Chapter Text
Part Four
“Seriously, shut up!”
Natasha and Klath shared a knowing glance as they considered the irony of Sunek making that sort of a statement to anyone, but they didn’t say anything out loud.
Sunek had directed the comment at Sister Lyca, now indelicately slung over Klath’s right shoulder, as they walked on through the forest. Even though her body was weakening by the minute thanks to the radiation exposure she had been through, her vocal cords still seemed strong, and she was continuing to wail in Sunek’s direction as they made good their escape.
Despite the fact that the noisy singing was not exactly making them inconspicuous.
With the guards subdued, the Bastille’s location on the edge of the village had made their getaway that much more straightforward, and with the retuned tricorder now in Natasha’s hands, they were making good progress back to their ship.
“Please, oh Beast of the Great Hereafter,” Sister Lyca shivered as she temporarily stopped her wailing, “I must complete my song. My death song. It is my offering to you.”
Sunek went to fire off an especially critical review of her offering, but before he could say anything, the Makalite’s wailing resumed, as she powered into the next stanza of her death song.
“Ugh,” Sunek griped at Natasha instead, “Why did we have to bring her with us?”
“Because she’s dying,” Natasha reminded him, “And it turns out she listens to you.”
“So?” Sunek grumbled, “What happened to that whole ‘don’t interfere’ policy you Starfleet lot are always banging on about? Feels like this definitely counts as interference.”
Natasha suppressed another grimace. She had plenty of misgivings about what they were doing, especially feeding Sister Lyca’s belief that Sunek was the guardian of their afterlife. But based on everything that she had seen in the village, and the extra information her colleagues had now provided about Mazur and the crashed ship, she was equally sure they didn’t have much choice.
“Whatever version of the prime directive I’m still following, it was already out the window down here. This Martus Mazur character saw to that. Non-interference doesn’t count when the interference has already happened. We need to help the villagers, and Sister Lyca in particular. Her symptoms are worse than any of the others I saw. I guess because she spent so long inside the…Bastille.”
“What difference would that have made?” Klath asked, his voice booming over the top of the singing coming from over his shoulder.
Natasha shrugged. The jigsaw was now fully assembled in her head. “Because it was almost entirely made of that metal that Mazur had been bringing over there. Which he was presumably stripping from the crashed ship that was saturated in radiation. Based on what I’ve been told, it sounds like he’d ‘reward’ the villagers that donated the most to his temple with extra metal for their huts, which would just have accelerated their symptoms, and presumably caused them to donate even more to try and show enough faith to ward off their sickness.”
“Huh,” Sunek mused, “These guys really are too stupid to live, aren’t they?”
“It’s not their fault,” she countered, “Any species at this stage of development would be susceptible to that sort of manipulation. Even all of our own species, once upon a time.”
“Ancient Klingons would not be fooled by such blatant trickery,” Klath countered with a proud glare.
“Yeah,” Sunek nodded in agreement, “And you’re not gonna pull the wool over a bunch of logical Vulcan eyes either. We’ve always been smart. Most of the time.”
Natasha rolled her eyes as she stepped over a tree branch. “Believe that if you want, but I’m telling the truth. I’m not too proud to admit that there were plenty of times in Earth’s history when we were suckered in by someone who sounded plausible enough in a time of crisis. Too many times, to be honest.”
Sunek glanced up at Klath, as the Klingon and the Vulcan shared a moment of common understanding between their two species.
“Always said humans were the dumb ones,” Sunek muttered, eliciting a nod from his colleague.
Natasha let that one slide, but she looked back at Sunek with a serious glare. “The point is that where I’m from, it’s considered rude to crash on a planet, expose the population to deadly levels of radiation and then leave them to it. It’s possible that Makalite physiology makes them especially susceptible to this type of radiation, but whatever the details, we need to treat it.”
As they continued to bicker between them, Sister Lyca’s focus remained on completing her song.
She was still confused about a lot of what was happening, such as how the friends of the spotted man could also know the Beast of the Great Hereafter. But the rational part of her mind that had served her well against The Seer had now been entirely subsumed. So instead of questioning what was being said, or where she was being taken, she kept her efforts on her singing, praying it would be enough to please the Beast.
Sunek winced a little more as her wailing started to intensify. “Ok, fine,” he said to Natasha, “But can you give her a sedative or something? I really don’t wanna hear the rest of her greatest hits.”
“We need to let her do what she needs to do,” Natasha countered, much to the Vulcan’s annoyance, “That way, it’ll be easier to get her back and treat her.”
At this, Sister Lyca stopped wailing, and weakly craned her head around to Natasha. “I do not understand,” she admitted, “The Beast has come to me. I am headed for the Great Hereafter. There is no more to be done, oh healer.”
Natasha sighed again, feeling her frustrations grow. She tried to toe the line between doing the right thing for Sister Lyca and damaging the situation on the Makalite planet any further. “Sister Lyca,” she managed eventually, “The thing is that…The Beast wants me to heal you. Right?”
She nudged Sunek in the side, who looked more than a little disinterested in whatever she was talking about, and not especially Beast-like.
“Oh, right. Yeah. That.”
Sister Lyca’s eyes widened slightly, as Natasha pulled Sunek away from the Makalite on Klath’s shoulder to mutter to him.
“Look, I hate to say this, but is there any chance you could try that again? Bit more commitment, maybe? Y’know, a bit more…Beast-like?”
Sunek rolled his eyes and sighed. Then, a thought crossed his mind. If she wants commitment, why not give it to her. He turned back to the Makalite and thrust his arms out wide in a dramatic display.
“Yes, puny mortal!” he bellowed in a considerably deeper voice than usual, “Listen to me, the great Beast, and heed my words! I command you to listen to what the overbearing and profoundly irritating healer is telling you!”
Natasha suppressed a fresh flinch of concern as she saw the repressed amateur dramatics major she seemed to have summoned up from within the Vulcan. But it seemed to do the trick. Sister Lyca nodded back wordlessly.
Sunek turned back to her with a suitably smug grin on his face. “That enough commitment for you?”
Before she had a chance to fully critique his performance, the tricorder in her hand began to chime out a warning. At the same time, Klath tensed up again, just as he had the first time they had walked through the forest earlier in the day. The Klingon’s reaction meant that Natasha didn’t even need to check the tricorder to know what was happening.
Seconds later, there was a rustling sound, coming from all around them.
They all stopped on the spot. Klath cursed the fact that he couldn’t get a clear path to draw his bat’leth with Sister Lyca still over his shoulder.
And then they emerged. Makalite faces, all light blue and curious, peered out of the undergrowth around them. Dozens of villagers, who seem to have raced to track them down. In the middle of all of them, Klath and Sunek recognised Sister Ryna.
“You see,” she said to her fellow Brothers and Sisters, “It really is the Beast of the Great Hereafter! He has come for us all on this day!”
On cue, each of the Makalites around them began to wail loudly, each singing their own unique death song in Sunek’s direction.
Klath grunted unhappily, while Sunek turned and looked at Natasha.
“Um” he said awkwardly, “You think I should do the voice again?”