Chapter Text
Part Two (Cont’d)
Natasha stared down at her tricorder and shook it in frustration.
It wasn’t the first time that she’d taken quite such an agricultural approach to a piece of kit she had sourced from the Bounty. Quite often, she had come to find that it was the only way to get any of it to work. But this time, she knew that it wasn’t the tricorder’s fault. This time, it wasn’t working properly because of the radiation all around them.
Still, it felt satisfying to shake it.
“Anything?”
She looked up to see Klath approaching her, the Klingon looking around guardedly.
Having heard Sister Ryna’s somewhat shocking explanation for the exact purpose of their supposed saviour’s arrival, they had left the ‘spotted man’ to enjoy the rest of the banquet, while they did some digging.
They had walked a short distance away from the main square, stepping into the well-trodden dirt streets that fanned out into the village itself.
With the entire population of the settlement seemingly busy attending the festivities, the streets themselves were deserted, save for the odd Makalite flitting here and there, who tended to be more worried about missing the party than they were the sight of the human and the Klingon.
That aspect of their arrival was still troubling her. Not that she wanted to be seen as a terrifying visitor from another world in a way that would permanently scar the Makalite culture, but the way that they were so entirely accepting of them was unquestionably perturbing.
She forced herself to focus on their most immediate issue, and shook her head in response to the Klingon’s question. “Not really,” she admitted, gesturing to the tricorder, “The radiation is even more intense around here than it was back out in the forest. What have you got?”
She had suggested that they split up to gather as much information as possible. Klath had never struck her as a particularly keen anthropologist, and she had braced herself for more grumbled complaints like back in the forest, but she found to her surprise and satisfaction that he had readily accepted the plan. Unfortunately, as he delivered his report, she realised that perhaps she should have been a bit more clear on what sort of information he was supposed to have been gathering.
“I have completed a full tactical assessment of the area,” he began, “The perimeter line is poorly defended, and their weaponry is primitive. Slingshots and stone projectiles. I do not believe that they pose us a serious threat.”
Natasha stared back at the entirely serious face of the Klingon, as a stray villager scurried past carrying a particularly unthreatening tray of fruit, underlining his analysis.
“Klath,” she sighed, “I meant information about the people, the culture, the—We’re not planning an invasion here!”
“You asked me to see what I could find out," he offered back, "That is what I have been able to find out.”
She sighed in exasperation and gave the tricorder in her hand an extra shake for good measure. “I meant, y’know, ask around. Find out who these people are, and why they seem to have been expecting us. Who’s this ‘Seer’ that Sister Ryna mentioned, and what’s going on with this prophecy of his that Jirel seems to be involved in. That sort of thing. Not a breakdown of their weaponry!”
Klath considered these points for a solemn moment.
“I do not see how that information will aid our attempts to leave.”
Natasha was certain that she felt her cheek involuntarily twitch at that comment, and made a mental note to run a quick medical scan on herself when she got back to the Bounty for signs of stress-related issues.
“Ok,” she replied calmly, “But we’re not leaving just yet. I mean, you heard everything back there. Why the hell do these Makalites expect us to transport them somewhere? And why are they so accepting of the idea of starships and alien visitors?”
Another solemn pause, as Klath considered those points as well.
“I see,” he nodded eventually, “Perhaps that has something to do with their disease.”
He offered that information in an entirely offhand manner, as if it was entirely unimportant compared to the details about the village’s defensive capabilities. Which, as far as he was concerned, it was. But that wasn’t an opinion shared by the curious ex-Starfleet doctor.
“What disease?”
“Most of these…individuals have some sort of disease,” he explained with a slightly reluctant grimace, “One of the males mentioned it to me, as I was enquiring about the existence of any armed outposts in the surrounding hillside.”
She felt another involuntary twitch as she tried to work out why he thought none of this would be important, and idly wondered whether or not she was going to be the first person on record to suffer a tactical report-induced seizure.
“Ok,” she said eventually, summoning up the patience to continue, “I need to take a look at that for myself. That might give us an idea of what we’re dealing with here. In the meantime, you go back and get Jirel. We need to be ready to leave once we’ve figured all this out.”
“Understood,” Klath nodded, “I will continue my tactical assessment on the way.”
“Ugh,” she groaned, “For the last time, we don’t need to worry about the Makalites and their wooden huts—”
“Metal,” Klath pointed out, “The huts are wood and metal.”
Natasha paused and looked around, taking in the glistening pieces of metal that were distributed all over the village for the first time. Inwardly, she cursed herself for missing such a simple piece of information in her own investigations. She’d been so wrapped up in trying to interpret the frustratingly patchy tricorder data that she hadn’t really properly looked around at what she was trying to scan.
Must be getting rusty, she mused wryly.
“Do not worry, doctor,” Klath added to his observation, “They do not appear to have begun using such materials in their weaponry at this stage.”
She wasn’t really listening at this stage. Instead, she walked over to a nearby hut and started to examine the metal supports on either side of the doorway. They looked incongruous compared to the wooden construction of the building. She checked the tricorder data, but it was just as useless as any of her other scans, so she resorted to a visual inspection, and became intrigued.
“Hey, check this out,” she motioned to Klath, who stepped over to her, “This metal. It’s been machined and tooled. And this isn’t just a naturally occurring element. It looks like some sort of compound alloy.”
Klath wasn’t especially interested in those findings. But he had been working hard on his ability to swap small talk with the rest of the crew, given how much it seemed to inexplicably matter to them. So he knew she was expecting a response.
“Interesting.”
He was satisfied that was enough for the time being, and mentally congratulated himself on another fine piece of small talk in his growing repertoire.
“But,” Natasha continued, her focus still on the metal, “There’s no way a civilisation at this stage of development should be able to make something like this…”
“Interesting.”
As far as Klath was concerned, he was acing this particular conversation.
Natasha ran the tricorder across the metal sheet and tutted in frustration at the lack of a result. Even if she had been expecting it. “Ugh. If only we could reconfigure our scans. Cut through the radiation pattern somehow.”
Klath considered whether he should chance a third ‘interesting’ in a row. It seemed especially hypocritical when he was struggling to think of a topic he found less interesting than Makalite building construction. But in the end, he decided to focus back on more important matters.
“Perhaps…I should locate Jirel, as you suggested?”
This snapped her back into the here and now, as she clipped the mostly useless tricorder back onto her belt and stopped her investigation into the metal sheet. “Right,” she nodded, “And in the meantime, I’ll see if I can find out anything about this disease. At the very least, the last thing we want is to catch something while we’re down here.”
They set off in different directions, with Klath heading back to the town square and Natasha heading deeper into the streets of the village. Neither of them noticed as Brother Falor and Brother Makan emerged from behind a nearby hut and started to follow her.
* * * * *
“Mmmf!”
Jirel grimaced at the unexpected force of the hands being pushed into his exposed back. He felt the impact hit him in between his shoulder blades and radiate out, the hands spreading across his back and crushing him as they went.
The Trill was now deeply regretting taking up Sister Ryna’s entirely innocent sounding offer of a traditional Makalite massage.
He hadn’t really fully thought through what such a treatment might entail on this planet as she had gleefully led him to a nearby hut and suggested that the spotted man should make himself comfortable on the large wooden table in the centre of the main room inside. Specifically, he hadn’t really factored in the effect that the slightly higher gravity of the Makalite planet might have on their concept of a delicate touch.
And so, he was in pain. Lots of pain.
“Hnggh!”
He squealed as the Makalite woman enthusiastically slammed the knuckles of her hands deep in between his shoulder blades.
“I have been trained in this practice by one of our healers,” she explained with a merry innocence that belied the fact that Jirel was pretty sure she was about to dislocate his left shoulder, “It brings me such joy to be able to treat you, oh saviour!”
As she slammed her hands down again and again, Jirel tried to respond as best he could without hurting her ever-cheerful feelings.
“That’s great, Sister Ryna. Really - Aack! - Really great. But is there any chance you - Gngh! - You could go just a tiny bit softer?”
Sister Ryna looked a little taken aback at this. After all, she had worked hard and studied for many hours to learn the ways of a true Makalite massage. “Am I hurting you, oh saviour?” she asked as she thumped the Trill’s exposed back again.
“Not so much ‘hurting’ as - Agh! - Just, y’know, maybe a bit less…brute force?”
“But this is exactly how the healer—”
“Gaah!”
“—Taught me that it should be performed.”
Just as Jirel was certain he had felt a vertebrae pop somewhere down his spine, the hut was treated to an extra display of brute force, as the door swung open with enough violence to nearly break it from its flimsy hinges. It was the fourth hut that Klath had walked into in his efforts to locate Jirel, and by this point he was allowing his frustrations to show.
The shock of the entrance caused Sister Ryna to jump back in shock, as Jirel awkwardly scrambled down off the wooden table, grabbing his tunic top where he had left it and holding it up to cover his chest in a curious display of instinctive modesty.
“Klath! Learn how to knock, maybe?”
The unimpressed Klingon glanced from the deeply embarrassed Trill to the mildly perturbed Makalite and back again. Jirel did his best to maintain a semblance of dignity as he pulled his top back on.
“Um,” he managed, “Sister Ryna was just showing me—That is to say she was, um—”
“I was just trying to give pleasure to our saviour!” the Makalite blurted out before Jirel could get any further towards forming a coherent sentence.
He stifled a wince, as Klath folded his arms in front of him, now doubly unimpressed. “That’s—She’s made that sound a whole lot worse than it really is.”
Sister Ryna took a step towards the Klingon, still only slightly wary around him. She offered a smile and gestured towards the table. “Perhaps, as you travel with the spotted man, I could—?”
“Perhaps not,” Klath interjected before she could get any further with her suggestion.
“Hey,” Jirel mustered, “You might actually like it. Hell of a lot of pain involved. I know you’re into that sort of thing.”
As Jirel tentatively swung his shoulders around, checking for broken bones, the Klingon shot him his best withering look, and gestured back out the door with a jab of his thumb.
“We are leaving.”
At this, Sister Ryna looked genuinely scared for the first time since she had met them.
“But…not without us, surely? The spotted man is here to save us!”
“Yeah, Klath, we can’t just—”
“We are leaving,” he reiterated, “Now.”
The insistent tone of the companion of the spotted man gave Sister Ryna cause for concern, as she stepped over towards the exit herself. “If we are all leaving,” she persisted, “Then we must all prepare. We need to pack, and to—”
She stopped in the middle of her train of thought, shocked into silence by the sight of another visitor to the increasingly crowded hut.
Jirel and Klath both turned and tensed slightly when they saw the newcomer. A tall man, his face partially obscured by the hood of the flowing green robes he was wearing.
“Sister Ryna,” The Seer said calmly, “Perhaps you can help your Brothers and Sisters to clear up after the festivities this afternoon. While I convene with our guests.”
Klath and Jirel shared a withering glance at the oddly pompous air of his speech. Jirel found himself wondering if this was a piece of amateur dramatics, to go along with all the music and dancing that the Makalites had put on for him earlier. But Sister Ryna showed no signs that she was participating in whatever passed for improv theatre on the Makalite planet. In fact, she still looked downright scared.
“And then,” The Seer continued, “Make sure to give some extra thanks in the temple on this joyous day, won’t you?”
“Yes, Seer,” she nodded, bowing down in deference before scurrying off out of the hut.
After she had left, The Seer turned back to Klath and Jirel.
“Sweet robes,” the Trill offered with an edge of sarcasm, “They come in any size, or just ‘stupidly large hotel bathrobe’?”
The robed figure didn’t immediately reply, though he did reach up and pull back his hood.
“What the hell?” Jirel offered, a sentiment that Klath silently agreed with.
The figure under the hood looked entirely unlike any of the other blue-skinned Makalites they had met so far. No bony ridges around his head, and his skin was more olive-toned than blue. If anything, he looked like a regular human.
Now they were alone, he also immediately appeared a lot less peaceful and serene. The benevolent mystic act had been well and truly tossed by the wayside, and replaced by a significantly less patient one.
“Don’t joke around with me,” he snapped at the perplexed Jirel, “Where’s Marel? And what the hell are you people playing at?”
He gestured dismissively at the equally perplexed Klath as he paced around the hut.
“I mean, a Klingon? You brought a Klingon with you? I was very specific about what I needed when I contacted your boss. Really, very specific indeed. The whole point was that you were supposed to be subtle!”
“Right,” Jirel managed, trying to maintain his best poker face while he figured out what was going on, “Sorry about that?”
If The Seer saw through his bluff, he didn’t show it.
“It’s bad enough that you’re a week late, and now you do this? You have no idea how much work I’ve had to do to explain…him!”
He pointed at Klath again, who, while being as confused as Jirel was, was also definitely starting to take offence.
After a few more moments of frustrated pacing up and down, The Seer paused and looked back at the pair of entirely baffled faces on the other side of the hut. He shook his head as the penny dropped.
“Hang on,” he chuckled wryly, “You two have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
Jirel’s poker face, such that it was, remained in place. Klath’s didn’t.
“We do not,” the Klingon stated simply.
The Seer clicked his tongue a few times as he mulled this development over, then shrugged. “Well, any port in a storm, I guess. I suppose you’ll have to do.”
“We’ll have to do?” Jirel asked, his own poker face now collapsing under the weight of the unfolding situation, “Do what? Who the hell are you?”
The Seer extended his arms out on a peaceable gesture.
“My name, gentlemen, is Martus Mazur. And I’m afraid I need a lift.”