Chapter Text
Part Three (Cont’d)
Of all the sharpshooters in Prosperity County, Rutox had long considered himself to be the strongest of all. His trigger finger was his pride and joy, and it had served him well for many years.
But, it turned out, Denella’s was even faster.
She may have been taken by surprise by the half dozen armed men that greeted her as she exited the hut, but it had immediately been clear to her that everything in the ranch was at risk. As indeed was everything in the immediate vicinity of the ranch. And so, her own trigger finger had kicked into action.
Just before she raised her hands in surrender, she had swiftly keyed a simple command into the communicator on her belt. Relaying a pre-programmed message not to any individual, but to the Bounty itself.
It was a command that she had put together some time ago, primarily because they tended to leave the ship parked on a lot of planets, more often than not leaving it unguarded. She considered it a miracle that it hadn’t been stolen already. At least, before she had added in her code.
Now it was less of a miracle. Because with a deft touch of her trigger finger, she had put the Bounty into lockdown.
Which wasn’t impressing Rutox, who had dragged her and Zesh across to their ship, only to find that the rear ramp was retracted, and there was apparently no way onboard.
The Nimbosian outlaw growled in frustration as he turned back to where Denella and Zesh stood, guarded by two of the gang members. The other three had been sent around Goodlife Ranch itself, checking for any other off-worlders still lurking around the place.
He stepped right up to the Orion woman, close enough for her to have to repress a feeling of nausea as she felt his fetid breath on her face, though she kept herself as outwardly stoic as possible. “Ok, listen here,” he growled, “Toxis is gonna be here soon. And he’s gonna want those weapons you’ve got inside your ship.”
“What weapons?” she replied with an air of innocence, “We’re pacifists.”
Next to her, she heard the somewhat less calm Zesh groan slightly.
“By the Registrar of the Divine Treasury,” the Ferengi muttered unhappily to himself, “Still making jokes. Even now.”
Rutox’s leer grew a little darker. Denella kept her expression as calm as possible.
“Don’t get smart, off-worlder,” he grunted back, “I ain’t kidding around here. Neither are my boys.”
She felt the sensation of an air-powered rifle being dug into her back, but she didn’t flinch. “I can’t open it,” she offered more seriously, “Not yet. The ship’s been deadlocked. None of us can get in. Not for twenty four hours, anyway.”
It was a lie. The lockdown could be undone at any time with her own personal decryption key, an extra failsafe she’d built in just in case she ever locked everyone out by mistake. But that wasn’t something that she was prepared to reveal to the Nimbosian in front of her.
“What the hell kinda ship is that?” the man with his rifle to her back grouched.
“The kind that doesn’t like strangers.”
Rutox’s eyes narrowed. With a growl of rage, he turned and fired his pistol at the Bounty’s left rear landing strut. Denella felt a choking stab of sympathy pain as the pellet struck the strut with enough power to pierce the metal. After a second, a trickle of lubricating fluid began to ooze out.
Her baby was bleeding.
“L—Listen,” Zesh piped up, “I think we can work this out. If you give me access to a computer terminal, I have a small quantity of latinum that I can transfer to you, or your superiors, within three business days—”
The forceful jab of a rifle into his back stopped his negotiation before it had even got started.
Rutox turned back to Denella with a sudden look of inspiration, and wagged a stumpy dirt-streaked finger at her.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not—”
Before she could back up her first lie with further untruths, Rutox turned and now pointed his pistol at Zesh’s tender head.
“Lie to me again, and I pull the trigger.”
“A—Actually,” the Ferengi stammered, now finding two weapons were being pointed at various parts of his body, “I think if I pay an extra transaction fee, I can get the transfer completed overnight—!”
“Now,” Rutox continued, ignoring Zesh’s pleas, “Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna let us into this ship of yours, and you’re gonna fix that water pump you’re hiding back there. And you’re gonna do both before Toxis gets here, otherwise your friend gets a hole in the head. Ok?”
There was a tell-tale hiss from the pistol, indicating that he had cocked the weapon again. On the other end of the weapon, Zesh started to wail quietly.
Denella licked her lips, processing the fact that the outlaws seemed to know about the pump while ignoring the wider psychological implications of how she perhaps felt a touch less concerned about Zesh being shot than she was about the Bounty getting shot again.
Rutox, meanwhile, showed no sign of moving his pistol.
“Ok,” she nodded eventually, “I’ll do what you want. Starting with the pump.”
Rutox’s face darkened still further. “Your ship—”
“Pump first,” Denella insisted, hoping she wasn’t pushing her luck too far, “It’s a way bigger job, so if that boss of yours wants both things done before he gets here, I’d suggest you let me prioritise that. Trust me, I’m an engineer.”
The burly Nimbosian stared at her with an expression that made Denella worry that her final attempt to buy some time wasn’t going to work. But eventually, he retracted his pistol from the Ferengi’s head and nodded, just as the three man search party returned.
“No other folks here,” one of them gruffly reported, “Whole ranch is clear.”
Rutox nodded in satisfaction, then idly gestured to Denella and Zesh with his pistol. “Take these two back to the pump and get them to work. And keep a close eye on them. They try anything, shoot ‘em.”
He looked down at the quaking Zesh with a cruel smile.
“This one first.”
The men nodded. Two of them grabbed Denella and Zesh by their arms and began to march them back across the baking expanse of Goodlife Ranch. Denella allowed herself a momentary sigh of relief, glancing at the still-fearful Zesh and offering him a supportive smile and a nod.
It was still a pretty hopeless situation, but they’d bought some time for the others. Not only for Jirel, Klath and Natasha, wherever they were over in the town and whatever they were getting up to. But also for Sunek, who was still hiding out somewhere.
She just prayed that one of them had a plan.
* * * * *
Sunek didn’t have a plan.
In fact, all he’d really managed to do since he had peered out of the hut through a crack in the door and seen Denella being led away by a group of armed Nimbosians was hide.
He had at least done a good job of hiding, even if Sunek did say so himself.
He’d managed to squeeze through a gap in the metal panelling at the rear of the water pump’s hut moments before three of the men had burst in to conduct their search. And had then continued to flit from cover to cover in the late afternoon sun, staying one step ahead of the search party until they had completed a full lap of the entire ranch.
Finally, as the men had returned to their colleagues, presumably satisfied that their extensive search was complete, Sunek had hidden himself away in one of the ranch’s storage sheds near the outskirts of the habitat. Here, he was confident that he could remain hidden while he put his plan into operation.
Except, Sunek didn’t have a plan. Which was proving something of a hindrance as far as his plan to put his plan into operation was concerned.
Trying to find some sort of inspiration, he had completed a quick inventory of the shed he had randomly holed himself up in, hoping to find some sort of weapon, or a transporter pad, or some comms equipment with which he could signal the others for help.
But his search had yielded nothing like that at all. Instead, all he had found was some old, worn out soil reclamators, stripped of most of their useful parts, a few crates of empty seed pods, and a few mostly dried out containers of fertiliser and chemicals.
Presumably, a former owner of the ranch had actually attempted to grow something out in the middle of the desert at some point. And presumably they had failed.
But much to the chagrin of Sunek, and the incredibly heroic and cunning plan that he didn’t have, the same former owner hadn’t thought to invest in any weaponry, or a communications console, or even a transporter pad. Which, as far as Sunek was concerned, was an unforgivable oversight.
The Vulcan sat down cross legged on the warm sandy ground inside the shed and sighed, staring at the meagre supplies he had in front of him.
Inside, he could feel the anger starting to rise again. Born of the frustration he was feeling.
He was roused from his frustrations by a noise from outside. He scampered over to a gap in the metal sheeting of his latest hideout to peer out at the rest of the ranch, worried that he might have to make another swift exit. But instead, he saw a gaggle of people walking back over to where the water pump was housed. Denella and Zesh were being marched there at gunpoint.
The frustration inside Sunek rose a little further. The anger began to ferment.
He saw his friends in danger. He saw that they were hopelessly outnumbered against the hostile forces that had entirely swamped the ranch. And he saw that he had no chance to get back to the Bounty.
He definitely needed a plan.