McKnight's Mission Read online

  “What do you know of firing warship weapons?” Lu Bu demanded irritably.

  Shiyuan glowered at her before defensively saying, “I’ll have you know that I was the top-ranked fighter in the Tungsten Tournament this year in a field of three hundred thousand competitors!”

  “Tungsten Tournament?” Lu Bu repeated, completely oblivious to whatever that was.

  “The second of three annual, world-wide naval combat simulator competitions,” Yuanzhi explained. “We used to compete as a ghost team, but since Fei Long was captured we’ve all gone solo. Shiyuan’s very good…but not as good as Kongming, who only missed becoming the first ever Triple Crown Champion because he was arrested the day before the finals.”

  “No one was as good as Kongming,” Shiyuan sniffed. “He never even paid cash for the virtual equipment upgrades and still beat the field with resources to spare!”

  “This is no video game,” Lu Bu interrupted before the two could engage in any more geek-speak that was absolutely necessary. “Traian will control the Mode’s weapons; if either of you want to do so in the future then you should pass the gunnery certification process—like he has,” she finished, tilting her head toward Traian as he made what looked to be the last of his inputs.

  “Oh, there we go,” Jarrett rolled his eyes, “I guess I shouldn’t have expected any differently. We leave one authoritarian, over-regulated situation for another—where is the value of merit, I ask you?”

  “Shut up, Shiyuan,” Yuanzhi cuffed the hideous-looking, borderline dwarf on the back of the head. “Let them fight; they are clearly quite good at it.”

  Lu Bu returned her attention to Yide, who appeared to have finished his own preparations. “Everyone strap in,” she barked, “Yide’s maneuver might overpower our grav-plates.”

  The look of terror in both Shiyuan’s and Yuanzhi’s eyes was precisely what she had hoped it would be, but Fengxiao remained unflappable as he continued to fine-tune the sensor inputs in order to update Traian’s targeting algorithms as accurately as possible.

  Shiyuan and Yuanzhi stumbled out of the cockpit before making for a nearby set of bucket seats further back in the corridor which led to the ship’s command center.

  After they had clicked in, Lu Bu did likewise and heard Yide say, “Coming about in three…two…one…firing thrusters!”

  The ship slewed so hard to port that, for the first time in a month, Lu Bu felt sick to her stomach. Fortunately, the dreaded ‘morning sickness’ had nearly been a non-issue for her during her pregnancy, so she successfully countered the urge to vomit by clamping her teeth together and clenching her throat tight.

  The Mode shuddered as their shields flared beyond the cockpit, but in the barest fraction of a second that the source of the incoming fire was in her field of view Lu Bu saw a series of explosions. Then the ship resumed its previous course and bearing before Yide opened the engines up to maximum, pressing them into their seats with the acceleration’s gee forces.

  “Direct hits,” Fengxiao reported coolly in Standard, “all six of our lasers struck their stern; their engines are off-line.”

  “Did we take damage?” Lu Bu asked anxiously.

  “None,” Yide reported, causing her to breathe a sigh of relief, “our forward shields are down to 23%; I have re-routed power to the stern and initiated evasive maneuvers.”

  As he said that, the ship slewed hard to starboard and an impact hammered into the starboard shields a split second after he had done so.

  “Good work,” Traian said appreciatively.

  “Thank you,” the adolescent Sundered said, fiercely baring his long teeth and making a grunting sound that sounded exactly like that of his non-uplifted counterparts. Lu Bu was still more than slightly impressed by the uplifted apes and their intellectual abilities; she had learned that Yide and his father, Toto, were considerably smarter than the vast majority of the other Sundered. That intelligence was almost certainly a large part of how they had come to privately own not one but three gunships, but in her mind their brainpower did little to diminish the impressiveness of their family’s accomplishments.

  The stern of the Mode rocked several more times in the next few minutes, but at no point was the ship in danger due to slick piloting on Yide’s part. Impressively efficient power load-balancing by Traian kept the shields to remain at top efficiency throughout the short-lived engagement, and soon they were clear of the enemy’s firing arc.

  “We are clear,” Yide declared after the craft passed beyond the gunship’s rated weapon range. “Shall I initiate stealth systems?”

  “Yes,” Lu Bu nodded, noting that Shiyuan had unbuckled himself from his seat in the companionway and was pushing gently toward the screen which showed Traian’s successful firing solution. She decided against shoving him out of the way since it was possible, albeit remotely, that he might actually contribute something to the ship’s operations in the next few minutes while her role appeared to have been completed. “How long until point transfer?” she asked after Shiyuan began reviewing the Mode’s sensor logs in conjunction with the firing solution Traian had devised.

  “Forty minutes,” Yide replied promptly as the lights in the cabin went dark and the usual thrum of the deck beneath their feet changed in pitch. These were now familiar sensations to Lu Bu, and they signaled the activation of the craft’s robust stealth systems.

  “Traian, good shooting,” she congratulated, drawing an appreciative nod from her fellow Lancer. “Remain on Condition One until we jump,” she instructed before grabbing Shiyuan by the shoulder, after he had stood back from the display with a confused look in his eyes, and dragging him from the cockpit with her as she exited.

  “That…that was an impossible shot,” Shiyuan said in Qin, clearly dumbfounded by what he had seen on the Mode’s instruments.

  “My people are very good,” Lu Bu said with no small measure of pride. Traian had been right: his technical abilities had proven crucial to their mission’s success, and she was more than happy to give credit where credit was due.

  “No, I mean it,” he said, angrily shrugging off her hand, “I have created tens of thousands of firing solutions for similar situations—literally tens of thousands,” he said, his voice squeaking in protest, “and I have never managed such a perfect salvo under similar conditions.”

  “This is not a video game, Shiyuan,” she scolded.

  He looked ready to protest, but Yuanzhi interrupted, “Let us return to our room, Shiyuan. We should be thankful that Fengxian’s people are as good as they are, or our own sojourn into the stars would have been cut short before we could ever set foot on another planet and breath its air.”

  Shiyuan seemed slightly offended at his friend’s suggestion, but eventually muttered, “You’re right.” He moved toward their quarters with a sullen look on his face, but there was something beneath that all-too-obvious expression that Lu Bu could not quite place, and she briefly wondered if it was pride.

  Fei Long had not spoken much of his colleagues in the ‘fight for freedom,’ as he had sometimes put it, except to say that he had trusted them with his life—a trust which, it turned out, had been misplaced on at least one occasion. Lu Bu wondered if she had made a mistake in bringing all three of them, but dismissed it as what her shipmates would call ‘buyer’s remorse.’

  In many real ways, the MSP would be stronger with these three in the fold than it had been with Fei Long. Even though none of them were likely to be Fei Long’s equal, the fact that three of them could be working in tandem, or even separately, opened up so many possibilities that she dared not wonder at them.

  A few minutes later, Fengxiao made his way from the cockpit and stopped before her, waiting a respectful interval before she gave him her full attention. “Yes?” she asked expectantly.

  “Shiyuan was right; that was a statistically improbable shot,” Fengxiao said before shrugging and making his way to the rear of the craft, leaving Lu Bu with narrowed eyes as she considered the ramific
ations of what they were suggesting.

  She considered confronting Traian about it, but decided against it since they were still in the middle of a combat situation. Her back was cramping horribly and she needed to lie down or risk collapsing to the deck in a pathetic heap.

  So she went to her bunk and did precisely that, and she wondered why her countrymen were so interested in—or disconcerted by—a perfectly-executed combat maneuver.

  Chapter VIII: Bad Dreams

  The dream was the same as it had been for months: Lu Bu was seated in the same taxi which had carried her and Fei Long to the huge, stone event center where she had first met Hutch.

  She sat in respectful silence, as she usually did, and listened to him prattle on about something she did not care to even try to understand. It was enough that he came to her in her dreams and that she could hear his voice again, even if she forgot most of the meeting when she awoke.

  Lu Bu knew that Fei Long was gone, and that what appeared in her dreams was no more than a ghost—and no less than a figment of her imagination—but she still drew great comfort from the dream. It had always proceeded in much the same fashion, with him confessing to her that he wished only to live with her harmoniously. The words he chose were less important than the sentiment they carried, and for Lu Bu it was enough that he chose to live his life with her.

  She tried to focus on the movement of his lips so she might make out the words, but the harder she focused the less clearly she saw him. This seemed to be a message in itself; a warning of sorts against paying too much attention to any single aspect of the scene since doing so might cause her to miss something else.

  So she relaxed and listened to him speak, allowing his wordless voice to bathe her mind and provide the only measure of stability she had known outside of her new mother’s support.

  But suddenly a sound, like the screeching of metal against metal could be heard and for an instant she feared she would be snapped from the dream. She desperately wanted to remain with Fei Long, or his ghost, or whatever it was that she found in her dreams and after a few moments she managed to settle back into the dreamscape.

  This time when Fei Long spoke, he was somehow different. His voice was familiar, but she could not place it at first. It was not until his face began to change that she realized who the voice belonged to—it was Traian, and he was screaming!

  She sat bolt upright in her bed—well, as close to it as she could manage with her swollen abdomen—and rolled out of her bunk before staggering to the doorway and moving across the hall.

  Traian’s quarters were directly across from her own, and when she reached his room she saw that Yide was already inside and kneeling beside Traian. The Lancer thrashed here and there, as though struggling against something which threatened to choke him, but his eyes were closed and it appeared he was dreaming.

  “What happened?” Lu Bu asked anxiously as she heard Shiyuan, Fengxiao and Yuanzhi approach at her back.

  “He will not awaken or stop,” Yide yelled, doing his best to slowly pull Traian from his bunk without being caught in his thrashing limbs.

  Just then, Traian leapt to his feet and his eyes snapped open. His eyes seemed empty, as though he was not present within his own body as he reached out for Yide’s neck and tried to strangle the young Sundered.

  Thankfully, Yide did not appear to feel threatened. He possessed several times Traian’s raw strength, and his neck was at least twice as thick as a human’s so it was essentially impossible for Traian to choke him with his relatively small hands. But Lu Bu had already seen enough. She stepped forward and yelled, “Traian—wake up!”

  His eyes seemed to look through Yide and he ignored her words, so she decided to take more drastic action. She cocked her left fist and hammered him in the liver, and she knew from experience that the blow would have even put Kratos down if she had connected as perfectly as she had just done.

  For a moment it seemed as though he was unfazed by her perfectly-placed punch, then his eyes slowly focused and he crumpled to the floor as she had expected him to do a second or two earlier.

  He looked up between his gasping attempts to regain his wind and Lu Bu saw genuine confusion in his visage. “What…where…what happened?” he asked as he seemingly regained access to his senses.

  “You were having nightmare,” Lu Bu explained, and for an instant she saw a look of recognition flash across his face before he looked down at his hands. Yide stood over him for several seconds, interposing his body between Lu Bu and Traian in such a way that she found herself briefly offended by the idea that she needed protection from any of them. But then she remembered that she was pregnant, and while she still thought she could take any of them in her present condition she knew the risk to her unborn children was simply too great to indulge her ego.

  So she stepped back as Traian stood and apologized, “I’m sorry, Yide…did I hurt you?”

  Yide made a harsh, barking sound that Lu Bu had come to learn was the Sundered equivalent of a scoff. “You could not hurt me unarmed, Traian,” he said with a mixture of wariness and self-confidence.

  “Good…” Traian said, visibly shaken from the ordeal and Lu Bu knew after looking at the rest of her team that they were in rough shape. They had been stacked on top of each other for nearly three weeks, with only a three day stopover at the world of her birth after having taken another three week journey aboard the sparsely-appointed vessel. Where at first Lu Bu had found the Mode’s appointments more than adequate, she realized after a month and a half aboard the vessel that it was likely causing issues for her people.

  “Two more days,” she said, moving forward to clap Traian on the shoulder reassuringly, “and we land on Capital. Lieutenant McKnight will not return for at least one more month, and possibly not for three more months. We will have shore leave,” she decided, “for one week after reaching Capital.”

  “I’m ok, Corporal,” Traian objected, “we can continued with the mission—“

  “Our experts want to start their work,” she said, casting a look in the trio’s direction and eliciting rapid, eager nods from the men at the prospect of delving into Fei Long’s virtual network which had infiltrated nearly every database on the Core World of Capital. “We can relax—in pairs,” she added, “for one week each.”

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Traian said with the barest hint of a smile on his still-pale features, “but you’re going to be out of commission soon after we land.” A pointed look at her belly made Lu Bu scowl, and she jabbed a finger into his chest hard enough to make him wince.

  “For that wise break,” she growled, “you will be assigned to first shore leave pair, Traian.”

  “I think you mean ‘wise crack,’ ma’am,” he said, the familiar warmth that she had come to expect from him returning to his countenance.

  “And for correcting superior officer,” she continued in a raised voice, doing her best to keep a stern visage as the urge to smile grew stronger by the second, “you will clean ship’s atmosphere intake manifolds after shore leave finished!”

  “That’s already one of my assigned duties, ma’am,” he said, beginning to chuckle and prompting everyone else in the room to quickly follow suit.

  Lu Bu kept her features schooled as she shoved him into the bunk with a lighthearted, two-handed push and barked, “Maybe you like cleaning them with your teeth?!”

  She could only maintain the façade for a few seconds after that, and when she finally broke into laughter the room erupted around her into a roar of merriment and the tension of a few minutes earlier vanished without a trace.

  Lu Bu pretended to have a cramp in her lower back, but when Traian and Fengxiao made to help her she waved them off with genuine irritation as she made her way back to her own cabin with a stiff gait. After closing the door, she looked to her mother and saw the expected look of disapproval.

  But she knew it had been her job to bring the situation under control, so she sighed and said, “Yes, mother�
��I know.”

  “We’re just lucky you haven’t gone into labor, Bu,” Dr. Middleton said with less rancor than Lu Bu had expected to hear. “I won’t sleep a full night until we’re within a cab ride of a properly equipped medical facility.”

  “Me either,” Lu Bu winced as she eased back into the bed, cradling her massively swollen belly as one, or possibly two of her babies began to writhe around with such energy that she quickly knew it was Meng and Xun. Su was more subdued than his brother or sister, and he was smaller as well. He had apparently taken up more or less permanent residence along her left side, while Meng and Xun battled for control over her womb’s center—as any good battle tactician would do, which she knew boded well for her children since they had each been named for valiant generals and strategists.

  And though Su was less boisterous than his siblings, Lu Bu reminded herself that his father had been less overtly aggressive than average—but he had possessed abilities far beyond those of normal humans.

  “We’re locked down, ma’am,” Traian reported two days later after the Mode had docked with an orbital mooring station.

  “Good,” Lu Bu nodded in satisfaction as she turned to the trio of tech experts and continued in Qin, their native tongue, “we must apply for political asylum, on behalf of you three, with the Capital government.”

  “Our documents and official complaints are in order,” Fengxiao assured her. She had learned that his named was Guo Jin, but he preferred to be called by his style name whenever possible. “We will commence the process immediately.”

  “Dr. Middleton believes the process will only take two or three weeks until you are granted provisional residency on the planet,” she explained. “She has helped others with this very process, and you should consider her a resource.”

  “She has already been of great assistance,” the potato-faced Shiyuan said with a gracious nod toward Lu Bu’s adoptive mother. Apparently there was a tediously long story behind his name—which was not of common etymology on the world of her birth—and he had thus far been reluctant to divulge its details so Lu Bu had avoided the subject.