The Battle of Betazed - Charlotte Douglas [60]
O’Brien’s stomach heaved, and he was glad he hadn’t eaten in several hours. In the gloom he could make out thousands of bodies stacked in endless, neat rows.
O’Brien shuddered at the grisly scene in the giant morgue. “This is why we haven’t run across any Jem’Hadar since we arrived. They were all dead before we got here.”
“Sirs,” one of the security detail called, “you better look at this.”
O’Brien and La Forge stepped over to inspect another body. The dead Jem’Hadar had an incision around his head that left the brain in plain sight.
“Look at that—it’s like they were operating directly on their brains,” La Forge said.
“He’s not the only corpse cut open,” one of the security team noted. “There’re stacks of them over here.”
La Forge ran his tricorder over the body and recorded the readings. “We should get out of here. Commander Riker’s waiting.”
The group moved between the dead bodies in silence, their lights illuminating rows upon rows of dead. O’Brien was glad these Jem’Hadar weren’t alive to fight, but the sight of so much death depressed him.
In his peripheral vision, O’Brien caught sight of a flash of white skin, something that didn’t belong among the gray-complexioned clones. He stopped and backed up.
“What is it?” La Forge asked.
“I thought I saw … there.” O’Brien pointed his light at a humanoid corpse. Thousands of the surrounding corpses were also humanoid. Dread in his gut, he approached one. This body didn’t have the pebbled ashen skin and contorted features of the Jem’Hadar, but a head incision exposing the brain had been done just the same. “She was Betazoid. This section must all be Betazoid.”
“Maybe the Betazoids brought up a virus that killed them and the Jem’Hadar,” La Forge suggested.
“Dr. Bashir could tell us what’s going on,” O’Brien muttered. “I wish he was here.”
“I wish I wasn’t,” one of the security team complained. “There’re more Betazoids over there.”
O’Brien’s combadge beeped.
“We have ten minutes and eighteen seconds until detonation.” Commander Riker’s voice sounded grim. “I need you all in cargo bay three. Now.”
Chapter Thirteen
W ILL R IKER HAD JUST ORDERED the rest of his away team to hurry to cargo bay three when he heard multiple footsteps approaching the bay doors. Inexact tricorder readings failed to identify friend or foe, so he ordered his security detail to duck into the shadows behind a group of containers.
Phaser drawn, Riker held his breath. A Vorta and several Cardassians hustled into the cargo bay. Riker signaled his team to remain hidden and peered over the top of a container, ready to fire, but only if detected. No reason to pinpoint their location for the enemy.
Cardassian security would have been combing Sentok Nor for Riker’s away team ever since they’d transported onto the space station, but this group was moving too quickly for a search mission. Obviously, with the station’s self-destruct mechanism on its countdown, they had important business in the cargo bay. Otherwise, the Vorta and Cardassians would have abandoned the station by now.
Riker debated following them, but he desperately needed to discuss with O’Brien and La Forge what he’d found. While he waited for his fellow officers, he sent his security detail to follow the Vorta and her entourage.
“Don’t let them see you,” he whispered. “Find out what they’re up to.”
Within seconds after the Vorta’s group had disappeared through a doorway, O’Brien, La Forge and the rest of their team entered the cargo bay. When they joined Riker, their gazes took in the strange pods of machinery filling the room around them. The containers were the size of torpedoes and sat like coffins upon catafalques.
“Each of these pods contains a Betazoid,” Riker told them, “and there’re thousands of them.”
“Any Jem’Hadar in them?” O’Brien asked.