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

  The density of the rings around the gas giant was unlike anything Middleton had ever encountered, or even read about, and it was that density which created a shield that would protect them from any beam weapon except the most powerful versions—like the Pride’s own heavy lasers, or the Starfire missiles on the corvette.

  The sensor distortions caused by the mineral content of the rings were also tactically problematic. The Pride’s sensors were likely no better than those of the pirate, but the advantage they had while the rings were interposed between the two vessels was that the Pride’s heavy laser array could recharge and fire again, even if they missed. The pirate’s Starfire missiles, on the other hand, were only good for a single attack so the corvette’s captain couldn’t afford to waste them on a low-percentage shot through the rings—especially at their present angle, which multiplied the amount of debris between ships many, many times the median thickness of the rings.

  “Comm.,” Middleton spun his chair after a minute’s silence to face the Comm. stander, “status on the primary transmitter?”

  “It’s still down, Captain,” the stander reported promptly. “Engineering reports the repairs will require at least thirty minutes to complete.”

  Before Middleton could respond to the Chief Engineer’s obviously sandbagged estimate, the forward array of the Pride of Prometheus erupted unexpectedly as all ten of her heavy lasers bored into the ice rings. “Beams away,” Sarkozi reported belatedly as she bent down to read the incoming telemetry and nodded satisfactorily, “reading three direct hits, Captain. Enemy shields are holding; adjusting battery timing to eight point seven microseconds for the next pass.”

  “Good work, Tactical; Helm,” Middleton replied as he flipped through the ship-wide status reports. This was all much simpler as a Tactical Officer, he thought half-grudgingly as he checked the departmental status reports. “Inform Chief Garibaldi that we need that transmitter online in no more than twenty two minutes,” he said after reviewing the ship’s status. Not a single casualty to this point, he thought with silent relief. Murphy willing, we might make it through this unscathed.

  A few minutes later the forward array fired another volley when the sensors read a clear enough gap in the ring system, causing Sarkozi to report, “Five direct hits, Captain. Their stern shields seem to have buckled and I’m reading trace atmo venting from their hull, but their engines appear undamaged.”

  Rather than ask, Middleton brought up the Shields status display and saw that their forward generators were at 62% of maximum. There had been multiple power grid failures that had necessitated re-routing of the lateral generators’ supply, but fortunately that was of little concern.

  If the two corvettes had worked together, they could have outflanked his slower, heavier vessel and made achieving firing position difficult for the Pride’s crew. But with one of the nimble corvettes already down for the count and the other well on her way to the same, by Middleton’s way of thinking, it would be little challenge to keep their bow facing the pirate vessel long enough to disable her.

  Still, Middleton reminded himself somberly, if we can’t disable those Starfires’ fire-linking system like we did with the first wave, I doubt that even our reinforced bow shields will hold.

  “Captain,” the Comm. stander began hesitantly, “I’m picking up some unusual chatter from the station.”

  “What do you make of it?” asked Captain Middleton.

  “It’s coded, sir,” the man replied as his fingers flew over his console, “but I’m getting…” he paused as he listened intently for a moment before continuing, “it’s an awfully powerful signal, Captain, and it’s being broadcast throughout the system. I don’t recognize the protocols…it must be some sort of automated SOS.”

  “Log it for later review,” Middleton ordered. He wanted to know where these pirates’ allies were located, and that signal might point them in the right direction.

  “Already done, sir,” the Comm. stander replied promptly, “I missed the first two seconds, but the rest—” he cut off mid-sentence, cocking his head briefly before shaking it in negation. “It’s gone now, sir.”

  “Contact,” reported the Sensors operator, who Middleton turned toward as she continued, “I’m reading a heat bloom at the edge of the ring system, Captain. Looks like…Captain, it’s accelerating. These energy emissions readings are off the charts.”

  “Put it on the main viewer,” the captain instructed, feeling a knot form in his stomach at the introduction of an unforeseen variable.

  The view screen shimmered, and the image of the ring system was replaced with a three-dimensional tactical overlay of the gas giant. Clearly depicted were the positions of the disabled corvette, the corvette still burning at maximum speed for the ring gap, the Pride of Prometheus, and even the gas collection facility with the trio of approaching merchantmen.

  But a new, flashing yellow icon had appeared on the far side of the planet. Its energy emission spike was incredible, and after a moment’s calculations Middleton knew that that much power could only be generated by a Dreadnaught class battleship’s multiple fusion generators—or potentially something even bigger.

  Then the flashing yellow icon disappeared without warning, causing the Sensors operator to report, “We’ve lost contact, Captain. The emissions have vanished as well…I don’t know what to make of it, sir.”

  “Give me a visual scan,” Middleton demanded, leaning forward in his chair. If there was another hostile out here—especially one so large—then a tactical withdrawal had to be considered, regardless of how it irked the Pride’s captain. “I want to lay eyes on it.”

  “Scanning now, sir,” the operator reported as the Pride’s forward weapons array fired yet again. Sarkozi had the good sense to hold her own report on the volley as the Sensors operation continued, “I’ve got visual on their last known location, sir.”

  The main viewer shimmered again, this time being replaced with a view of what appeared to be empty space beneath the immense ring system of the gas giant. “Scan along their projected course,” Middleton ordered promptly.

  “Scanning,” the operator replied, and the viewer slowly panned from top to bottom, revealing nothing but an empty star scape. “Negative contacts, Captain. Whatever it was, it’s gone...but it left behind a huge amount of radiation where we first detected it; it’s so strong we can read it through the EM field of the planet, sir. That amount of radiation is well beyond the lethal human limit.”

  The Captain gripped the arm of his chair and ground his teeth in silent frustration. Disabling the remaining corvette was essentially a foregone conclusion…if she was the last man of war the pirates had in-system.

  As the captain considered the matter, Sarkozi reported, “Two hits on the last volley, Captain; minor damage to their engines detected. The corvette has brought itself too close to the face of the rings; it’s out of our effective firing range,” she finished smartly.

  Arriving at a conclusion, Middleton nodded to no one in particular as he leaned on the right arm of his chair. “Either that energy spike was a decoy of some kind, or there’s a cloaked phantom ship out there. Seeing as I’ve never even heard of a vessel the size of a battleship being effectively cloaked at this close range—and only a criminally insane person would design a warship capable of producing that much radiation during normal operations—I’m guessing it was a ploy to keep us away from that station a few minutes longer. Continue on course to the station at best possible speed,” he instructed the helmsman.

  “It could have been an automated vessel of some kind?” Sarkozi offered after a moment.

  “Possible,” Middleton allowed tersely, “but irrelevant for now. We’ve got one job in front of us: disable that corvette. When that’s finished and we’ve re-taken the mining facility, we can investigate the matter more thoroughly.”

  “Yes sir,” Sarkozi acknowledged.

  The minutes ticked by until the pirate corvette had reached the gap between the rings.
Unfortunately, the primary comm. array was still offline despite Captain Middleton’s insistence that Chief Garibaldi finish in something resembling a timely manner.

  “How long until the array is back up?!” Middleton demanded, leaping from his chair and turning to loom over the engineering officer assigned to the bridge.

  “The Chief is testing the system now, sir,” the young man replied timidly. “He says it should be up after he’s finished running through the checklists—about three minutes.”

  “We don’t have three minutes!” Middleton roared, his composure shattered by his Chief Engineer’s feet-dragging. He snatched the headset from the man and holding the mic to his own lips. “Garibaldi, I need my transmitter and I need it now; flip the blasted switch already and to Hades with your checklists!” He heard a reply from the man on the other end, whose voice most certainly belonged to the Chief of Engineering and sounded more than a little indignant, but Middleton ignored his protestations. “Give me my transmitter now!” he yelled as the screen lit up with a new swarm of Starfire missile launches.

  “Incoming,” Sarkozi relayed, “sensors read thirteen…no, make that fifteen Starfire missiles inbound.”

  The Comm. stander quickly reported, “Transmitter is back online, Captain.”

  Dropping the headset in the Engineering officer’s lap, Captain Middleton returned to his chair and accessed the tactical readouts. Fifteen? he wondered as he calculated the time to the Starfire’s range. We might have disabled one of their launchers, he reminded himself as he turned to the Comm. officer. “Repeat the previous transmission on my order; I doubt they’ve changed the operating frequencies, since doing so requires a manual adjustment of each missile.”

  “Captain,” the Sensors officer reported tensely, “I’m reading another incoming object.”

  “The sixteenth missile?” Middleton asked, actually feeling relieved at confirming the presence of the final weapon, since it removed a variable from the equation.

  “I believe so, sir,” the officer replied hesitantly, “but it’s moving slower than the others.”

  “Sarkozi?” Middleton asked. Starfire missiles did not have adjustable speeds; they burned at maximum until their fuel supply was exhausted, at which point they used their attitude adjustment jets for achieving a coordinated firing position. There was no reason he could think of for a missile to be traveling slower than the others…

  “Scanning,” Ensign Sarkozi replied as she leaned over her console. “It’s transmitting the same as the others, sir,” she replied after a brief review. “It must have been damaged, or have some kind of failure in its drive system.”

  Middleton felt his hackles rise. This was most certainly an unexpected wrinkle, but he still had no idea what it meant. “Time to Starfire range?” he asked, even though the information was plain to see on the main view screen. He often had to forcibly remind himself that he was the Captain; coordinating the efforts of his crew was his primary focus, and relying on them doing their jobs, was the most important part of his own role. Easier said than done, he chided himself coldly.

  “Eighty seconds,” Sarkozi replied. “The corvette is coming in directly behind the missiles, sir.…” she trailed off doubtfully as her fingers flew over her console.

  “They must be banking on the missiles to eliminate our shields, Ensign,” the captain mused. “If they do, a full-frontal assault is their best chance to win, slim as that chance is.” He turned to the Shields operator, “What’s the status of our forward shields?”

  “68%, Captain,” came the reply.

  At those numbers there was a very real possibility that the corvette’s Starfire missiles could breach their shields, leaving them vulnerable to the corvette’s strafing run. Even still, a strafing run with every single weapon on the pirate ship overcharged likely wouldn’t do more than moderate damage to the Pride of Prometheus, during and after which the Pride would be able to unload on them—if those Starfires didn’t disable the forward heavy laser array.

  But in any event, the smart play would be to burn their engines at full power to minimize potential engagement time in the event the Pride suffered less than catastrophic damage.

  Still…this doesn’t seem right, Middleton cursed silently until he saw the speed of the sixteenth missile and something clicked in his mind. His fingers flew over his chair’s readout as he called up schematics from the ship’s archives, flipping through directories until coming to the exact listing he needed and his blood ran cold.

  “Starfires in range in twenty seconds, Captain,” Sarkozi reported as she continued to work furiously at her own console.

  “Tactical,” Middleton began calmly, his jaw set in grim determination, “prepare to receive a Liberator class torpedo. Comm.,” he continued evenly as heads turned in outright shock at the mention of what may well have been the most terrifying pieces of ordnance ever developed in the Confederated Spine, “you can hold off on scrambling the Starfires a little longer.”

  “Missiles in range in five, four, three, two, one…” Sarkozi reported in a professional, if subdued voice. “Starfires in range now, Captain,” she reported just as the missiles entered their projected zone of fire on the main screen’s tactical display.

  All around the bridge was silence, or at least as close to it as can be achieved with reports being relayed to the various department heads, as the bridge crew watched the swarm of fifteen Starfire missiles come ever closer to the Pride of Prometheus. The lone icon of the sixteenth ‘missile’ updated to display its proper status as a Liberator torpedo, and it continued to accelerate toward the Pride. It actually passed the line of Starfires, since they had already exhausted their fuel supply and were now relying solely on maneuvering jets for orientation. Middleton knew it was too late for anything but to rely on desperate, close-range heavy laser fire in addition to their underwhelming point defense countermeasures…not to mention prayers to the Saint himself.

  “At least we know when the Starfires will touch off,” Middleton said wryly, eliciting a pair of snickers from Jersey and, surprisingly, the Comm. officer, an Ensign named Jardine. The pirate captain would want the Starfires to fire as close to the torpedo’s impact as possible, just so long as they hit before the torpedo did by a few microseconds. “But just to be safe, begin broadcasting the jamming signal beginning nine seconds prior to the Liberator’s impact, Comm.”

  “Aye, sir,” the Comm. officer acknowledged.

  “Tactical,” Middleton continued, “I’ve got a case of Gorgon Ice Ale for any gunner who can evict that torp from my sight.” The corvette was still out of the Pride’s heavy laser range, which had clearly been the pirate captain’s intention all along, so a one in a hundred shot of hitting the Liberator was better than sitting on their hands with silent guns.

  “Larry that, sir,” she replied before relaying his offer to the gun deck.

  The tension on the bridge was almost suffocating, and Middleton had no choice but to watch as the timer sluggishly wound down. At least I can count on the pirate waiting until the last possible second to unleash his Starfires, he thought bitterly. Thank Murphy for small miracles.

  When the timer reached nine seconds to impact, the Comm. officer audibly slapped his console to activate the jamming signal. Shortly thereafter, the heavy lasers of the Pride’s forward array opened fire one by one, lancing off into the field of stars and disappearing.

  “Seven…eight…nine shots away, Captain; zero strikes on target,” Sarkozi reported testily just as the tenth and final heavy laser cleared its metaphorical barrel, resulting in a wave of excitement in the Tactical pit. “A hit, Captain!” Sarkozi exclaimed an instant before the Starfires erupted with all their might and fury.

  The lights on the bridge dimmed and briefly went out altogether, followed by a loud, crashing sound which saw the ship lurch off its axis. Myriad alarms to go off in unison as damage reports streamed into the bridge just as the lighting returned.

  That they were still alive and able
to receive reports at all was a miracle in and of itself, and one Middleton did not intend to take for granted. Liberator torpedoes were ship-busters, meaning they impacted on the hull and then bored a hole through the target ship’s armor using high-powered plasma streams. Through the newly-made hole, the torpedo would insert a high-yield explosive device which could destroy all but the largest capital ships in a single go, due to the explosion going off within the armor rather than without.

  “Tactical, focus your fire on that corvette,” Middleton ordered as he turned to the Shields operator. “What’s the status of the forward shields?”

  “The forward array has buckled, Captain,” he reported as blood flowed down his nose and onto his shirt. “Six of eight relays are off-line; I doubt I can get a screen up before the corvette closes to firing range, sir.”

  “Do your best,” Middleton ordered as he saw that the corvette had already come into the Pride’s heavy laser range. He growled in frustration, knowing it would take precious seconds to recharge the forward batteries after their last-ditch attempts to destroy the Liberator. That meant they would get no more than two shots at the enemy before they closed range, which may or may not be enough to disable the enemy ship before it shot past them and escaped to the hyper limit. Middleton silently laid the odds right around fifty-fifty for the pirate to escape. “Inform the gun deck that they may fire at will on approach,” he added almost absently.

  Sarkozi acknowledged the order and relayed it to the gun deck, after which the seconds ticked by as the enemy vessel came ever closer to the Pride of Prometheus. The forward batteries fired in near unison and Middleton allowed himself a pleased smirk at their coordination as the corvette’s forward shields visibly failed. The pirate held its own return fire until it was well within its own weapons’ optimal firing range before unleashing a hail of beam weapons, which impacted on the Pride’s forward hull with reports that were audible even from the bridge.