Chapter Text
Part Two (Cont’d)
“I’ve got to get me one of those.”
Jirel grinned and gestured to the centre chair of the Tolaris’s bridge. Though to call it a chair seemed a little too much of an understatement. It was more like a throne, raised above the surrounding stations and consoles to afford whoever sat in it an unobstructed view of the entire bridge.
Moments earlier, at the third time of asking, the turbolift had finally arrived. Rather than finding the whole situation embarrassing, however, Tepal had simply used the extra time to continue his overblown bragging on the subject of the might of the Tolaris. It hadn’t quite been the emperor’s new clothes, but there had been something mildly farcical about the situation.
The lift had brought them to what Tepal had described as the grand finale of the tour. And as soon as Jirel had seen the chair, he had to begrudgingly admit that for once, he hadn’t been overselling it.
Next to him, Denella’s focus was still on the relatively poor state of the bridge in general. The layout was a traditional enough design, though like so much of the Tolaris the room seemed scaled up to twice the normal size. There were forward helm and navigation stations, tactical and operations to each side and rows of supplementary science and engineering stations down the rear. A huge viewscreen dominated the front of the room.
Although everything here at least seemed to be working as it should, there were still signs of decay and disrepair everywhere. Flickering displays on consoles, loose wires hanging from the ceiling and open access hatches on the walls. Although Jirel might have found his dream chair, Denella was still waiting to be impressed.
The two forward consoles and the tactical station were currently manned by Vulcans in similar civilian clothing to Tepal, but the rest of the bridge was empty, underlining how low on numbers the Tolaris was. The viewscreen itself showed that the ship was at warp. Denella was only able to catch a glimpse of the navigation console over the shoulder of the Vulcan who sat there, but she was sure there was something familiar about the course they were following.
“So,” Tepal said as he looked around the domain in front of him, “This was worth the wait, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
Denella bit her tongue for the time being, aware that she didn’t want to provoke the emotional Vulcan too many times. Instead, she kept thinking about the navigational readout she had seen. It looked like they were heading somewhere. Somewhere familiar.
“Can I sit in it?” Jirel asked, gesturing to the centre chair.
“No,” Tepal replied simply, eliciting a look of childlike disappointment from the Trill.
“Naw,” Jirel muttered to himself, as the Vulcan paced around the bridge.
“But, now we have our ship, and our loyal crew, then the galaxy is whatever we want to make of it. Our futures are waiting out there, a chance to find somewhere where we can really thrive. For us, and for Sunek as well.”
Jirel and Denella glanced at each other, not exactly liking the sound of that.
“Yeah,” Denella mused in reply, “Not sure all of this is really Sunek’s scene.”
“Definitely not,” Jirel nodded in agreement, “We’ve been around the whole ship now, and have you seen one bottle of booze?”
Denella smirked and looked back at Tepal, who categorically wasn’t smiling.
“Believe what you like,” he replied, “But Sokar can be very persuasive with his people.”
Jirel felt his defences rise again having heard that for the second time. His people?
Before he had a chance to press that particular issue any further, however, the bridge’s tactical console chirped out an alert, and the Vulcan female stationed there called out to Tepal.
“Ronek reports that the cargo has been unloaded,” she said with a minor sense of urgency, “They are in position for stage two.”
A fresh chill went down Jirel’s spine with that comment. He was well travelled enough through the galaxy to be of the firm belief that nothing good ever came from any sort of situation that claimed to have a stage two.
“Well,” he said, gesturing to Denella and taking a step backwards towards the turbolift, “Thanks so much for the detailed tour, and the yummy food. But if the cargo’s unloaded, then we should be making tracks. There’s a certain Boslic I need to go have a really long and not especially friendly chat with, y’know?”
“I’m afraid that might have to wait,” Tepal said simply.
The Vulcans at the forward helm and navigation stations stood up and flanked Tepal as he stood in front of them. All three of them now held small Romulan disruptor pistols in their hands.
“Please,” Tepal said, in a voice entirely bereft of any serious concern for their well being, “Don’t resist.”
The three Vulcans facing them down were all smiling, but these were cruel, twisted smiles. All bereft of joy and happiness. And all eerily similar to each other.
“What the hell’s going on?” Denella asked.
“I’m gonna take a wild guess,” Jirel offered, “And say this is called stage two.”
As the three armed figures glared back at them, something clicked into place for Denella, about the navigational readings. She had recognised it as a course laid in through Federation space. And, if she wasn’t much mistaken, the cloaked Romulan Warbird was heading directly for the middle of it.
They were heading for Vulcan.
* * * * *
The single blast of green energy burst out of T’Prin’s disruptor pistol and stopped the marauding form of Klath in his tracks. The Klingon emitted a loud growl, a combination of pain and frustration, as he fell to the ground with a heavy thud.
Natasha gasped in shock as she saw him fall down, but she couldn’t move to help her stricken colleague. The identical disruptor pistol that was pointed squarely at her, this one in the hands of Ronek, made sure of that.
“Klath!” she shouted out impotently, as the Klingon rolled on the ground.
He ended up slumped in an almost motionless heap, though she was relieved to be able to make out that he was at least still breathing. She glared at T’Prin in anger.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she snapped, “We’re just here to deliver your cargo!”
“You may be here for longer than that,” T’Prin replied simply.
Natasha balled her fists in frustration, but through her own turmoil, she also thought she detected something in the reaction of the Vulcan woman. A sense that she wasn’t quite as enthused by what she was doing as she was letting on.
To her side, Klath tried to force himself back to his feet with no little effort. Internally, he cursed the fact that he hadn’t stuck to his instincts and recovered his bat’leth. It might not have been the ideal item to take on a disruptor pistol, but it wouldn’t have been the first time he would have taken on someone armed with an energy weapon wielding his bladed weapon of choice and won.
But he hadn’t recovered it. And, although it may have been entirely instinctive, he had to admit that his decision to immediately charge at T’Prin as soon as he saw her pull out the disruptor pistol may not have been the cleverest of moves, tactically speaking.
His right arm was in searing pain where the blast had hit, but he still tried to get back to his feet, trying to use the blood lust coursing through his veins to propel him beyond the limitations of his injured body. But it was going to take more effort than even he realised.
“Let me help him,” Natasha called out to T’Prin, trying to appeal to whatever fleeting moment of doubt she might have seen in the Vulcan’s eyes.
T’Prin stared back at her, then glanced at Ronek.
“No tricks,” Natasha persisted, “I promise!”
The two Vulcans considered this for a moment longer, before T’Prin conceded, gesturing to her that she could move over to the Klingon.
“No tricks,” the Vulcan woman echoed back to her.
As she walked, slowly but deliberately, Natasha could feel the pair of disruptors following her across the room. It wasn’t a comforting feeling. Still, she consoled herself with the fact that she’d been in far worse situations than this throughout her life. At least one since she had met up with the crew of the Bounty. So she kept her head down and focused on the immediate issue.
She crouched down on the ground next to the ailing Klingon and assessed the extent of his injury. It was immediately apparent that it wasn’t good news.
“I need a medkit,” she said to the Vulcans.
They glanced at each other again, but this time, T’Prin shook her head. Natasha sighed and returned her attention to the injury.
The disruptor shot hadn’t hit him squarely on the arm, merely a glancing blow. But it had still been strong enough to burn through a section of his flesh. The smell that filled the air was testament to that, and the ugly wound it had left behind was likely to be a haven for infection unless she treated it soon.
The only good news that she could see, given her lack of any sort of immediate treatment options was the fact that the searing heat of the blast appeared to have partly cauterised the wound as it had passed through. He was bleeding, but not by a fatal amount.
Klath was clearly reluctant to have his injuries looked at, especially given how ashamed he was feeling that he had picked them up in the first place. But for his part, he allowed her to check the wound on his arm, because it allowed him to lean in and surreptitiously whisper in her ear, the armed Vulcans none the wiser.
“Excellent work, doctor,” he growled quietly, “Now, what is your trick?”
Natasha paused for a second in her improvised examination and looked over at the expectant face of the Klingon warrior. Preparing to disappoint him.
“Um,” she whispered back, “I was being serious. No tricks. I literally don’t have any tricks.”
“No tricks?”
“No tricks,” she replied again, not entirely sure how many other ways she had of getting that particular point across to the rest of the congregation in the hangar bay.
Klath considered this, his brow thick with sweat as he worked to control his reaction to the pain in his wounded limb.
“That is regrettable,” he grunted back eventually, “I do not have any tricks either.”
Natasha turned her head around to regard the two disruptors still trained on them. And the leers of the two Vulcan radicals holding them.
Definitely not hippies, she mused grimly.
End of Part Two