McKnight's Mission Read online

  “Understood,” Hutch said smartly, and the crew began settling in for what Lu Bu hoped would be an uneventful journey to a place she had quietly hoped to never set foot on again for as long as she lived—a place most people would think of as ‘home,’ but which held nothing for her save memories she would prefer not to re-live.

  Still, there was something both inescapable and inexplicably deep within her which yearned to set foot on familiar soil.

  Chapter III: A Bump in the Road

  “Contact, ma’am,” the stander at Sensors reported shrilly, and Lieutenant McKnight’s head snapped around instinctively to the captured Slice of Life’s Tactical Officer.

  “What have you got, Xiahou?” McKnight asked tightly as a hundred possibilities hovered at the edge of her thoughts, waiting for the barest encouragement to spring into the fore of her mind and prompt a dozen different orders to spring from her lips. This star system was well off the established trade routes, but the recent chaos in the Spine had likely prompted other interests to keep off the beaten path in an effort to avoid run-ins with pirates—or worse.

  “It looks like an old Cruiser, ma’am,” replied Xiahou, the Tactical Officer, “I’m getting a lot of interference from the local planets—they’re launching fighters,” he said tightly.

  “Condition One,” McKnight snapped, flipping through the command chair’s built-in interface and initiating a ship-wide alert before issuing automated order packets to each of her department heads. “This is Lieutenant McKnight,” she said over the ship-wide comm., “all hands to battle stations. Repeat: all hands to battle stations—this is not a drill.”

  She cut the comm., but even before she had done so she was moving through the next phase of her meticulously practiced response to such a situation.

  “Comm.,” she said without looking up from her interface, where McKnight’s fingers moved with practiced speed and precision as she called up the available tactical information on the enemy vessel, “instruct the Halibut to heave to while we intercept the hostile—then have them switch to coded frequency Gamma and restrict comm. chatter to critical missives only.”

  “Yes ma’am,” the comm. stander acknowledged.

  “Helm, plot and execute an intercept course at best possible speed,” she continued, “Tactical, I want firing solutions once we enter long range.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” the two replied in near unison.

  “Captain,” the comm. stander said in a raised voice, “I’ve got an incoming hail.”

  “Put it on,” McKnight said as she felt the ship thrum to life beneath her and begin charging toward the bogey. She sincerely hoped it was a case of frayed nerves on the part of a patrolling SDF warship—but those hopes were dashed once she saw the image of the man on the other end of the channel.

  “Let’s see,” the pale-skinned man said, and for a moment McKnight was unable to tear her attention from the hundreds of piercings and thick patchwork of tattoos covering his face, “no official idents squawking on proper channels…unmarked hull—with recent battle damage, I might add—and a stolen bulk freighter in tow? If my mother hadn’t taught me manners…” he leaned toward the pick-up, somehow making his piercings and tattoos slightly less attention-worthy as his light blue eyes loomed large in the main viewer, “I wouldn’t even be making the generous offer to accept your unconditional surrender.”

  “This is Lieutenant McKnight of the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet,” McKnight said, working hard to keep her breathing under control so her voice would remain steady, “be advised that we are on official MSP business, and we are authorized to use deadly force to remove any obstacles from our path.”

  “That’s an awful lot of ‘we’ and ‘our’ there, blondie,” the man sneered, “and since when do fresh-faced Lieutenants get put in charge of Light Cruisers? With your battle damage and circumspect flight plan, I’m guessing you’re returning from a less-than-successful mission after taking significant casualties—including your former CO—and, as a result, are rather less than ready for a heads-up fight. But I, and my ship…” he said, pointedly claiming dominion over his ship and crew as any pirate scum might do, “well, I’m always ready for a fight—especially when the opponent is so fetching.”

  “You’ll find us more than a match for your rickety bucket of bolts,” McKnight countered as she called up the specs on the enemy vessel. “With the load-balancing issues the Talon-class Cruiser has in its shield grid, it’s amazing the things weren’t all scrapped for humanitarian reasons two centuries ago. You won’t be able to keep your shields up for more than twenty minutes against my firepower.”

  “Trust me, baby,” the pirate captain said with a lascivious look, “everything of mine stays up until I give it permission to do otherw—“

  He stopped mid-word as his eyes snagged on something to the side of his pick-up, and a short-lived look of surprise came across his features before he scowled and cut the connection.

  “What’s happening with those fighters?” McKnight demanded after seeing her chair’s tactical interface fail to update on the surprisingly large swarm of fighter craft.

  “I have over a hundred discrete fighters out there, ma’am, and they’re breaking into attack quads,” Xiahou replied tightly. Then he did a double-take of his instruments and reported, “They are fanning out and setting up a defensive perimeter while the Cruiser is powering its shields.”

  “They’re deploying defensively?” McKnight asked in confusion. Every teenage tactical gamer knew that fighters were purely attack vehicles, which made the fighters’ sudden change in posture so strange.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Xiahou nodded. “I’m reading another launch from the Cruiser,” he continued anxiously.

  “Craft or missile?” she asked evenly as she had flashbacks to the moment when Captain Middleton had correctly identified the inbound Liberator torpedo during the Pride’s first combat engagement. Those flashbacks actually made her vision narrow briefly before she shook off the anxiety and focused on the task at hand.

  “Craft,” he replied, causing her anxiety to lower only fractionally, “wait…Sensors, confirm the craft’s idents.”

  “Working on it,” the stander at Sensors acknowledged. Several seconds passed before he cocked his head and said, “Comm., can you confirm transponder frequencies?”

  “Confirmed,” the Comm. stander nodded, “it’s the Captain’s Yacht from the Dämmerung—the one we traded to Mr. Lynch.”

  “What?” McKnight breathed, her eyebrows climbing in surprise before she studiously schooled her features. “Are we receiving inbound communications?”

  “No, ma’am,” Comm. replied. “They’re running silent—in fact, their transponder just went dead.”

  “The Yacht’s still inbound, ma’am,” Xiahou reported.

  McKnight had a difficult decision to make, but given the available information she knew her best course was to see what the occupant of the Yacht wanted before taking aggressive action.

  “Tactical,” she said heavily, standing from her chair and feeling a flutter of butterflies in her stomach as she considered the meeting she was about to take, “keep weapons trained on that craft. If they make any aggressive maneuvers then you are to engage with intent to disable…if they don’t take the hint after three warning shots, put them down permanently.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Xiahou acknowledged. He was a young kid, and had something of a lazy eye but his tactical acumen was adequate and his nerves were unshakeable. His crime back on the world of his birth had been to stand up for his younger siblings when police had enforced a search-and-seizure of the housing complex where they had lived, and for resisting arrest—with deadly force, owing to what McKnight was convinced had been an accident involving a poorly-insulated power conduit—he had been sentenced to twenty years in a government penitentiary. All in all, it was a fairly typical story for most of McKnight’s crew—at least, for those who hadn’t grown up in an Iron Age society like the Tracto-ans who filled the ranks
of her Lancer force.

  “Comm.,” McKnight continued, “have Bernice assemble three quads of power-armored Lancers in the hangar.”

  “Three quads of armored Lancers in the hangar, aye,” Comm. nodded before doing as instructed.

  “Helm,” McKnight finished, “continue on intercept course but heave to at the forty percent mark between ourselves and the Cruiser. Hold position there to await the Yacht.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Helmsman Marcos acknowledged, and McKnight turned to her XO.

  “Chief,” she said, turning to her former Chief of the gun deck back on the Pride, and current XO aboard the Slice of Life, “you have the Con.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the grizzled veteran acknowledged, and McKnight made her way to the hangar, her mind working furiously to determine why Lynch would possibly want to meet with her.

  “I miss the old digs,” Lynch said after stepping out of the Yacht and looking around the Slice’s hangar. “Care to bring me up to speed on your sitch, McKnight?”

  “This isn’t your ship, Lynch,” McKnight said evenly, looking pointedly to the half dozen power-armored Lancers to her left who had their blaster rifles trained on Lynch’s torso. “I’ll be asking the questions.”

  “Fraid you got it wrong, girly,” Lynch chided with a wry grin. “Only reason y’all ain’t been atomized by them jumpy types under Colson’s command is ‘cause his and my bidness ain’t yet concluded—if it had been, he’d have shot you down and taken whatever goodies you might have back on that freighter before skippin’.”

  “What are you doing out here?” McKnight asked as he drove the conversation precisely where she hadn’t wanted it to go: the freighter.

  “Might could ask you the same,” he shrugged as he came to a stop a few meters in front of her. “But I was raised with manners, so I’m gonna go ahead and ignore that dangerous fish y’all seem to be guardin’ with your lives and instead ask after Tim.”

  Her mind took a moment to process everything he had said—his reference to the Perilous Halibut as a ‘dangerous fish’ had actually been the hardest part to decipher—but when she had done so she said, “We seized this ship from the Raubachs and Captain Middleton instructed me to return to Fleet HQ with it and the freighter, which will be returned to its rightful owners as soon as it is reasonably possible to do so.”

  “I like your verbiage,” Lynch grinned, “especially that ‘reasonably possible’ bit. But don’t try bluffin’ an old hand, blondie. Y’all wouldn’t be runnin’ dark ‘less there was something shiny inside that bloated baby at your back…and Tim don’t strike me as the type to turn from a half-done job or to let mutineers skate free. Which means,” he folded his arms casually, “either y’all have gone off the reservation and Tim ain’t able to catch ya, or y’all actually are headin’ back to your Little Admiral but Tim wasn’t able to accompany. Either way,” he continued, looking around the hangar lazily, “my money’d be on Tim croakin’ back at the Alpha Site. How am I doin’, sugar?”

  “My name is McKnight,” she said coldly, stepping forward until she could feel the blasts of heat from Lynch’s broad nostrils, “and my rank is Lieutenant. You can address me as either—or by my first name, if you happen to know it and insist on speaking disrespectfully like a spoiled twelve year old,” she added pointedly. “But one more ‘girly,’ ‘blondie,’ ‘sugar,’ or anything of the like and my Lancers will blow your head off, seize your ship, and then we’ll go put an end to whatever ‘bidness’ you were transacting with Mr. Colson.”

  Lynch’s eyes flashed with amusement and he threw his head back to fill the hangar with a deep, gravelly laugh. “Good on you, McKnight,” he said approvingly. “I ain’t got time for spineless children who think that runnin’ home to mommy should be the first choice when shit gets real.” He regarded her contemplatively for a moment before adding, “Might be Colson ain’t the only one I can do some bidness with on this particular stop.”

  McKnight narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She had suspected Lynch would be after more than just information about Captain Middleton’s death—a death he had apparently already deduced—and she was loath to engage in any kind of cooperative alignment with the mysterious arms dealer.

  “Whatever it is, we’re not interested,” McKnight said flatly.

  Lynch’s grin broadened, “I know a negotiation will go my way after hearin’ someone open with that line. Still, I don’t wanna give the impression that I’m holdin’ a hammer over your head—“

  “No,” McKnight cut in, “you would prefer that remain an unspoken subtext since we’ve already seen first-hand what happens to people who you think crossed you.”

  Lynch’s grin tightened and his eyes flashed dangerously, “I ain’t never done the crossin’, Lieutenant,” he veritably spat the word, “but I also ain’t never let a crossin’ go unanswered. Feel me?”

  Before McKnight could reply, Lynch lifted his left hand and produced a data crystal which immediately became the focus of the young Lieutenant’s attention. “What is this?” she asked after a lengthy, taut silence.

  “Consider it a token of goodwill,” Lynch replied, easily flipping the crystal into the air between them. McKnight caught it in her hand and looked at it suspiciously. “That’s my latest update on ship traffic ‘round these parts—includin’ pirates and wayward SDF’s,” he added pointedly. “Y’all can just plug it into the Mode’s database and use the info to plot a clean course home. Might take you an extra week or two, but you should be able to avoid any more unfortunate encounters like this one if you use it.”

  “I’ll point out the obvious,” McKnight said tightly, “there’s little reason for me to believe this information won’t lead to a trap—you are, after all, the most prolific black market supplier of military hardware in the Spine. What’s to stop you from setting a trap for us further down the road?”

  “Since you and I ain’t been properly socialized,” Lynch said, his visage hardening and his voice lowering dangerously, “I’ll forgive the implication that I ain’t a man of my word—but that’s the last time I’ll be so generous, Lieutenant. I’m tellin’ you that the info in there is clean, and that it’ll help you reach home base with less than a three percent chance of runnin’ into hostiles. What you do with that information is up to you, but that intel can cut your odds of another run-in with hostiles by seventy percent so, on behalf of your peeps, I suggest you use it.”

  McKnight cocked her head as she realized something, and blurted unthinkingly, “You were waiting for us here.”

  Lynch’s grin returned, though his eyes remained unyielding, “Clever girl…seems Tim had a keen eye for talent, after all.”

  “Why?” McKnight demanded, angrier with herself for not seeing earlier than she was for revealing her thoughts without thinking the matter through first.

  “Let’s just say I had a proposal for Tim and was hopin’ to meet up with him,” Lynch said casually, “but since he’s gone, I’m gonna have to pursue…alternatives. Y’all wouldn’t happen to still have that mouthy tech geek around, would you? It’d be a shame if he went up with Tim; I could use him.”

  “Our people aren’t for sale,” McKnight said icily. “Besides, I doubt he would choose to join your organization.”

  “Everybody’s for sale, McKnight,” Lynch said as a mischievous gleam entered his eye, “It’s just a matter of settlin’ on price.”

  “I’ll see if there’s anything on this crystal that we can use,” McKnight said guardedly, “but I have a mission to carry out.”

  “Sure thing,” Lynch nodded approvingly, “but if you’re ever out in my neck of the Spine again, don’t be surprised if I come ‘round with a proposal or two. This is our home, after all,” Lynch added, and McKnight thought there was some kind of unspoken message that she was missing, given the brief change in his expression, “if we don’t look after it, who will?”

  “The MSP has fought to re-stabilize the Spine—“ McKnight began, but Lynch smoothly interrupted her.


  “And a fine job y’all have been doing, too,” he said flatly, “but even a fleet of battleships ain’t no better than their targeting systems—and targeting systems rely on intelligence, Lieutenant McKnight. Ain’t nobody in the Spine knows more about what’s goin’ on in these parts than I do. Feel me?”

  “That’s awfully presumptuous,” McKnight scoffed, folding her own arms across her narrow chest.

  “Could be,” Lynch allowed, and McKnight found herself more than slightly intrigued by his odd nature. “But that’s enough pleasantries; I’ve got other bidness to attend,” he said, clapping his hands together with finality. “Colson will keep his peeps off you ‘til you make tracks because I told him to, but after that I can’t guarantee your safety from his particular brand of ruffian. Whatever it is y’all have stuffed into that freighter has to be big, and it has to be expensive—both of which appeal to men of a certain inclination, if you take my meaning. So I’d suggest you be on your way as quick as you can.”

  He turned his back on her and made his way to the Yacht’s boarding ramp, and McKnight found her curiosity getting the better of her as she stepped forward. “Mr. Lynch,” she called after him.

  “Please,” he said over his shoulder as he climbed the steps leading to the Yacht’s interior, only turning to face her after he reached the top, “just Lynch.”

  “Lynch,” she bit out irritably before hesitating, “I…”

  “Spit it out,” Lynch quipped, “I’m on a schedule.”

  Feeling her face flush at his rebuke, McKnight stiffened her spine and said, “My crew has reason to believe that Alice Schillinger is no longer alive.”

  Lynch’s gruff veneer cracked for the briefest of moments, but he nodded slowly and that façade reformed almost quicker than McKnight had seen it sunder. “Do you have any evidence of that?” he asked levelly, but the weight of his gaze very nearly made McKnight shrink away from him.