No Middle Ground

by Caleb Wachter

  “I think I can collect the readings anywhere except Main Engineering or sickbay’s imaging chambers,” he replied confidently. “If you don’t mind, maybe we should keep it here?”

  “Do it,” Middleton instructed. “Do you need anything else to get your readings?”

  Jardine shook his head. “I don’t think so; I can patch into the ship’s power grid behind that panel there,” he pointed near the doorway. “It should take just a few minutes to hook it up, sir.”

  “I don’t want this thing anywhere near our computer hard-lines,” Middleton said flatly.

  “Of course not, sir,” Jardine agreed. “I’ve already taken the liberty of disconnecting the hard-lines running into this room to ensure we don’t have any unwanted computer virus uploaded into our system.”

  “Are you sure you don’t need any help?” Middleton asked, uncertain whether he was willing to trust both the prisoner’s integrity and Ensign Jardine’s abilities in such a delicate matter.

  “There’s really nobody on the ship who would understand this thing as well as me, Captain,” Jardine assured him, “Science Officer Mankins was the only other person who could have helped, and he...” he trailed off, since they both knew that Mankins had died during the bioweapon attack. He nodded to himself confidently before adding, “I’ve got this, sir.”

  “All right,” Middleton nodded eventually. He knew that Jardine was the most expert person on the crew in this regard, and he had to learn to trust his subordinates if the Pride was ever going to function at peak efficiency. “When can you take the images?”

  “I’ll need to wait until the last few seconds before we jump,” the Ensign replied confidently. “The strange particles won’t reach minimal excitability before then, and until they slow down this thing doesn’t have the fidelity to get a readable image. I’ve already set a countdown timer,” he added, gesturing to a backward running chronometer on a nearby console. “Everything’s ready as far as I can tell.”

  “Good,” Middleton said with a measure of confidence he didn’t truly feel. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the Ensign said, and Captain Middleton turned and left the conference room.

  When he was in the corridor, he opened a channel to Sergeant Joneson on his com-link.

  “Joneson here, Captain,” the other man greeted.

  “Have you increased security throughout the ship’s vulnerable areas?” Middleton asked.

  “Tight as an airlock, Captain,” Joneson replied. “And our prisoner’s behaved himself so far; barely even moved since you left.”

  “Let’s hope for his sake he stays that way,” Middleton said, still wholly unconvinced that this wasn’t all some kind of ploy on this ‘Fei Long’s’ part, assuming that was even his real name. “I was meaning to ask you,” he added belatedly, “what was on his data slate that got you so worked up?”

  The link was silent for several moments before the Sergeant replied hesitantly, “I’d rather not say over the link, Captain.”

  Middleton stopped in his tracks. “If it’s something pertaining to ship’s security, Sergeant—“

  “I assure you that I’ve personally dealt with the situation, Captain, and will make a full report after we jump,” Joneson promised. “But that particular threat to shipboard security has already been contained.”

  “I don’t like this cryptic nonsense, Sergeant,” Middleton growled, thoroughly fed up with all the word games his crew seemed to enjoy playing recently.

  “Trust me, sir,” Joneson replied awkwardly, “you’ll understand when I explain.”

  “I hope so,” Middleton said shortly as he resumed his trek to the bridge, “Middleton out.”

  Chapter XI: A New Player

  Captain Middleton sat rigidly in his command chair, watching as the countdown to point transfer neared zero.

  “Field generators at maximum; strange particle activity has reached the hyper jump threshold,” reported Ensign Sarkozi who, in lieu of a proper Science Officer, had been assigned the duty of overseeing hyper jump protocols.

  “Jump in three…two…one,” Helmsman Jersey reported, “jump.”

  There was the familiar sense of vertigo which always seemed to accompany hyper jumps aboard the Pride of Prometheus, after which Ensign Sarkozi reported, “Jump successful, Captain. We have arrived in the target system.”

  “Inertial sump drain is six percent higher than anticipated,” Helmsman Jersey grumbled, “compensating with secondary engines now.”

  A few moments later there was a wholly unexpected, yet barely audible, ‘thwump’ as the ship broke free of the strange particle field which protected their vessel from the otherwise inescapable pull of gravity during point transfers.

  “Status report,” Middleton barked, bracing himself for sabotage of some kind to the ship.

  “We’ve broken the sump, Captain,” Helmsman Jersey reported only slightly irritably. “But there was more resistance than usual.”

  Middleton activated the com-link in his chair and raised Jardine. “Jardine, report.”

  “All systems green here, Captain,” the Comm. Officer reported promptly. “My equipment has already been secured.”

  “Good work, Ensign,” Middleton said, grateful to remove one possible variable from the equation. He turned to Ensign Sarkozi, “What do you have, Sarkozi?”

  “Reading a trio of vessels, Captain,” she replied after a brief check of her people’s instruments. “Two civilian transports and one unidentified vessel; all three ships are already within medium firing range, Captain.”

  “Battle stations,” Middleton barked. “Helm, come about to present our bow to these ships; Shields, divert all available power to the forward emitters. Engineering, have Chief Garibaldi go to combat output on the engines. Comm., squawk our ident codes and MSP authority,” Middleton finished, with each department head going to work even before he had finished issuing the orders.

  Middleton hated to give information away to potential enemies needlessly, but protocol demanded that when vessels jumped within such close proximity to one another they broadcast their ident codes immediately to avoid unnecessary fraying of nerves—or, more accurately, to avoid unnecessary exchange of fire between potentially friendly vessels.

  “Squawking now, Captain,” the Comm. stander acknowledged. Several seconds passed before the Comm. stander shook her head. “I’m receiving no reply, sir.”

  “Do you have an ID on the third ship yet, Tactical?” Middleton snapped as he flipped through the sensor readings piped through his chair’s console.

  “Negative, Captain,” Sarkozi replied quickly, “but the civilian ID’s have been verified as a pair of ore haulers licensed out of Sector 23.”

  “Sector 23?” Middleton repeated as he considered the distance between their current position, which in astronomical terms was relatively near the border of Sectors 24 and 23. “What’s their logged itinerary?” he demanded as he spun to face the Comm. stander.

  “Checking, sir,” she replied, flushing with frustration after a few moments’ effort to call up the requested information. After an unacceptably long interval, she finally said, “Their flight plan is over a month out of date, Captain; their last logged location was near the border of Sectors 23 and 24 just on the 23 side…a system called ‘Pavonis’.”

  “Captain,” the man at Sensors interrupted, “the vessels are preparing to jump; strange particle readings on all three vessels are consistent with imminent point transfer.”

  “That would account for the unexpected increase in the inertial sump, Captain,” Jersey suggested gruffly.

  “I’ve got a visual on the third ship, Captain,” Sarkozi reported, “putting it on the main viewer now.”

  The viewer shifted from a tactical overlay to one showing a strange ship, the image of which was magnified several times until Middleton – who had memorized the profile of every known ship class to ever operate in the Spineward Sectors – was at a loss for word
s.

  “What do you make of it, Tactical?” he asked as he leaned forward, his mind racing to make certain he had never come across anything even remotely similar in his studies.

  “It…appears to be a nearly perfect dodecahedron, Captain,” she replied after sitting down at a console and going over the sensor readings. “Measurements are approximately one hundred meters between each of its six pairs of opposing faces. Power profile is roughly that of a destroyer-class vessel.” She tapped away at her console for several moments before shaking her head in disbelief, “I’m reading an extremely odd radiation signature, Captain. There’s nothing in the ship’s database that matches it.”

  Middleton sat forward in his chair eagerly. “Check the radiation profile against the one we recorded in the engagement at the gas mine,” he ordered.

  “Already in process, Captain,” Sarkozi reported curtly before shaking her head. “It’s vaguely similar but definitely different, Captain; not only are these emissions orders of magnitude less powerful than the burst we recorded near the gas giant, they don’t match wavelengths with the other readings we recorded. This is definitely a different bird.”

  “Point transfers detected,” the Sensors officer reported. “One…now two; both of the civilian transports have transferred out of the system, Captain.”

  “Hail the remaining ship,” Middleton ordered, feeling his hackles rise.

  “Hailing now, Captain,” the Comm. stander acknowledged. A few moments later, she shook her head. “No response; I’m not even getting static…Captain, they’re jamming all comm. channels!”

  “Confirmed, sir,” Sarkozi reported immediately. “They’ve just blanketed the area with some sort of ultra-powerful signal like nothing I’ve ever seen.” A second later, her console lit up and a series of alarms went off around the bridge denoting incoming fire. “Massive power surge detected—“

  Before she could finish her report, the bridge was rocked so hard that even a few crewmembers properly seated at their stations were thrown from their chairs and into the ceiling. Those unfortunate crewmembers quickly came crashing back down to the deck with a sickening series of crunches, after which they lay motionless with blood streaming from their faces.

  “Damage report!” Middleton bellowed as half the consoles on the bridge flickered rapidly off and on before stabilizing.

  “Forward shields are down to 26%, Captain,” Sarkozi reported, having miraculously kept to her temporary seat by holding on for all she was worth an instant before the Pride had been struck.

  “Emitters two, four and five of the forward array are off-line, Captain; we’ve got critical spotting all along the forward, dorsal and lateral arrays,” reported the Shields operator.

  “Return fire!” Middleton roared.

  “Returning fire, Captain,” Sarkozi acknowledged hungrily, and a moment later the forward array of the Pride of Prometheus lanced out with its full might and fury, landing home on the enemy vessel with a grouping so tight it brought a smirk to Middleton’s lips when the image of the enemy vessel briefly disappeared behind its shield flares. “Ten for ten,” Sarkozi reported triumphantly, “damage to enemy vessel…negligible,” she finished incredulously. “That’s impossible; no ship that size should be able—“

  The Pride was rocked again, but this time no one lost their seat and the impact seemed to be far less punishing than the first assault. “Damage report!” Captain Middleton snapped angrily.

  “Forward shields have collapsed,” the Shields operator reported, “all forward emitters now offline.”

  “Forward armor has sustained minor damage; no system failures detected,” the Damage Control operator added with a hint of bewilderment.

  “That second volley should have finished us,” Middleton growled under his breath, knowing that a pair of shots equal in power to the first would have easily torn through the Pride’s forward defenses and caused massive damage to the aged cruiser.

  But before he could get any further in his thought process, the Sensors operator reported with obvious relief, “Point transfer detected, Captain; the enemy vessel has left the system!”

  Almost ashamed to admit it, Captain Middleton felt every bit as grateful as the Sensors operator sounded for the enemy’s timely egress. Even with the Pride’s robust forward armor, there was no way they could survive a sustained firefight of even a handful more salvos with that strange vessel.

  “Sensors,” Middleton said in a hard, level voice, “I want you to compile every scrap of data we have on that vessel and bring it to me the second you’ve done so.”

  “Yes, Captain,” the Sensors operator replied.

  “Comm.,” he continued as a pair of crewmen knelt beside the motionless crewmembers that had been thrown from their stations during the attack, “have sickbay send a team up here as soon as they can spare one.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Comm. stander acknowledged.

  “Maintain battle stations,” Captain Middleton said in a loud, carrying voice, “we can’t assume we’re all alone out here just yet. Helm,” he said, turning to Jersey, “I need you to make for the nearest planetoid at best possible speed; assuming that hostile comes back looking for us, we don’t want to be out in the open with a giant bulls-eye on our back.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Jersey acknowledged, this time without his usual, annoyed tone.

  “We’re not jumping out of the system, Captain?” Sarkozi asked in a surprisingly calm, professional voice.

  “No, Ensign,” Middleton replied coldly, doing his best to suppress the sudden upwelling of anger and disappointment he felt—the vast majority of which was directed at himself, “not yet. We may not be able to find out who they are…but I for blasted sure want to know what they were doing here before we tuck tail and run.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sarkozi said snappily, turning back to her subordinates and issuing orders.

  Captain Middleton saw the stream of damage reports coming in over his chair’s console, but all he could think about was how much power the enemy ship had generated on such short notice. It was, from everything he knew of starship combat—and physics in general—practically impossible.

  Then a thought occurred to him and he sat back in his chair with a wave of what most would call euphoria washing over him, but to him it felt more like relief. That’s it, he thought to himself as he ran some calculations on his console. While the numbers weren’t quite identical to what they had observed, they were close enough to support his supposition.

  He would need to verify the readings, but if they were evidence of what he suspected, then this protracted patrol just got a Hades of a lot more complicated.

  After burning to make close orbit of a nearby, rocky planetoid on the outermost edge of the system, the next six hours passed relatively uneventfully while engineering teams worked to bring the Pride’s shields back online. When the window for the enemy ship’s potential return had come and gone without incident, Captain Middleton stood from his chair and ordered the ship to stand down from battle stations but remain on alert status as he took the data the Sensors operator had compiled into his ready room.

  It wasn’t much, especially in light of what appeared to be overwhelming firepower, but at least now he had an idea of what they were dealing with. Developing a strategy of dealing with this new threat was now just a matter of focusing his resources on the problem to find way around it…or through it.

  Chapter XII: Walk a Mile in Another’s Feet…

  Lu Bu had been told by the doctor that she needed to remain in the sickbay for twenty four hours. The Lancer recruit had argued with the other woman, but in the end she had decided that Walter Joneson’s orders likely included her showing obeisance to the ship’s medical officer.

  As she lay there—even through what was clearly some sort of ship-to-ship battle which had taken place not long after their latest point transfer—Lu Bu had realized that the older man who had sat beside her on the shuttle ride to the Pride of Prometheus so many weeks e
arlier appeared to be working as a doctor in sickbay.

  It should not have surprised her, since it seemed that she was the only recruit from her world who had not been a prisoner prior to joining the ship’s crew. The barcode tattoos over the former prisoners’ right eyes clearly marked them for what they were, and Lu Bu was uncertain she could ever learn to fully accept what that brand represented.

  The woman doctor approached Lu Bu’s bedside with a scanning instrument of some kind in her long, delicate fingers. “How are you feeling?” Doctor Middleton asked in her calm, professional tone. But to Lu Bu that tone bordered on patronizing, especially considering the fact that her wounds were essentially already repaired.

  “This one is fine,” Lu Bu replied shortly. “When may this one return to training?”

  Doctor Middleton’s expression softened and Lu Bu felt a flare of anger at the other woman’s demeanor. “For most patients I would advise at least two weeks of zero exertion,” she replied, “so that’s what I prescribe for you as well.”

  Lu Bu stiffened and looked up at the ceiling. “Lu Bu not ‘most patients’,” she said shortly. “There is no more pain; this one should return to training now.” She sat abruptly and made to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, but the doctor placed a halting hand on her shoulder. Glancing over at the older woman with open irritation, it was all Lu Bu could do to refrain from forcibly removing the doctor’s interdicting hand.

  “I understand you’re eager to return to your…training,” the doctor said, veritably chewing on the last word as she said it. “But right now you are my patient, and I require a minimum of twenty four hours observation before releasing you. I simply don’t know enough about your physiology to properly predict your reaction to the medications and surgical procedure.”

  “This one not require surgery,” Lu Bu scoffed, looking pointedly at her own shoulder which no longer even bore its tiny bit of sticky gauze to cover the needle-sized entry the doctor had made through her skin to effect repairs. Had she not known that a few hours earlier there had been a delicate surgical instrument inserted there, she would have never been able to find the pinprick of a mark that device had made in her skin. “The doctor is skill at her craft after much practice,” she added, clasping her hands before herself respectfully. “This one asks for return to training for similar practice!”