“Arms dealing,” Brunt agreed, trying out the words for size. They rolled off the tongue nicely.
“I prefer the term planetary security retail specialist, actually. But you’ve already heard the most important element: my business is in the steadiest market that has ever … ” He paused. “Second steadiest. I don’t sell females, after all. Not usually, anyway.”
“I feel reassured already,” Brunt said dryly. “But don’t worry, I fully appreciate the point you’re trying to make.” He was beginning to sound hungry. “War is a universal constant—”
“And people at war always need the latest and best weapons. Which means a retailer specializing in such a market always makes profit. Always,” Gaila reiterated.
“All right,” Brunt agreed, “I’m in.”
“You know it makes sense,” Gaila replied. “I’ll be leaving Ferenginar first thing in the morning. I’ll have space cleared in in my shuttlebay for your shuttle. As a matter of fact, perhaps we can travel together—”
“Five slips.”
“Done. I’ll meet you in the morning.”
When Gaila had gone, after that first meeting, Brunt opened a panel in the wall and withdrew a data chip. He clipped it into a padd and activated it, first making sure to switch in a dampener to prevent anyone from accessing the padd remotely. He doubted anyone would dare, but it was definitely better to be safe than sorry.
Certain that he had the electronic privacy he needed, Brunt scrolled through the files on the chip. They were all tagged with the FCA’s data seal. They had been highly classified files accessible only to Liquidators, but Brunt had never seen the necessity to delete his copies when he was expelled from the Economic Congress. The Congress would have seen it differently had they known that he had hung on to the files, which is why he had never seen the necessity to mention that he had them. Most of the data was material he himself had collated and reported anyway. It was, as far as Brunt was concerned, his to do with as he pleased.
He stopped scrolling at the entry on Gaila, and began to read and to think. Gaila was a relative of Quark’s, of course, which was a massive strike against him, but he was also a frequently successful and profitable businessman. He had become rich enough to buy his own moon; most impressive, even in Brunt’s opinion.
Gaila’s known contacts included the likes of a hew-mon called Hagath, and the Regent of Palamar: callous murderers with no regard for the number of exploitable lives they wasted for fun rather than profit. Brunt was repulsed by the idea. All those wage-earning people no longer putting their currency into the system … It was appalling. And yet Gaila had made enormous profits over the years, dealing with such people. Enough profits, in fact, to buy that moon he was so famous for. Brunt felt an involuntary thrill run down his spine at the thought of enough personal profit to buy a moon.
Why stop at a moon? he asked himself. He was Brunt, FCA—in his heart and soul if not in actual profession at the moment. Why not a planet? After all, he had once been acting Nagus, presiding over the whole of the Ferengi Alliance.
That sort of investment would require a lot of profit, but, as Gaila had said, no one had ever gone broke selling weapons. War wasn’t just a universal constant, it was an infinite source of profit. Brunt grinned to himself; this was his chance, to get it all back. He would make his profit and buy his way back into favor. It had always worked before.
The next morning dawned with a lightweight western drizzle, and Brunt and Gaila took shelter in Brunt’s tiny shuttle as quickly as they could. After paying take-off fees, they were soon flying high and away from their drab homeworld.
Hunched over the controls, and still pretty much brushing shoulders with Gaila in the cramped cabin, Brunt said, “So, where are we going?”
“Right there.” Gaila pointed out the viewport toward a large cruiser ahead. “Now, we’ll need venture capital to begin a new trading company. If we are going to invest in selling major arms—”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Brunt agreed. “What we need is a suitably small but vicious conflict to begin with.”
“My thoughts exactly. One in which we can raise the maximum amount of capital quickly by selling to both sides.”
Brunt thought carefully. “It would take a lot of preparation to set up such a deal. So much, in fact, that it would require a number of people to run smoothly.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“A number greater than two,” Brunt added.
Gaila smiled troublingly. “Right again. And, as luck would have it, the crew of my ship is just the right small group of people.”
The ship was an aging light marauder, of similar shape to the D’Kora-class ships of the Ferengi Alliance’s military, but much smaller. It was no larger than that Federation ship that the hated Quark used to hitch rides on. What was it called, again? Brunt asked himself. The U.S.S. Deviant? Something like that; the name certainly sounded appropriate for something connected with Quark.
“Welcome aboard the Golden Handshake,” Gaila said proudly, once the shuttle had settled into place in the hangar. It didn’t take up as much room as the cargo sled next to it. He and Brunt got out and stretched their legs. “The ship is all mine.”
“As are its contents,” Brunt agreed. The ship was, after all, Gaila’s home away from home. Gaila led the way to a wide corridor. Almost immediately, six Breen soldiers stomped out of a side passage, in full sand-colored armor and helmets over their environmental suits. Brunt froze, the contents of his gut turning to lead.
“Oh, don’t mind them,” Gaila said breezily. “They’re just bodyguards.”
“Bodyguards?” Brunt recovered his superior demeanor. “And whyever would you need bodyguards?”
“For one thing, people who need an arms dealer usually have that need because they’re embroiled in some sort of violence.” Gaila looked uncomfortable. “Which means sometimes, to make a profit, one has to visit violent places.”
“And the list of enemies I should watch out for … ?”
“When a beetle-snuff salesman, for whatever reason, ends up with a dissatisfied customer, he can just ignore the lobeless little pest. But when a supplier of top-grade military technology and armaments ends up with a dissatisfied customer . . .”
Flanked by the Breen, Gaila and Brunt made their way up to the bridge. Two Breen halted to stand guard on either side of the doors, and the others disappeared somewhere into another corridor. The bridge was small but comfortable, with a plush command couch on a raised platform. A small minibar was built into it. There were consoles on either side, and a flight console at the narrow nose of the bridge, with a reclining chair set into a cockpit-like enclosure sunk slightly into the floor. There was also a console standing free, having been pulled out from the wall. Sounds of clattering and indistinct cursing indicated that some sort of repairs were in progress.
A short, slim Ferengi sat in the sunken cockpit, making preparations to leave orbit. He looked to be rather small-lobed, and Brunt was surprised that Gaila had employed someone without real business lobes. Then again, perhaps a pilot didn’t need such business acumen, so long as he had worked out a good deal on fares.
Another Ferengi came in, carrying a large container of tools and parts. Brunt paled; this was the biggest Ferengi he had ever seen—even larger than the Klingon that he used to see occasionally on Deep Space 9. “Where do you want these, Gaila?” he asked in a deep yet mild voice.
“Take them down to engineering, Bijon.”
“Oh, right.”
“Bijon, wait.” Gaila said quickly. “I want you to meet someone. This is Brunt, my new partner.”
Brunt stepped forward. “Brunt, FC— just Brunt,” he finished uncomfortably.
“Hallo, Brunt.” Bijon put the box down and pressed his wrists together, cupping his hands. Gaila cleared his throat and jerked his head toward the door. Bijon took the hint, picked up his box, and left.
“Bijon is a useful … factotum,” Gaila said, “but he
needs constant direction to remain focused.” He went over to the cockpit and looked down. “Pel, are we ready to leave orbit?”
What Brunt had taken to be an effeminate young Ferengi at the helm turned around and rose. He was simultaneously repulsed and intrigued to see that the lobeless pilot was actually female. A clothed female, wearing a sporty pilot’s jumpsuit. He didn’t try to hide the scowl of disapproval that crossed his face. “Just about,” she said eagerly. She had the tone of voice of someone who loved their means of earning profit; Brunt had to give her that. “Voloczin is just installing a few more hardware updates that he picked up while we were here.” She looked in the direction of the console that had been uprooted from its position. “Voloczin,” Pel said, “is the initializer linkage fixed now?”
“It’s kushti,” a somewhat mechanical voice said from below. A thick tentacle, covered in parchment-like skin, reached up from the access hatch and around the console. It looked like an agglomeration of all the braised slugs Brunt had feasted upon when he was a regular patron of Ferenginar’s finest restaurants. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating. Then another tentacle joined the first, and another, and another … The tentacles tensed, and levered up a fluked torso from the crawlspace below. If a hew-mon had been on board, he might have described it as something between a spider, a crab, and an octopus.
“Wotcher,” it said. The translator that gave its voice a noticeable mechanical bent flickered on a beak, half hidden under a fold beneath its one baleful eye. There were belts of tools, wide enough to go around a hew-mon waist, around the thickest parts of the tentacles, nearest the body. “Fresh meat, eh?”
“My new partner,” Gaila agreed.
“Another one?” Pel exclaimed. Gaila glared at her.
Brunt finally found his voice again. “What is … that?”
Pel looked studiously blank. “An engineer. What else would he be, with all those tools?”
“I meant, what sort of … What species is he?”
Gaila looked at Voloczin and opened his mouth to express his pride in the quality of his employees, but then closed it and shrugged. “Actually, I haven’t a clue. Nobody’s ever asked before.” He shrugged off the question. “Anyway, welcome to our little enterprise. My associates are, as I said, the right small group of people.” Pel and Voloczin returned to what they were doing.
Brunt lowered his voice. “Females making profit … wearing clothes.” He gave a theatrical shudder. “This is what happens when the Nagus is kin to the likes of Quark. No offense.”
“None taken. At least you don’t have to stand having that blood in you.” Gaila said darkly. “I can almost feel it poisoning me as I speak.”
“Might as well turn the whole treasury over to a hew-mon and be done with it.”
“Urgh. Hew-mons invented subprime!” Gaila spat.
“Give that idiot Rom time, and he’ll probably manage it.”
“Don’t even joke about that. Besides, Pel may be allowed to earn profit, but who do you think invests it for her?”
“Ah.” Brunt grinned understandingly, as did Gaila.
“The hew-mons have a saying: ’A sprat to catch a mackerel’—they’re some kind of aquatic food animals, I think. So I use Pel’s little bit of profit to bring myself more.” Brunt merely nodded; that was how a proper Ferengi should behave, after all. “Come on, I’ll show you your cabin, then we’ll discuss where we make our first deal.”
Gaila took Brunt down one deck and past three doors to a suite of rooms that were even more richly appointed than his home on Ferenginar had been at the height of his powers as FCA Liquidator. Objets d’art were on display, and there was a gleam of gold and latinum everywhere. There was a little office filled with accountancy paraphernalia, and a bedroom with a massive fur-strewn bed. “Nice little home from home, eh?” Gaila said.
“It’s passable,” Brunt said quickly.
“Get freshened up if you want, then meet me on the bridge and we’ll decide on a course.”
An hour or so later, Brunt returned to the bridge. Bijon was standing by a console, watching the displays, while Pel was seated in the cockpit. Gaila, on the command couch, beckoned Brunt to sit. “Snail juice?” he offered, replicating Brunt a glass from the minibar next to him. Brunt took it. “Now, I’ve been orbiting Ferenginar for too long. It’s time to get back out there and seek out new profits.”
“Rumor has it that there’s been a coup on Fonnam II,” Brunt said. “No doubt the original government will be looking to counter it and dispose of their traitors. And of course the new government will want to strengthen their hold and dispose of their traitorous counterplotters . . .”
“That’s the kind of level we want,” Gaila agreed, “to offload the last of last season’s product and raise capital. Fonnam is not such a good option, though; they’re notorious for wanting long credit terms.”
“No good for raising capital, then,” Brunt agreed. “No, we want a planet with hard latinum to spend.” His mind was working furiously. Was there anything in his stolen FCA files that could help? He took his padd from his pocket and looked at it, keeping its display away from Gaila’s view. “Kalanis Major,” he said hungrily. “They recently converted a lot of escrow into latinum, and there is a civil war running, with no sign of an end in sight.”
“Perfect!” Gaila exclaimed, rubbing his hands. “Pel, set course for Kalanis Major, and engage.”
“Kalanis Major . . .” she echoed. “It’ll take four days at warp seven.”
“Good enough.”
Four days of travel meant Brunt had time to get to know the ship. The first thing he learned was that his bedroom shared a bulkhead with the ship’s computer core. Computer cores were solid state, of course, with no moving parts above the subatomic level, but the one that shared a wall with Brunt’s cabin still somehow contrived to make occasional noises. They were small sounds—a crackle here, a distant metallic pop there—but just random enough to be unpredictable and therefore annoying.
As a result he couldn’t sleep on the first night, and found himself touring the ship. Occasionally the Breen soldiers would look at him silently, but they didn’t challenge him, and he hoped—if not prayed—that Gaila had told them he was on their side. He wondered how many Breen there were on board; their identical uniforms and face-covering helmets made it impossible to tell them apart or count the number of individuals.
He found that the ship had a large engineering deck, but Voloczin was the only engineer on board. There were vast cargo holds taking up most of the volume of the ship, and several large-scale replicator units programmed for weapons production.
There were a lot of automated systems overall, so the ship clearly didn’t need a large living crew. Brunt didn’t think that much of it. In his opinion, profit-making needed an audience. There just didn’t seem to be as much fun in being surrounded by automatic systems that couldn’t admire you or feel inspired to earn their own profit or, indeed, be jealous of how profitable and ruthless you were.
The only audience aboard most of the ship was the Breen, and they didn’t seem to care. Brunt caught up with Gaila at breakfast in the gilded dining chamber to ask him about them. The chamber was reminiscent of a good Ferengi restaurant, but with replicators.
“Do you trust the Breen?”
“Of course,” Gaila scoffed. “They’re utterly incorruptible.”
“Really?” Brunt wondered whether this was an opinion worth testing.
“Well, for one thing, nobody wants to hire soldiers who fought on the wrong side of the Dominion War. Secondly, they’re not easy to communicate with, without specialized equipment. Thirdly, I pay them more than anyone else could afford.”
Brunt nodded. That, he could understand; it was the best way to secure loyalty. He still didn’t like them, though.
“You’re a pilot,” Brunt asked. He was trying, more or less, to keep the disdain out of his voice, and as a result, the question came out as something of a squeak.
Pel looked up from the cockpit. The ship was on course on its own, so she was there merely to check that the instruments were working correctly and to see whether any gravitational fluctuations had necessitated a course change.
“I am now.”
“I didn’t think females were allowed to—Well, until recently.”
“I wasn’t always a pilot.”
Star Trek: Seven Deadly Sins Page 9
