MedLab and the morgue were soon full of security teams, scanning and investigating the area, looking for any clue, anything that could have told them where the body had gone. Sinclair had arrived to see Garibaldi and Franklin look very puzzled.
“Anything yet?” Sinclair asked.
“Nothing.” replied Franklin. “In all my time as a doctor I’ve never had a body stolen from my morgue before!”
Then one of the team approached them.
“I think I’ve found something.”
They followed him to the morgue entrance.
“It looks like someone tampered with the lock.”
Garibaldi kneeled down and examined the lock. His keen eye could tell that there was something wrong.
“Well Doctor, looks like someone used something to break into the morgue. Whatever it was he used gave the proper access code.”
“Who could do that?” asked Sinclair. “And who would want the body of a stabbing victim?”
“Beats the hell out of me!” said Garibaldi. “Unless we have any medical student son board and they can’t afford to buy a body.”
Sinclair began to rub his chin. He had hoped his last few hours as commanding officer of B5 would be uneventful.
“I want a full sensor sweep of this area. Try to find some traces of his DNA. If you can find that you may get a trail of some kind.”
Sinclair then left them to their work. He hoped they could handle it without him. He still had a lot of business to take of before he left.
Sinclair soon made his way to the Operations Room. There he was greeted by Ivanova.
“I’ve managed to run a check on that Doctor Frankenstein.”
Ivanova handed Sinclair the report.
“Says here he’s on a routine stopover. Is this all you could get on him? A geneticist from Earth on his way to the Deneb sector.”
“Apparently our Doctor Frankenstein keeps himself to himself much of the time. This is meant to be the first time he’s left Earth!”
Then one of the other officers approached them.
“Commander, we are picking up a slight power loss near the alien sector, where it nears the Down Below section. It’s probably just nothing.”
Sinclair let out a huge sigh.
“It’s okay.” said Ivanova. “I’ll handle this. I know you still have a lot to do.”
Sinclair then placed his hand on Ivanova’s shoulder.
“Thank you. By the way, Catherine should be calling any time now. When she does patch it through to my quarters.”
The events of the Down Below bar the previous evening had not deterred anyone from drinking there. Indeed, two such merry gentlemen were thrown out for drinking too much! The bar tender had not wanted any trouble after the last evening.
The two drunks went merrily on their way along the darkened corridors, singing drinking songs and not having a care in the world. They each took turns in supping from a bottle of Aldebran whisky they had taken from the bar. Then they got annoyed when they found they had finished the bottle. One of the drunks threw it into the wall, anger starting to build up inside him.
“Damn and blast it!” he cursed. “Where are we going to get another drink at this time of night?”
His companion then noticed someone lurking in the shadows not far ahead of them.
“Maybe we can ask him! Hey! Buddy! Can you spare some change so we can buy a drink? We haven’t got two pennies to rub together.”
The two drunks approached, or staggered, towards the supposedly kind gentlemen. When they got closer he stepped from the shadows. They could not see his face, and they didn’t see the knife either. He plunged it into the stomach of one of the drunks. The other one was scared. He started to scream, and after tripping over he got to his feet and scurried away.
Garibaldi had finally managed to clear the reports from his desk. He had not been made to sit behind a desk all day, and if truth be known he was glad for the incident in MedLab. He shut down his terminal and was about to turn in for the night when the drunk ran into his office.
“Chief! Chief! It’s Louie! He’s been stabbed!”
“Stabbed? Where?”
“Near the bar Down Below! I only just managed to get away!”
Garibaldi activated his communicator.
“This is Garibaldi. I want a full armed team Down Below now!”
Taking a phaser in his hand he left the office.
A few minutes later the drunk led Garibaldi and the team to the area where his friend had been attacked. Garibaldi looked around. There was nothing there, no body, nothing.”
“Are you pulling a fast one Jacko?” he snapped. “From the smell of you I’d say you’re more juice up than a freighter! There’s no body here!”
“I tell you Garibaldi, Louie was stabbed by this tall fella! He offered us a drink!”
Garibaldi signalled to one of the team.
“Take Jacko to be questioned, and then scan this area. Try to find anything, DNA, traces of blood, anything! If there was a stabbing here there should be at least a sign of blood!”
Garibaldi rubbed his eyes, trying to rub the sleep away.
“First a missing body, now a supposedly missing body, this is all I need!”
A full scan was carried out. Sinclair was woken from his deep slumber and informed of the attack. He joined Garibaldi while still putting on his uniform.
“What have you got for me Michael?”
“Jacko says that his friend Louie was stabbed. He came and got me, and when we arrived there was no body.”
“If I know Jacko I’d say he was so juiced up that he made this up, but what with the missing body from the morgue I’m not taking any chances.”
Then one of his team, who was kneeling on the floor and scanning the area, called over to them. They joined him.
“What have you got?” Garibaldi asked.
“Faint traces of blood, human blood. There was an attack here Chief, very recently, in the last two hours.
Garibaldi took out his tri-corder and scanned the area.
“Interesting.”
“What is?” asked Sinclair.
“I’m picking up two more DNA signatures. One of the is Jacko’s the other the tri-corder can barely make out.”
“How long would it take you to run a trace?”
“Jeff, there are over six thousand people on this station. Scanning everyone’s DNA would take nearly a week!”
“But the scan is definitely human, isn’t it?”
Garibaldi nodded.
“Try comparing it with the scan Doctor Franklin took on the morgue. We may be able to find a link to these two incidents.”
It was early the next morning, and Ivanova stood before her control panel in Ops. She was in contact with the engineering team that had been sent to the Down Below area.
“Have you found anything yet?” she asked. “I’m still picking up these strange readings.”
There was a slight pause before she got a reply. The engineering team moved along the corridor, tri-corders in hand, until they suddenly found something.
“I think we may have found something Commander.”
“What is it?”
The engineer walked over to one of the walls. Taking an old crate and putting it on the floor he stepped on it to gain extra height. He scanned the area and soon found what appeared to be a small box of some sort. He continued to scan the strange device.
“What is it?” Ivanova asked impatiently.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It seems to be draining power from somewhere and taking it somewhere else. Commander, try checking the power of the main reactor.”
Ivanova did as she was asked.
“Reactor power is down twelve percent.”
“I thought so. This doo-hickey is taking power straight from the reactor and diverting it somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“That I can’t tell. There appears to be some sort of shield around it. It’s scrambling the signal.”
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