Part 20 (1/2)
Finally, she turned and headed back toward the medical office, ignoring Narat's stares. That extra prion in the Ferengi held the secret to the cure. And as Dukat had just made very clear, she didn't have much time to find it.
Chapter Twenty-nine
BAJOR FILLED THE VIEWPORTS of the docking ring as the sounds of fighting echoed down the corridor. Kellec Ton knelt in the hallway and quickly wrapped the burned arm of a Bajoran fighter, then injected him with a quick painkiller.
”You'll be all right,” Kellec said, patting the man on the leg.
The man nodded weakly, as Kellec moved and crouched next to the woman leaning against the bulkhead two steps away. Plague, in its middle stage. The woman looked to be about Kellec's age and her skin had the rosy glow of the disease. Her face was dirty and she was starting to smell of rot. He quickly injected her with the temporary cure, and then monitored her as the medicine started to work. She was going to make it, at least for another ten hours or so. ”Rest here as long as you can,” he said, and she nodded.
He stood and checked the level of his hypospray. He had enough for another thirty or so, then he'd be forced to try to make his way through the fighting to one of the medical labs.
Down the hall to his right the fighting was raging, as the Carda.s.sian guards tried to retake this area of the docking ring. So far his people had held them off, but it didn't look as if that would last long. He'd been forced here by following the wounded and sick workers. It was like following a never-ending road of blood and death.
With the fighting echoing behind him, he moved down the large hall. A low moan caught his attention, coming from an alcove. Three Bajoran workers lay in the dark, against the wall. The smell in the small area made it seem as if they'd been dead for a week, but he could tell that two of them were still breathing. Barely.
He scanned them quickly. The two who were still alive both needed to be in one of the medical areas, but at the moment that wasn't possible. With all the fighting there was no one to take them there and no way to get there.
He gave both survivors full plague shots, then quickly checked them again. They might make it. He didn't have much choice but to leave them and keep helping others. At this point he'd done everything he could for them. They were so far gone that if they did recover they wouldn't even remember him being here.
He went back out into the main hallway, as a group of seven Bajoran workers moved past and turned into one of the docking-bay corridors. Two of them carried Carda.s.sian weapons, while the others carried iron bars. Three of them looked as if they were in the early stages of the plague.
”Hold on,” Kellec shouted. He ran up behind them and quickly injected one of the men who he could tell was quickly getting sick.
”You Kellec Ton?” A man with a b.l.o.o.d.y rag wrapped around his arm stepped forward.
”I am,” Kellec said. Kellec pointed at the other one clearly coming down with the plague. ”You need this.” He held up his hypospray.
The man nodded and moved up to where Kellec could inject him.
Then Kellec looked at the rest of them. ”Have the rest of you been given the plague cure in the last four or five hours?”
All of them nodded.
”We're getting out of here,” the man with the b.l.o.o.d.y arm said. ”Heading for Bajor. Help with the fighting there. You want to come along?” ”You won't make it,” Kellec said, shaking his head. ”Sure we will,” the man said. ”That's a Carda.s.sian ore freighter right there, and we have two pilots among us.”
”And there's a very large Carda.s.sian fleet surrounding the station,” Kellec said, pointing out the viewport.
”That's what the Carda.s.sians want us to think,” the man said, laughing. ”We'll just drop right straight down and be on Bajor before what s.h.i.+ps there are out there even know we've moved.”
Kellec shook his head. ”Don't waste all your lives.”
The man with the bandaged arm stepped right up into Kellec's face. ”We're going home and no Carda.s.sian sympathizer is going to stop us.”
The blow caught Kellec squarely in the stomach, sending him backward onto the deck gasping for breath. He couldn't believe the man had hit him.
”See you, Doctor,” the man said, motioning for the men to turn around and head into the freighter.
Kellec tried to shout no, but there was no breath left in him. His stomach felt as if it were holding his lungs in a death grip. No air was going in or out. His shout came out as more of a choking gag.
By the time Kellec could even get his lungs to take in a small amount of air, the men were in the freighter and the lock had rolled closed.
Kellec stumbled to his feet and moved over to a viewport just as the freighter disengaged itself from the station and turned toward Bajor. The planet looked so close, so large.
Maybe they would make it.
Maybe he had been wrong.
Three seconds later the s.h.i.+p exploded as two shots from Carda.s.sian wars.h.i.+ps blew it apart like a child's balloon against a pin.
”No!” Kellec shouted, then dropped down onto the deck, his head in his hands.
He sat there for a few moments, until the sounds of fighting grew in the corridor to his right. He had to keep going, to keep curing people for as long as he could.
He pulled himself back to his feet, facing Bajor and the expanding cloud of wreckage from the ore s.h.i.+p.
”Stupid fools,” he said.
Beyond the wreckage, against the blackness of s.p.a.ce, he could see three Carda.s.sian wars.h.i.+ps. He knew, without a doubt, there were a lot more than that surrounding the station at this moment. He knew, without a doubt, those wars.h.i.+ps would blast this entire station if a cure wasn't found soon.
He picked up his hypospray and checked it to make sure it was still working, then headed in the direction away from the sounds of the fighting.
”Hurry, Katherine,” he said to the walls and to the image of Bajor below him. ”Hurry.”
Chapter Thirty
PULASKI STARED AT THE IMAGE of the three prions on the screen. They seemed so harmless. The smallest living things known. She'd studied them in medical school. Everyone had. They were mostly of interest only because they were so small. Yet these three prions in front of her could mutate into a deadly virus when joined. They were far from harmless.
And one of them had been created by a biologically manufactured mutation in a Ferengi's body. It was no wonder the incubation period for this plague had taken so long. That special prion had had to travel through air or fluids from the Bajorans, then to a Ferengi, and then to a Carda.s.sian, where it combined with two other naturally occurring prions to form a deadly virus.
Then that virus mutated into a deadly virus for Carda.s.sians. Amazingly complex.
Yet it was an elegantly simple way to wipe out two races.
And so far impossible to stop.
Whoever had designed this had thought of almost everything. Even if the Ferengi were removed from the station and Bajor, the special prion was already here and multiplying in Carda.s.sian and Bajoran bodies. She had no doubt that with the long incubation period it had already traveled to Carda.s.sia. The Ferengi had been the start, but they were now no longer needed in the final deadly result. She stared at that fourth prion. It revealed nothing. She shoved her chair back and rubbed her eyes. She couldn't remember the last time she had slept or even eaten much more than a handful of nuts and a gla.s.s of water. But from her conversation in the hallway with Dukat two hours ago, she might not need to eat or sleep ever again. She didn't know how much time they had left, but she bet it wasn't much.
Behind her Governo, at another monitor, let out a long sigh. ”Nothing?” she asked.
”Nothing,” he said. ”I just don't understand what draws the three prions together. There has to be some sort of molecular attraction.”
Pulaski looked at her a.s.sistant for a moment, letting what he had said sink in. He was right. There had to be something working between the prions that drew them together. And if she had to wager, she would bet that attraction was in that special prion created by the Ferengi mutation.
She'd been focusing all her energy on trying to find a way to kill the prions, not on why they went together. It hadn't even occurred to her to look in that area. It was lucky Governo had.
”There's just no way to isolate what that attraction might be at such a small, microscopic level,” Governo said, ”at least not without months of trial and error.”