The Liberated: Rebels #3 by Dafydd Ab Hugh

Author:Dafydd Ab Hugh [Hugh, Dafydd Ab]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Star Trek Fiction, Space Opera, Fiction, Science Fiction, General, Media Tie-In
ISBN: 9780671011420
Google: yWgWDtVB8SoC
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 1999-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

A FURTIVE MEETING. Darkness in the corridor.

Major Kira brushed past the station tailor without so much as a sideways glance. She felt nothing.

ShouM I have? But Garak coughed delicately after they passed, and Kira hoped and prayed. Darkness again, and solitude. The moment passed—and hours would pass before Kira could return to her stateroom (her “cell,” as the dean would have it) to rest—rest and feel gently in her pocket to find what she hoped was the offspring of that furtive meeting in the dark, lonely corridor.

Just a sliver, the merest speck of metal. But using a mirror, she fit it perfectly into the slight, hairline crack between the edges of the torc, the slave collar.

She thought to test it, but thought a second time.

Alarms, perhaps. A diagnostic message broadcast to the Liberated, the prison guards who controlled Emissary’s Sanctuary, which Kira was already in her heart gloomily calling Deep Space Nine again.

The sliver would remain untested, nestled inside the collar, waiting for the ultimate test. My life is in the hands of that bastard spoon-head spymaster, she thought. May the Prophets help us all/

The summons bell chirped in Kira’s cell, rescuing her from a sleep so deep, a dream so dire, that she could remember nothing, despite being interrupted in the middle... nothing but the horrific sense of billions of kilos of water pressing upon her from all sides, crushing her young body like a bug between two palms. She swam awake, leaping to her feet with such alacrity that she shamed herself. “Kira,” she said, coughing up saliva that went down the wrong way.

“You will come to the central command center,” said the dean without preamble. The transmission ceased. What explanations need be offered to a slave?

When Kira rode the turbolift into Ops, she was shocked to see Kai Winn standing at the monster’s left hand. The woman looked old, head bowed, lips pressed together in tight surrender, the peaked mitre on her head drooping, as if even the cloth itself were tired of resisting. Winn stared at the deck, not even glancing up when Kira stomped from the turbolift.

She can’t face me, realized the major in wonder. Oh Prophets, what have you done, my Kai?

“The portable, far-seeing anomaly has been located,” said the dean—this was more than was strictly necessary, but he had come to trust his slave.

His black, featureless face looked at Kira, and a shiver danced along her spine. “You will retrieve it.

The chief of prisoners will tell you where.” Kira edged closer, stepping from the platform, passing Chief O’Brien’s engineering well, coming to rest just by the science console, her fingers lightly touching the cool plastic. “Kai?” she asked, voice trembling, “is this true?” “I have offered, my child. There are lives.” “It’s an Orb,” said the major firmly, with finality.

“It’s a hundred lives, child. More.” Bile exploded up Kira’s throat. She swallowed, feeling herself so close to tears that she turned her own face away, lest they actually fall. Her mind refused to function.

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