Have Tech, Will Travel (SCE Books 1-4) - Keith R. A. DeCandido_. [et al.] [72]
Eighteen of the dead and injured had been her own staff. She and the EMH, an efficient but cold and sarcastic image, had been the only ones able to treat the wounded.
She remembered Jenson, dying in her arms even as she buried her hands almost to the wrist in his wound, trying to hold closed a slippery, severed artery with her fingers because she couldn’t reach her tools. And Galloway, who kept refusing treatment in order to bring in others more gravely injured than she, breathing her last quietly in a corner, when she couldn’t bring in any more.
Lense had been able to save about a quarter of them. One lousy quarter of the screaming, bloody people who had begged her for help, pleaded with her to ease their torment.
Damn it. Damn it all to hell.
“Stay with me, 110,” she whispered, although she knew the Bynar could not hear her. She couldn’t treat him when the ship was this chaotic. The best she could do was make sure he didn’t fall off the bed, and that the pieces of medical equipment strapped to his little body stayed put.
For what seemed like an eternity, the ship shuddered under attack. Finally, it appeared that the worst was over. The power surged back on.
Lense turned her full attention to 110. The cortical stimulator was doing its job, and the spasming slowed, then stopped. A quick glance at her tricorder told her that the immediate danger had passed, though only a complete examination would reveal what, if any, permanent damage the Bynar had incurred.
She took a breath. She could use an extra pair of hands. “Computer, activate the EMH,” she ordered. At once, the slim, somewhat elegant figure of Emmett appeared.
“Good morning, Doctor—oh, dear,” said Emmett. “What happened?”
Lense noticed that his dark eyes had quickly taken in everything she had done before he asked his question. Good. She had never had so apt a pupil.
As he spoke, the door to sickbay hissed open. Lense turned her head quickly and saw that it was Sonya Gomez.
“Can you fill us in, Sonya?” she asked.
Gomez stepped closer, looking down at the Bynar with her arms folded tightly across her chest. “No one’s really sure,” she said. “He was attempting to interface with the computer aboard the alien ship when it appeared to send a massive shock throughout his system. He was caught in it for a few seconds, and then it shot him across the room. We had him beamed up the instant he was released.”
Lense extended a hand for Gomez’s tricorder, which had captured the whole event. She reviewed it in silence, Em peering over her shoulder.
“Who was working with him, or was he by himself?” asked Lense, handing the tricorder back to Gomez.
“Bart was with him at first, but he came over to look at the pilot’s remains after we noticed the— the holes.”
Lense glanced up sharply at the hesitation in the other woman’s voice. As a previous victim of burnout herself, she was always keenly alert to the manifestation of the symptoms in others. But Gomez appeared to be all right.
“Holes?” Lense demanded.
“Of course. You’ve been so busy keeping 110 stable, you haven’t had a chance to look at the body,” said Gomez. “There were holes in each of the arms. It was impaled on the chair.”
Lense glanced quickly over at the pilot’s body. Sure enough, there were three holes in the lower arms. Gomez was clearly a little rattled, and who wouldn’t be, upon discovering a body that had seemingly been impaled on sharp spikes in the command center of an alien vessel that had just gone on a city-wide rampage? Gomez wouldn’t be human if that hadn’t unnerved her at least a little.
“The pilot’s not going anywhere,” she said with a touch of black humor. “Right now, I’m more interested in 110. Did he do anything, touch any specific button? He had to have triggered something, or else the computer would have exploded the minute he tried to interface with it.”
“You’d think so,” said Gomez, moving hesitantly to stand beside the Bynar. “And he probably did, but no one was watching.”
“What about his own tricorder?”
“He hadn’t activated it. He never does.” She looked