The transporter pad was littered with bodies. Riker, in the act of plunging through the door, almost stopped moving with dismay - it was purely the sense of Worf charging up close behind him that kept him moving forwards.

A pile of people, all slumped, some evidently bleeding. Tangled limbs. And an ominous silence, broken only by the choking sound of the transporter chief either trying not to cry or trying not to swear. Her lips moved once, pressing together as if trying to either form or hold back words. Worf didn't bother to try and said something harsh in his birth parent's language, very softly.

None of the people who'd come back from the surface of Hitchcock were moving, and there were no reassuring cries of pain to indicate life.

Riker shook off his disbelief as Dr Crusher and three medical staff swept in and past him to start triage on the scene of carnage. He didn't even consider interrupting their earnest, practiced work with pointless questions like "Are they alive?" or "What happened?". Save lives first. Ask questions later. He started to feel almost superfluous, and was sure that Worf must feel similar: but they couldn't have stayed on the bridge, not after that last communication from the captain before beamup. He wasn't sure how Picard managed it, though he'd seen it done a hundred times. The dreadful call, indicating disaster, then Picard's calm, controlled horror, and immediately following appropriate action. He always knew what was suitable for the commanding officer to do. And it probably wasn't suitable at all for the first officer to be here, kneeling in blood and feeling like hell, when the whole ship's compliment needed him to be strong for them.

Picard. Riker's stomach clenched like a fist. Where in this wreckage of an Away Team was Picard? Or was he still down there?

At that moment, the grisly pile heaved with a seismic spasm, then stilled again. Riker tensed.

"Someone…alive under there! Worf, give me a hand!"

Crusher's medics moved aside to allow the Klingon access without pausing in their assessment of the wounded, and Riker's heart sank as Worf started lifting aside the trailing arms of motionless forms, because one of the limp bodies was revealed as Picard, his normally hawkish expression slack and bloodied. And lying across the captain's twisted shoulder, another blood-smeared hand, the fingers moving slowly.

Worf lifted the captain's body clear, committing Picard to the immediate attention of Dr Crusher. Riker leant in, focussing only on the tiny movements of that hand. Someone at least had survived that bloodbath. He watched in unconscionable relief as, with another heave and brace of spread fingers, Data's bent head and shoulders appeared out of the pile.

Data. Of course.

The android was liberally splashed with blood, but more worryingly his arms were trembling as he tried to rise from the mess. Data never trembled. Riker bent to help him, and was in time to stop the android sagging back to the floor with a grip under the arms. He's always heavier than I expect…

He glanced up over the second officer's bowed head and caught Beverley's eye. The doctor nodded, just once, her hands flat on Picard's chest. The captain was alive. Riker's sense of relief surged once more. Things had not quite fallen apart. The centre was holding. When the captain gets better, I'll tell him I remembered my Yeats.

Synthetic muscle flexed under his hands, and Riker drew his attention back to Data. Doggedly, the android had returned to his efforts at becoming upright, and his movements were jerky and wrong. He couldn't seem to lift his head properly; when Riker managed to adjust his posture slightly so he could brace Data with his own upper body, it became very clear why. Data's right eye socket was an exposed metal ruin, a few lost blue sparks crawling sluggishly around the edges. The untouched left eye roved blankly over Riker, unseeing.

"Call Commander La Forge down to Sickbay," he heard Beverley's voice ordering one of her team, and knew rather than saw that the rest of the ill-fated Away Team had been cleared from the platform around him. The hum of antigrav stretchers and the musical bleeping of medical recorders began to fade away down the corridor. "Will," she continued. "Will. We need to get Data some help now. His leg - "

Riker, who had been able to look only at the eye in dumb disbelief, glanced down. Data's left leg looked almost severed at the knee.

I once cleanly removed Data's arm below the elbow in an open courtroom, but now I feel like I'm gonna throw up.

The transporter room door hissed closed behind the last occupied stretcher.

"Will."

The doctor's voice was insistent.

Riker tightened his grip and hauled the android to his feet. Data dragged at his side, but remained balanced. A line of clear liquid dripped from his mouth. Gripped in his left hand was a short length of battered metal pipe, also slick with blood. Beverley pulled over the final stretcher and Will carefully lowered the android down until Data was sat, hunched slightly.

"Lie down, please, Commander," said Beverley, slowly, almost as if speaking to a child. There was a painfully long pause: then Data obeyed, creakily, as if bending was awkward. He did not let go of the pipe. The injured leg swung sickeningly in the air for a moment before Dr Crusher laid it straight alongside the right leg in a businesslike manner, and hurried out with the stretcher before her.

Will Riker stood in the smears of blood, running the toe of his boot through it without really realising what he was doing, because his mind kept coming back to the pipe in Data's hand. And I really don't like the way my mind's working on this one…

"No," he said out loud, in the empty room.

"Commander Riker to the bridge," came the call, and he wheeled and went to his duty, while at the back of his mind he knew he'd been down in Sickbay at the earliest available opportunity.

Having that pipe tested to see whose blood is on it…