Chapter Text
Part Three (Cont’d)
Maya was used to displaying a look of complete confidence. Especially when the situation she was in didn’t warrant anything of the sort. When you spent as much of your life as she did lying and cheating your way out of whatever sticky situation you had gotten into, that veneer of false confidence became second nature. After all, if you didn’t believe the lie yourself, what hope did you have of convincing anyone else?
Jirel had an altogether less confident expression on his face. Because, not for the first time in the last few hours, he had a disruptor pointed at his back.
Maya led him and Natasha down the corridor towards the two Miradorn twins pacing towards the next intersection, both of whom were eyeing the motley trio with suspicion.
Not that Maya flinched under such scrutiny. She maintained an outward expression entirely in keeping with a guard leading her two prisoners along. Because that was exactly who she was, and what she was doing.
“Who are you? And what are you doing?”
The trio came to an abrupt halt under the line of questioning from the left-side twin in front of them, as the two groups merged at the intersection itself. Jirel and Natasha remained silent, playing their own roles of downtrodden labourers to perfection. Maya didn’t miss a beat.
“I’m escorting these two to medical for another shot. Turns out they can’t hack the conditions out on the surface.”
The two Miradorn eyed up the confident looking human woman. They knew she was working with Grenk on this particular enterprise. But she wasn’t supposed to be down in the mine. This was all overseen by the guards.
“That’s not your job,” the right-hand Miradorn pointed out.
“Tell me about it,” Maya sighed without missing a beat, “Except, it turns out that your esteemed boss thinks I need to put in a bit more legwork if I want to earn my passage back to civilisation. So, here I am. Getting my hands dirty.”
The Miradorn shared a moment of telepathic debate.
They hadn’t heard anything about Maya being reassigned to the mine. But then, they didn’t get told a lot of things. And the idea that Grenk was greedily getting extra hard labour out of her in return for safe passage certainly tracked with their boss’s usual approach to helping others. Plus, they were running late for their own work detail, shadowing the next group of miners out on the surface. And if they wasted any more time, then Grenk would likely dock their meagre wage packet even further.
So, despite their suspicions still being somewhat raised, they eventually nodded at her and walked on down the corridor, distracted by their own thankless tasks.
Maya silently breathed out in relief, though her outward demeanour didn’t change, in keeping with the role she was playing. “Right then,” she offered, “Come on, you two.”
Maintaining the theatre of the scene, she prodded Jirel in the back with her weapon, causing a fresh angry scowl to cross the Trill’s face.
He wasn’t pleased with the deception that they had gone for in order to most efficiently move around the facility. Especially given that it involved him and Natasha surrendering the weapons they had secured from the two guards that Maya had dispatched. And he was doubly uncomfortable that the plan now involved the woman who had betrayed him in order for him to end up here now pointing a very real and very deadly disruptor pistol at his back.
But mostly, he was uncomfortable with the ease with which he had allowed himself to go along with the plan in the first place. How, despite Maya’s latest treachery, he was allowing himself to be swept up in yet another of her schemes. Even if this one was ostensibly designed to help them escape.
He and Natasha walked on down the corridor, with their fake guard in their shadows. All three tried to maintain a steady pace, but couldn’t help but move with a slight spring in their collective steps to try and distance themselves from the guards they had just crossed paths with.
“Told you this would be easy,” Maya muttered to her prisoners.
Jirel didn’t respond, doing his best to avoid slipping back into his old bantering ways with the woman he was sure he was never going to fall in love with again.
“How much further to the transporter room?” Natasha asked instead.
Maya offered a casual shrug behind their backs, keeping the disruptor raised. “Half a dozen more intersections. With any luck, we’ll—”
She didn’t get any further before the tell-tale whine of an alarm filled the air, accompanied with a succession of flashing red lights along the bare metal walls of the corridor.
“Huh,” Maya continued through the shrill noise, “So much for luck.”
“I take it that’s not telling everyone that dinner’s served in the canteen,” Natasha added with clear concern.
“Nope. Grenk must’ve raised the alarm as soon as he saw that the internal sensors were down. Come on.”
Maya dashed ahead of them, rushing further down the corridor. Jirel and Natasha followed in her wake as she raced around a corner. Almost immediately, she gestured to a door to their right.
They found themselves in another small office-type room, empty save from a small computer desk and chair. It didn’t exactly look like it was filled with ways out. In fact, apart from the door they had raced through to get in, there didn’t appear to be another exit. Still, Maya seemed unaffected by these minor issues, and made a beeline for the controls of the computer.
“Keep an eye on the door,” she ordered to the others, handing the disruptor in her hand to Jirel and passing the second one on her belt to Natasha, “This won’t take long.”
Natasha glanced at Jirel, who didn’t seem impressed with being given more orders by his former lover. A supposition he confirmed as he retorted to her over the continued blaring of the alarm.
“What now? This escape plan of yours got another level to it? Cos it’s going really well so far.”
“Calm down, Jirel,” Maya sighed patiently as she worked, “I’m working on it.”
Jirel felt his grip on the disruptor in his hand tighten a little on the weapon that was back within his grasp, and he found himself giving another moment of consideration to the offer Maya had made earlier, for him to just shoot her right here and now. But ultimately, he regained control of his own conscience once again, and dutifully turned his weapon towards the door, as instructed.
“What sort of work?” Natasha asked, in lieu of any further griping from the Trill.
“That depends on how many of my old access codes still work. Of course, Grenk really should have changed them all the second that he caught me trying to cheat him. And definitely should have changed them now. But then…Grenk’s an idiot.”
“Managed to catch you,” Jirel muttered pointedly.
“Yes, well,” Maya shrugged, “I suppose I’ve been hanging around with you too long. Must’ve rubbed off on me.”
Despite himself, Jirel almost fired back an increasingly playful retort, once again forgetting how he had gotten into this mess in the first place. But before he had the chance to, Natasha replied with an altogether different comment.
“You need some help with those controls?”
Maya offered a half-smile and gestured back towards the door. “Just make sure you stop anyone getting in here. If my codes are still good for anything, we’ll know soon enough.”
Natasha nodded in understanding, then felt the need to add more.
“Thank you. For this.”
“Don’t thank her, Nat,” Jirel butted in, “Don’t forget why we’re here. And what happened to the Bounty, and the others. That’s what we’ve got to thank Maya Ortega for right now.”
If he was expecting the human woman at the computer desk to offer a contrary quip at that, he was surprised to find none was forthcoming.
“He’s got a point,” Maya managed instead, with a distinctly sad tone.
Even as he found himself feeling a modicum of satisfaction for the guilt evident in Maya’s face, Jirel caught Natasha’s eye, and saw something different in her expression. A look that Jirel had seen aimed in his direction plenty of times since he and the Bounty’s crew had first run into the former Starfleet officer.
A frustrating look, one that had clearly been honed from an early life spent within the confines of the Federation’s web of unshakable values. A look that seemed designed to silently implore him to be a better person.
Ruefully, he found himself softening inside. And instead of continuing to twist the knife into Maya, an action which part of him felt he was entirely justified in doing given what had happened, he elected for a more equivocal path.
“I’d still like to know more about why you’re doing this.”
The comment caused Maya to glance up. Having not seen the look from Natasha, she had been expecting the barbs to continue as well.
She stared back at Jirel for a moment. Their eyes became locked together, as they so often had been throughout their lives together, with a mixture of longing and resentment. She pictured Niki Kolak, and wondered whether they had the time for her to explain that part of her past.
But eventually, she merely returned her attention to the computer.
“Like I said, I sold you out to survive. To escape. But, with Grenk, I was still going to be trapped. It just…took me a while to realise it.”
Jirel listened attentively. A flicker of something passed across his face, as he tried to decide whether or not he finally believed her. Or whether it all still sounded like a rehearsed speech from a woman that continued to double cross everyone she came into contact with.
Before he could make a final decision, Maya’s face lit up with a smile of satisfaction.
“Ok, I’ve been able to disrupt a few more of the security protocols. I can’t shut down the alarms, but I have isolated transporter control from the lockdown process. We shouldn’t have a problem using the transporter once we get there.”
“One slight problem,” Jirel offered back, gesturing around at the alarm sound, “How are we going to get there? The guards’ll be locking the whole place down outside that door.”
At this, Maya paused for a moment, looking unsure of herself for the first time in a while. Her plan hadn’t quite extended that far, clearly.
This time, it was Natasha who provided the answer. “Um, maybe we use that?”
She gestured to the rear wall of the small room. And, specifically, to the maintenance vent built in at ground level.
“First rule of escaping from any situation back at the Academy. There’s always a Jefferies Tube. Or whatever an illegal Ferengi/Miradorn mining operation calls them.”
The trio made their way to the wall and Natasha carefully moved the panel away, revealing the crawl space behind. She looked back at Maya.
“Half a dozen intersections you said. Can you find the way to the transporter room this way?”
“I can try,” she nodded, before looking back at Jirel, “If you trust me.”
Still thinking about what his decision was on that matter, Jirel took a long pause before answering. And he did so by simply waving the disruptor in his hand at her. “No, I don’t,” he replied honestly, “But at least I've got this back.”
Maya nodded in understanding, then crouched down and led the fleeing trio into the vents of the habitation dome.
* * * * *
You hear that?
The question entered Ret-Gon’s head immediately, having been telepathically sent there by his brother Ket-Gon.
The two Miradorn were crouched down in the Bounty’s cargo bay, finishing the task of sealing up the last of the breaches in the hull.
Technically, the breach was on the underside of the vessel, an ugly gash on the external hull itself from where the crippled ship had plunged into the rocks during its emergency landing. But it was too much of a technical challenge to access that section right now, so they were applying an internal patch inside the bay itself to at least allow for repressurisation. If Grenk wanted more permanent repairs to be completed, they would have to wait until the Bounty was tractored back into orbit.
The temporary patch represented the final item on Ret-Gon and Ket-Gon’s schedule. Elsewhere, a dozen other Miradorn were finishing off repairs to the warp core and power relays, and then they could contact the Boundless Profit and get off this godforsaken planet. So far, the repairs had mostly gone according to plan. Which was why Ret-Gon was slightly irritated by Ket-Gon’s nervous question.
Hear what?
He sent the thought back as calmly as he could, but his brother had been telepathically linked to him since birth, and he could tell when he was annoyed.
For a moment, Ket-Gon didn’t reply. He pricked his ears up instead, listening out for whatever he thought he just heard.
The Bounty was eerily silent. With the warp core still offline, the usual hum of energy flowing through any spacefaring vessel was absent. And with Miradorn everywhere communicating telepathically, there wasn't even a hum of conversation. Which was what had made the noise that Ket-Gon was sure he had heard stand out even more.
Except now, as he listened more intently, he wondered if he really had heard something. Or if it had merely been the absence of sound that had been playing tricks on him.
Eventually, he admitted defeat, and both Miradorn returned their attention to the final patch of welding under their feet.
Must have been nothing, he thought to Ret-Gon.
You’re getting paranoid, his brother chided. Too much time in this atmosphere.
Ket-Gon conceded this point. The Class-L atmosphere from outside had now well and truly leaked into the Bounty, Even after main power was back online, it would take a while for the environmental systems to purge that. It was just one of the reasons that both brothers had become especially miserable with the latest task handed to them by Grenk. Long hours doing back-breaking work to get the Ju’Day-type raider ready for towing. For reasons neither of them really understood.
And to cap it all off, they knew there was no chance of any sort of bonus pay from their boss for all of this extra labour.
Not for the first time, and not between the first pair of Miradorn twins, there were some silent rumblings of discontent about their current employer.
Still, there wasn’t much they could do about it right now. So instead, they diligently finished off their final piece of welding.
And then they both heard a noise.
Neither had to ask whether the other had heard it, even telepathically. The fact that they both snapped their heads up at the same time was all the confirmation required.
What the hell is it? Ket-Gon asked.
Must be to do with the warp drive, Ret-Gon replied as confidently as he could, The team over there are getting ready to bring it back online. It’ll be a tertiary system failing somewhere.
Ket-Gon doubted that. It hadn’t sounded like a system failure to him.
Both brothers listened silently as the sound started up again. It seemed to be coming from all around them in the mostly-empty expanse of the cargo bay.
Slowly, but surely, they recognised what it was. Without a doubt needing to be expressed between them.
Footsteps. Getting closer.
They stood and turned in unison towards the door of the cargo bay, back towards the Bounty’s main corridor, as a brief telepathic argument broke out. As far as Ret-Gon was concerned, it had to be one of the other teams, approaching their position for some reason. But Ket-Gon was convinced it must be Grenk, on a surprise inspection, here to punish them for falling behind with their repair work. Either way, they seemed to be the only two options.
Certainly, neither of them would have guessed where the footsteps were actually coming from. They stared, open-mouthed, as a single figure burst into the cargo bay.
A tousle-haired Vulcan, clad in a dirty vest, racing across the deck towards them, growling with anger as he raised a Klingon bat’leth above his head.
The Miradorn twins didn’t need to look at each other. They both communicated their thoughts on this curious turn in their fortunes telepathically, and entirely succinctly.
Oh crap.
* * * * *
Sunek roared with fury, adrenaline coursing through him as he began the task of reclaiming the Bounty from the Miradorn invaders.
And he was in control. He could feel that.
Despite all the chaos around him, he could still hear the calm lapping of the Voroth Sea against the side of the sailing ship. He was definitely in control.
He raised the deadly blade above his head, and charged onwards.