No Middle Ground

by Caleb Wachter

  “Captain,” the Damage Control stander cut in, “that explosion was from fighter four’s location.”

  Middleton closed his eyes briefly, knowing that in all likelihood his XO had just been killed in the blast. An explosion with enough power to knock the Pride off-course was certainly powerful enough to kill anyone in the immediate area—power armor or no power armor.

  When he opened his eyes again, he knew he had only one play remaining to him. Middleton calmly switched on his com-link, “Mr. Fei, make your move.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Fei Long replied just as Sergeant Gnuko had finished deploying Lu Bu and Peleus, who had taken up firing positions at the mouth of the only entrance to the blind corridor in which they now found themselves.

  Using his data slate, he remotely accessed the primary power grid control system. Chief Garibaldi did likewise from a nearby console while preparing to shunt the power from Reactor One.

  “I’m not sure this is going to work,” Garibaldi said as he finished his own task.

  “Neither am I,” Fei Long admitted. “However, it might draw them to us, providing our shipmates a clear target.”

  “Yeah,” Garibaldi quipped, “with us at the center of that target.”

  He flipped the virtual switch via his data slate, and the transmitter thrummed as it physically vibrated from the paces through which it was now being put. The power grid showed signs of severe fluctuation, which Fei Long worked via his data slate’s virtual interface to keep from reaching a tipping point and forcing a shutdown of ship-wide power.

  After a few seconds, he thought he had managed to create a relatively stable constellation of settings throughout the ship before saying tersely, “Some feedback would be appreciated, Sergeant.”

  “It’s working,” Gnuko replied after a brief pause. “The droids have broken off and are now en route; ETA one minute.”

  “Excellent,” Fei Long said dryly as he worked to maintain the delicate interplay between the transmitter, the ship’s power grid, and the primary fusion reactor of the Pride of Prometheus.

  “Mr. Fei’s transmission appears to be working, Captain,” Ensign Jardine reported with a note of awe in his voice, “I would have never thought the ship’s primary power grid could be used as a signal amplifier.”

  “Let’s just hope Mr. Fei’s signal confuses them long enough to snap the trap shut,” Middleton said severely. “Either way, we’ll only get one shot at this.”

  “Internal sensors are showing thirty nine active droids still operating within the ship,” the Sensors operator reported. “All but four of them are converging on the hyper dish. It appears that Lancer Atticus’ team has cleaned the rest off the hull and are currently re-entering the ship. ETA to the hyper dish junction…two minutes.”

  “Four strays, we can deal with conventionally,” Middleton grudged. “But a three-man team holding out against thirty plus droids for a minute is going to be a tall order.”

  “The first wave is approaching the junction, Captain,” the Sensors operator reported tensely.

  Let’s hope you picked the right man, Walt, Middleton thought to himself as a horde of angry, red signals converged on the trio of blue icons representing the Lancers at the junction.

  Chapter XLII: A Wall of Iron

  “They’ve broken through the outer door,” Gnuko called over the Lancer channel. “Lu, your aim’s the best in our group; take deliberate shots at them center-mass while Peleus and I provide suppressing fire.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” she replied as she checked the power cell of her blaster rifle one last time. Both she and it were as ready as they could ever be.

  “Contact in five…four…three…two…one,” Gnuko called, and Lu Bu gripped her blaster rifle tightly from her standing position behind Peleus, who knelt in preparation for the first wave.

  There was a flash of motion to the right side of the T-junction, and Lu Bu waited a fraction of a second longer than she normally would have done in order to get a clearer shot at their first guest. Once its torso was exposed, she snapped off a round which struck the mechanical creature precisely where she had aimed. The force of her shot staggered it, and she could see a spray of green fluid erupt from the wound as its forward momentum sent it crashing to the deck.

  Peleus and Gnuko added a shot each on the fallen droid just before two more came around the corner. Lu Bu took aim at the left side of the open portal and snapped off an equally-precise shot at the next droid, but this one kept its ‘feet’ beneath it as it brought its weaponized arms up to fire.

  It never got the chance, as Peleus hammered the near weapon-arm with a shot that nearly saw the appendage fly off in a shower of sparks. Lu Bu disengaged from that target and took aim at a fourth droid coming in behind the one to the right—which Sergeant Gnuko had already struck, nearly blowing its lead leg off. A careful shot from Lu Bu sent the machine crashing to the deck in a spasming heap, its weapon arms firing bolts of energy into the panels lining the corridor.

  After that, the horde was too numerous, and too fast, for even Lu Bu to track precisely. She continued to add carefully aimed shots but once the droids managed to clear the corner, their armored torsos enabled them to soak up at least three shots each before crashing to the deck. Some of them even fired their weapons from there, and Lu Bu felt a pair of impacts on her own torso which sent her reeling—but she kept the sights of her weapon lined on the enemy throughout.

  Six droids fell to their fire, then eight, and ten as a lucky shot from Gnuko sent one droid spinning into another just as its arms fired, causing it to fry its neighbor.

  Sergeant Gnuko took a shot to his helmet, the force of which would have broken a lesser man’s neck. But he tucked his chin and continued to pour round after round into the approaching mass of artificial life.

  Peleus took a pair of shots to the torso, followed by a swarm of follow-up fire clustered so tightly on his chest that even his mighty Storm Drake armor succumbed, leaving his torso a smoking ruin.

  But like nothing she had ever seen, the man continued fighting even as his vital fluids fell away in amorphous, congealed lumps. He fired his weapon into the approaching horde of droids—who were only a few meters from the trio of Lancers—before finally falling limp when the enemy concentrated their fire on his wound.

  Lu Bu felt a cold fury grip her as she snapped off a round at an incoming droid’s weapon arm, which had clearly been re-training onto her. The arm exploded, and the force of that explosion knocked the droid into its fellows.

  A split second later, the panels to either side of the oncoming droid flared with a deep blue light, and arcs of electricity went surging through the droid horde—a horde reduced to no more than thirteen members. The droids’ limbs seized up, and both Lu Bu and Sergeant Gnuko took advantage of the precious seconds this bought them, sending round after round into the line of droids which had nearly descended on them.

  They managed to drop six more of the creatures before the remainder regained control of their bodies and resumed their charge. Lu Bu was suddenly struck by a strange thought: Why do they continue to charge when they have ranged weapons?

  Regardless of the ‘why,’ she had no intention of rejecting Heaven’s will or her Ancestors’ blessings. She made to press her trigger again, to lay low another of the seemingly mindless droids as she acquired a nearby target.

  But before she could do so her weapon exploded in her hands, the force of which threw her arms wide and her helmet flying as she went crashing into the nearby panels. She felt a pair of shots hammer into her gut and fought to keep to her feet as another struck her right shoulder, and she temporarily lost her sense of sight.

  Lu Bu’s vision returned just in time to see Chief Engineer Garibaldi, brandishing a plasma torch in one hand, hurl his body into a droid that was less than a meter from her—and whose miniature, cannon-shaped arms were aimed squarely at her head.

  The chief deftly shoved the plasma torch into an opening in the droid’s flank before th
e creature’s torso was filled with a blue-white fire which erupted from every nook and cranny the vaguely humanoid figure’s torso had.

  The droid spun so quickly to face the Chief that Lu Bu barely even registered that she had launched her body at the thing and rammed its own arm against its torso. Its weapon fired before she could grip it with both hands and, using every ounce of genetically-engineered, torturously cultivated strength she possessed, she tore the far-too-delicate-looking appendage from the droid’s body.

  Filled with a primal rage—and knowing these were likely to be her final moments—Lu Bu gripped the droid’s severed arm in both hands and smashed its barrel end into the creature’s opposite arm just as it attempted to fire point-blank at her, sending the shot wide by just a few inches. She hammered the weapon arm again, and again, and again, until both arms—the one still attached, and the one she now brandished—were ruined and on the verge of disintegration.

  She saw the image of Peleus being torn apart in her mind’s eye, and she hammered her gauntleted fists into the droid’s shoulder joint while pinning its arm with her right knee. She pounded repeatedly until a jolt of electricity ran through her gauntlet and up her arm, vaguely realizing she had severed the arm’s control lines.

  Lu Bu then had an experience which she would never forget. For a fleeting moment it seemed as though she was hovering just above her own body, which was still savagely assaulting the remnants of the droid. When she looked around she saw Walter Joneson standing over, his arms folded across his burly chest and a faint look of approval on his face.

  Then she was back inside her own body, and realized the droid beneath her was no longer moving at all. But this was irrelevant to her. Reaching into a seam between its torso’s armor plates, she strained and screamed with everything she had as the plates resisted her. Redoubling her efforts, Lu Bu took a deep breath and arched her back as she heaved against it, and she was filled with a surge of satisfaction as the plates came apart and revealed a faintly glowing compartment of some kind within.

  She plunged her hands into that compartment and grabbed a twelve-sided object perhaps five inches across, which was held in place by pitifully weak clamps. Lu Bu tore it from its housing and the light within the droid disappeared entirely.

  Lu Bu raised it over her head, intent on hurling it at the next droid to come at her, and only then realized there was no weapons fire. She blinked forcefully as she looked around, seeing Chief Engineer Garibaldi clutching his left leg—which ended as a stump just above the knee—while Fei Long attempted to create a tourniquet with some nearby electrical wires.

  She looked toward the horde of droids and saw hulking, humanoid silhouettes picking through the wreckage. It took her a moment to realize that they were not more droids, but Lancers in power armor.

  Wiping her forehead, she realized her skin had been burnt there and was covered in a hot, sticky substance of some kind, which she removed as quickly as she was able for fear it might ruin her eyes if it touched them.

  “Stand down, Lancer,” Sergeant Gnuko panted, and she only then noticed that he was leaning against the wall and nursing a smoking hole in his abdomen. “We got ‘em.”

  Lu Bu had to replay the words in her mind before feeling her body begin to tremble so violently that another person may have called it a spasm, or seizure. Her eyes filled with tears, and for the first time since coming aboard the Pride of Prometheus, she did not fight them. She did not sob like a frightened child, but neither did she fight against the rush of emotion which overtook her.

  “Among men, Lu Bu,” she heard a man’s voice to her right, and when she looked she saw Fei Long standing at a respectful distance with a calm, determined look on his face. He then held out his hands, “I believe I should take that.”

  Furrowing her brow in confusion, she realized after a few seconds that she still held the dodecahedron-shaped device in her hand. After looking down at it, she nodded and stood gingerly—feeling her leg threaten to buckle as she did so—and handed the object to the young man.

  Lu Bu then felt light-headed, and before she knew what had happened the world spiraled into darkness.

  Chapter XLIII: Cleaning Up

  “Sergeant Gnuko,” Middleton said as the large man entered his ready room, “I’m not normally inclined to ask for it, but in this case I hope you’ve got good some news.”

  Gnuko, using a cane rather than a crutch, slowly made his way into the ready room with a data slate in hand. “I believe I do, Captain,” he replied as he sat himself down in the chair opposite Middleton’s. “Over the last week the hull’s been scraped clean; not even a kilo of foreign material is left out there. The droid remains have been catalogued and disposed of, except for a handful of intact ‘droid cores’.”

  “Droid cores?” Middleton asked, accepting the proffered data slate.

  “It’s Fei Long’s term, Captain,” the Sergeant replied, “not mine. He spends every waking moment—which apparently is every moment—examining them. If you ask me, he’s a little too excited over the things.”

  Captain Middleton nodded as he perused the report contained in the slate, which did seem to suggest that these devices were some kind of control units. Fei Long even went so far as to liken them to human brains—a comparison which troubled Middleton for more than a few reasons. “I’ll see that proper security measures are maintained,” he allowed, “but right now we need all the intel we can get.”

  “Of course,” Gnuko replied, wincing for a moment as his hand went to his knee.

  “How’s the leg, Sergeant?” Middleton asked.

  “Doctor Cho says I’ll get 80% functionality back within a month of standard rehab, but begging the Captain’s pardon,” he added somewhat awkwardly, “I don’t exactly trust the man’s neuro-orthopedics.”

  Middleton knew all too well what the Sergeant meant by that, but he shook his head calmly. “A serviceman’s life is making do with what’s available, Sergeant,” he chided a bit more coldly than he would have liked. “Doctor Cho is the Medical Officer aboard this ship, and without him we would all be suffering severe radiation sickness right now.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Sergeant replied, looking properly rebuked. He sat stiffly in his chair for a moment before changing the subject, “Captain, I fully intend to carry out the duties of the Pride’s Lancer Commander, in spite of my injuries.”

  Middleton nodded approvingly. “I’m glad to hear it, Sergeant; we can use your expertise and steady hand. Sergeant Joneson made it fairly clear to me in what might be considered his ‘will’ that you’ll do things differently than he did, but that I should have the utmost confidence in your approach.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Gnuko said, clearly put at ease by Joneson’s last sentiment, “I guess in a way, that’s just what I wanted to talk about.” He withdrew a second data slate and handed it across the desk.

  “What’s this?” Middleton asked, feeling more than slightly intrigued.

  “Obviously we’re going to need some fresh recruits before most of this matters,” Gnuko said hastily. “But I thought that given the likely nature of our upcoming missions, we should divide our Lancer contingent into two—or eventually even three—separate units in order to maximize available hardware and personnel.”

  Middleton scanned the report which, while completely unexpected, did indeed present an alignment which offered multiple benefits. “You’re suggesting Atticus be promoted to the effective rank of Corporal, but given a different in-unit designation of ‘War Leader,’ as well as tactical command over roughly half the Lancer contingent?”

  “His command authority would be strictly off-ship; anything aboard the Pride will still be under my direct authority,” Gnuko explained. “Sergeant Joneson and I put him through his paces recently, sir, and we concluded that this would be an ideal deployment of his abilities. Plus,” he added pointedly, “it opens up the possibility to include more Tracto-ans within the unit, should the opportunity present itself. I happen to shar
e some of Sergeant Joneson’s reservations regarding their kind’s closed-minded and arrogance, Captain, but after seeing Atticus incorporate the Sergeant’s lessons…as well as how Peleus comported himself down in the junction,” he added gravely, “I’m inclined to soften that stance somewhat.”

  “And it gives you a chance to measure him during our trip back to MSP command, while you’re on the mend,” Middleton nodded approvingly. “All right, Sergeant, you have my full support.”

  “Did you get a chance to read the rest of the report, Captain?” Gnuko asked.

  Middleton glanced at the slate and nodded. “All of this meets with my approval, Sergeant,” he assured him before affixing his digital signature to it and handing the slate back to the other man. “You should run your department how you see fit. If I have any concerns we will discuss them in private, but given your service record and recent accomplishments, I have every reason to give you my complete support.” He deliberately did not include Sergeant Joneson’s absolutely glowing recommendation of then-Corporal Gnuko, because after just a week on the job, the man had proven his own merits and did not require another’s expressed support to bolster his claim to Lancer command.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Sergeant Gnuko said, and Middleton liked to think that his slowly-improving ability to read people suggested the younger man swelled with pride at his commanding officer’s endorsement. The Lancer Sergeant stood from his chair, and Middleton did the same.

  “I’ll be seeing you in the shuttle bay at mid-third shift?” Middleton asked.

  “Of course,” Gnuko said stiffly, “a broken neck couldn’t keep me from paying my respects, let alone a torn-up leg.”

  Captain Middleton nodded approvingly. “Dismissed, Sergeant.”