The burnt flesh of the Security officer slid underneath the clear gel of the treatment tank. Anti-gravity lifted him a few millimetres off the surface of the bottom, allowing the gel access to his flesh. Clamps kept the tubes down his nose sealed off and a solid pad of gel mixed with glue kept his mouth closed. The mouth would be the last thing to heal but the pad would keep it in this condition until he was well enough to be out of the tank. McCoy ran the sensors over the man one more time in case he'd missed an injury. Drugs had kept him unconscious since he entered sickbay with burns to 75% of his body and a broken leg. Tearing off the skin tight gloves that covered his hands, Leonard stretched his neck and looked around. Every bed he could see was full, but two thirds of the medical staff was on duty, attending to the patients.
Sheets covered the faces of a number of the beds, waiting for him. If there had been need, they would have sent the bodies to the morgue to make room for patients. He peeled back the sheets and ran the tricorder over each body in turn, confirming the diagnoses and signing off. As Chief Medical Officer he knew all the crew members by sight and felt better if he looked them in the face before sending them off duty for the final time. None were good friends, he kept a professional distance, but he did their physicals and monitored their psychological health and knew them well. It had been many years since he'd accepted an offer from any of the Security women. Storing their body in stasis for six months until they went back to Earth shouldn't be creepier than immediate burial, but it was. And it was harder again if he'd kissed their warm lips good bye and wished them luck as they leapt out of bed at the alarm, eager for a fight.
The list of injured was long but most were broken bones from the failure of the ship's inertial dampeners. Today's deaths had been quick, at the hand of Klingons, no one had entered sick bay alive and left in a body bag, so while it wasn't the best of days, he would be able to sleep without a slug of bourbon tonight. The five burn victims would all live to fight another day. That day might be weeks in the future, but it would come because of him and his staff.
He entered his statistics into the computer at his desk, cursing the ship under his breath when it wouldn't upload from his PADD. The life signs scanner wouldn't respond. It often didn't during combat when he needed it most. Scotty often bled non-essential systems of power during combat. He tried not to complain too much, it wouldn't do any good to have the scanners up if the ship exploded but he was happy that medical's main power was a subset of life support. Now communications were down and they had to send messages by relay. At least Medical was self-contained and they could just yell across the room at each other. He'd hate to imagine how Kirk was communicating with Scotty down in Engineering. Carrier pigeon? Guesswork? Perhaps Scotty hadn't noticed?
Of the remaining crew, eight had not indicated their presence at work stations or quarters. He read the names, new crew sometimes didn't remember in a combat situation. He frowned at Gillian's name, which was blue, denoting that someone else had reported contact. Spock had made the entry, nineteen minutes after the attack. He frowned, had someone reminded her, or had she not been able to contact Spock until then? He mapped the work stations of the crew, three red in the Bio Lab, surrounded by a ring of black for the dead and Gillian's little blue name. The others a vertical stack on Levels four, five and six. The wing of the Bird of Prey, he guessed, looking at the black names, clustered where the body of the other ship had hit. The other wing had either hit storage or was dangling in mid-air.
"Al-Hamid," he yelled at his Head Nurse as she showed the orderlies which crewmen to take to the morgue. "What's the status of the retrieval crews?"
She turned her head towards him, sleek black curls bouncing round her shoulders. "Two are back. They brought in the latest dead. Chekov has closed off Levels 6 and 7 due to enemy action. One crew is in there, arguing with security. They don't want to let them in because the rest are probably dead."
"One had a blue tag," he argued.
"That's our argument," she confirmed. "I sent a runner to the bridge and they told me Dr Taylor reported in by comm just before it went offline and said she heard someone screaming. So there are two possibly still alive on Level 3. The retrieval team can't find anyone and they're swept it twice.
"Why the nineteen minute delay?" he asked, frustration making his voice brusque, even though it wasn't her fault.
"I don't know, sir." She was calm and self-possessed, waiting for his orders.
Frustrated, he typed a request to the computer and pulled the audio file of Gillian's last communication. As her voice played, he cursed, loud and fluent. Nineteen minutes without communication and her head hurt. The explosion must have knocked her unconscious. Hadn't anyone heard of concussion? Why couldn't the retrieval team find her? He looked again at the schematic, and accessed the computer records. Gillian had logged on to her work station at 0900 and a steady stream of data analysis had flowed until twenty minutes before the attack when it ceased.
"She was on one of the lower levels when the attack took place," he announced, stabbing a finger at the display. "It's why she survived the crash and why she could hear someone else who survived." He stared at the small crowd who had gathered at the door to his office. He spun the screen to face them "And now they're injured and trapped in with the hostiles."
"Security has to let us in now," Ellison countered his round face triumphant.
Dr McCoy dispatched two teams to cover Levels Four and Five, and joined his main team at the entrance to the turbo lift. The guard disagreed, claiming it was too dangerous, he would have to wait. McCoy yelled back that several of his team were Security, which was true. Ever since he'd spotted a budding med student who hadn't quite passed the gruelling exams for Starfleet Medical but had passed for Security, he'd made a point of nabbing his orderlies from Security personnel. The Ensign gave in, opening the lift. Al-Hamid smiled at the guard and offered him the PADD to sign and McCoy slipped in the lift, squeezing to the back. His last view of the guard was the back of his head as the doors slid shut. As CMO, he didn't go with the retrieval squads often but he had an unusual skill this time.
The orderlies took point, checking out the corridors with phasers drawn. The paramedics followed, scanning in all directions for signs of life with personal tricorders. The emergency override had forced all the doors open so as not to trap the crew. They had closed half the distance between the entry point and their goal when Clark gestured for their attention. Gathering close, they found the limp, grime covered body of a young man. Pinned to the ground by a fallen support, he laid face down, unseen by the retrieval squad until he moved. The scanner showed his main problem was smoke inhalation with some bruising to his back when the weight had fallen after he lost consciousness. One of the orderlies lifted the support one handed while another accessed the stretcher, joining the poles and activating the anti grav to form a square pallet out of a rectangular bundle. His retrieval cost them two orderlies, one to pull the stretcher, the other as a guard. The transporters were down, not uncommon in combat.
The second retrieval was worse, a young woman sprawled face down in the corridor, disruptor burns telling the tale of her death. They tagged her and left her there, they'd retrieve the body later by transporter. He drifted back behind the squad and leant against the wall after they turned the corner. He drew a slow deep breath and went through the lowest level of meditation exercise. It would be too humiliating if anyone caught him using this Vulcan mumbo jumbo. He had spent three months of Vulcan and having several Vulcan priests in his head probably hadn't hurt. Eyes closed, he groped for the others in his mind. A blank area which would be Spock and the excited and energetic presence of Jim Kirk were familiar to him. He reached for the newest, smallest presence, the bright presence of Gillian and 'pulled' it towards him. Pain exploded in his head. That had never happened before, him achieving more than he tried for but then, there hadn't been four of them last time. He pushed her away until the pain ebbed. He opened his eyes and caught up with the team. He could feel her there ahead of him. Not close, which made sense if she was fleeing pursuers who had come in the same way he just had.
He motioned to Ellison and they moved, quick and cautious to the remains of the Chem Lab, which was the team's first goal. The walls of the far corner sagged into the room, a heavy sensor from a floor above had damaged the ceiling. Torn and gaping support beams peeled away from the walls. The smell of burnt flesh and plastic tickled the back of his nose. Green arterial splatter in the destroyed corner trickled away to a smaller pool. McCoy examined it. A blood splattered strip of blue fabric with a knot in the ends lay discarded on the floor. A primitive tourniquet, applied to stop the bleeding. Small footprints he decided were Gillian's traced a frantic pattern across the floor, from the main blood pool to the other side of the lab and back. It wasn't hard to see what she had done. Most of the leg lay beside the blood, the sharp blade of the section tool beside it, still warm to his touch. The sour smell of vomit filled the air as he got closer.
The team swept the room for bodies, dead and alive. There weren't many hiding places, so the search was swift. They assembled near the door, looking for tracks. The bloodied footsteps stopped at the doorway, where the decontamination mat was set on the highest level. Ellison cleared his throat and pointed at a smear of brown, waist height at the wall on the left corridor. The squad fell into formation and they followed the trail as far as it went. Spots of blood on the floor showed she took the right turn on the next intersection. He knew she had turned left again at the next one, so he strode ahead as though he'd seen proof. "Alternating turns, we can go faster." No one questioned him and two turns later, when they were starting to slow and look again, streaks in the soot showed drag marks on the floor and they quickened their pace.
The heavy march of boots put the squad on alert. McCoy drew his phaser. He had set it on four to be sure it would render the Klingons unconscious for a reasonable amount of time. Level one would put a human out for about five minutes but had little effect on stronger races. They ducked into an open door and hid behind the boxes of equipment. The Klingons didn't even break stride as they passed the cross hallway. Too far and too fast for an attack with a guaranteed success and McCoy wouldn't let them reveal their presence for anything less.
Fabric rustled behind him, grabbing his attention, it was often the first sign of someone wounded. He spun towards it, calling out in a quiet voice "Fleet Medical." No point in calling the Klingons back. A hand flopped forward from beneath the shelf and he knelt, grabbing hold of the blue clad arm and pulling. Muffled moans greeted his efforts as he dragged the limp body into the open. The others rushed to join him, danger forgotten.
He recognised Dr Abbot from Chem lab. Her brown hair was wet with blood which soaked though the uniform. Torn fabric revealed the bruised and broken flesh on her left side. Her head lolled in his hands as he reached to untie her gag. The knot was in her mouth, wet and covered with saliva. Ellison dropped the med kit on the floor at her feet, running the dermal regenerator over her cuts and burns, pushing some of the gaping cuts closed with his fingers before running the machine over them. "She's given herself painkiller," he said. "Or, at least it's missing from the kit." Clark groped under the shelf and retrieved the empty hypo. Ellison gave her a second dose and the crew worked on the worst of her injuries. Retrieval was a difficult enough job when the patient was stable and quiet.
She moaned and flung out her hand, knocking the med kit from Ellison's hand. It fell to the floor with a metallic clatter. Her body shook with a seizure, arms flailing about. In the distance, he heard guttural voices and fear flooded him. The team had everything well in hand. He stood and moved to the hallway, steps as silent as he could make them. He waited, hoping they would move on but the muffled thump of running soldiers came towards him and he ran, banging his phaser against the wall to make enough noise to draw them after him. The shouts and thudding steps confirmed that his prey was enticed, now he had to lose them again. His weapon was in his hand, he just needed somewhere to get a good shot at them.
He took two turns into side tunnels which weren't obvious openings unless you knew they were there. The smoke was getting heavier, making him choke. He was nearing the impact site. Gillian, too, her fear was making acid churn his stomach. He had to turn away, before they trapped him. He turned again and growling voices echoed along the corridor. Was it the same ones? If they'd turned left instead of right at intersection 17, they could be in front of him. Otherwise he'd run into another patrol and was trapped. He twisted the control setting to widen the focus without looking down.
A jangle of music sounded in front of him, the opening strains of an Andorian composition whose name escaped him at the moment. He ran towards them, phaser lifted. If he could shoot two before the other two arrived, he might have a chance. He saw them round the corner in front of him, disruptors at the ready and squeezed the trigger. The front one stumbled, revealing a third humanoid shape behind them.
Something struck his head, the world went black and he slumped to the floor.