Chapter Text
Part Three (Cont’d)
“I get it. We’re in trouble. But you’ve got to admit, this is still kinda—”
“Do not say it.”
“—Cool.”
Klath grunted deeply unhappily. He had said it.
They were trapped alone in the back room of the Bar of Plenty, having both been firmly tied up to a pair of rickety wooden chairs with the thick lengths of rope that Bri’tor had sourced.
Since Toxis and his goons had left for the ranch, Klath had spent all of his time straining against his restraints in an effort to break free. And he really believed that he was making progress.
He may not have actually been making progress, but he believed that he was. And that was enough to keep him going for the time being.
But while the Klingon had been doing that, Jirel seemed uninterested in either attempting or deluding himself into believing he was attempting escape. Despite the Trill’s worried realisation after Toxis had restrained them, he seemed to have lapsed back into being more interested in their surroundings than anything else.
Which, as far as Klath was concerned, was becoming insufferable.
“But, I mean, look at all this, Klath,” he persisted over the Klingon’s growls over exertion, “We’ve been tied up! By a ruthless gang of outlaws! In a saloon! No holding cell, no forcefields, none of that crap. Just good, old-fashioned—”
“Rope,” Klath growled as his restraints dug further into his wrists in his latest attempt to weaken them, “Yes, I am aware. And it appears well constructed. I cannot find a weakness.”
Jirel kicked his feet in the dirt, ignoring any fleeting embarrassment at the sound of his ever-present spurs jangling. “It’s just all so real, y’know? So visceral. The smells, the look, the feeling of—”
“Jirel,” Klath persisted, “We must focus on escaping and getting back to help the others. Your plan has failed.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it ‘failed’ as such—”
“It has failed!” the Klingon snapped, “It was a tactically poor decision which put us in a position of weakness. All because you have allowed whatever inexplicable interest you have in this place to cloud your judgement.”
Jirel went to offer another comment, but the Klingon’s frustrations were now boiling over.
“The doctor was correct. This is not a holosuite program. This is a serious situation. And I feel ashamed that I did not point this out more forcefully earlier. A good warrior should always seek to challenge a battle plan when there are signs of weakness.”
With that, the Klingon growled deeply as he again threw all of his strength into breaking his restraints, suppressing a wince at the flare of pain coming from the wound caused by the pellet.
In the other chair, Jirel considered Natasha’s comments from earlier again. The ones that he’d been trying his best to ignore. And he sighed. “Ok, fine. You’re right. But stop doing that. You’re gonna sprain something.”
“Do you have a better plan?”
“I dunno, maybe? You know how it is when we get captured. Something always turns up for us.”
Klath craned his neck around to the Trill with an unhappy glare and a sarcastic grunt.
“I wish to challenge that battle plan as well.”
“Alright, fine, what do you suggest, hmm? Seeing as how the Incredible Hulk act isn’t working out for you over there?”
The Klingon reluctantly paused in his latest attempt to escape via brute strength alone, and scanned the room as best as he could, the cogs starting to turn in his brain. He gestured behind Jirel with an awkward nod of his head.
“If you can get to that shelf behind you and knock that crate of bottles onto the floor, they should break on the hard floor.”
“And then?”
“Then, I will use my weight to rock myself hard enough to fall to the ground, and if I can grab a shard of glass with one of my hands, I should be able to use that to cut through my bonds. That will allow me to free you as well, then we can use some of the larger shards to overpower the guards outside, take their weapons and fight our way back to—”
Just as Klath was really beginning to believe in his increasingly elaborate plan, they suddenly heard two loud thumping sounds from outside. Although neither of them could be sure, it sounded similar to what you’d expect to hear when two burly Nimbosian guards suddenly collapsed to the floor. Moments later, there was a different noise. The sound of the stout wooden door’s locking mechanism being deactivated, and the heavy door itself being opened.
The two restrained men watched on as a curious gaggle of individuals entered the room. They recognised the bartender that had tied them up before. They also vaguely recognised the man they had seen exiting the bar earlier with a bloodstained shirt on. Neither of them recognised the cat-like woman in the nurse’s outfit, nor either of her cleavages.
But they both definitely recognised the woman in the middle of it all.
“Would you look at the state of you two idiots,” Natasha sighed.
As Bri’tor rushed over to untie the two prisoners, Jirel and Klath looked back at their colleague with no small amount of surprise.
“The guards?” Klath asked.
Natasha smiled and nodded over at the woman in the nurse’s outfit.
“We brought those fellas a drink,” Kitaxis explained, “With a little something from the medicine cabinet in there. I’m always amazed what boys’ll drink if a girl says the right things to them.”
As Bri’tor finished untying the pair of them, Klath glanced over at Jirel, who offered him a shrug and the slightest of grins.
“See, Klath? Something always turns up for us.”
* * * * *
“Lissepians!”
Zesh’s frustrated voice reverberated around the hut, even as the taller of the two goons that had been sent to keep an eye on him and Denella kept his pistol pointed at him. But the weapon had been trained on Zesh for so long that it had almost become part of the scenery, and so despite the continued threat, the Ferengi was at a point where he felt confident enough to pace around on the dusty ground, lamenting their situation.
The goon, for his part, seemed perfectly happy to let him do what he needed to do. He absently chewed on a metal toothpick and watched him rant with ill-concealed amusement.
“I knew I should have hired Lissepians! Lissepians wouldn’t have come up with some stupid plan, or wanted to ride around on horses. Lissepians would have just guarded the place, like I was paying them to do! They’re never any trouble!”
Denella paused in her repairs to wipe the sweat from her brow. “You know,” she offered, with a trace of amusement, “I’m starting to feel a little insulted.”
Zesh wasn’t in the mood for banter. He just continued to pace, stomping his feet into the dirt to underline his point.
“And the jokes!” he snapped, “Lissepians wouldn’t make so many jokes! They actually take their work seriously.”
The Ferengi paced onwards on his never-ending tour of the hut, gesturing at the amused goon as he began his next lap.
“I mean, this was exactly what I didn’t want to happen! This is precisely the thing I hired you all to help stop from happening!”
“You were on the Bounty for a while, Zesh. You should have known that we’re not very good at any of this.”
The Ferengi paused and fixed her with an unimpressed glare. He really wasn’t in the mood for banter.
Denella shrugged apologetically. Truth be told, she wasn’t much in the mood for it either. But she was starting to get a tad concerned that regardless of how effective a coping mechanism it was for him, Zesh’s constant complaining was going to end up annoying their guards.
Initially, she had tried to buy them some more time by playing dumb, and conducting the remaining repairs as slowly as possible. But despite appearances, the goons assigned to watch them weren’t completely stupid. They saw through that immediately. And with the threat to Zesh’s life still apparent, she hadn’t had much choice than to speed up to something nearer her normal working speed. Which wasn’t good news, because it meant that she was nearly finished.
And then there was nothing standing between her and having to let the gang onto the Bounty.
Seeing that she had momentarily stopped working, the second of the goons stepped forwards and idly brought his own weapon to bear on her.
“Yeah, yeah,” she griped as she grabbed a coil spanner from the ground and ran it over the final set of connections for the replacement filtration system she had just installed.
Frustratingly, even though this was the last big job she had left to do, and she’d been hoping to kill a few hours with it, the unit had nestled perfectly into the housing at the first attempt. For the first time, possibly in the entire history of Nimbus III, it had actually been a completely straightforward repair.
She finished her work with the spanner as slowly as she dared, even as Zesh continued to pace around behind her.
“This is what always happened on the little adventures we used to have,” he whined, “Everything always went wrong because you’d all mess around instead of focusing on the latinum. Rule of Acquisition number—”
Zesh’s audience was spared the reciting of yet another Rule of Acquisition when the door to the hut opened and Rutox stalked in, causing both of the casually slouching goons to immediately jump to attention.
“We done here yet?” he spat.
Denella spied a chance to possibly buy a bit more time. It was a dubious plan, but one that she found had paid off a surprising amount of times over the years. “Nearly,” she offered, “But I’ve run into a bit of an issue with the secondary pump oscillator. I’ll need to completely recompile the configuration on the hydration capacitors and then check each of the isoneutronic linkages with a phased trimetric scan—”
Her improvised stream of consciousness was halted by the sight of Rutox’s pistol pointing at her head, the pistol’s owner looking decidedly unimpressed.
“Don’t give me the fake engineering mumbo-jumbo, off-worlder,” he grunted without a trace of amusement, “This ain’t my first rodeo.”
She didn’t have much choice but to give a curt nod in return. It had been a very dubious plan.
“So,” Rutox persisted, “I’ll ask you again. We done here yet?”
Denella looked back down at the water pump, now basically entirely repaired, and ran through the remaining options she had as far as stalling tactics were concerned. Which didn’t take long, because she didn’t have many.
“See,” Rutox persisted with an ugly grin, “I just got word that Toxis is on his way. And if you’re not done with this, and done opening up that ship of yours before he gets here, then you’re gonna be in real trouble.”
The Nimbosian’s words unsettled her just as much as his grin did, as he casually showed off his rows of rotting teeth.
“You’re out of time.”
Silently, she couldn’t help but agree with him.
* * * * *
“I promise, it’ll be easier the second time.”
Klath considered Jirel’s words as he unhappily surveyed the horse, realising that he had no other way of getting back to Goodlife Ranch. Unless he wanted to walk.
With Natasha having treated and bandaged Klath’s arm, they were now hurriedly preparing to leave, after she had told them all about the small army that she had seen riding off towards the ranch.
After he helped Klath back onto his steed, Jirel turned and saw the third member of their party was still staring back down the main street of Arcadia Falls. “Hey, come on,” he called out, “We’ve gotta get moving.”
“Just one second,” she said, gesturing back into the town, “Kitaxis and Bri’tor said they were going to get something for us.”
Jirel tutted as he looked up at the still-blazing sun, which was starting to creep slowly towards the horizon. “We don’t have time,” he gestured, “We need to get back before the sun sets.”
“And what then?” she countered knowingly, “What’s the new big clever plan to fix all this? And bear in mind that if you suggest a duel at high noon, I am going to feed your head into the next power relay we see.”
Jirel went to respond, then stopped. He actually didn’t have a great answer to that question. Apart from the duel at high noon idea, which sounded very cool.
“We are numerically disadvantaged,” Klath offered instead, “But we have the element of surprise. If we can evade Toxis’s men and gain access to the Bounty, we should be able to rescue the others.”
“See?” Jirel added, gesturing to the Klingon, “Would it kill you to have a bit of positivity like that every now and again?”
“Jirel, what exactly do we have to be positive about? We’ve lost the ranch, the ship, our friends, and we’re hopelessly outnumbered.”
“Maybe,” Jirel replied curtly, “But you’re not helping by delaying us like this. Just because you made a few friends down here. I should warn you, your Starfleet’s showing again—”
“Don’t you dare make this about that again, Jirel. Those people just risked their lives to save you back there!”
“I said thank you, didn’t I?”
“I actually don’t remember. Did you?”
From his precarious position on top of his horse, Klath groaned quietly to himself as the latest round of bickering kicked off, wondering if they were going to keep this up all the way back to the ranch again. And then, as he looked up, he saw something surprising. He gestured back into Arcadia Falls, silencing his two colleagues.
Jirel and Natasha followed where the Klingon was pointing, and stared in shock.
Down the main street came a gaggle of Nimbosians on horseback, all trotting in their direction. Many of the men were unknown to them. Some were dressed up with wide-brimmed hats and dusty jackets, others wore nomad cloaks. All carried weapons of some sort.
But they recognised the leaders, as Bri’tor, Kitaxis and Gr’Ash led the unruly gang up to where the three Bounty crewmates stood in shock.
“Told you we had something for you,” Kitaxis smiled at Natasha.
“What the hell?” she managed back.
“You’re riding out there to stop Toxis?” Gr’Ash offered, “Figured we couldn’t let you do that alone. Especially after what you’ve done for us here.”
He rubbed the freshly-stitched scar on his stomach over his shirt and managed a thankful smile at Natasha.
“We asked around,” Kitaxis added, “Didn’t take long to find a lot of folks in Arcadia Falls who want rid of Toxis’s gang more than you do.”
“But…this is going to be incredibly dangerous,” Natasha persisted.
It was Bri’tor who brought his horse forwards to answer her, glancing back at Kitaxis before he started speaking.
“My wife told me all about what you did earlier. Don’t think this town’s seen kindness like that in a long time. Matter of fact, I’d forgotten what that sorta thing felt like.”
The constricting guilt in Natasha’s gut wrapped itself around her another notch.
“And even though it scares me,” he continued, “Feels like we’ve gotta do the right thing. There’s still some good people down here on Nimbus III, after all.”
He gestured back to the strange mix of grizzled miners, nomads and townsfolk behind him. Natasha looked over at Jirel again with a knowing stare. The Trill immediately knew what she was getting at, but he opted to play dumb. The last thing he needed now was to deal with her Starfleet guilt.
And he definitely didn’t want to deal with the ever-growing gnawing sense he was feeling inside about their whole situation down on Nimbus III.
“Still think we’re the good guys?” she asked pointedly.
He wasn’t sure he did. Not any more. But he wasn’t going to say that. So instead, he adjusted his hat to the most heroic angle he could manage, and swung himself up onto his horse.
“More than ever,” he lied with a grin.
And then he turned and kicked his horse onwards. And the cavalry rode off out of town.
End of Part Three