Part One
The heavy doors to the airlock opened with a low clunking sound.
Jirel found himself being forcefully shoved through them, but part of him was relieved to get inside. Especially when the doors closed behind them and the sound of instant repressurisation fired up with a hiss of air.
The Class-L conditions on the surface had taken its toll on his Trill physiology more than he had been expecting, despite the shot of stims Natasha had given him before they beamed down. His usual misplaced bravado had led to him dismissing any concerns. He could tolerate it. Besides, they weren't supposed to be down here for this long. But it had been painful.
As he took a deep lungful of the stale, but oxygen-rich air that was being pumped into the airlock, his mind began to refocus on his more general plight.
He and his crew had been in the middle of another adventure, racing across the quadrant to rescue a Trill from a mysterious mining operation. A Trill who was apparently married to Jirel's former business partner, and lover.
And in an instant, everything had unravelled. Before he had even had a chance to act, their entire quest had been revealed to be a trick, designed to make him the property of Grenk.
Grenk was someone that the Bounty's crew had crossed paths with countless times. The sort of individual who had a habit of finding himself in the middle of the more nefarious aspects of the galaxy. And one that Jirel and the Bounty had managed to outwit and escape every time they had been unfortunate enough to run into him.
Until now. When, nearly a year after the Bounty had last beaten the wily Ferengi and left him marooned on a planet during an unsuccessful attempt to recover the ancient Jewel of Soraxx, Grenk had found a way to have his revenge.
Down on the surface of the planet, the security processes they had previously managed to override had suddenly come back to life and Jirel and Natasha had been captured. Up in orbit, the Bounty had apparently been attacked.
Now, he and Natasha were being taken to Grenk's fortified mining operation, far away from any other inhabited worlds. To be put to work until the considerable debt that the Ferengi believed he owed him had been paid off. And nobody was aware that they were even here.
And all of this was his fault. Specifically, it was his fault for trusting Maya Ortega. Once again.
He couldn't bring himself to look over at her as they silently stood in the airlock, opting instead to look straight ahead at the dirty metal inner door. The only sound from any of them was Grenk's slightly wheezy breathing from his own exertions in the Class-L conditions.
Eventually, the pressure equalised, and the inner door opened. Jirel was now shoved through into the habitation area alongside Natasha by the two Miradorn, Shel-Lan and Gel-Lan, who had long served as Grenk's most trusted bodyguards. And since their boss had taken ownership of Synergy Mining Enterprises, they were also serving as head wardens for each new mining facility.
They were confronted by a long corridor and a distinctly musty, unwashed smell. Maya found herself having to repress a flashback to the decay of Nyara City that the scent dredged up inside her.
As Jirel and Natasha were roughly led down the corridor, the freshly-oxygenated Grenk burst out in a fresh mocking cackle, as he allowed himself to gloat further over his victory.
"I do hope you like the place," the Ferengi mocked, gesturing at the walls of the corridor, "You're going to be here for a while, after all."
Jirel didn't respond. Natasha looked over at the silent Trill, and felt deeply worried by what she saw. One way or another, she had become very familiar with Jirel over the last year. And she had never seen him like this.
The wannabe space adventurer could be brash and cocky, or irritatingly casual and blasé, or insanely jealous, or surprisingly sympathetic, or any combination of the above, as he and his crew flew from one misadventure to the next.
But through all of that, he remained a man of positivity. For all of the dangerous situations that the Bounty and her crew had gotten into since Natasha had joined them, he had never looked like he was giving up, or accepting that there was no way out. Until now, it seemed. Because now, she couldn't see a trace of the happy-go-lucky adventurer anywhere. All she saw was a broken man. Which meant that, this time, Jirel didn't see the way out.
As they were marched around a corner, the corridor opened up into a cavernous room in front of them. And Natasha began to feel that she didn't see a way out either.
The room was dominated by a fenced-off area in the middle of the vast open space. Thick metal bars that extended all the way up to the roof of the habitation dome separated them from whatever, or whoever was inside.
Natasha silently theorised that this represented the accommodation for the mine's workers. And it looked far more like a prison than a barracks.
A shiver passed down her spine as she recalled what Maya had said about the operations that were run by this particular company on their journey here. How it used its workers like slaves. And looking at the heavy bars as they approached, it definitely felt more like incarceration than employment.
They were marched right up to a set of imposing doors by Grenk's bodyguards. One of the Miradorn, either Shel-Lan or Gel-Lan, tapped the controls, and seconds later the doors parted with a low hiss. Neither Natasha nor Jirel moved until they were shoved inside by the two armed Miradorn.
Natasha looked around the dank interior of their new accommodation. It was hard to make out details, with the lighting throughout the expanse of this area being kept low.
The interior of the caged area was a filthy expanse of metal flooring, covered in layers of dust and dirt from the boots of returning duridium miners. In the middle of the roughly circular space was a collection of small prefab rectangular cabins, which she surmised contained whatever passed for sleeping and recreation areas for the workers.
She could already see various grizzled forms peering out from the cabins, or standing elsewhere inside the caged-off area, checking out their new arrivals.
Through the meagre lighting, Natasha made out some of the faces of the other enslaved miners that must have fallen foul of Grenk at one point or another. And none of them filled her with any sense of confidence about their long-term survival.
There were several threatening Nausicaans, a couple of Breen in heavy refrigeration suits, at least one seven foot-tall Reman, a number of armour-plated individuals she couldn't recognise, and even what looked like a Gorn, with its compound eyes glinting in the half-light.
Only one thing seemed consistent across the sea of differing faces inside the cage.
None of them looked impressed by the two newcomers.
She forced herself to turn back, where Jirel was already staring back at Grenk, Maya and the two Miradorn. All four remained resolutely on the other side of the door.
"I'm sure your fellow employees will be over to introduce themselves very soon," the Ferengi cackled again, "But try not to get too many of those spots knocked off, Jirel. After all, your first shift starts soon, and Synergy Mining Enterprises expects its employees to work hard."
Jirel's fists clenched at his sides as he stared back at Grenk, but for the time being he remained silent, leaving the response to Natasha.
"This is how you treat your workers?" she said, gesturing around the confines of the cage, "This is slavery!"
"This is repayment," the Ferengi countered, "As I've told you, everyone here owes me a significant personal debt. And if you want to know how significant, I suggest you ask your friendly captain here to tell you how much latinum he's screwed me out of down the years."
He paused to shoot Jirel an especially pointed glare before he continued.
"But this is still a business arrangement, designed to ensure that everyone works hard enough until I'm satisfied that we're back on equal terms. If you stick to your shift rotation and make your quotas, there'll be no further punishment, and your free time will be your own."
Natasha scoffed, wondering if the Ferengi actually believed any of what he was saying himself.
"Still," Grenk added with a darker tone, "I should remind you that there is nowhere for you to run, even if you wanted to. You're all alone, with no hope of rescue, on a heavily-guarded planet in the middle of the galactic hinterlands. So try to behave. I'd hate for something to happen to you, Jirel…"
His mouth curved into a satisfied leer, displaying rows of sharp, spiky teeth, as he spelled out the depths of their incarceration.
As Grenk reached the end of his speech, Jirel finally spoke. But the tone of his voice was unlike anything that Natasha had heard before. The Trill's voice came out of his mouth laced with venom, directed squarely at the gloating Ferengi.
"Listen to me, Grenk," he hissed with naked anger, "You can stand there and gloat all you want, but you need to know this: I'm gonna get out of here, somehow. And when I do, I'm gonna find you. Wherever you are. And if what you're saying is true, and you've really hurt the others, or worse, then I'm gonna kill you. Both of you."
A fresh chill passed down Natasha's spine as the furious Jirel shot a glare from Grenk over to Maya, who met his gaze with a look of resigned understanding. She knew, as much as Natasha knew, that Jirel was being entirely serious. Which was a very rare occurrence indeed.
Despite the ferocity of his words, Grenk still looked comfortable. The two disruptors being trained on Jirel by the Miradorn bodyguards on either side of him seemed to be helping with that.
Still, Natasha noted something in their captor's eyes after the Trill's outburst. A flicker behind the confidence that suggested he was as perturbed by Jirel's uncharacteristic attack as the other witnesses to it were.
"Please, Jirel," the Ferengi replied, "Don't be like that. After all, I do intend to release you…one day."
With a final cackle, Grenk nodded at Shel-Lan (or possibly Gel-Lan), and the Miradorn tapped the controls again. As the heavy metal doors slowly closed, trapping them inside their new accommodation, Jirel kept his focus on Grenk and Maya. Staring them down with a look of rage.
As the doors locked in place, a fresh shiver passed down Natasha's spine.
Behind them, the welcoming committee was already massing.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The wooden deck rose and fell almost imperceptibly as the water gently lapped against the side of the hull. A gentle breeze wafted into the sails, keeping the vessel moving serenely across the sea, slowly but surely navigating towards its destination.
Sunek had no idea where he was.
Technically, he knew exactly where he was. He was on an ancient Vulcan sailing ship, crossing the vast expanse of the Voroth Sea. He'd been here many times before. But more accurately, he'd also never been here. And wherever he was, which was still something he had been unable to determine, he knew he definitely wasn't here right now.
This was a scene he pictured when meditating, a simple calming vista taught to Vulcan children when they were being introduced to the craft. Sunek had never been much for meditation, but recently he had taken to the practice more earnestly, to help quell some unsettling emotional episodes he had been having.
But he was pretty sure that, wherever he was, he wasn't meditating. Everything he could see, as best as he had been able to surmise, must just be a dream, or a hallucination, or some other randomly accessed memory that his subconscious brain was using to protect him from reality.
Which didn't exactly fill him with a great deal of comfort.
The last thing he remembered, the Bounty had been under attack. The ship was crippled. The battle was lost. Then something had exploded nearby. He had been thrown from his pilot's seat and had tumbled to the ground. His head had impacted on something heavy.
And then he was here. As much as he could be here without actually being here.
As he stood on the deck of the sailing ship and stared out across the gentle surface of the sea, he felt oddly serene. It wasn't a feeling he experienced very often. He began to idly wonder whether this was his mind's way of preparing him for death. Or even if he was already dead, and now he was here.
He quickly dismissed that idea. He'd never paid much attention during his studies back on Vulcan when matters had turned to existential discussions about the eternal nature of a Vulcan's katra, but he felt it was definitely a stretch to imagine that what awaited beyond one's corporeal existence just happened to be exactly the same as a meditation exercise for the under-fives.
"Sunek."
The voice caused him to refocus on the here and now. Or, at least, the vision of a here and now that was all around him. He couldn't tell exactly where it had come from. It was as if it had drifted past him on the breeze. Or floated up from the still waters of the sea.
But wherever it had come from, it unsettled him. Because he recognised the voice.
It was his voice.
"You can't ignore me forever, Sunek," his voice continued.
It was his voice, but it wasn't him. At least, that was how Sunek saw it. The voice belonged to someone he had become many months ago, during a run-in with his old friend Sokar and a group of former V'tosh ka'tur members. The Vulcans without logic.
Sokar, driven mad with a need for vengeance against the Vulcan society that had ostracised him, used violent mind melds to control his followers, and had done the same to Sunek, showing him upsetting scenes of his childhood, and turning him into something else. Something darker.
At the time, Sunek had referred to this new part of him as New Sunek. While New Sunek, who had just thought of himself as Sunek, had called him Old Sunek.
Either way, New Sunek had been in control of him, to the point that he almost ended up killing Jirel and assisting in a surprise attack on the Vulcan homeworld in a looted Romulan Warbird. But he had fought back in the nick of time, and New Sunek had been banished to the fringes of his memory. Where he had been doing his best to ignore him ever since.
But for some reason, given that he was here, and at the same time had no idea where here was, Sunek found that he was compelled to acknowledge him. He turned to the port side of the sailing ship, and looked at the storm on the horizon.
"There," his voice said, "That wasn't so hard, was it?"
Sunek licked his lips, for once a little unsure of himself. After all, he was about to have a conversation with a storm cloud. The manifestation of whatever rage Sokar had left inside him.
"This is really dumb," he sighed eventually, "What am I even supposed to call you?"
"Sunek."
"Nah," he said with a shake of his head, "Can't be that. I'm Sunek."
"So am I."
"Nuh huh. You're…well, I'm not really sure who you are. But you suck, I know that much."
"I've got as much of a right to be Sunek as you have," the storm cloud argued with an insistent rumble of thunder.
"Nope. I was here first. You're just some…weird mind meld thing Sokar gave me."
"Think that if you like, but I've always been here."
Despite the pleasant ambient conditions around the boat, Sunek felt a shiver pass through him. "Ok, I was right, this is really dumb," he grimaced, turning his back on the storm, "I'm gonna go back to ignoring you."
"Suit yourself. But I can tell you're gonna need me. Very, very soon…"
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
No answer.
"What?" Sunek persisted, keeping his back to the storm, "Now you're ignoring me?"
Still no answer. He stepped over to the rail around the edge of the boat and looked down at the clear water below. The fresh silence, which had seemed so peaceable to him before, now just seemed to irritate him. He now knew he wasn't alone, wherever he was. He had a talking cloud for company. A talking cloud that was ignoring him.
"Am I dead?" he asked eventually, breaking the silence.
"Psh," his own voice replied, "You think anything this boring happens when you're dead?"
"How would you know?"
A pause, accompanied by a low, enigmatic rumble of thunder in the distance.
"Well, no," the reply came eventually, "You're not dead. At least, not yet."
Sunek sighed and rested his chin on the rail in front of him. "So…what do I do now?"
"Well, I'd say the first thing you should do is…wake up."
The Vulcan lifted his head back up with a start, suddenly feeling something new as a result of that comment.
"What?"
"Wake up. Wake up, Sunek."
It was no longer his voice talking. It was someone else's. And all of a sudden, he remembered where he was.
The Voroth Sea faded from view. The storm still rumbling on the horizon.
'*'*'
'*'*'
"Sunek, wake up!"
Sunek's vision resolved into a twisted version of a very different, but still familiar location.
He was lying in a painful heap on the deck of the Bounty's cockpit. At least, what was left of it. The whole room was in darkness, aside from the remnants of a plasma fire smouldering in the far corner. All around lay the devastation caused by the orbital fight they had been entirely unprepared for. Consoles damaged, panels destroyed and the scent of burnt components tainted the air.
Just before he had been thrown clear of his pilot's console, the entire ship was in a death spiral towards the planet below, bereft of power and propulsion.
But somehow, they were still here.
"Sunek!"
With some effort, he forced himself to sit up, wiping a patch of green blood from his forehead, and looked in the direction of the familiar voice. Standing above him, his face smeared with blood as well, Klath's features contorted into a rare approximation of relief.
"You are alive," the Bounty's weapons chief grunted.
"Yeah, apparently," the Vulcan managed to cough, "Where the hell are we?"
Klath didn't immediately answer the question. Mainly because he wasn't sure himself.
With his Klingon reserves of strength, and a final sliver of battery power from the Bounty's failing systems that he had routed to the thrusters, he had managed to affect something approaching an emergency landing. It hadn't been graceful. But he had kept the ailing ship gliding for long enough to reach a relatively flat section of dusty grey rock below them, on the opposite side of the planet to Synergy Mining Enterprises and their operation.
Then, without the ability to even extend the dead vessel's landing struts, he had performed the mother of all bellyflops, the Bounty hitting the surface of the planet and skidding along for some time, gouging a path through the dust and dirt.
Klath had no idea how much further damage had been caused to the hull with the manoeuvre, but given the circumstances, the important thing was that they had landed.
Today had not been a good day to die.
Klath had then begun trying to revive the others, starting with Sunek. And in the interests of keeping the Vulcan as calm as possible, he elected not to tell him how close the sliding Bounty had gotten to a sheer vertical drop into a ravine. One that would have certainly destroyed the remains of the ship and them along with it.
So instead, satisfied that Sunek was alive, he turned and limped over to his more pressing concern at the rear of the cockpit.
"We have landed," he offered as an eventual answer to the Vulcan's question.
Sunek pushed himself up further, leaning back on the wall of the Bounty's cockpit next to an ugly tear in the metal caused by an exploded power line and checking himself for signs of injury.
He was immediately interrupted by a roar of exertion from Klath.
Sweat mixed with the blood on his forehead as he put all of his remaining strength into lifting a piece of shattered metal up from the deck of the ship. Gritting his teeth, he was just about able to manoeuvre the heavy slab up and away, before throwing it to one side with a clatter.
He turned back to see where he had revealed Denella's prone and twisted form where she had fallen during the final attack. The Orion engineer wasn't moving, her eyes were closed.
She seemed to have taken the force of one of the exploding conduits behind her station during the one-sided battle in orbit of the moon. Not only was she unconscious, but her right arm was twisted unnaturally around, and Klath could see that her oversized grey overalls were coated in blood on the same side, indicating significantly more severe injuries.
While his Klingon side felt instinctive pride at the possibility that his colleague may have died in battle, this was overridden by different feelings that had developed since he had left the Empire.
She was his friend. And, quite simply, he didn't want his friend to die.
"How is she?" Sunek coughed from behind him, with distinctly un-Sunekian concern.
Klath found himself holding his breath as he reached a heavy hand down to check for a pulse.
"She is alive," he reported with relief, "But badly injured."
He grabbed a battered tricorder from the debris and made an attempt to scan Denella's body for her most pressing internal injuries. After a moment, he grunted in frustration.
"The tricorder is not functioning correctly," he reported, "There is radiation around from damage to the ship's warp core, interfering with the scans."
"Neat," Sunek muttered.
Klath tossed the tricorder away and reached down to lift Denella up from the wreckage.
"We must get her to the medical bay and treat her as best as we can."
"Think we could all do with that," Sunek nodded with a grimace as he forced himself back to his feet with some effort, "But then what the hell do we do?"
Klath lifted Denella's body in his arms, and wasted no time in replying. He had been cultivating a battle plan, even as he had been ascertaining the status of the others. And nothing he had seen since then had given him cause to reconsider it.
"As soon as we get Denella stable, we must take whatever weapons and supplies that we can find and abandon ship."
As he stepped towards the cockpit's rear steps with Denella's unconscious form, Sunek stared at the back of the Klingon's head with incredulity.
"We abandon—? And what exactly do we do then, huh? What, you wanna go check into one of the local hotels? Spend some time sightseeing? Hey, maybe we can flag down a passing shuttle and see if they'll take us on a bar crawl?"
Klath suppressed a surge of irritation at the return of Sunek's sarcastic side, and began to descend the steps with Denella.
"I am well aware of our lack of options. But while I am still unsure who attacked us, they clearly meant to kill us. Which means that it will not be long before they come to finish us off."
"How can you possibly know that?"
"Because," the former member of the Klingon Defence Force grunted, "That is what I would do."
That was enough to convince Sunek that Klath was sincere about his plan, even if the Vulcan still had plenty of issues with it.
"And what about the Bounty?" he called after him as he disappeared from view down the steps.
"We may need to find…alternative transportation."
With no further sarcastic comments forthcoming from the pilot for the time being, the Klingon continued down the Bounty's darkened main corridor towards whatever remained of the ship's small medical bay.
But he didn't get very far.
As he got within sight of his destination, he suddenly heard the telltale sound of incoming transporter beams. And with Denella's prone form in his arms, he was completely powerless to do anything about it. He impotently watched on as the boarding party coalesced around him in the mangled remains of the Bounty's corridor.
He had been right. Their enemy had come to finish off the job.
Klath grunted unhappily as he saw the disruptors.
He hated being right all the time.
'*'*'
'*'*'
High in orbit above the Class-L planet, the Boundless Profit cut a serene form.
It was Grenk's pride and joy. His personal, and heavily armed, yacht. The armaments having been recently demonstrated to devastating effect on the Bounty.
It was a bespoke design, one that Grenk had ordered in a rare moment of indulgence. The hull was ovoid, roughly twice the length of the downed Ju'Day-type raider, and made of orange-tinged metal. Two stubby warp nacelles branched off from the rear, while the front section featured twin pincer-like prongs that housed the main disruptors.
And right now, it was the setting for an argument.
"This wasn't the deal!"
"You're in no position to tell me what the deal was."
Maya Ortega paced around Grenk's private quarters on the Boundless Profit, her face a picture of helpless anger. Grenk himself luxuriated on a cushioned sofa on one side of the room, idly popping tube grubs into his mouth from a bowl on a side table.
The rest of the room was extravagantly decorated. Most of the interior of the Boundless Profit was utilitarian, but Grenk had allowed himself further indulgence when it came to his own cabin. Priceless art from all across the quadrant hung from the walls, a huge king-size bed was draped in soft Tholian silk sheets, and the outer wall of the room was dominated by a huge panoramic window, giving a view of the planet below.
Maya paused in her pacing and stared down towards the featureless rock below. She found herself searching for a sight of the domed buildings that made up the mining operation, even though she knew they were too high for that to be visible.
And she also found herself thinking about Niki Kolak again. The face of the boy that she had known, and then betrayed, back on Turkana IV.
She hadn't thought about him for years. But something had caused all of that emotional baggage to surge forth from the depths of her memory. It wasn't entirely clear to her why these feelings would have returned now. There was nothing truly remarkable about her latest piece of treachery against Jirel and the others. It had been, as it always was for her, a practical decision in order for her to survive.
She had been caught out. And she had reacted on instinct. To save herself. But still, Niki Kolak's look of betrayal refused to disappear.
Forcing those thoughts away as best she could, she turned back to Grenk with renewed anger.
"You told me you wanted Jirel to repay you. That was all. Nothing about taking any of his crew, or attacking his ship!"
Grenk swallowed a mouthful of tube grubs and smacked his lips with satisfaction, before fixing her with an amused leer.
"Come now, my dear," he replied, "There's no way the same person who very nearly got away with the trick you tried to pull on me can also be this naive?"
Maya bristled at this, feeling it as a slight against her own skills. Time and again, from rumbling her profit-skimming trick in record time, to reneging on their original deal regarding Jirel, the astute Ferengi was bettering her.
He had even used her to plan out their strategy. She had meticulously worked to fake the details of her marriage, and of her equally fictitious husband and his employment with Synergy Mining Enterprises.
She had even come up with the overly elaborate means that she and the Bounty's crew would have to piece together the information they needed to reach this planet, putting them in just enough jeopardy for her to demonstrate her fictitious loyalty to them, and build Jirel's trust in her back up, only to betray him all over again.
She wasn't proud of it, but it was all second nature to her now. And she did what had to be done.
Except now, it seemed that Grenk's elaborate revenge on the Trill extended a lot further than she had anticipated. He had bettered her again.
"You could at least let Natasha go," she offered back at the grub-filled Ferengi, "The human woman he was with?"
Grenk tilted his head to one side, eyeing her up with new-found curiosity.
"You're also not in a position to ask for anything, And I must say, this is a very strange time for you to develop a conscience, my dear. You didn't seem to have a problem with any of this earlier."
"You didn't leave me with much choice," she reminded him, "And you told me that all you wanted was Jirel. Not the others."
"I had a…change of heart."
With that, the Ferengi cackled victoriously and shovelled another handful of tube grubs into his mouth, but Maya didn't flinch. When Grenk saw her reaction, he paused with slight irritation, realising that she wasn't going to stop bringing the mood down any time soon.
"Ugh," he tutted, "If you must know, I've decided to stick around for a while and send some of my men to…salvage that little ship of Jirel's. Whatever there is left to salvage."
"Why?"
"I thought it might make a pleasing trophy. I might even put it back into service, transporting the very ore that Jirel mines down there back to the processing plant. Just for a little extra humiliation. And, if the rest of his little crew have survived, we'll pick them up."
"And what then?" she pressed instead, suppressing a fresh and unexpected pang of guilt.
"Then, I'll put them to work as well. They can work off the debt to me together."
"And then you'll release them?"
Grenk's face creased back into an evil smile at this, sending a further wave of guilt through her body.
"Ah, still so naive," he chided her, "See, here's the funny thing. I always intend to release those that have wronged me after they pay off their debt. It's only fair, after all. But…somehow none of them ever make it that far. Such a shame."
Maya's expression hardened as Grenk's leer widened.
"Some of them work too hard in those harsh conditions. Some try to overpower the guards and need…disciplining. And sometimes they just start killing each other. Either way, it's a very happy coincidence. After all, there's a lot of people down there who are annoyed with me. Far safer that none of them get out."
Maya's left arm tensed and began to straighten as the sense of anger inside her grew. It was a move that Grenk instantly recognised.
"And before you think about pulling that little phaser out from up your sleeve, might I remind you that all Synergy Mining Enterprises facilities, including the Boundless Profit, are covered by a very strict weapon dampening field. Only SME-approved weapons will function."
Finding herself outflanked by the Ferengi yet again, she relaxed her arm and kept the antique type-1 phaser where it was. All of a sudden, she felt just as trapped as the miners down on the planet were. Literally in the middle of nowhere, with only Grenk and the Boundless Profit to transport her away from here. She didn't like the sensation of not being in control.
"Now," he continued, pushing the bowl of tube grubs away and reclining a little more on the sofa with a toothy leer, "I called you in here for a reason, didn't I?"
She stifled another grimace as she slowly paced over to the sofa and sat down, allowing him to nestle his head in her lap.
As Grenk got comfortable, he found himself giving serious consideration to having her killed. To tie up another potential loose end. But then, he was going to be stuck in orbit for a while as his men secured the wreckage of the Bounty. And she did have some other uses while he waited.
After all, she was very gifted at oo-mox.
As Maya began to reluctantly massage the Ferengi's bulbous ears, a victorious Grenk drifted off on a wave of pleasure.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Why was it always Nausicaans?
It was a question that had crossed Jirel's mind plenty of times in the past. Somehow, whenever it seemed like a situation couldn't get any worse, a Nausicaan arrived to undermine that belief.
This time, the question had crossed his mind moments before a hefty Nausicaan fist slammed into his stomach, doubling him over in pain and causing him to drop to the dirty ground in a miserable heap.
The welcoming committee wasn't proving especially welcoming.
As Jirel tried to recover from the latest punch to his bruised body, his burly opponent stepped closer, his armoured features contorting into the closest his species could get to a smile of satisfaction. Just as the Trill braced himself for another painful blow, a roar came from behind the Nausicaan.
Out of the shadows, Natasha raced up and put all of her strength into landing a two-handed punch to the back of the creature looming over Jirel. She felt a sharp flare of pain rushing up both arms as she made solid contact with the even more solid back of her opponent.
The Nausicaan barely flinched. But he was at least distracted enough to turn around to glare at her, giving Jirel enough of a respite to awkwardly clamber back to his feet.
As he caught his breath, he caught sight through the gloom of the baying audience that had gathered around the open part of the cage to watch the entertainment. He and Natasha had only just turned away from Grenk's gloating before several of the other captive miners had approached them. All of them had taken an immediate dislike to them. None more so than the tallest of the Nausicaans. And, as his species so often did, he chose to express that dislike as physically as possible.
It had become immediately obvious that none of the handful of twin Miradorn guards patrolling around the other side of the cage had any interest in breaking things up. Though the one positive was that, so far, none of the other equally terrifying miners had elected to make their little scuffle a tag team match. They were happy to form their audience.
As Jirel recovered, Natasha became the focus of the Nausicaan's dislike once again. She channelled the depths of her Academy combat training into evading two clumsy swings of the Nausicaan's burly arms, and then ducked and charged into her opponent's midriff with all her strength.
This tactic proved as pointless as the punches had. The Nausicaan didn't move an inch, and looked down at her as she wrapped her arms around his torso and grunted in vain with a trace of amusement, before grabbing her and tossing her aside like a rag doll.
As she struggled to get back to her feet and the Nausicaan stepped up with menace, Jirel pounced, slamming two ineffectual but distracting punches of his own into the hulking monster's back.
The Nausicaan, now growing more irritated, whirled around and grabbed the Trill around the neck with his hefty right hand, before lifting him clean off the ground and choking him.
As Jirel's eyes bulged and he gasped helplessly for air, Natasha forced herself to her feet and flung herself at the Nausicaan once again, trying in vain to do enough to cause him to release his grip on her ailing friend.
Just as Jirel's vision began to blur, another arm shot out from nowhere and grabbed the Nausicaan's wrist that was wrapped around Jirel's throat. From his vantage point, Jirel couldn't see who the arm belonged to, but they were strong enough for the Nausicaan to stop what he was doing.
With an unhappy grunt, the Nausicaan released Jirel. He dropped to the ground, gasping for air, and Natasha stumbled to his side to check on him.
"I'm ok," he managed to cough, only partly in truth, before they looked up at their saviour.
They saw the Nausicaan was now squaring off against a new opponent. For a moment, the two huge creatures sized each other up, apparently contemplating the merits of continuing the day's entertainment, but eventually the Nausicaan skulked back into the shadows, and the disappointed crowd dissipated.
Jirel and Natasha stared up at the unblinking face of the Gorn. The unlikeliest of rescuers stared back at them.
"Thanks," Natasha managed as she helped Jirel to his feet, "Glad someone's on our side in here."
The Gorn tilted his head curiously at them, his compound eyes looking them over.
"I am not on your side," he hissed, before nodding his head in the direction of the retreating Nausicaan, "I am simply not on his side. The more newcomers he kills, the more work that is left for the rest of us."
Any sense of reassurance the Gorn's intervention had cultivated vanished in an instant.
"I am tired of everyone fighting each other," he continued, "I have tried to tell them to save their strength for the real enemy, but some are too angry, or too stupid, to listen."
Jirel nodded, not needing any more details as to who the real enemy was in this instance. Then, he found himself stumbling slightly, wincing at a flare of pain from where one of the Nausicaan's fists had impacted on his stomach.
"You are damaged," the Gorn noted dispassionately.
"You have no idea," the Trill replied without a trace of mirth.
The Gorn didn't react to that comment, but he did gesture towards the meagre collection of prefab cabins in the middle of the cage, where most of the other miners had disappeared into.
"They provide us with medical supplies to treat any injuries we sustain," he hissed, "We are of no use to them if we cannot mine their duridium. You should repair yourselves. Before your first shift."
"Thanks," Natasha nodded, "I guess I'll get us both patched up. And I can check your…damage as well, if you want?"
She immediately saw the Gorn tense up at this. Her keen medical eye had spotted the telltale sign of injury to his right shoulder almost immediately. It was an old injury, but one that she would be more than capable of treating, as a way of thanking the Gorn for his intervention.
"I am not damaged," he replied.
As the lizard-like creature drew himself up to his full seven feet of height in response to her off-hand comment, she could now see that, in this sort of environment, it probably wasn't safe for someone like him to make any weakness apparent.
"My mistake," she corrected herself with a slight smile, before she leaned closer and muttered under her breath into the Gorn's right tympanum, "You have an old wound on your shoulder. Some of the damaged scales look to be infected. I can treat it later, if you want. Subtly. Nobody else would need to know anything."
The Gorn didn't react. Or at least, he didn't appear to. But she hoped that she had done enough to foster some sort of rudimentary understanding. She pulled away and steadied Jirel's weakened form as they prepared to walk off to find whatever passed for a medical bay in their current accommodation.
"You should know," the Gorn hissed, causing them to pause and look back, "You may face several more fights in here. Someone has…placed a price on your head."
Jirel and Natasha glanced at each other. She suppressed a shudder.
"Who would have done that?" she forced herself to ask.
"Knowing Grenk," Jirel muttered angrily, "Probably him. If someone kills us in here, he doesn't need to worry about me killing him when we get out of here."
Not for the first time, Natasha found herself troubled by the fact that Jirel seemed entirely serious about that.
"It is a substantial amount of latinum," the Gorn offered, "Whoever it is, they are quite eager to see that someone does the job."
Natasha now found herself troubled by a second thing in quick succession.
"What should we do?" she asked.
The Gorn considered this question for a long, thoughtful moment.
"You should hope that I never require the latinum."
With this, Natasha decided to stop counting the number of things that were troubling her.
'*'*'
'*'*'
Grenk had barely had time to fully immerse himself in an impromptu second round of oo-mox before he had been called away by one of his Miradorn guards.
As a result, he was in a particularly foul mood when he and Maya walked into the Boundless Profit's brig area. But, it had to be said, not in anywhere near as foul a mood as the individual in the main holding cell.
Klath stood proudly inside the cell, his teeth bared in the direction of the guards on the other side of the forcefield. Both had their disruptors raised, despite the forcefield, and one held their other arm at a contorted angle next to their body, clearly indicating a recent scuffle that he had come off the worse from.
As the doors opened, Klath switched his attention to the Ferengi and the human, but his aggressive stance didn't alter.
To Grenk's side, with the memory of the oo-mox session fresh in her mind, Maya absently wondered whether it was possible to have a lower opinion of herself than she did right now. That question was answered when she was hit by the full force of Klath's glower from the other side of the forcefield.
"You."
"Yes," Grenk cackled as he saw the familiar face, "Me."
But Klath's focus hadn't been on the Ferengi that had crossed paths with the Bounty many times before, as much of a surprise as his appearance might have been to him. His focus had been on the woman that had crossed their path even more often.
He had been a ball of unfocused rage ever since he had been surrounded down in the shattered corridor of the Bounty. Aside from the Miradorn guard's arm, his frustrations were yet to find a focal point.
Until Maya Ortega had walked in alongside Grenk.
For her part, Maya met Klath's gaze for a moment, then almost instantly looked down to the ground, even as the seemingly oblivious Grenk began to gloat.
"You know, I had rather assumed that my ship would have finished you off, my Klingon friend. But never mind. Perhaps your survival might make this little venture even more profitable for Synergy Mining Enterprises."
He rubbed his hands together with glee at this and let out a cackle.
"I won't use you in this operation," he continued, "I don't trust putting too many of you Bounty lot in one place together. But, there are more than enough opportunities for some hard labour out there in the galaxy for that burly Klingon frame of yours."
As Grenk cackled again, Klath just continued to stare at Maya. But he did take in the Ferengi's words, and the cogs of his brain began to turn over. Clearly this was the mastermind behind what had befallen them. Synergy Mining Enterprises was Grenk's company. His vessel had attacked the Bounty. And by the sound of it, he was holding Jirel and Natasha prisoner elsewhere.
And they had been led right into a trap. By Maya Ortega.
Given this new information, and his fired-up anger, Klath wanted to do a lot of things. Tearing through the forcefield and ripping Maya and Grenk limb from limb was top of his to-do list right now.
But, with more than a little reluctance, he knew there was a more pressing, and more practical concern.
"If you wish to…maximise your profit," he grunted, turning his attention to Grenk for the first time and gesturing to the bed of the holding cell behind him, "You must treat her."
Grenk and Maya both looked over to where the Klingon was pointing, and saw Denella's prone form for the first time. She lay on the bed, still unconscious and bloodied, after Klath had carried her all the way here from the transporter room.
"He's right," Maya urged the indifferent Ferengi, "She looks badly hurt."
Klath snapped another glare at the human woman from behind the forcefield.
"You pretend that you care?"
She took that latest blow to her battered conscience without a flinch, and pressed her case with Grenk, appealing to his dominant business side in lieu of his absent compassionate side.
"She's almost as strong as a Klingon, you know that. If you really want to maximise your profits from all of this, she'll be no good to you if she's dead."
Grenk mulled this over for a moment, eyeing up Klath with distrust.
"Psh," he replied eventually, "And as soon as my men lower the forcefield, that Klingon brute will charge right out of there. I'm not falling for that."
Again, that plan had been near the top of Klath's to-do list. But he looked back at the unmoving form of the Orion woman, and reluctantly shook his head.
"She needs urgent care. I will not intervene. You…have my word."
With that, Klath internalised his instinctive rage as best he could and stepped back to the far corner of the cell. Leaving a theoretically clear path for the Miradorn to recover Denella.
"Besides," he couldn't help but add, "Your men are armed. Do you not trust them to subdue me if I were to try and escape?"
This particular comment seemed to rile Grenk a little, and the Ferengi immediately pointed a stubby finger at the two guards.
"Get her out of the cell and patch her up. And if the Klingon takes one step out of line, kill him."
The two Miradorn nodded, while simultaneously sharing a telepathic moment of frustration at the way that their boss constantly barked his orders at them. With that, Grenk left them to do the dirty work, as he always did, and made for the door.
He stopped just as he reached it and looked back into the cell.
"By the way, what happened to that irritating Vulcan of yours?"
In truth, Klath had no idea. He hadn't seen Sunek since he had walked out of the broken cockpit of the Bounty and been surrounded by Grenk's boarding party. But at least he now knew that, whatever had become of the Bounty's pilot, he wasn't another of the Ferengi's prisoners. He was still at large somewhere.
So he mustered his best poker face as he looked back at Grenk through the forcefield, not missing a beat with his reply.
"He died in battle. It was glorious."
Next to Grenk, Maya looked shocked. But the Ferengi was unfazed.
"Huh," he grunted, "I bet it was."
Seemingly satisfied with that, the Ferengi completed his exit. Maya went to follow him, but at the last second turned back to the still-glowering Klingon.
"I am sorry," she offered, the words sounding hollow even to her, "For all of this. But you have to understand that I had to—"
"No," Klath cut in icily, "You did not."
She went to fire back a retort, but she found that she was out of ammunition. Because all she could think was that he was right. So, instead, she turned away and followed Grenk out of the room.
And as she walked, she felt Niki Kolak's face following her.