Taking a deep breath, Middleton looked at the tactical readout and knew they only had a few minutes before the corridors of his ship became a battleground.
“Captain,” Commander Jersey said in a raised voice, “the Lancers are short-handed; I’m rated for power armor and we’ve got more than enough empty suits down there in need of filling. I can’t do any more good at the helm anyway, sir.”
“Agreed,” Middleton said with a sharp nod, knowing there were only a handful of power armor-rated, duty-ready members of the crew outside of the Lancers. “Get down there and suit up.”
The previous helm stander resumed his post and worked with Ensign Sarkozy to maneuver the ship, as Commander Jersey sprinted to the bridge’s exit as fast as his venerable legs could carry him.
Chapter XLI: The Fray
“This is the Captain to all Lancers: suit up and prepare to receive boarders,” Captain Middleton’s voice came over Lu Bu’s ear bud unexpectedly. They had continued their course toward the Pride of Prometheus, and were apparently just within communications range of the tiny craft.
“The last vessel is gone, and the comm. blackout is gone with it,” Fei Long concluded with raised eyebrows, “but apparently, Captain Middleton believes there is more to these ‘fighters’ than first appears…interesting.”
“Interesting?” Lu Bu snapped in their native tongue. “Our crewmates are about to receive Ancestors-only-know how many boarders, and you think it’s ‘interesting’?! We must return to assist them!”
“Switch it back to Standard, you two,” Gnuko snapped.
Lu Bu turned to her new Sergeant and said, in Confederation Standard, “We must return to Pride and help crew, Sergeant.”
Gnuko was clearly torn. “We don’t have power armor,” he said doubtfully, “and that jump drive threw off a load of lethal radiation when it went. We’ll need to circumnavigate the danger zone, which will take an extra few minutes of maneuvering—assuming the shields on this shuttle can withstand even the less-intense rads on the periphery of the blast zone.”
“We cannot sit here!” Lu Bu objected furiously, feeling a vein in her forehead bulge unexpectedly.
“Lu Bu is correct,” Fei Long interjected. “Without the Pride of Prometheus, this shuttle is little better than a life pod. We must return to the ship and lend whatever assistance we are able, even if that is merely to ram an incoming fighter to diminish the threat to our crewmates. Anything else would be passive. Passivity is the path of prey, and prey exists only to feed the predator.” His eyes flashed with an inner strength which Lu Bu had never seen in his countenance, and which gave her cause to reconsider several of her preconceptions regarding the boy as he added, “I am not prey.”
“Agreed,” Peleus said with a sharp nod as he, too, leaned into the cockpit. “We must rejoin the battle however we are able.”
“All right,” Gnuko agreed, and Lu Bu realized he had only vacillated in order to gain consensus among the team. It seemed to her that while this was different from how Sergeant Joneson operated, Walter Joneson had wisely chosen his successor. She hoped that she could learn from her new Sergeant as she had from her old one. “Set a course for the Pride, Lu; push the engines as hard as you can.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” she replied with gusto before lighting the engines and initiating a maximum burn toward the Pride of Prometheus, which had just unleashed a flash of fire resulting in a pair of explosions among the approaching fighters.
“Two targets down, Captain, with twelve remaining,” Sarkozy reported. “We’ve cleared the lethal rad zone; recommend we bring the forward guns to bear on the incoming fighters. We should be able to take out a handful with some fancy firing.”
“Do it,” Middleton agreed, knowing that clearing the ‘lethal zone’ and clearing the zone entirely were two completely different things. But to survive what had clearly been a well thought out strategy on the part of the droids, he knew they needed to destroy as many individual units as possible before they reached the hull of the Pride.
His com-link flashed, and he opened the incoming packet to receive a status update of his Lancers that made him wince. In all, including those members of the crew who had been temporarily assigned, he had twenty one bodies in power armor. Seeing as Sergeant Gnuko had gone aboard the shuttle to assist with the missile deployment, command of the unit had fallen to Lancer Atticus and Commander Jersey.
Satisfied with his XO’s suggested plan to repel the boarders, Middleton acknowledged the report and wished the Lieutenant Commander a good hunt.
“I’m receiving a transmission from the shuttle,” Ensign Jardine reported. “They’re on approach and offering assistance.”
Middleton marveled at the courageousness of the people aboard the tiny craft. They couldn’t hope to influence the outcome in any fashion other than to make a suicide ram against one of the inbound fighters, and much as he hated to admit it, Captain Tim Middleton actually considered ordering them to do precisely that.
But the truth was that the four members of the shuttle’s complement were worth more to the ship if they somehow managed to re-board it, with Sergeant Gnuko, Peleus, and Lu Bu representing a significant increase in Lancer strength—to say nothing of whatever Fei Long might be able to contribute.
“Inform them to prepare for combat landing procedures on final approach,” Middleton ordered. “They are to re-board the ship; we’ll cover them with our PD grid.”
“Aye, Captain,” Jardine replied just as the first of the fighters entered immediate range, causing a set of quickly-muffled klaxons to go off.
The Pride of Prometheus—in what a less-logical man might consider a conscious act of defiance against its would-be killers—fired a pair of its forward lasers at an incoming craft and saw that craft disintegrate by the second shot.
“Two fighters have entered immediate range,” Sarkozy reported as a second icon entered immediate tactical range, “we’ll get shots on five more of the blighters before it’s down to the Lancers.”
“Make ‘em count, Tactical,” Middleton said as the impact alarm went off. Middleton gritted his teeth as he saw that the first fighter had just touched down on the hull—directly over the main engines. “Inform Commander Jersey that his first guests have arrived, and relay their location.”
The last phase of the battle had just begun, and Middleton knew that at this point the outcome was largely out of his hands.
“You’re sure you can land this craft?” Gnuko asked hesitantly as the shuttle made its final approach. Flashes of weapons fire could be seen along the hull of the Pride toward the stern, and as they continued to bear down on the ship.
“I am,” Fei Long replied confidently, knowing that there was little chance he could fail to execute such a simple maneuver.
“I wasn’t asking you,” the Sergeant growled, turning to face Lu Bu.
“I believe…yes, Sergeant,” the young woman replied in a less-than-inspiring tone.
“All right,” Gnuko said bitterly, “you’re on the stick, Fei. These are combat conditions—“
“I am well aware of the conditions, Sergeant,” Fei Long interrupted as he reached over to transfer primary control from the pilot’s console to his own co-pilot’s station. He expertly manipulated the various settings on the dash as he adjusted their rotation and velocity to match the Pride’s.
“We’ll need to break for the Armory,” Gnuko said, turning back to Lu Bu, “we’ll get some ordnance and form a rapid response team to deal with whatever gets past Jersey and the others.”
“Understood, Sergeant,” she replied curtly as Fei Long saw her eyes flit over to watch as he made final preparations, including activating the emergency landing system. As he did so, the shuttle bay’s external doors opened and he saw the internal doors do likewise, leaving the shuttle bay exposed to the vacuum of space—and, more importantly, making it vulnerable to a droid insertion.
Fei Long brought the shuttle into the hangar and set it down deftly, making bar
ely a sound as he felt a self-satisfied smile spread across his lips. “We have touched down,” he said as neutrally as he could manage after successfully completing such a delicate task—a task he had silently given himself a seventy percent chance of accomplishing, which was nearly double that of Lu Bu’s likelihood of doing the same.
“Move out, Lancers,” Gnuko barked as the pressure doors began to close.
“Commander Jersey reports they’ve cleared the first wave of droids from the dorsal hull, Captain,” Jardine reported. “The first fighter has been secured and removed from the hull using grenades and shaped charges, but two more have touched down on the ventral facing.”
“Status of Corpor—make that, Sergeant Gnuko’s team?” Middleton demanded as he read the Commander’s report, which showed he had already lost two Lancers to enemy fire.
“I show they’ve just checked into the Armory, Captain; Mr. Fei is no longer with them,” the Comm. Officer replied. Just then he received an incoming message from Fei Long, stating he was making preparations to implement one of the countermeasures he and Middleton had developed in recent weeks. It wouldn’t do much more than redirect the droids temporarily, but it was worth a shot, so he signaled his approval to Mr. Fei via the link before returning his attention to the bridge.
“Massive decompression near the gun deck, Captain,” the Damage Control stander reported.
“The Gunnery Chief is reporting droids have infiltrated Battery Two,” Jardine reported.
“Tell Sergeant Gnuko and his team to double-time it to the gun deck,” Middleton growled, only fractionally grateful that the droids had gone for the Pride’s heavy weaponry rather than something more critical at this juncture—like Engineering or Environmental.
“All right, listen up,” Sergeant Gnuko barked over his three-man-unit’s channel as the team hustled down the corridor in their full, Storm Drake armor, “we’ve got droids infiltrating the gun deck and our crew needs a hand. Lu, you’re on point; Peleus and I will cover you while you set up. We move in five meter intervals until we’ve engaged.”
The doors in front of them, marked ‘Battery Three,’ were closed and after a few seconds Sergeant Gnuko entered his access code and they slid open to reveal a relatively one-sided firefight within.
Lu Bu surged through the breach and kept her blaster rifle trained as she made it the designated five meters. Just as she knelt for cover, she saw a roughly humanoid shape enter her field of fire, and without thinking she snapped off a shot where a human’s head would have been.
The blaster bolt struck home and the mechanical creature staggered sideways before turning to level its arms in her direction. Both arms appeared to end in weapon apparatuses of some kind, and those weapons flared before she felt a pair of impacts on her torso which knocked her into the wall.
Without even looking down to assess the damage to her suit, Lu Bu regained sight of her target and snapped off a pair of shots by way of reply. The first went wide, but the second shot struck the creature in the side of its torso, sending a spray of greenish fluid into the air near where it was standing.
Sergeant Gnuko leapfrogged her position on the other side of the short corridor before assuming a similar posture to hers and firing his own weapon across the room at a target which Lu Bu could not yet see.
Peleus quickly followed, and took up a position directly opposite Gnuko’s as he added his own fire onto Lu Bu’s target. She took another shot at the droid after Peleus had cleared her field of fire and saw the thing explode in a shower of metallic fragments.
After the droid was destroyed, Lu Bu moved past Gnuko and Peleus, making for a nearby console to use as cover as another pair of droids came into view, one of which Sergeant Gnuko hammered with a pair of shots from his blaster rifle.
A nearby crewman wearing Engineering patches—a Tracto-an, from the size and look of him—came into view with a large drill of some kind in hand, which he rammed into the second droid’s back. The drill quickly penetrated the mechanical creature’s midsection, and the two foot long bit drove completely through the droid’s body and erupted through the creature’s ‘chest.’ But the droid fought on, and tried to spin its torso bring its weapons to bear on the large, light-haired Tracto-an.
The Tracto-an, using sheer, brute strength managed to keep a grip on the drill as the droid’s mechanically-driven movements threw his powerful body around like he was a child.
Lu Bu knew her crewmate couldn’t maintain a grip on the weapon for long, so she took a risk and snapped off a shot at the droid’s legs. The round struck home and the droid’s leg blew apart in a shower of fluid and metallic fragments, some of which struck the Tracto-an. But the large man took advantage of the opportunity and shoved the droid to the ground. After the droid crashed into the deck, Lu Bu snapped off another shot at its torso. She saw her squad-mates do likewise, and their combined fire caused the mechanical to go limp after a brief, violent seizure which saw it flail in an uncoordinated fashion for a few seconds.
The Tracto-an—who Lu Bu now realized was fairly old for his kind, having seen at least forty years—nodded his thanks as he recovered the drill from the droid’s ‘corpse.’ “This was the last of them on the gun deck,” he said as he reached up to wipe the fluid from his face, which had clearly been burned by the stuff, and Lu Bu only now realized the man had a mechanical prosthetic hand. “We will clean up here.”
“Larry that,” Gnuko replied, and Lu Bu nodded curtly to the man as her Sergeant asked for status updates.
“You know,” the Tracto-an said as he approached with the drill gripped in his prosthetic hand, “I could not have made that armor without help.”
Lu Bu’s mouth went briefly agape before she bowed her head in deference. “You are truly a master of your craft,” she said graciously. “I have never seen this armor’s equal.”
“Nor I,” he said matter-of-factly. “But mine was merely the hand that shaped it; I cannot claim to have authored its design,” he said with a pointed look at her name patch. “Such a fine gift should not be taken lightly—and make no mistake, that armor was a gift. In my world, such a token constitutes a…significant gesture.”
This caused her to narrow her eyes as she nodded respectfully. “I would be honored to receive your wisdom, Master Smith.”
“I wouldn’t claim to know how another should act,” the other man said with a shrug as he checked his makeshift weapon’s integrity. “But a life of shaping metal into weapons and armor, while other men carried them into battle, has taught me one lesson worth sharing—”
Before she could ask after the smith’s lesson, Gnuko called out, “Lu, we make for the hyper dish on the double.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” she replied before nodding respectfully to the smith and exiting the gun deck.
Fei Long’s fingers flew over his data slate as Chief Garibaldi made the final physical adjustments to the same makeshift transmitter they had installed on the day which Fei Long had first gained ‘freedom’ from the brig.
The Chief was sweating profusely as he continued his work inside the Jeffries’ Tube. “This is just typical,” he groused tremulously, “everyone assumes that because I’m a Belter I’d be right at home in cramped spaces. It’s a physical condition!” he snapped to no one in particular, judging from his tone and continued work. “I can’t help it if me and tight spaces don’t mix, ok?!”
“We each possess a unique collage of failings, Chief,” Fei Long said evenly as he ran some last-second checks to his calculations. “I find yours to be refreshingly obvious.”
“And just what is that supposed to mean?!” Garibaldi snapped as he glanced irritably at the younger man while re-connecting the primary power source to the transmitter.
“I assure you I meant no disrespect,” Fei Long said as he finished his calculations, “but in my experience, most people attempt to hide who they truly are—not only from others, but from themselves. A person who is unafraid to admit their weaknesses to others will find the
mselves capable of counteracting the limitations those weaknesses create. A person who is unafraid to admit their weaknesses to themselves, however, is capable of turning those weaknesses into strengths.”
“You’re an awfully chatty little guy, aren’t ya?” Garibaldi asked sarcastically, but Fei Long knew he had correctly navigated the Chief Engineer’s volatile temper.
“It is a weakness of mine,” Fei Long said simply while a lopsided grin played over his features, causing the Chief to chuckle harshly.
“Too smart for your own good, too,” Garibaldi quipped. “The transmitter’s connected; we’re ready for this little surprise of yours.”
“Thank you, Chief,” Fei Long said as he activated his com-link, “Captain Middleton, I am ready.”
“Good work, Mr. Fei,” Middleton said. “Let’s hope this works.”
“I have no reason to doubt that it will, Captain,” Fei Long replied.
The ship shuddered from an explosion which saw it tilt off its axis for several seconds and cause the grav-plates to fluctuate before resuming standard operation.
“We’ve lost contact with Commander Jersey’s squad out on the hull, Captain,” Jardine reported. “At last report they were setting charges on fighter number four while Atticus’ squad dealt with fighter number five. The gun deck is secure, and Engineering managed to neutralize twelve droids with an ionic burst before taking them apart with plasma torches. Twenty six casualties reported thus far, Captain, including eight Lancers out on the hull.”
No Middle Ground Page 40
