Read Online No Middle Ground (Spineward Sectors: Middleton's Pride) by Caleb Wachter - Free Book Online

like he was about to burst, and he made as if to rise from his chair but Middleton held him with a piercing stare that froze him mid-motion. “So you’re refusing to accept my resignation?” he demanded hotly.
    “For the time being, yes,” Middleton replied evenly. “You’re too valuable to ship operations, Chief,” he said, his voice softening slightly as he continued, “believe me, I know how much being deployed takes out of you and how badly you’d like to get back to your life. If I thought there was a way to replace you, I would have already done so—minus the confrontations.”
    Garibaldi’s eyes flared briefly before he too relaxed somewhat and sank back into his chair. He sighed in obvious frustration as he nodded, “Yeah…I believe you would have, Tim.”
    Middleton leaned forward and clasped his hands over the data slate. “We go way back, Mikey,” he said sympathetically, ignoring the lapse in protocol for an old friend. Several years earlier, Middleton had led a search-and-recovery mission which had rescued Garibaldi and a few members of his family from their wrecked mining vessel, following a pirate raid. “I, more than anyone else, understand that serving on a starship again is difficult for you…but I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t honestly need your help. I hope you can believe that.”
    Letting out another sigh, Garibaldi nodded and just like that, precisely as with so many times before, the matter seemed to have been forgotten as he produced another data slate. “Repair reports,” he said, activating the slate before handing it to the Captain, “that torpedo did a number on the inner hull integrity, but we’ve patched it up for now. Even forgetting my own personal preference,” he said pointedly, referring to his fastidious and detail-oriented approach to maintenance, “we really should set in at port for a few weeks so we can replace a few of the primary load-bearing members. If the grav-plating on decks three through eight forward go outside of normal operating tolerances—like, say, because we get shot at by someone who knows where to hurt us,” he added sarcastically, “we could cause catastrophic damage to the ship’s superstructure during high-speed maneuvers—which is to say nothing of more torpedoes or whatever the Hades else is waiting for us out here.”
    “Noted,” Middleton nodded, as usual finding himself thankful for Garibaldi’s meticulously written reports. “We’re going to need to find a place to pick up recruits, anyway,” he said as he perused the Chief’s log of repairs. He stopped when he came to a particularly troublesome section and re-read it. “Chief,” he began, knowing how volatile Garibaldi’s temper could be, “I really need the forward shields back up. Thirty percent isn’t going to do it.”
    Garibaldi shook his head adamantly. “There is simply no way, Captain; I’ve already stolen an emitter from each broadside, as well as one from the stern. Any more robbing Richard to pay Percy and we might as well abandon the entire notion of raising a defensive field around those sections. Thirty percent is the absolute best we can do without all-new emitters—not to mention the fact that most of those relays are already on bypass as it is. Those old Starfires hammered us, sir, but the real problem was the woefully under-designed power grid on these old Hydras. If I had my druthers,” he said with a sigh, “we’d replace the entire forward section with all-new relays and junctions.”
    “This is a Promethean flagged ship, Chief, so it’s designated a ‘Hammerhead’ class cruiser,” Middleton said with a lopsided grin, “not a Hydra.” Garibaldi, a Belter by birth, seemed to love nothing more than poking fun at Middleton’s home world, Capria, and its system of government—when he didn’t seem to want to kill the Captain, of course.
    “You say ‘tuh-may-toe’, I say ‘tuh-mah-toe’,” Garibaldi retorted dryly. “I can’t help