The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [196]
“Keep hitting ’em!” Archer shouted to his own crew, addressing the fleet as well. “And get those dropships launched!”
Once the sixty-odd small troop transports were away from the ships that carried them, the battle for Starbase 1—or whatever might remain of it following the long months of Romulan occupation—would finally be joined in earnest.
Even though the captain knew he wouldn’t be getting off the bridge any time soon, Archer was determined to take that battle all the way to the ground.
Even before the explosive bolts ejected the dropship from the Dykstra’s belly, Private Colin Idaho had known to expect his stomach to try to claw its way out of his body. But what he hadn’t expected was for his guts to attempt to escape through the top of his head before settling for his face. He vomited explosively moments after the dropship took up a fast, planetward trajectory that more than lived up to the little troop transport’s name.
“Why couldn’t these friggin’ dropships come equipped with those really efficient inertial dampers that Starfleet uses?” Idaho said while still in the throes of his agonies.
“You’re a shark, not a squid, trooper. You’ll live,” the corporal told him after he’d finished yakking, at least for the moment. But Idaho wasn’t ready yet to accept that he’d decisively quelled the rebellion of his internal organs; he’d consider that battle won only after his land legs returned, which wouldn’t happen until after the little transport ship was finished making its bucking, rattling, flame-trailed descent.
With nothing better to do at the moment, he recalled having asked Sergeant Mankiewicz just yesterday why the troops couldn’t have used one of the starships’ new cargo transporters to get to the planet’s surface, rather than the dropships. After the lengthy, complex, and decibel-enhanced answer he’d received—Mankiewicz had loudly emphasized both the unsuitability of the transporter equipment for mass human beamings and the tactical assumption that the Romulans could disrupt a transporter beam in such a way as to ensure that whatever it transmitted would arrive as so many kilos of ground chuck—Idaho now knew better than to question the natural MACO order of things.
The recollection made him rejoice that he’d never worked up the nerve to ask the sergeant about the many “here there be dragons” stories he’d heard about Berengaria VII.
But the drop was over soon enough. An immeasurable interval after the harrowing orbital descent had begun, the little dropship was finally on the ground. Idaho saw that the egress hatches were opening, letting in wide shafts of red Berengaria’s cloud-filtered light as the debarkation ramps extended. He also saw what appeared to be the telltale scorings of particle-beam weapons on the external metal gangways as they unfolded; he shuddered, nearly vomiting again as he realized how close he and his fellow MACOs must have come to being vaporized by the gauntlet of orbital Romulan guns they’d just run, and at nauseating ballistic speeds, no less.
He blinked against the intermittent flashes of brilliance he saw coming from beyond the nearest open hatchway as his fellow MACOs shouted in excitement and anger and fear while preparing to plant their boots on the alien ground they’d been ordered to take back from the faceless Romulans.
A strong arm grasped his, helping him get his feet beneath him. “Up and at ’em, trooper,” the corporal said. “You don’t want to let everybody else have all the fun, do you?”
“Thanks, Corporal Guitierrez,” Idaho