Part Four
"Seriously, shut up!"
Natasha and Klath shared a knowing glance as they considered the irony of Sunek making that sort of a statement to anyone, but they didn't say anything out loud.
Sunek had directed the comment at Sister Lyca, now indelicately slung over Klath's right shoulder, as they walked on through the forest. Even though her body was weakening by the minute thanks to the radiation exposure she had been through, her vocal cords still seemed strong, and she was continuing to wail in Sunek's direction as they made good their escape. Despite the fact that the noisy singing was not exactly making them inconspicuous.
With the guards subdued, the Bastille's location on the edge of the village had made their getaway that much more straightforward, and with the retuned tricorder now in Natasha's hands, they were making good progress back to their ship.
"Please, oh Beast of the Great Hereafter," Sister Lyca shivered as she temporarily stopped her wailing, "I must complete my song. My death song. It is my offering to you."
Sunek went to fire off an especially critical review of her offering, but before he could say anything, the Makalite's wailing resumed, as she powered into the next stanza of her death song.
"Ugh," Sunek griped at Natasha instead, "Why did we have to bring her with us?"
"Because she's dying," Natasha reminded him, "And it turns out she listens to you."
"So?" Sunek grumbled, "What happened to that whole 'don't interfere' policy you Starfleet lot are always banging on about? Feels like this definitely counts as interference."
Natasha suppressed another grimace. She had plenty of misgivings about what they were doing, especially feeding Sister Lyca's belief that Sunek was the guardian of their afterlife. But based on everything that she had seen in the village, and the extra information her colleagues had now provided about Mazur and the crashed ship, she was equally sure they didn't have much choice.
"Whatever version of the prime directive I'm still following, it was already out the window down here. This Martus Mazur character saw to that. Non-interference doesn't count when the interference has already happened. We need to help the villagers, and Sister Lyca in particular. Her symptoms are worse than any of the others I saw. I guess because she spent so long inside the…Bastille."
"What difference would that have made?" Klath asked, his voice booming over the top of the singing coming from over his shoulder.
Natasha shrugged. The jigsaw was now fully assembled in her head.
"Because it was almost entirely made of that metal that Mazur had been bringing over there. Which he was presumably stripping from the crashed ship that was saturated in radiation. Based on what I've been told, it sounds like he'd 'reward' the villagers that donated the most to his temple with extra metal for their huts, which would just have accelerated their symptoms, and presumably caused them to donate even more to try and show enough faith to ward off their sickness."
"Huh," Sunek mused, "These guys really are too stupid to live, aren't they?"
"It's not their fault," she countered, "Any species at this stage of development would be susceptible to that sort of manipulation. Even all of our own species, once upon a time."
"Ancient Klingons would not be fooled by such blatant trickery," Klath countered with a proud glare.
"Yeah," Sunek nodded in agreement, "And you're not gonna pull the wool over a bunch of logical Vulcan eyes either. We've always been smart. Most of the time."
Natasha rolled her eyes as she stepped over a tree branch.
"Believe that if you want, but I'm telling the truth. I'm not too proud to admit that there were plenty of times in Earth's history when we were suckered in by someone who sounded plausible enough in a time of crisis. Too many times, to be honest."
Sunek glanced up at Klath, as the Klingon and the Vulcan shared a moment of common understanding between their two species.
"Always said humans were the dumb ones," Sunek muttered, eliciting a nod from his colleague.
Natasha let that one slide, but she looked back at Sunek with a serious glare.
"The point is that where I'm from, it's considered rude to crash on a planet, expose the population to deadly levels of radiation and then leave them to it. It's possible that Makalite physiology makes them especially susceptible to this type of radiation, but whatever the details, we need to treat it."
As they continued to bicker between them, Sister Lyca's focus remained on completing her song.
She was still confused about a lot of what was happening, such as how the friends of the spotted man could also know the Beast of the Great Hereafter. But the rational part of her mind that had served her well against The Seer had now been entirely subsumed.
So instead of questioning what was being said, or where she was being taken, she kept her efforts on her singing, praying it would be enough to please the Beast.
Sunek winced a little more as her wailing started to intensify.
"Ok, fine," he said to Natasha, "But can you give her a sedative or something? I really don't wanna hear the rest of her greatest hits."
"We need to let her do what she needs to do," Natasha countered, much to the Vulcan's annoyance, "That way, it'll be easier to get her back and treat her."
At this, Sister Lyca stopped wailing, and weakly craned her head around to Natasha.
"I do not understand," she admitted, "The Beast has come to me. I am headed for the Great Hereafter. There is no more to be done, oh healer."
Natasha sighed again, feeling her frustrations grow. She tried to toe the line between doing the right thing for Sister Lyca and damaging the situation on the Makalite planet any further.
"Sister Lyca," she managed eventually, "The thing is that…The Beast wants me to heal you. Right?"
She nudged Sunek in the side, who looked more than a little disinterested in whatever she was talking about, and not especially Beast-like.
"Oh, right. Yeah. That."
Sister Lyca's eyes widened slightly, as Natasha pulled Sunek away from the Makalite on Klath's shoulder to mutter to him.
"Look, I hate to say this, but is there any chance you could try that again? Bit more commitment, maybe? Y'know, a bit more…Beast-like?"
Sunek rolled his eyes and sighed. Then, a thought crossed his mind. If she wants commitment, why not give it to her.
He turned back to the Makalite and thrust his arms out wide in a dramatic display.
"Yes, puny mortal!" he bellowed in a considerably deeper voice than usual, "Listen to me, the great Beast, and heed my words! I command you to listen to what the overbearing and profoundly irritating healer is telling you!"
Natasha suppressed a fresh flinch of concern as she saw the repressed amateur dramatics major she seemed to have summoned up from within the Vulcan. But it seemed to do the trick. Sister Lyca nodded back wordlessly.
Sunek turned back to her with a suitably smug grin on his face.
"That enough commitment for you?"
Before she had a chance to fully critique his performance, the tricorder in her hand began to chime out a warning. At the same time, Klath tensed up again, just as he had the first time they had walked through the forest earlier in the day. The Klingon's reaction meant that Natasha didn't even need to check the tricorder to know what was happening.
Seconds later, there was a rustling sound, coming from all around them. They all stopped on the spot. Klath cursed the fact that he couldn't get a clear path to draw his bat'leth with Sister Lyca still over his shoulder.
And then they emerged. Makalite faces, all light blue and curious, peered out of the undergrowth around them. Dozens of villagers, who seem to have raced to track them down.
In the middle of all of them, Klath and Sunek recognised Sister Ryna.
"You see," she said to her fellow Brothers and Sisters, "It really is the Beast of the Great Hereafter! He has come for us all on this day!"
On cue, each of the Makalites around them began to wail loudly, each singing their own unique death song in Sunek's direction.
Klath grunted unhappily, while Sunek turned and looked at Natasha.
"Um" he said awkwardly, "You think I should do the voice again?"
'*'*'
'*'*'
"We're not leaving without them."
Jirel maintained his position in front of the pilot's chair in the Bounty's cockpit, with Denella standing just as defiantly beside him. They both stared back at the ugly disruptor pistol that Mazur was pointing at them, but neither of them flinched.
After all, they'd both spent enough time travelling on the Bounty to have become used to people pointing disruptors at them. For some reason, it seemed to happen quite a lot.
For some, this situation would be terrifying. For the Bounty, this was a Tuesday.
"I'm telling you," Mazur persisted, keeping his grip tight on the pistol, "I really want this crate up in the air right now."
The El-Aurian had been very clear about that particular point since he had arrived onboard. Disruptor or no disruptor.
Inside, Jirel again cursed himself for how slow he had been to see the danger signs from Mazur. As someone who spent as much of their life as he did having disruptors pulled on him, he really should have read the signs.
And yet, despite knowing that Mazur was untrustworthy, and that he was itching to leave, and having seen what he had done with the Makalites, he hadn't expected him to go this far.
Still, the wealth of experience he had gathered in the troubling field of having disruptors pulled on him also gave him a sixth sense when assessing the intentions of whoever happened to be the one pulling the disruptor.
He knew that, a lot of the time, the person with the weapon didn't actually mean to fire it. That the act of having the weapon was intended to be enough of a threat. Because, despite the amount of death and destruction that went on around the galaxy in the average week, the truth was that most of the souls in the universe had no interest in being killers.
And Jirel could see in his eyes that Mazur was one of those souls. He may have been a con artist, a grifter and a man of a thousand scams, but he wasn't the sort of man that actually went around firing disruptors at people.
So, while he was clearly desperate to leave this planet, Jirel felt that he was safe enough to stall for long enough for the others to get back. And hopefully for him and Denella to regain control of the situation in the cockpit.
"Seriously, Mazur," he replied, calmly but firmly, "We're still short three people. And we're not leaving until they're onboard."
Mazur didn't flinch, though he was struggling to keep his slightly laboured breathing a secret. He was keenly aware that his condition was worsening by the minute.
"You…seem to be forgetting which one of us is armed."
He waved the Edosian disruptor, a slightly curious design clearly meant for a different physiology, to underline his point. But, Jirel noted, he didn't get any closer to actually firing it. So he continued with his distraction, as he glanced over at Denella.
"A prison transport, you said? Sounds like someone's been a naughty boy."
"A misunderstanding, nothing more," Mazur muttered with a smile bereft of mirth, as he nodded at Denella, "But I assume if you've found the ship, you've told them where it is. Which means I'd definitely prefer to get moving now."
"Sorry to disappoint you," Jirel grinned back, "But-"
He was immediately silenced by a sudden blast of dirty green energy that spat out from the disruptor and slammed into the deck of the cockpit next to his right foot, leaving a smoking scorch mark behind on the metal.
"Hey!" Denella snapped back at him, seeing her precious ship being wounded, "Careful with that thing!"
For Jirel's part, the blast caused him to momentarily reassess his initial read on Mazur. But still, even though he hadn't expected him to fire the weapon at all, he also noted that he had deliberately avoided shooting either him or Denella, even to injure them.
In a weird way, the entirely unexpected disruptor blast actually soothed the Trill. Mazur definitely wasn't a killer.
"Consider that a warning shot," the El-Aurian snapped, a little more on edge than before, "And let me put this another way: I've spent the last two months on this hellhole with all those villagers. So, I'm very much done listening to idiots. If you catch my drift."
Mazur took a step forward, keeping the disruptor tightly in his grip. Jirel kept an eye on it, wondering if it was close enough for him to dive for it.
"Besides, the way I see it, you don't have much of a choice here," he continued, "Either you do what I say, and we leave your friends behind. Or I shoot you, take your ship by force, and also leave your friends behind. Either way, you'll note the part where they're left behind."
Jirel kept his defences up, even as Mazur gestured at the pilot's controls at their side with the weapon in his hands.
"So," he concluded, "Feel free to choose the option where you don't get shot."
"I'm not doing it," Jirel said firmly with a slow shake of his head, "So I guess we're gonna have to wait-"
The disruptor fired again. But this time, the green bolt of energy didn't hit the deck itself next to Jirel's right foot. It hit him on the right foot itself.
The Trill screamed out in pain and dropped down to the deck.
"Agh! Son of a Tellarite miner!"
Denella instinctively dropped down to where he had collapsed with concern and tried to help him back up. She noted that it had been a glancing blow on the side of his foot, but also noted the burn mark and the smell of burnt flesh that meant Jirel's pain was very much real.
For his part, Mazur immediately flinched and stepped back away from the scene of the crime, the Edosian disruptor dropping down to his side as he looked both shocked and contrite at what he'd just done.
"Oh, crap," he managed, "I swear, I was just trying to shoot the deck again! It wasn't supposed to hit you-!"
"Well it did!" Jirel bellowed in pained anger, "It definitely hit me!"
He was especially angry for two reasons. One, because he'd just been shot in the foot. And two, because he'd allowed himself to completely underestimate Mazur again. He wasn't supposed to have actually shot him.
For a few more seconds, Mazur seemed to have lost control of the situation. He genuinely hadn't intended to hurt anyone, though the scent from Jirel's disruptor wound that was filling the cockpit rather undermined his intentions. So instead, the quick thinking mind that had gotten him out of so many worse scrapes in the past got to work, and decided that he had to make the most of this situation.
"Well," he said, raising the weapon again and nodding at Denella, "Now you've seen how serious I am, maybe you'll be so kind as to get us out of here. Unless you want your friend to lose any more limbs?"
"Haven't actually lost a limb," Jirel coughed as he sat prone on the floor, "Which…I appreciate isn't that big of a brag."
Mazur ignored his comment and kept his focus on Denella. Reluctantly, she glanced at Jirel and nodded, before standing back up and stepping over to the pilot's controls.
"Hey," Jirel managed, "Denella-"
"He's right, Jirel. We don't have a choice. I guess we'll have to come back for the others some other time."
Jirel's eyes widened, and he was about to argue the case further, but he saw something in the Orion's eyes as she stepped away from him that reassured him.
She had a plan.
"There," Mazur sighed in relief from the other side of the cockpit, "If I'd have known that was all I needed to do to get you to shut up and cooperate, I'd have shot you an hour ago."
He smiled smugly at Jirel, who winced again and propped himself up against the base of the pilot's console.
Above him, Denella tapped away at the controls, and the hum of the Bounty's thrusters began to fill the cockpit. She kept a close focus on the controls, knowing that she needed to be very careful with what she did next. Making it look like the Bounty had just suffered a catastrophic failure, without actually making it suffer a catastrophic failure.
She just prayed that among all his other dubious talents, Mazur wasn't also a qualified pilot. He had threatened to fly off in the ship himself, after all.
"Come on," the El-Aurian muttered, "Let's get going already!"
She licked her lips and gently eased up on the thruster inputs, not wanting to damage the Bounty any more than was necessary.
After a moment or two, she had started to overload the aft thrusters, and the entire ship began to shake and shudder. She quickly powered the whole engine assembly before it shook itself apart, and let out a frustrated grimace.
"Ugh, that's just great!" she snapped, "See, this is what happens when you rush me!"
"What?" Mazur asked, with a look of distrust.
"I had to do a lot of repairs after we set down here, and I hadn't finished all the pre-flight checks. We've got a potential fracture in the aft thruster casing."
Mazur's eyes narrowed further. One of the advantages of spending your life conning others was that you developed a sixth sense for when you were being conned yourself.
"Ok, nice try," he scoffed, "Is that the plan? Fool me with some engineering mumbo jumbo to give your friends, and the Edosians, time to get here? Well, I'm not buying that, so power everything back up and-"
"I'm serious," she said, spinning around in the pilot's chair and fixing him with a determined glare, "It's not a difficult repair, but we need to check it out. Otherwise, if the crack's bad enough, then as soon as we take off, there'll be enough of a shimmy for the ship to break apart in the atmosphere. I'm assuming that's not part of your escape plan?"
"Ugh," Mazur grimaced, "What kind of piece of junk is this ship?"
Denella kept her emotions in check at the latest slight against the Bounty, as Jirel shifted his weight and muttered through the pain in his foot.
"The sort of piece of junk you need to get off this planet in something other than a prison uniform," the Trill fired back knowingly, "So you might wanna think about being a bit nicer to the only person around here that can fix it."
Mazur kept his focus on Denella, but after a moment, the disruptor barrel lowered a tad.
"Ok, fine," he sighed, gesturing to the panel, "Hurry up and fix it."
"Can't do it here," she replied calmly, "I'll need to go check the assembly itself."
"Well, nice try, but I'm not letting you out of my sight."
Despite the sight of the disruptor in his hand, Denella shrugged and stood up from the pilot's console.
"Fine. Come with me."
Mazur's eyes narrowed again. He licked his lips slightly as he felt his best laid plans once again going awry.
"Where?"
Denella decided to twist the knife a little bit, enjoying the sudden look of discomfort on their adversary's face.
"Outside."
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Oh, and booze. You need something from The Beast? Can't go wrong with booze."
Natasha grimaced inwardly as she listened to Sunek setting the Makalite village even further off their natural course of evolution. The amount of cultural damage being inflicted on them seemed incalculable.
She had to remind herself that this was going to be for the greater good. That right now, curing the Makalites of their radiation poisoning was a bigger issue than the latest hard turn their belief system seemed to be taking thanks to a particularly significant case of mistaken identity.
"Food as well," Sunek continued, "The Beast loves food. So if any of you have got, like, a sandwich or something on you, that'd be-"
"Ahem," Natasha coughed from next to the Vulcan, "Dial it back a bit?"
He glanced at her and with a wide innocent smile. After initially being offended by the role that the Makalites had cast him in, his inner showman now seemed to have grown into the role. Especially after they had gained a wider audience than just Sister Lyca.
The three Bounty crewmates, along with Sister Lyca still slung over Klath's shoulder, stood where they had been ambushed in the middle of the forest, surrounded by a dozen or so Makalites, including Sister Ryna. They all sat cross-legged on the ground, enraptured by the Vulcan's words, like a group of school kids gathered around their teacher for story time.
Except, the story they were currently being spun by the guardian of the afterlife didn't appear to have any sort of moral at the end.
"Food," Sister Ryna nodded, looking around at her fellow Makalites, "The Beast of the Great Hereafter wishes for food. Quick, we must forage!"
"Yes!" one of the Makalite Brothers called out, "And then we must sing our songs to him again!"
At this, Sunek winced slightly.
"Ah, yeah, I meant to talk to you about the singing, actually. See, The Beast actually has very sensitive ears, and-"
"Sunek-I mean, mighty Beast," Natasha muttered again, before they were delayed even further by an impromptu foraging party, "Perhaps now's a good time to get everyone moving?"
He looked a little miffed to have his entertainment curtailed, but reluctantly turned back to the Makalites with a sigh, ratcheting up the theatre of his performance.
"No time for sandwiches, puny mortals, it is time for us to move!"
The Makalites looked at each other, and stood up obediently, before Sister Ryna took a cautious step towards the Beast.
"We will go wherever you wish us to, oh great Beast. Even if you are to take us to the Great Hereafter itself."
"We trust in you," another Makalite called out, "The Seer has forsaken us. And so has the spotted man. They were no longer in the village."
"Yeah, well," Sunek shrugged casually, "That's what you get for putting someone other than me in charge."
"But when I told everyone I had seen the Beast of the Great Hereafter," Sister Ryna continued, "We had to come and find you for ourselves. To help us find our salvation!"
Natasha felt as though her face had become a permanent grimace as the full details of the situation were spelled out to them by the Makalites. But it did at least give them the chance to fix the most pressing issue.
"We can do a lot better than salvation, can't we, mighty Beast?" she chimed in, "We can heal your sickness."
"Is this true?" Sister Ryna asked excitedly, directing her question to Sunek.
"The Beast was already preparing to cure me," Sister Lyca chimed in from Klath's shoulder, "I am sure he can cure all of you as well, Brothers and Sisters."
"Yes! Of course!" Sunek pompously bellowed, back in full Beast mode, "The great, mighty and incredibly handsome Beast will order his weak and feeble servant here to cure you all of your foul and wretched disease!"
As well as her grimace, Natasha found that her withering glare was getting a serious workout today.
"Right," she managed eventually, "So we should get moving."
"Yes," Sister Ryna nodded, "We should be swift, for more are following from the village."
"What's that now?" Sunek asked, a little less Beast-like.
"More are coming," Sister Ryna repeated, "Brother Falor, Brother Makan, Sister Hyla, and many more. They still trust in The Seer and the spotted man, and they did not believe my words about the Beast's visit. They forbade us from leaving, and when they find us gone, they will surely follow."
Natasha mentally added the charge of causing a religious schism to the rap sheet that a theoretical Starfleet tribunal would be handing down to them.
"Well," Sunek shrugged at her and Klath, "I don't like the sound of that."
Natasha checked the retuned tricorder in her hand and nodded. The Bounty wasn't far away, but she could also see a number of Makalite lifesigns now bearing down on their position.
"Perhaps," Klath motioned to the Vulcan, "The Beast should lead the way."
Sunek turned back around, and saw that the dozen or so Makalites were still staring at him, waiting on his every word.
"Oh, right," he nodded, "Come, simple peasants. Follow your noble Beast!"
He swaggered off into the forest, followed by Sister Ryna and the other Makalite believers, many of them still excitedly chattering to each other in hushed voices.
Klath shared an unhappy glance with Natasha before they followed in the wake of the over-acting guardian of the Makalite afterlife.
"He is giving me a headache," the Klingon muttered as they walked through a deeper patch of undergrowth, still carrying the ailing Sister Lyca on his shoulder.
"Could be worse," Natasha offered, "At least they haven't started singing yet-Ow!"
She stopped suddenly and hissed in pain. Looking down at the source of the pain, she saw a small purple thorn from one of the plants she had brushed past that was embedded in her leg, having pierced clean through her trousers.
"You are hurt?" Klath asked as he saw her leg.
She reached down and gently pulled the thorn out, before giving both the offending object and her leg a cursory scan with the tricorder.
"Just a scratch," she offered back, "Between this and that fruit I found earlier, I'm kinda getting used to the local flora not agreeing with me on this planet."
Klath nodded and continued walking.
Natasha carefully slipped the thorn into her pocket for later study, deciding that she may as well have something to show for her first proper away team mission in a year. Then, satisfied that there was nothing but the flesh wound to be concerned with, she resumed walking behind Klath.
She was far more concerned with the number of lifesigns that were approaching them from behind.
Not to mention what might be awaiting them further ahead.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"This would have been a lot easier if you hadn't shot me."
Jirel grimaced slightly again, as he propped himself up against one of the Bounty's landing struts to rest his injured foot.
To his side, Mazur stood in the grass, largely ignoring him. His focus, and his disruptor, were both trained on the more mobile of his prisoners, as Denella worked on the thruster assembly.
A gentle breeze blew across the clearing where the Bounty had landed, whipping up the stalks of grass, and the sky overhead was still clear and green-ish, though the sun was now much lower in the sky as sunset slowly approached.
The tranquillity of the scene was entirely lost on the armed man in the robes.
"Do you even know how to use that thing?" he shouted in frustration at Denella, as she ran the coil spanner across the hull.
As far as he was concerned, she didn't actually seem to be doing any proper work. If anything, she just seemed to be waving the bulky metal tool around the thruster housing without any sort of rhyme or reason. Once again, his senses told him that he was being conned in some way.
The Orion engineer, for her part, ignored the slight against her technical prowess and continued to work.
The truth was that, while she did know how to use the coil spanner, and had done since she was a small child being taught how to fix vintage shuttles by her father on the Orpheus IV colony, there weren't actually any repairs to conduct. But she had to follow through with the fictional damage that she'd set up back in the cockpit to buy them some more time, and so she was keeping up the pretence that there was something in the aft thrusters that needed repairing.
By waving the bulky metal tool around the thruster housing without any sort of rhyme or reason.
She couldn't help but take a small amount of smug satisfaction from the way she was able to fool him. As far as she was concerned, that was what you deserved for not understanding the basics of engineering.
"Nearly finished," she reported back to the El-Aurian, as she casually flicked her finger over the set of controls on the side of the spanner, causing a dark red light at the end of the device to gently pulse on and off.
To the uneducated Mazur, it looked like the implement was doing something. Even though she was simply cycling the coil spanner's torch attachment through a partial diagnostic program.
"Make sure you are," Mazur grouched.
Despite the pain in his foot, Jirel was finding some enjoyment in the improvised piece of theatre that Denella was putting on. But he felt he should help out with the ongoing distraction.
"Feeling the Edosians getting closer?" he offered, "What sort of scam did you try to pull with them, anyway?"
"Like I said, a misunderstanding," the El-Aurian shrugged.
Though he did also glance up at the sky in a moment of paranoia, as if he might be able to spot another Edosian ship in orbit.
"Fair few misunderstandings given the crash side," Denella chimed in, as she kept her attention on the torch diagnostic.
"Hey," Mazur shrugged, "It's not my fault their ship hit an ion storm and couldn't cope with it. And it's certainly not my fault that their species is so fragile."
Denella paused for a moment and looked back at him with an accusing glare.
"They all died in the crash?"
Mazur met her accusation with a knowing glance.
"Come on now. I'm not a killer, ok? I don't even like to use guns-"
He stopped and awkwardly gestured to Jirel's injured foot with the disruptor that had done the damage.
"Y'know. Normally."
"So glad you decided to make an exception to that rule," the Trill grimaced.
The El-Aurian switched his attention back to the work that Denella was still doing, pacing around with an ever-decreasing amount of patience.
"Whatever. You've got ten minutes to finish whatever the hell you're doing. Or maybe I'll shoot his other foot. Even things out."
Denella looked over at the already crippled Jirel and sighed, giving him a look that suggested she was all out of stalling options. They'd bought as much time as they could. Jirel looked around. Mazur was too far away, and he was too injured to consider any sort of surprise attack. They needed something else.
Then, he glanced behind Mazur, over at the tree line, and he smiled.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"They're right behind us!"
As Sunek issued his report, a particularly large stone went whizzing past Natasha's head, impacting on a nearby tree trunk with some force.
She hadn't really needed the report.
"Yep, got it," she called out, "Everyone keep moving!"
The other villagers had closed them down more quickly than they had been expecting. The Makalites moved significantly faster than the Klingon, Vulcan and human thanks to their familiarity with the environment, and Natasha knew they had slowed their own group down.
And she also knew that the other villagers had brought weapons with them. The slingshots that Klath had assessed to be of no real threat during his impromptu tactical analysis of the village earlier.
What he hadn't factored in during that analysis was the impact that the slightly higher gravity of the planet would have on the ability of the natives to propel the simple projectiles with rather more devastating force than one might expect.
The dent left behind in the tree trunk to their right as another stone whizzed past and slammed into the bark clearly underlined that.
Klath staggered over another tree root, doubly frustrated that he was having to retreat from the onslaught with Sister Lyca still on his back, and that her presence was still preventing him from grabbing his bat'leth and turning to fight.
"This is becoming annoying," he growled as another stone whistled past.
"Ah, you say that every time people start throwing rocks at us," Sunek quipped as he vaulted over a fallen tree trunk.
Up ahead of them, one of the stones being hurled from behind struck one of the Makalite Brothers squarely in the back, causing him to fall to the ground with a yelp of pain. Despite the danger of the situation, Natasha's medical training overrode everything else, as she stopped to help the blue-skinned man back up.
"You ok?" she asked, as another couple of stones impacted nearby.
The Makalite Brother managed a pained nod as she helped him back to his feet. With the pursuing pack getting ever nearer, they followed the rest of their group back through the undergrowth.
It didn't take them long to catch up. A few more paces further on, they found that the dozen or so other Makalites, headed by Sister Ryna, had stopped right at the edge of the clearing. Much to the continued frustration of Sunek and Klath.
Why they had stopped was immediately clear, despite the danger from behind. The Bounty was visible across on the other side of the clearing, nestled under the mountain range behind. Natasha felt a slight pang of comfort as she saw the now-familiar shape of the ship she had begun to call home.
But that was nothing like the feeling it had evoked in the Makalites.
"The skyship…" she heard Sister Ryna whisper.
But aside from that, they stood in venerable silence. Because not only was the skyship there, but so was The Seer.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"My flock?" Mazur spat at Jirel.
The Trill kept his eyes focused on the El-Aurian.
"Yeah, your flock," he replied, a little louder than was strictly necessary given the short distance between them, "I assumed you might want to do something for them before we left, given all they did for you. Especially now we're back at the…skyship."
The implication in his comment passed Mazur by entirely. Instead, he let out a cackle of laughter.
"My flock! Those stupid backward villagers? You really think, after all I've been through, I'm going to go back and help them?"
Jirel patiently maintained eye contact with the armed man, but didn't say anything, allowing the amateur dramatics of the professional con artist to play out. And letting him loudly dig his own grave. Metaphorically speaking.
"You have no idea how annoying this entire mess has been for me, do you? How utterly boring, how tedious and pointless! Trapped in that dreadful village for weeks on end, listening to those morons going on and on about prophecies, and diseases, and all their other problems! Having to make up a new vision every day just to shut them up!"
He tutted and paced up and down under the Bounty. Denella had stopped in her fictitious repair to watch the speech play out.
"They just wouldn't stop complaining! About anything! 'Oh, Seer, my crops won't grow!' or 'Oh, Seer, the rains haven't come yet!' or 'Oh, Seer, my elbow hurts!'."
"Seems like that's the sort of thing The Seer should be dealing with."
"Psh, yeah, well, good thing I'm not The Seer any more, isn't it?"
"No," Jirel grinned knowingly, "You're Martus Mazur. The greatest swindler in the galaxy. Reduced to peddling lies to the Makalites."
"Precisely," Mazur nodded pompously, appreciating the unexpected ego massage.
He appreciated it slightly less when he saw a wide grin spreading across Jirel's face, as the Trill's focus shifted from Mazur himself to something behind him.
That shift of focus wasn't lost on the El-Aurian. Nor was the distant, but unmistakable sound of excitable chattering coming from behind him.
With a sinking feeling, he slowly turned around to the tree line, and saw the large gaggle of Makalites gathered on the edge of the clearing. Also visible among the number of blue-skinned aliens were the unmistakable forms of a human, a Vulcan and a Klingon.
Some of the Makalites were armed with stones and slingshots, but they had paused in their assault once they had seen the skyship in the clearing. And heard The Seer speaking.
And now all of them, from the smallest Makalite to the burliest Klingon, looked thoroughly unhappy with him.
"Ah," Mazur sighed, "Crap."
He felt a familiar sensation inside. A sensation that he had experienced plenty of times as he had bounced around the cosmos from trick to scam and back again. The game was up. The grift was well and truly over.
So distracted was he at the collapse of The Seer's facade that he didn't even notice a familiar object come arcing through the air towards him. He only became aware of it when it impacted heavily on the back of his head.
Martus Mazur dropped the Edosian disruptor and crumpled to the ground in a becalmed, and deeply unconscious slump. Denella stood over his now immobile form, gripping her trusty coil spanner in her hand and smiling in satisfaction.
"See?" she said to the unconscious Mazur, "I do know how to use one of these."
She turned back to Jirel, who smiled back at her.
"And all's well that ends-"
But he didn't get any further with his comment. Because then the first stone, propelled from somewhere along the tree line of the forest, thudded into the ground next to them.
'*'*'
'*'*'
During The Seer's little speech, and his subsequent incapacitation, the Makalites gathered on the fringes of the forest had been struggling to process what was happening. For the umpteenth time in the last few weeks, their system of beliefs was being turned on its head, and they all had different opinions on the developing situation.
"The Seer has forsaken us!"
"The spotted man's companion has assaulted The Seer!"
"What of his prophecies? He said they were lies!"
"The spotted man and The Seer were abandoning all of us!"
"This is blasphemy!"
The splinter group that had been fleeing from the village with Sunek, Klath and Denella, and whose belief and trust in The Seer had been overtaken by their trust in the Beast of the Great Hereafter, who had visited them to cure their disease, took The Seer's words as vindication of their decision, and proof in Sister Lyca's long-held belief that The Seer had been a false prophet.
Which made them angry, because for a long time before the Beast had shown up, they had been following him just as much as the others.
Meanwhile, the larger group of villagers led by Brother Falor, Brother Makan and Sister Hyla, the group that had remained faithful to The Seer's prophecy and to the spotted man's skyship, were splintering further.
Some were angry with The Seer, for his hurtful words and his spiteful actions that seemed to undermine everything he had told them since he had arrived in their village, now he had admitted freely that he wasn't the man he claimed to be.
Others were too blinded by their devotion to The Seer to pay attention to what he'd actually been saying. His actual words had stopped mattering to them a long time ago, because they were often so confusing and contradictory that attempting to rationalise them completely was a hopeless task. Their faith was all that mattered now.
And they were angry because they had seen the green woman, who none of them had seen before, but who also appeared to be travelling with the spotted man himself, attack The Seer and knock him to the ground.
Whichever of the expanding collection of splinter groups each Makalite belonged to, one thing was common amongst all of them. They were all angry.
And before Natasha, Klath or Sunek realised what was happening, that anger began to escalate all around them.
"The Seer's prophecies were false! He said so himself!" Sister Ryna called out, "Just as Sister Lyca told us!"
"The Seer and the spotted man were going to leave us!" Brother Falor bellowed, especially angry seeing as how The Seer had promised him such a prime seat onboard the skyship when it made its ascent to the heavens, in return for his loyalty.
"They have both forsaken us!" Brother Makan, equally miffed at how his prime seat offer had been set to come to nothing.
"The Seer has been struck down!" Sister Hyla, committed to the words of the prophecy to the bitter end, retorted, "We must ignore this blasphemy, and save him!"
"No!" Sister Ryna shot back, "We must stop him!"
And then, as the angered words escalated, the crowd moved. Forwards, into the clearing. Those with weapons brought them to bear.
"Oh no," Natasha managed, "No, everyone, listen-!"
Before she could get any further, the first stones left their slingshots.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Denella helped the injured Jirel towards the rear ramp of the Bounty as best she could, even as more stones whistled past them.
She had left Mazur where he had fallen, reasoning that she'd come back for him later. At least she was sure that he wasn't going anywhere for the time being. And besides, they had more important things to worry about. Namely the dozens of blue-skinned aliens racing across the clearing towards them, flinging stones about with deadly force.
"What the hell are they doing?" she managed, "I thought you said they liked you?"
"They did!" Jirel insisted, gesturing out at one of the approaching Makalite women, "That one even gave me a massage-You know, I don't come across great in that story. Ignore that."
Denella had no time to query that further, as a particularly large stone slammed into the metal of the ramp, just inches away from them.
And then they heard a familiar voice.
"My people! Please! Stop this attack!"
Despite their situation, Denella and Jirel couldn't help but glance at each other.
"Was that…?"
"Definitely sounded like…"
Their confusion deepened as the Makalites obeyed the commanding sound of the voice, the entire pack coming to a halt immediately and turning back to the source of the voice. Even the few remaining true believers of The Seer, led by Sister Hyla, looked up from where they had rushed to attend to their unconscious saviour.
Behind them, in the middle of the clearing, Sunek stood and bellowed out at the crowd.
"Listen to the Beast of the Great Hereafter! Your brave, wise and perfectly proportioned Beast! Do not attack the feeble and destitute spotted man, or his measly skyship!"
A few of the Makalites began to chatter amongst themselves, even as Sunek calmly approached them. His arms were extended wide, in a similar manner to how Mazur had presented himself, though his face was less serene and peaceable, and more deeply smug.
Further back, Natasha and Klath, with Sister Lyca still on his shoulder, followed the Vulcan.
"It appears to be working," Klath noted with a grunt.
"Depends on how you're defining 'working', I guess," she sighed.
It had been the only play they had left, to send Sunek out to stop the Makalites. That didn't mean that she had to like it.
Sunek walked on through the awestruck Makalites. Even the former followers of The Seer now believed what Sister Ryna had been telling them. The Beast was here.
"The supremely intelligent and sexually potent Beast is pleased you are listening to him," Sunek continued as he walked on towards the Bounty, "Now he demands that you return to your homes, while The Beast deals with the spotted man and his skyship. Once and for all."
The Makalites looked at each other again.
Then, as Jirel and Denella's jaws dropped in unison, the entire hoard, even those tending to The Seer, turned back and headed towards the forest. The flock obeyed their new master.
They passed by Klath and Natasha, barely paying them any notice. And as the Makalites disappeared, save for the one on Klath's shoulders, Sunek triumphantly stepped up the ramp to where his stunned colleagues were standing.
"What?" he said with the most casual of shrugs, "Turns out I'm a god. Don't act so surprised. At least there are some people in this big old galaxy of ours who know my proper place in the pecking order."
With a final flourish, the latest con artist to ply his trade amongst the Makalites stepped past them and swaggered his way back into the ship.
After a moment, Denella turned to the still-stunned Jirel.
"I forgot to mention. He's got some HR issues he wants to discuss with you."
"Clearly," Jirel managed.
They were joined by Natasha and Klath, along with his passenger. He managed a weak apologetic smile at the deeply unhappy human doctor.
"Seriously. We don't usually do this sort of thing."
"Uh huh," she replied with a raised eyebrow.
She walked on into the ship, as Jirel hobbled after her, still supported by Denella.
"Hey, also, could you take a look at my foot? Kinda got a bit shot-"
"Get in line," she fired back, "First up, we've got a village to save."
The pain from his foot made him consider arguing his case further, but he reluctantly agreed with her order of priority. They carried on up the ramp.
"By the way," he added, "Who the hell made Sunek a god?"