Chapter Text
Part One (Cont’d)
“I do not trust her.”
Klath offered his frank assessment of the situation to the previously silent cockpit of the Bounty from behind his tactical station.
Although nobody vocalised an immediate response, it didn’t seem as though there were too many dissenting opinions to his statement.
Jirel sat in his centre chair, looking thoughtfully out of the cockpit window in front of him. Sunek and Denella, along with Klath, were all back at their posts as the Bounty remained in orbit of Golos III for a second day.
Only Natasha was missing. After Jirel had returned to the ship the night before, and he had brought everyone else up to speed with what Maya had told him, he had not hesitated in handing the padd she had given him over to the Bounty’s medic. He wanted as unbiased an opinion as possible on Maya’s story. And there had only been one person for the job. Someone both unbiased, having never met Maya before, and someone that Jirel knew that he could trust the judgement of.
He wasn’t happy to find that she was now aware of the details of his past with Maya, thanks to some loose tongues in the cockpit while he had been down on the planet below. But given what he wanted her to do, it at least saved him some time. And Natasha had accepted the responsibility, with all the apparent zeal of her previous career as a diligent Starfleet officer.
She had been poring over the data on the padd in her cabin, checking it against whatever she could find in the limited databanks of the Bounty, since last night. Only emerging every few hours to raid the ship’s sole replicator for sustenance. It wasn’t even clear if she’d found time to sleep.
Not that Jirel had done much sleeping himself. He had spent most of the night going back over everything that Maya had told him down in the bar. Trying to figure out how much had been the truth, trying to figure out how much had been lies.
And trying to figure out why, even now he knew she was married, he still found himself drawn to Maya Ortega.
He shook those thoughts out of his mind again as he forced himself to turn to Klath, who seemed to be waiting for some sort of reaction to his summary of their situation.
“You can really be that sure?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Klath leaned back in his chair and folded his arms in front of him, staring back at the Trill as if the answer to that question should have been obvious.
“Because I have met her,” he grunted.
Sunek couldn’t help but snort in amusement from the front pilot’s seat, as Jirel was forced to concede that point with a reluctant nod.
“Still,” Denella offered, “This is all a little bit more elaborate than her usual schemes. Last time, she had us running crates of knock-off jellied gree-worms across the Ferengi border.”
“Took two months to get the smell out of the cargo bay,” Sunek nodded with a shudder, “And we got stopped by a customs shuttle before we got halfway to the drop-off point.”
“At which point the esteemed Maya Ortega made herself scarce,” Denella added.
“As usual,” Klath grunted unhappily.
Jirel couldn’t counter their comments. It was an accurate summary of their usual interaction with Maya whenever she sought them out. Which was why he was so baffled by everything that she had told him. If she was trying to scam them in some way, what was her endgame?
His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs at the back of the cockpit. Everyone present turned to see the final member of the ship’s complement walking in, her research apparently complete.
“Well,” Natasha offered, waving the padd that Maya had handed to Jirel in her hand, “I don’t know what to tell you, but this woman’s story seems to check out.”
“All of it?” Jirel asked as he whirled around in his chair.
“I haven’t exactly got access to Federation libraries to verify every single file she’s given you, but from what I’ve managed to pull from public records, everything seems legit. Employment records from Synergy Mining Enterprises, details about Toren Kelsis, marriage certificate from Risa—”
“Wait,” Jirel jumped in immediately, spotting the hole in the story already, “She said she got married on Betazed.”
“She did,” Natasha shrugged, “Unofficially, at least. They got the paperwork done first, then travelled to Betazed for a proper ceremony. Transit logs are all on the padd. I guess it’s just easier to arrange a shotgun marriage on Risa.”
“Or,” Klath grunted, “It is easier to falsify transit logs than it is to obtain a fraudulent Betazoid marriage certificate.”
Natasha looked over at the Klingon with mild bemusement, before turning back to Jirel, who seemed to be seriously accepting that reading of the situation.
“I’m getting a feel for how little trust there is towards this woman,” she replied patiently, “But if she just wanted a fake marriage, why bother with the detail about Betazed at all? And why include the wedding photo on the padd? Which reminds me, I have now seen far more of this lady, her husband and their Betazoid officiant than I was planning on seeing when I started this investigation.”
“Hey doc,” Sunek called out at this, “If there’s nekkid wedding snaps on there, I think it’s only fair that we all get to—”
“Shut up, Sunek,” Jirel sighed, keeping his focus on the woman he trusted, “You’re really sure it all checks out?”
Natasha regarded the look on Jirel’s face with some concern. He looked like someone desperately searching for a reason for all of this to be a lie.
One of those exes, she thought to herself.
She knew that she had the option of making something up. Of lying about something to convince him of the lie he was sure was there. But that didn’t feel right. She hadn’t even met this Maya Ortega yet. And besides, she couldn’t lie to someone that she had somehow come to trust over the last year of misadventures. And more than that, someone that she was starting to be concerned that she was developing genuine feelings for, after their last accidental night together back on Kervala Prime.
So, she told the truth. As mildly and conservatively as she could.
“All I’m saying is…she doesn’t seem to be lying.”
“No,” Klath muttered, “She never does.”
Natasha shrugged and passed the padd back to Jirel, who reluctantly accepted it back. “Plus,” she offered additionally, “The latinum transfer was real enough. I thought you all said she was the one who usually scammed you out of money?”
Jirel glanced at Denella, and then at Klath. Neither of which seemed convinced, but neither of which had a response to the latinum issue.
In the absence of a more rational debater, Sunek sounded out once again.
“Ok, but seriously. Latinum, sob stories and nude photos aside, we’re not actually falling for this, right?”
“Falling for what?” Jirel responded quietly.
“Falling for—I dunno. Whatever the hell she’s trying to sucker us into! Which is clearly what she’s doing, because it’s what she always does! She’s obviously just—”
“And what if she isn’t?”
Jirel fired off this retort a little more firmly and harshly than he had been planning. The tone of his voice even took Sunek by surprise.
A moment of silence followed, with nobody entirely sure what to say. Eventually, Natasha took a step towards the pensive Trill in the centre chair.
“Ok, look, I still don’t really fully understand the whole story with you and her. And you can all bicker on as much as you like about all of this. But from what I can see, at the end of the day, there’s only really one question to ask here.”
Jirel looked back at her, suppressing an entirely different range of emotions that bubbled up when he looked into this woman’s eyes, and prompted her to continue.
“What do you want to do?”
He thought about this, then sighed. “I…don’t know,” he replied.
With that, he stood and walked out of the cockpit entirely, retreating to the sanctity of his cabin. The others in the cockpit watched him leave with a range of expressions.
“We’re going to do it,” Denella offered eventually.
“How can you be sure?” Natasha asked.
“Because, deep down, he’s too good of a person.”
“He’s too much of an idiot,” Sunek chipped in.
“He is…both,” Klath clarified.
Natasha looked back at where the Trill had just disappeared down the steps, and silently agreed with both points.