Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [60]
“If this dust cloud can hide us, it can also hide them,” Mayweather said.
“Look at this,” Guitierrez said, leaning in closely to the monitor and its false-color image of the fuel depot and the approaching ships. She was clearly trying to move the conversation past the worrisome point Eby had raised. “The nearest Xindi ship is docking at one of the fuel tanks. Must be fueling up.”
“It’s definitely sending out a signal, too,” Mayweather said. “If I were a betting man, I’d say it was transmitting some kind of access code.”
“We’re all betting men right now,” Chang said, smiling grimly. “That ship might have just handed us the keys to the kingdom. How much of their access code did you capture?”
Mayweather examined the readouts on the com monitor, then shook his head in disappointment. “The little bit we picked up was pretty garbled by all the ionized particles floating around out there. I’m afraid they’re not going to make it quite that easy for us.”
The quintet watched in silence for the better part of an hour as each of the Xindi ships docked and drank its fill of the refined Xindi isotope. Mayweather busied himself at the controls, hoping that the computers might be able to record some useful Xindi information—words, numbers, pictograms, anything at all—despite the dust cloud’s abundant electromagnetic interference. But the few bits he received were both embedded in and distorted by a torrent of radio noise. Mayweather also noticed that there seemed to be a near total absence of discernible audio communications between the ships and the depot—a fact that tended to confirm his suspicion that the facility was entirely unmanned and automated. He pondered this as he fed the precious few nuggets of Xindi data he’d gathered into the computer’s translation matrix; predictably, the linguistic algorithms had no luck interpreting any of the incoming symbols or sounds.
Hoshi will find a way to crack their language, he thought. He realized in that instant, and to some small comfort, not only that he expected Hoshi to recover from whatever anomaly-induced state she was in, but also that he anticipated success in bringing the captured Xindi signals back to Enterprise. Which meant that he expected to get the shuttlepod to safety, despite the odds.
Don’t get cocky, flyboy, he chided himself. You’re a long way from home free. Lots of things can go wrong before we’re out of here.
Chang turned away from his study of the monitors and barked an order back to McCammon and Eby. “Get four EVA suits ready. And prep the tether lines and magnetic grapples.” He turned back toward Guitierrez. “Corporal, break out the ordnance. We’ll want twenty-four heavy-yield tri-thermite explosives, rigged for remote detonation.” He hesitated a moment, and Mayweather saw him sizing up the structures on the monitors. “Better make that thirty-six of them.”
“Are you really planning what I think you’re planning?” Mayweather asked. “Are you sure lobbing a few grenades at the Xindi is really the ‘appropriate, prudent, and logical’ thing to do?”
Chang turned toward him, raising his voice loudly enough for the others to hear clearly; just as clearly, the MACO squad leader had no intention of responding to Mayweather’s comment.
“We don’t have enough weapons to take on the Xindi ships that are docked here,” Chang said to his team. “But we aren’t leaving until we take out as much of this fuel distribution operation as possible. We’re going to do a surgical ground strike. But instead of targeting the enemy directly, I intend to go after those fuel tanks.”
“And instead of striking on solid ground, we’re going to be space walking,” McCammon said, sounding glum. Mayweather wondered wryly what had happened to the gung-ho spirit with which he had imbued all of his tall tales of his past exploits.
“Once these three ships depart, Mayweather will bring the shuttlepod to position a half-klick above the containment tanks and keep station there,” Chang said, ignoring the other