Chapter Text
Part Three (Cont’d)
“Well, I didn’t think you’d actually do what I said!”
Jirel sighed in exasperation as he looked down at the injured Klingon lying on the bed of their new accommodation aboard the Tolaris.
It had been roughly an hour since they had all been reunited, but it wasn’t a happy reunion. Instead, they had been marched into the same holding cell in the same brig and simply left there. The cell was one of several around the hexagonal brig layout, a gently shimmering forcefield enough to separate them from the outside world. The lights were dimmed, but there was clearly still plenty of power to keep the forcefield running.
And that was where they had been left. A Trill, an Orion, a human and a very injured Klingon, locked away on a ship of laughing Vulcans.
“You said no weapons,” Klath managed weakly, as Natasha continued to tend to her reluctant patient’s arm as best she could.
“You did definitely say that,” she said to the Trill as she worked.
“I know what I said!” Jirel snapped back at the pair of them as he quickly paced up and down in front of the forcefield, “But you know how it is. Sometimes, when I say ‘no weapons’, I mean…some weapons!”
“In future,” Klath coughed, “You should make that clearer.”
Jirel balled his fists up in frustration, now entirely sure that the Klingon was winding him up on purpose, even as he lay injured on the cell’s sole small bed.
“But—You’re Klath!” he shot back, “You never have no weapons! Even when I specifically say not to bring anything, you’ve got seven unpronounceable knives and a disruptor on you somewhere!”
“Do you think if I was armed, I would have allowed myself to be captured?”
Jirel paused in his pacing. He couldn’t find a hole in that bit of Klingon logic.
“Also, can you please stop harassing my patient?” Natasha chimed in, as she tore another strip of fabric from the sleeve of her top to soak up the excess blood from the improvised bandage she had managed to apply to the wound, having still not been given a proper medkit.
“I am not a patient,” Klath grunted, in a manner that meant she couldn’t tell if he had been attempting a pun or not.
“Should have thought about that before you let that Vulcan shoot a hole through your arm,” she countered.
Klath went to retort, but thought better of it, and allowed her to continue. That’s some progress at least, she thought to herself, even if she definitely couldn’t call it a friendship just yet.
“Damnit!”
Denella’s sudden scream filled the confines of the holding cell, and was accompanied by the sound of her head impacting on the underside of the metal bed that Klath was lying on. She clambered out from under the bed and rubbed her head with an annoyed grimace.
“Any luck?” Jirel asked with a mirthless grin.
“Oh yeah,” she replied sarcastically, “That’s the noise I always make when I’ve just broken out of a jail cell.”
She batted away Natasha’s instinctive efforts to check her head for any injury and sighed deeply, calming herself down.
“I found an air circulation vent down there,” she continued, “Got the hatch off, but there’s nothing there that’s gonna help us. And it’s too narrow for any sort of escape.”
Jirel leaned back on the wall and looked over at the forcefield. “Any chance you can short that thing out?”
“Sure, piece of cake,” the Orion woman replied, “I just need access to a supply junction, isolate the power flow and trip the connectors.”
“Great, now we’re talking!”
“Course, the Romulans who designed this brig probably realised that’s all I’d need, which is why they built all that stuff on the other side of the big impenetrable forcefield.”
Jirel stared back at her with a withering glare, not appreciating her roundabout piece of mockery. “Next time, just ‘no’ is fine.”
Natasha looked up from her work and gestured at the flickering forcefield. “You know, even by our standards, we’re crap out of luck. Half the ship’s falling apart, but that thing’s working like a charm.”
“I do not believe that is luck,” Klath murmured, “From what we have been told about this ship, it appears that they have been prioritising tactical, offensive and security systems. I suspect that the brig falls into those categories.”
“I hate to say it, but I got the same feeling,” Denella nodded, “Essential systems, indeed. Kinda like they’re not so much building themselves a flagship as they are a warship.”
Natasha suppressed a shudder at this. She’d spent too long in the presence of warships over the last few years.
“Well,” Jirel mused drily, “That sort of thing always ends well, right?”
As they considered the situation, and how they had still made precisely zero progress with their escape plans, the door to the brig opened. T’Prin walked in, along with a burly Vulcan they hadn’t seen before. Both were armed, while T’Prin carried a simple tray of food.
“Hey Klath, good news,” Jirel quipped, “More Vulcan food.”
“Actually,” T’Prin replied curtly, “I am yet to reprogram the replicators on this level. This is Romulan cuisine.”
Jirel didn’t bother to look around, but he definitely heard a low growl emanating from the direction of the Klingon.
T’Prin looked over at her colleague and nodded. The burly Vulcan holstered his own disruptor and walked over to the forcefield controls.
“So, what now?” Jirel asked through the forcefield, “This the part where you talk us through your whole dastardly plan?”
T’Prin raised an eyebrow at this, keeping her weapon raised.
“In a manner of speaking,” she replied.
It all happened very fast. As the burly Vulcan tapped the appropriate combination into the controls, the forcefield briefly shimmered and died. At the same time, T’Prin dropped the food tray and shot her hand out to the neck of the other Vulcan next to her, administering a deft nerve pinch that rendered him unconscious in an instant.
As the residents of the brig watched on in surprise, the Vulcan slumped to the ground. T’Prin quickly grabbed the disruptor from his belt and offered it to Jirel.
“That was unfortunate,” she said simply, “But I did not know the code for the forcefield.”
She looked up, realising that nobody had taken the disruptor. Most of the Bounty’s crew still stared at her in shock. The only one that was immediately eager to take the weapon was Klath, and his prone state meant that he couldn’t get up to grab it.
“You should take this,” she offered, not realising she would have to spell it out quite so clearly, “And hurry. We do not have much time.”
Jirel noted the change in T’Prin’s demeanour. Her smile had gone. In fact, all of her emotions seemed to have gone. She suddenly seemed a lot more, for want of a better word, Vulcan.
“Um, what the hell?” Denella managed, as Jirel finally took the disruptor.
“I am not T’Prin,” the Vulcan woman explained, “My name is...classified, for these purposes. But I work for the V’Shar.”
“The who?”
“The Vulcan Spooks,” Jirel replied with a wry smile as he checked the disruptor’s power settings.
Not T’Prin raised an eyebrow at this. “An illogical aphorism. The V’Shar are an internal intelligence branch of the Vulcan government. For the last four months I have been involved in infiltrating Sokar and his followers. Unfortunately, things have escalated faster than I was anticipating and I require your…assistance.”
“Yeah, sorry, but we’re not the heroes you ordered,” Jirel said with a shake of his head, “You want those other guys. Annoyingly friendly? Matching uniforms? Pin badges on their nipples? Way too smug about having evolved beyond the concept of pension plans for a group of people who live in a galaxy that still mostly uses currency?”
He idly gestured to Natasha, who was giving him her best unimpressed ex-Starfleet glare.
“She knows what I’m talking about.”
“It is vital that you cooperate,” Not T’Prin persisted, calmly.
“Not really. Whatever’s going on here, we’re not—”
“Oh crap,” Denella piped up, putting the pieces of the puzzle together in her mind, “It’s a warship. And we’re on our way to Vulcan.”
“We are?” Natasha asked.
“We are,” Not T’Prin confirmed, “Sokar’s intention is to launch an attack from orbit. They cannot be allowed to succeed. There are eighty-six of Sokar’s loyal followers onboard. I cannot call for backup while the ship is cloaked. Communications are completely locked down. We must get to the cloaking device and disable it immediately.”
Jirel maintained his unconvinced expression, despite the seriousness of the situation.
“We must assist,” Klath managed with a groan.
He tried to stand up from the bed, but fell back down in pain, angrily waving away Natasha’s attempt to help him. Jirel gestured from Not T’Prin to the Klingon.
“As you can see,” he remarked, “We’re not exactly in fighting shape. Plus, this isn’t our fight.”
“They have made it our fight, Jirel,” Klath countered, “Only a coward leaves a battle halfway through.”
The Trill turned and looked at the faces of the rest of his crew, all of whom seemed equally as committed as the Klingon. “What? Are you all ganging up on me now?”
“Klath makes a good point,” Denella shrugged, “Plus we need to find Sunek.”
“Your pilot,” Not T’Prin nodded, “It is possible that he is part of this now as well. Sokar is quite skilled at manipulation. That is the reason that the V’Shar have been monitoring him for so long.”
“What sort of manipulation?” Natasha asked.
“He is in great emotional turmoil,” Not T’Prin continued, “But he has found a way to channel that into others by melding with them. I was able to resist and remain undercover only thanks to my mental training. But members of the V’tosh ka’tur are not as disciplined. Their minds are already in disarray, and Sokar has been able to use that to great effect.”
“Mind control,” Natasha muttered with a shudder.
“Not entirely accurate,” the Vulcan woman said with a raised eyebrow, “But an acceptable simplification.”
“And only the mentally strong can resist,” Klath muttered, a serious look on his face, “Sunek is in great danger.”
Jirel smiled despite himself, then sighed as he realised he didn’t have a choice.
“Ok, so, in summary: You’re saying we need to get out of here, fight our way through dozens of angry Vulcan terrorists, rescue our idiot pilot, destroy a Romulan cloaking device and prevent a mentally unstable guy with mind controlling powers from carpet bombing Vulcan, armed with two disruptors and half a Klingon?”
Natasha shrugged. Not T’Prin raised a second eyebrow. Klath stifled a grimace. Denella just smiled in acceptance.
“One of our quieter deliveries,” she replied.
* * * * *
The storm continued to rage.
The tempest of the Voroth Sea surrounded him, as he stood on the deck of the ship. A saline taste hung in the air from the frothing cauldron of a sea below.
Sunek was no nearer finding balance in this scene than he had been before. But to some extent, that no longer seemed to matter. Because he now found himself embracing the fury.
To an extent, this was a little bit troubling. While Sunek didn’t have a lot of time for meditation these days, he knew enough about it from his youth to know that fury wasn’t really supposed to be a big part of any sort of meditation. And yet, here he was.
Another wave crashed into the ship, sending the deck under his feet pitching upwards. He struggled to keep himself from toppling over, never mind any thoughts of perfect harmony. It was a terrifying experience. But it was also exhilarating. He may have felt angry, but he felt all the stronger for it.
And yet, as he embraced the chaos all around him, he still found part of himself questioning what he was doing. Deep down, part of him knew that this was wrong. That this wasn’t who he was. Or at least, this wasn’t who he thought he was. Or was it? Sunek decided to push those questions to the back of his mind.
The deck pitched again. He felt himself falling.
And then he was back in T’Len’s quarters on the Tolaris. His session of angry meditation brought to an abrupt end.
“Are you ok?” he heard her ask him from where she sat at the table.
He didn’t answer immediately. Because he didn’t know the answer. In the end, as he turned around to her, he decided to stick to what he did know.
“I fell over,” he said simply.
She smiled gently and gestured for him to join him. A selection of Romulan food lay on the table in front of her. He didn’t recognise any of it, but he sat down and ate a spoonful of something that was either a surprisingly sweet soup or a surprisingly savoury pudding.
“It happens,” she offered, “But it’s such a potent feeling, isn’t it? To really channel the true nature of the Voroth Sea? The power of the storm? The strength of the thunder?”
Sunek smirked. It wasn’t like his old smirk. This one was more like the one that the rest of the Tolaris crew favoured. A crueller, darker smirk.
“Yeah,” he nodded, “Makes me feel…alive.”
“And you are only at the start of your journey,” T’Len said wistfully, “The feeling only grows and grows the more that Sokar melds with you.”
Sunek considered this for a moment.
At the back of his mind, where he had pushed all those questions, there was a tiny voice. A tiny voice that he had decided to christen Old Sunek, but who Old Sunek just knew as Sunek. Whoever the tiny voice was, it was starting to become a serious irritant. Because Old Sunek really didn’t like what was happening. But Sunek himself, who Old Sunek had decided to christen New Sunek, but who Sunek now just knew as Sunek, just wanted more.
He revelled in the anger, he wanted the rage, he craved the violence.
“Do you want that?” T’Len asked gently from the other side of the table, as she idly chewed on a piece of Romulan fruit, “Do you want those feelings to grow?”
Old Sunek didn’t want that, and he made that very clear. Or, at least, he would have made it clear if he could have. But he couldn’t. Because now he lived in the back of his mind.
New Sunek was in control now. A Sunek born of his first meld with Sokar. A version of himself that was stronger than Old Sunek, thanks to the pain that he had been shown and the anger that he had been given.
And it was this Sunek, rather than Old Sunek, who stared back at T’Len and nodded.