Chapter Text
Part Two (Cont’d)
Although he’d never admit it to the others, Jirel was genuinely starting to doubt whether he hadn’t accidentally walked into a holosuite program by mistake. Because wherever they went in Prosperity County, everything seemed a little too perfect.
He brought his Nimbosian horse to a gentle halt on the outskirts of their destination and took in the sight of the town.
A creaking wooden sign in front of them indicated that this was indeed Arcadia Falls, adding the seemingly unnecessary information that it contained a population of 357.
A dusty main street ran through the centre of the town, with squat buildings on either side, all made of wood and sheet metal, like the buildings back at the ranch. Several simple signs hung above the doors, advertising the wares that lay within.
The rest of the town’s dwellings, such as they were, surrounded the main road in a simple grid system delineated by narrow dirt roads.
A gentle, dry breeze whipped up trails of sand and dirt down the length of the road. And while Jirel thought it was probably just a trick of his imagination, he swore he could hear someone playing a harmonica somewhere in the distance.
The Trill adjusted his hat against the fierce sun and expertly dismounted his horse, sighing in quiet satisfaction at the scene in front of him.
Alongside him, Natasha drew up and climbed down from her own steed. But she didn’t see the same adventure playground in front of her that the wannabe space cowboy had seen. Instead, she looked beyond the surface level and focused on the details of the threadbare settlement. And she didn’t like what she could see.
She spied a few of the town’s population braving the afternoon sun. A few hunched forms with gaunt, tired expressions nervously flitted in and out of some of the establishments on the main street. They all wore worn and dirty clothes, silently expressing clear signs of poverty.
During her first posting in Starfleet, as a young ensign onboard the USS Tripoli, she had been part of the first away teams on the surface when the ship had helped to liberate a Bajoran labour camp on Ventok II. And while the scenes of suffering she had witnessed there were significantly worse than what she could see in Arcadia Falls, there was a definite familiarity.
It was something in the demeanour of the figures. The slumped shoulders as they moved. In a manner that suggested that they had given up hope. That this was all they were destined for. To struggle to exist in a forgotten town in a forgotten corner of a forgotten planet.
And there was something else that hung in the air as well. Something that she knew all too well. A faint, but unmistakable sense of menace.
“Seriously,” Jirel griped as he glanced over at her worried look, “Don’t ruin this for me.”
She forced her attention away from the unhappy vista she had been confronted with and back to the irritatingly cheery Trill. “Really?” she scoffed as she gestured to the scene, “You still think we’re doing the right thing down here? Taking the latinum and running away? Whatever happened to helping the poor?”
“I’m poor. That’s what the latinum’s for.”
“I’m serious, Jirel.”
She fixed him with a knowing glare. And for a second, his grin slipped, just a fraction. And just for long enough to give Natasha a modicum of comfort that he wasn’t dismissing her take on the situation as entirely as she’d feared. But before she could tug at the thread any further, they were interrupted by the ungainly arrival of the final member of their party.
Klath managed to bring his horse to a stop a short distance from where the others stood, and attempted to dismount, only for the uncooperative beast to shift around at a critical moment in the procedure, causing him to tumble and land in an undignified plume of dirty brown sand.
“Yeah, I take it back,” Jirel grinned, his brief crisis of conscience now forgotten, “You definitely haven’t ridden before.”
Klath growled unhappily as he got back to his feet and dusted himself down with as much dignity as he still had available. “I prefer the transporter,” he stated simply, in a tone that strongly suggested that he wanted no further discussion of the matter.
Jirel stifled a chuckle as he led them over to a stout wooden fence, where the three of them tied their horses securely and left them to graze on the brittle grasses poking through the sand in the shade of the posts.
“Now what?” Klath asked, not unfairly.
Jirel surveyed the main street of the town and chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Well, according to Zesh, we’re looking for the biggest low-life in all of Arcadia Falls. So I say we find the local saloon.”
“Huh,” Natasha griped, “So there really is literally no situation where your first instinct isn’t to find the nearest bar—?”
“Still not letting you ruin this for me.”
Before Natasha could get any more shots in, Jirel started down the dusty street. She and Klath shared a concerned look before following in his wake.
Natasha felt an unsettling feeling as they walked. It felt as though they were attracting a lot of stares. And not just from the few Nimbosians that she could see flitting about, she had an unerring feeling of being watched through every window shutter and doorway that they passed. She could tell from the way that Klath’s hand was now resting on the pistol at his waist that the Klingon’s own battle senses were tingling as well.
It felt odd to see the Klingon without his trusty bat’leth on his back, but even though such bladed weapons weren’t banned on Nimbus III, and despite his preference for more honourable combat, Klath was experienced enough to see that, practically speaking, a projectile weapon was his best bet if anything happened here. Even if he didn’t care much for their construction.
It didn’t take long before Jirel pointed to one specific establishment on their left side. The unassuming building in question looked similar to all the others, but there was a sign hanging over the door that rather optimistically proclaimed the establishment to be the Bar of Plenty.
“I’d say this is the right place,” the Trill grinned.
He went to walk in, only to jump back when two burly Nimbosians came staggering out of the door, almost colliding with Jirel in the process.
“Excuse us, fellas,” one of the Nimbosians grunted, gesturing to the other man, “Something in there must’ve disagreed with him.”
“Huh,” Jirel offered, “Guess we’ll eat elsewhere—”
“Oh my god.”
Natasha’s gasp cut through Jirel’s attempts at levity, and he quickly realised what she meant. They could all now see the dirty red bloodstain on the second man’s shirt.
“A battle,” Klath grunted appreciably, causing the first man to smile wryly.
“A disagreement.”
While Klath pondered this minor technicality, Natasha’s medical instincts immediately jumped into gear, as she took hold of the injured man on the other side and helped to support him. “I’m a doctor,” she said by way of explanation, “I can help.”
“Natasha,” Jirel cautioned.
“Not now, space cowboy,” she snapped back, keeping her focus on her patient, “Is there somewhere we can take him?”
The uninjured Nimbosian looked a little confused, as if offers of help were in shorter supply than water around here. But seeing the determination in Natasha’s eyes, he jerked his head in the direction of another building across the street. “Infirmary's over there, ma’am. Can’t say it’ll do him much good, mind.”
Natasha nodded and started in the direction of the building, almost dragging the two Nimbosian men along with her. She barely got three steps away before Jirel called out again, a clear undertone of concern in his voice.
“Hey, Nat. Remember, we’re not here to—”
“Let me do a little bit of good while we’re down here, Jirel,” she called back, “I’ll catch you up when I’ve stopped the bleeding. Besides, I thought this place was too cool to be dangerous?”
As she walked on, Jirel glanced over at Klath, who shrugged his burly shoulders.
“She will be fine,” he boomed at his suddenly worried friend.
* * * * *
Jirel’s worries about Natasha lasted as long as it took him to step through the doors of the Bar of Plenty. And suddenly, he was enjoying Nimbus III all over again.
As soon as he and Klath walked into the dusty saloon, the low hum of conversation, along with the jaunty music being played on some sort of piano-type instrument in the corner of the room stopped immediately.
Behind the bar, the bald and buck-toothed patron of the establishment nervously paused midway through pouring a drink for a gangly Nimbosian dressed in nomadic robes.
The room wasn’t exactly full, and seemed to betray no sign of whatever violence had just befallen the man they had just met. But in the sudden silence, every customer in the place all turned their heads as one to take in the sight of the Trill and the Klingon, outlined in the doorway.
As Jirel stared back at the throng of haggard patrons, and Klath scanned the room for the most likely threats, the Trill couldn’t help but whisper one word under his breath.
“Awesome.”
With a deliberately exaggerated flourish, he stepped forwards with a confident smile and a friendly tip of his hat.
“Howdy there, folks,” he drawled, rediscovering the worst of his accent in the nick of time, “Don’t mind us. We’re just passing through.”
After a further uncertain moment of silence, which was as much down to the accent as it was anything else, normality resumed. As if someone had unpaused time, the conversations resumed, the music started up again, and the bartender resumed pouring.
Jirel glanced over at his Klingon companion, his confident smile still in place. “See? I know what I’m doing.”
“Now what?” Klath grunted, feeling like he was having to ask that a lot with regards to Jirel's plan.
“Now we, y’know, ask around.”
Klath nodded and took a step forward, only for Jirel to shoot an arm out to stop him and finish up his statement. “But with a bit of subtlety, ok? I get the feeling these people are gonna be anxious around strangers, and we don’t want to get the same treatment that guy outside got, ok?”
Klath nodded in apparent understanding as the two of them made their way over to the bar, with the Klingon still keeping one hand close to his weapon as they walked past the occasional group of watchful men gathered around one of the stout wooden tables.
As they got to the bar, Jirel called the bartender over.
Bri’tor uncertainly approached the strangers, cautiously eyeing them up as he did so while trying to remain as casual as possible to the untrained observer, cleaning the shot glass in his hand with a dirty rag. All things considered, it hadn’t been a particularly violent day so far by the Bar of Plenty’s low standards, aside from the odd disagreement. But as he sized up the two men, he had a feeling that might be about to change.
The strangers were clearly not from around these parts. In fact, they were clearly not from Nimbus III at all. Which tended to spell trouble, as far as Bri’tor was concerned.
Still, he was a businessman first and foremost, inasmuch as one could be a businessman in Arcadia Falls. And so he put on his best welcoming smile as he met the Trill and the Klingon.
“Hey there. What’ll it be, gents?”
Jirel went to reply, but before he could, Klath’s voice boomed out.
“We are looking for a man called Toxis.”
In an instant, the entire establishment was plunged into silence again. Conversations ceased. The music was extinguished. Bri’tor dropped the glass he was cleaning onto the ground where it shattered into a thousand pieces, his welcoming smile vanishing in an instant.
Jirel sighed deeply and shook his head. “Subtlety, Klath. Remember what I said about subtlety.”
The Klingon looked back at the Trill with a slightly put-off expression. “I do not see why we have to—”
“N—Now listen, friends,” Bri’tor stammered nervously, “We can all see you’re new in town. But this is a friendly establishment, you hear? And you really shouldn’t go around saying names like that without—”
Before Bri’tor could get any further, the door to the Bar of Plenty swung open again, with enough force to cause everyone present to turn around as one. And Jirel immediately realised that their search wasn’t going to take very long at all.
Toxis strode into the bar, dressed in dark clothing which didn’t seem to be causing him any discomfort in the Nimbosian heat. His grizzled, pock-marked face displayed an even fuzz of beard growth, and his sunken blue eyes stared back at the newcomers with clear contempt as he slowly chewed on a mouthful of tobacco.
Behind him stood a couple of menacing heavies. All three men were clearly armed, with twin Nimbosian pistols holstered to their waists. But for the moment, they left them there.
“Feels like my ears are burning, strangers,” Toxis muttered with his deep voice as he pushed back his wide-brimmed hat with his thumb.
Klath’s hand twitched closer to his own pistol, the Klingon’s eyes narrowing as he surveyed the three men.
Jirel, for his part, couldn’t help but mutter one single word as he stared back at the dangerous outlaw in his midst.
“Awesome…”