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

by Caleb Wachter

  His drones accompanied the Lancers down the corridor for several meters until there was a bright, blue flash of light. The visual pickups on all three drones were briefly interrupted, but when they returned Fei Long saw a firefight taking place aboard the Dämmerung. Lu Bu, standing to the two ground-based drones’ right, had apparently fired her plasma cannon at the outset causing the drones’ visual pickups to cut out.

  The teams exchanged fire for several seconds, and after a quick look at the ship’s schematics Fei Long knew that the team still had six decks and two hundred thirty total meters of deck to cover before reaching Main Engineering.

  He assumed control of the hover-drone and drove it at the unit’s top speed toward the intersection where the enemy Marines had taken cover. He spotted four power-armored Marines in total, and while he knew that his drone could not kill them, he also knew that it could give the Lancers a window.

  One of the Marines reacted quickly enough to get a shot off, but thankfully he missed the delicate drone. Before the others could react, Fei Long initiated the unit’s overload cycle and crashed it into the nearest Marine’s helmet.

  The feed on the hover-drone went dead, but the other two units’ visual systems recorded a crackling explosion as the high-voltage of the drone’s electrical overload arced across two of the Marines’ battle suits. The overload was just powerful enough to briefly cause the two suits to seize up, and thankfully Sergeant Gnuko recognized the opening for what it was.

  Stepping in front of his Lancers, the Sergeant lobbed a micro-grenade into the intersection and a bright, yellow, flash caused Fei Long’s visual systems to cut out once again.

  Except this time, the grenade appeared to have interfered with his drones’ remote control interface. He quickly initiated a diagnostic of his local systems and prayed to the Ancestors—and even to Saint Murphy—that the Lancers had broken through.

  It seemed entirely possible that he had provided them with as much assistance as he could manage.

  Lu Bu strode down the corridor with the two ground-based drones at her sides. Two of the Marines at the intersection were still moving, but both had been thrown from their positions by the powerful blast of Gnuko’s grenade.

  Claus pushed up beside her, and Lu Bu needed no further encouragement to clear a line of fire for his devastating plasma cannon. He poured a blast of blue-white energy into the nearest Marine, whose armor was enveloped in a layer of burning plasma that tore through the vulnerable portions of his fancy Imperial equipment and sent his armor crashing to the deck where it became its wearer’s superheated tomb.

  A precisely-placed blaster bolt smashed into the lone remaining Marine’s visor, knocking the enemy warrior off-balance long enough for a hail of follow-up fire to pin him—or possibly her—to the far wall as Kratos and Bernice stalked forward with their rifles firing as quickly as they could cycle.

  Sergeant Gnuko was still in the lead, and he signaled for the team to cease fire as he drew a vibro-dagger from his belt and ran toward the Marine while the Imperial was still recovering from the savage onslaught of Lancer fury.

  Before the enemy warrior could react, Sergeant Gnuko drove his vibro-blade up under his Imperial helmet’s jutting chin-guard and the Marine’s armor instantly went limp and crashed to the deck.

  Barely breaking stride, Gnuko signaled for the team to continue down the corridor. They had nearly reached an access junction which would allow them to descend three decks, which would bring them one step closer to their target: Main Engineering.

  Lu Bu quickened her pace and, for the first time since leaving her family’s torturous, heavy-gravity compound where she had grown up, the muscles in her legs burned fiercely. The continued effort of carrying the massive plasma cannon through the corridors of the enemy vessel was apparently more than even her genetically-engineered physique could manage effortlessly.

  It was an almost intoxicating feeling to her, and it was one which she relished as her team reached the junction.

  Chapter XXIX: Maneuvering for Advantage

  “Recon Team’s mission clock is at three minutes, forty seconds, Captain,” Lieutenant Sarkozi reported tightly. “The Dämmerung has adjusted her course predictably, sir; she’s still well outside our firing range.”

  “Captain,” Fei Long interrupted, “I must request that the final gunship move into position; I have lost contact with the drones.”

  Middleton hesitated. He did not want to sacrifice the last of their gunships so quickly, but if Fei Long’s ability to interrupt the Dämmerung’s shields depended on him doing so then he knew he had no choice in the matter.

  “Tactical,” Middleton said, turning to face Toto, “maneuver the gunship into position.” He knew that the Sundered had called that gunship their home for several years; the least he could do was be courteous when asking them to sacrifice it.

  “Yes, Captain,” the uplift rumbled, and while it was clear that he disliked the order he seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion as Middleton. “Home craft reach comm. range in two minutes,” he reported, “will initiate attack run after.”

  Middleton wanted to tell Toto that wasn’t necessary, and that simply placing the little craft in harm’s way long enough for Fei Long to use the signal booster he had installed would be sufficient. But he knew that was a lie; if Toto had an idea for incorporating the gunship into the battle plan then Middleton could not, in good conscience, object.

  “The Lancer clock is at four minutes, fifty seconds, Captain,” Sarkozi reported, and Middleton thought he heard the traces of anxiety creeping into her voice. Everyone on the bridge knew that if the Lancers didn’t accomplish their mission within nine minutes then they had almost certainly failed. But there was no realistic way they could have breached Main Engineering any earlier than six minutes and twenty seconds.

  The ship shuddered, and then shuddered again with increasing force, prompting the Shields operator to report, “Starboard shields at 32% with mild spotting, Captain.”

  Middleton knew he had no choice but to keep the enemy off the starboard beam; the port shields were in even worse shape and Garibaldi’s teams were still hot-swapping relays on the port grid. To roll would not only present a less stable facing to Raubach’s turbo-lasers, but it would also guarantee several fatalities among the Pride’s engineers.

  “We’ve got more pain in store, people,” Middleton said, knowing that everyone was already thinking it. He firmly subscribed to the notion of facing adversity head on rather than ignoring it and hoping it would go away. “Let’s set our jaws and be ready to give some back when we get our shot.”

  He couldn’t help but give Fei Long a look when he said this. Middleton’s slingshot maneuver around the system’s primary had managed to drag Raubach’s ship into range of the Lancer team, but it had also ossified the Pride’s course in the process. If they were to get a meaningful shot off then they were going to have to overcome a significant portion of their ship’s momentum and reverse course to bring their forward batteries to bear on the enemy vessel.

  But all of that was predicated on Sergeant Gnuko sabotaging the Dämmerung’s engines even more effectively than Raubach’s Marines had done to the Pride’s. And even then, the other ship was markedly fresher than the Pride, so Raubach’s ship would likely prove victorious in a contest of relatively immobilized vessels exchanging maximum firepower for as long as they could keep their guns firing.

  Fei Long worked furiously at his controls, and Middleton was acutely aware that once again, their mission came down to that young man’s seemingly limitless abilities, and the Lancer contingent’s equally inexhaustible determination.

  He had initially questioned the late Sergeant Joneson’s decision to place Lu Bu in direct command of the Recon Team, but after observing her exemplary performances to date he was forced to admit that his old friend’s eye for talent was much keener than Middleton’s would ever be.

  Lu Bu’s plasma cannon belched another stream of superheated plasm
a down the corridor, but before she could regain cover a pair of blaster bolts struck her in the torso. They would have been fatal wounds if not for the Storm Drake armor, which protected her from all but the kinetic energy of the impacts—the force of which nearly drove her from her feet.

  She saw Claus bring his plasma cannon up for a supporting blast down the corridor at the hastily-fortified junction before them. The Marines had erected a barricade made of duralloy plates and what looked to be parts of a machinist’s bench. The plasma cannons would burn through the metal barrier in time, but time was a luxury they could not afford.

  Claus’s weapon tore a gash half a meter long in one of the upper duralloy plates protecting the Marines, but before he could regain cover he was struck in the visor by a blaster bolt and his body crashed to the deck.

  Lu Bu’s weapon required several seconds to recycle for another shot, but she knew she was down to no more than four additional shots remaining before the cannon’s energy was depleted.

  She saw Kratos step forward toward Claus’s body and briefly felt pride at how quickly her teammate had moved to collect the heavy weapon in the face of enemy fire.

  But to her shock and abject outrage, Kratos eschewed the plasma cannon in favor of picking up the fallen Lancer’s body and gripping it with his massive, right arm clamped around the dead Tracto-an’s chest. Kratos drew his boarding axe in his free left hand and before Lu Bu could physically intervene, Kratos charged headlong down the corridor using Claus’ body as a shield.

  Bernice and Cassius laid down covering fire with their blaster rifles, and even Gnuko added a micro-grenade in support of the Tracto-an’s suicidal charge. The grenade exploded against the ramshackle barricade and the majority of the blaster bolts missed the Marines, but the weight of fire proved sufficient to clear a path for Kratos.

  Even still, Claus’s body was struck repeatedly by blaster fire his Storm Drake armor succumbed to the overwhelming onslaught of streaming energy bolts. But before his remains had been reduced to a charred lump of unrecognizable flesh wrapped in a formerly-intimidating skin of Storm Drake hide, Kratos managed to reach the near side of the barricade where he discarded the smoking ruin of his former teammate’s body.

  With a deft, practiced motion—one Lu Bu knew had only recently been taught to him by herself and Sergeant Gnuko—Kratos drew a grenade from his belt and gently lobbed it over the barricade.

  The Marines’ stream of fire halted briefly before the grenade exploded in a blinding flash. Lu Bu’s visor filtered out the majority of the blinding light, but before it had readjusted to the ambient illumination Kratos had already vaulted across what remained of the Marines’ fortification where he had begun laying into the power-armored defenders with his boarding axe.

  Sergeant Gnuko was already moving to support him with his vibro-knife drawn. The rest of the team advanced in unison while providing as much covering fire as they dared with their comrades engaged in melee combat.

  Gnuko cleared the barricade with a leap which Lu Bu had doubted him capable of executing with his still-rehabilitating leg. No sooner had he breached the barrier than a Marine’s vibro-knife sliced into his upper arm, drawing a red line across his Storm Drake armor.

  Cassius fired a precise shot into the offending Marine’s helmet, sending the man lurching. Sergeant Gnuko took the momentary opportunity to launch himself at his attacker, and the two of them disappeared behind the barricade.

  Lu Bu saw Kratos locked in a violent struggle against a Marine, with the two warriors locked in what would certainly prove to be a victorious struggle for the Imperial. Kratos was larger than any man Lu Bu had ever seen, but no human being’s muscular strength could match that of power armor, so Lu Bu did the only thing she could do: she took aim as best she could and fired a jet of searing hot plasma at the Marine just as he forced Kratos to his knees.

  The plasma seemed to splash against the Marine’s armor, and for a fraction of a second Lu Bu thought his armor must have been wrought from some fantastically heat-resistant material. But before she could even fully process that fragment of thought, the warrior’s left arm went stiff.

  Kratos, whose body had been bathed in the enormous heat of the blast—but who had remained almost entirely untouched by the plasma cannon inferno itself—surged upward and toppled the Marine in a display of raw strength which even Lu Bu envied. The Marine was lifted clean off the deck for an instant before the massive, one-eyed Tracto-an slammed his enemy onto his back with enough force that the impact could be felt through the deck plates.

  Lu Bu led the rest of the Recon Team to the barricade but, by the time they arrived, Sergeant Gnuko and Kratos had already dealt with the defenders manning the makeshift fort.

  A few seconds was all it took for the team to clear the hurdle, accompanied by the drones, and Lu Bu looked at the markings above the door before them with a sense of profound accomplishment.

  The words embossed above the door read: Main Engineering.

  “No sense being coy,” Gnuko said, breaking the radio silence he had previously ordered. “We’ve got two minutes before this op is called dead; let’s get in there and bring this ship to a grinding halt!”

  “Why no more Marines?” Lu Bu asked before thinking.

  “What’s that?” Sergeant Gnuko snapped, whirling to face her with anger clear on his visage.

  “Ship complement more than this,” Lu Bu gestured to the corridor from which they had just come before waving at the corpses near their feet. “Why they not send others?”

  Sergeant Gnuko took a step toward her, but before he could say anything Kratos stood and removed his helmet, which had apparently become damaged by her plasma cannon. “She is right,” he said grimly, and for the first time Lu Bu felt she saw the true man behind the mass of scars which covered his head from front to back. There was a sense of calm about him which she could not understand; her own heart felt as though it would quickly beat itself out of her chest. “There must be an ambush waiting for us inside,” Kratos continued as he bent over the barricade and removed the helmet from Claus’s body. After a quick examination, he placed it over his head.

  Lu Bu very much wanted to rebuke him—possibly via plasma cannon—for showing such utter disregard for his fallen teammate, but she saw that Gnuko was considering their observation so she kept silent.

  “I’m open to suggestions,” Gnuko said after a few seconds of silence, “but one way or another, those engines need to be brought offline and it needs to happen fast.”

  Lu Bu had a thought, and she reflexively dropped her plasma cannon before removing the pair of grenades from her belt and gesturing to Claus’s body. “Give me grenades,” she said hastily, but none of the team questioned her as they began unfastening their grenades and handing them to her.

  Kratos retrieved the lone visible grenade from Claus’s belt, and when all was tallied Lu Bu held twelve high-yield explosives in her hands. She linked the detonators as she had been taught to do by designating a ‘primary’ grenade and then touching each of the others to it, creating ‘secondary’ grenades which would only detonate after the primary had done so. She then took up Kratos’ helmet and carefully placed all of the secondary grenades inside before tucking it beneath her arm.

  Surprisingly, the spider-looking drone crept up to the main door’s control panel, and Lu Bu nodded to no one in particular as she drew a long, measured breath. This would be the most difficult run she had ever attempted, and would require the most accurate throw she had ever made with a projectile she had never even considered using in the fashion he had planned.

  “I clear left with bomb,” she gestured to the left side of the doorway before them as the drone interfaced with the access panel, “then I dive right. Team makes cover fire,” she continued as she bent down to scoop up the tread-mounted drone from the deck.

  “I think I’ve got the idea, and it’s not a very good one,” Gnuko said before nodding sharply. “But it’s what we’ve got; Cassius and Bernice
will lay down covering fire as soon as the door is opened, the rest of us will follow through and take up positions to the left after you’ve cleared it with the grenades.”

  The spiderlike drone lowered itself from the panel and turned its optical pickup toward Lu Bu pointedly. She gave a curt nod of thanks to it, knowing that she was really thanking Fei Long since he was the only one who could operate the drones.

  Cassius and Bernice took up positions to the left and right of the door, respectively, and Cassius put his hand over the panel which would open the door when pressed.

  Lu Bu tucked the helmet under her arm, remembering the general layout of a Soyuz-class Heavy Destroyer’s Main Engineering section. She had three possible targets for her bomb, and would need to make a decision for which to target in less than a second.

  She backed up as far as she could before drawing a final breath in preparation, and then she sprinted toward the door as fast as her feet could carry her over the tiny section of corridor leading to the beating heart of the warship.

  The doors slid open almost too slowly for her to pass between them, and she felt her left arm impact against the duralloy of the left panel as she turned sideways to squeeze through the narrow gap. Blaster bolts hammered into her chest even before both of her feet had cleared the portal, but she sighted in on her first prospective target: a nearby catwalk manned by five Marines.