No Middle Ground (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride) Read online

  Her lip curled as she mirrored his posture. Finally, she thought to herself, a challenge!

  Twenty rotations later Lu Bu was still in the center of her circle, having just been pinned for the fifth time by one of the men who had been set against her by Sergeant Walter Joneson.

  She snarled in outrage and clambered to her feet, her knees shaking and every muscle in her torso seemingly on fire. In a way it was disconcerting to feel so vulnerable, but in another way this was perhaps the most exhilarating experience of her young life. The thrill of a proper challenge was something she had savored for as long as she could remember, and this was easily the most difficult exercise she could have dreamt of.

  “Come!” she gasped as her legs threatened to give out. The first few bouts had been over relatively quickly as the Tracto-ans had, rather obviously in retrospect, allowed her to win while gauging her abilities. But the last few had lasted for nearly a minute each—and most had ended in her total defeat at the hands of the surprisingly powerful men.

  But not once had she allowed them to hurl her from the circle, while it was clear to her they held her in open disdain as they had attempted to do precisely that for several bouts. Eventually they abandoned that particular approach when it became clear she would not be so easily defeated.

  Kilo for kilo, she was certain that her own physical abilities far surpassed these ‘Tracto-an’s’ abilities, but the sheer size difference between them had become an essentially insurmountable obstacle to victory for Lu Bu—not that she was dissuaded by the hopelessness of the situation, however. She viewed this as a rare—or even unique—opportunity to examine her own flaws by testing herself against these surprisingly worthy foes.

  “Time!” Joneson called out. The other groups had already rotated three times, but Lu Bu had refused to step out and enter the ‘shark’ rotations, instead demanding to remain in the center to face the men who were already Lancers under Walter Joneson’s command.

  “Lu, rotate out,” Joneson ordered.

  “No!” she snapped over her shoulder, gesturing for the next Tracto-an to enter the circle. Much as she knew this was a chance to test herself, she found herself genuinely outraged at being defeated so handily by the Tracto-ans, and her primal desire to compete had already assumed control over her mental faculties.

  The next thing she knew, someone behind her had shoved her forward onto the mat and placed his knee into the small of her back, while immobilizing her right arm with some kind of two-on-one joint lock. “If you can’t learn to follow orders,” she heard Sergeant Joneson’s voice growl as he twisted her arm hard enough that she literally felt muscle fibers tear in her bicep, “then you can go to Gunnery like the rest of the washouts, Recruit! Maybe you’re looking for a way out?” he shouted, torqueing her arm even further to the point she was fairly certain ligament damage had occurred.

  “No!” she shouted, her voice muffled from having her face shoved into the mat, her vision narrowing as she was overcome with rage. “This one will not quit!”

  “Then maybe you’re trying to give me a reason to wash you out,” Joneson continued, cranking on her arm even harder until she heard something pop. “Looking for the back door; is that it, Recruit?” he hissed.

  Her arm flared with pain. She was certain that something had torn in her shoulder, but the knowledge of that damage was more concerning to her than the pain, which was something she had always been able to deal with.

  Just then there was a chime of some kind from nearby, and before she could scream in angry defiance, she heard the Sergeant say, “Joneson here, Captain.” A few moments later, he relaxed his grip on her arm fractionally and said, “On my way now, sir.”

  With that he released her arm and stood slowly, keeping his knee in her back for an extra second as he got to his feet.

  Rolling over with open outrage on her face, Lu Bu looked up to see the Sergeant towering over her as she fought to keep from cradling her damaged arm while fixing him with the raging infernos that her eyes had become. It was all she could do to keep from launching herself at him for damaging her arm—after attacking her back, no less!

  Walter Joneson stood there for several moments before leaning down slightly and saying in a low, deadly serious tone, “Report to sickbay and get that arm looked at, Recruit Lu. That’s an order.” He turned and made his way toward the door. “Break for chow,” he barked. “You’ve got twenty minutes to eat, and forty minutes to digest before we hit the grav-cycles. Move!” he shouted as he exited the room.

  After Walter Joneson had left, Lu Bu got to her feet and found that she actually had tears streaming down her face, which was completely unexpected. She had felt anger and nothing more. The pain in her shoulder was certainly not severe enough to provoke tears from her, and yet she could do nothing to stop them from flowing down her cheeks.

  “Blasted genies,” she heard one of the nearby recruits mutter in the tongue of her home world, followed by murmurs of assent from the nearest recruits.

  “What you call me?” she seethed in Confederation Standard, having heard this term in similarly hushed voices during the previous few days. It was a variation of a term she had heard too many times before, which she guessed was supposed to be a clever invocation of her heredity.

  The man, standing in a group with six fellow prisoners from her world, squared up slightly and said challengingly in her native tongue, “You heard me, genie. Your kind,” he gestured toward her and the Tracto-ans “are a blight on humanity’s future harmony—a disease which we should have erased when we had the chance!” The others around him nodded their assent, with one even going so far as to spit on the deck in derision.

  Without even realizing she had done it, Lu Bu leapt toward the man as her subconscious, animal instincts took control. Everyone in the room was caught unaware, and with just two powerful strides she planted the fist of her good arm into the man’s abdomen directly over his liver. Before he even hit the deck, she turned and kicked the leg of a nearby recruit so hard she felt his shin snap against her own, far more durable one. Before that man had hit the deck—howling in genuine agony—she knife-handed a third to the side of his head with her injured, right arm.

  All three collapsed to the deck, and she was just getting ready to deliver a front kick to the face of a fourth when she felt a pair of hands grasp her upper arms from behind. Acting purely on instinct, she twisted her body and slunk away from the man’s hands and squared herself.

  Before realizing she had done so, Lu Bu launched herself upward and brought her knee into the incredibly broad, powerful jaw of the last Tracto-an she had wrestled. His momentum carried him directly into the blow, as his body fell forward following the attempt to corral her with his outstretched arms.

  The Tracto-an’s head snapped sideways from the force of her blow, and she saw his eyes roll back as his momentum carried him face-first into the metal deck plates between the mats.

  But before she could recover, the other three Tracto-ans leapt on her and drug her to the ground. She fought furiously against them, but there was simply no way she could win a struggle against the three of them.

  Screaming wordlessly for several seconds, her conscious mind finally took back control and she stopped her thrashing for as she took sharp, controlled breaths. The Tracto-ans relaxed their grips on her arms and legs slightly and Atticus gave her a dire look of warning, which promised that further outbursts would be met far less gently.

  Standing to her feet, she gestured toward the three fallen men. “Walter Joneson orders this one to sickbay,” she said stiffly as she knelt to sling the man with the broken leg over her shoulder. To her surprise, no one—including the Tracto-ans—made an attempt to stop her. “Bring them,” she gestured toward the other injured recruits before making her way out of the rec room and heading toward sickbay.

  She strode past her slack-jawed countrymen with her head held high, carrying the still-screaming recruit with her.

  Chapter IX: Playing to Stren
gths

  The chime sounded at Middleton’s door an hour after he had concluded his discussion with Sergeant Joneson. The Sergeant had gone to make preparations for the trap which Middleton hoped to spring on whoever it was that was sending unauthorized, encrypted transmissions off-ship. With their next jump scheduled in roughly two hours, he wanted to set their trap as quickly—and quietly—as possible.

  “Enter,” the Captain called out as he reviewed an incident report involving their new Lancer recruits which had landed five of them in sickbay.

  The door opened and Jo, his ex-wife, entered the room. He refused to think of her as ‘Doctor Middleton,’ since she had kept his last name these past twenty two years without apprising him of that fact.

  The doctor had a look of pure, undiluted rage—at least, for her—on her face as she stormed into the office and shouted, “You made her a Lancer!?” The door slid closed behind her just after she finished her opening outburst, and he set his jaw at her flaunting of military protocols—protocols which she clearly held in the lowest regard.

  “Have a seat, Doctor,” Middleton said as calmly as he could manage.

  She leveled an accusing finger at him. “She is a child, Tim—a child! And you put her in there with men like Walter Joneson?!”

  Captain Middleton stood slowly and leaned forward, his knuckles pressing down on the desk so hard he briefly feared they might split open. “Sit down, Doctor,” he said, his voice turning to more of a growl than he would have liked.

  Jo looked as though she wanted to argue, rather than do as he advised. But she collected herself enough to walk stiffly over to the chair and lower herself deliberately into it, all the while holding him with her angry eyes.

  After she had sat, Captain Middleton remained standing for several seconds before lowering himself down into his own chair and taking a deep, quiet breath. “Doctor,” he began tensely, “you are afforded certain privileges which others in my crew are not—including being allowed to speak bluntly to this ship’s commanding officer—due solely to your invaluable contributions toward the well-being of that crew in the absence of someone who can adequately assume your duties. But there are limits to the amount of lenience I can publicly grant you…do you understand me?” he asked with a deliberate look at the door.

  Her expression softened momentarily before hardening once again. “I’m…sorry, Tim,” she bit out, and he believed that she was—even though she still clearly had plenty of fight left in her.

  “Now,” Middleton forced himself to lean back in his chair, “I assume you’ve come here to discuss Recruit Lu Bu’s recent mishap?”

  “You know blasted well that’s why I’m here,” she spat icily. “And you’ve got some nerve calling it a ‘mishap!’ She’s barely sixteen cycles old and you’ve got her in there getting abused by those-those…” she stuttered angrily before blurting out, “those thugs?! She has no business in there!”

  Middleton looked down pointedly at the data slate in his hand before sliding it across the desk toward her. “There are three recruits lying in sickbay—and, more than a little surprisingly, one Tracto-an Lancer—who would likely argue with your assertion, Doctor.”

  Jo made as if to argue, but her mouth snapped shut briefly and Tim Middleton was reminded of many similar engagements they’d had during their younger years. He wanted to grin at seeing her so worked up, but he forced his features to remain expressionless as she continued, “Did you know that your Lancer Sergeant nearly tore her arm off to prove some sort of Demon-spawned, testosterone-fueled point?”

  Middleton, having already read the report, furrowed his brow as he quoted, “Patient Lu Bu was observed to have significant insult to each of the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, subscapularis and teres minor muscles of the right arm. These were repaired using micro-sutur—“

  “Don’t quote my own words back at me, Tim,” she snapped, “you know how I hate that!”

  Middleton held up a hand by way of apology, knowing it had been bad form to jab her like that. He then shrugged slightly and said, “I’m not sure a partially torn rotator cuff quite qualifies as ‘nearly having one’s arm torn off,’ Doctor. Besides,” he continued in a calm voice when she opened her mouth to protest, “the Sergeant has final say over how his Lancer team operates. That authority extends to recruits under his care.”

  “Care?” she snorted derisively. “Is that what you call this?” she demanded, jabbing a finger down on the data slate.

  “Sergeant Joneson only has the well-being of his people—and this ship—at heart, Doctor,” the Captain said evenly. “We may not understand, or even agree with, his methods but he is one of the finest men I’ve ever had the privilege of serving with. I have to defer to his judgment regarding matters like this. Besides, your report says none of the injuries sustained during this incident should have lasting effects on anyone involved.”

  “Just like that?” she said in disbelief, leaning across the desk. “You can just wash your hands of it and act like nothing happened because I was able to patch it all up?”

  Middleton sighed. “I will speak with the Lancer Sergeant, as is protocol following such incidents,” he allowed. In truth, he had been more than slightly disturbed by this particular incident but for reasons quite different than the ones Jo had espoused. “But you need to understand that this ‘little girl’ is far more capable than you seem to believe. When she came aboard this ship I did my utmost to convince her that the Gunnery department would have been a safer choice than the Lancer detail. Not only did she refuse,” he said with a scoff, “she literally threw herself onto the floor and begged me to let her become a Lancer in one of the most impassioned pleas I’ve ever heard.”

  Jo leaned back and folded her arms defiantly. “You know that she’s the product of genetic engineering, Tim,” she said coldly. “And not just any genetic engineering, but a kind that makes those Tracto-ans of yours look like a lucky stroke of Darwinism?”

  “Of course I do,” he replied measuredly, through briefly gritted teeth. “I’ve read your report. Engineering like hers has been banned for centuries in the hope of preventing future eugenics-based conflicts.”

  “And you gave her to him?” she spat incredulously before leaning back in her chair and shaking her head in open scorn.

  He knew all too well to what she was referring, as Walter Joneson’s smashball career had ended in a spat of controversy regarding public statements he had made concerning genetic engineering and its place in society, with most having taken his words to be bigoted. Middleton had purposefully never delved into the matter, since he had only met Walter Joneson during his tour in the MSP.

  But regardless of the reason for her outburst, Middleton was through coddling Jo’s overly delicate sensibilities. She claimed she was no longer the naïve young girl he’d married, and he was ready to put that to the test.

  “Doctor,” Captain Middleton began in an icy voice of his own, “that was a long time ago. Surely you, of all people, can understand that a person’s past does not dictate his…or her future.”

  Her eyes went wide for a moment, and while he knew that what he had said would bring an avalanche of bitter memories for them both, he was sick of ignoring it. If they were going to work together then they would need to move beyond their mutual history, and he could think of no better way of doing just that than putting it out there.

  “I deserved that, Tim,” she said with a nod of resignation as she stood from her chair stiffly. “I just hope you’re not trying to get back at me by punishing that poor girl.”

  She turned and left his office without another word, and for a moment Captain Middleton was tempted to call after her. But that moment passed, and Ensign Jardine came through the door with an anxious look on his face while holding a data slate in his hands.

  “What is it, Ensign?” Middleton asked, briefly grateful for a distraction from the most recent visit with the ship’s doctor.

  “I think we might have him, sir,” Jardine sai
d excitedly, handing the data slate to the Captain.

  A brief look at the timestamp on the report told Middleton that another unauthorized communication had just been transmitted less than three minutes earlier. And they had a precise location of its origin!

  Activating his com-link, he opened a line with Sergeant Joneson, who responded promptly, “Joneson here, Captain.”

  “It looks like we’re ready to spring that trap right now, Sergeant,” he said, “I’m forwarding the location to you now.”

  A moment later, Sergeant Joneson responded, “I’m on it, sir.”

  “We need this person alive, Sergeant,” Middleton said emphatically, “non-lethal measures only. Is that clear?”

  “Tri-Locsium, sir,” Joneson replied curtly. “Joneson out.”

  Now, as always, it was Middleton’s job to wait while his people did the work. Is there a more trying thing in the entire universe than waiting? he wondered silently as he made his way out onto the bridge, with Ensign Jardine close behind.

  Chapter X: The Sleeping Dragon, the First Visit

  “Here he is, sir,” Sergeant Joneson said gruffly as Captain Middleton entered the brig. “We caught him dismantling some kind of homemade patch job into the main dish’s transmitter. Little blighter almost seemed glad to see us when we apprehended him.”

  As Captain Middleton approached, he was more than a little confused. The man—or rather, boy—before him could be no more than a mid-teen, with barely enough hair growing in his thin mustache and meticulously manicured chin patch to call organized growth. He was clearly one of the new recruits from Lu Bu’s world, and bore the same type of barcode tattoo over his right eye as the rest of the prisoners.