NOG KNEW he was taking a big chance, sneaking out of Quark's while there were customers waiting. He rubbed his upper ear ridge, which was still stinging from contact with the back of Rom's hand. He knew he'd get another slap just like it from Rom or Quark if he came back empty-handed. But then, Nog didn't intend to show up again until he had something to show his impatient elders. And besides, waiting tables on drunken Cardassians wasn't work for an ambitious young Ferengi entrepreneur.
No one knew DS-Nine like Nog did. At least, no one but maybe that Constable Odo. Nog's opinion of Odo was even more unfavorable than Quark's. But even Odo had to rest sometime. Nog knew that Odo turned into some kind of liquid puddle when he slept. Nog thought he'd really like to see that someday. In fact, he thought it would really be great to be a shape-changer like Odo. Too many people on the station could recognize his face. Ferengis weren't all that common on DS-Nine. But if he could change what he looked like, anytime he wanted, then no one would ever be able to identify him. The vendors on the Promenade wouldn't always guard their stuff whenever they saw him coming. And if they were chasing him, he could just turn into a liquid, slip through some crack, and get away.
Although Odo was just about the only one who could catch him now. Nog just wished his uncle and father appreciated his abilities.
The humiliation of getting caught in front of Garak's place was still festering. And it was all that human boy's fault. That Jake. Why did he have to jump and yell so loud when the lights went on?
Sometimes Nog thought Jake was a pain. All right, so they were friends and sometimes they could have a good time, but whenever something really important came up, some real opportunity for acquisition, Jake was always wanting to tail along, then pulling back when it came to a good opportunity for profit—like looting Garak's shop. Nog had no patience for human scruples. And he particularly didn't plan on cutting Jake in on his latest enterprise. Nog aimed at no less than cornering the stationwide market in spare parts.
The scheme was brilliant in its simplicity. DS-Nine had been constructed by Cardassians, all its systems were Cardassian. But there were no available spare parts for any of them. And no way to get spare parts from the Cardassians, with the political situation the way it was. They would sooner cut off their own lobes than trade with Bajorans. The Starfleet engineer, O'Brien, was complaining about the problem all the time.
But Nog had come up with the solution: Steal components out of the deserted regions of the station and sell them to people who needed their systems repaired!
He took the turboshaft down to the lower core, where he knew there were whole sections deserted and unused. He was imagining himself old and immensely rich, like Quark, reminiscing to a large gang of sons and nephews about his youth on DS9: how he'd hidden, terrified, as the rampaging Cardassian troops systematically demolished the station, destroying everything of value they could find. But he, Nog, had succeeded in turning disaster into profit!
The only drawback to the scheme, he thought, was the problem of how to market his wares without attracting the bothersome attention of the authorities. But as he began to prowl through the lower cargo sections, a few further complications began to present themselves. Such as the fact that the more deserted regions of the station tended to be the ones where the fewest parts had been left intact. And that he apparently wasn't the first brilliant mind to have had this same inspiration. Most of the systems that weren't wrecked had already been gutted or stolen outright. Control pads: broken. Power-junction nodes: burned out. Even most of the lights were broken or missing.
Several hours later, a weary, hungry Nog had only half a sackful of spare parts, and he wasn't sure how many of those would actually work. His brilliantly imagined future had begun to tarnish, and he could almost hear Quark's acid voice berating him about the way he was wasting his time, the sharp slap of Rom's palm against the sensitive upper ridge of his ear. He sighed with a distinct whining tone. Nothing ever went right in this place!
So when he peered into the wreckage of a workers' lounge, the sight of a food replicator that was still mostly intact didn't raise his spirits much. Even in the habitat ring, the replicators only worked right half of the time. The front panel of this one was off, lying on the floor, shattered. Nog gave it a halfhearted kick. Stupid replicators—
Suddenly his little eyes widened and his jaw dropped, his attention attracted by the sight of half a meat roll sitting on the tray: it was spiced ground meat wrapped in pastry, a quick, nutritious snack food that most Cardassians were fond of. He hadn't seen one of them around the station since the Bajorans had taken over. But this one—it looked, it even smelled … fresh? Nog prodded the crust, and a crisp flake broke away. It was even—he picked it up—still warm!
He spun around, still holding the roll, but there was no one in the lounge. Then he stared at the replicator again, burning with new visions of wealth. It worked! He could sell it! If only he could find some way to transport it back to Quark's with no one spotting him.
But as he considered the unit in frustration, he started to wonder: Whose meal was this—and where were they now? How could anyone, even in this abandoned section of the station, have overlooked a functioning replicator? Someone knew about it, someone had just programmed it to deliver this meat roll. Someone who liked Cardassian food.
Berat pressed himself back against the wall of the head, next to the door, trying not to breathe. He held the phaser ready, in case they came bursting inside to arrest him. Who was out there? Was it station security? Or worse: Cardassian MPs, searching for him?
He had just gotten a fresh hot meat roll out of the replicator when he heard the footsteps out in the corridor. He instantly dashed into the closest hiding place, the head.
Now he cursed his stupid panic. He'd trapped himself in this place, trapped with no chance of escape. He looked desperately around the room for a way out, but the ventilation ducts were too small, no way he could squeeze through. No way to escape, no way to hide, either. Any minute now, they'd break through the door. . . .
But out in the lounge it was too quiet. So it couldn't be Marak's deck patrol. They would have been kicking the furniture around, breaking down this door by now. The thought reassured him slightly. Maybe it wasn't even station security, maybe no one was after him at all. Maybe life as a fugitive was starting to drive him crazy. It could just be a maintenance worker out there, coming to clean this place up. Or a scavenger, or a casual passerby. Maybe all he had to do was keep still inside here until whoever it was went away.
The notion reassured him, gave him hope—until he remembered, and the panic started to squeeze his throat and chest again. The replicator. The meat roll. I left the meatroll out there, still on the replicator tray!
Even as he tried to make up his mind what to do, he heard footsteps approaching the door to the head, saw the handle ease back—why didn't I lock it?
Because that would have told them for sure that somebody was inside. They would have broken it down, then, anyway.
Again, gripping the phaser, he held his breath, until his temples throbbed and his lungs ached for air, while the door pushed open—very slowly. One more centimeter, one more, and he would fire. Even if it wasn't security, he couldn't afford to be identified. If there were too many more of them, then he was dead for sure, but he had a chance if it was only one or two. It was either fight, or turn the phaser up to lethal and use it on himself. Better than letting them take him back to the ship, to Marak's version of justice.
But the door seemed to pause for a long moment, and then, just as slowly, it began to slide closed.
Disbelieving, Berat released his breath, an involuntary gasp. They were going away. It had to be a trick, a trap. He knew it. But there was nothing he could hear out there, nothing. Not even footsteps. And after a while, standing with the phaser ready, waiting … waiting, he finally realized he couldn't stay inside here forever.
Just as slowly as the unknown intruder, he slid the door open, still holding the phaser ready. But the lounge was empty. The meat roll was still on the replicator tray where he'd left it.
For a brief instant he shivered with the impossible thought: A ghost? A haunted station? He almost wanted to call out to see if anyone would answer. Now, that would prove he was going crazy!
Nog's senses were all hyper alert as he slowly slid open the bathroom door. His most basic instincts were screaming, Danger, run away! But maybe whoever had just used that replicator was in there—in there hiding. But why was he hiding?
Just as he was about to take a first step through the door, just as Berat, behind it, was beginning to press his finger against the firing trigger, Nog hesitated. There was a familiar scent, close enough that he could almost feel the body heat generating it. Catching his breath, glancing down, he could just see in the room's darkness the toe-tip of a heavy dark boot. A Cardassian boot.
Nog had grown up surrounded by Cardassians. He knew how they smelled, what they wore, what they liked to drink and eat. Here was a Cardassian. Hiding from him. And he would have had to be blind and deaf, with all the commotion the last few days up on the Promenade, not to know there was supposed to be a Cardassian deserter, armed and dangerous, somewhere on the station.
With a reward on his head.
But not just somewhere. Here. He was right here behind this door! Nog was sure of it. Trying not to make a sound, he slowly let the door slide shut again. He backed away in silence, ready to run if the deserter came bursting out after him.
A reward. Gold-pressed latinum. Nog's avaricious little soul yearned for it. But they said the deserter was a murderer! And how could he capture a murderer himself, single-handed, unarmed?
He crept soft-footed to the comm node, but hissed a curse as he discovered it smashed, the transceiver unit missing. Now what?
And there stood the replicator. The working replicator. The meat roll still on it. The warm, flaky crust, done just right.
Nog started to think. He thought of how much money he could get for the replicator. He thought of the reward. It occurred to him that the replicator was probably worth a lot more than the Cardassian deserter. But if it was working, and producing meat rolls, then who had made it work? Who else but the Cardassian? And—an inspiration came to him, the most brilliant he'd ever had—if the Cardassian could fix one replicator, why not another? Why not all the broken replicators on the entire station?
Stricken by the scope, the audacious grandeur of his notion, Nog bared his teeth in a hiss of indecision, weighing the immediate short-term gain against the possibilities of larger long-term profits. And the practical difficulties of the scheme.
A short way down the corridor, a wall panel had been kicked out. Nog hurried to it, wedged his small body into the recess. Fortunately, most of the lights in the hall didn't work. It would be too dark to see him crouched in there. Nog hoped.
He waited in the shallow space, seething with doubts and misgivings. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe he should get out, run, while he still could. But what if he ran into the deserter then?
He might get hurt. He might even get killed!
There! Someone was coming out of the lounge! Nog held his breath and squeezed his eyes shut, so no one could see him. Then he forced himself to look. Yes, it was obviously a Cardassian. A Cardassian, and armed, yes—carrying a phaser like he was ready to use it. Nog tried not to whimper. But the Cardassian, though he looked hard up and down the corridor, didn't appear to see him. Instead, he moved off in the opposite direction.
Nog took a deep breath. He was safe. But the deserter was getting away!
After a moment's hesitation, he crept out of his hiding place and scuttled down the corridor after the Cardassian, just in time to see his feet disappearing into an uncovered access duct. Nog snorted indignantly. No one could move through the station's tunnels and ducts like he could—most especially not an oversized Cardassian!
Quickly, he slid into the opening after his quarry.
Someone was after him!
Berat could hear the hollow scrape of a body moving through the duct behind him. He would have run, but he could barely squeeze forward through the tight, confining space. His knees and elbows were already scraped raw, and his tool belt was constantly hanging him up on some seam or protrusion. Worst of all, there was no room for him to turn back and fire on whoever it was.
There was probably only one of them. The thought gave him enough hope to keep going. It was clear to him by now that no one did regular maintenance in these tunnels. If he could just go on, he could find a space large enough to turn and fire and leave his pursuer's body behind where it wouldn't be found, maybe for weeks. It was hope enough that he unhooked the tool belt and dropped it; he crept on without its awkward weight encumbering him. He could come back for it later, if he got away.
He paused, hearing his breathing echo loudly in the darkness. There was nothing else but silence, but it was the silence of someone else holding their own breath, waiting for him to move. He cursed his indecision back at the lounge. Someone had spotted him back there, whoever had started to open that door. And now they were after him. For whatever reason. He wondered if the Gul had offered some kind of reward for turning him in.
He knew now that he should have fired when he had the chance. He was sure now that it couldn't have been the Swift Striker's deck patrolmen. No Cardassian could crawl through this narrow space so easily, so quietly. If he hadn't been half-starved lately, he wasn't sure he'd have been able to make it through himself.
But the duct was long and dark, and he'd lost track of how many meters he must have crawled. He was heading downward—he thought he was—toward the level of the fusion reactors. But there should have been an outlet, some way to escape by now. Instead, the air seemed to be getting close and warm, too warm. Hard to breathe.
His hand, groping in front of him, hit something solid. There was—a wall? Frantically, his hands searched for an opening, a turning, another way to go, but the duct simply ended. A dead end! Someone had sealed this section off. He was trapped!
There was a microlaser torch in his tool belt; maybe he could cut his way through. But when Berat reached for it he remembered—somewhere back there he'd taken off the belt and left it behind. All he had left was the phaser.
In despair, he closed his hand tightly around the weapon. He closed his eyes. At least they wouldn't be able to take him alive. . . .
"Cardassian!"
Berat froze at the sound of the whisper in the dark. No Cardassian had a voice like that. There was a slight hiss to it: "Cardassian!"
Nog paused in the dark. His acute hearing picked up the sound of the Cardassian's fists pounding on the ductwork, the frantic gasping of his breath. Luck was with him. The deserter had run into one of the sealed-off reactor sections. He had nowhere now to turn.
"Cardassian!" he whispered out loud.
Finally there was a response. "What do you want?"
There was a desperate, strained tone to the voice. Nog knew he'd better not forget—the deserter was still armed. Dangerous.
"We can make a deal!"
A pause. "What do you mean? What kind of a deal? Who are you?"
"I know who you are! The Cardassian deserter. Your captain, Gul Marak, has a reward out for you."
"You'll never get it! Not if he wants me alive!"
He was desperate, yes. But Nog figured he could use that to his advantage. "I can hide you!" A longer pause. Nog went on, using the convincing tone he'd learned at his uncle Quark's knee, "I can. Nobody knows this station like I do. All the best places to hide, places where the Gul won't ever find you, not even if he tears the place apart looking."
Finally, "Why would you bother to hide me?"
"Are these your tools that you dropped?"
"Suppose they are?"
"Did you fix that replicator back in the lounge?"
"What if I did?"
"You're some kind of maintenance techie, aren't you? Well, if you can fix the systems on this station, then we can make a deal. I'll hide you. You can repair things."
"You want me to … fix things?"
The Cardassian sounded slow, or something. "Hey, you've seen what things are like around this place? Everything's trashed, wrecked! Nothing works right around here since Gul Dukat pulled out. Especially the food replicators."
"You have a hiding place?"
"Dozens of them!" Nog replied with confidence. "I tell you, I know this station like the palm of my own hand! How else do you think I found you? You come with me, and you'll be safe as a snug in its shell." He was about to add the additional inducement that they'd split the considerable profits he was anticipating, but just in time he recalled one of Quark's Rules of Acquisition for dealing with employees: that the less they knew about the cash flow, the smaller the share they could demand.
Trapped in the confined dead-end space of the duct, Berat considered his dwindling options. He had the phaser, he could still shoot whoever this was and make his escape. Until the next person discovered him. And then he might not be so lucky. Next time, it might be Marak's deck patrol.
But … "How do I know you won't turn me in for the reward?"
"If I was going to do that, security'd be here right now," Nog lied glibly. "All I'd have to do is make one call on my comm unit here. . . ."
"All right," Berat said at last, surrendering to fate. "I'll come with you."
It came down to this: He had nowhere else better to go, and no one else he could trust more than this unknown voice behind him in the dark.