Minglewood Blues part two of Songs of the Dirhja

New Minglewood Blues
(sequel to Deep Elem Blues)
TOS A/U, K/S, h/c
PG-13 for Violence and Other Unpleasantness

Damn... This wasn't just an ordinary seizure. Spock had never been out this long before, and he wasn't moving at all. He was breathing well enough, but still... Jim fretted, pacing endlessly in the tiny cabin, letting Dirhja fly herself. Behind him the Vulcan lay in his bunk, a safety strap across his chest, just in case. The human wasn't sure what else to do.

They'd named the ship Dirhja after the traditional triple-edged Rihannsu vengeance blade. Spock had drawn the characters and Jim had painted them on the hull. Although it might once have been unthinkable, Jim hoped that one day she might live up to that name, and in this Spock agreed with him. Neither of them knew what name she'd carried before; the masters hadn't painted one on her hull and none of the onboard documents had mentioned one. Hell, maybe they didn't even name their ships. Jim had never heard her use any name but her own -- but Dirhja didn't belong to her anymore. Humans and Vulcans do name their ships.

She was a sweet little ship, he had to admit. She was warp-capable, up to about warp 8.5; she had heavy-duty impulse drives -- what the fighter jocks used to call "long legs" -- for sublight manoeuvres, and a cloaking device, similar to that of the Rihannsu but modulated somewhat differently. So far no-one on either side of the Neutral Zone had detected them as they passed by -- invisibility was a useful attribute given their new profession, smugglers. Free Traders, if they wanted to put on airs. Dirhja had phasers equivalent to Federation Type II at a power level commensurate with her size, and she had an autopilot that was better than any Jim had ever seen before, now that he knew how to use it properly.

He had Spock to thank for that. Over the last two months, bit by bit, the Vulcan had hacked into and debugged both the ship's operating system and the computer core itself, encrypted all internal data flow, and found and disarmed a number of fairly sophisticated booby traps that !M'zh!w*hee had left behind. Jim had known that they must be there, but not how to find or remove them safely. Spock hadn't so much as seen a computer during all his years as a captive, but the knowledge had still been there in his mind, once he was given time, strength, and freedom to access it. Speaking might very difficult for him, but there was little, even now, that he couldn't get a computer to do.

One of the first things he'd done after ensuring they were safe was to modify the ship's vocal interface, resetting it for normal human pitch and range. Jim hadn't asked him to do that -- he did, after all, have a throat patch and earpiece. With them he could hear and speak in the ultrasonic range of the masters' speech, the same range the ship had originally been programmed for. But Jim hated that hardware. Every time he used it, it reminded him all over again of what the masters had done to him -- to both of them. And so, without a word, Spock had taken it upon himself to make the change. For himself, when he had to communicate with the ship the Vulcan used the keyboard. Even though the character set was foreign, that of the masters' language, it was easier for him, faster than sitting there fighting to find the right words, when in a crisis every instant lost might prove disastrous. In any case, for a long time that had been the only character set either of them ever saw. It had rather amused Jim, in a dry and rueful way, that it was Standard which was now difficult for him to read. It was coming back to him fast enough, but the experience was definitely an odd one.

They were inbound to the edge of Federation space right now, crossing the Neutral Zone with a load of Rihannsu pharmaceuticals. They had traded a hold full of salvaged, outdated computers and hardware for it. This was their third smuggling run, and if they could pull this off they'd have enough latinum for the phaser and deflector upgrades Jim wanted. Dirhja was fast and sleek, but it wouldn't hurt a bit to have her better defended. And they had other needs as well. Only now did Jim realize he'd never properly appreciated his access to StarFleet's bottomless credit, until it was gone. Out here on the Fringes, no-one used credits at all. Transactions here were either handled as barter or else paid for in latinum, which cost more energy to replicate than it was worth. Replicators themselves were rare, and costly. Had !M'zh!w*hee not already had one installed, they would originally have been unable to afford it. Only on their most recent trip had they made enough to buy a branch replicator for the galley.

They could have made more money, of course, but there were some goods that neither of them was willing to handle, and some people with whom they refused to do business. On that, both were agreed. They would not carry slaves, nor would they sell weapons nor any of the slavers' tools -- and they would not trade with the Orions, for what supported them went in the end toward the masters. The masters were one of the Orions' biggest customers, maybe the biggest. During the years he'd been a slave Jim had often wondered how the Fleet, so often engaged in battle with Orion pirates, could not know of the masters' existence. He had no answer. Nor could he answer the corollary: if the Fleet did know of the masters, why did they not do anything about them? Slavery was supposed to be anathema; no world that practiced it was permitted Federation membership, and slavers were pursued wherever they might be. Hell, at one time he and Spock had personally gotten the membership of the world of Ardana suspended, based on the mistreatment of the zienite miners by the dwellers in the cloud city, Stratos. Most especially, no one was supposed to be able to just snatch Federation citizens and get away with it. Yet the masters went about their business without interference, though Jim and Spock had not been so fortunate...

Neither of them seriously considered returning to the Federation now. Each, for his own reasons, preferred to stay out here. Most importantly, people didn't ask awkward questions or look at you with pity in their eyes. Here, folks knew how to mind their own business.

Once or twice they'd talked of going back, trying to fight the masters and break their power -- but they were only two men in one very small, stolen ship. How could it be done? Jim was hardwired against any direct attack on them and Spock certainly couldn't fight them alone. And how could they make sure that if the masters were defeated, the Orions wouldn't just move in and take over? Neither had any ready answer for that. The Orions were crueler and far more savage than the languidly decadent masters themselves. Only the masters' technology, in Jim's opinion, allowed them to continue their rule. In some ways, like the design of the wire in his head, it was far ahead of even the Federation's knowledge.

Orion guardsmen were the ones who'd nearly killed Spock, when they were first captured -- hell, for years Jim had thought that they had killed him. He had seen him fall in battle, felt his mind vanish into blackness and silence. For years, Jim had thought he was alone among his enemies -- until !M'zh!w*hee happened to return to the place where she'd bought him. There, against all his expectations, he'd felt that touch upon his mind, which he'd never thought to feel again this side of Death. That knowledge, his awareness that Spock had survived, had finally given him the key to the prison in which he'd been held. It had given him the incentive to stop dreaming about freedom and do something.

And they'd made it. They'd gotten away and stolen !M'zh!w*hee's ship, to boot. But to this day, the Vulcan had difficulty speaking, even in the mindtouch, and sometimes he had seizures. Jim knew damned well that he wouldn't have survived had their places been reversed; the injuries which had caused such damage would have been fatal to a human. And now he was starting to wonder just how badly the Vulcan himself was affected.

It had been Spock's turn this morning to stand the watch. Jim had been forced, after running on pure nerves for several days, to reset the wire and take a desperately needed rest. He hated to do that; with the wire tuned to sleep mode, he was vulnerable if anything went wrong. But even with the wire he was only mortal, and sometimes even he had to crash for a while. He'd left Spock on watch at the pilot's station and set himself to sleep for eight hours, no more, the longest time he'd allow himself. He'd have cut that down if he could have figured out how to do it and survive. Jim had absolutely no patience for his body's needs; it was something that he and Spock still argued about. Just the same, every time he'd crashed, he'd awakened to find that everything was fine and Spock was waiting to hand over the controls. But not this time.

This time, as soon as the timer brought him back on-line he'd known that something was wrong. He could feel it, like comm-static in the back of his head, a harsh discordant buzz like a communicator with an internal short. He'd skipped his usual wakeup routine and just tuned himself up to battle readiness, not knowing what might be awaiting him.

He'd found the Vulcan lying rigid on the deck next to the pilot station, all his muscles locked, back arched, eyes rolled so far back that only the whites showed, teeth gritted tightly shut -- unresponsive, hardly breathing. Cursing under his breath, Jim had run for the medkit, the wire giving him unhuman speed and grace, helping him keep his hands rock-steady as he administered the necessary shot. The wire enabled him to wait, outwardly calm, for the minute or two it took for the shot to work and the seizure to stop. It had given him strength to burn, long enough to get Spock up off the floor and strapped into a bunk. The Vulcan weighed much less than he had years before; even now, after two months of freedom, he was still far too thin. Often he was simply not hungry. That was another thing that they argued about.

Only then did Jim tune himself back down and begin to relax a little. It was the gift of his former owner, that wire in his head -- both curse and blessing, inextricably bound together. Without it, he could hardly function any more; with it, he could make himself do damn near anything he wanted. But it kept him away from all but the fringes of Federation space. Anywhere that Federation law held sway, wireheading was illegal -- even the one-shot drones who settled for a wire to the pleasure center and left it at that were committing a crime. The law was a legacy of the horrors of Earth's and Vulcan's pasts. By law, any Federation doctor who found such a thing was obliged to remove it as best he could and forward the wirehead, if he survived, to a rehab colony. And until the masters had made him one, Jim had always approved of that law. There was nothing a person couldn't be made to do, if he was wired correctly. Jim knew. But now...

No thanks. Jim had visited rehab once or twice during his service in StarFleet. No doubt such places were necessary -- but he had no intention of ending up in one. He still remembered the horrors of Tantalus, under the smiling and genial Dr. Tristan Adams. He hadn't escaped from slavery only to re-enter the Federation equivalent. In a rehab colony, he'd be under the microscope; he'd have to put up with the therapists and their endless questions about how he felt and what he was thinking. He'd be watched every minute of every day, every single action scrutinized and analyzed till hell wouldn't have it... He would be alone again. No. Now that he finally had a modicum of freedom, Jim was determined to keep it.

Still, in the end, he might have to take that chance. He was no neurologist; he had no way to tell how serious Spock's problem might be, no idea how best to treat it. He was worried about him. The Vulcan had had several of these seizures in the time since their escape. Jim had seen in his memory that he'd been having them for years. There were large swathes of silver in that once-black hair, mute testament to the savage beating he'd received at the hands of the Orion slavers -- for trying to defend Jim.

But he'd never been out this long. Usually he woke up within an hour or two, at most. Jim didn't know what else to do. The shot he had given him was from the emergency kit; what would happen if they ran out? They didn't really have the right kind of scanner on board. Most of their medical equipment was still calibrated for the masters, relatively useless for their own needs. It was one of many things on the long list of items to be bought, when funds permitted.

So in the end, he tried the only thing he could think of. He sat on the edge of the bunk, leaned over, put his hands on either side of the Vulcan's face, and concentrated. <<T'hy'la -- it's me, Jim. You have to wake up now. You've been down for too long.>> Further and further he traveled, down and into the darkness within, seeking the touch of the other's thoughts -- and finally, some endless length of time later, he found what he sought. No words, just an awareness that he was there, a reaching back towards him.

Using the telepathic bond that had started growing between the two of them during their early days on the Enterprise, the human reached -- and having made contact, held on. It was hard -- he felt himself stretched, somehow, very thin, and he could feel the ever-hungry darkness all about him, ready to devour them both, should either falter or lose his way.

But Jim had the wire to drive him. The wire didn't care how tired his body was, nor how low his reserves might be -- it pushed him on, relentlessly, allowing him to accomplish things no mere human could have done unaided. He endured, making of himself an anchor, pulling his friend's spirit back from the depths where it had wandered. And finally, after a time which seemed to last both forever and no time at all, he opened sore and burning eyes to find Spock looking up at him, the wide black eyes confused, unfocused -- but awake. One hand reached up and gripped Jim's tightly for a moment, as if to check that he was real.

Jim let out the breath he'd been holding and rubbed at his eyes. That had been just a little too damned close for comfort... He reached down and undid the strap that had held the Vulcan safely in his bunk. Neither of them, when awake, was comfortable under any kind of restraint, and he could feel Spock's distaste as if it were his own.

He stood up and stretched, hearing little popping noises up and down his spine. He tuned the wire down some more -- not too far, though, or he'd crash again, and he knew damned well the Vulcan wasn't going to be up to much for a while yet. It always took him some time to recover after one of these episodes; at first he often couldn't speak at all. Once he hadn't known who or where he was for a few panicked minutes. It hurt to see that and have no power to help. One more reason, among many, to hate the masters and all that they stood for.

<<...?...>> Spock frowned, unable, for the moment, to find any words -- but Jim knew what he wanted. He reached for the other's hand again, the contact making the mindtouch almost effortless. The skin was rough under his fingers, scarred from the years of hard labour the Vulcan had survived before Jim had found him and rescued them both. As always, it seemed hot -- but that was as it should be.

<<It's ok. You had another seizure, that's why your words are gone. It'll pass, in a while -- they'll come back.>> At least they always had so far. Jim looked down again and saw the long, thin fingers make the signs for "thank you." He gave a thumbs-up in return.

He wished he knew more about head injuries. Why was it easier for Spock to use sign language? Why did spoken words come so hard for the Vulcan, yet written or signed speech take relatively little effort? So much he didn't know, and he always wondered if perhaps there was some simple treatment of which he was ignorant. Times like this he really missed the third member of their former triad, Leonard McCoy. That one had dragged them both back from death times without number; if anyone at all could have solved this problem, surely it was he.

But Len would be an old man by now. He'd probably left the Fleet years ago; he never did have much patience for bureaucracy and rules. And he sure as hell wouldn't have approved of the wire or of Jim's decision to keep it. No, that wasn't an answer, either. Jim sighed, and put it out of his mind. He looked down at the face of his friend. At least for now, they'd pulled it off, sidestepped the danger one more time...

<<I'd best go check the conn -- make sure we're still on course.>> The Vulcan nodded and pulled the blankets up to his shoulders. He would probably sleep now, for a time -- but true sleep, not that terrible absence of this morning. It would help as much as anything could. The dark eyes drifted closed, and soon enough Jim felt him fall gently into dreams. He reached into his pocket, made the doubt and the worry go away, and walked to the pilot's station. There he sat himself down and began to run the systems check. The rest of it, he would deal with later.

Sure, Jim.

-----///-----

Dirhja beeped at him. Jim looked up from the padd he'd been doodling on -- ah, good. They'd just picked up the outermost beacon for the Vortex and scan was showing all clear. There was no-one but a couple of merchanters insystem right now and one Klingon scoutship. That was fine; as long as the Border Patrol or the Orions weren't here, it was safe to decloak. He sent the customary coded squirt signal, waited for the ship to decode the autoresponse, and lowered their cloak. It looked good. The port had assigned them a perfect orbit, close enough for transporter range, but far enough out to make a quick retreat possible should the need arise. Now all they had to do was wait for M'Shaa'a's signal, and they could make their deal and get out.

The sound of quiet, uneven footsteps reached him then, telling him that Spock was up and about. He turned and saw the Vulcan take his customary seat at the copilot's station. He looked a little paler than usual, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

"How do you feel?" Jim asked.

"Better. It... has passed." But Jim could feel his frustration as he tried to speak. He reached into his pocket and retuned the wire, giving himself enough of a boost to use the mindtouch instead. Depending on how high he wanted to boost himself and how thrashed he was willing to be afterward, he could use it at quite a distance. He had done so that first night at the mining colony, when he'd found that Spock was still alive. Jim was no telepath; he couldn't touch anyone else's thoughts in that way -- but the Vulcan's mind was open to him, had been for many years. There was a bond between them. Neither twelve years of separation nor the worst the masters had thrown at them had been able to break it.

<<You up for landing party duty?>> he asked. <<We're due to meet M'Shaa'a at the Vortex Hole in a couple of hours.>> That was another advantage Dirhja gave them -- she could be set to beam them both up again without needing anyone on board to run things, and she could be coded and locked so no other could do so. !M'zh!w*hee had been a cast-iron bitch but she'd bought herself -- and, unwittingly, them -- one very fine ship.

Spock shrugged Vulcan style, the spreading of the fingers. His eyes were hooded, expressionless. <<I... shall manage, Jim. There is... need.>>

Jim looked down at the pilot station controls for a moment. He'd been thinking the last couple of hours, thinking about need, and responsibility, and duty to a friend. He'd been too damned worried about what might happen to him -- but it wasn't that simple. There were more important things at stake.

<<Listen, Spock. I've been thinking. Seems to me this problem of yours is getting worse, not better.>>

The Vulcan turned away from studying the controls, to look at him. <<It is... possible.>> He frowned, and for a moment the look in his eyes was bleak. Then his face returned to that flat Vulcan non-expression he'd always used in the old days when he didn't want to think about something. <<What is, is.>>

<<Not necessarily. I've done some checking. There's a mining colony in the chu'Harr system, less than ten lightyears away from here. They've got a pretty good hospital, and they get funding from StarFleet XenoMed -->>

Spock cut him off in a flash of most un-Vulcan anger. "No." Even now, his voice was still harsh, broken. For so many years, he had not spoken at all... He sat bolt upright, and as he went back to the mindspeech, his hands moved, as they often did when he was disturbed, in the twisting, fluttering signed speech he had learned as a slave.

<<No... StarFleet hospitals, Jim. I... will not go.>>

<<Dammit -- why?>>

<> Jim scowled fiercely and refused to look away. The two of them glared at one another for a while.

Finally, Jim reached for his control and made his mood lighter. Then he tried again. <<T'hy'la -- don't shut me out. Why won't you even consider this? You know as well as I do that something's wrong.>> The Vulcan stared out at the stars, his hands laced together in his lap. Jim could feel the care with which he organized his thoughts.

Even then, he had to fight for the words before he replied. <<It is... There are... >> He sighed, and turned back to meet Jim's gaze. <<Jim, if I went... We are thought... dead. I cannot, I do not want... >> He hesitated, but Jim just went on looking at him, his face and his thoughts kept carefully neutral, waiting.

Spock tried again. <> He gestured toward himself, the gesture taking in the scars on his face and hands, the collar-gall about his neck, the damaged leg, all the rest of it. And Jim remembered that Vulcan had never been conquered within their collective memory, a record which went back uninterrupted for thousands of years. Slavery had been unknown on that world since the days of the mind-lords, before the time of Surak. <<I am thought... to be dead. They have already... grieved for me, and moved on. Let it... stay so. A Federation hospital... will know who we are. Who we were. There will be... inquiries, questions. Old wounds reopened. And we... we do not know that anything... can be done. I prefer to retain... my privacy.>> He had spent too many years without it.

Jim sighed. The worst of it was, he did understand. He felt the same way. He knew of no remaining kin except his nephew, Peter, only survivor of his brother Sam's family. Jim's mother might or might not be still alive -- he'd found no trace of her yet, but that didn't mean much. Peter had sworn from childhood on that he would follow in his uncle's footsteps and join the Fleet. What would it do to that idealistic young man if he were to learn that his beloved uncle was not only a wirehead, but determined to stay that way? How could he ever explain it? How could anyone who hadn't felt the damned thing understand? The only one who did understand was Spock, and that was only because he could feel what it was like.

"Well, shit," he muttered, under his breath.

That got him a raised eyebrow and the comment, <<As... a debating tactic, Jim... that leaves somewhat to be desired. >> The very smallest of smiles flickered across the Vulcan's eyes, then. Though his concern was real, Jim had to laugh.

He looked up and smiled, admitting defeat -- for now. <<Whoever said cats were the stubbornest animal sure as hell never met any Vulcans!>>

<<Perhaps not. >>

-----///-----

Red lights across the board -- they were almost ready to go to warp. Spock had brought the cloak online as soon as they'd left orbit. They only had a little further to go and they'd be at Cochrane's Limit for this system.

The new upgrades were online. The throaty purr of the impulse drives filled the air and sensors showed all clear...

No, wait. What was that, just now dropping out of warp? There was something familiar about that configuration. The Vulcan's hands moved quickly, easily, as he brought the close-range sensors to bear. He held up one hand, a signal for Jim to hold off on warp for a minute...

Yes! It was an Orion raider, very much like the ones that had captured the two of them all those years ago. But this time they had a cloaked ship and a lot more options.

"Jim... look." And he pointed to the pertinent section of the display.

The human leaned forward, read what was there -- and a predatory grin spread across his face. "You thinking what I am, Spock?"

"I -- yes." As he said that, his hands flickered across the controls, zooming in on the Orion, compensating for their shields, trying to maximise the amount of information gained without letting themselves be detected.

Unaware of Dirhja's cloaked presence, the Orion asked for and was given an orbital slot. A flurry of encrypted comm traffic ensued, between the freighter and a station on the ground. Meanwhile a picture was slowly taking shape on Dirhja's viewscreen: armaments, shields, engine capacity, life signs -- a lot of life signs. Spock flicked a glance at the human, one elegantly slanted eyebrow raised. His fingers danced across the keyboard, bringing up stats for that type of raider. Standard crew complement was thirty to thirty-five. Jim reached out and tapped the screen, his eyes alight with interest. The readout showed sixty-five sets of life signs -- and thirty of them were concentrated in two of the belly compartments. Almost certainly those were cargo holds.

Jim's grin grew a little wider. "Spock, this might be a live one. Those just might be a load of slaves on their way to market."

The Vulcan nodded. <<Slaves, or possibly ...soldiers. We need more data.>> He bent over the keyboard again, fingers flying. Once, every move he made had been as fast, as graceful, as this.

The spoken word had been just another tool to him, a scalpel with which to dissect the truth from the lies, the facts from the fancies, intent from result. Once. He had lost that long ago, in a hail of fists and boots and clubs.

Spock knew it had been Orions who had first captured them and sold them to the masters. He had seen, in Jim's memory, Orions standing by and laughing while Jim was locked into a cage and given to the surgeons. And afterward, once his t'hy'la's body had healed, it had been Orion fingers, on the controls of the wire, that had begun Jim's education in what it really meant to be a slave.

Once, in another world, in a different life, Jim Kirk had believed that hatred was wrong. As had Spock. But those had been different men, men strangely innocent for all their years in the Fleet.

Spock caught Jim's attention, tapping his arm. <<Here are... the scan results. Thirty-five are... Orions. None of the Orions are in the ...holds. Twenty-five are human. Three are a type... unknown to this computer. One is an Andorian... and one is Vulcan.>> The dark eyes were wide, from surprise, or from shock. Jim rubbed the bridge of his nose; he could feel a headache starting. This they did not need. How could they ever persuade a Vulcan not to give them away?

And yet, how could they not intervene? They couldn't, and looking over at Spock, Jim realized the Vulcan felt the same way. They could not rid themselves of this unwelcome knowledge; they could not turn away and thereby consign thirty souls to the same hellish fate that had once swallowed them. No matter what it might cost, they had to get those people free if they could. And it was always possible that a Vulcan might respect the argument of privacy...

Jim turned back to his own console. While Spock worked on refining their data, he ran a quick inventory of their weapons and other options, bringing as many online as he could without dropping their cloak. Whatever they decided to do, the more choices they had the better. He reached into his pocket and made the headache go away. Then he sat back and stared at the ceiling, thinking. They needed a plan. The trouble was, they needed a plan they could survive using. He could think of plenty of glorious suicidal plans at the drop of a hat. Useful ones took a little more work.

-----///-----

Jim wasn't going to like this one. Spock knew that. But it might work, and he hadn't been able to think of anything else. Judging from the scowl on the human's face, neither had he. And this -- well, it was going to need a lot more polishing, but he had the bones of it assembled.

The hardest thing would be persuading Jim to play his part. He would have to be onscreen, and he might have to use the voice hardware, and Spock knew that he wasn't going to like any of it.

Still, for a human, Jim could be ruthlessly logical when the need arose.

Spock was glad now that they hadn't got around to swapping out Dirhja's computers. This plan wouldn't have been possible without the original hardware and datafiles. But it should work, if he could put it together right. He had enough now to run a short demo, at least. Then it would be for Jim to choose what he was willing to do. The computer beeped at him then; it had finished the integration between voice and vid, the last bit he was waiting for.

Spock leaned over and touched the human's hand. <<Jim, I have something... to show you.>>

The human jumped a little, startled by the touch. His mind had been miles away, focused on the viewscreen image of the Orion ship, worrying over alternatives he didn't like. <<Sorry, Spock. I was just thinking. What is it?>>

<> He looked up to meet Jim's eyes, seeing the tension and frustration on his face. Spock hesitated, but he had to say the rest of it. <>

The look Jim gave him was both curious and apprehensive. <<Duly noted. Go ahead and run it.>>

The Vulcan reached out and typed in a single command. The image on the main viewscreen shivered and vanished into rainbow sparkles. When it coalesced again, it showed !M'zh!w*hee sitting in the "captain's chair" -- they never used that one, themselves, preferring to run Dirhja from the cockpit instead.

The image was detailed and realistic. In the background were the members of her former crew, still basically sketched in -- but !M'zh!w*hee looked as solid and as real as either Jim or Spock. And in the foreground knelt a still image of Jim himself, exactly where she had always made him kneel for hours on end, sometimes for days. Spock had seen that in his memories.

Only !M'zh!w*hee was fully animated; she could be heard making a greeting to the captain of the Orion ship. Jim focused on the screen, the fierce eyes narrowed in concentration. The image finished giving her greeting and the sequence ended. Jim kept staring at the screen, thunderstruck. All the colour had left his face.

"I... am... sorry, Jim." Spock frowned, fighting to get the words out. "I--" He stopped, frustrated. The words he needed were simply not there. Instead, he used the mindspeech. <>

The human was silent for what seemed like a long time. Then he turned to face the Vulcan and grinned. The colour had begun to return to his face as he thought it over. The odds were pretty damned good that !M'zh!w*hee hadn't told many of the Orions about the theft of her ship. Her pride would have demanded that she hide such a defeat, especially from the despised greenskins. The more Jim thought about the idea, the better he liked it. "Spock, they just might, at that. She gave my nervous system a hell of a jolt!" The grin grew wider. "You did all that just now? Not bad, Spock, not bad at all." He had finally put the bones of a plan together, himself, but he liked this one better.

The Vulcan nodded, accepting the compliment. Now came the hardest part. <<There is one more thing. I can... animate her fully, and the crew a little. I can... make her answer questions, to a point. But it will... be easier if I do not also have... to animate you.>> He fell silent. Only Jim could decide if he was willing to do this, but the need was real. Even with Jim's help, pulling this off would take everything the computer could do and all the skill he had. Dirhja's onboard system was fairly powerful, but a lot of this would have to be done in realtime, since there was no way of knowing in advance quite how the Orion captain would react, and this computer was nothing compared to the ones he'd had on the Enterprise. So he waited -- but while he waited, he turned back to the computer and began to refine the images of the crew. They could not take too long in choosing what to do, because at some point the Orion would just leave orbit and continue on her way.

There was silence for a time, the only sounds the tapping of the keyboard and the soft hiss of air in the vents, that sound no spacer ever really notices unless it stops.

"All right. You're right, dammit. I'll do it." The expression on Jim's face was bleak, resigned. Unpleasant, to see that and know that it was his doing. But it could not be helped. Jim got up and went to the replicator, tapping in a series of commands. After a minute, he took out a pile of silver fabric and vanished into the 'fresher. He said not a word, but Spock could feel, as clearly as if it were his own, the complicated mess of emotions swirling through his friend's mind -- anger, tension, fear and shame, all mixed up together. He felt it when Jim retuned the wire and made everything go away. How long could he keep on doing that? And what would come when he could do it no more? Spock didn't know. There was nothing he could do at the moment.

When the human emerged from the 'fresher he was clad once more in the sleek silver catsuit and slippers he'd worn the night they escaped from the masters. About his neck was a flat band of decorative chain with a plaque in the center emblazoned with !M'zh!w*hee's sigil. Such a collar was the mark of a favoured pet -- it did not damage the pelt. Spock's had been plain cold iron, and he bore the scars from it still, for they lacked the necessary equipment to regenerate his skin.

For a moment, when Jim stopped and looked down at him, the Vulcan had to fight the impulse to kneel before him -- that habit had been beaten into him over the years, that one of such status be deferred to always. He shook his head, remembering where he was and who this was. Neither of them outranked the other. Not any more.

"Does it look right?" Jim's voice was light, even amused, though at what cost, Spock could only guess. His thoughts were opaque again; it would require a deliberate effort to read them and that the Vulcan would not do without cause. They had little enough privacy, as it was. One had to draw the line somewhere.

"Yes. It is... perfect." He motioned for Jim to sit down and ran the program for him again. This time, the crew were as real as she was, and he had deleted the still image of Jim. Sitting where the Vulcan himself was sitting was the image of a tall, thin Orion, absorbed by his intruments.

After it was done, he met Jim's eyes again. <<Does this look good? It will show... on a monitor screen, here. You... will be able to see the monitor. They... will not. This way you will know... what her image is doing.>>

"Spock -- I can't tell it isn't her until I look over and see that her chair is still empty." He gestured downward at what he was wearing. "I hate wearing this shit again, but you're right." It was hard for him to admit that; Spock could feel it -- but there were no illusions between them any more. They knew one another too well for that.

<<Jim, it will work.>> And the human nodded.

"Yeah. I think it will, at that."

-----///-----

Finally, everything was ready. Jim took his place, kneeling beside the empty chair where !M'zh!w*hee had always sat. Spock gave him a signed countdown, from five. At two, the human drew in a great breath. At one, he shivered -- and became someone quite different, simply flowing from Jim, whom Spock knew very well, to a haughty stranger he had never seen before.

It was the same man and yet it was not. Every line of his body spoke of eloquent disdain for anyone of lesser station. This one was pampered, held in high esteem, and well he knew it. He sneered as he glanced around the empty room, showing his opinion of Dirhja's holographic crew in that scornfully curled lip, that supercilious lift of brow. Again Spock had to fight the impulse to drop to his knees. He knew better -- but the skin between his shoulders crawled in expectation of a blow that never came. He blinked, shook himself, and sent the opening commscreen she had always used to the Orion ship.

Their reply was very quick; they had obviously dealt with !M'zh!w*hee before. Perhaps a minute went by before the captain himself came onscreen, sweating and bowing obsequiously -- and visibly counting the profits he stood to gain. From their initial response, Spock had drawn his name and the name of his ship, for she would have known them.

On the monitor, her image paused to run a lazy hand through the kneeling human's hair. In response Jim arched and preened, as if he were a petted cat. His timing was perfect, as well it might be; Spock had drawn that particular bit straight from his memories.

Slowly she turned to face the Orion captain's onscreen image. "Captain Akkhaz't'sht -- greetings. I hear you have cargo of interest to me." She spoke in her own tongue, as the masters always did; it was not for them to speak in the way of their inferiors.

The Orion bowed very deeply, avarice and fear at war in his every motion. His reply to her was signed, the same signs Jim and Spock had learned as slaves. So must all do who would speak with the masters, for they forbade that any should speak their tongue unless it were pitched as they themselves spoke it -- and hardly any could do so unaided. "Lady," the man signed, "may it please you, I have thirty new-caught. Most are these humans, as you asked me to seek; some few are of other kinds, such as fell into my hands. Will you make purchase this day?"

She had asked for more humans? Both of them found that disquieting, but there was no time just now to consider it. Fingers flying, Spock bent over the keys again. Onscreen, she leaned back in her chair and appeared to think. Kneeling beside her, without uttering a single word, Jim showed his complete disdain for the disheveled and subservient slaver. He, after all, was !M'zh!w*hee's pet. This other was merely a hireling -- and an uncouth one, at that.

The Orion was shivering and fidgeting, but he made no comment, for none had been invited. He must wait, as all who dealt with the masters had to do. She would speak when she was ready. Spock let him wait and sweat, having the crew onscreen perform routine tasks, letting time pass. While he did this he was busily downloading sensor data into the transporter, calibrating and fine tuning it, getting everything ready. They would only get one chance at this; it must go right the first time.

He brought Dirhja's engines back up to full readiness, though he kept them idling for now, set at zero thrust. He wanted no power buildups to give away their intentions.

Finally he was ready. Onscreen, her image stifled a languid yawn and stretched, as one newly come from reverie might do. She glanced at the Orion, much as if to wonder what he was waiting for. At last, she spoke.

"Thirty new caught? You have been busy, Captain..." She seemed to think for a moment. "Very well. I shall take all thirty of them. How soon can this be done?" The Orion looked rather unhappy; perhaps he had hoped to sell a few of them on the side, for extra money. It made no difference. !M'zh!w*hee was legendary for her temper and her zeal in nurturing a grudge. If she wanted all thirty, then that was what she would get.

The Orion captain bowed again, even deeper, then straightened. "I can deliver them at your command, Lady," he signed.

She sat up a little straighter. As Spock laboured over the keyboard, she told the Orion, "Do so, then. I shall inspect them; if they meet with my approval, you will be paid."

Left unspoken was the possibility of them not being approved. The Orion onscreen grew, if anything, even more nervous. "At once, Lady," he signed. "Lowering shields now. Prepare to receive cargo."

Onscreen, Spock's counterpart signed that they were ready. On his console, display confirmed it; Dirhja had also lowered her shields. She lifted one leisurely hand. "Proceed."

Spock sat back and watched as sensors showed thirty sets of life signs appearing in Dirhja's belly hold. That was convenient; he had been prepared to snatch them if he must. Instead they were freely handed over. He waited a moment to confirm that transport was finished and made her image tell the man to wait while she inspected them herself. Then he signed off.

The instant the screen blanked, Jim bounced up off the floor and ran for the pilot's station. Spock was already seated at copilot; with a few keystrokes he brought Dirhja's cloak online, heeled the helm hard over, and brought them up to full impulse. Jim took over then, flying a twisting, dodging course to take them clear of all the orbiting traffic that couldn't see them. As soon as they got to Cochrane's Limit, he put her into warp and set course back toward the Vortex, the closest thing they had to a home base. That done, he turned on the autopilot.

Finally, he changed back into his Free Trader motley, and the two of them secured the bridge and headed below to interview their newly-arrived passengers.

-----///-----

"What a zoo, Spock! What the hell are we going to do with these people?" Jim leaned back in the pilot's chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose, trying to ease the headache that had returned full-blown while they had been running their ruse.

<<Several have... written here that they wish to be dropped at the Vortex. That... will remove six of them, at least.>> Spock didn't look too happy himself. They had just finished reading the padds that their passengers had filled out at Jim's request. There was no healer among the thirty, unless it was one of the three furries -- and since they apparently spoke neither Standard nor the speech of the masters, there was no way to tell. How they were going to communicate with them, Jim didn't know. They used sign language among themselves, but it was nothing like the signed speech that Jim and Spock had learned as slaves.

The Andorian was unconscious and they could not tell why or how bad his condition was, for although they did have a rudimentary medkit, they had no data on Andorian norms. And the Vulcan youth, whose name was Sek'hel, was from the city of T'lingShahr, of a family of crafters that were bound into Spock's kin in some way -- Jim didn't understand quite how. Vulcan families were notorious for their intricate convolutions of kinship. It was pure luck that the boy hadn't recognized the Vulcan, apparently they had never met and Spock didn't look much like his old self anymore. The youth was a musician. His uncle, with whom he'd been traveling, had been killed in the raid that took him prisoner. They couldn't just drop him in some random place. He'd led a sheltered life in that city of artists and musicians and this had been his first trip offworld -- but Dirhja could hardly go to Vulcan, either, with no Federation ID or registry. Problems, all the way.

They had told the passengers only that their names were Jim and Selek and that they had once escaped from captivity themselves. Given that Spock was scarred at neck and wrists, Jim figured that was obvious. And Selek was a name the Vulcan had used once before, years past; it was easy for him to remember. Neither of them mentioned any other names.

The only bright spot in all this was the family of Rom Garou.

They had come to the front after Jim had finished speaking, when all those rescued were talking among themselves, trying to decide what they wanted. They were a group of five, all related by the look of them -- mostly small, olive-skinned, with black hair and high cheekbones. There were two men and three women, one of whom was just a girl. The oldest was a tiny silver-haired woman with a much-wrinkled face, yet for all her diminutive size, the others treated her with a great deal of respect. One of the men was the obvious leader, far and away the biggest of them; he was not only tall, but large in girth as well. At Jim's nod, the man had begun to speak. "Jim, Selek -- I give you greeting, and thanks. You gave us your names, so I will give you mine. I am Yojo Vakako; I am rom baro of our kumpaniya. I have this to say to you -- you two have freed us from the hands of O Beng the Devil and we Rom do not forget such a thing. We wish to help you. If there is a place on this ship where we can cook, we can feed these people and keep them entertained. We are five, here. Would this be of help to you?"

Jim and Spock had looked at one another, and the Vulcan had nodded, almost imperceptibly. Jim turned back to face them. "Would that help? Yes, it would, Mr. Vakako."

The man demurred, saying, "Just Yojo is fine, Jim." Then he'd pointed a thumb at Spock and grinned hugely. "Now this one, hey! He could be Romany chal -- he has the look of it, does he not?" And his family nodded, smiling themselves. Spock had looked nonplussed but said nothing. Yojo continued. "Only the ears are not right -- and who's to say where a Rom might have wandered, years in the past, hey?" Jim had to smile. Now that they mentioned it, Spock did have a look about him, much like theirs. The darker skin, the long nose, the sharp cheekbones -- it was true, he could have fit among them with little more than a headscarf to hide his ears. He wore his hair longer now than he ever had in the Fleet. It hid some of the scars and helped to change the shape of his face. In the mining camp, it had helped him to keep warm. Thinking about it, Jim had laughed and been rewarded with the Vulcan's customary look of long-suffering patience, which he used where another might have smiled. It was a look that Leonard McCoy would have recognized instantly, never mind the changes that all the years had wrought.

After a moment, Yojo had hitched a thumb toward the door and said, "Well enough. What say you show us where is your kitchen?" He had been as good as his word. Ever since then the Rom Garou had served up a variety of foods, something to suit almost everyone. Dirhja had only the smallest of kitchens, but her food replicator was brand new. At the end of ship's day, they sang, danced, and juggled to amuse the others, helping to make the journey in the crowded cargo hold less tiresome. They had also won damn near a bar of latinum off of Jim playing poker, until Yojo caught them at it and made them give it back.

And after all, Jim reflected, staring at the viewscreen, they had pulled it off. The Orion captain had practically wet himself when he saw what he thought was !M'zh!w*hee onscreen. He had fallen all over himself in his hurry to please her. Jim just wished he could've seen the expression on that captain's face when he realized what had happened.

But what the devil were they going to do now? That, Jim mused, was a damned good question. He only wished he had as good an answer. It looked very much as though Dirhja was going to be pressed into service as a passenger transport for a time. He just hoped they could get them all on their way without too many side trips.

Onto Part 2