McKnight's Mission

by Caleb Wachter

  But the twinkle in Lynch’s eye was so unexpected, and so genuinely warm, that Tremblay was disarmed of his irritation completely as the thickly-built man said, “It’s bad bidness to make offers that’ll be refused—and I pride myself on my second career as a successful entrepreneur.”

  “Boss,” the man named Fish called out from the landing at the base of the stairs, “we really should be moving.”

  “Oh, right,” Lynch said with open amusement, “that.” He turned to Bethany, clicking his heels and standing to some approximation of royal decorum while offering his arm in some backward display of gallantry that had no business existing outside of a socially-backward holo-novel, “How’s about we continue our little palaver on my ship? This place has outlived its usefulness, and I ain’t in a habit of leavin’ things behind that might be used by unsavory types.”

  Bethany seemed surprised by the odd gesture, and considered for a moment, “If we don’t agree to your proposal?”

  “I’ll work up fake papers and send you on the first skiff to Capria—first class, all the way,” he assured her, and though Tremblay had come to think he hated Bethany Tilday-Vekna—or at least despised her—he found himself more than slightly jealous that the Lynch character seemed to have reduced her to putty in his hands.

  “Fine,” Bethany accepted his proffered arm.

  “And you?” Lynch asked the former Intelligence Officer, and Tremblay was surprised to find that the man’s affect suggested that he did not consider him to be an afterthought. More than just stroking Tremblay’s ego, that possibility actually piqued his interest. It had been a long, long time since anyone had shown anything resembling genuine appreciation for him, and while this Lynch character had done very little in that regard it was still considerably more than Raphael Tremblay could remember receiving recently.

  “I’ll listen to what you have to say,” Tremblay said with a guarded nod, prompting Lynch to return the gesture before leading them down the stairs toward the door. As Tremblay kept pace at their heels, he added, “But I won’t be governed by her choice.”

  “Of course not,” Lynch said agreeably as they made their way to the door, “but y’all need to understand that once you sign on, there’s no signin’ off. So clear your heads, because if you get with my program then things are about to get real in the field.”

  A few minutes later they were seated in a sparsely appointed Captain’s Yacht of a design consistent with those attached to several of the newer warships to be deployed in the Spineward Sectors.

  Tremblay looked around and noted that it appeared much of the craft’s equipment had been stripped and replaced with more utilitarian gear, and no sooner had the door to the craft closed than the yacht separated from the station and began to accelerate away.

  “It’s a funny thing, burnin’ bridges…” Lynch remarked casually—and Tremblay noted that Bethany had made no attempt to release her somehow strange grip on his arm, which caused another pang of something resembling jealousy to reverberate throughout his being.

  “Why is that?” Bethany asked all-too-politely, which thoroughly confused Tremblay and he resolved to ask her about her strange behavior at a later juncture.

  Lynch reached over to a nearby console and pulled up the image of the station on which they had all recently been. “When all the bridges behind you is burned,” Lynch explained, pausing with perfect timing as the space station exploded in a flash of light that corresponded with a mild shockwave that Tremblay could feel through the deck plates, “the only way to get back to where you belong is to press forward—and to never look back.”

  Lynch turned formally to Bethany and bowed forty five degrees at the waist while extending his forearm. Bethany dipped slightly in a fractional approximation of a curtsy, and Tremblay felt his brow furrow in abject confusion as the Caprian Princess-cadet released her hold on Lynch’s forearm. Lynch then took her left hand in his and kissed the second knuckle of her middle finger, prompting her to curtsy slightly deeper before withdrawing her hand politely.

  The odd social ritual concluded—which Tremblay seemed to recall seeing in some old holo-vids, but he couldn’t recall which story in particular had featured a similar display—Lynch grinned broadly and made eye contact with each of them in turn, “I think we’ll soon look back at this as the start of a beautiful thing.”

  Chapter XIV: Cooperation vs. Competition

  “Point transfer complete, Captain,” Helmsman Marcos reported, prompting Lieutenant Commander McKnight to feel a familiar rush as her new vessel slid past the laws of physics and emerged into the mid-point of her journey back to Capital in Sector 24.

  A few seconds later, the converted droid warship shuddered beneath their feet and those shudders slowly increased in strength and frequency until McKnight’s teeth rattled against each other in spite of her attempt to lock her jaw down.

  Then the ship lurched and Marcos reported with relief, “We’re through the sump, ma’am.”

  “Sensors,” McKnight craned her neck over her left shoulder to better view the Sensor console, “what have we got?”

  “Scanning, Captain,” the hand replied. The converted Destroyer was still undergoing retrofits which would make it habitable on a full-time basis for the crew assigned to it, and as such it was rather less than up to military standards in terms of amenities. With the dearth of life support systems, only the First and Second Shift command teams were presently stationed aboard the vessel—in addition to the engineers who worked tirelessly to implement life support stations throughout the ship. “Contact,” the Sensor hand—a man named Brickley—reported in a shrill tone, “I’ve got three warships altering course to intercept.”

  “Did the Gate make the transfer?” McKnight asked tightly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Brickley acknowledged, “I have Captain Archibald on a secure channel.”

  “Put him on,” McKnight gestured to the paltry excuse of a main screen which had been situated close to the middle of the front bulkhead. Archibald’s face appeared, and McKnight wasted no time in getting down to business, “Are the inbound ships in your database?” She hated needing to ask him, but her ship’s DI wasn’t yet online. All systems were presently operated locally, which meant that taking the slowly-converting Destroyer into battle was an unwise idea if it could be avoided.

  “They are,” Archibald nodded confidently, “it’s a pair of Corvettes and a Heavy Destroyer; all three were originally flagged out of the Xanatos System located on the border of Sectors 23 and 24.”

  “Raubach assets,” McKnight concluded, recalling the tactical breakdown of warships which they had come to suspect fell into House Raubach’s hands immediately following the Imperial Withdrawal.

  “That’s what our best intel—and, by that, I mean your intel—suggests,” Archibald agreed. “It’s curious that they’re operating this far from the Cagnzyz System, though. Unless…” he said, and an all-too-familiar gleam entered his eye as he trailed off pointedly

  She nodded, fully sharing his enthusiasm, “Unless they’re performing a patrol, which means the Raubach’s secret Beta Site might be nearby.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” he nodded. “This is your show, McKnight; how do you want to proceed?”

  McKnight considered her options, but it was a cursory consideration since she had already planned for this possibility in her mission outline. She opened a channel to her ship’s Chief Engineer, “Chief, I need you to start dumping radioactive material from the fusion plants in accordance with the mission outline.”

  The com-link crackled to life and Chief Engineer Tiberius Spalding replied, “I’m stating for the record that I’m opposed to this course of action.”

  “Understood,” McKnight said stoically, “commence with the dump, but make a slow and steady rate—I don’t want to expose our people to any more harm than is necessary.”

  “Orders received,” Tiberius said sourly, “venting material now.”

  McKnight nodded and disconnected
the link before returning her attention to Captain Archibald, “Commence Operation Whiplash, Captain.”

  “Good hunting, Captain,” Archibald acknowledged with a nod, which McKnight returned before severing the link.

  “The Gamer Gate is breaking formation, ma’am,” Brickley reported, “she’s moving to interdict the approaching vessels.”

  “Incoming hail from the Destroyer, m-m-ma’am,” the Comm. stander reported. He was a relatively new member of the crew and had a tendency to stutter under pressure, but he was capable of performing his duty and he knew the ins and outs of communication theory—and that was all that mattered to McKnight.

  “Put it on,” she said curtly, prompting the off-center screen which had been welded to the far wall to spring to life.

  A morbidly obese woman appeared—at least, McKnight thought it was a woman. She had several moles dotting her second and third chins which made it genuinely difficult for McKnight to give the woman’s other features her full attention.

  “This is Captain Alex of the Rim Fleet Destroyer, Cis,” the woman declared, causing the left side of her jowly-features to jiggle disproportionately more than the right side. “By order of Commodore James Raubach III, all vessels flying under the illegal flag of the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet are commanded to heave to and await duly-appointed inspection teams.”

  “This is Captain Archibald,” Archibald’s face appeared on the screen beside the obese woman’s, “of the MSP Heavy Cruiser, Gamer Gate—“

  The woman snorted derisively, “An apt name for a ship assigned to such an immoral and illegal group as the MSP.” Lieutenant Commander McKnight knew that the moniker was politically charged, and had popped up several times throughout human history with some scholars suggesting it originated back on Old Earth. Each time it rose up, however, it was surrounded by controversy which seemed to be defined by truly absurd ideas espoused by people who seemed more interested in talking past each other than in improving their respective understanding of the situation.

  “We’re conducting a routine patrol on the orders of Admiral Jason Montagne,” Archibald continued blithely, “who has officially declared Commodore James Raubach III killed in action during the Battle at Cagnzyz. Who is your new superior?”

  Captain Alex sneered contemptuously, “I’ve heard rumors of Commodore Raubach’s death—as I assume the Commodore himself has—but I find your bluff to be lacking, little boy. Strike your reactors, heave to and prepare to receive my inspection teams or be purged by righteous fire!” Her tone and affect seemed more akin to a religious zealot’s than a warship commander’s, and McKnight suspected this would prove useful later on.

  “Maybe you’re unaware of the throw weights involved,” Archibald said, drawing himself up and smirking. “I’ve got more than twice the guns all three of your ships have put together, and my ship’s shields are more than equal to the task of dealing with your armaments. So why don’t you strike your reactors, heave to, and await my inspection teams?”

  “You arrogant little prick,” Captain Alex spat, this time causing the right side of her apparently lopsided neck to jiggle hypnotically. “If that’s how you want to play this, I have no choice but to put you on your knees—where you belong!”

  The channel was severed, and McKnight saw Archibald’s ship drive slowly toward the incoming trio of ships. Those three ships quickly—and predictably—fanned out as they adjusted their trajectories and velocities so as to fully surround the Gamer Gate. It was precisely the same type of deployment which McKnight had seen at The Bulwark one jump from the Cagnzyz System when Commodore Raubach’s much larger fleet had surrounded the Pride of Prometheus.

  Which meant that these ships were almost certainly armed with the same enhanced turbo-lasers as those ships had been—and that was precisely what McKnight and her people were counting on.

  “Helm,” McKnight said as she pulled up the relevant tactical information on her chair’s makeshift interface panel, “plot an automatically updating intercept course with that Destroyer at best possible speed. I want to lure them in as far as possible before we make our move.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Marcos acknowledged.

  “Engineering,” McKnight said after opening a connection with her Chief Engineer, “I’m going to need maximum engine output sometime in the next thirty minutes, and I’m going to need it uninterrupted until this engagement is concluded.”

  Tiberius rolled his eyes in exasperation within his work suit—which had, for all intents and purposes, served as his quarters for the past several weeks. With the lack of life support, his team had taken to pulling seventy two hour shifts inside their suits, with twenty hour recuperative leaves granted on a rotating basis aboard the Gamer Gate where his people could be treated like actual human beings for a few hours after catching up on much-needed sleep.

  He watched intently a pair of his workers welded a parallel main power conduit into place, which would eventually serve as a main trunk for the starboard shield generators, and when they were finished he drew a deep breath and considered how best to respond to his new commanding officer.

  “Captain,” he said through gritted teeth, “this ship is not combat-ready; half of our shield grid is underpowered and the other half was just installed two days ago. That is to say nothing of the two newly-installed fusion plants that haven’t been fully load tested yet. I cannot stress how strongly I object to your decision to take this ship into combat.”

  “You have your orders, Chief,” McKnight said coolly, and Tiberius felt like reaching through his suit’s faceplate and tearing the link out with his bare hands—vacuum exposure be blasted! “We are going to engage the enemy and we are going to do so soon, so I suggest you do your duty.”

  The line remained open as McKnight presumably awaited his reply, and Tiberius fought against the urge to scream as he gritted out, “Understood, Captain.”

  “McKnight out,” the woman said before cutting the line.

  “Chin up, sir,” Penelope said from his elbow as she carried one end of a particularly delicate power shunt—it was delicate because they had literally just finished fashioning it from scratch using the mess of spare parts which they had managed to scrounge for the ship’s haphazard refit.

  “Pen, sometimes I wish you weren’t quite so upbeat,” Tiberius scowled, but the little power tech’s positive energy was clearly unrestricted by the heavy, radiation-resistant work suit she had been in for nearly three days just as he had been.

  “Aww, c’mon,” she snickered while helping her co-worker position the makeshift power shunt next to the conduit, which would eventually serve as the secondary power line once they finished re-tooling the ship’s primary power grid. “Things could be a lot worse, sir, and you know it. At least we’re not breaking rocks or scrubbing waste tanks with our tongues.”

  “That’s true,” he glowered, but found himself sighing as he knew that she was right. Lieutenant Commander McKnight had been incredibly lenient to date when it came to disrupting his team’s rhythm, and Tiberius was far from the first person in his forty two person team to recognize that fact. Of his original eighty teammates, nearly half had been transferred to full-time duty aboard the Gamer Gate where it seemed Captain Archibald was reasonable—if not quite as reasonable as Lieutenant Commander McKnight had been to his particular group. “After you’ve welded that in place, we need to get back to the engine room,” he declared, moving to help them complete the task more quickly. “Our CO thinks now is the perfect time to take this ship into battle.”

  “To be fair,” Pen chided as she deftly produced a handheld welder, which she somehow manipulated with no apparent issue even when restricted by the suit’s cumbersome gloves, “I don’t think most CO’s actually like fighting. They’re still people, Chief.”

  Tiberius was doubly annoyed at his de facto second’s indomitable attitude and cheerful spirit, but he knew somewhere in his higher brain that she was right. “You know what?” he asked with forced gruffness
as a smile threatened to break his mood. “You are every bit as annoying as you are rational.”

  “It’s a good combination—besides, you like it,” she retorted spunkily as he helped her hold the shunt up against the support beam. A few seconds later they had effectively tack-welded the framework to the bulkhead, prompting her to spin the handheld welder in her palm like a gunslinger might do in one of those dreadful holo-novels, “All done, Chief!”

  “Let’s head back to the power plant and see about those coolant lines,” Tiberius sighed as his second’s infectious personality finally moved his mood to something approaching normalcy. “This ship’s coolant system contains none of the safety mechanisms a human-built warship would have…probably because droids aren’t afraid of vacuum like we are, so abandoning ship isn’t nearly as daunting for them as it is for us—plus, an increase of a few hundred degrees centigrade doesn’t harm most droid components, whereas that kind of heat will cook us down in a matter of minutes. I want eyes on every single coolant pump we’ve got as soon as we put a strain on the system.”

  “You got it,” Penelope nodded, “we should probably take another look at Number Two plant’s magnetic containment coils while we’re at it. There were some oscillations during the last load test that might give us trouble if we go to max-burn.”

  Tiberius had already decided to do precisely that and was far from surprised to hear her correctly identify the second most important job before them. He had also been concerned by those oscillations, but the coolant system had taken primacy in this mind.

  “If you think so,” he said playfully, prompting her to chuck him in the shoulder as they made their way down the corridor to the ship’s poor excuse for a Main Engineering section.

  McKnight sat on the edge of her command chair and waited as the enemy Destroyer came ever closer. By having Chief Spalding the Younger stream radiation from one of their fusion plants, they had painted the picture of a wounded bird which would be unable to properly defend itself if needed.