"GET YOUR BUTT back in that bed!"
Chekov froze with his hands still on the examination table behind him, and peeked a guilty look over his shoulder at McCoy. The doctor stood in the doorway connecting their room to the rest of sickbay, slapping a medical instrument against his palm as though contemplating some use for it the designers never intended. Groaning, Sulu fell flat in his own bed and pulled the covers up over his face. "I told you it wouldn't work," he grumbled from beneath the blanket.
"I wasn't leaving sickbay," Chekov protested. But he hopped back up onto the bed anyway when McCoy took his first determined step into the room. "I was just going to—"
"—check on the Dohlman," the doctor finished sourly, and Chekov felt his face grow hot. McCoy glanced at the readout above the lieutenant's head. "I tell you, I can't wait 'til your blood chemistry settles and I can pump you full of that damned antidote." He punched some notation into the chart at the foot of the bed and turned away with a snort. "Not that it would make you behave. I'd just be confident that it was you trying to sneak out of here instead of her."
Sulu's laughter trickled from under his bedclothes, only to change into a startled yelp when the doctor slapped at his foot on the way by. "Don't laugh! You're second in line."
"Thank God!" the helmsman exclaimed, but McCoy was already through the door and too far into the main sickbay to hear him.
Sighing, Chekov sat cross-legged on top of his bed and propped his chin in one hand. His side still ached despite McCoy's commendable patch job, and the faint thread of breathlessness fluttering deep in his lungs told him his blood count was probably still way below any acceptable standard. He and McCoy simply differed on what they considered necessary treatment for such disabilities. The doctor insisted on complete bed rest in sickbay until such time as he decided the patient was free to leave; Chekov couldn't see what difference it made if he just went to his quarters to sleep it off, considering how much sickbay time he already spent out of bed trying to sneak past the doctor. The fact that he couldn't stop fidgeting with worry over Israi in the room across the way only made his forced inaction even more unbearable.
He waited until Sulu sat up and let his blankets fall into a puddle on his lap before scowling across the empty distance between them. "What is this about an antidote?" he asked pointedly.
The helmsman's eyebrows raised in a blatant expression of counterfeit innocence. "Hmm?"
"You heard me." Chekov unfolded to come up on hands and knees. "Did something happen in the shuttle that you neglected to mention to me?"
Sulu shrugged glibly. "Not in the shuttle."
"Sulu …"
A hush of quiet door movement announced someone's entrance from the direction of the sickbay labs. "Chief?"
Sulu startled at the thin whisper, but Chekov breathed a little prayer of thanks as he slid down off his bed to meet Howard and Lemieux near the room's rear doors. "The doctor's just outside," he whispered. "Keep your voices down."
Howard nodded, pushing Lemieux past him toward Sulu as he handed Chekov the bundle of clothes he had tucked under one arm. "Sorry we didn't get here earlier, Chief." He clapped one hand over a jaw-stretching yawn. "I only just woke up and got your message."
"Better late than never, Mr. Howard." Chekov slipped his trousers from the bundle and shook them out to step into them. It felt wonderful just to be in clean clothing that didn't belong to a sickbay. "How are things in the department?"
"Quiet," the young ensign admitted softly. "From what I heard, you had all the excitement planetside."
If Sulu's head hadn't been inside the collar of his tunic, his amused snort would have been loud enough to alert the doctor in the next room. "You can say that again." He straightened the seams on his turtleneck, then reached for the jacket Lemieux held out to him. He picked up one sleeve and turned it over in his hand. "Hey!" he exclaimed in a squeaky whisper. "Is this my uniform?"
Chekov shrugged into his own jacket. "No, it's Uhura's," he sighed. "Of course it's your uniform."
"Well, where did they get it?"
"From your quarters."
"My quarters?!"
Chekov dashed across the room to clap a hand over Sulu's mouth. "Stop shouting!" he hissed, nodding sharply toward the main sickbay. "Do you want Dr. McCoy to hear you?"
He felt the helmsman's mouth twist grumpily against his palm, and accepted that as some small sign of submission. Taking his hand away, he kept a careful eye on Sulu while he fastened the front of his own jacket.
"I sent them into your quarters on my authority," Chekov explained, latching his shoulder strap. "What's the point of being a friend in a high place if I can't help you sneak out of sickbay? We're less likely to be picked up outside the infirmary doors if we're dressed as though we're going on duty."
"What are you, some kind of expert at this?" Sulu paused in sliding his jacket down his arms, glancing at Chekov. "No, never mind. Forget I asked." He took his boots from Lemieux and stooped to tug on the first one. "So where do we go, noble leader, since we aren't really leaving for duty and probably everyone on the ship knows it?"
Chekov sighed. That was probably their biggest problem. "Usually," he admitted, "I go to visit you." He straightened after fastening his boots. "I'm still working on it."
Sulu grinned at him brightly. "We could go visit Uhura."
"No dice, sir," Howard told him, shaking his head. "She's on duty up on the bridge."
"On the bridge?" Sulu intercepted Chekov's hand before the security chief could muffle him again. "How come she gets to go on duty while we're still both stuck down here?"
"Because she has more than two pints of her own blood in her body and she isn't sporting metabolic ratios that would knock down an Orion."
McCoy met the bank of guilty stares that turned to him with a wide-eyed look of sarcastic concern. "What's the matter? Am I interrupting something?" He flashed sharp blue eyes over Chekov's shoulder, and the lieutenant heard both crewmen behind him jump. "Howard! Lemieux! Get out of here before I put you on report!"
Chekov felt them hesitate, but knew from the thin set of McCoy's lips that this wasn't a time to challenge the doctor's authority. Reaching behind him, Chekov waved a dismissal to both ensigns without turning. "Go on."
"Yessir." He wasn't sure which breathless voice answered him. An instant later, two pairs of feet hurried out the laboratory doors just ahead of the doctor's scalpel-edged glare.
"As for you two—"
If another word fell from McCoy's lips, Chekov didn't hear it.
Something slim and golden moved in the doorway behind the doctor's right shoulder, and Chekov glanced back at it for fear of being reprimanded in front of one of the wounded geologists. His eyes locked on the wide, angular face he saw there as though caught by a tractor beam. A sharp, unnamed apprehension had been chewing at him ever since he woke up, shaky from too much synthetic plasma, in the intensive-care unit of the Enterprise's sickbay. Now, without warning, his unease melted away the instant Israi stepped into view around McCoy.
Something in his stomach twisted uncomfortably at the thought that he could grow so painfully fond of the girl in such a short number of days. She was like a precious little sister whose delicacy and beauty fired such a painful protectiveness inside him that he had to clench his hands in Sulu's rucked-up blankets to keep from dashing across the sickbay to join her. It was her age, he decided. Or the fact that she was so tiny, and looked so fragile and slight. He glanced aside at Sulu to see if her appearance instilled the same feelings in him, and was horrified to find the helmsman almost leaning across his hospital bed to stare at her in helpless intensity. Even the six Elasian males trailing her followed the Dohlman's every movement with identical expressions of grim dedication.
Chekov forced his eyes to meet with Israi's, and the animal power of her gaze struck him clear to the soul. "You—you drugged me!"
"I saved your life," she corrected him, as though the hideously wonderful effect her words had on his heart was of little consequence to her. "Just as your people saved mine." She waved her cohort's attention toward the two Starfleet officers. "Behold the first brave men of my cohort. They have served me well, yet they have known me for but a day. You should all strive to be as true and loyal."
"Yes, Your Glory." Each of the Elasians went respectfully to one knee, bowing their heads until their burned and weary faces rested on their hands. Chekov swallowed hard against a storm of embarrassed guilt. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about seeing such humility from a group of men who only the day before had to be ordered by their leader not to murder him.
"Dohlman Israi …" McCoy approached her gingerly, coming as close to her side as he could without actually reaching out to take hold of her. "I'm having enough trouble as it is keeping these two idiots in bed. Now, I promised Crown Regent Uhura I'd see to it that you were safe and cared for until—"
"I am the Dohlman of Elas," Israi cut him off haughtily. "I choose when I go and where I stay." She motioned her cohort to stand without even moving her bright almond gaze from McCoy's exasperated face. "Starfleet Doctor, it is the custom of the Dohlmanyi to bestow gifts upon subjects who have proven worthy. As the Dohlman of Elas, glorious warlord of the planet, daughter of the House of Elasi and twelfth in the line of Kesmeth, I gift you with this sword which my father once wore." She extended one hand behind her to receive a thin, elaborately jeweled saber from the man behind her. "You have pleased me well by treating my own sickness, and by caring for the mortal wounds of these, my bondsmen," she announced. "May this weapon serve as a symbol of your great healing powers, and may you wield it to slay all of the enemies who ever rise up against you."
McCoy took the sword as though not sure how to refuse. "I'm touched," he remarked dryly.
Whatever sarcasm the doctor had intended whisked by Israi completely unnoticed. "Now I must go and bestow gifts upon the other who has served me so well in this conflict." She flung out her hand in summons, and the touch of her flashing eyes stung Chekov like a lash. "Bondsmen—come!"
His body obeyed as though she'd jerked on a cord tied through his nervous system. He hated every movement he made against the screaming of his own will—hated the expression of impotent disgrace so plainly sketched on Sulu's haunted features—hated knowing that his own face no doubt displayed his own mortification just as plainly. But to actually be allowed to stand near her, to feel her heat, to breathe her musky smell—
McCoy grabbed at his arm, mercifully shattering his obsessive attention. "Now, wait just a doggone minute!"
Israi frowned in regal displeasure and knocked the doctor's hand away. "There is nothing you can do to stop them. Not while they are under my command." She smiled up at both of them, something very far removed from anger in her eyes. "They will return to rest and heal presently. But first there is a duty that must be done." Her hand against his cheek felt smooth and warm and strong. "Where is Crown Regent Uhura?"
Chekov leaned into her palm without knowing how to resist her. "On the bridge," he whispered hoarsely.
Beside him, Sulu seemed no less uncomfortable with their situation. "We can show you how to get there."
"Very well." Israi stepped back, at least releasing them physically from her overwhelming touch. "Then let us go together and make this circle complete."