Chapter Text
Part Two (Cont'd)
The Bounty glided gracefully down through the wispy reddish clouds of the planet and came to rest on the outskirts of a dense forest area, the green leaves of the monstrously large trees swaying and shaking as the craft approached. After a few seconds, the cargo ramp at the rear of the craft opened and five figures strode out.
One of them was distinctly less happy than the others.
“But this happens all the time!” Sunek shouted after the others, “You guys get to go off and do something fun, and I’m stuck here watching the ship!”
“It’s a job that basically involves doing nothing,” Denella quipped as she reached the bottom of the ramp, “You’re perfect for it.”
“Come on,” the Vulcan persisted, gesturing around the deserted planet’s surface, “Who the hell’s gonna try and steal the Bounty down here? Lemme come!”
Jirel turned back to Sunek. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear he was about to start stomping his feet like a toddler.
“Sunek, stay,” he replied forcefully, pointing back at the ship to underline his order.
The Vulcan’s eyes narrowed.
“Fine,” he grouched, turning and starting back up the ramp, “Might as well have stayed in bed…”
Jirel turned back to the others and gestured for them to proceed. As they started to walk towards the forest line and the Bounty’s ramp began to retract, he heard Sunek fire off one final comeback.
“By the way, Jirel, way to get your end away!”
Jirel didn’t need to be a telepath to feel three sets of eyes all focus on him, all for subtly different reasons. He managed to muster a glance at Natasha, who had fixed him with a withering glare.
“Small ship,” he offered with an apologetic shrug, “News travels fast.”
She shook her head and walked on. Not for the first time since he had woken up that morning, Jirel absently found himself praying for the ground to swallow him up.
* * * * *
Wherever they were, it was a lush and verdant planet.
As the four figures walked through the dense forest, they were surrounded on all sides by incredibly tall trees in rude health, multi-coloured mosses and plant life underfoot, and the distant calls of any number of examples of the local wildlife.
Natasha idly gazed up at the tree canopy as they walked, a dizzying distance above their heads. The trees must have easily been five to six hundred feet tall, and her scientific instinct wondered how much of that was down to the slightly lower than Earth-type gravity they were experiencing. She didn’t allow her mind to wander far, though. Her focus remained on their destination. After so long feeling like she was alone and purposeless, she ignored the simple beauty around her and kept her attention on the possible wonder that lay ahead.
The team from the Bounty walked in a two-by-two formation, with Klath and Jirel leading the way and Natasha alongside Denella behind. Klath, his ever-present bat’leth still slung behind his back, scanned the path ahead with a bulky tricorder as they walked.
“Nice place,” Jirel offered, breaking the silence that had descended, idly brushing his hand across a particularly striking orange flower as he passed by.
“Hard to think any civilisation died out while living here,” Denella nodded.
“A lot can change in five thousand years,” Natasha reminded them, “According to the legends, the Soraxx died out from a devastating empire-wide plague.”
“Plague?” Jirel asked, glancing with concern at the hand he’d just used to touch the flower.
“Calm down. This isn’t my first away mission,” she replied with a patient smile, “Scanned the planet before we landed. No pathogens detected.”
“Agreed,” Klath grunted as he tapped the tricorder.
Natasha allowed herself an inward smile at that. The first time that the Klingon had been on her side since they had met. They walked on, as the undergrowth started to get thicker.
“That wasn’t what I was worried about anyway,” Denella admitted as the foliage started to close in around her.
Natasha looked curiously at the green-skinned woman next to her, who was now eyeing the undergrowth more warily than before. “What’s the problem?”
“I hate forests,” Denella grimaced, “The ones back on the Orion colony I grew up on were filled with all sorts of creepy-crawlies. There was this one type of snake that’d grow to thirty feet long or more, known as the Spinesnapper. Know how it got that name?”
“It really liked to read?” Jirel offered from ahead of them.
Denella fixed the back of the Trill’s head with an unimpressed glare.
“Point is, we’re not on some Orion colony,” he continued, “And if there was any sort of freaky bone-snapping snake out here, we’d be picking it up.”
“Jirel is right,” Klath nodded, gesturing to the tricorder, “I detect no reptilian creatures anywhere in the forest.”
Denella emitted an audible sigh of relief, before Klath continued.
“I am, however, detecting several species of arachnid in the local area. Based on their size, I suspect most will be capable of piercing humanoid flesh with their fangs.”
The colour drained from Denella’s face. Klath glanced back at her, with a deadly serious scowl on his face.
“Be careful where you step.”
The now paler Orion woman shot him a look that could kill, then immediately redoubled her efforts to keep an eye on the ground around her feet.
“I really hate forests,” she muttered miserably.
* * * * *
After twenty or so further minutes of walking, delicate steps in Denella’s case, they reached the edge of a clearing.
“There,” Klath pointed beyond the undergrowth ahead of them, “These are the exact coordinates.”
He had barely finished his sentence before Natasha stepped forward and brushed the branches out of the way. She gasped.
In front of them, in the middle of a vast clearing, was the remains of a vast structure. Roughly pyramidal in shape, made from rusted and decayed stone and metal and covered in moss and creeping vines, it stood around thirty feet tall, rising out of the soft grassland around it. It was clearly old. Very old. But to Natasha, it was beautiful. She felt a swell of pride and turned to the others with a satisfied smile.
“This is the place—!”
She stopped immediately, confronted by the fact that the focus of the others was not on the structure itself, but on something else. Klath gestured with a stocky arm. She followed where he was pointing.
And saw five Jem’Hadar soldiers, weapons slung in their arms, walking purposefully through the clearing. Directly towards the structure.
“Crap,” she whispered.
The others silently accepted that they couldn’t have put it better if they had tried.
End of Part Two