Chapter Text
The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 7: The Roundabout
Scene 8: Onboarding
7.8
Onboarding
“So why didn’t you tell us this was about the ancient history of your people? You have to know puzzles like this are candy to Captain Howard.”
Lance Corporal Petra Spitze was unhappy with Trader Pel. Skip Howard had taken Spike aside for a long conversation and given her a sense of Pel’s point of view. But Spike was still upset that Pel had not trusted her or, more importantly, Captain Howard, enough to trust him with what he had learned about from his extremely detailed study of the cultural records out of the immense radio transmission produced by five separate species.
“I’m sorry, Spike. And I’ve apologized to Skip, too,” Pel replied. “When you have made a lifetime of hiding, well, pretty much everything… That and we ferengi are trained to not trust other species. Especially humans. And especially people who want to be trusted.”
“Rules of Acquisition,” Spike said. There was a sound of disgust in her voice.
“That,” said Pel. “That right there. You humans try to hide your prejudices from yourselves, but a little scratch and out they come.” Pel sighed. “Look, most ferengi don’t understand the Rules. They think they’re rules to be followed. Some sort of guide for living.”
Curiosity, hurt, and suspicion battled for dominance in Spike’s mind. Curiosity won. “So they’re not a guide for living?”
“No,” Pel replied. “They’re a collection of observations on how people behave. What they’re really like at heart. And they hold true for more than ferengi. They’re even true for you humans. You try to be better than them, you really try. But when that thin veneer of a few hundred years of civilization gets stripped away, those rules are who you are. They’re how you behave. You study the rules to understand yourself. They’re not who you should be. They’re just who you are. Who you really are.”
Spike let this sink in for a few moments. Then: “I’m not prejudiced against ferengi…”
“Of course you are,” Pel interrupted. A calm voice and a kind look in his eyes. “You try, you really try to be better than that. And that means a lot. It really does. It actually means more than if you weren’t prejudiced to begin with.” Pel sighed again. “You know that ferengi society is male dominated. But long ago, it was a matriarchy. We were a very, very different people back then. Most of that history has been deliberately erased. We know so very little about the people we once were."
Pel lifted a small reader, started displaying a number of images of drawings and sculptures of faces and creatures that looked vaguely like ferengi. “These people have ancient legends of a female-led species that contacted them in ancient times. Even more ancient than our legends say the old matriarchy was. Who knows how many times our culture rose and fell. Is it possible that my ancestors got all the way out here and contacted these people?”
“But why Roundabout Station?” Spike asked.
“This station wasn’t built all at once. It accumulated over centuries. And at the very heart of it, the oldest part of the station… The legends say it was built by a mythical people called the grablers. All the artwork makes them out to look like ferengi. Female ferengi...”
It was less than an hour later that Pel’s shuttle docked at what translated to Starboard Docking Port 561-12. Private First Class Guz Maxwell drew the short straw and remained onboard with Chief Flight Specialist Ho River, who had piloted the shuttle. It was 20 minutes before Trader Pel, 2nd Lt. Iov Pushkin, Sgt. Chavez Lone Wolf, Lance Corporal Petra Spitze, and Privates First Class Randa Habib and Sasha Soko were allowed to disembark the shuttle and board Roundabout Station.
The shuttle was docked inside a cargo bay, allowing the rear of the shuttle to be opened for efficient loading of mass product. Each ship in this dock had it’s own space door and was sealed off from the remainder of the dock except during loading. The marines that came onto the station with Pel were stopped at a check station operated by a single orseld, who inspected the weapons the marines were carrying and checked Pel to verify the ferengi trader was unarmed.
Pel paid for weapons licenses for the marines. Each was carrying a bullpup, a type 1 phaser and a U.S. Marine issue knife. Licensing for these was 100 eadhels per weapon for a 9-day period. Pel’s willingness to part with 1500 eadhels marked him as dangerously wealthy.
Pel also paid for the shuttle to remain docked for 15 hours while he bargained for a number of refined products that would be useful for the task force, including refined deuterium, drive plasma, carbon filters, high tensile carbon fibre, and various medical products as well as a variety of cultural products, foods, replicas of artifacts, and a number of databases.
The marketers of these products were almost all oeast, working from a bank of small offices located a little further inside the station. These offices and docks were the newest parts of the station and had a grimy, but not run-down appearance.
Once these items were loaded onto the shuttle, Chief Ho undocked to return these to the task force, leaving Pel and the small squad of marines to find quarters aboard Roundabout Station, thence to seek out the most ancient part of the station, buried under layer after layer of construction.
7.8