Part Two
Yessik City, Barkan V Colony
Stardate 47693.4
Jirel ran for his life. He careered through the streets of Yessik City, slaloming through a host of confused pedestrians as he desperately raced on.
Several steps behind him, caring a lot less about avoiding anyone in their way, a group of armed goons pushed their way through the crowds, sending colonists tumbling to the ground in shock or running away in fear.
He turned down a side street just as a blast of disruptor fire whistled through the air behind him, accompanied by a few screams of panic from the crowds. Ignoring the aching in his muscles from the all-out sprint he was in the middle of, he kept on running, and at the same time, he grabbed the stubby communicator from his belt and bellowed into it in desperation.
"What part of 'emergency beam-out' aren't you getting?"
There was a fizz of static over the comms link, and for a moment he feared that the device in his hand was broken again, after the hasty rewiring job he'd attempted on it last week. But, as he turned down another side street to avoid another burst of disruptor fire, the response finally came.
"I'm working on it," Maya said over the sketchy link, as calm as ever, "There's a lot of interference around the colony, you know. Just keep your spots on."
Another disruptor blast whistled past, impacting on a nearby wall.
"I'm gonna be lucky to keep my head on if you don't get that thing working!"
"Oh, don't be so dramatic."
"I'm not being—!"
He raced around another corner and skittered to a halt. In front of him, blocking the entire width of the latest side street, stood several more armed goons. He spun around in despair, but the chasing pack head already turned the corner and cut off his only means of escape.
He was surrounded.
From within the gaggle of goons, a one-eyed Andorian stepped out of the crowd, his own disruptor raised at the Trill.
"Look, Thelev," Jirel began, putting on his best appeasing tone, "You've got to understand, this was all an honest mistake. I had no idea that—"
"No excuses, Jirel," Thelev hissed back, his voice sounding scratchy and distorted through the scars across his larynx, old wounds that the grizzled trader wore on his face as a badge of pride, much like his eyepatch.
Jirel gulped and raised his hands above his head in surrender, as the blue-skinned man took another pace towards him, the goons behind him shadowing his moves.
"I've warned you before, Jirel. One of these days you're going to end up crossing too many people. Looks like today is the day."
Jirel saw him bring his disruptor to bear. With a wince, he looked up despairingly at the communicator in his hand and screamed out.
"Maya!"
The one-eyed Andorian jabbed his finger down on his trigger a split second after Jirel felt the transporter effect starting up.
'*'*'
'*'*'
As he rematerialised on the transporter pad, his first instinct was to check his body for signs of a smoking, disruptor blast-sized hole. Once he was sure he was still in one piece, his second instinct was to begin to rant at the woman behind the transporter controls.
"Unbelievable," he began as he stepped off the pad, "You set me up!"
"I took a calculated risk," Maya countered with a shrug.
"A calculated—? You switched the bag of latinum I took down there to hand over in return for the dilithium with a bag full of rocks!"
"I honestly didn't think Thelev would bother checking until you were safely back onboard with what we needed. He's not usually that thorough."
"Yeah, well, he checked. He definitely checked. And you didn't think to maybe mention this little plan of yours to me before you sent me down there to make the swap?"
"If you'd have known, you'd have had to lie to him," she pointed out, "And I really don't trust that poker face of yours."
He fixed her with an unamused glare, before he turned and stormed out of the transporter room, into the main corridor of the Bounty. She sighed and took off after him, persisting with her defence as they walked.
"Look, I just thought there was a good chance that we might get the dilithium and the latinum out of this little transaction."
"Yeah, well, now we've got neither. Which means we're not gonna double our money by flipping that dilithium, like you promised we would. Which means we're gonna need to compromise on the repairs again. We can either fix the impulse stabilisers or the secondary power circuit. Not both."
He marched on down the corridor, continuing to grumble as he did so. The walls of the corridor still looked run-down and tired, a telling reminder of the repair list they still had to work through. Even though it had now been several months since they had liberated the Bounty from the Tyran Scrapyards, they had made little progress on the myriad issues plaguing the ship that were the reasons the Ju'Day-type raider had been towed to the scrapyards in the first place.
"You're the one that insisted on bay seven, darling," Maya offered casually as they walked.
"And don't 'darling' me, ok? Because we are absolutely, one hundred percent, definitely broken up this time."
He stalked on, avoiding the knowing glance she gave him which suggested how much she doubted the veracity of that statement. Although he was forced to agree with it. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd broken up with her since they had first got together. But it was a lot.
Instead of dwelling on that, he marched on into the dining area, still ranting.
"So, unless you've got some other dumb plan to screw up, I'd really like to hear how you think we're gonna—"
He whirled around to her and stopped immediately, as he saw the shocking sight of a huge Klingon warrior standing in the corner of the room. His eyes boggled in fright.
"Holy crap! Maya, we've been boarded!"
The Klingon remained standing where he was and merely turned his head nonchalantly in the Trill's direction. He didn't exactly look like he was here to seize the ship. Maya, with a patient sigh, stepped over to the stoic form of the Klingon.
"He was supposed to be a surprise. He returned my message while you were down on the planet. I met him down in Yessik City yesterday. He was looking for work. And you've said we need more muscle around here, so here he is."
Jirel looked at Maya, then at the Klingon. His look of fright had given way to a more perplexed stare.
"I am Klath, son of Morad," the Klingon boomed out.
"Well, Klath, son of Morad," Maya smiled as she completed the introductions, "Meet Jirel, son of…oooh, awkward."
The orphan Trill fixed Maya with a withering look, before he uncomfortably focused back on the impassive Klingon.
"Ok, I'm not sure this is gonna work—"
Suddenly, a shrill alarm sounded out from the Bounty's barely-functioning automated systems.
"Proximity alert," Maya noted, now altogether more serious.
"Great," Jirel griped as they raced for the door, "So Thelev has a ship as well. Your plan just keeps getting more amazing, you know that?"
They dashed up the steps into the Bounty's empty cockpit, with Jirel immediately making for his pilot's seat and checking the controls.
"Got a ship on an intercept course," he reported, "Weapons range in eight seconds!"
He broke the Bounty out of orbit of Barkan V and pivoted the ship around to face the enemy vessel. It was a lean and squat ship, slightly larger than the Bounty, with two ugly disruptor cannons poking out of the front of the vessel. Both were glowing fiery red, ready to destroy them.
"Ah, crap," Jirel groaned, as the disruptors fired, "Hang on!"
He swung the Bounty away just in time, as the twin blasts scorched past their port wing.
"I told you, Jirel," the rasping voice of Thelev came over the open comms link, "You crossed the wrong guy today."
Jirel ignored the taunts of the Andorian, and kept his focus on the firefight.
"Take it we've still not got the shields operational?" he called back.
"Not last time I checked," Maya replied.
"Ugh. Ok, let me try and get us—"
Before Jirel had the time to say anything else, he saw another burst of energy flying out. Except this one was from the Bounty itself, towards the enemy ship. The blast from their phaser cannons hit home onto the other vessel's shields.
"Huh," he mused, "We're fighting our way out then, I guess."
He swung the Bounty away from another disruptor blast from Thelev's ship, and quickly executed a tight arc to bring them around to the rear of the other ship, desperately sticking to them as they tried to shake them off.
"Ok, Maya, take your shot!"
The Bounty's twin phaser cannons flared out again, sending rapid staccato bursts of red fire that seemed to have been specifically tuned somehow. They impacted heavily on their quarry's shields and collapsed them. A single micro-torpedo followed, slamming into the rear of the hull and crippling them entirely.
Jirel turned the Bounty away and set a course for safety, a little shocked at the ease with which Maya had dealt with their enemy.
"Hey," he called back, "Where did you learn to shoot like that—?"
He swung around in his seat to see Maya stationed behind the rear engineering console, with her arms folded in quiet satisfaction. At the weapons console, on the right side of the room, sat Klath, son of Morad.
"In the Klingon Defence Force," he replied simply.
Jirel looked from the Klingon to the human woman and back again.
"Um," he managed eventually, with a smile in the direction of the frowning Klingon, "Welcome aboard, I guess?"
'*'*'
'*'*'
"The Badlands?"
Sunek raised his eyebrow in a typically Vulcan-like way, as he delivered his distinctly un-Vulcan-like take on Maya's plan.
"Like hell are we going into the Badlands."
From where she stood, leaning on the centre chair where Jirel sat, Maya raised an amused eyebrow of her own at the defiant pilot.
"Huh," she tutted absently, glancing knowingly at Jirel as she did so, "That doesn't sound like the adventurous young pilot I once had to single-handedly rescue from those half-dozen pheromone-crazed renegades from the Deltan anti-celibacy movement…"
At this, Sunek stood from his seat and pointed an accusing finger at her.
"Hey! This is absolutely nothing like that, ok? Also, we have very, very different definitions of the word 'rescue'!"
From her left-rear console position, Natasha found herself trying to blend into the background as she kept her focus on the mysterious new woman as the debate continued. A woman that she had already heard plenty about, and was now meeting for the first time. And someone who she was starting to see had an odd level of control over more than just the Bounty's self-appointed captain. The entire crew seemed on edge now that she was onboard.
"He's got a point," Jirel offered from his seat, gesturing at the unhappy Vulcan, "You didn't say anything about this rescue happening in the Badlands."
"And it won't happen there," Maya replied patiently, "But, as I was explaining to you before your excitable Vulcan so rudely interrupted me, we need some information. And the Badlands is the best place to get it."
"What sort of…information?" Klath grunted at her.
"Information like where my husband is actually being held. Synergy Mining Enterprises are an ever-moving operation. Jumping from one mineral-rich planet or asteroid to the next, strip-mining what they can before they move on. I don't have exact coordinates for where all their latest operations are, but I do know where one of their last ones were. Inside the Badlands."
Jirel looked around at the rest of the Bounty's crew, none of whom seemed entirely enthused by the plan just yet.
"If we get to the abandoned facilities that they left behind on that asteroid inside there," Maya continued, "There'll still be a database uplink in place at their old operations centre. With your esteemed engineer's help, we should be able to get an exact location for where we're heading, and details of the security situation at the new location as well."
"Hell of a place to build a mine," Denella chimed in from the back of the cockpit.
"The company buys the sites based on what they can get out of them. Not for the view. And when you're effectively using slave labour to do the grunt work, you don't need to worry too much about comfort."
"Neat," Sunek muttered as he slumped back into his chair, with heavy sarcasm.
"Either way," Maya persisted, apparently unflustered by the amount of pushback she was getting from the entire room, "That's where we'll find the information we need."
"And," the Vulcan pointed out to Jirel, "That's also where we'll find pirates, bandits and Surak knows who else. Come on, Jirel. This is a really, really dumb idea."
Jirel contemplated the situation for a moment, then nodded back.
"You're right," he conceded eventually, leaning forward in his chair and shrugging, "But then, that's our thing, isn't it?"
Sunek's eyebrow remained where it was, even as Jirel forcefully gestured back at the pilot's controls behind him.
"Take us to the Badlands, Sunek."
For a moment, it looked like the Vulcan was actually going to refuse. But after a further second or two of unimpressed staring, he swivelled back around to his controls.
"I knew you were going to say that."
'*'*'
'*'*'
As the Bounty streaked on towards the maelstrom of the Badlands, Maya excused herself from the cockpit and made her way to the ship's small dining area for some nourishment.
As she sat alone, finishing her meal, the door opened and Natasha walked in. She had deliberately decided to seek out the Bounty's guest to try and get more of a handle on her, and met her look with a friendly smile. She had spent far too long travelling the galaxy to let other people's opinions of someone cloud her own first impressions.
Though she had also come to trust the rest of the Bounty's crew enough over the last year to take a fair amount of healthy trepidation into the room with her.
As she walked over to the table, Maya took a sip from her cocktail and winced.
"Ugh," she tutted, "Is that lovely engineer around anywhere? She needs to reprogram this new replicator of yours to fix a proper martini."
"I'm sure we could mix you up the real thing," Natasha offered back with a friendly tone, "There's more than enough actual liquor floating around onboard the Bounty. I'm, um, Natasha, by the way. We didn't really meet back in the cockpit."
She offered a handshake across the table and Maya accepted with a nod.
"Of course. Maya Ortega. I'm sure you've already heard plenty about me, but I guess Jirel never was very good at introductions. And it can be so hard for me to keep track of who he's employing these days. Is that Ferengi gentleman still around, by the way? I liked him."
Natasha had to admit that she had also liked Zesh when she had met him. Although she wasn't sure he felt the same way about her after she had successfully convinced the rest of the Bounty's crew to give away his treasured investment on Nimbus III for nothing*. She offered a shrug.
"He's, um, moved on to pastures new."
"I see," Maya nodded, breaking the handshake and leaning back in her chair, "Well then, Natasha. What went wrong in your life to end up in Jirel's company?"
Natasha suppressed the image of a bloodied ensign in the burning corridors of the USS Navajo, and kept up her friendly demeanour.
"What makes you think something had to go wrong?"
"Please," she replied with a knowing tut, "However Jirel might have sold it to you to get you onboard, this isn't the sort of ship you end up on if your life's going the way you planned it. Believe me."
Natasha regarded the elegant look of the woman in front of her, from the quality of her attire to her general demeanour, and shrugged.
"Fair enough. I guess I'm a bit surprised to find out that someone like you ended up on this sort of ship as well."
Maya's lips pursed into a thin smile, as she swirled her martini around with practised grace.
"Please don't let appearances fool you, dear. I guess you haven't quite heard my full story from the loose lips of the others?"
Natasha shook her head, still intrigued. She silently slipped herself into the seat opposite Maya at the table.
"If you must know," Maya continued, "I was born on Turkana IV."
This sent a shiver down Natasha's spine. The name Turkana IV was enough to do that to just about anyone that heard it. An infamous failed Federation colony out in the Beta Quadrant, where law and order had broken down to the point that the warring powers that sprang up across the planet had severed ties with the Federation entirely.
Its distance from the core of the Federation meant that there had never been a serious attempt to try and counter the secession. And aside from the occasional uncomfortable visit by the odd passing starship, Turkana IV was left to spiral completely out of control, a wasteland of poverty and violence. Nobody was interested in going there, and very few people ever got to leave. Except, apparently, the woman sitting across from Natasha at the table.
"I'm going to guess from that look on your face that you're familiar with it," Maya continued, "But, yes, after a…difficult childhood, I was fortunate enough to escape. Many years ago."
Natasha was still processing this new information, as the other woman idly gestured to her own get-up, her clothing, jewellery and the rest of it.
"I know more than enough about what it's like to have nothing, you see? So once I got away, I resolved to do whatever had to be done to make sure that I never had to live like that again. And I also resolved to make sure I had a lot of fun while I was doing it…"
She offered a sliver of a smile as she sipped her drink.
"Well," Natasha nodded back eventually, "I've certainly heard about your…sense of adventure."
"I'll bet you have."
There was an undercurrent of something in her words that Natasha couldn't quite place, but that she certainly didn't like. A hint of tension, even of menace.
Just as she felt herself shift uncomfortably in her seat, the door opened again and Jirel entered. The Trill had been wrapped up in his own thoughts as he had been walking away from the cockpit, not really thinking about where he was heading. But those thoughts were quickly replaced by new ones.
As soon as he saw the scene inside the Bounty's dining area, he felt on edge for a different reason than before. In the way that anyone gets on edge when they find two people they have previously been intimate with engaged in a private conversation.
"Oh," he blurted out, with clear discomfort, "You've—I mean, you're here. Both of you. Cool."
On the far side of the table, Maya instantly began to smile wider, looking at the Trill and the other human woman and instantly putting two and two together.
"Ah," she purred, "Now I understand this latest bit of recruitment. And another redhead? I guess you've got a type as well, darling."
Jirel squirmed. Natasha's eyes widened in flustered shock at this comment, the memory of her and Jirel's most recent unplanned night together still fresh in her mind.
"We're not—" she began.
"We're just—" Jirel said at the same time.
They both stopped and looked at each other, both immediately unsure of how to proceed, after the less than definitive conclusion they had reached on what had happened between them back on Kervala Prime. After several dozen shots of liquor.
Seeing the discomfort her casual comment seemed to have caused, Maya drained the rest of her drink and stood from the table.
"Well," she offered to the two squirming presences, "Glad we got all that cleared up. Now, I'll see myself to the guest cabin."
She exited, still smiling and almost without the other two noticing.
Jirel considered restarting the discussion he and Natasha had been having back on Kervala Prime, about whether or not their second night together really did mean something, and elected to focus on his primary headache. He slumped down into another seat at the table.
"Ugh," he sighed in defeat, fixing her with a distinctly more serious look, "Should I really be going through with this?"
"Where was that attitude this time last week?" she offered with a friendly smile. Though it was immediately clear from his look that this was one of the rare occasions in his life when Jirel Vincent wasn't interested in joking around.
"I'm serious," he shot back, "Am I making a mistake here? I'm sure it'll just turn out she's trying to screw us all over again somehow. Nothing's ever straightforward with her. But…if she really does need help, can I really turn her down?"
Natasha adopted a more serious posture and considered his words for a moment. Eventually, she mustered a shrug.
"I don't know if I can answer that," she replied, "I barely know this woman."
He nodded at this, but continued to look at her with a slightly hopeful stare, trying to will some more useful advice out of someone he knew he trusted.
"It's just…I dunno," he said eventually, "There was something about her. Back in the day, on the Bounty, the excitement when we were hatching some new scheme. It was just kinda…thrilling. Proper seat of the pants living, you know? And no matter how crazy it all got, we always got out of it. There were never any consequences. Not when Maya was around."
He paused, then looked over at her a little sheepishly.
"Sorry. Is this weird? Me talking about this?"
"Not at all," she managed to lie, "I guess I can understand the attraction. But…if you really want my advice?"
He nodded back at her without a second's thought. She continued.
"I can't offer anything specific. But all I'll say is that, speaking as someone with plenty of bad relationships in her past to draw experience from, what you're describing doesn't sound like a very healthy way to live."
With that, she stood up and walked off in the direction of her own cabin. Leaving Jirel with plenty to think about.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The view ahead was a beautiful one, there was no doubt about that. But as much as Sunek wanted to be able to appreciate the view, all he could feel as he stared out of the Bounty's cockpit window was a growing sense of trepidation.
They had been inside the Badlands for several hours by that point, and the view ahead hadn't changed all that much. And that was starting to get to him.
For the scientists of the galaxy, the Badlands were a fascinating mixture of fiery plasma storms and gravitational anomalies, still not fully explained by current astronomical theories.
For the captain of a freighter or a transport, they were a certified nuisance. A turbulent expanse of navigational headaches nearly three hundred light years across, lying pretty much right on the most direct path between Federation and Cardassian space.
For the average mercenary, they were manna from heaven. A vast region of space where detailed sensor readings were impaired, communication was patchy and effective monitoring by any form of law enforcement, especially on the post-war Cardassian side, had become virtually impossible.
But for Sunek, the Badlands were just becoming irritating. He had been trying to make sense of them ever since the Bounty had first penetrated the edge of the storm front, but he was still no nearer figuring out the best way of dealing with the unpredictable maelstrom.
The entire ship continued to gently buck and weave around from the effects of the gravitational eddies all around them. The sensor readouts he was using as a guide as he eased the ship through the storms were patchy at best. And the view ahead, of the swirling, crackling plasma storms themselves, was starting to make him a little nauseous.
It was like flying through soup. A turbulent, chaotic, vomit-inducing soup.
"FYI," he called back to the rest of the cockpit, "This sucks."
The entire ship rocked again as Sunek quickly tapped his controls to veer around the worst of the turbulence, indirectly underlining his point.
Behind him, in the centre chair, Jirel itched his spots as he kept his own attention on the view. To his side, Maya leaned against his chair, looking significantly more serene despite the ever-bucking ride the ship was on. The rest of the crew were at their usual positions. Klath grimly kept his focus on his tactical readouts, looking for any sign of trouble in the patchy readings. Denella monitored the Bounty's essential systems as it flew on into the storm, while Natasha offered a second set of eyes on the sensor readings, trying to get first sight of their destination.
"Just keep her steady," Jirel muttered back to his tetchy pilot, "The Bounty was built for this sort of thing. This ship loves the Badlands."
"Yeah, well, this ship's pilot doesn't," the Vulcan grouched.
It was true that the Bounty was more suited than most to navigate this sort of expanse. The Maquis themselves had utilised the Ju'Day-type raider as one of their preferred vessels during their years of operation. But that fact didn't really settle Sunek's concerns. And he couldn't help but feel a slight chill passing down his spine as he stared out at the storms ahead of them.
He glanced back down at his garbled sensor readings and tutted in frustration.
"Ugh," he grimaced, "This really sucks. According to Maya's coordinates, we should be right on top of this asteroid by now, but—Holy crap!"
He frantically tapped at the controls, just as a major gravitational eddy bucked the nose of the ship vertically upwards. The rest of the crew braced themselves as the inertial dampeners struggled to keep up.
Eventually, Sunek got the ship level again, and steadied his frayed nerves with a quick Vulcan breathing exercise from his youth. Just as he was about to ask what had caused that sudden burst of turbulence, he caught himself as the crackling clouds in front of them parted, and the unmistakable sight of an asteroid was revealed ahead of them.
"Um," he announced, "We're here."
Jirel turned to Natasha as Sunek delicately brought the Bounty into orbit.
"Anything down there?"
"It's hard to scan through the plasma interference," she sighed, "But…I think I've got a structure. Northern hemisphere, near the pole."
"That's the old habitation section for the mining operation," Maya nodded, "The whole northern polar region was covered in rodinium deposits."
"I'm not scanning any rodinium," Natasha offered.
"Then they did a good job mining it," Maya pointed out.
Jirel did his best to ignore the discussion between two people he still would prefer to not be talking to each other, and focused on the task at hand.
"Lifesigns?"
Natasha looked back down at her readings, tapped the controls, then sighed again.
"Looks to be deserted," she reported back, "But again, I'm never going to be entirely sure given the interference."
"I am not detecting any vessels within range," Klath added, "Although, like the doctor, my range is somewhat…limited. It is possible there may be bandits or looters in the area."
"Did I mention how much I love this plan?" Sunek chimed in from the front of the cockpit.
Jirel cast a sideways glance at Maya, who offered a slight shrug in return, then he stood from his seat and turned to the cockpit exit.
"Well, I guess we didn't come all this way to sit and stare at the thing. Maya, Denella, let's go hack a database."
As the three members of the impromptu away team made their way to the rear steps of the cockpit, Klath stood and grabbed his bat'leth from where it was hanging on the wall behind him.
"Hey," Jirel motioned to the Klingon, "I'm sure we don't need—"
"I believe it would be wiser for me to join you down there."
"You don't trust me?" Maya tutted from Jirel's side.
"I do not trust the interference," Klath replied diplomatically, "There is still a possibility that whatever has been left behind down there is being looted."
Jirel looked back at the steely gaze of his friend and mustered an understanding nod.
"Fine. If you think we need backup, who am I to argue?"
With that, they continued their journey down the steps, leaving Natasha and Sunek to keep an eye on the Bounty. As he descended the steps at the back of the group, Klath shook his head and muttered.
"You always need backup."
'*'*'
'*'*'
It didn't take long for Jirel to silently appreciate bringing along his backup.
The dank interior of the abandoned offices was barely illuminated by the two beams of light that shone out from the torches that he and Denella carried. It didn't make for a welcoming scene.
The Trill walked at the front of the quartet, alongside Maya, who was navigating them through to their final destination. Denella and Klath followed close behind, working together to scan for danger with the Orion's torch and the Klingon's bulky old tricorder from the Bounty's limited stash.
Not that there seemed to be any danger to scan. The entire complex was eerily quiet.
The operational headquarters of what purported to be the base for Synergy Mining Enterprises on the asteroid were somewhat modest, consisting of little more than a pair of squat modular prefab buildings.
One of them contained the limited habitation area for the miners themselves, rudimentary barracks that were little more than prison accommodation. Which made sense, given how Maya had described the operation that was run here.
The other housed the slightly more comfortable offices and accommodation for the staff of the company, overseeing operations out on the asteroid itself, which would have been conducted the old-fashioned way. Back-breaking labour in heavy EVA suits for hours at a time. Until every last drop of rodinium had been extracted from the rocks.
The two were connected via a pressurised covered walkway, which was where the four of them had beamed into. From there, they had made their way into the larger office prefab.
The scant torchlight illuminated the unfriendly interior of the place. Short grey corridors that led to either sleeping racks, common areas, a cafeteria, or the main office itself. Which was where they were heading.
"This is the place," Maya nodded as they reached the end of the corridor.
She gestured to a pair of stout dark grey doors ahead of them, which remained definitely closed, powered down like the rest of the base. With a slight tut, Denella slid over to an access panel next to the door, popped the end of the torch into her mouth to free up her hands, and got to work.
As she worked, Jirel shone his torch back down the corridor, and Klath remained tense.
"Anything?" he asked the Klingon.
Klath looked down at the tricorder and growled in frustration.
"The interference is significant down here as well. I am not detecting anything. But that does not mean we are alone."
"You deliberately made that sound more scary than it had to be, didn't you?" Jirel replied witheringly.
Klath didn't respond, and merely kept his attention back down the dimly-lit corridor, using his own innate Klingon senses to make up for the tricorder's failings.
"It's a wonder anyone got any mining done down here," Denella observed as she pulled a length of wiring out of the access panel, "Having to check over their shoulders all the time."
"While the mine was operational, there was a hell of a lot more security," Maya explained, "Orbital sentries, guards, armed shuttles. To keep the whole place secure from anyone trying to get in. Or get out, for that matter."
"Well," the Orion replied with a hint of satisfaction, "The good news is that this place is a whole lot less secure than it used to be."
Just as she said that, the doors to the office opened with a shudder, and Denella took her torch back out of her mouth and shone it inside.
"Good work," Jirel smiled, as they cautiously stepped inside.
"We should be able to access the database from any of these terminals over here," Maya gestured to the far side of the room.
She and Denella paced over and started to work, as Jirel and Klath kept watch at the door.
The office had been mostly cleaned out before the operation had left for good. Most of the desks and workstations had been dismantled, or had their interfaces removed. All furnishings or signs of comfort had been packed up and shipped off, leaving behind a desolate look. But some of the bulkier or older work areas remained, albeit powered down. And that was where the two women headed.
Denella withdrew a small power pack from the pocket of her overalls and plugged it into the station, giving the computer a shot of power for the first time in weeks.
"Ok," she nodded, "We're online."
As she went to work, Jirel felt his spots begin to itch as he kept his torch beam aimed at the doorway. He licked his lips and called back.
"How long is this gonna take?"
"Not getting scared, are we?" Maya shot back, as she kept an eye on Denella's frantic work.
"No. Just impatient."
"Tsk. No sense of adventure. Just like old times."
"I like an adventure just fine," the Trill remarked, "I just remember how all of your adventures used to end."
Despite the situation, Jirel quietly cursed himself for lapsing back into banter mode with her so quickly, feeling him starting to fall back into his own ways with her despite still not trusting this new venture of hers. Mercifully, before their back-and-forth could become any more flirtatious, Denella called out.
"Ok, I'm in. Not much to it in the end."
"There's a good engineer," Maya purred a little patronisingly, "Now we need the details of any new operations started over the past month. They'll have moved everything they took from here to another site."
"On it," Denella nodded as she tapped away at the computer, "But…there's a whole other encryption layer on some of this information. Lot of security for a mining operation, isn't there?"
There was an edge to her question, but Maya played it with a straight bat.
"When you're breaking as many interstellar rules as this company is, you tend to want to keep things as secret as possible."
Denella couldn't help but accept that this made sense, as she continued to work, virtually snooping around the database of Synergy Mining Enterprises as best she could.
"Ok," she said as she worked, "Getting something here. Security protocols, staff rotas, personnel lists, and a whole bunch of requisition orders for duridium processors."
"No," Maya grimaced, shaking her head at the screen, "This isn't everything. We need exact coordinates, otherwise we're flying blind."
"Fine. Let me see what I can—"
She was stopped by the unmistakable noise of a muffled grunt from Klath. The Orion engineer looked up and peered at her colleague through the darkness, already on edge. She knew what that noise meant.
Jirel knew it as well. Even if the tricorder wasn't helping them, Klath's Klingon senses were not being inhibited by the interference that was all around them.
And in the last few seconds, Klath's senses had told him that it might be wise for him to draw his bat'leth.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"You sure you know how to work all that?"
Natasha did her best not to take too much offence from Sunek's cheeky question, as she looked up from the panel in front of her.
"They do teach us a thing or two about these things at Starfleet Academy, you know?"
"Cool," the Vulcan shot back, "So all of Starfleet's medical staff are trained in how to fire a spread of torpedoes. It's a wonder you guys have such a bad rep in so many places, it really is."
She shook her head patiently at this latest quip and returned her attention to the controls. Given the Bounty's precipitous position inside the Badlands, and given Klath's decision to join the party down on the asteroid, she had elected to move from her usual position in the cockpit to take over the Klingon's tactical controls. With the potential for some sort of skirmish, it seemed to make sense to have someone keep their finger on the phaser cannons.
"We all get a full round of basic training, regardless of our specialism," she replied, "Flight control, navigation, tactical, you name it. Never hurts to make sure anyone onboard a starship can save the day if they need to. Friend of mine served on the USS Artemis during the war. They once escaped from a surprise attack from a Cardassian battle wing with the ship's chief nurse at the helm and the mess officer at tactical."
Sunek shrugged as he spun around in his pilot's seat and pointed down at the bank of controls in front of her.
"Whatever you say, doc. Just make sure you remember which button fires the phasers and which one arms the auto-destruct."
She looked up again with a more withering glare, and gestured back out at the dizzying view through the cockpit window.
"And how about you keep an eye out for anything I need to shoot at, hmm?"
The Vulcan reluctantly spun back around in his chair and focused on his own controls. In truth, he had just been trying to distract himself from their current situation. He was getting more and more antsy by the minute. Natasha was feeling exactly the same way. She had already familiarised herself with the weapons controls. But that didn't stop her from checking her work for the fifth time.
A tense silence descended on the pair of them.
Eventually, the silence became too much for her, even as she embarked on her sixth check of her understanding of the weapons console. There were several nagging questions about their situation, and she took a moment to select the most pressing one.
"Do you believe her?"
Given the context of their situation, she didn't need to clarify the question any further.
"Seriously," Sunek replied, keeping his response firmly in his usual conversational wheelhouse, "Are you gonna be like this with all of Jirel's exes?"
She didn't dignify his comment with a response, and allowed the silence to return, forcing him into a more serious answer if he wanted to break it. Eventually, he sighed and shrugged his shoulders, keeping his attention focused out of the cockpit window as he talked.
"Fine. Let's just say that we've all got plenty of reasons not to believe her. Jirel more than the rest of us. So I'm pretty sure that there's more to all this than some husband in distress."
"Pretty sure?"
The Vulcan shrugged again.
"Well, this time's already been a little different."
"How so?"
He took a moment to swivel around in his chair and grin back at her from under his shock of tousled hair.
"This time she's paid us up front."
Natasha considered this point for a moment, then nodded.
"So what more could there be to all of this?"
"Knowing Maya," Sunek replied, "A hell of a lot more latinum. For her, anyway—"
He stopped himself mid-sentence and cocked his ear to the deck in a curious manner, raising an eyebrow to underline his change in focus.
"You feel that?" he asked.
Natasha looked a little confused. The Bounty had been gently bucking and rolling about ever since they had arrived in the Badlands, like an old sailing boat being tossed around in a storm.
"Yeah," she replied with a sliver of sarcasm, "Feels like a plasma storm. I wonder what could be causing that?"
"No," Sunek hissed, entirely seriously, as he swung back around to his instruments with renewed concern, "I definitely felt it."
"Felt what?"
"A new wavefront hitting us from somewhere. Everything's been pretty rhythmic ever since we arrived in orbit. But that was new."
She had to remind herself that, for everything else she was dealing with when it came to the Bounty's resident laughing pilot, she was still dealing with a Vulcan. And a Vulcan who could still occasionally use his keen intellect, when it came to noticing the little things.
She instantly started to check her own garbled scans.
"You're thinking…?" she forced herself to ask.
"I'm thinking that something just dropped in. Opposite side to our orbital position, probably trying to use the asteroid as extra cover for their approach. But they sent out a little extra ripple in that soup out there."
"Who else would be interested in an abandoned mine on an asteroid?"
He didn't waste any time replying directly to her. As he tapped at the helm controls to bring the Bounty out of orbit, he also jabbed a finger down on his comms link to the others.
"Hey, Jirel!" he called out, "Bandits!"
The response took a second to come back over the static-flecked link. And when it did, it merely deepened the concern in the cockpit.
"We know!"
'*'*'
'*'*'
Jirel snapped his response into the communicator as he fired back over the top of his scant cover with his disruptor pistol.
From somewhere in the gloom, he heard a roar from Klath, followed by the sound of a bat'leth impacting on something heavy. But the weapons fire didn't die down by much.
They had no idea how many bandits they were dealing with, but it was enough. As soon as Klath had sensed them, they had all looked for cover. But the shooting had started almost immediately.
Jirel fired off another few covering shots and looked around. He was hunkered down behind one of the bulky computer terminals in the office, cut off from the others. He knew Klath was enjoying himself out there somewhere, but he had no idea what had happened to Denella and Maya.
"You wanna maybe beam us up?" he called out into the communicator, "Any time now would be great!"
"On it," Sunek's response came through the static.
The lack of any sort of quip or comeback in the Vulcan's reply underlined the severity of the situation more than anything else could.
With some effort, Jirel affixed his communicator back onto his belt, then began to crawl towards where Denella and Maya had been working. In the darkness, he heard another satisfied bellow from Klath, as he tackled another opponent.
He managed to crawl along behind his cover to the next row of terminals. There, he just about made out two crouched figures in the half-light. And one was clearly injured.
Paying no more attention to his own safety, he fired off a couple more warning shots, then switched to a hunched dash for the final few metres to the figures, hearing a disruptor blast whine just above his back and impact on the wall behind him. As he reached them, he saw Denella's injury. She winced as she pressed her right hand around an ugly wound on her left arm.
"Crap," he managed, "How bad?"
"Bad enough that I'd be up for cutting this vacation short," the Orion replied with a pained grimace on her face.
"They're gonna beam us up any second."
"That'll be nice."
Jirel turned and fired off another few shots to keep the remaining bandits at bay. Another roar from Klath followed, followed by an agonised scream from one of their attackers.
"At least someone's enjoying themselves," Denella added with a pained smile.
Jirel glared over at Maya, who appeared strangely sanguine about their predicament. She gestured down at Denella and shrugged.
"She'll live."
"She'll—?" Jirel echoed incredulously, "What the hell have you brought us to? Was this a trap?"
"Absolutely not," she countered, "I have no idea who these people are. Showing up here, trying to shoot everything. Presumably some passing thieves, looking to strip the place of whatever got left behind. And apparently they're not interested in sharing."
"Ugh. This was supposed to be the easy part of the plan! You have completely—!"
He stopped as soon as he saw her left arm straighten and the antique type-1 phaser drop into her hand. In one fluid motion, she brought the tiny weapon to bear on him, and fired.
The line of red energy spat out from the weapon, flying just over his shoulder, and into something behind him, which groaned in pain, then slumped to the floor.
Jirel and Denella looked over to see the bandit, of a species they didn't recognise, slumped in a stunned, unconscious pile on the ground, his weapon by his side.
"You know," Maya smiled smugly at Jirel as he turned back to her, "I'm starting to get tired of saving your life all the time."
Just as Jirel went to fire off an appropriate comeback, the transporter took effect.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Glad you could make it!"
Sunek called out just as he pirouetted the Bounty around to evade a blast of disruptor fire from the unidentified ship that had brought the bandits to the asteroid, and manoeuvred the ship out of orbit to try and effect an escape.
A succession of footsteps cascaded up the steps to the cockpit as Jirel, Klath and Maya arrived on the scene. Natasha, having initially been a little shocked by the mise en scène that materialised on the transporter pad, especially the growling Klath, mid-bat'leth attack, had taken the injured Denella straight to the Bounty's small medical bay.
"Now," Sunek continued, as he bucked the ship around again, "If someone wouldn't mind raising the shields, that'd be awesome!"
Klath instantly slotted into his tactical position, as Maya took Denella's engineering station and Jirel slid into the centre seat.
"Shields up," the Klingon reported, "Weapons online."
"Disabling fire only, ok?" Jirel called back.
Klath paused for a fraction of a second, bitterly recalling the last firefight the Bounty had been involved in during their trip to Kervala Prime, and the way that it had ended with his former lover slaughtering a ship full of Pakleds.
"Ok, swinging her around," Sunek bellowed, shaking Klath back into the moment, "Give 'em both barrels!"
The whole ship turned to stare down the other vessel, a squat prowler-type design. Twin bursts of fire spat out from the Bounty's wing-mounted phaser cannons and impacted on their adversary's shields, with enough force to cause them to flare with crackling energy, fizzing against the backdrop of the plasma storms.
This show of force seemed to do the trick. Bandits tended to avoid confrontation with anything actually capable of beating them, and so the prowler turned on its axis and limped back to the asteroid itself.
"Take it we're not waiting around to exchange insurance details?" Sunek quipped from the helm.
"Hell no," Jirel sighed, "Get us out of the Badlands."
"With pleasure."
Sunek tapped his controls, as Jirel swung around to where Maya was sitting, standing from his chair with an angry scowl.
"Look," she began, seeing his expression, "I know what you're going to say, but—"
"That was a really dumb plan, you know?" Jirel growled, cutting her off, "And the only thing dumber than the plan is me, for actually agreeing to it!"
"Jirel, please calm down, you're going to strain something. The important thing is we got most of the information we needed—"
"What we've got is an injured engineer, a bunch of fresh battle damage, and we still don't know where this so-called husband of yours is even being held! Why I thought flying blind into the Badlands was a good idea, I'll never know."
"Still," Maya persisted, "We got away. Denella will be fine. And you've got to admit, there's never a dull moment when I'm around, is there? Besides, I didn't think there'd be any bandits."
Jirel's expression darkened a little more as he walked over to the steps, still ranting.
"This is classic you, you know that? You just assume your plans'll come off, and then we end up having to fight for our lives!"
As he descended the steps, Maya sighed and followed him.
"And another thing," Jirel continued to rant as his voice faded, "You'd better believe you're gonna get our repairs done while Denella's recovering…"
Sunek turned and watched the two squabbling figures disappear into the bowels of the ship, before glancing over at Klath.
"Nice to have her back, isn't it?" he offered with a dollop of sarcasm.
Klath just growled unhappily.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The argument continued all the way to Jirel's cabin, as Maya followed him through the door.
"…I'm sure there's barely any damage," she continued, "You saw how easily they gave up back there? I doubt they left too many marks. Besides, it's the Badlands. We were always going to have a few scrapes."
"This isn't a few scrapes, Maya," Jirel fired back, "This is, once again, you recklessly endangering everyone's lives, and me being too stupid to stop you!"
"I saved your life down there, remember?"
"Yeah, right after you endangered it!"
She stepped closer to him and he held his ground in the middle of the cabin. They both stared into each other's eyes with renewed passion, even as their tone remained antagonistic.
"You had fun down there, admit it," she growled.
"Fun? You think I had fun?"
"No. I know you had fun."
A beat. Jirel suddenly found himself entirely incapable of lying.
"Of course I had fun!" he shot back angrily.
"Good boy," she smiled back.
In an instant, they were on each other, kissing and pawing at each other's clothes. Falling back into every aspect of their former life together on the Bounty, a sudden rush of lust being powered by the adrenaline from their narrow escape, and the intensity of their argument.
Jirel forced himself to come up for air and looked back at the woman he had fallen in love with even more times than she had saved his life. The woman that he seemed drawn to with the power of a tractor beam.
"I thought you were married?" he managed.
"I thought you liked an adventure?" she replied.
They smiled, and embraced each other again.
Deep down, Jirel knew that he was making another huge mistake. Because it was always a mistake. But he equally found that he didn't really care.
Besides, with Maya, there were never any consequences.
They fell back onto his bed, still wrapped around each other, as Jirel succumbed entirely to his latest mistake.