at the clinic, or finagling the pension cheque out of a man in his eighties, would park her electric bike under a partition made of stone and driftwood.

She remembered the day Captain Phillip D'Arcy had come for her. She had just gotten in, after a long day in Sligo. Sligo itself had not changed much since she had last been in the city. The skyline was an amalgamation of the contemporary and the past. It had been quite a while since she had walked beside the Garavogue River or worshipped beneath the stone of St. John the Baptist Cathedral.

Aibhlinn hunched her shoulders against the soft drizzle that had begun as a storm somewhere in County Offaly. Said storm had left her soaked to the skin and muddy from booted feet to waist. Shivering lightly, Aibhlinn jiggled the handle to the front door, shoved against it with all her weight when the door stuck, and entered the small cottage when it finally gave way. As soon as Aibhlinn entered her home, she kicked off her boots, draped her leather jacket over the back of the old moth-bitten couch and shook her head like a dog ridding itself of water. Much of the main room consisted of two equally moth-bitten chairs, two scratched and roughened pine tables, and a fireplace pressed up against the wall adjacent to the entrance. Off to the side, behind the farthest chair, was a small dining area containing a small wooden stove, refrigerator and meticulously scrubbed table set for four. Unlike most homes, there was no food synthesizer, and many things were not automated like the fancier dwellings in large cities like Dublin, Wicklow, or Galway. Aibhlinn was lucky enough to get enough electricity to keep basic appliances operating. Some nights were spent in almost complete darkness, with nothing more than a handful of emergency lanterns for light. She had taken to decorating them, making them look cute and homey.

It was modest, it was a little run down, but it was very her.

More importantly, it was home. That was all that mattered.

Barefoot, she walked across the lovingly scrubbed floor, stripping off her sopping clothes as she went. Off came her sweater, her button-up, her bra, then her pants and socks and underwear. The storm was a bitch, worming its righteous fury into every nook and cranny of Aibhlinn's person until she was soaked to the skin. Mentally, she compiled a list of things that needed to be done, to take her mind off the overbearing chill (she would need to get a fire started soon). Aibhlinn needed to visit the cutesy little farmer's market in Wicklow for her weekly food run. She needed to look at the roof after the rain stopped to make sure her patch held from the previous storm. She needed to tear up some old rags that vaguely resembled clothing for patches for the knees of her jeans. Aibhlinn shook her head tiredly. Sometimes living on one's own at twenty-two was difficult. It nearly made her wish she had bit the proverbial bullet; swallowed the lies of Starfleet alongside her mother, without question.

But that would mean her father's service had been for nothing. And, no matter what, she could not shame Conor Pope's service. So she left.

Naked, Aibhlinn pushed open the door to her bedroom with the heel of her foot as she grabbed out for a towel protruding from the closet to her direct right. Her room was small but airy, with a bed pressed up under the window, and a desk and bookshelf occupying the opposite wall. There was a small refresher unit off to the side, but she paid it no mind at the moment. She toweled off and bound her hair back with an elastic band. Her hair would undoubtedly explode outward in a massive ball of waves and corkscrews the minute it began to dry, but she had more pressing things on her mind at the moment, and tending to her hair was low on the list.

Aibhlinn swiftly changed into a soft wool sweater and a relatively holeless pair of jeans, and shoved her feet into a pair of slippers. Running a hand over her ponytail, she wandered back out to the living room with the towel still draped around her neck. She gathered up her discarded clothes and tossed them into the laundry basket underneath the clean towels in the closet. Mentally, she added laundry detergent to the list of things to get as she meandered into the living room and sat herself down on the chair closest to the fireplace. Drawing her legs up to her chest, Aibhlinn let out a small, bored sigh as her eyes roved around the room.

She knew every nook and cranny of the old groundskeeper's cottage so well that it no longer held a modicum of interest to her. The only thing that managed to hold her attention for longer than a moment was the antique chessboard lying on the pine table between couch and chairs. Despite its age, the board itself seemed to be in excellent condition. The white and black squares were pristine. The only thing out of place seemed to be the half-played game in session, lacking its white brethren.

Contemplatively, Aibhlinn reached out and grasped the black rook by its base, bringing it closer for inspection.

"Da, what's this funny one do?"

Aibhlinn sat on her father's lap, staring at the strange black piece as if it would divulge the secrets of the universe to her. Her small hands turned it this way and that, fingers tracing each convex arch and concave scoop, not understanding it, but attempting to in that quaint way young children often try to.

As if sensing his daughter's frustration, Conor Pope gently removed the piece from Aibhlinn's hands and placed it back on the chessboard beside the king.

" 'This funny one is' a rook," he explained, grinning widely. "This is your big player, Al. He's more important than your king—" He removed his finger from the rook to point to the piece to its right. "—or your queen." His finger moved from the king to the crowned figure beside it.

"How can a funny looking castle be more important than the king or queen?" Aibhlinn inquired, brows furrowing with displeasure.

"He's your best friend once you have the other pieces out of the way." Conor cleared away three pawns from either side, both bishops, and one knight apiece. "The rook can move in any direction for any number of spaces.

"Always keep your rook close, Al," said Conor Pope. He slid the rook upward, placed the opposite king in check. "Your rook may save you one day."

Aibhlinn rolled the onyx castle between thumb and forefinger and stared at it like she had in her memory: as if it held the secrets of the Universe. The rain pounded against the roof, filling the silence, though not her thoughts. The rook lay in her palm like a slain soldier. Aibhlinn laughed bitterly and placed the piece back in its place between king and queen, in its proper place.

"Fecking Starfleet," she proclaimed tiredly.

Sighing again, Aibhlinn stood, pressing her palms against her lower back. Wincing at the answering series of pops—and deciding that she was far too young to be making those noises—she shuffled to the kitchen and retrieved the PADD lying on the table. Pulling out the stylus from its slot, she pulled up a fresh document and penned in her mental shopping list. Although she possessed a fairly eidetic memory, Aibhlinn found early on that entering her shopping list in the conventional way filled time that was otherwise used unobtrusively, and who knew how long her shopping list would remain in her short term memory before it was deemed unnecessary by her brain and deleted.

"Let's see," she muttered. "Laundry detergent, milk, eggs, dinner for the next week or so—"

A series of knocks interrupted her vocal train of thought. Pausing, Aibhlinn felt her heart leap into her throat, then freeze as she had. No one knew of her small abode in the mountains; she had been far too careful over the years. Something very cold settled in her stomach, spreading outward in tendrils until Aibhlinn was unsure if she was frozen in place by uncertainty, fear, or whatever dramatic climate change had occurred within her belly.

Capping the panic and harnessing it into focus and composure, she warily narrowed her eyes at the door. It was quiet. Maybe she had imagined—no, there it was again, a repetitive knock of a very solid, very human hand. The anxiety-ridden short path in her mind wanted her to flee. The calmer, longer, analytical path guided her hand downward, made it reach into the drawer to her right and pull it open, eyes always on the door, never varying or leaving. Aibhlinn heard the creak of the drawer on its rusting track, heard the silverware within clattering against each other like bells. Carefully, she removed a thin paring knife from its place amongst its tarnished brethren and slipped it into the waistband of her pants, handle facing to the left so she could grab it with ease. Closing the drawer as quietly as possible, Aibhlinn strode forward, her shoulders squared like any soldier's would be if they headed bravely into battle. Briefly, she paused before the door, checked the outside via the window (of course she did not see anything. The rain was far too heavy) and, finally steeling her nerve, opened the door.

Standing before her was not a murderer, nor a used car salesperson, but a stranger, a man who was almost familiar in the most surreal of senses. He was tall and broad shouldered, his bulk streamlined into an immaculate high-collared grey dress uniform, cap held neatly and parallel to his waist (his other hand was occupied with the umbrella held above him). His blonde hair was slicked back away from his forehead, dappled with grey at the temples. His grey eyes pierced her, pinning her in place, reminding her of times long gone.

However, it was not the face that gave her pause, but the uniform.

How many times had she seen that same grey uniform on her father—or her mother? The idea soured her mouth, soured the memory of her sitting on that man's shoulders during shore leave as he presented "The future CMO of the USS Concord" to her approving giggles and her mother's half-serious shout from the kitchen: "Don't drop her!"

But that was before the accident. Before her father was forced to live in a wheelchair.

Rattled, Aibhlinn felt her mouth dry. The words she uttered felt thick in her mouth as she snapped curtly, "Ensign D'Arcy."

The man smiled benignly.

"Aibhlinn Pope," he countered. "Or do I have to address you as 'Doctor' now?"

Aibhlinn scowled at the title, masking her panic artfully beneath ire and annoyance. "How did you—never mind. You probably knew about me being a doctoral candidate after the NATs four years ago."

D'Arcy offered the younger woman a small twitch of the lips. It was a ghost of a smile, but a smile nonetheless. "You remember that I was the supervising officer of the NATs four years ago, but not my comm's personal frequency?"

"I chose to forget it." Aibhlinn positioned herself in the doorway so that the officer wouldn't be able to muscle inside without five inches of carbon steel entering his abdominal cavity. "Now, I'd like you to leave."

"I can't do that, Alby," D'Arcy said, almost regretfully. "I'm here on official business."

With that one sentence, the blind panic that she had capped so delicately rose like a vice, choking her throat. The threat was real now, as real as D'Arcy was before her. As fast as the panic rose, hot and violent in her veins, it cooled back to icy composure. She would not be leaving without a fight.

"You're not taking me back there," she said pointedly, words enunciated and calm. Reflexively, her hand tightened around the grip of the knife. If that's what he was here for, she would go kicking and screaming.

"Relax Alby." He sounded so sure of himself, as if Aibhlinn's fright was nothing to be frightened of. "I'm not here to take you back to St. Conal's, or drag you back to Sligo." D'Arcy waited for Aibhlinn to relax marginally before he continued: "I'm just here to talk. Now can you please put the knife down and let me in for a cuppa? It's bloody freezing out here."

With narrowed eyes, Aibhlinn slowly removed herself from the doorway, but did not relax her grip on the tiny paring knife. Once D'Arcy was inside the threshold, she closed the door behind him and gestured toward the kitchen.

"Very quaint," D'Arcy commented as he shook out his umbrella and left it to dry on the floor, spread out like a big black blight. Once he took a seat at the kitchen table at Aibhlinn's begrudging behest, he looked at her. "No replicator or communications array?"

"Half of the smaller towns inland barely moved out of the twentieth century, let alone into the twenty-third," Aibhlinn said. "Besides, it's not like I'm attempting to impress anyone, nor can I afford it." Kicking over the step stool from its abandoned place by the edge of the counter, she stood on it to properly reach the upper cabinet. Opening the cabinet above the sink, she carefully removed the coffee container. She made no show to hide the bottle containing a three-quarter's-full payload of Jameson Gold. Once the canister of coffee was on the counter and the cabinet closed, she turned to D'Arcy, eyebrow raised, challenging him to ask.

His eyes had narrowed disapprovingly since her back had half-turned to him.

"How long have you been drinking?" he inquired, almost casually, as if he had been talking about the weather.

Aibhlinn paused as she placed the pot on the stove. "How long have I been a ghost in your systems now?"Without waiting for him to retort, she sat herself down across from him, knife on the table between them, a gesture of marginal trust. "So how'd you find me?"

D'Arcy grinned a little at that. "Some old man by the name of Augustus O'Hare was ranting to his mates about an 'Abnormally smart hick who weaseled me out of me pension check for the month.'"

Aibhlinn sat back and crossed her arms against her chest. "I've got to make a living somewhere," she defended. "Any sane establishment'd have me out on my arse and on the nearest police installation's doorstep as soon as they ran my name in the database." She stroked the chipped handle of her mug contemplatively. "Have, on some occasions."

"You're not exactly poor; you have money," D'Arcy said gently. "There's the tru—"

"Don't you dare talk to me about bloody trust!" Aibhlinn leaned forward. "My mother disowned me when I started prodding. And even if I could, I won't touch any of it. It can rot there for all I fecking care."

D'Arcy was silent for a moment. Aibhlinn was surprised when he smiled gently.

"What the hell are you smiling over?" she snarled.

"You reminded me of Doctor Pope right then." Aibhlinn fell silent, eyes losing their hard edge, exposing something vulnerable that D'Arcy could see, just barely beneath the surface. "She had a silver tongue. Everyone on Concord, from Ensign Kismet in Engineering, to Captain Okanao herself was afraid to go to Med Bay if she was on rotation."

Irena. She remembered Ensign Kismet and how she doted on her father.

"Why are you telling me this?" Aibhlinn snapped. "I still remember how my mother was; I haven't been gone that long." Six years, three weeks, twelve days, she calculated automatically.

"I'm trying to get you to realize something, Alby." D'Arcy leaned forward, pulling a PADD from a side pocket. He entered a set of commands in rapid succession. A moment later, Aibhlinn's PADD, which was still resting on the counter where she had put it, let out a small tinny note, alerting her to the reception of a message. Glaring suspiciously at D'Arcy, Aibhlinn stood, paused to pour the coffee and place it down on the table, and retrieved her PADD from the counter.

"Everything Starfleet has accumulated on you is in that data packet," explained D'Arcy. "Mind you, it's less dense than most, but it's still fairly larger than the average civilian applicant's." He pointed at a line of data on Aibhlinn's PADD. "Go ahead. Look at it."

"You gonna parade around my rap sheet?"

D'Arcy laughed. "I'm not that uncouth, Al."

Begrudgingly, Aibhlinn glared at D'Arcy, then down at the line of data.

She couldn't help but feel her jaw drop in surprise.

FILE FLAGGED PRIORITY ALPHA / EYES ONLY / D'ARCY, CAPTAIN, PHILLIP A. / SN: TS – 188 – 032

NATIONAL APTITUDE TEST RESULTS / YEAR 2254 / SUBJECT: POPE, AIBHLINN [18 STANDARD YEARS OF AGE] / SCORE: 2400 / 2400 *

"In the past seventy-five years, four people have received a 2400," D'Arcy said. He tapped the screen and the page flushed away. A new page replaced it almost immediately after its vacancy. Aibhlinn vaguely recognised the crest in the upper right hand corner.

"Throughout your years of schooling, your annual aptitude tests were all above average—the point one percent of the bell curve if you may. You only began to show academic issues at age twelve. Subsequent psych evals were inconclusive—"

"Those Starfleet arseholes only saw their next paycheque when they looked at me," growled Aibhlinn poisonously. "They didn't bother to look at how I couldn't express how Icould't bloody cope, only my behavioral issues and budding relationship with the law, and then they shipped me off to a bleedin' mad house while Mother just watched—"

"—and I'm sorry that happened, Alby," D'Arcy interrupted. "Starfleet had no right to put you away, but think for a minute. You're the youngest postdoc in the Royal College's history—though I can't exactly say Starfleet'll accept a doctorate from someone with as many outstanding warrants as—"

"Hold on one minute, fella." Aibhlinn held up a hand, cutting across D'Arcy. "I can't say that utilizing an apology for Starfleet sending me to St. Conal's to segue into a conversation about Starfleet accepting my doctorate is the best of choices––although the question should be raised as to why would I give a damn if Starfleet wants to accept my doctorate? Unless…" Aibhlinn paused, rested her chin on her folded hands and studied D'Arcy as if he were a chessboard. "You said before that my file was much larger than the average civilian applicant's. Where would you be concerned over my application to?" Her eyes narrowed, and her hand twitched to the handle of the knife. "Unless you're so called 'official business' involves the matter of my recruitment."

D'Arcy at least had the decency to look abashed. "Alby—"

"My answer is no, Ensign. It will always be no."

"It's Captain now, Alby." D'Arcy held up a warning hand, but Aibhlinn continued right over his head.

"Fine, Captain D'Arcy," she continued. "I'm not joining. Not after what happened."

D'Arcy was silent for a moment. Aibhlinn glared at her coffee—now lukewarm—steadfastly refusing to even look the captain in the face.

"I'm not telling you to enlist because of Lieutenant Commander Pope's accident," D'Arcy attempted. Aibhlinn let out a disbelieving snort that he seemed to purposefully ignore, pretending that she hadn't been lost in thought, and continued: "I'm telling you to enlist because you're clever. Maybe too much for your own good…"

Aibhlinn, however, was no longer paying attention. She had gathered up the cold mugs—one empty and one full—and upended them both in the sink. It was clear that the conversation was done as far as she was concerned, as it would always be.

Her attention was drawn back to D'Arcy and away from the mugs she was vigorously washing after he had stayed silent for longer than thirty seconds. Odd for him. She always remembered him as a chatterbox, never shutting up about one thing, switching topics like one would switch train cars. Lowering the mug and shutting the water, she turned around, eyebrow quirked at D'Arcy, who was staring into the living room, at the half played chessboard sitting abandoned on her coffee table.

She narrowed her eyes.

"You're joking," she scoffed. "This has got to be a bleeding joke!"

"If your half as talented at that bloody game as your old man is, you'd have no problem showing up a man twice your age." D'Arcy said as Aibhlinn strode over to the couch, removing the white pieces from her leather satchel. "At least it's more morally acceptable than taking an old man's pension cheque."

Aibhlinn didn't look up from her board. "Shut up and set up, D'Arcy."

Normally, Captain Phillip D'Arcy would scoff at any civilian who'd dare reprimand a ranking Starfleet officer, but it was that tone Aibhlinn spoke with that commanded respect. It was a picture into the future, realized D'Arcy at that instant, of an older, more experienced Aibhlinn Pope frightening clumsy ensigns during Alpha shift with hypos and her acerbic tongue, sharing a finger or so of whiskey with her captain in the darkened hours of Gamma shift as they discussed the day's events.

So he did what any sane individual would do. He sat across from the girl and set his pieces up in standard position.

Exactly seven moves—and four and a half minutes later—Aibhlinn muttered, "Checkmate," and sat back against the cushions.

D'Arcy sat back as well, albeit more stiffly than his counterpart. "I say we go another round," he offered.

Aibhlinn smirked cruelly. "Just a glutton for punishment, aren't you, mate?" She reset the board and began again.

Ten moves later, Aibhlinn once again said "Checkmate," and sat back. However, she looked far more disheartened than before. She had narrowly avoided check not once, but twice. The idea that someone was nearly as good as her bothered her mildly, but that didn't stop her from allowing a small smirk as her win was conceded by the Starfleet captain.

"Are we up for another round, Alby?" Captain D'Arcy offered, already moving to reset his side of the board.

"You seriously love having your arse handed to you by a girl half your age," Aibhlinn muttered, growing tired of their repetition. Without thinking, Aibhlinn's knight advanced. D'Arcy mirrored her, knight positioned before the pawns.

The game erupted after that. Pawns were taken. Knights stolen. Rooks removed. Aibhlinn, with much more thought than normal, pushed her bishop forward three spaces, seizing his rook.

"Check," she said.

D'Arcy's brows furrowed. He had been certain he cornered the young woman two moves before. Roaming the board, he grinned as he moved his rook horizontally and took the checked piece.

He missed Aibhlinn's thin smirk of satisfaction, unaware that he had fallen into a trap.

The white rook surged forward, seizing its brother. Blockaded on either side by her other bishop and queen, D'Arcy couldn't help but gape at the young woman in shock.

"And that is a third checkmate," she said after a brief pause, "and I believe that you have worn out your welcome." She jerked her head toward the door. "Make sure the door doesn't hit you on the way out, Captain. I need to replace it as it is."

She was unnerved when D'Arcy didn't move. She was a little scared when he slowly glanced between the chessboard and her, as if she had not done the work, just taken the credit. She was downright frightened when he met her gaze and refused to move from his seat on her couch, damning Irish hospitality to the four winds. Aibhlinn felt every single muscle in her body begin to tense systematically as her brain sent out the signal she knew so well. Get ready to run, there's danger afoot. Logically, she knew there was no danger. D'Arcy would not harm her, but one harsh year on the streets, nine months in a psychiatric hospital, and four stints in detention centres had chiseled that fight or flight instinct almost into her DNA. Aibhlinn could not decide in that moment whether or not to fling the chessboard in D'Arcy's face and bludgeon him to death with it, or fling it at the window and make a break for it.

His following words, however, made the trembling stop and stopped the need to run almost as quickly as it had come.

"You're clever, Pope," he said carefully, as if he were mulling over possible ways to broach some subject like one would mull over fine wine. "Maybe too clever for your own good, but you're something Starfleet needs. You've been living out here in the Godforsaken mountains for six plus years like some form of survivalist hermit. Sure, you had some trouble with the law, but you lived off your own money and not the trust your Mother had given to you, which would have been the easier choice. The tenacity of this venture alone should have, in my opinion, the Academy Commandant here himself asking you to enlist, not an insignificant captain such as I."

Flattery? Aibhlinn scoffed and opened her mouth to protest, opened her mouth to say "Bugger you, D'Arcy, and your compliments", but she never got the chance. D'Arcy cut across her with the diplomatic swiftness of a trained Starfleet officer.

"Before you say no, hear me out." It was not quite an order, but it was not a request either. Aibhlinn glared at D'Arcy, felt her ire radiating like a cloud about her head, but held her tongue. She did not want to listen to him. She did not want to hear his hero's tales and spun lies for her benefit so she would say yes.

A part of her, formerly submissive however, nodded tersely and gave him the go ahead to continue his recruitment spiel.

She would need to keep that part of her in check in the future.

"You're prime material," he continued. "You can think on your feet, weasel your way out of a situation, and dust yourself off after it. You're empathetic, even though you don't want to admit it. That's what makes you such a damn good doctor. There's no better person I can picture in a Med Bay.

"Look at your response time while playing chess, Alby. You defeated me three times in under thirty minutes, which is an absolutely incredible feat for someone who hasn't seen the inside of a school in God knows when. I can see you aboard a starship as its CMO, Aibhlinn. I can see it like I see you now."

Aibhlinn did not wait for the inevitable period at the end of his sermon. She was not going to be talked at, threatened, told things and raised in challenge, because damn him, that was a challenge at the end of that sentence. The part of her that had nodded in the beginning took the reins in her head, made the sharp transition from Hell fecking no to Where do I sign.

"Do you think that you can serve me some sort of song and dance and expect me to leap up and say Oh yes, Captain D'Arcy, of course I'll join Starfleet!" she spat, just for good measure, because the decision was already made in her mind, she just needed to piss on its importance now. "Do you know what I have to say to that?"

Captain D'Arcy opened his mouth. Aibhlinn, however, did not allow him to finish, but did so without the smooth graces of a Starfleet officer.

"You have a shiteton of bollocks to think that I'll sit pretty through four-plus years of bullshite classes and let those Starfleet eggheads believe that they're better than me because they're older and more experienced than I."

She leaned forward and pointed at D'Arcy, finger jabbing his chest hard enough to hurt.

"Do you know what I have to say to that, Captain?" she whispered. D'Arcy met her dark glare coolly.

"I'll do the whole damn thing and stuff the results so far up their arses, the Devil himself'll have to dig them out in order to feast his fiery gaze upon them."

Aibhlinn saw it in D'Arcy's eyes. Saw the abject belief in her statement. Maybe not the "stuff the results up their arses part", but he knew the results would be nothing short of grand and the Devil would have a hard time pulling them out.

With a nod, he gently pushed Aibhlinn's hand from his chest, stood, strode to the doorway, and retrieved his partially damp umbrella.

"You're going to have to hoof yourself down to Haulbowline—" he began in farewell.

"Haulbowline is four hours away!" she protested.

"Yes, and I'm sure you've driven the length of Ireland in your quest for clinic jobs and pension cheques. Now, Haulbowline Island—"

"You Starfleet eggheads operate off of Haulbowline Island? That's a little traditional, isn't it?"

"—at oh-seven-hundred hours promptly in a week from now."

The door clicked behind him, leaving Aibhlinn alone with her finished game before her and tumultuous thoughts within her.

She felt her stomach lurch, as if the words she just uttered had soured her stomach to the point of sickness. Aibhlinn stood, breathed through her nose, and tried not to throw the board in her anger. She had made a mistake. A mistake of the grandest of sorts. She could not handle Starfleet. She could barely handle the pamphlets and recruitment kiosks that popped up occasionally on her meanderings. Each grinning officer was just another Da in her mind. Each officer was another parent who wouldn't return whole from the cold and endless black.

Fuck, she needed a drink.

---

"…And that's how it went," said Aibhlinn, staring at the coffee grounds idly at the bottom of her cup.

Dr. Nejem let out a truly honest laugh at that prospect. "I bet D'Arcy shat himself after he left your little hovel," she snorted, turning her cup upside-down on the saucer. "Boy's too young to be at a starship's helm."

"Especially Concord."

All knowing, her medical advisor smiled kindly. "Her refit went splendidly, if that's any consolation. Almost as beautiful as these new Constellations they're churning out like cupcakes."

"Did they fix the matter/antimatter issue," said Aibhlinn at her most droll.

Dr. Nejem smiled, dry. "One can only hope." She turned Aibhlinn's cup upside-down, watched as her hands trembled, then clenched. "You know, I have an opening for an oncology fellowship in the spring, if you're interested."

Aibhlinn raised an eyebrow. "Oncology? Really?"

"Cancer is still an issue, despite all these so-called 'advancements'," said Dr. Nejem. "Oncology is a dying breed, and I need all the competent doctors I can get."

"They'll let me do rotations, even on probation?" asked Aibhlinn.

Dr. Nejem scoffed as she began filing some paperwork on her inset PADD screen. "They will if they know what's good for them." She paused briefly, stylus held in hand like an absently forgotten object of fancy. "You know," she began, voice lilting with thought. "I didn't want to take you on. I don't usually take more than one student every year—too much work to be done, let alone minding cadets."

Aibhlinn, stunned, was helpless, forced to sit and watch Dr. Nejem pull up file after file on her inset screen.

"When Admiral Barnett asked me to take you on, Starfleet Academy's charity case, as he put it, I turned him down. Wanted nothing to do with the daughter of Xue Pope. But take you I did. Do you know why?"

"No, ma'am," said Aibhlinn quietly, throat dry.

Dr. Nejem took the time to place her stylus down and fold her hands delicately as she regarded her charge. Her face gave absolutely nothing away as to the nature of her thought process, and it was beginning to scare Aibhlinn deeply.

"I took you," continued Dr. Nejem, "because I saw potential in your file. Psych evals, test scores, they can only do so much to persuade an advisor to take on a student. You know if a cadet isn't accepted by an advisor, they're waitlisted until the next year, right?"

Aibhlinn felt her throat dry. "Well, I know that now."

"I was your last line of defense between you and the cold, cruel world. And I sat down for a very long while and finally decided that young D'Arcy wasn't as crazy as everyone painted him out to be when he came back with your name on the '60 class's roster. I'd like you to prove the rest wrong."

Aibhlinn sat in quiet silence for a long while, watching Dr. Nejem fall back into her work. After a while, she raised one perfectly arched eyebrow, almost in question, but mostly in scorn.

"Are you still here?"

Aibhlinn sat in quiet silence for a long while, watching Dr. Nejem fall back into her work. After a while, she raised one perfectly arched eyebrow, almost in question, but mostly in scorn.

"Are you still here?"

And, simple as that, she was dismissed. And good thing, too. Her class was set to start in fifteen minutes.

---

"Class dismissed."

Aibhlinn's head rose of the desk as if she had been shocked, hair disheveled and collar of her starched and pristine Starfleet uniform in disarray, but nonetheless at attention. If any student or teacher or CO were to look at her (minus the disgruntled cadets sitting in her immediate vicinity), Aibhlinn would have looked like the picture of academic attentiveness, if albeit exhausted.

She blinked owlishly as cadets filed past her with harried "'scuse me's" and nonsense conversations with classmates who Aibhlinn could honestly care less about at the moment. The presiding professor, an aging Human whose name escaped her at the moment, had already tucked her PADD and data clips into her lacquered leather briefcase and strode from the podium with the speed of those in her charge, bustling off to her next lecture or to the teacher's lounge for a cup of non-replicated coffee.

God, Aibhlinn needed coffee.

With a tremendous yawn, Aibhlinn rose, powering on her sleeping PADD to observe the partial attempt at note taking she had undergone for the morning. As predicted, her notes were half legible and lead off into pointlessly untranslatable gibberish less than half a page in, totaling up to twelve pages of meaningless trash. Glaring pointedly at the device as if it were the cause of her trouble, Aibhlinn deleted the defunct document from the notes field and file base titled Advanced Molecular Immunology and glanced about the room.

Half the student body was already gone, on their way to their next class, duty rotation, or their free period. Aibhlinn should be joining them, should be on her way to the library to work on her new dissertation thesis (not that she had one yet, but she needed to step foot in a library in order to think of one), but she could not quite bring herself to walk the distance. In fact, if she were to be totally honest with herself, she wanted nothing more than to lay down exactly where she had been seated minutes before and sleep until the following professor kicked her out when the next class filed in.

Somehow she mustered the mental capability to goad herself into staggering up the stairs to the exit of the lecture hall. Eyes at half-mast, she stumbled out of Phelbran Hall and into the overcast grey afternoon that threatened San Francisco with a more than likely chance of rain.

Fuck the rain.

"Long night?" came the lilting accented and highly irritating voice of the rotation doctor who had treated her and countless others what seemed like years ago, even if it was only two months since she had stepped into a formalized institution for learning.

Aibhlinn grunted noncommittally and shouldered her satchel. Conversation that went beyond meaningless grunts and simple yes or no answers were beyond her at the moment.

"Very long night, I assume." The rustling beside her did nothing to draw her attention. "Here," he said. "You need it more than I. I'm not in the mood to drag your sorry arse to Infirm and signing your admit form. 'Cadet brought in for tripping over her own feet and braining herself on bench.'"

A scent permeated the air, sweet and succulent and reeking of everything that she lacked at the moment and promising one tantalizing thing in return: mental stimulation and rejuvenation of her depleted faculties. Like Pavlov's Dog on revolt, Aibhlinn's hand darted to the side, swiped the warm metal thermos from the grip of Robert Albara, M.D., and drank deeply, uncaring that it lacked the sugar and creamer she usually took with her coffee. All that mattered was the caffeinated beverage in her grasp.

Already she could feel the clarity of mental acuity returning to her.

"You have no idea how badly I needed that," said Aibhlinn.

Albara offered a noncommittal shrug. "Can't replicate your own?"

Aibhlinn raised her eyes skyward and sighed like a woman plagued by all the troubles in the universe. "My roommate removed the replication reader from the food synthesiser and has neglected to fix it."

"How did she—"

Aibhlinn, without looking, slapped her free palm over Albara's mouth, silencing him roughly.

"Lorelei Jackson," said Aibhlinn to the sky, "is an enigma, and a lying, godless cheat of a woman, who has effortlessly crippled me with the reduction of my ambrosia. Without coffee, I am nothing."

Albara studied Aibhlinn over the palm that was still clasped firmly over his mouth. Reaching upward, he removed her hand delicately and inquired cautiously:

"Are you drunk?"

Aibhlinn's face twisted in contemplation, "No, but I certainly wish I was," came her reply. She scratched the back of her neck. "Last drink I had was last night I think, at three in the morning, over Bajoran neruro scans on my PADD for Humanoid Neurology."

"And the stupid question is: how?"

She glanced at him, agog. "Giving a shite?" scoffed Aibhlinn. "Isn't that against your religion or something?"

Albara scowled. "I don't give two shits what happens to you, kid. I just want to know who gave you the moonshine."

"Why?"

"So I can knock their teeth out."

Aibhlinn let out a slightly hysterical laugh. "Careful, Albara, but it does indeed look like you're giving a shit."

Albara sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. "My question would like an answer, Aibhlinn."

"Doctor Albara, a magician never reveals her sources." Aibhlinn's smile was secretive and quirked, making Albara want to strangle the girl more than he already did.

"You got it from Steven Livenski for fifty credits per two millilitres."

Aibhlinn narrowed her eyes. "Buggering mind reader," she accused.

Albara nodded curtly, "I'll be sure to add that to my résumé," he deadpanned. "Anything else you have planned for today?"

"Got class in about forty minutes. Klingon II."

"What languages don't you know?" asked Albara, mock jokingly.

"Well," began Aibhlinn, at her most droll, "My Mandarin is excellent, as is my Irish. Then there's Ancient Greek and Latin—for the medical degree, you understand—and then, when I was really, really bored one summer, I decided to dabble in the romantic tongues."

Albara scoffed, crossing his arms almost defensively against his chest. "And Klingon is gonna help round out French and Italian?"

"And Spanish," added Aibhlinn with a coy smile. "And, for the record, you'd be amazed at how many cognates Klingon has with French." She smiled absently and patted his cheek in a decidedly un-condescending fashion. "Now, don't you start fretting, mother hen. I have just long enough for me to grab a kip and a bite before we launch into the nuances of past participle." Aibhlinn strode forward with her satchel shouldered and Albara's confiscated thermos held tightly in hand. "But no matter, Albara. I'll sleep, I'll threaten Lorelei to get started on fixing that blasted synthesiser, and I'll be on my merry way to receiving my lovely and ill-seized doctorate once more."

Robert Albara watched Aibhlinn Pope walk across the quad towards the dining hall on the far side of the campus, ready to run if she tripped over her own feet and brained herself as he had predicted. Damn kid, he thought, scowl planted on his face as she finally disappeared into a crowd of Cadet First Classes.

With an absent shrug, he headed to the Infirmary, twenty-six minutes late for his rotation and one thermos short. Again.

Dr. Aibhlinn Pope and Dr. Robert Albara met in a way that would not look out of place in most cheaply reproduced cinematics of the day. Now, most knew that one's admittance to Starfleet Academy was strictly based on one's performance during the official selection process.

Aibhlinn, upon being retrieved by Haulbowline Island—along with twenty-two other recruits at 0800 exactly on the dot—had been taken not to the famous Academy located in scenic San Francisco, but to a grandiose marble building in New York City. Stepping out in her freshly replicated reds, holding onto her cover in the windy evening, Aibhlinn was left to assume that the grandiose marble building (with accompanying lion statues) was a library in a past life.

It was there that she was grilled by senior officers in starched black uniforms and unsmiling psychiatrists with impenetrable faces and inquiries thousands of miles long. Following that, she was made to take tests on advanced warp applications, complex mathematics and physics, all matters of chemistry and general biology and basic histories of planets belonging to the United Federation of Planets. By the end of what she assumed was the entrance seminar, Aibhlinn was tired, she felt old, and she needed a drink sorely. It was not all for naught, because at the end of those six weeks in the first circle of Hell, she and fifty-six out of 109 remained in the old library.

The shuttlecraft that picked them up from the marble building was a welcome site to Aibhlinn, who had longed to see New York City for as long as she had been alive. She had stumbled aboard, strapped herself in, and shut her eyes before the seat had even adjusted to her body. So deep asleep was she, she was completely deaf to the commanding officer (a slight woman in her late forties) who shouted for any Medical tracks to stay put when they landed next.
Maybe if she listened, she wouldn't have landed in her predicament.

Then again, she wouldn't have met Dr. Albara.

One thirty kilometer run, advanced stage myonecrosis (courtesy of some snake native to the Mojave Desert), a swollen larynx, and moderate heat stroke equated to one very, very severe misunderstanding and, in the end, Aibhlinn did have to sit back and ask herself—while choking on air that just wouldn't come—if it was all really worth it.

Now, she had blacked out on the emergency shuttle craft from the middle of nowhere to what she hoped was the Academy and not a similar track to be done in the Antarctic snow. Words at that point had become jumbled hodgepodges of sound, but she was able to ascertain certain phrases. Among those were:

"Can we save the leg?"

"Why did a Hippy run the course? Thought we made that prerequisite illegal after the last one…"

"Did you say her name was Pope? As in Xue Pope?"

God, it always came back to her mother.

Before she could protest, tell the pathetic intern that nepotism would get her nowhere after that horrific falling-out six years past, Aibhlinn's poor larynx decided enough was enough, and swelled shut enough to warrant a manual intubation—something she was well versed in, as the tiny clinics in Ireland where she practiced most of her time didn't decide to move out of the twentieth century, let alone into the twenty-third.

When Aibhlinn had initially woken up the first time, she felt nothing but a brimming ache and and a tidal churning in her gut. Vision was sloppy at best, and sound was a disjointed harmony worthy of the worst childhood orchestra. Aibhlinn noticed—in her hazy mind—that she had been sequestered on a biobed in the midst of a bustling Infirmary. Said biobed was whirring with life, distributing the antivenin and fluids and pain medication that she desperately needed to her entirely overtaxed system via the catheter inserted in the inside of her elbow. Two cool, dry fingers were pressed against her swollen throat, there ten seconds, then off. Maybe she had asked a question, maybe she had whimpered low in her throat from the pain.

Well, it was really a warning.

Holding her stomach, Aibhlinn had the foresight to roll onto her side and vomit over the biobed, onto the shoes that belonged to the individual with the cool, dry fingers. All she could remember after that was a quiet murmur, the soft hiss of a depressing hypospray in her ear.

Then nothing.

The second time she had come to, that same someone with the cool, dry hands was probing her neck for damage, whispering words to a nurse beside him. There was far less activity now and Aibhlinn felt a little calmer than before (whether from the lack of external stimuli or the sedative dispersing in her bloodstream, she didn't know). As soon as she realized they were there, the hands were gone. A comforting beep was affirmed by the biobed as a vial of anti-inflammatory (she presumed) was inserted into the dispenser. Then the hands were back on the side of her neck, feeling for her pulse as she slid back into unconsciousness.

The final time she had dragged herself out of unconsciousness, Aibhlinn was alone. The only sign of life was the still-illuminated nurse's station, which was monitoring every active bed for change in status. She wearily righted herself after staring at the dim ceiling above her head for several dragging minutes, staving off the shaking in her muscles and the residual nausea churning in her gut in small increments. Her 'bed had been placed out by the nurse's station, unable to be housed within the privacy-screened rooms due to sheer influx, which explained why it had been so busy around her when she had first woken up.

The Infirmary was dark now; the chrono above the wall leading to precious freedom gently read 20:00 in bright blue. No one had come to discharge her in the three hours she had been awake, and she was about ready to climb the walls.

Crossing her aching leg over her lap, Aibhlinn let her head drop back against the cool metal wall and massaged the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. The debriefing packet that had been sent to her PADD (which she had finally requested from one of the nurses) was clear in its instructions (it should be, after the seventeenth time of her perusal of it): orientation tomorrow at 0730. Classes would begin in full the following day, directly after commencement. Her dorm would be in Callahan Square, adjacent from the overcrowded higher tech Archer Hall where they normally shoved first year cadets.

Her roommate was listed in uncaring black letters on the final page: JACKSON, LORELEI.

Aibhlinn only hoped it was not the Orion.

Just as she was contemplating leaving without discharge, hacking into her records and signing herself out AMA, someone cleared their throat to her immediate right. Exhausted, Aibhlinn opened that eye, taking in the bleary, double image of a handsome resident standing before her. He was young, from what she could discern, a handful of years older than her at most, with curling black hair and what she assumed was green eyes. What pulled her attention the most, however, was the fact that he was still bedecked in his civvies, and the accent.

Aibhlinn groaned. She knew that accent well.

"I've got your discharge papers," he said, holding out his PADD and a stylus. "I hope I don't have to tell you what you have to do?"

Her mood worsened, if possible.

"Fluids, rest, avoid drinking alcohol when in the desert, which, now that I think about it, had exacerbated the onset of heat exhaustion." She grunted, scrubbing a hand down her face. "Don't need a bleeding Limey from Yorkshire telling me what I already know." Aibhlinn reached for the board limply, eyes sliding shut once more.

"Pack the sass away," he snarked. "I had to scrub your sick off my shoes for an hour."

"Congrats, Mama," snapped Aibhlinn.

"Here we go again," bit out the resident. "I'm tired, I've been treating stupid cadets for nigh on thirty hours, and I don't want to be here as much as you do, so sign the buggering papers or I will inject your arse with every single hypo I have in my disposal, Papa."

Aibhlinn felt the edge of the PADD connect with her hand and lightly thunked it down in her lap, stylus loose in her fist because holding it upright would have been a pointless effort.

"All right, all right, relax," she muttered lowly, sufficiently chastised. "You calling me "Papa", is that like a sex thing?"

"Sign the damn discharge papers."

Signing her name (not because she was ordered to, but because she wanted to), Aibhlinn left the PADD in her lap, simply because lifting anything at the moment seemed like lifting the core of a neutron star. She was not like the comic book god she had read about when she was a child. It was impossible.

A cool hand touched her forehead, reminding her of her stints of unconsciousness before. It lingered there comfortingly for a few seconds before sliding down to her throat again.

"Nauseous? Dizzy? Confused?" the doctor inquired lowly.

Aibhlinn weakly swatted his hand away. "Take me out to dinner first, fella. Hell, I don't even know your name."

"Robert Albara."

"Aibhlinn Pope."

There was a pause. "However the hell that's spelled on your forms, it doesn't sound like an Evelyn."

Again Aibhlinn opened a singular eye. "Because it's spelled A-I-B-H-L-I-N-N."

"You got a nickname?" he inquired, "'cos that's one hell of a mouthful."

"You ask a lot of questions for a doctor who's supposed to be discharging me."

"Impatient, aren't you?"

"Only in the face of rampant idiocy."

"I'm not letting you out until you can open both your eyes."

"I already signed the discharge forms. You can't hold me here against my will."

"Too fucking bad. Open those undoubtedly pretty eyes for me, Aibhlinn."

"Oh Robert, you say the sweetest things."

"Don't make me sedate your arse and put you back on this 'bed."

Exhausted, Aibhlinn managed to tear open her eyes, blinking against the soft light to glare up at Robert.

He glared right back.

"May I leave now, Doctor?" she snarled.

Robert scrutinised her up and down with a critical eye, trying to find any reason at all to keep her on the 'bed for a moment longer. After a long minute of threatening glares and nonverbal warnings, Robert turned around, leant over the streamlined, chromium edge of the nurse's station, and lifted a familiar sight into the air.

"My satchel," said Aibhlinn, reaching for the cracked leather bag with sore arms. "How—"

"A resident brought it with him when you and Cadet Jackson were brought in," said Robert. "I kept it behind so no one would peek through it. Now go to your dorm and get in as much sleep as you can."

The present found Aibhlinn yawning hugely into the crook of her elbow as she valiantly attempted to keep herself vertical. Her exhaustion knew no bounds, exceeding any calculable number that she could think of offhandedly (which, at the moment, were very few, but damn did she know a lot of numbers). The whole problem, she knew, was the fact that residual caffeine from the uncountable cups she had replicated (before the synth unit locked her out and her medical override got pinged in the system log) paraded through her blood at a near glacial pace, though she had to admit it was most likely the only thing keeping her conscious and responsive. The sludge in her system made her left hand tremble slightly and clouded her brain, making her feel sleepy and stupid.

Blinking blearily, Aibhlinn forced her eyes to focus on the panel of medical screens on the wall before her. The observation room for the Academy's prerequisite training simulations were situated above the simulation rooms themselves. They were able to monitor everything from cadet communications, to the biosigns of any cadet. Those were transmitted by a small, dissolvable implant injected directly under the skin of the arm, to any of the multiple screens positioned at intervals and stations throughout the suite not dedicated to manipulating certain variables of the simulation. The medical screen that Aibhlinn was stationed at was split up into sixteen smaller screens, each bearing a cadet's name, their role in the simulation in question, and other important information such as medical concerns that would allow her to determine if the sim overseers should pull the cadet before a non-simulated medical emergency occurred.

Though, at the moment, her making an accurate diagnosis was as unlikely as the Klingons becoming travelling monks of pacificity.

Another huge yawn overtook her. God, what she would do for a cuppa right now.

Resisting the herculean urge to yawn once more, Aibhlinn glanced down at the sim floor through the observation room's window. It was laid out like some exotic rainforest, containing its own biosphere and environmental variables that the overseers could manipulate at will. Sixteen cadets were lined up in a smaller holding directly below them. From word-of-mouth, Aibhlinn knew that the prep room was where the training officer would outfit the sim cadets and inform them of their objective and roles in the sim at hand.

A cursory glance at the medscreen showed increased levels of adrenaline and increased heart rate, but none outside of normal parameters. From what she heard, it wasn't abnormal for a cadet to be pulled before the sim even began, especially when the sim was set at this difficulty.

The numbers, at that point, began to blur together until they appeared like a large smear of light across the screen. Blinking much slower this time, Aibhlinn reached for her thermos, momentarily forgetting that it was still in the tiny kitchenette beside the replicator where Gennifer had left it three hours previous.
Even after she had crawled into bed, it had been impossible to sleep. After several minutes of tossing and turning, Aibhlinn had given up on the concept of sleep and returned to her work. She spent the early morning deciphering complex DNA and RNA strands typical to the herpes simplex viruses, and viruses similar to it, until the helixes really did begin to resemble intertwined pasta as Lorelei had so helpfully giggled out hours previous. By the time Aibhlinn had crawled back into bed, it had been oh-six-thirty. Gennifer's arrival an hour previous, bearing not only her blessed thermos but a data packet containing Cadet Huang's medical history, only solidified her hypothesis that she would need a minimum of ten cups of coffee to function marginally beyond affirmative or negative grunts the next day, if at all. The only positive thing she had gotten from the long night was a few proven theories from that data packet, which wasn't much.

For example, Cadet Huang had been admitted to Starfleet Medical over twenty-seven times during his course at the Academy as a dramatis persona. That count was beyond normal and the mere fact had Aibhlinn scratching her head in defeat, because what injuries (which were not officially filed with Starfleet) had been so severe as to warrant repeat hospitalisation? The contents of his visits were sealed by a member of the cadre with clearance that far outranked her pathetic standing as Cadet Third Class, and Lorelei had outright refused to infiltrate the database on what Aibhlinn had believed was pure spite alone. Despite that, Aibhlinn was able to ascertain at some point in the early hours that Huang had indeed contracted genital herpes within three weeks of his demise, but without the files, she had no blood work to compare the autopsy results with.

Again Aibhlinn found herself stonewalled.

Aibhlinn sighed and crossed her arms, only just registering the unfamiliar weight of a takeaway cup clenched in her left hand. Nearly dropping it in surprise, she turned, stared up at the older cadet beside her, and gaped stupidly.

Finally, she summoned enough functional brain cells to choke out a sleepy, "Doctor Albara," in greeting, before turning back to the screen in an attempt to look like she was doing her job.

The older cadet spared Aibhlinn a sideways glance that bespoke nothing before nodding politely and pocketing himself tighter into his jacket.

"Doctor Pope," he returned neutrally.

"Aren't you due at St. Mary's?"

"In about an hour. Don't you have a sim to oversee, Doctor?"

"Why do you keep doing that?" Aibhlinn blurted out.

Doctor Albara averted his attention from the medscreens to stare down at her. The older man towered over her by at least half a head, his stiff back and unsmiling features only strengthening Aibhlinn's belief that there truly wasn't a pleasant bone in his body. He arched an eyebrow, as if to say, "Doing what?"

"Last I checked," clarified Aibhlinn, "I'm not exactly a properly licensed doctor," She paused as a brief alarm chimed, signalling to the observers and cadets that the sim had begun. Both she and Albara diverted their full attention to the screens. "Well," she continued in a lower voice, "according to the cadre at least."

Albara scoffed at that. "You go to medical school?" he asked, crossing his arms against his chest, sipping from his takeaway cup.

"Royal College of Physicians."

"You write a dissertation?"

"Yes."

"On what?"

"Clinical, neurological, and anthropological study of patients afflicted with Iverson's Disease."

"And was it approved?"

"Yes."

"Then you deserve that title. Don't let those Starfleet eggheads tell you any different."

Aibhlinn shrugged noncommittally and sipped at her coffee, nearly gagging on the sour taste. "Ugh…disgusting replicator shite," she grumbled, glaring at the takeaway cup.

Her companion chuckled. "Well, we're all not blessed with an Admiral or Captain's rank, so we don't get the good stuff."

"God forbid they give the cadets anything good." She paused, stared down at her takeaway cup in abject shock, then up at Albara, as if she had discovered the secrets of the universe. "Jesus, Mary, and Holy Saint Joseph."

"What?"

"I need to give you back your thermos."

"Yes you do, you little prat."

Aibhlinn smiled affectionately and elbowed him in the side. "Go on; you've wasted enough time with me," she said sweetly. "Don't want you to be late on your first day of rotations."

He snorted, but nonetheless went to leave.

"I always waste time on you," he said, turning the collar of his coat up against the chilly November air.

"Oh, Albara, you say the sweetest—"

Aibhlinn's "things" was left unsaid as an alert flashed warningly in red on a the middle left hand centre medscreen. Holding her breath, Aibhlinn was forced to wait as the millisecond delay made her wait.

Injuries registering... injuries registering... Standby.

Falling silent, Aibhlinn watched intently as injuries scrolled across the screen. Before they had even stopped, she had thrust her takeaway cup at Albara—who managed to juggle it, and his own—and manipulate the screen to pull up the biosigns of the cadet in question. Cursing roundly, she rushed toward the transporter pad, shouting "Pull Vepea out now!" at the top of her lungs.

The transporter pad situated by the sim overseers was empty one minute, than full the next, holding the akimbo body of a young woman. Dropping to her knees beside the girl, Aibhlinn barely registered the snapped, "Report, Cadet Pope."

"Cadet Vepea was caught in a simulated rock slide, which shattered the vertebrae between T5 and T9 and crushed her chest. Death was almost instantaneous," she said, nigh emotionlessly. "Non-simulated injuries sustained are mild concussion, three bruised ribs, left side, fractured sternum, and what appears to be slight swelling within the spinal cavity."

Without prompting, she leaned over to a console and commandeered an instructor's communicator.

"I'm sending a communiqué to Medical, alerting them to a grade D spinal injury and mild concussion," she continued, relaying the information as Albara directed, "The cadet is stable and responsive, and has been administered four hundred milligrams of ibuprofen to counteract swelling."

"Medical has received emergency call and is en route with a transport," came the voice of the instructor whose communicator she had taken. Smiling, she handed it back over while she affixed a cervical collar around the unconscious cadet's neck.

Albara, she noticed, had come back around to stand over her like a hawk, coffee balanced in hand.

"Not a doctor my arse," he said, handing her coffee over.

Aibhlinn grunted something vaguely affirmative and waved him out the door.

"Send me a communiqué when you get to civilization," was all she said in goodbye.

Unhappily, Albara complied.

With a sigh, Aibhlinn called up the other cadet's biosigns on her personal PADD, afraid to move Cadet Vepea for fear of damaging her neck further. Four other cadets had sustained minor injuries in the same rockslide that 'killed' the young cadet beside her. They ranged from broken bones to scraped knees, nothing too serious. Another, however, was nursing a moderate phaser burn to the right quadriceps—though not severe enough to warrant removal from the sim.

The doors to the observation room opened, disgorging two Medical officers bearing an anti-grav stretcher. Aibhlinn stood uncomfortably, back protesting and PADD hanging limply from her hand.

"What's the cause of death?" asked one of the officers, pulling up the cadet's info packet.

"Commander Alessandra Vepea died of a traumatic spinal injury cause by a seismic event on an unexplored Class-M planet."

Once the Medical officer dutifully recorded the cadet's false cause of death, Aibhlinn shrunk the screen back to its original sixteen—now fifteen—squares.

"I thought first-year training sims didn't include simulated science expeditions on unexplored Class-M planets with unstable tectonic events," she quipped negatively, glancing at the observation window positioned to the left of her. The cadet with the phaser burn was being led by another, stumbling blindly over large roots and upturned trees. Aibhlinn shook her head in disgust as the healthy cadet jerked the injured one back to his feet. It wasn't the first time she had seen a cadet try to get out of the sim by fabricating medical emergencies."This is a third-year sim," said the officer as they prepared Cadet Vepea to leave,

"I'd hate to see what a fourth-year sim looks like," Aibhlinn muttered to herself, no longer attentive to the two officers and their charge. She was too busy tracking the injured cadet silently. He could no longer walk, feet trailing lamely beneath him as his mate supported him under the arm and around the waist.

The injured cadet was still conscious according to the medscreen. Curious, Aibhlinn commanded a section of the observation screen to focus closer on the pair. A section of the window, the size of her PADD, cordoned itself off from the rest of the surface and projected a zoomed view of the pair as they trudged through the jungle, simulated fauna trailing after them with warning growls and rustling bushes. Meditatively swirling the remaining contents of her takeaway cup in hand, Aibhlinn manipulated the view to the forefront, focused upon the cadet's face, and watched as his lips move in what she assumed was a silent prayer.

Screw her original diagnosis. The cadet looked fucking horrible.

"Computer, can you give me the vitals for Madsen?" she inquired quietly.

With a polite sounding chime, the computer complied, isolating the cadet's individual screen and allowing it to take up the majority of the medscreen's space. Checking her communicator, she saw a single text communiqué from Albara:

If St. Mary's is civilization, I'll eat my hat.

Not taking her eyes off the fluctuating vital signs, she fired back a very quick message:

Eat your hat then. Quick: Madsen has an erratic heart rate, his blood pressure is tanking, and he's got a bit of a fever.

Albara's reply was almost instantaneous.

Define "erratic" and "tanking".

She replied: Signs of tachycardia with correlating low blood pressure.

This time, Albara didn't deign it worthy enough to reply via text. He called instead. This, the cadre took offense to, but Aibhlinn ignored their pointed stares and dirty looks as she answered Albara's insistent communiqué.

"This is Pope."

"If his heart doesn't improve soon, than you pull him." Albara spoke quietly on the other line; Aibhlinn could hear hospital noises in the background. "If what you say is true, you could have a cardiac event on our hands."

Aibhlinn pursed her lips and destroyed the screen with a wipe of her hand. "I'll keep that in mind."

"No thank you?"

"I'm too tired for thank you." Taking a sip of her lukewarm takeaway coffee, Aibhlinn thoughtfully shook her cup in hand and stared through the medscreens. She stared at the lid of her takeaway cup (which was far emptier than she would have liked) and hummed to herself. "Up all night."

"Dealing with Lorelei muttering in German or…"

Aibhlinn scoffed and nodded. "Yeah. What you said."

"Got any ideas yet?"Aibhlinn shrugged awkwardly. "Not much, and nowhere near enough to ward off the inevitable inquiry." She pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh. "It's like someone took the thing, erased the payload, and inputted their own package inside so it looks like the first thing, but doesn't act like it."

"You think it was manufactured?"

Caught between shrugging and banging herself into a concussion against the polished chromium walls that she could practically see herself in, Aibhlinn resisted the urge to groan and buried her face in her coffee instead. "I don't bloody know. Hell, I don't even know how I'm standing right now." She sighed again, and said, "Look, I'll call later. Some of the fellas are starting to give me the evil eye."

Without waiting for a response, she pocketed her communicator and sipped on her coffee prudently.

However, her peace did not last forever.

The medscreen on the upper right let out a tinny, pinging alarm that shook Aibhlinn firmly out of her caffeine-induced haze. It was far more urgent sounding than the small ping that had brought her attention to the plight of Cadet Vepea.

"Oh fuck—"

Turning her head so fast her neck cracked, Aibhlinn focused on the young cadet with the phaser burn. His heart rate had plummeted, blood pressure dropping in sick accompaniment. Aibhlinn felt the litany of fucks in her head increase.

"Get him out of there!" she barked to the overseers. "Get him out of there now!"

She darted for the transporter pad, letting her takeaway cup drop to the floor without a second thought, spilling its precious cargo upon the pristine deck. Aibhlinn was beside the 'pad before the cadet was beamed up from the sim, lying upon the cool metal like a cut marionette, lifeless and broken, in the same contorted position he had 'died' in.

"Help me get him off the 'pad," she snapped to no one, dropping to one knee before the downed cadet. A sim overseer was at her side in a heartbeat, lifting the cadet by his feet in tandem with Aibhlinn's lifting of his shoulders. The cadet was absolute deadweight; the smell of cauterised flesh soured her stomach. Once the cadet was clear of the transporter pad, she dug into her emergency kit for her tricorder. Taking a moment to let it power on, she cycled through its functions until she found the application for trauma diagnosis.

"Acute hypoxemia," she read off. Placing the tricorder beside her, Aibhlinn loaded a cartridge of vasopressin into the hypospray she dug out of her bag—she thanked whatever deity there was that Lorelei hadn't gotten to her medkit in search of some nondescript part for whatever she was fiddling on—and depressed it into his neck.

"He's succumbed to shock," she said, finding herself reaching for his wrist, using those antiquated methods she prided herself on knowing to check for herself. No pulse. No vascular tone. Laboured breathing. Aibhlinn dragged herself by her hands to the cadet's feet and propped them up on her lap.

"Tachycardic arrhythmia," she said to the sim overseer, looking down at the poor, unconscious cadet. "If you could place an emergency communiqué to the Infirm?"

"Already done," he said. "They're sending over a stretcher."

Aibhlinn nodded, thanking that same deity for a member of the cadre with blessed common sense, and returned her attention to the cadet. He was thankfully coming around, mumbling incoherent nonsense under his breath. His head lolled weakly, brow furrowing in distress.

"Just breathe," she murmured softly, awkwardly reaching over him to press a hand against the cadet's sweaty forehead. "You're doing fine, love. Just brilliant."

The cadet let out a weak groan, exhaling sharply between parted lips. Responsive, Aibhlinn thought. Brilliant.

"He's coming around," she said to no one in particular. She could almost imagine Albara touching Aibhlinn's elbow. You can stop panicking, his hand would seem to say. She settled instead for smoothing the cadet's hair back. He responded to her touch, fingers spasming against the floor, eyes flickering beneath closed lids. He tried to shape words, incoherent sounds emerging as faint whispers.

"Do you know where you are?" Aibhlinn asked quietly, pitching her voice towards the most calming tone she was capable of. She had taken the most basic emergency response training as was required for her, but the same three commands had been drilled into her as if she were a professional emergency first responder:

Don't alarm. Check.

Don't move unless necessary. Transporter pad needed to be cleared. Check anyway.

Call for help. Check.

The cadet's head lolled in her direction, eyes slitting open a fraction. "…trainin'…"

Aibhlinn let out a relieved sigh. No permanent brain damage. "Excellent. Can you tell me your name?"

"...'m Madsen. Leo Madsen. Cadet First Class."

"Good," exhaled Aibhlinn. Each word assuaged her fear that the cadet was going to be fine, far better than Albara's imaginary hand on her elbow. "You're going to be just fine, Madsen."

Madsen nodded limply, blinking. "Why can't I see you?" he murmured. "My eyes are open but I can't see."

Aibhlinn felt as if she had been slapped in the face. The blind stumbling she had witnessed on the observation monitor had not been an act as she had originally thought. The cadet really was blind, and she didn't know why. Her gaze darted to his unresponsive eyes. Don't alarm, she thought.

"The phaser may have been set too high," she soothed, hand touching the side of his face gently. "That could have sent a neural overload through your body, temporarily deadening many of your nerve endings—of which the visual cortex is a part of. It's treatable, and your vision will return once we give you a couple rounds of nerve regen, and your body has a chance to heal."

The cadet seemed placated at that, for his head dropped back to the floor and his eyes drifted shut. Aibhlinn felt terrible for lying (very badly) to the cadet, but it was far better than the alternatives.

What happened? she found herself wondering, once the cadet drifted off. She had only looked away for a moment; Aibhlinn cursed softly. That one moment was enough. She didn't want to think on it if that lapse in concentration had been any longer. On an instinctual level, Aibhlinn knew it was coming—the inevitable catastrophic drop in blood pressure and heart rate. She was a fool not to pull him sooner.

However, there was no longer any time to lament her poor judgement. The observation room's doors opened, disgorging two medical officers with yet another anti-grav stretcher borne between them. She informed one of the medics of Cadet Madsen's condition while the sim overseer and the other medic lifted the ill cadet from the floor and deposited him on the stretcher.

"I'm going to go with him," she said to the medic on duty,

"Sims aren't due over for another half-hour," said the sim overseer who had assisted her.

Aibhlinn wheeled on him, fire burning low in her gut. "This man is now my patient, sir. I'm honor-bound to accompany him to Infirm and ensure he receives the best treatment possible."

"Thank you for your concern, cadet," said the medic with little more than a nod in her direction. "But you really aren't needed on these matters."

And with that, they left, leaving Aibhlinn alone.

"Cadet," said a lieutenant off to the side. He was the head of the sim oversight for the semester, an unkind man with the beginnings of a round belly. "You have fourteen cadets left to observe. Might I suggest you get on that."

Aibhlinn heard the threat in his voice. Staring at her shaking hands, she clenched them tightly into fists.

"Yes, sir."

"I already am in the shit. Who gives a damn if I bury myself a little deeper if I was a few minutes late?"

"The cadre does."

Aibhlinn rolled her eyes and shifted her legs uncomfortably from where they were propped on the desk of the monitoring station. They were starting to go numb from the position; eyeing the monitor in front of her, she watched Albara's haggard face draw into an almost amused grimace.

"Cadre can go feckin' stuff themselves for all I care," muttered Aibhlinn. "Fèi wù huàidàn sons of bitches they are."

"You know," said Albara crossly, "I have no idea what you just said, but I know it's nothing good."

Without missing a beat, Aibhlinn replied, "Wǒ gōngsī měi yī shùnjiān yòu yīgè bǎozàng tuōsú."

"Haha. Keep mocking me."

Peeking up at the slightly bustling Emergency Department, Aibhlinn cast a glance back at Albara, a smile playing on her extremely exhausted face.

"I'll see you after my shift for a nice pint of Arthurs," she said.

"It's a date. Now shoo."

Aibhlinn offered him a mocking, two-fingered salute as she turned the terminal off. Only then did she allow herself to sink into her chair and drag her hand down her face.

The sims had ended with half of the cadets being pulled. The remaining had moved onto "surviving without off-planet assistance on a Class-M planet". No sooner had the relieving doctor arrived in the staging area, Aibhlinn had stepped over her spilled coffee with nary a glance in it's direction. Sick to her stomach with worry, all she could think of was Cadet Madsen laying still, breathing shallowly, his face pale and clammy and unresponsive. What truly bothered her was his record; there was no feasible reason as to why a perfectly healthy cadet would suffer from sudden onset cortical blindness, when his record was clear of any complications.

Nevertheless, she had maneuvered her bag higher up on her shoulder, she hustled over to Infirm as fast as her legs could carry her. The nurse on duty was extremely unhelpful, decrying regulations and "doctor-patient confidentiality". Aibhlinn had leant over the desk, found her signature and SMC number, and ejected a PADD with his information with nary a smile in her direction.

Still in her reds, boot heels clicking on the chromium floor, Aibhlinn slid into Cadet Madsen's room, and spent more time than she would have liked sitting beside him with two fingers on the pulse of his wrist. He didn't stir once, and she ignored all communiqués from Albara as they came.

After an hour had passed and the sun had long since set, Aibhlinn stopped a resident she was used to doing rotations with (a rich boy whose dad sat high up in Medical), leaving him with strict instructions to comm her if the cadet's condition changed at all.

His response:

"Dr. Pope, why would it change? He's fine here."

Aibhlinn didn't have the strength to argue with him. Gripping his arm tightly in silent goodbye, she made her way over to the transportation hub, just outside of the Academy gates. The whole thing—from Cadet Huang's crash to Cadet Madsen's blindness—was like an itch she couldn't seem to scratch. Staring out the window, she fingered her communicator, watching the Presidio fade, watching Alcatraz pass on the horizon. She almost didn't get off when the shuttlecraft pilot announced their arrival at Medical: the final stop on the loop before they circled back to the Academy.

Again, she ignored a comm from Albara.

Like the previous night, the Emergency department was void of life, filled occasionally by a few minor injures that the Infirmary at Starfleet Academy couldn't handle. No sooner was she through the door, Aibhlinn was accosted by a diplomat's daughter in the throes of a schizophrenic episode, the victim of a fourth year ensign's engineer thesis, and a single hypochondriac cadet who had managed to convince himself that his on-again off-again girlfriend back in his native Iran had somehow managed to give him Andorian shingles. Unable to be convinced that a perfectly healthy human girl vaccinated against Andorian shingles could neither pass nor contract the exovirus, Aibhlinn had no choice but to sedate the cadet, or face another three hours listening to him whimper on and on about how his eyeballs were going to fall out and his skin was going to come off in layers.

And that was before she even had a chance to visit the lockers.

Leaning back in her seat, Aibhlinn marked a young cadet who had been admitted with appendicitis for discharge, and watched the slow progression of the medical staff across the floor. Emergency duty, she decided bleakly, was to be reserved for Hell's worst offenders.

"Any change in our hypochondriac?" asked Gennifer.

Aibhlinn lowered her legs with undue drama, rotated in her seat, and arched an eyebrow at her friend. "Why should you even ask?" she inquired, reaching beside her to grab at her thermos. Without breaking eye contact, she sipped at her coffee. "There's nothing wrong with him."

"True, but a change would mean he's waking up."

Aibhlinn snorted and crossed her arms. "And I can't wait for it to wear off. He'll probably think he's dying."

Gennifer laughed and pointed to the clock above the main operating theatre. "Six o'clock. Your turn for rounds, Alby."

Aibhlinn groaned and let her head fall back. "Are you sure it's not Doctor Leeare's turn?" she asked, opening a hopeful eye.

"Sorry, no," Gennifer said, moving into the monitoring station to take Aibhlinn's soon to be vacated seat. "Leeare has rounds in PEDS—"

"—Why Medical wasted money on a Paediatrics wing, I'll never know—"

"—so you're covering for her until her relief comes out of surgery."

Aibhlinn rolled her eyes and stood, taking one last bracing sip of her coffee. Gennifer handed her an electronic clipboard and made sure Aibhlinn's badge and credentials were properly secured to the waistband of her scrubs. It almost felt like she was being dressed for battle.

"Anyone I should see to first?" Aibhlinn inquired, pulling up the list of patients in Emergency. Six names appeared in a large list, arranging themselves in priority, but the computer tended to prioritize wrong; the human aspect was something she valued above all else. The one thing she ever took away from her trauma residency was to always go with her gut.

"That cadet from the sims is still asleep," Gennifer said. Aibhlinn highlighted her name on the clipboard. "Check on the spinal swelling. If it hasn't increased, page Admissions and find her a room. If it's increased and has begun pinching the spinal cord, page Doctor Uduga in neurosurgery immediately."

"I can't believe they haven't moved her yet," Aibhlinn muttered, pulling up the remaining names. Two cadets were in from the Infirmary with major concussions and several broken bones—Parisi Squares, Aibhlinn thought—and a desk officer was in with a minor epileptic episode (which were chronic—but manageable—according to his file). Her hypochondriac was still sedated, leaving him last.

"There's another cadet with a broken leg. If he's finished with the osteo-regenerator, clear him for discharge."

Aibhlinn nodded. "I'll see him after the two arses who decided Parisi Squares was a perfectly safe game to play," she said, vacating her seat.

Gennifer laughed and slid into Aibhlinn's chair. "Have fun," she said, "and don't scare them, Papa!"

"No promises!" Aibhlinn called back as she left the monitoring station. Checking the clipboard, she noticed that the very top, where internal messages were received, was beginning to flash yellow. Pausing in an alcove that lead off to the surgical theaters, Aibhlinn pressed it.

Immediately, her clipboard lit up with a communications transcript:

Medical Base, we're inbound with the graduate ensign. Grade 3 concussion; signs of crush syndrome.

Stabilize, Medical 451. Trauma Room 1 is clear.

Copy, Medical Base. Ten minutes outbound.

Heart in her throat, Aibhlinn pulled up the communications queue, and fired off a quick text communiqué to Lorelei. Given her priority as a doctor, she was unashamed to watch her communiqué crest the top of the queue, and be sent within seconds of entering the massive queue. After a few heart pounding minutes with no reply on either the clipboard, or her personal communicator, Aibhlinn hustled back to the monitoring station, where Gennifer was bent over the test results of a patient waiting for surgery.

"Done already?" she inquired without looking up.

"Haven't even started," minutes, said Aibhlinn. "There's a trauma case incoming."

"Trauma cases come everyday, Alby. It's no cause to shirk your other duties."

"But—"

"Dr. Pope," said Gennifer sternly. "Go on your rounds. Don't make me say it again."

It was like she'd been slapped. Aibhlinn stiffened, feeling the very beginnings of betrayal on her face, and nodded stiffly.

"Yes, ma'am," she said.

Shoulders stiff, Aibhlinn clenched her hand around the clipboard with more force than was necessary, and made her way across the floor to the sim cadet's room.

Cadet Vepea lay peacefully upon her biobed, monitors keeping track of things like oxygen saturation, blood pressure, and heart rate. A quick check of the readouts showed that the swelling hand neither bettered nor worsened, which was the better option of the three. Unfortunately, that middle ground still left room for something to go wrong. Shaking her head, Aibhlinn minimised the screen and pulled up the girl's neurological scans. The cadet was leaving REM sleep, slowly crawling back to consciousness. It would save Aibhlinn time to wait for the cadet to wake up.

"Cadet Vepea?" she asked softly. "Can you hear me?"

The cadet nodded after a moment, face pinching with pain as she became more and more aware. Aibhlinn softly commanded the biobed to increase her morphine intake.

"I know these questions are going to seem pretty stupid, but you're going to need to answer them for me. Can you do that?"
Vepea nodded weakly.

"Name, cadet class?"

A moment passed. "Vepea, Alessandra. Cadet First Class."

"What do you remember last?"

"I was...taking a soil sample—a simulated one—on an unexplored Class-M planet."

Aibhlinn nodded and tapped a request in to Admissions. Once her request had been cleared, she tucked the clipboard against her hip and looked at the cadet. She looked pathetically vulnerable, reminding Aibhlinn of the young women she'd seen in many a clinic across Ireland. Aibhlinn allowed a small, comforting smile to flit briefly across her face.

"Everything seems grand," she assured, "but we want to make sure that the swelling in your spine stays down. We're going to keep you overnight and release you if it can stay down for twenty-four hours."

"What about my classes?" asked Vepea, an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice.

Aibhlinn smiled and patted her knee sympathetically. "I'm going to send a communiqué to your instructors. As for your coursework, I'm certain that your mates in class will bring your notes to you." Opening a medical communiqué, she attached the details of Cadet Vepea's injury to the Commandant of Cadets, with her own notes regarding follow-up and duty restrictions. "When we release you, I want you on strict bed rest for two days. Then light duty only, so no more sims, and no more Advanced Hand-To-Hand until you're cleared for full duty. If the pain comes back or gets worse, then come back to Medical immediately. Don't bother with Infirm; they'll just reroute you here and that's more time wasted.""Yes, Doctor," Vepea murmured, fiddling with the edge of her blankets.

"Not Doctor, just Cadet," she corrected impatiently. With a small wave goodbye, Aibhlinn left the cadet's bedside and made her way to the nurse's station adjacent to the monitoring station. There was a single nurse sitting there, filling out requests and processing test results. She glanced up at Aibhlinn as she approached.

"Make sure the cadet in Room 1B has enough morphine," she said, sending the request from her clipboard to the nurse. "Page admission, let them know to free up a bed for Cadet Vepea, Alessandra A. And start weaning the instructor in 2. He's to be discharged in one hour, and I'm sure that he's of no use to anyone stoned off his arse."

"Yes, doctor," the harried nurse said. Aibhlinn left the nurse's station with a quiet "Cadet, not Doctor," in correction and continued her rounds. There was two minutes left until the emergency shuttle was to arrive; Aibhlinn visited the two cadets with the concussions—who she reprimanded severely and adjusted treatment accordingly—and the cadet with the broken leg—who was in fact finished with the osteo-regenerator and ready for discharge.

"How are we doing, Cadet Dubaku?" asked Aibhlinn, almost on autopilot. She engaged the privacy screen one handed, PADD limp in her other hand, discharge papers already drawn up and prepared for filing.

The cadet in question—a young man in his early twenties—nodded politely at her. Aibhlinn stopped, stared at the black band of fabric wound about his right arm, and almost felt her PADD slip through her fingers.

"Nova Squadron?"

God, Aibhlinn hoped she didn't look as awestruck as she thought she looked.

Cadet Dubaku nodded; if Aibhlinn looked like a teenage girl who had just met her celebrity idol, then he didn't show it. "We have donned these in respect for Huang," he said, voice solemn and slow and affected with his native Twi-Fante.
Aibhlinn nodded, snapped herself out of the stupid Holy shite I hit the rainbow's end mindset and back into the careful professionalism she had cultured over the scant few years she had been a registered doctor.

"I performed his autopsy," continued Aibhlinn carefully.

She moved to sit when Dubaku gestured not politely but habitually to the uncomfortable plastic chair beside his 'bed. "I still don't know all the details, Dubaku. His body can only tell me so much, and trust me when I say he told me a lot already."

Dubaku stared at her, studied her with piercingly green eyes that almost made Aibhlinn shrink back.

Almost.

"We were completing manoeuvres as planned," said Dubaku evenly. "Nothing of note was out of the ordinary." Dubaku's gaze moved to study a patch of wall beside Aibhlinn's head. "Huang sounded odd however, towards the end of our final manoeuvre, right before…"

"Odd how?" prodded Aibhlinn as Dubaku trailed off, discharge forms forgotten as she began taking notes on her PADD. "Slow of speech? Slurring his words? Confused?"

Dubaku shook his head sagely. "Huang sounded odd, as if he had taken ill while we were flying," clarified the cadet. "Then we lost radio contact and his shuttle—"

"Was pulled into Saturn's gravity well." Aibhlinn paused. "Aren't all shuttles calibrated to withstand—"

"External gravity and magnetic interference?" Dubaku nodded solemnly. "Yes, Doctor. They are."

Aibhlinn resisted the urge to correct him. "The question then becomes," said Aibhlinn, "why Cadet Huang's shuttle was the only one to fall victim to Saturn's magnetic interference."

"It is possible," said Dubaku after a pause, "for a pilot to manually shut off dampeners and stabilisers and leave their craft exposed to the dangers of gravity and magnetic interference that could muddy with their ship's navigation and flight control."

Aibhlinn sat back, lowered her stylus, stared at Dubaku levelly. Oh God, it was making sense. "Is there any reason Victor would do that?" she inquired, for formality's sake.

Dubaku was silent for a long while, and then shook his head. "Huang was a brilliant pilot, Doctor. If he shut off the dampeners designed to shield him from the black, than it was under the influence of something."

"Something like drugs?"

"No. Not drugs."

"A medical crisis, then." Aibhlinn corrected. "Like a fit, or a lapse in cognitive ability, or—" the inability to see what the hell he was doing.

Dubaku looked stricken at the news. Gently, Aibhlinn placed a hand on his forearm. "We will get to the bottom of this, Dubaku," said Aibhlinn. "I promise you that." Standing, she addressed her PADD one final time. "Now, the leg is fine. No weakness, no pain. Light duty for twelve hours, than return to normal classes, all right?"

The cadet from Nova Squadron nodded and stood, eyeing Aibhlinn from his considerable height advantage over her.

"My squadron wants to know how Huang died so that we may properly mourn his passing," he said.

"And I promised you that I'd find out how he died, Cadet," said Aibhlinn, face as blank as Dubaku's was. "I'm not known for breaking my promises." She handed the PADD and her stylus to him. "Sign below and you're officially free to go."

Dubaku took the stylus, signed his name, and returned it to her hand.

"Be sure that you keep your promise, Doctor."

With no further communication with Aibhlinn, he left, leaving her in the now empty alcove with more questions than answers.

With a sigh, Aibhlinn slid the stylus home and exited, pausing only to input code on the touchpad just outside the door to signal Triage that the room was ready for use. She did not stop by the nurse's station to show them the signed discharge forms. Instead, she sent them electronically to the station, and headed to her last visit of the evening, until she was called to assist the trauma case. If she was asked to assist.

A light above the door leading to Medical's emergency shuttle bay began blinking the same yellow that had appeared on her clipboard. Pausing midway between the cadet's room and the door, she looked at Gennifer as the light changed color from blue to orange.

"Pope, go triage the intakes, now," she called over the din.

Aibhlinn didn't need to be told twice.

She placed her clipboard down on an abandoned supplies tray, grabbed a pair of microderm gloves out of a dispenser, and hustled out the door with a small group of residents, attendings, and a pair of nurses. The glass doors opened without any noise, breathing disinfecting air onto the small gathering; there were two emergency shuttlecrafts waiting in the entry bay, but only one was from Starfleet Medical. The second hailed from a small teaching hospital in San Francisco: St. Mary's.

"Dr. Pope, Dr. Padua, to the engineer, please!" called an attending.

Immediately, Aibhlinn split off from the group alongside a young resident who barely looked old enough to be out of medical school (not that Aibhlinn could throw aspersions there). Aibhlinn unlocked the hatch and backed out of the way as the attending medics made room and lowered the transportation bed to hover at chest level on the ground.

She was not surprised to see a lax Lorelei Jackson, cervical collar in place and medic performing manual chest compressions.

The medic locked eyes with her.

"You can perform manual compressions?" she asked.

Aibhlinn stammered briefly, but nodded.

"Good," was all she said. "Now hop on the 'bed and keep that blood pumping."

It was something she had only performed a handful of times in her life. On the rare occasion she had been worthy to watch her mother educate young trauma residents (a traumatic experience unto itself), she would watch the diminutive Chinese woman direct her gaggle of residents to watch as one of them would hop atop the arresting body of a patient and force their hands together to make the heart beat. Some of them would even hum while they did it.

Aibhlinn found herself straddling Lorelei's waist (ignoring the jut of her broken leg), heel of her hand between her breasts, fingers interlocked, humming as she forced her chest to compress at 110 beats per minute. It was an old song, a method not formally recognized anymore as a way to pace ones' self through manual chest compressions, but Dr. Xue Pope found it to be a necessary lesson for any and all who trained under her to learn.

She had the pleasure of learning it at eight years old.

The 'bed began moving. Aibhlinn locked her feet supportingly around the edge of it, but she did not let up on her compressions, nor her quiet singing.

"Steve walks warily down the street with the brim pulled way down low…"

An attending looked at her curiously as Aibhlinn quietly sang the chorus, drawing affronted looks from her fellow residents and a handful of nurses.

"Another one bites the dust…"

"Dr. Pope, where did you learn that?" asked a stern faced attending in charge of Starfleet Medical's tiny army of residents. He was deep into his sixties, portly in a grandfatherly sort of way. His scrubs were blue, and his credentials were recognizable to anyone with working eyes: Dr. Aberforth Llewelyn.

"Little town by Lough Ree," hissed out Aibhlinn, still keeping the rhythm of a song almost three hundred years old. "Gone by the name of Roscommon. Only hospital for miles. My attending at the Royal College sent me to that little shit hole with three commandments: to never kill a guest, always keep your medkit neat and tidy, and to always perform manual compressions to Freddy Mercury."

Dr. Llewelyn looked at her askance. "Freddy Mercury?" he repeated.

"In a pinch, the Bee Gees will suffice."

Aibhlinn didn't pause in her compressions, even as they began to take Lorelei from her care. She didn't know why she had leapt on Lorelei, when Albara was just a few feet away, tending to a girl sick with something that had her puking blood. Hell, she didn't like Lorelei; they barely tolerated each other's presences. Her fingers slid under the cervical collar, pressed against the side of Lorelei's clammy neck.

"We've got a pulse!"

There was a cheer behind her. A hand lightly touched her waist; she looked down, trembling slightly, to see Albara's scruffy face. His scrubs were lightly splattered with arterial blood from the girl he had ridden with.

"You done good, Papa," he said. Albara held onto her arm as he supported Aibhlinn's cramped jump off of Lorelei. Dr. Llewelyn directed Padua to take her spot.
Aibhlinn laughed nervily, wiped sweat off her forehead. Now that the action was out of her hands, the crash was coming on quick.

"Thanks, Mama," she quipped.

With a smile that was more of a grimace, Albara retreated to his patient's side, accepting a PADD from a starry-eyed nurse. Beside her, Gennifer elbowed Aibhlinn gently in the side.

" 'Doesn't give a shit about me'," said Gennifer placidly, Aibhlinn's forgone electronic clipboard in hand. "Weren't those your words?"

Aibhlinn laughed, nudged her friend right back and accepted the clipboard with a self-suffering sigh.

"And where's that coffee you promised?" she shouted at Aibhlinn's retreating back.

"Up yours, Newman!" replied Aibhlinn, winking her affection.

The final person on her list of visits had been left without a visit with the sudden activity. According to her PADD, the hypochondriac had been conscious for a handful of minutes, which was truly unfortunate for her. After the excitement, Aibhlinn had been hoping to poke her head in, report on his status, and sit back down beside Gen at the monitoring station to aimlessly quip the rest of her shift away.

The Universe, it seemed, did have a vendetta against her.

With a world weary sigh, Aibhlinn entered the cadet's room, already prepping his discharge papers on her PADD, because there was no reason for him to take up space in her Emergency Ward any longer than he had already. The cadet in question was staring up at the ceiling with a look of undisclosed horror on his face. This itself was not unusual, as he had worn that expression from the moment he stumbled into Medical, hours previous.

"Hello again, Cadet Taghvaei," she said, again on autopilot because if it were any different, she would be ripping the boy a new one just like she had the other pair of amadáins, just like she would Lorelei if (when, she corrected mentally) she woke. "How are you—"

"D-doctor Pope?" he interjected, cutting Aibhlinn off with a quavering inquiry. "Is that you?"

Aibhlinn narrowed her eyes at the cadet. He had not moved; his eyes remained riveted to the ceiling as if they had been permanently drawn there. "Yes, it's me," she said cautiously, too tired to correct the cadet. "Are you—"

Once more, he did not allow her to finish her sentence. Any words she attempted to say were swallowed up by his pained, mournful scream.

"I can't see!" the cadet howled finally. "I can't see! What did you do to me? I can't see—"

His screams petered off to an uncertain urk, which had Aibhlinn, who had been riveted in the doorway by shock, at his bedside in seconds, PADD clattering to the floor just as the cadet began convulsing.

"I need some help in here!" Aibhlinn shouted, shifting the cadet onto his side. A stray fist caught her in the lip, and she felt blood well. Foam and bile and blood spewed between his parted lips, staining her hand and shirtsleeve. Three nurses rushed into the room shortly after her initial call, the fastest she had ever seen them move. Then again, when was the last time Medical played host to not one, but three true medical emergencies in one day?

"He's seizing." Aibhlinn looked at an older nurse who had taken charge of the scene. "Page Doctor Uduga in neuro. We need a round of brain scans—CT and otherwise—and an in depth scan of his cerebral cortex, with high contrast scanning on the visual.

"Nurse Balera, go request a room in ICU. Tell them we have an acute case." Aibhlinn paused, glancing at the cadet, who lay spent on the bed, face and neck flecked with foam, blood, and vomit. Tears trickled down his cheeks from blind eyes. His utter look of despair made Aibhlinn's heart break open, then solidify to stone as her mind immediately shifted into first gear.

Aibhlinn thought of Cadet Leo Madsen and his half-conscious mumblings of blindness, to Albara's patient all the way from St. Mary's, then to Cadet Huang's cooling corpse beneath her hand and Dubaku's words to her.

She straightened slowly, eyes still on the cadet (who was more than likely dying under her hands) and said quietly:

"I want him in quarantine."

The older nurse who Aibhlinn had thrown her bag at the day before shot her a curious look, but hurried off with her fellow to fulfill her given task. That left Aibhlinn with another young nurse, far younger than the last. "Nurse…"

"Roth," the girl clarified.

"Send a communiqué to Admiral Barnett and Admiral T'Prau, marked Priority Alpha Emergency. If Dr. Albara's patient was from outside the Academy, we may—"

It seemed like the world was happy with interrupting Aibhlinn that day. An alarm pierced the air, almost identical in pitch to the cadet's screeches minutes earlier. It was possibly the only thing in the known galaxy that could bring all activity in Cadet Taghvaei's room and Emergency beyond (and possibly all levels of Medical) to a standstill. It was an alarm that Aibhlinn had been trained to respond to under any circumstance, no matter what she was doing at the moment, since she had first sat down in the lecture hall with seventy of her fellow doctors.

"The Emergency Alarm," whispered Nurse Roth, fear and awe and something akin to reverence colouring her voice. Aibhlinn didn't even know if she was trained to respond to it yet, she looked so young. Then again, Aibhlinn herself was not exactly the best example amongst them to throw her lack of expertise around.
Feeling a brief flit of terror somewhere in the pit of her stomach, Aibhlinn dragged the poor nurse out of Cadet Taghvaei's room, just as an inch thick transparisteel barrier slid into place. She was all but helpless as she watched the emergency containment system rear it's ugly head, isolating the entire Emergency ward. Heart in her throat, Aibhlinn's eyes met Albara's as the transparent seal slid across the floor like a knife, cutting her and a minority of

Medical's trauma staff off from the outside.

"Attention! All personnel please report to Emergency ward 2. This is a Priority Alpha Emergency—code orange. Multiple casualties inbound from Starfleet Academy. Please be advised that Emergency ward 1 has been quarantined. I repeat…"

Bracingly inhaling, Aibhlinn turned to the fretting nurse beside her, as well as Padua and another attending whose name was escaping her at the moment. Why they were all looking to her for guidance was beyond her ken.

"All right," snapped Aibhlinn in her best command voice. "You heard the lads: go report to the quarantine bay and start triaging our intakes. We want to stage them as quick as possible, then move them into quarantine. I don't need to tell you to engage the containment field around the 'beds, right?"

"Yes—I mean no, Doctor," Nurse Roth stammered out. Before Aibhlinn could correct her, she hurried out, leaving Aibhlinn alone with Padua and the attending.

"Padua, you go with her," said Aibhlinn. "You've got a good eye for problem cases."As Padua left—flushing with praise—the attending stopped Aibhlinn with a nastily barked: "And what am I supposed to do?"

Aibhlinn locked eyes with him, patience long worn thin. Reaching down, she scooped her forgotten clipboard on the floor and thrust it at the attending.
"You can tell me who I have and who I don't, Doctor…"

"Moretti," the attending spat. "And I don't do nurse's work. I spent too long in the Asteria's sickbay to take orders from a snot-nosed brat who got her admission papers signed by mommy."

And there went her patience.

"Tell me, Dr. Moretti," growled Aibhlinn. "Do you know how to manually intubate someone choking on their own blood? How to perform a manual decompression when all you have is a pen and a knife? When you're up to your elbows in blood and all you've got left is some saline and an outdated tricorder from seventy years ago?"

Moretti scoffed. "I didn't need to be raised on antiquated methods, Pope. I can do my job just fine without them."

Aibhlinn stepped closer, until she could smell the fine taste of percolated coffee on his breath. "Then tell me this, sir," she spat. "In three days' time, when we're low on everything from liquid skin for derm-regenerators, to something as simple as ibuprofen, when some poor sod is choking on blood and you've got a laryngoscope and guide wire, are you gonna be able to do it?"

She was almost pleased when Moretti deflated. He accepted the clipboard with grace, flushed with embarrassment.

"Let me know who can do most of what they learned in med school manually," Aibhlinn continued, far more patiently. "I need to know what I need to teach."

"Yes, Dr. Pope," said Moretti, with only a hint of animosity in his voice. He too took his leave of her.

Taking one last look at the now unconscious cadet confined behind a quarantine barrier, Aibhlinn hurried to the slowly filling ward, sidling by doctors and nurses as they ran past her. The emergency, it seemed, had taken every available medical officer in Starfleet Medical and trapped them in the tiny Emergency department, making the area feel painfully cramped and hot for the first time in a long time.

The main artery of the unquarantined department was full of biobeds and doctors and nurses. Some of them she recognised as med students like her. Others were tenured doctors she had the privilege of learning under. Grabbing a med kit—immediately she felt more composed with it in hand—from under the monitoring station as she passed, Aibhlinn slid her way over to the only familiar face she could pick out in the crowd of students and instructors alike.

"Gen!" Aibhlinn called out to her friend, who was preoccupied with manipulating the controls of the biobed she had commandeered, engaging its containment field to halt the spread of whatever the hell had taken hold. Cadet Madsen lay on his side, shaking with fever and who knew what else. Gennifer glanced up and nodded at Aibhlinn to show that she was listening. "I need you to comm the Academy Infirm! If this is a viral outbreak, we're going to need all the help we can get."

"I can't!" Gen shouted back. She leaned forward, hands breaching the invisible containment field to keep Madsen's head level as he vomited bright blood over himself and the floor.

"I didn't mean at the moment!"

Aibhlinn rushed over, snapping at a resident to get the blood mopped up and held the now convulsing cadet still. It was a nightmare. All around her, biosigns wailed and cadets and instructors alike screamed in agony.

"Hell, I'll even lend you my comm!" snapped Aibhlinn. Blood spurted from Cadet Madsen's throat like a geyser. It would have been almost comical if they were not under Priority Alpha-Code Orange at the moment. Reaching under the 'bed, she grabbed a clear plastic tube with a flexible guide. Flipping a switch, she leant over Cadet Madsen's slightly less bloody side and began suctioning the hemorrhage as it came.

"Your comm is useless!"

Aibhlinn directed Madsen's 'bed off to a resident, who was ferrying the critically ill to imaging rooms, with a barking order "not to feck up the works" and a quick show on how to properly hold the tube for suctioning.

"It's not useless; I made sure to charge the buggering thing last night."

"Aren't you even listening to me, Alby?" Gennifer yelled over the commotion. "I can't because—"

"Oh forget it," Aibhlinn spat. "I'll buggering do it myself—"

"Alby!" snapped Gennifer. "No one can get a comm out. Admiral T'Prau has issued Emergency Order 107-a-1. Medical is quarantined."

Surrounded by a sea of people, both sick and dying and healthy, Aibhlinn stared at her friend, who was covered with Madsen's blood and someone else's vomit and said:

"Fuck."