Against The Middle

by Caleb Wachter

  Middleton arched an eyebrow in genuine incredulity, “Don’t try to tell me you’re a card-carrying Saint-ist now—some things I could be persuaded to believe, Jo, but that is going too far.”

  Jo shot him a withering look, “You know perfectly well that’s not what I meant.” She cocked her head hesitantly and then leaned forward as she visibly struggled to find the right words. “After learning everything I’ve learned, and seeing the things I’ve seen,” she began before pausing to consider her next words, “the numbers just don’t bear it out, Tim. There’s something at work in this universe and, while I don’t claim to know what it is, it clearly wants me on this ship.”

  “What do you mean, ‘the numbers just don’t bear it out’?” he asked, intrigued by that particular line more than by his ex-wife’s suggested belief in some greater design to the universe’s existence. “I’ve never heard you talk like that.”

  She sighed. “The observable universe, while a big place, really isn’t all that big when it all comes down to it,” she replied. “The odds of all these things—our separation, my…choices stemming from that moment,” she said almost sheepishly, clearly referring to her having a daughter by him that he never even knew had been born until well after her death, “and the things that happened to me before you somehow, and against all odds, just happen to appear when things look bleakest—and with you in need of a doctor for your ship, no less?” Jo shook her head adamantly, “There is simply no way all of this is coincidence.”

  Middleton quirked a playful grin, “So what are you saying?” He leaned forward, clasping his hands before himself, “That the universe has somehow predetermined that we’re meant to be together?”

  The fact that she didn’t immediately scoff sent his mind into a near-tailspin. She did scoff, eventually, but the preceding pause—and look she gave him—spoke volumes as to what she really thought. “Bu is here, having never known a mother’s real love,” Jo said, clearly trying to change the subject, “and here I am, mourning a daughter who would have been almost exactly her age?”

  Middleton leaned back slightly and shook his head, “I feel like we’ve had this conversation before, except back then it was you cautioning me against looking for patterns and meaning where none existed.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she allowed, but Middleton could tell there was little or no doubt left in her mind on the matter, “but one thing I’ve learned since coming to this ship is that there really is a line between right and wrong. And whether I would want to admit it or not, the truth is that you’ve been on the right side of that line every single time as far as I can see.” She shook her head, “I can’t abandon the crew…I can’t abandon you just because my personal sensibilities are offended by the realities of what goes on out here.”

  Middleton found himself nodding slowly as she finished. “Not quite the idealist I remember,” he said after a pregnant pause. “I’m not sure how I feel about that…I think I’ve got more than enough dour pragmatism for the both of us.”

  “That’s just it, Tim,” she said, her eyes flaring with a familiar intensity which had, at one time in his life, consumed his every waking thought, “you need me. You may not realize it—you probably don’t—but you can’t do this alone.”

  Middleton wanted to argue with her, but he knew just as well as she did that he did need…something, and that she had provided it during her time aboard the Pride of Prometheus.

  “You always did hit close to the mark,” he said with a nod as he felt himself stiffen.

  She reached across the table and clasped his hand in her own, “Tim…I can’t even hope to make up for what I’ve done. But I’m here now,” she said, her eyes locking with his and conveying deep feelings he had never again expected to ever see in her, “and for however long the universe allows it, I want to be part of your life again.”

  He returned her grip, and they sat in silence for several minutes before leaving the galley in mutual silence.

  Lu Bu had expected Doctor Middleton to return to their quarters several hours earlier, but she had yet to appear. So Lu Bu had taken it upon herself to pack up their relatively scant personal belongings, segregated into a pair of duffel bags, in preparation for leaving their private quarters. Their quarters were located in a part of the ship which would require extensive reinforcement prior to their next engagement, so it had become necessary to relocate.

  She had already asked Kongming if she could stay in his quarters, and he had eagerly assured her that he would appreciate her presence. She knew that he required some degree of peace to perform his duties, but she doubted that she would be spending much time in their quarters outside of time spent sleeping.

  Lu Bu assumed that Doctor Middleton would move into the office attached to Medical, which already had a cot inside, and she had decided that she would take her effects there now that she was finished packing.

  Her relationship with Doctor Middleton had grown to the point that Lu Bu genuinely considered the older woman to be her adopted mother, and Doctor Middleton had said that she felt much the same way. It was, outside of her relationship with Fei Long—and short-lived apprenticeship at Walter Joneson’s feet—the most meaningful association she had ever experienced in her short life, and she treasured every moment they spent together.

  She left their quarters with a duffel bag in each hand—each bag weighed nearly fifty kilograms, but this was no great load to bear for the genetically-engineered ‘super soldier,’ Lu Bu—and made her way to Medical. Once she arrived, she was surprised to find the office where she expected to find Doctor Middleton was locked. Peering through the window she saw that it was also empty, which was confusing to her but she left the duffel beside the door anyway.

  Deciding against asking Doctor Middleton’s subordinates where she currently was, Lu Bu made her way to Fei Long’s quarters. Once she arrived, she stood outside awkwardly for several seconds, wondering if she should use the chime. Angry with herself over such a foolish concern, she slapped her access code into the door’s lock panel, and the door slid open.

  Expecting to find Yide—the Sundered uplift who Fei Long had befriended—working at the small bench which had been built against the nearby bulkhead, she was surprised to find his large, heavily-modified chair empty.

  “Kongming?” she asked, peering toward the head and seeing nothing. Then she looked at the bed and realized that what she had assumed to be a customarily-disheveled pile of bedding was actually Fei Long, who appeared to have passed out face-first into a pillow.

  She sighed and set her duffel down, making a muffled ‘whump’ sound as it hit the floor.

  Fei Long stirred and looked at her with blank, bleary eyes for a moment before giving her a weak smile, “Fengxian…you are here.” He made to get up, but a pair of strides took Lu Bu to his side and she not-so-gently pressed him back down into the mattress with her left hand. “I apologize; I wanted to help you collect your belongings, but I was more tired than I thought,” he explained, shaking his head vigorously as he tried to sit up.

  “You are on leave,” she scolded. “You must relax; you have been working too long.”

  He tried to wave off her concern, but she clamped her grip down on his shoulder just tight enough to elicit a sharp look from him.

  “You are certain that this will not be an inconvenience?” she asked a bit more harshly than she had intended, giving her duffel a pointed look..

  “Of course not,” he assured her, shaking his head quickly and giving her an intent look. “I have great hopes for our immediate future—“

  She placed a finger over his lips and shook her head in half-annoyance, half-amusement. Only rarely did he know the right words to say, but even more rarely did he know when to stop speaking. “Do not protest so much,” she said, using a term she had heard bandied about between the Promethean and Caprian members of the crew—but she was still uncertain if she grasped the nuances the saying was meant to convey.

  The brief look of amu
sement—a look which was quickly masked—flitted across Fei Long’s features told her she had indeed failed to use the phrase properly, so Lu Bu slugged him in the shoulder just hard enough to make him wince.

  “That hurts, Fengxian,” he muttered as he rubbed his arm.

  “Oh…poor baby,” she mocked, her lips turning into a ridiculous pout like she had seen among nearly every ‘great actress’ of her generation. Hamming it up, she leaned forward and said, “Are you going to cry now?”

  He gave her an irritated look as he sank back into the mattress and sighed, prompting Lu Bu to slide her hand down his torso toward his legs.

  “Here…” she purred, deciding to try out yet another colloquialism often used by her crewmembers in jest, “let me make it better.”

  Judging by his reaction, she fully grasped the subtext of this particular saying, and twenty minutes later they were fast asleep in each other’s arms, their hastily-removed clothes strewn about the bed.

  Captain Middleton’s eyes snapped open and he immediately looked over at the chronometer at his bedside. It had been four hours since he had left the bridge in Lieutenant Sarkozy’s—rather, in Lieutenant McKnight’s—capable hands. He knew that her name change was going to take some getting used to.

  But true to his character—and drawing a smirk from his own lips—the first thing that occurred to him when he realized this was that the previous shift had already ended and that his XO, if she had followed orders explicitly, was now in a bit of a quandary. He had ordered her to take over Mr. Fei’s calibration duties, and she would be unable to do that if she had followed his second order, which had been to take command until relieved. Technically, she could not relieve herself by calling on the Third Shift officer-of-the-watch, Ensign Daniels because the watch had not originally been hers.

  Middleton banished that train of thought from his mind as he sat up carefully in bed, swinging his legs over the side and placing his feet gently on the sole. Before he could stand, he felt a hand run up across his thigh and for a moment he hesitated.

  “Not bad for an old man,” Jo said, curling up against his back and gently pulling him toward her.

  He shook his head slowly, but clasped his hand over hers. For several seconds she tugged against him, but he remained seated as a flood of thoughts came to his mind. Oddly enough, he knew that in that moment he was thinking more clearly, and completely, than he had at any other moment in recent months. Feeling her body go tense at sensing his reticence to return to bed, he said quietly, “You picked up a thing or two, yourself.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting up and facing him.

  He wanted to answer her, but the truth was he didn’t know. Possible answers, platitudes, and clichés sprang to the fore of his mind, but instead of employing one of them as he usually did he surprised even himself by asking, “What are we doing here?”

  Jo recoiled and her features hardened, “If this was a mistake—“

  He clasped her hand firmly in hers, “That’s not what I meant, Jo.” He gave her a steady, unflinching look before giving her hand a squeeze between both of his, “I don’t regret what we just did in any way; I hope you feel the same.”

  Her visage softened and she returned his grip. “Of course I do,” she assured him before a quizzical look came across her face. “But if not that…then what?”

  Middleton gestured around his quarters, as though doing so communicated everything he felt, but had thus far failed to put into words. “This,” he said simply before sighing, “I just don’t know if this is the right thing to do.”

  “You mean…going after the Raubachs?” she correctly concluded.

  He nodded, glad that she had been able to put some sort of words to it. And now that she had done so, the thoughts seemed to crystallize in his mind, “I mean really, Jo…what am I doing to these peoples’ lives? They didn’t sign up for anything like this; the MSP was just supposed to be a reservist-type, show-of-force, peacekeeping body. And here we are, about to embark on a suicide mission against odds so long I don’t even want to think about them…what gives me the right to make that decision for them?”

  Jo recoiled slightly before narrowing her eyes, “Do you honestly think you’re the only one on this ship who is making decisions about his or her future?” There was a note of irritation in her voice, but there was also something akin to disbelief threading her words. “Tim, I’ve been with you for almost your entire command,” she said, and he nodded when she paused pointedly, “do you think I don’t make decisions for myself?”

  Middleton tried to grapple with whatever it was she was telling him, but he had never been good at conversations like this one. After several seconds he sighed, “Of course you make decisions for yourself—“

  She cut him off, as though she had expected him to say those exact words, “And we both know how I feel about the military, yes?”

  He nodded, still uncertain what she was getting at but growing increasingly confident that she did have a point she was getting to in a roundabout way.

  “So if I’m staying aboard this ship, even with my reservations and our…painful history,” she said, casting her eyes down briefly before steeling her resolve and meeting his gaze again, “what do you think that means of the men and women who actually signed up for the military life to begin with?”

  He thought he was beginning to see her point. “Even if they did choose to follow me,” he allowed, “who gave me the right to make this decision for them, a decision which will result in many—if not all—of them never returning home?”

  Jo blinked in disbelief and shook her head before scoffing, “They did, Tim. Don’t you see that?”

  A pregnant silence filled the room for several minutes as he came to understand what she was saying.

  “You’ve given them—us—every opportunity to get off this ship,” she continued, “and only a few people have taken you up on the offer. Do you think the ones who stay with you are weak-willed or feebleminded? Or do you think they believe in what you’re doing out here and are willing, if necessary, to die for this mission?”

  “So what are you saying,” he began skeptically after processing her words, “that I owe it to them to charge headlong into the fray?”

  “You’re blasted well right, you do,” she replied severely. “The only thing worse than getting them killed while fighting for what they believe in is to turn your back on them and what they believe by failing to lead them when they need you most.”

  When she put it that way, he saw her position with perfect clarity and he marveled at how his own thoughts had been so far from her own. He shook his head and placed a hand behind her neck, massaging the base of her hairline the way he used to do so many years earlier, “That was it, Jo. That was what I needed more than anything…thank you.”

  Giving him a satisfied nod, she pressed her cheek against his arm and cupped his hand to her face. “You can do this, Tim…even if you are an old man,” she teased.

  He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead before standing and making his way to his discarded uniform. “That was the one thing I never wanted to be, Jo,” he said distantly as he worked to re-don his uniform, “the ‘old man,’ that is. It’s one of the reasons I opted for early retirement,” he said, confiding a truth he had never shared with another living soul. “I saw all those old, broken-down warhorses who had lost the edge—an edge which has always separated me from others—and I didn’t want to be that man. I didn’t want my colleagues to see me get old and tired, to see me show up every day and just go through the motions, playing out the string because I had nothing else to live for,” he explained before snorting in disgust. “Turns out it was inevitable…nobody can outmaneuver Father Time or the divorce courts. I was a fool for thinking I could somehow stay ahead of the curve when so many others had failed to do so.”

  Jo stood from the bed, her naked body somehow more attractive to him than it had been twenty years earlier, and pressed herself against him. T
hey stood there in silence for several long moments, then she said, “I should find Bu; she’s probably worried sick about me.”

  Middleton nodded, “I need to get back to the bridge.”

  “Bu probably already took my things from our quarters,” Jo said as she picked up her clothes. “I told her I would be using the office in Medical for sleeping quarters and, knowing her, she might be waiting there for me.”

  Middleton hesitated, knowing that protocol wasn’t exactly conducive to what he was about to suggest, but neither was it expressly forbidden given the extenuating circumstances involved in Jo’s presence on the Pride of Prometheus. “You should stay here,” he said after she had replaced her clothing. “I’ve got the room so I should take on a bunk-mate anyway,” he added, sounding strangely unconfident as he attempted to justify the offer.

  Jo stopped and looked at him for several moments before shaking her head, “Let’s just take things one step at a time, Tim. It’s been a long time…”

  Middleton nodded, “It’s your decision. But as the Captain, I’m going to have to set a good example for the rest of the officers—officers who will be required to take on bunk-mates given our newfound berthing shortages. I’d rather it was you than anyone else,” he said with complete honesty. “Besides, you can sleep in the office whenever you want; no one will question our CMO crashing in Medical between shifts when her primary berthing assignment is with the Captain. Just imagine the whispered drama and intrigue they’ll engage in when they think we’re not looking,” he snorted, knowing full well that was precisely what would happen.

  She seemed to consider the offer before nodding, “Ok, I’ll bring my things over after shift’s end.”

  With that, she left the room and Middleton took a few minutes to compose himself before heading back to the bridge.

  Chapter IV: Picking up the Scent