Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [60]
At the end of the hall, the corridor kinked to the left. Crusher peered around the corner before proceeding, half-expecting the tech to be lying in wait. This turned out not to be the case; the corridor was wide and empty and ended in a set of swinging double doors. This was a part of the infirmary Crusher hadn’t visited before and she hesitated to enter unknown terrain without something with which to defend herself. But all she had on her was her medkit. Not exactly a formidable array of weaponry. Should she proceed? Go back for help? No, if she did that, the trail would grow cold.
She popped open her medical tricorder and tried to reset it to search for gross physical displacement. The tricorder couldn’t tell her much—only that someone had been down the corridor in the past few minutes—but not much more. She checked the cartridges in her medkit—antibiotics, antivirals, a cardiopulmonary stimulant, a couple of steroid combinations, a viral inhibitor—the standard mix. Nothing very useful. She spotted something through the windows of the double doors that she liked much better, a med cart someone had left outside a patient’s room when the emergency began. Checking the labels quickly, the doctor found something more to her liking: a general neuro-inhibitor. It was meant to be used on patients experiencing seizure, but, if she could administer it near a nerve cluster, it would drop the man in his tracks. She slid a cartridge into the hypo, pocketed a couple extra and pushed on down the hall.
When she reached the end of the corridor, Crusher realized she had left the last of the patient rooms behind her and was getting into the maintenance areas. Behind another set of double doors at the end of the corridor were several large pieces of cleaning equipment, barrels of chemicals and a single door on the left. Otherwise, it was a dead end. Crusher started to take another reading, but stopped when she saw the door was ajar. Peering through the crack, she saw a dimly lit stairwell, then heard the distant clank of a heavy door closing. Once again, the doctor hesitated and tried to determine whether there was a more intelligent solution to the present situation, but nothing suggested itself that didn’t involve endangering more civilians. Gripping the hypo, she slipped through the door as quietly as she was able. The stairs only led in one direction—down.
At the bottom of the stairway, she pulled open another door expecting a dimly lit basement or a storage area. Instead, she found a short, brightly lit corridor ending in a pair of heavy security doors. Two armed security drones lay inert on the floor. “This is not good,” she muttered. Taking a quick tricorder reading, all she was able to determine for sure was that no weapon had been fired, which only added to her uncertainty.
Approaching the security doors, Crusher wondered how she could pass without a password or keycard, but the doors slid open at her approach. A body slumped into the hall: a security guard. Crusher knelt beside him and checked his vitals. He was only lightly stunned. There was another man leaning against a console inside the security doors, also unconscious.
She realized where she was: the infirmary’s computer core. That was a problem. The damage a single determined person could do to such a vital facility, once they were inside, was incalculable—likewise, to any well-meaning soul who tried to stop them. But it wasn’t as if she had a choice.
The door to the core slid open as she approached, but the sound of her passage was lost in the bass throb of supercooled data processors and storage units. It wasn’t an immense chamber, as far as she could tell, but it was a maze of free-standing equipment that inhibited her view of the entire room.
Crusher stepped back into the anteroom and quickly searched the two guards for weapons, but found none. Obviously,