Star Trek: Bounty - 202 - "The Bat, the Birds and the Beasts"

Part Two (Cont’d)

Just as Sunek had predicted, the Verillian system wasn’t proving to be one of the galaxy’s must-see locations.

Not that there was anything especially bad about it. But it was an entirely forgettable system. Six planets, three of which had been colonised by the native Verillians, and three large outer gas giants with smaller colonies spread across their moons. The system was teeming with life. Just not especially interesting life.

The Bounty sat parked on a wide flat landing bay on the outskirts of one of the Verillian system’s ports, located on one of the moons of the fifth planet, a body that had been designated Verillian Five-Sigma. Even the names of the colonies were a little uninspired in the Verillian system.

Still, if the system itself was nothing to write home about, Natasha was at least finding some interest in the cargo they were here to pick up.

Specifically, the size of it.

She watched as Dr Brooks helped Klath and Denella manoeuvre a huge metal carrying crate towards the Bounty’s rear ramp. The crate was supported on each side by a small anti-grav unit, which were providing the lifting power. But it still needed the three of them to keep the huge crate on course.

“Wow,” she managed as they got close, “I think we’re gonna need a bigger ship.”

“I know,” Brooks smiled back, “You can see why I had to store it here and hop over to the Benzite port to find a lift. Damn Andorian traders brought me as far as Verillian Five-Sigma and then took off without me when they got a better job offer.”

“So why didn’t you get a lift from another transport here?” Sunek queried as he descended the ramp to join the others, and uncharacteristically helped them navigate the crate up the ramp.

Natasha tried not to be too distracted by the shocking sight of Sunek actively helping without being asked, and kept her attention on Brooks’s answer to his entirely reasonable question.

“That would’ve been my first choice,” the scientist conceded, “But, well, you’ve seen what I was working with in the Verillian system. Not a lot of scope for interstellar transports here.”

The others conceded this point with an understanding nod.

The Verillians appeared to be a galactic oddity in that regard. A species that had discovered the wider cosmos was teeming with life, and then elected to pretty much stay where they were, close to the creature comforts of home.

There were some exceptions, but generally transportation around the Verillian system was restricted to sublight or low warp trips between the various planets and lunar colonies. Which meant that the odd longer-distance trip from a faster Verillian ship or a passing vessel from another organisation tended to charge a significant premium.

“It almost exhausted my remaining funds just booking a seat on a transport to that Benzite port, never mind how much extra taking this with me would’ve cost.”

“See,” Sunek grinned at Denella as the crate moved up the ramp, “Told you we should’ve charged more.”

Denella shook her head patiently and focused on keeping the crate on course, even as Natasha stepped up and passed one of the Bounty’s clunky old tricorders over the cargo.

“Nothing too exciting, I’m afraid,” Brooks explained, “Just a ton of duridium alloy sheets, some containers for atmospheric samples and some spare computer parts.”

“Just making sure,” Natasha replied good-naturedly, “Last time we skipped over this part of the process, I ended up chained to a bomb. So…I don’t like to skip it.”

Brooks offered a curious look, as Natasha recalled an unfortunate incident last year, when she and Jirel had been shackled to a cabrodine bomb in the Bounty’s cargo bay, while a couple of Ktarians they had been transporting tried to pull off an elaborate heist.*

She decided not to go into further detail about that unhappy escapade. Especially the part about, while she and Jirel had been tied to the bomb, they had both been dressed only in their underwear.

“Still,” she continued instead, looking over the details on the cracked tricorder display, “No bombs here. Just a hell of a lot of duridium alloy.”

“I can only apologise for the disappointment,” Brooks replied with a lop-sided grin.

Natasha couldn’t help but smile back again. It didn’t take an expert to have detected the faint flirtatious edge to his interactions with her. And it equally didn’t take a tricorder to inform her that, as temporal scientists went, he was a handsome one.

But she knew she definitely wasn’t interested in anything like that right now.

Especially given her recent track record in that department. Indeed, the cabrodine bomb incident came after she had indulged herself with a handsome Ktarian called Mizar Bal. Who was the one who ended up tying her to the bomb.

On top of that, she hadn’t had any sort of romantic encounter since back on Kervala Prime two months ago, when she and Jirel had spent the night together for the second time. And while she had been very clear, both to the Trill and to herself, that there was nothing more to that latest tryst than a drunken mistake, she still felt as though there was something unresolved there. Especially given how Jirel had left the Bounty behind.

So, for the time being, she was ignoring that part of her life entirely. And it was going to take more than a passably handsome scientist’s gentle flirtations to make her reconsider that position right now.

But still, she was eager to learn more about Brooks, especially after Sunek’s comments about the legitimacy of his research. And as such, she wasn’t above leaning on his flirting a little in order to do a little digging.

“Still,” she replied with a smile, “With this much duridium, it looks like you’re building your research post from scratch.”

“Just some extra storage space,” he replied, “The facilities I’ve found are excellent location-wise, but rather lacking in facilities. Especially now that I'm scaling up my work.”

“By yourself?”

Brooks paused briefly before answering, as the crate reached the top of the Bounty’s ramp and continued on into the cargo bay.

“Like I said,” he said eventually with an off-hand shrug, “There’s not a lot of interest in this sort of science.”

Natasha smiled again, then glanced down at the tricorder readings.

Everything still looked in order, but whether it was Sunek’s comments or her own ex-Starfleet instincts, she couldn’t shake the idea that something was amiss with them. Even though she couldn’t tell exactly what.

After all, the tricorder was just telling her that they were dealing with a hell of a lot of duridium alloy.

As she continued to muse on the possible mystery, Denella stepped back from the crate, now secured down on the deck, and nodded in satisfaction.

“Well, if that’s everything, I’ll go get everything signed off with the port master. And we’re good to get going.”

Natasha looked back up, still a little concerned, but she nodded back at the Orion. Even as Brooks took a step towards her.

“You know, if you’re really interested in my research, I’m sure I have a vacancy for you.”

Natasha met his latest flirtatious smile with a gentle laugh, but shook her head gently.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she replied with a friendly air, “But…I would still like to hear more about this research. Over lunch?”

She affected a slightly flirtatious grin of her own to seal the deal, and Brooks happily followed her in the direction of the Bounty’s dining area. Leaving Denella, Klath and Sunek in the cargo bay.

As he watched the two humans leaving, Sunek couldn’t help but lean over to the other two with a typically cheeky grin on his face.

“Ten slips of latinum says they end up banging.”

Denella sighed and shook her head.

“Shut up, Sunek.”

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

A short while later, after Denella had completed another round of paperwork, a mercifully less convoluted process than the one she had endured with the Benzites, the Bounty lifted off and departed Verillian Five-Sigma.

It was only after the Ju’Day-type raider had vanished into the distance that the port master received some new visitors.

Senior Portmaster Gv’alk looked up from cataloguing a shipment of Verillian rice pods for delivery to the inner planet of Verillian II to see two men in dark blue uniforms approaching him.

He never had much cause to see anyone from Verillian Security during his work, so the sight of the two officers was enough for him to immediately set his requisition slate to one side and give them his full attention as they reached him.

“Senior Portmaster Gv’alk?” the senior of the two uniformed officers asked.

Gv’alk affirmed the identification with a worried nod. He felt his brow starting to moisten, and he couldn’t help but glance nervously down at the holstered weapons on the belts of the two men.

“We were hoping you could help us. My name is Prosecutor Gr’aja, and this is Deputy Prosecutor Ha’xil. We’re from Verillian Security Division Beta-Four.”

Gv’alk found himself involuntarily gulping.

The rice pods, he thought to himself. I must’ve gotten caught up in an illegal rice pod scam. And now the evidence is right here, in my hands.

He’d been set up.

The real ringleaders of this nefarious attempt to smuggle fourteen crates of rice pods to Verillian II would surely have kept their names well away from the mechanics of the operation. Giving them crucial plausible deniability if anything went wrong.

So when it did go wrong, and Verillian Security showed up, it would be poor old Senior Portmaster Gv’alk who got it in the neck.

As Gv’alk’s imagination consigned himself to his fate, Prosecutor Gr’aja simply held out a small data padd.

“Have you seen this man?”

The port worker breathed an audible sigh of relief.

All of a sudden, he saw that they weren’t here to arrest him. And at the same time, he remembered that the net value of the fourteen crates of rice pods behind him was roughly a week’s wages. And cursed his hyperactive imagination.

A little baffled by the continued lack of a response, Prosecutor Gr’aja pushed the padd forwards a little more insistently.

“We need him for questioning over a recent theft on Verillian Six-Delta. And a man fitting his description has been spotted by the automated security systems at this very port in the last few hours.”

“Any information you could give us would be appreciated,” Sub-Prosecutor Ha’xil added.

Knowing now that this had nothing to do with his unwitting part in a loss-making rice pod smuggling enterprise, Gv’alk highly doubted that he would be able to help.

And then he actually saw the image on the data padd. And immediately reconsidered that idea.

Staring back at him was the face of a human male that had just departed onboard a battered Ju’day-type raider.



* - A story told in Star Trek: Bounty - 108 - "A Klingon, a Vulcan and a Slave Girl Walk into a Bar".
 
Part Two (Cont’d)

Jirel didn’t know what he was doing.

In truth, that much had been true for a lot of his life so far. From his confused childhood as an orphan Trill in rural Colorado, to his early years in space, drifting from job to job, through to his time on the Bounty, when he had flown by the seat of his pants from one misadventure to the next with only a tenuous grasp on what he was supposed to do.

And since leaving the Bounty behind, he had managed to have even less of an idea of what he was doing. Which was why he had ended up working a dead-end job on Mivara II, flitting between drunk and hungover, and jumping into whichever woman’s bed he could find from one night to the next.

But on top of all of that, right now, he really had no idea what he was doing. Because, bereft of any other plans for what to do next after his argument with his father over the breakfast table, he had decided to visit his mother.

He stood in the corner of one of the fields that made up the Jenner homestead, the warm morning sun being partially obscured by the lush willow tree that stuck proudly out of the soil and reached towards the sky.

He stared at the ground underneath the tree. A patch of earth, decorated with a simple headstone.

Anette Jenner. 2314-2369.

He found himself feeling acutely ashamed that, as much as he had travelled around the galaxy, he had never visited this particular spot before.

His mother had died after he had left Earth, and his family home, behind. Peacefully but nonetheless suddenly. And while the distraught Jirel had rushed back to Earth for the funeral, he hadn’t returned to the homestead itself since he had first left.

But now, here he was. Visiting his mother.

He looked up and glanced around, making sure he was definitely alone. Then, he looked back down at the grave. And while he didn’t know what he was doing, he knew he should at least open with an apology.

“I’m sorry. I guess I don’t really know what I’m supposed to—”

He stopped himself and shook his head, the arch atheist inside him feeling faintly ridiculous to be talking to a headstone.

He sighed deeply and turned away, taking a couple of steps back towards the house. But as soon as he started to move, he felt compelled to turn back. Knowing that there was going to be no solace back inside. So, despite how ludicrous he might have felt, he elected to try and find some here.

Now back in front of the headstone, he crouched down on his haunches and licked his lips.

“I just—I’m not sure what to say. I mean, you’re…”

He gestured towards the grave, then stopped himself. He pictured his mother’s face, and thought about the others he had lost recently. A rush of emotion hit him.

And suddenly, the words came.

“I miss you, mom,” he whispered, “I guess…I don’t know how much I did until—”

He coughed back a sob, as he reached down and gently touched the ground in front of him.

“I remember what you said to me, on my first day of school. You walked me down to the shuttlepad, and before it arrived, you sat next to me and passed me a mini communicator. This tiny little thing, only programmed to use a single comms line back to the house. And you told me that if ever things got too much, or if I felt lost, I should call you right away. And you’d be there.”

He felt a tear escape his eye at the memory of the moment.

“I wish I still had that thing…”

The enormity of the weight on his shoulders caused him to sag backwards, falling off his haunches and flopping down onto the ground itself, sending a plume of dust into the air. He felt more tears preparing to join the first stray escapee.

“Cos I’m lost, mom. I’m really, really lost. I just feel…empty. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do—”

He stopped to stifle another wave of emotion, and couldn’t help but allow himself a wry shake of his head as he took a second to consider his position.

“I mean, of course I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m out here, sitting on my ass, talking to a patch of dirt. But…I did use that communicator, and you were always there on the other end. And I think I need something like that now. Somehow.”

He paused and felt a touch self-conscious again. But he did his best to push through it.

“I dunno. I guess I’d found somewhere I was happy. Or happy enough. And it wasn’t much, or really anything. But it was…home. And I guess I should go back. I want to go back. It’s just…now, whenever I think about it, I just remember…”

He tailed off as he remembered Maya Ortega. And the consequences of Sector 374. All of that came flooding back whenever he thought about the Bounty.

“I’m sure you’d know the right thing to tell me,” he sighed, “You always seemed to. I almost wish that you were still here, and that he was the one who had—”

He stopped himself immediately, feeling a stomach-tightening rush of guilt as he contemplated the awful thing his stream of consciousness rambling had been about to lead to.

“I don’t—I didn’t mean—Ugh. I can’t do this.”

He awkwardly scrambled up out of the dirt, dusting himself down and trying to forget what he had been about to say. What he’d been about to wish on his father.

Part of him wanted to continue talking. To grasp for some sort of strange comfort from speaking with his mother after so long. But a greater part of him was getting annoyed. Mostly with himself.

And another part of him suddenly felt like he was being watched.

He turned away from the grave, mustering as strong a front as he could manage after the tears he had just shed, and saw the unmistakable form of Hesk, standing a discreet distance away on the other side of the field.

It wasn’t clear how long she’d been standing there, or if she’d managed to overhear anything, but Jirel found that he didn’t really care.

He slowly walked over to the Bolian, seeing the slightly hopeful expression on her face.

“How are you feeling?” she asked as he reached her.

A dozen different answers sprung to mind, from the heartfelt to the sarcastic. But he elected to keep his response measured.

“Like I could do with a drink.”

“I can make more coffee.”

“Got anything stronger?”

He asked the question with a hint of a smile, but both he and the housekeeper could tell that the quip had been grounded in a genuine request.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she replied after a moment.

He nodded back and sighed, before glancing back again at the tall tree, and the patch of ground under its welcoming branches.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Hesk continued with a soothing tone, “Take more time if you need.”

“No, it’s fine,” Jirel muttered back, “I’m not sure it was helping. I…don’t even know if I was doing it right.”

The Bolian woman nodded thoughtfully.

“You know, on Bolarus IX, they say that the best way to respect the family that we had is through the family that we still have.”

Jirel turned back to the blue-skinned woman, who subtly nodded her head back towards the house behind them.

He picked up on her inference immediately. And he didn’t especially like it. But he also knew that she was right. As much as he hated the idea, he needed to find some way to talk to his other parent.

His living parent.

“He really has been wanting to take the horses out while he’s here,” she added.

Jirel suppressed the latest sigh, and nodded back at Hesk in understanding. They started back towards the house.

And more than ever, he was struck with the fact that he had no idea what he was doing.
 
Part Two (Cont’d)

Natasha sighed in fresh frustration as she worked on the small computer terminal on the desk of her cabin.

She was doing her best to dig deeper into their passenger’s history after a not entirely fruitful conversation with Dr Brooks over lunch. Even as the Bounty was warping further away from the Verillian system.

Brooks had been more than happy to talk about himself and his work at length while they had been eating. But everything he had said still seemed a little surface level to her. And now she had left him alone and returned to her cabin, her further efforts at researching him were proving to be equally frustrating.

For a start, she only had access to whatever public records she could pull up on the Bounty’s ageing computer system. Not for the first time, she found herself missing the near-limitless search capacity and computing power of a Federation starship.

But even with that limitation, she was still sure she should be able to verify some of the basic details Brooks had off-handedly provided against the public database. And yet, she somehow kept on hitting dead ends.

She had gotten so frustrated that, seconds earlier, she had called for some backup. And at that moment, her door buzzer sounded out, interrupting her from her task.

“Come in!” she snapped, a little too harshly.

The doors parted and Sunek poked his tousle-haired head through the gap.

“No need to snap,” he chided, “You’re the one who called me here. But, frankly, I’ve been expecting this call for a while.”

“Ok, good,” she nodded happily, aware that the Vulcan had his own suspicions about their new passenger, “That’ll save me some time.”

Sunek strode on into the cabin, a little too cocksure, as he continued.

“Yep. It was bound to happen sooner or later. And I get it. Jirel’s not here any more, and you’re a woman. You have needs. Thought you were maybe interested in that Brooks guy, but instead you’ve turned to your dashing, selfless Vulcan colleague in your time of need…”

Perplexed by the direction Sunek’s rambling had taken, Natasha swivelled around in her chair.

“What are you talking about—?”

She was confronted by the sight of Sunek unbuttoning his latest garish Hawaiian shirt as he stood next to her bed. Her eyes boggled.

“Oh my god, Sunek!” she called out quickly, “What the hell are you doing? I called you down here to help me look into Dr Brooks's past!”

Sunek paused, mid-unbuttoning. His Vulcan aptitude allowed him to process his mistake in a fraction of a second, and his new drug regimen allowed him to suppress the worst of the embarrassment he was now feeling almost as quickly.

In an instant, he switched from unbuttoning his shirt to buttoning it back up again, as he fronted out his faux pas.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he shrugged as casually as he could, “You’ve got needs…to look into Dr Brooks's past. So you called on me to help you. Do that.”

“And you were taking your clothes off because…?”

Vulcan brain and emotion suppressors worked in tandem again to provide him with an immediate response.

“Because it is really warm in this cabin. Atmospheric controls broken again? Cos Denella really needs to get on that—”

“Ok,” Natasha sighed, standing and facing the Vulcan and his flimsy excuses, “Point number one, let’s just be clear that if I invite you into my cabin, it will never, ever, ever be because I want to have sex with you. Ever.”

“Noted,” the humbled Sunek nodded quickly.

“And point number two, can you please just use that Vulcan intellect of yours for something useful for a change, and tell me what I’m missing here?”

She handed him the tricorder she had been using earlier, still displaying the details of the scan on the crate that was now in the Bounty’s cargo bay. She was still sure there was something off with the readings, but apart from that instinctive sense, she had been unable to spot what it was. And Sunek, for all of his distinctly less impressive traits, still had a Vulcan intellect to call on when the need took him.

He lazily grabbed the tricorder and glanced at the screen, before looking back up at her in mild confusion.

“Why?”

“Because I’m getting nowhere with my own research. He’s happy to talk about himself endlessly, it seems. But everything just seems to be…unverifiable.”

“How come?” Sunek asked, glad to have so quickly moved past his embarrassing error.

Natasha walked back to the computer terminal and gestured at the screen in frustration.

“Here’s one example. He said he graduated from the Central University on the Federation colony Gravis II. Easy enough to check. Except, Gravis II’s entire planetary computer core suffered a catastrophic data loss three years ago thanks to an unexpected stellar flare. They’re still getting everything recovered from backups, but the university records are still offline.”

“Could be a coincidence,” the Vulcan observed with a raised eyebrow.

“Could be,” she sighed, “But either way, I’d have to go to Gravis II and submit a formal request to retrieve the information manually to verify what he’s saying. And that’s just one example.”

She tapped the computer controls and brought up a list of her other searches.

“I can’t find any details about his mother and father. Anywhere. Plus, he said he spent five years as a graduate studying on Earth, but it’ll take me days to work my way through every Dr Brooks listed in the public records there. It’s just…weird.”

“Well, there has to be something, right?”

“And there is,” she conceded, “Bits and pieces. A few research papers. Transit documents. He even showed me the deeds he signed for this research outpost we’re taking him to. But it’s all from the last few years.”

She turned back to Sunek, who was idly spinning the tricorder around in his hand, and mustered a defeated shrug.

“It’s like he just…popped into existence a few years ago.”

“Huh,” Sunek mused, before stopping the tricorder mid-spin and glancing at the screen for a second time, “Well, you’re right. There is something weird here.”

“What?” she asked, stepping back over to the tricorder screen.

“See?” Sunek pointed at the readouts, “There.”

Natasha couldn’t see anything untoward in what he was pointing at, a list of chemical scans of the stack of duridium sheets the tricorder had detected. Realising that she was going to need to massage the pilot’s ego a little to get a proper answer, especially given the bruising said ego had just received from her swift and definitive shutting down of the reason he thought she had called him here, she reluctantly indulged him.

“I don’t understand.”

Sunek made a point of dramatically rolling his eyes, as if it should have been obvious to even the most basic single-celled life what he was getting at.

“The composition of the sheets. Look at the breakdown.”

Natasha peered closer as Sunek’s tone took on a slightly haughty edge, as he continued with his explanation.

“See? Each one’s identical. Ionic polarity, density, molecular coherence. Everything.”

“Huh,” she nodded, “You’re right.”

“I know,” the Vulcan replied with a shrug of his lanky shoulders, “And I don’t care how good the production facility that made those sheets is, nobody makes them that perfect.”

Natasha took the tricorder from him and scrolled down the full list of readings. Sunek was right. Every single one was identical.

“But…why?” she mused, mostly to herself.

“Well, either this scientist in our guest cabin has invented a new duridium refinement process that’s gonna make him a gazillionaire. Or you’re looking at a very lazy attempt to produce a fake tricorder reading from a sealed storage crate.”

Natasha looked up from the readings and met Sunek’s gaze. Not for the first time, she found herself thankful that, underneath the Hawaiian shirts and the deeply questionable reading of simple requests to come to someone’s cabin, there was still a Vulcan lurking under there.

Not that she was entirely reassured right now. For one good reason.

“All of which begs the question,” she pointed out with more than an edge of concern, “What the hell is in our cargo bay?”

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

Klath strode into the Bounty’s cockpit to find it empty aside from Denella.

It hadn’t escaped the Klingon’s attention to detail that the Orion was usually working in the cockpit these days. When she wasn’t working on ship maintenance elsewhere. He was starting to wonder where she was finding time to sleep.

But it wasn’t really his place to pass comment on such matters, so he merely slipped behind his own console and checked the readouts.

“Have you seen Sunek?” Denella asked as he did so, stifling a yawn.

“Yes. A moment ago. Heading for the doctor’s cabin. He looked…oddly pleased with himself. Even by the Vulcan’s standards.”

“Huh,” Denella mused, “Must be that medication.”

Klath shrugged a silent agreement and returned to his work, checking over their progress on the way to the Vandor sector.

Behind her own console, Denella was feeling tired.

Still effectively working two jobs as the Bounty’s engineer and de facto captain of their limited operations, she was struggling to balance the two jobs. She was more comfortable with it than she had been, but still a long way from not being tired.

She glanced over at the Bounty’s weapons chief, and couldn’t help but take the chance to pry a little while they were alone.

“Hey, Klath?”

The Klingon’s internal defences began to rise. This was immediately sounding disturbingly like small talk to him.

“You know…when Jirel left? How come you didn’t show any interest in taking over things around here?”

Klath was taken aback by this question. Because, while it appeared like small talk on the surface, it actually cut much deeper than that.

He uncomfortably cast his mind back to the fateful act that had sealed his discommendation from the Empire. When he had been captain of the IKS Grontar. And he had mistakenly, but fatally, fired on an unarmed freighter during the Klingon Civil War.*

He also recalled his more recent encounter with the captain’s chair. When he had temporarily been handed command of the Bounty while Jirel filled in as pilot back in the Kervala sector, as they had rushed to rescue Denella from a gang of Pakleds.

And another incident that had ended in a shameful loss of life, when another Klingon exile, K’Veth, had fired on the immobilised and defenceless Pakled ship. Destroying it with all hands.†

Both incidents had given him plenty of cause to reassess whatever desire he thought he still had for command.

Not that he was scared to get back into the centre chair. Klingons didn’t get scared, after all. But still, each time he found himself in that position, he couldn’t help but note that dishonourable acts tended to take place.

Which concerned him deeply.

Denella didn’t have anywhere near the full details about all of that, however. Her question had been asked in an entirely innocent way.

Indeed, he hadn’t shared the details of his discommendation with anyone, as was proper. Except, unfortunately, with Sunek. Who had found out the details last year after a run-in with a surviving family member of one of the dead crew of the freighter he had destroyed.

He suppressed a shudder at that unhappy thought, and focused back on Denella.

“You were the best choice for the role,” he replied, entirely truthfully, “My…strengths are best served in my current role onboard.”

The Orion looked over at the Klingon with a knowing glare, seeing through her long-time friend’s facade immediately. She knew she wasn’t getting the whole story.

“Are there always going to be secrets between us? No matter how long we’re friends?”

Klath looked up from his console and locked eyes with her.

“Of course,” he replied, with a hint of a smile.

She smiled back and shook her head.

“Fine, be like that,” she replied, “But I’m warning you, one of these days, I’m going to find out all those dark secrets of yours. And where will we be then?”

She asked the question with the same innocent air as before. But Klath couldn’t help but feel a sense of unease inside at the mere idea of his past becoming common knowledge among the rest of the crew.

Where would they be then, indeed.

Before he could summon up a light enough response to hide his internal strife, his console chimed out an alert. Bringing them both back to business mode.

“What is it?” Denella asked quickly.

“There is something on long-range sensors,” he reported, “A vessel. On an intercept course.”

His expression darkened, while Denella suppressed another weary sigh.

“Well,” she managed eventually, “That’s never a good sign.”

The Klingon warrior alongside her couldn’t help but agree.

End of Part Two​




* - A major plot point in Star Trek: Bounty - 102 - "Be All My Sins Forgiven" and Star Trek: Bounty - 10 - "Take Arms Against a Sea of Tribbles".
† - See Star Trek: Bounty - 11 - "Love, but With More Aggressive Overtones" for the full story.
 
Really enjoying the depth of self-awareness in Klath. Also a very interesting continuation of Sunek's mental crisis - which is being patched together with medication, but evidently still coming apart at the seams - just more slowly and less in his conscious awareness.

Thanks!! rbs
 
Part Three

The two horses proudly thundered along the soft ground of the valley in a full rhythmic gallop. They tore across the landscape in unison, as the two equally proud riders astride them kept a tight hold on the reins.

As they approached a small stream that trickled down the gently sloping valley towards a larger tributary that ran through the middle of the plain, both riders gently slowed their steeds to a gentle walk to allow them to ford the water without incident.

Jirel felt the comforting rush of the fresh, crisp air on his face as his horse tip-toed through the water, both flanks of the beast next to his legs expanding and contracting as it caught its breath. And for the first time in as long as he could remember, he found himself feeling something close to a sense of contentment.

Until the inevitable comment came from the other rider.

“You’re still sitting up too high in the saddle,” Jenner called out, “You’re making the horse work harder in the gallop when you do that.”

The Trill caught the grimace that threatened to leap onto his face, as his contentment vanished as soon as it had begun to appear.

Even after all these years, his father was still finding something to criticise.

“The horse likes it just fine,” he countered, patting the neck of the chestnut brown animal under him, which snorted back in what he took to be affirmation.

‘You should keep yourself down low, and lean forwards. Helps with the centre of gravity.”

Jirel was already regretting his decision to follow Hesk’s advice. Respecting the family that one had through the family that one still has was easier said than done when the family he still had was Admiral Bryce Jenner.

His father had been surprised to find him suggesting that they go for a ride together, but had set his work aside immediately. And then they had saddled up and set out together, in what was supposed to have been a gentle ride up to the mountain pass and back. A chance to get some fresh air, enjoy the sights of this largely unspoiled stretch of rural Colorado, and possibly even reconnect a tad more than they had so far.

Except, it hadn’t taken long for the gentle ride to get seriously competitive.

“Didn’t seem to stop us beating you to the stream, did it?” Jirel couldn’t help but shoot back at his father’s critique of his riding style.

He knew his style wasn’t perfect. He was almost entirely self-taught, after all. While his father had been away with Starfleet.

But he wasn’t going to take the inevitable criticism lying down. Any more than he had back on Nimbus III last year, when the more formally trained Natasha Kinsen had offered her own comments on his riding ability.

He stifled another grimace at the reminder of that part of his life.

“I wasn’t aware it was a race,” Jenner offered back as the two horses reached the other side of the stream and stomped out of the clear water.

“Sounds like the sort of thing someone who just lost a race might say.”

Jenner eyed his son with a mildly withering look as he deftly turned his horse towards him to continue the debate.

“Did you want to come out here and do this to spend some time together? Or try to turn this thing into another fight?”

Jirel kept a grip on his own reins as he allowed a slightly cocky smile to cross his face.

“I told you I don’t wanna fight you. But do I wanna beat you in a race? Well, that’s a different story entirely—”

He suddenly stopped himself and looked around the valley, peering up towards the high hillsides all around them.

Not for the first time since he had arrived back home, he had an unerring feeling that he was being watched. And he was pretty sure that, so many miles away from the homestead, this time it wasn’t going to be Hesk.

He shielded his eyes from the midday sun and tried to scan along the tops of the hills. Not really sure what he was expecting to see. Unsurprisingly, from this distance, he couldn’t really make out anything. Aside from a distant shuttle tracking across the sky, many miles away.

But that couldn’t have been what he had sensed.

“You’re not gonna win any more races if you keep sitting that high in the saddle,” Jenner chided again, oblivious to his son’s concerns.

This snapped Jirel away from scanning the hilltops, and returned him to the argument.

“Ah,” he replied with a note of triumph, “So you admit it was a race.”

Jenner’s face tensed slightly at this, but there was a slight curl of a begrudging smile dancing across his mouth.

Whether it was the fresh air or just the sensation of being away from his Starfleet responsibilities and back on horseback, he was starting to enjoy the verbal sparring match as well.

“No,” he argued back, gently manoeuvring the horse back in the direction they’d been heading, “But from here to the mountain pass is.”

He didn’t bother waiting for a reply, and immediately kicked his horse onwards.

Jirel took a moment to consider what to do.

If he wanted to be the bigger man here, he’d decline the challenge, of course.

And if he wanted to be more of an amateur psychiatrist about the situation, he’d definitely suggest that this sort of mildly toxic competitive streak didn’t exactly count as quality father/son bonding. If anything, the two of them were falling back into an old pattern. Jirel was trying to prove himself, and his father was always one step ahead.

But despite all of that, he really wanted to beat him to the mountain pass.

So, without any further dwelling on the matter, he kicked hard on the flanks of his horse, and they took off in hot pursuit.

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

High up on the hillside, the hooded figure watched the two men on horseback kicking up the dust as they rode away.

Through the binoculars, he could make them out more clearly. One horse leading, but the other gamely catching up.

He hadn’t been worried about being spotted. Not only was he far enough away not to be seen clearly from down in the valley, he had also known instinctively when to duck down for cover, to ensure he avoided Jirel’s prying gaze.

He didn’t need to be here at all. But with everything now so close to being complete, he felt the need to make sure that everything was proceeding as it should with the two men down in the valley.

Satisfied that all was indeed well, he stepped back from the side of the hill and reached into his cloak, tapping the small comms device hidden away in there.

Seconds later, the transporter effect took hold.

And he disappeared from view entirely.
 
Man... Even on Earth Jirel can't disentangle from mysterious hangers on. Nice that he has developed an instinct for catching it out. Liking father and son horsing around.

Thanks!! rbs
 
Part Three (Cont’d)

“This is Prosecutor Gr’aja of Verillian Security Division Beta-Four to the unidentified vessel. Please drop to impulse and prepare to be boarded.”

Denella fixed Brooks with a distinctly unimpressed glare where he stood in the middle of the now-full cockpit of the Bounty and listened to the sound of the hail.

It hadn’t taken long for her and Klath to identify the ship that was bearing down on them. Mainly because Prosecutor Gr’aja had begun hailing them almost immediately. And now that she had called their passenger to the cockpit, she was waiting somewhat impatiently for an explanation.

“It’s really not what it looks like,” Brooks managed, his usual measured tone displaying a hint of nerves at this new development.

“So what is it then?” the Orion woman offered back with a deadpan expression, “Believe me, we’re all ears.”

A chirp from Klath’s console punctuated their conversation.

“Whether we drop to impulse or not,” the Klingon pointed out, “The Verillian ship will intercept us in four minutes.”

“Better hurry up with that explanation,” Denella persisted, keeping her focus on their passenger, “Or should I just pull over and surrender—?”

“No,” Brooks cut in quickly, “You don’t need to—This is just a misunderstanding.”

“Right. Feels like you have a few of those.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” the scientist offered back, rediscovering a hint of his charm along with a hopeful smile.

“Sheliak Corporate, anyone?” Sunek chimed in from the pilot’s seat, after he and Natasha had rejoined them from her cabin.

Denella silently noted that little misunderstanding from the Bounty’s past. And it was fair to say that the Sheliak example wasn’t the only misunderstanding they had. When you lived the way the Bounty’s crew did, it was inevitable that a few unhappy paths would be crossed from time to time.

She even recalled their recent trip to Sector 374. And their fateful showdown with Grenk, a Ferengi who they had endured a significant number of misunderstandings with. And she considered the heavy cost they had paid when those misunderstandings had caught up with them.

Still, she wasn’t about to let Brooks off that easily.

“I need more than that,” she pressed him, aware of the ticking clock on Klath’s readouts.

Brooks looked back at her defiant glare and his shoulders sagged slightly, seeing that he was going to have to offer up a more complete explanation. He took a second to get the details straight in his head, then launched into it.

“Ok, fine. Truth is that…I was slightly taking advantage of the generosity of the Verillians back on Five-Sigma. Like I said, it’s taken me a while to find anyone to help me move my cargo out of there since the Andorian traders so unceremoniously left me there.”

“Taking advantage how?” Denella pressed.

“Well, latinum has been a little short. So I…may have run up some light-to-moderate storage fees. Which may or may not remain unpaid. I was just hoping Verillian Security wouldn’t be quite so on the ball about it.”

Denella sized the human up, then nodded in the direction of the approaching ship.

“If I hail them, will they confirm that—?”

“And some stolen property!” Brooks sighed with exasperation, “Fine. Yes. You got me. That’s the truth. The…whole truth.”

“What sort of stolen property?” Klath’s voice boomed out from behind the scientist.

“The, um, duridium sheets back there. They’re an especially premium grade. High purity. I needed the best possible sheeting to construct the extra space, because I need to keep the storage for the chroniton particles as unreactive as possible. No outside interference.”

Natasha immediately glanced over at Sunek, and the Vulcan instinctively caught her eye and offered a subtle shake of his head. Suggesting that he wasn’t entirely buying that as the reason for the odd scans they had seen.

She couldn’t help but wonder why he had been so precise with his explanation about the sheets, as if he already knew that was something they had concerns about.

“But,” Brooks continued, “Obviously everything in my price range wasn’t up to the task. So I was able to find a willing light-fingered Verillian to…secure some higher quality materials for me. That little thief must’ve sold me out the second we left the system.”

Denella remained unconvinced. She looked over at Klath, who glanced at his panel.

“The Verillian ship will be here in three minutes. Scans suggest that it is a powerful vessel. They will have us outgunned.”

“They’re not gonna attack you,” the scientist persisted, “Verillians are officious, insular, sticklers for the rules. But they’re not violent people. Especially over a simple…misunderstanding.”

On cue, the Bounty’s comms link flared into life again.

“I say again: This is Prosecutor Gr’aja of Verillian Security Division Beta-Four. Please drop to impulse and prepare to be boarded.”

Denella suddenly felt every eye in the Bounty’s cockpit on her. Her shoulders felt heavier, as the weight of a command she didn’t entirely want hit them once again.

She weighed up the decision she realised she had to make. Whether to help their passenger, or hand him over.

She wondered what Jirel would do. And then tacitly admitted that might not be the best way to approach problems like this, given how things usually went for the Bounty.

“Two minutes to interception,” Klath noted, not entirely helpfully.

“Please,” Brooks persisted, “You know how difficult life can be out here. And you helped me with those mercenaries back at the Benzite port.”

“I’m not going to fight a Verillian cruiser for you,” Denella countered.

“And you don’t have to. Just get me out of here. They’re not going to push things too far over a bit of stolen duridium.”

The Orion engineer suppressed a sigh. And eventually, just as she had back in the Benzite port, she found herself feeling the need to help out.

She stood and moved over to Natasha’s sensor panel.

“What else is around here?”

The human woman tapped the controls and brought up an overview of the sector, including all star systems and passing traffic. It only took a second for Denella’s eyes to light up.

“There’s a Talarian freighter bearing 161 mark 274, tracking down that shipping lane 0.2 light years away.”

“You know what I like about you?” Sunek grinned from the pilot’s seat, “How you focus on the really important stuff.”

Denella didn’t even dignify the Vulcan’s friendly sarcasm with a retort. Though to her side, Natasha looked confused.

“And?” she asked.

“And…I think we’re gonna pay them a visit.”

A few seconds later, the Bounty altered course.

And the chasing Verillian ship followed suit.

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

“Come on. We’re doing best of five.”

“Like hell we are.”

The father/son bonding session had escalated still further.

Their impromptu race to the mountain pass had merely been the first stage of what was turning into a multi-stage event across the countryside. Or at least it had been, until Jenner had called off Jirel’s plans for the fourth stage.

Which, as far as Jirel was concerned, was simply down to the fact that the admiral now led the series by two to one.

“Come on,” he pressed, as the horse underneath him panted from the exertions of the afternoon’s activities so far, “You can’t quit now. And that first race was a cheat anyway. You gave yourself a handy little head start.”

“We’ve pushed these two hard enough,” Jenner countered, as he patted his own steed, “Besides, we’ve got a long ride back home ahead of us after all this.”

Jirel knew that was true. They were already a long way past the mountain pass they had originally been aiming for. Still, he couldn’t quell the clear and unwelcome competitive streak that was beating freshly inside him.

“So you’re just running away from the challenge?” he scoffed, eagerly pressing his father’s buttons further, “Guess someone’s worried about getting shown up.”

Jenner scowled, trying his best to suppress his own competitive streak to focus on the actual reasons he had for wanting to take this trip in the first place.

“If it makes you feel better,” he offered back, “We can count that first run to the stream. Which would make it a tie.”

“Which means we need a decider—”

“Jirel,” Jenner sighed, “Just shut the hell up for a second. I didn’t want to do this just to race you all the way to Arizona.”

The Trill didn’t respond immediately, allowing his father to continue.

“You wouldn’t talk to me on the runabout. You sure as hell weren’t talking to me back at the house. So can we just stop racing and…do this.”

Jirel felt himself immediately closing up again, withdrawing away inside. There was plenty that he knew he wanted to talk about. But after his entirely unsuccessful visit to his mother’s grave, he didn’t feel ready to try anything like that again just yet.

Noting the silence, Jenner sighed again.

“I see,” he grunted, “Maybe we can’t.”

With that, he gently tugged on his reins to turn the horse back towards home and trotted off slowly the way they had come.

For a moment, Jirel considered avoiding the ride back entirely. Just keeping on going, racing away from the Jenner homestead and all the awkwardness contained within. Maybe he really could make it to Arizona.

But he saw that move for what it would be. Just more running away.

And while he didn’t especially want to talk about his own issues, he did have some choice questions for the older man trotting away from him. So, with some reluctance, he kicked his own horse on to catch up.

“Fine,” Jirel griped, “You wanna talk? We can talk. For a start, we can talk about what the hell’s brought all this on.”

“Meaning what?”

“You know what I mean. You’ve haven’t tried speaking to me even once since Starbase 216. Just exchanging notes with Natasha. And now, all of a sudden, you’re desperate to talk. So why now? If it’s not just stupid guilt cos you’ve heard how much my life has fallen apart, then what?”

He waited patiently for his father to answer, as Jenner silently considered the best response to his son’s ire.

Despite instigating this latest attempt at a serious talk with his son, Jenner wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this. The truth seemed far too complicated, after all. So, he elected to follow a different course. One that he still hoped would lead them both to where they were heading.

“I’ll tell you later,” he replied with a half-smile, “In the meantime, best of five, did you say?”

Despite the lack of response to his questions, Jirel didn’t need a second invitation. He instantly kicked his horse into a gallop as his father did the same. The two of them raced back towards the pass, into the afternoon sun. Both horses thumped their hooves into the dusty ground along the top of the hillside.

As they approached a corner, Jirel deftly tugged tight on the reins, allowing the horse to judge its own route around the bend.

He felt himself pulling away from his father, and was already starting to construct a suitably gloating victory speech in his head. All attempts to get some answers to his questions had been forgotten, as his competitive streak made a full-on return.

And then, just as he mentally began the second draft of the victory speech, he heard a cry of pain from behind him. He immediately slowed his horse and turned back.

He was shocked to see his father’s horse galloping past him, now shorn of its rider.

A short distance back in the dirt, his father lay in an awkward heap.

“Dad!”

He galloped back and dismounted in a shot, helping the struggling Jenner back to his feet.

“Ugh,” the older man griped as he coughed out a lungful of dust, “Goddamn thing threw me clean off. Must’ve gotten spooked by something—”

He immediately groaned in pain as he tried to rest his weight on his right foot, and had to brace himself against Jirel to stop himself from tumbling back to the ground.

“My ankle,” he managed through gritted teeth, “Must be broken.”

“I’ll call for help,” Jirel replied, “Where’s your communicator?”

“In the damn saddlebag,” Jenner grimaced, gesturing as best he could in the direction that his horse had fled, “Along with the field medkit.”

“Great. So I guess we’ll never be seeing any of that again.”

“She’ll find her way home,” Jenner grunted with a hint of pride towards the animal, “When Hesk sees her, she’ll report us missing. Won’t take anyone long to find us with a shuttle’s sensors.”

“And how long’s that gonna take?”

“Could be a while,” Jenner conceded.

“Ok,” Jirel sighed, “So I should ride back. See if I can catch up with the other horse, or at least—”

“You’re gonna leave me out here?”

“To go get help. Or, what? You want to walk all the way back home, like this? In this heat?”

Jenner tentatively tested his foot again and flinched at the predictable rush of pain.

“What’s the matter?” he couldn’t help but fire back, “Scared of a bit of hard work?”

Jirel had no idea if he was lashing out because of his injury, or if that had been a deliberate attempt to tap into his competitive streak all over again. But either way, he didn’t consider riding off for another second.

Instead, he wordlessly adjusted his father’s weight on his shoulder, while taking hold of the horse’s reins with his other hand, and started the long, slow walk back home.

As he walked, he glanced over at his father’s pained face.

“There’d better be a drink in this for me.”
 
Part Three (Cont’d)

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Captain Mordar of the Talarian freighter J’Daya sat in his vast command chair and stared at the viewscreen with visible confusion.

On the screen, Prosecutor Gr’aja of Verillian Security Division Beta-Four maintained his own stance without flinching in the face of the burly Talarian’s anger.

“As I explained, we have been tracking a small vessel in this sector which we believe is harbouring an individual of interest to us—”

“Yes, yes,” Mordar sighed with a dismissive wave of his hand, “I heard you the first time. But tell me, Prosecutor Gr’aja, does the J’Daya look like a small vessel?”

The Verillian paused before responding. The main in the huge chair had a point.

The J’Daya easily dwarfed the Verillian cruiser that had intercepted it. The blocky freighter spanned over two kilometres from bow to stern. It followed the usual design brief of such Talarian freighters, where bigger was unanimously considered to be better.

With so much ore to shift in their mining operations, there had been a flurry of larger and larger ships constructed to deal with the cargo, culminating in behemoths like the J’Daya.

A more level-headed approach might have been to build a larger fleet of smaller, faster ships to deal with the task of transporting the ore. Not only would that minimise disruption when ships were unavailable for maintenance, it would also mean they could be more easily repurposed for other needs in the future. But nobody had suggested that in any discussion on the matter.

So, the Talarian merchant fleet was instead made up of these increasingly unwieldy, gargantuan ships. Over a mile of dirty grey metal, roughly cylindrical in design, with two bulbous warp engines protruding out of either flank at the rear.

The fact that such an uniquely size-based arms race had erupted in the rigidly patriarchal confines of the Talarian people, coupled with the unerringly phallo-adjacent shape of the resulting fleet, had quickly become a favourite subject of psychoanalysts throughout the galaxy.

But whatever else could be said about the J’Daya’s design, it certainly would not be considered a small vessel.

Just as Captain Mordar liked.

“Well,” Prosecutor Gr’aja managed eventually, opting for a different line of questioning, “Have you seen any other vessels around here? Perhaps a…smaller one?”

This new query did little to lighten Captain Mordar’s mood.

“How the hell should I know? We’re transporting forty thousand kilotonnes of monazite from the Rezzik system. As I’m sure your readings are telling you, that means we’re emitting a hell of a lot of thoron radiation. Throws out sensors for anything smaller than a mid-sized escort.”

“Then,” the Verillian pressed, “If I may ask, how do you avoid such smaller ships?”

At this, Mordar mustered a superior smile.

“The hull of this ship is nearly two metres thick. It’s their job to avoid us.”

This attitude again threw Gr’aja off his stride, but he persisted. He and his crew had tracked the smaller ship until their scans had become obscured by the vast radiation-heavy body of the phallically-inclined J’Daya. And he didn’t want to quit now.

“Even so, we have tracked the other ship towards this location. And I request that we are allowed to conduct a full inspection of—”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Mordar snapped back, “Verillian Security has no jurisdiction in Talarian matters, and I’m three days behind schedule as it is. So leave us the hell alone, or you’re gonna cause an incident that’ll bring a fleet of Talarian warships to the Verillian system.”

Gr’aja quickly backtracked, suddenly feeling a little isolated.

“Well, that won’t be, um, necessary. But…perhaps you have a record of your sensor logs for the past few hours. Something we can use to figure out what happened to our target?”

“We do. And you can’t have it. If you have a problem with my decision, talk to my employers. Or contact Talarian Security. I might actually listen to them.”

Before Prosecutor Gr’aja could muster another hopeless request, Captain Mordar terminated the comms link with an angry growl.

Leaving the cream of Verillian Security Division Beta-Four with an entirely unsolved case on their hands.

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

“Well, the good news is: We’re not gonna die of thoron radiation poisoning.”

Natasha delivered the news with an uneasily bright tone as she re-checked her tricorder readings inside the Bounty’s cockpit, then felt the need to deliver a slight correction.

“Provided we don’t stay here for longer than seventeen hours. And even then…I’m gonna make sure we all get a shot of something to make sure we’re completely safe.”

“You’ve really got a knack for reassuring your patients, doc,” Sunek chimed out from the forward pilot’s seat.

“Well,” Denella offered, “I’m not planning on staying here that long. Just long enough for the Verillians to clear off.”

Next to her engineering console, Dr Brooks looked over at the green-skinned woman and mustered a thankful smile.

“Thank you. Again.”

“Just can’t help looking out for the little guy,” she shrugged back.

“You do realise,” Klath pointed out, “That we have likely just committed a number of crimes in the eyes of Verillian Security.”

“Were Verillian Security after us?” Denella replied, her face an innocent picture of plausible deniability, “I had no idea. Must’ve been all the radiation, interfering with our old communications relays and sensor pods.”

Klath’s mouth curved into a knowing smile.

“Agreed,” he nodded back, “A most…unfortunate situation.”

Denella smiled back, before turning back to the front of the cockpit.

“Sunek, keep us where we are for now. We’ll say our goodbyes to the Talarians once we reach the next star system.”

“Aye, aye, Captain Denella, sir!” the Vulcan called back.

Despite the good-natured intent behind Sunek’s latest use of that quip, Denella couldn’t help but suppress a flinch at the reminder of the weight on her shoulders.

“And Sunek?” she offered back.

“Yes, Captain Denella, sir?”

“Shut up.”

The Vulcan chuckled as he settled back in his seat and let someone else handle the driving.

The vast Talarian freighter lumbered onwards through space, leaving Prosecutor Gr’aja and the Verillian Cruiser behind.

Entirely oblivious to the tiny Ju’Day-type raider clamped to the underside of its hull.
 
Part Three (Cont’d)

The ungainly trio of figures continued to shuffle down the mountain pass.

Jirel and his father both breathed heavily with exertion as they stumbled down the gentle slope, while the loyal horse next to them picked its own way down with carefully-placed steps.

They were still a long way from the Jenner homestead. But all three were tiring from the effort they had already put in to get this far. And it was the older man who threw in the towel first, as his injured ankle jarred painfully against a rock underfoot.

“Goddamnit,” Jenner cursed with a wince, “I need to stop. And rest.”

The still-present competitive streak inside Jirel was tempted to brave the situation out and argue the case for pressing on. But in truth, he was just as tired.

With some difficulty, they manoeuvred their way to a rocky outcropping next to the path and sat down, inhaling lungfuls of dusty air.

“See,” the Trill panted, “This would never have happened if you lived near a shuttle route. Could’ve flagged down a ride by now.”

“We’re making good time,” Jenner coughed back wearily, “Plenty of daylight left.”

“We’d be making better time if you weren’t so heavy.”

“I’ll have you know I’ve lost five pounds this last couple of weeks. That goddamn CMO and his health kick…”

Leaving his father for a moment, Jirel stepped over to the horse and unhooked the canteen of water on the saddle. After pouring some of the liquid into a small depression in the ground for the animal to drink from, he returned to the rock and passed the canteen to Jenner.

For a moment, there was silence, broken only by the contented sounds coming from the thirsty horse. Then, Jenner felt the need to say something, as he took a gulp from the canteen. To make another attempt to connect.

“I read them all, you know.”

This threw Jirel slightly. He glanced at his father with a quizzical air.

“The messages from Ms Kinsen. About your…status. I always read them all.”

“Well,” Jirel replied with a sliver of sarcasm , “She’ll be glad to hear that all that spying wasn’t a waste of time.”

“Sounded like you got in a hell of a lot of fights. Orion slavers, Nimbosian cowboys, angry Pakleds. Like you never stopped fighting.”

Jirel accepted the canteen back and took a sip, before grudgingly smiling.

“Yeah,” he nodded, “I’ve heard that a lot. Someone once told me it was because I never know when to give up—”

He caught himself suddenly, as his mind painfully flashed back to a moment in a bar on Golos II.

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

The Nausicaan stopped on the spot, and eyed the weapon uncomfortably, as the pained Jirel awkwardly hobbled over to where Maya stood, gesturing at the phaser in her hand.

“You had that the whole time? And you let me try to fight them?”

“Never leave home without it,” she reminded him, “But I like to watch you fight. You never did know when to give up.” *

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

Another flood of memories rose up inside Jirel and needed suppressing. He stared down at the canteen and tried to fight them back.

“Maya told me that,” he eventually added in a quieter voice, “But…I guess she was wrong. Looks like I know exactly when to give up.”

Jenner looked back over at his son and shifted his weight awkwardly on the rock.

“I am sorry, Jirel. About what happened to her.”

Jirel mustered a nod back. He still didn’t want to be talking about this, especially with this audience. But he thought about what Hesk had told him. About how his father wanted to reconnect.

Maybe it was worth a try.

“I just—I’m not sure what to feel about everything that happened. Or how to feel. I still just…I dunno. I can’t believe she’s gone.”

“Did you love her?”

While the bluntness of the question was the sort of thing Jirel expected from his father, the subject was definitely not. But he felt compelled to answer.

“I don’t know. I mean, she sold me out to a Ferengi who enslaved me and my friends, and nearly destroyed my ship—”

“You know,” Jenner affirmed, with the confidence of a man who had loved and lost.

Jirel mustered another glance over at his father, and nodded weakly.

“Yeah. I loved her. But then, I also love—”

He stopped himself immediately. One thing at a time.

For his part, Jenner mused over his response. There was a lot that he could think to say, even if he couldn’t quite think of the right way to say it. In the end, all he could muster was a platitude.

“Well, all I can tell you is: It gets easier.”

He didn’t entirely feel comfortable saying it, and the look on Jirel’s face suggested that he might have been expecting more. But for the time being, it was all that he had to offer.

With that, he tested his right foot again and grimaced, before gesturing back down the pass.

“Speaking of which, we should press on.”

Jirel nodded. Part of him had been hoping for a little more advice after opening up like that. But then he remembered who he was talking to.

He fixed the canteen back on the horse’s saddle, helped his father back to his feet, and the three figures continued their slow walk back down the mountainside.

Getting closer to home with every step, if no closer to reconnecting.

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

“You know, you’re making me use my brain a lot today, Doc. And to think, earlier on, I thought you wanted me to use my—”

“Let’s stick with the first organ, ok?”

With the Bounty safely uncoupled from the Terellian freighter and back underway to the Vandor sector, Natasha and Sunek were back in her cabin. Continuing their investigation. Such that it was.

Natasha had redoubled her efforts to track down more details about their passenger, but was still finding information in the public records to be thin on the ground.

“It’s just,” she sighed as she leaned back in her chair, “Anyone of his age working in the sciences for that long should have enough of a history to find something. Published papers, research grants, talks he’s given, conventions he’s attended. But…nothing. Apart from the last six years.”

“Uh huh,” Sunek replied with a disinterested air.

She turned her head to look at the Vulcan, who was idly lazing on top of her bed and staring up at the ceiling, in the absence of any other chairs in the room. Though mercifully, after his earlier misunderstanding, he was at least fully clothed.

“Sorry,” she offered, “Am I boring you?”

Sunek glanced over and sat up.

“What? Oh, right, no. I mean…kinda, yeah? But not really.”

Natasha did her best to ignore most of the insults in that stream of consciousness, as she patiently stared back at the tousle-haired Vulcan and embarked on another round of ego-massaging.

“So, I’m clearly out of ideas again. Why would a scientist have no background like that? Did he have a late career change? Has he spent his life at Starfleet Intelligence working on classified projects?”

She sighed again and rubbed her tired eyes in frustration.

“I feel like the answer’s right in front of me. But I’ve been staring at that screen for way too long. I just can’t put my finger on it.”

Sunek swung his lanky legs over the side of the bed and regarded the doctor with a slightly confused glance.

“Are you messing with me right now?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, it’s pretty obvious what the reason is, right?”

Natasha suppressed the sudden urge to take out some of her mounting frustrations in all manner of casually violent ways, and settled on a stern glare in the pompous Vulcan’s direction.

“Oh,” Sunek continued, noting the look, “You’re not messing with me. You really haven’t figured it out—?"

“Sunek. It’s been a really long day. Just…enlighten me.”

“Huh,” he mused, “Well, I mean, logically, if there’s no info on this guy until six years ago, then that kinda suggests that six years ago…he didn’t exist.”

Natasha’s tired brain started to tick over.

“Right. Ok. I see. So, what you’re saying is he’s…the product of a genetic experiment? Or he’s used some sort of rapid ageing drug? Or—”

“Or…he changed his name six years ago.”

Natasha felt a sudden rush of embarrassment joining her frustration and her tiredness.

“Um,” she managed, “It’s been a really, really long day.”

Sunek raised a curious eyebrow, still not entirely sure she wasn’t messing with him. Then, he stood up and gestured back to the screen.

“Still, that would explain why you can’t find anything. Cos you’re searching for the wrong name.”

“So, this has all been pointless then,” she sighed in defeat, “I really don’t think I’ve got the time to sit here and research any scientist, of any given name.”

Part of Sunek was in complete agreement, and was already contemplating what snacks he might replicate before heading for his own bed.

But before he could shrug his shoulders and take the lazy approach, the part of Sunek that was being medically cultivated these days sprang into action. The part of him that was less lazy, and more helpful.

And so, against what might once have been his better judgement, he elected to mull over Natasha’s plight again.

“Well…you know enough to narrow the search a bit, right? I mean, he’s human. Federation citizen. Kinda mid-thirties. You’ve got height, skin colour, hair colour. And you know he’s got some sort of link with the Vandor sector.”

Natasha studied the face of the oddly helpful pilot.

“You really wanna burn the midnight oil trying to dig something up with as flimsy a set of search criteria as that?” she asked, not sure if she was the one being messed with now.

Not really, Sunek absently thought to himself.

“Sure,” he grinned.

Natasha uncertainly smiled back, then turned back to the console and started to work, with Sunek standing next to her and watching on.

“Hey,” he offered after a few moments, “You got any snacks around here?”

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

Away from the Bounty’s pair of amateur investigators, Denella sat in the cockpit alone, in the middle of a particularly fierce yawn.

As the Orion completed the involuntary tired reaction, she rubbed her face and tried to refocus on the screen in front of her. She knew she should be resting, as Klath and the others were, but in her dual role of captain and engineer, she also knew there was so much she had to do.

So she was in the cockpit. Alone. Working.

Working on planning out the Bounty’s route after they had dropped off Doctor Brooks, looking for the most efficient way of finding their next job. And working on re-prioritising various maintenance tasks that she had been putting off as non-essential.

Just generally working.

As she worked, she found herself thinking about Brooks, and about the number of individuals he seemed to have crossed. From Verillian Security to cutthroat mercenaries.

And while it was true that the Bounty had a fairly long list of individuals and collectives that they had crossed, it still seemed a lot for a single scientist. No matter how resource-poor he claimed to be.

She wondered if she should trust her instincts, and listen to those suspicions.

But then she shook her head. She was sure she was just imagining things. Too much time on the Bounty, falling into misadventure after misadventure, had clearly made her paranoid.

Besides, she was too tired to be suspicious.

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

In the Bounty’s guest cabin, Doctor Lester Brooks was very much aware of the number of suspicions he was starting to arouse onboard.

He knew there would be some, to think otherwise would be naive. But he was also confident enough that they were not going to cause an issue. Not now they were this close to the Vandor sector.

As he sat at the desk of the mostly empty cabin, he retrieved a small comms unit from his pocket, tapping a short text-only message ready for transmission.

He waited for a moment before sending it, using the comms device to track the Bounty’s navigation system’s standard pings to nearby subspace marker points, which he could then use to piggy-back his message on entirely undetected.

In truth, he knew there was little need for that level of subterfuge. Even if he had aroused suspicions, there was no chance that anyone onboard would be tracking outgoing transmissions that closely. And even if they were, he could conjure up a dozen different excuses as to why he’d been using a personal comms device.

But he didn’t want to take any chances. Now that he was this close to success.

And besides, doing it this way allowed him to show off his intellect. Even if he was only showing it off to himself, he still enjoyed doing that.

So he waited patiently for the next window to send the message.

A message that simply read: Prepare for arrival.



* - This passage formed part of this scene in Star Trek: Bounty - 112 - "The Woman Who Cried, Among Other Things, Wolf"
 
Part Three (Cont’d)

“That’s it. I need to stop.”

“We need to keep moving.”

As the father and son team’s long slow walk back home had continued, and fatigue had settled in with a vengeance, the atmosphere had steadily degraded all over again. Whatever moment of near-understanding they had threatened to reach at the top of the mountain pass had long been left behind.

“Nope,” Jirel panted, easing his way over to the side of the path with his father leaning on his shoulder for support, “Gotta rest.”

He deposited his father onto an improvised flat rock seat and released the horse’s reins, before he flopped down onto the dirty ground in exhaustion.

Oblivious to the increasingly tense atmosphere, the chestnut brown steed began to graze on a patch of grass, as Jirel caught his breath.

“We’ve only been moving for half an hour,” Jenner pointed out, through deep breaths of his own.

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one dragging an old man and a horse along with them. Plus, you’re the one who insisted we stop last time, remember?”

Jenner didn’t rise to that. Instead, the two of them sat in silence for a moment.

“I mean,” Jirel continued eventually, his frustrations rising, “What sort of idiot gets lost on Earth? There must be a couple dozen starships in orbit, thousands of transporters all over the place, billions of people wandering around—”

“We’re not lost. We’re just hiking back.”

“No. I’m hiking back. You’re hitching a ride on my shoulder.”

The familiar pattern of the argument began to take shape. This time, Jenner was irritated enough to take the bait, and jabbed an accusing finger at his son.

“You just need to get used to a bit of hard work—”

“Oh, right,” Jirel snapped back, scrambling back to his feet, “That’s what this is about. Same as it always is. Look, I get it, ok? I’ve been a huge disappointment to you. Ever since I flunked that entrance exam, you’ve been very clear about that. I failed to get into the Academy, I ended the run of Jenners in Starfleet, and I let you down—”

“You didn’t let me down because you failed, goddamn it,” Jenner bellowed back, unleashing words that had festered inside him for a long time, “You let me down because you didn’t even try!”

Jirel went to fire back an immediate retort, but stopped himself. Which allowed his father to continue his rant.

“Getting to sit the entrance exam is a huge honour. You have any idea how many strings I had to pull for that? And that was how you thanked me! By staying out partying and wasting your big chance!”

Jirel again caught himself from saying what he wanted to say, and opted for a different tack.

“Ok, so, let’s say I had passed. What then? I get into the Academy? Maybe I somehow scrape my way to graduation by the skin of my teeth? And then I live out my life as some unremarkable officer on some unremarkable ship somewhere? Would you have been proud of that?”

“I wanted you to—”

“I know what you wanted me to be,” Jirel pressed, anger dripping from his words, “You wanted me to be just like you. And your father, and his father. A starship captain. Well, I was always going to disappoint you with that sort of entry requirement. So I guess I thought I’d get the disappointment out the way early.”

“That’s bullcrap, Jirel. Just some easy excuse you’ve made up for yourself to justify what you did. For the opportunity you wasted.”

“See, this is the problem. You’ve never had any respect for me—!”

“You’ve got no respect for yourself!”

Jenner growled the words at his adopted son, stopping the Trill in his tracks. The grey-haired Admiral forced himself up straight on the rock, suppressing the pain from his ankle as he did so, to press home his point.

‘Look at you, for god’s sake. What the hell has happened to you? What got dragged back here from Mivara II? I know you’ve been through a lot just lately, and it’s been rough for you. But…you’ve just given up, Jirel.”

“I—!”

Jirel forced himself to bite his tongue again. He stepped away from his father to try and calm himself down. But it was no good. The argument had taken its full form. It was an unstoppable force.

He turned back to Jenner and dived straight back in.

“You know, when I was a kid, I thought there was something wrong with me.”

“I’m sure it was tough,” Jenner offered with a calmer edge, “Growing up on—”

“Not the spots!” Jirel snapped back, “This is Earth. There were kids from ten different species in my class at school. Nobody cared!”

He tried and failed to quell the rising anger inside, then continued.

“No, I thought there was something wrong with me, cos I didn't just get abandoned once. I got abandoned twice.”

Jenner went to retort, but Jirel wasn’t prepared to be interrupted right now. He had tapped into a rich seam of latent pain.

“First by my real parents, whoever the hell they were. They didn’t want anything to do with me. And then by you. You were always flying away to do whatever Starfleet wanted. And it always felt like you couldn’t wait to leave.”

“That wasn’t—”

“And mom was amazing. She really was. But I still felt like there was something missing. I mean, why did you even adopt me if you didn’t want to stick around?”

Jenner adjusted his weight awkwardly, suddenly finding himself on the defensive.

“Your mother wanted a child—”

“And I wanted a dad!”

He bellowed his words with enough force to cause the horse to look up from its meal, whinnying slightly in surprise.

Jenner just stared back across the dirt path at Jirel. At a loss for words. For a moment, the two men just stared at each other. Watched over by the startled horse.

Jirel forced back a wall of tears that welled up inside of him having found himself bearing far more of his soul than he’d been intending to.

Eventually, seeing that his father had no response, he snorted bitterly and shook his head.

“Well, you know what? Screw it,” he said, stepping over to the horse, “You abandoned me enough times, I can sure as hell abandon you.”

“What are you doing—?”

“What I should’ve done right at the start of this whole stupid thing. I’m gonna ride back to the house and get Hesk to call you a shuttle.”

“Jirel,” his father pressed, “You’re not going to—”

“Yep, I am,” he retorted, unhooking the canteen of water from the saddle and tossing it into the dirt at his father’s feet, “Besides, if your Starfleet training’s so great, I’m sure you’ll be fine for a few hours out here.”

With that, he clambered back onto the horse and rode off.

Leaving his father, and the angry words they had exchanged, behind.

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

The Vandor system lay at the heart of the sector that bore its name.

It was an unremarkable binary system in the middle of a galaxy teeming with unremarkable binary systems. The fourth planet was the only one with habitable atmospheric conditions.

The Bounty cut a graceful figure as it descended through the atmosphere, before settling on a flat landing pad next to a small collection of prefab buildings.

Once the rear ramp was deployed, the huge crate that represented the sum total of Dr Brooks’s cargo descended, floating on anti-grav pads, with a Bounty crewmember keeping watch at each corner.

“I’m afraid it’s not much to look at,” Brooks offered bashfully as he gestured to the buildings, “There is more space underground. But as I said, I need to expand if I’m going to scale up my work.”

From the far side of the crate, Natasha watched on cautiously.

Her efforts to dig up more details on their passenger had proved continually frustrating, despite a surprising amount of assistance from Sunek. But while she may not have had anything concrete, she was still harbouring a healthy suspicion towards the apparently charming scientist.

Oblivious to the look he was getting, Brooks tapped a code into a panel on the prefab building they had approached, and the set of doors in front of them yawned open.

“This is a cargo elevator to take us down to the storage bay. We can put the crate down there.”

Natasha tensed up a fraction at this. She hadn’t been expecting this to be a trip under the surface of Vandor IV. Something about that didn’t sit well with her.

“I guess we can leave you to it then,” she offered.

The still-exhausted Denella glanced over at her colleague, with some irritation.

“I want my anti-gravs back,” she pointed out, “These things weren’t cheap. Now come on, let’s finish this delivery.”

Before Natasha could offer a retort, the Orion led the rest of them in manoeuvring the crate inside the elevator. With a tap of a wall-mounted control panel from Brooks, the entire floor began to drop, as the lift mechanism carried them downwards.

While Natasha was sure she was being paranoid, she couldn’t help but feel as though she was descending into someone’s lair.

They emerged in a cavernous storage area filled with other crates and containers, and moved their own cargo off the elevator platform using Denella’s precious anti-grav units.

“Huh,” Sunek mused as he looked around the metal walls of the enormous space, “Thought you said you needed to expand?”

“Well, this is just storage,” Brooks pointed out, “The experiments happen elsewhere.”

“Ok,” Denella shrugged, “Cargo officially unloaded. Dr Brooks, it was a pleasure doing business with you, but we need to—”

“Ah, you’re here!”

The unexpected new voice caused everyone to turn around in surprise. Except for Brooks, who had been expecting it.

From the far side of the room, a slender human man with scruffy white hair came ambling over, beaming widely.

Something about him felt unerringly familiar to Natasha, but she couldn’t quite place it.

But while she couldn’t, Sunek could. His photographic memory clearly told him this was the man he had bumped into back in the bar on the Benzite port.

“Hey,” he piped up, “Didn’t I—?”

“It’s in here, isn’t it?” the tall human asked Brooks excitedly, patting the side of the crate, “Have you seen it? Did the Verillians do everything just like we asked? Oh, I hope they did.”

Brooks smiled back at the Bounty’s crew and gestured to the newcomer.

“Apologies, my…assistant here is a little excitable. Too excitable, if you ask me.”

The tall human turned to them and smiled even wider.

“Ah, yes, where are my manners? Friends, welcome. My name is Rasmussen. Berlinghoff Rasmussen. And I want to thank you all in advance for helping me to go home…”

End of Part Three
 
Part Four

The name was familiar. Eerily familiar. Natasha racked her brain trying to put the face and the name together.

And then it clicked.

“Ah,” Rasmussen called out, pointing at her look of recognition with glee, “My reputation precedes me with this one—! Wait. You’re not with Starfleet, are you?”

He eyed Natasha suspiciously, but she shook her head.

“Ah!” Rasmussen called out again, “Even better!”

The other Bounty crew members looked at the human woman, intrigued.

“You know him?” Klath grunted.

“Not exactly. I remember him from a Federation news report. He’s a…con artist.”

“We really do meet a lot of them, don’t we?” Sunek quipped.

“And I resent that label,” Rasmussen countered with a slightly hurt pout, “What I am is a poor, unfortunate soul, trapped out of his own time.”

“Hey,” Sunek jumped in again, gesturing to the lanky human’s attire, “You never know, that kinda thing might come back into fashion one day—”

“He means literally, Sunek,” Natasha sighed.

“I don’t understand,” Denella sighed, losing count of how often she had said that particular phrase just recently.

“He’s a failed inventor from the 22nd century, who managed to steal a time machine from a 26th century traveller and planned to go jumping through history, stealing technology and gadgets to pass off as his own back home. Except, even on his first trip, he got too greedy.”

Rasmussen’s friendly face twitched slightly at this unerringly accurate summary. But he hadn’t gotten this far in life by accepting what other people said about him.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” he conceded, “The other would be that I was merely availing myself of all that time travel had to offer having been given a unique opportunity to explore, and was then forcibly stranded in the 24th century by a Starfleet captain operating as judge and jury in his own private moral court—!”

He stopped himself as his tone grew a little more angry than he’d been intending.

“Oopsie,” he offered with a slightly sheepish smile, “I sometimes get a little carried away. But that’s what happens when you’re illegally detained, I suppose.”

“There was nothing illegal about it,” Natasha retorted, finding herself still defending Starfleet despite having left it behind her, “What was illegal was what you were planning to do to the timeline.”

“Ugh,” Rasmussen tutted, “Starfleet, ex-Starfleet, they’re all the same. No sense of fun. Slap a bald cap on her and she’d be the spit of—”

“And besides,” Natasha continued, her righteous indignation in unstoppable flow, “Speaking of incarceration, I thought you’d been sent to a Federation penal colony? For temporal theft.”

“Psh. ‘Temporal theft’! What a curious little charge. And, as for my new-found freedom, it really is incredible how forgiving your Federation justice system can be after a bit of good behaviour.”

Natasha considered this eminently plausible explanation. It was fair to say that the Federation favoured rehabilitation over extended punishment in most cases, though she couldn’t quite shake the idea that this wasn’t the full story.

“Still,” Rasmussen continued, his friendly smile back in place, “Bygones and all that. As I said, thanks to you, I’m going to be going home very soon.”

“But,” Denella jumped in, her tired brain still struggling to keep up, “If your home is the 22nd century, then how…?”

Rasmussen glanced over at Brooks with a gleeful smile, nodding in the direction of the crate that the Bounty’s crew had lugged all the way to Vandor IV.

“Can we show them?”

“I don’t see why not,” the scientist sighed patiently, “You’re clearly not going to stop going on about it unless we do.”

With that affirmation, Rasmussen nearly skipped over to the crate and tapped a control button. The front of the crate began to open, parting to reveal the contents.

“So,” Natasha said, glaring at Brooks, “I’m guessing it’s not a bunch of spare parts and duridium sheets after all.”

“As I’m sure you had figured out, Ms Kinsen,” Brooks replied, his tone now sounding more aloof and haughty than before, “Alas, I didn’t quite have enough time to make the sensor-masking readings perfect. But then, as a wise man once said, perfection is overrated.”

“Ugh,” Rasmussen muttered, “Here come the Cardassian art critiques again…”

“The important thing was,” Brooks concluded, “It was enough to fool the Verillians. And you.”

Natasha scowled slightly at that comment, as the crate continued to open. Finally revealing what was inside.

“Behold!” Rasmussen called out with a flourish, as the ambient light of the storage bay illuminated the interior.

Staring back at them was what looked like a small shuttlepod-type craft. A slightly stubby design, with an angular, honeycomb-style structure to the hull.

“Huh,” Sunek called out with inevitable and heavy sarcasm, “Well, that looks kinda crappy. Kinda really crappy.”

It was true that, as grand reveals went, it wasn’t exactly the grandest. But Natasha recognised the design immediately, from the Federation news reports.

“But…I don’t understand,” she said to Rasmussen, “Your—The time pod you arrived in went back through time without you.”

“Yes, it did,” Brooks responded, stepping in with a mildly pompous explanation,”But not before your diligent Starfleet crew took down all of its details. Sensor sweeps, tricorder scans, physical images. All stored away in the USS Enterprise’s computer core.”

He began to pace around the bay, as if he’d waited a while to give an audience this explanation.

“Of course, it’s not easy for a civilian to gain access to such information, But, after that particular ship crash-landed, the computer core was one of the items that was salvaged intact. A prize of the utmost importance, given how many discoveries they made.”

He mustered a smile as he turned on his heels back to the Bounty’s crew.

“Copies of the core were even made, and distributed throughout the Federation, for research teams to use as a reference point. And, after the war, with resources at a premium, it’s not always easy for Starfleet to make sure they’re all being…securely looked after.”

“But,” Rasmussen picked up eagerly, “Even when we had the plans, we still needed someone to build it. And that’s where my colleague hit on the delightful idea of the Verillians.”

“An insular species, but a technically gifted one,” Brooks pointed out, “It didn’t take long to find a ship builder to do the work, no questions asked. And with so little passing traffic through that system, there was little risk of them being disturbed.”

“Apart from with Verillian Security, apparently,” Denella pointed out, beginning to get an unerringly familiar feeling that she’d been suckered.

“Believe it or not,” Brooks replied, “That actually was for unpaid storage fees.”

“Yeah,” Natasha snorted, “And they got Al Capone for his taxes.”

Brooks didn’t get that reference, and a flash of irritation crossed his face when the same comment provoked a knowing chuckle from Rasmussen. He didn’t like being the one struggling to follow the conversation.

“So, wait,” Sunek piped up, pointing at the vessel inside the crate, “You’re telling me this dumb little ship that looks like a cheap holosuite prop is…a time machine?”

Rasmussen and Brooks shared a glance.

“Well,” Brooks replied after a moment, “Not yet.”

“Every ship needs a power source,” Rasmussen added with a shrug, gesturing to the other man, “Which is what brought me to this fine young gentleman in the first place.”

The penny dropped in Natasha’s head.

“The chronitons,” she whispered, “You’re using the chronitons.”

“Yes, we are,” Rasmussen beamed, “Or, to be precise, we will be. In…good time.”

He chuckled at his own weak joke, even as Brooks took his chance to strike.

With the Bounty’s crew all now standing in front of him, and with Klath furthest away of them all, he had more than enough time to execute his rather rudimentary plan.

In an instant, he pulled a tiny phaser out of his pocket and fired. The wide angle stun setting shrouded all four victims of the attack in a reddish glow.

He had been forced to take a calculated risk with the setting he was using. He knew he needed the shot to be strong enough to suppress all four different species, while also not being too strong to cause any permanent damage in any of them.

Fortunately, although both Klath and Denella were able to take a couple of staggered steps towards him when they saw him strike, all four quickly succumbed to the effects of the stop, collapsing to the ground one by one.

As the Klingon warrior finally slumped to the ground with a growl, joining his colleagues in unconsciousness, Brooks looked down at his handiwork with some satisfaction.

Alongside him, Rasmussen tutted and gestured to the phaser.

“You know,” he offered, “That was a bit tacky…”
 
Klath caught napping when he should have been outflanking was was clearly an enemy.... Yeah - Sunek's not going to let him live this one down.

"Don't torment the tiny demon..."
"Why? Does it make him dangerous?"
"No... It's just... tacky."

Thanks!! rbs
 
Part Four (Cont’d)

Now riding solo, with a horse that had already spent a long day toiling outside in the heat, Jirel’s pace was no longer a frantic gallop.

Even though he had a genuine reason to hurry, to get help to the father he had left behind, he knew it was best to stop the animal from tiring. And so, he was moving a little more than a fast trot. Which was giving him time to think.

As the horse patiently negotiated its way across the plains, towards the narrow stream it had forded earlier and the Jenner homestead beyond, the Trill on its back was silently ruminating on everything that had happened.

And he wasn’t limiting that ruminating merely to what had happened today, culminating in the ferocious argument full of home truths that had just erupted. The one that had caused him to abandon his father further up the pass.

He was also thinking about the wider context of his situation. Still trying to piece together everything that had led him here.

He thought back to his miserable time on Mivara II, and again considered the mysterious way in which he had been rescued from a beating that would likely have killed him, and transported to a Federation colony.

He thought about the fateful trip to Sector 374 with the Bounty. The feeling of shock when he had seen Maya Ortega getting shot. And the anger that had compelled him to retaliate by shooting Grenk, the Ferengi who had killed her.

He thought about his time on the Bounty, before it had been soured by all of that. About the friends he had made and the relationships he had developed.

He even thought back to his early life. Growing up back here on Earth, with his mother and his often-absent father.

And somehow, everything that had happened to him, every experience he had been through, had led him back here again.

And led him to abandon his father in the middle of the Colorado wilderness.

As he rode on, one part of his recent past began to bubble to the forefront of his mind. As much as he tried to suppress it.

He looked down at the animal underneath him, and recalled the trip to Nimbus III last year, when he had ridden a Nimbosian horse.

And he recalled how one person had managed to influence his actions back on the Planet of Galactic Peace. To convince him not to take the latinum and run, but to try and help a few of the people on Nimbus III.

How she had been able to convince him to do the right thing.

And he had done the right thing. He had elected to give up any riches promised by selling the stable source of water they had lucked into, and had instead given it to the local Nimbosians for free.*

That wasn’t the only time she’d convinced him to follow his conscience. Ever since she had first joined the Bounty’s crew, she had an unerring way of getting him to do the right thing, even when he might not have wanted to.

And, even though he had no idea where she was right now, she was somehow still doing it. Inside his head, he could picture her expression if she was here.

Because right now, he was definitely not doing the right thing.

True, he was now closer to the homestead than he was to his father. And the fastest way to get him some help would be to ride on and summon a shuttle. But that wasn’t really the point. And deep down, he knew it.

His father’s injury wasn’t in any way life threatening. The speed of the rescue wasn’t the issue.

It wasn’t even really about helping him. It was about the way that he helped him.

That was what Natasha’s disappointed expression was telling him, even from thousands of light years away.

With a grimace of reluctance, he broke free of his thoughts and gently pulled back on the reins.

“Bet he doesn’t thank me for this,” he muttered to himself.

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

Admiral Bryce Jenner hobbled onwards, awkwardly propped up by his newly-acquired improvised crutch.

He had located the tree branch a short distance from where Jirel had left him, and he was now employing it to take the weight of his broken ankle.

Even with the use of the branch, his progress had been slow. But that didn’t really matter to him. He may have been left behind, with nothing to do but helplessly wait for rescue to come his way, but that wasn’t how he operated.

So, despite the fact that whatever rescue Hesk was able to send would be with him well before he made his own way home, he was still grimly hobbling on.

As he paused to catch his breath, he took a moment to wonder whether this was how it was all supposed to have played out. If he could have done more to reconnect with his son.

If he’d been given more to go on, he might’ve done a better job. But he knew very well that he’d been given all he could have been.

As he paused for a moment to catch his breath, he heard the unmistakable sound of hooves approaching. He looked up through the setting sun as Jirel brought his horse to a stop and dismounted with practised ease.

“I thought I told you to stay put and wait for help,” the Trill offered with a slightly severe glare.

“You really think you’re ever gonna be in a position to give me orders?” the defiant and decorated admiral fired back.

Jirel sighed and shook his head, before stepping towards the older man.

“Fine. If you’re gonna insist on being this stupid, at least let me help you.”

Jenner immediately tried to wave him off by swinging his improvised crutch in his son’s general direction.

“I don’t need you,” he grouched, “I can do this on my own.”

His words sounded determined, but the extra wince that crossed his face as his injured ankle made brief contact with the ground rather gave the game away.

Still, Jirel found himself deciding to indulge the older man’s ego.

“I know you can,” he replied with a sliver of a smile, “But how about you just humour me and pretend I’m helping, hmm?”

He took another step forwards, half expecting another swipe from the crutch. But instead, Jenner merely grumpily nodded and allowed his weight to rest on Jirel’s shoulder once again.

The Trill grabbed the horse’s reins with his other hand, and once again the motley convoy moved off in the direction of home.

“You said you were leaving,” Jenner couldn’t help but offer to his son between slow and painful footsteps.

“And you said you’d lost weight,” Jirel grunted in reply.



* - For more details of the Bounty's trip to Nimbus III, see Star Trek: Bounty - 105 - "Once Upon a Time in the Beta Quadrant".
 
Part Four (Cont’d)

Slowly but surely, Natasha regained consciousness.

She sat bolt upright and looked around, and was taken aback by what she could see.

Since joining the Bounty’s crew, she had become grimly accustomed to being knocked out, or held at gunpoint, or otherwise incarcerated. She was already starting to lose count of the number of holding cells she had been inside.

But this was nothing like that.

She was lying on a comfortable, well-made bed inside a clean, antiseptic room. The walls, ceiling and the softly carpeted floor were all a brilliant white.

The bed itself was virtually the only adornment inside the room, save for a small table and chair on the opposite side of the room, and an open gap in the wall that seemed to serve as a permanently open doorway.

Having checked herself over and found no sign of injury from the stun shot, she clambered off the bed and walked over to the table.

On it, she was surprised to find a plate. On which sat the unmistakable form of a freshly replicated double cheeseburger (with all the trimmings), and a tall glass of water.

Regardless of how long she may have been out for, she was undeniably thirsty. And hungry, for that matter. But she was unwilling to simply start consuming the suspiciously perfect repast that had been laid out for her, likely by the same person that had so recently shot her.

Instead, she left the tantalisingly delicious scent of the meal behind and walked over to the open doorway. As she approached, she expected to see the tell-tale shimmer of a forcefield becoming visible in the empty gap. But she couldn’t see anything like that.

With a healthy hint of trepidation, she slowly reached a hand out to test the waters, bracing herself for something terrible to happen.

She jumped back in fright as Sunek poked his head around the side of the doorway.

“Hey, doc.”

“Holy crap—! Sunek!”

The tousle-haired Vulcan grinned back at the shocked human, then walked straight into the room through the evidently forcefield-free doorway.

“Who were you expecting?” he asked off-handedly, “T’Pau?”

He wandered around the room, taking the limited decor in, then alighted his gaze on the double cheeseburger (with all the trimmings).

“Huh. Ok, that makes sense.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh,” he continued, helpfully adding some belated context, “The room I woke up in was the same as this, except there was a fresh bowl of plomeek soup and a Risian mai tai sitting on the table. Both delicious, by the way.”

“You actually ate it?”

“Why not?” he shrugged, “I was hungry. Besides, if you’re worried it might be poisoned, it kinda feels like they’ve had enough opportunities to kill us if they wanted to, doesn’t it?”

Natasha was forced to concede this annoyingly rational point with a nod, as Sunek continued.

“Same thing with Denella. Identical room, Orion food—”

From somewhere outside, she heard a familiar angry bellow of frustration echoing around.

“Oh, and Klath’s awake too,” Sunek added as an unnecessary clarification, “Everyone else is in the living room.”

“The living room…?”

As she struggled to process what he was saying, the Vulcan jerked his head in the direction of the doorway and walked off. She rushed off after him, her head still swimming.

She found herself in a corridor, with other doorways branching off along each wall. She correctly surmised they were the identical rooms the others had found themselves in.

At the end of the short corridor was another bright white room, this one larger than the bedroom she had been in and clearly serving as a communal space. One wall was dominated by a vast computer screen, though there were no discernible controls to be seen anywhere.

The larger room was also sparsely furnished. In fact, at this point in time, it was even more sparsely furnished than the decorator had originally intended.

Half a dozen cushioned seats lay haphazardly across the floor, while the remains of a stout wooden table lay in pieces next to the far wall where, moments ago, it had evidently been thrown.

Denella turned to Natasha and Sunek as they walked in, and gestured to the fuming Klath where the Klingon stood with his fists clenched next to the shattered table.

“Klath’s just working through some stuff,” she offered with a shrug, before her tone turned more serious, “Are you ok?”

“I think so,” Natasha nodded, “But I take it from Klath’s spot of redecorating that we’re trapped in here?”

“Haven’t had a chance to look around everywhere, but it’s a pretty good assumption—”

Denella was interrupted by the huge computer screen suddenly flaring into life.

The four Bounty crew members turned in unison to see the unerringly familiar faces of Dr Brooks and Berlinghoff Rasmussen filling the screen.

“Ah, you’re all awake,” Rasmussen beamed, “Excellent.”

“Cowards!” Klath spat back, grabbing one of the chairs from the floor and lifting it above his head, his aim focused towards the screen.

“Klath!” Denella barked, “Hold on.”

The scowling Klingon reluctantly paused, bringing the chair back down to the ground.

“Ok,” the Orion continued back to the two men on the screen, “What the hell is this all about? We delivered your cargo, didn’t we?”

“I’m afraid we need you for a little bit longer, as it turns out,” Brooks offered with a satisfied smile, “Just until we’ve completed the final stage of my work.”

“What final stage?” Natasha asked warily.

“All in good time. But first, I should introduce myself properly.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Denella spat.

“I think your doctor was close to figuring it out. Just a shame that you made one little mistake with all that research of yours.”

Natasha’s eyes widened in shock.

“How did you know I was—?”

“That ship of yours isn’t exactly difficult to hack into,” he cut in, slightly haughtily, “I noticed what you were doing as I was…conducting some research of my own.”

“That reminds me,” Rasmussen chimed in playfully, “I hope you all enjoyed your meals. Trust Mr Thoughtful here to check your ship's replicator logs to make sure we could provide you with your favourite food. Although, doctor, double cheeseburgers? Tut tut.”

Natasha dismissed his playful remark and kept her focus on the other man on the screen.

“So Sunek was right,” she nodded, “You changed your name.”

“Duh-doy,” the Vulcan chimed in from across the room.

“To some extent,” Brooks replied enigmatically, “But your mistake was in focusing on the wrong part of the conundrum. Research the destination, not the person.”

That didn’t clarify anything to anyone, and it was becoming clear that Brooks was revelling in drawing out his explanation. A frustrated Klath began to give serious thought to revisiting his initial plan involving the broken chair and the computer screen.

“I love it when he does this,” Rasmussen grinned, “So mysterious.”

“The Vandor system,” Brooks continued, “Not an especially interesting place. Which means that any cursory piece of research would probably have shown you the most notable former resident of Vandor IV. A…Doctor Paul Mannheim.” *

Three of the four Bounty crew members didn’t react to this revelation at all. But, once again, it provoked a glimmer of a memory in Natasha’s head.

“Which makes me…Doctor Lester Mannheim. By birth, at least.”

“...Good for you?” Sunek managed with a shrug.

Brooks didn’t seem overly concerned with the evident lack of comprehension from his audience, as he continued.

“My father was a genius in the field of temporal science. He dedicated his life to understanding the relationship between space and time. To unlocking the keys to the universe. And for all of that work, all he ever got remembered for was—”

“The Mannheim Effect!”

Natasha blurted the words out in a sudden burst of understanding, as the pieces fell into place in her mind. The comment was met with more confusion from the rest of the Bounty’s crew, but it was enough to cause a very visible flinch on the face of the man on the screen.

“Still lost,” Denella offered with a tired sigh, on behalf of the others.

“It was a—” Natasha began.

“It doesn’t matter what it was!” Brooks snapped, “The point was that it was used to discredit his entire body of work, defund his experiments. And, until I was forced to change my name, it ruined my career as well!”

The frustration in his voice threatened to boil over. He took a second to calm himself before he continued.

“Well, no more. I know my father’s work had merit. And I knew I had to help preserve his legacy. All I needed was a focal point.”

“Ah,” Rasmussen chimed in excitedly, “And that’s where I came in. Little old me with the time pod. Or, at least an idea of where the plans for one were. Strange, isn’t it, how it was wrong for me to take a few little trinkets back through history, but there was nothing wrong with Starfleet keeping very detailed schematics of a 26th century time machine…”

Natasha felt that particular comment being directed her way, even if she hadn’t been a Starfleet representative for some time. But for the time being, she elected not to rise to the bait, and maintained her silence.

“And now we’re close to realising both of our goals,” Brooks continued, “My colleague here can finally go home, and I can finally link the Mannheim name with a piece of true scientific history, rather than infamy.”

Denella took a step towards the screen, growing tired of trying to keep up.

“None of this explains where we come in.”

“You had to ask,” Sunek muttered behind her.

On the screen, Brooks’s face twisted into a slightly superior smirk.

“Ah, yes. You see, I do still need you and your crew’s help. To get us our chronitons.”

“Afraid we’re fresh out,” Sunek quipped, “Used up our last one the other day cleaning the—”

“What do you mean?” Natasha cut across the sarcastic Vulcan, “How exactly are we supposed to help you with that?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Brooks responded cryptically, “As our…willing volunteers, we’re going to need your help in a little experiment, courtesy of my late, great father. But for the time being, please make yourselves at home.”

Klath snarled with frustration again, forcing Denella to gesture again for him to hold back.

“We’re not just going to sit around,” she snarled at the two men on the screen, “We’re going to break out of here. There’s got to be a way.”

Her veiled threat was, to her surprise, met with smiles from the two faces staring back at her.

“Oh yes,” Rasmussen offered enigmatically, “You’re more than welcome to try.”

“Indeed,” Brooks nodded, “We wouldn’t dream of stopping you.”

The two men shared a knowing laugh at this. A laugh that seemed to mock the very idea of the four captives breaking out. And a laugh that was unceremoniously ended by a chair being hurled at speed into the computer screen, shattering the panel in a cacophony of shrapnel.

Natasha, Denella and Sunek all turned to look at Klath, with wildly different levels of annoyance or amusement.

The snarling Klingon stared back at them, then slowly shrugged his huge shoulders.

“I needed that.”

Denella rolled her eyes and turned back to the others.

“So,” Sunek offered, “Seeing as how Klath just broke our only TV, I’m assuming we’re gonna try to get the hell out of here?”

Denella looked around at her assembled colleagues, and considered the scale of the challenge ahead of them. And never doubted her answer for a moment.

“You’re damn right we are.”




* - A character introduced in ST:TNG "We'll Always Have Paris". I've taken a little creative liberty with the character here, but no more so than with our other 'special guest star', Berlinghoff Rasmussen. :lol:
 
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