Against The Middle

by Caleb Wachter

  And he sat on his battleship, the Vae Victus, as a king might sit on a throne while his armies went forth to crush the would-be challengers to his dominion. In high orbit of the innermost gas giant, his Defiance-class vessel cast a long, metaphorical shadow across the battlefield.

  The Defiance-class was of an unusual design, given that it was essentially a catamaran with a pair of mirrored, but otherwise totally identical, hulls connected via a series of struts which also served as heat dissipators. Measuring six hundred fifty meters from bow to stern, she was longer, but significantly sleeker and less bulky, than the Dreadnaught-class like the Lucky Clover or Armor Prince. This particular feature was almost certainly why Lynch had bestowed two Liberator torpedoes on Middleton, and it was a gift which carried an unspoken message from the enigmatic arms dealer: finish the job, or else.

  In addition to her length, she was considerably more maneuverable than the Dreadnaught-class and boasted shields which made the Lucky Clover’s pale in comparison. And with eight fusion reactors—four to a hull—she was more than capable of simply overpowering the vast majority of vessels with which she might find herself in an exchange. But that maneuverability, and added power plant capacity, meant that the Defiance-class had armor that would seem paper-thin to a commander used to the thick hide of the Dreadnaught-class.

  Under normal circumstances this would be no issue at all, and Commodore Raubach’s enhanced weapons range would minimize this particular shortcoming even more than his already fleet and nimble—for a battleship—vessel already did.

  In short, Commodore Raubach had clearly been planning this entire sequence of events—from placing his flag aboard the Vae Victus, to which warships he would steal from the local systems of the Spineward Sectors, to the specific upgrades he was installing on those warships—for a very, very long time.

  The ship shuddered slightly, and Middleton breathed a short sigh as he nodded in satisfaction. That the enemy had fired meant they were indeed armed with the upgrade weaponry, and that meant that the Commodore had already managed to outfit at least those eight warships with the upgrades that would make them unstoppable when they moved against Sectors 23 & 24.

  “Turbo-laser strike on the starboard shields, Captain,” the Shields operator reported calmly. “Shields at 92% on that facing and recharging.”

  “Thank you, Operator,” Middleton acknowledged. A few seconds later, the tactical overlay showed that each of the ships pursuing the Pride of Prometheus had fired, and only a single strike had landed on her hull. Thank Murphy for small miracles, he thought grimly, knowing that his foes’ accuracy would only improve as the battle progressed.

  He checked the overlay and saw that the enemy vessels were currently at just under twice the Pride’s maximum heavy laser range. He knew that they could easily remain at their current distance and continue to take potshots at him until he either gave up and retreated, or they wore him down before he could close to grips with them.

  He checked the second clock which was running beside the main viewer and saw that he would be all on his own for another forty six minutes.

  “Helm,” he said, straightening in his chair, “continue on course at maximum acceleration.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the helmsman replied.

  “Shields,” he continued, turning to the Shields operator, “coordinate with Helm; if the shields fall below 70% on the starboard facing, or you read any anomalous readings on the power grid, I want to roll the ship and continue on our current course. We need to stay as fresh as possible for as long as possible.”

  “Yes sir,” the rating acknowledged.

  “Everyone needs to grab hold of their nerve with both hands,” Middleton said tightly as another pair of impacts struck the starboard shields, “because this is as gentle as it’s going to get.”

  Chapter XVI: Middleton’s Run

  They had rolled the ship three times before the clock ran down to fifteen minutes remaining, but fortunately the extra reinforcements Chief Garibaldi had made to the power grid which fed the shields were proving every bit as helpful as he had hoped.

  He had mirrored the Shields operator’s console on his command chair, and had been pleased to see no anomalous spikes or sags in the Pride’s power grid. The patchwork job might have looked shoddy, with cables strewn across seemingly every corridor in the ship, but Middleton was satisfied they would hold long enough for him to make his move.

  A move which, as it happened, was very nearly upon them.

  “Helm,” he said in a carrying voice as another quartet of turbo-laser strikes hammered into their starboard shields, “as soon as we pass the outer ice dwarf, commence your run.”

  “Yes, Captain,” the helmsman acknowledged tightly. Middleton knew they had been lucky to avoid an impact in their current parabolic course which skirted the outer edge of the system, but the likelihood of encountering a not-insignificant chunk of ice and rock was about to increase by several orders of magnitude.

  Of course, he thought with a smirk, that’ll go for those Rim Fleet bastards, too.

  The eight ship squadron had taken up a position on the other side of the ice dwarf’s orbital path, and were peppering the Pride’s shields from ranges that just a few months earlier Middleton would have thought beyond the operational range of any weapon—local or Imperial—in the Spineward Sectors.

  Their risk of a collision had been slightly greater than his to this point—a risk which had already bitten them with a pair of impacts against their shields which were more powerful than a single heavy laser strike from the Pride’s biggest guns.

  “Mr. Toto,” Middleton said, turning to the massive Sundered uplift, “verify that our enhanced point defense systems are online, please.”

  “Running diagnostic,” the uplift rumbled, and several seconds later he nodded his shaggy head, “enhanced systems online, Captain.”

  PD, or point defense, targeting systems relied primarily on heat signatures to lock onto incoming targets, but a chink of icy rock would naturally be a less-than-obvious target for sensors generally calibrated to detect missile heat blooms.

  To compensate for this, Middleton had asked Mr. Fei to work with Lieutenant McKnight to increase the sensitivity of the systems well beyond the rated specifications of their design. They had also added a short-range radar system to the PD targeting computers which, with any luck, would give them a fighting chance to keep the ship’s bow clear of deadly impacters.

  The drawback was that much of the new weaponry they had installed on the port and starboard broadsides were now forward-facing, and as long as the enhanced PD system was online they would remain that way—which also meant they would be unavailable to Mr. Toto for general firing actions.

  “We have passed the outermost planet, Captain,” Mr. Hephaestion reported.

  “You heard the man, Helm,” Middleton said, leaning forward in his chair and gripping his hands tightly together, “let’s do this.”

  The countdown timer on the Mode’s jump drive read twenty nine minutes, and since the closest Rim Fleet vessel was over forty minutes away at present, Mr. Strider had lifted the craft off from the surface of the moon and left the methane lake behind ten minutes earlier.

  “Always risky, makin’ a jump this far in-system,” Strider grumbled.

  Lu Bu snorted and gestured to the squadron of warships moving to match the Pride of Prometheus’ new angle of approach. Captain Middleton had aimed his ship directly at Commodore Raubach’s Flagship, and while Lu Bu admired and appreciated the apparent bluntness of the approach, she knew she was nowhere near her Captain’s equal in terms of naval tactics so she knew there was more to her commander’s approach than met her eye.

  If the Pride continued unmolested, she would reach her own heavy laser range in twenty six minutes, assuming the Commodore’s ship was stationary—which would obviously be a terrible assumption to make.

  “I am detecting no indications that we have been detected,” Fei Long reported, causing Lu Bu
to relax fractionally as they burned for the hyper limit. “Our engine heat bloom would be visible to a directed sensor sweep, but most passive scans at these ranges would miss us entirely.”

  “An impressive ship,” Lu Bu said grudgingly. She disliked Mr. Lynch for reasons she did not quite understand, but there was something about him she simply did not approve of. Her dislike of his character went even beyond the obvious skullduggery and lack of morality associated with a person in his profession, but more than that she had been unable to pin down.

  “This still doesn’t seem right,” Funar mumbled just loudly enough that Lu Bu could hear him.

  “I agree,” Hutch said, having spoken for the first time in several hours. “I’ve never minded facing danger, but I’m not much for running.”

  “We are running,” Lu Bu said tersely, turning to face the men, “but we do not run from battle—we run to it.”

  The two men’s expressions shifted in such a way that she knew she had gotten their attention.

  “We will have our chance to deal in death soon,” she promised them after turning back toward the bow of the nimble, stealthy craft.

  She watched as the ship neared the hyper limit, and as it did Commodore Raubach’s central formation of warships fanned out and began to move away from the Pride of Prometheus. The Commodore’s vessels were moving below the orbital plane of the system’s planets, which seemed curious to her but she pushed thoughts of it from her mind.

  She needed to prepare for their jump.

  As the clock wound down to zero, she found her heartbeat quickening its pace as Captain Middleton opened fire for the first time in the battle. But before she could see the damage wrought by the Pride’s wrath, the Mode point transferred from the system.

  “Three of eight,” Toto reported with bitter disappointment. “The struck Corvette moves to back of formation.”

  “Like clockwork,” Middleton grudged, knowing that if they had kept the little bugger in their sights for two more volleys it would have likely been destroyed. The pursuing squadron had spread out significantly in what was purely a defensive posture before moving well to the north of the system’s orbital plane. Commodore Raubach, on the other hand, had begun to fall back and away from Middleton’s charging warship while taking the rest of his fleet to the sought of the orbital plane.

  They were doing two things: first, they were mitigating the risk of running into stray asteroids by moving so far from the orbital plane; and second, they daring Middleton to alter his course and move for the heart of the eight ship squadron with which he had already engaged. But Middleton wasn’t going to make their jobs that easy.

  Even a battleship would have difficulty slogging through such a well-positioned, agile, and rangy force. While the Pride was a stout old girl who fought comfortably well above her own weight class, she was nowhere near a heavyweight on the battlefield. She was more of a natural welterweight who generally fought at middleweight, while making the occasional run up to light heavyweight without embarrassing herself in the process.

  “Maintain course, Helm,” Middleton instructed as the Pride’s point defense weaponry fired, causing a short-lived flare to erupt in the ship’s direct path which suggested they had struck a sizeable target. Their velocity was very nearly unmanageable—in fact, he was quite certain every other ship commander he had encountered would declare him insane for having purposefully gotten his ship moving this fast—but if their PD systems could give them one run across the system…

  “I am detecting a point transfer’s wake on the system’s periphery, Captain,” Hephaestion reported, and even in the midst of combat Middleton was once again amazed at how quickly the young man had picked up Confederation Standard. “I saw no evidence of the ship which jumped, Captain.”

  “Good job, Lu,” Middleton said, knowing that if they were to have any hope of succeeding against the Rim Fleet, they would need for her team to get a head start on ‘raising a ruckus,’ as Mr. Strider would have put it. He switched to the Lancer command channel and said, “Are your people in position, Sergeant Gnuko?”

  “We’re all locked in, Captain,” Gnuko replied promptly. “We’ve got the Defense Team locking down the major junctions and putting the finishing touches on our welcoming party. The Assault Team is in the hangar, waiting for your signal, sir.”

  “Very good, Sergeant,” Middleton said, “Middleton out.” He switched his com-link over to the channel he had designated for Lieutenant Sarkozy’s command team and said, “Cozy in there, Lieutenant?”

  “We’re all dolled up and ready to go, sir,” McKnight replied eagerly from within the assault shuttle. “Are we going to be stuck by the link all night alone, or do we have a date lined up?”

  “Not just yet,” Middleton replied, cracking a tight grin at her brevity, “but we’ve got a Light Destroyer at nine o’clock if you’re feeling antsy.”

  “I’m a girl with standards, sir; I wouldn’t be caught dead showing up to the big dance in a Light Destroyer,” she quipped, causing Middleton and several nearby bridge crew to chuckle shortly. “It’s Cruiser or higher for me, sir.”

  “Just make sure your eyes aren’t bigger than your stomach, young lady,” he chided, as a parent might scold a teenage daughter. “I’m afraid we can’t get too picky here.”

  “We’re ready to go; just give the word, Captain,” she said, her tone returning to her usual, professional demeanor.

  “Nothing’s looming,” he said seriously, “but I’ll let you know once something develops.”

  He deactivated the link and looked back up at the view screen. Commodore Raubach was proving to be a capable commander, judging by the deployment of his forces in response to Middleton’s ill-advised run into the system’s core.

  To say he had played into Middleton’s hand would have been greatly overstating the matter, but Middleton knew that if his reinforcements arrived on time then the board would be aligned in something resembling a neutral arrangement.

  The two destroyers comprising the eight ship squadron which had already engaged Middleton’s ship were spread out wide, with each forming the axis for between three and five Corvettes, depending on their configuration of the moment. The Corvettes along the edge of the two interwoven formations swapped easily back and forth as Middleton’s ship had made a series of feints on the run to the heart of The Bulwark.

  Just as he was considering how to draw one of those destroyers from its current position, Middleton saw that it had adjusted its course and speed to bring it closer to the Pride of Prometheus. As if to declare its intentions, the destroyer cleared her guns at the Pride and landed a pair of strikes against her port shields.

  “Port shields down to 46%, Captain,” the Shields operator reported. “No spotting detected, sir.”

  He was tempted to roll his ship and present the opposite facing, which was presently at 65% capacity, but Middleton knew it was nothing but a feint. The destroyer’s captain was attempting to draw him off-course by eight or ten degrees so that the nimble Corvettes manning that same destroyer’s starboard flank could make a strafing attack. Each Corvette appeared to have been armed with only a single turbo-laser, but Middleton had no desire to expose his flanks simultaneously.

  “Steady on, Helm,” he said steadily as another impact rocked the ship.

  “Port shields at 38%, sir,” the operator reported. “I’ve got mild spotting along the ventral sections of the port side.”

  “How’s the power grid?” Middleton asked.

  A moment’s hesitation saw the operator report, “Still five by five, Captain.”

  “We could use missiles,” Toto suggested. “Perhaps even kill destroyer.”

  “Negative, Tactical,” Middleton said heavily, “we’re going to need to keep as much of our powder dry as possible for when the tide finally turns against our Rim Fleet friends out there. Until then only take opportunistic shots with the Pride’s mounted arsenal, understood?”

  “Yes sir,” the uplift growled,
and a moment later the Pride’s forward heavy laser array lanced out in unison, smashing into a Corvette’s shields and forcing it to veer off from its predetermined flight path. It was a smart shot by Toto, since it would forestall the inevitable wolf-pack formation the eight ship squadron was working toward.

  Once they had the Pride surrounded, they could fire on her from every angle simultaneously, and then the battle would well and truly be nothing but a matter of time. By racing into the system proper, Middleton had ensured that his ship could not escape without outside intervention. But that was of little consequence to him, since there was no way they would survive without timely intervention on the part of his unwitting allies anyway.

  Middleton smirked as he saw that Commodore Raubach’s ship had moved dangerously close to the hyper limit after staying out of the Pride’s weapon range with the rest of his Bulwark fleet. But in a seemingly omniscient display, Commodore Raubach’s battleship lanced out with a quartet of turbo-lasers and, amazingly, every one of them landed against the Pride’s forward shields. The Vae Victus was ten percent beyond Middleton’s theorized maximum range for the modified turbo-lasers, but Commodore Raubachhad had somehow managed to loose a perfect salvo at such an unthinkable range.

  Rather than dissuading Middleton, however, the fact that his enemy had landed those strikes served to strengthen his resolve. He knew then, more than ever, that House Raubach’s plans needed to be stopped—and that he was the only one who could hope to stop them.

  “Forward shields at 80% and holding, Captain,” the operator reported promptly.

  “That was one hell of a shot,” the helmsman muttered under his breath, clearly awestruck and more than a bit fearful.

  “Yes it was,” Middleton agreed in a raised voice, causing the helmsman to duck his head and go red in the face, “but we’ll get our turn soon enough.”