Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [83]
Chang’s voice, crisp and businesslike, sounded again in Mayweather’s ear. “Chang to McCammon! I want you to get that shuttlepod clear. Now!”
“Affirmative,” McCammon responded after a very slight pause. “Soon as I release the tether lines.”
Operating on instincts that had always served him well as a spaceborn boomer, Mayweather had begun speaking almost before he realized what he was saying. “Belay that order, Corporal McCammon, on Captain Archer’s authority! Don’t move that shuttlepod, and leave those tethers in place!”
Even though the Xindi security systems had magnetized all of the strike-team members—except McCammon—to the fuel-tank hulls, that shuttlepod still represented their only chance of escape. And the tether lines that ran from the shuttlepod to each of the three large tanks might turn out to be the only way everyone could be assured of getting back to the shuttlepod.
Assuming, of course, that the imminent—and unanticipated—explosion of the MACOs’ entire incendiary arsenal didn’t render the idea of escape utterly moot sometime in the next few seconds.
Chang’s only response to Mayweather’s challenge was a pungent string of curses, followed by a wordless silence that Mayweather knew was going to cost everyone on the team their lives—unless he continued to act precipitously and decisively. Blistered by the obvious anger behind Chang’s latest string of epithets, Mayweather felt fleetingly glad that the MACO team leader’s magnetized boots still rendered him immobile.
But he was far more concerned about the ticking clock than he was with Chang’s wrath. Prioritize your problems, he thought, recalling the first rule of boomer survival that his father had taught him more than twenty years earlier.
He immediately set about putting that rule into practice. “Mayweather to Guitierrez. Keep sending that override signal to the bombs.”
“—knowledged. Dunno what—ood it’ll do, tho—”
“Shuttlepod Two, do you copy?”
Static hissed and screamed in his ear like a feral animal. “—still here, and I’ve left the tether lines up. If you’re wrong, you’re in deep sh—”
“We’re all in it deep, Corporal. Now listen. Guitierrez’s remote override signal can’t pierce the interference.” He glanced down at his padd’s readout again. FIFTEEN. FOURTEEN. Shit! “Can you use the shuttlepod’s transceiver to boost her gain?”
“—unno. Which buttons do I push?”
TWELVE. ELEVEN.
Unbelievable, Mayweather thought, suddenly wishing yet again that he’d listened to Chang and agreed to stay aboard the shuttlepod—not for the sake of his own safety, but because he knew what to do with the ship’s instruments, unlike these arrogant, undereducated—
Easy, Travis, he told himself as he began frantically entering commands into his padd’s manual interface, hoping all the while that his suit’s bulky gloves hadn’t introduced some critical error into his string of override code.
EIGHT. SEVEN. SIX.
Done, he thought, watching the countdown approach the point of no return with a weird sense of equanimity. One way or another.
FIVE.
He stared unblinking at his instrument readouts for several seconds. The number continued staring back at him, unchanged. Except for the faint grinding of the joints of his grit-camouflaged suit, the entire universe seemed to have gone abruptly silent, as though holding its breath.
“Mayweather to McCammon. You there, Corporal?”
A pause, followed by another brief blast of static. “—inally breathing again, Ensign.”
“What did you do?” Chang said. Like McCammon, he also seemed to have just rediscovered how to operate his lips and lungs. Mayweather noted that Chang was speaking over the private channel that linked the other man’s suit to his own, rather than addressing the entire strike team.
“My transmitter is close enough