Chapter Text
Part One
“You can’t bring that in here.”
Jirel adjusted the heavy satchel on his shoulder and suppressed the unnerving sense of deja vu that he felt as he looked up at the burly owner of the gruff voice standing in front of him.
Why was it always Nausicaans?
He took a second to cast his mind back to the last time a Nausicaan bouncer had stood between him and the entrance to a bar. Back on Hestina, at the Targ and Lion, when he and the Bounty were searching for information on the final location of the late USS Navajo, and her black box.
On that occasion, the solution to the menacing and entirely overzealous doorman had been easy. A simple bribe had been enough for him to look the other way. But this time, Jirel wasn’t in the mood to play around. There was no trace of his usual laid-back look on his face. His mood was dark.
“Listen, friend,” he muttered at the enormous Nausicaan, “I really don’t have time for this.”
The bouncer shrugged his shoulders and pointed a meaty finger at the satchel again. “No entry,” he boomed, “Doorman’s discretion.”
Another wave of deja vu washed over the Trill. It was clear that, unlike some of his kin, this particular Nausicaan was well aware of the merry dance at play here. The accepted process for a man in his line of work to negotiate a little extra cash from a frustrated wannabe patron of the establishment he was tasked with looking after.
Jirel sighed in apparent acceptance of the situation and reached for his pocket.
The Nausicaan’s look turned to one of anger when, instead of the modest amount of gold-pressed latinum he had expected the Trill to produce, he instead found himself looking down at an ugly disruptor, pointed squarely at his stomach.
“I said,” Jirel hissed, “I really don’t have time for this.”
The bouncer glared impotently at the now-armed wannabe patron in front of him. This move wasn’t in his script. But despite the sense of humiliation he felt at being bested like this by such a clearly physically inferior opponent, the cogs in his brain turned fast enough for the doorman to concede that it wasn’t worth getting killed over.
He scowled at the Trill and jabbed his finger at the entrance to the bar.
“In.”
Jirel kept the disruptor raised as he walked over to the door. The Nausicaan kept his distance.
“Glad we could sort that out,” the Trill offered.
But his mood still didn’t get any lighter.
* * * * *
Some time later, with the disruptor stowed back away, Jirel sat at the bar and stared down at the remains of his drink.
He found himself in the confines of the dingy establishment known as the Journeyman’s Rest.
The Bounty had arrived in orbit of Golos III a few hours ago, after spending several days warping over to the planet, following the coordinates that had been so mysteriously sent to him via subspace message, all the way back on the Kervala Prime spaceport. He had beamed down alone and walked the short distance to the Journeyman's Rest, not bothering with any backup, despite some audible protestations from the rest of the Bounty’s crew.
He could see their point. The Golos system was in an especially unfriendly sector of space, barely a day’s travel from the Badlands, the turbulent expanse of plasma storms on the fringes of the Federation-Cardassian border. An area best avoided unless absolutely necessary.
For several years, the Badlands had been a hive of activity for the Maquis, who used the treacherous conditions as perfect cover for their insurgency against the Cardassian Union. But they had long since been eliminated, even before the Dominion War had begun in earnest.
Then, in the absence of the Maquis, criminals, bandits and other nefarious groups had moved in to use the storms as cover for their own illicit activities and questionable business.
The Federation side of the Badlands was still heavily patrolled, but the Cardassian side was more of a free-for-all. The shattered Union, almost razed to the ground in the final stages of the war, no longer had the resources or the manpower to oversee the more remote regions of its boundaries. So the Badlands, and nearby outposts like the Golos system, had simply been left to fester.
Golos III itself had once been a thriving Cardassian trading post, and the Journeyman’s Rest had cultivated a reputation as the classiest kanar lounge this side of the Demilitarised Zone. But over time, the neglect had taken its toll. What was left of the Cardassian authorities had been recalled to the inner regions of the Union, and plenty of the galaxy’s undesirables had taken their place. And any business owners who couldn’t afford to move had simply had to adapt.
As such, the Journeyman's Rest was no longer renowned for its kanar. But it was renowned for just about everything else.
Since he had made his way past the Nausicaan bouncer and taken a seat at the bar, Jirel had been sexually propositioned three times, been challenged to four separate fights, and been offered more illegal substances than he cared to remember.
But, through a combination of patience, luck, and the occasional confirmation that it was a disruptor in his pocket, and he wasn’t pleased to see them, the unjoined Trill had managed to negotiate each of those incidents in turn. For the time being, he wasn’t being bothered.
He looked up from the dregs in his glass and checked the chronometer on the wall. He’d now been waiting here for more than an hour. With an inward grimace, he cursed the fact that, if it was anyone else he was supposed to be meeting, he’d have long since headed back to the Bounty.
But it wasn’t anyone else he was meeting. It was her. And, as ever, something was compelling him to stay.
So, he waited.
He returned his focus to the remains of his Andorian brandy, even as the Lurian bartender slowly idled his way over to him, gesturing to the glass. Jirel shook his head.
Despite the notoriously easy-going look of his species, the bartender took some significant offence to this. It was a tough job to turn a profit on Golos III these days, and there was nothing he hated more than seat-hoggers. Travellers and drifters taking up precious space at the bar while spending the entire evening nursing a single small drink.
There had been a particularly high spate of such transients in the Journeyman’s Rest already that week, and this latest specimen was the straw that broke the Lurian Sludgeworm’s back as far as the bartender was concerned. He was mad. Just as he was about to give the Trill a serious piece of his mind, a second figure slid effortlessly onto the empty barstool next to him, and ordered on his behalf.
“Dry martini with a twist. And he’ll have another brandy. All on his tab.”
The Lurian glared at the newcomer for a moment, a little put out at being denied the chance to give the impassioned speech about the need to support local businesses that he had mapped out in his head. But ultimately, he simply nodded and hobbled off to prepare the drinks.
Jirel, for his part, didn’t even look up to acknowledge the new arrival.
“What the hell do you want?”
He usually prided himself on his warm and friendly attitude to just about everyone he came across on his travels throughout the galaxy, considering it to be one of his better qualities. But there wasn’t a trace of that in his question.
“Really? That’s all I get? Not even a hello? Tsk, you used to be such a polite young man.”
He downed the remainder of the brandy in front of him, then turned to look at her. She sat as confident and assured as ever, like a ghost from his past. Dressed in a deep red suit that shimmered slightly in the dim light of the bar, with her hair in a tight bob and a silver brooch pinned to her left lapel. Her porcelain features displayed a familiar superior smile, as she met his gaze. She couldn’t have stood out more against the decay of the Journeyman's Rest.
He felt an immediate flash of anger. And an even more immediate feeling of falling in love all over again. With a woman that he had fallen in love with far too many times to count. He forced himself to repress both reactions.
“Fine,” he offered, with words that dripped with heavy sarcasm, “Hello, Maya. Nice to see you. Now: What the hell do you want?”
She raised an amused eyebrow as the bartender dutifully returned with their drinks. She took a sip of her cocktail and flinched slightly. “Ugh. Never trust a species that sleeps in mud to mix a decent martini.”
She waited for some sort of flicker of a smile from him, but there was none forthcoming. He kept his defences well and truly raised.
“How did you even find me this time?” he pressed instead.
“Come now, Jirel. You and that crew of yours aren’t exactly black ops. It’s really not that difficult to track you down when I need to.”
She allowed a victorious smile to cross her face as she idly stroked the delicate stem of her martini glass.
“Still,” she continued, “It’s nice to see that I’ve still got you wrapped around my little finger. One little message, and you come running.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he countered, “We happened to be passing. That’s all.”
“I sent that subspace message to Kervala Prime. That’s three sectors away. Must’ve taken you days to get here…”
The victorious smile showed no sign of leaving any time soon, as Jirel scowled in defeat, grudgingly accepting the truth of her observation. In fact, it had taken them the best part of a week to get to Golos III.
“Ok, you got me here. Congratulations. And it’s a good thing, actually. Here.”
He grabbed the satchel where it hung off his bar stool and offered it to her. She eyed the dusty bag up with a modicum of distrust.
“Latinum,” he explained, “That’s what I’ve saved up. And that’s the rest of what I owe you for the Bounty. So, take that and we’re even. And I never wanna hear from you again.”
She just scoffed, making no attempt to take the bag from him. “This isn’t about latinum, darling.”
“Then what the hell is it about?” he pressed again.
She paused for a second and took another sip from her martini, before she looked back at him, an entirely more serious look on her face.
“I…need your help.”
“Right,” Jirel scoffed, “Well, you can forget about that, for a—”
“It’s about my husband, Jirel. He’s in trouble.”
To the bartender’s delight, Jirel finished his second brandy a lot faster than he had finished the first.