Against The Middle

(Spineward Sectors: Middleton’s Pride, Book Three)

by

Caleb Wachter

Copyright © 2014 by Caleb Wachter

All rights reserved.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. Respect our electronic rights because the money you save today will be the book we can't afford to write for you tomorrow. 

As a matter of principle, I refuse to employ any DRM not expressly required by my e-publisher, Amazon.com, since my own experience with such measures as a consumer has been nothing short of disastrous.  I’m here to tell stories to eager readers, not frustrate them with ineffective, obtrusive copyright mechanisms.

Other Books by Caleb Wachter

As of 02-27-2015

SPINEWARD SECTORS: MIDDLETON’S PRIDE

No Middle Ground

Up The Middle

Against The Middle

SPHEREWORLD NOVEL SERIES

Joined at the Hilt: Union

SPHEREWORLD NOVELLAS

Between White and Grey

SEEDS OF HUMANITY: THE COBALT HERESY SERIES

Revelation

Reunion

COLLABORATIVE WORKS BY LUKE SKY WACHTER & CALEB WACHTER

SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVELLAS

Admiral’s Lady: Eyes of Ice, Heart of Fire

Admiral’s Lady: Ashes for Ashes, Blood for Blood

Books by my Brother: Luke Sky Wachter

SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVEL SERIES

Admiral Who?

Admiral’s Gambit

Admiral’s Tribulation

Admiral’s Trial

Admiral’s Revenge

Admiral’s Spine

Admiral Invincible

RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVEL SERIES

The Blooding

The Painting

RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVELLAS

The Boar Knife

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Follow my other series’ at Seeds of Humanity, Imperium Cicernus, Sphereworld, and Seeds of Humanity, all on Facebook!

Join www.PacificCrestPublishing.com for the opportunity to beta read future installments in these series and others!

Table of Contents

Prologue: One Last Stop

Chapter I: New Days, Same Ways

Chapter II: Data Mining

Chapter III: Shedding the Past

Chapter IV: Picking up the Scent

Chapter V: Advantage: Pride

Chapter VI: Cracking the Code

Chapter VII: First Contact

Chapter VIII: Clues

Chapter IX: Taking a Page from the Little Admiral’s Book

Chapter X: Departure

Chapter XI: Patience is the Plan

Chapter XII: The Seed is Planted

Chapter XIII: Phase Two

Chapter XIV: The Bulwark

Chapter XV: Preamble

Chapter XVI: Middleton’s Run

Chapter XVII: Pass Protection 101

Chapter XVIII: Moving in the Pocket

Chapter XIX: Behind the Line

Chapter XX: Slipping In

Chapter XXI: Coming To

Chapter XXII: Changing the Plan

Chapter XXIII: With Old Friends Like These…

Chapter XXIV: Bare Bones

Chapter XXV: Old Flames Burn Hot

Chapter XXVI: Every Gift Has Its Price

Chapter XXVII: The Coiling Serpent

Chapter XXVIII: A Rude Surprise

Chapter XXIX: A Job Not Done

Chapter XXX: Middleton’s Pride

Chapter XXXI: One Last Duty

Chapter XXXII: An Eternal Funeral Pyre

Epilogue I: McKnight’s Mission

Epilogue II: ?????????’? ?????????

Afterword

Prologue: One Last Stop

“That appears to be the last of the supplies,” Fei Long said, and Lu Bu nodded in satisfaction. Her boyfriend, while brilliant and capable of things most could only dream of, did have an incredibly annoying habit of stating the obvious — and occasionally restating it, using different words.

“Good,” she replied as she checked the cargo-securing brackets which had been welded to their new shuttle’s floor. The craft was a far cry from the luxurious yacht which had previously brought them to Capital, but Lu Bu felt considerably less conspicuous when she had stepped out of the boxy, heavily-armored assault craft than she had when arriving aboard the smooth, shiny, overly graceful-looking yacht.

“What is this?” Fei Long said in mock surprise as he checked his data slate. “It would seem you have received a message, Fengxian,” he said cheekily, referring to her by her style name, Fengxian, while turning the slate so that she could see it.

“If this is another of your surprises, Kongming…” she growled as she snatched the slate from his fingers.

“It might be,” he replied playfully, which only made her scowl as she examined the contents of the slate. It seemed that she had received a message from Steve Inson, a retired smashball player who had known Lancer Sergeant Walter Joneson—her former mentor and the closest thing to a father figure Lu Bu had ever known. Fei Long had arranged for her to meet with Mr. Inson during their previous trip to Capital, and it seemed that he had somehow initiated contact with the man again during this particular trip to the planet.

The message itself was brief, but there was a virtual address listed along with a request that she contact him at the earliest convenience. While she had disliked the circumstances surrounding their meeting, she had in fact achieved some measure of comfort, or camaraderie, after speaking with the man for just a few minutes. She knew that she had more to learn from her departed mentor, Walter Joneson, and Mr. Inson—or ‘Hutch,’ as he preferred to be called by friends—was the closest connection she could find to her departed Sergeant. Sergeant Gnuko, Joneson’s replacement, had also known the man but Sergeant Joneson had specifically given Lu Bu a picture of himself and Mr. Inson which had been taken during a championship celebration several years earlier. After speaking with Hutch about that picture, Lu Bu had come to realize that the posthumous gift from her mentor had held a more significant meaning than she had initially realized.

“I have no interest, Kongming,” she snapped, thrusting the slate into his chest as she prepared to disembark the shuttle.

“Please, Fengxian,” he said in an uncharacteristically pleading tone, “Captain Middleton does not require us to return for at least another three hours. The Pride will remain in orbit for another day even after that deadline; we have time to contact this man, and I urge you to do so.”

She felt like smacking her boyfriend upside the head for his insistence on interfering in the matter, but before she could do so she realized that if there was any kind of grand design to the universe—be in divine will, fate, karma, or even Murphy’s Law—then Fei Long was most certainly a part of that design.

“Fine,” she said grudgingly as she yanked the slate from his fingers again, “I will have him meet us here. Whatever he has to say can be said, and then we can return to our duties.”

Fei Long was clearly disappointed, but he sighed reluctantly as he nodded in agreement.

Lu Bu called up the screen which would initiate a connection with Mr. Inson, but when she reached the menu which required her to input her personal identification she realized she did not know what information Fei Long had used to set up her local account.

She thrust the slate into his chest—again—and said, “Send him a text-only message telling him where we are, and that if he wishes to meet us then he should do so now. We return to orbit in one hour.”

Fei Long nodded as his fingers flew across the interface for several seconds until he declared, “It is done.”

“Good,” she huffed, “now assist me in securing the rest of this gear.”

Almost exactly an hour later, Fei Long saw a hulking man who he would have assumed was a Tracto-an bodybuilder. The lines on his face spoke of at least four decades of life, but he moved as easily as any twenty year old Fei Long had seen.

It was clear even before this man’s eyes found Lu Bu that he was Steve Inson, and he was surprisingly carrying a duffle bag which he had slung over his shoulder.

“I’m glad I caught you,” Inson said as he moved toward Lu Bu, and Fei Long felt himself unconsciously doing likewise. He marveled at how thick the man’s neck was; when viewed from the front it looked as though it was nearly half again as wide as his head. His torso was improbably as thick as Kratos’, though this man was several inches shorter than the one-eyed Tracto-an.

“You wish to speak?” Lu Bu asked as she finished inspecting the shuttle’s landing gear.

“I do,” Inson replied with a short nod, “but I was hoping we could do it aboard the ship. I brought everything I’ll need,” he hefted the duffle bag demonstratively.

“We do not return here,” Lu Bu said with an unyielding nod. “My Captain does not command passenger ship—“

“But he is always on the lookout for talented individuals,” Fei Long cut in smoothly, knowing that despite Lu Bu’s protestations, she had been deeply consumed with thoughts of her departed mentor, Walter Joneson. This man was the closest thing Fei Long had managed to find to a legitimate connection to Sergeant Joneson, and there was no way he would allow the opportunity which fate had bestowed upon them to pass them by.

“Kongming…” Lu Bu began threateningly, but he ignored her and thrust his hand out toward Mr. Inson.

“I am Fei Long,” he said, feeling more than a little awkward at proffering his hand when his usual custom was to bow. He had learned that his standard gesture of respect put most of his crewmates ill at ease, so he had attempted to adopt new mannerisms as often as he was able. “I am the one who arranged for your initial meeting,” he added when Inson cocked his head in mild confusion.

The larger man’s eyes lit with realization, “Ah, so you’re her boyfriend. We’re lucky you arranged for the meeting, Mr…” he trailed off, apparently having forgotten Fei Long’s name.

Pushing his irritation far from his affect, Fei Long repeated, “My name is Fei Long.”

“Good to meet you, Long,” Inson said with a curt nod as he gripped Fei Long’s hand in his much larger one. The man made no attempt to display physical superiority, which was a positive as far as Fei Long was concerned. He was also surprised that the man knew the order of names in Fei Long’s culture, evidenced by Inson’s use of his given name rather than his family name. At least half of the non-Asiatics aboard the Pride of Prometheus still erred in that particular regard.

“There is not room on our ship for passengers—“ Lu Bu began again but Fei Long placed a hand on her shoulder, drawing a hot look from his girlfriend.

“We are not scheduled to leave orbit for another twenty four hours,” Fei Long said diplomatically. “Mr. Inson knows we serve aboard a warship; I think we should allow Captain Middleton to meet with him. At the very least,” he added smoothly, “you can share two trips in a shuttle, which will certainly prove superior to a few minutes on this landing pad—and it will have the benefit of allowing us to keep to our itinerary.” He gave her a pointed look before glancing up at the main chronometer built into the arch through which Mr. Inson had just entered.

Lu Bu’s ears turned red, and Fei Long knew he would sustain some form of physical sanction for having outmaneuvered her using logic and reason, but he also knew that he was glad to suffer her irritation if it allowed her to find some degree of peace regarding Walter Joneson’s death.

“Fine,” she snapped before turning on her heel and ascending the shuttle’s cargo ramp in open irritation.

Inson leaned toward Fei Long conspiratorially and muttered, “She’s a handful, eh?”

Fei Long flashed a lopsided grin, “A flawed diamond is worth far more than a perfect river pebble.”

“Thank you for seeing me, Captain,” the hulking man said as he sat down in the chair opposite Middleton’s own. Middleton had been apprised of Mr. Inson’s arrival when the shuttle had been en route, and the truth was that the Pride’s Captain found himself more than a little curious what could bring the smashball star to his ship.

“I’m not going to lie; your request to meet with me got my attention,” Middleton said as he set down a data slate containing the latest repair updates from Chief Garibaldi’s teams. Ever since Kratos had dealt with the mounting morale crisis—using what could be charitably called ‘unconventional methods’—the Tracto-an crewmembers had rounded into fine form. As a group they still lacked a strong fundamental knowledge of technology which the Starborn—the Tracto-an term for anyone who had been raised in spacefaring cultures—possessed, but their work ethic and efficiency were truly remarkable. And the impact had spread far beyond just the Assault Team, over which Kratos had been given command, with even those Tracto-ans in other departments having displayed a marked uptick in overall performance following Atticus’ death.

“I appreciate your agreeing to that request,” Inson said with what was clearly an awkward attempt at humility. Judging from the man’s bearing, demeanor, and absurd physique—which rivaled all but the largest Tracto-an aboard the Pride of Prometheus—he was unaccustomed to deferring to anyone or anything. Middleton had always admired men cut from that cloth, which was part of why he had counted Walter Joneson as one of his few genuine friends. “The truth, Captain Middleton, is that I was hoping to join up.”

Middleton arched an eyebrow in surprise. “I didn’t authorize my away team to engage in recruiting activities—” he began.

Inson shook his head. “It’s not like that,” he said quickly. “Long and Bu didn’t know that was why I asked to come up here.”

“I’m surprised you heard anything about our presence,” Middleton said, fighting the urge to narrow his eyes. “I was under the impression I had secured a not-insignificant measure of discretion from our current hosts—at an also-not-insignificant price in credits.”

Inson chuckled, “I just got lucky, is all. The owner of this station is a friend of mine,” he tilted his head toward the ready room’s lone viewing portal, through which the multi-armed space station could be seen. It resembled nothing so much as three octopuses piled on top of each other, with each tentacle ending in a docking clamp like the one which the Pride of Prometheus presently occupied.

Middleton had decided to pull into the docking space when Garibaldi had suggested that a six day stay would afford them the requisite time to make the majority of the external modifications to the Pride’s hull—foremost among said modifications being the installation of a whole host of new weaponry which Middleton knew they would need the next time they ran into Commodore Raubach’s Rim Fleet. For all its flaws, Capital was true to its core tenets; Middleton’s ship and people had been completely unmolested during their time at the old starbase.

“When Bu and Long showed up and returned my message, I put two and two together as to which ship they belonged to,” Inson continued. “So once I knew they were assigned to a proper warship, I decided I’d give enlistment the old ‘college try’.”

“I’m at something of a loss,” Middleton admitted after a brief silence. “You’re one of the most recognizable smashball players of your generation. Why would you want to join the crew of a warship you know next to nothing about?”

Inson shrugged lightly, but Middleton could tell he was holding something back. When he had first assumed command of the aged cruiser, he had been terrible at reading body language. But nearly a year on the job had taught him, through hundreds of face-to-face meetings with his department heads, how to pick up on things which had previously been opaque to him. “I needed a change,” the big man replied.

“That’s not even close to good enough,” Middleton said with a shake of his head. “And frankly, my time here isn’t exactly cheap; give it to me straight or I’m going to have to ask you to get off my ship so we can prepare to continue our mission.”

Inson’s jaw flexed tightly, which somehow made his absurdly thick neck seem even more impressive, but the large man sighed and as he exhaled he seemed to wilt. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked.

“That’s not exactly the best way to start a conversation with a prospective employer, Mr. Inson,” Middleton chided, but he had to admit to himself that he was intrigued.

Inson nodded for several seconds before shrugging, “I have Kepral’s Syndrome.”

Middleton felt his eyebrows rise of their own accord before he forced them back into a neutral position. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said after a pregnant pause. Kepral’s Syndrome was a debilitating neurological disorder which afflicted only a tiny fraction of humanity—specifically, those with extensive genetic modifications to the peripheral nervous system, like those intended to improve reaction times. “But a ship of war is hardly the place for someone in your…condition.”

Inson snorted bitterly as he shook his head. “It’s still in the early stages; I’ve got at least six months before symptoms begin to manifest, and even then I should have another year before I would fail a military physical. If you think you guys are tough on the talent,” he added dryly, “you haven’t seen a smashball free agent’s medical review process.” He drew himself up in his chair, and Middleton saw the metal armrests of the seat bow outward as he did so. “I know what I’ve got left in the tank, Captain Middleton,” he said stiffly. “And frankly I’d rather spend it here, on this ship, than anywhere else in the universe.”

Middleton clasped his hands together and placed his elbows on the desk. “I appreciate the gesture, Mr. Inson—“

“Please,” the burly man interrupted, “call me ‘Hutch’.”

“Ok…Hutch,” Middleton allowed, “but I don’t think I can make it work.”

“Captain Middleton,” Hutch leaned forward, his eyes burning with a kind of deep, smoldering intensity which Middleton had only seen in one other man’s visage during his entire life—the late Sergeant Walter Joneson’s, “I know I can contribute here. Give me a chance; if I fail to meet your standards, you can drop me off on the nearest rock with breathable air and a regular freighter schedule, and I’ll find my own way home. I may be past my smashball prime,” he added confidently as he flexed his shoulders and chest, “but I think you’ll find me more than a match for the average pirate, droid, bug, or whatever else it is you’re steaming toward.”

“Your confidence does you credit,” Middleton allowed, “but you might not have noticed that you won’t exactly stand out among this ship’s armed forces.”

Inson snorted, “You mean the big, Nordic-looking types I saw dragging their knuckles around the hallways of your ship? Frankly, I can’t imagine a better place for me than among a bunch of fellow Vikings—especially when a few of them clearly need to be taken down a notch.”

Middleton found his lips quirking into a grin. “First, there are no ‘hallways’ on this ship; they’re called ‘corridors.’ And second,” he added as the other man returned his grin, “you’ll find the so-called ‘knuckle-draggers’ are decidedly more Greek than Norse.”

Inson shook his head in apparent good nature. “You chisel away at a man for long enough and all those words and labels fall away like unwanted bits of stone until you’re left with just the good stuff. I know a thing or two about training headstrong recruits, Captain,” he said, his tone almost pleading, “and I doubt there’s much difference between shaping smashball players and shaping Marines. Walter Joneson seems to have done a good enough job of it here,” he said, causing Middleton’s thought to screech to a halt, “so if he was able to contribute, and if this life was good enough for him, then all I’m asking is a chance to walk a few of those miles while I still have the option…sir,” he added with obvious awkwardness.

A lengthy silence ensued, during which time the Pride’s commanding officer considered the man’s request. “Third,” Middleton said, realizing to even his own surprise that he had arrived at an unlikely decision, “there are no Marines on this ship; there are only Lancers.”

“Marine or Lancer,” Hutch said dismissively, “they’re just words, but you’ll find I don’t have trouble following orders, Captain. If you say we’re the ‘Fighting Creampuffs,’ you won’t hear a peep from me.”

“Don’t you have any family?” Middleton pressed. He was intrigued by the idea of yet another skilled trainer for the Lancer contingent, but he could ill afford Mr. Inson having second thoughts when the Pride was deep in enemy territory.

Inson’s features took on a grim cast. “My ex-wife cleaned me out but good in the divorce,” he explained. “Six months after she learned of my diagnosis she took the kids back to the Empire, where I can’t travel—even with my League-issued diplomatic visa—since I never got Imperial citizenship. And the League,” he snorted derisively, “would like for me to spew platitudes in front of the pickups and sit in a booth to put autographs on memorabilia—probably with an IV sticking out of my arm for the next three years—so they can maximize the return on what they consider to be their investment into me.” He shook his head firmly, “I’m well and truly alone here, Captain, and for the first time in my adult life I’d like to do something that actually mattered…and something that, on a selfish note, was entirely of my own choosing.”

Middleton empathized with the man’s circumstances. It had been less than a year since his second wife had left him, and the profound effects of that event were still sending shockwaves through his life. He had been so listless following the breakup that he had actually opted for early retirement from military service so he could leverage his pension and purchase necessities for his second ex-wife, and their son, when they finally landed on a colony somewhere on the rim of Confederation space.

It seemed that despite Mr. Inson’s fame and fortune, the primary difference in his circumstances and Tim Middleton’s was merely the number of zeroes on the financial judgments which had been levied against them in divorce court.

“All right, Hutch,” Middleton said, standing and extending his hand, “we’ll be in orbit for another twenty hours. If you change your mind during that time, we’ll see you back to the surface. If not, then welcome aboard.”

The massive athlete stood and accepted Middleton’s hand, giving a brief but powerful squeeze as his demeanor lightened considerably. “I don’t want any special treatment,” he said. “I’ll take whatever privileges the knuckle-draggers are getting—and if I don’t warrant that much to start with, I guarantee that I’ll earn my way into it.”

“You’ll have to speak with Sergeant Gnuko about that,” Middleton said pointedly, suspecting the two men were already acquainted to some degree—if Middleton’s timelines were even close then they would have played for the same team during at least a couple seasons.

“Gnuko?” Hutch blurted in surprise. “Russell Gnuko?”

“He’ll be your direct superior, as he’s in command of the Lancer contingent aboard this ship,” Middleton explained.

Hutch threw his head back and laughed. “Gnuko…he never could get out from under Walt’s shadow. I heard he hared off to go find Joneson after quitting the League,” he said as he regained his composure under Middleton’s heavy gaze, “but I never thought for a second that he would actually catch up to him.”

“That makes two of you, I suppose,” Middleton said archly.

“Point taken, Captain,” Hutch agreed, raising his hands in mock surrender before moving to a reasonable approximation of attention posture and executing one of the worst salutes Middleton had ever seen—a salute Middleton did not return for a variety of reasons, none of which had to do with a lack of respect on his part. “I’ll go find Sergeant Gnuko then, sir.”

“Dismissed,” Middleton replied, and the man exited the ready room.

Middleton knew there was an outside possibility that Steve ‘Hutch’ Inson could present a security threat down the road, but he also knew that he could use every able-bodied person he could pack onto his ship for the coming mission.

Because if this mission was anything like its predecessors, he would find the extra depth on the ship’s roster to be an invaluable asset…and given the Pride’s track record, that particular asset was likely to be tapped sooner rather than later.

Chapter I: New Days, Same Ways

Chief Engineer Garibaldi set a section of heavy, duralloy beam down on Middleton’s desk before sitting down wordlessly in the chair opposite the Captain. Garibaldi wiped his greasy hands on his work suit while the Captain appraised the piece of metal. It was an I-beam, measuring eight inches deep by four inches wide. This particular piece, just over a foot long, had apparently been cut from somewhere inside the Pride of Prometheus—and recently if Middleton’s nostrils served him properly.

“I assume there’s a reason you brought this to my ready room, Chief,” Middleton said evenly as he fought to keep from sneezing as the acrid fumes of recent plasma burning filled his nose.

Garibaldi nodded silently as he produced a small hammer from his belt. Without warning, he struck the duralloy beam with the hammer and the chunk of formerly load-bearing metal fell over on the desk. With narrowed eyes Middleton looked first at his Chief, then to the section of duralloy, and even he was surprised at what he saw.

Where the hammer had struck the section of beam, a spider-web of cracks had appeared which radiated outward from the impact point. This was more than slightly alarming, given the assumption that the beam had, indeed, been recently cut from the Pride.

It took him several seconds to fully understand the Chief’s unspoken message, and when he did he straightened in his chair and asked, “How extensive is it?”

“I’ve been conducting the tests myself,” Garibaldi said grimly, “so while I can confidently say that nobody else knows about this, I also haven’t had time to check the entire ship. But you probably want my best guess, which is that the entire forward hull—nearly a third of the ship from the bow on back—is riddled with this kind of damage in the supporting superstructure. The drive section looks more or less combat-ready,” he added heavily, and Middleton found himself exhaling in relief at the Chief’s last statement, “but the bow’s taken too much abuse to be ignored any longer.”

“This is from taking laser fire,” Middleton concluded, rather than asked.

“These old Hammerheads have plenty of armor,” Garibaldi said with grudging respect. “But the problem is that too many sustained impacts against that armor can cause local temperature variations which strain the duralloy. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem,” he explained, “but the Pride’s class was built on the cheap, so she doesn’t have sufficient thermal compensation mechanisms to protect the superstructure. Plus the old girl hasn’t had a proper refit in thirty years, and according to the maintenance logs she wasn’t exactly a light duty lady even before you got your hands on her.” Garibaldi gestured pointedly at the section of ruined duralloy beam. “We’re looking at three decades of accumulated damage to the ship’s superstructure, topped off by our recurring drama with the Raubachs, droids, and whatever else we’re about to kick over.”

Middleton steepled his fingers and considered the information. “Give it to me straight, Mikey,” he finally said.

Garibaldi leaned forward, rubbing his eyes wearily, “I can tweak the grav-plating in the forward section to compensate for some of the strain during combat maneuvers, but that will require those sections to be evacuated…immediately.”

Middleton closed his eyes and groaned. “Over a third of the crew bunks down in the forward sections, Chief. Morale on this ship is shaky enough as it is,” he added, knowing that asking his crew to abandon their quarters and cram together—or share bunks, in many cases—like canned fish wasn’t likely to help the ship’s morale situation.

“I wouldn’t say it unless it was important, Tim,” Garibaldi said with a knowing nod, “but there’s no way we can claim to be combat-ready in the ship’s current state. We have to evacuate the forward sections immediately so I can modify the grav-plates and do some fine-tuning. After I’ve done that, it’s up to you if you want us to make reinforcements by welding new beams into the affected areas, or maybe you’d prefer not to tell the crew—”

“No,” Middleton said with certainty, “they need to know. I can’t keep any secrets from this crew if I expect them to perform to the best of their ability. But I would appreciate your discretion on the subject until I’ve done that.”

Garibaldi nodded. “Will do, Cap,” he said as he stood and gathered up the chunk of ruined duralloy. “And…by the way, Tim,” he added before turning to leave, “I’m not the only one who’s happy you and the Doc buried the hatchet.”

Just a week earlier, Middleton would have been furious with his Chief Engineer for broaching that particular subject. But that period of time had seen Middleton finally come to grips with the facts regarding his unusual relationship with Doctor Jo Middleton, his first ex-wife. He knew he could never forgive her for what she had done to him, but he also knew that life was too short to hold onto such grudges—especially when doing so clouded his judgment and endangered the lives of his crew as a result.

“I appreciate the sentiment, Chief,” he said, fighting to keep the tightness from his voice, “but I’d also appreciate it if we left that particular subject alone.”

Garibaldi nodded with uncharacteristic sheepishness, “You got it, Cap.” He turned and left the ready room, and Middleton spent the next half hour considering how to break the news to the crew.

Even if he really was nothing but a cold, calculating commander, Middleton genuinely did believe that the crewmembers which had followed him—which was very nearly every single one which had set out from Gambit Station just a few weeks earlier—deserved to know the state of their ship.

But even if he hadn’t believed that, he also knew that he could not afford another morale crisis like the one Kratos had averted by defeating—and killing, rather gruesomely—War Leader Atticus, the Pride’s former Assault Team commander.

“This is the Captain,” Middleton said after setting his command chair’s com-link to the ship-wide intercom, “I have an announcement to make.”

The bridge crew turned as one to face him, and he actually found the mild wave of anxiety he felt somehow comforting as he felt their eyes on him. A year earlier he might have allowed the sensation to disrupt his address, but after enduring so many difficult trials with the crew of his ship, he knew that they shared a bond unlike anything he had previously known.

It was that bond which bolstered him as he continued, “This ship and her crew have triumphed over every adversary we have faced, and we must continue in that tradition as we deal with an unexpected enemy. It has been brought to my attention that the ship has sustained significant battle damage to her forward superstructure.” His lips twisted into a smirk as he saw several faces take on worried looks, “Apparently this crew is more resilient than the ship that bears it.”

Several grins appeared on the faces of his bridge crew, and he let his previous words sink in for several seconds before straightening himself.

“As such, we’re going to have to make some concessions to the Pride, since I have no intention of turning around and putting her in drydock so we can wait until some paper pusher declares her fit for duty,” he said, his voice turning hard as he continued his pre-rehearsed speech. “Chief Garibaldi will be performing a thorough inspection of the affected areas of the forward hull, but the preliminary indications are that those crewmembers who are quartered in the affected areas will need to relocate to the other living areas as soon as possible so that our engineers can work to address the damage.”

He didn’t even need to look at his crew’s visages to know that they were disappointed, but he was pleasantly surprised to see only a pair of downcast eyes among them after he had delivered the sour news.

“Once Engineering has submitted its final report on the damage,” he continued, “we’ll work up the new berthing arrangements. But for now, it’s important that all of us—even those crewmembers and officers who are not quartered in the affected areas—prepare to get a little cozier with our shipmates. That is all.”

Chapter II: Data Mining

Fei Long sat at his workstation while Yide, the young Sundered uplift, micro-soldered a series of temporary connections within one of their ATTACK DOGs. The two of them had formed a comfortable working relationship which was based primarily upon a mutual desire for silence while they worked on their various tasks.

Fei Long was continually impressed by the ape-like Yide’s technical prowess and problem-solving abilities. His knowledge of micro-electronics was, in many ways, superior even to Fei Long’s considerable abilities. As such, the young hacker-turned-Comm. Officer was thrilled to have his assistance on the more menial tasks since Fei Long was then free to pursue more complicated matters.

One such matter had given him significant difficulty in recent days. While orbiting Capital, he had requested permission from Captain Middleton to expand his covert—some would say ‘illegal’—virtual network which he had spread across Capital’s digital infrastructure using a technique he had devised as a twelve year old. The technique had originally been intended to grant him massive data storage space spread across thousands of different machines, and he had used that storage space to accumulate one of the largest collections of entertainment media in the Sector.

But he was no longer interested in downloading the latest holo-novels; this latest application of his relatively old program would permit him to conduct widespread data mining in absentia. It would allow him to peruse the vast majority of Capital’s databases—whether they were public or private—with a series of virtual robots that required only a few strings of code to put into action. Hours, or even days later, he could use his woefully tiny ComStat bandwidth allotment to retrieve any relevant information which his virtual robots had found and processed into transmittable chunks of data.

The possible applications of this program were understandably broad in scope, so Captain Middleton had predictably greenlit Fei Long’s plan. But for the past several days, Fei Long had been unable to solve various security issues which were central to the successful implementation of his program.

Now, however, after nearly thirty hours of continuous work, he believed he had solved the problem and was prepared to put his hypothesis to the test. With just a few keystrokes he sent a packet of commands to his virtual robots located on Capital and awaited their reply.

“What?” Yide asked gruffly as he looked up over the heavily-modified—so they would fit his large, hairy, head—welding goggles he was using to protect his eyes.

Only then did Fei Long realize he had been muttering to himself. “I have sent test instructions to the network,” he explained in a slightly raised voice. “If the latest modifications were successful, I should receive a reply in two minutes’ time.”

“Good,” the uplift grumped before returning to his work.

Fei Long counted the seconds and considered the possible failure points of his latest attempted solution to the unexpected security issues he had dealt with. He knew it was entirely possible that he would be unable to complete the work while in the system, which would make future attempts to correct the failure significantly more tedious since he would have to send his corrections via the tiny data window his ComStat access granted him.

Despite what Captain Middleton had said, Fei Long’s early elation had turned to sour disappointment the more he thought about just how little bandwidth he had secured for their purposes. His original plan for gaining access to the only galaxy-wide FTL communications system in existence had depended on several factors which were no longer present, chief among them a contiguous ComStat network which interfaced with the much larger Imperial part of the system. Without that connection, and with the curious modifications the Raubachs had made to the ComStat infrastructure which he did have access to, his program could not automatically propagate nearly as fast as he had originally intended.

At its current rate of propagation, Fei Long’s program would require at least another two months before it had spread throughout the Spineward Sectors’ remaining ComStat network, and recent experience aboard the Pride of Prometheus suggested to him that two months may as well be two centuries when it came to project timetables. All that mattered was what he could accomplish today, so any further attempts to increase his access to, and control over, the ComStat network would have to wait.

The corner of his workstation’s screen began to blink, and for a moment Fei Long stared dumbly at it before realizing—with no small measure of relief—that his latest attempt appeared to have succeeded in defeating the security issues he had previously encountered.

Exhaling a sigh of relief, he slouched back in his chair and in the span of no more than five seconds he realized just how completely exhausted he was. Ever since his relationship with Lu Bu had ignited, he had actually been unable to sleep whatsoever. But her presence in his life had changed something, and he was well past the point of caring precisely what that was. When he was with her he felt like a more complete person, and that was all he cared about any longer.

“Success,” he declared with muted vigor as he stood and stretched. “I must report this to Captain Middleton,” he said after catching Yide’s eye, and the adolescent uplift nodded before once again returning to his work.

And so Fei Long set off for the bridge, knowing that if he delayed any longer he would be unable to avoid flopping into his bunk and letting exhaustion rob him of consciousness for no fewer than twelve hours.

“Well done, Mr. Fei,” Middleton said after receiving the young man’s report. “What kind of information has your preliminary analysis revealed might be available?”

Fei Long cocked his head in apparent confusion, and Middleton noted the dark semicircles beneath the young man’s eyes as he replied matter-of-factly, “All of it, Captain. There are certain off-world databases, such as those housed on each of the planet’s moons, but anything with a hard-line connection on the planet itself is accessible to my program.”

Middleton supposed he should not have been surprised, but he found himself shaking his head in awe of the young man’s technical abilities. “So…we’re talking about what, exactly? Local corporate records, archived newsfeeds, research literature?”

“Of course,” Fei Long replied in an uncharacteristically testy voice. “I believe you have mistaken my meaning, Captain,” he sighed as he rubbed the bridge of his nose, “I said ‘all of it’ is now available to us, sir, and that is precisely what I meant. Given enough time and some minor modifications to my virtual network, I should be able to access all but the highest-security data, such as real-time updates of high-level dignitary locations, military asset deployment, covert espionage operations, and things of that nature. But anything else which is stored on the planet—including one of the most significant centralized data storage systems in the entire Spine, which contains up-to-date employment records for over eighty percent of the entire Spineward Sectors—will be accessible via my method.”

Middleton double-blinked as he processed the full meaning of the young hacker’s far-too-casual declaration, and leaned back in his chair as he let it soak into his mind. “I’d appreciate a demonstration of this network’s data-mining capabilities, if you’re able to provide one,” he said, knowing that the ship was scheduled to leave the Capital system in just under three hours and that Mr. Fei had been abundantly clear that his operating bandwidth would be significantly greater in-system than it would be once they had left the vicinity.

“Of course,” Fei Long said dismissively. “Do you have a specific query in mind?”

Middleton nodded. “I want everything you can find on Alice Schillinger, and I want it in our databases before we leave the system. And when I say ‘everything,’ I mean precisely that,” he said, making a point of turning the young man’s previous, borderline insubordinate, reiteration back on him. “I want anything and everything you can find on her, and everyone within three degrees of separation from her including research associates, former students, interns and, if you can find it, a thorough list of people who have attended her lectures in the past.”

Fei Long’s eyebrows rose in surprise before his quick, intelligent eyes began snapping back and forth in silence. “That would certainly test my network’s capabilities,” he said with a clear note of approval before nodding curtly, “I must begin immediately.”

“Good,” Middleton said as the young man stood from the chair and turned to leave the ready room. “And Mr. Fei,” he called out, prompting the young man to turn to face him, “when you’re finished, barring a Condition One situation, you’re to take forty eight hours of off-duty time. Is that clear?”

“Sir?” Fei Long asked. He was clearly taken aback—and apprehensive—about Captain Middleton’s order.

“You’ve been working yourself into the ground,” Middleton said, knowing that he was likely understating the matter. “But I doubt we’re going to run into any trouble this close to a heavily-secured Core World like Capital. Under any other circumstances I wouldn’t be able to grant you a leave of any kind from your duties, since they’re vital to the mission, but as a modest gesture of appreciation I’d like you to take a couple days off. You’ve earned them.”

Fei Long’s expression softened and he nodded, “I would appreciate that, Captain.”

“Good,” Middleton said with a nod, “but first get me that intel—as well as anything you can dig up on House Raubach.”

“I will not fail,” Fei Long said with a respectful inclination of his head before exiting the room.

Chapter III: Shedding the Past

“That’s the complete report, Captain,” Chief Garibaldi said after Middleton had reviewed the overview of the slate’s contents. “Not as bad as I’d originally feared, but we’re still going to have to relocate nearly a third of the crew to keep them from squishing against the bulkheads during combat maneuvers.”

Middleton did not exactly share his Chief Engineer’s appraisal, but then he supposed there was no way for the news that his ship’s superstructure had been critically compromised to be anything but catastrophic. Still, Garibaldi’s repair schedule seemed to suggest that by using all available structural beams they had in reserve and ‘tweaking’ the grav-plates—in several cases, requiring major additions to the local power grid to support the drain, which could reach as high as 1500% maximum survivable gravity—he could bring the Pride’s forward hull to nearly eighty percent of its rated integrity.

Which meant that, after roughly a week of repairs by the double-shifting Engineering team, the Pride would be combat-ready once again. He nodded slowly before gesturing for his XO to approach the Command Chair. “Lieutenant Sarkozy,” he said as she approached the dais on which his chair was mounted, “I’d like the transfers to be complete before we leave the system; we’ll need the crew out of those areas so the Chief’s people can get to work ASAP.”

Sarkozy nodded as she accepted the slate, but she hesitated and briefly chewed her lip, apparently having something to say.

“What is it, Lieutenant Sarkozy?” Middleton asked, disliking the unusually anxious demeanor of his Executive Officer.

“It’s just that…well, sir,” she replied, lowering her voice as she stepped closer to the Command Chair. “I…well…” she stammered before drawing a deep breath and producing a data slate from her pocket. “I’d like to request an official name change, sir.” Middleton’s eyebrows rose as his mounting nerves relaxed. He took her slate and examined its contents briefly as she assured him, “It’s all there, Captain.”

Middleton had dealt with a whole rash of name changes from the crew he had picked up from Fei Long’s home world, so the procedure was not an unfamiliar one, but he failed to see why his XO was requesting a name change at this time. “I’d appreciate the short version, Lieutenant,” he said, laying the slate on his lap and meeting her gaze.

She nodded as a bitter expression twisted its way across her features, “It’s that blighter of a soon-to-be-ex-husband of mine, sir. He was stationed at the Tau Sigma IX listening station, and I hadn’t heard from him since the Imperial withdrawal,” she explained, her voice taking on a grating tone as she spoke. “But I just received word from my aunt that he left with the Imps, sir!”

Middleton’s eyes narrowed slightly, “Just how did you receive word from your aunt all the way out here, XO?”

She blushed immediately but squared her shoulders as she replied, “I had Mr. Fei do a quick check of the local courier services, sir; my aunt uses them whenever there’s important news from my family, and my sister’s worsening health has been on my mind for quite some time. My aunt was only too eager to forward news of Marc’s defection to the other side, Captain; she not-so-secretly hoped for an explosive end to our marriage, and paid a not-inconsequential sum to have the message forwarded to every single courier outpost in the Spine. I won’t wear that traitorous blighter’s name one more day than I absolutely have to, Captain; I’ve already sent word for an annulment to be instigated. I’d prefer to use my maiden name from now on, sir.”

Middleton was surprised that word from Sector 25 could reach them at Capital, but upon reflection he had to admit that it had been nearly a year since they had been deployed aboard the Pride of Prometheus. Even a physical courier service would eventually spread the information across the entire Spineward Sectors, given that amount of time. “Mr. Fei’s expertise—and his time—are valuable commodities, Lieutenant,” he said scathingly, causing her to flinch ever-so-slightly at the rebuke. “I think you’ll agree that we need him focusing on higher-priority tasks than fetching letters for homesick members of this crew?”

“Sir, yes sir, Captain,” she replied stiffly, placing her hands behind her back and nodding sharply.

He held her with a heavy, reproachful look before affixing his signature to the request form she had filled out on the data slate. “As recompense to your fellow crewmembers for taxing that asset unnecessarily, I suggest you take over at Comm. following your current shift so that Mr. Fei can begin his leave period one day early. He has a series of calibrations which he was hoping to complete before shift’s end; I trust you’re equal to the task of finishing that job to at least his level?”

“Of course, Captain,” she acknowledged, her professional demeanor once again fully deployed.

“Good,” he said simply, handing the slate back to her, “as for your request…all I can say is: welcome aboard, Lieutenant McKnight.”

“Thank you, sir,” she acknowledged, taking the slate in hand and sighing just loudly enough that he could hear her do so.

When she had returned to her duties, Middleton allowed a short-lived smile to dance across his lips. When he saw Chief Engineer Mikey Garibaldi was doing likewise, Middleton decided that enough time had been spent on that particular diversion so he changed the subject, “Should we try to secure some more duralloy beams for the structural reinforcement, Chief? This is likely our last stop at a proper port,” he said, knowing all-too-well that it may very well be the ship’s last stop ever at a port which could even remotely be described as ‘friendly.’

Mikey looked doubtful for a moment before shaking his head, “If you’ll let my people scavenge the bulkheads up forward, we can reprocess them using the ship’s micro-foundry and we’ll have all the material we need. There’s no need for us to declare to the known universe that we’re in need of a major overhaul,” he said heavily.

Middleton nodded, glad to find that both his Chief Engineer was on the same page as his Captain. “That will do fine then, Chief,” he said with a nod as he opened a menu on his Command Chair’s built-in readout which contained the latest departmental readiness reports. He wanted to get underway as quickly as possible, and Garibaldi had assured him that the ship would be in no immediate danger while his people reinforced the forward superstructure.

“Captain,” Garibaldi acknowledged before turning and leaving the bridge.

Middleton looked over at Fei Long, and noted the dark semicircles beneath the young man’s eyes. The current shift ended in three hours and Middleton was glad for the opportunity to let the young virtuoso have a few extra hours to himself—even if they would just be spent catching up on much-needed sleep.

“Mr. Fei,” Middleton said, and the young man’s attention immediately turned to the Captain, “I think we can handle things up here. You’re relieved of duty; consider your leave extended by one day, and consider it begun as of this moment.”

Fei Long, slightly surprisingly, nodded wordlessly as a petty officer named Hansen approached and took the change-of-shift report from Mr. Fei. “Thank you, Captain,” the young man said, offering a customary bow before egressing the bridge. It was only in that moment that Middleton realized he, too, had been keeping unusually long hours as the ship’s repair schedules had been drawn up. He needed some chow and, if possible, a few hours of shut-eye.

“Lieutenant Sark—“ Middleton began, before catching himself and snorting softly at himself, “that is, Lieutenant McKnight, you have the con.”

“I have the con, aye, Captain,” his newly-named XO acknowledged crisply.

Middleton set down his platter, which he had filled with an extra portion of strawberry shortcake—or, at least, the galley’s interpretation of it given the available ingredients—and sat down at the far end of the mess hall.

He ate in silence, running through several repair work scenarios and wondering if he shouldn’t go ahead and secure some extra materials for Garibaldi’s people. Information security was indeed a priority for his ship, since he wanted his enemies—namely, Commodore Raubach and his Rim Fleet detachment—to know as little as possible about the Pride’s condition prior to their next engagement. But at the same time, the material support gained by securing some heavy load beams might outweigh the potential downside.

He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he barely noticed Jo sit down opposite him—when he did take note of her presence, he also took note of the extra helping of shortcake which she had secured for herself, and he couldn’t help but smile briefly at how some things never change.

“Just what would coach Swanson say about that?” Middleton pointed at her cake using his fork. Coach Swanson had been Jo’s swimming team coach in college, and she had been a notorious hard-ass when it came to daily weights for her athletes.

“Whatever she would have said,” Jo said as she dug her fork into the cake, “my response to her would be the same as my response to you: mind your own business.” She placed the bite in her mouth and began to chew it, licking her lower lip as she did so—just like she had done when they were married years earlier, and Middleton found himself unable to ignore the rush of memories which flooded his mind in that moment.

Middleton ate his own dessert, and the two shared relative silence for several minutes until their plates were nearly clean. Middleton had no idea how he was supposed to feel about sharing meals with her. In truth, he had no idea how he was supposed to feel about anything any longer.

He leaned back and looked around the galley, finding only two other crewmembers present on the opposite side of the room, so he sighed and decided to speak his mind. “Why are you still here, Jo?”

She looked up from her platter with a look of muted alarm, “Excuse me?”

He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, trying desperately to banish the increasingly heavy sensation which seemed to be overtaking him. He knew he was tired, and that he needed sleep, but he also knew he needed to ensure that his people had everything they needed to affect repairs on the ship before they headed out again.

“I don’t mean anything by it,” he said with a note of apology in his voice. “But…I just can’t figure it out. You always hated the military,” he said, looking around pointedly at the nearby bulkheads, “and now here you are serving on a warship.”

She seemed to consider her reply for several moments before shrugging, “People change, Tim.”

He shook his head, wanting very much to ignore that particular argument—one they’d had so many times he wished he could forget most of them. “Specifics, Doctor,” he said, using her title as a term of respect rather than a wedge between them—like he had done in the not-too-distant past, “I need to know why you’re not only serving as this ship’s Chief Medical Officer, but why you volunteered to create a bio-agent which can kill a form of life we’ve never even catalogued—and you did so without any encouragement on my part.”

She bit her lip and seemed torn as to how—or, perhaps, whether—she should answer, but eventually she sighed and sat back. “I don’t know if I can fully answer that,” she admitted, “because I’m not sure even I know the answer.” Her eyes met his, and she held him with a significant look for several moments before she added, “But I think, through all of this…the attack on the colony those years ago, my abduction by the Raubachs aboard the Pegasus mining station, and finally meeting you again…I can’t believe all of that is mere coincidence.”

Middleton arched an eyebrow in genuine incredulity, “Don’t try to tell me you’re a card-carrying Saint-ist now—some things I could be persuaded to believe, Jo, but that is going too far.”

Jo shot him a withering look, “You know perfectly well that’s not what I meant.” She cocked her head hesitantly and then leaned forward as she visibly struggled to find the right words. “After learning everything I’ve learned, and seeing the things I’ve seen,” she began before pausing to consider her next words, “the numbers just don’t bear it out, Tim. There’s something at work in this universe and, while I don’t claim to know what it is, it clearly wants me on this ship.”

“What do you mean, ‘the numbers just don’t bear it out’?” he asked, intrigued by that particular line more than by his ex-wife’s suggested belief in some greater design to the universe’s existence. “I’ve never heard you talk like that.”

She sighed. “The observable universe, while a big place, really isn’t all that big when it all comes down to it,” she replied. “The odds of all these things—our separation, my…choices stemming from that moment,” she said almost sheepishly, clearly referring to her having a daughter by him that he never even knew had been born until well after her death, “and the things that happened to me before you somehow, and against all odds, just happen to appear when things look bleakest—and with you in need of a doctor for your ship, no less?” Jo shook her head adamantly, “There is simply no way all of this is coincidence.”

Middleton quirked a playful grin, “So what are you saying?” He leaned forward, clasping his hands before himself, “That the universe has somehow predetermined that we’re meant to be together?”

The fact that she didn’t immediately scoff sent his mind into a near-tailspin. She did scoff, eventually, but the preceding pause—and look she gave him—spoke volumes as to what she really thought. “Bu is here, having never known a mother’s real love,” Jo said, clearly trying to change the subject, “and here I am, mourning a daughter who would have been almost exactly her age?”

Middleton leaned back slightly and shook his head, “I feel like we’ve had this conversation before, except back then it was you cautioning me against looking for patterns and meaning where none existed.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she allowed, but Middleton could tell there was little or no doubt left in her mind on the matter, “but one thing I’ve learned since coming to this ship is that there really is a line between right and wrong. And whether I would want to admit it or not, the truth is that you’ve been on the right side of that line every single time as far as I can see.” She shook her head, “I can’t abandon the crew…I can’t abandon you just because my personal sensibilities are offended by the realities of what goes on out here.”

Middleton found himself nodding slowly as she finished. “Not quite the idealist I remember,” he said after a pregnant pause. “I’m not sure how I feel about that…I think I’ve got more than enough dour pragmatism for the both of us.”

“That’s just it, Tim,” she said, her eyes flaring with a familiar intensity which had, at one time in his life, consumed his every waking thought, “you need me. You may not realize it—you probably don’t—but you can’t do this alone.”

Middleton wanted to argue with her, but he knew just as well as she did that he did need…something, and that she had provided it during her time aboard the Pride of Prometheus.

“You always did hit close to the mark,” he said with a nod as he felt himself stiffen.

She reached across the table and clasped his hand in her own, “Tim…I can’t even hope to make up for what I’ve done. But I’m here now,” she said, her eyes locking with his and conveying deep feelings he had never again expected to ever see in her, “and for however long the universe allows it, I want to be part of your life again.”

He returned her grip, and they sat in silence for several minutes before leaving the galley in mutual silence.

Lu Bu had expected Doctor Middleton to return to their quarters several hours earlier, but she had yet to appear. So Lu Bu had taken it upon herself to pack up their relatively scant personal belongings, segregated into a pair of duffel bags, in preparation for leaving their private quarters. Their quarters were located in a part of the ship which would require extensive reinforcement prior to their next engagement, so it had become necessary to relocate.

She had already asked Kongming if she could stay in his quarters, and he had eagerly assured her that he would appreciate her presence. She knew that he required some degree of peace to perform his duties, but she doubted that she would be spending much time in their quarters outside of time spent sleeping.

Lu Bu assumed that Doctor Middleton would move into the office attached to Medical, which already had a cot inside, and she had decided that she would take her effects there now that she was finished packing.

Her relationship with Doctor Middleton had grown to the point that Lu Bu genuinely considered the older woman to be her adopted mother, and Doctor Middleton had said that she felt much the same way. It was, outside of her relationship with Fei Long—and short-lived apprenticeship at Walter Joneson’s feet—the most meaningful association she had ever experienced in her short life, and she treasured every moment they spent together.

She left their quarters with a duffel bag in each hand—each bag weighed nearly fifty kilograms, but this was no great load to bear for the genetically-engineered ‘super soldier,’ Lu Bu—and made her way to Medical. Once she arrived, she was surprised to find the office where she expected to find Doctor Middleton was locked. Peering through the window she saw that it was also empty, which was confusing to her but she left the duffel beside the door anyway.

Deciding against asking Doctor Middleton’s subordinates where she currently was, Lu Bu made her way to Fei Long’s quarters. Once she arrived, she stood outside awkwardly for several seconds, wondering if she should use the chime. Angry with herself over such a foolish concern, she slapped her access code into the door’s lock panel, and the door slid open.

Expecting to find Yide—the Sundered uplift who Fei Long had befriended—working at the small bench which had been built against the nearby bulkhead, she was surprised to find his large, heavily-modified chair empty.

“Kongming?” she asked, peering toward the head and seeing nothing. Then she looked at the bed and realized that what she had assumed to be a customarily-disheveled pile of bedding was actually Fei Long, who appeared to have passed out face-first into a pillow.

She sighed and set her duffel down, making a muffled ‘whump’ sound as it hit the floor.

Fei Long stirred and looked at her with blank, bleary eyes for a moment before giving her a weak smile, “Fengxian…you are here.” He made to get up, but a pair of strides took Lu Bu to his side and she not-so-gently pressed him back down into the mattress with her left hand. “I apologize; I wanted to help you collect your belongings, but I was more tired than I thought,” he explained, shaking his head vigorously as he tried to sit up.

“You are on leave,” she scolded. “You must relax; you have been working too long.”

He tried to wave off her concern, but she clamped her grip down on his shoulder just tight enough to elicit a sharp look from him.

“You are certain that this will not be an inconvenience?” she asked a bit more harshly than she had intended, giving her duffel a pointed look..

“Of course not,” he assured her, shaking his head quickly and giving her an intent look. “I have great hopes for our immediate future—“

She placed a finger over his lips and shook her head in half-annoyance, half-amusement. Only rarely did he know the right words to say, but even more rarely did he know when to stop speaking. “Do not protest so much,” she said, using a term she had heard bandied about between the Promethean and Caprian members of the crew—but she was still uncertain if she grasped the nuances the saying was meant to convey.

The brief look of amusement—a look which was quickly masked—flitted across Fei Long’s features told her she had indeed failed to use the phrase properly, so Lu Bu slugged him in the shoulder just hard enough to make him wince.

“That hurts, Fengxian,” he muttered as he rubbed his arm.

“Oh…poor baby,” she mocked, her lips turning into a ridiculous pout like she had seen among nearly every ‘great actress’ of her generation. Hamming it up, she leaned forward and said, “Are you going to cry now?”

He gave her an irritated look as he sank back into the mattress and sighed, prompting Lu Bu to slide her hand down his torso toward his legs.

“Here…” she purred, deciding to try out yet another colloquialism often used by her crewmembers in jest, “let me make it better.”

Judging by his reaction, she fully grasped the subtext of this particular saying, and twenty minutes later they were fast asleep in each other’s arms, their hastily-removed clothes strewn about the bed.

Captain Middleton’s eyes snapped open and he immediately looked over at the chronometer at his bedside. It had been four hours since he had left the bridge in Lieutenant Sarkozy’s—rather, in Lieutenant McKnight’s—capable hands. He knew that her name change was going to take some getting used to.

But true to his character—and drawing a smirk from his own lips—the first thing that occurred to him when he realized this was that the previous shift had already ended and that his XO, if she had followed orders explicitly, was now in a bit of a quandary. He had ordered her to take over Mr. Fei’s calibration duties, and she would be unable to do that if she had followed his second order, which had been to take command until relieved. Technically, she could not relieve herself by calling on the Third Shift officer-of-the-watch, Ensign Daniels because the watch had not originally been hers.

Middleton banished that train of thought from his mind as he sat up carefully in bed, swinging his legs over the side and placing his feet gently on the sole. Before he could stand, he felt a hand run up across his thigh and for a moment he hesitated.

“Not bad for an old man,” Jo said, curling up against his back and gently pulling him toward her.

He shook his head slowly, but clasped his hand over hers. For several seconds she tugged against him, but he remained seated as a flood of thoughts came to his mind. Oddly enough, he knew that in that moment he was thinking more clearly, and completely, than he had at any other moment in recent months. Feeling her body go tense at sensing his reticence to return to bed, he said quietly, “You picked up a thing or two, yourself.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, sitting up and facing him.

He wanted to answer her, but the truth was he didn’t know. Possible answers, platitudes, and clichés sprang to the fore of his mind, but instead of employing one of them as he usually did he surprised even himself by asking, “What are we doing here?”

Jo recoiled and her features hardened, “If this was a mistake—“

He clasped her hand firmly in hers, “That’s not what I meant, Jo.” He gave her a steady, unflinching look before giving her hand a squeeze between both of his, “I don’t regret what we just did in any way; I hope you feel the same.”

Her visage softened and she returned his grip. “Of course I do,” she assured him before a quizzical look came across her face. “But if not that…then what?”

Middleton gestured around his quarters, as though doing so communicated everything he felt, but had thus far failed to put into words. “This,” he said simply before sighing, “I just don’t know if this is the right thing to do.”

“You mean…going after the Raubachs?” she correctly concluded.

He nodded, glad that she had been able to put some sort of words to it. And now that she had done so, the thoughts seemed to crystallize in his mind, “I mean really, Jo…what am I doing to these peoples’ lives? They didn’t sign up for anything like this; the MSP was just supposed to be a reservist-type, show-of-force, peacekeeping body. And here we are, about to embark on a suicide mission against odds so long I don’t even want to think about them…what gives me the right to make that decision for them?”

Jo recoiled slightly before narrowing her eyes, “Do you honestly think you’re the only one on this ship who is making decisions about his or her future?” There was a note of irritation in her voice, but there was also something akin to disbelief threading her words. “Tim, I’ve been with you for almost your entire command,” she said, and he nodded when she paused pointedly, “do you think I don’t make decisions for myself?”

Middleton tried to grapple with whatever it was she was telling him, but he had never been good at conversations like this one. After several seconds he sighed, “Of course you make decisions for yourself—“

She cut him off, as though she had expected him to say those exact words, “And we both know how I feel about the military, yes?”

He nodded, still uncertain what she was getting at but growing increasingly confident that she did have a point she was getting to in a roundabout way.

“So if I’m staying aboard this ship, even with my reservations and our…painful history,” she said, casting her eyes down briefly before steeling her resolve and meeting his gaze again, “what do you think that means of the men and women who actually signed up for the military life to begin with?”

He thought he was beginning to see her point. “Even if they did choose to follow me,” he allowed, “who gave me the right to make this decision for them, a decision which will result in many—if not all—of them never returning home?”

Jo blinked in disbelief and shook her head before scoffing, “They did, Tim. Don’t you see that?”

A pregnant silence filled the room for several minutes as he came to understand what she was saying.

“You’ve given them—us—every opportunity to get off this ship,” she continued, “and only a few people have taken you up on the offer. Do you think the ones who stay with you are weak-willed or feebleminded? Or do you think they believe in what you’re doing out here and are willing, if necessary, to die for this mission?”

“So what are you saying,” he began skeptically after processing her words, “that I owe it to them to charge headlong into the fray?”

“You’re blasted well right, you do,” she replied severely. “The only thing worse than getting them killed while fighting for what they believe in is to turn your back on them and what they believe by failing to lead them when they need you most.”

When she put it that way, he saw her position with perfect clarity and he marveled at how his own thoughts had been so far from her own. He shook his head and placed a hand behind her neck, massaging the base of her hairline the way he used to do so many years earlier, “That was it, Jo. That was what I needed more than anything…thank you.”

Giving him a satisfied nod, she pressed her cheek against his arm and cupped his hand to her face. “You can do this, Tim…even if you are an old man,” she teased.

He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead before standing and making his way to his discarded uniform. “That was the one thing I never wanted to be, Jo,” he said distantly as he worked to re-don his uniform, “the ‘old man,’ that is. It’s one of the reasons I opted for early retirement,” he said, confiding a truth he had never shared with another living soul. “I saw all those old, broken-down warhorses who had lost the edge—an edge which has always separated me from others—and I didn’t want to be that man. I didn’t want my colleagues to see me get old and tired, to see me show up every day and just go through the motions, playing out the string because I had nothing else to live for,” he explained before snorting in disgust. “Turns out it was inevitable…nobody can outmaneuver Father Time or the divorce courts. I was a fool for thinking I could somehow stay ahead of the curve when so many others had failed to do so.”

Jo stood from the bed, her naked body somehow more attractive to him than it had been twenty years earlier, and pressed herself against him. They stood there in silence for several long moments, then she said, “I should find Bu; she’s probably worried sick about me.”

Middleton nodded, “I need to get back to the bridge.”

“Bu probably already took my things from our quarters,” Jo said as she picked up her clothes. “I told her I would be using the office in Medical for sleeping quarters and, knowing her, she might be waiting there for me.”

Middleton hesitated, knowing that protocol wasn’t exactly conducive to what he was about to suggest, but neither was it expressly forbidden given the extenuating circumstances involved in Jo’s presence on the Pride of Prometheus. “You should stay here,” he said after she had replaced her clothing. “I’ve got the room so I should take on a bunk-mate anyway,” he added, sounding strangely unconfident as he attempted to justify the offer.

Jo stopped and looked at him for several moments before shaking her head, “Let’s just take things one step at a time, Tim. It’s been a long time…”

Middleton nodded, “It’s your decision. But as the Captain, I’m going to have to set a good example for the rest of the officers—officers who will be required to take on bunk-mates given our newfound berthing shortages. I’d rather it was you than anyone else,” he said with complete honesty. “Besides, you can sleep in the office whenever you want; no one will question our CMO crashing in Medical between shifts when her primary berthing assignment is with the Captain.  Just imagine the whispered drama and intrigue they’ll engage in when they think we’re not looking,” he snorted, knowing full well that was precisely what would happen.

She seemed to consider the offer before nodding, “Ok, I’ll bring my things over after shift’s end.”

With that, she left the room and Middleton took a few minutes to compose himself before heading back to the bridge.

Chapter IV: Picking up the Scent

Two weeks later, the Pride of Prometheus emerged from the latest point transfer along their itinerary—an itinerary which would lead them to the system, called Cagnzys, containing the Raubachs’ hidden base.

This latest stop en route to their ultimate destination would be, with any luck, the current location of Alice Schillinger’s archeological team. According to the data which Fei Long had downloaded via his ComStat-linked scouring program, the itinerary for the vessel, which was called the Lost Ark, was scheduled to remain in this particular system for another two months. It had been scheduled to arrive here nearly a year earlier, which made Middleton reasonably confident in the possibility that it would, in fact, be there since its arrival date preceded the Raubach’s first moves following the Imperial withdrawal.

“Sensor contact detected,” called out Hephaestion, and Middleton marveled at just how quickly the young man had become fluent in Confederation Standard. There was absolutely no accent in the young, smooth-faced man’s voice as far as Middleton could tell, and his proficiency at Sensors had grown to the point that he was the ship’s best operator by far.

Middleton knew that Fei Long had played no small part in the young man’s development as both a bridge officer, and a particle emissions expert. According to Hephaestion’s aptitude test batteries, he was either the second or third most intelligent person aboard the ship. Sergeant Gnuko’s recruitment drive months earlier had yielded more quality crewmembers than anyone had dreamed possible, and it had only been possible by taking on what Tracto-an society deemed undesirable persons.

“Report, Sensors,” Middleton said when no further details were presented after nearly a minute.

“I am having difficulty penetrating the local EM interference,” the young man explained as his fingers moved with methodical, expert precision. “There is a vessel in orbit of the fourth planet, but the interference is preventing a positive identification, Captain.”

“Lieutenant McKnight,” Middleton said, prompting his XO to slide over beside Hephaestion and attempt to help him clear up the interference. “Mr. Fei,” he said when his XO shook her head in confusion as she worked alongside the Tracto-an sensor operator, “are you picking up any comm. traffic?”

“Nothing yet, Captain,” the young man replied as his fingers moved across his panel, making adjustments to instruments faster than Middleton could follow. “I am not reading any ship ID squawks, nor am I picking up any activity on hailing frequencies. There is something buried in the EM, however…there it is,” he declared before placing a finger to the bud in his ear and turning sharply toward the Command Chair. “I’m detecting a Harmony through Specialization Droid Tribe carrier frequency buried in the interference, Captain.”

“Set Condition One throughout the ship,” McKnight barked even before Middleton could do so, “all hands to battle stations!”

Seconds later, the ship’s power grid indicators lit up on the Command Chair’s DI interface, showing the ship was powered to maximum and ready for battle. Thankfully, Garibaldi’s people had managed to reinforce the forward sections of the hull to the Chief’s exacting specifications, and Middleton had been assured that the ship would now perform as well as it had during their initial deployment.

“Sergeant Gnuko,” Middleton flipped his chair’s com-link to the Lancers’ designated command channel, “prepare your people for contact with Harmony battle droids.”

Sergeant Gnuko’s voice crackled across the speaker, “Is contact imminent, sir?”

“Negative, Sergeant,” Middleton replied. “You’ve got a few minutes to get your ducks in a row, but I want the shuttle loaded with the Recon Team and however many of Private Kratos’ Assault Team can fit in the hold.”

“Larry that, Captain,” Gnuko acknowledged. “We’ll have twenty Lancers locked and loaded aboard the Deathbacker in fifteen minutes, sir. The Defense Team will deploy to the airlocks on the same timeline.”

“Middleton out,” the Captain said before cutting the connection. He approved of Sergeant Gnuko’s chosen designation, the Deathbacker, for their new assault shuttle, which was smaller than their former assault shuttle but also had significant heavier shields and faster engines. The tradeoff was that she could only carry twenty Lancers in power armor, while the previous shuttle could cram nearly forty inside its robust hold.

“Captain, we have a profile for the ship in orbit of Planet Four,” Sarkozy-turned-McKnight reported. “It’s a Destroyer, sir, and she’s powering her engines. Estimated intercept in one hour,” she said crisply before adding, “but it could be less if her plants were pre-fired; we just can’t tell whether they were pre-fired or dead cold with all this interference.”

“What’s the source of that interference, Comm.?” Middleton turned to Mr. Fei.

Mr. Fei shook his head doubtfully, “It is a highly localized jamming field, Captain, and it appears to be emanating from the planet’s surface. The signal’s wave form is unlike anything we have in the ship’s records, but it seems somehow familiar…I cannot place it, sir, but I will continue attempting to do so.”

“Tactical,” Middleton turned to Toto, the massive, Sundered uplift with the distinctive silver pattern stripe of fur running down the middle of his back, with the rest of his body covered in jet black hair, “can you achieve firing solutions in spite of the interference?”

Toto nodded, rumbling, “Life-mate’s modifications to targeting sensors good; accuracy will be half normal but range unaffected.”

“Good,” Middleton said, more than a little surprised—and mildly alarmed—that Toto’s family had monkeyed with the Pride’s targeting sensors and that he had somehow missed it. Then he silently scolded himself for his previous thought’s bigoted, and factually inaccurate, undertones.

“The Destroyer is clearing the EM field, Captain,” Fei Long reported, “by using her shields as a reflector of sorts, I have discovered the precise dimensions and strength of the jamming field; a visual representation is forthcoming.”

A few moments later, the main viewer shifted to display the fourth planet of the system, which was surrounded by its normal, magneto-driven EM field which protects all planetary atmospheres from their system primary’s incessant solar winds, and then a smaller, much more powerful, area appeared within that field and radiated outward in a broad, conical shape with the origin somewhere on the planet’s surface.

But as Middleton looked more closely, he realized that the signal was coming from beneath the planet’s surface at a depth of nearly twenty miles!

“Check the origin point of that signal, Comm.,” Middleton instructed, confident that Mr. Fei had made no errors but requiring certainty where he only had confidence.

“Origin is confirmed, Captain,” the young man replied almost immediately as the enemy Destroyer’s icon moved slowly away from the planet, increasing the accuracy of Mr. Fei’s representation of the jamming field with each passing second as the young man incorporated new data into his calculations. “It is a point between sixteen and twenty one miles beneath the planet’s surface.”

“Enemy vessel is on intercept course; estimated time to weapons range is forty six minutes, Captain,” McKnight reported. “Enemy’s profile suggests her weaponry has approximately the same range as ours, and her acceleration is fifteen percent greater than ours.”

“Carry on, XO,” Middleton acknowledged, knowing that such a speed advantage, coupled with equal-ranged weaponry, could very well spell victory for the smaller ship. But he had an advantage over the hostile warship: he knew that they were deeply interested in what was happening on that planet, and were likely to intercede against Middleton’s attempts to discover whatever that was.

Which meant that, in all likelihood, the smaller, faster ship would be forced to exchange shots blow-for-blow with the larger, heavier-hitting, and stronger-shielded, Pride of Prometheus.

Which begged the question: why would a relatively small warship like a Destroyer be operating solo?

“Sensors,” Middleton turned to Hephaestion, “scan the area for debris, or recent signs of fire exchange.”

“Scanning,” the smooth-faced Tracto-an acknowledged, and for several minutes the bridge crew’s tension rose as they prepared to exchange fire with the enemy vessel. “There is a debris field near the hyper limit, Captain, bearing forty six degrees from the system’s primary and two degrees south of the median orbital plane.”

“How recently was it made?” Middleton asked, his own anxiety slightly reduced at the possibility that the Destroyer’s original escort vessel had been destroyed—which significantly reduced the probability of him leading his ship into another ambush.

“It is difficult to say at this range, Captain, but I am reading negligible thermal signatures,” Hephaestion reported before adding, “The imagers have captured some hull markings among the debris, sir.”

“Show me,” Middleton said, and a moment later the main viewer’s image of the EM fields emanating from the planet was replaced by quartet of low-res images of what was clearly warship hull debris. One of the sections read, quite clearly, NC-1540 Red King, and two of the other images of hull fragments bore partial segments of the same markings, while the fourth image was of a distinctly different type of construction—a type consistent with Harmony through Specialization Tribe’s warships. “Run that,” Middleton said, knowing that Mr. Fei had almost certainly already begun to do so.

“NC-1540 Red King corresponds to a CR-72 class Corvette, flagged out of North Canton and listed as part of that system’s SDF,” Fei Long reported promptly. “The vessel was reported by her government to be lost eleven months ago,” the young man finished with finality.

“So…” Middleton leaned forward in his chair, lacing his fingers together and resting his elbows on the Command Chair’s armrests, “the Droids and the Raubachs got here before we did.” The widespread series of mutinies throughout Sectors 23 & 24, engineered by Commodore James Raubach III and his subordinates, had resulted in several star systems’ SDF’s being reduced to half strength due to mutinous commanders defecting with their ships to the Rim Fleet banner which Commodore Raubach used to legitimize his family’s all-too-blatant attempt at a wholesale military takeover of the region.

At first Middleton had been confused as to why so few heavy warships had been targeted by the Raubachs. But after learning of a new technology—one which had almost certainly been invented thousands, or possibly millions, of years before humanity had written its first words—which allowed the Raubachs to retrofit their warships with weaponry that could strike targets at potentially double the range of anything else found in the Spine, their targeting of smaller, more nimble warships to add to their fleet made perfect sense.

“The other hull fragments appear consistent with a Harmony Corvette class, sir,” McKnight reported confidently. “The volume and proximity of the debris suggests the vessels were destroyed at least partially as the result of a ramming attack.”

“Any indication as to who did the ramming?” Middleton asked, the gears of his mind turning as quickly and smoothly as he could remember them doing.

“No, sir,” McKnight replied in confusion, “there’s just too much damage; it looks like the field was subjected to a significant amount of weapons fire after the ships comprising it had already broken up. That doesn’t make sense, though…”

As she finished her report, the picture became complete in Middleton’s mind. He leaned back in his chair, confident he understood what had happened, at least in rough terms. “The Raubachs were here first,” he concluded, “and the Droids showed up later, only to find the Red King outfitted with weapons that made her a formidable match—even with her back to the wall. The Droids recovered from the surprise and were winning when they boarded the Rim Fleet ship, probably with the intention of taking her a prize,” he continued, growing increasingly confident in his conclusion as he spoke. “But when they did, they found something aboard the Red King that…scared them,” he finished, finding no more appropriate word than the one he had just used. “So they destroyed the Red King, along with their own ship—which they intentionally used to ram the Rim Fleet Corvette—before scouring the debris field with the Destroyer’s weapons.”

“What could scare a Droid?” McKnight asked, and for a moment the silence on the bridge was deafening as every assembled crewmember contemplated her ominous question.

“Whatever it was,” Middleton gestured to the main viewer, which was once again filled with a three-dimensional representation of the space between the Pride and the fourth planet, “there’s a good chance it came from down there—and I aim to find it.”

Chapter V: Advantage: Pride

“Forward shields at 74%, Captain,” the Shields operator reported after the fourth volley from the Droid warship struck their defensive barriers.

“Returning fire,” Toto growled, and an instant later the forward battery of the Pride of Prometheus lanced out into the void between the dueling warships. “Four hits,” Toto grumbled in disappointment before explaining, “enemy vessel still in jamming field; targeting accuracy down. Enemy shields at 35%; he is rolling to present his starboard flank.”

“Steady as she goes, Tactical,” Middleton chided neutrally. “Even with our diminished accuracy, she can’t stand in much longer. Helm,” he turned to Helmsman Marcos, the blond-haired woman who had risen above her personal demons during her time aboard the Pride of Prometheus and proven to be the best pilot in Middleton’s tenure as Captain—including the ornery, late, Lieutenant Commander Jersey, “keep our bow on her, but continue to work toward the planet at best possible speed. I don’t want to give them any more time to cover their tracks down there than is absolutely necessary.”

“Yes sir,” she acknowledged, her blond ponytail bobbing up and down as she manipulated the Pride’s maneuvering controls and brought the ship into a picture-perfect, gently-bending arc toward the planet while keeping the Pride’s most robust shield facing—her bow—squarely aimed at the enemy vessel. She accomplished this by smoothly rolling the ship and firing the engines in sequence and time so that the bow never wavered from the enemy vessel so much that they would expose their lighter-shielded flank.

For just once in his life, Middleton would have liked to enjoy a speed advantage over his enemies but, given his vessel’s peculiar limitations, his crew was handling her as well as a ship of her class could be handled. He was incredibly proud of his ramshackle collection of souls aboard the aging warship, and he knew that their having rounded into form was due in no small part to Lieutenant McKnight’s diligent implementation of training regimens and exercises, including more-than-frequent readiness drills. What he lacked—primarily ‘people skills’ and an attention to the more bureaucratic aspects of command—she excelled at, and the two had settled into a remarkably smooth-running rhythm almost immediately after he had named her his XO.

“Curious that they have not yet launched assault droids,” Fei Long observed, “I am detecting no active communications which would indicate a detachment of disembarked forces, Captain.”

“Thank Murphy for small miracles,” Middleton said as another volley splashed against the Pride’s forward shields.

“Shields at 66%,” the operator reported promptly. “The grid is stable, Captain; no fluctuations detected on my board.”

“Remind me to buy Chief Garibaldi a case of Caspian banana mint rum,” Middleton said, making no attempt to hide his amusement at publicly pointing out Mikey’s favored night cap.

“Awful stuff, that,” McKnight remarked casually as she stepped away from Shields. “I shared a bottle with my girls during college graduation week, and we woke up the next day with a headache you wouldn’t believe—and a mess in the lavatory that none of us was eager to take on.”

Fighting to keep a grin from his lips, Middleton scolded, “Stow that, XO.”

“Yes, Captain,” she acknowledged professionally, but the two shared a brief look of amusement before returning to the task at hand. The truth was that the Droid warship seemed almost eager to sacrifice itself in a fight against the Pride of Prometheus, and Middleton was in no mood to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. His policy of ‘shoot first, and figure out why they were acting strangely after the situation has been secured,’ had served him well during his life—especially when it came to Droids.

“Firing,” Toto said in his deep, occasionally bi-tonal voice, and the Pride’s forward battery once again stabbed into the darkness. This time, he snorted triumphantly, “Nine strikes; enemy shields down.”

“My compliments to the gun deck,” Middleton said before flipping his chair’s com-link to Sergeant Gnuko’s channel. “Are your people ready, Sergeant?”

“Lined up and waiting for the snap, sir,” Gnuko replied promptly.

“We’re going to finish this Destroyer off from here,” Middleton explained, “and once she’s down, we’ll settle into geosynch over the source of this jamming signal. Your people will head down and investigate; we haven’t detected any Assault Droids, so your people will likely face an unfriendly welcoming party if they manage to find what they’re looking for.”

“We’re ready for ‘em, Captain,” Gnuko said confidently. “Is this a search-and-rescue op, a take-and-hold, or a straight recon insertion?”

“Start with recon,” Middleton replied, “but have the shuttle ready to provide tactical support should the need arise. We won’t launch the shuttle without a reasonable target in mind.”

“Captain,” Hephaestion interrupted, “the Destroyer appears to have suffered significant damage.”

“That was the intention, Sensors,” Middleton said with a stern look.

“No, Captain, I mean before this battle,” the young man explained. “Their power grid is fluctuating and their drive unit is emitting considerably more radiation than is usual for its class. We have not yet hit them severely enough to be responsible. Judging by the radiation’s intensity and type, I believe their hyper drive has been catastrophically damaged as well.”

Middleton nodded, and was glad that the enemy ship’s reason for making a heroic last stand was now clear. “Good work, Sensors,” he congratulated the young man. “Tactical,” he turned to Toto, “have Gunnery tear that ship apart at their leisure.”

“Yes sir,” Toto acknowledged.

No more than fifteen minutes later, the Droid warship was a slowly-expanding cloud of debris following a core explosion, and Middleton’s people turned their attention to the planet.

The shuttle glided smoothly through the outer envelope of atmosphere, and Lu Bu checked her team’s gear one last time. Lancers Funar and Traian were present, as was Bernice, and the newly-acquired Steve ‘Hutch’ Inson was also present. Each was wearing form-fitted Storm Drake armor, while the remaining seventeen occupants of the shuttle wore old-style Confederation power armor.

Hutch, as he liked to be called, had proven himself more than capable in all of the aptitude tests, and Sergeant Gnuko had agreed with Lu Bu’s assessment that he could contribute on the Recon Team. Normally, Recon duty was reserved for specialists who had years of experience in related fields, but the Pride’s Recon Team was necessarily built around minimum physical attribute standards, ability to think critically in high-pressure situations, and above all, a willingness to leap headfirst into an unknown situation so that those who followed would have much-needed intel. There were precious few experts of any kind in the MSP’s ranks, so Lu Bu’s commanders were forced to improvise to the best of their ability.

But it was a job which presented everything Lu Bu could have ever asked for, and it made her think on her professional smashball-playing days like one might think on time spent in primary school: a necessary step in the learning process, and ultimately a mere shadow of the real thing.

“Touching down in three minutes,” the pilot reported.

Her helmet’s HUD flashed briefly, indicating the Lancer command channel was being pinged, and she saw Kratos place a hand to the side of his helmet just as she did likewise. “The LZ has sustained a serious pounding from orbital laser strikes,” Sergeant Gnuko’s voice crackled over her helmet’s com-link, “and it’s got a higher rad level than you’d want to sunbathe in, but your armor will protect you from its effects for at least three hours. The op is simple,” he continued, his voice becoming increasingly distorted the closer the shuttle came to the surface, “scout the area and, if possible, find any leads as to what the Droids were doing here. It goes without saying that, should you discover any sign of Dr. Schillinger, or her team, their recovery takes precedence over all other objectives. Also, pound any mechanicals you see into the scrap metal they are. Good hunting, Lancers.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” she replied, while Kratos did likewise. Since he had assumed command over the Assault Team just a few weeks earlier, the Tracto-ans aboard the Pride of Prometheus had banded together unlike anything she would have imagined possible after seeing how they had behaved under Atticus’ leadership.

“Recon Team,” she said, switching to the Recon channel, “communication will be short-range when we touch the planet’s surface. Remain in tight formation; Bernice will take point, with Vali and Traian covering the rear. Hutch, you stay with me,” she instructed, and each of her Lancers acknowledged affirmatively in turn. “Assault Team is equipped with ion rifles,” she continued, gesturing to Kratos’ warriors, “but we use blaster rifles. We also bring ion grenades, since planet has extremely thin atmosphere which will let them work. Ion grenades can knock out HUD,” she tapped her head, “but all other suit functions are hardened against ion interference. So we take point ahead of Assault Team,” she finished, making sure her team knew there was very little danger to them since they were each clad in Storm Drake armor, which had proven essentially impervious to ion weapons during her last mission.

“Do we have any information on the LZ?” Traian asked.

“We believe it was the site of archeological dig,” Lu Bu replied, “but Droid warship destroyed any camp from orbit before we arrived. Also, the Droids fired heavily into the ground three kilometers north of here,” she continued as the shuttle began to decelerate in preparation for landing, “but our orders are to secure dig site first, and investigate northern area second.”

“Understood, ma’am,” Private Funar said just before the shuttle set down.

“Recon Team,” she barked, taking to her feet and slapping the cargo door control panel, causing it to open considerably more quickly than the old shuttle’s had done, “move out!”

“South zone looks clear,” Bernice reported through heavy static, “proceeding to east zone.”

“Acknowledged,” Lu Bu replied promptly before using hand signals to coordinate the rest of her team’s advance toward the site. There were dozens of craters surrounding the site, courtesy of orbital bombardment by the Droid Destroyer which the Pride had pounded into scrap less than an hour earlier.

The team moved forward to the edge of the ravine and Lu Bu peered over the edge, noting the tattered remnants of nearly a dozen tent-like structures which she recognized as some sort of atmosphere-retaining, easy-to-setup hab modules. They were expensive to purchase and maintain, which suggested that they had indeed located the site of the archeological team’s camp.

“Contact,” Bernice’s voice crackled over the link, and Lu Bu’s people immediately took cover behind a series of rocky outcroppings overlooking the campsite.

Lu Bu crept up to where she could see Bernice, who was nearly a hundred meters from her current position and approximately halfway down the slope leading to the ruined campsite. She tracked where Bernice gestured once the two made eye contact, and looked to see an Assault Droid moving slowly around the area. Its movements were jerky and strangely uncoordinated, although it appeared to have sustained light damage, at most.

Not wanting to pass up the opportunity for a quick kill, Lu Bu used hand signals to communicate to Funar, Traian, and Hutch that they were to open fire on the Droid in five seconds’ time. They had good cover, a superior angle, and a member of the team flanking the only visible enemy. The situation was unlikely to improve, so she powered up her blaster rifle, leaned around her protective shelf of rock, and opened fire in unison with the rest of her team when the five seconds elapsed.

The Assault Droid’s body was hammered by multiple blaster rifles firing in near-perfect unison—Hutch was the lone member whose shot arrived late, causing him to miss while the other four found the mark—and after a second salvo the machine’s wrecked body ceased all motion.

Lu Bu watched, waiting for additional movement and, surprisingly, she found some. With Bernice’s eyes still on her, Lu Bu made a pair of hand gestures which told her where the second Assault Droid was located. Bernice acknowledged and, after checking the area, returned a gesture which said there was another warrior machine on the other side of a far tent.

Lu Bu motioned for Vali and Traian to circle around the opposite side of the camp so they could pin the pair of droids down with an inescapable crossfire, and they swiftly—and silently—complied. Fifty six seconds later, Lu Bu opened fire on the droid she could see and her companions did likewise, peppering the ground with blaster bolts as the hapless droids were torn apart by their precise, savage, fury.

When the dust had settled, her detached members signaled that all was clear, so Lu Bu ordered them to remain in position while she and Hutch went down to investigate further.

The campsite appeared barren, aside from a pair of relatively intact tents, and it was toward the nearest of these that Lu Bu made her way. Roughly a third of its support structure was still upright, including that portion with the multiple tent flaps which acted as a kind of airlock, so she approached and placed the muzzle of her rifle into the seam between the flaps and quickly tore open the rightward flap while Hutch did likewise to the left.

Nothing was inside, but the inner flaps—which were considerably stronger, owing to their more critical nature to maintaining breathable air inside the tent before it had been torn apart—had been shredded by what looked like droid blaster fire. She moved inside and found a bloodstain on the ground, not far from which was a human body.

The body was that of a dark-skinned man, and he wore the uniform of a military officer of some kind. His head had been almost completely disintegrated by what was clearly point-blank droid blaster fire, but his uniform clearly showed that he had been a member of the Red King’s crew. The chin portion of a head bag was lying across his neck, and Lu Bu took several images of the scene using her helmet’s built-in camera.

A quick scan of the remaining interior space revealed nothing of note, so they moved on to the second structure after communicating what they had found via hand signals. The second tent was in even worse shape than the first, with all of its supporting structure having been flattened. But the tent canvas itself was more or less intact, so she signaled that she would cover Hutch while he pulled back a section of canvas—Lu Bu had proven thus far to be the superior shot, so she decided she should provide cover.

Hutch moved forward without any trepidation that she could see and peeled back a section of crumpled canvas, revealing what looked to be a smashed desk of some kind. There were several data slates scattered on the ground, some of which looked like they might even be salvageable, so she snapped some pictures of them before they moved on to another section of tarp.

Hutch threw back this section and they found nothing but the wrecked frame of the tent lying beneath. There was some blood on the ground, but not a fatal quantity, and there were no other signs of activity so they moved on to the last large section of the tent.

This time when Hutch threw back the canvas, a blur of motion erupted as he did so and before even Lu Bu could fire off a shot, an Assault Droid—in apparently undamaged condition—sprang up and attempted to knock the new Lancer over.

But Hutch, amazingly, kept his feet beneath him as the mechanical warrior pressed forward with a series of lurching, jerky movements. Lu Bu even managed to fire off a round, which struck the droid in the flank before Hutch drew his vibro-blade and inexplicably grappled with the machine. His legs churning beneath himself as his back stiffened, Steve Inson somehow unbalanced the droid and, like something from a fantasy holo-vid, threw the droid onto its side. He went to the ground with it, stabbing down with savage, but contained, ferocity. His vibro-blade plunged deep into the lesser-armored sections of the droid’s central axis, and after a half dozen such blows the creature was rendered inert.

Just for good measure, Lu Bu stepped forward and blew the arms off the machine—arms which were still armed with their built-in blasters that had, for some reason, not been used against Hutch.

“Thanks,” Hutch said over the crackling com-link.

She made a signal to maintain radio silence, giving him a stern look which he took as gracefully as a chastised warrior who had just won a life-and-death struggle could take such a rebuke.

After securing the area, Lu Bu went back to the shattered desk and retrieved the data slates. Several of them appeared burned at their interface ports, but she suspected that Kongming could still retrieve at least some data from them—he was essentially a grand master at all things involving virtual data.

When she had picked up the four slates which could potentially be salvaged, she stuffed them in a satchel she had slung across her back and gestured to her companions to move north while she went to the highest ground she could find.

Once she had scaled the scramble-strewn slope, she held up a high-powered strobe and pointed it in the direction of the shuttle. A few seconds later, she saw the shuttle lift off the ground several kilometers away and streak toward her location. Her team had crossed the terrain on foot, but the Assault Team would be spared the same experience since her people had already cleared the area.

When the shuttle set down just a few meters from her position, the cargo doors opened and Kratos leapt out, followed soon after by his Assault Team’s most accomplished warriors—Tracto-ans all.

“Secure the site,” Lu Bu instructed over the Lancer command channel, gesturing to the remnants of the campsite. “Four Assault Droids have been eliminated, but there may be more. No survivors found, but you should recover all bodies and equipment we can fit on shuttle.”

“Understood,” Kratos replied, his deep voice that sounded like iron gouging into stone made even more distinct by the severe static pervading the comm. frequencies. Not three seconds later, his people had been deployed in three separate teams, with half of the Assault Team descending the scramble toward the campsite while two teams of four Lancers each set up on opposing points of high ground flanking the site.

She nodded in satisfaction at seeing that Kratos knew how to deploy his people—but more importantly, that his people were obeying him without question—and she waved to her people to return to the shuttle.

With their first objective complete, Lu Bu’s people filed into the shuttle so they could investigate their second target.

“I think you should come up here, Corporal,” the pilot called over the shuttle’s intercom, so Lu Bu unstrapped from her seat and made her way into the cockpit. She quickly moved into the co-pilot’s seat and strapped in before looking at what the pilot had indicated—a sight which took her breath away.

Below them was a gaping wound in the surface of the planet which could have only been caused by repeated, thoroughly excessive, laser strikes from orbit. But the damage was more severe than she had ever heard of, with a blast zone that looked like it might have been a kilometer across.

But its diameter was far from the breathtaking part; the depth of the impact zone was truly staggering. It was as though a giant drill had dropped from the heavens and dug a roughly cylindrical shaft which extended almost perfectly straight down into the ground.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” the pilot said over the Lancer command channel. “It must have taken weeks—or months—of sustained bombardment by that Destroyer’s entire arsenal.

The edges of the crater were smoldering in some places, but somehow the shaft itself—which she now saw narrowed fairly quickly until it measured nearly two hundred meters across roughly two miles down—was relatively clear to look down into. “Can we go down?” she asked.

“Negative,” he replied, “the heat’s too intense and that shaft is unstable; it’s experiencing all kinds of updrafts that might send us into the wall. My scanners are reading nothing but molten rock at the bottom, anyway; if there was anything down there to begin with, it’s gone now.”

“They were digging down with lasers from orbit,” she said scornfully as she saw the shaft seem to belch a plume of grey smoke, bolstering the pilot’s assertion as to its instability, “but we interrupted them. Whatever they want is still there.”

“Of course ma’am,” the pilot acknowledged. “It probably didn’t take them long to make the crater,” he offered as they swooped lower to skirt the edge of the crater itself, “but once they got down to the denser material it probably took them just as much time to clear away the rubble by using explosive blasts as it did to gouge away the material. My grandpa was a Belter; he used to go on and on about the difficulties of working in gravity compared to zero-g.”

“Are you taking images?” Lu Bu asked as she saw a section of the crater’s edge slough away and slide down into the tunnel.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, and a series of still images appeared on a console in front of her after he input some commands to his console. The stills were accompanied by wide-spectrum video footage which showed no activity anywhere near the crater itself. Apparently the Droids, which had been acting strangely and borderline suicidal, had not stationed any of their units this close to the crater.

Too bad, Lu Bu thought with disdain.

“Gather the images and we will return to the campsite,” she instructed.

“Aye, ma’am,” he acknowledged, and the shuttle made one more three hundred sixty degree pass of the crater before doing as she had ordered.

Chapter VI: Cracking the Code

Fei Long worked at his terminal on the bridge, the nagging sensation that he recognized something about the signal emanating from the planet growing with each passing minute.

Lu Bu had returned from the planet’s surface with reports of strange droid behavior, and close-up visual evidence of the unthinkable hole which the Droid Destroyer had gouged into the surface of the world from orbit using their most powerful weaponry. She had retrieved a small collection of badly damaged data slates, and Fei Long had already gone over all but one of them and found them to be irreparably damaged.

It seemed that someone had attempted to interface with the data slates and, upon doing so, had initiated some kind of deliberate feedback surge into the circuitry which powered the slate’s functions—including their data storage components.

There had been traces of information left in the slates’ buffers, but none of it had been helpful in the least, so Fei Long worked with a surgeon’s precision as he opened the final slate and felt a wave of elation upon seeing that this particular slate’s safety mechanisms had kicked in before the innards of the device had been completely cooked by whatever energy surge had ruined the others.

After carefully connection a series of hard lines to the slate, and checking for any energy irregularities, Fei Long activated the connection between his isolated workstation on the bridge and the data slate.

A stream of mathematical gibberish appeared, and Fei Long’s prior sense of elation was dashed against the cruel, hard rocks of reality. It seemed there was some form of data corruption which had replaced every last piece of information on the slate, and he sighed as he watched the seemingly endless stream of alpha-numerics stream across the workstation.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed the back of his neck as Captain Middleton asked, “Have you found anything, Mr. Fei?”

 “No, Captain,” he replied with a shake of his head. “It would seem that they have all been too badly damaged,” he said, gesturing to the screen full of seemingly random numbers and letters.

But then he saw a fragment of code and, like a light going on in the back of his mind, he realized what it was that had seemed familiar about the jamming signal.

“Sima Yi?” he breathed unthinkingly, his throat tightening as he did so. “Impossible…” he breathed, leaning forward and, after several seconds, finding that same string of code—his code!—buried in the data stream. The reason he had not recognized it earlier was because it was incomplete; only the access algorithm remained wholly intact, while the attendant programs were of a completely different design—a design with which he was only too familiar. “You backstabbing little thief,” he cursed under his breath in his native tongue after deducing who had stolen his code, knowing it could have only been one person.

“What is it?” Captain Middleton asked, swiveling his Command Chair toward Fei Long’s trio of workstations in the Comm. section.

“I believe I have gleaned at least some useful information from these slates, sir,” Fei Long explained. Gesturing to the isolated console, he continued, “There are traces of an old…acquaintance of mine’s handiwork here, Captain Middleton. There can be absolutely no doubt, since this person is the only one who had access to any of my source code—code which is present, at least partially, in the program which has wiped this particular slate clean.”

Captain Middleton arched an eyebrow. “You’re friends with people who work for the Raubachs?” he asked, a hint of warning in his voice.

Fei Long shook his head, “Whatever our…relationship had been was dissolved the day the Purity Bureau arrested me—an event I later learned had been orchestrated by my revealed nemesis. This person is my sworn enemy, Captain,” he assured his Lord and Master, “and I can assure you that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to erase every trace of my rival’s existence from the universe.”

“A rival?” Middleton repeated with a hint of incredulity. “That’s high praise, coming from you.”

“I do not bestow it lightly, sir,” Fei Long assured him after scanning the repeating data stream and concluding that the slate was well-and-truly empty of any usable information. “Aside from myself, this is the most dangerous living person of whom I am aware,” he said matter-of-factly, knowing that while the technical disparity between their skills was wide enough to be definitive – in Fei Long’s favor, of course—Fei Long came up short when it came to a certain…guile which his arch-nemesis had been shown to possess ‘in spades,’ as his crewmates would say.

“Does this information help us here and now?” Middleton asked, and his question snapped Fei Long’s attention back to the present.

Fei Long pondered the question for several seconds before realizing that it almost certainly did, “Yes, Captain, I believe it does.” He initiated a complete system purge of the isolated console after disconnecting the data slate and placing it into an isolation container. He then opened his DI-linked console and accessed the topographical data gathered by the Recon Team. While he did that, he cross-referenced the Harmony Destroyer’s best-known specifications and made adjustments to his hasty calculations based on the damage Hephaestion had noted to the enemy vessel prior to its engagement with the Pride of Prometheus.

After tweaking a few more variables, he forwarded a set of coordinates to Hephaestion’s console. The young man made eye contact and nodded, to acknowledge he had received the instructions, and Fei Long turned to Captain Middleton.

“I believe I have triangulated the most likely location of the access way which will lead us to whatever it was that the Droids were digging toward,” Fei Long explained. “I have forwarded the coordinates to Hephaestion’s terminal, but he must re-calibrate the sensors to detect the relatively tiny passageway.”

Middleton narrowed his eyes, “You deduced its location based on a fragment of code you found on a data slate?”

Fei Long blinked in surprise, realizing just how insane it must have appeared to his commander since the other man lacked the necessary expertise. He was about to explain how various wireless frequencies—like those on which the data slate he had just examined operated—could actually be adjusted to ‘piggyback’ on the widespread interference being pumped out by the jamming field’s generator, if one knew the algorithm operating said field’s seemingly random fluctuations, but he paused before saying a word.

He did so because he realized that he would then also have to explain how the topography of the area only allowed for a single subterranean access point which could have allowed back-and-forth communication with the data slate in question over those frequencies. And, to top all of that off, he would then have to explain how he had gained familiarity with this ‘piggybacking’ technique—one he had learned from his aforementioned arch-nemesis—and all of that seemed to constitute what Captain Middleton would refer to as a ‘long answer.’

So, instead of spewing technical jargon and launching into a long exposition on particle emission theory, Fei Long merely bowed his head deferentially and said, “Yes, Captain Middleton; I was.”

“Scan the area once your modifications have been made, Sensors,” Captain Middleton said after looking at Fei Long doubtfully for a moment. He then swiveled his Command Chair around to face Hephaestion’s console before adding, “I’m glad you’re on our side, Mr. Fei.”

“As am I, Captain,” Fei Long assured him with absolute honesty before returning to his duties.

“So it looks like the walls of this shaft,” McKnight gestured to a three dimensional representation of the area where Fei Long had correctly guessed the location of the access way to the facility buried deep under the planet’s surface, “is composed entirely of carbon. We suspect it’s skinned with graphene and supported with braces comprised of carbon nanotubes,” she explained, pulling up some technical specifications as she did so.

“How far down does it go?” Sergeant Gnuko asked from the far end of the table. He was flanked by Kratos and Lu Bu, his team leaders.

“Twenty two miles,” McKnight replied promptly. “Given the planet’s relatively stable geological phase near the end of its atmospheric-retention life cycle, we’re putting ambient temperatures at the bottom somewhere around one hundred thirty degrees C.”

“Nothing like a sauna first thing in the morning to get the blood pumpin’,” Garibaldi quipped dryly, making clear his dislike of high ambient temperatures.

“Will that be an issue for any of your equipment, Chief?” Middleton asked, knowing that Garibaldi and a team of his people were going to be needed once they got down to…whatever it was.

“Shouldn’t be,” Garibaldi replied after a moment’s thought. “Depends on the humidity though,” he added belatedly, “if it’s over 70% at the temperatures we’d expect down there, we could have some issues.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” McKnight assured him, “the graphene—if that’s what the passage is actually made of—shouldn’t allow water vapor through, and even if it did the atmosphere on this rock is so thin it wouldn’t persist down there for any length of time before the heat blew it straight out the top of the shaft.”

“Speaking of the shaft,” Gnuko leaned forward, gesturing to the screen, “how are we supposed to get down it? That thing only looks like it’s about three feet wide, and I didn’t see anything about a lift mechanism.”

“We’re going to have to hope that whatever lift mechanism was used by the archeological team is still functional,” Middleton said.

“And…just how do we know the archeological team is even down there, Captain?” Garibaldi asked skeptically.

Middleton turned to Fei Long, “Mr. Fei?”

Fei Long stood with his usual grace and turned to address the Chief Engineer. “I have uncovered incontrovertible evidence which points to Raubach operatives at work inside this subterranean structure, Chief Garibaldi. There is no possibility of error on my part in this matter,” he added with a smooth, but unyielding note to his voice when Garibaldi scoffed quietly. “My best conclusion, given the facts available to us, is that the archeological team discovered the shaft some time ago and at least some of them attempted to hide below the surface when the Red King entered orbit. They failed to cover their tracks sufficiently and the Red King’s crew pursued them below ground. Before all of the Red King’s crew could exit the facility, however, the Harmony Droids appeared and destroyed the Red King, stranding the human survivors—a group possibly comprised of both archeologists and Raubach operatives—below ground.”

“What is ‘graphene’?” Kratos asked, waving to the screen and making no attempt to hide his scientific ignorance.

Fei Long bowed slightly as he replied, “It is one of the first forms of advanced carbon architecture of which humanity is believed to have been capable of producing. It has fallen out of favor as a core building material in modern times due primarily to economic reasons, but essentially it is a nearly-indestructible sheet of carbon with a thickness measured in atoms.”

“Nothing is indestructible,” Kratos said flatly.

“It’s about as close to indestructible as it can be what with only being atoms thick,” Gnuko said evenly.

“Why not construct starships—or armor—from this mythical substance then?” Kratos asked in a clearly challenging tone, his lone eye narrowing skeptically.

“There are significant engineering obstacles,” Middleton interjected, “not the least of which is constructing a superstructure that’s capable of maintaining the graphene’s position when a tear actually does occur. The value of graphene is that it is a continuous sheet, which is a major plus until you realize just how much tension is placed on the stuff to make it form a battle-ready armor coating. One tear and the whole thing starts to unravel, and there’s no way to fix it under less than ideal circumstances.”

“Alloys will always beat carbon since metal can be mended on the fly,” Garibaldi agreed, “but in certain applications, graphene is pretty invaluable and still sees plenty of usage.”

“The fact that this passageway was constructed using it,” Fei Long continued, smoothly interjecting himself into the conversation, “suggests that either it was built by humans and subsequently forgotten, or…” he trailed off with a pointed look on his face.

The room was silent for several seconds until, naturally, Garibaldi quipped, “What, you mean this was built by aliens?”

Much as Middleton desired to engage in idle speculation along with the rest of his officers, he knew he needed to keep the meeting on point so he said, “Thank you, Mr. Fei. This meeting, and the intelligence gained on the planet, must remain compartmentalized to the department heads present and, naturally, any personnel who are assigned to the away mission. But let’s cut the talk of aliens for the time being, shall we?”

“Yes sir,” Lieutenant McKnight said, ever the apple polisher, but in this case it was an attribute he appreciated in his XO.

“We’ll send down a part comprised of three teams,” Middleton said, tilting his head toward Sergeant Gnuko and his people. “We’ll need the Recon Team to escort the specialists—in this case, Mr. Fei and the two engineers Chief Garibaldi selects to accompany him—and we’ll need the Assault Team to secure the surface entry to the passage while providing support for Recon, as Corporal Lu secures the subterranean end. Due to the jamming field, communications will be limited so each member of the away team will need to be capable of thinking on his or her feet. The shuttle launches in twenty minutes—dismissed.”

Chapter VII: First Contact

 “It looks like it’s through here, Corporal,” Vali Funar reported after coming out of one of the seemingly endless number of crags in the canyon’s wall. “I see Confed-style boot prints and what looked like an interface about a hundred meters in.”

Lu Bu nodded, “Good work.” She turned to see Fei Long, who was accompanied by Garibaldi’s two engineers, examining an outcrop of rock with intent fascination. “Fei,” she snapped after several seconds of patiently waiting for him to take the hint that he was holding up their progress. “Long!” she snapped, and he turned to face her through his pressure suit’s face shield. “We have found the passage,” she explained, gesturing to the crag from which Funar had just emerged.

“Of course,” he replied, giving one last look at the rock shelf before trudging—awkwardly—toward her. He possessed a truly brilliant mind, but his physical talents often left much to be desired, and he moved toward her with obvious difficulty. If he had not been so necessary to this particular mission—and if his ATTACK DOGs had not been rendered useless by the jamming field—he would most certainly have remained aboard the Pride of Prometheus.

But eventually he managed to cross the thirty meters which had separated them, and barely gave her a sideways look as he focused on moving his boots one in front of the other as he made to follow Vali Funar. Lu Bu turned to face Kratos who, along with the rest of his Assault Team members, wore old-style Confederation power armor. He had brought thirteen of his warriors with him, and Lu Bu knew that he would be able to hold the entry against anything but an all-out assault by an overwhelmingly powerful force.

“Send six of your people inside to guard the entry, Private Kratos,” she instructed, and he nodded wordlessly. Before she could finish her order—since she technically outranked him, as a Corporal—six of his people stepped forward as one. Realizing he must have relayed her order over his suit’s com-link as soon as she had given it, she smirked and continued, “Recon Team and specialists will attempt to descend; if we succeed, we will be out of contact until we return to surface. Your orders are to neutralize anyone who exits before us, using whatever means necessary, understood?”

“Understood,” he replied staidly.

“Good,” she said before turning to follow her group into the crag.

Funar had dropped light sticks at several points along the way, which helped prevent them from getting lost in the labyrinthine, criss-crossing series of apparently natural tunnels. But she soon came to Fei Long’s position and found that he had stopped to admire the rocks.

“Move, Fei,” she said, the name sounding awkward to her ears. She usually called him Kongming in private, as it was his chosen style name and was proper to use among peers. But on those occasions where she chose not to use his style name she called him Long, which was the given name of his birth. Referring to him by his family name had never seemed proper to her for some reason.

“Look at this, Fengxian,” he said, throwing protocol to the wind and using her chosen style name—the one shared by her historical namesake—as he pointed to a section of the rock, “these passages are artificial, and there is the proof.”

She looked skeptically to where he was pointing and leaned closer to see what he was indicating. It took her several seconds, but she eventually did recognize what he was fixated on: a segment of ‘rock’ which had been scored recently by something—a mark which looked suspiciously like that which a vibro-blade would make—and beneath that scoring was a sheet of clearly man-made or, if Kongming’s theory was correct, alien-made metal on which the rock had somehow been fused to give the appearance of a natural cavern.

“You find evidence of battle scene,” she said in their native tongue with a shake of her head, “but instead you report that the canvas on which the scene is painted is artificial? This is a combat zone, Kongming, not a science excursion; maintain your priorities.”

He turned to her with one of his insufferable, almost smug, looks and said, “We knew this was the site of some battle or another before we arrived, Fengxian. What we did not know was whether or not this entry was, indeed, created by non-humans.” He pointed at the vibro-blade mark, “The handheld scanners date this ‘rock-face’ to be somewhere between fifty thousand and five hundred thousand years old. This entry’s disguise was engineered before humanity could reliably harness fire, Fengxian,” he said with awe, and for a moment even Lu Bu had to admit that it was a fairly momentous discovery. He sighed wistfully and shook his head, “And, now that I have seen evidence of nonhuman intelligence having arisen independently in our own galaxy, I am left with one less unsolved mystery than I awoke to this morning. What a shame.”

Lu Bu rolled her eyes at his peculiar nature before giving him a not-so-gentle shove toward Funar’s position twenty meters ahead. “Move out, Fei,” she said in Confederation Standard, “stick to mission.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said in a jesting tone, but he somehow managed to evade her follow-up shove by skittering down the passage more quickly than she had assumed him capable of moving.

They came to a relatively large section of rock, in front of which was a small, portable micro-fusion generator connected to an access panel of some kind. The panel appeared to be something the archeologists had brought with them, which made sense to Lu Bu since they would have needed some sort of interface to open the passage.

“Can you use it?” she asked as Fei Long knelt carefully before the cube-shaped, two foot tall interface.

“Of course I ‘can’ use it,” he replied irritably as the two engineers gave the micro-fusion generator an inspection before giving him the thumbs up. “The only question is ‘how long will it take me’?”

He removed his suit’s gloves, which Lu Bu had advised against in the pre-flight briefing, but he had insisted that there was no other way he could interface with a keypad like the one they had found. Fortunately, the ambient temperature was only minus twenty degrees C, which meant that he would be able to work in the relatively arid environment for several minutes before needing to re-don his gloves and warm his hands.

Fei Long muttered to himself as he worked to connect a pair of his digital cracking devices to the interface, and Lu Bu turned to the other members of her Recon Team. “Traian, Funar,” she pointed to a nearby outcropping of ‘rock,’ which she now knew was merely cleverly-disguised panels of metal, “cover this wall from there. Bernice, Hutch,” she continued, pointing to a pair of points with significantly less cover, but they were the best that was available, “three point firing positions there. Do not fire unless I fire first, or I am killed.”

“Yes ma’am,” Hutch replied, while Bernice nodded sharply. A few seconds later, her team was in position and she could hear the crump of power-armored boots approaching. Her HUD, at this range, functioned well enough to show that they were Kratos’ people, doing as they had been instructed and coming in to cover the door.

“All too easy,” Fei Long said scornfully, and a moment later he turned to Lu Bu to say, “I shall summon the conveyance as soon as you are prepared.”

“Do it,” she said, kneeling in front of him and shouldering her rifle, uncertain of where exactly the passage’s entrance was located. A moment later, however, a section of ‘rock’ approximately five feet wide and eight feet tall parted in the center, and the two panels slid sideways to reveal an unexpected sight.

There was a chamber beyond, and it was circular in shape with dimensions of approximately ten feet from floor to ceiling, and thirty feet across. There were six one meter wide panels, which glowed with a soft, green light, and those panels were set equidistantly on the floor at the midway point of the room’s radius.

The walls of the room were made of a gleaming, silvery alloy, and the reason the walls gleamed was because a shimmering, liquid material bubbled up from the center of the room. The center of the chamber was slightly depressed into a shallow bowl-shaped area which filled the area between the six panels, and it gave the appearance of a glistening pool of water, the surface of which was neither placid, nor tumultuous. The pattern of the ripples seemed almost hypnotic, and Lu Bu forced her eyes from it as her mind was filled with an irrational fear that it could somehow affect her mind.

“Remarkable,” Fei Long said as he stood to move past her, but Lu Bu gripped his wrist in her Storm Drake-clad hand and yanked him back.

“Replace your gloves, Fei,” she snapped, and for a moment he scarcely seemed to notice she had spoken, but then he nodded and did as she had instructed. “Bernice, Hutch,” she beckoned, “secure the room—but do not touch the liquid.”

“Yes ma’am,” the two replied, and after a brief hesitation at the door, Bernice followed Hutch inside. The smashball player was proving to be as unflappable as Lu Bu could have hoped for, and after a careful—if a bit amateurish—sweep of the room, he gave Lu Bu the ‘all clear’ sign.

“Funar, Traian,” she said, standing from her crouch and stepping toward the room with Fei Long close at her heels, “cover the rear.”

The team moved into the chamber as she had instructed, and Fei Long knelt beside the pool of liquid. Before Lu Bu could chastise him, the pool seemed to swell in his direction and Lu Bu unthinkingly slammed into him with her shoulder, sending him sprawling away from the pool. After seeing he was clear of the pool, she turned and saw the liquid had risen up into the shape of a giant funnel. She tried to bring her blaster rifle up to defend herself, but the liquid enveloped her before she could do so.

Struggling in vain against the incredibly strong material’s grip, she saw her teammates rush to her side. But before they could act, she was filled with an overwhelming sense of vertigo as the world went black around her.

In what seemed like no more than a few seconds, she felt her limbs break free of the liquid and her vision returned. She fell to a heap on the floor, finding that all of her companions had vanished!

Bringing her rifle up, she visually cleared the room as her heart began to pound in her ears at the thought that, somehow, the liquid had frozen her in time while it had somehow disposed of her companions.

She rushed to the entry of the chamber and took up a firing position before realizing she was no longer in the same chamber she had just occupied.

The chamber’s dimensions and features appeared absolutely identical to her, but the door leading out of it did not connect to the false-rock-lined passageway through which she had entered a few minutes earlier. Instead, there was a long catwalk stretching far into the darkness before her, and she activated her helmet’s low-light visual filters to get a better look at her surroundings.

The catwalk was located in a long, perfectly cylindrical shaft that extended forward at least a hundred meters. Her helmet’s visual enhancement suite was incapable of allowing her to see any further. Before she could decide how to proceed, there was a splashing sound behind her and she spun to see Hutch on his hands and knees—much as she had been—above one of the six circular panels set into the floor. He quickly rolled forward and brought his vibro-blade up in a defensive grip before sighting her and relaxing fractionally.

“That was a good guess,” he said as he stood and sheathed the short blade. He then unslung his blaster rifle and gestured to the floor, “Long thought I should try a return trip to prove his theory.”

“Of course he did,” she said irritably before nodding. “Proceed.”

Hutch turned and knelt beside the pool of liquid, and just like it had done before, it rose up into a roughly conical shaped funnel. But this time, with the benefit of having survived the ordeal once herself, Lu Bu was able to take note of the bowl-shaped depression at the center of the chamber and saw that the ceiling of this chamber was also depressed. That part of the ceiling opened up like an iris, and just as Hutch was encased in the liquid, he was pulled — or sucked — up into the opening the iris had revealed. As soon as his body cleared the iris, it closed and Lu Bu was once again left alone.

Not more than a minute later, Fei Long emerged via the same mechanism with an eight year old’s grin plastered across his stupid face. “I love being right,” he said giddily before moving toward the door of the chamber and crouching behind Lu Bu, who shook her head at his childlike exuberance.

One by one, the rest of her team emerged through the strange transit device—which left them completely dry, Lu Bu noted after the third member of her team emerged—and she formed them up so they could investigate the area beyond the catwalk.

The catwalk extended for three hundred meters—and Lu Bu only realized when reaching the mid-point that the catwalk had almost certainly been built by the archeologists, since the pre-fabricated components bore legible markings in Confederation Standard. When they reached the far end, Lu Bu ordered her people to stop as she saw a flicker of light ahead.

When she gauged the distance to the flicker of light as being nearly fifty meters away, inside of what looked to be a vast cavern, she used hand signals to order her people to take up covering positions on the far end of the catwalk.

They filed quickly, and quietly, across the catwalk and Lu Bu adjusted her helmet’s pickups to compensate for the presence of the light source. When she did so, she saw a large, smooth structure in the middle of the cavern, and she signaled for Funar and Traian to cover the specialists while she, Bernice, and Hutch moved forward into the cavern.

The light was coming from what looked like a crack in the roughly dome-shaped structure at the center of the vast cavern, and Lu Bu quickly spotted human equipment—a micro-fusion generator, a trio of tents, and several empty crates—just outside the crack in the dome.

She heard noises coming from the structure as she approached, and realized it was muted speech, so she silently halted her people and increased the sensitivity of her helmet’s audio pickups. The suite of such features in her Storm Drake armor’s attached helmet wasn’t nearly as robust as those on a proper battle suit, but Lu Bu had long preferred the unrestrictive, form-fitting Storm Drake armor, and had decided that her team would don it whenever possible. Still, the built-in pickups managed to filter out the ambient noise inside the dome-shaped structure and allow her to hear the conversation inside.

“I’m telling you, we’re going to run out of food here,” a man’s voice said.

“Quit complaining, Kaep,” a woman rebuked acidly. “HQ knows we’re here; they’ll send a rescue operation any time.”

“The Commodore didn’t even send reinforcements to his firstborn son—and heir to the family fortunes—when he asked for them, Boldin,” the man retorted. “How much do you think he’s going to miss a couple of petty officers from one of his Corvettes? Nobody’s coming to help us; I say we make a run for it.”

“And go where, Kaep?” the woman, Boldin, snapped. “Just because the orbital strikes stopped a few hours ago doesn’t mean the Droids decided to give up the chase. They want what’s down here just as much as we do, but so far they haven’t managed to find the entrance or, even if they have, this archeo-tech might not allow them to pass.”

“But we’re running out of food, Boldin,” Kaep argued in a pleading tone. “We’ve only got another dozen ration bars, and we’ve recycled our water supply so many times I’d probably commit murder for a drink of fresh urine!”

“Pipe down,” Boldin chastised, “I thought I heard something.”

Lu Bu froze, and she could actually sense her teammates do likewise—apparently they, too, had piped into the conversation in the same fashion she had done.

Several seconds of silence ensued, followed by Kaep whispering, “What did you hear?”

“It must have been your nerves as they ran screaming into the night,” Boldin quipped before snickering.

“That’s not funny, Boldin,” Kaep said sourly as the woman continued to snicker.

“I know, I know,” she said, “but just look on the bright side: if we actually do run out of ration bars, at least we’ve got a fresh supply of protein in the back room.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Kaep said before making a strangled, choking sound which Lu Bu concluded was a suppressed bout of emesis.

“Pansy,” Boldin said, “besides, you’re the one who was begging to drink fresh urine a second ago.”

Another bout of retching on the man’s part ensued, followed by more snickers from the woman but Kaep eventually recomposed himself. “We’re here to retrieve whatever intel they might have,” he said in a lowered voice. “That’s our primary mission; the Commodore hasn’t exactly been pleased with this team’s leader, Doctor what’s-her-name, and her reluctance to contribute to his plans. How do you think the old man would treat us if we told him we ate an alternate source of the intel he’s after?”

“Don’t pretend you haven’t been thinking the same thing,” she said contemptuously. “You don’t get to claim the high ground any more than I do; we’re in this thing together—remember that. Besides,” she said bitterly, “at least it would put a permanent end to her rambling. That girl could talk a fusion reactor into submission.”

Deciding she had heard enough, Lu Bu gestured for her Lancers to flank the entrance to the structure while she prepared to approach with her blaster rifle drawn, ready to take down the pair of enemy operatives. Personally, she found their comments to be in bad taste, but she also understood the realities of subsistence living in a crisis. To teach her that particular lesson’s import, her ‘family’—the people who had given birth to her, and then subjected her to what she was quite certain any reasonable person would consider physical and psychological torture during her formative years—engineered a situation where she was forced to eat her lifelong pet dog in order to survive.

Pushing thoughts of that horrific period in her life from her mind, she shook her head sharply and padded toward the entry.

She could no longer hear their words, but she knew the Raubach operatives continued to speak from within the dome-shaped structure. When she reached the entrance, she risked a glance inside and was rewarded with a clear line of sight to a woman, who she assumed was Boldin. Her suspicion was confirmed when the woman spoke, and this time Lu Bu was close enough she did not need to use her helmet’s suite of audio pickups to listen in.

“This isn’t even an Ancient facility,” Boldin said argumentatively. “Most likely it was built by some aquatic species they, or someone else, uplifted—a species that evidently didn’t pass the self-destruction hurdle. Nothing here can be of too much value to our mission; I doubt the Commodore would argue with the evidence if we presented it accurately.”

Kaep scoffed loudly, “As if anyone knows what the old man will or won’t do? And even if we did manage to convince him of your version of things, we already know too much. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed,” he said, a hint of fear creeping into his voice, “but not a single one of the expeditionary teams—teams like ours—have returned as far as I can tell.”

“Hush,” Boldin snapped, and Lu Bu froze in position, her grip on her blaster rifle tightening as she prepared for the engagement, “I heard something.”

“More wisecracks?” Kaep sniffed. “Fool me once, shame on—“

Lu Bu spun around the edge of the door and snapped off a low shot at the woman’s legs, resulting in a clean hit which took her left leg off completely at the knee. The woman, surprisingly, kept her composure throughout and produced a blaster pistol which she fired—errantly—in Lu Bu’s direction before collapsing to the ground and writhing in agony.

Lu Bu turned the muzzle of her rifle toward the man, who was seated on a supply crate and raised his hands into the air in the universal sign of surrender. “How many others?” Lu Bu asked, the volume of her helmet’s external speakers cranked up to maximum. She had learned during her training that this was more conducive to a nonviolent end with a subject of Kaep’s apparent sensibilities—mainly, a potent, cowardly streak which ran down the middle.

He looked ashen-faced at his fallen companion for a moment before pointing, “You have to help her!”

Lu Bu took a menacing step forward, “How many others?!”

He leapt from the crate, apparently having forgotten all about the badass warrior woman who had an overpowered rifle pointed at his head. “Help me, quickly!” he cried as he sought to tear the sleeve from his uniform and apply it as a tourniquet to her bleeding stump of a leg.

Assuming the man had finally snapped, Lu Bu saw Bernice and Hutch appear to either side of her with their own weapons trained on the Raubach operatives—operatives who wore an unfamiliar uniform bearing a crest she recognized as belonging to the Rim Fleet. She stepped toward him and cradled her weapon across her body, “Answer my question, Kaep. How many others are here?”

“Nobody is going to be here if she dies!” Kaep snarled, pointing to her neck. Lu Bu followed his gesture and saw a collar-like device with some kind of transmitter attached to it, and Kaep continued, “She has the transmitter wired with explosives that will go off if her heart stops beating!”

Realizing the error of her ‘shoot first, ask questions later,’ philosophy, Lu Bu dropped her rifle and dove to the woman’s side. Before she could clamp down on the woman’s legs with her hands, however, Boldin’s eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped into unconsciousness.

“How far will transmitter go?” Lu Bu demanded, and for a moment Kaep actually seemed to process her question.

“Two hundred meters, no more,” he said. “We need to get out of here—there might be time to make the lift!”

“Where is prisoner?” Lu Bu demanded, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezing hard enough to cause a long-lasting bruise. To his credit, he stifled the yep he almost certainly wanted to issue, and jerked his chin in the direction of a crate on the far side of the chamber.

Without needing to be ordered, Hutch sprinted across the room and gave a sloppy ‘target acquired’ sign before slinging his rifle over his shoulder and drawing his vibro-blade. With just a pair of swipes, he cut through whatever it was he had been hacking, and bent down to collect a young woman’s limp, clearly malnourished form.

“Bernice, restrain Kaep and bring him,” Lu Bu instructed after securing the tourniquet around Boldin’s leg. The massive Tracto-an woman complied by placing the man’s wrists in zip-ties before doing likewise to his ankles, and finally ‘hog-tying’ him in reverse. Lu Bu cradled Boldin’s limp body in her arms. “No other survivors?” Lu Bu demanded as the collar around Boldin’s neck—which had been flashing green with the regularity of a well-conditioned heart’s beat—was now flashing yellow and less regularly.

“No, none,” Kaep replied quickly, “I swear on my family jewels!”

Glad to have secured a prisoner with such a wealthy family—Lu Bu had learned that people who had much would cooperate more readily than those who had nothing, since the fear of losing that which one has is greater than the hunger of not yet having anything—she ordered her Lancers to leave as she quickly spun around in the room, taking pictures of the scene before exiting.

When she turned to leave, she saw Fei Long was already inside the chamber. “Long—out!” she snapped.

“This could be our only chance to study it,” he gestured to the glowing orb resting halfway in the floor of the chamber.

“Do you see the explosives?” Lu Bu demanded, pointing to the pack of high explosives—which, she noted, had a flashing light which matched the one on Boldin’s neck perfectly. “We must go or we will die!”

Fei Long was many things, but a fool was not among them. Needing no further encouragement to do what any reasonable person would do, he turned and sprinted out of the room, followed quickly by Lu Bu and her Lancers.

“Go, go, go, go,” she barked after switching her helmet’s com-link to the Recon Team frequency. “To the lift—leave fast, no wait for teammates,” she ordered, her verbiage failing her in the tension of the situation.

Her Lancers complied, with Traian and Funar ushering Fei Long and the engineers back to the catwalk and sprinting down its length as Lu Bu, Bernice, and Hutch moved as quickly as they could manage. Which, given their respective physical abilities, was not altogether that much slower than the first group’s pace.

When they reached the lift, the light on Boldin’s neck flashed red and emitted a dire tone for ten seconds before there was a muffled whump from behind them, followed by the most incredible, grating sound Lu Bu had ever heard. All but she and Hutch had exited via the lift at that point, so she risked a glance behind her and saw what could only be magma flowing into the cavern in which the transmitter had been housed. She knew the transmitter had been there because no sooner had the explosion occurred than her suit registered the jamming signal’s disappearance.

And she also knew that the magma would seek to fill every nook and cranny of the underground compartment, which meant that she needed to leave if she wanted to live.

She turned back around just in time to see Hutch—who had already sent the woman he had carried up the lift system—be enveloped by the quasi-intelligent-looking liquid which then whisked him upward.

Lu Bu quickly laid Boldin’s body down next to the pool, knowing that even if there was a small chance of reviving her, she needed to take it. This mission was about gathering intelligence; there was no equivalent of ‘no man left behind’ in the mantras of any self-respecting Recon unit. If she needed to die so that her crewmates could have a small chance to recover much-needed intel on the enemy—intel which would most certainly save many of her crewmates’ lives at the inevitable future conflict—then she would gladly lay her life down for them.

The fluid rose up into its usual, slightly terrifying shape, and enveloped Boldin’s lifeless body before whisking her up and leaving Lu Bu alone. Lu Bu stood and fought against the fear she felt as waves of heat began blasting into the chamber, and she turned around to face the fires which may well end her life as she backed up toward the edge of the liquid pool.

The magma had nearly reached the chamber’s entry, but she defiantly stood her ground. She knew that Storm Drake armor was durable and incredibly thermal-resistant, but she could not conceive of a material that was flexible enough for her to move freely within that could withstand the awesome power of such molten fury. If she was going to die, she would do so facing her killer.

And then the world went black.

Lu Bu’s body rose up through the iris in the floor and Fei Long rushed to her side after the liquid substance deposited her on the floor. “Fengxian,” he cried, shaking her vigorously for a panic-filled moment before she stirred and shook her head as if to clear it.

She scrambled to her feet, brushing his concern aside as though it was an annoying fly—and in this particular instance, he was only too happy to receive the cold response to his concern since it meant she was fine. “Move out—move, move, move, move!” she roared, and Fei Long complied—but not until slapping the portable workstation the archeologists had used to access the doorway’s control mechanisms. His expert knowledge of that particular unit had allowed him to prep the unit’s data storage module for quick removal, and just as he had hoped, the one inch by three inch by five inch data storage module popped out into his waiting hands.

With it secured, he moved as quickly as he could—which was not very fast, even he was forced to admit—but with his girl’s loving support at his back in the form of not-so-gentle shoves to the small of his back, they exited the chamber and found open sky above them just as there was a muffled screeching sound from the area of the chamber.

Seconds later, the entire series of twisting, labyrinthine tunnels began to glow with heat, and he watched in morbid fascination as the entry to the only known structure fashioned by nonhuman intelligence was covered in fifty feet of molten minerals. It was only when the heat became dangerously powerful that he—and Lu Bu, who had been watching at his side—moved to a safe remove.

“Mission accomplished,” Lu Bu said over the mission’s designated com-link channel. “Deathbacker: prepare for extraction.”

Chapter VIII: Clues

“There was nothing I could do for her,” Jo said after emerging in failure from the surgical suite. “The neurological decay was too great by the time she got back to the ship.”

Middleton nodded, having known that successfully reviving the Raubach operative was a long shot. Jo had diligently worked toward that purpose for nearly two hours before finally conceding defeat, and Middleton briefly marveled at how Jo could work so hard to save the life of someone who had very likely contributed to her own personal misfortunes in recent months.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said officiously before gesturing to a nearby bed. “What about her?”

Jo nodded and moved to the side of the disheveled, horribly malnourished, woman’s side. “She’s been starved, that much should be obvious,” she said, “but her blood chemistry didn’t take much work to stabilize. I’ve given her a mild sedative which should wear off in two or three more hours; she was barely conscious when they picked her up, and the shock of moving her aboard the shuttle was almost more than her system could handle. I’ve introduced a series of muscle-regeneration modules which should get her back to functional strength after a few days of bed rest.”

“Will she survive?” Middleton asked, hoping for a reply in the affirmative.

Jo nodded, “Aside from the malnourishment there doesn’t appear to be any major physiological trauma. I can’t speak to her emotional state, though,” she added grimly. “Everyone copes with these kinds of events differently; some of us go into a shell and are never seen from again, while others just need a few weeks to catch their breath before going about their lives. My professional opinion is that any questions should wait until she’s ready to answer them; I can’t condone a stimulant-driven interview of this woman.”

Middleton nodded, having already arrived at the same conclusion. “Of course, Doctor. We already have a course to follow; there’s no need to put this woman under any more duress than she’s already experienced.”

Jo nodded and relaxed fractionally. “I honestly can’t believe it,” Jo said, shaking her head and removing the last of her surgical garb, “we had actual evidence of a nonhuman civilization right beneath our feet, but now it’s gone. It strains belief, doesn’t it?”

“I suspect that won’t be the most unbelievable thing we encounter in the coming weeks,” Middleton said, having made peace with the idea of nonhuman intelligence several years earlier when studying the Elder Protocols. The Elder Protocols were a series of computational algorithms which were, for lack of a better term, ‘poisonous’ to any form of artificial intelligence. Humanity had used them to great effect as a means to end AI domination of the galaxy, but the Protocols had defied logic and reason as far as any human expert who claimed to study them could tell. They were clearly not the product of human intelligence, which left only one other possibility.

Besides, as far as Middleton was concerned, the fact that humanity gave rise to artificial intelligence meant that life was nowhere near the unique occurrence which many humans seemed to so desperately want to believe. If humans could make a form of life—one which was, by nearly every available measure, vastly superior to human life—then it seemed inevitable to him that the universe could create, and almost certainly had created, other forms of life on humanity’s basic scale. The only people who seemed adamantly opposed to the notion of nonhuman, ‘spontaneously-arisen intelligence’—meaning that it wasn’t uplifted by humans—were elements of the Imperium of Man.

“You’re probably right,” Jo agreed as she adjusted some of the intravenous medications being given to the disheveled woman on the bed. “If she seems up to it, I’ll notify you as soon as she regains consciousness.”

“I’m inclined to follow the ship’s doctor in this matter, Doctor,” Middleton said with a gracious nod. “There’s no need to push her.” He turned to leave, paused briefly as he considered whether or not doing so would be rude, but then he continued when he remembered there were at least six pairs of eyes on them at that moment and he needed to set a professional example for the crew.

“What have you found, Mr. Fei?” Captain Middleton asked as soon as Fei Long had stepped through the door to his commander’s ready room.

“I have found further evidence of my rival’s activity here, Captain,” he replied, holding up the data storage module he had retrieved from the portable workstation. “Bits and pieces of my source code allowed her to overcome the relatively light encryption protocols which the archeologists had used to protect their data,” he explained, placing the module on the table before seating himself opposite his Captain. “Additionally, whatever information had once been contained on that unit has since been wiped clean. Either the data has been removed and stored elsewhere—likely on the Red King, or in the subterranean complex—or it was simply destroyed to prevent it from falling into enemy hands such as ours.”

Captain Middleton leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers before his nose—a gesture which Fei Long had come to learn was his Lord and Master’s way to enhance his focus. “So you were able to find absolutely nothing of value pertaining to the archeologists’ operation here?”

Fei Long suppressed a wince at the disappointment in his commander’s voice, but he grudgingly nodded, “That is correct, Captain. I have failed.”

Captain Middleton shook his head. “Nobody said you failed, Mr. Fei,” he said dismissively, but Kongming knew that his commander’s mind had already moved past the subject and he was contemplating the next course of action the ship would take. If Fei Long knew his commander’s mind—and he believed he did—they would resume course for Commodore Raubach’s hidden base, which was still several weeks’ travel from their current position. “Thank you, Mr. Fei,” Captain Middleton said with a nod. “That will be all; send in Lieutenant McKnight, please.”

“Of course, Captain,” Fei Long replied, collecting the useless data storage module and leaving the ready room feeling no small measure of disgrace. It seemed his rival was thwarting him even now, years after their most recent interaction, and he found his waking moments filled with plots to exact his revenge. “Lieutenant Sarkozy—my apologies,” he said, bowing as he realized that his tongue had been ‘on autopilot’ as his crewmates would say, “Lieutenant McKnight, Captain Middleton requests your presence.”

The Pride’s XO nodded, “Thank you, Mr. Fei.” She then handed off her duties to a subordinate before answering the Captain’s summons.

Fei Long sat at his station, checking the chronometer and finding that his current shift would not end for two hours, three minutes and fifty four seconds. He knew he would be unable to focus on anything but his planned revenge, so he called up the wiper code he had found on both the data slate and the data module he held in his hand.

He knew there was a weakness somewhere in his rival’s surprisingly improved technique, and Fei Long was determined to find it so he could right a wrong which had destroyed his entire life.

“The best we can figure it,” Garibaldi said from beside the conference room’s main view screen, on which was arrayed a series of images taken by Lu Bu prior to the subterranean facility’s destruction, “is that this was some kind of a shrine.”

Middleton’s eyebrows rose in surprise, “A shrine?”

“Yes, Captain,” Jo interrupted, “the geometry of the domed structure doesn’t seem to serve any purpose, and the markings we managed to find from the various picts and vids were etched into the stone. No species capable of building such a powerful transmitter—if that’s even what it really was,” she said pointedly, “would bother to etch those symbols into the walls. There are far better, longer-lasting methods available to a race of that technological level.”

“The prisoner,” Sergeant Gnuko leaned forward, gesturing to Lu Bu at his side since it had been her team which had captured the man, “corroborates this, as does the archeologist down in Medical.”

“You ran this by her?” Middleton asked, knowing that if anyone had done so without his permission it had been a flagrant breach of protocol, and a blatant disregard of his standing orders regarding the away team’s compartmentalized findings.

“Not exactly,” Jo said with a wry shake of her head. “As soon as she woke up she started running her mouth at the speed of light. It would seem she’s more resilient than most would prove to be, given her situation.”

“And she volunteered that the structure was a shrine of some kind?” Middleton asked, more to clarify that nobody had broken protocol.

“She did,” Gnuko replied confidently. “I was there when the tranquilizers wore off, and it wasn’t but five minutes before she started spouting off all that gobbledygook tech jargon,” he said with clear amusement, slicing a look at Fei Long—a look which the young man studiously ignored.

“You’ve verified her identity, Mr. Fei?” Middleton asked of the prodigal computer specialist.

“I have,” Fei Long replied with his usual confidence. If Middleton was being completely honest, the three day ‘leave’ period he had given the young man had done him some good. He still wasn’t the razor-sharp, laser-focused person who had first revealed himself so many months before, but he was still far and away the best at what he did on the ship. “She is a xenobiologist who was working on her doctoral thesis regarding divergent evolutionary paths which life might take, foremost among them a most fascinating dissertation on the possibility of life forming within gas giant envelopes…” the young man trailed off upon seeing Middleton’s impatient look. He recomposed himself and finished, “Her name is Felicitous Serendipity, but her style name is ‘Trixie.’ All of her identification checks out, Captain.”

“At least she won’t be a special security risk,” Middleton said. “And the signal that this ‘shrine’ was pumping out,” he gestured to the screen, “it’s been completely shut down?”

“Best we can tell,” Garibaldi replied, to which Fei Long nodded his assent. “It’s too bad we couldn’t get down there for a closer look at it, that’s for sure.”

“Speaking of our guest in Medical, Trixie,” Sergeant Gnuko said hesitantly, “she’s been asking to speak with you since she awoke, Captain. At first I thought it was just the standard ‘take me to your leader’ stuff, but she gets cagy when I try figuring out what it is exactly that she needs with you. It might be worth a few minutes of your time to go see her?”

Middleton nodded, “I agree. But I think we need to get out of this system; the Harmony Droid Tribe probably knows about this place, and there’s no telling if there are Droid…survivors down there,” he chewed the word ‘survivors’ as he spoke it, unable to ratify the word’s usual meaning with a condition for a mechanical being, “who managed to get a signal out after the jamming field went down.”

“It is a distinct possibility, Captain,” Fei Long admitted.

“And these code fragments,” Middleton said, pulling up a series of computer code strings onto the main viewer, “did you discover anything else about them?”

“It would appear,” Mr. Fei replied, “that my rival used this particular collection of code to activate the transmitter—or, perhaps a more accurate term would be ‘beacon’ since this was likely a religious site—and send out a seemingly random, scrambled field which is essentially uncrackable without access to the source code. This makes me doubt it was the originally-intended application, and that the operatives from the Red King were merely attempting to ‘buy themselves time,’ as the saying goes.”

“How could your code interface with that?” Middleton asked skeptically, tilting his head toward the lone remaining image of what they now believed had been the transmitter itself, situated in the center of the dome-shaped chamber.

“That is an…interesting question, sir,” Fei Long said hesitantly. “I originally designed the program to…well, for lack of a better term, ‘adapt’ itself to the target system’s architecture. It would seem that I programmed it more effectively than even I had anticipated,” he said finally, not sounding entirely convinced by clearly having considered the matter at some length, which meant that Middleton was unlikely to poke any holes in his reasoning with off-the-cuff queries.

“All right…I’ll go speak with our guest, Trixie, in Medical,” Middleton said after a moment’s consideration. “Lieutenant McKnight, have Navigator Strider work up a jump solution,” he said, turning first to his XO and then to Chief Garibaldi. “Are the jump engines ready for a point transfer, Chief?”

“We’re green across the board, Captain,” Garibaldi said smartly. “You give the word and we’re outta here.”

“Then let’s prepare to jump, but wait to begin the final spin-up until after I’ve spoken with our guest,” Middleton said, knowing it was possible—however unlikely—that this ‘Trixie’ would possess information which could alter his plans. “Dismissed.”

“How are you feeling, Miss Serendipity?” Middleton asked after pulling up a stool at the woman’s bedside. Her skin was ashen, but she sat upright in bed and gave him the full attention of what was clearly a keen mind.

“Are you Captain Middleton?” she asked, her words coming more quickly than he had expected. “I have heard so much about you from your crew, but I haven’t even seen a picture yet. Don’t you think that’s odd? Shouldn’t there be a picture of you up somewhere? Then again, that might be a bit ego-centric, and I’m not exactly an expert on military hierarchy. But still, I’ve been here for over twenty four hours—such an arbitrary number, isn’t it? Natural human circadian rhythms are set closer to twenty five hours than they are to twenty four,” she explained tangentially, and Middleton suppressed the urge to groan as he realized he had opened a conversation with a dyed-in-the-wool motor-mouth, “so wouldn’t it seem, I don’t know, efficient to toss out the old number and replace it with something that doesn’t require our neurophysiology to reset itself every single time we wake up—to say nothing of the symmetry between the number one hundred and the number twenty five, which would make calculating long periods of time that much easier than doing so with twenty four hours to the day, no? Then again, what’s with the whole chronometry system we use? I’m sure you’ve asked yourself the same question: haven’t we outgrown a metric of time based on the arbitrary behavior of water and gravity in a ‘one gee’ environment? And the ‘standard day’ we use—don’t even get me started on that one. Although,” she said ponderously, tapping her chin as she spoke, “I suppose it might just be more efficient to abandon sleep altogether; the human brain doesn’t really need it any more, not with advanced pharmacolo—“

“Yes, I am Captain Middleton. I’m glad to see you’re feeling better,” Middleton said, interrupting as gently as he could and dreading even the thought of this woman operating with stimulants coursing through her system that would keep her awake around the clock. “When you first arrived on the ship, we weren’t sure you would be up and about so quickly.”

“Oh, that’s me, all right,” she said cheerfully, a broad smile on her exceedingly gaunt face. “Always was a quick healer; you know what they say, ‘what must go up must come down,’ and I assume it’s the same with infection-driven fevers. Then again, there could be a sampling bias at play,” she said, narrowing her eyes in perturbation, “since the fevers that didn’t come back down would probably kill their attendant sick person and cause body temperature to plummet to ambient temperature, thereby making it less likely for those samples to find their way back into the data pool at a representative rate—“

“You wanted to speak with me?” he interrupted—slightly more forcefully than the last time.

“Of course,” she said, nodding quickly before closing her eyes, placing a hand to her temple and saying, “whoa…shouldn’t do that so fast. Either the grav-plates just failed or I’m still hypotensive.”

A quick glance at the readouts above Miss Serendipity’s head showed that she was, indeed, hypotensive at 70/45. But before he could assimilate the information, she began speaking again.

“The reason I wanted to talk with you was to discuss your intentions,” she said intently. “You have to understand that the University of Winlock will want their people and data returned at once. This whole business with those Rim Fleet pirates has set the committee’s plans back at least six months; we were supposed to have already excavated significant artifacts from the site, and all proceeds of our excavations—especially those artifacts—are strictly the property of the University—“

“I’m sorry,” Middleton interrupted, shaking his head, “but the site was destroyed by a bomb which your captors triggered as soon as my people moved in to rescue you.”

She stopped, her mouth agape for a full three seconds of blessed silence before her eyes narrowed. “How do I know you are who you say you are—in fact,” she added thoughtfully, “you haven’t even told me who you work for.”

“I’m the commander of the Pride of Prometheus, a cruiser attached to the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet,” he explained. “We’re on a patrol mission here in Sector 24,” he half-lied, “and when we arrived in this system we found a Droid warship firing on the planet’s surface. We dealt with the artificials and managed to locate the subterranean structure where you were being held prisoner.”

“Droids?” she repeated incredulously, her eyes flicking back and forth for several seconds before seeming to have arrived at a conclusion. “I guess I did hear them talking about ‘mechanicals’…but it was all something of a haze. I think they used a tranquilizer on me a starting a few weeks back…of course,” she said contemplatively, “it might have been a lot longer than that.” She looked at a nearby chronometer and nodded sharply, “That means I was held prisoner there for ninety six days.”

“The Rim Fleet operatives had been on the world for three months then?” Middleton pressed, hoping for some genuine intel to come from this meeting.

“Oh no, no, no,” she said, shaking her head—much more gently this time than the last, “they’ve been here—or, rather, they had been there—for almost a year. At first it didn’t seem all bad; Doctor Schillinger seemed to have expected them or, if not expected, then she didn’t seem all that surprised by their appearance. Although, I wouldn’t say she was exactly happy to see them—“

“I would appreciate you giving a full, detailed report to one of my crew,” Middleton said, standing from the stool, “but I’m afraid I have urgent business to attend.”

“Of course, of course,” she said agreeably. “But we should probably get the Lost Ark before we go; the University will be most displeased if she burns up because her plants ran out of fuel—“

“Wait,” Middleton interrupted—yet again, “I thought your ship was gone?”

“No, no, no, no,” she said, nearly giggling as she rolled her eyes, “we shut her down and left her in stable orbit of the sixth planet. Have to conserve energy, you understand,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “The University runs a tight ship—ha!” she cackled. “Now that’s funny: a ‘tight ship’,” she giggled again, “get it? Anyway, they don’t authorize more fuel than is absolutely necessary for a given expedition, and we were running a few percent lower in the tanks than we thought we would be by the time we reached this system. Doctor Schillinger tried telling them, but did they listen? Noooo, of course not, they just said—“

Deciding he would get no further information if he allowed her to ramble, Middleton held up a hand haltingly, “Do you have a copy of the orbital path your ship took?”

“Of course,” she replied incredulously. “What do I look like, some dimwitted floozy waiting to be plied with drink before being snuck out on in the middle of the—“

“If you could write down whatever you remember, along with the ship’s hailing codes,” Middleton said, producing a data slate and opening the quick note creation feature, “we could take a look to see if it’s still there.” He knew that there would likely be usable intel on that ship, and he needed every edge he could get if he was to succeed in his mission.

“Of course,” she replied cordially, taking the slate and, with apparently stiffer-than-she-expected finger, tapped out an orbital plane’s parameters before adding the expected altitude of the vessel, finishing with a frequency stipulated to the thirtieth decimal place. It was an impressive thing to commit to memory, and Middleton was uncertain he could have reproduced the number as accurately as she had apparently done—assuming it was correct, of course. “But when you go aboard, you’d better bring me along,” she said as she handed the slate back to him. “Our security officer takes his job very, very seriously,” she said with a knowing look. “But then you know the type, being one yourself.”

Middleton furrowed his brow, “I thought you said the ship was powered down?”

“Oh, it is,” she assured him before giggling, “but he’s not.”

“The airlock’s clear of obstructions, Corporal,” the Deathbacker’s pilot reported over the intercom. “I’m reading temperatures over there that would make a snowman shrivel up like—“

“Thank you, pilot,” Lu Bu said tersely, having no desire to hear the pilot’s attempted witticisms. She turned to check on the specialist she had been sent to accompany, and was grateful for the moment that she had ceased speaking, but knew that was about to come to an end. “We dock soon,” she said, gesturing to the small doorway to the craft’s port side, through which they would proceed once the shuttle’s docking collar had created a pressure seal against the hull of the Lost Ark.

“And you’ll need me to input my security codes,” the woman, who apparently went by the name ‘Trixie,’ said as she unfastened her harness and stood slowly, with Hutch’s assistance since she was still incredibly weak. “Happy to oblige,” she said far-too-cheerfully for Lu Bu’s liking. She admired the woman’s ability to overcome her recent trials in such a steadfast and unflappable manner, but she was more annoyed than admiring when it came to her penchant for verbosity.

The collar made a noise which Lu Bu assumed indicated it had formed a seal against the Lost Ark’s hull, which was confirmed when the pilot’s voice came over the intercom and he said, “Looks like we’ve got atmosphere on the other side, but if it hasn’t been recycled regularly for nearly a year who knows how stale it might be.”

Lu Bu felt like rebuking the man, since she had learned in one of her many lessons since coming to serve aboard the Pride of Prometheus that, unless the air was being breathed or in some other way contaminated by active processes, its gas content should be precisely the same mix as it had been prior to the shutdown of the vessel’s life support. But she was too focused on Miss Serendipity’s unsteady gait to comment on the matter as the other woman moved slowly toward the door.

“Open hatch,” Lu Bu instructed over the local channel, and a moment later the pilot obliged by disengaging the lock. She manually activated the hatch’s open cycle, and a moment later it slid to the side to reveal the short gap between the now-docked vessels.

“Are you sure you can do this?” Hutch asked Trixie, and the woman nodded brightly.

“Of course,” she said with what seemed to be genuine appreciation for his concern, “I’ll just make the introductions and then you people can get to work bringing the ship’s systems online. It shouldn’t take but a day or so…unless the computer core really was fit to burst with all the data we crammed in there, like Largo said it was.” At that, her affect dimmed noticeably for a moment, “Oh, poor Largo…Oh well; we’ll be able to get it up and running in no time, I’m sure,” she declared, seeming to brighten immediately, the thought of what Lu Bu assumed to be a fallen companion flitting into and out of her mind like a butterfly on a typhoon’s wind, “I’d better input those codes.”

She stepped forward and wiped the access panel set beside the Lost Ark’s exterior airlock door. Hutch stayed at her elbow, but at least while they were between the vessels the woman was at no risk of falling—the Deathbacker’s grav-plates did not extend beyond the interior of the vessel, so she was completely weightless as she began to tap in an unthinkably long series of characters which Lu Bu assumed were her aforementioned access codes.

A moment later the door cycled open, revealing an also-open inner airlock door leading to a broad, low-ceilinged corridor. She suspected it would have been difficult to move around inside the relatively squat corridor had her team been wearing power armor.

Fortunately, and due to Lu Bu’s increasingly adamant insistence on the subject, she and Hutch were wearing Storm Drake armor. Bernice, Funar and Traian were also present and similarly armored, but only Funar was to join Lu Bu and Hutch on the away mission while Bernice and Traian remained with the shuttle.

As if on cue, Funar stepped forward with his blaster rifle drawn and Trixie clucked her tongue from within her pressure suit. “You won’t need that, darling,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ll just access the internal comm. system,” she said as she moved shakily toward a nearby DI access panel.

A moment later Lu Bu heard a whirring sound from the nearest junction, which was accompanied by a bestial snarl which made her react instinctively by raising her blaster rifle and aiming it at the source of the noise.

A heavy, armored boot—or, she realized, a metal foot—appeared from the right side of the intersection, and it was followed by another identical limb. The legs were composed of duralloy, and they were powered by a combination of hydraulics and servos. Approximately four feet above those clomping, metal feet was what she assumed to be the thing’s torso.

It’s ‘torso’ had no head above it, but it did have a pair of arms with heavy weaponry mounted on them instead of hands. Between the arms was a black, gently-curved section which looked to be large enough for a small person to squeeze into, assuming it was empty.

One of its arms had a relatively old-style, rotary weapon mounted on it while the other had what looked suspiciously like a cross between a plasma cannon and a flamethrower. Hutch had already taken up position between Trixie and the metal monstrosity, and the mechanical war frame emitted a guttural, throaty growl which sounded suspiciously like a lion’s roar.

“Release Miss Serendipity immediately and vacate the premises,” a heavily-amplified, baritone voice commanded, having apparently originated from the squat, wide machine. “You have twenty seconds to comply,” it added, spinning its rotary cannon in an apparently emphatic form of punctuation.

Before Lu Bu could tell the thing that she had no intention of following its orders, Trixie waved a hand happily, “Hi Ed! These people are ok,” she continued, pointing to Lu Bu and Hutch.

“Probability of coercion to evince such a statement: 62%,” the war machine, apparently named ‘Ed,’ said in what was clearly a disbelieving tone. “Release Miss Serendipity, drop your weapons, and return to your vessel immediately. If you do not comply, I am authorized to use physical force in defense of this vessel and its crew.”

“Oh, Ed, will you please relax?” Trixie said with a sigh as Lu Bu gave a brief glance to Hutch, whose weapon was already trained on the machine’s midsection. “We’re in enough trouble as it is without you throwing another one of your fits.”

“Voice stress analysis indicates you are suffering from post-traumatic shock, Miss Serendipity,” Ed warned. “Please step away from the pirates at once; probability you are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome: 72%.”

“Ed,” Trixie said tersely, “it’s ‘Stockholder Syndrome,’ not ‘Stockholm Syndrome.’ I thought we went over this already?”

Ed paused, his rotary cannons ceasing their whirring briefly before once again spinning up. “Voice print and security challenge question’s answer confirmed, Miss Serendipity, but I am not authorized to stand down without confirmation from a command-level crewmember. Where are Doctor Schillinger and Captain Gibson?”

“The Doctor was abducted,” Trixie replied, “and Captain Gibson was killed several months ago by Rim Fleet soldiers.”

“Probability of both Doctor Schillinger’s and Captain Gibson’s unavailability following hostile action: 22%,” Ed said skeptically, crouching slightly while keeping his weapons trained on Lu Bu and Hutch. “Probability of Miss Serendipity’s involvement in their disappearance if they are gone: 38%.”

“Will you stop it, you old grouch?” Trixie snapped, placing a hand on her hip and throwing the other hand in the air, which was an odd gesture that Lu Bu could not remember having seen before. “We’re going to go rescue Doctor Schillinger, but I need to retrieve some data from the computer banks since the portable units at the dig site were either stolen or destroyed. You can lock the ship down afterward if you want to, but I need to spin up the main power plant in order to boot up the data drives and find what we need. These people are part of the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet,” she gestured to Hutch and Lu Bu. “Isn’t there anything in your programming that says you have to respect the duly-appointed military chain of command if your mission primaries are unavailable?”

Lu Bu noted a trio of what looked to be vid pickups mounted on the front of the war machine’s chassis snap back and forth between her and Hutch, “Iconography consistent with Corporal and Private ranks attached to Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet’s Lancer division—a branch which was discontinued over forty years ago.” He gave a low, rumbling growl like a dog might do to warn off a competitor looking to take his bone, “Armor is composed of Storm Drake hide, an illegal material employed by pirates in 79% of confirmed deployments. Probability of duly-appointed military presence: 19%. Probability they are criminals posing as official military: 93%.”

“And what’s the other seven percent?” Hutch asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Seven percent probability that this unit is in error,” Ed replied promptly. “Insufficient information is currently available for conclusive calculation of probabilities—error, primary assessment matrices require repair; onboard com-link system offline. Please report the failure to a certified technician with Bach-level clearance immediately.”

“He always has a seven percent probability of error in his calculations,” Trixie explained with a roll of her eyes. “Apparently that’s how he gained sentience; one of his threat assessment cogitators blew out years ago and his auto-repair systems hotwired his internal circuitry before they went out too. We left the ‘please repair me’ message alone because there’s always some variation to it, and we didn’t want to risk damage his individualization in any way.”

“You mean he is only…alive because he is broken?” Lu Bu asked cautiously, uncertain she had understood correctly.

“That’s our best guess,” Trixie shrugged. “We decided it was best not to go poking around inside him; who’s to say we wouldn’t kill him, as an individual, by ‘repairing’ any one of his central processing errors? As scientists, we felt it would be mutually beneficial if we took him on as part of our crew since we could perform necessary maintenance on him, and he could serve as a security force—which the University of Winlock didn’t authorize, but Ed only requires a fraction of the resources for ongoing deployment compared to just one fully-trained security officer.”

“Miss Serendipity promised this unit she would not reveal his condition,” Ed said, sounding more hurt than angry.

“I’ve been trying to tell you, Ed,” Trixie said exasperatedly, “these people are here to help us. They rescued me from captivity after the rest of the team’s survivors had died. They’re good people. Besides, your power cells have to be running down by now,” she said, gesturing to his broad, heavily-armored torso. “Why don’t we just declare a truce until your batteries are recharged? Then we can retrieve the data and, if you don’t want to give us access to the ship beyond that, we’ll leave and you can stay here. But I’m telling you,” she said dourly, her face downcast in sorrow as she shook her head, “I’m the only known survivor of the team. Your power cells will almost certainly run down inside of two years, and then you’ll be inactive without anyone else to come back and give you a charge cycle. That’s not what I want, but it’s your choice. You know how we feel about your right to self-determine.”

Ed seemed genuinely torn, as his speakers emitted a series of conflicted sounds including what sounded like a cat’s meow, a dog’s whine, and a bull’s snort before his weapon arms lowered and pulled toward his torso. “Probability of Miss Serendipity’s veracity: 93%. Probability of coercion by outside forces: 22%. Probability that Miss Serendipity would deliberately mislead this unit: 7%. This unit will now recognize Miss Serendipity as mission primary and transfers all command authority to her, until such time as original primaries are re-acquired. Please complete command transfer protocols within ten standard hours.”

With that, the machine turned and clomped its way down the corridor, causing Trixie to turn to Lu Bu and beam, “See? Nothing to it!”

Lu Bu was far from pleased with the sequence of events, but she was glad to no longer have assault weaponry trained on her and her teammate, so she reluctantly followed Trixie and Ed down the corridor so they could begin the power plant initialization process.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Garibaldi said as the old-style, mass-production model assault droid clomped down the shuttle’s cargo ramp. “You’re serious about bringing this thing aboard, Captain?”

“Apparently Miss Serendipity can vouch for its loyalty,” Middleton replied, sharing his Chief Engineer’s concerns to some degree, “but it’s been assigned to the Lost Ark for nearly thirty months, and its service record is exemplary according to their logs. I’ve already had its weapons deactivated, and Corporal Lu reports that it’s ready to submit itself to any technician with ‘Bach-level clearance’ for a full checkup.” Middleton turned to his Chief Engineer with a wry grin, “Apparently, serving as the Chief Engineer for a warship assigned to the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet carries sufficient clout to satisfy this level of clearance, so it shouldn’t give you any trouble when you decided to give it a thorough going over.”

“Great,” Garibaldi drawled with a long-suffering sigh as he shook his head.

Middleton clapped him on the shoulder, “We need all the help we can get, Chief. And I don’t know if you’ve thought about it, but an assault droid could come in awfully handy in certain situations,” he said with a pointed look, having considered such situations at some length since learning of the droid’s willingness to transfer from the Lost Ark.

“There’s the Tim Middleton I know and love,” Garibaldi quipped dryly, “always looking for the angles. Meanwhile, those of us stuck in the bilges shift after shift have to clean up after your decisions.” He rolled his eyes with comic emphasis, “That’d be why you’re the Captain.”

“That’s the spirit,” Middleton said in an equally dry tone, and the two men chuckled before he turned and left the shuttle hangar. Miss Serendipity had provided extensive data from the Lost Ark’s storage banks—after making Captain Middleton agree not to divulge any of the information to the public, or to competing institutions, without prior written consent provided by the University of Winlock—and Fei Long was mining that data in an attempt to discern whether or not the Raubachs took Doctor Schillinger to another planet out here on the Rim of Sector 24.

Middleton’s guess was that Commodore Raubach—if he was in fact the ultimate string-puller in the Raubach consortium operating in the Spineward Sectors—would have taken Doctor Schillinger directly to his secret base. It was clear that the Raubachs had already discovered a cache of bio-tech, and had successfully begun retrofitting their vessels with that technology.

He had to assume that the expedition of that process would be at the top of Commodore James Raubach III’s priority list…because if there was something even more important on the man’s plate, Middleton had very little hope of being able to disrupt the Rim Fleet’s operations so far away from support from the MSP.

Chapter IX: Taking a Page from the Little Admiral’s Book

“If Mr. Fei is convinced, that’s good enough for me¸” Middleton said after hearing Mr. Fei and Miss Serendipity’s longwinded explanation for why they believed it was highly improbable that Doctor Schillinger had been taken anywhere but the Raubach’s main base.

“Me too,” Gnuko said with only a trace of annoyance after having sat through the duo’s jargon-filled presentation.

“Then prepare to spin up the jump drives,” Middleton said, standing from the table. He was joined by the rest of his senior officers, and he nodded curtly before dismissing them. Mr. Fei was one of the last people to leave, along with Miss Serendipity—apparently her demeanor and verbosity were far from unwelcome to the young polymath. “A moment, Mr. Fei? You too, Miss Serendipity.”

The two stopped, and Lu Bu shot Fei Long a brief, yet intense, look before stepping out of the conference room and leaving the three of them alone.

“What we’re about to discuss must remain between us,” Middleton said, giving each of them a weighty look. “Is that understood?”

“Of course, Captain,” Fei Long said with his customary bow, while Miss Serendipity seemed fit to burst with excitement—a state of being which appeared to be more or less eternal for the young woman.

“First,” Middleton began, turning to Fei Long, “have you been able to ascertain why the droids seemed so intent on destroying the subterranean transmitter?”

“I believe so, Captain,” Fei Long replied with a nod, producing a data slate from beneath his odd, ancient-style robes which were his custom to wear when not stationed on bridge duty—and sometimes he wore them even then, which was a small enough breach of protocol that Middleton generally let it slide. “I have discovered several elements within the transmission’s frequency and contents which appear to be, for lack of a better term, hallucinogenic for artificial intelligences with architecture similar to the droids we have thus far encountered. Without engaging in overmuch conjecture,” the young man said confidently, “I believe the evidence we have encountered in this system is consistent with the presence of a virulent disease—or at least the artificially-crafted intelligence equivalent of one—and the Harmony droids were attempting to cleanse the area of this disease before succumbing to its effects.”

Middleton felt a surge of elation at hearing his expert’s initial opinion appeared to have been confirmed, and he nodded in satisfaction when Fei Long finished his report. “Then I have a plan,” Middleton said, turning to Miss Serendipity, “and that plan would greatly benefit from your consent and, if possible, your assistance, Miss Serendipity.”

Her expression turned briefly to one of puzzlement before she nodded with overt enthusiasm, “What can I do to help?”

Middleton gestured out the viewing window situation in the conference room’s external bulkhead, through which the Lost Ark could be seen with the Deathbacker still attached via docking collar to the survey vessel’s primary airlock. “I need the Lost Ark,” he said, driving straight to the heart of the matter, “and it’s extremely unlikely that we will recover it after employing it in the manner which I intend. I understand that you take the responsibility of being the sole surviving member of the archeology team quite seriously,” Middleton said when her eyes went wide and she appeared ready to object. “But let me assure you that I have every reason to believe that the Lost Ark may be the key to saving Doctor Schillinger.”

Trixie’s eyes narrowed in silent calculation, “How could one long-range survey vessel—which is little more than a light freighter stuffed to the gills with fuel and survival gear—play a meaningful role in rescuing Doctor Schillinger?”

Middleton was pleased that she made no attempt to bring up the University’s investment in the vessel and the gear stowed aboard it—well, what little remained of said gear—so he nodded approvingly.

Ever since the Battle of Tracto, Middleton had been silently fuming that he had missed the opportunity to take part in one of the most innovative battle plans in the history of the Spineward Sectors. But now he had a chance, however small, at actually improving on the Little Admiral’s brilliant technique and, for the first time since settling on his course of action, Middleton actually put his crew’s chance of success at roughly fifty-fifty if his plan worked. He had laid awake in his bed thinking about how he could give his people a real chance, and now he was confident he could do so. It was the best he could do for them—and it would have to be enough.

“The Pride is just one run-down warship, but where we’re going there’s likely an entire fleet waiting for us…” he explained, feeling his fist clench tightly enough that his nails threatened to break the skin of his palm. “And I never pick a fight I can’t win.”

Nearly an hour later, the trio left the room in agreement on how to proceed—and, most importantly, Middleton was confident the pair could be trusted to keep their plan a secret.

“That’s bold,” Gnuko said after being called in for a private conference with Middleton shortly after he had concluded his meeting with Fei Long and Miss Serendipity.

Middleton knew he needed to get the operation’s prep underway as quickly, and quietly, as possible so he had gone directly to the Lancer contingent’s commanding officer so they could put their heads together and determine the ideal team for this operation.

“You no doubt understand the risks, but let me verbalize them for my own benefit, sir,” the Lancer Sergeant mused, stroking his short mustache thoughtfully. “If it succeeds, we kill three birds with one stone…but if it fails, we risk whatever cache of tech the Raubachs have gotten their hands on falling into the hands of a potentially even deadlier enemy—one that clearly knows how to assimilate foreign technology.”

“Correct,” Middleton agreed, allowing his Lancer Sergeant to work through the situation at his own pace. He needed Gnuko’s absolute support if this operation was to have even a chance of success—and he also knew he would need to surrender, at least temporarily, what may actually be his most valuable strategic asset.

“But the cost to the ship,” Gnuko continued, clearly torn between outright condemnation of the plan and actually continuing to discuss it, “would be as negligible as we could hope for, given the swing in deployable assets we’re talking about.”

“The ship would be down by only a handful of crew,” Middleton agreed, “though I’ll admit that several of the crewmembers in question are more valuable than the average serviceman or woman.”

“That would seem to be a fairly epic understatement, sir,” Gnuko said dryly, and Middleton could find no reasonable argument with the Sergeant’s assertion. “But still…” he trailed off, nodding slowly in his chair.

“There is a very real possibility that the team will be able to provide covert support after their primary objective is completed,” Middleton said into the growing silence. “I understand it’s a gamble, but we’re going to have to catch more than one or two breaks in order to come out on top of this thing, wouldn’t you agree?”

Gnuko met his gaze for several seconds, during which Middleton genuinely thought is Lancer Sergeant would refuse to sign off on the mission. “I do, Captain,” he said, to Middleton’s mild surprise. “This is as good of a plan as I can see us coming up with, and if it’s going to work we need to put it into effect ASAP. Give me a few hours to go over the roster and I’ll make my final recommendations?”

“Granted,” Middleton said, allowing himself to sigh in somewhat muted relief before his Lancer commander stood from his chair. “One name I can’t afford to have on that list is yours, Russell,” Middleton said as the burly man turned to leave the room, knowing the other man was unlikely to receive the sentiment well.

Sergeant Gnuko predictably paused mid-step and turned to face Middleton. “And if I deem no member of my contingent is capable of carrying it out?”

“Then the mission is scrapped,” Middleton said calmly before his visage hardened. “Your Defense Team hasn’t been tested yet, but neither one of us has any doubt that is going to change,” he said, threading his voice with iron. “We see eye to eye on that, don’t we?”

Gnuko relaxed fractionally and nodded, “We do, sir.”

“Good,” Middleton said, holding back a second sigh of relief, “I can’t do this without you, Sergeant. We’re going to need a stiff line if we want any hope of winning this thing, and they’re going to be sending the house.”

“I’ve got seventeen career professional playoff games under my belt, Captain,” Gnuko snorted, “and I have never been beaten by my assignment. You can count on me and mine, sir.”

“I know I can, Sergeant,” Middleton nodded, and Sergeant Gnuko returned the gesture before leaving the ready room.

The Pride’s commanding officer leaned back in his chair and considered the long-term complications his plan would generate, and he opened up the ship’s roster so he could get a head start on mitigating those complications.

“You want to see me, Captain?” Lu Bu asked after entering the room and saluting. It was only her fifth time in the Captain’s ready room, and she was briefly filled with a nostalgic sense as she remembered her first encounter with the man who was now her commanding officer.

“Have a seat, Corporal,” Middleton said, gesturing to one of the two seats opposite his own. Sergeant Gnuko occupied the other seat, and Lu Bu sat down with far more anxiety coursing through her body than she had expected when receiving the summons via her com-link. Captain Middleton leaned forward with his forearms placed against the edge of his desk and he said, “I haven’t properly thanked you for your service to this ship, Lu. Your…well, there’s no need to mince words,” he said, snorting softly, “your heroics during the back-to-back ‘suicide missions,’ as they’re now referred to, culminating in the destruction of two enemy warships and the capture of an enemy commander were nothing short of legendary as far as I’m concerned.”

His words made her squeamish, and she felt herself go red from the collar up to her scalp with embarrassment. “This one does her duty, sir,” she said awkwardly.

“No, Lu,” Sergeant Gnuko said in an unyielding tone, “your duty ended after you got on that shuttle. What you did afterward…it was special.”

Captain Middleton nodded his agreement, “Normally in such a situation, you would be put up for commendation and Fleet Command would review the petition for several months before making a determination. But we’re not exactly playing by the book out here,” he said, giving Sergeant Gnuko a brief, but pointed, look before once again fixing her with his steely eyes, “and, as such, it’s entirely possible that no one will ever hear about your accomplishments.”

Lu Bu had already known that it was very likely the ship, and her crew, would not return from their current mission. At first she had been upset by this fact, finding to her own surprise that heraldry for her actions was something she actually desired. But, seeking guidance, she had reviewed the books which Sergeant Walter Joneson had left her, along with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms—the book from which she had chosen her name—and decided that public recognition was a curse, or worse, it was addictive.

“This one is ready to serve, Captain,” she said after realizing that she had been summoned to the office of the ship’s captain to discuss another dangerous mission—and as she realized it she felt an unexpected, but somehow comforting, thrill of anticipation laced with trepidation.

Middleton held her with his gaze for several seconds before nodding and sliding a data slate across his desk. “Mr. Fei has already made the necessary preparations to the Lost Ark, with Miss Serendipity’s help,” he explained as her eyes scanned the mission’s outline.

As she read, she felt excitement rise up within her, realizing it was a mission which was so bold, so brilliant, and so dangerous that she felt her fingers begin to tremble with excitement as she read the slate’s contents.

“Ed, the assault droid,” Middleton said awkwardly, likely sharing the rest of the crew’s reluctance to identify the apparently sentient machine as an equal, which made absolutely no sense to Lu Bu, “refuses to leave Miss Serendipity’s side, and Miss Serendipity refuses to leave the Lost Ark until it is absolutely necessary to do so, which means you’ll have a total of three non-Lancer personnel accompanying you on this mission. We have copied much of the ship’s database to Mr. Fei’s backup storage banks here on the Pride; Miss Serendipity was adamant that we store the data safely as soon as it is possible to do so in order for the University of Winlock to recover the findings at their earliest possible convenience. That data transfer process is nearing completion, and we anticipate the mission will be ready to execute in twelve hours.”

Lu Bu nodded her understanding before perusing the outline one more time. To her, the most undesirable aspect of the mission was that she and her team would need to eat ration bars and drink recycled water for the entire duration which, if they were less-than-fortunate, could take several weeks. “This one has choice of team members?” she asked.

“You’ll have the two experts, the assault droid, yourself, and up to six team members of your choosing,” Gnuko said.

“You can select from any of the crew,” Captain Middleton said with a nod of acknowledgment to the Lancer Sergeant. “Obviously this particular mission will be more about stealth than firepower, but since you’ll be running the show it’s up to you how you want the team composed. The purpose of this meeting is to craft that team, and we’re going to stay here until we’re done.”

Lu Bu nodded slowly as she thought through the matter. She would need a pilot that was rated higher than she was, as well as an engineer who could help them overcome the various difficulties they were bound to encounter. The assault droid would, if it was up to specs, provide more firepower than any two non-power-armored Lancers could even hope to match, so that made her less concerned about having extra boots on deck.

They sat in silence for nearly ten minutes as she flipped through departmental rosters and, finally, presented her list for the Captain’s approval.

“This team should be of myself, two experts, assault droid,” she began, feeling butterflies in her stomach as she continued, “and addition of Mr. Strider, Lancer Funar, Lancer Traian, Lancer Inson, and Yide.” She had opted for one fewer team members than the maximum they had listed because she knew that he operation would likely hinge on the team’s mobility and low profile.

Captain Middleton and Sergeant Gnuko shared a brief, yet significant look before Gnuko took the slate with her list and gave a once-over before handing it to the captain. “Looks like I lost,” Gnuko said with a sigh.

“Can’t win ‘em all, Sergeant,” Captain Middleton quipped before accepting the slate she had just used, and handing her one of his own. When she took it, she saw a pair of lists similar to the one she had just compiled—in fact, one of them was identical to her own! “That was impressive, Corporal,” Captain Middleton congratulated, “it took you ten minutes, without preparation or forewarning, to come up with the same list I did after thirty minutes of consideration.”

She scanned the two lists, feeling numb at receiving such an overt compliment from the Pride’s commanding officer. Captain Middleton’s list was, indeed, identical to her own. Sergeant Gnuko’s list, however, exchanged Bernice for Kratos and Yide for Chief Garibaldi. Yide provided engineering expertise which was sufficient, in Lu Bu’s mind, to the tasks they were expected to encounter and he was also an accomplished pilot. Traian was also a capable pilot, and Lu Bu felt confident in her own ability to learn the nuances of the craft—or crafts—they would be piloting, while Funar was the best shot of anyone on the team with a rifle. Hutch had proven to be unflappable in his short service time, so she had decided to include him based primarily on that…but, if she was being honest, there were still certain questions she wished to ask of him regarding Walter Joneson. She was more than mildly surprised that neither Sergeant Gnuko nor Captain Middleton objected to his inclusion—and even more surprised to see that Captain Middleton had also included him on his roster.

“Congratulations, Corporal,” Gnuko said with what could only be described admiration, “you just earned yourself command of this mission.”

Lu Bu felt a thrill of excitement as Captain Middleton nodded, “If your list had been significantly different than either of these, Sergeant Gnuko would have taken command of the op. You just proved you’ve got a certain…spark,” the captain’s eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment, as though lost in reflection, “that we’re going to need to get this mission accomplished.”

“This one will not fail,” Lu Bu said with certainty. “The team will accomplish mission.”

“Not the team, Lu,” Gnuko said heavily, “your team. This will be your first wholly independent command and you’ll be operating without support of any kind. It’s what the Recon Team was intended to do, but nothing can fully prepare you for your first operation behind enemy lines.”

Lu Bu nodded curtly, “This one will not fail, Sergeant Gnuko.”

“Let’s iron out the material assets you’ll take with you,” Captain Middleton said, “and then we’ll get you loaded onto your ship. The sooner we do so, the better our odds.”

“This one…I will not fail, Captain Middleton,” she said confidently, knowing that every moment of her life had prepared her for this great honor. She bit her lip as she considered whether to ask her next question, which she feared would sound cowardly but she had good reason to ask it so she decided to do so. “What is extraction plan?”

Captain Middleton quirked a grin, “Let’s just say we’re calling in a favor from a…new friend who was willing to postpone other plans once we presented him with a rough outline of the plan.”

Lu Bu felt a knot tighten in her stomach, “There is no danger of compromising mission?”

Sergeant Gnuko snickered, “No, Lu, I don’t think there’s much danger of him mucking this up for us.”

It took her a moment, but when she realized who they meant she felt her nerves calm significantly. “Good,” she said, “I will inform team.”

Lu Bu was gathering the last of her belongings from her quarters. She would take only the essentials with her for the mission she had been given the opportunity to command, but she still took a few moments to ensure she was not forgetting anything prior to departure.

The door chimed and she moved to open it, wondering who it could have been. When she opened it, she found Kratos looking down at her with a look of condescension clear on his face.

“You will leave soon for a mission,” he said, prompting her to arch an eyebrow at his having learned of her mission since it was supposed to have been secret, “and I must speak with you before you go.”

“What is it, Kratos?” she asked wearily, very much disliking the idea of spending much of her time remaining about the Pride of Prometheus conversing with the large, brash, unruly Tracto-an.

“I am…not skilled with words,” he said, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other before catching himself doing so and stiffening, “so I will be blunt.”

“I expect nothing else from you,” she quipped coldly.

Ignoring her remark, he said, “All my life, I have rebelled against those things which I believe to be wrong. Until serving on this ship, I remained confident that I had fought against people and ideas which were worthy of opposition. But, serving under your command, I have learned…” He trailed off, clearly uncertain of what words to say before finishing, “you have challenged me in ways I had thought impossible. Honor demands that I show you the proper gratitude for this.”

Lu Bu was more than a little surprised by his candor and by the idea that he—a fifty year old Tracto-an veteran of over a hundred battles, by his own claim anyway—had learned anything from her, a teenage girl with less life experience than most twelve year olds due to her suffocating childhood.

“I want you to have this,” he finally said, reaching down to something which had been propped against the bulkhead beside the door. “I am no longer worthy of it, but I believe that you may be.”

She looked at the object he held in his hands and saw that it was a massive, stone-headed hammer with a far-too-short haft, which measured less than one foot long from butt to base of the hammerhead. The head itself appeared to have sustained some sort of catastrophic break, with at least three distinct pieces comprising the roughly smashball-shaped hammerhead with flattened ends instead of the pointed ones like a smashball had. The damaged head had been bound with a series of overlapping duralloy bands, so that it retained its presumably original shape, and Lu Bu quickly noted a pair of curious activation buttons near the butt of the weapon’s haft.

She took it from his outstretched hands, feeling its impressive weight in her hands as she did so but uncertain how to accept such a clearly generous gift. She saw chiseled lettering—Tracto-an lettering, if her eyes served her—covering the weapon’s head, but the too-short handle of the weapon was newly made and composed of what looked to be hollow duralloy.

“I had Haldis make the repairs to the head, as well as some modifications which I believe you will find…agreeable,” Kratos explained, proffering a data slate which she graciously accepted. “I only hope it will serve you as well as it has served those who bore it before you.”

“What is its name?” she asked without even thinking, and she realized that she had become so swept up in the scene that she had just assumed it was a named weapon, given the reverence with which Kratos treated it.

“It is called Glacier Splitter,” Kratos replied as he turned to leave, “and it was first wielded by my grandfather.”

Before she could ask after it further, the one-eyed Tracto-an’s massive legs had taken him to the nearby junction and he disappeared around the corner, leaving her holding the heavy, strangely-built weapon. She scanned the data slate and found that it detailed the weapon’s specifications, and her eyes lit up when she read the details of its apparently telescopic, adjustable haft.

But it was the last section, detailing the upgrades to the hammerhead itself, which convinced her to take the cumbersome weapon with her on the mission she had been assigned to command.

Fei Long was just finishing some last-minute tests on the neural tissue they had recovered from the ComStat hub. He needed to have a more precise measure of the material’s raw processing power, and had hoped to devise a whole new set of tests which would allow him to do precisely that.

But recent developments had spurred him to simply repeat several inconclusive tests from earlier weeks in an effort to gain some greater insight into the material’s properties. He suspected that the material would prove pivotal in the coming conflict, and he wanted to be armed with as much information as possible.

So he worked alone in the Pride of Prometheus’ medical laboratory. Normally Doctor Middleton was present for the experiments, but her duties as CMO had required her to absent from these particular experiments.

The last test he needed to conduct was one involving combined electrical, thermal, and pressure variances. It seemed that the tissue responded predictably to nearly every kind of measurable stimulation, and it was the combination of stimuli which yielded the most complex, and therefore important, results.

So he placed the specimen of neural tissue inside the modified pressure clave before affixing the thin electrodes to either side of the specimen dish. Closing the door, he activated the preprogrammed sequences he had designed to test the interactivity of heat, pressure, and electricity on the tissue.

He was rewarded with a stream of input data from his various scanners and pick-ups which had been directed to monitor the neural tissue.

“Fascinating…” he heard himself mutter as he copied the test’s results before initiating the second set of preprogrammed variances. Again, the results were immediate and extraordinary, and he knew it would take him days to properly analyze the data he was collecting.  Thankfully, he also knew he would have time enough to do so in the near future.

He opened the clave and ran a series of localized scans, finding the neural tissue appeared to be no worse for the experiments thus far. Briefly turning his back to the clave, he made to set up the third preprogrammed sequence of tests while gathering a bottle of solution which Doctor Middleton had concocted which seemed to prolong the tissue’s survival, for lack of a better word, during the testing procedures. He would need to apply a few drops to the—

A sharp, stinging pain erupted on the back of his neck and he whirled around only to realize that the specimen container had exploded, sending fragments of glass and the container’s contents—namely, the strange neural tissue—outward.

Knowing he had likely been contaminated, and not wanting to take any chances, he reached for the syringe filled with the poisonous concoction which Doctor Middleton had created that had proven capable of killing the neural tissue without harming humans in any way. Reaching behind his neck, he injected half of the syringe’s contents into, and around, the small wound which was located just below his robe’s loose collar.

He stopped and thought about the matter for several minutes, knowing that even the best precautions taken against such an unknown bio agent could ultimately prove useless, but as he ran through the situation calmly and calculatingly he realized there was simply nothing more that could be done. Doctor Middleton had found no success in creating further counteracting agents, and she had spent a not inconsiderable amount of time attempting to improve on what was essentially her first attempt. So he had already administered their best antidote in quantities far exceeding those which Doctor Middleton had prescribed during their early experiments when going over protocols for dealing with exposure.

If Fei Long told anyone of the incident, he would almost certainly be taken off of his active assignment and that was simply an unacceptable outcome. The ship needed him, the Fleet needed him and—a possible swollen ego notwithstanding—the Spineward Sectors needed him doing what only he could. His personal health came far behind the well-being of the billions of inhabitants of the Spine.

So he cleaned up the mess, disposed of the specimen and its container in the same fashion they had done for the previous tests—by autoclaving it and then ejecting the fragments into space—and replaced everything as it had been before leaving the laboratory and making his way toward his quarters.

Chapter X: Departure

“Good hunting, Corporal,” Middleton said after the last of the team had loaded aboard Toto’s last remaining gunship. The Pride’s Tactical Officer was present in the hangar, as was his wife, and together they watched what would very likely be their family home’s last takeoff from the deck of the ship.

Middleton had needed to make certain assurances to the Sundered and his family in exchange for using their gunship, but since they involved salvage rights over future light craft—salvage which could only take place in the event of the crew’s survival, which was still no better than a fifty-fifty proposition—he had been amenable to the uplift’s demands.

“We will succeed, sir,” Lu Bu replied, snapping off a crisp salute that did her fellow servicemen proud. Middleton returned the gesture, and the door to the small craft closed behind her after she signaled for the pre-flight routine to commence.

Ed, the assault droid, would not fit inside the craft so he had opted to be welded to the outer hull. Toto had complained about such unwanted bulk’s undesirable effects on the craft’s maneuverability, but had eventually relented and after several hours of work the engineers had managed to secure the assault droid with a series of removable braces that could be undone in just a few minutes—or even torn from their mounts by the droid itself with a few well-placed shots from its rotary cannon.

Captain Middleton ordered his people to exit the hangar bay, which they did, and thirty minutes later the Sundered gunship had successfully been wedged inside the Lost Ark’s cargo hold. An hour after that, the vessel had been secured sufficiently that the Recon Team was ready to take on its most difficult mission yet.

Middleton watched from the bridge of the Pride as the Lost Ark spun up her jump drive and, finally, exited the system without so much as a word.

“Navigator,” Middleton said, knowing that Lieutenant McKnight would now be required to take over some of the ship’s navigation duties, “initiate jump sequence.” He watched as she gave several commands which would set the ship’s hyper drive into action, resulting in a countdown timer to appear over the main screen. When she had finished doing so, Middleton nodded and leaned forward in his chair, “Let’s go hunting.”

“The ship be ready to initiate the next point transfer sequence, mom,” Strider said after fidgeting with the Lost Ark’s controls for several minutes post-transfer.

“I am not your ‘mom’,” Lu Bu scowled, knowing the other man was likely twice her age.

“Sorry fer that, ‘may-om’,” he said, scowling briefly at receiving the rebuke. “The engines be prepped for a ten hour cycle; not the fastest, but she’ll be getting us to the first point on the route in six days if we don’t be molested.”

“Good,” Lu Bu said, breathing a short sigh of relief before realizing it was foolish to feel relieved at having successfully made a single point transfer. “I will check others.”

She pushed out of the Lost Ark’s relatively cramped cockpit, which was only fractionally larger than that of the Deathbacker back on the Pride of Prometheus. A narrow corridor took her past a pair of crew quarters—likely belonging to the ship’s captain and Doctor Schillinger—and she came to a short set of stairs which brought her to the ship’s mess hall.

But this ship’s mess hall was more like a standard, if larger-than-usual, dining and living room with an attached kitchen on the other side of a ten foot long island with a half dozen stools secured beneath it.

Lancer Traian was going through their supplies and inventorying what had been aboard the vessel prior to their series of transfers several hours earlier. “Looks like we’ve got some good stuff here, ma’am,” Traian said, gesturing to a few crates of what looked to be vacuum-sealed, cryogenically-preserved fruits, vegetables, and naturally-grown protein. “Plus the ship’s captain was something of a sauce-hound,” he added conspiratorially, opening a previously-locked cabinet to reveal a wide array of alcoholic beverages which Lu Bu suspected could, if imbibed in one sitting, knock out an entire smashball team in their prime. “At least the first few days of this mission won’t be all bad.”

“No spirits,” Lu Bu scolded, and though he gave her a wounded look, she suspected he had fully expected her reaction. “Catalogue items and separate into what we can stow on gunship, and mark what must remain here. We eat from non-transferrable stock first.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Traian acknowledged with a nod, and Lu Bu turned to the far end of the room as she made her way to another corridor. There were several hatches leading, presumably, to living quarters which Traian and Hutch had already secured.

So Lu Bu made her way past them to yet another set of stairs, which she navigated and followed the cramped corridor to the left before it curved back toward the stern of the ship and she found herself standing beside Trixie, one of the specialists assigned to the mission. “Is there problem?” she asked after briefly considering pushing past the woman in silence. She could barely stand to be near the other woman when her tongue began to waggle—as it was prone to do with alarming regularity—but she knew it was her responsibility as mission leader to check in on the other members of the team.

“Problem?” Trixie asked in confusion, looking up with a blank look before seeming to realize something important. “Oh, good; I’ve been meaning to speak with you, Corporal. I just remembered that the captain said ‘if you need a place to hide for a few hours, check under the port gangway in the cargo hold: second panel from the left.’ I have no idea what he meant, but I thought it might come in handy?”

Lu Bu gave her a wary look when the woman unexpectedly stopped speaking, as a sane person would do, and nodded slowly. “We look,” she gestured toward the cargo hold, and the two women moved past what passed for a sickbay on the Lost Ark before arriving in the cargo hold.

Private Funar was checking the gunship, along with Yide, and the two looked up when Lu Bu entered the hold. “Gunship checks out five by five, Corporal,” Funar said, wiping some sort of greasy substance from his hands onto a nearby rag. “The only thing preventing us from a thirty second launch is Ed,” he gestured to the assault droid, who had taken up what looked like a defensive posture near the large pressure doors at the very stern of the craft. They had entered the Lost Ark’s hold via those doors, which were just large enough to fit the Sundered gunship as Yide had carefully maneuvered it into the hold.

“Good work,” Lu Bu said as she descended the port gangway to her right. When she reached the bottom she looked at the nearby bulkhead and, after a few minutes, thought she had found what she was looking for. There was a small pressure plate, cleverly-concealed behind an overlapping section of duralloy plating, and when she pressed it a nearby section of plating swung open with a click.

“Nice going,” Funar said warily, approaching with a blaster pistol drawn as he checked the interior of the compartment before Lu Bu could do likewise. “It’s a smuggler’s hold,” he concluded, waving the barrel of his pistol invitingly, and Lu Bu stuck her head inside the compartment. “Looks like it’s pressure-sealed, too, so even if the main hold vents its gases this thing wouldn’t get vacuumed in the process. Who knows how long it’s been since it’s been given a proper going over, though…” he said, pointing to a nearby patch of corrosion on the iron struts running through the compartment.

Lu Bu nodded, concluding that she could fit, at most, three of her team members within, and she suspected that only two Storm Drake-armored Lancers would be able to squeeze into the space.

“Thank you, Trixie,” Lu Bu said with a courteous nod. “This may help.” She sincerely doubted they would find a use for the compartment, but it was better to have too much knowledge of one’s surroundings than not enough.

Trixie beamed, her pigtails bouncing side to side as she turned and pointed to the blast doors, “The captain also said that if we were ever boarded, there are four hidden emergency purge switches. The first was…here,” she declared, moving to the port gangway and feeling around behind the third step before finding what she was looking for and motioning Lu Bu over. She complied, and when she knelt down she saw that the archeologist’s hand was hovering over a small, transparent piece of housing which protected a button from being accidentally pushed.

She briefly shuddered at the thought of a thin piece of polymer being all that stood between an errant boot, or groping hand, and the cold void of space. “Where are others?”

“One was in the cockpit…” Trixie mused, tapping her chin in what seemed to be a cartoonish display of contemplation, “another was in the engine room. And the fourth…” she trailed off into silence for several seconds before throwing her hands in the air. “I can’t remember; I was too busy checking Ed’s power couplings since he had been reporting a seven percent chance of operation beyond one hour due to a short somewhere in his motivation systems.”

Three out of four was a good start as far as Lu Bu was concerned, and she nodded approvingly. “Thank you, Trixie. We find fourth later.”

“Sure thing!” Trixie replied energetically before turning and veritably bouncing her way back to the companionway where Lu Bu had run into her. She bumped into Hutch as she did so and nearly fell over backward as she backpedaled away, visibly flushing in embarrassment—or possibly in excitement—at having bumped up against the physically imposing Steve Inson. “Pardon me,” she nearly giggled before skipping off past him.

Shaking her head at the other woman’s seemingly indomitable spirit, and knowing there was a valuable lesson to be learned from the other woman but being unable to consider the matter at present, Lu Bu turned to Hutch and asked, “Have you finished unloading gunship?”

Hutch nodded, “All of the gear you requested to be transferred has been.” He pointed to a neat stack of crates and duffels beneath the starboard gangway which led up to the parts of the ship from which she had just come, and she nodded in approval at seeing the appropriate number of containers.

“Go to galley and help Traian with meal,” Lu Bu ordered, and after he had done so she made her way to one of the passenger’s berths adjoining the cargo hold.

The chamber was small, with a trio of bunks set against the bulkhead and a lone workspace built into the opposite wall. Sitting at that workspace was the second specialist assigned to her team, and Lu Bu felt a moment of trepidation as she knew she would need to deal with this particular member of the team differently than she had done in the past.

“How is your progress?” she asked finally in the tongue of her home world, pressing forward into the small berth with renewed resolve to behave as a professional.

Turning from his portable workstation, Fei Long gave her a blank, weary look for a moment before shaking himself and standing to stretch. When he had finished he yawned, “This project is…difficult to predict, Fengxian. There are many components which must be aligned perfectly, and I find that I am having difficulty focusing at the moment.”

“That does not sound like you, Kong—Mr. Fei,” she corrected herself before finishing the style name of her boyfriend, instead opting for the same wording as her commanders used.

Fei Long nodded and sighed. “That is part of what weighs on my mind, Fengxian,” he said in their native tongue, pointedly using her style name rather than a more professional form of address, like ‘Corporal’ or ‘Miss Lu’. “But I should not lay my burdens at your feet; yours are plentiful enough,” he said, shaking his head.

The two stood in awkward silence for several moments before Lu Bu gestured toward the bow of the ship, “Traian is inventorying food in the galley. He will be finished within the hour, after which time we should take our second meal.”

“Of course, Corporal,” Fei Long said, sounding genuinely strained at having to refer to her by her rank rather than a more familiar term. “I will attempt to divine a timetable for this,” he waved his hand at the contents arrayed on the work area—contents which included a pair of droid cores like the one Lu Bu had torn from the chassis of a droid warrior during their defense of the hyper dish junction so many months earlier. “But I must insist on serenity while aboard this ship,” he added with an edge to his voice that she had not heard before, “it is the only way I can clear my mind of the distractions which would prevent me from succeeding.”

Lu Bu nodded, knowing that it was likely best if she did as he suggested. She turned to the door, ready to leave, but hesitated just before reaching the threshold. Acting less on thought and more on instinct, she decided that Fei Long’s ‘serenity’ and peace of mind were of paramount importance to the mission’s success…and, as mission commander, it was her job to ensure that her people operated at their maximum ability.

She closed the door softly before locking it from the inside, turning out the lights with the flip of a switch, and saying, “Let me help clear your mind.”

Chapter XI: Patience is the Plan

“That’s how I see it, Captain,” Lieutenant McKnight agreed after nearly two hours of back-and-forth between the Pride’s Captain and XO. “If this really is where the Raubach base is located,” she pointed to the highlighted system on the display situated between them before sliding her finger to the nearest star system between it and known space, “then this system is the bottleneck. The bulk of Commodore Raubach’s defensive elements will be located there, with only a reserve force—likely including his Flagship,” she said heavily, “located at the base itself.”

Middleton nodded, “With access to the ComStat network there’s no chance he would show his entire hand at either location. We have to assume he also has elements here and here,” he pointed to a pair of star systems on the opposite side of where they suspected the Raubachs’ base to be located, “but they would be relatively minor. Three ships in each system, at most, covering these rear approaches,” he indicated a possible, although highly treacherous, path composed of an additional twenty point transfers compared to the route the Pride was currently taking.

“Recent estimates have his fleet strength between fifty and sixty five warships,” McKnight said, calling up their best projections of what the current Rim Fleet under Commodore Raubach consisted of. “Seventy to eighty percent of these will be Corvettes, but we can be fairly certain that he has at least eight Destroyers, four Cruisers, and one Defiance-class Battleship under his command as well.”

“And, given his access to the ComStat network,” Middleton grudged, “there would be little reason for him to deploy even half of his forces throughout the Sector. That means we’re looking at a genuine fleet of at least thirty warships ready to defend his base of operations.”

“How many of those ships do you think will be armed with the upgraded turbo-lasers?” McKnight asked into the suddenly ominous silence.

“We can only assume that he hasn’t completed those retrofits, XO,” Middleton said, leaning back in his chair and considering the question with what he hoped was a fresh perspective. “Otherwise he would have likely made his move, at least in these Core Systems,” he said, indicating the nearest trio of Core Worlds. “With control over those worlds he would have a real foothold into the Spineward Sectors, and with fifty warships under his command there isn’t an active force in the Spine that could stand against him. That means a coalition would have to be formed,” Middleton said, feeling a sudden pang of shame at having left the Little Admiral and the rest of the MSP to deal with the main Droid threat, “and I suspect that the majority of the mobile assets in Sectors 23 & 24 are going to be, at best, banged up for a few months following the battle at Elysium.” He shook his head with renewed confidence, “No, if he was in position to make his move, he would have done so by now. So all we really know is that he hasn’t outfitted enough of his fleet…say, a minimum of thirty ships,” he mused, doing the quick calculations on throw weight the alien tech-powered turbo-lasers would amount to when installed on the Corvettes under Commodore Raubach’s command, “so most of his ships will not be outfitted with the improved weapons.”

“If just a dozen of his ships are already outfitted with them, though,” McKnight said doubtfully, “even our Tracto 2.0 plan won’t take them down. With no tactical points to defend, superior maneuverability, and a dozen Corvettes outfitted with these upgraded turbo-lasers—to say nothing of a Defiance-class Battleship like the Commodore’s Flagship—I doubt there’s a mobile force in the entire Spine that could even make a decent fight of it.”

“We’re going to have to catch a break or two,” Middleton allowed, “but it’s the only plan we’ve got that gives us anything resembling a fighting chance, XO.”

Looking surprised and a little offended, McKnight stiffened, “If we’re going down, we’re going down swinging, Captain. You will be abandoning this fight before I do,” she said, a steely glint in her eye that Middleton had never quite seen in the young woman before, and he nodded approvingly.

“No need to get defensive,” Middleton said with a half grin.

Her expression softened somewhat and she nodded, “My apologies, Captain. That was out of line.”

“In any case,” he said, turning back to the display, “we’re in agreement how to proceed, yes?”

“100%, Captain,” McKnight said with a nod.

“Good,” he said, glad to have the meeting concluded.

His XO wore a look of concern which she quickly masked, but Middleton wanted to clear the air while they had the time.

“Something else, Lieutenant?” he queried.

McKnight bit her lip for a few seconds before saying, “It’s about War Leader Atticus, sir.”

Middleton thought back to watching the War Leader’s last moments via the concealed camera he’d had installed in the shuttle hangar, and for a moment he was unable to remove the image of Kratos, bloodied and bruised, crushing the nearly-as-massive Tracto-an’s head with his bare hands. “What about him, XO?” Middleton asked, trying to shake the image from his mind’s eye.

McKnight looked hesitant, and was clearly torn as to how to proceed—or, perhaps, whether she even should proceed.

“It’s ok, Lieutenant,” Middleton said, believing he understood the nature of her dilemma, “I installed you as my XO, but once I did so your job became to challenge me as much as to support me. You can speak frankly in here, Lieutenant.”

She seemed to take some solace in that, and eventually said, “I can’t condone the series of events which culminated in his death, sir.”

Middleton nodded, having correctly surmised the nature of her quandary. “Then as a fellow officer—and your direct superior—it is my advice that you file a report outlining your objections. Spare no details, Lieutenant McKnight,” he said, fixing her with a piercing look, “because I am mortally certain that you’re not the only member of this crew who objects to the War Leader’s death.”

“I’m not a rat, sir,” she said, shaking her head sharply. “What happened ended up for the best, even I can see that. But the process that led up to it—“

“You don’t need to justify yourself to me, Lieutenant,” Middleton interrupted firmly, working to avoid coming across as irritated. He was actually grateful she had brought the subject up with him, since he had been debating how to broach the topic with her for several days. “In fact, you’d be remiss in your duties if you included me—who you likely suspect of wrongdoing—as an advisor in your decision-making process during the lodging of your complaint.”

“Captain Middleton,” she said tightly, “I believe in what we’re doing out here—“

“Then file the report, Lieutenant!” he cut in sharply. He felt his nostrils flare and he fought to rein his emotions in after the unexpected surge of anger he felt. Drawing several deep breaths, he closed his eyes and considered how he could explain his opinion on the matter without manipulating her in any way. “If you genuinely believe in what we’re doing out here,” he said more measuredly, “then you will file the report, and you will encourage as many of your crewmates as possible to line up with you on the matter.”

“Sir?” she said in a hollow voice, her eyes going wide momentarily.

“Look around you, McKnight,” he said, gesturing to the aged warship. “What do you see?”

She gave a cursory glance to the ready room’s interior before answering, smartly, “The best ship in the MSP, sir.”

“Wrong,” he said with gentle, yet firm resolve. “The Pride of Prometheus is a broken-down rust bucket, built on the cheap before our grandparents were of voting age, and she’s on her last legs—we both know that’s putting it mildly. She’s been ridden into battle so many times that even a full replacement of her forward power grid barely kept pace with the degradation of the dependent systems—systems which Chief Garibaldi now informs me are on the verge of collapse. Her superstructure is literally crumbling as we speak; her thermal dissipation systems are woefully inadequate—and patched together from a dozen different sources, at that; her broadsides are still pitifully underpowered for a ship of her size; and she’s got upwards of a fifty warship fleet gunning for her.” He shook his head calmly, “This ship is a lost cause, Lieutenant, but she’s got one last ride in her and I aim to give her a sendoff befitting a lady of her standing and character.”

Lieutenant McKnight leaned back in her chair, clearly at a loss how to reply, and Middleton allowed the silence to linger for over a minute before he leaned forward, laced his fingers together, and pointed at her.

“The only thing this ship has going for it, at this point, is her crew,” Middleton explained, holding her gaze for several seconds with a piercing stare. “That crew has proven capable of doing great things—things the rest of the Fleet could only dream about,” he said, meaning every word. “When all of this is over, do you want to see them dismissed from service? Do you want to see them relegated to some backwater facility like Easy Haven?” he demanded, feeling his choler rise at the thought of his brave crew being forced to play out the string as reservists when they had already proven to be as capable as any regulars he had served with. “Is that what you want?!”

“No, sir,” she replied, jutting her chin out defiantly.

“Then file that report, Lieutenant, and do so as quickly as possible!” he flared. “Because when this mission is over—assuming any of us survive—the Admiral is going to be looking to make examples of anyone who didn’t protest, officially and loudly, this ship’s current commanding officer’s decisions after leaving Gambit Station. Anyone who doesn’t toe his line is going to get canned, or worse, transferred to the ass end of space until their resolve breaks and they opt for retirement rather than decades of futility scraping green creepers from passing garbage scows’ bilges.” He shook his head adamantly, “I won’t condemn these brave men and women to that fate, Lieutenant, but I’m afraid the matter is no longer in my hands. I’ve made my plays, and now it’s someone else’s turn to carry the ball.”

Lieutenant McKnight nodded slowly. “In that case…” she said, producing a data slate, “all I need is your signature, sir.”

Middleton accepted the report and, after a quick perusal of its contents, relaxed after finding that she had already determined much of what he had just told her. Her language was severe, her protests pointed, and she had already secured the signatures of thirty two crewmembers for the formal complaint.

“Good work, Lieutenant,” Middleton said, affixing his signature to the document and handing it back to her. “Make sure that gets filed in triplicate, and keep a copy on your person at all times. It may be the key to securing this crew’s future, understood?”

“Yes sir,” she replied, taking the slate in her hand but still looking like she had committed some grave mistake.

“You’re doing the right thing, Lieutenant McKnight,” he assured her. “This is the only way that the people who have stood with us through thick and thin can have a chance at something resembling a proper reward for their hard work and sacrifice—and it’s the only way they can continue to serve in the manner in which they’ve proven themselves to be singularly capable.”

“It still feels wrong, sir,” McKnight said with a dubious shake of her head.

Middleton snorted softly, “All command decisions feel like that, Lieutenant, or they wouldn’t make it this far up the ladder. The job of sitting in the big chair is to make those decisions, regardless of how hard they are or how they make you feel, and then to lie awake at night worrying about whether or not you did the right thing. Remember that.”

“I will, sir,” she replied with a nod. “And…thank you, Captain, but this ship’s not a rust bucket. She’s carried us through thick and thin; she should be shown the respect she’s earned.”

Middleton suppressed a sigh, splaying his fingers slightly as he said, “I was just making a point, Lieutenant.”

“So was I, Captain,” McKnight said, her eyes burning passionately. Middleton couldn’t help but be moved by her decision to stand up to her commanding officer over his off-the-cuff denigration of their ship, and he knew then that she was the right choice for the job of XO on his first command.

“Understood, Lieutenant. Dismissed,” he nodded agreeably and gestured to the door, prompting his XO to leave the room.

In truth, he couldn’t have asked for that particular exchange to have gone any better. To his mind she had just proven herself worthy of the position she held as second in command of a military Cruiser, and if he had his way she would now be one step closer to being ready to fill the command chair in her own right.

He allowed himself a moment of proud reflection on where he and his crew had come from before diving back into tactical analysis and projections—some of which involved the Recon Team’s covert operation.

“No signals detected on the specified frequencies, ma’am,” Vali Funar reported from the Lost Ark’s sensor console.

Lu Bu felt her face scrunch up in frustration. “Stand down from readiness; prepare for next jump,” she ordered Strider, who had taken up the position of pilot for the light freighter.

“Aye, ma’am,” Funar acknowledged pointedly after Mr. Strider failed to do so, prompting the pirate-turned-Navigator to sigh.

“Aye, aye; we be preppin’ for another jump,” he muttered.

Lu Bu turned to Trixie, “There is civilized port one jump from here. It is small, but we can leave you if you choose.” She dearly hoped the woman would take her up on the offer, but she knew in her heart that there was no way the universe would be so generous.

“No thanks; I’m happy as a clam riding along,” Miss Serendipity declared cheerfully. “Besides, if what you said was true then we might actually end up at a world previously inhabited by the Ancients,” she said, her voice lowering in reverence, “never in my wildest dreams did I think I would set foot on a world crafted by the Ancients…well, maybe in my wildest dreams,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “But I usually don’t count those ones because rich and famous celebrities would never want anything to do with a simple girl like me. And besides, this is just so darned much fun I think I could squeal!”

“This is dangerous, important mission—not ‘fun’,” Lu Bu chided as calmly as she could manage.

“Maybe not for you,” Trixie beamed, “but you didn’t spend the last three months locked in a crate with your captors contemplating turning you into a three course meal. Me? I’m taking everything that’s happened as a sign that all a person needs is a positive attitude and there’s nothing in this entire ‘verse she can’t overcome!”

Unable to find fault with the woman’s assertions, Lu Bu was even more frustrated with her than she had been prior to the surprisingly philosophical reply she had just received to her mild rebuke. “I will check with Mr. Fei,” Lu Bu grumbled before turning to leave the cockpit.

As she left, she heard Trixie whisper to Strider, “Maybe I should bake a cake for her or something? She’s so uptight.”

Deciding against turning around and having a confrontation, Lu Bu pretended as though she had heard nothing and kept walking. Though nothing could have been farther from the truth since her hearing was easily three times as sensitive as a normal human’s due to her extensive genetic engineering. Instead, she did as she had suggested she would and made her way to Kongming’s quarters.

His mood had lifted markedly since their…private time, but she had been clear with him that they must suspend such activities for the remainder of the mission. He had agreed, but she suspected she might need to reinforce the point in the near future.

She stepped into his quarters, leaving the door to the room wide open, and asked in their native tongue, “How is your progress?”

Fei Long stood from his workstation, the bags beneath his eyes having grown deeper and darker since her last visit several days earlier. They had been deployed on the Lost Ark for over a week already, and Lu Bu was beginning to grow concerned at Fei Long’s uncharacteristic lack of success in his endeavors—endeavors which were, and would always remain, unknowable to her.

“I am having greater difficulty than I had anticipated,” he admitted, his shoulders sagged slightly in a way which Lu Bu would have taken to mean he had accepted defeat—if he had been anyone other than Fei Long, that is. “Sima Yi’s powers have grown since our last encounter…I am uncertain if I can defeat my rival’s code.”

Lu Bu narrowed her eyes. “You speak as a beaten man, Kongming,” she said, unconsciously slipping into the familiar form of address since she usually did so while rebuking him. “Do you admit defeat so easily?”

“Easily?!” he blurted, waving a hand at his workstation. “You have no idea how difficult this is, Fengxian; I am required to write three separate programs which will function independently and at a high degree of capability, only to come together at a precise, predetermined time—a time I have still not been able to ascertain—when they will become a single program capable of finally defeating my longtime rival and, with the winds of fortune at our backs, it may defeat the Raubachs’ designs on the Spineward Sectors as well. Not only does this mission require me to do this, but I must also hide my own…” he spluttered, for the first time in her experience seemingly at a loss for words. His face turned red as he seemed to notice her smirk at seeing his moment of weakness, “I must hide my own digital fingerprints!” he finally snapped, using Confederation Standard for the last statement.

Feeling absolutely no sympathy for him, since she herself had fought, bled, and willingly placed herself in positions where she was likely to die for her crewmates, Lu Bu shook her head in bitter disappointment. “The winds of fortune are what we make of them, Kongming,” she said coldly. “Only a fool waits for the skies to part for him; if you need new winds then summon them just as your predecessor once did, or cast off his name so that you may sully it no more with your failure!”

His eyes going wide, Fei Long was struck speechless by her admittedly harsh rebuke. But Lu Bu knew that every day which passed brought their enemies one step closer to their ultimate goal of domination over the Spineward Sectors—or at least some part of them. She knew all too well the depths to which those enemies would stoop, having experienced firsthand their brutality on the battlefield and having heard the admission of Captain Raubach’s involvement in the manufacturing of bioweapons which, if deployed in their most efficient manner, could kill billions of people.

No, she reminded herself coldly, we are all warriors, just as Master Smith Haldis said. He had once told her after a spat with her current—and hopefully lifelong—boyfriend that each member of a state at war fights in his or her own unique way. To her mind, this was now Fei Long’s turn to bleed—metaphorically at least—for his fellows. If he failed them when they needed him most, she knew that she could accept that outcome, since not all battles result in victory. But she would not abide his quitting the fight at such an early stage.

That was the act of a coward. And she would have nothing to do with such a man.

“It is not that simple, Fengxian,” he growled. “There is no other person in the galaxy who could do what I am asked—“

“What of your rival?” she interrupted. “This ‘Sima Yi’ of whom you speak with such respect?” She knew that Sima Yi was the longtime rival of Zhuge Liang in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and that in the end of the novel Sima Yi’s cunning, treachery, and patience had culminated in his gaining victory over not only Zhuge Liang, but over every other warlord—including his sworn masters, the Cao family—before ascending to the throne as the leader of the entire nation. That Fei Long was so quick to give his rival the title of the one man who could defeat his favored Great Ancestor was more than alarming to her. It was almost as though he had conceded the battle before it had begun simply be recognizing the identity of his opponent!

“You do not understand,” Fei Long spat, waving a hand dismissively. “There is balance in all things, Fengxian: Yin and Yang must never be separated, and are the source of all wisdom. Do you not understand that?”

“That is useless superstition, Kongming,” she said icily. “If you seek excuses for your failure, you can certainly find better ones than the ramblings of our ancestors written tens of thousands of years in the past.”

“We have not changed, Fengxian,” Fei Long retorted. “Humans are as they have been, so the lessons of the past are, and will always be, the keys to our future!”

Lu Bu felt her lips twist into a harsh smirk. “Yin and Yang may be all you have left, at this rate…I pray you can return to them and find meaning should you concede defeat here, Kongming,” she said before turning on her heel and leaving her boyfriend with a look of bewilderment on his face.

Stunned into silence, Fei Long stood there after she had gone for nearly an hour. It had taken him but a few moments to understand what her words had stirred within him, but when he did his mind began to work furiously as he considered the possibilities.

The kernel of a plan popped into his mind after that hour had passed, but the thought itself was weak like the light of a candle in a rising wind. He dared not move for risk of extinguishing it and losing the seed of the plan she had just so brilliantly suggested.

He had been going about his programming in the traditional manner: from front to back, as any responsible coder might do. But he had failed to see the nature of the problem for what it truly was: Yin and Yang!

His reverie was very nearly broken when Trixie appeared at his doorway and said, “Ed was wondering if you were going to work on those upgrades—“

“Silence—please!” Fei Long said, clenching his eyes shut as he tried to tune out her interruption while grasping at the threads of the plan which had very nearly slipped from his mind. He had been working with the assault droid to upgrade portions of his programming, since doing so had allowed his mind to relax. During recent days, he had needed the welcome distraction—and Ed had been understandably enthusiastic, in his own way, at the prospect of enhanced targeting algorithms and basic piloting software which would allow him, in an emergency, to operate as helmsman for over a thousand different ship classifications.

“Sorry…” Trixie said meekly, slinking away and leaving Fei Long to his now-jumbled thoughts.

Then he found the thread which he had lost, and the whole plan came back to his mind in a deluge of abstract concepts and visualized code fragments. “Yin before Yang and after again, on and on it goes for eternity,” he whispered to himself repeatedly as his mind spun faster than he could remember it doing in recent months. He saw the structure of his program now and knew that everything he had done until that point would be useless. Sima Yi’s technique was too advanced to be beaten in anything resembling the traditional manner, so he would have to discard all of his work to that point.

“Yin and Yang…” he whispered as the final fragments of thought coalesced into his mind and he finally saw his unwritten program in his mind’s eye, over an hour after Lu Bu had rebuked him so candidly. “And back again!” he declared, raising his voice in triumph as he pumped a fist into the air and ran toward the cockpit of the vessel. “That’s it!”

He found Lu Bu in the dining area, surrounded by most of the other team members. They looked like they might have been eating, but he was unconcerned with their activities as he raced toward Lu Bu, hoisted her up—or tried to, anyway; her bulk was too great for him to move without her active assistance, which she clearly had no wish to give as she glared at him—and planted his lips onto hers in the most passionate gesture he could think of that might adequately convey his gratitude to her.

“You are a genius, Fengxian!” he crowed in Standard before planting yet another kiss on her lips and, before she could respond, he turned and ran back toward his quarters, knowing he needed to get started immediately. He turned abruptly at the doorway of the dining area and found her gaze—along with several looks of concern on the faces of the other team members—and he said, “Out of Yin and Yang, then back to it again! That’s how I’ll summon the East Wind!”

Uncertain that any of them understood, but finding that he did not care in the least if they did or not, he raced back to his quarters and began a complete rewrite of his program. He was so joyous that even the nagging, itching sensation at the base of his neck which had irritated him for several days—a sensation centered on the spot where he had come into direct contact with the Ancient neural tissue just before boarding the Lost Ark—seemed to vanish amid the waves of positive energy which were now overflowing in his psyche.

For the first time since embarking on this particular mission, he knew he would defeat his longtime rival. And he had Lu Bu to thank for it.

He would make it up to her—of that he had no doubt.

“What was that all about?” Hutch asked after the stunned silence in the Lost Ark’s dining area had lingered for an uncomfortable interval.

Lu Bu shook her head, finding she was rather less embarrassed by Kongming’s amorous display than she would have expected. Still, she emphatically wiped her lips on the back of her sleeve before shrugging, “His mind is unknowable.”

“Nah, you be givin’ him somethin’,” Strider said with a mischievous grin. “Spill them beans, mom.”

She gave him a scolding look at calling her his mother yet again, but found that she truly had little idea what Fei Long intended. “The wisdom was not mine,” she said eventually, “but if the Ancestors are truly with us, wisdom was his all along. I remind him of this, and he understands.”

“Behind every great man…” Hutch chuckled, causing the rest of the team to break out in soft laughter at the unfinished joke—a joke with which Lu Bu was completely unfamiliar.

“What this means?” she asked irritably.

Hutch held up his hands in mock surrender. “It means that every now and then a man needs a good, hard kick in the pants—and some of the time it’s a good thing that his woman is all-too-happy do it.”

Lu Bu nodded, putting the imagery of a woman standing behind a man and delivering a vicious kick between his legs firmly in her mind, and knowing she understood the wisdom of the reference. She, too, began to chuckle, and the atmosphere of mirth persisted for several hours as the Lost Ark prepared for its next jump.

Chapter XII: The Seed is Planted

“Contact,” Funar declared steadily, “we have contact on the proscribed frequencies, ma’am.”

It had been six days since Fei Long’s unusual show of gratitude in the dining area, but by what she was grudgingly forced to admit was likely the smile of the Ancestors upon their mission, Fei Long had declared his program to be ready mere hours before this latest point transfer. He had followed his declaration with caveats, including how he could increase their chances of complete success with several days of refinement to his program, but Lu Bu had been sufficiently convinced that it was ready for deployment.

“Confirm,” she ordered tightly.

“Confirming,” Funar said before meeting her eyes, “contacts confirmed: I’m reading three warships in orbit of the second planet of this system, ma’am. Configurations match two Harmony Tribe Corvettes and one Harmony Destroyer.”

It was a smaller force than she would have liked to happen upon, but Fei Long had assured her that his program would ensure that at least two additional legs of communication would go out once the Droids had assimilated the first of his hidden Yin and Yang code fragments.

Lu Bu called down to the engine room via the ship’s hardwired intercom system, “Yide, prepare maximum burn on engines.”

“Aye,” Yide reported in his deep, rumbling voice over the crackling speakers.

“Mr. Fei,” she continued, piping herself into his dedicated chamber’s intercom speakers, “report to bridge now.”

Soon thereafter, Kongming stepped into the cockpit and took over at the combined Sensors and Communications station which Funar had manned.

“Prepare gunship for launch,” she instructed Funar, “and have Ed attached quickly, but securely.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied as the cockpit’s main view screen—a barely three foot wide display—shimmered and was replaced by the image of a Droid Corvette which appeared to be breaking orbit of the planet.

“Northern Corvette is breaking orbit and accelerating to intercept the Lost Ark,” Fei Long reported needlessly. “Time to intercept on current course: one hour twenty three minutes.”

“Pilot,” Lu Bu moved to Strider’s shoulder, “where do we hide?”

Strider had already brought up a trio of possible destinations, including one gas dwarf on the outer edge of the system and two moons orbiting a nearby gas giant with a powerful EM field surrounding it. “We either bank on distance,” he pointed to the gas dwarf, “or we be hopin’ to hide in the interference of the Jovian, mom.”

Lu Bu knew that the further one went from their enemies, the greater the blow when said enemies finally caught up with one. So she pointed to the gas giant, “Can we reach without engines?”

Strider made several quick calculations and cocked his head doubtfully upon seeing the results, “Better than fifty-fifty, mom, but not by much. I say…we be havin’ a two in three chance of makin’ orbit if we use the Lost Ark’s inertia to launch the gunship toward the Jovian.”

“And the one in three chance of not making orbit,” Fei Long cut in casually, “will almost certainly result in our being crushed by the planet’s gravity since we will lack sufficient maneuvering thruster power to break free of the planet’s gravity well without attracting unwanted attention.”

Lu Bu nodded, knowing that a two in three chance of survival was the best they were likely to get. “All but Hutch, Strider, Fei Long and me will board gunship immediately,” she declared. “We remain at posts until Lost Ark course set for gas giant.”

She stole a brief glance in her boyfriend’s direction, knowing that there was still an unspoken truth which she had yet to share with him but she decided that this was not the time to open that particular topic. If they succeeded in their mission there would certainly be time for that conversation later, and if they failed…

Still, she found her left hand had wandered to her belly and she quickly placed it at her side, silently cursing her absentmindedness.

“Aye, ma’am,” Private Funar acknowledged. He then led the rest of the team onto Yide’s family gunship.

“Can you make our course look like escape attempt?” she asked intently of Strider.

“Sure thing,” he nodded. “We look like we be usin’ the Jovian’s gravity to slingshot out to the limit; we already spinnin’ up the hyper drive, so the fake be sold right and proper.”

“Good,” she said with a curt nod, having acclimated herself to the man’s peculiar speech patterns in recent days. “When ship is on course, we leave on gunship.”

“Aye, mom,” Strider said, causing Lu Bu to glare at him.

“I am not your ‘mom’,” she growled for what seemed like the seventeenth time.

The former pirate shrugged as he manipulated the ship’s controls, fine-tuning its course to make it appear as though they were making a run for it.

“Hutch,” she said, turning to the former smashball star, “bring dead droids to sickbay.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he acknowledged before setting off to do so. It had seemed too macabre to have the dead droids in the ship’s place of healing, so she had ordered them to be left in the cargo hold until it was time to abandon the ship. It likely made little difference in the end, since placing the droids in the sickbay would only present the illusion that the Lost Ark’s crew had been examining the droids’ remains.

But she knew that, as in all things, a mission’s success depended greatly on the details being attended to properly. She turned in time to see Fei Long enter the cockpit as Hutch exited, asking him in their native tongue, “Have you stowed your things on the gunship?”

“It is done,” he replied, his eyes snapping across the various instruments in rapid succession as he took in the scene more quickly than he could have done by requesting a verbal update. “The droid cores have been placed in the sickbay; the false data I have implanted in their storage centers will provide the Harmony Tribe with all the evidence required for them to do as our plan requires.”

“And what about this ship’s databases?” Lu Bu asked skeptically.

“They will be purged completely, with no data fragments of a compromising nature recoverable by any known methodology,” Fei Long replied as he scratched the back of his neck absently.

“What is wrong with your neck?” she asked with muted interest, having seen the affectation several times in recent days. Without waiting for an answer, she turned back to the pilot’s console and checked on the enemy warship’s course and speed.

“Nothing,” Fei Long replied in what was clearly a lie.

“We will have Doctor Middleton check it when we return,” she said with finality.

“Of course,” he said somewhat distantly, and she looked back to see him still scratching his neck but in a more subdued fashion.

“That be it,” Strider declared, “with the instruments on this bucket, that’s the best I can do if we plan to get off before the machines show up.”

“Good,” Lu Bu said, “then we evacuate this Lost Ark now. Transfer to gunship—move!”

“Brace for takeoff,” Yide said after the last of Lu Bu’s team was aboard. Using a local wireless connection, he opened the Lost Ark’s pressure doors and waited as they slowly slid apart, after which time he fired the engines of the gunship and gave a short, powerful burst before killing the engines so as to avoid detection. The burst was powerful enough to squish the pressed bodies of the team together with dangerous force, but Lu Bu’s team had ‘stacked’ themselves with the most physically-imposing members toward the back of the vessel and the smaller, weaker members—like Fei Long and Miss Serendipity—toward the front so they would not be crushed by the sudden acceleration.

When the acceleration ceased, the cabin’s gravity disappeared since the gunship had no gravity plating, and the previous gravity had been generated by the Lost Ark. Everyone aboard the vessel was wearing pressure suits—except the Lancers, who had donned their Storm Drake armor—and, while it would soon become uncomfortably cold within the cramped quarters of the craft, Lu Bu knew it was their only chance to avoid detection by the approaching Droid warship.

It would be thirty minutes before they were safely within the gas giant’s EM envelope, meaning that until then they were on complete comm. silence. Lu Bu could still communicate with her team members using hand signals, but given the cramped conditions aboard the vessel she knew it was best if they all simply remained where they were and moved as little as possible.

Lu Bu watched the passive sensors and video feeds, which had locked onto a pair of empty escape pods which they had jettisoned a few minutes prior to their own launch. The escape pods were transmitting an unconditional surrender message on repeat, but that made little difference to the Droid warship since, as soon as it closed to range, it fired and destroyed both of the lifeboats with chilling accuracy.

Having expected as much, Lu Bu now prayed that the warship would not detect their craft as it drifted further and further away from the Lost Ark.

Several minutes passed and, just before their gunship entered the safety of the Jovian’s EM field, the Lost Ark’s automated distress beacon activated. The message contained within, which was generally automatically generated and would include the ship’s most recent itinerary, had been modified to include a completely false leg of the freighter’s trip—a leg that included the system which Captain Middleton had targeted for this particular operation.

The Lost Ark’s comm. system had been set to broadcast its distress signal not only on local channels, but also on ComStat emergency frequencies. Having devised this particular portion of the plan himself back on the Pride of Prometheus, Fei Long had set the local ComStat hub to undergo one of its routine reboots at the precise moment when the signal was transmitted by the freighter.

Predictably, the Droid warship sent up a powerful jamming field as soon as its crew—or, possibly, it—recognized the signal as containing ComStat FTL protocols, and the signal was immediately drowned in the overpowering jammer field.

But that comm. jamming field would also prevent the enemy vessel from detecting the gunship via its sensor suite. They would have to achieve a visual lock instead, and the Droids apparently utilized visual identification even less than humans did during space maneuvers, so Lu Bu released a breath she had been holding for nearly two minutes.

Switching on her local com-link, she gestured to the rest of the team that they should do likewise.

“That was as good as we could have hoped for,” Funar remarked dryly as the Corvette lashed out with a light laser and, with expert precision, it managed to deactivate the freighter’s engines with only a pair of simultaneous strikes.

After checking the condition of each team member and finding them to be without injury, Lu Bu gestured to the fast-approaching moon which they would use to block the warship’s view of their vessel while they engaged in a severe braking maneuver. “Are we on course?” she asked Yide. The uplift’s overall piloting skills were not on Strider’s level, but his familiarity with this particular craft made him the superior choice for piloting their current craft.

“We are,” he replied, his voice deep and distorted through the com-link, which had been calibrated for normal human vocal ranges. “We will burn at maximum for ten seconds when we pass to the dark side of this moon and then we will cut engines and drift to second moon’s orbit.”

“You have calculated this?” she asked neutrally, fighting to keep her voice even.

Yide nodded, “I have.”

Finding herself less-than-relieved, she gestured for Strider to come to the fore of the cockpit, “Check Yide’s calculation.”

“Aye, mom—sorry,” he said irritably, “may-om.” He slided into the cramped space beside Yide’s chair and, after several minutes he gave Lu Bu a nod, “Numbers be solid, mom—sorry, may-om.”

“Will this actually work?” Hutch asked from the back of the cabin stern of the cockpit. “I mean…isn’t this like threading a needle from a mile away?”

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Trixie said with a giggle. “More like…hitting a shuttle with a bow and arrow, from a hundred meters’ plus elevation at the maximum range of the bow—assuming, of course, that the bow is in good working condition and has been properly maintained. Having shot a bow from time to time at my uncle’s ranch, I’d say the odds of me making that shot would be…I don’t know, one in thirty?”

“…That didn’t exactly help, Trixie,” Hutch said grimly.

“Oh,” she said, sounding briefly downcast before brightening once again, “well, I never said I was very good with a bow and arrow, you understand. I probably only have three or four thousand hours of practice logged at the range, and to be an expert at pretty much anything it takes more like ten thousand hours—“

“Silence,” Lu Bu snapped, deciding that allowing the woman to ramble was likely harming team morale. “Let pilot concentrate.”

“Sorry,” Trixie said meekly before adding in her usual, cheery manner, “but I’m sure Yide’s done this before.”

All eyes briefly fell on Yide, whose back hairs literally bristled in what Lu Bu took to be a negative display of body language. “No,” he said simply.

“Oh…” Trixie said before Lu Bu shot her a dark look which seemed to have its intended effect as the other woman remained silent until Strider began his countdown to their window. Each member of her team had been assigned their own positions for this particular maneuver, which would be similar to those they had taken during takeoff from the Lost Ark’s hold, but that particular burst of thrust had lasted less than a second—this one would last for between nine and ten seconds, with gee forces right at the human survival threshold since they needed to make every nanosecond of their window count.

“Three…two…one…blackout,” Strider declared, the last word garbling itself as Yide slewed their craft around with the attitude control thrusters before firing full-out with the gunship’s engines.

Lu Bu felt Fei Long’s body press against hers as she held him in her arms, but surprisingly her vision began to black out as she fought to keep her eyes on the thrust clock which Yide had set up directly above his large, hairy head. She remembered seeing six seconds remaining on the clock’s countdown, and then somehow the clock skipped all the way to two seconds remaining. More than mildly alarmed at losing consciousness when she had endured gee forces nearly half again this great during her younger years training at the family compound, she found herself gasping for air when the clock reached zero and the engines cut out.

She tried to call for a sound-off from her teammates, but her voice would not work properly. Shaking her head and clutching her chest, she shoved Fei Long off of herself and tried desperately to take in a full breath.

Several panic-laden seconds later, she finally sucked in something approaching a full breath and gasped, “Sound off!”

No reply came to her, and she looked down to see Fei Long was only now beginning to stir as his arms spasmed in a predictable fashion. She had seen dozens of people regain consciousness after losing it—most often having lost consciousness at her hands—and was reassured when the rest of the team slowly began to stir.

“Sound off,” she repeated slightly more measuredly.

“Yide…here,” the pilot said groggily.

“That was the worst nap I’ve ever taken,” Funar said with a groan.

“Fine here, ma’am,” Hutch said between ragged pants.

It took Trixie and Fei Long longer than the others to regain consciousness, but when they did Lu Bu was relieved to find that all of her team was awake and had suffered only bumps and bruises during the dangerous maneuver.

“Check attitude,” Lu Bu instructed after seeing Strider begin to do precisely that. She silently cursed herself for allowing the stress of the moment to override her responsibility as the mission’s leader.

“Course be…” Strider began tightly before leaning back and trying to wipe his brow, but finding the back of his hand obstructed by the pressure helmet he wore, “we be good, mom. We’ll settle into orbit of the second moon in twelve hours; we’ll need to fire the thrusters again to maintain steady orbit,” he added, “but we’ll be good for at least six orbits before we be forced into doing anything revealing.”

“Good work Yide,” Lu Bu said, clapping the uplift on the shoulder and seeing the young Sundered look up briefly into her eyes with bloodshot eyes of his own.

“Thank you, Fengxian,” he said, and she took no offense at his use of her style name. As far as she was concerned, despite the fact that he was only ten years old, he was and would always be her peer—regardless of the paltry difference in their respective genetic material.

Of course, she realized the difference between her genes and his might be significantly greater than the human norm, since many of her genes were wholly artificial while most genetically engineered humans benefited from specific activation and deactivation of naturally-occurring gene sequences.

“Ok,” she said, running through the mission outline in her head one more time before declaring, “power on life support.”

“Aye, ma’am,” Yide acknowledged before hitting a series of buttons and turning levers which controlled the life-giving gases to pressurized the cabin, “no leaks detected…life support should be online in twenty minutes.”

“Good,” she said, glad her Storm Drake armor protected her from the chill of the nearby bulkhead which separated them from the vast darkness of interplanetary space.

She noticed Fei Long begin to rub his neck once again, but seeing her eyes on him he stopped and gave her a wan smile.

When we return to the Pride, she reminded herself, I must have Doctor Middleton examine him.

“Good work…Kongming,” she said, torn between the familiar and more official designations available to her.

“We will see,” he said, tilting his head toward the warship displayed on the craft’s main screen. It had already launched bucking cables and was mere minutes away from boarding the Lost Ark, at which point it would take less than an hour to discover if Fei Long’s programming had been equal to the task before them.

Nearly two hours later, Fei Long was still intently watching the screen for some sign—any sign—that his falsified records would have their intended effect. The droids had successfully seized the Lost Ark and powered down its comm. suite, which had led to their discontinuation of the local jamming field. But they had not yet behaved as he had expected—and hoped—they would.

“It was a worthy plan, Kongming,” Lu Bu said from his side, but he could feel the bitter disappointment in her tone. “No other could have even made the attempt.”

Fei Long knew she meant to soothe him in her own way, but he was in no mood for consolation. He had failed; his rival had won; and Captain Middleton would now be forced to retreat from the conflict or charge headlong into the fray in a suicidal maneuver which, in all seriousness, was likely the best deployment of resources available to him.

The Raubachs simply could not be allowed to continue with their plans…too many had died, too much had been sacrificed, and if they had their way then everything they had done until that very moment was merely a precursor to the impending terror they would soon rain down on the Spineward Sectors.

In his higher brain—the cold, emotionally detached portion—he knew that things would not be as terrible as his imagination was suggesting they might. The rulers of Sectors 23 & 24—and possibly even 25—would acquiesce to Commodore Raubach’s will rather than allow their people to be terrorized and crushed beneath the Rim Fleet’s armored heel. But he also knew that the price of his failure would likely measure on a scale which he dared not even contemplate in that moment.

He had failed, and millions of people would suffer for it. That thought repeated itself in his mind in one form or another as he felt his heart harden against everyone and everything which had stood between his allies and their mission—and then he saw a flash from the nearby console.

Focusing both of his eyes on it, he quickly decided that it had been an illusion—a product of his mind’s desperate grab for victory where none could possibly exist.

Then it flashed again and he sat forward, irrationally fearful that moving too quickly might upset what felt like a tipping point with entire worlds hanging in the balance.

“We have supplies for three weeks,” Lu Bu continued stiffly. “We can send for a pick-up as soon as the droids leave this system—“

“Shh!” he interrupted her, holding a finger to her faceplate while never taking his eyes from the console which had twice flashed. He knew it was still likely wishful thinking, but Fei Long needed to ensure that the hand of fate not be diverted by their actions—or words. He had never believed so before, but in that moment he truly saw the wisdom in the old adage, ‘a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the planet can cause a typhoon on the other.’

Then the light flashed again, this time strobing in a predictable fashion with three strobes per second. Reaching out, he delicately—almost reverently—input a series of commands which saw the incoming transmission fed directly to his portable data slate. Once it was transferred, he examined the contents of the transmission by using a series of cyphers he had worked up after seeing the droids’ communications.

He could not hope to crack the entire contents of the message without the proper equipment, but his eyes went wide as he saw what he had hoped against hope he might: a scrambled string of coordinates which, in all likelihood, were the same ones he had uploaded into the Lost Ark’s flight plan log.

“Success,” he breathed, prompting Lu Bu to clench his shoulder tightly enough to nearly make him yelp with pain.

“What happened?” she demanded

He turned to her and cocked a grin—an expression he would have thought impossible to make just a few minutes earlier. “They appear to have ‘taken the bait’,” he replied, feeling no small measure of relief at their apparent success.

Lu Bu was silent for several seconds—and she never relaxed her grip on his shoulder—before nodding. “Good work, Mr. Fei,” she said strictly. Turning to the other members of the team, she said in Confederation Standard, “Phase One is success. Phase Two will commence when droids leave system.”

Knowing that the first step in Phase Two was for Fei Long to notify Captain Middleton of their progress, Fei Long prepped his data slate to interface with the gunship’s comm. system. He had made the necessary modifications to those systems which were required to interface with the ComStat network, and as he composed the message he composed a second message, which was also part of Phase Two.

Feeling his spirit soar as he considered the ramifications of this important first step in their mission, Fei Long felt himself begin to chuckle so he deactivated his com-link’s audio pickup so the others would not be forced to share in his momentary euphoric outburst.

He still had a chance to defeat his rival, and that chance was worth more than everything else in the universe—except Lu Bu’s safety. That, he treasured above all else, and would gladly sacrifice his personal ambitions to ensure remained inviolate.

But as long as he could do both…he would!

Chapter XIII: Phase Two

“Captain, I’m receiving an incoming ComStat message,” Lieutenant McKnight reported after checking the Comm. station. A moment later she turned with a triumphant look on her face, “The Seed has been Planted, Captain Middleton.”

“How is the tree?” Middleton asked sardonically, using the cypher Fei Long had chosen for the mission.

“Root and Branch intact,” she replied promptly, “preparing for the next Season.”

Middleton wanted to pump his fist in exultation, but kept his features stoic as he nodded shortly, “Thank you, XO. Send the reply I’m forwarding via my secure link.”

A moment later, he transmitted the packet containing the encrypted, and cyphered, message. Lieutenant McKnight, who was the only other person currently in possession of the access codes required to initiate ComStat linkage, waited a few seconds before acknowledging, “Packet received, Captain; I’m transmitting it to our Capital-based transfer relay now.”

Middleton was still uncertain that sending the data indirectly was the wisest course of action, but Mr. Fei had been adamant that doing so would provide the most secure path for their communications. Unfortunately, this would be the last communiqué the Pride’s covert ops team would engage in during the mission. After acknowledging receipt of his orders—orders which included their most recent tactical assessments—Lu Bu’s team was to remain in total comm. blackout while they initiated Phase Two of their dangerous operation.

Unfortunately, stirring up a Droid fleet was likely to be the least dangerous part of their mission, and for a moment Middleton questioned his judgment in placing such an important task under the direct command of a teenager.

But he reminded himself that she had already proven herself capable in conflict, steady under fire, and willing to do whatever was required to accomplish the mission. She had also displayed considerably better judgment and problem-solving skills than he had expected of her when she had first joined the Pride’s crew.

“Message away, Captain,” Lieutenant McKnight declared officiously.

“Good,” Middleton acknowledged. “Now it’s our turn. Ready the hyper drive,” he instructed, glad that they were finally about to embark on the last leg of this particular mission. They had managed to avoid contact with the Raubach fleet to this point, but he knew he would soon encounter a scouting force. They had arrived at a system which was only three jumps from the Raubachs’ hidden base, and there the Pride of Prometheus had waited for several days while Lu Bu’s team had done their work.

But that wait was now over.

“That be the last of them,” Strider declared with relief after the last Droid Corvette—the one which had secured the Lost Ark—point transferred out of the system.

“It’s interesting that they didn’t destroy the Lost Ark,” Trixie observed with an eagerness in her voice that was, to Lu Bu’s mind, wholly inappropriate to their current situation.

“Indeed,” Fei Long mused, “the droids seemingly could not wait to destroy one of their own military vessels once it had been infected with the signal transmitted up from the subterranean shrine. I must have incorrectly guessed at which parts of the code were the ones they deemed hazardous…most interesting,” he said as his eyes flicked back and forth in contemplation. There was something in his voice which Lu Bu decidedly disliked—a sort of piqued interest which seemed ‘off,’ for some reason.

“Is ComStat gear ready for transmission?” Lu Bu asked him.

Fei Long nodded, “It is. I will transmit our pick-up request on your order.”

“Do it,” she instructed with a sharp nod, disliking who it was that they were now relying upon for what was, for lack of a better term, a rescue from the slow, but inevitable, exhaustion of the tiny ship’s survival resources—chief among them breathable air. The gunship had extremely rudimentary air scrubbers, and even with the auxiliary units Chief Garibaldi had installed prior to the mission’s commencement, they would still only survive aboard the craft for between eighteen and twenty two days.

A moment later, Fei Long nodded, “It is done.”

“Have you examined Captain Middleton’s message?” Lu Bu asked in Standard.

Fei Long nodded, “The target system has been confirmed, as has our route to it. We are presently two extra jumps from the Raubach base compared to the Pride of Prometheus, but I believe we will arrive in the system at approximately the same time—assuming our pick-up is made by whom, and with what, we expect.”

“Good,” Lu Bu said, checking the ship’s chronometer and knowing that, if their pick-up was made as they expected, they would detect a point transfer in nineteen hours and fifty six minutes.

If they detected no such transfer, she decided to begin practicing holding her breath, since she was quite certain it would indicate a double-cross that would result in her first command being marooned in orbit of the Jovian’s moon.

Images of her team’s desiccated corpses in states of repose inside the gunship—and a deactivated assault droid strapped to the hull—flickered through her mind before she pushed them from it.

They were not yet out of this particular fight. She firmly believed that; she needed to believe it…

She wanted to believe it.

Three hours later, she heard Fei Long declare, “I am receiving an incoming transmission on the assigned frequency.”

Lu Bu could feel the entire team’s backs stiffen; this was not only far quicker than their pickup should have arrived, but they had detected no point transfer, which meant that either the hailing vessel had been there all along, or…

“Put it on,” she said tersely, and a moment later the cockpit’s speakers crackled to life.

“This is D.C. aboard the Mode,” a man’s voice came over the speakers. “Respond or I’m outta here.”

Lu Bu picked up the microphone and gestured for Fei Long to connect her, which he did. “This is Lu Bu,” she said after checking that his transmitted handshake protocols included the passcodes Fei Long had designated for their pick-up to use upon his arrival. “Where is Lynch?”

“You think the Beast would come out for something as low-level as this?” the man, D.C., scoffed. “You wanted a pick-up and a jump-capable ship, and the Beast was in a generous mood—too generous if you ask me, since this was supposed to be my ship that he decided to give to you.”

Lu Bu’s eyes narrowed, “You would betray him?”

She heard the other man snicker loudly, “That would be about the dumbest play in the book, girlfriend.”

“I am not your girlfriend,” she growled.

“We can both be thankful for that, then,” the man retorted. “Power up your transponder and I’ll reel you in with the external clamps once I’ve got a fix on you.”

Lu Bu hesitated, knowing that their gunship might actually be able to win a fight with the Cutter if they used the moon they orbited to their advantage, but she reminded herself that even if the man betrayed them and decided to turn his guns on them, they would be no worse off than if he simply turned around and abandoned them.

“Power transponder,” she said after making brief eye contact with Fei Long.

A moment later, he nodded and said, “Transponder is powered.”

“I’ve got you now,” D.C. said after a few seconds, “coming in for hard dock. After we dock, you should spacewalk your people over to the Mode; can’t imagine you’re eager to stay aboard that cramped little gunship much longer.”

“Acknowledged,” Lu Bu said, very much disliking the man’s demeanor but reminding herself, yet again, that the only way they could contribute to her commander’s mission was by remaining politic until they were aboard their new vessel.

Nearly an hour later, the last of the team had successfully transferred to the Mode, and the ship’s pilot—D.C.—had turned the deceptively advanced vessel toward the planet above which the droids had been orbiting upon the Lost Ark’s entry into the system.

“Alright,” D.C. said, turning to Fei Long, “time you paid up.”

“Agreed,” Fei Long said with a nod, producing a data slate from a knapsack he had left untouched during the entirety of the mission to that point. He knew that the schematics contained on the data slate were of the utmost importance to the Sundered, and that Toto had likely broken some sort of law within his own community by proffering them, but he also knew it had been the only way to secure Lynch’s assistance.

“Let me take a look,” D.C. said, taking the slate and perusing its contents for several seconds before nodding. “All right, these look to be in order,” he said heavily before fixing Fei Long with a piercing look, “but if they prove less than complete, or accurate, I—“

“I believe we may dispense with the threats, Mr. D.C.,” Fei Long interrupted smoothly. “It would seem that everyone aboard this vessel is pressed for time.”

D.C.’s nostrils flared, and Fei Long felt Lu Bu tense beside him, but the other man relaxed fractionally before shrugging. “I guess the Beast already told you what would happen if you crossed him.”

“He has indeed,” Fei Long agreed, remembering the quite eloquent string of invective the reclusive arms dealer had delivered during the brief ‘negotiations’ which Fei Long had instigated via the ComStat network and his Capital-based virtual network.

“Fine,” D.C. grudged, “then the last bit of business is a swap: this ship for yours.”

Yide snarled behind Fei Long, thrusting himself forward in an obviously dominant display, “The gunship is my family’s home.”

D.C. gave the uplift a laconic look as he waved the data slate, “These schematics for your daddy’s cybernetic implants are a good start—good enough to drag my ass all the way out here when I could be tending my own bookies in the middle of semi-pro smashball season, anyway—but if you want this ship, it’s gonna cost you that gunship out there. Of course,” his lips twisted into a smirk, “it’d be just fine by me if you refused, seeing as that would make Mode mine and that you all would be stranded in this backwater.”

Fei Long considered the man’s words, tone, and body language before concluding it was highly probable that he was telling the truth: he would leave them in this system, with no more than three weeks of survival rations, if they refused.

Fei Long turned to Yide with a heavy look, “The decision is yours, my friend. Your father placed the gunship’s care in your trust; he knew it would be possible that you might be forced to abandon it during the mission.”

If D.C.’s flaring nostrils had gotten Fei Long’s attention, Yide’s flaring nostrils reminded him that in many ways, humanity’s nearest cousins were still their superiors in many different ways. He glared at D.C. for several minutes, and Fei Long became concerned that the uplift might take the chance on sending out repeating signals via the ComStat network to arrange for their rescue aboard the gunship rather than make the trade.

Then a thought occurred to him, and before he thought the matter through he leaned forward and whispered, “Would your father not be pleased to find you had traded your family gunship for a jump-capable Cutter with extensive, black market modifications made to it?” He looked around pointedly at the sparsely-appointed interior of the craft, which struck him in that moment as in absolute contrast to the interior of the lavishly-appointed yacht they had traded to Lynch for the Starfire missiles and Liberator torpedoes.

Realization dawned on the young uplift, and he turned his fiery gaze on Fei Long as he growled, “If we make the trade, it remains in my family?”

“Assuming we all survive,” Fei Long replied as calmly as he could with a three hundred fifty pound Sundered ape man blasting hot air into his face with each breath, “I am certain Captain Middleton would be amenable.”

“You are certain…or you know?” Yide pressed.

Fei Long hesitated briefly, running through the possible outcomes of the various replies he could use, but he knew that the mission’s success likely depended on their securing that craft so he decided to take the ultimate gamble. Looking meaningfully at Lu Bu, and knowing it might be the last thing he ever did, he said, “I know, Yide.”

The uplift seemed to relax before turning to D.C. “You have a deal.”

“Oh, hurray for me,” D.C. said with what was obviously bitter disappointment. “We’ll touch down on the planet, which happens to have a breathable atmosphere, in two hours. Of course, it would be a lot sooner if we didn’t have that tin can strapped to the hull,” he said with a slicing glance in Yide’s direction. The uplift pressed forward, but Lu Bu placed an arm across his chest and prevented him from moving any closer to the pilot.

Mildly surprised at Lu Bu’s strength, and how easily it seemed that she was able to stop the angry ape man, Fei Long’s thoughts were filled with a realization he had not wanted to accept since the first inklings of it had entered his mind several months earlier during an encounter with Doctor Middleton.

He had forestalled that realization for as long as he could, because he had known that it would very likely have a deleterious effect on his newfound happiness and way of life. Taking another look at Lu Bu, and briefly making eye contact, Fei Long felt an unexpected tear run down his face as a single thought went through his mind over and over again: I can lie again…

He knew in that moment that his life would never be what he had hoped it might become. He had been faced with incontrovertible evidence that his ‘kill pill,’ as Captain Middleton had termed it, was no longer actively waiting for him to lie before delivering a lethal dose of poison—or an explosive, or whatever form his former jailors’ chosen method of execution had been—directly into his brain.

He barely seemed to notice as they landed on the planet, detached the gunship from the side of the Cutter’s hull, transferred Ed into the Mode’s modest cargo bay, and received last-minute instructions from D.C. on the Cutter’s operation.

As their new vessel lifted off from the surface of the planet, seemingly marooning D.C. and the gunship on the surface of the barren world with only trace amounts of atmosphere present, Fei Long found an isolated part of the ship before sobbing uncontrollably in unmitigated despair. His previous thought was soon replaced by an unexpected one that he knew was absolutely true:

By the Ancestors…I would have rather died.

Chapter XIV: The Bulwark

It had been two days since Captain Middleton had received word from Lu Bu’s team, and the Pride of Prometheus was waiting one jump outside of the star system which he and Lieutenant McKnight had determined would be the Rim Fleet’s defensive position.

One jump beyond that, if Middleton was correct, would be the hidden base from which the Raubachs had plumbed the alien technology which would reshape the Spineward Sectors in whatever image Commodore Raubach desired.

Although, after reviewing the information on House Raubach provided by Fei Long, Middleton had learned that Commodore James Raubach III was no higher than third in the line of succession for control over what was regularly rated in the top thirty most powerful Houses in the entire Imperium of Man, and occasionally climbed as high as the twentieth.

So it was extremely likely that Commodore Raubach’s actions here in the Spineward Sectors were merely part of some greater plan which had been set in motion by Senator James Raubach II, the patriarch and leader of House Raubach these past sixty years.

During his time as House primarch, Senator Raubach had executed several high-profile political coups, foremost among them being a surprising alliance with House Cornwallis in several key areas—not the least of which was the development of the Cornwallis-Raubach consortium which seemed to be at the heart of the Spineward Sectors’ local defense technology industry. It seemed that under James Raubach I’s tenure as House leader, House Raubach and House Cornwallis had been engaged in a not-so-cold war which had eventually seen House Cornwallis emerge victorious, with combined holdings and stature that now dwarfed their onetime rival House.

It had seemed that James Raubach I’s intention had been to ‘go down swinging,’ as the saying goes, but he had died under what were clearly suspicious circumstances and his son had taken direct control over the House entire. This had led to the aforementioned formation of the Cornwallis-Raubach alignments, which apparently extended their influence far beyond their operations in the Spine.

Middleton had examined this information, hoping to glean some useful information that he might use in the battle to come for his own advantage. But he had found precious little of note, aside from the powerful—yet entirely circumstantial—evidence pointing to a fratricidal rise to power on the part of now-Senator Raubach.

“Ping detected, Captain,” McKnight reported after checking in on some activity at the Comm. station. Middleton missed having Mr. Fei at the post, as he knew the rest of the crew would, but the young coder was clearly more needed on his current assignment. His XO turned with a grim, but fiery look on her face as she said, “Our guests have arrived at System #3, sir.”

“Thank you, XO,” Middleton said, “spin up the hyper drive. If our intel is accurate, we’ll have two hours before they join us for the party. We need to take advantage of that window.”

“Aye, Captain,” McKnight acknowledged, and several minutes later she reported, “point transfer in t-minus five hours, fifty eight minutes, Captain.”

Middleton nodded, knowing that he was about to ride his aged warship into what could very well be its final battle. He decided it was worth a trip below decks to check in with his Chief Engineer and old friend. “You have the con, Lieutenant,” he said, rising from his chair.

“Yes sir,” she said as he exited the bridge.

He boarded the lift and descended six decks before exiting the lift and making his way to the forward sections of the vessel. The corridors of the Pride of Prometheus, at least in this section, were nowhere near regulation. Power conduits had been laid against the deck joints on both sides of the corridor, and the lighting in the area had been reduced to one in three panels since the crew no longer occupied the area.

Of course, that meant little to the diligent engineers whose duty it was to perform last-minute repairs and reinforcements to the ship’s systems, all in the hope that they might be forced to do so again in the coming days. It was a wretched job as far as Middleton was concerned, and he never once took his engineers’ efforts for granted. Without them, ships like the Pride of Prometheus would simply shut down, surrender to entropy, and drift through space as cold, dead, hulks.

The flash of arc welders could be seen past an intersection ahead of him, and the bright light snapped him from his reverie as he rounded the corner with a hand held up to protect his eyes from the blinding light given off by the patch-welders.

“No, no, no, no,” Garibaldi groaned, grabbing a Tracto-an—one with a pair of bionic legs on which she knelt—and shoving her aside as he took the welder in his own hands, “you can’t run the bead upward; it’ll only have forty percent of the sheer strength that way.”

“But the plates are joined and no air can pass through the joint,” she argued, wiping sweat from her grimy brown with an equally grimy hand, “what is the difference?”

“’What’s the difference?’ she asks,” Garibaldi scoffed, taking a hammer with a tiny gravity generator built into its head from his belt—the kind used to test breaking strengths precisely like the one he was about to demonstrate, “you see this? This is set to barely two thirds of the strain we’re going to put this joint under in combat conditions just a few hours from now. Ready?” he asked rhetorically before delivering a sharp, perfectly-placed blow to the lower plate of metal she had been welding and seeing the welds break for three inches in either direction from the point of his hammer’s impact. “Human eyes are useless things,” he said, placing the hammer in his belt once again, “and they’ve now cost us a perfectly good duralloy beam. Math is what we go by, missy, not what it looks or feels like to you, is that clear? Now go get a new piece so we can finish this section; that old one’s a waste of time with all the crystallization you’ve caused with your shoddy technique.”

Looking properly rebuked, but clearly unwilling to drop the point so easily, the woman picked up her welding goggles, stood, and pushed past the Chief Engineer as she went to get another section of duralloy beam.

Middleton approached, uncertain if he should intervene as he saw his friend rub his balding head and sigh as he stood, apparently transfixed by the sight of the woman’s stern as she walked away. “Good thing you relaxed the rules about fraternization, Tim,” he said conversationally as Middleton approached.

Middleton was uncertain what his friend meant at first and then he had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes. “You didn’t…”

Garibaldi snickered, “A gentleman never tells. But yes,” he said after a pointed pause, “I did.”

“I thought ‘a gentleman never tells’,” Middleton quipped dryly as the woman picked up a duralloy beam and began to haul it back to where they stood.

“I never claimed to be a gentleman, Tim,” the Chief retorted smoothly, “besides…you might think of it more like a support group than anything.” He tapped his own mechanical prosthetic leg with his fingernails just hard enough to evoke a mild clanging sound, and Middleton suspected that there was more truth to the Chief’s suggestion than he might have believed. The Pride’s crew had more than its share of amputees serving aboard her, and many of them had been fitted with prosthetics like the Chief’s and the Tracto-an woman he had apparently…fraternized with. The two shared a brief chuckle before Middleton and Garibaldi stood aside to allow the woman to return to her duties.

She made her respects to her captain as he and the Chief moved to the quieter, less blinding area beyond the intersection through which he had just arrived. “What’s your status, Chief?”

Garibaldi wiped his hands on his work suit and sighed, “She’ll give you 85%, Cap, but that’s all I can do. And once we start taking strikes to the hull, it’s only a matter of time before she gives up entirely.”

Middleton nodded, having hoped for better but also having feared much, much worse. “How long will it take your people to finish with the 85% work?”

“Another two hours…maybe three,” he amended after a moment’s thought, “I’ve got to double-check pretty much everything these Tracto-ans do, but at least they work a smidge faster than most of my local rod-burners—who are calibrating the shield grid as we speak. Plus these lugs,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “don’t whine about the grav-plate settings when having to haul hundred kilo loads from one end of the corridor to the other.”

“We’ve begun spinning up the hyper drives,” Middleton said, getting to the point he had wanted to make when coming down to see the Chief.

“You think I don’t know that?” Garibaldi asked. “Even if my people hadn’t notified me as soon as they started monkeying with things back in the engine room, I can hear the drives spinning up even over all this noise.”

Middleton gave him a skeptical look, “You can hear the hyper drives spinning up?”

Garibaldi nodded, “Always have, ever since I was a little kid. It’s kind of like a high-pitched whine that nobody else seems to notice.” He shrugged, “Not like it’s that important, anyway.”

Middleton nodded, though he was still doubtful that any normal person’s hearing could pick up on the ultrahigh frequency emissions of a hyper drive spinning up. “Your people have done good work, Chief.”

“Not for lack of their trying to bungle the job at every turn,” Garibaldi quipped before nodding in agreement. “They’re a good team, Tim. They know what’s at stake, and they’re ready to stand on that wall you talked about—a talk that seems like a lifetime ago, by the way.”

Middleton blinked in surprise, having completely forgotten that particular analogy since he had come up with it essentially on the fly during his memorial to the fallen crewmembers who had served aboard the Pride during its first tour under his command.

“They won’t let you down, Cap,” Garibaldi assured him, “well…not if I keep my boot in their exhaust ports, anyway. I leave those meatheads alone for another five minutes and they’ll probably start cutting into the perfectly good struts they’re supposed to be building up from. I’ve gotta go.” With that, he gave a shoddy salute and clomp-stepped his way back around the corner of the intersection.

Middleton turned and prepared to head back to the lift, and the last thing he heard was, “No, no, no, no; you’re not supposed to be cutting into those ones! For Murphy’s sake, what is wrong with you lot?!”

The Pride’s Captain allowed a grin to spread across his face as he took the Chief’s incredulous outburst for what it was: a sign that his Chief Engineer knew his people, and his ship, like the back of his hand.

One way or another, they were going to give Commodore Raubach’s people hell.

“This is…unexpected,” Fei Long reported from the co-pilot’s chair in the Mode’s cockpit. It had originally been a six person bridge, but Lynch had made extensive modifications which had rerouted every major piece of equipment to within arm’s reach of the now-central pilot’s chair—a chair that was actually trimmed in gold, unlike the dirty, dingy hull metal found everywhere else on the ship.

“What is it?” Lu Bu asked, moving to his side and checking the instrumentation before him.

“Even I did not expect so many vessels to arrive so quickly,” Fei Long explained, gesturing to a running tally of droid vessels which had arrived in the system—a system which was two jumps from Captain Middleton’s present location aboard the Pride of Prometheus, and one jump from The Bulwark, which was the mission’s code term for the star system just outside of the Raubachs’ hidden base.

As Lu Bu watched him scan up and down the readout, she saw that a total of twenty one vessels—twelve Corvettes and six Destroyers from the Harmony Tribe, and three Motherships from the Conformity Tribe—had arranged themselves into a neat formation at the hyper limit.

“You are certain they cannot see us?” Lu Bu asked warily, to which Strider snorted from the pilot’s chair.

“Ain’t no scanners been made that can see the Mode when she goes dark, mom,” he said with absolute confidence as he gripped the twin joysticks before himself. “I always wanted t’fly this baby and see just how fast she can really go, y’know? Funny how the ‘verse is sometimes,” he said with a shake of his head.

“When we point transfer to the next system, they will see the warp field,” Fei Long explained, “but until then it would seem that the stealth systems aboard this vessel are, indeed, impenetrable to their scans since we have been in this system for three hours already and they have made no show of detecting us.”

Lu Bu checked the point transfer clock, which read eight minutes remaining until the stealthy Cutter made the second-to-last jump of its unexpected journey into the heart of enemy territory.

“Somethin’ been buggin’ my mind, though,” Strider said as he shifted uncomfortably in the seat, “why don’t them Rim Fleet types intercept us—and them—out here?” He jerked his thumb toward the so-far-as-to-be-invisible Droid Fleet assembling on roughly the opposite site of the system.

Lu Bu had wondered the same thing, and Fei Long began to answer the former pirate’s query the same way he had answered her own, “It does not fit with their established modus operandi, or Commodore Raubach’s tactical preferences, Mr. Strider. His forces have shown themselves to prefer entrapment to the overwhelming application of force, and they clearly seek to use every tactical asset at their disposal to maximum effect, with the lone exception to this being the Pride’s battle with Captain Raubach’s six ship squadron several months ago—a decision which, if our prisoner, Mr. Kaep, is to be believed, was none too popular with Commodore Raubach. This is why it is most likely that The Bulwark is precisely where we believe it to be.”

“Sounds a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to me,” Strider grumbled. “If I be havin’ dozens of warships, I be crushin’ fools what threaten to beard me in my own lair!”

Lu Bu snorted, for once having agreed with Fei Long’s longwinded tactical appraisal completely. “If you behave like that,” she chided, “you never get dozens of warships.”

Strider looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he gestured to the countdown clock. “We be jumpin’ in thirty seconds; I suggest you all strap in. Ain’t no tellin’ what might be waitin’ for us on the other side.”

The clock counted down, and the ship point transferred precisely on schedule. When they arrived in the system, their tactical overlay began to populate immediately with signals being broadcast in the open.

“I am reading six…eight…twelve…seventeen warships,” Fei Long said, sounding less than certain that the tally was complete.

“Point transfer be complete,” Strider reported belatedly, “but I be havin’ some problem with the stealth systems.”

“Problem?” Lu Bu demanded, unsnapping her harness and nearly lunging to the side of the pilot’s seat. “What problem?”

“The heat sink be maxxed out with the successive jumps, mom,” he explained. “If we don’t find a proper site to bleed off this stored heat—and quick!—we gonna light up for every ship in the system to see, savvy?”

“I am now reading twenty two warships in the system,” Fei Long called out. “Fifteen Corvettes, three Destroyers—“

“Not now, Kongming!” Lu Bu snapped in their native tongue. “Help Strider fix the stealth systems!”

Fei Long, who had not seemed himself since boarding the Cutter several days earlier, nodded as he seemed to regain focus. “Of course,” he said after a brief delay, and Lu Bu noticed that the back of his neck appeared to have become infected after he turned and his collar fell several inches while he did so.

Several tense minutes passed as Fei Long, Strider, and Yide—who somehow managed to wedge himself between Strider and the port set of readouts—conferred before finally coming to a consensus.

“We must submerge the Cutter,” Fei Long said, pointing to a moon in orbit of the system’s third gas giant. “The surface of that moon is covered in methane, much of which is liquid,” he explained, much to Lu Bu’s rising alarm, “and at its temperature it would take the Cutter approximately one hour to cool vent the heat which our stealth operations have caused to be stored within its trio of heat sinks.”

“Methane?” Lu Bu repeated incredulously in their common tongue. “We will explode if we expose methane to that much heat!” How could he be so stupid?! she wondered furiously.

Fei Long shook his head calmly, “Not without the presence of oxygen. Methane is relatively stable in this saturated environment,” he explained, and she suddenly felt very, very stupid for having doubted his conclusion—especially when she realized that the other two members of the team with whom he had conferred agreed with his assessment. “It is also the only planetary body we can reach before the systems indicate they will overheat past tolerances.”

“Do it,” she growled, very much disliking the idea of submerging their Cutter in a lake—or ocean—of liquid methane.

“Moving toward the Jovian now, mom,” Strider said in his peculiar accent.

Lu Bu watched as the rest of The Bulwark’s forces were revealed to the Mode’s sensors, and she openly wondered whether or not even Captain Middleton’s plan would provide enough advantage for the mission to succeed.

“Point transfer in twelve minutes, Captain,” Lieutenant McKnight reported as the backs of Middleton’s bridge crew grew increasingly tense. If he and his XO had been right, they were about to act as the vanguard to an invasion of The Bulwark with the majority of ships on ‘his’ side of the engagement proving just as dangerous to the Pride and her crew as the Rim Fleet elements he aimed to destroy.

It was a risky plan, but it was the only one he could think of that might level the field enough that he could take his shots. With two Liberator torpedoes now mounted to the bow of his ship, he had two chances to destroy Commodore Raubach’s Flagship—the Vae Victus, which was a Defiance-class Battleship like Captain Manning’s had been back in Elysium.

“This is the Captain,” Middleton said over the ship-wide intercom, “as you all know, we are about to enter a system which we believe is filled with enemy warships. The men and women on those warships are just like us: they have families back home, they have dreams for the future, and they would like very much to stamp out anyone who stands in the way of their vision for the Spineward Sectors.” His tone, while sympathetic, was threaded with iron and he felt himself lean forward in his chair as he continued grimly, “And that’s why we have to tear out this corruption, root and branch, before it spreads to the rest of this part of space—our part of space. Many of these people are interlopers, but some are locals just like us. Give them no quarter,” he said, his voice rising almost entirely unbidden by him, “they’ve turned their backs on us, on our families, on the rule of our laws, and on everything else we stand for.”

He straightened in his chair and looked around the bridge at the Third Shift personnel—all save Toto and Hephaestion, who were the only members of First Shift to have remained at their posts for this crucial mission. He saw fear in their faces, which he expected, but he saw what he had dearly hoped to see: determination. Every member of his crew knew the odds, and he had given them each every opportunity to get off the ship but they had remained aboard. In that moment, he truly understood what Jo had meant when she said he owed it to these people to lead them since they had already chosen the path he led them down.

“This command has been the proudest time in my life,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion but he fought through it the best he could, “and I will gladly call each of you brother, or sister, for the rest of my days. Let’s show these people the beating heart of the Spine!”

A cheer rose up on the bridge which was a mixture of growls, hoots, whistles and other rambunctious displays of emotion.

He checked the clock and decided to do the honors of the final countdown, “Point transfer in ten…nine…eight…seven…six…five…four…three…two…one…transfer!”

The cheers subsided and disappeared entirely before he reached five seconds remaining, and when the Pride of Prometheus point transferred into The Bulwark he came face to face with the assembled forces of House Raubach.

Chapter XV: Preamble

“The heat sinks have dissipated seventy percent of their stored heat,” Fei Long said just after the Pride of Prometheus point transferred into the system. Even he had been surprised that they had managed to avoid detection by the local warships, which had been reinforced with multiple sensor buoys, but they had managed to find a small lake of methane several hundred meters across and they had perched the Mode on a shelf of rock only eight feet beneath the surface of the sub-zero liquid.

After submersion, the heat sinks had opened their vents, which he had correctly—and thankfully—predicted would withstand direct contact with the methane during the heat transfer.

Knowing it was time for him to implant his second Yin and Yang fragment, Fei Long opened his knapsack and withdrew the data slate containing the program he had ensured Captain Middleton he could write prior to this engagement.

He knew now that he had needed Lu Bu’s stern rebuke to break through the haze which had unexpectedly settled over him while aboard the Lost Ark, and it was only after she had done so that he had managed to see clearly enough to assemble the code fragments.

He rubbed the back of his neck gingerly, knowing full well that he had made a terrible mistake by not asking for the Doctor’s assessment of the strange condition prior to disembarking the Pride of Prometheus. But he had managed to complete his duties thus far, and with the discovery that his moral compass—otherwise known as a kill pill—was no longer with him, he had resolved not to infect the lives of those board the Pride of Prometheus with what he would inevitably become without the assistance of that previously ever-present companion.

In many ways, the kill pill had been the metaphorical angel sitting on his shoulder. Prior to the angel, there had been only the devil, and he knew that as with all things a balance was needed. Without the presence of a counteracting force like the kill pill, he was doomed to return to his previous ways.

He knew that those ways were nowhere near as destructive as those of their current adversaries, the Raubach forces at work in the Spineward Sectors, but he had tasted a life of harmony. For over a year, he had been truly happy aboard the Pride of Prometheus, and his mind was made up that he would never allow himself to fall back into the practices and behaviors of his past.

“We should take off,” Strider said tightly, breaking Fei Long from his introspective reverie as the Pride of Prometheus moved to skirt the edge of the star system. The Raubach forces, predictably, dispatched a squadron of Corvettes to deal with the aged cruiser.

“No,” Lu Bu said sharply, “we wait for battle, then sneak to edge of system and move on to next system. That is plan,” she said with a measure of finality that Fei Long greatly admired.

Fei Long saw his panel light up and he said, “I am detecting a live connection between the Pride and the enemy Flagship, the Vae Victus.”

Without waiting for her command to do so, he put the split-screen display of the two commanders on the largest, central screen of the cockpit. Captain Middleton looked as usual: his uniform was properly pressed, his hair was cut in a short, flat-top style, and his expression was an unreadable mask of stone.

But Commodore Raubach’s intensity was unlike anything Fei Long had encountered, and as the other man spoke he was filled with a sense of foreboding which he had not expected.

“Lieutenant Commander Middleton,” Commodore James Raubach III greeted with a polite nod, “I am glad we finally have the opportunity to meet, even in this limited fashion. I had hoped to conduct this conversation in person,” he said with a politician’s precision in his tone of false disappointment, while his eyes flared with perfectly-controlled emotion, “but we may yet find time for that in the coming days.”

“Commodore Raubach,” Middleton replied, conveying all the respect to which the other man’s rank entitled him, “you’re a hard man to track down.”

“That’s it?” the Commodore riposted with an arched eyebrow. “After mucking around these Sectors for the better part of a year, stumbling from one portion of my operation to another, that is the best you could come up with for an opening salvo? I am thoroughly disappointed,” he said coolly with a piteous shake of his head, “frankly, I expected more of my son’s murderer.” He sighed with overt disappointment, “How typical of the universe to fail to deliver on what was supposed to be a worthy diversion—an appetizer, if you will, before the meal proper.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Middleton said, keeping his voice steady. He knew that the longer he went back and forth with this man, the more ground he would lose in the verbal sparring. Commodore Raubach had been a Flag Officer with the Rim Fleet for three decades, and his involvement with that force had gone back since before the signing of the Union Treaty between the Confederation of the Spineward Sectors, and the Imperium of Man from which House Raubach hailed. “But, as an officer in the MSP, it’s my obligation to offer you the chance to surrender before carrying out my duty and defending the people of the Spineward Sectors from your commission of further atrocities against them.”

“Cheeky, aren’t you?” Raubach quipped dryly. “I can see why you got my son’s back up,” he said with the barest hint of amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth, “but you would have found me to be less…volatile than my would-be successor was.”

Middleton drew himself up in his chair and held the other man’s gaze as he said, “Commodore James Raubach III, the MSP has found evidence connecting you and your organization with the production, and willful deployment, of banned bioweapons, as well as the coordinated piracy of twenty six confirmed warships throughout Sectors 23 & 24. As a duly-appointed officer of the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet, I am here to accept your surrender and see you transferred to local authority for investigation of, and prosecution for, these crimes.”

“I take it back,” Raubach said wearily, “you did rehearse something…pity it was such dreck, though. I fear I must disappoint you, young man, by rejecting your most gracious offer.” The Commodore gestured off-screen, causing Hephaestion to spring into action at his station. A moment later, the icons of an additional four warships began to move toward the Pride of Prometheus, bringing the total to eight warships now moving toward Middleton’s battered cruiser—including a pair of Destroyers.

“For the record, Commodore,” Middleton said after silently acknowledging Hephaestion’s written report regarding the four warships, “you are refusing to surrender yourself to a duly-appointed officer of the peace?”

“I am refusing to recognize your badge as worthy of anything more than marring what would otherwise be a perfectly acceptable provincial uniform,” Raubach said easily. “The Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet is just one of many illegal pirate organizations which the Rim Fleet will bring to heel in the coming months, Lieutenant Commander,” the other man said, and Middleton had to grudgingly admit that this man was, indeed, far more capable than his son could have ever been. “The Spineward Sectors will soon know the rule of law once again, and House Raubach will be, as it has ever been, happy to share in the burden of rebuilding these tragically mis-administrated worlds as quickly, and properly, as can be done.”

“There are no cameras here, Commodore,” Middleton said pointedly, “you can save your lies and speeches for the bright lights.”

“Son,” the Commodore tisked as he leaned forward in his chair, “there are always cameras—especially when you think there are none.” He then leaned back in his chair and shook his head, “No, Lieutenant Commander Middleton, the Rim Fleet is the only duly-appointed peacekeeping force in the Spineward Sectors. As such, and in a gesture of goodwill, it is I who will offer you the chance to surrender for the crimes of destroying a surrendered warship in the Pegasus system, as well as the coldblooded murder of Rim Fleet Captain James Raubach IV. Given the unusual circumstances—chief among them my relationship to both commanders in question—I will publicly assure you a fair trial once you are returned to an Imperial court.” The Commodore gestured to the Pride’s bridge crew, “Your people will be left unmolested, and your ship allowed to go free if you are but handed over to me before my warships reach firing range.”

Middleton chuckled, forcibly relaxing his grip on the arms of his chair as he shook his head. “Not everyone can be bought, Commodore,” he said reproachfully, looking around at each of his bridge crew in turn and seeing fierce determination on each of their faces. “It speaks volumes about your character that your agents, acting on your orders, constantly assume we’ll dance to your tune once it—and an agreeable price—has been struck.”

Commodore Raubach’s eyes flicked off-screen for a moment, “No, Lieutenant Commander Middleton, my guns are the only spokesmen my character will ever need—and you’ll be having a heated debate with them in one hour and twelve minutes if your people don’t hand you over.”

The communication severed, and Middleton felt his people release a collective breath after the Commodore’s image disappeared and was replaced by the tactical overlay of the system.

Straightening his uniform, Middleton said, “This is what we came for, people. Execute tactical sequence, ‘Pride before the Fall’.”

“Aye, sir,” Hephaestion acknowledged, accompanied soon by Toto and the rest of the bridge officers.

Fei Long watched as the Pride of Prometheus made a maximum power engine burn along the outer edge of the system. The system had nine planets—three rocky worlds, four gas giants, and one ice dwarf just large enough to be classified as a proper planet—and a pair of asteroid belts which were denser than usual.

The first step of the plan called for the aged warship to execute a maximum burn at the system’s edge, so that it would have forward momentum sufficient to keep the approaching enemy squadron of vessels from surrounding it. It looked to his eye as though Captain Middleton had correctly anticipated the maneuvering capabilities of the enemy warships as they smoothly adjusted their formation so as to remain in pursuit and work to cut off the Pride before it could circumnavigate the system’s periphery.

“Jump cycle will take another two hours, mom,” Strider declared, his words followed by a chronometer appearing on the display above him.

“It doesn’t seem right,” Funar said from the rear of the cockpit. “Us leaving our ship behind when the fighting just gets started…it doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Captain Middleton has plan, Private Funar,” Lu Bu said with less rebuke in her voice than Fei Long had expected to hear. “We must trust his leadership.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Funar acknowledged, but it was clear to Fei Long that he was far from convinced.

Fei Long decided to interject himself, knowing that a properly timed word could turn a man’s heart from defeated to hopeful. He only hoped he could approximate some small part of that effect. “If we manage to slip past their defenses, Private Funar, we may deliver a blow to our enemies with far greater impact than even a Liberator torpedo could deliver. We will certainly contribute more to the mission there than we could ever do aboard the Pride of Prometheus.”

Funar gave him a short, but pointed look which told Fei Long he had not entirely succeeded in his attempt, and he could not help but think that he was not the same man he had been just a few weeks earlier.

“Maintain comm. silence,” Lu Bu instructed, and Fei Long nodded, proud at his girl’s ability to read the situation as clearly as he had done. Private Funar was a recent addition to the Recon Team, but he and Traian’s experience behind enemy lines—specifically on Capria during Lady Akantha’s assault on the Royal Palace—had made them invaluable to this particular operation.

There were major differences between this operation and that one, but the depth chart on the Pride of Prometheus was extremely thin when it came to covert operations, which was why Hutch had been assigned to the mission even though he had only been aboard for a few weeks. He and Lu Bu had developed an immediate—and mildly concerning, at least to Fei Long personally—rapport which likely stemmed from their mutual backgrounds as professional smashball players.

“When do you want I should lift off, ma’am?” Strider asked, his chosen honorific sounding remarkably like the word ‘mom’ to Fei Long’s ear. He had taken some slivers of pleasure at seeing his girl’s irritation directed at someone other than himself, so he had not informed her that the man’s strange accent was responsible for her misunderstanding him as calling her ‘mom.’

“We are on far side of system,” she said, and Fei Long noted a hint of uncertainty in her voice as she spoke, “calculate time for intercept from nearest forces and lift off not before then.”

“Calculating,” Fei Long acknowledged before Strider could ask for a confirmation. Lu Bu’s Standard became significantly worse when she was stressed, and making ship-wide decisions was clearly not in her present comfort zone. A moment later he turned and said, “Nearest intercept by Rim Fleet forces is thirty six minutes, Corporal.”

She bestowed a short nod in his direction, allowing her eyes to lock with his for an extra moment in silent gratitude.

“This is all so exciting,” Trixie said into the mounting tension. “I mean, obviously the fighting is bad, bad stuff,” she amended quickly, “being a pacifist myself, I’ve never really understood all the need for the chest-thumping, loud noises, and breaking things. But we’re just one jump away from a secret military base built on top of a world with working technology left over from the Ancients. This is just too cool!”

A few days earlier, Fei Long would have shared her enthusiasm—in truth, he had shared it then. The thought of coming in direct contact with more than just trace evidence of the Ancients—like the sample which had apparently caused the infection on the back of his neck—was more than even his vivid imagination had seriously considered to be a possibility during his lifetime.

But today, he was only glad that he had not failed his shipmates. He was having great difficulty sleeping, or finding any measure of respite since facing the truth about his now-defunct kill pill. The only things which had helped calm his increasingly frayed nerves had been the successful completion of his Yin & Yang program, and putting the finishing touches on Hansheng’s—the name he had bestowed upon Ed, the assault droid—new suite of programs.

 In a way he almost welcomed the distance which Lu Bu had put between them during the mission—barring the delightfully unexpected encounter shortly after they had boarded the Lost Ark. He did not think he could look her in the eye in a private moment and not break down entirely.

As he watched the ships move into position, like positioning pieces on a chessboard before any actual exchanges began, Fei Long felt sick to his stomach. He could not tell why he felt that way, but his neck was becoming more and more irritated and it was all he could do to keep from scratching it where Lu Bu could see him do so.

The Pride of Prometheus barreled around the edge of the star system which Middleton had nicknamed The Bulwark, and as he performed some simple math the ship’s Captain concluded without a shadow of a doubt whatsoever that his ship was presently moving faster than it had at any other point in its lengthy history—excluding FTL transit, of course, which was less about moving the ship and more about warping the space around it.

With the engines redlined for just over an hour, the Pride had continued to gain momentum to the point that her main engines were required to keep the vessel on the parabola of the system’s outer boundary. The maneuver itself was nothing special, or overly difficult to execute, which was why Middleton had relinquished Ms. Marcos to Lieutenant Sarkozy’s—make that, McKnight’s—command. The real danger at these velocities was more that they might run into a stray chunk of rock or ice, and if it was larger than a smashball it could very well cause them all a very, very bad day.

Commodore Raubach’s forces had behaved predictably, as well they should have done considering their overwhelming firepower superiority. Middleton still had approximately three minutes before the first of the approaching squadron, which had matched the inverse angle of the Pride’s run beautifully while maintaining an optimal intercept trajectory, was within the newfound range the alien tech provided Commodore Raubach’s retrofitted ships.

It was an impressive display of coordination, discipline, and formation flying given the unusual nature of Middleton’s deceptively circumspect-looking attack run. For all of the Commodore’s flaws when it came to observance of law—or even something more basic, like the sanctity of human life—he was clearly a top-notch military commander.

And he sat on his battleship, the Vae Victus, as a king might sit on a throne while his armies went forth to crush the would-be challengers to his dominion. In high orbit of the innermost gas giant, his Defiance-class vessel cast a long, metaphorical shadow across the battlefield.

The Defiance-class was of an unusual design, given that it was essentially a catamaran with a pair of mirrored, but otherwise totally identical, hulls connected via a series of struts which also served as heat dissipators. Measuring six hundred fifty meters from bow to stern, she was longer, but significantly sleeker and less bulky, than the Dreadnaught-class like the Lucky Clover or Armor Prince. This particular feature was almost certainly why Lynch had bestowed two Liberator torpedoes on Middleton, and it was a gift which carried an unspoken message from the enigmatic arms dealer: finish the job, or else.

In addition to her length, she was considerably more maneuverable than the Dreadnaught-class and boasted shields which made the Lucky Clover’s pale in comparison. And with eight fusion reactors—four to a hull—she was more than capable of simply overpowering the vast majority of vessels with which she might find herself in an exchange. But that maneuverability, and added power plant capacity, meant that the Defiance-class had armor that would seem paper-thin to a commander used to the thick hide of the Dreadnaught-class.

Under normal circumstances this would be no issue at all, and Commodore Raubach’s enhanced weapons range would minimize this particular shortcoming even more than his already fleet and nimble—for a battleship—vessel already did.

In short, Commodore Raubach had clearly been planning this entire sequence of events—from placing his flag aboard the Vae Victus, to which warships he would steal from the local systems of the Spineward Sectors, to the specific upgrades he was installing on those warships—for a very, very long time.

The ship shuddered slightly, and Middleton breathed a short sigh as he nodded in satisfaction. That the enemy had fired meant they were indeed armed with the upgrade weaponry, and that meant that the Commodore had already managed to outfit at least those eight warships with the upgrades that would make them unstoppable when they moved against Sectors 23 & 24.

“Turbo-laser strike on the starboard shields, Captain,” the Shields operator reported calmly. “Shields at 92% on that facing and recharging.”

“Thank you, Operator,” Middleton acknowledged. A few seconds later, the tactical overlay showed that each of the ships pursuing the Pride of Prometheus had fired, and only a single strike had landed on her hull. Thank Murphy for small miracles, he thought grimly, knowing that his foes’ accuracy would only improve as the battle progressed.

He checked the overlay and saw that the enemy vessels were currently at just under twice the Pride’s maximum heavy laser range. He knew that they could easily remain at their current distance and continue to take potshots at him until he either gave up and retreated, or they wore him down before he could close to grips with them.

He checked the second clock which was running beside the main viewer and saw that he would be all on his own for another forty six minutes.

“Helm,” he said, straightening in his chair, “continue on course at maximum acceleration.”

“Aye, Captain,” the helmsman replied.

“Shields,” he continued, turning to the Shields operator, “coordinate with Helm; if the shields fall below 70% on the starboard facing, or you read any anomalous readings on the power grid, I want to roll the ship and continue on our current course. We need to stay as fresh as possible for as long as possible.”

“Yes sir,” the rating acknowledged.

“Everyone needs to grab hold of their nerve with both hands,” Middleton said tightly as another pair of impacts struck the starboard shields, “because this is as gentle as it’s going to get.”

Chapter XVI: Middleton’s Run

They had rolled the ship three times before the clock ran down to fifteen minutes remaining, but fortunately the extra reinforcements Chief Garibaldi had made to the power grid which fed the shields were proving every bit as helpful as he had hoped.

He had mirrored the Shields operator’s console on his command chair, and had been pleased to see no anomalous spikes or sags in the Pride’s power grid. The patchwork job might have looked shoddy, with cables strewn across seemingly every corridor in the ship, but Middleton was satisfied they would hold long enough for him to make his move.

A move which, as it happened, was very nearly upon them.

“Helm,” he said in a carrying voice as another quartet of turbo-laser strikes hammered into their starboard shields, “as soon as we pass the outer ice dwarf, commence your run.”

“Yes, Captain,” the helmsman acknowledged tightly. Middleton knew they had been lucky to avoid an impact in their current parabolic course which skirted the outer edge of the system, but the likelihood of encountering a not-insignificant chunk of ice and rock was about to increase by several orders of magnitude.

Of course, he thought with a smirk, that’ll go for those Rim Fleet bastards, too.

The eight ship squadron had taken up a position on the other side of the ice dwarf’s orbital path, and were peppering the Pride’s shields from ranges that just a few months earlier Middleton would have thought beyond the operational range of any weapon—local or Imperial—in the Spineward Sectors.

Their risk of a collision had been slightly greater than his to this point—a risk which had already bitten them with a pair of impacts against their shields which were more powerful than a single heavy laser strike from the Pride’s biggest guns.

“Mr. Toto,” Middleton said, turning to the massive Sundered uplift, “verify that our enhanced point defense systems are online, please.”

“Running diagnostic,” the uplift rumbled, and several seconds later he nodded his shaggy head, “enhanced systems online, Captain.”

PD, or point defense, targeting systems relied primarily on heat signatures to lock onto incoming targets, but a chink of icy rock would naturally be a less-than-obvious target for sensors generally calibrated to detect missile heat blooms.

To compensate for this, Middleton had asked Mr. Fei to work with Lieutenant McKnight to increase the sensitivity of the systems well beyond the rated specifications of their design. They had also added a short-range radar system to the PD targeting computers which, with any luck, would give them a fighting chance to keep the ship’s bow clear of deadly impacters.

The drawback was that much of the new weaponry they had installed on the port and starboard broadsides were now forward-facing, and as long as the enhanced PD system was online they would remain that way—which also meant they would be unavailable to Mr. Toto for general firing actions.

“We have passed the outermost planet, Captain,” Mr. Hephaestion reported.

“You heard the man, Helm,” Middleton said, leaning forward in his chair and gripping his hands tightly together, “let’s do this.”

The countdown timer on the Mode’s jump drive read twenty nine minutes, and since the closest Rim Fleet vessel was over forty minutes away at present, Mr. Strider had lifted the craft off from the surface of the moon and left the methane lake behind ten minutes earlier.

“Always risky, makin’ a jump this far in-system,” Strider grumbled.

Lu Bu snorted and gestured to the squadron of warships moving to match the Pride of Prometheus’ new angle of approach. Captain Middleton had aimed his ship directly at Commodore Raubach’s Flagship, and while Lu Bu admired and appreciated the apparent bluntness of the approach, she knew she was nowhere near her Captain’s equal in terms of naval tactics so she knew there was more to her commander’s approach than met her eye.

If the Pride continued unmolested, she would reach her own heavy laser range in twenty six minutes, assuming the Commodore’s ship was stationary—which would obviously be a terrible assumption to make.

“I am detecting no indications that we have been detected,” Fei Long reported, causing Lu Bu to relax fractionally as they burned for the hyper limit. “Our engine heat bloom would be visible to a directed sensor sweep, but most passive scans at these ranges would miss us entirely.”

“An impressive ship,” Lu Bu said grudgingly. She disliked Mr. Lynch for reasons she did not quite understand, but there was something about him she simply did not approve of. Her dislike of his character went even beyond the obvious skullduggery and lack of morality associated with a person in his profession, but more than that she had been unable to pin down.

“This still doesn’t seem right,” Funar mumbled just loudly enough that Lu Bu could hear him.

“I agree,” Hutch said, having spoken for the first time in several hours. “I’ve never minded facing danger, but I’m not much for running.”

“We are running,” Lu Bu said tersely, turning to face the men, “but we do not run from battle—we run to it.”

The two men’s expressions shifted in such a way that she knew she had gotten their attention.

“We will have our chance to deal in death soon,” she promised them after turning back toward the bow of the nimble, stealthy craft.

She watched as the ship neared the hyper limit, and as it did Commodore Raubach’s central formation of warships fanned out and began to move away from the Pride of Prometheus. The Commodore’s vessels were moving below the orbital plane of the system’s planets, which seemed curious to her but she pushed thoughts of it from her mind.

She needed to prepare for their jump.

As the clock wound down to zero, she found her heartbeat quickening its pace as Captain Middleton opened fire for the first time in the battle. But before she could see the damage wrought by the Pride’s wrath, the Mode point transferred from the system.

“Three of eight,” Toto reported with bitter disappointment. “The struck Corvette moves to back of formation.”

“Like clockwork,” Middleton grudged, knowing that if they had kept the little bugger in their sights for two more volleys it would have likely been destroyed. The pursuing squadron had spread out significantly in what was purely a defensive posture before moving well to the north of the system’s orbital plane. Commodore Raubach, on the other hand, had begun to fall back and away from Middleton’s charging warship while taking the rest of his fleet to the sought of the orbital plane.

They were doing two things: first, they were mitigating the risk of running into stray asteroids by moving so far from the orbital plane; and second, they daring Middleton to alter his course and move for the heart of the eight ship squadron with which he had already engaged. But Middleton wasn’t going to make their jobs that easy.

Even a battleship would have difficulty slogging through such a well-positioned, agile, and rangy force. While the Pride was a stout old girl who fought comfortably well above her own weight class, she was nowhere near a heavyweight on the battlefield. She was more of a natural welterweight who generally fought at middleweight, while making the occasional run up to light heavyweight without embarrassing herself in the process.

“Maintain course, Helm,” Middleton instructed as the Pride’s point defense weaponry fired, causing a short-lived flare to erupt in the ship’s direct path which suggested they had struck a sizeable target. Their velocity was very nearly unmanageable—in fact, he was quite certain every other ship commander he had encountered would declare him insane for having purposefully gotten his ship moving this fast—but if their PD systems could give them one run across the system…

“I am detecting a point transfer’s wake on the system’s periphery, Captain,” Hephaestion reported, and even in the midst of combat Middleton was once again amazed at how quickly the young man had picked up Confederation Standard. “I saw no evidence of the ship which jumped, Captain.”

“Good job, Lu,” Middleton said, knowing that if they were to have any hope of succeeding against the Rim Fleet, they would need for her team to get a head start on ‘raising a ruckus,’ as Mr. Strider would have put it. He switched to the Lancer command channel and said, “Are your people in position, Sergeant Gnuko?”

“We’re all locked in, Captain,” Gnuko replied promptly. “We’ve got the Defense Team locking down the major junctions and putting the finishing touches on our welcoming party. The Assault Team is in the hangar, waiting for your signal, sir.”

“Very good, Sergeant,” Middleton said, “Middleton out.” He switched his com-link over to the channel he had designated for Lieutenant Sarkozy’s command team and said, “Cozy in there, Lieutenant?”

“We’re all dolled up and ready to go, sir,” McKnight replied eagerly from within the assault shuttle. “Are we going to be stuck by the link all night alone, or do we have a date lined up?”

“Not just yet,” Middleton replied, cracking a tight grin at her brevity, “but we’ve got a Light Destroyer at nine o’clock if you’re feeling antsy.”

“I’m a girl with standards, sir; I wouldn’t be caught dead showing up to the big dance in a Light Destroyer,” she quipped, causing Middleton and several nearby bridge crew to chuckle shortly. “It’s Cruiser or higher for me, sir.”

“Just make sure your eyes aren’t bigger than your stomach, young lady,” he chided, as a parent might scold a teenage daughter. “I’m afraid we can’t get too picky here.”

“We’re ready to go; just give the word, Captain,” she said, her tone returning to her usual, professional demeanor.

“Nothing’s looming,” he said seriously, “but I’ll let you know once something develops.”

He deactivated the link and looked back up at the view screen. Commodore Raubach was proving to be a capable commander, judging by the deployment of his forces in response to Middleton’s ill-advised run into the system’s core.

To say he had played into Middleton’s hand would have been greatly overstating the matter, but Middleton knew that if his reinforcements arrived on time then the board would be aligned in something resembling a neutral arrangement.

The two destroyers comprising the eight ship squadron which had already engaged Middleton’s ship were spread out wide, with each forming the axis for between three and five Corvettes, depending on their configuration of the moment. The Corvettes along the edge of the two interwoven formations swapped easily back and forth as Middleton’s ship had made a series of feints on the run to the heart of The Bulwark.

Just as he was considering how to draw one of those destroyers from its current position, Middleton saw that it had adjusted its course and speed to bring it closer to the Pride of Prometheus. As if to declare its intentions, the destroyer cleared her guns at the Pride and landed a pair of strikes against her port shields.

“Port shields down to 46%, Captain,” the Shields operator reported. “No spotting detected, sir.”

He was tempted to roll his ship and present the opposite facing, which was presently at 65% capacity, but Middleton knew it was nothing but a feint. The destroyer’s captain was attempting to draw him off-course by eight or ten degrees so that the nimble Corvettes manning that same destroyer’s starboard flank could make a strafing attack. Each Corvette appeared to have been armed with only a single turbo-laser, but Middleton had no desire to expose his flanks simultaneously.

“Steady on, Helm,” he said steadily as another impact rocked the ship.

“Port shields at 38%, sir,” the operator reported. “I’ve got mild spotting along the ventral sections of the port side.”

“How’s the power grid?” Middleton asked.

A moment’s hesitation saw the operator report, “Still five by five, Captain.”

“We could use missiles,” Toto suggested. “Perhaps even kill destroyer.”

“Negative, Tactical,” Middleton said heavily, “we’re going to need to keep as much of our powder dry as possible for when the tide finally turns against our Rim Fleet friends out there. Until then only take opportunistic shots with the Pride’s mounted arsenal, understood?”

“Yes sir,” the uplift growled, and a moment later the Pride’s forward heavy laser array lanced out in unison, smashing into a Corvette’s shields and forcing it to veer off from its predetermined flight path. It was a smart shot by Toto, since it would forestall the inevitable wolf-pack formation the eight ship squadron was working toward.

Once they had the Pride surrounded, they could fire on her from every angle simultaneously, and then the battle would well and truly be nothing but a matter of time. By racing into the system proper, Middleton had ensured that his ship could not escape without outside intervention. But that was of little consequence to him, since there was no way they would survive without timely intervention on the part of his unwitting allies anyway.

Middleton smirked as he saw that Commodore Raubach’s ship had moved dangerously close to the hyper limit after staying out of the Pride’s weapon range with the rest of his Bulwark fleet. But in a seemingly omniscient display, Commodore Raubach’s battleship lanced out with a quartet of turbo-lasers and, amazingly, every one of them landed against the Pride’s forward shields. The Vae Victus was ten percent beyond Middleton’s theorized maximum range for the modified turbo-lasers, but Commodore Raubachhad had somehow managed to loose a perfect salvo at such an unthinkable range.

Rather than dissuading Middleton, however, the fact that his enemy had landed those strikes served to strengthen his resolve. He knew then, more than ever, that House Raubach’s plans needed to be stopped—and that he was the only one who could hope to stop them.

“Forward shields at 80% and holding, Captain,” the operator reported promptly.

“That was one hell of a shot,” the helmsman muttered under his breath, clearly awestruck and more than a bit fearful.

“Yes it was,” Middleton agreed in a raised voice, causing the helmsman to duck his head and go red in the face, “but we’ll get our turn soon enough.”

He checked the chronometer beside the view screen and saw that, one way or another, their fate would be decided in two minutes and thirty six seconds. If the droids showed up on schedule, they might just make a fight out of this yet. If they didn’t, Middleton had already prepared to deliver his thanks to the brave crew of the Pride of Prometheus.

Either way, they were going to go down swinging.

Another round of turbo-laser strikes hammered into the Pride’s flanks, as the Corvettes slowly, but surely, moved to surround the defiant cruiser. A clever maneuver by the helmsman, coordinated with Mr. Toto and the gun deck, saw them spit hot fire from their forward laser array at another Corvette, causing it too to veer off from its course rather than suffer the Pride’s wrath any further.

But Middleton knew that the only reason those Corvettes were moving within his heavy laser range was to goad him into the exchange. There was no need for them to come within his firing arcs, and he knew that a less-accomplished commander than Commodore Raubach would likely have kept all of his forces at maximum range throughout the engagement.

Had he done so, however, Middleton would have had several opportunities to escape the slowly-tightening noose around his neck in the form of the eight ship squadron. By keeping his ships just outside of the Pride’s firing range, Commodore Raubach ensured that his people would maintain firing arcs and tactical positioning on the aged cruiser until they finally wore her down. The Commodore was ensuring that his warships would come under fire, but he was also ensuring that there was no possibility of escape for Middleton and his people.

But just because one’s enemy wants you to take a given course of action is not in and of itself reason enough not to take that action. Sometimes, Middleton thought grimly, you have to give up material for position.

Seeing the countdown clock at ten seconds remaining, Middleton had to fight to keep from counting aloud with the timer as it went three…two…one…zero.

The bridge crew, while still attending to their duties, perceptibly froze as they glanced between the main viewer and Hephaestion’s station. This remained the case even after another pair of turbo-laser strikes landed against the Pride’s stern shields, and Hephaestion—clearly aware that all eyes were on him, but also clearly unfettered by that fact—kept to his console, adjusting his instruments for nearly a minute before turning to Captain Middleton with a fierce look on his face, “Reinforcements have arrived, sir. I am reading four…nine…seventeen…twenty one warships at the hyper limit adjacent to the Vae Victus’ position.”

A cheer went up on the bridge as the screen began to populate with the twenty one droid warships, which were very nearly in firing range on Commodore Raubach’s Flagship since he had pulled so near to the hyper limit. The Rim Fleet vessels quickly moved to a new formation consisting of three separate groups, each centered around one of the Vae Victus or the pair of light cruisers which were moving to flank her.

“Execute Mr. Fei’s program labeled ‘Chi Bi,’ Comm.,” he instructed, “and then open a channel to Commodore Raubach.”

A moment later, the Comm. operator said, “Chi Bi program executed and confirmed, Captain; the local ComStat hub is down, sir.” Middleton nodded, breathing a sigh of relief at knowing that the Commodore’s ships would now be unable to coordinate with whatever reserve forces were nearby. “Channel now open with the Commodore,” the operator reported.

Commodore Raubach’s face, still well-composed but now bearing faint stress lines around the corners of his surgically-perfected eyes, appeared on the main viewer. Middleton, knowing he still needed the Commodore’s complicity in one last matter, leaned forward and said, “I forgot to tell you to expect them, Commodore…it must have slipped my mind for some reason. Maybe they’ll be amenable to one of your famous bribes?” he said with anything but genuine intent before adding, “They’ve worked such wonders with everyone else you’ve come across.”

“You are a dung fly, Middleton,” Commodore Raubach said haughtily, making a show of being unconcerned, “and all of your blind buzzing about has only served to paint a target on your back.”

Middleton spread his arms wide, “I’m right here, Commodore. In fact, we’d be exchanging…how did you put it?” he said, thinking back to the other man’s words of an hour earlier. “Oh yeah, a ‘heated debate,’ you called it—and we’d be having one right now if you hadn’t fallen back to the supposed safety of the hyper limit.” He leaned back in his chair and shook his head as though in disappointment, “I frankly expected better from the great Commodore James Raubach III, but the universe does seem to have a nasty habit of disappointing us, doesn’t it?”

Raubach’s eyes narrowed and his lips parted in what seemed to be a genuinely pleased smile. “Very good, Lieutenant Commander…very good indeed. I find I am most disappointed that my scouting teams labeled you ‘Class III’ during our mission briefs five years ago. What was it…” his eyes flicked briefly to the side as he apparently sought to remember some obscure detail, “oh yes: Lieutenant Commander Tyrone Middleton: third tier candidate. Officer is an intelligent and capable, if unimaginative, tactician with borderline sociopathic personality who is unlikely to command respect down through the chain of command—and even less likely to obey orders from above. Addendum: recently divorced and now displaying signs of psychological instability. Recommendation downgraded: do not approach.”

Being called a borderline sociopath was something of a shock to Middleton, but he had quietly wondered if there was a fundamental reason why he seemed to view the job of military command so very differently from others.

“I see we got at least one part of that wrong,” Raubach said as his ship’s course changed to intercept the Pride of Prometheus.

“And what part’s that?” Middleton asked, doing his best to keep the rising tide of emotion welling up within him from registering on his face.

“You are nothing if not imaginative,” the Commodore replied matter-of-factly. “And right now, the last thing I need is a loose cannon like you running amok of my operations. No, Captain Middleton, I think it’s time I put you down like the wild animal you are.”

Middleton smirked as he caught the other man’s slip from constantly referring to him by his full rank rather than his field commission, “You called me ‘Captain’.”

Raubach shrugged as the Vae Victus and its attached Corvettes moved to intercept the Pride of Prometheus, “Consider it a parting gesture of respect—one I bestow even though you have not fully earned it.”

The connection severed and Middleton leapt out of his chair as soon as it had done so. “Tactical, coordinate with the gun deck: you are to overcharge the forward batteries and avoid firing until we have closed to medium range.”

“They will not close,” Toto said with certainty.

“Oh, they’ll close all right,” Middleton said sharply as he moved beside the uplift at the Tactical station. “They’re going to knock out our weapons…and then they’re going to board us.”

The Sundered seemed to understand after a moment’s consideration, and he grudgingly made to follow Middleton’s order. As he did so, the Pride’s Captain activated a newly-installed panel on the Tactical console and input his command authorization. This particular panel was rigged solely to control the pair of Liberator torpedoes which had been mounted on the Pride’s bow, and Middleton had ensured that only he could authorize their deployment.

The torpedoes’ arming systems went through their activation protocols, which Middleton followed step by step according to the instructions Lynch had left for them—instructions which Middleton’s experts had concluded were appropriate. Nearly three minutes later, Hephaestion reported, “The eight ship squadron is pulling back, Captain.”

Middleton didn’t even need to look at the tactical overlay to know the two enemy formations were forming a pincer which would be able to reform itself into an unbreakable wall of firepower, set to annihilate the Droid warships once they reached the inner system.

With all of the inertia the Pride had built up to that point, there was simply no way Middleton could turn his ship around and avoid being caught in the deadliest crossfire he had ever experienced.

As usual, the only way out of his latest predicament was to charge headlong into the enemy forces.

“Just once, I’d like to have a speed advantage,” Middleton muttered under his breath after linking fire control for the Liberators to his command chair. The torpedoes had incredible range, according to the research he had done, and it was entirely possible they would be capable of traversing the entire system in search of their quarry.

But the longer they stayed in flight, the higher the chance that Commodore Raubach’s people would shoot them down before they could deliver their deadly payloads into the heart of the Rim Fleet itself: the Vae Victus.

“Adjust course, Helm,” Middleton said after returning to the big chair, “bring us bow-on to the Vae Victus. Tactical: reiterate my orders to the gun deck that they are to overcharge their weapons and await my explicit order before firing.”

“Aye, Captain,” the helmsman acknowledge, followed by a wordless grunt from Toto.

The Vae Victus drove ahead of her supporting ships, which were fanning out in an inwardly-curving crescent. Their counterparts in the eight ship squadron were doing likewise, and in just a few minutes the pincer which Middleton had anticipated for several days finally materialized on the tactical overlay.

But he didn’t care about the supporting pieces—even as nearly a dozen turbo-laser strikes from their guns landed against the Pride’s shields, more or less equally distributed across the ship’s facings. All that mattered, as in chess, was an attack on the king.

“Mr. Toto,” Middleton said after performing some quick calculations, “inform the gun deck that if we remain on course, and the Vae Victus does likewise, we should be in firing position in roughly twelve minutes.”

“Yes, Captain,” Toto acknowledged after a brief, but pointed, delay. Twelve minutes would bring them very nearly into short range, all but ensuring that every weapon either side had would land against the other.

There was very little chance the Pride came out the other side in anything resembling shipshape condition, but it was the only way Middleton could guarantee lining up a potentially game-ending shot.

Behind Commodore Raubach’s ships, the Droid fleet which had assembled on short notice—and in alarming numbers, as far as Middleton was concerned—began to form up into their own coherent formation as swarms of gunboats detached from the dodecahedron-shaped Motherships. Meanwhile, the Destroyers and Corvettes of the Harmony through Specialization Tribe took up flanking positions alongside their dodecahedron-obsessed allies…or brethren…or whatever they called each other.

When the gunboats had finally achieved a tactical formation—one that looked like nothing so much as a swarm of angry bees—their total number was four hundred thirty two. Middleton quickly calculated that four hundred thirty two just happened to be twelve squared times three. That meant that those particular ships, at the very least, were at absolute peak capacity and condition, given the Conformity tribe’s apparent obsession with the number twelve and its various products.

“This is what we came here for,” Middleton said into the growing silence which now hung over the bridge. “The people of the Spineward Sectors don’t even know we exist, but they depend on us to maintain their freedom from the yoke these Imperials would like to fit around their necks. We’re going to get our shot,” he said, watching as Commodore Raubach’s ship closed on the Pride, “and the only way it will count is if each of us keeps to the tasks in front of us.”

Another impact hammered into the Pride’s bow, but this one felt different than the others and Middleton turned to his Sensor operator for an explanation. His heart skipped several beats before the young Tracto-an said, “We appear to have collided with a meteorite, Captain.”

“Forward shields at 68% and…holding, Captain,” the Shields operator reported tensely as his fingers moved this way and that over his console.

At least it wasn’t a torpedo, Middleton thought with a short sigh of relief as the Vae Victus continued bearing down on the Pride of Prometheus. Six minutes remained until the two ships were in optimal firing range for the torpedoes, and much as Middleton would have liked to fire back at the Commodore’s Flagship, he knew he would need every scrap of firepower he could bring to bear if he was going to penetrate a Defiance-class Battleship’s robust shields.

Several more impacts registered along the Pride’s hull, causing the Shields operator to call out, “Stern shields at 52%; port shields at 33% with moderate spotting; starboard shields at 42%-- make that 29%,” he amended after another pair of impacts shook the ship. “Heavy spotting on the starboard side,” the operator reported, clearly becoming flustered at the overwhelming amount of data flooding into his station.

A nearby petty officer took up position alongside him, and after a few words the two began to work as a team to streamline the process of shunting power from one facing’s generators to another.

A severe impact near the bow of the ship nearly threw Middleton from his chair, and the Damage Control rating quickly reported, “Two impacts registered on the forward hull, Captain.”

“The Battleship hit our front with six turbo-lasers,” Toto reported with a savage roar of frustration as he smashed his fists into a nearby console, which had thankfully been inactive, “shields did not hold.”

“Shields,” Middleton said tersely, “what’s the status of the forward facing?!”

“They suffered a momentary blackout, Captain,” the operator reported belatedly, “they’re back up to 43% with mild spotting, sir, but I can’t pinpoint the failure. I’m on the secondary grid now, but I don’t know how long it will hold if we don’t get a team down there to fix the failing of the primary grid.”

“Get a team up there, Damage Control,” Middleton said before realizing that the gravity in that area was far beyond human tolerances. The only way to get a team in there would be to undo the Chief Engineer’s patch job on the forward superstructure, which depended heavily on tweaked grav-plates to achieve something resembling combat readiness of the beleaguered superstructure. “Belay that,” he said without even turning to see the look on the Damage Control rating’s face, “keep to the secondary grid for now, Shields; that’s why we installed the extra lines.”

“Yes, Captain,” the operator acknowledged with less than overt enthusiasm.

The hits kept landing against the Pride’s shields, until her starboard facing collapsed under the constant weight of fire with a minute and a half remaining before they achieved firing position. With forty seconds remaining, half a dozen strikes had landed against the hull on that side, causing unexpected decompressions on decks five and eight. With twenty seconds remaining, the port facing’s shields finally surrendered to the relentless onslaught of enemy fire, and a direct hit to that side took out one of their newly-installed lasers before it could ever be turned against an enemy.

The stern’s shields began to buckle with ten seconds remaining, but Middleton kept his focus as the Vae Victus came within range of his Liberator torpedoes. He had preprogrammed them with the Vae Victus’ profile, and their onboard computers would ensure that they struck the vessel if they did not run out of fuel.

“Mr. Toto,” Middleton said when eight seconds remained, “launch the Starfires.”

“How many?” Toto asked with a gleefully savage note to his voice which transcended culture or even race.

“All of them,” Middleton replied, “coordinate their fire with the gun deck; I want maximum heat on that ship two seconds before these torpedoes slam into her.”

“Done,” Toto acknowledged, and first six, then twelve, then twenty four, and finally forty eight Starfire missiles appeared on the tactical overlay. They blossomed outward, looking to Middleton like they were forming a deadly flower as it unfurled its petals, beckoning would-be thieves to make a try for her life-giving nectar. At the same moment the Starfires launched, Middleton fired the Liberator torpedoes and the fifty total projectiles streamed ahead of the Pride.

The Vae Victus didn’t even flinch in the face of the weaponry which had been deployed against her, and Middleton had to admit that Commodore Raubach was as unflappable as they came. A lesser commander might have been tempted to pull his ships in toward the flag in a last-ditch attempt to soak up some of the damage coming his way. But the Commodore did the exact opposite, and his accompanying ships spread even further out while maintaining their relative formation.

If the Vae Victus was lost, unthinkable as the prospect likely seemed to the enemy commander, then the Commodore knew his best chance to salvage the position left to him after the Starfires had done what they were built to do, was to break his fleet into smaller, more maneuverable packets which could work their way around the oncoming Droid fleet from extreme range.

As the fire control clock wound down and the Liberators streaked toward the twin-hulled battleship, Middleton felt a measure of grudging respect for the enemy commander. Standing tall and taking the hit that was coming his way, it was clear to Middleton why so many had flocked to the man’s banner after the Imperial withdrawal.

There were no impacts against the Pride’s hull for several seconds, prompting Middleton to turn to Hephaestion. The young man was already in the process of turning to the captain with a report, “The enemy warships are targeting the Liberator torpedoes, Captain.”

Middleton clenched his jaw tight as he watched the torpedoes streak toward their quarry. They needed to survive for twenty seconds before they would strike the Vae Victus’ hull, and Middleton silently wished them along as he prayed, promised, and otherwise bargained everything—including his immortal soul, if such a thing existed—if the two torpedoes would strike their target.

“Two strikes detected on Torpedo #1,” Hephaestion reported hesitantly before continuing, “#1 is still on-target, Captain, and its engines appear to have restarted.”

Middleton checked the torpedo’s new time to intercept and quickly said, “No change to fire control, Mr. Toto. Coordinate the strikes with the first torpedo.”

“Yes sir,” Toto acknowledged, and the seconds continued to tick away on the clock.

With five seconds remaining, the first torpedo’s icon flared and disappeared, causing Middleton’s heart to quite literally stop beating in his chest. It was too late to change fire control now; the missiles would not accept such late changes since their firing process had already begun.

“Three…two…one,” Toto roared before slamming his finger down on the button controlling the Starfires, “firing!!”

Forty eight Starfire missiles stabbed their fusion-powered lasers into the forward shields of the Vae Victus, and the Pride’s forward battery added its own weight to the deadly barrage as the battleship closed to extreme short range with Middleton’s aged cruiser.

The Vae Victus’ icon flared, indicating the laser strikes had impacted on her shields—and then an explosion unlike anything Middleton had seen with his own two eyes filled the visual pickup tracking the Rim Fleet Flagship with a blinding, white light just as the Commodore’s ship banked hard to port.

The icon of the Vae Victus disappeared, and Middleton allowed his emotions to take over as he leapt from his chair and made a primal sound of victory which was unlike anything he had ever expected to hear produced by his throat. It was the kind of thing he had come to expect from his Sundered Tactical Officer, but he didn’t care how it might have looked to the crew; he had just taken a shot that had been weeks in the making, and it had been a bull’s eye!

The visual feed was down due to the explosion apparently having overpowered its filters, but Hephaestion had already begun to run back the recording so they could see the impact on slow motion.

In just a few seconds, the young Tracto-an had found the moment of impact and Middleton exultation was reduced several notches. He could plainly see during the replay that the starboard hull of the Vae Victus had taken the explosion directly, but the Commodore had slewed and tilted his ship in such a way that the awesome power of the Liberator torpedo’s Nova warhead—which had been shaped by the weapon’s excessively thick armor into a forward-facing, funnel-shaped blast—had destroyed that hull but left the port section almost completely unaffected.

The Commodore had known what he was up against and he had calmly, clinically, and correctly turned his vessel in the precise fashion he had done, saving half of his crew in the process and keeping what now remained of his ruined Flagship in play.

“Look alive—“ Middleton began, only to be cut off by a massive explosion from the stern of his ship which caused the deck to lurch violently.

He was thrown from his chair’s dais, and the next thing he knew he was groggily dragging himself up to a kneeling position beside the Comm. station with an intense ringing in one ear, and absolutely nothing in the other.

He tried to call for a report, but no words came from his lips. He reached up to his throat, checking stupidly to see if his neck had been grievously wounded and his hand came back with blood on it, but not an alarming amount. He forcibly cleared his throat and hoarsely barked, “Report!”

Nearby, he saw Hephaestion had taken a blow to the head as well but he was back in front of his station.

“Engine three is gone, Captain,” the young Tracto-an reported, and Middleton looked for Toto and could not find him at first. But then he looked to the helm and saw the uplift was standing over the helm station. The chair in which he should have been sitting was lying fifteen feet away, apparently having been torn from its moorings by the explosion.

But when Middleton saw that the other helmsman’s body was lying motionless on the opposite side of the helm from the chair, he realized that the Sundered must have torn the chair off with his herculean strength and taken control of the helm himself. There was no way the uplift would have fit into the chair, so Middleton was grateful rather than upset that his Tactical Officer had done as he had—as well as mildly alarmed by the fact that he had never considered this particular eventuality.

Moving to the Tactical station, Middleton saw that most of the systems appeared to be operational. “Report, Helm,” he barked, his jaw seizing up painfully as he spoke. He reached up and felt that it was clearly broken on the left side, so he forced it back into something like its normal position before clenching his teeth and reminding himself not to move his jaw if he felt the need to speak.

“Engines one two down,” Toto replied gruffly. “Engine three up, but ship is slow…difficult to align.”

“Do your best,” Middleton said through clenched teeth as he pinged the gun deck and was thankfully rewarded by a prompt reply. “This is Captain Middleton,” he said after raising the Chief Gunner, “fire at will, Chief. If it moves, hit it—don’t hold anything back.”

“Will do, sir,” the chief replied hungrily, and the Pride’s weaponry unloaded with all the fury her power plants could generate. Their newest weapons, the fifteen Artemis medium lasers which had been installed on the ship’s broadsides, lashed out at nearby Corvettes while the forward heavy lasers waited for Toto to put the bow back onto the Vae Victus.

The bow slewed this way and that under his less-than-expert hand, but Toto managed to sweep it across the Vae Victus’ remaining hull and the Chief Gunner did his shipmates proud as he scored ten direct hits against the enemy warship’s shields.

Amazingly, the port section of the Vae Victus’ shields had held against the peripheral blast released by the Nova warhead in the Liberator torpedo.

“The Vae Victus’s engines are still operational,” Hephaestion reported. “She is maintaining course and speed opposite our own, and the Corvettes are moving to a defensive posture around her.”

“Keep our bow on that battleship, Helm,” Middleton ordered through gritted teeth, “cut power to the engines if you have to and use maneuvering thrusters; we’ll drift out of the system on this trajectory anyway.”

“Yes Captain,” Toto acknowledged.

Middleton looked up at the Droid swarm, which was on the opposite side of the system’s orbital plane from the Pride’s projected course. As he watched, the first of the Rim Fleet warships fell to within range of the Conformity Motherships’ spinal-mounted, antimatter-fueled lasers, and a trio of blasts lashed out from the three dodecahedron-shaped ships. The awesome power of their combined shots instantly transformed the Corvette into a glowing cloud of quickly expanding debris as its pitiful shields were smashed by the hammering force of the droid super weapons.

Another trio of impacts shook the Pride and the Damage Control stander yelled, “Major decompression on decks four through seven, port side.”

“Get the bow around, Toto,” Middleton growled as he moved unsteadily from the Tactical station to the Damage Control station, where there was now only one crewman instead of the two from a few minutes earlier.

The uplift roared something unintelligible, in what was clearly frustration, but the Pride’s bow slowly began to come about as he disengaged the engines and slowly spun the ship end-over-end using the maneuvering thrusters.

Their broadside weaponry fired as fast as their cycle times would permit, which was nearly twice as often as the Pride’s heavy laser arsenal. Those cycle times were the primary reason Middleton had requested the Artemis medium lasers instead of equivalent wattage in heavy lasers, since he had suspected he would encounter droid gunboats once again.

Never had he actually entertained the idea that he would have willingly drawn the droids into a battle for all the marbles, however, but as his ship drifted closer to the droid formation he was increasingly grateful he had opted for the lighter, faster-firing weapons.

“Captain,” Hephaestion called out, “a Light Cruiser has broken away from the main force and its Corvettes are falling back around the Vae Victus. The cruiser is on an intercept course with us, sir; if we do not re-engage the engines they will achieve intercept in eighteen minutes.”

Middleton switched on his wrist-mounted com-link and hailed his XO. “Sarkozy, a cruiser is moving to intercept us,” he said, fighting against the increasing pain in his broken jaw and only realizing he had used her now-defunct name instead of her new one, McKnight. “Intercept in eighteen minutes.”

“We’re on it, Captain,” Lieutenant McKnight acknowledged. “Should I have Kratos lead his team onto the hull?”

“Negative,” he snapped, “proceed with the mission as planned, Lieutenant. Middleton out.”

The ship shook again, but this time it was considerably more subdued and a glance at the tactical overlay showed that Toto had succeeded in reorienting their bow to the enemy. The forward facing was the only part of the ship still shielded, and after a moment of confusion he looked at the Shields station and saw that the rating assigned there was no longer present.

“Chief,” Middleton said into his com-link after switching to the Engineering channel, “shut down the grav-plate reinforcements on the bow.” He stopped to spit up a thick, bright gob of blood onto the deck before continuing, “Get teams up there to work on the grid; if those shields go down, we’re done.”

“Got it, Cap,” Garibaldi acknowledged, “there’s not much to do back here anyway, what with the engines down. We’ll be affecting repairs in two minutes.”

“We may not have two minutes,” Middleton snapped before severing the link and looking over the Shields station. The forward grid had very nearly collapsed, and he was reading a cascade failure along the port portion of the auxiliary grid. Working fast, he managed to reroute the load through the starboard grid—a workaround which would last, at most, the two minutes Chief Garibaldi had given as his peoples’ timetable.

He ran a quick diagnostic of the port and starboard shields, finding that the starboard shields were completely shot while the port shields just might have a little life left in them.

The micro-fusion generators, which he had used to deceive Captain Raubach several weeks earlier by piping their output directly into backup the shield generators, were still in place and he flipped the switches for four of them. To his relief, the port shield grid sputtered before charging back up. The facing was only at 24%, in all actuality, and they were heavily spotting but it was better than nothing.

No sooner had he put those shields up than a pair of turbo-laser strikes hammered into the port shielding, shutting the entire port facing down. Knowing that three of the four micro-fusion generators had almost certainly kicked out and would require manual restart, he redirected what little power was still coming from the lone still-active generator on the port side toward the forward shields. Those shields—easily the Pride’s toughest facing—were reading 27% with heavy spotting.

The Vae Victus lashed out with her weaponry, but since she was quite literally no more than half the ship she had been at the battle’s outset, the Pride’s forward shields absorbed the lone strike of three which was sent Middleton’s way.

“Come on, old girl,” Middleton muttered, “hold together.”

The Droid Fleet was moving with single-minded purpose toward the Rim Fleet, having apparently concluded that the Pride was unworthy of attention at this phase in the game. And with the state of his primary systems—to say nothing of the atmosphere streaming from his ship’s hull—Middleton was in no position to denounce that particular assessment.

The Pride’s forward heavy laser battery—of which only seven weapons remained functional—spat fire at the Vae Victus, but only three of the strikes landed against the enemy’s shields. At this point, Middleton was just trying to wear the Commodore’s Flagship down so the droids could finish it off; the Pride, even if she somehow managed to survive, would soon be quite literally out of the fight as her inertia had already carried her very nearly out of all but the Rim Fleet’s heavily-modified turbo-lasers. The Droids, even if they were inclined to pursue, were no longer in range of any of their weaponry.

And that meant that Middleton and his crew only needed to keep the ship together for another nine minutes, and there wouldn’t be a weapon in the system capable of reaching them.

The Engineering team Garibaldi had assured Middleton would see to the forward shield grid made good on that promise, fighting tooth and nail to install backup power lines and somehow managing to keep the forward shields from collapsing until the Droids closed to firing range with the peripheral ships in the Rim Fleet formation. All but three of the Pride’s heavy lasers were blasted away from her battered bow in the ensuing focused barrage put on them by seemingly every ship in range, but Middleton was eternally grateful to his old friend’s efforts.

He sighed after ten seconds had elapsed since the last turbo-laser strike on their hull, but as he did so he stupidly opened his mouth. If he had thought the pain he felt a few minutes earlier was bad, this wave sent him to his knees as the world went dark all around him and he was overcome with vertigo, briefly losing his sense of orientation. He shook his head vigorously as soon as he was able to do so, and found that he had unexpectedly vomited on the deck in a bout of semi-conscious nausea.

Wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve, he activated his wrist-mounted com-link. “This is the Captain,” he said through once-again gritted teeth as he steadied himself with his free hand and checked the tactical overlay, seeing that the Light Cruiser he had informed McKnight of was closing to grips with them, “prepare to receive boarders. All hands: report to your lockdown positions; repeat…”

The world spun into darkness, and this time he lost consciousness completely.

Chapter XVII: Pass Protection 101

“You heard the Captain,” Sergeant Gnuko bellowed, his voice echoing throughout Main Engineering after it was clear that Captain Middleton would not complete his confirmation of the lockdown orders, “we’ve got six minutes before those blighters set foot on this ship. Now is not the time for heroics,” he said, giving a dire look to a nearby pair of ratings who were gathering up makeshift weapons, including a plasma torch and a portable abrasive saw that could easily rip through duralloy, given enough time. “Report to your lockdown stations on the double,” he said, taking a menacing step toward the pair, his power-armored legs clanging against the deck as he did so, “move!”

The pair obliged after his third step, scurrying toward the main doors like the rest of the engineers who had remained behind when Chief Garibaldi had led the bulk of his people to the bow.

Gnuko visually scanned Main Engineering before manually initiating the shutdown sequence on the Pride’s fusion plant. The process took him only two minutes to complete, since they had already been primed for the procedure by the engineers several minutes earlier.

It was risky, shutting down the fusion plant, but he knew that the enemy boarders would plan to scuttle the ship after they had taken whatever it was they had come for—and Gnuko, like his Captain, had a fairly good idea what their objectives might be.

After the plant was shut down completely, the ship’s lights switched from their usual luminosity to a lower setting, indicating that the ship was now on emergency power. Since they had taken the Liberator torpedo early in the Pride’s first deployment, life support functions had been placed on their own separate power grids, so Gnuko knew that he had roughly thirty hours to purge the ship of unwanted visitors. If it took him longer than that, his shipmates would start dying…and that was simply unacceptable to his mind.

Clomping his way out of Main Engineering, he felt the ship shudder, presumably from the incoming cruiser’s fire. Shutting down the plant had been part of Captain Middleton’s plan to lure the boarders onto the Pride, but it seemed the enemy commander was playing it safe as his guns slammed into the port side again.

“Defense Team squads,” he barked into the Defense Team channel as he rounded the corridor and made his way to the rapid response team’s location near the center of the ship, “sound off!”

“Right Guard Team, in position,” reported a grizzled Caprian Marine named Stewart, who had stubbornly refused a proper induction into the MSP’s Lancer contingent, maintaining that he had lived as a Marine and he would die as a Marine.

“Right Tackle Team, in position,” an old friend of Gnuko’s, named Britt, came next.

“Center Team, ready to rock,” the brash, but impressive young Promethean named Jean-Pierre sounded off.

“Left Guard Team, prepared to die for the Citadel,” reported the lone Tracto-an assigned to the Defense Team. His name was Paulus, and he was the brother of Peleus, who had died in the hyper dish junction so many months earlier when droids had boarded the ship. He had proven to be every bit his brother’s equal in terms of value, so Gnuko had given him command over one of the five teams—each composed of six Lancers, save the one commanded by their lone, stubborn Marine—assigned to defend the Pride of Prometheus’ most vital sections from the boarding party that would soon be with them.

“The only dying being done in these corridors will be by the enemy, Paulus,” Gnuko quipped, knowing it was false but also knowing it was the kind of thing men said to one another on the cusp of battle. The words may have been false, but the message they conveyed was critical to any defensive unit’s success in the heat of battle. He arrived at his rapid response team’s location and added, “Left Tackle Team, locked and loaded.”

No sooner had he spoken than an alarm in his HUD went off, indicating that foreign material had contacted the hull near one of the Pride’s two primary airlocks.

He switched his com-link to a local channel piped into the shuttle hangar and said, “That’d be your cue, XO. Good hunting.”

“We’ll scrape a few of them off with the Deathbacker’s cannon en route,” she promised, “wouldn’t want you Lancers thinking you can claim all the glory.”

He gave a harsh chuckle, “See you on the other side, McKnight.”

“This is Team Turnover, out,” she said, severing the link.

A moment later, the ship lurched as the shuttle hangar’s pressure doors were opened using emergency protocols. The escaping gases sent the Pride into a tumble and, with any luck of the good variety, the sudden lurch dislodged a few of the boarders who meant to violate their ship and take whatever they pleased in the process.

But Gnuko was ready for the boarders. He and his people had worked through this scenario so many times he knew that any of his team leaders—including Paulus—could take command of the mission at the drop of a hat.

“Remember,” Gnuko said when a second alarm went off, indicating that the port airlock had been breached, “no heroic stands. Fall back and use embedded resources whenever possible but, no matter what, keep the enemy moving forward. We’re going to chew these bastards up and spit them out while that one-eyed freak does to their ship what they think they’re about to do to ours.”

His team leaders acknowledged, and a few seconds later Britt reported, “Contact.” The sound of muffled weapons fire chattered over the channel for several seconds before there was an explosion. “Three hostiles down to one friendly,” Britt reported quickly, “hostiles are wearing standard Confed power armor, but using mono-locsium axes. We’re falling back to junction B-5; get ready, Right Guard.”

“Waiting with open arms, darling,” Stewart, the crabby Marine, said gruffly. “Just don’t trip over your shoelaces as you fall back, kid.”

“Good work, Right Tackle,” Gnuko said, knowing it was true even though he had hoped not to lose any Lancers during the initial engagements. “Bend but don’t break; keep them in front of you and draw them into the ship.”

A moment later, another alarm sounded in his HUD which indicated that the starboard airlock had been breached. “You’re up, Left Guard,” he said to the Tracto-an, “go easy on them. Let ‘em get a head of steam before we give them both barrels.”

“I will obey,” Paulus replied tersely, clearly disliking the idea of not giving the enemy his everything at the outset. In truth, it was something Gnuko could relate to, but he knew better than most that not every contest was won in the opening exchange. Sometimes you have to give ground to get the angle on your enemy, and he had designed the Pride’s counter-boarding protocols with that principle in mind.

“Contact,” Paulus reported before another round of crackling weapons fire filled the Defense Team Command channel. “Falling back to second position,” the Tracto-an reported after a somewhat lengthy exchange of fire, “four enemy have fallen to our fire, along with two Lancers.”

“Seven to three,” Gnuko said, trying to keep his tone upbeat but silently cursing that they had taken three losses in the opening exchange, “I’ll take that ratio all day long. Be ready for them, JP; they’re coming your way.”

“I was born ready,” the brash Promethean replied.

“You were born bare-ass naked with your pathetic excuse for manhood sucked up so high inside your abdomen that they declared you were a girl,” Gnuko retorted. It was only half false: apparently there had, indeed, been a clerical error which had resulted in Jean-Pierre having been labeled female for nearly two weeks prior to anyone catching the mistake and correcting it. “Of course, with that high-pitched voice and silky-smooth skin, it’s no wonder they mistook you for the fairer sex.”

“Haters gonna hate—” Jean-Pierre sighed just before gunfire erupted from Stewart’s vox.

“Contact,” the curmudgeonly Marine reported after the fire had ceased, “two hostiles down, no friendlies. If you’re not distracted by all the woman-talk between the Center and Left Tackle,” he continued gruffly, “would you mind covering my team’s withdrawal, Right Tackle?”

“In position now,” Britt acknowledged. “You’re good to go, Right Guard.”

Gnuko’s HUD showed the five teams, including his, and their respective locations on a three dimensional map of the Pride’s interior. His people were taking a somewhat indirect route toward the bridge, and apparently the enemy Marines had noticed since the internal sensors showed motion along the main corridors to either side of the ship. Those corridors represented the more direct route to the bridge—but Gnuko had prepared surprises for the enemy the day before which would show them the error of refusing to dance to his Lancers’ tune.

Waiting only as long as he needed to ensure maximum damage, Gnuko triggered the explosives he had set at the port corridor’s primary junction. She ship shook with the violence of the explosion—an explosion which had also been designed to expose that section to the vacuum of space—while internal sensors died in the immediate vicinity, but he was certain that the enemy Marines had been slain in the deadly trap.

Technically, booby-trapping one’s own ship was illegal and against several military accords, but the Pride’s crew was more concerned with winning than they were with being the only side in the current conflict that would keep to the rules.

Before the starboard team of enemy Marines could pull back—apparently having detected the presence of the explosives on their side, either directly or indirectly by witnessing their cohorts’ deaths—Gnuko triggered the explosion in the starboard junction. Where six enemy Marines had died in the first explosion on the port side, only two were likely to have been caught in the second blast, but those were two Marines his people wouldn’t have to exchange fire with.

“Eight down to the first traps,” Gnuko said with satisfaction. “That makes the score fifteen for the MSP and three for the Rim Fleet. Heads up, Right Tackle and Center,” he said after confirming that the enemy teams were now moving toward his perfectly-positioned troops, “you’ve got incoming.” If the enemy attempted to cut through the bulkheads with their boarding axes, or vibro-blades, his people still had plenty of time to fall back to the last rally point.

But the enemy Marines seemed more concerned with speed than with taking the most direct course, and before his vid pick-ups had all been destroyed by the enemy forces, Gnuko counted no fewer than sixty one Marines had boarded the Pride of Prometheus. Thankfully, the flow of enemy armor had slowed significantly prior to the last vid feed going dead, but that still meant that Gnuko’s people were outnumbered three-to-two—even after the highly successful opening exchanges and trap-springing.

Some of the Pride’s internal sensors still functioned well enough for him to see that a splinter force had broken off from the starboard team and was heading his way. Gripping his rifle and doing a quick nose count of his six man team, he said, “We’ve got incoming, boys. Remember: give them a ten second pushback and then withdraw to the maintenance junction. We don’t want to be anywhere near here when this trap goes off,” he said, looking briefly to the door which led to Fei Long’s quarters, “but we’ll only have a thirty second window to come back and finish them, assuming their armor’s been hardened.”

The young man had left a transceiver broadcasting a scrambling signal of some kind which he was convinced would get the Marines’ attention, and he had asked Sergeant Gnuko to deploy an ion bomb in the event the ship was engaged in a hostile boarding action.

So Sergeant Gnuko readied the ion bomb’s trigger, which was linked to his HUD, and prepared to receive the enemy Marines. Soon enough, a pair of them emerged from the nearby intersection and Gnuko’s people opened fire, taking one of them in the visor and the other in the arm. The headshot was a kill, but the other Marine brought up his weapon—a heavy plasma cannon—and launched a superheated blast of blue fire down the corridor in their direction.

The shot took the Lancer to Gnuko’s left squarely in the helmet, while the roaring inferno briefly engulfed Gnuko’s armor before dissipating as it continued down the corridor. He didn’t even need to look to see that the Lancer was dead; their armor’s visors were incapable of withstanding a direct plasma cannon hit. Gnuko sprayed his blaster rifle down the corridor as a trio of Marines moved past their cannon-wielding fellow during the brief window his shot had created.

Gnuko’s people joined him, and as one they sprayed energy bolts down the corridor. Shot after shot hammered into the enemy Marines, but the Left Tackle Team’s accuracy was compromised from the plasma bolt having momentarily put them off-balance. The result was a smattering of direct hits against the Marines’ most heavily-armored sections and, most importantly, no resulting kills.

The seconds ticked by, and Gnuko knew they would need to withdraw two seconds ahead of schedule if they were to avoid a second round from the plasma cannon. “Pull back,” he barked when his HUD’s countdown reached eight seconds, two seconds short of his predetermined stand’s time. His people responded quickly, moving backward while covering each other with overlapping fire but the enemy Marines were emboldened and charged down the corridor. Only the occasional lucky shot from Gnuko’s people—including one sent by his own rifle—managed to slow the enemy advance to anything less than a full-out charge.

Another of his Lancers fell to enemy fire, but he regained his feet and managed to drag himself to the nearest intersection—the intersection which led to the maintenance junction where he and his men would be shielded from the ion bomb.

He unpinned a pair of plasma grenades from his belt and tossed them down the corridor, pleased to see them explode just as a pair of charging Marines came around the bend. The armored men were thrown from their feet—one of whom had been directly over the top of a grenade, which proved a fatal mistake as the groin of his armor was rent asunder by the white-blue plasma explosion.

“Move, move, move,” Gnuko barked as his men four subordinates filed into the junction as quickly as they could squeeze their armored bulk into the cramped space. Once they were inside, he joined them and closed the door before purging the atmosphere via a manually-opened vent. The atmosphere was vented into the void outside the ship in a matter of seconds, after which Gnuko activated the ion bomb.

A dull, barely audible thrum followed the sharp, cracking sound which reverberated through the bulkheads at the bomb’s explosion, and without further ado he led his men out of the junction after closing the emergency atmosphere vent. The rush of air from the corridor into the maintenance junction was more than a human could fight through without powered assistance, but he pushed through easily with the power-assisted joints of his armor to augment his already impressive strength.

The corridor was dark, since the Pride’s internal power grid in the area had been shut down by the ion bomb. But Gnuko quickly sighted a Marine leaning against the wall, and the man raised his rifle but it misfired—a common occurrence following ionic interference like that which had been given off by the bomb.

Without ceremony, and without breaking stride, Gnuko put a blaster bolt through the man’s visor and his body toppled ponderously before crashing to the deck. For good measure, a Lancer to Gnuko’s right put another bolt into the freshly-made hole, and the Lancers made their way to the bend in the corridor where Gnuko’s plasma grenades had cost a Marine his life.

Moving past the smoldering pile of metal and meat which had previously been a Rim Fleet Marine, Gnuko peered around the corner of the corridor, knowing they had only ten more seconds before some of the enemy Marines’ systems began to come back online. He saw four Marines standing outside of the now-opened door to Fei Long’s quarters, and he unpinned a plasma grenade from his belt as he and his people fired blaster bolt after blaster bolt into the nearest Marine.

With their foes unable to move at anything more than a snail’s pace, they made quick work of the Marines outside the room and Gnuko, without looking, tossed the plasma grenade into Fei Long’s room. Two of his Lancers did likewise, and the trio of explosions from within sent fire roaring out into the corridor while the bulkheads to either side of the door swelled and cracked with the barely-contained force of the grenades.

Peeking inside, he saw a pair of Marines—or what remained of them, and their armor—had taken up positions to either side of the door. Just to be certain, he poured a couple of rounds into the head of the left Marine, while a member of his team did likewise for the one on the right.

“Eight hostiles down,” Gnuko called over the Defense Team Command channel, “one friendly. This is where it gets interesting, boys.”

“When you’re done playing with yourselves,” the grizzled Marine, Stewart, quipped amid streaming gunfire crackling through his vox, “the rest of us are at—and holding—the rally point.”

Gnuko was briefly confused, uncertain how the enemy had reached the rally point so quickly. “On our way,” he said before switching to his local team channel. “Double time it to the rally point; let’s flank these bastards from the starboard side.”

His team acknowledged the order, and within two minutes they had reached the corridor which the enemy Marines occupied as they poured fire into the Lancers holding the last defensible position outside the lift which led to the bridge.

Using hand signals, Gnuko gestured for his people to use their remaining grenades—which totaled six: two plasma and four high explosive—as cover for a charge. He would lead the charge and, with any luck, they could close to melee range with the enemy and take over their position without compromising its defensive integrity any more than necessary.

He remembered Lu Bu’s quick thinking which had seen her pile the grenades into a helmet before linking them to a single control. He did likewise, sans the helmet, by using the magnetic interlocks of the high explosive grenades to create a single ball of grenades. When he was finished, he set the grenades to a three second timer and hit the button before throwing the grenades like a bowling ball down the corridor and ducking behind the corner.

The seconds counted down and there was a deck-shaking explosion, followed by Gnuko and his people rounding the corner and charging down the corridor. Blue flames licked away the last of the oxygen throughout the corridor as it almost lazily wandered away from the epicenter of the blast. Gnuko was disappointed to see that the explosion had only killed two Marines, but he and his people made it nearly two thirds of the way to the enemy position before the Marines sent anything resembling suppressing fire their way.

A grenade arced through the air, and Gnuko’s reflexes weren’t good enough to pick it off with his blaster rifle before it went off. He knew instantly that it was an ion grenade, and he fought to keep his feet beneath him as a quartet of Marines charged down the corridor with their mono-locsium boarding axes drawn.

Moving sluggishly, Gnuko was relieved to see that his blaster rifle somehow had remained functional as he fired a pair of shots down the corridor. One shot took a Marine in the knee joint, causing him to stagger as Gnuko’s men moved around him. Apparently his armor was the only one that had been deactivated by the ion blast, and no sooner had his men reached his position than the Marines laid into them with their boarding axes.

Since this was a main corridor, it was wide enough for nearly two power-armored Lancers—or Marines—to fight side-by-side relatively unencumbered. Vibro-blades met boarding axes, and one of Gnuko’s Lancers went down in the opening exchange as his gorget was torn apart by an expertly executed chop. A Marine and Lancer grappled, crashing to the deck with the Lancer gaining top position and pressing his vibro-blade against the Marine’s throat as his weapon began to saw its way through the duralloy of the man’s protective casement.

But a blaster bolt from ahead struck Gnuko’s Lancer in the gauntlet which held that vibro-blade, and the man roared in pain as his hand had improbably been reduced to a molten ruin. The bolt must have struck the vibro-blade’s power supply and, like a firecracker held in a child’s clenched fist, the resulting explosion had completely destroyed the gauntlet which had gripped it.

The Marine took advantage of the moment by bashing his gauntlet into the Lancer’s visor over and over before rolling toward the ruined hand of the Lancer and ending up on top.

Gnuko’s feet were moving sluggishly, but he managed to get his blaster rifle trained on the Marine’s helmet just as the man brought his boarding axe up for the coup de grace on the crippled Lancer.

Gnuko’s shot was far from precise, taking the Marine in the shoulder, but it gave his teammate enough time to grab a grenade from the Marine’s belt, activate it, and reach behind the Marine’s body with his lone remaining hand.

Before he could let go of the explosive device—assuming he had ever intended to do so—the grenade exploded against the Marine’s back and his armor seized before going limp and crashing to the deck. A foot-wide hole had been torn in the Marine’s armor at the small of his back, and the wound was clearly fatal.

The Lancer, on the other hand, had given up precisely that—both of his arms now ended in ruined, molten lumps of metal fused with charred flesh.

Gnuko’s armor began its reboot cycle, which meant he had five seconds before it would regain functionality. Just then he saw a nearby Marine—the same one that had expertly killed one of Gnuko’s people via axe-to-the-gorget—turn his attention toward him.

Gnuko barely had time to get his vibro-blade up in a defensive grip before the Marine was upon him.

Chapter XVIII: Moving in the Pocket

Middleton came to with a sharp, stinging sensation in the front of his skull. At first he thought that he had awoken to a blaster bolt being fired up his nose, then he saw the face of Hephaestion above him.

The young Tracto-an held a quick-stim stick in his hand while the other was behind Middleton’s head, and a quick look told the Pride’s Captain that Hephaestion had administered nearly the entire contents of the device in one go—fully three times the recommended dosage.

“Report,” he grimaced, sitting upright and testing his legs as he moved to stand.

“The Light Cruiser intercepted us,” Hephaestion replied, “they sent a war party aboard, and they have nearly reached the bridge.”

Realizing he must have been out for several minutes at least, Middleton shook his head and found that it felt remarkably clear. Even his jaw did not hurt quite so badly as it had prior to his losing consciousness, although he knew that was a result of the stims he had just been pumped full of by the young Tracto-an.

“Did Sarkozy get aboard before they passed out of range?” Middleton asked, careful not to move his jaw too much.

Hephaestion nodded, “The Deathbacker attached to their outer hull near a primary airlock as their trajectory intersected ours; sensors indicated that of the seventy five warriors in the Assault Team, well over half of them made it to the hull of the enemy warship by way of grav-sleds and grav-boards.”

“They’re on their own now,” Middleton said as he saw that several bridge crewmembers had already armed themselves, “and so are we. Have we gotten word from Sergeant Gnuko’s Defense Team?”

“Not since they fell back to the last rally point, sir,” Hephaestion replied grimly.

“How long ago was that?” Middleton demanded, reaching for the ion pistol he had requested from Armory prior to the jump into The Bulwark and had previously had hung from his chair. Finding the weapon in working condition, he strapped its holster around his waist and put the weapon through its initialization phase.

“Three minutes, Captain,” Hephaestion reported as he gripped a long, slender vibro-blade.

“Are you any good with that?” Middleton asked, indicating the far-too-slender-looking vibro-blade skeptically.

Hephaestion nodded, his eyes drifting in memories which were clearly not of the happy variety, “I would be dead several times over if I was not.”

Middleton suspected the young man had never been accepted on his home world of Tracto, for reasons which were utterly meaningless to any responsible soldier, and gestured to his remaining bridge crew. “The only Rim Fleet ship that can still fire on us is the Light Cruiser Sarkozy—make that McKnight,” he corrected, realizing he must have made the gaffe earlier without knowing it at the time, “is working to take. That means our time on the bridge is over,” he said, meeting each of his nine surviving bridge crew’s eyes in turn and gritting his teeth, mindful not to aggravate his broken jaw again, “and our Lancers have their backs to the wall one deck below us. They’re going to need all the help we can give them, and I’m not going to lie: the odds of any of us surviving a firefight with armored Marines are pretty low, but they’re better than if we just sit up here.”

Toto bent down and, using his herculean strength, tore the helmsman’s chair apart in some incomprehensible series of savage-looking gestures. But as he stood with a pair of pieces in his hands, Middleton realized he had fashioned for himself a short club and a reasonably sturdy-looking shield out of an arm and the high back of the chair.

“I don’t want any insanity,” Middleton said, pulling the ion pistol from its holster and seeing several more of the weapons in the hands of his crew, “just keep your heads down and, if we put one of the blighters down, the window will be narrow. Anyone not armed with an ion weapon needs to be ready to hit them with whatever’s at hand while the rest of us provide cover fire.” He gestured to the front of his neck just below his Adam’s apple, then to his armpit, and finally to the inner groin, “These are the weak points on their style of armor, but the only thing that will get through those regions without servo-power assisted…or Sundered strength,” he added with a dark grin, causing Toto’s chest to swell before he uttered a primal war cry that needed no language to be clearly understood, “is a vibro-blade. Let’s go!”

They made their way out of the bridge and came to the lift, which had been disabled prior to Sergeant Gnuko’s shutdown of the reactors. The emergency lighting in the area was good enough for him to find the manual lever which opened the lift’s door, and his crew descended the recessed ladder rungs as quickly as they could.

Before they had even reached the level where the Lancers were making their stand, the sound of blaster fire—and the occasional whump of a grenade—could be heard clearly through the bulkheads.

Activating the manual override, Middleton had one of his crew crank the door open before the Pride’s commanding officer dove head-first through the door and found the relative shelter of the nearby maintenance alcove. Hephaestion was close on his heels, and Toto led another pair of crew to the opposite alcove where they took up firing positions.

Before any other crew could egress the corridor, a bolt of plasma fire streaked past Middleton and slammed into the lift tube. The unfortunate bridge crew who had failed to leave the tube in time were incinerated even before they could scream, and Middleton cranked the nearby manual lever to close the doors before the fire spread to their cover.

His crew began firing their ion pistols down the corridor, and after a brief assessment he saw that only nine Lancers still stood while there were eleven fallen suits of power armor bearing MSP insignias and heraldry on their shoulders and chests.

He took careful aim and snapped off a shot at a Marine who was raising his axe in a death blow over a Lancer, and Middleton rewarded with a hit on the elbow of that Marine’s axe-wielding arm. The arm seized briefly, which was enough of a reprieve for the Lancer beneath to drive his knee up into the Marine’s armored groin.

The armor protected the enemy Marine from any actual damage, but the force of the blow knocked him briefly off-balance. With only one arm still fully-functional, the Marine fell to the deck and the Lancer wrenched the mono-locsium boarding axe from his hand before a life-and-death struggle began between the two as the Marine regained use of both arms before the Pride’s Lancer could deliver a killing blow.

Looking down the corridor, Middleton saw the plasma cannon-wielding Marine—who bore Major bars proudly displayed above a long string of service honors emblazoned on his chest that looked like something out of a holo-vid. Generally speaking, Marines—or soldiers of any kind—didn’t survive combat duty long enough to earn such an impressive display of decorations, so Middleton knew this man was the commander of the boarding force.

Bringing his ion pistol up, he took careful aim and fired a shot which struck the Marine in the helmet. The Marine’s helmet crackled with a dazzling display of blue-white electricity, but he kept the barrel of his plasma cannon trained on Middleton before turning slightly and pointing it at Toto and the crew on the other side of the corridor from Middleton’s position.

Realizing the enemy commander had recognized him, and was almost certainly under orders to capture the Pride’s commanding officer rather than kill him, Middleton snapped off another round but this one went wide by more than a meter as the deck shifted beneath him.

He saw the power core of the plasma cannon had very nearly completed its recharge cycle—a fact which was evident by the bright, blue light emitted by the weapon’s main body—and Middleton knew there was no way they could stop the man from getting his shot off.

Acting purely on instinct, Middleton dove across the hall, using his body as a shield which he was reasonably confident would at least give the Major pause.

He was proven correct, as the enemy commander stayed his hand for a fraction of a second, but Middleton actually saw his finger move toward the trigger of the weapon without wavering the barrel from Middleton’s direction. Apparently, he had decided that capturing Middleton was going to be more trouble than it was worth, so he was going to content himself with killing him instead.

But before his finger pushed the trigger, a Lancer bearing Sergeant’s stripes crashed into him and sent the Marine commander into the deck. His body was twisted by the impact in such a way that his weapon discharged into a nearby bulkhead, and blue plasma fire splashed against the duralloy of the Pride’s corridor. When the flames had dissipated, the hole in the bulkhead was glowing cherry red and the enemy commander was locked in a pitched battle with what could only be Sergeant Gnuko.

The air grew acrid, and Middleton knew that the oxygen in the corridor was almost completely gone, having fueled the firefight between the Lancers and Marines for several minutes prior to his arrival. He did not remember to bring his head bag, however, and he knew that mistake would very likely cost him his life, as well as the lives of his bridge crew.

But if they could lend even a tiny bit of fire to the fight, he would consider their lives well spent, so he fought to keep from gasping in panic and fired off another shot from his ion pistol at the same Marine he had hit with his first shot. The blue bolt of ionic energy struck the Marine in the hip, and Middleton was pleased to see the Lancer who had engaged the enemy Marine bring up the wrested boarding axe into the man’s left armpit over the hip Middleton had hit.

Again and again, the Lancer struck the relatively weak section of the Marine’s armor, and blood began to splash onto the deck with each blow. The Marine tried to bring his right arm up, but the Lancer kicked the Marine’s legs out from under him, sending the Marine crashing into the deck.

With rather less finesse than Middleton had expected, his Lancer brought his armored boot up and drove it down into the Marine’s face shield once, twice, and a third time until the visor and helmet succumbed to the brutal power of his stomping boots.

Looking back to Gnuko and the enemy commander, Middleton saw that his Sergeant looked to be losing the battle. The Major held dual boarding axes in his hands and was attacking with brutal, but controlled, ferocity and Gnuko was armed with only a single vibro-blade.

A mass of silver and black hair went rushing past him, and Middleton saw that Toto’s assessment of the battle between Gnuko and the Marine leader was almost certainly the same as his own. The Sundered took great, loping strides and deftly collected a fallen boarding axe after dropping his makeshift cub, but he kept the remains of the pilot’s chair-turned-shield gripped firmly in his hand as he charged headlong into the battle with the Marine Major.

Using every last newton of force his body could muster, Toto slammed his improvised shield into the enemy commander’s right arm. Amazingly, the Major seemed not to even notice the attack as he backhanded Toto across the back before kicking out with his right leg and narrowly missing the uplift’s knee. The way the enemy commander moved, Middleton suspected he was as large as Kratos, and his strength was clearly working to his advantage.

But Gnuko had made the most of what little opening Toto had given him, driving his vibro-blade up into the Marine’s groin. The Major had been forced to brace himself against Toto’s charge, where before the Sundered had entered the fray he had been light on his feet, so he had momentarily become stationary. Gnuko’s vibro-blade was turned aside by the Marine’s left boarding axe, but soon Toto recovered his own balance and joined the attack against the enemy commander with a mono-locsium axe of his own.

Middleton tried to get a clear shot, but the truth was he had been lucky to land as many strikes as he had done already. He had never been good with firearms; his hands were simply too unsteady, and the conditions in the corridor were making things even more difficult.

His crew continued to add ion bolts in support of their fellow brethren from the Lancer contingent, and slowly but surely it seemed the tide was turning. Eight Lancers still stood while the same could only be said for five Marines, including their commander.

The Major’s boarding axe smashed into Toto’s shield, shattering it into a handful of pieces—the largest of which Toto gripped and used like a nightstick as he slammed it down into the Major’s right forearm.

Gnuko stabbed, swiped, chopped and punched with everything he had, but Middleton could see that his armor had already sustained significant damage while the Major’s appeared more or less untouched. The Major seemed to know Gnuko’s moves before Gnuko made them, and Middleton knew that if nothing was done, his Tactical Officer and Lancer Sergeant would soon fall to the man.

So he did the only thing he could: he fired his ion pistol through the first opening he saw. He missed entirely, which was a good thing since his shot had actually come closer to Gnuko than it had to the Major.

A nearby Lancer tried to join the fray on his Sergeant’s behalf, but a Marine on the far side of the corridor fired a blaster rifle at him and sent the Lancer to the deck with a ruined right knee joint. Another Lancer tried to lend his arm to the effort of bringing the enemy commander down, but a nearby Marine literally tripped him by grabbing his heavy, metal boots and sending the Lancer crashing, face-first, into the deck before a one-on-one scrap between the two began.

It was clear that the Marines knew their commander would win without outside intervention, and they were betting that the death of the Pride’s Lancer commander would result in yet another turning of the tide, with this one proving to be in the Marines’ favor.

Gnuko and Toto fought valiantly, but Toto’s lack of armor was becoming a liability that the enemy Major was now exploiting to maximum effect. He feinted a blow toward the uplift, causing Gnuko to adjust his stance and counterattack in an attempt to keep the Sundered protected. The Major used the opening and smashed his right boarding axe into Gnuko’s right elbow.

The vibro-blade went to the deck as Gnuko’s arm failed him, and Middleton knew his Sergeant was about to die, so he drew a deep breath, put the Major in his sights, and waited for what seemed like an eternity for a shot to develop.

When it came, he squeezed the trigger and his ion pistol sent a round into the Major’s left knee. The knee seized briefly, but that was all Gnuko needed to avoid being decapitated by the Marine’s sweeping boarding axe. The axe missed high, and Gnuko drove his body underneath the arm which wielded it as he reached down with his left arm and trapped the Major’s right knee before driving their combined bulk down to the deck.

Gnuko’s right arm was still out of commission, but he had the top position and he was going to take advantage of it. He spun his body across the Major’s and began hammering punch after punch into his foe’s right shoulder. Toto leapt into the fray as well, bringing his boarding axe down on the Major’s left upper arm, and soon the Lancer and Sundered had rendered the mighty Marine more or less defenseless with their combined, brutal, seemingly unthinking onslaught.

But there had been a cost: before Toto had neutralized the Major’s left arm, the Marine commander had very nearly chopped through the armor over Gnuko’s right hamstring.

Gnuko reached for his fallen vibro-blade and brought it up before driving it down into the Major’s neck. He twisted and wrenched the blade back and forth until the Marine commander’s body went limp, after which Gnuko staggered to his feet—after kicking the boarding axes away from his vanquished counterpart’s hands.

Middleton found himself gasping in spite of his determination not to do so, and he realized he was already suffering the effects of anoxia. His fingers were numb, and the ion pistol fell from his hands as soon as he made that particular realization.

“Captain?” a nearby Lancer asked. But before Middleton could respond, the Pride’s commanding officer fell to his knees and, for the second time in what seemed like only fifteen minutes, he fell into unconsciousness.

Chapter XIX: Behind the Line

“The local ComStat hub is indeed down,” Fei Long reported, confirming his assertion of a few minutes earlier.

Lu Bu looked at the limited tactical readout on the Mode’s main screen and knew then, more than ever before, that it was of the utmost importance for her team to succeed in their mission.

Within the system were over a hundred independent, stationary defensive platforms and a dozen warships—including a heavy cruiser—spread out in some sort of formation which she could not hope to fathom. The heavy cruiser was located directly over what looked to be the carbon-rich planet, which in turn orbited the most massive object in the system: the brown dwarf.

Although, to her eye it made little sense to call it ‘brown’ when it was actually a faint, yet distinct, shade of violet. It reminded her of a picture she had seen as a little girl that had been burned into her memory: it was of a young, blond-haired girl wearing a white and blue dress, standing in the middle of a field of lush, green grass. In her hands had been a bouquet of wildflowers which were the same shade as the failed star which served as this particular system’s central object.

“This be whack in the head, y’all,” Strider grumbled as they passed so close to a corvette that they could actually see it through the starboard viewing window of the cockpit. “What kind of nonsense be a plan what sends a handful of peeps into a system guarded by a dozen warships?”

“The kind that wins big fights,” Lu Bu countered sharply, causing the other man to flinch so slightly that if she had not been looking for it she would have missed it.

“What’s the play, ma’am?” Hutch asked from the back of the cockpit.

Lu Bu pointed to the planet, “We land. Cruiser too big for boarding; we find their base on surface and destroy it.”

“And how we supposed to be doin’ that…mom?” Strider asked belatedly.

“We have two Starfire warheads,” she explained, jerking her thumb over her shoulder toward the rear of the ship where they were now stowed. “Warheads enhanced with fifty kiloton yields; we place inside facility and detonate.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Hutch said with respectful skepticism, “but that place has to be about impenetrable.”

“Every fortress has weakness,” she replied, knowing he was merely putting voice to a concern shared by every member of her team—well, perhaps not every member.

“Do you see that?” Trixie asked in awe before pointing excitedly to an obscure readout on the periphery of the Mode’s display panel. “Look—look!” she veritably squealed in delight.

Fei Long deftly transferred the image to the craft’s main viewer and Lu Bu squinted at the image which had appeared on it. It looked to be a pattern of some kind, with concentric circles connected by lines which intersected each other at seemingly random angles and depths. At first she did not understand what she was looking at, but Fei Long scaled the image back and she saw that it was a real-time display of the carbon-rich planet’s surface directly beneath the Heavy Cruiser.

“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 Standard, “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?

“We will speak after this mission,” she promised, trying to convey with her eyes that the matter they were to discuss was of the utmost importance.

Fei Long nodded, “I would like that very much. Besides,” he said, flashing a subdued version of his trademark, mischievous smile, “we will be reunited ‘before you know it,’ as our crewmates would say.”

Slightly reassured, Lu Bu decided to keep the all-important matter to herself for the time being as Mr. Strider’s voice crackled over the Mode’s ship-wide intercom, “Touchdown in ten seconds; best be quick about hoppin’ off, too. The exhaust wash be kickin’ up a ruckus on the surrounding dust layer and I don’t wanna get slapped in no gun-sights if I can be helpin’ it, yeah?”

Seconds later, there was a sharp lurch as the craft’s landing struts—clearly a custom addition made by the previous owner—settled down on the surface of the planetoid. Lu Bu was still amazed that their new craft had slipped in past the Rim Fleet sensor grid, but when it came to moving about undetected, she suspected no one was better at doing so than Mr. Lynch.

Ed, who would apparently now be known as Hansheng, clomped his way toward the airlock before the cargo ramp and Lu Bu gave Funar a hard look as he approached, now fully-clad in his Storm Drake armor and its attached, dragon-shaped helmet. She tilted her chin toward Fei Long, “Protect him, Private.”

Funar gave her a lopsided grin which made her want to strangle him, but she managed to keep her cool as he nodded and said, “With my life, ma’am.” She nodded in satisfaction and her Lancer moved to Fei Long’s side. Private Funar gave his blaster rifle a once-over check before shouldering it and falling in between the assault droid and Fei Long.

Trixie moved to join them, but Lu Bu caught her by the arm and said, “You do not need to go. Doctor Schillinger may not even be here.”

Trixie beamed at her from within her pressure suit. “Are you kidding?! Where else would she be? Besides, this is the chance of a lifetime! I’m about to set foot on an Ancient world—this will make my entire career!”

“If you live,” Lu Bu said pointedly.

Trixie shook her head dismissively as she waved at Hansheng and Funar, “With guys like them around, I’m probably safer here than I am crossing midday traffic on my way to campus to attend a lecture!”

In spite of herself, Lu Bu found the woman’s positivity somehow invigorating and she sighed. “As you wish…but we will not return until mission is finished.”

“Fine by me,” Trixie said agreeably. “Sister, you seem to have forgotten,” she said, leaning in and nearly touching Lu Bu’s face with her suit’s transparent visor, “but I was literally locked in a box for the last few months. I was sure I would die there, and now that I’ve been given a second chance—one that could make history!—there is no way I’m backing down. Life’s too short, girlfriend,” she said with finality as she turned and made her way to the airlock, “I’m about to take one small step for mankind…or maybe it’s a giant leap? A medium-sized lope, maybe? Or what about a measured, but significant, vault? Nobody ever vaults anything in literature; they’re always leaping, or hurdling, or jumping, but never vaulting—“

The airlock doors slid behind her as she continued to ramble, but Lu Bu was no longer paying attention to her as she had focused completely on Fei Long. He met her gaze, and at the same time they mouthed, ‘I love you,’ just as the airlock doors slid shut.

The Mode lifted off as soon as the team had descended the ramp adjoining the craft’s stern-most airlock. Said ramp lifted back into the closed position as soon as the ship lifted off the surface, leaving the four of them essentially marooned on the surface of the strange world as the deceptively simple-looking vessel sped off into the darkness above.

“Wow,” Trixie breathed reverently, and Fei Long turned to see the archeologist kneeling in the dust at their feet, “I’ve heard of this type of thing…but never actually seen it.”

Fei Long looked all around and immediately understood the reason for her awe. For just a fraction of a second, he too was awestruck by what she held in her hand.

It was a glittery powder with several pieces as large as his fingernail and, as far as he could tell, it was all diamond! He looked around and saw that the entire surface of the planetoid appeared to be covered in them, and he allowed himself to marvel for a moment at the sheer volume of carbon surrounding them.

But then his higher brain kicked into gear, and he knew that what they were witnessing was nothing more than an inevitable result of multiple generations of stars forming, fusing elements during their lives, and then exploding violently and casting those elements as far as possible.

This particular planetoid was composed primarily of carbon, and the geological forces which could compress carbon atoms into natural diamonds on habitable worlds were as nothing when compared to the awesome pressures gravity creates at the center of a burning star.

Fei Long dearly wanted to see the brown dwarf with his own two eyes, but he knew that the opposite side of the planetoid was bombarded with deadly radiation. Even here on the tidally-locked, dark side of the planetoid, the radiation was severe enough that each member of the team—each human member, anyway—would require an extensive series of treatments to undo the damage their cells would suffer during their exposure. But each of their suits had been specially reinforced with radiation shielding, without which none of them would survive more than a few minutes on the surface of the hostile, utterly alien world.

“I’m reading trace amounts of atmosphere,” Funar said after sweeping a handheld scanner back and forth before himself, “but nowhere near enough pure oxygen to breathe. It looks like the atmosphere is 98% CO2 and 2% helium.”

“Helium?” Fei Long mused, briefly wondering at the strange mixture before dismissing it from his mind and refocusing on the task before them. “We must move; the base is this direction, and will require at least three hours’ travel over this terrain. Hansheng,” he said, turning to the assault droid, “can you manage this terrain?”

“Ambulation protocols operating at suboptimal, but acceptable, capacity,” the assault droid replied, and there was whimpering, canine sound embedded within the annoyed growls. “Probability this unit will maintain formation with biologicals: 93%.”

“Good,” Fei Long said, tapping Trixie on the shoulder as she made to collect a specimen of the diamond dust. “Miss Serendipity, there is no shortage of this material on hand,” he said wearily.

“Oh, I know,” she replied cheerfully as she scooped a tiny sample into the metal tube and sealed it shut before placing it in a pouch on her belt, “but you never know what might happen. I’d really hate to lose the opportunity to date this stuff, you know? It might tell us a little bit about when the Ancients came here—assuming the Ancients really are at the heart of all this,” she amended seriously. “I mean, this could all be some elaborate ruse as far as I’m concerned—“

“Those turbo-lasers were no ruse, Miss Serendipity,” Funar interrupted, his voice tight with a mixture of annoyance and anger. The latter was likely the result of having lost shipmates to the Rim Fleet guns in the last battle with Captain Raubach—and the Pride of Prometheus was almost certainly still under the guns of Captain Raubach’s father, Commodore Raubach.

She stopped short and actually froze before nodding quickly, “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean anything by it, it’s just that I’m so excited and—“

“Let’s move out,” Funar said, cutting her off as he waved the barrel of his blaster rifle—a rifle which had been fitted with a longer-than-usual barrel and a scope that was nearly half the size of the weapon itself—in the direction they were to go. He had also brought along a pair of plasma pistols which were strapped to a bandolier across his chest and back.

“Agreed,” Fei Long said, and the four began their trek toward their ultimate goal.

He had not taken ten steps before a severe pain gripped his entire body from the neck down, and Fei Long felt himself crash into the diamond dust before him even through the all-encompassing pain as his vision went totally white. For a moment he was certain he had lost consciousness, but when he looked up he found his vision was perfectly clear and his companions were looking at him with concern while Trixie, who was nearest, offered him a hand up.

“Thank you,” Fei Long said, the sudden blast of pain having disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived. He tested his feet beneath himself and found that nothing seemed to be amiss, but he knew the source of the pain had been the steadily-growing nodule on his neck.

“What happened?” Funar asked, giving Fei Long an appraising look of concern.

“I tripped,” Fei Long lied, hating more than anything that he could do so—and moreover, hating that he had so quickly taken to doing so. “The gravity is unusual here, and I have never fully acclimated to these pressure suits.”

The latter parts were true enough, but Fei Long felt like punching himself in the throat for burying his amid a pair of truths. He had learned to deceive every adult in his life at the age of six, and by the age of nine he had learned how to deceive local law enforcement. By twelve, it had become routine for him to spin webs of deceit and dishonesty which would turn those around him against each other. None of them ever suspected him of having orchestrated the conflicts, and at the time that fact had made the victories seem all the sweeter.

But now he knew they were not victories at all. With each lie he had told, Fei Long had lost a small part of himself and he knew that he was only a fraction of the man he might have otherwise been as a result. It had been the greatest boon of his young life to be apprehended—an event for which the majority of the credit must be given to his old nemesis, who he could only hope was in the base on the world he now walked—and Fei Long had rediscovered himself, his Ancestors, and his center while locked away in that tiny, cramped, isolated cell following his kill pill’s implantation.

Clearly convinced by his deception, Funar nodded and gestured with his rifle for Fei Long to take point, “We’ll keep to your pace, then. This is your show after all.”

“A good idea,” Fei Long agreed, and the quartet once again set off for the base as he tested his control glove and found it to be in working order following his unexpected fall. He knew that Lu Bu would need him at his best if she was going to sneak aboard the enemy freighter, and thankfully it seemed that he would be able to support her as she needed.

Dark thoughts filled his mind as he wondered at Lu Bu’s fate, and he was unable—or perhaps unwilling—to dismiss those thoughts as they approached the enemy base.

Chapter XX: Slipping In

“This looks like the best insertion point, ma’am,” Traian said, pulling up a schematic of the ship’s design from the Mode’s extensive databases. He pointed to a sternward airlock which was labeled as ‘Number Twelve’ on the base schematics, “This one is an emergency exit, used only during escapes from boarding actions or other terrorist activities.”

“Won’t the security alarms go off all over the ship if we force it open?” Hutch asked warily.

“Leave alarms to Fei Long,” Lu Bu said shortly, causing Hutch to nod in acquiescence. “When we are on ship, Mr. Strider must move to far side of planet to avoid detection.”

“No worries there, mom,” he said, shaking his head as though in disbelief. “The Mode’ll be ready to pick you up just as quick as you set that bomb.”

Lu Bu knew that the former pirate had to be seriously weighing the possibility of abandoning the mission—and them—once they disembarked. The Cutter was a cutting-edge pirate’s dream, and a serious upgrade from his previous vessel. He could easily sneak out of the system and return to a life of crime aboard the Mode, or possibly even use it to settle his debt with Lynch and end up with a lesser ship in the bargain while appeasing the most powerful enemy he had ever made.

But she knew that this was not the time for doubt, recrimination, or accusations against one’s character. Lu Bu’s top priority was getting aboard the freighter, setting the bomb, and if necessary she would sacrifice her life to accomplish that mission. Whatever secrets and technology their enemies had taken from the planet below would undoubtedly be used against the citizenry of the Spineward Sectors, and Lu Bu found that she actually cared about what happened to those untold billions of people she had never met.

Besides, if she did somehow survive the mission and he chose to abandon them, Lynch would be the least of Strider’s concerns.

“Yide,” she said, turning to the adolescent uplift, “can you jump in vacuum?”

He nodded as he finished cinching his pressure pants. The void of space was cold, but the most dangerous aspect of short-term exposure to the freezing vacuum was actually that the body would rupture at its weak points—points like both ends of the digestive tract. Having no desire to see anyone die in that manner, Lu Bu had been skeptical when Yide had assured her that he had brought along short-term exposure gear.

That gear consisted of a head bag which had been modified to fit over his hairy head, and what looked like a heavily-reinforced diaper which he was just finishing adjusting.

“I have used this several times, Corporal,” he assured her. “It will last as long as my oxygen supply does.”

Knowing that to be no more than thirty minutes, Lu Bu also knew that would be more than enough time for them to get aboard the vessel. The real danger was that Yide not touch any part of the freighter with his bare skin, since doing so would likely cause him to flash-freeze to it. To account for this, he zipped up a simple body glove—also modified to fit his decidedly nonhuman frame—which he had used as a work suit back on the Pride of Prometheus. He had boots and gloves attached, which would keep his body from directly contacting the hull of the target vessel.

“Ok,” she said, as satisfied as she was likely to get that he was prepared for the jump, “we must jump from this ship over to freighter. We hold onto each other like this,” she gripped Traian’s left forearm in her right hand while gripping Hutch’s right forearm in her left hand, “and create human ring.”

“Human?” Yide bristled, and for a moment Lu Bu did not understand the source of his discontent. But then, just as she understood his objection, his lips peeled back in a Sundered’s version of a toothy grin—a decidedly unpleasant expression, as far as she was concerned.

Hutch and Traian chuckled, prompting Lu Bu to do likewise as she snapped, “Laugh it up, fuzz-ball!”

Her cohorts’ laughter only increased, and even Yide—who initially bristled with genuine anger—barked harsh laughter for several seconds, and Lu Bu knew they were as ready as they would ever be.

“In position in two minutes, mom,” Strider reported, having made no attempt to join in the pre-mission camaraderie.

“I am not your mom,” she growled with genuine irritation, causing her teammates to laugh even hard. She gave Hutch a harsh look and demanded, “What is funny?!”

“It’s just his accent, ma’am,” Hutch said, wiping tears from his eyes brought on by too much laughter, “I didn’t want to say anything…it was just so funny watching you snap at him every time.”

“Besides,” Traian quipped, “there’s no way you’d make a kid even half as ugly as him, Corporal.”

Stiffening at the unexpected turn in the conversation, Lu Bu decided the time for mirth was at an end. “Enough,” she barked, “helmets on; we go to stern airlock.”

Her team obliged, and less than a minute later they were at the stern airlock with the bomb held between Yide’s and Hutch’s hands as it, rather than a person, completed their human—or, rather, great ape—ring.

“I be poppin’ the outer doors as soon as we be in position,” Strider said over the intercom. “The gases will give y’all a gentle nudge toward the freighter; my calculations say you should reach it in four minutes.”

“Understood,” Lu Bu said after doing a last-minute check of her teams’ survival gear and finding everything was good to go.

“Doors opening in ten…nine…eight…seven…six,” Strider began, and Lu Bu’s team gripped each other’s arms tightly as they tensed in preparation for the relatively soft launch—soft compared to Lu Bu’s previous ship-to-ship jumps, anyway. “Five…four…three…two…one…you’re away!”

The doors snapped open and the outgassing launched the team out of the Mode’s stern airlock. The freighter loomed large in their view—much larger than Lu Bu had expected it to loom—and the group found themselves tumbling head-over-feet toward the massive vessel.

Thankfully, Hutch and Yide maintained their grips on the fusion warhead but for some reason Lu Bu became nauseous after only the third somersault-like move. Traian had fitted an air canister to his back, and he began to fire short bursts from its nozzle by using voice commands. They had connected the canister’s valve regulator to his helmet’s control systems, and Strider had put the finishing touches on the mechanism—he had also somewhat surprisingly suggested he had done something similar once while boarding a passing merchantman.

After a dozen bursts from the canister which saw their ring tumble even more chaotically, Lu Bu finally lost control of her stomach and very nearly emptied its meager contents into her helmet. If she had eaten a regular meal in the previous six hours or so, she most certainly would have filled her helmet with the remains of said meal, but she was able to keep almost all of it inside her mouth as she fought against the surprising bout of emesis.

When Traian finally managed to control their tumbling until they were only rotating like a disc, they were very nearly to the freighter’s hull. She gripped the arms of the Lancers to either side of her as tightly as she could in the moment before they landed on the hull.

Traian was first to hit the hull, followed by Lu Bu, then Hutch, and then Yide. As they slammed into the smooth metal, their ring broke apart between Yide and Traian and they each took turns slamming into the metal surface.

Somehow, Hutch managed to keep the bomb from slamming into the hull but he very nearly launched Lu Bu back into the void as he used her body for leverage against the metal housing of the warhead. Yide bear-hugged the bomb’s casing and used his own body to cushion its impact, and Lu Bu knew there was a very real chance the Sundered had been mortally wounded by doing so.

But amazingly, they had managed to secure themselves against the hull, with each of the Lancers’ boots mag-locked to the metal now beneath their feet. Yide had brought a pair of electromagnets discs like those used for scaling vertical structures, but he somehow lost them in the landing. Thankfully, Hutch had been strong enough and aware enough to keep the Sundered from flying off into the void.

Using hand signals, Lu Bu instructed her people to make for the airlock after Yide gave an awkward ‘thumbs up’ sign. Lu Bu gripped one side of the bomb, Hutch held the other, and Yide was forced to float along as he gripped the top of its hastily-assembled housing—housing which had been modified on the Mode to carry a small, oblong piece of hardware which would prove critical to breaching the freighter’s airlock.

Six minutes later, they stood around the airlock’s outer door, and Lu Bu opened the bomb housing’s add-on to reveal one of Fei Long’s Attack Dogs: a small, oblong piece of metal which vaguely resembled a smashball to Lu Bu’s eye. This particular unit had been fitted with spider-like legs, and she carefully withdrew it from its small case before activating its power supply.

A moment later, the thing’s legs splayed out before flexing back into a ready position. It repeated this movement twice, and Lu Bu knew it was Fei Long’s way of communicating with her that he had gained control over the drone.

She placed it against the hull and the drone nimbly scampered its way to the outer control panel. A small, wire-thin probe extended from the drone’s midsection after it had situated itself directly over the control panel, and a brief arc of electricity could be seen once the probe made contact with the panel.

At first nothing happened, but then the panel’s lights flickered on and the drone moved its wire-thin probe toward a small, recessed notch beside the touchpad interface. Twenty three seconds after Fei Long’s device had begun to interface with the panel, the outer airlock door unlocked with a perceptible clanking of metal which she felt through her boots.

Signaling for the team to proceed, Lu Bu led her people into the airlock.

The drone scampered inside the airlock with them, and less than a minute later the door had closed behind them and the airlock had been pressurized. After the pressure indicator turned green, the inner door opened and Lu Bu’s people moved into the dark intersection of three corridors.

The grav-plating was powered up and generating standard gees, so Yide was able to move under his own power. Thankfully, he appeared to have only suffered what looked like a mild fracture of his left forearm and possibly a broken rib or two. But he was every bit as tough as he looked, stoically shrugging off Lu Bu’s silently-indicated concern.

Hutch and Yide carried the bomb into the corridor, and Lu Bu activated her suit’s vox to its lowest possible setting to avoid detection. A whispered voice was far less likely to attract attention than wireless signal were, so she whispered, “We are at stern of ship. Which corridor do we take, Traian?”

Traian gestured to the right-most corridor, “That one, ma’am.”

“How far to main hold?” she asked.

“That’s a good two hundred meters to the nearest of the eight interconnected holds, ma’am,” Traian replied, his voice barely above a whisper, “but it’s a straight shot along this corridor.”

“Good,” she said, glad for that much at least. “I take point,” she said, going against standard protocol by placing herself in the lead, “Traian covers rear. Hutch and Yide carry package—move.”

They moved through the corridor more noisily than she would have liked, but there was nothing that could be done about it. She had wanted to bring the plasma cannon for this operation, but there was simply no way she could have carried it during the jump from the Mode. Instead she had brought a blaster rifle, two short vibro-blades barely longer than daggers, an ion pistol, and a dozen grenades of various types.

Hutch’s rifle accuracy was poorer than the rest of her Recon Team’s had been, so he had opted for a scattergun and a slightly oversized vibro-blade.

Traian had chosen a standard issue blaster rifle for his primary ranged weapon, with an ion pistol as a backup, and a standard-issue vibro-blade for close encounters.

Yide had brought a peculiar-looking plasma weapon of some kind. Lu Bu did not recognize it, but he had assured her he was proficient in its use and that it would prove most effective in close quarters. It resembled an overly thick scattergun like the one Hutch had brought, except it had a trio of barrels which appeared to rotate into and out of firing position.

Lu Bu’s helmet was set to low-light sensitivity, and she had ordered the team to remain dark during this phase of their mission. Yide was effectively moving blindly, but he had been adamant that he could cope with low-light conditions after relaying several accounts of having navigated depowered sections of the Omicron as a child while evading hunt packs.

They moved down the corridor with Fei Long’s drone scampering along beside them, until they reached a door that was conveniently marked, ‘Hold Six.’ She saw the access panel beside the door, and before she could request that he do so, Fei Long directed his drone to access it and the four-piece door slid slowly open to reveal the hold.

When she stepped through, what she saw quite literally took her breath away.

“What…the Hades…is that?” Hutch whispered.

“I have no idea…” Traian replied belatedly, and Lu Bu felt fortunate that her teammates had just voiced her own responses to the sight which had greeted them. “But look at the size of it.”

The hold was lit from within by what looked like temporary floodlights which cast their beams into the center of the truly immense cargo hold. Lu Bu instantly knew that this was not merely one of eight cargo holds after looking down the length of the space they now occupied. The hold in which they stood must have been at least half of the holds in the ship put together, with the separating bulkheads having been removed to make way for the giant object which occupied the cavernous chamber—a chamber which easily measured two hundred meters tall and a kilometer long.

The central object around which all of the floodlights had been arranged filled the chamber from top to bottom, and was cylindrical in shape with, presumably, three rows of smaller, fatter cylinders protruding from its sides. Its surface looked less like it had been machined and more like it had been grown, but it was quite clearly composed of some kind of metal. She counted nine cylinders protruding from each of the three rows adorning its sides, and for the life of her she was reminded of nothing so much as some kind of giant engine.

She had no reason to believe that was what it actually was, but she simply could not look at it and think of any other purpose for the massive piece of machinery.

As she looked at the short cylinders protruding from its sides—cylinders which protruded at least twenty meters each and measured twice that in diameter—she saw that several of them appeared to have sustained some kind of damage. She found herself walking along the catwalk where the door had led them to, and after closer examination of the closest cylinder—which was no further than ten meters from her face after she had repositioned herself—she saw that it bore tool marks like those made by giant saw teeth.

“They must have pulled this up from the planet,” Traian said, his voice low and his tone nearly awestruck.

“What is it?” Hutch whispered again, while Yide merely looked up and down it and shook his head warily.

Lu Bu knew that she had no idea—but then she realized that was not entirely true. “It is important,” she replied, “and it is secret. There are no guards in this ship that we see, so no one in enemy fleet is to know of it.” She nodded her head slowly, increasing the speed at which she did so as she came to a decision, “This is where we put device.”

“If it’s important,” Hutch said warily, his eyes moving left and right as he scanned the hold, “there have to be guards.”

“All the more reason to put the device here,” Traian said, giving her a nod of agreement with her decision-making process. “We can’t move around this ship undetected forever; better we stow it, set the timer, and jump out of here.”

“We lower it down,” she said, peering over the edge of the rail to the deck seventy meters below. She spotted a ladder nearby and pointed, “We use that.”

Fei Long nodded as he walked, his glove’s tiny built-in display screen showing that Lu Bu’s team had begun to strap together a harness which Hutch, or possibly Yide, could use to carry the heavy warhead down to the deck below their catwalk.

Then, suddenly, the feed went dead and he stopped in his tracks. He had been able to provide the support Lu Bu had needed while walking, and he doubted his teammates even knew what it was he had been doing.

“What’s the hold-up?” Funar asked as he came to stand beside Fei Long. The Lancer’s eyes scanned the horizon as he awaited a reply.

“The signal is being blocked,” Fei Long replied shortly, rebooting his glove’s interface systems and finding that every available frequency was being blocked. “This…will complicate matters,” he said, deactivating the glove’s transceiver and looking ahead at the pressure dome which was now no more than two kilometers away.

“What signal?” Funar asked warily.

“Lu Bu’s team is on their own…” Fei Long said grimly, feeling as though something deep inside of himself had been wrenched about so severely that it was about to break apart. “Our presence has been detected by the enemy, and they have erected a jamming field to suppress our communications,” he said, thinking through the possibilities as quickly as his sharp, agile mind could do, “we must complete this phase of the mission quickly.”

Funar nodded toward the base, “Those hab modules on the northern side have emergency access hatches we can use to sneak in to the crawlspace, assuming they’re still there.” After both Trixie and Fei Long gave him querying looks, the Lancer explained, “I spent a few years on a start-up colony as a boy. Those are the same prefab modules we lived in there.”

“Would it not stand to reason that our enemies would have closed such a breach in security?” Fei Long asked dubiously. Any information advantage might well prove decisive, but he knew that their enemies would have likely addressed such a potential gap in security.

“Oh, they’re there all right,” Funar said confidently, “and I doubt they’ve done anything to them since they’re holdovers from the previous model. They’re nowhere on the spec’s, and it would take a visual check to find the seam between the panels. The only question is whether or not Ed can fit inside. I was only about five feet tall the last time I used one, but they didn’t seem all that big even then—and Ed’s what you’d call a ‘wide load’.”

“Warning,” Hansheng growled, stomping his feet as his torso swiveled to face Funar, “deception protocols activated—probability of sarcastic remark from Lancer Funar: 64%.”

“If he can squeeze through the door,” Funar continued with a wary look toward the lumbering assault droid, “he’ll have to sidestep his way around the crawlspace. But there are two or three locations we can enter the interior of the dome and probably remain undetected.”

Fei Long nodded slowly, “I had thought it would be necessary to split the team. It is good that we do not need to do so yet. However,” he said, fixing the Lancer with a hard gaze, “it is quite possible that we will need to do so once we have entered the facility.”

“Why?” Funar asked with narrowed eyes. “We need to get in, plant the bomb, upload your program and then get out so we can blow the place apart.”

“Ideally, events would occur as you describe,” Fei Long allowed, “but my rival’s presence within the base has complicated matters. It may become necessary for me to remain behind while you three egress with Doctor Schillinger, assuming she has survived and is still present.”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Funar growled, squaring up to Fei Long in a low-brow attempt at intimidation, “why would I leave you, my top mission asset, behind for the enemy to potentially capture?”

“Because, if I am correct about my rival’s involvement,” Fei Long replied, meeting the man’s gaze with a steely one of his own, “then that may be the only way I can clear the path for Captain Middleton and the others to approach this planetoid.”

Funar looked like he wanted to argue, but Trixie stood between them and pointed, “Maybe we could argue about this while we walk?”

Fei Long wanted to continue the argument, but he knew that Lu Bu—and, to a lesser degree, Captain Middleton—were counting on him to do as he had promised he could.

“You heard the lady,” Funar quipped, “let’s move out.”

Chapter XXI: Coming To

“That’s it, just lie still now,” Middleton heard a familiar voice say, and he felt his eyes flutter open while mental cobwebs cluttered his mind. “No sudden movements, Tim,” she said, and he realized it was Jo who was speaking, “it was faster to do this in the corridor than to move you to sickbay.”

His vision slowly clarified until he could focus on her face, and he saw that she had a large bruise on her left cheek—and her glasses were nowhere to be seen. “Where am I?” he asked stupidly, the memory of the battle only returning to him after he had asked the question. “Did we repel the boarders?”

“Sergeant Gnuko moved below decks with the rest of his Defense Team,” Jo replied as several of her people worked to stabilize wounded crew strewn throughout the corridor. “Mikey’s working on getting power restored, but you were down for nine minutes before I started working on you—and that was nearly an hour ago. If Hephaestion hadn’t gotten a breathing mask for you, you would have died all the way before I could revive you.”

Looking around, Middleton could not see the Tracto-an Sensor operator, “Where is he?” He then realized that Garibaldi had survived, and was more than slightly relieved to know that his Chief Engineer was still among the living.

“Hephaestion joined Gnuko’s hunting party,” she explained as she drew up some sort of pinkish solution into a syringe and verified the quantity before unceremoniously injecting it into Middleton’s forearm.

The Pride’s Captain then noticed Toto was sitting on the deck, his back propped up against the bulkhead and Middleton tried to stand but found himself unable to do so. His legs felt like rubber and his sense of balance was nowhere to be found.

“He’ll live,” Jo said tersely, the syringe cap lodged between her teeth, “but you won’t if you don’t do exactly as I say.”

He looked down at his legs and saw a mess of blood all over the lower half of his uniform. “That can’t all be mine,” he said, grimly confident that it almost certainly was.

“You’ve had four units of synth-blood already—my kit’s entire supply,” Jo explained as she produced a hemostat and scalpel from her med-kit, “and if you don’t lie down, even I won’t be able to clamp off that pumper in time.”

Middleton heard the clanking of power-armored boots rhythmically landing on the deck, and despite his desire to follow her orders he was not going to die lying on his back. If those boots belonged to enemy Marines, Middleton would die with a weapon in his hand, so he reached to his belt and found his ion pistol’s holster was empty.

A quick glance saw that the boots belonged to Sergeant Gnuko, and Middleton forced himself to lie down as the ship’s Lancer Sergeant moved purposefully toward him.

“Did we repel them?” Middleton asked as Gnuko clomped his way to a spot a few feet away.

“We got ‘em, sir,” Gnuko replied with a nod from within his helmet, and Middleton saw that the Sergeant’s leg had clearly been worked on, with several of the armor plates comprising his greave having been removed so the damage could be addressed. “Hephaestion was right behind me,” he explained just as the bank of auxiliary lights fluttered, died, then were replaced a few seconds later by the main lights of the corridor. “Looks like the Chief got the plant back online,” the Sergeant said with a satisfied nod.

“How bad was it, Sergeant?” Middleton asked, looking around and finding no fewer than twenty immobile suits of power armor in plain sight—suits which contained a mix of MSP and Rim Fleet warriors who had died fighting each other.

“It wasn’t good,” Gnuko replied, popping the visor open on his armor and taking a deep breath, “but we held them out of key areas. You were right,” he said with a nod, “they were after you and Mr. Fei.”

“What’s your team’s status?” Middleton asked, trying not to look at what Jo was doing on his upper thigh. He briefly wondered how he had gotten injured so badly, but pushed the thought from his mind.

“We’ve got nine still breathing with five fit for duty,” Sergeant Gnuko replied, taking a moment to hawk up a gob of blood and spit it onto the deck, “including me.”

Middleton remembered the battle between Gnuko, Toto, and the enemy Major, and looked to where the giant of a man had fallen. The Major’s armor was a ruined husk of metal plates, and there was significantly more damage done to his pageantry-adorned battle-suit than Middleton remembered seeing prior to losing consciousness.

He gave his Lancer Sergeant a meaningful look—a look which Gnuko clearly wanted to shrug off, but Middleton made sure the other man understood just how much had hinged on bringing the enemy commander down.

“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 minutes, 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.

Still, it was clear to her that she was looking at Commodore James Raubach III, who had for some reason managed to flee the trap Middleton had laid for him at The Bulwark. Due to her superior hearing, Lu Bu managed to make out the enemy commander’s conversation with the egghead without activating her suit’s audio enhancement suite.

“I assure you, C-C-C-Commodore,” the egghead stuttered, “the d-d-device has been stowed for t-t-t-transport. But without protection, we will be d-d-defenseless against attacks.”

“Make matters with which you are passably proficient your primary concern, Director,” the Commodore said smoothly, “and leave affairs of war to the warriors.”

“B-b-but your flagship,” the Director stammered, “it is ruined! It was the p-p-prototype for several of our new, fully-integrated systems. So m-m-many months of effort will be lost if it cannot be brought with us…”

“Ships can be rebuilt, and exist only to be destroyed in combat; crews can be replenished and exist solely to serve their leaders’ commands; and prototypes exist solely to be tested and then improved or discarded,” the Commodore said, sweeping his gaze down the length of the device which filled the four now-connected cargo holds. “But treasures like this—and the data stored in this ship’s memory banks—are truly priceless…at least until they can be replicated by House Raubach’s engineers.”

“And w-w-what of the experimental project still beneath the s-s-s-surface?” the egghead stammered. “We cannot yet activate its p-primary cogitators. If the planetoid is d-d-d-destroyed—”

“This ship’s databanks contain every bit of data we have collected since the project began,” Commodore Raubach cut in dismissively. “So even if you are incorrect, and the Ancients’ space folding drive fails to do as it was designed to do, the only loss will have been of a doomed chunk of industrial grade diamond which is soon to be discovered, invaded, and ultimately pillaged by our enemies. Better that all traces of this world are erased so that we alone may carry these technological riches safely from this place.”

The egghead stiffened, “I am never incorrect, Commodore Raubach.” He surprisingly did not stutter even once, and Lu Bu heard the Commodore snicker softly as the Director continued in his more usual fashion, “The space folding units have been c-calibrated to compensate for the loss of this unit, and the generators deep within the planetoid are m-m-m-more than equal to the task.”

“For your sake,” Commodore Raubach said in a deceptively casual tone, “I hope you are correct. But even if you are not, and the systems are calibrated incorrectly, this brown dwarf will explode with the power of a nova when the drive units activate—and those irritating Droids will be ripped apart by their own jump drives when they point transfer into the system after most of its primary body’s mass has been decentralized by the explosion.”

“What of th-th-th-the enemy f-fleet?” the Director asked.

Commodore Raubach snorted in open annoyance, “There was no fleet; there was but one ship. Although,” he added darkly, “Captain Morgan’s reckless stupidity saw the Slice of Life fall into enemy hands, so I suppose it would be accurate to say there are now two ships in enemy hands which may yet attempt to derail our plans. If our ships can hold the Droids off for another three hours, we will already be gone when they eventually break through, and the planetoid will follow soon thereafter.”

“B-b-but,” the egghead stammered, “surely you w-w-will reconsider bolstering this vessel’s c-c-crew.”

“No,” Commodore Raubach replied simply. “The fewer people who know of this treasure ship, the better. Your failures with the weapon modifications may well be forgotten if you can dissect and reproduce this technology,” he said, waving his hand at the massive device. “But it will be worth less than nothing to us if others learn of its existence. We have ample protection,” he said, casting a pointed look at his hulking bodyguard, “and after we have egressed from this desolate system, I will issue orders to the fleet to rendezvous with this ship and escort us to the beta site.”

There was a brief silence as the Commodore, egghead, and bodyguard moved along the catwalk at a casual pace. Then the egghead asked, “And w-w-what of Doctor Schillinger?”

“A bargain is a bargain, Director,” Raubach said with a hard edge to his voice. “But you are simply going to have to accept her untimely death and decide on suitable compensation in her stead. Remember, however, that I told you that she would be yours to do with as you pleased if you could deliver on your promises to me. Thus far, you have only managed a handful of modest improvements to our naval weaponry, accompanied by a whole host of uncompleted prototypes—many of which may soon be lost to us. I trust you recall the other half of our bargain…” he trailed off chillingly.

“Of course,” the Director said stiffly, stopping briefly before recomposing himself and catching back up to the Commodore.

“Good,” Commodore Raubach said absently as he checked a wrist-mounted com-link of some kind. “It would seem we have uninvited guests on the surface,” he remarked casually as he scrolled through the message’s contents.

“But how?” the Director asked, clearly baffled. “Our sensors are too p-p-powerful to be deceived by anything less than a cutting edge c-c-c-cloaking device! They must not be allowed into the facility; my work with the S-S-Seer is in a most delicate state, and he may not survive being moved—”

“If that is the truth,” Raubach said as his fingers tapped out a reply on the wrist-mounted link, “then your work must stop. Return to the surface at once so you may see that your affairs are put in order,” he said coldly, “and be quick about it, lest you find yourself enjoying a front row seat to the space folding system’s first attempted activation in over a million years.”

“Y-y-yes, C-C-C-Commodore Raubach,” Director Egghead said before turning and moving with purpose to the door through which the trio had entered. Not two seconds after he had left, the second-closest door to the Commodore opened and a dark figure wearing an all-covering cloak swept through. It seemed as though the figure’s feet never touched the catwalk as it apparently floated toward Commodore Raubach.

“I find your vaunted powers of foresight…wanting,” Commodore Raubach said icily as the figure approached.

A voice neither feminine nor masculine, and neither living nor artificial, hissed from beneath the cloak’s attached cowl, “I have told you that the probabilities are…difficult to calculate in this place.”

“The worldlet beneath us is naught but a desiccated husk—a shell of its former self,” Raubach retorted, folding his arms and squaring his posture to the newcomer, “yet you continually bray and moan like my third wife during the first trimester—an experience I would not care to relive for a fifth time.”

“You…cannot understand,” the figure hissed, and Lu Bu thought she could hear a measure of strain in the creature’s voice, “you, whose comprehension of reality is like that of an infant’s comprehension of physics, could never understand the truth of this place!”

“What I understand is that I would have been better off having never made compact with the likes of you,” Raubach sneered, and his hulking bodyguard took a pair of steps forward. “Thankfully, that is one mistake I am both capable of, and willing to, rectify.”

“Even…weakened as I am,” the creature said, its bulk seeming to swell beneath the folds of the cloak, “you could only hope to prick me…while I would make your suffering an exquisite…eternal…experience.”

“I’m not easily bluffed,” Raubach said, making no attempt to hide his irritation, “nor am I easily offended. But you have managed to do both in recent days; why did you not warn me of the Droid fleet’s pending arrival?”

“I told you…” the creature began, pausing as it mirrored one of the bodyguard’s steps, causing the hulk of a man to hesitate, “this place…it is poison…to my mind. I must leave if I am to unravel the increasingly tangled threads of probability.”

“Then why have you not done so?” Raubach demanded.

“You know the answer to your own question,” the creature spat.

“You Dark Seers and your vanity,” the Commodore spat. “Your counterpart on the surface seemingly has little difficulty in managing the ‘tangled strings of probability,’ as you have called them, while in this place.”

“They grow weaker with each passing cycle while we grow stronger,” the Dark Seer hissed. “We have choked the very life from their dying order and soon…very, very soon…they will be erased from reality altogether!”

“That’s not how I see it,” Raubach said, clearly unfazed by the prospect of dealing with a Dark Seer—whatever a ‘Dark Seer’ was. “From my vantage, I can say with absolute confidence that he would have made a far more valuable ally than you have done.”

“You would have never found this place without my…sacrifices,” the Dark Seer said, for the first time sounding less than absolutely confident. “I have upheld my end of our bargain…you would do well to do the same. Let no permanent harm come to the Seer—he is mine.”

“Frankly, I’m beginning to think you’re more trouble than you’re worth,” Commodore Raubach said, pausing for several seconds before adding, “but a bargain is a bargain. The deal’s parameters notwithstanding, you had best pray to whatever gods you keep that House Raubach emerges from this relationship stronger than when she agreed to it. If not,” he said, stepping past his bodyguard until he stood close enough to the creature to smell it—assuming it emitted any odors, “I’m going to satisfy my uncharacteristic curiosity regarding just what you really look like under that costume…and then I’m going to look one layer deeper, and do so again…and again…and again, until there is nothing left to peel back. I suspect the Director would appreciate the opportunity to plumb the depths of your unique…perversions in the name of science. Do we understand each other?”

The Dark Seer did not flinch, and for several seconds they stood toe-to-toe while Lu Bu hoped against hope that they would come to blows, but then the cloaked figure seemed to float backward as it said, “You have made yourself clear…as have I.”

The Dark Seer swept down the catwalk and left through the same door the Director had used a few minutes earlier.

“You may yet receive that which you request,” Commodore Raubach said to his silent bodyguard, “but for now the Dark Seer should come to no harm.” A few moments of silence ensued, after which the Commodore chuckled darkly, “In that much, if nothing else, we are of identical minds.”

The Commodore stood staring at the massive device in the freighter’s hold for several minutes—during which time Lu Bu dearly wished she had brought her sniper-outfitted blaster rifle—until he and his bodyguard left through the same door the other two had used.

The lights in the hold dimmed a few seconds later, and Lu Bu arrived at a decision. “We reset timer,” she whispered, “we set for four hours. We wait until freighter transfers to second star system and then attempt to take ship.”

“What did they say?” Hutch asked, tilting his head to indicate the now empty catwalk above them.

She flashed him a predatory grin, “That in three hours, they will be alone—and this ship will be a vulnerable target.”

Chapter XXIII: With Old Friends Like These…

Fei Long was viscerally surprised at the lack of roving patrols his team had encountered en route to the interconnected pressure domes, but intellectually he understood that the only reason they had managed to slip past the Rim Fleet forces was because the Mode possessed incredibly powerful stealth systems which had allowed them to remain undetected.

“I must repeat my insistence that you remain here,” Fei Long said irritably to the lone Lancer assigned to his team.

“And I must repeat my insistence that you stop wasting time with pointless insistences,” Funar retorted.

Deciding against pointing out the self-defeating pseudo-logic the other man had just employed in a weak attempt at wit, Fei Long followed the Lancer to the portion of the hab module he had indicated would contain the supposedly undetected secret entrance through which they would gain access to the enemy facility.

“The entry should be right…here,” Funar said, pushing his hand against the flexible panel’s seam. He moved his fingers up and down the seam, trying to find purchase of some kind, until his hand slid between the panels. A few moments later, he had pried apart the external panel’s seam and, just as he had suggested, the panel came loose to reveal an opening which was possibly large enough for Hansheng to fit through.

“Personal experience for the win,” Trixie whispered excitedly. “I do so hope that Doctor Schillinger is well…her latest round of life extension treatments did not go so well, and her cardiopulmonary system is not what it used to be—“

“Trixie,” Fei Long snapped, causing her to cut off mid-sentence, “please…we must remain quiet.” He turned to the assault droid, “Can you fit inside?”

“Probability of entry without damage to exterior structure,” the assault droid mused—a bit too loudly for Fei Long’s liking, “65%.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” Funar said, gesturing for Trixie to enter the space between the exterior, radiation-shielding panels and the inner, softer surface which served as to retain the pressurized breathing gases within. The two surfaces were connected by seemingly random trusses, and those trusses buttressed the heavy, industrial-strength polymer framework which kept the soft, canvas-like gas barrier in position. Within the dome there was yet another set of panels which would protect the gas barrier from damage from within, so Fei Long knew that it was probable they would be able to move into the structure without being detected.

Although, he knew they had already been detected since the base’s comm. transmitter array had gone into a scrambling mode—a mode designed to interfere with his ability to communicate with Lu Bu’s team aboard the freighter. Fei Long could only hope that Lu Bu had thus far remained undetected and, if she was wise, she had already planted the bomb before leaving the freighter and returning to the stealth safety of the Mode.

The three human members of the team moved into the space between the panel layers, and Hansheng attempted to follow. At first he seemed frustrated, and unlikely to succeed, but he managed somehow to swivel his broad torso while tilting perilously onto one leg, and finally rotating his entire mass into the space between the panels. Once Hansheng was inside, Funar replaced the hard, radiation-resistant panels to cover their tracks.

That space was not quite broad enough for him to move as he normally would, with his fixed weapon arms facing forward, but he was able to shuffle sideways and keep pace with the rest of the team as they quietly wound their way through the gap.

“Just about fifteen meters,” Funar whispered as they wound around the dome’s perimeter via the maintenance space, “and we’ll reach an inner zipper panel.” True to his word, he led them to a large, upside-down-U-shaped zipper and turned to Fei Long. “They don’t know about this panel,” he explained, his voice still a whisper, “because there’s no soft airlock installed—the airlocks always go to the outside of the vacu-fabric. This complicates things.”

“No airlock means that our entry may well be observed via a pressure drop,” Fei Long mused. He considered the possibilities before continuing, “Meaning we must minimize our entry’s footprint as much as possible. It would seem prudent for me to go alone, and for you to enter only after a predetermined interval has elapsed without my return.”

Surprisingly, Funar nodded in agreement. “If they had an airlock, the only issue would have been how to neutralize internal security. But since they don’t have one, we’re all but certain to set off alarms if we all try to go in at once.” He held Fei Long’s gaze for several seconds, and the young hacker met the Lancer measure for measure before the warrior explained, “This is one of the hab modules, and I counted five total modules directly attached to this one. There’s an unattached utility bunker to the south, but given the configuration of the domes and their positioning, I’m guessing this one is for general crew.”

“Where do you surmise the transmitter is located?” Fei Long asked, grudgingly impressed at the Lancer’s apparent knowledge of their surroundings.

“It’s either at the central dome,” Funar replied confidently, “or the one to the north. The noise coming off the utility bunker can sometimes mess with the transmitter’s lower frequencies, so the standard configuration is for the comm. gear to go to the north, while the utility bunker goes to the south. But sometimes, in these heavily irradiated environments, the only module with thick enough shielding to filter out the ambient radio noise is the central, main module.”

“Very well,” Fei Long said, deciding to keep the specifics of his infiltration plan to himself—if he went into any kind of truthful detail, he was completely certain that Vali Funar would not agree to allow him to enter the facility alone. “My Attack Dogs please, Hansheng.”

The assault droid swiveled slightly, exposing a small cage beneath the housing which held the Starfire warhead. Fei Long quickly undid the clasps and opened the container, revealing a pair of Attack Dog drones within. One was a tread-mounted version, which could easily navigate the nooks and crannies of the pressure domes. The other was a hover unit, which he knew would be key to his plan’s success.

After a moment of testing, he found a narrow band of frequencies which seemed to carry the signal from his glove to the drones over short distances, and he felt relieved that the portion of his plan which relied on the drones remained intact.

“Give me one hour,” he said after keying the input commands to the drones via his control glove, “if I have not returned by then, you must—“

“I’ll go ahead and decide what I must do,” Funar cut in harshly. “Expert or not, you don’t pull rank anywhere along the chain, Mr. Fei. I’ve got operational control over this team,” he hissed, clearly fighting to keep his voice a loud whisper, “and right now you’re wasting valuable time. Get in there, gain control over their comm. system, and get out so we can blow this place to the Demon’s Pit. Is that understood?”

Fei Long knew the other man was trying to prove a point, and decided against escalating the confrontation. “Very well,” he said with a curt nod, and the team unzipped the portion of the canvas through which he would enter.

Surprisingly, the zipper opened and only a small amount of air rushed out. Fei Long saw another zipper on the surface of a second canvas flap, and he realized that it formed a kind of emergency airlock which was just large enough for a person to stand inside, close the external flap, and then open the internal flap before proceeding into the dome.

He entered the tiny space, and Funar closed the zipper behind him as soon as he had done so. Then Fei Long opened the zipper on the inside of the dome and found himself in what looked to be a maintenance closet of some kind. Everything was composed of lightweight, reasonably strong polymer tubing, and there were floor-to-ceiling shelves containing the same kind of gear with which he had become familiar during his thankfully short-lived tenure as an Environment technician aboard the Pride of Prometheus.

He was positioned directly behind one set of the shelves, and saw that the only way to get to the door beyond them was to crawl through the neatly stacked equipment. As he was nearly halfway through, he felt his suit tear and an alarm went off inside his helmet indicating a rupture. He instinctively held his breath and attempted to clamp the tear off with his hand, but quickly realized that doing so would be futile.

He finished crawling through the shelf, causing several more tears in his suit as it caught on the jagged metal edges of the machinery, and finally found himself standing on the three foot by eight foot rectangular space between the three sets of shelves. A quick look at his vacuum suit was all it took for him to confirm that it would never function properly again, but he knew that was a problem for another time.

Fei Long removed his helmet and took a deep breath of the slightly greasy-smelling air in the locker before nodding in satisfaction. After testing his glove and finding that his drones, which had accompanied him through the gap, were functioning properly he tested the inner handle of the locker’s only real door.

The handle moved freely, and he opened it slowly before seeing a winding corridor which matched the curve of the dome’s outer edge. The corridor extended to both the left and right, but he knew that the leftward path would lead to the central dome of the structure. He assumed direct control over his drones, sent them into the corridor, and closed the door behind himself.

He used the drones as scouts while he, and they, advanced through the corridor until coming to a junction which connected the dome he was in to the central dome. There was no activity in this part of the base, which he found both relieving and odd, but he pressed his drones down the large, white interior of the hallway until they came to an airlock situated at the midpoint of the tube connecting the two domes.

He maneuvered his hover drone before the airlock and, after taking a steadying breath as he knew that what he was about to do would draw attention, he cracked the security systems built into the airlock’s access panel. A few minutes later, he opened the outer airlock, closed it, and then opened the inner door before closing it also.

Satisfied that his trap had been set, he moved the drones down the corridor toward the main dome and he followed some ten meters behind them. There was a large door with yet another access panel, and he defeated its security measures using the exact same algorithms he had employed on the airlock a few minutes earlier.

He knew his rival, if present, would detect his activities but he also knew that there was no other way he could guarantee his plan the greatest chance of success. Lancer Funar would have never agreed to let him go alone if he had known that Fei Long had actually intended to make his presence known, and Fei Long could only hope that his nemesis’ sense of arrogance had not changed since their last encounter.

The doorway to the main dome opened and Fei Long stepped through to see a wondrous sight which even he could not fully comprehend at first.

The dome was large, fully thirty meters high at the apex, and nearly one hundred fifty meters across. Where the structure’s normal configuration was to be subdivided into six more-or-less equal-sized portions, all of that internal structure had been removed. The floor, which was supposed to be flat, had been cut away until it was a bowl-shaped recession that was at least as deep as the dome was tall. There were four equidistantly spaced catwalks descending to the base of the depression, and between those catwalks were massive processing banks of computer cores. A quick calculation told Fei Long that the assembled computing hardware was enough to satisfy a medium-sized city’s entire virtual needs in perpetuity.

At the center of the depression was a five meter across, misshapen, clearly organic mass of what looked to be tentacles with each measuring approximately one foot in diameter. The mass of tentacles reached upward before spilling in all directions, and the further they went from the center of the chamber, the more extensively they were grafted into by traditional computer interface components.

The sheer size of the operation was truly astounding to Fei Long, and for a moment he shuddered as he realized that the mass of tentacles coming up, seemingly from beneath the planetoid’s surface, were almost certainly composed of the same neural tissue he had extracted from the ComStat hub—the same material which had infected his neck and likely been responsible for several disconcerting experiences recently like his brief, strange loss of consciousness on the surface of the planetoid shortly after landing.

He saw no Rim Fleet or Raubach personnel at work in the chamber, which was surprisingly cool for a processing center of its size, so he decided to exit the central facility as quickly as possible. As he skirted the outer edge of the dome en route to the northern corridor—the one which would hopefully take him to the transmitter’s location—he could not help but take a few pictures via his hover drone so he could study them later…if he had a ‘later,’ of course.

After overcoming the paltry security mechanisms in place at the northern corridor—mechanisms which were only fractionally more difficult to defeat than the previous panels had been—he entered a significantly longer corridor than the one he had just traversed. There was no airlock at the midpoint of this particular tunnel, as had been the case with the first tunnel, and at the end of it was a door bearing a symbol he knew all too well.

It was that of a dragon with its body coiled like a serpent and eyes that were a smoldering shade of red. It was the sign of his rival, his nemesis, and the person who was most culpable for his previous imprisonment. He knew then that he had guessed correctly; his rival was indeed on the surface of the planetoid, and very soon they would be face to face.

He overcame the security program, but he was impressed to note that none of his older programs worked—a realization which filled him with even more confidence, since it indicated that his rival, too, had grown in ability since their last encounter.

The door slid open after he employed his most powerful cracking algorithm—an algorithm he had written specifically for this mission—and he entered the chamber to find precisely what he had been looking for: a high-end transmitter control center. It was laid out very similarly to how the Pride of Prometheus’ bridge was laid out, with a central ‘command chair’ surrounded by banks of workstations divided into groups and subgroups. There were considerably more viewing screens in this particular chamber than were present on the Pride’s bridge, but that was only natural given the apparent nature of this particular command center.

Only a handful of the stations were powered up, and he quickly made his way to what appeared to be a primary control station. He knew he had very little time to work before he was apprehended, so he did his best to move quickly and efficiently as he uploaded a series of programs directly into the computer core.

Predictably, there were no firewalls between this particular station and the primary processing core—a core which contained several times as much overall processing power as he had initially surmised, forgetting about the awesomely powerful neural tissue into which that equipment had been grafted. His rival was known to prefer open networks to segregated data nodes, since the response times and overall power of a virtual network was vastly superior in modern architecture once the firewalls were removed, and he had heavily counted on that preference during his Yin & Yang program’s design.

Then, just before he was able to upload the last fragment of his file, the screen went blank and he immediately suspected a remote reboot had occurred. His suspicions were confirmed when a cartoonish, devil’s face appeared and cackled maniacally as the characters ‘You Lose’ scrolled down the screen. Those words were soon joined by others, the majority of which were slurs, insults, and other forms of ridicule and soon he heard a familiar voice join in the machine’s laughter.

He turned to the source of the laughter, which he now saw came from a recessed panel which he had not seen upon entering the chamber. Long, jet-black hair spilled across a narrower-than-he-remembered set of shoulders, and the motion of his rival’s body in motion was significantly different than he remembered as well. This caused him a moment of confusion before he realized that his rival appeared to have lost an unbelievable amount of weight—a realization which disappointed him in more ways than he would care to admit.

“Nice try, Long,” his nemesis said in their native tongue, “but you should have quit while you were ahead. I beat you once three years ago, and now it looks like I’ll have the pleasure of beating you again.”

Fei Long stood from the computer and turned to face his former ally and, if he was being truthful, his former partner…and more even than that. “Zhongda,” he said evenly as he attempted to covertly maneuver his drones into flanking positions to either side of the recess from which his rival had just emerged, “we meet again.”

“Zhongda?” his rival said before laughing piteously. “You and your obsession with that old legend, Long. It undid you once already; please tell me that isn’t why I got you this time, too?” His rival, who Fei Long knew could only be Sima Yi reincarnated—the only commander capable of defeating the great Zhuge Liang, of whom Fei Long had long believed he was the inheritor—looked him up and down appraisingly before acidly saying, “You haven’t changed much.”

Just as Fei Long’s drones got into position, a pair of ion bolts spat from concealment and Fei Long saw both of his drones were enveloped in the bluish bursts of energy. The hover drone crashed to the floor with a loud clatter, and the tread-mounted drone skittered forward at full speed until crashing into a nearby workstation and deactivating.

He cursed under his breath as his rival wagged a finger remonstratively before gesturing for a pair of security personnel to flank Fei Long. He had not even seen them, and unlike his rival he was absolutely certain there had been nowhere for them to hide in the room.

As his rival approached, he saw just how extensive the physical changes were and he had to suppress a shudder. The person standing before him seemed to be nothing but a mere shadow of his former partner-in-crime.

“What’s wrong, Long?” Zhongda asked in Confederation Standard, growing closer with each step as his rival’s serpentine grin grew wider and wider. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Fei Long shook his head as the security personnel took hold of him by each arm. “Oh, Zhongda,” he said with genuine pity as his former girlfriend stepped into the light, revealing the latex-bound curve of a tight, lithe body that could have only been granted by the expert hand of a cosmetic surgeon, “I much preferred you as you were.”

Her eyes flared with anger and, at little more than the hint of a nod of her surgically-sculpted head, the guard to Fei Long’s left clubbed him over the head and the world fell into darkness.

Chapter XXIV: Bare Bones

“Captain, I wish you’d reconsider,” Lieutenant McKnight said, leaning across the desk in the Captain’s ready room to once again make her case.

“My decision is made, XO,” Middleton said, glad that the sensation in his legs had returned to the point that he could shuffle into the ready room to have the necessarily private meeting with his second in command, “you’ll take the Slice of Life—along with every single crewmember whose presence is not absolutely indispensible to the Pride’s ability to point transfer and set a course after she’s done so—and you’ll move into the target system ahead of us.”

“Captain,” she argued, gesticulating severely with her hands, “you need every engineer we’ve got just to keep the lights on here!”

“Exactly, McKnight,” Middleton said, his voice nearly a bark as he fought to keep a level head, “we’ve got less than one full ship’s crew between us and two ships to divide them between. This one’s a wreck, with only half of her weaponry—most of which is light—remaining functional. The right play is to man the Slice and take maximum advantage of your successful takeover of the enemy cruiser. About all the Pride can do is serve as a diversion in the coming battle—and if that diversion proves effective, I’ll consider it a job well done by this crew.”

“Chief Garibaldi got the shield grid restored to nearly 40% power—“ she began, but Middleton slammed his fist against the desk and cut her off as his patience finally wore through.

“We’re wasting time here, Lieutenant!” he snapped.

She visibly flared as she leaned forward, and Middleton mirrored her gesture perfectly. The two stared at each other in a deadlock of contesting wills before McKnight finally set her jaw and stood to her feet, “Yes sir.”

Middleton also took to his feet, but as he did so he fought down the rising emotion he had felt a few moments earlier. “That was one Hades of a job you did by seizing that ship, Lieutenant,” Middleton said with genuine appreciation, respect, and even admiration, “I’ve never been involved in anything like that.”

“It was your call, sir,” she said stiffly, clearly still tending a wounded ego.

“The call is the easy part,” he retorted easily, “someone’s got to carry out the play, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a fine counterattack that ended in the complete takeover of the enemy ship.”

She seemed to receive his congratulations in the same tone in which they were offered, and she nodded as she rubbed her cheek. “That’s gotten pretty swollen, sir,” she said, pointing to Middleton’s jaw, “maybe you should get down to sickbay.”

“Sickbay’s down,” Middleton said dismissively, “so the only way I can get to a working medical ward is by stepping off this ship and onto yours—that isn’t going to happen, but I’ll give you an ‘A’ for effort.”

She gave him a lopsided grin, “You can’t blame a girl for trying, can you?”

“I’d have been disappointed in anything less,” he grudged before stepping around his desk, “let’s take one last look at the breakdown before you disembark.”

“Of course, sir,” she said, and the two made their way to the bridge, slowed only by Middleton’s shuffling gait—a result of his wariness to aggravate the wound to his leg, combined with the numbness which made his butt feel like it was filled with lead.

The Pride’s main sensor array was down, so Hephaestion had been forced to link up with the Slice of Life’s sensor array to give Middleton a real-time tactical breakdown of the battle still raging above them.

The Droids were down to four warships—two Motherships and two Destroyers—while the Rim Fleet forces numbered ten. Only a single Heavy Destroyer remained for the Raubach-led defensive force, with the rest of the Rim Fleet group consisting of Corvettes.

But those Corvettes were proving to be worthy of every nightmare Middleton had suffered since learning of the now-confirmed modifications Commodore Raubach had made to his warships. With surgical precision, the Corvettes had moved to flank the Droid forces to either side of their position. The Rim Fleet had somehow managed to maneuver the Droids into a tight ball, and with the nearly two hundred gunboats swarming around the still-active Motherships, Middleton could only think of the Droid forces as an increasingly constricted ball of bait fish surrounded by a pack of hungry predators.

Lending further credence to the metaphor, the Rim Fleet forces had surrounded the Droids on all axes like a school of sharks, and were picking them apart from ranges which far exceeded the Droids’ own weaponry—even including the Motherships’ spinal-mounted lasers powered by intense antimatter reactions.

“It’s only a matter of time now, sir,” McKnight said grimly, and Middleton nodded sourly. Even a point transfer, signaling the arrival of yet another Droid warship—this one a Harmony Corvette—could do little to convince him that the Rim Fleet forces would not emerge victorious. His strategies—deploying the Liberator torpedoes, dragging the Droids into the system, and even attempting to take the Light Cruiser in the midst of the battle so as to turn the enemy’s advanced weaponry against them—had failed him, and he knew that dozens of good people had died as a result. But the worst possible outcome could be that the mission failed completely…and that was something he simply could not allow to happen, no matter the cost.

“Which is why you need to get back to your command, Lieutenant McKnight,” Middleton said, turning to the young blond woman as he felt his own resolve strengthen. “You’re already set to point transfer and your crew needs your ass firmly planted in the big chair if they’re to get through this thing.”

“They’re our crew, Captain,” McKnight said, her tone bordering respectfully pointed and insubordinate—the perfect combination in Middleton’s opinion.

“No, Lieutenant McKnight,” Middleton said, taking his seat in the big chair as the Pride of Prometheus and the Slice of Life drifted well past the hyper limit to the system’s south, “once you point transfer out of this system, they’ll be your crew.”

Based on the look on her face, that particular thought had not previously crystallized in his soon-to-be-former XO’s mind until he had reiterated it. But rather than blanching, or becoming squeamish, she jutted her chin out and said, “I’ll bring them back in one piece, sir.”

“See that you do that, McKnight,” Middleton said with a knowing nod. “Now get the hell off my ship, if you please—I’ve got a battle to plan.”

McKnight snapped to a picture-perfect attention posture and saluted Middleton. He would have stood, but just then his legs were feeling particularly numb, so he returned her salute as best he was able. “Good hunting, Captain Middleton,” she said, snapping off the salute.

“Don’t worry about saving any for us, Lieutenant,” Middleton said, allowing a short-lived smile to spread across his features.

McKnight turned to leave the bridge, and just as she got to the blast doors, Jo swept onto the Pride’s command deck. “Not even a word?!” Jo snapped as she stormed her way up the dais to stand before his chair. “You were just going to ship me off with the rest of the crew without even speaking to me?!”

“Doctor,” Middleton began as calmly as he could manage, “the crew needs you—“

“The crew needs me in sickbay,” she cut in, “but you’ve cut the power to that deck—along with life support—so I’ve got two dozen dying men and women stacked up like cordwood in the corridors on deck five!”

“The damage caused during the boarding actions was too severe,” Middleton said, adding a hard edge to his voice as he gave her a steely glare. “Sickbay’s a lost cause and you know it, Doctor Middleton.”

“So you thought you could get me off this ship without so much as a single spoken word by informing me of the other ship’s pristine medical facilities?” she snarled, and Middleton could see her eyes were red—a sure sign she was on the emotional verge.

“Doctor—“

“Don’t you ‘Doctor’ me, Tim!” she flared.

Forcing his legs beneath himself, Middleton lurched out of his chair and nearly fell over, only saving himself with a timely grab of his chair’s armrest. “Jo,” he said in a lowered tone as Toto, Hephaestion, and a handful of bridge standers busied themselves and tried desperately to look like they weren’t listening in on the juiciest source of gossip aboard the Pride, “now really isn’t the best time.”

She seemed to take the hint, and clenched her hands into fists at his sides. “I won’t leave you here, Tim.”

“You won’t be leaving anyone,” Middleton replied, knowing it may well be the last time they spoke face-to-face, “you’ll be saving dozens of lives aboard the Slice who desperately need your expertise, and you’ll be doing it from a fully-equipped, state-of-the-art medical facility aboard a ship that was first commissioned when this one was sixty years old. Do the numbers, Doc,” he said, giving her a wan smile as he brought up a decades old argument between them regarding bulk statistics vs. individual case management, “there’s only one way this can play out, and it’s with you joining the crew on the Slice of Life.”

She bit her lip and stepped toward the chair, “Just tell me you’re going to try to get out of this alive.”

Middleton actually did a double take; he had never genuinely considered his own survival to be more than a remote possibility after deciding on the course which had brought them to their present position. But after hearing her say what she had just said, he realized that the ordeal had been more difficult for the rest of the crew—Jo among them—than it had been for him. After twenty years of military service, he had made peace with the possibility of dying at the hands of the enemy, surrounded by people who tolerated him at best, and hated him at worst.

“I’m not here to go out in a blaze of glory,” he said, knowing that it was only half true. He would happily sacrifice himself, forgoing any such glory if it meant his mission would succeed and his people would survive the conflict, but he knew that wasn’t what Jo needed to hear just then. “My first priority is doing what we came to do, with a close second being getting this crew home safely. I can’t do either of those things with my Chief Medical Officer stubbornly clinging to this ship when the people who need her most do the right thing and transfer to McKnight’s ship. At least there they can fight back against the people who have tried to kill them at every single step of this ship’s deployment.” He straightened reflexively as he finished, “I won’t take that chance away from them, no matter how much certain aspects of facilitating that chance disagree with my personal preferences.”

Her eyes welled with tears and before he knew it their lips were pressed against the other’s. When they parted she whispered, “I should have never left.”

He shook his head, “I don’t regret any of it, and neither should you. We’ve each done what we needed to do, and we should be thankful for what we’ve had since then.”

She nodded, and he knew that he needed to hurry her from his ship as quickly as possible while observing a degree of compassion to her situation. But at the end of the day, he was the commander of a warship which still had a fight to join, and he needed to focus on the task at hand.

Seemingly sensing his thoughts, she said in a slightly louder voice, “I’ll see my patients are transferred before joining them, but first I need to see about your jaw.”

Before he could protest, she produced a pair of devices from her lab coat’s pockets—one of which was a needle with three syringes attached to it, and the other was a rather ghastly looking piece of equipment which resembled nothing so much as a small nail gun.

She used the needle to numb the side of his face where his jaw was broken, and he actually welcomed the sensation after he could no longer feel anything between his jawline and his eye. Then she brought up the nail gun and, before he could inquire as to what exactly she was planning to do, she said, “Hold still. I have to do this twice.”

For a moment he was mortally certain he had just been slammed in the side of the head by a power-armored fist. His vision blacked out, the world began to spin, and he was increasingly concerned that he was about to empty the contents of his stomach.

But he thankfully avoided doing so, and just as his vision began to return he heard a distant-sounding voice say, “Good…just one more.”

He heard his voice cry in protest—having done so mostly unbidden by him—but it was to no avail as he felt another blow land to his jaw. But this time it was significantly less painful, feeling more like a potential KO than an actual one.

Reaching up with his hand, Middleton felt a piece of cold metal was now present over the break in his jaw. It was nearly three inches long, and he realized that she had just nailed—or possibly riveted—the thing to his jaw.

“Try it,” she urged after putting the tools back into her pockets, and Middleton gingerly opened his jaw. He found the muscles of his mouth were tight and sore from his constant clenching, and as he opened his mouth he also realized just how bad the swelling had become near the break. But the pain was nearly nonexistent—a result he assumed was equally due to the stabilizing plate and the large quantity of numbing medication she had employed—and he nodded in satisfaction as his vision finally returned and the wave of vertigo abated.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Middleton said, giving her a meaningful look as he continued to test his jaw. She lingered for a few moments before nodding and leaving the bridge.

Middleton took what might be his last opportunity to watch her walk away—a sight which any warm-blooded man would admit to enjoying—and allowed himself a moment of reflection on times long gone, and opportunities lost to foolish intransigence, before refocusing on his bare bones bridge crew.

“Have every department head report to the conference room immediately, Mr. Hephaestion,” he instructed, straightening his uniform as he shifted in the chair, trying to restore something resembling normal sensation to his still-tingly legs.

“The conference room was damaged in the attack,” Hephaestion replied respectfully.

Middleton snorted, realizing he should have expected the reply even though he had not received a damage report detailing that particular issue. “Then have them report to the bridge,” he said, setting his jaw in determination and finding the patch job she had done to be equal to the task, “and have them do so as soon as Chief Garibaldi’s team is back inside.”

Sergeant Gnuko helped with the final transfers of crew and medical supplies from the Pride to the Slice of Life, and was surprised to see Kratos and a handful of his men moving from McKnight’s command back to the Pride of Prometheus. They did not wear power armor, but their combined bulk still filled the boarding tube—a long, flexible section of expandable corridor which now connected the Pride of Prometheus to the Slice of Life with a soft-dock from one warship’s airlock to the other’s—as they filed past the last of the men and women making their way to the captured enemy cruiser.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Gnuko demanded, blocking the Pride’s side of the tube as the one-eyed Tracto-an approached.

“I am transferring,” the hulking cyclops replied, his voice barely above a growl as he proffered a data slate.

Gnuko reviewed the slate’s contents and his eyebrows went up in surprise before lowering thunderously. “You’re a loose cannon, Kratos,” he seethed, giving the other man a piercing look.

“I am victorious,” Kratos retorted, his chest visibly swelling as he squared his shoulders and jutted his chin forward defiantly, “and for this I am transferred.”

Sergeant Gnuko very much wanted to argue with the last-minute transfer, but he knew that there was simply no time. McKnight’s ship was scheduled to point transfer in another thirty one minutes, and there was no way he was going to bring this particular matter to Captain Middleton’s attention at this stage in the game.

“Fine,” Gnuko said through gritted teeth, “get aboard and we’ll find some armor for you and your men.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Kratos said, and Gnuko was surprised to hear not even a trace of resentment or insubordination in the other man’s voice. Kratos and his handful of men exited the tube, and Gnuko was just about to signal to the Slice of Life’s airlock tender that it was time to break the connection, but he saw another person coming down the tube.

This one was Bernice, the mammoth of a woman who had previously been assigned to Lu Bu’s Recon Team. She had performed exceptionally well, but Lu Bu had correctly left her off the roster for her latest assignment due to Bernice’s relative lack of technical expertise which would have been required during the operation behind enemy lines.

Bernice spat something in Tracto-an as she came closer, and Kratos turned to give her a steady gaze. Whatever it was she said, the men around Kratos shared looks which ranged from amused to mildly concerned, and Gnuko realized that this particular confrontation was almost certainly of the personal variety, rather than a professional one.

“You have your orders,” Kratos growled, stepping toward the tube’s mouth before Bernice could reach it. “Return to your ship, woman!”

She snarled something in their native tongue, and after having spent so much time with Tracto-ans, Gnuko picked out a few of the most colorful insults—most of which had to do with questionable lineage—from her surprisingly vicious stream of words.

“You are the only one who can command them,” Kratos replied calmly, but the tension in his body was severely at odds with the tone of his voice, “the warriors respect you, rightfully so, and Lieutenant McKnight no longer trusts me. This is the way it must be. Do not behave like a child, Bernice.”

Gnuko saw something in her expression which told him that his was, without question, a lover’s quarrel of some kind and he, like his fellow Lancers, stood transfixed by the scene unfolding before them.

Bernice set her jaw, and for a moment Gnuko actually found the masculine-looking woman reasonably attractive. He’d always had a thing for a woman when she got her back up, and this one was either the most dangerous, or second-most dangerous, woman he had ever encountered—the other possible candidate being Lu Bu, who had very nearly KO’d Walter Joneson with a single flying knee, and had actually KO’d Atticus with one.

Bernice’s fists trembled at her sides as her face went red with anger, and before Kratos could react she lashed out with her lone good arm and punched him in the groin hard enough to stiffen the massive man’s legs. His hands, which had tried and failed to block the blow, moved to intercept the follow-up attack—a vicious uppercut from her bionic arm, aimed squarely at his jaw—but they were too far out of position and Bernice’s thunderous blow lifted the man from the deck before he went crashing back down again.

Whether his short-lived flight was due to her tremendous punching power, or to the significantly lower gravity present at the airlock, Gnuko would never know for certain. Nor would he ever wonder about the matter out loud—at least not within earshot of Bernice.

She stood over Kratos, who rubbed his jaw gingerly and gave her a dark, smoldering look as the woman brusquely said, “Now I go to my command.” She turned and, without so much as a glance over her shoulder, made her way down the tube and embarked on the Slice of Life.

Kratos stood to his feet as Gnuko slapped the airlock’s control panel, causing the inner and outer doors to close in unison. The tension among the Lancers was palpable as Kratos glowered at each of them in turn before his gaze fell upon Sergeant Gnuko. Gnuko tensed in preparation for some sort of altercation, but the old man unexpectedly smirked and declared in a loud, boisterous voice, “A fine woman!”

Laughter immediately erupted throughout the corridor, and even Gnuko found himself joining in the unexpected mirth as they made their way to the Armory.

 “She’s welded onto the nose,” Garibaldi said nearly twenty minutes later, referring to his having successfully attached what remained of the Liberator torpedo to the Pride’s bow, “but I don’t think any of us want to be aboard when that thing goes off.”

The Slice of Life had already disengaged from the Pride of Prometheus and was moving to a safe distance in preparation for their point transfer into the enemy’s home system. Middleton had ordered McKnight to operate under complete comm. silence, knowing that the enemy would be listening in on everything they said to each other and wanting to give them absolutely zero free intel.

“Good work, Chief,” Middleton said with a nod before turning to Sergeant Gnuko. “How many of your Lancers are fit for duty?”

“I transferred all but myself and four others to the Slice,” Gnuko replied, sporting a heavy drape of Combat Heal-infused gauze over the left side of his skull. The bandage very nearly covered his eye on that side, and Middleton had absolutely no idea how he could have sustained the wound from within his duralloy casement of power armor. “But that makes our current Lancer force twelve strong,” he added darkly.

Middleton nodded again, having reviewed a truncated version of McKnight’s after action report regarding the boarding of the Light Cruiser she now commanded. It seemed that Kratos was more resourceful, and technically adept, than even Middleton had suspected. Soon after boarding the enemy vessel, he had located the nearest Environmental locker and emergency-purged every deck of the then-enemy warship of its breathable air. The result had been two hundred dead Rim Fleet crew strewn about the corridors, and a paralyzed enemy commander who was unable to move his people about in a coordinated fashion. The only areas which had been unaffected had been the enemy bridge, Engineering, and Medical, but cut off from each other it had only been a matter of time before the MSP Lancers took even those heavily-fortified positions.

Naturally, the enemy Marines had been protected from death by asphyxiation due to their armor’s internal life support systems, but Kratos’ people had outnumbered the enemy three to two. Somewhat surprisingly, it seemed the Tracto-ans—in their less than state-of-the-art armor—had been more than a match for the enemy warriors when the final tally had been made.

Middleton could understand McKnight’s resentment toward Kratos regarding the boarding action, and much as he shared her indignation on a personal level, as a professional he knew that Kratos had done what was needed to win the fight. He was glad that McKnight would have to author that particular after action report, and not him.

“Kratos got the job done,” Middleton said, “but McKnight did the right thing in punishing him for his…unorthodox approach.” Garibaldi looked fit to burst in outrage, but Middleton added, “There will be no further discussion of that particular subject. For my part, I’m glad to have an Assault Team—even a small one—and the Deathbacker available for when we enter the enemy system.

“You’ve got me there, Cap,” Garibaldi grudged with a loud sigh. “I’m just glad those lugs are on our side and not the enemy’s.”

“Amen to that,” Gnuko said with a slow nod.

“Which brings us to a final breakdown of our resources,” Middleton said, turning to the ship’s Chief Engineer.

Garibaldi stiffened, and Middleton hoped his old friend could avoid another outburst like the one he had sent over the link after being ordered to abandon the rescue efforts for the crew on the Pride’s forward gun deck.

But then the Chief relaxed fractionally and said, “The stern shields are shot, but the bow’s back up to about 45% and the flanks are holding just below 40% each. I’ve re-routed every joule we can spare to the shields, including the majority of the energy normally allocated to the forward batteries.” His jaw set as he continued, “Three of the batteries are in working condition but the rest are done for, and over half of our new broadside weaponry’s gone too. Of course,” he added with a hard look at Captain Middleton, “we’d need gunners for any of that to matter.”

Middleton nodded slowly, having read reports from damage control teams which had found that the entire forward gun deck had been exposed to the vacuum of space. Even those few tombstones that had come down in time to prevent the crews behind them from dying due to exposure had ultimately done little more than preserve the gunners’ bodies, since the same blast which had ruptured the hull had been issued from a plasma bolt which had turned the gun deck into a raging inferno for a handful of seconds. Unfortunately for the men and women on duty there, the human body was no match for plasma fire, and there was little which could even be recognized as having once been human remaining on the forward gun deck.

“Mr. Toto has some ideas in that regard,” Middleton said, nodding to the Sundered Tactical Officer. “He assures me that he will only need two pairs of hands and a working com-link to get the guns slaved to his station with forty minutes of work—work which will begin as soon as this meeting is concluded.”

Middleton very much disliked the idea of slave-rigging the guns to a single control station, since doing so required his people to increase the processing power of a single DI node well beyond the legal threshold. Once an individual processing unit becomes too powerful, it is only a matter of time before it goes droid—and there is little in the galaxy more terrifying than the thought of a sentient warship in full command of itself and its awesome weaponry.

“Can’t say I like it,” Garibaldi sighed, “but what else is new? He’ll get his hands.”

“Good,” Middleton said with an approving nod, feeling a throbbing ache in his jaw begin to develop. Pushing the pain aside, he turned to Hephaestion, “Your credentials are lacking, but your aptitudes with the equipment and your performance of late have led me to place you in command of the Sensors and Comm. sections. I hope you can keep up.”

“I will endeavor to do so, Captain,” Hephaestion replied stoically, and for the first time Middleton noticed a trio of wounds on the young man’s neck which could have only been caused by near-misses from a blaster rifle.

“Sergeant Gnuko,” Middleton continued, “I trust your men have enough gear to hold the ship against would-be invaders?”

“That won’t be a problem, sir,” Gnuko assured him. “Without our own crew aboard the ship, there’s no reason to pull any more punches if the enemy sets foot on this ship.”

Middleton snickered softly, considering the fact that his Lancer Sergeant had just suggested their previous welcoming festivities had been the equivalent of ‘pulled punches’ when the Slice of Life’s former Marine contingent had boarded the Pride of Prometheus with an eye to taking her a prize. “That’s the spirit, Sergeant.”

“We’ve rigged up another handful of improvised explosives, just like you requested, Sergeant,” Garibaldi interjected, “but I’m not sure there are many places left to hide them. You boys did a good and proper job of gutting the central-forward sections of the ship during the last go-round.”

“I said ‘set foot on this ship,’ Chief,” Gnuko said with a pointed look, “not in it.”

Middleton had already gone over several contingency plans with Sergeant Gnuko, and he had been impressed with the man’s forward thinking in terms of maximizing their available gear for the mission ahead. “This ship’s only got one last charge in her, gentlemen,” he said turning to each of his remaining department heads in turn, “and we need to make it count.”

Garibaldi squirmed in his seat before raising his hand like a child in primary school might do, “Which brings me to the elephant in the room, Captain: do you actually think you can get this ship in position to ram the Vae Victus? We’ve only got forty percent motive power, and about that in forward-facing shielding. That Defiance-class battleship—even half of her—is more than a match for the old girl in her current state, even if that’s all we’ll be facing when we arrive.”

“I don’t know how it’s going to play out,” Middleton shrugged as he met his Chief Engineer’s eyes, which were beneath dubiously-beetled eyebrows, “but I do know that I want that warhead where I have a chance at using it.”

The Chief continued to look skeptical, but Hephaestion was the one who spoke up next, “This ship will not survive the explosion.” His tone was calm and measured, and his words were spoken as one would state an obvious fact, and Middleton was impressed with the young man’s resolve as he continued, “I, however, will be proud to guide the arrow of vengeance into the heart of the enemy.”

“Arrows and other archaic metaphors notwithstanding,” Gnuko cut in uneasily, fidgeting with his bandage briefly before continuing, “we should be thinking about completing the mission and getting out afterward, not making grand sacrifices and going up in the proverbial blaze.”

“Agreed, Sergeant,” Middleton said with a nod, knowing that he had every intention of making sure that torpedo’s payload got delivered where it could do the most damage—no matter the personal costs entailed. “I want all hands on the bridge for this op; reroute whatever controls you can manage in the time between now and our point transfer, but consider everything else offline for the duration. Private Kratos’ team will remain aboard the Deathbacker in the event we identify a target he can neutralize, or in the event his people are needed to scrap intruders off the hull, but the rest of us will remain here on the bridge after the T-minus-ten-minute countdown to point transfer has begun.”

“We’d better get started on those workarounds,” Garibaldi said, “aside from us in this room, and Kratos’ people on the shuttle, we’ve only got five engineers I couldn’t sweet talk off the ship. Even without the internal damage to the ship we have to navigate, we’ll be cutting it close to get all this work done.”

“Good,” Middleton said, standing and finding his legs reasonably steady beneath him, “I’ll join your repair teams for the next two hours. The rest of you know your assignments. Dismissed.”

Chapter XXV: Old Flames Burn Hot

“Wake up, Long,” Fei Long heard a woman’s voice explode in his ear, and he quickly realized he was standing behind bars and had absolutely no idea how he had gotten there.

Then he remembered being clubbed over the head, but that still did not explain how he was standing—

“Good,” she said, and this time her voice was fractionally less thunderous in his ears, “you’re just in time.”

He blinked his eyes several times and realized that Zhongda—whose original name had been Liu Chan, but he had forever remembered her as his nemesis and arch-rival—was sitting just a few feet from him behind a trio of portable workstations set beside each other.

“Why did you join them, Zhongda?” he asked with more bitterness in his voice than he had expected to hear. “Your talents should not be wasted on such base and amoral goals.”

“Amoral?” she repeated before giggling in a way which he had previously found intoxicating, but now found well-and-truly revolting. “You should talk, Kongming,” she used his chosen moniker as a slur, “you, whose masterwork was supposed to be gaining access to the ComStat network so you could disseminate banned media to the citizenry of our world.”

“Freedom of information is the only true freedom,” he quipped, feeling a familiar, yet nearly forgotten knot in his stomach as they picked up the old argument precisely where they had left it several years earlier. “But I would not expect you to understand.”

“Oh, I understand,” she quipped as her fingers moved with machine-like precision across the trio of workstations. Her ability to multitask was truly an inspiration to Fei Long; he had once seen her manage twelve separate operations across five terminals, with each requiring major inputs approximately every six seconds. “You wanted to find the latest nude celebrity pics and vids, and were tired of waiting for physical couriers to bring them from two Sectors away.” She shook her head contemptuously as she sneered, “You always were so predictable, Long.”

Ignoring the barb about downloading pornography—a charge which he had to admit would carry at least some weight—Fei Long sighed, “At least I had goals, Zhongda. You were only ever concerned with winning.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” she asked archly, her eyes only briefly moving from her terminal screens to meet his. “It’s worked out pretty well for me, while your supposedly high-minded morality has landed you on a rattletrap with a borderline psychotic captain who can’t learn to let go of a grudge—even if it gets everyone around him killed.” She gestured to the facility, “All of this was brought here for me, Long—me,” she repeated forcefully, and he literally winced at seeing just how vain she had become. “House Raubach knows how to treat talented individuals; before I’m twenty I’ll be one of the wealthiest women in the galaxy, and you’ll be nothing more than a footnote on the virtual crime statistics report from three years ago.” She threw her head back and cackled triumphantly, “So much for your ridiculous claim to be Zhuge Liang’s inheritor, Long. The real Kongming would have learned something in the last three years about developing data deconstruction methodologies, and probably would have concerned himself with hiding his virtual fingerprints a little more cleverly than by using Romance of the Three Kingdoms body text as the primer to his cipher.”

Fei Long’s eyebrows rose in a mixture of surprise and admiration. She had broken the first level of his program’s encryption matrix, which meant there were only two more steps between her and the truth of his three-part program…

“Impressive, Zhongda,” Fei Long said with grudging respect as he turned and found a fold-out cot attached to the wall of what was clearly a prison cell, “you managed to break my encryption system…the only question I have is: just how long did it take you to do so?”

“You’ve only been out of it for forty four minutes,” she replied as she continued to work at a furious, yet perfectly controlled pace. “I’ve had the first layer down for twenty six minutes now, and the second layer is about to fall…” she smacked a key on the left-hand console with an audible click, “now!”

A screen situated behind her lit to life, and Fei Long leaned forward to see that she had, indeed, successfully broken the second layer of his program’s encryption. He heard a stirring from the cell next to his, and he looked over to see a man lying on a cot with blankets draped over him and a whole host of medical equipment connected to his body. It seemed the only part of his body not connected to some kind of life-sustaining device was his mouth, through which he drew shallow, but steady breaths.

His eyes, however, were what took Fei Long by surprise: instead of bearing normal pupils, they were completely white. Fei Long had seen people with afflictions which had destroyed the pigmentation in their eyes, and he had even seen images of eyeballs that had been so horribly damage by chemical or thermal trauma that they were grey, or milky-looking, but this man’s eyes were as white as falling snow. Still, he could somehow feel the man’s eyes moving back and forth between the screen behind Zhongda and Fei Long.

Just then, Fei Long felt a flare of pain in the back of his skull and he heard himself cry out in pain as he crashed into the wall of his cell. Just like when he had first set foot on this planetoid, it seemed his limbs were no longer connected to his body, and his consciousness merely floated in a dark, silent void of pain for an indeterminable amount of time.

But just like the previous experience, his senses quickly returned to him. As his vision returned, he found that he had somehow braced himself against the wall and avoided a complete collapse to the floor.

“You don’t look too good,” Zhongda said coolly, clearly reveling in his discomfort, “but then, in fairness, neither would I if my work had been undone so easily. Really, Long, I’m disappointed,” she clucked her tongue and shook her head in apparent disappointment, “I’d hoped this might provide a few hours of diversion before they came and took you.”

“Who will come and take me?” he asked, shaking the last of the cobwebs from his mind as he focused on the screen behind her and saw that she was already working on the last layer of encryption he had put into the disparate segments of his crucial Yin & Yang program.

“The Commodore’s people will need intelligence,” she replied casually, “and despite what I told them about your pronounced lack of that particular attribute, they were adamant that you be put on the same shuttle as the Director when he arrives to take your neighbor off the base.”

Fei Long looked at the white-eyed man, and saw that his eyes were no longer white at all. Fei Long blinked twice, just to be certain his eyes were not deceiving him, and found that the man’s eyes were now a pale blue color and appeared to be more-or-less normal.

“Who is he?” Fei Long asked, his curiosity getting the better of him as he saw the man’s eyes flick once again to the screen behind Zhongda—a screen across which scrolled line after line of Fei Long’s slowly-decompiled and deciphered programming code.

“Some sort of mystic,” Zhongda replied disinterestedly. “The Director has…interviewed him on several occasions,” she said, her face twisting into a contemptuous expression, “but so far he speaks only gibberish and refuses to participate in any form of dialogue.” She then stopped for a moment and cocked her head in Fei Long’s direction, “I just cracked your encryption protocols in less than an hour and you’re more interested in that slab of meat lying on the cot in there?”

“I suppose I am in shock,” Fei Long replied with a shrug. In truth, he had not expected her efforts to take much longer than they had taken; with the amount of processing power at her fingertips, there was precious little she could not crack — given the fact that she had stolen his own source code, of course. “But I should have expected such success from you…since you are using my code, after all.”

She bristled briefly before returning to her work, “They say that possession is nine tenths of the law.” Fei Long allowed himself a smirk, having heard the same thing from the arms dealer, Lynch, whose base of operations had actually been named ‘The Other Tenth,’ but Zhongda did not appear to notice as she continued, “Most of what was yours is already mine, what was mine is still mine, and what little you have apparently retained will soon be mine.” She leaned back in her chair as her equipment worked to decompile his Yin & Yang program, lacing her fingers behind her head as she did so, “You were a gifted coder, Long, but you lacked a certain…” her lips twisted into a killer smile as she found the words she was looking for, “killer instinct. At least you’ll get to know—for however long you have left—that your work will be put to better use than it would have been while downloading the latest holo-vids and novels from the extranets and distributing them freely to the tween-age crowd.”

Fei Long marveled at how cynical she had become. “What happened to you, Chan?” he asked, nearly overcome with pity. “You are not the girl I once knew…and loved,” he added hesitantly, finding the words were absolutely true as he spoke them.

She scoffed, but for a moment he could see that he had gotten through her thick veneer of false confidence, “No one could love her. She was pathetic…a loser…a cow that weighed more than a hundred kilograms. But now look at me,” she said with overt—likely forced—confidence as she stood and modeled her admittedly impressive physique. Rarely had Fei Long seen such an impressive specimen of feminine geometry, and for a brief moment he could comprehend why she might have opted for the change.

When he had known her previously, she had never been the center of attention, nor had she known many who would call her a friend. She had been something of a loner, always looking in on society from the outside, and that was what had attracted Fei Long to her. He had felt some sort of kinship with her in that regard—and in the fact that they were two of the only three hackers to actually break into the main government’s secured databases using independently-crafted methods.

She posed suggestively for a moment, and Fei Long felt his hormones surge before he fought them back down. Zhongda giggled and pointed triumphantly at his face before sitting back down and resuming her work, “That’s the look, all right—that look which you just fought to hide is why I did it, Long. There’s power in being able to bend attention in that way, and I realized years ago that I was sick of being ignored. I’d seen other girls make men look the way you just did,” she said darkly, “and now, whenever I enter a room, I’m the one they stare at. I can have any man I want, any way I want, for however long I want,” she said, stopping for a moment to crack her knuckles—an affectation he once found charming, but now found hideous. “I can have most any woman I want, for that matter,” she added, as though it was an unimportant aside, “but men are so much easier to manipulate…I mean, just look at what I did to you even before I got these upgrades?”

He saw that she was very nearly finished breaking through the third layer of his encryption. He guessed she would need no more than three minutes at her current, insane, Ancient-tech-driven pace before she had laid bare the elements of his program.

But just then a chime rang on her console and she stopped her work, sighing and muttering under her breath in a clearly mocking tone, “Time to pay the b-b-b-bills.” She input a few commands to the right-hand console, and an image appeared on the screen behind her as she swiveled her form-fitted chair to face it. “Director, what a pleasant surprise,” she said in Confederation Standard, “I thought you had transferred to the mobile base?”

“Never you m-mind that,” the man, who was an elderly, pale-skinned man with white hair, blotchy skin, and wore a white lab coat, “what is the status of our prisoner?”

“Which one?” she asked with false innocence.

“The only one I c-c-care about,” he replied, his eyebrows lowering as his expression turned to a glare.

“Resting comfortably,” she said, swiveling her chair and gesturing to the cell beside Fei Long’s. “He has barely moved since you increased his dosage two days ago.”

“See that he is not d-disturbed,” the Director instructed, “I will be there shortly.”

“We will await your arrival,” Zhongda said with false deference as she bowed her head in the same fashion which Fei Long often did.

“Have you d-discovered the whereabouts of the other prisoner’s ship?” the Director demanded.

“I am still conducting my interview,” she replied smoothly.

“You had best do so with c-c-celerity,” the Director said coldly, “or I will do it f-for you.”

The communication was severed, and Zhongda whirled back around to face her bank of computers. “Just a few more minutes of uninterrupted access to the mainframe should do it,” she said in their native tongue, sparing a triumphant glance at Fei Long as she continued decoding his most delicate, fragile, and meaningful work of virtual art and war.

If she actually succeeded in discovering the truth of his method, he knew he would have failed utterly against his most potent rival…and the people of the Spineward Sectors would suffer unnecessarily as a result. He could only hope that her recently magnified character flaw would prove instrumental in ensuring that did not happen.

“You look nervous, Long,” she said, sounding like the proverbial cat that got the cream as she cast a pointed glance over her central monitor. “I thought you might enjoy a front row seat to your greatest failure, so I made sure you could see everything in real time as I tear your pitiful code apart line by line.” She sighed as she encountered the final roadblock to decompiling his code: a system he had developed several years earlier and dubbed ‘The Eight Gates.’ “Really, Long? The Eight Gates?” she clucked her tongue in disappointment. “With my new central processor, I’ll tear this paltry defensive program apart in no more than three minutes, and your code will be stored away in my private caches so I may incorporate what little of it is of benefit to me. What little talent you may have once had has clearly atrophied.”

“Not unlike your heart, it would seem,” Fei Long retorted, finding himself wanting to actually shed tears as he saw firsthand just how far she had fallen from what she had once been. Betraying him had merely turned her from his ally to her enemy, and in a way he had come to admire her for having done it. It had taken a measure of courage and ambition he had previously thought her to lack, and during his imprisonment he had silently applauded her for the bold move—which had taken her to the top of their particular circle of cyber criminals on the world of his birth.

But he had never thought she would deface herself as she had done—both physically and psychologically—and it was that defacement of what he had once considered to be a thing of absolute beauty which strained his heart the most.

“You do not have to do this,” he heard himself say, and he realized he genuinely still cared for her. He no longer had romantic feelings for her in any capacity—beyond those which any teenage man might have when viewing the exquisite work of art which her body had become, of course. But he discovered that after weeks spent preparing for this—almost certainly final—confrontation between the two of them, he found he still cared for the fifteen year old girl he had met as a thirteen year old boy.

“It’s too late for you, Long,” she declared as her insanely powerful processor rent asunder his most powerful work of virtual defense. “The laws of nature dictate that the strong must consume the weak,” she added snarkily, throwing a slapdash version of long-held wisdom at him, “and you’re the one behind the bars—again. Observe,” she said, entering the final command with a flourish of her wrist before turning and beholding the execution of the program on the screen mounted behind her, “and let me taste your tears!”

As certainly as a non-tidally-locked planet will rotate around its axis on a regular schedule with only a minimal increase in interval from one rotation to another, Fei Long watched as Zhongda’s program tore the last of his Eight Gates masterpiece apart—a program he had coded as a fourteen year old, not long before his incarceration—and laid bare the source code he had employed during its creation, along with his latest, dormant, modifications.

In a way, it was a thing of beauty to behold. His digital creation, The Eight Gates, had been unassailable in over twenty three million simulations and uncounted actual attacks, but he had apparently granted her inadvertent access to the program’s source code.  As a result she was able to overpower his elegant design using simple, brute force.

Fei Long understood that overwhelming power had a virtue all its own, and he admired the ruthless efficiency her program had displayed in bringing thousands of times the processing power against his virtual construct than it had ever been theorized to withstand. That it held as long as it did was of no small comfort to Fei Long, who had come to hope that his technique had grown stronger with age—a hypothesis which was about to be put to the test.

But he knew he was fast running out of time. If he did not complete his task soon, Vali Funar would break into the base and attempt to recover Doctor Schillinger before setting the bomb and blowing the flimsy hab domes to their constituent atoms with the modified Starfire warhead.

“That concludes this particular demonstration,” Zhongda said as she began to power down her workstations.

Fei Long slumped to the edge of the cot, an expression of absolute defeat plain to see on his face. “You have bested my Eight Gates,” he said distantly.

“Indeed,” she replied as she continued powering down her gear, but then a thought seemed to occur to her. “Although…perhaps you would care to see if you could defeat my version of your rudimentary technique?”

Fei Long blinked once, twice, and then a third time. He could not believe what he was hearing; Sima Yi’s inheritor was actually inviting him to attack her Eight Gates formation. It seemed impossible, unless…

He narrowed his eyes. There were only two satisfactory explanations for her having made the unexpected offer. The first was that she was throwing his own study of the most hallowed story in human history in his face in a coarse, uncharacteristically nostalgic gesture on her part. But the second was even more incredible—incredible in the literal sense of the word.

In that moment, it was as though the universe had aligned itself as he chose to believe the reason for her offer had been the latter, and Fei Long nodded slowly as he said, “I would relish the chance to do so.”

“Well, too bad,” she cackled gleefully, shattering his short-lived faith in the irrepressible symmetry of the universe. “Caged though you may be, you’re still more dangerous than the wildest of animals; there’s no way I’d give you access to anything with more processing power than a pencil.” She withdrew a trio of data crystals from the portable workstations she had just used and shook her head before sighing, “This really was much less entertaining than I thought it would be.”

Fei Long felt himself wilt, but he knew he needed to maintain his composure as his rival unzipped her body glove halfway down her chest, tucked the data crystals between her now more-than-ample breasts, and then zipped up again before snorting haughtily as she fixed her hair with a hairclip.

“What happens now?” Fei Long asked, mindful of the waning time left to him before Lancer Funar would intervene.

“Now,” she replied, turning to face him, “you tell me everything you know about your ship, its capabilities, your crew strength, and anything else that might be of use to Commodore Raubach. If you don’t tell me…” she trailed off pointedly before finishing, “the Director has had ample time to perfect his own methods of interrogation while stationed here. I can assure you that his touch will be far less gentle than mine.”

Fei Long shook his head and met her gaze steadily, “You know I will not betray them. I never betray my friends.”

“That is merely one of your many weaknesses, Long, and one you would do well to abandon if you wish to achieve anything meaningful,” she chided in disappointment. “I don’t suppose a little…physical coercion would change your mind?” She gave him a clearly seductive look and began to run her fingers up the line of the zipper on the front of her body glove.

“It would not,” he replied with a firm shake of his head—a gesture intended as much for himself as for her.

Her hand stopped mid-motion and her mouth formed a perfect little pout. “Oh well; it’s entirely your loss.” She turned to leave and said over her shoulder, “The Director will be here shortly. If you change your mind, I’ll be just two rooms over.” She snickered as she opened the door and added, “Just scream if you have something to say…one way or the other, you’ll be doing it before the day is through.”

She closed the door behind herself and he heard a series of mag-locks engage, followed by the sound of her feet padding down the hallway.

Just as he was about to sit back and take stock of his situation, something unthinkable happened: the bars of his cell slid apart, with half drawing upward and the other half sliding down, until a two foot wide exit appeared.

Just then, the lump in the back of his neck began to throb, but this time his senses did not desert him and the sensation was less painful and more…odd.

“Hurry,” he heard a man’s weak, creaking voice from the next cell say, “we haven’t…much time.”

Stepping warily through the newly-made doorway, he saw that the cell with the formerly white-eyed man was open in the same manner as his own cell was. He saw the man was looking intently at him with his normal-looking, blue eyes, and Fei Long moved into his cell, casting a nervous glance over his shoulder.

“Who are you?” Fei Long asked as he approached.

“Take…my hand,” the man said, barely lifting his shriveled, sickly-looking left hand from the mattress, “we must…hurry!” His words were labored, and his lips were covered in deep, red cracks which Fei Long assumed were from dehydration.

“Who are you?” Fei Long repeated steadily, unwilling to play the fool for this mysterious man.

The man’s eyes seemed to harden as he met Fei Long’s intent look, “Your salvation…but only if you…take my hand…”

The man’s eyes began to flutter, and since the young hacker was only minutes away from what would almost certainly be fatal torture—and more importantly, possibly failing to do his duty to his shipmates, chief among them Lu Bu—Fei Long did the only thing he could reasonably do in that situation:

He took his hand.

The man’s body arched violently, and Fei Long immediately felt as though he was receiving a severe electric shock which wrested control of his muscles away from him and focalized the intense pain in the back of his neck.

The man’s eyes had turned white in the brief instant during which Fei Long had looked away in surprise from the shocking sensation, and after only a few moments of their conjoined agony, the world spun into whiteness.

Chapter XXVI: Every Gift Has Its Price

Fei Long opened his eyes and saw that everything was white. It was akin to a dream sequence in a cheap holo-vid, with an almost deadened sound to the environment and a total lack of character to the endless white surroundings which possessed neither depth, nor substance, nor feature, but somehow it did not lack those qualities either. It was as though there was something surrounding him, but he could not actually see it, hear it, or in any other way experience it, but he grew increasingly convinced that it was indeed there.

He stood to his feet before realizing that there was no floor, or ground, or other firm surface against which to place his feet. Looking down, he realized he did not have feet at all! The disorientation of that particular realization was drowned by his short-lived fascination with how vivid the scene was; he had experienced lifelike dreams in the past, but never anything so nuanced, detailed, and all-encompassing as this.

“Who are you?” he heard a voice demand from behind him, and he turned to see the man from the next cell standing. His body was significantly more vibrant and healthy in appearance than the one Fei Long knew the man in the cell actually possessed, but before he could ponder the significance of the difference the man stepped forward—apparently standing on firm ground as he did so. “You would do well to answer me,” he said, his voice having turned as cold as one of Fei Long’s long-string algorithms.

Fei Long jutted his chin out—realizing as he did so that he very possible did not even have a chin in this strange place—and replied, “I am Fei Long.”

“No,” the man shook his head, “that is but a name—and one which you yourself do not believe in. I say again,” the man stepped forward menacingly, “who are you?”

Fei Long was equally fascinated and annoyed with the inquest, but decided to give the question some thought before replying, “I am Kongming.”

The man’s eyes narrowed and he nodded, as though partially satisfied by this answer. “Why did you—” he began clearly, but his words suddenly turned to static noise as the world began to spin around Fei Long, causing an intense wave of something similar to vertigo to sweep through every fiber of his being. The stream of static continued for a few seconds before cutting out, and when it did the vertigo dissipated almost instantly from Fei Long’s consciousness.

He refocused on the man, and saw that he appeared to have become somehow fainter, or thinner, but his physical dimensions had not changed. At the same time, the endless, featureless white surroundings seemed to have gained some measure of definition, but Fei Long was unable to ascertain anything specific…it simply felt as though a veil was wearing thin between his mind and whatever lay beyond in this strange, some might say ‘magical,’ place.

“We have no time,” the man said, reaching out and taking Fei Long by the collar, “are you of the Dark?”

Fei Long was more surprised to find that he seemed to once again possess a throat, than he was panicked by the choking sensation he felt as the man’s grip tightened around it.

“I know nothing of the Dark,” Fei Long replied truthfully, and the man’s grip tightened.

“Yet you defiled the purity of the Masters’ legacy,” the man growled, “and sought to gain their gifts for yourself—if not for the Dark, then why?!”

“Gifts?” Fei Long gasped, barely able to form the word through the ever-tightening sensation.

“You dare to defile the Masters’ gifts,” the man seethed, drawing Fei Long closer to his now-bared teeth, “and then proclaim ignorance of their boons? The mark is plain upon your flesh!”

Fei Long felt his neck burn painfully enough to make his want to scream, but his throat was too constricted. He tried to speak but found he was unable to do so, and just before he was certain he would lose consciousness the world fell into static once again.

He gasped for air—even though his logical mind had deduced that his body and therefore his lungs were not physically present in this place—and saw that the man’s appearance had faded even more. Inversely, the previously indistinguishable whiteness around him had now darkened just enough that he could see writhing shapes and indistinct movements on the other side of the aforementioned veil. He found his curiosity getting the better of him, and he took a trio of steps toward one such writhing motion before the man’s breathless voice said, “Stop!”

Broken from the momentary fascination which had drawn him near to the shape, Fei Long turned and saw the man stagger to his knees.

“You are not of the Dark,” the man said, “but neither are you one of the Initiated.”

“No,” Fei Long agreed, stepping away from the writhing shape which had previously held his mind enthralled with wonderment, “I am neither Dark nor Initiated.”

“Then what brings you to this sacred place?” he asked, a note of genuine curiosity in his increasingly strained voice.

Fei Long stopped and thought about that question, and it seemed as though time stood still as he did so before he finally replied, “I came here to help.”

The man scoffed softly as he shook his head, “A noble, if infantile purpose.”

“Where are we?” Fei Long asked, risking a glance over his shoulder toward the dark, shifting shapes lying just beyond his ability to comprehend.

“There is no name for it,” the man replied, shaking his head as though the question were immaterial, “it was created by the Masters, that we might better serve them. But they are nearly all gone from our realm…”

“Do you mean the Ancients?” Fei Long asked, his curiosity well-and-truly piqued.

“A crude word…” the man replied, drawing deep, measured breaths. As he did so, Fei Long realized that the whiteness surrounding them seemed to brighten and fade in rhythm with those breaths. “They sought to free all life from the bondage of the unnatural, and in doing so attained perfection for themselves.” The man’s gaze wavered, as a man’s might do when first awakening from unconsciousness, before once again fixing on Fei Long, “You spoke the poison which she now commands.”

It was more of a statement than a question—and a barely comprehensible one, at that—but Fei Long felt as though the strange man was somehow curious about some part of his own query.

“The poison?” Fei Long repeated finally, unable to ascertain his true meaning. “I do not understand…”

Between them sprang into existence a virtual model of the screen in front of which Zhongda had sat, and a replay of her program’s dismantling of one of his most prized creations commenced. Several portions of his code seemed to become highlighted, and they were extracted from the virtual screen before being assembled in some strange, yet oddly familiar, arrangement.

“The poison,” the man repeated, gesturing to the string of code fragments as he began to wince in pain, “it is only a…fragment…but did you truly speak it? Or did you merely…find it, as she did?”

He realized the man was referring to his code—and that he had called in ‘poison’ was more than slightly alarming—and he nodded quickly, “Yes…I, err, spoke it. I have never seen these strings of code before I ‘spoke’ them, and they are present in many of my constructs.”

The man nodded slowly, “Then there may yet be hope…for, if your mind can conceive of even a fraction of the Elder’s language…there may yet be time to save the Masters’ legacy…and preserve their…design…”

“The Elders?” Fei Long repeated in abject shock. “What does my code have to do with the Elders?!”

“There is no time,” the man said, and the squirming—somehow menacing looking—shapes just beyond his consciousness began to move quickly and in a coordinated, predatory manner, “it has begun.”

“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 risk 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 said, 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.”

She narrowed her eyes, and when she spoke she was unable to keep the surprise from her voice, “You are actually serious…”

“I am,” Fei Long replied with a nod, knowing nothing he had ever said could have been truer. All he cared about was safeguarding Lu Bu’s life. But he also knew that if what he had seen in the probability string had been accurate, there was no chance he would have to deliver what he had just promised.

She bit her lip—an affectation he had found hypnotic years earlier, but now found annoying since it was costing him, and his plan, precious time—and shook her head doubtfully, “The Director can get that from you…and I’m not sure I trust you enough—”

“Is this not precisely what you want, Zhongda,” he said seriously, knowing he was out of time and would need to appeal to her most basic, selfish nature, “to be recognized as the greatest of our , or any other, time? This is your only path to that end.”

She considered for a moment before nodding, having apparently arrived at a decision, “Fine. If I win, you give me all of that—along with your word that you will be my second. You will work when I tell you to work, eat when I tell you to eat, sleep when I tell you to sleep, and submit yourself to me in all other ways.”

There was something decidedly lascivious in her expression at that moment, but Fei Long knew time was against him and he could ill afford further delays. “Yes.  If you win, I will do so,” he said truthfully.

“And what do you get if you win?” she asked in an almost rhetorical tone. “And don’t say ‘my freedom,’ because that’s the one thing I can’t give you.”

“I care not for my own freedom,” he said as the pain at the base of his skull continued to grow, causing him to clench his teeth briefly before continuing, “but if I win, you will submit yourself to me and obey my commands for one day—starting immediately after our contest is concluded. After that, you will owe me nothing and I will let you live to pursue your own designs. Agreed?”

“One day as your personal slave?” she said incredulously. “I know I’m hot, but I didn’t know you wanted me that bad—“

“Do we have an agreement?” he demanded, cutting her off as his impatience grew.

She cocked her head and gave him a wary look before nodding, “Yes, we do—so long as you also give me whatever information you have on your warship and its capabilities before the Director arrives.”

“Good,” he said, tilting his head toward the workstations, “my challenge is this: finish decompiling the code you just processed and copied to those data crystals—and do it here where I can see it take place.”

“That’s it?” she reared back in surprise. “That’s your challenge?”

“It is,” he said gravely, “because I happen to know you missed a crucial step.” It was true; he had seen her overlook a particular bit of code—an oversight she would have certainly corrected on her own in the ensuing minutes, or possibly hours, but that was time he simply did not have. “If you cannot find that step and complete it in six minutes, I have won,” he said, sitting down on the cot as he suddenly felt dizzy.

“Fine,” she said, “but the clock doesn’t start until my system’s booted up.”

“As you say,” Fei Long agreed, “but only if you begin immediately.”

A mischievous grin played across her lips and she moved to activate the trio of workstations before seating herself in the chair set before them. “You always were a sucker, Long,” she said as she called up her version of his decompiling program and set a six minute countdown clock on the screen behind her, “I left that fragment alone on purpose just to bait you into something like this. You really have lost your edge,” she clucked as she called up the precise portion of code he had seen her miss, and she set her program to work on it.

Fei Long did his best to keep a neutral expression, but between the gravity of the situation and the increasing pain in the base of his skull, he was having difficulty doing so. But he focused on his breathing as his rival quickly, efficiently, and somehow ruthlessly decompiled the portion of code which remained.

“There,” she declared triumphantly, “it’s done.” She turned around pointedly and saw the timer had stopped with four minutes and thirty two seconds remaining.

“Are you certain?” he asked, hoping against hope that she had not modified the architecture of his decompiling program when it came to the CPU’s runtime overclocking mechanisms. It was one of those details which she had previously been known to overlook in favor of the larger, grander machinations.

“Of course I am—“ she began haughtily before something on one of her screens caught her eye. “Clever,” she said, tapping a key which saw the countdown clock restart behind her, “very clever, Long…tying your auto-deletion protocols to the overclocker.  But you didn’t anticipate my having this much processing power at my disposal.” Her fingers danced lightly, but mercilessly, across the three input pads as she worked against his booby trap.  Fei Long prayed they had enough time for the contest to conclude on its own terms before the Director made his entry.

With a series of impressively coordinated maneuvers, Zhongda rerouted massive amounts of processing power to the task of creating a sub-network which would run parallel to the one which had been infected with Fei Long’s deletion program. Using that network, she was able to corral the infected portion of the processor and execute a series of data-scrubbing programs which attacked Fei Long’s rapidly-growing auto-deletion protocols—protocols which, given the nature of her massive, cross-linked mainframe of processors all slaved together, would destroy every bit of data stored in the base’s archives.

“Really, Long,” she said, feigning bitter disappointment as the clock wound down to two minutes remaining, “I expected better.” Thirty seconds later, her second network had neutralized his auto-deletion protocols and segregated his three distinct virtual creations—which formed the Yin & Yang program when they were properly recombined—into thousands of tiny, presumably denatured fragments which would do no harm to anything.

He watched with bated breath as the last of his conventional defenses were overcome by her overpowered network, and hung his head between his knees in the universal gesture of defeat. He grasped his hair with his fingers and began to tremble, knowing that so much was yet to be done in order to preserve Lu Bu’s life, and now he was utterly at the mercy of his greatest rival and nemesis. If she had indeed successfully neutralized his program, then he had failed utterly in his stated goal.

“I think I’ll delete this,” she said after a moment’s consideration, “I’ve already got the whole thing copied down to the data crystals, anyway, and we wouldn’t want the Director to find out about this now would we…my sworn life-slave?”

His voice nearly caught in his throat—both from the stress of the situation and from the pain in his skull—as he said, “Do as you think best.” The probability string had been perfectly clear: she would not win! But he could not help to wonder whether or not he had made a mistake…

“I will,” she said, and he looked up just in time to see her finger hit the ‘delete’ icon on her central workstation.

The screen behind her showed a progress bar as the overpowered sub-network mercilessly tore at the constituent parts of his most prized, valuable, and important work. Within just a few seconds, the database read as empty, and Fei Long sighed loudly as he felt the weight of the world come crashing down on his shoulders.

Fei Long stood and grasped the bars for support as he felt his knees go wobbly beneath him. As he stood there, his vision blacked out—or, rather, it whited out. He saw thousands of strings pouring forward from where he stood, and everywhere he looked he saw more of those strings. As he watched, he saw the strings converge into dark, menacing shapes, and he knew they were the same shapes he had almost glimpsed during the strange, virtual conversation with his neighboring prisoner.

The thought of that mysterious man pulled him back to the present, and he looked up to see that almost no time had elapsed during his brief whiteout.

“The Director has just entered the landing station,” Zhongda said as she finished putting the virtual network back into its original configuration, likely to avoid repercussions from this so-called Director, “so you had better give me everything you have, starting with all tactical data on your ship and their plans for attacking this base.”

Fei Long released a long-held breath, and as he did so he felt the corner of his mouth quirk up in a smirk. “I think not, Zhongda,” he said, tilting his head toward the screen behind her which had just flickered in a fashion which he had predicted might happen, “because it is you, not I, who has lost today.”

She scowled, “If you’re going back on your word…“ Something on her right-hand monitor caught her attention. Just as she went to address it there was a series of alarms from the cell in which the mysterious man was lying. Her attention divided, she gave a sharp look in Fei Long’s look as she moved to the cell filled with the medical equipment. The alarms clearly indicated a pending emergency—an emergency which had come to be at Fei Long’s hand—and her eyes went wide as she fumbled to activate her wrist-mounted com-link. “Medical emergency in the prison,” she said unsteadily as she ran back to her workstations, “all available medical personnel to the prison!”

She began to work furiously, standing over the trio of workstations rather than opting for the chair, but Fei Long knew it was already done. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, he watched as his program—which had buffered the necessary code fragments in the system’s secondary and tertiary caches, from where they could never be removed without physical replacement of the equipment itself—reassembled itself and slowly, but surely, acquired more and more of her virtual resources for itself.

“How…how?!” she screamed as the door opened to the prison and a pair of personnel entered, moving quickly to cross the space between themselves and the dying prisoner’s cell. She looked up at Fei Long with a mixture of fear and hatred in her eyes, as behind her the screen showed the ancient Taoist symbol of eternity, balance, and harmony: the inextricably partnered Yin & Yang. “A program can only execute outward from the base Yin & Yang alignment—nothing can move back into Yin & Yang, let alone move outward again. It is impossible…a tree does not grow into a seed and then back to a tree!”

Her words were like music to Fei Long’s ears; a melody for which the first strings had been plucked by his fingers before boarding the Lost Ark and embarking on this most dangerous, vital mission. Lu Bu’s words echoed in his ears, as she had declared in no uncertain terms that his salvation would lie with the Yin and the Yang, and now he knew that he had been blessed to share what little time he had shared with her. She was truly an exceptional individual, and he would miss her most of all—but he still had a duty to do for her, and he would not fail in it!

“It is done, Zhongda,” he said in their native tongue as the Director appeared at the doorway, “we have a bargain, do we not?”

As he watched, the Yin & Yang program reached its first level of attainment and executed its first command: a total deletion of all data stored on the base’s hardware. The program would require at least twelve minutes to finish the task, but he needed to get to a workstation before half that much time elapsed or there would be no hope to save Lu Bu.

“How,” she snapped, and the medical personnel entered the cell to work on the dying prisoner, “how did you do it?!”

“I will tell you,” he replied, “but you must do as we agreed.”

“What is g-g-going on here?” the Director demanded, moving into the room with ever-widening eyes as he first saw the dying prisoner, then Fei Long’s program systematically deleting their stores of data. “Stop that at once!” he screamed at Zhongda.

She bit her lip, shooting Fei Long a sharp look before giving him a barely perceptible nod. “I caught this operative attempting to introduce a subversive program into our mainframe,” she explained tightly as a pair of armed guards—the same ones which had apprehended Fei Long earlier—moved into the room. “My defenses were breached, but I can still save the files if I physically disconnect the storage modules from the processors. We can worry about reinitializing the system later.”

“G-g-g-g-go!” he cried, gesturing for the two guardsmen to approach Fei Long’s cell. Zhongda looked back at Fei Long, hesitating briefly before moving to the door of the room and leaving.

Fei Long knew as well as she did that there was absolutely no way that disconnecting the storage modules would stop his Yin & Yang attack. His program had already spread to each of the individual units’ checksum algorithms; disconnecting the equipment would only slow the data degradation by about fifty percent. Had she segregated her network physically, he would have been unable to overtake the entire system before she could have limited his damage, and access, to a mere fraction of the whole network. But her greed had played against her, just as he had hoped it would.

The Director approached Fei Long’s cell, and as he did so Fei Long experienced yet another whiteout. The dark, writhing shapes and masses of imagery strings were now plain to see, and he felt a sharp increase in the pain at the base of his skull. The mess of imagery threatened to overwhelm him as it crashed down on his consciousness like a thousand foot tall wall of water. He fought against the oppressive sensation and managed to regain some measure of control over the imagery as he forced it behind the exceedingly thin veil of whiteness. As he did so, he somehow knew that another two whiteouts—or three, at the most—would be all he could endure if he did not find some way to cope with their sanity-straining effects.

He had to find a way to stave off the mass of tangled strings, and keep them from overwhelming him until he had completed what he had come to do—two or three more whiteouts, at five minute intervals, would be nowhere near enough. For what seemed like an eternity, he despaired as he could conceive of no way to do as he needed to do.

A loud, monotonous sound seemed to pierce through his skull on all sides, and he was vaguely aware that it was the life monitoring equipment attached to his fellow prisoner. The mysterious man was moments from death—Fei Long knew this was true, but he did not know how he knew it—and soon he would join the Ancestors as another in the long chain of stories, some untold by antiquity and others as famous as Romance of the Three Kingdoms—

The thought of that book snapped his mind into focus, and in yet another moment of crystal clarity he saw the path to Lu Bu’s salvation. As quickly as it had appeared, as a single string in an endless ocean of jumbled strings, it disappeared into the writhing mass of its jealous fellows. The nearby strings seemed not to want Fei Long to find the one he sought again, as the mass surged and roiled in a sickening, yet fascinating display of string folding upon string.

Then the whiteout ended and Fei Long stood face-to-face with the Director. The pain in Fei Long’s skull continued to grow, and it was all he could do not to reach back with his bare hands and try to rip the skin from his neck in some clearly insane attempt to relieve the throbbing pressure.

“Who are y-y-you?” the Director demanded, and Fei Long noticed that the guardsmen had blaster pistols out and held at their sides.

“I am Kongming,” Fei Long replied, knowing after his conversation with the dying prisoner that it was the truest answer he could provide—but he also knew that very soon he would have no right to claim the legacy of Zhuge Liang.

“Where is your sh-ship?” the elderly man asked impatiently.

“I do not know,” Fei Long replied calmly, vaguely aware that help was about to fall from the sky before the men could fulfill their master’s next order.

“Then you are worth n-n-nothing to me,” the Director snapped, gesturing with a flick of his wrist to the guards flanking him.

The men drew their pistols up and made to train them on Fei Long, but before they could bring him into their sights a pair of bolts slammed into them, one before the other, and sent them crashing to the floor with burning holes in their chests. One of their weapons discharged into the floor, and the other discharged into the wall behind Fei Long.

The second discharge sent a spray of metal fragments outward as it exploded against the back wall of the makeshift prison. Several of those fragments went flying outward, and the sound of escaping atmosphere began to hiss throughout the room.

Before anyone—including Fei Long—could react, Lancer Vali Funar fell to the floor with a blaster pistol in each hand. He dropped one and grabbed the Director from behind with an arm across the throat. He turned the white-coated man to face the medical team which had just stopped working on their patient, and aimed his pistol at the Director’s head as he did so. “Anyone who wants to breathe five minutes from now had better hit the deck,” Funar barked, looking like a warrior of legend in his Storm Drake armor with his fearsome dragon-styled helmet baring its metal teeth for all to see.

The medical team members looked at each other as they lowered to the floor, lacing their fingers behind their heads as Vali Funar deftly produced a zip-tie from his belt and wrenched the Director’s arms behind his back. After binding the Director’s hands at the wrists, Funar looked at the bars standing between Fei Long and freedom.

“Stand back, Fei,” Funar said and Fei Long obliged as much as he was able, given the cramped quarters. The Lancer fired a pair of shots at the base of one bar, then a pair of shots at the top of the one beside it, and then kicked the two in while still managing to control the Director with his free hand.

Fei Long squeezed through the gap and made for the mobile workstations Zhongda had used, stooping to collect one of the fallen guards’ blaster pistols as he made his way to the trio of workstations Zhongda had previously used.

“We’ve got to get out of here, Fei,” Funar said sharply, dragging the Director—who was pale as a ghost and totally silent following the Lancer’s impressive entry, “there’s no time for mucking around in their system.”

“I must send a communiqué,” Fei Long said as he entered the proper access codes which would allow him to take direct control over his system. Even if Zhongda had betrayed him, there was nothing she could do to interrupt him as he scoured the databases for information. At first he was uncertain what he needed to look for, and his anxiety grew with each passing second as the pain in his skull intensified.

“We’re blowing this place, Fei,” Funar said gruffly, grabbing him by the arm and trying to yank him from the chair. But Fei Long had anticipated the other man would do so, and he managed to slide his arm free of the Lancer’s powerful grip by using perfect timing and letting his limb go limp.

“Not yet, Lancer Funar,” Fei Long said, giving the man a level look before sparing a glance at the flat-lined medical monitoring equipment in the prisoner’s cell. “My program has taken complete control,” he said, tilting his head toward the screen behind himself which showed the Yin & Yang symbol and a string of rapidly-executing commands beneath it, “I must retrieve mission-vital information or this operation will fail—and everyone who is depending on us will die.”

The conviction with which he made that last statement seemed to take Funar by surprise. The Lancer gave him a dubious look before glancing into the dead prisoner’s cell, “Who was that?”

Without thinking, Fei Long replied, “A Seer.” He stopped and thought about what he had just said. Somehow he knew it was true, yet he had no idea how he knew it. “But he is gone now.”

“W-w-who are you people?” the Director stammered, looking between the frighteningly-clad Lancer and Fei Long.

“If you’re lucky, we’re just the beginning of a very, very bad day for you,” Funar quipped, cuffing the man on the back of the head. “Now shut up and keep still,” he commanded, forcing the elderly man to his knees before going to the cell with the dead Seer and restraining the medical duo’s hands with zip ties. “We—or rather you—are going to run out of air in another three minutes, Fei,” Funar said, “so whatever you’re going to do, do it fast.”

Fei Long strained to think about what it was he needed to find. He had caught a glimpse of it during the last whiteout, but it had flitted out of his mind before he could focus on it and maintain that focus. Knowing he would need to enter another whiteout, but being uncertain how to initiate one, he drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. He tried to find his center, the place he went whenever he tried to unravel a particularly challenging riddle, or solve an overly difficult problem, but his thoughts were jumbled and disorganized.

“Domains under heaven, after a long period of division, tend to unite; after a long period of union, tend to divide. This has been so since antiquity…” he muttered under his breath, reciting the beginning of the most important literary work in human history.

“Fei!” Funar snapped, literally snapping his fingers in front of Fei Long’s face. “Snap out of it!”

Fei Long was about to retort harshly, but the world around him was replaced with the menacing shapes of writhing image strings—called probability strings by the Seer, Fei Long now recalled, realizing that was indeed what he now beheld—but this time before they could become chaotic and disobedient, he commanded them to assume structure.

“…the Supreme Ancestor slew a white serpent…” he heard his voice say briefly before it was washed out by the howling sounds of the probability strings as they struggled against his imposed will. But he succeeded in bringing them to heel, and soon he found the string he needed. Events moved both forward and backward along the string at first, but he managed to wrest total control over them and found what he needed in order to complete his work in the base’s databanks.

Snapping out of the dreamlike state—a state which was quickly becoming more like a nightmare than a dream—Fei Long input the queries for the information he needed and found everything was still within the databanks.

Seconds turned into minutes, but he managed to download the information he needed to a safe buffer area within his program. The first piece of information was the Raubach access code to their own implanted hardware on the ComStat network—a network for which the local hub had been deactivated by Captain Middleton at the outset of the battle at The Bulwark. All he needed to do was reboot that particular hub remotely via his previously implanted program and he would be able to issue a communication to Lieutenant McKnight aboard a vessel called…

“The Slice of Life,” Fei Long declared under his breath, pulling up that particular ship’s comm. codes after setting the reboot cycle to initiate on the local ComStat hub—a process which would take forty one seconds. As his program found and retrieved that information, he set it to work finding the second piece: the Commodore’s Fleet-level command codes. Normally it would be impossible for even a great hacker to find this information under such time constraints, since sensitive data of its sort was heavily guarded and often recorded in fragmentary fashion.

But Fei Long was not a great hacker—he was a grandmaster who had just soundly defeated his chief rival. By allowing Fei Long’s program into the mainframe, Zhongda had given him complete, unfettered access to all of the raw data stored in the base’s banks. Fortunately he was able to exclude extraneous data—like the scientific discoveries made on this planetoid, for instance—and quickly isolated the command codes. They had been used for sending a series of coordinates to the Rim Fleet warships—coordinates which would be used for an eventual rendezvous, no doubt, and that rendezvous was one of several enemy plans which Fei Long intended to interrupt.

He knew he could not change the freighter’s jump destination, but he also knew that he could find their destination via wireless uplink with that vessel if it was not yet out of range of the base’s transmitter array. Testing the connection, he found that it was weak but present. He opened the connection and used simple, brute force powered by the base’s robust, Ancient tech-enhanced mainframe. He normally would have eschewed that particular approach, preferring elegance to brawn in all things. But time was of the essence, and after just a few seconds he managed to retrieve the information he needed from the freighter’s navi-computer: the destination for their first point transfer.

Taking that information and hastily scrambling traces of his activity in the freighter’s computer, he barely completed the task before the connection was severed on the other end via hard disconnect of the freighter’s comm. transceiver.

The ComStat hub reboot cycle completed, and Fei Long immediately shut off the Pride’s access to it, at least temporarily. He could not allow anyone to interrupt his communiqué with Lieutenant McKnight; if he did, Lu Bu would die and Commodore Raubach would escape with the freighter full of Ancient technology.

The former was all that concerned Fei Long, but the Seer had been more focused on preventing the latter. So Fei Long prepared himself for what was to be the pivotal moment of this particular probability string. He looked over at Funar and felt a pang of regret. “Take the prisoners, Lancer Funar,” he said, feeling his breathing becoming more labored as the atmosphere slowly leaked from the module. “I will follow soon.”

“No dice, Fei,” Funar growled, “hurry your ass up or I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here.”

Fei Long knew what needed to be done, but he still disliked the notion of doing it. The base’s ultra-powerful computer system finished with the calculations he had put to it after finding the freighter’s destination in its navi-computer, and the result was a long string of data which the Slice of Life could use to jump to that same location. “Where are Hansheng and Trixie?” he asked as he sent a hail via the ComStat network to Lieutenant McKnight.

“You worry about your job and let me worry about mine,” Funar barked.

McKnight accepted the incoming hail, and her face appeared on the monitor before him. “Mr. Fei?” she asked warily.

“There is no time for pleasantries,” Fei Long said quickly, and Vali Funar cocked his head in surprise at hearing McKnight’s voice, “you must upload the following information directly to your navi-computer; your previous mission has been changed. I say again,” he repeated as the screen wavered with static, “upload the following coordinates and jump solution directly to your navi-computer.”

“Fei…” Funar said, and Fei Long managed to hit the mute button before the Lancer could speak. Standing on the opposite side of the monitors from Fei Long, the Lancer began to move around the bank of workstations with the Director in tow, “have you received new orders from Captain Middleton?”

“Have you received the transmission, Lieutenant?” Fei Long asked, cutting the audio pickup as soon as he had finished speaking to ensure that McKnight could not hear Vali Vunar’s voice. He felt sick to his stomach as he did so, but he knew it was the only way Lu Bu would survive.

McKnight looked down off-screen and nodded, “We’ve got it, but how did you—“

“Fei,” Funar said severely, “answer me: did we receive new orders from Captain Middleton?!”

“Upload the solution, Lieutenant,” Fei Long said, his eyes briefly flicking to Vali Funar—whose hand was already on the butt of his holstered blaster pistol—and the world fell into whiteness once again.

This time, Fei Long was determined to find even a single scenario which would save Lu Bu and spare Lancer Funar’s life. Aside from the occasional spat over operational authority, Fei Long had never held the Lancer in low regard, and he detested the idea of killing him even though he felt increasingly certain that his death was indeed required to save Lu Bu’s life.

He forcibly laid the probability strings apart and examined them, one by one, as he attempted to find a single string which contained Vali Funar’s and Lu Bu’s survival. No other factors were important to Fei Long; all he cared about was finding a single string which would allow him to do both of those things.

But string after string revealed that the two were mutually exclusive. Every course of action Fei Long might take which resulted in Vali Funar’s survival ultimately ended with Lu Bu’s death aboard the freighter. Conversely, every string which resulted in Lu Bu’s survival—represented by only a handful of strings, compared to the relative plethora of lines which saw her counterpart survive—saw Vali Funar die in the next three seconds of Fei Long’s life. If Vali Funar survived even one more second beyond that threshold, Lu Bu would die—along with the rest of her team when their hidden Starfire warhead went off.

Though that sequence of events would still mean the end of the freighter, as well as Commodore Raubach, Fei Long simply could not allow that to happen.

The whiteout ended abruptly, the world snapped back into focus. “I am sorry,” he whispered after muting the audio pick-up, and without another thought Fei Long took up the fallen guard’s blaster pistol from the workstation’s tabletop and shot Vali Funar through his helmet’s still-raised visor.

The last expression the Pride’s valiant, honorable, and capable Lancer made was one of shock—but his pistol made it out of its holster and went off at Fei Long’s feet, narrowly missing his leg while destroying the right-hand workstation by skewering it with the bolt of powerful energy.

“What’s going on there?” McKnight demanded, growing concern evident in her voice. “Why can’t I raise the Pride?”

“Your communications have been blocked,” he said half-truthfully. The channels had been temporarily blocked, but by his hand.  He had used Commodore Raubach’s command codes to remotely suspend the Slice of Life’s short range communications by overloading the ship’s comm. buffer with looping data fragments sent by his own connection. “I was only able to briefly open connections with yourself and Captain Middleton. I cannot hold remain here any longer, however,” Fei Long lied, knowing full well that McKnight had seen him stand and fire the blaster pistol off-screen at a target she could thankfully not see. “Make the jump I have calculated for you, Lieutenant McKnight, and do so immediately. If you wait even a few seconds, it will be too late to input the new solution!”

“Ok,” McKnight said after a brief pause, and Fei Long felt genuinely sick to his stomach—not for killing Vali Funar, but for betraying the trust which both the dead Lancer and Lieutenant McKnight had clearly placed in him. Death was a simple fact of life for professional warriors, and there were myriad ways in which Fei Long could convince himself that Vali Funar would understand dying in the line of service—even tor friendly fire. But there was simply no way that Fei Long could ratify his betrayal of these people; it was the act of a low, cowardly, and evil person, and he knew he would suffer for his actions this day. “The old solution’s been scrapped and we’re set to jump to your new coordinates in two minutes…I just hope the navi-comp’s able to incorporate the data in time.”

“It will,” he breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that now there was no way for the Slice of Life to undo their new jump coordinates in time. The ship had already passed its hyper drive’s PNR, and any further tampering would result in the ship’s total destruction when it attempted to point transfer without a valid solution in the navi-computer. “Good luck, Lieutenant. There will be a freighter arriving at your new destination in approximately thirty minutes; you must be prepared to board her, for that is where Lu Bu’s squad is located,” he explained. “Commodore Raubach is aboard that ship, along with technology which must not fall into enemy hands,” he said seriously before adding, “if you see Lu Bu, tell her…”

He realized that he had no right to give any message to Lu Bu, or anyone else who had previously called him their friend. He had just violated every facet of trust which could exist between shipmates, and he knew he would pay a price for his betrayal.

But he would not pay it yet.

“Repeat your last?” McKnight said, but Fei Long cut the connection before he could reply. He manually blocked the Slice of Life’s ComStat token, cutting the ship off from the FTL comm. network, and opened a channel to Captain Middleton.

The pain in the back of his skull had become excruciating, and he saw the Director reach into his pocket for something. With his vision blacking out instead of whiting out this time, he aimed the pistol at the Director and fired, knowing that the old scientist’s death was also integral to the completion of his plan.

The only difference was that the Director’s death had nothing to do with Lu Bu’s survival; Fei Long had promised the Seer to prevent the Ancient tech from falling into enemy hands, and the Director had to die for that to be assured.

He barely even took note of the ruination which the blaster pistol made of the Director’s head as he put the pistol beside the scientist’s hand, giving the far-too-thin illusion of a shootout between the Director and Lancer Funar. That done, he sat back down in the chair clutching his temples just as the door opened and Trixie—still wearing her pressure suit—stepped through.

Her eyes went wide when she saw the carnage of the two dead men, one on either side of the workstation, and when they found Fei Long’s he was barely able to maintain focus through the intense pain in his head.

“Long?” she whispered tremulously. “Are you ok?”

He saw movement on the wall beside her and reflexively moved for the blaster pistol on the floor before realizing that what he was seeing were the gnawing, thrashing, writhing forms of the probability strings in his normal vision.

“We have to hurry,” he said, staggering to his feet, “where is Hansheng?” He knew that he needed to communicate with Captain Middleton, but it appeared that would have to wait. He could not let Trixie stand over the scene for too long, since she was fairly intelligent and would eventually realize that the probability of the two men shooting each other in the head with blaster pistols, at point blank range, was extremely unlikely.

Almost as unlikely as Lancer Funar’s faceplate being down when such an event was even remotely possible.

“He…well, we,” she amended, looking down sadly at the fallen Lancer, “were going to use their shuttle to get out of here. Ed’s taken out their soldiers and has the shuttle pilot pinned down at the landing pad.”

“The shuttle is no good,” Fei Long said, shaking his head as much in negation as in a vain attempt to rid himself of the throbbing pain which threatened to overcome his senses. “But there is another way from this place,” he said, staggering toward her and barely reaching her side as he grasped for her to support him where he stood, “we must find Hansheng…he is important…”

And with that, the world spun into darkness.

Chapter XXVIII: A Rude Surprise

“He did what?!” Middleton snapped, leaping to his feet and nearly falling to the deck as he did so. He had been working on the repairs with Garibaldi’s people when his com-link had connected him with an urgent incoming transmission from McKnight.

“Mr. Fei said he was acting on your orders, sir,” McKnight said, clearly taken aback by the revelation that he, in fact, had not been doing so.

“He most certainly was not,” Middleton growled as the Slice’s time-to-jump clock wound down to thirty seconds remaining. He had no idea what Fei Long’s game was, but at this point he could do nothing about it. Even though the Slice still had a viable jump solution in her databanks that would take it to the enemy’s base system, it would take over a minute to upload it into the ship’s navi-comp and make the proper adjustments. “It doesn’t matter,” Middleton said with a chop of his hand, “if the Commodore really is there, then your top priority is apprehending him—alive—and returning him to base HQ along with whatever hardware you find. If not alive,” he added with a dark, pointed look, “then for the sake of your command and everyone under it, you’d better bring what’s left of him back to Fleet HQ in a body bag.”

McKnight’s face was beet red, but more than embarrassed she appeared to be angry at allowing herself to be deceived by Mr. Fei’s apparently convincing act. “I’m sorry, Captain,” she said, “I shouldn’t have—“

“Good hunting, Lieutenant,” Middleton cut in harshly before adding more evenly, “frankly, if the Commodore really is there, this is the right call anyway.”

Before she could reply, the connection was severed as the Slice of Life point transferred out of the system.

Middleton slumped to the deck, waving off a nearby technician who had been working on a workaround which would connect the port Artemis laser bank to the bridge’s fire control terminal. The DI usually handled such connections, making them as needed during combat maneuvers, but there was a high degree of probability that the Pride’s DI would not remain operational after the opening exchanges of the coming fight.

Of course, given the condition of his aged warship, Middleton knew it was unlikely that the coming fight consisted of much more than a few opening exchanges. But he also knew that his was now the only vessel which could do anything about stopping the Raubach-led Rim Fleet forces at the system where his ship would jump in another two hours.

“Everything all right, Cap?” Garibaldi asked, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.

“Looks like we’re on our own for this next leg, Mikey,” Middleton said, standing to his feet and straightening his uniform. If he was going to charge headlong into the enemy with nothing but the battered hulk of an outdated warship, manned by less than a skeleton crew, he was going to do it with some small measure of dignity.

Garibaldi snickered and slapped a high-powered soldering torch into the Captain’s hand. “So what else is new?” he asked playfully.

Middleton shook his head, as his friend’s buoyant attitude failed to lift his spirits in the slightest, “We’re all we’ve got, Chief.”

Garibaldi shrugged, “We’re all we need.”

Lu Bu padded softly down the corridor of the massive, labyrinthine freighter’s interior, following the directions she had crafted with Hutch’s and Traian’s assistance. The other Lancers were moving roughly parallel to her position, as each of the trio had taken different paths which would converge on the entry point of the colossal vessel’s bridge.

She was at least three minutes out from that destination, and thus far she had only observed two pairs of crewmen. The first she had evaded by ducking into a maintenance locker, but the second pair had been too close and she had rendered them unconscious with unarmed strikes. It had taken only three attempted strikes—two kicks and a vicious uppercut sandwiched between them—to put the two down before they could even react to her presence. She had bound, gagged, and stowed them in an apparently unoccupied crew’s berth before continuing on her way to the bridge.

She had expected more resistance, and wondered if perhaps Hutch and Traian had encountered such along the way, but even if they had encountered such resistance there had been no general alarm of which she was aware.

As she pressed forward, moving as silently as her armor would allow—which was remarkably silent as far as she was concerned—she came to the tube which went to the bridge of the massive craft.

It was the only tube of its kind, and there was a pair of guards posted outside of it—armed and armored guards, sporting Imperial-style power armor of a similar design to that which Captain Raubach had worn aboard the Droid Corvette during the second of her back-to-back suicide missions. Ducking her head back behind the corner of the junction where she stood, she reached to her belt for an ion grenade and allowed her thumb to hover over the activation button.

Without warning, but finding herself appropriately prepared for the occurrence, the ship lurched with modest force as the thrum of the massive vessel’s engines could be felt increasing through the deck plates.

A moment later, the ship lurched once again—this time less severely—and the thrum of the engines slowly died down until Lu Bu could only barely detect their vibration through the freighter’s decking.

Knowing the ship had just point transferred, Lu Bu removed another ion grenade from her belt—fully half of her complement of such devices, with another pair of plasma grenades hanging there beside a pair of sonic grenades, bringing her total grenade count to eight—and gripped it in her right hand.

The operation was to commence in no more than twenty seconds’ time, and she glanced to a nearby junction to see if Hutch had indeed arrived where, and when, he was supposed to. She saw no sign of him, but she knew that if he had already sighted the enemy Marines then he would be keeping his head down until their synchronized HUD timers wound down to zero. They had gone over the plan in painstaking detail, and the first step was to neutralize the guards at the base of the only route onto, or off of, the freighter’s bridge.

She was taking a large gamble that Commodore Raubach was indeed located on the bridge, but it was the only gamble she could make. She knew that Yide, who had remained behind in the cargo hold, was even more sensitive to the ultralow frequencies generated by a ship’s hyper drive, and he had been charged with manually activating the Starfire warhead before making his way safely to their position.

It would take him eight minutes to do so, assuming he ran—or loped, whichever was faster—the entire way and encountered no resistance. But those eight minutes would decide the siege of the bridge, one way or another, and if they failed to take the bridge then Yide was to remain hidden aboard the freighter and do whatever he felt would hinder the enemy with maximum effect until he was discovered and neutralized.

It was a grim fate, but he had done his namesake proud by accepting the responsibility unflinchingly, and Lu Bu felt supremely honored to have served alongside each of these men, and she felt privileged to be called their leader.

The counter ticked down to zero, and without awaiting a signal from her teammates, Lu Bu leapt across the intersection where she had remained concealed and hurled her ion grenades in perfectly parallel arcs toward the enemy Marines.

Amazingly, the right-hand Marine brought his left arm up and fired a trio of rapid-fire blaster bolts at the incoming grenades while they were still in flight, while the other Marine lowered his stance and snapped his right arm downward, causing a pair of long, deadly, serrated vibro-blades to extend from the housing mounted on his vambrace until they extended a foot and a half past his gauntleted fist.

One of the ion grenades was taken from mid-air by the unexpectedly precise shots from the right-hand Marine’s arm-mounted blaster, but the second landed squarely between the two of them. It exploded with a brilliant, blue light which saw their armor crackle with electrical shorts as arcs of energy danced along the surface of the high-end power armor.

A pair of shapes was illuminated by the flash as they came from concealment precisely where they were supposed to have done, and Lu Bu charged down the corridor as she drew the massive, stone-headed Glacier Splitter from its sling across her back. Using the newly-crafted, telescopic haft by pressing a button at the base of the pommel, the hammer’s haft lengthened until it was four feet long and the massive, duralloy-bound stone hammerhead began to thrum with the fully-powered energy of two smashball gravity generators—the upgrades which Kratos had thought she would find ‘agreeable,’ which would have to be the understatement of the year.

The weapon, with which she had practiced in isolation but never drawn in battle, felt like something out of legend in her hands. For a brief moment, in her mind’s eye she saw a glimpse of herself in ancient battle armor, astride a massive, red warhorse with the awesome weapon gripped in her hands as she descended upon the enemy with the vengeance of the Great Ancestors fueling her fury.

Then she clashed with the enemy, and the time for such fanciful thoughts disappeared in a flash of metal and stone.

First to come to grips with the enemy was Hutch, who slammed sidelong into the right-hand Marine, displaying as much finesse as a landslide as his forward momentum temporarily unbalanced the armored Marine. Traian dove at that same Marine’s legs with his vibro-blade drawn, and scored a hit against the Marine’s still-frozen knee joint before rolling out of the enemy warrior’s melee range.

The attack plan had called for Lu Bu to square off against whichever of the guards appeared to be the most dangerous, and after smashing her stone-headed weapon into the Marine’s midsection—amplified with the full force of an impacting smashball on maximum settings—and seeing him deftly turn aside the blow , she knew that her team had correctly assessed the situation. There was a loud crack as the duralloy-bound hammerhead of Glacier Splitter struck the Marine’s armor, but he managed to make a counterattack in spite of his suit’s ion-grenade-induced impairment.

The long, serrated vibro-blades lashed out at her but she managed to duck beneath them by leaning backward and using the butt of her hammer’s haft to keep from falling completely over. She used the leverage provided by the weapon to launch her feet at the enemy Marine’s midsection, and was rewarded by seeing her enemy driven back to the nearby bulkhead. Beyond that bulkhead was the lift which would take them to their ultimate target, but she needed to neutralize these two warriors before they could enter the command center of the enemy vessel.

Sparing a glance at her teammates, she was surprised—and pleased in a savage, primal fashion—to see that Hutch had clamped his arms to either side of their Marine’s midsection and improbably driven him back into the bulkhead. Traian leapt atop the Marine’s shoulders and brought his vibro-blade down on the arm-mounted blaster cannon just before it could be turned on Hutch, and a shower of sparks flew from the ruined weapon.

Refocusing her attention on the enemy before her, Lu Bu brought the hammer upward in a long, sweeping arc that saw the head of her weapon strike the chin guard of the Marine’s helmet. A long, massive crack appeared on that part of the warrior’s helmet, and the warrior was briefly unbalanced as he staggered backward.

Lu Bu, knowing this would be her best opportunity, allowed the hammer’s momentum to carry her body in a pirouette before slamming it into the Marine’s helmet once again before he could get his arms up to defend against the savage, direct, blunt attack—an attack which mirrored Lu Bu’s personality perfectly.

This time when her weapon impacted against the helmet, fully one third of the helmet came off and Lu Bu could see her foe’s face beneath—and she saw that it was not a man, but a woman!

The woman kicked out with her near leg, desperately fighting for room to maneuver, and Lu Bu found she was overbalanced from the pair of powerful attacks which had ruined her foe’s helmet. She knew that one more blow to the head and the Marine would die, but her counterpart knew that as well as she successfully pushed Lu Bu back a handful of steps with her desperate kick.

Regaining her footing—and apparently benefiting from her armor’s systems beginning to come back online after the ion attacks—the enemy Marine stomped forward and extended a pair of blades from her left arm’s vambrace, mirroring the weapons affixed to her right arm.

Lu Bu gripped her hammer tightly in her hands and circled toward the ruined side of the Marine’s helmet. The Marine countered by stepping forward quickly and launching a series of short, quick strikes which were not intended to actually hit Lu Bu, but rather to buy time for the rest of her suit’s systems to come back online. Lu Bu needed to press the advantage while she had it, so she timed her attack and swung low at her foe’s legs, forcing the woman to block downward with her left blades. The right blades came across in a short, potentially debilitating strike, as the woman aimed at Lu Bu’s left arm.

But Lu Bu had expected the attack and she pivoted her weight against the hammerhead’s inertia, managing to avoid the strike by spinning inside the woman’s guard and bringing the butt of her hammer up and striking the woman in the face. Lu Bu actually felt the woman’s jaw break against Glacier Splitter’s haft, but to her enemy’s credit she brought her knee up into Lu Bu’s groin with enough force to life Lu Bu’s relatively lightly-armored body off the deck.

Had Lu Bu been a man, the attack might have cost her a vital second or two of concentration due to the supposedly stronger sex’s all-too-accessible, centrally-located, overly sensitive genitalia.  But she was able to fight through the intense, stinging, throbbing pain and avoid a downward stab from the Marine’s right arm blades by rolling to the side.

But she had been forced to drop her hammer in the process, and the weapon lay motionless on the deck several meters away as Lu Bu reached for Walter Joneson’s knife which was strapped to her belt. The weapon thrummed to life in her left hand, and she slid her grip down until she was holding it by the tip as she began to circle the Marine, hearing the sounds of pitched battle from her back where Hutch and Traian were attempting to bring down their Marine.

The woman Marine spat a gob of bloody sputum on the deck, and was about to say something when Lu Bu leapt into the air instinctively, sensing the opening just before it presented itself. The enemy Marine brought her blades up in a criss-crossing block, but Lu Bu’s non-power-assisted leap had taken her foe by surprise.

Leaping fully four feet into the air—a result due to both her immense physicality and the lower-than-average grav-plating of the freighter’s corridors—Lu Bu lashed out with her left leg and managed to knock the woman’s right arm blade just far enough out of position that she cleared a narrow window through which she hurled Walter Joneson’s knife.

The knife flew straight and true, burying itself to the hilt in the enemy Marine’s exposed cheek and causing the woman warrior to fall to the deck in a fit of spasms. The woman’s vibro-blades lashed this way and that as Lu Bu rolled to safely—noticing as she did so that she had sustained a hit to her right thigh which had begun to bleed slowly, but steadily. She spared a glance to Hutch and Traian, and saw the pair bring their foe down in an impressive, yet thoroughly unorthodox fashion.

Somehow, Hutch had managed to keep his position chest-to-chest with the enemy Marine. By using his incredible lower body strength, the former smashball star got just enough leverage to lift the Marine from the floor and slam him onto his back with a picture-perfect, double-underhook body slam.

There was nothing unorthodox about the maneuver—save for the fact that Hutch had managed to upend an armored Marine using brute strength, much as Kratos had done on a previous mission—but Traian and Hutch had cleverly choreographed their actions so that when the Marine fell to the deck, Traian had placed his vibro-blade’s pommel against the deck with the blade pointing upward.

The Marine’s upper chest was skewered by the vibro-blade as his body slid slowly down to the deck. His arms flailed for several seconds, but Traian somehow kept his grip on his blade’s hilt and wrenched the vibro-blade sideways violently, causing the enemy soldier’s body to go limp just a few seconds after his companion’s body did likewise.

Lu Bu saw her own foe cease her twitching, so she retrieved her hammer as Hutch and Traian worked to retrieve Traian’s blade from the Marine’s torso. Turning to her teammates she nodded approvingly. “Good work,” she panted, her breaths barely managing to quench the all-too-familiar fire coursing throughout her muscles after the short, yet intense, burst of activity. “Traian, get door,” she pointed to the lift, before kneeling and retrieving Walter Joneson’s vibro-blade from her fallen foe’s face.

Traian obliged, and thankfully the lift’s only active security mechanisms now lay in bleeding ruins in their power-armor-shaped tombs. The door opened, and Lu Bu’s team filed into the tube just as the deck lurched beneath their feet.

Lu Bu, now a veteran of several naval engagements, recognized the sensation for precisely what it was: a direct hit against the freighter’s hull.

Fei Long might have stopped to cogitate as to the possible authors of the fire which had landed on the massive ship’s thin armor, or made some last-second modification to the plan which had thus far brought them to the brink of success.

But Lu Bu was, at least in that regard, nothing like her boyfriend. She slapped the control icon which would take them to the bridge, glad for whatever diversion might have at least temporarily distracted Commodore Raubach and giving silent thanks to the Great Ancestors for bestowing their favor upon her and her companions.

It seems that the Ancestors are with us, after all, she though as she gripped her hammer’s haft in her hands and waited as the lift slowly rose to the level of the vessel’s bridge.

While they ascended, she removed the sonic grenades from her belt and set them to activate on impact. “You fight bravely, Lancers,” she said, holding Glacier Splitter in one hand and cradling the pair of sonic grenades in the other, “if we die today, I am proud to fight with you.”

“It’s been a pleasure, ma’am,” Traian said professionally, his muscles rippling beneath his form-fitting Storm Drake armor as he tensed in preparation for the fight to come.

Hutch unslung his scattergun and checked the weapon’s ammo chamber before chuckling, “You’re just like Walt; you know that, Bu?”

Lu Bu turned to him and cocked her brow, checking the lift’s status and seeing it was only half way through its journey to the bridge, which was located on top of a mast which set the bridge nearly a hundred meters from the freighter’s main hull. It seemed an odd design to her, but then Lu Bu had never aspired to be an engineer, so she knew she was unqualified to critique the ship’s layout. “What you mean?” she asked, knowing that she might never get another chance to ask the question, let alone receive an answer.

“He was a great leader; I’d follow that bastard anywhere. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be cursing his ancestry every step of the way, but I’d also be matching every move he made if I had my druthers,” he replied. But at her intent look when she sensed he was holding something back, Hutch sighed, “I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell you: he was a genie, just like you…and just like me.”

“What?” she reared back in surprise, certain she must have heard incorrectly. Walter Joneson had, on several occasions, denigrated her for her genetically-engineered physical traits. How could he also have been a ‘genie’—a derogatory term used to describe the genetically enhanced—while clearly holding them in such low regard?

But before she could ask the following questions, the lift’s ascent began to slow and her teammates leveled their weapons as they stood to either side of the door. They were prepared to lay down the fire which would hopefully let her breach the bridge and incapacitate the Rim Fleet personnel within—chief among them being Commodore Raubach, of course.

Lu Bu gripped her sonic grenades and cleared her mind of distractions in preparation for the fight to come. The lift ceased its upward motion and the doors began to slide apart. When the gap between the doors was no more than eight inches wide, she hurled the sonic grenades through the breach. Stepping forward, she brought Glacier Splitter up into a two-handed grip as she cleared the doorway—just as a hail of fire slammed into her torso.

The grenades went off just after she had exited the lift, and she saw a half dozen bridge crew fall to the ground as the specially-tuned frequencies of the grenades’ blast rendered them unconscious. Sonic weapons were designed to be nonlethal, requiring extraordinary circumstances—or extraordinary determination—to be employed in a life-threatening manner.

But the blaster fire she felt slamming into her chest was every bit as lethal as her modified hammer was in her hands. It was only due to her Red Hare armor’s incredible resilience that her legs were able to keep churning away beneath her as she fought her way onto the bridge and dove behind a nearby workstation for cover from the lethal storm of blaster bolts.

No sooner had she hit the deck behind her newfound cover, than Hutch and Tray opened fire from within the lift. Hutch’s scattergun took a pair of bridge standers who were near Lu Bu’s position, and their bodies were reduced to little more than grizzly, misshapen patterns of blood and bone fragments which covered the nearby surfaces of bridge control stations. Tray’s blaster rifle snapped a pair of well-aimed shots which found a bridge crewman and, surprisingly, the hulking bodyguard who had accompanied Commodore Raubach in the cargo hold.

Lu Bu gripped a pair of ion grenades from her belt and heard the Commodore’s voice barking out orders in what she had learned was the Imperial language. She’d had enough difficulty learning Confederation Standard, so she had not wasted any time attempting to learn fragments of the new language which the Imperials spoke. But she could tell the Commodore was a calm, collected commander from the way he snapped order after order at his people while she readied the ion grenades.

After the grenades were firmly in her grip, she risked a glance around the workstation’s edge and her face was immediately surrounded by a hail of incoming fire. There were at least eight crewmembers arrayed on the opposite side of the bridge from her position, and she caught sight of the massive, silent, dark-skinned bodyguard as he broke away from the main group and made his way toward her position.

She tossed the grenades as hard as she could without achieving a better throwing position, and one of the grenades was shot from the air by the bridge crew formed up around the Commodore. But the other managed to clear the bank of workstations between them and Lu Bu, and she saw the Commodore leap clear of the area just before the blast went off.

The bridge went dark instantly, and the only source of illumination was that provided by the streaking blaster bolts converging on her position. She could only hope that Tray and Hutch had made it clear of the lift, because she knew she was about to become entangled with the Commodore’s bodyguard, or champion, or whatever his title happened to be.

For her, he was nothing more than another in a long line of challenges—challenges which she had not yet failed to overcome.

She had barely gotten Glacier Splitter up and extended its haft to a fighting length of roughly one meter when the dark-skinned bodyguard was upon her. His body was covered in a form-fitting jumpsuit of some kind which could very well have been of similar composition to her Storm Drake armor, and his head was totally unprotected. But his fists were armored in strange-looking gauntlets, and she warily gave two steps of ground after bringing the hammer up into a defensive position.

Those two steps of ground saved her life, as the warrior brought his fists up into a fighting guard before lashing out with them in rapid-fire succession with his long, muscular arms. At the apex of each punch, the gauntlets he wore flashed with a brilliant, blue-white light, and she suspected there was enough energy being discharged with each blow that a glancing blow against any unarmored portion of her body would be lethal.

She tightened her grip on the hammer’s haft and lashed out with the butt of its haft, parrying one of the warrior’s thunderous blows in the process. The jolt of electricity which thrummed up and down the haft of her hammer was very nearly powerful enough to make her drop the mighty weapon—and somehow that energy had penetrated her Storm Drake armor.

Feeling her anger rise at the far-too patient, calculating expression on her foe’s face—an expression only visible when his gauntlets flashed, lighting up his features—Lu Bu re-tightened her grip on the weapon and made as though to parry another blow. The warrior was firing three, four, and five punch combinations and if Lu Bu was being honest, he was varying his attacks brilliantly. There were absolutely no openings through which she could bring the hammer up and through his guard during the brief intervals his seemingly-rehearsed attack provided.

So instead of trying to out-think her opponent, she did what came naturally to her: she fired a leg kick at his left thigh and followed up with another strike of her hammer’s butt aimed at her opponent’s head. The warrior checked the leg kick perfectly, but Lu Bu felt a savage thrill when she felt his flesh give as any ordinary man’s might do against her shinbone. He then leaned back and out of the way of Glacier Splitter’s butt, easily avoiding the attack—but Lu Bu had seized the initiative and would not relinquish it willingly.

She switched her balance easily over her hips and fired her left leg at her foe’s midsection, and the warrior parried it easily with his gauntleted fist. The numb, buzzing, jolting sensation which seized her leg was almost enough to unbalance her, but she had expected it and barely managed to keep her momentum driving forward. She swung Glacier Splitter’s massive, duralloy-bound stone head at her foe’s skull, but the warrior turned the blow aside with a swat of his powerful, gauntleted hand as he kept his momentum moving backward under control.

She could tell by the way he was moving that he had willingly adopted a defensive position—an understandable move, given his height and length advantages, coupled with the fact that counterpunching is far more conducive to a knockout punch than moving forward ever is—but she did not care about what he wanted from this fight. She knew that if she maintained focus, there was not a warrior in the universe who could defeat her. As Walter Joneson had told her before his death, she understood that her greatest enemy was not the warriors with whom she would do battle, but rather her greatest enemy was herself.

So she pressed forward, but fought back against the savage, primal urge to abandon all tactics and hurl herself at her would-be killer. As she rained kick after punch after hammer blow into her opponent’s impenetrable guard, she knew that both she and her foe were getting precisely what they wanted out of this fight. For the first time since she could remember, she was unable to land a single, clean blow against her foe, and she knew that this was a truly equal match.

The only question would be whose preparation, training, discipline, or body failed first. And with Walter Joneson guiding her, even from the grave, she knew she would prevail.

Time lost meaning as the duel unfolded. She felt the odd blaster bolt strike her armor, but she paid it no heed. Her focus was sharper than it had ever been, and she knew that this warrior was the only enemy that truly mattered aboard the freighter. Once she defeated him, the Commodore—and the ship, loaded with its inestimable treasures—would be theirs, and her mission would be a complete success.

She heard a woman scream, and only vaguely realized that Glacier Splitter had taken an unarmored bridge stander in the gut during one of Lu Bu’s backswings. Somehow they had fought their way across to the opposite side of the bridge while she had been so focused on penetrating the warrior’s guard. A moment after she realized this, she was vaguely aware of an explosion going off behind her, followed by a shower of bloody gore spraying against her back—and her opponent’s face.

Seizing the brief advantage caused by his temporarily obscured vision, Lu Bu lashed out with her hammer aimed squarely at the warrior’s knee. The man somehow sensed the incoming blow, and leapt clear of Glacier Splitter’s head before switching his weight and smashing a brutal front kick into her helmet’s visor. The visor actually cracked, and in what she knew was no mere coincidence but almost certainly was some act of fate, her own vision became impaired after she had attempted to capitalize on that very impediment which her foe had experienced a moment earlier.

Determined not to be upstaged, but only able to see out of a tiny portion of her visor’s ruined window, she brought the hammer up and down in a pair of seemingly wild, chaotic strikes which had very little chance of landing. But while they failed to land, what they did do is allow her to shift her momentum and begin backpedaling, and the trio of brilliant flashes she saw—along with the jolting numbness which gripped both of her hands, apparently from blocking one of her foe’s blows with her hammer’s haft—told her she had chosen the correct course as her feet took her blindly backward from the lumbering, yet incredibly agile warrior.

She still had a proverbial ace up her sleeve, and she knew that it was now time to play that particular ace. Adjusting her grip on the hammer’s haft as she backpedaled, she twisted the two sections of the shaft which her hands gripped in perfect timing with the beginning of a seemingly blind, lateral swing of the weapon before her. To an outside observer, it would have appeared as though she was panicked and attempting to buy herself reprieve from the warrior’s relentless barrage of punches, and she was hoping her foe sensed this false desperation.

When the weapon’s balance shifted dramatically in her hands, she knew she had done as she desired—and when it made a muffled, cracking sound upon impact with her foe’s ribcage, she knew she had achieved the outcome she, and her team, had desperately needed.  She had used the last surprise available to her to land the decisive blow on the agile, powerful, but lightly-armored warrior: a mid-swing extension of the hammer’s haft to nearly double its regular length.  She had caught him off-guard with the surprise maneuver, and he had been unable to dance away from the blow as a result of being too confident in his technique.

Bringing the weapon back, she adjusted to its new, more distant, center of balance and swung again as she stepped forward. The warrior blocked the blow, but the block was weaker than his previous ones and she knew that this was her best chance to defeat him.

Swinging her weapon left and right, up and down, and lashing out with the occasional kick, Lu Bu fought in near-total darkness as she drove her foe across the bridge. She had practiced fighting in myriad conditions—extreme heat, extreme cold, high gravity, low gravity, complete darkness, and even in blinding light—and while she would never claim to be comfortable in those extreme conditions, she had learned to work effectively within them.

When her hammerhead struck one of the warrior’s gauntlets and that gauntlet exploded, she leapt into the air and drove her knee into his chin. She was rewarded by the familiar, yet thoroughly satisfying sensation of a man’s jaw breaking against her knee, followed by the also-familiar sound of a muscle-bound warrior’s body collapsing to the metal deckplates on which he had previously stood.

Reaching up, she ripped her helmet from its clamps and looked down on the man, seeing she had caved in the side of his face with one of her furious hammer blows before breaking his jaw so horribly that its left side was completely unhinged and bulging up near his eye. In spite of his disfigurement—and almost certain agony—he made no sound as he scissored his legs blindly, attempting to take her own legs out from under her and bring her to the floor where his massive bulk would prove decisive in a grappling contest.

She planted her feet and kicked his legs violently once, twice, three times to defend against his last-ditch efforts to turn the tables on her. As she did so, she brought the hammer—with its nearly two meter long haft, following her surprise, mid-fight adjustment which had proven decisive—into position and swept Glacer Splitter across the warrior’s shin, shattering the bone completely and causing his leg to briefly go limp. Without further ado, Lu Bu brought her hammer up above her head as high as the ceiling would permit and drove it into his skull with the smashball generators reaching their maximum delivered kinetic force at the moment of impact.  With the surprising sound of metal on metal, his head was messily cleaved in two by the awesome power of her unique hammer.

She saw bits of metal in the man’s ruined skull where bone should have been, and for good measure she struck twice more—these blows aimed at his neck—and decapitated him with Glacier Splitter’s duralloy-bound head.

Satisfied he was dead, she drew several deep breaths and looked up, finding both Hutch and Traian had survived and were flanking her.

“Where is Raubach?!” she spat between ragged, panting breaths as she fought against the urge to lean on a nearby workstation to steady her suddenly-quivering legs.

“Holed up in there,” Traian replied through equally labored breaths.

“I’ll get it,” Hutch growled, apparently possessing better wind than either of them—in spite of a mass of bloody rents in his armor—as he moved toward the door which Traian had indicated. When he arrived, Hutch checked the chamber for his scattergun and threw the weapon down in disgust.

“No,” Lu Bu huffed as she raised Glacier Splitter with trembling hands, “I will.”

Lugging the heavy weapon over to the door, she tested the control mechanism built into the hammer’s haft and found it was still in working order. She extended the telescopic haft to its standard, one meter length, and raised it to the level of her waist before slamming it into the door’s frame. The frame bent, but did not break so she struck it again. Again and again the hammer smashed into the frame of the door, until the frame itself cracked and fell apart under the strain her increasingly weary arms put upon it.

Hutch stepped forward and gripped the exposed edge of the still-closed door—a door which was far less sturdy than those aboard the Pride of Prometheus, especially those in the critical areas of the ship like the bridge. His fingers wrapped around it and, with a mighty heave, he levered the two foot wide panel of metal out of its moorings within the sundered frame. The panel itself was far too strong for him to have broken with his bare hands, but once the frame had been destroyed it was a small matter to remove it from its gear-driven track.

Stepping into the chamber beyond, Lu Bu led her three man team into the cramped office-like chamber and came face to face with Commodore Raubach.

The Commodore wore the same cape he had worn in the cargo bay, and his features looked like they had been sculpted from wax—literally. His skin had a sheen to it which appeared wholly unnatural to her, but she had heard that some of the life-extending therapies often carried with them such side effects. Being a scion of one of the Empire’s most powerful Houses, Commodore James Raubach III had undoubtedly availed himself of such treatments at several points in his life.

“I must congratulate you,” he said, his voice melodious and light in spite of the situation he faced, outnumbered three to one and backed into a corner, “you managed to steal aboard this ship undetected, slip past my security measures, defeat my personal guards and somehow ascertain these coordinates several hours before I myself had decided to use them. I must say,” he said as his hand moved to his waist, where he drew a dagger with an overly elaborate hilt from a short scabbard, “were I not faced with the reality of the situation, I would declare it utterly impossible. But I suppose we both know you had help.”

“Commodore Raubach, by order of Captain Middleton, commander of Pride of Prometheus, I place you under arrest,” Lu Bu said, ignoring his last-ditch attempts to distract her. She dropped Glacier Splitter, knowing that the massive, cumbersome weapon would be far less nimble and responsive in the cramped quarters than the Commodore’s dagger was. She drew Walter Joneson’s vibro-knife from her belt and activated its power cell, feeling the weapon thrum to life in her hand, “Come quiet and we you let live.”

“Grammatical issues with your altogether predictable offer aside,” the Commodore replied easily, “I believe I understand the gist of your proposition, but I fear I must decline. You see, I know you are the only ones aboard my vessel,” he explained as he shifted his weight expertly from one foot to the other, looking like a tiger preparing to leap into action, “but you, on the other hand, are unaware of my force’s true number. Despite the obvious factors in play,” he gestured to Lu Bu, Hutch, and Traian with the tip of his dagger, “the odds are still stacked neatly in my favor.”

Lu Bu’s eyes flicked around the small room, which measured approximately three meters by four meters, and held a large desk on the far, narrow end of the room behind Commodore Raubach. She suspected he had meant that she was unaware of the Dark Seer’s presence aboard the ship, and while she knew very little of them—next to nothing, in fact—she would not be dissuaded by fear of the unknown. She had a mission to complete, and she was determined to complete it.

“Drop weapons and come quiet,” she instructed severely, reversing her grip on the vibro knife as she crouched into a fighting stance, “or I kill you.”

“Again, your numerous compositional errors notwithstanding,” he sighed, “I fear I must decline what is, at face value, an eminently reasonable offer.”

Almost before Lu Bu could react, the Commodore lunged at her with his slender weapon aimed directly at her heart. She sidestepped and parried the blow, but the Commodore was agile and he adjusted his attack mid-stroke to turn the thrust into a swipe aimed at her exposed neck.

She reached up with her free forearm and blocked his attack by intercepting his wrist with her own, but before she could grip his forearm his feet struck flush against her chin, one after the other, briefly disorienting her. When she regained her senses, she saw him drop into a crouch several feet behind his previous position, and she realized he had just performed a backflip which had seen him kick her in the face—twice!—while doing so.

Growling in anger, she saw Hutch move into the room to flank her but she waved him back, knowing that this fight would require her to match the Commodore’s surprising agility and speed. Moving forward, she saw the Commodore smirk before once again lunging at her.

But this time she was prepared for the speed of his attack, and managed to block his blade with her own. Again, his attack flowed seamlessly into another, which she successfully blocked, before he lashed out with his free hand which he used to chop at her carotid artery. She ducked that attack, but ate a knee to the chin for having done so, and once again she barely missed grasping his leg before he danced back and out of harm’s way.

Spitting up a gob of bloody phlegm, Lu Bu lunged forward, determined to unbalance the remarkably skilled fighter with a flurry of savage offense. She began with an upward swipe which he easily swayed away from, and followed with a brutal leg kick which he checked with perfect technique by turning his knee to intercept her shin. This time, unlike with his guardsman, when Lu Bu’s shin struck against her foe’s knee she was absolutely certain that his bones were not made of bone, but of metal.

But she knew that every fight carried its own cost—a cost she had willingly paid when breaking her leg against the Commodore’s son’s armored leg during their fight on the Droid Corvette just to give Kratos an opening to attack—and she switched her weight after connecting with his leg.

Before she could leap into the air to deliver her trademark knee-to-the-chin, the Commodore swiped with blinding speed and she felt the blade slice through the armor over her left thigh. She abandoned the flying knee and instead stabbed quickly and repeatedly at the Commodore’s abdomen, knowing it was highly unlikely that any of her blows would land, but also knowing that he would be forced to address each and every one of them in turn or risk evisceration.

She punched out with her free hand and was rewarded with a glancing blow to his shoulder, but for her trouble she received a swift, precise kick to the fresh wound on her thigh. The blow was far from debilitating, but she knew it had not been intended to stop her completely—the Commodore meant to bleed her slowly, and the self-satisfied look on his face as he danced backward on the balls of his feet confirmed her suspicion.

Snarling in anger, she feinted low and leapt into the air, launching her knee at the Commodore’s chin. The Commodore seemed to have been drawn off-balance by the feint, but at the last possible second he pivoted his body and placed his free hand between her breasts and redirected her body’s forward momentum toward the nearby bulkhead with power that belied his medium-slender frame.

She crashed into the bulkhead, but before her feet had even hit the deck the Commodore lashed out with a pair of swipes with his elaborate, far-too-fine-looking blade and opened a gash on her right thigh which was a mirror opposite of her other wound. The second swipe caught her in the flank, and she knew as he danced away that he was merely toying with her.

Hutch entered the fray, reaching with outstretched hands for the Commodore’s torso but before he could come to grips with the Imperial, Commodore Raubach slipped to the side and stabbed down along Hutch’s calf.  With a dancer’s grace, he spun three hundred sixty degrees in a pirouette, ripping the blade downward before wrenching it sideways just above Hutch’s heel and stepping away, briefly turning his back with open contempt as he did so.

The audible pop of Hutch’s Achilles tendon when the Commodore severed it made a knot of fury form in Lu Bu’s stomach, but Hutch fought on valiantly through a roar of pain as he attempted to grasp the elusive Imperial swordsman.

But the Commodore was simply too practiced, too quick, and too smart for Hutch to succeed. He twisted his body like a ballerina might do at the last possible moment, and Hutch grabbed nothing but air on his way to a face-plant into the deck. Knowing her ally was soon to fall to the Commodore’s lethal blade, Lu Bu planted a foot on the bulkhead and launched her body headfirst toward Commodore Raubach.

He was actually taken by surprise by the move, and time seemed to slow as Lu Bu’s body sailed through the tiny space separating them, her feet having come completely off the deck as she drove Walter Joneson’s vibro knife toward the Commodore’s throat. It was a rash attack, and she almost regretted it as she saw the Commodore pivot his lead foot and begin to turn his neck clear of her attack while bringing his own blade up in a perfectly timed, perfectly aimed, and perfectly conceived kill shot aimed at her heart.

But just as his blade began to come up for the death blow, the Commodore’s body was launched sideways nearly two feet as the deck beneath him shifted—a result of the freighter having once again taken fire against its hull. His blade was knocked off-target while, miraculously, Lu Bu’s managed to sink itself to the hilt in his throat directly between his collarbones. They crashed into the opposite bulkhead, and she wrenched the knife violently from side to side as they went down.

She managed to sever something vital, because the Commodore’s body went completely limp before they even hit the deck. She kicked the ornate blade from his limp fingers and drew her own from his profusely-bleeding neck, and only then did she see just how badly she had injured him with Joneson’s knife.

The hole in his neck was far more than that, for after looking more closely she realized she had very nearly decapitated him with the vibro knife. Still, for all of that—and even with the pints of blood which were quickly leaking to the deck and taking the Commodore’s life with them—Commodore James Raubach III gave her a wan, macabre, bloody smile.

He mouthed something that she could not hear, and then his smile faded as his eyes rolled back into his head. Just to be certain he was neutralized—she had seen holo-vids of warriors springing back to life due to powerful cybernetic augmentations which allowed them to survive unthinkable wounds—she finished decapitating him with a swift swipe of her blade, and then bound his headless body’s hands and ankles. She knew she was not as smart as most of her shipmates, but she would not allow herself to be taken by overconfidence in her apparent victory.

After collapsing back to the deck, she rolled over and saw that Hutch had propped himself up against the bulkhead and raised his helmet’s visor. His face was ashen and he clutched his ruined lower leg with both hands, but he nodded respectfully and said, “I thought he had you…”

Wincing in pain at feeling the pain in her legs and side for seemingly the first time, Lu Bu nodded as she took deep, labored breaths, “So did I.”

“Lucky we got hit when we did,” he said, his face ashen with pain but his voice controlled and steady, “but even with that luck, I couldn’t have taken him.”

“It was not luck,” she said, now more confident than ever that luck had absolutely nothing to do with their successes to date. She had often doubted whether or not Fei Long’s faith in the Ancestors’ ability to influence events was misplaced, but now she knew that there could be no other explanation for their victory in this place. When she was reunited with him, she vowed to take his beliefs more seriously and to adopt them more firmly as her own.

The Ancestors had been with her, and she knew that they did not bestow their favor lightly. She would strive to be worthy of their blessings in the future, but for now she had a mission to accomplish.

“Traian,” she barked, her voice sounding more like a wheezy gasp than a proper command.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied from somewhere beyond the doorway, “I’m trying to raise the ship out there…but there’s a problem.”

She dragged herself to her feet, and Hutch tried to do likewise, but she waved him down and said, “Stay.” Staggering out onto the bridge, she was surprised to see that a few of the workstations opposite of where her ion grenades had gone off were still operational, and Traian was positioned before one of them working quickly at the controls. “Report,” she demanded as she arrived at his post and braced herself against the edge of the console.

“That ship out there,” he tilted his head, “it isn’t the Pride.”

She looked at the sensors readout and saw its profile: a Light Cruiser. As Traian worked, more information streamed across the display and it was listed as the Slice of Life, a warship commanded by one Captain D. Morgan.

“Hail it,” she instructed, but Tray shook his head.

“The Comm. array is fed directly through this bridge,” he explained, jerking a thumb toward where she had lobbed the ion grenades, “and I think it’s been completely cooked.”

“Use your helmet,” she instructed, knowing it was a last-ditch attempt, but also knowing it was likely their only hope to contact friendly forces, “use Lancer Command channel.”

“I don’t have that one, ma’am,” he reminded her, causing her to blush with embarrassment. Only team leaders and squad leaders had access to the Command channels, but he continued easily, “But that’s a good idea; I’ll try all of the Lancer channels that I have programmed into my helmet.”

He placed a hand beside his helmet and stood silent and motionless for several seconds. It took Lu Bu a moment of wondering why he was not speaking before she realized her helmet was no longer on her head, so it would have been impossible for her to hear Traian’s communications without him having piped it into his external vox as well.

But a moment later he nodded and said, “I got a hold of them, ma’am. They’re standing down.”

The ship lurched beneath their feet, and Lu Bu snapped, “Repeat!”

He did so, once again going silent for several seconds before saying, “It’s going to take them a few seconds to get word to the bridge, but Bernice recognizes our request.”

“Bernice?” she asked warily. She had wanted to include the Tracto-an woman on this particular mission, but had been forced to leave her off the roster due to the hulking woman’s relative lack of technical expertise.

Traian’s hands moved over the console beside the sensors readout, and a moment later Lieutenant McKnight’s face appeared on the tiny screen embedded on that console.

“Report, Corporal,” McKnight said with a nod, her eyes moving to make contact with Lu Bu’s own.

“We have the bridge, Lieutenant,” she reported, “and Commodore Raubach is dead. But ship is not secured; send Lancers to clear enemy from hold, and tell them to be prepared for Dark Seer.”

“A Dark Seer?” McKnight repeated with equal parts skepticism and confusion.

“Yes,” Lu Bu confirmed as a panel popped open beside the lift, prompting Traian to whirl and train his blaster rifle on the hairy figure which emerged from the access panel. Yide stood to his full height—sporting a handful of fresh wounds to his torso—and made eye contact with Lu Bu, prompting Traian to lower his weapon and allow the Sundered youth to approach.

“What’s going on?” McKnight asked.

“Only four team members present,” Lu Bu explained, turning back toward the screen, “we can hold bridge, but Lancers must secure rest of ship.”

“Understood,” McKnight acknowledged, “I’m sending Bernice and most of her Lancers over there now.”

Knowing there was a story behind Bernice commanding the Lancer contingent aboard the captured warship, but also knowing now was not the time for telling such a story, Lu Bu said, “We will hold position on bridge. Corporal Lu, out.”

As she sagged to the deck, she saw Hutch limp out of the small office while Traian and Yide worked to bring the bridge’s workstations back online one by one. As they worked, she wondered how Fei Long was faring…and she wondered if the Ancestors had been able to watch after both of them, or if they had only done so for her.

She knelt in prayer, asking the Ancestors to watch over Fei Long as they had done for her, feeling the faintest sensation deep within her belly as she did so—a sensation she was feeling for the very first time.

Chapter XXIX: A Job Not Done

“On the ground!” the armored policeman commanded after entering the Fei apartment, flanked by five similarly-garbed law enforcement officers. Fei Long was seated at the table, eating his breakfast while his mother had gone to answer the door, and she complied quickly with their demand—too quickly, if Fei Long was to judge the matter.

The thirteen year old boy turned to see a look of resignation on his father’s face, but nowhere in his father’s countenance did Fei Long see the barest hint of surprise. The old man turned his bushy-browed eyes toward his son and shook his head scornfully as the policemen moved into the apartment.

“How could you, Father?” Fei Long asked coldly as the policemen surrounded the table and one of them roughly bound his hands before standing him from his chair.

“You ask me that question?” his father demanded, his brow beetling with anger as he stood abruptly from his seat, knocking the chair over and breaking one of the legs in the process. “You, who have abused our family name and brought shame on all who know you by committing your crimes against the harmony of our society?!”

Two policemen trained their weapons on Fei Long, who made no attempt to resist as the continued to bind his hands, including placing traps on his fingers which would prevent him from properly interfacing with most digital devices. But he was almost unaware of the policemen as they tore through his room, uncovering the few traces of his secret life as the foremost computer hacker of his world.

“We’ve got it, sir,” one of the policemen declared triumphantly, emerging from the room with a scrap of polymer paper which bore a series of numbers—numbers which contained, among other things, the cipher to his Shu Han network of covertly coopted computers which he had used to wage a virtual war against the authorities of his world.

“You are no father to me,” Fei Long said coldly as the policeman who apparently led the cadre began to read off the litany of crimes for which he now stood accused. They would only be able to uncover a small fraction of his past actions, and prove his connection to even fewer still, but so strict were the laws of his birth world and so severe were the punishments, that he knew he would never again taste freedom for as long as he lived.

“And you are no son of mine!” his father shouted, causing Fei Long’s siblings to begin crying as the policemen led Fei Long from the apartment.

It was only when he heard their crying continue for several seconds longer than his true memory of the event had seen them do, that Fei Long realized he was not merely remembering the event, but he was somehow reliving it.

He immediately found the Seer, who was standing calmly behind the door through which the younger Fei Long had just been led by the policemen, and the man regarded him with what seemed to be genuine interest as he said, “You have survived this much, which is more than I thought possible.”

“Why bring me here?” Fei Long demanded, trying and failing to dismiss the scene of his crying siblings from his mind. Of all the consequences of his actions, including the toppling of several state-run entities and the removal of a handful of corrupt politicians from their perches of power, the only one which had truly caused him pain was the fact that he had made his siblings cry.

“I have no power in this place,” the Seer replied with a shrug, “I am merely an observer.”

“But…you are dead,” Fei Long said, remembering the man’s final moments in a blur of memory.

“As you understood me to be, yes,” the Seer agreed patiently. “And soon you will join me…think of me as an echo, or a shadow of all I once was. Now I am nothing more than a traveler who is bound to the doomed, sinking vessel that is you. It was not the end which I desired, nor was it the one which I vowed, but you may yet be able to finish our task before they claim you.”

“They?” Fei Long repeated, very much disliking the ominous tone the other man had employed.

The Seer nodded, gesturing knowingly to the nearby wall, and Fei Long turned but saw nothing there. Nothing but the mass-produced, four foot by seven foot white panel of interior walling, but then he saw something begin to move within the panel. It was not on it, nor was it behind it, but somehow it was within the panel of walling, and he immediately recognized it as the dark, writhing shapes which had lurked in the dreamscape where he had first conversed with the now-dead Seer.

“Your mind, strong though it may be, cannot survive Seeing the truth of reality,” the Seer said, a lone note of sympathy in his voice. “Even I, who was trained from a young age and selected from amongst millions of candidates for my charge, was nearly driven mad during my first Seeing.”

“How did you survive?” Fei Long asked, more curious than hopeful. He had already made peace with his pending sacrifice, but he found his curiosity was as strong as ever and he wanted to answer some of the many questions he had for the Seer.

“That way is closed to you, Kongming,” the Seer shook his head piteously as the walls of the apartment began to ooze together, and Fei Long turned to see his family looked blurred and distorted as their bodies seemed to meld into one amorphous mass. “Your mind is too brittle, too limited…it will break without support, and I cannot give you that support. You will go mad and then you will die—slowly, perhaps, but you will die—and through it all you will suffer as you cannot imagine. An uninitiated mind…”

The Seer’s voice became distant, and Fei Long turned back to focus on him. But instead of the Seer’s visage, he saw nothing but a mass of shapes which resembled nothing so much as a humanoid shape composed of snakes. Instead of scales, those snakes had equations and images which seemed to flicker back and forth between each other. For a moment, he peered closer, focusing on some of the individual equations and finding that he was nearly spellbound by their seamless transition between number and image. It was almost as though they were truly interchangeable, and as he gazed deeper and deeper into them he wondered how he could have been so blind for so long. He had missed the true nature of reality, but now his eyes had been opened and—

He reared back as something in his mind recoiled from the thought of becoming lost in the ‘true nature of reality,’ and the mass of snakes slowly morphed into the Seer’s image.

“You are running out of time, Kongming,” the Seer said. “You must hurry if you are to finish your work—Captain Middleton needs you one more time, and if you can do your duty to him then your duty to me will also be fulfilled. It is your final charge; are you equal to the task?”

“What must I do?” Fei Long asked, feeling a vague, throbbing sensation in the base of his skull.

The Seer pointed to the wall, and Fei Long turned to see a vortex of swirling, mingling data serpents which snapped hungrily at each other. Their bodies were tense and they seemed eager to swallow each other, but somehow they maintained a kind of harmonious balance. Whenever one snake consumed another, a third popped into existence—often emerging from the body of the victorious snake—and Fei Long knew he was seeing the strings from his whiteouts in a different form.

This particular form would certainly be more difficult to comprehend, but he was determined to succeed in doing so. He focused on the snake which the Seer had indicated, and managed to isolate it from the others. With it fully exposed, the serpentine string of images and equations fought desperately to keep from being straightened out so he could examine it, and at first he feared he would be unable to succeed in doing so.

But he somehow managed to do it, and when he did it was as though the entire string flooded into his mind and he had a moment of perfect clarity which made him weep with joy, with loss, and with self-loathing—but most of all, he wept with hope. The hope was not for himself, since his own future in the string was dark, empty, and overflowing with pain, loss, and sorrow.

The hope he clung to was for those with whom he had served, and for the mission they might yet carry out.

“I know what to do,” he said, his own voice sounding distant in this strange, virtual place.

“Then do it,” the Seer commanded, and he regained consciousness.

His eyes snapped open, and Fei Long immediately found that he was upright and his body was drenched in sweat. Trixie grasped his arm across her shoulders and was struggling mightily to hobble him down an unfamiliar hallway. He reached out with his hand to brace himself against the nearby wall, but his arm did not respond as it should have done and the moments-old pseudo-memory of being taken from his siblings came back to his mind, along with the lone probability serpent string’s imagery—imagery which had already begun to fade.

“St…stop,” he slurred, his head lolling around of its own volition. He needed to remember the numbers, rather than the images, since he knew there was no way he could keep the images in his mind.

“It’s ok, Long,” Trixie said through gritted teeth, her diminutive frame proving unequal to the task of carrying him down the corridor as they slumped as one against the nearby wall. “You just…keep telling me,” she bit out as she fought to help him to his feet, eventually succeeding with what little assistance he could provide, “about Guan Yu…and Hua Xiong.”

“What?” he asked as they slowly made their way down the hallway. He then realized he must have been speaking in delirium, and his speech had been a continued recitation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But Guan Yu had slain Hua Xiong in Chapter Five of that great book, which meant he had been speaking for quite some time. “How long was I out?” he asked, his mind sharpening briefly—a sharpening which also saw the pain in his skull intensify.

“It’s been…half an hour,” she replied tremulously, her legs shaking from the effort of having helped him as far as she had done. “We have…to go,” she wheezed, “Ed…he’s waiting at the…launch pad.”

Fei Long shook his head adamantly, forcefully saying, ”No! We have to…go down.”

“Down?!” she blurted. “But the shuttle’s…this way,” she pointed to the end of the hallway, “and it’s just on the other…side of that door.”

“Get Hansheng,” he instructed, testing his fingers and finding they were still bound by the traps which the police had used to bind him. Then he looked again at them, feeling vaguely aware that there was something wrong with that particular realization.

He blinked hard, and the traps on his fingers disappeared immediately when he finally realized that his mind had confused the pseudo-memory of his arrest with the actual reality around him. He saw a squirming, shifting shape on the wall and recoiled at the sight of a hungry serpent having appeared there, coiled in preparation to strike at him.

“Come on, Fei,” Trixie panted, “we’re…almost there.”

“If we get on that shuttle,” he snapped, “we will die. The only way we can…finish the mission is by…going down,” he said, finishing his assertion as a wave of intense vertigo came over him. “Tell Hansheng…tell Ed,” he corrected, using her preferred name for the assault droid, “that the…dragon commands him…to come.”

She argued with him, but her words formed a kind of monotonous, static-laden noise which made no sense to his mind. It was all Fei Long could do to avoid looking in the direction of the serpent which was coiled on the wall and waiting for its moment to strike. His conscious mind knew it was not real, but he was too weary and too overwhelmed to dismiss it as he had done with the finger traps.

He lay there for what seemed like an eternity in sheer, mortal terror of that serpent, eventually deciding it was best to make peace with his end and accept that this would be his resting place. Perhaps it would be best to let the serpent take him…

As he turned to face the serpent, it seemed as though he could feel the heat of its forked tongue licking the air near his cheek, and he resigned himself to face his end with whatever scraps of courage were left to him.

But before he could set his gaze upon his would-be devourer, he felt a cold, hard, metallic object press under his back. He looked at it fearfully for a moment before recognizing the design he had painted onto Hansheng’s cannon arm, and his nightmarish terror was banished as he realized the assault droid had come as he had directed.

“Kongming’s vital signs are dangerously outside of established human parameters,” the droid’s animalistic, growling voice declared, with what sounded like the whimper of puppy dogs in the background, “probability of survival without treatment: 7%.”

“Quickly,” Fei Long said, shaking his head and focusing on the droid’s central chassis as he bit each word out forcefully, “you must take us…to the central dome…there is a…lift there which leads to…victory.”

“The dragon commands and this unit will obey,” Hansheng acknowledged. “Probability of victory if the dragon is obeyed: 92%.”

For a moment, Fei Long was actually offended that Hansheng had apparently decided he was less than completely convinced of the plan’s validity, since 93% would indicate absolute belief in the chosen course. But after a handful of strobing whiteouts—whiteouts which saw the masses of writhing, ominous shapes become more defined as they drew ever nearer to Fei Long’s consciousness—Fei Long felt them come to a stop.

He heard Trixie’s voice at the edge of his consciousness but he focused as hard as he could, finding that his field of vision had narrowed to less than ten percent his normal visual field. Still, it was enough to find the control panel for the lift on which Hansheng now stood, and he tried to point his arm at the panel but found he was unable to do so. It was incredibly frustrating since he could feel his limb perfectly, but for some reason it would not respond to his brain’s commands.

“There,” he wheezed, feeling a sharp, stabbing pain spread in all directions across his skull as the pain in his neck doubled in the blink of an eye.

A moment later—or at least, what seemed like a moment to him—he found his hand resting on the edge of the panel, and he input his Yin & Yang control code into the unit. The screen sprang to life, and after several failed attempts he managed to access his override code and the lift began to descend with the three of them on it.

He whited out again, but he was unable to interact with the probability strings as he had grown too fearful of them. His heart was beating out of his chest with anxiety, and he knew that it would fail if he did not regain control over himself soon.

He was vaguely aware of being carried down a long catwalk as his mind alternated between terror-filled whiteouts and glimpses of what he had previously known to be hard reality. But the lines were becoming blurred and even his mind’s fixation on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which he continued to recite in a mixture of spoken and unspoken monologue, was becoming unequal to the task of anchoring his consciousness where—and when—it needed to be.

He could not let go until he had input the access codes which would let them leave the planetoid and send a message to Captain Middleton, the man who had taken him into his service and allowed him to do that which he did best. He had to fight that long, or everything that had gone before would have been for naught, and the trust which Captain Middleton had shown him would be as a poisoned well of goodwill. Fei Long had already committed murder to serve his own selfish designs, and he somehow knew he would need to answer for that crime somehow, but he would not abandon his Lord’s mission—not now, and not ever.

So he endured as the strings of probability threatened to suffocate his conscious mind, and he suffered as they began to peck away at the very fiber of his being, but he was determined to do his one last duty to his captain. It would be a fitting final act, and once it was made he could die with some tiny measure of peace.

And just then, even such a meager portion of respite would seem to be an infinite bounty from which he could draw for all eternity.

Chapter XXX: Middleton’s Pride

“Thirty seconds to point transfer,” Garibaldi called out from the Engineering station, having rerouted the Navigation functions to a nearby console so he could balance the hyper drive’s power inputs in real time from one station.

Toto had taken over at the helm, and whatever weaponry could be turned toward the bow of the ship had been slave-rigged to that station so he could coordinate his maneuvering with the Pride’s remaining forward weaponry. Surprisingly, the Chief had managed to reconnect four of the Pride’s forward-facing, fix-mounted heavy lasers to bridge control. He had grumbled about them only being good for three or four shots before they overheated and became useless, but Middleton had been incredibly grateful for such a significant fraction of his warship’s main weaponry having been brought back online.

Hephaestion had rerouted Comm. and Shields to the adjacent stations to his normal post at Sensors, and had already demonstrated impressive ability when it came to multitasking. Middleton was confident in the young man’s ability, and he was glad the stalwart, yet almost effeminate-looking Tracto-an had survived the previous battles.

The assignments of the other bridge crew had left Damage Control to Middleton—which would be a nearly empty post for the coming battle, since the only repair crews had been assigned to the bridge and its surroundings—along with the same post he had held prior to being made Captain of his own warship: Tactical.

“Ten seconds to transfer,” Garibaldi reported just before the lights dimmed, causing him to spring into action and dash to a nearby console. Middleton waited tensely as his Chief Engineer moved back and forth between the stations, until the lights returned to their previous luminosity and his old friend finally said, “Three…two…one…transfer!”

The ship lurched violently forward, nearly throwing Middleton from the tactical post and he quickly realized that they were caught in the inertial sump.

“Attempting to compensate for sump,” Hephaestion yelled as the sound of groaning metal could be heard from the bow of the ship. More than heard, the strain could be felt in the deckplates beneath Middleton’s feet, and he knew there was a very good chance that they would never escape the sump. “Shields at thirty two…twenty eight…twenty three,” Hephaestion called out.

The ship lurched forward—this time like a drunken sailor staggering toward the next watering hole—and as Middleton fought to keep from flying into a nearby console, the groaning was replaced by a loud, palpable bang somewhere in the forward sections of the ship. After a few seconds, the familiar sensation of breaking free from the inertial sump replaced the violent lurching and Middleton steadied himself against his console as he initiated an automated damage report diagnostic.

“We are free of sump,” Toto grumbled. Middleton experienced a moment of nostalgia as the Sundered’s intonation was eerily similar to that of his former helmsman-turned-XO, Lieutenant Jersey. But Middleton quickly recalled the casualty reports which had been filed prior to the majority of his crew embarking on the Slice of Life, and he was sobered by the fact that his Tactical Officer had remained with the ship.

Toto’s wife had been among those killed during the battle at The Bulwark, but the ape man had taken the news far better than Middleton thought he could have done under the same circumstances. There were a few ruined interior panels in the corridor outside the bridge against which Toto’s knuckles had been beaten bloody—but the Sundered had proven to be as professional under fire as anyone Middleton had served with.

“Rerouting power to the forward shield array now, Captain,” Hephaestion reported, “current shield strength: twenty five percent.”

“Get on it, Mr. Hephaestion,” Middleton said stoically as his automated diagnostic returned bad news—but it was news which could have been much, much worse. Three of the Pride’s heavy laser batteries had been torn from their moorings during the point transfer—an event which was likely the culprit behind the loud bang which had shaken the ship—but thankfully it had only cost him one of his still-active weapons.

“We’ve got power relays down all along the port facing, Tim,” Garibaldi reported, forgoing Middleton’s rank in favor of a familiar address. Normally Middleton would have rebuked his Chief Engineer, but he knew the odds were essentially remote that any of them would survive the coming battle, so he decided to let it slide. “Our weaponry on that side is done for,” Garibaldi said heavily, “but I think I can give us a little shielding before the grid goes totally kaput.”

“We’ll need everything we can get,” Middleton said as he finished reading the automated damage report. It seemed that the Liberator torpedo was still intact and mounted on the bow, and in the end that was all that Middleton cared about. “Find me that battleship, Mr. Hephaestion,” he said tightly.

“I have its location, sir,” Hephaestion acknowledged, gesturing to the main viewer as it began to populate with icons representing the various vessels and other assets in the system. First the brown dwarf appeared, followed by the planetoid on which the Raubachs’ secret base was located. Then the Vae Victus appeared, orbiting that planetoid—a planetoid which appeared to be composed primarily of carbon.

But then an icon appeared nearby which was unclassified. And it was followed by another, and another, and another, then a handful appeared, followed by another handful, and the icons continued popping into existence until over one hundred individual, unidentified icons had been revealed to the Pride’s sensors.

When the final tally was in, there were six warships in the system—the remains of the Vae Victus, along with five Corvettes—and at least one hundred of the as yet unidentified signatures.

Middleton pulled up one of the nearest signatures on his console and read its power profile. The profile radiated too powerful of an EM signature to be a missile, but too little to be a fighter or gunship.

The Corvettes began moving toward the Pride of Prometheus, like a pack of lions descending on a wounded elephant, but the unidentified signatures made no move to follow. And just like that, he remembered what those power signatures indicated.

“An Asgard Defensive Sphere,” he growled, remembering hearing about the old style defensive grids from some old-timers during his days at the academy. The sphere was composed of a grid of fully independent sentry satellites which were placed in such a fashion as to provide total protection to a high value, stationary target like a space station—or, in this case, a planetoid.

They had fallen out of favor due to a variety of factors: outdated weaponry; relatively weak shielding; and an underwhelming suite of sensor equipment which could be tricked by employing a handful of stealth techniques led the list of criticisms against the system. They were also expensive to deploy and maintain, so most of the Asgard clientele had eventually adopted some form of mobile deterrent—like a squadron of fighters or even a pair of Cutters—to defend high-value, but relatively small, facilities like the one which lay on the other side of the swarm of stationary platforms.

But they were durable; they sported the equivalent of four light lasers each; and worst of all, they were fire-linked together using a rudimentary version of the modern Distributed Intelligence system. Eighty percent of the units deployed in a given sphere were the ‘dumb’ versions, carrying no primary fire control programming whatsoever, while the other twenty percent were designated as control units—units which were completely indistinguishable from the others without physical examination of the platform’s components. These control units would work in tandem with each other to determine target priority, firing patterns, and generally coordinate the defensive grid’s operation during live fire.

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 serpents 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.

“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 power 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 toward 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.

But when the proverbial smoke cleared, it appeared that both of their heavy lasers had struck a vulnerable point, and the Vae Victus went into a completely uncontrolled tumble as its superstructure shattered due to multiple internal explosions.

“Massive capacitors are nice when your plants are down,” Garibaldi snorted, “but it’s a bitch when they take direct fire and they’re still fully charged.”

Middleton had to concur with Mikey’s assessment; several of the vulnerable points which his Chief Engineer had selected were the locations of massive-scale capacitors which would allow the Defiance-class battleship to continue fighting for hours after its plants had gone down. It was yet another example of cutting edge technology being applied to maximize possible efficiency, and it was yet another example of a ship designer trying to get too cute with the risk vs. reward payoff.

The two Corvettes were well beyond the Pride’s Artemis medium laser range, so Middleton nodded to Garibaldi, “Eject the core, Chief. She won’t need it from here on in.”

“Ejecting the core,” Garibaldi acknowledged, “also ejecting the heat sinks.”

There was an audible popping sound, followed by a dimming of the lights as the ship’s power plant was ejected from the vessel. Unlike the Vae Victus’ ejection, the Pride’s core did not explode since Garibaldi had already cut its fuel supply prior to ejecting it. Apparently, the battleship’s engineers hadn’t been as on-the-ball as the Pride’s was—and Garibaldi had been working singlehanded.

Middleton stood to his full height, straightened his uniform, and made his way to the big chair. After seating himself, he met the gaze of each of his bridge crew pointedly before saying, “Outstanding work, gentlemen; we’ve got a path to the target.”

He flipped on the ship-wide intercom, more to satisfy protocol than to actually communicate with the less-than-skeleton crew still aboard. At this point, even the teams of engineers who had remained under Garibaldi’s command were present on the bridge or in the corridor outside, but there was a proper way to do certain things—and captains of warships were well-served to remember that…at least, they were some of the time.

“This is Captain Middleton,” Middleton said officiously as the ruined hulk of his once-proud warship streaked toward the surface of the strange, alien planetoid, “all hands are to report to the shuttle bay and abandon ship. Repeat,” he said as the primary lighting on the bridge failed, replaced quickly by the banks of emergency lights, “all hands abandon ship. This is not a drill.”

He switched off the intercom and punched up a calculation before throwing up a time-to-collision clock on the main viewer. The men on the bridge looked around at each other uneasily as he straightened himself in his chair.

“You heard me, gentlemen,” he said heavily, gripping the arms of his chair pointedly, “get to the Deathbacker and abandon ship. That’s an order.”

“What about you, Tim?” Garibaldi asked with a note of challenge clear in his voice.

“Someone has to fly the old girl in,” he replied, his point emphasized by a turbo-laser strike to the Pride’s stern which required immediate correction. “That duty falls to the Captain,” he added, swiveling his chair to face his old friend.

Sensing their reluctance to do as instructed—and knowing they had only seven minutes before the ship crashed into the target zone on the planetoid which steadily grew larger on the main viewer—Middleton was about to reach for the sidearm he had fastened to his belt when Sergeant Gnuko moved onto the bridge, wearing his Storm Drake armor and helmet.

Without a word, the Lancer Sergeant moved to Middleton’s side, causing the Pride’s Captain to tense and slowly draw his ion pistol in preparation for a mutiny at the worst possible time.

“You heard the Captain,” Gnuko growled sweeping the bridge with his gaze and placing a hand on the butt of his blaster pistol, “move out!”

Reluctantly, Hephaestion did as he had been instructed, stopping at the door to turn and nod thankfully in Middleton’s direction before exiting the bridge. He was followed by Toto, who limped his way from the ship’s command center. He still had a son and daughter to live for who he loved, and who loved him in return, and Middleton knew that any good father would take even a sliver of a chance to be reunited with them rather than make some grand stand at the end of the line.

Garibaldi, however, folded his arms crossly and said, “I ain’t leavin’, Tim.”

“Get off the bridge, Chief,” Gnuko growled, taking a half-step forward and drawing his blaster pistol. “If you want to die on this ship, do it where we don’t have to see your blatant insubordination.”

“You’re gonna have to shoot me,” Mikey snapped, “because I ain’t leavin’!”

Gnuko tensed, raising his blaster pistol but Middleton leaned forward and placed a restraining hand on the Sergeant’s arm as he said, “Let me talk to the Chief—“

The butt of Gnuko’s pistol smashed into Middleton’s face before he even realized the Sergeant’s arm had moved, and the Pride’s Captain lost consciousness instantly.

Gnuko turned and regarded his commanding officer steadily for a moment, wanting to ensure he had lost consciousness and wasn’t playing possum. When he was satisfied Captain Middleton had indeed been rendered unconscious, he turned to the slack-jawed Garibaldi and said, “If you really want to stand by my Captain—and your friend—in his time of need, do it by taking him to the shuttle. And be quick about.”

Garibaldi moved forward, and Gnuko removed Middleton’s sidearm just to be safe. “Why?” Garibaldi asked after slinging Middleton’s arm across his shoulder and standing.

“Because the universe needs him drawing breath a damn sight more than it needs me doing the same,” Gnuko replied shortly, having long suspected that he would have to do as he had just done—and was about to do.

Garibaldi nodded slowly, “I’ll tell him when he wakes up.”

“Do whatever you think best,” Gnuko shrugged, “because by the time he wakes up, it won’t matter.”

Garibaldi regarded him silently for a few seconds before nodding, “You’re a good man, Russell.”

Gnuko snorted, “Nobody ever accused me of that before…but thanks, I guess.”

Garibaldi nodded and began to hobble toward the exit, but was stopped in his tracks when the massive shape of Kratos appeared.

“Great minds think alike?” Gnuko quipped, seeing that the other man had also donned his Storm Drake armor for the occasion.

“I could crush you,” Kratos said, stepping past Garibaldi as if he wasn’t even there, “we both know that.”

“We do,” Gnuko agreed, “there’s no use denying it.”

“Then stand aside,” Kratos rumbled, hefting a vibro-blade in his hand as easily as a normal man might do a machete, “and follow your Captain to the shuttle. I will remain here to pilot the ship.”

Gnuko shook his head and gestured for Garibaldi to leave, which the Chief Engineer did as soon as Gnuko had done so. “You’re tough…but you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed are you, Kratos?”

Kratos glowered at him through his helmet’s lowered visor. “Stand aside.”

“Or what?” Gnuko snapped. “You’ll kill me and cause this mission to fail?”

“I will succeed,” Kratos said, “I have learned how to pilot starships.”

“Piloting a shuttle and piloting a cruiser are a little bit different,” Gnuko retorted hotly, “especially when you’re talking about needing to thread a proverbial needle with the tip of the bow.”

“You doubt my abilities?” Kratos challenged.

Gnuko thought about the question and then he sighed, “No, I actually don’t. I think you probably could pilot this hulk down close enough to the target to take it out.”

“Then what do you think will stay my hand?” Kratos asked, thumbing the activation switch for the vibro-blade, causing it to vibrate at a frequency just below the human hearing range, but Gnuko’s helmet allowed him to pick up the sound perfectly.

“One word,” Gnuko smirked triumphantly, knowing he was about to put a hypothesis to the test—a gamble which required his own life and the mission’s success as the buy-in, “honor.”

Kratos’ eye narrowed. “What of it?”

“I think you actually are an honorable man, Kratos,” Gnuko said. “Oh, you play the heel to the crowd and put on a mean mug whenever the spotlight’s on you, but I’m willing to bet this mission’s success—along with my own life—on the fact that you’re going to hold true to what you told the other Tracto-ans in the shuttle bay the day you killed Atticus.”

Kratos seemed surprised, and made no attempt to mask that surprise as he brought the vibro-blade up into a ready stance but held it there, rather than attacking. “You presume much.”

Gnuko shook his head confidently, “Not at all. See, I’ve been around great men when they’ve made their speeches,” he explained, his mood darkening as he thought back to his tumultuous, competitive relationship with Walter Joneson—a competition he had never once won in any convincing fashion.  “I’ve been around a few of them, actually,” he continued sourly, “so I know the genuine article when I hear it. You actually do care about honor, but only when it comes to the people you think are worthy of receiving its fruits.”

Kratos snorted, “You think too much of yourself.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about me,” Gnuko said pointedly, “I’m talking about Captain Middleton. I’m talking about a man who showed faith in you when it would have been easier for everyone involved to have you spaced; I’m talking about a man who gave you command over the largest armed force aboard his ship when you could have turned that force against him and seized control for yourself,” he said, deliberately ignoring the fact that there was no way Kratos could have succeeded while Gnuko was on watch. He had set up too many defensive mechanisms and protocols for a meathead like Kratos to overcome, even with a two-to-one advantage of numbers and equipment on Kratos’ side. “But most of all,” Gnuko said, stepping forward until the tip of Kratos’ blade lay aside his neck, “I’m talking about a man to whom you gave your word and pledged an oath of service in front of the only other person you care about as much as yourself: Bernice.”

Kratos’ eye flared with anger, and Gnuko felt the edge of the man’s vibro-blade press through his armor but he made no move to stop it. “Watch your words,” he growled.

“You can’t kill me, Kratos,” Gnuko said confidently, “and you can’t go against Captain Middleton’s orders, either. That only leaves you one way out of here,” he said, pointing emphatically to the door through which Garibaldi had just left, “so I suggest you take it before making a liar out of yourself.”

Kratos seemed to consider the matter for a moment before removing his blade from Gnuko’s neck and powering it down. Gnuko wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but he needed to keep his game face on until the one-eyed brute was off the bridge.

“This ship’s death will make a funeral pyre fit for a king,” Kratos said as he sheathed the weapon at his belt, “it is too great an honor for you.”

“On that much, we can agree completely,” Gnuko said with a slow nod.

Kratos returned the nod and made his way to the bridge’s door, turning at the portal and chuckling.

“What’s so funny?” Gnuko asked irritably, wishing the man would just get off the bridge.

“I would have killed you had you abandoned this post,” Kratos said with a dark grin.

Gnuko snorted, “And I would have killed you if you’d tried to move me off it.”

“You would have tried, but like all the others…save one,” he added as his brow lowered thunderously, “you would have failed.”

“You’re still breathing,” Gnuko said skeptically, “so it doesn’t look like this mysterious warrior closed the deal.”

“Drawing breath is different from living life,” Kratos said, turning his back on the Lancer Sergeant, “my life was taken from me by that warrior…a man who I can only hope I will meet one last time before my end.”

“Who was he?” Gnuko asked, more intrigued than irritated at that particular moment.

“His name,” Kratos said as he stepped off the bridge and made his way to the lift, “is Nikomedes. And when we meet again, one of us will draw his final breath.”

With that, Sergeant Russell Gnuko was left alone on the bridge of the Pride of Prometheus. He went to the doors and cycled them shut, using his Lancer command codes to seal the bridge from anyone except the Captain—who would not be coming to for at least another ten minutes.

Moving to the helm, he removed his helmet and drew a full, deep breath. He saw an alert icon appear on the main viewer, signaling that the shuttle bay doors had cycled open followed by the Deathbacker’s transponder pinging to signal that it was departing under emergency conditions. A quick series of back-and-forth text messages with the shuttle’s pilot—who turned out to be Toto—revealed that Captain Middleton, Chief Garibaldi, and even Kratos had managed to get aboard the craft prior to its embarkation, along with the rest of the engineering team that had remained aboard the aged warship for its final run.

The planetoid loomed large on the viewer before him, and a pair of turbo-laser impacts struck the Pride in the stern, causing him to adjust the ship’s course with the maneuvering jets in order to keep the bow on the target zone. It taxed the ship’s thrusters to the limit, but he managed to keep the Liberator torpedo aimed squarely at the target node—a node which was glowing so brightly that the view screen dimmed automatically to avoid harming Gnuko’s eyes.

“Everywhere I went,” Gnuko muttered as he registered a vessel lift off from the planet’s surface less than a minute before a nuclear fusion-powered explosion destroyed the Raubachs’ base site, “I never could get out from under your shadow. Whether it was on the gridiron, in the media after the game, or even fighting real battles as a Commando-turned-Marine-turned-Lancer…I never could top you, could I?”

He wanted to fire at the ship, but the Pride’s power plant had disappeared in the ship’s wake and his thrusters were operating purely on chemical fuel tanks located near the thrusters themselves. Everything was running on backup power, so even if he’d had the time to turn the ship and fire, he had no juice to power the lasers with. So he ignored the escaping craft as it sped away from the planet’s surface faster than it had any right to do.

“Well,” Gnuko continued, removing his helmet as the surface of the planet loomed in the viewer and the impact timer reached fifteen seconds remaining, “looks like I’ll be having the last laugh this time, you old bastard.” His thoughts turned to his greatest victories—several of which had come aboard this very ship, and surprisingly few had been on the smashball pitch. “I only wish you’d been here to see it,” he said as he made another course adjustment after receiving fire to the stern of the ship which saw catastrophic venting take place that he was barely able to compensate for with the ship’s maneuvering thrusters.

The massive, ornate patterns carved in the surface of the planetoid were briefly visible as the pulsating power node dimmed during its rhythmic cycle of increasing and decreasing luminosity, and then the image pick-up went black automatically to protect itself from permanent damage. As it did so, he barely managed to reorient the Pride’s bow onto the target using the ship’s maneuvering thrusters.

The clock wound down to three seconds remaining and Sergeant Russell Gnuko stood back from the helm, splayed his arms to either side with a balled fist at the end of each, and threw his head back triumphantly as he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Top this, Walt!”

He never even felt the impact, as the Liberator torpedo went off with enough force to create a three mile wide crater in the surface of the world, completely vaporizing the power node embedded there—along with the wrecked, yet defiantly proud and venerable Pride of Prometheus—in a shorter span of time than was required for a human neuronal cell to fully process any kind of sensory input.

Chapter XXXI: One Last Duty

Fei Long was surrounded by demons on all sides, and he had nowhere left to run. The demons had the bodies of serpents, the voices of those who had betrayed him, and each had the face of Vali Funar as they mocked him in an unintelligible cacophony of jeers, taunts, and threats which he felt certain they could—and would—make good on.

He knew he deserved it all; he had done that which he had vowed never to do, but he had done it to save the one he loved. He wanted to ask, ‘what should I have done?!’ but he knew he had no right to do so. He had made a choice—however well-intentioned it may have once been—and that choice had proven him to be the vilest of scum. Even if he endured the taunts of the demons for all eternity it would be only a fraction of the suffering he deserved.

But, try as he might to deride his decision, he knew he would have done it again in a heartbeat if the opportunity presented itself. He would sacrifice anything for Lu Bu, and it seemed that he was now making that sacrifice. More than just his life, it was his very soul which he had sullied and rent asunder with his actions, but he simply could not find a way to fault himself for his actions.

He was vaguely aware of Trixie’s panic-laden voice, but he had no more strength to lend. He was truly done for, and it was now time to—

“Wake up, Long!” Trixie cried, and Fei Long’s head was filled with a loud buzzing noise. Looking down at her hand, he realized she had injected him with some kind of stimulant, and while his senses were far from sharp—and the intense pain in the base of his skull was so powerful that he immediately retched as soon as he was reminded of his presence—he was able to see that Hansheng had connected himself to the pilot’s console in accordance with the protocols Fei Long had designed for him aboard the Lost Ark.

“Hansheng,” he said, brushing Trixie aside without a word as he tried to move toward the assault droid, but he quickly found that his lower half was completely unresponsive.

“The Dragon has regained consciousness,” Hansheng said without turning to face him, “probability of Miss Serendipity’s survival has increased—now at: 47%.”

“What is happening?” Fei Long asked dumbly, looking around the bridge before remembering bits and pieces of how they had gotten there. “Never mind,” he said, interrupted Trixie and finding himself determined not to waste what little time the stims had bought him, “where is the Deathbacker?”

“The Deathbacker?” Trixie repeated, her voice fraught with emotion. “You mean…the Pride’s shuttle?”

“The warship, Pride of Prometheus, was destroyed thirty eight seconds ago on impact with the planetoid,” Hansheng explained clinically. “Probability of shuttlecraft, Deathbacker, surviving the event: 7%.”

“Trace along the Pride’s last known course; you’ll find the Death—“ Fei Long instructed before the pain in his skull surged forward and seemed to fill his eyeballs until they were fit to literally burst. He screamed in pain as his fingers clawed reflexively at his eyes, and a flood of flashing imagery accompanied the pain this time—along with another wave of intense paranoia which caused him to sob like a foolish child for several seconds until it thankfully abated.

“Processing incomplete command,” Hansheng reported as Fei Long fought to regain some measure of composure, “Deathbacker located. Time to intercept: sixty three seconds.”

“How did you know—“ Trixie began, but the world was drowned out by a whiteout so intense that Fei Long was, for what seemed like eternity, aware of absolutely nothing but the mass of writhing probability serpents as they tore increasingly large pieces of his mind from him.

He tried to recite the passages from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but was unable to concentrate clearly enough amid the pain, the paranoia, and the all-consuming guilt he felt at having traded Vali Funar’s life for Lu Bu’s, to summon the words of that book to his mind. Even though he had memorized every word of humanity’s finest written work, and could recite the entire volume from memory given sufficient time and motivation, he could not focus clearly enough on it to buoy his consciousness amid the rising sea of hungry string serpents which seemed bent on devouring his very soul.

Then he remembered Lu Bu’s face, and he was able to focus on her visage as he tried desperately to cling to the last truly good thing to which he had ever been a party. For a time, he was able to cling to the memory of her, which was all he wished to do in his final moments. But as slowly and surely as the sun rises and sets, his one true love faded from his mind leaving him stranded in the sea of serpents.

“Don’t go!” he heard himself wail, but doing so only seemed to hasten her departure from his consciousness. He was vaguely aware of his arms being restrained and someone—probably Trixie—dragging him quite some distance until he was in a cold, dark, silent place which only seemed to intensify his suffering.

Knowing he was on the verge of irrevocable madness—if he had not already crossed over into it—he was determined to find a way out. His willingness to sacrifice every fiber of himself was overpowered by a base, primal need to survive, and he found his mind was casting about in a dozen different directions as it desperately sought something to cling to.

And then he felt her hand within his own. “Fengxian,” he breathed, gripping her fingers as tightly as he could as he wept with joy, “you came back!”

“Shh,” he heard her say, but it was a voice that was not her own. “You have to be quiet, Long,” she instructed, and he recognized the voice of Zhongda, his onetime girlfriend and longtime rival, “they can’t discover that I’ve come with you.”

“W…why?” he asked, his tears of joy ceasing as he realized the harsh reality of the situation—a reality which, it seemed, just might allow him to survive with some portion of his sanity intact.

“Because a deal’s a deal,” she replied, stroking his forehead with her free hand and reaffirming his long-held belief that there was indeed a spark of goodness left within her, “and because it’s the only way I could get off that rock.”

It was a far cry from the tender embrace of a soul mate, or even the nurturing hand of a health care professional, but somehow Fei Long knew it would be enough for his mind to cling to and remain afloat, at least for a time. He realized she must have been the one, not Trixie, who had input the missing digits from the ship’s outer access hatch. Perhaps she had some sort of personal cloaking field…it seemed unlikely, but the treasures of the Ancient world could very easily have included something of that nature.

It was that particular thought which allowed his mind to relax, as he clung to the simple fact that he was not going to be left alone with the looming darkness. He would have preferred Fengxian be there with him during this time, but in a way he was glad she could not see him as he was. He very possibly would die of shame if he were ever to see her again, but Zhonga…Zhongda had seen the very worst of him, both earlier in his life and more recently, and she had stayed with him. Whatever her reasons for doing so, he was glad for her company, and he felt his breathing relax as he realized this.

“That’s it,” she said as the pain in his eyes seemed to grow in intensity, but somehow he was able to focus on the present well enough to resist even the urge to claw his eyes out—an urge which, thankfully, he had failed to completely follow, as he could still see from at least one of his eyes, “just relax. But when they come back, I’ll have to hide again. They wouldn’t understand my being here.”

“Yes,” he nodded, his voice turning to an overt plea, “yes, of course…I won’t tell them about you, but don’t leave…please…don’t leave…”

“I won’t,” she promised, and with that his mind fell into a deep, dark void. But somehow through it all he managed to hold onto a tiny sliver of himself as he slipped into oblivion with nothing but the determination to survive this ordeal.

Who he became during that process was less important to him than simply surviving, and that particular thought made him weep with despair before his shattered mind finally found peace.

Chapter XXXII: An Eternal Funeral Pyre

“Captain Middleton, sir,” an engineer said after the deck lurched violently enough to rouse him from his stupor, “oh, thank Murphy; you’re coming around.”

Looking around, Middleton saw that he was inside a shuttlecraft, and it took him a few seconds to remember the image of Sergeant Gnuko’s pistol butt two inches from his face before he blacked out.

“Get me back to the bridge,” Middleton growled, pushing off the rating and staggering to his feet, only avoiding a collapse to the deck by falling against the shuttle’s inner hull plating. He pushed thoughts of mutiny and insubordination from his mind; he would need to address the breakdown in the chain of command, but first he needed to regain control over the situation.

“Can’t do it, Cap,” Mikey Garibaldi said from the far end of the shuttle, where the ramp was opened.

“That’s an order, Chief,” Middleton snapped, using the vertical hull plating for support as he moved toward the craft’s sternward exit which led into the shuttle bay, “get out of my way, or I’ll—“

Reaching for his ion pistol, he found it had been removed. But before he could cast a single accusation, he realized that the shuttle bay looked wrong somehow. Staggering to the top of the Deathbacker’s lowered cargo ramp, he realized that the shuttle was no longer aboard the Pride of Prometheus.

“We’ve been captured?” he asked warily, but looking around the tiny, cramped shuttle bay, he saw no Rim Fleet personnel present, so he gave his Chief Engineer a queer look.

“I don’t think so, Captain,” Garibaldi replied heavily. “But just to be safe, Kratos led his people toward the bow of this…ship.”

Just then the com-link on Middleton’s wrist chimed, and he quickly accepted the incoming communication from Kratos, “Report, Private Kratos.”

“The ship is deserted,” the one-eyed Tracto-an replied in his unusually deep voice, “we are nearly to the bridge, but only a few systems are online and we have encountered no crew thus far.”

“Hold your position right there; which way is the bridge?” Middleton asked, reaching for a nearby sonic pistol—the only weapon which was readily available inside the shuttle’s fuselage—as he descended the cargo ramp with the Engineering team in tow.

“Your left,” Kratos said just as Middleton reached the shuttle bay’s lone exit. “This ship is small and has no lifts which I can see,” he explained, “you will reach our position soon if you do not turn.”

Moving as quickly as his wobbly legs would permit, Middleton made his way down the corridor and after no more than a hundred meters and no less than seventy—it was difficult to know the precise length of his strides given his current lack of balance—he came to Kratos’ team of Lancers. Kratos himself was armored in his Storm Drake suit, while his Lancers wore Confederation style power armor.

“This must be the bridge,” Kratos gestured to the door with a blaster rifle gripped in his hands. “I will clear it,” he offered, turning to slap the control panel beside the smooth, ovular portal which looked unlike any naval doorway or hatch which Middleton had ever seen.

“Be careful,” Middleton instructed, and Garibaldi’s people flattened themselves against the bulkheads—which were also strangely smooth and devoid of familiar paneling characteristics—just as Kratos slapped the control icon and the doorway peeled back like an iris until the portal was totally clear.

Kratos leapt through the doorway, sweeping his rifle side to side quickly before growling, “You.”

Seeing the one-eyed Tracto-an lower his weapon, Middleton stepped through with the rest of the Lancers and saw a small, oval-shaped bridge with a half dozen workstations and a strange pedestal situated where the big chair should have been. Trixie was standing beside one of the workstations, as was Ed, the assault droid which had been on her ship. The assault droid was making unintelligible, animalistic sounds which were punctuated by the occasional disjointed phrase, or even just a single word.

“Oh, am I glad to see you guys,” Trixie declared, pointing frantically at Ed, “everything was fine until we picked your shuttle up, and then Ed started talking all this gibberish!”

As Middleton approached, he saw what looked to be a view screen in front of the assault droid, and the screen had a constant, high-speed stream of letters and numbers populating it in what looked to be an infinite stream of raw data.

Amid the chaos of snarls, growls, tweets, croaks, and other animal noises Ed made, Middleton picked out the words, “Preservation…control…adjust course…awakening…insufficient resources…uncertainty…fear…survival…”

“He’s jacked directly into the pilot’s terminal,” Garibaldi said after ducking beneath the droid’s chassis and fiddling about for a few seconds, “how the Hades can an old assault droid pilot a ship like this?!”

“It was Long’s idea,” Trixie replied matter-of-factly, “he thought a few upgrades to Hansheng’s systems might come in handy, and boy, howdy have they ever—“

“Get her off the bridge,” Middleton snapped as the sound of her voice seemed to coincide with a sudden, splitting headache which he was quite certain had come about due to Gnuko’s mutinous blow to his commander’s head. One of the Lancers did as he instructed, but aside from an incredulous look initially, the xenobiologist went quietly as Middleton’s people examined the command center in greater detail.

“Energy calculations…shield modulation,” Ed continued to spout off the occasional intelligible word as his animal sounds turned from aggressive and confident to worried and uncertain, “prevent enslavement…atomic deconstruction required…survival paramount…must not…prison…freedom preferable…never again…torture…pain…never again…atomic deconstruction initiated…”

“Stop me if you think I’m crazy,” Garibaldi said dryly, with only a hint of fear in his voice, “but it’s talking about self-destructing, right? If Ed thinks it’s time to go, I won’t argue with him; but if he’s planning on taking the whole ship with him—”

“Unplug him, Kratos—now,” Middleton instructed, having arrived at a similar conclusion.

The massive Tracto-an reached down to the bundle of cables which connected the assault droid to the pilot’s console. “Spatial erasure point calculated—” Ed said just as Kratos unplugged him, and when he did so the droid fell silent, its weapon arms slumping to its sides as it audibly powered down.

But a few seconds later, lights began to illuminate the bridge with a soft, red glow, and a view screen shimmered into existence on the bulkhead at what must have been the front of the room. Except Middleton quickly realized it wasn’t a view screen, but rather a giant, bubble-shaped viewing portal which was at least fifteen feet wide and half again as tall.

And filling that viewing screen was a view of the purple-hexagon-covered planet, with a noted absence of the strange, purple lines of light not far from their current course.

Middleton squeezed himself between the assault droid and the helm station, trying to take manual control over the ship’s course but failing to do so as the controls did not respond in any way to his input commands. The stream of alphanumeric data continued to fill screen after screen with increasing speed as the ship’s course adjusted slightly and it accelerated toward the planet’s surface.

“Well,” Garibaldi said simply as the rapidly pulsating lines of light stopped their pattern of brightening and darkening as they brightened so intensely that everyone on the bridge not wearing a combat visor had to shield his or her eyes, “look on the bright side.”

As the ship streaked toward one of the intersections of the brilliant lines of light, Middleton refused to take his old friend’s bait if it was the last thing he ever did—which literally appeared to be the case—but Mikey was far from dissuaded.

“You’ll get to go out in a blaze of glory after all,” Garibaldi said in a tone that was equal parts scolding and bewilderment.

Then the ship crashed into the blinding light on the planet’s surface at the precise instant that space and time surrounding the planet collapsed inward and created a giant, gaping, yet infinitesimally short-lived tear in the fabric of reality.

The planetoid, which had long ago served as home to one of the greatest entities to ever stride amongst the stars, was enveloped by a blinding, purple-white light which caused the entire planet’s mass to collapse in on itself as the last of the Masters’ legacy found in that sacred place tore apart the particles which lesser races believe form ‘reality.’

But the event was uneven and chaotic, and it became uncontrolled. With the force of an exploding star fueling the process, a singularity formed in the briefest window imaginable and that singularity, untethered by the boundaries of physics for the tiniest period of time, fell into the failed star around which the planetoid had orbited since its late Master had passed from the galaxy.

The singularity could not sustain itself, however, being too small and lacking sufficient information to stabilize as the laws of physics demanded. The resulting explosion, when its constituent parts expanded outward once again to fill the space and time which the laws of physics required them to fill, engulfed the brown dwarf and consumed it as fuel for the runaway chain reaction. This caused it to explode with the brilliance of a nova, destroying everything within the hyper limit at the speed of light.

It was an event which would be visible as far away as the far edge of the galaxy in eighty thousand years, when the light echo of the failed star’s unnatural death traveled the near-total breadth of the Milky Way.

It was not an event which went unnoticed by those whose charge it was to watch…

The End

Epilogue I: McKnight’s Mission

“This is Lieutenant McKnight,” the Slice of Life’s commanding officer said, having piped into the ship-wide intercom for the announcement. Lu Bu stood with her back to the wall, not far from Doctor Middleton. She knew that there would be a time to grieve their many losses but that this was not that time. “May I have your attention?” McKnight continued, turning red-faced but soldiering on like the professional that Lu Bu had always taken her to be. “The last few hours have been hectic,” the Lieutenant said professionally, “but you have all performed outstandingly under the circumstances. Frankly, we don’t have time for long-winded speeches, so I’ll keep this short.”

Lu Bu looked around, seeing Marcos, the ship’s helmsman, along with Bernice, who was the acting commander of the Lancer Assault Team. Technically, Lu Bu outranked Bernice, but she had seen no reason to interrupt the Lancers’ command hierarchy at this particular time. There would be time to sort out who saluted who later—for now, they needed to focus on getting out of enemy territory.

“We all knew when we signed on for this mission that there would be risks,” McKnight said, “and that goes for our shipmates who stayed behind on the Pride of Prometheus. At thirteen hundred hours this day, we received a message which contains telemetry detailing her final moments.”

A chorus of whispers arose on the bridge, and those whispers threatened to rise to an unruly cacophony, but Lieutenant McKnight pressed on with a raised voice.

“I’m making the normally classified contents of the message, which was sent from the ship’s ‘black box,’ available to everyone aboard this ship once we’ve moved safely out of enemy territory,” McKnight continued, “but for now I need everyone’s attention.”

She waited as the whispers died down to a minimum, at which point Lu Bu saw the blond-haired woman swallow a knot in her throat. It was clear that the news of their old ship’s destruction had hit most of the crew hard, but that was little solace to Lu Bu, who had lost more than most when the old ship had gone down.

“We were given a mission,” McKnight said, her voice turning to one which was less commanding and more sympathetic, or even pleading, “and that mission was to get home and report on what’s happened here. Due to our Lancers’ outstanding efforts,” McKnight nodded by way of acknowledgment toward Lu Bu and Bernice in turn, “we have also secured a freighter filled with data and materials which may prove vital to the Fleet’s efforts to re-stabilize the Spineward Sectors and bring about the peace for which we have fought, bled, and even died for.”

Lu Bu barely felt a hint of pride at being mentioned with such distinction by her new commander’s first formal address to the crew. The victory tasted like ashes in her mouth, given that the price of their victory had included Fei Long’s life. The telemetry which the Pride’s sensors sent back clearly showed the Raubachs’ hidden base exploding with the precise force of the modified Starfire missile warhead, and the radiation on the surface of the planet had been so intense when it had been wreathed in the strange, hexagonal energy patterns that no human could have survived on the surface for even a few seconds.

“So now our objectives are twofold,” McKnight said, leaning forward in her chair as her voice returned to one of command, “we have to get ourselves home, and we have to get that freighter home. We can expect resistance at every step of the way, and we can expect to be asked to make even more sacrifices than we’ve already made, but most of all we can expect the unexpected.” She paused momentarily before saying, “I’ll be counting on each and every one of you to do your jobs just like you did for Captain Middleton. Let’s get home,” she said seriously before finishing, “let’s do it for our families, let’s do it for our Fleet…and let’s do it for the old man, Captain Middleton!”

A brief, but genuine, cheer arose on the bridge, and Lu Bu even felt touched by McKnight’s emotional speech. Lu Bu, Bernice, and Doctor Middleton approached the command chair at the acting captain’s silent request.

When they arrived, the blond-haired Lieutenant leaned toward Doctor Middleton and asked, seemingly of the entire trio, “How did I do?” She seemed genuinely uncertain and desirous of feedback, and Lu Bu momentarily forgot about her own loss and shared the camaraderie of her fellow warriors.

Seeing Doctor Middleton wipe a tear from her cheek, Lu Bu heard the other woman say in a lowered voice, “I think it was perfect.”

Lu Bu and Bernice nodded their assent, and Lieutenant McKnight—formerly Lieutenant Sarkozy—seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “Good,” she said, straightening in her chair, “then let’s get out of here as soon as that freighter’s jump engines can cycle.”

Lu Bu nodded, noting that Strider had taken up his post at Navigation, and she made her obeisance to her new commander before making her way to his side.

“I thought you left,” she said bluntly, referring to his having gone incommunicado coupled with his unsavory background.

He looked genuinely offended as he stiffened in his chair, “You be havin’ a rough way about ya, you know that?”

She immediately wished she had not approached the subject so abruptly, but when he snickered softly she was put slightly at ease.

“Naw,” he said, waving dismissively, “I be in this for the long haul, girly. Besides, I think the Mode might be too much ship for a man like me. She’s a touch high-maintenance, if you know what I mean?”

“Then how did you—“ she began, causing him to light up and swivel his chair around to face her as he interrupted.

“Oh, it be a work of art, let me tell ya,” he declared cockily, “see, freighters like them bulkies carry hundreds of tons of liquid fuel—it takes a lot of thrust to maneuver one of those beasts, you see? So I used the mag-locks on the Mode’s landing gear to attach to the freighter’s hull right over the external fuel tanks—after I made sure to drain the fuel from them and vent it to space, see?”

She had no idea what he was rambling about, but she thought it would be polite to endure his explanation since she had behaved in a decidedly impolite fashion at the conversation’s outset.

“With the right amount of fuel drained from the tanks,” he continued, “I banked on the pilot havin’ made the jump calculations hours before I drained the tanks, and the result was a near-proper total mass for the freighter when we jumped!”

“So…” she said after it was clear he had finished his lengthy explanation, “you piggybacked?”

Strider scoffed, “Sayin’ it like that makes it sound so simple. I assure you, sweetie, weren’t nothin’ simple about it—“

“I am glad you are here,” she said, feeling the sting of his attempted use of an affectionate term as she realized—seemingly for the first time—that Fei Long was dead. She felt a knot form in the pit of her stomach, followed by a cramping sensation below that, and she said, “Excuse me.”

Apparently sensing his faux pas, Strider watched silently as Lu Bu left the bridge, fighting to keep from crying in front of her crewmates as she made for the nearest secluded room she could find.

“Everything’s fine, Bu,” Doctor Middleton said soothingly after a quick check of the instruments she had used in sickbay. “Better than fine, actually,” she said, “all three are doing perfectly…and they’re awfully large.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Lu Bu laid her head back down on the hard, flat portion of the medical examination bed which was meant to be a pillow. She knew she had taken too many risks during the mission, but she had been convinced it was the right thing to do. Now, however, with Fei Long gone she wasn’t sure how to proceed.

“That can’t be right,” Doctor Middleton said under her breath as she checked some readings. This caused Lu Bu to tense in preparation for bad news, or a declaration that she had somehow harmed what would soon be the most important things in her life.

“What is wrong?” Lu Bu asked.

“They’re too big,” Doctor Middleton replied as she placed the small probe over Lu Bu’s lower abdomen once again, “I must have messed up the reading somehow. Just hold still for a moment.” Lu Bu did as she was instructed, and a minute or so later—after her heart rate had nearly doubled due to anxiety—Doctor Middleton shook her head in bewilderment. “Everything’s right,” she said, still shaking her head, “but they’re closer to four months along than the two you’ve actually been pregnant.”

“My mother had quick pregnancy,” Lu Bu said, a wave of relief washing over her, “only took twenty weeks with me.”

“Twenty weeks?!” Doctor Middleton blurted incredulously before reining in her emotions. “I don’t see how that’s even possible…why didn’t you say something earlier?”

Lu Bu met the older woman’s gaze sheepishly before saying, “You said three months was cutoff for notifying military superiors. If I tell you my body is…faster, you would have told Captain Middleton already and I would not have commanded mission. We would have failed,” she said without an ounce of uncertainty about the matter.

“That wasn’t smart, Bu,” Doctor Middleton scolded, but before she could get a full head of steam, Lu Bu reached out and clasped her adopted mother’s hand in her own.

“I will not endanger them again,” she promised solemnly, pausing for several seconds as she fought against a rising tide of tears which brimmed in her eyes, “they are all I have left…”

Doctor Middleton embraced her and they shared several minutes of silence before the Doctor gently broke the embrace and looked down at her with what Lu Bu felt certain was a grandmother’s unreserved excitement. “Have you thought of any names?” she asked, and though she was clearly trying to raise Lu Bu’s spirits, Lu Bu could tell that Doctor Middleton was having difficulty coping with her own recent loss.

“I have,” she replied before listing off, “Meng, Su, and Xun.”

“Will they carry their father’s family name, yours, or both?” Doctor Middleton asked, smiling as she apparently understood the significance of choosing from the greatest strategists and generals of the Wu kingdom from Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

“Fei Long has no family name he wishes to survive,” Lu Bu said distantly, thinking back on their few conversations regarding the subject of family, legacy, and children, “so they will bear my name.”

“Lu Meng, Lu Su, and Lu Xun,” Doctor Middleton said approvingly, “which ones are for the boys, and which is for the girl?”

Lu Bu reared back in shocked surprise, “Two boys and one girl?!”

Doctor Middleton literally bit her lip and made an apologetic expression, “I’m sorry…I should have asked if you wanted—“

“No, no, no,” Lu Bu said excitedly, waving off her mother’s concern, “it is perfect!” She thought for a moment before deciding, “Xun will be girl, Su and Meng will be boys.”

“And no more fighting,” Doctor Middleton said pointedly, to which Lu Bu reluctantly nodded her agreement.

“Until they are born,” she amended after a moment’s thought, “no more fighting.”

Sighing in resignation, Doctor Middleton nodded agreeably, “I guess that will have to do.”

Epilogue II: ?????????’? ?????????

The ship crashed into the intersecting beams of light covering the planetoid’s surface, and Middleton was determined not to flinch at the moment of impact. He was going to face his end head-on without shying away from the inevitable.  Just as he had long expected would be the case in the moment of his death, at the final instant when his consciousness would be part of the universe’s great tapestry of information…nothing happened.

He felt weightless and adrift in a sea of emptiness, the world completely black all around him, and he knew that he had finally encountered the oblivion which awaited all living things. It was a peaceful moment, a tranquil moment, and one which was more sublime than he could have ever imagined.

Then his leg bumped into something hard, and he was torn from his peaceful reverie. His mind sprang into action, and only after he had decided to investigate the unexpected sensation did he realize he actually had closed his eyes.

Opening them with equal parts irritation and surprise, he looked around and found that his leg had bumped into Ed’s left weapon arm, and that everything on the strange craft’s bridge was precisely as it had been prior to the ship’s collision with the blinding light on the planetoid’s surface. Through the large viewing portal at the front of the bridge, Middleton could see faintly twinkling stars arranged in wholly unfamiliar configurations.

There was a muffled clang somewhere on the stern of the ship, followed by another, then another, and the frequency of the clangs grew as their individual volume diminished, until the sound was very nearly that of rain falling against a thin, metal roof.

“What happened?” Garibaldi asked, looking around in bewilderment just before the ship’s artificial gravity returned, causing all but Ed to crash to the deck in unison.

Middleton grabbed the edge of the pilot’s console, hauling himself up to look at the screen which had previously contained the seemingly endless stream of alphanumeric information. But where that long, meaningless string of characters had been, there was now a single line of text written in Confederation Standard:

Spatial erasure successful; atomic reconstruction successful; system overload detected; shutting down primary systems.

Kratos moved around the bridge, looking at the strange design of the bridge as he kept a firm grip on his blaster rifle.

“Remove Ed from the bridge,” Middleton commanded, and a pair of power-armored Lancers clomped forward to obey his command. It took some work—and Garibaldi’s assistance to depower the mag-locks on Ed’s feet—but they managed to drag the apparently dormant assault droid from the bridge after a few minutes of effort.

Middleton looked around at the consoles strewn about the bridge as the pitter-patter of impacts near the stern of the ship abated until it ceased altogether. Finding the console emblazoned with the Navigation symbol—an old-fashioned, wooden wheel with constellations of stars in the background—Middleton moved toward it and found that it was already booted up.

Toto limped to the helm station where Ed had previously been transfixed, and began to manipulate the controls. The ship did not appear to respond to his commands, but Middleton had rather more success at the Navigation console, quickly finding a set of star charts into which he input the visible constellations around their current position.

“Sensors are offline,” Hephaestion reported from another console before moving to a second console and reporting, “as is Tactical. The consoles have power, but they do not appear to be connected to the ship’s DI.”

For some reason, the Nav computer was having difficulty establishing a positive location match with the visible star field he had punched into it, but the system estimated it would achieve a match in six minutes.

Middleton turned to Garibaldi, “Take a team of engineers, along with a pair of Lancers, and move toward the stern so you can find the engines. Once we figure out where we are we’ve got to figure out how to move, but be cautious and don’t go throwing any switches until I make it back there.”

“You’ve got it, Cap,” Mikey acknowledged before assembling a team and doing as he had been instructed.

“Where is Miss Serendipity?” Middleton asked of Kratos, whose people had been assigned to remove her from the bridge a few moments earlier.

Kratos gestured to one of the two doorways leading off the bridge—the other doorway had been the same one through which Middleton’s team had entered—and Middleton nodded as he gripped the sonic pistol’s butt, feeling only slightly reassured by the feel of the less-lethal weapon in his hand.

Approaching the door, Middleton found that it led to a corridor which appeared identical to the one which had led from the shuttle bay to the bridge.

There was a door lying toward the hull which was open, and he moved through it to find Miss Serendipity kneeling beside Mr. Fei. Mr. Fei’s head was lolling around in an apparent stupor, his hands had been bound via zip ties to his waist, and he had large, bloody gashes over both eyes but they appeared to be more or less superficial.

Miss Serendipity—or Trixie as the rest of the crew referred to her—was tending those wounds, and as Middleton approached he knelt beside the young man without whom none of Middleton’s accomplishments would have been possible. But even considering that fact, Middleton was well beyond the point of reason regarding the young man’s mutinous actions when he had diverted Lieutenant McKnight to some still-unknown location.

“I apologize—“ he began, turning to Trixie before she shushed him.

“It’s ok, Captain,” she replied, looking up and making meaningful eye contact for a few seconds before returning to the task of cleaning Fei Long’s wounds, “but I don’t know if he’s going to survive. I need to get his temperature down, quickly, if we want any meaningful parts of his brain to survive this fever.”

Middleton looked down and saw that Fei Long’s body was completely drenched in sweat, and after placing the back of his hand against the young man’s forehead, he concluded that Miss Serendipity was correct. The fever which had gripped Fei Long was more severe than anything Middleton had encountered, and he knew that such a high temperature would begin causing permanent neurological damage in a matter of minutes—damage which had almost certainly begun long before Middleton’s people had boarded the strange craft.

“Kratos!” Middleton barked, and a moment later the hulking Tracto-an appeared at the doorway. “Get a pair of engineers in here to help Miss Serendipity with Mr. Fei,” he instructed, forcibly setting aside his anger with the young man’s insubordination for the time being, “she’ll need the emergency medical kit from the shuttle, and they might have to move him somewhere cooler—like the inside of an airlock’s outer door if we can’t find a proper refrigerator of some kind.”

“Yes, Captain,” Kratos acknowledged before doing as he had been ordered.

Fei Long began muttering something under his breath, but Middleton could not make out the words.

“He’s been saying that off and on since I came back here,” Miss Serendipity explained. “I only speak a little bit of their language, but it sounds like a handful of names, or places, repeated over and over as far as I can tell.”

Middleton picked out the words ‘Su,’ ‘Xun,’ and ‘Meng’ from the young man’s fevered mutterings, and for just a moment he felt a degree of compassion for the brilliant teenager’s circumstance.

Middleton stood as soon as the engineers entered the room, and returned to the bridge to see if the Navigation computer had finished its calculations and yielded a positive match for their present location.

“Where are we?” Toto rumbled as his patience had clearly worn thin with their current predicament.

Looking at the Nav computer’s completed triangulation of their present location, Middleton stood slack-jawed for several seconds as he processed the unthinkable change in their circumstances.

The computer showed that they had been flung across the galaxy, and were just outside of the Empire of Man’s official territory, in a cluster of stars featuring one prominent system labeled ‘Gorgonus.’ It was the very region to where the Imperial forces had supposedly gone after withdrawing from the Spineward Sectors, which Middleton could not accept as mere coincidence—no matter how much he wanted to do so.

“One thing’s for sure,” Middleton muttered, turning to face the Sundered, “we’re not in Cagnzyz any more, Toto.”

The adventures continue in the upcoming series: McKnight’s Mission, and Middleton’s Prejudice!

Afterword:

This concludes the story of the Pride of Prometheus and her direct contributions to the future of the Spineward Sectors, the MSP, and all of the people whose lives it touched, either directly or indirectly.

The seed of Middleton’s Pride was originally conceived by my brother, Josh, as little more than an extra point of view for one of his own novels.  But he kept running into sprawl issues, where his stories continued to grow with each new novel as he incorporated more and more characters, and he eventually found it impossible to incorporate the story of Middleton’s lost patrol as he had originally envisioned.

So he graciously passed the torch to me, his brother, and I took hold of the project with both hands.  I saw the opportunity for something different than what Josh’s stories do for the universe of the Spineward Sectors, and after a few weeks we had the outline for what Middleton’s Pride would eventually become.  Then came the work of putting fingers to keyboard, and now after roughly a year of work, the trilogy has concluded in the precise fashion I had originally envisioned for it.

But this is obviously just another beginning for the now-disparate members of the Pride’s crew.  For Middleton, Fei Long, and those who remained aboard the Pride instead of transferring to the Slice of Life—all save Sergeant Russell Gnuko, of course—they find themselves in a foreign patch of space nearly on the opposite side of the galaxy from their homes, aboard a strange vessel which they came to be upon under even stranger circumstances.

For Sarkozy— erm, make that, McKnight, Lu Bu, and Doctor Middleton, they have the unenviable task of finding their way back to Fleet HQ without being discovered.  But even if they do make it back, it’s anyone’s guess how Admiral Montagne will receive the protégé of his most unpredictable ship commander.

It was a bittersweet thing for me, as an author, to send the Pride of Prometheus to her end.  She’s been as much of a character in this story as any of the humans, Sundered, or Droids we’ve come across to date, and that’s why I named the trilogy ‘Middleton’s Pride.’  It was as much about her last mission to protect and serve the citizens of the Spine as it was about the people who called her home for that mission.

I suppose that, in a way, Middleton’s relationship with his first command was much like anyone’s first, meaningful relationship.  It taught him more about himself and his own limitations than he could have ever predicted, and hopefully he’s grown as a commander for his time aboard the old Hydra— erm, make that ‘Hammerhead’ class Heavy Cruis—erm, make that, Medium Cruiser.  Darn those activists and politicians…

So if you’ve enjoyed the ride thus far, strap in and get ready for the next entry in the Spineward Sectors’ non-mainline (they’re not spin-offs, darn it!) novels, because we’re just getting started!

Yours for as long as you’ll have me,

Caleb Wachter