Star Trek: Bounty - 207 - "The Stars That Shall Be Bright When We Are Dust"

BountyTrek · Jan 29, 2026

Hello.

Here we are again. After a bit of a festive/New Year/creative delay, it's time for another dubious adventure with the dubious crew of the Bounty. Hopefully not quite as silly as the last holosuite-heavy one. :biggrin:

As ever, hope you enjoy reading!

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

The story so far:

Star Trek: Bounty - 201 - “Something Good Happened Today”
Star Trek: Bounty - 202 - "The Bat, the Birds and the Beasts"
Star Trek: Bounty - 203 - "Three Minutes to Three Minutes to Three Minutes to Midnight"
Star Trek: Bounty - 204 - "Acquire, Evade, Retreat, Confront"
Star Trek: Bounty - 205 - "Zen and the Art of Corvallen Shuttlepod Maintenance"
Star Trek: Bounty - 206 - "Any Resemblance to Actual Persons is Purely Coincidental"

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Star Trek: Bounty
2.07
“The Stars That Shall Be Bright When We Are Dust”

Prologue

Tygon Sector, Klingon Empire
Stardate 45009.4

“There!”

The hiss from Lieutenant Kovagh was accompanied by a decisive jab of a stubby finger onto the crimson grid of the tactical board in front of him.

The two Klingons flanking him at his station on the bridge of the IKS Grontar peered at the spot that the junior officer was indicating. Neither looked convinced by what they saw.

The tactical display was dominated by a fuzzy interference pattern, representing the best efforts of the Grontar’s computers to translate the patchy sensor readings it was receiving from the approaching Tygon Nebula into something approaching a viable readout.

But, just where Kovagh had indicated, there was a faint additional trace. A potential contact.

“That is all you have?” the tall Commander Torq, the Grontar’s first officer, replied impassively.

“Pah,” the shorter figure of the ship’s second officer, Lieutenant Commander Lusara, offered with a more dismissive scoff, “That could be anything. Sensor interference, a rogue asteroid—!”

“This is the fourth time I have detected the same signature!” Kovagh fired back, “It is a positive contact, I am sure of it—!”

The excitable young lieutenant only realised he was speaking out of line to a superior when he felt the powerful hand of Commander Torq grabbing him firmly by the shoulder.

“Do not talk that way again, Lieutenant,” he intoned, “Make your report when asked.”

The younger Klingon nodded stiffly, bracing himself for a further volley of anger from Lusara herself, knowing that the ship’s feisty second officer wouldn’t have taken kindly to either his interruption, or Torq’s decision to defend her honour on her behalf. To his surprise, no such response was forthcoming. Lusara merely stared sternly in Torq’s direction.

If Kovagh had been more in tune with the latest scuttlebutt, he may have been less surprised. The developing passion between the two senior officers was an open secret on the Bird of Prey. Initially around the corridors that bordered Torq and Lusara’s cabins, as the violent sounds of their bouts of developing passion leaked into the communal space, and permeating onwards from there.

The news had caused little more than passing amusement among the Grontar’s small crew. Even if they were officially frowned upon, such pairings were commonplace on fleet deployments. When every day brought a fresh battle that might be your last, there rarely seemed much point in waiting for a patch of shore leave to scratch whatever itch a soldier of the Empire might have.

If anything, the affair had given the crew a deeper respect for Torq. Given that, if and when the pairing turned sour, the fiery Lusara would be within her rights to kill her superior on a charge of willful insubordination for fraternising with a junior colleague, and then assume his rank.

Commander Torq was, as far as the crew was concerned, a very brave warrior.

But Kovagh wasn’t up to date on any of that, so both Torq’s defence of the second officer, and Lusara’s decision to apparently allow it, came as a complete surprise to him.

As the junior officer returned to a more deferential silence, the two senior officers consulted the flickering anomaly in the soup of the tactical display a little more closely.

“Four detections or not,” Lusara growled, “It is still most likely the result of interference.”

“Agreed,” Torq nodded stiffly, “However, we are at war. We are here to patrol this region. And we must report this to the captain. Call him at once.”

“We should not be disturbing the captain with every sensor anomaly in the quadrant—!”

“I gave an order,” Torq cut in, “I expect you to carry it out.”

Lusara’s eyes narrowed and blazed red with fire in the direction of her superior. As she tapped the console to carry out the order, she bared her teeth in his direction, and stored this fresh burst of violent rage. Planning to unleash it on her lover’s body once they were both off duty.

Commander Torq was a very brave warrior indeed.

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

Klath, son of Morad, strode onto the bridge of the Grontar.

His heavy captain’s armour shone boldly even in the dim light of the room, and he allowed himself a brief moment to glance around the compact command area with pride. This was his bridge. His ship. His command.

He strode over to the aft tactical station where Torq, Lusara and Kovagh remained gathered.

“Report,” he boomed out at them.

In the presence of their huge, hulking captain, neither Kovagh nor Lusara considered stepping out of line even for a moment, allowing Torq to take the lead as the senior officer present.

“We have detected a potential threat in the Tygon Nebula,” he explained, “Repeated positive contact, though readings are being disrupted by interference from the nebula itself.”

The three officers took a step back, allowing their commander an unobstructed view of the console.

“I see,” Klath nodded, as he glared intensely down at the details of the reported blip, “And what is our current status?”

“We are uncloaked, at impulse,” Torq reported, “Repairs to the warp drive are complete and we should be able to catch up to the rest of the patrol fleet before change of watch. However, we felt this reading merited your attention, sir.”

Klath kept his attention firmly on the readouts, but nodded in acknowledgement. Ordinarily, such a blip would not merit any further investigation. However, as Torq had pointed out to Kovagh and Lusara, right now they were at war.

The Klingon Civil War was only a few days old, yet even the initial skirmishes between sections of the fleet loyal to either Gowron or Duras had been devastatingly bloody. If there was one enemy ready and willing to fight Klingons to the death, it was other Klingons.

Right now, the Grontar was part of a patrol group sent to the Tygon sector by Gowron, to investigate intelligence reports of Duras’s forces illegally moving weapons across the border in this region. Using the nebula as cover, just as this potential contact might have been doing.

Furthermore, Klath and his crew were privy to reports on the operations of Duras loyalists. Including their propensity for sneak attacks on vessels flying Gowron’s colours, using whatever interstellar cover they could find.

It was a distinctly un-Klingon battle tactic. One that had turned Klath’s stomach to hear, almost cowardly enough to be considered Romulan. And yet, it was also proving a very successful one. Just about all of the critical advances made by Duras’s forces had come about from such attacks.

And now, the Grontar was approaching a turbulent, scanner-blinding nebula. One that appeared to contain some sort of sensor trace inside.

In an instant, his warrior’s brain clicked into gear, as he devised the most effective response.

“Helm,” he barked out to the junior lieutenant at the front of the bridge, “Maintain course and speed for now. If this is an enemy contact, we do not wish them to know we have detected them.”

“As you command, sir,” the gruff response came back.

“What is our distance from the nebula?” he demanded, turning to Lt Commander Lusara.

“Two hundred thousand qelI'qammey from nebula boundary,” she reported quickly, “We are on a parallel course.”

Klath turned back to Lieutenant Kovagh and pointed to his console.

“Run a full metallurgical scan,” he ordered, “All sensors concentrated on that area. As we approach, we should be able to get a better eye on what we are dealing with.”

“As you command!”

The young officer snapped into action, as Klath took a moment to thoughtfully gaze at the forward viewscreen, showing the approaching wispy mass of the nebula. And whatever was inside it.

“Tactical alert,” he fired off at Commander Torq, “No shields, nothing to give away our situation. But all weapons crews to combat positions.”

Torq nodded stiffly and tapped a secondary console to initiate the change of ship’s status. The already dim bridge lighting lowered a little further and glowed deep red as a result.

Seconds later, the newest round of scans were complete.

“Here, sir,” Kovagh called out with urgency, “Still only partial results, but definitely a metallic mass.”

“A vessel,” Torq nodded, unnecessarily.

That was all it took for the entire bridge to snap to attention. Someone was hiding in the nebula. And they were at war.

“Full combat alert!” Klath bellowed, as he strode to his raised throne of a command chair, “Helm, alter course to 221-mark-4! Raise shields! Torpedoes ready!”

Captain Klath felt another surge of pride as he felt the entire ship seamlessly preparing for battle all around him, as the men and women under his command carried out his urgent orders.

His ship was preparing to fight for the Empire.

As he settled into his command chair, a chorus of affirmations and alert chimes sounded out all around him. Commander Torq stepped up to his side.

“All decks, all stations ready. Full combat alert.”

Klath felt an extra level of satisfaction at the speed of the operation, as he leaned forward in his chair, urging the ship towards its quarry.

“Captain,” Torq continued, lowering his voice, “I must point out that with our warp drive repaired, and with the sensor data still inconclusive, it might be appropriate to rendezvous with the fleet instead, and report this observation to command.”

Klath growled in the direction of his loyal exec, but Torq didn’t flinch. In truth, Klath knew that his first officer was carrying out his duties as much as anyone else onboard. Suggesting an alternative course of action was an entirely valid and honourable act. And, given the patchy sensor data and the Grontar’s recently repaired status, there was logic in Torq’s suggestion.

Still, the blood lust beat strongly inside of his chest. And he remained focused on their quarry.

“We cannot continue to allow Duras’s forces to act like this,” he hissed back, “We have already lost too many ships, too many warriors, to their dishonourable ways. They are either engaged in activities with illegal weapons, or they are planning a coward’s attack. Whichever it is, we have the element of surprise here, Torq. And so, we strike!”

For the briefest of moments, Torq considered pressing his case further, even if doing so would come close to overstepping the invisible boundaries of a Klingon vessel’s chain of command. But eventually, he relented and stepped back. He trusted his captain, after all. A warrior who had led the Grontar into dozens of battles without fear. And one whose uniform was adorned with a commendation from Chancellor K’mpec, no less.

“We are approaching firing range,” Lusara called out from her own console on the port side of the bridge.

“Status of target,” Klath called out, his blood lust growing ever stronger.

“Readings have not changed,” Kovagh reported, “They have not altered position.”

Klath’s mouth curled into a greedy smile.

“It seems their own sensors are also limited inside the nebula,” he nodded, “We can use their own cover against them.”

As the Grontar crossed into weapons range, the ship’s eager captain sprang into action.

“Target all weapons on their position!” he bellowed, “Full spread!”

“As you command!” Lusara called back.

Klath stared at the swirling nebula on the screen, preparing for another proud battle in his long, glorious career.

He had no idea that his next word would be the last meaningful order he would ever give from the captain’s chair.

“baH!”

Author’s Note: The Tygon Nebula incident has already been referenced several times throughout the ST: Bounty series, particularly featuring as a plot point in Star Trek: Bounty - 102 - "Be All My Sins Forgiven”.

Robert Bruce Scott · Feb 1, 2026

Looks like we've stepped a moment back in time. Ohhh that dastardly Duras family...

Thanks!! rbs

BountyTrek · Feb 1, 2026

Part One

Main Settlement, Gorvik V
Stardate 54578.9, Present Day

Long ago, he had been a warrior.

He had fought in too many battles to even try to remember. He had served on mighty warships as they had rained fire on their enemies. He had clashed with countless foes on the battlefield in pursuit of glory. He had slain rivals, traitors and assassins and lived to wipe their blood from his blade. He had dined on the spoils of that glory, taken strength from his victories. He had even shared bloodwine and sang songs with General Martok himself.

He had lived for, and been ready to die for, the good of the Empire.

And now, he delivered fruit.

Klath, the Klingon weapons chief of the merchant ship Bounty, paused for a moment and looked down at the crate at his feet, filled with the miserable sight of hundreds of cloying, colourful, gently ripening Golana melons.

He found himself recalling some of those battles. The crash of blades, the heat of the fight, the power of the blood lust that had raged inside of him. Ever since his discommendation, and his painful exile from his people, those memories had kept him going. Despite his dishonour, he still felt a measure of pride in those past acts, and his warrior’s soul still believed that one day, he would return to the Empire.

But with each passing day, he felt those memories - and that belief - growing fainter. After all, that wasn’t who he was anymore.

Now, he delivered fruit.

“Hey,” a familiar, annoying voice called out, “You’d better not be slacking off, buddy.”

Klath was shaken from his ruminations as Sunek, the Bounty’s curiously emotional Vulcan pilot, wandered past towards another of the packing crates stacked throughout the ship’s cargo bay.

“Cos,” he continued, “If there’s one thing I hate more than doing manual labour, it’s doing way more manual labour than the guy who’s actually built to do it.”

The wiry Vulcan idly gestured to the burly Klingon with a tired sigh, as the two of them were joined by a third member of the Bounty’s crew returning to the cargo bay for another crate.

“You know,” Natasha Kinsen, the Bounty’s ex-Starfleet medic, offered, “It wouldn’t hurt for you to do more heavy lifting, Sunek. Bulk those arms of yours up a bit.”

“My arms are just fine,” the Vulcan shot back, pushing up the sleeve of his garish Hawaiian shirt and unconvincingly flexing the meagre bicep underneath, “See?”

Natasha smiled and shook her head, as she picked up a crate next to Klath.

“Hey, doc,” Sunek continued with a grin.

“Sunek,” she sighed patiently, nodding at the fruit in the crate, “If this is another ‘nice melons’ joke, may I respectfully point out that nobody laughed at the first three. And an advanced Vulcan mind like yours should really understand the concept of further diminishing returns.”

The Bounty’s pilot looked a little offended at the suggestion that he would try such a puerile gag for the cheapest of laughs, and instead reached into the crate in front of him.

“Um, no,” he retorted, holding up a particularly large Risian banana, “I was actually gonna ask if you wanted to check out my huge—”

“Shut up, Sunek.”

Klath ignored the latest round of playful bickering between his crewmates, and instead lifted up the crate in front of him and followed Natasha down the rear ramp, leaving Sunek to giggle to himself at the unfortunate shape of the fruit in his hand.

As he stomped down the ramp, he passed Denella, the Bounty’s Orion engineer, returning for another crate. She smiled at him as they passed, and he nodded back at his friend.

And these were his friends, he mused. As much as he yearned for the past, this was who he was now. He wasn’t a proud warrior, flying into another glorious battle. He was someone who was friends with a former slave girl, and a human woman, and a deeply, deeply irritating Vulcan.

And he was someone who delivered fruit.

At the foot of the ramp, Klath followed Natasha across the small landing pad where the Bounty had set down for this latest delivery run. The bustling streets of the main market town of the neutral port on Gorvik V stretched out in front of them. Each street was lined on by stores and businesses offering an array of goods and services, while there were further temporary stalls on the walkways in front of the permanent buildings, where traders bartered over all manner of trinkets, fabrics, jewels and, apparently, fresh fruit.

The Bounty had picked up this straightforward delivery by chance, after receiving a general hail from a distributor in the next system over. A Benzite freighter had been waylaid with a faulty impulse drive, leaving an entire harvest of fruit bound for Gorvik V at risk of rotting in their crates.

They had been the first to respond, and while the improvised refrigeration solution that Denella had come up with by tweaking the atmospheric controls in the cargo bay hadn’t been ideal, it had been enough for their cargo to survive the fifteen hour trip to its destination. And now, they simply had to unload the crates into a storage building near to the landing pad, where the trader who had ordered the stock kept his wares prior to setting them out on his stall.

As Klath walked into the storage building and dropped the latest crate down on top of the similar container that Natasha had placed down in front of him, the final member of the Bounty’s crew was already there.

Jirel, the unjoined Trill and de facto captain of the Bounty, stood alongside the market trader. He was one of the resident Gorvikians, a humanoid species whose skin was covered in rows of tiny crimson scales, and whose lizard-like features were topped off with tiny obsidian eyes and a dark brown tongue that unerringly flitted in and out of its wide mouth as it spoke.

The Trill was in the middle of checking over a padd in his hand as the tired Natasha called out to him with a good-natured tone.

“Speaking of people running scared of a bit of manual labour…”

Jirel looked up at the red-haired doctor and smiled back.

“Captain’s discretion,” he shrugged, waving the padd at her, “Besides, someone’s gotta lift all this heavy paperwork, haven’t they?”

Klath noted how Natasha rolled her eyes at him, but also how she smiled a little more warmly, a gesture reciprocated by the Trill. He groaned inwardly at this latest moment of flirtation between the pair.

He knew that both Denella and Sunek found the continued tension between the Bounty’s captain and medic, and particularly their regular denials of the existence of said tension, to be a source of some amusement. But he merely found it to be another source of irritation.

After all, if their mutual attraction was so obvious that even he, someone with absolutely no interest in the mating rituals of other species, could pick up on it, then he couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just act on that attraction. Rather than behaving as they did.

As Natasha walked off back to the Bounty, Klath noticed that Jirel’s attention was now on him.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

The Klingon was a little taken aback, as Jirel handed the padd back to the Gorvikian trader with a smile, before walking over to join him.

“And I know,” he continued, gesturing to the crates of fruit, “It’s not exactly the most exciting work. But it’s still work.”

Klath felt a little reassured that Jirel hadn’t actually known what he was thinking. The one thing worse than observing their flirtation would have been if the Trill had asked him for advice on the matter.

Still, his reassurance only went so far. It still appeared that Jirel was eager for another of those social situations that irritated him. A moment of small talk.

“The work is…fine,” he grunted back, hoping that would suffice.

Jirel smiled patiently back at his longest-serving and least-talkative crew member. Someone who he could, despite the Klingon’s best efforts, often read like a book after their years together.

“We’re delivering melons, Klath. I know you’re not fine with that.”

An image popped into the Klingon’s mind. Of him fighting through a group of Romulan footsoldiers during a skirmish on a border colony near Gamma Eridon, armed with nothing more than his trusty bat’leth. The same weapon that was still sheathed on his back right now.

He wasn’t fine with what he was doing now. But he was equally not fine with small talk.

“Look,” Jirel continued, despite the expected lack of a response, “It’s just one job. And a handy one at that. We got double the usual rate for stepping in at the last minute like this.”

“As I said,” Klath said again, “The work is…fine.”

“…Right.”

As the two friends walked back towards the Bounty, Jirel patted the huge Klingon on the back.

“How about, once we’re done here, we try to find something a bit more challenging, hmm? Maybe something a bit closer to bandit country? See if we can fire a few torpedoes at a pirate ship or two, or at least find a decent bar fight?”

Klath suppressed a sigh as they emerged back onto the street. While he could see that his friend evidently meant well, he still had no interest in having the conversation that the Trill seemed determined to have.

“Jirel,” he persisted, “The work is—”

He stopped on the spot. Both physically and conversationally.

Suddenly, he felt the unmistakable sense of being watched. As though an attack was imminent. His warrior instincts flared into life, and he spun around into a squat, defensive pose.

But he saw nothing in front of him apart from the merry crowds of shoppers and sellers continuing their transactions. All either oblivious or uninterested in the Klingon’s shift in posture.

Jirel, however, had seen that reaction before. Usually just before something bad happened.

“What is it?” he asked with an edge of concern, scanning the crowds of shoppers.

Klath’s own keen eyes continued to dart around, almost willing whomever he had sensed to emerge from the peaceful scene in front of him. But his defensive posture slowly relaxed again, as he was forced to conclude that he must have been mistaken.

“For a moment,” he began, “I thought I saw…”

He paused again.

Long ago, he had been a warrior. But now he delivered fruit. And that was clearly now showing in his instincts. The ones he had honed on so many battlefields when he had fought for the Empire.

The ones that had evidently now atrophied to the point that he could no longer trust them.

“It was nothing,” he concluded with a definitive nod.

With that, he turned away from the crowds and continued on towards the Bounty. Jirel followed, casting a concerned eye at his troubled friend.

Klath felt Jirel’s look. His instincts were still working that much, it seemed. But he was far more concerned by his previous faltering reaction, which seemed to confirm what he had been increasingly feeling of his time in exile.

He had once been a warrior.

But with each passing day, he was becoming a little less of one.

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

A few hours later, the Bounty’s delivery was complete.

Now, with the ship lighter by several pounds of fruit, and their bank balance heavier by several bars of latinum, the weatherbeaten Ju’Day-type raider gently lifted off from the surface of Gorvik V and jetted back towards orbit.

As it moved up into the red-tinged cloud layer, nobody on the ground would have been able to make out the almost imperceptible shimmer of the transporter effect on the underside of the port-side wing. Equally, thanks to some clever transporter manipulation, the Bounty’s own somewhat antiquated sensor systems failed to detect that anything was amiss.

But something was amiss.

In a split second, a tiny sector of the ship’s hull plating had been removed, and in its place, an identically-sized and weighted section of metal had taken its place.

Except this one was also equipped with a tiny rectangular metal device, attached flush to the hull plate that it had replaced.

A tiny rectangular metal device that, as the Bounty broke through Gorvik V’s atmosphere and back into the cold blackness of space, began to transmit.

BountyTrek · Feb 4, 2026

Part One (Cont’d)

Denella whirled away with a grunt of exertion to avoid the swing of the deadly blade.

Functioning solely on adrenaline, she used her momentum to swing back around with her own blade primed, and held it defiantly in place as it clashed with the returning arc of the sharpened weapon of her adversary, sending a shower of sparks arcing through the air.

She felt her muscles groan as she pushed back against the other blade with all her might, doing just enough to force her opponent off-balance and break the bind, so that she could step back and swing her weapon on the offensive.

Her opponent predicted her move instantly, and their blades clashed again in another cascade of sparks. The Orion’s footing faltered slightly, but she gritted her teeth and pressed her bodyweight back against the other blade. She knew she couldn’t win the fight in a straight battle of brawn, but for the time being she could at least hold her own, until her opponent tried a new tactic.

And soon enough, he did. As he broke away to prepare his next strike, she used her speed to pounce first, swinging her blade at her foe.

It was a move she had made dozens of times before, and each time it had been parried away with ease. But not this time.

She heard a sudden roar of pain as her deadly blade cut through undefended flesh.

And in an instant, the sparring session was over.

“Crap!” she called out, “Klath, are you ok? How bad did I get you?”

Still panting from her exertions, she dropped her mek’leth to the deck of the cargo bay with a clatter and rushed over to her sparring partner.

The Klingon grimaced and gritted his teeth, internalising the pain and keeping a hand clamped over the bloodied wound on his forearm. As he heard her approach, he defensively turned his injury away from her and held up his own mek’leth with his weakened arm.

“Defend yourself!” he growled.

“Defend—? Klath! Put the mek’leth down, you’re hurt!”

“I am fine,” he snarled back, as he felt beads of sweat developing on his ridged brow, “We…can continue.”

Just as a warrior should.

“You’re clearly not fine. Blood is pouring out of your arm!”

The Orion impatiently gestured to the deep wound that he was doing his best to keep from her, but he didn’t lower his weapon. Instead, he called out again.

“We must complete our session. Defend yourself—!”

“Klath!”

Denella growled her fresh interjection with the force of a warrior. And now she had his attention, she followed it up with a choice phrase from her developing efforts to learn Klath’s mother tongue.

“Hegh neH chav qoH!”

While her pronunciation and inflection was still lacking, the intent of the message got across to the sweating, bleeding, weakening Klingon.

A fool’s only achievement is death.

Slowly, and decidedly reluctantly, Klath lowered his blade. It clattered to the deck next to Denella’s.

“Thank you,” she smiled in relief, “Now, go to the medical bay. I’ll call Natasha.”

For a moment, it looked as though he was going to offer further protest. But finally, the huge Klingon skulked off towards the Bounty’s rudimentary medical facility, still holding his arm tightly.

And leaving a trail of his own blood in his wake.

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

“Well, looks like you’re a lucky boy.”

There was no response from her patient, but Natasha Kinsen was getting used to that sort of thing from this particular visitor to the medical bay.

It wasn’t the first time that she had treated Klath for a life-threatening injury. And true to form, the gruff Klingon sat stiffly and silently on the edge of the single rudimentary biobed, as she finished working on the last of the scar tissue on his forearm with a dermal regenerator.

Still, she wasn’t going to allow his lack of response to quell her talkative bedside manner.

“I mean,” she continued as she worked, “This was a very deep, very nasty cut. But it was just a flesh wound. No muscle or tendon injury, no damage to the bone. If any of that had happened, then you’d have been stuck here for hours listening to me talk.”

She set the regenerator to one side and grabbed her old medical tricorder to make a final check of the area, as Klath offered no response to her attempt at a mood-lightening joke either.

“Although,” she offered, “I have been meaning to ask you something. I picked up some holovid files of Klingon opera on Gorvik V before we left. And there are two performances of Korvath’s Final Battle on there. The 2257 residency on Qo’noS, and the 2355 tour’s performance on Rangar VII. Which one should I go with?”

Even her efforts to continue her recent successes bonding with the Bounty’s weapons officer over his love of Klingon opera didn’t soften her patient’s mood*. Instead, as she finished her scan, he merely looked down at his repaired arm and flexed his fingers.

“Thank you, doctor,” he grunted eventually.

Behind them, Denella called out, having spent most of the treatment pacing around the cramped medical bay like a worried mother bringing her son for a check-up.

“So he’s all fixed?” she asked, “There’s nothing else you need to do?”

“Well,” Natasha offered as she packed her tools away, “My Hippocratic Oath requires that I make a polite but firm request for you two to stop fighting in the cargo bay with literal swords. But I suspect I’ll be entirely ignored on that front…”

Denella aimed a sympathetic shrug in her direction, as Klath stood from the bed and rotated his arm for good measure, before nodding at the Orion.

“I am fine,” he reported with a grunt.

With that, he headed for the door. Only pausing at the exit to glance back at Natasha.

“The Rangar VII performance is considered the superior portrayal.”

The Klingon vanished down the corridor, as Denella looked over at the Bounty’s newest Klingon opera buff with some confusion.

“What?” Natasha said innocently, “I’m actually really starting to get into it. Last night, I listened to K’varag’s performance of the male solo in The Bloody Death of Karg the Unslayable, and it moved me to tears. And…sort of gave me a migraine.”

Denella shook her head and mustered a smile, before she turned her attention back to her main concern, glancing back at where Klath had just left.

“There’s something wrong with him, though,” she mused.

“Psh,” Natasha snorted as she finished tidying up her tools, “Tell me about it.”

The medic suddenly paused and looked over at the Orion, belatedly noting the serious tone of her comment.

“Oh,” she added in realisation, “You mean something specific.”

Denella cast her mind back to the sparring session in the cargo bay and sighed.

“I mean, I’ve been sparring with Klath for over two years now. And we started the mek’leth sessions last year when he decided I needed more close combat experience. And in all that time…I’ve never come close to actually hurting him. Until now.”

Natasha considered this troubling statement, even as the worried Denella followed Klath out of the medical bay.

And the Hippocratic Oath compelled her to call out after the Orion woman as she left.

“Seriously! Stop using real swords!”

* - Efforts that began in the previous episode Star Trek: Bounty - 206 - "Any Resemblance to Actual Persons is Purely Coincidental".

Robert Bruce Scott · Feb 5, 2026

Great running character portraits. Something I should take some time for, especially as my characters have multiplied out of control. Thanks!! rbs

BountyTrek · Feb 8, 2026

Part One (Cont'd)

Klath tapped at the ageing tricorder in his hand with a thick finger as he ran the device over the metal storage crate in front of him.

As he waited patiently for the results of the scan to be displayed on the screen, he tacitly avoided meeting the gaze of the man on the other side of the crate, in an effort to avoid another conversation that he didn’t want to have.

It was an effort that failed entirely.

“Ok, I’m sorry,” Jirel said as he held the crate steady, “I promised bandits, and there were precisely zero bandits. But once we’re done with this delivery, I’m sure we can—”

“Sixty-four medium isolinear circuit boards.”

Klath boomed out the response as soon as the results were visible, ignoring Jirel's conversational gambit and focusing on the job he was here to do. Again, not the job of a warrior, but the job of someone tasked with scanning and verifying the full manifest of their latest delivery.

Jirel stifled a sigh at the curt response, and added the crate to the verified pile to his side.

The Bounty had travelled a short distance from Gorvik V to a nearby neutral spaceport and repair yards, after Denella had suggested spending a healthy chunk of their generous profits from their previous delivery on some much-needed spare parts.

While Denella had been negotiating a good price for the parts, Jirel had stumbled upon another job through a sometime contact of his, delivering a consignment of replacement electrical components to a nearby Dopterian colony. Again, it wasn’t the most interesting task in the galaxy. But, given the peripatetic nature of their work, the Trill was eager to clean up while they were in a temporarily high level of demand.

And so, Klath found himself here. Standing in the Bounty’s cargo bay, scanning and checking each and every storage crate that had been beamed in by the port’s loading crew.

Because that was the sort of thing he did now. Warrior or not.

Jirel picked up the next crate from the unchecked pile and Klath's tricorder went to work again. For a moment, the Klingon’s preferred atmosphere of silence was maintained.

But only for a moment.

“You know, this Dopterian colony is a couple of sectors away. And once we’re done there, we’re not too far away from that old Nausicaan trading point in the Kobliak system. And nobody does a bar fight like the Nausicaans—”

“Two hundred and fifty-six portable data rods.”

Jirel mustered a knowing look at his longest-serving crewmate and stepped back over to add the latest crate to the verified pile.

“I remember when we used to talk,” he offered.

Klath found himself managing a wry smile, even as he reset the tricorder for the next scan.

“And I remember,” he countered, as he picked up the penultimate crate to be scanned, “All the times I have expressed my preference for silence.”

“Huh. That doesn’t sound like the guy who impressed us all with his best Klingon drinking songs at that cocktail bar on Morava III a few weeks ago.”

Klath offered a slightly wider smile at this, just enough for Jirel to hope he might be breaking through the Klingon’s ever-impermeable outer layer. Until he responded.

“Five hundred and twelve coils of insulated wiring.”

“Ok, fine, be like that,” Jirel sighed in defeat as he set the penultimate crate aside, “But just for that, we’re not going to that Nausicaan trading point.”

Klath cast the tricorder over the final crate and forced an additional response.

“Jirel, I do not require a…bar fight.”

“Ok, well that’s something. So, what exactly do you require—?”

“Sixty-four capacitive junction boxes.”

Jirel fixed the Klingon with another patient look, and then stepped away to add the final crate to the verified pile.

“Don’t change the subject,” he chided, “And I know you like your privacy, and everyone onboard respects that. Even Sunek. But…maybe it might do you good to open up, just a little bit, every now and—”

He turned back to see that Klath was already striding towards the Bounty’s rear cargo ramp.

“I will pass confirmation of our checks to the port authorities,” the Klingon called back, “Once Denella has returned, we will be ready to depart.”

Jirel sighed again as he watched the Klingon disappearing down the ramp.

And the Trill was left with nothing more than silence.

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

It didn’t take long for Klath to deliver the paperwork to the relevant authorities. Still not the job of a warrior, but one he completed efficiently nonetheless.

As he walked back to where the Bounty was parked on the sprawling port’s outer landing pads, he found himself considering what Jirel had been saying to him. One part specifically.

It might do you good to open up.

Unlikely, he snorted to himself.

He had always kept himself mostly to himself, even back during his time in the Empire. He couldn’t say that was the Klingon way, but it was his way.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t socialise. His vocal performance at the bar on Morava III after several too many bottles of bloodwine would attest to that. But even in those more raucous moments, he was always careful to keep his private life as private as possible.

Especially with aspects of his private life that he was sure no non-Klingon could understand. Such as his current and persistent predicament with his fading warrior senses. Not to mention the reasons for his discommendation itself. Even Denella, who he respected for learning as much about his culture as she had done, couldn’t fully understand that.

So he kept it to himself.

He suppressed a flinch at the reminder that someone onboard the Bounty already knew the details of his exile from the Empire. Of his shameful actions in the Tygon Nebula. And it was the one person onboard that he would have least wanted to know about it.

Sunek.

The Vulcan had learned the truth over a year ago, when he had been held hostage and used as leverage against Klath by a family member of one of those Klingon souls who had died in disgrace thanks to his orders from the captain’s chair of the IKS Grontar.*

And while the Bounty’s most talkative crew member had, so far, kept his promise not to reveal the details to anyone else, the fact that he knew about them at all was a source of significant ongoing concern for Klath. If anything, that whole situation merely convinced him that his decision to keep his personal affairs as private as possible was a sound strategy.

Just as he turned another corner on his walk back to the Bounty, still lost in his thoughts, he suddenly tensed up. Again.

For the second time in as many planetside visits, his instincts kicked in and told him that something was amiss. That he was being watched.

He whirled around again and scanned his surroundings with a furtive eye. Unlike back on Gorvik V, he wasn’t in a bustling market street. Instead, this was a narrower side street, with high, stone-walled buildings on either side. And instead of being in the middle of a sea of people, he was alone.

Or was he?

Despite his ongoing questions over his warrior instincts, he still sensed something inside. Something that told him that he wasn’t alone.

He trusted that feeling, and sprang forwards while pulling his bat'leth from its sheath on his back in a single fluid motion. And he raced towards an alleyway on the right side of the street. Without even thinking, his warrior’s brain had identified the only potential cover within range for anyone who had been following him close enough for him to have sensed them.

And he had definitely sensed them.

He failed to suppress a guttural roar, as he swung his bat’leth above his head and charged into the alleyway itself, blood lust coursing through his veins, preparing to unleash his recent frustrations on whoever had been playing games with him.

And then he stopped in his tracks.

Staring back at the snarling, armed Klingon was a terrified Gallamite colonist. Who appeared to be in the middle of sweeping her doorstep.

The transparent-skulled woman clutched tightly onto her broom and stared back at Klath in terror, even as he forced himself to calm his breathing. And, more importantly, lower his bat’leth.

For a fleeting second, the part of him still determined that there was nothing amiss with his formerly pin-sharp warrior instincts considered whether it was possible that he was being stalked by a middle-aged Gallamite assassin armed with a blade hidden in the handle of her broom.

But his deflated ego couldn’t cling onto that desperate theory for long. He had been wrong. Once again.

“Excuse me,” he managed to grunt at the terrified housewife.

Then, he turned and stalked quickly back out of the alley, thunder descending back onto his features.

As he returned to the side street, he paused again. Something wasn’t right. He may have been losing his warrior’s edge. But this was two planets in a row that he had sensed something. And he thought back to the crowds on Gorvik V. When, just for a second, he thought he had seen something. Or, specifically, someone.

Even if who he thought he had seen couldn’t possibly have been who he had seen.

The more he considered the two incidents, the more he began to trust his fading instincts a little more. One false alarm was a sign of his time away from the Empire. But two in as many planetary visits seemed a little too unlikely.

So, instead of returning to the Bounty, Klath spun around and headed back to the settlement.

Determined to find a way to get some answers.

* - All of which happened in Star Trek: Bounty - 102 - "Be All My Sins Forgiven".

Robert Bruce Scott · Feb 9, 2026

Liking the slow build with Klath. Always trust that instinct. Even if you're wrong.
The monkey that runs from the wind in the grass lives.
The monkey that ignores the lion in the grass is lunch.

Thanks!! rbs

BountyTrek · Feb 10, 2026

Part One (Cont'd)

A few hours later, Klath sat in a meditative silence, staring at the screen in front of him.

He was in his cabin onboard the Bounty, sitting uncomfortably at the room’s small desk in a chair that was a little too small for his gargantuan frame. The ship itself was now warping towards the Dopterian colony to drop off their cargo.

The computer terminal on the desk rarely got used, but he was hunched over it right now, studying the information that he had managed to retrieve before they had set off for the colony.

He was still fighting against the idea that he was just mistaken. That both today, and back on Gorvik V, he had simply been imagining things. That his instincts really had atrophied to the point that he could no longer trust them. But something inside compelled him to ignore that theory for now.

Next to him sat a small wooden box. One of the few personal items he owned that wasn’t specifically weapon-based.

He paused in his work and regarded the box, retrieving an object from inside and holding it up to watch the silvery surface reflecting the dim light from the screen. It was a small ritual that he had found himself doing more and more just recently.

And just for a moment, he no longer felt like a dishonoured exile, living a piteous existence of endless delivery runs. For a moment, he felt like a warrior again.

The transient moment of pride was interrupted by the harsh sound of the door buzzer.

He grimaced and ignored it, but evidently his visitor was in a persistent mood. The buzzer sounded a second time, then a third and a fourth. It was followed by the muffled sound of Denella calling from the other side.

“I know you’re in there. And I can also hotwire these door controls in about fifteen seconds flat, so either answer the door or get yourself decent, cos either way I’m coming in.”

The Klingon suppressed another grumble, again cursing the crew’s singular inability to respect his regular desire to be left alone.

Seeing the futility in trying to stop this latest interruption, he set the silvery object back inside the box and stood from the desk, quickly striding over to his cabin’s storage closet to hide it away again before he finally stepped back and released the lock.

The door opened immediately, revealing the Orion woman holding up a large bottle.

“Denella,” he nodded curtly, “I am—”

“Fine. I know. In which case, you won’t mind if I come in.”

Evidently, that hadn’t been a question, as she immediately entered his cabin with a friendly smile. As the door closed, she proffered the bottle to him. He took it and studied it with a keen eye.

“Bloodwine,” he grunted.

“Yep,” she nodded back, "Specifically, I think you’ll find that’s a full imperial measure of the 2356 vintage. That’s…a good one, right?”

He looked back up at her, a little confused, and nodded.

“An excellent year.”

“Good. Cos I was kinda worried that the Denobulan trader I bought it from made all that up so she could get it off her hands. So…happy birthday, Klath.”

She smiled a little wider and gestured to the gift in his hands. He remained defiantly confused.

“It is not my birthday.”

“I know. Nobody knows when your birthday is. Because you won’t tell anyone. So I’ve decided that it’s today.”

She walked over to the storage closet, causing Klath to tense up slightly as she got close to the item he had just hidden away. But she simply retrieved two large goblets from where they hung inside and held them out to him.

He tried to rack his brain for a means to politely end this latest social interaction before it went any further, but he knew there was no escaping what was to come. He could recognise the signs by now, of a dreaded enemy even worse than mere small talk.

She wanted to have a serious conversation.

With no way out, he reluctantly popped the stopper and poured generous portions into both goblets. Denella passed him a drink, then perched on the bare metal frame of Klath’s Klingon-standard bed in lieu of a chair and offered a bite of her conversational Klingonese as a toast.

“qoSlIj DatIvjaj!”

Klath remained standing, but mustered as friendly an acknowledgement as he could, before taking a hearty slug of the fiery drink. Denella mirrored his action, suppressing a mild gag as the acquired taste of the bloodwine hit her tongue.

“So,” she managed after a moment, “You wanna talk about it?”

Klath grimaced yet again. There it was. The enemy. The serious conversation.

Despite the inevitability of what was looming, he made one last effort to play dumb. Fighting to the last to slay the enemy.

“About what?”

His valiant last stand brought little more than a snort from the Orion.

“Come on. You’ve been acting weird for days. And we still haven’t really talked about what happened in our sparring session. I nearly took your arm off!”

“I am sure that the doctor’s talents would have remedied the situation—”

“That’s not the point! We’ve never drawn blood like that before. And I know the only reason you haven’t is because you’re being careful—”

Klath went to interject, but she persisted with a knowing smile.

“—And I also know you’ll say that’s not true. But it is, and I’m fine with it. I know I’m stronger than most, but I also know that if you really were trying when we’re sparring like that, I’d probably lose a hell of a lot more than just an arm.”

He reluctantly backed down from his rebuttal, as she continued.

“Either way, every time I’ve tried that attack before, you’ve swatted it aside. But this time, you ended up in the medical bay. Something’s wrong. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed, either.”

Klath stiffened slightly, now wondering with fresh irritation whether he had become a subject of conversation among the rest of the crew behind his back. How cowardly.

But then, he reluctantly mused, was it also cowardly to avoid a serious conversation? To not confront this enemy head-on, as if it were a blade-wielding foe? He sighed deeply, took another long slug of bloodwine, and metaphorically met the enemy’s attack. By engaging in the conversation.

“I suppose that I have been…distracted of late. My mind was clearly not focused on our fight. Which is an important lesson for a warrior to learn.”

“A lesson you need to learn, by the looks of it,” Denella replied, cutting off Klath’s efforts to turn the discussion into an impromptu training exercise, “Why so distracted?”

The burly Klingon instantly clammed up again. Denella sighed patiently, then stood up, grabbed the bottle and topped Klath’s goblet up to the brim.

“Drink more,” she offered, “Then tell me. Also, will you please…sit down.”

He regarded the freshly-filled goblet, then glanced at his friend.

“Are you attempting to use this bloodwine to extract information from me?”

“Am I trying to get you drunk? I doubt there’s enough in the bottle for that. Besides, I’ve learned the hard way how painful it is when you try and drink a 300-pound Klingon under the table.”

He mustered a slight smile as she returned to her perch on the solid bedframe. Then, he reluctantly followed her suggestion and sat on the chair next to the desk, the aging piece of furniture creaking slightly under his frame.

“Recently,” he finally admitted, “And on more than one occasion, I have sensed that I am…being watched. Or even followed.”

Denella's relaxed demeanour gave way to a more concerned look. Like Jirel, she was used to taking comments from Klath like that with due seriousness.

“Who by?” she asked.

“I am not sure. Perhaps by nobody. But, there was a moment - just a moment - when I was walking with Jirel on Gorvik V, that I was certain I saw someone I recognised. Somewhere in the crowds. Another Klingon.”

“Could’ve been,” Denella offered back, “It was a busy market. And there’s a lot of Klingons around the galaxy.”

Klath sighed again, seeing that he would have to go further with his explanation. The Orion matched his reaction by waving her goblet in his direction.

“Hey, if I can keep drinking this stuff, you can keep talking.”

She underlined her commitment by taking another slug of her drink with a wince. Klath begrudgingly acknowledged the effort she was making, even if he felt that the 2356 was a relatively mild vintage, and pointed a burly finger in the direction of the screen of the computer terminal.

“I was surely mistaken,” he conceded, “But after I sensed a similar feeling at the port we just departed, I felt it necessary to review security footage from several businesses on the route I had been taking."

“Um,” Denella said, looking more closely at the screen, “How exactly did you get your hands on security footage?”

“I made some…polite requests.”

The Orion’s mouth curved into another smile, wondering exactly how polite those requests might have been from a man who went everywhere with a bat’leth sheathed on his back.

“Right,” she nodded simply, “And have you found anything?”

She felt herself tensing up. In the back of her mind, she recalled a similar situation over a year ago, when the Bounty had visited Starbase 216. Back then, Klath had been convinced that someone had been trying to kill him, and had pursued the matter equally privately back then*.

Unlike Sunek, she had never gotten the full story of what had happened back there, outside of joining in with the Death Howl for a Klingon she had never met before. But she took that example as further evidence as to why Klath should be trusted when he started intimating about mysterious figures pursuing him in the shadows.

Klath, for his part, merely reached over and switched off the computer with a note of finality. As much as Denella had been unnerved by his words, hearing it all out loud had merely convinced him of the folly of his actions.

“No,” he grunted in response to her question, “And I should not have expected to. I am being foolish, nothing more.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Because,” he replied, “The Klingon I thought I saw was a former commander of mine. Captain Mekvar. I was a junior lieutenant under his command onboard the battlecruiser IKS qajunpaQ. For four full cycles of duty.”

Denella considered this, as Klath took another fortifying slug of bloodwine, feeling a little surprised at how much of his past he had just elected to reveal.

“Well,” the Orion shrugged eventually, “Maybe it was him? It’s a bit of a stretch, but it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve bumped into someone like that—”

“No. It cannot have been him.”

“Why not?”

“Because…Captain Mekvar, and the qajunpaQ, were lost during the Dominion War.”

He glanced back at the now-blank screen and shook his head, offering a conclusive final report on his investigation that served to both affirm to him that he had been a fool, while also causing Denella to somehow feel more unnerved than ever.

“If I did see him,” he grunted, “Then I…must have seen a ghost.”

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

“Go away!”

“Excuse me?” Jirel asked with a hint of amusement as he bounded up the steps and into the Bounty’s cockpit.

Sunek glanced over his shoulder from the pilot’s seat. Aside from the Hawaiian shirt-clad Vulcan, the room was empty.

“Ugh. Not you. Well, also kinda you. You know you don’t do anything up here, right?”

“None taken.”

Sunek smirked and spun around in his chair, gesturing around the limited expanse of the Bounty’s modest and somewhat tumbledown command deck.

“I’m serious. I mean, the rest of us all have consoles to work at, jobs to do, buttons to press. You just kinda…sit there in that chair in the middle, doing nothing.”

Jirel stepped over to the Bounty’s centre chair and took a moment to trace a finger down the frayed and tattered fabric of the headrest. Recalling how, not so long ago, he had left it behind. And how glad he was to be back.

“It’s called being captain,” the Trill offered back to his pilot with a grin, “And it’s awesome.”

Sunek rolled his eyes, then gestured back to his bank of controls.

“Agree to strongly disagree. And I was actually talking to this stupid sensor ghost on this stupid broken console.”

Jirel’s grin retreated slightly. He approached the pilot’s position, feeling his spots starting to nervously itch for some reason.

“What sensor ghost?”

“That one.”

Sunek pointed to the readouts on his panel. Where, just to the right of the Bounty’s position on the virtual display, there was a very faint smear of colour.

“Huh,” Jirel mused, “There’s…someone on our starboard bow.”

“No. It’s just a stupid sensor ghost. I’ve been getting them all the time recently. Off and on.”

“Since when?”

“I dunno,” the Vulcan shrugged, “Since ages ago. Ever since Gorvik V, I guess.”

Something about that planet, and whatever had distracted Klath when they had been down on the surface, added to Jirel’s nerves.

“And you didn’t think it was maybe important to mention this before?” he asked his casually yawning pilot.

“I have mentioned it,” Sunek argued back after completing his yawn, “I keep asking Denella to fix it. But she claims it’s working fine. You know, between you and me, I think our engineer has started to slack off. Must be getting distracted by that new girlfriend of hers.”

The Trill scoffed at the very idea of the palpably hardest-working member of his crew slacking off one iota. Even if she had recently reconnected with, and was now maintaining a fledgling long-distance relationship with, the Bajoran pilot Juna Erami.†

“Sounds like someone’s jealous,” he offered back, “That someone on this ship has finally found a tiny bit of happiness in this big unhappy universe of ours.”

“I’m just saying,” Sunek pouted, “First the replicator screws up my plomeek soup recipe, now—”

“Hey,” Jirel cut in, his eyes on the sensor readings, “Change course to 211-mark-3.”

The Vulcan pilot blinked a few times, a little irritated at having been cut off.

“Why?”

“Because I’m the captain.”

“Psh, you’re a bossy boots, is what you are,” the Vulcan grumbled, tapping at his controls to carry out the instruction even as he complained, “Fine. Course altered to 211-mark-3, oh great Captain Overlord sir. But I don’t see why you’re—”

He stopped in his tracks as Jirel pointed back to the sensor readings.

“Huh,” he managed as an altogether weaker follow-up.

“So then,” Jirel mused, “If that’s just some stupid sensor ghost, then…why is it following us?”

* - Again, see Star Trek: Bounty - 102 - "Be All My Sins Forgiven".
† - A reconnection covered in Star Trek: Bounty - 205 - "Zen and the Art of Corvallen Shuttlepod Maintenance".

Robert Bruce Scott · Feb 10, 2026

Those older klingon cloaking devices don't work perfectly and ghost images can be picked up by up-to-date sensors...

Nice slow buildup. Thanks!! rbs

BountyTrek · Feb 13, 2026

Part One (Cont'd)

“Well, I’m suitably freaked out.”

Natasha made the observation now that the Bounty’s entire crew had convened in the cockpit and were gathered around the more extensive sensor displays of the doctor’s own console. Which also showed the faint smear that Sunek had detected.

“We’ve made three different minor course corrections and three changes in speed,” Jirel nodded, “And each time, that little blip has followed us a few seconds later.”

“Not getting any less freaked out,” Natasha muttered.

“Could be an echo,” Denella suggested, “Our own hull bouncing off our deflector assembly and producing a false reading?”

Jirel wanted to believe it was something that simple, but he forced himself to point out the evident flaw in that theory.

“So…why is it so much bigger than the Bounty, then?”

“Well,” the Orion mused, gamely trying to persist with her simple solution, “I guess the contours of the hull could be distorting the—”

“It is not an echo,” Klath boomed out suddenly.

The Klingon had been silently gazing at the sensor readings while the others had been debating them, and his sudden interjection caused them to turn to him as one.

“Unless I am mistaken,” he continued, trying not to think too much about how much he had been worrying that his instincts could no longer be trusted, “It is a cloaked ship.”

His comment was met by a perplexed silence, even as he tapped at the sensor controls.

“I cannot ascertain the type of vessel,” he added, “But the readings are consistent with the presence of a cloaking device.”

“You think there’s a cloaked ship out there?” Sunek snorted, “One that’s been stalking us for days on a bunch of dull-ass supply runs?”

“Not like that sort of thing hasn’t happened before,” Jirel pointed out, suppressing a slight flinch at the memory of a Romulan scout craft that had been the personal shuttle of an acquaintance of Maya Ortega. A Nuvian criminal in a very tight shirt.*

While the memory of Maya still provoked a reaction inside him, Jirel now quickly worked to find his happy place. And ignored the flinch.

Meanwhile, his off-hand comment had also caused a reaction in Sunek. The Vulcan recalled the fateful time last year when the Bounty had crossed paths with a Romulan Warbird. One under the control of a group of his former colleagues from the V’tosh ka’tur.†

He had only recently been able to get back on top of the emotional scars that misadventure had left inside him, thanks to a regiment of Betazoid-sourced emotional suppressants.‡

“Did I mention how freaked out I was?” Natasha chimed in, in the absence of a follow-up comment from Jirel or a pithy remark from Sunek.

“But,” Denella offered to Klath, “And tell me if this is a stupid question, isn’t the whole point of a cloaking device that you…don’t show up on sensors?”

“It is,” Klath nodded, “But this one appears to be defective. Likely the crew of the vessel are unaware of this weakness.”

“Guess nobody can get the engineering staff these days,” Sunek muttered with a glance in Denella’s direction that the Orion didn’t understand.

Jirel idly itched his spots and considered this freshly uncomfortable situation.

“Sunek, how far away are we from the nearest port?” he asked eventually.

“I dunno,” the Bounty’s pilot shrugged, “We’re a couple of days out of that colony we’re heading for. Might be a closer port, but at least a day’s travel out of our way.”

“A day?”

“We’re not exactly in a party sector here, Jirel. Especially this close to Tholian territory. There’s a reason those poor Dopterians have to rely on the likes of us for their delivery runs.”

“So,” Denella pointed out, “It’s not like we can hide away in a crowd somewhere.”

“Apparently not,” Jirel conceded with another sigh, “So…what do we do?”

“I thought you were the captain?” Sunek couldn’t help but snipe following their earlier discussion in the cockpit.

“I’m delegating,” the Trill fired back without missing a beat.

Natasha ignored the fresh bickering, and looked over at the one person in the cockpit likely to have a clear idea of what to do in this sort of situation.

“Klath?” she motioned, “What should we—?”

She never got a chance to finish her question. Because that was when the noise started.

It was an instantly recognisable noise to everyone present. And one that caused a reaction in two of the individuals in the cockpit specifically.

Klath reacted with growing realisation, as he felt the familiar sensation of a transporter effect surrounding him.

Denella reacted with an instinctive need to help her friend. She leapt across the short space between herself and the Klingon without even thinking. Which, while being a noble moment of solidarity with her friend’s sudden plight, only resulted in her being ensnared in the transporter signal as well.

The other three individuals in the Bounty’s cockpit took on a more passive role in the scene, watching on in shock as their two colleagues were spirited away before their eyes.

And before they could do anything to intervene, all that was left where Klath and Denella had been standing was an empty space.

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

Klath found himself rematerialising inside a dream.

As the room coalesced into existence all around him, he was barely even aware of Denella’s presence next to him, even as she released her grip from where she had instinctively grabbed onto him as the transporter effect had begun.

He was barely aware of anything, in fact, apart from the room itself. One that made him convinced that he must indeed be dreaming.

As she took in the room for herself, Denella had the sinking feeling that she wasn’t.

They stood on a raised transporter pad. Inside what was clearly a Klingon vessel. A very large Klingon vessel.

In front of them, in the dim, murky surroundings of a room illuminated by little more than a low red-tinged light, a clear indication that the ship was in a cloaked, stealth mode, half a dozen Klingons in full battle dress, including the one behind the transporter controls, stood to attention.

Despite the shock of the situation, Klath responded with his best foot forward.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, “Who are—?”

He was stunned into silence as one of the Klingons stepped towards him, his face now visible in the dim light, his heavier and more decorated battle dress indicating even to Denella that he was the one in charge around here.

He was older than the last time Klath had seen him, his hair greyer and his frame substantially stouter. But there was no doubting who he was looking at.

Captain Mekvar.

As Klath stared in shock, the older Klingon erupted into a burst of delighted growling laughter, then nodded in satisfaction back at the man on the transporter pad.

“Klath, son of Morad,” he affirmed, gesturing around the room, “Welcome home…”

End of Part One

* - From this scene in Star Trek: Bounty - 112 - "The Woman Who Cried, Among Other Things, Wolf".
† - For more details on that story, see Star Trek: Bounty - 103 - "The Other Kind of Vulcan Hello".
‡ - Prescribed to Sunek at the end of Star Trek: Bounty - 201 - "Something Good Happened Today".

BountyTrek · Feb 16, 2026

Part Two

IKS Grontar, en route to Qo'noS
Stardate 45017.2

The door to Klath's cabin opened with a sudden low thud.

Instinctively, he sprang up from his solid metal bed where he had been attempting to rest, and prepared himself. He had been expecting this for some time, after all.

As Klath braced himself for the inevitable, he saw Commander Torq enter the room. Carrying his dinner.

Klath remained braced for what was to come, even as the younger Klingon, and the now-temporary captain of the Grontar, sat a metal tray down on the stout table in the corner of the cabin.

Even from this distance, he could smell the fresh gagh. Even hear the delicious sound of it writhing inside the tray. He suppressed the aching hunger inside him and remained poised.

Without ceremony, Torq proceeded to set a heavy mug down next to the tray, filled with steaming, and seemingly freshly-brewed bahgol. The scent of the brew mingling with the odour of the gagh in a singularly agreeable way. For a hungry Klingon stomach, at least.

Only after the full repast was set down did Torq turn to regard his former commander.

“The guards inform me that you have not been eating,” he stated simply.

Klath remained in his braced pose, still expecting an entirely different action from Torq. One more befitting his current status. But Commander Torq didn’t move. Didn’t make any effort to reach for the blade on his belt.

Eventually, Klath felt compelled to respond.

“I do not deserve to eat.”

Torq considered this in his usual impassive style, then responded with a slight nod.

“Perhaps not,” he conceded, “But we are still three days out of Qo’noS. You must eat. There is no honour in—”

“I have no honour!”

Klath spat the words out with enough force to shake the walls of the room. Torq didn’t flinch, merely stood and allowed his former commander’s anger to wash over him.

A freighter. It had been a freighter. Nothing more.

A single, unarmed Klingon freighter. Hiding in the Tygon Nebula, not because it was a strike force loyal to the House of Duras preparing another dishonourable sneak attack, but because it was a simple, unarmed freighter picking its way through a war zone.

As soon as Lieutenant Kovagh's sensor scans had confirmed the results of the analysis of the debris field, Captain Klath had been no more. He had relinquished command to Torq immediately, as was proper. And confined himself to his cabin to await punishment.

Since then, for several days, he had remained here. He was aware that Torq had elected to post guards at his cabin’s door. Both had entered at one time or another to throw him some field rations or other basic nutrition. All of which had gone uneaten.

But there was no need for guards. Klath had no intention of leaving his cabin. He had remained here, in mostly meditative silence, reflecting on his mistake. And awaiting his fate.

And now, Torq had brought him dinner.

More insistent now, he took a step towards his former first officer.

“I am dishonoured,” he hissed, “I have brought shame on this entire vessel. You must kill me!”

Torq barely reacted again, but he did draw himself up a little taller as he stared back into the eyes of his former commander.

“You are in no position to demand I do anything.”

It was a fair comment. But again, not the one he had been expecting. Given the circumstances, Torq would be well within his rights to cut him down for his actions, and restore some pride for himself and the rest of the crew.

“Now,” the younger Klingon continued, pointing a finger in the direction of the fresh meal on the table behind him, “Eat.”

With that, he strode off towards the door again.

Having been preparing himself for his fate for so long, Klath couldn’t stop himself from pressing the issue. He roared in frustration and stepped up to Torq, stopping him in his tracks and looking him dead in the eye.

“You mock me? You pity me? You bring me food like a mother caring for her child?”

His rage produced the response he had been hoping for. In an instant, Torq grabbed his d'k tahg from his belt and brought the cold blade up to Klath’s throat. And there it remained, pressing against his skin.

“Perhaps I should kill you,” he mused, his tone calm but firm, “That is what Lusara has been urging me to do ever since you walked off the bridge.”

Another moment passed. Klath prepared to embrace the inevitable feeling of the dagger slicing into his neck. Yet Torq's blade remained static.

“But I told her of Commander Durshk, of the Ninth Fleet,” he continued.

Klath’s eyes narrowed in confusion, even as he silently urged Torq’s dagger onwards.

“You do not know of that case?” Torq noted, “A proud, loyal warrior serving under Captain Bru'hoq. So loyal to the Empire that, when he saw his captain failing to attack a Romulan ship inside his patrol area, he cut him down without a moment’s hesitation.”

To emphasise that part of the story, Torq deftly increased the pressure he was exerting with his blade just a tad, enough to pierce Klath’s skin and send a trickle of warm blood down his neck.

But as soon as Klath readied himself to embrace the end, Torq pulled his blade away again and stepped back.

“When Commander Durshk and his crew returned to base, the High Council decided that Captain Bru'hoq's actions had in fact been entirely honourable. He had noted that the Romulan ship was not only travelling in the direction of a suspected secret Romulan base on the border, but in the direction of where the Eighth Fleet was already on maneuvers, under cloak. That one ship led them straight to the Romulan base, and the Empire scored a proud victory.”

Klath continued to stare at Torq, making no effort to stem the trickle of blood that was now soaking into the collar of his uniform.

“Instead,” Torq added, “The Council judged that Durshk had acted dishonourably, in cutting down his superior officer without due reason. And instead, it was he who was banished into exile.”

He idly wiped the streak of blood from his dagger and returned it to his sheath, before pointedly glaring back at his former captain.

“I have no intention of following the path that Durshk took. Let the Council judge you.”

With that, he left Klath behind again, striding back towards the door.

Frustrated, hungry, bemused and now bleeding, Klath found himself needing to shout out after him as he reached the exit.

“So you believe I acted honourably?” he called out.

Torq paused at the door and glanced back at his disgraced captain.

“I believe you acted exactly as I would have done.”

He turned back and stepped through the stout cabin door, leaving Klath bereft of a response.

After a moment spent contemplating Torq’s words, he eventually returned to lying on his solid metal bed, leaving the cut on his neck to bleed.

And leaving the fresh gagh uneaten.

Bynar0110 · Feb 16, 2026

I been enjoying the reads so far.

Robert Bruce Scott · Feb 19, 2026

Klath on a hunger strike? Okay - maybe not deliberate, but still, very odd behavior. Where is Denella?

Thanks!! rbs

BountyTrek · Feb 19, 2026

Robert Bruce Scott said:
Klath on a hunger strike? Okay - maybe not deliberate, but still, very odd behavior. Where is Denella?

I think I've overcomplicated things with too many consecutive scenes on similar Klingon ships and not enough author notes. :weep:

That scene was back in Klath's past again, following on from the Prologue. We return to the 'present' in the next scene...

BountyTrek · Feb 19, 2026

Part Two (Cont'd)

“Lies!"

Before Denella could fully contemplate what had happened, Klath jumped into action, drawing his bat’leth and bringing it to bear on the figure in front of him.

“You are not Captain Mekvar!” he continued, “This is a trick! Return us to our ship!”

Denella was a little surprised to see none of the Klingons standing along the back wall of the transporter room snapping into action at Klath’s aggressive posture. For his part, the older Klingon at the front of the group, whom Klath was now threatening with his bat’leth, simply nodded back in sage understanding.

“Of course,” he mused, “I would not believe it myself, if I stood where you were.”

His left arm moved swiftly, but not for a weapon. Instead, he reached across to his right arm and awkwardly rolled up the sleeve. Underneath, etched into his dark skin, was a deep, ugly scar.

“From the ground assault on Rugos VII,” he continued, with a knowing look in Klath’s direction, “We fought the Cardassians side-by-side, you and I. Outnumbered, outflanked. And still we held our position until reinforcements arrived.”

Klath stared at the scar in shock, his grip on his bat’leth faltering slightly. A rush of proud memories rose back up from inside his soul. Memories he had started to forget.

“It was a glorious battle,” the older Klingon added with a guttural hiss.

It had been. Klath agreed with that. And yet, he knew this couldn’t possibly be Captain Mekvar.

“I saw the reports,” he countered, “During the War, the qajunpaQ was…”

The Klingon who looked like Captain Mekvar stepped closer, easing Klath’s weapon out of the way without any resistance from the man on the other end of the bat’leth, who was putting more effort into fighting his doubts than anyone else. He patted his former junior lieutenant on the shoulder with a firm thud.

“I think we have…much to discuss.”

Klath searched for a response, but found himself bereft of one. Instead, he simply nodded back and returned his bat’leth to its sheath.

As the tension between the two Klingons began to subside, everyone now noted the other guest on the transporter pad. Denella, who had kept silent throughout the exchange between Klath and his apparent former commander, now found herself the centre of attention.

“Huh,” Mekvar grunted at her dismissively, “You were not expected.”

“Could say the same thing about you,” she managed to reply, taking a slim amount of confidence from still being next to Klath, “But, um, this is clearly a very personal reunion. So…I guess you can just beam me back to my ship—”

“Not possible,” one of the previously-silent Klingons cut in.

“Why not?”

“Because we are already underway,” Mekvar explained, “And Klingons do not turn back.”

Before she could question where exactly they were underway to, another of the Klingons behind the grey-haired captain stepped forwards.

“What should we do with this interloper, HoD?”

“It does not matter,” the older Klingon offered dismissively, “Take her—”

“No.”

Having been stunned into silence at the sight of his former commander seemingly returning from the dead, Klath suddenly found his voice.

“She is with me,” he added.

Now it was Mekvar's turn to look confused, as he slowly glanced from Klath to Denella and back again.

“Klath,” he replied after a moment, “You are home, and we have much to—”

“Whatever you have to say to me, you must also say to my shipmate,” Klath persisted, “After all, you have taken both of us from our vessel in the same manner. An explanation is required.”

Mekvar seemed unmoved. Denella felt herself tense up even more. Then, eventually, a slightly toothy smile crossed the older Klingon’s face, and he nodded back to the two of them.

“Very well,” he replied, “Then follow me.”

He turned with a flourish and marched off to the exit. After a reassuring nod in Denella’s direction, Klath set off as well, determined to get the explanation that Mekvar had promised.

Seeing that she had no other option available to her right now, the reluctant Orion followed in their wake.

And as she walked, she felt the eyes of every Klingon in the room on her.

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

“Where the hell are they?”

“I’m trying my best!”

“Well, try harder!”

“That’s some top class, A-1 captaining right there, Captain Jirel, sir.”

“Shut up, Sunek.”

Ever since the transporter effect had faded and their friends had disappeared, the Bounty’s cockpit had been a scene of mild chaos, as the remaining members of the crew did their best to figure out what exactly had just happened.

As soon as they had all agreed that the apparent presence of a cloaked ship off their bow and the sudden kidnapping of Klath and Denella were likely to be linked, Natasha had gone to work on her sensor panel. Meanwhile, Sunek had rushed to the pilot’s controls, ready to chase the sensor ghost wherever it had gone. And Jirel tried to do his best impression of a ship’s captain in charge of the situation.

But they had all instantly run into a problem when the sensor ghost indicating the apparent position of the cloaked ship was no longer detectable. It had vanished.

“Still nothing,” Natasha reported in frustration, as she worked her controls, “Nothing even on long-range sensors.”

“Whoever they were,” Sunek offered, “They must’ve dropped into warp and got the hell out of here faster than a Scalosian middle distance runner.”

“And we need to go after them,” Jirel insisted as he paced around the space between Sunek’s pilot’s console and Natasha’s controls at the back of the cockpit.

“Sure,” the Vulcan smirked, gesturing out of the cockpit window, “Pick a direction, buddy. It’s a hell of a big galaxy when you don’t know where to aim.”

Jirel paused in his pacing, preparing to channel a considerable amount of his current frustrations into his retort to his pilot. But Natasha interrupted him before their bickering could gestate.

“Hang on, I’ve got one more idea,” she said, moving over to Denella’s vacant engineering console and starting work.

“Wanna clue us in?” Jirel asked.

“Back when I was on the USS Tripoli, we once went on a month-long mission to map a series of inert plasma clouds in the Barvon sector.”

“Man,” Sunek muttered with healthy sarcasm, “Being in Starfleet sounds so exciting…”

“And I remember a junior engineer telling me about how they’d found a way to boost sensor strength and distance by pushing extra power from the impulse drive into the sensor arrays. If I can recall how they did it then, in theory, it should give us enough precision to pick out our sensor ghost before it leaves the sector.”

“We can do that with the Bounty’s old sensor array?” Jirel asked, “Why don’t we just do that all the time?”

Natasha looked a little less sure of herself, even as she continued to work.

“Well, um, it turned out that a side-effect of pushing that much extra juice into a single system ended up shorting out a couple hundred relays. Took a trip to Starbase 98 to repair everything. But, before that happened, you should have seen the readings they got of that plasma cloud.”

“I’d just like to voice my complete confidence in this plan,” Sunek called out, continuing to immerse himself in a healthy coating of sarcasm.

“Not like we’ve got a choice,” Jirel pointed out.

“Ok,” Natasha nodded, “I think that should do it.”

For a moment, the cockpit descended into silence. Even Sunek waited patiently as Natasha rushed back to her sensor panel and checked the results. Jirel clung onto hope for some positive news all the way until he saw her grimace.

“Ugh,” she groaned, slamming her hand on her panel in frustration, “Still nothing. Stupid Ensign J'haal's stupid idea. I knew that guy was full of—”

She stopped in the middle of her rant, spotting something unexpected in the readouts.

“You got them?” Jirel asked, still defiantly clinging onto blind hope.

“No,” she replied, “But I’ve got…something.”

“Wow,” Sunek’s sarcasm continued, “These new sensor upgrades are incredible.”

“There’s some sort of energy reading,” she continued, ignoring the Vulcan’s latest jibe, “Coming directly from…our hull. Looks like something’s transmitting a—”

She was cut off by a sudden explosion of sparks from above her head, as her hasty modifications to the sensors produced similar end results to those on the Tripoli.

“Damnit,” she cried out, rushing back to the engineering controls and undoing her work as quickly as she could, “That’s about half a dozen relays gone. Long-range sensors'll be offline for the foreseeable future. Ugh, Denella’s gonna love me.”

“The important thing is,” Jirel motioned, shrugging off the Bounty’s latest battle scars, “What the hell is on our hull?”

Natasha looked up at the Trill and shrugged in defeat.

“I couldn’t tell. And whatever it is, it’s clearly designed to be invisible to our sensors without some sort of power boost. Which…they’re not gonna be getting for a while.”

“Great,” Sunek sighed, “And we’re still about a day from the nearest breathable atmosphere if we wanna set down and find out what the hell it is—”

“Actually, we can probably find that out right now,” Jirel cut in, looking back at his pilot with a knowing grin.

It didn’t take long for Sunek’s Vulcan brain to figure out the same solution that Jirel had. And he wasn’t happy with what it was.

“Oh no,” he shook his head defiantly, “Nope. Nuh huh. No, no, no, no. Absolutely not.”

Jirel ignored his protests and turned back to the slightly confused Natasha.

“So,” he shrugged, “Who’s up for a spacewalk?”

Robert Bruce Scott · Feb 19, 2026

Nothing like some EVA action... So was this installment supposed to come before the previous?

Thanks!! rbs

BountyTrek · Feb 22, 2026

Robert Bruce Scott said:
So was this installment supposed to come before the previous?

No, it's in the right publishing order. The opening scene of Part Two in Klath's cabin was a flashback to Klath's past, like the Prologue. I did a similar narrative thing with Denella's past in "Zen and the Art of Corvallen Shuttlepod Maintenance", but I guess I made this one more confusing because the flashback and the 'present day' are both set on Klingon ships (albeit different ships, Klath's old command in the past and Captain Mekvar's battlecruiser in the present). :crazy:

BountyTrek · Feb 22, 2026

Part Two (Cont'd)

Klath was home. Or, at least, that was what it was starting to feel like.

It hadn’t taken long from him walking out of the transporter room for him to conclude that this was indeed the IKS qajunpaQ. Somehow.

Despite the report he had read of its destruction in the war, this was assuredly the same ship he had served on under Captain Mekvar. Every corridor, every panel, every sight and sound and smell was exactly as he had remembered from his time aboard the K'tinga-class battlecruiser.

He was, somehow, back among his people.

Next to him, Denella had never felt further away from home.

She had been around this many Klingons before, nearly a year ago when the Bounty had helped eradicate a tribble infestation from a colony of exiled ex-warriors. And when they had subsequently embarked on a mission into the Empire itself in a fruitless effort to restore Klath’s honour. *

But this all felt very different. Back then, she had been a welcome guest. And she had never been far away from the Bounty, and the rest of its crew. Now, she was getting the sense that she was entirely unwelcome. She had, in fact, managed to get herself effectively kidnapped with her instinctive decision to grab hold of Klath as he was being beamed away. Not her finest hour, she had to admit.

And now, she was trapped on an invisible ship, with no idea where they were or where they were going. And the Bounty was a very long way away indeed.

She tried to put all of that out of her mind, and focus on her raktajino.

Mekvar had led them from the transporter room, through various dark and musty corridors, all the way to the main wardroom of the qajunpaQ.

They now sat around the stout metal table that dominated the room, with steaming raktajinos in front of them. And they had been joined by a tall, muscular female Klingon, who Mekvar introduced as his executive officer, Commander K'Vara.

Not only was this new figure taller than Denella, she also looked at the Orion woman as if she was something she had trodden in. Which was serving to disconcert Denella even more.

Still, she felt some reassurance that she still had Klath by her side. Even if her friend had been entirely focused on his fellow Klingons since they had arrived. Patiently awaiting an explanation for what he was seeing.

“So,” Mekvar began, after a gruff slurp of raktajino, “You saw the reports. The qajunpaQ was lost with all hands during the Battle of the Jessik Nebula, on stardate 52589.”

“It was not a battle,” K’Vara added with an angry hiss, “It was a slaughter. A Dominion trap!”

Mekvar conceded this view of the incident with a nod. Klath’s focus remained solely on his former captain, his own drink remaining untouched.

“Regardless,” the grey-haired Klingon continued, “The qajunpaQ was clearly not destroyed. Severely damaged, yes. We were crippled, left dead in space. But…we survived.”

“Most of us did,” K’Vara added, keeping her own focus very much on Klath across the table, “Their deaths were glorious.”

“Is that what happened to Commander Kravon?” Klath asked pointedly, referencing Mekvar’s long-time right hand man, now noticeably absent.

The silent Denella, regarding the scene, picked up on a split-second glance between Mekvar and K’Vara when that name was mentioned, but Klath appeared none the wiser.

“Commander Kravon,” Mekvar affirmed, “Died in battle.”

Klath nodded back in acknowledgement, even as Denella’s senses remained suspicious.

“The ship was severely damaged,” the older Klingon continued with his explanation, “We barely had enough power for life support. But we survived, we sent out teams in what shuttles we could get working to salvage parts from the wreckage of the battle. And we rebuilt, slowly but surely, in the cover of the nebula.”

“Can’t have been easy,” Denella noted, speaking for the first time and earning an acid stare from K’Vara for her efforts.

“Klingons do not run from a challenge,” she hissed back at her, “Unlike some species.”

Denella took that as a personal attack, and felt obligated to respond with a short list of some of the challenges she and the Bounty had faced in just the past few months. But given her current predicament, she decided that a modicum of discretion was in order.

“It took many months to complete,” Mekvar added, “Slow, painstaking work. And by the time the ship was ready to sail into battle once more…the war was over.”

“But,” Klath retorted, “With your ship repaired, why not return to the Empire? Inform them of your survival?”

This time, even Klath was able to pick up on the subtle shift in body language from both Mekvar and K’Vara.

“Perhaps we should,” Mekvar nodded after another long slurp of raktajino, “But as soon as long-range communications were back online, and I read news of not only the end of the war, but of our reported demise, I suddenly felt like I was Kortar, guiding my ship through the waters of the Kos'Karii.”

K’Vara aimed another dismissive sneer in Denella’s direction.

“Kortar commands the Barge of the Dead, the vessel that ferries—”

“The dishonoured to the gates of Gre'thor,” Denella finished for her, taking some pleasure from the look of surprise on the formerly sneering woman’s face, “I know a thing or two about Klingon culture. Got a very good teacher.”

Klath tensed up slightly, but acknowledged her with a stiff nod.

The Orion relaxed a little, even feeling the urge to underline her knowledge with some of the basic Klingonese she had learned. But she couldn’t recall if the phrase that jumped to mind was the first verse of the Death Hymn sung to guide a deceased loved one to Sto-vo-kor, or a recipe for Rokeg blood pie. So she decided not to chance it.

Next to her, Klath returned his attention to Captain Mekvar, perplexed by this latest admission.

“I do not understand.”

The older Klingon managed a bitter chuckle as he leaned forwards in his seat.

“Back home, our families and houses were toasting our entrance into Sto-vo-kor. They were proud of our deaths in battle. But we were denied such glory.”

“There will always be another battle,” Klath argued back.

“Perhaps,” Mekvar replied, a little icily, “But the war is over. And now…Martok is in charge.”

The dismissive tone of his former captain’s voice as he mentioned Chancellor Martok's name shocked Klath almost as much as the reappearance of the qajunpaQ had done.

“Martok is a great warrior!” he snapped.

“He used to be. But perhaps not anymore. He has been working too closely with the Federation, for far too long.”

Denella silently noted that Mekvar put even more of a dismissive edge on the mention of the Federation as he had done for Martok.

“He has grown soft,” he continued, even as Klath bristled, “And weak. Too much time spent around the quisling comforts of the old enemy. Did you know, before we set out for the Jessik Nebula, I heard reports that he had asked the Defence Force to consider posting ship’s counsellors amongst the fleet? Some nonsense he picked up from one of his Starfleet colleagues, apparently.”

While the thought of a shipboard therapist disgusted Klath to his Klingon heart, he still wasn’t quite ready to believe this character assassination of a man he had once shared bloodwine with. Before his long exile.

“I still do not understand why you would not return to Qo’noS,” he replied, “Regardless of your…thoughts on the new Chancellor.”

Mekvar leaned further forwards, looming over the desk.

“I spoke with my crew, and they all felt the same way. We were a ship seeking the battle we had been denied. We did not wish to merely return as survivors, but as warriors!”

Klath glanced from Mekvar to K’Vara and back again, and considered this statement.

His Klingon heart, which seemed to be beating a little stronger with every minute he spent onboard this ship, told him that such a desire was an entirely valid quest. Still, that explanation didn’t come close to answering the most important question on his mind.

“But,” he grunted, “Why have you been…stalking me?”

Mekvar leaned back at this. Denella wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a Klingon looking sheepish before, but this felt as close as she’d ever come.

“That was not my intention,” he explained, “I just wanted to be certain that it was you, Klath. You were a fine lieutenant. And, from what I heard after your promotion, an even finer captain.”

Klath repressed a fresh rush of absolute shame. The image of weapons fire cutting an unarmed freighter to shreds filled his mind.

“You have clearly not heard the entire story,” he admitted, “I am…”

Dishonoured. Exiled. A biHnuch.

“I have heard everything,” Mekvar assured him, with a sideways look at Denella as the two Klingons skirted around a discussion of the sort of thing they didn’t discuss with outsiders, “And I never agreed with the High Council’s judgement of you.”

Not entirely sure how to take that, and equally conscious of Denella’s presence, Klath mustered a slight grunt back.

“That is…irrelevant,” he pointed out, “The Council’s judgement is clear. And I—”

“And you,” Mekvar hissed, “Need the same thing that me and my crew need. A glorious battle. And a glorious victory.”

The older Klingon leaned forwards again, as Klath felt his warrior’s heart beating even stronger than before, and felt the sense of hope that had kept him going throughout his exile rising again.

“That is why we have brought you here, Klath. To join us. On our quest for glory...”

Denella looked over at her friend, and couldn’t help but feel worried when she saw one of the rarest sights in the entire galaxy.

Klath was smiling.

Klath was home.

* - All of which happened in Star Trek: Bounty - 110 - "Take Arms Against a Sea of Tribbles".

Robert Bruce Scott · Feb 22, 2026

Yeah... I'm sensing a very large rug getting ready to be pulled out from under a large Klingon...

Thanks!! rbs

BountyTrek · Feb 25, 2026

Part Two (Cont'd)

Natasha felt sick.

She forced down another wave of nausea, knowing just how much worse her situation would get if she ended up vomiting right now, and focused on the dirty metal sheet below her feet.

Technically, the dirty metal sheet was above her feet. At least, that was what it felt like inside her head right now.

Even more technically, it wasn’t actually above or below her feet. It was neither. Or both. That was how things worked in zero-g.

But thinking about all of that was just making it more likely that the last meal she had eaten was about to allow itself an unwelcome encore inside the helmet of her EVA suit. So she did her best not to think about it.

“You ok?”

Jirel’s voice filled her helmet over the distinctly crackly comms link that had to remain permanently open during their work on the Bounty’s portside wing. Like everything onboard, the comms units on the ship’s only two EVA suits had seen better days.

“I’m fine,” she lied, “Just hurry up and finish.”

To her side, Jirel shrugged and returned to his work, carefully cutting the curious metal transmitter they had found there from the hull plates with an engineering laser. Adding to Natasha’s unhappy state of mind by lightly whistling over the static-flecked comms link as he did so.

Like the comms units, the suits themselves had seen better days as well. As she and Jirel had been suiting up, the Trill had casually explained how he had swiped them from his old workplace in the Tyran Scrapyards, at the same time he had acquired the Bounty. And they had probably needed replacing back then.

Only after several careful scans of her suit with a tricorder to check for any signs of weak points or impending breaches did Natasha elect to proceed with the EVA.

She hadn’t even planned on being part of the spacewalk at all. But it was too dangerous for Jirel to work alone, and she had managed to lose an impromptu game of rock, paper, scissors to Sunek to decide who had to join him. A loss made particularly humbling by the fact that she’d had to explain the rules of the game to the fast-learning Vulcan seconds before they had started.

“I thought this kind of thing would be bread and butter to you Starfleet folks,” Jirel offered during a break in his whistling while he worked.

She glanced across at the Trill, and instantly regretted the decision as she caught sight of the rolling starscape behind his head and had to fight off another wave of nausea for her trouble.

Even more annoyingly, as far as she was concerned, Jirel was in his element.

His many months of labour in the Tyran Scrapyards had involved plenty of long shifts spent maneuvering across the hull of one doomed freighter or another, cutting up sections in areas that his supervisors had deemed too tricky to risk any of their expensive automated drones on.

Better to just risk the life of one of their less important employees instead.

“I’m a doctor, not a salvage yard grease monkey,” she fired back defensively, having temporarily settled her stomach again.

“Still,” Jirel persisted innocently, “The Academy had a bunch of mandatory EVA courses, right? So this should be easy. Unless you were one of those dumb cadets you hear about who end up flunking the course again and again because they can’t stop throwing up inside their—”

He stopped himself as he glanced up to see the daggers she was now shooting his way. And he mustered an awkward cough.

“Ahem. I’ll, um, just hurry up and finish…”

The Trill quickly returned to cutting the mysterious device from the Bounty’s hull.

And Natasha returned to ensuring that her lunch stayed exactly where it currently resided.

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

Thirty minutes later, after the two halves of the spacewalk had awkwardly maneuvered the device back to the Bounty’s airlock, Natasha mercifully found herself back inside the creature comforts of artificial gravity.

But her relief was only temporary. As soon as she had extracted herself from her EVA suit, she had gotten to work on the mysterious object itself, scanning the small, stout metal rectangular construct with the Bounty’s least unreliable tricorder.

“So, what is it?” Sunek asked as she worked.

“Hmm,” she replied as she studied the readings, “Based on the metallic composition of the case and the layout of the circuitry inside, I’d say it’s Klingon.”

Jirel looked over the object with a less analytical eye, and asked the obvious follow-up question.

“A Klingon…what?”

Natasha sighed and allowed some of the residual bad feelings from her EVA to boil over as she pointed defiantly at herself.

“Again: Doctor. Not zero-g salvage expert. Not Klingon artifact collector. Doctor!”

“But it’s not a bomb, right?” Sunek asked, “Cos if that thing blows up and kills us right now, I’m gonna be seriously annoyed.”

“I don’t think Klingons really do bombs,” Jirel pointed out, “Not a lot of honour in them.”

“There’s not a lot of honour in sneaking ten thousand tribbles into some guy’s wine cellar, but look what happened the last time we hung out with some of Klath’s buddies.” *

Acknowledging the Vulcan’s point, Natasha sighed and looked back down at the readings with a shrug.

“It’s not a bomb,” she confirmed, “It’s some sort of transmitter. But whoever it was transmitting to, it’s no longer functioning. I guess they…got what they needed.”

Jirel’s jaw clenched slightly. Keenly aware of exactly what, or more precisely who, they had gotten from the Bounty.

“But,” he persisted with the obvious questions, “Why would a Klingon ship kidnap Klath?”

“Maybe they’re throwing him a birthday party,” Sunek offered as he poked inside his left ear with a slender finger, “When is that guy’s birthday, anyway?”

“The bigger issue,” Natasha pointed out, “Is that this doesn’t get us any closer to figuring out where the hell that cloaked ship went with Klath and Denella.”

“Um,” Sunek ventured again, mid-examination of whatever he had fished out of his earlobe, “It kinda does.”

Jirel and Natasha turned to their pilot, who looked up at them and affected the sort of know-it-all look he always did when he was preparing to use his still-present Vulcan intellect to point out what they were clearly missing about a given situation.

“It’s pretty obvious,” he shrugged for effect, gesturing at the object, “That thing has a transmitter inside it, which must’ve been tuned to a specific subspace receiver, to make sure whoever was tracking us didn’t lose sight of where we were.”

He paused, his attention briefly drawn to idly probing his right ear with a different finger.

“Ok,” Jirel sighed impatiently, “And?”

Sunek finished up his exploratory excavation of his right ear and shrugged again.

“And…we just need to put some juice in this thing, and then reconfigure the transmitter to bounce a signal back from that receiver to us. That’ll tell us exactly where they are. Turn their tracking device into a means to track them. Easy.”

Jirel looked across at Natasha, trying to get confirmation that Sunek wasn’t just winding him up. She shrugged and handed the tricorder over to the Vulcan.

“Ok. Get to it, then.”

In an instant, the Bounty’s pilot switched from annoying know-it-all to expert work evader.

“Me? Naw, come on, I need to go—”

“And I need to go recover from that spacewalk,” Natasha pressed, stepping away from the Klingon transmitter and heading for her cabin, “Besides, you said it was easy, right?”

As she walked off, the suddenly unhappy Sunek turned to Jirel, who shrugged his shoulders.

“You heard the lady. Someone’s gotta do it.”

The Vulcan sighed deeply and looked down at the tricorder, then the transmitter, and then back to the Trill.

“Rock, paper, scissors?”

* - Again, see Star Trek: Bounty - 110 - "Take Arms Against a Sea of Tribbles" for the full story.

Star Trek: Bounty - 207 - "The Stars That Shall Be Bright When We Are Dust"

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