The Art of the Deal Read online

  “Not exactly the thriving, successful mining world I was expecting,” Corsi commented.

  They stood at the center of a wide avenue and gazed upon a long, pothole-filled, broken road that extended several miles in each direction and was littered with rubble and old garbage. Along both sides of the avenue stood shut-down, boarded-up businesses—a clothing shop, a hardware store, several restaurants and saloons, and a barber shop were just a few.

  “Business seems to have taken a turn for the worse in this neighborhood,” the dark-skinned Hawkins commented as they passed a building in disrepair that had once been a holographic entertainment theater.

  In the distance, the away team could see a number of tall office buildings that at one time must have been beautiful, gleaming structures, but were now nothing more than abandoned husks. The gray, murky sky provided the perfect backdrop for this gloomy scene.

  Farther down the avenue, they saw several four-story residential buildings still in use. These structures too were in disrepair, with numerous cracked windows, crumbling façades, and an overall dingy appearance. The occupants of these buildings could be seen walking into, out of, and around the structures. They included male and female humanoids of the same species as Ramark, of all ages, shapes, and sizes. And there were several Red Nasats there, too, huddling together. Corsi glanced over at P8 Blue, who seemed eager to approach these former inhabitants of her homeworld.

  But Corsi also noticed that there was a certain…aimlessness to all of them. Some of the humanoid males sat on the front steps of one of the buildings, looking like they had all the time in the world and absolutely no idea how to spend it. Several of the older humanoid females cooked some sort of food on old, dented garbage cans that had been converted into makeshift stoves. Everyone had on outfits that were worn-out, shabby, looking about ready to be turned into rags.

  Turning to her teammates, Corsi said, “They don’t look like they’re part of a successful mining operation. They look like…this is all that they have going on in their lives.”

  “Hey there!” shouted a voice from behind her.

  Corsi turned to see Ramark approaching, waving and bearing a friendly smile. He was of medium height, a few inches shorter than Corsi, but he carried himself with confidence. After introductions were made, he pointed to a small, nondescript building down the avenue. “The comm center is right over there. We can go to my office and talk. I’d love to know how Phantas 61 is involved in this investigation of yours. I can’t imagine its name coming up in anything other than a cautionary tale.”

  “What do you mean?” Corsi asked.

  Ramark smirked. “Well, look around you. Things aren’t exactly what they used to be around here.”

  “And why is that?”

  “How about we talk while we walk?”

  “Very well, Mr. Ramark, lead the way.”

  The doors to the main chamber in the communications center slid open, and Ramark led his guests in. He continued his explanation about the fate of Phantas 61.

  “So when Portlyn bought the mining operation and all the real estate here, we had a really good thing going. I mean, we were thriving. Portlyn kept us all on as his employees, to keep things running smoothly. But pretty soon, ol’ Roddy-boy needed more funds to buy up more planets and businesses. So he started giving us ridiculous, unrealistic budgets that we were supposed to meet, to generate enough revenue to support his other deals. We became his cash cow. At first, we became more successful than we’d ever been, but we couldn’t sustain that forever, not at the rate he had us going. He didn’t seem to understand, or care. In the end, he ended up draining Phantas 61 of its natural resources, leaving us with this sad, desiccated corpse that we proudly call home.”

  The walls of the chamber were lined with outmoded, but still functioning, computers and monitor screens. As Corsi and the away team walked around the room inspecting the technology, Ramark activated the main communications console, which was built into a circular desk at the center of the chamber. He sat down in the chair behind the desk and put his feet up on the console.

  With a melodramatic flourish, he raised an imaginary glass and said, “So here’s to Rod ‘The Shaft’ Portlyn, who’s made the people of Phantas 61 what we are today—broke.”

  This guy is just lucky that Farmer Delfo isn’t here listening to this, Corsi thought. Ramark’s portrayal of Portlyn was in sharp contrast to the image of the tycoon that was so popular back on Vemlar. It only served to reinforce her own misgivings about him. But that was not why she was here.

  “You said you might be able to help us,” she reminded him.

  Ramark nodded. “What do you need to know?”

  “There have been several terrorist actions taken against Portlyn-owned properties in this system. We have reason to believe there may be some sort of connection between these actions and Phantas 61. Would you know anything about it?”

  “No, not at all,” Ramark replied without hesitation. “I haven’t even heard gossip about it on the subspace channels.”

  Corsi pressed on. “What about the term ‘Taru Bolivar’? Have you ever heard of it? Would you know what it means?”

  Ramark turned his gaze upward, apparently searching through his memories. He then looked back at Corsi and said, “No, I can’t say that I have.” He gave her a quizzical look. “So, are you people working for Portlyn?”

  “We’re here to protect Federation interests,” she told him.

  “I see. Well, look, let me check through the communications archives for the last month or so. If Phantas 61 is somehow involved, maybe there’s a past transmission we picked up that can provide you with a lead.”

  Ramark placed a communications earpiece in his ear, adjusted various controls on his console, and started checking through his archives. As the minutes passed with no hint of success, Corsi began to think it might be more productive for her and her team to search elsewhere. She appreciated Ramark’s cooperation, but now doubted that his efforts would lead to anything. If he hadn’t heard anything about the terrorists before now, it was probably too much to expect for him to suddenly stumble upon a direct line to them. But she would give him at least a few more minutes before she and her team moved on.

  Corsi was just about ready to thank Ramark for his efforts and depart with the away team when he perked up and said, “I found something, Commander Corsi. Some mention of…Kalibiss. It seems to be in a language I don’t recognize, but I’m sure that’s what I heard.”

  Corsi glanced over at the other members of her team, all of whom looked as intrigued as she felt. Kalibiss. That’s promising.

  Ramark continued adjusting the controls. “I’m feeding it through our translator. If it recognizes the language, the transmission will start showing up as text on the large monitor screen.” He pointed to a unit on the far side of the room.

  P8 Blue glanced over at the screen and became enthusiastic. “It looks like text is showing up now!” She rushed toward the monitor screen.

  Corsi and the rest of the away team joined the Nasat at the screen. They all wanted to see what the transmission said. But Corsi noticed that Ramark remained at his console. He seemed uninterested, which was odd, considering all the effort to which he had gone. Sure enough, text scrolled across the screen. Corsi scowled.

  “It’s just gibberish,” Hawkins said, voicing Corsi’s own thoughts.

  Something didn’t feel right to her. She slowly reached for her phaser, just to have her hand near it, just to be on the safe side. Suddenly, on the other side of the room, one of the large computers, about seven feet in height and positioned up against the wall, popped open and swung away from the wall, revealing a secret entryway behind it. Four humanoid figures—three males and one female—burst out of the entryway, armed with crude hand weapons they immediately aimed at Corsi and her team. They were dressed in tan-colored paramilitary uniforms.

  Phony computer—how clever, Corsi thought. I should’ve known. She swiftly pulled out her phase
r and fired at the figure in front—a tall, burly male with straight blond hair, who went down in a stunned heap. She saw Hawkins and Powers following suit, but the ambushing figures scattered so fast that the phaser beams missed their targets and struck only the far wall.

  At least the odds are pretty much even, Corsi thought. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ramark duck behind his communications console for shelter.

  One of the ambushing figures—the female, a short, tough-looking young woman with her dark hair in a buzz-cut style—aimed her hand weapon at Corsi and fired. Corsi scrambled and managed to evade the blast of energy, but Hawkins was not so lucky. The blast hit him across the shoulder, knocking him off his feet.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Corsi then saw five more armed ambushers emerge from the entryway. Three of them were Red Nasats.

  P8 Blue, who had been aiming her phaser at the tough-looking woman, also noticed the new arrivals. “Wait! Stop!” she called out to them, waving six of her eight limbs. “Let me talk to you—I’m a Nasat, too!”

  One of the Red Nasats fired its weapon at P8 Blue. The blast hit her phaser, knocking it out of the limb that was holding it.

  “Drop your weapons and surrender!” shouted the tough-looking woman.

  Corsi realized there was no way for her team to come out of this situation on top. They were outnumbered and outgunned, with an injured man. But she would not surrender to them.

  She hit her combadge. “Corsi to da Vinci—emergency beam-out now!”

  No response.

  She hit the combadge again. “Corsi to da Vinci, come in, da Vinci. ”

  Still no response.

  She heard Ramark clear his throat, and glanced over at him. He was standing at the communications console, with a smug grin on his face, waving to her mockingly. Then, he pointed to the console, looking quite mischievous.

  Jamming communications, she thought, stifling a particularly strong curse.

  Still more armed ambushers entered the room through the secret entryway. Another Red Nasat, an Arcturian, a Betelgeusian, and several more humanoids. The group now numbered thirteen, and they closed in and surrounded Corsi and her team, hand weapons at the ready. Corsi looked over at Powers, P8 Blue, and Hawkins, who was still conscious and rubbing the shoulder that had been hit. Corsi saw no blood or even burn marks on Hawkins’s shoulder—he was apparently grazed by nothing more than a stun blast. The ambushers’ weapons weren’t set to kill. That was interesting.

  Corsi nodded at her team reluctantly, conveying silently that they didn’t stand a chance. They dropped their phasers to the floor. The tough-looking woman—“Buzz-cut” was as good a name for her as any—confiscated the phasers and handed them over to a compatriot.

  “You and your people, come with us,” Buzz-cut told Corsi, pointing her hand weapon directly at the security chief’s chest.

  “Powers, Pattie, help Hawkins,” Corsi said, her eyes never leaving Buzz-cut’s.

  Powers and P8 Blue walked over to Hawkins and helped him to his feet.

  “I’m all right, I can walk,” Hawkins said, waving them off. “Shoulder and arm are just numb, that’s all.”

  Elsewhere in the room, two of the ambushers lifted up the unconscious body of the man Corsi had stunned. They shot smoldering glares at the da Vinci security chief as they passed her by, carrying the unconscious man over to the secret entryway. They headed inside.

  Buzz-cut then motioned Corsi and her team over to the same entryway. A flight of stairs leading downward lay before them, dimly illuminated by a series of small glowing light rods attached to either side of the stairwell. With a wave of her hand weapon, Buzz-cut indicated that she wanted Corsi and her team to enter.

  As she walked down the steps, Corsi could hear the large computer being put back into place so that it would once again block the secret entrance.

  “I’m sorry, Commander,” Hawkins told her, his voice filled with self-recrimination. “I should have been more alert. I never should have let my guard down with that weasel.”

  “Same here, Commander,” added Powers.

  Corsi waved off the apologies. “I’m as much to blame as anyone,” she said.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs and, at the prodding of the ambushers, moved on through a narrow corridor until they entered an underground cavern converted into a headquarters of some kind. Corsi saw a long conference table covered with various maps, charts, and graphs, fifteen chairs, and several computer consoles.

  The ambushers, weapons still in hand, continued to surround her, Hawkins, Powers, and P8 Blue.

  “Where are we?” Corsi demanded.

  A gruff masculine voice responded. “You’re where you wanted to be, Commander Corsi.”

  A fairly young-looking, yellow-skinned humanoid male with wavy brown hair and intense, piercing blue eyes stepped out from a side alcove. He moved forward to face her.

  “You wanted to find the Taru Bolivar,” the male told Corsi. It was his voice that had answered her. “Well, here we are.”

  In the communications center, Ramark was chuckling to himself about how easy it had been to defeat those Starfleet suckers, when he heard a noise behind him.

  He stood up swiftly, pulling a small, laser-powered firearm out of a pocket in his trousers.

  “Who’s there?” he called out. No one should have been able to get into the building without the proper authorization code. And everyone with proper authorization was now down below.

  Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in the wrist of the hand holding the firearm—so much pain that he dropped the weapon. He looked down to see a large, gray-skinned hand holding his wrist. How could anyone have been able to sneak up beside him so fast? He twisted around to see who had seized him.

  “Gerard?” he said in shock.

  “Hello, Ramark,” said Rod Portlyn’s Senior High Security Agent with a malevolent grin.

  Gerard, towering over Ramark, shifted his expression to a cold glare. “I need to get down to that underground hideout, and you’re going to show me how.”

  “What underground hideout?” Ramark responded defiantly, placing his free hand on the communications console and reaching for the toggle that would sound the alert signal to warn those down below.

  But Gerard pulled Ramark closer to him and squeezed harder on the wrist, causing Ramark to wince despite his best efforts to show no weakness.

  “I’m dead serious, twerp. And unless you tell me what I want to know, you’ll just be plain dead.”

  “I can’t hear you, Gerard. Your head is too far up Portlyn’s rear end.”

  “Wrong answer,” the big man replied.

  Continuing to hold Ramark’s wrist, Gerard strode over to the wall where the seven-foot-tall computer blocked the secret entryway. He lifted Ramark, turned him in a horizontal position, and then placed the smaller man under one of his large, muscular arms.

  “I figure both sides of this wall have their own control switches to open the computer. The one on this side has to be hidden around here somewhere,” Gerard commented in an almost casual manner. “All I have to do is find it. And I can’t think of anything better to use than your head.”

  Without warning, Gerard slammed Ramark’s head into a section of the wall. Ramark was too shocked to even cry out in pain.

  “Nope, it’s not here,” Ramark could hear Gerard say through the intense pounding in his ears. “Let me try this section here…”

  Wham!

  Amid his agony, Ramark was filled with anger and hatred, wanting nothing more than to tear out Gerard’s eyes and wrap his fingers around his throat and squeeze the life out of him. But Portlyn’s agent was too big, and too strong.

  “Nope, not there, either. Guess I should try a little further up. Gee, I might have to cover this whole room. This could take a while….”

  Ramark felt Gerard rushing him toward another section of wall. “Wait,” he managed to croak out. “I’ll talk.” He couldn’t take another blow to the head. And he ha
ted himself for it.

  “Where?” Gerard demanded.

  Ramark pointed weakly to the computer itself.

  “Now what?” Gerard hissed.

  “Button, side of ’puter,” Ramark mumbled.

  Through blurred vision, Ramark saw Gerard examine the sides of the computer and find a small camouflaged stud near the top. The big man pressed the stud and watched in triumph as the front of the computer popped open, exposing the entryway and the dimly lit stairway leading downward.

  “All right, Ramark. I won’t be needing you anymore.”

  Gerard dropped Ramark onto the floor and quickly inspected the entrance. Ramark tried to get to his feet, but he was barely holding on to consciousness. He looked up to see Gerard pull out a phaser.

  “It’s set for stun,” Gerard told him. “This way, you can live out the rest of your life knowing that you betrayed your friends down there.”

  That was the last thing Ramark heard before he was bathed in the light of the phaser beam and all went black.

  Gerard descended the winding stairway quietly and carefully, until he entered a narrow corridor and then heard a voice echoing from up ahead. He stopped as soon as he could make out clearly what the voice was saying.

  And Gerard found that he recognized the voice.

  Elless, he thought.

  “We intend to be a constant thorn in Portlyn’s side, and prevent him from spreading his taint to other worlds,” Gerard heard the voice say.

  This is good stuff, he thought as he pulled a small transmitter out of his jacket, activated it, and began broadcasting to a specific location: Rod Portlyn’s private office on Vemlar.

  Chapter

  7

  “My name is Elless,” the young man with the piercing blue eyes told Corsi.

  “I take it you’re the leader around here?” she replied in a cold tone.