Unfortunately, the one thing the servants could not provide was a way of proving that the contract Brunt had produced was a fake. She had brought all of her skills to bear, many of which she learned during Starfleet advanced tactical training, particularly a decryption course that left her wondering how anything was ever kept secure on a computer.
Driven both by a need to talk to someone—anyone—who wasn’t a Ferengi, and also by the fact that she was, technically, still on duty, she put a call through to Deep Space 9, charging it to the Grand Nagus’s account. I’ll pay Rom back later if I have to.
Kira’s face appeared on the viewer. Ro still did a double take every time she saw her in Starfleet colors. On the one hand, she’d associated Kira with the red Bajoran Militia uniform she’d worn for the first six months or so that Ro had served on the station. On the other hand, the new uniform suited her.
“Ro,” the colonel—or, rather, captain—said. “Good to see you. Status report?”
“The ambassador’s safe and sound—but I’m not sure I can say the same for his brother.” Quickly, she filled Kira in on the situation.
Kira looked dubious. “I can’t believe Rom’d be capable of something like that. Almost any other Ferengi, maybe, but not Rom.”
“That’s what Quark said. We’re looking into it.”
“Good. Rom’s doing some real good over there, I’d hate to see some of those trolls ruin it.”
Chuckling, Ro said, “You really don’t like Ferengi much, do you?”
“What was your first clue?” Kira also chuckled. “I don’t think I could ever stand to visit their homeworld. Do you know, the first time I met Zek, he hit on me?”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”
“You’ll be okay there?”
“Actually, it’s not that bad,” she said, her words belying her feelings of only a few minutes before. “Being here has actually put a lot of Quark’s personality into focus.”
Again the dubious expression. “And that’s a good thing?”
Ro considered her words. “Useful data, if nothing else.” She didn’t want to get into how she felt about Quark with the captain—especially since she herself wasn’t a hundred percent sure how she felt about Quark. Changing the subject, Ro asked, “What’s happening on the station?”
That query prompted a quick rundown of the station’s status—which was unusually quiet. “Oh,” Kira added, “and tell Quark that Treir’s doing a fine job running the bar.”
“I’m not sure he’ll be happy to hear that.”
Kira grinned. “Why do you think I want you to tell him?” Then her expression grew more professional. “All right—keep me posted about what’s happening, Lieutenant. Any change in power on Ferenginar is going to have an impact on the rest of the quadrant.” She seemed to consider her words for a moment, then added, “I’m not sure how big, but definitely some kind of impact.”
Nodding, Ro said, “Don’t worry, Captain. I’ll update you every twenty-six hours.”
“Good. Kira out.”
Kira’s face faded from the viewer, replaced with a display of a receipt telling Ro the cost of the communiqué, and asking Ro to acknowledge it. She did so with the touch of a control, at which point the view switched to a still image of a well-dressed Ferengi man watching a naked Ferengi woman chew food.
“Do you miss the good old days, when males were real males and females were naked and quiet?”
As the voice spoke, the woman spit out her food and handed it to the man, who hungrily ate the masticated bugs. Ro had to swallow down the bitter bile that welled up in her throat at the sight of it. The image switched to the same Ferengi man punching something into a padd, then holding it up to the camera. The words TRANSACTION CONCLUDED were visible in the Ferengi language on the padd’s display.
“When Ferengi businessmen were free to earn profit without worrying about ridiculous tax burdens, or unwanted competition?”
The image switched to Rom, looking even more befuddled than normal. “The Grand Nagus is trying to spit in the face of Ferengi tradition—and Ferengi values. Ferenginar doesn’t need a Grand Nagus who breaks a contract and destroys the Ferengi family by interbreeding with aliens. Ferenginar needs—”
Rom’s face faded, replaced by the smiling face of Brunt, which actually served to make Ro more nauseous than watching a woman pre-chew her husband’s food.
“—Brunt. He understands what made Ferenginar great. Sponsored by Chek Pharmaceuticals on behalf of the Brunt for Grand Nagus Campaign.”
Well, Ro thought, they’re certainly laying it on thick. Several attempts to end the commercial had failed, as the unit apparently could not shut down until the ad was complete.
As she tried to banish thoughts of herself sitting naked next to Quark chewing an assortment of worms for him—a mental image she would go to her grave never sharing with Quark—Ro realized that talking to Kira over a comm line wasn’t enough. She still felt overwhelmed by the general Ferenginess around her, and needed a stronger palliative.
After a moment, she realized that the Brunt commercial had provided her with the answer.
Within a few minutes, one of the toadying servants was able to secure her a transport that would take her to the hospital where Leeta was being treated.
En route, she saw several more advertisements, including a bunch for Eelwasser soda, all of which involved Brunt, and all of them sponsored by Chek Pharmaceuticals. These are people who have it in for Rom. Okay, so maybe the contract is a dead end, but there are routes to pursue in the other direction. We know Brunt has a motive to stop Rom—maybe Chek’s involvement goes beyond sponsorship? She wasn’t sure where this would lead, but she also hadn’t started digging yet.
Something to take on after visiting the pregnant lady.
As expected, Ro had to pay a fee to enter the waiting room of the hospital, another to visit Leeta, and yet another to be allowed to stay more than a minute, since it wasn’t official visiting hours.
The hospital itself was like none Ro had ever seen. She’d been in treatment centers, infirmaries, sickbays, medical units, and hospitals all over the quadrant, and most of them shared a certain antiseptic feel. More to the point, all of them had that distinct chemical smell that came of storing large quantities of medicine. Even the most pristine Starfleet sickbay had at least a mild whiff in the air.
But not this place. With décor as tacky as the décor everywhere else on this planet, the only thing Ro smelled here was the metallic tinge of gold-pressed latinum. She saw no evidence of medical equipment in the waiting room or the hallways. The staff was dressed in the multicolored jackets, shirts, and vests that most Ferengi favored; if the sign outside the building hadn’t specified that it was a hospital, Ro would have assumed herself to have entered an ordinary office building.
It just figures, she thought. Human doctors take an oath that says “First, do no harm.” The Ferengi doctors’ oath is probably more like “First, take their money.”
Leeta’s room was not the one listed at the front desk, a fact not revealed to Ro until a staffer had escorted her to the corner room listed in the computer. The door slid open to reveal a huge room containing plush carpeting, a window with a view of the Tower of Commerce, curtains of what looked like Tholian silk, and several comfortable guest chairs. The large biobed at the center looked more comfortable than any biobed Ro had ever seen, and was also the first thing she had seen in the entire hospital that looked even vaguely medical. As it was, the display unit over the bed was framed in something that was at least plated gold.
The biobed was, however, empty.
When the staffer double-checked his padd, his eyes widened. “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry, but it appears that the Grand Nagus’s wife has been moved to smaller accommodations. It’s coincidental with the change in her billing cycle.”
Having already gotten the lay of the land, Ro didn’t even ask the next question until after she’d handed a strip of latinum to the staffe
r. “What change?”
Pocketing the latinum, the staffer started leading Ro back down the corridor. “Her billing cycle actually almost ended. Dr. Orpax prefers not to treat customers who break contracts. However, the Grand Nagus convinced him to keep his wife on as a customer—for a price.” The staffer leaned closer to Ro. “He’d better hope he comes out of this okay, because Orpax is charging double his usual fee, and if he’s ousted as Grand Nagus, he won’t have a strip to his name.”
Ro looked at the staffer in shock as they turned a corner. “You mean to say that if Rom hadn’t paid up, Orpax would’ve kicked Leeta out?”
The staffer, in turn, looked at Ro in even more shock. “Of course. What else could he do? Dr. Orpax is a professional, who spent years in very costly training to become a medical practitioner. Do you really expect him to just give away his services? Where’s the logic in that?”
Ro found she couldn’t come up with a good answer to that—and was relieved of the need to do so by their arrival at a door in the middle of one of the back corridors. The door slid open to reveal a tiny room in which there was barely enough space for a much more standard-looking biobed, with a display unit over it that was as utilitarian as any seen on a Starfleet ship. There was only one chair, and no window.
Both bed and chair were occupied by sleeping forms—Leeta in the former, her belly swollen with the child she carried; Rom in the latter, curled up with his nagal staff in his lap. Leeta awoke at Ro’s entrance. Rom, though, didn’t budge.
“If you need anything,” the staffer said, “simply come to the front desk and drop a slip of latinum into the box.” With a bow, he then departed.
Ro had checked over Leeta’s security file before leaving the station, more out of curiosity than anything else. There wasn’t much there. The only specific security-related items in her file involved the formation of a union among Quark’s employees and her incarceration—along with Kira, Rom, and Jake Sisko—as part of a resistance movement on the station when the Dominion had taken it over during the early days of the war. The only other information consisted of her relationships with both Dr. Bashir and Rom and a few pictures.
She looked like none of those pictures now, of course. Her red hair was uncombed and unstyled, splayed out on the pillow of the biobed, she was pale, her eyes watery, her skin blotchy in spots, and she had that puffy look that pregnant women tended to get.
“Hi,” Leeta said in a sleepy voice. “You must be Lieutenant Ro. Rom said you came with Quark and Nog.”
“Yeah, yeah, I did.” Ro gave an encouraging smile. “We met briefly at the signing ceremony. I just wanted to check up on you, see how you were doing.”
“Honestly, I’ve been better. Pregnancy’s supposed to be a wonderful time—you’re creating new life. But this has just been awful. I’ve been sick, I’ve been tired, and then this whole thing with Rom…” Her voice trailed off. Then she started coughing, and Ro went and grabbed the glass from the sideboard, assuming it to be filled with water. However, it was empty. A quick perusal of the sideboard revealed a spigot with a strip slot next to it. Sighing, Ro dropped a strip of latinum into the slot and put the glass under the spigot. As soon as the strip fell into the receptacle with a hollow clunk, the spigot released the water.
Gratefully taking the glass, Leeta said, “Thanks,” in a hoarse voice, then drank three-quarters of the glass’s contents. “Still,” she continued, her voice strengthened by the water, “it’s worth it. Rom and I are having a baby.” She looked over at Rom, still sleeping soundly. Ro thought she heard a bit of a snore coming from the chair.
“Can I ask you something?” Ro said after a moment.
“Sure.”
Ro hesitated. “How can you stand to live here? I mean, it’s been an—interesting visit, to say the least, but I think I’d go crazy if I had to stay here.”
“It’s not that easy,” Leeta said, lowering her eyes. “Nobody here really likes me. I mean, Rom’s servants are all nice to me, but they just see me as the Grand Nagus’s wife. And that’s kinda nice, really, but—honestly, I don’t have any real friends. Rom’s mother doesn’t approve of me, and there’s nobody else here to talk to.” She sighed. “And there’s nothing for me to do, either. Yes, I’m the Grand Nagus’s wife, but there’s no real job that comes with that. And since I’m not a Ferengi, there’s not much I can do here except look pretty standing next to Rom.” She smiled. “It’s kind of ironic, really.”
“How do you mean?” Ro asked.
Leeta took another sip of water. “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m an orphan.” Ro had assumed as much, based on the lack of a family name in her file. “When I was really young, I went to work as a serving girl in the home of a rich Cardassian named Gallek. He thought I was a nice little girl, and he always used to sneak me treats. Then, when I got older, he”—she hesitated—“he became attracted to me.”
A flush of anger suffused Ro, as she knew exactly what happened to Bajoran women who were deemed attractive by Cardassian men.
Quickly, Leeta said, “But he never did anything to me! That’s the weird part—I kept expecting him to. The head of the serving staff kept warning me that he might—she’d been raped when she was a girl by a different Cardassian, and she lived in fear of it—but Gallek never touched me. He treated me well, he was always nice to me, and he always told me how—how beautiful I was, but it never went past that.” Her lips twisted in an expression that was, oddly, part smile and part frown. “So I used it. Gallek’s servants were all treated much better than most Bajoran servants, mainly because I asked him to. He could never say no to me—at least, he mostly couldn’t. It wasn’t much—better food, nicer clothes, no beatings—but it made everyone’s life easier. And everyone was happier. Maybe not happy, but you took what you could get.”
Ro shook her head. She’d left Bajor behind during the Occupation, after living in a succession of offworld refugee camps, because she refused to live among a defeated people. “So you gilded your cage a little,” she said in perhaps more snide a tone than she’d wanted.
“What else was I supposed to do? I didn’t know anything about the Resistance—I’d heard rumors, but most of us thought the Resistance was just a myth that Bajorans perpetuated as a way of keeping up hope. I was an orphan with nowhere to go. The one thing I had going for me was that the head of the house was fond of me. So I used it to make my life easier.” She finished off her water. “Gallek died of a heart attack about a week before the Cardassians pulled out of Bajor. Suddenly, we had nowhere to go—the Cardassians torched his house before they withdrew—so I took the money I had saved over the years. Eventually, I came up to the space station. I already knew how to use my looks to influence people, so I went to Quark.” Leeta smiled. “He never treated me as nicely as Gallek, but he also paid me better. And I was free, which was the important part.”
Again, Ro shook her head. Leeta wasn’t entirely what she’d expected. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“You’re free, like you said. You’re not Gallek’s servant anymore—in essence, you are Gallek.”
“I know—that’s why I thought it was ironic.”
“So why stay here if you don’t like it?”
“I never said I didn’t like it.” She looked over at Rom, whose snores had gotten a bit louder, and suddenly, she was beaming. The paleness, the puffiness, the blemishes on her skin, all of them seemed to recede as she gazed longingly at her husband. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life—because I’m with him.”
From what Ro had seen, she wasn’t sure that that was worth it. Then again, I dropped everything to come visit Quark’s homeworld and to spend time with him, so who the hell am I to judge?
“Can I ask you something?” Leeta said in a small voice.
“Of course.”
“You really seem to like Quark.”
Here it comes. “Yeah—yeah, I do.”
Leeta shook her head. “Why?”
Unable to help herself, Ro burst out laughing, as did Leeta a moment later. “Honestly, there are times when I have no idea. But he’s so—so sincere.”
Giving Ro an incredulous look, Leeta said, “He’s the most insincere man I’ve ever met!”
“Yeah, I know, but he’s so sincere in his lack of sincerity. I mean, yes, he’s totally full of it, but he’s completely up-front about how full of it he is. It’s kind of—well, endearing.”
“If you say so.” Leeta didn’t sound convinced.
“He’s really not a bad person,” Ro said. “For all his bluster, he’s as compassionate in his own way as Rom is.”
Leeta grinned. “I can tell you never worked for him.”
“True. And he’s certainly capable of being a conniving bastard, but—there’s more to him than that. Besides, he and I have a lot in common.”
That seemed to surprise Leeta. “Like what?”
Choosing her words carefully, Ro said, “Neither of us are entirely perfect fits with what our societies expect of us.”
“I did notice that your earring’s on the wrong ear.”
At that, Ro laughed again. “Yeah, my little rebellion against the vedeks who kept grabbing my ear when I didn’t want them to.” She then gave Leeta a serious look, and decided, Oh, the hell with it, I’ve been wanting to ask her this since I got here, may as well do it already. “Mind if I ask a really personal question?”
Shrugging, Leeta said, “I guess.”
“What’s it like—being in bed with a Ferengi?”
This time it was Leeta’s turn to laugh, though it turned quickly into another coughing fit. Ro immediately dashed over to the water spigot, tossed what she hoped was only a strip into the receptacle, and poured her some more water.
Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Three Page 10