Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Soul Key Read Online Free

none of the trappings of her office. Instead she was dressed in drab, baggy clothing of the type that Opaka had seen on the peasants who lived in the valley’s agricultural townships. Her taller companion was similarly dressed, except that he also wore a hood. Although he stood behind Kira and kept his head down, Opaka could see that he was an old human with a close-cropped gray beard.
    This unannounced visit and the attack on Terok Nor cannot be a coincidence, she thought, and her anxiety grew both steadily and insistently.
    “You know who I am, I take it?” Kira asked without preamble, her smile dripping with smugness.
    “Of course, Intendant,” Opaka said, bowing deeply. “Welcome to Vekobet. I am this facility’s administrator, Opaka Sulan. And this is my chief overseer, Winn Adami. Your presence honors us. I regret that I wasn’t informed that you were planning to pay us a visit today. I would have prepared a proper reception, had I known.”
    “Naturally,” Kira said. “But you weren’t meant to know of my coming. My servant and I have been traveling in secret.”
    “May I inquire as to what brings you here?”
    Still smiling, the other woman leaned in and whispered conspiratorially. “My purpose isn’t for the ears of the rabble serving under you. Is there some place where we can speak privately?”
    “Of course. Please follow me.” Opaka nodded to Winn, who dropped back, and then Opaka led her two visitors toward the cluster of sturdy old buildings along the camp’s eastern fence—it was all that remained of the thriving rural community that had occupied this site since long before the Council of Ministers had seized the land for mining operations on the Alliance’s behalf.
    As they crossed the empty intersection at the center of the camp, Opaka offered up a brief history of Vekobet, pointing out its key features, expounding upon the great successes of her administration…and doing her best to keep her visitors’ attention diverted from the Klingon disruptor she was very slowly sliding out of the holster on her hip.
    When she felt the muzzle of an unfamiliar weapon at her neck, she knew her efforts at discretion had been in vain. “Drop the pistol,” Kira whispered in her ear.
    Opaka merely smiled.
    “I said, drop the pistol,” Kira hissed, pressing the weapon against her skin.
    “I think not,” Opaka whispered back. “Take a good look around you.”
    She felt the younger woman’s head turning, first left and then right, and slowly the weapon at Opaka’s neck eased off. The entire camp had fallen silent. Following Winn’s silent orders, both the “workers” and the “overseers”—nearly three hundred strong—had drawn disruptors of their own, each and every weapon targeted at the visitors.
     
    “All right, look,” Captain Kira Nerys said as the alternate Winn Adami moved in to confiscate their phasers. “We’re not who you think we are.”
    Opaka laughed. “Oh, I’m quite certain of who you are, young woman. I knew it the moment I saw him.” She pointed a finger at Vaughn. “What I demand to know is why you’ve come here, and why you’re posing as the Intendant.”
    Kira grinned involuntarily, a nervous rictus catalyzed by the sheer absurdity of seeing Opaka Sulan as the gun-slinging master of a labor camp, and Winn Adami as her lieutenant.
    Vaughn, for his part, seemed preoccupied studying the faces around him. What he expected to learn from doing so, Kira had no clue. They’d spoken little during the two hours it had taken them to walk here from Akorem’s Rock—after Nog had successfully beamed them across the dimensional gulf from Deep Space 9—pausing in their journey only to snatch some indigenous clothing from a vacant farmhouse in order to conceal their uniforms as they continued toward Vekobet.
    “I came here because of Iliana Ghemor,” Kira told their captor.
    Opaka stuck her disruptor under Kira’s jaw. “Where is she? If she’s dead, if you’ve