Part Four
"Really? That's all I get?"
Jirel scoffed in a not inconsiderable display of offence as he continued to work. To his side, Not T'Prin raised an eyebrow.
"As I have stated, it was an imaginative solution," she replied, without taking her eyes off her task.
Jirel scoffed again and looked over to the other side of the access hatch, where Denella shook her head patiently. "Can you believe that?"
"I can definitely now believe that you're capable of flirting in literally any situation," she offered, as she finished unscrewing the bolt in front of her.
The three of them, now freed from the limiting constraints of gravity, floated at the very top of the four story room, along with anything in the room that hadn't been secured to the ground. They were clustered around the access hatch to the access conduit that Denella had spotted, quickly working to unscrew the bolts securing it in place.
"Flirting?" Not T'Prin asked with curiosity, as she detached another bolt and allowed it to float out into the room.
"Ugh, great," Jirel sighed, "Now we've got to explain flirting to the dispassionate Vulcan."
"No," she replied, "I received adequate training on the subject before I went undercover. It is a popular activity with emotional beings, after all. But I was not aware that was what you were doing."
Jirel paused and stared back at the Vulcan, who met his stare with an impassive look. Denella, for her part, stifled an amused chuckle. "Funny," he replied, returning to work on the next bolt.
"That is not something I am capable of-"
"Ah, come on," Jirel continued, "Even though you've dropped the whole laughing Vulcan act, you've still been joking with us. There's some emotions in there, I can tell."
Not T'Prin considered this for a moment as she worked on the next bolt.
"Perhaps I have been undercover for too long," she offered eventually, "It is possible that the strains of maintaining my character, and the intensity of the melds with Sokar have left some residual emotional aftereffects. When I return to Vulcan, I will ensure I correct this aberration."
"Isn't that the problem here?" Denella chimed in, "Seeing that sort of thing as an 'aberration'?"
Not T'Prin paused again, but this time she didn't seem willing to offer an answer. They worked on in silence.
His plan, such that it was, had at least bought them some time. The work to cut through the door below them seemed to have slowed considerably since the entire deck had gone zero-g.
"You might have at least let me shoot it," Jirel muttered eventually, gesturing back down to the distinctly second hand gravity generator below them.
"If I had let you shoot what you intended to shoot," she pointed out, "We would be dead from asphyxiation."
Denella failed to suppress this chuckle.
"Yeah," Jirel said pointedly, "I'd get that aberration corrected, if I were you."
"We must make haste," she continued, as another bolt floated away, "It will not be long before the backup gravity generators come online. And then..."
She underlined her point by glancing downwards, at the considerable drop back to the ground underneath them, before continuing.
"Despite the height of the fall, I believe myself and the Orion would survive, with significant injuries. You would not."
Jirel fixed her with another unhappy glare. "Just so you know," he offered dryly, "Your flirting game needs work as well."
Denella went to chuckle again, then coughed slightly, suddenly looking a tad more queasy, and less green, than she usually did.
"You ok?" Jirel asked as his penultimate bolt loosened.
"You know I don't like zero gravity," she muttered as strongly as she could.
Not T'Prin cocked her ear again to some faraway noise, before she quickly moved onto the final bolt on her side of the panel. "The backup generator is coming online," she reported, "Hurry."
Jirel detached his final bolt, as Not T'Prin and Denella completed their own tasks. They pulled the hatch away from the opening and it joined the bolts in floating away across the room.
Not T'Prin half clambered and half swam through the hatch, followed by Jirel and Denella. Seconds later, the three of them dropped the short distance to the bottom of the access conduit, picking up nothing more than a bruise or two.
Behind them, they heard the sound of anything on deck 47 that hadn't been secured dropping to the floor with a series of loud bangs.
"Plenty of time," Denella said mirthlessly.
Not T'Prin ignored her, crawling onwards through the conduit. "We are not far from the cloaking device," she called back, "If we hurry."
Jirel got into a crawl and followed closely, awkwardly trying to maintain his professionalism and keep his attention on anything other than the Vulcan behind that was now very much dominating his eyeline.
"I changed my mind," he called out, "Your flirting game is on point."
Ahead of him, Not T'Prin raised an eyebrow.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The process of cutting through the door to the maintenance room on deck 47 was taking a lot longer than the group of Vulcans had originally planned.
Firstly there had been the loss of gravity, which had made their efforts considerably more difficult without access to any dedicated zero gravity equipment.
Secondly, there had been the regaining of gravity, which had not only delayed their work further, but also caused several broken bones when they had all dropped back to the deck without warning.
It was standard practice on starships to give plenty of warning before restoring gravity, to give everyone plenty of time to brace themselves. But this was not a normal starship, and up on the bridge, Tepal had brought the backup systems online without so much as a five second warning.
All of which led to a third reason why the task was taking longer than expected. They were all understandably annoyed about reasons one and two, which was having a direct impact on their productivity. One of the disadvantages of embracing your emotions was that it was now very much possible to have a bad day at the office.
Still, none of them had much time to file any sort of grievance, because almost as soon as they had picked themselves up, Sokar had arrived with Sunek and T'Len to oversee the situation personally. And he hadn't liked what he had seen. And he was armed. So they were now working through the final few sections of the door, twice as fast as before.
Sunek idly leaned on the corridor wall, spinning his disruptor around in his hand, watching them work without even offering to help.
"This is stupid, you know," he offered with a yawn.
Sokar spun around in annoyance, while even T'Len looked a little bit irritated. Tensions were running high among every Vulcan out in the corridor, it seemed.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Sokar spat at him.
Sunek's sneering grin grew wider, reveling in being able to ratchet up the frustration on the faces of the others by making them wait for his answer.
Meanwhile, Old Sunek was busy climbing a wall. Specifically, the wall of anger that was keeping him trapped at the back of his own mind. He wasn't physically climbing a wall, he didn't think. He was pretty sure the thing he was climbing was more of a metaphorical wall.
His reason for thinking that was surprisingly logical, for Sunek. If he was climbing an actual wall, that sounded like it would take a lot of physical effort. Which was not something that Old Sunek really liked doing. In fact, it was something he actively avoided whenever possible. So, it made sense that any wall he was climbing would be merely metaphorical.
But then, he found himself thinking, if it was only a metaphorical wall, then how the hell was he climbing it?
Starting to feel a little bit overwhelmed by the metaphysical conundrum he was at risk of trapping himself in, Old Sunek decided to focus on something less confusing. And continued to either literally or metaphorically climb the wall. At this point, he didn't care which.
All the while, New Sunek was smiling cruelly at the other Vulcans in the corridor.
"So? Are you going to explain why my plan is so stupid?" Sokar spat, tired of waiting for an answer.
Sunek stood up straight from where he had been leaning on the wall and treated himself to a long, lazy, cat-like stretch. "It's stupid," he said eventually, waving his disruptor at the door, "Because you're wasting time trying to get where they are, not where they're going."
"And where are they going?"
Sunek smirked wider and took off down the corridor, with his disruptor raised. After a moment, Sokar and T'Len followed.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The access hatch dropped down onto the floor of the corridor, some ten feet below. The three figures followed, one at a time, as quietly as they could manage. Pausing for breath, Not T'Prin, Jirel and Denella scanned their immediate surroundings. The Vulcan woman tilted her head curiously, again hearing something in the distance.
"The cloaking device is close by," she reported, "But there are more guards on the way. I estimate at least six sets of footsteps."
Jirel went to reply, but Denella got there before him. "I'll deal with them," she said, checking her disruptor's power levels, and ignoring Jirel's grimace.
"Denella-"
"Don't worry. You focus on the sabotage thing while I give this lot the runaround, and we'll meet up back at the Bounty, ok?"
Jirel still looked concerned, but he knew his engineer could handle it, and then some. He reluctantly nodded.
"Catch you on the other side," the Orion woman smiled, before she took off down the corridor with her weapon drawn. After a moment, she was out of sight.
Jirel watched her go with a sigh, suddenly feeling very alone. He turned back to Not T'Prin. "Right then, let's go break a cloaking device, I guess? I'm assuming it's as easy as it sounds?"
She led him around the corner and through the first door they came to on the right.
It was a wide room, somewhat similar to the engineering level of a starship. Control panels covered in Romulan text dotted the walls, but it was the gently humming cylindrical device in the centre of the room which immediately demanded their attention. Not T'Prin immediately holstered her disruptor and approached it.
"This is it," she nodded, "Now we just need to-"
"I wouldn't," an eerily familiar voice shot back.
Jirel whirled around to see Sunek standing in a doorway on the other side of the room. He was soon joined by Sokar and T'Len. All three of them had disruptors trained on them. But it wasn't so much the weapons that surprised Jirel, it was Sunek himself.
His twisted leer was without any of his friend's usual warmth. His entire demeanour seemed darker, angrier somehow. Jirel couldn't help but suppress a gasp.
"Told you they'd be here," Sunek continued, "Now, how about you two both just surrender to my pal Sokar here. Cos it'd be a real bummer to have to shoot you."
Jirel looked back at Sunek's leer. And found himself doubting whether he really meant that.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Well," Natasha managed, as the bulky crate next to them exploded into fragments from the latest incoming disruptor blast, "At least we found the hangar bay."
The turbolift had indeed deposited them near enough to the hangar bay, with the Bounty sitting right where they had left it.
Unfortunately, it seemed that once word got out about their escape, it hadn't been much of a leap for the Tolaris's crew to realise they might head there at some point. Hence why they had been greeted by half a dozen heavily armed Vulcans, and were now pinned down behind a pile of cargo crates.
"Return fire!" Klath growled from her side.
She grimaced and fired out a few more shots as best she could, remembering her Starfleet training and focusing on maintaining a defensive posture. Even though she was a doctor, she was still more than capable of fighting. The war had seen to that. The old maxim of 'First, do no harm' tended to go out of the window when you started getting shot at.
To her side, Klath was still unarmed, both in the physical sense and the weapon-based sense, and feeling more than a little useless. He gripped onto his injured limb and tried to keep his focus on their battle tactics.
"This is not a particularly advantageous position," he grumbled, as another disruptor blast struck the wall behind his head.
Natasha fired off a few more hopeless shots of her own and checked the pistol. The power levels of the disruptor were dropping fast. Klath ducked his head out around the other side of the crate and scanned the rest of the hangar bay, before ducking back as more fire came in.
"They are flanking us," he reported, "On both sides. Make your shots count!"
"I'm trying!" she shouted back in frustration over the sound of further incoming fire.
"You must try harder."
"You're a terrible instructor, you know that? Any other helpful comments?"
Klath considered their situation for a moment, as the weapons fire got closer and closer. "It is possible," he said eventually, "That today is a good day to die."
"You also suck at motivation!"
"I do not see another option," the Klingon replied with a grimace.
She sighed and checked the disruptor's power cells again. She didn't have many shots left. And by the sounds of it, their opponents did. Two more disruptor blasts passed over their heads, leaving scorch marks on the wall behind them.
She didn't have a plan either. Oddly enough, Starfleet offered very little training for how to deal with a gang of psychotic armed Vulcans. In fact, that was pretty much the only group of galactic inhabitants Starfleet hadn't found itself picking a fight with recently.
She wondered if this was how her life was destined to end. All in pursuit of trying to strike up a friendship with an injured Klingon. How stupid could she be?
Then, something came to her. She realised exactly how stupid she could be. She glanced behind them and saw another cargo container.
"Klath," she shouted back to the Klingon, "How close are they?"
Klath ducked out to check. "Thirty meters, and still advancing," he reported, "On both sides."
"Ok," she nodded, "I've got a plan. But it's kinda stupid, and a bit suicidal. Although, I assume from your previous comments that you don't have much of an issue with that?"
Klath didn't respond. Over to his left, another cargo container exploded under weapons fire, showering them both with fiery shards of debris. Natasha ducked further down, then gestured to the mostly unblemished container almost directly behind them.
"Think you can make a run for that?" she shouted.
Klath checked where she was indicating. The additional cover was a good twenty metres away across the deck of the hangar bay, with no obvious additional cover between them and it. It also didn't seem to offer any significant strategic improvement on their current suboptimal location.
"I believe so," he replied, "What is your plan?"
Another disruptor blast whizzed by. They were almost on them. She opened the casing of her disruptor and fiddled with the settings, quickly figuring out how to achieve what she was aiming for despite the unfamiliar Romulan design. The pistol's muzzle began to glow bright green. Something that Klath immediately recognised.
"You have just-!"
"I know," she shouted out, "Let's go!"
They raced out from behind their cover, towards the container that was twenty metres away. Keeping low and fast, even as their adversaries trained their weapons on their moving forms.
She ducked an incoming disruptor shot. Fifteen metres to go. Maybe less.
She mentally braced herself for the inevitable disruptor blast to her side that would fell her, but two more shots whizzed past without hitting, the Vulcans apparently struggling to aim amidst the chaos around them. She didn't even know if Klath was behind her, or alongside, or if he had been cut down by a disruptor shot. But she kept moving, focusing on her destination.
Ten metres.
Behind her, the Vulcans were upon their original position, having closed up in a pincer movement. But they didn't move away from their former cover, merely swivelled around to try and get a clear shot at them. Which meant they were far too close to the disruptor pistol that she had just rigged to overload.
Five metres.
She only hoped that they weren't too close as well. Even if they made it to their cover, it wasn't exactly a safe distance from this sort of detonation. She dived forwards at the last second, just as the disruptor exploded.
And then everything went dark.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Sunek, what the hell?"
"Come on, Jirel," Sunek shrugged, his dark leer remaining firmly in place, "If you're really being honest, you can't say you never expected our friendship to end with one of us pointing a disruptor at the other one, hmm?"
Jirel kept his response calm, ignoring the feeling that deep down, he felt his pilot may have a point. "Guess I never factored in the bit about you committing genocide."
Sunek's leer vanished, now replaced by a look of rage. He kept the weapon pointed squarely at Jirel's chest. Sokar stepped over to the pair of them, and relieved them of their own disruptors.
"I'm very disappointed in you, T'Prin," he told her calmly, "Who are you working for? Starfleet Intelligence?"
"The V'Shar," she replied, with an equal amount of calm.
"Hmm," Sokar shuddered, "Even worse."
Jirel's focus was still on Sunek. His long-time friend, who now looked so strangely different. "Sunek, what the hell did he do to you?"
Sunek went to answer, but it was T'Len who got there first, her own weapon pointed determinedly at the Trill as well.
"He has made him stronger!" she shouted, standing by her sometime husband, "We are all stronger for knowing Sokar."
"And to think you told me this wasn't a cult," Jirel replied with heavy sarcasm.
"Psh, this isn't the V'tosh ka'tur, Jirel," Sunek mocked, "That was just some lame little wannabe activist movement. Surely even you can see that this is way bigger than that."
"You must listen, Sunek," Not T'Prin said, her focus still on the cloaking device in the middle of the group, "Your actions are not your own. Sokar has controlled you with his melds-"
"Quiet!" Sokar snapped, "I'm tired of everyone meddling in my plans. Nobody will stop me from having my revenge on Doctor Sevik!"
Sunek and T'Len nodded along firmly at this. Not T'Prin raised an eyebrow.
"Doctor Sevik is dead."
Somewhere, deep inside Sunek's mind, near the top of a wall, Old Sunek gasped.
What? Old Sunek said.
"What?" New Sunek echoed out, before he realised what he was saying.
"Ain't that a bitch?" Jirel said, seizing on the look of confusion on the Vulcan's face, "You've come all this way, and you're not even gonna carpet bomb the right guy?"
Sunek stared blankly back at the V'Shar agent, his trigger finger faltering as his disruptor slipped to his side. If it wasn't for the identical one that T'Len still had pointed at him, Jirel might have allowed him to relax a tad.
"No," he managed, "Cos...Sokar showed me-I mean, I saw-"
"I know what you saw. Sokar also melded with me. But Doctor Sevik died many years ago," Not T'Prin continued, "In exile, and in disgrace. It is deeply unfortunate what happened to you, Sokar. But this is not the answer. This attack cannot be allowed to-"
"This is all lies! V'shar lies!" Sokar spat.
"It is the truth," she persisted, "His methods were never medically approved by the authorities, and as soon as the full details of his treatments became a matter of public knowledge, he was removed from-"
Sokar didn't want to hear any more. He fired.
The dirty green disruptor blast slammed squarely into Not T'Prin's stomach, and for a moment the stoic Vulcan woman's face displayed a genuine emotion. A look of shock.
The energy of the blast was enough to knock her back into Jirel's equally aghast arms. The pair of them collapsed onto the floor in what felt like slow motion. Jirel stared in horror at Not T'Prin's crumpled form. No longer caring where the weapons in the room were pointing.
"Hey, hey, don't worry," he managed, "It's-It's gonna be ok…"
Looking down at the green blood soaking her top, he knew he was lying. He wasn't a doctor, but he knew that the prognosis wasn't good.
"I was...unsuccessful," she managed to croak, "But I hope you will have the chance to be a hero…"
The last remnants of life drained from her body. Jirel gently rested her down on the ground, then stared up at the armed Vulcans with primal anguish.
"This is your guy, Sunek?" he snarled at his friend, "This is the guy you wanna follow?"
Jirel wasn't sure if he was expecting an answer. Either way, he didn't get one. Because as soon as he had heard Not T'Prin's comments, and seen Sokar's violent retaliation, Sunek had vanished.
Not physically. Physically he was still in the room. But mentally, he was somewhere else.
He was on the deck of a sailing ship. On the Voroth Sea.
And he wasn't alone.
"Hello," said Old Sunek.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The storm was blowing all around as New Sunek stared across the wooden deck, where Old Sunek stared back at him. If either was unnerved by what was happening, they didn't let it show.
"Talking to yourself, Sunek?" New Sunek snorted, "How many signs of madness is that now?"
"Yeah, fair enough, this is a bit weird," Old Sunek begrudgingly agreed, "But I can take weird. I like weird. I can definitely live with weird."
A booming thunderclap rang out above the ship. New Sunek looked around through the swirling gale and the spray from the writhing sea. "So, what the hell is all this? You want to practice meditating in the middle of this storm again?"
"What storm?"
Old Sunek looked back at his doppelganger in confusion, seeing nothing but the peaceful tranquility of the Voroth Sea. From the dull, boring meditation technique from his youth.
A ferocious gust of wind blew across the deck in front of New Sunek, drenching his unruly mop of hair and whipping it around in the cataclysm.
"Never mind," New Sunek grimaced, "You've got my attention, now what?"
"I want my mind back. Cos, honestly, you kinda suck."
The deck pitched up as the boat crested another wave and slammed down on the other side. Or at least, it did for one of them. For the other, it laboured in the stillness.
"Psh," New Sunek retorted, "You've seen what Doctor Sevik did. Why we need revenge-"
"I've seen what Sokar showed you. I mean, showed me-Showed us. Whatever. But I've also just seen him straight up murder an unarmed woman, so I kinda think it might be a good idea to get a second opinion on some of this stuff, y'know?"
"Psh. She was a V'Shar agent! She was just trying to stop us."
"Of course she was! And she also said Doctor Sevik is dead!"
"Lies!"
Another flash of lightning illuminated New Sunek's fiery eyes. Old Sunek stood firm in the placid sunshine, not seeing anything of the violent storm that swirled and crashed above his counterpart's head.
"Shouldn't we at least check that? And besides, whether he's alive or dead, he's just one crazy doctor! How is razing half of our homeworld from orbit the right idea? Don't get me wrong, I hate the place as much as the next laughing Vulcan, but this isn't the answer. And all this definitely isn't you. I mean, me. I mean-"
"You know," New Sunek growled, trying to shut himself up as another burst of lightning flared in the sky, "It's true what they say about you, Sunek. You really are tiresome."
"See, that's why there's no future for you inside my head. I'd never use the word 'tiresome'."
"You just did."
Satisfied he'd won their latest bout of verbal sparring, New Sunek didn't wait for his duplicate to formulate another retort. He charged across the ship. He charged at himself. Sunek and Sunek collided, and crashed down to the wooden deck below them.
They grappled together, one slipping and sliding across the rain-soaked deck, the other one basking in harsh sunlight.
As they broke apart and got to their feet, New Sunek aimed a punch at Old Sunek, who anticipated it, because that's how he would have aimed a punch if he was in New Sunek's position. He dodged it and fired off a punch of his own, which New Sunek evaded with equal ease.
The scuffle went on like that for some time, each version of Sunek predicting the other's attack, and dodging or parrying it. Neither able to lay a finger on the other. A literal stalemate.
"This is ridiculous," New Sunek shouted over the cacophony on his version of the boat, as he evaded a swing of his opponent's left hook.
"I dunno," Old Sunek grinned, squinting through the bright sunshine hitting his half of proceedings and spinning away from a low attempted kick from his adversary, "I'm kinda enjoying myself."
They grappled some more, as a wave crashed onto the deck, soaking New Sunek in warm saline water. In close quarters, both aimed a flurry of punches at each other's midriffs, connecting solidly and firmly each time.
But even though they were finally landing, each punch still worked to cancel the other out in a different way. As this phase of the fight went on, they both tired at exactly the same time and were both forced to back away in order to get their respective breaths back.
New Sunek grimaced, then tried to channel more of his anger and rage into proceedings, the power that Old Sunek had no access to, to overwhelm him. His sneer was back. Even in the storm. Or perhaps because of it. Feeding off the anarchy of the tempest.
"You've gotta see this is all wrong," Old Sunek managed to get out, still panting deeply from the exertion, "What Sokar's doing? And if that wacko doctor really is dead, then-"
"You saw how much Sokar suffered," New Sunek countered, "All of Vulcan is complicit in Sevik's actions! They've always had it in for anyone who dared to explore their emotions, to deviate from the norm. You know that as well as anyone!"
Sunek recalled his own childhood. The work that his parents had put in to helping him control and repress his emotions. Counsellors, therapists, meditation. All to 'fix' his pesky emotions.
Granted, they had never done anything anywhere near as extreme as what Doctor Sevik did to Sokar. But he still knew what it was like to be pitied, to be ostracised or made to feel like an outcast just because of the way that he felt. Or the fact that he felt at all. It had been a miserable time for him. Until he had found the V'tosh ka'tur. Until he had found Sokar, and the others.
And as he got caught up in recalling his past, he faltered. And New Sunek didn't.
Filled with the cyclone's violence, he rushed forwards and slammed Sunek back against the edge of the boat, the low-hanging wooden rail around the edge of the deck now all that existed between them and the ocean.
Old Sunek wheezed as the air was knocked completely out of him. Now confident he was on top in the fight, New Sunek squeezed harder, sandwiching Old Sunek between himself and the rail and constricting his adversary's body beneath his own.
"Still enjoying yourself?" New Sunek hissed, as he felt his counterpart weaken.
Old Sunek felt his vision start to blur around the edges. He didn't know if he could die, because he was no longer really sure what he was, or where he was, or how he was, metaphysically speaking, but he definitely felt as though his consciousness was fading.
"You're-We're not a killer," he strained to choke out.
"You don't know until you've tried," New Sunek shot back with his cruel grin.
Old Sunek stared back at his own face, a twisted version of his reality. And as his vision began to fade, he saw something in his counterpart's eye. A reflection of a raging storm. And then he realised where New Sunek was. And what he had to do.
With his final few ounces of strength, he grabbed New Sunek around the waist, and forced his own body up, allowing New Sunek's crushing weight to carry them both up and over the rail.
They both tumbled overboard, into the Voroth Sea.
One into a frothing, merciless tumult, the other into clear, pure serenity.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Even at the best of times, Jirel had to admit that didn't have much of an idea what was really going on in Sunek's head.
But as he stared back at his unmoving pilot on this occasion, he really would never have guessed the inner turmoil that was going on inside the Vulcan. Nobody in the room could.
The fight between himself and himself may have gone on for some time, but to everyone else present around the Tolaris's cloaking device, it looked like he was just momentarily daydreaming.
"Sunek!" Sokar snapped eventually.
Sunek was roused from wherever he had been. He shook his head to try and refocus, blinking a few times to clear his head.
"We cannot let this delay us any longer," Sokar continued, pointing at Jirel, "Now...kill him."
Sunek looked down at where Jirel sat crouched next to the body of Not T'Prin. The unarmed Trill stared back at him with fear, but also defiance.
"Sunek, come on now, you're not really gonna…"
Sunek felt confused. He felt strange. He felt like he was gasping for air, like he was drowning. He felt everything and nothing.
He looked down at the disruptor pistol in his hand.
"I said, kill him!" Sokar repeated, more angrily.
"Sunek," Jirel tried again, the fear overtaking the defiance, "Please, don't do this-"
Sunek didn't listen. He lifted the disruptor.
And he fired.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Slowly, but surely, the darkness began to resolve in front of her eyes.
She began to make out shapes. The blurry vista in front of her coalesced into a landscape of eerily familiar patterns and surroundings. And then it all clicked together in her head. She was staring at the grey metal ceiling of the small medical bay onboard the Bounty.
Seconds later, she saw the hulking form of Klath appear, towering over her where she lay with the closest a Klingon could get to a look of concern on his face.
"You are awake," he stated simply, his booming voice betraying significantly less concern than his face did.
"Did we…" she managed to croak.
"We did," he replied with a nod, "We are back onboard the Bounty. The Vulcans were neutralised. It was a...fine plan."
The Klingon's features softened slightly further as he spoke. Natasha mustered a smile, partly of pride and partly of relief.
She couldn't remember anything after she dived for their cover, and certainly couldn't remember how she had ended up back in the Bounty's medical bay. But however Klath had got her here, she never thought she'd be so glad to see the place.
"Good job it did work," she pointed out, "Cos if it didn't, I blew up our only gun."
She tried to get up from the bed, and felt a searing pain in her back, realising for the first time the extent of her injuries. Although she might have survived the explosion from the disruptor pistol, it definitely felt like she had caught a decent amount of the shrapnel.
"You should rest," Klath pointed out.
She winced, but didn't lie down, continuing the struggle to get back to her feet despite the pain she was feeling. "We need to help the others," she persisted.
"I will help them," he replied firmly, gesturing for her to lie back down on the bed with a stubby finger, "You are injured."
She mustered a knowing smile in the Klingon's direction as she got herself in a position to sit up and swing her feet over the side of the bed.
"Never stopped you, did it?"
Klath went to retort, then immediately stopped himself. Another look spread across his face, as he looked at the human doctor, struggling on despite her injuries, in a new light. A look of grudging respect. The corners of his mouth curled up into the beginnings of a smile, and he nodded, taking her arm and helping her off the bed.
She regretted her decision almost immediately. As her feet hit the ground, a shockwave of pain travelled up her back, hitting every cut and wound on the way. But she'd committed to it now, so she simply gritted her teeth and continued on as if it wasn't that much of a big deal.
"I guess," she grimaced as they slowly hobbled towards the door, "Today wasn't a good day to die after all."
"It would appear not-"
Klath paused, as they both heard the footsteps approaching.
Natasha mentally took back her last comment, and braced for whatever fresh challenge was about to present itself. She doubly braced when she saw the disruptor.
But she relaxed when she saw who was holding it.
"Well, you two look like you've had fun," Denella smiled.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Jirel closed his eyes.
It was an instinctive reaction, and also a completely pointless one. It's not like closing his eyes would stop the disruptor blast. Disruptors could still kill you even if you weren't looking directly at them.
And yet, despite all of that, he didn't feel the blast from the weapon slamming home into his body at all. Instead, he heard a loud explosion. And a scream of anger.
And then he felt someone grab his arm.
He opened his eyes to see Sunek standing over him. A far more familiar looking grin plastered across his face. A grin that looked much more like the old Sunek he knew. One without the dark edge of earlier.
"I'm back, baby," he announced.
Jirel didn't have time to even begin to contemplate the metaphysical subtext behind that comment, before Sunek forced him back to his feet and back towards the exit.
"Also," the Vulcan added, "We should get out of here, cos they're definitely gonna kill us."
The room was filled with choking smoke, billowing out of what was now a very second hand Romulan cloaking device as a result of some recent and particularly devastating disruptor damage. From somewhere in the smoke, Sokar called out.
"Sunek! You traitor!"
A stream of disruptor blasts came streaking out of the smoke, randomly slamming into the wall behind them.
"See?" Sunek added.
That was all the impetus that Jirel needed to scramble back to his feet and make for the exit and the corridor outside. They raced through the door, even as the disruptor fire continued.
The corridor outside was considerably more smoke-free, and they rushed off around a corner as quickly as possible, trying to evade their pursuers.
Moments later, Sokar and T'Len emerged from the same room and took off after them, disruptors raised and poised for action.
Sokar's face was plastered with anguish. Everything was falling apart. He knew that now the Tolaris would have decloaked. They had been exposed, deep in Federation space, the chance of any sort of surprise attack ruined.
The decloaked Romulan ship would have triggered every warning buoy across the next ten sectors, lit up every long range sensor scan in Federation territory, and there would already be half a dozen starships racing to converge on their location. And all of that made him angrier, and more eager to find his quarry.
Further ahead, Sunek and Jirel rounded another corner.
"You sure you're ok?" the Trill managed to ask as they ran.
Old Sunek, who was now very happy to go back to calling himself just plain old Sunek, nodded and smiled.
"Hell yeah, never better," he said, before immediately correcting himself, "Actually, that's a huge lie. I am very, very confused about a lot of what's happened here. But it'll do for now. Let's just get back to the Bounty."
"That is a plan I'm definitely up for," Jirel nodded, as he grabbed the stocky communicator on his belt and bellowed into it.
"Anyone alive back there? Me and Sunek could really do with someone working that transporter around now!"
Denella's voice came back over the channel, crackling slightly. "I'm tracking you, but I can't get a lock on your patterns! That whole section of the ship's flooded with radiation from somewhere."
"Psh. Some idiot must have just shot a cloaking device," Sunek chimed in.
"You're gonna need to get clear of it, then I can beam you over," the Orion woman continued, as Jirel suppressed a grimace. Nothing was ever easy.
They came up to an intersection in the corridor, and Jirel pointed to their left.
"Turbolift!"
They rushed over to the dark green door and called the lift, waiting impatiently for the doors to open and let them in.
"Sunek!"
They turned around, to see Sokar and T'Len reach the intersection and approach them, bringing their weapons to bear. Both of the Vulcans had murderous anger etched across their faces. Jirel licked his lips, realising that he was the only one without a weapon in his hand.
"You've ruined everything!" T'Len screamed through her anguish, "Everything that we've worked for, everything that Sokar wanted-"
"T'Len," Sunek tried, though he could see there was no getting through to her, "This isn't the answer, ok? Whatever Sokar did to me, whatever he's done to all of you...this isn't right. Besides, if Doctor Sevik is dead, then there's nobody left to have any revenge against-"
"I should never have trusted you, Sunek!" Sokar spat, flexing his trigger finger, "How quickly you've ruined everything I've worked for all these years!"
The doors opened behind him. Sunek couldn't help but muster a cheeky grin, feeling emboldened by their impending escape.
"Yeah, sorry about that."
He went to take a step back into the comforting safety of the lift, ready to whisk them to a location to be beamed out. Jirel shot an arm out to stop him.
"Um…" the Trill said, pointing back behind the Vulcan.
Sunek looked back, and saw nothing but an empty turbolift shaft.
"What the hell-?"
"Should probably have mentioned," Jirel offered with an apologetic shrug, "That happens every now and again on this ship."
Sunek gulped and looked back at T'Len and Sokar, with their weapons still very much drawn. His boldness had very much disappeared, replaced by his more traditional cowardly streak.
"Yeah," he managed, "You definitely should have mentioned that."
"So, perhaps I won't get the revenge I wanted," Sokar growled menacingly, "But at least this will be something."
Sunek looked over at his estranged wife, trying a final distraction. "I take it we didn't have thirty years, six months and fourteen days of marriage to catch up on after all?"
T'Len went to answer, but she paused. Sunek saw something in her eyes that gave him a modicum of hope. Until Sokar jumped in with his own answer.
"You really think she wanted anything to do with you?" he spat, taking another confident pace forward with his disruptor raised, "How pitiful. We just knew that would be the easiest way to get you on our side."
"Ouch," Jirel offered from Sunek's side.
For his part, Sunek felt himself shrink slightly. The worst part was he couldn't tell if Sokar was trying to rile him, or if that was actually the truth. T'Len simply refocused and brought her disruptor to bear.
"I wanted to catch up with that passionate Vulcan I met at the ShiKahr Learning Institute," she added through gritted teeth, "Not this lazy deadbeat clown you've become."
"I've definitely seen less dysfunctional marriages," Jirel managed to quip.
Sunek turned to the Trill. For a moment, he felt an entirely uncharacteristic flash of anger at his comment, and considered lashing out. But he managed to quickly dismiss it. That wasn't Old Sunek's way, after all.
"So," he shrugged instead, looking back at the empty lift shaft behind them, "I guess we're totally out of options?"
"I mean," Jirel replied, "We do have one option. But it's really, really, really stupid."
Sunek nodded and grinned widely.
"Sounds like my kind of option."
The pair of them turned back to the armed Vulcans. Both of them gritting their teeth in anguish. Sokar tightened his grip on his disruptor.
"Goodbye, Sunek," he grunted.
"Yep," Sunek smiled back, "See ya."
They didn't wait for the weapons to fire. They jumped. And they fell.
The twin bursts of disruptor fire which followed slammed into the rear wall of the lift shaft where they had been standing.
As he plummeted down the shaft towards the bottom of the Warbird, Sunek contemplated that this had indeed been a really, really, really stupid option.
And because of that, he couldn't help but laugh.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Stupid crapping piece of crapping crap!"
Natasha and Klath watched this curious display of anger as Denella deftly worked the transporter controls as fast as her hands could move.
"I'm still struggling to get a lock on them," she grouched, "There's still so much interference! And now their patterns are moving about all over the place."
"You must get a lock," Klath offered, entirely unhelpfully.
"Ugh!" the Orion woman sighed in frustration as she frantically worked, "Ok, here goes...nothing!"
They all turned to the transporter pad in unison, to see the slightly odd sight of Sunek and Jirel both materialising in front of them while mid-freefall.
The two figures that had been transported were equally surprised as they fell the short distance from where they had materialised to the transporter pad below with a loud thump.
"Ow," Jirel managed.
"Huh," Denella managed, looking up from the control panel, "Told you that'd be easy."
Jirel and Sunek awkwardly picked themselves up and looked around. The Vulcan had the widest grin anyone had ever seen plastered across his face.
"Now that," he said conclusively, "Was awesome."
The two figures on the transporter pad saw the pained and injured Natasha and Klath for the first time, as the human and the Klingon continued to stare at the two formerly free-falling individuals on the transporter pad.
"What the hell happened to you two?" all four of them said at the same time.
"Ok, maybe we can leave all that for later," Denella offered, "Like, after we've actually escaped."
The five of them, some more awkwardly than others, scrambled out of the transporter room and back to the cockpit. They bounded down the Bounty's short main corridor and up the steps into the cockpit, where they all slid into their usual places as quickly as possible.
"Powering her up," Sunek reported as he tapped his helm controls.
"Sunek," Natasha asked with a slight grimace, "What about T'Len?"
The Vulcan paused in his work, feeling a flash of loss inside.
He made sure that he had fully regained his cocky demeanour before he answered, sending the memories of the tingle of electricity he had felt whenever her hand had touched his straight to the back of his mind.
"Right, yeah, that's a really good point," he nodded as he worked, "Anyone know a good divorce lawyer?"
The Bounty lifted off from the deck of the hangar bay, pivoted around on its axis to face back the way it had come, and gently moved forwards. Towards the dark green bay doors, which were still very much in the closed position.
"Any time you like, Denella," Jirel called back to the Orion woman working at the engineering station at the rear of the cockpit.
"What?" she called back.
"The doors!" Jirel bellowed, gesturing forwards at the rapidly approaching solid metal doors in front of them with considerable concern.
"Yep, working on it!"
The doors loomed even larger in front of them.
"Aw, screw this," Sunek snapped, "Klath, old fashioned way?"
"With pleasure," the Klingon replied.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The incongruous form of the Romulan Warbird, now very much decloaked and out of warp, hung peacefully in the middle of Federation space.
The serenity of the scene was suddenly and entirely ruined when a huge explosion rocked the rear of the ship's hawk-like front section, fire burning out from the surface of the hull where the hangar bay doors had been.
Through the gap that had been cleared by the Bounty's phaser cannons, the small ship pierced the wisps of smoke and fire and blasted free of the Warbird.
The Bounty swooped gracefully in between the double hull of the vast Romulan ship and moved clear, the Vulcan pilot at the helm now back to his normal self.
Seconds later, it vanished entirely, as the tiny ship streaked away at warp.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"They are not pursuing," Klath reported as he checked his readouts.
Jirel sighed in relief and looked around the cockpit, allowing himself a moment to take in their escape before he turned back to Sunek.
"Set course back to Redrax," he nodded, "Let's see if our friend Darhall is still around. I quite fancy some revenge of my own."
Sunek declined to pass comment as he usually did, and just tapped his controls as the Bounty followed the new course.
"What happens to the Tolaris now?" Denella mused out loud.
"It is without a cloak and deep inside Federation territory," Klath pointed out, "It will be impossible for them to remain undetected."
"They'll already be lighting up the sensor grid of every starship in range," Natasha nodded.
Sunek considered all of this in silence, not entirely sure he wanted to let on to anyone quite how conflicted he felt over the likely fate of the Tolaris, and her crew.
"You know," he said eventually, putting on his best Old Sunek voice, "Let's let Starfleet worry about that. Besides, didn't Darhall say he was on his way to Risa...?"
He turned back and grinned hopefully. Jirel smiled and shook his head.
"Nice try," the Trill replied, "But we'll start on Redrax."
Sunek kept grinning and swung back to the front of the cockpit.
He managed to somehow maintain his grin as he stared out at the stars streaking by. And thought of everything he'd just left behind.