CHAPTER 19

“BEHIND YOU,” Quark muttered as Benjamin Sisko collapsed on the filthy deck of the din-filled water-plant room. “I was trying to say, behind you. . . .”

But, as usual to Quark's view of things, no one ever paid him any attention until it was too late.

And it was much too late for Sisko, just as it was too late for those ghastly Andorian sisters.

Quark had absolutely no idea who it was who had struck Sisko down. All he knew was that Sisko's attacker was outfitted in a shiny black, wrinkled, class-two environmental suit, one designed to operate within normal life-support pressure and temperature ranges, and that such a garment was worn usually to protect against biological or chemical contamination. Knowing this did not make Quark feel any better.

Or smell better, Quark thought bitterly. Ever since something had happened to momentarily interrupt the station's gravity fields a few minutes ago, the water treatment facility had begun to stink worse that he most likely did, thanks to that clumsy Andorian female and her spectacular fall into the sludge vat. In fact, now that he thought about it, this place smelled even worse than a Medusan moulting pit.

Quark hung motionless in his chains, shutting out the cacophony of the incessant sound of rushing liquid, regarding the floor and the latest interloper, as he stoked his internal fires of resentment. Trust the Cardassians to economize by treating waste water in a centralized location, instead of using personal recyclers. I mean, Quark thought indignantly, there's an understandable desire for profit, and then there's being obsessed by it. And right now, suffering the disastrous olfactory consequences arising from the imbecilic decision of whichever Cardassian genius thought he'd save some latinum on Terok Nor's waste-recycling system, he himself would actually be willing to trade a year's worth of profits from his bar for just one last lungful of fresh air before the stranger in black killed him as he had just killed DS9's chief executive.

Quark reconsidered the odds. After all, this close to the wormhole, one could never be too certain which prayers were going to be answered. Better make that six months' worth, Quark amended as he saw Sisko's murderer heading toward him, toward the sludge vat above which he dangled helpless, headfirst, and beside which Satr now lay, recovering her breath after climbing out of the vat.

Of the two sisters, Quark remembered thinking when he had first met them that Satr was the cute one. And that the other, Leen, was the smart one. But incredible though it now seemed to him, he had been willing to overlook that classic character flaw in a female. Instead, he had stupidly looked forward to seeing how long he might be able to prolong negotiations with both Satr and Leen. He'd been in the bartending business long enough to have heard what they said about females with blue skin. And the chance to feel four female Andorian hands on his lobes at the same time had always been a little fantasy of his.

But then Dal Nortron had gone and got himself killed and spoiled everything—he'd had to avoid the sisters instead of cultivating them. Before long Odo had him in protective custody, and then had arrested him, only to let him go just in time to be waylaid by that miserable excuse for a Ferengi—Base. And all to be dragged down here to meet Satr and Leen again.

Quark moaned just recalling the degrading treatment he'd been subjected to. His head hurt like the devil, and it wasn't simply because he had been left hanging by his heels like a Mongonian eelbat for the past day and half.

He'd been a perfect gentlemen with those two Andorian monsters. Even after that ingrate Base had dragged him in a sack through the smugglers' tunnels and dumped him out in front of Satr and Leen, he'd made the two sisters a completely reasonable request in his most charming manner. Something along the lines of: “Ladies, such a pleasure to see you again. Is it time to do some . . . business?”

Satr's reply had involved a sharp elbow in his stomach, and Leen had trussed him up in chains like the Friday night special at the Klingon Cafe. It was then that Quark knew for certain that he had been betrayed by them and Base.

Base. The name should have warned him. The little insect had come into Quark's back office and launched into his oh-so-sincere sales pitch, about how he wanted to protect his investment in the Orbs, how he wanted to make sure Quark stayed safe before, during, and after the auction, how he planned to take care of Satr and Leen personally—and for only an extra eighteen percent of Quark's commission on the auction proceeds.

That percentage had been so out of line that Quark had actually spent twenty minutes negotiating a reduction, never once questioning why it was that Base should be on his side for eighteen percent, when the little gnat could kill him and have a shot at the full one hundred percent.

They had settled on nine-and-a-half. Plus Base could keep half the tips all the bar's wait staff earned during the days he replaced Quark as barkeep. In the meantime, Quark would be safe behind a sensor mask where no one could find him.

And worst of all, in Quark's recollection, was that the entire deal had been negotiated in front of his own idiot brother. Base had set the whole thing up so that when Quark disappeared, Rom would dimwittedly think that was part of the plan and would not be concerned. No one would be concerned.

As if anyone would anyway, Quark thought with a self-pitying half-sob.

And then, even more humiliating to recall, that conniving Base convinced him to put himself into the sack with an antigrav ballast, supposedly so he could be taken to a safe place deep within the station.

“Why the sack?” he remembered asking Base.

“For a stinkin' nine-and-a-half points,” that little vole had squeaked persuasively, “no way you're going to find out about the perfect hiding place I figured out. But for twelve-and-a-half. . . .”

It had been the perfect argument. No hiding place on the station was worth an extra three percent, and like a targ to the Klingon wedding feast, Quark had climbed willingly into the sack, hugging the antigrav, until Base tossed him out on the deck of the water-plant room—and the four female Andorian hands went to work on him in a terrible travesty of his fantasy.

Now, suspended directly above a dark substance which was as good a metaphor for his life as any, Quark mulled over those he considered his enemies as if he were fingering a pocketful of well-worn worry stones.

First, Rom, his idiot brother who betrayed him by letting that half-sized, half-son-of-a-Klingon into Quark's bar in the first place. Second, Base. Third and fourth, Leen and—

Quark saw the black-suited figure below draw a small phaser and shoot Satr with a soundless flash of energy, then splash through the sludge-strewn deck to dispatch Leen next.

Wincing in commiseration for their bad luck, Quark amended his list of enemies, at the same time wondering where the Andorian sisters had hidden their latinum. It would be quite a tidy sum for someone fortunate enough to find it.

But not for him. His own luck, no matter how poor it had been, had obviously run out. It was his turn now.

The black figure, face completely obscured by a wrinkled black hood and a full-face breathing mask, looked up at Quark, then adjusted the small phaser's setting and took careful aim.

Even though he was resigned to his fate and determined to face it as a rational being, Quark instinctively reached back to his childhood lessons from the weekly Celestial Market classes his loving parents had forced him to attend. Trying not to breathe in any more of the noxious fumes that he had to, he reflexively mumbled the Ferengi prayer that was his people's traditional ward against impending disaster. “All right, this is my final offer. . . .”

But the shooter below was in no mood to negotiate.

He fired.

In one timeless instant, Quark realized that the shooter's beam wasn't aimed at him but at the chain that bound his feet.

A second timeless instant later, as he felt his stomach fall up toward his knees, Quark dropped —the chains melted through—straight into the bubbling vat of—

“Frinx!” Quark gasped, as a strong hand grabbed him just before he hit the liquid sewage.

Still in midair, he kicked wildly to be free of what was left of the chains still loosely draped around his ankles.

The figure in black deposited him on the deck, standing upright on his own two feet, right beside the motionless body of poor Captain Sisko.

Quark opened his mouth and let loose with a string of invective in the Trading Tongue such that his moogie would have scrubbed out his mouth with carapace gel if she had heard a single syllable—swearing like a philanthropist, his moogie would call it. Not that anyone could hear him in the roar of the outflow from the system pipes.

The figure in black regarded him impassively, then seemed to come to a decision, stepped back, and pulled off his breather mask.

Just as Quark bravely barked out, “I don't care who the greeb you are. If you're going to shoot me like the rest of them, go ahead—kill me and be done with it.” He realized that once again—big surprise—the Choir of Celestial Accountants had been braying his name in jest.

The murderer wasn't male.

He was a female.

Vash.

She delicately wrinkled her button-like human nose at the stench of the place, then yelled out the sweetest words Quark had ever heard—not that he'd ever admit that to her. “Is that any way to talk to your new partner?”

“Just what I need,” Quark muttered as he looked at the sprawled bodies of Satr and Leen. “Another new partner. . . .” Then relief flooded through him. Vash was no murderer. The odds were very good that both Andorians were only heavily stunned, not dead.

Vash snapped her breather back into place, then motioned for Quark to follow her.

But much as he wanted to get out of this foul pit, there was something Quark had to do first. He reached down and got a good grip on Captain Sisko's jacket to drag the unconscious hew-mon toward an open metal staircase beside the sludge vat.

When Vash saw what he was doing, she tried to pull him away, but Quark refused to let go of Sisko. Maybe Satr and Leen deserved to remain in the muck where they fell, and maybe the captain wasn't the best friend a Ferengi barkeep ever had, but Quark wasn't about to leave him to drown in such an undignified fashion.

With Vash's reluctant assistance, Quark hoisted Sisko up on a platform on the staircase, well above the steadily rising sewage.

Motioning to Quark to follow her across the room to the exit, Vash turned to look back at him, pulling aside her breathing mask long enough to shout, “I don't get it, Quark—what did he ever do for you?”

Breathing heavily as he dragged his boots through the disgusting deck debris—the hew-mon had been surprisingly heavy, and Quark's body was still telling him how badly abused it had been by its hanging ordeal—Quark looked back down at Sisko. “Nothing,” he said, out of earshot of Vash. She'd never understand anyway. Not that anyone else ever had. Or ever would. “But he never did anything to me, either.”

Even without looking at Vash, he could feel her suspicion, and he could almost hear her thinking, How could she trust someone who went out of his way to help a Starfleet officer?

Quark wearily cupped a hand to his mouth and yelled ahead to her, as he shook something unmentionable off his foot, “He owes me money!” The terrible thing was, he knew, that there had to be easier ways to earn latinum. But the even worse thing was that, all other things being equal, he hadn't found it. Yet.

“Stay still and keep your eyes closed,” Vash told him.

In the dimly lit kitchen at the back of his bar, Quark did as he was told. “If you only knew how many times I imagined you saying those words to me,” he murmured. Then he heard a frothy hissing noise and was suddenly engulfed in a thick foam. He started to protest, but the medicinal-smelling lather bubbled into his mouth the moment he tried to speak.

“And keep your mouth shut!” Vash snapped.

Quark suddenly felt cold. He started to shiver. As he did, he felt the foam begin to drop off him in clumps.

When his face felt free of bubbles, he risked opening one eye. Then the other.

Vash was in front of him, kicking off the last of her environmental-suit, a large carryall duffel bag beside her, along with a pressurized tank and nozzle, dripping foam. Quark could see that portions of her protective suit were covered in rapidly evaporating bubbles as well.

And then he realized with delight that the dreadful stench of the raw sewage was gone. “What is that foam?” He looked down at his suit jacket. It was still wet, but there wasn't a single stain on it. Neither was there any muck on his boots or on the floor beneath them.

Vash leaned back against an inductor stove with a sigh. “A cleansing-agent from Troyius. Their pheromonal systems are so volatile, they need something that will break down all organic waste completely and instantly—otherwise, they couldn't leave their planet.”

“Well, that's fantastic,” Quark said admiringly. “Tell me, do they have a good distribution network?”

Vash gave him an odd, measuring look. “Oh, it's not what you'd call a perfect product. There are a few drawbacks.”

“Really.” Quark grinned. Anything that could eradicate all traces of what he had just been through smelled like pure latinum to him. “I can't imagine what they'd be.”

“That suit of yours—replicated from synthetics?” Vash asked, curious. “Or is it natural?”

Stung by the insult, Quark smoothed the multicolored fabric of his snug tapestry jacket. “I am a successful businessman. Of course, all my suits are natural fiber.”

Vash smiled. “You sure?”

Quark glanced down. “AAAAAA!” His jacket and trousers were in the process of melting, consumed by the same polyenzymic action that had neutralized the sewage.

The last curling streamers of his suit flickered out of existence just as he ducked for cover behind a food locker. Quark found himself facing the bulkhead whose small access door led to the unmapped tunnel through which he and Vash had escaped from the water plant.

Leaning out from behind the locker, ears flushed, as naked as a female in public, Quark blustered, “Well, don't just stand there, woman! Get me something to wear!”

Vash looked up at the lighting panels on the kitchen ceiling. They were dark. Only the emergency glowstrips on the walls were operating. “Bad timing, Quark. My guess is there's some trouble on the station. I don't think Garak's will be open.”

Quark pointed imperiously to the locker behind her. “The locker by the door! Staff uniforms!”

Vash stuck her head in the locker and brought out a clothes holder with a few wispy strands of glitter cloth. “Not your size,” she smirked, “but it'll bring out the yellow in your eyes.”

Quark fumed. “That's a dabo costume. Give me a waiter's suit!”

“Oh, come on,” Vash said as peeked at him through the almost transparent cloth. “You wear something like this, I might stay at the dabo table all night.”

Quark couldn't help himself. “Really?” He ran the calculations comparing how much someone could lose at dabo in a single night against the irreparable loss of his self-esteem. It was a close call. As the 189th Rule had it: Let others keep their reputation, you keep their latinum. Maybe he had been hasty when he stopped having Female Nights at the bar. Even though Rom had put up such a fuss over wearing a dress the last time. . . .

“I'll take it under advisement,” Quark said thoughtfully. “But now, a waiter's suit?”

Vash pulled one out of the locker and handed it over to Quark, making a show of covering her eyes. “Don't worry, I won't look,” she said. “I just ate.”

The pale-green jacket, brocade vest, and ruksilk shirt were too large, the trousers were too long, and the boots were so large they were almost unwearable. All in all, the lamentably unfashionable outfit reminded Quark of his years as a cabin boy on the old Ferengi freighter, the Latinum Queen. But it would do for now. It had to.

Decently covered, Quark emerged from behind the food locker, his steps necessarily mincing because of the unseen oversized shoes beneath the overlong trousers. “Now what did you say happened to the station?”

Vash looked him up and down with a broad grin as she hefted her strap-on carryall over her shoulder. But she merely opened the door leading to the main-level room of the bar without commenting on his appearance.

The room beyond was dark, but the light from the kitchen in which Quark and Vash stood revealed several overturned chairs, as if customers had run out of the bar in a hurry. There were still drinks and food dishes on the tables.

Quark stepped into the bar. He picked up a glass, sniffed it. Groaned. It had held a Deltan-on-the-Beach cocktail with a full measure of triple-proof Romulan ale. Was Rom trying to ruin him?

“Satr and Leen rigged a Pakled sensor mask in the water plant,” Vash now told him, “so that if anyone went searching for you, you and they wouldn't show up as lifesigns on anyone's tricorders.”

Quark looked around his bar. It looked to him as if it had been hit by something much more powerful than a sensor mask. “And that's not all they arranged,” Vash said as she walked past him to open the closed doors of the bar.

Quark sighed. At least his idiot brother had remembered to lock up. Not that it mattered. Beyond the doors, the Promenade, lit only by emergency strips like his bar, looked deserted.

“I'm listening,” Quark said, squinting to see what was in the shadows at the end of the bar, and frowning when he did.

“They also slipped a programming worm into the station's computer system,” Vash said, turning to reclose the doors to the bar.

“Is that possible?” Quark began walking to the end of the bar.

“A little something they picked up on Bynaus,” Vash said as she turned away from the door. “Until the worm detected someone setting up security screens around the water plant, trying to contain the area, the worm was dormant. The bad new is, once it was triggered, it reproduced so quickly it used up all available processing space. All the automatic systems locked up. They'd have needed a cold start to reset all the computers. The good news is there's no permanent harm done. DS9 should be up and running in about ten minutes or so.”

“Good,” Quark said, reaching out to touch what he had noticed in the bar's shadows. “I'd like to see Satr and Leen talk their way out of Odo's cell this time.”

Vash's voice suddenly became tense. “Is someone at the bar?”

“Just Morn,” Quark chuckled, affectionately. He poked at the lugubrious alien's shoulder. His voice became a stage whisper. “Mor-ornnn? Hellooo? Are you in there?”

The huge Lurian snuffled something unintelligible and shifted slightly on the bar stool, driving his massive head deeper into the crook of his well-padded arm, as he remained slumped facedown on the bar. Very faintly, he began to snore, each exhalation accompanied by the pungent perfume of Martian tequila. And judging from the strength of each puff, Quark calculated that at two slips a shot for the extra-premium blend, Morn had had enough this evening to more than pay for a bartender's brand-new suit—even if Rom hadn't properly watered the goods.

“Look at him,” Quark crooned. “Sleeping like a baby. A great big, wrinkled, prune-faced baby.”

“Well, wake him up and get him out of here,” Vash said sharply. “We have business to conduct.”

But Quark stood defensively in front of his first, best, and most treasured customer. “I'm sorry, but even I have to draw the line somewhere. If Morn wants to sleep on my bar, well then—may the Divine Treasurer bless him and keep him solvent all the days of his life—I am not going to be the one who says no. Besides, I can charge him half a bar of latinum for rent. And . . .” he added in a half-whisper, “if we wake him up now, he won't stop talking for hours.” Quark smoothed his jacket, feeling better than he had since Base came into his bar. “If you want to discuss business, we can do it down there where we won't disturb . . .” His voice softened as he gazed down at the lovable lump of his constant and continuous consumer. “. . . the customer.”

Vash eyed Morn's hunched-over and snoring body with distaste. She reached out to him, gave his bald scalp a sharp flick with one of her long nails. Morn's only response was to blow a series of small, quickly popping bubbles from his open mouth.

“Don't make him drool now,” Quark warned. He took Vash firmly by the arm and led her to the other end of the bar. “Just think of him as part of the furniture.”

“Now,” Quark said as he took his usual place behind the bar, and placed both hands flat on the bartop. “What kind of business did my favorite archaeologist have in mind?”

Vash shrugged off her carryall, carefully lowering it to the deck, then rubbed at the spot on her shoulder where the carryall strap had been. “Not my business, Quark. Your business.”

Quark blinked at her. “I'm not sure I follow. Would you like a reward for rescuing me? I'm sure I can work out an equitable payment schedule, though business has been slow and—”

Quark winced as Vash leaned over the bar and pinched one of his earlobes. Painfully. “Quark! I'm not talking about new business. I'm talking about the reason why I risked arrest in three systems to get here as soon as I did.”

Quark's eyes widened nervously. He pulled back, but Vash did not release her grip on his ear. “You don't mean . . . ?”

“Yes, I do,” Vash said. “The Red Orbs of Jalbador. You made it clear you were ready to deal. That's why I'm here. And that's why I saved your wrinkled Ferengi butt.”

“You said you wouldn't peek!”

Vash increased the pressure on his ear. Quark had to stand on one foot, just to keep his balance, to spare his delicate earflesh. “Listen, Ferengi. I'm serious. When this station comes back on line, security's going to be all over the place trying to figure out what went wrong. And when they find out I'm not all cozy and warm in the Infirmary, they're going to come looking for me. And that's not going to happen, understand? Because I'm going to be on my way with what I came for. Now let's do it!”

Quark squealed as Vash suddenly yanked up on his earlobe, lifting him right off his feet. Then just as suddenly she released him, and he fell stomach first onto the bartop. His first thought was to look down the length of the bar at Morn, to make certain at least he wasn't disturbed. Then he flopped back, regaining his footing.

“It . . . it's not that easy . . .” he stammered, one hand to his injured earlobe.

Vash reached a hand inside a small pouch on her belt as if going for a knife. “Then I suggest you make it easy.”

Quark waved his hands in a vain attempt to deflect whatever it was she was about to cut him with. “I'm just the middleman. The goods are with a . . . a third party.”

“Then get him down here.”

“I really wish I could. You have no idea. But, the fact of the matteris, he's dead.”

Vash narrowed her eyes and Quark knew his other ear was doomed. Just knew it.

“Who?” Vash demanded.

“Dal Nortron. The Andorian who came here with Satr and Leen. Those heartless females were his bodyguards—and they killed him.”

Vash snorted. “Bodyguards don't kill their clients. It tends to cut into repeat business.”

Quark was outraged. “Base was my bodyguard, and he sold me out to Satr and Leen!”

Vash held the heel of one hand to her forehead and sighed. “Oh, sleem me. . . .”

Quark brightened. He sensed a slight lessening in her resolve to do something unspeakable to him. “Maybe your visit doesn't have to be a total loss. We can work out another deal.”

“Another deal?” Vash leaned over, digging into her carryall-from the sound of it. Then she straightened up and slammed a spindle-shaped chunk of dark crystal on the bar. It was maybe two-thirds of a meter tall, a quarter-meter at its widest, top and bottom. And except for the fact that it was oddly dull in the way it reflected what little light there was, it looked exactly like—

Quark choked.

“. . . Oh, no . . .” he whispered.

“Oh, yes,” Vash said. “A Red Orb of Jalbador.”

Quark could scarcely draw a breath. Shocked. Unprepared. “You mean . . .” he gasped, “they are real?”

“This one is.” Vash leaned over the bar counter and in the same moment, Quark leaned back, thus ensuring the continued health of his other, as yet uninjured, earlobe. “But without the other two,” she said in disgust, “it's worse than useless.”

Quark's business sense quickened. He felt a strong sense of finality-within Vash. There would be no more negotiations. He was right.

“Time's up, Quark. I want the map.”

A commotion behind Vash made Quark's heart flutter like a grubworm on a toothpick, with no hope of escape.

“You mean, this one?” Satr hissed.

Vash wheeled around, phaser already in her hand and aimed behind her.

But the danger was above her, not behind. Satr and Leen—clearly recovered from whatever miserably low-setting stun Vash had used on them—were on the bar's second level, and the golden dagger Leen now threw down knocked the phaser directly out of Vash's hand before she could even fire it.

Instantly Satr flipped over the railing, her lithe, tattooed body spinning through the air, to land like a feline in a crouch, braced by one hand. In the next instant, the Andorian spun around on both hands and reverse-kicked Vash, sending her skidding across the floor of Quark's bar.

By the time the archaeologist regained her feet, Leen had slid halfway down the stairway railing to the main level and flipped over to land on her feet, a golden dagger in each hand.

The spectacle of fully clothed feminine physicality was too much for Quark, and he shivered with forbidden pleasure. Rather than slide the Red Orb off the bar, he continued to watch the action in anticipation of the three females' killing each other. Yet if even one of them survived, Quark had little doubt that he'd be the next victim.

Satr held up a slender cylinder of amber crystal. “We have the map, Vash. Without it, your Orb is nothing more than a sparkly rock. Let us buy it from you.”

Vash was breathing hard, weaponless, holding her side where Satr had kicked her, but Quark suspected the resourceful archaeologist wouldn't admit defeat yet. And he was right again.

“Without an Orb, your map might as well be a Ferengi ear probe. Let me buy the map from you.”

The one thing Quark never forgot was that he was Ferengi. He saw his opportunity and he acted upon it immediately. “Ladies, please . . . you each have something the other wants. What better situation could there be for striking a deal? A deal, I might add, I'd be glad to broker for just a small commission—”

Leen's bare blue arm flexed and a golden dagger flashed through the air to pin Quark's too-large jacket—with him inside it—to the wall.

“Or not . . .” Quark whispered.

Satr and Leen moved to flank Vash, one heading to either side of her. The archaeologist was forced up against the bar counter, with no way to escape them.

Leen drew a third golden dagger from the set of scabbards at her back, and once again held a wickedly sharp blade in each hand.

Satr tossed her crystal cylinder tauntingly, back and forth, from one hand to the other.

“You want the Orb, I want the map,” Vash said, her eyes moving quickly from one to the other. “The Ferengi is right. We can work out a deal.”

“Dal Nortron wanted to work out a deal,” Satr sneered. “He hired us, so of course we supported his decision. And then the Ferengi killed him.”

“What?!” Quark protested. “I didn't kill anyone! I thought you were all lying! That the map was a forgery!”

“You were willing to be the broker at the auction,” Leen said.

“I make no representations as to the suitability of the product for the use to which the purchaser intends—”

“Silence!”

Quark knew much better than to argue with a blue tattooed female. Each intricate black scroll on her arm represented a man she had killed—after having had her way with him. And though Quark suspected he would not necessarily object to the second interaction, he would definitely have issues with the first.

He nodded, not even risking a single word to say he agreed with her.

“If you didn't kill Nortron,” Vash said, “and the Ferengi didn't, then who did?”

“Do I look like the changeling?” Leen snarled viciously.

“We don't care who killed him,” Satr said quickly, with a sharp glance at her sister. “The fact is, he's dead. We're not. So now we do things our way. And we want your Orb.”

“It won't do any good without knowing where to use it,” Vash countered.

Satr brandished her crystal wand. “This map tells us which world we must take the Orb to.”

“And when we get close enough to the second Orb,” Leen said triumphantly, “the first will glow to lead us along the final path.”

“You actually believe that kragh?” Vash asked.

Quark caught his breath as Satr's head jerked menacingly forward like a striking snake. “If you didn't believe it, you'd sell us your Orb.”

“You wouldn't believe what I went through to get this,” Vash said, undaunted. “I'm not selling anything.”

The three of them faced each other, drenched in sweat, ready to fight to the death, taut muscles rippling beneath the Andorian sisters' glistening blue skin, Vash's long, lustrous hair a dark fountain against creamy-white shoulders . . . Quark trembled, took a calming breath. He was falling in love, and he didn't care with which one.

A moment before he had been on the verge of slipping to safety and obscurity behind the bar. But now he paused, unsure.

“We're not selling anything, either,” Satr said.

“Which leaves us only one alternative,” Leen added.

“Exactly,” Base squeaked. “It means I'll take both!”

“Oh, for—” Quark snorted in disgust, as Base jumped up on the bar waving aloft his comically puny bat'leth. The little betrayer could only have been hiding among the crates of glasses across from the replicator, waiting for his moment to strike.

Moron, Quark thought. Base would probably last about fifteen seconds against the blue sisters. And Vash would—

“What are you?” Satr said. “Your worst nightmare, bluecheeks,” Base chirped. Leen hooted at the thought, then suddenly threw both daggers at the minute Ferengi.

And then, to Quark's utter astonishment, Base twisted his bat'leth in an expert blur and deflected both daggers. He hadn't even tried to duck.

“I can throw this a skrell of a lot faster than you blues can run,” Base crowed. “Now bring me the map crystal,” he said to Satr. Then he glared at Quark. “And you, you lobeless hunk of greeworm castings, you bring me the Orb.”

Quark tugged at his jacket where its shoulder was still fixed to the wall by Leen's dagger, trusting Base would see that he was otherwise detained.

But Vash provided distraction enough.

“You backstabbing little hardinak,” she spat at him. “You're supposed to be working for me!”

“Ha!” Quark said, much that had been unclear at last becoming clear to him. “He was supposed to be working for me!”

“You're both fools!” Leen snarled.

“We paid him off so he'd work for us!” Satr added.

“Which begs the question,” Vash said. “Who the hell are you working for now?”

Base shrugged his shoulders. “What can I tell you half-wits? With all the latinum you slugs gave me, I finally had enough to go into business for myself.” Base jabbed his thumb against his small chest. “You'd better believe it. I'm pure Ferengi, in it for the profit and nothing else!”

That was too much for Quark. “Oh, will someone step on him and crush him flat.”

Base squealed, enraged, as he whirled around to confront Quark, holding his miniature bat'leth high—relatively speaking—above his head with both hands.

Quark fought to wriggle out of his borrowed jacket, still pinned securely to the wall. The only way that pitiful excuse for a Ferengi would actually kill him was if he died first from embarrassment.

But Vash got to Base first, knocking him straight off the bar to the deck.

Squeaking in outrage, Base rolled to his feet, still waving his bat'leth, but in the wrong direction. Because Satr and Leen now attacked him from behind, Satr sweeping him up in the bare, muscled arms Quark thought had definite potential, Leen drawing her own well-exposed arm back to slap him, and then—

—Quark moaned as everything went wrong. Again.

Even though Base's bat'leth didn't have the finely honed cutting edges of the traditional Klingon weapon—and he certainly didn't have the skill to slice an artery or bisect a key muscle group—all he seemed to need to do to cause havoc was make contact between the blade and any part of his opponent's body, and Ferengi plasma-whip circuits did the rest. Which is just what he did.

Quark watched in disbelief as Base swung the bat'leth wildly at Leen until he provoked her sufficiently to reach out to swat it away. At that precise moment of contact with Base's weapon, the blue Andorian flew back in a shimmering nimbus of disruptive neural energy.

Startled, Leen's sister dropped her prey; he took the opportunity to tuck, roll, and come up swinging, bashing Satr across the knees with his bat'leth so that she, too, collapsed in the throes of neural disruption.

Vash still hadn't regained her feet, and being at Base's level didn't have a chance. Quark covered his eyes with both hands, but peered through his fingers, appalled and fascinated at the same time.

After vanquishing his last female enemy with a glancing blow to the ankles, Base now threw back his head and cackled like a mad paultillian as he used his bat'leth like a vaulter's pole and sprang back up onto the bar.

He swaggered toward Quark.

Quark pulled and struggled mightily, but the barbs on the dagger just wouldn't let go. He was a sitting Grumpackian tortoise.

“Base, can't we talk about this?” Quark pleaded.

The little Ferengi spun his bat'leth around his wrist just like Bus Betar in the old Marauder Mo holos. The classic ones, not the remakes. “I don't think so, frinx-for-brains. For the first time in my life, it's winner-take-all.” He stopped the bat'leth in midspin, tapped one pudgy finger against the tip of his weapon. “It's the 242nd Rule, after all . . . More is good, all is better. Prepare to meet your Accountant.” Then Base raised his weapon. “The Orb is mine. The map is mine. Everything is mine! Do you hear me?! For the first time in my life, Base wins!”

“I don't think so, you miserable scrap of a sentient being!”

For a moment, Base stopped in midstride, staring at Quark as if those combative words had dared come from his intended victim's mouth.

Quark shrank down into his oversize green jacket, wondering if he had be stupid enough to utter those words. True as they might be.

And then, as the truth finally dawned on both hunter and hunted, Quark and Base both slowly turned to look at the person who had uttered them.

Morn.

No longer deep in his cups on the bartop.

Instead, the hulking Lurian was on his feet, a gigantic dark silhouette looming against the light filtering through the doors to the Promenade.

“Drop the bat'leth,” Morn growled.

“Make me!” Base squeaked back in defiance.

“I will.”

Quark's mouth dropped open in awe and respect. Not only was Morn his best customer, he was about to senselessly sacrifice his life in a tragic and doomed attempt to save him.

What a noble gesture, Quark thought. A totally ineffective, inadequate, useless gesture.

If he lived, Quark decided, he'd retire Morn's stool. Or—even better—charge people extra to sit in it.

“Prepare to die,” Base yodeled.

Morn grunted. “Not today,” he said.

And then, even as tiny Base raised his bat'leth for the attack, Morn swung up his huge arm and—

—it snaked out along the bar like golden lightning, until Morn's immense hand closed on the bat'leth, and crushed it, dropping the shards to the ground, and then snapped back like a tentacle around Base's scrawny neck, still eerily flowing like the pseudopod of a hew-mon-sized amoeba.

As Base gargled helplessly in Morn's unforgiving grip, Quark recovered his senses.

“Why didn't you wait until the little monster had killed me?” he snapped. “Wouldn't that have given you an even better reason to act, Morn?”

Morn shook his huge wrinkled head once, then softened, melted, into a gelatinous amber statue before resolidifying as Odo, though one Morn-like arm retained its grip on Base.

“Ohhh, you enjoyed that, didn't you?” Quark accused the shape-shifting constable. “Seeing me almost killed.”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” Odo said. “By the way, Quark, nice suit.”

“That's not funny.”

“And you'll notice I'm not laughing. Whatever else is going on around here—and I assure you, I did hear everything —Dal Nortron's still dead. And if you didn't kill him, and the Andorians didn't kill him, then there's still a murderer walking free on DS9.”

Quark threw up his hands. “Finding murderers is not my job,” he said piously. With much relish, Odo gazed at Base's stumpy legs kicking frantically as he held the snarling little Ferengi above the deck just high enough to keep Base from connecting with anything solid.

“Fortunately,” Odo said gravely, “it happens to be mine. And in this case, I think my job has just become much simpler.”

Quark saw where Odo was looking—directly at the Red Orb of Jalbador, still sitting on the counter of Quark's bar. Shocked and appalled, Quark realized he'd forgotten what a Ferengi must never forget. Profit and the potential thereof.

“As a wise man once explained,” the constable said, “all we have to do now to solve the crime is follow the Orb. . . .”