The Middle Road (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 7)

by Caleb Wachter

  The final wave of sixty missiles slammed into the Cruisers seconds before those Cruisers lobbed another broadside at the Void Hunter Cruiser, Bleeding Meat, which returned fire in kind for what would be its final act as a ship of war.

  “The Bleeding Meat is breaking up,” Hephaestion said tightly, “escape pods are ejecting but…” he trailed off as the Meat’s reactor went critical before it could be ejected. Thankfully, it had unleashed a full-throated broadside into the enemy mere seconds before being struck by the fatal barrage. Combined with nearly twenty kinetic missile strikes against the Imp Cruiser distant from the Prejudice, the Meat’s final act of savage defiance was to cause its Imperial adversary to eject her fusion cores and escape pods.

  As the opposing Cruisers went into their death throes, the Prejudice’s turbo-lasers bored into the partially exposed rear quarter of the lone remaining mobile Cruiser of Imperial Three. “Four hits…three to the hull and one was absorbed by their shields,” Middleton rattled off the tactical feed information before Hephaestion for a change. “Minor decrease detected in their engine output and a turbo mount was scrubbed.”

  He had gotten spoiled by the closer-range accuracy displayed by Toto to the point that he was actually disappointed with only three of eight strikes landing on high-value targets from extreme firing range. He knew it was a better than expected outcome, but right now he didn’t need ‘better than expected.’ He needed as close to perfection as humanly—or Sunderedly—possible.

  “The Corvettes are adjusting posture,” Hephaestion reported, and just as they should have done the Void Hunter Corvettes began to collapse back into a fan-shaped formation which would allow them to escape the firing arcs of nearly half of the inbound Imperial Destroyers—Destroyers which were still several minutes from extreme firing range on the Corvette and, a minute after that, on the Void Hunter Mothership.

  Mrr’shan had been an impressively receptive student during Middleton’s tutelage sessions in recent weeks. She, unlike the Stalwart Commander, appeared to have little—or no—pride when it came to revising her peoples’ long-held naval battle strategies. She seemed interested solely in improving her ships’ performance without the intrusion of ego or other undesirable factors entering into the equation.

  Middleton could not claim full credit for Mrr’shan’s impressively appropriate application of the tactical principles he had taught to her, but as her ships fell back he was reminded of a particular virtual simulation he had conducted with her a week earlier. As he thought about that training session—a session in which Middleton had taken the role of her people’s ships while Mrr’shan had taken the role of the Imperials, whose force was remarkably similar to the one she now faced—a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He saw a nearly perfect replication of his own formation in her ships’ movements, and for a moment he felt a measure of pride that was as unfamiliar to him as it could be.

  “She’s going to get hit hard,” he muttered as her Destroyers—two of Imperial make and two of decidedly lower quality—surged forward to engage the Destroyers which would first achieve firing angle on the Void Hunter Corvettes. “But if that main gun of hers has a few more shots in it and the Mothership’s shields hold…she might actually pull this off.”

  The Prejudice suddenly lurched beneath him as warning indicators flashed on his Tactical console after the two in-range Destroyers fired their long guns at Middleton’s ship. “Adjust posture, Helm,” Middleton ordered as his port shields fell to thirty two percent with heavy spotting and his starboard shields fell to twenty eight percent with critical spotting. The Prejudice’s power relays also began strobing with warning indicators, which meant he needed to disengage as quickly as possible or risk losing his limited cloaking device’s protection just beyond firing range from a squadron of Lupine-class Destroyers. “I’m diverting power from the guns to the stealth systems; drive us straight at the northern Destroyer on my mark. Three…two…one…” his finger stabbed down on the dual shield-swapping controls as he rotated the forward shields to the stern and moved the port shields to the front, “mark!”

  The Prejudice spun deftly and surged toward the northern Destroyer, with Toto desperately juking and rolling the nimble warship as its stealth suite attempted to cast sensor ghosts in the immediate vicinity in order to distract the in-range Destroyers’ targeting computers.

  The lone remaining Imperial Cruiser’s hull suddenly rippled with explosions, none of which was powerful enough to cause serious damage to the ship. After a few seconds’ examination, Middleton realized what had been hit: the escape pod tubes.

  He clenched his teeth, causing his cheek to bunch up against the metal plate attached to his jaw. “Blast it, Mrr’shan,” he cursed, knowing the only possible reason for the Imperial Cruiser’s many escape pod tubes to suffer such damage simultaneously was if they were sabotaged by the Void Hunter boarding parties. Tactically, Middleton fully approved of the maneuver since it would restrict the Imperials’ options—chief among them being whether or not to scuttle their ship while still aboard it—but ethically it was a step too far to deny your opponent the opportunity to retreat.

  Still, he understood the Void Hunters’ reasoning plainly enough: sabotaging the enemy’s escape paths greatly increased the chances of the Void Hunters capturing an intact Imperial Cruiser. And, assuming Middleton’s fleet emerged victorious, it was clear they would need many—many—hulls to replace those lost in this brutal, bloody battle.

  If Middleton had not been constrained by years of indoctrination with uniform military codes and regulations, he was certain he would have employed a similar tactic in the Void Hunters’ shoes. He wasn’t sure what that meant about him as a person, but he would need to ponder that particular subject later.

  “Over sixty percent of their throw weight is gone,” Middleton said with a slow nod as the beleaguered and crippled Imperial Cruisers fell silent, suggesting the feline boarding parties had, at the very least, disrupted ship-wide operations sufficiently to drop them out of the fight—and, at most, that the Void Hunters had seized control of one or more of the Imperial warships. “Which makes the remaining ships roughly even in a heads-up fight at knife range…” he trailed off as the Imperial Destroyers widened the angle of their approach to the Void Hunter formation.

  At their new angle, they would not enter firing range of the Void Hunter ships—save the two Imperial-tech captures which now served as the second and third heaviest warships in the Void Hunter formation—and Middleton hissed a bitter sigh. The new angle meant the wolf pack of Destroyers would not enter extreme firing range for another eight minutes, but once they did so they would be too far from the Void Hunters for the felines to return fire in any meaningful fashion.

  “P2p to Mrr’shan on the Mothership,” Middleton instructed, “have her people pull back to the third planet at maximum burn. They’ve done everything they can here; they’ll only die if they hold this position. Congratulate her on a perfectly executed defense. We couldn’t have asked for more at this particular engagement.”

  “Message sent,” Hephaestion acknowledged several seconds later, and just as he had hoped they would Middleton saw the Void Hunters do as he had commanded. At their present acceleration compared to that of the Imperial Destroyers—which perfectly adjusted their collective trajectories in order to minimize intercept time—the Void Hunters had just bought themselves nearly twenty minutes before they would come under turbo-laser fire.

  But once the wolf pack entered firing range, it would only be a matter of time before the Void Hunter ships were methodically wiped off the board. And there was nothing they could do about it.

  Perhaps worst of all, however, was that the Void Hunters’ arsenal of small craft had already been deployed. Middleton was confident that a number of elite teams remained aboard the Mothership—perhaps even as many as fifty small craft—but those would be far from decisive when it came time for the next tilting of lances.

  A lone turbo-laser strike ha
mmered into the Prejudice’s stern shields, dropping them to sixty percent strength as the Destroyer astern of Middleton’s ship sent two turbo-laser strikes in very different directions. The one which ‘missed’ actually intercepted one of the sensor ghosts Middleton had projected via a decoy buoy he had rigged up with Mikey’s help, which meant his latest addition to the Prejudice’s stealth systems were capable of at least occasionally tricking even Imperial sensors.

  “Looks like we’re clear,” Middleton said with measured relief as the Prejudice escaped the sternward Destroyer’s firing arc. “Hephaestion, get me a p2p line with Chancellor Foles. I need to know what other assets she’s got that can come into play.”

  He still had almost two hundred Independence missiles-cum-mines he could deploy, which had been placed near the third planet at the Void Hunters’ final fallback position. But if he used them now, while the completely unscathed Imperial One approached the second planet where the battered remnants of the Stalwart Battle Group had finally rendezvoused, he would be leaving the third planet—and the Void Hunters—totally vulnerable to the hungry pack of Lupines which were presently working to encircle them before tearing them apart piece by ragged piece.

  The Independence missiles’ range was significantly less than that of the Destroyers’ turbo-lasers, so Mrr’shan’s people would need to suck at least some of them into the missiles’ range with what Middleton hoped did not appear to be textbook or pre-rehearsed maneuvers.

  Middleton pored over tactical simulations as he searched for the ideal method to employ so that he might draw some of the wolf pack into the missiles’ firing range. He was broken from his single-minded reverie by Hephaestion’s voice when the young Tracto-an said, “I have Chancellor Foles on p2p with a two minute delay, Captain.”

  “Thank you,” Middleton said as the Chancellor’s face appeared on the Tactical console’s secondary display. Middleton drew a steadying breath as he prepared to engage in a process for which he knew only too well that he was ill-suited:

  Politics.

  Chapter XXXIV: Lance-tip Diplomacy

  “Supreme Commander,” the Chancellor greeted, her eyes sunken and dark from what must have been several consecutive stressful, sleepless days. But her resolve was evident in her stony demeanor as she spoke, “I assume you mean to ask after our remaining defensive assets, but I am not in a position to reveal that information at this time. I am, however, exercising executive authority—in spite of the electorate’s objections—and re-tasking our squadron of Corvettes to your direct command. Your efforts in defense of our star system thus far have been satisfactory,” Middleton’s lip curled into a contemptuous sneer at hearing that last word, which fell well short of any descriptor he would have used for his fleet’s efforts thus far. “As a gesture of good faith, I am permitting you to command our warships and their crews as you see fit.”

  Middleton snorted derisively, “I’m not good at word games, Madam Chancellor, so I’ll be blunt: you don’t have a choice whether or not to re-task your Corvettes. You can either place them under my direct command or they’ll get caught in the increasingly bloody crossfire out here. Worse still, they could sit on the sidelines like cowards while my people—foreigners in every sense of the word—bleed and die to protect your star system. And before you think to hide behind parliamentary protocol, executive authority restrictions, or any of the other myriad tropes and gambits you’ve assembled for the occasion, understand that every second you waste doing so will cost lives. For a while those lives will belong to the AG Fleet, but eventually the butcher’s bill will demand contributions from your own people—and after me and mine are gone, you won’t be in much of a position to repel these invaders. To be clear: I’ll leave this star system, right here and right now, if I don’t get assurances of serious commitment on your part to act in your own defense. I’ve torn this Imperial fleet apart far better than anyone could have reasonably hoped for to this point; I’d gladly quit the field on a victorious note and let the Imps descend on you like a plague before I’ve bled all but my last few drops and left myself at the Imperials’ mercy—or yours. Think on that while you compose your reply, Madam Chancellor.”

  Middleton resumed his tactical calculations and projections as he awaited the Chancellor’s reply, which eventually came as Foles’ lips tightened into a thin, pale line. “Then I will be equally blunt, Captain Middleton,” she said icily, “we demand first salvage rights of any and all warships found in our star system after the battle’s conclusion. I have already drafted a resolution which can be passed in our interplanetary legislative branch in eight minutes’ time following your verbal agreement. If you can agree to the salvage stipulations in the attached document, I promise to push this resolution through on your behalf.”

  “On my behalf?!” Middleton roared as the document arrived at his terminal. He took a trio of long, steadying breaths as he fought to regain control of his surprisingly volatile emotions.

  This woman was actually arguing over salvage rights when her entire star system was under siege! He recalled a passage from the League’s MDP, which he and the Alliance Gorgonus principals had already agreed to, and ground his teeth angrily as he pulled up that particular document and forwarded it to Hephaestion’s station so the young man could send it on to the Chancellor.

  “My counter to your counter, lady,” Middleton seethed, “is as follows: you replace whatever nonsense you just sent me with this document’s section regarding salvage rights—along with your star system’s unqualified, albeit provisional, agreement to enter into this Mutual Defense Pact—and I’ll agree to abide by the salvage clause contained therein, which is more than generous when addressing a host system’s primacy in salvage rights. Furthermore,” he continued hotly, “I’ll agree not to leave your people in my wake on my way out of this star system—which I can assure you is precisely where I and my remaining people will be headed if you don’t sign the MDP within five minutes of receiving this message.”

  Hephaestion sent the file Middleton had forwarded to him and acknowledged he had done so with a short nod. Included in the MDP was a full breakdown of the League’s civilian assets—including the Imperial Constructor, and the converted settler ships which housed literally hundreds of thousands of uprooted colonists. Middleton had been advised—a far more preferable word to ‘instructed’—by Chairman Lewis not to divulge that information unless he deemed it absolutely necessary to the preservation of the League’s ships.

  He was sure that a long line of lawyers could be quickly formed to argue that, technically speaking since the League’s ships had not yet entered combat with the Imperial Task Force, he had breached the spirit of that ‘advice’ by transmitting the full MDP but he saw no other way to secure the Chancellor’s cooperation at this point. None of their previous negotiations had yielded anything resembling progress toward a mutual agreement on key points like salvage or mutual defensive commitment, and now was the time to cut and run if such a mutual understanding and agreement could not be reached.

  Maybe a better negotiator could have already succeeded without surrendering such vital information, but Middleton had never been one with a talent for diplomacy that didn’t involve a knife to the throat—which, as far as he could tell, was essentially the position both he and Chancellor Foles were in at this exact moment.

  Middleton didn’t want to leave any potentially salvageable ships—or recoverable crews—behind by fleeing the system here and now. He knew that retrieving those assets for the AG Fleet was the only hope he had of mounting a serviceable defense of the Gorgon Sectors. But he would absolutely tuck tail and run if it was clear that staying would only cost him even more of the blood and arsenal which he and his people had already spent. To continue fighting on this particular field without establishing a reasonable expectation of return on the AG’s already deep investment here would be tantamount to the AG Fleet’s collective suicide.

  He’d scored a victory in the opening rounds of this fight, alb
eit something of a pyrrhic victory, and he knew of several more star systems which would lend their aid to the AG. He had purposefully set course for the border region of the conflict so that he could first establish a defensible perimeter. Once that perimeter was established, he could resume recruiting those other forces into the AG from a position of strength and relative solidarity. But if the Imperials were left unchecked in their advance, he knew he would never be able to build a coalition capable of resisting them.

  Precisely seven minutes later, Chancellor Foles’ scowling features once again filled his display. “It is my duty to acknowledge this extortion for precisely what it is,” she said stiffly, “however, given our predicament, we have no choice but to provisionally accept your salvage terms—with the understanding that several of the other more peripheral points of the MDP be subject to…clarification at a later date.”

  Middleton rolled his eyes pointedly, “That would be why we employ the term ‘provisional,’ Madam Chancellor, and I’m glad your people have seen fit to do what is clearly in their best interests—something which should not have required several days of political standoff, but I understand that some portion of your posturing was unavoidable. During our arrival in your star system my people and I had only proven to you that we were enemies of the Empire, but now I think it’s clear we’re here to help and not to harm…well, not just to harm,” he added with a sharkish grin. He saw a file come over from Hephaestion’s terminal and he opened it quickly, finding what appeared to be a complete breakdown of the star system’s arsenal—which did, in fact, include another one thousand Independence-class missiles scattered throughout the star system, whereas the first four hundred had all originated from the third planet’s surface.

  He finally understood why the Chancellor had been so reluctant to engage in formal negotiations: her people had already possessed enough firepower to destroy the invading Imperials, and possibly even Middleton’s fleet. But if they had deployed that weaponry against Admiral Edelweiss’s force then whatever Imperial task force followed would be more than capable of executing a full, ruthless, merciless siege of the star system from well beyond even the Independence-class missiles’ range.