McKnight's Mission Read online

  Bethany nodded agreeably, but before she could respond the door through which the woman’s sister had just passed opened and a trio of figures slowly appeared.

  Their host’s eyes flitted toward the figures as they entered the room, and a short-lived look of terror passed over her face as she backed away from the rail and drew a slender, high-powered blaster pistol from its holster on her hip.

  Tremblay threw himself at Bethany just as the first shots were exchanged in a blur of motion too fast for his eyes to follow. He knocked the rebellious royal to the ground, where she landed with cat-like grace and rolled toward the back of the mezzanine while the club’s bodyguards and the newcomers exchanged fire.

  Tremblay scrambled to her side as he looked around for a weapon of some kind. His search came up empty, but Bethany produced one of her cleverly-hidden hair sticks and crouched in a ready position.

  Tremblay saw their host fire her pistol three times in rapid succession, moving with inhuman grace and speed as she picked two objects out of mid-air—grenades, by the look of them—while narrowly missing the third as it passed just a few feet from her and clattered against the mezzanine floor.

  She leapt over the rail, and her body disappeared just before the world exploded in white noise that overwhelmed Tremblay’s senses as the grenade went off.

  Looking around groggily, Tremblay slowly became aware of the fact that his hands were bound and he was kneeling beside the rail over which their host had leapt a second earlier—or, at least, what had seemed like a second earlier.

  Tremblay’s mind fog slowly dispersed and he realized that the grenade had not been a lethal one, but rather it had been a far-more-powerful version of the standard flash-bang grenades which were used to pacify rather than kill rooms full of unarmored people.

  He saw Bethany kneeling beside him, and her wits appeared to have already sharpened by the time he noticed that she seemed to have no visible wounds.

  “Whatcha got, Fish?” Tremblay heard a deep, commanding voice ask in a completely unfamiliar accent.

  “She’s fixed up, rigged, and ready for business, boss,” another man’s voice replied from somewhere on the lower level, “just like downtown.”

  “Good man,” the first voice said, and Tremblay craned his neck around to see that their host was being frog-marched up the stairs by a pair of thickly-built men. Those three were followed by a man with long, thick dreadlocks, extremely dark brown skin, and a swagger that looked like it had been earned through years of constant conflict. “Put her over by them others,” he instructed as he rolled his neck around, eliciting a series of audible pops and cracks as he did so.

  The guards brought their host to the rail and roughly threw her to the floor. It was clear that she had taken several blows to her previously exquisite face, which was now a ruined, swollen mess which leaked blood from a handful of cuts.

  Tremblay looked back to the apparent boss of the crew which had assaulted the station and saw that his eyes were moving like a predator’s across the three of them. He moved toward them, stopping roughly ten feet from each of them in turn, and rubbed his chin contemplatively after completing the appraisal.

  “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” the man asked after settling his gaze on Tremblay and cocking his head accusingly.

  Tremblay had never seen this man before in his life—he was the type one would never forget—so he shook his head, “I don’t think so.”

  “Naw,” the man shook his head with certainty, “I know you…I just can’t quite place it…” He squinted at Tremblay for several long, tense seconds before pointing a finger at him playfully and saying, “Don’t go nowhere.”

  Two years earlier, Tremblay would have likely been intimidated by the situation to the point of trembling uncontrollably, but with all he had been through—including serving under two Montagne Princes—this all seemed rather like old hat.

  The dark-skinned man put Bethany in his cross-hairs for a few seconds before shaking his head, “I don’t know you.” Bethany made to speak, but he had already shifted his attention to their battered host, “But you…I never forget a face—even one that’s been mussed up a touch.”

  “Surely we can work something out,” their host said, her prior air of disdain replaced by the sound of a desperate woman who knew the end drew nigh. She spat a gob of bloody sputum onto the floor—along with what looked like most of a tooth—and said, “Come on…we worked well together, didn’t we?”

  “True…true,” the man nodded thoughtfully. “We had some good times, all right—moved decimal places on bank accounts, too.”

  “My sister and I were never cut out for upper management,” she continued hastily, “it was a mistake, us trying to do it on our own.”

  “Naw,” the man shook his head as the hint of a smile played at the edges of his mouth, “that wasn’t your mistake.”

  “Please,” she pleaded, what little veneer of composure she had managed to retain vanishing as a man’s footsteps could be heard coming up the stairs, “I’ll do anything…anything.”

  “I believe it,” he said matter-of-factly as he gestured for the man who had just ascended the steps to approach, “but the fact is that I ain’t in the bidness of handin’ out second chances—they don’t tend to be good investments, feel me?”

  Before the bloodied woman could reply, a muffled thud was followed by an object rolling toward her and coming to a stop just a meter or so from where she knelt.

  Even Tremblay’s stomach turned at the sight of a disembodied head—one which looked identical to that of their battered host—as it came to a stop before them.

  “Now I’m what you’d call a sporting man,” the man continued casually, “so I ain’t gonna execute you if you behave.”

  “You killed my sister…” the woman said in horror.

  “She weren’t no more your sister than she was my mother,” the man quipped irritably, “and we both know it.”

  Taut silence filled the room until she finally said, “What do you want?”

  “Simple,” the man tossed her a data slate, “you give me the names of everybody who went with you or helped you pull your little coup—along with where you stashed all that gear of mine that you stole—and I’ll let you walk outta here. But I’d advise against tryin’ to pull a fast one, savvy?”

  “They’ll…they’ll kill me if I give them up,” the woman said hesitantly.

  “And I’ll kill you if you don’t,” he retorted. “There’s an old saying about dealin’ with today’s problems today and leavin’ tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow. Seems apt, wouldn’t you say?”

  She looked like she wanted to argue, but when the man began popping his knuckles she muttered, “Fine.”

  “Good,” he nodded, gesturing to his guards to approach Tremblay and Bethany, “bring them over here so I can chat ‘em up a spell.”

  The guards did as instructed, roughly helping them to their feet and directing them to the pair of chairs—one of which was missing the majority of its back, having apparently been struck by a blaster bolt during the firefight. With a downward flick of his fingers, the man directed his guards to seat Tremblay and Bethany in the chairs.

  He looked like he was about to say something before a look of realization dawned in his eyes. He snapped his fingers and pointed an accusing finger at Tremblay, “Caprian Naval Intelligence—Trembly, right?”

  “Tremblay,” the former Intelligence Officer corrected as politely as he felt necessary—which was to say, quite politely, “Raphael Tremblay.”

  “That’s what I said,” the man waved a hand dismissively as a grin spread across his features. “Besides, we ain’t exactly on a first name basis, savvy? Best we keep things professional for the time bein’.”

  Tremblay furrowed his brow in confusion, but the man had already turned his focus to Bethany.

  “Now…that jaw-line seems familiar,” he mused, “and the skin tone seems about right…you wouldn’t be a Montagne, would you?”


  Tremblay couldn’t help but wince—he had heard her epic tirades against the Montagne branch of the Royal Family, and had no desire to endure another. But surprisingly, she stayed her normally razor-sharp tongue and corrected, “My name is Bethany Tilday-Vekna; Princess-cadet of the Vekna branch of Capria’s Royal Family, and Special Ambassador assigned by Capria’s Parliament to represent Caprian interests in the Rump Assembly.”

  A look crossed the mans’ face that Tremblay initially took to be lust, but he realized there was something else there that made it much less impulsive and, in a way, far more predatory.

  “Well, we ought to be properly introduced then,” he said, approaching Bethany and producing a sharp folding knife which he deftly opened and slid between her wrists, severing the bindings which had held her hands together. “I go by ‘Lynch.’ Crazy as this might sound…I think you and I might could do some bidness.”

  Bethany arched an eyebrow, but months of close quarters contact with her told him that she was more intrigued by this Lynch person’s offer than she was repulsed. I guess the old stereotype is true, he thought to himself bitterly, they really do go for the bad boys.

  “I’m unsure just what type of business you’re referring to, Mr. Lynch,” she said with a hint of uncharacteristically shy coyness in her affect, prompting Tremblay to roll his eyes in disgust.

  “Naw,” he shook his head firmly, “just Lynch. And I ain’t one to beat ‘round the bush too much. Still, some matters is best kept private—wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I—“ she began to nod, but before she could reach the next word there was an explosion which rocked the mezzanine beneath Tremblay’s feet.

  He looked over and saw that their former host had been turned into a macabre circle of gore on the mezzanine’s floor, and before he had even processed what had taken place he heard Lynch begin to tisk.

  “I done told her not to try pullin’ a fast one,” he sighed. His eyes briefly met Tremblay’s, and apparently the large, strangely-accented man saw the confusion plainly enough because he explained, “I rigged that pad to pop if she tried implicatin’ anyone I knew was solid. Dummy,” he snorted, looking back at the messy remains, “she coulda walked outta here and I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.” He turned to Bethany and said, in an entirely-too-pleasant tone of voice, “You was sayin’?”

  “I,” Bethany gulped hard, but maintained her composure as she spoke, “was just saying that I agree with you; some topics are better kept for privacy.”

  “Then on that note, I’d like to make both of y’all an offer,” he said pleasantly, gesturing to the door through which they had all entered. “How about a ride in my yacht?”

  “Who are you?” Tremblay blurted, more irritated that his hands were still bound than by the insanely unpredictable change of circumstances since they had first set foot on the station.

  “Who am I?” Lynch repeated in mock confusion. After a moment he shrugged and gestured to the ruination of flesh which had previously been the person who Tremblay and Bethany had hoped to pay for covert passage back to Capria. “I suppose you could say that Monique and Unique tried to become this place’s new management,” he explained before a gleam entered his eye, “which, followin’ the metaphor, would make me the old management.”

  At Tremblay’s persistent confusion, Lynch threw his head back and laughed heartily, as though there was some profound inside joke to which only he was privy.

  “Boss,” one of his guards said in a raised voice, “you said to tell you when the game was back on.”

  “Yeah, so?” Lynch said with an expectant look.

  “The game is back on, boss,” the man said, gesturing to a nearby monitor.

  Lynch rubbed his hands together in eager anticipation as he moved to the screen and called up the channel menu. “Turn back them clocks, Fish,” Lynch instructed over his shoulder, “I ain’t movin’ til she scores again.”

  “You’ve got it, boss,” the man named Fish acknowledged before descending the stairs and moving across the dance floor.

  “Y’all have gotta see this game,” Lynch said, gesturing for Bethany and Tremblay to approach. “I’d offer you refreshments, but the girls done did away with my side bar,” he gestured to a section of recessed bulkhead which would have been the idea place for such a stash of beverages—or anything else one wished to conceal, for that matter. “Oh, there she is!” he said excitedly as he turned up the volume.

  Tremblay focused on the screen for a few seconds before rolling his eyes. The video was a live feed of a smashball game in progress, and the second-half kickoff was just about to take place. Just as the kicker’s foot struck the oddly-shaped ball, the volume reached maximum and Tremblay couldn’t focus on anything but the announcer’s voice.

  “And here we go to start the second half,” the announcer declared as the ball soared across the field toward the waiting arms of a player wearing the uniform of a Capital Corporates player—the top team of the Capital System—which bore a pair of zeroes on the chest. The player snatched the ball out of the air, and the announcer’s voice became excited, “Touching the ball for just the fourth time this game and taking it out of the end zone to the ten, the twenty; here comes the gunner for the Giants—and Lu with a beautiful smash to start the run!”

  “I don’t think he’ll be waking up until they turn the stadium lights out, Vic,” the broadcaster’s play-by-play partner remarked dryly as Player Zero Zero juked past a second incoming player and used an improbable burst of speed to sneak past a third.

  “Right you are, Ken,” the first broadcaster agreed, “that Lu has got some serious moves.”

  “Rumor has it she was playing for a local-only team in the Shèhuì Héxié system until a few years ago,” Vic the Broadcaster explained.

  “She was,” Kenny agreed as Lu gripped the ball with two hands and slammed it into a tackler’s helmet with such brutal force that he was upended like something out of a badly-choreographed action holo-vid, “she was playing for the sheer love of the game.”

  “And now she plays for the only good reason anyone can have for professional athletics,” Vic said enthusiastically, and his partner joined him in perfect synchronism as he said, “money!”

  “Here she comes,” Lynch leaned forward as Lu came up on the last player between her and the scoring zone, and for a moment Tremblay thought he recognized something about the way she moved. “Come on, girl; come on,” Lynch said with eager anticipation as Lu approached the final defender.

  Lu ran toward the defender, who gave ground as the smashball timer reached seven seconds—signifying that the ball had been at maximum weight for several seconds already, and was clearly hampering Lu’s movement. Then she did something inexplicable: she dropped the ball and lunged toward the defender.

  The move caught everyone off-guard, but no one’s excitement equaled Lynch’s as he almost perfectly mirrored her movements when she delivered an uppercut to her opponent’s midsection which saw him nearly double over. A vicious leg kick knocked him the rest of the way off his feet, and she returned to collect the ball a half second before one of her opponents could do so.

  “Point blank!” Lynch hooted. “Rock and bob, baby—that’s how it’s done!”

  “That was a brilliant move, Vic,” the announcer said, clearly dumbfounded by the unexpected nature of Lu’s gambit as she walked into the end zone to change the score from 31-28 to 34-31. “She dropped the rock and then dropped the hammer before dropping another score on the board!”

  “Right you are, Ken,” the other announcer agreed, “about the only thing that wasn’t dropped down there was a load of acid.”

  “Now, now, Vic; think of the children,” the announcer chided, “this is a public broadcast after all.”

  There was a deliberate pause before Lynch joined the broadcasters in mockingly declaring, “Oh, wait, there’s no such thing as a public broadcast in the Capital System!”

  Tremblay failed to see the humor
in the situation, but as Player Zero Zero reached the sideline and removed her helmet he felt his eyes bulge out of his head—and he saw Bethany’s do likewise when the recognized the woman who had just scored. It was the gruff Lancer which had so rudely thrown them into the escape pod aboard the Pride of Prometheus!

  “So that gives Lu five scores on the day,” Ken the Announcer declared, “which accounts for all five of her team’s scores.”

  “Right you are, Ken,” Vic nodded, “she’s only played in three games and she already has eleven scores—three of which have come on interceptions—along with a league-leading nine hospitalizations of opposing players. They’re still carting Giants off the field.”

  “Well, you know what they say, Vic,” Ken said knowingly. “The bigger they are—“

  “The harder they fall!” Vic agreed. “Right you are, Ken—and now a word from our sponsors!”

  Lynch thankfully muted the feed, and Tremblay sat there in a state of shocked confusion. Had he somehow snapped? Was he seeing afterimages of his last moments aboard an MSP vessel because his mind had finally been overburdened? In general he would have dismissed such thoughts as soon as he’d had them, but he genuinely wasn’t sure of his own sanity at that particular moment.

  “Come on,” Lynch said, chuckling heartily as his mood seemed to have been significantly lifted by watching the smashball game. He sliced Tremblay’s bonds with a practiced flick of the wrist using the same folding knife which had freed Bethany, “I’ve got a proposal for y’all.”

  “I’m really quite sorry,” Bethany said in a slightly raised voice, “but we were simply looking to—“

  “You thought your best play was to hightail home and crawl under King James’ skirt,” Lynch interrupted in a surprisingly sympathetic tone. “And until a few minutes ago, it probably was…but I’ve got a better offer.”

  “What makes you think we would be interested?” Tremblay asked with no small measure of anger as he marveled at the man’s presumption, and he saw Bethany’s eyes narrow while she carefully studied Lynch’s reply.