by Ian Edginton
Instead, the human female Corsi and her subordinate took him to the bridge, where the human DaiMon—what are they called, he thought, “kaptans”?—sat waiting for him. Also present were a bunch of other humans—including, to his disgust, more clothed females—as well as a Bajoran and, surprisingly, a single Bynar. I thought those computer-lovers all came in pairs. Still, at least the Bynar was almost normal-looking, though he did, of course, have the same hideously stunted ears as the others.
“DaiMon Phug, I’m Captain Gold. I wish I could say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but considering that your ship is holding mine in a tractor beam right now—”
“I accept no responsibility, Captain!” Phug cried. “I never asked you to come back to the Debenture.”
“In fact, you told us the Debenture had exploded. Mind telling us why you really left?”
Phug said nothing. He saw no reason to just give information to this human, and it’s not like someone from Starfleet would ever pay for it. So he remained silent.
“All right, let’s start smaller—how come we didn’t see the Debenture before it was too late?”
Again, Phug stood his ground—until the female Corsi put her hand to her phaser. Gold might have been a typical Starfleet weakling with no lobes for business, but Phug recognized in Corsi the type who liked to extort by the barrel of a phaser. This, he thought sourly, is what happens when you clothe females. They get delusions of Klingon-hood….
“Multiple cloaks,” he said. “Some Klingon, some Romulan. The Merchantman is so vast that it would overload a single device. There is a cloak array around the perimeter; they allow us to enter a trading area before the local customer base is aware of us.”
Corsi smiled. “The One Hundred and Ninety-Fourth Rule of Acquisition: ‘It’s always good business to know about your customers before they walk in your door.’ You find out what they have the most need of and then magically appear to provide it.”
Phug regarded the female with revulsion. To hear the Rules coming from a female mouth—it was despicable. He quickly turned his gaze back to the captain.
The female named Gomez was standing next to Gold. “You run several cloaks—that’s got to require a huge amount of power.”
Phug shrugged. “We acquire the technology we need to run the systems. We’re traders, after all.”
Gold cut him off. “As interesting as this is—and at some point there are questions you’ll have to answer about how exactly you acquired this cloaking technology—we need more information from you. Can you override that tractor beam?”
Phug was about to ask why he should, when it occurred to him that he was as trapped as they were. The da Vinci would never break free of the Debenture ’s tractor beam. So it was in his own interests to acquiesce. He went to the tactical station and tapped in a code sequence, ignoring the doleful look the human male at that station gave him. “There. That will free your ship. It isn’t a threatening device; its purpose is to maintain the proximity of ships of visiting customers. When you have purchased goods, there is a release code issued. I believe you have a similar tradition on your planet: validated parking.”
Corsi looked incredulous. “You trap your customers?”
Phug was offended. This female quoted the Rules, yet had no comprehension of them. “No—how can you imply that? We just want you to buy goods, then you’re free to go.”
“So by transmitting this code, the Debenture will assume we’ve conducted a transaction and then free us?” asked Gold.
Phug nodded, glad that the male, at least, understood business matters. “You must destroy this information immediately—if the Commerce Authority found I’d revealed this code, I could lose my credit rating.”
Gold was about to reply when the ship lurched, throwing Phug to the floor.
“Report!” Gold bellowed, having managed somehow to stay in his chair.
“The tractor beam disengaged, sir,” the human at tactical said, “but some kind of energy beam came from the Debenture. Now it’s trapped us.”
The Bynar spoke from one of the aft consoles. “Captain, something is attempting to take control of our computer systems!”
Gold looked at Phug questioningly.
“What?” Phug asked defensively. “I’m as surprised by this as you are!”
Gomez walked up to the Bynar. “Can you stop it, Soloman?”
“I’m attempting to do so now.” The Bynar—who, to Phug’s surprise, had a name rather than a numerical designation; Phug filed that fact away for potential future use, assuming he lived long enough—then let loose with a stream of high-pitched droning. “It’s some kind of intelligent worm—it’s very sophisticated. I will need to focus.”
“Go to it,” Gomez said, backing away.
Soloman chirped that droning some more. Phug put his hands to his ears. “Must he make that horrid noise here?”
“Suffer,” Corsi said, again putting her hand to her phaser.
Then the droning mercifully stopped. “Commander Gomez,” Soloman said, “I can only hold off this invasive program for a limited time. It needs to be stopped at the source.” Then the droning started again, stopped. “I must be vigilant here, or the da Vinci systems will be compromised.”
Gomez looked at Gold. “We’ll have to send an away team over there.”
“Put it together, Gomez.” Gold turned to Phug. “We’ll need your help, Phug.”
Phug looked around the bridge, realizing there was no escape from this. Why did these Starfleet types have to be so eager and earnest? Why couldn’t they have let him go, left him to float in his pod until he’d found a young, fresh world where he could introduce the natives to the holy joys of commerce, could amass a fiscal empire, make himself a new life and forget about this debacle? But no—these tiresome humans dragged him back to face … he couldn’t even think the words.
“I shall aid you … but on the strict understanding that I will not set foot on that ship. I will provide you with specifications and routes to disable the computer systems … and when you are done I wish to leave here and never return!”
“Good. Let’s get to it.”
Phug noticed that Gold’s statement was not an actual agreement to Phug’s terms.
Arrizon walked down the Path of Preferred Payment toward the Central Hall of the Debenture of Triple-Lined Latinum, his heart and soul at peace. Trade and commerce went on at stalls and boutiques on either side of the Path. Voices spoke softly, and gentle laughter drifted by him. As he passed by Ferengi, they bowed politely, smiled, and walked on. Words were not needed. They shared the joy that was the Way of Milia.
Turning through the Avenue of Actuaries, he reached the Central Hall, with its Fountains of Ystrad. It was a loving scale re-creation of the Swamp Forest of Arrizon’s home district. Gold-rimmed, a disk some fifty meters in diameter, the forest rose up into the atrium of the hall. Benches ringed the public space, with timed credit meters mounted on each. Sweeping around the foliage were the fountains themselves, organic-looking threads, rising to above the canopy of green. The water flowed from the sculpted crystal fountains, falling as fine rain over the trees and fungi. He inhaled deeply of the moist, loamy atmosphere. This was a good day. Arrizon smiled again: they had all been good days, since Milia returned.
Near the fountains, he saw and politely acknowledged Nakt and Tyvil, two brothers with whom he had been in a bitter dispute over Kevas franchise routes just weeks before. Now, that didn’t matter. It was a detail, a curiosity in the greater fabric of the Way of Milia. They nodded back, genuine smiles on their faces.
Soon, he thought, all Ferengi would know this peace, this contentment.
As he moved on, seeking a bench to sit on for the allotted period his credits would buy, to fully absorb the ambience of the fountains, he noticed four humans. He approached them. Three of them were, he noted dispassionately, clothed females.
He smiled at them. He was glad to see them.
They seemed wary; the tall blond-hai
red one, carrying a large weapon, spoke quietly to the two dark-haired females and their tall male companion. The male was also armed.
“That will not work here,” he informed the male, politely. He turned at this.
“Excuse me?”
“Your weapon. No weapons work here. It is the Way of Milia.” He beamed a beatific smile. “We have no need of such things. We are all friends here, all of Milia.”
The female with the longer black hair started, “Friend … uh … ?”
“Arrizon,” he prompted helpfully.
“Friend Arrizon,” she continued, “we seek the Central Core of your fine ship. Can you help?”
In a grand gesture he indicated the Fountains. “Can there be a greater center than this? It is an expression of all that is glorious on Ferenginar: the rain, the trees, the scent … all that binds us, all that makes us Ferengi!” He was lost in the ecstasy of his exhalations.
“I was asking more about a systems core. Where the machinery is?”
This brought Arrizon up short. The sheer resonant joy and the beauteous rhythms his heart and soul rang to were interrupted momentarily. A voice in his head said: She shouldn’t be asking about this. It was, he noted with some confusion, not his own voice.
He shook his head, looked away, raising his arm behind him to wave to them dismissively. “I, ah, can’t help you. Sorry, I have to move on now.”
He started away, his gait a shuffling uncomfortable one, the Fountains of Ystrad and their attendant joys gone from his mind. He had to find his peace again, commune with Milia.
* * *
Gomez watched as the small, nervous Ferengi slunk away. Seconds before he was joy unparalleled; now he was nervous.
“Odd,” commented Carol Abramowitz, the ship’s cultural specialist. “That’s the first negative reaction we’ve gotten from a Ferengi since we got here.”
“I know what you mean,” Corsi said. Despite the Ferengi’s warning, neither she nor Vance Hawkins had lowered their phasers. “It’s making me nervous.”
Gomez sighed. “And Phug’s directions are proving less than helpful … it’s like someone’s redesigned elements of this city-ship to deliberately hide the computer core.”
“It’s like a living representation of the Seventy-Sixth Rule,” Corsi said. “‘Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies!’”
Gomez shook her head. “That’s the second time you’ve quoted the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, Domenica. I’d expect Carol here to know them, but it hardly seems your area of expertise, no offense.”
“None taken.” Corsi nodded at a passing trader decked in the long coat and gleaming bejeweled headskirt of a Senior Actuary, before continuing. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no difference between the Rules of Acquisition and any other handbook of war—Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War, Admiral Chekov’s Meditations on a Pre-Surak Vulcan, the writings of Kahless. That they call their battles ‘commerce’ is a matter of semantics.” She smiled. “Two Hundred Thirty-Ninth Rule: ‘Never be afraid to mislabel a product.’”
As they turned into the Row of Restored Antiquities (as Phug’s directions indicated) they noticed a short hooded figure, obviously a Ferengi, though he carried himself differently than the others. He held a staff, made of conduit piping, Gomez noted with some curiosity. “Something …” she muttered.
“What is it, Commander?” Corsi asked.
“There’s something oddly familiar to all this … this niceness. Especially that one,” she added, pointing to the hooded Ferengi.
The Ferengi then raised his staff, his hood falling back slightly.
Gomez noted with alarm his dead, dark eyes.
David Gold paced the bridge, waiting for word from his away team. There was something that didn’t feel right about the whole situation. Something irritatingly familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Must be getting old, he thought with a wry smile.
He turned to the aft computer station. “How we doing, Soloman?”
The Bynar’s eyes looked up momentarily to acknowledge the captain, then flicked back to the displays. “I have restricted many of the subroutines that the worm has sought to access, though it seems to be learning quickly. I have had to change the encryption sequences every few seconds. It is, oddly, very much like the human game of chess—every move I make is responded to with a countermove.”
“So how are you doing?” Gold asked.
Soloman stared intently at the displays in front of him, allowing himself a small smile. “I have lost perhaps two pawns, but no bishops or knights. My opponent has suffered loss of a rook and four pawns. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”
Gold put an encouraging arm on the engineer’s shoulder. “My wife always beat me, because I’d go for the queen first. She always got pawns across the board to collapse my second line. Keep up the game, Soloman.” He turned to McAllan. “Any word from them yet?”
The tactical officer shook his head. “Not yet, sir. Still five minutes until the designated call-in point. Do you want me to hail them?”
Gold shook his head. “No, no—let’s give them the five minutes.”
* * *
It had taken less than five minutes for the away team to be surrounded.
Several Ferengi in robes had gathered around them. Each of them brandished an apparently hollow length of piping. Gomez recognized them as twenty-millimeter tetracarbide, hi-tensile, low-conductivity thermabore—hardly the most threatening weapon in the galaxy, especially against phasers. Even if that other Ferengi had been right in his statement that the phasers wouldn’t work, Gomez had faith in Corsi and Hawkins’s ability to take on half a dozen Ferengi with glorified pipes.
There was something about the way they were holding those pipes that was familiar to Gomez as well, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
The blissful traders had looked around to note the scene, but then turned back to their business.
Before Gomez could say anything, a projected image of a Ferengi appeared before the group. He beamed, and his features were aquiline—he’s almost attractive, Gomez thought with surprise. She’d never seen a Ferengi with straight teeth. Or such a look of serene contentment.
“Greetings to you, friends. I am the Prophet Milia. Are you of the Way?”
Suddenly, everything clicked in Sonya Gomez’s head. The odd sense of familiarity that had been nagging in the back of her head finally came into focus as soon as the serene Ferengi asked about “the Way.”
“Yes,” she said quickly, “we are.”
“My Adjusters were concerned about your inquiries. Such questioning is not of the Way. Being part of the Way of Milia is to be of the whole of Milia.” He nodded to them, putting his hand to his chest. “Joy to you, friends. Peace and contentment will fill you.”
He faded as quickly as he’d appeared, the moment of confrontation having apparently passed. Gomez, however, felt her apprehension growing.
“We,” she said, “are in big trouble.”
* * *
DaiMon Phug paced around the mess hall, occasionally looking up at the quiescent security detail stationed to watch him. He muttered and swore under his breath. Pausing, he turned to the guards. They were both males, thankfully, one a Bajoran male called Loten, the other a human named Foley. Having had his fill of humans, Phug posed his question to the Bajoran.
“When are we getting out of here? Do you know how long I’ve been cooped up in this room?”
Loten nodded. “About three hours.”
“What is taking your people so long?” He shook his head, gesturing wildly with his arms. “Shouldn’t have sent females! This stupid human belief in equality is going to be the ruin of your society!”
Suddenly, a connection he’d not previously made linked in his mind.
“Oh, no. They sent females.” He turned to Loten. “Get me your captain—now!”
“Why?”
“Because your precious away team will be in
desperate trouble if I don’t.”
Loten looked at Foley, who just shrugged. Then the Bajoran tapped his combadge. “Loten to bridge.”
“Gold here.”
“Sir, the Ferengi says that there’s a problem with the away team.”
“What kind of problem?”
“He won’t say, sir.”
“DaiMon, you want to join this conversation?” Gold said tartly.
Phug hesitated. “It’s about the nature of what they’re going to face over there…. and about the fact you sent females.”
Gold made some kind of noise. “Why do you Ferengi cling to this barbaric notion of women as second cla—”
“No!” Phug cut him off. “You don’t understand—it’s because they are the only females on that ship!” Phug ground his teeth, trying to figure out a way to phrase it without revealing any culpability on his own part. “It’s to do with the system set up on the city-ship—the, uh, nature of the situation over there—one which,” he added quickly, “I will attest before a registered Commerce Authority attorney that I was wholly unaware of when I engaged in the transaction!”
“Spit it out, DaiMon!” Gold shouted.
“You have to beam them off the Debenture right now. It’s about to get very nasty over there!”
The away team moved on, with several of the cloaked Ferengi following not far behind. Gomez was scanning ahead with her tricorder.
“You said we’re in trouble, Commander,” Corsi whispered testily, not wanting their pursuers to overhear. “I’d appreciate some details.”
“The power source seems to come from this direction,” Gomez said. “Of course, we’ve thought that about six times in the past few hours.”
“Commander—”
“Give me a minute, Domenica,” Gomez said while still considering the readout on the tricorder. She indicated a narrow corridor to their left. Here, some very young-looking Ferengi had set up stalls. The goods didn’t seem to have any theme to them, unlike other similar setups they’d seen on the Debenture.