The Battle of Betazed - Charlotte Douglas [61]
Riker frowned. “Not that I’ve seen. Why?”
O’Brien inspected the pods more closely and left the explanation to La Forge.
“Cargo bay two’s a morgue filled with Betazoid and Jem’Hadar corpses,” La Forge said. “Thousands of them, too.”
“You sure they were dead?” Riker asked.
La Forge shivered. “We didn’t check them all, but most of them showed signs of extremely invasive brain surgery.”
O’Brien rejoined Riker and La Forge. With a sweeping gesture, he indicated the pods. “These people are all alive and in medical stasis. The station’s power drain was due to these pods. Emergency generators won’t keep them alive much longer.”
Odd, Riker thought, how these prisoners were so important to the Dominion that they’d used backup generators in these cargo bays. What was so special about these Betazoids, and what had their captors done to them? Riker didn’t know and had no time to find out. The entire station would self-destruct within eight minutes.
“We have to get them out of here,” O’Brien said with a shudder.
Riker understood the chill going through the engineer. He felt the same way. Something very odd, very sinister was going on with these prisoners. Clearly the Dominion had had more than just territory in mind when they conquered Betazed. But whatever was going on, he couldn’t leave thousands of helpless, innocent people to die when the station blew.
“Can we revive them?” Riker asked.
O’Brien shook his head. “I’m an engineer, not a doctor.”
La Forge agreed. “Commander, we could kill them if we wake them up and they don’t have proper medical—”
“If we do nothing, they’ll die, too,” Riker argued.
O’Brien squatted next to a container. Unlike Riker’s earlier examination when he’d cleared the condensed moisture from the glass casing of the pod to peer inside, O’Brien inspected the wiring. “Maybe the Enterprise could transport a doctor over?”
“Even with a doctor to revive them,” La Forge said, “there’s no time to transport thousands before the self-destruct kicks in.”
Riker couldn’t stomach the idea of abandoning the very people they’d come to save. “There’s got to be a way. We need a fast solution.”
O’Brien cursed in surprise.
“What?” Riker asked.
O’Brien stood so fast he bumped his head on the edge of one of the pods. His voice rose with excitement as he rubbed the sore spot. “These stasis tubes aren’t just keeping them alive. Each one doubles as a miniature transporter chamber!”
La Forge inspected the equipment and nodded in agreement. “The idea makes a sadistic kind of sense. If these are experimental subjects, why waste time and effort forcing a struggling victim into a stasis tube when they could beam them in directly?”
“Can we use their pods to beam them to the Enterprise?” Riker asked.
“Yes, but there’s a problem, sir,” O’Brien answered. “These transporters are very short-range, apparently not designed to reach too far beyond the docking pylons. The Enterprise would have to come within one kilometer of this cargo bay.”
“At least we know the shields are still down,” La Forge added. “But the timing’s going to be critical.”
Riker hesitated, weighing his decision. Considering whether to jeopardize the Enterprise to save thousands of Betazoids whose prospect of survival remained unknown had him wasting precious seconds. Crusher’s medical team might never revive these people. And even if they did awaken, had they suffered such permanent damage that death might be preferable?
Even if the Tulwar and Scimitar could hold off the remnants of the Dominion fleet, the transport would have to be almost instantaneous, or the Enterprise could be destroyed in the explosion along with Sentok Nor.
“Sir,” one of the security detail he’d sent to follow the Vorta dashed into the room. “I heard the Vorta and Cardassians talking. Several squads of Cardassian soldiers are on their way here.”
It’s now or never, Picard thought.
The captain sat tensely in his command seat as the Enterprise continued at full impulse on a collision course with the Jem’Hadar warship. He was still playing his metaphorical cards close to his chest, waiting