McKnight's Mission Read online

  His com-link chimed and Traian was only too glad to accept the incoming call from Corporal Lu, “Traian here; go ahead, ma’am.”

  There was a brief silence followed by her voice, “What is cause of their fight?”

  “An engineering dispute,” Traian replied dryly, wincing as Shiyuan made a hilariously bad approximation of cocking a fist in anger. “I’m guessing they’ll run out of steam in another hour or so, and we might actually get some work done then.”

  “How much money remains in team fund?” she asked.

  “A little under three hundred thousand credits,” he replied, having gone over their financial resources at some length, “but it’s only about two hundred fifty thousand if we budget living expenses and docking fees for the next two months like the mission outline called for.”

  “Good,” Lu Bu acknowledged. “I will need to draw funds.”

  “Of course,” Traian nodded, “how much are we talking about?”

  “Two hundred thousand,” she replied matter-of-factly.

  He blinked in surprise, “Say again, ma’am?”

  “I need two hundred thousand credits in six days,” she reiterated with no small of irritation flavoring her voice.

  “I’ve spoken with Dr. Middleton about the hospital bill,” Traian said hesitantly, “I’m sure we can work something out when the Lieutenant returns—“

  “Have funds access information brought to me in six days,” she said firmly, “Corporal Lu, out.”

  The link was severed and Traian sighed, “Yes, ma’am.” She was an unconventional team leader, to say the least, and the fact that Traian was a decade older than she was happened to be one of the less unusual aspects of her command.

  But she had proven time and time again that she was as quick on her feet as anyone he had ever served with, and her seemingly blind commitment to the mission was more than just inspirational—it had been the difference between victory and defeat more than once, and Traian would gladly follow her into battle anywhere.

  As he looked over at the squabbling tech experts, he sighed and checked the chronometer on his com-link before muttering, “Fifty eight minutes to go…or I’ll have to make an example of someone.”

  After Lu Bu got off the link with Traian, she resumed her work on the exercise cycle. Hutch had come down to the hospital gym with her, and she was being monitored by no fewer than three hospital employees—each of whom had attempted to stop her from entering the hospital’s physical therapy room, but she had ignored them and made her way directly to the hardest-looking pieces of equipment in the room.

  There were free weights, though most of them were pathetically light and unfit for her attention. But the exercycle was one of the few pieces which she knew would provide her with at least something resembling a real workout if she put the settings at maximum.

  “You really should take it easy, ma’am,” Hutch said after checking the machine’s settings.

  “I have made my decision,” she said hotly, “you will act as observer and give me honest opinion when finished.”

  Hutch sighed, “Of course. But seriously…you’ve been through a lot.”

  “I am fine,” she said severely as her legs and arms began to pump up and down on the machine. The sensation was curious at first; it was as though her limbs were moving through mud, and her bones somehow felt lighter and emptier than they normally did. But she pressed on and after five minutes of pushing the machine as hard as she could, she felt a familiar ache fill her joints.

  That sensation drove her onward, and she lost herself in the routine as she focused solely on the next thrust of her legs, or the next shuck of her forearm, and before she knew it the thirty minute timer buzzed to signal that the exercise routine was complete.

  “I’ve got to say,” Hutch mused as he tossed her a towel, which she snatched out of mid-air after getting off the bike, “that was as good as anything I could do right now.”

  “More,” Lu Bu quipped as she wiped her head and neck before tossing the rag back to him. She looked around the weight room and saw a free-standing squat rack, and after a quick assessment of the total weight room’s inventory of plates she saw that if they piled every weight onto the bar then it would be a reasonable first-time peak. “Help,” she instructed as she began to slide the plates onto either side of the bar.

  When she was no more than half finished, a doctor burst into the room and cried, “What is the meaning of this? You are in no condition to be down here; I’m going to call security!”

  Ignoring him, Lu Bu got under the squat bar and said, “Spot.”

  Hutch nodded, assuming a position behind her as she lifted the bar off its rack and performed a series of quick repetitions. She did ten reps in ten seconds—a putrid effort, but she was determined not to get too down on herself since she had just endured a traumatic childbirth a few weeks earlier—and racked the bar.

  “Good form,” Hutch said approvingly as they began to slide more weights onto each side, “how much more?”

  “Add fifty kilos,” she said as she slid that much weight onto her side of the bar.

  Hutch did as instructed, and she resumed her position beneath the bar just as the doctor came into view and said, “This activity is contraindicated in your treatment plan. If you don’t stop—“

  She gave him a hard look and, without breaking eye contact, she took the weight off the squat rack and performed six quick reps. The doctor appeared stunned into silence, and after she had finished she replaced the bar on the rack and said, “Put on the rest.”

  Hutch complied as she piled the rest of the tiny weights onto her side, bringing the total amount of weight she would be lifting to three hundred sixty kilos.

  She resumed her position beneath the bar as the white-faced—and clearly fascinated—medical personnel looked on.

  “I have to ask you to stop this at once,” the doctor said, but it was clear from his perfunctory tone and intent gaze that he was just as interested as anyone else in the room to see if she could lift the weight. It was almost as much iron as she had ever put on a squat bar, but then of course the conditions here were different from those to which she had become accustomed so a direct comparison of mass was meaningless.

  Drawing a deep breath, she gripped the bar in either hand and slid her neck against the pad before moving the bar off the rack and taking a step from the rack. She slowly and deliberately dipped down to a regulation lift position and pressed up. Her legs burned and she felt several tiny muscles tear in her quadriceps, but the pain was the only friend she could claim to have known throughout her conflict-filled life.

  Thoughts of her life in the ‘family’ compound, where she had felt more like a laboratory animal than a member of anything resembling a real family, came flooding back to her mind as she pressed up to a standing position. She let the thoughts fuel her mind, and for the first time in months she felt like her old self—strong, single-minded, and unstoppable.

  She dipped down again and, just as before, pressed upward with careful precision to control every aspect of the motion. She knew that controlling the weight was more important than simply bursting back to the finish position, and she intended to find out just how far she had fallen in the last few months of minimal physical exercise.

  She stepped toward the rack and replaced the bar before looking down at herself appraisingly. She saw no evidence that her fully-healed abdominal wound had been aggravated, and she saw no blood anywhere in her hospital-required disposable underwear, so she nodded to herself in satisfaction. This might work, she thought to herself triumphantly, this might actually work! She had doubted the sanity of her plan even just a week earlier, after having received it as a prophet might claim to receive divine counsel, but now that she better understood the condition of her body she knew she had a chance to solve several of their problems in short order.

  “Bu!” she heard her mother’s shrill, scolding voice call from the door. “What are you doing?!” she demanded as she
stormed across the mostly-open PT room floor.

  “I am finished,” she assured her mother, hiding a wince at hearing the disapproval in Dr. Middleton’s voice. “We can go back to room.”

  Dr. Middleton looked furiously at Hutch, who had the good sense to remain silent as the older woman’s eyes settled on the squat bar and quickly widened. “Don’t tell me…” she said with something between awe and horror.

  “It is fine,” Lu Bu assured her, “I am fine.”

  “That’s…that’s insane!” Dr. Middleton blurted, pointing at the bar accusingly. “You could have gotten yourself hurt—maybe you already did and just don’t know it!”

  “You are right; we should check,” Lu Bu agreed, knowing she would need a full round of medical examinations prior to putting her mostly secret plan in action. She had told only Hutch about it since he would be instrumental in that plan’s success, and Lu Bu had sworn him to secrecy until she had passed the point of no legal return.

  “You’re not getting off that easily, missy!” Dr. Middleton snapped, and Lu Bu furrowed her brow at hearing the term ‘missy.’ She genuinely had no idea what it was supposed to mean, but she also had no wish to escalate the situation needlessly.

  “This was light workout, Mother,” Lu Bu explained patiently, gesturing to the bar.

  “That’s a light workout?!” Dr. Middleton asked incredulously.

  “Of course,” Lu Bu nodded gently as she took her mother’s arm in hand, “this world has 1.04 standard gravities; I do hard workouts at 2.10. I know you do not want me to overexert myself, so I keep first workout light. Is this not nature of compromise?” she asked seriously as her mind began working through the next step in her plan.

  Her mother made a series of spluttering noises, and the hospital staff quickly checked their various com-links as Lu Bu pushed past them—presumably to check the video record of what she had just done.

  Which she hoped would lend itself to her money-making scheme.

  Chapter XIII: Twice Nothin’…

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” said Raphael Tremblay, former Intelligence Officer of the MSP flagship, Lucky Clover, and current exile-in-hiding after narrowly surviving the harrowing battle of Elysium aboard a Droid ship.

  “You and your bad feelings,” Bethany sneered as they made their way down the cheap space station’s corridor, “I’m beginning to question my decision to bring you along.”

  “You would never have made contact with these people without me,” he fired back.

  “True enough,” Bethany allowed coyly, “but your name has already circulated widely enough in certain circles that I might not have needed to contact these particular people if you and I had already parted company.”

  “You say the word and I’m gone,” Tremblay snorted. His alliance with Bethany Tilday-Vekna had definitely been of mutual benefit, but he found himself increasingly disillusioned with her as time went on.

  The sex was great, of course, but even that had become less frequent than it had been at one point. Tremblay had eventually concluded that he was little more than a diversion to the Royalist woman.

  “Aww, what’s the matter?” she pouted with mock sympathy. “Are you getting skittish about going back to Capria?”

  “I’m starting to think we should stay as far away from Jason Montagne as possible,” Tremblay retorted defensively, his hand running over the scar on his wrist where another Montagne Prince had cut his hand off just to prove a point about…well, in truth Tremblay still didn’t quite know what the point had been. “He’s clearly got his sights set on Sector 25—including Capria, the world of his birth and one of the most powerful Core Worlds in the Sector—and I don’t think he’s going to take kindly to a couple of his most-hated enemies positioning themselves in his path.”

  “You really are scared of him, aren’t you?” Bethany scoffed as they came to a lift which would take them from the docking ring to the station’s habitat zone.

  “We’re lucky to have gotten out of Elysium with our lives,” Tremblay muttered. “The odds suggest we won’t be so lucky next time we run into him. From what I’ve seen, Sector 24 isn’t so bad.”

  “People of your station might not find much to complain about in such a low-rent corner of the cosmos,” Bethany sniffed, “but those of us with a modicum of taste know better.”

  Tremblay snorted bitterly as the lift came to a halt and they exited into a corridor which led to the left and the right. A large, heavily-built body guard was waiting for them—with an equally large, heavily-built blaster rifle in his hands—and he gestured toward their left with the barrel of the weapon, “You’re late.”

  “We should all be thankful that you are wrong,” she said pleasantly as she sliced a look toward Tremblay which made his ears burn at the cryptic, sexual innuendo which referred to her menstrual cycle.

  “Move,” the guard growled, and Bethany led the way as they walked to the end of the corridor. There seemed to have been a nameplate over the door at one point, but it had been thoroughly defaced with some sort of metal grinder—but Tremblay noted that the last to letters of the last word seemed to be ‘nt.’

  The guard knocked on the door, and a moment later a series of audible clicks and scrapes of metal on metal commenced which eventually saw the vault-like door swing wide open.

  On the other side of the door was guard who shared the first one’s herculean, chemically-enhanced physique. He grunted, prompting Bethany and Tremblay to move through the door and enter the large, mostly-empty room beyond.

  There were several lights and speakers consistent with a night club, which struck Tremblay as incredibly odd. Why would someone fly into orbit to dance on such a grungy, grimy station? he wondered.

  But his thoughts were dashed when he saw a pair of insanely-curvaceous—and clearly unnaturally-endowed—women perched alongside a rail overlooking what had apparently been a dance floor. Moving across that dance floor, and making his way at Bethany’s side toward the stairs which led to the overlook where the women were perched, Tremblay saw one of the statuesque beauties gesture to the guard escorting them to bring them up.

  “You’ve got five minutes,” the guard growled after reaching the base of the stairs, “make them good or they’ll be your last.”

  “So grouchy,” Bethany tisked condescendingly, ascending the stairs without even giving the man a look, “what’s the matter? Compensating for an embarrassing shortcoming with all those muscles?” This apparently angered the man, and he took that anger out on Tremblay with a cuff to the back of the head that nearly knocked him face-first into the stairs, but only ended up depriving him of his vision for several seconds as he clumsily made his way up the stairs.

  As they reached the top of the landing, one of the women began to descend the stairs. The mere scent of her was enough to make Tremblay go nearly cross-eyed, and this confirmed his initial suspicion that the woman was heavily-modified with cybernetic implants—implants which were largely illegal in the Spineward Sectors, but legality apparently meant little to people like this.

  “You were granted this meeting on the strength of your family name, Ms. Tilday-Vekna,” the second of the apparently identical women purred in a seductive tone which succeeded in fouling Tremblay’s mind even more than it had previously been.

  “Princess-cadet,” Bethany corrected smoothly as she seated herself opposite the other woman, “or, if that’s too much to remember, just ‘Princess’ will do.”

  The woman’s eyes seemed to lick Tremblay in all the wrong places as he nervously moved to stand beside Bethany. There were only two seats, and it was clear from the dangerous look in their host’s eye that Bethany had given offense by seating herself.

  “I don’t care what you call yourself,” the woman said with a serpentine smile, “and frankly, every second you spend in my sister’s chair only adds to the bill.”

  Bethany seemed offended at the notion that she shouldn’t be entitled to one of the two chairs on the lan
ding area—which looked to have previously held a handful of seating booths with tables, but now had only the one small, round table with the two chairs—and reluctantly stood with an abused look on her face.

  It was the finest sight that Raphael Tremblay had seen in weeks, but his attention was torn away by the sound—and sight—of their host’s apparently identical twin sister leaving through the same door they had used to enter the former club.

  “Better,” the seated woman with the impossible physique said with open disdain, “I’ve found that knowing one’s place is a crucial survival skill. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I’ve yet to hear better words to live by,” Bethany retorted smoothly, and Tremblay barely needed to use his imagination to envision the claws extending from the women’s fingers as they sized each other up.

  Their host’s triumphant smirk melted away instantly. “You seem to presume that whatever you offer me will be more than I could get in ransom from your government,” the woman said coldly.

  “I make no such presumptions,” Bethany said languidly, “but I came to you because I heard you were intelligent and that you were looking to make friends in high places. Was I mistaken?”

  After spending months with Bethany, Tremblay knew that was as generous of an olive branch as one could ever hope to receive from her—and he hoped that their host recognized as much.

  “Since my sister and I removed the old management from our little corner of the Spine’s industry,” the woman said, apparently deciding against responding directly to Bethany’s barbed query, “we have indeed become eager to make new friends. We will, however, require a gesture on your part to prove that you are worthy of inclusion among those we call our friends.”