Chapter Two; Extraho
Extraho. Verb. 1. Drag out. 2. Prolong. 3. Remove. .
"In here! Look, there's Commander Riker!"
"Find Daniels, he's our priority case." That sounded like the medical team. Data found it hard to care. They weren't here for him. He indulged in a moment of bitterness before being bought back to the moment at hand by a sharp jolt of sensory data which he interpreted again as pain. He reacted in a particularly human way to the stimulus with a flinch and a gasp as his eyes shot open.
"Oh good lord, Commander! I'm so sorry, I didn't see... there're wires everywhere, I must've stepped on..."
"That... That is quite alright." It wasn't really, he felt like shouting at the young woman for being so careless, but under the circumstances he 'bit his tongue', as Geordi might say. He wondered how long it might be until his engineer friend arrived.
"He's on his way sir, not ten minutes behind us." Her voice was slightly further away, obviously moving towards the other casualties. Data was not aware that he had spoken aloud, and that disturbed him. Obviously something was very wrong, he felt limp and underpowered, and now it seemed that his cognition was suffering also. Possibly it was just the lingering after effects of the EMP, or perhaps it was an overload caused by these new sensations, and the feelings they created in him.
The voices had all but gone now, fading away down the corridor as the medical personnel whisked the casualties away to the waiting shuttles. Data sighed and turned his head to regard the body he was sharing the ruins with.
A slab of concrete had fallen across Ensign Singh's lower body, her stomach and pelvis totally crushed by the massive section of ceiling. Obviously the medics had been unable to move the slab, and were unwilling to waste time trying while the living needed their care. That was only logical.
He watched with detached curiosity as a trickle of his hydraulic fluid ran into the pool of blood seeping out from under Singh's mangled corpse. He had never had much of a chance to talk to her, after the drama of the shake-down cruise of the new ship and subsequent repairs; they had all been so busy. He wondered if the engineering team would have the equipment necessary to extricate her.
He was surprised at the depth of feeling engendered in him at the thought of leaving her here. A burial in space was one thing, but to be abandoned in this place...
He put one hand under the concrete slab, braced his shoulders against the rubble, and pushed.
"Data! Data!"
"... Geordi?" The voice was stilted and quiet, but Geordi could already see the glowing outline of the android as he scrambled through the wreckage. Was it his imagination, or was that halo of light fainter than usual? He slipped and skidded over the loose material, his boots sliding on the spilt fluid trail leading him to his friend.
Data was flat on his back, his legs below the knees almost completely sheared away, and there was a disturbing slow trickle of fluid running over the rubble strewn floor. The android had one arm straight up in the air, supporting a gargantuan concrete slab.
"Geordi, could you pull Ensign Singh clear, please? I have locked my arm in place, but I am still experiencing a significant power drain."
"Over here, guys!" Geordi shouted back over his shoulder as he grabbed the woman's body under her arms and dragged her away from the piece of ceiling that had killed her. She was very dead, he could tell that much.
"Data? How are..." His sentence was cut off by the percussive thump as Data dropped his arm and the concrete crashed to the floor. "... How are you?"
"Not... not good, I am afraid." Geordi knelt down and ran his tricorder over the android. Data was simply lying there, eyes open to what remained of the upper floors of the building. The other two engineers Geordi had bought with him appeared, with cases of tools and spares.
"This is gonna be crude, but we need a quick patch job, no time to make it pretty. We've got to seal off the leaks before we move him. Jensen, can you get a steel plate and some epoxy on there?"
"Yes sir."
"You get going on that, Fisk you support. I'm gonna update them on our situation." Geordi stood and left his engineers working on the stricken android in order to move into the corridor. He tapped his combadge.
"La Forge to Enterprise."
"Picard here. How is he?"
Geordi sighed. "It's bad sir, real bad. He's lost a lot of his hydraulic fluid. That might not sound like a big deal, but the micro-hydraulics provide movement for every part of his systems. If it gets too low, he won't be able to get air into his cooling unit, every moving part will seize, and then it's just a matter of time 'till he overheats to a critical point. We're patching him up as best we can to stop any further fluid loss but, to be quite frank, if he were human, he'd be bleeding to death."
There was a moment of silence as the captain digested this information.
"I have every faith in you and your team, Geordi. Do what you can there, and then get back as quickly as you can."
"Aye, sir. La Forge out." Geordi tapped his combadge again to sever the connection as he walked back out onto the surface to the waiting shuttle, and activated the anti-grav sled.
The twelve minutes and eighteen point seven three seconds between the medical teams leaving and Geordi's arrival had given Data some time to analyse his recent experiences. He had to admit to himself that, while new sensations and emotions were fascinating, there were some that he would really rather do without. Having the chip fused to his neural net was something of a mixed blessing.
He had managed to put the pain to the back of his mind somewhat in order to analyse his situation with more clarity, but the work now being carried out on him was the cause of some discomfort. The sensors had been stripped bare, scraped clean of protective bioplast, and were shrilling their protest into his damage control warning system at every movement the engineers made.
"Ow." He said. The engineer looked up.
"Excuse me, sir?"
"Whatever you just did felt unpleasant. I was articulating my discomfort. Ow."
The two men looked at each other, puzzled.
"Of course, sir. I'm sorry, I'll try and... be more gentle?" The young man was clearly confused, and Data could not fathom why. He had explained things quite clearly, he thought.
"Thank you, that would be very much appreciated."
"Okay, let's load you up!" Geordi reappeared, pushing an anti-grav sled up to let it down next to the android. Geordi grabbed Data under his arms, and the two engineers slid their hands under the trunk of his torso. As they set him down onto the sled, Geordi noticed that the android's face was pinched and drawn, and that he winced as the two other men released their grips. Geordi quirked an eyebrow.
"You okay?" He queried.
Data looked up at his friend. He knew that he could tell Geordi, he would listen and understand. The other two men? Unknown. He was so addled that he couldn't even remember their names. He was their superior officer. Would they think less of him if he admitted weakness? He had often heard people speak of 'manning up' or 'toughing it out', knew that it was expected that he would be able to mask his pain. So, in reply to Geordi's question, Data simply shook his head and looked away.
"Please make sure that Ensign Singh's body is appropriately taken care of." He murmured.