Chapter Text
Part Four
“Guard them,” Clora’gerax barked, gesturing to the smallest of the trio of Jem’Hadar.
Sixth Lota’sharam nodded obediently. He turned to Natasha and Jirel and pointed over to a corner of the chamber with a jerk of his rifle.
“You do know you can’t use those, right?” Jirel said with a hint of smugness as he gestured to the ugly energy weapon in the soldier’s hands.
In a single, swift motion, Lota’sharam swung his weapon around in his hands and slammed the rifle butt into the Trill’s exposed stomach, causing him to double over and collapse onto the ground in wheezing pain.
“Good point, well made,” he managed to gasp, as he struggled for air.
As he continued to writhe in pain, Natasha did her best to stand her ground, keeping her focus on the largest of the Jem’Hadar, who was clearly the leader of the group. “What are you doing here? How the hell do you even know about this?”
Clora’gerax glanced at the gleaming red jewel in the centre of the room, then turned back to her, his grey scaly face studying her own features with intrigue.
“Ah, and I assume that you must be the one they call Natasha Kinsen,” he replied, in lieu of a direct answer to her questions, “I always believed that you would be taller.”
As she struggled to process whether or not she had just been insulted, he continued. “Still, it is thanks to you that we know about this place.”
Of all of the answers he might have given her, she hadn’t been expecting that one. As she stared back in shock, Jirel managed to awkwardly clamber back to his feet.
“You know, doc,” he coughed, still short of breath, “You really should have warned me that your fan club was going to be here.”
“I—I don’t understand—” she began.
Clora’gerax grinned. Until this moment in her life, she had been completely unaware that it was possible for a Jem’Hadar soldier to gloat.
“Your own writings, Natasha Kinsen,” he explained with relish, “We discovered everything we needed to know about the Jewel of Soraxx from your own personal logs. All of them preserved in the black box of your ship.”
Natasha looked aghast. That she had somehow, even inadvertently, brought this situation on herself. To her side, Jirel just tutted.
“See, that’s the problem with Starfleet,” he chided, “Too many logs.”
The Trill kept his tone as bold as possible, trying not to show how anxious he was about their somewhat futile situation. Inside, it was taking all of his self-restraint to resist the ever-building nervous urge to scratch his spots.
“The only part that was missing,” Clora’gerax continued, ignoring the Trill, “Was the jewel’s exact location.”
Natasha managed an understanding nod at this. She hadn’t had time to make a log record of the most recent part of her research, the final translation of the coordinates she had saved from the Navajo, and brought onboard the Bounty, before the Jem’Hadar attack.
“Fortunately,” Clora’gerax concluded, gesturing around the amphitheatre, “You were kind enough to lead us right to it.”
“But,” Natasha managed to get out, still trying to process the situation, “Why do you even care about this—?”
It wasn’t Clora’gerax that answered, but the slightly smaller Jem’Hadar to his left, who had been entirely silent until this point.
“Why do we care about the most powerful weapon in the galaxy?” Second Panar’atan snapped, his face twitching slightly as he spoke, “Surely that is obvious, even to you!”
Both Jirel and Natasha noted the look of mild irritation that crossed Clora’gerax’s face when his subordinate jumped into the discussion unannounced, but he restrained himself from any sort of immediate rebuke.
“Most powerful what now?” Jirel chimed in, totally confused, “It’s just a big old jewel.”
“Ok, I think it might well be much more than that,” Clora’gerax smiled, “Isn’t that right, Natasha Kinsen?”
Jirel looked over at her as she shrank back slightly.
“I mean, there’s a lot of writings about the Jewel of Soraxx, and a lot of them are very vague,” she began, “But some scholars have pointed out that there is evidence the Soraxx may have used it as some sort of power source. Or even as a…weapon.”
Jirel scoffed, his breathing now almost recovered. “And you didn’t think that was important information to share with us?”
“We found it quite important,” Clora’gerax noted.
“Most of those theories have been discredited,” she insisted, “By my father as much as by anyone. When you look more deeply at the sources being used to build those arguments, the language and the context being used could just as easily be seen as referring to the jewel’s power and strength in a symbolic way. Because of what the jewel represented.”
“What a uniquely…Federation perspective,” Clora’gerax spat out.
“He’s insulting you,” Jirel offered to Natasha, “Just in case you didn’t get that—”
“I got that.”
“The real truth,” Clora’gerax continued, almost starting to grandstand in front of them, “Is that this jewel truly is the ultimate power in the galaxy. Why else would it be so heavily guarded?”
He gestured around, alluding to the series of traps and pitfalls that they had all had to overcome in order to get this far.
“And,” he added, “Once we use the jewel’s power to return to the Dominion, we will bring back to the Founders something that will help us achieve a glorious victory over the Federation.”
“Obedience brings victory!” Lota’sharam snapped in involuntary excitement, earning him a withering glare from his two superiors.
“Shut up,” Clora’gerax muttered, pointing to their prisoners, “And guard them.”
The smaller Jem’Hadar nodded and corralled Natasha and Jirel over to the corner he had indicated earlier, leaving Clora’gerax and Panar’atan standing alone.
“Second,” the taller Jem’Hadar said to his subordinate, “Let us complete our mission.”
Panar’atan nodded, as the pair of them turned back to the glowing red jewel in the centre of the room. Natasha watched on helplessly, her father’s greatest accomplishment now so close, and so agonisingly out of reach.
The two Jem’Hadar began to walk towards the illuminated stage.
Towards their victory.
* * * * *
Thick smoke filled the cockpit of the Bounty as Sunek sent the ship on another death-defying turn towards the ground, only to jerk back the controls and pull the small ship away from meeting an untimely end at the last second.
“Grenk’s shuttle is still on our tail, matching our course,” Klath reported angrily from the tactical console behind the Vulcan.
“Can’t this guy just take a hint?” Sunek griped, wrestling with his controls to flick the ship around to the left and avoid another micro-torpedo blast.
“It would appear not.”
Behind them, Denella bounded up the steps to the cockpit and staggered over to her engineering console, struggling to keep her footing as the inertial dampeners only partially compensated for the wild ride the Bounty was on.
“Ok, some good news,” she reported as she slipped into the relative stability of her seat, “Hull breaches are all sealed up, for the moment at least. And I managed to get one of the phaser cannons working.”
“Excellent,” Klath said, his eyes lighting up.
“Not so fast,” the Orion woman interrupted, “Firstly, it’s a total botch job. Probably gonna be good for one shot at best. Secondly, the phaser power junctions were completely fritzed, so I’ve had to reroute most of the relays through…the replicator system.”
Sunek turned his head at this, Klath also giving her a curious look.
“What? Only non-essential system left onboard with enough capacity to handle the job,” she shrugged.
“And by handle the job,” Sunek questioned, “You mean…?”
“I mean we take that one shot, we’re on ration packs for the rest of the trip.”
Sunek and Klath looked at each other across the cockpit, neither exactly liking the sound of that particular fate.
“Better make it count then, I guess,” Sunek said as he swivelled back around to his console, “And don’t worry, cos I think I’ve got an idea.”
With his back now to the others, he didn’t see that his comment elicited clear looks of worry from both the Klingon and the Orion. Instead, he was focused on turning the Bounty through a full 180 degree turn, just as another nearby weapons blast rocked the whole ship.
“This piece of junk!” the Vulcan snapped, bashing the side of his console with his foot, “Controls are too slow, that wasn’t my fault!”
“She won’t do what she’s told unless you treat her right, you know,” Denella shot back, coming to the defence of the ship she’d spent so long repairing and maintaining.
“Fine, I’ll apologise later. Klath, we’re headed to that forest, about thirty clicks due west. Get your shooting finger warmed up.”
“Why?” Klath grunted, “If we are to die in battle, I would prefer not to end up stuck in a tree like some pathetic cha’Do’.”
“You won’t, trust me,” Sunek grinned, “Although I have no idea what one of those is.”
The Bounty veered towards the forest, still relentlessly pursued by the Ferengi shuttle, and began to reduce altitude.
“Sunek, we’re getting a little low,” Denella warned, as half a dozen alarms simultaneously rang out from her console.
“That’s kinda the whole point. Klath, ready with that one shot of ours?”
“Always,” the Klingon replied, still none the wiser as to what the plan was.
“Ok then, we’re going in.”
Denella couldn’t help but flinch as the Bounty dipped down below the tree line of the gigantic forest, nearly colliding with a trunk as it did so. The small Ju’day-type ship navigated between the towering trunks, which were spaced out wide enough thanks to the broad reach of their individual branches. There was room for the ship to move. But not a great deal of room. The pursuing shuttle followed them in, firing another micro-torpedo for good measure.
Sunek’s fingers danced across his control panel with careful precision as the ship veered left and right, in between the huge, ancient trees. He may not have been a traditional Vulcan, but he could still focus when he needed to. And he definitely needed to right now.
A panel on Klath’s console sparked out, as the Bounty’s port wing clipped one of the enormous trunks, gouging out a section of the wood and cracking the tip of the wing.
“Hull integrity going critical,” Denella reported over the cacophony of alerts, “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Definitely,” Sunek lied, “We still got our friend with us?”
“Grenk’s shuttle is still in pursuit, and gaining,” Klath bellowed, “It is a smaller vessel, more able to manoeuvre in this environment. This plan does not appear to be working!”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that,” Sunek shot back, “Prepare to fire!”
The Bounty turned again. Through the cockpit window, Denella and Klath could see that they were now on a collision course with a particularly imposing tree.
“Sunek?” Denella screamed over the sound of another explosion, as the tree grew larger and larger ahead of them.
“One sec!” he shouted back, “And…fire, Klath!”
The Klingon jabbed his finger down on his controls. A burst of dark red energy spat out from the phaser cannon mounted on the ship’s port wing, impacting straight in the middle of the tree’s gargantuan trunk. At the same time as the weapon fired, the replicator in the ship’s dining area exploded into a thousand tiny pieces, leaving a smouldering hole behind.
The phaser blast was enough to completely vaporise the central section of the trunk, momentarily creating a clear gap just large enough for Sunek to fly the limping Bounty through a fraction of a second later.
By the time Grenk’s shuttle arrived, however, gravity had taken over, and that gap had disappeared. The top portion of the tree slammed down hard onto the dirty orange hull of the shuttle, buckling it and sending the small craft on an immediate spiral down to the forest floor. It skidded along through the undergrowth, clipping another tree on the right-hand side, before coming to rest a smoking, immobile ruin.
At the same time, above the tree line, the battered Bounty emerged in a sudden explosion of stray leaves and branches. With its wing tip still gently smoking, it rose unsteadily at first, but it slowly regained altitude and stabilised its course.
Sunek finished the manoeuvre and turned back to the others, the widest grin in the Alpha Quadrant now splashed across his face.
“Now come on,” he said, holding his arms wide and waiting for the adulation to arrive, “How cool was that?”
Denella looked a slightly paler shade of green than usual. Klath merely grunted.
“An acceptable use of our one shot,” he replied, checking his console, “Grenk’s shuttle has been neutralised.”
“Really? That’s all I get? Did you see how we—?”
“Yep,” Denella replied, a little too quickly, “Saw it.”
She recovered enough composure to check her console, which was still flashing a myriad variety of alerts at her. “And I can also see the half dozen fresh hull breaches we’ve picked up.”
“Everyone’s a critic…” Sunek muttered.
As a minor moment of calm descended on the cockpit, save for the alerts still gently chirping at them, Sunek allowed himself to fully take in the bigger picture for the first time, and gestured at his two colleagues.
“By the way, where the hell are the others?”