Star Trek_ Generations - J M. Dillard [28]
The scent of destruction was fresh. The attack had occurred, Riker guessed, only a handful of minutes before. While he and his friends had been standing on the quarterdeck of the H.M.S. Enterprise celebrating, these people had been dying. He stopped suddenly to squint at something small and dark protruding from under a twisted metal beam: a bloodied hand. Beverly immediately stepped forward and scanned it with her tricorder, then shook her head and shared a disappointed look with Will. The group moved on.
Frowning at the scarred ruins, Worf broke the silence at last. These blast patterns are consistent with type-three disruptors.
Brutal weapons capable of burning through skin, muscle, bone … Well, Riker said with grim irony. That narrows it to Klingon, Breen, or Romulan.
Im picking up life signs. Crushers face and voice grew suddenly hopeful, animated. About twenty meters ahead.
That would rule out Klingons, Worf said, and when Riker gave him a curious look, added, They would not have left anyone alive.
Beverly ignored them, moving purposefully into the darkness. Over here …
Riker followed, quickly sweeping his palm beacon over wreckage until at last the doctor paused and knelt beside a prone, still form. Without Crushers tricorder, Riker would have taken the man for dead; the back of his Starfleet science officers uniform had been almost entirely burned away by a disruptor blast. He turned his face from the smell of scorched flesh and fought to contain a wave of hatred for whoever had committed such an atrocity.
Seemingly immune to any emotion except determination to save the man lying before her, Crusher opened her medikit and began to work.
Riker glanced up and gestured at the three men standing nearby. Worf, youre with me. Paskall, you and Mendez search the upper deck.
The two security guards moved off. Riker headed with Worf down a dark corridor, following the ovals of light cast by their palm beacons past more twisted, collapsed bulkheads and battered consoles. At last, a wavering arc of light played across something cylindrical emerging from the shadows: fallen ventilation tubing, Riker thought at first, until he saw the boot. Worf redirected his beacon to reveal the fallen figure of a woman; beside her lay a man. Both wore Starfleet blue.
While Worf provided light, Riker knelt quickly and felt for pulses, then shook his head, wishing the darkness had shielded him from the sight of the womans staring face, half of which had been seared away.
At the sound of sudden banging from a distant corner, he rose, and hurried in the direction of the noise.
Worf directed his beam onto a collapsed bulkhead.
Under here …
Together, both officers pulled aside the large sheet of jagged metal covering the pile of debris, then began tearing through the rubble. From beneath came stirring, and the sounds of ragged breathing. Encouraged, Riker and Worf dug faster, until at last a bloodied hand appeared and began to flail as if desperately trying to assist.
It is all right, Worf said, with a gentleness that made Riker glance up in surprise, but not pause in his excavating. The Klingon clasped the thin, pale hand with his own great, dark one. Do not struggle.
Where had he learned tenderness? Will wondered. From Deanna? The thought caused a flicker of jealousy; he repressed it firmly. If Worf had gotten something good out of the relationship, then so much the better.
Worf continued to hold the hand until Riker lifted and shoved aside a crushed console to reveal the head and torso of a pale-haired humanoid man. Worf