Part Five / Epilogue
“My name is Sunek, and I have a problem.”
Given who was saying it, the statement felt like a masterpiece of understatement, rather than a positive step forwards.
Nevertheless, as the scruffy Vulcan said it, he saw Palia Rani’s face crease into a smile, as she offered him a comforting nod.
The rest of the Bounty’s crew, forming the rest of the small trust circle inside one of the meeting rooms of the Corvin III facility, looked a little more confused. Both at the obvious content of the statement itself, and why the Vulcan was choosing to make it now.
It had been two days since the Bounty had returned to the colony, towing the stolen support craft back with them. And since returning, while Natasha had been busy helping the colony’s medics to treat Lyssa and the other former helpers, and Denella and a reluctant Klath had been with Sarina in her garden, Sunek had been largely absent, spending long hours with Palia in private.
Now, it seemed, he was ready to speak. Even if the others weren’t quite sure what it was that they were hearing.
“I don’t get it,” Natasha admitted eventually, on everyone’s behalf.
Sunek sighed and steepled his fingers, in a curiously Vulcan manner for such a decidedly un-Vulcan Vulcan.
He hated serious conversations. Especially when he was the subject.
But another look at the supportive face of Palia, and a short thought back to some of the recent events that he’d been through, and he realised that he needed to continue.
“I, um,” he faltered, “You’ve…probably all noticed that I’ve been weird recently.”
He glanced around at the knowing looks from the others, and stifled a smile. He deserved that one.
“Fine. Weirder,” he corrected himself, “Well, I guess Denella already knows some of this, but ever since we ran into Sokar and the others last year, and he tried to control me with that mind meld, it’s like he…left something behind. Inside me.”
“What?” Klath grunted, sounding oddly intrigued.
“I don’t know,” Sunek sighed with mild exasperation, “I’ve been trying to figure that out myself for months now. I’ve tried a bunch of stuff to sort myself out. Even…meditating.”
He flinched at this, as if that was the worst part of what he was admitting. But he was surprised and relieved to see he merely received a mixture of support and indifference from his audience.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I guess it’s just like this…darkness inside me. This teeny tiny ball of anger. And I was doing a pretty good job of controlling it. Keeping it all inside. But recently, I guess it’s started to…slip out a bit more.”
His mind instantly called up an image of the two dead Miradorn, back on the planet in Sector 374, while everyone else merely recalled the Betazoid women that had been so violently consumed with his second-hand anger.
Didn’t seem like a teeny tiny ball of anger, Natasha mused to herself.
“So,” Sunek sighed, “I guess I should have told you all this before. But I’ve been talking to Palia since we got back, and she’s been helping me figure some stuff out.”
“I have offered Sunek the use of our facilities,” the Betazoid explained, “And I suggested that talking things through with all of you like this would be a positive first step. He is even free to remain here and recuperate for a time, if he desires. But ultimately, he has opted for a medicinal approach.”
She proffered a small vial in her hands, large enough to fit in a standard hypospray. Natasha’s medical curiosity was instantly piqued.
“What is it?”
“A natural remedy, from Betazed,” the grey-haired woman offered calmly, “One that we have used for a variety of emotional ailments down the centuries. It is actually made from one of the plants in Sarina’s garden. And it helps to…inhibit negative emotions.”
“Inhibit?” Natasha pressed, her eyebrow now raised in an almost Vulcan-like way.
“In a manner of speaking. I suppose it’s more of a mood stabiliser, scientifically speaking. But we prefer to think of it that way.”
“Whatever it is,” Sunek offered with a more familiar grin, “I’m going with the yummy drugs.”
“No disrespect,” Natasha replied, keeping her eyes on Palia, “But not before I’ve done a full chemical markup on exactly what that is. A precaution, before someone I’m medically responsible for starts to inject themselves with something new.”
“Whatever makes you happy, doc,” Sunek shrugged, as he leaned back in his chair.
Palia, for her part, gently nodded in affirmation and passed the vial to the doctor. Appearing to take no offence from her defensive reaction.
Denella glanced at Klath and Natasha, then back at the erratic Vulcan sitting opposite her, studying his suddenly more relaxed features with some concern.
“And that’s everything?” she asked.
No, Sunek thought to himself, blocking out the image of the dead Miradorn again.
“Yep,” he grinned simultaneously.
Denella studied him for a few more moments, then reluctantly nodded.
Sunek, meanwhile, felt relaxed. For the first time in a long while. Palia had been right. It had been a good idea to be more open with his colleagues. He felt like a weight had been lifted off of his lanky shoulders as a result. Now he was no longer lying to them.
Aside from the bit about the dead Miradorn.
And the fact that, unbeknownst to anyone, he had taken his first shot of the remedy several hours ago.
Maybe the Betazoid in the room could sense that he was holding something back. But he was pretty sure his Vulcan mind was keeping the worst of it at bay.
He closed his eyes and allowed himself a moment of meditative thought, now that this new treatment had gotten a chance to take effect.
He stood on the deck of the ancient ship. On the peaceful Voroth Sea.
And the horizon was clear.
The storm was gone.
****************************
“You’re sure about this?”
As Denella asked the question, she tried to keep all traces of relief out of her voice, and was only slightly successful.
“Yes,” Sarina nodded back at her friend, “I am.”
They walked together, with Klath alongside them, down one of the paths of the botanical gardens, the Klingon having again been dragged along out of loyalty.
Denella brought the group to a gentle halt, and she turned and smiled at Sarina.
“Well, I’m not gonna lie, I’m glad to hear it.”
“I mean,” Sarina sighed, looking around the garden, “I’m still not sure my future is here, doing this, for the rest of my life. But if that’s how your…adventures usually go, then I don’t think my future is where I thought it was.”
Denella nodded in understanding. Sarina had told her about the fight in the cockpit. How scared she had been when the Betazoids had arrived.
She considered trying to reassure her, to insist that not every trip on the Bounty ended up with the ship being boarded by furious Betazoids being powered by the unfettered anger of their emotionally compromised pilot. At least, not that specifically.
But, while she wasn’t entirely happy with how she had got there, she knew that Sarina was making the right decision. She couldn’t protect her friend every day when she was here on the colony, but leaving her here offered far more protection than taking her with her would do.
“Well,” Denella said eventually, rubbing her friend’s arm supportively, “I guess this just means that I’ll have to find an excuse to come and visit you more often.”
“I’d like that,” Sarina smiled back.
They walked on again, as a moment of silence descended over the group.
Denella considered opening up further. Even if she hadn’t plucked up the courage to respond to the messages from Juna Erami, or even read them, telling Sarina about her felt like a step forward. A step towards affirming the existence of whatever relationship might have blossomed there.
“So, listen,” she began uncertainly, “I, um…”
Her confidence immediately escaped her, even as Sarina looked back over at her with curiosity.
“What?”
Denella tried again, but the words kept catching in her throat. She admitted defeat.
“It’s…nothing. Just—”
Suddenly, a burly hand shot out from behind them. One of Klath’s fingers extended out ahead of them, pointing at something.
“There,” he grunted.
The two Orions looked over at where he was pointing, then raced over in glee.
In the flower bed that Sarina had carefully prepared earlier, where they had planted the seeds from the Orpheus IV flower, eight tiny green shoots were rising up out of the soil.
“It worked!” Sarina squealed, emotion suddenly playing in her voice, “We did it!”
“You did it,” Denella whispered back gently.
From a distance, Klath observed the eight shoots with more of a dispassionate eye. He still would have preferred a mass of toxic thornweed adorned with skulls. Not to mention the fact that the defences of the garden remained severely lacking.
But he could also see that it meant a lot to Denella and Sarina. So he didn’t offer any of those comments out loud. Instead, and in a moment of polite discourse that he was rightly proud of, he chose this moment to leave the two friends alone. And he turned and walked out of the garden.
Denella didn’t even notice him leaving. She held back a tear of happiness as Sarina gently watered the eight shoots in front of them.
After a long period of misery onboard the Bounty, she suddenly felt good.
“Maybe this is what I’ll do,” Sarina laughed, “I won’t stop until the entire colony is covered in these flowers.”
Denella laughed back, and then discovered that she had found the words.
“I was meaning to say,” she began, “I think I might’ve, um, actually…kinda met someone…”
She started to talk about Juna Erami.
And Sarina’s smile widened in joy.
****************************
The blazing light burned into Jirel’s eyes with coruscating force.
But this time, he could tell things were different than usual. The pain wasn’t a hangover. It was something else.
As he slowly started to piece together what he could remember, his surroundings resolved themselves around him.
He was lying on a medical bed, dressed in a thin gown, in the middle of an entirely unfamiliar antiseptic white room.
Where the hell was he?
He tried to get up, but was immediately stopped from doing so by a dozen aches and pains from all over his body. He grimaced and lay back down on the cushioned bed, trying to recall what happened.
He remembered the pain of the beating. And then he remembered the phaser fire, and the hooded stranger.
And then he couldn’t remember anything. Until he had woken up here.
He felt himself tense up as the door to the room opened. He instinctively sat up and called out with a weak voice to the only person he thought could possibly have brought him to a medical facility.
“Natasha?”
“Well, I’ve certainly been called worse,” a cheery Denobulan in a white doctor’s coat replied as he walked in and approached Jirel’s bed, “But no, I’m Doctor Phrax. And you, Mr Vincent, have had quite an adventure, haven’t you?”
Jirel blinked in renewed confusion, a million questions jostling around in his aching head.
“Wh—What happened?” he managed, “Where am I?”
The Denobulan deftly pulled a tricorder from his coat pocket and began to scan him as he responded.
“You’re at a medical facility, on a Federation outpost on Fermis III. And by the looks of these scans, you’re responding very well to treatment, I must say.”
“Medical facility? Federation…?” Jirel shook his head to try and make sense of anything, “B—But, how did I get here?”
“We were rather hoping you could tell us that. You sort of…appeared. Security footage showed that you were beamed onto an empty gurney in our emergency unit three days ago. Just you and a padd containing your personal details and medical history.”
Jirel stopped shaking his head. It was just making things worse.
“We had the techs take a look,” Phrax continued, “But none of them could trace the transport. We’re not exactly a starbase, you understand. Limited sensors and all that. Still, at least you’ve kept us doctors busy since you arrived.”
He finished the scan, pocketed the tricorder and picked up a padd from a table next to the bed, tapping the screen with a chubby finger.
“Broken right anterior leg bone, seven cracked ribs, punctured lung, ruptured inferior kidney, a cracked skull and a fractured eye socket. Not to make light of your trauma, Mr Vincent, but you’ve certainly made a change from treating another sprained ankle from the local Parrises squares team.”
The Trill wasn’t quite sure how to take that. He was still struggling to think straight.
“I was on…Mivara II,” he croaked.
“Oh my,” the Denobulan replied, “Well, you’re certainly not there now. That’s been a journey indeed. But, once you’re discharged, I can arrange transport back to—”
“No,” Jirel cut in, as firmly as he could, “Thank you.”
The Denobulan looked a little perplexed at this response, but eventually nodded and offered a smile as he set the padd back down on the table.
“I’ll leave you to rest. And I’ll send a nurse in with some food.”
He turned and walked off towards the door, then stopped and turned back, remembering something else.
“Ah yes, there is another thing. You have a…visitor.”
Jirel’s confusion gained another layer. As far as he was aware, nobody knew he was here. Indeed, he had only just become privy to that information himself.
“Now,” Phrax continued, “Technically, it’s not visiting hours. But people like that never stand on that sort of medical protocol.”
“I don’t understand."
“Standard procedure once we input any information on a Federation citizen into our system. A subspace message is sent out through the network to any next of kin.”
Jirel’s face instantly sagged as he heard that.
With another friendly smile, Phrax exited. Seconds later, a new and altogether sterner figure stood in the doorway. The artificial light glinting off the delta on his chest.
“Well,” the new figure grunted, “You’re in a hell of a state.”
Jirel mustered as friendly a smile as he could in response.
“Hi, dad.”
Framed in the doorway, Admiral Bryce Jenner of Starfleet stared stoically back at his son.
To be continued…
