• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Star Trek: Bounty - 13 - "Something Bad Happened Today"

BountyTrek

BountyTrek

Commander
Red Shirt
Hello. :)

The Bounty returns again. Both to resolve the dubious cliffhanger from the previous episode and to wrap up the first ‘season’ of stories. Will it get another season? Only NBC knows the answer.
Six seasons and a movie!
Unsurprisingly, this episode follows directly on from the previous one. So it might be useful to read that one first! There are some other callbacks and continuations of previous plots, which I’ll try to call out as we go, but it might also be an idea to refresh your memory of Star Trek: Bounty - 3 - "The Other Kind of Vulcan Hello" as well. No spoilers, just advice. :)

As ever, I hope you enjoy reading. And if you don’t want to read, that’s cool too. :D

Star Trek: Bounty is a slightly off-kilter series set in the Trek universe that focuses on the adventures of the ragtag crew of a small civilian ship, who do what they can to get by in the Alpha Quadrant. They're not exactly Starfleet spec, but they try to keep on the right side of the moral line where they can.

The story so far:
Star Trek: Bounty - 1 - "Where Neither Moth nor Rust Destroys"
Star Trek: Bounty - 2 - "Be All My Sins Forgiven"
Star Trek: Bounty - 3 - "The Other Kind of Vulcan Hello"
Star Trek: Bounty - 4 - "It’s Not Easy Being Green"
Star Trek: Bounty - 5 - "Once Upon a Time in the Beta Quadrant"
Star Trek: Bounty - 6 - "He Feedeth Among the Lilies”
Star Trek: Bounty - 7 - “One Character in Search of an Exit”
Star Trek: Bounty - 8 - "A Klingon, a Vulcan and a Slave Girl Walk into a Bar"
Star Trek: Bounty - 9 - "But One Man of Her Crew Alive"
Star Trek: Bounty - 10 - "Take Arms Against a Sea of Tribbles"
Star Trek: Bounty - 11 - "Love, but With More Aggressive Overtones"
Star Trek: Bounty - 12 - "The Woman Who Cried, Among Other Things, Wolf"

=============================================================

Star Trek: Bounty
1.13
“Something Bad Happened Today”

Prologue

Nyara City, Turkana IV Colony
Stardate 28578.9

The two figures sprinted along the dirty alleyway.

All the while, they could hear the sets of heavy footfalls behind them getting louder. However quickly they tried to go, their adversaries could always move faster.

Night had fallen across Nyara City, which added to the fears that both of them were keenly feeling. The crumbling buildings and unfriendly surroundings of the settlement seemed even more terrifying in the darkness, as if danger could come from anywhere.

Which, in truth, it usually did on Turkana IV.

They raced on, keeping pace with each other as their scrawny, underdeveloped legs propelled them forwards through a simple survival instinct, if nothing else. All around them was the smell of decay. It was inescapable here. As long as either of the pair of fleeing forms could remember, that stench had hung in the air. But by now, they were used to it. It didn’t distract them from their desperate attempt to flee.

They turned and scampered down the next alley. Both of them knew that if they could get themselves far enough ahead of their pursuers through the filthy maze of backstreets, they could give them the slip. At least for long enough to find an old service tunnel or sewage pipe. Once they were underground, despite the further stench and misery they knew they would find down there, then they could get away entirely.

And they could take their treasure with them.

One of the two fleeing children, a scrawny girl with lank, greasy hair, took a second to glance down at the prize in her hand. The reason that she and her friend were now running for their lives. She felt her undernourished stomach rumble at the mere sight of such a delicious bounty, but there was no time to think about anything other than escaping right now.

The boy by her side suddenly grabbed her bony arm and pulled her down another alley to their right, forcing her to switch her focus back to their getaway.

“Leggit here now, friend Maya,” he called out breathlessly to her in the broken language of the Turkana IV youth.

Maya Ortega didn’t stop to think, allowing herself to be pulled along even as her spindly legs cried out for rest. She glanced at the boy at her side. And despite the peril they were in, she felt a little reassured.

Niki Kolak, the equally scrawny youth with a shock of dirty brown hair, was her friend. Her only friend. Among all the despair that Turkana IV had provided them with, the two of them had formed a rudimentary alliance in order to survive. They looked out for each other, night and day. Because in the depths of Nyara City, nobody else would.

So, as he guided her along, Maya felt a crumb of comfort. They would get through this.

And then they both came to a skittering halt, stopping on the spot in horror. Ahead of them, the entire route down the alley was obstructed by a pile of twisted metal and rubble. One of the buildings on the left side of the street had finally succumbed to the decay that had been festering inside, and collapsed.

And their escape route was well and truly blocked.

They both whirled around to backtrack and find another path to safety. But it was too late. At the end of the alley behind them stood half a dozen bigger children.

Like Maya and Niki, their pursuers were dressed in little more than dirty rags. Most of Turkana IV’s street children had never so much as heard of a sonic shower, let alone seen one. And clean clothing was a farcical luxury.

But unlike the two of them, their pursuers were armed.

Their weapons were simplistic. Little more than improvised clubs or cudgels. But they were brutally effective, and the sight of them being wielded by the older children was enough to make Maya and Niki’s eyes widen like saucers.

Maya felt her entire body shaking. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation, especially when the cold winter nights settled in across Nyara City. But this time, it wasn’t the temperature that was causing her to shiver. It was fear.

To her side, Niki grasped her hand a little tighter. She glanced over at him and saw the sad look of resignation on his face.

“No way now, friend Maya,” he whispered, “No ‘scape.”

She fought back a tear and kept hold of his hand as the leader of the rabble stepped forwards. He was a tall, pale-skinned teenager with an ugly scar running down his left cheek.

For the time being, the other teenagers held back, gently beating their clubs into their open palms in a show of force. The leader himself was unarmed, but he cracked his knuckles as he approached in a manner that suggested he didn’t need one. The disconcerting sound of his joints cracking and popping sent a fresh shiver down Maya’s spine.

As the boy reached where Maya and Niki stood holding hands, he shot out a tendril-like arm and grabbed her other arm by the wrist. She squealed in pain, as he twisted her arm and increased the pressure, until she was forced to unclasp her hand and relinquish her treasure.

It revealed a squashed, expired ration bar. The wrapper had split open before anyone had happened upon it, and there was visible mould growing on the exposed corner of the dirty brown substance inside. Just about anywhere else in the galaxy, it was disease-riddled garbage. But for the hungry children on the streets of Nyara City, it was a priceless banquet.

“That ours,” the scarred leader of the gang grunted at Maya, “Innit our chow-chow.”

He punctuated his broken speech by pointing to his mouth with his other hand, in an oddly child-like way for his teenage years.

She tried to formulate a response, but none was forthcoming. He was right, after all. The food, such that it was, belonged to the older gang. But neither Maya nor Niki had eaten for days, and when they saw their chance to grab the bar and make a run for it, they had taken it.

But unfortunately for them, they had quite literally run down a blind alley. And now the consequences of their actions loomed large in front of them. Angry and armed to the teeth.

The leader of the gang grabbed the rotten snack from her, shoving it roughly into the pocket of his tattered shorts. Then, he glared at her more intently and cracked his knuckles again, inducing a fresh wince in her terrified features.

They clearly wanted more than just their morsel of food back. They wanted to teach them a lesson.

“You took chow-chow?” he asked her.

Maya’s mind raced. She had taken the snack. In fact, the whole thing had been her idea. And now she was going to be beaten, and possibly killed, for it.

Then, something inside her was triggered. The survival instincts that she had honed in her time growing up amongst the ruins of the Turkana IV colony morphed into something new. A ruthless streak she never realised she had suddenly blossomed. She saw that she might have a way out of all of this. And this new part of her didn’t waste any time in taking it.

She and Niki Kolak had promised to always stick together. To face the horrors of the failed colony as one. And they had both stuck to that solemn promise.

Until now.

Before she fully comprehended what she was doing, Maya let go of Niki’s hand. Then, she looked up at the angry teenager and shook her head, before pointing at the boy next to her.

“He took,” she whispered, the lie nearly getting caught in her throat, “Then gave me.”

The older boy turned his attention to Niki. Maya glanced over as well, and felt her heart break as she saw the look of terrified betrayal on his face.

To add to her shame, Niki made no attempt to argue back. To try and save himself from the beating she had just sentenced him to, or try to take her down with him. Instead, he remained loyal to their promise, even as she tore it up in front of him.

The gang’s leader pushed her to one side. She stumbled on the debris under her feet and fell to the floor. The leader advanced on Niki, as the other gang members closed in, clubs and cudgels at the ready.

Maya scrambled to her feet and looked away, even as the first blows began to ring out in the alley, accompanied by squeals of pain from Niki.

As the beating continued, she ran back the way they had come. Nobody bothered to chase her. They were all busy having their fun. So she ran. Even as Niki’s wails echoed behind her and tears stung her eyes, she ran on through the back streets.

She was sure the bigger boys wouldn’t go as far as killing him. At least, not deliberately. But she knew that whatever happened, she would never see Niki Kolak again. She would have to leave Nyara City and strike out alone into the wilderness beyond the ruined city’s walls to search for another settlement.

But as she ran on, and the sounds from the merciless beating grew quieter, she found that she could live with all of that. Suddenly, none of that seemed to matter.

What mattered was that she had done what she needed to do to survive. And although Maya Ortega had no way of knowing it, that would be the most important lesson she would ever learn.

So she ran on through the decaying streets, leaving Niki behind.

And she never looked back.

****************************

Synergy Mining Enterprises Mining Operation, Sector 374
Present Day

Maya Ortega watched as the armed Miradorn goons grabbed the two figures. She had done it again. Done what she needed to do in order to survive.

But it wasn’t supposed to play out like this.

Her plan to skim some latinum off the profits of her new employers at Synergy Mining Enterprises had been foolproof, using her access to their financial systems to patiently accumulate a modest sum of capital. Utilising skills she had perfected over a lifetime lived on the edge of legality.

And it worked. For a while. But unfortunately, she had underestimated the new owner of Synergy Mining Enterprises. The Ferengi called Grenk had nurtured his lack of trust over his own lifetime spent jumping from one shady business deal to the next. And he had noticed her profit-skimming scam immediately.

Like everyone who crossed him, Grenk demanded that she work off what she took from him as punishment. Back-breaking slave labour in his mines until the ruthless Ferengi considered the debt settled. Whenever that may have been.

But then, as she had done so many times, all the way back to Nyara City, Maya found a way to survive. She found a deal to strike with Grenk that had been equally beneficial to the Ferengi. A way to get his hands on a group of people who had wronged him far more than she had. And she delivered them right to him. The crew of the Bounty.

She had survived. And yet, this time, she felt no sense of satisfaction.

She watched as Jirel Vincent, the unjoined Trill captain of the Bounty, her former business partner and lover, was hauled past her towards the duridium mine in the valley below. Along with him, Natasha Kinsen, the human doctor of the Bounty, was dragged along by the other Miradorn.

In orbit, Grenk had claimed that the Bounty itself, and the rest of her crew, had been destroyed. An act that had not been part of the deal.

As Jirel was dragged past her, he locked eyes with her. And she saw the same look of betrayal that she had seen on the face of Niki Kolak. A look that she had seen on countless faces over the years as she had lied and scammed her way through the galaxy.

She had never forgotten the look on Niki’s face. And she was sure now that she would never forget the look on Jirel’s.

As she and Grenk turned to follow the prisoners down into the valley, she forced her to remind herself what this had all been for. She had survived. And that was all that mattered.

Wasn’t it?
 
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.

* - A story told in the first episode of Star Trek: Bounty.
 
Part One (Cont'd)

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.

* - Check out Star Trek: Bounty - 3 - "The Other Kind of Vulcan Hello" for the full details of the stormcloud's origin story, and there have been other references and plot points built off the fallout from that, particularly in Star Trek: Bounty - 5 - "Once Upon a Time in the Beta Quadrant".
 
Part One (Cont'd)

“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.
 
Part One (Cont'd)

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.
 
Part One (Cont'd)

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.

End of Part One
 
admiralelm11 said:
I'm behind on reading this series. Is there a place where I can download them and read them at my leisure, please? You know, for those moments when I'm taking a break from my own literary endeavors. :)
Click to expand...

Not sure if there’s a download option (I can’t see one anyway, and the entire site has been riddled with technical issues recently), but I have been posting each story on FF.net concurrently with my posts here, which might make them a slightly easier read:
https://www.fanfiction.net/u/12360133/BountyTrek

I also started posting them up on Ad Astra when that popped into my field of vision, but I’m considerably further behind with that particular archive:
https://www.adastrafanfic.com/series/47

Keep meaning to put together a dedicated website for them, even if it’s just a Google Site or something. Maybe that’s a job for between ‘seasons’. :crazy:
 
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.

* - One of the sub-plots of Star Trek: Bounty - 2 - "Be All My Sins Forgiven".
 
Part Two (Cont'd)

“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…”
 
That rumble of thunder, reminiscent of the opening credits for the Reacher series... I can hear Kirk from ST5 - "I don't want someone to take away my pain... I need my pain!"

Thanks!! rbs
 
Part Two (Cont'd)

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.
 
Totally with Klath on this one. Too bad that he let slip Sunek's survival, but Maya doesn't really have much to work with there. interesting continued character development... Thanks!! rbs
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

BountyTrek
Star Trek: Bounty - 204 - "Acquire, Evade, Retreat, Confront"
2
Replies
29
Views
826
BountyTrek
BountyTrek
McCovey Cove
Star Trek: Delta, Stars, & Anchor #1: "Esprit de Corps" (WIP)
2
Replies
23
Views
1K
BrotherBenny
BrotherBenny
BountyTrek
Star Trek: Bounty - 203 - "Three Minutes to Three Minutes to Three Minutes to Midnight"
2 3
Replies
56
Views
4K
BountyTrek
BountyTrek
Oddish
Non-Trek Fic - Poetic Justice (Skyrim)
Replies
0
Views
287
Oddish
Oddish
A
Star Trek Ambassador - Episode 1 - Twice Born, Twice Torn - 40 years after the occupation Rugal Da'Par returns to Bajor, Cardassia's first Ambassador
Replies
18
Views
798
Robert Bruce Scott
Robert Bruce Scott
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top