Middletons prejudice spi.., p.31
Middleton's Prejudice (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 5), page 31
“None of my ships moved into the Prichtac home system after your arrival,” the Stalwart said in a dangerous tone. “Your modifications are unnecessary.”
“It’s probable that they tracked the felines, whose comm. discipline is nearly as bad as your own and whose gear is even worse,” Middleton retorted, “to the Prichtac home world and simply waited until other operations—like those in the Hesperia Minor system—were concluded before moving on to the Prichtac. Still, if we can find weaknesses in your grid by using high-end Imperial comm. gear,” Middleton produced a data slate containing the very weaknesses which Mr. Fei had located in the Stalwart’s comm. grid, “what makes you think the Imperials didn’t do so months—or even years—ago?”
The Stalwart Commander eyed the slate before snatching it from his hand and perusing the first few pages of content. His expression turned from stony to a scowl as he grunted, “These are supposed to be secure and untraceable com-lines.”
“Which my technician cracked within an hour after arriving in the Prichtac star system,” Middleton said matter-of-factly. “He can make these modifications, but if you try to have your people make them then the job won’t be done properly. He’ll need a few days to complete the upgrades before we can move on.”
“You suggest remaining here for several days?” the Commander objected.
“No,” Middleton shook his head, “that would be stupid. We’ll keep moving, but it won’t be toward the target system until Mr. Fei’s work is done. Can we at least agree that your com-grid is dangerously compromised and that it poses an immediate threat to the fleet?”
The Stalwart eyed him before nodding, “We will allow your technician to assist ours in making the modifications.”
“Good,” Middleton nodded, turning to Garibaldi, “Chief, I’ll need you to give Mr. Fei two engineers who can assist him with the heavy lifting on the equipment modifications while he cleans up the Stalwart’s virtual resources.”
“Julian’s one, for sure,” Garibaldi said before shaking his head, “but I think the only other person qualified for those types of repairs is me.”
Middleton hesitated before shaking his head, “We need you aboard this ship, Chief—“
“If these modifications are as important as you claim,” the Commander interrupted, folding his massive arms across his hairy, barrel-shaped chest, “then the Stalwart demand your best engineers conduct them.”
“He’s my Chief Engineer,” Middleton said severely, “I’m not about to leave my ship without its Chief Engineer.”
“So the safety of the Stalwart ships—which comprise the bulk of this fleet, I remind you,” the Commander flashed his teeth menacingly, “is less important to you than this one ship? Where is your sense of perspective, Captain Middleton?”
Middleton’s brow lowered thunderously as he met the uplift’s gaze and held it for a long while. Eventually, he acquiesced, “Fine…I’ll have my Mr. Fei and Chief Garibaldi make the modifications, as a show of good faith, before we move on to our destination. We’ll start with your flagship, where my people will arrive via our shuttle after the next jump.”
“That is acceptable,” the Stalwart nodded. “Is there nothing else?”
“No,” Middleton said through gritted teeth, prompting the Stalwart to open the door and return to the shuttle hangar.
After the uplift had left earshot, Garibaldi said, “You know this is a trap, right?”
“Of course it is,” Middleton snapped irritably. “But what choice do we have? The Prichtac warships need crew, and that’s precisely what we’re short on. If we’re going to get those ships moving quickly enough to get them out of that star system, we need to have the Stalwart on board.”
“They’ll use your experts as leverage,” Snake Eyes said contemptuously. “Once the Stalwart have them, and after they’ve made the proposed modifications, they won’t let them come back until you’ve given in to their demands—which will only grow after each one you cave to.”
“Again, what choice do we have?” Middleton demanded, working hard to school his features into a professional mask as he spoke.
“Abandon the Stalwart,” Snake Eyes suggested immediately. “Cut away from them right here, right now, and let them fend for themselves while we do the same. If you’re right about the Imps tracking their movements and the uplifts can’t make the proper modifications to their comm. gear, the apes will either run as far and fast as they can or they’ll end up leading Commodore Paganini directly to this fleet of unmanned Prichtac ships. Can you think of a much more tempting target for that task force than an entire fleet of crewless, battle-ready warships? This is our best opportunity to get clear of this mess while they’re dealing with each other—experience says you rarely get one opportunity like this, and you never get two.”
“We’re not abandoning them,” Middleton said sharply. “We won’t let this coalition disintegrate.”
“It already has,” she spat. “The felines left and the Stalwart are just looking for a reason to do the same. Giving them what they want is the surest way to get out of here with your head still attached.”
Middleton locked eyes with her and said, “Chief, prep the Deathbacker. Take whatever gear you’ll need, and be ready to depart with your team as soon as we make the next jump. This is not a debate or a request.”
“Yes sir,” Garibaldi said stiffly before turning and leaving.
“Tim,” Snake Eyes said urgently while moving closer, “you have to think clearly about all this—“
“I’ve made my decision,” he cut her off. “If you want off my ship, this looks like the best chance you’ll get. I’m sure the Stalwart could use a good pilot.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said emphatically before adding, “at least not until I get my replacement ship.”
“Then do your job and let me do mine,” he growled before pushing past her and making his way to the bridge.
“Zhongda?” Fei Long asked after closing the door to his quarters and waiting for several seconds. “Zhongda?” he repeated, moving toward the removable panel behind which she slept.
The data slate on his belt chimed before he could reach the panel, so he took it from its case and received the inbound connection—which was on a secure line that he thought only he knew about.
When the connection was established, Zhongda’s face appeared—and the background suggested she was no longer aboard the Prejudice.
“This is a recording, Long,” she said before he could ask where she was, “I left with the felines when Mrr’shan’s shuttle departed. I’d been in private contact with them, and they said they could use my skills.”
“Zhongda…?” he said blankly, his mind reeling from the blow of this revelation. He had been continuously stationed on the bridge since the feline leader had boarded the ship, so it was entirely possible that Zhongda had indeed disembarked with the felines. But before he could gather his thoughts, her recording continued.
“I think you’ve made a bad choice by sticking with your Captain, Long,” Zhongda said derisively. “He’s in way over his head; anyone with an open mind can see that. He’s going to get everyone on that ship killed, and I’m not interested in going down in flames because of someone else’s stupidity.”
“Zhongda…no…” he pleaded in vain, fearing she had betrayed them to the Imperials.
“But I won’t tell the Imperials what you’re up to,” she said, as though she had read his mind. “Even as misguided and gullible as you are, you don’t deserve another knife in the back—not that it will make much difference. We both know that the Imps are going to catch up to you, and when they do…” she trailed off dramatically.
His worst fears seemingly allayed, he sighed in relief as he felt his knees begin to wobble beneath him. He sat down on the edge of the bed as his vision began to blur and the room seemed to spin around him.
“But Long,” she continued, leaning forward into the pick-up and looking precisely as she had so many years ago, with her cheeks soft and round and her eyes drawn into tight lines rather than the exaggerated, cat-like dimensions they’d been a few weeks earlier, “this isn’t going to end well for you. If you get a chance to join me, you need to take it and not look back. That slug doesn’t care about you and neither does your Captain—I care about you, but I don’t care enough to march to my death. These cats aren’t all bad, but I don’t plan on sticking with them for very long. I’m going to make my own way out here, and I’d like it to be with you at my side. I’ll transmit a ping on the frequency listed at the bottom of this screen. I suggest you memorize it because this message is going to burn your data slate as soon as it’s done playing. I hope you do the right thing. If not…well, it was nice knowing you.”
He quickly memorized the frequency as the message completed, and when it did so the slate went blank and powered down. He suspected there was no point in attempting to reverse her data wipe; she was at least as good at that sort of thing as he was—probably better than him in his current state, if he was being honest.
He gave a final, long look at the compartment where she had resided for the last few weeks until fully processing the fact that she was gone. He was tempted to dismiss her suggestion that he join her, but the truth was that Patterson was right: it did seem that Captain Middleton was losing control over the situation, and the stakes were only getting higher with each passing day. Zhongda just might have made the smart play, but even with that possibility dancing in his head he couldn’t ignore the fact that what Captain Middleton was doing happened to be the right thing.
Shaking those thoughts from his mind, he went about the task of prepping for the job of modifying the Stalwart warships’ comm. arrays. But no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to dismiss the most distressing thought of all:
He was alone.
Chapter XXVI: Power Plays
“That completes this ship’s modifications,” Fei Long said after finishing with the final diagnostic on the tenth ship, confirming that the work had been completed correctly.
“The Commander orders you to repair the Shattered Fist next,” the Stalwart engineer said gruffly.
“Look, pal,” Chief Garibaldi said, climbing out from under the transceiver’s housing and shaking a multi-tool angrily, “we’ve got our own work orders and we’ll fill them in the order they were approved by our Captain. Capiche?”
“You are not on your Captain’s ship,” the engineer sneered. “This ship, and everyone on it—including you—is under the Commander’s authority. Comply with your orders, human.” The last word was overflowing with disdain, and Fei Long saw the Prejudice’s Chief Engineer bristle and move to raise his multi-tool in protest so he intervened.
“The order is unimportant,” he said quickly. “What is important is that your Commander would make a point of flexing what little muscle he has in this completely counterproductive fashion. Repairing the Shattered Fist before working on the Blood Moon, as previously scheduled, will force Chief Garibaldi and I to recalibrate our equipment to accommodate the Fist’s archaic com-grid. We will of course oblige if the Commander insists, but we will simply need to recalibrate the equipment—again—before modifying the Blood Moon as was originally planned. This process will take at least two additional hours, so if your Commander’s ego is more important than a delay which might see the Imperial task force move two hours closer to our present position, by all means thump your chests and exert your dominance. But if doing this job in the most efficient and time-sensitive fashion as possible is of a higher priority than low-brow displays of territorialism, our advice is that we keep to the original plan and put an end to this inane jockeying for position.”
The Stalwart engineer’s nostrils flared and pumped hot blasts of air in Fei Long’s face for several seconds before he began to chuckle. “You are weak…but you are also brave.” Before Fei Long knew what had happened, he felt his cheek explode in pain before realizing he was kneeling beside the bulkhead and was reeling from the Stalwart engineer’s blow. “Continue your work…on the Blood Moon,” the engineer growled before turning his back and loping down the corridor on all fours.
“You all right?” Garibaldi asked as Julian gathered up their equipment. The Prejudice’s Chief Engineer offered Fei Long his hand, which the younger man accepted and used to pull himself to his feet.
“I have had worse during coitus,” he said dismissively, though his jaw ached tremendously.
“I’m sure you have,” Garibaldi said with a wink before adding, “but it’s always worth it, isn’t it?”
Fei Long nodded numbly, realizing as he did so that he could not understand why he had said that just now. He had no memory of being physically struck during sexual congress, but for some reason it felt as though his saying he had was somehow correct.
“By the way,” Garibaldi said as he slung a duffel full of equipment over his shoulder, “why’d you lie about the timetable? It would have only cost us about ten minutes to recalibrate the gear twice, and the Fist’s the same distance from this hunk of junk as the Moon is, anyway.”
“I am not a pawn,” Fei Long said with genuine anger, “and I will not be treated as one. They wish to send a message to Captain Middleton and we will relay it. But I will not give them the satisfaction of intimidating me.”
“You mean ‘of knowing they intimidated you’,” Garibaldi said with another wink.
“The meaning is the same,” Fei Long shook his head. “Fear and intimidation are not necessarily linked; to be intimidated is to surrender in some fashion to fear. There is no shame in feeling fear, but there is shame in being intimidated.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Garibaldi said after a moment’s thought. “I guess you’re right. So you were scared before you whipped Atticus back on the Pride, eh? I never pegged you for the brave type, but you sure proved me wrong that day.”
“Yes…I suppose I did,” Fei Long nodded, though in truth he could not remember anything to do with a man named ‘Atticus.’ It was apparently an extremely common name among the Tracto-ans, but he had no specific memory of encountering one—or of ‘whipping’ him.
“Come on,” Garibaldi beckoned, “we’re almost halfway done with this mess. I don’t wanna stay here any longer than absolutely necessary.”
“How much trouble did they give you?” Middleton asked after his team returned aboard the Deathbacker.
“Well, we had to be careful to keep from slipping on the banana peels,” Garibaldi quipped, “and they wanted to make sure we knew they were in charge every step of the way, but we got the job done.”
“Will the modifications do the job, Mr. Fei?” Middleton asked, grateful that the entire team had returned after just less than twenty hours of work, which had spanned eight point transfers.
“They will, Captain,” the young man nodded as his left hand massaged his temple. “There is no guarantee that the Stalwart will not circumvent them, but for now the fleet’s comm. security should be sufficiently improved to negate the possibility of detection by the Imperials. Miss Patterson’s suggestions were of significant assistance as well,” he added with a nod to the ship’s pilot. “Several of their systems had integrated salvaged Imperial components which contained embedded transponders precisely as she had indicated they would. Those transponders were neutralized, and…and…” he trailed off dully before shaking his head and apologizing, “I am sorry, Captain. I think I should return to my quarters.”
“Of course,” Middleton nodded, “I’ll have Mr. Garibaldi finish the debriefing.” Mr. Fei nodded and left the shuttle bay, prompting Middleton to give his longtime friend a quizzical look.
“He did fine,” Garibaldi shook his head. “Stuck his chin out and got slapped for it, but I think all told it was as good as we could hope for. They’re on pins and needles over there, Captain; it won’t take much to send them off the deep end. There were two lethal brawls that we were present for while hopping from one ship to another, and another dozen dust-ups that came close. I think we’re lucky he got off with just a smack to the mouth.”
“The Stalwart struck Mr. Fei?” Kratos growled from nearby, apparently eavesdropping on the conversation. He stood to his full, imposing height and moved toward the small assemblage. Naturally, all eyes moved to him as he did so.
“I think their Commander’s holding things together by a thread over there,” Garibaldi nodded. “I’m not enamored of the guy, but it seems the felines aren’t the only ones looking for a way out at this point.”
“The Stalwart struck Mr. Fei,” Kratos repeated, this time a statement of fact as he turned to Middleton. “What will be your response?”
“Kratos,” Middleton said as he felt all eyes shift to him, “we’ve got enough going on right now without starting a war with the Stalwart.”
“If they disrespect us so flagrantly,” Kratos said, literally looking down his nose at Middleton as he spoke, “then they are unworthy allies. If we do not respond appropriately to such disrespect then we are unworthy allies—to them or to each other.”
“Kratos,” Middleton squared up to the vastly larger man, who towered a full head above him and weighed at least twice what he did, “the last thing we need is for our morale to start coming apart.”
“Will you respond to their disrespect and demand a show of contrition?” Kratos demanded.
“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t!” Middleton barked, infusing his voice with as much command authority as he could muster—and knowing that it would likely prove to be a futile gesture. “But one thing I won’t do is allow this ship to be run by some sort of blasted committee—is that clear?!”
Kratos nodded silently before turning and making his way out of the shuttle bay, leaving Middleton, Snake Eyes, and Garibaldi standing next to the shuttle in silence.
