By Jane Seaton

Disclaimer: Characters and setting belong to Paramount

"It's not as cold as it should be, but I really haven't got the hang of this yet."

"Oh, it doesn't matter." Uhura took the martini in her hand and noticed that her nails were chipped. And that she didn't care. She hadn't thought she had time for a drink, but now that she was sitting down, she couldn't be bothered to get up again.

"It's going okay, isn't it?" Christine Chapel prompted.

"Oh, sure. Well, I'm here, so I must have found someone to sit up there and try to look as if they know what they're doing. But, you know, I really can't remember who it was..."

Suddenly the two of them were giggling. Uhura stifled her unseemly merriment with a hand pushed into her mouth, removing it only when the desire to laugh had subsided. "It was that pushy little ensign from Systems. Greta Schnoor. Ugh. I don't even like her, and I let her sit up there."

"It doesn't have anything to do with whether you like her."

"No. I know." She sobered abruptly. "You know, Chris, I have the feeling that this is getting out of control."

Chapel raised her eyebrows in a passable imitation of her boss. "I didn't know we'd got it under control in the first place. No, seriously, Nyota, why? We've come this far. We'll be at Starbase Seven in four more days. And..."

Both women looked out of the door of McCoy's office into the main treatment room.

"No change?" Uhura asked.

"No. They're all stable. No improvement, which isn't surprising. No deterioration, which is little short of a blessed miracle, since there's so little we could do about it..."

"I don't know. Yours is the one department that's still almost up to strength."

"True, but the care ratio is still impossible."

"And the rest of us?"

Chapel shrugged. "Tired, stressed. What do you expect? We can survive for four more days, probably for four more weeks, if we had to."

"I'd like to..."

"Mm?"

"Well, I feel I shouldn't be content to just limp into Starbase Seven. I want to solve this whole problem. Not just hand it over to someone else."

They sat in companionable silence over their glasses for a couple of minutes.

"Only, if we start to solve it, it ceases to be your problem," Chapel pointed out eventually.

"I know, but..." Uhura put her head down on her folded arms, knocking over her empty glass.

"Come on, Nyota. We're winning. It isn't your fault every officer on this ship over the rank of lieutenant is a man. Or that the women are concentrated in the soft options. Command should have had more sense. It must have occurred to someone that something like this could happen."

"Yes, but anything could happen. You could have all the left handed crew members going down with chicken pox. Or all the humans..."

"Yes, well, it would make sense to have a crew that was half Vulcan." Chapel still had the energy to laugh at herself. Uhura wasn't sure she'd retained that vital perspective. When every male on board had abruptly, and mysteriously, collapsed eight days before, she'd simply coped. First with the realisation that, despite not being in the strict chain of command, she was now in charge. Then with the cold fact that she was presiding over a disaster waiting to happen. The hundred and eleven females on board were inexperienced, concentrated in the junior grades, and notably absent from the disciplines where she needed them. It seemed that after three centuries of emancipation, women still didn't want to navigate, get their hands covered in engine residues or grapple with command. No, that wasn't fair. It certainly wasn't true of the women she'd trained with, and she was pretty damned sure Star Fleet was more clued up than that. Which led her to the unwelcome conclusion that only one person could be blamed for this state of affairs, and he was lying in sick bay, oblivious to the fate of his ship and his crew. She'd have words with him, she promised herself, but unfortunately they would come too late to help her with the immediate problem.

***

Uhura hadn't been able to fall into the same trap as her comatose commander. Scrolling through the crew rosters, she had seized on what talent was available, and each and every one of those women had responded in ways that brought tears of gratitude to her eyes, once she was alone in her cabin. They'd taken on responsibilities four or five levels above their previous posts without hesitation, dived into technical manuals, allowed, from a hotch potch of junior officers, the natural leaders to rise to the top. Indeed, she wasn't at all sure, she'd said jokingly to Chapel three days into the journey home, that they'd want to hand the ship back.

Then at last Christine had something to report. "I've made some progress, with discovering what the problem is..."

"Yes?"

"Oh, don't get your hopes up. I don't have a practical application yet. There's a mild bacterial infection that several of the crew picked up on Ganges IX. Asymptomatic. We were just monitoring, and blood populations of the thing were falling spontaneously. I reviewed the affected personnel, and found very low levels of an inert organic compound. When I looked at samples taken from other personnel at the same time, they didn't have it."

"The Ganges landing party were all female..."

"Yes. Unusually and unfortunately. If it hadn't been, we'd have spotted this earlier. Anyway, the compound, which appears to be formed when the immune system attacks the bacteria, isn't broken down by the body. It's just excreted - in sweat, in respiration, and into the sewage system. It isn't destroyed by any of our filtration or sterilisation procedures. So it gets back into the water, the air and so on..."

"And it hit all our male crew members simultaneously?"

Chapel nodded. "It's present in everyone I've checked."

"And it's knocked out the men but not the women?"

"Looks like it. I don't know why yet."

***

Uhura hadn't pressed Chapel. She knew that her acting Chief Medical Officer was doing the best she could to find a cure while coordinating intensive nursing for three hundred and twenty seven men. The rec deck had been turned into one immense extension of sick bay, providing intravenous feeding, warmth, basic physical attention and the best monitoring that could be rigged up on that scale. There wasn't a spare tricorder, medical or otherwise, on the ship.

Beds in sick bay were reserved for the Captain, Spock, McCoy, Scott, Sulu and, for reasons Uhura didn't at first understand, Chekov.

"I know you think of him as one of the bridge crew, but he is only an ensign. I hate to say this, but if we can do anything, or if we can only help a few, wouldn't another engineer be more use? I mean, I can navigate us back to Starbase Seven. The computer can, for that matter."

Another day had passed since Chapel's previous announcement, when this conversation took place. Chapel pushed a stray lock of blonde hair out of her eyes. "No. I want him here for a reason. I've got a lead."

"I didn't mean he was so disposable you should use him as a guinea pig!"

Chapel shook her head. "That isn't the point. I haven't got to guinea pigs yet."

She explained, keeping it simple more out of consideration for Uhura's obvious exhaustion than for her lack of expertise. The compound, the toxin, had a ring structure. A locked manacle, she called it, picturesquely. The key was the Y chromosome. Once unlocked, the manacle lost its inert character and bonded with just about anything, but chiefly with glucose molecules to produce a powerful narcoleptic drug.

"And..." Uhura said hopefully.

"And nothing," Chapel replied. "We can remove the drug from their systems, but the inert form of the toxin is just too pervasive. It's everywhere. And it's like Teflon. It's just so inert, we can't pick it up to get rid of it. I'm sure they'll have the facilities on Starbase Seven to deal with it, but in the meantime, I don't see the next step."

"What if you put one of them in complete isolation, and kept removing the drug until all the manacles in his system had been unlocked and taken out..."

"Then we'd have a conscious male in complete isolation. Leaving aside that the procedure for removing the drug is stressful. Undergoing it continuously for..." She closed her eyes while she calculated. "...approximately seventy-two hours might make him pretty ill."

The vagueness of this prognosis reminded Uhura, unnecessarily, of how tired Chapel must be. She nodded encouragingly. "A risky procedure, with the probably outcome of one very sick officer in a plastic bubble. So why do you need Chekov?"

"Doctor McCoy just happened to have done a genetic work up on him, for some research project. I have the precise DNA map, and cultures and analyses. If I do think of something, attacking it from that angle, I'd be able to apply it to Chekov three days ahead of anyone else."

"What about Mister Spock? Has it affected him the same way, or..."

Chapel smiled. "I never thought I'd say this, but as far as the Y chromosome is concerned, they're all just men. Maleness is done the same way throughout the known galaxy."

***

Uhura had left Chapel to it, her hopes not much raised except by the Head Nurse's certainty that Starbase Seven could offer a solution. It would be nice to get there and tell them that they didn't need all those swish facilities, of course.

Then it struck her. If Chapel thought of something, and tried it out on Chekov, and it worked, there would then be a three day gap before she could extend it to any other male officer. And in the meantime, Uhura would be taking Chekov's orders.

Was it really worth risking his health with an untried procedure, she asked herself, just so a ship that was running perfectly well under her supervision should have to undergo the upheaval of a transfer of command? Was it, she demanded, fair to Chekov to expect him to offer himself as a guinea pig for an experimental cure, devised, for heaven's sake, by an unqualified medical practitioner, just so that Nyota Uhura could off load the responsibilities of command onto his inexperienced shoulders? Reluctant as she was to retain the mantle of authority, she told herself, the answer had to be no.

***

Chapel continued her research, reporting periodically to her commanding officer as she made progress in a series of fits and starts. Eventually, when they were still two days out from Starbase Seven, and running silently for fear of attracting Klingon notice, she appeared on the bridge.

"I can do it."

"What?"

"Synthesise a handy little chemical that will stop his Y chromosome unlocking the manacle, without creating havoc somewhere else in his metabolism or permanently damaging his DNA"

"Hold on. You keep saying "his". Is this just a cure for Chekov, or will it work for any of them?"

"What I've got will work for Ensign Chekov. It'll take three days to adapt it for anyone else."

"And what are the risks?"

Chapel looked at Uhura and wondered what she wanted to hear. Not that she'd fudge the facts, but there were ways of presenting them. "Not zero. But not very great. I'd have no hesitation in using this if there was a risk to his life if we didn't treat him."

"But as things are..."

"It's really a question of how much you feel you need him - balancing that against a small, but real, risk to him."

"Uh, Lieutenant, ma'am, I'm picking up ships on the sensors. Three of them. I'm not sure, but they could be Klingons." Greeta Schnoor, newly promoted to the post of helmsman, turned apologetically to her commander, as if the trio of heavy cruisers were somehow her fault.

"I think you should see if it works," Uhura decided swiftly. "But don't tell him what's happening, and don't release him from sickbay without consulting me first."

"Yes, ma'am."

****

The yellow alert was whooping as Chapel turned into sickbay. She directed her steps towards Ensign Chekov and stopped a little short. They were just two days out of Starbase Seven. If only the Klingons hadn't turned up now... The hypo hissed and she stood watching the telltales as the designer drug set to work, not only altering the lock on the inert form of the toxin, so that it would no longer spring open when it made contact with his DNA, but also parting it from wherever else it had parked itself and firmly locking it shut again.

The indicators dipped as the narcoleptic drug vanished from his system, then stabilised. He stirred, muttered.

"Pavel?"

"Hm?"

"Don't worry. You passed out. You're in sickbay."

His eyes opened, focused. "Nurse Chapel?"

"Just take it easy. You may be a bit dizzy if you sit up too soon."

"How long..?" He stopped. His mouth felt foul, as if he hadn't cleaned his teeth for days. Chapel held a glass of water to his lips.

"Long enough that you can't just hop out of bed, I'm afraid. Take your time."

He registered the presence of other patients. "What happened? Why are we on yellow alert?"

"You weren't the only one affected. A whole bunch of you just keeled over without warning. We've sorted out the reason now, but you're the only one we've managed to bring round."

He nodded, accepting that the alert was something to do with the medical emergency. "Where is Doctor McCoy?"

"He's still unconscious."

The tone of the alert suddenly altered, becoming more strident, and Chekov's eyes opened wider. "Is something else wrong?"

"Mm? Just relax. You're off duty."

The intercom played a counterpoint to the building cacophony, and Chapel slipped away to answer it, leaving him to swing his legs onto the floor and stand, noting the absence of any other staff in the apparently oversubscribed sickbay.

"Seems okay. Looks as though he could do with a cup of coffee... No, Georgia's just gone off duty. I can't really. No. I'll send him up then. Yes, I think so." She turned back to her patient. "D'you feel up to going back to work?"

He blinked in surprise. "I suppose..."

"Good. Off you go then."

"Um, are my boots somewhere?" He was beginning to get an uneasy prickling feeling that something was wrong. Not so much because of the Head Nurse's unusually casual attitude to his discharge, but because the disappearance of his boots suggested that sickbay had not been operating along its usual disciplined lines while he'd been here. And how long had he been here?

"You'd better get some new ones. We've - rather lost track of things over the last few days..." Then her eyes flicked across to the synthesiser. "No, tell you what. I'll let you have some slippers."

Chekov clicked that there were problems with the service systems. Still, that wasn't his concern. "I can't go on duty in slippers. I'll go to my cabin and get my spare..."

"You're wanted on the bridge, now. Believe me, no one's going to care. They probably won't even notice."

"And you said 'days'..."

"Here you are. You are size seven, aren't you? Off you go."

She pushed the footwear into his hands as a small chorus of alarms suddenly went off at the nursing station.

He bit off a question and put the slippers on.

***

As the doors onto the bridge slid aside, he stopped dead in the lift and let his eyes roam over the odd assortment of crew. Only Uhura, to his knowledge, had ever been on the bridge before. She was sitting centre stage, the red glow of the alert indicators making her complexion look even darker than usual.

"This is a drill?"

"Mister Chekov, I'm very pleased to see you. Did Lieutenant Chapel explain what's happened?"

"No..."

"Ten days ago, every man on the ship collapsed. From the captain down. We've been heading back to Starbase Seven, but we've hit a little problem." She pointed to the screen, where three Klingon cruisers were clearly visible.

"Tactical is not set up properly..." He began to step down to his accustomed station, still working on the assumption that this was an exercise.

"Chekov, just hold on a moment. We're seriously undermanned... Well, undercrewed anyway. I think tactical is irrelevant. I have no intention of taking on three Klingon battle cruisers."

He suddenly realised that this was for real, and Uhura was looking at him as if she'd like some input. "What is our systems status?"

"All functional, but not optimal. And we couldn't cope with any significant damage."

"And weapons are manned?"

"Well... yes."

"Every man on the ship?" His eyes weren't on her, they were on the Klingon vessels hovering at a watchful distance. "If every man on the ship is unconscious, why am I awake?"

"Chekov, now is not the time to have an identity crisis. Chris Chapel just happened to be able to help you first. Okay? You were hit by a chemical that only becomes active in contact with something in the Y chromosome..."

"No warning?"

"No."

"Well. Then it is obvious what we have to do, isn't it?" He sounded a little hesitant.

She felt a wave of relief surge through her. "That was going to be my recommendation."

"Recommendation?" he echoed.

"It's your decision. You're in command."

He'd looked a little pale and shaky before. Now he rested a hand lightly on the back of her chair as she got out of it, steadying himself. "You didn't get me up here just so I could be the commander who surrendered the Enterprise to the Klingons, did you?"

"It didn't cross my mind. Really." Uhura went quietly back to her place at communications, dislodging a yeoman.

Greta Schnoor twisted in her seat to look at him. He was still standing, as if Kirk's chair might bite him if he presumed to sit down in it.

"Surrender? Why? You think we can't cut it?"

He glanced at Uhura, then down at Greta. "What post did you hold when you came across the Kobayashi Maru?"

Now it was her turn to look uncertain, an expression that didn't suit her. "We're not supposed to..." Then she realised that it really didn't matter. "Communications Officer."

"Well, I blew up my ship. This time it's real. Could you start to bleed power off the shields, please. Lieutenant, hailing frequencies, please. And choose a dirty band. I don't want them to see that I'm wearing slippers." He sat down decisively in Kirk's place.

"Yes, sir," Uhura said correctly and without irony. "Why are you wearing slippers, by the way?"

"I can only think that it is a reflection of the way you have been running this ship for the last ten days. Once we have dealt with this I shall have every woman on board searching for my boots."

Their eyes met and they smiled.

"I have the UFrey, sir."

He cleared his throat. "This is Commander Pavel Andrei'ich Chekov of the USS Enterprise. You seem to be taking an interest in us. Can I help you in some way?"

A Klingon male, with a forehead that had been thrown up during a phase of major tectonic upheaval, filled the screen.

"Commander Chekov? I was expecting Kirk. I'm disappointed."

"Don't be."

There was a moment of silence, as the Klingon registered that this human was not about to volunteer anything.

"Commander, you are heavily outnumbered and outgunned. Our sensors register that your engines are not operating optimally and your shields now appear to be failing..."

"I assure you, I am aware of these facts."

"What is the reason for this? Have you been in battle? Your ship has sustained no obvious damage."

"Captain..?"

"Captain Makel."

"Captain Makel, the Enterprise is heading for Starbase Seven, through neutral territory. We pose no threat to you, or to anyone else. We have casualties and need to reach the medical facilities at Starbase Seven quickly if lives are not to be lost..." He watched, as Makel signed something to someone off screen.

"Captain Kirk is among the casualties?"

Chekov didn't reply. After a moment, Makel obviously received information that enabled him to reach a decision.

"Ensign Chekov, you will surrender the Enterprise to me. We will provide any medical assistance you require."

"Chekov!" Schnoor burst out.

Chekov ignored her. "The Federation will regard this as a hostile act."

"Nonsense. It is humanitarian. It would be irresponsible of me to allow an inexperienced officer such as yourself to attempt to deal with this situation. You will surrender the Enterprise to me, Ensign Chekov, or I will take control by force."

Chekov signalled to Uhura to cut the contact. "Flicker the shields right down, and back to seventy percent of their previous strength. And power down the phaser banks. Make it look like an exponential failure curve."

"A what?" Schnoor still looked annoyed that he hadn't ordered them to go down with all guns blazing.

He smiled at her, and got up out of the centre seat to come down and press buttons. "There. I'm sorry. Keep it a little erratic. You're doing a good job." He paused by his own usual position, currently occupied by a decorative, and hopefully functional astro-cartographer, and bestowed an encouraging smile on her too before returning to his proper place.

"Get me Captain Makel, please."

***

Five days later, Captain Kirk groaned and opened his eyes, feeling particularly well rested and... for some reason, he wasn't in his cabin. Instead, he was staring at the gleamingly white walls of what smelt suspiciously like a hospital. Adrenaline surged, and as if swept in on the hormonal tide, an attractive brunette nurse appeared at his bedside. "Captain Kirk? Take it easy, please. You've been unconscious for a little while and..."

"Where am I?"

"In the hospital on Starbase Seven."

"Jim!" McCoy materialised in the doorway, his arm around a rather tired-looking Nurse Chapel. "Captain, my head nurse is a genius."

"I'm sure you're right," Kirk agreed ungraciously. "Could you please tell me what I'm doing here?" Then he noticed that McCoy was clad in neutral coveralls - patient garb. Whatever had happened hadn't only happened to him. "Bones?" His voice contained a note of desperation.

"Now, don't worry, Captain. Everything's fine. We're on Starbase Seven. Most of the crew are in the medical facility here, but they're all going to be fine."

"What d'you mean, fine? Tell me what happened!"

"Captain..." Chapel broke in, disapproving of McCoy's teasing, "we had a minor medical emergency on board. Members of the crew lost consciousness without warning and we were unable to rouse them. We returned to the Starbase immediately. By the time we reached here, we had identified the problem and devised a treatment, but we were unable to implement it fully before arriving."

McCoy looked at her admiringly. "You make it sound like a mild case of the 'flu."

"Since no one has suffered injury, and the ship is undamaged, I see no reason for the Captain to worry just so that you can spin out telling him what happened," she said huffily. "If you'll excuse me, Captain, we're short staffed and I'm sure Doctor McCoy can fill you in on the details."

"Yes, of course." Kirk stared after her retreating back. "You were hit by this thing too? How about Spock?"

McCoy grinned. "You, me, Spock, Scotty - and every other man on the ship."

"What?"

"But it seems they managed perfectly well without us. Until they decided to try out Chris's cure on Chekov."

"Why Chekov?"

"They happened to have some research data on him that made him the easiest one to tackle. And maybe they thought no one would miss him if it didn't work..."

"The Enterprise is in one piece, is she?" Kirk interrupted him for reassurance, having jumped ahead to the realisation that once out of sickbay, the ensign would have been in command.

"I'll tell him you said that. Uhura assured me that she fully supported his decision to surrender to the Klingons."

He watched delightedly as Kirk sat back down on his bed in response to this bombshell.

"He surrendered my ship to the Klingons? Get him in here, now!"

"Uh, Captain." His communications cfficer hovered in the doorway. "Mister Chekov is overseeing the decontamination procedures. Commander Taylor didn't feel it would be appropriate to remove him from command just because we'd reached somewhere safe. And as you're still on the sick list, I think you'll just have to wait until he can find time to visit you."

Her voice held an odd combination of disapproval and teasing. Kirk put on his best 'Okay, I'll be good, mama,' face. "Uhura, tell me what happened, please?"

"We lost you all fifteen days ago. Every man on the ship, within thirty seconds of each other. That left no one in the immediate chain of command, ten percent of the engineering and weapons staff, all in junior grades, and a surplus of redundant linguists, clerks, florists and hairdressers."

"We don't have any florists and... oh, I see."

"We only had a top flight research biochemist on board because she pretends to be a nurse to keep you and Leonard happy. Captain, I want your signature on my application for command training, and I want it now." She pulled a clerical recorder out from behind her back and offered it to him with a stylus. "Sign there."

"But..."

"Yes, Captain?"

"You took command of the ship?"

"I was the least unqualified person. I knew what you did on the bridge in an emergency, and we reckoned everything else could go hang. You'll find your paperwork is a little behind."

"My yeoman..."

"This is her application for officer training, specialising in weapons."

He signed that too.

"And the Klingons?"

"We came across a trio of battle cruisers two days out from the Starbase. Chris was just ready to try out her cure on Chekov, so I told her to go ahead with it, even though we couldn't be sure it would work, or that it was safe. I thought if it came to a fight, we'd need all the practical experience we could call on."

"Who did you have..?"

"This is Ensign Schnoor's application to transfer from Systems to Helm - she'd like to be a pilot, and this is Lieutenant Delaware's application to move from Cartography to Navigation."

Kirk signed them with a long face. "You're going to have to persuade some of the... some of the men to move in the other direction, you know. Now tell me why Chekov surrendered..."

"We had no option, Captain. We were outnumbered, and we weren't in a position to deal with any damage. Casualties would have meant we couldn't cope with maintaining the patients we already had. We... Chekov ordered reductions in shield strength and weapons readiness, to make things look a little worse than they were, and surrendered."

"That doesn't sound like Chekov," Kirk objected. "Are you sure he should have been allowed out of sickbay?"

Uhura was smiling now. She continued with the story in strict chronological order. "The Klingon commander, Captain Makel, ordered us to lower our shields so he could beam over a boarding party. Chekov claimed the shields were malfunctioning, and we couldn't turn them off completely. So they beamed in a small number of officers from each of the three ships, using a higher energy setting. Of course, the moment they arrived, they started to keel over. When they didn't make contact with their ship, they were transported out again, taking back enough of the chemical that was causing the problem to knock out everyone else. Then we left."

"You just abandoned them there?"

Uhura looked offended. "Of course not, Captain. We sent out a distress signal on their behalf once we were well on our way here. After that, everything went smoothly. The transporters here on Starbase Seven were rigged to remove the toxin that caused the problem, and we've just been waiting for you all to come round. The Base Medical Director reckoned it was safer to let you sleep it off. And the Environmental Control Service helped us to run a decontamination program. The Enterprise is now fully serviceable."

"Congratulations. You seem to have dealt with everything. How did Chekov cope with being in command?"

"Very graciously," Uhura said, unexpectedly. It wasn't a word that Kirk associated with his navigator. "He recognised that we'd been dealing with everything up until then, and he let us get on with it. I was a little afraid he'd want to take over and save the day - you know what I mean. And I'm sure he thinks I only woke him up so that he could do the surrendering... but I really didn't feel happy about taking that decision without checking it out with someone else with some experience. I was very relieved when he saw it the same way. And, well, it's academic now it's all turned out right, but I wasn't trying to avoid taking the responsibility. I don't know about Chekov, but I enjoyed being in charge."

"It sounds as though all of you deserve a commendation."

"Thank you, Captain, but..."

"Yes?"

"You know, the nicest thing about Chekov was, it didn't seem to occur to him that we were doing anything out of the ordinary."

The End