Chapter Text
Part One (Cont’d)
High in orbit above the Class-L planet, the Boundless Profit cut a serene form.
It was Grenk’s pride and joy. His personal, and heavily armed, yacht. The armaments having been recently demonstrated to devastating effect on the Bounty.
It was a bespoke design, one that Grenk had ordered in a rare moment of indulgence. The hull was ovoid, roughly twice the length of the downed Ju’Day-type raider, and made of orange-tinged metal. Two stubby warp nacelles branched off from the rear, while the front section featured twin pincer-like prongs that housed the main disruptors.
And right now, it was the setting for an argument.
“This wasn’t the deal!”
“You’re in no position to tell me what the deal was.”
Maya Ortega paced around Grenk’s private quarters on the Boundless Profit, her face a picture of helpless anger. Grenk himself luxuriated on a cushioned sofa on one side of the room, idly popping tube grubs into his mouth from a bowl on a side table.
The rest of the room was extravagantly decorated. Most of the interior of the Boundless Profit was utilitarian, but Grenk had allowed himself further indulgence when it came to his own cabin. Priceless art from all across the quadrant hung from the walls, a huge king-size bed was draped in soft Tholian silk sheets, and the outer wall of the room was dominated by a huge panoramic window, giving a view of the planet below.
Maya paused in her pacing and stared down towards the featureless rock below. She found herself searching for a sight of the domed buildings that made up the mining operation, even though she knew they were too high for that to be visible.
And she also found herself thinking about Niki Kolak again. The face of the boy that she had known, and then betrayed, back on Turkana IV. She hadn’t thought about him for years. But something had caused all of that emotional baggage to surge forth from the depths of her memory.
It wasn’t entirely clear to her why these feelings would have returned now. There was nothing truly remarkable about her latest piece of treachery against Jirel and the others. It had been, as it always was for her, a practical decision in order for her to survive. She had been caught out. And she had reacted on instinct. To save herself.
But still, Niki Kolak’s look of betrayal refused to disappear.
Forcing those thoughts away as best she could, she turned back to Grenk with renewed anger. “You told me you wanted Jirel to repay you. That was all. Nothing about taking any of his crew, or attacking his ship!”
Grenk swallowed a mouthful of tube grubs and smacked his lips with satisfaction, before fixing her with an amused leer. “Come now, my dear,” he replied, “There’s no way the same person who very nearly got away with the trick you tried to pull on me can also be this naive?”
Maya bristled at this, feeling it as a slight against her own skills. Time and again, from rumbling her profit-skimming trick in record time, to reneging on their original deal regarding Jirel, the astute Ferengi was bettering her.
He had even used her to plan out their strategy. She had meticulously worked to fake the details of her marriage, and of her equally fictitious husband and his employment with Synergy Mining Enterprises.
She had even come up with the overly elaborate means that she and the Bounty’s crew would have to piece together the information they needed to reach this planet, putting them in just enough jeopardy for her to demonstrate her fictitious loyalty to them, and build Jirel’s trust in her back up, only to betray him all over again.
She wasn’t proud of it, but it was all second nature to her now. And she did what had to be done.
Except now, it seemed that Grenk’s elaborate revenge on the Trill extended a lot further than she had anticipated. He had bettered her again.
“You could at least let Natasha go,” she offered back at the grub-filled Ferengi, “The human woman he was with?”
Grenk tilted his head to one side, eyeing her up with new-found curiosity. “You’re also not in a position to ask for anything, And I must say, this is a very strange time for you to develop a conscience, my dear. You didn’t seem to have a problem with any of this earlier.”
“You didn’t leave me with much choice,” she reminded him, “And you told me that all you wanted was Jirel. Not the others.”
“I had a…change of heart.”
With that, the Ferengi cackled victoriously and shovelled another handful of tube grubs into his mouth, but Maya didn’t flinch. When Grenk saw her reaction, he paused with slight irritation, realising that she wasn’t going to stop bringing the mood down any time soon.
“Ugh,” he tutted, “If you must know, I’ve decided to stick around for a while and send some of my men to…salvage that little ship of Jirel’s. Whatever there is left to salvage.”
“Why?”
“I thought it might make a pleasing trophy. I might even put it back into service, transporting the very ore that Jirel mines down there back to the processing plant. Just for a little extra humiliation. And, if the rest of his little crew have survived, we’ll pick them up.”
“And what then?” she pressed instead, suppressing a fresh and unexpected pang of guilt.
“Then, I’ll put them to work as well. They can work off the debt to me together.”
“And then you’ll release them?”
Grenk’s face creased back into an evil smile at this, sending a further wave of guilt through her body. “Ah, still so naive,” he chided her, “See, here’s the funny thing. I always intend to release those that have wronged me after they pay off their debt. It’s only fair, after all. But…somehow none of them ever make it that far. Such a shame.”
Maya’s expression hardened as Grenk’s leer widened.
“Some of them work too hard in those harsh conditions. Some try to overpower the guards and need…disciplining. And sometimes they just start killing each other. Either way, it’s a very happy coincidence. After all, there’s a lot of people down there who are annoyed with me. Far safer that none of them get out.”
Maya’s left arm tensed and began to straighten as the sense of anger inside her grew. It was a move that Grenk instantly recognised.
“And before you think about pulling that little phaser out from up your sleeve, might I remind you that all Synergy Mining Enterprises facilities, including the Boundless Profit, are covered by a very strict weapon dampening field. Only SME-approved weapons will function.”
Finding herself outflanked by the Ferengi yet again, she relaxed her arm and kept the antique type-1 phaser where it was. All of a sudden, she felt just as trapped as the miners down on the planet were. Literally in the middle of nowhere, with only Grenk and the Boundless Profit to transport her away from here.
She didn’t like the sensation of not being in control.
“Now,” he continued, pushing the bowl of tube grubs away and reclining a little more on the sofa with a toothy leer, “I called you in here for a reason, didn’t I?”
She stifled another grimace as she slowly paced over to the sofa and sat down, allowing him to nestle his head in her lap.
As Grenk got comfortable, he found himself giving serious consideration to having her killed. To tie up another potential loose end. But then, he was going to be stuck in orbit for a while as his men secured the wreckage of the Bounty. And she did have some other uses while he waited.
After all, she was very gifted at oo-mox.
As Maya began to reluctantly massage the Ferengi’s bulbous ears, a victorious Grenk drifted off on a wave of pleasure.