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

backbreaking menial work that kept Bajor—and, by extension, the Alliance—prosperous. One day, perhaps sooner than those in power were willing to acknowledge, the highly coveted resources of Opaka’s world would be gone, exhausted. She hoped she would not live to see it. But then, sadly, there was much she had hoped never to see that had already come to pass.
    How the times do change.
    “What are you thinking about?” her companion asked.
    Opaka continued to survey her domain from the ramparts. “I was thinking about the past,” she admitted,and a chuckle escaped her lips in spite of herself “And the present…and the future.”
    “Really?” the other woman asked. “You know, there are times when I suspect you’re actually proud of this place.”
    Opaka scowled and looked at her friend, but if Winn Adami had intended her comment as a rebuke, no trace of it was apparent in her smile. “You’re teasing me now.”
    Winn shrugged, a motion that was almost lost under the padded armor that covered her upper body. “Maybe a little.”
    Opaka shook her head and returned to her overview of the camp. East of the mine, several cargo skimmers were being filled with raw uridium ore in preparation for its transport to the processing center in Ilvia. “Don’t you have anything better to do than rattle my cage?”
    “You need rattling from time to time,” Winn opined. “If only to keep you on your toes.”
    “I’ve managed this long.”
    “True. But when you first came here, you weren’t nearly so sure of yourself.”
    “Things were different then,” Opaka said. “ I was different.”
    “My point exactly,” said Winn. “You were caught unawares by the unexpected, and it changed everything. You need to tread carefully, lest the next change be less to your liking.”
    Opaka was growing impatient. “If you have bad news to deliver, Adami, then out with it! I’m becoming too old to put up with your little tactic of ‘preparing’ me for the latest unpleasantness. Let’s have it.”
    “Terok Nor is under attack.”
    Opaka nodded, somehow not surprised. “I take it you wouldn’t be telling me this if it hadn’t been confirmed.”
    “Your daughter has been monitoring the comnet—”
    “I wish you’d stop calling her that! She isn’t my daughter.”
    “She may as well be,” Winn said. “She certainly looks to you as—”
    “Finish that sentence, Adami, and I swear I’ll push you off this tower.”
    Winn shrugged again. “Fine, have it your way. The fact remains that the battle for Terok Nor is finally upon us, and we need to be ready for the outcome of—” She interrupted herself, apparently distracted by something happening out at the camp’s perimeter. “What’s going on down there?”
    Opaka heard shouts coming from somewhere below. The two women followed the voices to the south rail of the observation platform, from which they could see a flurry of activity around the main guard tower. Outside the fenced perimeter of the camp, a pair of figures were emerging from the wilderness, walking toward the main gate.
    “Who the kosst are they?” Opaka wondered.
    “I have no idea,” Winn said, squinting at the unexpected visitors. “But we won’t find out by remaining up here.”
    Opaka cursed again and went to the lift. Winn followed her, and both women checked their sidearms as they made their rapid descent from the top of thewatchtower. Once on the ground, Winn discreetly snapped off orders to her overseers as she and Opaka hurried to the gate, which to her shock and anger her own security people were already pulling open to admit the travelers.
    The chief of the guards ran toward her, looking pale.
    “What’s the meaning of this?” Opaka demanded. “Why did you open the gate without my authorization?”
    “Mistress, it’s…it’s the Intendant,” the chief said.
    Opaka’s eyes narrowed as the visitors strode toward her. The shorter of the two was clearly Kira Nerys, but she wore