Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Lust's Latinum Lost (and Found) Read online

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  To Ira Steven Behr,

  who once told us that he suspected his tombstone would read: “He did good things for the Ferengi.”

  1

  When the clado isn’t singing, it’s the most fearsome creature on Ferenginar.

  The tiny amphibian—no bigger than the average Ferengi toe—loves the rain. The harder the downpour, the more the clado’s shrill and steady cry of “frip, frip, frip” fills the air. Ferengi children learn early to judge the intensity of a day’s downpour simply by listening to the frippiness they hear in counterpoint to the splatter of the raindrops. Which is why Clado’s Call, the game in which players guess whether it’s vinkling or merely melnering outside, remains a preschool favorite.

  Children and adults alike are happiest when the moisture falls in a warm and steady wave. So are the clado, in fact. That’s when their song reaches its most soothing tones, prompting Ferengi spirits—and, more important, Ferengi portfolios—to rise precipitously. Weather seers, well aware of its effect on the market, call this level of rainfall frippering.

  But on those occasional days when the rain slows to a mere widdling, the clado silently slithers into pools and puddles, or disappears into drainpipes. Which is bad for business. Fearsomely bad. Every intelligent Ferengi knows that the market suffers during those quiet spells, slowing as surprised businessmen stop working to stare about in distracted wonder. On his deathbed, Grand Nagus Gint addressed this phenomenon with his declaration, “When the clado isn’t fripping, you can hear your profits dipping.”

  Quark knew that sound of silence all too well—but he couldn’t blame it on the rain, or the clado. Quark’s Public House, Café, Gaming Emporium, Holosuite Arcade, and Ferengi Embassy on Bajor was empty, abandoned by Deep Space 9’s residents and visitors alike. The only thing his overly sensitive ears could detect was the muffled hum of the new space station’s inner mechanisms. Within the bar itself, however, there was nary the clink of a slip nor the clunk of a strip nor the always satisfying plunk of a brick. Quark had enjoyed three heady days of bustling business following the new station’s dedication ceremony, bustling despite the regrettable assassination of the Federation president. (After all, people had to eat, didn’t they?) But then came “the miracle”—the reappearance of the wormhole, bigger and more beautiful than ever. In a matter of minutes every living being had withdrawn to the outer viewing bulkheads to stare in awe as the wormhole made periodic recursions. The bar had been fripless ever since.

  Now only the station’s recreation areas, the park and playing fields, bustled. Spacefarers stood in groups, discussing trips they could, at long last, make into the Gamma Quadrant. Bajorans picnicked, held poetry readings, and gathered for spontaneous religious ceremonies. Vedics drew crowds as they addressed the Prophets, thanking them for the return of the Celestial Temple. Species of all stripes, and spots, and bumps played their favorite sports, from the hew-mon baseball first introduced years earlier by Station Commander Benjamin Sisko, to the challenging Yridian kaat-chag that species with thumbs find almost impossible to win. All of this in the reassuring glow of hope brought on by the wormhole. No one had the faintest urge to retreat into Quark’s to play tongo. Or dabo. Or to visit the holosuites. Or even to take advantage of the bar’s most basic function by ordering a drink.

  Quark had complained, of course. “Your gods are putting me out of business,” he’d told Ro Laren, DS9’s current commander.

  “Get a grip, Quark,” she’d replied. “People are happy. Your customers will return. Eventually.”

  That was the word that frightened him. His overhead was too high to lay favorable odds on how long the bar could hold out against “eventually.”

  Oh, for the sweet sound of a thirsty traveler asking for salvation . . .

  “I need help.”

  A customer! Quark dropped the shot glass he’d been endlessly polishing and spun around. “Of course, my good man. How may I—”

  His voice trailed off as he got a look at the potato-shaped humanoid clothed in what appeared to be dun-colored, quilted furniture-moving pads.

  Oh great. Just my luck.

  The potato—or at least its two beady eyes—blinked as it studied Quark. “I am Derf,” it announced. “I need help.”

  “Yes,” said Quark through gritted teeth. “I’m sure you do. What can I get you? Sir,” he added, although truthfully he wasn’t altogether sure if it was male or female. It’s so hard to tell with Pakleds.

  “I need help,” said Derf.

  “Got that,” Quark muttered. He wasn’t fond of Pakleds. They had a tendency to sit around taking up space, conning legitimate patrons into buying them drinks, and placing sucker bets at the tongo table in order to convince the other players that they were brain-dead dolts ripe for fleecing. Until, of course, that inevitable moment when they won the inflated latinum pot from the stunned players. Quark forced a smile. “What are you looking for? I’m running a special on Argelian ale—”

  “No. I do not need ale. I need to go.” The Pakled lifted his eyebrows in what Quark took as an attempt to signal a deeper meaning.

  The Ferengi looked to the left, in the direction the eyebrows seemed to point. “To the holosuites? Of course! I have just the program—”

  “No,” interrupted Derf. “I do not need programs. I need to go.”

  Quark noted that Derf had added a peculiar body twitch to the eyebrow fling, which, he realized, had targeted the closest refresher near the back of the bar. “You’re looking for . . . waste extraction?” he guessed.

  The Pakled’s lips curled into a relieved smile. “Yes. I need to go. Now.”

  “Well, you must have walked right past it,” said Quark, grabbing the portly alien’s thick arms and orienting him toward the bar’s exit. “You go out that door and turn right, then follow the corridor past the Replimat. You’ll find a nice public refresher there. Mine is for paying customers.”

  “That is far. I need waste extraction now,” said Derf, his lumpy features drawing into a tightly puckered expression.

  “Better hurry, then!” Quark gave him a solid shove in the right direction.

  He breathed a sigh of relief as the Pakled waddled out the door. “He should have thought of that before he left his home planet,” he muttered. Not that he could blame Derf. His establishment was reputed to have the best-appointed ’freshers on Deep Space 9’s Plaza, well worth the wait.

  The distraction gone, Quark lapsed back into his foul mood. “What I need right now,” he shouted, “is some fripping clado!” His sudden emotional eruption startled the handful of employees on the bar’s main floor. At Quark’s icy glance, however, they quickly resumed the menial tasks he’d assigned them.

  Frool grabbed a padd and headed for storeroom C to do an inventory check. Hetik, the lone dabo boy, crouched under the gaming table, calling seemingly random but carefully chosen numbers to copper-coiffed M’Pella as she manipulated the delicate circuitry that propelled the dabo wheel. The subtle adjustments would allow the house to come out ahead more often than the law of averages strictly dema
nded—but just a little more. Enough to give Quark an edge but not enough to raise suspicions with the patrons, or with Lieutenant Commander Blackmer, the station’s head of security.

  Truthfully, the way things were going, Quark didn’t need any employees on duty, but he realized the value of keeping up appearances. At least they’re staying busy, he thought. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s idle hands. Speaking of which— “What are you up to, Broik?” he called, noting the waiter hustling out of the kitchen.

  “Just finished tidying up the food replicator, Boss,” Broik said.

  “Well, seeing as it hasn’t been used for days, that couldn’t have taken very long,” Quark growled. “As long as you’re doing work that doesn’t need to be done, why don’t you straighten up the employee lounge?”

  Broik got a peculiar look on his face. “Oh! The lounge! Uh . . .”

  “Something wrong, Broik?” queried Quark.

  “No, Boss. I’m on it.” The waiter palmed a door control in the hallway and stepped into the euphemistically named “employee lounge,” a space barely large enough to accommodate two exceedingly uncomfortable chairs.

  Quark sighed. He hated relinquishing perfectly good storage space to a lounge, but he had no choice. It was one of the concessions he’d made years earlier following his idiot brother Rom’s successful strike against the bar on the old station. And even though that bar no longer existed, several of Quark’s employees from that bar—Broik, for example—were still working for the establishment and thus entitled to the same benefits. Or so that idiot brother—now Grand Nagus of Ferenginar—had patiently explained to Quark when the two went over the plans for the new station-based Ferengi Embassy.

  “Uh, Boss?” Broik called, backing out of the lounge. “This guy’s been waiting to see you. He was hanging around when I opened up this morning, so I stuck him in the lounge. I, uh, I forgot to tell you.”

  “What guy?”

  An unfamiliar Ferengi face peered out of the doorway behind Broik. “Um, me, sir.”

  Quark’s gaze zeroed in on the stranger. He was young, very young—barely grown into his lobes. And he was wearing an ill-fitting waiter’s uniform. “Who are you?” Quark snapped.

  The youth straightened abruptly. “I’m . . . uh . . . Shmenge, sir. I’m new.”

  Quark frowned. “I don’t remember hiring a new waiter. I certainly can’t afford one.”

  Shmenge approached him hesitantly, his hands clasped before him in an appropriate posture of supplication. “No, sir. I’m not a new hire. My moogie—she’s an old friend of Ishka’s. She . . . she arranged for me to come here as an apprentice.”

  Quark blinked. “An apprentice? To me?”

  The concept boggled his mind. Not that apprenticeships were uncommon on Ferenginar. It was rumored that nearly a quarter of the liquidators at the Ferengi Commerce Authority these days were apprentices. It kept the overhead down. But no one had ever suggested, even in jest, that Quark held a prestigious enough vocation to attract an apprentice. Maybe having the bar proclaimed an embassy isn’t so bad after all, he thought.

  “This . . . apprenticeship,” Quark said, mildly intrigued, “what’s the fee arrangement?”

  Shmenge grinned. “My moogie paid seventy-nine strips of latinum to set it up.”

  “Seventy-nine, eh? And who did your moogie pay?”

  “Uh . . . Ishka. And Ishka was supposed to send you an introductory letter about me, going over the terms. She did, didn’t she?”

  Quark removed a small padd from the inside pocket of his jacket. He seldom activated the padd’s communication function; no one ever wrote to him, so why bother?

  Sure enough, there was something from his mother.

  Quark sighed. You might have simply called, Mother. He put the padd back in his pocket without reading the communication. He’d look it over later. “Apparently she did,” he said. “What about the other fee?”

  Shmenge’s brow furrowed. “Other fee?”

  “My fee, for going to all the trouble of letting you work for me . . . while you learn everything there is to know about becoming a preeminent entrepreneur.”

  “Oh!” Shmenge rooted around in his pockets. “That’s right! Moogie did say something about that. But she didn’t know how much it would be, so she gave me this.” His expression brightened as he located the credit chip he’d been looking for. He handed it to Quark.

  Quark blew a few particles of lint off of the chip and inserted it into the card transactor he kept behind the counter. “Let’s say one bar to start with,” Quark said while studying the balance. “That will cover your expenses for a few weeks.” He initiated the transaction. “You know, things like room and board, uniform cleaning and repair. And I’ll put a second bar on reserve for . . . hmmm, unanticipated opportunities.” He smiled and returned the chip to Shmenge.

  “Thank you, sir!” said the apprentice. “I’m sure I’ll make you proud.”

  Quark studied him briefly. “Shmenge, I’m going to impart lesson number one. It’s inspired by an old hew-mon expression. ‘If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean!’ ” He grabbed a cloth from behind the counter and threw it at his charge. “Now get busy!”

  “Still running the place like a despot, eh, Quark?” a voice called from across the room.

  “Not a despot, a simple businessman,” Quark responded matter-of-factly, still watching his new apprentice hustle toward the far end of the bar. Then he turned toward the entrance. A satisfied smirk of randy anticipation spread across his face as he recognized the female walking toward him. She was lovely and lithe, her body apparently poured into her skintight jumpsuit. The metallic fabric sparkled, backlit by the glow of the Plaza beyond.

  “Rionoj,” Quark said, his smirk shifting into a genuine smile. “How nice to see your purple tresses after all these years.”

  “I doubt that it’s my tresses you were looking at, Quark,” the Boslic freighter captain said, reaching out with a long, delicate finger to stroke the edge of his left lobe. “We have business to discuss. I believe you once told me you were in the market for entertainment. Well, I have something to fulfill your wildest dreams.” With an almost imperceptible, yet very effective level of pressure to Quark’s lobe, she added, “Why don’t you mix me a Black Hole, and we’ll discuss it.”

  Quivering slightly, Quark found a bottle of opaque liquid and poured it into a tapered glass. “Still transporting . . . questionable goods?” he asked.

  “No,” Rionoj answered after taking a sip of the pungent drink. Leaning gently over the bar and reaching again for his lobe—the other one this time—she said, “I’ve moved on to a more interesting, creative profession.”

  Quark made a feeble attempt to respond. “And, uh, what would that be?”

  “All in good time,” she answered. “I hear the shape shifter isn’t around anymore.”

  “Odo . . . uh . . . he comes and goes. But he isn’t here now.”

  “Not that it matters,” Rionoj purred. “What I have for you”—she removed her fingers from his lobe, then reached into a pouch and produced an isolinear optical chip—“is perfectly legal.”

  “Wha-what is it?” Quark asked, standing straighter as he forced aside the pleasant warmth fogging his brain.

  “A holosuite program. It’s exactly what you need”—she turned to swing her arm across their view of the empty establishment—“to remedy your dying business.”

  “I’ve got holosuite programs,” Quark said. “What’s so special about this one?”

  “The price,” Rionoj said, breaking into a smile. “It’ll only cost you ten bars of latinum.”

  “Ten bars! That’s ridiculous,” the fully recovered Ferengi stated. “You once sold me a whole shipload of salvage for three—and even today I can buy a crateful of programs for two.”
/>   “True,” she said, “but this isn’t salvage. And nothing in that crate would compare to it.” Rionoj poured the last of the Black Hole down her throat. Then she laid the chip next to the empty glass and turned to walk away. “This is going to say more than I ever could. Take a look at it. I guarantee that you’ll want it. I’ll be back to continue our conversation tomorrow.”

  Quark sighed as he watched her sashay into the Plaza. Then he looked down at the chip. Whatever was on it couldn’t possibly be worth ten bars of latinum. But the negotiation promised to be very enjoyable . . .

  2

  “All right, everybody out!” Quark barked at his employees.

  During boom times, he kept his establishment open around the twenty-six-hour clock; one didn’t need to be a Ferengi to know that sweet profits come from foolish bets made in the middle of the night.

  Under current circumstances, however, it was clear that staying open in case a customer might come in was the foolish bet.

  No one on the staff protested. Their contracts clearly addressed the arduous protocol related to disagreeing with the boss. No one was in the mood to go through that over a few hours of lost pay. Out they went.

  With a resigned sigh, Quark lowered the lights on the main floor, palmed the isolinear chip, and trod the stairs to Holosuite 3.

  All right, Rionoj, let’s see what you’ve brought me. He briefly scrutinized the title. Lust’s Latinum Lost. Well, the subject matter sounded intriguing, at any rate. He pushed the chip into the companel’s slot. “Computer, run program,” he instructed.

  “Program ready,” responded the computer.

  The holosuite door opened, and as Quark entered he was struck—

  —by the heady aroma of his homeworld. The woodlands of Ferenginar surrounded him, glistening through a veil of intense frippering. Mold, crusted in yeast and laden with fungi, encased the treetops, an enticing salad of culinary delight. Quark plucked a mushroom and tossed it into his mouth. Delicious. Rows of marrow trees drew his attention to a gentle river below . . .