Against The Middle

by Caleb Wachter

  “What…what has begun?” Fei Long asked, his mind flooded with thousands of questions which he felt certain he would never again have the chance to ask.

  “Your friends are already doomed,” the man said with a piteous shake of his head, his eyes briefly rolling back into his head as the virtual screen was replaced by the image of the Pride of Prometheus, streaming atmosphere from two dozen rents in her forward hull and powered by only a single engine, was pummeled by a horde of hitherto concealed defensive platforms spread throughout the system. “There is no salvation for them without…intervention,” he said as the Pride took a trio of converging shots and was destroyed in a less-than-spectacular fashion as its keel buckled and three separate pieces of the once-proud warship broke apart from each other and drifted in separate directions, “there is only the Masters’ design—one which we must protect at all costs, lest your realm fall into an apocalypse.”

  Fei Long somehow knew that he was glimpsing a vision of the future—or, perhaps, a possible future—and he also felt strangely certain that there was no deception in the image he had seen. “What of Lu Bu?” Fei Long demanded without even thinking to ask the question. “Will she survive?”

  The man cocked his head before a hacking fit of coughs seized him. Fei Long moved forward instinctively, helping the man to the ground—ground which he could now perceive clearly enough that he could see his feet planted firmly on it. When the coughing fit was completed, the man shook his head, “The strings of probability…are already unraveling…too late…too late for Fengxian…”

  More concerned with his words than wary of the fact that the man had used Lu Bu’s style name rather than the one which Fei Long had spoken, he gripped the man’s collar and drew him up until their faces were inches apart from each other. “There must be a way,” he said sharply, “a way she can survive. Tell me there is!”

  The man’s eyes softened and a moment later they began to flicker between blue-irises and stark white, as they had been when Fei Long had first set eyes on him. With great apparent effort, the man’s eyes finally solidified into their whiter-than-milk, seemingly endless forms, and in those eyes Fei Long saw what could only be described as chaos.

  He saw images fly by too fast to properly perceive, but he knew that Lu Bu was featured in the majority of them, which gave him a sliver of hope as the man’s eyes finally clamped shut and Fei Long staggered backward with a headache unlike anything he had ever felt.

  “There is…one way both of our goals…may be served,” the man gasped, “but you must betray your lord…and sacrifice yourself to the Masters’ design. And you must take an innocent life.”

  Fei Long tightened his grip on the man’s collar, “Will Fengxian survive—will she return home and live a full life, free of all this?!”

  The man shook his head, “She will survive, but my…sight is too weak to see her end. She will escape these enemies…but hers is a life fraught with conflict…conflict of her own choosing.”

  Fei Long considered the man’s words very carefully, knowing that agreeing would mean striking a bargain with forces he genuinely did not understand. He thought of the life he had envisioned for himself and Fengxian, how they would grow old together and do great deeds standing side by side against a universe bent on undoing them. But he already knew that life could no longer be his; his moral compass had been sundered from him, and he would soon be as he had been before: a rudderless ship at the mercy of circumstance and his own naked ambitions.

  He lowered the man down fractionally as he considered the man’s suggestion that he must take an innocent life to save Lu Bu’s own life. He knew he was at a crossroads to which he could never return, and if he agree to what the man said then his hands would become indelibly stained with innocent blood.

  But he had already learned one truth about his sense of priorities: all he cared about was Lu Bu. If it the trade of one innocent life was required to safeguard hers, then it was a trade he would make every time he was able to do so. He stood in the strange, virtual space, and the other man did likewise with Fei Long’s assistance as the young hacker set his jaw and said, “Tell me what I must do.”

  The man’s eyes, with their blue irises once again, softened significantly. “What you must do…what you will see…no uninitiated mind can survive,” he said, gesturing somberly to the writhing mass of shapes which drew steadily nearer to Fei Long’s consciousness. “You will do this thing…and then you will be no more.”

  “You do not know my mind,” Fei Long retorted coldly, forcing his gaze away from the foreboding shapes which seemed to circle him like a pack of predators might do. “But even if you are correct, my life is no great thing…its end is nothing to fear, and its passing will not be mourned.”

  The man seemed to arrive at a difficult decision after that. He drew his hands up, making to place one to either side of Fei Long’s head, and then hesitated before saying, “There will be pain.”

  Fei Long smirked, “There always is.”

  They shared a brief moment of understanding, but then the man’s hands touched Fei Long’s head and the world exploded all around them.

  To say that he lost consciousness would be to cheapen the event, but there are no words which can describe what Fei Long experienced in the ensuing seconds, minutes, hours, and eons.

  Except to say that the man’s last words were proven profoundly prophetic.

  Chapter XXVII: The Coiling Serpent

  “I still don’t understand,” Hutch said skeptically after Lu Bu had gone over the plan for the third time, “we’re actually going to wait for this ship to jump to another system…and then we’re going to try taking Commodore Raubach hostage before seizing this ship and everything on it?”

  “Yes,” Lu Bu replied shortly as Traian shook his head slowly. Ignoring the other disgruntled Lancer, Lu Bu continued, “Large ships like this one have long jump range; small ships have short jump range. This ship will be unguarded after first jump. If we seize Commodore and this ship, and return them to Fleet Command, we can stop all of our enemy’s plans.”

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Traian said respectfully, looking around at the cramped maintenance closet they had found for the impromptu meeting—and would use for the placement of the bomb, “but we have absolutely no idea just how many security personnel will be aboard this ship after it jumps. If we want to take the Commodore, shouldn’t we do it before the jump?”

  Lu Bu shook her head adamantly, “Commodore Raubach says his fleet only rejoins this ship at rendezvous point.”

  “The rendezvous must be to cover something the Commodore plans to do and doesn’t want his fleet captains to know about,” Traian mused.

  “Either that, or they don’t get paid until they get safely back to where they were going,” Hutch thought aloud. “These Raubachs seem to view bribery as the first option whenever it’s available. It could be that he wants the rest of his fleet as far away from this ship and its treasures as possible…or maybe the Commodore plans to rendezvous with another fleet before the captains from here join him?”

  Lu Bu nodded along with their musings before shaking herself sternly. “The reason is not important,” she chided, and the other two men nodded while Yide did likewise. “What is important is this ship is vulnerable to us, and we should take this chance.” She turned to the young Sundered, “Can you pilot this ship?”

  Yide made a harsh, barking sound which Lu Bu took to be the equivalent of a snort. “I can pilot it if the systems are all online. Ships like this, though…there is so much automation involved in routine tasks.”

  “What about jump drive?” she pressed. “Can you operate jump drive?”

  Yide paused in contemplation before shaking his head. “No. I understand basics of point transfer theory, and with familiar system interfaces I could perhaps succeed in a single jump, but this ship’s systems are totally unfamiliar.”

  Lu Bu swore quietly, then gathered her wits about her as she said, “The only r
isk is our lives. If we destroy ship here, now, we accomplish secondary objective but nothing else. If we wait, ambush enemy after jump, we can still destroy ship at cost of our own lives—even if we fail to capture Commodore and freighter. But if we succeed,” she gave a pointed look over her shoulder in the direction of the cargo hold, “we take this ship and everything in it for our allies to use.”

  She looked around at her people, starting with Hutch, who shrugged. “I’m game; this is better than anything I could have hoped for when I bumped into you back on Capital. Win, lose, draw, or worse—I’m in.”

  Lu Bu nodded in satisfaction as she turned her gaze to Yide. The adolescent Sundered stroked his chin in an overt gesture of contemplation, “My family’s new ship…I would go with you, if the decision was only for myself, but my family needs that ship…”

  “The truth, Yide,” Lu Bu said in a conciliatory tone, “is we do not know if Strider is even here. And if we wait for ship to jump, we leave Strider behind. The Mode is out of our hands.”

  Yide seemed to have been physically struck by her words, but after a few seconds he shrugged, “I did not think of that. Very well, I agree with your plan.”

  She nodded in thanks and turned to Traian. “What about you?”

  Traian cocked his head skeptically, “There are just too many variables, ma’am…the safe play is to blow the ship here and now. We take out the Commodore—and his goodies—in the explosion and his forces will scatter to the corners of the Spine.”

  “If we scatter those ships,” Lu Bu retorted hotly, “they will prey on local systems. Even three Corvettes will be more than most System fleets can fight—you know this, Traian,” she said, steadying herself as she continued, “but if we capture Commodore here, now, and take away his technology, he would order his people to stand down so he can save himself.”

  “Are you sure about that, ma’am?” Traian asked, a note of challenge in his voice.

  She jutted her chin out confidently, “His son wished to trade all his crew for his own safety. You have saying, I believe, which goes, ‘like father, like son’?”

  Traian snickered and nodded, “Yeah, we do say that, and I see your point…ok, I’m in.”

  “Good,” she said eagerly as she pulled up the limited specs she had on the ship’s layout—specs she had downloaded prior to boarding the freighter, and had come courtesy of the Mode’s extensive databanks. “Here is my plan…”

  Fei Long awoke with a start—although he knew as soon as he was conscious again that he had never truly slept. The pain the man’s hands had caused to fill every fiber of his being was nearly gone, but a slight, dull, throbbing sensation persisted near the back of his skull.

  He looked down and saw the man’s thin, frail form, along with the myriad medical devices which were connected to it, and Fei Long recalled the entirety of their conversation in the strange, white realm which he still did not understand.

  He looked down at his fingers and saw a pair of medical tubing lines between them, and realizing he was still standing inside the other man’s cell, he checked the chronometer embedded in the screen behind the chair where Zhongda had sat.

  “Impossible…” he breathed, seeing that no more than six seconds had elapsed since he had last glimpsed it—a glimpse which had been taken prior to his taking the mysterious man’s hand.

  “It…is done,” the man croaked, and Fei Long looked down at him as he drew a weak, raspy breath. “You…must…kill me…before the Dark…can claim…” his lips continued to move, clearly forming the final words of his would-be utterance, but no sounds passed between them. The man tried to draw another breath, but Fei Long suspected that what little energy he had mustered for their previous interaction was now thoroughly exhausted.

  Fei Long hesitated, glancing at the bags of medical solution to which the tubing lines between his fingers were connected. One was a nervous system depressant, and the other was a nitrous compound of some sort which was intended to regulate cardiac rhythms. He did not even bother to wonder how those lines had found their way into his hand, because he knew that together they could cause immediate failure of the man’s cardiopulmonary system—a failure which would only be reversible under expert care and with the proper equipment present.

  He saw a rolling box with medical equipment atop it—commonly referred to as a ‘crash cart’ in modern media—and nodded slowly. “Is death what you want?” he asked, turning to face the man.

  The other nodded, and Fei Long heard padding footsteps from down the corridor. Having run out of time, he removed the IV tubing from the pump mechanisms which regulated their introduction to the man’s system. He then grabbed the soft bags which contained the suspensions which would end the man’s life, and he squeezed them as hard as he could, forcing dozens of milliliters of the powerful medicine into the man’s veins—easily several hours’ worth of continuous dosage at the rates previously maintained by the pumps—and the man’s eyes rolled back in his head. He lifted a gnarled finger and pointed toward Fei Long’s cell, and Fei Long quickly replaced the tubing into their former places in the pumps before egressing from the cell and returning to his own.

  No sooner had he stepped inside his cell than the bars which had parted to form a doorway of sorts slid back into their closed positions. Two seconds after that, the door through which Zhongda had left opened and she stepped through it.

  “I heard you scream,” she said contemptuously, “so I thought you might have had a change of heart?”

  Fei Long glanced at the other prisoner, who lay motionless on his cot, and the young hacker nodded to his nemesis. “I have,” he said, hanging his head as though in shame, “but I require compensation before I submit fully to you.”

  “Oh?” she asked with an arched brow. She stepped closer and regarded him skeptically, “This wouldn’t be some clever ploy to gain your freedom, would it?”

  “No,” Fei Long replied, knowing it was absolutely true. The base of his skull was still throbbing, and it seemed as though it had fractionally worsened since his awakening from the…meeting with the mysterious man. “I have no desire to escape from this place.”

  Her forehead wrinkled in surprise. “You never could lie to me,” she said as her eyes narrowed, “and I’m willing to bet that hasn’t changed. Fine, what is it you want?”

  Fei Long tilted his head toward the trio of portable workstations. “I want to see you complete what you started,” he replied, knowing that his original plan was in dire need of last-minute modification. When he had written his Yin & Yang program, he had anticipated having ample time for Zhongda to recompile the components on her own schedule, but now he knew that time was running out.

  Somehow, he knew that he needed to contact Lieutenant McKnight as quickly as possible, and as he tried to divine how exactly it was he knew that, a series of images flooded into his mind so fast that he was unable to focus on his surroundings.

  Images of a battle fought in the corridors of an unfamiliar ship came to his mind, followed by the image of Lu Bu doing battle with a brutish, giant of a man. She wore her Red Hare armor as she leapt through the air, aiming her knee at the other man’s jaw, and then the image cut out and was replaced with one of Captain Middleton sitting in his chair on the Pride’s bridge. His face was bloodied and the vessel was rocked by violent explosions all around him, and then in a brief, fleeting moment, all of these images seemed to create a line—or, he realized in a moment of clarity, a string—and that string was filled with other images of things he did not recognize as it lengthened and stretched away from his perspective.

  The string became thinner and thinner as the images he recognized grew farther and farther, but then the string returned to an image he recognized: Zhongda’s face.

  He blinked his eyes and, for a perfect moment unlike anything he had ever experienced, he saw her face precisely as it had appeared in the string of imagery—and he knew what he needed to do.

  “You don’t look so good,” Zhongda sa
id, the barest hint of concern entering her voice. “I don’t want you worse for the wear when the Director retrieves you. So you had best spit out whatever it was you wanted to say before he gets here and takes matters into his own hands.”

  Fei Long nodded as he felt equally dismayed and thankful that the flood of images seemed to have abated, at least temporarily. “I want you to defeat me,” he said, locking gazes with her, “and I want there to be no room for doubt afterward. If you win, I will yield everything I have to you.”

  “Everything you have?” she repeated with a derisive snort. “You have nothing, Long; you are trapped in a cell and are soon to be strapped to a table to undergo the Director’s…inquisition. If you don’t tell me everything, I’m going to—“

  “I gained access to Capital’s entire planetary database,” he interrupted, knowing that was precisely the bait which could attract her. “I will give you root access to my network.”

  She scoffed, but he could tell she was intrigued as she gestured to the mobile workstations, “With this kind of processing power at my fingertips, it wouldn’t take two days to break into everything they have with two year old code.” She shook her head, “Not good enough.”

  “Ok,” Fei Long said, knowing the first offer would fall short before he had even made it, “I have remote-controlled war drones which can operate independently, in tandem, or under direct remote control. I will give you every suite of programs I have written for them, or any other system—such as my superior ComStat takeover protocols which spread virtually, and do not require manual installation of foreign material onto each hub like your master’s does. This would give you complete access to any ComStat network with which you physically interact one time, and the war drones would allow you to do so remotely.” He paused for a moment to let the gravity of his offer sink in, which it clearly did by the way her eyes narrowed before widening slightly, “Coupled with my virtual network established on Capital, you would become master of all information flow in the Spineward Sectors. You would not even need this base’s superior processing power to become the most well-informed person in this part of the galaxy—and we both know that, despite the protests of feebleminded critics, knowledge is power.”