Chapter Text
Part Five
There were times since she had joined the Bounty’s ramshackle crew that Natasha had felt that she could use a medical assistant or two. But this wasn’t exactly what she had in mind.
She crouched on the banks of the stream that flowed past the Makalite village, carefully emptying the contents of the flask into the water, and checking the resulting concentration levels of the anti-radiation compound with her tricorder. All the while, Sister Lyca crouched next to her, watching on in awe. While a short distance away, Sunek leaned against a tree and yawned.
They were a little way upstream from the village, and partially shrouded by the early evening gloom that was setting in. Her scans had shown the stream to be the source of the well inside the settlement, which Sister Lyca had confirmed was the main water source for the entire population.
And therefore, this was the best place to subtly and swiftly cure them of their radiation sickness, without having to bring each Makalite back to the Bounty, as she had been forced to do with Sister Lyca’s more severe condition.
“And this will cure the others?” the Makalite woman asked, craning her neck back around to Sunek as she posed the question.
The Vulcan rolled his eyes and sighed. Predictably, the universe’s most skittish man was starting to find his role as the Beast of the Great Hereafter a little annoying ever since he had been dragged back out here by Natasha. Still, she felt she needed to include him. Her instructions to Sister Lyca to help cure the other villagers were far more likely to be carried out if they carried the seal of the Beast.
“Yes!” he called out as pompously as he could, “The great Beast will cure you all! For he is so very powerful! And, also, you should direct any further questions at my feeble subordinate!”
He gestured to the nonplussed Natasha and returned to his yawn. Sister Lyca turned back to Natasha with an eager look that suggested she did indeed have further questions.
While she had been treating her, she had been sure to check Makalite physiology in more detail, and had been disappointed to find that their genetic makeup precluded any sort of memory wiping technique she would have been capable of performing. The old Starfleet cheat code when it came to cultural contamination wasn’t going to work this time.
“Perhaps I can learn to be a healer, like you?” Sister Lyca asked, as Natasha concluded her scans, satisfied with the dispersal process of the compound.
“I’m sure you could,” she replied as she stood up, “And you can start by making sure everyone drinks plenty of water from the well for the next day or so, right?”
Sister Lyca nodded enthusiastically, but then persisted. “Perhaps…if the Beast allows it, you could teach me how to be a healer?”
“I’m fine with that,” the Beast muttered off-handedly as he idly picked a fleck of dirt from under his nail.
Natasha suppressed a sigh and shook her head patiently at the innocent face of the blue-skinned woman. “I’m sorry, Sister Lyca. But me and the Beast need to get going.”
“Where?”
Natasha paused for a moment, silently cursing herself for still not checking if the planet had a southern continent or not.
Her silence caused a ripple of understanding to spread across Sister Lyca’s face. “I see,” she replied sagely, “You must leave. In your skyship.”
“Right,” Natasha nodded back, “But I’m sure you’ll do fine without us. And you remember what else the Beast told you to do back in the village, right?”
“Yes,” she replied quickly, “We must rid ourselves of The Seer’s belongings.”
Natasha nodded in satisfaction. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but with the anti-radiation meds now flooding through the village, she hoped that leaving the Makalites to remove the scrap metal from their village was the right thing to do. At least for the time being.
“Praise to you, Beast,” Sister Lyca called out, “And praise to his divine healer.”
Sunek didn’t even bother looking up despite this praise, but Natasha flinched with worry.
“Sister Lyca, please, you don’t need to praise us—”
“But you travelled here with the Beast of the Great Hereafter! And you showed us the truth about The Seer! You even cured my sickness!”
She held her arm up as proof of her final point, now devoid of the ugly rash that had been there for so long before, before gesturing down at the stream.
“And now you are curing all of us. Surely these are the acts of a saviour?”
Natasha sighed again, glancing at Sunek for some kind of backup on this one.
“Hey,” the Vulcan shrugged, “I say we take it. How many chances in life do you get to go down as an actual saviour?”
Devoid of support from the tousle-haired Vulcan, she shook her head and turned back to the enthusiastic Makalite. “Sister Lyca, please, we’ve talked about this. I’m just a…healer. And if the last few weeks have proved anything, with The Seer, the sickness and everything else, it should be that you don’t need to look for saviours any more. Do you understand?”
The Makalite woman paused and considered this for a moment, cocking her head at an odd angle as she looked down at the stream where the healer had released her cure.
“Yes,” she replied eventually, “I think I do understand. Good wishes to you, healer.”
She didn’t really understand at all. She didn’t understand a lot of things about the Beast’s healer, from a place she couldn’t possibly comprehend. But she could see from the healer’s expression that this was important to her.
So, out of respect for her saviours, Sister Lyca decided to lie.
* * * * *
“Two hundred bars of gold-pressed latinum!”
Jirel stood on his freshly healed foot and glanced over at Denella and Klath, then back at Mazur, where he stood inside the Bounty’s cargo bay. The El-Aurian was shackled in a replicated set of handcuffs, but that wasn’t stopping him from at least trying to wriggle out of the situation verbally.
“What do we reckon? Is the great con artist good for two hundred bars?”
“Unlikely,” Klath offered with a grunt.
“For a start,” Denella pointed out, “Those jewels he brought with him were barely worth the price of the bag he was carrying them in.”
The jewels, worthless as they were, had been returned to the Makalite village. Mazur rolled his eyes and tutted. “You don’t have to rub it in, you know. And I don’t have two hundred bars on me, obviously, but if you get me out of here, I can make a few calls, and—”
His latest proposal was interrupted by a chirp from the communicator on Denella’s belt. She checked it and nodded. “The Edosians are in orbit. They’re ready to retrieve their prisoner.”
“Ugh,” Mazur grouched, shaking his head and waiting for the inevitable, “All you idiots had to do was take off. And you couldn’t even do that right.”
“Look at it this way,” Jirel grinned, “At least you’re finally getting off this planet.”
“Cute,” Mazur griped.
Jirel looked over to Denella and nodded at the communicator. “Guess we’re ready down here. Tell them to collect whenever they’re ready.”
“Three hundred!” Mazur suddenly blurted out, “I just remembered a Ferengi contact in the Agoras sector that owes me a debt. I can make it up to three hundred bars!”
He gave the three Bounty crew members his best plaintive look to go along with his latest offer, but given the time they’d had on the Makalite planet, none of them were in a charitable mood.
“I guess we could think about helping you out,” Jirel mused, “For…eight hundred?”
Mazur’s face slumped.
“Four. Four hundred!”
Jirel glanced at his colleagues again and grinned. “I definitely said eight hundred, right? You both heard that?”
“That’s what I heard,” Denella nodded.
“Tsk,” Jirel sighed theatrically, “And he calls himself a good listener…”
Mazur’s glare back at the Trill was fuelled by a combination of defeat and withering dissatisfaction.
“You know,” he said eventually, “This whole thing with the Edosians really is just a big misunderstanding. And I’ll get it straightened out. Just like I always do.”
“Have fun doing that,” Jirel shrugged.
“Oh, I will,” Mazur nodded, “And then, once I’ve got all that sorted, I’ve got plenty of friends around the quadrant who I can call on to sort out any other…problems I’ve got.”
Jirel’s face dropped slightly at the implication, even as the Edosian transporter beam began to take effect, and the El-Aurian started to dissolve. As he slowly vanished inside the dark green beam, he offered them a false smile.
“Be seeing you…”
He left behind a moment of contemplative silence, which Jirel eventually broke.
“You, um, don’t think that’s gonna come back to bite us in the ass one day, right?”
He tried not to read too much into the rather more prolonged silence that followed his question.
* * * * *
The process of removing all traces of The Seer’s influence was taking a long time. But the healer’s cure at least seemed to be working.
As Sister Lyca carried the latest piece of metal out of the village and back into the forest, she allowed herself a smile of satisfaction at the sight of the other villagers, already looking stronger and healthier, as they worked on disposing of the rest of The Seer’s materials.
The Bastille remained standing for now, but the temple had been demolished, and the treasures inside returned to their rightful owners. With most of the huts now stripped of their metal supports, it wouldn’t be much longer until everything was back to normal.
She dropped the metal on the accumulation of scrap that they had made in the forest and started back to the village. After a few steps, she paused to look up into the night sky, staring at the twinkling objects in the heavens. She wondered if the Beast, the healer and the skyship were up there right now, watching over them all.
Eventually, she was distracted by an excited shout from the village. She looked over to see Brother Falor and Sister Ryna beckoning her over with eager looks on their faces.
“Good wishes to you both,” Sister Lyca smiled as she reached them.
“And good wishes to you, Sister Lyca,” Sister Ryna replied, “Our day’s work is done. The takarti root soup is ready. Perhaps…it is time?”
Sister Lyca smiled and nodded. Brother Falor and Sister Ryna led her back through the deserted streets of the village, back to the main square.
As they arrived, she saw that there was a larger audience around the fire than she had been expecting tonight. Even Sister Hyla and the other Makalites who had stayed loyal to The Seer until the bitter end were in attendance, having been forgiven and allowed to rejoin the rest of the flock.
It felt like so long ago that she had been the outcast, shunned by the villagers and locked away inside the Bastille. Now, she was the talk of the town. Sister Lyca, who had followed the Beast and the healer all the way back to the skyship, and returned with the news that the village’s sickness would be cured. And as Brother Falor and Sister Ryna joined the excited audience and left her standing alone in front of them, illuminated by the flickering fire, she didn’t feel nervous. She felt content.
A reverential silence descended as she prepared to speak.
“Brothers and Sisters,” she began, “Let me tell you again of the Beast, and the Great Healer. And tell you of their teachings…”
She paused for a moment.
The truth was that, while she had been invited to tell her stories as soon as she had returned to the village, there really wasn’t much to say. Neither the healer nor the Beast had given her any real teachings to impart on the others. But having been invited to speak, and having basked in the attention of her audience, she had quickly found that the half-truths, the exaggerations and the lies had come a lot easier than she had been expecting.
“The Great Healer told me many things,” she continued, “This summer, she foretold of a great and bountiful crop…”
Perhaps The Seer had been more of an influence on her than she realised. Or perhaps she was just happy to have been welcomed back into the fold, and was enjoying the unexpected attention. Either way, Sister Lyca continued to speak the fictional words of the Beast of the Great Hereafter and his equally Great Healer.
And once again, the entire belief structure of one small village of Makalites was completely and thoroughly rewritten.
* * * * *
Natasha sat in the Bounty’s dining area and glanced over the message on the padd in front of her.
“Thought you’d be getting some rest?” Jirel asked as he walked into the room and made a beeline for the replicator.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she admitted as he joined her at the table.
“Starfleet guilt again?”
She fixed him with a deeply unimpressed glare. “You don’t feel bad at all? For everything that happened back there?”
Jirel set his jumja tea down on the table and shrugged. “It could have gone better,” he conceded, “But I’ve told Sunek he’s not allowed to do any more comet slingshots.”
“Really? That’s your takeaway from all this?”
“One of them. Besides, I’m not sure he’ll listen to me anyway. Kinda feels like being worshipped as a divine being might have had some lasting effects on the guy’s ego.”
Natasha was inclined to agree with that point.
“But,” Jirel continued, “It’s not like we could have fixed it, right? I mean, the damage was done way before we showed up.”
“True,” she admitted, gesturing to the padd, “And that’s what this is for. My latest message…back to the admiral.”
Jirel’s quizzical look gave way to one of grim understanding.
Admiral Jenner. The Starfleet officer who had made an unofficial request for Natasha to keep him updated on their journey after she had resigned her commission several months ago. The man who had indirectly brought them together by slipping the Bounty’s crew a mission to track down and salvage the black box of the late USS Navajo.
And the man that, unbeknownst to the rest of the Bounty’s crew, was Jirel’s mostly estranged adoptive father.
“Really?” Jirel snorted, “You’re gonna tell my dad on us? What are you, twelve?”
“No,” she replied patiently, “But Starfleet has resources for dealing with cultural contamination like this. Hell, they’ve caused enough of them down the years, it’s only right that they’ve learned a thing or two.”
“Makes sense.”
“Yeah, so I’ve suggested they coordinate with Edosian Internal Security to recover the wreckage, and also send a team to monitor the village.”
She paused and wiped her brow, surprised by how warm she was suddenly feeling, and absently wondering if there was something wrong with the ship’s environmental systems. It would make sense. There was always something wrong with the Bounty.
“Do what you gotta do, Nat,” Jirel offered, “But…if you are telling my dad about all this, can you leave out the bit where I let the villagers throw a feast in my honour? I mean, I don’t want the guy to start respecting me too much…”
She managed a smile and nodded back. “Don’t worry, oh spotted man. I’m blaming it all on Mazur. He caused the problems, after all. The rest of the details will just get stored away on the personal blackmail file I’ve got on you.”
“Hrm,” Jirel mused, “That’s not filling me with confidence.”
He smiled back, as she started to itch the back of her neck. A curious sensation was rising up inside of her that she couldn’t quite pinpoint.
“You ok?” he asked, with an edge of concern, “You look a bit…pale.”
She felt herself getting warmer. Visible beads of sweat formed on her forehead. “Yeah,” she managed, feeling a little weak, “I think I just need to—”
She went to stand, and immediately faltered. A sudden stabbing burst of pain spread through her leg. She looked down at the limb, and with growing horror, remembered the plant thorn that had embedded itself there earlier.
“Seriously,” Jirel persisted, “What’s wrong?”
“Back on the planet, there was—”
She winced in pain and grabbed the table for support. Jirel rushed over to try and support her.
“There was what?”
“A plant. It didn’t show anything on the tricorder, but…”
Her vision started to fade. She felt herself going limp, falling into Jirel’s arms as they both slumped down to the ground.
“Hey! Denella! Klath! Sunek!” she heard the Trill call out, “We’ve got a problem down here!”
Even though he was right next to her, it felt like his voice was coming from a far distance. Blackness closed in on the periphery of her vision, like she was disappearing down a tunnel. She felt the vague sensation of being picked up. She thought she heard him say something else, but it was a faint whisper.
And then she drifted away entirely. And she couldn’t see, or hear anything. She was gone.
Her comatose form flopped lifelessly into Jirel’s arms.
To be continued…