Against The Middle

by Caleb Wachter

  Two weeks later, the Pride of Prometheus emerged from the latest point transfer along their itinerary—an itinerary which would lead them to the system, called Cagnzys, containing the Raubachs’ hidden base.

  This latest stop en route to their ultimate destination would be, with any luck, the current location of Alice Schillinger’s archeological team. According to the data which Fei Long had downloaded via his ComStat-linked scouring program, the itinerary for the vessel, which was called the Lost Ark, was scheduled to remain in this particular system for another two months. It had been scheduled to arrive here nearly a year earlier, which made Middleton reasonably confident in the possibility that it would, in fact, be there since its arrival date preceded the Raubach’s first moves following the Imperial withdrawal.

  “Sensor contact detected,” called out Hephaestion, and Middleton marveled at just how quickly the young man had become fluent in Confederation Standard. There was absolutely no accent in the young, smooth-faced man’s voice as far as Middleton could tell, and his proficiency at Sensors had grown to the point that he was the ship’s best operator by far.

  Middleton knew that Fei Long had played no small part in the young man’s development as both a bridge officer, and a particle emissions expert. According to Hephaestion’s aptitude test batteries, he was either the second or third most intelligent person aboard the ship. Sergeant Gnuko’s recruitment drive months earlier had yielded more quality crewmembers than anyone had dreamed possible, and it had only been possible by taking on what Tracto-an society deemed undesirable persons.

  “Report, Sensors,” Middleton said when no further details were presented after nearly a minute.

  “I am having difficulty penetrating the local EM interference,” the young man explained as his fingers moved with methodical, expert precision. “There is a vessel in orbit of the fourth planet, but the interference is preventing a positive identification, Captain.”

  “Lieutenant McKnight,” Middleton said, prompting his XO to slide over beside Hephaestion and attempt to help him clear up the interference. “Mr. Fei,” he said when his XO shook her head in confusion as she worked alongside the Tracto-an sensor operator, “are you picking up any comm. traffic?”

  “Nothing yet, Captain,” the young man replied as his fingers moved across his panel, making adjustments to instruments faster than Middleton could follow. “I am not reading any ship ID squawks, nor am I picking up any activity on hailing frequencies. There is something buried in the EM, however…there it is,” he declared before placing a finger to the bud in his ear and turning sharply toward the Command Chair. “I’m detecting a Harmony through Specialization Droid Tribe carrier frequency buried in the interference, Captain.”

  “Set Condition One throughout the ship,” McKnight barked even before Middleton could do so, “all hands to battle stations!”

  Seconds later, the ship’s power grid indicators lit up on the Command Chair’s DI interface, showing the ship was powered to maximum and ready for battle. Thankfully, Garibaldi’s people had managed to reinforce the forward sections of the hull to the Chief’s exacting specifications, and Middleton had been assured that the ship would now perform as well as it had during their initial deployment.

  “Sergeant Gnuko,” Middleton flipped his chair’s com-link to the Lancers’ designated command channel, “prepare your people for contact with Harmony battle droids.”

  Sergeant Gnuko’s voice crackled across the speaker, “Is contact imminent, sir?”

  “Negative, Sergeant,” Middleton replied. “You’ve got a few minutes to get your ducks in a row, but I want the shuttle loaded with the Recon Team and however many of Private Kratos’ Assault Team can fit in the hold.”

  “Larry that, Captain,” Gnuko acknowledged. “We’ll have twenty Lancers locked and loaded aboard the Deathbacker in fifteen minutes, sir. The Defense Team will deploy to the airlocks on the same timeline.”

  “Middleton out,” the Captain said before cutting the connection. He approved of Sergeant Gnuko’s chosen designation, the Deathbacker, for their new assault shuttle, which was smaller than their former assault shuttle but also had significant heavier shields and faster engines. The tradeoff was that she could only carry twenty Lancers in power armor, while the previous shuttle could cram nearly forty inside its robust hold.

  “Captain, we have a profile for the ship in orbit of Planet Four,” Sarkozy-turned-McKnight reported. “It’s a Destroyer, sir, and she’s powering her engines. Estimated intercept in one hour,” she said crisply before adding, “but it could be less if her plants were pre-fired; we just can’t tell whether they were pre-fired or dead cold with all this interference.”

  “What’s the source of that interference, Comm.?” Middleton turned to Mr. Fei.

  Mr. Fei shook his head doubtfully, “It is a highly localized jamming field, Captain, and it appears to be emanating from the planet’s surface. The signal’s wave form is unlike anything we have in the ship’s records, but it seems somehow familiar…I cannot place it, sir, but I will continue attempting to do so.”

  “Tactical,” Middleton turned to Toto, the massive, Sundered uplift with the distinctive silver pattern stripe of fur running down the middle of his back, with the rest of his body covered in jet black hair, “can you achieve firing solutions in spite of the interference?”

  Toto nodded, rumbling, “Life-mate’s modifications to targeting sensors good; accuracy will be half normal but range unaffected.”

  “Good,” Middleton said, more than a little surprised—and mildly alarmed—that Toto’s family had monkeyed with the Pride’s targeting sensors and that he had somehow missed it. Then he silently scolded himself for his previous thought’s bigoted, and factually inaccurate, undertones.

  “The Destroyer is clearing the EM field, Captain,” Fei Long reported, “by using her shields as a reflector of sorts, I have discovered the precise dimensions and strength of the jamming field; a visual representation is forthcoming.”

  A few moments later, the main viewer shifted to display the fourth planet of the system, which was surrounded by its normal, magneto-driven EM field which protects all planetary atmospheres from their system primary’s incessant solar winds, and then a smaller, much more powerful, area appeared within that field and radiated outward in a broad, conical shape with the origin somewhere on the planet’s surface.

  But as Middleton looked more closely, he realized that the signal was coming from beneath the planet’s surface at a depth of nearly twenty miles!

  “Check the origin point of that signal, Comm.,” Middleton instructed, confident that Mr. Fei had made no errors but requiring certainty where he only had confidence.

  “Origin is confirmed, Captain,” the young man replied almost immediately as the enemy Destroyer’s icon moved slowly away from the planet, increasing the accuracy of Mr. Fei’s representation of the jamming field with each passing second as the young man incorporated new data into his calculations. “It is a point between sixteen and twenty one miles beneath the planet’s surface.”

  “Enemy vessel is on intercept course; estimated time to weapons range is forty six minutes, Captain,” McKnight reported. “Enemy’s profile suggests her weaponry has approximately the same range as ours, and her acceleration is fifteen percent greater than ours.”

  “Carry on, XO,” Middleton acknowledged, knowing that such a speed advantage, coupled with equal-ranged weaponry, could very well spell victory for the smaller ship. But he had an advantage over the hostile warship: he knew that they were deeply interested in what was happening on that planet, and were likely to intercede against Middleton’s attempts to discover whatever that was.

  Which meant that, in all likelihood, the smaller, faster ship would be forced to exchange shots blow-for-blow with the larger, heavier-hitting, and stronger-shielded, Pride of Prometheus.

  Which begged the question: why would a relatively small warship like a Destroyer be operating solo?

  “S
ensors,” Middleton turned to Hephaestion, “scan the area for debris, or recent signs of fire exchange.”

  “Scanning,” the smooth-faced Tracto-an acknowledged, and for several minutes the bridge crew’s tension rose as they prepared to exchange fire with the enemy vessel. “There is a debris field near the hyper limit, Captain, bearing forty six degrees from the system’s primary and two degrees south of the median orbital plane.”

  “How recently was it made?” Middleton asked, his own anxiety slightly reduced at the possibility that the Destroyer’s original escort vessel had been destroyed—which significantly reduced the probability of him leading his ship into another ambush.

  “It is difficult to say at this range, Captain, but I am reading negligible thermal signatures,” Hephaestion reported before adding, “The imagers have captured some hull markings among the debris, sir.”

  “Show me,” Middleton said, and a moment later the main viewer’s image of the EM fields emanating from the planet was replaced by quartet of low-res images of what was clearly warship hull debris. One of the sections read, quite clearly, NC-1540 Red King, and two of the other images of hull fragments bore partial segments of the same markings, while the fourth image was of a distinctly different type of construction—a type consistent with Harmony through Specialization Tribe’s warships. “Run that,” Middleton said, knowing that Mr. Fei had almost certainly already begun to do so.

  “NC-1540 Red King corresponds to a CR-72 class Corvette, flagged out of North Canton and listed as part of that system’s SDF,” Fei Long reported promptly. “The vessel was reported by her government to be lost eleven months ago,” the young man finished with finality.

  “So…” Middleton leaned forward in his chair, lacing his fingers together and resting his elbows on the Command Chair’s armrests, “the Droids and the Raubachs got here before we did.” The widespread series of mutinies throughout Sectors 23 & 24, engineered by Commodore James Raubach III and his subordinates, had resulted in several star systems’ SDF’s being reduced to half strength due to mutinous commanders defecting with their ships to the Rim Fleet banner which Commodore Raubach used to legitimize his family’s all-too-blatant attempt at a wholesale military takeover of the region.

  At first Middleton had been confused as to why so few heavy warships had been targeted by the Raubachs. But after learning of a new technology—one which had almost certainly been invented thousands, or possibly millions, of years before humanity had written its first words—which allowed the Raubachs to retrofit their warships with weaponry that could strike targets at potentially double the range of anything else found in the Spine, their targeting of smaller, more nimble warships to add to their fleet made perfect sense.

  “The other hull fragments appear consistent with a Harmony Corvette class, sir,” McKnight reported confidently. “The volume and proximity of the debris suggests the vessels were destroyed at least partially as the result of a ramming attack.”

  “Any indication as to who did the ramming?” Middleton asked, the gears of his mind turning as quickly and smoothly as he could remember them doing.

  “No, sir,” McKnight replied in confusion, “there’s just too much damage; it looks like the field was subjected to a significant amount of weapons fire after the ships comprising it had already broken up. That doesn’t make sense, though…”

  As she finished her report, the picture became complete in Middleton’s mind. He leaned back in his chair, confident he understood what had happened, at least in rough terms. “The Raubachs were here first,” he concluded, “and the Droids showed up later, only to find the Red King outfitted with weapons that made her a formidable match—even with her back to the wall. The Droids recovered from the surprise and were winning when they boarded the Rim Fleet ship, probably with the intention of taking her a prize,” he continued, growing increasingly confident in his conclusion as he spoke. “But when they did, they found something aboard the Red King that…scared them,” he finished, finding no more appropriate word than the one he had just used. “So they destroyed the Red King, along with their own ship—which they intentionally used to ram the Rim Fleet Corvette—before scouring the debris field with the Destroyer’s weapons.”

  “What could scare a Droid?” McKnight asked, and for a moment the silence on the bridge was deafening as every assembled crewmember contemplated her ominous question.

  “Whatever it was,” Middleton gestured to the main viewer, which was once again filled with a three-dimensional representation of the space between the Pride and the fourth planet, “there’s a good chance it came from down there—and I aim to find it.”

  Chapter V: Advantage: Pride

  “Forward shields at 74%, Captain,” the Shields operator reported after the fourth volley from the Droid warship struck their defensive barriers.

  “Returning fire,” Toto growled, and an instant later the forward battery of the Pride of Prometheus lanced out into the void between the dueling warships. “Four hits,” Toto grumbled in disappointment before explaining, “enemy vessel still in jamming field; targeting accuracy down. Enemy shields at 35%; he is rolling to present his starboard flank.”

  “Steady as she goes, Tactical,” Middleton chided neutrally. “Even with our diminished accuracy, she can’t stand in much longer. Helm,” he turned to Helmsman Marcos, the blond-haired woman who had risen above her personal demons during her time aboard the Pride of Prometheus and proven to be the best pilot in Middleton’s tenure as Captain—including the ornery, late, Lieutenant Commander Jersey, “keep our bow on her, but continue to work toward the planet at best possible speed. I don’t want to give them any more time to cover their tracks down there than is absolutely necessary.”

  “Yes sir,” she acknowledged, her blond ponytail bobbing up and down as she manipulated the Pride’s maneuvering controls and brought the ship into a picture-perfect, gently-bending arc toward the planet while keeping the Pride’s most robust shield facing—her bow—squarely aimed at the enemy vessel. She accomplished this by smoothly rolling the ship and firing the engines in sequence and time so that the bow never wavered from the enemy vessel so much that they would expose their lighter-shielded flank.

  For just once in his life, Middleton would have liked to enjoy a speed advantage over his enemies but, given his vessel’s peculiar limitations, his crew was handling her as well as a ship of her class could be handled. He was incredibly proud of his ramshackle collection of souls aboard the aging warship, and he knew that their having rounded into form was due in no small part to Lieutenant McKnight’s diligent implementation of training regimens and exercises, including more-than-frequent readiness drills. What he lacked—primarily ‘people skills’ and an attention to the more bureaucratic aspects of command—she excelled at, and the two had settled into a remarkably smooth-running rhythm almost immediately after he had named her his XO.

  “Curious that they have not yet launched assault droids,” Fei Long observed, “I am detecting no active communications which would indicate a detachment of disembarked forces, Captain.”

  “Thank Murphy for small miracles,” Middleton said as another volley splashed against the Pride’s forward shields.

  “Shields at 66%,” the operator reported promptly. “The grid is stable, Captain; no fluctuations detected on my board.”

  “Remind me to buy Chief Garibaldi a case of Caspian banana mint rum,” Middleton said, making no attempt to hide his amusement at publicly pointing out Mikey’s favored night cap.

  “Awful stuff, that,” McKnight remarked casually as she stepped away from Shields. “I shared a bottle with my girls during college graduation week, and we woke up the next day with a headache you wouldn’t believe—and a mess in the lavatory that none of us was eager to take on.”

  Fighting to keep a grin from his lips, Middleton scolded, “Stow that, XO.”

  “Yes, Captain,” she acknowledged professionally, but the two shared a brief look of amusement before returning to
the task at hand. The truth was that the Droid warship seemed almost eager to sacrifice itself in a fight against the Pride of Prometheus, and Middleton was in no mood to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. His policy of ‘shoot first, and figure out why they were acting strangely after the situation has been secured,’ had served him well during his life—especially when it came to Droids.

  “Firing,” Toto said in his deep, occasionally bi-tonal voice, and the Pride’s forward battery once again stabbed into the darkness. This time, he snorted triumphantly, “Nine strikes; enemy shields down.”

  “My compliments to the gun deck,” Middleton said before flipping his chair’s com-link to Sergeant Gnuko’s channel. “Are your people ready, Sergeant?”

  “Lined up and waiting for the snap, sir,” Gnuko replied promptly.

  “We’re going to finish this Destroyer off from here,” Middleton explained, “and once she’s down, we’ll settle into geosynch over the source of this jamming signal. Your people will head down and investigate; we haven’t detected any Assault Droids, so your people will likely face an unfriendly welcoming party if they manage to find what they’re looking for.”

  “We’re ready for ‘em, Captain,” Gnuko said confidently. “Is this a search-and-rescue op, a take-and-hold, or a straight recon insertion?”

  “Start with recon,” Middleton replied, “but have the shuttle ready to provide tactical support should the need arise. We won’t launch the shuttle without a reasonable target in mind.”

  “Captain,” Hephaestion interrupted, “the Destroyer appears to have suffered significant damage.”

  “That was the intention, Sensors,” Middleton said with a stern look.

  “No, Captain, I mean before this battle,” the young man explained. “Their power grid is fluctuating and their drive unit is emitting considerably more radiation than is usual for its class. We have not yet hit them severely enough to be responsible. Judging by the radiation’s intensity and type, I believe their hyper drive has been catastrophically damaged as well.”