Chapter Text
Part Four (Cont’d)
The cavalry charged on through the desert.
Viewed as a whole, it certainly wasn’t the most imposing sight. A haphazard collection of a couple of dozen individuals racing across the scorching sand in a loose huddle, kicking up the dust as they thundered onwards towards their target. But what they lacked in organisation, they made up for in a shared sense of determination.
Klath, his earlier unhappiness with the main mode of transport on Nimbus III now forgotten, rode at the head of the improvised militia, eager to get to the impending battle.
To his side, Jirel kept pace. Mainly to keep an eye on the Klingon’s galloping horse, in case it improvised a new destination for its passenger as it had done on their ride to Arcadia Falls.
Further back, Gr’Ash was keeping a tight grip on his Nimbosian rifle, already drawn and loaded with pellets. He suppressed a wince on each heavy landing as it jarred his scarred stomach, making him doubly committed to not getting surprised as he had been earlier in the saloon.
All around, the other grizzled Nimbosians raced along with them, armed with whatever pistols or rifles they had brought with them. Each one equally determined to come back alive.
As they rushed onwards, Natasha deftly brought her own steed up alongside Jirel’s. The wannabe cowboy, spurs still jangling along with the sound of hooves, did his best to ignore her presence. Mainly because he was pretty sure he knew what she was going to say.
“They’re putting everything on the line for us,” she called out, not caring who else heard.
Jirel stifled a grimace. He’d been right. But despite her latest comment, and his own growing concerns on the same issue, he used the shared sense of determination within the group to keep focused on their objective.
“And they’re getting something in return,” he fired back, “We drive Toxis and his gang away, and they get their town back.”
“Until the next gang of outlaws shows up.”
Jirel failed to stifle the second grimace. He glanced over at the irritatingly benign face of the doctor riding next to him. The face that he really hated to let down. The face that, ever since he had first seen it, seemed to have an unerring ability to cut through whatever facade he attempted to put up, and was somehow able to burrow right down into the deepest recesses of his feelings.
And the face that he was now starting to get seriously annoyed by. Because it was the face of someone that had a point.
“You know what’s really healthy?” he called back, “Suppressing stuff. Trust me. Just take all that pesky guilt and bury it really nice and deep down in that brain of yours, ok?”
“Why, Counsellor, I didn’t recognise you out of uniform.”
“Let’s just…focus on winning our ranch back, ok?”
“Our ranch?”
Before his grimace threatened to permanently take control of his face, Jirel just sighed and kicked his horse on, moving out to lead the pack. He was hoping it looked like the actions of a dashing space cowboy hero, asserting himself at the head of the cavalry.
But in reality, as Natasha watched him move, it just looked like the actions of someone who was fresh out of answers. She shook her head sadly and eased her own horse back, dropping back into the rest of the pack.
Before long, she found Kitaxis and Bri’tor, the couple now risking their lives for the Bounty’s crew, and an awful lot of latinum they were completely unaware of. She felt a familiar gnawing sense of guilt inside, but offered the willing nurse and the meek bartender a supportive smile.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“We were just thinking,” Kitaxis offered back, “About when we used to sit up at night and talk about getting away from Prosperity County for good.”
The level of guilt inside her rose by a few more inches.
“Except,” Bri’tor added with a rueful chuckle, “We never really had an idea of where we’d go, even if we could. Been here for so long, it’s our only home. No matter what happened. Guess we both convinced ourselves things’d get better one day.”
“And,” Kitaxis added as she bounced in the saddle of her steed, “Turns out the universe might have had a plan for us this whole time.”
The guilt rose higher. It felt like it was up to her shoulders.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she offered, silently hoping that they might just agree and ride back to town.
Bri’tor and Kitaxis looked over at each other from either side of Natasha’s own horse, in unspoken agreement over their potentially futile actions.
“All this time since my brother died, we’ve been trying to stay of trouble,” Bri’tor replied, “Just trying to stay safe. But I guess there’s no such thing as staying safe on Nimbus III. So all that's left is to stand up and be counted.”
“Amen to that,” Kitaxis affirmed.
Natasha felt the level of guilt inside her reach her neck. Her lack of response gave Kitaxis an opening to continue.
“Can I ask you a question, honey?”
She nodded back over the thundering of the hooves in the sand below.
“It’s just,” the nurse continued, “One thing we can’t figure out is why you folks didn’t escape from all this while you could. I mean, we might all be stuck here, but you folks have a ship. You could have left Goodlife Ranch any time you wanted.”
The guilt rose so high that Natasha started to feel like she was drowning, straining to keep her head above it.
“I guess we were just wondering what’s so important about this ranch anyway?”
Natasha pictured the precious water pump, back in the hut on the ranch, and the priceless treasure that it contained. She recalled the poverty that she had seen back in Arcadia Falls, the constant struggle and sacrifices that the other Nimbosians had to find fresh water of their own. She thought about the sacrifices this group was now making, not realising that it was all merely in aid of the Bounty’s crew making a healthy chunk of latinum.
The guilt no longer felt like a liquid that was drowning her. It felt solid, crystallising all around her and choking her as it did so.
And she decided that, regardless of whether it was Starfleet guilt talking or not, the Nimbosians she was riding into battle with deserved to know everything.
After all, they were supposed to be the good guys.
“Listen,” she began, “The truth is that—”
“Look!”
Natasha had no idea where the cry had come from, but it snapped everyone’s attention back towards their destination.
They had just entered the valley where Goodlife Ranch was located, and from this distance, it was just about possible to make out the small group of ramshackle buildings that made up the unassuming settlement.
But it wasn’t the ranch itself that their attention had been called to. There was a plume of smoke rising up from within the confines of the ranch, slowly disappearing into the ether.
Whatever had caused it, one thing was immediately clear to every member of the cavalry.
The battle had already started.
* * * * *
Toxis coughed and spluttered to get the dirt and sand out of his mouth as he regained his footing.
The ringing in his ears subsided as he tried to take in what had happened. One second, he had been interrogating the off-worlders, finally about to gain access to their ship, and the next, all hell had broken loose.
All around him, all he could see was smoke and dirt from the explosion. All he could hear were the occasional panicked shout from one of his men, coupled with the occasional gunshot. He had no idea who was shooting, nor at what, but he suspected that they were instinctively firing at shadows, completely disorientated by the situation.
He could no longer see the off-worlders. The green-skinned woman and the bulbous-headed man had entirely disappeared from view.
The grizzled outlaw grimaced and gripped his weapon tightly, blinking through the choking air to try and resolve the scene in front of him.
As the view cleared, he could make out that some of his men had already scattered. The sound of hooves galloping away from them suggested that the explosion had been enough for some of them to immediately cut their losses. Loyalties be damned. But plenty had remained, and were still standing around the expanse of the ranch, coughing and blinking in confusion.
As they saw Toxis through the smoke, they began to make their way over.
It was immediately clear to all of them that their boss wasn’t in a good mood.
“Don’t come this way!” he bellowed, “Get out there, find those goddamned off-worlders, and bring them back to me!”
In an instant, every man stopped in their tracks sprung into action, checking their pistols and fanning out into the ranch, even as the dust cleared further.
Toxis himself gritted his teeth in anger. He had no idea where the bomb had come from. But presumably it had come from a colleague of the off-worlders. Which meant that there had been someone left on the ranch even after his men had seized and searched it.
Which meant that someone had let him down again.
And that made him even angrier. His usually calm and cool demeanour now completely left behind in the dirt.
Just as he prepared to take off and join the hunt, he heard something else over the calls from his men and the residual ringing in his ears. He turned to peer through the smoke, following the sound of clattering hooves, terrified screams from some of his men, and the sound of further gunshots.
The cavalry had arrived.
Toxis prided himself on his eagerness and his willingness to fight. That was what had got him as far as he already had gotten in life.
But something else had gotten him this far as well. A deep sense of pragmatism. He was always willing to fight, so long as the odds were on his side.
So, as his remaining men took on the fresh carnage of an invasion through the chaos left behind by the bomb, and a few more of them took the opportunity to flee from the ranch entirely, Toxis slipped away into the shadows.
* * * * *
There was one thing that the Ferengi hated more than anything else, and that was loud and unexpected noises.
Their wide, bulbous ears and associated keen sense of hearing were often an advantage in their day to day lives, especially around the negotiating table. But they were also constantly at risk from sudden changes in volume, especially when given no time to really prepare.
And right now, Zesh was cursing his biggest assets, as he hid behind one of the outlying buildings at Goodlife Ranch, desperately trying to quell the ringing in his ears.
One of the more shameful events in Ferengi history was the reign of Grand Nagus Utek in the early 22nd century. A paranoid and cruel ruler who had authorised the use of sonic weapons against perceived enemies of the state. Having read about the brutality of the pain as a young student, about how subjects had been sent insane from powerful blasts of sound waves, inflicted on them for crimes as minor as underpaying their respects at the Chamber of Opportunity, Zesh had never really understood what they must have gone through.
But now he was getting a pretty good idea.
The ringing seemed to fill his entire skull, the constant buzzing sound leaving him almost entirely cut off from his most precious of senses.
Keeping his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to resolve the situation, he blinked through tear-streaked eyes, caused by the dust kicked up by the explosion, and tried to figure out exactly where he was.
As soon as the bomb had gone off and everyone had scattered in fear and confusion, Zesh had found himself released from the grip of his captors, and had raced off blindly into the ranch until he had found some cover. He had only made it a few yards before he had tripped and fallen to the ground, seconds before a gunshot had sounded out and a deadly pellet had gone whistling past where he had previously been standing.
After that near miss, he had desperately crawled the rest of the way to cover, operating on his survival instinct alone.
He wasn’t quite sure which building he was behind, but he was pretty sure that he was close to the main homestead. And if he could get there, he at least had a chance to find a weapon and find a way to get to the rest of the Bounty’s crew.
He awkwardly smacked the sides of his head a few times to try and clear the buzzing, which only partly worked. In the distance, he was sure he could just about make out the sound of hooves and further gunshots, but he didn’t have time to contextualise those.
Instead, he crept along, hugging the wall of the building he was behind, finding his way to the corner and feeling glad that the ringing was starting to subside.
He felt less glad of his situation seconds later, when he rounded the corner itself.
And he saw the barrel of the gun.