No Middle Ground

by Caleb Wachter

  But in any event, the smart play would be to burn their engines at full power to minimize potential engagement time in the event the Pride suffered less than catastrophic damage.

  Still…this doesn’t seem right, Middleton cursed silently until he saw the speed of the sixteenth missile and something clicked in his mind. His fingers flew over his chair’s readout as he called up schematics from the ship’s archives, flipping through directories until coming to the exact listing he needed and his blood ran cold.

  “Starfires in range in twenty seconds, Captain,” Sarkozi reported as she continued to work furiously at her own console.

  “Tactical,” Middleton began calmly, his jaw set in grim determination, “prepare to receive a Liberator class torpedo. Comm.,” he continued evenly as heads turned in outright shock at the mention of what may well have been the most terrifying pieces of ordnance ever developed in the Confederated Spine, “you can hold off on scrambling the Starfires a little longer.”

  “Missiles in range in five, four, three, two, one…” Sarkozi reported in a professional, if subdued voice. “Starfires in range now, Captain,” she reported just as the missiles entered their projected zone of fire on the main screen’s tactical display.

  All around the bridge was silence, or at least as close to it as can be achieved with reports being relayed to the various department heads, as the bridge crew watched the swarm of fifteen Starfire missiles come ever closer to the Pride of Prometheus. The lone icon of the sixteenth ‘missile’ updated to display its proper status as a Liberator torpedo, and it continued to accelerate toward the Pride. It actually passed the line of Starfires, since they had already exhausted their fuel supply and were now relying solely on maneuvering jets for orientation. Middleton knew it was too late for anything but to rely on desperate, close-range heavy laser fire in addition to their underwhelming point defense countermeasures…not to mention prayers to the Saint himself.

  “At least we know when the Starfires will touch off,” Middleton said wryly, eliciting a pair of snickers from Jersey and, surprisingly, the Comm. officer, an Ensign named Jardine. The pirate captain would want the Starfires to fire as close to the torpedo’s impact as possible, just so long as they hit before the torpedo did by a few microseconds. “But just to be safe, begin broadcasting the jamming signal beginning nine seconds prior to the Liberator’s impact, Comm.”

  “Aye, sir,” the Comm. officer acknowledged.

  “Tactical,” Middleton continued, “I’ve got a case of Gorgon Ice Ale for any gunner who can evict that torp from my sight.” The corvette was still out of the Pride’s heavy laser range, which had clearly been the pirate captain’s intention all along, so a one in a hundred shot of hitting the Liberator was better than sitting on their hands with silent guns.

  “Larry that, sir,” she replied before relaying his offer to the gun deck.

  The tension on the bridge was almost suffocating, and Middleton had no choice but to watch as the timer sluggishly wound down. At least I can count on the pirate waiting until the last possible second to unleash his Starfires, he thought bitterly. Thank Murphy for small miracles.

  When the timer reached nine seconds to impact, the Comm. officer audibly slapped his console to activate the jamming signal. Shortly thereafter, the heavy lasers of the Pride’s forward array opened fire one by one, lancing off into the field of stars and disappearing.

  “Seven…eight…nine shots away, Captain; zero strikes on target,” Sarkozi reported testily just as the tenth and final heavy laser cleared its metaphorical barrel, resulting in a wave of excitement in the Tactical pit. “A hit, Captain!” Sarkozi exclaimed an instant before the Starfires erupted with all their might and fury.

  The lights on the bridge dimmed and briefly went out altogether, followed by a loud, crashing sound which saw the ship lurch off its axis. Myriad alarms to go off in unison as damage reports streamed into the bridge just as the lighting returned.

  That they were still alive and able to receive reports at all was a miracle in and of itself, and one Middleton did not intend to take for granted. Liberator torpedoes were ship-busters, meaning they impacted on the hull and then bored a hole through the target ship’s armor using high-powered plasma streams. Through the newly-made hole, the torpedo would insert a high-yield explosive device which could destroy all but the largest capital ships in a single go, due to the explosion going off within the armor rather than without.

  “Tactical, focus your fire on that corvette,” Middleton ordered as he turned to the Shields operator. “What’s the status of the forward shields?”

  “The forward array has buckled, Captain,” he reported as blood flowed down his nose and onto his shirt. “Six of eight relays are off-line; I doubt I can get a screen up before the corvette closes to firing range, sir.”

  “Do your best,” Middleton ordered as he saw that the corvette had already come into the Pride’s heavy laser range. He growled in frustration, knowing it would take precious seconds to recharge the forward batteries after their last-ditch attempts to destroy the Liberator. That meant they would get no more than two shots at the enemy before they closed range, which may or may not be enough to disable the enemy ship before it shot past them and escaped to the hyper limit. Middleton silently laid the odds right around fifty-fifty for the pirate to escape. “Inform the gun deck that they may fire at will on approach,” he added almost absently.

  Sarkozi acknowledged the order and relayed it to the gun deck, after which the seconds ticked by as the enemy vessel came ever closer to the Pride of Prometheus. The forward batteries fired in near unison and Middleton allowed himself a pleased smirk at their coordination as the corvette’s forward shields visibly failed. The pirate held its own return fire until it was well within its own weapons’ optimal firing range before unleashing a hail of beam weapons, which impacted on the Pride’s forward hull with reports that were audible even from the bridge.

  “Forward armor holding, Captain,” Sarkozi reported crisply. “No breaches detected. Heavy laser battery number three is off-line…and damage control protocols have been initiated,” she continued, eliciting a sideways glare from the nearby Damage Control officer at having usurped his privilege.

  “Very good; continue firing as she passes by,” Middleton instructed. “Helm: keep our bow facing them throughout. Another two volleys and she’s done for.”

  “Aye, sir,” Jersey replied, this time with considerably less disgruntlement.

  “Captain, the enemy vessel is hailing,” the Comm. operator reported anxiously, pausing briefly before adding, “she’s offering her surrender.”

  “She’s powering down her engines, Captain,” Sarkozi concurred, a note of triumph in her voice.

  Despite the severity of the situation, Middleton arched an eyebrow incredulously. “Put her on screen,” he ordered, straightening himself in his chair just before the rugged, yet oddly handsome, face of a bent-nosed woman appeared on the viewer. “This is Captain Tyrone Middleton of the MSP cruiser Pride of Prometheus,” he said sharply using his ‘true’ first name, as protocol demanded. His father’s name had been Tyrone, and the two of them had experienced a rather severe falling out just before Middleton had gone to college, prompting him to adopt his middle name of Timothy for informal use. “You are ordered to stand down, heave to and prepare to be boarded.”

  “We will comply,” the pirate captain replied agreeably, causing Middleton’s eyes to narrow suspiciously. “We have already deactivated our engines and are powering down our fusion core while we prepare to receive your boarding party; I have no desire to see my crew suffer for my failure as their captain.”

  “Take your weapons off-line and power down your shields, Captain,” Middleton instructed in a hard voice. “Do so quickly, or I’ll have my gunners tear your ship to pieces.”

  The woman tilted her head toward someone on her own bridge, and a moment later Sarkozi nodded her affirmation that the pirate corvette had done as instructed.


  “Your name, Captain?” Middleton pressed, leaning forward in his command chair as he considered how this could all be a deception. We survived the Liberator torpedo—one of the few universally banned weapons in the Confederated Spine—so perhaps she simply has no more fight left in her? he wondered briefly. Maybe her ship is in worse shape than it appears…but even so, with reasonable maneuvering they still have a good chance to escape our weapons range.

  “Captain Meisha Raubach,” the large-nosed woman replied stiffly, breaking his silent musings. “We will surrender to your inspection and seizure teams as soon as they arrive,” she said, briefly snapping her eyes below the viewer’s pickup. “Raubach, out.”

  “Confirm their engines, shields and weapons are off-line,” Middleton snapped irritably. He was certain he was missing something, but what that was he could not yet say...

  “Confirmed, Captain,” Sarkozi replied promptly. “Their entire power grid outside of environmental now reads as off-line.”

  “They must be itching for a trench fight,” Middleton mused aloud, grasping at straws for why they would give up at this juncture.

  “Maybe they hope to sucker our Lancers aboard and then counterattack with a boarding party of their own?” Sarkozi asked, sounding respectfully skeptical.

  “Could be…” Middleton mused, feeling a growing knot of discomfort in the pit of his stomach. Something isn’t right here, he thought, angry with himself for not seeing all the angles. “No,” he shook his head in negation, “there’s no way that’s it; our Lancers outnumber that ship’s listed armed forces personnel three to one at full complement, and I’d wager we’re in better shape than she is.”

  Ensign Sarkozi nodded slowly. “True…and nobody wants a firefight on their own ship,” she continued before throwing a three dimensional representation of the Pride onto the main viewer. “The Liberator’s still lodged onto the starboard bow,” she reported as the image centered on that part of the represented ship, showing the path of the beam in bright red. “Its coring beam fired and penetrated decks three through nine at an angle of approximately twelve degrees, extending nearly sixty percent the length of the ship.”

  Captain Middleton called up the latest damage reports and had to keep himself from wincing. The latest reports showed four confirmed deaths and three more crewmembers missing whose last reported positions were along the path of the coring beam.

  Just then a pale, blue bar of lights began flashing along top of each workstation, as well as around the joint between the bulkheads and the ceiling. Middleton did not immediately recognize the emergency code.

  But when he did, he understood the pirates’ intentions all too clearly.

  Chapter III: Earning Hazard Pay

  “Biohazard detected on decks four, five and six,” the Comm. officer reported. “Emergency lockdown protocols are now in effect.”

  Middleton punched up the ship’s doctor on his chair’s comm. unit and was quickly rewarded with the image of the aging doctor’s face. “What is it, Doctor?” he asked, feeling an odd mixture of anxiety and serenity now that the final piece had fallen into place. It was terrifying to have a biological contagion aboard the ship, but he now fully understood the tactical situation and would no longer need to analyze and re-analyze each and every piece of new information. To Middleton, this was actually a significant relief.

  “Computer’s reading some kind of multi-part, auto-recombinant airborne virus,” Doctor Milton replied grimly. “It beat the standard filters because it only recombines inside the host’s body. Frankly, we’re lucky it got detected by the outdated filters in here,” he said with a hard look.

  Middleton kept his features firm despite the roiling sensation in his abdomen. “Can you treat it?”

  The Doctor shook his head as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Realistically the best thing we can do is lock the ship down, shut off the primary air circulation systems and hope to Murphy it’s been contained.”

  “Can we re-route the air circulation through the systems in Engineering and the Bridge?” Middleton pressed, knowing it was a long shot. The Pride’s critical areas—the bridge, Engineering, the gun deck and sickbay—had independent air re-circulation systems which, when activated, could keep those portions of the ship separate in the event of a contaminant like the one just discovered. They could also filter out and destroy any potential bio-contaminants for several days with no more than emergency power. Tapping into those filtration systems was a long shot, but Middleton had to do everything possible for his crew.

  “If we do that, we risk exposing the crew that are already protected within the high-security sections,” the Doctor shook his head firmly. “Protocols are clear on this situation, Captain; I’ve already initiated the lockdown, and now only you or I can override it. As Chief Medical Officer, it is my opinion that you should leave the lockdown in place until this contagion has been identified and treated, or run its course in containment.”

  Captain Middleton felt the urge to sit back in his chair but fought it, remaining precisely where he was so he could maintain eye contact with Milton. “How long, Doctor?” he asked after a lengthy pause which saw all activity on the bridge come to a grinding halt.

  “If this is a high-grade bioweapon, and I’ve got no reason to believe it isn’t, no more than twelve hours—barring extreme luck with the available treatments,” Doctor Milton replied matter-of-factly. “That still gives me a few hours here to determine what it is we’re dealing with…in the event we don’t have ‘extreme luck’.”

  Middleton could feel the eyes of the entire bridge crew on him as the reality of the situation sank in for them. But to him, Doctor Milton’s report was just another piece of the puzzle which explained the second corvette captain’s behavior perfectly. To Middleton’s mind, the fact that the Liberator had carried a bioweapon rather than a ship-busting bomb was good news since at least some of the crew would survive. They were already in full lockdown, containment mode, so there was little point in worrying about the inevitable aftermath of the virus just yet.

  “I’ll leave you to it then, Doctor,” Middleton said with a short nod which Milton returned before cutting the com-link. Straightening himself in his chair, Captain Middleton turned deliberately toward Ensign Sarkozi. “Has Captain Raubach’s vessel come to a full stop?”

  Sarkozi stared blankly at him for a moment before snapping to and checking her console with a glance. “No, Captain,” she said with a note of surprise, “she’s cut her engines and stopped her acceleration, but the corvette’s inertia is still carrying it forward with only the gravity of the gas giant slowing her down fractionally, and they’ve already gone well past orbit-breaking speed.”

  Middleton had expected such, so he continued calmly, “Are their shields still raised?”

  Sarkozi glanced down and shook her head. “Negative, Captain; her shields are down and her primary generator is off-line. Aside from her forward momentum, she’s dead in space.”

  Replaying the sequence of events in his mind, Captain Middleton shook his head at his own lack of experience. Foreseeing the presence of not one, but two banned weapons in the Liberator torpedo and the bioweapon it carried, required an unreasonable amount of foresight. But he now knew that he should not have accepted Captain Raubach’s unconditional surrender as readily as he had.

  “Tactical,” he began evenly, feeling his face go red with anger, “have the gun deck transfer fire control of the forward batteries to my console.”

  “But Captain—“ Sarkozi began, but the rest of her words caught in her throat at Middleton’s hard, unyielding look. “Transferring now, sir,” she said professionally before bracing to attention several seconds later and adding, “transfer complete, Captain.”

  “Comm.,” the Captain said, his eyes fixed on the main viewer, “hail the corvette.”

  “Hailing now, Captain,” Ensign Jardine replied after a brief pause.

  A moment later, the screen was filled with Captain Meisha T.
Raubach’s smug features. “We are prepared to receive your boarding party, Captain Middleton,” she said officiously, but Middleton could plainly see the outright arrogance in her visage. She clearly knew that the Pride of Prometheus would catch her eventually, but she also just as clearly knew that the Pride would be in lockdown and that sending a boarding party would be next to impossible until that lockdown was over, which could either take hours or days.

  Still, Middleton thought to himself bitterly as he leaned forward in his chair, at least we won’t have to worry about them sending a boarding party of their own. “Captain Raubach,” he began in an officious tone of his own, “you have deployed outlawed ordnance, including weapons of mass destruction in the form of an engineered bioweapon, delivered by an universally banned ship-to-ship delivery platform. Your crimes have been noted in my ship’s log and are witnessed by the members of this crew; under the Confederation War Crimes statute you are hereby sentenced to summary execution.”

  Captain Raubach stiffened visibly as she shook her head in negation, her curly hair bouncing around her oddly handsome features. “The Confederation War Crimes statutes are outdated, Captain,” she said smugly. “As Imperial citizens, both I and my crew are afforded safe passage to an Imperial outpost—as stipulated under both the Union Treaty and the United Space Sectors and Provinces Act—where our legal status can be impartially determined. We have complied with your demands by powering down our fusion reactor and disabling our weaponry—as well as our engines,” she added with a triumphant smirk, “and are even now awaiting your boarding party. I assure you we will cooperate fully with your inspection and seizure teams whenever they arrive.”

  “The Union Treaty has been dissolved, Captain Raubach,” Middleton said evenly, “and with it your so-called ‘protection’.”