Caretaker - L. A. Graf [29]
Kim gave him a startled look, but only nodded mutely and brandished the extinguisher like a phaser as Paris moved up to the door.
Smoke belched over them in a rotten-smelling wave the instant Paris keyed the doors aside. Coughing into his arm, Paris stumbled into the darkness with the tricorder pushed out in front of him in search of life. Bright, fat sparks dripped like molten gold from a panel in the sickbay's far wall, and Kim darted across to smother the fire in chemicals while Paris made his way toward the two bodies tangled around each other at the base of the console. He knew Fitzgerald and the nurse were dead even before the tricorder confirmed his fears.
"They must have been right next to the console when it exploded."
He closed the tricorder to silence it.
Overhead fans roared into life, the overhead lights brightening as power rallied from somewhere and began to sluggishly waken damaged consoles. Pulling a sheet from one of the examining tables, Paris draped it hastily across the two bodies. Already the echo of approaching voices sounded in the corridor outside--wounded arriving, no doubt, and many more to come.
Paris could imagine few things less heartening than stumbling through the sickbay doors only to find your doctor lying dead.
"Computer!" Kim ran to meet the first arrivals, a burned, battered group in engineering gold. "Initiate emergency medical holographic program!"
A sparkle of what Paris took at first to be a transporter tingled through the damaged room. Then, waiting impassively by one of the examining tables, a nondescript man in Starfleet blue suddenly appeared at Kim's elbow as the ensign struggled to lift an unconscious engineer onto the bed. Paris shook off his startlement and hurried over to help.
"Please state the nature of the medical emergency." The new arrival peered keenly at the growing flood of patients from the corridor outside.
"Multiple percussive injuries," Kim told him, and the hologram flashed into action as though activated by a switch. In less time than it took Paris to scrub the sting of sweat from his eyes, the pseudo-doctor was on the other side of the sickbay, bent over a leg wound to peel back the burned cloth.
Something like the registering of information flickered through the hologram's eyes, but no expression reached his face. "Status of your doctor?" he asked as his hands moved up the patient.
Paris only shrugged when Kim glanced up at him. How did you explain to a computer program that the entire ship's butt was in a very flimsy sling?
"He's dead," Kim answered at last, and the hologram in turn responded promptly, "Point four cc's of trianoline."
Kim moved a few uncertain steps forward. "Trianoline?"
The doctor lifted his head, fixing Kim with an expression of chill impatience that Paris could only assume had been programmed in--accidentally or otherwise--from whatever real physician had been the template for this AI. The look certainly had the same effect on Paris that smart-assed doctors always did--he felt stupid and more than a little resentful as he volunteered, "We lost our nurse, too."
That answer was apparently enough, although it didn't do much to ease the hologram's peevish expression. In a blink, the doctor was at one of the scattered medical cabinets, selecting a hypo and a canister of spray. "How soon are replacement medical personnel expected?"
"That's going to be a problem...." Kim had to turn almost in a complete circle to follow the hologram's lightning-fast return to the patient's bedside. "We're pretty far away from replacements right now."
The doctor cleaned and sealed the leg wound with a speed and thoroughness Paris suspected as all for the best, as far as recovery was concerned. The pilot couldn't help thinking it was a good thing the engineer was unconscious, though--it didn't look like Doc Holodeck's handling