Chapter Text
Part Four
“Really? That’s all I get?”
Jirel scoffed in a not inconsiderable display of offence as he continued to work. To his side, Not T’Prin raised an eyebrow.
“As I have stated, it was an imaginative solution,” she replied, without taking her eyes off her task.
Jirel scoffed again and looked over to the other side of the access hatch, where Denella shook her head patiently.
“Can you believe that?”
“I can definitely now believe that you’re capable of flirting in literally any situation,” she offered, as she finished unscrewing the bolt in front of her.
The three of them, now freed from the limiting constraints of gravity, floated at the very top of the four story room, along with anything in the room that hadn’t been secured to the ground. They were clustered around the access hatch to the access conduit that Denella had spotted, quickly working to unscrew the bolts securing it in place.
“Flirting?” Not T’Prin asked with curiosity, as she detached another bolt and allowed it to float out into the room.
“Ugh, great,” Jirel sighed, “Now we’ve got to explain flirting to the dispassionate Vulcan.”
“No,” she replied, “I received adequate training on the subject before I went undercover. It is a popular activity with emotional beings, after all. But I was not aware that was what you were doing.”
Jirel paused and stared back at the Vulcan, who met his stare with an impassive look. Denella, for her part, stifled an amused chuckle.
“Funny,” he replied, returning to work on the next bolt.
“That is not something I am capable of—”
“Ah, come on,” Jirel continued, “Even though you’ve dropped the whole laughing Vulcan act, you’ve still been joking with us. There’s some emotions in there, I can tell.”
Not T’Prin considered this for a moment as she worked on the next bolt.
“Perhaps I have been undercover for too long,” she offered eventually, “It is possible that the strains of maintaining my character, and the intensity of the melds with Sokar have left some residual emotional aftereffects. When I return to Vulcan, I will ensure I correct this aberration.”
“Isn’t that the problem here?” Denella chimed in, “Seeing that sort of thing as an ‘aberration’?”
Not T’Prin paused again, but this time she didn’t seem willing to offer an answer. They worked on in silence.
His plan, such that it was, had at least bought them some time. The work to cut through the door below them seemed to have slowed considerably since the entire deck had gone zero-g.
“You might have at least let me shoot it,” Jirel muttered eventually, gesturing back down to the distinctly second hand gravity generator below them.
“If I had let you shoot what you intended to shoot,” she pointed out, “We would be dead from asphyxiation.”
Denella failed to suppress this chuckle.
“Yeah,” Jirel said pointedly, “I’d get that aberration corrected, if I were you.”
“We must make haste,” she continued, as another bolt floated away, “It will not be long before the backup gravity generators come online. And then…”
She underlined her point by glancing downwards, at the considerable drop back to the ground underneath them, before continuing.
“Despite the height of the fall, I believe myself and the Orion would survive, with significant injuries. You would not.”
Jirel fixed her with another unhappy glare. “Just so you know,” he offered dryly, “Your flirting game needs work as well.”
Denella went to chuckle again, then coughed slightly, suddenly looking a tad more queasy, and less green, than she usually did.
“You ok?” Jirel asked as his penultimate bolt loosened.
“You know I don’t like zero gravity,” she muttered as strongly as she could.
Not T’Prin cocked her ear again to some faraway noise, before she quickly moved onto the final bolt on her side of the panel. “The backup generator is coming online,” she reported, “Hurry.”
Jirel detached his final bolt, as Not T’Prin and Denella completed their own tasks. They pulled the hatch away from the opening and it joined the bolts in floating away across the room. Not T’Prin half clambered and half swam through the hatch, followed by Jirel and Denella. Seconds later, the three of them dropped the short distance to the bottom of the access conduit, picking up nothing more than a bruise or two.
Behind them, they heard the sound of anything on deck 47 that hadn’t been secured dropping to the floor with a series of loud bangs.
“Plenty of time,” Denella said mirthlessly.
Not T’Prin ignored her, crawling onwards through the conduit.
“We are not far from the cloaking device,” she called back, “If we hurry.”
Jirel got into a crawl and followed closely, awkwardly trying to maintain his professionalism and keep his attention on anything other than the Vulcan behind that was now very much dominating his eyeline.
“I changed my mind,” he called out, “Your flirting game is on point.”
Ahead of him, Not T’Prin raised an eyebrow.
* * * * *
The process of cutting through the door to the maintenance room on deck 47 was taking a lot longer than the group of Vulcans had originally planned.
Firstly, there had been the loss of gravity, which had made their efforts considerably more difficult without access to any dedicated zero gravity equipment.
Secondly, there had been the regaining of gravity, which had not only delayed their work further, but also caused several broken bones when they had all dropped back to the deck without warning. It was standard practice on starships to give plenty of warning before restoring gravity, to give everyone plenty of time to brace themselves. But this was not a normal starship, and up on the bridge, Tepal had brought the backup systems online without so much as a five second warning.
All of which led to a third reason why the task was taking longer than expected. They were all understandably annoyed about reasons one and two, which was having a direct impact on their productivity. One of the disadvantages of embracing your emotions was that it was now very much possible to have a bad day at the office.
Still, none of them had much time to file any sort of grievance, because almost as soon as they had picked themselves up, Sokar had arrived with Sunek and T’Len to oversee the situation personally. And he hadn’t liked what he had seen. And he was armed.
So they were now working through the final few sections of the door, twice as fast as before.
Sunek idly leaned on the corridor wall, spinning his disruptor around in his hand, watching them work without even offering to help.
“This is stupid, you know,” he offered with a yawn.
Sokar spun around in annoyance, while even T’Len looked a little bit irritated. Tensions were running high among every Vulcan out in the corridor, it seemed.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Sokar spat at him.
Sunek’s sneering grin grew wider, revelling in being able to ratchet up the frustration on the faces of the others by making them wait for his answer.
Meanwhile, Old Sunek was busy climbing a wall. Specifically, the wall of anger that was keeping him trapped at the back of his own mind.
He wasn’t physically climbing a wall, he didn’t think. He was pretty sure the thing he was climbing was more of a metaphorical wall.
His reason for thinking that was surprisingly logical, for Sunek. If he was climbing an actual wall, that sounded like it would take a lot of physical effort. Which was not something that Old Sunek really liked doing. In fact, it was something he actively avoided whenever possible. So, it made sense that any wall he was climbing would be merely metaphorical.
But then, he found himself thinking, if it was only a metaphorical wall, then how the hell was he climbing it?
Starting to feel a little bit overwhelmed by the metaphysical conundrum he was at risk of trapping himself in, Old Sunek decided to focus on something less confusing. And continued to either literally or metaphorically climb the wall. At this point, he didn’t care which.
All the while, New Sunek was smiling cruelly at the other Vulcans in the corridor.
“So? Are you going to explain why my plan is so stupid?” Sokar spat, tired of waiting for an answer.
Sunek stood up straight from where he had been leaning on the wall and treated himself to a long, lazy, cat-like stretch.
“It’s stupid,” he said eventually, waving his disruptor at the door, “Because you’re wasting time trying to get where they are, not where they’re going.”
“And where are they going?”
Sunek smirked wider and took off down the corridor, with his disruptor raised. After a moment, Sokar and T’Len followed.
* * * * *
The access hatch dropped down onto the floor of the corridor, some ten feet below. The three figures followed, one at a time, as quietly as they could manage.
Pausing for breath, Not T’Prin, Jirel and Denella scanned their immediate surroundings. The Vulcan woman tilted her head curiously, again hearing something in the distance.
“The cloaking device is close by,” she reported, “But there are more guards on the way. I estimate at least six sets of footsteps.”
Jirel went to reply, but Denella got there before him.
“I’ll deal with them,” she said, checking her disruptor’s power levels, and ignoring Jirel’s grimace.
“Denella—”
“Don’t worry. You focus on the sabotage thing while I give this lot the runaround, and we’ll meet up back at the Bounty, ok?”
Jirel still looked concerned, but he knew his engineer could handle it, and then some. He reluctantly nodded.
“Catch you on the other side,” the Orion woman smiled, before she took off down the corridor with her weapon drawn. After a moment, she was out of sight.
Jirel watched her go with a sigh, suddenly feeling very alone. He turned back to Not T’Prin. “Right then, let’s go break a cloaking device, I guess? I’m assuming it’s as easy as it sounds?”
She led him around the corner and through the first door they came to on the right. It was a wide room, somewhat similar to the engineering level of a starship. Control panels covered in Romulan text dotted the walls, but it was the gently humming cylindrical device in the centre of the room which immediately demanded their attention.
Not T’Prin immediately holstered her disruptor and approached it. “This is it,” she nodded, “Now we just need to—”
“I wouldn’t,” an eerily familiar voice shot back.
Jirel whirled around to see Sunek standing in a doorway on the other side of the room. He was soon joined by Sokar and T’Len. All three of them had disruptors trained on them.
But it wasn’t so much the weapons that surprised Jirel, it was Sunek himself. His twisted leer was without any of his friend’s usual warmth. His entire demeanour seemed darker, angrier somehow. Jirel couldn’t help but suppress a gasp.
“Told you they'd be here,” Sunek continued, “Now, how about you two both just surrender to my pal Sokar here. Cos it’d be a real bummer to have to shoot you.”
Jirel looked back at Sunek’s leer. And found himself doubting whether he really meant that.