The Battle of Betazed - Charlotte Douglas [58]
“Can you tell how many?” Deanna asked Data.
He cocked his head and listened to the muffled steps of the oncoming soldiers. “Twenty-seven.”
Tevren’s soft voice was in her ear. “You can’t kill them all yourselves. Give me a weapon. I can help.”
“Forget it,” Deanna said.
“If I die here,” Tevren said, “this is all for nothing, isn’t that right?”
Ignoring him, Deanna turned to Data. “Even from a secure position, three of us can’t hold off twenty-seven Jem’Hadar. See that point in the path?” She pointed below to the way her team had come.
“Where it broadens?” Data asked.
Deanna nodded. “The Jem’Hadar will probably attack several abreast and give us multiple targets instead of a single-file line.” She hefted Lanolan’s phaser in her hand. “Set this to overload, figure the time to explosion, and toss it into the middle of the patrol.”
Data didn’t hesitate. With rapid movements, he adjusted the phaser to overload, and its ominous whine filled the air around them. The advancing Jem’Hadar, however, were still too far away to hear the telltale shriek of Lanolan’s old phaser about to blow.
Watching Data’s expression of concentration, Deanna could almost discern the humming of his positronic brain over the phaser’s warning whine as he calculated the time until explosion.
Suddenly the android lobbed the weapon toward the approaching patrol.
Deanna jerked Tevren down behind the boulder, Beverly ducked beside her, and Data shielded the commander.
The phaser struck the path in the midst of the Jem’Hadar. Before any could cry out a warning, the resulting blast rocked the hillside, scattering soldiers, shattering boulders, and splintering fragments of Jarkana pines in every direction.
Debris rained on Deanna and her group, but before the deluge stopped, she ordered her team to their feet. “Take out any survivors.”
The carnage on the path below sickened her. Jem’Hadar emotions were strange, unlike those of most humanoid species she’d encountered, and much more focused. She shuddered from the emanations coming from the injured and dying.
Data quickly shot three of the enemy who had apparently brought up the rear and had been too far away to be affected by the explosion. Another Jem’Hadar on the fringe of the group pushed to his knees and attempted to fire, but Beverly’s phaser struck him down.
Deanna waited, listening for movement, opening her mind to sense the presence of others still alive on the path. She heard nothing, felt no one.
“Let’s move,” she ordered. “Data, activate the transponder now. Let’s hope the Defiant can lock on to us before something worse happens.” She jerked her head toward the fallen Jem’Hadar. “There are plenty more where those came from.”
Data slung the wounded commander over his shoulders once more and followed Deanna up the steep mountain path. Tevren followed Data, and Beverly brought up the rear, phaser ready for either Jem’Hadar behind or any unexpected moves from their prisoner.
The steep path was blocked occasionally by rock slides that the group had to scale. The exertion caused Data no trouble, and Beverly and Deanna, career Starfleet officers, took the ascent in stride. The out-of-shape Tevren, however, stumbled and gasped for air like a fish out of water.
“I need to … rest,” he demanded.
“We can’t stop now,” Deanna said.
“Counselor,” Data said. “I have sent the subspace signal, but I am receiving no acknowledgment pulse.”
“Noted. Keep sending.”
Deanna didn’t need to voice her concern. Data and Beverly both knew what a lack of response meant. Either the Defiant had been destroyed by an enemy vessel, or Worf’s ship was elsewhere, out of range.
“Keep moving,” she ordered her team.
O’Brien, La Forge, and the security detail jogged quickly down a dark hallway and encountered no sign of Jem’Hadar or Cardassians. Without normal systems engaged, the hallway remained uncannily quiet. The group hurried onto a turbolift, weapons raised, ready to fight off deshrouding Jem’Hadar.
“Cargo bay three,” O’Brien ordered.
At his voice command, the turbolift whisked them smoothly