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  McKnight's Mission

  (Spineward Sectors: Middleton’s Pride, Book Four)

  by

  Caleb Wachter

  Copyright © 2015 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 11-17-2015

  SPINEWARD SECTORS: MIDDLETON’S PRIDE

  No Middle Ground

  Up The Middle

  Against The Middle

  McKnight’s Mission (A House Divided)

  SPHEREWORLD NOVEL SERIES

  Joined at the Hilt: Union

  SPHEREWORLD NOVELLAS

  Between White and Grey

  SEEDS OF HUMANITY: THE COBALT HERESY SERIES

  Revelation

  Reunion

  IMPERIUM CICERNUS SERIES

  Ure Infectus

  Sic Semper Tyrannis

  COLLABORATIVE WORKS BY LUKE SKY WACHTER & CALEB WACHTER

  SPINEWARD SECTORS NOVELLAS

  Admiral’s Lady: Eyes of Ice, Heart of Fire

  Admiral’s Lady: Ashes for Ashes, Blood for Blood

  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

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVEL SERIES

  The Blooding

  The Painting

  RISE OF THE WITCH GUARD NOVELLAS

  The Boar Knife

  Follow me at Seeds of Humanity Facebook Group

  Join www.PacificCrestPublishing.com.

  Be sure to stop by the blog at blog.PacificCrestPublishing.com for updates.

  Be sure to stop by the blog at blog.admiralwho.com for updates.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: The Seeds of a Plan

  Chapter I: A Drop-Off

  Chapter II: Capital Decisions

  Chapter III: A Bump in the Road

  Chapter IV: Homecoming

  Chapter V: A Bold Proposal

  Chapter VI: A Heart to Heart

  Chapter VII: A Lucky Shot…

  Chapter VIII: Bad Dreams

  Chapter IX: A Wizard in Chains

  Chapter X: Clarity

  Chapter XI: A Dilemma

  Chapter XII: The Three Stooges

  Chapter XIII: Twice Nothin’…

  Chapter XIV: Cooperation vs. Competition

  Chapter XV: Blood and Treasure

  Chapter XVI: The Last Play

  Chapter XVII: A Dark Alley, and Eureka!

  Chapter XVIII: The Belly of the Beast

  Chapter XIX: Together Again

  Chapter XX: The Replacements

  Chapter XXI: Harmonious Interests

  Chapter XXII: A Daring Plan

  Chapter XXIII: Dropping In Unannounced

  Chapter XXIV: Pirates, Pirates Everywhere

  Chapter XXV: Slipping In

  Chapter XXVI: A Wizard’s Spell

  Chapter XXVII: Insertion

  Chapter XXVIII: Extraction

  Chapter XXIX: A Flower in Bloom

  Chapter XXX: Fourth & Goal

  Chapter XXXI: A Vow Unbroken

  Chapter XXXII: A Timely Pick-up

  Chapter XXXIII: Skippin’ Town and Sittin’ Down

  Chapter XXXIV: Packing Up

  Chapter XXXV: A New Home

  Epilogue: A Dark Awakening

  Preview Ch. 1: Middleton’s Prejudice

  Prologue: The Seeds of a Plan

  The bridge on the Slice of Life was tense as the jump clock wound down. The ship’s crew prepared to execute the latest in a long series of point transfers which had already taken them far from the site of the star system known as Cagnzyz.

  “Thirty seconds to point transfer, ma’am,” Helmsman Marcos reported, prompting Lieutenant McKnight to look up sharply from the console built into the arm of her chair—the captain’s chair.

  “Carry on, Helm,” McKnight acknowledged as she re-checked—for the third time—the Slice of Life’s readiness reports, along with those of the bulk freighter which they had slave-rigged to the Slice’s navigation computer.

  The reports checked out—precisely as they had done the previous two times—and Lieutenant McKnight forced her hands into some semblance of a relaxed posture on the armrests of the command chair as the countdown neared zero.

  “Point transfer in three…two…one…mark,” Helmsman Marcos reported, and the familiar sensation of the ship slipping past the laws of physics caused McKnight’s stomach to lurch as the woman at the Helm expertly manipulated the warship’s engines as they broke free of the inertial sump which threatened to tear the ship apart.

  The Slice of Life shuddered briefly and McKnight looked down to the automated status report being relayed by the bulk freighter, Perilous Halibut, which took a few seconds to populate her console. Once the report streamed in, she audibly released an anxious breath and silently chastised herself for doing so loudly enough that her crew could hear her.

  “Both ships have cleared the inertial sump, ma’am,” Marcos reported, “the Halibut is reporting all systems five by five.”

  “Good work,” McKnight acknowledged after reviewing the department reports a few seconds later. “What do we have, Sensors?” she asked, swiveling the Slice’s command chair to face the cluster of consoles where the ship’s various sensor feeds were located.

  “Nothing yet, ma’am,” reported the rating at the main Sensor console. “We’ve completed a full sweep of the system and found nothing but the usual background radiation expected for a red supergiant like this one.”

  Nodding in satisfaction, McKnight flipped on her chair’s intercom and switched to the ship-wide system. “This is Lieutenant McKnight; stand down from Condition Two. Repeat: all hands are to stand down from Condition Two. Doctor Middleton, Corporal Lu, and Yide are to report to the conference room immediately—McKnight out.”

  Private Traian—known as ‘Tray’ to the handful of people in his entire life who he counted as friends as—moved throughout the hold of the Perilous Halibut on yet another in an endless, but critically important, series of patrols around the most sensitive and dangerous components stored in the belly of the gargantuan bulk freighter.

  Lieutenant McKnight had ordered visual inspections of the Halibut’s cargo hold to be made every hour, on the hour, and Traian had been assigned the task of overseeing security aboard the Perilous Halibut during the long trip back to Fleet HQ.

  “This is Abydos,” the Tracto-an assigned to sweep the opposite side of the hold reported over the com-link, “quadrants five through eight check out.”

  “Copy that, Abydos,” Traian acknowledged, the hairs on the back of his neck standing for some reason. He looked over his shoulder for a moment before dismissing the sensation and saying, “Quadrants one through three check out; I’m almost finished with quadrant four. Double back through your grid and report when you’ve finished.”

  “I will comply; confirm when your sweep is completed,” Abydos said before the link was severed. Traian had never really cared for the Tracto-ans and their collectively overdeveloped sense of superiority, but he did appreciate their fanatical dedication to ritual—in this case, that meant that if he failed to check in within five minutes then Abydos would secure the hold and investigate.

  Traian looked up at the massive,
cylindrical piece of hardware which loomed in the largest of the Halibut’s cargo holds and shuddered just as he had done every other time he’d laid eyes on the colossal, alien device.

  The device was huge—well over a kilometer in length—and composed of material which resisted attempts to penetrate with scanners. In fact, the reason they had been conducting regular visual sweeps is because most of their sensor equipment failed to work properly within the main hold. The utterly alien design was more than slightly unnerving, but it was as if the device itself was watching him. Traian knew it was irrational to actually believe that, but he also knew that there was something unnatural…or at least unnerving about the massive piece of alien technology.

  Traian swept his blaster rifle from left to right as he neared the end of the hold, and came to the last corner of the hold only to find it empty. “Traian here,” he said through his com-link, “quadrant four checks out; I’m making my way back through the hold.”

  “Message received,” Abydos acknowledged, and the link went silent.

  Traian looked up at the giant, cylindrical device—which, in turn, sported several clusters of cylinders which protruded from the main body of it, some of which very nearly touched the interior of the ship’s hold—and he thought he saw a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye.

  Acting purely on instinct, he spun and knelt into a three point firing stance and unloaded his blaster rifle at the source of the motion blur. His rifle rounds hammered into the roughly humanoid creature and tore through its ragged vestments as what looked like metal tentacles writhed around the creature’s form.

  His blaster rifle’s energy bolts hammered repeatedly into the creature’s torso as he hit it center-mass with nine consecutive rounds before the inhuman monstrosity finally fell to the deck. Standing from his three-point stance, Traian moved slowly toward the creature after his twelfth blaster bolt had struck the now-motionless creature—which had been reduced to a smoldering pile of meat and metal which no longer held any semblance of humanoid form.

  His heartbeats were coming fast and strong as blood pounded in his ears, and Traian reached up with his left hand to activate the com-link on his collar. But before he could send a message, he heard the clomping of power-armored boots behind him and he briefly looked to see Abydos approaching.

  “Secure the area, Abydos,” Traian instructed without ever taking the barrel of his weapon from the ruination it had just wreaked on the creature—whatever it had been—which lay smoking and motionless before them.

  To Traian’s surprise, Abydos was not alone. A quad of Lancers moved to do precisely as Traian had instructed, and Traian turned with a confused look in Abydos’ direction as the Tracto-an approached.

  “Why did you not report in, Corporal Traian?” Abydos asked warily.

  “What are you talking about?” Traian asked irritably. “I just told you that I was beginning my back-sweep.”

  Abydos gave him a short-lived look of concern and said, “That was seven minutes ago, Corporal.”

  Traian fought the urge to raise his eyebrows in surprise, and looked back at the lump of fused organic and synthetic materials before saying, “I must have lost track of time.”

  It was not the kind of thing he expected to hear himself say, but before he could ponder the reason he had done so the Lancer at the nearby entry point reported, “The hold is secure, Private Abydos.”

  “Good,” Abydos acknowledged, and the hulking Tracto-an then gestured to Traian’s com-link, “shall you report this to Lieutenant McKnight or shall I?”

  Irritated at Abydos’ suggestion that he could usurp his authority, Traian sneered and gestured with his blaster rifle toward the dead creature, “Secure the corpse, Private.”

  Abydos returned the sneer for a brief, insubordinate moment before nodding, “Yes sir.”

  After the Tracto-an had done as Traian ordered, Traian activated the command channel on his com-link and said, “Lieutenant McKnight, this is Corporal Traian; I think we just found and neutralized the Dark Seer. We’ve secured the scene and are requesting a quarantine unit.”

  “Are you sure it’s the Dark Seer?” McKnight’s voice came over the link.

  “That question’s above my pay grade, ma’am,” Traian replied grimly. “You should probably send the doctor over to answer it.”

  “Good work, Corporal,” Lieutenant McKnight said, “I’ll dispatch the forensic and quarantine teams immediately—McKnight out.”

  “What is ‘Dark Seer’?” Lu Bu asked after McKnight had cut the connection with Corporal Traian. She had seen the creature conversing with Commodore Raubach during her team’s initial insertion onto the Perilous Halibut in the Cagnzyz System, but her team had been unable to find the mysterious figure.

  “Nobody really knows,” Lieutenant McKnight replied as her fingers flew over the conference table’s built-in DI interface. “I’m hoping Traian was able to put it down with a minimum of damage; a forensic examination would be one of the most important efforts in recent years since most people think they are little more than ghouls or goblins. Doctor, are you familiar with them?”

  “Not at all,” Doctor Middleton shook her head firmly, “I’m as interested as anyone to find out more about its physiology.”

  “What about Traian?” Lu Bu asked with more than a note of concern.

  “His report suggests no harm came to any of the Halibut’s crew,” McKnight said with no small measure of relief.

  Lu Bu’s eyes narrowed as she recalled the encounter between Commodore Raubach and the Dark Seer. The Commodore had postured with the strange being, but Lu Bu had spent much of her life engaged in physical altercations. As a result, she had come to learn more about body language than most people, and there had been more than a hint of trepidation in the Commodore’s posture when the Dark Seer had acted aggressively—and that had been while the Commodore’s bodyguard had stood at his side!

  Hearing that Traian’s people had taken down the Dark Seer without incurring any losses was every bit as surprising as the fact that they had found the thing in the first place. Lu Bu and her people assumed the Dark Seer had left the ship at some point, but she had ordered Traian to maintain high alert and to perform hourly security checks of the ship from bow to stern just in case the mysterious thing had remained aboard the bulk freighter.

  “Do you have something to contribute, Corporal?” McKnight asked, breaking Lu Bu’s silent reverie.

  “No, Captain,” Lu Bu shook her head, pushing her previous thoughts from her mind. “I should help with investigation—“ she began, but Dr. Middleton interrupted.

  “Absolutely not, Bu,” her adoptive mother said shortly. “You’re almost half way through your accelerated pregnancy; you’re on light duty and nothing more until you’ve delivered.”

  Lu Bu scowled at Dr. Middleton, but Lieutenant McKnight leaned forward and added, “She’s right, Corporal. You’re on reserve duty and ordered to observe minimal physical exertion protocols until you’ve been medically cleared for active duty. Frankly,” McKnight said with a pointed look at Lu Bu’s growing belly, “I’m surprised you were able to keep it secret as long as you did—and more than a little disappointed that you failed to bring it to the doctor’s attention earlier.”

  Lu Bu jutted her chin defiantly, “I have rights to continue service until three months of pregnancy.”

  “That’s the letter of the law,” McKnight said in a scolding tone, “but we all know you manipulated it for your own purposes. Besides,” continued the blond-haired woman—who was closer to Lu Bu’s age than she was to Doctor Middleton’s—proffering a data slate, “the assignment you accepted requires you to be at peak condition so that you can travel if necessary. I can’t risk your failing to carry out that task while I return to Fleet HQ.”

  Lu Bu sourly accepted the data slate, which contained her orders for the aforementioned mission. “Yes, Captain,” she said grudgingly.

  “Yide has already prepared his family’s new C
utter, the Mode,” McKnight continued, “which will reach Capital with seven point transfers, Corporal. Doctor,” she said, turning to Doctor Middleton, “I’m inclined to repeat my official request that you remain aboard the Slice of Life for the return trip to Fleet HQ. We still have wounded, and Murphy only knows what we’ll encounter during the next eight weeks of transit time.”

  “And again I have to refuse,” Doctor Middleton said officiously, “I’m staying with Bu.”

  “Understood,” Lieutenant McKnight nodded. “Then I’m directing you to conduct a forensic examination and maximum-containment quarantine of the Dark Seer’s remains. You are to conduct a complete biological purge of the immediate area, after which you should conduct your examination.”

  “We don’t have anything remotely resembling max-containment biohazard receptacles,” Dr. Middleton said dubiously. “The Slice isn’t as well-equipped as the Pride was; as a result there is no way I can even satisfy Tier Three containment protocols, let alone the maximum Tier Five which you’re asking for.”

  “I’d prefer not to eject the creature’s remains, Doctor,” Lieutenant McKnight said heavily, “but I’m not going to risk possible contagion.”

  “Unfortunately,” Doctor Middleton said, her eyes flitting left and right before she shook her head in negation, “there doesn’t seem to be another option. If we transfer its remains here then we’ll be exposing ourselves to whatever pathogens it might carry.”

  “Can you save at least a few tissue samples?” McKnight pressed.

  “I could modify a small cryo-stasis canister,” Doctor Middleton said dubiously, “but they don’t reach containment temperatures required for Tier Five quarantine measures.”