Middleton's Prejudice (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride Book 5), page 1
Middleton’s Prejudice
(Spineward Sectors: Middleton’s Pride, Book Five)
by
Caleb Wachter
Copyright © 2016 by Caleb Wachter
All rights reserved.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. Respect my electronic rights because the money you save today will be the book I can't afford to write for you tomorrow.
Other Books by Caleb Wachter
As of 03-22-2016
SPINEWARD SECTORS: MIDDLETON’S PRIDE
No Middle Ground
Up The Middle
Against The Middle
McKnight’s Mission (A House Divided)
Middleton’s Prejudice
SPHEREWORLD NOVEL SERIES
Joined at the Hilt: Union
SPHEREWORLD NOVELLAS
Between White and Grey
SPINEWARD SECTORS: A TRACTO TALE
The Forge of Men
SEEDS OF HUMANITY: THE COBALT HERESY SERIES
Revelation
Reunion
IMPERIUM CICERNUS SERIES
Ure Infectus
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Books by my Brother: Luke Sky Wachter
SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVEL SERIES
Admiral Who?
Admiral’s Gambit
Admiral’s Tribulation
Admiral’s Trial
Admiral’s Revenge
Admiral’s Spine
Admiral Invincible
Admiral's Challenge
Admiral’s War
RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVEL SERIES
The Blooding
The Painting
RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVELLAS
The Boar Knife
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Table of Contents
Prologue: The Assignment
Chapter I: Middleton’s Prejudice
Chapter II: Shadow & Smoke
Chapter III: A Truce…and A Favor
Chapter IV: Waking the Dragon
Chapter V: The K-Team
Chapter VI: Fire It Up!
Chapter VII: Fleeing the Flames
Chapter VIII: Disappointment
Chapter IX: The Healing Process
Chapter X: First Contact
Chapter XI: Dialogue
Chapter XII: Bloody Confirmation
Chapter XIII: A Real Dialogue
Chapter XIV: Cultural Differences
Chapter XV: With Open Pseudopods
Chapter XVI: Old Friends
Chapter XVII: You Are Our Last Hope!
Chapter XVIII: Baiting The Trap
Chapter XIX: The Healing Process
Chapter XX: Settling Disputes
Chapter XXI: The Unthinkable
Chapter XXII: The Message
Chapter XXIII: The Next Step
Chapter XXIV: The Lost Fleet
Chapter XXV: Mending Fences, Comm. Gear, and Dealing with Loss
Chapter XXVI: Power Plays
Chapter XXVII: A Bumpy Arrival
Chapter XXVIII: Lifting the Veil
Chapter XXIX: The Long Con
Chapter XXX: All Systems Online
Chapter XXXI: Surrounded
Chapter XXXII: Brutal Efficiency
Chapter XXXIII: The Tide Turns
Chapter XXXIV: Slamming the Door
Chapter XXXV: The Aftermath
Epilogue: A Startling Discovery
A Sneak Peek: Out of the Barbecue Pits
Prologue: The Assignment
Working the hind end of space was an understandably dirty job. But it was one which Larissa ‘Snake Eyes’ Patterson had drawn, and she would be deep-fried in thrice-recycled lavatory cleanser before failing an assignment of any kind.
The light freighter she was piloting, called the Rusty Unit—likely due to its cheap, iron construction and the all-too-evident fact that it had seen better days—literally shook all around her as she made a course adjustment to investigate an anomaly which her craft’s pitiful sensor suite had detected. She had made this run a dozen times over the last two years—a period which had almost perfectly matched the length of her assignment, starting when she had killed the craft’s previous operator not long after arriving in this stinkhole of a system—but the Unit’s sensors had never picked up anything on those trips save the nearly empty vacuum of interplanetary space.
The comm. bud in her ear buzzed at a barely audible volume, alerting her to an entirely predictable inbound communication from her escort team. She had turned down the bud’s volume to protect her extraordinary hearing from being damaged by the crude gear, and a sour expression came across her features as she gave a long-suffering sigh at being forced to interact with her escorts.
Switching the earbud to full volume, she accepted the incoming call with what had become a customary delay of several seconds. These beyond-the-rim types were a rough bunch, and if one was too polite with them they would take it as a sign of weakness—a certain mistake when it came to dealing with the slender woman known as Snake Eyes. She had earned the nickname for her skill with a certain pair of easily concealed vibro-sticks which, when properly employed, could stab through a plate of duralloy like it was a slice of warm bread. She had left more than a few pairs of so-called ‘snake eyes’ in the protective gear of those who had thought her an easy target, and that reputation had likely prevented a dozen times as many similar confrontations from ever materializing.
“This is Patterson,” she acknowledged testily as she worked to balance the Unit’s power grid as she fought to compensate for the suddenly increased draw of the craft’s engines. The ship’s reactor was only barely usable, spilling radiation out of its core badly enough that she had taken to monthly injections of the best radiation treatments available out here in this cesspit of a system. When she finally got back to civilized space, she was determined to have a thorough cleansing of her system, along with a full-on genetic restoration cycle on a pleasure world where she could indulge her every appetite and fancy.
“The terms of our contract clearly stipulate,” the crackling voice of the fighter pilot whose craft now flanked the Unit’s port side, “that we escort you to the coordinates, you collect whatever you can find in thirty six hours, and then we escort you back to the Barn. You know full well that any course deviations not made in the effort of avoiding navigation hazards will cost you extra—and last I checked, you were already up to your cute little ponytail in debt to the boss.”
“Now, now, Wedge,” Larissa said with icy disdain, “I never knew you stick-jockeys were so skittish.”
“Return to the established course, ma’am,” Wedge instructed, his professional tone masking what she knew was at least some measure of genuine concern for her—concern she had cultivated during the past several months of their mutual deployment, “or the only way you’ll be able to pay the overages will be a less than pleasant experience at the hands of the boss…or one of his friends.”
“Why, Wedge,” she purred, knowing exactly what he was suggesting that the boss—or any warm-blooded male, for that matter—might want with her, “I never knew you cared.”
Before she could continue her game of cat and mouse, the Rusty Unit’s spectrometer returned a verified result on the hit she had decided to intercept. It could have been the wreckage of another freighter, a detached cargo container or, if she was incredibly lucky, it might even be an intact vessel waiting to be salvaged by one of the system’s dozens of slow-drive freighter pilots—nearly all of which worked for one of the six bosses like she did.
She shook her head in confusion at the readings; it appeared that the anomaly was a slowly-expanding cloud composed completely of carbon. There were approximately five hundred million cubic meters of the stuff out there, most of it appearing to be industrial grade diamond which would not be worth recovering. There were a few larger chunks of low-grade gemstone out there, but nothing that looked big enough to recover a profit which would warrant the costly detour Wedge had warned her about.
“Oh, fine,” she sighed as she began to input the original course heading back into the Unit’s helm, “back on course, it is.” She scowled; it would take another two weeks for her pitiful craft to reach the Barn and she had already been aboard the cramped, greasy, intra-system vessel for three times that long.
Just as she was about to do as she had said, the spectrometer returned a giant object—nearly a hundred twenty meters long and between fifteen and fifty meters across—which appeared to be almost entirely composed of carbon.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Wedge replied, the relief in his voice evident to her well-honed ears.
“Not so fast,” Larissa said, her eyes growing wide as she set the craft’s pitiful sensors to scan the object, which appeared to be near one edge of the ellipsoidal cloud of carbonic particles. A chunk of diamond that large would be a record, at least for a naturally-occurring diamond. But as the readings came back, her eyes narrowed as she realized it was no diamond at all—it was a ship!
“We’ve been over this,” Wedge said tersely, “unless you
“We’re staying on this course,” she said with conviction, “there’s a large, unmarked cloud of carbonic debris this way with what looks like a derelict, completely intact ship at its edge. Salvage rights on a ship like that might even allow you to buy your own squadron of fighters,” she said leadingly, playing to the only impulse which could hope to touch the heart of a man as powerfully as carnal lust: greed.
The brief hesitation before his reply was all she needed to know she had successfully baited the hook. “What kind of debris are we talking about?” he asked warily, and she smirked in self-satisfaction before coordinating their approach.
Nearly four hours later, Larissa completed her craft’s deceleration as she brought the Rusty Unit alongside the slowly tumbling, derelict craft. Part of her training had been to memorize every single craft design ever produced—or even recorded—in the Empire of Man, but this craft was unlike anything she had studied.
It resembled nothing so much as a long, slender insect with a multitude of short legs sprouting from its ‘back.’ Those legs curved down and merged with what looked to be a pair of nacelles, and the hull of the craft was dotted with large, ovular bubbles that a more imaginative person might have thought to be eyes.
The cloud of debris had continued its outward expansion during the approach interval until it was nearly eighty kilometers across at its widest point. The mysterious craft had been on the far side of the cloud, and due to the Unit’s weak drive system she had been forced to drive partially through the cloud rather than skirt around the edges of it.
“Looks clear from here, ma’am,” Wedge reported after he and his wingman had completed a trio of orbits around the alien-looking vessel. “But we’ve only got emergency evac gear on these fighters,” he explained all-too-predictably, “so you’re going to have to plant the salvage flag yourself.”
“What would I do without you boys around?” Larissa quipped as she finished fastening the final pieces of her vacuum suit together.
Strangely, however, her craft’s sensors could not penetrate the interior of the vessel. It was clear that the majority of the strange ship’s skin was graphene. But the bubble-shaped ‘eyes,’ while also composed of carbon, were of a different configuration.
She had matched the Rusty Unit’s rotational period and orientation to the warship’s, and did a last minute check of her freighter’s instruments before moving toward the airlock. She fastened her helmet as she did so, feeling more than a little apprehensive about relying on the aged gear. But she had performed a thorough analysis of the suit and helmet prior to setting off on her latest assignment and knew it would be equal to the task of getting aboard the vessel, recording some images, and leaving with the salvage claim having been properly made.
Of course, the salvage rights to the vessel were a distant second in her mind to the real priority: investigating the craft and reporting back to her superiors as soon as she was able to do so. If there was a new warship manufacturer operating in the Gorgon Sectors—a region of beyond-the-rim space which had been cleverly named by the Imperial propaganda machine—then it was her duty to report back as soon as she had solid evidence of that manufacturer’s activity and quality.
Of course, she would have to cut her current mission short in order to do that, given the lack of accessible faster-than-light communications out here in the hind end of space. That was a problem she was prepared to deal with in due time, however, if doing so became necessary.
The walk to the airlock took her past the craft’s pair of staterooms, one of which she used for herself after converting the other to a storage vault. She entered her biometrically coded passkey to the vault’s door, and after a moment’s silent cogitation the door’s security mechanisms stood down and she opened the chamber to find the various pieces of gear she had stowed securely within.
Reaching onto a nearby table on which sat a high-grade recording monocle, she hesitated as her hands passed over the pair of vibro-sticks which she had used to such great effect early in the assignment. She had dispatched of the Rusty Unit’s former operators—a husband and wife team—in precisely twelve seconds, and had earned the post for herself by doing so. It was a far from perfect job, but it was also one which allowed her a measure of privacy while also providing her with regular, if limited, contact with the boss of one of the six pirate clans operating in this particular Star System.
She decided against bringing the vibro-sticks since her suit was unlikely to survive any real confrontation where they might be required. The odds were long on anyone actually being aboard the tumbling vessel she was about to board, and if there was anyone there then a fight was almost certainly the least safe path to her continued survival.
So she affixed the monocle to her left eye and tested its recording suite before wirelessly linking it to the small, self-contained, independently-powered—and heavily encrypted—data storage module which sat in the corner of the stateroom-turned-vault. Satisfied that the connection had been made, she performed a cursory check of the storage module’s crystalline housing. She clucked her tongue when she saw that the web of cracks which had appeared several months earlier was continuing to slowly spread across the unit’s entire housing.
At the storage module’s current rate of degradation, she would be required to cut her mission short nearly a year early or risk losing all of the data she had accumulated to this point. But if that ship outside was in fact the product of a heretofore unknown manufacturer operating in the Gorgon Sectors, she would need to cut her assignment even shorter than that.
Securing her helmet to the vacuum suit, she exited the vault and secured its locking mechanisms once again—mechanisms which contained explosives that would completely destroy the front half of the small freighter in the event of an unwanted attempt to access the vault—before finally making her way to the airlock.
She cycled the inner airlock doors shut before grasping the safety handles near the outer door and initiating a slow purge of the gases inside the airlock. The vacuum suit slowly expanded around her, much like a balloon, before settling several inches from her skin everywhere except portions covering her joints. The light above the outer door turned blue, prompting her to crank the wheel which controlled the locking seal which caused the door to swing gently open after nearly thirty seconds of effort on her part.
She had brought the Rusty Unit alongside the strange vessel, and had managed to get within twenty meters of the strange, oddly organic-looking craft. In spacewalking terms, it was little more than a hop to go from her craft to the still-open shuttle bay doors on the other craft, but she had never much cared for zero gravity exercises even with state-of-the-art gear—which her present loadout most definitely was not.
Flattening her body and gripping the door to either side of the airlock’s outer door, she aimed her head at the shuttle bay opposite her position and launched her body like a missile toward the insect-looking ship’s lone entry point.
She floated through the vacuum between the ships for several seconds, taking a moment to look up and down the vessel with her monocle as she did so in order to file a complete report on the craft at a later date. As she entered the shuttle bay’s doors, she immediately felt the artificial gravity of the craft’s interior pull her down and she managed to roll her body sideways and avoid damaging her helmet as she came to a stop on the craft’s deck.
Drawing herself to her feet, she looked around and quickly saw that there was already a craft within the shuttle bay. Cursing herself for having left her vibro-sticks on the Unit, she looked around the dark compartment and saw nothing else of note until her eyes came to rest on a console near what looked like some sort of doorway leading to the interior of the ship. The doorway itself was closed, and appeared to be some kind of iris mechanism composed primarily of carbon, but the console was of decidedly Imperial design—complete with iconography declaring as much.
