Chapter Text
Part Three (Cont’d)
Jirel’s discomfort gave way to outright confusion a few moments later.
He and Klath stood in the Bounty’s transporter room as Maya worked the controls, and watched as the form of her contact took shape on the transporter pad.
But instead of a Romulan looking back at them at the end of the process, the face of a Nuvian stared back at them. A thick-set cranial ridge ran across his forehead, with long blond hair billowing out behind him. He wore a simple blue tunic top that was stretched taut across his muscular upper body in a way that Jirel was sure must be deeply uncomfortable, a belief that was enough to temper the distinct jealous feeling he got when confronted with someone that well-built.
His nascent jealousy only got worse a moment later, when the strapping Nuvian silently stepped down off the transporter pad, smiled at Maya and kissed her deeply. She gladly reciprocated.
Jirel resisted the need to squirm and look away from this new display of dubious fidelity from Maya during the search for her husband, reminding himself that no matter how tall the Nuvian was and how big his arms were, he was probably really uncomfortable in that top.
As the kiss continued, Jirel even found time to practise ensuring that his face was displaying an appropriately casual expression for when they eventually came back up for air and acknowledged the other people in the room. A look that affirmed he was totally fine with what was happening right now between this adonis of a Nuvian and the woman he definitely hadn’t fallen in love with yet again, and moreover showed that he was completely comfortable with his own choice of top.
As the kiss threatened to enter its second minute, Jirel noted that even Klath was starting to look a little uncomfortable. So, in an entirely altruistic act, completely unconnected with the feelings of jealousy he may or may not have been having towards the brawny Nuvian, he mustered up a brief but vocal cough.
The sound echoed around the confines of the transporter room with enough volume to break up the extended public display of affection.
Maya reluctantly uncoiled herself from the Nuvian and took a step back, keeping a lustful smile on her face as she did so. “I’ve missed that,” she purred.
“And I’ve missed you,” the Nuvian responded with an equally broad smile, “I can still remember that night in the healing pools of Klavon V, when we slipped away from the other bathers, slipped out of our costumes, and—”
“Hey there,” Jirel jumped in, stepping forwards as confidently as he could and extending a hand out towards the strapping stranger, “I’m Jirel. We haven’t met.”
The Nuvian gave him a brief, dismissive glance, not bothering to accept the handshake.
“No. We haven’t.”
Jirel slowly retracted his hand, feeling a familiar desire to have the Bounty’s deck plates swallow him up all of a sudden.
“You are not a Romulan,” Klath grunted, taking the heat off his friend for a moment.
“Very perceptive, Klingon,” the Nuvian scoffed, “But just because I don’t have the ears doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate their ships. That cloak, in particular, has got me out of plenty of scrapes.”
“And into even more, I seem to recall,” Maya added.
The Nuvian shrugged his broad shoulders and produced a small data chip from the pocket of his equally tight trousers. “Perhaps. But it also helped me get this.”
“The location of the new operation?” Maya asked, reaching out to take the chip.
At the last second, the Nuvian pulled his hand away with a flourish, shaking his head at her with a knowing look.
“Nuh huh. Payment first. Then you get your information. I had to take a hell of a detour to get here, you know? Very inconvenient.”
“It’s all here,” she replied casually, holding out a padd in her other hand, “Just check the amount and confirm the transfer—”
“Heh. The last time I did that, you cancelled the transfer five minutes after I left.”
Jirel glanced at Maya, who maintained a superficially superior look. But the Trill could see the tiniest of flinches in her eyes.
“Oh,” she replied, “Did I? Butterfingers.”
“Well,” the Nuvian continued, “Just to make sure there are no more…unfortunate mistakes, I’d prefer cash this time. And I know you’ll have it with you.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because,” the brawny stranger replied, holding up the data chip to emphasise his point, “You really need this information.”
“Maya,” Jirel sighed, “Just give him the damn latinum.”
Maya rolled her eyes and reluctantly reached for a small purse on her belt, handing it and the jangling contents inside to the Nuvian. He took a second to check inside, indicating that even now he was keenly aware that Maya Ortega was capable of an extra layer of deception when she had to, then eventually handed the data chip over to her.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” the Nuvian grinned, “As always.”
Jirel tried not to allow his entirely comfortable expression shift from his face as the Nuvian cast a final eye over Maya, and she gladly returned the favour.
Just as both parties began a second pass of each other, Sunek’s voice filled the air over the comms link. Jirel didn’t think he’d ever been happier to hear the voice of the often-irritating Vulcan.
“Um, guys. I don’t wanna alarm anyone, but we’ve got a blip on sensors the size of a Borg Sphere, heading right for us.”
“A trap!” Klath snapped, his entire body tensing up.
To the Klingon’s side, Jirel shot a particularly stern look at Maya. She merely raised an eyebrow at the Nuvian.
“Not exactly. They’ll be after me,” he replied.
With that, he took a step towards Maya and kissed her again before hopping back up onto the transporter pad. She smiled and stepped over to the controls.
“I’ll call you,” she smiled.
“I’m sure you will,” he replied, “And good luck getting away. You’ll need it.”
“I thought you said they were after you?” Jirel jumped in urgently.
“They are,” the Nuvian offered, “But I’m the one with the cloak.”
Before Jirel could offer a further response, the transporter effect kicked in and the Nuvian disappeared. As soon as he was gone, Klath snapped into business mode.
“We should prepare for battle.”
“Feels like that’s happening a lot all of a sudden,” Jirel sighed, as he nodded back.
As the three of them made for the door, Jirel’s ego couldn’t help but glance across at Maya in a way that she clearly picked up on.
“Don’t be like that, Jirel,” she tutted, “Jealousy is such a bad look on you.”
His previously entirely comfortable demeanour that he had been carefully preserving ever since the woman he had accidentally fallen in love with yet again had started to passionately embrace a muscular Nuvian in a clearly uncomfortable top began to sag slightly. Despite his better judgement from years of experience, he couldn’t help but retort.
“Ok, firstly, let’s focus on not dying out here, maybe? Second, I’m not jealous. And thirdly, why should I be? What did that guy have that I haven’t got?”
As they walked through the door and into the Bounty’s main corridor, she cast an amused glance back at him.
“Twelve fingers. On each hand.”
Jirel found that he didn’t really have a response to that.
To his side, Klath looked over and offered a sympathetic shrug.
* * * * *
By the time they reached the cockpit, there was no trace of the Nuvian, or the Romulan ship he had acquired. But there was definitely a trace on whoever had been after him.
Klath wasted no time in taking his position at the weapons controls, while Jirel felt Maya shadowing him all the way over to the centre seat.
“Who are they?” Jirel asked as he slipped into his chair.
“Not sure yet,” Natasha admitted from behind her console, “But—”
Before she got any further, a booming voice sounded out over the Bounty’s comms link.
“This is the Nuvian Security Barge Ressik-Vol. You are to be detained for your recent contact with the vessel of a known Nuvian criminal, wanted for a number of separate offences. Maintain your position and prepare to be boarded.”
To Jirel’s side, Natasha sheepishly completed her report with a little more certainty.
“…It’s the Nuvian Security Barge Ressik-Vol.”
Jirel didn’t take any amusement from her comment, and gritted his teeth with frustration at the latest complication in their mission. “We really don’t have time for this,” he sighed, turning to Klath, “What are we looking at?”
The Klingon’s scowl deepened as he looked over the readings in front of him. “It is a significantly larger vessel. I am reading multiple disruptor-type weapons, fore and aft. It will be a…challenging battle.”
Klath’s words were tinged with his usual level of anticipation for an upcoming battle, regardless of how challenging it might be. But Jirel wasn’t in the mood to let him indulge himself.
“Too challenging for us right now,” the Trill sighed, suddenly realising how tired he felt, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Always happy to do that,” Sunek piped up.
The Vulcan moved the Bounty out of orbit of P373-Kappa with a swift tap of his controls, even as Denella began to state the obvious from the rear of the cockpit.
“I’m going to assume that the Ressik-Vol also has us at a disadvantage, speed-wise,” the Orion engineer pointed out.
“I’m sure they do,” Jirel sighed, “Sunek, any chance we can lose them?”
The Bounty’s pilot assessed the situation. They were in the middle of an entirely unremarkable sector of space, nowhere near any planetary system or stellar phenomenon, with only a lumbering ice-covered rogue planet for company.
It took him 4.23 seconds to come up with his plan.
“Hey,” he grinned as he tapped his controls again, “I can do anything.”
“The Nuvian vessel is coming within weapons range,” Klath reported with some urgency.
“Shields up,” Jirel ordered, “Sunek, whenever you’re ready.”
“Ok then,” the Vulcan replied, cracking his knuckles for effect as he prepared himself, “Best hold onto all your favourite bits. This is gonna get a bit bumpy…”
Before anyone could ask him to clarify what he meant by that, the Bounty suddenly lurched forwards and made a sharp banked turn to the right, just as the Ressik-Vol’s first warning shot sailed past their bow.
“Unidentified vessel,” the booming voice returned over the comms link, “Your attempt to evade us has been noted. In such matters, Nuvian Security is authorised to use deadly force.”
“Well,” Natasha managed to fire off as she gripped onto her console for dear life, “That definitely feels like a step backwards.”
“Meh. They’ve gotta catch us first,” Sunek smiled, as the Bounty turned into a sharp climb, looping over the top of their larger pursuers. The Ressik-Vol fired off another burst of disruptor fire from its aft cannons, but Sunek evaded them with ease.
He brought the Bounty level, with the view ahead now dominated by P373-Kappa itself.
“They are turning and following,” Klath reported urgently, “I am preparing to return fire.”
“Won’t need to do that,” Sunek shot back, “Like I said, just hang on.”
With that and nothing more, he instantly dipped the nose of the ship downwards, directly towards the planet’s surface. Jirel gripped tightly to the armrests of his chair as he watched the barren surface of P373-Kappa looming large in front of them. Behind him, he sensed Maya gripping onto the back of his chair as well, and he tried to focus more on his faith in Sunek’s piloting ability than he was on the view through the cockpit window.
As the rest of the Bounty’s crew went through similar feelings, Sunek kept his focus on the task at hand, the contradictory Vulcan his usual haphazard mixture of logical calculation and precision and entirely illogical excitement and emotion. Both figuring out the complex details of the manoeuvres he was attempting at breakneck speed, while enjoying the surge of adrenaline that came with the anticipation of quite how much he was about to show off.
The ship got closer and closer to the planet, with Sunek taking a split second to glance across his panel of readings to confirm that their pursuers were gamely following. He then maintained his focus on his original target. A plot of P373-Kappa’s thin residual atmosphere, made mostly of water vapour rising from the frozen surface.
Just as the Bounty approached the edge of the troposphere, with the Ressik-Vol still in hot pursuit, he pulled the Ju’Day-type raider’s nose up, to a sufficient angle to allow the whole ship to bounce off the edge of the atmosphere and away from the Nuvian ship.
Behind them, the pilot of the Ressik-Vol wasn’t taken by surprise by the Bounty’s sudden course change, and they went to match their manoeuvre. But the larger vessel didn’t quite have the reaction time of the more nimble Bounty, and its pilot apparently didn’t have Sunek’s speed of calculation.
The Ressik-Vol made significantly more heavy contact with the atmospheric layer, at an awkward angle, causing their shields to glow white-hot and collapse in an instant. With that protection gone, the underside of the ship glowed red as the pilot struggled to get it back into orbit, with several small explosions dotting across the surface of the hull from the stress.
Sunek couldn’t help but grin in satisfaction as he swung the Bounty up and away from P373-Kappa’s frozen wastes, and confirmed that the Ressik-Vol was no longer in pursuit.
“And that,” the Vulcan beamed, as he swung around in his seat to the rest of the Bounty’s crew, “Is how you do that.”
There were a few slightly worried faces looking back at him from around the rest of the cockpit, none of whom seemed as delighted with his atmospheric manoeuvre as he had been. On the right side of the room, Klath merely folded his burly arms in front of him behind his console.
“Acceptable,” he grunted.
“Sunek,” Jirel added, unclenching himself from within his chair, “Continue to get us the hell out of here.”
Sunek rolled his eyes at the predictable lack of adulation for his talents as he turned back to his controls and took the Bounty to warp. As the cockpit was briefly illuminated by the burst of light that accompanied their progression to warp speed, Maya casually walked up to the Vulcan and set the data chip that her Nuvian contact had supplied her with onto the top of his console.
“For your next trick, you should find the coordinates we need on there,” she said, “And please, don’t spare the horses. I’ve got a husband to save.”
Sunek reluctantly picked up the tiny chip and slipped it into the relevant slot on the side of his console, not even bothering to look over and check with Jirel as to whether he should be following her requests at this point. He knew that they were well beyond the Trill reconsidering his choices.
“Yes, your majesty,” he fired off, in lieu of any more practical retort.
Maya merely nodded, then spun around on her heels and walked off towards the rear steps of the cockpit, ignoring the other stares she was getting from around the room.
She paused as she reached Jirel and glanced back at the Vulcan in the pilot’s seat with a knowing twinkle in her eyes.
“I told you I knew how to pick ‘em.”
Jirel didn’t respond, even as she continued on down the steps.
It was only when he was sure that she was gone that he allowed himself the luxury of letting out a long, tired sigh.
* * * * *
Maya walked smartly back into the Bounty’s guest cabin and allowed the doors to gently close behind her.
She let out a sigh of relief of her own, allowing her otherwise impervious exterior to weaken slightly now she was alone.
It was a trick that she had honed to perfection very early in her life, back on Turkana IV. Back there it quickly became second nature not to allow any weaknesses to show. The weak didn’t tend to last long on Turkana IV. But now she was alone, she allowed a few weaknesses to creep out.
She walked over to the small desk in the corner of the room and slumped down into the tattered chair in front of it, allowing her shoulders to slump slightly. She reached up and did her best to massage the tightness out of her muscles.
She knew what she needed to do now, if she was to get what she needed. But that didn’t mean that she was overly eager to do it.
Still, hiding your weaknesses wasn’t the only thing that she had learned to do on Turkana IV. She had also learned all about the concept of survival of the fittest. Or at least, of doing whatever needed to be done in order to survive. So, while she didn’t want to do what she had to do, she was also entirely unflinching in the knowledge that she had to do it.
If she was going to survive.
After a moment, she stood up from the desk, adjusted her hair in the mirror, then opened the drawer of the desk and retrieved a small communication device. One that she had brought on with her when she had beamed aboard the Bounty from Golos III.
She took a moment to steady herself, then silently tapped out a coded transmission.
Exactly as she had been told to.
End of Part Three