Against The Middle

by Caleb Wachter

  Which led to another criticism of the Asgard Defensive Sphere: on a pair of occasions, the grid had actually become sentient due to faults in the original fire-linking firmware’s design. In general, each stationary satellite was linked to three control satellites and it used those control satellites’ telemetry and threat priority algorithms to determine when, or if, to engage a given target. Originally the Spheres had cross-linked every control platform to every other platform, maximizing their coordination and overall effectiveness. But when each platform was limited to connecting with only three control platforms—a precaution deemed necessary to avoid the system going droid—their overall effectiveness plummeted dramatically.

  A weakness of the system was soon exploited en masse: if one could get lucky enough and knock out three of the control nodes in a given area, the local satellites would become blind to the presence of enemy ships. The only problem with that plan was that there was absolutely no way to distinguish between the standard and control versions of the platforms.

  “Is that bad?” Garibaldi asked, referring to Middleton’s declaration of the host of unidentified icons on the main screen.

  “It’s not good,” Middleton muttered, “and we’ll be in range of the first of their lasers before too long. Mr. Toto, I need you to point our bow at that planetoid and burn the engines for everything they’re worth. Our target is the Vae Victus and, if we can knock her out, then we’ll need to turn our attention to their base. Either way, we need to make orbit over the planetoid.”

  “Yes sir,” Toto rumbled, and the Pride’s bow ponderously swung around until it was pointed at the carbon planetoid.

  The Pride of Prometheus shuddered, and Hephaestion reported, “Turbo-laser strike to the port broadside. Shields on that facing are at 15% with critical spotting.”

  “We’re lucky the shields picked that one up at all,” Garibaldi said matter-of-factly.

  “What’s our time to intercept the Vae Victus?” Middleton demanded, only realizing after he had done so that it was the Tactical Officer’s job—meaning it was his job—to answer such questions. “Just like riding a bike,” he grumbled irritably as he made the calculations and found that, even though they had jumped remarkably close to the brown dwarf compared to their usual point transfers, they would not make an intercept with the essentially stationary battleship for at least thirty two minutes.

  There was absolutely no way the Pride of Prometheus would survive that long under fire from the Asgard grid and the handful of converging warships.

  Though it was completely against his nature to do so, Middleton found himself saying, “We need to catch a break here.”

  As if to rebuke him for his out of character plea, the Pride was rocked by a pair of impacts which sent the aged warship lurching left, then right, and would have thrown Middleton across the bridge had it not been for his vice-like grip on the edge of the Tactical station. Lights dimmed throughout the bridge and a few unoccupied workstations flickered off and on as the automated damage reports began streaming in to his console.

  “Come on!” he yelled angrily as his battered warship literally began coming apart all around him. He targeted the nearby Asgard platforms with the Pride’s still-functioning weaponry—all except for the heavy lasers slaved to Toto’s station—and for the first time he felt genuinely glad he’d had the Artemis medium lasers installed on the broadsides. He would be able to bring them into the fight against the Asgard grid before that grid could return fire.

  That realization made him snicker, since nearly every other fight his crew had been party to had seen his enemy possess superior range or maneuverability. For the first time since he had assumed command, he had the edge in both of those departments over the majority of the assets arrayed against him. But even with that particular advantage, he knew they were going to need more than simple luck to do what they had come to do.

  They were going to need a miracle.

  “Long,” he heard Lu Bu say, her deep, brusque voice more beautiful to his ears than any piece of music could ever hope to be. “Long,” she repeated, “you need to wake up now.”

  “Not yet,” he said sleepily, his hand reaching toward her voice and finding her soft, inviting bosom. He was surprised that she seemed to be wearing a pressure suit, but no matter what clothing she wore he was glad she had managed to find him. “Just let me stay here,” he pleaded.

  “No, Long,” she replied, gently taking his hand from her breast and placing it down at his side.

  In fact, she had too gently removed his hand, and he opened his eyes in surprise to see that it was not Fengxian who had spoken, but it was a pale, thin woman wearing a pressure suit. She was standing beside a giant made purely of metal, and for a moment Fei Long felt certain that he had died and was now condemned to exist for eternity among such demonic creatures who would woo him with temptations and glimpses of the only true happiness he had ever known.

  Then a sharp, bursting pain erupted in the back of his head, and the reality of his situation set in amid a flood of emotion and imagery.

  “We’re here,” Trixie, the woman in the pressure suit, said anxiously, “now what? And don’t tell me any more about Sun Jian’s death or the plight of his children because I don’t think I can handle any more tragedy today—“

  Fei Long tuned her out as she continued to prattle on, and he looked around to find that they were in a large, cavernous chamber of some kind. It was dimly lit by floodlights, and he dared not look too deeply into the darkness beyond their illumination. Whenever he did so, he saw the hungry probability serpents flicking their tongues and slithering to and fro, waiting for him to become weaker still than he already was.

  Why they waited was beyond him; he knew he could not resist them if they descended on him in force. His mind was taxed to the breaking point already, and he was burning with the worst fever he had ever known. His eyes felt like they were about to burst in flames, his skin felt tight around his bones, and his head pounded with rhythm in time with his heartbeat—which was going at nearly two hundred beats per minute, and likely had been doing so for quite some time.

  Fearful as he was of the probability serpents lurking in the shadows, he knew he had told Trixie and Hansheng to come to this place for a good reason. He simply could not remember what it was, but he desperately wished to avoid another whiteout. He doubted he could return from one more such event, so he peered in the direction which all of the floodlights were pointed and saw a dark, spidery shape.

  It was long and slender, with many legs arching up from its back which then angled toward the cavern’s floor and merged into what looked like long, wavy blades. For a moment, it looked like some kind of massive, demonic insect—but the thought of such creatures nearly sent Fei Long’s mind into a panic so he shut his eyes and pointed toward the massive object, “There…we must go there.”

  “I had a feeling you were going to say that,” Trixie said anxiously, making no attempt to hide the fear which they apparently shared when looking at the terrible thing. It was difficult for Fei Long to see just how large it was without taking another glance, but it was easily a hundred meters long and it was clearly the object for which the chamber had been dug.

  “Threat assessment difficult,” Hansheng growled as he clomped his way toward the thing, “probability of successful entry into vehicle: 42%. Probability of human fatalities during entry: 26%. Probability of unaccounted variables which will render previous calculations null: 93%.”

  “Then you might as well save your runtimes, big guy,” Trixie said tersely, her mood darker than Fei Long could remember it being at any other time. The trio moved down the walkway which led toward the vehicle, which Fei Long now knew was a ship. “Almost there,” she said seemingly just a few seconds later, but Fei Long looked up and saw that they were no more than twenty meters from the fuselage of the sleek craft. It was clearly composed of metal, but aspects of its design seemed almost organic rather than mechanically engineered. He saw the serpe
nts snaking their way up and down the craft’s external struts—struts which looked more like bony insect legs than proper support beams—and he clenched his eyes shut as a wave of pure, unadulterated fear gripped him so tightly he found it difficult to breathe.

  Through it all, he imagined Lu Bu’s voice rebuking him for a coward. The great Kongming, she scolded during a particularly lucid series of chastising remarks, jumping at shadows while the droid and archeologist do his work for him. You are a disgrace, Long.

  “No,” he whimpered, “I’m trying the best I can.”

  Ha, her voice cracked in his ear like a whip, you lay there like a sick child, hoping your mother will come to make it better for you. You have no mother, Long, Lu Bu’s phantom voice sneered, you are alone now, and you will die that way.

  “No!” he shouted, flailing his arms and legs in precisely the fashion a child might do during a tantrum or nightmare. His senses sharpened—as did the pain in his head—and he realized he could no longer feel his feet. But he did not care; Hansheng could carry him where he needed to go, and in that moment he knew what he needed to do as he recalled a series of numbers which he had previously committed to memory. “The panel,” he gasped, pointing at the access panel just a few feet away, “bring me closer.”

  Hansheng complied, swiveling his torso so that Fei Long could manipulate the panel.

  The first eight numbers were clear in his mind, and he input them quickly before pausing. The other three digits were eluding his consciousness, but before he could even begin to despair at his failure to recall them, he blinked his eyes and saw that they had been entered.

  Trixie was standing nearby, and as the doors slid open he deduced that she must have input the missing numbers. “Thank you, Trixie,” he said weakly, his head lolling around numbly as Hansheng and Trixie made to enter the airlock of the dark vessel.

  “Thank me?” she asked nervously. “We need to find this thing’s sickbay; you’re not looking too good, Long.”

  “No,” he yelled, his voice painfully loud in his own ears, “to the bridge.”

  They stopped and Trixie looked at him skeptically. “And where in the world would that be?” she asked, throwing her arms in the air.

  “Probability of bridge being located to the stern of vessel,” Hansheng mused, “13%. Probability of bridge located toward the bow: 71%.”

  “Left,” Fei Long said, pointing a hand before a wave of nausea overcame him.

  He tried to keep conscious as his body heaved and retched violently, but he knew he had blacked out at least three times during the ordeal. Thankfully, however, he managed to avoid whiting out and as he regained control of his faculties he heard his own voice saying, “How can I leave Huang Zu in their hands?” He recognized the phrase as something which Liu Biao was supposed to have asked after Sun Jian’s death, in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

  “Snap out of it, Fei!” Trixie pleaded, and he looked around to see they were on what looked to be the strange vessel’s bridge. There were a handful of conventional workstations, similar to those found on the Pride of Prometheus’ bridge but much more modern in design, but there was no captain’s chair. Instead, there was a small pedestal in the back of the ovular chamber, and Fei Long recalled an image from the probability string he had seen which would allow him to complete the Seer’s mission.

  It made very little sense to him, but he pointed at the pedestal and said, “There. Take me there.” His legs were completely numb, but his arms still responded to his commands and he reached out for Trixie to help steady him as he lowered himself gingerly from Hansheng’s cannon arm.

  In the center of the pedestal—a pedestal which appeared to be made of a transparent material of some kind that housed a bundle of the same Ancient biotech neural tissue which he had infected himself with back on the Pride, and which had allowed the Raubachs to upgrade their weapon so greatly—he saw the hilt of what looked like a sword, and realized that the sword’s blade must have been pointed downward into the neural tissue bundle itself.

  The bridge was illuminated only by Hansheng’s external light fixtures, and the pedestal looked dark even when those lights shone upon it. Reaching out with a shaking hand, Fei Long gripped the hilt of the weapon and felt a strange, almost painful sensation as the image he had seen in the probability string came to be in front of him. The pedestal flared with a dark, red light, and the pain in the base of his skull disappeared completely.

  He released his grip and blinked his eyes, uncertain of what had just happened, but the pedestal’s light dimmed immediately and he reached out with both hands to grip the hilt tightly. He was determined not to let go this time, and he was rewarded after several seconds with the lights continued intensification until, one by one, the workstations around the bridge began to come online.

  “How did you—“ Trixie began, but Fei Long released his grip and made his way toward the Comm. console—easily identified via the Imperial letters and characters which appeared on the screen. He had been required to become fluent in the Imperial language during his youth, since he had needed to break down Imperial code in order to create his ComStat-cracking programs.

  He felt the pain in the base of his skull begin to reassert itself, but he was grateful for the brief respite he had been provided. His mind was sharp, and he easily pulled up the Comm. system’s local and ComStat connections. Switching the local gear to the Pride of Prometheus’ Recon Team channel—the one which they were to use when hailing their mother vessel—he was rewarded by an accepted handshake response from Captain Middleton’s ship.

  Knowing he had precious little time to send his duo of messages—one to Captain Middleton, and the other to the Asgard grid surrounding the planetoid—he was relieved to see Captain Middleton’s bruised and bloody face appear on the console before him.

  “Mr. Fei?” Middleton said, narrowing his eyes as the Pride took another pair of shots from the converging Corvettes. The port shielding had already gone down, and the starboard face was soon to follow. Thankfully, the forward shielding had held in the low-to-mid-twenties, which was more than he could have hoped for at this stage in the game.

  “There is…little time, Captain,” Fei Long said, his face beet red, his eyes so badly bloodshot that it looked as though his sclera were filled completely with blood rather than white as they should have been, and his body was shaking so severely it was surprising to see him upright at all. “The Asgard array—” he said before his eyes rolled back into his head, his body swayed perilously, and he muttered deleriously, “why not sacrifice this blundering warrior for a region?”

  “Mr. Fei?” Middleton asked, equally angry with the young man for lying to Lieutenant McKnight as he was eager to bring whatever the young virtual virtuoso could bring to the table against the Raubach forces in the system.

  “Yes, Captain,” Fei Long asked blankly, his eyes lolling around for a moment before fixating on Middleton once again. “Forgive me,” he said, blinking his eyes forcefully as Middleton noted the thick sheen of sweat covering the young man’s skin, “you must not fire on the Asgards.”

  “What?” Middleton demanded.

  “I will clear a path for you,” Fei Long replied, his shaky hands moving over the console before him. Middleton realized the young man was seated on a bridge of some kind, but it was of a design and layout which he had never studied—and he had studied every schematic in the Confederated Empire’s joint databases. “But you must strike here,” he added, and an image of the planetoid’s surface appeared on the monitor which Middleton was using to converse with the young man. Crosshairs appeared over the center of what looked like a giant set of concentric circles, and numerical coordinates were listed along with the crosshairs. “Our implanted Starfire warhead will disable the central processing facility,” Fei Long explained, “but you must destroy this other…larger target with the Liberator welded to the Pride’s bow. Your lasers…will be ineffective.”

  “I’ll need some answers first, Mr. Fei
,” Middleton glared, but before he could continue, the ship was rocked by a trio of rapid-fire impacts from a nearby Asgard platform. He waited impatiently for a few seconds until his Artemis lasers facing the platform recharged, and he launched a trio of his own shots from his broadside weaponry. Only two of them landed, but it was enough to at least temporarily knock the Asgard platform out of commission.

  “I beg of you, Captain,” Fei Long said, his voice weak and more pleading than Middleton could remember it having previously been, “do not fire on any more of the platforms!”

  “And why shouldn’t I?” Middleton snarled, the Pride lurching from a turbo-laser strike from a nearby Corvette having landed against her bow’s armor. With such heavy spotting on the forward facing, some shots were bound to get through—but if the Liberator was damaged, it would be game over for the Pride and her remaining crew.

  Fei Long’s visage relaxed fractionally, and the Asgard platforms—even those not in range of the Pride of Prometheus—began firing, lighting up the main screen’s tactical display with hundreds of weapons fire signatures as they did so.

  “Because I have assumed control over them,” Fei Long replied triumphantly. Then, unexpectedly, his eyes rolled back into his head and his body was gripped in a violent seizure that saw him collapse out of the camera’s view.

  Middleton looked back up at the tactical overlay and was almost shocked to see that the Asgard platforms had opened fire on the nearby Corvettes. Two of the Corvettes had been destroyed utterly by the concerted attacks from the horde of stationary platforms, and two more were having serious issues with their main power plants and had altered their trajectories significantly enough that they would pull clear of the Pride’s heaviest weaponry.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” Miss Serendipity—known to the rest of the crew as Trixie—said, leaning into view of the image pick-up which had previously shown Fei Long’s face, “but I don’t think he’s going to make it, Captain Middleton.” She was clearly referring to Fei Long, and Middleton was more ambivalent than he expected he would have been upon hearing that particular news. Fei Long had given McKnight false orders which had sent her off into the gods only know where when the Pride could have dearly used a wingman of her caliber for this particular battle.