Chapter Text
Part Four (Cont’d)
“They’re right behind us!”
As Sunek issued his report, a particularly large stone went whizzing past Natasha’s head, impacting on a nearby tree trunk with some force. She hadn’t really needed the report.
“Yep, got it,” she called out, “Everyone keep moving!”
The other villagers had closed them down more quickly than they had been expecting. The Makalites moved significantly faster than the Klingon, Vulcan and human thanks to their familiarity with the environment, and Natasha knew they had slowed their own group down. And she also knew that the other villagers had brought weapons with them. The slingshots that Klath had assessed to be of no real threat during his impromptu tactical analysis of the village earlier.
What he hadn’t factored in during that analysis was the impact that the slightly higher gravity of the planet would have on the ability of the natives to propel the simple projectiles with rather more devastating force than one might expect.
The dent left behind in the tree trunk to their right as another stone whizzed past and slammed into the bark clearly underlined that.
Klath staggered over another tree root, doubly frustrated that he was having to retreat from the onslaught with Sister Lyca still on his back, and that her presence was still preventing him from grabbing his bat’leth and turning to fight. “This is becoming annoying,” he growled as another stone whistled past.
“Ah, you say that every time people start throwing rocks at us,” Sunek quipped as he vaulted over a fallen tree trunk.
Up ahead of them, one of the stones being hurled from behind struck one of the Makalite Brothers squarely in the back, causing him to fall to the ground with a yelp of pain. Despite the danger of the situation, Natasha’s medical training overrode everything else, as she stopped to help the blue-skinned man back up.
“You ok?” she asked, as another couple of stones impacted nearby.
The Makalite Brother managed a pained nod as she helped him back to his feet. With the pursuing pack getting ever nearer, they followed the rest of their group back through the undergrowth.
It didn’t take them long to catch up. A few more paces further on, they found that the dozen or so other Makalites, headed by Sister Ryna, had stopped right at the edge of the clearing. Much to the continued frustration of Sunek and Klath.
Why they had stopped was immediately clear, despite the danger from behind. The Bounty was visible across on the other side of the clearing, nestled under the mountain range behind. Natasha felt a slight pang of comfort as she saw the now-familiar shape of the ship she had begun to call home.
But that was nothing like the feeling it had evoked in the Makalites.
“The skyship…” she heard Sister Ryna whisper.
But aside from that, they stood in venerable silence.
Because not only was the skyship there, but so was The Seer.
* * * * *
“My flock?” Mazur spat at Jirel.
The Trill kept his eyes focused on the El-Aurian. “Yeah, your flock,” he replied, a little louder than was strictly necessary given the short distance between them, “I assumed you might want to do something for them before we left, given all they did for you. Especially now we’re back at the…skyship.”
The implication in his comment passed Mazur by entirely. Instead, he let out a cackle of laughter.
“My flock! Those stupid backward villagers? You really think, after all I’ve been through, I’m going to go back and help them?”
Jirel patiently maintained eye contact with the armed man, but didn’t say anything, allowing the amateur dramatics of the professional con artist to play out. And letting him loudly dig his own grave. Metaphorically speaking.
“You have no idea how annoying this entire mess has been for me, do you? How utterly boring, how tedious and pointless! Trapped in that dreadful village for weeks on end, listening to those morons going on and on about prophecies, and diseases, and all their other problems! Having to make up a new vision every day just to shut them up!”
He tutted and paced up and down under the Bounty. Denella had stopped in her fictitious repair to watch the speech play out.
“They just wouldn’t stop complaining! About anything! ‘Oh, Seer, my crops won’t grow!’ or ‘Oh, Seer, the rains haven’t come yet!’ or ‘Oh, Seer, my elbow hurts!’.”
“Seems like that’s the sort of thing The Seer should be dealing with.”
“Psh, yeah, well, good thing I’m not The Seer any more, isn’t it?”
“No,” Jirel grinned knowingly, “You’re Martus Mazur. The greatest swindler in the galaxy. Reduced to peddling lies to the Makalites.”
“Precisely,” Mazur nodded pompously, appreciating the unexpected ego massage.
He appreciated it slightly less when he saw a wide grin spreading across Jirel’s face, as the Trill’s focus shifted from Mazur himself to something behind him.
That shift of focus wasn’t lost on the El-Aurian. Nor was the distant, but unmistakable sound of excitable chattering coming from behind him.
With a sinking feeling, he slowly turned around to the tree line, and saw the large gaggle of Makalites gathered on the edge of the clearing.
Also visible among the number of blue-skinned aliens were the unmistakable forms of a human, a Vulcan and a Klingon.
Some of the Makalites were armed with stones and slingshots, but they had paused in their assault once they had seen the skyship in the clearing. And heard The Seer speaking.
And now all of them, from the smallest Makalite to the burliest Klingon, looked thoroughly unhappy with him.
“Ah,” Mazur sighed, “Crap.”
He felt a familiar sensation inside. A sensation that he had experienced plenty of times as he had bounced around the cosmos from trick to scam and back again. The game was up. The grift was well and truly over.
So distracted was he at the collapse of The Seer’s facade that he didn’t even notice a familiar object come arcing through the air towards him. He only became aware of it when it impacted heavily on the back of his head.
Martus Mazur dropped the Edosian disruptor and crumpled to the ground in a becalmed, and deeply unconscious slump.
Denella stood over his now immobile form, gripping her trusty coil spanner in her hand and smiling in satisfaction. “See?” she said to the unconscious Mazur, “I do know how to use one of these.”
She turned back to Jirel, who smiled back at her.
“And all’s well that ends—”
But he didn’t get any further with his comment.
Because then the first stone, propelled from somewhere along the tree line of the forest, thudded into the ground next to them.
* * * * *
During The Seer’s little speech, and his subsequent incapacitation, the Makalites gathered on the fringes of the forest had been struggling to process what was happening.
For the umpteenth time in the last few weeks, their system of beliefs was being turned on its head, and they all had different opinions on the developing situation.
“The Seer has forsaken us!”
“The spotted man’s companion has assaulted The Seer!”
“What of his prophecies? He said they were lies!”
“The spotted man and The Seer were abandoning all of us!”
“This is blasphemy!”
The splinter group that had been fleeing from the village with Sunek, Klath and Denella, and whose belief and trust in The Seer had been overtaken by their trust in the Beast of the Great Hereafter, who had visited them to cure their disease, took The Seer’s words as vindication of their decision, and proof in Sister Lyca’s long-held belief that The Seer had been a false prophet.
Which made them angry, because for a long time before the Beast had shown up, they had been following him just as much as the others.
Meanwhile, the larger group of villagers led by Brother Falor, Brother Makan and Sister Hyla, the group that had remained faithful to The Seer’s prophecy and to the spotted man’s skyship, were splintering further.
Some were angry with The Seer, for his hurtful words and his spiteful actions that seemed to undermine everything he had told them since he had arrived in their village, now he had admitted freely that he wasn’t the man he claimed to be.
Others were too blinded by their devotion to The Seer to pay attention to what he’d actually been saying. His actual words had stopped mattering to them a long time ago, because they were often so confusing and contradictory that attempting to rationalise them completely was a hopeless task.
Their faith was all that mattered now.
And they were angry because they had seen the green woman, who none of them had seen before, but who also appeared to be travelling with the spotted man himself, attack The Seer and knock him to the ground.
Whichever of the expanding collection of splinter groups each Makalite belonged to, one thing was common amongst all of them.
They were all angry.
And before Natasha, Klath or Sunek realised what was happening, that anger began to escalate all around them.
“The Seer’s prophecies were false! He said so himself!” Sister Ryna called out, “Just as Sister Lyca told us!”
“The Seer and the spotted man were going to leave us!” Brother Falor bellowed, especially angry seeing as how The Seer had promised him such a prime seat onboard the skyship when it made its ascent to the heavens, in return for his loyalty.
“They have both forsaken us!” Brother Makan, equally miffed at how his prime seat offer had been set to come to nothing.
“The Seer has been struck down!” Sister Hyla, committed to the words of the prophecy to the bitter end, retorted, “We must ignore this blasphemy, and save him!”
“No!” Sister Ryna shot back, “We must stop him!”
And then, as the angered words escalated, the crowd moved. Forwards, into the clearing. Those with weapons brought them to bear.
“Oh no,” Natasha managed, “No, everyone, listen—!”
Before she could get any further, the first stones left their slingshots.
* * * * *
Denella helped the injured Jirel towards the rear ramp of the Bounty as best she could, even as more stones whistled past them.
She had left Mazur where he had fallen, reasoning that she’d come back for him later. At least she was sure that he wasn’t going anywhere for the time being. And besides, they had more important things to worry about. Namely the dozens of blue-skinned aliens racing across the clearing towards them, flinging stones about with deadly force.
“What the hell are they doing?” she managed, “I thought you said they liked you?”
“They did!” Jirel insisted, gesturing out at one of the approaching Makalite women, “That one even gave me a massage—You know, I don’t come across great in that story. Ignore that.”
Denella had no time to query that further, as a particularly large stone slammed into the metal of the ramp, just inches away from them.
And then they heard a familiar voice.
“My people! Please! Stop this attack!”
Despite their situation, Denella and Jirel couldn’t help but glance at each other.
“Was that…?”
“Definitely sounded like…”
Their confusion deepened as the Makalites obeyed the commanding sound of the voice, the entire pack coming to a halt immediately and turning back to the source of the voice. Even the few remaining true believers of The Seer, led by Sister Hyla, looked up from where they had rushed to attend to their unconscious saviour.
Behind them, in the middle of the clearing, Sunek stood and bellowed out at the crowd.
“Listen to the Beast of the Great Hereafter! Your brave, wise and perfectly proportioned Beast! Do not attack the feeble and destitute spotted man, or his measly skyship!”
A few of the Makalites began to chatter amongst themselves, even as Sunek calmly approached them. His arms were extended wide, in a similar manner to how Mazur had presented himself, though his face was less serene and peaceable, and more deeply smug.
Further back, Natasha and Klath, with Sister Lyca still on his shoulder, followed the Vulcan.
“It appears to be working,” Klath noted with a grunt.
“Depends on how you’re defining ‘working’, I guess,” she sighed.
It had been the only play they had left, to send Sunek out to stop the Makalites. That didn’t mean that she had to like it.
Sunek walked on through the awestruck Makalites. Even the former followers of The Seer now believed what Sister Ryna had been telling them. The Beast was here.
“The supremely intelligent and sexually potent Beast is pleased you are listening to him,” Sunek continued as he walked on towards the Bounty, “Now he demands that you return to your homes, while The Beast deals with the spotted man and his skyship. Once and for all.”
The Makalites looked at each other again. Then, as Jirel and Denella’s jaws dropped in unison, the entire hoard, even those tending to The Seer, turned back and headed towards the forest.
The flock obeyed their new master.
They passed by Klath and Natasha, barely paying them any notice.
And as the Makalites disappeared, save for the one on Klath’s shoulders, Sunek triumphantly stepped up the ramp to where his stunned colleagues were standing.
“What?” he said with the most casual of shrugs, “Turns out I’m a god. Don’t act so surprised. At least there are some people in this big old galaxy of ours who know my proper place in the pecking order.”
With a final flourish, the latest con artist to ply his trade amongst the Makalites stepped past them and swaggered his way back into the ship.
After a moment, Denella turned to the still-stunned Jirel. “I forgot to mention. He’s got some HR issues he wants to discuss with you.”
“Clearly,” Jirel managed.
They were joined by Natasha and Klath, along with his passenger. He managed a weak apologetic smile at the deeply unhappy human doctor.
“Seriously. We don’t usually do this sort of thing.”
“Uh huh,” she replied with a raised eyebrow.
She walked on into the ship, as Jirel hobbled after her, still supported by Denella.
“Hey, also, could you take a look at my foot? Kinda got a bit shot—”
“Get in line,” she fired back, “First up, we’ve got a village to save.”
The pain from his foot made him consider arguing his case further, but he reluctantly agreed with her order of priority. They carried on up the ramp.
“By the way,” he added, “Who the hell made Sunek a god?”
End of Part Four