Part One
"You can't bring that in here."
Jirel adjusted the heavy satchel on his shoulder and suppressed the unnerving sense of deja vu that he felt as he looked up at the burly owner of the gruff voice standing in front of him.
Why was it always Nausicaans?
He took a second to cast his mind back to the last time a Nausicaan bouncer had stood between him and the entrance to a bar. Back on Hestina, at the Targ and Lion, when he and the Bounty were searching for information on the final location of the late USS Navajo, and her black box.
On that occasion, the solution to the menacing and entirely overzealous doorman had been easy. A simple bribe had been enough for him to look the other way. But this time, Jirel wasn't in the mood to play around. There was no trace of his usual laid-back look on his face. His mood was dark.
"Listen, friend," he muttered at the enormous Nausicaan, "I really don't have time for this."
The bouncer shrugged his shoulders and pointed a meaty finger at the satchel again.
"No entry," he boomed, "Doorman's discretion."
Another wave of deja vu washed over the Trill. It was clear that, unlike some of his kin, this particular Nausicaan was well aware of the merry dance at play here. The accepted process for a man in his line of work to negotiate a little extra cash from a frustrated wannabe patron of the establishment he was tasked with looking after.
Jirel sighed in apparent acceptance of the situation and reached for his pocket.
The Nausicaan's look turned to one of anger when, instead of the modest amount of gold-pressed latinum he had expected the Trill to produce, he instead found himself looking down at an ugly disruptor, pointed squarely at his stomach.
"I said," Jirel hissed, "I really don't have time for this."
The bouncer glared impotently at the now-armed wannabe patron in front of him. This move wasn't in his script. But despite the sense of humiliation he felt at being bested like this by such a clearly physically inferior opponent, the cogs in his brain turned fast enough for the doorman to concede that it wasn't worth getting killed over.
He scowled at the Trill and jabbed his finger at the entrance to the bar.
"In."
Jirel kept the disruptor raised as he walked over to the door. The Nausicaan kept his distance.
"Glad we could sort that out," the Trill offered.
But his mood still didn't get any lighter.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Some time later, with the disruptor stowed back away, Jirel sat at the bar and stared down at the remains of his drink.
He found himself in the confines of the dingy establishment known as the Journeyman's Rest.
The Bounty had arrived in orbit of Golos III a few hours ago, after spending several days warping over to the planet, following the coordinates that had been so mysteriously sent to him via subspace message, all the way back on the Kervala Prime spaceport. He had beamed down alone and walked the short distance to the Journeyman's Rest, not bothering with any backup, despite some audible protestations from the rest of the Bounty's crew.
He could see their point. The Golos system was in an especially unfriendly sector of space, barely a day's travel from the Badlands, the turbulent expanse of plasma storms on the fringes of the Federation-Cardassian border. An area best avoided unless absolutely necessary.
For several years, the Badlands had been a hive of activity for the Maquis, who used the treacherous conditions as perfect cover for their insurgency against the Cardassian Union. But they had long since been eliminated, even before the Dominion War had begun in earnest. Then, in the absence of the Maquis, criminals, bandits and other nefarious groups had moved in to use the storms as cover for their own illicit activities and questionable business.
The Federation side of the Badlands was still heavily patrolled, but the Cardassian side was more of a free-for-all. The shattered Union, almost razed to the ground in the final stages of the war, no longer had the resources or the manpower to oversee the more remote regions of its boundaries. So the Badlands, and nearby outposts like the Golos system, had simply been left to fester.
Golos III itself had once been a thriving Cardassian trading post, and the Journeyman's Rest had cultivated a reputation as the classiest kanar lounge this side of the Demilitarised Zone.
But over time, the neglect had taken its toll. What was left of the Cardassian authorities had been recalled to the inner regions of the Union, and plenty of the galaxy's undesirables had taken their place. And any business owners who couldn't afford to move had simply had to adapt.
As such, the Journeyman's Rest was no longer renowned for its kanar. But it was renowned for just about everything else.
Since he had made his way past the Nausicaan bouncer and taken a seat at the bar, Jirel had been sexually propositioned three times, been challenged to four separate fights, and been offered more illegal substances than he cared to remember.
But, through a combination of patience, luck, and the occasional confirmation that it was a disruptor in his pocket, and he wasn't pleased to see them, the unjoined Trill had managed to negotiate each of those incidents in turn. For the time being, he wasn't being bothered.
He looked up from the dregs in his glass and checked the chronometer on the wall. He'd now been waiting here for more than an hour. With an inward grimace, he cursed the fact that, if it was anyone else he was supposed to be meeting, he'd have long since headed back to the Bounty. But it wasn't anyone else he was meeting. It was her. And, as ever, something was compelling him to stay.
So, he waited.
He returned his focus to the remains of his Andorian brandy, even as the Lurian bartender slowly idled his way over to him, gesturing to the glass. Jirel shook his head.
Despite the notoriously easy-going look of his species, the bartender took some significant offence to this. It was a tough job to turn a profit on Golos III these days, and there was nothing he hated more than seat-hoggers. Travellers and drifters taking up precious space at the bar while spending the entire evening nursing a single small drink.
There had been a particularly high spate of such transients in the Journeyman's Rest already that week, and this latest specimen was the straw that broke the Lurian Sludgeworm's back as far as the bartender was concerned. He was mad.
Just as he was about to give the Trill a serious piece of his mind, a second figure slid effortlessly onto the empty barstool next to him, and ordered on his behalf.
"Dry martini with a twist. And he'll have another brandy. All on his tab."
The Lurian glared at the newcomer for a moment, a little put out at being denied the chance to give the impassioned speech about the need to support local businesses that he had mapped out in his head. But ultimately, he simply nodded and hobbled off to prepare the drinks.
Jirel, for his part, didn't even look up to acknowledge the new arrival.
"What the hell do you want?"
He usually prided himself on his warm and friendly attitude to just about everyone he came across on his travels throughout the galaxy, considering it to be one of his better qualities. But there wasn't a trace of that in his question.
"Really? That's all I get? Not even a hello? Tsk, you used to be such a polite young man."
He downed the remainder of the brandy in front of him, then turned to look at her. She sat as confident and assured as ever, like a ghost from his past. Dressed in a deep red suit that shimmered slightly in the dim light of the bar, with her hair in a tight bob and a silver brooch pinned to her left lapel. Her porcelain features displayed a familiar superior smile, as she met his gaze. She couldn't have stood out more against the decay of the Journeyman's Rest.
He felt an immediate flash of anger. And an even more immediate feeling of falling in love all over again. With a woman that he had fallen in love with far too many times to count. He forced himself to repress both reactions.
"Fine," he offered, with words that dripped with heavy sarcasm, "Hello, Maya. Nice to see you. Now: What the hell do you want?"
She raised an amused eyebrow as the bartender dutifully returned with their drinks. She took a sip of her cocktail and flinched slightly.
"Ugh. Never trust a species that sleeps in mud to mix a decent martini."
She waited for some sort of flicker of a smile from him, but there was none forthcoming. He kept his defences well and truly raised.
"How did you even find me this time?" he pressed instead.
"Come now, Jirel. You and that crew of yours aren't exactly black ops. It's really not that difficult to track you down when I need to."
She allowed a victorious smile to cross her face as she idly stroked the delicate stem of her martini glass.
"Still," she continued, "It's nice to see that I've still got you wrapped around my little finger. One little message, and you come running."
"Don't get ahead of yourself," he countered, "We happened to be passing. That's all."
"I sent that subspace message to Kervala Prime. That's three sectors away. Must've taken you days to get here…"
The victorious smile showed no sign of leaving any time soon, as Jirel scowled in defeat, grudgingly accepting the truth of her observation. In fact, it had taken them the best part of a week to get to Golos III.
"Ok, you got me here. Congratulations. And it's a good thing, actually. Here."
He grabbed the satchel where it hung off his bar stool and offered it to her. She eyed the dusty bag up with a modicum of distrust.
"Latinum," he explained, "That's what I've saved up. And that's the rest of what I owe you for the Bounty. So, take that and we're even. And I never wanna hear from you again."
She just scoffed, making no attempt to take the bag from him.
"This isn't about latinum, darling."
"Then what the hell is it about?" he pressed again.
She paused for a second and took another sip from her martini, before she looked back at him, an entirely more serious look on her face.
"I…need your help."
"Right," Jirel scoffed, "Well, you can forget about that, for a—"
"It's about my husband, Jirel. He's in trouble."
To the bartender's delight, Jirel finished his second brandy a lot faster than he had finished the first.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"So, she's Jirel's ex?"
Natasha, the human ex-Starfleet doctor of the Bounty, broke the uneasy silence that had descended over the ship's cockpit with her question. But it did little to ease the unsettled mood that had accompanied it.
The entire modest crew complement of the Bounty were present. The ship's emotional Vulcan pilot Sunek sat at the helm controls, their Orion engineer Denella sat at her rear console, while Klath, the Klingon weapons chief, kept a close eye on his own instruments. With the ship hanging in orbit of an unruly planet in a lawless section of space, nobody wanted to be too far away from their positions as they waited for a call from Jirel down on Golos III.
And, ever since the Trill had beamed down, nobody had seemed to be in much of a mood to talk either. Until Natasha's question brought an inevitable quip from the Bounty's usually talkative pilot.
"Why, doc?" Sunek couldn't help but grin, "You jealous?"
Natasha gave the Vulcan a withering glare from behind her sensor panel on the right side of the cockpit. She also did her best to banish any thoughts she had about the latest complications in her relationship with Jirel, after the two had drunkenly ended up in bed together back on Kervala Prime.
On their long journey to the Golos system, she had tried to piece together some more information about the mysterious woman who had dragged Jirel and the rest of them across several sectors, and found her usually talkative colleagues suddenly becoming a little evasive.
Especially Jirel.
What she had been able to piece together was that the message had come from one Maya Ortega, a human woman who was a former member of the Bounty's crew. And possibly more than that, when it came to the Trill.
The fact that Jirel had warped over to the coordinates she had provided wasn't entirely surprising to Natasha. After all, something similar had happened a few months ago when a Ferengi called Zesh, another former member of the Bounty's roster, had called on them to help defend an investment of his on Nimbus III. When a former crewmate was in trouble, he was compelled to help.
But while the mood had been generally cheery when Zesh had called them, the mood on the trip to Golos III had been considerably less happy. Jirel had been closed off, and spent long stretches of the trip in his cabin, and the others had been cagey and on edge as well. So, with Jirel now busy down on the planet itself, having insisted on going alone, Natasha was trying to finally get some answers.
"I'm serious," she persisted through Sunek's comment, "That's who she is?"
Klath grumbled sullenly at his console, still reluctant to discuss it. But Denella looked over at the human doctor and sighed.
"It's…a bit more complicated than that."
This seemed like enough of an opening for Natasha to start to pull at the thread.
"So, then, explain it to me," she persisted, "Who is this Maya Ortega?"
Denella sighed again, and glanced over at Klath, who simply folded his arms in front of him to indicate his reluctance to expand on the matter any further.
"I mean," the Orion offered, "She's gonna find out the full story sooner or later."
"Yeah," Sunek chimed in from the front of the cockpit, "Cos you know Jirel's not just gonna give her that latinum and leave. She'll want something. And you know what that means."
Denella nodded and turned back to the expectant Natasha.
"Fine. Maya Ortega is…a bit more than just Jirel's ex."
"Another secret ex-wife?" Natasha snorted slightly, "Thought we'd already mined that particular cliche?"
Sunek suppressed a grimace at that jibe, correctly surmising that this was a shot at him, and his ex-wife T'Len, who the Bounty's crew had crossed paths with in somewhat unhappy fashion shortly after Natasha had joined the crew.
"No," Denella continued, "But more than just an ex. Actually, Maya's the one he bought the Bounty with. A long time ago. She…technically still owns a stake in her, at least until Jirel hands over that last pile of latinum."
"Huh. Really?" Natasha replied, seemingly dumbstruck as she glanced around the Bounty's shabby thirty-plus year old cockpit, "He actually paid money for this thing?"
"I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that," the overprotective engineer of the ship muttered.
"Joking," she offered back with a friendly smile, "But I'm still not seeing what the big issue is."
"That's cos you haven't met her," Sunek chimed in.
Denella nodded knowingly. Natasha just looked even more confused. At the front of the cockpit, the Vulcan spun around in his pilot's seat, sighed, and continued.
"Ok, here's the story. Maya and Jirel have a…complicated past. They bought the Bounty together, they put most of the crew together, and their relationship was kinda chaotic. On-again, then off-again, then on-again again."
"Ah," Natasha nodded, "One of those exes."
"And when she was part of the crew, she was always trying to get us involved in crazier and crazier schemes. Properly dodgy stuff, y'know? She always figured that's where the biggest profits were. And her schemes all got too much for Jirel. So, one day, she left the Bounty behind, and so ended the romance of the century."
"Except now she's back?"
"She's been back before," Denella replied knowingly, "She'd left long before I joined the crew, but we've crossed paths a few times since then."
Natasha was reminded of Jirel reluctantly admitting the story of how they had rescued Denella from the Orion Syndicate. A spur of the moment decision they had made only after accepting a job to deliver supplies to a location inside Syndicate space.
She couldn't help but wonder, if that had seemed like an acceptable job to take on after Maya Ortega had left the crew, how bad were the jobs she had been pushing for?
"So," Sunek said, picking up the story, "This is how these things tend to go down. Maya calls him up out of the blue, uses his debt to her as leverage, he drops everything to go find her, insisting that this is the last time he's gonna do it. Then he falls head over heels again, goes along with whatever dumb scheme she's pitching this time, at some point she screws us all over again, and Jirel swears never to get involved with her ever again."
"It is a predictable pattern," Klath boomed out from his console, speaking for the first time in the conversation.
Natasha shook her head and gestured to the others.
"And you just keep going along with this? Even though you know what's gonna happen? Why didn't you stop him from coming here?"
"We've tried before," Denella offered, "Believe me."
"Yeah," Sunek added, "We've found that the only thing we can do is just kinda let the whole thing play out, and hope we don't lose too much latinum by the end of it."
Natasha shook her head in disbelief, as the Vulcan continued.
"I mean, we've all got someone like that, right? Someone we're so crazy about, who had such a lasting impact on us, that we'd do incredibly stupid things for, no matter how often we get hurt? For me, it's this swimming coach I met on Risa, many years ago. We just connected on a…deep spiritual level, y'know? And even to this day, I've never met anyone with such a huge pair of—"
"Shut up, Sunek," Denella cut in, even as the Vulcan's eyes glazed over at the memory.
Natasha wanted to counter the Vulcan's somewhat specious argument, but she couldn't help but remember the number of second chances she had given her ex-husband Cameron throughout their relationship, all the way up to her finding out the details of his affair with Lieutenant Ramirez on the USS Ticonderoga.
Even if it seemed as though Jirel was being an idiot over this woman, she recognised the potential for anyone to be an idiot, given the wrong circumstances.
"Huh," she managed, "I see."
"Still," Denella added, as optimistically as she could muster, "Maybe Sunek's wrong. Maybe he really will just give her the latinum and leave. And that'll be the end of it."
Natasha saw Klath's expression darken, suggesting that he didn't believe that statement for a second, while Sunek simply snorted from the front of the cockpit.
"Yeah," the Vulcan added sarcastically, "And if you believe that, I've got some prime real estate on Ceti Alpha V to sell you…"
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Well, you definitely have a type."
Jirel passed the comment as he looked down at the picture displayed on the small padd. Staring back at him from the screen was the face of a handsome jet black-haired Trill.
"What can I say?" Maya casually replied from the seat next to him as she patiently sipped her martini, "I like the spots."
Jirel looked up from the padd and fixed her gaze. He couldn't help but feel the sliver of a smile creeping onto his face, which he quickly warded off.
I'm not happy to see her, he reminded himself.
"So," he said aloud, gesturing to the Trill on the padd, "Marriage. This is new."
"You know I like to move fast," she offered, not doing anything to prevent her own smile from forming, "His name is Toren Kelsis. We met a few months back and…I guess you could say it was a whirlwind romance. Had the ceremony next to the Crystal Lake of Betazed."
"Guess my invite got lost in the mail?"
"Would you have wanted to come?" she retorted knowingly, "Bear in mind the ceremony was entirely traditional. So you would have had to show off…all of your spots."
Jirel tried to dismiss the mental images that particular comment conjured up and focused back on the padd.
"Ok, so, you've got a husband. And he's in trouble. What trouble, specifically?"
The smile departed from her face, and she winced slightly. Jirel watched on with cautious intrigue, looking for the inevitable signs of deception from her.
"We've been working together. For a mining operation. Office-based, you understand. I don't like getting my hands dirty."
"Disagree," he remarked dryly, "But continue."
"Well, we were both based in the finance department. Not exactly glamorous work, but Toren had bigger plans than that. And so did I."
"Why do I get the feeling that we're heading somewhere illegal with this?"
Her porcelain features tightened slightly, and she accepted the jibe with a slight nod.
"We thought we'd found a way to…lightly skim a modest amount off their profits—"
"There it is."
"—Barely anything, really, given the sorts of funds that the company was moving around. Unless you really started digging into every itemised transaction, it should have been virtually undetectable. It was a long play thing, you know? Just giving ourselves a nice little nest egg for whenever we decided to up and move on."
"Except, I'm guessing your plan wasn't quite as clever as you thought it was. Now, where have I heard that one before?"
"Yes, well, what we didn't realise was someone had gotten away with a similar trick a few years back. So the owner of the company had put in a bunch of extra security checks. And he wasn't impressed when he saw what we were doing."
She ran her finger down the stem of her glass again, and to Jirel's surprise, she seemed to be fighting back a genuine burst of emotion.
"Toren was—He took the blame. For all of it. Insisted that I had nothing to do with it, no matter how hard the owner's thugs punished him. He made sure none of it was traced back to me, even as they were dragging him away. And that's why I owe him, Jirel. I have to help him. And I can't do it by myself."
Jirel stared back at her, the woman that had double-crossed him almost as many times as he had fallen in love with her. Which was a lot of times. He felt certain that he wasn't getting the whole story. Because you never got the whole story from Maya Ortega. Her emotions seemed genuine. Her story seemed plausible. But deep down, he couldn't help but feel like he didn't believe her.
"And if you help me with this," she continued, gesturing to the satchel of latinum, "Then, in return, I'll not only write off the rest of your little debt, I'll pay you and your crew for your time. Twice your normal rate."
"And where are you getting that sort of money from?" he couldn't help but ask.
"You don't need to worry about that. But I'm good for it. I've called in some favours. And I'll even transfer it up front, if that's what you need me to do."
She pushed her cocktail glass away and fixed her eyes on him. He could see a trace of moisture in the corner of her eyes.
"I could have searched around and tried to find another crew to do this with me, Jirel. It's a big galaxy, after all. But I need someone I can trust. And, no matter what has happened between us in the past, I know I can still trust you."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Because you just dropped everything you were doing and flew across three sectors to come and find me."
Jirel went to insert a scathing counterpoint to this claim, but he found himself immediately faltering, so he remained silent instead.
"You don't believe me," she noted, correctly, "Which I suppose is understandable."
She picked the padd back up off the top of the bar, tapped the screen a few times, then passed it back to him.
"I just transferred half the payment to your account," she explained, "And this padd contains plenty of information for you to check out. About me, Toren, our employment history, and so on. Feel free to check anything you need to check in order to verify what I'm telling you."
Jirel paused for a moment, still considering just walking off and leaving her. But something inside him compelled him to reach out and take the padd.
"Thank you."
And he heard something he wasn't expecting to hear in her words. Something that he wasn't sure he'd ever heard from her.
Genuine thanks.
After a second, she composed herself, took a final sip from her cocktail and stood up.
"I'll be back here tomorrow evening, at the same time, for your answer," she continued, "So, please, do whatever checks you have to. But hurry. I don't have a lot of time."
With that, she walked off. Leaving Jirel staring blankly into space where she had once been standing, wondering how someone he thought he knew so well could still surprise him after all these years.
He still wasn't sure if he could trust her.
But at least he knew who he could.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"I do not trust her."
Klath offered his frank assessment of the situation to the previously silent cockpit of the Bounty from behind his tactical station. Although nobody vocalised an immediate response, it didn't seem as though there were too many dissenting opinions to his statement.
Jirel sat in his centre chair, looking thoughtfully out of the cockpit window in front of him. Sunek and Denella, along with Klath, were all back at their posts as the Bounty remained in orbit of Golos III for a second day.
Only Natasha was missing. After Jirel had returned to the ship the night before, and he had brought everyone else up to speed with what Maya had told him, he had not hesitated in handing the padd she had given him over to the Bounty's medic.
He wanted as unbiased an opinion as possible on Maya's story. And there had only been one person for the job. Someone both unbiased, having never met Maya before, and someone that Jirel knew that he could trust the judgement of.
He wasn't happy to find that she was now aware of the details of his past with Maya, thanks to some loose tongues in the cockpit while he had been down on the planet below. But given what he wanted her to do, it at least saved him some time.
And Natasha had accepted the responsibility, with all the apparent zeal of her previous career as a diligent Starfleet officer. She had been poring over the data on the padd in her cabin, checking it against whatever she could find in the limited databanks of the Bounty, since last night. Only emerging every few hours to raid the ship's sole replicator for sustenance. It wasn't even clear if she'd found time to sleep.
Not that Jirel had done much sleeping himself. He had spent most of the night going back over everything that Maya had told him down in the bar. Trying to figure out how much had been the truth, trying to figure out how much had been lies.
And trying to figure out why, even now he knew she was married, he still found himself drawn to Maya Ortega.
He shook those thoughts out of his mind again as he forced himself to turn to Klath, who seemed to be waiting for some sort of reaction to his summary of their situation.
"You can really be that sure?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Why?"
Klath leaned back in his chair and folded his arms in front of him, staring back at the Trill as if the answer to that question should have been obvious.
"Because I have met her," he grunted.
Sunek couldn't help but snort in amusement from the front pilot's seat, as Jirel was forced to concede that point with a reluctant nod.
"Still," Denella offered, "This is all a little bit more elaborate than her usual schemes. Last time, she had us running crates of knock-off jellied gree-worms across the Ferengi border."
"Took two months to get the smell out of the cargo bay," Sunek nodded with a shudder, "And we got stopped by a customs shuttle before we got halfway to the drop-off point."
"At which point the esteemed Maya Ortega made herself scarce," Denella added.
"As usual," Klath grunted unhappily.
Jirel couldn't counter their comments. It was an accurate summary of their usual interaction with Maya whenever she sought them out. Which was why he was so baffled by everything that she had told him. If she was trying to scam them in some way, what was her endgame?
His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs at the back of the cockpit. Everyone present turned to see the final member of the ship's complement walking in, her research apparently complete.
"Well," Natasha offered, waving the padd that Maya had handed to Jirel in her hand, "I don't know what to tell you, but this woman's story seems to check out."
"All of it?" Jirel asked as he whirled around in his chair.
"I haven't exactly got access to Federation libraries to verify every single file she's given you, but from what I've managed to pull from public records, everything seems legit. Employment records from Synergy Mining Enterprises, details about Toren Kelsis, marriage certificate from Risa—"
"Wait," Jirel jumped in immediately, spotting the hole in the story already, "She said she got married on Betazed."
"She did," Natasha shrugged, "Unofficially, at least. They got the paperwork done first, then travelled to Betazed for a proper ceremony. Transit logs are all on the padd. I guess it's just easier to arrange a shotgun marriage on Risa."
"Or," Klath grunted, "It is easier to falsify transit logs than it is to obtain a fraudulent Betazoid marriage certificate."
Natasha looked over at the Klingon with mild bemusement, before turning back to Jirel, who seemed to be seriously accepting that reading of the situation.
"I'm getting a feel for how little trust there is towards this woman," she replied patiently, "But if she just wanted a fake marriage, why bother with the detail about Betazed at all? And why include the wedding photo on the padd? Which reminds me, I have now seen far more of this lady, her husband and their Betazoid officiant than I was planning on seeing when I started this investigation."
"Hey doc," Sunek called out at this, "If there's nekkid wedding snaps on there, I think it's only fair that we all get to—"
"Shut up, Sunek," Jirel sighed, keeping his focus on the woman he trusted, "You're really sure it all checks out?"
Natasha regarded the look on Jirel's face with some concern. He looked like someone desperately searching for a reason for all of this to be a lie.
One of those exes, she thought to herself.
She knew that she had the option of making something up. Of lying about something to convince him of the lie he was sure was there. But that didn't feel right. She hadn't even met this Maya Ortega yet. And besides, she couldn't lie to someone that she had somehow come to trust over the last year of misadventures. And more than that, someone that she was starting to be concerned that she was developing genuine feelings for, after their last accidental night together back on Kervala Prime.
So, she told the truth. As mildly and conservatively as she could.
"All I'm saying is…she doesn't seem to be lying."
"No," Klath muttered, "She never does."
Natasha shrugged and passed the padd back to Jirel, who reluctantly accepted it back.
"Plus," she offered additionally, "The latinum transfer was real enough. I thought you all said she was the one who usually scammed you out of money?"
Jirel glanced at Denella, and then at Klath. Neither of which seemed convinced, but neither of which had a response to the latinum issue. In the absence of a more rational debater, Sunek sounded out once again.
"Ok, but seriously. Latinum, sob stories and nude photos aside, we're not actually falling for this, right?"
"Falling for what?" Jirel responded quietly.
"Falling for—I dunno. Whatever the hell she's trying to sucker us into! Which is clearly what she's doing, because it's what she always does! She's obviously just—"
"And what if she isn't?"
Jirel fired off this retort a little more firmly and harshly than he had been planning. The tone of his voice even took Sunek by surprise.
A moment of silence followed, with nobody entirely sure what to say. Eventually, Natasha took a step towards the pensive Trill in the centre chair.
"Ok, look, I still don't really fully understand the whole story with you and her. And you can all bicker on as much as you like about all of this. But from what I can see, at the end of the day, there's only really one question to ask here."
Jirel looked back at her, suppressing an entirely different range of emotions that bubbled up when he looked into this woman's eyes, and prompted her to continue.
"What do you want to do?"
He thought about this, then sighed.
"I…don't know," he replied.
With that, he stood and walked out of the cockpit entirely, retreating to the sanctity of his cabin. The others in the cockpit watched him leave with a range of expressions.
"We're going to do it," Denella offered eventually.
"How can you be sure?" Natasha asked.
"Because, deep down, he's too good of a person."
"He's too much of an idiot," Sunek chipped in.
"He is…both," Klath clarified.
Natasha looked back at where the Trill had just disappeared down the steps, and silently agreed with both points.
'*'*'
'*'*'
She was sitting in the same seat as the night before when he found her. Still looking entirely out of place amongst the rest of the grizzled miners, travellers, criminals and other ne'er-do-wells that populated the Journeyman's Rest. He couldn't help but notice that, on the bar in front of her, sat a fresh martini and a fresh Andorian brandy.
She knew he was going to come.
He ignored that little detail she'd been sure to leave in plain sight for his arrival and slid onto the bar stool next to her. She didn't bother to look over at him.
"You know," he said, "I'm really not a fan of this place. Seems to attract the very worst the galaxy has to offer."
She acknowledged his pointed comment with a trace of a smile, as she slid the waiting brandy over in front of him.
"So, you believe me now?"
There was a confidence in her tone that riled him further, on top of the drink that had been waiting for him. A whole range of temptations flooded his mind. The temptation to walk away, the temptation to laugh, the temptation to grab a weapon and shoot her, and the temptation to get down on his knees and profess his undying love for her.
The rudimentary psychiatrist in him was forced to admit that his feelings towards her were still somewhat mixed.
"I'm not sure what I believe," he replied, in lieu of any other response he was considering, "You've screwed me around plenty of times."
"Never heard you complaining—Oh, screwed you 'around'. I see. Carry on."
"Very funny," he replied, without amusement.
She shrugged unapologetically and sipped her drink, as Jirel made a deliberate show of pushing the brandy that had been waiting for him to one side.
"So," he continued after a pause, "Let's say - for the moment - that I believe you. You're married, your husband's in trouble for embezzling funds from this Synergy Mining Enterprises. And apparently, you think I can help."
"More like: Your crew can help," she offered back, "You were always a bit of a…figurehead on that ship of yours, darling."
"Got you out of trouble enough times."
"Touche," she shrugged, "Either way, if I'm going to get Toren back, I'm going to need a particular set of skills. Denella's engineering know-how, Klath's strength, Sunek's piloting, and you and…what you have."
"Cute. You know, you're throwing out all these insults pretty casually for someone who needs me on their side."
"You're right. I'm sorry, force of habit."
She tried another disarming smile, but he maintained his glare, and fought off the persistent desire he felt to smile back.
"So," he said instead, "What's the full story?"
Her smile faltered slightly. She drained her cocktail, signalled for another from the Lurian bartender at the other end of the bar, and then began.
"Fine. Like I said, Toren's in a lot of trouble. And if I'm going to get him back from where they've taken him, I'm going to need you all."
"Where have they taken him?"
"The owner of this mining company has a simple, but particularly…ruthless approach to anyone he feels has crossed him. Once he's caught you, he sends you straight to one of his mines themselves, to work off your debt. Brutal, back-breaking work on whatever mineral-rich asteroid they happen to be stripping at the time."
"Huh," Jirel offered, "Doesn't sound especially legal?"
"You don't get to be as rich as he is by doing things legally. His mining operations are more like prisons, or slave trading. Just about everyone there is his prisoner, until he considers that the debt has been worked off. Every slip of latinum. And you can bet that they're all kept well guarded from the outside world."
"Neat. Sounds like a fun trip already."
"I never said it would be fun," she pointed out, "But, with my contacts and your crew, I think we can rescue him. In return for the rest of that latinum I promised you."
Jirel stared back at her, still trying to size her up. Trying to figure out why she was looking so sincere about all of this.
"You're really—?"
He didn't get any further before he felt a burly hand grab his shoulder. He spun around to see a familiar unwelcome face staring down at him.
"Hello, Trill," the Nausicaan doorman from the day before scowled at him, "No disruptor today?"
Jirel's face dropped a little further as half a dozen more Nausicaans loomed into his view over the doorman's shoulder.
"Friends of yours?" Maya enquired from behind him.
Jirel kept his attention on the lead Nausicaan. He had drunk in enough bars like the Journeyman's Rest to recognise a bar fight when one was about to happen. With as much confidence as he could muster, he eased himself down from the bar stool, and sized up the significantly taller Nausicaans in front of him.
"Don't you work here?" he asked their ringleader, who from this angle appeared to be the tallest of them all.
The Nausicaan stretched his armour-plated face into a wider leer and cracked his knuckles in greedy anticipation.
"Day off," he grunted.
Jirel sighed and nodded in acceptance.
"Figures."
He knew what he had to do, if he had any chance of getting out of the Journeyman's Rest, he couldn't allow the Nausicaans the luxury of a proper fight.
So he shot first.
He swung his right fist at the Nausicaan doorman with all of his might, straight into the hulking monster's midriff. As soon as it connected, Jirel felt like his fist had exploded, as it impacted with some force squarely into some very thick body armour.
"Ow!" he cried out, loudly enough for everyone else in the bar to turn around, "Son of a—!"
That was as far as he got. Because then the enormous Nausicaan part-time doorman hit back with a firm backhanded flick of his hand, delivered with enough power to send the Trill flying backwards onto the filthy floor of the Journeyman's Rest.
Jirel barely had time to process the extent of the pain the undignified landing had caused him before he saw the entire gang of Nausicaans descending on his position. He rolled away across the floor in a despairing motion, but felt one of his adversaries grab his left leg and pull him back. He looked down and aimed a sharp downward kick into the face of the Nausicaan that had a hold of him, connecting with enough force to stun him into releasing his grip.
He forced himself back to his feet, but as soon as he did so, he saw the rest of the Nausicaans closing in, each with their hefty fists raised.
Why was it always Nausicaans, he bemoaned, not for the first time since arriving on Golos III.
Then, out of nowhere, a familiar voice called out.
"Excuse me, boys."
The gang of Nausicaan thugs stopped on the spot, entirely thrown off by the silky female voice that had crashed into their old-fashioned pummelling. They turned to see Maya standing behind them, her hands casually affixed to her hips.
"Me and my friend were right in the middle of a conversation. This is all very impolite of you."
The Nausicaan nearest to her leered darkly, and stepped towards her.
In a flash, her left arm dropped from her hip, and a tiny vintage type-1 phaser rolled out of her sleeve and into the palm of her hand. Before the Nausicaans could process what was happening, she fired off three bursts of energy, stunning half of the brawling gang, who each dropped to the floor with a heavy thud.
"You see," she purred at the remaining three, "That was heavy stun. Now that's polite."
Just as the lead Nausicaan took another half-step towards her, she thumbed the phaser's controls.
"And now, it's set to kill. Even my manners only stretch so far."
The Nausicaan stopped on the spot, and eyed the weapon uncomfortably, as the pained Jirel awkwardly hobbled over to where Maya stood, gesturing at the object in her hand.
"You had that the whole time? And you let me try to fight them?"
"Never leave home without it," she reminded him, "But I like to watch you fight. You never did know when to give up."
Jirel sighed and shook his head, as her face twisted into a knowing smile.
"Now," she continued, "Are we leaving, or not? Because I suspect it might be in our best interests not to stick around for last orders."
The sudden intervention of the Nausicaans seemed to have put a lot of Jirel's previous worries into immediate perspective, and he nodded back.
Moving together, the human and the Trill slowly but surely stepped towards the exit of the bar, with Maya keeping her phaser raised all the way to the door, warning off the remaining conscious Nausicaans, along with any of the other patrons in the Journeyman's Rest who decided that they wanted to get involved in the evening's drama.
"Just like old times, hmm?" Maya couldn't help but smile as they backed away.
Jirel, for the time being, stayed silent. As the two of them made their escape from a sticky situation, together.
Just like old times.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Moments later, they raced down to the end of the street outside and paused for breath around the next corner. Jirel glanced back around the corner, back towards the bar, but saw no evidence that they were being followed by any Nausicaans.
"You know," Maya opined from his side as she slipped the tiny phaser back up her sleeve, "I don't think I'll ever get bored of bailing you out of trouble."
Satisfied that they weren't being followed, Jirel steadied his breathing as he ducked back behind cover and glared at her.
"You picked the bar," he pointed out.
"Yes, but you picked the Nausicaans."
Before he realised what he was doing, he felt the beginnings of a smile crossing his face. He managed to stop it before it fully blossomed, but the twinkle that appeared in her eyes suggested that she had seen it.
"Still," she continued, "Even if we're not being followed right now, I suggest we get moving. So, are you going to help me?"
He stared back at her, as his mind raced. But ultimately, he reluctantly knew there was only ever one answer to that question.
"I always do, don't I?"
She smiled in silent victory as she went to move off down the side street.
"Glad to see you're finally starting to trust me—"
The rest of her sentence was cut off when Jirel suddenly stopped her with a firm outstretched arm that shot out in front of her.
"Let's get one thing straight, Maya," he growled, "I'm bringing you along for now because you just saved my life back there. And because if what you're saying about your husband is true, then I feel like we need to help you. But don't think for a second that means I trust you. Because I don't. And the second I think you're messing me, or my crew, around again, I'm gonna drop you off on the nearest asteroid and I'm never gonna respond to one of your messages ever again. Clear?"
He was silently impressed with himself for the level of menace he managed to get into his words, his usual affable air nowhere to be seen. But whatever he personally thought about his impromptu threat, she didn't flinch at all. Instead, she kept her knowing smile firmly on her face.
"Well well," she smirked, "That's more like the Jirel I used to know."
He didn't relax the best shot at a menacing leer that was on his face, but he did allow her to idly lower his arm from in front of her as she continued.
"But believe me, darling. I'm on your side on this one."
With that, she walked off down the side street. After a second Jirel found himself diligently following behind. Still no closer to truly believing her.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Back in the Journeyman's Rest, the Nausicaans hadn't even attempted to follow the Trill and the human after they had made their escape.
Instead, their ringleader had reluctantly told them to take a seat.
The three that had been stunned hadn't taken long to regain consciousness, and they had joined their colleagues at one of the tables inside the bar. With the impromptu bar fight over, the other patrons had all returned to their own drinks and idle conversations.
The mood at the Nausicaan table wasn't exactly conducive to idle conversations, however. Even through the silence, the ringleader could tell that the others were angry.
And he was angry too. Regardless of why it had happened, he really didn't like losing fights. And this was now two he had lost in as many days, if you counted the minor altercation with the Trill and his disruptor on the previous evening. And his ego insisted that he did count that.
He could sense similar feelings from the others as they silently licked their wounds. Whether or not they had been one of the trio that had been stunned by the human's phaser, they had all been well and truly shown up in front of every last patron of the Journeyman's Rest this evening.
But the ringleader, and part-time bouncer, also knew that his men were aware that it had all been worth their while.
Or, at least, it soon would be.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Over at the bar of the Journeyman's Rest, the Lurian bartender kept an uncertain eye on the table of Nausicaan troublemakers as he polished a shot glass with a dirty rag.
He was thankful that the earlier fight hadn't caused too much lasting damage to an establishment that was already rife with lasting damage. But he wasn't entirely sure the action was over for the night, especially when the Nausicaans were still there.
Then, he watched as two newcomers entered the bar. He had trouble telling the two figures apart, but he definitely recognised them both. He was the sort of bartender that never forgot a face.
He watched on, his glass-cleaning duties temporarily forgotten, as one of the newcomers handed a stout and clearly heavy briefcase to the leader of the Nausicaans, who readily accepted it without so much as a word exchanged.
And then, just as soon as the newcomers had arrived, they turned and walked straight back out again.
The Lurian half-considered chasing after them to give another non-paying pair of customers a piece of his mind. But, much like the table of Nausicaans, they didn't strike him as the sort of visitors to Golos III that he wanted to be giving a talking to. So instead, he looked back at the lead Nausicaan, who was now dutifully doling out the latinum inside the briefcase to his men, splitting it evenly.
The Lurian wasn't surprised to see the transaction being completed. In fact, he had overheard the deal being set up a few days ago, during a quieter night in the bar. A deal that involved the Nausicaans allowing the Trill and the human to escape from them, to ensure that they left Golos III together.
He wasn't really sure why it was so vital that they did that. But he would have been happy to warn either the Trill or the human about what he had heard. He'd have talked to them at great lengths about it, if only they had asked him.
But they hadn't asked him.
For all that he observed from behind the bar of the Journeyman's Rest, nobody ever asked him about anything.
And that, as far as the Lurian was concerned, was the real tragedy here.