Chapter Text
Part One (Cont’d)
Natasha picked her way through the undergrowth of the mysterious forest, doing her best to scan through the radiation with the ancient tricorder she had picked out from the Bounty’s rather underwhelming manifest.
As they walked, she tried not to think too much about how, the last time she had been in a forest with Jirel and Klath, they had run into a pack of rogue Jem’Hadar soldiers. This was going to be a much better field trip than that one, she told herself.
So, instead, she pictured her late father, the archaeologist, boldly stepping through the overgrown ruins of an ancient civilisation, or searching for a clue to some long-forgotten interstellar treasure. Even if she didn’t hold out much hope of finding either of those things on this particular planet.
Klath and Jirel followed in her wake. The Klingon had his trusty bat’leth slung behind his back, but aside from that, they hadn’t seen the need to arm themselves.
They mostly walked in silence, save for an occasional growl of annoyance from the Klingon every time Natasha stopped for a closer inspection of a particular instance of the local plant life. It was something that was happening far too often for his liking.
“Wait,” she exclaimed out of nowhere, as if to underline Klath’s unspoken point, “I wanna get a closer look at this one.”
Jirel diligently stopped and smiled as she carefully stepped over to the foot of a tree to their right, tricorder raised in preparation. His walking companion at his side found the scene significantly less endearing.
“This is insufferable,” the Klingon growled.
“No,” Natasha replied with a patient smile, “This is lunch.”
She reached under one of the leaves of the plant that she had been scanning and snapped off three pieces of fruit, handing her companions one each. They eyed it dubiously. It was a small cylindrical object, deep blue in colour, with asymmetrical semi-circular lumps running along the outer skin. All things considered, it wasn’t winning any prizes for its looks.
“Ok, granted, it doesn’t look like much,” Natasha conceded, “But the tricorder says it’s perfectly safe.”
“The tricorder that’s not working properly cos of all that yummy radiation?” Jirel asked, “Also, cos it’s one of our tricorders?”
She shook her head and gestured to the readings she had been able to gather. “Like Denella said, short-range scans seem to be mostly fine. It’s just the wider stuff that’s affected. And it says it’s perfectly safe to eat. So, let’s enjoy this little slice of an unexplored world.”
She smiled in satisfaction, then took a healthy bite from the fruit in her hands. Klath and Jirel followed suit.
During his misspent youth with his adoptive parents on Earth, Jirel had once been challenged by a friend to eat a portion of B’kaazi reklor. A dish from the B’kaazi people which involved fermenting the meat of one of their most common farm animals under the sun for six days straight, completely unprotected from the elements, save for a simple wrap of aromatic plant leaves.
The resulting meal is considered a particularly choice delicacy by the B’kaazi, but to every other species in the Alpha Quadrant, the reklor’s offensive smell and even more offensive taste renders it virtually inedible.
It remained the most disgusting thing that Jirel had ever eaten. Until now.
“Oh. God. No,” he managed to splutter, before he spat out the entire mouthful of fruit onto the forest floor and hurled the rest of the offending foodstuff away.
He looked over to see Natasha hastily retreating behind the tree they were standing next to, and promptly vomiting loudly.
“Good find, doc,” he coughed, “Your tricorder picking up any delicious natural springs of flesh-eating acid to wash that down with?”
After taking a moment to compose herself, she staggered back over with as much dignity as she could muster, waving an accusing hand at the tricorder. “It can tell if it’s edible. Not what it tastes like.”
The pair of them turned to see Klath still merrily munching on his own piece of fruit. After a second, he looked up, slightly puzzled by his sudden fascinated audience. “Delicious,” he stated simply, “This may have been a worthy mission after all, doctor.”
He reached down with a hulking arm and snapped off two more of the pieces of fruit, devouring the first one whole. Natasha felt a fresh wave of nausea rising in her body.
“Well,” Jirel said weakly, “At least Klath’s lunch is sorted.”
Just as the Klingon tore into the other piece of fruit, he suddenly froze in position. His warrior instincts kicked in as he sensed something moving in the undergrowth.
“What’s the matter?” Jirel whispered.
He was familiar with that look from his tactical chief. It usually meant trouble.
Klath dropped the second piece of fruit to the ground and reached for his bat’leth, as he scanned the undergrowth for signs of danger. He didn’t offer an answer.
But Natasha did. Or at least, her tricorder did. “Um,” she said, in shock, “I’m picking up lifesigns. Close by. Heading this way.”
The former Starfleet officer realised in horror that they had landed on an inhabited planet. Potentially a pre-industrial planet. One of the biggest galactic violations it was possible to commit. She was equally horrified to see that Jirel seemed entirely unaffected by this news.
“Oh, is that all?” he replied, tapping Klath on the arm, “Hey, Klath, put the big scary bat’leth away, ok? The natives might be friendly.”
“Why the hell are there natives here in the first place?” Natasha hissed as the Klingon reluctantly lowered his weapon, “Why didn’t we check that before we landed?”
“Because, if you remember, we were kinda busy at the time. With the whole ‘big explosion, lots of shaking about, oh crap we’re going to die’ thing we had going on.”
“But,” she shot back, “If this is a pre-warp civilisation, then we’re potentially contaminating—”
“Relax, ok?” Jirel sighed, “We do this sort of thing all the time.”
The stare he got from Natasha as he made that statement was sharp enough to cut him. He realised his mistake immediately, and managed an awkward cough.
“Did I say ‘all the time’? I meant to say that we’ve never previously done anything like this before. Ever. So, um, lifesigns, you say?”
Natasha’s stare got even more intense, as she felt a sudden urge to wrap the vintage tricorder in her hand around the Trill’s head. But before she had a chance to do that, or to query his first answer any further, the impromptu away team found themselves surrounded. On all sides, light blue faces emerged from the undergrowth.
There were at least a dozen of them. They all wore simple cotton-like clothing and looked roughly humanoid in appearance, albeit with thin bony ridges running around the top of their head and disappearing underneath their hairline. And they were clearly from a pre-warp civilisation. By some considerable distance.
Natasha was principally worried about two things. Her primary concern was the fact that they were committing a fairly substantial act of cultural contamination just by being here. A human, a Klingon and a Trill marching through the backyard of a pre-industrial civilisation who were likely yet to fully comprehend the concept of their own planet, never mind anyone else’s.
And her secondary concern was tangentially connected to that. If these people really had never seen a human, a Klingon or a Trill before, then why were they all smiling?
One of the aliens stepped forward as the others watched on. She looked around at them, and gave the scowling Klath a slightly wide berth, but she clearly wasn’t afraid of them. Instead, she stepped straight up to Jirel and smiled even wider.
“Um,” the Trill offered with an uncomfortable shrug, “We come in peace?”
“Oh, for the love of…” Natasha muttered under her breath, accompanied by a roll of her eyes.
The alien ignored the comment, and instead gently reached out her hand and ran her fingers down the spots on the side of Jirel’s face, before turning back to her colleagues in excitement.
“It is him! The spotted man! He has come to us!”
Klath and Natasha shot confused looks at Jirel, who looked as perplexed as they were about the whole situation.
“I swear,” he managed, “I’ve never seen her before.”
All of a sudden, the rest of the blue-skinned figures came rushing out of the undergrowth towards him. But while Klath instinctively brought his bat’leth to bear on the potentially hostile hoard, he felt faintly ludicrous for doing so moments later. The aliens surrounded Jirel and hugged him warmly, before they took careful hold of him and hoisted him up into the air, onto the shoulders of two of the stouter male figures.
“Brothers, Sisters,” the original alien continued, “The prophecy really is coming true! We must celebrate! All of us!”
Cheers of joy sounded out from the entire crowd of aliens, which echoed through the forest and bounced off the trees all around them. Natasha watched on with mounting horror as they began to carry the increasingly confused Trill off into the undergrowth.
As they walked off, Klath reached out and grabbed one of the aliens by their arm. The female alien looked up at the larger Klingon, a little wary, but not scared by the situation.
“You…know him?” Klath asked, gesturing at Jirel with a jerk of his head.
“Of course we know him,” the alien replied, a little offended that she had to be asked, “We’ve been waiting for him. Waiting for our saviour!”
Klath didn’t know what to do with that. Nor, despite her Starfleet training, did Natasha.
“Seriously,” Jirel shouted out to them, as he disappeared into the trees, “Never seen them before in my life!”