The Battle of Betazed - Charlotte Douglas [59]
“Odd we haven’t seen even one Jem’Hadar,” he muttered to no one in particular.
La Forge nodded. “If you don’t count the thousands we discovered incubating in the hatchery mid-core.”
“If they’re breeding them on the station,” a security man said, “you’d think we’d have run across a few, at least.”
O’Brien had worked solely in the security office, but La Forge had made his way to the computer cores and back. Unless he’d had uncannily good luck, he should have spotted Jem’Hadar. Rather than making O’Brien feel better, the lack of enemy soldiers raised the hair on the back of his neck. There had to be Jem’Hadar on the station. So the only explanation was that they were shrouded, ready to attack.
La Forge exchanged a long look with O’Brien, who tightened his fingers around his phaser. Inside the turbolift the chief felt like a sitting duck.
“Can we halt the turbolift, sir?” O’Brien asked La Forge. “I think everyone should get out.”
La Forge’s expression was puzzled, but he nodded in agreement. Aware O’Brien had stopped short of their final destination, he said, “Commander Riker ordered us to come right away.”
“With all due respect, I’d rather take a minute or two longer than walk into an ambush,” O’Brien argued. “We can enter a tunnel from here and arrive undetected. We’ll have to cut through cargo bay two, but our movements will be less predictable.”
“Lead the way,” La Forge said.
Having lived for years on her sister station, O’Brien was more familiar than the regular Enterprise crew with Sentok Nor’s layout. He led the group through the darkened corridor to an access panel and prepared to fend off an attack at any moment. But they saw no one.
The lack of Jem’Hadar was raising the tension by the moment.
O’Brien opened the panel into an access tunnel that reeked of stale air. The team crawled inside. O’Brien wiped sweat from his brow. The Cardassians kept the station too hot for human comfort. With the computer systems down and environmental off-line, the station should be cooling, but he had yet to notice a temperature drop. His engineer’s instincts suspected trouble, some factor he had overlooked, some fail-safe he wasn’t aware of. He thought longingly of Keiko and his children and wondered if he’d ever hold Molly or Kirayoshi in his arms again.
“How far?” La Forge asked.
“Just around the next bend is an access panel into bay two. We’ll take a short cut to Commander Riker and bay three.”
A minute later, O’Brien popped open a hatch into cargo bay two. An acrid, medicinal smell flowed into the tunnel from the bay and almost made him gag, but he forced himself to enter the cargo area. Recollecting Commander Riker’s experience when he’d surprised two Cardassians in the security office, O’Brien rolled onto the cargo bay deck, weapon in hand.
Instead of angry soldiers, O’Brien found a dark, uninhabited area with an eerie aura that raised goose-bumps on his arms. First he’d been too warm. Now the super-chilled air raised his hackles. Either the space station was cooling faster than he’d thought possible, or this section had its own power supply. He recalled a lot of main power that had been shunted to this section and wondered what was going on.
The floor of the cargo bay was stacked with thousands of objects with only small pathways among them, but in the murky light, O’Brien couldn’t tell what the Dominion had stockpiled.
La Forge poked his head through the access tube and frowned. “What’s going on in here?”
“I have no idea.” O’Brien approached one of the neatly stacked piles, flicked on his light, then recoiled in surprise and disgust. “They’re Jem’Hadar bodies.”
La Forge, phaser raised, came up beside him. He didn’t have a light—his ocular implants precluded the need for one. The soldier’s face was misshapen and grotesque, his limbs