Definitely good about tormenting your characters - and a fun cliffhanger. Thanks!! rbs
Star Trek: Bounty - 4 - "It's Not Easy Being Green"
- Thread starter BountyTrek
- Start date
Part Four
She heard the engines first.
The powerful roar of half a dozen sets of thrusters filled the air as the small green landing ships came rushing over the horizon and towards the township. Even though she was only nineteen, and had mercifully never seen a Syndicate ship before, she had been told enough to be able to recognise one when she saw it.
When he was alive, her father had said that Orpheus IV was far enough away that the Syndicate would never bother them. That their interest in the Orion Free Traders was minimal.
But over recent months, she had seen plenty of evidence from newscasts and in word of mouth around the township that this may no longer be the case. Reports of raids by Syndicate groups reaching further and further into Free Traders territory. Stories of outposts being razed and destroyed, settlements being ransacked, and innocent men, women and children being rounded up en masse to bolster the Syndicate’s trafficking operations.
She had been working hard over the last few weeks to convince her mother that they needed to leave Orpheus IV for somewhere deeper inside Trader-controlled space. And Telmis was beginning to realise that her daughter might be right.
But as Denella saw the ships preparing to land, she realised she had run out of time.
She dropped her tools, ignoring the half-repaired Gorn transport pod parked next to her, and ran for the house. In her mind, she quickly formulated a plan. She would get back, find her mother, and find Sarina and her family, and then get them back to the pod. It was a work in progress, but it was spaceworthy. And if they were lucky, they’d have a chance to evade whatever Syndicate ships were in orbit.
It was a small chance. Still, it was better than the alternative.
But before she got even halfway back to the house, she could see that it was too late. Two of the ships had landed right next to her homestead. She could make out a gaggle of burly Orion men as they swarmed through her mother’s house, along with the small collection of homes nearby.
She ducked behind a tree before any of them spotted her, and peered out from behind the cover in terror.
Sarina was being dragged towards one of the landing ships by two of the men, kicking and screaming as much as she could to put up a fight. But it was barely slowing the men down. Denella felt a flash of impotent anger as she saw the younger Orion woman’s terror. Her friend. The one that she had always said she’d protect, and look after.
She reached down and felt the hilt of the dagger in her boot. She gently lifted it and hefted it in her hand. But she didn’t move. She had no idea what she was going to do, even as she watched her best friend being dragged away. There were at least two dozen men visible down there, to say nothing of how many might be inside the houses, ransacking the place for whatever valuables they could take. And she suddenly felt very small.
She felt the urge to run. To run away. Perhaps, if she could make it to the cover of the forest, she could hide. She could survive. If she could stay out of sight for long enough.
For once in her life, the forest seemed like the lesser of two evils.
But she also felt the urge to do something, do anything, for her mother, and for Sarina. And the other Orions being carried away. Even though she knew it was useless, that it would be a hopeless fight, part of her wanted to do something.
Fight or flight. A simple choice.
Shamefully, as the cries of the girl she had promised to protect drifted out from the homestead, she felt herself turn away. Back towards the forest. While her mind was still in conflict, her body had made a decision. She was running away.
And then she stopped. Frozen to the spot. In terror.
She hadn’t heard him approaching her from behind, but now he stood in her way. Before she could move, an arm the size of a tree trunk shot out and grabbed her around the neck. The other one grabbed the wrist that held the dagger, squeezing it mercilessly until she dropped it. The dagger that her mother had given her dropped to the soft ground below.
She felt his grip tightening around her neck. She struggled to breathe.
“Well, well,” the burly Orion muttered at her, “This trip just keeps getting more profitable.”
He snorted in satisfied amusement as she quaked in his arms. She couldn’t move. His vice-like grip saw to that.
“My name is Rilen Dar,” he continued, “And you…belong to me.”
He picked her up and began to carry her away over his shoulder, back towards the nearest of the landing crafts.
And she didn’t struggle.
As they ascended the steps up into the ship, she saw that her home was on fire. She had no idea where her mother was. Or Sarina. What she did know, as the flames licked higher and engulfed the second floor, was that she would never see Orpheus IV again.
And she still didn’t struggle.
Her face was blank. Her body was limp.
In her mind, she started to work on replacing the primary power grid on an Antedean warp shuttle.
****************************
The calculations for a warp jump were some of the most complicated and precise in all of warp field mechanics. It was usually postulated as a concept by all warp-capable species shortly after they discovered the means of faster than light travel. But it usually took a lot longer to refine.
The idea was simple enough. A split-second burst of warp speed to instantaneously propel a vessel or probe a relatively short distance between two points.
There were plenty of famous uses of such a jump throughout galactic history. Captain Jean-Luc Picard had used one to defeat a Ferengi Marauder in the Maxia Zeta system. Arbeiter Drak’han of Dexia Minor once ordered his entire warfleet to warp jump directly into orbit of neighbouring Dexia Major, to win a battle that was lauded as the most remarkable military upset of all time. And renowned 23rd century Bzzit Khaht shuttle racer Bzzakhashgon was once disqualified from an interstellar time trial around the Lethian system for allegedly using a warp jump during his final qualifying run, an allegation that Bzzakhashgon strenuously denied all the way to his grave.
But it was possible that nobody had ever used one in as foolhardy a way as Denella had decided to.
When she fired on Rilen Dar’s ship, she had actually kicked off a pre-programmed combination of several discrete actions, all carefully designed to occur in a tight sequence.
The shuttle’s tiny laser cutter shot out an overpowered band of reddish energy at the Orion vessel’s shields. A brief burst that was significantly more than the cutter was designed to handle, and one that burnt out every element inside it almost immediately.
A simple laser was nowhere near enough to bring the shields down, or even weaken them, but it was enough to give them a tap, and cause the Orion cruiser’s modular defence systems to recompile the shield grid around the impact site as a matter of course.
Just as Denella knew Orion shield generators always did.
Which meant that, for a fraction of a split second, the shields winked off around where the laser cutter had hit them, leaving a tiny, shuttle-sized hole. Not long enough for any weapons system to take advantage, but long enough for Denella’s faster-than-light plan.
At the same time, the shuttle’s warp drive flared into life. In a literal blink of an eye, the shuttle executed a short-range warp jump, straight through the hole the laser had caused. It was as if the tiny ship had disappeared from outside the shield, and reappeared inside it, now with no barrier between itself and the larger vessel’s hull.
As the jump took place, the shuttle’s deflector array sent out a burst of theta radiation into the surrounding gas and dust of the nebula, serving to further blind the already patchy sensor data that the Orion ship was receiving just as the shuttle breached its defences.
Finally, the magnetic clamps activated, as the hull of the Orion ship loomed large. With a dull thud and an impact strong enough to shake the vessel’s occupant significantly more than she had been hoping, the shuttle clamped onto the hull like a limpet.
Despite how long it had taken Denella to prepare for it, the whole process was over in an instant. If she’d been entirely honest, even after all her preparation, she had only given herself a 50/50 chance of the whole thing succeeding. But it had. Exactly as she had planned.
Still, she didn’t allow herself even a brief moment of satisfaction. This was just the start.
Instead, she completed one final check of the belongings in her rucksack, and then quickly stepped over to the shuttle’s ore transporter. It wasn’t an ideal scenario, using a device primarily designed to handle rocks in order to get herself onto the other vessel. But she tried not to worry too much about that.
As for what she had just managed to do, she barely paid it another thought.
Which was a shame. Because it meant that even though it had been as impressive a warp jump as anything attempted by Picard, Drak’han or, allegedly, Bzzakhashgon, chances were that nobody would ever hear anything more about the Denella Maneuver.
****************************
On the bridge of Dar’s ship, the mood had shifted in an instant.
Just as the gunner was preparing to fire, the entire vessel had gently rocked from the impact of the improvised weapon, and the shuttle seemed to disappear in front of their very eyes.
Dar growled in frustration, causing every one of his subordinates to flinch.
“What the hell just happened?” he spat out, to nobody and everybody.
The subordinates all leapt to action, working their controls to try and get some sort of answer to Dar’s question that wouldn’t anger him further. They all knew that they wouldn’t like him when he was mad.
Eventually, one subordinate, a young navigation chief called Tarlas Rel, found an answer. He wasn’t the only one to find it, but he was the only one naive enough to inform Dar.
“I am picking up a transporter signature. Deck 16, section 11!”
Before Dar had a chance to respond, Rel’s console chirped out another warning. Several other consoles around the bridge also chirped, but again, Rel was the only one eager enough to report the reason to his master.
“Internal sensors are down throughout the ship! Someone has flooded the computer with a recursive program!”
The other subordinates braced themselves for Dar’s wrath to rain down on Rel. But Dar checked himself. While he was pretty sure he would enjoy killing Rel, he felt it was best to focus on the more pressing issue for now.
Instead, he pointed at a pair of his other subordinates and barked out spittle-flecked orders.
“Get down there, take as many guards as you need, and bring her to me!”
The two Orions quickly nodded and exited, as Dar turned back to the viewscreen, his face like thunder.
He had considered joining the hunt himself, to try and satisfy the frustration and irritation that he was feeling after being so completely wrong-footed by a simple slave girl. But he had a standing to maintain as the master of this particular domain. It wouldn’t have been proper for him to reduce himself to the level of stalking around below decks with the rest of his guards and subjects.
Dar wasn’t concerned. He had more than a hundred of his most loyal subjects onboard, and regardless of how many tricks this particular slave might have up her sleeves, she would be captured eventually.
But he was also pragmatic when he needed to be. And he had a sneaking suspicion that he knew exactly where his unlikely adversary would be heading. He knew what she was looking for, what she had come all this way to find.
And on the off chance that she did manage to evade his guards, he could make sure he was there to meet her.
He stood from his throne-like chair and immediately started towards the bridge’s turbolift, without a word to his subordinates.
Just as he reached the turbolift doors, and still feeling that he hadn’t quite scratched his irritation as much as he would have liked, he turned back and fired a single disruptor shot into the back of Tarlas Rel, silencing the young navigator and his irritating reports forever.
The remaining men on the bridge barely batted an eyelid at their master’s latest irrational act of callousness.
Dar turned back to the turbolift, and allowed himself a satisfied smile.
He had enjoyed that.
****************************
Despite the potential unreliability of the ore transporter, she had materialised exactly where she had planned to, in an empty service corridor on the lower decks of Dar’s ship.
The relatively isolated location gave her time to put her piece of software to work silencing the ship’s internal sensors.
It wasn’t a foolproof plan. Tricorders and handheld scanners would still be unaffected, but it would give her a small amount of cover, and prevent Dar from just beaming her lifesigns straight into a detention cell.
Still, she knew her beam-in would have been detected. She had to move quickly. Once the software was in place, she drew the phaser from her belt and re-checked the vicinity. The coast was still clear. For the moment.
She crept down the corridor, deeper into the ship.
The Orion cruiser had looked menacing enough from the outside, and inside was no different. The walls of the corridor were covered in ugly metal overhangs and sharp, jutting corners. The lighting was relatively dim, which meant there was gloom and shadowy corners everywhere.
It seemed to be a trait of Orion ships. Especially Syndicate ones. Even if Rilen Dar had upgraded his ship from the smaller raider he had travelled in when he had taken her from Orpheus IV, the interiors were very similar. Shadows everywhere.
And she stayed in those shadows as she moved. Until she could find a way to get off the beaten track even further.
She ducked behind a corner as she heard footsteps approaching, gripping the phaser even more tightly as she did so.
“There’s a whole bunch of guards coming down here to search,” she heard one of the burly Orions gripe as they approached her concealed position, “We should leave it to them.”
“You fool,” the other one spat, “Dar wants the girl. If we find her before the others get here, we’ll be the ones in line for a promotion. Or do you want to live out your days in the engineering decks?”
Denella peered out from her hiding place and watched the two men walk obliviously past with their backs to her. Thumbing the phaser to a wide-beam stun setting, she fired without a second thought. Both of them slumped to the floor in a heap, neither having the time to register what had hit them.
She adjusted the rucksack on her back and turned away from the two unconscious forms, sneaking further down the corridor. As she crept, she kept an eye out for any sort or access junction or panel that would give her access to whatever maintenance tunnels there were on this ship.
She knew that was her best chance of getting to the upper decks undetected. Perhaps her only chance, given that there were guards heading her way.
As she absently wondered when they might arrive, she rounded a sharp corner in the corridor. And came face to face with a knife.
It was a typical Orion design, not unlike her own, though with less of an ornate pattern on the hilt. This one was more utilitarian in nature.
But even as her eyes were on the blade, her senses were also assessing the man holding it. This Orion was young, but well-built enough to be intimidating, dressed in deep brown overalls. He stood cocky and confident. After all, he’d got the jump on her.
Still, she was relieved to see that he was on his own. Presumably another straggler in the engineering decks looking to curry Dar’s favour.
“Drop it,” he grunted, gesturing to the phaser in her hand.
She complied. For the time being.
“Huh,” he continued, looking her up and down, “Dar is going to be very pleased with me. Very pleased indeed…”
She finally took her eyes off the weapon and properly looked up at the man who held it.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” she replied.
And then she attacked. Just as she had learned to do.
Launching the attack out of nowhere, she kicked out with her foot, connecting squarely with his leg and eliciting a shocked scream of pain. Her younger opponent dropped the weapon and backed away, which was a rookie mistake.
She followed up with a flurry of further kicks, before grabbing the Orion man’s arm and slamming him into the bulkhead in front of them. She grabbed her own dagger from her belt and brought it up to his throat. She couldn’t help but take some satisfaction from feeling him shaking underneath the weight of her body.
“Y--You can’t…!” he managed to splutter.
Denella kept the blade tightly pressed against his skin. She remembered the bartender. The first person she had killed, all those years ago.
“I can,” she replied after a moment, “But you’re not worth it.”
She retracted the blade ever so slightly, then slammed his head straight into the bulkhead, knocking him out in an instant. He slumped down to her feet.
She slipped the blade back into her belt and picked up the phaser where she had dropped it. Then she spotted what she had been looking for further down the corridor. She rushed over to the access panel even as she heard more footsteps approaching, and crawled through.
Ever deeper into the bowels of the ship.
She heard the engines first.
The powerful roar of half a dozen sets of thrusters filled the air as the small green landing ships came rushing over the horizon and towards the township. Even though she was only nineteen, and had mercifully never seen a Syndicate ship before, she had been told enough to be able to recognise one when she saw it.
When he was alive, her father had said that Orpheus IV was far enough away that the Syndicate would never bother them. That their interest in the Orion Free Traders was minimal.
But over recent months, she had seen plenty of evidence from newscasts and in word of mouth around the township that this may no longer be the case. Reports of raids by Syndicate groups reaching further and further into Free Traders territory. Stories of outposts being razed and destroyed, settlements being ransacked, and innocent men, women and children being rounded up en masse to bolster the Syndicate’s trafficking operations.
She had been working hard over the last few weeks to convince her mother that they needed to leave Orpheus IV for somewhere deeper inside Trader-controlled space. And Telmis was beginning to realise that her daughter might be right.
But as Denella saw the ships preparing to land, she realised she had run out of time.
She dropped her tools, ignoring the half-repaired Gorn transport pod parked next to her, and ran for the house. In her mind, she quickly formulated a plan. She would get back, find her mother, and find Sarina and her family, and then get them back to the pod. It was a work in progress, but it was spaceworthy. And if they were lucky, they’d have a chance to evade whatever Syndicate ships were in orbit.
It was a small chance. Still, it was better than the alternative.
But before she got even halfway back to the house, she could see that it was too late. Two of the ships had landed right next to her homestead. She could make out a gaggle of burly Orion men as they swarmed through her mother’s house, along with the small collection of homes nearby.
She ducked behind a tree before any of them spotted her, and peered out from behind the cover in terror.
Sarina was being dragged towards one of the landing ships by two of the men, kicking and screaming as much as she could to put up a fight. But it was barely slowing the men down. Denella felt a flash of impotent anger as she saw the younger Orion woman’s terror. Her friend. The one that she had always said she’d protect, and look after.
She reached down and felt the hilt of the dagger in her boot. She gently lifted it and hefted it in her hand. But she didn’t move. She had no idea what she was going to do, even as she watched her best friend being dragged away. There were at least two dozen men visible down there, to say nothing of how many might be inside the houses, ransacking the place for whatever valuables they could take. And she suddenly felt very small.
She felt the urge to run. To run away. Perhaps, if she could make it to the cover of the forest, she could hide. She could survive. If she could stay out of sight for long enough.
For once in her life, the forest seemed like the lesser of two evils.
But she also felt the urge to do something, do anything, for her mother, and for Sarina. And the other Orions being carried away. Even though she knew it was useless, that it would be a hopeless fight, part of her wanted to do something.
Fight or flight. A simple choice.
Shamefully, as the cries of the girl she had promised to protect drifted out from the homestead, she felt herself turn away. Back towards the forest. While her mind was still in conflict, her body had made a decision. She was running away.
And then she stopped. Frozen to the spot. In terror.
She hadn’t heard him approaching her from behind, but now he stood in her way. Before she could move, an arm the size of a tree trunk shot out and grabbed her around the neck. The other one grabbed the wrist that held the dagger, squeezing it mercilessly until she dropped it. The dagger that her mother had given her dropped to the soft ground below.
She felt his grip tightening around her neck. She struggled to breathe.
“Well, well,” the burly Orion muttered at her, “This trip just keeps getting more profitable.”
He snorted in satisfied amusement as she quaked in his arms. She couldn’t move. His vice-like grip saw to that.
“My name is Rilen Dar,” he continued, “And you…belong to me.”
He picked her up and began to carry her away over his shoulder, back towards the nearest of the landing crafts.
And she didn’t struggle.
As they ascended the steps up into the ship, she saw that her home was on fire. She had no idea where her mother was. Or Sarina. What she did know, as the flames licked higher and engulfed the second floor, was that she would never see Orpheus IV again.
And she still didn’t struggle.
Her face was blank. Her body was limp.
In her mind, she started to work on replacing the primary power grid on an Antedean warp shuttle.
****************************
The calculations for a warp jump were some of the most complicated and precise in all of warp field mechanics. It was usually postulated as a concept by all warp-capable species shortly after they discovered the means of faster than light travel. But it usually took a lot longer to refine.
The idea was simple enough. A split-second burst of warp speed to instantaneously propel a vessel or probe a relatively short distance between two points.
There were plenty of famous uses of such a jump throughout galactic history. Captain Jean-Luc Picard had used one to defeat a Ferengi Marauder in the Maxia Zeta system. Arbeiter Drak’han of Dexia Minor once ordered his entire warfleet to warp jump directly into orbit of neighbouring Dexia Major, to win a battle that was lauded as the most remarkable military upset of all time. And renowned 23rd century Bzzit Khaht shuttle racer Bzzakhashgon was once disqualified from an interstellar time trial around the Lethian system for allegedly using a warp jump during his final qualifying run, an allegation that Bzzakhashgon strenuously denied all the way to his grave.
But it was possible that nobody had ever used one in as foolhardy a way as Denella had decided to.
When she fired on Rilen Dar’s ship, she had actually kicked off a pre-programmed combination of several discrete actions, all carefully designed to occur in a tight sequence.
The shuttle’s tiny laser cutter shot out an overpowered band of reddish energy at the Orion vessel’s shields. A brief burst that was significantly more than the cutter was designed to handle, and one that burnt out every element inside it almost immediately.
A simple laser was nowhere near enough to bring the shields down, or even weaken them, but it was enough to give them a tap, and cause the Orion cruiser’s modular defence systems to recompile the shield grid around the impact site as a matter of course.
Just as Denella knew Orion shield generators always did.
Which meant that, for a fraction of a split second, the shields winked off around where the laser cutter had hit them, leaving a tiny, shuttle-sized hole. Not long enough for any weapons system to take advantage, but long enough for Denella’s faster-than-light plan.
At the same time, the shuttle’s warp drive flared into life. In a literal blink of an eye, the shuttle executed a short-range warp jump, straight through the hole the laser had caused. It was as if the tiny ship had disappeared from outside the shield, and reappeared inside it, now with no barrier between itself and the larger vessel’s hull.
As the jump took place, the shuttle’s deflector array sent out a burst of theta radiation into the surrounding gas and dust of the nebula, serving to further blind the already patchy sensor data that the Orion ship was receiving just as the shuttle breached its defences.
Finally, the magnetic clamps activated, as the hull of the Orion ship loomed large. With a dull thud and an impact strong enough to shake the vessel’s occupant significantly more than she had been hoping, the shuttle clamped onto the hull like a limpet.
Despite how long it had taken Denella to prepare for it, the whole process was over in an instant. If she’d been entirely honest, even after all her preparation, she had only given herself a 50/50 chance of the whole thing succeeding. But it had. Exactly as she had planned.
Still, she didn’t allow herself even a brief moment of satisfaction. This was just the start.
Instead, she completed one final check of the belongings in her rucksack, and then quickly stepped over to the shuttle’s ore transporter. It wasn’t an ideal scenario, using a device primarily designed to handle rocks in order to get herself onto the other vessel. But she tried not to worry too much about that.
As for what she had just managed to do, she barely paid it another thought.
Which was a shame. Because it meant that even though it had been as impressive a warp jump as anything attempted by Picard, Drak’han or, allegedly, Bzzakhashgon, chances were that nobody would ever hear anything more about the Denella Maneuver.
****************************
On the bridge of Dar’s ship, the mood had shifted in an instant.
Just as the gunner was preparing to fire, the entire vessel had gently rocked from the impact of the improvised weapon, and the shuttle seemed to disappear in front of their very eyes.
Dar growled in frustration, causing every one of his subordinates to flinch.
“What the hell just happened?” he spat out, to nobody and everybody.
The subordinates all leapt to action, working their controls to try and get some sort of answer to Dar’s question that wouldn’t anger him further. They all knew that they wouldn’t like him when he was mad.
Eventually, one subordinate, a young navigation chief called Tarlas Rel, found an answer. He wasn’t the only one to find it, but he was the only one naive enough to inform Dar.
“I am picking up a transporter signature. Deck 16, section 11!”
Before Dar had a chance to respond, Rel’s console chirped out another warning. Several other consoles around the bridge also chirped, but again, Rel was the only one eager enough to report the reason to his master.
“Internal sensors are down throughout the ship! Someone has flooded the computer with a recursive program!”
The other subordinates braced themselves for Dar’s wrath to rain down on Rel. But Dar checked himself. While he was pretty sure he would enjoy killing Rel, he felt it was best to focus on the more pressing issue for now.
Instead, he pointed at a pair of his other subordinates and barked out spittle-flecked orders.
“Get down there, take as many guards as you need, and bring her to me!”
The two Orions quickly nodded and exited, as Dar turned back to the viewscreen, his face like thunder.
He had considered joining the hunt himself, to try and satisfy the frustration and irritation that he was feeling after being so completely wrong-footed by a simple slave girl. But he had a standing to maintain as the master of this particular domain. It wouldn’t have been proper for him to reduce himself to the level of stalking around below decks with the rest of his guards and subjects.
Dar wasn’t concerned. He had more than a hundred of his most loyal subjects onboard, and regardless of how many tricks this particular slave might have up her sleeves, she would be captured eventually.
But he was also pragmatic when he needed to be. And he had a sneaking suspicion that he knew exactly where his unlikely adversary would be heading. He knew what she was looking for, what she had come all this way to find.
And on the off chance that she did manage to evade his guards, he could make sure he was there to meet her.
He stood from his throne-like chair and immediately started towards the bridge’s turbolift, without a word to his subordinates.
Just as he reached the turbolift doors, and still feeling that he hadn’t quite scratched his irritation as much as he would have liked, he turned back and fired a single disruptor shot into the back of Tarlas Rel, silencing the young navigator and his irritating reports forever.
The remaining men on the bridge barely batted an eyelid at their master’s latest irrational act of callousness.
Dar turned back to the turbolift, and allowed himself a satisfied smile.
He had enjoyed that.
****************************
Despite the potential unreliability of the ore transporter, she had materialised exactly where she had planned to, in an empty service corridor on the lower decks of Dar’s ship.
The relatively isolated location gave her time to put her piece of software to work silencing the ship’s internal sensors.
It wasn’t a foolproof plan. Tricorders and handheld scanners would still be unaffected, but it would give her a small amount of cover, and prevent Dar from just beaming her lifesigns straight into a detention cell.
Still, she knew her beam-in would have been detected. She had to move quickly. Once the software was in place, she drew the phaser from her belt and re-checked the vicinity. The coast was still clear. For the moment.
She crept down the corridor, deeper into the ship.
The Orion cruiser had looked menacing enough from the outside, and inside was no different. The walls of the corridor were covered in ugly metal overhangs and sharp, jutting corners. The lighting was relatively dim, which meant there was gloom and shadowy corners everywhere.
It seemed to be a trait of Orion ships. Especially Syndicate ones. Even if Rilen Dar had upgraded his ship from the smaller raider he had travelled in when he had taken her from Orpheus IV, the interiors were very similar. Shadows everywhere.
And she stayed in those shadows as she moved. Until she could find a way to get off the beaten track even further.
She ducked behind a corner as she heard footsteps approaching, gripping the phaser even more tightly as she did so.
“There’s a whole bunch of guards coming down here to search,” she heard one of the burly Orions gripe as they approached her concealed position, “We should leave it to them.”
“You fool,” the other one spat, “Dar wants the girl. If we find her before the others get here, we’ll be the ones in line for a promotion. Or do you want to live out your days in the engineering decks?”
Denella peered out from her hiding place and watched the two men walk obliviously past with their backs to her. Thumbing the phaser to a wide-beam stun setting, she fired without a second thought. Both of them slumped to the floor in a heap, neither having the time to register what had hit them.
She adjusted the rucksack on her back and turned away from the two unconscious forms, sneaking further down the corridor. As she crept, she kept an eye out for any sort or access junction or panel that would give her access to whatever maintenance tunnels there were on this ship.
She knew that was her best chance of getting to the upper decks undetected. Perhaps her only chance, given that there were guards heading her way.
As she absently wondered when they might arrive, she rounded a sharp corner in the corridor. And came face to face with a knife.
It was a typical Orion design, not unlike her own, though with less of an ornate pattern on the hilt. This one was more utilitarian in nature.
But even as her eyes were on the blade, her senses were also assessing the man holding it. This Orion was young, but well-built enough to be intimidating, dressed in deep brown overalls. He stood cocky and confident. After all, he’d got the jump on her.
Still, she was relieved to see that he was on his own. Presumably another straggler in the engineering decks looking to curry Dar’s favour.
“Drop it,” he grunted, gesturing to the phaser in her hand.
She complied. For the time being.
“Huh,” he continued, looking her up and down, “Dar is going to be very pleased with me. Very pleased indeed…”
She finally took her eyes off the weapon and properly looked up at the man who held it.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” she replied.
And then she attacked. Just as she had learned to do.
Launching the attack out of nowhere, she kicked out with her foot, connecting squarely with his leg and eliciting a shocked scream of pain. Her younger opponent dropped the weapon and backed away, which was a rookie mistake.
She followed up with a flurry of further kicks, before grabbing the Orion man’s arm and slamming him into the bulkhead in front of them. She grabbed her own dagger from her belt and brought it up to his throat. She couldn’t help but take some satisfaction from feeling him shaking underneath the weight of her body.
“Y--You can’t…!” he managed to splutter.
Denella kept the blade tightly pressed against his skin. She remembered the bartender. The first person she had killed, all those years ago.
“I can,” she replied after a moment, “But you’re not worth it.”
She retracted the blade ever so slightly, then slammed his head straight into the bulkhead, knocking him out in an instant. He slumped down to her feet.
She slipped the blade back into her belt and picked up the phaser where she had dropped it. Then she spotted what she had been looking for further down the corridor. She rushed over to the access panel even as she heard more footsteps approaching, and crawled through.
Ever deeper into the bowels of the ship.
Great adventure writing. There are plenty of universe-shaking fanfics out there. The tighter focus makes for a more accessible, relatable story.
Thanks!! rbs
Thanks!! rbs
Part Four (Cont'd)
The entire holding area was filled with a roar of pure guttural rage, loud enough to make the walls rattle.
Seconds later, it was filled with a different noise. The unmistakable sound of a heavy Klingon body impacting on a powerful security forcefield. There was a fizz and crackle of energy accompanied by a far more pained roar.
Then the fizzing ended, and gave way to the sound of the same heavy Klingon body falling to the floor of the holding cell in an aching heap.
Then there was silence.
“So,” Sunek quipped into the silence, “How’s that working out for you?”
Klath summoned the energy to pick himself up off the deck, but he didn’t acknowledge the Vulcan, who was crouched on the other side of the holding cell, doing his best to tend to Jirel’s broken and unconscious form. That had been the fifth futile attempt that he had made to breach the forcefield with pure strength alone. And it had gone about as well as the previous four.
Klath knew that it was a spectacularly poor plan with no real hope of success. After all, a forcefield running off the power generators of an Orion cruiser could replenish its strength much faster than he could hope to do. But he still felt the need to do something.
“I mean,” Sunek continued behind him, “You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right?”
Klath’s sense of impotent anger was even building to the point that he was seriously starting to consider relieving some of that frustration by shutting his annoying Vulcan companion up. But ultimately, he decided against it. For now.
Instead, he turned and walked over to Jirel’s prone body.
“His condition?”
Sunek sighed and looked back up at the Klingon. “I’m not a doctor. But it’s not looking good, buddy. You saw the beating he got. There’s gotta be head trauma, broken bones, Surak knows how much internal bleeding…”
His words tailed off, but the implication was clear. Klath looked down at the swollen and bloodied face of his friend and grimaced.
“If he wanted revenge, he should have fought me,” he growled, “I was just as involved in taking Denella from him as Jirel was.”
“First rule of interstellar bastardry,” Sunek offered with only a fraction of his usual humour, “You don’t get where this guy has by picking too many equal fights.”
Klath grunted unhappily in response, before he turned his attention back to the forcefield, preparing for a sixth assault that would likely go as well as the preceding five.
“Still, Jirel needs medical attention. That is why we must try to break out of here.”
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure you’re gonna kill yourself before you short out that thing,” Sunek countered as he stood back up and gestured at the shimmering forcefield.
“Then what do you suggest?”
“I dunno. I guess we need to wait here until the guards come back to move us someplace, and then figure something out. We’ve been in plenty of holding cells before, right? Guards are always doing stupid things like that.”
“And how long will that take?”
“I dunno, Klath! Who am I? Head of shift rotation?”
The two bickering friends stood toe to toe with each other as they argued. For a second time, Klath considered taking some more aggressive steps to shut Sunek up.
Whether or not the Vulcan sensed how close he was getting to being slugged in the face by his crewmate, he took a step back and sighed, looking a little less adversarial.
“Ok, so, we definitely need to get out of here one way or another, right?”
“Right,” Klath nodded, not entirely sure why that needed reiterating.
“Right,” Sunek nodded back, “Cos you don’t wanna live out your days down some Orion mine, and although I’m still not entirely clear on what he meant by ‘concubine’, I also really, really, really don’t wanna find out.”
Sunek paused, looking down at Jirel’s unmoving body, and then back up at the forcefield. “So,” he continued, “I’m just gonna say that - hypothetically speaking, you understand - do you think that we’d have a chance of shorting it out if we were to use someone, y’know, more…willing to take the hit?”
Klath’s eyes widened, hoping that the Vulcan wasn’t implying what he thought he was implying.
“You cannot mean--”
“I’m just saying - again, totally hypothetically - what if we were to push, say, something kinda Trill-sized and unconscious into the forcefield. Something that’d, y’know, be less able to jump back when the pain got too much? Would that maybe…short it out?”
Klath grunted unhappily, fixing the Vulcan with a glare that suggested in no uncertain terms exactly what he thought of Sunek’s suggestion. It wasn’t the first time the Bounty’s pilot had seemed willing to sacrifice one of his colleagues for himself. Nor the first time he had played it off as a bit of banter.
“Ok, don’t give me that look. I’m not saying we actually do it, obviously! I’m just--Y’know, we’re brainstorming, thinking big, working with what we’ve got, right? No wrong answers--!”
“That was a wrong answer,” Klath stated flatly, as he focused back on the forcefield and prepared for the pain he was about to endure.
“Come on,” Sunek persisted, “Whatever we’re doing, your plan is definitely not the answer either. I dunno what you think you’re achieving, but I can definitely bet you ten bars of gold-pressed latinum that you’re never gonna just magically run through that forcefield.”
Klath ignored him, and charged. And, to his surprise, magically ran through the forcefield.
Technically, just as he reached the shimmering wall of energy, it had disappeared, and he had continued through the gap left behind at full pelt, only managing to stop himself before he careered into the far wall. He turned around to see the equally surprised Sunek staring back at him, suddenly worried about the wager he’d placed seconds earlier.
“Hey, no, no, no, that doesn’t count,” the Vulcan blurted out, “You didn’t run through anything. It was switched off. That’s cheating!”
“Sunek,” Klath sighed, trying to focus his colleague back onto more pressing matters.
“Seriously, if you think I’m paying out for that--”
“Sunek!” the Klingon snapped with more urgency, gesturing for him to stop rambling on and start utilising the surprising new-found freedom they had been granted.
“Oh, right, yeah,” Sunek nodded, stepping out of the cell, “Also, what the hell just--?”
Before he could finish his question, a sturdy metal grate dropped down from the ceiling, crashing onto the deck in between them. Seconds later, the grate was joined on the deck by a familiar green-skinned woman, who deftly jumped down from the access tunnel above the room.
“Guys, will you get a move on,” she sighed, “This isn’t a party, it’s a jailbreak.”
“Denella!” Klath roared.
Sunek didn’t think he’d ever seen a Klingon hug someone before. Until now. Klath wrapped the Orion woman in a hearty embrace, which she was happy to return in kind.
Then, she saw Jirel’s unconscious body over the burly warrior’s shoulder.
“Oh my god…”
They broke the hug and she rushed over to the Trill’s side, leaning down and brushing his bloodied face with worry.
“He put up impressive resistance,” Klath offered by way of a positive spin, as he stepped over to her side, “But he requires medical attention.”
Denella stifled the pang of guilt at what had happened to Jirel, all because he had loyally followed her, and stood back up.
“Ok, you two get out of here. Take Jirel, get back to the Bounty, and get him whatever treatment you can manage. I still need to find Sarina.”
“We must assist you--”
She shook her head, giving the Klingon an intense stare that he immediately recognised. “You know, more than anyone, I need to do this alone. Just make sure you’re waiting for my signal, ok?”
Klath nodded wordlessly, and stepped over to pick up Jirel and hoist him over his shoulder.
“Um,” Sunek offered as Klath and Denella stepped back out of the holding cell, “Where the hell are you going, exactly?”
Denella checked the phaser on her belt, then mustered a slight smile as she glanced at Klath again.
“I’m heading into a burning house.”
Klath’s mouth curled up into a tight smile of his own, complete with a nod of understanding and a look that displayed no small amount of pride in the warrior in front of him.
“Qapla', Denella,” he grunted.
Sunek, for his part, just looked confused.
****************************
The good news, such that it was, was that after some time, Sarina had finally felt comfortable enough to emerge from behind the cover of the lounge chair.
The bad news was that, rather than helping Natasha muster some sort of escape plan from the lavish boudoir that was serving as their holding cell, she had instead scurried across to one particular area of the room, which was dominated by a full-length wardrobe, and had quickly started to select various outfits from within it. And she seemed to be completely ignoring Natasha’s questions.
“Ok, Sarina, please listen to me, how many guards are we dealing with outside? Just the two that brought me here, or are there more--?”
Before she completed the sentence, Sarina interrupted her.
“You must prepare yourself for the master,” she said, beckoning Natasha over to the wardrobe.
She said it in a voice that was quiet and diligent, chillingly devoid of any sort of emotion. As if she was talking about getting ready for a weekly cadet review.
Natasha reluctantly walked over and glanced over the outfits that Sarina had selected. Though suggesting that any of them were substantial enough to be called an outfit seemed laughable.
“Yeah, I’m good with what I’ve got on,” she managed.
Sarina, still on auto-pilot, looked her up and down, assessing the rather more dignified tunic and trousers that she was wearing.
“The master won’t be happy with that,” she replied.
“Well, I’m hoping to disappoint him for as long as I--”
She stopped herself short, not wanting to finish that sentence out loud. For as long as she could. That, she knew, was the long and short of it. She could do her best to fight, to channel all of her Starfleet training, or even to try and negotiate or bargain her way out of it. But it would likely all just be delaying the inevitable.
Unless she could get through to Sarina.
“Listen,” she persisted, as the other woman dispassionately offered up another outfit for her assessment, “We really are here to save you. But I need you to--”
“No,” the green-skinned woman called out, a tear forming in her eye, “I--In the past, I have tried to--But I know, there is no escape. I serve my master.”
Natasha felt her heart break at the defeated tone to her words. Silence descended as she flopped down into a nearby chair, sensing defeat.
“But…you said,” Sarina whispered as she disappeared back into the wardrobe, “Denella was here?”
It was the first time since they had met that Natasha had heard any emotion other than fear in the other woman’s voice. And it gave her a glimmer of hope.
“That’s right.”
Sarina considered this information, idly toying with a piece of fabric on one of the garments as she did so.
“I remember her,” she said eventually, “If she’s here, then--”
Sarina immediately shut up as the main door to the suite opened. Natasha could see visibly that the woman had retreated back inside herself. As she whirled around to see who had walked in, she suddenly understood why.
Rilen Dar marched over to where the two women stood. The muscular Orion cast a deeply unhappy glare at Natasha as he approached, but he addressed the enfeebled Sarina.
“I thought you would know to prepare this one. Why is she still dressed like that?”
“I am sorry, my master,” she offered quietly.
Natasha ignored the rush of fear she felt inside, and instinctively tried to protect Sarina in the only way she could see that she could, given the situation. By distracting her master’s wrath away from her.
“Yeah, that’s my fault,” she said, idly gesturing to the elaborate wardrobe, “Would you believe you’ve got nothing in my size?”
Dar didn’t smile. His stare chilled her to the bone, but she maintained her front of defiance. It was all she seemed to have left.
“I can see you’re going to require a little more training than the Orion women require,” he scoffed with a dark leer.
“Probably,” she shot back, surprising herself with her front of confidence, “So much effort that it probably isn’t even worth your while--”
The speed of his movement took her by surprise. One moment, she had been standing straight next to Sarina, and holding her ground with defiance, the next Dar was onto her, forcing her backwards. His bodyweight crushed her up against the wall. His face got close enough to hers for her to smell his fetid breath. She stifled a wave of nausea, as she tried and failed to wriggle free. He was too powerful.
“On the contrary,” he hissed at her, “I do like a challenge…”
She felt one of his hands grab her around the throat with a vice-like grip, preventing her from even trying to resist any further. Off to one side, Sarina stared down at the ground, retreating further inside herself.
With no more defiance to offer, Natasha struggled to even gasp for air.
And then the ceiling exploded.
****************************
“Just…explain one thing to me.”
Klath sighed in frustration at the Vulcan’s continued efforts at conversation, and fired twice to fell the two Orion guards charging at them.
He staggered further on down the corridor, as alert sirens blared out all around. He had Jirel’s limp form over his left shoulder, and the stout Orion disruptor pistol he had liberated from the first guard they had run into in his right hand. In his wake, Sunek scurried on behind him, with a disruptor of his own.
As a rule, Klath disliked energy weapons for personal combat. There was nothing especially honourable about simply shooting your enemies, as far as he was concerned. But, all talk of honour aside, Klath was also a pragmatist. And so, in their current situation, a disruptor pistol worked just fine.
The only other thing he needed was some peace, to focus on the task of getting them to a transporter room, and back onboard the Bounty.
Sunek didn’t seem to agree on that point.
“See, we came all the way out here to help Denella, right?” the Vulcan continued, as they reached another intersection and paused while Klath checked around the corner to make sure that the coast was clear.
“Yes,” Klath grunted as a reluctant reply.
“Ok,” Sunek nodded, seemingly oblivious to their perilous situation, “But now we’ve actually caught up with her, we’re just leaving her back there to go off all by herself and do who the hell knows what? While we just run away and hide?”
Klath glanced around the corner again and fired off a succession of disruptor blasts, as a trio of Orions rounded the next intersection and thundered towards him. All of which did nothing to stop Sunek’s train of thought.
“Cos, honestly, if our plan was just to run away and hide the whole time, then I’d really rather we’d have just done that from the start.”
Klath gritted his teeth as he felled the final guard, leaving the coast clear. Still Sunek continued.
“Preferably in a bar that can mix a decent Risan mai-tai--”
Exasperated, Klath whirled around to the Vulcan, Jirel’s unconscious form still propped up on his shoulders.
“Sunek, can you please--!”
He paused in shock as he saw the Vulcan lift his disruptor in his direction and fire.
It took him a second to realise that the shot had actually passed just to one side of him. Behind him, the Orion guard that had just rounded the corner, ready to attack, slumped to the ground.
Sunek looked back at the Klingon with an entirely innocent face.
“What?”
Klath stifled a rueful smile and merely nodded a terse thank you, before leading them off on their continuing journey back to the Bounty.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Sunek pointed out as they walked, “Why did we leave her back there?”
Klath kept his focus on the route ahead, not wanting to be bailed out by Sunek twice in one day, but he considered his answer as he did so. In the end, Denella answered it for him.
From somewhere far above them, it was impossible to tell how many decks away, they heard the distant but unmistakable sound of an explosion. The entire ship gently rumbled all around them from the aftershock of the tremor.
Klath glanced back at Sunek as the Vulcan tried to narrow down how far away the explosion had been with his more finely attuned hearing.
“Because she can handle this herself from here.”
Sunek raised an eyebrow. And nodded in understanding.
The entire holding area was filled with a roar of pure guttural rage, loud enough to make the walls rattle.
Seconds later, it was filled with a different noise. The unmistakable sound of a heavy Klingon body impacting on a powerful security forcefield. There was a fizz and crackle of energy accompanied by a far more pained roar.
Then the fizzing ended, and gave way to the sound of the same heavy Klingon body falling to the floor of the holding cell in an aching heap.
Then there was silence.
“So,” Sunek quipped into the silence, “How’s that working out for you?”
Klath summoned the energy to pick himself up off the deck, but he didn’t acknowledge the Vulcan, who was crouched on the other side of the holding cell, doing his best to tend to Jirel’s broken and unconscious form. That had been the fifth futile attempt that he had made to breach the forcefield with pure strength alone. And it had gone about as well as the previous four.
Klath knew that it was a spectacularly poor plan with no real hope of success. After all, a forcefield running off the power generators of an Orion cruiser could replenish its strength much faster than he could hope to do. But he still felt the need to do something.
“I mean,” Sunek continued behind him, “You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right?”
Klath’s sense of impotent anger was even building to the point that he was seriously starting to consider relieving some of that frustration by shutting his annoying Vulcan companion up. But ultimately, he decided against it. For now.
Instead, he turned and walked over to Jirel’s prone body.
“His condition?”
Sunek sighed and looked back up at the Klingon. “I’m not a doctor. But it’s not looking good, buddy. You saw the beating he got. There’s gotta be head trauma, broken bones, Surak knows how much internal bleeding…”
His words tailed off, but the implication was clear. Klath looked down at the swollen and bloodied face of his friend and grimaced.
“If he wanted revenge, he should have fought me,” he growled, “I was just as involved in taking Denella from him as Jirel was.”
“First rule of interstellar bastardry,” Sunek offered with only a fraction of his usual humour, “You don’t get where this guy has by picking too many equal fights.”
Klath grunted unhappily in response, before he turned his attention back to the forcefield, preparing for a sixth assault that would likely go as well as the preceding five.
“Still, Jirel needs medical attention. That is why we must try to break out of here.”
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure you’re gonna kill yourself before you short out that thing,” Sunek countered as he stood back up and gestured at the shimmering forcefield.
“Then what do you suggest?”
“I dunno. I guess we need to wait here until the guards come back to move us someplace, and then figure something out. We’ve been in plenty of holding cells before, right? Guards are always doing stupid things like that.”
“And how long will that take?”
“I dunno, Klath! Who am I? Head of shift rotation?”
The two bickering friends stood toe to toe with each other as they argued. For a second time, Klath considered taking some more aggressive steps to shut Sunek up.
Whether or not the Vulcan sensed how close he was getting to being slugged in the face by his crewmate, he took a step back and sighed, looking a little less adversarial.
“Ok, so, we definitely need to get out of here one way or another, right?”
“Right,” Klath nodded, not entirely sure why that needed reiterating.
“Right,” Sunek nodded back, “Cos you don’t wanna live out your days down some Orion mine, and although I’m still not entirely clear on what he meant by ‘concubine’, I also really, really, really don’t wanna find out.”
Sunek paused, looking down at Jirel’s unmoving body, and then back up at the forcefield. “So,” he continued, “I’m just gonna say that - hypothetically speaking, you understand - do you think that we’d have a chance of shorting it out if we were to use someone, y’know, more…willing to take the hit?”
Klath’s eyes widened, hoping that the Vulcan wasn’t implying what he thought he was implying.
“You cannot mean--”
“I’m just saying - again, totally hypothetically - what if we were to push, say, something kinda Trill-sized and unconscious into the forcefield. Something that’d, y’know, be less able to jump back when the pain got too much? Would that maybe…short it out?”
Klath grunted unhappily, fixing the Vulcan with a glare that suggested in no uncertain terms exactly what he thought of Sunek’s suggestion. It wasn’t the first time the Bounty’s pilot had seemed willing to sacrifice one of his colleagues for himself. Nor the first time he had played it off as a bit of banter.
“Ok, don’t give me that look. I’m not saying we actually do it, obviously! I’m just--Y’know, we’re brainstorming, thinking big, working with what we’ve got, right? No wrong answers--!”
“That was a wrong answer,” Klath stated flatly, as he focused back on the forcefield and prepared for the pain he was about to endure.
“Come on,” Sunek persisted, “Whatever we’re doing, your plan is definitely not the answer either. I dunno what you think you’re achieving, but I can definitely bet you ten bars of gold-pressed latinum that you’re never gonna just magically run through that forcefield.”
Klath ignored him, and charged. And, to his surprise, magically ran through the forcefield.
Technically, just as he reached the shimmering wall of energy, it had disappeared, and he had continued through the gap left behind at full pelt, only managing to stop himself before he careered into the far wall. He turned around to see the equally surprised Sunek staring back at him, suddenly worried about the wager he’d placed seconds earlier.
“Hey, no, no, no, that doesn’t count,” the Vulcan blurted out, “You didn’t run through anything. It was switched off. That’s cheating!”
“Sunek,” Klath sighed, trying to focus his colleague back onto more pressing matters.
“Seriously, if you think I’m paying out for that--”
“Sunek!” the Klingon snapped with more urgency, gesturing for him to stop rambling on and start utilising the surprising new-found freedom they had been granted.
“Oh, right, yeah,” Sunek nodded, stepping out of the cell, “Also, what the hell just--?”
Before he could finish his question, a sturdy metal grate dropped down from the ceiling, crashing onto the deck in between them. Seconds later, the grate was joined on the deck by a familiar green-skinned woman, who deftly jumped down from the access tunnel above the room.
“Guys, will you get a move on,” she sighed, “This isn’t a party, it’s a jailbreak.”
“Denella!” Klath roared.
Sunek didn’t think he’d ever seen a Klingon hug someone before. Until now. Klath wrapped the Orion woman in a hearty embrace, which she was happy to return in kind.
Then, she saw Jirel’s unconscious body over the burly warrior’s shoulder.
“Oh my god…”
They broke the hug and she rushed over to the Trill’s side, leaning down and brushing his bloodied face with worry.
“He put up impressive resistance,” Klath offered by way of a positive spin, as he stepped over to her side, “But he requires medical attention.”
Denella stifled the pang of guilt at what had happened to Jirel, all because he had loyally followed her, and stood back up.
“Ok, you two get out of here. Take Jirel, get back to the Bounty, and get him whatever treatment you can manage. I still need to find Sarina.”
“We must assist you--”
She shook her head, giving the Klingon an intense stare that he immediately recognised. “You know, more than anyone, I need to do this alone. Just make sure you’re waiting for my signal, ok?”
Klath nodded wordlessly, and stepped over to pick up Jirel and hoist him over his shoulder.
“Um,” Sunek offered as Klath and Denella stepped back out of the holding cell, “Where the hell are you going, exactly?”
Denella checked the phaser on her belt, then mustered a slight smile as she glanced at Klath again.
“I’m heading into a burning house.”
Klath’s mouth curled up into a tight smile of his own, complete with a nod of understanding and a look that displayed no small amount of pride in the warrior in front of him.
“Qapla', Denella,” he grunted.
Sunek, for his part, just looked confused.
****************************
The good news, such that it was, was that after some time, Sarina had finally felt comfortable enough to emerge from behind the cover of the lounge chair.
The bad news was that, rather than helping Natasha muster some sort of escape plan from the lavish boudoir that was serving as their holding cell, she had instead scurried across to one particular area of the room, which was dominated by a full-length wardrobe, and had quickly started to select various outfits from within it. And she seemed to be completely ignoring Natasha’s questions.
“Ok, Sarina, please listen to me, how many guards are we dealing with outside? Just the two that brought me here, or are there more--?”
Before she completed the sentence, Sarina interrupted her.
“You must prepare yourself for the master,” she said, beckoning Natasha over to the wardrobe.
She said it in a voice that was quiet and diligent, chillingly devoid of any sort of emotion. As if she was talking about getting ready for a weekly cadet review.
Natasha reluctantly walked over and glanced over the outfits that Sarina had selected. Though suggesting that any of them were substantial enough to be called an outfit seemed laughable.
“Yeah, I’m good with what I’ve got on,” she managed.
Sarina, still on auto-pilot, looked her up and down, assessing the rather more dignified tunic and trousers that she was wearing.
“The master won’t be happy with that,” she replied.
“Well, I’m hoping to disappoint him for as long as I--”
She stopped herself short, not wanting to finish that sentence out loud. For as long as she could. That, she knew, was the long and short of it. She could do her best to fight, to channel all of her Starfleet training, or even to try and negotiate or bargain her way out of it. But it would likely all just be delaying the inevitable.
Unless she could get through to Sarina.
“Listen,” she persisted, as the other woman dispassionately offered up another outfit for her assessment, “We really are here to save you. But I need you to--”
“No,” the green-skinned woman called out, a tear forming in her eye, “I--In the past, I have tried to--But I know, there is no escape. I serve my master.”
Natasha felt her heart break at the defeated tone to her words. Silence descended as she flopped down into a nearby chair, sensing defeat.
“But…you said,” Sarina whispered as she disappeared back into the wardrobe, “Denella was here?”
It was the first time since they had met that Natasha had heard any emotion other than fear in the other woman’s voice. And it gave her a glimmer of hope.
“That’s right.”
Sarina considered this information, idly toying with a piece of fabric on one of the garments as she did so.
“I remember her,” she said eventually, “If she’s here, then--”
Sarina immediately shut up as the main door to the suite opened. Natasha could see visibly that the woman had retreated back inside herself. As she whirled around to see who had walked in, she suddenly understood why.
Rilen Dar marched over to where the two women stood. The muscular Orion cast a deeply unhappy glare at Natasha as he approached, but he addressed the enfeebled Sarina.
“I thought you would know to prepare this one. Why is she still dressed like that?”
“I am sorry, my master,” she offered quietly.
Natasha ignored the rush of fear she felt inside, and instinctively tried to protect Sarina in the only way she could see that she could, given the situation. By distracting her master’s wrath away from her.
“Yeah, that’s my fault,” she said, idly gesturing to the elaborate wardrobe, “Would you believe you’ve got nothing in my size?”
Dar didn’t smile. His stare chilled her to the bone, but she maintained her front of defiance. It was all she seemed to have left.
“I can see you’re going to require a little more training than the Orion women require,” he scoffed with a dark leer.
“Probably,” she shot back, surprising herself with her front of confidence, “So much effort that it probably isn’t even worth your while--”
The speed of his movement took her by surprise. One moment, she had been standing straight next to Sarina, and holding her ground with defiance, the next Dar was onto her, forcing her backwards. His bodyweight crushed her up against the wall. His face got close enough to hers for her to smell his fetid breath. She stifled a wave of nausea, as she tried and failed to wriggle free. He was too powerful.
“On the contrary,” he hissed at her, “I do like a challenge…”
She felt one of his hands grab her around the throat with a vice-like grip, preventing her from even trying to resist any further. Off to one side, Sarina stared down at the ground, retreating further inside herself.
With no more defiance to offer, Natasha struggled to even gasp for air.
And then the ceiling exploded.
****************************
“Just…explain one thing to me.”
Klath sighed in frustration at the Vulcan’s continued efforts at conversation, and fired twice to fell the two Orion guards charging at them.
He staggered further on down the corridor, as alert sirens blared out all around. He had Jirel’s limp form over his left shoulder, and the stout Orion disruptor pistol he had liberated from the first guard they had run into in his right hand. In his wake, Sunek scurried on behind him, with a disruptor of his own.
As a rule, Klath disliked energy weapons for personal combat. There was nothing especially honourable about simply shooting your enemies, as far as he was concerned. But, all talk of honour aside, Klath was also a pragmatist. And so, in their current situation, a disruptor pistol worked just fine.
The only other thing he needed was some peace, to focus on the task of getting them to a transporter room, and back onboard the Bounty.
Sunek didn’t seem to agree on that point.
“See, we came all the way out here to help Denella, right?” the Vulcan continued, as they reached another intersection and paused while Klath checked around the corner to make sure that the coast was clear.
“Yes,” Klath grunted as a reluctant reply.
“Ok,” Sunek nodded, seemingly oblivious to their perilous situation, “But now we’ve actually caught up with her, we’re just leaving her back there to go off all by herself and do who the hell knows what? While we just run away and hide?”
Klath glanced around the corner again and fired off a succession of disruptor blasts, as a trio of Orions rounded the next intersection and thundered towards him. All of which did nothing to stop Sunek’s train of thought.
“Cos, honestly, if our plan was just to run away and hide the whole time, then I’d really rather we’d have just done that from the start.”
Klath gritted his teeth as he felled the final guard, leaving the coast clear. Still Sunek continued.
“Preferably in a bar that can mix a decent Risan mai-tai--”
Exasperated, Klath whirled around to the Vulcan, Jirel’s unconscious form still propped up on his shoulders.
“Sunek, can you please--!”
He paused in shock as he saw the Vulcan lift his disruptor in his direction and fire.
It took him a second to realise that the shot had actually passed just to one side of him. Behind him, the Orion guard that had just rounded the corner, ready to attack, slumped to the ground.
Sunek looked back at the Klingon with an entirely innocent face.
“What?”
Klath stifled a rueful smile and merely nodded a terse thank you, before leading them off on their continuing journey back to the Bounty.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Sunek pointed out as they walked, “Why did we leave her back there?”
Klath kept his focus on the route ahead, not wanting to be bailed out by Sunek twice in one day, but he considered his answer as he did so. In the end, Denella answered it for him.
From somewhere far above them, it was impossible to tell how many decks away, they heard the distant but unmistakable sound of an explosion. The entire ship gently rumbled all around them from the aftershock of the tremor.
Klath glanced back at Sunek as the Vulcan tried to narrow down how far away the explosion had been with his more finely attuned hearing.
“Because she can handle this herself from here.”
Sunek raised an eyebrow. And nodded in understanding.
BIg fan of not only the capable female protagonist, but the strongest of the male protagonists acknowledging her ability. Also a big fan of the nice balance between gritty, high-stakes adventure and comic timing. Really liking the odd frenemy banter between Sunek and Klath.
Thanks!! rbs
Thanks!! rbs
Part Four (Cont'd)
The boudoir was in chaos.
Twisted fragments of metal lay all around where the ceiling had been blasted apart by the force of an old school type-2 phaser’s power cell, wired into a secondary plasma relay that passed right above the room.
Two guards raced into the ruins of the room from outside, weapons drawn, and looked shocked to see Dar staggering back towards the door, coughing and peering through the dust and debris that hung in the air.
Natasha had gone the other way, taking what cover she could in the corner by the wardrobe, with Sarina cowering alongside her.
Before anyone present could fully adjust to what was going on, Denella dropped down through the ragged hole in the ceiling, right into the middle of the mayhem. She held her phaser tightly and still had her rucksack secured on her back.
Natasha couldn’t help but smile. To her side, she heard Sarina instinctively grab her arm and gasp, in shock at seeing the promised face from her past in the flesh.
In contrast, Dar’s sneer returned as he saw her, despite the havoc all around him.
“Back off,” Denella said to the guards, gesturing to their weapons as she kept the phaser trained on their master, “Now!”
The guards paused, frozen in confusion. They definitely weren’t used to a slave girl giving them orders. But Dar turned to them and nodded, and they shrank backwards towards the far wall of the room.
The Orion turned his attention back to Denella. She resisted the compelling urge to flinch under the gaze of her former owner.
“Huh,” Dar tutted, his demeanour remaining supremely confident in the midst the carnage, “I had a feeling you might find a way to creep up here, slave.”
Denella kept her finger on the phaser’s trigger and maintained her poker face. She didn’t want to give the man opposite her the satisfaction of seeing any weakness. And she also wanted to cover for the fact that, with the phaser in her hand now missing its power cell, it was entirely useless.
“I think we need to talk, Dar,” she said.
“And I thought you said you didn’t destroy, you fix?” Dar offered back, glancing around at the remains of what used to be his favourite room on the ship.
“I fix things that are worth fixing,” she countered.
As if on cue, Sarina’s voice drifted over to her, even as a whisper. “Denella…”
The older Orion woman wanted to keep her attention on the face of the enemy. But hearing her friend’s voice after so long was too much for her. She glanced across at where Sarina crouched next to Natasha, staring up at her.
“Sarina,” she managed to reply, focusing on keeping her emotions at bay and resisting the overwhelming urge to drop her weapon and race over to hug her long lost friend, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry it took me so long to--”
Seeing her distracted, Dar took the opportunity to take a step towards her. She spotted his movement out of the corner of her eye and snapped her attention, and the phaser, back in his direction, forcing him to stop. A minor victory, she told herself.
“Touching though this reunion is,” Dar boomed out sarcastically, “You said you wanted to talk? So talk.”
Denella slowly nodded, and slipped the rucksack off her back. Dar watched on in curiosity as she casually tossed it over to his feet, a tell-tale metallic jangle coming from inside.
“What is this?” he grunted.
“Payment,” she replied, “Every scrap of latinum I’ve managed to save up since I got away from you, Dar. Twenty bars of the stuff.”
The hulking Orion man raised an intrigued eyebrow and greedily bent down to lift the bag up, checking the heft of the heavy bag and nodding in appreciation.
“Huh,” he smiled coldly, throwing a glance back at his guards, “A slave with latinum. Now I have seen everything.”
The guards let out mocking laughs. Denella stoically ignored them.
“I’m here to make a deal with you,” she continued, “All that latinum, in exchange for the release of my friends.”
She took a couple of steps backwards, towards where Sarina and Natasha remained crouched down.
Natasha stood back up and smiled at her friend. Sarina remained crouched down, staring at Denella as if she had seen a ghost. The expression tore at Denella’s heart some more, thousands of words that she wanted to say to her jostled around in her mind.
But she had to keep focused. She only had time for a couple of words. Not a thousand.
“Trust me,” she whispered, before she turned back to Dar.
“Do you really expect me to deal with you, slave?” he bellowed back at her with palpable derision.
Denella gritted her teeth and continued to match Dar’s glare with one of her own. She wasn’t going to be bullied by him again.
“You’re a businessman, Dar. Think about it. You’ve already seen the mess I’ve made around here, and trust me, it can get a lot worse. Or, you can cut a deal. You take the latinum, and we’ll be on our way.”
Natasha struggled to work out what Denella’s plan was. Next to her, she felt Sarina grip her arm a little tighter.
In contrast, Dar couldn’t help but laugh again. A deep, mocking burst of laughter that was again echoed by his guards. Denella watched on patiently, keeping her useless phaser primed.
“Well, I see you’ve turned into quite a negotiator since I last saw you,” Dar said as the laughter subsided, “Except, you forget one thing. Rilen Dar doesn’t negotiate.”
He stepped over towards his guards, dropping the rucksack on the ground by his feet. Denella licked her lips with an edge of concern.
“I was hoping you’d make an exception once you--”
Dar cut her off before she could get any further with her attempt at negotiation.
“And here’s another thing,” he growled menacingly, “I suspect that the explosion you just caused used up the power cell of that phaser. Which means that thing no longer functions.”
Denella felt a bead of sweat form on her forehead.
“If I’m wrong,” Dar continued, gesturing at one of the guards, “Shoot him.”
The guard tensed up a little, understandably. Denella’s poker face remained in place, but Dar seemed to see straight through it.
“So, as far as I can see, you have no weapon, and you have no plan. And what do I have? I have your friends. I have your ship. I have your latinum. And I have you.”
Denella saw that her bluff was called. Her arm dropped to her side, and the phaser clattered down onto the deck, amongst the debris and detritus at her feet.
Dar’s leer extended further, as he basked in his victory. Despite the damage that had been caused to his ship, he knew that the latinum he would make from selling an extra slave would make up for that.
Denella turned back to Natasha and Sarina, who both stared back at her.
“This?” Natasha hissed, “This was your plan?”
As Natasha spoke, she saw a glint of something in the Orion woman’s eye. When Denella opened her mouth to reply, she didn’t speak. She just mouthed two more words at them.
Take cover.
She chanced a glance at her chronometer as she turned back to the gloating form of Dar. It was time.
“Really, slave,” the Orion master snarled, gesturing at her defeated form, “This was all you had?”
“Pretty much, I guess,” Denella replied with a shrug, “Except for one little thing.”
She allowed a sliver of a smile to creep onto her face. It unnerved Dar momentarily. He wasn’t used to his slaves smiling at him. At least not genuinely.
“See, I’m just a poor, simple, ex-slave girl, trying to get by in deep space. Honestly, Dar, do you really think a girl like me has got twenty bars of latinum?”
Dar’s gloating leer vanished in an instant, as the smile formed fully on Denella’s face. Quick as a flash, he grabbed the bag filled with heavy jangling metal from where it sat at his feet and ripped the top open.
Staring back at him, fresh from the Bounty’s weapons locker, was a cluster of Ferengi stun grenades.
At the same moment, Denella turned and dived backwards, pushing Natasha and Sarina down with her and trying to cover them as best she could. She scrambled to tap the communicator on her belt, hoping that someone was around on the Bounty to receive the signal.
Across the room, Dar roared in anguish.
It was too late for the guards to really understand what was happening.
The grenades exploded, precisely on schedule.
****************************
The two figures in the cargo bay panted heavily, getting their breath back.
Both of them were bruised and battered from their latest training session. Just as they always were. They understood that they weren’t going to hone any of their skills if they did things by halves.
“Impressive,” Klath managed to get out between heavy breaths, “You parried my final counterpunch without looking.”
Denella remained bent over, her hands on her knees as she took in ragged lungfuls of air. But she mustered a smile.
“Your sleeves,” she said, gesturing to Klath’s plain brown tunic, “Picked up the sound moving through the air.”
The Klingon looked down at his arm, as if this hadn’t even occurred to him.
“So,” she continued, standing back up straight, “Same time tomorrow?”
Klath began to collect up some of the weapons that lay strewn around the deck from their morning’s enterprises.
“I do not believe that will be necessary.”
“What do you mean?”
Klath carefully returned his bat’leth to its leather sheath, and turned back to the confused Orion woman.
“I have taught you all I can,” he explained, “Your last parry was proof of that. I do not believe there is anything more I can help you with.”
She stared back at him as she got her breath back. Her expression suggested that she wasn’t entirely convinced.
“We can’t just stop all this now,” she insisted.
Klath glared into the whites of her eyes. A question he had wondered for a long time on his lips.
“Why are you doing all of this?”
“What do you mean? I need to be able to protect myself. To--”
“No,” Klath shook his head, “You could already protect yourself. You proved that in our first lesson. But I have taught you how to attack. How to fight. And still you want more. Why?”
She considered offering him a half answer, something to deflect from the full reality. But she knew that she owed him more than that. She picked up her dagger from the ground and idly spun it around in her hand as she spoke.
“Because I need to know that I’ll be ready.”
“For what?”
She stopped spinning the dagger and gripped the handle of the weapon tightly.
“All those months ago, you rescued me from the Syndicate. But really, I know it’s not gonna be forever. All this, all I’m doing onboard the Bounty, it’s just temporary. One day, all of that will come back and find me.”
She placed her dagger back in her belt and turned back to Klath.
“And I need to make sure that I’ll be strong enough when that day comes.”
She turned and walked towards the exit of the cargo bay. Klath watched her as she walked, then called out just as she reached the door.
“Tomorrow. Here, at the usual time.”
She looked back, a half-smile on her face.
“I thought you said you had nothing more to teach me?”
“But now I understand your reasons. You are preparing for battle,” Klath pointed out, “It is important that you practice your combat skills, regardless of whether there is more to be learned.”
The Klingon matched her smile and continued.
“Besides, perhaps there are some things that you can teach me.”
****************************
The ringing in Denella’s ears was intense enough to mask the sound of the transporter, but even without hearing and with her eyes closed, she felt the tingle of the beam’s effect.
She forced her eyes back open, and found herself lying prone on the pad in the Bounty’s transporter room, with Natasha and Sarina still underneath her.
Blinking to adjust to the harsher light of the Bounty, she looked around at the familiar surroundings, and saw a smiling face at the transporter controls.
“Am I glad to see you,” she croaked, patting the deck of the Bounty to her side for emphasis, before adding, “You too, Klath.”
The Klingon quickly walked over to help the three women back to their feet.
Natasha shook her head to try and clear the ringing, feeling a palpable sense of relief flooding through her. “I changed my mind,” she offered to Denella with a wince, “That was a hell of a plan.”
Denella smiled back at the human woman, ignoring the pain emanating from her back where shrapnel from the grenade explosion had dug into her flesh. She turned to her side, where Sarina looked around fearfully, gripping onto the taller Orion woman’s arm and trying to make sense of what was happening.
Denella knew exactly what she was going through in her mind, because it was exactly what had gone through hers all those years ago, in the same tumbledown transporter room of the same beaten Ju’Day-type raider.
The two women made eye contact. Once again, Denella’s head felt like it was going to explode with all of the things she wanted to say to her friend that she hadn’t seen in so long.
In the end, she decided not to say anything. She just embraced Sarina in a tight hug. A hug that spanned the decade or more that they had been apart. Sarina reciprocated, as tears formed in their eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Denella whispered in her friend’s ear, “You’re free.”
As Klath and Natasha allowed themselves a moment to witness the emotional reunion in front of them, they were interrupted by Sunek’s voice over the ship’s comms link.
“Um, guys? We’ve got a few problems up here…”
His words of concern were followed by the deck pitching to one side as the whole Bounty shook from a barely evaded disruptor blast.
The group raced out of the transporter room and continued down the Bounty’s main corridor, dashing up the metal steps and bursting into the cockpit just as the ship bucked again, evading another blast.
Sunek frantically worked at the pilot’s controls as the ship swept through the familiar colours and patterns of the Numekk nebula ahead of them.
Klath took his place at his console, while Denella slid into the engineering station, with Sarina still with her, gripping her arm tightly. Natasha just clung onto Jirel’s vacant centre chair for dear life, the Trill still unconscious down in the medical bay.
“So, the good news is, whatever the hell just happened over there sent their whole power grid haywire. We’re out of the tractor beam,” Sunek shouted back, “The bad news is, I think they noticed.”
The ship pitched again as the Vulcan flung the ship out of the way of another disruptor blast.
“Shields are still offline. Returning fire,” Klath reported, “No effect.”
“We can’t go to warp until we’re clear of this stupid nebula,” Sunek added, “And even then, pretty sure an Orion cruiser’s got us outpaced!”
Denella’s jaw clenched tightly as the ship veered again. Even with Dar dead, the Syndicate was resolutely refusing to leave her alone. The Syndicate that had hurt her so much, destroyed her home, and hurt so many of her friends.
The Syndicate that had, in some awful twisted way, made her the person she was today.
She wondered if she had it in her to make sure that situation changed for good. Tried to rationalise the final element of the plan that she had put together to herself once again. She glanced over to Sarina, saw the fear in her eyes as the Bounty shook again. She looked around the cockpit at her friends, who had risked and very nearly lost everything to try and help her on her reckless quest.
And she decided that, for these people, she did have it in her.
She quickly tapped a succession of commands into the console in front of her, then smiled sadly at Sarina.
“Hang on,” she whispered, “I’ve still got one last trick.”
She didn’t wait a second longer, and tapped a final button on her console.
The Bounty transmitted a simple command through the nebula to the tiny Yridian mining shuttle that was still clamped to the side of the Orion ship. The shuttle’s computer received the command and obediently set about carrying out the instruction contained within it. Even though the instruction required it to release the magnetic constrictors around its tiny warp drive.
With the constrictors offline, the warp core breach was almost instantaneous. The venerable old shuttle exploded in a fierce ball of fire, ripping a huge hole clean through the cruiser’s engineering section.
The huge Orion ship listed uncertainly to one side, further explosions visible across the underside of the hull as the damage it had sustained broke out into a full-on cascade failure.
And then, against the beautiful backdrop of the crimson and gold nebula, the late Rilen Dar’s mighty Orion cruiser exploded.
The Bounty, wearing its battle damage on what remained of its port wing, crested the shockwave of the explosion as it permeated into the nebula.
And the little ship, and her crew, limped away to freedom.
End of Part Four
The boudoir was in chaos.
Twisted fragments of metal lay all around where the ceiling had been blasted apart by the force of an old school type-2 phaser’s power cell, wired into a secondary plasma relay that passed right above the room.
Two guards raced into the ruins of the room from outside, weapons drawn, and looked shocked to see Dar staggering back towards the door, coughing and peering through the dust and debris that hung in the air.
Natasha had gone the other way, taking what cover she could in the corner by the wardrobe, with Sarina cowering alongside her.
Before anyone present could fully adjust to what was going on, Denella dropped down through the ragged hole in the ceiling, right into the middle of the mayhem. She held her phaser tightly and still had her rucksack secured on her back.
Natasha couldn’t help but smile. To her side, she heard Sarina instinctively grab her arm and gasp, in shock at seeing the promised face from her past in the flesh.
In contrast, Dar’s sneer returned as he saw her, despite the havoc all around him.
“Back off,” Denella said to the guards, gesturing to their weapons as she kept the phaser trained on their master, “Now!”
The guards paused, frozen in confusion. They definitely weren’t used to a slave girl giving them orders. But Dar turned to them and nodded, and they shrank backwards towards the far wall of the room.
The Orion turned his attention back to Denella. She resisted the compelling urge to flinch under the gaze of her former owner.
“Huh,” Dar tutted, his demeanour remaining supremely confident in the midst the carnage, “I had a feeling you might find a way to creep up here, slave.”
Denella kept her finger on the phaser’s trigger and maintained her poker face. She didn’t want to give the man opposite her the satisfaction of seeing any weakness. And she also wanted to cover for the fact that, with the phaser in her hand now missing its power cell, it was entirely useless.
“I think we need to talk, Dar,” she said.
“And I thought you said you didn’t destroy, you fix?” Dar offered back, glancing around at the remains of what used to be his favourite room on the ship.
“I fix things that are worth fixing,” she countered.
As if on cue, Sarina’s voice drifted over to her, even as a whisper. “Denella…”
The older Orion woman wanted to keep her attention on the face of the enemy. But hearing her friend’s voice after so long was too much for her. She glanced across at where Sarina crouched next to Natasha, staring up at her.
“Sarina,” she managed to reply, focusing on keeping her emotions at bay and resisting the overwhelming urge to drop her weapon and race over to hug her long lost friend, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry it took me so long to--”
Seeing her distracted, Dar took the opportunity to take a step towards her. She spotted his movement out of the corner of her eye and snapped her attention, and the phaser, back in his direction, forcing him to stop. A minor victory, she told herself.
“Touching though this reunion is,” Dar boomed out sarcastically, “You said you wanted to talk? So talk.”
Denella slowly nodded, and slipped the rucksack off her back. Dar watched on in curiosity as she casually tossed it over to his feet, a tell-tale metallic jangle coming from inside.
“What is this?” he grunted.
“Payment,” she replied, “Every scrap of latinum I’ve managed to save up since I got away from you, Dar. Twenty bars of the stuff.”
The hulking Orion man raised an intrigued eyebrow and greedily bent down to lift the bag up, checking the heft of the heavy bag and nodding in appreciation.
“Huh,” he smiled coldly, throwing a glance back at his guards, “A slave with latinum. Now I have seen everything.”
The guards let out mocking laughs. Denella stoically ignored them.
“I’m here to make a deal with you,” she continued, “All that latinum, in exchange for the release of my friends.”
She took a couple of steps backwards, towards where Sarina and Natasha remained crouched down.
Natasha stood back up and smiled at her friend. Sarina remained crouched down, staring at Denella as if she had seen a ghost. The expression tore at Denella’s heart some more, thousands of words that she wanted to say to her jostled around in her mind.
But she had to keep focused. She only had time for a couple of words. Not a thousand.
“Trust me,” she whispered, before she turned back to Dar.
“Do you really expect me to deal with you, slave?” he bellowed back at her with palpable derision.
Denella gritted her teeth and continued to match Dar’s glare with one of her own. She wasn’t going to be bullied by him again.
“You’re a businessman, Dar. Think about it. You’ve already seen the mess I’ve made around here, and trust me, it can get a lot worse. Or, you can cut a deal. You take the latinum, and we’ll be on our way.”
Natasha struggled to work out what Denella’s plan was. Next to her, she felt Sarina grip her arm a little tighter.
In contrast, Dar couldn’t help but laugh again. A deep, mocking burst of laughter that was again echoed by his guards. Denella watched on patiently, keeping her useless phaser primed.
“Well, I see you’ve turned into quite a negotiator since I last saw you,” Dar said as the laughter subsided, “Except, you forget one thing. Rilen Dar doesn’t negotiate.”
He stepped over towards his guards, dropping the rucksack on the ground by his feet. Denella licked her lips with an edge of concern.
“I was hoping you’d make an exception once you--”
Dar cut her off before she could get any further with her attempt at negotiation.
“And here’s another thing,” he growled menacingly, “I suspect that the explosion you just caused used up the power cell of that phaser. Which means that thing no longer functions.”
Denella felt a bead of sweat form on her forehead.
“If I’m wrong,” Dar continued, gesturing at one of the guards, “Shoot him.”
The guard tensed up a little, understandably. Denella’s poker face remained in place, but Dar seemed to see straight through it.
“So, as far as I can see, you have no weapon, and you have no plan. And what do I have? I have your friends. I have your ship. I have your latinum. And I have you.”
Denella saw that her bluff was called. Her arm dropped to her side, and the phaser clattered down onto the deck, amongst the debris and detritus at her feet.
Dar’s leer extended further, as he basked in his victory. Despite the damage that had been caused to his ship, he knew that the latinum he would make from selling an extra slave would make up for that.
Denella turned back to Natasha and Sarina, who both stared back at her.
“This?” Natasha hissed, “This was your plan?”
As Natasha spoke, she saw a glint of something in the Orion woman’s eye. When Denella opened her mouth to reply, she didn’t speak. She just mouthed two more words at them.
Take cover.
She chanced a glance at her chronometer as she turned back to the gloating form of Dar. It was time.
“Really, slave,” the Orion master snarled, gesturing at her defeated form, “This was all you had?”
“Pretty much, I guess,” Denella replied with a shrug, “Except for one little thing.”
She allowed a sliver of a smile to creep onto her face. It unnerved Dar momentarily. He wasn’t used to his slaves smiling at him. At least not genuinely.
“See, I’m just a poor, simple, ex-slave girl, trying to get by in deep space. Honestly, Dar, do you really think a girl like me has got twenty bars of latinum?”
Dar’s gloating leer vanished in an instant, as the smile formed fully on Denella’s face. Quick as a flash, he grabbed the bag filled with heavy jangling metal from where it sat at his feet and ripped the top open.
Staring back at him, fresh from the Bounty’s weapons locker, was a cluster of Ferengi stun grenades.
At the same moment, Denella turned and dived backwards, pushing Natasha and Sarina down with her and trying to cover them as best she could. She scrambled to tap the communicator on her belt, hoping that someone was around on the Bounty to receive the signal.
Across the room, Dar roared in anguish.
It was too late for the guards to really understand what was happening.
The grenades exploded, precisely on schedule.
****************************
The two figures in the cargo bay panted heavily, getting their breath back.
Both of them were bruised and battered from their latest training session. Just as they always were. They understood that they weren’t going to hone any of their skills if they did things by halves.
“Impressive,” Klath managed to get out between heavy breaths, “You parried my final counterpunch without looking.”
Denella remained bent over, her hands on her knees as she took in ragged lungfuls of air. But she mustered a smile.
“Your sleeves,” she said, gesturing to Klath’s plain brown tunic, “Picked up the sound moving through the air.”
The Klingon looked down at his arm, as if this hadn’t even occurred to him.
“So,” she continued, standing back up straight, “Same time tomorrow?”
Klath began to collect up some of the weapons that lay strewn around the deck from their morning’s enterprises.
“I do not believe that will be necessary.”
“What do you mean?”
Klath carefully returned his bat’leth to its leather sheath, and turned back to the confused Orion woman.
“I have taught you all I can,” he explained, “Your last parry was proof of that. I do not believe there is anything more I can help you with.”
She stared back at him as she got her breath back. Her expression suggested that she wasn’t entirely convinced.
“We can’t just stop all this now,” she insisted.
Klath glared into the whites of her eyes. A question he had wondered for a long time on his lips.
“Why are you doing all of this?”
“What do you mean? I need to be able to protect myself. To--”
“No,” Klath shook his head, “You could already protect yourself. You proved that in our first lesson. But I have taught you how to attack. How to fight. And still you want more. Why?”
She considered offering him a half answer, something to deflect from the full reality. But she knew that she owed him more than that. She picked up her dagger from the ground and idly spun it around in her hand as she spoke.
“Because I need to know that I’ll be ready.”
“For what?”
She stopped spinning the dagger and gripped the handle of the weapon tightly.
“All those months ago, you rescued me from the Syndicate. But really, I know it’s not gonna be forever. All this, all I’m doing onboard the Bounty, it’s just temporary. One day, all of that will come back and find me.”
She placed her dagger back in her belt and turned back to Klath.
“And I need to make sure that I’ll be strong enough when that day comes.”
She turned and walked towards the exit of the cargo bay. Klath watched her as she walked, then called out just as she reached the door.
“Tomorrow. Here, at the usual time.”
She looked back, a half-smile on her face.
“I thought you said you had nothing more to teach me?”
“But now I understand your reasons. You are preparing for battle,” Klath pointed out, “It is important that you practice your combat skills, regardless of whether there is more to be learned.”
The Klingon matched her smile and continued.
“Besides, perhaps there are some things that you can teach me.”
****************************
The ringing in Denella’s ears was intense enough to mask the sound of the transporter, but even without hearing and with her eyes closed, she felt the tingle of the beam’s effect.
She forced her eyes back open, and found herself lying prone on the pad in the Bounty’s transporter room, with Natasha and Sarina still underneath her.
Blinking to adjust to the harsher light of the Bounty, she looked around at the familiar surroundings, and saw a smiling face at the transporter controls.
“Am I glad to see you,” she croaked, patting the deck of the Bounty to her side for emphasis, before adding, “You too, Klath.”
The Klingon quickly walked over to help the three women back to their feet.
Natasha shook her head to try and clear the ringing, feeling a palpable sense of relief flooding through her. “I changed my mind,” she offered to Denella with a wince, “That was a hell of a plan.”
Denella smiled back at the human woman, ignoring the pain emanating from her back where shrapnel from the grenade explosion had dug into her flesh. She turned to her side, where Sarina looked around fearfully, gripping onto the taller Orion woman’s arm and trying to make sense of what was happening.
Denella knew exactly what she was going through in her mind, because it was exactly what had gone through hers all those years ago, in the same tumbledown transporter room of the same beaten Ju’Day-type raider.
The two women made eye contact. Once again, Denella’s head felt like it was going to explode with all of the things she wanted to say to her friend that she hadn’t seen in so long.
In the end, she decided not to say anything. She just embraced Sarina in a tight hug. A hug that spanned the decade or more that they had been apart. Sarina reciprocated, as tears formed in their eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Denella whispered in her friend’s ear, “You’re free.”
As Klath and Natasha allowed themselves a moment to witness the emotional reunion in front of them, they were interrupted by Sunek’s voice over the ship’s comms link.
“Um, guys? We’ve got a few problems up here…”
His words of concern were followed by the deck pitching to one side as the whole Bounty shook from a barely evaded disruptor blast.
The group raced out of the transporter room and continued down the Bounty’s main corridor, dashing up the metal steps and bursting into the cockpit just as the ship bucked again, evading another blast.
Sunek frantically worked at the pilot’s controls as the ship swept through the familiar colours and patterns of the Numekk nebula ahead of them.
Klath took his place at his console, while Denella slid into the engineering station, with Sarina still with her, gripping her arm tightly. Natasha just clung onto Jirel’s vacant centre chair for dear life, the Trill still unconscious down in the medical bay.
“So, the good news is, whatever the hell just happened over there sent their whole power grid haywire. We’re out of the tractor beam,” Sunek shouted back, “The bad news is, I think they noticed.”
The ship pitched again as the Vulcan flung the ship out of the way of another disruptor blast.
“Shields are still offline. Returning fire,” Klath reported, “No effect.”
“We can’t go to warp until we’re clear of this stupid nebula,” Sunek added, “And even then, pretty sure an Orion cruiser’s got us outpaced!”
Denella’s jaw clenched tightly as the ship veered again. Even with Dar dead, the Syndicate was resolutely refusing to leave her alone. The Syndicate that had hurt her so much, destroyed her home, and hurt so many of her friends.
The Syndicate that had, in some awful twisted way, made her the person she was today.
She wondered if she had it in her to make sure that situation changed for good. Tried to rationalise the final element of the plan that she had put together to herself once again. She glanced over to Sarina, saw the fear in her eyes as the Bounty shook again. She looked around the cockpit at her friends, who had risked and very nearly lost everything to try and help her on her reckless quest.
And she decided that, for these people, she did have it in her.
She quickly tapped a succession of commands into the console in front of her, then smiled sadly at Sarina.
“Hang on,” she whispered, “I’ve still got one last trick.”
She didn’t wait a second longer, and tapped a final button on her console.
The Bounty transmitted a simple command through the nebula to the tiny Yridian mining shuttle that was still clamped to the side of the Orion ship. The shuttle’s computer received the command and obediently set about carrying out the instruction contained within it. Even though the instruction required it to release the magnetic constrictors around its tiny warp drive.
With the constrictors offline, the warp core breach was almost instantaneous. The venerable old shuttle exploded in a fierce ball of fire, ripping a huge hole clean through the cruiser’s engineering section.
The huge Orion ship listed uncertainly to one side, further explosions visible across the underside of the hull as the damage it had sustained broke out into a full-on cascade failure.
And then, against the beautiful backdrop of the crimson and gold nebula, the late Rilen Dar’s mighty Orion cruiser exploded.
The Bounty, wearing its battle damage on what remained of its port wing, crested the shockwave of the explosion as it permeated into the nebula.
And the little ship, and her crew, limped away to freedom.
End of Part Four
Epilogue
Jirel sat up in the single bed of the Bounty’s cramped medical bay and winced.
Natasha had worked tirelessly on their journey back out of Syndicate space to heal his myriad wounds. And he was just about back in one piece.
“Five broken ribs,” she reported as she ran a final scan over his body, “One punctured lung, a ruptured kidney, broken leg, fractured jaw--”
“Thanks doc, I get the picture,” he replied with a knowing grimace, “And thanks for patching me all back up. Again.”
“Good news is, next time it happens, you’re entitled to a free soda.”
They shared a smile, as she quickly stopped thinking about how worried she’d been when she’d first seen the state he was in after his reunion with Rilen Dar. It wasn’t the time to get into all of that.
Instead, she continued with the scan, and opted for a different area of conversation.
“I get it, you know.”
“Get what?”
“What you said earlier. About how uneven the moral line can get out here, and all you can do is try to do a bit of good where you can. For what it’s worth, I think this ship does more good than you give yourself credit for. Even if it is just one ship.”
“I’ll remember that the next time we take on a supply run for the Syndicate,” Jirel replied, matching her resulting withering look with a cheeky smile, “Kidding. Obviously.”
In the following moment of silence, as they maintained each other’s gazes, Jirel was certain that the two of them were sharing a moment of something or other. But he stopped himself from pursuing that any further. It wasn’t the time to get into all of that.
“Well,” Natasha said eventually as she finished her scan, “I’m officially calling this treatment over. You’re good to go.”
The door to the medical bay opened and Denella walked in. Natasha saw the look between the two friends, and got the message.
“I, um, guess I’ll go grab a coffee,” she nodded, flashing a smile at Denella as she exited.
As the door closed behind her, a relieved looking Denella walked up to the fully mended Jirel and gave him a warm hug. Then, as she broke the hug, she gave him a fierce slap across his face.
“Um, ow?” Jirel managed, with some justification.
“That’s for being a complete idiot,” she replied, smiling despite herself, “I told you not to follow me, and you nearly got yourself killed back there! What the hell did you think you were doing, flying out into Syndicate space like that?”
“You did it first.”
“That’s different. I had to.”
“So did we,” he replied, with an uncharacteristically serious tone, “You know that if you go charging off on some crazy suicide mission, the rest of us are gonna have your back. We’re gonna come after you--”
“And get caught by the Syndicate boss with the grudge against you? And get beaten within an inch of your life? And have to get bailed out by your engineer on said crazy suicide mission?”
Jirel looked a little more sheepish when she put it like that. “I didn’t say we’d be any good,” he offered with a shrug.
Denella’s smile widened as she shook her head in amusement.
“How’s our guest?” he asked eventually.
“She’s still…getting used to everything. From my experience, it takes a while to get everything right in your head. But…she’s ok.”
“Is she gonna stick around?”
“Not right now,” Denella said sadly, “There’s a Betazed centre just inside Federation space that helps people like Sarina. Over in the Corvin sector. Natasha suggested it as a starting point, and Sarina wants to go there. I said we’d take her?”
Jirel nodded silently, though he felt as though his blessing really wasn’t needed for that particular order.
“Longer term…I don’t think she knows,” the Orion woman continued, “But I’ve said I’ll stay with her for a while, while she gets settled. For as long as she needs me.”
“Take all the time you need. We can handle the repairs--”
“Like hell you can,” she smiled, as she turned and made for the exit, “But don’t worry, I can multitask.”
Jirel smiled back as she left. Moments later, Natasha returned, clutching a freshly replicated mug of coffee in her hand.
“Didn’t I discharge you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jirel said, rubbing his slapped cheek, “But I think this is gonna bruise.”
****************************
The Bounty sat parked on the surface of Corvin III, next to the calming expanse of the Betazed care facility. The ship’s rear ramp was deployed, and the crew, along with Sarina, stood on the soft grass underfoot along with one of the employees of the centre, a porcelain-skinned woman called Palia Rani.
“You can stay with us as long as you need,” the Betazoid woman explained to Sarina in a soft and kindly tone.
The younger Orion woman looked around the countryside that surrounded the facility and saw the rolling hills and the woods in the distance. She managed a smile.
“It reminds me of…home,” she whispered.
“Me too,” Denella nodded with a smile of her own.
As the two Orion women walked away from the group, to take in the view by themselves, Rani turned around to the rest of the Bounty’s crew and gestured around in a friendly manner.
“The rest of you are welcome to stay as well, while you make your repairs.”
Jirel looked up at the shattered remains of the Bounty’s port wing, and took in the other signs of battle damage across the long-suffering ship’s hull.
“Thanks,” he nodded, “We might need it.”
Natasha looked around at the picturesque surroundings of Corvin III.
“Well, I’d definitely be happy to spend some time here,” she offered, glancing at Klath, who didn’t appear to share that particular belief.
Sunek, for his part, kept his inquisitive focus on the Betazoid woman. “So, hey, like, you can really read our minds? You can, y’know, tell what I’m thinking right now?”
Rani looked back at the Vulcan with a somewhat disgusted expression on her face.
“Yes.”
Jirel glanced awkwardly over at Natasha.
“I mean, we probably shouldn’t stay too long…”
****************************
After a brief tour of the rest of the facility, Denella left Sarina to settle in, happy that she was being looked after.
She didn’t rejoin the others, or even start on the Bounty’s latest repair schedule. Instead, she returned to a spot a short distance away from where they had landed to consider the view again.
Sarina had been right. The place could have been Orpheus IV if she hadn’t known any better. The deep blue sky, the rolling hills and the warm, rich red of the soil all brought back a sea of memories in her mind.
She also knew that this would be as close as she and Sarina ever got to their old colony. They would never be able to actually go home again. Orpheus IV was lost to them.
She heard heavy footsteps approaching, as Klath stepped up alongside her.
“Beautiful, huh?” she ventured as she contemplated the view.
Klath’s grunt was enough to betray the fact that the Klingon was still slightly less impressed by the beauty of Corvin III than everyone else seemed to be.
“It is very green,” he managed.
He turned to look at his friend, who was still staring out at nothing in particular into the distance. On seeing her troubled look once again, he reluctantly opted to flex his developing small talk muscles once again.
“Do you…wish to talk about it?”
Despite everything, Denella stifled a smile before she collected her thoughts.
“I guess I was just wondering how many more there are out there,” she mused as she looked up to the heavens, “How many more Sarinas.”
Klath considered this for a moment.
“We could attempt to rescue more of them. It would be quite a battle.”
“Take on the entire Syndicate? In the Bounty?”
“We could find a larger ship,” Klath retorted, apparently in all seriousness.
She turned her attention to her Klingon companion and smiled warmly. They stood in silence for a moment.
“You fought well, Denella,” he offered eventually, “You should be proud.”
She managed a slight nod, but his words didn’t seem to have the positive outcome that he had been hoping for. He pushed further.
“I was…going to suggest that we have a feast. In honour of your battle.”
At this, Denella raised an eyebrow. If she didn’t know any better, she’d have sworn that the gruff, burly Klingon was trying to make her feel better.
“To toast the great battle of the Numekk nebula? Bloodwine? Toasts? All that?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“And you’d compose a song for it?”
Klath shot a worried look at the Orion woman, only to see the smile on her face that gave away the fact that she was messing with him.
“I could try,” he replied with a hint of amusement of his own.
She sighed and shook her head as she turned back to the Bounty, leaving the view behind.
“Thanks for the offer, Klath. But I’m not sure a feast is really necessary. Tell you the truth, I don’t really feel like celebrating.”
The two friends started to walk back to the ship together.
“Why?” Klath asked as they went.
She looked back up into the sky as they walked, a tinge of sadness clear on her face. She thought about what she had been compelled to do. The lives she had ended, the carnage she had caused. And she thought about how many other slave girls might be out there, still needing to be rescued, somehow, by someone.
“Because it doesn’t really feel like I won.”
****************************
In the end, there was no feast to toast the battle of the Numekk nebula, but the tired and tormented crew of the Bounty did at least find some moments of peace on Corvin III.
Denella spent as much time as she could with Sarina, reconnecting with her old friend and trying to help her recover.
Sunek spent most of his time on Corvin III receiving a succession of disgusted looks from the various Betazoids that were unfortunate enough to pass nearby to him.
As he had promised, the recovered Jirel took charge of the repairs, with help from Klath and Natasha. Even though he knew Denella would re-do them all as soon as she had the time, it felt good to at least pretend to help.
Jirel even managed to sell an appropriate excuse to the Talarians about the delay to their shipment of mining supplies. Though he was less sure how he was going to sell the fact that most of the supplies were now irreparably damaged from the Bounty’s latest firefight.
As the sun set at the end of the day on Corvin III, Sarina sat cross-legged on the bed in the quarters that she had been assigned, opposite her friend. The two friends had spent almost all of their time together since they had been reunited talking, about the past, about happier times, and about all of Denella’s adventures with the Bounty. They barely touched on Sarina’s experiences, but Denella didn’t need to know any of the details.
The important thing was that her friend was already adjusting. She was smiling. It was a smile that brought joy to Denella’s heart.
“I just…can’t believe it’s really you,” Sarina managed as they looked at each other, “I can’t believe you did all this. For me.”
“I just…I guess I always thought I’d see you again, one day. I never wanted to--”
Denella couldn’t ignore the guilt inside any more. She stifled a sob.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, as Sarina touched her shoulder with concern for her friend, “You don’t know that I--I was supposed to protect you. Look after you. But when the Syndicate came, I--”
She stifled another sob as she recalled her fight or flight decision back on Orpheus IV.
“I saw them ransacking the homestead, dragging you away, and I should have attacked. I should have fought them!”
“There were too many of them,” Sarina whispered, “You couldn’t have fought them all.”
“I should have tried. You were being carried away, I had my dagger, but--When I was caught, I was trying to run away. I--I tried to run away…!”
The younger Orion woman shifted across the bed and gave her friend a comforting hug, one that Denella accepted.
“But you came back,” Sarina whispered.
The words, and the hug, seemed to melt the guilt from Denella’s soul. She controlled her tears and managed a faint smile.
A moment of silence descended.
“What do I do now?” Sarina asked eventually, as they broke the hug.
Denella looked around the comfortable surroundings of the quarters Sarina had been given, and remembered the same confusion she had experienced after her own impromptu rescue all those years ago.
How after so many years with the Syndicate, she had forgotten what it was like to be free.
“Whatever you want to do,” she said eventually, her smile returning.
Sarina considered the enormity of this statement for a moment, then nodded. Denella rubbed her arm supportively, then started to get up to leave her friend to rest.
“Stay?” Sarina whispered, “I…don’t want to be alone.”
Denella wiped away the remaining tears and nodded in understanding. She lay back down on the bed next to her friend, as Sarina settled down to sleep.
****************************
The two girls swung their legs off the side of the tree trunk as the sun continued to set.
In the distance, they heard the sounds of the other children returning from their adventures in the forest. It was nearly time to head home.
Denella looked over at Sarina, who had now been silently contemplating her answer to the question for so long that Denella was wondering if she’d forgotten about it.
“Sarina,” she said in her best stern grown-up voice, the one she’d learned from listening to her mother chide her father when he stayed out too late working on his shuttles, “You know it’s rude to ignore someone. What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Sarina swung her legs some more, looking up into the darkening sky.
“I’m thinking,” she insisted, with a hint of irritation, “Don’t rush me.”
The younger Orion girl chomped on the final bite of her snack, while Denella returned to kicking the rusty red dirt at her feet.
After a long time searching through her brain, Sarina was finally satisfied that she’d found the right answer, and nodded with confident certainty.
“Happy,” she said, “When I grow up, I’d like to be happy.”
Denella screwed up her face at this. It seemed like a silly answer as far as she was concerned. But then, she was still mostly thinking about what sort of things she would do if she was a famous archae-lol-ologist.
So she accepted Sarina’s answer with a friendly nod, as the other children’s voices grew ever nearer, and their time on top of the hill together grew shorter.
The two girls sat together and watched the sun set.
****************************
In the safety of the quarters on Corvin III, Denella looked down at Sarina, as she lay peacefully sleeping with her head tucked onto her friend’s shoulder. And she smiled.
Shifting slightly, careful not to wake the younger woman, she settled back and closed her own eyes.
And, as per her doctor’s orders many days ago, Denella finally got some rest.
The End
Jirel sat up in the single bed of the Bounty’s cramped medical bay and winced.
Natasha had worked tirelessly on their journey back out of Syndicate space to heal his myriad wounds. And he was just about back in one piece.
“Five broken ribs,” she reported as she ran a final scan over his body, “One punctured lung, a ruptured kidney, broken leg, fractured jaw--”
“Thanks doc, I get the picture,” he replied with a knowing grimace, “And thanks for patching me all back up. Again.”
“Good news is, next time it happens, you’re entitled to a free soda.”
They shared a smile, as she quickly stopped thinking about how worried she’d been when she’d first seen the state he was in after his reunion with Rilen Dar. It wasn’t the time to get into all of that.
Instead, she continued with the scan, and opted for a different area of conversation.
“I get it, you know.”
“Get what?”
“What you said earlier. About how uneven the moral line can get out here, and all you can do is try to do a bit of good where you can. For what it’s worth, I think this ship does more good than you give yourself credit for. Even if it is just one ship.”
“I’ll remember that the next time we take on a supply run for the Syndicate,” Jirel replied, matching her resulting withering look with a cheeky smile, “Kidding. Obviously.”
In the following moment of silence, as they maintained each other’s gazes, Jirel was certain that the two of them were sharing a moment of something or other. But he stopped himself from pursuing that any further. It wasn’t the time to get into all of that.
“Well,” Natasha said eventually as she finished her scan, “I’m officially calling this treatment over. You’re good to go.”
The door to the medical bay opened and Denella walked in. Natasha saw the look between the two friends, and got the message.
“I, um, guess I’ll go grab a coffee,” she nodded, flashing a smile at Denella as she exited.
As the door closed behind her, a relieved looking Denella walked up to the fully mended Jirel and gave him a warm hug. Then, as she broke the hug, she gave him a fierce slap across his face.
“Um, ow?” Jirel managed, with some justification.
“That’s for being a complete idiot,” she replied, smiling despite herself, “I told you not to follow me, and you nearly got yourself killed back there! What the hell did you think you were doing, flying out into Syndicate space like that?”
“You did it first.”
“That’s different. I had to.”
“So did we,” he replied, with an uncharacteristically serious tone, “You know that if you go charging off on some crazy suicide mission, the rest of us are gonna have your back. We’re gonna come after you--”
“And get caught by the Syndicate boss with the grudge against you? And get beaten within an inch of your life? And have to get bailed out by your engineer on said crazy suicide mission?”
Jirel looked a little more sheepish when she put it like that. “I didn’t say we’d be any good,” he offered with a shrug.
Denella’s smile widened as she shook her head in amusement.
“How’s our guest?” he asked eventually.
“She’s still…getting used to everything. From my experience, it takes a while to get everything right in your head. But…she’s ok.”
“Is she gonna stick around?”
“Not right now,” Denella said sadly, “There’s a Betazed centre just inside Federation space that helps people like Sarina. Over in the Corvin sector. Natasha suggested it as a starting point, and Sarina wants to go there. I said we’d take her?”
Jirel nodded silently, though he felt as though his blessing really wasn’t needed for that particular order.
“Longer term…I don’t think she knows,” the Orion woman continued, “But I’ve said I’ll stay with her for a while, while she gets settled. For as long as she needs me.”
“Take all the time you need. We can handle the repairs--”
“Like hell you can,” she smiled, as she turned and made for the exit, “But don’t worry, I can multitask.”
Jirel smiled back as she left. Moments later, Natasha returned, clutching a freshly replicated mug of coffee in her hand.
“Didn’t I discharge you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jirel said, rubbing his slapped cheek, “But I think this is gonna bruise.”
****************************
The Bounty sat parked on the surface of Corvin III, next to the calming expanse of the Betazed care facility. The ship’s rear ramp was deployed, and the crew, along with Sarina, stood on the soft grass underfoot along with one of the employees of the centre, a porcelain-skinned woman called Palia Rani.
“You can stay with us as long as you need,” the Betazoid woman explained to Sarina in a soft and kindly tone.
The younger Orion woman looked around the countryside that surrounded the facility and saw the rolling hills and the woods in the distance. She managed a smile.
“It reminds me of…home,” she whispered.
“Me too,” Denella nodded with a smile of her own.
As the two Orion women walked away from the group, to take in the view by themselves, Rani turned around to the rest of the Bounty’s crew and gestured around in a friendly manner.
“The rest of you are welcome to stay as well, while you make your repairs.”
Jirel looked up at the shattered remains of the Bounty’s port wing, and took in the other signs of battle damage across the long-suffering ship’s hull.
“Thanks,” he nodded, “We might need it.”
Natasha looked around at the picturesque surroundings of Corvin III.
“Well, I’d definitely be happy to spend some time here,” she offered, glancing at Klath, who didn’t appear to share that particular belief.
Sunek, for his part, kept his inquisitive focus on the Betazoid woman. “So, hey, like, you can really read our minds? You can, y’know, tell what I’m thinking right now?”
Rani looked back at the Vulcan with a somewhat disgusted expression on her face.
“Yes.”
Jirel glanced awkwardly over at Natasha.
“I mean, we probably shouldn’t stay too long…”
****************************
After a brief tour of the rest of the facility, Denella left Sarina to settle in, happy that she was being looked after.
She didn’t rejoin the others, or even start on the Bounty’s latest repair schedule. Instead, she returned to a spot a short distance away from where they had landed to consider the view again.
Sarina had been right. The place could have been Orpheus IV if she hadn’t known any better. The deep blue sky, the rolling hills and the warm, rich red of the soil all brought back a sea of memories in her mind.
She also knew that this would be as close as she and Sarina ever got to their old colony. They would never be able to actually go home again. Orpheus IV was lost to them.
She heard heavy footsteps approaching, as Klath stepped up alongside her.
“Beautiful, huh?” she ventured as she contemplated the view.
Klath’s grunt was enough to betray the fact that the Klingon was still slightly less impressed by the beauty of Corvin III than everyone else seemed to be.
“It is very green,” he managed.
He turned to look at his friend, who was still staring out at nothing in particular into the distance. On seeing her troubled look once again, he reluctantly opted to flex his developing small talk muscles once again.
“Do you…wish to talk about it?”
Despite everything, Denella stifled a smile before she collected her thoughts.
“I guess I was just wondering how many more there are out there,” she mused as she looked up to the heavens, “How many more Sarinas.”
Klath considered this for a moment.
“We could attempt to rescue more of them. It would be quite a battle.”
“Take on the entire Syndicate? In the Bounty?”
“We could find a larger ship,” Klath retorted, apparently in all seriousness.
She turned her attention to her Klingon companion and smiled warmly. They stood in silence for a moment.
“You fought well, Denella,” he offered eventually, “You should be proud.”
She managed a slight nod, but his words didn’t seem to have the positive outcome that he had been hoping for. He pushed further.
“I was…going to suggest that we have a feast. In honour of your battle.”
At this, Denella raised an eyebrow. If she didn’t know any better, she’d have sworn that the gruff, burly Klingon was trying to make her feel better.
“To toast the great battle of the Numekk nebula? Bloodwine? Toasts? All that?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“And you’d compose a song for it?”
Klath shot a worried look at the Orion woman, only to see the smile on her face that gave away the fact that she was messing with him.
“I could try,” he replied with a hint of amusement of his own.
She sighed and shook her head as she turned back to the Bounty, leaving the view behind.
“Thanks for the offer, Klath. But I’m not sure a feast is really necessary. Tell you the truth, I don’t really feel like celebrating.”
The two friends started to walk back to the ship together.
“Why?” Klath asked as they went.
She looked back up into the sky as they walked, a tinge of sadness clear on her face. She thought about what she had been compelled to do. The lives she had ended, the carnage she had caused. And she thought about how many other slave girls might be out there, still needing to be rescued, somehow, by someone.
“Because it doesn’t really feel like I won.”
****************************
In the end, there was no feast to toast the battle of the Numekk nebula, but the tired and tormented crew of the Bounty did at least find some moments of peace on Corvin III.
Denella spent as much time as she could with Sarina, reconnecting with her old friend and trying to help her recover.
Sunek spent most of his time on Corvin III receiving a succession of disgusted looks from the various Betazoids that were unfortunate enough to pass nearby to him.
As he had promised, the recovered Jirel took charge of the repairs, with help from Klath and Natasha. Even though he knew Denella would re-do them all as soon as she had the time, it felt good to at least pretend to help.
Jirel even managed to sell an appropriate excuse to the Talarians about the delay to their shipment of mining supplies. Though he was less sure how he was going to sell the fact that most of the supplies were now irreparably damaged from the Bounty’s latest firefight.
As the sun set at the end of the day on Corvin III, Sarina sat cross-legged on the bed in the quarters that she had been assigned, opposite her friend. The two friends had spent almost all of their time together since they had been reunited talking, about the past, about happier times, and about all of Denella’s adventures with the Bounty. They barely touched on Sarina’s experiences, but Denella didn’t need to know any of the details.
The important thing was that her friend was already adjusting. She was smiling. It was a smile that brought joy to Denella’s heart.
“I just…can’t believe it’s really you,” Sarina managed as they looked at each other, “I can’t believe you did all this. For me.”
“I just…I guess I always thought I’d see you again, one day. I never wanted to--”
Denella couldn’t ignore the guilt inside any more. She stifled a sob.
“I’m sorry,” she managed, as Sarina touched her shoulder with concern for her friend, “You don’t know that I--I was supposed to protect you. Look after you. But when the Syndicate came, I--”
She stifled another sob as she recalled her fight or flight decision back on Orpheus IV.
“I saw them ransacking the homestead, dragging you away, and I should have attacked. I should have fought them!”
“There were too many of them,” Sarina whispered, “You couldn’t have fought them all.”
“I should have tried. You were being carried away, I had my dagger, but--When I was caught, I was trying to run away. I--I tried to run away…!”
The younger Orion woman shifted across the bed and gave her friend a comforting hug, one that Denella accepted.
“But you came back,” Sarina whispered.
The words, and the hug, seemed to melt the guilt from Denella’s soul. She controlled her tears and managed a faint smile.
A moment of silence descended.
“What do I do now?” Sarina asked eventually, as they broke the hug.
Denella looked around the comfortable surroundings of the quarters Sarina had been given, and remembered the same confusion she had experienced after her own impromptu rescue all those years ago.
How after so many years with the Syndicate, she had forgotten what it was like to be free.
“Whatever you want to do,” she said eventually, her smile returning.
Sarina considered the enormity of this statement for a moment, then nodded. Denella rubbed her arm supportively, then started to get up to leave her friend to rest.
“Stay?” Sarina whispered, “I…don’t want to be alone.”
Denella wiped away the remaining tears and nodded in understanding. She lay back down on the bed next to her friend, as Sarina settled down to sleep.
****************************
The two girls swung their legs off the side of the tree trunk as the sun continued to set.
In the distance, they heard the sounds of the other children returning from their adventures in the forest. It was nearly time to head home.
Denella looked over at Sarina, who had now been silently contemplating her answer to the question for so long that Denella was wondering if she’d forgotten about it.
“Sarina,” she said in her best stern grown-up voice, the one she’d learned from listening to her mother chide her father when he stayed out too late working on his shuttles, “You know it’s rude to ignore someone. What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Sarina swung her legs some more, looking up into the darkening sky.
“I’m thinking,” she insisted, with a hint of irritation, “Don’t rush me.”
The younger Orion girl chomped on the final bite of her snack, while Denella returned to kicking the rusty red dirt at her feet.
After a long time searching through her brain, Sarina was finally satisfied that she’d found the right answer, and nodded with confident certainty.
“Happy,” she said, “When I grow up, I’d like to be happy.”
Denella screwed up her face at this. It seemed like a silly answer as far as she was concerned. But then, she was still mostly thinking about what sort of things she would do if she was a famous archae-lol-ologist.
So she accepted Sarina’s answer with a friendly nod, as the other children’s voices grew ever nearer, and their time on top of the hill together grew shorter.
The two girls sat together and watched the sun set.
****************************
In the safety of the quarters on Corvin III, Denella looked down at Sarina, as she lay peacefully sleeping with her head tucked onto her friend’s shoulder. And she smiled.
Shifting slightly, careful not to wake the younger woman, she settled back and closed her own eyes.
And, as per her doctor’s orders many days ago, Denella finally got some rest.
The End
Quite enjoyable story! Easily my favorite parts are the relationship between Denella and Klath - great dry wit. Nice combination of drama and comedy. Thanks!! rbs
Thanks for the read, and the messages throughout! Always interesting to see what's working/not working from a reader's perspective. 
I was worried the tonal shifts in this one were a little too jarring, but hopefully it all seemed to work out in the end! I'm more used to writing straight comedy stuff (subjectively speaking, obviously), so I'm trying to keep that side of it reined in a bit here. I'm at least somewhat aware that the drama/stakes get undercut if everything's just a big joke to everyone the whole time.
I can guarantee the Bounty's crew will not be shaking any universes any time soon. Universe-shaking isn't really in their wheelhouse.
Not sure when the next episode will be ready. Probably not for a while. There's half a dozen other Bounty stories in some sort of draft stage, but none are really ready for consumption. Plus I've just rattled off those last two in fairly quick succession, so I should probably take a break and stop clogging up the forum with these silly adventures for a bit.
I was worried the tonal shifts in this one were a little too jarring, but hopefully it all seemed to work out in the end! I'm more used to writing straight comedy stuff (subjectively speaking, obviously), so I'm trying to keep that side of it reined in a bit here. I'm at least somewhat aware that the drama/stakes get undercut if everything's just a big joke to everyone the whole time.I can guarantee the Bounty's crew will not be shaking any universes any time soon. Universe-shaking isn't really in their wheelhouse.
Not sure when the next episode will be ready. Probably not for a while. There's half a dozen other Bounty stories in some sort of draft stage, but none are really ready for consumption. Plus I've just rattled off those last two in fairly quick succession, so I should probably take a break and stop clogging up the forum with these silly adventures for a bit.
Similar threads
