Playing tongo at the bar, Dax is annoyed that Quark is distracted by bad financial news. He’s put the bar up as collateral to three different debtors and he’s wiped out.
At this very moment, because the opening credits are gonna roll soon, Quark’s cousin Gaila the weapons dealer shows up with a lucrative job offer.
Exhausted from walking his baby to sleep, O’Brien reluctantly accepts Jake’s offer to babysit, but changes his mind. While this episode is clearly mining “dad caring for baby while mom is away” sitcom territory, the humor comes from O’Brien’s devotion — he brings the baby to work and, later, to the bar, where he smugly impresses Bashir with his calming-baby-while-playing-darts powers.
Quark’s new employer, the confident and intensely charming businessman Hagath, is impressed by Quark’s practice sales pitch in a holosuite. We learn Hagath sometimes sells weapons to both sides of a war, and we learn Hagath dislikes overconfidence and double crossing, and Galia is making sure Hagarth likes Quark.
Odo tries to arrest Quark for selling weapons via a virtual showroom, but Sisko orders him released by special order of the Bajoran government. During the Cardassian occupation, Hagath supplied weapons to the Bajoran resistance, when nobody else would risk supporting the underdog.
Quark is impressed by Hagath’s un-Ferengi explanation for supporting the underdogs: “At times gaining a friend is more important than making profit.” We see Hagath scold and then cooly dismiss an irresponsible subordinate, which adds some context to Galia’s desire to retire (which explains why he recruited Quark to take over for him).
Dax gives Quark the cold shoulder, denying him the forgiveness he seems to want.
Quark impresses Hagarth with the food he provides to the visiting Regent of Palamar, but falters when he hears the Regent wants weapons capable of eradicating a rival’s city and killing 28 million of her followers.
Quark has a nightmare in which the DS9 regulars blame him for their deaths.
He shows up at Dax’s quarters with a gift — his tongo wheel. She rejects it as a bribe, and doesn’t seem to notice that that Quark has made a decision to do something dangerous, and he wants to say goodbye.
Quark’s plan is a good one. Just like the resolution in a classic Mission: Impossible episode. Quark arranges for the right people to be in the same room, while he is on the other side of a door where he can hear the consequences.
The B-plot resolution involves Worf opening up about his own son, but O’Brien upstages him without saying a word.
An infodump from Sisko updates us on how the “episodic TV end-of-show reset button” did its magic. The return to status quo is a win for Quark, with enough loose threads to be picked up again later if the right script comes along.
