Chapter 2: The Rules of Acquisition
Dressed in his nightclothes, Quark looks intently at a lantium bust of a venerable-looking Ferengi ceremoniously set on his table as he begins his prayers: "Blessed Exchequer, whose greed is eternal, whose wealth is as vast as the cosmos, hear this plea from your most devout debtor and continue to bless my bar with a steady stream of thirsty customers whose pockets are lined with lantium and whose skills at dabo are shaky at best..."
As the prayer passes through his exquisitely sharp teeth, Quark places slips of paper into the idol's ears perched on either side of the lobed lantium forehead and continues: "And, while you're at it, see if there is anything you can do about Doctor Bashir -- don't hurt him or anything, just get him off Deep Space Nine for a couple of months..."
A klaxon sounds in the background and everything fades to black.
"Bankruptcy and loss!" shouts Trader Kris. "I haven't seen that episode yet!"
The pale-skinned Korx moves his eyes from the view-screen to the freighter's scanner feed and surveys the incoming data. Trader Kris's vessel, the Pride of Rom, was alerting him to the fact that another Korx freighter had just emerged into scanner range and was closing fast.
"D'Kora's Profit?" Trader Kris wondered to himself (for Korx Traders usually worked alone to maximize profit). "My rendezvous with Trader Krang isn't supposed to happen for another six Oxor cycles. Why he is racing toward Earth at such high speed?"
Kris the Korx was deeply puzzled but one thing was clear: "Krang must be up to something for, as the Rules of Acquisition say, 'the riskier the road, the greater the profit.' I'll have to see what it is." And he charted a course to intercept the incoming freighter.
To the rest of the galaxy, Terra's most well-known export was the hyperdrive. The Korx, however, were as fond of another human invention as they were of faster-than-light travel: the Ferengi. By chance, a Korx Trader on Earth purchased a holochip of an ancient human form of entertainment known as "television shows" intending to re-sell copies of it to bored Terran surveyors mapping anomalies near Oxor. As fate would have it, that holochip turned out to be more valuable than purest lantium. The human surveyors, as it turned out, were little interested in watching re-runs of TNG and DS9 but Trader Kralax ended up selling so many copies of it to his own people that he was able to purchase a controlling interest in the Dominion and have himself installed as Executive Chairman.
The Korx are not by nature a religious race but in the Ferengi they found a mythos that could be embraced wholeheartedly (indeed with all three of the hearts that beat within each Korx's chest). Soon after Kralax begin distributing his holochips, temples to the Blessed Exchequer begin to appear throughout the various Korx Subsidiaries. Enterprising Korx, who, of course, paid generous fees for the rights to Kralax, began to publish copies of the Rules of Acquisition for sale throughout the Dominion. The Korx even began to write their own Rules and, by the time Pride of Rom had begun to dock with D'Kora's Profit near the Terran-Arcean frontier, the New Revised Updated Rules of Acquisition (Third Edition) numbered 10,237 (although only 285 were adjudged to be 'cannon').
With the airlock secured between the two vessels, Trader Kris emerged into D'Kora's Profit curious as to why his trading partner was racing so quickly along the trade route between Athol and Sol. The Arcean-Terran Cold War provided many profitable smuggling routes for enterprising Korx traders and Kris and Krang had long been rendezvousing in the Neutral Zone to swap information as they ferried goods back and forth between the rival homeworlds. The appearance of D'Kora's Profit on the Terran side of the Neutral Zone meant Krang was far ahead of schedule on his trip to Earth and Kris wanted to know why.
The door to Krang's bridge opened and a tri-strontium gauntlet whizzed through the air into the head of the unsuspecting Kris making the distinctive crunching sound that is heard when any kind of metal strikes the flesh of any kind of species. Before he could swear "by Quark's beard," the Korx Trader slumped to the grated floor and saw a pair of battle-armored Arcean commandos emerge as everything faded to black.
