Part One
The Bounty hung serenely in orbit above the fluffy white clouds of the fourth planet in the Tranix system.
Denella stood in the cargo bay with Klath, Natasha and Sunek and watched in satisfaction as the final stack of cargo containers disappeared in the familiar shimmer of the transporter.
They weren't exactly the most polished crew, clad in mismatched outfits from Denella's oversized overalls, to Klath and Natasha's plain tunics and trousers, to Sunek's garish Hawaiian shirt. But right now, they were at least offering something adjacent to a professional front in their latest delivery.
And it seemed to be working, judging by the satisfied expression on the face of the fifth member of the group in the cargo bay.
"Ah," the blue-skinned Bolian, a colony administrator called Pludd, nodded in satisfaction as he checked a small comms device in his hand, "Storage Coordinator Rast confirms beam-down and receipt of all cargo. Excellent work."
Denella stepped over to Pludd and proffered a small padd of her own with a friendly smile. A smile she had practised for hours to ensure it gave the right amount of warmth without being misinterpreted as anything else. She often found that her Orion appearance had the frustrating tendency to allow other species to misconstrue any friendliness on her part.
"Glad we could help," she replied, "And if you just sign here to accept the latinum transfer, minus the cost of the supplies we requested, then we'll be on our way."
The officious Pludd offered no sign that he was misinterpreting her actions, and merely offered a cheery smile of his own through well-fed cheeks as he took the padd and signed the transfer with the flourish of a long-serving administrator.
"On behalf of everyone down on Tranix colony, thank you. And it would give me a great honour if you would all join me and the colony administration team for lunch before you depart."
Denella maintained her not-too-friendly smile, while trying to picture the precise scowl that had broken out across Klath's face at the suggestion of a long lunch on a Bolian colony in the company of half a dozen officious administrators.
"That's a…very generous offer," she effortlessly lied, "But I'm afraid we're on a very tight schedule. Still, next time you've got some cargo that needs moving, please bear us in mind. We're just a subspace call away."
Pludd nodded at this offer with continued good grace, but didn't seem entirely ready to roll the red carpet back in just yet.
"Is there anything I can do to make you reconsider? The chefs in our staff canteen have just whipped up the most delicious Spiceroot Soufflé."
"Hey, buddy," Sunek suddenly piped up from the end of the line, irritation clear in his tone, "She said no, ok? Take the hint already, you stupid—"
"Sunek!" Denella barked, a little too sharply.
Her snapped response, coupled with a dark glare from Klath, was enough to shut the Vulcan up. But not before there was a clear souring of Administrator Pludd's expression.
"Like I said," Denella continued, doing her best to recover the situation, "We're, um, just a subspace call away."
"Yes," the Bolian mused, eyeing up the rude Vulcan in the garish shirt with trepidation, "Well, we use a lot of vessels for our logistical needs. But if we need your services again, we'll be in touch…"
On that significantly less positive note, Pludd signalled to the colony on his comms device, and was transported back down to the planet below.
Denella maintained her merely-friendly-and-nothing-more smile, to the point of nearly straining several facial muscles, until the Bolian had completely vanished, then spun around on her heels to offer Sunek an entirely smile-free expression.
"Good work. Really good work, Sunek. Keep up that level of customer retention, and you're in line for a hell of a bonus this quarter."
"Ah, he'll get over it," the Vulcan snorted back with an air of defiance, "He said he'd be in touch, didn't he?"
"Yeah," Natasha chimed in, "Sounded like the second they've got an old waste reclamator that needs scrubbing clean, they'll be right onto us."
"Well, it wasn't just me. You should've seen the face Klath made when he asked us to beam down for lunch."
"I did not—" Klath began to protest.
"You did," Denella correctly guessed, "But at least you kept quiet, unlike our Salesperson of the Month over there."
Growing visibly more irritated, Sunek emitted an audible scoff.
"Ok, you know what? I don't have to stand here and listen to this—"
"You're right, you don't," Denella interjected again, "In fact, you can head back up to the cockpit and set course for that trade fair on Gavis VI."
For a second, it looked like the Bounty's pilot was going to push things even further. But in the end, he relented. Suppressing the storm inside him a little deeper in the process.
"Fine," he muttered, before stalking off towards the cockpit.
The other three watched him leave, none of them missing the fact that their often unpredictable pilot was behaving even more unpredictably than usual.
'*'*'
'*'*'
A short time later, the Bounty was back underway, warping towards their next appointment.
In the dining area, Denella sat at the single table, a set of padds spread out in front of her and a half-eaten plate of food to her side.
She set down the padd in her hand, detailing the potential list of running repairs she had time to complete during their journey to the trade fair and leaned back in her chair with a tired sigh, closing her eyes and massaging her temples as she suppressed a yawn.
"Do you ever sleep?"
The Orion opened her eyes to see Natasha standing in the doorway with a lop-sided smile on her face. She walked over to the Bounty's single replicator and tapped the controls, as Denella straightened up in her seat again.
"I sleep just fine," she replied defensively, "Once I'm finished working."
Natasha sat down opposite her and pushed a freshly replicated mug through the sea of padds.
"Haliian moss tea," she offered by way of explanation, "Recently voted the most calming beverage in the Alpha Quadrant by a team of top nutritional specialists. Apparently."
Denella stared down at the murky dark green liquid in the mug with a dubious expression.
"Are you trying to poison me?"
"I'm trying to help you relax. You've been working a hell of a lot these last few weeks."
"We all have," Denella countered, "And I thought we were glad to be so busy?"
"You're working harder than any of us. Don't try to deny it. So either drink the tea and take a break, or else. Don't forget that, whatever the vessel, a ship's doctor is the only one qualified to override the captain."
"I'm not the captain."
Natasha shook her head patiently, almost amused by the other woman's modesty.
"Are you kidding? You've basically turned the Bounty into a profit-making entity in a couple of months. All while pretty much refitting the whole ship and dealing with our resident Vulcan manchild. Whatever you wanna call yourself, you're in charge."
A little uncomfortable with this unexpected level of praise, Denella absently picked up the mug and swirled the tea around inside, still coming no closer to actually drinking it.
"But," Natasha continued, "As the Bounty's sole medical professional, it's my responsibility to look after the crew's health. And it's not good for you to be working two jobs like this. Engineer and captain. That's too much without a break here and there."
Denella set the mug back down and shook her head.
"It's fine, honestly. Besides, this is just temporary, until…"
She tailed off as she locked eyes with the other woman across the table. Neither of them were quite willing to mention their absent colleague by name.
Nobody onboard had seen or heard from Jirel Vincent, the unjoined Trill and erstwhile de facto captain of the Bounty, since he had disappeared following the tragic events in Sector 374.
After so many foolhardy adventures around the cosmos, the death of his former business partner and occasional lover Maya Ortega at the hands of Grenk had apparently been too much for him to process. He had walked away from the Bounty, leaving without even saying goodbye. And despite their best efforts, the rest of the Bounty's crew had been unable to find where he had gone. By the time they realised what had happened, he simply vanished into the galaxy.
Natasha suppressed the unexpectedly strong wave of emotion that bubbled up inside when she thought about the missing Trill, and ignored the complicated feelings she had built up for him over the past year to focus on her more immediate concern.
"Temporary or not," she persisted to Denella, "You're tired. We're all tired. And there's no harm in taking a break."
The Orion still wasn't convinced, gesturing to the padds in front of her.
"There's too much to do to take a break. Maintenance schedules, a list of vendors on Gavis VI to check through, plus a bunch of…personal messages to reply to."
"Ah, I see," Natasha responded with a suddenly impish look, "Would those be from Juna Erami?"
Denella shot a frustrated glare across the table. Juna Erami's name was indeed on some of the messages in front of her. The Bajoran woman she had struck up a rudimentary friendship with on Kervala Prime, who was proving very determined in her efforts to stay in touch.
But those messages remained unread. She wasn't quite ready to deal with those.
"No, and shut up," she retorted at the human woman who seemed determined to live vicariously through the Orion's personal life, "Actually, this one was from…Sarina."
As Denella picked up the padd containing her personal correspondence and focused on one of the messages in particular, Natasha nodded back in recognition.
Sarina was Denella's childhood friend from the Orion colony on Orpheus IV. Nearly a year ago, she had rescued Sarina from deep inside the Syndicate, and rescued the Bounty's crew to boot. After that, they had ferried Sarina to a safe haven on a Betazoid colony on Corvin III.
"We've kept in touch over subspace," Denella continued, "But I keep meaning to visit her. Apparently she's got herself a job. She asked the Betazoid staff if she could help look after the gardens of the facility."
"Well, there we go," Natasha nodded triumphantly, "Sounds like the perfect place for us to take a nice little break."
The Orion fixed the human with a more patient look.
"No, I can't. Even if I really am in charge around here, that doesn't make the Bounty my personal shuttle to go off running errands whenever I feel like it. We've all got a job to do."
"And we've all been doing that job really well these last few weeks. We've got latinum in the bank, we've got a ship that's fully functional for a change, and this trade fair isn't all that important. Plus, we're your friends. And trust me, neither Klath nor Sunek are going to say no to some R&R."
Denella looked up from the padd at the kind, but no less determined expression on the face of the Bounty's medic.
"Just so I'm clear, if I don't agree to this, are you gonna force us to go there anyway?"
"No. I'm gonna force Sunek to take us to the Federation colony on Tassik II. Then I'm going to book us both a day at the fifty-acre spa complex they have there. Full body massages, long soaks in the geothermal heating pools, and apparently the eight hour herbal mask treatments take years off your complexion."
"I'd genuinely hate every second of that," the dirt-streaked Orion pointed out.
"I know," Natasha replied with a victorious smile.
Sensing that the Bounty would be making a course change towards Corvin III very soon, she stood up and walked to the door. Once she got there, she forced herself to turn back with one final piece of advice.
"Oh, and…it might not be easy, but you really do need to start seeing that you're in charge. This is your ship now, ok? Not Jirel's."
Despite her friendly expression, the mere mention of his name seemed to ratchet up the tension in the room a notch.
But after a moment, Denella mustered a nod of understanding back.
"I take it that means you don't think he's coming back?" she added quietly, reasoning that, as long as they were on the subject, it was finally time to ask that question.
Natasha searched for an answer.
In truth, she was surprised how much Jirel's disappearance had affected her. Regardless of what their latest drunken night together on Kervala Prime, just before Maya's appearance, had meant, and that was something she still wasn't willing to explore too deeply, she felt like she had lost a friend. Perhaps, given the sudden end to her time in Starfleet, and her nomadic life on the Bounty since then, her closest friend. Which was an odd thought.
And which also explained why she had been making an extra effort to forge closer bonds with the remaining crew.
And, with her other options being the pathologically monosyllabic Klath and the pathologically everything else Sunek, also explained why the majority of that effort had gone into forming a closer friendship with Denella herself.
Dismissing all of that from her mind, she tried to muster an answer to the Bounty's new captain's question.
"I'm not sure if he is coming back or not. I really don't. I guess I just hope that, wherever Jirel is now, he's doing ok…"
'*'*'
'*'*'
The blazing light burned into Jirel's eyes with coruscating force.
Suppressing the lancing pain that stabbed into his temples, he forced himself to keep them open and tried desperately to focus on anything. But all he could make out through the agony was a blur of half-shapes.
Have I gone blind?
He dismissed the thought immediately. Of course he hadn't gone blind. It was just a hangover. A really bad hangover. Yet another really bad hangover. But still, just a hangover.
Putting as much focus as he could into his throbbing brain, he managed to start making out objects in the fuzzy blur.
A plain metal nightstand.
An empty bottle of Andorian brandy.
A hastily discarded pair of underwear that, based on the delicate lace material they were made from, he was pretty sure didn't belong to him.
Each new object brought a fraction of a semblance of a memory of where he was, and how he had gotten here. Growing in confidence in his new-found ability to recognise simple shapes, he decided to really push the capacity of his hungover brain to the limit.
He decided to figure out what time it was.
He stared intently at the chronometer on the wall of the room and tried to make sense of what he could make out. His aching brain worked through the conundrum in stages, firstly refreshing itself on the concept of numbers, then recalling how to visually identify individual numbers, and finally putting them together into an appropriate time format.
By the end of that surprisingly lengthy process, Jirel had at least managed to ascertain that he had overslept.
With a groan that seemed to emanate from the depths of his soul, he forced himself up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, before awkwardly beginning the hunt for some more appropriate clothing than the underwear draped across his nightstand.
"Well, good morning sunshine," a voice purred from the other side of the bed.
He didn't bother to turn around in acknowledgement as he pulled on his clothes. Everything that was happening, from the hangover, to the discarded items on the nightstand, to the mysterious voice, was all part of what had become his somewhat pathetic morning routine.
"Yeah," he grunted, "Morning."
Eventually, as he pulled a slightly stained top over his head, he turned back to the voice's owner where she reclined under the bedsheets and smiled back at him.
He didn't recognise her, didn't know her name or even her species. Whoever she was, she had a lustrous head of long red hair, piercing blue eyes and a delicate rim of bony protrusions around her cranium.
As his foggy brain tried in vain to retrieve any further information about her whatsoever, she looked him up and down and pouted.
"Aw. Getting dressed already? I thought we might at least work up an appetite before breakfast?"
Jirel forced a wan smile onto his face, struggling to recall the last time he had actually managed a genuine expression of happiness.
"Yeah, listen, um…" he began, leaving a long enough pause to accidentally make it clear that he had tried and entirely failed to recall her name, "This was fun, ok? But I'm not—I mean, it might be best if you…got going."
In what he assumed was at least a vague display of chivalry given the situation, he idly picked up the underwear from the nightstand and tossed them over to her.
"And, um, once you're ready, we can square up whatever I owe you."
Around halfway through that follow-up sentence, Jirel's struggling brain managed to proffer the controversial theory that this particular encounter might not have been of the transactional nature. And perhaps it might be a good idea to ascertain a few more details about that one way or the other before saying what he was in the middle of saying.
But by the time Jirel's slow-moving brain had fully conveyed that message to Jirel's fast-moving mouth, he had already reached the end of what he was saying.
And even in its current alcohol-affected state, it didn't take Jirel's brain to pick up the signs that he might have got entirely the wrong idea.
'*'*'
'*'*'
As the young Kobheerian patiently worked away in the apartment's small kitchenette area, he heard a series of telltale events that confirmed that his roommate was awake. And was already managing to get up to no good.
He heard the unmistakable sound of a violent slap being delivered to someone's face, immediately followed by the sound of a bedroom door opening and high-heeled footsteps emerging.
He looked up from the stovetop in time to see an elegant red-haired woman stalking angrily towards the front door, dressed in a long fur-lined coat. She didn't even bother to acknowledge him before she paced straight out the door.
A few moments later, the bedroom door opened again, and an altogether less hurried set of footsteps plodded out.
"Another redhead, huh?" the Kobheerian grunted in amusement, "You definitely have a type."
Jirel felt his hackles rise on hearing that phrase, his groggy head filling with images of a woman that had used that off-hand phrase with him before. A woman he'd been working hard to try and forget.
"Shut up, R'Asc," he grouched without amusement.
"I take it that means I don't need to remember her name either?"
"Guess not," Jirel shrugged, "I didn't."
If his old self could have heard his dismissive tone, he would have been shocked. But Jirel had slowly but surely become so accustomed to the emptiness of his new routine that he could barely muster anything other than a feeling of indifference towards the latest woman he had just driven away.
"Still, it's a shame she had to leave so soon," the Kobheerian continued as he began plating up the breakfast he had been slaving over, "I made enough for three this morning."
Jirel stumbled into one of the high metal chairs at the countertop that delineated the kitchenette from the rest of the small shared living area, just as R'Asc pushed one of the plates in front of him.
He looked down at the blackened mess on the plate, then back up at the expectant eyes of his wannabe chef of a roommate.
"It's that old Earth recipe you told me about," he explained excitedly, "Bacon and eggs."
Jirel had indeed told him about bacon and eggs. A comfort food the Trill had been raised on by his adoptive parents back in Colorado, and one that he still liked to return to whenever he needed an old-fashioned morning boost. But even from the most optimistic of viewpoints, nothing on the plate in front of him resembled either bacon or eggs.
He pushed the plate away and gestured to the replicator on the wall.
"Why didn't you just use that?"
"I did," R'Asc replied with visible confusion, "I replicated the ingredients, and then cooked them. Just like you should do. Everything tastes better this way, trust me."
Jirel gave the charred remains on his plate another glance. And not for the first time since he had left the Bounty behind, wondered what the hell he was doing with his life.
He knew he had to leave that life behind. After the death of Maya Ortega, just as she seemed to have finally turned over the leaf he had wanted her to for years, everything was too raw for him to deal with. He had to get as far away from his life on the Bounty.
And so he had set off, leaving most of the latinum in the Bounty's accounts behind to cover the repairs that the ship so badly needed. What little latinum he had taken hadn't lasted as long as he had hoped. In fact, he had only made it a few sectors before he had washed up at the Mivara II spaceport virtually penniless. And he had been here ever since.
It hadn't taken long for him to find some employment, working shifts behind the bar of one of the port's more downtrodden casinos.
And after a few weeks spent hopping from bed to bed of whichever woman his dwindling charm could impress at the end of the night, he finally struck up a more professional living arrangement with R'Asc, one of the casino's regulars.
And he had struck it up before he had realised how terrible a cook the Kobheerian was, and how nevertheless insistent he was about doing all the cooking.
Oblivious to his latest culinary disaster, R'Asc sat opposite Jirel and began to loudly crunch a blackened piece of bacon from his own plate.
"You know," he offered between crunches, pointing at him with the sad strip of ruined meat, "You really do bring a hell of a lot of women back here."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
There was none of his usual cockiness or humour in Jirel's reply. He'd left all that behind as well, along with everything else.
"Mmm," the Kobheerian mused as he scooped up a mouthful of carbonised eggs, "And each one with red hair…"
The Trill's head shot up to flash R'Asc a sudden angry glare. Silently telling him to back off from this particular topic of conversation.
"Say no more," R'Asc offered, holding his hands up in surrender, "Just…still trying to figure you out, that's all."
Jirel's scowl didn't lessen, despite the Kobheerian's concession.
It didn't take a psychology degree for him to note that particular physical similarity between all the women he had been with on Mivara II and the woman he had lost. But he'd stopped trying to figure out if he was trying to remind himself of her, or if he was trying to replace her.
He even found himself wondering whether his feelings for Natasha Kinsen, which had been kindled almost as soon as he had met her, had merely been an extension of his hangups with Maya. Whether he was projecting those unresolved issues onto some of Natasha's surface-level physical similarities.
He prayed he wasn't quite that shallow and pathetic, and that there was something deeper to those feelings, but he couldn't tell for sure any more.
His life had spiralled into such levels of incoherence that he wasn't really sure of anything.
He didn't really feel anything any more. Whatever he did, and whoever he did it with, his senses were dulled and deadened. Ever since he had seen Maya's life ebb away, and he had walked away from the Bounty, he had felt nothing.
"Still," R'Asc continued, oblivious to the ongoing mental turmoil inside the Trill's head, "Even if I can't figure you out, we make a pretty good team, don't we?"
"Do we?"
"Absolutely. We're perfect roommates. We don't judge each other. We give each other space. And we always provide for each other, hmm?"
To underline that last point, R'Asc gently pushed Jirel's untouched plate of cauterised breakfast back towards him.
Recognising the telltale signs of the Kobheerian angling for a favour, Jirel sighed and looked up at his roommate's leathery, slightly bulbous head.
"What do you want, R'Asc?"
The Kobheerian mustered an entirely unconvincing display of shock.
"What sort of question is that? A man can't cook his roommate a delicious meal and pay him a few compliments without being accused of—"
"Just cut to the chase," Jirel sighed again, his aching head not taking kindly to the amateur theatrics on display.
R'Asc looked a little annoyed that his carefully rehearsed display had come across so poorly, and took another crunch out of a charred strip of bacon.
"Well," he began, "If you must know, I'm a little…short of funds right now—"
"Nope."
"But I'd just need a few slips of latinum! I've got a really good feeling about tonight. That Dabo wheel has to start paying out sometime, and if you could just—"
"Still nope."
Jirel stood and ambled into the kitchenette area, rifling through the limited storage space for something to quell his hangover. Undeterred, R'Asc turned around to continue his plea.
"You're really going to be like that? You're not gonna cover me?"
"R'Asc, I've covered you plenty this month already. I even paid your half of the rent up front, which you still owe me for, by the way. And I'm not exactly rolling in latinum myself. That job doesn't bring in much cash, y'know?"
"It might bring in a bit more if you didn't drink half your paycheck away," the Kobheerian muttered bitterly.
Jirel whirled around to confront that accusation, but stopped short when he realised that the bottle of Risian whiskey in his hand, the one he had just fished out of storage in pursuit of something to cut through the hangover, might undermine his point slightly.
"Point is," he managed instead, reluctantly putting the bottle back into the cupboard, "I can't cover you for another gambling spree. You need some more latinum, take on some extra shifts down at the repair yard."
R'Asc studied his roommate's face, and saw from his cold gaze that there was no chance of any movement on this matter.
"Huh," he tutted eventually, "I guess I thought you liked helping people out."
Jirel grimaced deeper and fended off the fresh desire to reach back for the whiskey bottle.
"I used to," he offered back, gesturing around the confines of his new living space, "And look where it got me."
With that, he stalked back out of the kitchen area, forcing a fresh image of Maya from his mind as he did so.
Leaving R'Asc, and three portions of ruined bacon and eggs, behind.
'*'*'
'*'*'
The force of the hug threatened to squeeze the air out of Denella's lungs, as the shorter Orion wrapped her arms tightly around her.
It was safe to say that Sarina was delighted with the surprise visit.
The two Orions hugged it out in the shadow of the Bounty, which had set down on the landing area in front of the Betazoid recuperation facility on Corvin III that they had brought Sarina to following her rescue from the Syndicate.
A respectful distance back, Natasha smiled warmly at the reunion, while Klath and Sunek appeared significantly less invested. A short distance away on the other side of the hugging forms stood a trio of Betazoids, a welcoming party from the facility.
"I'm so glad you came," Sarina beamed as she finally broke the hug with all of Denella's ribs still mercifully intact.
"I wish I could have come sooner," Denella replied, wiping away a happy tear.
Sarina looked much better than the last time she had seen her. Back then, she had still been meek and frightened, her head usually bowed in unwarranted deference to anyone and everyone. Just as the Syndicate trained you to do. Just as Denella remembered she had done, when the Bounty had first rescued her.
But now, Sarina cut a far stronger and more confident figure. And the same smile Denella recalled from their childhood together on Orpheus IV was now almost constantly on her features.
Sarina looked at her friend's face, still a little unfamiliar to her after so long apart, and studied the tired expression with a tinge of concern. The sixth sense of a friendship nurtured since childhood cut through everything else.
"Are you ok, Denella?"
Denella paused and considered expanding on everything that had happened since her last proper talk with Sarina over subspace. About Juna Erami. And Maya Ortega. And Jirel.
But it felt like too public a forum to get into all that right now, and she was suddenly aware of the small but attentive audience that was gathered around them.
"We've…been through a lot," she managed, "But yeah, I'm ok now."
It wasn't quite the whole truth. But it would do for the time being.
Seemingly satisfied with that answer, the younger Orion's gaze moved from her friend and onto the rest of the Bounty's crew, and then up to the Bounty itself.
"Perhaps," one of the Betazoid women offered in a gentle, lilting tone of voice, "You might want to show your friend the work you've done in the gardens, Sarina?"
Denella recognised the woman from their last visit. The head of the facility, a kindly middle-aged Betazoid called Palia Rani. She didn't recognise the two younger women that flanked her, but both smiled equally peaceably at her, displaying the twinkling ink-black eyes of their species.
"She has transformed the place," the left-side Betazoid added.
"It's not much really," Sarina insisted, looking a little sheepish all of a sudden, "But I just wanted to try and give something back. Everyone here has been so kind."
"I'd love to see what you've done," Denella nodded supportively, before she gestured over to Klath, "And…actually, I've got something for you."
Having been given his cue, the Klingon stepped forward a little stiffly and proffered the small container in his hand to Denella with a curious amount of ceremony. Denella accepted the container, before holding it out to Sarina, who gazed inside.
"Oh my," she gasped, "Is that…?"
Inside the container was a single small flower, deep orange in colour. It was a flower that Sarina instantly recognised.
And one that was, technically speaking, in the process of being re-gifted. Originally, it had been given to Denella by Juna Erami. A flower that, as far as Denella knew, only grew on Orpheus IV, her home that was now under Syndicate control.
When she had first seen it, she had been as overwhelmed as Sarina was now.
"It is," Denella nodded happily, "It was a gift. From…a friend. But it's the only one I've got, and it's too dangerous to keep it on the Bounty."
She recalled how the plant had nearly died during the Bounty's crash-landing in Sector 374. Only a lot of luck had allowed it to survive.
"So," she continued, "I thought maybe you could try and cultivate it here? Make the place feel a little more like home? You were always better with living things, after all. If it hasn't got a warp core, I'm hopeless."
Sarina looked back up at Denella, and seemed a little reluctant to accept this unexpected gift, for reasons the older Orion couldn't immediately discern.
From his vantage point, Klath's eagle eye noted that she seemed to be looking past Denella and the container, and off into the distance at something. But when he glanced behind him, all he could see was the parked-up Bounty.
"Maybe…I could try," Sarina managed eventually, "But first, I should show you the gardens."
Denella nodded and smiled, keeping hold of the container with the flower for now. Sarina looked at the colder form of Klath with an earnest expression.
"Would you like to see the gardens as well, Klath?"
The Klingon felt every pair of eyes on the landing pad suddenly directed at him. Denella caught his gaze and subtly nodded her head in a way that suggested that he should do the sociable thing. Which wasn't really the thing he wanted to do in this circumstance.
But, as was so often the way, his need to respect his friendship with the Orion engineer overrode his own wants in the situation.
"I would be honoured," he managed, with all the enthusiasm of someone who had just been given two tickets to the finals of a Zakdorn debating tournament.
Seemingly oblivious to the Klingon's rather equivocal stance on her plan, Sarina's face lit up and led Denella and the scowling Klath away.
"And what about you two?" Palia Rani calmly asked Natasha and Sunek, "Would you care for a tour of the facility?"
Natasha couldn't help but feel a little conflicted.
On the one hand, this rather formal response to the arrival of the Bounty by Palia and her helpers was as close to a diplomatic Starfleet welcome she had experienced for some time. And a not insignificant part of her was enjoying it.
But on the other hand, she knew all too well how many emotional scars she had lurking just under the surface, doubtless prominent in the vicinity of so many telepaths. And she felt undeniably uncomfortable.
She hadn't always been nervous around telepaths. In fact, during her wilder days as a fresh-faced Starfleet ensign, she had indulged in an intense holiday fling with a Betazoid civilian during a spot of shore leave on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet. But she also knew from that experience how innately a Betazoid could pick up on a human's thoughts and feelings.
At the time, she had understandably only seen the positives, having never before been able to instantly direct a man in her bed to just the right area at just the right time simply by thinking it.
Back then, though, she had been carrying a lot fewer scars.
"Don't worry," the younger Betazoid to Palia's left offered in a peaceful tone, "We don't probe minds without consent."
"Then how did you know I was worried?" Natasha couldn't help but fire back.
If any of the trio of Betazoid women were put out by the slight accusatory tone her question carried, none of them let it show.
"Please excuse my colleague," Palia offered, "This is Lyssa Halan. One of our newest volunteers here at the centre. But she is right. Humanoids give off emotions that we cannot help but pick up on, but anything deeper than that must be a consenting act."
"I know," Natasha replied, a little friendlier, "I worked with a few Betazoids in Starfleet. And, um, in some other capacities."
She ignored the knowing grin Sunek gave her as she awkwardly made that comment. Thanks to a mind meld he had carried out with her in an attempt to help free her from the effects of a psychoactive plant venom last year, the Vulcan was well aware of those memories of hers.
She just prayed he was still abiding by his promise to keep that secret to himself.
"Still," she continued, "A tour seems a little…formal? Would it be alright for me to just wander by myself for a while?"
"Of course," Palia nodded back, "Our home is your home. But I do hope you will all join us for dinner this evening."
"We'd love to."
With diplomacy restored, Palia and the other two Betazoids bowed their heads slightly and started back towards the main complex of the facility.
As Lyssa passed Sunek, she couldn't help but stop and stare at him with her dark eyes.
"Um," the Vulcan offered, a tad unnerved at the intensity of this sudden attention, "Hi?"
For a second, Lyssa continued to stare, as if in a trance. Then, she shook her head slightly to recover her senses and looked a little sheepish.
"My apologies. It's just, as Palia said, we cannot help but pick up on emotions. And your emotions are…fascinating."
"Well," Sunek shrugged, "I've never had any complaints before."
Lyssa seemed to fall back into a trance for a moment, before Palia gently led her away by the arm, offering an apologetic smile back to the Vulcan.
"As I said, Lyssa is new. And perhaps a little…earnest."
Natasha felt a tad concerned as she watched the little scene play out. Then she noted the lop-sided grin emerging on Sunek's face as Palia and Lyssa walked away.
"Was it just me," he couldn't help but ask through his grin, "Or was she totally coming on to me?"
Natasha's concerns melted away in the time it took her to organise an eye roll back in his direction.
"It's just you, Sunek," she sighed, "It's always just you…"
'*'*'
'*'*'
Sarina had definitely been busy.
Denella stood at the top of a set of steps that led down to the gardens on the opposite side of the facility to where the Bounty had parked, and couldn't help but gasp in awe.
Stretching out in front of her was a picturesque landscape garden, with a succession of flower beds criss-crossed with interconnecting stone paths that radiated out from a central pavilion area like the spokes of a wheel. Each bed was filled with a carefully coordinated type and colour of flowering plant, coordinated to produce a symmetrical pattern around the whole wheel.
Only a few empty spots remained, spaced out around the spokes and clearly waiting for their own turn to be populated with a new plant species.
Around the perimeter stood sections of tall wooden trellises, each one adorned with blossoming climbing plants covering every colour of the rainbow. And in each corner, where the circular flower beds met the square fencing, were lush patches of green turf.
"Wow," Denella managed, "Sarina, it's incredible."
Sarina flinched slightly under the weight of the compliment, then looked over to Klath where he stood, his arms folded across his chest as he viewed the scene distinctly more dispassionately than the two Orions.
Realising that they were again anticipating a response from him, the Klingon scanned the garden again. But he saw little more than a poorly fortified location whose low-lying terrain and lack of obvious cover would make it near-impossible to defend from an approaching enemy force.
Suspecting that this wasn't the sort of observation they were expecting, he reluctantly grasped for something more appropriate.
"It is…colourful," he settled on eventually.
"Don't mind him," Denella chimed in with a wink, "I don't think Klingons are big on botany."
"On the contrary," Klath retorted, "The Gardens of Morvok on Qo'noS are a glorious sight to behold. Field after field of toxic thornweed, each vine with spines as big and sharp as a kut'luch. And each spine piercing the skull of a fallen enemy of the Empire."
And, Klath thought to himself privately, also designed to make the entire area defendable by any reasonably-sized battalion from a surprise ground assault. Just as a garden should be.
Denella shook her head in amusement, and Sarina suppressed a giggle, before she led the pair of visitors down the steps and onto one of the stone paths.
"Either way you're both being too kind," she offered modestly, "I'm just trying to be useful. The colony provided me with all the tools and resources I needed, and I've been learning from the computers as well. About soil preparation, how different species interact, and so much more."
She stopped and crouched down in front of a particular bed filled with several plants consisting of rich green oval leaves and topped with spectacularly colourful flowers, each one spanning the colour palette from a warming yellow centre out to a deep purple at the tips of their petals.
"These are Deltan lilacs," she explained, "They bloom all year round, the same flowers. And they change colour with the seasons, regardless of what planet you cultivate them on."
"They're beautiful," Denella noted.
Klath maintained a respectful silence. Personally, he would have preferred something with more spines. But to each their own.
"They were the first non-Betazoid species I cultivated," Sarina explained, "The first four attempts all died off, until I did some research and figured out the right way to approximate the nutrient content of the soil back on Delta IV. They're so sensitive that even replicated soil didn't work."
She paused for a moment, and looked back at the container in Denella's hand.
"If I only have one specimen to work with, I'd worry that the same thing might happen to that…"
"Hey," Denella offered supportively, gesturing around the gardens, "Look what you've done here. You're an expert. You'll get it right."
This didn't seem to entirely settle the younger Orion, but she mustered a nod before she stood back up and quickly changed the subject again.
"I have to show you the best part," she smiled, grabbing Denella's free hand and rushing off towards the central pavilion.
Momentarily left behind, Klath wondered whether there was a respectful way he could extricate himself from the tour at this point. But again, his loyalty to Denella overrode his other instincts, and he slowly strode after the two women, trying not to feel too much like a loyal pet targ following its master as he did so.
As he reached the pavilion, he found Denella and Sarina standing by a curious tall plant with blue leaves connected to improbably thin and spindly stems. From a distance, it looked as though the leaves were floating.
The two women were gently touching the leaves, which, in return, were emitting a faint humming sound.
"A Talosian singing plant," Sarina explained enthusiastically as Klath arrived, "This sapling arrived on a transport two months ago. Palia ordered it specially. When it's fully grown, she hopes to cultivate more with cuttings from this one, and decorate the whole pavilion."
"Bet the thornweed in the Gardens of Morvok don't sing to you, do then?" Denella added with a grin, as she touched another leaf to produce a subtly different harmony.
"They do not," Klath conceded, "But the designers did ensure that, when the prevailing wind blows across the gardens, the noise sounds like the screams of a thousand enemies, slain on the battlefields of history."
Sarina didn't entirely know what to do with that. Denella just kept smiling.
"Well," she added, as she looked around at the tranquillity of their surroundings again, "Enemy screams notwithstanding, this'll definitely be the perfect place for a bit of R&R…"
'*'*'
'*'*'
Deep inside the main administration building of the Corvin III facility, Lyssa Halen scurried along the corridor.
She turned a corner and slowed her pace. With an affected casual glance behind her to ensure she was alone, she silently ducked through a nondescript doorway to her right.
Inside, she found herself in one of the maintenance stores of the facility. Tall shelving units filled with crates of supplies ran in orderly rows across the expansive interior, with wide walkways between them. She crept on, passing row after row of shelving. She already knew where they were waiting without having to call out to them.
She could sense their worries.
I wasn't followed, she thought as she walked.
Are you sure?
To a non-Betazoid, the new voice suddenly arriving in one's mind would have been a singularly unnerving experience. But Lyssa had been experiencing the power of telepathic conversation even when she was still in her mother's womb. Throughout the final trimester, Betazoid mothers often telepathically sung to their unborn children to soothe them.
And so, the voice inside her head was nothing unusual to her.
Yes, she thought back, I'm always sure.
She reached the ninth row of shelving and rounded the corner. The owner of the voice, along with three other young Betazoid women, stood waiting for her.
What is it then, another voice in her head, which Lyssa instantly recognised as belonging to the tall Azaria Ida, thought.
Yes, the original voice - from a jet-black haired woman named Jenna Puri - chimed in. What couldn't wait for our next meeting?
Lyssa didn't need to be able to sense emotions to tell that she had annoyed the other women with this impromptu request to speak with them. They all knew that there was a significant risk to each of their little trysts.
Not only the risk of being followed, or otherwise detected by one of the other helpers. Which was mitigated somewhat by them meeting deep in the maintenance section, well away from the prying minds of Palia Rani and the other senior helpers. But also the risk that they would fail to keep their thoughts and feelings about the meetings fenced off from the others when they returned. Each of them had to take care with every stray thought and shared emotion not to let anything slip through.
When every one of your co-workers could literally read your mind, it was that much harder to keep a secret.
But still, Lyssa was sure this was worth the risk of the unplanned meeting.
You all need to feel this, she thought insistently at the sea of unconvinced expressions in front of her, I promise you, you'll understand.
With that, she closed her eyes and focused hard, separating the part of herself that she was now so eager to share with the group. And then she let the emotions flow.
Each of the other women couldn't help but gasp as the intense feelings swamped them. It was enough of a rush to make two of them buckle at the knees, steadying themselves on the shelves next to them as their breathing grew faster.
Together, the coven of five women bathed in the flood of raw, conflicting, uncontrolled emotions, feasting on it ravenously like starving beasts tearing into the flesh of a fresh kill.
And then, just like that, the flood dissipated. The snapshot that Lyssa had been able to replicate fizzled out all too soon. Each of them, even Lyssa herself, were left frustrated and wanting, panting slightly on the verge of emotional euphoria.
Where? Azaria greedily asked.
Who? Jenna followed up quickly.
Lyssa pursed her lips into a knowing smile, happy that she now had the group's full attention.
One of the visitors, she explained silently. A Vulcan.
A Vulcan? One of the other women repeated in shock.
Yes, she continued. And as you just felt, I've never touched emotions quite like those that lurk inside of him.
The other four women all responded with overlapping thoughts, each as captivated as the other.
So intense.
So chaotic.
So powerful.
So…emotional.
Yes, Lyssa responded with satisfaction. All of that, and much more. I think we can say he will suit our needs.
There was complete and silent agreement between the rest of the group on that point. If the small morsel they had just tasted was anything to go by, he was exactly what they were looking for.
He would be perfect.
He would also die, of course. But that couldn't be helped.
The important thing was that they were in for one hell of a feast.