Chapter Text
Part Four (Cont’d)
The three Bounty crew members kept their focus on the weapons being pointed at them by the two familiar newcomers to the penthouse, and kept their own disruptors raised.
Not that this seemed to faze Mizar at all, who merely waved dismissively at the trio of weapons pointed at him as he stepped over to the pile of latinum. “You can put those away,” he motioned, “Don’t forget that we’re one little button click away from wiping out that little ship of yours…”
Denella stole a glance at Sunek and Klath, and nodded a silent acknowledgement. They all, especially reluctantly in Klath’s case, lowered their weapons.
Mizar acknowledged their concession with a smug nod of his head, and then took in the pile of latinum with a greedy smile. “Now, this is what I was waiting for,” he grinned.
“Who the hell are you?” Palmor barked out at the tall Ktarian, “I don’t recognise you.”
“I’m just a man who happens to know how much of a crook you are, Palmor,” Mizar drawled, still with one glinting eye focused squarely on the latinum, “And one who knew how much of a payday robbing you would be. If you want to know why we chose you specifically, you’d need to talk to my colleague.”
Devan felt the urge to shrink back as the attention of everyone in the room suddenly swung over to him. But he forced himself to stand as tall as he could, and kept one thing in his mind to ensure that his often fleeting resolve didn’t waver this time.
One single image. An image of her face.
Of those looking at him, Klath, Sunek and Denella waited patiently for an explanation, while Tegras and Evina looked a little confused, having never seen him before.
And Palmor Fot suddenly looked significantly paler.
“You…” he whispered, “You’re behind all this—?”
“Please, d—don’t talk,” Devan managed to snap out, keeping his disruptor pointed squarely at Palmor and his finger on the trigger, “You know why I’m here.”
Palmor swung back around to the others, his eyes widening with fear. “You can’t trust this man, ok? What has he told you?”
“Actually, very little,” Denella said truthfully, “We were kinda hoping to get some answers at the end of all of this.”
“Just what have you done this time, Palmor?” Tegras added with a shake of his head.
“You don’t understand,” Palmor continued, “This is all a big misunderstanding—”
“He knows what he did,” Devan replied, his hand with the disruptor starting to shake slightly as he prepared for what he had to do, “A—And now, I’m going to—”
He was interrupted by the sound of another incoming transporter beam.
Two more forms coalesced inside the increasingly crowded penthouse. Two that were again familiar to most of those present in the room, and significantly more appropriately dressed than the last time anyone had seen them.
It hadn’t taken Jirel and Natasha long to figure out where they needed to beam in. Even the Bounty’s often temperamental sensors could pick up the lifesigns of a Klingon, a Vulcan and an Orion from orbit of an otherwise almost entirely homogenised colony such as Varris IV.
But any relief they felt as they saw the familiar faces of their crewmates again was short-lived. Jirel immediately turned around to the shocked Devan. “Hey, Devan, stop,” he called out, “Please!”
Devan was momentarily stunned at the sight of the Trill and the human, and struggled to find anything to say to his former colleague. But Mizar had no such issues.
“I thought I said goodbye to you two,” the Ktarian grouched, seemingly not overly concerned that his own hostages had escaped.
“You did,” Natasha replied, “It was gross.”
“Huh, but you broke out and beamed down here. Tut, tut, that wasn’t part of the deal. I’ve got a mind to detonate that little bomb anyway—”
That was enough for Denella to whirl around to the Ktarian and raise her disruptor once again. He’d threatened the life of the Bounty, after all.
“You do that, you’re not getting out of here alive!”
The determination in her face as she growled those words at him were enough to make Mizar pause and second guess his position for the first time since he had arrived.
“Hey, hey,” Jirel managed to his engineer, “Let’s - all of us, ok? - put the disruptors down for a bit, ok? And just calm down.”
Denella ground her teeth, but reluctantly lowered her own weapon. Mizar followed suit with a shrug of his shoulders, then tapped a command into a device in his other hand.
For a sickening moment, Jirel wondered if that had been the command for the bomb. Even if he still wasn’t entirely certain it was a bomb. Instead, a split second later, the pile of latinum shimmered and disappeared, as Mizar’s shuttle’s transporter whisked it away. Fifty bricks of latinum literally disappeared before everyone’s eyes.
“Well,” Mizar purred, “I’ve got everything I need.”
Jirel sighed and turned his focus back to Devan, who had been looking at the Trill ever since he had beamed in. “Ok, so, Devan, you’ve got the latinum, so there’s no need to do anything else, ok?”
“I—I’ve told you, Jirel. You can’t stop me from—”
“He’s gone!”
Evina’s cry was enough to cause everyone in the room to look around in shock. It quickly became apparent that, as everyone else had been arguing with each other, Palmor Fot had taken the opportunity to disappear as completely as his latinum had.
“No!” Devan screamed.
Without waiting, without even thinking, he took off with his weapon raised. Heading for the exit of the living area next to where Palmor had been standing, and the steps that led up to the landing pad.
Jirel jumped into action, following his friend. Equally close to the door through which Devan had bolted, Natasha instinctively tagged along as well.
“Ok, that’s enough of that,” Mizar called out, just as the other Bounty crew members were about to follow in their wake.
Denella, Sunek and the limping Klath turned to see that Mizar’s disruptor was raised again, the Ktarian still looking entirely in control of the situation despite the sudden flurry of activity.
“Let’s leave them to it, hmm? Devan just needs to do what he needs to do.”
Klath grumbled slightly, causing Evina to look over at him. “Feel like a hostage yet?” she offered with a friendly smile.
The Klingon didn’t match her smile, and simply grumbled again, even as Mizar stifled a slight yawn.
“Shame though,” he offered idly, “I had been hoping to see someone die today…”
* * * * *
Palmor Fot had run. Because that was exactly the sort of thing that Palmor Fot was best at.
Whenever he found himself in a sticky situation, he had an instinctive ability to get out of it. Usually exactly like he just had, by waiting for an appropriate distraction and then making a sharp exit, either literally or metaphorically, leaving everyone else to clean everything up.
It was exactly how he had been able to get involved in just about every dodgy deal on Varris IV without ever leaving enough of a trace to get caught. And here, in his own penthouse, he had spotted a window of opportunity to sneak away and make for the landing pad.
Now outside, he swiftly dashed across the pad, stumbling slightly in a deep puddle that was left behind by the still-driving rain as he made for the freshly liberated personal shuttle that was still parked there.
He may have lost a hell of a lot of latinum, but he knew he had more where that came from. And if he could escape in the shuttle, he could shop the others to the authorities and be home free.
As the rain soaked him to the skin, he reached the steps of the shuttle and tapped at the external controls to open the door. He breathed a sigh of relief. He had made it.
And then he heard the voice.
“Stop!”
Palmor’s stomach sank. Even as the door began to open, he turned around and squinted back through the rain, to where Devan stood on the far side of the pad, his disruptor raised.
“N—No further, Palmor,” he added for emphasis, stepping towards him.
Palmor licked his lips. This was undoubtedly a setback, but he was still sure he could talk his way out of this one. He’d talked his way out of worse situations before. And behind him, he heard the shuttle door fully opening with a dull thud. He was just a few steps from his escape.
“Listen, Devan,” he replied with an amenable tone, “I know you’re upset, but this isn’t the way to—”
“D—Don’t talk!” the other Ktarian snapped back, “Nothing you say can change what has to happen here!”
He took another step forwards, edging closer to his target.
Behind him, the door to the stairway opened again and Jirel and Natasha raced into the driving rain themselves, stopping when they saw the standoff in front of them.
“Devan!” Jirel called out.
The Ktarian didn’t turn back. He didn’t even flinch. He kept his weapon raised. “This is the man, Jirel,” he called back, “The one that took her from me!”
“I get it,” Jirel replied, “But this is way too crazy a reaction to—”
“Oh no,” Natasha gasped, grabbing Jirel’s arm in shock, “He took her from him, Jirel. He didn’t steal her. He killed her.”
Jirel’s jaw dropped as he processed that comment, silently cursing himself for not having seen the full truth of Devan’s words earlier.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Palmor insisted, taking half a step backwards, “You can’t blame me for—”
“Her name was Etara,” Ryan bellowed out into the sodden night’s sky, “S—She was Ktarian. And she was the most perfect woman I’d ever met.”
He took another step forwards, rage now entirely overriding his earlier timidity.
“A—And then she came to Varris IV to work on a new mining deal for her company. And she met Palmor Fot. And his drug empire.”
Jirel stepped towards his friend, with Natasha following suit. But the Trill struggled to find the words to respond to his friend’s raw angst. “Devan, I had no idea—”
“Felicium!” Devan spat out.
Next to Jirel, Natasha’s mouth gaped in horror. “Oh my god,” she whispered.
“What’s felicium?” Jirel asked.
“Heavy narcotic,” she explained, “Originally developed on a planet called Brekka as a cure for the Ornaran plague, but so addictive that they turned it into a dependency. Starfleet intervened and broke the cycle, but without any other industry to speak of, the Brekkans turned to selling the drug on to the rest of the galaxy.”
“I—It’s everywhere on Varris IV,” Devan added miserably, “Thanks to this man.”
Palmor kept his hands raised up in front of him, an appeasing look on his face. “You have to understand, I’m just a businessman providing a service—”
“It consumed her,” Devan continued, cutting the other Ktarian off with a furious glare, “Took away everything that was perfect about her. A—At first, I tried to keep her supplied with enough of it. But with felicium, you can never have enough. You can never be satisfied. And eventually we ran out of latinum, and Palmor Fot cut us off…and then the withdrawal started.”
Natasha flinched in sympathy. Jirel grimaced. Palmor tensed up further. Devan stifled a sob.
“It sent her insane. S—Screaming in agony. Begging me for help. And then, one day, when my back was turned, she g—got away, and s—she—”
His body convulsed in a sob. The disruptor in his hand wobbled slightly. Jirel had heard enough, he stepped through a puddle towards his old colleague to comfort him.
“No closer, Jirel,” Devan managed as he heard the splash of water behind him, “I can’t let you stop me. Not now.”
Jirel obediently stopped, having only reduced the distance between himself and Devan by a few feet. There was still half the length of the landing pad between them.
“Devan,” Jirel urged, raindrops dripping off his forehead, “I know you don’t want to do this. It might seem like the right answer, given everything that’s happened, but I promise you that you will regret this the moment you press that trigger.”
Devan shook his head and stared down at the disruptor for a moment, as Palmor took another fearful half-step back towards the safety of the side door of the shuttle.
“There’s no other way,” Devan replied eventually, “A—And this is why I had to find someone like Mizar Bal to help me with all this. Because you might have given me passage here, but you wouldn’t have helped me to do something like this.”
“Well,” Jirel managed with a sad smile, “I guess you got that part right.”
Devan still didn’t take his eyes off Palmor, but he nodded in acknowledgement of Jirel’s comment, even as his wife’s face flashed through his memory once again. He stifled the fresh wave of emotion and stared back at where Palmor still stood, frozen in terror, gripping his disruptor a little more tightly.
And then they heard the sound of the transporter.