Against The Middle

by Caleb Wachter

“You held the line,” Middleton said with genuine appreciation, “now we need to get back to the bridge and find out what happened with McKnight’s team.”

  Hephaestion appeared behind Gnuko, his delicate-looking vibro-blade covered in blood, and the young Tracto-an said, “I will check the comm. system now that Chief Garibaldi has restored power, Captain. Lieutenant McKnight’s team should have at least gained a foothold by now.”

  Middleton wanted to tell the young man to wait for him, but one stern look from Jo—who had made a neat incision which was now over three inches long in his inner thigh, and was fishing around inside that incision with her fingers—told him that doing so would be inadvisable.

  “Report on the Lancer’s Command channel as soon as you make contact with the XO—or if you fail to do so,” Middleton instructed, and Hephaestion nodded before sheathing his still-bloody blade and making his way to the lift tube. Middleton did not envy the young man when Hephaestion opened the door and the scent of cooked flesh wafted out of the tube.

  But, proving he was made of stern stuff, Hephaestion entered the lift tube and began to climb the recessed ladder which led to the bridge deck.

  “Almost got it,” Jo said, and Middleton was more than slightly concerned that he felt absolutely no pain while she worked deep beneath his skin to close off the damaged artery.

  She had already fastened a hemostat to the ‘pumper,’ as she had called it, and was working to apply a vascular clamp which was impregnated with Surgical Heal—a powerful, expensive substance which would promote healing post-operation, and would greatly increase Middleton’s chances of surviving the surprisingly dangerous wound.

  Knowing there was still a battle raging in the system above—the Pride had drifted well to the south of the system’s orbital plane by now—it was everything Middleton could do to keep still as Jo finished her work.

  “Done,” she declared, “now I just need to close this up. I’d tell you to stay off your feet, but I’ve already given you a nerve block to your legs that should be in full effect now, so there’s no point in arguing.”

  “You paralyzed me?” Middleton demanded after finding that his previously rubbery legs were now completely devoid of sensation or any degree of control.

  “It will wear off in two hours,” she said tersely, “if you need to get back onto the bridge, I suggest you get that lift tube operational again and have someone help you up.”

  With that, she stood and began replacing the gear she had brought in her emergency bag.

  “Where are you going?” Middleton asked sharply.

  “You’re not the only wounded person on this ship, Tim,” she said as she finished stuffing the contents of the bag back inside, “and now that we’ve got main power back, I need to get to sickbay as soon as possible.”

  He caught her by the wrist before she could stand, and their eyes met for a moment before he said with genuine feeling, “Thank you, Jo.”

  She hesitated, but then unexpectedly leaned down and gave him a kiss. The previous few weeks had been far more relaxed than the months which had preceded them, and he knew it was because they had begun to deal with the issues between them. He was certain that many people would call their method of coping far less than ideal, but he had not been as clear-headed as he was in those weeks for many years.

  “I just hope all of this is worth it,” she said after slinging the bag over her shoulder and standing.

  “It will be if we win,” he said heavily.

  She left as quickly as she could manage, and just as she rounded the corner of the nearby intersection Sergeant Gnuko’s helmet speakers buzzed with Hephaestion’s voice, “Team Turnover has successfully wrested control of the enemy warship, Captain. They have already changed course to rendezvous with us; ETA is one hour.”

  Middleton and Gnuko shared looks of surprise. Even though they had sent fully seventy five Lancers in power armor aboard the enemy vessel—along with the majority of First and Second shifts from the bridge and gun deck—the likelihood of their capturing the Light Cruiser had been no better than a coin toss.

  “Private Kratos reports thirty two casualties among his people,” Hephaestion continued, “while Lieutenant McKnight reports another four, but she says they have complete control of the vessel’s key areas.”

  “Impressive,” Gnuko said with grudging admiration of the one-eyed Tracto-an’s shocking, one-sided victory. He had begun with seventy five Lancers and lost fewer than half of them, while somehow managing to not damage the enemy vessel so severely that it could not be taken over so quickly by Team Turnover.

  “That’s not the last break we’re going to need,” Middleton said grimly, but even he had to admit it was a sweeping success, “but I’ll take it. Help me up, Sergeant; we need to get to the bridge.”

  Gnuko reached out with his gauntleted hands and picked Middleton up carefully like a man might carry a sleeping child, but the Captain knew it was the only way he could get to the bridge before an Engineering team cleared out the lift—and frankly, he knew there were bigger issues requiring their attention than an out-of-service lift.

  Several minutes later, they emerged onto the bridge. Only Hephaestion, Toto, and Middleton were present on the bridge, but after being situated in his chair Middleton was able to reroute all pertinent information to his chair.

  He quickly saw that his ship had drifted well clear of the conflict between the Droids and the Rim Fleet elements. But he also saw that the Commodore’s Flagship, the Vae Victus, was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hephaestion,” Middleton said after strapping a lap buckle across his still-numb legs, to ensure he would not come out of the chair, “get Lieutenant McKnight on the line.”

  “Yes, Captain,” the young man replied, switching from his usual post to the now-vacated Comm. station. A few moments later, he said, “I have the Lieutenant, sir.”

  Lieutenant McKnight’s face appeared on the main viewer, and Middleton allowed himself a smile at seeing that her usually pristine blond hair was stained pink, and she had a handsome wound running down her left cheek toward her neck. Had that wound been a half inch closer to her throat, she likely would have bled to death from a severed carotid artery.

  “Captain Middleton,” she said with a curt nod from the bridge of the other vessel, “we’ve secured the Slice of Life and are moving to rendezvous with you now.”

  “Give me your status, XO,” Middleton said, glad to know that Helmsman Marcos had survived as he saw her platinum blond hair in the background of the image.

  “We’ve got about a third of the primary weaponry still active, Captain,” she replied, “but they fragged all the upgraded turbo-lasers when it was clear they couldn’t hold the ship. We’ve got heavy lasers, PD platforms, and the ship’s entire complement of plasma weaponry for short-range engagements. They scrammed one reactor, but the other is still up and running at 100%,” she continued, “and her shield grid is operating at maximum specs as far as we can tell. But with only one reactor up, we’ll have to balance the loads if we end up in a real firefight.”

  Middleton nodded as she finished the brief report. “Well done, McKnight,” he congratulated, “give my compliments to Private Kratos.”

  A dark look flashed across McKnight’s face, and Middleton felt certain that there was a story she wanted to tell regarding the Assault Team’s new commander. But she had correctly determined that this was not the time for such. “We also managed to recover a certain wayward parcel which might be of interest to you, sir.”

  Middleton cocked his head for a few seconds in confusion before realizing what she meant. “Handle it with care, Lieutenant,” he said, his mind moving more quickly than it had done since regaining consciousness. If she was saying what he thought she was saying, then they had somehow recovered the Liberator torpedo which had been knocked off-course by the Rim Fleet’s upgraded turbo-lasers. Its drive system was a single-use device, and its protective shields were powered entirely by that same drive mechanism, so
really all they had recovered was the Nova warhead…but he already had designs on how to redeploy it.

  “It’s stowed, Captain,” she said gravely. “I lost two crewmen during recovery, but it’s been safely lashed to the hull near the drive section.”

  “Outstanding performance, XO,” Middleton said, doing his best to convey with so few words that losses were to be expected during such unusual and contended conditions. “If we manage to avoid the yard arm after all of this, I’m sure you’ll get that promotion you’ve been bucking for.”

  She shook her head, and in that moment Middleton saw something in her eyes that told her she had learned one of the absolute truths of command: that every command decision potentially meant the difference between life and death for the people who followed her. He knew she would never sleep as peacefully as she had done prior to this particular mission, but he also knew from the iron determination he saw in her visage that she would not hesitate to make those same decisions again in the future. “The Commodore’s Flagship jumped as soon as it made the hyper limit, sir,” she said sourly. “I’ve never seen a ship that big jump that quickly—to say nothing of after sustaining so much damage.”

  “We got our shot,” Middleton said darkly, “and we missed. The only way we can make up for it is by following them as soon as we’re able. I’ll have an Engineering team in heavy load suits ready to transfer the parcel from your ship to ours, but in the meantime you should have your Navigator plot a jump to the next system.”

  “What about you?” she asked.

  Middleton shook his head, “I haven’t even assessed the damage here, but I think it’s safe to say that our people can do more good aboard your ship than they can aboard this one. We’ll transfer as many as we can spare as soon as you’re alongside, and if we can get the Pride into the fight we’ll do so as soon as time permits.”

  “She’s a good ship, sir,” McKnight said, harkening back to their conversation where Middleton had denigrated his old warship’s condition to make a point to his young XO. “She’s got one more fight left in her.”

  “On that,” he grudged, “you and I can agree. Maintain comm. silence until you’re alongside, and then use point-to-point whiskers.”

  “ETA is fifty four minutes, Captain,” McKnight said. “This ship’s jump drives will be ready to point transfer in three hours and twelve minutes.”

  Middleton smiled wryly, “That design’s got a cycle time of four hours, XO.”

  She returned his smile with a lopsided grin, “I made a command decision, sir. We didn’t even know if there was anyone left alive over there.”

  “As usual, your tactical judgment is impeccable,” Middleton said, “Pride of Prometheus actual, out.”

  The link severed, and Middleton immediately flipped to the channel reserved for Engineering. “Chief Garibaldi, this is the Captain.”

  “Glad to hear your voice, Cap,” Mikey replied through ragged, panting breaths. “We’re a little busy with a fire down on deck five forward; I could really use the extra hands.”

  “You can’t vent it?” Middleton asked.

  “The systems are all jammed up,” Garibaldi replied, “I’d have to vent a quarter of the ship to get rid of the burn, and the bulkheads are all torn to Hades after the Lancers set off their traps. There’s just no other way to contain this thing.”

  Middleton knew that the reason the Chief had gone to quench the fires, rather than stay with the power plant, was because there were possibly still gunners in the forward section manning the heavy lasers. But he also knew that with all the fire they had sustained, the chances of those gunners still being alive were slim—at best. If they did manage to survive, they had done so by locking themselves in their self-contained posts at each of the Pride’s heavy laser batteries, which meant they still had at least forty eight hours of life support before their situation became dire. And if they hadn’t managed to lock the tombstones down in time…

  “Pull back to the power plant and vent the required areas as soon as your team is clear, Chief; we need to spin up the hyper drive ASAP and prepare for a sensitive transfer from the Slice of Life, McKnight’s new command,” Middleton said, knowing it was one of those decisions which could easily be criticized via hindsight—and that it was quite possible that several of his people would die as a direct result of his order. “That’s an order, Chief,” he added just as he heard his Chief Engineer draw a breath in preparation for a protest.

  There was a pregnant pause, followed by, “You heard the Captain: pull back, you grease monkeys, and do it while I’m still young and pretty!”

  “Thank you, Chief,” Middleton said, knowing the order would never sit well with his longtime friend.

  “Get spaced,” Garibaldi shot back acidly before belatedly, and quasi-respectfully adding, “Captain.”

  Deciding that he not only needed his Chief Engineer’s continued support, but that he could empathize with his sentiment, Middleton decided to ignore the flagrant disrespect and said, “Middleton, out.”

  Toto was shuffling to his station, and Middleton knew his Tactical Officer had been seriously wounded in the fight with the enemy Marine commander. He was about to order the Sundered to report to sickbay, but Toto growled, “Will stand at post, Captain.”

  “What about your family, Toto?” Middleton asked, truly ambivalent as to whether or not he genuinely wanted the uplift to abandon his post in spite of his query’s tone.

  “Mate dead, youngest with repair crews,” Toto replied tersely, “I must guard her from here.”

  Middleton blinked in stunned surprise. Toto had just informed him that his mate, or wife, had been killed in the firefight and had steadfastly remained at his post after learning of this. Knowing he had no business commenting on the Sundered’s personal decisions, he nodded his head. “Then you can do more good at Damage Control than you can at Tactical,” he said, tilting his head toward the vacant workstation.

  “Yes sir,” Toto grumbled as he hobbled over to the station—a station which was essentially on the opposite side of the bridge from Tactical.

  “Let’s see what we can do for the old girl before the next scrape,” Middleton muttered as he flipped through the grim readiness reports which were trickling in from his various department heads.

  On the main viewer, he checked and saw that there were still twenty two vessels engaged in the system. It looked like the Rim Fleet had turned the tide and outnumbered the Droid vessels nearly two to one, but even as he watched there was the blip of an inbound point transfer at the hyper limit where the rest of the Droid fleet had appeared.

  It seemed the Droids were still bringing in reinforcements at something of a trickle, but thus far the sensor logs—incomplete as they were, what with the blackout caused by powering down the Pride’s power plant—indicated that no Rim Fleet vessels had arrived to reinforce those still fighting in The Bulwark.

  It seemed that the Droid Motherships had done the most damage, with their small, nimble, short-range attack craft providing difficult targets even for the upgraded targeting arrays of the Rim Fleet warships.

  But there was only so much they could do, given the increasingly lopsided numbers the Raubach-led forces represented against them. Still, Middleton saw that there were no vessels in the immediate vicinity which could maneuver to fire on the Pride of Prometheus without directly endangering themselves in the process due to exposure to enemy firing arcs.

  So for the time being, it seemed the Rim Fleet forces were winning the battle at The Bulwark, but Middleton had managed to send the heaviest hitter on the field limping back to base by deploying the Liberator torpedoes. Unfortunately, Commodore Raubach appeared to have survived the ordeal, which meant Middleton’s work was far from done.

  Chapter XXII: Changing the Plan

  “The device is secured, ma’am,” Traian whispered after nearly an hour of continuous work. They had lowered the bomb down to the lowest level of the bulk freighter’s cargo hold in about fifteen minute
s, but the hold’s floodlights had brightened not long after they had reached that level so they had hidden in a dark alcove for nearly thirty minutes until the lights had dimmed once again.

  “Set timer for one hour,” Lu Bu instructed, and her Lancer complied. She had a remote detonation switch, but she suspected it would be useless after Fei Long’s Attack Dog had gone inactive. It continued to follow them around like some kind of robotic pet, but it was clearly acting in a preprogrammed fashion as it normally did when Fei Long’s connection had been severed. One hour should be enough time for them to disembark the bulk freighter and get picked up by Strider aboard the Mode—assuming he was still out there and hadn’t high-tailed out of the system.

  Traian’s eyes fixated on something toward the opposite end of the hold and he gestured for the team to remain silent before using hand signals to indicate that there were three hostiles in the hold. Lu Bu looked where he had indicated and her eyes immediately locked onto the small group.

  One of them was clearly a warrior, carrying a blaster rifle and standing nearly as tall and broad as Kratos. He was dark-skinned and devoid of hair anywhere she could see, but his eyes scanned this way and that with quiet intensity, and she knew he was assigned to protect one, or both, of the newcomers.

  This second man was obviously what some of her fellow Lancers would call an ‘egghead,’ and was not the one who the dark warrior was assigned to protect. The egghead wore a white body glove and had several tools hanging from that jumpsuit’s waistline, and had a nervous demeanor with a pronounced stutter as he spoke.

  The third man, however, was almost certainly the very man who had been pulling the strings on the Rim Fleet’s operation here on the edge of known space. He bore the insignia of a Commodore, and had House Raubach’s emblem proudly displayed on a medium-length cape which hung from his shoulders. His heraldry was long and illustrious, but since Lu Bu was not fluent in Imperial—or even proficient in either speaking or reading it—she could not read what they said.