Zork

In early 2367, Blott and Itzka welcomed their first son and youngest child into the world on Ferenginar. Zork has very few memories of his early childhood, however his upbringing was quite exceptional considering his father’s business acumen and his mother’s adherence to traditional Ferengi life. Blott’s fortune was largely inherited from generations of mining ventures and direct exploitation of agricultural workers, and this fortune rapidly increased in the late 2360’s due to the official diplomatic relationship established between the Ferengi Alliance and the Federation. With the rediscovery of the Bajoran Wormhole, Blott was among the first intrepid would-be robber-barrons to uproot his family to seek out further riches in the unexplored quadrant. This venture was not suitably profitable in Blott’s estimation, and as such he returned to the Alpha Quadrant in 2371 to focus on raising his son as a proper and upright Ferengi learning the family business.

This led the family to Ajilon Prime, where Blott found a colony of “suckers playing our family’s game,” and quickly bought controlling stakes in several small operations. Zork’s memories begin during the two years his family spent on Ajilon – learning the Rules of Acquisition, being eased into his role as the inevitable heir to his father’s businesses (by way of being told to bang smaller rocks with larger ones until they split open), and otherwise bonding with his mother and sisters. Each Rule stuck almost as soon as he was introduced to it, his learning curve reduced due to watching his father’s practical application of them in his dealings with the other colonists. Zork, though young, was made to understand that Ferengi were culturally and morally superior to all other species, and Blott was quick to instill in his son that their family – specifically Zork and himself – were superior to other Ferengi in that their family had dug themselves out from near ruin over the last three generations. Everyone in the galaxy had a place, and Zork and Blott were meant to be at the top.

Then the Klingons arrived.

The well-to-do family was helpless in the face of such overwhelming violence, whether to stop the bombing of their mines or the razing of their fields. The images burned into his mind of his father’s terror, his mother’s utter hopelessness, the wails of his sisters at each ground shaking explosion are among the most vivid flashes of his young cognizant memory. One particular moment stands as Zork’s most visceral recollection from his youth: a lone Starfleet officer fending off half a dozen Klingon warriors while the colonists boarded their escape shuttle. Young Zork was inconsolable due to his incomprehension at such selflessness, and his young voice somehow boomed through the shuttle, “Why did he do that?! Why would he do that?! Why did he do that?!” in spite of his father’s demands for silence, his mother’s comforting affections, and his sisters’ bullying threats. The family subsequently escaped to Deep Space 9, where a Ferengi transport was contracted to return them to Ferenginar post haste.

Blott returned to a mercantile vessel in the role of DaiMon, his family in tow, shortly after getting his business affairs in order after Ajilon. War came and war went. Zork watched his father rip off, scam, and otherwise flim-flam naive colonists, avaricious bureaucrats, arrogant Starfleet officers, as well as every and anyone in between. The family would settle planetside for a year or two, return to space for a year, drop anchor at a space station, go back into space with Blott reinvesting in the position of DaiMon, and so on and so forth. Throughout this time Zork held his tutors (the best money could buy), as well as the teachings of his mother (about their culture) and father (about business), in high regard. He was attentive, he was curious, he was obedient, and he was communicative, especially with his teachers (even after a tutor’s contract expired). For quite some time, it seemed as though Zork would follow his father’s lead in the mining and agricultural realm – exploiting the poor, the naive, and the unintelligent – even though the adolescent was mild mannered and prone to being “soft” during negotiations with such disaffected strangers. As Zork got older, he came to realize how well travelled he had been, the singularness of experiencing the horrors of war at such a young age and the terrible aftermath (and opportunity) of that war. He had also been taught by some of the best and brightest minds in the Alpha Quadrant about subjects as varied as xenoanthropology and macroeconomics, and had watched his father accrue glories and treasures that only the top DaiMons would ever see. Zork came to consider himself as a precious commodity to not only his father and family, but to the larger whole.

While the purpose of his schooling and of the constant travel was so that he could follow his father’s footsteps, the ghost of the Starfleet Officer from Ajilon continued to haunt his memories. There was no memory of his father that elicited such admiration, so Zork, upon his Attainment Day, “threw it all away” by deciding he was going to invest his small sum of money into joining Starfleet with the purpose of commanding a ship superior to that of his father. A loud and vicious argument ensued, culminating with Blott disowning his son in a fit of rage, “A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all!”

Zork accepted defiantly, “Not all profit is latinum!” and set out on his journey.

Using his former tutors’ contacts within Starfleet Academia to ensure his application would be reviewed, and citing the one way transport itinerary and banking records to prove that he’d spent literally everything he had to get to Earth and pursue a Starfleet career, Zork was sponsored into the Academy by two mid-level intelligence officers that interviewed him regarding his father’s influence both on Zork and on several far flung Federation colonies (Ajilon topping the list). Without the intelligence officers’ sponsorship, Zork’s career would have been dead on arrival.

His previous educational and travel experiences were invaluable during his four years in San Francisco, during which he demonstrated a knack for resource and personnel management during various command and operations simulations. The diligence behind his studies of various advanced physics, communications systems, astrogation and navigation methods, as well as his completion of seemingly irrelevant courses focused on the development and interaction of other species, image it quickly evident to Zork’s instructors that the young man was aiming for a higher mark than a simple flight control or operations officer. Due to his innate intelligence and desire to impress both peers and superiors, he was consistently challenged to grow the breadth of his knowledge and volunteer for various extracurricular clubs and events.

By the time of his final year, Zork had earned a reputation as not only one of the most resourceful and inventive flight control officers amongst Red Squadron, but also as a natural athlete (years of slaving in fields and mines and cargo holds for his father had had unexpected benefits), a competent three-dimensional chess player, and – almost above all else on a personal level – a hustler the likes of which would have made any Ferengi proud. Zork successfully ran friendly chess and card tournaments, planned athletic celebrations, and even set up a tiny “speak easy” off-campus for cadets looking to experiment with less than savory vices. Zork was only discovered once, and escaped with informal discipline after convincing the security personnel he was only “looking for a friend who wasn’t even there.”

At the end of his academic training, Zork invited his father to his graduation by way of promising recompense for all of Blott’s investment into him. Blott accepted the invitation (as well as all the bars of latinum Zork had accrued over his for years of “business”) and made tentative peace with his son. Shortly thereafter Zork was stationed as the conn officer aboard the Aubagne, a Danube-class runabout acting as a ferry between Utopia Planitia and Starfleet HQ, where for six months he made said run dozens of times each week. During his last week aboard the Aubagne, Ensign Zork came face to face with one of the intelligence officers that had originally sponsored him into the academy. Commander Lapzik Ghein immediately recognized the Ferengi, and intently asked all about his experience in the Academy and how he felt about his current assignment. In the midst of a pleasant conversation between a senior and junior officer, the Ferengi was asked to show the Commander what the academy had taught him about flying. Though hesitant at first, Zork quickly took the commander up on his request – low passes over the surface of the moon, barrel-rolling into the atmosphere, a number of upsetting atmospheric maneuvers more suited for a fighter than a runabout in order to evade several vessels sent to investigate and escort the reckless shuttle, and subsequently coming in “hot” for a mock combat landing. Starfleet flight control was less than pleased, though Ghein seemed to have some sort of pull that allowed Zork to avoid court-martial, being grounded, or otherwise facing any formal discipline.

Several days later, Zork received a startling message. Commander Ghein had been returning to San Francisco for a promotion to Captain within Fleet Intelligence Support Activities, and made clear he had taken that opportunity to put in a good word for the young pilot within Starfleet Intelligence. The offer was simple: there was a joint venture, vague as to between whom, that Ensign Zork seemed well suited to. If he were to accept a dual position as a flight control and operations officer (primary role subject to mission needs) reporting to Starfleet Intelligence instead of Starfleet proper, he would not only receive “what could be [his] only opportunity to leave Sol-duty,” but would also be rewarded for “mak[ing] the right choice” with a second pip. Zork, recognizing the position he had been thrust into, very quickly accepted. 

Zork’s official record shows him to continue his service aboard the USS Aubagne for the next two years as the Lead Flight Conn Specialist and Operations Officer, during which time he received a promotion to full lieutenant despite filing only a handful of classified or heavily redacted official reports. Personal logs were also scant and spoke very little of Zork’s duties aside from the mundane and routine tasks of a Lead Flight Control Specialist. It is interesting to note that in these handful of logs Zork refers to shuttles and runabouts both in the plural sense. Also of note is Zork’s remorse that he “won’t be able” to contact his family on Ferenginar, as opposed to “can’t get in contact with.” This was partially explained when Zork requested a transfer to the Bajoran Front in May of 2391 and reported to the Starfleet Intelligence Liaison rather than the Starfleet Administrator of Deep Space Nine. He transferred his commission into Starfleet proper and was thrown into the conn of the USS Defiant after the arrival of the Dominion fleet, the unfolding situation allowing Zork to avoid questions about his former posting. All he would say was that it had been “compromised by Borg activity.”

The very first assignment Zork received aboard the Defiant was as the “getaway driver” during the recon mission into the gamma quadrant prior to the Second Battle of Bajor, a mission led by the Nogura and the Dauntless. Due to their size, Defiant-class vessels had often been largely ignored by the Borg in previous battles; were a battle to ensue and such events to unfold again, the Defiant was to turn around and race back to the Alpha Quadrant in order to warn the Fleet. This role was never fulfilled however, as the battlegroup quickly completed its mission by recording the presence of over four hundred some-odd Borg ships. The entire lot of the Starfleet vessels tucked tail and retreated back to Alpha Quadrant. They regrouped with the awaiting defense picket, and the Defiant broke away to form up with a flight of four other such vessels to wait out the inevitable arrival of their enemy. 

When the wormhole opened and two dozen assorted Borg vessels squeaked through, Zork proved himself to be a truly awe inspiring pilot aboard the Defiant. Two particularly dire moments caused him to stand out both amongst the Defiant’s crew and the larger defense force. The first occurred at 1300 hours, just following the vessel’s second rearmament aboard DS9. Zork executed the hairpin evasion of a tractor emitter during the Defiant’s fifth strafing run against a Sphere, an emitter that their vessel had been tasked with disabling. Zork had noticed the Sphere preferred to lock on to the aft of a target, had also picked up on the placement of the arrays that actually powered the weapon, and, seeing those relays charge once the Defiant was acquired as a target, simultaneously fired the aft ventral and forward dorsal maneuvering jets at 110% output. To boot, Zork maintained a relative perpendicular orientation to the sphere in order to complete the strafing run, a run which was in turn successful in disabling the tractor emitter. 

This bestowed a dubious distinction on the USS Defiant for the rest of the battle: it was designated a threat. What followed 1301 was the near fixation of the Sphere with the smaller Federation craft Zork was helming, and a cat and mouse game that had the Defiant zipping in and around fields of destroyed Borg and Federation space frames. The Sphere was forced to smash through the slagged hulls, damaging itself, or to go around the debris in order to continue its pursuit, at which point the Defiant would take pot shots with phaser pulses and torpedo salvoes. While the Defiant eventually lost this game, culminating in an abandon ship order after a direct hit to the engine systems, the Sphere had been slowly overwhelmed by larger Federation vessels and was eventually destroyed. Zork made up 10% of the surviving crew from the Defiant, and he was half of what was left of the bridge staff. 

Once the Borg dispersed from Bajoran space, Zork was rescued by the USS Mikhail Kalashnikov and reassigned to the USS Thunderchild as the Lead Small Craft Flight Control Officer, operating Type-11 Shuttlecraft in mission profiles ranging from long range early warning/reconnaissance to deep-space rescue operations.  The young officer used the conn almost as a musical instrument, and as a pilot this manifested as an innate understanding of the tolerances of almost any smaller vessel he “got behind the wheel” of. What stood out further was the extent his knowledge purportedly gained as an operations officer – his inexplicable secondary role supposedly aboard the Aubagne from 2389 to 2391 – of the passive electronic failsafe protocols and the mechanical systems behind impulse and warp propulsion, fuel utilization, maneuvering thrusters, and – most suspiciously – the finer points of manipulating the intercooling systems within the high-output engines of a Defiant. Engineers repeatedly complained up the chain of command that Lt Zork’s “reckless disregard” of inertial dampeners, antimatter injectors, ionizing-nodes, and shipwide-atmospheric scrubbers was more of a detriment to the war effort than the Borg could ever hope to be. It was antics such as these on the part of Zork and numerous other such gifted pilots that led to significant design improvements in inertial dampener and thruster technology during a time that any edge against the Borg was intensely pursued. In 2393 Zork was officially commended for his uncanny talents and technical knowledge. 

When not flying a ship, a significant portion of Zork’s personal time was dedicated to honing his sorely lacking combat skills and marksmanship. In 2392, midway through his time on the Thunderchild, he was accepted to Advanced Tactical Training, again based on need as much as ability. Following the first attack on Sol, Zork began actively seeking reassignment to the system in order to continue the fight against the seemingly unstoppable Federation foe. Zork eventually found a position as a Marine Airman in 2394 thanks to his Advanced Tactical Training, transferred into SFMC despite the loss of a pip, and aided in the rebuilding and training efforts within the Sol Sector from behind the conn of Type 11 shuttlecraft and Danube-class runabouts. 

In 2395 Zork earned his Valkyrie wings within SFMC (which came with a promotion to Lieutenant 1st Class) and was soon flying escort and interdict missions for supply convoys throughout the Sol Sector. In 2396, Zork was promoted to Marine Captain and chosen as the Flight Leader of the “Storming” Second-Ninety-Second Fighter Wing due to ability and need: the CAG aboard the USS-Typhon-C had been lost in an engagement and someone had to step up. The Typhon was one of the three ships to subsequently survive Starfleet’s escape through the Briar Patch in 2397, and miraculously suffered the loss of only three pilots and four fighters. 

In March of 2397, during the most dire of threats to the Federation’s continued existence, Zork was transferred back into Starfleet at the rank of Lieutenant Commander and given command of the USS Phantom, a Defiant-class vessel that was to run escort for the Sol evacuation to Bajor, strictly due to the need for ship-level leadership. The time as a Marine had changed the Ferengi from an idealistic Starfleet officer looking to aid the disaffected into a hardened veteran of a grizzly war, and Zork ran the Phantom as such. The freshly minted Lieutenant Commander managed to requisition a Jem’Hadar security detail (albeit some of the youngest of their race), a Chief Operations Officer from the Klingon Empire, and four Bynar to act as computer-specialists. The Phantom was assigned (per request) to a battlegroup commanded by Captain Lapzik Ghein of the USS Constellation, who had four additional Defiant-class escorts and two Akira-class gunships under his command. Both men were elated to find the other still alive, and both found the prospect of working directly together to be something worth checking off on an unwritten to-do list. 

As had been Zork’s own experience throughout the war, most of the Starfleet officers directly under his command had been promoted as much due to need as due to ability. Zork found himself fortunate as a commanding officer because of the ingenuity, dedication-to-duty, and professional chemistry of his senior staff. The way the almost exclusively young crew of the Phantom came together in as perilous a predicament as could be imagined is what proved to be the very thing that kept their ship and almost all personnel alive during the six day Battle to Bajor. The Constellation was lost with all hands on the second day of the journey. The Resurgent and the Musashi were crippled and assimilated on the third day, which led to the USS Templar and USS Phantom deciding to destroy the disabled Resilient and Valiant on the fourth and fifth day (respectively) rather than allow the Borg to have the crew. 

On the sixth day, the Phantom had been pushed back to Bajor along with the rest of the fleet. Relatively unscathed in spite of the near constant state of battle (aside from the rate at which the Phantom chewed through inertial dampeners, antimatter injectors, maneuvering thruster components, intercooler refrigerant, and torpedoes) and one of only a dozen Defiant-class warships left in the fleet, the only reprieves offered to the crew were a handful of five minute rearmament runs made to Bajor. Zork and the crew were running on amphetamines and the sheer desire to live at any cost by the time the Borg arrived at 0600, making them especially dangerous to not only their attackers but their Allied wingmates. While it seemed as though most of the fleet was operating under the same circumstances, there was an especially wonton recklessness to the actions of the Defiant-flight. 

Led by Captain Kalaax of the Defiant itself, the twelve remaining purpose-built warships performed a role more suited for fighters than for starships: close range attacks meant to disable the primary offensive and defensive systems of the Borg vessels. For sixteen hours the loosely coordinated squadron of Starfleet destroyers bobbed through explosive decompressions, wove through the gaping fiery hulks of Allied vessels and Borg constructs alike, dipped disrupters, phasers, projectiles, and tractor beams, and desperately hacked through repeated boarding attempts. The Defiant-E, the Phantom, the Glory, and the rest would swarm a single Cube or Sphere like angry hornets, stinging unrelentingly with their pulse phasers and biting with photon, quantum, and transphasic torpedoes. These tactics were largely intended to distract and impair rather than outright destroy, and as such the squadron would hit and run several Borg vessels in the same vicinity to draw a coordinated response, which in turn gave the larger Allied starships the opening necessary to deliver their own coordinated onslaught. This arguably suicidal tactic was quickly adopted by similarly smaller Cardassion, Klingon, and Bajoran escort craft and destroyers.

The Borg soon acknowledged the threat such groups of vessels posed by prioritizing the targeting of such battle squadrons. The Klingons lost nearly seventy percent of their Birds of Prey, and the Phantom was one of only two Defiant-class starships to survive the carnage. Zork and his crew had managed to preserve their ship even with multiple catastrophic system failures: artificial gravity and climate control, warp propulsion, long range sensors, both torpedo launchers, the port phaser arrays, transporters, and finally – a day after the conclusion of the fighting – the main computer and warpcore. The forward torpedo pod had at one point been stuffed with five tricobalt devices and launched into a sphere. The Phantom was useless slag, and was quickly scrapped for much needed parts. Zork had lost half his crew, their body count doubled by the number of slain drones throughout the four decks. Only Zork, Flight Control Officer LtJG Rebecca Oswald, and Chief Operations Officer B’rang (a Lieutenant commissioned by the Klingon Empire) had survived of the original bridge staff.

Zork was stationed aboard the USS Defiant as Chief Operations Officer and SO, with a freshly promoted Lt Oswald joining him as the LFCO. B’rang was given command of a Bird of Prey – now a prestigious position within the Klingon Fleet – and was assigned to the same CAP as the Defiant. Oswald and Zork quickly became best friends; B’rang and Oswald married in early 2399. It seemed as though life had begun to return to the survivors, though unrest brewed on Bajor. As one of the few remaining Ferengi, Zork grew torn between the future of his culture and his role as an officer. His family name still bore great weight as did his position and service record, however the murky nature of politics was a stark contrast to the black and white nature of the war he’d fought his entire adult life. Zork opportunistically has kept a foot in both worlds. 

When the Enterprise was launched and found itself in need of a Chief Operations Officer, Zork was placed on the shortlist with the idea that officers such as himself would prove to be the future of Starfleet. His lack of experience aboard a vessel the size of a Century-class starship proved his only professional shortcoming, and Zork was also made more attractive a candidate as a visible and vocal progressive within the Ferengi hierarchy. When he was eventually offered a position aboard the Enterprise with the express purpose of learning the logistics behind extended, unsupported large-scale starship operations in deep space, Zork parlayed the offer to claim to the Ferengi elders that his basis for joining Starfleet had been proven: “not all profit is latinum.” He left this thought with the leaders of his species to further pursue his own perception of profit.  A promotion to Commander has been withheld, however, pending the assessment of the senior staff aboard the Enterprise at the completion of their mission, the mission that has always been at the very heart of the Federation and its Starfleet:

“To explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

And the Alpha Quadrant is indeed a strange and dangerous new world worthy of exploration.