Pathways - Jeri Taylor [69]
“Quite a sight,” murmured Chakotay as they took stock. From their vantage point they could see the entire camp, a vast, sprawling ribbon of squalor contained inside the foreboding walls of the dark metal stockade. Thousands of beings swarmed the meadow, sluggish fire ants, pulsing, undulating, as though the mass of prisoners composed one organism, one entity that throbbed with torpid life.
Now they could see the “arena” where the fight was taking place, a circle of hundreds of prisoners surrounding an open space some thirty meters in diameter. Within that ring hunched two beings who circled each other warily, eyes locked on one another, ready to spring at the other or dodge a blow. They were a study in contrasts, as one was dark and shaggy, covered from head to foot with a mat of hair, while the other was fair and smooth-skinned. B’Elanna wondered for a moment which was the challenger and which the champion, then dismissed the thought as irrelevant. It was a silent drama enacted a hundred meters from them; only the sound of the shouting spectators rose to the distant knoll on which they stood.
They turned their attention to their task, and were busy estimating distances and topographical features when they saw something the crowd watching the fight didn’t. One of the side portals of the stockade wall had opened, and through it emerged a phalanx of four guards, loping toward the arena area on their three legs.
“Uh-oh,” said Harrison, and without knowing why they did it, they aped the behavior of the prisoners the day they’d arrived, pretending to busy themselves, collecting bits of rock and grass, as though this task were the most important in the world.
They kept an eye on the drama below, however, sensing that it would soon encompass more than the battle in the ring. The spectators of the fight were still oblivious to the approach of the guards, engrossed in the duel that was unfolding. The two combatants were now locked in a grip, rolling on the ground as the cries of the onlookers swelled to a wail.
What happened next was truly horrible, and would haunt B’Elanna’s dreams for a long while. The three of them ceased their aimless activity and stared, appalled, at what was transpiring below them.
As the guards approached the cluster of spectators, whose backs were to them, they raised their massive weapons and opened fire. A stream of yellow energy vapor emerged and flooded the backs of the unlucky periphery. The people hit by the vapor burst into flame. The tumult that had been athletic exhortation became shrieks of agony as the guards cut a swath through the clumped mass, bodies falling aside and then writhing and rolling in fearful torment.
The guards quickly broke through to the open ring, as the spectators realized too late their fate and began to run, panicked, stumbling and tumbling over each other in their desperate efforts to escape. The combatants themselves looked up in shock, their bodies still locked in struggle, a pose they would share in death. The guards trained their awful weapons on the pair and incinerated them.
A panicked riot now ensued among the remaining spectators. Those at the rear of the circle opposite the guards had some chance of escape; among them B’Elanna saw the ragged gray locks of the wager-maker, who scuttled into a shelter and disappeared.
But few others were as fortunate. The guards spread out, putting their weapons on continuous fire and swinging them in widening arcs, cremating anyone in range. Burning bodies fell to the ground, twisting, tormented, trying in vain to extinguish the cruel flames that were consuming them. Hideous cries resounded from the burning mass of bodies, and the stench of burnt flesh rose like