USS Culver City was underway in the Duwalla system, cruising under impulse power.  On her bridge, Lieutenant Commander Varyn K’lev sat in his command chair, glancing idly down at his chair’s armrest console.  “How long until we’re at the first marker?” he asked.

The ship’s helm officer, Lieutenant (jg) Ari Phillips, checked their display.  “About 5 minutes,” they said.

K’lev nodded, then activated an intercom channel.  “Bridge to Shuttlebay 3.  Tiza, you nearly ready down there?”

The voice of Lieutenant (jg) Tiza came back over the intercom.  “Ready and waiting!  Buoy’s at the edge of the shuttlebay, and the tractor beams’re standing by to catch it as we push it out.”

“Excellent!  Ari says we’ll be at the launch point in 5 minutes, so that’ll be your timer.  Is Pelix there with you, too?”

The gruff voice of chief engineer Lieutenant Pelix joined the conversation.  “Yeah, yeah, I’m here.”

“Any issues with boot-up and configuration?” K’lev asked.  “We can’t have these buoys malfunctioning on us, with how far out we are.”

“Nothin’ to report,” Pelix answered.  “Powered up just fine, and no issues with the configurations, either.  And yes, I’ll do a final remote diagnostic after we launch each, and before we move on.”

K’lev chuckled.  “Wasn’t even gonna ask,” he said.  “Go ahead and launch it once we’re at the launch point, then let’s get it properly linked into the Framheim network.”

“Will do,” Tiza said, answering for both himself and Pelix, then the channel closed.  The right side of K’lev’s mouth curled up in a bit of a half-smile; it was early, but so far everything was going well.

A few minutes later, Phillips called out, “We’ve reached the first marker.”

“Aft view, please,” K’lev asked the second-class petty officer currently manning the Operations console, nodding towards the main viewscreen.

The image on the screen shifted, now showing an aft camera view that looked down from the saucer towards the ship’s small secondary hull, sitting suspended between her underslung nacelles, that contained Shuttlebay 3.  The view shifted as a small object – the first subspace comms buoy – drifted out of the shuttlebay; it was then taken into control by Culver City‘s powerful aft tractor beams, and guided slowly and carefully away from the ship and to its intended location with the precision of a surgeon.  The petty officer at Ops consulted the console.  “I’m seeing a strong signal from the buoy, sir!  Looks like it’s tied in nicely.”

K’lev smiled in pleased satisfaction.  “Well done, everyone!  That’s one down, but we’ve got two more to go.  Set course for the second marker, Ari; let’s keep it up.”

Culver City edged away from the newly-launched buoy.  Once clear, she jumped to warp; her next comms buoy placement site  was in the Vekrun system.  Around halfway to the second marker, a sound suddenly came from the tactical station, drawing the attention of Lieutenant (jg) Tyrisa sh’Livo.  “There’s a Ferengi shuttle heading our way,” she said.

K’lev glanced between sh’Livo, Lieutenant Ophelia Lotharys at science, and the petty officer currently manning ops.  “What d’you make of her?  Just passing through?  Or’s she showing interest in us, or in the buoy?”

Lotharys took that one.  “It’s hard to say what she was doing, but the shuttle looks interested in us now, at least.”

sh’Livo nodded her agreement.  “It’s not getting too much closer, though, at least for now; I guess we’ve got a shadow now?”

K’lev nodded.  “Keep an eye on her for now, I’d say; if that shuttle doesn’t bother us, we won’t bother it.  But let me know the moment you see it do anything suspicious, especially towards the buoys.”  This doesn’t feel right, he added in his own mind.

As the minutes ticked by and Culver City slowed to impulse, then began to close on the second deployment marker, the Ferengi shuttle continued shadowing her.  Its crew were clearly interested in what the California-class ship was doing, but had not – or at least had not yet – decided whether or not to intervene in some way.  The shuttle’s presence did have one notable impact, though; aboard the Culver City, anxiety levels were rising.  The Ferengi had recently started trying to bad-mouth the Federation and the two Starfleet ships in the system among the populations of Derganix and Formica, and while the networks supported by these buoys were free for anyone to use, the buoys themselves were Starfleet standard-issue, and so there was a chance that the Consortium might try to spin them as evidence of an attempt to take over the system.  Fortunately, if the Ferengi were thinking about doing anything beyond watching, they had not given any sign of it, and so K’lev was content to let them watch.

Unfortunately, while the Ferengi were not currently causing any issues for Culver City, that doesn’t mean that there were none.  The intercom sounded as Pelix opened a channel from Shuttlebay 3 to the bridge.  “Bridge here,” K’lev answered.  “What’s up?”

“This second buoy’s being a bit of a problem,” Pelix said.  “We’re having trouble getting the onboard computer to read the backup tranceiver assembly.  I’m worried about the reactor’s auto-diagnostic sensors as well, they’re not reliably reading reactor status.”

K’lev sighed with a wry laugh.  “I was wondering when the wrinkle’d show up, it wouldn’t be one of our jobs without at least one…  How much time do you need to get this all sorted?”

“If you want it fast and don’t care about quality, 10 minutes; if you want it right, probably an hour or two at least.”

“Let’s do it right,” K’lev replied, then turned to Phillips.  “Ari, all stop once we get to the second deployment zone.  We’ll hold there until Pelix has that buoy sorted.  Oh, and Pelix?” he glanced upwards.  “Make a record of what’s wrong with that buoy, so we can relay it to Framheim; could just be bad luck that we got a faulty one, but it couldn’t hurt for them to check their inventory, too.”

“Will do,” Pelix said, then closed the channel.

Culver City drifted to a stop as she reached the deployment zone.  Down in Shuttlebay 3, Tiza and Pelix had opened the outer casing of the buoy; Pelix’s team exposed the secondary transceiver’s data relays to the buoy’s main computer, beginning to examine them one by one.  The problem quickly became apparent: two of the relays were faulty, one with a loose connector and the other with frayed wiring that was preventing some data packets from being transferred between the transceiver and the computer.  Fortunately, this problem was equally easy to fix, as replacing the relays only took a few minutes.

The issue with the auto-diagnostic sensors, it turned out, was an equally simple problem, which – paradoxically – is how it had escaped notice at Framheim: a power relay that ran past the sensor suite had insulation that was ever so slightly too thin and was just a little too long.  The relay was in faint contact with the sensor housing, causing an itinerant short in the sensor suite.  The sensor suite had to be removed to access the relay, which also gave them a chance to inspect it; fortunately, the sensors themselves were undamaged, and once the relay was replaced everything was functioning normally.

The whole repair took almost an hour to complete.  When it was done, Pelix called back up to the bridge.  “What’s the word?” K’lev asked.

“Repairs’re done.  Buoy’s now fully-functional,” Pelix said.

“We can deploy it whenever you’d like,” Tiza added.

“Go ahead and launch it, then; we’ve got a schedule to get back to,” came K’lev’s reply.

“On it,” Pelix said, then closed the channel.

Up on the bridge, K’lev watched on the viewscreen as the second buoy was launched.  “I’m getting a good signal from the buoy,” the petty officer at Ops said.  “And it’s uplinked to the first one, as well as back to Framheim.”

K’lev smiled.  “Let’s keep it up!  One more to go; Ari, set course for the third zone.  And let’s keep an eye on our little shadow, too.”

Culver City banked away from the second buoy, accelerating to warp 5 and heading towards the Tisalfa system and the final leg of the deployment; her Ferengi shadow stayed at a distance, but started to accelerate, seemingly trying to outrun Culver City to her final destination.  “What should we do about that shuttle?” sh’Livo asked.

“For now?  Let’s keep an eye on her and see what she does,” K’lev answered.  “I don’t want to bother them if we don’t have to, but we don’t want to be caught by surprise if they do try something.”

sh’Livo nodded.  Lotharys looked at her readouts.  “I think they’re trying to get ahead of us,” she said, calling up her sensor display picture-in-picture on the viewscreen.

K’lev nodded, looking a the telemetry.  “So they are…”  He shrugged.  “Steady as we go; even if they do get in front of us, we can always just go around them.”

Phillips nodded, and Culver City continued on her way.  The Ferengi shuttle was able to run around the larger California-class ship, though not without a degree of risk; she had forced her engines fairly hard during the maneuver, and the Starfleet ship’s sensors could easily detect that they were close to breaking down.  However, the shuttle did eventually settle in between Culver City and the final deployment zone.

As Culver City approached the final deployment zone, a sound came from the Ops console.  “Sir, the Ferengi shuttle is hailing us,” the petty officer at the station said.

“Let’s have it, onscreen,” K’lev said.

The view forward from Culver City was replaced by the view of a Ferengi officer.  “By order of the Consortium of Ferengi Traditionalists, you’ve been caught engaged in corporate espionage against the Consortium.  Your ship and your spy buoys are hereby impounded, and you will be held until the proper fines are paid.  Follow us to our base,” he said.

K’lev raised an eyebrow.  “Ari, all stop; let’s not ram a shuttle.”  He then reclined in his seat, contemplating the Ferengi before him for a long moment.

The Ferengi officer seemed to be getting impatient, both with the lack of compliance and K’lev’s unimpressed body language.  “The longer it takes you to obey, the higher the fines’ll be…  That’s fine with us, of course.”  He smiled, widely and meanly.

K’lev waited another moment before responding.  “So, you’ve got the bright idea,” he said the words ‘bright idea’ a bit sarcastically, “to try and impound a full-size starship… with a shuttlecraft.  That about right?  On the so-called authority of a consortium that comes from alleged contracts that Starfleet doesn’t recognize?  And to threaten said starship’s crew with fines if we don’t comply, in what amounts to an act of attempted extortion, on top of attempting to impede in our installation of communications buoys in these systems and threatening to steal them?  Am I missing anything?”

The Ferengi stood up, visibly offended and angry.  “We are the recognized broker for all operations in this sector, and-”

“So, I’m not missing anything, then,” K’lev interrupted, looking down at his chair’s armrest console and reviewing the sensor data on this shuttle.  Truthfully, he didn’t really need to review the data; he just wanted to make his counterpart squirm.

“Our contracts with the Dergans and the Formicans-” the Ferengi began to retort.

“Do not bind on Starfleet vessels or operations,” K’lev interrupted once more.  “Simply put, we don’t answer to you.  But you did threaten us, as well as threaten to steal Starfleet hardware…  which gives me the authority to impound your shuttle.”  He turned to the petty officer at Ops.  “Beam the crew of that shuttle directly to the brig, emergency transport.”  As the Ferengi opened his mouth to protest, there was an audible hum and a wash of energy on the viewscreen; when it cleared, his seat was empty.

“Transport complete,” the petty officer said.  “We’ve got them all; there were three aboard.”

K’lev nodded.  “After we launch the last buoy, take the shuttle into Shuttlebay 3.  We’ll then return the shuttle crew to one of their stations, but this consortium can’t have the shuttle back.”  He then nodded towards Phillips at the helm.  “Resume course; let’s get this last buoy launched.”

The deployment of the final buoy went smoothly, both launch and configuration.  After the buoy was confirmed connected to the other two – and on to Framheim – the now-abandoned Ferengi shuttle was towed into Shuttlebay 3 and its engines shut down.  The shuttlebay doors then closed, and Culver City pulled away, heading for what appeared to be the decommissioned D’Kora-class marauder that Lotharys had confirmed when Culver City first entered the Duwalla system.

Coming into visual range of the marauder-turned-space-station, Culver City slowed.  K’lev nodded now to Tiza, who had by this point returned to the bridge and taken Ops.  “Go ahead and hail them,” he said.

Tiza entered a few commands into his console, then nodded back.  “Channel’s open,” he answered.

This time, K’lev stood.  “Ferengi station, this is USS Culver City.  One of your shuttles attempted to steal Starfleet hardware and extort a Starfleet vessel, and has been impounded.  We have its crew aboard, and are here to return them.”

After a moment, a Ferengi daimon appeared onscreen.  “Culver City, this is Daimon Tak of Bok Station, headquarters of the Duwalla Mining Corporation of the Consortium of Ferengi Traditionalists.  What do you want for their return?”

K’lev sighed.  “I’m not going to charge you for bringing them back; that’s not how this works.  I just need you to confirm that you’re ready to receive them and I’ll have them beamed over.”

Daimon Tak seemed untrusting, but was not willing to deny what felt to him as an act of naive charity.  “Very well, we’re sending transport coordinates.  And what about the shuttle?”

K’lev nodded to Tiza, who sent a message from his console; within moments, the Ferengi shuttle crew in the brig had been beamed to the station.  Meanwhile, K’lev then returned his gaze to Tak.  “The shuttle will be returned after things cool down, and certain other issues are resolved.”

That brought the daimon up short.  “I see…  And what would it cost us to get it back now?”

K’lev pondered the question for a few long moments – or at least he made a show of it – before shaking his head.  “That’s simply not possible, I’m afraid.   They attempted to extort a Starfleet ship, and threatened to steel Starfleet hardware; call this the penalty to your organization for the poor conduct of your employees.  Culver City out.”

The channel now closed, Culver City swung around to port, turning clear of the former marauder turned space station.  As she began to pull away, the ops console chimed.  “Sir, Bok Station’s hailing us again,” the petty officer at the station said.

“What do they want?” K’lev asked.

The petty officer consulted their display, an incredulous expression firmly on their face as they looked up.  “They….  They just sent us an invoice for the conversation; apparently, it counted as security consultation, and they have fees for that.”

K’lev shook his head wryly before a sly smile spread across his face.  “You know what?  Send them a bill back, and make sure it’s for a lot more than theirs; mark it to cover housing, food, and transport home for their crew, recovery of their abandoned shuttle, and transport of both.”

The collective bridge crew looked at K’lev in surprise; it was Lotharys who got it first.  “Giving them a taste of their own treatment?”

K’lev tapped the tip of his nose, then pointed at her.  “Exactly!”

“Transmitting now, sir,” said the petty officer, now smiling as well in understanding.

A couple of minutes later, another chime sounded from Ops.  “They say they’ll cancel the bill,” the petty officer said, “if we cancel ours.”

K’lev nodded.  “Works for me.  Tell them I’ll consider the matter closed, as long as they don’t try to reopen it on their end in the future, or try to send us bills for anything else they think they should charge us for.”

The petty officer sent the message, then read the response.  “They confirm, though it reads as a grudging agreement.”

“Go ahead and save those messages, in case it comes up again in the future.  Now let’s get on about our business,” K’lev said, taking his seat.  “Ari, let’s move on.”  Culver City began to accelerate, continuing on her course.