Up The Middle (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 2) Page 6

  Fei Long was starting to get irked by the elderly man’s superior attitude, so he decided it was time to take him down a notch. “If the past is, as you say, so valuable,” he began evenly, keeping his tone as respectful as he could but failing worse than he would have liked, “then how may it help in establishing handshake protocols between remotely linked units operating on a distributed, Heisenberg architecture, multi-transceiver system?”

  Spalding’s brow furrowed for several seconds before his eyes narrowed, and Fei Long thought he had pushed it too far when the older man took a menacing step forward, “Boy…you’ve got no business messin’ with Heisenberg architecture unsupervised.”

  Fei Long jutted his chin out defiantly. “I did not adopt an existing system,” he retorted evenly, “I created my own, fractal, version of a true Heisenberg and have placed it in a distributed architecture. There is no risk of runaway data procession, and it solves the issue of latency to the fourth decimal.”

  “The fourth decimal,” Spalding blurted, “ye want to live as an AI slave, is that it?!”

  “The fractal nature makes the data environment hostile to artificial intelligence,” Fei Long retorted more defensively than he had thought he would, but he kept his determination not to back down—even in the face of the half-man, half-machine standing before him.

  Spalding seemed to consider this for a moment before shrugging. “Well…I suppose it might, at that,” he admitted before sighing, and Fei Long folded his arms across his chest triumphantly. Then the old man turned and began to clomp across the room toward the door. When he reached the door he called over his shoulder, “The grav cart’s main processor will do the job just fine.” Then he unexpectedly grasped a smaller grav-cart’s handle and moved it back in Fei Long’s direction.

  “Excuse me?” Fei Long asked, nearly convinced the other man was either insane or senile—or both.

  “You want to solve a fractal Heisenberg in real-time?” Spalding repeated irritably before jutting his chin toward the grav-cart which Fei Long had already begun to disassemble. “That cart’s main processor will do the trick—but I’ll not let ye leave this room until after we’ve disconnected its secondary and tertiary caches.” The smaller, newer, grav-cart came to a stop just in front of Fei Long and the old Engineer loudly made his way to the side of the Stotch B-series unit. He began unstacking several crates which had been placed atop the Stotch B and, as he did so, he confided, “Not many know this…but the Stotch B was partly responsible for the desalination catastrophe on Praxis IV…awful uppity, these ones.”

  Fei Long was growing impatient, but he was also somewhat intrigued. This was not because he had ever heard of Praxis IV, but because for some reason Commander Spalding seemed to believe that a grav-cart could actually help him solve a fractal Heisenberg—a digital information architecture which was, mostly, just a theoretical construct since it was considered hazardous due to its similarities to a true Heisenberg architecture.

  Without asking permission, Commander Spalding reached down and plucked a pair of Fei Long’s meticulously maintained instruments from his neatly arranged toolkit and promptly placed one between his teeth while using the other to pop open the grav-cart’s control housing. “Now,” he said, his teeth still clamped on the tool, “what ye need to remember is that the processor itself is harmless. But if ye put it in touch with its secondary or tertiary caches…bad things can happen. Why, this very unit once went droid about…oh…two years ago?” he said as he stopped to scratch his head. “Needed a total wipe, it did…cheeky thing actually mocked my Droid accent. The nerve!” he spat before going back to work. A few seconds later he swapped the tool in his hand with the one in his mouth and shortly thereafter, he handed Fei Long what looked to be the secondary cache’s main assembly. Not long after that, the old man did the same with the tertiary cache.

  “You…speak Droid?” Fei Long asked, unsure if he should be impressed or trying to find a way to the nearest security terminal to request an armed guard. The aged Engineer was at least as much machine as man, and if he was actually professing to speak Droid?!

  “Not fluently,” Spalding hastened to assure him, “but I can keep most of the blips and beeps straight enough to get a rough message across. Help me transfer this cart over,” he said, and while Fei Long was less than Herculean physically, he did manage to assist in loading the older grav-cart onto the newer one.

  When they were done doing so, Spalding handed Fei Long back his tools and grumped, “Good luck with yer project.” He then turned and left the small shop.

  Fei Long thought he heard him muttering something about ‘green horns’ as the doors closed behind him, which made no sense to him whatsoever.

  Chapter VII: Testing a Theory

  “Next,” the short, young man from Engineering said, and Lu Bu folded her arms impatiently as she oversaw the procession of the one hundredth person to come through the examination tent.

  The next applicant was a large, burly-looking woman who caught Lu Bu’s attention immediately. She had jet-black hair; a strong, round face; and stood at least as tall as any Tracto-an man Lu Bu had seen—outside of Atticus, that is. In fact, this woman appeared to be the near physical equal of the late Walter Joneson, a fact that intrigued the younger woman. Lu Bu had all but given up hope regarding uncovering an acceptable candidate for her own quota.

  “What is your name?” the young man—whose name was Jake Smith—asked as he prepared to populate the application form. He was speaking in Tracto-an, since he was one of the few members of the crew who had a knack for linguistics. Lu Bu had heard these particular phrases enough times that she, herself, could repeat them with at least as much proficiency as she could do for Confederation Standard.

  “Bernice,” the woman said, and Lu Bu looked at the massive woman’s left arm and saw that it was an atrophied ruination of its healthy, well-muscled opposite.

  “Where do you hold lands?” Smith asked patiently, again speaking in Tracto-an.

  “I,” Bernice said, using Confederation Standard in a truncated, deliberate fashion, “do not…make lands.”

  Lu Bu cocked an eyebrow. “You speak Standard?” she asked appreciatively. Bernice was only the sixth person to display anything resembling proficiency with Confederation Standard, so Lu Bu was naturally intrigued.

  The larger woman gave her an appraising look before nodding curtly. “I speak small Stan-dard,” she emphasized the word, “but not have practice much.”

  “Do you mean to say, then,” Engineer Smith interrupted easily in Confederation Standard, “that you do not own lands?”

  Bernice nodded quickly, “Yes.”

  “But,” Lu Bu said in confusion, “I think all women of Tracto owned lands?”

  The mammoth of a woman shook her head. “I…” she seemed to struggle to find the correct word, “not line with fate of mothers.”

  Lu Bu scrunched her forehead in further confusion, but Engineer Smith stepped in confidently, “You mean you didn’t abide by your Matriarch’s wishes…you were ostracized? Err,” he said, fishing around for a word of his own for several seconds, “you were removed from your family line?”

  Bernice nodded in apparently equal measures of relief and shame—she was likely relieved that her information had been accurately conveyed, but she was still shamed at her social status.

  “And your injury,” Smith pressed, gesturing to her arm, “how was it sustained?”

  Bernice furrowed her brow and Lu Bu stepped forward. “How is your arm hurt?” she pointed at the ruined, permanently contracted limb.

  The massive woman’s chest stuck out proudly, and Lu Bu was instantly envious of the other woman’s physique. She had pectoralis muscles which would likely grant her as much raw strength as Lu Bu’s artificially-designed, more compact musculature could generate. Her bone structure was clearly heavy, but she moved with surprising agility and held her posture perfectly. “I lose arm in Sky Demon God battle, fighting with Lady Adonia Zosime’s
side.”

  “Battle wound,” Smith nodded knowingly as he held up his own, mechanical right arm, which had been replaced shortly after the Pride’s battle with invading droids—a battle which had cost Chief Engineer Garibaldi his leg, which had likewise been replaced with a mechanical prosthetic.

  Lu Bu nodded and clapped the larger woman on her upper, right, arm. “You are warrior?” she asked, looking up into the other woman’s eyes.

  Bernice nodded proudly. “No man breaks me,” she said pointedly, and Lu Bu decided it was unimportant to press her on the precise meaning of her words. Suffice to say, it was clear that any man who thought they could coerce Bernice into submission or compliance on any matter would have bit off more than he could chew. “Only Sky Demons break arm,” she said bitterly as her eyes landed and lingered on Smith’s prosthetic arm.

  Lu Bu felt a flare of something warm and anticipatory deep within herself and she turned to Smith pointedly, “Bernice is Candidate One for this one’s quota.”

  Smith nodded agreeably and gestured to a nearby station before switching back to Tracto-an and saying, “Please step over there for a medical examination.”

  Bernice’s eyes widened and Lu Bu grinned, tilting her head toward the medical station. “I would fight with you, Bernice,” she said with feeling, “but first, let nurse examine you.”

  Bernice nodded graciously and clasped her hand over her chest before making her way to the medical station.

  Finally, Lu Bu thought to herself with satisfaction, my first recruit.

  The days came and went, with the routine consisting of nearly nine hours of continuous examinations. Atticus held his own ‘tryouts’ on the far side of the small encampment, and Lu Bu wandered out to observe his predictable methodology from time to time.

  He arranged his applicants in lines and then, with what seemed to be a far-from-random method, pitted the largest, strongest, and clearly most battle-tested warriors against the smaller, less-practiced counterparts. Predictably, there were few upsets to Atticus’ ‘favorites,’ each of which eventually took his place within Atticus’ portion of the encampment.

  It seemed that Atticus’ idea was to pit the strongest against the rest in order to prove which attributes were most successful, and indeed, Lu Bu found difficulty arguing against the idea behind his method. After a full day of physical exercises, weapons demonstrations—including blaster rifles fired at flung objects—and one-on-one combat between applicants continued, until only one man stood victorious above the others.

  During the four days which they had been there, Atticus had already accepted six warriors into the Pride’s Lancer contingent under his direct authority. Several ‘failed’ applicants would return the following day to try their hand once again but inevitably a larger, more fearsome warrior would outshine them yet again.

  It was on the third such attempt by one man—a man who had caught Lu Bu’s eye on his first day of tryouts—that she paid special attention to the outcome of the day’s events as the sun began to set.

  The man’s left eye was already swollen shut, and his opponent towered nearly a head above him and seemed half again as broad. But the smaller, relentless man spun his wooden sword over in his hand as he checked his shield’s position and straps for weakness as the larger man rolled his head around laconically. Lu Bu felt a surge of anger at the larger man’s apparent lack of concern; the smaller man was not his physical match in any measurable dimension, but there was something present in him which warranted careful observation.

  “Arrogance,” Lu Bu spat under her breath as she shook her head derisively.

  Atticus made his way between the warriors. “The final contestants are Quintus, son of Tacitus,” his voice boomed across the rocky hillside as he gestured to the larger man before turning to face the smaller man, “and Cassius. The match is to three falls.” He held his hand up between them and chopped it down, “Begin!”

  The two men circled each other and, wasting no time, Quintus brought his blade up in a series of quick, upward slashes designed to send his opponent backpedaling. But Cassius appeared wise to the ploy, and easily sidestepped the attack while hammering the tip of his own sword—which he held in his left hand, rather than the traditional right—into Quintus’ tardy block. The larger man did manage to bring his shield across his body and intercept the attack, stopping it cold using simple, brute, strength.

  Lu Bu snorted in derision at the larger man’s obvious showboating, but she kept her eyes on Cassius as he circled—it would seem unadvisedly—toward the larger man’s sword arm. Quintus rewarded the smaller man with a hard, savage sweep of his blade aimed at Cassius’ midsection. The smaller man diverted the blow using his own weapon while ducking beneath the arc of the large man’s blade, but Quintus wasn’t done just yet. He kicked out with his long, tree trunk-like leg and Cassius’ leg bent so viciously at the knee that Lu Bu feared a catastrophic knee injury had just taken place.

  The blow sent the larger man to the ground and Atticus called in a loud, carrying voice, “Fall! Quintus has one, Cassius has none.”

  It was only then that Lu Bu realized Atticus had been speaking in Confederation Standard, rather than his native Tracto-an tongue. She found his gaze and met it, suspecting he had been looking at her before she had done likewise. She narrowed her eyes and folded her arms across her chest as the combatants regained their feet.

  “Begin!” Atticus called from the perimeter of the combat circle, and again the two men began to circle. Cassius’ leg looked no worse for having sustained the devastating kick, which was a relief to Lu Bu—she wanted to see what the smaller man could do against a larger, stronger, fresher opponent.

  Cassius circled away from the larger man’s sword-arm this time, and lashed out with a kick of his own. Quintus’ face twisted into a contemptuous sneer as he easily blocked the maneuver with his shield—but then Cassius, to even Lu Bu’s surprise, leapt into the air and brought his sword high before plunging it down toward the other man’s throat.

  It was all Quintus could do to keep from falling down as he backpedaled away from the attack. He did manage to avoid the potentially fight-ending strike when Cassius failed to close distance quickly enough due to the other man’s longer strides. Quintus got his shield up into a guard and counterattacked with a furious series of well-practiced blows—clearly, he was no longer content to showcase his admittedly impressive physique, having identified Cassius as a real threat.

  The two exchanged blows back and forth, sword to shield, until Cassius once again worked an opening against Quintus’ lead, left, leg. He hammered his sword into the other man’s thigh with enough force that Lu Bu questioned whether or not her own thigh would have broken outright, but Quintus absorbed the blow and trapped the smaller man’s wooden blade between his shield and leg. He then lifted Cassius up into the air—as Cassius clearly did not wish to lose grip of his weapon—and flung the smaller man to the ground with an expert foot sweep that saw the wind knocked from Cassius’ lungs as soon as he landed flat on his back.

  “Fall!” Atticus declared, and Lu Bu grimaced as she refused to meet the other man’s haughty look. “Quintus with two falls to Cassius’ none.”

  Cassius was slow to stand, but Lu Bu’s eyes were locked firmly on Quintus’ lead, left, leg as the larger man stiffly moved it back and forth in an all-too-familiar attempt to regain sensation in the limb. Lu Bu had been correct in her initial appraisal of the damage: had the two men been wielding real blades, the smaller man would have likely severed the larger warrior’s leg—or at least rendered it useless.

  “Begin!” Atticus called out, and the two men began to circle each other yet again. This time they were more wary of each other and, Lu Bu noted with grim certainty, they each bore wounds which would require several weeks to heal without advanced medical assistance.

  Cassius initiated the attack by slamming his shield into Quintus’ shield. He then pivoted with surprising speed and grace as Quintus made a brutal, overhand
chopping attack with his sword which very well may have killed the smaller man had it landed on or near his neck. The attack sent the larger man staggering, and Cassius took advantage of the opening by hammering the larger man’s left hamstring with his blade.

  Quintus’ leg unexpectedly gave out, and he fell to a knee as Cassius followed up with a vicious kick to the larger man’s back. But Quintus was simply too large, and too well-prepared. He somehow kept from being kicked forward by resisting the attack and then, inexplicably, he dropped his weapons and spun his body before Cassius could withdraw his foot to launch a second kick.

  Cassius fell forward a half step before trying to regain his balance, but Quintus already had his long, massive arms wrapped around the smaller man. Cassius struggled mightily against the crushing grip, and even smashed his forehead into Quintus’ nose three times with bone-cracking force before the larger man locked his hands behind Cassius’ back.

  Lu Bu winced as Cassius’ feet were lifted from the ground, and without ceremony or celebration, Quintus spun the smaller man’s body in mid-air before driving him into the ground with enough force to kill a normal human outright.

  Quintus’ massive shoulder drove into Cassius’ chest as the smaller man’s back was driven into the ground, and Lu Bu took several steps forward as cheers erupted from Atticus’ camp. “Fall!” Atticus declared with a savage, triumphant look as he met Lu Bu’s eyes briefly, but she was too focused on Cassius’ well-being. “Quintus is the victor; Cassius is dismissed. He, and the other failed applicants, are welcome to try again on the morrow.”