Chapter Text
Part Two (Cont'd)
The empty cockpit of the Bounty was silent, save for the gentle hum of the ship’s warp engines as it pushed on to its destination.
With dinner over, most of the crew were resting. But Jirel sat hunched over the tactical console, staring at the screen in front of him and re-reading his message back to Admiral Jenner for the tenth time. It wasn’t that it was a particularly long or complicated message. And if he was being completely honest, he didn’t strictly need to send it at all. After all, they’d be arriving at the starbase in less than 48 hours either way. But given what they had found, or more specifically who they had found, he felt that he should probably forewarn the admiral.
Except, as ever, he was finding sending the message more difficult than writing it. Jirel’s bravado had a tendency to fluctuate over long distance communications as much as it did in person.
As he set about reading through it for the eleventh time, and definitively decided that the line about the admiral’s waistline and the gas giant planet they’d passed a few days ago had to go, he was glad to hear the sound of footsteps on the metal stairs leading up to the cockpit. He was surprised to look up and see Natasha walk in.
“Hi,” she said, as she walked over to Jirel’s usual centre chair and flopped into it, figuring that there wasn’t much time spent standing on ceremony on a ship like this.
“Trouble sleeping?” he offered with a smile, “Sorry, I know the Bounty’s spare cabin isn’t exactly the sort of comfort that you’re used to, but it’s the best we’ve got.”
“I’ve spent the last three months sleeping on a rock,” she reminded him, “Trust me, it feels like the honeymoon suite on Risa in there.”
It was true that the small cabin she’d been assigned wasn’t all that impressive. A small room with nothing more than a bed, a tiny metal desk and a bathroom, all spartan and unfriendly. And she wasn’t exactly sure how, given that they were on a spaceship flying through the Alpha Quadrant, but as she’d been lying in bed, she had been sure that there was a draft coming from somewhere.
But equally, she knew for certain that none of that had been the reason she had been unable to get to sleep. The face of the crewman she had left behind had been the reason for that. Every time she had closed her eyes, all she pictured was that young ensign, lying in the corridor of the Navajo. Just as it had been every night on Kesmet IV. And so, instead, her mind had wandered to the one thing that had survived the destruction of the Navajo along with her. The single data file she had managed to download.
Her Plan B.
“Can I ask you something?” she continued eventually.
Jirel closed the message on the screen in front of him, happy for the distraction. He nodded.
“Why does your Vulcan pilot laugh so much?”
He couldn’t help but stifle a laugh himself.
“You know, that’s always everyone’s first question,” he replied, as he leaned back in his chair, “I take it you’ve never heard of the V’tosh ka’tur?”
Natasha shook her head.
“Makes sense. The Vulcans tend not to draw too much attention to them. Guess they think it’ll ruin their street cred. Couple of centuries ago they splintered off from the Vulcan homeworld, deciding to pursue their emotional side and reject the logical.”
“Sounds…interesting,” she was forced to agree.
“I guess. Apparently, back when it all started, it was more of a serious movement. Their intentions were to try to convert the whole of Vulcan to their kooky ways. These days, well, let’s just say it didn’t exactly catch on.”
“I guess I can see why.”
She smiled, and Jirel found himself smiling back without even meaning to. He was finding that she had a smile that seemed to do that to him.
“Yeah, well, my reaction was basically the same when I first met Sunek. But you get used to him. Eventually.”
She considered this and nodded, idly swinging from side to side in the chair. Usually, Jirel found himself feeling quite protective of his centre chair, even though he hadn’t done much to earn it. But as Natasha sat there, he only found it cute.
“What about you then?” she continued, gesturing to his spots, “How come someone with that many lifetimes ended up here?”
“Ah, I’m not joined,” he said, patting his stomach for effect, “One hundred percent belly slug free.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologise. It’s not your fault.”
He paused, not used to opening up about his past quite this quickly with someone new. But there was something disarming about the woman in front of him and the ease of their conversation that compelled him to continue.
“I was an orphan,” he explained, “Actually ended up being adopted by a Starfleet officer who took me back to Earth, and that’s where I grew up. Turns out there’s not all that many opportunities for wannabe Trill initiates in Colorado.”
“So instead you became a swashbuckling space captain?”
“It’s been a while since we swashbuckled anything,” he shrugged, “But I left Earth a long time ago, travelled around here and there for a while, before I found my home.”
He gestured around the Bounty for effect.
“She was a wreck when she got towed into the scrapyard. But, I dunno, there was definitely potential there. So I did some repairs, found myself a crew, and here I am.”
Natasha failed to stifle a snort. “Your crew. A Klingon warrior, a slave girl and a laughing Vulcan.”
Jirel’s friendly demeanour disappeared instantly.
“Hey,” he grunted, “I know we’re not Starfleet spec. But Klath’s saved my life more times than I want to remember, Denella’s the best damn engineer I’ve ever met, and Sunek…”
He tailed off for a moment, before gamely trying to rescue his point. “Well, like I say, you get used to him. So don’t go judging us, ok?”
Natasha nodded contritely, feeling embarrassed to have stepped over the line.
“I’m sorry,” she offered, shuffling uncomfortably in her seat, “I guess so long alone out here made me forget a few things about polite conversation.”
“Well, don’t worry, we’ll have you back with Starfleet in no time.”
She suppressed the involuntary flinch, but not quickly enough for Jirel not to pick up on it.
“See,” he continued, gesturing to her, “What is that?”
“What is what?”
“Ever since we met, whenever anyone mentions the S word, you look like a Boslic merchant that just spotted a tax collector.”
She sighed and rubbed her hands together awkwardly. She didn’t exactly want to have this conversation with a man she barely knew. But she needed to have it with someone.
“I don’t know if I’ll be going back. To Starfleet,” she admitted. It felt odd to say it out loud.
This was enough to pique Jirel’s interest. He leaned forwards.
“Well, that’s something you don’t hear every day,” he admitted, “Usually it’s all ‘the fleet is mother, the fleet is father’ with you guys.”
“I mean, it’s not like I was a standout officer,” she began, “I doubt they’d miss me.”
Jirel stayed silent. After a thoughtful pause, she continued.
“But more than that…I signed up to explore. To discover. And all we seem to have done recently is fight. Fighting the Klingons, then the Borg, then the Dominion, the Breen…”
She tailed off, her gaze drifting off into the distance. “I’m just not sure how much longer I can keep triaging my shipmates.”
“I guess it’s been a tough few years for you guys.”
“I mean, I became a doctor to help people. But treating injuries is one thing. Patching up dozens of your colleagues, your friends, just to get them healthy enough to charge right back out the door and into another disruptor blast? It hurt. Every day. Even before what happened to the Navajo.”
She resisted the urge to flinch again, and forced the ensign’s face to the back of her mind. Jirel studied her face, feeling himself drawn to her plight.
“Well,” he said eventually, only half-jokingly, “If you’re on the market for a new job, the Bounty could always use a doctor.”
She looked back at him. He grinned and gestured down to his patched-up leg. “We meet a lot of Miradorn.”
She smiled back, and considered her options, wondering whether she could really trust this Trill and his band of merry men and women. In the end, the thought of returning to the starbase, and the image of the injured ensign, made her mind up for her.
“Thanks for the generous offer,” she replied, with a sliver of sarcasm, “But I’ve actually got my own retirement plan, of sorts. And it might be something you can help me with.”
Jirel looked confused. So she began to explain. About her plan, and about the contents of the data file she had rescued from the Navajo.
And it didn’t take long for Jirel to realise that his message to Admiral Jenner could wait.
* * * * *
Less than ten minutes later, Jirel had excitedly assembled his crew back in the dining area, now doubling as an impromptu meeting room. The timing of the meeting had irritated all of them, not least Klath, who was the last one to enter. He walked over and slouched into an empty chair.
“This had better be important,” he grunted, stifling a loud Klingon yawn.
He looked around the table, seeing that all eyes were on him.
“Wow,” Denella said simply, gesturing to the wildly unkempt and knotted jumble of hair that tumbled haphazardly from the Klingon’s head.
The others at the table silently agreed with that assessment. It was the worst case of bed hair any of them had ever seen. Klath shuffled uncomfortably in his seat.
“My hair usually requires attention when I wake,” he offered as an explanation, backing it up with a pointed look to the gathered crowd that warned them to drop the subject.
“Mine too,” Natasha offered with a friendly smile.
For a moment, she hoped this might be an unlikely bonding moment for her with the least welcoming of the Bounty’s crew, but the Klingon’s scowl merely grew deeper.
“Anyway,” Denella sighed, stifling a yawn of her own, “We’re all here, we’re all exhausted, so what’s this big important news?”
“This,” Jirel said excitedly, dropping a small padd onto the table with a flourish.
“A padd? That’s amazing,” Sunek chimed in with a deeply sarcastic tone, “You should take a look at the shelves in my cabin one of these days, you’ll have a heart attack.”
Jirel ignored his pilot’s comment and leaned towards his confused shipmates, an excited glint visible in his eye. “How much do you guys know about the Jewel of Soraxx?”
A wave of confusion rippled around the table, leaving it to Sunek to break the silence again. “The strip club on Farius Prime, or the stupid fairytale?”
“It’s not a stupid fairytale!” Natasha snapped, surprising even herself with her tone.
“But it’s a hell of a strip club,” Sunek grinned, unperturbed.
“Ok, I’m gonna go ahead and de-escalate this right now,” Denella said, raising her hand like a child in a classroom, “I don’t know anything about the Jewel of Soraxx. Please explain.”
Jirel looked over to Natasha, who needed no encouragement to tell the story.
“The Jewel of Soraxx is said to be the purest crystal in the entire galaxy. A source of great wealth and prestige throughout history, and the last surviving remnant of a long-dead civilisation. There are references to the Soraxx race and the jewel itself in the writings of dozens of other extinct civilisations that travelled the stars long before we got here.”
“Yeah,” Sunek snorted, “Great big magic diamond. Except, when a story sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”
“Not this one,” she persisted, “This isn’t a myth. Pretty much every other artefact, settlement, everything else mentioned in those same writings has been located by archaeologists, or verified by other sources.”
She noted the continued looks of confusion and distrust, from everyone apart from Jirel.
“Even Starfleet’s science division believes the tale of the Jewel of Soraxx has credibility. Captain Picard himself has taken part in three separate digs looking for it!”
“Only problem is, nobody’s sure where exactly it’s supposed to be,” Jirel added, before pointing at their guest, “Until now, apparently.”
Natasha smiled and gestured to the padd on the table. Denella picked it up and she and the others scanned over the details on it.
“My father was an archaeologist,” Natasha explained, “And before he died, he devoted his final years searching for the jewel. Spent most of his time convinced that this was the one big find that was going to finally secure his place in the history books.”
She paused to compose herself, remembering the kindly face of her father and her childhood back on Earth.
“When he died, I kept up his work. It was a…I dunno, a passion project, I guess. And a few weeks before the Navajo was attacked, I finally figured out the meaning behind the code on a set of runes discovered on a planetoid near the outer edge of where the Soraxx empire was believed to have spanned. They’re coordinates! Actual coordinates!”
“So, let me get this straight,” Denella said, pointing at the padd, “You’re saying this is a treasure map?”
“See?” Sunek added, “Stupid fairytale.”
“Come on guys!” Jirel urged, “These coordinates aren’t that far off our course back to Starbase 216. We can easily shoot over there. Plus, when was the last time you got a chance to go on an actual, real life treasure hunt?”
“Two months ago,” Sunek replied immediately.
Natasha assumed this was another joke she didn’t quite get, until she saw that Jirel’s face had sagged slightly.
“Oh. Yeah. Forgot about that.”
“Yeah,” Denella continued, “Believed some crackpot Benzite trader’s story about the lost medal of Klinga being buried on a rogue planet in the Denevan sector, got Klath all riled up about the chance to find the Klingon Empire’s biggest lost relic, then spent three weeks digging empty potholes in the dark.”
“A fool’s errand,” Klath nodded, “As I am sure this would be.”
Jirel looked back at Natasha with a guilty shrug. “Honestly, I completely forgot we did that. Kinda undermined my main argument there.”
Natasha sighed and snatched the padd back from across the table. “Fine. Don’t believe me. Let’s just get back to Starbase 216, you guys can get off searching for whatever other black boxes need your attention, and I’ll find a crew who are actually interested in finding the most prized relic in all the galaxy.”
The three more stubborn members of the crew glanced at each other, suddenly looking less sure of themselves.
“Think about it,” Jirel persisted, “What is there to lose? We go there, we check it out, worst case scenario, it’s a bust and we get right back to Admiral Jenner for those repairs. Easy.”
“Best case scenario,” Natasha added, “You’ll be rich enough to buy a brand new ship. Each.”
“Well, I’m in,” Sunek shrugged, caving at the first scent of profit and drawing an irritated look from Klath, “I’m gonna buy one of those fancy new runabouts.”
Jirel smiled and looked over at the remaining two holdouts.
“I still have a question,” Denella said to Natasha, “Why are you getting us involved in all this? Isn’t there gonna be a starbase full of scientists wanting to study all this?”
Natasha looked down at the table for a moment.
“If you must know,” she replied eventually, “I’ll be leaving Starfleet when I get back. Resigning my commission. And frankly, I’m not about to hand over my father’s defining life’s work for someone else to find.”
She looked back up at the green-skinned woman and offered a smile. “Plus, I dunno, call it a thank you for rescuing me.”
“So, if we do find it, what happens then? You’re not just gonna hand it over to a Federation museum somewhere?”
“When we find it,” Natasha replied with determination, “We’ll make sure we get paid handsomely for it. If I’m leaving Starfleet, I’m gonna need the money.”
Denella studied the other woman’s face intently, before turning to Klath. “What’re you thinking?”
“I still believe this is an act of folly,” the Klingon scowled.
“Oh, it’s definitely one of those,” Sunek nodded.
Denella considered this and nodded in agreement, gently tapping the tabletop with one of her fingernails.
“Yep, can’t argue with that,” she admitted, before a smile flickered across her face, “Sounds like what we do all the time.”
Jirel broke into a smile of his own, as Natasha sighed in satisfaction. Along with Sunek and Denella, they all turned to Klath. The burly Klingon exhaled in clear annoyance and folded his arms in front of him. He stared back from underneath his unkempt hair at the four expectant faces around the table.
“Fine,” he muttered.
* * * * *
As it raced through space at warp speed, the Bounty banked away to the right, indicating the change of heading to the coordinates provided by Natasha’s map.
Had Sunek been paying any sort of attention to his sensors as he made the course change, before heading back to bed, he might have noticed a small Rigellian freighter, on the very outer limits of the Bounty’s detection grid, matching their course precisely. But Sunek never really paid close attention to his sensors unless he had to. And who cared about a small Rigellian freighter anyway?
On the bridge of the Jem’Hadar fighter, First Clora’gerax watched his pilot complete their course change and smiled in satisfaction. He flicked his headset viewer up and turned to his second in command, who now appeared to have calmed down following his earlier outburst thanks to a hit from his ration of ketracel white.
“A perfect manoeuvre, Second Panar’atan,” he said, his voice thundering around the room, “They still do not detect us.”
“No, First,” his subordinate replied, a flicker of emotion still playing across his voice, “The projection is holding. They will only see us as a meaningless freighter, if they see us at all.”
Clora’gerax allowed himself a moment of satisfaction, which was almost immediately interrupted when he saw his Second’s face twitch again. Signs of withdrawal were still apparent.
“You still require white,” he stated flatly. A statement, rather than a question.
“No, First,” Panar’atan lied, “The additional dose was sufficient.”
The smaller Jem’Hadar clumsily steadied a shaking hand, failing in his efforts not to further undermine his lie. Clora’gerax studied him, concerned with the battle readiness of his most trusted subordinate, even though he knew there was little else he could do for him. The whole crew were dealing with their meagre ration as best they could.
“Be ready,” he replied, in an attempt at reassurance, “Soon our troubles will be over.”
“Then they are leading us to the jewel?”
“I believe they are,” he replied, “And once we have it in our possession, this great source of power will finally allow us to return to the Dominion, and we will have all the white we require.”
Second Panar’atan nodded back and returned his attention to his workstation. Focusing his efforts on doing a better job of hiding his inner turmoil. Clora’gerax flipped his headset viewer back down and continued to monitor their course. Allowing himself to feel that they were as close as they had ever been to returning to the Gamma Quadrant after so long.
In the aftermath of the war, during the Dominion’s humiliating withdrawal from the Alpha Quadrant, they had been one of several Jem’Hadar ships left behind. Ships that had been separated from their fleets, too damaged to keep up, or otherwise abandoned in the chaos of the retreat.
Most of the remaining scattered stragglers had either been rounded up by Starfleet patrols or destroyed in a final few suicidal skirmishes, under the command of rogue Vorta unable to deal with the sudden evidence of the fallibility of the Founders. But First Clora’gerax, who had personally killed his own Vorta at the first sign of trouble, had made sure he and his troops had remained alive, out of harm’s way. He and his crew had spent their time scavenging, picking off any smaller vessel that got in their way, searching for some way back to the Gamma Quadrant.
A way that he was sure he had finally found after analysing the personal files stored within the Navajo’s black box.
The Jewel of Soraxx.
An object of enormous power, enough to ensure that nobody would stand in their way as they returned to the Dominion. And perhaps even enough to enable them to return to the Alpha Quadrant, this time as an unstoppable force. But he knew that he was running out of time. That his crew’s paltry remaining rations of ketracel white were close to being exhausted. In many ways, it was a miracle that they had managed to make them last this long.
And that, he mused, as he continued to track the vessel ahead of them on his viewer, makes us very dangerous indeed.