Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [74]
Just don’t pop the caps, Guitierrez, until after I get back inside that Starfleet boat, he thought as he pointed his magnetic boots toward the distant shuttlepod and took his first woozy step back toward relative safety.
Several minutes later, as McCammon reached the shuttlepod’s tether line to Target Charlie, a portion of the tank’s hull shifted very slightly beneath his left boot. But in his haste to leap free of the tank—and into space to reach the shuttlepod—he ignored it.
I’ve really gotta find a way to spend more time in zero-g, Guitierrez thought, incredulous. There was something liberating about being in freefall, and her only regret was that she had to remain tethered, via her magnetic boots, to the huge isotope storage tank at Target Baker.
But the best part of being out here was that she no longer felt a trace of the gut-clenching nausea she had been experiencing since shortly before she had discovered her pregnancy. Who would have thought that microgravity was the cure for morning sickness? she thought. Maybe Phlox will want to write a paper about this.
After he helped her figure out what to do about the damned pregnancy in the first place, of course. Naturally, that couldn’t happen until after she finally gathered up enough courage to tell him about it.
Which, she knew, was effectively the same as telling Major Hayes, who would have to be informed, since the Xindi-hunt mission protocols would surely trump the sanctity of any doctor-patient relationship aboard Enterprise. And that would no doubt summarily end her MACO career, as well as Nelson’s.
Whether I bring the baby to term or not, whether I keep the baby or send it away, Hayes will have to cashier us both. He won’t care that we don’t serve in the same squad. He’s going to say, “Fraternizing is fraternizing,” and that’ll be that.
“You okay up there, Guitierrez?” Eby said, the sudden appearance of his sharp voice inside her helmet startling her into almost losing her grip on the last of her half-dozen magnetized explosive disks. “You need to stay focused, Corporal.”
“Don’t you worry about my focus, Private,” Guitierrez said, nettled at what sounded uncomfortably like an order coming from a trooper she outranked. “Right now I’ve got more focus than I know what to do with. Any sign of countermeasures?”
“Negative, either active or passive.”
Guitierrez was relieved to hear that, but she expected her current, relatively nausea-free state of combat-ready nervousness to continue for at least as long as they remained out here, exposed to whatever surprises the Xindi might decide to throw at the strike team. As gently as she might lay an infant down into a bassinet, she set the final disk in place on the skin of the storage tank, where it sat armed and ready. Next, she double-checked the timer-detonator control padd strapped to her left gauntlet, examining the readout that confirmed the successful deployment of each and every one of the radio-linked explosive charges in all three target areas on the Xindi facility. Then she keyed in the INITIATE command. At her signal, each explosive device would independently begin its final thirty-second countdown to detonation.
Using Strike Team Hammerhead’s open channel, she sent a pair of clicks that declared to the entire group that her task was now complete. “Race you back to the shuttlepod, compadres,” she said, speaking into the silence of her suit rather than either of the voice channels; there was no point in unnecessarily risking com-signal interception by the Xindi. “It’s showtime.”
The rest of the team acknowledged remotely, also using clicks, and while Guitierrez and Eby began retracing their cumbersome steps back toward the shuttlepod, something deep in her belly seemed to kick.
But she felt certain—or at least almost certain—that it was nothing more than a warrior’s natural apprehension about engaging a thus-far