Part Two
Natasha took another ragged breath and tried to focus on the task in front of her.
She couldn't say precisely how long it had been since their shift had started, but she knew it couldn't have been much more than an hour ago. And she already felt weak enough to keel over.
In theory, duridium mining was a straightforward task. The shining veins of metal in the rock face of the quarry were clearly visible against the dull rockface, and the laser cutting tools they had been provided with made short work of the extraction process. They simply had to cut out the ore and carry the pieces to the set of anti-grav collection crates behind them. Once they were full, the automated units whisked themselves away to the far side of the habitation dome where they were prepared for shipping.
Aside from the labour involved in carrying the extracted chunks of ore, which could be as big or as small as you elected to laser them, there was very little serious legwork to be done.
But the seemingly straightforward task was being significantly complicated by the atmospheric conditions on the Class-L planet. The thin, barely-breathable air was turning the entire process into punishing, back-breaking labour. They had learned that the mining rota was split into short four-hour shifts due to the conditions. Still, barely an hour into their first mining experience, that seemed far too long.
Natasha paused for a second to wipe the sweat from her brow, gulping in as deep a lungful of air as she could. She knew she was struggling.
And she also knew Jirel was struggling more.
"How're you doing?" she managed as she glanced over at the tired-looking Trill where he worked next to her.
Some distance away, a pair of armed Miradorn guards watched on, but did little to break up the nascent conversation. They didn't seem to care much about anything when it came to who worked where, or who spoke to who. And Natasha and Jirel had found it easy to ensure they were working close together in the line of miners now spread across the rock face.
Provided the duridium ore kept coming, nothing else really mattered.
And as Grenk had so gleefully pointed out, there wasn't even a requirement for a significant number of guards. The harsh conditions of the planet's surface, coupled with the elaborate security systems that surrounded the whole mining complex both on the surface and in orbit, meant that there was little risk of a jailbreak. Even if someone did manage to get away, nobody was surviving for long out here. And that was what kept everyone in line.
"I've been better," Jirel breathlessly responded as he paused in his lasering.
He tried a smile, but the pain on his features was clear. Natasha knew that the shot of stims she had given him before they had beamed down would have now worn off. He was definitely struggling.
And she also knew that there was a deeper level to the pain he was experiencing.
With a supportive nod, she returned to her work. They lasered away at the rock face in silence for a few moments, save for occasional pauses to try in vain to catch their breath.
After a time, they both set their lasers down and strained to grab the duridium they had liberated from the rock. With some effort, they carried the shiny lumps of metal the short distance down to the waiting anti-grav units.
Natasha chanced a look further down the line of the rock face, and saw the Gorn from earlier, staggering to his own anti-grav cart with a huge hunk of metal raised above his head. Despite his injured shoulder, he seemed keen to give his fellow miners a show of strength.
"Listen," Jirel gasped as they walked, "I really am sorry. About getting you into this. All of this. I guess this isn't what you had in mind when you signed up with us."
Natasha took a moment before replying, as they dropped their payload into the carts and turned back to the rock face.
"You have to stop saying that," she sighed eventually, "I'm not gonna lie and tell you I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I joined the Bounty. But I'm also not gonna lie and say that I never thought it might end up somewhere like this."
She repressed the sudden memory of the dying ensign in the corridor of the USS Navajo. The one she had left behind. And tried not to wonder too much about whether she was dealing with their predicament relatively well because, deep down, she felt she deserved this sort of punishment.
"Besides," she continued, having dismissed those thoughts, "I could have walked away at any point, right? After the run-in with the murderous Vulcan cult. Or after the time I ended up in the hands of an Orion slave trader. Or after we were nearly executed by a member of the Klingon High Council. But I didn't. So…this is on me."
She mustered a smile as the Trill fired up his laser cutter again. It was the same warm smile that he had been infatuated with ever since he had first met her. But this time it had no effect, the look of pain on his face remained.
"No," he said firmly, "It's on me. For getting involved with Maya Ortega again."
He started to chip away at the next seam of rock, even as his mind wallowed firmly in a pool of self-pity.
"It's on me for believing her. For listening to her stupid story about her husband. For being stupid enough to actually think that she was doing something selfless. For…everything."
"You thought you were helping—"
"I should have known I wasn't doing that!"
He spat the words out with such force that he was forced to pause for a ragged breath of the scant atmosphere around him, setting his free hand against the rock face to steady himself.
"Maybe we should just get through our shift," Natasha offered with clear concern, "We can talk more when you've got your breath back inside."
Jirel reluctantly nodded, and they fell back into silence for a short while, the sound of their laser cutters the only thing filling the thin air.
It didn't take long for the silence to become constricting.
"I get it, you know," Natasha said eventually, opting to take the lead in the conversation to save Jirel's breath, "Why you kept going back to Maya."
Jirel kept working, but managed a slight glance in her direction, and a hint of gallows humour in his response.
"Wanna clue me in?"
"I had the exact same thing with Cameron."
Jirel set his laser cutter down for a second and gave her his full attention. The name of Natasha's ex-husband, whom he had fleetingly met nearly a year ago back on Starbase 236, piqued his curiosity despite their situation.
"I know what it's like," she continued with a hint of sadness, "To have that one person in your life that you can't help but keep going back to. Even when every single rational part of you is screaming at you that you're just gonna end up getting hurt again. I knew he wasn't good for me, that he was controlling, and manipulative, and I knew how toxic the whole relationship was. But…I'd always end up going back."
"At least he never tricked you into a lifetime of slavery in a duridium mine."
Natasha looked over to the Trill, and was relieved to see the sliver of a familiar smile behind the self-pitying exterior of his comment. She mustered a nod.
"Touché."
They worked on for a few seconds, then she felt a cathartic need to continue.
"When I finally got that evidence that he'd been cheating on me with Lieutenant Ramirez, you know what I felt?"
Jirel shook his head. Natasha sighed again and looked up at the shining tracks of duridium in the rock face above her.
"It was the weirdest thing. I mean, I felt hurt, and betrayed, and all the rest of it. But…most of all, I actually felt happy. Because I knew that I finally had something that he couldn't lie, or twist, or deny, or turn around against me. I finally had a reason to leave."
She fought back a sudden rush of emotion and steadied herself. "So, yeah," she managed, "I get it."
Another silence descended. Jirel's shoulders sagged slightly.
"Still," he muttered with a pained cough, "This time, it wasn't just about me getting hurt. It's you, and…if what Grenk said was true about the Bounty—"
"We're gonna get out of this, Jirel."
She stared at him with a determined glare, causing him to look a little confused at the certainty in her tone.
"What makes you so sure?"
She summoned up as much confidence as she could muster, then shrugged.
"I've been onboard the Bounty for a year now. At the start, I genuinely didn't see how the hell you'd all made it this far. I mean, you had no command structure, no organisation, no plan, or schedule, or any idea where your next paycheck was gonna come from. And you couldn't seem to go five minutes without getting into a shooting match with someone."
Jirel took each of these points with a reluctant nod of his head.
"But," she concluded, "I've come to see that, however crazy and chaotic it seems on the surface, underneath there's something far more solid. There's a togetherness as strong as any starship crew I've been a part of, and a determination that works as well as any directive I've ever followed. And you never know when to give up."
Jirel was reminded of something very similar that Maya Ortega had told him, just a few days ago. But coming from Natasha, it seemed far more positive.
"So we just need to survive, because I know that, somehow, the others will have survived. And I also know that, somehow, we're gonna get out of this."
She kept her determined gaze aimed at Jirel for long enough to make sure she had burned away the Trill's doubt and self-pity, just like they were burning the rock from the duridium. And she was sure she could see the shining glimmer of hope inside him.
He nodded back at her.
With her pep talk complete, they returned to their work, under the watchful glare of the guards. And while Natasha was glad that she had given Jirel the strength to keep going, she couldn't help but wonder what really had happened to the others.
And above all, she couldn't help but wonder how the hell they were going to get out of this.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"I hate this."
Sunek forced the words out of his mouth in an uncharacteristic whisper, as he forced up as much of his depleted reserves of Vulcan stoicism to try and stave off the pain and discomfort he was feeling in the scrunched-up position he found himself in.
All around him, the Bounty was abuzz with life.
Not the sort of life it was used to. Instead, the interior of the downed vessel was now the home of several pairs of Miradorn twins. All working to salvage Grenk's trophy. In strict teams of two, they were busy sealing up various interior hull breaches with sheets of cheap sheet metal in order to get the ship in a state to be tractored back into orbit and towed away.
One thing they hadn't gotten around to working on was the warp drive itself, which was still damaged and apparently leaking a steady amount of radiation. Not a dangerous level, at least not yet. But enough to continue to cause continued disruption to tricorder scans.
Which was good news for Sunek, where he lay squeezed into one of the narrow access conduits in the Bounty's tiny engine room, temporarily invisible to all of the Bounty's new passengers. Not that it felt much like good news right now.
"I hate this," he whispered again.
As soon as he had heard the tell-tale sound of the incoming transports down in the Bounty's main corridor, and as Klath found himself surrounded, the Vulcan had made a break for the only hiding place he could think of. Across from the Bounty's cockpit, into the rarely-manned engine room, and into the tight confines of the access conduits.
The narrow crawl spaces weren't the same as the much wider and more extensive Jeffries Tubes on a starship. They didn't snake around the entirety of the ship, merely criss-crossing the engine room itself to give access to the ship's critical systems.
Elsewhere on the Bounty, the ship was small enough that any other repair could be conducted through hatches in the walls of the vessel, rather than requiring engineers to crawl on their hands and knees for deck after deck, looking for the right junction.
All of which meant that, while Sunek had found somewhere to hide, he hadn't really managed to do much else. Because there was nowhere for him to go.
The gangly Vulcan had been trapped where he had secreted himself ever the boarding party had arrived. He could occasionally make out the shapes of two passing Miradorn through a grate in the hatch he had crawled through, and it was apparent that there were too many for him to deal with on his own. He had no weapons, and no plan.
So he was waiting. For a miracle. Hating every minute as he did so.
The radiation, coupled with his proximity to the core itself and the narrowness of the space, was causing the temperature to rise all the time. And while Vulcans were more impervious to heat than most, the addition of Sunek's stress-based emotional turmoil was causing him distinct discomfort. He had already awkwardly discarded his bloodied, garish Hawaiian shirt, and was now stripped down to a distinctly dirty white vest top.
Just as he was about to whisper another curse, his ears pricked up as he heard voices approaching his position. Staying as silent as possible, he adjusted himself to bring his eyes back to the grate and peered through the gaps in the metal.
"...I want this ship in a fit enough state to be towed by the end of the day, you hear me?"
Sunek recognised the owner of the eerily familiar voice a split-second before he walked into the engine room, flanked by two of the Miradorn.
Grenk.
"We need to leave orbit tomorrow to make our rendezvous with that Syndicate supply vessel," the stout Ferengi grumbled in the direction of the tired pair.
He paused in his pacing, and Sunek just about made out a greedy leer spreading on his face.
"Ah, that's an idea. Perhaps I can offload Jirel's slave girl and that stupid Klingon onto them. For a very healthy profit…"
Sunek internalised a rush of anger as Grenk punctuated his musing with a gleeful cackle. But he took comfort from the news that Klath and Denella were still alive, wherever they had been taken.
Entirely oblivious to the extra pair of ears hidden in the walls, Grenk started pacing around again, continuing to bark at the Miradorn duo.
"What about the warp core? How bad is the damage?"
Grenk tutted with impatience as the two Miradorn, engineering specialists from his coterie called Mon-Bal and Ton-Bal, shared a moment of silent telepathic communication.
While the Ferengi had a penchant for recruiting Miradorn for their expert abilities to identify and deal with trouble as telepathic double acts, not to mention their pathetically cheap pay rates and complete lack of experience when it came to unionising, he often found their preference for sharing thoughts between each other telepathically to be a serious drag.
Mainly because he had come to recognise that they only did that when they were trying to figure out the best way to deliver bad news.
"Don't do that!" he snapped, "Just give me an answer!"
Ton-Bal reluctantly stepped forward, having lost the telepathic battle with his brother to be the one to lead the conversation.
"The core is structurally safe. But several subsidiary components suffered damage during the craft's landing. There are radiation leaks to deal with before we can bring the core back online, which will require additional resources to be brought down from orbit."
Even though he had anticipated bad news, Grenk failed to keep a lid on his frustration.
"More resources? How much is this going to end up costing me?"
Mon-Bal and Ton-Bal shared another telepathic moment, but offered no verbal answer. They were engineers, not accountants.
"Besides," Grenk continued to rant, "I don't need the warp drive if we're just towing it back, you pair of idiots!"
The two Miradorn took particular affront to this latest slight, and made each other aware in their own minds. After all, they were the experts.
"We are aware of that," Ton-Bal replied in a conciliatory tone, "But even towing the vessel at warp in this condition would risk a core breach. Under tractor beam, such an explosion would cause serious damage to the Boundless Profit as well."
Grenk's scowl deepened. He glanced from one twin to the other, looking for any sign that they were trying to trick him out of a profit. But he saw nothing.
"Fine! Get the extra supplies. But not a single stem bolt more than you need, am I making myself clear?"
Ton-Bal nodded, while at the same time sending a particularly cutting comment about their boss to his twin telepathically, forcing Mon-Bal to quickly stifle a smirk.
As oblivious to the comment as he was to the extra set of ears in the engine room, Grenk turned and stormed off. And after silently exchanging a few more choice comments about their employer, the pair of Miradorn followed suit to continue their repairs.
For the first time in a while, Sunek breathed out. Now he knew who was behind everything that was happening, at least. And, in terms of his hopes of making some sort of escape, the news that Grenk was repairing the Bounty wasn't the worst news that he could have heard.
But as a counterpoint to that positive news, it was clear that Grenk had Klath and Denella, to say nothing of whatever he had done with Jirel and the others. Which meant that Sunek could only see one possible way that they were ever going to get out of this.
He was going to have to save the day.
He peered back out of the grate, wondering just how many Miradorn were now swarming throughout the Bounty. Throughout his ship.
That thought caused him to pause for a moment. He would never admit it to Jirel and the others in a million years, but right now as he hid from a hoard of Miradorn in a tiny engineering crawlspace, dressed in a filthy vest top, apparently he could at least admit it to himself.
Somehow, at some point between him first joining up with Jirel back on Kressari Starbase 34, the battered and broken ship around him had become more than just another stopping off point on his meandering and directionless journey through life. It had become his home. And the crew had become his friends.
And so, even though he really didn't want to, he knew he had to fight his way out of this. And if he was going to do that, he was going to need weapons.
And he was going to need help.
As the Vulcan pondered how exactly he was going to sneak from his current hiding place to Klath's cabin, where he was reasonably sure he'd be able to find some weapons, he did his best to ignore the distant sound he heard in the back of his mind.
A low rumble of thunder.
Instead, he peered back out of the grate and muttered to himself.
"I hate this…"
'*'*'
'*'*'
The blurry view in front of her slowly coalesced into focus. But she was in no way reassured by what she saw.
Faced with an unfamiliar antiseptic white ceiling, Denella instinctively tried to sit up straight, only to find herself unable to move. She was shackled down by her wrists and ankles.
"Hey!" she snarled, feeling a sudden rush of panic inside, "Where the hell am I? What are you—?"
She stopped mid-rant when she saw two faces loom over her. Both identical Miradorn faces. They looked down at her, then glanced at each other. She could only guess, but she assumed they were sharing some thoughts telepathically.
She struggled to crane her neck and figure out where she was. The last thing she remembered, she had been struggling to hold the Bounty together in a pitched battle with a mystery foe. Then she had felt a searing pain in her side, and everything had gone dark.
And now she was here. Wherever here was.
It was clearly a medical facility onboard a vessel. She could hear the telltale hum of the warp drive. But it was also a medical facility that felt the need to keep its patients restrained. Which told her it probably wasn't the sort of medical facility she wanted to be in for very long.
She winced as she shifted her weight on the bed under her, feeling a tender spot on her back where her injuries had only partly healed. And then something twigged inside her.
Miradorn twins.
She had only crossed paths with that species once before. And something told her that wasn't a coincidence.
"Grenk?" she asked the twins looming over her.
They didn't say anything, but the Miradorn on the right offered an affirming nod.
Grenk.
One of the medics moved off to one side, out of her range of vision, while the other waved a small scanning device over her head in a gentle orbit.
"What are you doing?" she managed, "Where's Klath? Where's Sunek? Where's the Bounty?"
She struggled against her bonds once again as she spoke, but while the Miradorn scanning her head glanced over at his twin, sharing another telepathic moment, they worked on in silence. No answers to her questions were forthcoming.
After a while, she had to stop struggling, still weakened from her injuries. For reasons she couldn't yet discern, it seemed as though Grenk's medics had treated the worst of them, but she was still feeling the effects of what she had been through.
The twins switched places. The one that had been scanning her walked over to a console and clipped the device into a small housing on top of the screen to analyse the results, while the other returned to her bedside with a hypospray in his hand. Her eyes widened in renewed concern at the sight of the mystery drug, and the Miradorn seemed to note the change in his demeanour. And felt the need to speak.
"Analgesic. For the residual pain."
He grunted the comment without anything in the way of a bedside manner, but with enough sincerity to settle Denella's worries. Besides, she sensed that she'd need everything she could get if she was going to get her strength back for whatever was to come.
As the hypospray was pressed to her neck, she glanced around the confines of the sickbay again, and spotted a small collection of medical tools on a side table near her bed.
And a plan began to form in her head.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Maya had no idea where she was going.
She had been walking down the corridors of the Boundless Profit for several minutes now, having been left to her own devices while Grenk was down on the surface, surveying the Bounty.
Grenk's yacht wasn't an especially large ship, three times the size of the modestly-proportioned Bounty, and she was already on her fourth lap of the deck. But she barely noticed that. She was lost in her thoughts.
Her mind had been a swirling conflict of worries and questions ever since her brief conversation with Klath in the brig. And there was nobody but herself to talk them through with, as she waited impotently to leave orbit and get back to civilisation. Which was why she had embarked on her rigorously repetitive tour of the vessel's main deck. She needed to think.
And then, as she unknowingly reached the end of her fourth lap, she stopped in front of one particular doorway. One that she had been drawn to each time she had passed it.
With a stifled sigh, she walked in.
Klath was midway through his own 247th lap of the holding cell when the door to the brig unexpectedly opened. The Klingon, boiling over with frustration at his continued incarceration, snapped his head in the direction of the doorway, hoping to see Denella returning with the guards, to give him a chance to strike. Instead, he was surprised and not especially happy to see Maya enter.
She barely acknowledged him as she paced across the deck of the brig, partly lost in thought. She wasn't entirely sure why she had elected to walk in this time, nor what she wanted to say to her former crewmate. She wasn't really sure of anything right now. Her mind was still dominated by unshakable thoughts about Turkana IV.
She finally stopped and looked up at the brooding, silent Klingon on the other side of the shimmering forcefield, and she shrugged in defeat.
"You wanna know why I did it?"
Klath remained stoically silent, staring daggers at the woman in front of him.
"No," he replied eventually, "I do not."
Despite herself, Maya stifled a frustrated smile and shook her head. Klath, for his part, was being entirely truthful. He despised small talk at the best of times, with people he genuinely considered to be his friends, never mind Maya Ortega.
But, as he so often found when he attempted to avoid small talk, his silent indifference towards the instigator of the conversation was entirely ineffective.
"I did what I had to do to survive," Maya explained, to herself as much as to her unwilling audience, "This is a cruel and unforgiving universe we're in, you know. And you have to be ruthless, all the time, otherwise it'll destroy you. Just like it destroyed…"
She tailed off, her expression shifting a little sadder as she remembered Niki Kolak.
Klath paid no attention to the subtleties of her mood. Glancing up at the still-present scowl on the Klingon's face, Maya switched to a different tangent.
"Is Sunek really dead?"
"Yes. He died in battle. It was glorious."
She studied his face as he delivered the same obituary as before, this time seeing just enough behind his eyes to see through his lie. Though, instead of calling him out, she elected to continue in defence of her actions.
"Look, I genuinely had no idea that Grenk would go this far. I knew he wanted Jirel. He never told me he would attack the ship, and take the rest of you."
"Those are the actions of the sort of dishonourable person you have chosen to work with," Klath noted, "You should not be surprised."
"I didn't choose to work with him, Klath! I—"
"You betrayed your colleagues," he countered with a growl, "And you worked hard to do it. The fake marriage, the false documents, the lengths that you went to in order to disguise your treachery."
She took an unconscious half-step back under this barrage, but still mustered up a counter.
"Only because I had to! How the hell can I prove that to you?"
"You could lower the forcefield."
Klath's impassive expression seemed entirely serious. Maya signed and shook her head.
"You know I can't do that."
"Then leave," he retorted.
She didn't move, and instead doubled down on her argument, electing to throw a line of attack into her flagging defence.
"Ok, fine. I betrayed you. But, come on, Jirel and the rest of you had already crossed Grenk plenty of times in the past. He wouldn't have wanted Jirel so badly if you hadn't. How is that any different to what I do?"
Klath reluctantly considered this question for a moment, finding himself once again being drawn into a conversation he really didn't want to have.
"Whenever we have encountered the Ferengi," he responded eventually, "We are usually preventing him from doing some kind of illegal activity. With you, we were the ones attempting the activity."
Maya kept her eyes locked on his, even as he delivered his definitive response.
"You know, Klath, legality is a very fluid term. There are very few universal laws out here in space. There were definitely none back on Turkana IV."
"True," the Klingon conceded, folding his huge arms across his chest defiantly, "But there is always honour."
She tutted and shook her head, mustering another trace of a smile. "A very Klingon response," she noted, "I suppose I picked the wrong room to try and find some measure of compassion."
"Klingons have compassion. When it is deserved."
This latest remark was delivered without a trace of warmth. It cut through her with enough force to remind Maya that whatever rudimentary comradeship there might have once been between them, that was now long gone.
"Huh," she nodded sadly, "You know, I'm not even sure why I came in here."
At this, Klath stepped towards the forcefield. He may have been trapped, both literally inside Grenk's brig and metaphorically inside an unwanted conversation. But he now saw a chance to work off some of his frustrations with some home truths.
"I do," he boomed, "You have come here to justify your actions to me. Perhaps out of guilt, perhaps out of pride, or perhaps to seek some kind of sympathy for your plight, which I will not offer. Either way, I do not wish to hear your excuses. So, if you are not going to lower the forcefield, then leave."
He delivered the suggestion like an order, stepping close enough to the shimmering forcefield to cause a spark of energy across its surface. Maya remained silent.
"Ever since we first met, I have changed my opinion about you many times," the Klingon hissed, "But now I know for a fact that you are nothing more than a coward."
For a Klingon, there was no greater insult. Maya felt her cheeks redden with shame.
Having said what he felt needed to be said, Klath simply turned away from her and began his 248th lap of the cell with renewed earnest.
Maya remained where she was for a moment, standing in silence. She worked on putting together the rest of the justification for her actions, to counter Klath's judgement. But the words didn't come. And the silence merely grew in length. Niki Kolak's face loomed larger in her mind. And instead of responding, she simply turned and walked out of the room.
Klath didn't even acknowledge her departure as he began lap number 250.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Seriously, I'm fine."
Natasha sighed. There were few things more irritating to a medical professional than a patient that resolutely refused to be honest with them.
Back in a starship sickbay, or even the Bounty's significantly less well equipped medical bay, she could have cut through the lies with a quick tricorder scan. But in their current predicament, she couldn't avail herself of such a tool. She was forced to turn to her trusty old intuition.
She checked Jirel's glazed eyes and took his pulse for the third time since they had returned to the caged-off habitation area at the end of their first mining shift.
"You're not fine," she countered patiently, "I know you too well to listen to that sort of thing. So please drop the space adventurer act and just focus on eating that."
Jirel reluctantly picked up a musty grey nutrient bar and took a bite. The ration packs were all that seemed to pass for sustenance for the hungry miners in Synergy Mining Enterprise's venture. As the Trill's bravado was briefly silenced with a mouthful of tasteless chewy mush, Natasha continued her improvised diagnosis.
"You're definitely suffering from oxygen deprivation."
"Huh," Jirel offered, "Can't think why."
"I'm serious," she persisted, "Your reactions are down, and we've been back inside for more than an hour now, but your pulse is still abnormal. It's not your fault that your metabolism is even less suited to all this than mine is."
"I'm fine—"
Jirel stopped as he saw her knowing glare. He conceded to himself that he couldn't lie to her.
"I'm not fine," he sighed as he swallowed the bite of nutrient bar, "My head's pounding, I feel weak as hell, and towards the end of our time out there, my vision went seriously blurry. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought we were back on the tequila."
She raised an eyebrow at this mention of their recent liaison after more than a few shots of that particular liquor, but kept her demeanour professional. Her concern for her patient was overriding any desire she might have had for some reassuring back-and-forth banter. Almost.
"Well," she sighed as she took a step back, "Just like my last encounter with tequila, there's gonna be some pretty terrible consequences if this carries on."
She noted the slightly wry look cross Jirel's tired face at this comment, and looked quizzically down at him.
"Sorry," he sighed, "That just reminded me of something Maya said to me. Back when we were in my cabin—"
He stopped himself, awkwardly remembering how Natasha had walked into the scene the morning after his and Maya's little tryst. Natasha, for her part, mustered a smile.
"Getting reacquainted?"
"Let's go with that," Jirel nodded with a weak grimace, "She said…that was why I kept ending up going along with whatever her new scheme was. I wanted the thrill, the excitement, and I wanted the lack of consequences. I guess there's definitely been some consequences this time."
"That's one way of putting it," she offered, as he took another bite from the nutrient bar, "So, I'm guessing all that talk from this Grenk character back there was true? You really do owe him this much latinum?"
"Grenk exaggerates," Jirel countered defensively.
"But you did leave him marooned on the planet of the Soraxx?"
The Trill chewed the mouthful for a moment or two as he mulled over his answer.
"He exaggerates most of the time," he went with eventually, "I guess the truth is…for all the work you've done over the last year building up our consciences, we didn't always have so much of that before you came along."
"I didn't realise that was what I was doing."
"No need to be modest," the Trill smiled, "You're good at it."
They were suddenly interrupted by approaching footsteps towards the corner bunk in a secluded area of the rudimentary barracks where they had hobbled over to after their shift. They both felt their defences rise, then immediately relax when they saw an unerringly familiar face approaching them.
The Gorn stopped in front of Natasha and held out a small metal box in his hand.
"Further medical supplies," he hissed by way of explanation, "As I said, it is important you are able to keep mining."
"Thank you," Natasha replied with genuine warmth as she took the box, before gesturing to the spot next to Jirel on the bottom bunk, "If you wanna take a seat, I can take a look at that…damage now. While we're alone."
For a moment, the Gorn froze, his unblinking eyes taking some time to process this offer. Then, after a quick check to verify that they were indeed alone, he awkwardly sat down.
Natasha opened the kit and grabbed a small scanner and a hypospray, before starting to triage the extent of the Gorn's injury.
"So, what are you in for, anyway?" Jirel asked as casually as he could to the huge lizard creature.
He received back little more than a curious and slightly disconcerting stare, as Natasha deftly waved the scanner across the damaged shoulder of the Gorn.
"Or," the Trill continued after a long pause, "We could…talk about something else?"
The Gorn remained mute, even as Natasha reached back into the kit for a packet of medical sealant.
"Personally," she offered as she worked in her best medical bedside manner voice, "I find that treating damage goes easier when I know my patient's name, at least?"
To both her and Jirel's surprise, this was the thing that got their new acquaintance to talk to them.
"Struss," the Gorn hissed, "My name is Struss."
"Well, Struss," Natasha replied, as she finished off with the sealant and grabbed the hypospray and a vial of analgesic medicine, "I'm gonna give you something for the pain, but I've cleaned the infection, and that sealant should hold for long enough for the scales underneath to fully harden."
She pressed the hypospray to the Gorn's neck and stepped back with a satisfied nod. Struss slowly rotated his shoulder a few times to test it out, and seemed happy enough with the result. He stood up and silently began to walk away. Natasha shrugged at Jirel with a knowing look as it seemed there was no note of thanks coming her way.
She paused mid-shrug as the Gorn stopped and turned back.
"My brother."
Natasha and Jirel both turned back to where Struss was standing, both looking a little confused. It was now their turn to offer silence back to their companion.
"You asked why I was here," the Gorn continued, "I am here because of my brother."
"I…don't understand," Natasha managed eventually.
"He became…indebted to the Ferengi who owns this place. After trying to set up a transport firm in the Medulla cluster with a substantial loan he was unable to repay, after the Ferengi changed the conditions at short notice. When it came time for his punishment, I took his place."
"Why? Jirel opted to ask the obvious question.
"I am the strongest hatchling from my nest. He would not have survived here. Taking his place was the honourable thing to do."
Despite everything, Jirel couldn't help but give Natasha a wry smile.
"Remind you of anyone?"
He suppressed the rush of angst that followed his comment, at the reminder that they still had no idea what had become of Klath. Or Denella or Sunek. Aside from Grenk's chilling suggestion that the Bounty had been shot out of the sky.
Natasha clocked the slight flinch from the Trill, and suppressed her own worries as she forced as friendly a smile as she could in the direction of the Gorn.
"Well," she managed, "It's nice to meet someone honourable in here."
Struss nodded, then rotated his repaired shoulder again.
"Likewise," he hissed back.
With that, he turned and walked away, leaving them alone again. Natasha watched him leave, then turned back to continue triaging her other patient. And she felt a modicum of hope inside her.
At the very least, they had made a friend.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Completely unacceptable!"
Shel-Lan and Gel-Lan stood patiently next to each other inside Grenk's private dining area on the Boundless Profit, and took the latest tirade from their boss on their collective chin.
The Ferengi paced around in fuming annoyance, ignoring the first course of his evening repast, a Ferengi crab cake with a side of spiced lokar beans that was slowly going cold on the dining table. His focus was entirely on his head bodyguards.
"I told your men to disable Jirel's ship, that was all! It would have been so much easier to retrieve once it was merely drifting in space!"
On the opposite side of the table, Grenk's reluctant dining companion for the evening picked at her own appetiser with a silver fork. Maya Ortega's focus was elsewhere.
"And now this whole salvage operation is taking five times as long! And costing me ten times as much! Well, I tell you one thing, this is going to come out of your paycheques, you hear?"
Shel-Lan and Gel-Lan were Grenk's most trusted and longest-serving bodyguards. They had been dealing with the irritable Ferengi for longer than any of their fellow Miradorn. So they were used to getting this sort of humiliation from their boss.
But they were also starting to get sick of it.
The two Miradorn kept their attention on Grenk, but internally, they used their sibling telepathy to share their more candid thoughts about this latest rant.
Shel-Lan was quick to remind Gel-Lan how much worse things had gotten recently. Ever since the Bounty had disabled their shuttle and left them marooned on a deserted planet earlier in the year, life in Grenk's employ had taken a turn for the worse.
They had painstakingly repaired the crashed shuttle, while Grenk had barked orders and eaten his way through most of the emergency rations. They had thanklessly protected him from myriad spacefaring dangers as the tiny shuttle had limped back to port, and had then tirelessly worked to prepare and fit out the Boundless Profit, Grenk's newest mode of transport.
And on top of all of that, Shel-Lan added, since Grenk had acquired Synergy Mining Enterprises, they had been working double duty. They were now both Grenk's personal bodyguards, and also head supervisors for the mining projects themselves. And Grenk had never considered appropriately remunerating them for their extra workload.
"...I don't care how long it takes for you to work this off, you're paying me back!..."
Gel-Lan silently agreed with his brother's points, but suggested that there was little they could do about it. He was their boss. And while the pay wasn't generous, they still needed the latinum.
"...I pay you too much as it is! And your performance these last few weeks has been especially sub-par, don't think I haven't noticed!..."
Shel-Lan chided his brother for being too faithful, and told him what he had read in the unauthorised biography of Grand Nagus Rom. About the time that Rom, as a younger man, had formed the Guild of Restaurant and Casino Owners, and unionised his fellow employees to fight for better working conditions against his own thankless boss.
"...And your men are getting too sloppy! This isn't the first time they've screwed up lately!..."
Gel-Lan countered that there was no Miradorn word for 'union'. And even if there were, their loyalty to their boss should override such selfishness. It was the Miradorn way, after all. Loyalty to one's brother, or to one's job.
"...Am I making myself clear?"
The silent and somewhat circular debate was brought to an abrupt pause when both Miradorn realised that Grenk was addressing them, and that neither of them had been following what the Ferengi had been saying.
After a few seconds of staring at their silent, blank expressions, Grenk snapped again.
"I said: I expect you both down on the planet within the hour to oversee the next mining shift. Am I making myself clear?"
This time, he had made himself clear. And even though they were supposed to be off-duty until tomorrow, they both merely nodded their affirmation at this latest humbling order and exited the dining room. As they walked out, Shel-Lan silently promised Gel-Lan that he would read the relevant passages from Rom's biography to him later this evening.
With an angry sigh, Grenk turned back to the table and took his seat opposite Maya, trying to allow himself to focus on the more pleasurable aspects of the evening he'd planned.
While he had been ranting on, Maya had barely touched her own food. She had only loosely been following along with the details of the rant. Instead, she had found that, once again, her mind had been filled with thoughts of Niki Kolak.
"You should ease off on them, you know," she idly noted as Grenk sat down, "It might backfire on you one of these days…"
"I don't need business advice from you," he scowled back, as he pushed away his crab cake in frustration, "What I require is for you to fetch me a hot meal!"
Maya maintained her proud position on the other side of the table and raised a wryly amused eyebrow at this suggestion.
"I don't think I'll be doing that. And I've been thinking. Once we leave here, there's a small colony two sectors away. I think you can drop me there."
Grenk's eyes narrowed a tad at this, but she kept her back straight. She was determined that she wanted to get away from him and his personal yacht as soon as possible.
"My dear," the Ferengi said slowly, "I will drop you off where I say I will drop you off. So, I think I'll stick to the original plan. You can come with me while we tow Jirel's little ship back to port. And while you're here, you should do your best to keep me happy. So…"
He pushed his cold plate further towards her with a knowing look. She still didn't move from her seat, grimly clinging onto her pride.
"Also," Grenk continued, "I've been thinking that I might use your…powers of persuasion to help round up another one of my debtors. I saw how easily you were able to sucker in Jirel and his crew. We could make quite the team, you know…"
"No, thank you," she responded with a thin smile.
"Who said you had the option to decline?"
At this, her proud demeanour dropped for just a second. She suddenly felt very alone, and again realised she had lost control over her own destiny. Out here, with dozens of guards at his disposal, there was nothing stopping Grenk from enslaving her just as he had done with the others.
Satisfied that he had made his point, Grenk's face creased into a cackling grin.
"A little joke," he explained, with only a partial amount of trustworthiness, "But please think about the offer. I can take in this new debtor the old fashioned way, of course. But your way was so much more fun…"
With a sigh, she pushed her own plate away and stood up. "You know, I'm actually not all that hungry. I might have an early night."
Grenk's eyes narrowed a little as he watched her leave.
"Don't start getting a conscience on me now," he muttered idly, "Before you start feeling guilty about Jirel and the others, remember that they left me behind on that planet."
"At least you survived," Maya muttered back as she reached the door, "And what did this new debtor do to you, anyway?"
"He stole from me. Just like everyone else."
In Maya's head, she pictured the scrap of mouldy food in her hand, back on Turkana IV. The one that she and her friend had risked their lives to steal. She felt a fresh stab of guilt.
"Maybe they were hungry…"
Grenk, mouth now full of cold crab cake with spiced lokar beans, looked up at her with a look of slight confusion.
Maya glanced back at this latest bully that had found their way into her life, and then walked out of the door. Suddenly a little more clear about what she had to do.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"He needs to rest!"
"He needs to work."
That appeared to be the extent of the debate. The two armed Miradorn brandished their disruptors at them and gestured down the corridor.
Natasha grimaced and looked back at Jirel where he stood alongside her. They had barely had enough time to fall asleep after her round of triage before the guards had indicated that it was time for their next shift.
While the shifts out on the harsh surface of the planet weren't all that long, it seemed their downtime in between was even shorter. She had no idea whether that was standard practice, or a special part of Grenk's punishment specifically for Jirel. Either way, despite the attempt at a brave face that the Trill was pulling, she knew this had been nowhere near enough time to get his strength back.
"Don't worry," he managed, "I'll be fine."
She went to counter this with her most authoritative medical voice, but before she could get anything out, they were being roughly shoved in the direction their guards wanted them to move.
It was a short journey to the airlock through the corridors of the habitation dome. And soon they would be back out on the Class L surface. Natasha was sure that Jirel would indeed be able to make it through another shift. But if this was the sort of treatment they could expect, she also knew he wouldn't make it through too many more.
"Seriously," she tried again to appeal to the guards as they turned a corner, "You need to give him more time to—"
She stopped in her tracks, along with the rest of the four-person convoy, as they rounded the corner and were confronted by an unexpected sight.
In the middle of the corridor, just ahead of the doors to the airlock, stood Maya Ortega. Looking as effortlessly regal as if she had taken a wrong turn on the way to a Federation ambassador's reception being inexplicably held elsewhere in the drab mining facility.
"Hello, boys," she smiled demurely at the Miradorn twins.
Jirel's face quickly turned into a scowl, while Natasha looked more than a little concerned. Their guards exchanged words of confusion. First silently, with each other, and then out loud, with the surprising interloper.
"What do you want?" the Miradorn on the right asked her.
"Tsk," she tutted, "One of your delightful boss's little jokes. He thought it might do me good to put in a shift or two down here to earn my passage back to civilisation. Can you believe the nerve?"
Both Miradorn remained silent, but they both telepathically admitted to each other that her story definitely sounded like the sort of thing their boss would do.
"So," she continued, idly gesturing at Jirel and Natasha, "I'm to escort these two to their next shift."
Jirel's glare darkened even further. He couldn't help but offer a retort.
"Like hell you are."
"Calm yourself, darling," she replied, suppressing the pang of unexpected sadness that his glare caused to flare up inside her.
The guards, for their part, still looked unconvinced.
"We weren't informed of any such plan," the twin on the left grunted.
Maya theatrically rolled her eyes and gestured to a comms panel on the wall next to her.
"Fine," she sighed, "Feel free to call up to the yacht and double check. But this is cutting into some perfectly good duridium mining time."
The Miradorn shared a glance, and the twin on the right then nodded and walked over to the comms panel to verify this unlikely order.
All the while, Jirel kept his glare laser focused on Maya. The woman that he had spent so much of his life conflicted over. Either madly in love with her, or wishing that he had never met her. Or sometimes both.
He kept glaring at her, even as the twin reached the comms panel, and she sprang her trap.
In an instant, she grabbed the Miradorn's arm. The telepathic bond between the twins came into play immediately. As one twin found themselves in danger, the second twin reacted, instinctively bringing his disruptor to bear.
But Maya had already anticipated that action, and deftly manoeuvred herself behind the first twin, meaning that the second twin's disruptor blast merely impacted with devastating force on his own brother's exposed back.
The sickening pain of the impact registered on the second twin as well, aghast at his actions. Which left him wide open for attack. Maya pivoted the limp arm of the first twin in her grasp around and fired the disruptor in his hand, hitting the second Miradorn square in the chest.
The whole thing took a split-second to play out, but seemed to unfold in slow-motion. Still, before Jirel and Natasha realised what was happening, they were standing in the corridor, with unmoving Miradorn twins on both sides of them on the ground.
And Maya Ortega, standing impatiently in front of them.
"Well?" she motioned to them, gesturing at the two bodies, "I'd take their disruptors if I were you. You're probably going to need them."
Jirel went for the nearest disruptor. And to Natasha's shock, the Trill immediately brought it to bear on Maya herself. Anger still burning in his eyes.
Maya, for her part, remained passively standing in front of the pointed weapon. She nodded her head in acceptance.
"You probably should do that," she sighed, "I deserve it. But then, I'm also the best chance you've got of getting out of here. And getting back to the others."
Jirel didn't lower the weapon, but Natasha stepped forward.
"They're alive?"
"Klath and Denella are on Grenk's ship. And if I can read Klingon facial expressions like I think I can, I'm pretty sure Sunek is alive somewhere. I know you don't really have any reason to trust me, but for what it's worth, that's the truth."
Natasha felt a rush of relief inside. But Jirel kept the disruptor raised, staring back at the woman that had lied to him far too many times for him to remember.
"Is this another trick?" he hissed eventually.
She stared back with complete sincerity. A look that Jirel was painfully aware she was an expert in faking entirely.
"No. This is me…finally doing the right thing. But, if you'd rather just shoot me, then I can't really stop you."
She found a moment of serenity, picturing Niki Kolak's face even as she looked back into the eyes of her former occasional lover and business partner.
Jirel gripped the disruptor a little more tightly, feeling his trigger finger starting to twitch. Then, he felt a hand on his shoulder. And his conscience reactivated inside him.
"Jirel," Natasha whispered, "That's not who you are."
The Trill's face flashed into a frustrated snarl, before he eventually admitted defeat. He lowered the disruptor and mustered a calmer look in Natasha's direction. She smiled back at him sadly.
"Ok," he nodded, "Let's get the hell out of here."
Natasha grabbed the disruptor from the other guard, and they took off down the corridor, with Maya leading the way. As they dashed on, Jirel regarded Maya's now-exposed back, and still felt the weight of the disruptor in his hand.
But Natasha had been right. That wasn't who he was.
At least, not yet.