Forwarded by the ASC-VSO 
Posted: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 05:15:30 GMT  
In: alt.startrek.creative 
From: Gabrielle Lawson  
 


Title: Oswiecim
Author: Gabrielle Lawson (inheildi@earthlink.net)
Series: DS9
Part: REP 38/42
Rating: [PG-13] (Violence)
Codes:

           Chapter Sixteen -- Continued

      When he was dead, the changeling melted again, releasing
herself to liquid.  She moved onto the body, pouring herself into
his coat and pockets.  She found a phaser there, a tricorder, the
ensign's comm badge.  She could use it later.  If the *Defiant* was
still in this time, trying to rescue Bashir, she could use it to return
to the Link.  She might be able to salvage her mission after all, and
avenge the deaths of her people.

      She removed the objects from the carcass and carried them
back to where Heiler's uniform lay piled in a corner.  She knew
she couldn't just leave the body there to be discovered.  It would
have to go.  She thought of using the phaser to destroy it, but
changed her mind.  If she was going to be Salerno, Salerno could
be Heiler once she was finished with him.  So now she removed all
of Heiler's identification, all the papers from his pockets, the
decorations from his uniform that were not on Salerno's.

      She moved back to Salerno's body and oozed over him
again, letting the decorations move through her to their proper
places on his uniform.  It took only minimal effort to put the
papers in his pockets.  But his face would be a problem.  He didn't
look like Heiler.  She couldn't change his appearance, so she
decided she would have to obscure it.  Lifting herself up, she
formed herself into a lion and placed one paw over Salerno's
entire face.  She raked her claws over him repeatedly, leaving
nothing but torn flesh and scarred bone.  He was unrecognizable.

      She dropped back into a puddle on his chest.  There was
one more problem.  He was only an ensign.  Surely, they had sent
more than a lowly ensign to find her.  There had to be others.  She
would have to call them and divert them from searching here
again.  Besides, if she was going to be Salerno, she would have to
know his voice.  Fortunately, she had not damaged Salerno's
throat with the lion's claws.  She made another appendage and
pushed it through the carcass's gaping jaws.  She found his larynx
and explored it, feeling the shape, sensing the tension of his vocal
chords.  She formed them in herself as she did so.  "I'm retrieving
my prisoner, as I told you," she said, testing the voice she had
made.  "Return to your post."

      It was perfect.  Now to get rid of the body.  She could not
pull it across the courtyard in her present condition.  Yet she was
loath to make herself solid again.  She couldn't hold it for more
than a few minutes.  She needed to rest.  But there was no time for
resting.  The real guard outside might have heard the noise.

      She could become solid, as she had with the lion, but she
had to keep changing.  She had to remain fluid.  She chose the lion
again.  It was strong and could drag the man's body at least part of
the way across the courtyard.  Bashir was delirious.  He probably
wouldn't even notice.  She got halfway across the length of
the courtyard, dragging the carcass in her teeth, before she felt she
had to change.  She was glad the windows on the one building
were barred.  There were no lights in the other.  She became an
elephant and lifted the body with her trunk.

      She made it to the wooden wall and tossed the body over.
As she hoped, it went above the wooden wall, but also above the
brick one beyond it.  Good enough.  The *Defiant*'s crew
wouldn't find it there.  And, hopefully, neither would the SS until
after she was gone.

      That done, she poured herself into the form of a rat and
scurried back over to her corner where she released the form near
Heiler's uniform and her new loot.  She only needed a few more
hours before she would be rested enough to continue.  In an hour,
she would call the *Defiant* and give Salerno's report.


      Bashir opened his eyes when he heard the voices, but he
couldn't turn his head to look at them, not even as he had with
Garak.  That is how he determined that he wasn't hallucinating
this time.  He couldn't make out the words either.  *Must have
been German,* he thought.  *Maybe it's morning and she's come
back to finish it.*  But the voices stopped and after a few moments
a lion walked in front of him dragging a uniform in its mouth.  The
lion dropped it, looking tired and changed into an elephant to
finish its journey.  Neither of the animals had a made a sound.  No
growling, no trumpeting.  And that was how Bashir determined he
was hallucinating.  He liked it better when he hallucinated a
person, someone he could talk to.  He wished Garak would come
back.



      By 0300, the entire main camp had been searched,
assuming of course that Bashir was not in any of the barracks.
Kira didn't know where to go now.  They were still searching
Birkenau, starting with the newly completed Crematoria IV.  But
the guard at the main gate there had said Heiler had passed him,
dragging a prisoner by the hair.  They had left Birkenau.  Kira was
sure of that.  But if they weren't in the main camp, she didn't
know where they would be.  The entire team had reported back.
No one had seen either of them.

      *Six hours,* Kira thought.  *He has to be dead.*  But she
shook that thought away.  She wouldn't accept it.  She found
Novak near the main gate and called him over.  "Where is
everyone, now?" she asked.

      Novak had come with the rest of the away team and was
better prepared with more equipment.  He took out a PADD and
punched in a few commands.  A map appeared with blinking dots
to show the whereabouts of the away team members.  In Birkenau,
they were fanning out to either side of Crematoria IV, some
reaching into an area barely under development and others
retracing his trail back to the barracks.  In the main camp, the dots
were converging back at the main gate.  Barker was coming to
them now.  Kira hoped the guard at the gate wasn't too curious
about the increased SS activity that night.  One dot was moving
out the other gate by the SS guard house, an area they had
neglected to search.  Someone had caught the mistake.

      Kira left orders with Novak to go with the others
into the woods nearby and back into the field between the two
camps.  Maybe there was something they had missed.  She wasn't
ready to leave yet, though she wasn't sure why.  It was a hunch,
for lack of a better term.  In the resistance back on Bajor, she had
learned to listen to her hunches.  She watched Novak and Barker
head back out the gate and turned back herself into the heart of the
camp.

      This one looked so different from Birkenau that one might
not have guessed they were so tightly connected.  It had brick
multi-storied buildings where Birkenau had mostly wooden stables
converted into barracks.  She had no doubt though, that these were
equally as overcrowded.  The stench in the air could tell her that.
And even this place did not escape the smoke.

      Kira didn't have the PADD, but she did have a tricorder
and she took it out now, scanning the area around her.  She wasn't
sure what she was scanning for, but she remember her reasoning
out of Bashir's fear.  The changeling would somehow know of the
comm badge, so he had left it behind.  She had to have something
to tell her he had a comm badge.  Modern technology gave off EM
radiation, so Kira scanned for that.  Not surprisingly, she found it
encircling the camp in the form of an electrified fence.  But there
was one point where the fence had a slightly higher rate of
radiation.  It was behind the last two buildings in the farthest row.
Blocks 10 and 11, if she remembered the map.


      Bashir could not keep up in his present condition, and the
changeling thought about just killing him there in the field.  But
that seemed anticlimactic.  After all the weeks she'd spent with
him, dreaming up his ultimate demise, deciding how he would pay
for the crimes of his people, she could not just snap his neck now.
He didn't deserve a quick, merciful death.  If she could not bring
death to all his people, then she would bring death to him a
hundred times before he ceased to exist.  He was her revenge.

      She saw movement ahead in the darkness, silhouetted
against the horizon.  Someone was searching the fields.  She had
stayed off the road hoping they would not look for her in the snow.
But they were there.  Two of them.  She shoved Bashir to the
ground.  He made a small sound, but didn't cry out.  She was glad
now that she had hit him where she did.  It prevented him from
telling her why he returned, but it also kept him quiet.  She threw
herself over him, covering him completely.  She turned herself
white, like a drift of snow, slightly dirty from the falling ash.  She
could still perceive the searchers, though they could not see her or
the man that lay beneath her.

      She had made a pocket above him, so that if he struggled
or moved, it would not affect her appearance to the searchers.  He
didn't move though.  He was probably in shock, close to death
already.  She had to hurry.  There was a transport already arriving.
She had to get him to Birkenau.

      The searchers passed and she picked Bashir up off the
ground.  She placed him on his feet and pulled him forward again
by the collar.  If she had to she would drag him.  One way or
another he would keep up.


      Kira had gone behind Block 10 to find the EM spike in the
fence.  Now that she was back there, the tricorder didn't read the
spike.  It read a separate source of EM radiation a few yards from
the fence.  She followed the tricorder forward until she saw a black
lump against the ground just past the wall of Block 10.  A brick
wall linked that building to the next one, and the lump lay just
behind it.  As she moved forward, she was able to distinguish the
shape of an arm.  It was a body.  She pulled out her phaser and
moved cautiously.

      It was a body alright, an SS officer.  But the face was
mutilated, slashed horizontally and diagonally at least twenty
times.  Kira's stomach turned, but she ignored it.  Her hunch had
led her here, and she felt this was important.  No one could just
kill an SS officer in a place like this.  This was not a normal
occurrence.  The tricorder confirmed that this was the source of
EM radiation.

      Kira wasn't a doctor, but she was sure that dead bodies do
not generally emit EM radiation, so it had to be something on the
body.  Pushing aside her distaste, she began to fumble through the
dead man's pockets.  Her hands became bloody, but she ignored
that too.  She found papers, a wallet of some sort, and some loose
money.  But she didn't find anything electronic.  She held one of
the papers up to the tricorder, trying to use its light to illuminate
the words.  They were all in German, of course, which she
couldn't read, but she looked for something that might be a name.
In Federation Standard, proper nouns began with capital letters, so
she looked for capital letters in the document.  There were plenty
of them.  Too many.  Kira guessed they weren't all names.

      She threw the papers down and took up the wallet in the
same manner, hoping to find an identity card.  This time she had
better luck.  There was a card, with a picture attached.  The name
under the picture was Heiler, Helmut.  The word *Scharfuhrer*
was nearby.  The changeling.  Kira backed away quickly, holding
her phaser toward the body.

      It didn't make sense.  The changeling wasn't human.  She
couldn't be dead like this.  She could fake it, of course, but why?
And where was Bashir?  There was only this body.  Bashir had
said that she probably killed the real Heiler.  Perhaps this was him.
But no, the changeling had been in the camp for awhile.  She had
saved him from selections.  Thomas said those took place
randomly, but usually a couple of weeks apart.  If this were the
real Heiler, he would have decayed by now.  The blood Kira had
felt was still warm.  This was a fresh kill.  And frankly, she
thought the slashes on his face looked like something an animal
had done.  The edges were not smooth enough to be cuts from a
blade.

      This was not Heiler.  So who was it?  And she still had not
solved the mystery of the EM radiation.  She took up the tricorder
again and ran it slowly over the length of the body starting from
the boots.  It showed nothing until after she'd reached past his
neck.  It had to be something in his head.  She doubted very
seriously that anyone in this time carried around hidden electronic
devices in their heads.  This had to be someone from her time.

      Kira couldn't help it this time.   She pulled away from the
body and vomited.  She tried to wipe her mouth with her hands,
but they were covered in blood.  It made her sick again.  She stuck
her hands in the snow and rubbed them together while she gasped
for breath.  Who was it?  Everyone was accounted for.  She had
counted the dots on the PADD that showed their comm signals.

      But she had not found a comm badge on the body.  She
took a deep breath and moved back toward it.  She turned the head
and put her finger in the left ear.  There was nothing there.  She
tried the other one and her finger hit something hard and cool.  It
was not set deep so she pulled it out.  She recognized it.  She had
been at the briefing when Stevens had shown his gadget to the
away team.  This amplified sound so that the team could listen in
on conversations from a distance.  This is how they had first
realized Bashir was still alive.  This is how Jordan had identified
him outside the barracks.  But it still didn't answer who it was.

      But Kira could deduce that easily now.  The body was near
Blocks 10 and 11.  Salerno was going to search Block 11.  Salerno
had checked in saying there was nothing there.  Kira stood up and
pocketed the tricorder and the papers she had found.  She ran back
toward Block 10 and around the corner.  She stopped running
when she reached the next corner.  There would be a guard at the
gate.  She stopped, took a deep breath to slow her breathing and
then walked up to him.

      "Good evening," she said, keeping her face expressionless.
"I need inside.  I have orders to enter."  She held up one of the
papers and hoped the man couldn't read it in the dim light.

      "There's an awful lot of traffic through here tonight," the
guard complained.  But he opened the door.  *For a prison camp,*
Kira thought, *the security isn't very tight.*  Anyone with a
uniform could come and go.  That was a problem, she surmised,
when one believed in master races.  One doesn't bother
questioning one's brethren.

      It only took a moment for her to realize the courtyard was
empty.  She went in anyway.  She waited for the door to shut
behind her and then took out her tricorder again.  There was a lot
of blood on the ground in the corner not far from her, near the wall
of Block 10.  Salerno's, she guessed.  It had been covered over
with dirt and snow from the courtyard.  But the tricorder had seen
through the guise.  There was also blood near the far wall, though
the tricorder had a more difficult time reading it.  It was older
blood, Kira guessed.  They executed people here.  She must have
brought Bashir here.  But there were no bodies.  Kira pressed her
comm badge five times, opening a signal to the *Defiant* and
letting them know she was free to speak.

      "This the *Defiant,*" Sisko answered.  "Report."

      "No sign of Bashir," Kira whispered.  "But I found
evidence of the changeling.  She killed Salerno, sir.  His body is
just beyond the wall that links Blocks 10 and 11 in the main camp.
You should probably have him beamed up.  She has his comm
badge.  Can you trace it?"

      There was silence and Kira assumed he was checking for
the signal.  But he answered, and it was too soon if that had been
the case.  "Actually, Major, we lost his signal just outside the
camp gates near the SS Guardhouse.  We sent Barker and Novak
over that way, but they didn't find anything."

      "She still has him, Captain," Kira told him.  "She could
have killed him here and dumped the body just like she did with
Salerno.  He was a prisoner.  She could have left him here to be
cremated in the morning.  But he's not here.  She still has him."

      "Find him, Major," Sisko growled, "and maybe I won't
court martial you this time."

      "You can't court martial me anyway, Captain," Kira
reminded him.  "I'm not in Starfleet.  Kira out."

      She knocked on the door and the guard opened it.  "Silly
me," she told him.  "Wrong building.  I need Block 12, not 11."

      He gave her a look that told her she was stupid, but she
didn't care.  He was dead in her timeline anyway.  She left him
and walked away.  She waited until she was blocked from his site
by Block 21 and took off at a run.  The gate that led to the SS
Guardhouse was on the other side of the camp, not facing the
direction of Birkenau.  Kira felt another of her hunches and
decided to bypass it and head back to the main gate.


      Bashir could see them, figures moving in the night.  They
weren't prisoners, not even ones in civilian clothes.  They wore
hats, sharp hats, not the striped caps.  They were SS.  But he knew
the SS wouldn't need to be running around at night.  They had
Ukrainians to guard the camp.  The prisoners were all asleep.  And
Heiler acted strangely around these SS.  She didn't want to get too
close.  When one of them was in sight, she would jerk him around
another building or throw him down in the mud.

      He assumed then, that if she didn't like them, that he
should.  Maybe they were like Sisko, *Defiant* crew disguised,
looking for him at night when it's less likely they would be seen.
They had come to save him.  He knew he couldn't call out to
them.  His voice didn't work.  It was worse now.  His neck was
stiff from hanging most of the night.  He couldn't even turn his
head.  And she pulled him so fast that his feet couldn't keep up.
He'd already lost his clogs to the mud.  He had no shoes now and
his toes were numb.  He was numb, and all he could do was watch
them prowl around the buildings.

      They were coming to save him.  *It's almost a pity,* he
thought, *that I'll be dead soon.*


      Kira reached the main gate at Birkenau out of breath.  She
hadn't even stopped to take the time to tell the others of her hunch.
There were still several of them in Birkenau, and hopefully they
would spot him.  Kira saw the end of a long line of people going
into the gate.  They were well dressed against the cold.  But they
were quiet and scared.  They looked around nervously and huddled
together in families.  SS officers, both men and women,
accompanied them as did prisoners in striped uniforms.  Kira
slipped in with them without incident.  No one even questioned
her at the gate.

      Kira thought about breaking away from them once she was
inside, but her hunch told her to stay.  Walking was too slow
though, and no one here was running.  If she sprinted ahead, she
would draw attention, maybe even cause panic.  Much as she
wouldn't mind those people panicking and fighting with their
captors, she knew she couldn't disturb the timeline.  She knew
where they were going.  She had seen slaughter at Gallitep.  That's
what was awaiting these people.  Their captors smiled at them and
told them not to worry.  They would lie to them right up to the
door of the gas chamber.  They had been using a boarded up
farmhouse for the task but now they had an efficient new one with
crematorium attached.  And Kira knew the way without following
the line.

      She broke away from them and started up the main road.
She figured that one out by now, too.  The railroad line hadn't
been built yet.  It would come in the next year or two to bring
people like that closer to the slaughterhouse.  They wouldn't have
to lie to them so much.  The victims would have less time to panic.

      Kira remembered the other road that cut to the north, the
one she could see from that first gate.  She took it and ran again,
passing barracks on either side of her.  More than ten, more than a
dozen.  The camp was huge.  *How many people?* she wondered.
She emerged out the other side and ran into the line again.  There
were over a thousand people waiting to enter, and their captors
were hurriedly encouraging them along.  Kira had to stop running
but she walked fast, still passing the line.

      She passed four watchtowers and then entered a wooded
area.  She kept with the line moving forward.  As she emerged
from the trees, she saw him.  An SS officer was holding him by the
collar.  The SS pushed people aside, putting himself between them
and Bashir.  Julian looked like little more than a rag doll, too weak
to offer resistance.  His hands were tied behind his back.  Kira
guessed that if the officer, probably Heiler, hadn't had a hold of
him that Bashir would simply fall over.

      The SS up ahead of Kira stopped the line from moving and
told the people there to wait.  Beyond him and the break in the line
he'd just made, the people kept moving.  In front of them was the
building, with its two tall chimneys glowing orange from the force
of the heat.  The changeling pushed Bashir on despite the orders of
the other SS.  Kira wanted to run to catch them, but she couldn't.
She was being watched by both SS and condemned alike.  She
forced herself just to walk.

      The well-dressed people had already disappeared inside the
building.  The changeling kept moving Bashir forward.  Kira was
not able to gain on them.  The changeling was too fast.  In a few
minutes, they too disappeared into the building.




      The changeling entered just as the last of the pathetic
humans left his clothes on the floor and stepped, unsuspecting,
into the room.  Men in striped uniforms emerged from the room
and closed the door.  "One more," Heiler called to them.  "You
can leave.  I'll take care of it."

      There was an SS officer in the room with them.  "Who are
you?" he asked.

      "Go on!" Heiler shouted to the prisoners, "or I'll put you
inside, too.  Wait out there for the next batch."

      The prisoners seemed confused, but they knew better than
to disobey an order.  The officer also looked confused.  He
stomped over to her as the last of the prisoners went outside.
"What are you doing?" he demanded.  "This is not how we do
this."

      Heiler let go of Bashir and he fell.  He was too weak to get
up on his own, at least not with his hands tied behind him.  He
tried though.  Heiler ignored him.  He wouldn't get far.  She
turned back to the SS.  "You're right," she told him.  "Bring them
back."

      The officer looked at Heiler as if he were crazy, but shook
his head and turned to call them in.  As he turned, Heiler pulled
Salerno's phaser from her pocket.  She fired and the man crumpled
to the floor.  He didn't disintegrate, though.  She checked the
setting on the phaser.  Lowest setting.  She had only stunned him.

      *Little matter.*  She forgot him instantly.  He was no
longer a threat.  Wheezing for breath, Bashir was trying to slither
toward the door.  *Ironic,* she thought.  *He's not even inside yet,
and he's having trouble breathing.*  She grabbed his collar again
and lifted him off the floor.  She hadn't had enough rest.  She
could feel it now.  He seemed heavier to her and hard to lift.  Or
perhaps, he had finally decided to fight for his life.  No matter.  He
would lose.  She pulled him to the door, unlatched it and pushed
him in.


      They panicked when they saw him.  He was bloody and
bruised and he smelled bad.  He could hardly stand and to their
eyes, was barely alive.  He was not what the Germans had told
them.  *Disinfection,* they had been told.  *You've been sent here
to work.*  Bashir was not an example of the safe, if less-than-free,
life in Auschwitz.  He was an omen of something bad.

      The lights went out and they began to scream.  Their cries
echoed around the concrete walls, deafeningly loud in Bashir's
ears.  They didn't want to die.  And neither did he.  Not now.  *It's
a little late for that now,* he heard Garak's voice say.  But the
room was dark and he couldn't see Garak.  He couldn't see
anything, and he couldn't hear the crystals dropping.


      Kira pushed past the bewildered *Sonderkommando* and
went into the building.  She closed the door behind her, locking it
quietly.  She could see an SS officer just coming down from a
ladder.  Another lay face down on the floor only a few meters
from her.  The one standing would be the changeling.  She drew
her phaser and aimed.

      The changeling reached the end of the ladder, dropping the
can she--he--held.  "Let him go!" Kira demanded.

      The officer froze for one second and reversed himself.  His
face came straight through the back of his head, and his whole
body switched until he was facing Kira.  He opened his mouth to
say something.  He took a step forward at the same time, and Kira
fired.  The blast threw the changeling back against the wall and
burnt up the uniform it was wearing.  And then it exploded,
shooting slimy residue all over the room.  Some of it dripped down
from the ceiling and landed on Kira's arm.  Her hand shook.  More
of it had landed on the SS on the floor and on the piles of clothes
all around the room.

      She was frozen, waiting to see if it would pull itself
together, if the slime would move.  It didn't.  Instead, it began to
dry and turn into a dark gray powder.  Kira put her phaser away
and slapped her comm badge.  She didn't even wait for a response.
"He's inside," she cried.  "You've got to beam him out.  Now!"


      Sisko had gone to the transporter room.  He had called
O'Brien there as well.  They had sent Salamon back into the main
camp to locate Salerno's body.  O'Brien beamed them up together.
Sisko's throat hurt.  Salerno had survived.  He was one of the
three.  He had struggled for over a week to stay alive alone on
Galapagos, and now he was dead anyway.  His face was gone and
his stomach was sliced open all the way up to his chest.  It wasn't
right.

      The nurses had carried him away, and Salamon had
insisted on returning to the planet.  Sisko watched him go.  He
could have left himself, but he stayed.  He had a hunch.  And he
knew from his years in Starfleet that he should obey his hunches.
He told O'Brien to stay by the controls and called Thomas in to
wait with them.

      They waited.  Eventually they had all sat down on the
transporter pad.  Dax had come in with coffee.  Sisko accepted this
time.  He'd been up for over twenty-four hours, and now the
waiting was draining him.  He had just finished his second cup
when Kira called.

      "He's inside," she cried.  "You've got to beam him out.
Now!"

      O'Brien jumped up from the pad spilling his coffee onto
the carpet.  Sisko and Thomas stood as well, all fatigue rushed out
of their bodies.  "Chief?" Sisko asked, hopeful.

      O'Brien shook his head.  "I can get a lock on her, but I'm
reading hundreds of life forms in the next room.  I can't get a lock
on just one.  I don't even know which one he is."

      Sisko had left the channel open.  Kira had heard him.
"He's just inside the door.  The last one to go in.  Probably only a
meter directly in front of me.  You've got to hurry.  I think there's
already gas in there."

      Sisko could hear the muffled screams behind her voice.
"Chief?" he asked again.  O'Brien was the one with access to the
sensors.  This time he nodded.  "Hydrogen cyanide."

He looked back at Sisko, his face questioning.  What should he
do?

      Sisko didn't know the answer.  In his mind he heard the
seconds tick away.  How many seconds before Bashir died in
there?


      Bashir was counting again.  He was at thirty-seven when
the others began to rush the door.  Of course, he was standing at
the door, and so, they rushed at him.  He closed his eyes and
wished that he could plug his ears.  The sound was horrendous,
ghostly.  People were screaming and choking, trampling others
beneath their feet.  They pressed so hard against Bashir that they
knocked his breath out of his chest.  He'd been holding it.  But it
was no use now.  He would pass out anyway, from the pain in his
shoulder and hand.  Both were pinned beneath him.  He would
pass out, and his lungs would draw in the poison.  There was no
stopping it.  There was no salvation now.  *Death will be a
mercy,* he told himself.  And he sucked in a deep breath.


      "Major!" Thomas screamed.  "He was last?"

      There was silence on the other end.  The seconds echoed in
Sisko's mind.

      "Yes," Kira answered.  She sounded confused.  "He was
several minutes behind the others."  Sisko didn't blame her for
being confused, but he didn't interrupt the ensign.

      "What were they wearing?" Thomas asked.

      "What?"  Kira was incredulous.  "Nice clothes, coats,
dresses . . . ."

      "Look around you, Major."  Thomas spoke quickly.  She
heard the seconds, too.  "Do you see his uniform?"

      More silence.  *Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three,* Sisko
counted.

      "No," Kira answered.

      "Cotton, Chief!" Thomas screamed again.  "Scan for
cotton fabric."

      O'Brien spun back around to the console.  "Got it," he said
quietly.  He was amazed.

      "Beam it up," Thomas ordered, "and anything inside it."


      The gas had an almond smell to it. *Cyanide,* his mind
diagnosed.  He couldn't feel the pain any longer, nor could he hear
the screams of those around him.  He forced himself to breath
deeply, not to cough.  Death was a mercy.  It was all over now.

      He felt a tingling sensation that started at his toes and the
top of his head.  He thought for a moment that he remembered it.
But then realized it was only another hallucination.  His eyes were
still closed, he wouldn't open them.  He was going to die.

      The tingling fell through him, meeting at his stomach, and
the ground moved under his feet.  The pressure of all those bodies
was gone, and the door was not at his back.  He defied himself and
opened his eyes . . . and promptly fell into the captain's arms.

To Be Continued....


-- 
--Gabrielle
I'd much rather be writing!

http://www.stormpages.com/gabrielle/trek/    The Edge of the Frontier
http://www.stormpages.com/gabrielle/doyle/   This Side of the Nether
Blog: http://www.gabriellewrites.blogspot.com

--
Stephen Ratliff
ASC Awards Tech Support

http://www.trekiverse.us/ASCAwards/commenting/

No Tribbles were harmed in the running of these Awards

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