“What profit would that be?”
“The profit that I’m sure you haven’t declared, or paid taxes on.”
“We’re a long way from Ferenginar, and you’re not wearing a liquidator’s medal,” Kren said dismissively, a hint of uncertainty hiding in his tone.
“Ah.” Nog understood. “You think the FCA can’t reach you here?”
“Look, I don’t know what you’re doing aboard this hew-mon ship, but—”
“Is that what they told you?”
“What?” Kren froze.
“They told you this was a hew-mon ship. A Starfleet ship.”
Kren nodded toward the uniformed guard. “Starfleet.”
Nog let his grin widen, and shook his head slowly. “Oh, the ship is ex-Starfleet, an older model, and there is a Starfleet crew aboard, but it’s so much more valuable than that.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, and Kren did likewise. “You know the FCA now has treaties in place with the Federation.” Kren nodded. “We have a ship exchange program also. This is my ship, and I don’t like you trying to depreciate it by damaging the finish!” Nog ended with a yell.
“But—”
“No buts, Kren! Didn’t they tell you who you would be dealing with?”
“Starfleet engineers—”
“Do I look like a Starfleet engineer?” Kren shook his head, his eyes wide and confused. “Who do I look like?” Nog asked, suddenly quiet and calm.
Kren thought hard. “I dunno. I suppose you look a bit like—”
“Nog, son of Rom.”
Kren brightened. “Yeah, that’s right. You look a bit like the son of the Grand Nagus—” He blanched. “Actually, you look exactly like the son of the Nagus.”
“That’s because I am!”
Kren panicked. “But Daimon Bok said that—” And Nog had his answers.
As they returned to the bridge and went on through to the conference room, Hunt shook his head in amazement. “That Ferengi is terrified of you. In fact, they all are . . .”
“Good. If they respect us, we’ll get further, right?” Uncomfortable with the issue, Nog flashed a faltering smile.
“Right, but it’s not just respect. I can’t put my finger on it, but they look at you the way a prisoner might look at an executioner. A bribable executioner, now that I think about it . . .”
“Don’t worry, sir, I’m not bribable. Or an executioner.”
“I know, and I’m not worried. Just wondering what so impressed them.”
They sat down with the rest of the senior staff around the table. Nog explained that Kren had given up the identity of his paymaster as another Ferengi criminal, Daimon Bok, and that he had three cloaked ships, two of which were now with the Intrepid for reasons that had apparently never been explained to Kren and his mercenary crew.
Scotty sat back in his seat and mulled the information over. “Nog, do you know this Daimon Bok?”
“Not personally. I do know that he’s twice tried to kill Captain Picard. After the second attempt, he served time at Rog Prison before buying his way out.”
“I’m more curious,” Hunt said, “as to how a disgraced former daimon could still swing the kind of power that would enable him to get hold of cloaked ships and crews.”
“I did a little digging about his prison time in Ferengi records. During his incarceration, he made contact with the Shadow Treasurers.”
“The who?” Hunt asked, looking as mystified as everyone else at the table.
“The Ferengi criminal underworld.”
Hunt blinked in surprise. “The Ferengi have an underworld? Isn’t that an oxymoron? No offense.”
“None taken.”
Scotty tapped on the tabletop. “How dangerous is this Daimon Bok, Nog?”
“To the Ferengi he is like a . . .”
“Traitor?” Hunt suggested.
“Worse. His quest for revenge went against everything a Ferengi believes in.”
“Ah, a heretic, then.”
Nog nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. Bok is a heretic for putting revenge before profit.”
“I’m sure there are Ferengi over the years who’ve been wronged, or think they have, and gone looking for revenge,” Leah said.
“Of course,” Nog agreed. “But Ferengi get revenge by costing their enemies profit, not by trying to kill people at the expense of their own opportunities for profit.”
“So, he’s unstable.”
“Very. He’s obsessed with Captain Picard.”
Scotty stood. “Then let’s not leave him alone with Intrepid. We’ll rejoin the drive section, and get back to the Agni Cluster as fast as we can.” He adjourned the meeting with a nod.
Qat’qa held back until everyone except she and Nog had left the room, then blocked the door to keep Nog in. “Hunt says the Ferengi were scared of you.”
“I guess they’re just not used—”
“To warrior Ferengi? No. You must have at least suggested cutting off lobes, or—”
Nog sighed. “They’re afraid I might tell my father about them.”
“Your father? The ex-engineer?”
“Yes.”
“Why would they be afraid of you telling your father?”
“Because he’s . . . Well, because he’s now the Grand Nagus.”
“The Grand—” Qat’qa’s eyes widened, stunned. “The Grand Nagus? Your father is the Grand Nagus?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t tell us?”
“No, and I don’t want you telling people either,” Nog said with urgency.
“Are you not proud of him?”
“Of course I’m proud of him! But I don’t want people to think I got where I am because of his influence. It was his career as an engineer that inspired me to become a Starfleet engineer, and that was long before he became Grand Nagus. He was a private contractor, and then, a member of the Bajoran Militia.”
“As an engineer, not a soldier.”
Nog grunted. “You haven’t met my father. My uncle Quark always called him an idiot, because he didn’t have the knack for turning a profit. But he did have the courage to know what he could do, to dare to be a different kind of Ferengi—with a different kind of project. That’s what inspired me.”
“You have courage.” Qat’qa nodded toward his bio-synthetic leg, a consequence of combat during the Dominion War. “And you wish to be judged only by your actions.” Qat’qa smiled approvingly. “A Ferengi who has earned scars, and honor, and wisdom, in war. She stepped through the door, onto the bridge. “I shall see if I can find you a better battle.”
12
Intrepid cruised through space, away from the Agni Cluster. Stripped of their combadges, Geordi La Forge and Reg Barclay were taking apart an intercom in her mess hall. “If we can tap into a subspace link,” Geordi was saying, “we might be able to contact Challenger.”
“They’re probably out of range,” Barclay predicted gloomily.
“They’ll be coming after us.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Rasmussen’s voice said from the doorway. Geordi had the urge to go for his throat, but the Klingon who was standing behind him with a disruptor rifle discouraged such notions. “We have a ship laying false warp trails.”
“You’ll—” La Forge was about to say “never get away with this,” but then realized how stupid the cliché sounded. He decided to see whether Rasmussen was still in a chatty mood, which his presence suggested he probably was. “How did Bok know where to find Intrepid?”
“I told him.”
“You told him? How?”
“Well, I must confess I’d have prefered to just contact him from the Challenger, but with you all watching me all of the time . . .”
“And rightly so!”
“All right, I can’t really hold that against you, can I? The fact is, being in a rehab colony put me in contact with other people who also needed rehabilitation.”
“So you got contacts with the Ferengi and others.”
“Yep, but I had no real need for them even after I was released. I was just hanging around, trying to live out my life in this century. But then Starfleet poked their noses into my life again, asking me to take a look at Intrepid. That’s when I came up with a plan. I couldn’t use Challenger’s communications system to contact Bok, at least not without alerting you Starfleet folks to what I was doing, who I was doing it with, and what we were planning.”
“But Intrepid’s communications system is a lot more limited.”
“To you, maybe. But remember, Commander, this is from my era. I know this gear, and how it works. I know how to work around it, and use it without you knowing about it.”
“And you let Bok know where to find us.”
“Exactly.”
“So . . . What about us?”
“What about you?”
“What are you going to do with us?”
Rasmussen looked surprised to be asked the question. “Nothing.”
“You can’t expect us to—”
“I expect you to do exactly what you came on board to do. Oh, I daresay Bok will have his guards watching you, to make sure you don’t interfere with our project, but other than that it’s the same mission. Only the support vessels have changed.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that Bok just came here to perform a scientific service.”
“Of course not. What he has in mind . . . is a business venture, and it won’t harm anyone. Anyone else, I suppose I should say. Poor Ensign Carter . . . This was supposed to have been done bloodlessly.”
“Yeah, right.” Carter’s family would be delighted to hear that.
“If you don’t believe me, come on up to the bridge. The science station is free for you to use. Well, Bok’s locked out the flight and command controls, but you can play with the sensors and the Intrepid’s archives to your heart’s content.” Rasmussen extended a hand. “Come on, let’s see what Bok’s up to.”
La Forge and Barclay exchanged a glance, then rose. “So, what’s this business venture?”
“Oh, that?” Rasmussen beamed excitedly. “It’s great! I’d love to tell you, but you know how Ferengi are about that kind of thing. You’ll love it when you hear, though. Seriously.” He hesitated, and shrugged. “Well, maybe not love it, but you will be impressed with the ingenuity of its execution.”
“Maybe I should just ask Bok himself,” Geordi said sourly.
“Maybe you should. He’s not such a bad guy, you know. He just has his own way of putting things across. He’s what we used to call damaged goods.”
“We still call it that,” La Forge said drily.
“Then I’m sure you understand what he’s like. Me, I don’t mind so much.”
“So you’ll tell me what this business deal is?”
“No . . . Geordi, you know, I feel a kinship with you. I’m an inventor, and you’re an engineer . . . I sometimes have to engineer things, and I daresay you’ve invented a thing or two in your time.”
“Yes,” La Forge said, playing along.
“Exactly, which means it’d just be unfair to you to tell you what we have in mind.”
“Unfair?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you ought to not know, or anything like that. I have no secrets from you now. It’s just that you’ll feel so much better to have worked it out for yourself than if I tell you.”
“Really?” La Forge was revisiting the idea of throttling Rasmussen, and damn the consequences.
“Of course! I really wish I could just tell you, but . . . Where would the challenge be if I just told you what I’m doing? When you work it out you’ll get such a buzz! I can’t take that away from you.”
“You told them what?” Bok demanded.
Rasmussen relaxed into the Intrepid’s center seat. “Look, you said yourself that your engineers couldn’t have gotten Intrepid up and running. These are the experts who did. They’ll be invaluable.”
“For interfering!” Bok knew the dedication of Starfleet far too well. Or perhaps, he thought, it was a hew-mon thing. Maybe he was wrong to go into partnership with a hew-mon. He was, after all, of the same make as Picard, the son-killer.
“For running essential systems that are not a security threat. Deflector control, sensors, and so on. It wouldn’t do our venture any good if we”—Rasmussen slapped one fist into a palm—“went face-first into a planet, would it?” Bok merely grunted, thinking about all the ways in which letting the Starfleeters live could cause problems. Mainly it was that they would try to sabotage the ship, and contact Starfleet.
“We’re going to need them when we reach the Infinite,” Rasmussen pressed. “And they are experts.”
Bok nodded reluctantly. “Very well. They can work on the sensors and other systems, but nothing that can be used to affect our navigation and flight control, and nothing that can be used to send transmissions. And always under armed guard.”
“Works for me,” Rasmussen agreed.
La Forge was tempted to refuse to order his staff to help Bok, but if it meant even the slightest chance to contact Challenger, it was worth it.
“Balis,” he said, “take charge of deflector control monitoring. Reg, you’ll aid the crew from the marauder that’s flanking us. I’ll take the sensors on the bridge. Everyone else . . . take a look at the environmental controls. They still need work.”
There was a chorus of “Yes sir.” Then the Starfleet crew-men left the mess and went back to work.
Barclay found Bok and Rasmussen standing in the corridor facing the segmented, copper-colored, three-meter diameter vertical bowl that was Intrepid’s transporter platform. Rasmussen stood as far away from it as possible, shaking his head. “I’m glad we’re not using this thing to travel.”
“Me too,” Reg agreed.
Bok snorted. “There’s nothing to fear about a transporter.”
“Not now that there’s been two centuries of technological advances, but back in Intrepid’s day . . . They weren’t used for people that often. And this one’s been out of service for a couple of millennia.”
“Upgrades,” Bok said thoughtfully. “What a concept, making people buy the fixes to make their purchases work a little closer to the way they were supposed to . . .”
Rasmussen gave him a sidelong look. “Or a little safer. You know, in my century there was a real belief that transporters copy a person and kill the original. And you know how a copy of something degrades every time you copy it.” He shuddered.
“That’s not how transporters work.”
“Not now.”
“They’re much safer now,” Barclay agreed, half disbelieving. “Relatively speaking, that is. I mean, now and again you get the odd anomaly.”
“Anomaly?” Rasmussen echoed.
“Sometimes the pattern can be deflected by ion storms, or reflected back from atmospheric conditions, and then you find yourself in another reality, or that there are . . .” He coughed. “Two of you.”
“And when’s the last time anything like that happened?” Bok sneered.
“Well, actually, just a couple of years ago, we were experimenting with transporting active holograms, and power surge through the transporter caused a matter echo . . . But we really don’t like to talk about that. It’s funny how, just when you think you’ve seen the worst, something even more distressing happens.” Reg shivered at the memory. “Then you have to find something for the other person to do, like join the Maquis, or explore the opposite side of the galaxy . . .”
“Opposite side?”
Bok turned away with a wave, and drew his communicator. “Enough monkey-brained opinions. Grak, is Sloe ready with his cargo?”
“Ready, Daimon.”
“Energize.”
As the three men watched, the transporter floor and ceiling lit up, and a human materialized, along with a bulky metallic tower-like device covered in metal and crystalline tubing. The device was on a small grav-sled, and the man had one hand on the handle
of the sled. The man was around Rasmussen’s age, but had youthfully bright eyes in contrast to lank graying hair tied in a rough ponytail. He was tall, and wore drab clothes that he had probably bought new half a century ago and never needed to replace.
“Welcome aboard, Sloe.”
“Daimon.”
“Is the cloak ready to install?”
“It tested fine back on the marauder. Of course, that was with modern power systems, not twenty-second century ones. But I see no reason why it shouldn’t work as well here.”
“Excellent. I’ll need you to install it as quickly as possible.”
“It shouldn’t take long, really. It’s an older model, not such complex connections to deal with.” Sloe patted the device as if it were a pet.
“Older, but hopefully no less effective.”
“The original model dates from before the Klingon civil war, so it’s bound to have been penetrated at some point, but more likely by the Romulans than by Starfleet.”
“Then let’s hope the Romulans didn’t share their data,” Rasmussen grumbled.
“Well, just in case they did, I’ve made a few modifications.”
“Modifications?” Barclay asked.
“This is Reg,” Rasmussen said to Sloe. “He’ll be assisting you.”
“But don’t let him touch the cloak itself,” Bok warned.
“Oh, right,” Sloe said. “Well, I’ve introduced an automated random modulation to the phase discriminator, and one or two other little tweaks. If anyone does get a peek through the cloak, the modulation should mean it doesn’t last very long, and they lose us again straight away.”
“Good,” said Bok. “Now stop wasting time. Get down to D deck and install it.”
La Forge powered up the long-range sensors on the bridge, and quickly scanned for some sign of Challenger, or any other Federation ship. There was nothing, and that made him uneasy.
He caught himself wondering whether he ought to have just asked Leah where they stood when he had the chance. It would be ironic if she had been waiting for him to make a move, and he now might never have the chance. He told himself to stop thinking like a lovesick teenager, and concentrate on the situation.
Slowly he looked around the bridge, not just in the visible spectrum, for any sign that the mercenaries might be nervous enough to make mistakes, but everything looked normal. Then, La Forge turned his attention to the sensors, which gave him navigational information, but without the ability to affect the ship’s course. They were heading to a system near Ferengi space, Delta Five Gamma Zeta Alpha. It wasn’t one he knew, but the designation was vaguely familiar.
Star Trek: TNG Indstinguishable From Magic Page 16
