McKnight's Mission Read online

  “Words were never my strong suit,” Archibald said dismissively, “but what I’m talking about are purely temporary transfers. Once you’ve got your Destroyer’s systems online, you’re welcome to transfer however many of them back that you can use. But this is about the mission,” he added pointedly, “as you so aptly put it.”

  “Agreed,” she nodded, having hoped to avoid this particular outcome but knowing all along that it had been a possibility. “Which is why, before we go over the specifics of whatever transfers might take place, I’m going to be frank.”

  Archibald arched an eyebrow incredulously, “Are you trying to tell me everything up to this point was your version of walking on eggshells?”

  She shot him a withering look but his incorruptible, self-satisfied grin actually softened her urge to display irritation with him and she laughed in spite of herself. “Seriously,” she said, shaking her head as if to clear it, “we both know you’ve been assigned to eventually take over this operation. I have zero issue with that,” she said in a raised voice before he could interrupt with what would have certainly been an insulting, pre-rehearsed platitude, “but until you’re up to speed, this is my operation. I fully understand that your command has been tasked with providing my operation with support; I also understand that you have the option to refuse my requests if you think it prudent or if you think they somehow violate our orders.”

  He still seemed like he wanted to deny her assertions, so she pressed on in the hope that they might actually get their working relationship started on a productive note—or, as he put it, on the right foot.

  “I will not withhold any of our intelligence or other assets if you ask for access to them,” she continued, “but I hope that you’ll understand it might sometimes be better if you didn’t ask for them. This task force is my baby,” she explained passionately, “and it’s not going to make it without my unilateral direction while it gets its legs under it. Once it’s fully operational, you can assume command over it in accordance with whatever secret mandates Admiral Montagne might have given you.” She paused for a moment as the flicker of realization briefly flashed behind his eyes, and eventually finished, “This operation is being undertaken in an effort to stabilize the Spineward Sectors, and as far as I can tell that means Admiral Montagne is the best possible steward of whatever it becomes. But we might as well march to his office right now and report back to him in failure if you think we can run it by committee. When you think you’ve got a handle on it, and if you think I’m not the right woman to run it, all you have to do is ask and I’ll step back, hand over the keys, and there will be no hard feelings. Deal?”

  Archibald exhaled loudly, but there was no annoyance in his voice when he said, “I think you’ve got the wrong of me, Commander, but I’m going to accept your proposal in the spirit of cooperation. Nobody at Fleet HQ thinks that doing something like this is even remotely possible; the fact that you convinced the Little Admiral to sign off on it, and to reassign so many resources to it, should count for something to you. We’re on the same side here, McKnight.”

  She cocked her head as she focused on his apparent slip of the tongue, “What happened to calling him ‘Admiral Montagne’?”

  Archibald actually reddened from the collar up, and McKnight silently reprimanded herself for thinking how cute it made him look as he backtracked, “I’ve always kind of liked the moniker…but I think it’s important for us to set a good example to our crews.”

  McKnight nodded as she kept her features neutral, fighting against the urge to return his nervous smile, “I agree.”

  “Now,” Archibald continued, holding a data slate in his hands, “how about those transfers?”

  Though it pained her to do so, she grudgingly nodded, “Fine.” She had served with those men and women for months—some of them for over a year—and she felt like she was betraying them by agreeing to have some of them reassigned to another commanding officer.

  She reminded herself that this was about the mission, not personal preferences or loyalty, so she knew she would have to agree with any reasonable requests he made.

  Plus, there was only life support on the as-yet unnamed Harmony Destroyer for sixty humans—and that was only if one took a very liberal interpretation of the term ‘life support.’ So it wasn’t like she had much of a choice in the matter, unless she wanted to station three hundred people on the medium freighter which Admiral Montagne had assigned to the task force—a freighter which would not be ready to leave Fleet HQ for another month after she and Archibald set off for Sector 24 due to the extensive refits it was undergoing.

  Tempting as that idea actually was to assign those people to the freighter, she also knew that she and Archibald would be working together rather closely for the foreseeable future—and, unfortunately, that meant compromises would be a regular occurrence.

  She knew from experience that she would make whatever personal sacrifices were necessary to accomplish the mission, and that realization had caused her to lose more sleep during the last few months than she cared to admit.

  Chapter XI: A Dilemma

  “Bu,” Dr. Middleton said into the peaceful silence which had thankfully followed the feeding of all three babies, “we need to talk about something.” Lu Bu had been paying close attention to the mid-season Sector Smashball League—which was the middle-ranked league on the Spineward Sectors, just below the level at which Hutch, Sergeant Gnuko, and Sergeant Joneson had played in—where the Capital team had been fighting tooth and nail against one of their longtime rivals. The game had just entered overtime, but Lu Bu turned off the display to give her mother her full attention.

  It had been two weeks since the birth of Lu Bu’s children, and her mother had asked her to sit down for what she had called a ‘difficult conversation’ during what she hoped would be the final days of her hospital stay.

  “What is it?” Lu Bu asked as she awkwardly—and with more than minor frustration—juggled Xun and Meng in her arms while Dr. Middleton held Su in hers.

  “During the caesarian delivery,” Dr. Middleton explained, “there were several complications.”

  “I know,” Lu Bu nodded toward the baby in her mother’s arms, “you saved Su.”

  “Su wasn’t the only one who had complications,” Dr. Middleton said with a deliberate shake of her head.

  It took Lu Bu a moment to realize what her mother was saying, but when she did comprehend her mother’s meaning she nodded slowly, actually feeling somewhat liberated by the news as she concluded, “I will have no more children.”

  “That’s not true,” Dr. Middleton said forcefully, fixing Lu Bu with a solemn look, “the trauma to your uterus was significant, but by no means was it irreparable—”

  “Three children is enough,” Lu Bu said with conviction, having thought about the matter at some length in recent days. She was surprisingly calm about it, given her recent emotional volatility—which, more than the constant attention the babies required, was the most difficult issue she’d dealt with in recent days. “I do not wish for more.”

  “You’ve been through a lot,” her mother said with a look that bordered on pity—and this stirred a deep anger within Lu Bu, as she was unaccustomed to being the object of such pity, “but you don’t need to decide anything today. It’s even possible that your body’s almost…supernatural healing will reverse enough of the damage that surgery won’t be required in the future.”

  Lu Bu pushed past the anger she had briefly felt at receiving her mother’s pity, and forced a smile which became more genuine with each second she wore it. “You have already saved us, Mother. I did not plan to have babies…I thought I could not. I am a Lancer; my life must be spent on the field,” she said, causing Dr. Middleton to appear mildly exasperated, “I know you do not agree with this choice, but it is my choice.”

  “And what about them?” Dr. Middleton asked, tilting her head toward baby Xun and baby Meng in Lu Bu’s arms. “What about their choice? What about wh
ether or not they get to grow up with their mother? You’re a parent now, Bu,” she said with the same gentle force that Lu Bu had come to both admire and despise since it so often presaged defeat in an argument, “you have to think of them first.”

  “Mother,” Lu Bu said gently, taking Dr. Middleton’s near hand with her own as she continued to juggle the babies in her arms, “I am thinking of them. Look at me,” she said, glancing down in disgust at her bedbound body, “I am warrior trapped in a bed. How can I protect my babies—and all other babies—if I do not return to duty?”

  “You are a mother, Bu,” Dr. Middleton chided, “let someone else protect them.”

  “There is no one else, Mother,” Lu Bu said with a shake of her head as she looked down at her babies. “We are at war and no one else will stand to protect us. I will do my best as mother to them…but I am not like you. I…” her words caught in her throat, prompting her to finish forcefully, “I cannot do all they need, but I can protect them and the world they live in.”

  “Bu,” Dr. Middleton said heavily, squeezing her hand, “I will never abandon you or the babies. I know how hard it can be to raise a child without a partner…these babies lost their father before they were even born, and I won’t let my daughter face the reality of parenting alone. I feel every bit as responsible and attached to them as I do to either of my daughters.”

  Lu Bu felt her heart begin to melt in a wholly unexpected fashion. Her emotions had been almost completely unaffected during pregnancy, but in her time recovering at the hospital she had found that her moods were swinging wildly back and forth. Her adoptive mother had raised her biological daughter, Jill, to adolescence before a droid attack had claimed her life. That her mother spoke such powerfully loving words was something Lu Bu was profoundly humbled by, though she knew she did not deserve such kindness.

  “Thank you, Mother. I…cannot say how much this means.” She wiped her runny nose and added, “But I am Lancer; what I do is too important.”

  Her mother sighed and patted Su with her free hand, signifying the end of that particular vein of conversation. But Lu Bu sensed there was something she was holding back, and felt herself tense as she wondered what it might be.

  “What is it, Mother?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing, Bu,” Dr. Middleton said dismissively, keeping her eyes fixed on the window.

  “You are terrible liar,” Lu Bu growled. “Tell me…please.”

  Dr. Middleton met her gaze and sighed, “We spent two days in surgery with you, Bu. This world doesn’t have a public health care system; it’s based on the capitalist model, just like everything else here.”

  Lu Bu had actually failed to consider the issue of payment for her hospitalization. “I have small funds from my birth world,” she said dubiously, knowing that only five percent of the original funds had remained—and that she would need them to bring her tech specialists down to the surface in a few days, since their immigration papers had been approved and they were anxious to get to work.

  “That’s not even close to enough, Bu,” Dr. Middleton scowled before forcing a pleasant expression, “But you don’t need to worry about it. I’ve got it under control.”

  “Under control?” Lu Bu repeated skeptically. “You have money?”

  “No,” Dr. Middleton admitted, “but…let’s not talk about it any more.”

  Lu Bu’s brow furrowed in confusion until she finally realized what must have happened. “You signed labor contract?!” she blurted angrily. “You become slave!”

  Her mother winced but retorted, “It was the only way—“

  “How much money?” Lu Bu demanded, feeling a familiar fire enter her belly and begin to spread throughout her body. The idea that her mother would actually sign a labor contract on a planet like Capital—which embodied several aspects of economics that Lu Bu found absolutely deplorable—was too much for her, and Xun began to cry in her arms after hearing the outburst.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” her mother said in an obvious attempt to change the topic, but Lu Bu was determined to find out how deep of a hole she had dug with her weakness during childbirth. She would never let her mother stand for such a debt!

  “How much?” she repeated as she rocked Xun in her arm, prompting the little girl to close her eyes and resume her silent, restful sleep. “I will access financial records myself if you do not—“

  “A million Capital credits,” Dr. Middleton replied softly, apparently resigned to the reality while Lu Bu’s eyes bulged nearly out of her skull, “the nano-repair modules we used to repair the hemorrhaging in your brain are illegal on most Core Worlds—frankly, we’re lucky they were available at all, even at such a ridiculous price.” Her mother then gave her a maddeningly patient look and said, “It’s not such a big deal, Bu; working part-time I can satisfy it in six years. Besides,” she gestured to the babies, “this wouldn’t be such a bad place for them to grow up, would it?”

  Lu Bu was so angry with herself—with her weakness—at forcing her mother into such a situation that she trembled with rage.

  “I can get a full-time job and afford to pay for everything they’ll need,” her mother continued, but it was as though Lu Bu heard only every other word as she struggled with the reality of their situation.

  Then, suddenly, a plan sprang to life in her mind. For a moment she was thunderstruck at just how complete the plan was from the moment she thought of it, and if she had been a more superstitious person she might have invoked Fei Long’s influence from beyond the grave in guiding her thoughts. Only he, of all the people she had known, could have such quick, clear, and complete thoughts.

  The realization of this plan saw her rage nearly vanish altogether, and it seemed that Dr. Middleton noticed the change in her mood as well.

  But Lu Bu was too busy trying to work through the timelines necessary to make the plan work. It would be close, on all counts, but if she could just get out of this blasted bed…

  “Bu…I don’t like that look,” Dr. Middleton said with the barest trace of fear in her voice.

  But Lu Bu shook her head confidently as she reactivated the display on which the smashball game was being played out, “It is fine, Mother. I have plan.”

  Chapter XII: The Three Stooges

  Traian sat in the corner of the room as Shiyuan, Yuanzhi, and Fengxiao argued about how best to utilize their limited funds in establishing a network access point aboard the Mode. Most of the equipment was already present on the Cutter, but apparently there were several crucial factors which made the debate far more hostile than he would have imagined a bunch of eggheads capable of achieving.

  Even more remarkable was the relative ease with which they had become proficient in Confederation Standard, which they used the majority of the time—except when, judging by their tone and the reaction of their peers, when they cursed each other which they did exclusively in their native tongue.

  “We should go with the mock DI setup similar to Kongming’s old design in order to quickly process the harvested data, which means we have to buy no fewer than six of the core processing units I found on the second hand market. We do not need the extra band capability of your transmitter array,” argued Shiyuan with a derisive wave of the data pad held firmly in Yuanzhi’s grip, “this ship already has far better equipment than anything we have previously worked with when it comes to transceiver specifications.”

  “I keep telling you,” Yuanzhi snapped, wagging his data pad in Shiyuan’s face, “the extra bands have nothing to do with it; the issue here is total transmission time! If we want to keep from being detected while making an uplink, we will need to improve on this ship’s transmitting equipment’s output by at least four hundred percent!”

  “Uplink time is less important than encoding the data,” Fengxiao repeated for the third time in as many minutes while the other two argued over their entrenched ideas, “the most important thing is ensuring that our data does not become discovered. If it does, the entire networ
k will be compromised and we risk losing the asset regardless of how fast our uplink is or how fast we can process the data after receiving it. We must incorporate a multi-processor capable of operating on senary architecture with no fewer than eighteen parallel operations—that means purchasing parallel and line caches for this ship’s central processor, which possesses plenty of architecture but requires extensive overhaul. I have found such a system for a relative barg—” he was interrupted by a contemptuous snort from both of his colleagues.

  “What good is that asset if we cannot decompile the information we receive in a reasonable time?” Shiyuan fired back, his face twisting into an even more unpleasant mask of contempt than his usual, disfigured features.

  “And what good is decompiling efficiency if we get destroyed because the enemy detected us before we had the chance to finish with the uplink?” Yuanzhi interrupted before Fengxiao could respond, which he quickly did.

  “You are both missing the greater point here,” Fengxiao continued with what Traian was certain would be taken as maddening patience in his voice and visage, “without proper informational encoding, we will certainly be discovered…”

  At this point the trio made a round of rapid-fire insults in their native Qin—only a handful of which Traian recognized—and commenced in a heated debate in the tongue of their world. Having spent several months aboard the Pride of Prometheus, which had been crewed primarily by convicts from the same world as these three, he had come to know the really juicy insults—even if he failed to recognize the words themselves as insults based on cultural differences.