The Sky's the Limit - Marco Palmieri [40]
No way to dig them out without the rest of the wall collapsing. All I can do is make them comfortable and treat what I can reach. Come on, Geordi, your turn to be a miracle worker.
She knelt down and began examining the first casualty. The young technician seemed to be stable, but Pulaski recognized shock when she saw it. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here.”
She weakly smiled up at Pulaski. “Thanks, Doctor. I think my left leg is broken.”
“The tricorder agrees with you. Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“Bruises, bumps, nothing serious, I think. Bill is hurt a lot worse than me.”
“I’m going to give you a shot and then I’ll check him out next. Try to relax. The damage control teams will be here in a moment.”
The lieutenant sighed as the painkiller hit her system. “Thanks for coming after us, Doc.”
“What? Your old doctor didn’t make house calls?”
The engineer gave a lopsided smile before drifting off to sleep. As Pulaski concentrated on the other casualties, she glanced up from time to time and could see Lieutenant Duffy over at the console making frantic gestures to a young female engineer who’d joined him. Together, they manipulated the controls almost as one person, while Geordi’s damage control team fought the plasma fire.
She administered a painkiller to the last of the four when she noticed a sudden drop in the temperature. A cheer rose and she looked up in time to see the plasma jet flicker and die. Geordi didn’t waste time celebrating, though.
“Good work, people, but we have to get that warp core under control. Dennings, stay with this team and ensure that rupture is fixed. Schmidt, al-Fahedi, take your teams and check out the hull breach. Take some security guys with you.”
Pulaski wiped her brow and stood up. “Mister La Forge, I need a team over here. You’ve got some people trapped in this mess.”
Geordi wheeled around. “Baker, get the antigrav manipulators. Thomas, Phillips, don’t just stand there. Give the doctor a hand.”
Pulaski did her best to stay out of the way as engineers and medical staff converged on her position and extricated the four personnel from the rubble. It was only when one of the engineers offered her a hand to step over the remaining debris that her knees began to shake. She was grateful to have someone else to lean on for a second.
Geordi pointed a couple of engineers toward the rear of the compartment and came over to where Pulaski leaned against a bulkhead. “That was pretty gutsy, Doctor. You’ve won a lot of fans today.”
Pulaski smiled, trying to hide how shaky she was. “Just doing my job, Mister La Forge. Thanks for believing in my technique.”
“Just doing my job, Doctor.”
Once everything was under control, Captain Picard recalled all the senior staff for an after-action review. Pulaski reclined in her familiar chair and noted that the Enterprise’s senior staff seemed a lot more relaxed than the last time. Everyone, that is, except Commander Riker, who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else but in the room.
Captain Picard put his cup of tea down on the table and turned to Lieutenant La Forge. “How are repairs coming down in engineering?”
Geordi frowned as he considered the question. “We suffered less damage than I thought. The intruders were surprisingly efficient. We’ll have to hit a drydock to make complete repairs, but we’ve established a temporary patch and we have a localized force field backing that up. I don’t anticipate any problems unless we’re forced to do some fancy maneuvering.”
Captain Picard favored him with a small smile. “We’ll try to avoid that, Mister La Forge. Doctor Pulaski, status report.”
She glanced at her padd and then looked up at the captain. “All things considered, we were very lucky. Fourteen