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

by Caleb Wachter

  The tactical overlay had not been updated in several minutes due to the intense interference thrown out by the star, but Middleton knew exactly where Captain Raubach would be waiting for him so the temporary blackout did not concern him in the least.

  The doors to the bridge, which were flanked to either side by Lancers, slid open and Fei Long entered the bridge. He wore a strange, bulky glove on one hand regarding which one of the Lancers began to question him as soon as he had set foot in the command center.

  “It’s all right,” Middleton called loudly enough to be heard over the commotion, and the Lancer—who happened to be one of the suspicious transfers sent over by the Little Admiral, a man named Traian—stepped aside so as to allow Fei Long to pass. Middleton knew that whatever Traian’s true allegiances, they most certainly lay with the MSP, and he preferred to have a non-Tracto-an serving as bridge security at that moment. That preference was only likely to change if, and when, Atticus’ people incorporated themselves into the crew with an order of magnitude less friction than they had generated to date.

  “Captain,” Fei Long said as he slid into the seat beside the standing Comm. Officer. “I must tend to this particular device until the program has been uploaded,” he explained as he gestured to the bulky, bizarre glove.

  Middleton waved a hand dismissively, “As you were.”

  “Starboard shields at 45% and falling steadily,” Sarkozi reported, “integrity is optimal; they should hold long enough to escape the hot zone.”

  The captain leaned forward in his chair and watched as his ship’s icon neared the star’s blackout zone. “Now comes the fun part,” he growled, knowing that the coming hours were certain to accumulate heavy losses.

  He only hoped that enough of his people survived to successfully carry out the mission.

  Nearly an hour had passed, and Lu Bu found that her nervous energy had not diminished in the slightest. This was somewhat unusual, even for her, but she could almost sense that the same could be said of the entire Recon Team.

  Sergeant Gnuko’s head snapped forward suddenly, and she felt a thrill of anticipation as he nodded to himself—or, more likely, in an unseen acknowledgment of receiving his orders from Captain Middleton.

  “All right, Recon,” Gnuko called out as he twirled his finger in the air above his head, “switch your re-breathers to vacuum mode. We’re at T-minus ten minutes.”

  Lu Bu looked over at the heavy weapons arrayed against the front of the compartment, and she could almost feel the grip of the heavy plasma burner in her hands as she remembered using it during the insertion on the Cardinal’s Wrath so many months earlier. She had practiced for at least thirty hours with the weapon using flash loads that would do little more than scorch the hair off a person’s head, and she could not wait to squeeze the trigger with live ammunition at her disposal.

  Chapter XXVII: Receiving a Charge

  “Is the Dämmerung within the shuttle’s range?” Middleton asked when the icon of the Heavy Destroyer appeared to kiss the outer border of the hidden shuttle’s effective range.

  “Yes, Captain,” Hephaestion replied just as the Pride was struck by yet another turbo-laser blast. “But they are still at extreme range.”

  “Aft shields are down to 26% with mild spotting, Captain,” Sarkozi reported.

  Middleton nodded grimly as he silently congratulated Captain Raubach’s fire control equipment’s unerring accuracy. The Soyuz-class Heavy Destroyer was equipped with a trio of turbo-lasers which far outstripped the Pride’s own heavy lasers’ range and, apparently, were considerably more accurate as well.

  “Their accuracy is a good indication, Captain,” Fei Long said into the brief lull in status updates.

  Middleton shot the young man a withering look. “Just whose side are you on, Mr. Fei?”

  “The probability is high that they have centralized fire control to their primary computer core,” Fei Long said with a shrug of his shoulders, and after a moment of confusion Middleton finally took the other man’s meaning.

  “It’s a silver lining, I suppose,” he grudged as the ship received another turbo-laser strike to her stern. “Status on the shuttle?” he demanded as Sarkozi slotted in beside Hephaestion.

  “Point-to-point contact is uninterrupted; they’re reading all systems ‘go’ for the mission, sir,” she replied after a brief check of the instrumentation.

  “Helm, adjust heading seventeen degrees to starboard while rolling the ship,” Middleton ordered. This latest maneuver was far from imaginative; in fact, it was so unimaginative and ‘by the book’ that he was genuinely concerned that Captain Raubach would begin to suspect something. But if the Dämmerung’s commander continued to follow that same book, he would adjust his own course to bring him almost directly toward the shuttle’s location.

  Hiding behind an asteroid measuring just under four hundred meters in median diameter, the shuttle had been powered down for the majority of the operation to that point. The asteroid’s orbit was extremely elliptical with its current position well to the stellar south of the system’s plane.

  The Lancer team aboard the shuttle, led by Sergeant Gnuko, was prepared to make a high-risk run at the Heavy Destroyer with a little help from one of Toto’s automated gunships. If they succeeded in penetrating the shields of the Dämmerung undetected, Fei Long would have the opportunity to once again prove his skills as a hacker extraordinaire.

  “You wanted the ball, Gnuko,” Middleton muttered under his breath as the Dämmerung’s course adjusted precisely as Middleton had expected it to do, “here it comes.”

  Chapter XXVIII: Touchdown

  “This is going to get a little rough,” the pilot said over the shuttle’s intercom. “Our grav-plates aren’t designed to counteract this much acceleration, so everyone—and everything—had better be locked down back there.”

  Sergeant Gnuko replied over the local channel, “We’re locked and loaded.”

  “Commencing our run in five…four…three…two…one…ignition,” the pilot counted down, and when he finished Lu Bu felt her head snap back against the bench’s headrest. The apparent gee-forces were tremendous, and she was startled to find that she briefly lost consciousness. Sergeant Gnuko had warned them that such might occur, but she had assumed that her superior physical makeup would have left her unaffected.

  She became aware of a series of impacts registering somewhere on the starboard hull, but then she remembered that both of the autonomous gunships which the Sundered had brought were strapped to the shuttle’s hull. Their engines were providing the additional acceleration required to give them a fighting chance to close on the Dämmerung before its point-defense and short range weapon systems could tear them to pieces.

  The shields of the three craft had been merged into a single unit, with all generators diverted to protecting the collective bow of the craft. Chief Garibaldi had been doubtful that the hasty welds would hold under the strain, but as usual his fastidious nature had proven equal to the task.

  A massive explosion to port snapped Lu Bu’s head sideways and, again, she briefly lost consciousness from the violent jolt. Cursing herself in her native tongue, she came to and saw Sergeant Gnuko was beginning to unstrap himself from his seat. She almost reached out to stop him, believing he was suffering from some sort of delirium, but then she realized that the shuttle’s apparent gee-forces were markedly reduced.

  “On your feet and saddle up, Lancers!” Gnuko barked. Lu Bu quickly unstrapped herself and turned to check on her teammates to find that only one of them—Kratos—was presently conscious. The rest of the team began to stir, and Lu Bu quickly retrieved her designated weapon from the front of the compartment.

  The weapon came free after a few latches were undone, and Lu Bu briefly gripped the weapon in anticipation of what was to come. She then strapped it across her back using the attached carriage, and went about the task of getting the rest of the team ready for the final leg of their approach.

  Once awak
ened, the Recon Team began to retrieve their own weapons from storage and when they were finished they each went to the rear of the compartment to retrieve their individual grav-sleds.

  The shuttle lurched violently to port, causing Lu Bu to lose her footing and slam into the bulkhead shoulder-first. Her arm went numb immediately, but she was able to regain her footing quickly enough and make her way to her own grav-sled.

  “You all know the drill,” Gnuko said after a brief inspection of Lu Bu’s helmet and collar. “When the pilot says ‘go,’ then we had blasted well better ‘go’.”

  “We’ll reach position in thirty seconds,” the pilot called out over the intercom.

  “You heard the man,” Gnuko barked as the last of the team got into position for the insertion. “The shuttle won ‘t survive contact with the enemy shields at these speeds,” he said as the pilot made his way out of the cockpit and quickly made his way to the final grav-sled, “but it should punch a big enough hole for us to get through. Timing is everything, people,” he bellowed as he slapped the button which controlled the cargo ramp. The ramp began to descend, and Lu Bu gripped her grav-sled tightly in her hands.

  A quick check confirmed that Sergeant Gnuko had secured the crate containing Fei Long’s so-called ‘attack dogs’ to his grav-sled. Without Fei Long’s latest inventions on hand post-insertion, the mission would be as good as dead.

  “A Soyuz-class Heavy Destroyer has a standard Marine complement of twenty five,” Gnuko said as the clock in Lu Bu’s helmet wound down to twenty seconds remaining before launch. “Lu and Lynch already got half of them back on the Pride, and they aren’t expecting us to be nearly impervious to energy weapons when we show up. Make for the nearest airlock and once inside, head for Main Engineering to shut down their engines. Three…two…one…go!”

  The front line, of which Lu Bu was a part, fell back and out of the assault shuttle, followed quickly by the second row. Precisely two seconds after the Lancers and pilot had departed the shuttle—which streaked forward like a rocket as it put at least a hundred meters between itself and the Lancers—the craft which had carried Lancers to and from every mission of which Lu Bu had been a part exploded against a radiant, blue-green field of energy. In that brief instant, Lu Bu’s field of view was filled with the sleek—rapidly enlarging—hull of the Dämmerung.

  Then her grav-sled kicked in with its resistors at maximum, and again she lost consciousness. She was dimly aware of tumbling against a hard surface for what seemed like an eternity before coming to a full stop and looking around blankly.

  It took her several seconds to realize that she was lying on the outer hull of the Dämmerung and that the only thing keeping her in place were the grav-sled’s magnetic strips running along its edges.

  She then realized that her suit was registering a failure in its air seals, and after a panic-laden moment she realized it was not as severe as she had feared. She would lose her supply of breathable air in a little under seven minutes at the current rate of escape, which was far more time than the team needed in order to breach the enemy vessel’s nearest airlock.

  She sat bolt upright when she thought of her team, and for several seconds she was unable to locate them visually. Then her HUD began to register their locations relative to her own, but it appeared that only Kratos, Bernice, Claus, Cassius, Gnuko, and the shuttle’s pilot, Jackson, were present.

  The others must have either missed the hull, or possibly been killed passing through the shields. Lu Bu was frankly amazed that so many of them made it through the hole; simulations had put survival rates for each team member at roughly 50% for that particular phase of the mission.

  “Sound off,” she heard Gnuko bark over the static-laden channel.

  “Recon Seven,” Bernice reported quickly.

  “Recon Five,” growled Kratos.

  “Recon Four,” Claus said, and Lu Bu caught sight of him climbing out of a small pit about ten meters from her position.

  “Recon Three,” Cassius added stoically.

  “Recon Two,” Lu Bu said as she planted her feet on the deck and swung the heavy plasma cannon down into the ready position. The bulky weapon took both hands to maneuver and a strong lower body to fire without causing the wielder to lose her footing with each shot.

  “Recon One,” Gnuko finished, “nearest door is indicated on your HUD. Move out!”

  Lu Bu began to move toward the indicated area, which was closer to her position than most of the other Lancers. She arrived outside the portal alongside Claus, and the two took up positions to either side and temporarily locked their mag-boots to the hull. Doing so expended significant energy, but it also provided protection against localized polarization, which was a common defense mechanism featured near most modern warships’ external airlocks for obvious reasons.

  “Crack it, Kratos,” Gnuko ordered, and the largest member of the Recon Team moved forward with a boarding tube held easily in one hand. This one, like the others which Lu Bu had seen deployed, had no self-sealing pressure membrane. Sergeant Gnuko was using a trick out of Walter Joneson’s playbook, and Lu Bu was glad for her former mentor’s continued presence on a mission of such importance, even if that presence was little more than a memory.

  The boarding tube sealed itself against the airlock door and a dozen individual cutting devices went to work on the reinforced metal of the hatch.

  The process took much longer than Lu Bu had hoped, but she had learned during the mission’s briefing that the construction methods, and materials, employed in the Soyuz-class was far superior to that of the aged Hydra-class on which she served.

  But the cutting wheels and plasma jets did their duty, and a meter-wide circle of metal fell away from the portal when Kratos kicked it with his metal-shod boot.

  “You’re up, Jackson,” Gnuko gestured, and the lone member of the team not wearing Storm Drake armor slid through the opening, taking a pair of explosive charges with him. A few seconds later the man exited through the same hole. No sooner had he taken up position beside Lu Bu than there was a bright flash from inside the airlock, and Lu Bu could even feel the explosion’s force through reverberations in the hull. A massive geyser of breathable gases came roaring out of the hole for several seconds with enough force to knock over a cargo hauler, but before long the majority of the gases were expended and it was time for their insertion.

  “Observe comm. silence once we’re inside; move in!” Gnuko barked, and Bernice quickly slid through the hole and disappeared into the ship’s interior. Cassius followed her, and then it was Lu Bu’s turn. She and Claus were the only members of the team who were armed with heavy weaponry, so they were to move in separate teams to maximize their potent weapons’ firepower in the cramped corridors of the warship.

  Lu Bu pushed past the molten wreckage which had been the inner airlock door and swept her plasma cannon side to side, covering first the corridor to her left and then the corridor to her right. The engines were to the stern of the vessel, so after finding the left corridor clear of hostile contacts she moved to a supporting position behind Bernice and Cassius a few meters down the right corridor.

  After she had done so, the second team covered the left corridor and Sergeant Gnuko knelt beside the bulkhead. He opened the crate containing Fei Long’s drones and almost immediately one of the drones sprang from the crate, causing the Sergeant to rear back in alarm as his hand went to the vibro-knife at his belt. This first drone had spider-like legs arrayed around a roughly egg-shaped body, and it quickly skittered down the corridor until it came to rest beside Lu Bu.

  The second drone gently hovered up and out of the crate far more smoothly than Lu Bu had seen it do while her boyfriend had been tinkering with the thing. It, like all the drones, had an egg-shaped body but this one also had a micro-repulsor fitted to its ‘bottom’ surface.

  Sergeant Gnuko took the third drone from the crate, and this particular unit had six equidistant treads running the full length of its body. Fei Long had explaine
d to her in nauseating detail how this particular unit could infiltrate any compartment measuring larger than ten inches in diameter; it was easily the least elegant-looking of the three, but it was also potentially the most useful—according to Fei Long, of course.

  Gnuko unslung a micro-grenade launcher from his shoulder and assumed a position beside Lu Bu. The drones clustered around the two of them, with the hover-drone hovering a little too close for Lu Bu’s comfort, and the Lancer team set down the corridor at a quick pace knowing the enemy were most certainly aware of their presence.

  Fei Long adjusted the settings on his control glove until the visual feedback from all three drones was coming in clearly enough for his liking. The hover-drone had been the most difficult to complete on short notice, and he knew its power supply would not last for longer than ten minutes under combat conditions.

  The program he had written which governed their autonomous actions—a program which would become necessary if, or possibly when, the enemy decided to blanket jam the local comm. frequencies—would have the drones remain with the team for several minutes before automatically seeking out the nearest DI nodes through which they would upload his modified virus.

  Although, to call it a virus was likely a misnomer; the program was little more than a high-priority version of standard diagnostic protocols inherent to the various systems which Fei Long had targeted: shields, communications, and sensors. As such, the continuous function of those services could be interrupted, albeit briefly, by placing them in an emergency diagnostic cycle which generally required command override to authorize.

  It was a fairly ingenious trick, even by Fei Long’s standards. Each DI node aboard a modern warship operated independently of the others, and as such was vulnerable to certain misinformation regarding the status of the network as a whole. Fei Long’s program essentially tricked the targeted node into believing that catastrophic failure had occurred across the network and that it needed to prepare for an increased workload. Such a catastrophe was the only scenario during which an interruptive diagnostic cycle could be initiated automatically, and therein lay the weakness which Fei Long had uncovered in every DI-based system he had encountered: the need for persistent, immutable autonomy while simultaneously preparing for an unexpected increase in workload should a network failure occur.