Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [69]
Semper Invictus, he thought, though the MACO motto now struck him as somehow hollow. He felt anything but invincible at the moment, after all. They had been deceived, and would no doubt soon be captured and interrogated.
Afterward, more than likely, they would all be killed, except perhaps for Trahve, though Hayes found himself hoping that the Xindi would execute the low-life courier too as a possible security risk. It would serve the sonofabitch right, Hayes thought.
The mission to find the Xindi and their homeworld would go on, of course, carried out in tandem by the MACO company and Starfleet. Per the sealed final orders Hayes had left behind with his company clerk, Corporal McKenzie would lead the MACO force in his place. Not only would she make a demanding leader—those beneath her in the command hierarchy, not to mention several of her current superiors, privately referred to her as “Corporal Punishment”—she also understood the order and discipline of the troops better than anyone else besides Hayes himself. Command of the ship and the Starfleet contingent that ran her would pass to Sub-Commander T’Pol, whose reserved Vulcan demeanor would probably make for a better fit with the open-ended MACO presence aboard Enterprise than had Archer’s more emotionally volatile personality.
The mission had to succeed, after all, regardless of what happened to any individual charged with carrying it out. Too many millions of innocents had already died and had yet to be avenged. And billions more would join those millions if either the MACO or Starfleet contingents serving aboard Enterprise were to falter now.
Comforted by that assumption, Hayes also felt confident that his family back on Earth would get along well enough after his death. The notion of oblivion held no real terror for him; his time in the MACOs and those bloody battles against the Janus Loop pirates had crushed the fear of death out of him years ago. Not being able to see his kids again, being incapable of reassuring them that he had died pursuing a worthy cause, were his only personal regrets.
It’ll be up to McKenzie and T’Pol, or whoever ends up taking over for them if they buy the farm, too, to make sure that my kids have the luxury of mourning me, he thought.
The Xindi structure loomed steadily larger in the window before him. Hayes was pleased to note that even now he felt no personal fear of death, despite his growing certainty of its inevitability. He could only hope that Kemper and Money would also meet their respective ends with a similar sense of equanimity, and would also resist whatever interrogation techniques the Xindi might use on them in the meantime.
But he wasn’t quite so certain about Archer and Reed. Certainly, they were as accomplished as any naval officers he had ever encountered. Their skills—such as an impressive ability to make sense very quickly out of utterly alien instrument panels—made them invaluable mission assets, assets that had to be protected at all costs. But Archer and Reed simply weren’t the product of the MACO company’s elite military training program—a grueling physical and academic ordeal that consistently chewed up and spit out ninety-five percent of even the finest candidates.
Hayes studied Reed, who remained intent on the console before him, on which he continued to work frantically—and so far fruitlessly—to free Trahve’s vessel from the grip of the Xindi tractors. Though Reed appeared to be tougher, both physically and psychologically, than most of the other Starfleeters aboard NX-01, he still wasn’t MACO material. At least, not quite.
Will he crack under the pressure of sustained interrogation? Hayes wondered. He shifted his gaze toward the captain. Will Archer?
Glancing down at his weapon, Hayes hoped he wouldn’t be forced to intervene with extreme prejudice before that question was actually put to the test. But he had no illusions