Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [75]
Back at Target Abel, Chang noted the bomb-deployment confirmation signals that were coming in on his padd, and clicked his acknowledgment to both. Relief was racing through him like an endorphin; his ad hoc plan was going to work. All the strike team had to do now was get out of harm’s way as quickly as possible, board the shuttlepod, and then double-time it back to Enterprise to make their after-action reports. With the explosion of the fuel tanks to provide a covering distraction, he thought they had a fair chance of evading any Xindi ships that might have lingered unnoticed nearby. He cast a quick grin in the direction of Mayweather, who was walking alongside him, his expression as unreadable as ever in the glare of both men’s helmet lamps.
“How much farther to the shuttlepod?” Chang asked over the secure, tight-beam com channel, his eyes sweeping the close, rolling horizon of the cylindrical storage tank as they continued their slow, methodical walk along its duranium spine. The shuttlepod itself was out of sight.
“We should be able to see her after we cover about another thirty meters in this direction,” said Mayweather, who was consulting the padd on his arm without slowing his pace. “We’ll reach our tether line, and start pulling ourselves back aboard, about twenty meters after that.”
A seeming eternity later, just as Chang was about to ask Mayweather to check his directions again, the shuttlepod hove into view just above the gleaming metal horizon. Another enormous gust of relief blew across the corporal’s soul, not only at seeing the shuttlepod again, but also because he could see a member of the team—McCammon, probably, since he was the only trooper who had been working unaccompanied—drifting quickly toward the airlock that lay atop the shuttlepod, using both leg power and inertia for propulsion, and guiding his trajectory with one of the tether lines that connected the spacecraft to each of the three Xindi storage tanks. Very soon, the entire team would be back aboard the little ship, and then the bombs could all be sent into their final countdowns.
Chang felt a sudden, unfamiliar vibration beneath his grav boots. Then, after he disengaged the right boot’s magnet, he discovered that he couldn’t raise either of his feet from the tank’s surface; even with the magnets shut down, both boots remained stubbornly locked in place, as though he were an insect caught in tree sap.
“What the hell?” Chang said. He looked toward Mayweather, who had come to a stop beside him, evidently every bit as rooted to the fuel tank as Chang was.
“I can’t move, either,” the ensign said.
Shit! Chang thought. One of us must have triggered some sort of security countermeasure somehow. Or maybe we’ve been seen by actual Xindi.
Just over the horizon, McCammon was vanishing into the open outer airlock hatch on the shuttlepod’s dorsal surface. The spacecraft itself now seemed impossibly distant, as unreachable as the Andromeda Galaxy.
Chang’s com system crackled to life, carrying McCammon’s not-quite-so-confident-as-usual voice. “Shuttlepod Two to Strike Team Hammerhead. I’m back in the boat. Where the hell is everybody?”
Corporal Guitierrez spoke up a moment before Chang could find his voice. “Shuttlepod Two, we have a problem. Eby and I are both stuck in our tracks. Looks like some sort of electromagnetic security trap, but the field’s getting so strong it’s interfering with my scanner.”
Then it could interfere with Guitierrez’s remote detonator-timer controls, too, Chang thought, his stomach once again pitching and yawing, just as his and Mayweather’s suit lamps abruptly cut out, and the icy fingers of interstellar space began tracing feather-light touches along the length of his spine. Not to mention our environmental suits.
With a shock of horror, he realized that everyone in Strike Team Hammerhead except for McCammon was fixed in place here, like a pod of Rigelian root-grubs.
“—orporal Chang?” Guitierrez’s tone was beseeching, though her signal was becoming distorted by static.
“—ame over!” Eby was shouting,