Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [90]
Frowning, McCammon muted the speakers; the forward consoles continued to display the countdown’s steady downward progression.
“Disengaging tethers,” Mayweather said. The Xindi vessel loomed larger, on a heading directly for the shuttlepod. “Approaching vessel has slowed. Range, two klicks and closing.”
They probably want to take us prisoner, Mayweather thought. They want to interrogate us, find out how much we’ve learned so far about their plan to destroy Earth.
“Let’s dust off, team,” said Chang.
Mayweather glanced up and sideways at the team leader, who exchanged an unusually genial grin with him; the young pilot then faced front and engaged the throttle.
Depleted though they were, the engines immediately hurled Shuttlepod Two into a long parabola that carried her quickly away from the doomed Xindi depot. No one spoke as the craft raced away.
It was evidently only then that Chang noticed the heading Mayweather had chosen.
“Ensign, did that EVA give you brain damage? You’re on a collision course with that Xindi ship!”
The Xindi vessel abruptly grew immense in the forward window, its running lights showing off its frightening array of weapons. The alien warship had angular, aggressive lines, and Mayweather estimated it to be at least twice the size of Enterprise.
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” said the pilot. “Strap yourselves in, folks. And send word back to the airlock to grab the handholds.”
Chang clambered into a seat, and both MACOs present in the crew compartment began fastening their belts and crash webbing as quickly as humanly possible. McCammon shouted a terse warning to the airlock via the com system before turning to face Mayweather, who kept his eyes both on the windows and on his flight console.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” McCammon asked. Mayweather glanced at him, and noted that his face had taken on an almost lime-green, spacesick hue.
“I need to keep that Xindi ship heading toward the fuel depot for as long as possible,” Mayweather said, keeping his voice level. “Otherwise, she might still be around to chase us down after the fireworks start.”
“Let’s hope we’re still around then, too,” Chang said, hanging onto the arms of his seat.
Mayweather skimmed the Xindi ship’s dorsal hull, passing almost close enough to trade hull paint with it before abruptly pulling up and angling away. Crossing his fingers, he opened the throttle up all the way. The impulse engines whined in angry protest, but the little ship complied, however grudgingly, with the dictates of the rudder.
Glancing down at the console’s tactical display, Mayweather could see that the Xindi ship appeared to be trying to turn in order to give chase, though it couldn’t make the maneuver quickly enough to alter its heading from the fuel dump.
Looking elsewhere on the console, Mayweather monitored the progress of the detonation countdown as it continued toward and past the point of no return.
FIVE.
FOUR.
THREE.
TWO.
ONE.
The three dozen synchronized explosions that followed were silent, but they made their combined arrival known instantaneously nevertheless. Retina-searing brilliance flooded the aft and side viewports, and was even visible through the forward window, even though that portion of the shuttlepod was pointed in the direction opposite that of the fuel facility’s spreading conflagration. Shuttlepod Two rocked as the bow shock met her blunt stern, rattling and shaking her, but also carrying the little ship forward like a board skimming along atop a high, horizontally rolling tube of Risan ocean surf.
The tactical monitor on the console displayed an aft view of the secondary and tertiary explosions that had begun tearing through the hull of the Xindi vessel, even as what remained of the combined fuel depot and asteroid-mounted mining facility continued to consume