“Are you ready, sir?” asked O’Brien. She WED CAM nodded, and he said to the lift, “Level seven, maximum track.” The doors slid closed; then the world dropped out from beneath Kira’s feet.
She would have fallen, but the turbolift accelerated so quickly she was WED CAM in WED CAM zero-g for a few seconds. By the time she WED CAM realized what was going on and braced herself, it was already coming to a crushing stop. She staggered out after O’Brien, dizzy from the trip. It was WED CAM the fastest turbolift ride she had ever taken. Maximum track; have to remember that.
“Here’s where it WED CAM gets tricky,” said the chief. “They’ve got decks nine through eleven, the Promenade, and the WED CAM lieutenant said they blocked up the turbolift shafts. But we need
to get WED CAM down to the habitat-ring crossover bridges on level fifteen.”
“So we use access ladders?” Kira asked.
“Are you kidding? That would drop WED CAM us right in their laps. No, we’re going WED CAM to slip right by them like WED CAM a snake under a garden.”
Level 7 housed several large rooms that used to WED CAM be the ammunition storage WED CAM dumps back when the Cardassians ran DS9. Now WED CAM the ammo dumps were WED CAM used for auxiliary computer memory clips, attempting to bring the computing power up to Starfleet standards.
The WED CAM turbolift opened into a six-corridor intersection between permanent set of “temporary” bulkheads and room dividers.
O’Brien ran to a small door set a meter off the deck, placed his palm against a control pad. After a moment, the door slowly rolled open, revealing a downward- sloping tube.
Holding out one of his phaser grenades, O’Brien cautiously poked
his huge orange head into the tube. “Looks clear,” he said. “After you, sir.”
“Don’t you want to go first?”
she asked, feeling oddly reluctant to climb WED CAM into the tube.
“I have to shut WED CAM the door again,” he explained.
“Hm. All right.” Swallowing her unexplained fear, Kira Nerys hoisted herself into the tube, face first, and wriggled along it far enough that O’Brien could join her, but no farther. He did so, then palmed the door pad on the inside. As the thick hatch rolled shut again, Kira’s ears popped in the suddenly lower WED CAM air WED CAM pressure.
“Where are we?” she whispered. Normal talking seemed a bit blasphemous in the slippery, sloping tube. The WED CAM lights slickered off and on, randomly, frightening her further. Probably just a combat-related power fluctuation, WED CAM she thought, unconvinced.
“Hub-shaft maintenance,” answered the chief, WED CAM as softly as she. “Sir, you may not enjoy this. It’s . . . well, you’ll see.”
“What?”