Chapter Text
Part Four (Cont’d)
“We’re not leaving without them.”
Jirel maintained his position in front of the pilot’s chair in the Bounty’s cockpit, with Denella standing just as defiantly beside him. They both stared back at the ugly disruptor pistol that Mazur was pointing at them, but neither of them flinched.
After all, they’d both spent enough time travelling on the Bounty to have become used to people pointing disruptors at them. For some reason, it seemed to happen quite a lot.
For some, this situation would be terrifying. For the Bounty, this was a Tuesday.
“I’m telling you,” Mazur persisted, keeping his grip tight on the pistol, “I really want this crate up in the air right now.”
The El-Aurian had been very clear about that particular point since he had arrived onboard. Disruptor or no disruptor.
Inside, Jirel again cursed himself for how slow he had been to see the danger signs from Mazur. As someone who spent as much of their life as he did having disruptors pulled on him, he really should have read the signs.
And yet, despite knowing that Mazur was untrustworthy, and that he was itching to leave, and having seen what he had done with the Makalites, he hadn’t expected him to go this far.
Still, the wealth of experience he had gathered in the troubling field of having disruptors pulled on him also gave him a sixth sense when assessing the intentions of whoever happened to be the one pulling the disruptor. He knew that, a lot of the time, the person with the weapon didn’t actually mean to fire it. That the act of having the weapon was intended to be enough of a threat.
Because, despite the amount of death and destruction that went on around the galaxy in the average week, the truth was that most of the souls in the universe had no interest in being killers. And Jirel could see in his eyes that Mazur was one of those souls. He may have been a con artist, a grifter and a man of a thousand scams, but he wasn’t the sort of man that actually went around firing disruptors at people.
So, while he was clearly desperate to leave this planet, Jirel felt that he was safe enough to stall for long enough for the others to get back. And hopefully for him and Denella to regain control of the situation in the cockpit.
“Seriously, Mazur,” he replied, calmly but firmly, “We’re still short three people. And we’re not leaving until they’re onboard.”
Mazur didn’t flinch, though he was struggling to keep his slightly laboured breathing a secret. He was keenly aware that his condition was worsening by the minute.
“You…seem to be forgetting which one of us is armed.”
He waved the Edosian disruptor, a slightly curious design clearly meant for a different physiology, to underline his point. But, Jirel noted, he didn’t get any closer to actually firing it. So he continued with his distraction, as he glanced over at Denella.
“A prison transport, you said? Sounds like someone’s been a naughty boy.”
“A misunderstanding, nothing more,” Mazur muttered with a smile bereft of mirth, as he nodded at Denella, “But I assume if you’ve found the ship, you’ve told them where it is. Which means I’d definitely prefer to get moving now.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Jirel grinned back, “But—”
He was immediately silenced by a sudden blast of dirty green energy that spat out from the disruptor and slammed into the deck of the cockpit next to his right foot, leaving a smoking scorch mark behind on the metal.
“Hey!” Denella snapped back at him, seeing her precious ship being wounded, “Careful with that thing!”
For Jirel’s part, the blast caused him to momentarily reassess his initial read on Mazur. But still, even though he hadn’t expected him to fire the weapon at all, he also noted that he had deliberately avoided shooting either him or Denella, even to injure them. In a weird way, the entirely unexpected disruptor blast actually soothed the Trill. Mazur definitely wasn’t a killer.
“Consider that a warning shot,” the El-Aurian snapped, a little more on edge than before, “And let me put this another way: I’ve spent the last two months on this hellhole with all those villagers. So, I’m very much done listening to idiots. If you catch my drift.”
Mazur took a step forward, keeping the disruptor tightly in his grip. Jirel kept an eye on it, wondering if it was close enough for him to dive for it.
“Besides, the way I see it, you don’t have much of a choice here,” he continued, “Either you do what I say, and we leave your friends behind. Or I shoot you, take your ship by force, and also leave your friends behind. Either way, you’ll note the part where they're left behind.”
Jirel kept his defences up, even as Mazur gestured at the pilot’s controls at their side with the weapon in his hands.
“So,” he concluded, “Feel free to choose the option where you don’t get shot.”
“I’m not doing it,” Jirel said firmly with a slow shake of his head, “So I guess we’re gonna have to wait—”
The disruptor fired again. But this time, the green bolt of energy didn’t hit the deck itself next to Jirel’s right foot. It hit him on the right foot itself.
The Trill screamed out in pain and dropped down to the deck.
“Agh! Son of a Tellarite miner!”
Denella instinctively dropped down to where he had collapsed with concern and tried to help him back up. She noted that it had been a glancing blow on the side of his foot, but also noted the burn mark and the smell of burnt flesh that meant Jirel’s pain was very much real.
For his part, Mazur immediately flinched and stepped back away from the scene of the crime, the Edosian disruptor dropping down to his side as he looked both shocked and contrite at what he’d just done.
“Oh, crap,” he managed, “I swear, I was just trying to shoot the deck again! It wasn’t supposed to hit you—!”
“Well it did!” Jirel bellowed in pained anger, “It definitely hit me!”
He was especially angry for two reasons. One, because he’d just been shot in the foot. And two, because he’d allowed himself to completely underestimate Mazur again.
He wasn’t supposed to have actually shot him.
For a few more seconds, Mazur seemed to have lost control of the situation. He genuinely hadn’t intended to hurt anyone, though the scent from Jirel’s disruptor wound that was filling the cockpit rather undermined his intentions. So instead, the quick thinking mind that had gotten him out of so many worse scrapes in the past got to work, and decided that he had to make the most of this situation.
“Well,” he said, raising the weapon again and nodding at Denella, “Now you’ve seen how serious I am, maybe you’ll be so kind as to get us out of here. Unless you want your friend to lose any more limbs?”
“Haven’t actually lost a limb,” Jirel coughed as he sat prone on the floor, “Which…I appreciate isn’t that big of a brag.”
Mazur ignored his comment and kept his focus on Denella. Reluctantly, she glanced at Jirel and nodded, before standing back up and stepping over to the pilot’s controls.
“Hey,” Jirel managed, “Denella—”
“He’s right, Jirel. We don’t have a choice. I guess we’ll have to come back for the others some other time.”
Jirel’s eyes widened, and he was about to argue the case further, but he saw something in the Orion’s eyes as she stepped away from him that reassured him.
She had a plan.
“There,” Mazur sighed in relief from the other side of the cockpit, “If I’d have known that was all I needed to do to get you to shut up and cooperate, I’d have shot you an hour ago.”
He smiled smugly at Jirel, who winced again and propped himself up against the base of the pilot’s console.
Above him, Denella tapped away at the controls, and the hum of the Bounty’s thrusters began to fill the cockpit. She kept a close focus on the controls, knowing that she needed to be very careful with what she did next. Making it look like the Bounty had just suffered a catastrophic failure, without actually making it suffer a catastrophic failure.
She just prayed that among all his other dubious talents, Mazur wasn’t also a qualified pilot. He had threatened to fly off in the ship himself, after all.
“Come on,” the El-Aurian muttered, “Let’s get going already!”
She licked her lips and gently eased up on the thruster inputs, not wanting to damage the Bounty any more than was necessary. After a moment or two, she had started to overload the aft thrusters, and the entire ship began to shake and shudder. She quickly powered the whole engine assembly before it shook itself apart, and let out a frustrated grimace.
“Ugh, that’s just great!” she snapped, “See, this is what happens when you rush me!”
“What?” Mazur asked, with a look of distrust.
“I had to do a lot of repairs after we set down here, and I hadn't finished all the pre-flight checks. We’ve got a potential fracture in the aft thruster casing.”
Mazur’s eyes narrowed further. One of the advantages of spending your life conning others was that you developed a sixth sense for when you were being conned yourself. “Ok, nice try,” he scoffed, “Is that the plan? Fool me with some engineering mumbo jumbo to give your friends, and the Edosians, time to get here? Well, I’m not buying that, so power everything back up and—”
“I’m serious,” she said, spinning around in the pilot’s chair and fixing him with a determined glare, “It’s not a difficult repair, but we need to check it out. Otherwise, if the crack’s bad enough, then as soon as we take off, there’ll be enough of a shimmy for the ship to break apart in the atmosphere. I’m assuming that’s not part of your escape plan?”
“Ugh,” Mazur grimaced, “What kind of piece of junk is this ship?”
Denella kept her emotions in check at the latest slight against the Bounty, as Jirel shifted his weight and muttered through the pain in his foot.
“The sort of piece of junk you need to get off this planet in something other than a prison uniform,” the Trill fired back knowingly, “So you might wanna think about being a bit nicer to the only person around here that can fix it.”
Mazur kept his focus on Denella, but after a moment, the disruptor barrel lowered a tad. “Ok, fine,” he sighed, gesturing to the panel, “Hurry up and fix it.”
“Can’t do it here,” she replied calmly, “I’ll need to go check the assembly itself.”
“Well, nice try, but I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
Despite the sight of the disruptor in his hand, Denella shrugged and stood up from the pilot’s console. “Fine. Come with me.”
Mazur’s eyes narrowed again. He licked his lips slightly as he felt his best laid plans once again going awry. “Where?”
Denella decided to twist the knife a little bit, enjoying the sudden look of discomfort on their adversary’s face.
“Outside.”