Chapter 4
The best thing you could say about an Orion, the Romulan thought to herself, it was that they knew how to keep their ships warm.
Ever since she had left Romulus, she had found herself longing for the desert heat of her family home, aching for the unyielding sun to bake out the cold of space that chilled her to the core of her bones. Even the deserts of the dozens of worlds she had visited in the past few years had never come close to matching that sun's intensity, leaving her chilled and shivering even beneath the heavy layers of her uniform.
Until now, she added, thanking the gods for making Orion a far hotter world than even her own - and for a pilot who didn't hesitate to reroute the ships waste heat back into the life support system.
Indeed, for the first time in months, she felt as though she could remove her duty jacket and relish the heat of the room - although, of course, that was quite unthinkable. A proper Romulan wouldn't give in to the needs of the body - at least not in front of an alien.
And a disgusting and filthy alien at that.
She glanced around the filthy cramped space that the trader called a bridge, the dented and tattered command chair centered behind a hodge-podge assembly of navigation and helm controls, her noise wrinkling at the stench of spoiled foodstuffs and body odor that filled the room, then looked at the seven-foot tall, dark green humanoid hovering over her - and shivered, despite the heat of the space.
No, she corrected herself, the fact that Orions kept their ships warm was the _only_ good thing you could say about them.
She affixed the tall being with a contemptuous look, spat on the floor in disgust, then sneered. "No wonder you leave the running of your planet to the women; your men are utterly incompetent. Would that your women ran your ships as well; we wouldn't be in this mess," she added angrily.
"This 'mess' as you call it," the Orion snapped back, "is entirely of your doing. You said eight passengers - which is the number for which I provisioned this ship! That you brought over thirty aboard is not my problem!"
"It will be if they starve to death!" she snarled back. "You're not going to get the balance of your fee if you bring back a cargo hold full of corpses."
The Orion laughed scornfully. "The downpayment was sufficient to cover my costs to this point; I could kill you all now - and be no worse for my efforts," he informed her coldly.
She glared back, utterly uncowed by the threat. "Your words are as empty as your brain," she replied. "Don't forget for an instant that I am a Romulan of the highest order - and should I disappear, my family will investigate that disappearance - and should I be killed, the perpetrator will be found. If it takes an entire lifetime, he will be found," she repeated, glowering at him, "and his death will be protracted, agonizing and horrifying." She narrowed her gaze at him. "And know this: to a Romulan, family is everything. If I die at your hand, my family's honor will not be satisfied until every member of your family is dead as well: mother, father, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, children, grandchildren - no one will be spared - and their deaths will be as brutal as yours." She smiled coldly. "Just remember, the downpayment we made was generous - because I can afford to be generous. Don't doubt for a minute that those same resources to drag you and your family into the bowels of hell," she said.
The Orion flinched, his bravado shaken - but he squared his shoulders an instant later - and she felt a wash of reality come over her.
Yes, in theory her family would search out her killer – in theory. In reality, however, she had been too rebellious, to opposed to following the ways that a proper Romulan should behave to know if anyone in the family would bother to do so – if they ever realized what had happened.
Which they wouldn't, she knew equally well; space was a very, very big place - and she was very, very small. They would never find her; they would never find any of them.
But the same lack of reasoning that had put them in this predicament would spare them as well; the Orion captain had taken the bluff at face value - which only meant that he wouldn't kill them outright.
Unfortunately, that left far too many other possibilities, she knew.
"You had eight hours to reprovision your ship before we left Cardassia Prime," she reminded him. "You didn't - and now we're going to need to divert to another system to pick up the provisions we need," she directed.
"That," the Orion countered confidently, "will be unnecessary."
For an instant, terror filled the woman, her confidence in the innate cowardice of the man faltering, the possibility of her imminent murder - and that of her cargo - surfacing in her mind.
But he was a coward, she reminded herself, knowing it as surely as she knew herself; whatever his new idea, it didn't involve their deaths.
"Unnecessary? We're three weeks out of Charon - with sufficient provisions for less than a quarter of that time. Unless you've managed to steal one of Starfleet's quantum temporal drive systems and install it in this piece of shit you call a starship, there's no way to get there any faster," she reminded him. "You can't use warp drive in the Bryona system - and you can't get to Charon without skirting around Bryona first."
"To which I offer a legitimate solution: instead of bypassing Bryona, we traverse the field. It will reduce the time to Charon to mere days..."
"Or increase it to eternity!" she roared back. "You moron! The Bryona field is mined! They blew up their own gods'-cursed planets so they could mine the damned thing in the Trellian war!"
"That was a millennia ago," he countered.
"Try telling the mines that!" she countered. "They're still active - and eighty per cent of the ships that try to cross it don't make it!"
"But twenty per cent do - and I'm one of those twenty percent," he countered. "I've got a route," he added boastfully.
"So did most of the ships that blew up," she retorted.
The Orion snorted contemptuously. "They were fools! They bought maps that claimed to show the paths that cross the Bryona - but no trader who knows the route would sell it! It is far too valuable; crossing the Bryona can bring a ship to port days ahead of the competition!"
"Yeah? And where did you get your map?" she growled back.
He looked at her proudly. "It is a family treasure, handed down, generation to generation, father to son."
She raised her brow skeptically - but his demeanor was so confident, so damned cock-sure that she realized he was telling the truth.
But he wasn't telling everything, she added silently, glancing about the bridge of the ship, noting the countless panels that had been hastily patched together, the jury-rigged systems - and hearing the strain on the engines even as they carried them along at low warp.
"Then why haven't any of them used it?" she asked.
He glared at her, instantly suspicious. "How do you know they haven't?"
She gave him a derisive look. "Captain, this ship is barely holding itself together; you don't have near the resources needed to repair her. No; if you had used that map, you - and your ancestors - would have been able to bring your cargos to port ahead of the other captains - and those profits you were talking about would have been yours - and this ship would have been a marvel, rather than the piece of crap it is. No; no matter what the provenance of that map, neither you nor your family have never dared to use it, no matter how desperate you've been, because you're scared. Scared, because you know as well as I do that it might not be real."
"It is real!" he sneered.
"Then try it - but on your own dime," she added, "not on mine. This cargo is precious beyond money." She considered for a moment. "All right; we're a week out of Cardassian space - but if we're on course, there should be a half dozen ports within a week's travel; we can ration out our remaining supplies until then..." she began - then looked at the Orion, realization sinking in. "We're not on course, are we?"
He straightened haughtily. "I... made some adjustments in the ship's trajectory in order to minimize our fuel utilization," he informed her.
"Minimize..." she began - then froze. "By the gods, I paid you in advance so that this ship would be properly provisioned - including sufficient fuel to get us all the way to Charon!" she roared.
"The Cardassians have increased their fuel taxes since the war," he countered. "I was unable to completely refuel my tanks with the funds you provided."
"You should have told me!"
"You said you had no more funds with you," he reminded her, a look of unmitigated greed rising in his eyes.
Admit you have funds, she cautioned herself, and he'll kill you here and now, regardless of the consequences. Deny it - and we may stand a chance. "And I didn't!" she snapped back instantly. "But I had contacts on Cardassia - I could have made arrangements!" she snapped back.
"And that is something that _you_ should have told _me_," he replied, echoing her words of a moment before. "But since a starship captain can only act upon the knowledge he has, I did what I thought best - buy what fuel I could, and alter our course to utilize the fuel as best as possible."
"Meaning crossing the Bryona field," she answered in horror.
"It was the only way we could make Charon with the provisions and fuel I could afford - and it will place us there in five days," he said.
"If it doesn't kill us first," she answered.
He smiled cruelly. "The choice is yours, of course - but given the fact that your rations are almost gone, you and your passengers will undoubtedly be dead if we don't."
"We'll all be dead, Captain," she responded. "The rations will be gone tomorrow - and you'll starve along with us."
"On the contrary, Commander," he said with an oily smile. "My replicators can produce adequate provisions - for an Orion. Regrettably, the nutritional needs of Romulans and Cardassians are far more complex - and beyond the rudimentary programming of my system."
"Bastard," she muttered.
"Not at all," he replied. "I did not plan this situation - but rather, I have worked around the limitations you presented to me. Had you been forthcoming from the beginning regarding the number of passengers and the availability of funds, we might not have found ourselves in this situation - but you did not - and I have done the best that I can in these circumstances.
"Now, I give you the option once again: we take our chances with my map - or you and your people face certain death from slow starvation. The choice is yours."
She glared at him. "You give me no choice."
He smiled unctuously. "I'm glad you see it my way, Commander," he oozed. "Now, I have work to do - so you will excuse me," he ordered, gesturing at the lone door leading from the cramped room.
Bristling at the dismissal, she glared at him - then turned on her heel and made for the door.
It slid open to admit her, then closed again - and she felt the tension fall from her shoulders even as the weight of her burdens settled back in.
"Tek da vida me?"
She turned to the Cardassian boy - man, she reminded herself; after all this time he must be a teen-ager by now - and shook her head.
"No," she answered, slipping into the Cardassian dialect the teen spoke. "The captain says there's no more food to be had. He says he spent everything else on fuel."
"Tuk va ecarge?"
She smiled. "No, of course I don't believe him," she replied. "He's lying through his filthy teeth. Not that I didn't think he wouldn't try to steal half the money by inflating his costs - but..." She sighed, shaking her head.
The boy reached for her arm, looked into her eyes and murmured quietly.
She nodded, then patted his hand gently. "Thank you, dear - but I should have known better. Hell, I did know better - but there wasn't anything else I could do. I had enough money to buy myself a ship's captain - but not a ship, and that's the only way I could have been sure to get you all home safely.
"Instead, I had to take my best shot - and it wasn't good enough," she sighed - then looked back at the closed bridge door. "He's going to do something stupid, S'bey; he's going to try to turn a profit even beyond what I offered him - and he's probably going to kill us all in the process.
"All for money, S'bey; all for money," she sighed - then turned to her young companion.
"Enough for the self-pity," she chastened herself. "Let's get everyone together and move them to the engineering bay."
"Du dek ke?"
"It's warmer, for one thing," she explained, "and there's a replicator terminal there. The captain's quite right - we can't survive on Orion rations - but he doesn't realize that it'll take months before the deficiencies affect them. If he didn't bother to buy enough rations, the least he can do is to share his own with them."
"Sené kota, uvek ni to miket, Komiada" he said quietly.
"I know, I know," she sighed. "But if he's right we'll be on Charon in five days - and I can eat then." If I'm right, however, food is not going to be something I ever have to worry about again.
She sighed - then noticed the troubled expression on S'bey's face. Shaking her head at her own sense of dread, she managed a smile for the young man, then tousled his short black hair. "You worry about me too much. Worry about them instead," she reminded him.
As I will, she added silently. "In the meantime," she continued a moment later, "we can keep their bodies warm, their bellies filled and their minds off their hunger for a few more days."
And if the end comes in the next few hours, they'll die warm and content.
I promised you that, she told them sadly; I promised you you'd be warm and full - and safe.
But I couldn't give you that, she added wordlessly. I tried - but I wasn't good enough.
I'm sorry; I failed you.
I failed you all.