Shades of Grey - Part 1

The shadow market did not advertise itself. You found it the way you found most things worth finding in New Ferenginar, by knowing someone who knew someone, and by being the kind of person that someone was willing to tell. The directions Zedd had been given that morning were characteristically indirect, down to the lower commercial district, past the processing yards where the marsh smell never quite left the air, through a corridor that did not appear on any station map, and then left at the junction with the blue light overhead which turned out to be a bioluminescent fungal growth rather than anything deliberately installed.

The market itself occupied three connected warehouse spaces carved out of the original swamp infrastructure and never properly registered with anyone. The lighting was a mix of salvaged panels and portable units arranged by individual vendors to suit whatever they were selling, which meant the space moved between pools of warm amber and patches of near total darkness in ways that took some getting used to. The smell was machine oil and unfamiliar spices and the particular metallic tang of components that had passed through too many hands to have a clean provenance.

Zedd moved through the first warehouse with his hands in his jacket pockets and his eyes doing what they always did in unfamiliar environments, cataloguing exits and assessing the people between him and them. The dataport at the base of his neck picked up low level interference which gave him a slight tinge of pain behind his eyes, standard for a market where nobody wanted their inventory tracked.

He was not here for random parts. He was here for the proper dilithium crystals the Dutchman needed and word on the street was that whoever ran the operation at the coordinates he had been given had them.

Nestled within the warehouses and stalls in the exact location that had been provided was what appeared to be a medium sized shop that stood out from the ramshackle stalls and larger buildings around it simply for the fact it seemed well put together and clean. The amber tube lighting above the two windows on either side of the door glowed steadily unlike its flickering neighbors.

Zedd stopped a few feet short of it and looked it over for a moment. The windows were treated glass, you could see light through it but not detail, which meant whoever ran this place was not interested in advertising what was inside. The door was solid and had a proper locking mechanism rather than the improvised security most of the surrounding stalls made do with. The whole setup had the particular quality of something that had been built deliberately rather than assembled from whatever was available.

He pushed the door open and went in.

The interior was cool and considerably better lit than the market outside. Shelving units ran along three walls from floor to ceiling, organized with a precision that suggested the person who maintained them had a system and kept to it. The components on display were clean and correctly labeled and arranged in a way that made it immediately apparent this was not a place that moved salvage. This was a place that moved specific things to specific people who knew what they were looking for.

He also noticed almost immediately a power distribution node mounted flush to the back wall behind the counter that had no business being in a shop this size. The kind of node that managed significant draw, the kind you needed if you were running equipment that pulled more power than the market's standard grid allocation would support. Someone had run a dedicated line into this building and had been careful about hiding it but not careful enough for someone who had spent years interfacing with computer systems and knew what the infrastructure looked like when it was carrying something it was not supposed to be carrying.

Behind the counter stood a Lissepian, broad shouldered and heavyset with the distinctive pale grey skin and deep set eyes of his species, dressed in a dark work jacket that had seen better days and was wearing it like he had not noticed. He was working on something small with a tool that caught the light and he looked up when Zedd came in with the particular expression of someone who had been expecting him and had already decided how the conversation was going to go.

"Captain Sykes," he said, his voice carrying the slightly flat cadence common to Lissepians conducting business in a second language. "You are early."

"Habit," Zedd said.

The Lissepian set the tool down and regarded him with the assessing patience of someone who had been reading customers in markets like this one for long enough that the process required no real effort. He reached under the counter and produced a sealed case which he slid across without ceremony.

"Grade four dilithium, matched pair," he said. "Within the tolerance range specified in the inquiry. My name is Voral, by the way. Since we are doing business."

Zedd pulled out his scanner and ran it over the case without asking permission and Voral watched him do it with the expression of someone who had expected exactly that and had no objection to it. People who objected to verification in a market like this one generally had a reason to object.

The readings came back clean. The crystals were exactly what had been specified.

The transaction was handled without much additional conversation. Price, payment, the particular efficiency of two parties who had both decided in advance that they wanted the exchange to go smoothly. Voral processed it with the practiced ease of someone who had done this many times and

Zedd pocketed the case and that should have been the end of it.

"The computer core on my ship is early 2370s," Zedd said, not moving from the counter. "It runs but it hesitates and the processing lag is becoming a problem."

Voral looked at him with the flat patience that Lissepians deployed when they were deciding whether a conversation was worth having. "I deal in propulsion components Captain. Crystals, injectors, that sort of thing. Computer cores are a different market entirely."

"I'm sure they are," Zedd said pleasantly. He let his eyes move to the power distribution node on the back wall and then back to Voral. "That node behind you is pulling about three times what this shop needs to run its lighting and its vendor systems. Whatever you have drawing that kind of power back there is not a replicator."