Chapter Text
Part Four (Cont’d)
“Remind me to leave a bad review for this place when we get back.”
Jirel’s quip was delivered through wheezing breaths, without any of his usual pep. At his side, Natasha could tell the Class-L conditions were affecting the Trill more than the two humans in the group, despite the shot of stims.
Though the good news was that they were nearly at the top of the hill.
Jirel had holstered his disruptor back on his belt for the time being, as he was being forced to occasionally use his hands to scramble up the rocks ahead of them. But he was still gamely keeping pace.
Eventually, they reached the top and stepped across the peak to gaze down into the expanse of the valley below.
“Well,” Maya observed, “I’d say this is the place.”
Some distance below them, they saw the mining site itself. The valley was dominated by a vast dome-shaped building constructed from a silvery metal, presumably housing habitation and processing facilities for the whole area. Dotted around the rest of the valley were dozens of figures, some clearly working on the various rock faces with lasers and cutting equipment, some hauling anti-grav units filled with duridium ore back to the dome, and others keeping watch over them.
It was clear, even from this distance, which were the miners and which were the guards.
Jirel grabbed a small set of binoculars from his belt and held them up to his eyes, scanning around the figures from afar.
“We should hold back for now,” Maya offered, “Try and sneak a little closer using the rocks as cover and try to locate Toren. Then we just need to wait for a shift change to distract the guards and keep them away from the miners.”
“They look more like prisoners,” Natasha muttered as she tapped her tricorder.
“Same difference,” Maya responded with a shrug, “As far as the good people at Synergy are concerned.”
Natasha suppressed the immediate chill that passed down her spine at that, and kept her focus on scanning the valley’s population as best she could through all the inhibitors.
Jirel completed another quick scan through the binoculars. There was something wrong about the scene, even from this range, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “You sure we’ll have time at the shift change?” he asked Maya, dropping the binoculars and turning back to her.
“Pretty sure. They’ll leave the miners to themselves for that. After all, where exactly are they going to run to?”
She gestured around at their grim surroundings, and Jirel nodded. “Ok,” he sighed after another lungful of thin air that didn’t come close to dealing with his increasing feeling of breathlessness, “I guess in the meantime, we need to—”
“Jirel,” Natasha cut in, with some urgency, “This isn’t right.”
He whirled around to her, as she gestured to the tricorder. The look of concern that was etched onto her face was enough for him to instantly tense up.
“I’m not scanning any Trill lifesigns down there,” she confirmed.
“The interference?”
“No,” she shook her head, “Not at this short range. I’m picking up every lifeform in the valley, and none of them are even part-Trill.”
Jirel’s expression hardened in an instant. Without even stopping to think, he grabbed the communicator from his belt and barked into it.
“Denella! Get us the hell out of here!”
There was no response, aside from a burst of static.
“Denella!” he called out again. Still nothing.
In anger, he whirled back around to the other woman in the group.
“Goddamnit, Maya. What have you—?”
He stopped immediately when he saw the familiar sight of the antique type-1 phaser being pointed directly at him and Natasha.
“Never leave home without it,” Maya said, her face a picture of serenity despite the sudden change in circumstances.
“What the hell are you doing?” Jirel spat out.
“Come on, darling,” she offered back, “I’m sorry it had to be this way, but you know that things were never going to be quite what they seemed with me, hmm? Now, drop the communicator. And drop your tricorder as well please, my dear.”
She gestured to Natasha’s tricorder. Jirel grimaced further, feeling entirely helpless, but nodded back at his crewmate as he dropped the communicator to the ground. Natasha’s tricorder followed with a clattering sound.
“What’s going on?” Natasha managed to ask.
“Jirel’s probably figured it out by now,” Maya shrugged, “Even he tends to get there eventually.”
The Trill ignored the latest casual insult and spat out his response. “This whole thing was a goddamn setup. Again. Another of Maya Ortega’s traps. There never was a husband to rescue, was there?”
“Jirel, please,” Maya sighed, “You have to understand that—”
“Who are you working for now? What the hell have you gotten us into this time?”
“This was all business. I’m just doing what I had to do. The husband might have been made up, but the debt I owed Synergy Mining Enterprises was real.”
“You,” Jirel muttered with a shake of his head, “You were trying to screw the company over, all by yourself.”
“And it very nearly worked. But, even when things went wrong, I was fortunate enough to be able to come to an agreement. You see, it turned out the new owner knew somebody that owed him considerably more than I did…”
Jirel felt a cold rush of dread inside as she spoke. And something that he’d seen down in the valley suddenly twigged with him.
That was what had been wrong. All of the guards had been Miradorn.
Feeling a sinking feeling growing inside, he looked back at a shocked and confused Natasha. And he realised how stupid he had been. Once again, he had been suckered in by Maya Ortega. He had allowed her to spin him a tall tale, and seduce him into bed. And he had allowed her to take him in entirely with the promise of a heroic adventure for the wannabe swashbuckling captain.
And not only had he fallen for it again, but he had brought the rest of the Bounty’s crew down with him. Including Natasha.
“I’m sorry,” he managed.
“For what—?”
She didn’t get any further before the transporter effect sounded out. The three figures turned to see three new forms coalescing a short distance away.
Natasha didn’t recognise any of them. But Jirel already knew who it would be before the familiar leer from the shorter of the three figures finished forming, and he opened his mouth.
“Hello, Jirel.”
“No hard feelings, darling,” Maya offered from behind him, “But, then again, you did promise to help me…”
* * * * *
Denella staggered up the steps to the Bounty’s cockpit even as the ship was pitched into another sickening angle by the impact of another hit.
The cockpit was in chaos. The air was thick with smoke from dozens of failing systems. All hell had broken loose.
In the pilot’s seat, Sunek grappled with the controls, trying to keep the Bounty away from the volley of fire that was raining down on them.
The surprise nature of the attack meant that he was only being partly successful. The ship was already crippled badly, with several ugly gouges and scorch marks peppering the Bounty’s long-suffering hull. The venerable Ju’Day-type raider, veteran of a thousand firefights, was bleeding from multiple wounds.
Klath, bleeding from a wound of his own across his forehead, was wrestling with his own console helplessly, trying to return fire as best he could.
The whole cockpit was dimmed, with dark red emergency lighting the only thing that was illuminating the scene. Smoke was pouring from a ruptured power conduit in the ceiling, while the Bounty’s fire suppression systems were struggling to cope with an inferno that had broken out across Natasha’s unmanned station.
Denella dragged herself to her own console, fighting against the ship’s erratic pitching and turning, as she tried to understand what was going on.
“The orbital sentries?” she called out through the choking smoke.
“No,” Klath called back, “Another ship. It dropped out of warp, already launching micro-torpedoes. They must have disguised their approach somehow.”
“First hit knocked out our warp drive!” Sunek cried out, “I’m doing my best, but we’re sitting ducks here!”
Denella caught a brief glimpse of the ship through the cockpit window as Sunek swivelled the Bounty away from a disruptor blast. It was an ovoid design, not much larger than the Bounty, with stubby warp nacelles branching off from either side towards the rear of the body of the vessel. Not a ship type that she had ever seen before, but it almost looked like a private yacht. Albeit a very heavily armoured one, with twin pincer-like prongs at the front containing deadly disruptors.
A fresh alarm blared out amidst the cacophony, as Denella did her best to check on the damage they had already picked up.
The ship rocked from another impact. Sunek’s efforts at the pilot’s controls were becoming less and less useful. The expert pilot was hamstrung by the crippling damage to the ship. There was a desperation to his movements, and a sluggishness to the ship’s responses.
“Weapons are offline!” Klath called out, “We must reroute power!”
“I’m working on it,” Denella shouted back, though she could already see that there was little power left to reroute.
Another burst of green disruptor fire flared out at them. Sunek managed to avoid the first one, but the second hit home on the bow of the ship, cutting into the exposed hull and pitching them into an unnatural dive.
Denella was thrown to the ground. Klath clung onto his console for dear life. Several more alarms and alerts flared up.
“Warning,” the Bounty’s computer chimed out, “Hull breach in cargo bay.”
Tasting blood in her mouth, Denella forced herself back into her seat and checked the latest damage reports, even as Sunek wrestled for control of the ship. “We’re venting atmosphere!” she cried out, “Hull integrity is going critical and the shield emitters are fried! I’m sending everything we’ve got left to the impulse drive and thruster control!”
“I need weapons,” Klath bellowed, “We must disable them!”
“I can give you a couple of phaser blasts. Wouldn’t make a dent in their shields.”
“Who the hell are they?” Sunek griped, as he feverishly spun the ship away from the ovoid yacht’s latest attack.
Nobody had an answer for that.
The noxious air became even more toxic as a relay exploded above Klath’s console, showering him with fiery sparks and causing half of his console to blink out.
“I’ve lost navigational sensors!” Sunek shouted out, “Can’t get her stable!”
The Bounty pitched and groaned around them, like a mortally wounded animal straining against the spears in its side. Smoke billowed forth from the ugly hole in the rear of the ship where the cargo bay was now exposed to the harsh vacuum outside.
Just as Sunek tried to get the ship back under some sort of control, a further disruptor blast coursed out from one of the pincer-like prongs at the front of the unidentified ship. There was nothing anyone could do to avoid it.
It impacted on the underside of the crippled vessel’s hull, ripping a hole clean through the protective metal. In an instant, half the remaining systems onboard collapsed under the latest wave of punishment. The entire ship convulsed from the ferocity of the impact, the superstructure itself sounding like it was whining in agony.
The Bounty tumbled away, mortally crippled.
Sunek was thrown clear of the pilot’s seat, just as the entire right side of his console exploded.
Denella cried out as she was slammed to the ground. A sickening crunch sounded out above the rest of the carnage as she hit the deck and fell silent.
Klath was flung from behind his console, flying across the cockpit and onto the ground, narrowly avoiding landing on the vacant centre chair as he did so. He took the full force of the landing on his right shoulder, but he forced himself to bear the pain and remain conscious.
Emergency power breathed its last as the ship’s own lifesigns ebbed away, and the cockpit was plunged into darkness, acrid smoke still filling the air from dozens of fried components.
The Bounty was dead.
The Klingon growled with agony as he crawled across the deck, past Sunek’s unmoving form, to the wrecked pilot’s controls. He had no idea where their enemy was, or how long it would take them to finish them off, but he knew he wasn’t about to die on the deck of his ship.
Through the window, he could see the planet below them looming ever larger. Out of control, they were now spiralling into the atmosphere.
He fought against the forces that were pushing him down and clambered into the pilot’s seat, grasping desperately at the controls in front of them. He wrestled with the console to try and extract any remaining battery power out of the shattered ship to arrest their uncontrolled descent. Even though it might have been useless, he knew he had to at least try.
Behind him, his two colleagues lay prone and unmoving amongst the carnage.
In front of him, the solid ground of the Class-L planet loomed larger.
Klath gritted his teeth, and couldn’t help but wonder one thing.
Whether today was going to be a good day to die.
End of Part Four