Kai Winn was studying him, a look of expectation on her face.
Nog wasn’t at all certain how much time had passed. It might have been minutes, or merely seconds, the way time often passed in his latinum-lined dreams.
All he knew was that now he felt more willing than before to listen to what Winn had to say. And that there was a lot he needed to learn about the universe around him, dangerous or not.
He wondered if this was the same feeling his uncle had spent years systematically stamping out of his father.
“Will you do it?” Winn asked. “We can discuss the issue of remuneration later. At the moment, time is of the essence.”
“Okay,” he heard himself saying, realizing only belatedly that he had somehow dropped his insistence on up-front payment. He hoped he hadn’t just disgraced every sacred, heroic, profit-driven principle that Marauder Mo stood for.
Almost in a daze, Nog walked across the Promenade back to the bar. Maybe Marauder Mo wouldn’t have struck the deal he had just made with the kai. Ferenginar’s favorite superhero certainly wouldn’t have been afraid of the mission; it was an adventure, after all, and many were the protagonists of Ferengi holofiction who valued adventure nearly as highly as Acquisition Itself. But being asked to wait for payment until after the fact might have given even the most stalwart action hero pause.
Nog noted with some surprise that he wasn’t afraid. A little apprehensive, maybe. But not afraid. Instead, he found himself eagerly anticipating the mission, which would commence with his meeting Kai Winn on the docking ring in a little less than four hours.
The trick, of course, would be getting through those few hours without letting anyone know what he was up to; the kai had made him promise to keep his involvement in the mission absolutely secret. Nog had agreed, aware of how bad she would look if word were to get around that she might be taking someone as young as he was into harm’s way. Were that to happen, the kai would no doubt become very testy. And a testy kai could certainly contrive ways to make life very difficult not only for him, but also for his father and Uncle Quark so long as they remained aboard the station.
He wondered: Would the kai have retaliated had he flatly declined to go on the mission? He wasn’t sure, but he decided it didn’t matter. He wanted to go, if only to prove to himself that Uncle Quark couldn’t do to him what he’d already done to his father.
Now, as he wended his way toward his uncle’s business office, was the time Nog felt most in need of the unfailing courage of Marauder Mo. After all, he was about to disappear for four days, and he couldn’t tell anyone why, not even his father. But I’ve got to tell my uncle something.
He entered the office without knocking and saw Quark sitting behind the desk, hunched over an untidy pile of financial padds. Nog saw that his uncle was auditing the secret books for accuracy, while vetting the public ones for plausibility. It was a good, solid practice for any Ferengi businessman.
“I need a few days off, Uncle,” Nog said without preamble.
“No,” said Quark without looking up. “Now get back to work—”
“—before I dock you,” Nog finished, in unison with his uncle.
Nog remained standing beside the crowded desk, watching his uncle work. Quark looked up at him at last, obviously irritated.
“You’re still here.”
“Just for as long as this takes, Uncle. I really need some time off. Four days.”
Quark set down the padd he was working on, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Why?”
Nog feared he’d already said too much. Quark would surely figure out what he was up to. After all, hadn’t he also heard O’Brien’s pitch to his father? He had to know that the foray into the DMZ exactly coincided with his vacation request.
But if Quark had done the math, he gave no outward indication of it. He simply returned his attention to the teetering stacks of padds on his desk. “I’m afraid I can’t spare you, Nog. You know how shorthanded I am around here.”
The reason for Quark’s obtuseness suddenly struck Nog like a body blow. He doesn’t take me seriously enough to think Winn would want to take me along to the DMZ. He only barely overcame a powerful temptation to tell his uncle the truth.
Instead, he said, “I’m taking the time off, Uncle. With or without your approval.” He turned his back on Quark and made for the door.
Quark pushed the padds to one side with a loud clatter and stood. “Nog, if you leave before your shift is over, you can forget about ever drawing a paycheck from me again.”
Nog hesitated in the doorway. The impulse to stay, to remain in the bar doing his uncle’s bidding, had evidently become an entrenched habit. How many times had his father caved in to Quark following confrontations like this one? He pictured himself twenty years older, still working in the bar alongside his father and a spiritually broken—and financially insignificant—cadre of Ferengi waiters and Bajoran dabo girls. The horror of the image rivaled his father’s tales of the Vault of Eternal Destitution, the impoverished netherworld that awaited the souls of insufficiently profitable Ferengi in the next life.
“Good-bye, Uncle,” he said, then continued out the door, steeling himself so as not to react to the shouted invectives that followed him halfway back out onto the Promenade.
Nog found the Bajoran Militia ship Akorem Laan surprisingly comfortable and roomy. But then, never having been aboard a Bajoran Militia ship, he’d had no idea what to expect.
Napping in the luxurious cabin where Winn had left him, Nog reflected on just how smoothly things had gone during the first two days since the departure from DS9. Almost too smoothly.
An unfamiliar and incredibly loud sound shrilled through the room, startling him so thoroughly that he nearly fell off the bed. He jumped up and ran awkwardly to the companel mounted on the bulkhead.
“Um, bridge?” Nog said, shouting above the alarm. “What’s going on up there?”
“Who’s this?” responded a stern male voice.
Nog tried to swallow, but found that his mouth was too dry. His ears were beginning to throb with pain because of the blare of the Klaxon. “I’m Kai Winn’s, um, mission specialist.”
“We’re in a state of red alert. Please remain in your quarters, young man. And stay off the comm unit.”
Nog nodded, then realized that the person on the other end of the comm couldn’t see him. “What’s going on?”
“Just stay put and be quiet,” said the comm voice. Then the channel was abruptly cut off.
Nog scowled at the silent companel. Hupyrian beetle-wings of fear brushed his spine. What would Marauder Mo do? he thought, trying to calm himself.
He went to the door and exited into the corridor, then carefully followed the signs on the bulkheads until he found a turbolift.
The male Bajoran officer who greeted Nog on the bridge of the Akorem Laan might or might not have been the same individual who had told him to remain in his quarters. In Nog’s experience, Bajorans were usually as hard to tell apart as hew-mons.
“This is a restricted area,” said the officer. Another pair of brown-uniformed Bajorans, a male and a female, approached him, their intentions as clear as if they were Nausicaan bouncers.
“I just wanted to find out what was going on,” Nog said, splaying his hands imploringly.
“That won’t be necessary,” said another voice as the pair put their hands on his shoulders and began steering him back into the turbolift.
They stopped. “Yes Eminence,” they said in unison, then released their grip on Nog’s quaking shoulders.
Kai Winn emerged from behind a bank of arcane-looking equipment and approached Nog and the officers who still flanked him. “It’s all right. Why have you come to the bridge, child?”
“I heard the alarms,” Nog said. In fact, his lobes were still ringing, even though the Klaxon had been turned off minutes earlier. “I just wanted to know what was going on.”
Winn nodded, then turned toward the stern-looking, blunt-fa
ced Bajoran male who stood in the center of the room. The large viewer beyond him at the front of the room displayed an image of a Federation runabout whose port side looked pitted and scorched. “With your permission, Colonel Lenaris?”
“By all means, Eminence,” he said deferentially. Nog gathered that this colonel was nominally in command of the ship. But Winn was clearly the one who wielded the real authority here.
Winn returned her gaze to Nog. “We seem to have reached a portion of the DMZ frequented by the Maquis. The Starfleet runabout aiding in our search has been damaged by one of their mines.”
Mines, Nog thought, his fear rising, running, and getting out ahead of him. If the runabout can smack into a mint, then so can this ship.
“How ... How bad is the damage?” Nog asked, his heart racing.
The colonel spoke up. “The crew of the Orinoco was fortunate. Their navigational deflector apparently set off the mine, but the runabout managed to avoid the brunt of the blast. Chief O’Brien and his team are busy repairing the damage now, with some assistance from our people. We’re at full stop for the moment.”
Nog considered with mounting horror just how close O’Brien and the other Starfleet people had come to being incinerated by a terrorist booby trap.
“After we get under way again,” he asked the colonel, “how do we know we won’t run into more of these mines?”
Lenaris smiled beneficently. “We’ve got a pretty good idea of the mines’ sensor profiles now, thanks to the incident with the Orinoco.”
“Don’t fear, child,” said the kai.
Fear is one of the things we Ferengi do best, Nog thought as he nodded a mute acknowledgment. He wondered how O’Brien and the others on the runabout dealt with that fear.
Then, perhaps as a way of managing his own trepidation, he became truly curious about that. How could anyone keep his head when faced with such a crippling emotion?
“Could I listen in on their comm traffic?” Nog asked Winn, who batted the request to the colonel with an interrogative glance.
“I don’t see why not,” said Lenaris. “So long as you don’t tie up the channel with any chatter of your own.”
The colonel ushered him toward a console in an out-of-the-way corner, where a female Bajoran officer who couldn’t have been much older than he was adjusted an earpiece to “passive” mode, then handed the unit to him. It hadn’t been built with the Ferengi body plan in mind, so Nog had to hold the earpiece in place with one hand as he took an unoccupied seat nearby. Then he did something else that many Ferengi did extraordinarily well.
He listened.
Monitoring the Starfleet crew’s secure-channel conversations with each other and with the Bajoran crew, Nog was impressed at how efficiently—and apparently fearlessly—O’Brien, Muniz, Adabwe, and Wright worked to transform a near-catastrophe into a minor inconvenience. His Uncle Quark’s management style notwithstanding, Nog concluded that constant yelling might not be necessary to get satisfactory results out of one’s subordinates after all. The Orinoco and its Bajoran escort were both under way again within the hour.
From the confidence Nog heard in the Starfleet team members’ voices, he might have concluded that the mine incident had never even happened. He was beginning to think that O’Brien and his staff were either the bravest people in the galaxy, or the most foolish. Or maybe they possessed acting abilities capable of fooling even the most sensitive, empathetic of Ferengi lobes.
Whatever the reason, these people seemed to fear nothing, while Nog and his father couldn’t even stand up to Quark. What am I doing hanging around with people who have this kind of courage?
Somehow, the Starfleet team had made an acquisition that Nog had never seriously considered making. And he found that it both shamed and inspired him.
“The runabout’s sensor link verifies that we’re approaching the end of the warp trail,” said the young female Bajoran. Nog could see that her words were intended for Colonel Lenaris and Kai Winn, both of whom were still on the bridge. “The coordinates correspond with this system’s one marginally habitable planet.”
“That has to be where the Maquis took the Orb,” Winn said, apparently speaking to no one in particular. A mottled blue crescent was steadily growing on the forward viewer.
Lenaris nodded as he scrutinized one of the many nearby tactical displays. “It would seem so, judging from the sensor data Legate Turrel supplied us. This has to be the location of the base from which the thieves are currently operating.”
The colonel gestured to another junior officer. “Open a channel to the Orinoco.”
“O’Brien here, Colonel,” came the chief’s voice a moment later.
“We’re ready to make our approach. Is your recovery team prepared?”
“Just say the word.”
No fear, Nog thought, lying to himself. He felt as though he was about to hyperventilate. No fear.
“All right,” Lenaris said. “Let’s—”
O’Brien’s raised voice cut the colonel off. “There’s a ship approaching us from the planet. From the profile, I’d say it’s a small Maquis raider.”
“Confirmed,” said an intent young Bajoran man who was seated at a console to the colonel’s right.
“We see him,” Lenaris told O’Brien. He began barking orders to his crew. “Red alert. Raise shields. Charge weapons.”
The klaxons shrilled again. Nog winced as his head rang like a bell.
The battle was fast, savage, and memorable only for its brevity. But the bridge had shaken so much that Nog worried he might develop kidney trouble.
Then something happened that seemed to surprise everyone on board: After exchanging multiple barrages with both the runabout and the Akorem Laan, the Maquis raider simply broke off its attack and flew off. Away from the planet where the Maquis base was supposedly located.
“Pursue them,” Winn said to Lenaris, “We have to find out what they know.”
Lenaris gently shook his head. “I’d advise against that, Eminence. This could be a ploy intended to leave the Orinoco vulnerable to a sneak attack.”
Winn looked angry at being questioned on the bridge. But she also seemed to know the limits of her expertise. Thank the Blessed Exchequer that somebody does, Nog thought, wondering not for the first time just how he allowed himself to be dragged into the middle of a combat zone.
Apparently satisfied that he was acting with the kai’s blessing, Lenaris resumed giving the bridge crew their orders. “Approach the planet. Cover the runabout’s landing from a standard orbit.”
Nog knew that O’Brien and his recovery team had no choice other than actually landing; being impervious to transporter beams, the blindvault itself couldn’t simply be beamed up from the Maquis base. Once again, Nog marveled at the courage of O’Brien and the others. After all, these were engineers, not marines.
Even Marauder Mo might think twice about doing something like this, Nog thought as he exchanged a glance with Winn. Unless he’d been paid up front, that is.
Nog was glad he hadn’t been forced to accompany Chief O’Brien’s team down to the surface. But not for the reasons he’d expected.
“They’re dead,” O’Brien reported gravely, immediately after his team had crossed the curiously quiet Maquis perimeter. “All of them.”
Winn looked stricken. “You’re saying the Maquis fighters we’ve been tracking are all dead?”
“Yes, ma’am. Almost all of them are—were—humans. But we’re finding some Bajorans among the bodies as well.”
Nog watched the entire Bajoran crew as they bowed their heads mournfully. He felt unutterably sad. No amount of latinum could make up for the lives that had been lost.
“How did they die, Chief?” Lenaris asked, his voice somber.
“A firefight, apparently. A pretty vicious one, from the look of things. We’re continuing our tricorder sweeps. O’Brien out.”
The Bajoran bridge was silent as a tomb for the remainder of the recovery team’s
search of the Maquis compound. Finally, uncounted minutes later, O’Brien’s voice returned, sounding more upbeat this time. “We’ve isolated the footprint of the blindvault. It’s showing up as a one-cubic-meter blank spot on our scans.”
“That’s wonderful news, Chief,” said Winn, brightening.
“How long do you expect the recovery op to take?” Lenaris asked.
“It shouldn’t take us half an hour to get it aboard the Orinoco, Colonel. Is your mission specialist ready to assist us in getting the thing open?”
Lenaris looked in Nog’s direction. Nog merely swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded.
It’s showtime.
The chief was wrong, Nog realized as he and Winn materialized aboard the Orinoco. It had taken the recovery team only twenty-seven minutes to carry the blindvault that held the Orb of Contemplation back to the small ship and then reach orbit.
Nog stepped down from the small, two-person transporter stage located behind the runabout’s cockpit, followed a moment later by Winn.
The first thing Nog noticed was the slick-looking black cube, just aft of the transporter, still sitting on the antigrav sled the recovery team had used to bring it aboard the runabout. Each of the cube’s sides measured just over a square meter. The next thing Nog noticed was the trio of Starfleet-garbed people who stood about the sled, touching the object’s seamless surface in search of a way in.
That’s why I’m here, Nog reminded himself. Because nobody here except me has a chance of getting a blindvault open quickly enough to satisfy Kai Winn.
The sound of Colonel Lenaris’s voice drew Nog’s eyes toward the extreme forward part of the cabin, where the gray-blue planet below was visible through a large, front-facing window.
“We’re ready to break orbit and withdraw from the DMZ, Orinoco.”
Chief O’Brien, seated in the cockpit with his back to Nog, answered crisply. “We’re ready as well.”
Moments later, the planet dropped away. The runabout was heading back toward Deep Space 9, shadowed by its better-armed Bajoran escort. The worst part of the mission was over, Nog noted with no small amount of relief. Within two days, he’d be back home, trying to explain his mysterious absence to his uncle and his father.
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