Chapter Text
Part Four (Cont’d)
“Oh, and booze. You need something from The Beast? Can't go wrong with booze.”
Natasha grimaced inwardly as she listened to Sunek setting the Makalite village even further off their natural course of evolution. The amount of cultural damage being inflicted on them seemed incalculable.
She had to remind herself that this was going to be for the greater good. That right now, curing the Makalites of their radiation poisoning was a bigger issue than the latest hard turn their belief system seemed to be taking thanks to a particularly significant case of mistaken identity.
“Food as well,” Sunek continued, “The Beast loves food. So if any of you have got, like, a sandwich or something on you, that’d be—”
“Ahem,” Natasha coughed from next to the Vulcan, “Dial it back a bit?”
He glanced at her and with a wide innocent smile. After initially being offended by the role that the Makalites had cast him in, his inner showman now seemed to have grown into the role. Especially after they had gained a wider audience than just Sister Lyca.
The three Bounty crewmates, along with Sister Lyca still slung over Klath’s shoulder, stood where they had been ambushed in the middle of the forest, surrounded by a dozen or so Makalites, including Sister Ryna. They all sat cross-legged on the ground, enraptured by the Vulcan’s words, like a group of school kids gathered around their teacher for story time.
Except, the story they were currently being spun by the guardian of the afterlife didn’t appear to have any sort of moral at the end.
“Food,” Sister Ryna nodded, looking around at her fellow Makalites, “The Beast of the Great Hereafter wishes for food. Quick, we must forage!”
“Yes!” one of the Makalite Brothers called out, “And then we must sing our songs to him again!”
At this, Sunek winced slightly. “Ah, yeah, I meant to talk to you about the singing, actually. See, The Beast actually has very sensitive ears, and—”
“Sunek—I mean, mighty Beast,” Natasha muttered again, before they were delayed even further by an impromptu foraging party, “Perhaps now’s a good time to get everyone moving?”
He looked a little miffed to have his entertainment curtailed, but reluctantly turned back to the Makalites with a sigh, ratcheting up the theatre of his performance. “No time for sandwiches, puny mortals, it is time for us to move!”
The Makalites looked at each other, and stood up obediently, before Sister Ryna took a cautious step towards the Beast. “We will go wherever you wish us to, oh great Beast. Even if you are to take us to the Great Hereafter itself.”
“We trust in you,” another Makalite called out, “The Seer has forsaken us. And so has the spotted man. They were no longer in the village.”
“Yeah, well,” Sunek shrugged casually, “That’s what you get for putting someone other than me in charge.”
“But when I told everyone I had seen the Beast of the Great Hereafter,” Sister Ryna continued, “We had to come and find you for ourselves. To help us find our salvation!”
Natasha felt as though her face had become a permanent grimace as the full details of the situation were spelled out to them by the Makalites. But it did at least give them the chance to fix the most pressing issue. “We can do a lot better than salvation, can’t we, mighty Beast?” she chimed in, “We can heal your sickness.”
“Is this true?” Sister Ryna asked excitedly, directing her question to Sunek.
“The Beast was already preparing to cure me,” Sister Lyca chimed in from Klath’s shoulder, “I am sure he can cure all of you as well, Brothers and Sisters.”
“Yes! Of course!” Sunek pompously bellowed, back in full Beast mode, “The great, mighty and incredibly handsome Beast will order his weak and feeble servant here to cure you all of your foul and wretched disease!”
As well as her grimace, Natasha found that her withering glare was getting a serious workout today.
“Right,” she managed eventually, “So we should get moving.”
“Yes,” Sister Ryna nodded, “We should be swift, for more are following from the village.”
“What’s that now?” Sunek asked, a little less Beast-like.
“More are coming,” Sister Ryna repeated, “Brother Falor, Brother Makan, Sister Hyla, and many more. They still trust in The Seer and the spotted man, and they did not believe my words about the Beast’s visit. They forbade us from leaving, and when they find us gone, they will surely follow.”
Natasha mentally added the charge of causing a religious schism to the rap sheet that a theoretical Starfleet tribunal would be handing down to them.
“Well,” Sunek shrugged at her and Klath, “I don’t like the sound of that.”
Natasha checked the retuned tricorder in her hand and nodded. The Bounty wasn’t far away, but she could also see a number of Makalite lifesigns now bearing down on their position.
“Perhaps,” Klath motioned to the Vulcan, “The Beast should lead the way.”
Sunek turned back around, and saw that the dozen or so Makalites were still staring at him, waiting on his every word. “Oh, right,” he nodded, “Come, simple peasants. Follow your noble Beast!”
He swaggered off into the forest, followed by Sister Ryna and the other Makalite believers, many of them still excitedly chattering to each other in hushed voices. Klath shared an unhappy glance with Natasha before they followed in the wake of the over-acting guardian of the Makalite afterlife.
“He is giving me a headache,” the Klingon muttered as they walked through a deeper patch of undergrowth, still carrying the ailing Sister Lyca on his shoulder.
“Could be worse,” Natasha offered, “At least they haven’t started singing yet—Ow!”
She stopped suddenly and hissed in pain. Looking down at the source of the pain, she saw a small purple thorn from one of the plants she had brushed past that was embedded in her leg, having pierced clean through her trousers.
“You are hurt?” Klath asked as he saw her leg.
She reached down and gently pulled the thorn out, before giving both the offending object and her leg a cursory scan with the tricorder. “Just a scratch,” she offered back, “Between this and that fruit I found earlier, I’m kinda getting used to the local flora not agreeing with me on this planet.”
Klath nodded and continued walking. Natasha carefully slipped the thorn into her pocket for later study, deciding that she may as well have something to show for her first proper away team mission in a year. Then, satisfied that there was nothing but the flesh wound to be concerned with, she resumed walking behind Klath.
She was far more concerned with the number of lifesigns that were approaching them from behind.
Not to mention what might be awaiting them further ahead.
* * * * *
“This would have been a lot easier if you hadn’t shot me.”
Jirel grimaced slightly again, as he propped himself up against one of the Bounty’s landing struts to rest his injured foot.
To his side, Mazur stood in the grass, largely ignoring him. His focus, and his disruptor, were both trained on the more mobile of his prisoners, as Denella worked on the thruster assembly. A gentle breeze blew across the clearing where the Bounty had landed, whipping up the stalks of grass, and the sky overhead was still clear and green-ish, though the sun was now much lower in the sky as sunset slowly approached.
The tranquillity of the scene was entirely lost on the armed man in the robes.
“Do you even know how to use that thing?” he shouted in frustration at Denella, as she ran the coil spanner across the hull.
As far as he was concerned, she didn’t actually seem to be doing any proper work. If anything, she just seemed to be waving the bulky metal tool around the thruster housing without any sort of rhyme or reason.
Once again, his senses told him that he was being conned in some way.
The Orion engineer, for her part, ignored the slight against her technical prowess and continued to work.
The truth was that, while she did know how to use the coil spanner, and had done since she was a small child being taught how to fix vintage shuttles by her father on the Orpheus IV colony, there weren’t actually any repairs to conduct. But she had to follow through with the fictional damage that she’d set up back in the cockpit to buy them some more time, and so she was keeping up the pretence that there was something in the aft thrusters that needed repairing.
By waving the bulky metal tool around the thruster housing without any sort of rhyme or reason.
She couldn’t help but take a small amount of smug satisfaction from the way she was able to fool him. As far as she was concerned, that was what you deserved for not understanding the basics of engineering.
“Nearly finished,” she reported back to the El-Aurian, as she casually flicked her finger over the set of controls on the side of the spanner, causing a dark red light at the end of the device to gently pulse on and off.
To the uneducated Mazur, it looked like the implement was doing something. Even though she was simply cycling the coil spanner’s torch attachment through a partial diagnostic program.
“Make sure you are,” Mazur grouched.
Despite the pain in his foot, Jirel was finding some enjoyment in the improvised piece of theatre that Denella was putting on. But he felt he should help out with the ongoing distraction. “Feeling the Edosians getting closer?” he offered, “What sort of scam did you try to pull with them, anyway?”
“Like I said, a misunderstanding,” the El-Aurian shrugged.
Though he did also glance up at the sky in a moment of paranoia, as if he might be able to spot another Edosian ship in orbit.
“Fair few misunderstandings given the crash side,” Denella chimed in, as she kept her attention on the torch diagnostic.
“Hey,” Mazur shrugged, “It’s not my fault their ship hit an ion storm and couldn’t cope with it. And it’s certainly not my fault that their species is so fragile.”
Denella paused for a moment and looked back at him with an accusing glare. “They all died in the crash?”
Mazur met her accusation with a knowing glance. “Come on now. I’m not a killer, ok? I don’t even like to use guns—”
He stopped and awkwardly gestured to Jirel’s injured foot with the disruptor that had done the damage.
“Y’know. Normally.”
“So glad you decided to make an exception to that rule,” the Trill grimaced.
The El-Aurian switched his attention back to the work that Denella was still doing, pacing around with an ever-decreasing amount of patience. “Whatever. You’ve got ten minutes to finish whatever the hell you’re doing. Or maybe I’ll shoot his other foot. Even things out.”
Denella looked over at the already crippled Jirel and sighed, giving him a look that suggested she was all out of stalling options. They’d bought as much time as they could.
Jirel looked around. Mazur was too far away, and he was too injured to consider any sort of surprise attack. They needed something else.
Then, he glanced behind Mazur, over at the tree line, and he smiled.