Tying the Loose Ends

The silence was eerie and devoid of any living presence. The Sickbay was deserted, like the rest of the damaged starship now docked at Deep Space 9. The repair crews were not due to arrive aboard for another 48 hours or so and the warp core was offline. Most of the power was being provided not by the ship, but via the umbilical cables attached to the vessel. Only basic life-support and lighting were active.

Were anyone to observe the atmosphere on USS Taurus, it would have reminded any such observer of a ghost ship, especially since, according to the space chronometer, it was the middle of the night.

Suddenly, the darkness was momentarily disrupted by the shimmer of a site-to-site transport and a figure dressed in purely black attire appeared right in the middle of the room.

"Computer, lights at sixty percent !" Ordered the "visitor" in Standard English, and the Sickbay was immediately filled with dim light. The black clad figure stepped over to the console on the wall and accessed the internal sensors, deactivating them so no-one would detect their next move.

The black-clad figure slowly approached the stasis chambers.

*Yes !* The bodies of the dead Jem'Hadar from the Regial Seven system were still there.

Slowly but steadily, the "visitor" opened the chambers, took out a phaser, resetting it to "disrupt". The operative then pointed the phaser at the dead bodies and shot-by-shot, one after another, the corpses were vaporized.

That might have been the only way to protect the Federation interests, for now anyway. No need to know. Simple as that.

The black-clad operative presently closed all the now empty stasis chambers and, stepping away from them, ordered the lights off, activated the personal site-to-site transporter and vanished…

As before, the Sickbay was eerie and deserted: a grave and silent witness to what had just occurred.