Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Soul Key (10 page)

Still, while she might have little choice except to adapt on the fly to these suddenly altered circumstances, that wouldn’t necessarily prevent her from taking steps to affect how events would unfold.

Iliana touched the companel on Kurn’s desk. “Kira to bridge.”

“This is Kurn,”
came the terse reply.

“Send out the word, General,” she said pleasantly. “We are to make best speed for Raknal Station at once. I want the entire fleet ready to get under way within the hour.”

“As you command, Intendant. Bridge out.”

“A wise choice,” Entek said.

“Choice has nothing to do with it,” Iliana said. “As the regent’s loyal servant, I’m bound to obey him, as are we all.”

“Well spoken,” said Entek. “Tread as carefully before Martok, and you may yet come out of this with your whole skin intact after all, Intendant.”

Iliana leaned forward with her elbow on the desk, propping her chin up on a languidly posed hand. “Oh, please…call me Nerys,” she pouted. “And you seem to think I’m guilty of something, Mister Entek. That hurts my feelings.”

“I doubt that sincerely,” Entek said. “And if the Order has taught me anything, it’s that everyone is guilty of something.”

“Too true,” Iliana said. “So what are
you
guilty of, Entek?”

“Quite a great deal less, I suspect, than you are.”

“Indeed.” She dropped her arm and leaned in to whisper conspiratorially. “Would you like to see just what I’m guilty of?”

Entek laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Completely,” Iliana said, placing her hand on her heart. Dropping her coquettish façade, she spoke her next words loudly and sharply. “Taran’atar…show yourself.”

Instantly, the air next to Entek shimmered, and her Jem’Hadar pawn solidified, tall and imposing as he stared down at the Cardassian. She had ordered him to stick close to her since their arrival three days ago, but not to
reveal himself until she was ready to make his existence known.

Now seemed to be a particularly useful time to unveil him.

Entek stood up quickly and stumbled backward, startled. “What—what is that?” he demanded to know.

“The future,” Iliana told him, allowing an almost flirtatious purr to return to her voice. “Now, Corbin—may I call you Corbin? it feels natural somehow—now, Corbin…you’re going to tell me what this is all
really
about. Or else I’m going to tell my friend here to take his time with you.”

“You cannot threaten me, Intendant.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” Iliana said. “Oh, I know all about that little wire in your brain that’s supposed to make you resistant to torture. But wired or not, I’m willing to bet you can’t produce nearly enough endorphins to do you much good while you’re watching yourself being dismembered, once small piece at a time.”

Entek licked his lips—apparently a nervous tick that Iliana had never observed the spymaster’s counterpart to exhibit—as he watched the Jem’Hadar warily.

She sighed. “I’m still waiting, Corbin. Now why are you here, really?”

Apparently finally recognizing the better part of valor, Entek said, “Twenty hours ago, you transmitted an inquiry to the Central Records Office on Cardassia Prime, for information on one Ataan Rhukal.”

Iliana swiveled around in her chair, hiding her face from Entek. “What of it?”

“It raised a flag on the Obsidian Order’s surveillance
grid,” he said, “since all information pertaining to Rhukal is classified.”

“Why is it classified?” she purred.

Entek’s equanimity appeared to have returned, at least somewhat. “I can’t disclose—”

Speaking in the same commanding tone she had used to conjure the Jem’Hadar, Iliana said, “Taran’atar, remove his left thumb.”

“Wait, I’ll tell you!” Entek shouted, once again on the ragged edge of panic as the monster took its first determined step toward him.

“Stop,” Iliana said calmly, and the Jem’Hadar immediately halted his advance. Addressing Entek in ingratiating tones, she said, “You were saying, Corbin?”

Still clearly flustered, Entek said, “Rhukal was one of ours—an operative of the Order. But he has been positively identified as the assassin of the organization’s previous director, Tekeny Ghemor.”

Iliana’s hand curled into a fist. “And Martok…Martok believes that my interest in Ataan stems from complicity with—with Ghemor’s murder?”

“They all believe it,” Entek said. “The regent, Director Lang, the supreme legate. Everyone.”

“Everyone,” Iliana echoed, her voice mild. But the sudden realization of her own profound carelessness ignited a sudden firestorm of anger and frustration deep within her soul.

Ever since the
Paghvaram
had shown Iliana her counterpart, she’d found it mercifully difficult to recall the broken kaleidoscope of memories to which she’d been subjected once the other’s life had been opened to her.
But there was one thing she’d retained—or thought she had retained, because it had invaded her sleep so many times during the intervening weeks: the face that still, after all these years, caused her nothing but sorrow.

Ataan’s face.

On her first night aboard the
Negh’Var,
Iliana had in a moment of weakness arisen from her troubled sleep and filed an inquiry on the Cardassian information net, requesting any information on Ataan’s counterpart, just to know who he was in this continuum. She had found nothing. Ataan Rhukal had seemed not to exist in this universe, and Iliana became convinced that she had simply imagined having seen him in the
Paghvaram’
s whirlwind glimpse of her counterpart’s life.

Now she knew the truth. The Order had made Ataan disappear.

She considered how her Obsidian Order training, aggregated with every tragedy and betrayal she had experienced since those days, had eroded away most of her emotional core.
How ironic
, she thought.
After all I’ve gone through, and everything I’ve had to do to get myself to this point along my Path…to be undone by my own sentimentality….

How her mentor must be laughing at her now.

She took another moment to gather her wits before she stood up from behind Kurn’s desk.

When she turned to face Entek again, she wore one of the Intendant’s brightest, most personable smiles. Using the pleasant tones of a magnanimous host, she told Taran’atar, “Bring him.”

“Wait,” Entek cried as the Jem’Hadar grabbed him roughly by his jacket and dragged him after Iliana as she
strode to the office door. “Intendant, please! I see now that this is all an unfortunate misunderstanding. You obviously didn’t know about any of this. I’ll make that case to the regent for you. I swear it!”

Iliana was still smiling as she led them out of the office. “I know you will, Corbin. You’ve always been
such
a help to me.”

T
ethered by gravity to the planet for which it was named, Raknal Station hung like an immense spider within the iridescent haze of the Betreka Nebula.

Its design reflected the sensibilities of its Cardassian builders, the dozen duranium “legs” of its docking pylons arching outward from its saucerlike central mass. Easily five times the size of Terok Nor and possessing ten times its firepower, Raknal was undeniably the most heavily fortified base in its region of the galaxy. Virtually every major joint operation of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance was staged from here, at what was—symbolically if not quite literally—the midway point along the axis between Cardassia Prime and Qo’noS. In every way, Raknal Station represented the collective might of two great galactic powers, as well as the tenuous bond that held them together.

Nearly fifty years ago, a Cardassian survey of Raknal V had uncovered the hulk of a crashed Klingon vessel, a discovery that had nearly unraveled the still-young Alliance in the ensuing dispute over which side had the
truer claim to the system. As in the past, it was Bajor that had brokered the accord the two empires finally reached; Raknal V became the symbol of a stronger and more unified Alliance, and Raknal Station was built to affirm that partnership.

In retrospect, Iliana now knew she should have realized that a command to appear before the regent of the Klingon Empire at Raknal Station would also mean appearing before the supreme legate of the Cardassian Union.

After crossing the airlock from the
Negh’Var
and clearing interminable security checkpoints throughout the station, Iliana reached the audience chamber and pushed open its enormous doors with an impatient shove; Intendant Kira’s reputation for brazen arrogance had to be maintained, after all. The ostentatious room stretched away before her, its long metal walls and high ceilings overlaid with thick decorative slabs of volcanic rock. She started confidently down the main aisle toward the raised black marble dais with its two occupied thrones at the other end of the room, pointedly ignoring the Klingon and Cardassian guards who had drawn their weapons as she made her entrance.

But when she saw Dukat seated upon one of the thrones, she slowed almost to a complete stop.

“Well?” the legate snapped. “What are you waiting for? A procession of slaves to cast flower petals at your feet?”

Knowing that this wasn’t the same Dukat she had known in her own universe now seemed to be an utter irrelevancy. The fact remained that it was
his
voice that she heard in her nightmares.

His
face that she longed, even now, to flay from its skull.

Suppressing her sudden desire for violence, Iliana marched forward, keeping her eyes fixed upon Martok, who made a far more imposing figure than did the legate. But the attempted self-diversion did her little good. Dukat was a beacon in her peripheral vision, impossible to ignore, and she knew that pretending he wasn’t there would avail her nothing. And still another presence made itself known as well, lurking quietly in her peripheral vision.

As she approached the thrones, she reminded herself that encounters like this one, and the earlier one with Entek, were to be expected; meeting the counterparts of people she’d known, friend and foe alike, seemed inevitable—and in a way, almost comforting. The subtle if inexplicable forces that caused many of the same sets of lives to intersect in both universes might also prevail in other realities as well, and therefore were likely to make her ultimate goals easier to achieve.

She fixed on that idea, clinging to it like a lifeline. And at the foot of the dais, just beyond the edge of a centrally placed, floor-mounted viewscreen that was angled toward the thrones, she prostrated herself before the rulers of the Alliance, just as L’Haan had coached her.

“My lords,” she said humbly.

The crowned heads of the Alliance took their time giving her their leave to rise. Iliana understood that they were merely making a point about who was in charge here, thereby setting the tone for the audience.

It wasn’t until Martok released her to stand that she
got a good look at the small, low table that stood between the two men. Upon the table’s polished surface was arranged the square marble board and bone-carved pieces of what appeared to be a half-finished game of Terran chess. There was even a tradition, as old as Raknal Station itself, among the leaders of both sides: once a year, no matter which of the two powers was in ascendancy, they would meet at Raknal to play chess—not
kotra
or
klin zha,
the favored pastimes native to their respective empires, but rather the seminal strategy game of their long-vanquished Terran adversaries; more symbolism, intended by the rulers of the Klingon Empire and the Cardassian Union to remind themselves, and each other, of all that they had accomplished by working together, despite their longstanding mutual competitiveness.

“Tell us,
Intendant,”
Dukat began with his familiar drawl, his voice practically dripping with disdain as he used her title. “Where are your loyalties?”

“With the Alliance, of course, Legate,” Iliana said automatically, laboring to keep her smile genial. “As always.”

“And yet,” Martok said, his regent’s cloak gathered around him like the webbed wings of the giant avians that roosted among the peaks of Bajor’s mountains, “you answer my summons with my own Ninth Fleet at your back, accompanied by a host of Legate Dukat’s ships as well.”

“A fleet that you yourself released to me, Regent,” Iliana said smoothly, “so that I could bring you the results I vowed to achieve: the destruction of the rebels. Already their infestation has been purged from the Badlands.
Terok Nor is to be next—a mission I would be on at this very moment, but for your summons.”

“Do not presume to remind me of what I already know,” Martok rumbled, his eyes burning with scorn. “I’m well aware of your successes in driving the Terran rabble from their hiding places among the plasma storms…but I also know that that isn’t
all
you’ve been up to.”

Iliana spread her hands in a gesture of openness. “I have no secrets from you, Lord Regent.”

“Then explain your interest in Ataan Rhukal,” came a shout from across the room. The command had been flung like an accusation, intended to rattle her. But Iliana had expected it, having already noted the presence of the dark-clad speaker, who had been skulking restlessly in the audience chamber’s shadows when Iliana had entered.

Martok seemed incensed by the interruption. “Legate, if you cannot control your people—”

“Natima!” Dukat scolded, his embarrassment plain. “I specifically instructed you to remain silent while we questioned her!”

“My lords, I beg your forgiveness,” said Director Lang of the Obsidian Order, the heels of her black boots clacking loudly as she marched toward the dais. “But since I have been charged with the responsibility for the security of our Alliance, I cannot hold my tongue while this Bajoran traitor pretends her innocence!”

“You
will
hold your tongue,” Martok said, the gravel-strewn timbre of rebuke in his voice. “Or I will cut it out myself.”

Properly chastened, Lang moved off to one side, taking a position off the dais to the left of Dukat’s throne. Iliana quickly took stock of the Cardassian woman: she was older than Iliana, but still athletic and attractive, her shimmering brown hair styled in a manner that was undoubtedly calculated to seduce. Likewise, the dark fabric of Lang’s smart civilian suit was cut in all the right ways, both to flatter her shape and to make her appear as formidable as possible. Iliana noted that it also afforded her just the right amount of room to conceal all manner of useful technology beyond the standard comcuff and padd that were already in evidence. She guessed that Lang was carrying at least six small weapons, a homing device to allow her movements to be tracked, a mini-tricorder, and a full-spectrum imaging device to record the proceedings.

Clearly she was not long out of the field; she had not yet acquired sufficient confidence to “travel light” in her recently attained position of authority.

Lang caught Iliana staring at her. Iliana covered by sending her a kiss, hoping it was a sufficiently Intendant-like taunt. She added a flirtatiously lifted eyebrow just to be sure, and was rewarded with Lang’s angry but ultimately ineffectual glare.

“Director Lang speaks out of turn,” Dukat said, turning his scowl upon Kira. “But she does speak to the very question that has brought you before us today. What
is
your interest in Ataan Rhukal, Kira Nerys?”

“Only the interest of a loyal subject of the Alliance, Lord Legate,” Iliana answered smoothly.

“Do you think this is a game?” Dukat asked, rising
angrily from his chair. “I warn you,
Intendant,
your platitudes serve only to enlarge the cloud of suspicion that already hangs over your head.”

Iliana’s eyes narrowed. She considered the Cardassian leader’s expression, his body language, the timbre of his voice. This wasn’t just professional, she realized. This was personal.

Of course it is.
For years the Klingons had been the dominant partner in the Alliance, helped in no small part by Bajor’s support, which had been strongly influenced by Iliana’s predecessor. But during Intendant Kira’s temporary disgrace over a year ago, Dukat had successfully installed his own Bajoran concubine, Ro Laren, as the new Intendant, and for that brief time Bajor’s political axis had swung toward Cardassia.

Kira’s return to grace had meant Ro’s downfall, accompanied by a quick shift back toward more Klingon-friendly votes in the Alliance Council.
Evidently the legate is still nursing a bit of a grudge,
Iliana thought.

Dukat’s wounded pride might also serve to explain the constant emphasis he was placing on her title today: he was mocking her with it, in effect telling her that he didn’t feel she deserved it.

Or rather, that he didn’t feel that the Kira of this universe deserved it.
But
that
Intendant’s reign is over now,
she told herself silently.
And very soon it’ll be time to give these fools a glimpse of who and what they’re really dealing with now.

“Cloud of suspicion, Legate?” she shouted back. “Suspicion of what? If you have charges to bring against me, level them now!”

She sensed the chamber’s guards advancing behind her. Martok sent them back to their places with but a look.

“Have a care, Kira,” the regent cautioned her. “Yours may still be a valued and powerful voice in our Alliance—for now—but I remind you that you’ve fallen from our favor before. You would do well to tread carefully now.
Very
carefully.”

Iliana bowed her head, hoping that Martok would see the gesture as an adequately contrite one.

The legate returned to his throne and nodded to Lang. The Obsidian Order director came forward and placed the padd she’d been holding into Dukat’s outstretched hand, which he in turn held out to Iliana. Taking it, she saw that it showed the face of a Bajoran female.

It was Lupaza, from Kira’s old resistance cell—Lupaza as she would have looked, had she lived to the present day.

Lupaza…

“I take it from your expression that you recognize the woman,” Dukat said.

Iliana saw little point in denying it. “She looks like someone I remember from my youth.”

“Then you deny any current association with her?”

For a fraction of a second, Iliana hesitated. She had been anything but idle during the voyage to Raknal; L’Haan had compiled dossiers of all of Intendant Kira’s known associates over the last ten years, even the most casual ones, and Iliana had spent hours reviewing the files, committing their details to her eidetic memory. Lupaza had not been among those associates, but her
absence from the files far from ruled out the possibility of recent contact between the two women. Still, if the Order had taught her anything, it was to stay as close to the truth as possible.

“I
do
deny it,” she told Dukat.

“Then you lie,” Lang said. She leaned toward Dukat. “My lord, end this now. She recognized the Bajoran woman. The Bajoran woman was tied to Rhukal. Rhukal confessed to Ghemor’s murder, and Kira has sought information about Rhukal. What more do we need? The truth is plain: Rhukal was obviously in Kira’s employ. The dissident movement on Bajor and Ghemor’s assassination are clearly linked.” She pointed at Iliana. “Through
her
!”

Iliana frowned. “
What
dissident movement?”

“You deny
that
as well?” Dukat asked. “Then let me speak plainly. We know that treason is stirring on Bajor.”

“And you suspect my involvement?” Iliana said.

“I note that you do not seem surprised by the accusation. And yet, why
should
you be? As my Klingon brother rightly points out,” the legate said, nodding toward Martok, “you’ve fallen before. And while your resourcefulness in clawing your way back to your old rank and office was exceptional, not everyone believes you can still be trusted,
Intendant.
”

Dukat turned to Lang, who took that as her signal to address Iliana directly. “The Bajoran national you see on the device was recently apprehended on Cardassia Prime as she was attempting to make contact with Ataan Rhukal, at a time when he was under suspicion of Ghemor’s assassination, but not yet under arrest. Before she died
during her interrogation, she had confirmed Rhukal’s guilt and admitted to being a member of an underground movement on Bajor—a movement of which we weren’t previously aware, one fueled by the ancient religion that once held your people back.”

“Strange, isn’t it?” Dukat asked. “Your reports from Bajor have never even mentioned such a group.”

Iliana scoffed and tossed the padd with Lupaza’s face back to Lang, who fumbled to catch it. “I wouldn’t waste my time or yours with updates about a pitiful little cult of religious fanatics, my lord—even if I’d known they existed.”