No Middle Ground Read online

  She sat and fumed for several seconds, her moment of blissful hero worship shattered by yet another encounter with bigotry regarding something over which she had absolutely no control. She felt the harness straps bite into her shoulders as she had apparently leaned forward to hard in her anger and barely noticed the young man sitting beside her as he spoke.

  “For what it’s worth,” he said under his breath in the language of her home world, “I find the discrimination you’ve faced to be absolutely appalling.”

  “Do not speak to this one, prisoner,” she spat in her native tongue. To have risen so high, and yet been cast down so low in such a brief period was nearly enough to make her scream, but she managed to keep a tenuous hold on her volatile emotions. They were as much a part of her as any other aspect of who she was, but she had often found them to be of great detriment as she adjusted to life in normal society.

  “Fair enough,” he said with an apologetic splaying of his hands. “But I still think it’s criminal that they never even let you have a name.”

  She glared at him. “You would speak of things ‘criminal’ as though your opinion carries weight?” After looking at him for just a moment she saw that he was oddly attractive—in a thin, wiry, wholly un-athletic fashion, of course. She forcibly glanced up at his barcode and recognized the number code, which indicated his crimes were those against public property—the most pathetic type of criminal, in her view.

  “A poor choice of words,” he allowed with a snicker. “Still, from what I understand, these MSP people are going to need you to choose a name. I would imagine it’s something you’ve thought about for a while…I can’t wait to see what you pick.”

  “Do not speak to this one for the duration of this shuttle ride,” she growled and, much to her surprise, he stowed his honeyed words and did as she said. The truth was she had considered the matter of a name at great length, and had already decided on a suitable name for herself.

  Walking through the corridors of the Pride of Prometheus was like walking through a temple to the Ancestors. She stood in reverent awe at all of the people, who appeared to be from an incredibly diverse array of backgrounds, going about their duties in what seemed to be perfect harmony.

  Walter Joneson led her, as well as the other ‘recruits,’ a short ways through the ship’s corridors before they had arrived at sickbay where a middle-aged woman wearing glasses stood ready to receive them. The woman’s uniform designated her as a Doctor, and her eyes lingered when they came to the form-fitting smashball uniform bearing the twin zeroes. But the Doctor quickly cleared her throat as she prepared to address the two dozen recruits en masse.

  “My name is Doctor Middleton,” she began, “and I will be conducting a thorough physical examination of each of you prior to signing off on your readiness to serve aboard this…ship.” She paused after that particular word before continuing, “If any of you have allergies or other medical conditions you are aware of, please mark them down on the slate. Otherwise, we will proceed with the examinations alphabetically, which should take ten minutes each.”

  The hours ticked by as each recruit was processed in turn by the doctor. After they were finished, the recruits were escorted out of the sickbay until only one person remained.

  “I’m sorry,” Doctor Middleton said with an apologetic look at her data slate, “I don’t seem to have a name on file for you here; it must be a clerical error of some kind.”

  “It is no error,” she replied stiffly with a deliberate shake of her head. “The circumstance of this one’s birth…you would say ‘controversial’?”

  “I don’t understand,” the doctor said before sighing, “but then, I’m afraid there’s a lot I don’t understand about your culture—”

  “It is not my cul—,” she snapped angrily before stopping herself short and taking a deep, cleansing breath. “Proceed?” she asked in as even a tone as she could manage.

  The doctor nodded, and oddly enough she did not appear to be fearful in the slightest. “Still,” the doctor said as she made her way to a scanning apparatus of some kind, “you’re going to need a name aboard this ship. We can’t just refer to you as,” she gestured to the smashball uniform, complete with pads, “’that smashball player’. Before we’re finished, we’ll need to log your name into the system. If you have one picked out, we could do so now…?”

  Nodding in understanding, she felt a thrill of anticipation as she realized she would finally be able to take up a name for herself and no longer be treated like a faceless shadow. She typed in her chosen name, using both her home world’s native characters as well as the Confederation Standard alphabet.

  “I see…” the doctor said as a smile played over her lips. “You know,” she confided as she tucked the data slate away in her lab coat’s pocket and gestured to the nearby exam table, “we have uncensored—albeit digital—copies of each of the four great literary classics in the ship’s library.”

  Uncertain as to precisely what the Doctor mean, but feeling a wave of elation come over her regardless, she lay back on the table and allowed the doctor to conduct her examination.

  “Recruit,” Captain Middleton began, looking down at his data slate in mild confusion, “Lu Bu?”

  “Yes, sir,” the young, immensely powerful-looking woman replied promptly in an unusually deep voice. She stood a few inches shorter than Middleton himself, but easily outweighed him by at least twenty—and maybe closer to thirty—kilos of solid muscle and bone.

  Middleton nodded appreciatively. “I take it I have you to thank for apprising us of the Confederation statutes regarding legal emigration from your world?” he continued, knowing full well that it had been her. He seriously doubted that even on a planet of two billion there was even one other individual who resembled the young woman standing before him.

  “Yes, sir,” she repeated, standing so rigidly at what she clearly believed to be ‘attention’ that Middleton couldn’t help but smile. “This one not good with studies, but Lu Bu hopes she is of assistance, sir.”

  Her accent was far more pronounced than that of Representative Kong, but it was clear she was trying very hard to speak Confederation Standard properly—and equally clear that she had very little experience doing so.

  “I’ve got to admit that your smashball play is impressive,” Middleton said with an appreciative nod, “but it says here you’re requesting to become part of our Lancer contingent. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied, proudly jutting her broad, powerful chin forward.

  “That’s going to be…problematic,” he said with a sigh. “It also says here that you’re only fourteen of your world’s years old—which would make you about sixteen standard cycles.”

  “Captain,” she said, for the first time appearing less than one hundred percent confident, “age of adulthood in home world is fourteen, so enlistment is legal.” Looking at a loss for what to do, she suddenly fell to her knees and clasped her hands before herself much as the representative had done, catching Middleton completely by surprise. “All this one’s life she is treated as outcast; even teammates treat her as unwanted. All Lu Bu want is to…belong,” she said as she turned her face to the floor. “Please let this one serve!”

  Middleton was truly at a loss. He hadn’t expected to have such emotion boil to the surface so quickly. “Lu—I mean, Bu,” he corrected sheepishly, remembering her culture’s name order, “of course you can serve.” When her eyes turned upward and he saw that they were nearly brimming with tears, he sighed, “But you might not understand the risks involved—not to mention the kind of people you would be working with if you became a Lancer. Your reactions and reflex scores—along with most of your other physical aptitudes, to be fair—are completely off the charts,” he said suggestively, “and this ship needs good gunners.”

  She thrust herself forward onto her hands, forming a triangle with them on the floor in front of her forehead as she did so. “Lu Bu is not gunner, Captain,” she ple
aded, “Lu Bu is warrior! It is all…” she hesitated, likely searching for the right word, “I wish.”

  Middleton sighed again and leaned down, awkwardly placing his hands beneath her arms. “Stand up, Lu Bu,” he said gruffly, and when she did not do so, he removed his hands. “I said ‘stand up’!” he repeated with a crack of authority he wasn’t quite sure he could produce on such short notice.

  It appeared to have the desired effect, as she immediately ceased her groveling and returned to her former, rigid pose which more or less approximated ‘attention.’

  Middleton leveled the data slate at her. “As a member of the MSP, you are expected to follow orders—and to perform whichever tasks are assigned to you, however distasteful they may seem,” he said in a hard voice. While it was clear she wanted to protest, she kept her mouth shut and Middleton let the silence hang for several moments before making an entry on the data slate. “Aboard the Pride of Prometheus, I am the Captain, but the Lancer Sergeant has final say on who qualifies for his team.” He handed the slate back to her. “If you pass his inspection then you might become a Lancer; if you don’t,” he added pointedly, “you will still be required to serve the MSP, most likely as a gunner. If you have a problem with that, I suggest you return to your planet immediately seeing as we will not be in orbit for more than another day.”

  A look of pure, unmitigated joy filled her wide, almost masculine features before she did her best to dismiss it as she presented what might have been the worst salute Middleton had ever seen. “Thank you, sir,” she said, her voice trembling with obvious excitement. “This one will not disappoint Walter Joneson!”

  “We’ll see,” Middleton said, knowing far better than his newest crewmember just how large that particular hill was. On the plus side, either way he gained a valuable crewmember—so long as she could learn to follow the rules in a timely fashion. “Dismissed, Recruit,” he said, giving her a proper military salute in return.

  She relaxed her own salute somewhat sheepishly after glancing at his far better version and turned toward the door. She exited the room with just a trio of short, powerful strides from her equally powerful legs, which looked like something out of a body-building e-zine.

  Middleton shook his head and chuckled after the door had closed. “Misfits and outcasts, all,” he muttered under his breath as he made his way out onto the bridge to check the disembarkation protocols. He had a mission to carry out, and he’d already spent far too much time licking his wounds.

  There were pirates out there wreaking havoc on innocent people’s lives, and he aimed to stop them. He briefly wondered if Admiral Montagne would approve of his continued foray into Sector 24, but decided then and there that the MSP under the Little Admiral’s leadership had shown itself more than willing to track down and deal with threats wherever they might be.

  If only the Imperials hadn’t scuttled the ComStat network before leaving the Spineward Sectors to its fate, he could easily send a message to Admiral Montagne relaying their status. The ComStat network was the only means of faster-than-light communication that didn’t involve courier ships to physically transport the information via point transfer from system to system.

  Without it, they were deaf, dumb, and blind. A few more weeks of intelligence gathering on the local scene would be encouraged, if we had the ability to communicate, Middleton thought, not quite convincing even himself of the statement’s truth as he stepped back onto the bridge.

  Chapter VIII: Mixed Signals

  Two weeks after leaving orbit of what Captain Middleton had come to think of as ‘the planet of false harmony,’ they had already performed several hyper jumps and inspected a half dozen colonial systems which, aside from what seemed to be high—if borderline acceptable—levels of local criminal activity, had been fairly unremarkable.

  Still, each of the colonies had fairly begged for the Pride to remain in-system to bolster their defenses. Middleton understood their plights only too well; half of those colony’s defense squadrons had deserted, presumably to become pirates much like Captain Raubach had professed she and her own crew had done. And the half that remained was generally undermanned, with the majority of the skilled officers having gone with the Imperials during the withdrawal—making the acquisition of able officers to fill out his own command crew impossible.

  Middleton was still surprised that so many of the people he had considered to be compatriots and friends would up and leave their places of birth defenseless like they did. But he knew that what was done was done. There was little point in dwelling on it; all he could do was the best possible job going forward.

  He was reviewing the status of the new recruits—most of whom were performing better than he expected, given the circumstances—when the chime at his door rang.

  “Enter,” he called out, setting down Chief Garibaldi’s report on the engineering recruits, which had been the only report to declare his recruits substandard.

  The door slid open and the Comm. Officer, Ensign Jardine, entered. “Captain,” he said, holding a data slate in his hands, “I’ve got something I think you should see.”

  Middleton gestured for the man to sit, and took the proffered data slate as Jardine settled into the chair opposite his Captain. Middleton reviewed the contents and was more than a little disturbed by what he saw which, at first glance, seemed to be nothing but a record of the ship’s energy emissions just before three of their most recent hyper jumps. “Are you certain this isn’t just a series of random fluctuations?” he asked. The truth was, while he could see what seemed to be a pattern of some kind in the data, he was far from convinced.

  “I’m fairly certain, Captain,” Jardine said, his tone betraying his lack of confidence. “I’ve run the signals through all the regular filters, as well as the decryption software in the main computer, but nothing seems to break it down into readable chunks. Still,” he continued, this time more assuredly, “every simulation I’ve run suggests the odds of our engines randomly creating these specific emissions three times in six are astronomical.”

  Middleton nodded slowly as the reality of the situation sank in. “So, in your estimation, Ensign Jardine,” he began evenly, “we have unauthorized, heavily encrypted communiques being transmitted from someone aboard the Pride?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Jardine replied after a brief hesitation. “The only reason we picked these signals up at all is because I’m still fine-tuning the new comm. transmitter we installed before breaking orbit at Shèhuì Héxié. It was by complete chance that I picked up on the first one. In the interest of security I thought that if the engines were acting up, the Chief would want to know about it. So I’ve been closely monitoring these frequencies continuously; these signals only appear during pre-jump protocols.”

  “And the computer can’t identify the encryption?” Middleton asked, more to confirm what the Ensign had already said than to suggest anything.

  Jardine shook his head. “No sir. It’s strange…the data is clearly digital, but there’s something about it that…” he trailed off doubtfully.

  “What is it?” Middleton pressed.

  Jardine sighed. “The best way I can describe it is,” he took a deep breath, “the signal seems like it doesn’t want to be decrypted. I know that sounds crazy, Captain, especially since it’s just a recorded data stream…but that’s the best way I can put it. I’m sorry I can’t explain it any better,” he added sheepishly.

  “Who else knows about this?” Middleton asked calmly.

  Jardine shook his head firmly. “I know the regs, Captain,” he said quickly, “all unauthorized, encoded communications are to be reported directly to the acting commander and no one else.”

  “Good work, Ensign,” the Captain said, grateful for the man’s adherence to doctrine. “What’s your recommendation.”

  Jardine shifted in his seat. “If we have a saboteur aboard,” he began hesitantly, “we need to keep him from knowing that we’re onto him while we work to apprehend him.”
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  Middleton nodded. “Is there any way we can triangulate this signal?”

  Jardine shook his head. “That’s the thing, Captain. I’m fairly certain this signal is at least partly generated by the Pride’s hyper dish. I’ve already checked the integrity of the dish’s systems and I can’t find any security breaches, at least not from my console.”

  “What do you mean by ‘partly generated’?” Middleton asked.

  Jardine shook his head. “I’m sorry, Captain,” he apologized, “I’m getting ahead of myself. Part of the problem with this signal seems to be that this,” he pointed at the data slate, “is only part of whatever message is being sent out.”

  “Then where is the rest of it?” Middleton demanded.

  Jardine slouched in the chair. “I…I don’t know, sir. I can’t tell if my equipment is physically incapable of detecting it, or if I just don’t know where to look.”

  Middleton sat back in his chair and considered the matter. Unknown variables were perhaps the only thing that could keep him up at night, and this was one of the more disturbing ones he had come across during his tenure as the Pride’s captain.

  “You’ve done well, Ensign,” Middleton said encouragingly, causing the younger man to brighten ever so slightly. “None of the other Comm. Officers picked up on this; you shouldn’t be ashamed of anything.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Jardine replied less than enthusiastically, which Middleton could fully understand.

  “I need you to dedicate your efforts toward building a net,” Middleton continued, “so we can snare this threat to ship-wide security. Can you do that?”

  Ensign Jardine nodded. “I’ll do my best, Captain. I’ve got a few ideas, but I’ll need Chief Garibaldi’s help with some of the hardware.”

  Middleton had expected as much. “Do it,” he ordered, “but keep it quiet. No one but you, the Chief, and myself are to know about this, do I make myself clear?”