Star Trek: The Fall: Revelation and Dust Page 17

  “Then how come you don’t know the Thirty-third?” Quark asked. It never hurts to suck up to the boss.

  “Oh, I know it,” Treir said. “I just don’t subscribe to it.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Quark said. He tossed down the cloth and set the snifter back in its place. He came out from behind the bar and crossed past where the smooth-nosed M’Pella waited patiently beside the dabo wheel for anybody who wanted to gamble. Quark felt as though the silence of the wheel, its stillness, mocked him.

  He paced to the wide entrance in the half wall that separated his Public House, Café, Gaming Emporium, Holosuite Arcade, and Ferengi Embassy to Bajor from the expansive walkway of the Plaza. Through the bowed transparent bulkhead that extended from above the third level and curved out and then back to the residential level below, Quark could see the broad span of the station’s horizontal x-ring and, out beyond it, the saucer section of U.S.S. Robinson. To the right, he could just make out the long-necked, green-hulled form of a Romulan warbird; he read the small native characters on its hull: I.R.W. Tranome Sar.

  Now where are those crews? he thought. It’s not as though Romulans are celebrated for their restraint. Quark knew that other starships besides those had arrived at the station during the previous twenty-six hours. He’d taken a stroll earlier—checking out the state of his competition on the Plaza—and noted the other vessels docked at DS9: Ezri Dax’s ship, Aventine; Chancellor Martok’s flagship, Sword of Kahless; a Cardassian battle cruiser, Jorrene; and an asymmetric Gorn leviathan, S’persson.

  “So where is everybody?” Quark asked aloud. Down the Plaza to his left, he saw a Starfleet security officer, a Tellarite named Ansarg, whom he’d met only on the prior day. She looked over at him when he spoke, but said nothing.

  Quark peered out into space, at U.S.S. Robinson, then back at his nearly empty business. He’d seen that some of that ship’s crew—including Captain Sisko and his wife—had been invited to the memorial service Laren had held, and he’d expected at least some of them to stop by the bar before returning to their ship. Quark suspected that perhaps the crew—and those of the other vessels—had been embargoed because of the dignitaries visiting the station, though if so, that would probably last only until the various protection details had been permitted to reconnoiter DS9’s layout.

  I could find out for sure if I could tap in to the starbase’s computer, he thought. While Quark liked his new establishment, he did miss the old one—not down on Bajor, but on the original Deep Space 9. After years spent there—all the way back to when the Cardassians had run it as Terok Nor—he had devised numerous means of gleaning information, including learning procedures and acquiring devices that allowed him to bypass security encoding and access the main computer on a deep level—both when the Guard had run the station and when Starfleet had taken it over.

  The day before, Quark had made his first attempt at circumventing the starbase’s computing defenses. It earned him nothing more than a visit from DS9’s head of security. Lieutenant Commander Blackmer accepted Quark’s explanation of having simply made a mistake at his companel, but the security chief also made it clear that he would tolerate such an excuse—or any excuse—just the one time.

  I’m going to have to be exceedingly careful, Quark thought. He felt confident that he could ultimately gain access to the assets he would need on the starbase, but it would require finesse and time. More than anything, he wanted to avoid drawing the wrath of Ro Laren.

  Or that might be the only way to get her attention these days, he thought. Quark had moved to the station from Bajor three months earlier to prepare for his new venture. He tried to make time to see Laren, but her own responsibilities in advance of Deep Space 9 becoming fully operational kept her extremely busy—and even more so recently. Over the previous ten days, Quark had seen her just twice, and one of those times had been at the memorial.

  Maybe that explains why none of the starbase crew are here, Quark thought, turning to regard the bar. Hosting a head of state anywhere could bring complications, doubly so on a new facility. Laren faced more than that, though: multiple chief executives currently quartered at DS9, two of them—Imperator Sozzerozs and Praetor Kamemor—from historically adversarial powers. The crew had been working around the clock to ensure that everything proceeded smoothly up to and through the dedication and the diplomatic visits.

  Quark also knew that most of the new civilian residents wouldn’t arrive until after that. So why did I even bother opening so soon? he asked himself—though he needn’t have, since he knew the answer. First of all, any new business venture required time to set up and find its way, and better that happen before being inundated by customers. Second, Laren—The station commander—requested that all the proprietors on the Plaza open prior to the dedication. And finally, where high-ranking political officials traveled, high-value information followed. As the Twenty-second Rule stated: A wise man can hear profit in the wind. With imperators and chancellors, presidents and praetors present, the hot air on the station would blow at gale force.

  Quark started back across the room, but then stopped for a moment to appreciate the place. He loved its sleek, ultramodern look. To the left of the bar, a staircase rose straight up to the rear of the second level, which sat tiered back from the first level, and then to the third level, following the line of DS9’s upper hemisphere. An open lift operated, funicular-like, to the right of the bar. The third level stepped back from the second.

  Past the stairway on the left, a corridor led to several storerooms, as well as refreshers for the employees and a pair of offices. On the right, beyond the lift, another corridor ran past customer ’freshers back to his holosuite arcade. Also reaching up three levels, the holocomplex featured twice as many units as his place on the old station, all of them larger and with more sophisticated processors.

  As if that matters without customers. Quark shook his head as he paced back across the floor and behind the bar. Plenty of items still required his attention in the new establishment, but instead he plucked the snifter off the shelf and began wiping it down again.

  “Will you stop moping already,” Treir said, once more paring herself from atop the bar. “I understand that you’re always concerned about your business interests, but you’re only two days into this place, you’ve got ten thousand new customers coming to live here in just a few days, and you still have a successful operation on Bajor. And I know you know all of that, so what’s really bothering you?”

  Quark stared at Treir. She’s right, he thought.

  “The memorial was difficult,” Treir said quietly. She reached behind the bar and picked up an empty glass, which she held up in front of her. “To absent friends,” she said.

  The way Treir offered her toast reminded Quark of somebody else who had always wanted to drink to one thing or another—an absent friend. “You shouldn’t be sitting there,” he told her.

  “What?” Treir asked. “What are you talking about?”

  Quark set down the glass and rag, then walked over until he stood across the end of the bar from Treir. “Morn should be sitting there,” he said.

  Treir frowned. “That’s not quite what I meant by ‘absent friends.’ ”

  “I know,” Quark told her, and he did know, but he also didn’t want to think anymore that night about the people who hadn’t escaped the destruction of the station.

  “You haven’t heard from Morn at all?” Treir’s concern seemed a matter of friendship, though Quark believed that the two had enjoyed a bit more than that at one point.

  “Not for more than a year,” Quark said. Morn had evacuated from DS9—had actually done so with Quark, helping to carry a holosuite simulation tester preserving the Vic Fontaine program. After that, Morn ran his shipping business from Bajor for a while, regularly visiting Quark’s bar in Aljuli. The local customers loved the big, bald Lurian, frequently crowding around to hear one or another of his long, meandering tales that invariably had everybody ar
ound him convulsing with laughter. Morn, of course, appreciated the opportunity to recycle his stories for a new audience, and he clearly adored the attention—almost as much as Quark adored the invariable uptick in sales that came with his presence.

  Even so, Quark thought, I could see he wasn’t quite himself. Despite still acting like the life of the party, Morn had seemed deeply troubled. Quark didn’t know if he suffered from survivor’s guilt, or post-traumatic stress, or just plain grief. He did attempt to broach the subject with Morn once, to no avail. Not long after that, Morn stopped patronizing the bar.

  “You did try to contact him, right?” Treir asked.

  “Of course I did,” Quark said. “I counted the monthly payment of his tab as a long-term asset.” Treir tilted her head and arched an eyebrow in an expression that told him she knew he valued Morn as more than just a financial boon.

  “I know he doesn’t still owe you money,” she said.

  “No,” Quark said. Within ten days of Morn’s last appearance at the bar in Aljuli, a cash payment had arrived by courier, completely satisfying his tab. “But I do keep trying to track him down. I just want to make sure . . .” Quark shrugged. “I just want to make sure that he’s all right.”

  “I know,” Treir said.

  A sudden whisper of noise reached Quark’s ears, followed by a pounding sound. “Do you hear that?” he asked Treir.

  “Look at me,” Treir said. “I’m tall and green. You’re the one with the big ears.”

  “So I am,” Quark agreed. “And these ears just heard a turbolift arrive, and now there are footsteps headed in this direction.” He waited a moment, then added, “And voices.”

  “Whose voices?”

  Quark listened. “Chief O’Brien,” he finally said. “And that wayward nephew of mine . . . and Doctor Bashir.”

  “That’s it?”

  “No, there are at least six people walking . . . seven.”

  “Are they coming here?”

  “I can hear sounds, not thoughts,” Quark grumbled, but he waited to see if the voices and footsteps grew quieter, which they would if the group chose to enter the Replimat, or Bella’s Confections, or Café Parisienne, or any of the other establishments between that turbolift and Quark’s.

  “I can hear them now,” Treir said. “I think they are coming this way.”

  Seconds later, the group arrived, Doctor Bashir and Chief O’Brien leading the way, chattering with each other as though nothing had changed in years. To Quark’s surprise, Lieutenant Commander Douglas and Captain Dax walked side by side following the men, although they did not appear to be chatting. Commander Bowers trailed behind them, along with two of the starbase’s security team, Olivia Dellasant and Ventor Bixx. Bashir and O’Brien peered around until the chief pointed out a large table that would seat all of them. As most of them headed in that direction, the doctor walked over to the bar. Two waiters, Frool and Grimp, started over toward the table.

  “Quark,” Bashir said. Spoken in the doctor’s accent, his name always sounded like the noise some animal would make: Kwahk.

  “Doctor,” Quark said, “it’s good to see you.” Bashir hadn’t been in the bar since it had opened, although they had seen each other several times since Quark had moved back to the station.

  “I don’t suppose the dartboard has arrived yet?” the doctor asked.

  “Not yet,” Quark said. Bashir and O’Brien had hung a dartboard in the bar on Bajor that they’d wanted to bring with them to DS9, but the game had become so popular in Aljuli that they’d decided to leave it there. When Quark got to the station, they asked him to order a new one. “I’ve got a shipment of goods coming in from Alpha Centauri in just a few days, and I expect it to be in there.”

  “Excellent,” Bashir said.

  “Hello, Julian,” Treir said, standing up from her barstool.

  “Treir,” Bashir said, almost singing her name. “It’s lovely to see you.”

  She started toward the table where Chief O’Brien had led the others. “I thought you weren’t working,” Quark said to her.

  “I’m not going to take their orders,” Treir said, smiling. “I’m going to join them.” Then, looking to the doctor for approval, she added, “If that’s all right with you, Julian.”

  “Please,” Bashir said. “By all means.”

  As Treir sauntered across the room, Quark felt annoyed, but only for an instant. He realized that it would make him as happy to take Treir’s latinum as anybody else’s. In fact, it might make him even happier, considering the ridiculous salary she extorted from him.

  The doctor watched Treir for a moment as she crossed the room, and then he turned back to Quark. “Any word on Vic?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” Quark said. “There are some interface issues with the new holosuites.”

  “Can’t you get it fixed?”

  “Believe me, Doctor, I’d like to,” Quark said. “For one thing, I’d like to be able to use my tester again.” Although Quark had eventually found the resources to install a pair of holosuites in his place on Bajor, they hadn’t had the capacity to handle Vic’s complex simulation matrix. Because of that, he’d chosen to allow the program to continue running in his tester.

  “Miles said that you shouldn’t use it for any other program while Vic’s in there,” Bashir said, his tone betraying his concern.

  “I know that, Doctor; I’ve been hearing it for two years,” Quark said. “That’s why I want to get Vic out of there and into a holosuite. At least in there, he can bring in some customers. The problem is that the Starfleet engineers have been too busy making Deep Space Nine fully operational to help out here, and right now, the few civilian engineers on the starbase are working for other establishments on the Plaza.”

  “Can’t you just hire an engineer from Bajor?”

  Quark couldn’t keep himself from smiling, and he felt the reassuring sharpness of his teeth against his lips. “Thank you for your business advice, Doctor, but I think I’ll wait until the supply of available engineers on the station increases enough to bring down the cost of my demand.”

  “Of course,” Bashir said. “I understand. It’s just that I’m concerned about Vic. He’s spent two years by himself.”

  “He hasn’t been by himself,” Quark said. “I’ve told you, the tester has been executing his program all along. It doesn’t project the holograms or generate the sounds or any of the other tangible aspects of his matrix, but his whole world is in there and moving forward.”

  “At least you think it is,” Bashir said. “What if something’s gone wrong?”

  “If something’s gone wrong, then something’s gone wrong,” Quark said matter-of-factly. “Maybe we’ll be able to do something about that and maybe not, but as you said, it’s been two years. Do you really think a few more days will make a difference?”

  The doctor sighed. “No, I suppose not.”

  “I promise to let you know as soon as I know,” Quark said. And he certainly would keep the doctor informed, particularly once he’d migrated Vic’s program back to a holosuite, because that would be sure to lure Bashir and his friends to the bar.

  “Thank you, Quark.” Kwahk.

  Bashir walked back over to the table. Ezri and Sarina talked, Quark saw, but not to each other, and he wondered about that dynamic. While he studied the group, Ezri looked up and saw him. She immediately excused herself and made her way over to the bar.

  “Quark.” She reached over and patted his hand. “How are you? I’ve been told that you’re something of a tycoon now—places on both Bajor and Deep Space Nine.”

  The compliment sent a tingle through Quark’s lobes. “Well, yes, I’m keeping the bar on Bajor that I opened after . . .” He found that he didn’t want to explicitly mention the fate of the original station, and so he finished, “After.”

  “It must be successful, then,” Ezri said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” Quark said, honestly touched by her attention a
nd kind words. “And what about you? How’s life aboard the Aventine?” He hadn’t seen her in three years, since her duties had last brought her ship to the old station.

  “I’ve got nothing to complain about,” Ezri said, and then she leaned in and added, sotto voce, “Although that usually doesn’t stop me.”

  “Good thinking,” Quark said. “It keeps you in practice for when you really do have complaints—such as having an almost empty bar on a gigantic starbase where six starships are docked.” He waved his hand at the room.

  Ezri gazed around the space. “I’m sure it’ll fill up—if not tonight, then soon.”

  As she spoke, Quark heard something else beyond her words: the breath of turbolift doors opening—and not the doors of the lift he’d heard a few minutes earlier, but those of the lift closest to the bar. As before, the sounds of numerous feet traipsing on the deck arose, and just seconds later, another group of Starfleet officers appeared from the other direction. He saw Captain Sisko and Kasidy Yates, along with Lieutenant Commander Blackmer, Lieutenant Commander Wheeler Stinson, Lieutenant Aleco Vel, and a Starfleet officer Quark didn’t recognize, a Bajoran woman. He realized how much work he still had to do in getting to know the crew.

  “See that,” Ezri said. “Six more customers.”

  Six, Quark thought, plus Ezri’s group of seven, plus the nine already in the bar, makes twenty-two. Twenty-three, if he counted Treir. Not exactly standing room only, but certainly better than nothing.

  As two more of his waiters, Broik and Zirk, hurried over to serve Captain Sisko’s party, Quark heard the turbolift doors open again. He smiled. Maybe his new bar would succeed after all.

  • • •

  “How are you feeling, Minister?”

  Asarem Wadeen allowed herself to fall backward onto the plush sofa. She soughed heavily as she relaxed into the comfortable cushions. It delighted her to see that Captain Ro and her crew had been thoughtful enough to place a vase of fresh nerak blossoms in her guest quarters, atop the low table in front of the sofa. Across from her, they had also rendered the wide port in the outer wall transparent, allowing her a stunning view of the stars through the equally pellucid band around the equator of the starbase’s sphere. She could also see the horizontal docking ring and, moored there, the transport that had brought her to DS9. Coincidence, she wondered, or another thoughtful touch?