Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Soul Key Read Free Page A

shots.”
    “You see now why we felt the need to warn you,” the Intendant’s counterpart said. “General O’Brien, I also have a stake in seeing this woman stopped. She’s proved herself a threat on our side as well as yours. My people and I stand ready to assist you.”
    “I appreciate the offer, Captain,” O’Brien said. “And I accept. You can start by explaining exactly where…What the bloody hell—?”
    Sloan was running back to his station before O’Brien could finish cursing. The loud, dull tones that had interrupted his conversation sent everyone present into action; something had tripped Terok Nor’s long-range proximity sensors.
    “We’ve got multiple warp signatures on approach vectors,” Ishikawa reported. “Looks like Klingons. ETA, two minutes.”
    “Raise shields,” O’Brien ordered. “Charge all weapons and prepare for planetary bombardment. I want a torpedo lock on Ashalla in the next thirty seconds.”
    Sloan’s hands danced rapidly over his tactical console, executing the well-practiced moves that gave O’Brien the results he demanded.
    “General, what are you doing?” The question had come from the alternate Kira.
    “What I warned them I’d do, Captain.”
    “You can’t attack Bajor,” Kira said. “Millions of innocent lives—”
    “Captain, exactly how do you think we’ve managed to hold Terok Nor all this time?” O’Brien asked. “It’s by convincing the Alliance that if they pushed me too far, Bajor would suffer the consequences of their actions.”
    A new curtain of static was falling across the holoscreen. “Nog…aking up!” Kira was shouting. “Do someth…!”
    “…rying…terfering with…ignal lock, overri—”
    The comlink to the other universe went dead.
    “We’ve lost their signal,” Eddington reported, reading data off his side of the situation table. “Something cut into it.”
    “From the Klingons?” O’Brien asked.
    “Maybe,” Eddington said, beads of sweat forming below his receding hairline. “You think they picked up the transmission?”
    “I think I don’t give a damn. Luther, where’s that torpedo lock?”
    “Target acquired,” Sloan announced, an almost surreal calm settling over his soul as battle, and perhaps death, approached. “Weapons charged and ready.”
    “Enemy ships entering firing range in…one minute,” Ishikawa said.
    Eddington shook his head. “If only Defiant were here….”
    “How many ships are you reading?” O’Brien asked Ishikawa.
    “Twelve,” she answered. “Including the Negh’Var.”
    O’Brien offered her a mirthless grin. “Pretty good odds, then, even without Defiant.”
    “That’s not funny, Miles…. What if they do force you to attack Bajor?”
    “It won’t come to that.”
    “But—”
    “Keiko, trust me,” Smiley said, his gaze reassuring. “It won’t come to that.”
     
    Standing on the uppermost platform of the observation tower, Opaka Sulan looked out over her labor camp, noting the regimented discipline of the workforce andits taskmasters, and was satisfied to see the ordered, mechanical efficiency she had cultivated here since taking operational command of the mine three years ago. On the northern side of the camp, huge excavated rectangles descended into Bajor like steps leading into some mythic underworld.
    True, the recently discovered new veins of raw uridium now required them to delve far deeper into her planet’s already-ravaged crust than ever before, but Bajor had come to know unprecedented economic prosperity since becoming the Alliance’s primary supplier of the vital metal. Bajor’s political capital had likewise risen exponentially since the dark days of Imperial Terra, before Bajorans had learned how to influence the quadrant’s great and mighty, and Bajor’s value as a power broker had elevated its status from that of a mere subject world to that of a respected ally.
    Now Terrans and their former associates served Bajorans, performing the