Title: Home (Multichapter fic with 35 parts)

Beta: Lissaea at Livejournal

Warnings, Themes and Tropes, etc.: bondage, torture, prostitution, explicit sex, drug use

Summary: The Vulcans need a new home planet, so the Enterprise and her crew set out to find one for them.

"They'd come all the way for this? Which mad astronomer had sent them out here? Whose twisted idea had it been?"

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek or any of its characters.

Author's note: Poor Lissaea has had her laptop break, and beta'ing on an iphone is not easy. So yeah, sorry for the delay.

So where were we? Jim, Spock, Chekov, and random red-shirt Howard are on a starbase looking for information about the pirates who attacked Saketh.

– Home-Part 20 of 35 –

They'd found the shop called P.L.K.. It was a busy clothes shop, so it was perfect-they could exchange their credits for hard cash and get their disguises here at the same time. Jim had sent Chekov off to look for the owner, while everyone else was to look for clothes that said: 'I'm an outlaw, don't mess with me'.

As the ensigns all shuttled off into the crowd, Jim and Spock headed towards a row at the back of the shop. The clothes there were mostly dark colored and Jim decided they looked pretty badass.

"Hey, what about this jacket, Spock? Think it might suit you

Spock looked at the jacket which Jim had taken off its hanger. An eyebrow was raised. Jim felt his heart beat faster. Please, just take the damned jacket, he thought. All I want is a sign that we're okay, because if we aren't … I don't think I could stand that.

Eventually Spock reached out and not only took the jacket, he tried it on it too.

"You're going to wear it?" Jim asked biting his lower lip.

"Certainly," Spock replied.

A smile spread across Jim's face.

"That jacket makes you look mean," he teased.

Spock took a step towards him. They'd already been standing close before, but now Jim could feel Spock's breath on his face. When he looked into the dark brown eyes his mouth went dry. Jim swallowed hard and turned away quickly.

Someone was jogging towards them; Jim took a step back and looked over Spock's shoulder. It was Chekov.

"I have found the owner. He says he's interested to svap large amounts of credits for latinum. Ve should meet him outside in exactly ten minutes."

They grabbed some clothes, and Jim also found some duffle bags for them to each carry their purchases around in—they could get changed into them later. Spock was talking to Chekov a few steps away.

Jim clenched his fists; he was trying to get over Spock. If Spock didn't want to be with him anymore, he could deal with that. And if Spock regretted his choice to break things off with him, if logic was failing to guide his green Vulcan heart, well, he should keep it to himself. Jim didn't want to know about it unless Spock actually decided to get back with him, because what Spock had done, walk up to him as if to lean in for a kiss, was cruel. He'd hoped Spock would be considerate of his feelings; but it seemed the guy had the emotional intelligence of an amoeba.

A light skinned man with large blue ears was waiting outside for them. "Welcome to this humble starbase dear travelers. My name is Pel Lak Kar. I hear you are all in need of some hard cash?"

"Yeah, that's right. And the name's Jim."

After all, how many people, especially aliens, knew Jim was short for James T Kirk, Captain of the Enterprise?

Pel nodded and then turned to Spock. "And just to clarify, sir, I don't have any Romulan Dinari. I would never deal in the currency of the Star Empire."

"Of course not," Spock replied.

The man frowned at Spock, probably unsure whether he was being sarcastic or not.

Pel then motioned for the whole group to follow him. He took them right through the crowds on the main deck. Jim had been worried everyone would recognize him and Spock from the newscasts, especially since the Enterprisewas in dock here, but only humans occasionally glanced at them twice.

Maybe the aliens couldn't tell the difference between him and any other humans. After all, every Klingon looked the same to him, and with their identical hairstyles and robes Vulcans all looked alike too-apart from Spock. He'd be able to spot him in a crowd of Vulcans, he was sure of that. A small hard lump had formed in his throat at that thought. Jim pointedly avoided looking at Spock as they continued to follow the set of blue ears that was confidently weaving its way through the throng of people. In the clothes shop Spock had acted like a complete dick—why had he done that? Now Jim's mind was racing with possibilities and his heart was starting to hope again; he hated Spock for doing that to him.

They entered a small access tunnel at the end of which they came to a small room; Pel unlocked it with a swipe card. Inside was a safe that was connected to a computer terminal. Jim recognised is as a Young & Alan F-Series model. The safe wouldn't open until the electronic transaction was complete; and when it did it would only spit out as much money as had been agreed upon. The security was decent on such systems, but there was a weak Huffman encoding in one of the subroutines ... Jim stopped those thoughts in their tracks—he wasn't seventeen anymore, he'd moved on from that life. And besides, they'd probably upgraded the security on those terminals sometime in the last decade. He sighed softly to himself. Could the leopard ever change its spots?

Jim handed over his account chip.

"How much do you want to change?"

"All of it," he replied.

"Running from something?"

Jim glared at him.

The alien examined Jim's accounts and scowled. "A lot of this is United Earth credits. I can't accept those, they're utterly useless. Right, so that's 8,000 Federation credits, which is 2 bars worth of latinum."

Jim folded his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes.

"That should be at least 3 bars."

"Not the most competitive rate," the alien replied smoothly, "but what did you expect? Federation credits are worthless."

Jim knew that was true-with 8,000 credits he could buy a lot, but only within the Federation. On the galactic market the credit had no value. The Vulans had been the only ones to trade well beyond the Federation's borders; the other worlds being either too suspicious to trade outside the borders or overly protective of their own markets.

He thought maybe he should put up more of a fight for realism's sake, but then again he didn't want to spend all day here.

"I'll take your latinum," he said.

"Is that all?"

"Wait," Spock said and handed over a chip of his own.

"Same thing? All the credits?"

Spock nodded. When the alien examined it, his eyebrows shot up.

"That's 230,000 credits. A pretty tidy sum, more than the whole planet of Zerox receives from the Federation in one year for use of their mining facilities. I don't have that much latinum. I have a contact though... a wealthy merchant with his own ship. Don't ask me what business he does, I'm sure it's unsavory."

Spock barely indicated to Jim but he knew Spock was asking for instructions. Jim nodded gently, while Spock still had the merchant fixed in his gaze. He wondered briefly how Spock had amassed so much, but then again, he could imagine Spock being the kind to save and never spend.

"Take us to him," Spock said. "You will get your commission."

The clothes shop owner nodded enthusiastically, greed lighting up his eyes. Jim and Pel wrapped up their deal, and the bottled liquid latinum was hidden away in Jim's bag, but it was nowhere near enough to bribe the kind of people Jim had in mind to approach; the station's custom officers for example.

"Can you take us to your contact now?" Jim asked.

All five of them were led to a bar. Clearly this wealthy merchant owned more than just a ship. If the décor was anything to go by they were far from the main deck now; pipes were no longer hidden in the bulkhead walls and there was litter in every corner. They were led through to the back of the bar, behind the counter to a small room, where Pel left them. In it, half a dozen guards, armed with weapons chosen to impress with their large size, watched their every move. They waited.

Eventually a slender red skinned woman entered; Pel was standing at her shoulder.

"We will meet the boss at his ship," she said sweetly. "There you can discuss the trade, but the cash will be handed over to you here at the bar. For security reasons, of course."

Jim could see Chekov measuring up the guards and he couldn't help but agree with his navigator—the sooner they left this 'bar', the better.

The red woman, Pel and the guards stood back at a respectable distance once they arrived at the ship; trade negotiations needed to be held in private. Jim looked back over his shoulder at them. The leader of the guards patted his plasma rifle, the message clear: we won't be listening in, but we'll be watching. One step out of line and you're all toast.

The ship itself was small and unglamorous, but it looked sturdy. There was a hiss and a door to the ship opened; the man who stepped out had to be the merchant. He was very ugly with his little beady eyes, Jim thought-like a pig.

"My name is Quol," he introduced himself.

"Jim," he replied.

They didn't shake hands, it seemed that was not the convention, instead a lengthy discussion of the terms and conditions and of the exchange rate followed. Jim knew his bartering skills were no match for this man's, which was perfectly fine—he'd wanted to offer his man a good deal, the kind he wouldn't want to turn away from, without it looking like a set-up, so this suited him well.

"Now that the business side of the deal has been settled," Jim said, "there's still one issue that remains. Do you even have as much latinum as you claim? This isn't a rich starbase, you can't make much profit here. Where do you trade?"

"Why should I tell you that?"

"Why would you not tell us?"

Quol's eyes flicked briefly to Spock.

"So you're a smuggler of Romulan technology?" Jim pressed on.

Right on cue Spock took a step towards Quol.

"What?" the merchant sputtered. "No! Why would you even say such a thing? It's a lie!"

"Because there's no other way you could possibly amass so much wealth."

Judging by his reaction to Spock, Jim decided to believe him though. People on this starbase had all clearly had some kind of knowledge of the Romulans, but they couldn't look exactly like Spock, surely? Especially the haircut, he thought. It was probably second had knowledge at best.

"Don't even think about calling out to your guards," Jim hissed. "We've already passed on your name and the details of your ship to the Romulans. If we die, then so will you. If you really are innocent then we're the only ones who can set the record straight."

"You're bluffing," Quol replied.

Jim looked over to Spock for help.

"Your trading partners," Spock prompted.

Quol was silent for a while. Then Jim saw the fight leave his eyes.

"Kroth," the merchant said. "I traded with him. His men can't pirate everything they need. But I swear I haven't had any dealings with him since they destroyed the Romulan ship."

Jim turned to look at his group. Behind them he could see Quol's guards.

Jim definitely considered himself the type to distrust overly elaborate plans, as he'd never known one to work out yet. When you planned as you went along, you were more flexible. In chess he made the right choices because the game's strategy was ingrained in his mind through practice. He just had to look at a board to know what to do instinctively. The situation was similar now-he knew what his next move had to be even if he didn't yet understand how it would all play out.

He couldn't do this alone, but he had to send someone to the Enterprisewith word of what was happening; someone who could take care of themselves. But not Spock, he needed him here. He'd seen Ensign Li practice advanced hand to hand combat in the gym.

"Tell the others," he addressed her in a hushed tone, "not to stop Quol's ship." Slightly louder he added. "He didn't deal with Romulan smugglers after all."

He stared at Quol and pointed towards the guards. "Tell them that she can go. Make it abundantly clear they're not to stop her. Your life depends on it Kroth. And once she's left, we can continue our chat."

Quol narrowed his eyes but complied quickly. He shouted his instructions to his guards. Jim's heart beat frantically, but they let Li pass.

"Who are you?" Quol hissed.

Now Li was out of sight Jim could see Quol was standing taller.

"People you don't want to mess with," Jim said. "Leave now. Take us to the pirate
base."

He made sure his back was to the guards as he carefully drew his phaser and pointed it in Quol's direction. The others followed suit.

Jim nodded with his head towards the door of the ship. "Oh, and don't forget to let your guards know not to shoot your new friends."

So now they'd done it; stolen Quol's ship. He knew Scotty would go spare, but maybe he'd be able to follow them. And if not … hopefully they'd find their way back with all the knowledge they needed to wipe out the threat Kroth and his pirates posed to Saketh.

Jim divided his attention between watching Spock rifle through the craft's navigation systems and keeping a good eye on Quol. They'd restrained him, but Jim still had his phaser aimed at the man's chest. This was Quol's ship after all—the merchant might still have a few tricks up his sleeve.

"All but the most recent flight plans were deleted. I was however able to recover two hundred and twenty plans from the back-up magnetic memory banks," Spock said.

"I knew I shouldn't have skimped on the routine computer clean-ups," Quol cursed. "I hope the Romulans catch you all and boil you alive in a vat of warp core coolant!"

Chekov joined them in the cockpit. "Captain, the hull is from a typical Earth trading wessel, but the engines are from Andor, the weapons Klingon and there's a load more stuff I'm not too sure about."

"These controls are Romulan," Spock said.

"You're from the Enterprise, aren't you?" Quol said.

Jim ignored him as he watched the spacestation and with it the Enterprisebecome smaller and smaller on the viewscreen.

"I have rights!" Quol shouted. "You can't just steal my ship!"

As much as he wanted to say 'we just have', he knew he shouldn't be admitting to that.

"Steal? No, you're simply assisting us. That's why you were trading with the pirates, wasn't it? To get their trust so you could help the Federation's investigations into the matter of piracy against its vessels. Unless you were actually trading with them purely for your own profit? In which case ..."

Jim raised his brows and smiled a sardonic grin. "I'm sure the Klingons or the Romulans would be interested in all this technology of theirs which you have on board this ship."

"You wouldn't dare! You'd have to hand me over to Starfleet-a federation trial!"

"I think you'll find that as your crimes were committed outside our boundaries it would not be necessary to do so and we really want to improve relations with our neighbors-a few friendly gestures here and there are always appreciated."

The man had gone pale.

Jim turned away from him. "Ensign, what's in the ship's cargo hold?"

"Alcohol, warious medicines, veapons, spare parts for Romulan sheeps… ."

"Alright," Quol said gruffly. "I'll help."

"Clever man."

"Do you know the ways around here, where not to go, when to send out signals? You'll have to let me go, because you'll have to rely on me, or you'll die in your stupid attempt to find the pirates."

"We'll see about that," Jim said. "I have confidence in my officers and I also think you don't want to die. You'll give us all the vital information; you don't want to risk anyone destroying this ship and killing everyone on board, do you now?"

All in all Jim thought he could trust Quol to look out for himself, but no more than that.