“Rusty?” Nog asked.
Danny shrugged wearily, like he didn’t have the strength to comment, and sat back in his club chair. The hologram flickered once and then again.
“My brother’s still having problems with his holosuites?” Rom asked from where he sat. Nog’s father fidgeted, first rubbing the arms of the chair, then touching the lobes of his ears, and finally tugging on the cuffs of his expensively tailored shirt. Despite having been the grand nagus for more than a decade, Rom still did not present any evidence of being comfortable with the higher-quality fabrics his wife, Leeta, rightly insisted he wear while serving in his official capacity.
“What kind of suites?” Danny asked.
Rom, seated in front of his personal holographic array in his office on Ferenginar, grinned, remembering that this hologram was not self-aware like Vic Fontaine. “Danny, you look good.”
“You too, Rom,” Danny replied. “How’re the wife and the kid?”
Rom smiled hugely, showing his back teeth. “The treasures of my life.”
Danny dipped his head and turned away as if he was embarrassed by the display of unbridled happiness. “How is it,” he asked wryly, “that a guy like you is in charge?”
Rom’s grin faded. “I think,” he said uncertainly, “because the economic indicators are up one point six percent over projections for the quarter, largely on the basis of the depreciated tariffs we’ve introduced for both Federation and Cardassian goods. In the past three quarters, we’ve seen slightly smaller increases, though we’ve managed to leverage the improved reputation of Ferengi mining so that—”
“Father?” Nog asked.
“Yes?”
“Please don’t get started on economic reforms. Beaming in your hologram from home is very . . . costly.”
“I can afford it,” Rom said brightly.
“I mean, Uncle Quark is bound to notice sooner or later and wonder what we’re doing.”
“Oh,” Rom said, shrinking slightly, which seemed so ridiculous to Nog. His father had infinitely more wealth and prestige than his uncle, and yet Rom still acted like he was afraid Quark was going to walk in at any moment and tell him to clear a dirty table. “All right, then, what are we doing?”
“Yeah,” Danny said. “What’s the deal?”
“I need some advice,” Nog began.
“Oh,” Rom said, and sat up straighter. “Of course, son. What can I help you with? I mean, what kind of advice do you need? Financial information? Questions about career options? Uh, decorating suggestions? You do have new quarters, don’t you?”
“This isn’t about women, is it?” Danny asked. “If it is, I can go get Rusty.”
“No. No,” Nog said. “No, and definitely no,” he said. “It’s just that . . .” He searched for the right words despite the fact that he’d been rehearsing the conversation for the past couple days. Crossing his arms over his chest, he lowered his head and said, with as much meaning as he could muster, “Life has been very odd lately.” He looked up from under his brow to see what kind of response his statement had generated. His father was now leaning forward in his chair, palms of his hands resting on his knees. Now that Rom had something to do, a task to engage in, he had ceased fidgeting. Danny maintained a demeanor of polite, modulated concern. Interestingly, a small table had materialized beside his chair and Danny was sipping from a tumbler of brown liquor.
No one said a word for several seconds.
His father looked back and forth between Nog and Danny. “So?” Rom asked, apparently mystified. “You’re on Deep Space 9. Life is always odd there.”
Danny pointed toward Rom without taking his eyes off Nog. “I concur.”
“It’s been extra odd,” Nog amended. “As in ‘more so than usual.’ I . . . I’m afraid I can’t tell you about all of it.” He shook his head, an indication of his frustration. “Orders.” Rom frowned at him as if to say, So? Nog added, “From the top. The very top.”
“But you’re okay?” Danny asked.
“Nothing physical,” Nog explained. “Nothing permanent, anyway.” He rubbed his forehead and stood up straight. Besides the two chairs and the table, the room was starkly simple, with paneled walls and a lush wall-to-wall carpet based on the kinds in gentlemen’s clubs a person like Danny might have frequented back in the twentieth century, though purely for business reasons, naturally. Nog enjoyed walking around on the carpet. He felt like the soles of his feet were being massaged by tiny, furry springs.
“Then what?” Rom asked.
“Yeah, kid. What he said. Then what?” Danny asked. “Afraid you’re being a bit too cryptic.”
“There’s no one to talk to!” Nog said, surprised by his own words. He had been thinking about this conversation for some time, but now that he had arrived at the crux of the matter, he was surprised—and not a little bit embarrassed—to hear the words come out of his mouth. This was the source of his spiritual malaise? That he didn’t have anyone who would listen to him complain?
Danny and his father looked at each other. Two overlapping but competing thoughts blipped through Nog’s mind:
These two glancing askew at each other is costing an astonishing amount of latinum.
The holograms look great.
“Well . . . ,” Rom began.
“You could . . . ,” Danny hemmed. “Ah . . .”
Both fell silent and became very intensely interested in their manicures, waiting for the other to continue.
“You could call me anytime,” Rom said, rising and spreading his hands.
“All you have to do is drop in,” Danny added, uncrossing and recrossing his legs.
Nog waved them both away. “This isn’t about making you feel guilty. Or worrying about me. I know how I sound. I know this is kind of . . . ” He searched his feelings for the correct word. “ . . . pathetic.”
“Not at all,” Danny said. “It’s important. And something you need to get all the kinks out of because if you don’t, it can turn nasty.”
“He’s right, son,” Rom said. “It is important. Everyone needs someone to talk to about this sort of thing. If I didn’t have Leeta, I don’t know what I’d do. Thoughts whizzing away at warp speed, one way or another. A million things to ponder every day. It’s enough to make a man’s lobes throb.”
“What did you do before you met Leeta?” Nog asked.
Rom sat down again and slumped into his chair. Nog was touched by the momentary expression of wistful sadness on his father’s face. “Well,” he said, “I had you.” He furrowed his brow. “And Quark, who can be a surprisingly good listener when you pay him enough.” He frowned, but then brightened. “And Morn!”
“Morn?” Danny asked.
“I miss him,” Rom said, momentarily lost in the mists of nostalgia.
“Sure,” Danny said, playing along.
His father remained quiet for a count of four and then asked, “What about Jake?”
Well, Nog thought. Here we are. He kept his answer brief. “Married. Baby.”
Both men shrugged and looked at opposite corners of their virtual room.
“No counterproposal for that,” Rom said.
“It happens,” Danny added.
“Yeah,” Nog sighed. “And I’m happy for him.”
“Of course you are,” Rom said. “But I understand what you’re saying,” his father added. “What it means. But it’s one of those things that happen to everyone. People change. They grow up. And sometimes . . .”
“People get left behind,” Danny concluded.
No one spoke. They all stared for what seemed a very long time, but was probably only ten strips of latinum.
Finally, Nog asked, “So, what do you do?”
Rom looked at Danny, who looked back. They shrugged as one.
“Move on,” Danny offered.
“Make new friends.”
“Or see a shrink,” Danny added.
Nog shook his head at the last suggestion. “No. This isn’t that sort of thing. I’m not looking for therapy. Just someone who wants to . . . I don’t know. There’s a word . . .”
“Hang out,” Danny offered.
“That’s two words,” Rom corrected.
Nog rolled his eyes.
“What about the chief?” Rom asked.
January 9, 2386
Ops Center
Robert Hooke
“What about this Chief O’Brien?” Finch asked.
“What is a chief?” Sabih asked, scrolling through large chunks of data at rapid speeds. One of his skills—his only skill, he would admit when he was being honest with himself—was his ability to quickly and efficiently search for and retrieve data from a variety of nonintegrated databases. Starfleet, he knew, was all about cohesive, curated databases, but not everyone else in the Federation (and definitely not outside it) was fortunate enough to possess its refined resources. Sabih also knew he could look up the answer to his own question before Finch could reply, but he wanted to buy himself some time. Also, sometimes he enjoyed listening to his employer pontificate.
“A chief,” Finch began, leaning back with fingers steepled, “is a noncommissioned officer, which means he or she has been promoted up through the ranks of enlisted personnel and did not receive a commission. There are many types of noncommissioned officers—or noncoms, as they are sometimes called—but most of them share the distinction of being particularly talented in some complex, specialized skill, such as piloting a particularly nasty form of craft or mastering a weapons system. Chiefs frequently know more about the actual subject than the lieutenants and captains to whom they report.”
Finch exhaled, as he often did when completing one of his complex and perfectly phrased sentences. Inhaling, he began anew. “Now, our Chief O’Brien is likely some sort of engineering specialist—the most common use of the term in Starfleet—and holds sway over some section of specialists . . .”
“Actually,” Sabih said, having located O’Brien’s public records, “he’s the chief engineer of Deep Space 9. In fact, he’s one of the primary designers and architects.”
“. . . Or, as I was about to say,” Finch continued without missing a beat, “sometimes the title is retained by individuals who, in fact, have a much wider swath of responsibility and authority. Obviously, such is the case with our erstwhile visitor. And his associate?”
“Nog? Hang on, let me check.” As Sabih had immediately recognized the name as Ferengi, he needed little time to find a Starfleet lieutenant commander from that world. There was, in fact, only one, named Nog or otherwise. “Lots of impressive information here, assuming I’m reading this correctly. But one fact stands out: Lieutenant Commander Nog is the son of the current grand nagus, Rom.”
Finch was not often rendered speechless. Sabih observed the spectacle from the corners of his eyes, not daring to stare directly at a minor miracle. Finch’s gaze, meanwhile, appeared to be flickering from one imagined vista to the next. He lifted his chin and rubbed the underside with the tip of his thumb. “Really?” he breathed. “How very interesting.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Sabih commented. “Why would the son of the grand nagus waste his time working for Starfleet? He must be worth more latinum than, well, the space station he works on.”
“The newly built space station,” Finch said. “And our nearest neighbor of any note if you don’t count Bajor.”
“Don’t you count Bajor?”
“No,” Finch said. “Bajor is too concerned with Bajor to have much interest in our activities. But a Starfleet station . . . I’ve been meaning to focus some thought on them, but, you know . . .” He gestured significantly in an “up-there-thataway” fashion. “Busy, busy.”
“But now they’ve come to us,” Sabih added, and then corrected, “To you. They’ve come to you.”
“They have,” Finch growled. “But why?” He suddenly remembered. “Ah, yes—Ben. Ben the janitor.”
“You know, he’s not really exactly a janitor,” Sabih said, wishing to present a fair and balanced perspective.
“He is if I say he is,” Finch replied, pulling his cuffs through the sleeves of his jacket. “But clearly there’s more to our Mr. Maxwell than was unearthed by his background check. How does he command the attention of two such eminences?”
“I’m not sure,” Sabih said, scrolling as fast as he could. “I’m not finding anything actionable. It’s not exactly the easiest name in the word to disambiguate. Benjamin No-Middle-Initial Maxwell. He could be anyone.”
“Check for a Starfleet connection.”
“I thought of that,” Sabih said, mildly insulted. “I found a stub of a record about an officer named Benjamin Maxwell.”
“A stub?”
“Something left after something has been edited. Or purged.”
“Purged. An interesting term, my lad. Why purged?”
“It doesn’t say. That’s more or less the point of a purge. So no one knows. Again, I note that Benjamin Maxwell is a common name.” He knew he would pay for these last comments—Finch did not appreciate being the target of sarcasm—but Sabih was tired and hungry and had been working for more than sixteen hours with neither rest nor consuming anything he considered real food. This internship was not working out the way he had hoped. If only he had worked a little harder at university, maybe he wouldn’t be in this ridiculous situation, forced to kowtow to every whim of this strange, strange man.
“Hmph,” Finch grunted. “Yes.”
Oh, yes, Sabih thought. I’m definitely going to pay for that last comment. Unless I can distract him? “They’re waiting for a reply.”
“Of course they are,” Finch said, standing up straight and tugging his jacket down over his barrel chest. “Where are our manners? Lower the ramparts and invite the venerated inside. And, as soon as they’re comfortable, we’ll take them up to meet her.”
Runabout Amazon
“And who is this fellow Finch when he’s not at home?” O’Brien asked.
“Well,” Nog said, “to start, he is at home. The Hooke is his home, his only home. Or at least it’s his only known address.”
“He owns it?”
“He’s the landlord. An Orion bank owns it. He didn’t have much of a down payment. The loan terms are not optimal. Interest rates are . . . well, my uncle would need to have a lie-down with a damp cloth on his forehead if he ever had to pay these rates.”
O’Brien glanced at the column of numbers Nog indicated. “Or have a little private party if he was the lender,” the chief observed.
Nog grinned. “He might invite a close friend or two with these kinds of rates.”
“So he’s a landlord. What else?”
“A scientist,” Nog recited. “A researcher—genetics and biotechnology. An entrepreneur.”
“Not a term you hear much these days,” O’Brien said.
“But not a very good one,” Nog said. “Finch has had his successes.” He pulled up a long list of filed patents. “And some failures.” He pulled up an even longer list of lawsuits.
“Aren’t lawsuits one of the operational hazards of aggressive capitalism?”
“Not if you’re doing it right.”
“Hmmm,” O’Brien said, realizing that while Nog was the least Ferengi-like Ferengi he had ever met, he was still steeped in the arcane workings of finance. “So, Finch managed to purchase—well, mortgage—this station out here in the middle of nowhere and lured some other researchers to come along. Why? How?”
“Because they couldn’t find anyone else who would let them do their work?” Nog theorized.
“Possibly,” O’Brien said. “Do we have any data about Finch’s tenants?”
“No,” Nog said,
having obviously attempted several searches. “Not public information.”
“So they could be crackpots.”
“Crackpots?”
“Fringe scientists.”
“Ah,” Nog said. “High-risk researchers. Understood. Then, if I may ask, do you have any idea why Captain . . . I mean . . . Mister Maxwell . . . is out here with them?”
O’Brien was reassured by the fact that he wasn’t the only one tripping over what to call Ben Maxwell. “I think,” he said, “because he believed he didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
The comm cheeped. “Gentlemen,” boomed the deeper male voice, presumably Finch’s. “My sincere apologies for keeping you waiting. We’ve contacted Ben—Mister Maxwell—and asked him to meet you here in our operational center. The transporter platform has been cleared. Please be aware that we use a slightly older integrator, so set your pattern buffer to—”
“Got it,” O’Brien said, checking the schema on the transporter panel and finding it mildly alarming. Maybe I should offer to do an upgrade while I’m here, he thought. “Thanks for the warning. We’ll use your coordinates but our transporter”
“I apologize for not being able to let you use our docking facility,” Finch continued. “But both of our transports are in for minor repairs.”
“No worries,” O’Brien said. “Give us a minute to secure our ship and we’ll be over. Amazon out.”
O’Brien pointed at the transporter schema and Nog winced. He stood, brushed off the front of his uniform tunic, and then sighed deeply. “I hope you won’t mind, but I have to ask you this, Chief.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why am I here?”
O’Brien answered, “Like I said, you’ve had a rough couple months and Captain Ro thought you looked like you needed to take a little trip.”
“Remember where we went the last time we ‘took a little trip’ together?”
“No,” O’Brien said uncertainly.
“Empok Nor.”
“Oh,” O’Brien recalled. “Right. That could have gone better.”
Nog walked to the transporter pad. O’Brien joined him. Neither of them commented further.