Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [94]
Reed nodded, as did the MACOs. The harried quintet lined up in single file before the airlock, with Archer at the forefront, followed by Hayes, Kemper, and Money. Reed stood at the end of the procession, a position that put him within easy reach of the airlock’s control keypad, which he was presently busy manipulating.
Archer suddenly felt a sensation of freefall that made his belly lurch unpleasantly. “I’ve just neutralized the artificial gravity in the airlock chamber,” Reed explained. Archer turned toward him, and thought he saw him smiling again ever so slightly.
“A little warning might have been nice,” Hayes said, looking dyspeptic, slightly green, and more than a little annoyed. Kemper’s florid complexion was paling as well, already well on its way to chartreuse. At least he doesn’t have to worry about spitting up inside a sealed helmet, Archer thought, quietly amused. I guess there’s an up side to everything, including shirtsleeve space walks.
He checked the tether line again, and for an absurd instant he flashed back to his kindergarten days, when his entire class had been trooped through the Zefram Cochrane Museum for the very first time; each child had held the hand of the next to form a long, semiorganized human chain.
“Sorry, Major,” said Reed, now obviously tamping down a smirk at the ground-pounders’ plight. “Next time.”
I can’t believe I actually ordered this, Archer thought, although he remained as convinced as ever that he had no better alternative. Adopting a knees-bent stance before the outer hatch, Archer pulled out his communicator and flipped it open; he felt reassured, at least somewhat, by the little device’s familiar electronic chirrup.
“Archer to O’Neill. We’re ready to blow the hatch now.”
“O’Neill here, Captain. We’re ready on our end, too, sir. The shuttlepod’s dorsal surface is now oriented directly toward you. But I’d advise you to get over here as quickly as you can. That ship you’re on is reading pretty hot, and this Xindi installation could decide to fire something at us any second.”
“Acknowledged.” Archer locked his gaze with that of Malcolm, whose hands were poised above his keypad like those of a virtuoso musician about to give an honors recital. “We’re blowing the hatch five seconds from my mark.”
Archer quickly closed and tucked away his communicator, hoping to prevent its becoming a potentially lethal missile.
“Mark!” Reed said, beginning the countdown. “Four.”
The little ship rattled and vibrated. The hull rang like a bell, as though something huge and heavy had struck it. Was Trahve doing something up in the cockpit? Or was his ship finally succumbing to its internal stresses and beginning to rip itself to pieces?
“Three. Two,” Reed continued as Archer took a couple of deep breaths.
“One.”
Archer then exhaled, deeply. Empty those lungs, he told himself, well aware of the dangers of explosive decompression.
Facing the outer hatch, Archer heard everyone else releasing air, following their EVA training. Reed’s hand slammed down on the keypad, and the hull shimmied very hard a split second later as the explosive bolts fired simultaneously with a deafening roar. In that selfsame instant, the outer hatch vanished in a haze of jagged ice crystals and twisted outbound metal shrapnel, and a miniature hurricane howled briefly to life just behind Archer’s back.
He gave himself to it, and it bore him forward through the breached and gaping hatchway and out into the airless void, where the hurricane’s thunderous sound pealed swiftly away into a whine before devolving into a cold silence that was utter and absolute. The top of the shuttlepod beckoned from nearby amid the surrounding infinite blackness beyond, limned by the small vessel’s running lights and outward-directed floodlights. Although the craft’s opened airlock entrance loomed large, it still seemed impossibly far away.
Archer clenched his eyes shut tightly, hoping his eyeballs wouldn’t be flash-frozen inside his head. The line attached to his