Against The Middle

by Caleb Wachter

  “Yes, I am Captain Middleton. I’m glad to see you’re feeling better,” Middleton said, interrupting as gently as he could and dreading even the thought of this woman operating with stimulants coursing through her system that would keep her awake around the clock. “When you first arrived on the ship, we weren’t sure you would be up and about so quickly.”

  “Oh, that’s me, all right,” she said cheerfully, a broad smile on her exceedingly gaunt face. “Always was a quick healer; you know what they say, ‘what must go up must come down,’ and I assume it’s the same with infection-driven fevers. Then again, there could be a sampling bias at play,” she said, narrowing her eyes in perturbation, “since the fevers that didn’t come back down would probably kill their attendant sick person and cause body temperature to plummet to ambient temperature, thereby making it less likely for those samples to find their way back into the data pool at a representative rate—“

  “You wanted to speak with me?” he interrupted—slightly more forcefully than the last time.

  “Of course,” she said, nodding quickly before closing her eyes, placing a hand to her temple and saying, “whoa…shouldn’t do that so fast. Either the grav-plates just failed or I’m still hypotensive.”

  A quick glance at the readouts above Miss Serendipity’s head showed that she was, indeed, hypotensive at 70/45. But before he could assimilate the information, she began speaking again.

  “The reason I wanted to talk with you was to discuss your intentions,” she said intently. “You have to understand that the University of Winlock will want their people and data returned at once. This whole business with those Rim Fleet pirates has set the committee’s plans back at least six months; we were supposed to have already excavated significant artifacts from the site, and all proceeds of our excavations—especially those artifacts—are strictly the property of the University—“

  “I’m sorry,” Middleton interrupted, shaking his head, “but the site was destroyed by a bomb which your captors triggered as soon as my people moved in to rescue you.”

  She stopped, her mouth agape for a full three seconds of blessed silence before her eyes narrowed. “How do I know you are who you say you are—in fact,” she added thoughtfully, “you haven’t even told me who you work for.”

  “I’m the commander of the Pride of Prometheus, a cruiser attached to the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet,” he explained. “We’re on a patrol mission here in Sector 24,” he half-lied, “and when we arrived in this system we found a Droid warship firing on the planet’s surface. We dealt with the artificials and managed to locate the subterranean structure where you were being held prisoner.”

  “Droids?” she repeated incredulously, her eyes flicking back and forth for several seconds before seeming to have arrived at a conclusion. “I guess I did hear them talking about ‘mechanicals’…but it was all something of a haze. I think they used a tranquilizer on me a starting a few weeks back…of course,” she said contemplatively, “it might have been a lot longer than that.” She looked at a nearby chronometer and nodded sharply, “That means I was held prisoner there for ninety six days.”

  “The Rim Fleet operatives had been on the world for three months then?” Middleton pressed, hoping for some genuine intel to come from this meeting.

  “Oh no, no, no,” she said, shaking her head—much more gently this time than the last, “they’ve been here—or, rather, they had been there—for almost a year. At first it didn’t seem all bad; Doctor Schillinger seemed to have expected them or, if not expected, then she didn’t seem all that surprised by their appearance. Although, I wouldn’t say she was exactly happy to see them—“

  “I would appreciate you giving a full, detailed report to one of my crew,” Middleton said, standing from the stool, “but I’m afraid I have urgent business to attend.”

  “Of course, of course,” she said agreeably. “But we should probably get the Lost Ark before we go; the University will be most displeased if she burns up because her plants ran out of fuel—“

  “Wait,” Middleton interrupted—yet again, “I thought your ship was gone?”

  “No, no, no, no,” she said, nearly giggling as she rolled her eyes, “we shut her down and left her in stable orbit of the sixth planet. Have to conserve energy, you understand,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “The University runs a tight ship—ha!” she cackled. “Now that’s funny: a ‘tight ship’,” she giggled again, “get it? Anyway, they don’t authorize more fuel than is absolutely necessary for a given expedition, and we were running a few percent lower in the tanks than we thought we would be by the time we reached this system. Doctor Schillinger tried telling them, but did they listen? Noooo, of course not, they just said—“

  Deciding he would get no further information if he allowed her to ramble, Middleton held up a hand haltingly, “Do you have a copy of the orbital path your ship took?”

  “Of course,” she replied incredulously. “What do I look like, some dimwitted floozy waiting to be plied with drink before being snuck out on in the middle of the—“

  “If you could write down whatever you remember, along with the ship’s hailing codes,” Middleton said, producing a data slate and opening the quick note creation feature, “we could take a look to see if it’s still there.” He knew that there would likely be usable intel on that ship, and he needed every edge he could get if he was to succeed in his mission.

  “Of course,” she replied cordially, taking the slate and, with apparently stiffer-than-she-expected finger, tapped out an orbital plane’s parameters before adding the expected altitude of the vessel, finishing with a frequency stipulated to the thirtieth decimal place. It was an impressive thing to commit to memory, and Middleton was uncertain he could have reproduced the number as accurately as she had apparently done—assuming it was correct, of course. “But when you go aboard, you’d better bring me along,” she said as she handed the slate back to him. “Our security officer takes his job very, very seriously,” she said with a knowing look. “But then you know the type, being one yourself.”

  Middleton furrowed his brow, “I thought you said the ship was powered down?”

  “Oh, it is,” she assured him before giggling, “but he’s not.”

  “The airlock’s clear of obstructions, Corporal,” the Deathbacker’s pilot reported over the intercom. “I’m reading temperatures over there that would make a snowman shrivel up like—“

  “Thank you, pilot,” Lu Bu said tersely, having no desire to hear the pilot’s attempted witticisms. She turned to check on the specialist she had been sent to accompany, and was grateful for the moment that she had ceased speaking, but knew that was about to come to an end. “We dock soon,” she said, gesturing to the small doorway to the craft’s port side, through which they would proceed once the shuttle’s docking collar had created a pressure seal against the hull of the Lost Ark.

  “And you’ll need me to input my security codes,” the woman, who apparently went by the name ‘Trixie,’ said as she unfastened her harness and stood slowly, with Hutch’s assistance since she was still incredibly weak. “Happy to oblige,” she said far-too-cheerfully for Lu Bu’s liking. She admired the woman’s ability to overcome her recent trials in such a steadfast and unflappable manner, but she was more annoyed than admiring when it came to her penchant for verbosity.

  The collar made a noise which Lu Bu assumed indicated it had formed a seal against the Lost Ark’s hull, which was confirmed when the pilot’s voice came over the intercom and he said, “Looks like we’ve got atmosphere on the other side, but if it hasn’t been recycled regularly for nearly a year who knows how stale it might be.”

  Lu Bu felt like rebuking the man, since she had learned in one of her many lessons since coming to serve aboard the Pride of Prometheus that, unless the air was being breathed or in some other way contaminated by active processes, its gas content should be precisely the same mix as it had been prior to the shutdown of the vessel’s l
ife support. But she was too focused on Miss Serendipity’s unsteady gait to comment on the matter as the other woman moved slowly toward the door.

  “Open hatch,” Lu Bu instructed over the local channel, and a moment later the pilot obliged by disengaging the lock. She manually activated the hatch’s open cycle, and a moment later it slid to the side to reveal the short gap between the now-docked vessels.

  “Are you sure you can do this?” Hutch asked Trixie, and the woman nodded brightly.

  “Of course,” she said with what seemed to be genuine appreciation for his concern, “I’ll just make the introductions and then you people can get to work bringing the ship’s systems online. It shouldn’t take but a day or so…unless the computer core really was fit to burst with all the data we crammed in there, like Largo said it was.” At that, her affect dimmed noticeably for a moment, “Oh, poor Largo…Oh well; we’ll be able to get it up and running in no time, I’m sure,” she declared, seeming to brighten immediately, the thought of what Lu Bu assumed to be a fallen companion flitting into and out of her mind like a butterfly on a typhoon’s wind, “I’d better input those codes.”

  She stepped forward and wiped the access panel set beside the Lost Ark’s exterior airlock door. Hutch stayed at her elbow, but at least while they were between the vessels the woman was at no risk of falling—the Deathbacker’s grav-plates did not extend beyond the interior of the vessel, so she was completely weightless as she began to tap in an unthinkably long series of characters which Lu Bu assumed were her aforementioned access codes.

  A moment later the door cycled open, revealing an also-open inner airlock door leading to a broad, low-ceilinged corridor. She suspected it would have been difficult to move around inside the relatively squat corridor had her team been wearing power armor.

  Fortunately, and due to Lu Bu’s increasingly adamant insistence on the subject, she and Hutch were wearing Storm Drake armor. Bernice, Funar and Traian were also present and similarly armored, but only Funar was to join Lu Bu and Hutch on the away mission while Bernice and Traian remained with the shuttle.

  As if on cue, Funar stepped forward with his blaster rifle drawn and Trixie clucked her tongue from within her pressure suit. “You won’t need that, darling,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ll just access the internal comm. system,” she said as she moved shakily toward a nearby DI access panel.

  A moment later Lu Bu heard a whirring sound from the nearest junction, which was accompanied by a bestial snarl which made her react instinctively by raising her blaster rifle and aiming it at the source of the noise.

  A heavy, armored boot—or, she realized, a metal foot—appeared from the right side of the intersection, and it was followed by another identical limb. The legs were composed of duralloy, and they were powered by a combination of hydraulics and servos. Approximately four feet above those clomping, metal feet was what she assumed to be the thing’s torso.

  It’s ‘torso’ had no head above it, but it did have a pair of arms with heavy weaponry mounted on them instead of hands. Between the arms was a black, gently-curved section which looked to be large enough for a small person to squeeze into, assuming it was empty.

  One of its arms had a relatively old-style, rotary weapon mounted on it while the other had what looked suspiciously like a cross between a plasma cannon and a flamethrower. Hutch had already taken up position between Trixie and the metal monstrosity, and the mechanical war frame emitted a guttural, throaty growl which sounded suspiciously like a lion’s roar.

  “Release Miss Serendipity immediately and vacate the premises,” a heavily-amplified, baritone voice commanded, having apparently originated from the squat, wide machine. “You have twenty seconds to comply,” it added, spinning its rotary cannon in an apparently emphatic form of punctuation.

  Before Lu Bu could tell the thing that she had no intention of following its orders, Trixie waved a hand happily, “Hi Ed! These people are ok,” she continued, pointing to Lu Bu and Hutch.

  “Probability of coercion to evince such a statement: 62%,” the war machine, apparently named ‘Ed,’ said in what was clearly a disbelieving tone. “Release Miss Serendipity, drop your weapons, and return to your vessel immediately. If you do not comply, I am authorized to use physical force in defense of this vessel and its crew.”

  “Oh, Ed, will you please relax?” Trixie said with a sigh as Lu Bu gave a brief glance to Hutch, whose weapon was already trained on the machine’s midsection. “We’re in enough trouble as it is without you throwing another one of your fits.”

  “Voice stress analysis indicates you are suffering from post-traumatic shock, Miss Serendipity,” Ed warned. “Please step away from the pirates at once; probability you are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome: 72%.”

  “Ed,” Trixie said tersely, “it’s ‘Stockholder Syndrome,’ not ‘Stockholm Syndrome.’ I thought we went over this already?”

  Ed paused, his rotary cannons ceasing their whirring briefly before once again spinning up. “Voice print and security challenge question’s answer confirmed, Miss Serendipity, but I am not authorized to stand down without confirmation from a command-level crewmember. Where are Doctor Schillinger and Captain Gibson?”

  “The Doctor was abducted,” Trixie replied, “and Captain Gibson was killed several months ago by Rim Fleet soldiers.”

  “Probability of both Doctor Schillinger’s and Captain Gibson’s unavailability following hostile action: 22%,” Ed said skeptically, crouching slightly while keeping his weapons trained on Lu Bu and Hutch. “Probability of Miss Serendipity’s involvement in their disappearance if they are gone: 38%.”

  “Will you stop it, you old grouch?” Trixie snapped, placing a hand on her hip and throwing the other hand in the air, which was an odd gesture that Lu Bu could not remember having seen before. “We’re going to go rescue Doctor Schillinger, but I need to retrieve some data from the computer banks since the portable units at the dig site were either stolen or destroyed. You can lock the ship down afterward if you want to, but I need to spin up the main power plant in order to boot up the data drives and find what we need. These people are part of the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet,” she gestured to Hutch and Lu Bu. “Isn’t there anything in your programming that says you have to respect the duly-appointed military chain of command if your mission primaries are unavailable?”

  Lu Bu noted a trio of what looked to be vid pickups mounted on the front of the war machine’s chassis snap back and forth between her and Hutch, “Iconography consistent with Corporal and Private ranks attached to Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet’s Lancer division—a branch which was discontinued over forty years ago.” He gave a low, rumbling growl like a dog might do to warn off a competitor looking to take his bone, “Armor is composed of Storm Drake hide, an illegal material employed by pirates in 79% of confirmed deployments. Probability of duly-appointed military presence: 19%. Probability they are criminals posing as official military: 93%.”

  “And what’s the other seven percent?” Hutch asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

  “Seven percent probability that this unit is in error,” Ed replied promptly. “Insufficient information is currently available for conclusive calculation of probabilities—error, primary assessment matrices require repair; onboard com-link system offline. Please report the failure to a certified technician with Bach-level clearance immediately.”

  “He always has a seven percent probability of error in his calculations,” Trixie explained with a roll of her eyes. “Apparently that’s how he gained sentience; one of his threat assessment cogitators blew out years ago and his auto-repair systems hotwired his internal circuitry before they went out too. We left the ‘please repair me’ message alone because there’s always some variation to it, and we didn’t want to risk damage his individualization in any way.”

  “You mean he is only…alive because he is broken?” Lu Bu asked cautiously, uncertain she had understood correctly.

  “That’s our best guess,” Trix
ie shrugged. “We decided it was best not to go poking around inside him; who’s to say we wouldn’t kill him, as an individual, by ‘repairing’ any one of his central processing errors? As scientists, we felt it would be mutually beneficial if we took him on as part of our crew since we could perform necessary maintenance on him, and he could serve as a security force—which the University of Winlock didn’t authorize, but Ed only requires a fraction of the resources for ongoing deployment compared to just one fully-trained security officer.”

  “Miss Serendipity promised this unit she would not reveal his condition,” Ed said, sounding more hurt than angry.

  “I’ve been trying to tell you, Ed,” Trixie said exasperatedly, “these people are here to help us. They rescued me from captivity after the rest of the team’s survivors had died. They’re good people. Besides, your power cells have to be running down by now,” she said, gesturing to his broad, heavily-armored torso. “Why don’t we just declare a truce until your batteries are recharged? Then we can retrieve the data and, if you don’t want to give us access to the ship beyond that, we’ll leave and you can stay here. But I’m telling you,” she said dourly, her face downcast in sorrow as she shook her head, “I’m the only known survivor of the team. Your power cells will almost certainly run down inside of two years, and then you’ll be inactive without anyone else to come back and give you a charge cycle. That’s not what I want, but it’s your choice. You know how we feel about your right to self-determine.”