Star Trek: The Next Generation - 119 - Armageddon's Arrow by Dayton Ward

seals were disengaged.
    “You’re getting pretty good at that, Commander,” said Lieutenant Cruzen from where she stood at the rear of the group, positioned so that she could keep watch down the length of corridor they had already traversed.
    The hatch opened, receding into the door’s frame until it was flush with surrounding bulkheads before sliding upward and out of sight. Beyond was a room perhaps thirty meters deep and half as wide, a guess La Forge confirmed with a quick scan of his tricorder. Like the corridor, the room was adorned with more of the lighting strips, running the length of the walls as well as across the ceiling. One bulkhead was crowded with control stations similar to those the team already had encountered, but the chamber’s most striking feature was the eight cylindrical objects, each nestled within a frame secured to the deck plating.
    “Oh, wow,” said the engineer. “Look at this.” He was about to enter the room when he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. It was Worf, who said nothing as he moved around La Forge, phaser held out before him, and stepped through the doorway. After taking a few seconds to examine the room’s interior, the Klingon gestured with his free hand.
    “All clear.”
    La Forge led the rest of the team into the room, and Konya and Cruzen took up positions just inside the door, leaving the others to spread out and examine the consoles and, of course, the eight tubes. Each of the cylinders was composed of a transparent material, and as he inspected the closest specimen, La Forge saw that its interior was coated by a thick layering of frost. The frames in which the cylinders rested featured their own control panels and arrays of status monitors, with indicators flashing in rhythmic sequences while the occasional stream of data in the now familiar yet still unreadable alien text scrolled across compact screens. Even through his helmet, he heard the steady hum of equipment stored within the frame and likely the undersides of the cylinders, as well.
    “Definitely a form of cryogenic suspension,” said Elfiki as she stepped closer to examine one of the cylinders. “These don’t look too different from the sort of suspended animation capsules that were developed on Earth in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, like those used in the first pre-warp sleeper ships.”
    “Their reliability was about the same as these, too,” Chen said. She was standing between a pair of the tubes, and La Forge saw that those two cylinders, like four of the remaining six, were dark and lacked the frost permeating the interior of their companions.
    “Left to the mercy of a machine,” Worf said, disapproval evident in his voice. “A deplorable way to die.”
    Still standing with Cruzen near the door, Konya said, “Damned right.”
    La Forge stepped closer to one of the active units, and through the layer of ice crystals on the inside of the otherwise transparent shell, his ocular implants allowed him to see the humanoid figure encased within. Unclothed, the hibernating subject had no visible body hair, and its smooth skull was larger than that of a normal human, with an elongated crown. Its eyes were closed, flanking a shallow crease with a single opening that suggested a nasal passage. He noted the ridges on the sides of its head that covered small openings he took to be auditory organs. Prominent ridges connecting its neck to its torso reminded La Forge of Cardassian physiology, though in this case the alien’s skin was smooth, sporting a pigmentation that suggested wine, or perhaps lavender, and its musculature was on par with a human male in prime physical condition. Several dark patches were affixed to the subject’s skin and La Forge saw that they each contained some form of compact circuitry or technology.
    “They all have small sensors attached at various points to their bodies,” Elfiki said. “Some sort of biomed tech, I’m guessing.”
    La Forge nodded.