Varug the Bard. Varug the Warsinger. Varug, the Rolling Thunder.

The old Klingon stared at himself in the washroom mirror, working oil into his mustache.

Varug, Bastard Son of a Two-Headed Targ.

Varug, the Map of Flesh.

He pulled at the corners of his mouth. He widened his eyes, then squinted. He chanced a small growl.

He could feel the dust of age and how it made a cloud around him when he tried to shake it off.

Varug, His Spine Unbroken.

Varug, Who Ran.

Varug, the Uncaptain.

Shame slouched his shoulders where the years saw fit to take their leave. What was left of him anymore? What was all this, for that matter?

A little mud in Starfleet’s eye. To make a daughter he never sired, happy.

But it wasn’t that simple, was it? He gripped the edge of the sink and felt his demons close in tight around him. Honor- cast away in a dark moment- forever turned away from him, looking back over its shoulder. A miserable thing called Discipline stood opposite that old devil, abandoned for the sake of hollow glory, an empty ghoul of a Klingon with its arms and legs bound in thick, buckled belts.

And then there was Blood. Thin and pink, a translucent specter drummed up out of imagination and lies and winding paths that kept leading the old man to dead end after dead end.

There was no Great House. There was no storm-tossed crossing of bat’leths. There was no father, or father’s father, or deified ancestor come crashing down from Sto-vo-kor to carve the mark of Varug into the crust of Qo’nos long before his birth.

The specter called Blood grew thinner every day, made of little more than stories now- and even those, only from this lifetime.

Varug abided a time with his ghosts, unable to clear them from his eyes, and helped himself to a long squeeze of toothpaste. How his little Dexie could stand a mouthful of the stuff every morning mystified him, but the bright, overwhelming flavor of mint that clung to his gums and tongue was a welcome distraction.

The lights flickered in the cabin he’d claimed. It’d been a week since Starfleet broke off their pursuit, thinking the Ocracoke destroyed during the insane maneuver they’d pulled to achieve warp. In that time, Fredge had changed the color of his jumpsuit a dozen times over, crawling through tubes, changing out fluids, attending to various fires, and so on. But small things were starting to work. The sonic shower, for instance, no longer blasted him against the wall with a hard thrum of bass every time he adjusted the pressure knob.

He'd rather a real shower, but water would be in short supply for a while still. The old water condensers were currently adjoined to the warp core assembly as a makeshift cooling system, so their small crew made the most out of what Tadexi couldn’t help but call “rations.”

It was junk food. So things weren’t all bad. Rip an old console that won’t be used out of the Ocracoke’s innards, hock it at the nearest market, and flip the resulting latinum into piles and piles of tiny bags of chips. Or, coolers full of cheap, carbonated sugar water.

It wasn’t choice cuts and bloodwine, but Varug didn’t earn his belly on choice cuts and bloodwine. He washed down the toothpaste with a stiff belt of dark cola and ripped open a bag of dusty orange cheese curls on his way to the turbolift.

“Hoy, Dexie,” he called, jabbing his thumb against his combadge. “What deck’re ye on? We ought to set a flight plan.”

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Dex’s response was hesitant. After a beat, he heard her:

“You think we’ll get this tub out of atmo soon?”

That’s my girl. If it comes out of my mouth, don’t you believe it. Hah!

“Sooner, rather’n later. Fredgie’s on a tear, if the lights are any indication. –Where’s he at right now, anyway?”

“Said something about the old gravity plating. We’re steady in orbit right now, far enough out that we won’t just drop, but he mentioned to expect—”

The snacks were floating out of Varug’s open bag. “Oh, aye. Sure. Well, we weren’t planning on Parrises practice. Anyway, you never said- what deck, Dexie?”

“Come on up to the Bridge. Come to think of it, I could use your counsel.”

When the doors slid open once again, Varug took a step back and frowned. He hadn’t remembered the bridge being so… green. Or bright. Or full of wild animals. In the middle of it all, a similarly puzzled Captain Tadexi Darro crouched on one knee, refusing to get comfortable. She loomed over a figure in Starfleet dress, sprawled out on a checkered tablecloth.

“Feel like Fredge would’ve mentioned this,” the old man grumbled, stepping out. He often felt out of his element, but the contrast of his bare-and-belted chest and slate gray greaves against this idyllic wonderland certainly made the point.

“Our guest felt like stretching his legs. ‘A walk in the park,’ he said. Not exactly what I expected, but Fredge says that with the ship’s power load completely skipping the bridge, he can get more work done.”

There was a bewildered pause. Slowly, unsteadily, Varug approached.

“So I allowed this,” Dex concluded. Even as she said it, she was donning a fresh frown for Q.

Finally, the stranger sat up and flashed a shiny grin. He was dressed as an admiral, bordered pips and stripes of gold, but he had the face of a young Earther. Smug and sparkly-eyed and fit to burst with the kind of mirth you only find among the honorless, their hand freshly drawn from the cookie jar.

Freshly drawn from the… Varug shook his head and muttered. “Too much television.”

“I’m sorry?” Q asked, eyebrows raising high.

“Bah, never you mind. My antiques wouldn’t interest you, anyway. –So, Starfleet, are ya?”

Varug crouched down, forearms on his knees, and bared his uneven teeth. “I once got a mouthful of them shiny little buttons, y’know. When I bit right through the man’s hairless little neck.”

Q was thoroughly amused, and sat up a little higher. “Oh, I’ve heard about you. Well, not you, but Klingons! The bravado! The pageantry! The-“

A thick brown sausage of a finger filled Q’s vision. “No racialisms on the Ocracoke. New rule. We got no choice but to run a mixed crew, we’re making it up as we go. Y’got observations, we’ll find you some nice files on anthropology. ‘Sides, there ain’t nothing you can say that I ain’t already heard in a hundred bars, a hundred times.”

Q raised a hand and patiently, slowly… struggled to push Varug’s hand away. Varug held iron-hard eye contact and only relented when Q looked away first.

“I could reduce you to strawberry preserves with a mere thought, you know that, don’t you?”

Varug snorted. “I did that to my last captain. Weren’t a very complicated thought. Now, how about you hurry along and make it clear what it is you want, so we can parlay.”

Dex gave Varug a worried look, but he shook his head. He’d never met a Q, but he’d heard stories- and he knew a confidence game when he saw one. Give someone an inch of supposed superiority and they’ll turn the whole galaxy into a hall of mirrors in pursuit of their fresh new take on eugenics.

That’s what Klingons were best at. Taking ‘em down a peg. Varug felt a brief thrill run through him, that demon called Honor chancing to give him a longer look, just for a moment.

“This is a Starfleet vessel,” Q began.

“Was,” Varug corrected.

Dex didn’t like taking a backseat to the conversation, but she grit her teeth for now. She did ask for counsel, after all. Even if her counsel was slowly crushing a bag of cheese curls in the hand that wasn’t gesticulating.

“…Fine. Was. But in my defense, no time has passed for someone in my position. I bottled myself, thinking I’d be out in a week. Humans give in to temptation so easily- and frankly, it’s an excellent impulse to follow. If they weren’t such cowards, they’d never be bored.”

Varug felt himself chuckle at that. “Ha, well, I suppose they are cowards, speakin’ generally. But some old captain’s temptations- or lack thereof- aren’t the issue at hand.” He took a deep breath and drew himself up, hands on his hips.

“We claimed this ship. From Starfleet. Whatever she was, she isn’t anymore. So I ask you, Q- knowing we ain’t a Federation vessel, not out in the galaxy to set examples or what have ye, what do you want from us?”

Before Q could answer, a loud thrum sounded from deep in the core of the ship. Immediately after, Fredge’s greasy, too-smooth-for-Vulcan voice came over the comms.

“Do not panic. The ship was reaching a trough in its route, so I manually initiated a skid. We will be picking up speed for approximately eight minutes. There will be another disruptive sound, after which the Ocracoke-B will bounce off the planet’s gravity well and adopt a higher orbit.”

When Varug and Dex looked back at Q, he was grinning again. He’d found his answer.

“My friends,” he said, spreading his arms out wide. “I want to see what it looks like when you win.”