No Middle Ground (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride)

by Caleb Wachter

  Lining up a shot on the Marine’s visor, Lu Bu sent a round at the Marine’s unseen face, but was disappointed as the shot went low when the barrel of her weapon unexpectedly wavered toward the floor.

  “Grav-plating,” Joneson bellowed. “Point and line squads, maintain your assignments; Thomas, disable these plates!”

  “Yes, sir,” Thomas replied, and Lu Bu found it nearly impossible to get a clear shot as the gravity of the corridor seemed to fluctuate completely at random. At times it seemed as though she was back in her mother’s compound, with gravity forces nearly twice that of normal human tolerances, and other times it seemed as though they were in a zero-gee environment.

  Still, she managed to send a few well-placed shots down the corridor as the Marines took advantage of the opportunity to cover both sides of their intersection, and to Lu Bu’s count it appeared there were four Marines positioned before her.

  But her shots did little more than strike the heavily-armored thighs and breastplates of the Marines, and only served to stagger them or force a brief retreat behind their respective corners.

  There was a series of sharp blasts behind her, after which the fluctuations in gravity ceased entirely and they were fully in a zero-gee environment.

  “Ready for insertion, Sergeant,” Thomas called out.

  “Mag-locks, Lancers!” Joneson ordered, and again Lu Bu barely had enough time to engage her boots’ locking mechanisms before the roar of venting atmosphere surged down the corridor, followed by yet another wave of shrapnel which skittered haphazardly off the metallic surfaces of the corridor and its inhabitants. “Thomas, Sherman,” Joneson ordered, “you’re in first. Unger, you’re next.”

  The weight of fire from the enemy Marines was significantly heavier this time as Lu Bu and her squad-mates retreated to the newly-made, two meter wide hole, and one of Unger’s Lancers fell to the deck just before reaching the hole. His helmet was clearly compromised, with the face shield having been shattered as blood trickled down its duralloy surface.

  “Insert, Lancer,” she heard Unger snap as she hesitated, wondering if she should help her fallen squad-mate, “now!”

  His words spurred her to action, and she leapt down the hole to the deck below. No sooner had she arrived there than two things happened: first, Corporal Thomas’ squad began firing at a nearby panel and second, a stream of blaster bolts came down the corridor from both directions.

  Corporal Thomas and two of his men were hit immediately, and Lu Bu laid down a barrage of covering fire as quickly as she was able as she backed up against the wall. The Corporal staggered as a series of shots impacted on his armor, and he fell near Lu Bu’s position as his armor clearly failed from repeated, accurate blaster strikes.

  Without thinking, she continued firing with her left hand and reached to his belt with her right, where he kept his plasma grenades. She knew she would have to be accurate, or she would risk harming her fellow Lancers, but it was clear they had no time to re-group and fortify the position.

  Thumbing the activation button and twisting the cap of the grenade so it would explode on impact, she took aim—while still firing the blaster rifle with her left hand—and hurled the grenade down the corridor like she was gunning for the end-zone on a gadget play.

  The grenade sailed perfectly straight in the now zero-gee environment, where it struck the far wall of the intersecting corridor which the Marines were stationed within. The grenade exploded in a bright, fiery flash, and this time she barely even felt the energy of the explosion as the last wisps of blue fire barely reached her position.

  But the Marines’ fire from that intersection had ceased altogether, so Lu Bu turned quickly and saw one of her squad’s members fall to the ground, her body spasming as it was enveloped in a cloud of blue-white flame. The Lancer barely managed to utter a scream before going silent—and limp.

  “Plasma cannon,” Corporal Unger shouted as he took up his fallen squad-member’s position while firing as quickly as his blaster rifle would allow. “Unger minus two, Sarge!” he added between shots.

  “Larry that,” Lu Bu heard Joneson reply, just before the barrel of the plasma cannon swept around the corner toward her. She fired twice at the weapon, with each of her shots finding their home on the plasma cannon’s thick barrel, and Corporal Unger also landed a pair of shots on the weapon’s mid-section.

  But their efforts did little to deter the Marine wielding the bulky weapon, as he slung it around and, holding it at waist-level with both hands, fired the powerful weapon at their position.

  Lu Bu was determined that if she was to die in the cannon’s flames, she would take its wielder with her. So she took what she truly believed would be her final shot—aiming directly at the man’s visor.

  His head snapped back from the force of the impact, but not before the roaring blast of super-heated plasma shot down the corridor from the cannon’s barrel and smashed into Corporal Unger, spinning him like a top and spraying molten metal fragments in all directions as his suit was melted by the powerful weapon.

  Lu Bu had no time to consider her options, knowing that the Marine needed to wait at least five seconds before firing his hellish weapon again. So she stood and ran down the corridor as fast as she could, finding that her power-armored, servo-enhanced legs were far slower than she expected.

  With four seconds remaining, the Marine ducked back around the corner and his cohorts wrapped their weapons around the corner and they took aim at her as she charged toward them.

  With three seconds remaining before the plasma cannon could again fire, she managed to correctly predict the path of the rightward Marine’s fire and blocked all but one of his shots with the body of her blaster rifle. The leftward Marine’s blaster rifle hammered repeatedly into her shoulder and chest, but she continued her charge unabated.

  With two seconds left she had nearly reached the intersection, and hurled her ruined weapon—which had thankfully not yet exploded from repeated impacts near its power cell—at the leftward Marine just before slamming her power-armored knee into the right Marine’s forearm, knocking his weapon off-target.

  With one second left, she grabbed for his blaster rifle and pivoted her body as she slammed his armored bulk into the thin, metal wall of the corridor and sent his head into a power conduit. The electricity arced briefly before cutting out, but the interruption in his suit’s control systems was just enough time for her to grab the blaster rifle from his slackened fingers.

  Knowing she had no more time before the plasma cannon could be turned on her, she turned and fired at the first, glassy visor she saw in the corridor opposite herself. The Marine’s head snapped back and she noted with satisfaction that it had been the plasma cannon-wielding warrior who she had struck. Uncertain if the first shot had penetrated his visor, she fired again as she clomped across the junction as quickly as her painfully slow, armored legs would take her.

  The second shot also landed on the man’s visor, and this time he went to his knees and the cannon slipped from his gauntleted hands to the deck. But his fellow Marine had brought his own weapon up, and was aiming at Lu Bu’s head.

  She knew she would be unable to bring her weapon up in time, so she tried to sink her weight in a last-ditch effort to avoid the incoming deathblow, but her armor prevented her from doing so.

  The Marine fired, but not before the barrel of his weapon was struck by a timely shot from one of her fellow Lancers, and the Marine’s blaster shot went just wide of her helmeted head. Needing no more providence from the Ancestors, Lu Bu screamed and lifted her leg before driving it forward into the man’s arm.

  Her duralloy boot slammed into the Marine’s forearm and pinned it against the wall of the corridor, but he kept his grip on the blaster rifle and grabbed her leg with his free hand before shoving it off his pinned arm.

  Squeezing the trigger, Lu Bu sent a round into the man’s lightly-armored neck. The Marine’s free hand went to the fresh gash in his armor, and Lu Bu knew she had him
as she brought her leg back down before slamming her armored shin into his head, knocking his helmet completely off in the process and knocking the warrior prone to the deck.

  There was the sound of repeated blaster rifle impacts from behind her, and she turned just in time to see the Marine whose rifle she had taken crash against the wall of the corridor with a short vibro-blade in his hand. It took her a moment to realize he had been coming for her with the weapon, and that realization made her grind her teeth as she added her own weapon’s fire to that of her fellow Lancers until the blaster rifle’s power cell was completely empty—and the Marine’s armor was a shattered, smoking shell.

  She turned back to the Marine whose helmet she had knocked off and realized she had taken more than just his helmet; she had apparently kicked his head off as well! Finding the sight of a decapitated man more odd than disturbing, she reached down to collect the plasma cannon. Its dual grips felt good in her hands, and she swung the barrel of the weapon around to sweep the nearby corridors, only to find them all empty.

  “Regroup, Lancer,” she heard Sergeant Joneson call, and she turned to see him standing amid the fallen forms of her fellow warriors. The sight of so many downed Lancers—six, by her count—angered her and she felt the urge to fire her newfound weapon into the nearby wall in rage. “Regroup!” Sergeant Joneson snapped again.

  This time, Lu Bu managed to force her choler down as she trudged back toward their position just in time to hear Thomas call out, “Ready, Sarge.”

  “Mag-boots,” Joneson ordered, and again she had just enough time to lock her boots before the corridor was filled with the rush of escaping gas, which deformed the deck-plates around the jagged hole which the boarding tube had made.

  “Give me totals,” Joneson growled.

  “Gnuko: plus six, minus three,” Corporal Gnuko reported stiffly.

  “Thomas…plus five…minus three,” Thomas said through panting breaths. It was a miracle he had survived the ruination of his armor.

  “Sherman: plus five, minus one,” Sherman added, his voice crackling with static.

  Lu Bu looked down at Corporal Unger’s clearly lifeless body, of which barely half of his power armor remained. She knew she was the only surviving member of her squad, so she cleared her throat and reported, “Unger: plus four, minus three, Sergeant Joneson.”

  “Joneson plus three, minus three,” Joneson added with a nod to Lu Bu, “you’re with my squad now, Lu. There’s only one more deck between us and the bridge; let’s cap this drive off!”

  Overcome with the moment, Lu Bu found herself shouting wordlessly—along with the rest of the nineteen surviving Lancers, apparently, as her ears were filled with roars of approval coming in from the battle suit’s comm. unit.

  “Remember the mission,” Joneson barked as he gestured down the corridor with his blaster rifle. “Move out!”

  Surprisingly, they encountered no more resistance on their way to the bridge. Sergeant Joneson ordered Lu Bu to destroy the pressure doors sealing off the parts of the ship not affected by their series of forced entries which had exposed the interior of the destroyer to the cold vacuum of space. They had only left the final pressure door along their route intact.

  But unsurprisingly, the vault-like door to the bridge—which was also a large airlock—was sealed when they arrived.

  “Lu,” Joneson called over the link as he knocked on the seam of the blast doors, “you brought the key?”

  She looked at him in puzzlement for several seconds until realizing what he meant, and she felt her face flush with embarrassment as she replied, “Yes, Sergeant Joneson.”

  “Then let’s see ourselves in, Lancer,” he gestured after taking a step to the side.

  Lu Bu thumbed the two-part trigger of the plasma cannon and felt its thrum reverberate through her gauntlets as it cycled to full-charge. When it was primed, she released her index finger and the awesome recoil the weapon created nearly knocked her off her feet as the blue-white flame belched from the barrel of her weapon and leapt toward the door.

  It took her a moment to regain her footing, but when she had she saw a large hole in the center of the door. The ragged edges were still glowing orange as Sergeant Joneson gestured for Sherman to enter.

  “Good work, Lu,” Joneson said. “Now take up position near that last pressure door,” he ordered, pointing down the corridor some ten meters.

  “But Sergeant—“ she began, only to be cut off.

  “If you don’t hear me say the word ‘pickoff’ in the next sixty seconds, you blast that door and then come support our position,” Joneson said over the top of her. “Start your clock, Lancer.”

  She did as she was ordered, and after the clock began counting down she said, “Clock is running, Sergeant Joneson.”

  “Good,” he replied after Sherman and another trio of Lancers had entered the airlock portion of the bridge’s access point.

  Lu Bu made her way down to the pressure door and checked the charge of her plasma cannon. She saw it had enough fuel for another six shots before requiring a new canister—which she did not possess. Still, six shots from such a destructive weapon would almost certainly be more than she could take before being overcome if a wave of enemy Marines suddenly appeared.

  Not long after she arrived at her new position, she heard a snap of static over her suit’s com-link and the lights of the corridor go out, but she kept her focus on the door. She watched as the countdown neared zero and felt her heart begin to quicken its pace as the clock reached single digits and still she had heard no word from Sergeant Joneson.

  Oddly, she had heard no comm. chatter from her fellow Lancers, but she dared not risk taking her eyes off the door. Sergeant Joneson had given her this task, and she would carry it out no matter the distractions.

  The clock reached five seconds remaining and she activated the weapon’s charge cycle. She kept the triggers down with her thumb and index finger as the weapon whirred and vibrated minutely in her hands, until the clock finally reached zero and she heard nothing from her Sergeant.

  So she locked her mag-boots to the deck and fired the plasma cannon at the pressure door, sending a gout of super-charged plasma streaming into the duralloy plates of the double-layered door, which caved and blew outward as her weapon tore a rough hole through it.

  The breathable gases around her streamed out of the hatch in a torrential rush, and she felt something slam into her backside just before something went hurtling out the door.

  She disengaged one mag-boot and turned slowly, careful to keep her footing, and saw an unarmored woman’s body come careening down the corridor toward her as though it was flying. The woman’s body slammed into Lu Bu’s power armor before the venting gases drove her body out through the ruptured pressure door.

  Pushing the image of the woman’s panicked face from her mind, and taking deliberate steps, Lu Bu re-cycled the charge of her weapon and clomped her way up the corridor toward the bridge’s airlock. She saw her fellow Lancers moving painfully slowly, with a few even having fallen over onto their sides. As she approached she saw Corporal Gnuko standing nearest her position, and she asked, “Corporal Gnuko, what is happened?”

  Receiving no verbal reply, she saw Gnuko reach up with his hand and tap his helmet three times, signaling that his suit’s comm. unit was down. He then gestured for her to enter the bridge as he sluggishly attempted to do likewise.

  Quickening her pace, she did as she was ordered and when she arrived on the bridge she saw Sergeant Joneson and Corporal Sherman, along with the surviving members of their squads. But they, too, appeared to be moving sluggishly—in fact, only the Sergeant and Corporal were moving at all. It then dawned on her that the pirates must have used some kind of ion burst which had knocked the Lancers’ suits off-line.

  She brandished the barrel of her weapon, sweeping it side to side as she scanned for threats and finding a vibro-blade-wielding pirate crewman moving toward Corporal Sherman. The pirate was wearing a ‘head
bag’ over his face, which allowed him to survive in the current, gasless environment, and Lu Bu fired her weapon at him just before he managed to plunge the vibro-knife into Corporal Sherman’s gorget.

  The man’s body nearly disappeared without a trace, as only the hand which had clutched the vibro-knife remained after the plasma cannon’s flames had passed through his body. That hand fell to the deck, but oddly kept its grip on the knife as it rolled to a stop near Sherman’s feet.

  She re-cycled the weapon and scanned to either side, but found no more apparent threats or armed crewmembers. A man wearing long, braided hair and bearing the insignia of a Captain backpedaled as Sergeant Joneson bore down on him with slow, deliberate steps before finally cornering him near the main view-screen.

  The pirate Captain’s shoulders sagged as Joneson put his hands on him and placed him in restraints, and Lu Bu almost failed to notice Corporal Sherman making hand signals in her direction.

  It took her a moment to understand his instructions, but she signaled that she understood his orders before allowing the plasma cannon to power down and activating her suit’s com-link.

  “Captain Middleton, this Lancer Lu Bu,” she reported over the link after switching to the proper frequency. She waited a reasonable interval and received no reply, so she repeated, “Captain Middleton, this Lancer Lu Bu.”

  This time, she received a static-laden reply, “This is the Captain. What is your status?”

  “Bridge secure, Captain,” she reported, feeling the thrill of victory like never before, “we have the ball. Repeat: we have the ball.”

  Chapter XXVI: Answers

  “Good work, Sergeant,” Middleton congratulated as soon as he entered the brig.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Joneson replied with a curt nod.

  Captain Middleton came to the last cell and looked at its lone occupant for several moments before turning back to the Lancer Sergeant, “You made quite the run, from what I hear.”