Part Two (Cont'd)
“Seriously, I’m fine.”
Natasha sighed. There were few things more irritating to a medical professional than a patient that resolutely refused to be honest with them.
Back in a starship sickbay, or even the Bounty’s significantly less well equipped medical bay, she could have cut through the lies with a quick tricorder scan. But in their current predicament, she couldn’t avail herself of such a tool. She was forced to turn to her trusty old intuition.
She checked Jirel’s glazed eyes and took his pulse for the third time since they had returned to the caged-off habitation area at the end of their first mining shift.
“You’re not fine,” she countered patiently, “I know you too well to listen to that sort of thing. So please drop the space adventurer act and just focus on eating that.”
Jirel reluctantly picked up a musty grey nutrient bar and took a bite. The ration packs were all that seemed to pass for sustenance for the hungry miners in Synergy Mining Enterprise’s venture. As the Trill’s bravado was briefly silenced with a mouthful of tasteless chewy mush, Natasha continued her improvised diagnosis.
“You’re definitely suffering from oxygen deprivation.”
“Huh,” Jirel offered, “Can’t think why.”
“I’m serious,” she persisted, “Your reactions are down, and we’ve been back inside for more than an hour now, but your pulse is still abnormal. It’s not your fault that your metabolism is even less suited to all this than mine is.”
“I’m fine—”
Jirel stopped as he saw her knowing glare. He conceded to himself that he couldn’t lie to her.
“I’m not fine,” he sighed as he swallowed the bite of nutrient bar, “My head’s pounding, I feel weak as hell, and towards the end of our time out there, my vision went seriously blurry. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought we were back on the tequila.”
She raised an eyebrow at this mention of their recent liaison after more than a few shots of that particular liquor*, but kept her demeanour professional. Her concern for her patient was overriding any desire she might have had for some reassuring back-and-forth banter. Almost.
“Well,” she sighed as she took a step back, “Just like my last encounter with tequila, there’s gonna be some pretty terrible consequences if this carries on.”
She noted the slightly wry look cross Jirel’s tired face at this comment, and looked quizzically down at him.
“Sorry,” he sighed, “That just reminded me of something Maya said to me. Back when we were in my cabin—”
He stopped himself, awkwardly remembering how Natasha had walked into the scene the morning after his and Maya’s little tryst. Natasha, for her part, mustered a smile.
“Getting reacquainted?”
“Let’s go with that,” Jirel nodded with a weak grimace, “She said…that was why I kept ending up going along with whatever her new scheme was. I wanted the thrill, the excitement, and I wanted the lack of consequences. I guess there’s definitely been some consequences this time.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” she offered, as he took another bite from the nutrient bar, “So, I’m guessing all that talk from this Grenk character back there was true? You really do owe him this much latinum?”
“Grenk exaggerates,” Jirel countered defensively.
“But you did leave him marooned on the planet of the Soraxx?”
The Trill chewed the mouthful for a moment or two as he mulled over his answer.
“He exaggerates most of the time,” he went with eventually, “I guess the truth is…for all the work you’ve done over the last year building up our consciences, we didn’t always have so much of that before you came along.”
“I didn’t realise that was what I was doing.”
“No need to be modest,” the Trill smiled, “You’re good at it.”
They were suddenly interrupted by approaching footsteps towards the corner bunk in a secluded area of the rudimentary barracks where they had hobbled over to after their shift. They both felt their defences rise, then immediately relax when they saw an unerringly familiar face approaching them.
The Gorn stopped in front of Natasha and held out a small metal box in his hand.
“Further medical supplies,” he hissed by way of explanation, “As I said, it is important you are able to keep mining.”
“Thank you,” Natasha replied with genuine warmth as she took the box, before gesturing to the spot next to Jirel on the bottom bunk, “If you wanna take a seat, I can take a look at that…damage now. While we’re alone.”
For a moment, the Gorn froze, his unblinking eyes taking some time to process this offer. Then, after a quick check to verify that they were indeed alone, he awkwardly sat down.
Natasha opened the kit and grabbed a small scanner and a hypospray, before starting to triage the extent of the Gorn’s injury.
“So, what are you in for, anyway?” Jirel asked as casually as he could to the huge lizard creature.
He received back little more than a curious and slightly disconcerting stare, as Natasha deftly waved the scanner across the damaged shoulder of the Gorn.
“Or,” the Trill continued after a long pause, “We could…talk about something else?”
The Gorn remained mute, even as Natasha reached back into the kit for a packet of medical sealant.
“Personally,” she offered as she worked in her best medical bedside manner voice, “I find that treating damage goes easier when I know my patient’s name, at least?”
To both her and Jirel’s surprise, this was the thing that got their new acquaintance to talk to them.
“Struss,” the Gorn hissed, “My name is Struss.”
“Well, Struss,” Natasha replied, as she finished off with the sealant and grabbed the hypospray and a vial of analgesic medicine, “I’m gonna give you something for the pain, but I’ve cleaned the infection, and that sealant should hold for long enough for the scales underneath to fully harden.”
She pressed the hypospray to the Gorn’s neck and stepped back with a satisfied nod. Struss slowly rotated his shoulder a few times to test it out, and seemed happy enough with the result. He stood up and silently began to walk away. Natasha shrugged at Jirel with a knowing look as it seemed there was no note of thanks coming her way.
She paused mid-shrug as the Gorn stopped and turned back.
“My brother.”
Natasha and Jirel both turned back to where Struss was standing, both looking a little confused. It was now their turn to offer silence back to their companion.
“You asked why I was here,” the Gorn continued, “I am here because of my brother.”
“I…don’t understand,” Natasha managed eventually.
“He became…indebted to the Ferengi who owns this place. After trying to set up a transport firm in the Medulla cluster with a substantial loan he was unable to repay, after the Ferengi changed the conditions at short notice. When it came time for his punishment, I took his place.”
“Why? Jirel opted to ask the obvious question.
“I am the strongest hatchling from my nest. He would not have survived here. Taking his place was the honourable thing to do.”
Despite everything, Jirel couldn’t help but give Natasha a wry smile.
“Remind you of anyone?”
He suppressed the rush of angst that followed his comment, at the reminder that they still had no idea what had become of Klath. Or Denella or Sunek. Aside from Grenk’s chilling suggestion that the Bounty had been shot out of the sky.
Natasha clocked the slight flinch from the Trill, and suppressed her own worries as she forced as friendly a smile as she could in the direction of the Gorn.
“Well,” she managed, “It’s nice to meet someone honourable in here.”
Struss nodded, then rotated his repaired shoulder again.
“Likewise,” he hissed back.
With that, he turned and walked away, leaving them alone again. Natasha watched him leave, then turned back to continue triaging her other patient. And she felt a modicum of hope inside her.
At the very least, they had made a friend.
****************************
“Completely unacceptable!”
Shel-Lan and Gel-Lan stood patiently next to each other inside Grenk’s private dining area on the Boundless Profit, and took the latest tirade from their boss on their collective chin.
The Ferengi paced around in fuming annoyance, ignoring the first course of his evening repast, a Ferengi crab cake with a side of spiced lokar beans that was slowly going cold on the dining table. His focus was entirely on his head bodyguards.
“I told your men to disable Jirel’s ship, that was all! It would have been so much easier to retrieve once it was merely drifting in space!”
On the opposite side of the table, Grenk’s reluctant dining companion for the evening picked at her own appetiser with a silver fork. Maya Ortega’s focus was elsewhere.
“And now this whole salvage operation is taking five times as long! And costing me ten times as much! Well, I tell you one thing, this is going to come out of your paycheques, you hear?”
Shel-Lan and Gel-Lan were Grenk’s most trusted and longest-serving bodyguards. They had been dealing with the irritable Ferengi for longer than any of their fellow Miradorn. So they were used to getting this sort of humiliation from their boss.
But they were also starting to get sick of it.
The two Miradorn kept their attention on Grenk, but internally, they used their sibling telepathy to share their more candid thoughts about this latest rant.
Shel-Lan was quick to remind Gel-Lan how much worse things had gotten recently. Ever since the Bounty had disabled their shuttle and left them marooned on a deserted planet earlier in the year, life in Grenk’s employ had taken a turn for the worse.
They had painstakingly repaired the crashed shuttle, while Grenk had barked orders and eaten his way through most of the emergency rations. They had thanklessly protected him from myriad spacefaring dangers as the tiny shuttle had limped back to port, and had then tirelessly worked to prepare and fit out the Boundless Profit, Grenk’s newest mode of transport.
And on top of all of that, Shel-Lan added, since Grenk had acquired Synergy Mining Enterprises, they had been working double duty. They were now both Grenk’s personal bodyguards, and also head supervisors for the mining projects themselves. And Grenk had never considered appropriately remunerating them for their extra workload.
“...I don’t care how long it takes for you to work this off, you’re paying me back!...”
Gel-Lan silently agreed with his brother’s points, but suggested that there was little they could do about it. He was their boss. And while the pay wasn’t generous, they still needed the latinum.
“...I pay you too much as it is! And your performance these last few weeks has been especially sub-par, don’t think I haven’t noticed!...”
Shel-Lan chided his brother for being too faithful, and told him what he had read in the unauthorised biography of Grand Nagus Rom. About the time that Rom, as a younger man, had formed the Guild of Restaurant and Casino Owners, and unionised his fellow employees to fight for better working conditions against his own thankless boss†.
“...And your men are getting too sloppy! This isn’t the first time they’ve screwed up lately!...”
Gel-Lan countered that there was no Miradorn word for ‘union’. And even if there were, their loyalty to their boss should override such selfishness. It was the Miradorn way, after all. Loyalty to one’s brother, or to one’s job.
“...Am I making myself clear?”
The silent and somewhat circular debate was brought to an abrupt pause when both Miradorn realised that Grenk was addressing them, and that neither of them had been following what the Ferengi had been saying.
After a few seconds of staring at their silent, blank expressions, Grenk snapped again.
“I said: I expect you both down on the planet within the hour to oversee the next mining shift. Am I making myself clear?”
This time, he had made himself clear. And even though they were supposed to be off-duty until tomorrow, they both merely nodded their affirmation at this latest humbling order and exited the dining room. As they walked out, Shel-Lan silently promised Gel-Lan that he would read the relevant passages from Rom’s biography to him later this evening.
With an angry sigh, Grenk turned back to the table and took his seat opposite Maya, trying to allow himself to focus on the more pleasurable aspects of the evening he’d planned.
While he had been ranting on, Maya had barely touched her own food. She had only loosely been following along with the details of the rant. Instead, she had found that, once again, her mind had been filled with thoughts of Niki Kolak.
“You should ease off on them, you know,” she idly noted as Grenk sat down, “It might backfire on you one of these days…”
“I don’t need business advice from you,” he scowled back, as he pushed away his crab cake in frustration, “What I require is for you to fetch me a hot meal!”
Maya maintained her proud position on the other side of the table and raised a wryly amused eyebrow at this suggestion.
“I don’t think I’ll be doing that. And I’ve been thinking. Once we leave here, there’s a small colony two sectors away. I think you can drop me there.”
Grenk’s eyes narrowed a tad at this, but she kept her back straight. She was determined that she wanted to get away from him and his personal yacht as soon as possible.
“My dear,” the Ferengi said slowly, “I will drop you off where I say I will drop you off. So, I think I’ll stick to the original plan. You can come with me while we tow Jirel’s little ship back to port. And while you’re here, you should do your best to keep me happy. So…”
He pushed his cold plate further towards her with a knowing look. She still didn’t move from her seat, grimly clinging onto her pride.
“Also,” Grenk continued, “I’ve been thinking that I might use your…powers of persuasion to help round up another one of my debtors. I saw how easily you were able to sucker in Jirel and his crew. We could make quite the team, you know…”
“No, thank you,” she responded with a thin smile.
“Who said you had the option to decline?”
At this, her proud demeanour dropped for just a second. She suddenly felt very alone, and again realised she had lost control over her own destiny. Out here, with dozens of guards at his disposal, there was nothing stopping Grenk from enslaving her just as he had done with the others.
Satisfied that he had made his point, Grenk’s face creased into a cackling grin.
“A little joke,” he explained, with only a partial amount of trustworthiness, “But please think about the offer. I can take in this new debtor the old fashioned way, of course. But your way was so much more fun…”
With a sigh, she pushed her own plate away and stood up.
“You know, I’m actually not all that hungry. I might have an early night.”
Grenk’s eyes narrowed a little as he watched her leave.
“Don’t start getting a conscience on me now,” he muttered idly, “Before you start feeling guilty about Jirel and the others, remember that they left me behind on that planet.”
“At least you survived,” Maya muttered back as she reached the door, “And what did this new debtor do to you, anyway?”
“He stole from me. Just like everyone else.”
In Maya’s head, she pictured the scrap of mouldy food in her hand, back on Turkana IV. The one that she and her friend had risked their lives to steal. She felt a fresh stab of guilt.
“Maybe they were hungry…”
Grenk, mouth now full of cold crab cake with spiced lokar beans, looked up at her with a look of slight confusion.
Maya glanced back at this latest bully that had found their way into her life, and then walked out of the door. Suddenly a little more clear about what she had to do.
* - * Those lurid details documented in Star Trek: Bounty - 11 - "Love, but With More Aggressive Overtones”.
† - Those lurid details documented in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - 88 - “Bar Association”.
“Seriously, I’m fine.”
Natasha sighed. There were few things more irritating to a medical professional than a patient that resolutely refused to be honest with them.
Back in a starship sickbay, or even the Bounty’s significantly less well equipped medical bay, she could have cut through the lies with a quick tricorder scan. But in their current predicament, she couldn’t avail herself of such a tool. She was forced to turn to her trusty old intuition.
She checked Jirel’s glazed eyes and took his pulse for the third time since they had returned to the caged-off habitation area at the end of their first mining shift.
“You’re not fine,” she countered patiently, “I know you too well to listen to that sort of thing. So please drop the space adventurer act and just focus on eating that.”
Jirel reluctantly picked up a musty grey nutrient bar and took a bite. The ration packs were all that seemed to pass for sustenance for the hungry miners in Synergy Mining Enterprise’s venture. As the Trill’s bravado was briefly silenced with a mouthful of tasteless chewy mush, Natasha continued her improvised diagnosis.
“You’re definitely suffering from oxygen deprivation.”
“Huh,” Jirel offered, “Can’t think why.”
“I’m serious,” she persisted, “Your reactions are down, and we’ve been back inside for more than an hour now, but your pulse is still abnormal. It’s not your fault that your metabolism is even less suited to all this than mine is.”
“I’m fine—”
Jirel stopped as he saw her knowing glare. He conceded to himself that he couldn’t lie to her.
“I’m not fine,” he sighed as he swallowed the bite of nutrient bar, “My head’s pounding, I feel weak as hell, and towards the end of our time out there, my vision went seriously blurry. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought we were back on the tequila.”
She raised an eyebrow at this mention of their recent liaison after more than a few shots of that particular liquor*, but kept her demeanour professional. Her concern for her patient was overriding any desire she might have had for some reassuring back-and-forth banter. Almost.
“Well,” she sighed as she took a step back, “Just like my last encounter with tequila, there’s gonna be some pretty terrible consequences if this carries on.”
She noted the slightly wry look cross Jirel’s tired face at this comment, and looked quizzically down at him.
“Sorry,” he sighed, “That just reminded me of something Maya said to me. Back when we were in my cabin—”
He stopped himself, awkwardly remembering how Natasha had walked into the scene the morning after his and Maya’s little tryst. Natasha, for her part, mustered a smile.
“Getting reacquainted?”
“Let’s go with that,” Jirel nodded with a weak grimace, “She said…that was why I kept ending up going along with whatever her new scheme was. I wanted the thrill, the excitement, and I wanted the lack of consequences. I guess there’s definitely been some consequences this time.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” she offered, as he took another bite from the nutrient bar, “So, I’m guessing all that talk from this Grenk character back there was true? You really do owe him this much latinum?”
“Grenk exaggerates,” Jirel countered defensively.
“But you did leave him marooned on the planet of the Soraxx?”
The Trill chewed the mouthful for a moment or two as he mulled over his answer.
“He exaggerates most of the time,” he went with eventually, “I guess the truth is…for all the work you’ve done over the last year building up our consciences, we didn’t always have so much of that before you came along.”
“I didn’t realise that was what I was doing.”
“No need to be modest,” the Trill smiled, “You’re good at it.”
They were suddenly interrupted by approaching footsteps towards the corner bunk in a secluded area of the rudimentary barracks where they had hobbled over to after their shift. They both felt their defences rise, then immediately relax when they saw an unerringly familiar face approaching them.
The Gorn stopped in front of Natasha and held out a small metal box in his hand.
“Further medical supplies,” he hissed by way of explanation, “As I said, it is important you are able to keep mining.”
“Thank you,” Natasha replied with genuine warmth as she took the box, before gesturing to the spot next to Jirel on the bottom bunk, “If you wanna take a seat, I can take a look at that…damage now. While we’re alone.”
For a moment, the Gorn froze, his unblinking eyes taking some time to process this offer. Then, after a quick check to verify that they were indeed alone, he awkwardly sat down.
Natasha opened the kit and grabbed a small scanner and a hypospray, before starting to triage the extent of the Gorn’s injury.
“So, what are you in for, anyway?” Jirel asked as casually as he could to the huge lizard creature.
He received back little more than a curious and slightly disconcerting stare, as Natasha deftly waved the scanner across the damaged shoulder of the Gorn.
“Or,” the Trill continued after a long pause, “We could…talk about something else?”
The Gorn remained mute, even as Natasha reached back into the kit for a packet of medical sealant.
“Personally,” she offered as she worked in her best medical bedside manner voice, “I find that treating damage goes easier when I know my patient’s name, at least?”
To both her and Jirel’s surprise, this was the thing that got their new acquaintance to talk to them.
“Struss,” the Gorn hissed, “My name is Struss.”
“Well, Struss,” Natasha replied, as she finished off with the sealant and grabbed the hypospray and a vial of analgesic medicine, “I’m gonna give you something for the pain, but I’ve cleaned the infection, and that sealant should hold for long enough for the scales underneath to fully harden.”
She pressed the hypospray to the Gorn’s neck and stepped back with a satisfied nod. Struss slowly rotated his shoulder a few times to test it out, and seemed happy enough with the result. He stood up and silently began to walk away. Natasha shrugged at Jirel with a knowing look as it seemed there was no note of thanks coming her way.
She paused mid-shrug as the Gorn stopped and turned back.
“My brother.”
Natasha and Jirel both turned back to where Struss was standing, both looking a little confused. It was now their turn to offer silence back to their companion.
“You asked why I was here,” the Gorn continued, “I am here because of my brother.”
“I…don’t understand,” Natasha managed eventually.
“He became…indebted to the Ferengi who owns this place. After trying to set up a transport firm in the Medulla cluster with a substantial loan he was unable to repay, after the Ferengi changed the conditions at short notice. When it came time for his punishment, I took his place.”
“Why? Jirel opted to ask the obvious question.
“I am the strongest hatchling from my nest. He would not have survived here. Taking his place was the honourable thing to do.”
Despite everything, Jirel couldn’t help but give Natasha a wry smile.
“Remind you of anyone?”
He suppressed the rush of angst that followed his comment, at the reminder that they still had no idea what had become of Klath. Or Denella or Sunek. Aside from Grenk’s chilling suggestion that the Bounty had been shot out of the sky.
Natasha clocked the slight flinch from the Trill, and suppressed her own worries as she forced as friendly a smile as she could in the direction of the Gorn.
“Well,” she managed, “It’s nice to meet someone honourable in here.”
Struss nodded, then rotated his repaired shoulder again.
“Likewise,” he hissed back.
With that, he turned and walked away, leaving them alone again. Natasha watched him leave, then turned back to continue triaging her other patient. And she felt a modicum of hope inside her.
At the very least, they had made a friend.
****************************
“Completely unacceptable!”
Shel-Lan and Gel-Lan stood patiently next to each other inside Grenk’s private dining area on the Boundless Profit, and took the latest tirade from their boss on their collective chin.
The Ferengi paced around in fuming annoyance, ignoring the first course of his evening repast, a Ferengi crab cake with a side of spiced lokar beans that was slowly going cold on the dining table. His focus was entirely on his head bodyguards.
“I told your men to disable Jirel’s ship, that was all! It would have been so much easier to retrieve once it was merely drifting in space!”
On the opposite side of the table, Grenk’s reluctant dining companion for the evening picked at her own appetiser with a silver fork. Maya Ortega’s focus was elsewhere.
“And now this whole salvage operation is taking five times as long! And costing me ten times as much! Well, I tell you one thing, this is going to come out of your paycheques, you hear?”
Shel-Lan and Gel-Lan were Grenk’s most trusted and longest-serving bodyguards. They had been dealing with the irritable Ferengi for longer than any of their fellow Miradorn. So they were used to getting this sort of humiliation from their boss.
But they were also starting to get sick of it.
The two Miradorn kept their attention on Grenk, but internally, they used their sibling telepathy to share their more candid thoughts about this latest rant.
Shel-Lan was quick to remind Gel-Lan how much worse things had gotten recently. Ever since the Bounty had disabled their shuttle and left them marooned on a deserted planet earlier in the year, life in Grenk’s employ had taken a turn for the worse.
They had painstakingly repaired the crashed shuttle, while Grenk had barked orders and eaten his way through most of the emergency rations. They had thanklessly protected him from myriad spacefaring dangers as the tiny shuttle had limped back to port, and had then tirelessly worked to prepare and fit out the Boundless Profit, Grenk’s newest mode of transport.
And on top of all of that, Shel-Lan added, since Grenk had acquired Synergy Mining Enterprises, they had been working double duty. They were now both Grenk’s personal bodyguards, and also head supervisors for the mining projects themselves. And Grenk had never considered appropriately remunerating them for their extra workload.
“...I don’t care how long it takes for you to work this off, you’re paying me back!...”
Gel-Lan silently agreed with his brother’s points, but suggested that there was little they could do about it. He was their boss. And while the pay wasn’t generous, they still needed the latinum.
“...I pay you too much as it is! And your performance these last few weeks has been especially sub-par, don’t think I haven’t noticed!...”
Shel-Lan chided his brother for being too faithful, and told him what he had read in the unauthorised biography of Grand Nagus Rom. About the time that Rom, as a younger man, had formed the Guild of Restaurant and Casino Owners, and unionised his fellow employees to fight for better working conditions against his own thankless boss†.
“...And your men are getting too sloppy! This isn’t the first time they’ve screwed up lately!...”
Gel-Lan countered that there was no Miradorn word for ‘union’. And even if there were, their loyalty to their boss should override such selfishness. It was the Miradorn way, after all. Loyalty to one’s brother, or to one’s job.
“...Am I making myself clear?”
The silent and somewhat circular debate was brought to an abrupt pause when both Miradorn realised that Grenk was addressing them, and that neither of them had been following what the Ferengi had been saying.
After a few seconds of staring at their silent, blank expressions, Grenk snapped again.
“I said: I expect you both down on the planet within the hour to oversee the next mining shift. Am I making myself clear?”
This time, he had made himself clear. And even though they were supposed to be off-duty until tomorrow, they both merely nodded their affirmation at this latest humbling order and exited the dining room. As they walked out, Shel-Lan silently promised Gel-Lan that he would read the relevant passages from Rom’s biography to him later this evening.
With an angry sigh, Grenk turned back to the table and took his seat opposite Maya, trying to allow himself to focus on the more pleasurable aspects of the evening he’d planned.
While he had been ranting on, Maya had barely touched her own food. She had only loosely been following along with the details of the rant. Instead, she had found that, once again, her mind had been filled with thoughts of Niki Kolak.
“You should ease off on them, you know,” she idly noted as Grenk sat down, “It might backfire on you one of these days…”
“I don’t need business advice from you,” he scowled back, as he pushed away his crab cake in frustration, “What I require is for you to fetch me a hot meal!”
Maya maintained her proud position on the other side of the table and raised a wryly amused eyebrow at this suggestion.
“I don’t think I’ll be doing that. And I’ve been thinking. Once we leave here, there’s a small colony two sectors away. I think you can drop me there.”
Grenk’s eyes narrowed a tad at this, but she kept her back straight. She was determined that she wanted to get away from him and his personal yacht as soon as possible.
“My dear,” the Ferengi said slowly, “I will drop you off where I say I will drop you off. So, I think I’ll stick to the original plan. You can come with me while we tow Jirel’s little ship back to port. And while you’re here, you should do your best to keep me happy. So…”
He pushed his cold plate further towards her with a knowing look. She still didn’t move from her seat, grimly clinging onto her pride.
“Also,” Grenk continued, “I’ve been thinking that I might use your…powers of persuasion to help round up another one of my debtors. I saw how easily you were able to sucker in Jirel and his crew. We could make quite the team, you know…”
“No, thank you,” she responded with a thin smile.
“Who said you had the option to decline?”
At this, her proud demeanour dropped for just a second. She suddenly felt very alone, and again realised she had lost control over her own destiny. Out here, with dozens of guards at his disposal, there was nothing stopping Grenk from enslaving her just as he had done with the others.
Satisfied that he had made his point, Grenk’s face creased into a cackling grin.
“A little joke,” he explained, with only a partial amount of trustworthiness, “But please think about the offer. I can take in this new debtor the old fashioned way, of course. But your way was so much more fun…”
With a sigh, she pushed her own plate away and stood up.
“You know, I’m actually not all that hungry. I might have an early night.”
Grenk’s eyes narrowed a little as he watched her leave.
“Don’t start getting a conscience on me now,” he muttered idly, “Before you start feeling guilty about Jirel and the others, remember that they left me behind on that planet.”
“At least you survived,” Maya muttered back as she reached the door, “And what did this new debtor do to you, anyway?”
“He stole from me. Just like everyone else.”
In Maya’s head, she pictured the scrap of mouldy food in her hand, back on Turkana IV. The one that she and her friend had risked their lives to steal. She felt a fresh stab of guilt.
“Maybe they were hungry…”
Grenk, mouth now full of cold crab cake with spiced lokar beans, looked up at her with a look of slight confusion.
Maya glanced back at this latest bully that had found their way into her life, and then walked out of the door. Suddenly a little more clear about what she had to do.
* - * Those lurid details documented in Star Trek: Bounty - 11 - "Love, but With More Aggressive Overtones”.
† - Those lurid details documented in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - 88 - “Bar Association”.
