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

by Caleb Wachter

  “But I do understand that it’s just an echo,” she said evenly, “and it’s entirely possible that what I thought I loved in you was nothing but a reflection of what I wanted you to be. But like a wise philosopher said, ‘Belief is more important than fact; without belief in them, facts cannot create change. But belief, even without supporting facts, can—and more often than probability suggests, does—create change.”

  Middleton was again stunned into silence, this time at hearing his own words—written out in a philosophy paper during their freshman year of college—spoken back at him.

  “I’m not here for you, Tim,” she said, her features taking on a hardened cast. “I need to be perfectly clear on that.”

  Middleton stood from the table with his meal half-eaten, disappointed at hearing her utter those words but knowing they were to be expected. “I don’t care why you’re here, Doctor,” he said with genuine, heartfelt feeling. “But I am grateful beyond my ability to express at this time that you are. I find your counsel, support, and perspective to be sorely lacking aboard this ship. And that ship—as well as her crew—benefits every time you offer such counsel to its Captain. I hope I can continue to depend on your continued contributions.”

  “You can,” she said with a curt nod. “But I’m going to need some larger quarters eventually—something with two separate beds, if possible.”

  “I’ll have something arranged.” Middleton said before nodding his head officiously, knowing that whatever she had planned did not involve him. “Thank you, Doctor Middleton.”

  She stood and collected her tray. “Captain,” she acknowledged, using his rank for the first time, which provoked an unexpected mix of feelings to roil around inside his chest.

  After dropping off his tray, Captain Middleton made his way to the bridge. All things considered, the meeting had gone far better than he had feared, and far worse than he had hoped—which made it a fairly typical result in the interpersonal relationship department.

  But he had secured the services of the best doctor he could hope for, and that was more than enough for him…for now, at the very least.

  Chapter XXXVI: A Hub and a Surprise

  “Point transfer complete,” the helmsman reported. “We’ve broken free of the inertial sump.”

  “Scanning the system now, Captain,” the Sensors operator reported as the system’s tactical overlay began to populate with signals. After a few minutes, the operator reported, “No vessels detected, sir. This system appears clear.”

  Middleton turned to the Comm. section. “Mr. Fei, begin your scans.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Fei Long replied as he went through the same sequence of gestures he had done each of the two dozen jumps the Pride of Prometheus had made in search of an elusive ComStat hub. It had been two weeks since they had left Elysium, and Middleton was beginning to believe that their priorities might require readjustment—a belief clearly shared by Representative Kong Pao.

  “Tactical,” he turned to Ensign Sarkozy, “keep your eyes peeled and coordinate with Sensors; let’s make sure there’s nothing lurking in that relatively hot asteroid belt. The radiation will probably prevent standard scans from getting a clear picture.”

  “Yes, Captain,” she replied.

  “Captain,” Fei Long said in his usual, patient voice, “I believe I have something.”

  Middleton turned his chair quickly toward the Comm. station. “So soon? Confirm, Mr. Fei,” he said evenly.

  “I have already done so, Captain,” the young man said. “There is unquestionably a ComStat hub nearby; it will require several hours’ time to determine its precise location and plot a subsequent point transfer, but we have indeed located a hub.”

  Middleton leaned back in his chair. “Maintain Condition Two, XO,” he said to Commander Jersey. There was no reason to expect an imminent danger to the ship, but Captain Middleton had learned a long time before that a few hours of extra tension rarely served as a detriment to morale or operations efficiency. And with Commander Jersey’s stern, yet fair, hand at running readiness drills since becoming the XO, Middleton had been more than pleased to find performance improved across the board.

  “Aye, Captain, maintaining Condition Two,” the older man replied gruffly before relaying his orders. A light blue light bar along the joints of the deck plates and bulkheads continued to flash gently, signaling that the ship was on heightened alert, but not expecting imminent danger.

  “Ensign Jardine,” Middleton said, turning to his Comm. Officer, “assist Mr. Fei in whatever manner you can. And inform Sergeant Joneson that his people should expect deployment as soon as we can re-cycle our jump engines.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Jardine replied.

  Middleton felt a flare of anticipation as he reviewed the tactical reports from the Elysium SDF—as well as a handful of other intelligence sources recently provided by Representative Kong Pao—as he prepared for what he had a hunch would be a fairly predictable surprise when they reached the hub.

  Much like maintaining Condition Two aboard the Pride, he had no reason to believe there would be trouble waiting for them when they arrived, but he also had come to expect the unexpected over the course of his tenure as Captain of this now well-oiled machine.

  There was no way he would get caught with his britches down.

  “Point transfer plotted; we’ll be ready to jump in twenty minutes, Captain,” reported the helmsman.

  “Captain,” Sarkozy said snappily, “as far as we can tell we’re transferring into cold, extra-stellar space just outside of a relatively uncharted nebula; there’s no telling how far we’ll be from our target since there’s no catalogued gravity well nearby for our nav-computer to plot against. Recommend we take the ship to Condition One.”

  “Agreed,” Middleton said, less-than-surprised to find the ambitious young Ensign making such a suggestion, “XO, set Condition One throughout the ship: battle stations, Commander Jersey.”

  “Aye, Captain, setting Condition One,” the other man replied. A few seconds later, the pulsating blue bars on the floor had shifted their hue and were now a deeper shade of blue. Those lights were also joined by a similar bar of red lights flashing at the joint of the ceiling and bulkheads.

  “Captain,” Fei Long said respectfully, “I believe we should prepare for the pull of a significant gravity well upon arrival.”

  “Explain,” Middleton demanded, feeling a knot form in his throat.

  “I cannot confirm,” Fei Long began hesitantly, “but certain readings in the ComStat hub’s baseline signal would seem to suggest the presence of a not-insignificant mass nearby.”

  “There’s nothing on the scanners,” Sarkozy interjected, “and Confederation stellar cartography doesn’t show any stars or black holes in the nebula where your readings suggest the hub is located.”

  “All the same,” Fei Long said, his voice taking a harder tone, “I believe we should compensate for a potentially powerful gravity well in near proximity to our target deep within the remnants of the ancient, nearly nonexistent, nebula. I have already made the appropriate adjustments to our impending point transfer’s navigation solution, but preparing the engines for an immediate overdrive may also prove beneficial.”

  “Do it,” Middleton nodded to the Engineering petty officer on the bridge, who went to work relaying the Captain’s orders to his Chief over the com-link. “And this kind of information would be appropriate to bring up before we’re about to jump, Mr. Fei—and I do mean ‘something a bit more substantial than ten minutes before,’—do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly, Captain,” Fei Long assured him calmly, “but I did not detect the subtle variations until six minutes ago. I have multiple hypotheses regarding the nature of the suspected gravity event, but I believe that verbal speculation at this time would be counterproductive.”

  “Very well,” Middleton grudged.

  “Transfer in two minutes,” the helmsman called out somewhat needlessly, seeing as the inform
ation was clearly depicted on the main viewer. But Commander Jersey had implemented a strict set of bridge protocols governing all manner of situations, and while Middleton probably wouldn’t have been quite so strict or demanding, he understood that his former helmsman’s method produced the desired result.

  The seconds ticked down until the helmsman called out, “Point transfer in five…four…three…two…one.”

  The ship shuddered and lurched violently, and Middleton was suddenly grateful for the Condition One status which Sarkozy had suggested, as he was quite certain that at least half of the bridge crew would have been thrown from their seats.

  “Report!” he bellowed.

  “We’re caught in a massive gravity well, Captain,” the helmsman replied as he hauled himself up against the edge of his console before the grav-plates finally began to compensate for the extreme variance. “The inertial sump is over three hundred percent of maximum; attempting to shed it now. Shields are down to 62% and falling rapidly.”

  “Three hundred percent?!” Jersey snapped as he staggered over to the helmsman’s station. “Re-check your readings, Helm—” he said irritably before the color drained from his face. “Murphy’s monkey,” he breathed, “we jumped next to a black hole.”

  “Negative,” Sensors reported after the ship had regained its apparent orientation and the drag only felt like twice the normal gees, “I’m reading outgoing x-rays in all directions and only a subtle bending of inbound starlight. This is definitely not a black hole, Commander.”

  “Helm: shed that blasted sump, overdrive my engines and make all-stop,” Middleton barked before turning to Fei Long. “Is the hub here, Mr. Fei?”

  “It is, Captain,” the young man replied confidently. “Based on the signal strength it is within roughly one hundred million kilometers of our current position.”

  “Captain,” Sarkozy interrupted, “my calculations show the only way to shed the sump is to overcharge the entire shield grid by diverting all primary reactor output to the shield array.”

  “Check those calculations,” Middleton said as he, himself, made to do precisely that.

  After a few moments’ silence, he nodded grudgingly just as Fei Long interrupted, “Confirmed, Captain; doing as the Ensign suggests will yield a 58% chance of shedding the sump; if we fail to shed the sump in the next thirty seconds, we will fall well past the neutron star’s calculated point of no return, given our engines—”

  “Do it,” Middleton snapped, cutting the young man’s verbosity off at the pass.

  A moment later the power grid aboard the Pride of Prometheus visibly sagged, with lights dimming and consoles flickering as they went to their local, emergency power supplies.

  “The sump is shed, Captain,” the helmsman reported tensely.

  The Damage Control stander interjected, “I’m reading a cascade failure of the ship’s primary and secondary power grids. Engines are still operational, Captain, but all other systems including life support are now on emergency backups. Weapons and shields are off-line.”

  “Plotting a parabolic course to slingshot around the neutron star, Captain, adjusting for our weakened grav-plates,” Commander Jersey said in a raised voice as he worked in tandem with the helmsman to do precisely that. “This is gonna be close,” the older man added after finishing his inputs to the helm.

  The ship’s bow planed downward toward what appeared to be empty space, but if Fei Long was correct—and there was no apparent reason to believe he wasn’t—there was a neutron star somewhere off the port bow. Almost as if someone had read his mind, the tactical overlay populated with icons for the Pride, the ComStat hub, and the neutron star—which was far closer than Middleton thought possible.

  The Pride careened dangerously close to the star’s point of no return as the ship gained momentum along its projected, gently curving course which took a relatively sharp turn right as they passed the star at the closest point along the route. Middleton actually saw his bridge crew’s bodies list slightly to port as they did so, in what he would have believed to be an impossible display of the star’s gravity working against, or somehow with, the grav-plates.

  Then their aged ship began to pull away from the star, and Commander Jersey stood to face the Captain. “We’ve broken the neutron star’s gravity well, Captain; estimate twenty minutes before we reach the recommended safe maneuvering distance from the object.”

  “Very good, Commander,” Middleton said with conviction as he straightened himself in his chair. He was fairly certain that, regardless of how much confidence his XO showed in their current helmsman, the Pride of Prometheus would have never survived its close shave with one of deep space’s most enigmatic bodies without Commander Jersey’s hand at the tiller.

  “Mr. Fei,” Middleton said, turning deliberately to face the young man, “I believe you have an engagement to prepare for.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Fei Long said with a grin as an eager light filled his eyes.

  “Report to the shuttle hangar,” Middleton nodded, aware of just how much this meant to the young man in his own, strange hierarchy of needs, “and join Sergeant Joneson’s boarding party.” The young man clasped his hands and bowed low, holding the pose for several seconds before turning and exiting the bridge.

  Shaking his head at his new crewmembers’ still foreign-seeming customs, he turned to the Damage Control stander stationed near the Engineering petty officer. “Dispatch teams to the primary power relays and get Chief Garibaldi on the line; I need repair estimates, and I need them yesterday.”

  Chapter XXXVII: Protecting the Ball

  “All right, Lancers, listen up,” Sergeant Joneson barked as soon as the ramp to the shuttle had closed and the twelve person team had entered the craft. “We’ve got a mission to carry out, and I want everyone aboard this craft to understand what we’re getting ourselves into. You’re all the best the Pride of Prometheus has to offer,” he said, letting his eyes linger on the young man sitting near the cockpit, “which is why you’ve been selected for this important task. The details of this mission are to remain classified—whoever survives this mission is to share none of what they are about to learn with the rest of the crew, as doing so will compromise MSP security…and then some.”

  Lu Bu had never heard her Sergeant speak in such dour terms so even her straying thoughts regarding the young, conventionally-armored Fei Long wearing what looked to be a bomb-proof suit, were pushed aside as her Sergeant continued.

  “This mission is an intelligence operation,” he explained, casting a pointed look toward the Tracto-ans before continuing, “and if we are successful, it will change the balance of power in this Sector. Intelligence is the most critical component of warfare, modern or otherwise, as Lancer Lu correctly explained during the ride back from Elysium.”

  Lu Bu felt herself swell with pride, and felt Fei Long’s eyes on her. She did her best to ignore them, but found herself casting a glance in his direction before forcing her eyes back to her Sergeant. Those mixed feelings the gift of her armor had stirred within her had only strengthened with each passing day…and she very much disliked where they seemed to be going.

  “We are about to board a ComStat hub,” Joneson explained, evoking a round of whistles from the more senior members of the unit as he pointed at Fei Long. “And once we have done so, our expert here will perform a series of very technical, very geeky,” a chorus of snickers filled the cabin, “and most importantly, mission-critical interfaces with the hub’s mainframe. Indications are that conditions will be cramped, extremely hot—that means ‘electrically,’ Gnuko,” he added, taking the opportunity for yet another jab at what the entire unit knew to be Joneson’s eventual successor, “and more importantly, jammed with ionic interference. Thus, the new skins the Saint’s seen fit to bless you overgrown monkeys with,” he gestured to Thomas’ form-fitted Storm Drake armor. “These suits won’t be affected by the interference, which will render all complex electronics save those built specifically for s
uch environments completely useless. That means com-links, HUD’s, tactical sensors and pretty much anything else with an ‘On’ switch that doesn’t look like this,” he gestured to the trigger of his blaster rifle. “Unfortunately, due to the sensitivity of the hub’s equipment, we won’t be bringing ranged weaponry—that includes grenades, Gnuko,” he said with a smirk as he discarded his rifle to the floor before drawing a vibro-knife from his belt.

  Lu Bu was glad she had opted for an extra vibro-knife in addition to her standard issue piece, rather than the short boarding axes which the Tracto-ans appeared to favor, or the longer swords which Thomas and Sherman had selected. In cramped conditions maneuverability would be a decisive factor, and a smaller weapon would make for less of a liability.

  “So it comes to this, Lancers,” Joneson said, twirling the blade over in his hands. “We have no idea what to expect when we board this hub, but since it is one of the most technologically advanced and valuable pieces of equipment known the humanity, I’m guessing we’ll get more than a personalized cake in the welcoming ceremonies.”

  “Sarge,” Corporal Thomas interrupted, “what’s the play? Limited intel means limited deployment package options.”

  “Nothing gets past you, Thomas,” Joneson quipped dryly before straightening. “The play is from the first page of the book: a Leeroy Jenkins. This will be a blind, up-the-gut, grindfest during which we can expect heavy resistance from various automated defense systems including: ion turrets, fluctuating grav-plates, and a dozen other things as to which your guess is as good as mine. But we will drive to the heart of this hub,” he said adamantly, “and, with Murphy’s blessing, a few of us might even make it back to the shuttle afterward.”

  A chorus of chuckles filled the cabin, with even the Tracto-ans joining in this time. Only Fei Long remained silent as he kept his eyes on Lu Bu—which filled her with a mixture of emotions that she knew had no place in the pre-game huddle, so she cast him a reproving look before returning her attention to Sergeant Joneson.