Star Trek: ALL - Seven Deadly Sins (18 page)

The Breen began returning fire, but it was too late; the Urwyzden forces had made a breach and had begun descending toward the parked holoship. Voloczin immediately started to power up the engines, ready to leave, but before they were warmed up a thump rang through the hull. An Urwyzden shuttle had docked. A second vessel joined it in a matter of moments.

Two of the holoship airlock hatches exploded into the corridors, and space-suited soldiers flowed into them. Breen troops began firing immediately, and battle was joined.

“Bugger this,” Voloczin muttered. “I’m offski.” He pulled himself into an upper level, making for the holoship’s shuttle. Halfway there, a group of Urwyzden ran right into him. His tentacles immediately snatched up two of them, crushing their fragile bodies in a trice. The others opened fire as soon as his victims’ screams were silenced.

Struck by multiple phaser beams, Voloczin’s skin ripped apart. Being mostly gaseous inside, he exploded like a burst balloon.

It took less than an hour for more arriving Urwyzden to subdue the remaining Breen. None surrendered, and none survived.

The news reached Urwyzden Beta within the hour, and Brunt found himself summoned to a secure military office. The Betan prime minister was there, with several generals and other advisers. Representatives of Gamma were there too, as was someone Brunt vaguely recognized as one of the inmates he had brought out of Conditioning Camp Seven. It turned out that he was a high-ranking civil police officer.

Brunt felt uncomfortable with so many eyes on him, all masking mixed emotions. Mostly hostile emotions, at that. “You were right,” the prime minister said at last. “We’ve taken control of a vessel midway between our worlds, and there is a mass of computer data showing how this war came about as the result of the Ferengi desire for profits.” He hesitated. “Did you start the war for profit?”

“The crew of which I was a part did,” he admitted, “and I did my part in it. The camps and the … the rest of it, weren’t part of my personal intention. I can’t sell to the dead.”

“Then why? Why did this happen?”

Brunt had expected that question as well. “Gaila invested here. This whole project has been set up to allow him to cash out without anybody—especially Daimon Blud or the Nagus—knowing what he’s doing. The war is a distraction for a massive insider trading scam!”

The police officer nodded slowly. “Many of us are indebted to you,” he said, “but you must understand there’ll have to be a reckoning about your part in this abomination.”

“A Ferengi always pays a fair price,” Brunt promised.

“Can you bring us Gaila?”

“Yes.”

Brunt materialized in the
Golden Handshake
’s engine room. The place was darkened, running on minimal power to avoid detection, just in case. It had occurred to Brunt that Gaila—or more likely Lok, as Gaila wouldn’t have the expertise—might have changed the transporter protocols. For that reason he had come alone, rather than risk bringing up an Urwyzden, which might set off an alarm when the biofilters noticed it.

Brunt was no expert at demolition, but he didn’t have to be. With access to the computer, all he needed to do was override the autodestruct system. It was a simple enough task, and just as simple to make sure that his override couldn’t be overridden by Gaila or Lok. It was impossible, however, to avoid the loud alarms and vocal warnings that the computer would give, and Brunt had to move as quietly as he could to get where he wanted to be before Gaila and Lok heard them.

Gaila woke with a scream when the alarm started blaring.
“Autodestruct in five minutes,”
a voice was calling.

He knew it was Brunt, of course. Brunt with his FCA snooping skills. “Computer, cancel autodestruct sequence. Authorization Gaila four four two seven nine omicron.”

“Autodestruct sequence cannot be canceled. Autodestruct in four minutes thirty seconds.”

Gaila swore in several languages, then called upon Lok to try to deactivate the autodestruct. By the time he ran onto the bridge, Lok was thumping a console with his gauntleted fist. Obviously he was having no luck either. The only thing to do, it soon became clear, was evacuate the ship.

The transporter room was pitch dark when Gaila and Lok ran in. “Set the coordinates for the spaceport on Urwyzden Alpha,” Gaila ordered. “We’ll blend in with everyone else who’s leaving the—”

A phaser blast cut down Lok where he stood, and he fell with a mechanical gurgling sound.

“Hello, Gaila,” Brunt said. “Brunt, FCA … ish.” He grinned, waving a phaser before him as he emerged from the shadows. “You’re about to become notorious as the first ever Ferengi war criminal, you know. And I must say, it gives me great pleasure to arrest you as a war criminal, as a member of the Shadow Treasury—”

“If I’m a war criminal, then so are you!”

“As an offensively poor example of Ferengi morals, and as a personal threat to my own profit and opportunities.”

Gaila just laughed. “What profits? Once you ran out, I made sure to sequester your share of the company profits.”

“Then I can add breach of contract.”

“You can add what you like, but if we’re still here in fifteen seconds . . .”

“Step onto the pad.”

Gaila did. Brunt touched a control on the transporter console and stepped up onto the pad. Immediately, Gaila grabbed for the phaser, and the room dissolved around them.

In orbit, the
Golden Handshake
exploded, and Gailtek Armaments and Technologies was, in all possible ways, dissolved.

At the Urwyzden capital’s spaceport, Brunt and Gaila rolled down the slope of the pyramidal terminal while hanging desperately on to each other’s throats and lapels. Jagged chunks of rubble thumped repeatedly and randomly into bone and flesh, always in the least expected and most painful places.

Black fingernails tore at skin, and bruised knuckles bruised themselves some more against jaws and cheeks. The two combatants butted up against a handful of Urwyzden corpses; soldiers lay sprawled around, with blood-slicked weapons lying on the tarmac.

Gaila leapt on top of his enemy and started to throttle him, while trying to keep his face out of range of the fists that were coming up in an attempt to dislodge him. He jerked his head back away from one punch, and that was when he saw the most beautiful sight on this miserable slime-hole of a planet: a warp-capable shuttle, impulse drive idling, with its hatch open and a fully powered but mercifully uninhabited cockpit inside.

Pieces of rubble clattered down from farther up the sloping wall of the terminal, and both Ferengi looked up to see armored Urwyzden soldiers scrambling down in pursuit. Both then looked back to the shuttle.

The distraction was just enough to allow Brunt to roll, throwing Gaila off. They broke apart on all fours, scrambling for the weapons
lying near the hands of the fallen soldiers. Then they were on their feet again, both trying to get the business end of a hand phaser into the other’s face first.

Neither won.

Beaten and bloody, their eyes blackened, their clothes torn and bloodstained, each found himself pressing a phaser to the other’s lobes at arm’s length. The pursuing soldiers were gathering around them, weapons raised, cutting them off from the shuttle. “Gaila,” Brunt said smugly. “Oh, if only you were Quark … that’s the only way this moment could possibly be any more delicious. Or profitable.”

Gaila tried to look less bowel-looseningly terrified than he felt, consoled only by the thought that he couldn’t look
more
terrified. “You’re finished too, Brunt! It’s a mutual loss scenario!”

Brunt just sighed as the troops closed in. “How did my life come to this?” he asked.

Gaila licked his lips. “If you want us to cross each other, then fine, but we should at least get offworld first, and then do it in a proper Ferengi fashion.” He spoke calmly and as rationally as he could manage. “There’s no profit in getting ourselves killed by these troops.”

“Profit?” Brunt echoed. “Profit can still be profit even if it’s coming as something other than latinum. Information. Matériel. Females.” He nodded. “But you’re right—we’re Ferengi together, and should put that first.”

The pair turned to aim at the approaching soldiers, raising their weapons. . . . Then suddenly, before anyone could fire, Brunt turned back and clubbed Gaila down with his weapon. He disarmed Gaila and shoved him toward the troops.

“What are you doing?” Gaila demanded as the soldiers forced him to his knees and wrapped restraints around his limbs.

“I have a new partner. The Rules of Acquisition say there’s profit in peace, and profit in war, and in each of those conditions you must prepare for the other. You didn’t understand that. There’s no ongoing profit in genocide and death camps. You can’t exploit someone you killed. It’s just … un-Ferengi.” Brunt was wholly incapable of letting such un-Ferengi behavior slide. That’s why he was so well-suited to the FCA. “Oh, I didn’t mind the insider-trading scam, but the genocide that will cut off all opportunities for future profit, that’s not just
un-Ferengi, it’s unnatural.” Brunt leaned in more closely. “And, of course, there’s the fact that you are a member of the detestable House of Quark, as well as being guilty of all the things that the FCA was devoted to rooting out. And I will always be ’Brunt, FCA.’”

“And where’s your profit? Your nonlatinum profit?”

“Well, let’s see,” Brunt said smugly. “By exposing you, I will stop the war, preserve opportunity for future Ferengi profits, and thwart a member of Quark’s detestable family. That’s worth a lot. Oh, and did I forget to mention that I’ve negotiated a license to operate as a consultant/enforcer who is a properly legal authority in the region, albeit one operating on private and government contracts and commissions. It’s not the same as being in the FCA, but it’s the closest thing—especially since the diplomats for such a fiscally important exchange planet will exert pressure on Ferenginar to allow me to earn profit from non-Ferengi. That’s my profit: not in latinum, but in opportunity for more latinum. I won’t be in the FCA, but I will be doing the same job in the private sector—for more money!” He laughed at Gaila’s horrified expression.

While the soldiers dragged Gaila away, Brunt could hear him trying to bargain both for his life and for the rights to holonovels of his life and this scheme. It was almost more than he could take.

Then again, he didn’t have to. He had a shuttle just the right size for himself and Pel, and a new, profitable job in the career he had always lived with.

The three Urwyzden prime ministers met on Urwyzden Alpha, to make a joint declaration of peace. The war was over.

“Now we know who our enemies are,” the Alphan said.

“And we will never forget,” the Betan agreed.

The prime minister from Gamma nodded. “The Ferengi.”

“We must look into this matter,” the Alphan continued. “We must protect ourselves in future, proactively if need be.” He looked out across the smoldering capital. “Next time, we will teach the Ferengi how to conduct business.”

Quark had a long day. His brother Rom and family were visiting the bar on a stopover at Deep Space 9. This wouldn’t normally be cause for a long day, even with his niece, little Bena, teething and being a royal pain, but now that Rom was Grand Nagus, and the bar the official Ferengi Embassy to Bajor, it was a different matter. Now there were security people, and advisers, and businesspeople looking for an audience with the Nagus, and innumerable other annoying hangers-on.

Quark pretended not to mind too much, as he was glad of the chance to see Rom and Leeta again for a proper family dinner. He pretended not to be too glad either, but they were family, and he was charging premium prices for Ferengi dishes and drinks while there were so many Ferengi visitors among the crowd following the Nagus. This was looking like his best month so far this year, as far as the takings were concerned. If he could persuade Leeta to take a shift on the dabo table, he could increase profits further by casting it as a nostalgic grand return . . .

Quark had mostly tuned out the sound of FCN. The net was playing on a large display next to the staircase to the upper level. It was a screen similar to the main viewer in ops, but Quark rarely had it put up, as it tended to distract patrons from the dabo tables and other attractions. Rom liked to keep an eye on it now that he was
Nagus, however, and so Quark had had a couple of waiters install the screen.

He had just sat down to dinner with the group when there was a sudden crash from upstairs and a horrifyingly familiar voice roared triumphantly:
“Brunt, FCA!”

Rom let out a howl, causing Bena to wail as well. When Quark turned, his guts filling with ice and his throat with fire, he was all ready to unleash the full diplomatic fury of an ambassador’s ire.

There was nobody there. There was nobody on the stairs, and the only faces visible on the upper gallery were Morn and his Klingon date.
“That’s right!”
Brunt continued.
“I’m back, and debtors and deal breakers everywhere are in for their worst nightmares.”
Rom squealed again, and Quark stepped back, looking up.

Brunt’s face leered out of the large screen, the bar of latinum around his neck looking as if it was about to crack Leeta in the back of the head. “I don’t believe it,” Quark muttered. “What is he doing there?”

“I don’t know, brother,” Rom answered. At least he had stopped yelling. Quark wished Bena would too.

On the screen, Brunt grinned his oiliest and most repulsive grin.
“Only on FCN!”
A title slammed down over his face:
“BRUNT THE BOUNTY HUNTER: ALL NEW!”

Quark and Rom exchanged a glance, and then both of them screamed.

James Swallow

Historian’s Note

This story is set in early 2362 (ACE), during the Cardassian-Federation conflict while Miles O’Brien was serving aboard the
U.S.S. Rutledge
(“The Wounded” TNG).

For Sean Harry, with thanks

The deck plates rose up to meet her and she felt the impact of the fall vibrate through her duty armor, felt the gridded metal slice into her right eye-ridge. Sanir Kein swallowed a reflexive cough and tasted the earthy wash of new blood in her mouth, where her teeth had cut the inside of her lip. Dimly, she was aware of alert sirens howling and the cloying, spent stink of curdled electroplasma.