Against The Middle

by Caleb Wachter

  “We found markings similar to these in the shrine we were excavating,” Trixie explained excitedly. “But they were fragmented and incomplete…these ones look like they cover the entire planet!”

  Lu Bu saw that she appeared to be correct, as Fei Long moved the image pick-up across the surface of the planetoid. More shapes appeared, but the majority of them were increasingly complex sets of interconnected, concentric circles with faint markings on the edge of each circle. There were thousands of the structures, or whatever they were, and fascinating as they might be to others, to Lu Bu they were superfluous details.

  “They represent elements,” Fei Long said confidently, switching the feed to a single circle with a tiny marking at its edge, “this one is hydrogen. This one is helium,” he continued, panning the camera over. “Extraordinary…it is a planet-sized periodic table of elements.”

  “We suspected that, as well,” Trixie agreed, bobbing her head up and down quickly, “but there’s more information in the part we think of as the electron field than what would be required to explain subatomic structure—even if they understand physics several steps further than we do, which is more likely than not. The inscriptions we examined were incomplete, though; they were probably taken from a distance even greater than our own present remove from this planet, meaning that much of the detail was never accurately represented back on that world—wait,” she said, mercifully pulling herself up short as her eyes went wide, “could those images we saw in the shrine have been originally taken from here?!”

  “Possibly,” Fei Long agreed. “And the Heavy Cruiser is in geostationary position directly above the symbol representing carbon,” Fei Long said, sliding the vid feed over to what looked like a ruined set of circles. Zooming in, it was revealed that the circles had been disturbed by heavy excavation equipment—much of which was still present and motionless on the planetoid’s surface.

  “That’s no Heavy Cruiser,” Strider said, gesturing to the Sensors panel, “that be a bulk freighter.”

  Fei Long transferred the image pick-up to focus on the vessel, and Strider was confirmed correct when the image of the ship’s hull was run through the Mode’s database and it was confirmed to be a bulk freighter flagged out of Capital named Perilous Halibut. According to the Mode’s database—which Lynch had thankfully not completely wiped prior to the handover—the vessel was logged as missing and a suspected victim of piracy over a year earlier.

  The company which owned the vessel had gone bankrupt immediately afterward, as the freighter had represented the vast majority of that corporation’s net worth. A footnote on the vessel’s entry said that Lynch had shorted the owning company’s stock two hours before news of the vessel’s disappearance had hit the market, and the arms dealer had turned an eye-popping profit of seventeen million credits with the shrewd move. He would have made nearly ten times that amount if he had shorted the stock even two days earlier, so it was extremely unlikely that he had been involved in the vessel’s disappearance…although Lu Bu would not have put it past the man.

  “Why would it be running with Heavy Cruiser transponders?” Funar asked.

  “It is far more than a simple transponder switch,” Fei Long said, gesturing to a series of readouts, “somehow they have masked its actual power generation profile, as well as every other identifying feature of the vessel which can be gleaned at long ranges via sensor sweeps. The only method by which its true identity could be ascertained is via a visual check.”

  Lu Bu knew that the enemy would not have gone to so much trouble to mask the identity of the bulk freighter—a vessel which was nearly the equal of a Settlership in terms of sheer size—unless there was something of great value stored, or meant to be stored, within its holds.

  “Most warships are equipped with visual scanners that can see most of the way across the average star system,” Funar mused, “that means this thing wasn’t likely to go anywhere near the trade lanes.”

  “It must contain something of great value, indeed, to have been prepared in this way,” Fei Long agreed.

  Arriving at a decision, Lu Bu nodded curtly to no one in particular. “The ship is our new target,” she declared. “The base will not move, but the freighter can. Whatever is on it must remain here or be destroyed.”

  “I am detecting a powerful transmitter array located on the planetoid’s surface,” Fei Long said as soon as she had finished speaking, “there appears to be a large, surprisingly simplistic, pressurized facility near the excavation site as well. This facility seems to be the location of the transmitter.”

  “Show me,” Lu Bu demanded, and her boyfriend obliged a moment later.

  Indeed, there was what looked to be a prefabricated set of interconnected pressure domes just a few kilometers from the edge of the carbon image carved deep into the surface of the world which was itself composed primarily of carbon.

  Lu Bu noted with growing ire that the prefab modules were identical to the standard colonial startup package she had seen when reviewing the mission report from many months earlier involving the Settlership and the Corvette, Elysium’s Wings.

  Knowing that her team was thin to begin with, Lu Bu considered her options as she weighed the priority of the two targets. On the one hand, the surface-based facility almost certainly held valuable intelligence, as well as possibly hostages such as Doctor Schillinger, whose recovery had been listed as a mission priority in her pre-flight briefing with Captain Middleton and Sergeant Gnuko. And even Lu Bu had to admit that setting foot on an alien world with such unimaginably large-scale engineering present was a thrilling prospect.

  On the other hand, she had already identified the Perilous Halibut’s mobility as a tactical variable which required address. What good will come of securing the enemy’s surface base if they simply point transfer away with what they have learned and stored aboard the freighter? she wondered as she struggled with the decision.

  “We have to split up,” Hutch said with a measure of certainty she had not heard from the star smashball player since he had joined the Pride of Prometheus’ crew. “One team goes to the surface and the other goes to the freighter.”

  “We weaken our force,” Lu Bu said with a shake of her head. “Team must remain as one.”

  “He is right, Corporal,” Fei Long said before Hutch could reply, and Lu Bu gave her boyfriend a sharp look. She was slightly surprised to hear him use her rank instead of her name, and she found that it was not the comforting experience she had expected it to be as he continued, “Neither the base nor the ship can be permitted to remain in enemy hands if we are to succeed in this mission. We have four Lancers,” he said, gesturing to Lu Bu, Hutch, Funar and Traian, “as well as Ed, Yide, Trixie, and myself. That makes eight team members in all, assuming Mr. Strider remains aboard the Mode to provide support.”

  “The base will not move,” Lu Bu countered more hotly than she had wanted, “but the freighter can.”

  “All the more reason to divide our forces,” Fei Long replied calmly. “The freighter will be more difficult to infiltrate,” he explained as she felt her face go red with anger at being debated in front of the team, “so a team composed of the more agile members—namely you, Hutch, Traian and Funar, along with Yide who can serve as your pilot—should be dispatched to seize it while the rest of us will make our way for the ground-based facility.”

  “I cannot leave my experts without Lancer protection,” she snapped, switching to their native tongue. “You would be defenseless, Kongming!”

  “We will be far from defenseless, Fengxian,” Fei Long replied in the language of their home world, “and besides, I highly doubt there will be roving patrols on the surface of the world. If the prisoners we interrogated from Captain Raubach’s ship provided accurate information, Commodore Raubach has limited transit to the surface of the planet to only a handful of key staff members—most of whom apparently reside full-time within the base complex.” He shook his head calmly and switched back to Confederation Standar
d, “My technical expertise, combined with my ability to deploy the Attack Dogs from the surface of the world in support of your efforts on the freighter, means I must be on the team which sneaks into the base. Miss Serendipity’s familiarity with Doctor Schillinger may prove key to recovering her quietly, as might her admittedly limited knowledge of the alien markings covering this world. Ed is not mobile—or circumspect—enough to contribute to a covert boarding action on the freighter and, as you say, we will require protection should we encounter armed resistance on the surface.”

  “What if you are captured?” she asked after rolling his words around in her mind for several seconds.

  Fei Long shrugged, “This mission never had a high probability of survival for any of us. We cannot become timid at this point in time; the path to victory is paved with guile and valor, often in less than equal measures. The only real risk is in failing to secure this system prior to the Pride’s arrival…I seriously doubt that the ship we have called home for more than a year will be ready to fight one dozen Corvettes if we do not act quickly.”

  She bit her lip in thought, growing more certain with each passing moment that Fei Long was correct. “Can you truly do as you said you could, Kongming?” she asked tightly, referring to his bolder-than-usual claims during the mission’s briefing.

  Fei Long, who had seemed distant and less-than-himself for several days, flashed her an icy cold look that she had never seen from him—a look that sent chills down her spine and actually saw her recoil briefly, “You tell me, Fengxian: have I ever failed to do as I claimed I would?”

  She stood in silence for a moment before gathering her wits and shaking her head once affirmatively.

  “I will succeed,” Fei Long said with certainty, his visage softening as he turned back to face his console, “but you must do likewise…or none of this will matter.”

  She realized he was right. It would do them very little good to ignore either of the primary targets they had identified. If they left the base unmolested, the transmitter array would allow the Rim Fleet forces in the system to coordinate their movements and Doctor Schillinger would remain in enemy hands. And if they left the freighter in enemy hands, the ship would very likely point transfer out of the system as soon as the Commodore’s people returned with word of the battle at The Bulwark—assuming, of course, that the Commodore’s people did not emerge victorious in the battle.

  The original plan had indeed centered on getting Fei Long into the surface base so he could upload his program into the enemy’s main computer core. His program, according to his bold claims, would allow him to take control of every interconnected system on the planet once it was introduced to a system with enough processing power. He had been so adamant in the claim that even Captain Middleton had eventually been convinced that he could do as he suggested he could.

  “We divide in two teams,” she finally said, “but you take Funar.” When Fei Long opened his mouth, almost certainly to object, she added steel to her voice and said, “One Lancer makes no difference to boarding operation. We sneak on freighter, plant bomb, and leave. Smaller is better for stealth,” she said, daring him to challenge her assertion.

  Fei Long nodded without meeting her gaze, “That is acceptable.”

  “Strider,” Lu Bu said, turning to face the pirate-turned-Navigator-turned-pilot, “can you land here?” She jabbed her finger at one of the complex patterns carved into the surface of the planetoid. The planetoid itself was no larger than a mid-sized moon, but its trace levels of atmosphere—atmosphere which was completely poisonous to humans—and other characteristics, such as a weak, but active, EM field meant it was indeed a planetoid of some variety. Astrophysics had never interested Lu Bu—or been a strong suit—but she did know that it was a planet they orbited and not a moon.

  “I think I be doin’ a right and decent drop job,” Strider mused. “We be needin’ to cut the engines, though, and pray they don’t be havin’ no visual tracking gear, because that be only thirty kilometers from the base itself.”

  Lu Bu shrugged, “If they have tracking, we die. This mission only succeeds if we can sneak into both targets.” She turned to Fei Long, “Help me move bomb onto Ed.”

  “Modifications do not meet minimum combat-readiness standards,” Ed’s mechanical, yet somehow bestial, voice complained after they had finished tack-welding the harness which carried the bomb onto the assault droid’s back. “Probability of failure during close-range combat: 23%.”

  “It is the best we can do, Hansheng,” Fei Long said tersely, causing Lu Bu to arch her eyebrow at both his attitude of late and his chosen moniker for the aged assault droid. “If you refrain from rotating your torso more than one hundred ten degrees to either side, the likelihood of failure should decrease drastically.”

  “Processing,” Ed—or rather, Hansheng—said before slowly turning his torso from side to side precisely as far as Fei Long had said. “Recommendation’s probability of effectiveness: 93%. Overall performance degradation due to restricted movement: 9%. This unit will incorporate new range-of-motion parameters immediately. Thank you, Kongming.”

  “Of course, my friend,” Fei Long said after Funar and Yide had finished making the temporary mount for the nuclear fusion warhead. Lu Bu shook her head in amazement; apparently Fei Long had spent some time with the assault droid, and formed some measure of a bond with him—or it—during the trip aboard the Lost Ark, but she had assumed him to be locked inside his quarters every moment of that leg of their trip.

  “I never expected to hear any thinking being give thanks for being inextricably connected to a nuclear warhead,” Lu Bu said to Fei Long in their native tongue.

  Before Fei Long could reply, Ed/Hansheng turned toward Lu Bu and, in their native tongue, said, “Kongming has upgraded this unit’s vocalizing protocols to include your language, Corporal. He successfully demonstrated the benefits of subterfuge and adaptability to this unit, and was subsequently permitted to make additional modifications to core programming which was deemed to be of tactical benefit in the upcoming mission.”

  “The ‘benefits of subterfuge and adaptability’?” Lu Bu asked warily, giving Fei Long a sharp glance.

  Her boyfriend shrugged indifferently, “I do not like to lose, Corporal.” His use of her rank when speaking in the relative privacy of their native tongue made Lu Bu more than slightly uneasy, but she decided to say nothing on the matter—for the time being, anyway. “Hansheng was requesting several upgrades which were beyond our present capabilities, so we settled on a compromise of sorts,” Fei Long explained. “His tactical firmware was easy enough to decode and re-write, and before your…assistance regarding my lack of confidence,” he said, looking off distantly and sounding even further still as he spoke, “I was in dire need of productive distractions. The interaction was of mutual benefit.”

  Lu Bu looked at his neck, which he had covered not-so-subtly by flipping up the collar of his jacket for the previous several days, and was now hidden behind the collar of the pressure suit he had donned in preparation for disembarkation to the planetoid’s surface.

  “What happened to your neck, Kongming?” she asked.

  He waved a hand dismissively, “It is nothing, Fengxian. I will report to the ship’s doctor as soon as we complete our mission here; for now, I can assure you that it does not hinder my performance in any way.”

  “I was not concerned with your performance,” Lu Bu said irritably, feeling her face flush in anger at his dismissal of her concern. “I am concerned about you,” she said pointedly before taking his hand in her own. “You have not been yourself these past several days…I have never seen you this way, and I do not like it.”

  Fei Long looked sheepish for a moment before he composed his face into a nearly unreadable mask. The only thing she could actually read was the presence of pain. Whether that pain was physical or emotional, Lu Bu could not tell, but she could tell that the only person she could truly claim to love in the entire universe was not
himself—and he was getting worse.

  “I would ask you to refrain from pursuing this subject, Fengxian,” he said, and she took a sliver of comfort in his having reverted to using her style name rather than her rank. “Please…we must focus on this mission.”

  Lu Bu knew that there was still a great matter which, despite her protestations to Doctor Middleton several weeks earlier, Fei Long had every right to know about as soon as it was reasonable for her to tell him.

  “Kongming…” she began, struggling to decide whether or not she should take this particular opportunity to tell him of what she, herself, had been more than a little surprised to hear about upon awakening in the ship’s infirmary after the back-to-back suicide missions. She knew that it was his right to know of it, but she also knew that it might very well unbalance his increasingly fragile psyche.

  She felt a hand in her shoulder, and she snapped back to the moment to see Fei Long looking deeply into her eyes, “I can see that something weighs heavily on you, Fengxian. But now is not the time,” he said, and for a moment she actually thought he had guessed what she meant to tell him. In truth, she had been surprised that he had not already deduced the nature of her quandary, given his inquisitive nature coupled with his quite literally unstoppable investigative abilities when his mind was set to a task. “After the mission is complete, we will have all the time we need to discuss whatever the future may hold. For now, I…” he trailed off, clearly struggling to find the right words, “I…I wish you to know that you have been my North Star. Without you, I would have lost my way…” he said, drawing a deep breath to continue but Lu Bu grabbed him by the collar and pulled him closer.

  She kissed him and, for a brief moment, he returned it as he usually did. Then the moment passed, and as they parted she was uncertain how things could have changed so much between them. Was it something about her that had made him behave so strangely? Was it their mission and the pressure of succeeding when nearly everything depended on him? Or was it possibly the awkwardness which had arisen between them during this mission with her acting as the leader and him as her subordinate?