Part Three (Cont'd)
The stocky form of the Raja-class Bajoran warp shuttle gracefully glided up through the atmosphere of Arvon II.
Inside the cockpit of the craft, space had become something of a premium. While there was room for four occupants inside the cockpit, there were only two seats for the pilot and co-pilot, which were taken by Erami and Denella respectively. As they worked, Natasha and the Andorian guard that Sha’jev had assigned to them were both forced to awkwardly stand behind.
“Ok, orbital systems are green,” Erami reported, before glancing at the Orion woman with a hopeful grin, “No pun intended.”
Denella didn’t react to the joke, and kept her expression serious and her attention fixed on the antique instruments in front of her.
Inside, she was still a cavalcade of confused emotions when it came to the Bajoran. And she hadn’t found time to talk any more of it through with Natasha before they had started putting the rest of Erami’s plan into motion. Mainly because she’s been hiding in her cabin. But however she felt, she wasn’t interested in joking. Especially not now.
And especially not when they had a giant security guard looking over their respective shoulders.
“Warp drive is online,” she reported instead, “Main power is stable.”
“Well then,” Erami nodded, glancing back at the guard, “I’d say we’re ready for that test flight, if you wanna give me the codes for the shields, Mr…?”
The guard showed no apparent interest in introducing himself, and instead brusquely took a step forward and pushed his way in between the two women to get to the controls.
“I will input the required codes,” he grunted.
“Huh,” Erami couldn’t help but snort, “And I thought Sha’jev trusted me.”
“She does,” the guard replied simply, “But Dashev does not.”
Erami elected not to reply to that comment, even as the guard tapped roughly at the mechanical controls with his thick, stubby fingers.
Her plan to steal the warp shuttle had been straightforward when she had expected it to just be her, Denella and Natasha onboard. But the presence of the guard was now making things tricky, and she knew she would have to act quickly to get things back on track.
She just hoped the others would pick up on what she was planning.
“Codes verified,” the guard reported eventually, “The access point in the shield grid is open. You may proceed with the test.”
“Gladly,” Erami replied as the guard stepped back, “Taking us out.”
The shuttle pivoted around and moved up through the higher layers of the atmosphere, passing through the invisible gap in the equally invisible shielding that had been opened by the codes. For some reason, even though she knew there was no need for concern, Denella found herself bracing herself as they passed through.
Within moments, they were out into the familiar blackness of space.
“Ok, let’s do this,” Erami continued, “Breaking orbit…and going to warp speed.”
Natasha watched on as the craft jumped to warp, still feeling tense from the close proximity of the guard next to her. She hadn’t been expecting her gooseberry duties on Arvon II to go this far.
As the shuttle proceeded on the agreed course to loop around Arvon I, the smaller inner planet between Sha’jev’s home and the system’s star, Erami nodded in satisfaction.
“Ok, all looks good here. Warp two-point-five and holding steady.”
“Agreed,” Denella added as she checked her own instruments, “Warp field is stable. Minor variance in the outer shell, but all well within tolerance.”
“Right then,” the Bajoran grinned, “Let’s push it a bit further, hmm? The Raja-class was good for warp four back in the day, after all.”
As she began to tap the pilot’s controls, Denella shot a look across at her.
“Are you crazy? We’re not taking her to warp four! Keep it table at two-point-five until we complete the loop, then throttle back.”
“Nah, it’s fine. She can take it.”
“We only just finished the repairs, Erami. She’s not ready for that.”
Erami looked back over at the Orion, and reluctantly prepared herself to use this developing debate to her advantage. She had to make it look convincing after all.
“I think it is ready for it,” she offered back.
“And I’m telling you it’s not!”
“Or,” the Bajoran persisted, “Maybe it’s actually been ready for this the whole time, and it just hasn’t realised.”
Erami flinched internally even as she offered her thinly-veiled comment. Natasha suppressed a slight gasp at the thinly veiled double meaning behind her words. The Andorian guard simply stared dumbly at the unfolding argument.
Meanwhile, Denella was taken aback at the edge to Erami’s comment. But she found herself reacting instinctively, well before she thought about what she was actually saying.
“Or maybe you shouldn’t be pushing it too far too soon! These things take time! You can’t just expect to go to maximum warp like that!”
As the argument continued to build, Erami stood from her seat and faced the Orion. Denella mirrored her movements until they were staring each other down across the controls.
“Um,” Natasha managed, “Maybe we should all—”
“I’m not expecting anything!” Erami fired back, “I’m just showing a bit of faith! I know it can do it, I guess I just need to prove it to itself!”
“How can you even say that?! You have no idea what—!”
“Stop this,” the guard cut in, growing increasingly frustrated thanks to being entirely bereft of the contextual information needed to understand the double meaning of the ongoing debate, “Proceed with the test.”
“Ugh,” Erami continued, ignoring the guard, “I can’t believe this, you know. It’s like, sometimes you make me so frustrated, I just wanna—”
She acted instantly, swinging her arm around and bringing her clenched fist straight into a clean contact with the Andorian guard’s jaw.
It was a surprising enough action to catch him completely by surprise. And despite the size difference between the Bajoran and the huge Andorian, it sent him down onto the deck below with a hefty thud.
As Denella and Natasha watched in shock, the cockpit was then filled with a cry of agony, as the pain receptors in Erami’s brain registered the damage to her fist.
“Crap!” she screamed in pain, “Ah! Triple crap with crap on! That hurts!”
The other two women stared back at the Bajoran for another moment or two, even as she wrung her swollen hand and glared back at them.
“Well, what the hell are you waiting for?” she continued, gesturing to the fallen guard with her one remaining good hand, “Tie him up! And tightly as well, I’m pretty sure those arms of his’ll make short work of most restraints.”
Natasha was the first to react, grabbing a nearby coil of thick wiring left over from the repairs and awkwardly manoeuvring the dead weight of the Andorian onto his front so she could tightly bind his wrists together.
Meanwhile, Denella just continued to stare incredulously at Erami, as she realised what the argument they had just engaged in had really been about. From Erami’s side at least.
“D—Did you just—?”
“Denella, I’m sorry,” the Bajoran replied quickly, and seemingly entirely honestly, “But I had to make it as believable as possible to be a proper distraction for our friend over there. He definitely wasn’t part of the plan, and he was watching us like a hawk.”
She gestured back down to the controls and shrugged.
“But we’ve got what we wanted. And now he’s, um, incapacitated, he can’t input the codes to re-raise the shielding.”
The Orion continued to stare, now feeling mortified at how close she had come to revealing some of her deeper home truths right there in front of everyone. During what had been, as far as she had been concerned, an entirely legitimate and somewhat overdue argument between them. She felt her face starting to burn, even as a wealth of new reasons for a fresh argument flashed to the forefront of her mind.
Fortunately, before she could blurt out anything else she might later regret, Erami let out a fresh wince of pain.
“By the way,” she added with a grimace, holding up her swollen hand, “Any chance you could find me a medkit?”
****************************
Jirel and Sunek bounded up the steps of the Bounty’s cockpit to find the other two members of their side of the fractured crew already in place. Klath was seated at his regular station, while in the absence of Denella, Zesh had elected to slot behind the rear engineering station for the time being.
“We get what we needed?” Jirel asked as flopped into his tattered centre chair and Sunek reached the forward pilot’s position, ditching his replicated sunglasses to one side as he sat down.
“I believe so,” Klath boomed, checking his bank of controls, “And the opening in the planetary shield grid is still in place. I have sent the exact coordinates to the pilot’s station.”
“Gottem,” Sunek nodded.
“Ok then,” Jirel gestured, “Let’s get going, Sunek. Just like Erami said.”
The Vulcan tapped the controls and immediately the Bounty began to rise from the landing pad, leaving Sha’jev Thallis and her compound behind.
“Man, I’m gonna miss that cocktail bar,” Sunek sighed as he worked.
“If we pull this off, the Risian Sunrises are on me,” the Trill replied.
“He’ll hold you to that, you know,” Zesh chimed in from the back of the cockpit.
Jirel smiled despite himself as the Bounty swiftly rose up. He wondered whether or not panic was setting in below them now, as Sha’jev and her security detail saw them making their entirely unannounced exit from Arvon II.
And furthermore, he wondered whether it really was going to be this easy. After all, things never were with the Bounty.
The ship powered away from the compound under thruster power, as Sunek eased the ship upwards towards the invisible gap in the shielding that enveloped the planet.
“Ok, think I’ve got sight of that hole I’m aiming for,” the Vulcan reported, before snorting and adding, “That’s what she s—”
“Shut up, Sunek.”
The Bounty’s pilot shrugged his lanky shoulders and smirked to himself as the Bounty moved higher and higher through the atmosphere, even closer to the metaphorical door that had been literally left open for them.
Maybe things would be this easy, Jirel mused to himself. Maybe they really were about to just fly right out of—
His thoughts were interrupted by a harsh alert from Klath’s station, eliciting a familiar sinking feeling in Jirel’s stomach.
“The opening is gone,” the Klingon reported with some urgency, “The shield grid is back to full strength!”
“Goddamn it,” Jirel barked, “Sunek, get us—!”
But he couldn’t get any further. Because then the cockpit was filled with the whine of incoming transporter signals.
Klath snapped into action as any good warrior should, standing from his station and reaching for his trusty bat’leth on his back. But it was too late.
Before his hand reached his weapon, he found himself staring at a pair of stubby disruptor pistols, pointed straight at him.
The rest of the Bounty’s crew stood and looked at the scene that confronted them. Now all finding themselves on the end of a disruptor or two, as the cockpit had instantly filled with armed and angry Andorian security guards.
And in the middle of them all, Sha’jev Thallis stood proudly and offered a sarcastic slow clap of applause.
“Bravo,” she sneered in Jirel’s direction, “A most entertaining escape attempt, I must say.”
“We were going for ‘flawless’, rather than ‘entertaining’,” Sunek couldn’t help but fire back from behind Jirel.
“Well, I’m afraid you fell a long way short of that, my friends. A very long way short. Especially the attention you were giving to my security systems under Dashev’s watch.”
Klath and Zesh shared a glance at their unsubtle part in getting them captured.
Meanwhile, the Andorian woman stepped towards Jirel, even as the rest of the Bounty’s crew remained held at disruptor point.
“You say that,” the Trill couldn’t help but respond, “But actually, we’ve got what we needed.”
“Ah yes, my treasured Bajoran warp shuttle. That does seem to have flown the nest, so to speak, doesn’t it? But, no matter. You see, it’s not exactly the fastest of ships. And, well, it’s very nearly a one-of-a-kind. Which does make it that much easier to find on sensors…”
She chuckled lightly in victory, as Jirel glared back at her.
“And when I find them,” she added, “I have a feeling they’ll be very keen to give it back. In exchange for…my hostages.”
Jirel’s gaze dropped to the nearest disruptor and sighed deeply.
Things were never that easy.
End of Part Three
The stocky form of the Raja-class Bajoran warp shuttle gracefully glided up through the atmosphere of Arvon II.
Inside the cockpit of the craft, space had become something of a premium. While there was room for four occupants inside the cockpit, there were only two seats for the pilot and co-pilot, which were taken by Erami and Denella respectively. As they worked, Natasha and the Andorian guard that Sha’jev had assigned to them were both forced to awkwardly stand behind.
“Ok, orbital systems are green,” Erami reported, before glancing at the Orion woman with a hopeful grin, “No pun intended.”
Denella didn’t react to the joke, and kept her expression serious and her attention fixed on the antique instruments in front of her.
Inside, she was still a cavalcade of confused emotions when it came to the Bajoran. And she hadn’t found time to talk any more of it through with Natasha before they had started putting the rest of Erami’s plan into motion. Mainly because she’s been hiding in her cabin. But however she felt, she wasn’t interested in joking. Especially not now.
And especially not when they had a giant security guard looking over their respective shoulders.
“Warp drive is online,” she reported instead, “Main power is stable.”
“Well then,” Erami nodded, glancing back at the guard, “I’d say we’re ready for that test flight, if you wanna give me the codes for the shields, Mr…?”
The guard showed no apparent interest in introducing himself, and instead brusquely took a step forward and pushed his way in between the two women to get to the controls.
“I will input the required codes,” he grunted.
“Huh,” Erami couldn’t help but snort, “And I thought Sha’jev trusted me.”
“She does,” the guard replied simply, “But Dashev does not.”
Erami elected not to reply to that comment, even as the guard tapped roughly at the mechanical controls with his thick, stubby fingers.
Her plan to steal the warp shuttle had been straightforward when she had expected it to just be her, Denella and Natasha onboard. But the presence of the guard was now making things tricky, and she knew she would have to act quickly to get things back on track.
She just hoped the others would pick up on what she was planning.
“Codes verified,” the guard reported eventually, “The access point in the shield grid is open. You may proceed with the test.”
“Gladly,” Erami replied as the guard stepped back, “Taking us out.”
The shuttle pivoted around and moved up through the higher layers of the atmosphere, passing through the invisible gap in the equally invisible shielding that had been opened by the codes. For some reason, even though she knew there was no need for concern, Denella found herself bracing herself as they passed through.
Within moments, they were out into the familiar blackness of space.
“Ok, let’s do this,” Erami continued, “Breaking orbit…and going to warp speed.”
Natasha watched on as the craft jumped to warp, still feeling tense from the close proximity of the guard next to her. She hadn’t been expecting her gooseberry duties on Arvon II to go this far.
As the shuttle proceeded on the agreed course to loop around Arvon I, the smaller inner planet between Sha’jev’s home and the system’s star, Erami nodded in satisfaction.
“Ok, all looks good here. Warp two-point-five and holding steady.”
“Agreed,” Denella added as she checked her own instruments, “Warp field is stable. Minor variance in the outer shell, but all well within tolerance.”
“Right then,” the Bajoran grinned, “Let’s push it a bit further, hmm? The Raja-class was good for warp four back in the day, after all.”
As she began to tap the pilot’s controls, Denella shot a look across at her.
“Are you crazy? We’re not taking her to warp four! Keep it table at two-point-five until we complete the loop, then throttle back.”
“Nah, it’s fine. She can take it.”
“We only just finished the repairs, Erami. She’s not ready for that.”
Erami looked back over at the Orion, and reluctantly prepared herself to use this developing debate to her advantage. She had to make it look convincing after all.
“I think it is ready for it,” she offered back.
“And I’m telling you it’s not!”
“Or,” the Bajoran persisted, “Maybe it’s actually been ready for this the whole time, and it just hasn’t realised.”
Erami flinched internally even as she offered her thinly-veiled comment. Natasha suppressed a slight gasp at the thinly veiled double meaning behind her words. The Andorian guard simply stared dumbly at the unfolding argument.
Meanwhile, Denella was taken aback at the edge to Erami’s comment. But she found herself reacting instinctively, well before she thought about what she was actually saying.
“Or maybe you shouldn’t be pushing it too far too soon! These things take time! You can’t just expect to go to maximum warp like that!”
As the argument continued to build, Erami stood from her seat and faced the Orion. Denella mirrored her movements until they were staring each other down across the controls.
“Um,” Natasha managed, “Maybe we should all—”
“I’m not expecting anything!” Erami fired back, “I’m just showing a bit of faith! I know it can do it, I guess I just need to prove it to itself!”
“How can you even say that?! You have no idea what—!”
“Stop this,” the guard cut in, growing increasingly frustrated thanks to being entirely bereft of the contextual information needed to understand the double meaning of the ongoing debate, “Proceed with the test.”
“Ugh,” Erami continued, ignoring the guard, “I can’t believe this, you know. It’s like, sometimes you make me so frustrated, I just wanna—”
She acted instantly, swinging her arm around and bringing her clenched fist straight into a clean contact with the Andorian guard’s jaw.
It was a surprising enough action to catch him completely by surprise. And despite the size difference between the Bajoran and the huge Andorian, it sent him down onto the deck below with a hefty thud.
As Denella and Natasha watched in shock, the cockpit was then filled with a cry of agony, as the pain receptors in Erami’s brain registered the damage to her fist.
“Crap!” she screamed in pain, “Ah! Triple crap with crap on! That hurts!”
The other two women stared back at the Bajoran for another moment or two, even as she wrung her swollen hand and glared back at them.
“Well, what the hell are you waiting for?” she continued, gesturing to the fallen guard with her one remaining good hand, “Tie him up! And tightly as well, I’m pretty sure those arms of his’ll make short work of most restraints.”
Natasha was the first to react, grabbing a nearby coil of thick wiring left over from the repairs and awkwardly manoeuvring the dead weight of the Andorian onto his front so she could tightly bind his wrists together.
Meanwhile, Denella just continued to stare incredulously at Erami, as she realised what the argument they had just engaged in had really been about. From Erami’s side at least.
“D—Did you just—?”
“Denella, I’m sorry,” the Bajoran replied quickly, and seemingly entirely honestly, “But I had to make it as believable as possible to be a proper distraction for our friend over there. He definitely wasn’t part of the plan, and he was watching us like a hawk.”
She gestured back down to the controls and shrugged.
“But we’ve got what we wanted. And now he’s, um, incapacitated, he can’t input the codes to re-raise the shielding.”
The Orion continued to stare, now feeling mortified at how close she had come to revealing some of her deeper home truths right there in front of everyone. During what had been, as far as she had been concerned, an entirely legitimate and somewhat overdue argument between them. She felt her face starting to burn, even as a wealth of new reasons for a fresh argument flashed to the forefront of her mind.
Fortunately, before she could blurt out anything else she might later regret, Erami let out a fresh wince of pain.
“By the way,” she added with a grimace, holding up her swollen hand, “Any chance you could find me a medkit?”
****************************
Jirel and Sunek bounded up the steps of the Bounty’s cockpit to find the other two members of their side of the fractured crew already in place. Klath was seated at his regular station, while in the absence of Denella, Zesh had elected to slot behind the rear engineering station for the time being.
“We get what we needed?” Jirel asked as flopped into his tattered centre chair and Sunek reached the forward pilot’s position, ditching his replicated sunglasses to one side as he sat down.
“I believe so,” Klath boomed, checking his bank of controls, “And the opening in the planetary shield grid is still in place. I have sent the exact coordinates to the pilot’s station.”
“Gottem,” Sunek nodded.
“Ok then,” Jirel gestured, “Let’s get going, Sunek. Just like Erami said.”
The Vulcan tapped the controls and immediately the Bounty began to rise from the landing pad, leaving Sha’jev Thallis and her compound behind.
“Man, I’m gonna miss that cocktail bar,” Sunek sighed as he worked.
“If we pull this off, the Risian Sunrises are on me,” the Trill replied.
“He’ll hold you to that, you know,” Zesh chimed in from the back of the cockpit.
Jirel smiled despite himself as the Bounty swiftly rose up. He wondered whether or not panic was setting in below them now, as Sha’jev and her security detail saw them making their entirely unannounced exit from Arvon II.
And furthermore, he wondered whether it really was going to be this easy. After all, things never were with the Bounty.
The ship powered away from the compound under thruster power, as Sunek eased the ship upwards towards the invisible gap in the shielding that enveloped the planet.
“Ok, think I’ve got sight of that hole I’m aiming for,” the Vulcan reported, before snorting and adding, “That’s what she s—”
“Shut up, Sunek.”
The Bounty’s pilot shrugged his lanky shoulders and smirked to himself as the Bounty moved higher and higher through the atmosphere, even closer to the metaphorical door that had been literally left open for them.
Maybe things would be this easy, Jirel mused to himself. Maybe they really were about to just fly right out of—
His thoughts were interrupted by a harsh alert from Klath’s station, eliciting a familiar sinking feeling in Jirel’s stomach.
“The opening is gone,” the Klingon reported with some urgency, “The shield grid is back to full strength!”
“Goddamn it,” Jirel barked, “Sunek, get us—!”
But he couldn’t get any further. Because then the cockpit was filled with the whine of incoming transporter signals.
Klath snapped into action as any good warrior should, standing from his station and reaching for his trusty bat’leth on his back. But it was too late.
Before his hand reached his weapon, he found himself staring at a pair of stubby disruptor pistols, pointed straight at him.
The rest of the Bounty’s crew stood and looked at the scene that confronted them. Now all finding themselves on the end of a disruptor or two, as the cockpit had instantly filled with armed and angry Andorian security guards.
And in the middle of them all, Sha’jev Thallis stood proudly and offered a sarcastic slow clap of applause.
“Bravo,” she sneered in Jirel’s direction, “A most entertaining escape attempt, I must say.”
“We were going for ‘flawless’, rather than ‘entertaining’,” Sunek couldn’t help but fire back from behind Jirel.
“Well, I’m afraid you fell a long way short of that, my friends. A very long way short. Especially the attention you were giving to my security systems under Dashev’s watch.”
Klath and Zesh shared a glance at their unsubtle part in getting them captured.
Meanwhile, the Andorian woman stepped towards Jirel, even as the rest of the Bounty’s crew remained held at disruptor point.
“You say that,” the Trill couldn’t help but respond, “But actually, we’ve got what we needed.”
“Ah yes, my treasured Bajoran warp shuttle. That does seem to have flown the nest, so to speak, doesn’t it? But, no matter. You see, it’s not exactly the fastest of ships. And, well, it’s very nearly a one-of-a-kind. Which does make it that much easier to find on sensors…”
She chuckled lightly in victory, as Jirel glared back at her.
“And when I find them,” she added, “I have a feeling they’ll be very keen to give it back. In exchange for…my hostages.”
Jirel’s gaze dropped to the nearest disruptor and sighed deeply.
Things were never that easy.
End of Part Three
