If he had only wanted to drown his sorrows in some excellent brandy, McCoy thought, he couldn't have come to a better place than this: a well-stocked bar that offered both alcoholic and syntheholic beverages from all over the galaxy; tucked into the back of a wide entertainment area that provided both an ever-changing canopy of aliens to watch, and a soothing background noise of people chatting and Dabo wheels tinkling, only interrupted by the occasional excited cry of "Dabo!" He would've curled up in the dimly-lit bar area, nursing his drink and letting the noise wash over him to silence his thoughts until the brandy had taken over that task.

Unfortunately, he wasn't here to drown his sorrows.

"I told him!" McCoy leaned closer to his drinking buddy, his fake smile feeling terribly incongruous to the fear and annoyance he felt. "I said, 'Jim, there are words I never want to hear in one sentence. Words like us. And deal. And interesting. But if you knew him... those words are like catnip for a cat. Which is.. alright, it's just how he is. But then he had to drag me into it!"

The woman to his left nodded sympathetically. Her Dabo gown glittered distractingly as she laid a soothing hand on his arm. Hell only knew how Christine Chapel had ended up in an Orion entertainment parlor; the last thing McCoy had heard, she had abandoned her BioSciences studies to search for her fiancé, who had 'vanished' after he had published a paper that someone on Ch'Rihan had disapproved of.

Guess she didn't find him, after all. No surprise there. McCoy took another gulp from his brandy and remembered to reapply his smile. He shouldn't worry right now how Chapel had ended up here. It was bad enough that he had ended up here.

"So, what kind of deal was that?" Chapel asked. "And how can I help you?"

McCoy drew back a fraction to glare at her. "'And what's in it for me?', you mean."

Chapel raised a brow and half-shrugged. "Well, it's not so easy to just quit your job around here. Workers' rights are pretty much nonexistent. Unless your deal gets me out of here, I'd be far better off to sound the alarm, you know?"

She smiled apologetically, but McCoy wasn't fooled. Whatever twist of fate had stranded her here, he was sure that Christine Chapel had been forced to make hard decisions long before that point. She was used to it by now, he could see it in those icy blue eyes of hers, and she would rat him out if it gave her the slightest bit of advantage; that one class of his she had sat in twelve years ago didn't matter one bit.

It was strange that she had still remembered him after all that time. Under different circumstances, he would've found it flattering.

"Well..."

.*.

"You said I wouldn't be there!" McCoy grabbed the backrest of the ratty captain's chair to keep himself from grabbing the lapels of Kirk's jacket and shaking him instead. "You said my job was to take out that tracer implant and then lean back in my comfy chair in my doctor's office which is back on Pundarika and not on this ship, and wait for the money to come in!" He'd never have thought it possible to feel something like homesickness for that icy hellhole of a mining asteroid — which had been nicknamed after the equivalent of the eighth cold hell in every miner's native language — but right now he'd even prefer camping on one of its glaciers to being on Kirk's ship.

"And that's exactly how it would've gone down," Kirk said, completely unruffled. "Who could've known that it'd send a signal to the Romulans before it exploded?"

"She could have!" McCoy felt a vein throbbing in his temple. His blood pressure was definitely not in the healthy range anymore. "That two-faced, conniving, lying..."

"Bones. Remember you're a gentleman."

McCoy drew a deep breath. "That alleged turncoat just 'forgot' to mention that their locators do that by default! Just like she didn't give you all the details for your raid—"

"Heist."

"... so you'd be forced to take her along! This 'Janice Rand' person already tricked you twice, and you still want to go through with this, on nothing but her word? Jim, I know you're easily swayed by a pretty young face and nice legs, but—"

The doors swished open to let in the object of McCoy's ire. Apparently she had heard his last words, because she greeted him with a radiant smile.

"Hrmph," McCoy said and turned away, but not without noticing how Kirk returned that smile with one of his own, suave ones.

Clearly, it was time to retreat to what counted as sickbay around here, and run some diagnostic checks on the medbeds.

But the blonde nemesis who was responsible for his current predicament had other plans. "Dr. McCoy! I've been looking for you!" She beamed at him, completely oblivious or indifferent to his bad mood.

"What for?" McCoy muttered. "To trigger another subspace signal to your superiors, with ribbons and flowers this time?"

The girl let out an exaggerated sigh. "I already said I'm sorry, but you have to admit that you wouldn't have helped me if I'd told you about that little detail."

"That little detail?"

"But since you're here now," Rand — or whatever her real name was, McCoy didn't believe a single thing she had told them about herself by this point — continued, ignoring his outburst, "I've been thinking about how you can contribute to the success of this mission."

For a second, McCoy was speechless. "How I can contribute...?"

He had to stop, because his voice had climbed so high with the last word that it was breaking. He had to clear his throat and draw a deep breath in preparation of a rant that would tell her exactly how he was going to contribute to this harebrained 'mission', which would be by staying inside sickbay, tending to anyone who got their head knocked in by enraged Orions, and praying to a god he no longer believed in that they'd get out of the system before the Romulans showed up.

"We need a Face down there," Kirk said before McCoy could voice any of those thoughts. The remark was cryptic enough to distract him for a moment.

"A what?"

"A distraction," Rand supplied helpfully. "Someone who acts out the story we'll present to our targets, so that the crew can carry out the mission undisturbed. Since this is an auction, we thought you'd be the ideal choice to be our bidder."

"We," McCoy said numbly.

"You'll bid on the artifact we're going to swap," Rand explained. "A pair of Vulcan swords, pre-Surakian, approximately six thousand years old. Very rare, very sought after. You need to keep the bidding going as long as possible, even if that means the sum climbs to ridiculous heights."

"Right," McCoy managed to say. "And after I've out-bidded everyone else, and am the proud owner of those incredibly precious pieces of scrap metal, how am I going to pay for them?"

"You don't," Kirk interjected, and by the smirk on his face, McCoy knew he was in for yet another insane idea. "Because nobody would pay for forged art. And you'll throw a big tantrum about it down there."

"The Orions are auctioning off forgeries?" This was getting more confusing by the minute.

"No, but the crew will have swapped the originals while you're holding up the show in the auction room," Kirk said, as if swapping out a pair of six thousand years old Vulcan swords was what he was doing on the regular before breakfast.

McCoy didn't dare to ask where they'd get the duplicates. They'd never even get into the vault anyway.

"That's why I suggested that you'll play the bidder," Rand took over again. McCoy's head was swiveling between Kirk and her as if he was watching a game of tennis, trying to keep track of the ball. "You have the perfect personality for this role: irascible, impatient, impolite..."

"... prone to breaking into loud rants..." Kirk added with a grin.

"You two," McCoy waved a finger at them. "You already figured everything out between the two of you, right? Well, too bad! I'm not gonna be your sock puppet in that snake pit!"

.*.

"Mm-hm," Chapel said. "I see that worked out perfectly for you." An amused smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but her eyes were calculating. She wasn't convinced. Neither was McCoy.

"Well," he muttered, and waved for the bartender to top up his drink, and bring Chapel another of whatever she was having, "I figured that if you want a job done right, you've gotta do it yourself, and keep an eye on things as they happen. Less chance of unpleasant surprises sneaking up on you."

Of course, it didn't prevent you from unpleasant surprises running into you, which was exactly how he and Chapel had met about half an hour ago, at one of the Dabo tables, the last place in the galaxy where he would've expected her.

"I wouldn't count on that," Chapel said, as if she had read his mind. "From what you've told me about your captain, he's a pretty enterprising fella. I wouldn't be surprised if he bagged a few more things while he's down there."

"He wouldn't—" McCoy began indignantly, but then he paused and raised a brow. Maybe here was a way to not only prevent Chapel from blowing the whistle on them, but to get actual help — something that would give them a better chance to break into the vaults under the auction house than Sulu's 'surgical explosives'.

"You said you want to get away from this place? Well, I'm sure Jim will give you a ride if you lend us a hand here."

"Oh." Chapel smiled and sipped at her cocktail. "Oh no, Leonard. I'm not that easily bought. If I'm gonna be a part of your crew, I want a ride and an equal share of the money."

"Deal," McCoy said without thinking. He'd discuss this with Kirk once they were safely out of the system, or better yet, out of Orion and Imperial space, when there would be time to discuss such inconsequential matters as money. If all else failed, he'd gladly give up his own share of the money—

—and lose his only chance to find his daughter again—

— he'd find a way to get Chapel the money, but right now, the important thing was to get her on their side.

"Mm-hm." Chapel took another sip from her drink and watched him thoughtfully, though what thoughts were moving behind those striking blue eyes of hers, McCoy couldn't even begin to guess. "So what can I do for you?"

"Can you get us beyond the 'authorized personnel only' force fields?"

She raised her brows. "Easily. I just need to grab some ID badges from the locker room. Are you saying that you didn't even have a plan for that part?"

"Oh, we had," McCoy said darkly. "But yours is much better." He didn't care to elaborate — for one thing, because he hadn't paid much attention to what Kirk and Sulu and Uhura had been discussing, and for another, because from what he had caught, he was too embarrassed to say a word.

"Fine," Chapel said, and slid off her seat with a languid motion that made McCoy grab his glass harder and look anywhere but at her. "Come back here in an hour. Bring that Rand girl — she can make a scene when she detects her 'husband' with one of the Dabo girls, that'll make it easier to slip you the badges." She breathed a kiss at his flushed cheek. "Besides, I'd like to meet her. Anyone who can make you jump through her hoops like this sounds interesting."

By the time McCoy had recovered, she had already vanished into the crowd.

On the bridge of the supposed cargo runner Enterprise, Chief (and only) engineer Montgomery Scott was fighting the urge to fidget in the captain's seat. When the captain was away, command switched to the second-in-command of their two-man crew, so it wasn't that he felt out of place there, except in the sense that an engineer's place was in engineering, where the real seat of power was.

No, Scotty's unease was stirred by the sight of the communications station, which had sprouted a nest of cables and an array of portable interfaces, all of which had been brought aboard by one Miss Uhura from Agret space station as part of her work equipment, and had been hooked up to the Enterprise's main computer. Scotty didn't feel comfortable with introducing unknown equipment to his ship, much less unknown code to his ship's computer, but this had been one of the rare instances when Jimmy had pulled rank on him; then he had gallantly kissed Miss Uhura's hand and had appointed her as communications officer for the duration of this mission. Scotty had to admit that the kiss had been a suave move, even if Miss Uhura hadn't seemed to be that deeply impressed.

But seeing his lassie sprouting equipment that didn't belong to her was painful. It was as if your girlfriend had suddenly grown a wart. You loved her just as much, you just couldn't look away.

"Any word from them yet?" he said. Everyone save for him and Miss Uhura — and, well, that Chekov laddie — had gone down to the surface to smuggle some swords into the auction for reasons Scotty hadn't bothered to pay much attention to.

Uhura didn't look up from the screen before her, but she shook her head. "Sulu and the captain have entered the vault just now," she said. For someone who, according to Dr. McCoy, was a ruthless hacker and hardened criminal, her voice was surprisingly soft. If the word had been part of Scotty's vocabulary, he'd have called it 'lovely'. "I'm sorry, Mr. Scott, but I can't chat with you now. I must stay ahead of the computer down there."

"That's alright, Miss Uhura," Scotty said and leaned back in the creaky seat, relieved that he didn't have to make conversation, although there was a slight chance that he'd get away with discussing the latest technical journals with her, seeing as she was working in an adjacent field, so to speak.

Unfortunately, Chekov took this as his cue to fill in for her. "Vhat if they cannot make it back to the ship through the elevator?" He turned around and looked at Scotty with a worried frown that didn't seem to be completely genuine to the engineer. "Can ve use the transporters then?"

"Aye," Scotty said after a moment's thought, and the boy broke into an excited smile that softened Scotty's heart a fraction. "Though I wouldna want to hear what Dr. McCoy would have to say aboot that."

Chekov turned back to his console and fiddled with the controls. "I hope ve can beam them up," he said. "It vould prove that it's completely safe to use it on people. Did you know that the transporter vas invented in Yekaterinburg by a—"

"Chekov," Scotty said firmly, "No more Russian fairy tales."

"It's like a huge library," Sulu said. He had paused his descent to sweep the walls of the vault with the beam of his lamp: a beehive of sealed alcoves, the force fields invisible but deadly to anything that wasn't a robotic retrieval arm with the correct access code. "A library of things."

"Mmh," Kirk said, unimpressed. He was hanging in his rappel gear a few feet above Sulu, waiting for his new teammate to remember their reason for being here. "Are we close to finding our book before the librarians wake up?"

Sulu consulted with his electronic clipboard. "We're close. A few more levels down."

"Let's not hang out here, then," Kirk said. Sulu put the clipboard away and resumed rappelling down.

Kirk didn't know how he felt about having such a big team under his command. On Tarsus IV, it had been 'every inmate for themselves', unless you wanted to be part of a gang, but he'd never been a follower and he'd done a pretty good job on his own at staying alive. When he had chased away the pack of thugs going for some tech serf who'd strayed too far from the watchhouse, it hadn't been to save the guy's life: he had wanted his ration bars for himself.

But then the kid had offered to smuggle him off the planet, stowed away in some access tube of the ship he was serving on. At the first opportunity, they had made a run for Orion space.

Ever since that day, he and Scotty had been a committed two-man team, which was a bigger team than Kirk had thought he'd be able to tolerate. But they fit together well: Scotty tended to the technical side of their business, while Kirk took care of the social aspect. Together they had carved out a smooth-running business in the margins of the three big empires in the quadrant. And a big part of that comfortable niche existence was Kirk's talent for staying under the radar of Klingons, Romulans, and Orions.

Kirk wasn't sure if stealing a highly profitable object from right under the noses of its Orion holders still qualified as 'staying under the radar'. He doubted it, but he was too thrilled by the challenge to care about it. As for Scotty... the engineer was already dreaming of upgrading the Enterprise in every conceivable way from the money their haul would earn them, including state-of-the-art disruptor banks that would definitely get unwanted attention from the authorities. But who cared, since the other upgrades would make her too fast to catch?

No, it wasn't the risky mission that had Kirk on edge; it was suddenly being in charge of a seven-man team that excited him. He had always thought that he worked best alone, while Scotty was doing his own thing down in engineering, but having a bunch of people at his disposal — people who were each an expert in their chosen field, and working together as smoothly as a pack of Terellian ahn-vets? That had worked out surprisingly well so far. He could maybe get used to that. And he wasn't doing too bad a job at leadership himself, even if he was the one making that assessment.

"This one here," Sulu called up to him; he had stopped rappelling, and Kirk let himself down until he was level with him to lend him a hand.

"Let's see if Uhura was able to crack the code," he said.

Sulu shrugged. "She got us through everything these guys have been throwing at us," he said. "She's a witch, let me tell you." He tapped a command into the lock of the alcove and reached into it a second later. Kirk flinched involuntarily — he'd have preferred a scan first; but Sulu's blind faith in Uhura proved justified. No alarms blared, and he retracted his arm in one piece, holding a long, plain-looking bundle that he handed to Kirk.

Whatever was in the tube at least had the right weight for a pair of old Vulcan swords. Kirk would also have preferred to scan the contents, or to at least screw off the lid and have a look with his own eyes, but Sulu had already deposited his own forgeries and resealed the alcove, and Kirk was forced to attach the tube to the holding strap on Sulu's gear that had been tailored to the tube's dimensions. They had no idea when the automated retrieval system would come for this alcove, so they couldn't linger.

But instead of beginning the ascent, Sulu disappeared farther down the shaft.

"Sulu!" Kirk called after him. "Clock's ticking — I don't know how long McCoy can keep his nerves under control and I'd feel better if we were there in case things go sideways. We don't have time for a tour of the library."

"You don't have to wait for me," Sulu called back. "Take care of the doctor, I'll catch up with you in a minute."

Kirk quickly rappelled down. "As long as you have my money strapped to your back, I do have to wait for you," he said. "What are you doing, mister?"

Sulu glanced at him, dark eyes unreadable behind his visor. "That's none of your concern."

Kirk grabbed his arm. "In case you missed it, we're both dangling in an Orion auction vault that is outfitted to the hilt with deadly security systems, and the success of our mission as well as our lives are hanging on the thin thread of a precisely timed schedule and Miss Uhura's hacking skills, which means yes, this is my concern." He slightly shook Sulu's arm. "Explain yourself."

Sulu snorted. "Or what, you'll trigger the alarm? As you said, we're both in here."

Kirk smiled grimly. "Yes, but you want something in here more urgently than a pair of obscenely precious Vulcan swords, so — much as triggering the alarm would hurt me, it'd hurt you more. You, and whoever you're working for."

The other man's expression didn't change, but Kirk felt Sulu's bicep tighten imperceptibly in his grip, and knew that he had won.

"There's some piece of tech in an alcove twenty levels down," Sulu admitted. "Game-changing technology."

Kirk didn't let go yet. "And you have no intention of selling it to the highest bidder. You want it for yourselves."

Sulu held his gaze. His eyes were like obsidian now, hard and sharp. "Yes."

Kirk drew a slow breath. "You're Resistance."

The one faction in the galaxy he had made sure to never cross paths with. Utopists who dreamed of shaking off the yoke of their Romulan masters and founding their own star empire — or rather, some sort of republic, or federation, or whatever. If growing up in a Romulan penal colony had taught Kirk anything, it was to keep his eye on what was feasible (and profitable, of course). Risking your life for some pie-in-the-sky nonsense was nothing he'd ever been willing to do.

And now they had hired him. Well, tricked him into working for them, and that was worse, because in this galaxy, Kirk was the one who tricked, bluffed, and outwitted his adversaries, not the other way round.

Sulu was watching him. "Yes," he said. "And if you want to get out of this hole alive, and live to sell your swords to the highest bidder, you better stop talking and start rappelling." He pulled free from Kirk's grip and continued his descent.

Kirk swallowed a curse, glanced up to where the mechanical whine of the automated retrieval system announced the imminent display of the next item in the auction room far above — he thought it was accessing the alcove he and Sulu had just raided; if so, they were rapidly running out of time — and followed the resistance fighter deeper into the vault.

He should return to the auction room, keep an eye on McCoy, stage a distraction if necessary to ensure their exit... but what if Uhura was also working for the Resistance? She and Sulu had both joined the team on Rand's recommendation, and they seemed to know each other; on the other hand, Rand had worked for the Tal Shiar, not for the Resistance... or had she?

Everything had become murky all of a sudden; but he still had to make a decision, and Kirk wasn't prone to dithering. For now, he'd assume that Uhura was also Resistance, and in that case, it would be doubtful they'd get out of the system while Sulu was still stuck down here with his mysterious piece of 'game-changing' technology. She had been able to sneak them through Orion security; who knew how deep she had already infiltrated the Enterprise's computer?

Besides, who said that that piece of tech had to stay in Sulu's hands? If antique Vulcan swords could make them rich, avant-garde technology would make them obscenely rich...

"This is it," Sulu murmured over the comm-link. The beam of his flashlight illuminated a... door. Unlike every other alcove Kirk had seen so far, this one was sealed with an actual metal bulkhead instead of a force field. Or maybe in addition to a forcefield; a quick scan confirmed that suspicion.

"Why would they need a bulkhead—"

But Sulu had already hooked up a small device to the positronic lock, and before Kirk could finish his sentence, could even formulate the suspicion forming in his mind, Uhura had cracked its code (just how far ahead had they prepared for this? They had to have acquired the codes beforehand) and the metal plate began to move.

Sulu suddenly jerked aside, and Kirk reacted by reflex, grabbing at a beam running down the sides of the alcove and pulling himself out of the way—

A disruptor beam cut through the darkness, a toxic green arc searing Kirk's retinas before it lit up one of the alcove force fields at the opposite end of the vault.

That'll have triggered an alarm... Any attempt to break through one of the security shields of the alcoves would do that, it was the reason they had been so careful to let Uhura hack the codes...

Sulu was firing into the cavern behind the metal plate that Uhura's witchcraft had opened for them without triggering an alarm, and Kirk drew his own disruptor and dropped any thoughts about what was going on in some security control room far above him. Whatever was in there had its own living, breathing guards protecting it; Kirk estimated at least four of them, covering the door so completely with disruptor fire that it was impossible to get into a good position himself. Time for a strategic retreat—

Sulu threw something — something that lit up inside the compartment without a sound. The disruptor fire stopped immediately. Sulu swung around and jumped into the darkness without hesitation.

Kirk followed more slowly. His flashlight jumped from still body to still body — four, as he had guessed — and flickered for a second across Sulu stuffing something surprisingly small and compact into his backpack.

"So, what is it?" Kirk asked, mostly to avoid asking what Sulu had thrown into the small room that had killed or stunned four people in the fraction of a second.

"Romulan Cloaking Device," Sulu panted. Small as the thing was, it seemed to be quite heavy. "The first functional prototype, and they managed to have it stolen." His teeth gleamed in the semidarkness.

"It was an inside job," Kirk guessed.

Sulu was still grinning when he passed him. "Of course it was. Let's get out of here before they send more guards."

"They've already locked the vault," Kirk said. "I doubt Uhura can break us out this time — Rand said that that security system is a purely mechanical one." He felt strangely numb about it; from the moment the disruptor fire had barely missed his head, he had known it was game over.

Sulu didn't seem to be overly concerned. "And that's why they sent me down with you." His smile turned into a smirk that Kirk found hard not to join in.

"Surgical explosions," Sulu said, and began climbing. "It's a hobby of mine."