Concurrent to Charon's predicament...
Savant found the Ferengi station a little unpleasant. Her boots sounded
off discordantly on the floor grates, which required her to write a
gestalt feature just to write out that sound. It didn't bother anyone
else, however, as the place was full of lifeforms of all sorts. This was
a civil station, outside of the Federations' jurisdiction, and it was
popular. A good deal of the sectors' mercantile business came through
here, making it a natural one-stop shop for whatever you wanted. And,
given the Ferengi's utter lack of morals when it came to business (or,
it could be argued, their highly refined business morals), you really
could buy *anything* here. And that's why Savant had been here for the
past few days.
She was not operating under Starfleet's aegis here - to be honest, she
doubted if the Federation was aware of the fact that she was operating
several nodes beyond their borders. That didn't bother her in the
slightest - she was in fact glad for the fact. Autonomy and anonymity
were her friends.
That said, she was not particularly anonymous here - her android was
human and there were few other humans aboard, so she did stand out a
little. She was dressed in the rugged, pragmatic clothing of a freighter
and wore a particularly large Klingon disruptor on her hip, though, so
she blended in well enough. Other than the occasional chummy human
looking for companionship from the same xenospecies and the more
frequent Ferengi offering a tidy sum for a night she would "never
forget", she was left to her business.
And her business was her own preservation. Savant was able to parlay her
vast information network into sizable resources when she wanted them,
but for the moment she had a Runabout class shuttlecraft as her only
possession. Sufficient for her purposes, for certain, but for her plans
to come to fruition, she needed more.
Savant pulled herself out of the busy corridor, away from the hawkers
and the squeal of the over-stressed atmospheric system, and ducked
through heavy fabric curtains into dim light. Her internal sensors
automatically adjusted her visible-light spectrum downwards while IR and
multispectral grained precedence. Peoples sat on the floor around low
tables, talking, smoking, gambling, drinking - every vice was on display
here to some excess of another. The heavy, sweet smell of Ferengi
opiates hung in the air in filmy clouds, mixed with spices and cooking
oil. Savant smiled.
This was the Gilded Ear, a "relaxation den" that was popular amongst the
locals in the region. Outsiders were welcome provided that they had
money, of course, but Savant got a few glares behind heavy eyebrows as
she came in. She chose one of her Ferengi-oriented smiles for the
occasion, which seemed to placate the irritable in the room. She wasn't
here for them, though; she made her way to the round kiosk at the centre
of the room where the addictive concessions for which this place was
known were sold.
The crusty Ferengi behind the counter bared his teeth in a vicious smile
- she mimicked the gesture, baring her canines - sure, hers were
polymer-coated duranium, but he wouldn't know that.
"Well, look at you," he said as he eyed her up and down appraisingly, "I
could get kilos of latinum for a creature like you."
"Compliments like that are why I came here first," she toyed with him,
taking no offense at his voracious eyes. It was in fact a compliment, at
least in his head. She had no ego to bruise, in any case.
"Can I interest you in some Ivox? Tan-taun maybe? Perhaps a night of
wild passion back at my bunk?" he sneered, amused but interested in the
newcomer.
"Tan-taun would be *lovely*. I'll get back to you on the rest."
The lumpy-lobed alien smirked and bared his teeth again - it really was
a communication medium for the creatures - and gave her a dun brown
bottle. She put down a latinum credit on the counter top, and held a
proper bar in her hand. "I was wondering, are there any miners here
tonight?"
The bartending Ferengi glanced at the dull bar of latinum hungrily
before grinning widely, "It's so nice to see a human that knows how the
system works. Yeah, over there," he gestured to a low, round table where
a pair of betentacled creatures sat. Savant pressed the small bar onto
the counter and gave him a wink before turning away. His biochemical
reaction was exactly as she predicted.
[ To Be Continued ]
Captain Savant,
Rogue Trader
