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

by Caleb Wachter

  No sooner had he done so, Kratos appeared—seemingly out of nowhere—and cracked the War Leader on the jaw with the most beautiful straight left hand that Fei Long had ever seen. Before his head had even whipped back around from the impact, Atticus fell to the deck in a heap. His unconscious body knocked over a nearby tray of blood-soaked rags on its way down, making a loud enough clatter that every able head turned to see the source of the commotion.

  “Kratos, outside!” Sergeant Gnuko barked from the other side of the room, but the one-eyed Tacto-an was already moving to oblige the order when Gnuko had given it. The massive, bald-headed Tracto-an made brief eye contact with Fei Long and gave a wordless nod of what Fei Long took to be respect before exiting the medical facilities.

  Fei Long saw a nearby scalpel, and a torrent of thoughts so dark and unexpected came flooding into his mind in that moment as he looked down at Atticus’ limp, snoring form.

  But instead of taking up the blade, he looked across the room and saw that a pair of medical technicians had already begun to work on Lu Bu at a pace which suggested that she was not beyond hope.

  Before returning to his duties, with his mind threatening to tear itself apart, Fei Long muttered under his breath, “I forget nothing.”

  “The Corvette has been secured, Captain,” Lieutenant Sarkozi reported from the Comm. station. “Her drives are off-line and her fusion plants have been powered down.”

  “Thank you, XO,” Captain Middleton acknowledged. “Status of the Dämmerung, Mr. Hephaestion?” he asked. Apparently several of the Tracto-an crewmembers had no family name—and had been reluctant to change that particular fact—so their given names were forced to serve double duty.

  “I see seven escape pods, Captain,” the young, boyish-looking man replied. “The warship’s energy output continues to fall.”

  Sarkozi slid into position beside the young Tracto-an and nodded, “It looks like their shields are down, and whatever backup power they were using to fire their weapons looks to have been spent as well.”

  Middleton nodded, having expected as much. “Send out the following short-range message on emergency channels,” he instructed, and Mr. Winters at Comm. made ready to do so. When the young man was ready to record, he gave the captain a nod. “This is Captain Tim Middleton of the MSP Cruiser, Pride of Prometheus. Activate your short-range beacons and we will collect you as soon as we are able to do so, but I need to be absolutely clear,” he said, lowering his voice as he fought the urge to grit his teeth, “if my people catch a single whiff of resistance during the rescue process, they will be under my explicit orders to space each and every person aboard the escape pod in question. If you would prefer not to accept our help, you are to adjust your emergency beacons as outlined in the instruction packet you receive attached to this message. Pride of Prometheus out.”

  “Gunship returned to hangar,” Toto reported as soon as he had finished authoring his message to their soon-to-be prisoners.

  “You were able to squeeze it in?” Middleton asked, knowing that Sergeant Gnuko’s hijacked yacht was fully three times as large as any small craft the Pride had previously housed in its hangar.

  “It fits,” the uplift replied simply, and Middleton knew it was best to leave the subject of gunships alone for the time being. The battle had just cost Toto’s family two of their three craft, and he knew the subject would be sore for quite some time. He also knew it was up to him to replace their craft, if at all possible, but that would be a problem for another day—assuming there was another day.

  “Captain,” Sarkozi said as she turned to face the main viewer, “I’m reading multiple explosions within the Dämmerung.”

  Middleton turned his attention to the magnified image of the once-mighty warship and saw its hull begin ripple with a series of coordinated explosions. Those explosions continued for nearly ten seconds, at which point the ship was little more than a slowly expanding cloud of debris. “Monitor the escape pods’ transponders,” he said, having fully expected the Heavy Destroyer’s remains to be scuttled before he could dispatch a team to salvage valuable data or materials from it. “And log their positions so we don’t lose any that take us up on our offer of aid.”

  “Yes, Captain,” his XO acknowledged, and for the first time since he had stumbled into Raubach’s trap, Tim Middleton felt a wave of relief wash over himself.

  “XO, Set Condition Two throughout the ship,” he ordered. “Have the department heads submit crew readiness reports within the hour.” He hesitated for several seconds as he checked the latest update from sickbay, but eventually added, “I’m heading down to sickbay.”

  Lieutenant Sarkozi nodded her acknowledgment. “Condition Two, aye, Captain. I’ll forward any updates to your link.”

  Middleton stood and gave her a short nod of approval before heading to the blast doors and making the long trek to the ship’s medical center.

  There were some tough decisions in need of making, and he knew that with Jo incapacitated, the entirety of that particular responsibility had fallen to him. He had never given as much thought as he thought others expected him to do when making tactical decisions which could end up costing crewmembers their lives. To him, that part of the job had always seemed natural, and in some ways, familiar.

  But the decisions in sickbay were of an entirely different variety, and he was uncertain how he would react when faced with them.

  Chapter XXXIV: Tough Choices

  Fei Long made eye contact with his Captain as soon as the ship’s commander entered sickbay. The majority of the young man’s contributions had already been made, and now that triage had been effectively conducted—with far more grace and alacrity than Fei Long had expected, given the absence of Doctor Middleton throughout the process—he knew that the next few minutes would determine who lived and who died.

  “Mr. Fei,” Middleton said with a short nod as he passed by on his way to the Tracto-an woman—named Heldryn Foulchen, as Fei Long had come to learn—who was presently in charge of sickbay. Fei Long returned his Captain’s recognition with an obeisant bow, and the Pride’s commanding officer made his way to the surgical suite without another word.

  Several minutes passed as Heldryn operated inside the suite on a poor crewmember whose liver had been torn apart by shrapnel when one of the portable power generators had exploded early in the battle. Captain Middleton waited patiently—or, as patiently as a man in his position could do—before finally pressing the intercom button and saying, “Miss Foulchen, I don’t mean to be impertinent but we need to speak as soon as you are able.”

  Heldryn looked up over her surgical mask’s attached face shield and briefly met Captain Middleton’s gaze before resuming her task. A few seconds later she said, “I can speak in two minutes; any faster and she dies.”

  “Fine,” Middleton replied, and the seconds ticked by far too slowly for Fei Long’s liking. He stole a glance at Lu Bu’s unconscious form and, after seeing that no one needed his assistance, he made his way to her side.

  She had not regained consciousness since being brought to sickbay, and Fei Long had overheard Sergeant Gnuko imply that she had gone for several minutes without proper oxygenation. Her initial brain scans had revealed no catastrophic damage, but there were indications of an active subdural brain bleed which could be fatal if left untreated.

  The problem was that there was only one person on board who was qualified to undertake the corrective procedure, and that was Doctor Middleton. Fei Long looked at the three cryo-tubes arrayed behind the surgical suite, and knew that since Doctor Middleton had already been placed within one of them, there were only two remaining openings to which Lu Bu could gain access.

  Fei Long looked over at the physically, and chemically, restrained Captain Raubach. He was simply too valuable for Captain Middleton to risk losing, so if Heldryn’s opinion was that he required cryo-stasis in order to survive then he would be placed in one of the remaining tubes.

  He looked around sickbay an
d counted no fewer than twenty two crewmembers whose chances of survival would be drastically improved by placement in the last cryo-tube. Some of them even had more pressing wounds than Lu Bu, but that made absolutely no difference to Fei Long.

  Heldryn came out of the surgical suite and removed her mask as she came to stand before Captain Middleton. The woman was at least three inches taller than the Pride’s commanding officer, and at least three inches broader at the shoulders, but even with the physical disadvantage it was clear who the commander was simply by observing their affect.

  “Captain,” she said, “I did not wish to disturb you.”

  Middleton raised an interruptive hand. “Never start a conversation with me by apologizing,” he said evenly. “Let’s go over the priority patients as quickly as possible while still being thorough.”

  “Of course,” she replied as she made her way to Captain Raubach’s bedside. “This is the prisoner; he was exposed to va-cuum,” she chewed on the word, which had almost certainly been unknown to her prior to joining the Pride of Prometheus’ crew. “His lungs are damaged, but functioning. He suffered significant blood loss, but the brain scanners suggest he will not be a dullard when he awakens.”

  “When will that be?” Middleton asked after giving his adversary a quick, appraising, look.

  “I cannot say, Captain,” she replied with a shake of her head. “I am only trained as a field medic; the brain is unknown to me.”

  Fei Long felt his heart sink at hearing Heldryn’s report. He knew that Captain Middleton would have to protect the valuable asset which Captain Raubach had become after being taken prisoner, and without a convincing prognosis to the contrary, that meant ensuring his safety by placing him in a cryo-tube.

  “Who’s next?” Middleton asked, and Heldryn moved to a nearby cot which held the same crewmember whose leg had been destroyed by the coolant leak in Main Engineering.

  “This crewman will die without trans-fu-sion,” Heldryn explained, once again fighting to pronounce the foreign word properly. “He has wrong type of blood for syn-the-tic blood bags.”

  Fei Long’s ears pricked up at her last revelation. He could scarcely believe his ears, but she had just suggested that the wounded crewman’s blood type was incompatible with synthetic replacements—a condition which Fei Long, himself, shared, as did approximately one in ten thousand of his countrymen.

  In that moment, Fei Long tilted his head back and closed his eyes as he silently thanked the Ancestors for their beneficence. He still did not truly believe in the souls of people who had died years, or even millennia, earlier having the ability to manipulate reality as many appeared to believe. But his position had just taken a decided shift from ‘active disbelief’ to ‘cautiously skeptical.’

  “Have you checked the ship’s blood banks for a match?” Middleton asked, and Heldryn nodded affirmatively.

  “There is not in supply,” she replied firmly. “Without transfusion, he will not survive.”

  Middleton nodded before gesturing for Heldryn to continue and the Tracto-an woman did so. Fei Long felt butterflies attempt to create a typhoon in his stomach, and he fought against them as he looked down and found he was holding Lu Bu’s hand between his own.

  “This warrior,” she said, adding a hint of pride as she looked down on Lu Bu, “has several wounds which are severe, but most significant is bleeding in brain. The repair technique is beyond my abilities, Captain,” she said, giving Fei Long a guarded, yet sympathetic look. It seemed the entire ship knew of his relationship with Lu Bu, which he found oddly comforting.

  Middleton looked down at Lu Bu for several seconds, his eyes moving up and down her body as he appraised the significant damage which had been done to her improbably physique. Bruises covered her torso, and her lower right leg had been fixed with a splint after the jagged ends of her broken tibia. Those pieces of bone had protruded through her skin upon admission to sickbay, but had since been cleaned and returned to their proper alignment prior to splinting.

  Her left arm had experienced similarly catastrophic damage, with a complete break of the upper arm near the shoulder which, fortunately, failed to break through the skin. Significant bleeding had developed in that arm which called into question the long-viability of the limb—which was still nearly black from elbow to shoulder—but the circulatory damage had been corrected not long after Heldryn had seen to her.

  And her face, which had been sharply angled and proudly defiant to Fei Long’s approving eye, was now beet red and swollen so badly it was difficult to recognize her. She had apparently suffered minor plasma burns during battle, which was fortunate because anything more significant would have caused fatal respiratory collapse within minutes.

  And scattered throughout the rest of her body were bruises, apparently caused by blaster bolt impacts, which were already between purple and black in color. Fei Long had counted no fewer than twenty such impacts on her thighs and chest. He had also noted—with no small amount of pride—that she bore no such wounds anywhere on her back.

  How she had fought through those wounds was very nearly beyond Fei Long’s ability to comprehend. He had sustained injuries in the past, including a few broken bones, but nothing as severe as any of the worst ten which had been inflicted on her during the back-to-back suicide missions.

  “Can you estimate how long she has?” Middleton asked, and even through his professional veneer, Fei Long could hear the conflict in his commander’s voice.

  Heldryn cocked her head dubiously. “I am not expert…but perhaps hours. No more than days if bleeding is not stopped.”

  Middleton looked around the room and asked, “Who else?”

  Heldryn gestured to a nearby man with severe cranial trauma—his left ear, and much of the skull beneath it, had been cut away when a power relay had exploded near his station. “That one has severe head damage,” she said simply. “Brain scanner is unclear if his mind will live, but he will become infected and our an-ti-bi-o-tics are almost empty.”

  The captain nodded slowly. “Are there any others?”

  Heldryn shook her head. “Others are stable…for now,” she added as she wiped her brow with her sleeve.

  “Good work,” Middleton said almost absently as he looked at each of the four in turn. He quickly pointed to Captain Raubach, “Place him in one of the cryo-tubes immediately.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Heldryn replied, thought even through her thick accent Fei Long could tell she was not pleased at receiving the order.

  Middleton then looked at the remaining crewmembers, and Fei Long knew he had to make his move then or lose the opportunity—and possibly Lu Bu—forever.

  “Captain,” he said, clasping his hands before himself and bowing his head deferentially, “may I speak?”

  “Now is not the time, Mr. Fei,” Middleton said darkly, but Fei Long would not be deterred.

  “Captain, I have reviewed this crewman’s brain scans,” he said, gesturing to the man missing part of his skull, “and they are inconsistent with a probable recovery. Lu Bu’s wounds, however, have not yet caused permanent damage to her brain.”

  “Mr. Fei, I understand your position—“ Captain Middleton began, but Fei Long interrupted him, knowing that by doing so he was violating military protocol.

  “The technician’s blood type is, in all likelihood, similar to my own,” he continued. “It is a rare, but not unheard of, condition which afflicts those of my birth world. I could serve as the source of a transfusion if my blood is indeed found to be compatible.” He almost added that this would free Captain Middleton to put Lu Bu in the final cryo-tube, but he knew that doing so would be properly viewed as insubordination.

  Captain Middleton took a pair of slow, deliberate steps toward him, and Fei Long cast his eyes to the floor immediately. He knew his commander would be unpleased with his interruption, but he did not care. If his actions helped save Lu Bu’s life, then he was willing to pay whatever price was required of him.

  “Mr. F
ei,” Middleton said in a low, dangerous tone, “you are an invaluable member of this crew, but you have just placed me in a very difficult position.”

  “I apologize, Captain,” Fei Long gushed as he felt himself go red between the ears, “but I could not—“

  “You couldn’t what?” Captain Middleton interrupted icily. “You couldn’t wait to hear my orders before questioning them?”

  Fei Long fell to his knees and kowtowed to his commander. While he knelt in prostration before Captain Middleton, silence hung between them for what seemed like an eternity.

  “I’ve been lenient with regards to your eccentricities, Mr. Fei,” the Pride’s commanding officer said coldly, “but as long as I am in command I will have discipline on this ship, however it is achieved…do we understand one another?”

  Fei Long nodded as he rose to an upright, kneeling position with his hands still clasped before himself in obeisance. “I apologize, Captain,” he said, the words turning to ash in his mouth, “I submit to your judgment, as always.”

  “Stand up, Mr. Fei,” Captain Middleton ordered, and Fei Long did as he was instructed. “You are to submit your blood for examination; if it is, in fact, compatible with engineer Xu’s then you will provide enough for a stabilizing transfusion. Technician Xu has much-needed expertise in fabricating high-pressure containment systems—systems we are now in need of after ejecting our heat sinks.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Fei Long replied as his heart threatened to beat a hole through his chest. He took his commander’s meaning plainly enough: Xu’s expertise may well prove crucial to the ship’s ability to limp to a nearby port for proper repairs. In a truly bizarre twist of logic Lu Bu was, for all intents and purposes, expendable now that she had succeeded in her mission.