Chapter Text
Part One
Even by his own admission, Jirel Vincent was lacking in many of the basic requirements that people tended to look for in a top of the line 24th century space captain.
He wasn’t especially gifted academically. He struggled to project any sense of gravitas. He let his crew ride roughshod over the very concept of a chain of command whenever they pleased. And he didn’t own anything that came even close to the definition of a uniform. He also really needed a haircut.
But none of that necessarily mattered when you took into account the fact that the Ju’Day-type raider he nominally commanded, the Bounty, was lacking in many of the basic requirements that people tended to look for in a top of the line 24th century spaceship.
The Bounty was an ancient, weathered, battered vessel which had been through more repair cycles than a Klingon battle wing, more warp cores than an experimental starship, and had covered more sectors than an overworked Ferengi mining freighter.
Still, in their own special way, captain and ship both possessed a shared quality of resilience. Which explained why both had somehow made it this far in life, despite their obvious limitations.
For the Bounty, this resilient quality was built into the rugged design of the Ju’Day-type craft, and the durability and repairability of the ship’s components. And for Jirel himself, the quality was reflected in his unerring confidence in his own ability to talk his way out of anything. No matter how dire a situation he found himself in, the Trill trusted his powers of negotiation and his winning charm to get him through. That was just what he did. That was what he always had to do.
Which was why, even though he and the Bounty were five days late in arriving at the Flaxian science station Reja Gar, and even as he stood in front of the station commander’s desk, he was absolutely certain that he was successfully talking his way out of his latest problem.
After all, he had some really solid excuses.
“The Children of Tama?”
Commander Turanya, the Flaxian whose office Jirel stood in, steepled his tendriled fingers on the other side of the desk and stared back at Jirel in bemusement.
Jirel, for his part, offered his best disarming shrug and a sideways grin straight out of the top drawer of the available smiles in his armoury.
It didn’t matter to him how unbelievable the truth might have sounded. Because a lot of days onboard the Bounty tended to be fairly unbelievable. So, while a lesser captain might have been concerned that his excuses weren’t washing, he just casually pointed down at a bowl of Flaxian pine nuts sitting on his side of the desk.
“These complimentary, or…?”
Turanya gestured dismissively at the bowl and Jirel grabbed a handful of the nuts, popping a couple in his mouth and crunching them noisily.
“You’re telling me,” Turanya continued, the oily commander’s nostrils flaring slightly with incredulity as he spoke, “That you’re five days late with the consignment of spore samples our biological science team were waiting on because of…the Children of Tama?”
“Well, not entirely,” Jirel conceded truthfully, his confidence levels still high, “But one of their ships did intercept us as we were taking the most direct route out here, and they said we couldn’t cut through the Montur system because it belonged to them.”
“Did they?”
Commander Turanya’s tone was bereft of any sense of genuine belief, and he had in fact had to work hard to extract most of the sarcasm from his words.
Not that Jirel was worried about that. He was talking his way out of the problem, after all.
“I mean,” he continued with another winning grin, “I think that’s what they were claiming? They just kept saying ‘The city of Julod, its walls high, its moat wide’. And then they locked weapons on us. So we, y’know, decided we’d go the long way around.”
Turanya shook his head and picked up a small padd from the desk in front of him, raising a single eyebrow in confusion. “But your engineer told my repair teams that the damage to your vessel was caused by a Breen scout ship?”
Jirel crewed on another pine nut and nodded, confidence levels still operating within normal parameters. “Ah, yep, well, our new route had us skirting pretty close to the new border of Breen space. And, apparently, also a tiny bit over the border. Which was an honest mistake, but they didn’t give us a chance to explain that.”
Turanya’s second eyebrow joined his first.
“And then,” the Trill continued, “After we got through all that, we picked up the distress call.”
“…Distress call?”
“Yeah. From a transport ship ferrying a Kriosian princess to the Sentaxian system.”
“You…rescued a princess?”
Commander Turanya’s eyebrows were now threatening to flee his face entirely.
“I know what it sounds like,” Jirel smiled back, “But the transport just had a warp core imbalance, so we didn’t ‘rescue’ her so much as we just gave her a lift. We were passing that system on our way here anyway.”
“I see.”
“But, I mean, you know Kriosians, right? And it turned out this princess hadn’t imprinted yet. Said she’d been saving herself for her wedding day. Until she accidentally bumped into my weapons chief at the wrong moment. So then that became a whole thing—”
“Jirel, I’m going to stop you there,” Turanya said with a deep sigh.
Jirel obediently paused, happy that another sticky situation had been successfully avoided thanks to his ever-resilient powers of negotiation.
In front of him, the Flaxian leaned forward in his chair, affecting a slightly deeper glower than Jirel would normally have expected from a man who was fully satisfied with the completely truthful explanation that he had been offered for their entirely understandable delays.
“Frankly, I don’t believe a word of what you’re saying.”
Jirel’s latest grin disappeared for a fleeting moment, as his confidence levels suffered a hit. But he quickly rotated his shield harmonics and recovered. “That’s genuinely what happened,” he persisted, “Ask my crew. Klath had to undergo an ancient Kriosian memory wipe to get out of that whole imprint thing—”
“Stop it.”
Jirel stopped it. His confidence levels now fluctuating under pressure from the Flaxian’s reaction.
“So,” Turanya continued, “They’re fun, the stories. Very entertaining, I’m sure. But here’s the facts of the situation: In return for a very generous quantity of latinum, I entrusted you and your crew with the simple task of transporting two hundred spore samples from Flaxia Prime to my station, so that our researchers could conduct groundbreaking research into fungal lifespans in microgravity.”
“I know,” Jirel nodded, “Sounded super important.”
“Instead, you’ve shown up here five days late. All of the samples are damaged, destroyed or otherwise unusable. And on top of that, you’ve had the front to ask my engineering department to take time out of their refit of the habitation levels to help repair your ship!”
Jirel calmly reached down and grabbed another handful of pine nuts. “Look, Commander,” he offered, keeping his tone understanding as his confidence returned to peak levels, “I’m as upset as you are. All we wanted was a nice quiet delivery for once—”
“For once?!”
“My point is that we honestly tried our best. But sometimes these things happen out here. And I totally understand if you want to renegotiate payment given what’s happened.”
The Flaxian leaned back in his seat and steepled his fingers again. “Oh, you have no idea how much we need to renegotiate. Because of your delays, the spores are ruined, the research will have to be delayed, which means the funding for the whole project will now need to be returned. And we were supposed to use part of that to get our new onboard animal habitat up and running!”
“Huh,” Jirel managed, his confidence levels shielding him from fully acknowledging how far south this negotiation was heading, “So, what, we’ll keep the upfront payment, you keep the rest of the balance, and we’ll call it even?”
The Trill tried a hopeful smile. And for the first time since their conversation had started, there was a trace of a smile on Turanya’s own face. Though not one that settled the nerves that were starting to impact on his resilience. As Turanya idly tapped on the padd in his hand and then handed it over, Jirel felt his spots starting to itch.
“Here’s my counter-proposal,” the Flaxian said, calmly but firmly, “You, and your crew, are going to repay that amount of latinum. In full.”
Jirel stared at the figure on the padd. His confidence shattered in an instant. “Um, I think there’s a typo here. This says you want us to pay—”
“No typo. That’s what you’ve just cost the Flaxian Science Agency.”
Jirel looked back up at the Flaxian commander. Who was still smiling, but definitely didn’t seem to be joking. “Ok, let’s be real here, Turanya,” the Trill managed, “We both know that there’s no way we can give you that sort of money.”
“Well, I’d suggest you find a way, Jirel. Because until you do, I’m afraid that I have no choice but to keep hold of the collateral.”
“What collateral?”
“Your ship,” Turanya replied with a wider leer, “Which is hereby impounded.”
Jirel’s face dropped. His confidence had fully evaporated. For the first time, he was forced to fully acknowledge that he wasn’t going to talk his way out of this one.
“Y—You can’t do that!”
“I assure you I can,” Turanya replied, his own confidence growing as Jirel’s dwindled, as if he was absorbing it from the Trill’s body, “As per the rules of Flaxian interstellar law. If you need to double check, I think it’s section 17, paragraph 3.”
He gestured back to the padd in Jirel’s hand as he continued.
“You bring me what you owe me, and you can have your ship back. Otherwise, I guess you’re hiking to your next delivery.”
Jirel went to retort again, to try and argue his case further, and talk his way out of what was happening to him and his ship. But something entirely unexpected happened.
He found that he had nothing else to say.
* * * * *
Moments later, Jirel quietly stepped out of the station commander’s office and into the small reception area.
Over on the benches across the side of the room, the rest of the Bounty’s crew stood up expectantly, and he looked back at them. Klath, his Klingon weapons chief, Denella, his Orion engineer, Natasha Kinsen, his human ex-Starfleet doctor, and Sunek, his emotional Vulcan pilot.
Four people that had entrusted their immediate future in Jirel’s ability to talk his way out of any situation. Four people that were completely exhausted from their eventful trip to the Flaxian science station Reja Gar.
And four people that Jirel now had to tell that they were homeless.
“Well?” Denella asked expectantly, “How did it go?”
The unjoined Trill took a moment to decide on the best way to break the news. Eventually, he settled on his approach.
“So, there’s good news and bad news.”
A long pause. The four people stared back at their de facto leader, as he held his hand out with a hopeful, confident smile.
“The good news is: I got us some pine nuts…”