No Middle Ground Read online

  “Even if that’s true,” she countered easily, “as an officer in the Imperial Navy, the United Space Sectors and Provinces Act stipulates that I be remanded into Imperial custody before any provincial legal action can proceed.”

  “Captain Raubach,” Middleton began, feeling his collar begin to heat at the incessant back-and-forth wordplay but knowing he needed to keep calm, “are you saying that your actions here are condoned by the Imperial Navy?”

  Raubach laughed in open derision. “Of course not,” she spat with a piteous shake of her head, “I, and my crew, seized this ship and station in an act of piracy, in order to take financial advantage of the political instability in the region. But, as a mutinous Imperial officer, my superiors will naturally want me remanded to their custody immediately following my arrest.”

  Middleton felt the urge to scream at the top of his lungs, but he kept his best poker face throughout. His mind raced as he tried to devise a way to outmaneuver this woman, but it was clear that she had the legal framework on her side—which meant this had been a well-coordinated effort, likely with significant backing. “Raubach,” Middleton mused as he tried to buy time, “I’ve heard that name before. Your family’s one of the most powerful in the Imperium, isn’t it?”

  “My husband, James’, family,” she corrected with a disdainful shake of her head, looking for all the world like the cat that got the cream. “My maiden name is Tate,” she added in her insufferably smug tone.

  Ensign Sarkozi approached Middleton’s chair and leaned close to say under her breath, “In three minutes they will have left our heavy lasers’ extreme range, Captain.”

  At Middleton’s momentary hesitation, Captain Raubach snickered triumphantly. “Face it, Captain,” she said, taking a step toward the viewer’s pickup, “there’s nothing you can do now; I’ve got complete legal immunity.”

  Middleton closed his eyes and his hand hung suspended over the arm console of his chair. He knew full well that what he was contemplating bordered on a capital offense in and of itself, but even assuming the Pride caught up to the corvette and secured both it and its crew, all that would do is buy more time for the merchantmen to conclude their business at the mining facility—and Captain Middleton was now certain that said business was far from legitimate.

  Conversely, if he turned his back on the corvette to secure the gas facility and merchantmen, there was nothing to stop it from coasting further and further away until it was outside the Pride’s effective zone of control. And if there was even a half-reasonable possibility that the gas facility had been turned into a bioweapons manufacturing site—

  His eyes snapped open after he had worked his way through the situation, and he knew what he had to do…no matter how much it might cost him personally.

  “Your ‘immunity,’ Captain Raubach,” he began coldly, his fingers tapping the Captain’s fire control code into the console on his chair, “has just been revoked.”

  His finger rammed down on the firing icon, and the look on the pirate Captain’s face was one of shocked incredulity as the Pride’s forward batteries fired in unison. Captain Raubach made to protest, but the connection was severed before any sound passed her lips.

  The viewer shimmered to replace her smug visage with a real-time image of the corvette as its superstructure buckled from the combined salvo of eight heavy lasers landing in concert on the drifting vessel.

  Seconds later there was a series of explosions which cascaded through the corvette’s hull, sending sections of hull plating flying in every direction as the vessel began to topple end over end from the force of the internal ruptures. Debris went spinning off with every rotation, and after less than a minute all power signatures aboard the corvette went dark.

  There was shocked silence on the bridge, into which Middleton smartly ordered, “Helm, best possible speed to the gas collection facility; I don’t want a single ship escaping this system under any circumstances. Comm.,” he continued, bracing himself against the arm of his chair, “transmit on all channels the order for vessels in system to heave to—or, if docked, to remain where they are—and await MSP inspection. Failure to comply will result in,” he cocked a cold grin in spite of the situation’s severity, “further revocations.”

  “Aye, sir,” both men replied in near unison as they went about their tasks.

  “However,” Middleton added as he considered the matter tactically, “while they will be arrested on sight, the lives of any suspected criminals will be spared unconditionally regardless of what we find during our inspections—given that no harm has come to the surviving inhabitants of the station upon our arrival.”

  “Yes sir,” Ensign Jardine, the Comm. Officer, acknowledged. A few minutes later, he turned to the Captain and said, “The pirates agree to offer their unconditional surrender, Captain, and report that there are twenty six unharmed civilians aboard the facility.”

  Sitting back in the command chair, Captain Middleton breathed a short sigh of relief. It seemed that the heavy lifting was done with. He flipped through a few pages of directories until he came to the gas facility’s specifications and found the crew complement during normal operations was a hundred and two.

  “I want immediate contact with a representative of those ‘civilians’,” he ordered. “Once I’m satisfied as to their state, I’ll officially recognize the pirates’ surrender.”

  “Yes sir,” Jardine acknowledged.

  Middleton began perusing ship status reports, specifically those regarding how many personnel were within the areas of Engineering, the gun deck, and the Bridge. It was possible that some of the sternward areas of the Pride had been protected by the lockdown, but that was only of short-term benefit if they couldn’t re-activate the air circulation systems.

  “Patching the representative through now, Captain,” the Comm. officer reported.

  Captain Tim Middleton looked up at the main viewer just as the image there morphed into a Caprian woman’s face—the sight of which made his heart skip a beat as his mind went totally blank as he blinked in some vain attempt to dismiss what he was seeing.

  “Jo?” he asked eventually, still unable to believe his eyes.

  “Not now, Tim,” she replied with a no-nonsense shake of her head. “You need to let me speak with your ship’s doctor immediately; I can help save some of your infected crew but only if we hurry!”

  It took him a moment to process her presence—not to mention her apparent knowledge of the situation aboard his ship. But Middleton did as she suggested and patched her through to the sickbay, causing her image to disappear from the main viewer, after which he slumped back in his seat.

  Apparently it wasn’t enough that he had to deal with the burden of command, marauding pirates, bioweapons, and—perhaps worst of all—the convoluted legal structure of the Spineward Sectors following the Imperial withdrawal. In addition to all that—and a pending court martial for firing on a hove-to vessel in the process of surrender—Captain Tim Middleton had to deal with one of the few people who could shake the confidence of any man right down to the core:

  An ex-wife.

  “Joneson here,” came Lancer Sergeant Walter Joneson’s smooth, deep voice through the main viewer’s speakers. They had been fortunate that half of the Lancer contingent had been armored and waiting in the boarding shuttles when the bioweapon had gone off, so Sergeant Joneson had led his team of men over to the facility as soon as they were in range to do so.

  “What’s your status, Sergeant?” Middleton asked, glancing up at the clock to note that his Lancer contingent had already been aboard the station for over an hour.

  “The facility is secure, Captain,” Sergeant Joneson replied. “All twenty six civilians are present, accounted for, and have valid identification. The three merchantmen have been seized, their computers locked, power plants deactivated and hulls hard-locked to the station. The pirate crew has already been taken into custody—eighty three pirates total, Captain.”

  “Any res
istance, Sergeant?” Middleton asked, feeling more than a little relieved at the man’s report.

  “None, sir,” Joneson replied with more than a hint of disappointment in his voice before he audibly perked up as he added, “but Mrs. Middleton already showed us to the laboratory. With her help we’ve secured and destroyed the contaminants per your orders. In addition to the lab gear you wanted confiscated as evidence, we’ve found some other unusual materials and are preparing to bring them back to the ship on your order.”

  “What sort of unusual materials?” Middleton asked, ignoring the barb about his ex-wife.

  “Some kind of mineral fragments which were already numbered and catalogued when we arrived,” Joneson replied, his voice once again serious. “Looks like some type of crystal—it looks like a type of Locsium, Captain, but I honestly couldn’t say more in its current state.”

  “Good work, Sergeant,” Middleton said, knowing that the only group which knew how to produce and work with Locsium was the Empire of Man. Why the pirates were in possession of an as-yet unidentified type of that material was a mystery, but that mystery would have to wait for the time being. “Update me in ten minutes.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Sergeant Joneson replied before severing the connection.

  Middleton activated the com-link to the sickbay via his chair’s arm console, and Doctor Milton’s face appeared after a slight delay. “What’s your status, Doctor?”

  Doctor Milton’s face was bright red and he appeared to be sweating profusely. But his voice was even and matter-of-fact, although it had a distinct wheeze and rasp to it. “With Doctor Middleton’s help, the vaccine has been produced in sufficient quantity to inoculate everyone aboard the ship still located in the high-security zones of Engineering, the gun deck and the bridge, as well as a handful of people here in sickbay who were as yet asymptomatic. But our supply of the necessary chemicals and synthetic proteins is already exhausted, so even if we wanted to inoculate the others we simply don’t have enough vaccine to go around.” He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, blinking his eyes and wiping sweat from his brow before shrugging, “I doubt it would have done the rest of us any good, at any rate.”

  Middleton nodded slowly as he took in this information. Engineering, the bridge, the gun deck and sickbay, during active battle conditions, held just over two thirds of the ship’s crew. But with sickbay already exposed, that brought the total number of exposed crewmembers to nearly half of the Pride’s remaining four hundred eighty six person complement.

  “What’s the prognosis, Doctor?” Middleton asked evenly.

  “If Doctor Middleton’s information is correct,” the Doctor replied, causing the Captain to flush under the collar at the reminder that she had kept his name, “this particular virus cocktail has a ninety two percent mortality rate within twenty four hours. After that, with proper fluid and electrolyte maintenance, the other eight percent should recover with only minor to moderate neurological and respiratory deficits. You should be receiving the bridge’s portion of the vaccine now.”

  A chime, signaling the arrival of a parcel via the high-security pneumatic tube system, rang near the back of the bridge and Middleton gestured for a nearby crewmember to go collect it. The crewmember brought the parcel and Middleton inspected it briefly before nodding. “Distribute this to the crew at once,” he instructed.

  “Inoculate the Captain first, if you would be so kind, crewman,” the Doctor wheezed in a raised voice which made the command chair’s speaker crackle as he was seized with a fit of coughing. When he was finished, he continued, “Protocols being what they are, I’d like to ensure these particular ones are followed to the letter considering I only have an eight percent chance that this will not be my final assignment.”

  Middleton wanted to argue, but in light of the Doctor’s predicament decided against it as he rolled up his sleeve and gestured for the crewman to inoculate him. After the needle had pricked his arm, Middleton rolled his sleeve back down and turned back to face the Doctor’s image, “Is there anything else we can do, Doctor Milton?”

  The Doctor shook his head and swayed slightly to the side as his breaths came harder and more ragged. “The vaccine syringes will each transmit a signal to me whenever a crewmember has been inoculated. After the crew inside the high-security zones has been inoculated, wait one hour before ending the lockdown. That should give the vaccine enough time to…” he slumped slightly before shaking himself with a start. “One hour,” he repeated forcefully, choking back a hacking cough, “and the vaccine should be fully active in your systems. You can then move about…the ship…without fear of infection.”

  “Understood, Doctor,” Middleton said with a nod.

  “And to think…” Doctor Milton began sardonically, his wheezing becoming more pronounced with each passing breath, “I gave up smoking…twenty years ago…Milton out.”

  The screen went blank, and Captain Middleton turned to the Comm. officer. “Has the Lancer shuttle arrived yet?”

  “They’re just touching down now, Captain,” he replied. “Doctor Middleton should arrive in sickbay in three minutes to help with the wounded.”

  “Good,” Middleton nodded in satisfaction as he thought about possible courses of action, but he came up empty at every turn. The truth was that he had experts who knew far more than him working on the situation, and they had informed him that they already had all available resources at their disposal. For now, it seemed like all he could do was to rely on those experts and wait for the next hour while keeping a watchful eye out for the unexpected.

  Middleton was slowly realizing, when all was said and done, that this seemed to be the job description of a starship captain. And as long as he sat in the big chair, he was determined to do the best job of it he could.

  Chapter IV: Starting Over

  The chime at Captain Middleton’s ready room door rang and he promptly replied, “Enter.”

  The door slid to the side, and a veritable giant of a man ducked his head as he made his way into the room.

  “Have a seat, Sergeant,” Middleton gestured to the chair opposite his own, and Sergeant Walter Joneson did so. “I was just going over our readiness reports and wanted to speak with the departments heads individually, before today’s senior staff meeting, to go over any department-specific concerns.”

  Walter Joneson shifted in his seat, which seemed far too small for a man of his girth and bulk. He stroked his thin, black mustache thoughtfully after finding an apparently less-uncomfortable position. “My Lancers were hit hard when we took that torpedo last week, Captain,” he said eventually. “That four man team of Tracto boys came through more or less unscathed; would that we all had their immune systems,” he said grudgingly. “The rest of us got hammered but good.”

  “I see your total readiness is now at sixteen of our original fifty Lancers?” Middleton asked, having already memorized every department’s reports an hour earlier. “You’re cautiously optimistic that three more might recover well enough for active duty, but two are off the squad for certain, is that correct?”

  Joneson nodded. “Bryant and Rice are casualties, sir. Bryant’s lung capacity is going to be forty percent his baseline even after recovery, and Rice’s fingers are too unsteady owing to viral nerve damage; he’ll never be able to exercise proper trigger discipline again.”

  “So that puts you, in all likelihood, at nineteen potential duty-ready Lancers, correct?” Middleton reiterated.

  “Yes, Captain,” Joneson nodded. “Fifteen regulars and them four Tracto boys,” he said gratingly, making no attempt to hide his disdain for the genetically engineered super soldiers. “That’s only after McQuistan, Carpenter and Gnuko have mended, though. Still, every piece of gear we’ve got is in A-One shape, so all we need are fresh recruits and I can have us up to eighty percent of our rated combat capability in six weeks.”

  “I see,” Middleton said, having expected as much from the stalwart Joneson. He had served with him for several y
ears, and a finer leader of men Tim Middleton had never known. Middleton had specifically requested Joneson to accompany him on this tour, and he was grateful that Admiral Montagne had granted his request. “All right, is there anything specific you’ve got on your mind, Sergeant?” he asked, uncertain how to proceed in a meeting like this.

  “Sir?” Joneson said, cocking his head slightly in confusion.

  “I understand we’re in rough shape, but in order to make the best decision on how to proceed I’m going to need the input of my most trusted officers,” Middleton explained. “I’m newer at my job than you are at yours, Walt,” he added with a wry grin. Walter Joneson had served as a Commando in the Caprian Royal Army for several years before transferring to the MSP, where Middleton had met him. Prior to that, the Sergeant had enjoyed a thoroughly dominant run at the highest level of professional smashball in the Spineward Sectors, before unexpectedly retiring at the height of his playing career.

  Sergeant Joneson nodded silently for several seconds before shaking his head. “Can’t think of anything, sir,” he said eventually. “You get me some fresh meat and I’ll turn ‘em into Lancers.”

  “Lancers,” Middleton repeated sardonically, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. The term was so archaic and outdated that one only ever heard it used in holo-vids about the ‘good old days’ when, supposedly, men were men and certain barnyard animals were nervous.

  “The Little Admiral’s put his brand on my little branch of the MSP,” Joneson said with a short chuckle of his own, “I’ll give him that. Never did like being a ‘Marine’ anyway; the only water I recall seeing was the stuff running down the enemy’s leg when he saw us coming.”

  “Indeed,” Middleton mused before shaking his head in bewilderment at certain aspects of military tradition. “If that’s all, then?”

  Joneson nodded and stood to his feet, clearly glad to be rid of the confines of the tiny chair. “That’ll be it for me, Captain.”