Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [94]
“Twelve point two. These are five-minute charges? No more, no less?”
‘That’s it. When you’re blowing off a nacelle, all the alternatives have been exhausted. The decision’s already been made. All you need is a small safety margin. Five’s usually enough.”
“It will not be enough today.” Spock glanced around as he positioned the canister between the bolted fingers of a stanchion. “Other than the trees, there is no cover here.”
“Most of those ‘trees’ aren’t even trees. They’re tendrils of an ancient root system. They just keep going up and down out of the glade like some giant’s sewing them all over the countryside. They’re hollow with liquid inside. They’ll be blown down and act like a big net on us. The bark’ll just crumble and turn into shrapnel.” “Perhaps we should head in another direction, in that case.”
“We’ll head over that way, on the open meadow. How far can we run in five minutes?”
“Hardly matters, Mr. Stiles. We’re unlikely to survive the blast wave. If the ship is freed from this beam, Dr. McCoy can lead a landing party to collect your friend and continue with the medical mission.”
Stiles peered through the dutronium spiderweb. “Is that why you left him up there? To lead a second landing party if we got killed?” “Yes. Two fronts are better than one.”
“Hmm… I left him because I figured he couldn’t run.” With feelings appropriately scornful to that little step down, Stiles pressed the charged canister into place. “Ready … it’s set. Now what?” “Four minutes, fifty-five seconds.”
Ambassador Spock set his own canister, then stepped back from the granite block, his black eyes vibrant with the moment’s risk. He was actually enjoying himself. “I believe the operative phrase,” he said, “is ‘run like hell.’”
“Three minutes.” How long can five minutes be?
As Spock ticked off the time in thirty-second intervals, Stiles’s legs pumped in unison with the pounding of his heart.
The longest Constrictor on record (the last time Stiles had experienced one) was three and a half minutes. The last eruption of Mount Vesuvius had lasted nine hours. A two-minute earthquake was really long. A ten-minute tornado. Minutes stretched into drawn-out experiences that seemed never to end, seemed to make the whole universe turn slower and slower, until a heartbeat itself became a sluggish kettledrum with the drummer falling asleep.
Five minutes of running across a swamp meadow, splashing through rancid fluids, anticipating the platform back there to blow sky-high and sweep him off the face of the planet-that five minutes shot by faster than a snapped finger. What happened to all those stories about minutes becoming hours?
As the five-minute mark approached, they were only a third of the way across the meadow, running toward a blister of stony hills. At thirty-six years old, Stiles could devour some ground, and he had been holding back somewhat because he didn’t want to outpace the ambassador in case Spock needed help. Soon that showed itself to be unnecessary-Spock was tall, long-legged, and Vulcan.
They ran. Hindered by the knee-high meadowgrass and the uneven ground beneath, the exercise became a venture into hopping, tripping, sprinting, and catching on thorns and tangles. Another ten feet… another… each step drew him deeper into misery. His brain shut down, he couldn’t think of what to do but keep running. In his periphery he saw the flash of purple and black-the ambassador’s clothing moving at his side, the flick of Spock’s fists and arms pumping as he forcefully kept up with a much younger man.
Stretching out his right leg to pass over a depression that opened before him, Stiles gasped suddenly as a cramp tore through the bottom of his thigh, wrecking his stride. His foot connected with the upward slope of the depression, but his leg instantly folded and he crammed into the compacted dirt kneefirst, down onto his side, skidding on his right cheekbone into the grass.