Against The Middle

by Caleb Wachter

  He reared back as something in his mind recoiled from the thought of becoming lost in the ‘true nature of reality,’ and the mass of snakes slowly morphed into the Seer’s image.

  “You are running out of time, Kongming,” the Seer said. “You must hurry if you are to finish your work—Captain Middleton needs you one more time, and if you can do your duty to him then your duty to me will also be fulfilled. It is your final charge; are you equal to the task?”

  “What must I do?” Fei Long asked, feeling a vague, throbbing sensation in the base of his skull.

  The Seer pointed to the wall, and Fei Long turned to see a vortex of swirling, mingling data serpents which snapped hungrily at each other. Their bodies were tense and they seemed eager to swallow each other, but somehow they maintained a kind of harmonious balance. Whenever one snake consumed another, a third popped into existence—often emerging from the body of the victorious snake—and Fei Long knew he was seeing the strings from his whiteouts in a different form.

  This particular form would certainly be more difficult to comprehend, but he was determined to succeed in doing so. He focused on the snake which the Seer had indicated, and managed to isolate it from the others. With it fully exposed, the serpentine string of images and equations fought desperately to keep from being straightened out so he could examine it, and at first he feared he would be unable to succeed in doing so.

  But he somehow managed to do it, and when he did it was as though the entire string flooded into his mind and he had a moment of perfect clarity which made him weep with joy, with loss, and with self-loathing—but most of all, he wept with hope. The hope was not for himself, since his own future in the string was dark, empty, and overflowing with pain, loss, and sorrow.

  The hope he clung to was for those with whom he had served, and for the mission they might yet carry out.

  “I know what to do,” he said, his own voice sounding distant in this strange, virtual place.

  “Then do it,” the Seer commanded, and he regained consciousness.

  His eyes snapped open, and Fei Long immediately found that he was upright and his body was drenched in sweat. Trixie grasped his arm across her shoulders and was struggling mightily to hobble him down an unfamiliar hallway. He reached out with his hand to brace himself against the nearby wall, but his arm did not respond as it should have done and the moments-old pseudo-memory of being taken from his siblings came back to his mind, along with the lone probability serpent string’s imagery—imagery which had already begun to fade.

  “St…stop,” he slurred, his head lolling around of its own volition. He needed to remember the numbers, rather than the images, since he knew there was no way he could keep the images in his mind.

  “It’s ok, Long,” Trixie said through gritted teeth, her diminutive frame proving unequal to the task of carrying him down the corridor as they slumped as one against the nearby wall. “You just…keep telling me,” she bit out as she fought to help him to his feet, eventually succeeding with what little assistance he could provide, “about Guan Yu…and Hua Xiong.”

  “What?” he asked as they slowly made their way down the hallway. He then realized he must have been speaking in delirium, and his speech had been a continued recitation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But Guan Yu had slain Hua Xiong in Chapter Five of that great book, which meant he had been speaking for quite some time. “How long was I out?” he asked, his mind sharpening briefly—a sharpening which also saw the pain in his skull intensify.

  “It’s been…half an hour,” she replied tremulously, her legs shaking from the effort of having helped him as far as she had done. “We have…to go,” she wheezed, “Ed…he’s waiting at the…launch pad.”

  Fei Long shook his head adamantly, forcefully saying, ”No! We have to…go down.”

  “Down?!” she blurted. “But the shuttle’s…this way,” she pointed to the end of the hallway, “and it’s just on the other…side of that door.”

  “Get Hansheng,” he instructed, testing his fingers and finding they were still bound by the traps which the police had used to bind him. Then he looked again at them, feeling vaguely aware that there was something wrong with that particular realization.

  He blinked hard, and the traps on his fingers disappeared immediately when he finally realized that his mind had confused the pseudo-memory of his arrest with the actual reality around him. He saw a squirming, shifting shape on the wall and recoiled at the sight of a hungry serpent having appeared there, coiled in preparation to strike at him.

  “Come on, Fei,” Trixie panted, “we’re…almost there.”

  “If we get on that shuttle,” he snapped, “we will die. The only way we can…finish the mission is by…going down,” he said, finishing his assertion as a wave of intense vertigo came over him. “Tell Hansheng…tell Ed,” he corrected, using her preferred name for the assault droid, “that the…dragon commands him…to come.”

  She argued with him, but her words formed a kind of monotonous, static-laden noise which made no sense to his mind. It was all Fei Long could do to avoid looking in the direction of the serpent which was coiled on the wall and waiting for its moment to strike. His conscious mind knew it was not real, but he was too weary and too overwhelmed to dismiss it as he had done with the finger traps.

  He lay there for what seemed like an eternity in sheer, mortal terror of that serpent, eventually deciding it was best to make peace with his end and accept that this would be his resting place. Perhaps it would be best to let the serpent take him…

  As he turned to face the serpent, it seemed as though he could feel the heat of its forked tongue licking the air near his cheek, and he resigned himself to face his end with whatever scraps of courage were left to him.

  But before he could set his gaze upon his would-be devourer, he felt a cold, hard, metallic object press under his back. He looked at it fearfully for a moment before recognizing the design he had painted onto Hansheng’s cannon arm, and his nightmarish terror was banished as he realized the assault droid had come as he had directed.

  “Kongming’s vital signs are dangerously outside of established human parameters,” the droid’s animalistic, growling voice declared, with what sounded like the whimper of puppy dogs in the background, “probability of survival without treatment: 7%.”

  “Quickly,” Fei Long said, shaking his head and focusing on the droid’s central chassis as he bit each word out forcefully, “you must take us…to the central dome…there is a…lift there which leads to…victory.”

  “The dragon commands and this unit will obey,” Hansheng acknowledged. “Probability of victory if the dragon is obeyed: 92%.”

  For a moment, Fei Long was actually offended that Hansheng had apparently decided he was less than completely convinced of the plan’s validity, since 93% would indicate absolute belief in the chosen course. But after a handful of strobing whiteouts—whiteouts which saw the masses of writhing, ominous shapes become more defined as they drew ever nearer to Fei Long’s consciousness—Fei Long felt them come to a stop.

  He heard Trixie’s voice at the edge of his consciousness but he focused as hard as he could, finding that his field of vision had narrowed to less than ten percent his normal visual field. Still, it was enough to find the control panel for the lift on which Hansheng now stood, and he tried to point his arm at the panel but found he was unable to do so. It was incredibly frustrating since he could feel his limb perfectly, but for some reason it would not respond to his brain’s commands.

  “There,” he wheezed, feeling a sharp, stabbing pain spread in all directions across his skull as the pain in his neck doubled in the blink of an eye.

  A moment later—or at least, what seemed like a moment to him—he found his hand resting on the edge of the panel, and he input his Yin & Yang control code into the unit. The screen sprang to life, and after several failed attempts he managed to access his override code and the lift began to descend with the three of them on it.
/>   He whited out again, but he was unable to interact with the probability strings as he had grown too fearful of them. His heart was beating out of his chest with anxiety, and he knew that it would fail if he did not regain control over himself soon.

  He was vaguely aware of being carried down a long catwalk as his mind alternated between terror-filled whiteouts and glimpses of what he had previously known to be hard reality. But the lines were becoming blurred and even his mind’s fixation on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which he continued to recite in a mixture of spoken and unspoken monologue, was becoming unequal to the task of anchoring his consciousness where—and when—it needed to be.

  He could not let go until he had input the access codes which would let them leave the planetoid and send a message to Captain Middleton, the man who had taken him into his service and allowed him to do that which he did best. He had to fight that long, or everything that had gone before would have been for naught, and the trust which Captain Middleton had shown him would be as a poisoned well of goodwill. Fei Long had already committed murder to serve his own selfish designs, and he somehow knew he would need to answer for that crime somehow, but he would not abandon his Lord’s mission—not now, and not ever.

  So he endured as the strings of probability threatened to suffocate his conscious mind, and he suffered as they began to peck away at the very fiber of his being, but he was determined to do his one last duty to his captain. It would be a fitting final act, and once it was made he could die with some tiny measure of peace.

  And just then, even such a meager portion of respite would seem to be an infinite bounty from which he could draw for all eternity.

  Chapter XXX: Middleton’s Pride

  “Thirty seconds to point transfer,” Garibaldi called out from the Engineering station, having rerouted the Navigation functions to a nearby console so he could balance the hyper drive’s power inputs in real time from one station.

  Toto had taken over at the helm, and whatever weaponry could be turned toward the bow of the ship had been slave-rigged to that station so he could coordinate his maneuvering with the Pride’s remaining forward weaponry. Surprisingly, the Chief had managed to reconnect four of the Pride’s forward-facing, fix-mounted heavy lasers to bridge control. He had grumbled about them only being good for three or four shots before they overheated and became useless, but Middleton had been incredibly grateful for such a significant fraction of his warship’s main weaponry having been brought back online.

  Hephaestion had rerouted Comm. and Shields to the adjacent stations to his normal post at Sensors, and had already demonstrated impressive ability when it came to multitasking. Middleton was confident in the young man’s ability, and he was glad the stalwart, yet almost effeminate-looking Tracto-an had survived the previous battles.

  The assignments of the other bridge crew had left Damage Control to Middleton—which would be a nearly empty post for the coming battle, since the only repair crews had been assigned to the bridge and its surroundings—along with the same post he had held prior to being made Captain of his own warship: Tactical.

  “Ten seconds to transfer,” Garibaldi reported just before the lights dimmed, causing him to spring into action and dash to a nearby console. Middleton waited tensely as his Chief Engineer moved back and forth between the stations, until the lights returned to their previous luminosity and his old friend finally said, “Three…two…one…transfer!”

  The ship lurched violently forward, nearly throwing Middleton from the tactical post and he quickly realized that they were caught in the inertial sump.

  “Attempting to compensate for sump,” Hephaestion yelled as the sound of groaning metal could be heard from the bow of the ship. More than heard, the strain could be felt in the deckplates beneath Middleton’s feet, and he knew there was a very good chance that they would never escape the sump. “Shields at thirty two…twenty eight…twenty three,” Hephaestion called out.

  The ship lurched forward—this time like a drunken sailor staggering toward the next watering hole—and as Middleton fought to keep from flying into a nearby console, the groaning was replaced by a loud, palpable bang somewhere in the forward sections of the ship. After a few seconds, the familiar sensation of breaking free from the inertial sump replaced the violent lurching and Middleton steadied himself against his console as he initiated an automated damage report diagnostic.

  “We are free of sump,” Toto grumbled. Middleton experienced a moment of nostalgia as the Sundered’s intonation was eerily similar to that of his former helmsman-turned-XO, Lieutenant Jersey. But Middleton quickly recalled the casualty reports which had been filed prior to the majority of his crew embarking on the Slice of Life, and he was sobered by the fact that his Tactical Officer had remained with the ship.

  Toto’s wife had been among those killed during the battle at The Bulwark, but the ape man had taken the news far better than Middleton thought he could have done under the same circumstances. There were a few ruined interior panels in the corridor outside the bridge against which Toto’s knuckles had been beaten bloody—but the Sundered had proven to be as professional under fire as anyone Middleton had served with.

  “Rerouting power to the forward shield array now, Captain,” Hephaestion reported, “current shield strength: twenty five percent.”

  “Get on it, Mr. Hephaestion,” Middleton said stoically as his automated diagnostic returned bad news—but it was news which could have been much, much worse. Three of the Pride’s heavy laser batteries had been torn from their moorings during the point transfer—an event which was likely the culprit behind the loud bang which had shaken the ship—but thankfully it had only cost him one of his still-active weapons.

  “We’ve got power relays down all along the port facing, Tim,” Garibaldi reported, forgoing Middleton’s rank in favor of a familiar address. Normally Middleton would have rebuked his Chief Engineer, but he knew the odds were essentially remote that any of them would survive the coming battle, so he decided to let it slide. “Our weaponry on that side is done for,” Garibaldi said heavily, “but I think I can give us a little shielding before the grid goes totally kaput.”

  “We’ll need everything we can get,” Middleton said as he finished reading the automated damage report. It seemed that the Liberator torpedo was still intact and mounted on the bow, and in the end that was all that Middleton cared about. “Find me that battleship, Mr. Hephaestion,” he said tightly.

  “I have its location, sir,” Hephaestion acknowledged, gesturing to the main viewer as it began to populate with icons representing the various vessels and other assets in the system. First the brown dwarf appeared, followed by the planetoid on which the Raubachs’ secret base was located. Then the Vae Victus appeared, orbiting that planetoid—a planetoid which appeared to be composed primarily of carbon.

  But then an icon appeared nearby which was unclassified. And it was followed by another, and another, and another, then a handful appeared, followed by another handful, and the icons continued popping into existence until over one hundred individual, unidentified icons had been revealed to the Pride’s sensors.

  When the final tally was in, there were six warships in the system—the remains of the Vae Victus, along with five Corvettes—and at least one hundred of the as yet unidentified signatures.

  Middleton pulled up one of the nearest signatures on his console and read its power profile. The profile radiated too powerful of an EM signature to be a missile, but too little to be a fighter or gunship.

  The Corvettes began moving toward the Pride of Prometheus, like a pack of lions descending on a wounded elephant, but the unidentified signatures made no move to follow. And just like that, he remembered what those power signatures indicated.

  “An Asgard Defensive Sphere,” he growled, remembering hearing about the old style defensive grids from some old-timers during his days at the academy. The sphere was composed of a grid of fully independent sentry satellites which were placed in su
ch a fashion as to provide total protection to a high value, stationary target like a space station—or, in this case, a planetoid.

  They had fallen out of favor due to a variety of factors: outdated weaponry; relatively weak shielding; and an underwhelming suite of sensor equipment which could be tricked by employing a handful of stealth techniques led the list of criticisms against the system. They were also expensive to deploy and maintain, so most of the Asgard clientele had eventually adopted some form of mobile deterrent—like a squadron of fighters or even a pair of Cutters—to defend high-value, but relatively small, facilities like the one which lay on the other side of the swarm of stationary platforms.

  But they were durable; they sported the equivalent of four light lasers each; and worst of all, they were fire-linked together using a rudimentary version of the modern Distributed Intelligence system. Eighty percent of the units deployed in a given sphere were the ‘dumb’ versions, carrying no primary fire control programming whatsoever, while the other twenty percent were designated as control units—units which were completely indistinguishable from the others without physical examination of the platform’s components. These control units would work in tandem with each other to determine target priority, firing patterns, and generally coordinate the defensive grid’s operation during live fire.