Chapter Text
Part One (Cont’d)
“How is this my fault?”
“How is this not your fault? He’s your friend!”
“Ah, no, he’s an acquaintance. I was very clear about that. Plus, he’s never done this before.”
“Really? He’s never done this specific thing before?”
The argument rattled around the confines of the Bounty’s cargo bay with no sign of stopping, as the Ju’Day-type raider hung in high orbit of Varris IV.
Since she had joined the ship’s ramshackle crew, having officially resigned her commission from Starfleet, Natasha Kinsen had found herself in plenty of uncomfortable situations.
In the past few months, she had battled rogue Jem’Hadar for a precious lost treasure, fought a gang of Vulcan psychopaths hell-bent on a vengeful quest to destroy their homeworld, been kidnapped by the Orion Syndicate’s most terrifying slave trader, fended off gun-toting outlaws on Nimbus III and nearly died after being infected by a psychoactive plant venom on a pre-industrial world.
She did wonder whether Admiral Jenner, the Starfleet officer who had asked to be kept informed of the Bounty’s movements as a personal favour, was starting to think she was making it all up.
Either way, it hadn’t taken her long to come to terms with the fact that, when you were a part of this crew, uncomfortable situations were par for the course. But even then, this particular uncomfortable situation was taking the biscuit.
She and Jirel, the unjoined Trill who served as the Bounty’s de facto captain, as well as being Admiral Jenner’s mostly estranged adopted son, were sharing this situation together. They were both sitting on the deck plates in the middle of the cargo bay with their backs to each other. Their hands were cuffed together, linking them around a large metal cylinder.
And they were both dressed only in their underwear.
Yes, Natasha thought to herself, as she shivered slightly from the cold deck below her, this is probably a new low.
“No, actually, he’s never done…this specific thing before,” Jirel fired back from behind her, gamely keeping his side of the never-ending argument going, “So how was I supposed to know—”
“Nope,” she butted in, shaking her head, “Oh, no, no, no, don’t even think of trying to get out of any responsibility like that. This guy was your friend—”
“Acquaintance.”
“—You’re the one that convinced us to take on this job he was pitching. And thanks to all of that, and specifically thanks to you, I’ve now been drugged, shackled to a naked idiot and left trussed up next to a cabrodine bomb!”
Jirel paused for a second, realising that his defence was on slightly shaky ground. “Still not entirely convinced it’s a bomb,” he offered instead.
“You really wanna test that theory?”
Another pause.
“Not right now,” the Trill replied, in an altogether less confident voice.
The metal cylinder in between them had initially been brought onboard as the sole item of cargo for their trip to Varris IV. Supposedly nothing more than a container filled with electrical equipment for one of the remaining mining operations on the surface. However, it had since been revealed to be something quite different. A bomb, designed to detonate at the whim of a trigger finger, should the Bounty’s crew not do as they were told.
Like Jirel, Natasha also had some doubts as to the validity of the claim. For a start, she wasn’t sure why such a simple explosive device needed to be quite so large. But equally, she also wasn’t eager to test that theory either.
“Look,” she sighed deeply, “Can we please just focus on getting the hell out of this?”
She backed up her request by starting to struggle against her end of the bulky metal handcuffs around her wrists.
“Oh, yeah, ok, I’ll get right on that,” Jirel shot back, “Because, little known fact about unjoined Trills, although we don’t get the belly slug, or the sixteen lifetimes of memories, we do at least have the ability to melt steel.”
Natasha stopped struggling, silently acknowledging the futility of her efforts. She shivered again and suppressed a deep sigh. “This is still your fault,” she muttered.
“It’s not my—”
Before the circular argument could get rolling again, they heard two sets of footsteps approaching the cargo bay down the main corridor of the ship. They both turned around to see their captors entering the bay.
Natasha once again found herself noting how different the two Ktarians were. They really were the unlikeliest of criminal couples.
The shorter of the two was Jirel’s friend/acquaintance. A Ktarian called Devan Gol who the Trill had worked with at the Tyran Scrapyards before he had acquired the Bounty. He carried himself with a slightly passive stoop, accompanied by a nervous tendency to wring his hands together.
Jirel had originally been delighted when he had got in touch with him out of the blue, and had not only been keen to meet up with his former colleague, but had also promised them a lucrative supply run to Varris IV as well.
Initially, Devan had seemed harmless enough to Natasha. He was friendly, if a little shy and unsure of himself. Compared to the fake bravado that Jirel’s wannabe space adventurer personality tended to give off, she struggled to reconcile the two as friends.
And speaking of polar opposites, next to Devan strode the second Ktarian. A significantly taller man called Mizar Bal.
When the two of them had beamed aboard with the cargo, Mizar had been introduced as a senior representative of the mining company that the electrical equipment was destined for. And nobody onboard had thought to question this statement. Which now seemed like an oversight, after he had actually turned out to be a criminal, and Mizar and Devan had seized control of the Bounty and her crew thanks to a rogue canister of anesthizine gas slipped into the air supply.
Natasha tried not to focus too much attention on the taller Ktarian as he strode into the bay. He was broad-shouldered and impeccably dressed, not to mention dashingly handsome, with an elegant head of dark brown hair and a not entirely dissimilar air of self-confidence to the one that Jirel often tried to project. Except in Mizar’s case, it was entirely justified.
And she had been taken in by pretty much all of those qualities of the Bounty’s new passenger on the journey to Varris IV. Back when she thought she was dealing with a senior representative of a mining company.
Which, as she sat tied up in an undignified half-naked heap next to an explosive device, she grimly conceded had been another oversight.
“Well now,” Mizar smiled at the two ungainly figures, “I know this has been a very stressful day for all of us. But you’ll be pleased to hear myself and my colleague are about to leave you in peace. Relatively speaking, at least. There’ll still be a great big bomb here.”
Jirel ignored the sneering attempt at humour, and kept his attention on his former colleague. “Hey, Devan,” he said, “Listen, whatever the hell you’re trying to do, we can help, if you—”
“That’s enough out of you, Captain Nobody,” Mizar interrupted, glancing back at the nervous Devan at the same time, “Let’s not let ourselves get distracted, hmm? It’s time to get to the shuttle.”
“What shuttle?” Jirel pressed, earning a smug smile from the Ktarian.
“You think we planned this without alternative means to get away from this dreadful little colony? It's your crew running riot down there, and this is the ship they'll be traced back to. Besides, once we’re out of harm’s way, it’ll be a lot easier to detonate that thing if your friends don’t do as they’re told.”
He gestured at the device in between Jirel and Natasha, as the Trill bristled from his impotent position on the floor of the cargo bay.
“S—Sorry, Jirel,” Devan managed to get out in a quiet voice, “I know you won’t understand, b—but I had to do this.”
“This?” Jirel offered back incredulously, doing his best to gesture at the mildly farcical scene he was a part of, “You had to do this?”
Devan didn’t find a response for that, and instead began pacing back and forth down the length of the bay, chewing on his fingernails.
Mizar, meanwhile, had idly stepped around to Natasha’s side. She continued to try and keep her focus elsewhere, silently hoping that the handsome man she had so regrettably been taken in by wasn’t about to add any extra discomfort to her latest uncomfortable situation.
“Listen,” he offered with a winning smile, “It really is important to me that you understand this isn’t how I normally like to treat a lady.”
Natasha suppressed the fresh pang of regret, as she tried her best to find her own right knee a fascinating enough object to deserve her full attention.
“Especially the morning after a night like we had.”
She closed her eyes and sighed. Discomfort levels were now at critical mass.
“I’m sorry, what?” the inevitable sound of Jirel’s voice came from the other side of the bomb.
“Jirel,” she growled, “Don’t even think about making this a thing.”
She already knew it was too late. The Trill’s jealousy tanks were primed and full, despite the attempt he made to disguise it. “I’m not making—Who’s making this a thing?” he replied.
A pause.
“Making what a thing, anyway? I mean, I’m not making it a thing, as we’ve already clarified, but, um, what exactly is it that I’m not making a thing, just so we’re all on the same page?”
Natasha groaned slightly and leaned back, resting her head on the metal cylinder behind her. For his part, Mizar’s face creased into a superior smile as he stepped back over to Jirel and offered him a knowing shrug. “Hey, a gentleman never kisses and tells.”
“Ok, so there was kissing—?”
“Jirel!”
“Not making it a thing.”
Before Jirel could not make a thing out of it any further, and just as Natasha began to wonder if the fiery devastation of a cabrodine bomb explosion might be preferable to spending the next few hours shackled to the Trill’s jealous streak, the communicator on Mizar’s belt chirped out. The taller Ktarian glanced over at his colleague, who rushed over. Both of them were very much back in business mode.
“What is it?” Mizar barked into the device.
A reassuringly familiar voice replied. Albeit one that seemed to be affecting an even more pompous and belligerent tone than usual.
“Hey there, team leader. This is Trelok, head of strike team alpha, checking in from the target location.”
Even over the slightly patchy comms link, everyone in the cargo bay picked up on the sound of an annoyed Klingon growl in the background. The two Ktarians shared a confused glance.
“Who?” Mizar asked eventually.
“Ugh,” Sunek tutted, “You know, Trelok! The gritty, hard-nosed vigilante from the Cerris nebula! Men fear me, women love—”
The impromptu character bio was interrupted by a sudden scratching sound, indicating that a short battle had broken out for control of the communicator. Seconds later, Denella’s voice came over the link, positively spitting her words back at the Bounty’s new commanders.
“Alright, listen to me, we’ve done what you said. We’re at the bar, and we’ve found this Palmor Fot. What the hell do we do now?”
Jirel managed to take a break from thinking about how best to continue not making it a thing to spot a flicker of something cross Devan’s face when he heard Denella say that particular name. A flicker of familiarity, mixed with something darker.
“Th—They’ve got him,” he whispered to Mizar, “We need to—”
“Not yet,” the bigger Ktarian chided, “One thing at a time.”
Devan backed off immediately. Jirel couldn’t help but notice how much more meek and passive his old acquaintance now was compared to back at the scrapyards, even as the more confident Ktarian continued to bark orders into the communicator.
“Now, listen carefully,” Mizar explained, “I want you to talk to Mr Fot, and get him to take you down to the basement of the bar. I’m sure with a bit of gentle persuasion, he’ll give you what I’m after.”
“What exactly are you after?” Denella queried.
Unseen by the Orion, the Ktarian’s face twisted into a greedy smile. One that gave away the answer to her question a split second before he verbalised it.
“Latinum.”