Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [108]
“Even a stopped watch can be right twice a day, right?” McCammon said, downing a copious amount of bourbon a moment later.
Kemper chuckled over his cup. “Damned straight, Mac. You’re living proof of that.”
McCammon adopted a dramatic, wounded expression. “Hey!”
Hayes firmly stepped on the banter, wanting to hear what Chang had to say about interservice relations. “I read your after-action report, Mister Chang. I see that Ensign Mayweather went along on your EVA at the Xindi fuel station.”
McCammon interposed himself, no doubt emboldened by drink. “Damned straight, sir. And letting him come along might have been what set off the booby traps.”
Chang flushed visibly with anger, clearly not enjoying being second-guessed by one of the men he’d commanded on that mission.
Never having been a fan of useless recriminations, Hayes turned a steely eye on McCammon. “There’s no way to know that, Corporal. For all we know, you might have been the one who tripped the trigger on the booby traps. And I think Mayweather proved that he knows his stuff when it comes to working the shuttlepod’s systems, and even MACO ordnance controls. Whether he was on or off the boat at that moment might not have made any difference to the mission’s outcome.” Or to its body count, he added wordlessly.
McCammon turned beet red, and went as silent as a tomb.
Hayes turned toward Chang and said, “It looks to me like Mayweather’s quick thinking may have saved the whole damned mission.” Everybody who made it back from that mission in one piece literally owed the man their lives.
“I’d just as soon he doesn’t get to hear any of us say that out loud, sir,” Chang said, grinning. “At least until I make some new rooming arrangements. My billet’s small enough as it is without having to step around his swelled head.” Fraternal martial laughter erupted at that, and rippled through the room. Everyone tipped their drinking vessels again, consuming more of the burning liquid.
In the renewed silence that followed, Hayes considered how close every member of Chang’s team had come to losing their lives out there in the debris cloud. Though he’d already given Chang’s preliminary report a quick read, the events of the day—particularly the memorial service—hadn’t permitted him to give either the corporal or the surviving members of his strike team a thorough debriefing prior to this moment. He still wasn’t entirely certain whether or not Chang had been correct in deciding to attack the Xindi fuel depot once his team had discovered it, though he was prepared to reserve judgment pending the arrival of detailed reports. On the one hand, Chang’s course of action had dealt the Xindi a blow which might well delay the deployment of their weapon; on the other, the engagement had cost Hayes’s small company of troopers one of their number.
But regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the outcome, Chang had still arguably exceeded Sub-Commander T’Pol’s orders; after all, the record showed that she had ordered the team to take whatever action was “appropriate, prudent, and logical,” and Archer’s dour Vulcan exec wasn’t likely to use any of those three adjectives to describe Chang’s lone-wolf operation. Exceeding one’s mandate was a practice that Hayes also generally frowned upon, though he knew he also had to take into account the extenuating circumstance of Chang’s being forced to operate under com silence. Sometimes a MACO squad leader simply couldn’t afford the luxury of waiting for the due deliberation of the chain of command; there were always occasions when decisions had to be made on the fly, in response to the exigencies of a particular mission, as Ensign Mayweather had ably illustrated when he’d evidently pulled several gung-ho MACO asses out of the fire—and destroyed a Xindi warship and another major piece of Xindi equipment in the process.
Discipline and training are only the means, not the ends, Hayes reminded himself. Still, Mayweather was right to interpret Sub-Commander T’Pol’s orders strictly, even though it