by David Mack
Dalkaya was standing in front of the master systems display with his arms crossed and his eyebrow lifted in a show of disdain. “If you don’t want your punching bags to talk back, you should get your exercise on the holodeck.”
“Now I know why people call your species rude.”
“Rude? Hardly. Brutally honest, perhaps.” Dalkaya glanced toward Rossini, then looked back at Ra-Havreii. “He was right, you know. The specs—”
“I know what the specs say,” Ra-Havreii snapped.
“Then you should update them, instead of expecting the rest of us to read your mind.”
Ra-Havreii frowned and pretended to adjust something on the MSD. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
Dalkaya didn’t seem to be fooled by the chief engineer’s feigned busywork. “While you’re at it, vent your angst someplace else.”
“Excuse me?” He turned and put on his most intimidating glower. “Need I remind you that you’re addressing a superior officer?”
Dalkaya grimaced with contempt. “Sure, pull rank. How’s that been working for you? From what I see, every engineer on this ship tenses up at the sight of you. Way to boost morale.”
“I won’t apologize for being a perfectionist when it comes to this ship.”
“A perfectionist they could handle. But you’re also a micromanager and a condescending prick. And that’s a step too far for most of them. And me.”
Puffing out his chest, Ra-Havreii asked, “You want off this ship? Just ask.”
“Not at all. I like this ship, and I like its officers and crew.” He made a sour appraisal of Ra-Havreii. “Present company excluded.”
Ra-Havreii’s pulse quickened, and his hands turned to fists. “Dalkaya, you do understand that insubordination is a court-martial offense.”
The Zibalian appeared unfazed. “You want to rip open that bag of troubles? Be my guest. You’ve pissed in so many people’s boots lately, I doubt there are any officers left on this ship who’d convict me on your word alone.”
“Really? And just whose wrath have I incurred?”
Dalkaya swung his arm in a gesture that encompassed all of engineering. “Everyone who knows you. They won’t say it to your face, but they’re starting to hate you for meddling with their work and giving them advice they don’t want or need.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that not one of them would speak up? That you alone have the courage to speak truth to power?”
A diffident shrug. “Think what you want. But the only reason these people haven’t pushed you out an airlock is they’re waiting to see who you recommend for deputy chief engineer.”
That news caught Ra-Havreii by surprise. He hadn’t known that any of his engineers were aware that Commander Sarai had been pressuring him for months to name deputy chiefs in order to establish a clear chain of engineering command succession in the event of emergencies. He had been dragging his heels, mostly to be contrary to Sarai as payback for her spurning him, but he had justified his sloth by claiming that none of the “dilettantes” under his supervision deserved to hold such lofty titles within the department.
But apparently word had gotten out.
He pretended it was a matter of no importance. “I’ll decide when I’m ready.”
“Well, I’d do it sooner rather than later if I were you. The longer this goes on, the deeper their resentment’s going to get. And in case you haven’t noticed, you aren’t making any new friends on this ship acting like a pompous twit.”
And the few I used to have are getting a little more distant each day, he admitted to himself. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. Get your head out of your ass about Melora Pazlar. She dumped you. Deal with it, preferably on your time instead of ours.”
Ra-Havreii grabbed Dalkaya by his tunic. “You’re outta line, mister!”
A cocky smile. “I’m just trying to help. But if you don’t let me go in the next five seconds, there won’t be enough of you left for Doctor Ree to stitch back together. Sir.”
Maybe he was bluffing. It sure sounded like bravado to Ra-Havreii. But he knew enough about Zibalians to realize that he had no desire to face one in a bare-knuckle brawl. Especially not with a dozen other engineers watching to see what happened next.
He let go of Dalkaya. “You’re relieved and confined to quarters until further notice.”
“Whatever you say, boss.” Dalkaya smoothed the front of his uniform as he backed away toward the nearest turbolift, defiant and cocksure. “Whatever you say.”
Ra-Havreii watched the Zibalian depart, then he barked at the other engineers, “What? Back to work!” They all averted their eyes and retreated into their duties.
Alone in front of the MSD, all Ra-Havreii could do was brood.
He resented Dalkaya—not just because the jerk had been right about all he had said but because, barring a massive on-duty mishap or the public murder of a Federation dignitary, Ra-Havreii was probably going to have to promote him to deputy chief of engineering.
Life sucks.
“Put it up on the companel,” Admiral William Riker said. “I want to see the whole grid.”
On the other side of Riker’s desk, his aide de camp, Lieutenant Ssura, clutched his paws tight around a padd. When the Caitian lieutenant frowned, his whiskers twitched. “I don’t think we have time for a full review right now, sir.”
“Nonsense. Put it on-screen.” Riker reclined his chair as Ssura relayed the latest mission priorities from Starfleet Command to the large companel mounted on the bulkhead. It was a large spreadsheet, with objectives organized by type into rows and assigned by ship into columns. In addition to listing assignments for the Titan, which served as Riker’s flagship and mobile command post, the grid showed which tasks the Operations Division at Starfleet Command thought should be assigned to the other vessels currently under Riker’s command as part of the Alpha Quadrant Frontier Exploration Group, or AQ-FEG.
Using the interface built into his office’s desktop, Riker highlighted several items in the schedule. “Why are so many of the planetary surveys assigned to the Canterbury?”
Ssura said, “I think the rationale was the recent refit of their sensor suite.”
“That’s fine, but tasking them with all the surveys has them hopping back and forth all over the Carina Arm. Draft a new schedule that keeps them on a constant outward heading, then reassign whatever surveys don’t fit that course to the Wasp and the Ajax.”
Never a complaint or a protest from Ssura, only a compliant nod. “I’ll have a new schedule ready for you by the start of alpha shift tomorrow, sir.”
“Good.” Riker highlighted a handful of different items in the grid. “Am I reading this right, Ssura? Gaseous anomaly surveys in the void between galactic arms?”
His aide leaned close to the companel. “I believe that’s what it says, sir.”
“Is that what passes for a joke at Starfleet Ops these days? Tasking my flagship with logging gaseous anomalies while sending the Canterbury on a possible first-contact mission?”
Perhaps sensing that the rhetorical question was a trap, Ssura considered his reply for a long moment. “I presume you’d like me to reverse those assignments, Admiral?”
“A capital idea, Lieutenant. Make it so.”
Ssura noted the order on his padd, then checked the chrono. “Sixty seconds, sir.”
Riker sprang from his chair. “One minute? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried, sir, but—”
“Move!” He almost trampled his overworked aide on his sprint out the door of his office. Though he suspected Ssura was right behind him, it was hard for Riker to tell because the Caitian’s tufted paws were whisper quiet even when running on the carpeted decks of the Titan.
It had been a long while since Riker had really needed to run, and as he barreled through the corridors of the Titan, he feared that he was starting to feel his age—mostly in his knees, but also in his hips. Have to ask Ree to take a look at th
at, he decided.
Running flat out, he made a wide turn down a broad, high-ceilinged spiral ramp that connected a few of the decks in the Titan’s saucer section. The ramp was a nonstandard design element aboard Starfleet vessels, but the variety of alien species who served on the Titan, including many nonhumanoids, made its inclusion a necessity rather than a convenience.
“Make a hole, please!” Riker shouted, cueing the junior officers and enlisted personnel ahead of him to stand aside so he could pass in a hurry. It was a perquisite of his rank that he rarely employed, precisely because he had found it more effective to save it for true emergencies such as this one. Never be the boy who cried “wolf,” he reminded himself.
At the bottom of the ramp Riker narrowly dodged a collision with computer specialist K’chak’!’op, a massive Pak’shree female whose size and appearance—she reminded Riker of a gigantic four-eyed beetle, except for the flurry of tentacles undulating from either side of her head—made him recoil slightly. “Sorry!” He didn’t wait long enough to hear the translation of her storm of angry clicking noises.
A few doors shy of his destination, Riker stopped and took a deep breath. He smoothed the front of his uniform as Lieutenant Ssura stumbled to a halt at his side. “Time?”
“Fifteen seconds, sir.”
Affecting a calm demeanor, Riker continued ahead, through the door, into the Titan’s education suite. On the other side had gathered several members of the ship’s crew, those who had children enrolled in the onboard school run by T’Pel, the civilian wife of Commander Tuvok. The Vulcan woman was standing just inside the door, and she greeted Riker as he entered. “Welcome, Captain. Your wife is holding a seat for you up front.”
“Thank you, T’Pel.”
No matter how hard Riker tried not to draw attention, he found it impossible to move about the Titan, especially in settings such as this, without becoming the focus, even if only briefly. He smiled at other parents as he walked up the center aisle to the front row. There he settled onto a folding chair next to his wife, Commander Deanna Troi, the Titan’s diplomatic officer and head of its counseling division.
She made a show of checking the chrono. “Cut it a bit close this time.”
“Nonsense,” Riker said. “Wild targs couldn’t have kept me away.”
The overhead lights dimmed, and a warm spotlight illuminated the small stage. From hidden speakers, classical music filled the room, and a troupe of small bodies garbed in tights and tutus pranced and spun across the stage, mesmerizing in their grace and innocence.
But there was only one who commanded Riker’s attention: his daughter, Tasha, who pirouetted across the stage, showing all she had learned of ballet. Five and a half years old and already she’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, he marveled.
Deanna took his hand in hers. Like him, she had tears of joy in her eyes while she watched their daughter float like a sylph in time with a melody stolen from a dream.
Will Riker loved being a Starfleet officer, and he loved exploring the galaxy. But if there were only one thing in life he knew to be true, it was that he loved his wife and daughter more.
Four
* * *
There were five words that Brunt had never thought he would entertain without irony: It’s not about the latinum. If there was one thing every Ferengi grew up to understand, it was the foundational truth that, ultimately, everything in life and the universe was about latinum. Yet no matter how many different ways he manipulated the numbers on his latest undertaking, he was unable to justify its trouble or expense purely in the name of profit.
Hunched over the controls of his ship the Net Gain, Brunt kept his eyes on the sensor display even as his thoughts wandered through wastelands of self-doubt. Once he had been among the most feared liquidators of the Ferengi Commerce Authority. In recent years he had recovered from the financial reversals of an arms deal gone bad and clawed his way back into the upper echelons of Ferengi society. Now he was a rich and respected figure on Ferenginar, a proud Magnus-plus-level member of the Ferengi Entrepreneurs Club.
So what am I doing at the ass end of space, lurking alone in the dark between the stars? He thought he had long ago put an end to his spacefaring days. But here he was, ensconced once more on his private ship, seeking out conflict and danger instead of luxuriating in his office, sipping on Slug-o-Cola and counting his profits in between oo-mox sessions with all the choicest female companions latinum could rent by the hour. By the numbers, he knew he could never explain this decision to his fellow Ferengi. They would never understand.
This wasn’t business. This was personal.
New data appeared on the sensors. The Federation supply ship he was tracking had changed its heading and increased its speed. He adjusted the settings on his helm to keep the Net Gain in the freighter’s sensor blind spot, so that if they somehow detected him they might mistake him for a sensor echo in their warp eddy.
Most small starships would be hard-pressed to pull off such a trick, but the Net Gain was no ordinary vessel. It was packed with improvements Brunt had acquired through years of hard work and judicious investment. Signal-boosted long-range sensors, military-grade encrypted comms, enhanced shields, and a few hidden weapon systems all made the nondescript starhopper more formidable than it appeared.
Its interior upgrades were more obvious. Creature comforts abounded; a wide, soft bunk; replicators programmed with delicacies; and several crates of prime libations concealed beneath scan-proofed deck plates were just a few of the pleasures Brunt had installed to make the Net Gain an environment he could stand to live in for months at a time, if necessary.
Not that he had been foolish enough to let hedonism get in the way of survivability—his ship also boasted several pragmatic enhancements: redundant battery arrays, reinforced interior force fields, intruder countermeasures, and spare escape pods, plus a survival module built into the cockpit, which could be ejected separately in the event of an emergency, all contributed to Brunt’s peace of mind as he navigated alone into uncharted sectors of space beyond the rimward edge of the United Federation of Planets.
Course change completed, he surveyed the long-range scans of the sector ahead. There were no named systems this far from explored space, just notations from the Federation Galactic Catalog—strings of letters and numbers linked to bare-bones data. Though automated sensor arrays had mapped many of the sectors surrounding local space, little was known about which systems were inhabited—and, of those, which if any were populated by intelligent species.
So where is that supply ship going?
That question was part of what had drawn Brunt so far from his home and business. Sources he trusted to provide reliable information in exchange for hefty bribes had alerted him to the peculiar movements of cargo vessels in this sector. There were no known colonies in this region of space, no cultures advanced enough to engage in trade with the Federation or anyone else. If there had been, the Ferengi would already have sought them out as emerging markets.
Yet here was a ship that could carry millions of metric tons of cargo, the sort of vessel normally tasked with supporting a far-flung colony or starbase, traveling without a convoy or Starfleet escort on a heading into a place it seemed to have no business going. That meant it was either bringing something of value to an unknown port of call, or retrieving something of value from one. Either way that made a ship like this a prime target for pirates and smugglers.
Exactly the sort of people Brunt was looking for.
No one in the Ferengi Entrepreneurs Club had ever asked Brunt how he made his profits. Such questions were considered rude; inquiries of that kind were considered tantamount to attempted theft of trade secrets. How a Ferengi made his latinum was his own affair. So it was that even on Ferenginar very few people knew that Brunt was the proprietor of one of the most successful bounty-hunting operations in the quadrant.
Brunt had started as a lone operator in the Net Gain, tracking down criminals to coll
ect the prices on their heads, immediately after he had turned against Gaila, his former partner in the arms-dealing trade. At first it had been easy for Brunt to gain other hoodlums’ trust. His own shady reputation had enabled him to move through their ranks as if he were one of them. As a result, few of them had seen his betrayals coming until it was too late. Just like Gaila.
In time Brunt’s business expanded. First he took on partners, and then he started to subcontract. Within a few years the former liquidator had transformed his one-man bounty-hunting operation into an interstellar business empire worth over a billion bars of gold-pressed latinum. He preferred not to advertise his role in the business—not because he felt any shame over it, but because violent criminals were prone to seeking retribution, and that was a hassle he wanted to avoid.
It all had gone so well . . . until the day Gaila escaped from prison. Despite having been placed into maximum-security detention on Urwyzden Alpha, the wily Ferengi death merchant had made contact with former employees on the outside, and they had paid exorbitant bribes to guards—and, Brunt suspected, the warden—to effect Gaila’s unscheduled early release.
I should have seen this coming, Brunt castigated himself. Every man has his price.
Gaila’s newfound freedom worried Brunt. What might he do now that he was on the loose? Would he seek revenge on Brunt? Would he spread the word of Brunt’s occupation, thereby ensuring that every murder-minded alien in known space would come gunning for him? Or perhaps undermine his social standing on Ferenginar and deprive him of his coveted status as a Magnus-level member of the FEC? If nothing else, news of Gaila’s escape from prison would smear Brunt’s business reputation, even though keeping the man behind bars had been someone else’s responsibility.
It was imperative, Brunt decided, that he track down Gaila before the cunning bastard had a chance to avenge himself, and return him to prison on Urwyzden Alpha.