Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [100]
The movie he recalled from the night in question was 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“I think it’s high time we reinstituted movie night, Captain,” Reed said, deadpanning. “Purely for its tactical training value, of course.”
“Of course,” Archer said, equally deadpan, though his eyes twinkled with restrained mischief.
Reed decided that only after such pastimes once again became a priority aboard Enterprise would he be satisfied that the Xindi threat had finally been brought to an end.
Seventeen
Friday, September 14, 2153,
Xindi Council Inner Sanctum
FOLLOWING A SEEMINGLY interminable journey from the debris field that was all that remained of the destroyed kemacite refining facility, Degra’s shuttle finally touched down in the principal spaceport of the Xindi homeworld’s capital city, just in time for the latest emergency session of the Xindi Council.
Not long afterward, he stepped inside the dimly illuminated Inner Sanctum, and did so with no small amount of trepidation. Degra knew, after all, that neither he nor his fellow Xindi humanoid aide Mallora had much in the way of good news to impart to the other members of the Council. And Degra could see plainly, even before he looked upon the dour faces and met the hard stares of the representatives of the other three Xindi land species who had already taken their seats around the great round Council table, that he was to be taken to task. As he and Mallora seated themselves beside the Xindi marsupials and near the wall-sized seawater tank that housed the Council’s two placidly swimming Xindi aquatics, Degra knew that some, most notably the reptilians and the insectoids who sat directly across the table from the humanoids and the marsupials, might even become fairly demonstrative in voicing their displeasure over recent events.
Commander Guruk Dolim, representing the Xindi reptilians, wasted little time rising to Degra’s expectations. “Your risky scheme has completely failed to halt the human incursion, Degra!” roared the military leader as he brought one of his mailed fists down heavily upon the duraplast tabletop. He rose to his feet as he spoke, his eyes blazing with fury, his gaze focusing like a weapons tube upon Degra; even his scales seemed to move, shimmering and darkening from aquamarine to deep camouflage green, reflecting his roiling emotions—and a cerebral cortex that wasn’t far removed from the brain stem, a racial characteristic of the reptilians.
“We have been more than patient in indulging your passive response to the Terran threat,” Guruk continued. “And yet their starship continues probing even more deeply into our territory than they had ventured previously. Not even the hazards of the Orassin distortion fields have deterred their progress!”
Shresht silenced his angrily chittering aide before fixing his eerie, multi-ocular gaze upon Degra as well. Speaking frenetically in the clicking, popping language of the insectoid people, he said, “I must agree! You have gambled with the safety of our homeworld, Degra—and you have lost!”
Degra could not bring himself to disagree entirely with Shresht’s harsh assessment, however emotionally overwrought it might be. He had, in fact, taken an extraordinarily large gamble, though the odds at the time had seemed to be in Degra’s favor. Yet somehow, in defiance of those odds, Archer and his human crew had won the wager he had placed against them, just as they had defied Degra’s expectations a short time earlier by escaping from the trellium-mining slave camp on Tulaw. Degra had indeed lost a serious gamble. And now the time had come for him to brief the Council candidly about the costs of that failure.
After a brief pause to gather his thoughts, Degra addressed the group, which had lapsed into an expectant silence. “It is true that the destruction of the Kaletoo Sector kemacite mining and