A House United Read online

  A House United (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride, Book VIII)

  by

  Caleb Wachter

  Copyright © 2017 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 my electronic rights because the money you save today will be the book I can't afford to write for you tomorrow.

  Other Books by Caleb Wachter

  As of 08-22-2017

  SPINEWARD SECTORS: MIDDLETON’S PRIDE

  No Middle Ground

  Up The Middle

  Against The Middle

  McKnight’s Mission (A House Divided)

  Middleton’s Prejudice

  Lynch’s Legacy

  The Middle Road

  A House United

  SPHEREWORLD NOVEL SERIES

  Joined at the Hilt: Union

  Joined at the Hilt 2: Dross

  SPHEREWORLD NOVELLAS

  Between White and Grey

  SPINEWARD SECTORS: A TRACTO TALE

  The Forge of Men

  SEEDS OF HUMANITY: THE COBALT HERESY SERIES

  Revelation

  Reunion

  IMPERIUM CICERNUS SERIES

  Ure Infectus

  Sic Semper Tyrannis

  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

  Admiral's Challenge

  Admiral’s War - Part One

  Admiral’s War - Part Two

  Admiral's Nemesis – Part One

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVEL SERIES

  The Blooding

  The Painting

  The Channeling

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVELLAS

  The Boar Knife

  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

  Join my mailing list at CalebWachter.com for beta reading opportunities, exclusive FREE content, and a load of other goodies!

  Prologue: A New Quest

  Chapter I: It’s Never the Fall…

  Chapter II: Baby Steps

  Chapter III: A Giant Jigsaw

  Chapter IV: Clyde

  Chapter V: Waldo’s Woes

  Chapter VI: The Fourth Step

  Chapter VII: Contingencies

  Chapter VIII: An Olive Branch

  Chapter IX: Dissidents & Disagreements

  Chapter X: Five and Dive

  Chapter XI: Fire & Forget?

  Chapter XII: Negotiations

  Chapter XIII: A Crown of Horns

  Chapter XIV: The Second Greatest

  Chapter XV: Sage Counsel & New Information

  Chapter XVI: Echoes of Light

  Chapter XVII: Back at Base

  Chapter XVIII: The Heist—Prep

  Chapter XIX: Like Marionettes

  Chapter XX: The Heist—Insertion

  Chapter XXI: The Heist—Showdown

  Chapter XXII: Final Prep

  Chapter XXIII: A Deadly Trap

  Chapter XXIV: An Uninvited Guest

  Chapter XXV: A Puzzle of Questionable Divinity

  Chapter XXVI: Clearing a Path

  Chapter XXVII: Density vs. Destiny

  Chapter XXVIII: An Angry God

  Chapter XXIX: A Voice of Thunder

  Chapter XXX: A Good Show

  Chapter XXXI: The Moment of Truth

  Chapter XXXII: The Closing Window

  Chapter XXXIII: Unexpected Assistance

  Chapter XXXIV: A Glittering Rainbow

  Chapter XXXV: New Hope

  Chapter XXXVI: Conduction, Pt. II

  Chapter XXXVII: For All She's Worth

  Chapter XXXVIII: Recollections

  Chapter XXXIX: Lying in Wait

  Chapter XL: The Pride's Proud Pride

  Sneak Peek Chapter: The Eternal King

  Prologue: A New Quest

  “Then it would seem you have no choice,” Nazoraios mused after Nikomedes had finished describing his plan. “I, on the other hand, am still needed here.”

  “Agreed,” Nikomedes nodded grimly. He had come to trust Nazoraios in a way, and he would miss their lengthy conversations. The old man was a true scholar of warfare—and humanity in general—and Nikomedes had learned much during their time together. “I will return victorious,” Nikomedes assured him as he stood to leave.

  “Might you stay a moment?” Nazoraios asked, prompting Nikomedes’ eyebrow to quirk interestedly. “Indulge an old man,” the deceptively gray-haired warrior gestured to the seat which Nikomedes had just vacated.

  Nikomedes sat down, intrigued. “My ship departs soon,” he said neutrally.

  “I will not take up much of your time,” Nazoraios assured him, leaning back in his simple chair and eyeing Nikomedes appraisingly. “Your wounds have healed well,” he gestured to Nikomedes’ face—where Jason Montagne’s cleverly-concealed firearm had torn nearly half of his skull away.

  Nikomedes scowled, “If you mean to remind me of past mistakes—“

  “Quite the contrary,” Nazoraios interrupted smoothly, “for, indeed, I think it is time that you learn what is perhaps the most fundamental truth of our existence.”

  Nikomedes cocked his head, his curiosity once again piqued, “Go on.”

  Nazoraios inhaled slowly before exhaling with equal deliberation. He breathed in and out in silence for the better part of a minute and, just when Nikomedes’ patience was nearly exhausted, Nazoraios said, “There are no mistakes, Nikomedes. There is only existence and, for creatures like us who are born with limited perspective, antiquity.”

  His eyes narrowing skeptically, Nikomedes decided to take the bait, “So the warrior whose gear fails him due to poor maintenance is not at fault for his demise on the battlefield?”

  Nazoraios chuckled, “Fault is irrelevant. Consider this: if not for his poor example, how would we know—I mean truly know—that tending one’s equipment is of such vital importance? We might have excellent reasons to suspect that spending half of every day seeing to the readiness of our panoplies is crucial to our success on the field of battle, but how would we ever know it without proof?”

  “Every village needs an idiot?” Nikomedes asked challengingly.

  “Of course,” Nazoraios agreed, seemingly ignoring Nikomedes’ tone, “just as every kingdom needs a king. How else are we, as limited loci of consciousness and perspective—whose individual existences are so brief as to be inconsequential in the grand scheme of reality—to recognize which ideas are strong and which are weak? How else are we to plot a course for future generations than by providing them with clear, incontrovertible truth in the form of an enduring record of trial and error?”

  “I am no philosopher, Nazoraios,” Nikomedes grunted.

  “You are what you are, Nikomedes,” Nazoraios riposted easily, “and nothing you say—or do—will change that.”

  “You speak of fate,” Nikomedes concluded, uncertain how any of this was relevant to the task at hand.

  “Not quite,” Nazoraios shook his head, “I speak of what the word ‘fate’ attempts—and miserably fails—to describe. I speak of existence, Nikomedes; I speak of reality. Who is the true victor of a given battle?” he asked, easily assuming the role of teacher—which made clear what role Nikomedes was to take at this point in the conversation.

  “Whoever conceives and exec
utes the winning strategy,” Nikomedes replied neutrally, knowing that such a simple answer could never satisfy Nazoraios. But, in truth, Nikomedes sensed that the old man was indeed driving at something important—and that kept Nikomedes’ full attention focused on the exchange.

  “Of course not,” Nazoraios scoffed. “Often times, a battle is decided by factors totally out of the combatants’ control. Weather, terrain, contagion, politics—there are a thousand variables in every battle which are uncontrollable by the warriors on the field. How can a man be truly victorious if he did not create that victory but, instead, simply profited by events outside of his control?”

  Nikomedes finally understood where the old man was going with this line of conversation, and he allowed himself to scoff as he shook his head wryly. “Antiquity,” he said simply, drawing a knowing nod from Nazoraios as Nikomedes expounded, “antiquity is the victor.”

  “Since our forebears learned to make fire or to otherwise engineer their environments to suit themselves—even in the crudest possible fashion—the accumulation of information has been our species’ driving purpose.” The elderly warrior looked over to a map of the galaxy which hung alone on his room’s otherwise barren walls, “We are agents of creation tasked with a simple, yet daunting purpose: to understand creation itself. The only way to truly do that is to gather ever-increasing volumes of information, and to ensure that this information represents—for lack of a better word—truth.”

  Nikomedes nodded slowly, uncertain if he agreed with Nazoraios’ now-obvious conclusion. Still, the old man had given him something to think about, so he indulged him by stating what he felt confident was Nazoraios’ conclusion, “So the warrior who dies because he ignored his equipment—“

  “Is every bit as important to our gathering of information as the warrior who demonstrates his fatal flaw to him,” Nazoraios interrupted with a knowing nod. “Thus, there are no mistakes; each of us has his part to play, and none of us can ever truly know what that part is. The rise of one dynasty invariably requires the fall of another, and yet it is both dynasties working in perfect—if unwitting—harmony with each other which validates the existence of each.” He shrugged pointedly, “For if the outgoing rulers were legitimately better suited to govern than the incomers, why would their star be in decline and their opposites’ in ascent?”

  Nikomedes cocked his head dubiously, “What of right and wrong? What of morality, ethics, or…” he chewed the last word as he said it, “honor? Do they have no place in the universe you describe?”

  The old man’s expression softened fractionally. “Those are beautiful words which describe equally beautiful ideas,” Nazoraios said, his visage hardening as he spoke. “But the older a man gets, the less bewitched he is by beauty. An idea can appear beautiful—even perfect—to all who behold it when it has been placed on a pedestal and shielded from challenges to its quality. But history clearly demonstrates that we humans are terrible predictors of which ideas are the strongest—to make that determination, an idea must be taken onto the field of battle and tested against its rivals. Only then can its true measure be taken and its real worth tallied,” he stood from his chair, prompting Nikomedes to do likewise, “just as it is with us men.”

  Nikomedes considered the old man’s words for a long while before proffering his hand, “Thank you, Nazoraios.”

  The old man gripped his hand firmly, “Thank you, Nikomedes. May you come to know your true purpose, just as I have come to know mine.”

  Nikomedes left the old mans’ quarters and headed to the shuttle bay, unable to shake the feeling that he had just held his final conversation with Nazoraios.

  But as with every other step he had taken in his life, Nikomedes was loathe to look backward. His future—some might say his destiny—was ahead, and every moment wasted in retrospect was a lost opportunity to move forward. His path ahead was clear, and nothing would keep him from completing his next quest—a quest which had tremendous personal meaning to him:

  He had a god to kill.

  Chapter I: It’s Never the Fall…

  Lu ‘Fengxian’ Bu pivoted, narrowly avoiding the incoming vibro-spear which had been aimed at her throat. She lashed out with her left shin and felt a familiar, satisfying crack as her foe’s thighbone shattered against her shin.

  The guardsman screamed in agony and fell to the floor, only to be replaced with another who also sought to prevent her from reaching her quarry. Lu Bu sneered as the all-too-obvious feint which the new guardsman employed opened him to a three-strike combination which, when completed, saw her fist shatter his nose and send him to the floor in a heap.

  That brought the total number of fallen guardsmen in her wake to six, and with just two more remaining between her and her quarry she felt the thrill of victory begin to swell in her chest.

  The seventh and eighth guardsmen seemed better prepared than their predecessors. They moved in tandem with clearly-practiced coordination, and launched a surprisingly adept sequence of lunges and swipes with the signature vibro-spears which their fellows had wielded. Lu Bu was forced to give ground—for the first time in this particular battle—in order to avoid attacks aimed primarily at her legs.

  “Enough,” she snarled, reaching into her belt to produce the telescopic pike that she had taken from the Senatorial Guardsmen back at the Alpha Site. The weapon sprang to its full length in her hand as she activated it, and the look of unvarnished confusion—and, if she was being honest, abject terror—in their faces preceded what she had to believe was the worst beating either of them had ever received.

  Lashing out with astonishing speed and ferocity, Lu Bu’s pike took each of them in the side of the head while she deftly spun hither and thither in a long-practiced dance of death. Their helmets saved them from the worst of her onslaught, but now they were forced to retreat in the face of her savage assault.

  Ten moves into the exchange, she stabbed her pike’s needle-sharp tip into the rightward guard’s left thigh. He managed to keep his grip on his weapon, to his credit, but three moves later she snapped a vicious front kick into—and through—the purely decorative visor built into his helmet.

  He fell, predictably, but not before his fellow swiped his vibro-spear’s tip across her left flank. Grimacing in anger, she launched a new torrent of attacks on the isolated—and last—guardsman standing between her and the Senator she had been sent to ‘negotiate with.’

  The guardsman fought valiantly enough, but anyone watching the affair would be able to tell that he was simply outclassed. Lu Bu’s thick, powerful body allowed her to move with preternatural speed, grace, and ferocity. The guardsman was clearly a practiced warrior who knew his equipment, but even in terms of weaponry he was outclassed.

  To more clearly illustrate both points, Lu Bu snapped her double-ended pike against the shaft of his spear a handful of times in an attempt to draw it out of position. The guardsman had already given as much ground as possible without endangering his charge, so he had no choice but to expose his body to her attack.

  But instead of stabbing her needle-sharp pike tip into his chest, Lu Bu targeted the power cell of his vibro-spear and was rewarded by a small explosion when the pike sundered the vibro-weapon’s power source.

  She followed that attack with a kick between the guardsman’s legs, and was impressed that he kept his feet beneath him immediately following the brutal strike. Her next blow was a leaping switch-kick to the side of his head, and this time he went down in a boneless heap.

  Lu Bu looked down at her bleeding side, where the last guardsman had landed a shallow blow earlier, and scowled in annoyance. The bleeding had largely stopped, but the vacuum-rated suit which she had worn was no longer intact—meaning that two of her three possible escape routes from this place had just been taken off the table.

  “Your guards fought well,” she said to the Senator, “too well, in fact, since I now have only one way out of here.”

  “Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll triple
it,” the Senator—a woman whose height and girth seemed to be of equal measure—said in a haughty tone. The Imperial noble clearly had no idea who she was talking with, but Lu Bu had no objection to ‘instructing’ her in that particular regard.

  “Money?” Lu Bu scoffed as she stepped forward menacingly. “You think I came here for money?”

  “If not money, what?” the woman asked, defiance clear in her tone as Lu Bu drew steadily nearer toward the end of the corridor where the Senator had been trapped. The door to her back was locked and, unless Lu Bu gave the order, it would remain that way.

  “Your vote,” Lu Bu said simply, and a blur of motion from the blubberous woman’s side prompted Fengxian to sway to the left while lashing out with her pike aimed at the woman’s offending limb.

  A plasma stream hissed through the air past Fengxian’s ear, leaving the distinctive odor of ozone in its wake. Before the Senator could re-train her weapon on Lu Bu for a second shot, Fengxian’s pike slapped it wide and a second plasma stream gouged a deep rent in the corridor’s metal bulkhead.

  Lu Bu smashed her shin into the blubberous woman’s flank—only to discover that, flabby as the Senator appeared, her side was as hard as a rock.

  Snarling grimly, Lu Bu directed her attention to the plasma pistol—which had apparently been secreted somewhere inside the woman’s false layers of fat. The Senator moved far quicker than should have been possible for a woman of her physique, and it was now clear to Fengxian that the Senator’s body was heavily augmented.

  The source of that augmentation—cybernetic, genetic, or some other variant—was immaterial. What mattered was that, for the next few seconds, Lu Bu’s senses were once again sharpened as her own heavily-augmented body rose to the challenge before it.