Chapter Text
Part Four
Sunek stood on the deck of the ancient Vulcan sailing ship as it gently drifted across the surface of the Voroth Sea.
He exhaled as quietly as he could, as he listened to the calm waves gently lapping against the wooden frame of the hull, and focused on maintaining his balance on the slowly rolling boards underneath his feet.
He couldn’t help but feel faintly ridiculous standing there like that. Mainly because he wasn’t actually standing there like that. He was still back in the sweltering confines of the storage shed he was hiding in back on Goodlife Ranch.
But he needed to focus on his plan. The one that he still didn’t have. And so, with his anger and frustration again threatening to bubble over and ruin his concentration, he had retreated back to this old meditation technique from his youth. The one that he had found himself returning to since his run-in with Sokar.
Sokar had used the technique for more nefarious means within his followers. He asked those Vulcans in his thrall to see the Voroth Sea as it really was back on their homeworld, a violent and unfettered tumult, which ancient ships had only dared navigate at great risk.
As far as he had been concerned, it was downright hypocritical, not to mention inherently illogical, for Vulcans to teach their children meditation with such an inaccurate view of the Voroth Sea, and a perfect example of the disease at the heart of a Vulcan society that treated emotions as something to be suppressed and purged.
But as Sunek had recovered from his encounter with his former friend, he had come to see that the logic of the scene was in the peace itself. If you could picture serenity in the chaos of the Voroth Sea, you could control anything.
Which made sense to Sunek now. More so than it used to when he was a child.
Except now, whenever he pictured himself on the deck of the ship, the scene was never entirely tranquil and peaceful, as it was supposed to be. And he was never entirely in control.
He opened his eyes and stared out across the clear expanse of water. And saw the storm on the horizon. And he sighed.
He had pushed it back, forced it to retreat for the time being. But that was all he had done. Sunek chewed his lip, lost in thought for a moment. Because there it was. In the distance. Where it always was.
Feeling like it was waiting to explode into action.
And then he opened his eyes for real, and looked down at the mish-mash of empty seed pods, stripped-down reclamators and the dregs of various industrial fertilisers and chemicals that lay haphazardly on the ground in front of him. And he allowed himself a quiet but unmistakably Sunek-ian chuckle as he put together the jigsaw puzzle in his mind.
At long last, he had a plan.
Now he just needed to use his Vulcan intellect, the part of his brain that he was usually least interested in using, to figure out the details.
So he went to work, opening up one of the seed pods and examining the bottles for some sort of clue as to what was inside them.
For the time being, as he worked, his anger was forgotten. The storm had almost disappeared. In fact, he was actually happy, because he’d figured it all out. Everything was going to be ok, and it was all thanks to him.
And then, from outside the shed, he heard the gunshot.
* * * * *
Denella watched on in silent horror as the hefty body slowly slumped to the ground in an undignified heap.
For his part, Toxis felt a slight pang of regret at what had just happened. Despite how quickly he had acted. As he gently reloaded his pistol with a tell-tale hiss of air, he stepped forwards and stared down at the still, unmoving form in the sand. He gently stretched out a dusty boot and prodded it slightly, quietly affirming that his shot had been fatal.
“Shame,” he muttered to himself, as he chewed his tobacco.
Denella stared down at the man’s body, feeling a rush of outrage inside her at the savage and unnecessary death she had just witnessed.
“You didn’t have to do that!” she spat out at the gaunt leader of the gang that had now doubled in number since Toxis’s arrival a few minutes earlier.
Toxis kicked the body again for good measure and shook his head.
“A damn shame.”
He turned back to the Orion engineer, who struggled against the two men standing either side of her and restraining her out in the middle of the ranch. Next to her, Zesh was whimpering quietly.
The sun was starting to set now, and the shadows around the ranch were lengthening. Though there was no end to the oppressive heat.
Toxis seemed at ease with the climate though. More so even than the other Nimbosians. He stepped up to the defiant green-skinned woman and the more fearful Ferengi and leered at them.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Denella repeated more quietly.
“Afraid I did,” Toxis retorted, “And that was all on you, off-worlders.”
Denella scoffed as she looked back down at the unmoving body of Rutox in the dirt. It turned out that it was him that had run out of time.
“See,” Toxis continued, “If you’d have just done what Rutox asked you to do, he wouldn’t have let me down like that. And that was twice he’d let me down.”
He punctuated that comment by glancing around at the other members of his gang that stood around the ranch, making sure they were all taking that comment in.
It had brought him no joy to shoot a man as loyal to him as Rutox. Men like that were a rare commodity in Prosperity County. Nevertheless, he had his rules. And he also knew that an act like that would send a message to the rest of his men. Anyone considering challenging him or defying him now that he had the ranch and the off-worlders under his control.
Nothing could have underlined his ruthlessness more.
For her part, Denella returned her gaze to Toxis, staring at his deep blue eyes underneath the peak of his hat with a look of impotent rage. She balled her fists up and felt herself shaking. She was perfectly used to death and to killing. A lot more so than she’d like to be. But it was the senselessness of the act she’d just witnessed that had so outraged her.
“Course,” Toxis continued, casually pacing off to one side, “I could always have killed you. After all, you’re the ones that are defying me, aren’t you? But then, I do kinda need you to get into that ship of yours.”
He turned back to Denella and stared darkly at her.
“And I am going to get into that ship of yours. And I’d rather do it without having to kill any other folks, understood?”
“Y—You know,” Zesh stammered, “I have a cousin who runs a supply route in the Badlands, he’s always on the lookout for personal bodyguards. Pays a very handsome salary—”
Not for the first time today, the Ferengi’s improvised attempt at negotiating was silenced by a pistol being pointed at his head. On the other end of the pistol, Toxis kept his focus on Denella.
“But I’m always willing to kill some more if that’s what it takes to get the message across.”
The Orion woman mentally calculated the likelihood of her being able to surprise the tall Nimbosian and disarm him before any of his cohorts were able to shoot her or Zesh.
Although the others she could see in her peripheral vision didn’t have their weapons ready, she concluded that there was zero chance of that being successful. Even if she did wrest the pistol from Toxis, there would still be plenty of time for his cohorts to shoot them before she’d even had a chance to run for cover.
“Ten…nine…” Toxis began.
Upon hearing the countdown, a bead of nervous sweat dripped down Zesh’s face, past the barrel of the pistol that was still pointed squarely at him.
“Um,” the Ferengi managed, “Denella?”
“…Eight…seven…”
Denella idly wondered whether letting the bandits onto the Bounty would actually prove a tactical advantage, whether she could use the home soil to her benefit.
“…Six…five…”
She quietly cursed herself for not building more failsafes into the ship. Once they were inside, the weapons would be theirs.
“…Four…three…”
“Denella!”
But that couldn’t be helped.
“…Two…”
She grimaced and nodded, ending the countdown in its tracks, to the relief of Zesh. She didn’t need to be a champion Tongo player like him to see when the cards were stacked against her. She’d bought all the time she could.
Which, as it turned out, was just the amount of time that had been needed.
In the sudden silence that followed the end of the countdown, everyone inside the ranch heard a curious clanging sound. A metal object haphazardly hitting a sandy surface. They all turned as one to see a small cylindrical object rolling gently towards them.
Nobody had seen where it had come from, but based on the trajectory, it had probably been thrown from one of the sheds on the far side of the open ground they were standing on.
But nobody really had any time to contemplate the origins of the object any further than that.
Because then Sunek’s bomb exploded.