by Неизвестный
Quark opened his mouth and let loose with a string of invective in the Trading Tongue such that his moo-gie would have scrubbed out his mouth with carapace gel if she had heard a single syllable-swearing like a philanthropist his moogie would call it. Not that any-one could hear him in the roar of the outflow from the system pipes.
The figure in black regarded him impassively, then seemed to come to a decision, stepped back and pulled off his breather mask.
Just as Quark bravely barked out, "I don't care who the greeb you are. If you're going to shoot me like the rest of them, go ahead-kill me and be done with it." He realized that once again-big surprise-the Choir of Celestial Accountants had been braying his name in jest.
The murderer wasn't male.
He was a female.
Vash.
She delicately wrinkled her button-like human nose at the stench of the place, then yelled out the sweetest words Quark had ever heard-not that he'd ever admit that to her. "Is that any way to talk to your new part-ner?"
"Just what I need," Quark muttered as he looked at the sprawled bodies of Satr and Leen. "Another new partner...." Then relief flooded through him. Vash was no murderer. The odds were very good that both Andorians were only heavily stunned, not dead.
Vash snapped her breather back into place, then motioned for Quark to follow her.
But much as he wanted to get out of this foul pit, there was something Quark had to do first. He reached down and got a good grip on Captain Sisko's jacket to drag the unconscious hew-mon toward an open metal staircase beside the sludge vat.
When Vash saw what he was doing, she tried to pull him away, but Quark refused to let go of Sisko. Maybe Satr and Leen deserved to remain in the muck where they fell, and maybe the captain wasn't the best friend a Ferengi barkeep ever had, but Quark wasn't about to leave him to drown in such an undignified fashion.
With Vash's reluctant assistance, Quark hoisted
Sisko up on a platform on the staircase, well above the steadily rising sewage.
Motioning to Quark to follow her across the room to the exit, Vash turned to look back at him, pulling aside her breathing mask long enough to shout, "I don't get it, Quark-what did he ever do for you?"
Breathing heavily as he dragged his boots through the disgusting deck debris-the hew-mon had been surprisingly heavy, and Quark's body was still telling him how badly abused it had been by its hanging ordeal-Quark looked back down at Sisko. "Nothing," he said, out of earshot of Vash. She'd never understand anyway. Not that anyone else ever had. Or ever would. "But he never did anything to me, either."
Even without looking at Vash, he could feel her sus-picion, and he could almost hear her thinking, How could she trust someone who went out of his way to help a Starfleet officer?
Quark wearily cupped a hand to his mouth and yelled ahead to her, as he shook something unmention-able off his foot, "He owes me money!" The terrible thing was, he knew, that there had to be easier ways to earn latinum. But the even worse thing was that, all other things being equal, he hadn't found it. Yet.
"Stay still and keep your eyes closed," Vash told him.
In the dimly lit kitchen at the back of his bar, Quark did as he was told. "If you only knew how many times I imagined you saying those words to me," he mur-mured. Then he heard a frothy hissing noise and was suddenly engulfed in a thick foam. He started to protest, but the medicinal-smelling lather bubbled into his mouth the moment he tried to speak.
"And keep your mouth shut!" Vash snapped.
Quark suddenly felt cold. He started to shiver. As he did, he felt the foam begin to drop off him in clumps.
When his face felt free of bubbles, he risked open-ing one eye. Then the other.
Vash was in front of him, kicking off the last of her environmental suit, a large, carryall duffel bag beside her, along with a pressurized tank and nozzle, dripping foam. Quark could see that portions of her protective suit were covered in rapidly evaporating bubbles as well.
And then he realized with delight that the dreadful stench of the raw sewage was gone. "What is that foam?" He looked down at his suit jacket. It was still wet, but there wasn't a single stain on it. Neither was there any muck on his boots or on the floor beneath them.
Vash leaned back against an inductor stove with a sigh. "A cleansing agent from Troyius. Their pherom-onal systems are so volatile, they need something that will break down all organic waste completely and instantly-otherwise, they couldn't leave their planet."
"Well, that's fantastic" Quark said admiringly. "Tell me, do they have a good distribution network?"
Vash gave him an odd, measuring look. "Oh, it's not what you'd call a perfect product. There are a few drawbacks."
"Really." Quark grinned. Anything that could eradi-cate all traces of what he had just been through smelled like pure latinum to him. "I can't imagine what they'd be."
"That suit of yours-replicated from synthetics?" Vash asked, curious. "Or is it natural?"
Stung by the insult, Quark smoothed the multicol-
ored fabric of his snug, tapestry jacket. "I am a suc-cessful businessman. Of course, all my suits are nat-ural fiber."
Vash smiled. "You sure?"
Quark glanced down. "AAAAAA!" His jacket and trousers were in the process of melting, consumed by the same polyenzymic action that had neutralized the sewage.
The last curling streamers of his suit flickered out of existence just as he ducked for cover behind a food locker. Quark found himself facing the bulkhead whose small access door led to the unmapped tunnel through which he and Vash had escaped from the water plant.
Leaning out from behind the locker, ears flushed, as naked as a female in public, Quark blustered, "Well, don't just stand there, woman! Get me something to wear!"
Vash looked up at the lighting panels on the kitchen ceiling. They were dark. Only the emergency glow-strips on the walls were operating. "Bad timing, Quark. My guess is there's some trouble on the station. I don't think Garak's will be open."
Quark pointed imperiously to the locker behind her. "The locker by the door! Staff uniforms!"
Vash stuck her head in the locker and brought out a clothes holder with a few wispy strands of glitter cloth. "Not your size," she smirked, "but it'll bring out the yellow in your eyes."
Quark fumed. "That's a dabo costume. Give me a waiter's suit!"
"Oh, come on," Vash said as peeked at him through the almost transparent cloth. "You wear something like this, I might stay at the dabo table all night."
Quark couldn't help himself. "Really?" He ran the calculations comparing how much someone could lose at dabo in a single night against the irreparable loss of his self-esteem. It was a close call. As the 189th Rule had it: Let others keep their reputation, you keep their latinum. Maybe he had been hasty when he stopped having Female Nights at the bar. Even though Rom had put up such a fuss over wearing a dress the last time....
"I'll take it under advisement," Quark said thought-fully. "But now, a waiter's suit?"
Vash pulled one out of the locker and handed it over to Quark, making a show of covering her eyes. "Don't worry, I won't look," she said. "I just ate."
The pale-green jacket, brocade vest, and ruksilk shirt were too large, the trousers were too long, and the boots were so large they were almost unwearable. All in all, the lamentably unfashionable outfit reminded Quark of his years as a cabin boy on the old Ferengi freighter, the Latinum Queen. But it would do for now. It had to.
Decently covered, Quark emerged from behind the food locker, his steps necessarily mincing because of the unseen oversized shoes beneath the overlong trousers. "Now what did you say happened to the sta-tion?"
Vash looked him up and down with a broad grin as she hefted her strap-on carryall over her shoulder. But she merely opened the door leading to the main-level room of the bar without commenting on his appear-ance.
The room beyond was dark, but the light from the kitchen in which Quark and Vash stood revealed sev-eral ove
rturned chairs, as if customers had run out of
the bar in a hurry. There were still drinks and dishes on the tables.
Quark stepped into the bar. He picked up a glass, sniffed it. Groaned. It had held a Deltan-on-the-Beach cocktail with a full measure of triple-proof Romulan ale. Was Rom trying to ruin him?
"Satr and Leen rigged a Pakled sensor mask in the water plant," Vash now told him, "so that if anyone went searching for you, you and they wouldn't show up as lifesigns on anyone's tricorders."
Quark looked around his bar. It looked to him as if it had been hit by something much more powerful than a sensor mask. "And that's not all they arranged," Vash said as she walked past him to open the closed doors of the bar.
Quark sighed. At least his idiot brother had remem-bered to lock up. Not that it mattered. Beyond the doors, the Promenade, lit only by emergency strips like his bar, looked deserted.
"I'm listening," Quark said, squinting to see what was in the shadows at the end of the bar, and frowning when he did.
"They also slipped a programming worm into the station's computer system," Vash said, turning to reclose the doors to the bar.
"Is that possible?" Quark began walking to the end of the bar.
"A little something they picked up on Bynaus," Vash said as she turned away from the door. "Until the worm detected someone setting up security screens around the water plant, trying to contain the area, the worm was dormant. The bad new is, once it was trig-gered, it reproduced so quickly it used up all available processing space. All the automatic systems locked up.
They'd have needed a cold start to reset all the com-puters. The good news is there's no permanent harm done. DS9 should be up and running in about ten min-utes or so."
"Good," Quark said, reaching out to touch what he had noticed in the bar's shadows. "I'd like to see Satr and Leen talk their way out of Odo's cell this time."
Vash's voice suddenly became tense. "Is someone at the bar?"
"Just Morn," Quark chuckled, affectionately. He poked at the lugubrious alien's shoulder. His voice became a stage whisper. "Mor-ornnn? Hellooo? Are you in there?"
The huge Lurian snuffled something unintelligible and shifted slightly on the bar stool, driving his mas-sive head deeper into the crook of his well-padded arm, as he remained slumped face-down on the bar. Very faintly, he began to snore, each exhalation accompanied by the pungent perfume of Martian tequila. And judging from the strength of each puff, Quark calculated that at two slips a shot for the extra-premium blend, Morn had had enough this evening to more than pay for a bartender's brand-new suit-even if Rom hadn't properly watered the goods.
"Look at him," Quark crooned. "Sleeping like a baby. A great big, wrinkled, prune-faced baby."
"Well, wake him up and get him out of here," Vash said sharply. "We have business to conduct."
But Quark stood defensively in front of his first, best, and most treasured customer. "I'm sorry, but even 7 have to draw the line somewhere. If Morn wants to sleep on my bar, well then-may the Divine Treasurer bless him and keep him solvent all the days of his life-I am not going to be the one who says no.
Besides, I can charge him half a bar of latinum for rent. And..." he added in a half-whisper, "if we wake him up now, he won't stop talking for hours." Quark smoothed his jacket, feeling better than he had since Base came into his bar. "If you want to discuss busi-ness, we can do it down there where we won't disturb..." His voice softened as he gazed down at the lovable lump of his constant and continuous con-sumer. "... the customer."
Vash eyed Morn's hunched-over and snoring body with distaste. She reached out to him, gave his bald scalp a sharp flick with one of her long nails. Morn's only response was to blow a series of small, quickly popping bubbles from his open mouth.
"Don't make him drool now," Quark warned. He took Vash firmly by the arm and led her to the other end of the bar. "Just think of him as part of the furniture."
"Now," Quark said as he took his usual place behind the bar, and placed both hands flat on the bartop. "What kind of business did my favorite archaeologist have in mind?"
Vash shrugged off her carryall, carefully lowering it to the deck, then rubbed at the spot on her shoulder where the carryall strap had been. "Not my business, Quark. Your business."
Quark blinked at her. "I'm not sure I follow. Would you like a reward for rescuing me? I'm sure I can work out an equitable payment schedule, though business has been slow and-"
Quark winced as Vash leaned over the bar and pinched one of his earlobes. Painfully. "Quark! I'm not talking about new business. I'm talking about the rea-son why I risked arrest in three systems to get here as soon as I did."
Quark's eyes widened nervously. He pulled back, but Vash did not release her grip on his ear. "You don't mean... ?"
"Yes, I do," Vash said. "The Red Orbs of Jalbador. You made it clear you were ready to deal. That's why I'm here. And that's why I saved your wrinkled Fer-engi butt."
"You said you wouldn't peek!"
Vash increased the pressure on his ear. Quark had to stand on one foot, just to keep his balance, to spare his delicate earflesh. "Listen, Ferengi. I'm serious. When this station comes back on line, security's going to be all over the place trying to figure out what went wrong. And when they find out I'm not all cozy and warm in the Infirmary, they're going to come looking for me. And that's not going to happen, understand? Because I'm going to be on my way with what I came for. Now let's do it!"
Quark squealed as Vash suddenly yanked up on his earlobe, lifting him right off his feet. Then just as sud-denly she released him, and he fell stomach first onto the bartop. His first thought was to look down the length of the bar at Morn, to make certain at least he wasn't disturbed. Then he flopped back, regaining his footing.
"It... it's not that easy..." he stammered, one hand to his injured earlobe.
Vash reached a hand inside a small pouch on her belt as if going for a knife. "Then I suggest you make it easy."
Quark waved his hands in a vain attempt to deflect whatever it was she was about to cut him with. "I'm just the middleman. The goods are with a... a third party."
"Then get him down here."
"I really wish I could. You have no idea. But, the fact of the matter is, he's dead."
Vash narrowed her eyes and Quark knew his other ear was doomed. Just knew it.
"Who?" Vash demanded.
"Dal Nortron. The Andorian who came here with Satr and Leen. Those heartless females were his body-guards-and they killed him."
Vash snorted. "Bodyguards don't kill their clients. It tends to cut into repeat business."
Quark was outraged. "Base was my bodyguard, and he sold me out to Satr and Leen!"
Vash held the heel of one hand to her forehead and sighed. "Oh, sleem me...."
Quark brightened. He sensed a slight lessening in her resolve to do something unspeakable to him. "Maybe your visit doesn't have to be a total loss. We can work out another deal."
"Another deal?" Vash leaned over, digging into her carryall from the sound of it. Then she straightened up and slammed a spindle-shaped chunk of dark crystal on the bar. It was maybe two-thirds of a meter tall, a quarter-meter at its widest, top and bottom. And except for the fact that it was oddly dull in the way it reflected what little light there was, it looked exactly like-
Quark choked.
"... Oh, no..." he whispered.
"Oh, yes," Vash said. "A Red Orb of Jalbador."
Quark could scarcely draw a breath. Shocked. Unprepared. "You mean..." he gasped, "they are real?"
"This one is." Vash leaned over the bar counter and in the same, moment. Quark leaned back, thus ensuring
the continued health of his other, as yet uninjured, ear-lobe. "But without the other two," she said in disgust, "it's worse than useless."
Quark's business sense quickened. He felt a strong sense of finality within Vash. There would be no more negotiations. He was right.
"Time's up, Quark. I want
the map."
A commotion behind Vash made Quark's heart flut-ter like a grubworm on a toothpick, with no hope of escape.
"You mean, this one?" Satr hissed.
Vash wheeled around, phaser already in her hand and aimed behind her.
But the danger was above her, not behind. Satr and Leen-clearly recovered from whatever miserably low-setting stun Vash had used on them-were on the bar's second level, and the golden dagger Leen now threw down knocked the phaser directly out of Vash's hand before she could even fire it.
Instantly Satr flipped over the railing, her lithe, tat-tooed body spinning through the air, to land like a feline in a crouch, braced by one hand. In the next instant, the Andorian spun around on both hands and reverse-kicked Vash, sending her skidding across the floor of Quark's bar.