Up The Middle (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 2)

by Caleb Wachter

  “The Dämmerung is in pursuit, Captain,” Hephaestion reported, and Middleton saw the icon representing his adversary’s vessel begin the long journey toward the system primary. Predictably, Captain Raubach’s vessel made for the stellar south, and the Corvette adjusted its own course so as to follow the Pride while also cutting off its escape routes.

  Had his engines been at full power, Middleton could have easily smashed through the Corvette en route to the hyper limit and escape. But there was simply no possible way that he could accomplish the same with his drive system in its current shape.

  “Steady on,” Middleton said, adjusting his posture in his chair. It was going to be a long ride with a decisive end, one way or the other.

  “Check your gear,” Sergeant Gnuko ordered, and the Recon Team did as instructed. Lu Bu was glad for his presence, even if that meant that her own role was significantly diminished for the mission’s duration. “We only get one shot at this,” Gnuko said in his deep, commanding voice. Lu Bu checked her blaster rifle and briefly wondered if she could ever command as much respect with a spoken word as he so effortlessly managed.

  Walter Joneson had made it look even easier than Sergeant Gnuko did and, despite the encouraging words of her superior, Lu Bu had begun to doubt whether or not she could even come close to matching either of the men’s leadership abilities.

  “Chin up, Corporal,” Gnuko said, and Lu Bu quickly looked up to see a faintly disapproving look on her commander’s face. “This is liable to be the greatest insertion no one ever hears about,” he said as he sat down and strapped himself into the seat beside her. “Either that,” he added nonchalantly, “or worst insertion everyone hears about.”

  Lu Bu nodded as she gripped her hands tightly, feeling the gloves stretch slightly as she did so. The feel of the Red Hare armor against her body, hugging every part of her as if it was a second skin, was far more comforting than she had expected it to be. “We will succeed,” she said with certainty as she laid her helmet in her lap and checked its external features for possible issues.

  “You’ve got that right,” Gnuko agreed, but Lu Bu thought she heard a hint of doubt creep into his voice. The Sergeant looked over his shoulder pointedly, and Lu Bu did likewise as she performed a quick head count. Cassius, Kratos, Bernice, Claus, Lysander, and Stavros were all strapped in and looked to have completed their pre-launch checks.

  “They’ve been trained well,” Gnuko said as he turned to face the front of the shuttle. “You’ve been as much a part of that as I have.”

  Lu Bu felt herself flush with embarrassment. “This one begins with fourteen on team,” she said with an angry snort. “Now only six.”

  “Not everyone’s cut out for recon work,” Gnuko chided. “It takes a flexibility of mind and body which most people can’t understand. Take your first mission against those droids at the fusion reactor, for example,” he said, rolling his head around slowly and the cracking sounds in his neck were audible even over the shuttle’s idling engines, “you reacted to the situation on the ground, and you did it like a veteran. But you would have failed if your teammates had been the blunt instruments Atticus commands.” He locked his eyes with hers for a few seconds before adding, “Better to have six teammates you can trust to do their jobs than fourteen you have to second guess—or worse, who can’t think on their feet.”

  To hear her commander speak so candidly regarding the Assault Team under Atticus’ command was surprising, but his words carried the ring of wisdom which she had come to expect from the higher-ranking officers aboard the Pride of Prometheus.

  Lu Bu clasped her hands before herself in deference. “Thank you, Sergeant Jones—“ she began before catching the word halfway past her lips. She had disrespected her commanding officer more than she could have believed possible, and for the first time in her life she felt certain that she would fall ill with shame.

  She flushed in abject humiliation and lowered her eyes in shame, but to her numbed shock she felt the Sergeant cuff her on the shoulder as he began to chuckle.

  “It’s ok, Lu,” Gnuko said warmly, and when she reluctantly met his gaze she saw understanding mixed with something darker in his face. The Sergeant then leaned back and closed his eyes before adding, “I miss him too.”

  “We are now on final approach to the system primary,” Helmsman Marcos said precisely when the Pride of Prometheus passed the point of no return for the unorthodox maneuver.

  The system was, thankfully, a small one otherwise the Pride would have never been able to reach the star before coming under fire from the Dämmerung. As it was, the aging cruiser had just barely managed to keep outside of the Heavy Destroyer’s range owing to Engineering’s impressive performance over the previous hour since the maneuver had begun.

  “The Dämmerung is altering its course,” Hephaestion reported, and several seconds later the tactical overlay confirmed the young man’s report.

  “They’re following your projected flight plan, Captain,” Sarkozi added as she moved from the Sensors station to stand beside the Shields operator. Since the Pride was about to come far closer to the system primary than a vessel manned by a sane crew had any business doing, Lieutenant Sarkozi had been assigned to oversee the ship’s shields during this particular phase of the operation.

  “Of course they are,” Middleton muttered under his breath as he flipped through screen after screen of status reports. After using the primary’s gravity to perform an unorthodox slingshot maneuver, he knew they would come under the firing arc of Captain Raubach’s newer, faster, all-around-better warship. Until then, the bridge evoked the very image of the calm before a storm.

  “The Corvette is maintaining its angle as well, Captain,” Sarkozi said with mild disappointment.

  Middleton nodded wordlessly. The fact that the Raubachs had managed to commandeer a droid warship was, oddly, the least interesting thread of the tangled web he had begun to unravel since the fateful encounter with the former Mrs. Raubach.

  “Steady on, Helm,” he said after he was satisfied that his ship was as ready as it would ever be for this particular maneuver.

  The Pride’s course gently tilted toward the sun’s surface while the bow of the ship remained slightly oblique to the star itself. The good part about falling into a star at their current angle was that it would provide a significant boost to their forward velocity. The bad part was that if the engines failed at any point during the approach, it was unlikely that the warship’s disintegration would even create a solar flare that would be visible from the goldilocks zone.

  The minutes passed and all around the bridge Middleton’s crew was dabbing their foreheads as sweat began to pour off of them. The interior of the ship was fully thermo-regulated, and a quick glance told him that the internal temperature of the ship remained precisely the same as it had been prior to the potential death ride.

  The command chair’s com-link flashed, indicating an incoming connection and Middleton quickly accepted. “You have a report to make, Mr. Fei?”

  “I have completed the project, Captain,” Fei Long replied promptly. “I have run twenty nine simulations and I am confident that it will perform as I had anticipated.”

  “Bottom line, Mr. Fei,” Middleton said as the Pride continued barreling toward its far-too-intimate encounter with a main sequence star, “what can we expect out of it?”

  “I have uploaded a series of programs which, when introduced to the Dämmerung’s DI, will attempt to interrupt key systems in order of priority—an order which I had hoped you might determine?” the young man said plaintively.

  “What are my options?” Middleton asked, and he noticed more than a few eyes sneaking looks in his direction. It was only then that his voice had grown much louder than he had wanted, so he moderated his tone as he reiterated, “What kind of systems can you target?”

  “If the Dämmerung’s DI is substantively the same as the Soyuz-class schematics indicate,” Fei Long mused, and Middleton was convinced he
would soon be subjected to another in a long, seemingly endless series of lectures conducted by the too-smart-for-his-own-good hacker, “I believe my program can completely interrupt sensors, communications, or shields, but that interruption—“

  “Stop,” Middleton snapped, “you said you can interrupt their shields?” He couldn’t believe his ears; that kind of control was supposed to be impossible to execute on a modern warship. “I need to know if that’s true, Mr. Fei, and not just some vain boast.”

  “The Soyuz-class employs a type of crossover between its DI nodes,” the young man rebuffed, sounding genuinely offended by Middleton’s suggestion that he might not actually be capable of doing what he suggested, “as such it is more vulnerable to a system-wide attack than is an old, antiquated vessel such as this one.”

  “Antiquated?’ Sarkozi snapped, and only then did Middleton realize she had taken up position to his flank. But the captain forestalled further outbursts by raising a hand sharply.

  “How long can you bring them down?” Middleton asked, the words sounding more like a demand than a query.

  “It is difficult to say,” Fei Long replied hesitantly, “the interruption would only affect a single facing, would last for no less than three seconds and, in all likelihood, for no more than five seconds but—“

  “Shields it is, Mr. Fei. Upload your program and deliver it to the shuttle bay, Mr. Fei,” Middleton cut in. “Inform me when you’ve finished.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Fei Long replied before Middleton severed the connection.

  The Pride’s captain turned to his XO, and the hungry look he saw on her face perfectly reflected his own mood in that moment. “We’ll only get one shot,” he said heavily as he pulled up the Dämmerung’s schematics on his chair’s display, “so let’s make sure it counts.”

  Fei Long walked as briskly as he dared while cradling the cumbersome crate in his arms. He knew that his ATTACK DOGs were far from a finished product, but if the Lancers could manage to introduce them into the Dämmerung‘s interior then he knew it would provide invaluable data regarding future developments in the field.

  Toto’s son—who Fei Long had begun to refer to as ‘Yide’ in memory of Ancestor Zhang Fei—went before him, clearing the corridor of interlopers and obstacles so as to provide a clear path to the shuttle bay.

  Yide had proven to be every bit as helpful as Fei Long could have hoped; his affinity with micro-electronics was significantly greater than Fei Long’s own, which was likely the only reason deploying the ATTACK DOGs so soon could possibly result in success.

  A particularly loud roar from Yide cleared the final corridor between Fei Long and the shuttle bay, and had the situation been less dire he would have apologized profusely for the Sundered’s poor manners.

  The shuttle was no longer in the bay, which was as Fei Long had expected, so he made his way to the gunship which served as the Sundered family’s sleeping quarters. Yide’s mother—whose name was unpronounceable as far as Fei Long was concerned—was making last-minute adjustments to the craft’s communications suite.

  Fei Long set the crate down on the floor between the pilots’ seats, and lowered himself into the overly large seat opposite Yide’s mother. She barely gave him a glance, but began conversing with her eldest son in what Fei Long assumed was their native tongue.

  Fei Long carefully connected the relay device—a device which he and Yide had only completed a few hours earlier—to the communication unit’s exposed innards, and after three minutes he had successfully connected the device.

  “We must fasten the crate to the deck,” he said, looking to Yide expectantly.

  The uplift returned the look with a decidedly nonplussed affect, but before Fei Long could explain further Yide’s mother produced a bolt gun and punched a pair of bolts through the crate’s bottom at opposite corners.

  Fei Long looked at her in surprise, prompting her to peel her lips back in what he eventually took to be a mischievous smile—but, much like her husband, her teeth were decidedly vicious and intimidating in appearance. As such, Fei Long was unable to ascertain the nature of the expression as quickly as he would have done otherwise.

  “Thank you,” he said after briefly inspecting the device to ensure it had not been damaged by her handiwork. It appeared that the system was ready for deployment, so he nodded to himself and said, “I believe it is prepared.”

  He exited the craft, followed soon thereafter by Yide and his mother. As soon as the female uplift had stepped off the ramp and was standing on the deck, the ramp lifted up and became part of the craft’s hull. The shuttle bay’s alarms began to sound, indicating that the craft was prepping for launch and that personnel should evacuate the area immediately.

  The three of them did so, with Yide and his mother sharing a long, meaningful look at the craft before turning their backs and exiting into the adjoining corridor. Fei Long knew that the mission called for the tiny craft to be placed in harm’s way, and that the odds were high that it would not return from the mission. He had no frame of reference for what the two of them must have felt in that moment, but he found it nonetheless fascinating to observe them and ponder their potential loss’s implications for their future.

  It was only after the airlock doors had sealed shut behind them that he realized there was a very high probability that he, too, would be losing something precious during this particular conflict.

  He fought against the powerful feelings of despair which came over him in that moment, and knew that he still had a part to play in the events which were about to unfold.

  So without speaking another word, he ran to his quarters as fast as his feet could carry him. He needed to retrieve his control glove, and then he needed to get to the bridge.

  The battle was soon to unfold, and he would be blasted to the so-called Pit if he failed to do his part in it.

  Chapter XXVI: The Couched Lance

  “Vacuum test,” Sergeant Gnuko called out, lifting his helmet into the air for those seated behind the front row to see.

  Lu Bu took her helmet in hand and turned to face her Recon Team. They quickly set their helmets over the collars built into the Storm Drake armor they each wore, and one by one the seals engaged with a muffled whir. The lights inside their helmets activated in turn, and after they had each donned their headgear Lu Bu did likewise.

  A few seconds later her head was encased in the draconic visage which Haldis had fashioned for them, and Lu Bu remembered Sergeant Joneson’s lecture on the ‘superhero-looking stuff’ she now wore. It was supposedly capable of improving human reaction times measurably, and she could personally attest to the sharpened senses she associated with wearing the fantastic gear.

  Her helmet’s HUD activated and automatically began to check the integrity of her suit with a series of pressure tests. Almost a minute passed before the diagnostic cycle was complete, and her suit was found to be in perfect condition for spacewalk.

  She looked down onto the floor at the crate which contained Fei Long’s so-called ‘attack dogs’ and, for the first time she could remember, she had reservations as to whether or not even he was capable of backing up his latest boasts.

  “Sound check,” Gnuko called over the main channel.

  One by one, and in predetermined order, the Recon Team began to sound off until it was Lu Bu’s turn, at which point she called, “Recon Two, check.”

  “Recon One, check,” Sergeant Gnuko finished. “All right, ladies and germs, get your game faces on. We are ‘go’ for insertion; repeat, our mission is ‘go’. Switch your air cyclers to intake from the shuttle until we get a countdown. Until then, sit tight and stay loose.”

  Lu Bu felt her heartbeats begin to quicken in a familiar, almost comforting, pre-game buildup of nervous energy. There had been a time when the feeling had very nearly overwhelmed her, but she was no longer a little girl.

  She was a smashball player, a soldier, and a Lancer. And she was about to play the most important game of her life�
�one which required her team to defy the odds and emerge victorious if they, and those who depended on them, were to survive.

  Lu Bu couldn’t have dreamed of a better start to the day.

  “Shields are down to 30% on the port facing,” Sarkozi reported, “we’re at risk of spotting, Captain.” Their proximity to the star’s corona had already placed a severe strain on the Pride’s shields, but there had been little choice in the matter. Fully-charged shields merely meant that the Pride would survive for a fractionally longer period under the combined fire of the two warships. Middleton’s maneuver, however, would give them one shot at leveling the playing field relatively early in the engagement.

  “Helm, roll the ship,” Middleton commanded, and no sooner had the words passed his lips than the ship began its roll to present the fresher, starboard, shields to the system’s primary.

  “We have achieved escape trajectory and momentum, Captain,” Strider, the former pirate captain-turned-Navigator, reported in an uncharacteristically professional fashion.

  “Thank you, Mr. Strider,” Middleton acknowledged, knowing full well that they had passed that particular threshold. The question was no longer whether or not they would crash into the sun’s surface for lack of sufficient angular momentum, but whether or not they would survive the longer-term issues created by such near proximity to its blazing hot corona.

  “Starboard shields at 60% and falling predictably,” Sarkozi reported tightly. Despite Garibaldi’s best efforts, he had been unable to dissipate the heat generated by maintaining the shields under such a constant strain. Middleton knew that, even at 60%, the Pride would escape the star’s intense energy before the shields themselves fell altogether. But they would be significantly more vulnerable to the inevitable attacks by the Dämmerung and its partner Corvette.