Chapter Text
Part Three (Cont’d)
“It’s not a kidnapping.”
Denella raised an entirely unconvinced eyebrow and kept her weapon raised at the Bajoran on the other side of the Kendra’s cockpit. “Really?” the Orion countered, “Cos, as far as I can see, you knocked me unconscious, got me all the way back to your ship somehow, and then took off into space. Presumably without telling anyone where we’re going?”
Erami cringed slightly at that list of undeniable facts and reluctantly sighed. “Ok, granted, there are a few similarities with a kidnapping. But this was all for your own safety.”
“My own safety?”
“Like I said,” Erami shrugged, “We needed to make a quick escape, and there wasn’t really time to explain. We needed to get away from Kervala Prime before the Pakleds got themselves back together, and I couldn’t risk them going after you if I left you there.”
“And now what? You’re just gonna keep me onboard your shuttle forever? Is this how you normally hire your crews?”
“No,” Erami smiled patiently, “We just need to find somewhere to hide for a bit. Just until the Pakleds clear out of the system to try and find us. I’ve done my best to mask our warp trail, so give it a few hours and then we should be safe to head back.”
The Orion still didn’t look convinced. Erami sighed again and gestured to the dagger that Denella was still wielding defensively in front of her.
“Look, if this really was a kidnapping, would you still have that? And wouldn’t I have tied you up instead of leaving you to wake up and hold me at knifepoint? Trust me, I’m familiar with the concept of a kidnapping. And this isn’t one.”
Denella had to concede that these were some good points. At the very least, if she was a kidnapper, Erami was taking an awful lot of liberties. “Well,” she managed eventually, “I, um, guess that makes sense.”
“You really thought I’d kidnapped you?” Erami chuckled with an amused shake of her head.
“Wouldn’t you?”
Now it was Erami’s turn to concede the point, as Denella rubbed the back of her head with a pained wince.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” the Bajoran winced, “If you, um, put the knife away, I can take a look at you with the medkit?”
Denella shook her head, but found herself holstering the dagger regardless. “It’s fine,” the Orion assured her, “Don’t think there’s a concussion. But you couldn’t have been a bit more gentle?”
“Don’t know my own strength, do I?” Erami grinned, rolling up her sleeve and flexing her bicep to underline her point.
Denella smiled back, and the Bajoran relaxed now the weapon was removed from the discussion.
“Well,” she continued, “Now that’s all cleared up, I’ll ask you again: You hungry?”
Denella considered trying to deny it, but she was completely famished. She nodded back, eliciting a wider smile from the other woman.
“Perfect,” Erami replied with satisfaction, “Cos I’ve got just the thing. Call it an apology. For, um, not kidnapping you.”
The Bajoran stepped over towards the controls of the shuttle and deftly tapped them. The Kendra had a simple bank of controls, with two seats at the front of the cockpit for a pilot and co-pilot, and much like the rest of the ship they showed clear signs of a lifetime of running repairs, the metal plates and control surfaces a mishmash of different designs and colours.
As Erami worked at the controls, Denella felt the shuttle slow to sublight speeds.
“Cos,” she continued, “I’ve told you we’re hiding from the Pakleds, but you haven’t seen where we’re hiding yet.”
She nodded towards the shuttle’s cockpit window, and Denella turned back to the view, just as the Bajoran swung the ship to her port side.
Denella couldn’t help but gasp, as she saw that the typical starscape view had been replaced by that of a dazzling nebula. It was a swirling mass of pink and purple hues, tendrils of gas twisting and curling around each other in a cosmic dance of charged particles. The light from the view bathed the entire cockpit in a warm pinkish tinge as the Kendra slowed to an impulse crawl just on the periphery of the nebula.
Regardless of exactly how she’d got here, she couldn’t help but be captivated by it.
“May I introduce you to the Kervala Nebula,” Erami smiled as she gazed at the beauty of the view herself, “Figured that if you’re stuck laying low with me for a while, the least I could do was take you someplace nice.”
Denella was still staring through the cockpit window, too transfixed to answer. Erami smiled and stood from her seat, walking over to the rear of the cockpit.
“And get you something nice to eat,” she added.
Denella tore herself away from the view and turned around to see the Bajoran ostentatiously spreading a thick woollen blanket across the deck of the cockpit. Next to her sat a small replicated wicker hamper, overflowing with various food and drink.
“You…made a picnic?” Denella asked, with mild incredulity.
“Yeah,” Erami nodded as she smoothed the blanket out, “And if you ever dare tell anyone about how cute I’m being right now, I’ll give you another whack on the head. Got a reputation as a hard-ass shuttle pilot to maintain.”
Denella felt herself smiling again, as Erami gestured for her to sit down on the blanket.
“So,” she added with a smile of her own, “Wanna try that dinner again?”
She paused, then shrugged before continuing.
“I mean, technically this is brunch, but whatever.”
Denella took another look at the beauty of the swirling nebula, then turned back to the impromptu picnic scene.
And she nodded.
* * * * *
High above the surface of Kervala Prime’s overpopulated spaceport, the Pakled vessel Martan hung silently in orbit.
It wasn’t much to look at. Externally, the hull was that of a decades-old Andorian freighter, consisting of a spherical forward section and a blocky rectangular midsection, complete with twin warp nacelles that branched off on elevated pylons.
When it had been used by the Andorians, it had served as little more than a supply ship, completing short runs between colonies with raw materials and other resources. But, like all Pakled ships, once Grumtrag and his crew had come into possession of it, they had made plenty of adjustments under the skin. Using whatever extra resources they had been able to buy, steal or otherwise acquire, the rechristened Martan had been thoroughly overhauled from the ground up.
Her warp drive had been replaced with one from a Terrelian cruiser. Her shields had been upgraded using a generator from an old Vulcan transport. And she had been kitted out with weapons systems sourced from half a dozen other vessels.
In combination, the disparate requirements of each system shouldn’t have worked in tandem. But the Pakleds found a way to patch everything together in a way that worked. As a result, despite the rather unthreatening exterior of the Martan, it packed a hefty punch when the need arose.
Not that Grumtrag felt comforted by that fact as he stalked onto the Martan’s bridge.
He had woken up several minutes earlier, to find that he and his trusty first mate had been left behind in the storage room in the port. The Bajoran and her Orion companion had clearly long gone, and hadn’t even bothered taking their disruptors with them. In something of a foul mood, he had immediately signalled to the Martan to beam them back aboard, and in the same transmission, he had also told his crew to work on getting a trace on any ships that had left the port recently.
By the time he had reached the bridge, little had changed about his mood. But then, he finally received some positive news. His tactical chief, a stout Pakled by the name of Grivnog, had a report for him as soon as he sat down in his command chair.
Because, not only had Grumtrag and his crew thoroughly upgraded the Martan’s propulsion, defensive and weapons systems over the last few months. They had also completed extensive work on the external sensors.
Thanks to a lucky find on a derelict they had come across a few sectors from Kervala Prime, there was now a full set of sensor modules from a Ferengi Marauder installed. Which meant that not only was the unassuming Martan packing a hefty punch, it was also excellent at locating its prey.
And while Juna Erami had done her best to hide her shuttle’s warp trail, she hadn’t reckoned with the beefed up systems of the Pakled vessel.
“We see where they have gone, Grumtrag,” Grivnog reported excitedly, “They tried to hide their path from us, but we have found it. Because we are smart.”
Grumtrag nodded in complete agreement with Grivnog’s final assessment. They were indeed smart. Smarter than the Bajoran that had taken their prize, at least. “Take us to them,” he barked out without a moment’s hesitation, “Fastest speed!”
The bald Pakled at the helm nodded and prodded at his controls.
The Martan broke orbit from Kervala Prime, and turned in the direction indicated by Grivnog’s sensor data, before exploding forwards in a burst of light as the Terrelian warp drive got to work.
The hunt was on.
* * * * *
One of the things that Natasha had found difficult to adjust to with the size of the Bounty, compared to the Starfleet ships she was used to, was that it was impossible to avoid anyone for very long.
Back in her days onboard the USS Tripoli, or the late USS Navajo, if she really wanted to avoid someone then there were ways to make it happen. Provided they worked in a different department, she could reschedule shifts, stagger her trips to the mess hall, hide away in a holodeck for a few hours, or even just walk the corridors of the engineering decks for an evening if necessary.
But on the Bounty, she had no such options available. And she couldn’t even relax in her cabin for hours on end as she could on a starship. Because she was hungry. And the only replicator onboard the Bounty was in the dining area. And as soon as she walked into the dining area, she saw that she wasn’t the only bedraggled individual who had sought out the universal hangover cure of a huge breakfast.
“Oh. Hey,” Jirel nodded from where he sat at the table, his fifth jumja tea of the morning in his hand.
For a second, she considered whether she could get away with simply nodding back and walking out again. No matter how ridiculous that would have looked. But ultimately, the combined strength of her growling stomach and her pounding head overruled any other plan she might have had. She medically needed to eat something, and while she would rather have dealt with that issue without bumping into Jirel, that wasn’t a luxury afforded to her onboard a ship of this size.
“Hi,” she replied simply, swiftly pacing over to the replicator and ordering up her hangover cure of choice.
Seconds later, she sat down opposite the Trill, with a steaming mug of triple filtered raktajino and a plate containing a double stack of pancakes complete with butter and syrup.
She could guess the look on Jirel’s face in response to the impending display of gluttony, but she kept her focus on the gooey, sugary mass in front of her and simply pointed at him with her fork.
“Don’t judge me, ok? As a medical professional, I’m aware there are plenty of actual hangover cures in the medical bay. But given how bad I feel right now, I’ve earned the right to cure this one the old fashioned way. By eating a huge plateful of crap.”
Jirel smiled and sipped his tea as she unapologetically attacked the stack of pancakes. “Hey, I’m not judging,” he half-lied, “I’ve always thought that sticking a hypospray in your neck to cure a hangover is cheating. If you don’t want to do the time, don’t do the crime. Or just stick to synthehol.”
She looked up at him, her mouth full of buttery, syrupy goodness, and she nodded.
The moment of hungover camaraderie almost immediately gave way to a more uncomfortable silence. The unspoken issues surrounding their night together hung thick in the air like a fog. Issues that Natasha really didn’t want to deal with while she felt like this.
“So,” Jirel ventured, with a click of his tongue, “About what happened—”
“What’s the plan after we’re done with the repairs?” she jumped in, swallowing another mouthful of pancake, “We gonna try and find a job in the port, or head to that trade convention on Corvin VII?”
“Oh,” Jirel replied, a little taken aback, “I hadn’t really thought about—”
“Cos I think we may as well look for something here first, right? Maybe a delivery we can make on our way over there? Bit of extra latinum?”
Jirel set his mug down on the table and mustered a nod, wondering how the conversation had drifted onto this particular subject from the one he had been intending to discuss. “Right, sure,” he shrugged, “But, um, all I wanted to say was—”
“Where are the others, by the way?” she continued, her words slightly muffled through another mouthful of food, “I might see if Denella needs a hand with the repairs. Sooner we get them done, sooner we can get moving, after all.”
Jirel sighed inwardly, gradually picking up on the hint that the conversation he had been preparing to have in his head throughout his own carb-heavy breakfast was destined not to happen.
The silence returned, as Natasha continued her meal and Jirel contemplated if there was another way for him to broach his preferred subject.
“So, um—”
That was as far as he got.
Although, this time, he wasn’t interrupted by another deliberate non sequitur from Natasha. Instead, the interruption came from outside the room, a curious noise from elsewhere in the ship.
Intrigued, and a little relieved at the disturbance, they stood up in unison and went to investigate. It didn’t take long for them to find the source of the disturbance. Klath had noisily returned to his ship, and to his cabin.
And he appeared to be packing.
The Klingon was in the middle of carefully placing the various bladed weapons that usually hung from the wall of his cabin into a stout metal carrying container when he looked up to see the two figures standing in the doorway.
“And where have you been all night, young man?” Jirel chided, gesturing at himself and Natasha with a sliver of amusement, “Do you have any idea how worried we both were?”
Klath didn’t look especially amused by this. Nor, in truth, did Natasha.
“I have…been with K’Veth,” he begrudgingly replied, as he slid his prized mek’leth into the container, “And I believe I now know what I must do to change her mind.”
“What?” Natasha couldn’t help but ask.
The Klingon looked back at her with steely determination. His cheek was still scarred by the mark left behind by K’Veth some days ago. And he still had no intention of doing anything to remove it.
He didn’t know for sure whether he was acting rationally, or whether he was again allowing the feeling of par’Mach inside him to dictate his actions, at the expense of his more rational side. But equally, after spending another night with K’Veth, he was more convinced than ever that he didn’t care either way. He wanted to be with her. And it was clear to him now that there was only one way that would ever happen.
“She believes her dishonour is too great,” he grunted by way of explanation, “That our great victory back on Brexis II was not enough to remove the stain of what she has done.”
“Great victory…?” Natasha asked in confusion.
“The tribble hunt,” Jirel reminded her, eliciting an unhappy shake the doctor’s head as she recalled the mass slaughter that Klath and K’Veth had carried out in the stores of the Klingon High Council member, “Hey, who knew that didn’t count as a proper battle?”
Klath ignored that comment. He didn’t have time to get into another debate about the morals of the Klingon people’s approach to tribble infestations. It was already taking a great deal of his willpower not to go and kill the one creature that remained in Natasha’s cabin. So, instead, he focused on his packing.
“But,” Natasha persisted, “Where are you going?”
Klath paused again and looked up at her, still deadly serious. “I must leave the Bounty, perhaps forever. And she and I must travel far from here, to find a battle worthy of reclaiming her sense of honour. And we must not stop until our blades are coated with the blood of our slain enemies.”
As Natasha took in the entirety of that statement, Jirel couldn’t help but chime in from her side.
“You had to ask…”