Part Two
It was Klath that broke the shocked silence that had descended on the Bounty's cockpit, the Klingon immediately jumping to action stations.
"I am raising our shields and bringing weapons online," he barked out as he tapped his controls.
Nobody else in the cockpit moved.
"Why?" Jirel managed to reply, still staring at the vast ship in front of them.
"We must defend ourselves!" Klath spat back at the Trill, "They are Romulans!"
"Yep, thanks for the ID, mighty oracle. And if they really want to pick a fight with us out here, there's not much our little peashooter of a torpedo launcher can do about it."
"It's enormous," Natasha whispered from the other side of the cockpit. She had seen Warbirds plenty of times before during her time with Starfleet. But back then, she had been on a starship. Somehow, seeing the gigantic vessel from onboard a ship as small as the Bounty seemed to magnify its size even more.
"Jirel," Klath persisted, "If we are to die, then we must die with honour!"
Jirel spun around to his incensed Klingon weapons chief and tried to keep his voice as calm and measured as possible. "Ok, Klath, just listen to me for a second. I have no intention of dying today, with honour or otherwise. And, right now, the best way of making sure I don't die today is if we do nothing that might piss off that great big Romulan ship out there, ok?"
For a moment, he thought Klath was actually about to ignore him and open fire, regardless of how futile it would be. But eventually, he merely folded his arms in a show of annoyance.
"We could always run?" Natasha offered.
"Same problem," Denella replied, "That thing'll run rings around us at warp."
"So?" Sunek asked, not unreasonably, "What exactly are we gonna do?"
Jirel went to answer, then stopped himself. A silent admission that he didn't have a clue. Instead, it was T'Len who answered her estranged husband's question.
"You could hail them?"
All five of the Bounty's crew turned around in unison to look at the Vulcan woman with varying levels of disbelief. For her part, she stared back with complete sincerity.
"You were asked to deliver your cargo to a ship at these coordinates, were you not? Well, that is a ship. At these coordinates."
Jirel scoffed, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "Ok, so, you think the Romulan Empire is paying us - this ship - to deliver their spare parts?"
T'Len remained a picture of sincerity. Jirel scoffed again and looked over to Denella for some sort of support. The Orion woman merely shrugged. "I mean," she offered, "If they wanted us dead, we'd be very, very dead by now, right?"
The Trill chewed his lip thoughtfully, then sighed in defeat. "Alright," he said, feeling faintly ridiculous, "In lieu of a sane plan, I guess I'll...hail them."
He swivelled back around to the front of the cockpit and tapped the controls on the arm of his chair, licking his lips and digging down to find his best captain's voice.
"Romulan ship, this is, um, the Bounty?" he began, not quite finding it, "We were, erm, told to deliver supplies to these coordinates. Do you...know anything about that?"
He slumped back in his chair and waited for a response. He had started to sweat.
"Very nice Jirel," Denella whispered from behind him, "Sounded very captain-y."
"Yeah, very funny. Do you wanna take over-?"
Before he got any further, the whole ship rocked gently. Klath jumped back into action, but everyone present knew it didn't feel like weapons fire.
"They have locked a tractor beam on us," he reported urgently, "We are being towed into their main hangar bay!"
The Klingon looked up at his colleagues, who he noted with increasing disdain had still not matched his state of battle readiness.
"Well," Denella offered, "That's what I'd do if I wanted to offload a bunch of supplies from the cargo bay of a smaller ship?"
"Yeah," Jirel added, giving himself up to the farce of the situation, "In a weird way, this is actually a good thing?"
Through the cockpit window, they watched as the eerie green-tinged light of the tractor beam pulled the Bounty between the twin hulls of the ship and towards the open doors of the hangar bay at the rear of the ship's hawk-like front section.
"So," Sunek quipped as the ship passed inside, "Anyone know the Romulan for 'We come in peace'?"
The Bounty settled down onto the deck of the hangar bay with a gentle thud. Behind it, the vast bay doors slowly closed and locked together. Seconds later, unbeknownst to the Bounty's crew, the entire Warbird began to shimmer as the great ship cloaked.
And then Sector Gamma 432 was back to being as unremarkable and boring as it had ever been.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Jirel peered out of the cockpit window at the huge empty hanger bay and shrugged.
"Well," he muttered to nobody in particular, "Let's go say hello, I guess."
He turned around, to see Klath in the middle of tooling up. The Klingon already had his bat'leth slung behind his back, and was in the process of clipping a dagger and a stout disruptor to his belt.
"Klath, what the hell are you doing?"
Klath looked back at the Trill, as if the answer should have been obvious. "I am preparing for battle."
"Of course," Jirel sighed, "So, what's the plan, then? You're gonna rush out there, single-handedly fight your way through a couple of thousand Romulan soldiers and commandeer their ship?"
Klath considered this for a moment with a look of complete seriousness. "You are all welcome to assist," he said eventually.
"Ok, just-No weapons," Jirel snapped, "We're here to make a delivery, remember?"
"You hope," Sunek muttered with amusement from behind Jirel.
Klath stared back at the Trill for a moment. Then, with a further annoyed grimace, he reluctantly started to remove his weapons.
Moments later, six slightly dishevelled and entirely unarmed figures descended the Bounty's rear cargo ramp and looked around.
"You know," Sunek mused, "I was expecting it to be a lot bigger on the inside."
Despite his comment, the hangar bay was more than large enough, made of faded dark metal and stretching out around them. But there was something slightly off about their surroundings.
What little cargo they could see was haphazardly piled up around the place, with no real sense of military order to them. The scuffed walls of the bay showed clear signs of damage and disrepair, as if the ship had just come out of a significant battle. And even the lighting seemed off, slightly dimmer than was really comfortable for a bay of this size, and flickering slightly.
"Huh," Denella offered simply as she clocked the extent of the decay, "Does this place ever look like crap."
As they reached the bottom of the ramp, a set of doors on the other side of the bay opened and footsteps paced into the room.
"Welp," Jirel muttered, trying to adopt his best space captain pose and falling as short as he had with his captain's voice a few minutes earlier, "I guess this'll be the welcoming committee."
Through the dimmed lighting, they saw a trio of figures with pointed ears approaching them. But they didn't walk with the practiced march of Romulan troops. This was more of a ramshackle cacophony of steps on the hard metal floor. And they weren't wearing Romulan uniforms. Instead, they were all clad in a variety of coloured overalls and tunics. And, while they had pointed ears, they were all clearly not Romulan, but Vulcan.
And they were all smiling.
The Vulcan at the head of the trio was a tall, rangy man with short brown hair and a close-cropped goatee beard. He led the other two Vulcans, a stout male and a slender female, up to the Bounty's crew and then stopped in his tracks, taking them all in. For a moment, nobody quite seemed to know what to do next.
Except for Sunek, who let out an audible gasp as he finally saw the face of the leading Vulcan in a clear light.
"Holy crap," he blurted out, "Sokar?"
The bearded Vulcan smiled wider and nodded.
"Yes, Sunek," he replied, "It's me."
Sunek laughed out loud, crossing the divide between the two crews and wrapping the rangy Vulcan in a tight bear hug. T'Len also broke from her position and walked over to join the others, looking to be familiar with all of them.
"Anyone starting to feel a bit used?" Denella asked without amusement.
"Guys," Sunek laughed, turning back to the rest of the Bounty's crew, "It's Sokar!"
"Yep," Jirel replied tersely, "We got that bit."
"But...I know him! From years ago, in the V'tosh ka'tur! I…"
Sunek paused, struggling to take everything in. Sokar took that opportunity to step forwards and address the rest of the Bounty's crew with open arms.
"My friends," he said, with a somewhat pompous air, "Welcome to the starship Tolaris. The flagship of the V'tosh ka'tur."
'*'*'
'*'*'
"This is crazy…"
It was already the sixth or seventh time that Sunek had said those exact words since Sokar's announcement in the hangar bay. And it almost certainly wouldn't be the last. His mind had been flying at warp speed ever since he had crossed paths with the second face from his past in the last couple of days.
He had barely noticed as Sokar had introduced the Bounty's crew to his two cohorts, Tepal and T'Prin. He had only been vaguely aware as he had led them from the hangar bay through a dizzying maze of corridors. And he hadn't really been listening when dinner was suggested.
Because his mind was still struggling to put all the pieces together. Sokar, one of his best friends back at the ShiKahr Learning Institute, was here. Apparently commanding a Romulan Warbird.
Sunek had gotten used to a lot of things not making sense in his life. But this was stretching even his sense of credulity.
He struggled back into the here and now and looked around at their surroundings. Sokar had brought them to the enormous main dining hall of the Tolaris, a vast expanse of a room which had presumably been designed to keep hundreds of hungry Romulan soldiers fed at a time. Meaning that the room slightly dwarfed the current dining party, who occupied a scant few seats on a single one of the long metal tables that were laid out around the room in tight formation.
There was a clear delineation down the middle of the table, though Sunek hadn't been paying enough attention to remember whether that was deliberate or not. He sat with the rest of the Bounty's crew on one side, while Sokar sat with T'Prin, Tepal and T'Len on the other.
In between the two groups, the table was adorned with a veritable feast of Vulcan cuisine, a display of luxury that seemed a little unnecessary both for the size of the dining party and for the occasion. It was more like a state banquet than a friendly cosy meal.
He looked over at T'Len, who was directly opposite him. She smiled back at him, knowingly.
"I take it you knew about all this?" he managed. There was no unhappiness at being deceived in his comment, merely a tinge of awe.
"I felt it would be a nice surprise," she replied with a good-natured tone.
"Yes," Sokar jumped in without prompting, "T'Len and I crossed paths some months ago on Abrion IV. We were both eager to get together with some V'tosh ka'tur members again. And she was especially keen that we tracked you down, in particular, Sunek."
She looked down at the table with mild embarrassment. Sunek felt that pesky dopey smile creep back onto his face.
"This is crazy…" he whispered for the seventh or possibly eighth time.
Sokar let out a hearty laugh and turned back to the rest of the Bounty's crew, who were still looking distinctly uncomfortable with the situation. "My apologies to you all," he offered, "It wasn't our intention to deceive you."
"Hard fail on that front, just FYI," Jirel replied curtly.
Sokar's broad smile remained, but Jirel saw something change in his eyes. He definitely looked a little irritated by the Trill's comment.
"I'm sure you have plenty of questions," Sokar continued with a deliberately pleasant tone, "And I'll be happy to answer them. It's just unfortunate that our method of getting you here had to be a bit...cloak and dagger."
"Was that a pun?" Denella asked from Jirel's side, without a trace of mirth.
Sokar didn't answer, the signs of irritation on his otherwise smiling face growing a tad more recognisable. He gestured to the feast in front of them. "But first: Please, eat," he continued, "Thanks to T'Prin here for preparing such a repast. She has been busy reprogramming the replicators with appropriately Vulcan food."
The slender Vulcan woman at the end of the group nodded and smiled.
At the end of the Bounty's side of the table, Klath looked at the food with distrust. They had already been deceived once, and given the proliferation of poisons and biological agents throughout the galaxy, it would be an act of pure stupidity to accept anything from their untrustworthy guests without completing some sort of rudimentary inspection first.
He looked back across at his hungry colleagues to see that they had all already started eating. The Klingon rolled his eyes in frustration.
"Hey, a free meal's a free meal," Sunek quipped to the watching Vulcans as he loaded his plate with generous slices of fried Flatroot.
"You really didn't have to do this," Jirel added, as he chewed on a portion of Adronn feltara.
"But it's appreciated," Denella said between hungry slurps of Plomeek soup.
Natasha mustered a nod of agreement, her efforts to do anything else hindered by a mouthful of Shav-rot.
On the other side of the table, the four Vulcans watched on for a moment with a shared look of satisfaction. T'Prin turned and looked at the final member of the Bounty's crew, as Klath unhappily sniffed a piece of freshly prepared Saffir.
"And what about you, Klingon friend?" she asked with a smile, "Is my cooking to your tastes?"
Klath glanced up, looking unsettled as he realised that he was the centre of attention. He still wasn't entirely sure they weren't all being poisoned, but he reluctantly took a tentative bite of the warm bread and swallowed loudly.
"It is...edible," he said, after a moment of guarded consideration.
"Our brave warrior," Denella grinned as she ripped off a similar chunk of bread from the communal pile, earning an especially dark glower from the Klingon.
Sokar roared with laughter at this. Jirel smiled, but there again seemed something off about his reaction. It hadn't been that funny. It felt like he was compensating for something, somehow.
"Think of this as a thank you," Sokar offered as his laughter subsided, "For bringing us our supplies."
At this, Denella paused, midway through helping herself to a second portion of T'mirak rice. "You...actually need all that stuff?"
It was Tepal who replied, from the left side of Sokar. "I don't know if you've ever tried to keep a Romulan Warbird running," he said, "But it does tend to need a lot of spare parts."
Denella recalled the state of disrepair she had seen in the hangar bay, as well as in the corridors on their walk to the dining hall, and nodded. It made sense.
"This is crazy…" Sunek offered, for what may have been the ninth time.
"I'm still a bit hazy on how you ended up with this ship," Jirel admitted, toying with his food for a moment.
"We found it," Tepal replied simply, his tone switching to a more terse and guarded level.
"Forgetful guys, those Romulans. Imagine losing a thing like this."
Sokar smiled back at the Trill, but there was no trace of even false mirth in this one. "The Tolaris - or whatever the Romulans might have called it - was drifting through the Sendran system when we happened upon it," he explained in a slightly superior manner, "Completely abandoned, but very much repairable."
"I guess that bit's still a work in progress," Denella offered. Sokar flinched slightly. Must've hit a nerve, the Orion woman thought to herself.
"Romulans do not abandon their ships," Klath boomed out suddenly, "They destroy them before they end up in the hands of an enemy."
Sokar glanced over at the Klingon dismissively. "The Sendran system was a Dominion stronghold during the war," he explained, "We suspect the ship was boarded and captured before the crew had a chance to scuttle it, and the Dominion took it away for further study. Only to abandon it when they fled back to the Gamma Quadrant."
"Makes sense," Natasha nodded thoughtfully, "Starfleet heard similar reports of starships being seized by Dominion forces from time to time."
She was sure she detected a slight flinch on Sokar's face when she mentioned Starfleet, but she quickly dismissed it. After all, if she was being entirely honest with herself, the word still had a similar effect on her.
"The superstructure and the warp drive were fully operational," Sokar continued, "But you are right that the rest of the ship required a lot of work. With the supplies you have provided, however, we should be able to bring all essential systems online."
"Like the cloaking device?" Denella asked, politely but pointedly querying his definition of essential systems.
Sokar's smile tightened another few notches. Tepal chimed in with a response.
"As Sokar said to us when we first drew up the repair schedule, when your ship has a cloak, it tends to become an essential system. Because it's so…'wicked cool'."
Sokar burst out laughing again. Natasha couldn't help but stare at the sight, realising too late that the bearded Vulcan had noticed her gaze.
"Is there a problem, doctor?"
"Oh, um, sorry," she managed, shifting in her seat, "It's just-I guess I'm still getting used to the idea of laughing Vulcans."
She tried a chuckle of her own, her comment meant to be good-natured. But Sokar and the others didn't match her reaction. If anything, the mood across the other side of the table seemed to grow substantially darker. She stopped chuckling and coughed awkwardly.
"Interesting," Sokar nodded, with a raised eyebrow, "Tell me, Ms Kinsen, what do you have in common with Adolf Hitler?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Or Khan Noonien Singh? Or Vlad the Impaler? I mean, you are all human, are you not? Surely you must all think and feel and act the same way?"
Natasha struggled to figure out whether he was being serious, or whether this was a particularly committed joke on his part. None of the Vulcans seemed amused, that much was clear.
"Hey," Sunek managed, breaking the icy silence that had descended, "Come on, you don't need to do the whole-"
"Or is it only you humans who are allowed to embrace their individuality?" Sokar continued, with what was now sounding like a well-trodden spiel, "While the rest of the galaxy must conform to these narrow little stereotypes? The logical Vulcans, the brutal Cardassians, the warlike Klingons-"
"Present company excepted, obviously," Jirel chimed in, causing Klath's glower to deepen further.
"Um," Natasha managed, "Look, I'm sorry if I offended you. I just meant-"
"Doc, relax," Sunek chimed in, looking a tad embarrassed, "This is just some old rabble rousing stuff from when we were young. Right, Sokar?"
The bearded Vulcan stared at Natasha for a few more moments, long enough for her to get the distinct impression that his forthcoming climbdown was not entirely genuine.
"Yes. Perhaps it is," he replied, "But you have to understand that it does get...tiring, to be constantly seen as aberrations."
"All we want," Tepal added, "Is to be seen as a natural - perhaps even a logical - part of an inherently chaotic universe. Not a strange deviation from the norm."
Natasha nodded in understanding, still feeling like every pair of Vulcan eyes in the room was silently judging her. Even Sunek. Another silence descended. Everyone's appetites appeared to have vanished for the time being.
"Well," Jirel managed eventually, "Again, you really shouldn't have...with all the food. But now we should probably offload our cargo and leave you to get on with-"
"My people will deal with the cargo," Sokar shot back, as if he hadn't really been listening, "You are our guests."
Something about that comment piqued Jirel's suspicions all over again. His people?
"Besides," he continued, looking over at Sunek, "I'm sure that Sunek would like to stay for a while."
"Perhaps," Tepal offered to the others, "The rest of you would care for a tour of the Tolaris?"
Denella mused on this for a moment, then shrugged and nodded. After all, it wasn't every day you were offered a tour of a Romulan Warbird. Regardless of what condition it was in. Evidently, however, this wasn't a belief shared by Klath.
"I will assist with the cargo," the Klingon replied simply.
Sokar and the other Vulcans looked back at the impassive Klingon, but decided against pushing the issue.
All things considered, Jirel mused to himself, he had been to less awkward dinner parties.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Tepal's tour was proving to be as extensive as it was dreary.
"A magnificent craft," he stated flatly, "The Romulans call it a D'deridex-class. Sixty-three decks in total. Maximum speed of warp 9.6, and, of course, you're already aware of the cloaking device..."
The stout Vulcan may have embraced his emotional side, but as he led Denella and Jirel down yet another of the Tolaris's dark metal corridors, he still needed some work on his presentational skills. For most of the tour, it sounded to Jirel like he was just reading facts off a trading card.
"...The whole ship is over 1400 metres in length," he continued to drone on, not exactly disproving the Trill's suspicions, "With a mass of some 4,320,000 metric tonnes..."
Jirel and Denella had been the only two who had ultimately taken up the offer of the tour.
Sunek had disappeared with T'Len as soon as dinner was over, holding hands and giddily rushing off like two furtive teenage lovers trying to get some alone time away from their parents. Meanwhile, Natasha had surprisingly volunteered to go with Klath back to the Bounty and help to unload the supplies. Jirel suspected that decision had been down to the particularly uncomfortable time she'd had during their meal. She didn't want to risk any more faux pas.
Still, as Tepal continued with his lengthy description of the precise composition of the metal panelling in the corridor walls, Jirel found himself feeling a little jealous that he hadn't decided to go with a couple of hours of manual labour instead.
"...The Romulans seem to prefer tritanium to lighter composites," the Vulcan noted, as Jirel suppressed a yawn, "I believe this is designed to help with ship rigidity while at impulse…"
To Jirel's side, Denella was at least paying attention to Tepal's spiel. Although she was more unimpressed with what she was seeing rather than what she was hearing. The more she saw of the Tolaris, the less it looked like the unimpeachable Romulan Warbird that had first confronted them in Sector Gamma 432.
In fact, in her considered and semi-professional engineering opinion, the Tolaris was a complete wreck.
The disrepair they had seen earlier wasn't even half of it. As they followed Tepal on his exhaustive tour, she noted wires and cabling hanging down from various panels all over the ceiling, apparently unconnected to anything, while every few steps they walked past an exposed section of isolinear circuitry in the walls.
Barely half of the lights on the entire ship seemed to work, computer terminals flickered and blinked as if they were low on power, and when they reached the occasional section where the ship's guts were at least covered up, the walls and decking were a hodge-podge of multicoloured panels, all badly sealed together.
Despite the vast scale and the grandeur of the Warbird, she wasn't lying to herself when she thought she'd be ashamed if even a fraction of the Bounty was left in this sort of condition.
It also wasn't hard to spot that the Tolaris was unnaturally empty for a vessel of her size. Aside from the odd smiling Vulcan here and there, the corridors were virtually deserted.
But despite all that, Tepal delivered his dry tour with all the reverence and pride as if they were touring the decks of the USS Enterprise herself.
"...And once we've completed work on the internal sensors, we'll have full automation of shipboard systems…"
They turned a corner and Tepal deftly swerved around a stray plasma relay spitting sparks out onto the deck as if it wasn't there. Behind him, Jirel gave the crackling relay a significantly wider and more tentative berth, glancing over at Denella and matching her look of concern.
"Love what you've done with the place," Jirel muttered sarcastically.
"There is still some work to do," Tepal replied with a shrug, in what Denella thought was a contender for the understatement of the century so far.
"I'll say," she replied, noting that Tepal's expression turned notably more annoyed at this latest comment on the state of his ship.
"Still," he countered, "Before the Tolaris, we travelled on an old Tellurian freighter. It was old, run down, barely capable of warp 4. Sokar felt it was time for an upgrade."
"I can imagine that," Jirel mused, "But, I mean, back when I found the Bounty, I thought I'd bitten off more than I could chew just getting her spaceworthy. This is something else."
"Yes, well. Yours is a perfectly fine little ship-" Tepal began.
"Little?" Denella muttered. This time, it was her turn to look offended by a comment about her ship.
"And yet," the Vulcan continued, "If you had been fortunate enough to find a Vor'cha-class cruiser, or a Galaxy-class starship, would you have turned it down?"
Jirel considered this for a moment. "Well, I'd probably have needed a bigger crew."
"You definitely would," Denella added with a good-natured grin, "You think my overtime costs are bad now."
They reached the doors to a turbolift and Tepal pressed the controls to summon a lift car.
"Speaking of crews," Jirel added, "Seems a bit empty around here?"
Tepal's face betrayed another look of irritation at this question. Or perhaps something even deeper than that. A look of anger. "There are eighty-seven of us onboard," he admitted eventually, "Many of the other members of the V'tosh ka'tur decided not join us."
"Huh," Jirel replied, "Any reason why?"
Tepal didn't even pretend to offer an answer to that question, and merely turned back to the controls to call for the lift again. "I'm sure there'll be plenty more onboard once word gets out about the Tolaris," he replied, switching effortlessly back to monotonous tour guide mode, "After all, the D'deridex-class has room for a crew complement of up to 1500…"
The turbolift doors opened, and Jirel went to step inside, secretly glad that the doors had broken up Tepal's latest monologue.
Suddenly, he felt the Vulcan grab him, stopping him from going any further. It was only then that he saw that, while the turbolift doors had opened, the turbolift itself didn't seem to have got the message. His right foot dangled out into the empty lift shaft, a good forty-floor drop below it.
For his part, Tepal kept a firm hold of the Trill until he retracted his foot safely back to terra firma, watching the scene unfold impassively.
"Apologies," he said simply, "We are still having some minor issues with the turbolifts."
Jirel looked back at Denella, who was staring at the empty space where the lift was supposed to be with a fair degree of shock.
"Good to know," he managed weakly.
'*'*'
'*'*'
If one half of the Bounty's crew were finding Tepal's tour of the ship hard to take, the other half found themselves stuck in an equally trying situation.
Natasha and Klath had returned to the hangar bay to unload their cargo accompanied by T'Prin, who wasn't the most talkative of the Vulcans they had met so far. But they had been joined by a younger and considerably more excitable Vulcan man called Ronek, who had clearly latched onto the emotion of pride more than any of the others.
Natasha sighed with exertion as she dropped the latest crate of supplies into the Tolaris's hangar bay, sending an echoing sound around the expanse of the room, as Ronek continued his own soliloquy on the subject of the Tolaris.
"It really is a fantastic ship," the lanky Vulcan persisted, effortlessly walking down the Bounty's cargo ramp with a crate in his arms, "I personally worked with Tepal on repairing the weapons systems. Six full-spread disruptor arrays, twin torpedo launchers. Remarkable."
"Sounds...great," Natasha managed with a forced smile.
He had been talking almost non-stop since they had arrived back in the hangar bay. And while she had hoped that helping Klath unload the cargo would be a welcome break from the awkwardness of dinner, Ronek had ensured she had just ended up with a slightly different type of awkwardness.
"I apologise for Ronek's candour," T'Prin offered as she descended the ramp with a crate of her own, "The younger members of our crew tend to get rather sidetracked with how...cool everything is."
No matter how many times she heard a Vulcan say the word 'cool', it didn't get any less strange. But after her experience at dinner, she decided to keep that particular observation to herself.
"Nothing wrong with being proud of what we're building here," Ronek shot back, with a slight edge of irritation in his voice.
Natasha left the Vulcans to their discussion and headed back up the ramp. She found Klath in the cargo bay assessing the remaining tritanium sheets, and glanced back to make sure that Ronek and T'Prin were still suitably distracted by each other.
"What do you think?" she said simply. She knew that she wouldn't need to expand her question any further for the Klingon's benefit.
"I do not like this," he admitted freely.
Despite her own worries rattling around inside of her, she had to admit that she found the Klingon's candid response settling.
In fact, one of the other reasons she'd volunteered for this task was to spend time with him. He was the one member of the Bounty's crew that she had struggled to connect with so far, and while there had been a softening to the edges of their relationship recently, she still wanted to do more to build a friendship.
Back in her cabin, her unfinished project remained. She had spent time here and there combing through the records of the USS Navajo's dead crew, searching for the face of the ensign that still haunted her dreams. The man she had left to die.
But with progress on that task proving slower than she had hoped, she felt like she needed all the friendships she needed right now. Even a friendship with a grumpy, often monosyllabic Klingon.
Klath, for his part, wasn't worried about anything quite so personal. He was more concerned about the tactical disadvantage they were in right now, locked away in the belly of the Tolaris. He was also somewhat concerned about the smell. Vulcans or no Vulcans, the Tolaris still smelt like Romulans to him.
"Me neither," Natasha muttered back, checking over her shoulder to make sure they were still alone, "There's something...off about all this. Especially the Vulcans."
"The thin one talks a lot," Klath replied.
Natasha stifled a smile and shook her head. That wasn't quite what she meant. "It's more...I mean, I haven't known Sunek, or the V'tosh ka'tur for very long, but everyone we've met on this ship seems darker somehow."
"Darker?"
"You don't see it?" she persisted, "I know they're still laughing and smiling, but there's something underneath it. Something twisted. It's like...they're all unhappy. Angry, even."
Klath didn't reply. Given his own mood, he felt any comment on that would be hypocritical.
"It's...unnerving," she concluded. Deep down, for possibly the first time in her life, she wished the Bounty had a Betazoid onboard.
Klath looked down at the remaining tritanium sheets and considered this for a moment.
"I believe it may be prudent for me to return to the cockpit and find a weapon," he said eventually, "From a tactical perspective-"
"As I was saying," Ronek's voice echoed up into the cargo bay as he ascended the ramp, interrupting their conversation, "The torpedo launchers really were a challenge to get back online. If this ship really was seized by the Dominion, they took those apart completely."
Klath and Natasha shared another wordless glance, conveying their collected frustrations at the fact that the Ronek show was starting up again.
"Fascinating," Natasha managed, without meaning it.
"Well, it makes sense," he continued as he walked over to them, "After all, they were adversaries in the war. And it's always important to know the weapons that your adversaries have available to them, don't you think?"
He looked directly at Klath as he said this. The Klingon couldn't help but feel like that had been deliberate. As ever, Ronek was smiling, but as Natasha had noted, Klath now saw that there was something behind the smile. They stared at each other for a moment, before Ronek gestured to the tritanium.
"Do you need some assistance here?"
Klath glared back as if he had just been personally insulted. All immediate thoughts of returning to the cockpit for a weapon were momentarily forgotten.
"I am fine," he replied tersely, reaching down and picking up another of the metal sheets with no little amount of effort.
As the Klingon staggered back over to the ramp, moving slightly faster than he had before to prove just how little assistance he needed, Natasha stifled a smile and picked up another of the cargo containers, getting back to work for the time being.
She still felt unsettled, though. Partly from the nagging feeling she couldn't shake that Ronek and T'Prin were watching their every move like a pair of hawks. But also because she couldn't shift one particular question from her mind.
It was a question that had first popped up when Sokar had introduced himself as a member of the V'tosh ka'tur and welcomed them onboard the Tolaris.
And she was worried that it was a question that she didn't want to know the answer to.
What does a hippie need with a starship?
'*'*'
'*'*'
The storm was raging all around.
He stood on the deck of the ship and tried to lean into the wind as it buffeted him, just as another wave crashed over the side of the vessel and drenched the thin tunic he was wearing. He shivered as the full chill of the wind hit his soaking wet form and desperately tried to keep his focus on the task at hand.
It was a deceptively straightforward task, the same task it had always been. Simply to achieve a state of perfect balance on the deck. Legs slightly apart, arms out to your sides.
The fact that it was so straightforward was the main reason that the Voroth Sea scenario was the first meditation technique that most Vulcan parents taught their children. Except in the traditional scenario, the sea was calm. Achieving harmony and balance was easy. In the midst of the violence of the real Voroth Sea, Sunek could barely stand up, never mind balance.
Behind him, he heard the main sail of the ship slapping against the mast as the storm whipped it back and forth. He tried to ignore it, wishing for a break in the weather, even though he knew that one wasn't coming. Because that wasn't what the Voroth Sea was really like. It was far too violent a place for breaks in the weather.
And so, as he faced down the impossible, instead of a feeling of inner calm and serenity, Sunek was just annoyed. Very annoyed.
"Screw it," he shouted out above the tumult of the swirling wind, "This is dumb!"
He opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times and refocused on his surroundings.
He stood in the middle of T'Len's quarters on the Tolaris, as she watched on from where she sat on the bed in the corner of the room.
It was a generously sized room, with a bed, sitting area and a dining room with a food replicator. But it was also plain and cold, a lack of personal objects on display anywhere meaning that they may as well just been in some anonymous guest facilities.
"You know," he sighed as he rubbed his eyes to help clear his head, "When you said we should go back to your quarters, just the two of us, I was kinda hoping-"
"You see the lack of logic now?" she asked, standing and walking over to him, "The hypocrisy, that they try to teach the Voroth Sea scenario to every Vulcan child? Don't you hate it?"
Sunek's mind was still fuzzy. He walked over to the dining table at the side of the room and sat down, trying to get his thoughts in order and attempting to hide his continued disappointment that she had brought him back here for a debate about meditation.
"Well," he said eventually, "It was definitely easier when I was a kid."
She sat down next to him and placed her hand on his. Sunek felt the familiar crackle of electricity, and that calmed him more than any peaceful meditation technique ever could.
"It was Sokar that helped me to understand," she said, "Helped me to practice that form of meditating."
"You really do that every day? Imagine yourself in the middle of that storm?"
She nodded. He considered this for a moment, remembering the tempest in his mind.
"You ever manage to balance?"
She didn't answer, but she smiled. Behind her, the door to her quarters opened and Sokar strode in confidently. "I hope I'm not disturbing you," he offered as he walked.
"Way to knock," Sunek said with a grin. But Sokar didn't grin back. He sat down with them, steepling his fingers in front of him.
"It's been good to see you, Sunek. T'Len was right. You would make a fine addition to our cause."
Sunek stifled a snort. "Your 'cause'? Ok, who died and made you King of the Maquis-?"
He stopped himself and looked slightly awkward at his own comment, continuing in a slightly more sheepish tone.
"I mean...I know they, y'know, all actually died. I wasn't trying to-Is it still too soon to joke about-?"
"Is he ready?" Sokar asked T'Len, cutting off Sunek midway though his confused rambling.
She didn't reply, but she nodded.
"Ready for what?" Sunek asked, maintaining his grin but feeling an edge of concern, "Guys, come on, I know you missed a few birthdays, but you really don't need to throw me a surprise party."
Sokar stood and slowly walked over to a set of computer controls on the wall of the quarters. After a moment, music drifted out through speakers hidden somewhere around the room. Sunek didn't recognise the piece immediately, but it clearly wasn't designed to be soothing. Harsh percussion backed up by aggressive stringed instruments.
"Do you remember me telling you about Doctor Sevik?" Sokar asked.
Sunek blinked a few times in confusion. Did he remember that? He couldn't be certain. And the cacophonous music wasn't helping.
"I...think so?" he managed, "Crazy Vulcan doctor, right?"
"Something like that," Sokar replied, smiling without warmth, "I told you about his techniques for purging emotions. About the pain he caused. The mental torture. And I also told you that, one day, I would like to get my revenge on him for all of it. For all of the Vulcans that suffered in his hands."
Sunek glanced at T'Len, then back at Sokar, not sure where this was all going. And not entirely sure that he wanted to know.
"Like, leave a flaming bag of sehlat turds on his doorstep? That kinda thing?"
The music stepped up in tempo. The harsh chord progression made Sunek flinch involuntarily.
"It's a Romulan piece," Sokar offered, gesturing to the music, "The ship's library is full of them, as you'd expect. Still, I quite like this one."
Sunek was starting to feel a tad claustrophobic. T'Len gripped his hand again. The tingle that went through his body calmed him a tad. But not entirely.
"The composer's name was Kolas, the database tells me," he continued, "A prolific and quite accomplished musician on Romulus a century or so ago. I've been through his entire catalogue since we found the Tolaris."
"You don't say?" Sunek offered, failing to disguise his disinterest in Romulan composers, nor his growing concern about the situation he was in.
"He writes with such passion, such intensity. Makes a change from the Vulcan dirges we were forced to endure as children, don't you think?"
The symphony grew louder and angrier. The strings screeched out the final section of the opening sonata. Sunek felt a growing intensity around them in the room that was making him distinctly uncomfortable. T'Len stood and walked behind him, starting to gently massage his shoulders. The tingle of electricity became stronger.
"But I suppose that's Vulcans for you, isn't it," Sokar continued with a dry chuckle, "What do you expect from a civilisation that thrives on ignoring and repressing their emotions so completely."
As he spoke, he started to pace around the table where Sunek sat, disappearing from view behind him before emerging on the other side.
"Vulcan music is so rigid. So precisely constructed and scrupulously formed. But ultimately, so...empty."
The music shifted into an altogether more foreboding second movement. Sokar vanished behind him again on his second lap of the table, as T'Len massaged his upper back. Or was it his third lap? Sunek was struggling to keep track.
"Look," he managed to get out, "If you're both angling for a bit of kinky stuff, I'm totally ok with that, but I do insist on some ground rules-"
"Doctor Sevik was a lot more than just some crazy doctor, Sunek," Sokar hissed from somewhere behind him.
A blast from the Romulan horn section pierced the room. Sunek felt a chill run down his spine. He tried to focus, through the music, the massage, the whole atmosphere.
"He was a revered Vulcan medic, one that my parents sent me to, along with many other Vulcans. Over and over again, for his...groundbreaking treatment."
Sokar's voice positively dripped with anger and bile as he spat out those words. Sunek felt his mouth beginning to dry up. The pace of the music picked up, an urgency in the crash of the drums. Sokar disappeared behind him again. On his fourth lap. Or was it his fifth?
"Guys," Sunek managed to get out, "Come on now, this is getting a bit weird. Actually, more like a lot weird-"
"You never experienced it yourself, did you? You have no idea what the pain was like. What I had to endure. What all of his patients had to endure. If only you had, you would understand."
The music reached a molto allegro passage. T'Len's hands reached Sunek's lower back. Sunek felt a bead of sweat drip down his face.
"So perhaps," he heard Sokar whisper, "You need to be shown…"
Before Sunek could begin to process what he meant by that, he felt T'Len's hands reach out and grab his arms with a vice-like grip, holding them in place behind him.
"Hey! What the hell-?"
Sokar moved back in front of him, staring back at him with an intense look of anger. Sunek tried to writhe away, but T'Len held him firm, seemingly with the strength of ten men.
The tempo of the music rushed on, faster and faster. A cacophony of strings danced around the horn section. The chords kept threatening to resolve, but never did.
Sokar reached out towards him with his hands. Sunek's eyes grew wider as he felt fingers making contact with familiar pressure points across his face.
"No!" he snapped, now very much in a full-on panic, "Sokar, don't! Don't do that-!"
The music played on. Faster and faster. Sunek writhed helplessly. He couldn't see from where he was sitting, but T'Len had started to cry.
Sokar opened his mouth and began to speak.
"My mind to your mind…"
Sunek screamed.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"I've got to get me one of those."
Jirel grinned and gestured to the centre chair of the Tolaris's bridge. Though to call it a chair seemed a little too much of an understatement. It was more like a throne, raised above the surrounding stations and consoles to afford whoever sat in it an unobstructed view of the entire bridge.
Moments earlier, at the third time of asking, the turbolift had finally arrived. Rather than finding the whole situation embarrassing, however, Tepal had simply used the extra time to continue his overblown bragging on the subject of the might of the Tolaris. It hadn't quite been the emperor's new clothes, but there had been something mildly farcical about the situation.
The lift had brought them to what Tepal had described as the grand finale of the tour. And as soon as Jirel had seen the chair, he had to begrudgingly admit that for once, he hadn't been overselling it.
Next to him, Denella's focus was still on the relatively poor state of the bridge in general.
The layout was a traditional enough design, though like so much of the Tolaris the room seemed scaled up to twice the normal size. There were forward helm and navigation stations, tactical and operations to each side and rows of supplementary science and engineering stations down the rear. A huge viewscreen dominated the front of the room.
Although everything here at least seemed to be working as it should, there were still signs of decay and disrepair everywhere. Flickering displays on consoles, loose wires hanging from the ceiling and open access hatches on the walls. Jirel might have found his dream chair, but Denella was still waiting to be impressed.
The two forward consoles and the tactical station were currently manned by Vulcans in similar civilian clothing to Tepal, but the rest of the bridge was empty, underlining how low on numbers the Tolaris was.
The viewscreen itself showed that the ship was at warp. Denella was only able to catch a glimpse of the navigation console over the shoulder of the Vulcan who sat there, but she was sure there was something odd about the course they were following.
"So," Tepal said as he looked around the domain in front of him, "This was worth the wait, I'm sure you'll agree."
Denella bit her tongue for the time being, aware that she didn't want to provoke the emotional Vulcan too many times. Instead, she kept thinking about the navigational readout she had seen. It looked like they were heading somewhere. Somewhere familiar.
"Can I sit in it?" Jirel asked, gesturing to the centre chair.
"No," Tepal replied simply, eliciting a look of childlike disappointment from the Trill.
"Naw," Jirel muttered to himself, as the Vulcan paced around the bridge.
"But, now we have our ship, and our loyal crew, then the galaxy is whatever we want to make of it. Our futures are waiting out there, a chance to find somewhere where we can really thrive. For us, and for Sunek as well."
Jirel and Denella glanced at each other, not exactly liking the sound of that.
"Yeah," Denella mused in reply, "Not sure all of this is really Sunek's scene."
"Definitely not," Jirel nodded in agreement, "We've been around the whole ship now, and have you seen one bottle of booze?"
Denella smirked and looked back at Tepal, who categorically wasn't smiling. "Believe what you like," he replied, "But Sokar can be very persuasive with his people."
Jirel felt his defences rise again having heard that for the second time. His people?
Before he had a chance to press that particular issue any further, however, the bridge's tactical console chirped out an alert, and the Vulcan female stationed there called out to Tepal.
"Ronek reports that the cargo has been unloaded," she said with a minor sense of urgency, "They are in position for stage two."
A fresh chill went down Jirel's spine with that comment. He was well travelled enough through the galaxy to be of the firm belief that nothing good ever came from any sort of situation that claimed to have a stage two.
"Well," he said, gesturing to Denella and taking a step backwards towards the turbolift, "Thanks so much for the detailed tour, and the yummy food. But if the cargo's unloaded, then we should be making tracks. There's a certain Boslic I need to go have a really long and not especially friendly chat with, y'know?"
"I'm afraid that might have to wait," Tepal said simply.
The Vulcans at the forward helm and navigation stations stood up and flanked Tepal as he stood in front of them. All three of them now held small Romulan disruptor pistols in their hands.
"Please," Tepal said, in a voice entirely bereft of any serious concern for their well being, "Don't resist."
The three Vulcans facing them down were all smiling, but these were cruel, twisted smiles. All bereft of joy and happiness. And all eerily similar to each other.
"What the hell's going on?" Denella asked.
"I'm gonna take a wild guess," Jirel offered, "And say this is called stage two."
As the three armed figures glared back at them, something clicked into place for Denella, about the navigational readings. She had recognised it as a course laid in through Federation space. And, if she wasn't much mistaken, the cloaked Romulan Warbird was heading directly for the middle of it.
They were heading for Vulcan.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The single blast of green energy burst out of T'Prin's disruptor pistol and stopped the marauding form of Klath in his tracks.
The Klingon emitted a loud growl, a combination of pain and frustration, as he fell to the ground with a heavy thud.
Natasha gasped in shock as she saw him fall down, but she couldn't move to help her stricken colleague. The identical disruptor pistol that was pointed squarely at her, this one in the hands of Ronek, made sure of that.
"Klath!" she shouted out impotently, as the Klingon rolled on the ground.
He ended up slumped in an almost motionless heap, though she was relieved to be able to make out that he was at least still breathing. She glared at T'Prin in anger.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she snapped, "We're just here to deliver your cargo!"
"You may be here for longer than that," T'Prin replied simply.
Natasha balled her fists in frustration, but through her own turmoil, she also thought she detected something in the reaction of the Vulcan woman. A sense that she wasn't quite as enthused by what she was doing as she was letting on.
To her side, Klath tried to force himself back to his feet with no little effort. Internally, he cursed the fact that he hadn't stuck to his instincts and recovered his bat'leth. It might not have been the ideal item to take on a disruptor pistol, but it wouldn't have been the first time he would have taken on someone armed with an energy weapon wielding his bladed weapon of choice and won.
But he hadn't recovered it.
And, although it may have been entirely instinctive, he had to admit that his decision to immediately charge at T'Prin as soon as he saw her pull out the disruptor pistol may not have been the cleverest of moves, tactically speaking.
His right arm was in searing pain where the blast had hit, but he still tried to get back to his feet, trying to use the blood lust coursing through his veins to propel him beyond the limitations of his injured body. But it was going to take more effort than even he realised.
"Let me help him," Natasha called out to T'Prin, trying to appeal to whatever fleeting moment of doubt she might have seen in the Vulcan's eyes.
T'Prin stared back at her, then glanced at Ronek.
"No tricks," Natasha persisted, "I promise!"
The two Vulcans considered this for a moment longer, before T'Prin conceded, gesturing to her that she could move over to the Klingon.
"No tricks," the Vulcan woman echoed back to her.
As she walked, slowly but deliberately, Natasha could feel the pair of disruptors following her across the room. It wasn't a comforting feeling.
Still, she consoled herself with the fact that she'd been in far worse situations than this throughout her life. At least one since she had met up with the crew of the Bounty. So she kept her head down and focused on the immediate issue. She crouched down on the ground next to the ailing Klingon and assessed the extent of his injury. It was immediately apparent that it wasn't good news.
"I need a medkit," she said to the Vulcans.
They glanced at each other again, but this time, T'Prin shook her head. Natasha sighed and returned her attention to the injury.
The disruptor shot hadn't hit him squarely on the arm, merely a glancing blow. But it had still been strong enough to burn through a section of his flesh. The smell that filled the air was testament to that, and the ugly wound it had left behind was likely to be a haven for infection unless she treated it soon.
The only good news that she could see, given her lack of any sort of immediate treatment options was the fact that the searing heat of the blast appeared to have partly cauterised the wound as it had passed through. He was bleeding, but not by a fatal amount.
Klath was clearly reluctant to have his injuries looked at, especially given how ashamed he was feeling that he had picked them up in the first place. But for his part, he allowed her to check the wound on his arm, because it allowed him to lean in and surreptitiously whisper in her ear, the armed Vulcans none the wiser.
"Excellent work, doctor," he growled quietly, "Now, what is your trick?"
Natasha paused for a second in her improvised examination and looked over at the expectant face of the Klingon warrior. Preparing to disappoint him. "Um," she whispered back, "I was being serious. No tricks. I literally don't have any tricks."
"No tricks?"
"No tricks," she replied again, not entirely sure how many other ways she had of getting that particular point across to the rest of the congregation in the hangar bay.
Klath considered this, his brow thick with sweat as he worked to control his reaction to the pain in his wounded limb.
"That is regrettable," he grunted back eventually, "I do not have any tricks either."
Natasha turned her head around to regard the two disruptors still trained on them. And the leers of the two Vulcan radicals holding them.
Definitely not hippies, she mused grimly.