ONLINE THE NEEDS OF THE MANY

by Michael A. Martin

  Exactly.

  Until they called in another one of Captain Data’s old friends to take a fresh look at the problem.

  You’ll have to ask the Soong people about that, Mister Sisko. All I know for certain is that they seemed to have had better luck than I did in restoring Data’s personality. And while working on two fronts simultaneously, no less.

  Can I assume that one of those fronts involved continued efforts to unlock the “Data matrix”?

  Of course. And the other was their ability to use the Undine crisis to justify what they did next. And that’s something I really don’t care to talk about.

  Standing unsmilingly behind his desk, Maddox crosses to the wide window’s desert vista, signaling that he’s done with the interview. The temperature on both sides of the transparent aluminum seems to have plunged by at least fifteen degrees Celsius in the space of so many seconds. I rise from my chair as well and begin awkwardly gathering up my recording padd and the small holoimager I had set down on Maddox’s desk.

  I briefly consider asking him whether he includes his old friend Data in whatever ethical indictments he might be thinking of leveling at the Soong Foundation. Thinking better of it, I thank him for the interview, finish packing up my gear, and exit the office. In the hallway outside, I make a mental note to get Captain Geordi La Forge’s side of this story as soon as I possibly can.

  JAKE SISKO, DATA ROD #Q-22

  Quark’s Bar, Federation Starbase Deep Space 9

  Quark doesn’t pour many of the drinks or wait tables himself these days, which accounts for his availability on this rather busy evening. Other than his ears being slightly larger than I remember, Quark hasn’t changed much over the years: he’s still a flashy dresser who enjoys flaunting his latinum, and who can make a great show of wounded pride when someone calls into question the veracity of his anecdotes. He continues to be a past president and member in good standing of the Federation Starbase Deep Space 9 Promenade Merchants’ Association, not to mention the owner and sole proprietor of Quark’s Bar, Grill, Gaming House, Holosuite Arcade, and Ferengi Embassy, which looks as prosperous now as I’ve ever seen it—more prosperous, in fact, since he’s been allowed to expand his enterprise into some of the neighboring Promenade storefronts.

  Quark leans back into the luxuriant upholstery of the booth we’re sharing near one of the walls on the main level. The noise from the bar, the other booths and tables, and the gaming area beyond is considerable, but it works in tandem with the subdued lighting to assure our privacy—along with the discretion of a number of shady-looking characters I glimpsed on my way to the booth. (Despite Quark’s obvious success and frequently convincing veneer of legitimacy, some things clearly will never change.)

  Quark and I ease into our conversation via small talk and shared reminiscences, and soon he seems to be getting comfortable relating to me as a journalist rather than as the son of one of the station’s former commanding officers. As he warms to the interview process, it occurs to me that this man is a natural raconteur, which should come as no surprise considering his line of work. Still, I’m impressed by his ability to draw me into his narrative just as surely as I’m drawing it out of him. The realization makes me wonder how much trust I should invest in the tales he’s telling. But at the moment, I am content merely to satisfy my very human need to know what happened next.

  The Undine War, huh? Well, it just so happens I played a role in that. Probably a much bigger role than you’d expect.

  Was that when Grand Nagus Rom tried to cut a deal with the Undine leadership—like you always thought the Federation should have done with the Dominion?

  I think it was around that time. But I don’t think the Undine would have come to any negotiating session. It should have been obvious by the time the fighting really got started that the Undine weren’t like the Dominion. We might have come to some sort of economic modus vivendi with them—the Dominion, I mean—if the Federation hadn’t gotten so bent out of shape over those initial incursions from the Gamma Quadrant. No, the Undine weren’t remotely like the Founders, or the Vorta, or even the Jem’Hadar. The Undine made the Borg look… reasonable. My brother should have seen that from the beginning. He might be the Nagus, but he’s still an idiot.

  As far as you know, did the Undine ever manage to put any of their spies on Ferenginar?

  I’ve asked that same question myself more times than I can count over the years. I’ve never heard a satisfactory answer—in spite of all the pull I have with the Nagus. Bottom line? Nobody knows. But at least I know one thing for a fact: the Undine had definitely managed to compromise at least some of the Ferengi Alliance’s major trade partners during the Long War years. And you happen to be looking at the very Ferengi who discovered that fact, let me tell you.

  Tell me, tell me. That’s why I’m here. I’m all ears.

  Huh. Look who’s talking.

  Well, during the early phases of the war I had some dealings with a certain high-ranking member of the Orion Syndicate.

  The Orion Syndicate? Are you sure you really want to talk about this on the record?

  How do you know I wasn’t working with Security Chief Ro as part of a covert—and entirely legitimate—sting operation?

  Fair enough. Of course, I could check with her—

  And get either a flat denial or a “no comment”—for security reasons, of course. Now where was I?

  The Orion Syndicate.

  Right. It all began around the time of that Hobus supernova business. Not long after a thoroughly unpleasant individual named Hassan pushed aside a minor crime boss named Raimus and took over his various enterprises, both legal and illicit.

  Hassan the Undying? The Orion crime lord?

  The very same—green, but not from any lack of experience. He earned that name by being bold enough to grasp any opportunity that came his way, yet cautious enough so as to appear practically unkillable. After all, it wasn’t as though there was any shortage of Syndicate underbosses ready and willing to put Hassan’s “Undying” sobriquet to the test, at least early in his career. I lost track of all the assassination attempts he survived. He had a kind of sixth sense, and that made him one of the biggest players in the Orion Syndicate. At the height of his power, most of the drug trade, prostitution, and weapons trafficking in three sectors went through his giant jade fingers.

  But Hassan wasn’t the biggest player in the Syndicate.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what Hassan’s standing with the Syndicate was when I first started doing business with him, back in the day. I mean, it wasn’t as though I was trying to associate myself with that organization. I’ve always been a legitimate Ferengi businessman, just trying to turn an honest profit—preferably a large one. But whenever the needs of any large organization operating anywhere in the sector create the potential for me to make a killing—so to speak—my lobes are bound to pick it up.

  Of course. Rule of Acquisition Twenty-Two: “A wise man can hear profit in the wind.”

  Jake! You’ve really done your homework. I think I might cry, really.

  Anyway, the Orion Syndicate had a complicated hierarchy with a lot of levels to it, even then, when the Orions were only beginning to seize direct control of all the top crime tiers. So it was no small achievement on Hassan’s part that he answered directly to Melani D’ian herself, instead of one of her many underlings.

  Melani D’ian. The Orion Syndicate’s so-called Emerald Empress.

  Not to mention the star of several exclusive and highly profitable holosuite programs crafted for… highly refined sensibilities. But I digress.

  The long and short of it is that a played-out pergium mine at the Xoxa colony had recently come into my possession, thanks to my cousin Gaila having a run of bad luck at the tongo wheel. The mine was so worthless that it almost didn’t merit the effort to get it on the market—and off my books.

  How did a played-out pergium mine get you involved in deal-making with Hassan the Undying and Melani D�
�ian?

  By turning out to be smack on top of a thick deposit of kelbonite that had hidden a huge vein of decalithium from all the previous deep scans of the mine. And it just so happened that Hassan and D’ian found themselves in great need of decalithium, in bulk and in a hurry, not long after I made that little discovery.

  Wait a minute, Quark. Isn’t decalithium a volatile material with a lot of weapons applications?

  True enough, though it was a new enough discovery at the time so as not to have run afoul of a lot of fussy Federation laws and interstellar transport regulations yet. There’s always a regulatory lag of a year or so, and an entrepreneur who’s willing to trust in the Ninth Rule* and step into the gap at the right moment can make a fortune.

  How? By developing decalithium weapons?

  I thought you knew me better than that, Jake. After that fiasco with Hagath back in ’seventy-three, I was done with the weapons trade for good. And I was only a broker then, mind you, not a full-fledged arms dealer.

  Are you saying that the Orion Syndicate was interested in peaceful ways of using decalithium?

  Rule Number Thirty-five: “Peace is good for business.” Even those green glandular cases who were trying to take over the Syndicate back then knew that.

  And I’m sure they were at least as aware of what the Thirty-fourth Rule said.

  “War is good for business.” Of course. That’s what makes the Rules so beautiful, elegant, and versatile, not to mention so universally relevant: you can apply them to any given situation. But the Orions aren’t one hundred percent about death and destruction, even though some of their, um, less savory ventures have shown the galaxy no shortage of either. Even the Klingons aren’t all bloodlust; somebody has to grow food, build and repair things, and pilot the freighters and garbage scows.

  So what exactly were the Orions using your decalithium for?

  Interstellar transportation. Or more precisely, multiparsec subspace teleportation.

  Interstellar-range transporters? Like the technology the Dominion had?

  A lot like that. Imagine the benefits. No more risky smuggling operations. No more chance of being boarded unexpectedly by Starfleet. No more cargoes or freighters being impounded. Merchandise would just disappear from one secure location and reappear in another one, light-years away.

  The Orion Syndicate really had that kind of technological know-how?

  Let’s just say that there were more than a few highly competent scientists and engineers at the Syndicate’s disposal. Some of them came from Starfleet, and ended up entangled in webs of gambling debt and blackmail that gave them no choice other than to quietly cooperate with Hassan. The Dominion had already proved that it was possible to beam across interstellar distances, though nobody else had managed it yet. Hassan’s people must have figured that all they really lacked was a sufficient source of power.

  Your decalithium.

  Exactly.

  You don’t seem quite so proud of that now, Quark.

  Did you come here to give me a counseling session, or to conduct an interview?

  Sorry. Obviously, the first shipments of decalithium from your Xoxa mining operation to the Orion Syndicate had to arrive the old-fashioned way, smuggled via freighter.

  Shipped. Not smuggled. Shipped. Remember, the regulations curtailing decalithium transport hadn’t been written yet.

  So you weren’t breaking any laws when you rode along with Hassan’s lieutenant, Raka, to take that first decalithium delivery to Hassan’s private shipping depot?

  Not yet.

  So how could you have been conducting a “sting” operation, if nothing technically illegal was going on?

  Like I said, you’d have to ask Ro Laren or Starfleet Intelligence about that, if either of them are willing to talk to you about this, which I doubt. But I’m sure they felt as entitled to do surveillance on Raka and Hassan as Odo used to feel in keeping an eye on me.

  So you had some time to generate a lot of quick profits before the new rules drove the decalithium trade underground.

  I should have known it was too good to last. There were only so many paid-by-the-piece cargo runs I’d be able to supply before Starfleet closed the door on this opportunity—at least as a legitimate venture. And I certainly wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of being arrested by my own nephew. So when Raka made me a lump-sum offer on the mine, I was sorely tempted. I mean, I could have made more money over the long haul by hanging on to the deed to the mine and filling the Syndicate’s orders as they came in.…

  Assuming that Melani D’ian didn’t decide to have Hassan or Raka kill you so she could just move in and annex the mine herself.

  I’ll admit, that possibility had crossed my mind once or twice, though I didn’t think that even Melani D’ian wanted to risk getting sideways with the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi Alliance by murdering his brother. I mean, Rom might be an idiot, but he’s as loyal as a Drathan puppy lig and he wields more power than anybody as ambitionless as he is has any right to. But as it turned out, fear of Orion assassins wasn’t what made me decide to sell and get out of the decalithium-mining business while the getting was still good.

  Maybe you’d gotten tired of dealing with gangsters and corruption.

  Jake, have you ever tried keeping a bar and gaming establishment profitable without dealing with “gangsters and corruption”? No, I made my decision based on something else entirely, and I did it during that first flight from the Xoxa mine with Raka, after we’d picked up the cargo. We weren’t halfway to Hassan’s undisclosed location when it happened.

  When what happened?

  Raka and I were flying a two-man cargo ship, and our course took us through an ion storm–infested region on the ragged edge of the Badlands. A plasma discharge opened up one of the decalithium canisters and catalyzed the material somehow—releasing some of it into the ventilation system, which sprayed it into the cockpit.

  You’re lucky you weren’t killed.

  Doctor Bashir treated me for radiation poisoning after I got back to Deep Space 9. But Raka wasn’t so lucky.

  Did the radiation kill him before you returned to DS9?

  No. Raka wasn’t killed by the radiation. In fact, he must have been dead before we left Xoxa. Maybe a long time before.

  What do you mean?

  I mean he wasn’t… Raka. At least, not anymore. The radiation must have been the trigger. One moment, he was this huge, green humanoid sitting behind a control panel that was already too small for him. And then he started… changing into an even huger purple-gray thing. He was becoming something not even remotely humanoid, something that looked more like a giant predatory bug.

  He was an Undine infiltrator, placed in the Orion Syndicate—until he underwent a sudden unintentional “reversion” to his natural form. I remember one of Captain Janeway’s Delta Quadrant logs recording an incident like that happening in Voyager’s sickbay.

  It was the only answer that made any sense at the time. The radiation from the burst canister must have reversed whatever gene-surgery those aliens do on their deep-cover operatives. The accident turned “Raka” back into what he was really supposed to look like, and did it in a hurry. His Undine was undone, so to speak. But he wasn’t showing any signs that he was about to die. Instead, he seemed angry that he’d blown his cover. And at the time I really wished he hadn’t done it right in front of me, since I was all alone with him in a cramped freighter cockpit.

  Now the timing of your decision to retire from the mining business makes perfect sense to me.

  Unfortunately, “Raka” wasn’t interested in leaving retirement on the table as one of my available options. He had claws the size of Talarian hook spiders, and they were at my throat in a heartbeat. I tried to get to the rear of the cabin, to get away from him, but he was just too fast.

  That’s all I remember, until I came to in that Starfleet infirmary, with Ro and Nog flanking my bed. It seems I’d been rescued in the proverbial nick. A crack Starfleet
security team had dealt with the Undine monster with what you might call “extreme prejudice.”

  Getting back to the bar after that must have been a welcome change of pace.

  It was. Eventually.

  You didn’t go home right away?

  Starfleet Intelligence needed somebody to be aboard that freighter when it delivered its cargo to its destination at one of Hassan’s distribution hubs. The trouble was, I really didn’t see that as a viable option at the time.

  Aside from your own healthy instinct for self-preservation, why not? Wasn’t your original plan to deliver the freighter’s cargo to Hassan?

  Sure it was. But think about it, Jake. I hadn’t planned on having to explain the sudden absence of one of Hassan’s most trusted lieutenants. I mean, the man was bound to be pretty peeved when I turned up alone.

  Even though you would have been bringing him the cargo of decalithium he was expecting?

  Along with a dead Undine that used to be Raka until it somehow acquired a phaser hole in its chest. And a lame story about having had no choice but to kill the thing after it had revealed itself as a spy that had obviously killed and replaced the real Raka some time ago. I pointed out to Ro, Nog, and anybody else who might have listened that nobody was likely to get into the habit of calling me “Quark the Undying” if I were to try this stupid stunt.

  I gather from the fact that you didn’t go back to the bar right away that Starfleet Intelligence finally persuaded you.

  The Starfleet spooks didn’t persuade me. Ro did.

  How?

  She said that Hassan was liable to be in an even worse mood if he had to go searching for that freighter—and that he’d be angrier still if he found it adrift with a dead nightmare creature sprawled across the cockpit in place of both me and Raka. He’d no doubt come looking for me next, and if he were to find me alive and well at the bar, he’d be pretty insistent about getting a detailed explanation from me—probably after a lengthy interview in a soundproof chamber filled with sharp objects.

  Excellent point.