Chapter Text
Part Five
Sector 394, Five Hours out of the Tyran Scrapyards
Stardate 47123.2
Jirel lay in bed with a satisfied smile on his face.
He listened to the comforting background sound of the ship at warp, as it raced away from his life at the Tyran Scrapyards on autopilot.
Not just the sound of a ship at warp. But the sound of his ship at warp.
They had well and truly left the scrapyards, Crax Traxanar and his whole unhappy life back there well and truly behind.
Granted, the Ju’Day-type raider that they had purchased had been well worth its place in the scrapyards. It was worn and tattered, and everything smelt oddly musty, like the whole ship had been in a state of decay for some time.
But importantly, as Jirel had immediately ascertained when this particular ship had first arrived for processing several weeks ago, it was generally intact and spaceworthy. The warp core still functioned, the power grid was generally intact, the flight controls and computer systems were operational. While it might look like it belonged in a scrapyard from an aesthetic perspective, he knew that could all be fixed. And it would be fixed.
And even if it wasn’t, none of that mattered all that much. Because five years after finally leaving his adoptive family behind, having entirely failed to get anywhere in Starfleet Academy, or impress his high-flying father a single iota, he had made it. He was a captain. Sort of.
Next to him in bed, Maya lazily rolled over and draped herself over him, noting the look on his face with a wry smile. “You know,” she purred, “I’m not calling you Captain Jirel.”
Jirel did his best to disguise the fact that she had again successfully guessed exactly what he was thinking about, with only partial success. “I just…can’t believe we did it,” he replied eventually.
This elicited a more flirtatious and knowing look from her, as she idly traced a finger across the spots down the side of his chest.
“I rather hoped you were used to it by now—”
“Not that,” he sighed patiently, “I mean…I actually got it. My own ship.”
“Careful, darling,” she chided him, “I seem to recall that I’m the majority owner of the…what are we calling it?”
“The Bounty.”
Her amused expression was complimented by a more curious raised eyebrow.
“Cute.”
“You got a better idea?”
“Plenty, as always. But a little something tells me that you’re not going to be all that interested in hearing them.”
He didn’t bother to respond to that. Because he knew she was right, on both counts. And, slightly more troublingly, she was also right about her majority ownership. For now.
“You know I’m gonna pay you back, right?”
“Jirel, you know I don’t care about all that. Do you really think I sank that much latinum into this specific ship so that I could play at being captain, hmm?”
He tried to ignore the implication of that comment. After all, he wasn’t playing at being captain. He was captain. This was his ship, and he was the captain.
“The truth is,” she continued, as she traced her finger back up the chain of spots to his neck, “That, as ever, I can see the bigger picture in this little partnership of ours.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
“You named the ship. I’ll name this.”
He sat up a little straighter in bed, and gestured for her to continue. “So?” he added, “What is the bigger picture?’
“It’s fairly simple. While you see the ship as the end product, I see it as the gateway to plenty more profit. We’ve got the means to make so much more latinum out of all this that the meagre…deposit I just paid for it will seem like pocket change.”
She smiled wider as she considered the possibilities.
“The galaxy is our oyster, Jirel.”
He thought about this for a second. He hadn’t actually given much thought to what they were going to do now. He knew he had wanted a ship, to get away from the scrapyards. And when he had seen the Bounty being towed in, he knew he had found it. But he had to reluctantly admit that was pretty much as far as his plan had gone. And he did like the sound of what she was proposing.
“Ok,” Jirel nodded back, “I’m in.”
“I know you are,” she smiled, “Besides, I wouldn’t worry about what the ship cost. As soon as we left sensor range of the scrapyards, I sent a subspace message to cancel the latinum transfer.”
In the midst of another tingle of pleasure as she gently stroked his spots, Jirel’s entire face sagged in shock.
“What?”
She chuckled and rolled away to the other side of the bed, as Jirel entered a state of mild panic.
“You didn’t think I was actually going to pay him, did you? For this ship? But relax, by the time that idiotic Reegrunion figures out what’s happened, we’ll be long gone, won’t we? And it’s a big galaxy, Jirel. He’ll never find us.”
That didn’t calm him at all. He leapt out of bed and started to pull on his clothes as he babbled back at her. “B—But he knows who I am! He’s got my name, my details! And now you’re saying I just stole a ship from him?!”
She reclined in bed as he finished dressing and rushed for the door of his cabin, still in a panic.
“Ok, we’ll just turn around. Go back there, explain what happened, and then we can…”
He tailed off as he reached the doorway, turning back to Maya where she lay, apparently without a care in the world.
“…And you’re winding me up.”
“Maybe,” she smiled impishly, “But I really didn’t mean to. It’s just that you make it so very easy to do.”
With a defeated slump of his shoulders and a wry smile, he walked back over to the bed and sat down, looking back at her all the while.
“Am I ever going to be able to trust you?”
She beamed wider and leaned forward to kiss him.
“Not if you know what’s good for you.”
* * * * *
“Grenk.”
Jirel managed to cough out the name, as the Ferengi leered back at him on the rocky, barren surface of the Class-L planet. It had been nearly a year since he had last seen him. But there was no mistaking him for any other Ferengi. Especially when he arrived flanked by his most trusted Miradorn bodyguards.
Either side of Grenk, Shel-Lan and Gel-Lan pointed disruptors in Jirel’s direction.
“Yes, Jirel,” the Ferengi cackled through a toothy grin, “It’s me.”
Grenk.
The Ferengi who Jirel and the Bounty’s crew had crossed more times than he could remember. A ruthless businessman forever searching for new ways to acquire latinum. Not to mention screw over any potential business partners.
They had most recently run into each other on a planet that had contained the Jewel of Soraxx, shortly after they had rescued Natasha from her involuntary exile, and while she and the crew of the Bounty were trying to track down said mythical treasure. Back then, Jirel had stolen the last known coordinates of the late USS Navajo from Grenk, and after he had tracked them down, the rest of the Bounty’s crew had gone on to disable his shuttle and leave him stranded on the planet’s surface.
But that was nowhere near the first time Jirel had crossed paths with Grenk. And it certainly wasn’t the first time they had gotten the better of the wily Ferengi during their encounter.
But now, the sinking feeling in Jirel’s stomach confirmed that the tables were very much turned.
“Welcome to my latest acquisition,” Grenk postured, gesturing down into the valley below, “I’m so glad you found the time to pay me a visit.”
“You’re the owner of Synergy Mining Enterprises?” Jirel grimaced.
“Didn’t you get it?” Grenk beamed, gesturing at the Miradorn twins either side of him, two brothers who shared an innate telepathic bond between each other, “I do like a certain…synergy in my work, after all.”
As Grenk gloated, Maya made her way over to join the Ferengi and his goons, keeping her own weapon pointed at Jirel and Natasha.
“You make a cute couple,” the Trill observed, keeping his bravado levels as high as possible despite the situation.
“Don’t make this any harder than it has to be, darling,” Maya replied, before looking over at the still-leering Grenk, “I assume this means my debts are paid off.”
“Oh yes,” Grenk nodded greedily, “Very much so.”
Jirel struggled to fight off the feelings swirling inside him at being so completely abandoned by Maya Ortega once again. And the anger he felt with himself for allowing it to happen. “So,” he grimaced with a shake of his head as he saw the situation for what it was, “This was never a rescue. It was an exchange.”
“Jirel,” Natasha urged, having not had the pleasure of actually meeting Grenk during their misadventures with the Jewel of Soraxx, “Who the hell is this—?”
“I am a businessman, my dear,” Grenk replied on the Trill’s behalf, “One that your colleague here has robbed from, stolen from, double-crossed and nearly ruined over the years.”
“He’s exaggerating,” Jirel grunted at Natasha.
“Am I really? The last time we met, you and your crew left me marooned on that awful, desolate planet.”
“You wanna tell her the full story—?”
“Oh, Jirel, you’ll have plenty of time to tell her that story. And all the others. Because ever since you left me behind there, I swore that was the last straw. That I would have my revenge. And then one day, I caught someone else trying to steal from my company. And just as I was about to send her to my duridium mine to work off her debt…I discovered that we had a mutual acquaintance.”
Jirel flashed another angry look at Maya, as the Ferengi took a step closer to the Trill, confident in the backup from his bodyguards.
“You belong to me now, Jirel. You’re trapped here, and there’s no escape.”
“Oh, really?” Jirel worked on maintaining some of his confidence, “You don’t think the others—”
“The others have been dealt with,” Grenk interjected darkly, revelling in his victory, “That little ship of yours is burning in space.”
The rest of Jirel’s bravado collapsed. Natasha gasped in horror.
To Grenk’s side, Maya suddenly looked a little unsettled. “What did you do?” she cut in, “That wasn’t part of our deal—!”
“Our deal was for you to deliver Jirel and his friends to me. You didn’t seem all that interested in what would happen to them after that.”
Despite having secured her own freedom, no matter what the cost, just as she had since her days back on Turkana IV, Maya suddenly looked ashen. Grenk didn’t seem to care. He kept his focus entirely on his captives.
“What the hell have you done to them?” Jirel growled.
“Assuming my crew have followed my instructions, exactly what you did to me. Disabled their ship and left them to die…”
The sneer on Grenk’s face grew even wider. With a sudden rush of anger, Jirel went to grab him. Natasha held him back just in time, as Shel-Lan fired a warning shot over the Trill’s head.
“And now,” the Ferengi continued, “You and your colleague here are going to work down there, in the duridium mine. In the middle of an empty sector of space, inside all of my carefully curated security procedures. Entirely untraceable, where nobody even knows you are…”
Jirel felt a stab of pain inside as Grenk’s words sank in. He wondered what had happened to the Bounty. To his friends. He wondered what was about to happen to him and Natasha. And he wrestled with the fact that this was all his fault.
All the while, Grenk’s gloating continued.
“And you’re going to work there until you’ve paid off your debt to me. Which, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, is going to take you a very, very long time indeed.”
He punctuated his gloating with a victorious cackle that seemed to resonate out across the barren landscape.
The two armed Miradorn, with no discernible expressions on their own faces, stepped over to the two helpless Bounty crew members and grabbed their arms, ready to march them away. Neither Jirel nor Natasha offered any resistance, seeing how futile such a gesture would clearly be.
As they were marched off down into the valley, towards the looming dome and the rest of the duridium mine, Jirel fired off a glare at the still-ashen Maya. A glare filled with rage. Not only at her, for the scale of this latest and deepest of betrayals. But also at himself, for allowing himself to trust her again. For allowing himself to fall for her again.
Because the person that had given him his ship, and the freedom of the entire galaxy, had come back to take it all away from him.
As they were dragged away, all Jirel could hear, echoing all around him, was the sound of Grenk’s victorious cackling.
To be continued…