Against The Middle

by Caleb Wachter

  “Hold tight, Miss Serendipity,” Middleton said, knowing there was nothing he could do for her or the rest of the team at the moment.

  “I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere—“ she began, but the connection was unexpectedly severed and a cloud of static replaced the image of her face.

  As it did so, Hephaestion said warily, “Captain…”

  A moment later, the young Tracto-an put the image of the planetoid up on the main viewer which Middleton could only stare at dumbly for several seconds, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

  The entire planet was glowing with a faint, purple light, and as the glow intensified Middleton could see that it was in the form of an all-covering series of hexagons. Most of those hexagons also had a single, bright, purple light glowing in their precise center, but several of them had no such light at all.

  Middleton looked down at the coordinates which Mr. Fei had sent to him, and found that they were for the precise location of one of the brightly glowing points at the center of one such hexagon—of which there were at least fifty covering the planetoid’s surface—and that it was adjacent to two hexagons which had no lights at their centers.

  “What in the name of all the space gods is that?” Garibaldi asked, clearly awestruck by the sight of the planet as the lines of light continued to brighten.

  “Whatever it is,” Middleton growled, hating his current information deficit as much as the fact that his ship was in tatters, “Mr. Fei seems to think we should stop it.”

  “He’s rarely wrong,” Garibaldi quipped, causing the Pride’s Captain to shoot him a dark look.

  “Such are the ways of wizards…” Hephaestion said reverently, unable to tear his eyes from the image of the glowing planet. The lines of light began to pulsate slowly, and those pulsations increased their frequency until the planet was veritably strobing with whatever energy was now encircling it. The young man did manage to break his gaze from the incredible image and scanned his instruments before saying, “The energy readings our sensors are detecting on the planetoid are unfathomable, Captain.”

  “I need better than that, Mr. Hephaestion,” Middleton snapped, surprised at the Tracto-an’s apparent inability to properly communicate the readings.

  “The energy seems to be originating from deep within the world itself,” the young man explained as the main viewer was populated with energy readings that did, in fact, seem unfathomable, “perhaps from as deep as the very center of the planetoid. That energy is then being routed through the nodes at the center of the hexagonal patterns so as to form the hexagonal lines themselves.” He performed several calculations on a nearby console before shrugging, “I simply have no frame of reference for these values, Captain…but I am detecting energies which our databanks suggest are on the order of stellar outputs, rather than those of a planetary scale.”

  “You’re reading an entire star’s output down there?” Garibaldi said incredulously—before Middleton could do likewise.

  “Several of them, depending on the size of the star,” Hephaestion agreed with a nod. He seemed to be the only one who was not dumbfounded by the magnitude of his incredible report.

  “What would require so much energy?” Garibaldi breathed.

  Silence was his only reply as the members of the bridge each pondered the question, until Toto said decisively, “Only engines require that much power.”

  “The planetoid is not moving,” Hephaestion said with conviction, seemingly having arrived at the same conclusion and completing an analysis of the planet’s angular momentum before the Sundered had spoken, “it is maintaining its current orbital plane and period.”

  Middleton took his Tactical Officer’s meaning plainly enough, and arrived at a decision immediately. “Mr. Toto, plot a new course,” he instructed, squirting the coordinates which Mr. Fei had sent to him over to the helm.

  “It is not ‘Mr. Toto’,” the Sundered growled as he input the new course. “Just ‘Toto,’ sir.”

  Middleton nearly missed the quip, being so caught up in pondering the Sundered’s suggestion that the planet was preparing to move. But if the planetoid wasn’t physically moving through space then that left only one possible explanation: it was going to use some form of FTL drive to leave the Cagnzys system entirely.

  There had never been an FTL drive even conceived of which could accomplish that particular feat—at least, one had never been conceived of by human minds—but it was the only possible explanation which made any sense. Somehow the Ancients, or whoever had left behind the planetoid which they now approached, had not only conceived of such a drive—they had actually built one large enough to move an entire planet.

  “That’s just bananas,” Garibaldi declared firmly before adding, “no offense to your people’s dietary preferences, Toto, but there’s just no way that thing is going to jump outta here.”

  “I hate bananas,” Toto shot back, baring his teeth viciously.

  “That’s enough!” Middleton barked, snapping himself from his own reverie as he brought up the lone remaining hull of the Vae Victus on his Tactical screen. The Corvettes had, indeed, been cleared away from the Pride’s path, but the half-of-a-battleship remained firmly entrenched over the planetoid’s equatorial plane on the face of the worldlet which faced Middleton’s ship. “Even with Mr. Fei’s last-minute…magic,” he said, acknowledging Hephaestion with a short nod before borrowing from an old pal’s preferred parlance, “we’ve still got a defender standing between us and the end zone.”

  “For the love of Murphy,” Garibaldi sighed loudly, “can we please cut with the smashball references already?!”

  “I’ll take it under advisement after we’ve run our last play,” Middleton retorted, causing his old friend to snicker just before the ship closed to the Vae Victus’s turbo-laser range and the Pride was rocked by a head-on impact from the enemy warship’s batteries.

  He saw that the enemy vessel had fired three turbo-lasers at them, but only one had landed against his ship’s battered hull. The Vae Victus came under a flurry of fire from the Asgard array, but in return it began snapping out precise shots at the fixed assets, picking them off one by one until none remained in range of the half-battleship.

  As his cruiser barreled toward the planetoid, Middleton saw the Asgard platforms turn on each other. Somehow, Mr. Fei had managed to reprogram them to recognize each other as enemy targets, and he knew they would only stand against each other’s fire for a few minutes before the cloud of defensive platforms was reduced to nothing but a handful of devices.

  If he had been smart about it—and there was no reason to believe otherwise, when it came to Mr. Fei—then the young man would have discovered the control platforms’ locations and instructed the other turrets to disable them first. That would render the entire network of defensive platforms useless, which made the battle essentially a one-on-one between the Pride and the remnants of the Commodore’s flagship.

  Even so, it was a battle which the Pride was bound to lose. A battered cruiser against a battered battleship was nothing but a one-sided beat-down waiting to happen—and the battleship was the one swinging the hammer in that particular analogy, especially since she still had at least three turbo-lasers that could be brought to bear while the Pride had only a handful of heavy lasers remaining.

  The only hope Middleton’s people had left was to destroy the node which Mr. Fei had highlighted on the planetoid’s surface by physically delivering the Liberator torpedo to it. Middleton had previously intended to ram the Vae Victus with the powerful warhead, but even the remote possibility that the Ancient world could be moved to another location was enough to warrant his change of target at such a late hour.

  “The Vae Victus’ shields are down on her port facing, Captain,” Hephaestion reported as they approached, and a pair of turbo-laser strikes landed against the Pride’s hull, “but she is guarding that facing by keeping it from us. I am, however, reading severe power fluctuations from her two still-active po
wer plants.”

  Middleton piped into his raw Sensor data and nodded to himself as his ship drew nearer to heavy laser range. “They’re experiencing a cascade failure in their power grid,” he said, feeling hope well up inside himself as he saw the potential for a fight-ending blow. “Chief,” he shouted, squirting the information over to Garibaldi, “how long can they keep their plants active with a leak of that size?”

  Garibaldi mulled over the numbers, during which time the Pride was rocked by another turbo-laser impact, before replying, “Too long, Cap, but if we can put enough fire onto her hull at these points we’ve got a chance to hurry the process enough to make a difference.”

  A three dimensional image of the Vae Victus’ remaining hull was sent to Middleton’s station, and there were nine locations highlighted by Garibaldi which indicated locations where the battleship’s power grid was most vulnerable. “Good work, Mikey,” Middleton said, deciding to eschew proper military address for the moment. “Toto, focus your fire on these locations during our approach to the planetoid,” he instructed, sending the same image over to the helm.

  “Yes sir,” Toto acknowledged after receiving the target coordinates.

  The two retreating Corvettes began to come about as one, while the other two had never left pursuit of the Pride of Prometheus but had already been passed far enough that they were unable to fire on the forward facing of Middleton’s ship.

  “How are the attitude control thrusters, Mikey?” Middleton asked.

  “Twenty one of twenty four jets are still firing at full power,” Garibaldi replied. “They’ll be more than enough for tactical maneuvering, Tim, even if we lose half of those.”

  “Then kill the main engine,” Middleton instructed, seeing that the Pride was already well on her way to the planet and on a bull’s eye course for their target zone. Whatever course corrections would be required to compensate for the fire they received would be managed by the maneuvering thrusters en route, but with the two Corvettes having gained firing angles on the ship’s stern, the risk of a kill shot up the kilt was too great.

  “You’re going to have to repeat that, Tim,” Garibaldi said tightly, clearly disliking the idea of shutting down the lone fully-functional engine they had left. Even if that engine survived the coming battle, it would be physically impossible for their limited crew to restart it in time to steer off a collision course with either the planet, or the brown dwarf beyond.

  “Kill the main engine, Mikey,” Middleton repeated heavily, no happier about making the move than his Chief Engineer was, “we’ll let Newton take us in from here.”

  “Killing the main engine,” Garibaldi said bitterly, and a few moments later the constant, barely-perceptible thrum of the Pride’s main engine vibrating through the deckplates diminished until it dissipated completely.

  “You’re on thrusters only, Toto,” Middleton said after he saw the ship’s engines go inactive on his Tactical station’s readouts. “I want you to take every shot you can on the Vae Victus; don’t worry about protecting our flanks or preserving shield integrity. The only way we make it to our objective is by taking that battleship out first.”

  “Thrusters are easier,” Toto quipped, “fewer variables to compensate.”

  As far as that particular matter went, the Sundered was correct. Combat maneuvers were more complicated with trying to keep the ship on a given bearing, requiring the helmsman to lower main engine output while slewing the ship to create firing arcs in order to avoid steering off a given bearing. Using thrusters only made attitude control the only factor which the helmsman—and gunners—had to account for, but it came at the price of presenting a significantly easier target to hit since the enemy gunners would also be taking fewer variables into calculating their firing solutions.

  In short: it was a two-edged sword that was at least as likely to cut the Pride as it was to cut her enemies, but it was the only way to avoid a lucky shot to the stern taking them out of the fight.

  Middleton looked down at his console and saw the range indicator begin to flash yellow beside the Vae Victus’ icon, signifying that the Pride was nearing long range of its heavy laser array. Normally they would have begun firing at extreme range, but with so few shots left in the forward array, Middleton didn’t want to waste any on low percentage attempts.

  “Firing range in three…two…one,” Middleton called out, and Toto began to slew the bow toward the enemy vessel, “firing range achieved.”

  Three beams of energy lanced out from the Pride’s heavy laser array, causing Middleton to check his instruments to find out why the fourth had failed to do likewise. There had been an interruption in the targeting computer’s fire command being delivered to the fourth slave-rigged heavy laser, but a remote reboot of the system from his station returned the lone remaining laser to active status.

  Without even needing to be told it had happened, Toto put the fourth laser on target. The cumulative effect of their volley was three hits against the Vae Victus’ starboard shields, but none landed against her hull.

  Returning fire, the Vae Victus lashed out with her turbo-lasers, striking the Pride three times with its three shots before adding a pair of heavy lasers to the barrage, both of which struck the Pride’s forward shields.

  But the turbo-lasers all struck the Pride’s forward hull, and a few seconds after the barrage had ended Middleton saw that one of his four heavy lasers was now out of commission.

  “Give me a full spiral at fifty degrees offset from the target, Toto,” Middleton called out, and the Sundered turned the bow of the ship as Middleton had instructed. As soon as his Artemis lasers on the starboard side came to bear, he fired all four of the remaining weapons and was rewarded with a pair of hits—one of which struck his enemy’s hull very near one of the weak points Garibaldi had highlighted—but the Vae Victus’ power grid showed no ill effects.

  Toto began to roll the ship in not-quite-textbook fashion, but Middleton was able to compensate for the uneven nature of the maneuver by the time his port broadside came to bear and he fired the three remaining Artemis medium lasers still functioning there. Only one of them struck the Vae Victus’ forward shields, but Hephaestion quickly reported, “Moderate spotting detected on their forward shields, Captain. They’ve powered down their stern facing completely, and I’m reading that one of their engines has initiated its power down cycle.”

  “They must be trying to put off the cascade a wee bit longer,” Garibaldi opined as he worked furiously to balance the Pride’s power output to the various systems on which they now relied.

  “They’re more wounded than we were led to believe,” Middleton mused darkly, smirking as Toto brought the forward batteries to bear once again on what was left of the enemy battleship, “but you won’t hear me complaining.”

  A pair of impacts on the Pride’s stern shook the ship violently, and Garibaldi quickly reported, “They just shot out our engines, Tim; that was the trace plasma venting from the exhaust manifolds on impact.”

  “Which means we didn’t shut them down a moment too soon,” Middleton said, knowing they had just dodged a kill shot by powering down the engines preemptively. “Good work, Mikey.”

  The Pride’s forward lasers were ready to fire again, but Toto was struggling to put the ship back on course for the planetoid using the maneuvering thrusters. After twenty seconds—and another pair of heavy laser impacts authored by the Vae Victus’ forward guns—he managed to set the ship back on its collision course for the power node on the planetoid’s surface.

  “Firing,” Toto roared, sending a trio of heavy laser beams toward the Vae Victus. All three struck home, with two of them making their way past the enemy vessel’s shields and slamming squarely into one of the weak points Garibaldi had indicated. A huge explosion rocked the enemy vessel as a result, sending it into an end-over-end tumble. But before elation could take firm root in Middleton’s heart, the enemy battleship began to correct its attitude and maneuver its starboard facing to
ward the Pride of Prometheus.

  Without needing to be ordered to do so, Toto initiated another spiral roll like the one Middleton had previously requested, and as soon as he was able to do so Middleton opened fire with his starboard Artemis lasers. Only two responded to his command, and both were deflected by the Rim Fleet warship’s shields. He initiated a diagnostic, but a pair of turbo-laser strikes to that facing from the Corvettes behind the Pride rocked the deck beneath his feet so badly that he was thrown from his station and sent to the deck in a sprawl.

  He quickly regained his feet and scrambled back to his station just in time to execute a fire command from the port broadside’s Artemis lasers. Three lasers fired and two struck the battleship’s hull, but neither landed on a particularly sensitive area.

  “The Vae Victus’ power plants have been ejected,” Hephaestion reported victoriously. A few seconds later, the fusion cores exploded with anticlimactic effect, barely even registering as impacts against the enemy vessel’s shields.

  “We’re not far from having to do the same thing, Tim,” Garibaldi reported grimly. “I’m redlined across the board; we’ve cooked our heat sinks, we’re overdrawing the plant, and we don’t have the hands available to compensate for the damage long enough to make it to the target.”

  “How many maneuvering thrusters are left?” Middleton muttered as he checked his Damage Control console, finding that the Pride still had thirteen fully functional thrusters and another two which were responding but showed major faults which would soon cause them to shut down automatically.

  Toto put the bow back on the Vae Victus and fired two heavy lasers just before the enemy returned fire, and the Pride’s bow shuddered ominously. The groaning of metal could be both heard and felt through the surface of his workstation as the venerable warship’s superstructure began to fail.