"All right." Goudchaux signalled to Chen to cut the power to the torture machine they had the ensign strapped to. The pirate slowly walked around the device as he waited for Chekov's screams to fade to agonised, heaving breaths.

This one was called the 'chair'. It worked on much the same principles as the 'table', but, as his tormentors had discussed at length, had a greater variety of settings. Their favourite was the one that made him feel like a nest of angry hornets were buzzing around inside his skin.

Chekov's head dropped forward onto his chest as he gasped for air. They'd removed his shirt and his boots. He was held in place by straps around his upper arms, forearms, thighs, calves and chest. Other straps with contact points wrapped around his stomach, wrists and ankles and wound in between each of his fingers and toes.

He could tell from the sound that Goudchaux had activated the viewscreen on the wall opposite him.

"Now that you're in a more agreeable mood," the pirate said as he crossed to him and taking a handful of hair jerked Chekov's head up. "Tell me if you've ever seen that before."

On the screen, instead of the picture of Mister Scott that he expected, Chekov saw the medallion. It lay, completely intact for the first time in centuries, on a table somewhere. A small adjustable light source bathed it in a gentle radiance which it seemed to return many times over.

"No," Chekov answered, his voice cracked and hoarse.

At a nod from Goudchaux, Chen sent pain humming through the device again. Chekov cried out, his body arching against the restraints.

"Wrong answer," Goudchaux informed him as he slumped forward again as the agony ebbed.

"No, Captain," Chekov corrected himself defeatedly.

"Good boy." Goudchaux patted him on the head. "But you know that's not what I mean."

For a moment there was only the sound of Chekov's gasps and the tap of Goudchaux's boots against the deck as he crossed back to the viewscreen.

"I'm disappointed to find out you're a liar, Mister Chekov," the pirate said. "But I'm glad to see you're such a poor one. This is what you saw on Esme's viewscreen, isn't it?"

Chekov swallowed hard.

The pirate smiled and shook a finger at him. "You see, that's what you get for acting out of character. We were all so puzzled as to why our little Starfleet gentleman would suddenly put a scalpel to a lady's throat, that we just had to keep thinking about it until we came up with an explanation. Perhaps, we thought, he's trying to distract us, turn our attention away from something important... maybe something that he saw that he shouldn't have."

Chekov knew he was caught, but remained silent.

The pirate crossed and took a painful grip on his hair again. "Tell me what you know about the Orlan Du," he ordered.

"It is an Orion legend about a lost treasure. I've seen it mentioned in archaeological and socio-historical reports," he admitted. "I don't know anything unusual about the medallion except for the fact that you have the missing fifth shard that has not been seen for centuries."

"Why did you try to hide the fact that you recognised it?"

"I thought that since you had gone to some effort to ascertain that I had a background in Navigation and Science that you might be planning to... eliminate certain members of your crew and use me instead to help you find the treasure... at which point, I would, of course, become very expendable. I calculated that the less I seemed to know about the Orlan Du, the longer I might live."

"Very astute," Goudchaux commented approvingly as he released him. Crossing back to the screen, he changed the angle of the display to a closer view of the medallion and cut the light source. In the relative darkness, the medallion didn't shine so brightly, but it still glowed with a milky inner light. A dozen or so Orion characters became visible within it. "I don't suppose you read Orion, too, do you?"

Chekov squinted at the screen. "Those are numbers, I think."

"Yes." Goudchaux changed the view again. "In fact, they are these numbers."

A nine digit number appeared on the screen, followed by two more.

Chekov shook his head. "Perhaps a navigation code of some sort... to be fed into a particular computer system."

The pirate rolled his eyes impatiently and nodded to Chen. Chekov didn't have time to work out what he was being punished for before a burst of white-hot agony shot through his nerve endings.

"Sorry to be so short with you, Chekov, but we're not in the best of moods right now. You see, we've gone to considerable efforts to assemble this little bauble and now... all we have is a pretty glowing rock and three sets of meaningless numbers." The pirate slapped off the viewscreen. He crossed to his prisoner and put his bony hands around the ensign's neck. "Do you want to live?"

Chekov made no reply.

The pirate snorted. "Oh, how stupid of me. I forgot that in the Academy they teach you to answer 'no' to that question. All right then, I know you don't want to see dear old Mister Scott die, though, do you? If you don't cooperate, I'm turning him over to Brecht... and you can figure that's going to be a little worse than dying, can't you?"

The pirate squeezed his throat a little tighter, making a response nearly impossible.

"You have five seconds to give me a brilliant idea as to what those numbers mean, or you'll never see your friend alive again."

"I don't know what the numbers mean," Chekov choked out, "but if they wanted... if I wanted to leave something somewhere... so that I didn't know where, but I could find it again... I'd put it in a sensor neutral capsule and feed in a random heading and speed. Add to that an unknown amount of fuel. Then I'd launch the capsule and have my computer put the coordinates into the medallion. You could also double that and have your launch point known only to the computer."

The pressure on his throat lessened.

"Good for a first try," Goudchaux said critically. "But a little vague."

Chekov coughed air back into his throbbing throat as the pirate stepped back and signalled for Chen to loosen his restraints.

"I think we'll all meet here again after dinner to hear what you can come up with next, Mister Chekov," Goudchaux said, then smiled. "Welcome to the partnership."

***

"The quality of your coffee hasn't gone down," Stuart Brecht said, taking the pot from Chekov's trembling fingers. "But your aim has deteriorated considerably."

"He has a nervous condition," Khwaja explained tersely over his coffee cup.

Chekov was unsure if Brecht's status had changed from guest to prisoner. It was ambiguous, whether Khwaja was present as a companion or a guard.

"I'd certainly be nervous if I was in his condition," Brecht replied amiably. He caught the ensign by the wrist and examined his hand. "I can tell a lot about a person just from their hands. Look at this one, Khwaja, and you can see right away he isn't used to this sort of work. All the blisters and burns are still fresh."

The black man shifted nervously in his seat.

"No," Brecht said judiciously, "these are the hands of someone who's used to working on a computer all day long. Look at those long fingers. They'd come in handy if you were training to be a..."

"Navigator," Chekov supplied helpfully. Brecht, he knew, was probably a dead duck, but he was still the only ticket out of this place for the ensign and Mister Scott.

"Shut up," Khwaja warned him, "and bring me that coffee."

"Hmm, so you have an interest in navigation?" Brecht mused as Chekov delivered the coffee pot to Khwaja. "What a coincidence. We've all been discussing a perplexing little problem in navigation, haven't we, Khwaja?"

The black man grunted as the freebooter picked up a data padd that someone had left on the table and tapped something into it. He held it out and beckoned to Chekov. "Tell me what you make of this."

Chekov glanced at it just long enough to recognise the three sets of nine digit numbers. "It looks like a navigation code of some sort."

Brecht took the coffee from him, pulled him into a chair, and placed the padd in his hands. "Look closely, lad. I think you could be more specific."

"Well..." Chekov looked across the table. Khwaja was making a bad attempt at looking disinterested. The ensign took in a deep breath before committing himself to a gamble that the Orion stooge could get him and Mister Scott off this ship. "These are not conventional coordinates. That makes it look as though someone if trying to hide something."

Brecht nodded. "So far, so good."

"Perhaps these are instructions to a navigational beacon. Embedded in these numbers could be..." Chekov pointed to each line of numbers in turn. "...the location of the beacon; the specific frequency needed to activate it; and the specific times the signal is emitted -- that would reduce the likelihood of anyone else receiving it."

"Very clever, for a guess," Brecht congratulated him.

Khwaja glowered as he stood up and crossed to the ensign.

"He's not here to be clever," the black man said, pulling Chekov up by the collar and propelling him back towards the kitchen with a push.

"What is he here for?" Brecht asked. "Just entertainment? Is it you or Moray who's screwing him? Or do you take it in turns?"

Khwaja laughed unpleasantly. He reached out one long arm and grabbed Chekov by the shoulder. "C'mere, kitten. I need to relax, and Mister Brecht has just given me a good idea how."

Just when he thought things couldn't get any worse... Chekov wriggled out from the taller man's grasp and backed away. "Now, see here..."

"All right, little kitty," Khwaja said, going down into a crouch. "I'll make a game of it, if that's what you want."

"You keep away from me," Chekov warned.

"Or what?" the other man replied, immediately spotting the flaw in Chekov's argument. Khwaja lunged forward. Chekov dived past him and scrambled under the table.

"Give me a hand, Brecht," Khwaja ordered, quickly cornering the ensign again.

"Afraid that just wouldn't be sporting, old man." Brecht rose and headed for the exit. "If you want him, you'll have to catch him."

"Alone at last." Khwaja grinned evilly at the sound of the door sliding shut behind him.

Chekov feinted to the left and dove under the table again. However, he was anticipated this time. Khwaja was over the table and waiting for him.

"Spitfire," he said lightly, dragging Chekov to his feet.

Chekov was able to pull away, but was then immediately knocked to the floor by a blow across his cheek. As he landed on his chest, his cuffs clunked and stuck.

Khwaja knelt down by his head. "Keep screaming, kitten. It's more fun that way."

The cuffs slid across the plastic coated decking, free again. Chekov wished fervently that he could divine the mechanism that turned them off and on. Khwaja hooked his hands under the ensign's armpits and dragged him upright once more.

"Let me go!" he demanded, struggling furiously, but already beginning to resign himself to the inevitable.

"No, you really have to keep screaming," Khwaja said, and then bit him hard on the back.

This prompted a deafening response from Chekov.

"That's it, kitten!" Khwaja grinned as he clicked Chekov's wrists together behind him, spun him around and then slung him over his shoulder.

"Let me go, you filthy son of a cossack bitch!" Chekov shouted, squirming helplessly.

"That's the stuff," Khwaja encouraged him, heading for the door. Before exiting, he turned his head and bit Chekov in the side for good measure. Chekov let out a blood-curdling yell that probably caused washerwomen to miscarry in nearby solar systems.

Outside, they immediately ran into Chen and Goudchaux.

"I've got him this afternoon," Khwaja growled.

The pirate captain shrugged. "So it seems."

Khwaja let them get a few steps away before he bit Chekov again, prompting another ear-splitting howl.

"Don't kill him," Goudchaux admonished without turning around. "Yet..."

Once inside Khwaja's cabin, Chekov was thrown face forward onto the bunk. His ankles stuck against the metal at the foot of the bed. He could hear the lock on the door being engaged. "Don't worry..." Khwaja said, in such an even tone that Chekov twisted desperately to see who was in here with them. No one. He was beginning to feel like a yo-yo, plunging into a desperate search for help in one direction after another. Moray Morgain had proved completely compassionless. Esme had been unyielding. Brecht was beginning to seem sympathetic -- right before he abandoned him to Khwaja, having first given the man some bright ideas of what to do with him... Was there any point trying to reason with his current persecutor?

He remained twisted uncomfortably so that he could watch what the man was doing. His attention seemed to be on a stack of obviously self-assembled audio equipment. A couple of quick adjustments brought the painful sort of jazz that was currently fashionable in the expensive parts of the Federation swooping and jarring out of a set of paper-thin silicate inertia speakers. Uhura had once tried to introduce her shipmates to the awful noise. However, even she had to admit eventually that it was good for nothing but provoking headaches. Right now, it made Chekov feel acutely homesick.

Khwaja stood motionless for a few moments. Apparently he was more interested in the Bae Amis Quartet than his prisoner.

Finally, Chekov could stand the suspense no more. "What now?"

Khwaja's reflective expression broke into a teasing smile. "Oh, I'm sure you're not so innocent that you can't tell me what happens now. In fact having watched you put up a good fight for the first time since you came aboard makes me quite sure that you do know exactly what happens now." Khwaja knelt down beside the bed, and pulled Chekov's head over to one side using a handful of his hair. Chekov struggled to escape but Khwaja followed through and kissed him full on the mouth.

"Please..."

"That's the idea, kitten. If you ask me real nicely, I might change my mind..."

"Khwaja..."

"Or I might not."

"Khwaja!"

Just then several things happened simultaneously. There was a high-pitched whine. The door opened. There was another whine accompanied by a flash of light and Khwaja slumped forward on top of him.