Star Trek: 4.
Movements of the Unseen Hand
by Charles Hackney
2369 AD
(Three years later)
It was done at night, when the Ferengi's superior hearing gave him an edge over beings who relied too much on their sight. He was of middle age, and walked with the stoop-shouldered scuttle typical of men of his species. His partner in the endeavor was an Andorian, whose antennae allowed him to see into the infra-red, giving him a similar advantage when it came to nocturnal enterprises. Against all concepts of Andorian fashion and good taste, he had shaved off his mane of white hair, exposing the juncture where the antennae sprouted from his scalp. This was considered nigh-indecent by mainstream Andorian sensibilities.
Tesla IV, deep within Orion space, had no moon. This made for some dark nights, and this night was no exception. The pair made their way down a shabby street in a shabby part of town. The Andorian, as was common for his race, was slight of build but deceptively strong, and spoke in a soft whispering manner: "Are you sure it's here?"
"Of course, I'm sure," hissed the Ferengi. "It took two and a half years of digging through records, but I found it." The Ferengi stopped at a dilapidated building and opened the door. "Fajo's secret stash."
The pair descended to the basement of the building, where another door was opened. Behind it was a simple brick wall.
"This is where you come in," said the Ferengi to the Andorian. "This wall is loaded with security devices. Get us through it, and Fajo's treasure is ours."
The Andorian, a security specialist by trade, nodded and began examining the wall. "I can see the outline of a door." He leaned in close and began feeling along the wall. "There wouldn't be any proximity alarms, or any old vagrant who stumbles in here would set it off. There would be some kind of hidden keypad or� Yes. Found it. A voice recognition sensor behind this brick." The Andorian carefully removed a brick to reveal a network of thin wires attached to a small sensor. "The sensor itself is wired to the alarms and weapon systems. Any tampering with it will set them off."
"Then how can we get past it?" the Ferengi was looking quite nervous. Security systems of this type often included lethal measures such as disintegration-type disruptors or a small phaser array. The alarm was usually a silent one, alerting the owner that the defense systems had been activated. The last thing he wanted was to be disintegrated, and he hoped that the Andorian was up to the task, or at least that he would be the one to get disintegrated, rather than the Ferengi.
"Aha," whispered the Andorian as he reached for a wire. "There is always some sort of failsafe. If the client forgets his code, or the devices need repair, how does his security specialist get into the system?" He pulled a device from his pocket and attached it to the wire. "This is how. An electronic back door." The device hummed and clicked, and the sensor beeped. The Ferengi twitched at the sound. The Andorian reached into the wall and a soft click was heard, followed by a rush of air as the door slowly swung open.
"Voila." The Andorian had read that phrase in a Human book, but he pronounced it phonetically: Voy-lah. The Ferengi didn't know the difference.
The interior of Fajo's vault was in stark contrast to the surrounding squalor. It was well lit and cleaned regularly by a small robot. The Ferengi's eyes lit up as he surveyed the magnificent collection of loot before him, Some of the items therein were of obvious value to his appraisal: pieces of art, jewelry (including a strange ring that seemed to call to him), antiques. Others seemed to be of no real value, but he assumed that they were "collector's items," valuable for their rarity. After all, they were in Fajo's private vault; they must be valuable. The Andorian's face was split with an immense grin, and the Ferengi could hardly contain himself. They began to assess the treasures, to determine how many trips it would take, and if they needed to beam some of the larger pieces directly into the cargo bay of the Andorian's ship.
"Why is it you never knew of this place when you were Fajo's accountant?" asked the Andorian, eyeing a mounted Human skull with "Elvis Aaron Presley 1935-1977" inscribed on a placard below it.
"Oh, I knew of it," explained the Ferengi, "I just didn't know where it was. You see, we had an understanding, Fajo and I. He overlooked my occasional embezzlement, provided I didn't take too much; and I never inquired about the legality of his acquisitions. And I never inquired about his secret vault. It was a pleasant enough arrangement. But Fajo's in a rehabilitation colony now, and not likely to be back for a long, long time, so all arrangements are void."
Against one wall was perhaps the strangest part of the collection, A stasis tube on a raised platform contained the nude body of a Human male. He was of above average height and build, somewhat overweight, with shoulder-length brown hair and a well-trimmed beard. Quite out of the ordinary, however, were his arms, which were covered from shoulders to hands with tattoos in the forms of religious symbols. Byzantine crosses, trinity knots, celtic crosses, "Jesus fish" symbols, a Maltese cross on the back of each hand, doves, tongues of flame, a tattoo in the figure of a chain broken by a stylized cross wrapped around the left upper arm at bicep level, a large chi-rho symbol on his right shoulder. Highly unusual. A shard of metal lay next to his head, and an inscribed plaque tastefully covered his nether region. The plaque read:
Human male, late 20th or early 21st century.
Discovered in cryogenic suspended animation, this 350-year-old specimen has been restored to mint condition, Stardate 42378.4.
"I heard of this guy," breathed the Ferengi. There was really no need to whisper, but it looked so much like the Human was lying in state that he slipped into more funereal manners. "Fajo got him from a Marauder that found him in some kind of primitive cryogenic unit a few years back. He had that piece of metal stuck in his head, from some accident or something. Fajo probably should have left him as is, but for some reason he didn't like the idea of owning a 'flawed' specimen. So he had the guy thawed out and repaired, then stuck him back in stasis before he could wake up."
The two looked at the Human (whose name, by the way, had been Arthur W. David) for a long moment, then turned to continue around the room. As they did so, the Ferengi (whose name was Grell) tripped on the stasis tube's power cable, disconnecting it from the generator sitting nearby.
"Fool!" spat the Andorian, taking a swipe at Grell's head. Grell, however, was busy falling down, so he hardly noticed.
With a short fzzt, the stasis field collapsed.
And Arthur David woke up.
To fully appreciate what Arthur did next, consider the situation from his point of view. The last thing he remembered was the explosion (Arthur had received the shrapnel in his head when a terrorist group detonated a bomb in an airport. The bomb had been in a metal Samsonite suitcase, and a shard of the case had lodged in his skull), which took place years before First Contact on Earth. He then awoke to gaze into the face of a troll with jagged teeth and ears the size of dinner plates, and a man with pale blue skin and (Good Lord) antennae sticking out of his bald (BLUE!) head.
He freaked.
There is really no other way to put it. Arthur screamed like a banshee as he jumped out of the tube and scrambled to the nearest wall, which he tried to climb, gibbering like a panicked howler monkey.
Grell, not the most sympathetic of souls, pulled a small disruptor from his belt and approached the Human. He pointed the weapon at Arthur and said "Stop screaming or I'll put a steaming hole through your ugly hu-man head." Unfortunately, Arthur did not have a universal translator (more common in the twenty-fourth century than a wristwatch was in the twentieth), so Grell's warning came across something like "Nerg farlash gnipper var thel hyew-mahn guujnifark," which doesn't mean much.
When presented with a threatening situation such as this one, Humans come hardwired to respond in one of two ways: fight or flight. Flight had not worked; the wall stubbornly remained unclimbed. So Arthur turned to fight.
It was at this point that things got ugly.
In one move, Arthur sidestepped out of the disruptor's line of fire, grabbing the Ferengi's wrist and pulling him off balance. He then suddenly reversed the movement, and Grell's wrist snapped like a twig.
The Ferengi immediately began to shriek, making Arthur wonder if he'd set off an alarm. The Andorian pulled a knife as he lashed out with a front kick. Arthur pivoted around the kick, striking the Andorian's knee with force enough to shatter a Human's kneecap. It turned out, however, that Andorians' knees bend in such a way that a strike such as that would not break them. Live and learn. The Andorian grinned and slashed with the knife at Arthur's throat. Arthur counterpunched, hitting the inner part of the Andorian's forearm where (in Humans, at least) a nerve cluster runs toward the wrist. This time it worked. The Andorian's hand spasmed, dropping the knife. Arthur stepped forward, striking the Andorian in the nose with the heel of his palm, then grabbed an antenna in each hand and pulled in opposite directions.
The Andorian's right antenna tore away in a spray of dark cobalt blood. The normally soft-spoken Andorian screamed in a high-pitched wail as his flesh tore apart, and then passed out from the shock, his deep blue blood forming a quickly-widening pool beneath his unconscious form.
Grell, still shrieking, scrambled over to the Andorian and pulled his communicator from his belt. He couldn't stop screaming long enough to order the Andorian's ship's computer to beam him up, but, with his good hand, he pressed the "panic button," which activated the transporter automatically.
Arthur was scooping up the fallen Andorian's knife when he heard a strange hum in the air. He whirled around to see the Ferengi disappear in a cloud of sparkles. This was weird, but not the weirdest thing he'd seen that day. He looked around the room, and it was only then that he realized that he was stark, absolutely, great-day-in-the-morning naked. He cautiously approached the unconscious Andorian and, wiping [blue!] blood from his hands, stripped him of his clothes. They didn't even come close to fitting, but he was able to fashion a crude loincloth from the tunic. He had no idea how to use the disruptor, so he just left it where it had fallen. He staggered a bit, then ran headlong out the door into the night.
Up on the ship, Grell had calmed down and was fixing his broken wrist with the ship's first-aid kit's regenerator. After the bones had knit and the pain subsided, he waited until he was confident that the Human had gone, and cautiously beamed down to the vault. Tesla IV had little in the way of authorities, but the commotion might have attracted others who would take his treasure, so he quickly gathered all the artifacts and collector's items together and beamed them all up into the ship's hold. He left the unconscious Andorian to bleed to death.
Thornn loved Ferengi. They could be tempted to greed almost as easily as a Human could be tempted to pride. Aboard Grell's newly "acquired" ship, Thornn exulted in its liberation from Fajo's vault, and almost immediately began the next phase of its plan. To recreate another Sargon, Thornn needed a person of faith among other people of faith. Advanced enough to have spacefaring capabilities, but not enamored of that stark self-satisfied "scientific" materialism prevalent in some of the more "advanced" races' philosophies. It had considered using a Klingon, since the spiritual aspects of Klingon culture were still in force, but Klingons were a warrior people, and it would be so much more dramatic to build an empire from a people with no pre-existing might of their own. It wanted someone who was a victim, a weakling in the arts of war, someone who would kill for the power Thornn could hold out.
It wanted a Bajoran.
Leaving its customary resting place within the ring, Thornn passed through the ship's bulkheads from the cargo hold to the helm, where Grell sat at the controls, preparing to break orbit and depart.
"You know who would be the perfect man to arrange an auction," whispered Thornn into Grell's mind. "Remember that arms dealer you met on Risa? He mentioned a cousin who had on more than one occasion arranged buyers for artifacts acquired under, shall we say, nontraditional means. What was his name again? Ah, yes." Grell and Thornn whispered in unison: "Quark."
Grell set a course for Deep Space Nine.
It seemed to take forever to find a Human. Arthur prowled the streets hiding an shadows and peeking from corners. Everywhere he looked, creatures not contemplated in his wildest imaginings lurked on streetcorners and in buildings. Hugely muscled green-skinned behemoths, shadowy humanoids with elfin features and tapering ears, insects that walked like men, porcine slobs scratching enormous bellies, lizards, felines, creatures that defied description. All of them passed before him in a nightmare kaleidoscope. "Toto," he muttered to himself, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
At last, Arthur saw what appeared to be a Human male holding commerce with a trio of the large green men under the glare of a streetlight. He looked closely to be absolutely sure. Round ears, yup. Not green or blue, yup. The individual in question was slovenly and unkempt, with a decidedly seedy appearance. Any port in a storm. Arthur began running toward him, shouting "Human! Human!" The man and his comrades started at the intrusion, and began to reach for weapons, then relaxed and began to laugh at the comical sight approaching them. Arthur grabbed the man by the lapels of his jacket. "English! Do you speak English?"
"Yes, I do. I'm from America. Name's Smythe."
Arthur was so relieved he nearly burst into tears. "What is going on here?! Where am I?!" The man smiled tolerantly. "Don't worry, buddy. We'll get you someplace you can sober up." The smile turned wolfish. "Won't we, boys?"
