Caretaker - L. A. Graf [30]
"Tricorder." He was at another bed instantly, one hand thrust out as he probed the livid bruise on a new patient's forehead despite the young woman's hisses of protest.
Not sure what else to do, Paris tossed his tricorder to Kim and let the ensign press the device into the hologram's grasp. From the way the kid jerked back from the doctor's touch, Paris guessed that hologram hands didn't exactly make up for the feel of real human skin pressed against your own. He made a vow to himself never to get hurt on this mission if he could avoid it.
The doctor glanced at the tricorder, then pushed it back at Kim in brusque rejection. "Medical tricorder."
The ensign nodded, flushing in realization, and darted between a half-dozen other waiting patients to retrieve the right device.
The hologram took it from him this time with no particular sign of thanks.
"A replacement must be requested as soon as possible. I'm programmed only as a short-term emergency supplement to the medical team."
Paris laughed a little at the thought of how many of them on this ship would have to serve as emergency supplements for each other in the next few days. "Well, we may be stuck with you for a while, Doc."
The hologram glanced up in what Paris almost mistook for insulted surprise. But that was his own projected feelings of inadequacy from being faced with a nonphysical program that had more responsibility than he did. A classical what-was-the-world-coming-to sort of thing.
The doctor looked away again to finish applying a light analgesic spray to the darkening bruise. "There's no need for concern," he remarked to Paris while closing up the tricorder. "I'm capable of treating any injury or disease." He met the patient's worried gaze with no warmth or reassurance in his tone. "No concussion. You'll be fine." Then, brusquely to Kim, "Clean him up."
Yeah, Doc, you can treat disease and injury, Paris thought as he watched the doctor-image reappear on the other side of a knot of wounded, snapping off emotionless commands to whatever hapless crewman stood nearby as he set to work. It's just the treating the patient thing you've got to work on now.
* Janeway kept judiciously out of the way as Carey and one of his assistants activated the core seal with a great crack of thunderous light. Ozone seemed to blossom like fire in the air throughout the engine room. For one fearful moment, Janeway imagined that the warp-core leak had run wild, swallowing the ship, the crew, every bright hope for all their bright futures, in a single flare of atomic flame. Then the field's initial discharge settled into a deep, steady glow, and the nitrogen misting from the side of the core pinched off to nothing. She stared at Carey across a sudden weird, thrumming silence.
"Unlock the magnetic constrictors," she told him quietly.
Carey nodded and reached around his console to punch in the command.
"Constrictors on-line."
Whatever sense of power coursed through the veins of a living ship swelled into life again. Their lives and deaths, all wrapped up in one matter-antimatter package. Janeway clenched one fist behind her back, a captain's prayer. "Pressure?"
"Twenty-five hundred kilopascals..." The engineer looked up from his instruments with a smile. "And holding."
Thank God, thank God! Relief washed over her in an almost fatiguing wave. Janeway flashed Carey a thumbs-up, and reached across to tap her comm badge when it beeped to interrupt them.
"Bridge to Janeway." Rollins's voice over the comm sounded brittle and laced with panic. "We're being scanned by the Array, Captain--it's penetrated our shields--" Janeway turned her back on the engine room's bustle, trying to concentrate on the fading signal. "What kind of scan?"
She listened to blank air for nearly ten seconds before realizing it was silence she heard, not a pause.
"Bridge? Janeway to bridge! Respond!"
In the chill quiet that followed, the