Up The Middle (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 2)

by Caleb Wachter

  Using her plasma rifle’s scope, she sighted in on what was clearly a droid—but bore no resemblance to the ones she had fought aboard the Pride of Prometheus—attempting to interface with the reactor’s primary control panel. She had learned what to look for, and how to initiate an emergency shutdown, during her mission brief. She had also been given the general layout of the facility, which suggested there were three such reactors present but that only Number Two and Number Three would be active at this time.

  She signaled for Kratos to enter the chamber and make his way to the right, while Cassius was to move left. They complied wordlessly—with only Kratos making his acknowledgment via the suit’s silent acknowledgment system—and Lu Bu gestured for Homer to take up a position near the door where she herself was positioned.

  She entered the chamber and moved to the right, following Kratos as he came to the end of a large piece of machinery which would provide them with cover should a firefight break out.

  Lu Bu suspected that the droids would be evenly distributed, since they clearly had no intention of actually holding the facility for any meaningful duration. Their intention had been clear: to overload the reactors and cause an explosion which would ultimately lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.

  And since the droids were unlikely to be clustered together she knew that once the first group was dealt with, the second would be alerted to her presence.

  She motioned for Kratos to swap positions with her, and he hesitated before complying. The noise inside the facility was incredible, and Lu Bu suspected that it was due to the droids’ efforts to overload the reactors.

  Using her suit’s low-light visual suite, she peered around the corner and caught sight of the droid once again. This time, however, she saw two other droids. She scanned the room for several seconds but found no sign of another droid, so she quickly input their positions into the team’s three-dimensional representation of the chamber.

  Lu Bu indicated which of the droids each team was to engage, and the acknowledgment icons flashed almost in perfect unison. She took a breath and, just as she spun around the corner, an overload alarm began to sound overhead as yellow lights flashed in warning.

  But she was committed to her motion, and lined up a shot on the droid interfacing with the control systems. She squeezed the trigger and a bolt of energy belched from her rifle’s barrel, slamming between the short, squat droid’s ‘shoulders.’ A short shower of sparks flew from the enemy’s metal body as she squeezed off her second shot.

  With uncanny—one could accurately say ‘machine-like’—precision, the trio of droids turned as one and unleashed their fire on her. They sent blaster bolts of their own from their roughly humanoid, weaponized arms which appeared to have each been fitted with a blaster of similar power to hers.

  She ducked behind the corner in time to avoid all but one of the bolts, which slammed into her vambrace with enough force to spin her body a quarter turn before she regained control of herself.

  Cassius and Homer then opened fire on their targets, displaying considerably less coordination than the droids had done with their counter-fire. But Lu Bu knew it would buy Kratos time to circle around behind them with his melee weapons. So she spun around the corner and crouched down as she did so, a blaster bolt torching the air above her head as she did so. She sighted in on the droid she had already hit and snapped off another precise round, this one aimed at the droid’s ‘shoulder.’

  The mechanical’s arm flew off in a spray of sparks and fluid, but it seemed unfazed as it poured a trio of rounds into her torso’s armor as Kratos’ long, power-assisted strides took him across the gap which Lu Bu was covering with her own fire.

  The droid attempted to fire at the massive Tracto-an, but it missed by less than a foot as Kratos gained cover and continued to sprint around the roughly circular chamber, making for a flanking position near two of the droids.

  Lu Bu returned to cover when the droid returned its fire in her direction, and heard an explosion from the far side of the room which seemingly signaled that a droid had fallen to her team’s fire.

  She gripped her rifle tightly and spun around, preparing to fire as soon as her weapon’s muzzle cleared the edge of her cover.

  But when she sighted her target, she held her fire upon seeing Kratos lay into the droid with his boarding axe, which cleaved one of the artificial warrior’s four legs from its torso. The giant Tracto-an ignored a pair of blaster bolts that hammered into his back as he jammed his—or, rather, her—vibro-blade into the center of the droid’s back, causing a series of spasms in its limbs.

  Lu Bu took a carefully-aimed shot at the droid’s remaining weapon arm and, with a squeeze of the trigger, removed the mechanical’s weaponized limb. She then sighted in on the droid which had fired on Kratos and took a hasty shot as it ducked down beneath a console on the far side of the chamber.

  “Flank it!” she barked, and saw her teammates Cassius and Homer move to do precisely that. A volley of fire erupted from their position, and the droid’s ruined form went sprawling to the floor.

  When it was clear the three droids had been neutralized, Lu Bu moved toward the control panel and found that it was no longer functional—likely due to the droid’s last-moment efforts.

  “Secure Door Three,” she barked as she tried one last time to activate the console. The Tracto-ans moved toward the door she had indicated and, when they were near their positions, she abandoned her hope of reversing the reactor’s impending overload. She would have to hope that the other reactor’s control system was not yet compromised—and that she could stop this reactor from self-destructing after she had secured the second one.

  The door to the other active reactor was already open, and Lu Bu moved through the heavily-reinforced portal which led to the long corridor connecting the reactors with her team at her heels. No sooner had they cleared the doorway than the doors slowly slid shut behind them. It was of little concern to Lu Bu—the only way any of them were going to survive was if they shut the reactors down before they overloaded.

  No sooner were they in the long corridor than a hail of blaster fire came streaming at them. Kratos dove left, Lu Bu dove right, and Cassius followed her lead. Homer, however, was struck by a trio of blaster bolts. Two of the bolts struck him high, and Lu Bu returned fire as she sighted in on a pair of droids stationed just inside the far reactor chamber. They were using the doorway for cover, and she growled wordlessly as she sent a quartet of rapid shots at them.

  She was rewarded by a pair of impacts, but they seemed to have been absorbed by the droid’s heavy frontal armor.

  She reached down to her belt as Cassius opened fire behind her, and he even managed to get a hit on the same droid she had struck as Lu Bu removed one of the ion grenades form her belt. She primed the tiny, egg-shaped device, and threw it with as much precision as she could manage.

  The droid on the left, which she had already hit, pulled behind the corner while the droid on the right did something she had not expected.

  Tucking its arms and legs in and bending them at odd, seemingly impossible angles, it quickly formed a pair of metal rings nearly two meters in diameter with its previously distinct four legs and two arms. It then rocketed toward her team as it rolled along the smooth, concrete of the corridor’s floor using those rings as wheels.

  It covered a distance of forty meters in less than two seconds—including the time it took it to transform—and Lu Bu managed to get a shot off at the incoming droid before its wheels broke apart and became distinct arms and legs once again.

  She had to admit that the sequence had jarred her, but Kratos seemed unimpressed as he stood and charged headlong into the creature’s flank. The droid turned in time to author a quartet of blaster bolts at the one-eyed Tracto-an, during which time both Lu Bu and Cassius took advantage of the mechanical’s brief presentation of its flank.

  A half dozen blaster bolts impacted on the droid’s left side as Kratos’ boardin
g axe cleaved the robotic warrior’s right arm from its short, squat torso. No sooner had the droid fallen than there was a pulse of deep blue light from the doorway where Lu Bu had tossed the ion grenade, and she gathered her feet under her and screamed, “Charge!”

  Her fellow Lancers at her heels, Lu Bu began firing her blaster rifle as soon as she saw motion on the far side of the reactor chamber. Her shots went wide by several meters, but Cassius managed to get a lucky strike while running full-out which was just enough to put the droid off-balance as it began to return fire.

  The droid near the door was seizing in a fit of violent spasms as electricity visibly danced across its joints, and Lu Bu hammered a pair of rounds into its less-armored flank as she took up a crouching position behind a large panel box. Her shots appeared to neutralize the robotic warrior, but her fellow Lancers followed her lead. By the time the four of them had made it into the chamber, the droid was little more than a disparate collection of metallic fragments lying in a pool of thin, yellow-ish fluid.

  Lu Bu used hand signals to order Cassius to move to the catwalk directly above their current position and he complied immediately. She then gestured for Kratos to flank the lone visible droid’s position, and instructed Homer to take up her position while she moved around the room opposite Kratos.

  Homer did as he was instructed, as did Kratos, and Lu Bu began to carefully circle around the chamber until she heard a scream from the far side of the room that had not been issued by any of her teammates. She stopped behind a large, iron support beam and glanced around the corner, barely managing to pull back as the second and third shots of a droid’s blaster arms skewered the space her head had occupied during the quick check. The first shot had landed on the iron beam itself, which was now glowing cherry red from the energy transfer.

  She looked up and saw a mirror which granted her visual access to the entire chamber, but no sooner had she sighted in on the second droid—a droid which was holding a living human on front of itself like some kind of shield—than that mirror exploded in a shower of smoldering fragments as the droid blasted it with a perfectly-placed shot.

  “You have to cut off the H3!” she heard the man cry before screaming in pain. “The yellow lines!” he said in a barely-articulate manner as his screams of agony nearly drowned out his message.

  Lu Bu looked up and saw a series of yellow lines running along the wall, and looked to feed directly into the fusion generator at the center of the room. She closed her eyes and considered whether or not Kratos could sneak up on the droid, and knew there was no chance since the droid was poised on a catwalk which could only be accessed from the mouth of the chamber.

  Cassius would also have difficulty acquiring a clean shot, and she couldn’t risk sending her orders over the com channel. Secure or not, she didn’t trust sending digital information for the droids to potentially intercept—especially battle plans.

  That left her as the only member of the team who could even possibly free the man. But, judging by his position, it would be impossible to get a clean shot at the droid that didn’t go through the man’s body.

  She briefly considered lobbing an ion grenade, but the man was being held near a control panel which would almost certainly be rendered useless if the ion grenade went off in close proximity, and there was always a chance that the grenade itself would kill him.

  Her eyes snapped open as she gripped her blaster rifle, knowing with grim certainty that there was only one chance for the man to survive. She inhaled deeply, attempting to find her metaphysical center, and as she exhaled she leaned around the corner.

  Acting almost on faith, and trusting her reflexes implicitly, she barely registered that the droid had fallen into her sights before squeezing a shot off. The droid returned fire and a pair of bolts slammed into her breastplate.

  The man, who was wearing a technician’s uniform, was struck by her blaster rifle shot in the upper left arm. The energy bolt tore easily through his flesh and bone and, losing almost none of its violent energy as it slammed into the droid’s armored front.

  The worker screamed in agony but the droid had primarily controlled his posture by gripping the very same arm Lu Bu had just shot off. She followed up the shot with three more, each of which hammered into the droid’s protective plate of armor on its ‘chest.’ Her fire was joined by that of Cassius, who tore the droid’s right arm off with a pair of blaster bolts.

  A few seconds later the droid was armless and the hostage it had held before its mechanical body was dragging himself slowly away using his remaining, right, arm.

  Lu Bu felt a moment of pure, all-encompassing, savage fury as she poured round after round into the droid. Even its heavily-armored front could not withstand the weight of her fire, to which Cassius added with his own weapon, and before long the droid was no longer recognizable as it lay in a motionless pile of scrap.

  A salvo of fire erupted from the other droid’s position which was quickly cut off. She looked over to that droid’s position and saw that Kratos was hacking it apart using his boarding axe. Her vibro-blade had apparently been broken in two at some point in the battle as half of its blade was lodged firmly in the droid’s shoulder, but that was of little concern to her. She preferred the vibro-knife she had kept at her belt to the larger, less-nimble weapon—in part because the knife was what Walter Joneson had favored.

  Lu Bu clomped over to the technician’s side and gripped him by his good arm, lifting him as gently as she could manage in the power armor. He was surprisingly stalwart as he looked up at her visor with an ashen complexion, and she knew it was probable that he would lose consciousness very soon due to the shock of losing a limb. Thankfully the blood loss did not look life-threatening—at least not for the next few minutes.

  “How to shut down reactor?” she snapped.

  He looked at her blankly for a moment before blinking his eyes quickly and shaking his head. “Right,” he said, his voice sounding somewhat distant, “this panel.”

  He moved toward the panel in front of which he had lost his arm, and gagged at the sight of his ruined limb’s remains.

  “Focus,” Lu Bu snapped, wishing she did not need to be so forceful with the man. Unfortunately, that moment was not one for tenderness—people were about to die if they did not shut down the reactors!

  “Let me try…” he said before swaying to the left and nearly crashing into the deck. Lu Bu braced him by gripping his right forearm and he returned to his senses quickly enough. “Sorry,” he said dully as he regained his balance, and Lu Bu released his arm to allow the man to manipulate the station’s controls.

  He flicked several switches and called up a series of readouts before tilting his head to the far side of the room. “Cut off the helium three lines,” he instructed, the look in his eyes sharpening as he did so, “I will be fine.” He promptly emptied the meager contents of his stomach, but kept said contents confined to the floor rather than the workstation before him. “Go!” he instructed in a panic-laden voice.

  Lu Bu saw Kratos approaching, and she said, “Keep him awake.” She then clomped over to the only visible valve, which was shaped much like any other plumbing valve. She began to turn the valve, and after a few seconds it was closed.

  “Good,” the technician said as he pointed to the now-closed door at the end of the corridor adjoining the two reactors, “now do the sam—“

  He unexpectedly collapsed, but Kratos caught him before he hit the ground entirely. Lu Bu set off at a run for the corridor, her heart racing as the flashing yellow lights overhead turned from yellow to red.

  When she reached the entry portal of the chamber, she saw Homer’s body lying supine on the floor almost precisely where she had left him. The droid had gotten a lucky shot which had pierced his visor, and she knew with a glance that he was dead.

  She briefly felt sick to her stomach, but pressed on and quickly reached the heavy industrial door at the far end of the corridor. It was still closed, so she slapped the emerg
ency-open control panel after breaking the glass covering the button. But nothing happened and Lu Bu screamed in frustration.

  Kratos appeared soon thereafter, having apparently carried the technician, and the one-armed man woozily removed a keycard from his pocket after reaching across his body. He then inserted the card below the emergency-open button, and Lu Bu impatiently slapped the button again.

  This time the doors rumbled open, and she moved through them as soon as the gap was large enough. She ran to the far side of the room as fast as the power armor would allow and immediately began to close the valve. After a few seconds she was done, and she raced back to the main entry ramp where Kratos, Cassius, and the technician were gathered.

  “This reactor stays on,” Lu Bu barked via her suit’s built-in speaker, and the technician gave her a blank look in reply. She turned to face him as the sirens began to rise in their volume, “If reactor dies, droids kill civilians.”

  A look of recognition flashed over the man’s face and he nodded as he set off toward the same control panel Lu Bu had attempted to use a few minutes earlier. He shook his head—impressively ignoring his missing arm—and said, “The magnetic interlocks are out of alignment; I can’t keep the reaction stable any longer. We need to abort!”

  “No,” Lu Bu snapped, knowing that thousands of lives might hang in the balance. “Fix reactor—now!”

  The man shook his head doubtfully as he eyed the exit, “The controls are offline. There’s nothing I can—“

  Lu Bu stepped between him and the door, shaking her head and saying in a dire voice, “We stay here.”

  His eyes widened. “You’re insane—they don’t pay me enough to blow myself up. Do you know what happens if I misalign the coils using the manual controls?!”

  “We die,” she said hotly, “and if you do not try, we die. No difference.”

  She heard Kratos issue a short, bark of laughter, causing what little color remained in the technician’s face to drain. But thankfully he did not lose consciousness as he seemed to find his Ki—his center—and with renewed resolve he moved toward the giant, hemi-spherical reactor in the center of the room.