Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [17]
Like Mayweather, O’Neill was a space baby, “born on a freighter and raised in microgravity,” as she liked to say. She had learned to run flight-control consoles while sitting on her father’s knee, unaware until years later that her brilliant flying maneuvers at age five were really the result of preprogrammed auto-astrogation subroutines.
As she grew, O’Neill knew that she wanted something different for her life, and eventually she found that calling with Starfleet. She attended flight school in San Francisco, graduating just three years after Captain Archer. Following postings on the Essex and the Archon, two of Starfleet’s Daedalus-class starships, she had joined the crew of Enterprise near the end of ’52, shortly before Archer had been captured by the Klingons. That had certainly been a mission to remember.
Although O’Neill had expected to be given a job as a flight controller, for some reason, Archer had made her a watch commander. She didn’t mind the assignment, though she sometimes wished she could have a more hands-on role in piloting the ship, even if the job of pilot was considered “below” her rank.
Guess I’m finally getting my wish, she thought, checking coordinates and headings on the shuttlepod’s navigational computer. Through the wide forward window, she watched the desiccated, dust-shrouded, tan-and-orange lump of a world that was Kaletoo as it grew ever larger. According to the data being received by the small auxiliary craft’s sensors, numerous vessels were currently arriving at and departing from Kaletoo; other than the occasional streak of light caused by some ship’s fiery passage through the planet’s soupy atmosphere, however, she couldn’t spot any of this traffic visually.
“We’ll be entering the planet’s exosphere in about three minutes, Captain,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Archer.
“Thanks, Donna,” said the captain, who had just signed off with T’Pol. He edged forward, half-crouching between O’Neill and Reed. “We’re on com silence from here on in. Ensign Marcel is pulling Enterprise back to the periphery of the system.”
“Good idea,” Reed said. “There’s no point in announcing our presence to any long-range Xindi sensors that might be present down there.”
O’Neill nodded. “Or to ships departing from the surface, or arriving from off Kaletoo.”
Reed cast a slightly worried glance at Archer. “Just how far into the ‘periphery’ does T’Pol intend to withdraw?”
“The safety of the ship is the most important consideration,” Archer said. “So I’ve given T’Pol a lot of discretion. I doubt she’ll want to get Enterprise so far from Kaletoo that she can’t maintain contact with the deep-space probes we launched into this system.”
“But I suppose Enterprise will probably be too far away to give us a quick rescue should the need arise,” Reed said with a resigned chuckle.
Archer gestured with his thumb toward the silently attentive MACO team, strapped into their seats in the aft compartment and armed to the teeth. “Let’s hope we brought all the rescue we’re going to need here with us.”
“Understood, sir,” Reed said, nodding.
O’Neill could no longer suppress what one of her flight-school colleagues had called her “fatalistic grin.”
“Cheer up, Lieutenant,” she said as she slightly leveled out the shuttlepod’s approach vector. “Like the captain said, we’ve got Earth’s finest fighting force watching our back. What could happen?”
“There’s nothing quite like swimming in the shark tank, is there?” Reed muttered, so that only O’Neill and Archer could hear.
Archer smiled grimly as he patted both O’Neill and Reed on the shoulder. “Take her in.”
A minute or so later, the shuttlepod passed the rarefied topmost layer of Kaletoo’s atmosphere, and swiftly descended toward the planet’s far more substantial thermosphere and mesosphere bands. O’Neill fought the controls for a moment as sudden and extreme turbulence buffeted the ship.
Reed looked from his data screens to the forward window. O’Neill was about to give