by Dayton Ward
At least Gaila had, on that occasion, proved himself the most redeemed of Quark’s family, by trying to shoot Quark. Sadly, he had not proved himself any more competent than the rest of Quark’s discount-rate kin.
It always came back to Quark, Brunt thought. Quark’s schemes, and Quark’s impossible luck that haunted Brunt and drove him to penury. If only it had been Brunt who had been quick enough to fire a shot at Quark on Empok Nor. The loathsome welcher would have been as overcooked as hew-mon food.
Looking at the holographic target, Brunt didn’t even see it as a circular targeting matrix. It was Quark’s smug, leering face! He blasted it. Immediately another target was generated; Brunt saw Quark again, and was only too happy to oblige by firing again. Two more targets flashed in from the flanks. Rom’s and Nog’s faces spun wildly across the room, but Brunt got them both with a single shot each. And then there was Zek … Yes, sure enough, he could see Zek’s wrinkled jowls laughing at him on the surface of the next target globe, and he smoothed them out with a disruptor beam right between the beady little eyes.
“Simulation complete,” a computerized voice stated mildly. Brunt was surprised, and looked down at the rifle in his hands. He had actually enjoyed that, he realized, and much more than he had expected to.
“You’re a good shot,” Pel said from behind him. He jumped, almost dropping the disruptor. “I don’t think I could have hit all of those target globes, especially not those last two.”
Brunt was rather impressed himself; he hadn’t expected to hit them all either. He wasn’t going to tell her that, of course. There was always more profit in keeping your assets or debits secret and letting others draw their own conclusions. “It’s just about hitting what you see,” he said truthfully, and with not a little relish.
“I could see the targets, but . . .”
“Let’s just say I have good motivation.”
“I could never do that.”
“But you must have good hand-eye coordination to be a pilot?” If not, Brunt thought, he would never step into the group’s ship again until they got a new pilot.
“That’s true. It just feels different flying a ship, though. You’re not pointing at something; you’re having your whole self carried along. It’s like you’re using your whole body.” Brunt tried not to think about her whole body. It was difficult, what with its being so temptingly clothed and therefore invitingly mysterious. “I don’t like those Breen that Gaila has taken up with.”
“I know what you mean,” Brunt agreed. “Dominion soldiers. At least with a Jem’Hadar you could see his face, and what he was thinking.”
“You’ve met Jem’Hadar?” Pel asked admiringly.
“Yes,” Brunt admitted. He decided not to tell her that the meeting was in the context of trying to swap a Vorta for the Nagus’s mate—who also happened to be Quark’s mother.
“I’m impressed! What did they do?”
“They . . .” Brunt hesitated. On that occasion most of them had simply been withdrawn, and two had been killed, by Rom and Leck. “They died,” he said at last.
Pel nodded slowly. “So the famous Liquidator does have lobes, eh?”
Brunt looked at her. After the past few months, he had even stopped noticing that she was clothed. “Oh yes.”
“I never imagined I’d say that to a Liquidator.”
“We’re not all monsters. We try to be, but we’re only flesh and blood. Something shows through.”
“You’re actually a pretty decent Ferengi,” she admitted. “Strong, resourceful.” She was standing closer to him now. “Profit-driven.”
“We should keep out of the way of those Breen. I mean . . .”
“You mean you have a reputation to uphold?”
“I do? I mean, I do.” Brunt smiled nastily, suspecting that Pel might actually like that kind of expression. It would fit his reputation as the nasty FCA Liquidator, after all, and she had brought up that reputation. “I don’t like the way they look at me.”
“I don’t like the way they look at me either,” Pel admitted. “In fact, I don’t like the way they look at anyone other than Gaila and Voloczin.” She pulled herself up proudly to her full height, such as it was. “I especially don’t like the way they look at people talking together.”
“Then we shouldn’t let them look at us talking.”
Pel began to giggle, then stopped. “They’d probably assume we’re conspiring together against Gaila, or them.”
“I don’t trust any of you enough to conspire with you, about anything.” Not yet, anyway, he thought, and the thought surprised him.
“That won’t stop them,” Pel said. “I was one of the first females to earn profit, and I want to keep earning profit, but … I sometimes wonder if Gaila’s way of doing things is really … well, if it’s really the best way to get the maximum profit.”
“You don’t trust Gaila?”
Pel gave him a disbelieving look, then her expression cleared, and she laughed. “Oh, you were making a joke! Sorry. It’s a long time since I’ve seen irony or subtle humor. The Breen don’t laugh, Bijon only thinks people falling over is funny, and Voloczin . . .”
“Is just a little too different,” Brunt observed.
“You’re right. Of course I don’t trust Gaila; nobody trusts Gaila. Frankly, you’ve been his partner for seven months. That’s not a record, but it’s not that far off.”
“He’s always been a profitable man,” Brunt reminded her. “Everything he does is so beautifully geared toward increasing profit. Not just for himself, but for all of us.”
“I suppose it is, as best he can think of it. But, you know, sometimes I think he just does it for fun—or for practice. And profit comes second.”
Brunt shivered at the very thought of profit coming second. Yet he had seen Ferengi behave that way before. “Perhaps it runs in the family.”
“The family?”
“His cousin does that a lot.”
Three times, Gaila marched around the racks of supplies in the holoship, stroking a hand along the edges. He gave the same speech to each of the three prime ministers; it was well-rehearsed and carefully honed to sound off-the-cuff, heartfelt, and believable. “We have everything for the growing military defense force.” He paused and lifted a hand phaser from a row of them. “Hand weapons with variable stun and kill settings. Concealable, and ideal for enforcement and protection.” He moved to the next rack. “Sidearms for troops in the field. More powerful, with a longer-lasting power pack, which is easily removable for charging while in the field. Again, very reliable. Accurate up to over a kilometer, variable power, and can fire in pulse or beam mode.”
“What about larger weapons?” each prime minister had asked. “Anti-air, for example,” the Alphan had suggested. The prime minister of Urwyzden Beta wanted “orbital defense.” The man from Gamma had requested “air superiority.”
“I’m glad you asked that,” Gaila said with undisguised delight in each case. He moved his customers into another chamber and activated it. A moving cradle clanked into life, bringing out a mechanism roughly eight feet tall, made of two linked canisters with an array of folded solar receptors and sensor packages. It looked vaguely like a giant, hibernating wasp of some kind. “These are my most … delicious offers,” Gaila went on. “They are drone weapons. Unmanned automatic probes that are fully user-definable. You can program them as passive guardians, to detect and interdict unauthorized approaches, or as offensive weapons that can be sent in waves to overwhelm enemy defensive positions.”
“Armaments?” everyone asked, during their separate visits.
“Kinetic energy missiles are standard, but—for a small fee, of course—they can be replaced with plasma pulse weapons, photon mortars, or even an antimatter payload with a self-detonation yield of up to two hundred and fifty megatons.” Gaila grimaced. “Though, if you don’t mind my saying so, that option tends to be more for consumers who wish the destruction of planetary ecologies along with their
enemies. For the urban pacification you are interested in, I’d recommend the standard or photon mortar options.”
“Fully customizable?”
“Of course. My engineer will make any complex adjustments necessary to fulfill your specifications before delivery, and supply comprehensive manuals.”
Brunt decided it was time to add his voice, to help seal the deal. He could almost feel those bars of latinum brushing against the skin of his fingertips already. “And, as well as automatic systems, they also have—”
“Brunt!” Gaila snapped. “Please! Our customers don’t want to be bored with meaningless technobabble. They want to see their potential purchases in action!”
Why, Brunt wondered, did Gaila not want to advertise the remotecontrol options on the drones? It was unthinkable that he didn’t know about them, as he was always very knowledgeable about his products, and it was equally inconceivable that he didn’t see the option as a selling point. Maybe he wasn’t immune from the stupidity that characterized his cousins after all.
Of course, it wasn’t just the sales pitch that Gaila was enthused about. There were the bribes, the little words of worry, and the outright lies. The words that spread tension and unease. The suggestion to each prime minister that the others had approached the Ferengi in search of offensive weapons, but been turned down.
By the time the prime minister of Urwyzden Gamma had visited the holoship, he was desperate to buy, because he was so certain that Alpha and Beta were plotting against his holdings.
All three planets bought in heavily. And, a month later, they asked Gaila and Brunt to return with more.
By the time of the second visit, there were three Breen guards on the drone production unit. Gaila waved them aside and went through. Voloczin was curled in the rack, several tentacles twisting their way into access panels on a drone. Lok was at a console, monitoring readings from the drone.
“How are my special babies today?” Gaila asked.
“Happy as Larry, squire,” Voloczin grated. Lok gave a short agreement.
“Good. Business, my friends, is about to be booming.” He laughed. “And booming business is the best kind!”
Three Months Ago
Orbital traffic around Urwyzden Alpha was light when the war started. Most of the vessels arriving and departing belonged to other governments or private corporations, but there were enough intrasystem transports ascending and descending. A corporate shuttle was the first to explode, speared by a burst of kinetic energy missiles from a drone. Several more Betan shuttles were hit in the moments following. A few vital cargo vessels strayed too close to a drone armed with pulsed phase cannon, and it came to life and peppered the entire flight with fire.
Passenger vessels weren’t immune, and Urwyzden women and children died in many crashes after being shot down. Pel looked on in horror as another ship exploded on the Golden Handshake’s main viewer. “Unbelievable . . .”
“In what way?” Gaila asked. “We did come here because of a most profitable ongoing military escalation, didn’t we?” He laughed again.
The prime ministers were enraged, screaming at each other over the system’s communications network. “You are murderers!” the Betan yelled at the Alphan. “This is unprecedented and unacceptable! No Urwyzden has ever declared war on another!”
“Declared war!?” the Alphan replied. “We are the victims of your madness. Is this some kind of attempt at a takeover of the Board?”
“We are clear that some members of the Board of Premiers need to be let go!”
“And the sooner the better. Urwyzden Alpha is now in a state of war . . .”
In his palatial quarters aboard ship, Gaila listened to the arguments, accusations, and counteraccusations. They were the finest opera he had ever listened to. This was the kind of situation he had long dreamed of, and knew that his idiot cousin Quark would never have been able to stomach. Thankfully, he had had the sense to have Brunt as his partner; Brunt was a strong man, and would do what it took.
The door chimed, and when he opened it, Lok stepped in, buzzing a report. Gaila raised his glass to the Breen. “Exactly as planned, Thot Lok. Here’s to exploiting the weak for fun and profit.”
Outside in the corridor, Brunt was on his way back to his suite, and overheard Gaila’s comment. It was a strange thing to say, he thought. He continued onward and into his suite, helping himself to a stiff drink. He had profits to count, and it would take time to work out how to invest them all. These profits were stacking up quite nicely.
On their next trip, having arranged for slightly upgraded weapons software and longer-lasting power packs, they approached the Urwyzden system cautiously. Ships were departing on a regular basis, but there was no large-scale exodus yet. Fighting was rather neatly confined to skirmishes in orbit, and things didn’t look that much different on the surface. Nevertheless, the Ferengi took care, because, while they wanted to be welcomed as customers, they didn’t want any of the three governments to take exception to their visiting the others.
“The Beta and Gamma governments may not be pleased to see us visiting Alpha,” Brunt pointed out.
“That’s why we’ve got this.” Pel patted a bulging addition to the flight control panel.
“Ah,” Brunt sighed appreciatively. “A cloaking device?”
“It’s Klingon,” Pel explained. “It came from an old B’rel class. Gaila bought it from an old Duras clan captain who was trying to raise funds to pay his bar bill in exile. The cloak was just about the only part of his bird-of-prey that still worked. And, being on the wrong side of the civil war, he couldn’t really take it back and exchange it for a new ship.”
“Welcome, my friend!” the Alphan prime minister enthused, when Brunt and Gaila visited him. This time they had beamed down to his office, which was a crisp white-and-chrome affair overlooking a deep blue lake. “It seems I was wise to make those purchases.”
“You know it makes sense,” Gaila said.
“And continues to do so. I shall have ongoing business with you, I think. Our own military productivity is still in its initial stages . . .”
“How goes the war?” Brunt asked. “We didn’t see much sign of it.”
“Obviously we are doing our best to ensure that it doesn’t interfere too much with business.” Both Ferengi nodded understandingly. They could appreciate that. “For the most part we’re concentrating on inhibiting the colony worlds’ ability to take hostile action against us. We’re eliminating their satellite weapons, and so forth.” Brunt felt a warm glow around the money belt. That would mean the other worlds’ prime ministers would be ordering replacement drones during this trip. “We have also,” the prime minister went on, “begun interning Beta and Gamma citizens in conditioning camps to be sure of their loyalty.”
“I like that,” Gaila said. “I like when a people take their responsibilities seriously.” That pleased the prime minister. Brunt was less enthusiastic. Once they had returned to the ship with a new order and contract, he said so to Gaila. “They’re running the war properly, and taking it to heart,” Gaila told him. “They’ll be the best customers because they’re giving themselves wholly to their responsibilities. They’ll keep us rich for life.”
“The only problem with anything that’s for life, is that it’s only for the living,” Brunt muttered.
“You’re not going all hew-mon on me, are you?” Gaila asked suspiciously.
“Of course not! Who better to rip off than—” Somebody you hate? He had no problem with it. Yet.
Two Months Ago
Gaila looked up as the ranking leader of his Breen mercenaries stomped onto the bridge, while he was alone there. Pel was delivering hardware to Urwyzden Gamma, and Brunt to Beta. Bijon was helping Voloczin to fetch and carry aboard the holoship. “What is it, Lok?” It occurred to him that, were the Breen to switch rank markings between their uniforms, he could find himself addressing the wrong one. That led him to wonder if they occasionally did this to amuse themsel
ves by making a fool out of him. He dismissed the idea; Breen were cold, heartless killers who did what they were told. They didn’t have a sense of humor.
Lok rumbled a warning, describing what he had been observing for some time.
“Brunt and Pel?” Gaila scoffed. “You must be joking.” Lok buzzed a short reply. “Er, yes, I was just thinking that . . .”
Lok leaned forward and slipped a data chip into a padd. Immediately, the screen came to life, and a miniature Brunt and Pel were walking across the bridge of the Golden Handshake a few days earlier. Brunt seemed strangely laid-back as she showed him the innermost secrets of the Klingon cloaking device that Gaila had once gone to such lengths to covertly acquire.
As Gaila watched, he felt a mix of anger and dismay, but at the same time he felt a strange relief. He had always expected to be betrayed by his partners, and at least now he didn’t need to worry about when Brunt or Pel would do so. He couldn’t blame Pel, of course; she was only a female, and the freedoms of wearing clothes and earning profit had clearly gone to her head. It was bound to happen eventually.
Brunt, on the other hand, had been a Liquidator, and had spent a lot of time in the past trying to think like Quark. This was one of the reasons why Gaila was always so reluctant to return home: his relatives were idiots and it was a contagious idiocy. Leaving and buying his own moon had saved his intellect, just as stalking Quark seemed to have whittled Brunt’s intellect down. “Ah well,” Gaila said. “What am I to do with them, eh?”
Lok made a dark, almost subsonic, suggestion.
“You took the words right out of my mouth.” Gaila grimaced. He hated having to do this kind of thing, but sometimes it was unfortunately necessary. He was a weapons dealer, not a soldier, but he recognized the need for the use of weapons, and for the occasional death, and that was why he employed soldiers as well as selling to them. He didn’t like the necessity for killing, but he accepted it as an infrequent price to be paid. A tax, in a manner of speaking. He had even tried to kill Quark once or twice, by sabotage.
