AN: Happy New Year! I hope everyone has a safe and fun New Year's Eve and gets 2017 off to a good start!
The planet materialized around them in a haze of heat and dust. Searing sunlight poured down out of an impossibly blue sky, casting hard-edged shadows on the red rocks. Kirk squinted against the glare. Around him, the rest of the away team did the same. Rev Bem actually raised one clawed hand to shield his face—Kirk suspected his species might be low light-adapted—but Khan stared calmly around the bleak landscape, apparently unaffected by fierce light. He and Rev Bem were the only ones without phasers; Khan because Kirk didn't trust him, Rev Bem because he said his religious order was a pacifist one.
A steady pulsing noise echoed across the salt flats on which they stood, keeping time with the streaks of light that flashed down from above and vanished into a distant outcropping of rock. Not far away, more rocks thrust up from the foothills of a veritable mountain range of sand dunes. Interspersed among the narrow fingers of rock were the tattered remains of buildings: arches, domes, pillars, all worn down by the constant movement of wind and sand across their surfaces. A ramshackle collections of tents and lean-tos sprawled around the base of the closest structure. Two angular out-of-atmosphere ships crouched nearby on the flats. Everything was hot, dry, dusty.
"Who would want to live in a place like this?" Sulu muttered.
Trance started walking toward the settlement, her tail twitching. They all trailed after her. "I think it's pretty, in its own way," she said.
More practical, Rev Bem said, "The rich kormaline deposits are much in demand."
"Do the Ocampa use it for barter?" Sh'athylnik asked. She was already panting from the heat. Andorians could tolerate extreme heat even better than Vulcans, but it cost them.
"Oh, no," Trance said, without turning around. "The Ocampa don't trade with anybody."
Kirk looked at Rev Bem, wondering if he would have something more useful to add. Rev Bem glanced at Trance's back and then at the sky, as though seeking guidance. He said, reluctantly, "The Magog mine and trade the kormaline ore."
"The Magog?" Kirk repeated. "Who are the Magog?"
Rev Bem tucked his hands into his sleeves and nodded toward the settlement, where humanoid figures could be seen scrambling among the tents, clearly agitated by their arrival. "They are. The Magog tribes control this part of the quadrant. Some have food, some have ore, some have water. They all trade, and they all kill each other." He sounded disappointed, as though he expected better of the Magog. And perhaps he did, if he had come here to convert them.
"Hold on." Kirk lengthened his stride to catch up to Trance. "You said the Ocampa had our people."
"Well, actually, no. I didn't say that." Trance gave him an apologetic look and a hopeful smile, like a puppy that knows it's misbehaved but hopes being cute will be enough to save it. Kirk knew that look: he'd used it before. "I, um, also didn't say the settlement was Ocampan."
Kirk opened his mouth, and then closed it. He had made an assumption, and the fact that she had deliberately led him to that assumption didn't excuse his failure. Just because she was friendly and attractive didn't mean she was trustworthy or reliable. Spock would say he had allowed his emotions to cloud his judgment. McCoy would say something similar, but a lot pithier.
"Is there anything you would like to say?" he said pointedly.
"Well…" Trance glanced at Rev Bem. "I'm sure you'll see soon enough."
Kirk would have liked to press her, but it was too late: a ragged crowd was spilling toward them from the settlement. The away team bunched together as the people—the Magog—approached them. Sh'athylnik muttered something in Andorian and Sulu gave an exclamation of surprise. Kirk didn't blame them. The Magog and Rev Bem were the same species.
"Something you forgot to tell us, Reverend?" Kirk asked quietly.
"'Forgot' is not the word I would use," Rev Bem replied dryly.
These Magog lacked Rev Bem's measured stride: they loped and sprang as they surrounded the landing party, clawed hands raised menacingly, forcing the away team to bunch together. They wore no robes, nothing but their own coarse pelts. And they didn't look at all inclined to religious contemplation: they bared their needle-like teeth and hissed at the interlopers, producing a keening, screeching noise that Kirk realized was a language, though the Universal Translator refused to render it into anything understandable.
"Hold your fire!" Kirk warned his people, though his own phaser had appeared in his hand almost against his will.
"We're here to see Black Claw!" Trance shouted. Her voice was shrill but admirably steady. "Excuse us—we want to see Black Claw!"
She edged forward, and the press of snarling Magog gave way grudgingly before her. Kirk and the rest of the away team followed closely on her heels, phasers pointed warily at anyone who ventured too close. Khan, though lacking a phaser, seemed tense but calm; Rev Bem, on the other hand, hissed and screeched back at the horde. Kirk didn't dare ask what he was saying, afraid the slightest wrong move could set off a violent rush.
The Magog village—if Kirk could grace it with such a word—was nothing more than a shantytown. The Magog had thrown up crude shelters among the ruins of what must have once been an ancient and beautiful city, or simply squatted among the broken stones. There was little evidence of advanced technology beside the two ships, and he wondered how the Magog mined the kormaline. Then he saw the rough palisade, built against the side of a decaying building, and the wretched figures huddled within it. Kirk was too far to get a good look at them, but they seemed to be of more than one species, none of them Magog. Slave labor. So that was how they were mining the kormaline. His stomach twisted in disgust.
Sulu nudged his shoulder and nodded toward another building. In the shadow of the doorway a Magog crouched, watching the cavalcade pass with glittering eyes. In his claws he clutched what was clearly a dismembered arm, and as Kirk watched the Magog raised it to his mouth and bit off a mouthful of flesh. Kirk looked away and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, fighting the urge to vomit. He was suddenly aware of the smell of rotting meat, thick and heavy in the back of his throat.
Trance stopped so suddenly Kirk almost ran into her. Distracted, he had failed to notice the approach of another Magog, bigger than the others. In the way many less Human-looking aliens did at first, all the Magog looked alike to Kirk's eyes, but he was beginning to recognize variation in their rough faces and coarse pelts. They were all more or less the same size—if any differed in age or gender, Kirk couldn't tell—but this Magog was taller and broader across the shoulder. He moved differently, too: heavy, swaggering. This must be Black Claw.
Black Claw looked past Trance and Kirk as if they weren't even there and said something to Rev Bem in the harsh Magog language. Rev Bem answered in clear Anglish—or what Kirk's Universal Translator rendered as Anglish.
"We are here to bargain this time, not preach," he said. "I think you will want to hear what these people have to say."
Black Claw's eyes went to Kirk, and then away again. "What could they possibly have that would interest me?" he demanded, answering Rev Bem in the same language.
"Water," Trance said. She unhooked the small canteen clipped to her belt and stretched it nervously out toward Black Claw, clearly unwilling to get any closer to him than she had to. "They have a technology that can make water out of thin air."
Kirk tensed, afraid Black Claw might try to grab her, but he only took the canteen and sniffed at the container's open mouth. He passed it to one of the other Magog clustered around him and studied Kirk with an unpleasantly predatory gaze.
"You have more?" he rasped.
With the hand not holding his phaser, Kirk flipped open his communicator. "Kirk to Enterprise. Energize."
The canteen had seemed like a pitifully small amount of water when Trance requested it, but after only a few minutes on this parched planet Kirk realized how precious even a few drops of liquid were. The enormous tank that materialized a dozen meters away now seemed absurd, decadent. He could smell the cool, dank scent of wet metal and damp air, even through the stink of rot. The Magog turned as one, sniffing at the air like eager dogs. Most of the horde broke away from Black Claw and ran to the tank, some snatching up empty containers as they went. Black Claw looked after them, the expression on his ugly face unreadable.
"There's more where that came from if you help us," Kirk said, thinking he would rather see these people die of thirst than give them so much as a drop of piss.
Black Claw lifted his lips in a snarl, exposing pointed teeth. "I am not in the habit of helping my food," he said. "But for you, I may make an exception."
Kirk struggled not to react. Behind him, he Sulu mutter something under his breath and felt Khan move impatiently. "These people led us here suggesting we might find the people called Ocampa," he said, gesturing toward Trance and Rev Bem and fighting to keep his voice level. "Do you know where they are?"
"Ocampa?" Black Claw repeated. "She is Ocampa."
He gestured with a clawed hand. While they spoke, a slim, elfin figure had drifted into the doorway of a nearby structure. Kirk was instantly captivated. She was beautiful, with porcelain-fair skin and spun-gold hair. Among the coarse, dark bodies of Magog, she looked ethereal, angelic. But there was dirt and blood smeared across her face and tunic, and she hunched slightly, as though it hurt to stand.
"What interest do you have in such worthless creatures?" Black Claw continued, oblivious to Kirk's growing fury. "You are obviously very powerful; they are weak, pathetic. We caught this one when she wandered to the surface."
"To the surface," Sh'athylnik repeated, pulling Kirk's attention away from the battered woman. The Andorian's voice was level, but her antennae were tilted at a dangerous angle. She obviously didn't like dealing with Black Claw any more than Kirk did. "You mean they live underground."
"The entity in space that gives them food and power also gives them sole access to the only water on this world, two miles beneath the surface," Black Claw explained. He tilted his head, a gesture Kirk read as curiosity. "Perhaps you, too, wish to reach their city? It is impossible. The entity has created a subterranean barrier we cannot penetrate."
And I bet that's precisely why he made it, Kirk thought. But just because the Magog couldn't get through didn't mean he couldn't.
"She got out," Khan said suddenly. "Surely you could go down the same way she came up."
Kirk just managed to stop himself from telling Khan to shut up. They couldn't afford to show dissent in front of these people, but at that moment he wanted nothing more than to hit Khan in the face a few more times. The last thing he needed was for Khan to undermine his authority or, worse, give the Magog ideas.
Black Claw hissed at Khan. "Sometimes they manage to find their way to the surface," he said. "But the Ocampa seal the tunnels afterward. This one has refused to show us the path she took, even though we have tortured her."
Kirk couldn't allow himself to react to that, though the rest of the away team bristled openly. If he let himself act on the rage that filled him… He felt Khan stir beside him and Kirk half-turned, unwilling to show his back to Black Claw, to mouth at him, Not another word.
Khan met his his eyes and quirked an eyebrow to show he understood, and then spoke anyway. "In that case, she's worthless to you," he said smoothly. "Let us trade you water for this scrawny thing."
Kirk almost did punch Khan, then, but caught himself in time. It was clever, he had to admit. He would have been a lot more appreciative if he wasn't sure Khan was exactly as cold-blooded as he sounded.
Black Claw was dismissive. "I have a better offer," he said. "Give us this technology that creates water from thin air, and I will give you as many of those as you want." He tipped his head toward the pen holding the slaves.
Kirk's heart began to pound. From the moment he had seen the enclosure he had wondered if there were some way to free the people trapped within, despite the overwhelming number of Magog. Could he negotiate for their freedom? Giving the Magog replicator technology was out of the question. Even if it wasn't a violation of the Prime Directive, he wouldn't give Black Claw anything except, perhaps, a barrage of phaser fire.
"That would be difficult," he hedged, giving himself time to think. "It's integrated into our ship's systems."
As he spoke, he saw those Magog who had stayed beside Black Claw begin to edge closer to the away team. They had no intention of bargaining, Kirk realized. Black Claw wanted the replicator technology, but he would stab Kirk in the back the moment he had it—or sooner.
Trance saw it, too. She lifted her phaser and pointed it at Black Claw. "Get back!" she shouted. "Get back, or he dies!" And then, "Kes!"
The away team contracted into a tight ring, phasers phasing out at the suddenly snarling Magog that surrounded them. There were only a handful of Magog now, but those that had run to the water tank, realizing something had changed, were racing back toward them. Soon the numbers would be overwhelming, and there would be no way to beam out before being torn to shreds. They needed something to tip the odds in their favor.
Kirk's eyes swept over the ruined city, looking for something, anything—and found the water tank. He lifted his phaser and fired. A long gash appeared in the side of the tank, and water began to pour onto the sand, which soaked it up greedily. A wail of fury and despair rose up from the Magog; some turned back to frantically collect as much water as they could in buckets and pails. The ring around the away team wavered, unsure.
"Kes!" Trance shouted again.
The golden-haired woman gathered herself and sprinted toward them. She slipped through a gap between two Magog; one swiped at her as she passed, clipping her shoulder. She stumbled, fell at Trance's feet, and flung her arms around the other woman's knees. Trance pressed her hand protectively against the woman's head and said to Kirk, "Get us out of here!"
Kirk already had his communicator in his hand. "Seven to beam up!"
Black Claw screamed something in his own tongue and the Magog sprang forward. Kirk watched a gnarled, three-fingered hand, tipped with long, deeply-curved claws, swing toward his face… and then dissolve into nothingness as the transporter seized him.
As soon as the transporter room materialized around him, he whirled on Trance and Rev Bem. "What the hell was that?" he demanded. His heart pounded with the thwarted fight-or-flight reflex. He'd been played, from start to finish: they had used him for their own ends, manipulated him for their own purposes. He had barely gotten them out in one piece and he was no closer to finding his lost people and he wanted answers—
The anger left him in a rush. Trance was gently helping the Ocampan woman stand. The two women embraced; the Ocampan woman trembled in Trance's arms, and Trance stroked her hair tenderly. "Didn't I tell you I'd come back for you?" she murmured.
It was an intensely private moment. Kirk wrenched his eyes away, feeling like a voyeur. His gaze slid across the other members of the away team: Sulu smiling slightly, Sh'athylnik inexplicably stricken, Rev Bem quietly pleased, Khan...
Kirk looked away from Khan, as well. He couldn't read all the emotions written on the other man's face, but they were clearly both powerful and painful. Trance may have neatly manipulated them into rescuing someone she cared about, but Khan, like Kirk, still had someone important to him in danger.
"Trance," Kirk said, reluctantly breaking apart the tender reunion, "It looks like your friend could use some medical attention. Why don't we get her down to Sickbay, and then you can tell me all the things you haven't been telling me."