Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [77]
Trip drank thankfully, but before he could inquire further about the captain’s current whereabouts, and whatever else had been happening aboard Enterprise over the past few hours, the transparent sickbay doors slid open. T’Pol strode into the room, taking graceful, purposeful steps. Trip realized that Phlox must have called her down to sickbay when he had first begun showing signs of regaining consciousness.
As T’Pol came to a stop in front of him, Trip set down his glass on the bedside table and favored her with a small, wry smile. “Sounds like I’m in need of a pretty damned thorough briefing.”
He got one, and he absorbed it in unsurprised silence.
Two landing parties off the ship at once, he thought, resting on his elbows. Both shuttlepods had carried some of Enterprise’s very best people off into two separate sets of dangers. Not only was the captain walking into what might well turn out to be a Xindi trap, but so had Malcolm, Travis, D.O. and Ensign Chandra—friends and colleagues whom he now couldn’t safeguard by trying to go on one mission or the other in their place. Whatever the outcome of either team’s efforts, everything that happened would be a pure fait accompli now, for better or for worse. And the die had been cast while he’d been summarily dealt out of the game. And all because of a whim of Delphic Expanse fate.
Trip exchanged a wordless but sympathetic glance with Hoshi, who seemed to be having similar thoughts. After all, if they both hadn’t been KO’d simultaneously by the E deck anomaly, might not his engineering skills, and her gift for languages, be making some crucial difference between life and death for one or the other of the away teams—perhaps right this very minute?
Even T’Pol seemed to be sensitive to his misgivings, albeit in her uniquely cold, Vulcan way. “There’s nothing you can do to affect the outcome of either mission, Commander,” she said very quietly. “Even your presence among one of the shuttlepod crews would not necessarily guarantee a successful outcome. It is illogical to dwell on it.”
Trip nodded in grudging agreement, though the thought still didn’t sit well with him. “I know that, T’Pol. I just hope they’re doing all right out there. I guess it’s really all I can do at this point.”
“Both teams are extremely competent,” T’Pol said impassively. “And with their complements of MACO troops, I’m certain that they have matters well in hand.”
Trip nodded again. But T’Pol’s bland assertion of confidence sounded suspiciously like somebody’s famous last words. Even on a milk-run mission, after all, there were simply too many damned things that could go wrong.
Trip lay back against the biobed’s single hard pillow, fervently hoping that neither Murphy nor Finagle were enforcing their respective laws today.
Outside Shuttlepod Two
Mayweather tried once again to lift his boots, the left one first, followed by the right. It was a useless gesture, as he’d expected; like Chang beside him, he remained rooted in place, shivering as the heat inside his suit steadily dissipated.
“I wonder what else can go wrong? What’s next, a sneak attack by a hidden Xindi ship?” Chang said after he’d ignited another brief string of caustic, clearly MACO-minted epithets. The intermittent but frequent blasts of static that were coming over the com channel—obviously originating from the very magnetic trap that continued to hold four strike-team members in place where they stood on the outer skin of the Xindi fuel tanks—were already making conversation difficult.
Working hard to keep his own rising anxiety at bay, Mayweather registered some surprise at Chang’s increasingly emotional outbursts. People born and raised in space simply didn’t speculate about possible disastrous outcomes while in the midst of an extravehicular activity; all such discussions were supposed to take place sometime before or after, and in far safer places than in untethered environmental suits surrounded by hard vacuum. And these guys really consider us undisciplined?
Still, Chang’s concerns