“This is dangerous,” Chekov muttered. He was being led back into Lord Ming’s lair by the same passage that Desireé had used to get them out. She was ahead of Takeda, lighting their way this time by means of a torch rather than the lantern she’d used before. The Russian wondered at that, but said nothing. His hands were tied, DelMonde leading him like some slave by the rope that bound him.
“I startin’ to be glad I not shoot you right off,” the engineer commented, smiling at the sight.
The Frenchman still held his pistol, Takeda, a saber.
“This is not a good idea,” he reiterated. His voice echoed, despite the fact that his words were barely audible.
“Not at all,” his real life counterpart agreed. “The penalty at that time for striking a superior officer alone would be…”
“Shut him up,” Takeda snarled to DelMonde.
“I could if ya’ll’d let me shoot him,” the Cajun grumbled.
“Shut up, Moscow,” Del said obligingly.
“But why are we…” the Russian began.
“Jilla,” Del supplied.“Damn straight,” Sulu confirmed.
Next to him, the Indiian flushed.
“I not know,” the Frenchman grumbled. “An’ even if I did know why we headin’ into this place where none of us are s’posed to be in the first place, I wouldn't be tellin’ the likes o’ you.”
The Russian shook his head. “So rude.”
When Chekov scowled at him, he waved his pistol in the shorter man's face.
“You best mind your own manners or you gonna wind up wit’ a nose full buckshot here in a minute,” Del warned. “This bunch came that close to lettin’ me shoot you a minute ago…”
Del turned back to Takeda.
“By th’ way, Také,” he said warily, “would you mind tellin’ me just what th’ hell we be doin’ here?”
“Jilla,” Sulu repeated.
“This is where the call I heard came from,” Také answered grimly. “I can feel it.”
“Call?” Chekov asked. “You heard a call?”
“Shhh!” Desireé snapped sharply. “We’re getting close!”
“Master DelMonde,” Chekov whispered,
The Cajun grinned. “Oh, that not gettin’ old anytime soon…”
“Lord Ming has a witch in his keeping.”
“A vitch, you say?”
“Lord Ming? You on a first name basis wit’ th’ Chinaman now?” Del retorted with a sneer.
“Speakin’ o’ catamitery…” the engineer muttered loudly enough to earn a raised eyebrow and a fierce, “Shhhhhh!!!” from a few rows in front of him.
“It was how he was introduced to me, yes,” the Russian returned tightly. “But as usual, you miss my point. He has a witch. A native woman.”
“You think cold lead won’t kill an islander?” Del replied, again brandishing his weapon.
“Damnit, Del!” Sulu cursed.“That not really me, you know…”
“I think…”
“SHHH!” Desireé hissed.
The three men fell silent as they reached the top of the stairway. Chekov noted that the end of the passage, which had been a stone wall when he and the girl had passed through it, now seemed to be an archway.
“I don’t think this is good,” he began, but then they were out of the passage and through the arch.
“Me neither,” the Cajun agreed.
With a suddenness that surprised even the usually swift Také, Desireé leapt through the archway. It led not into the corridor where she and Chekov had entered the passage less than a day before, but to a small foyer of sorts, lined with cells.
“Intruders!” the girl screamed at the top of her lungs, dashing away from Také’s saber. “Guards, help me!”
“Damnit, Monique!”The Frenchwoman shrugged. “C’est le guerre, Lieutenant.”
“Gods curse you!” Také snarled at the sound of running feet. Chekov pulled at his bindings.
“Release me!” he demanded. “I can’t fight with…”
“Like I give a damn about your ass when I facin’ a whole damn Stell army,” the engineer observed, his eyes widening at the number of nearly identical armed Vulcaniod beings surrounding his character on screen.
But DelMonde wasn’t listening. Instead he faced the approaching guards, his pistol at the ready. He had no time to get off even a single shot before his feet were swept from out from under him by the bladed hewing spear of someone behind him. He managed to shout a warning, but before he could see if Také had responded to it, his head hit the stone floor.
“Shee-it,” the Cajun exclaimed, appalled.
“She’s got that look again,” One-Eyed Riko murmured to Cat.
"That’s the same look you get when you’re thinkin’ of…” McCoy began with a wide grin.“And the same one you get when you’re thinking of…” Jade interrupted sharply.
The older doctor hesitated, frowning at his younger colleague, then subsided with a “Hmmph!”
Caitlin glanced at their captain.
“No, that be her thinkin’ look,” Cat replied, and cleared her throat. “What’s our headin’ to be, Cap’n?” she asked.
“I believe,” MeiLin answered slowly, “it’s about time we paid a little visit to our dear friend Sahin.”
“And his First Mate,” Uhura purred.
Cat grinned. “See how he liked our li’l tip?”
”And find out what he’s done with the Royal pay.”
“You really think he has it?”
MeiLin glanced at her First Mate. “Why else would he come to us to ‘congratulate’ us on our taking of it?”
“To put us off the scent of it?”
“But that makes no sense,” Riko put in, “beggin’ the Cap’n’s pardon.”
“It does if you think like a Turk,” the captain replied.
“Or a Haven,” Daffy, Sulu, Ruth, Sakura and Del all commented at once.
“If we think he doesn’t have it, his ship would be the last place we’d look.”
“An’ he tells Kirk that we have it, making Kirk not look none too close himself,” Cat snarled.
“Exactly,” MeiLin returned.
“Ooh, that scurvy bilge-rat!” Cat seethed.
“Womp,” Spock murmured softly for the third time, and Ruth grinned at him, nudging his arm.
“I’ll run him through meself!”
“After this stunt he's gonna to making himself right scarce – if he knows what's good for him,” Riko added.
“Where can we find him?”
“Knowing Sahin,” MeiLin mused, “he'll head for the one place everyone's talking about but no one dares to go.”
Yuriko and Cat exchanged nervous glances.
“You don't mean...?” Cat began warily.
MeiLin stood up from the railing, her dark eyes set. “I do,” she announced. “Riko, set course for WaqWaq Island.”
Riko shivered and Cat quickly crossed herself, but both women muttered, “Aye, Cap’n.”
“I hope the Chinaman doesn’t get to him first,” Cat added, “or there’ll be nothin’ left for me to keelhaul.”
“’Cause no scary Chinaman gonna stop a keheil, non?” Del smirked.“Not when the scary Chinaman is married to her,” Sulu agreed.
Del scowled, and the helmsman shrugged. “Sorry.”
“An’ here I all into helpin’ you rescue th’ li’l one.”
Azim Sahin stood on the deck of the Kirat, considering his next move.
“EEK!” Daffy burst out before clamping a hand over her mouth.“Daphne,” her boyfriend asked solicitously. “Why does the this Haven alarm you so?”
Over the badly stifled snickers of the row behind her, the chemist growled. “Can we just watch the movie?”
He had to admire MeiLin Han – privately, of course. The wench had given him as good as he’d given her. All he had to show for his subterfuge was a slave to sell in the Sultan’s markets.
“Think again, sugar,” Uhura warned the screen confidently.
He wondered what, if anything, the pirate captain had gotten from his efforts.
“Oh, I think she was able to get a little satisfaction…” McCoy commented.
If he was lucky, she’d be in a Royal Navy brig and her damnably fast ship impounded. But he had learned through long years of negotiation and subtlety that it was never wise to count on luck.
“You’re going to need some luck when we catch up to you, Gage,” Ruth promised.
No, it was best to leave Han to her fate and concentrate on his own profit. He’d sent spies out to find any word among the islanders regarding the Enterprise’s stolen sovereigns, but so far there had been no word. Not even a hint.
Which means, more likely than not, Sahin said to himself, that our dear friend Ming has been up to his usual tricks. Which also means he’ll be expecting us to call on him to negotiate some arrangement.
“A Vulcan tryin’ to wheel an’ deal wit’ Havens.” DelMonde snorted. “This gonna be rich…”“Yes, it will be,” the Antari promised on behalf of her husband.
Sahin and the Kirat had been trading with the man known to the islanders as ‘the sorcerer’ – and to the British as ‘the Chinaman’ –– for years. The latter designation was, Sahin knew, more than inaccurate. While he didn’t know where Ming had come from, or from what land he originally hailed, the Turk knew for certain it wasn’t China.
“How ‘bout Vulcan?” the engineer suggested.
As to the former… Ming could control the winds, up to a point; certainly those around the cursed island he had claimed as his own. It was said he had dealings with demons.
“Or a cheap localized climate control unit,” the Cajun posited.“Noel, that would be completely anachronistic for this time period,” his roommate dismissed.
“So is havin’ a Stell Clone army hangin’ ‘round to beat th’ shit out o’ trespassers,” Del retorted. “But that not seem to be stoppin’ this motherfucker, do it?”
While not a religious man by any means, and not one prone to superstition or the beliefs of ignorant peasants, Sahin could not doubt that karakura of his own people were real – and if those nightmare creatures could exist, why not others?
“So Gage’s character believes in the male nightmare demon,” DelMonde mused to no one in particular. “Fancy that.”“Shut up,” he was advised by the helmsman of the Enterprise.
Still if it were true, it was sure to lead to disaster for Ming sooner or later. Demons, by their very nature, could hardly be trusted. But that, of course, was not his affair. As long as Ming paid for the services of the corsairs, the corsairs would deliver.
Gollub shrugged. “That’s a Haven for ya.”
He turned to the man at the ship’s wheel. “Where’s Faik?” he asked. “We must plan for a visit to WaqWaq.”
“He said there was a problem with one of the wenches we took from the port,” the man answered.
“I’ll bet there is,” Uhura smiled.
Sahin frowned. They had put to sea hours before. How long could it take to subdue and restrain one slave?
“A slave, I wouldn’t know,” the Communications Officer said, “but if he’s trying to tussle with a strong and confident free woman, then, sugar, that’s gonna take as much time as that man has got…”
When the Enterprise’s newest, self-appointed ‘crewman’ was discovered, the men nearly went wild. Daphne Rosen found herself being leered and pawed at, the men passing her from one set of groping hands to another like a bottle of rum, without so much as a ‘by-your leave’ to her.
“Insolent scoundrels!” Chekov snarled.
She shrieked at them, slapping hands and faces and finally punching arms and stomachs and jaws and aiming kicks to sensitive and intimate portions of the male anatomy.
“So there!” The chemist stuck her tongue out at her fictive attackers.
The uproar from below decks must have filtered upwards, because in short order a few of Kirk’s officers made their way down the small gangway to see what the commotion was about. Daphne made a bee-line for them, knowing from her experiences with Pytor Chekov that they would be mindful of the gentler sex’s more delicate sensibilities.
“Absolutely!” the navigator confirmed.
The officers stared at her and the look in their eyes momentarily took her aback. But they quickly recovered their sense of duty. One man, a rather tall, gangly red-head, grasped her arm in a more-or-less gentlemanly fashion and hauled her up the stairs, the others staying back to bark orders at the disappointed seamen.
Sulu blinked. “Kev?”“Whose bright idea was is for Riley to show up?” Ruth Valley groused.
“You slept wit’ him?” DelMonde asked, aghast.
“Shhhhhh!!!!” the Antari hissed.
The Cajun shrugged. “Guess nobody gonna be proud o' that.”
Once on deck, Daffy shook herself free from the man’s grip, brushing her hair from her eyes as well as she could, seeing as how most of it was bound up in her bandana.
The Commodore will want to see you, Miss,” the officer said, and gestured. “This way, if you please.”
Sulu frowned at the eyebrow the Cajun raised in his direction.“Don’t tell me you…”
“Just watch the movie, Del.”
Daffy made a ‘humphing’ sound, but walked in the direction the man indicated, though a set of glass-paned doors into a cabin that was clean and elegantly appointed. Commodore Kirk stood as she entered.
“The cause of the disturbance, sir,” the red-haired officer said with a smart salute.
“Damn,” DelMonde shook his head at Kevin Riley’s image.“Shield, Del,” Valley ordered between her teeth.
"Oh, I am," her ex-lover assured her before turning back to the screen and wincing. “Not no accountin’ fo’ damned taste…”
“Shhhh!!”
For a moment, all Kirk did was stare at her. Then he closed his eyes, his hand coming up to his forehead.
“Miss Rosen,” he said with a sigh.
She blinked. “How did you know it was me?” she asked.
His eyebrows rose, frankly gaping. “Surely you jest,” he said.
She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t take your meaning, sir!”
He sighed again. “It's not even a very good disguise, Mistress Rosen.”
“What?” Gollub protested. “I didn’t recognize me.”
She scowled. “What do you mean by that?” she asked. She gestured at her pants and at the bandana. “I look every bit as disreputable as any of your crew…”
"Not at all,” Chekov said, putting an arm around her waist. “You look very lovely.”
"It’s not that,” Kirk replied. “Your – that is…there’s too much… ah… it doesn't exactly hide your...er, uhm...” He inclined his head, his cheeks coloring. “You don’t look like a boy, Miss Rosen.”
“Thank God,” Gollub agreed heartily.
Daffy showed her teeth. “And thank God for that. What has it to do with…”
“Never mind,” Kirk said with a third sigh.
“I can sympathize with this fellow,” the captain of the Enterprise commented.
“May I ask what the devil you think you're doing here?”
“I would think that would be obvious, Commodore,” she answered, drawing herself up. When he didn’t answer her, just stared blankly, she pursed her lips and went on. “Making sure you track down the brigands who robbed me, kidnapped Cori, and captured Pytor.”
“Very heroic,” the navigator commended his lady-love.
“That is what we’re doing, Mistress Rosen,” Kirk explained with what by the look on his face he thought was admirable calm.
“Not so as I can see,” she retorted. “You don’t look to me as if you’ve even begun.”
“Oh, Daphne…”“Well, it doesn’t.”
“We have men out gathering evidence…”
“You don’t have the first idea of where to look, do you?” she challenged.
“And I suppose you do?” Kirk returned with exaggerated courtesy.
Her hands again went to her hips. “Have you tried the places where such scoundrels bide when they're not robbing, kidnapping, and abducting innocent people?”
“Like that Whack-Whack island,” the chemist suggested.
With a fourth sigh, Kirk turned to his officer. “Mr. Riley, please find secure accommodations for Miss Rosen, while I investigate the places scoundrels bide when they're not robbing, kidnapping, and abducting innocent people.”
“Pencil-necked, freckle-faced…”“Shut up, Del!”
He regarded Daffy with an ungracious smile. “I trust that will suffice, Mistress?”
With another ‘humph!’ Daffy stormed out of the office.
“You really should be more respectful, Daphne.”“Shhh! I’m saving you, bubee.”
“And ask Dr. McCoy to come in,” Kirk added.
“Aye, sir,” Riley replied and saluted.
“No accountin’ fo’ damn taste at all…”“Shhhhhhhh!!!!!”
“We have a stowaway,” Kirk said as soon as McCoy stepped into his cabin.
“Do we now?” McCoy answered. “And what do you intend to do with him?”
“Wonder if there are regs against having her walk the plank?” the Captain of the Enterprise muttered.
“Not him, her,” Kirk replied. “It’s Miss Rosen from the Sweetwater. She’s – ah – concerned about Lieutenant Chekov.”
“Concerned?” Gollub repeated. “I’m saving him!”“Oy,” her commanding officer sighed quietly.
“Is that the young woman he’s been seeing?” McCoy asked.
“It better be,” the chemist growled.
“I believe she is, yes. They apparently had a rendezvous planned.”
“Which, of course he’s been unable to keep.” McCoy paused. “Well, then, John, what are you going to do with her?”
“Lord knows,” the Captain sighed.
“I’ve found her accommodation for now,” the Commodore said. “We’ll put her off as soon as we make the next decent port.”
McCoy made careful note of Kirk’s words. “Which means, I assume, that our next call isn’t one you’d feel comfortable leaving her at?”
“No.”
“See!” The chemist elbowed her boyfriend in the ribs. “We’re going to that Whack-Whack place!”
Kirk was staring out the cabin window and McCoy waited patiently. After many years, not only of a working relationship, but of friendship, he recognized Kirk’s posture and expression. The Commodore was troubled about something, but determined to see it through – whatever it was. And he’d explain when he found the proper words to express his concern.
“We’re headed to King’s Isle,” he said at last.
“No!” Gollub protested. “Whack-Whack!”“Daphne…”
“King’s Isle?” McCoy repeated, his eyebrow rising. “And what business do we have there?”
“Go to Whack-Whack!”“Daphne...”
“Sahin said the Raven had taken the pay, which was a lie,” Kirk began. McCoy kept silent, not thinking it would be quite prudent to point out that Captain Han’s ship hadn’t been searched. “But I don’t think he has it either. He would have, as you said about Captain Han, negotiated for Pytor’s release if he had. But our dinghy was deliberately wrecked, and the debris was found not far off the coast of that cursed place. We’ve searched the waters all around it with no good result.”
“Which leaves the island itself…” McCoy mused heavily.
“Whack-Whack!”“Daphne…”
“… and the Chinaman,” Kirk finished.
“Huh?”“Daphne, King’s Isle is Waq-Waq.”
McCoy shivered and resisted the urge to cross himself. “That’s a dangerous place, if even half the tales be true,” he warned softly.
“Vok-vok?”The Russian sighed and enunciated, “Whack-Whack.”
“Give me another option, Samuel.” Kirk returned.
“I’m going to give you a whack if you don’t be quiet.”“Daphne…”
McCoy shook his head. There wasn’t one, and both he and Kirk knew it. “That will be a hard order on the men,” he said.
“Screw them! We’re going to Whack-Whack!”“Daphne…”
“They’ve been provisioned,” the Commodore said grimly. “If the Chinaman does have their pay…”
“My boyfriend and my money? Oh, this boat is definitely headed to Whack-Whack!”
“That worked when they were looking for brigands,” McCoy interrupted. “It won’t be as easy when dealing with all the superstition surrounding King’s Isle.”
“Which is also called Waq-Waq,” the navigator footnoted helpfully.“Vok-what?”
“Aye, I know, Sam,” Kirk sighed. “But again, what other course do I have?”
McCoy sighed as well. “You have my support, of course, John.”
“I only hope this is not another falsity.”
“Aye. As do we all.”
“Then they’d better get their tails to that Whack-Whack place.”“Daphne,” Chekov explained wearily. “That is where they are going.”
“Oh?” Gollub frowned at the screen. “Then they should have said so.”