No Middle Ground

by Caleb Wachter

  She marveled at his magnanimity, and held her head high as she walked into sickbay behind him, having finally found her very own place in the universe.

  “By the way,” he said as they sat on the waiting stools inside Sickbay, “that’s a good name you picked. I changed my own right before draft day to honor the greatest player that ever wore the pads…but you might have done me one better.” He gave her an approving nod, and Lu Bu felt a wave of exhilaration sweep through her like the cleansing rains of a monsoon.

  Chapter XXIII: A Plan Comes Together

  “Enter,” Middleton called after the chime at his door had sounded, and Ensign Jardine entered the ready room with a pair of data slates in hand. “Ensign, good,” the Captain said as he shifted his attention from his own console toward the junior officer, “what’s your status on deciphering the transmission?”

  Jardine look anything but confident as he sat down, which put Middleton ill at ease. Jardine was the top Comm. Officer aboard the Pride of Prometheus, and there wasn’t another member of the crew whose credentials exceeded his own at decryption. “I’m sorry, Captain,” Jardine said as he slid one of the data slates across the desk, “I just can’t seem to crack it. The closer I think I get, the more complex the data patterns become.”

  Middleton took up the proffered data slate and examined its contents, finding it to be a comprehensive analysis of their strange particle fields these past few jumps. “This contains the raw data, as well as your analyses of these past four transmissions?” he asked, keeping the frustration from his voice.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied. “Both the strange particle fields and the transmissions embedded in our engine wake have been isolated and cleaned up to the best of my ability.”

  Middleton thumbed the activator glyph on his console’s com-link, which had been preset to the Master at Arms’ channel. “Bring him in,” the captain said.

  Nearly a minute later, Fei Long entered the ready room with the Master at Arms close behind. The Master at Arms’ left eye was covered with an adhesive bandage and the skin on the top of his head was exposed and clearly very badly burned. Captain Middleton had received Sergeant Joneson’s report, which had listed the Master at Arms as having sustained ‘superficial injuries,’ which Middleton supposed only spoke to the general difficulty of the boarding missions.

  “Thank you, Master at Arms,” Middleton said with a gesture to the man’s damaged head. “I was unaware of your injuries being so significant.”

  “Universe builds redundancy into everything, Captain; I’ve still got one good optical sensor,” the Master at Arms replied curtly, clearly still feeling his oats from the boarding action. “Besides, Doctor Middleton thinks she can save the eye; never been too partial to the bionics, personally.”

  “Either way,” Middleton said, standing from his chair, “I’ve made a note requesting commendation for your actions; sounds like we would have lost more Lancers if you hadn’t been there.”

  “Just doing my part, Captain,” the other man replied.

  “Dismissed, Master at Arms,” Middleton said graciously, and the other man snapped a salute which the captain returned, before the other man left the room. He paused for a fraction of a second as Fei Long sat in a chair Middleton had set beside Jardine’s prior to the meeting, but then the Master at Arms left.

  “Ensign Jardine,” Middleton began, gesturing toward Fei Long, “this is Fei Long. Fei Long, Ensign Jardine. Ensign Jardine’s our senior Comm. officer and head cryptologist, and he’s got a project he needs your assistance with.”

  “I am happy to be of service, Captain,” Fei Long said with a tilt of his head.

  Middleton nodded and turned to Jardine deliberately. “Fei Long is privy to certain intelligence regarding what we might be facing out here,” he said evenly, “and during your collaboration he’s going to share that information with you, Ensign.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Jardine said, his face a professional mask but Middleton knew the other man was surprised by Fei Long possessing any information he might not.

  “But I need to make something perfectly clear,” Middleton said gravely, “for the time being, no one outside of this room is to be included in examining—or even discussing—that intelligence. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jardine said curtly.

  “Then get to work,” Middleton said, eager to discover the identity of their hidden passenger—as well as the purpose of their carefully concealed transmissions.

  “Captain,” Fei Long began after Jardine had stood from his chair, “if you will permit it, I would very much like to build upon the rather rudimentary system we utilized to deceive the pirate vessels.”

  Middleton shook his head. “The project with Jardine takes precedence over everything else,” he said. “When it’s finished, I’ll be happy to consider your proposal.”

  “Yes,” Fei Long said patiently, “but given the nature of our assignment, it will be necessary to utilize the ship’s primary computer network, yes?”

  Middleton looked at Jardine, who nodded affirmatively. “Yes, it will,” the Captain conceded.

  “And since I am clearly not yet trustworthy—a status I find oddly comforting, to tell the truth,” Fei Long added quickly, “I must then work under Ensign Jardine’s direct supervision, correct?”

  “That is correct, Fei Long,” Middleton said, keeping his growing irritation out of sight.

  “Then, even assuming Ensign Jardine operates for sixteen out of each twenty four hours,” Fei Long said calmly, “I will have eight hours which I may devote toward other efforts.”

  Jardine cocked an eyebrow, “You don’t plan on sleeping?”

  Fei Long chuckled softly as he turned to the Ensign. “I have not slept in the two years since my untimely incarceration, Ensign Jardine. I find my faculties marginally diminished as a result, but I also find it quite liberating and am uncertain if I miss the act of sleep very much, if at all.”

  The Ensign shot Middleton an incredulous look as the Captain considered Fei Long’s words. “Fine,” he said, “but you’ll still need direct supervision when interfacing with the ship’s systems—or even when throwing the power switch to test whatever it is you’re building.”

  “Of course, Captain; I will forward my project outline immediately,” Fei Long said graciously as he stood from the chair. “I believe it will ensure future successes of the type we have recently experienced, even against military targets.”

  “I look forward to your outline,” Middleton said. “Dismissed.”

  The two men left and Captain Middleton turned his attention to the matter at hand: stopping these pirates once and for all.

  “Before we get started, I want to recognize the efforts of our Lancers in neutralizing these pirates,” Middleton said after the last of his senior officers had arrived. He gestured toward Sergeant Joneson, “Thanks to their service, the two thousand remaining colonists aboard the settlement ship have been safely evacuated to the planet below, and the immediate threat to their safety has been contained.”

  Sergeant Joneson sat stiffly in his chair and nodded curtly, “We were just doing our part, Captain.”

  Middleton nodded approvingly before continuing, “Two hours ago, Captain Manning made for Elysium aboard one of the merchant conversions. He will return in six days with a repair crew so he can put the Elysium’s Wings to rights and bring it back to his home world’s SDF. In the meantime, he’s consented to allow us to use his ship against these pirates.”

  Garibaldi leaned forward and raised his hand, much as one might do in a classroom during primary school. Middleton gestured for the Chief to speak, and the engineer said, “Captain, that ship ain’t going nowhere. Although her primary fusion core miraculously survived a live shutdown—don’t ask me how Captain Manning managed to do that without making the thing go ‘kablooey’—even if we get the generator back up and running, and even if we get her engines up to maneuvering capability, her power grid won’t support anything
resembling a combat load.”

  “That’s correct, Chief,” Middleton agreed. “Tactically speaking, the Elysium’s Wings is dead in space and likely in for more than just a few weeks at space-dock after she limps home.”

  “Then, forgive me for asking the obvious,” Garibaldi said in what Middleton took to be a less-snarky-than-usual tone, “but how exactly can we use it against the pirates?”

  “We turn it into bait,” Sarkozi chimed in as her eyes flashed with realization. “We rig it with modified transponders to make it look like something else—the settlement ship maybe?”

  “Close, Ensign, but I’ve got a slightly different idea,” he said with an approving nod. “The settlement ship will burn up in the planet’s atmosphere in a few hours, and the prisoners have verified they were in contact with their commanders before we entered the system. So we have to assume they already knew the settler was done for. But, if we switch transponders, we might just be able to trick them into getting close enough for us to spring the trap.” He activated a view screen near his chair, and it displayed a vessel’s technical specifications as he gestured to the images, “Our interrogations of the pirates we took prisoner indicate that an Incumbent-class Light Destroyer is scheduled to rendezvous with the Elysium’s Wings in two days’ time, to make contact with the mutinous crew and transfer whatever valuables they deemed worth salvaging.”

  Sarkozi shook her head as though in defeat. “Incumbents are the newest class of vessel to operate in this region,” she said evenly. “They’re fast, they’re versatile, and they’ve got the longest-range weaponry of anything outside of a Dreadnaught-class Battleship in the entire Spine.”

  “And all military warships use image recognition to verify vessel ID’s, Captain,” Jardine pointed out. “Civilians generally can’t afford those systems, which is partly why our sensor decoys worked so well against the conversions.”

  “Yeah,” Chief Garibaldi agreed, “and we don’t have the time or facilities to modify the hull of the conversion to make it look even remotely like the corvette.”

  Middleton nodded knowingly, having already addressed each of these issues. “If we can’t make the conversion look like a corvette, then we’ll just have to keep them from making visual contact with either vessel until we’ve made our move,” he explained as he pressed the control pad for the view screen, changing it to show the fifth planet of the system. “The fifth planet of this system is a type two ice dwarf. The characteristics within the outer edges of its atmospheric envelope are within the limits for the merchant conversion, the Wings’, and the Pride’s shield and gravity tolerances. We can hide just beneath the topmost, visually opaque, layer without endangering our vessels while the Incumbent class Destroyer approaches. They should be unable to make visual confirmation of either the conversion or the corvette’s identification until it’s too late.”

  “Begging the Captain’s pardon,” Jersey put in respectfully, “but if we’re just going to hide the other two ships within the planet’s atmo, why go to the trouble of re-rigging transponders and modifying energy output patterns to make them think the conversion is the Wings and vice versa?”

  “Because that destroyer’s too fast, too maneuverable, and her weaponry can outdo ours at extreme range if she knows what she’s up against. In a heads-up, one-on-one fight, she beats us four times out of five,” he explained seriously. He swept the room with his hard gaze before allowing a smile to crack his otherwise stony features before adding, “And I aim to tilt the odds our way.”

  Chapter XXIV: Springing the Trap

  “Incoming jump detected at the hyper limit, Captain,” the Sensors operator reported precisely on schedule.

  “Initiating handshake protocols,” Jardine reported. Fei Long was seated at a Comm. console beside him, with his hands clasped over his lap.

  “Remember,” Middleton said, “you’ll be speaking as the conversion, Jardine.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Jardine replied before placing a finger to his ear briefly. “Incoming transmission, Captain.”

  “Go ahead, Ensign,” he said with a gesture. If this worked, they just might take the Incumbent-class vessel at the outset. If not, there was nothing to stop the faster, longer-ranged vessel from sighting in their guns at extreme range and picking the Pride apart until there was nothing left—or until he tucked tail and fled, leaving the two thousand colonists at the tender mercy of these marauders.

  “This is Lieutenant Drummond,” Jardine said, using the name of the pirate Comm. officer. He had spent the previous hours studying the man’s file, and using a voice modifier heavily augmented by static interference, Middleton had been assured that the Ensign could passably impersonate the man. “The package is secure and awaiting extraction; we require immediate assistance.”

  “This is Captain Rodriguez,” a surprisingly familiar man’s nasal voice came over the speakers, “activate your visual pickup and transmit on the assigned frequencies.” Middleton had previously met the man during a major summit some years earlier. Rodriguez had been a Lieutenant in the MSP at the time, and Middleton had actually played a game of chess against him—a game which Rodriguez had lost rather spectacularly.

  “Negative, Captain,” Jardine replied, “our engines are disabled and we’re in a decaying orbit within the fifth planet’s atmosphere. Our Comm. unit is boosted to maximum to penetrate the local EM interference; it’s only a matter of time before we lose the ability to transmit entirely.”

  “The fifth planet?” Rodriguez demanded. “What in the Demon’s name are you doing there? Where’s Raubach?”

  “Lieutenant Commander Raubach was killed seizing the Elysium’s Wings, Captain,” Jardine replied, adjusting the gain on his transmitter so as to garble the signal. “He and the others managed to disable the ship’s weaponry before they were neutralized, and our Marines disabled her engines before they could make the hyper limit, but we lost contact with them after they entered the atmosphere. We can confirm that Captain Manning was in Marine custody before we lost contact with the Wings.”

  “Why in Murphy’s name did you follow them in?” the pirate captain asked with obvious irritation.

  “Sir,” Jardine replied, “our top priority was to seize the Wings. We attempted to send a shuttle over after they entered the atmosphere, but encountered unexpected pockets of unstable gas which damaged our engines and destroyed the shuttle, along with our engineers.”

  “Say again, Drummond,” Rodriguez demanded, “your signal’s breaking up.”

  Jardine continued to manually degrade his transmission as he replied, “Our engines are down; without replacement parts we can’t break free of the planet’s gravity on maneuvering thrusters alone. We need an engineering team to affect repairs—“ Ensign Jardine cut off mid-sentence as he tapped a glyph to cease transmission.

  “Good work, Ensign,” Middleton said. “Now we wait for them to take the bait.”

  Minutes began to tick by after the destroyer changed course to approach the planet Middleton had chosen for the trap, and the tension on the bridge was palpable as the crew ran through their final preparations.

  Eventually, the Liberator-class Destroyer under Captain Rodriguez’s command made high orbit of the planet, while continuously transmitting hails in an attempt to contact the fake Lieutenant Drummond. The real Lieutenant Drummond was currently locked away in the brig along with nearly two dozen other prisoners, who had thus far cooperated with the Master at Arms’ interrogations and supplied the necessary intelligence for Middleton to set this particular trap.

  “Give Captain Rodriguez a little encouragement, Ensign Jardine,” Middleton said after a few minutes, “but just enough to whet his appetite.”

  Jardine nodded before adjusting the settings of his console and speaking, “Repeat, we require an engineering team to affect repairs on the Elysium’s Wings’ engines in order to break free of the planet’s gravity. Watch for pockets of unstable ice on descent—“

  He cut the transmission
and turned to face Captain Middleton, who nodded his approval.

  Lieutenant Commander Jersey approached the Captain’s chair and clasped his hands behind his back as he made to survey the bridge while speaking under his breath, “How do you know he’ll go for it, Captain? Taking our shot now might be the best play.”

  Middleton shook his head. “These pirates were on explicit orders to recover Captain Manning’s corvette,” he explained, “and I doubt their superiors—whoever they are—will look kindly on their failure to do so. Not only that, but I’ve met ‘Captain’ Rodriguez,” he added with a contemptuous snort, “and the man is prone to taking unnecessary risks with his primary assets if his goal appears to be in sight. He knows his destroyer’s engines won’t be affected by the planet’s atmosphere, so he’s unlikely to risk a dangerous shuttle trip when he can just descend through the atmosphere far enough to minimize the danger to his engineers in transit. My guess is he’ll come close enough for a good, close shave.”

  Middleton shook his head in wonderment as he remembered the chess game they had played some years earlier. Now, much like then, he was offering his opponent a free piece on the board while in actuality making designs on the other man’s queen—a gambit which had paid off and won the game for Middleton. He had little reason to suspect this situation would play out any differently.

  Jersey’s face was a mask of professionalism, but a note of his former gruff, sour attitude came through as he said, “You’re the Captain.”

  “Yes, I am,” Middleton replied as smoothly as he could while keeping his eyes fixed on the tactical display.

  “They are descending through the atmosphere, Captain,” the man at Sensors reported in his people’s distinct accent. He was one of the few prisoners they had recruited whose aptitudes and performance to date had earned his way onto the bridge, and Middleton found himself more comfortable than he had expected to be with his new crewmembers’ performance and ability to integrate into the Pride’s crew.