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

by Caleb Wachter

  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 the 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 tha
n 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 share 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.”

  The sternward cargo ramp of the shuttle craft was lowered, and Captain Middleton stood at the base of the ramp as over two hundred crewmembers had stuffed themselves into the cramped conditions of the shuttle bay.

  “You’ve come to know me over these last six months,” Middleton said, sweeping the assemblage with his gaze, “and over that same time I’ve come to know you. I’m not one for long-winded speeches, so I’ll keep this brief.”

  He turned and began to pace along the front line of the throng, which was filled with faces with which he had become more familiar than he ever would have dreamed possible. Six months earlier, he had thought that starship Captains sat in their cushy chairs, drinking high-end caffeine sources and sending the ship’s problems running down the proverbial hill toward the unsuspecting crew. But the truth, as is so often the case, held little resemblance to reality.

  “A year ago we were all going about our lives,” he continued, “and I imagine that if you’d asked each other back then what the odds were that you would be here, in this moment, after doing the things that you’ve done…you would have dismissed it as a billion to one. Moreover, you probably would have asked ‘Why would I go stand on the wall if even the Imperials won’t? Let someone else deal with it,’ you might have said.”

  He turned to face the line of bodies, for which the Hedonist system’s main world had graciously supplied enough proper burial tubes. The Pride’s supply of fifty such devices had only met roughly half the demand their recent efforts had created, as ninety three crewmembers had been killed during the droid attack alone. Each tube was draped with the flag of its occupant’s home world.

  “These men and women,” Middleton pointed to the neatly stacked tubes bearing the Multi-Sector Patrol fleet’s emblem at the top, “stood on that wall, and they did it not because they were forced to, or because they were compelled to. They did it for their families back on the seventeen worlds from which they came, including Capria, Prometheus, Shèhuì Héxié, Tracto, and the many colonies under the shields of protection which those worlds provide.”

  He turned to face the assembled crew and regarded them silently before sweeping across them with his outstretched hand.

  “But that shield isn’t some vague, abstract thing made of words written on the pages of some moldy book; that shield is you,” he said forcefully, allowing the word to hang for several moments before continuing. “The majority of our fallen crewmates have requested their remains be returned to the worlds of their birth, which we will do to honor their memory. But for some, they have asked us—their true family—to see them returned to the stars. They did not fail us, so we must not fail them.”

  Middleton already knew the names of the fallen for whom they were about to provide a star burial, so he gestured for the pallbearers to approach. The first were mostly from his own world of Capria, and were entirely made of Lancers—some were active-duty like Corporal Gnuko, and some, like Bryant and Rice following the bioweapon attack, had been transferred to other departments after sustaining grievous injuries. Only one member of the group neither from Capria, nor a man, and Middleton gave her a curt nod as he said, “Walter Joneson, Lancer Sergeant of the Pride of Prometheus.”

  The bearers carried the burial tube up the cargo ramp of the shuttle and set it down reverently before turning back and rejoining the crowd.

  “Gong Wei, Confederation Lancer who volunteered to serve aboard the Pride of Prometheus,” Middleton continued as Lu Bu peeled off from the Lancers and made to carry the second tube bearing the Lancer emblem. Lu Bu was joined by a handful of her countrymen as they carried the tube up onto the shuttle.

  “Norbert Jersey, Lieutenant Commander in the MSP,” he said as the bridge crew bore his former XO’s casket up the shuttle’s ramp past the previous group of pallbearers.

  One by one, Captain Middleton read off the rest of the twelve names of those who had requested a star burial. After he had completed, the shuttle’s cargo ramp closed and the craft gently floated toward the air lock. Once inside that chamber, the inner door closed shut.

  Captain Middleton then read the names of those who wished to have their remains returned to their home worlds, and after he had finished he turned to the crew and regarded them for
several, silent seconds before nodding curtly, “Dismissed.”

  The Pride of Prometheus’ internal viewscreens were all set to a single camera feed, as the aged warship drove almost directly toward the sun. The shuttle launched when they had entered the designated zone, and most of the crewmembers—even those on duty—watched as the burial tubes were ejected one by one from the shuttle’s cabin before the tiny vessel returned to its hangar.

  The tubes formed a nearly perfect line which fell toward the sun, and the external video feed stayed on those tubes until it was no longer able to filter out the intense light from the system’s primary, causing the camera to go black and the feed to disconnect.

  Such was the traditional star burial of a Confederation serviceman or woman. With the task concluded, the Pride of Prometheus set course for what would be the final destination of this particular mission and, for many, it was a return to that part of space which they called home.

  But for Captain Middleton, it was just another stop along the way. He had a mission to complete and by the Saint’s mercy, he would carry it out with every breath in his body.

  Tim Middleton had learned many things during his tenure as the Captain of the Pride of Prometheus, and chief among those hard-won lessons was the harsh reality that no matter where a person was, or what they did, there was always someone—or something—lurking in the shadows.

  Sometimes they want your money, sometimes they want your life, and sometimes they want even more than that. And when they came to do you harm, they often did so in the guise of offering help—or worse, compromise, and the promise of reaching the elusive ‘middle ground.’

  He knew he had been right when speaking to Captain Rodriguez: the reason that ‘middle ground’ is so elusive is because there is no middle ground. There’s right, and there’s wrong, and the precious few times a person’s life when can tell the difference they had better act in accordance with their principles, because the universe is rarely generous enough to do so twice in a lifetime.