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

by Caleb Wachter

  “Of course,” the forge master replied with a gruff gesture as he washed his hands in a nearby sink fitted with an old-style, sonic pulse-powered cleansing unit which would, given enough time, do a better job of cleaning human skin than any combination of soap and water ever could. Such cleaning devices were standard issue throughout the Pride of Prometheus, with only the officers enjoying genuine water in their showers and other toiletry facilities.

  Thankfully, Fei Long’s new quarters were equipped with such facilities.

  Returning his focus to the content of the box, he reverently removed the small, slender handle and examined it carefully. The details were precise, just as he had come to expect from the Pride’s finest metal-smith, and while the materials used in its construction were quite different from what the original may have been, he felt confident that his favored Ancestor would approve.

  He laid the exquisitely crafted handle back down in the box before lifting one of the false feathers which had laid beside the handle. He examined the feather, and found all the details to be perfect. It was, for all intents and purposes, a crane feather—but as with everything, appearances could be deceiving.

  “You are truly a master of your craft, Smith Haldis,” Fei Long said as he gently placed the feather back inside the box.

  Haldis shrugged. “The re-se-quen-cers,” he forced out the word, clearly having only used it a few times before, “which we brought from the Gambit Station allow even fine materials like those to be produced to specification,” he said, proving by his humility that he was, indeed, worthy of the praise which had been given him.

  “How long until it is ready?” Fei Long asked excitedly.

  Haldis shrugged. “While we are in orbit I cannot attend to its completion,” he replied with a finality that made Fei Long’s stomach seem to fall. “However, once the ship moves, I believe it will require only one or two days to complete.”

  “Have you tested its internal components?” Fei Long asked before wincing at questioning the smith’s attention to his craft.

  But Haldis seemed not to even notice the potential slight against his ability as he nodded, “It will function as you desire.”

  “Excellent,” Fei Long said with elation before clasping his hands and bowing his head, “thank you for your time, master smith. Oh,” he added before leaving, “what of Lu Bu’s rhino hide?”

  The smith tilted his head toward a crate on the far side of the shop, “I’m curing it now. She has asked that I store it after I have completed the curing process, which will require another month.”

  “I shall inform her of your timetable,” Fei Long said graciously as he bowed respectfully.

  Haldis grunted before turning back to his work, and Fei Long quickly made his way to the shuttle which waited to take him to the surface of the planet below.

  As was so often the case with him, mere seconds after leaving the machine shop Fei Long had completely dismissed the smith’s project from his mind. He needed to focus on the task at hand—a task which Fei Long hoped was merely the first step on what he considered to be a treasure hunt of unprecedented scope and substance.

  He had recently realized that he was, perhaps uniquely in human history, about to embark on a hunt for lost stars!

  Chapter XVII: Nerd Diplomacy

  “I have already told you,” the rail-thin, blotchy-skinned attaché said irritably, “the Science Directorate will not agree to the accessing of our databases by a military entity of any kind. Your request must go through proper channels,” she reiterated for the ninth time during the meeting.

  “I understand your concern,” Fei Long repeated, for the fifth time, “however the governmental entities which processed such requests have been functionally disbanded. Surely you can appreciate the complexity of the situation?”

  “This situation is far from complex,” the woman retorted, thankfully using a fresh bit of verbiage. Fei Long had grown weary of her clearly-rehearsed rhetoric just five minutes into the currently twenty eight minute meeting, but he kept his features as placid as a lake’s surface in summer. “Your people have come here under the guise of aiding us from attack; you fly a flag which not one system in this Sector officially recognizes as legitimate; and now you demand that we hand over some of our most precious data—data which we did not surrender even to the Empire of Man fifty years ago. I can assure you that we have no intention of doing so now—even under duress!”

  “Miss Harper,” Fei Long began, almost feeling the waves of annoyance pouring from the pair of Tracto-ans behind him, “we have come here under no guise, are making no demands of you, and will not resort to the use of force in order to take what we desire—which, it seems to me, is precisely what you would have us do.”

  The woman’s eyebrows shot up incredulously. “How dare you—“

  “Please,” Fei Long cut in gently as he produced a small data crystal from the fold of his Taoist-style robe, “I would dispense with the next few hours of needless posturing if, as they say, it is all the same to you?”

  The woman eyed the crystal as her skin somehow reddened even more deeply than it had been at the outset of the meeting. “What is this?” she demanded, making no move to accept the proffered crystal.

  “It is my offer,” Fei Long said with a respectful bow of his head, and he held the pose for several seconds until she finally accepted the crystal by snatching it angrily from his fingers. “I would advise you to upload it to a disposable device, however,” he added with the barest hint of a smirk as he stood to his full height, “and that you be prepared to manually remove your slate’s power supply.”

  The woman eyed him suspiciously for a moment before producing a small data slate from her lab coat’s pocket and scanning the crystal with its externally-mounted, modular interface device. Fei Long’s eyebrows shot up in surprise; he had read the specifications for such devices but he had never actually seen one. He almost regretted that he had just given her one of his most powerful viruses in the data crystal, since that virus would no doubt infect the modular firmware and render it more or less useless for anything but low-security operations.

  Miss Harper’s eyes scanned the data slate for several seconds before those eyes widened in surprise, then horror, then something akin to abject terror as she quickly tore the power supply from the data slate. “You…you…” her voice trembled as she waved a finger at him reproachfully, “you thug!”

  “Before you give voice to the remaining quotient of your outrage,” Fei Long said as he produced a second data crystal, “I would advise you to load the program on this crystal to that device.”

  “Your virus just cracked through our highest-level encryptions and nearly infected our tertiary databases,” she howled in protest. “And you actually think I’ll upload another one?! Get out!”

  “I assure you,” Fei Long said as evenly as he could manage, having grown exceedingly tired of the woman’s incredulity, “if I wished to deploy that virus on your systems, I could have done so far more surreptitiously than by giving it to you and then warning you of the potential consequences. Please,” he gestured to the second data crystal.

  She snatched it from his hand with fingers still trembling with rage, and somehow the shade of red which her blotchy skin had taken on was even deeper than it had been previously.

  She manually disconnected the wireless antennae of the data slate before reconnecting the power supply and scanning the crystal, all the while shooting dark looks in Fei Long’s direction. Surprisingly, she never once made eye contact with either of Fei Long’s escorts and it was for this fact alone that Fei Long deduced the woman was merely there to present an official position of noncompliance which she, and her superiors, fully expected to be subverted.

  Zhu’s Hope was a completely non-military colony, the population of which had dedicated itself absolutely to scientific exploration of every kind. This was, understandably, why their fusion reactor had been so easily infiltrated by the droid force which Lu Bu’s te
am had neutralized. As such, the colony had fully expected—or perhaps even hoped—that the Pride of Prometheus’ crew would simply take what they wanted. “This…” she said, her voice low and steadier than it had been, “is this what it seems?”

  “It is,” Fei Long agreed as he bowed his head for the eleventh time in the meeting, “I am the author of the virus, and as such I have become quite adept at detecting, and neutralizing, similar threats to virtual integrity. The suite of antiviral programs I have just given you will safeguard your systems with a simple reallocation of existing hardware, but I would not ask you to take my word for it. Given two weeks’ time, I am confident your virtual technicians will be capable of confirming this information.”

  Miss Harper narrowed her eyes, “A protection racket, is that it? You come here and threaten to destroy our data if we don’t do precisely as you say…I suppose I should have expected as much from a band of pirates.”

  “Miss Harper,” Fei Long sighed, “I have already told you thrice that we are not, in fact, pirates. The Pride of Prometheus is assigned to the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet—a fleet which, I might add, recently destroyed a pirate force whose operations had even reached as far as this Sector.” He met her gaze for several seconds before continuing, “And what I have offered you is a gift, nothing more. My Captain has not authorized me to force my way into your archives; as such I will be content to report your recalcitrance to him upon my return, should you deem my offer unworthy of such a meager return.”

  “Meager?” she blurted. “You would download this facility’s entire—proprietary—astrometric database! Our data is more accurate than any locally-sourced records and has contributed to the understanding of intra-galactic interplay—”

  “Again,” Fei Long cut in smoothly, “I would prefer we dispense with the posturing. Your facility was state of the art eighty years ago,” he said pointedly, “but has long since been surpassed by at least eight other facilities in this Sector alone.”

  Miss Harper bristled visibly, and Fei Long knew he had her right where he wanted her. “If our data is so extraordinarily mundane,” she said icily, “then you will have little difficulty finding better elsewhere.” She turned as if to terminate the meeting, and Fei Long waited a fraction of a second before taking a tentative-looking step forward.

  “The truth, Miss Harper, is that my mission is time-sensitive,” he said honestly. “I do not have time to go from one planet to another in search of fractional or segmented databases which contain the information I need. Zhu’s Hope was my first choice simply because of the complete, precise nature of your records. They are purported to be, if not of up-to-date precision, more complete than any records now available to us. Please,” he said, putting an edge of desperation into his voice, “much depends on my sourcing and examination of data like that which is stored in your astrometric vaults.”

  Miss Harper stopped and turned, giving him a haughty look before cocking her head and relaxing her features. “What possible value could century-old star charts hold?” she asked, finally giving in to her innate, scientific, curiosity.

  Fei Long wanted to exhale in relief, but he kept his posture as firm as possible as he shook his head doubtfully, “I am not authorized to say—”

  “Then we have nothing more to discuss,” she interrupted with certainty, turning to leave once again.

  “Wait,” he said in a false, pleading, tone. He then let loose a long sigh before stepping forward and lowering his voice, “You cannot share this information with anyone, do you understand?”

  Her eyes narrowed, “How else am I to convince the Directorate to grant you access if not by conveying the true motives behind your request?”

  Fei Long nodded slowly, as though in thought, before meeting her eyes and saying, “I believe it is entirely possible that the recent droid attack which your colony suffered was aimed at destroying these very records, Miss Harper. I cannot say more than that but, in the interests of protecting the labors of your colony, I would ask that you trust me. Remember,” he said when she snorted derisively, “I could have quite easily taken what I wished to take by force and then caused irreparable harm to your data storage systems.”

  “I doubt that,” she said stiffly.

  Fei Long hardened his visage and gave her a look which saw her nearly recoil as he said, “You do not know me, Miss Harper, so your doubt is understandable. But I can confidently say that there has not yet been a system invented which I cannot crack—regardless of its origin or architecture.”

  “So if this data is so important, what’s to stop you from just taking it should we refuse?” she demanded hotly.

  Fei Long shrugged. “Because I will not need to do so; you are an intelligent woman, and I believe the same can be said of your Science Directorate. I have just offered to upgrade your data storage security with a suite of programs which, as yet, have never been beaten.”

  Harper seemed to search his features for several seconds before shaking her head. “It’s not enough.”

  Fei Long sighed in relief. “Finally,” he said agreeably, “the negotiations can commence.”

  “Well done, Mr. Fei,” Middleton said after reviewing the report in detail, “you’ve secured their entire astrometric database in exchange for replaceable data and materials.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Fei Long replied calmly, and Middleton wondered just what the young man couldn’t do if he put his mind to it.

  “I won’t ask for details,” Middleton said before leaning across the desk and fixing the younger man with a piercing look, “but I can’t condone coercion of any kind in negotiations of this kind, are we clear?”

  The young man’s eyes flashed briefly before he bowed his head in that same, infuriating fashion as Middleton had come to rue. “We are ‘clear,’ Captain. No coercion was necessary, I assure you,” he added when Middleton gave him a dubious look. “We merely went about the task of identifying our mutual needs and attempted to ascertain how we might assist one anot—“

  “Enough,” Middleton held up his hand haltingly. “I just want us to be clear on this matter for whatever future contact we might need to make with colonies like this one.”

  “Of course, Captain,” Fei Long replied.

  “Good,” the Captain said, easing back into his seat and gesturing to the data slate, “how long will it take you to incorporate their data into the Pride’s navigation computer?”

  Fei Long cocked his head hesitantly, and Middleton dearly hoped that the young man wasn’t about to launch into yet another of his long-winded dissertations. “It is a significant task; alone I shall require no less than two months to synchronize the data. With assistance I may be able to cut that time in half.”

  “What kind of assistance do you need?” Middleton asked.

  “Data entry, primarily,” Fei Long replied as his eyes flicked back and forth in silent calculation. “Breaking the data into fragments which can be processed in a single shift will consume the majority of my efforts, and then verifying the data has been integrated will also take some time but I believe I can handle that operation virtually.”

  “How many assistants will you need?” the Captain pressed.

  Fei Long cocked his head again before saying confidently, “I believe one will suffice.”

  Middleton blinked in surprise. “I assume that means you have a particular one in mind?”

  “I do,” the young man replied with a smooth nod.

  “So long as that person is not a senior staffer, consider them reassigned effective immediately,” Middleton instructed.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Fei Long said as he tapped out something on a data slate before sliding that slate across the Captain’s desk.

  Middleton picked it up and had to suppress a roll of his eyes. “If you can convince his father, you’ve got my blessing.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Toto,” Fei Long said with a courteous bow, keenly aware of the face that the being he currently addressed was well over four tim
es his total body mass, “I would ask for a moment of your time?”

  The lumbering Sundered turned from his project, where he had apparently been working on the exhaust manifolds on one of his trio of fighting craft. He moved toward the young man on all fours before drawing himself up to his full height. He squinted at the young man and said, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Fei Long,” he replied with another courteous bow, curious as to why the uplift did not seem to recognize him after sharing the bridge for several weeks already, “and I am currently working on a project for which I will require skilled assistance.”

  “I have no time,” Toto replied, and Fei Long had to fight the urge to stare at the marvelous, haphazard, array of cybernetic implants which had been grafted into the uplift’s head. “Tactical Office is big job.”

  “I can appreciate that,” Fei Long assured him, “however, I am not here to beseech you for aid. Rather, I wish to enlist the aid of your son in a series of projects.”

  Toto’s lips peeled back and Fei Long recoiled instinctively as he was faced with a nearly full mouth of long, savage-looking teeth. Fei Long recoiled slightly in the face of the massive uplift’s displeasure. “Why?” the ape man rumbled, and his hot, unpleasant-smelling breath wafted into the young man’s nostrils in measured blasts.

  Fei Long resisted the urge to gulp but failed to suppress a stammer as he explained, “You-your son is listed as a…qualified data analyst and compiler. He also…” he trailed off as the uplift stood to his full, imposing height, “umm…he is also listed in the ship’s personnel database as highly qualified with micro-machinery, and I have need of his expertise to complete a small project I have—“