Chapter Text
Part Four (Cont'd)
Who are you to gaze upon the Pride of Soraxx?
The voice seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. It reverberated around with a deep bass tone, but it was impossible to tell whether it was echoing off the walls of the chamber itself, or was directly bouncing around in their own heads. The pitch sounded vaguely masculine, but was bereft of any kind of notable accent or unique audible marks that Natasha could detect.
From the far side of the chamber, she noticed that the two Jem’Hadar that had climbed to the stage were now frozen in place in front of the jewel, which was still shining with the same intense red light as before, but now appeared to be gently pulsing.
It was beautiful.
Jirel stood next to her, unabashedly unnerved by the voice and anxiously trying to look around for the source, but finding nothing. Even as he remained frozen in place, he idly reached a hand up to itch his spots.
It was weird.
“You’re hearing that too, right?” he managed to whisper to Natasha.
She didn’t say anything, and barely reacted to his words at all, her focus still entirely on the pulsing jewel in the centre of the chamber. But she slowly nodded in acknowledgement.
Up on the stage itself, a scant few paces from the jewel, Clora’gerax and Panar’atan remained frozen to the spot, unsure of their next move and trying to gauge the threat posed by the booming disembodied voice. Eventually, Clora’gerax took a step forward, looking up towards the roof of the chamber, which was still shrouded in darkness.
“I am First Clora’gerax!” he bellowed, his own voice echoing around the vast amphitheatre, “And I claim this prize for the Dominion!”
“Bold move,” Jirel muttered to himself.
“It’s not possible,” Natasha whispered, ignoring the Trill’s comment and still trying to focus on what she was seeing, “After five thousand years, how can it still be—”
You are not worthy of the Pride of Soraxx. You will leave this place.
The sound of the voice cut Natasha off from her musing. Given the disconcertingly vague source of the voice, it wasn’t entirely clear whether it was addressing Clora’gerax specifically, or all five figures inside the chamber.
Clora’gerax looked around uncertainly, but he was no nearer figuring out where the voice was coming from. To his side, Panar’atan seemed more sure of himself.
“This is yet another trick, First,” he hissed firmly, “Just like all the others. We must take it! We need it—!”
Clora’gerax swiftly held a hand up to silence his subordinate, still warily glancing around the chamber. The smaller Jem’Hadar stopped speaking, but only seemed to take that course of action begrudgingly.
“Who are you to demand that of us?” Clora’gerax eventually shot back, his voice still loaded with confidence despite the situation.
I am the Guardian of the Pride of Soraxx.
“What do you mean by that?” Clora’gerax persisted.
I am that which guards the Pride of Soraxx.
The Jem’Hadar paused for a moment, seemingly in confusion. From his vantage point, Jirel had to admit that hadn’t exactly cleared anything up.
“So, you are responsible for the traps that we encountered?” Clora’gerax asked, trying a different tack, “They posed little threat. Hardly a fitting way to guard such a valuable prize.”
Those were but a fraction of my power. They were there to be heeded, not to destroy.
Panar’atan, looking even more on edge than before, stepped forward at this point, flanking his commanding officer.
“We are not frightened of you!” he snapped in as close to the general direction of the voice as he could ascertain.
You should be.
That was a good line, Jirel had to admit to himself.
“What the hell is it?” he managed to mutter in Natasha’s direction.
She had been trying to figure that out for herself as the bizarre conversation had been unfolding, but without a tricorder, she was at a loss.
“I have no idea,” she whispered back in awe, “Elaborate security system, automated program, higher state of consciousness…?”
Her voice drifted off as she watched on, consumed by the scene in front of her. She took an involuntary step towards the base of the stage. Lota’sharam, his attention also entirely focused on the unfolding drama in front of him, didn’t stop her.
The two figures on the stage itself remained where they were, standing their ground.
“First Clora’gerax,” Panar’atan snapped again, “We must take it, now.”
Clora’gerax looked at his subordinate. He saw the way his hands were shaking, saw the way his eyes were twitching.
“You require white,” he offered simply, “Your mind is still troubled. Leave this to me.”
“I require the jewel!” he snapped back, “Just as you promised! The jewel will lead us back to the Gamma Quadrant and end this torment!”
Clora’gerax looked at the pained features of his loyal second, and thought about the paltry remains of his own supply of ketracel white back on their ship. He forced his own mounting withdrawal effects away to the back of his mind, and turned back to the glowing jewel.
“We are not leaving!” he shouted into the ether, “We have been wandering for too long. My crew are close to insanity! We need this power—!”
You are not worthy.
“We serve the Dominion!”
You are not worthy.
The unearthly roar filled the cavernous chamber. It took a few moments for everyone present to realise that it wasn’t coming from the mysterious voice. It was coming from Panar’atan.
“I no longer care what you think!” he roared.
“Second Panar’atan—!”
Before Clora’gerax could say anything else, Panar’atan rushed forwards on stage towards the plinth where the jewel stood.
“Victory is life!” he bellowed, his face twitching violently as his withdrawal took hold.
He reached out and grabbed the jewel.
The whole room began to shake.
* * * * *
“I am so getting bored of this!”
Sunek pitched the Bounty around to avoid a volley of disruptor fire from the Jem’Hadar fighter, which instead impacted in a series of small explosions on the forest below.
Usually, in the midst of a battle, Klath couldn’t have disagreed more with the Vulcan’s assessment, but still bereft of weapons to return fire and reduced to impotently tracking their enemy on his sensors, the Klingon begrudgingly had to side with his colleague.
“I mean,” the Vulcan continued as he swerved out the way of another blast, “One way or another, I’ve spent way too much of today getting shot at. A really unfair amount.”
“Focus forward, Sunek,” Denella replied over the increasingly familiar chorus of alarms, “Keep us out of range!”
“That’s exactly what I am doing—!”
As he spoke, he turned the Bounty to the right, just as the Jem’Hadar fighter fired again. Except this time, his carefully attuned Vulcan mind was a tiny bit too slow. Not very slow. Approximately 0.025 seconds too slow, in fact. Still, an eternity for a Vulcan.
And more than enough time for the disruptor blast to strike the Bounty’s port-side wing, gouging a deep hole straight through it. The whole ship lurched violently as the impact sent them spinning wildly off course.
“Apart from just then!” Sunek added.
Through the cockpit window, the tumbling view resolved into a view of a grassy landscape, the surface of the planet below.
The ship was in a death dive.
Denella was thrown clean out of her chair, impacting against the side of the cockpit with a dull thud and crying out over the sound of snapping bone. Klath clung onto his own station with grim determination, feeling the edge of the unit slam into his midriff as he was thrown into the console, knocking the wind clean out of his body. And Sunek gripped onto his own controls as he slid from side to side, fighting the urge to vomit.
The Bounty’s engines began to whine as the little ship plunged towards the ground, smoke billowing out from its damaged port wing.
A new, insistent alarm blared out from Klath’s console.
“Altitude now 8000 metres,” Klath bellowed, “We must pull up!”
Sunek ignored the sarcastic quip that jumped to the front of his mind, and focused on grappling with the controls. In fact, with a great deal of effort, he dismissed all of his emotional instincts. The reactions telling him to close his eyes and scream as loud as he could in the face of his impending death. Instead, he channelled his Vulcan intellect and focused on arresting their descent. With a rapid series of logical and accurate inputs, he managed to stop the spinning, bringing at least two of the directions he was working on back under his control.
“6000 metres!” Klath barked, as a bank of screens behind him obliterated themselves in a shower of sparks.
Sunek took as deep and as calming a breath as he could manage in the circumstances and pulled back on the controls, hoping that there was still enough time to force the crippled ship’s nose up. Slowly, it began to rise.
Not fast enough.
Two more explosions rang out behind him. Another alarm joined the party. He ignored them, focusing zen-like on the task at hand.
“Structural integrity at critical levels,” the monotone voice of the computer added unhelpfully.
“4000 metres!”
Despite his becalmed interior, Sunek felt his face creasing in pain from the exertion he was putting in. A flare of sparks burst out from the wall next to him, as the nose raised still further. And the green land below grew even closer.
The Bounty creaked and whined from the stresses it was being put under, threatening to tear itself apart before the ground even became an issue.
“2000 metres!”
He could suppress his emotions no longer. He could feel them bursting out of his chest. He gritted his teeth and kept his full force on the controls.
And he screamed.
The Bounty’s nose levelled out just as it reached the grassy landscape below, the ship skimming along the ground close enough to disturb the tops of the tallest blades and leave them swaying in its wake. And then the nose rose up further, and the ship took off towards the heavens.
Sunek’s emotional scream effortlessly segued into the biggest sigh of relief in history.
“Nice flying,” Klath said from behind him, allowing the situation to overwhelm him before he had a chance to realise he was actually paying the Vulcan a compliment.
Sunek took a moment to spin around in his chair and give the Klingon a victory smile.
“Ah, Klath,” he grinned, “I knew you had a compliment in you somewhere.”
The Klingon merely grunted, before he spotted Denella trying to ease herself up from where she had landed. He moved over to help her.
“You are injured,” he stated, unnecessarily.
“Yep,” she replied weakly, as Klath helped her into her seat, “Where’s the Jem’Hadar ship.”
Sunek tapped his controls as he levelled the Bounty off at a safe altitude.
“I think we lost them,” he reported confidently.
He looked back up to the cockpit window, and immediately emitted a loud gulp. The Jem’Hadar fighter was dead ahead, its disruptors glowing.
“No, wait,” he added lamely, “The other thing.”