Worlds of Star Trek Deep Space Nine® Volume Three

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Taking a sip of her tea, Ro moved over to join Nog on the couch. “I just finished talking with Kira.”

  “How’re things on the station?”

  “Pretty quiet, actually.”

  “That’s a change.”

  “Yeah.” Ro took a bite of jumja.

  Nog hesitated briefly. He didn’t want to ask the question, in part because he could guess the answer based on the fact that Ro hadn’t said anything about it, but he still wanted confirmation as to the status of DS9’s science officer. “Has there been any word from Shar?”

  Ro shook her head. “Not since we left the station. He’s still on Andor, and no clue as to when he’s coming back.”

  Sighing, Nog said, “I hope he’s all right. Prynn told me he’s doing what he wants to be doing, but—well, I miss him.”

  “Me, too.” Ro took a sip of her tea. “I can’t imagine what he’s going through right now.”

  A voice from behind Nog said, “Do you know how ridiculous the two of you sound?”

  Turning around, Nog saw Uncle Quark enter the sitting room. “We’re worried about Shar, Uncle,” Nog said in an annoyed voice.

  “Fine, worry about him. Nothing wrong with that. I like the guy, too—gotta love someone who’s always looking to try new and expensive drinks. But don’t talk like he’s going through something unimaginably bizarre. Nog, you were less than three years out of your Attainment Ceremony when you went into combat—which eventually led to your leg being blown off. Laren, you watched Cardassians torture and kill your father when you were a kid.” At those words, Nog shot a look at Ro. He hadn’t known that about the security chief. Uncle Quark continued: “You’re trying to tell me that, with all that, you can’t imagine what Shar’s going through?” Before Nog could say anything, his uncle went on: “Have you proven that the contract’s a fake, yet?”

  Ro shook her head. “No. I think we’re going to have to check it against the archive.”

  Nog frowned. “I read the report from Investigator Rwogo. She verified it against the archive.”

  At that, Ro smiled. “Did she?” Setting down her jumja stick and tea on the side table, she pulled out a padd. “I’ve been doing a little checking into this Rwogo woman.”

  Uncle Quark’s eyes widened. “She’s a female?”

  Giving him a withering look, Ro asked, “You have a problem with female investigators, Quark?”

  Opening his mouth, then closing it, Uncle Quark then said, “There’s no way I can answer that question without getting in trouble, is there?”

  “Not really, no,” Ro said with a grin. “In any case, Rwogo’s financial portfolio turned up some interesting transactions. She’s come into possession of about two dozen shares in Chek Pharmaceuticals. Prior to being hired as an investigator, she was doing odd jobs for the past year and a half, and hadn’t saved up enough to pay for this—and she’s only been an investigator for a week, and payday isn’t for another three weeks.”

  Uncle Quark frowned. “So how’d she pay for the shares?”

  “That’s a really good question. I haven’t been able to track that down.”

  Nog leaned forward on the couch. “Chek is the company sponsoring all those Eelwasser ads with Brunt. This is starting to look like a conspiracy.”

  “Why would Chek want to bring Rom down?” Ro asked.

  “I don’t know,” Uncle Quark said, “but he does. Trust me.”

  Nog shot his uncle a look. As far as he knew, Uncle Quark didn’t have any connections with Chek—pharmaceuticals weren’t really his line. “How do you know that?”

  “I hear things.”

  Ro stood up. “Where did you hear this?”

  “What difference does it make?” Uncle Quark now sounded defensive.

  He started to say something else, but Ro grabbed her jumja off the side table and said, “So help me, Quark, if you quote the Seventh Rule at me, I’m going to shove this jumja stick in your ear.”

  “Hey, look, I do keep my ears open.” As Uncle Quark said the words, he backed slowly away from Ro. “The point is, we need to check the archive ourselves.”

  “I don’t see how,” Nog said. “Only authorized personnel are allowed into the archive.”

  “Who’s authorized?” Ro asked.

  “Only two people,” Nog said. “Glat, the owner of the company that provides the computer that houses the archive, and Torf, the programmer who maintains it. It’s got the best security of any place in the Alliance.”

  “State-of-the-art systems?” Ro asked.

  Nog nodded. “That’s part of it, yes.”

  Uncle Quark added, “Glat is also one of the three or four richest Ferengi in the galaxy, and he pays Torf an obscene salary. Nobody can afford to bribe either of them.”

  “Not that anyone really would,” Nog said. “That archive is the ultimate preservation of the Seventeenth Rule.”

  “Of course somebody would,” Uncle Quark said in a derogatory tone. “Don’t be so naïve.”

  Before Nog could reply to the slander, Ro said, “Is there any way we can get access to it?”

  Shaking his head, Nog said, “Only the FCA and the investigators can check the archives, and they have to do it by special request to Glat. If anyone else wants to, they have to submit an application and token bribe to Glat and then expect at least a two-month wait.”

  “We don’t have two months,” Ro said dolefully.

  Uncle Quark then got the wide-eyed, openmouthed look on his face that usually meant he had an idea that he, at least, thought was brilliant. “No, but we have something better. I’ll need to make a call.”

  Nog hadn’t really been paying close attention to the FCN broadcast on the wall viewer, but the words “former Grand Nagus Zek” caught his attention, and he turned toward the screen.

  What he saw made his lobes shrivel. “What’s Gaila doing here?”

  Ro and Uncle Quark followed Nog’s gaze to the screen. It showed Zek slowly walking through the corridors of the spaceport, Maihar’du keeping the crowds at bay. Walking behind Zek was the unmistakably smarmy face of Nog’s second cousin.

  Nog said, “Computer, raise volume.”

  “—ival at Fram Memorial Spaceport this morning in the company of his Hupyrian servant and another Ferengi described as ‘an old family friend,’ but whom the FCN has identified as Gaila, a weapons merchant. When asked why he had returned to Ferenginar from his retirement on Risa, Zek had this to say.”

  The image switched to a close-up of Zek’s wrinkled face. “I’m here because the Ferengi Alliance is in trouble. Throughout my reign as Grand Nagus, I always made sure that Ferenginar was a beacon of hope to entrepreneurs across the galaxy. What I see now is a Ferenginar that shines a dim light indeed. I’m here to support Chek Pharmaceuticals’ efforts to bring glory back to Ferenginar—and to stop Grand Nagus Rom before he ruins this great alliance!”

  Zek was then replaced by the image of the newscaster. “We’ll return for an analysis of Zek’s statement after these advertisements.”

  As soon as Nog heard the first note of the Eelwasser jingle, he cried, “Computer, disengage FCN!”

  The screen went blank.

  The three of them stood and looked at each other for several seconds.

  Then, finally, Ro spoke. “This may be a problem.”

  “Understatement number nine hundred and twelve,” Uncle Quark muttered. “Someone has to tell Mother.”

  Nog looked at his uncle. So did Ro.

  Putting his hands to his chest, Uncle Quark asked, “Why are you looking at me?”

  “She’s your mother,” Ro said.

  “How is that my fault?”

  Before his uncle could whine further, Nog said, “It’s all right—I’ll tell her.”

  “Good. Besides, like I said, I have a call to make.” He looked at the now-blank viewer. “And it looks like I need to make it sooner instead of later.”

  8

  The riskier the road, the greater the profit.<
br />
  —RULE OF ACQUISITION #62

  Clad in his state-of-the-art bog suit, Eliminator Leck swam through the muck of the Mayak Swamp. The heads-up display on the visor of his helmet gave him a sensor reading that indicated that the Glat Archive was only a few more minutes away, if he kept swimming at his current pace.

  The HUD beeped a warning that a swamp eel was moving toward him. Leck unholstered his phaser and fired. The beam sliced through the mud and plant life—as well as several muck-encrusted items of refuse—and vaporized the eel.

  Swamp eels were, of course, completely harmless, but Leck didn’t see that as a good enough reason to pass up the chance to shoot something.

  Leck had been grateful for Quark’s call. An eliminator of many years’ standing, Leck rarely found himself challenged. Mostly, he just eliminated people. At first it was fun, especially since his targets were often under some kind of protection. Getting through a Starfleet security system or Nausicaan bodyguards was great fun. But after a while, it just got too easy. He was up on all the latest security technology, and Leck had never had any trouble getting past bodyguards of any species. True, the profit margin was high, but latinum was never Leck’s primary concern. He’d made more money than he could possibly spend in three lifetimes after his first year as an eliminator.

  No, what Leck wanted was a challenge.

  Quark understood that. Leck had first met the bartender when the eliminator was doing a job in Cardassian territory, one that had taken him to a Cardassian space station in orbit of Bajor called Terok Nor. After the job was done, he’d gone to Quark’s bar for some recreation, and found it in spades. Quark had a Deltan holosuite program that Leck had been trying to track down for years.

  They’d stayed in contact over the next decade or so. Quark had sent some business his way, including some of his most interesting clients.

  One was Quark himself, only a couple of years ago. When Quark’s mother had been taken by the Dominion, Quark hired him to help in the rescue operation. The operation certainly needed his help, since the rest of the team consisted of a down-on-his-luck weapons dealer, an equally down-on-his-luck ex-liquidator, two engineers, and Quark. It was slipshod, amateurish, poorly planned, pathetically executed, and more fun than Leck had had since his last trip to the Badlands.

  The HUD beeped again. He was only a few meters from his target.

  The Glat Archive had been formed a little over a century ago, the final authority on the veracity of a contract. Copies of all contracts were backed up here, and their records were sacrosanct. The primary security for the facility was natural. The archive was, basically, a big metal box containing one very large computer. Once it was constructed, it was dropped into the Mayak Swamp, the deepest, murkiest, filthiest, most garbage-filled swamp on the entire planet. Direct exposure to the swamp’s toxic waters pretty much guaranteed an early grave.

  Leck set the bog suit’s scanners to look for entrances. He found three. One was big enough to accommodate a ship, which Leck dismissed. That entrance would allow only a ship to gain ingress. The second was one that was at the top of the structure, and would provide the easiest access to someone coming straight down through the Mayak Swamp. Leck, not being a fool, had taken a more curcuitous route through the swamp. He dismissed that entrance as well: it was the obvious place to go, which meant Leck knew to avoid it at all costs.

  Only two people in the galaxy were authorized to enter the Glat Archive. On the one hand, that meant security was fairly straightforward: anyone who wasn’t Glat or Torf wasn’t allowed in. On the other hand, it also meant that, if you could fool the security system into thinking you were one of those two, you’d be free and clear.

  Quark was lucky that he called when he did. Had it been three months earlier, Leck would have had a much harder time breaking into the archive. But two and a half months ago, Leck had been hired by Janx Outerwear to eliminate a member of the research-and-development team of their chief competition, Sorv Spacesuits ’N’ Things. Janx had apparently stolen the design for the very bog suit Leck was now wearing from Sorv. The Sorv employee who facilitated the deal was threatening to go public if he didn’t get more money than Janx was willing to pay. Fearing that this employee would continue to blackmail them for years on end, the president of Janx felt it would be more cost-effective all around if he instead just had the employee eliminated.

  In lieu of a fee, Leck requested as payment one of the bog suits, which not only enabled the wearer to move freely about in the densest swamp on Ferenginar, but also provided camouflage, which was handy in avoiding the various swamp-dwelling life-forms that were somewhat more dangerous than the eels.

  In the course of his elimination of the employee, Leck learned that Janx sold two suits to Glat, and also that the bog suits could be used to mask the wearer’s life signs. After all, sometimes the predators in swamps weren’t natural.

  After Quark’s call, it was a simple matter for Leck to determine the biosignature of Torf and program it into his bog suit.

  But Leck also knew it wouldn’t be this simple. Which was why he did not use either of the first two entrances he found.

  The third entrance was on the underside of the structure, buried underneath a ton of algae and piles of refuse.

  Leck didn’t think like most Ferengi, but he still knew how most Ferengi thought. He also knew the Eighty-eighth Rule of Acquisition: “It ain’t over till it’s over.” Most would assume that it would be enough to put the archive in the swamp and equip the entrances with bioscanners. They wouldn’t realize that that wasn’t the end of it, and would then be stopped by the additional security precautions at the other entrances.

  Secure in the knowledge that the entrance on the top of the archive was designed to keep everybody out, Leck avoided it and spent the extra time plowing through the foliage and waste that blocked the entrance on the underside.

  Once his phaser made short work of the impediments, he double-checked his HUD to make sure it was giving off Torf’s biosigns, down to the DNA level. In addition, he double-checked the optical camouflage he’d placed in his eyes. Salvaged off the body of a Tal Shiar operative he’d eliminated a year ago, they would fool any optical scanner into thinking he was Torf. He even wore a holomask that, if he took off the bog suit, would make him look like Torf.

  Confident that all his equipment was functioning as it should, Leck then activated his Orion Codebreaker, which he’d taken as payment for eliminating someone on behalf of the Orion Syndicate. It could tell you the proper sequence for any code lock in the quadrant. By itself, it wouldn’t be enough to get in, but the code, combined with his assorted camouflages, would do the trick.

  Or so he thought. To his surprise, the Codebreaker revealed that there were two codes that would open the door.

  Of course, Leck realized after a moment. One code for Glat, one for Torf. The question is, which is which?

  What made this entire operation more difficult—a factor that just made it more appealing to Leck—was that the bog suit had a limited power supply. In order to maintain the sensors, the camouflage, and protection from the toxicity of the swamp while limiting the energy leakage, it had to eat up a great deal of power.

  That also meant the more time he spent trying to figure out which was the right code to use, the less time he would have inside to find Rom’s original marriage contract, make a copy of it, and get back to the surface without being discovered.

  He stared at the Codebreaker’s readout. Which do I choose? Fifty-fifty odds—that’s better than most of my jobs.

  The codes were numeric. One was 58128, the other 31954. Since Glat was the owner, and Torf a mere programmer, Leck decided that Glat would give himself the higher number.

  If I’m wrong, those Klingon disruptor emplacements the suit is picking up around the door will reduce me to my component atoms.

  Leck had imagined his own death on numerous occasions, and each one of them had involved combat of some sort. To die at the bottom of
the Mayak Swamp during a simple break-and-enter would just be embarrassing.

  He entered 31954.

  The door opened.

  It was an airlock, of course. Leck went limp as the swampwater poured into the open chamber, and let himself be carried inside.

  A moment later, the outer door closed, and Leck heard the sound of the ventilation system. The swampwater was being sucked into a drain in the corner of the airlock. Within a minute, the room was dry and the inner door opened.

  While waiting for the airlock to cycle, Leck had checked the bog suit’s power supply. It took twenty-five minutes to swim from the surface to the archive, and thirty-five minutes of power remained. That left him with only ten minutes to do what he came here to do. Perhaps fifteen if I swim very fast.

  The airlock opened to a tiny room with a small desk at its center; on the desk was a terminal. There was no other way in or out of the room. Leck assumed the rest of the structure had the actual computer. Briefly, he wondered how the physical maintenance of the computer was performed, then decided that he didn’t really care all that much.

  He activated the terminal.

  It asked for his access code.

  Leck consulted the Codebreaker.

  This time there was only one code. Leck was about to enter it when the Codebreaker’s display changed to a different code.

  Leck frowned. Which is it?

  The display didn’t change. Then he checked the bog suit’s chronometer. The code had changed right at the top of the hour. The code changes on the hour—or maybe on the half- or quarter-hour. Either way, this code should be fine now.

  He entered the new code, then touched the tab marked SELECT.

  The terminal’s display then read: WELCOME, TORF. PLEASE ENTER YOUR REQUEST.

  Leck grinned. I love it when a plan comes together.

  It took only a few minutes to call up Rom’s marriage contract. Then he removed the padd from one of the sealed pockets in the bog suit and instructed the computer to copy the contract to his padd.

  The computer’s response: ENTER ACCESS CODE AND PRESS SELECT.