McKnight's Mission

by Caleb Wachter

  “I’m worried about us not getting an honest crack at their coded databases,” Archibald countered. “You already said it; mounting a recovery operation wouldn’t make sense for anyone without the mobile infrastructure needed to put them to rights.”

  McKnight found herself nodding in approval. “Good,” she mused as she, too, was more than passingly concerned with the information in the enemy warships’ databanks, “that’s good thinking, Captain…but I think we’re going to be best served by downloading whatever we can, scuttling any hybrid Ancient technology we find, and leaving them adrift for their proper owners to deal with when they send a reclamation force.”

  Archibald seemed confused for a moment before realization dawned in his eyes. “You want to draw Xanatos into this conflict,” he said slowly, shaking his head and snorting approvingly. “I would never have thought to exploit that angle.”

  “You’ll get up to speed soon enough, Captain,” McKnight assured him. “And remember that I’ve had a few extra months to think about this.”

  “You’re the shot-caller,” Archibald said as he re-schooled his features. “How thorough should we be in our search of the ships?”

  “Download however much of their databanks as possible,” McKnight said urgently. “Then use scanners attuned to the EM patterns we’ve associated with Ancient technology, and secure every gram of that…unnatural technology as your people can find. I’d rather go too far than not far enough in purging those ships of that…stuff. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Archibald nodded gravely. “A full search-and-secure operation should take three hours—four at the most.”

  “Don’t miss the opportunity to stock up on anything portable that your people can transfer before we’re out,” McKnight reminded him, wishing that her own ship was in a state that would permit her people to do likewise. “Even extra head bags might prove invaluable in the next few months.”

  “According to my Lancer Colonel, their supplies are already pretty well depleted,” Archibald said skeptically. “It looks like they were already raided pretty heavily for anything that wasn’t bolted down; that’s the only reason our casualties were so light during the boarding actions. In fact,” Archibald added, leaning conspiratorially, “they only had enough food for another three weeks of operation before needing to resupply.”

  This was news to McKnight, and she immediately took Captain Archibald’s meaning. “That will be an important data point, Captain; your Lancer Colonel deserves recognition for making such an astute observation.”

  “Yeah, well,” Archibald leaned back with a bitter expression, “I only wish my gun deck was as efficient as my Lancers were.”

  “For a shakedown battle, I don’t think we could ask for any better, Captain,” McKnight chided. “We’ll get these crews up to speed; if you’d like, I could send over a few policy and procedure addendums which significantly improved ship-wide performance back on the Pride significantly in terms of combat performance.”

  She felt so stupid after making the offer, and actually felt herself go red at the ears but Archibald thankfully seemed not to notice as he nodded, “I’d appreciate that. I’m not used to running a command structure this large; I’m finding some of the peculiar challenges to be more frustrating than I’d anticipated.”

  “I’ll forward those addendums immediately,” she said, schooling her features and speaking slightly more quickly than she had done before. “If there isn’t anything else, I need to meet with my department heads.”

  “We’ll reconvene after the ships have been secured,” Archibald said agreeably.

  “McKnight out,” she said, cutting the connection and leaning back in her chair. For the first time in years, she had felt like nothing so much as a flirtatious schoolgirl near the end of the conversation with Archibald. More surprising than the fact that she had let herself behave that way was the fact that she had actually behaved that way.

  Ever since her divorce had been finalized with her now-ex-husband—which included the removal of his thrice-cursed name from her official records—McKnight had thought herself to be past such silly behavior.

  “Stupid girl,” she muttered, repeated an oft-uttered phrase which her auntie had used both affectionately and as a genuine rebuke. But in spite of herself, the fact that she felt the stirrings of some sort of emotional response to her counterpart aboard the Gamer Gate was a welcome development—and one she would do her best not to think too much about in the near future.

  She had a mission to accomplish, and there was no time for distractions—even ones with such neatly-trimmed facial hair and surprisingly quick wits.

  “Stupid girl,” she repeated under her breath before issuing an automated summons for her new Executive Officer. She had wanted to wait until reaching Capital to inform the officer of her decision, but that had proven to be a mistake during the battle—and it was a mistake that might have proven costly.

  It took nearly twenty minutes before the summoned officer rang the chime outside her door, and when it did ring she stood from her chair in preparation for the meeting.

  She knew it would not be without its turbulence, but she also knew that there was only one person on the ship who was genuinely qualified to serve as her XO.

  Tiberius Spalding, sweaty and stinking after such a prolonged stint in his work suit, stood outside Lieutenant McKnight’s office after ringing the chime which informed her he had arrived as summoned.

  “Come in,” she said through the speaker, and the door slid open to reveal a sparsely-appointed, barely-livable space where it appeared his current CO spent all of her off-duty time.

  The room was barely ten feet on a side, and had a large structural support beam running at a thirty degree angle from the upper near right corner down to the far right bulkhead. McKnight had positioned a pair of low-backed stools opposite her own identical seat, and sandwiched between them was a hastily-constructed table made of spare metal plates that were too fatigued to serve any longer in their original capacity.

  “Have a seat, Lieutenant,” McKnight gestured to the leftward seat opposite her own. She was standing behind the makeshift desk, and her expression betrayed none of whatever emotions she might have felt at that particular moment.

  Tiberius moved stiffly across the tiny compartment and stood at attention. “I’d rather stand, ma’am.”

  “Lieutenant,” she said steadily, apparently unsurprised by his reticence, “your people performed top notch work in this ship’s first battle. I can’t stress enough just how impressive your team’s performance has been since joining this mission—“

  “We didn’t have any choice in the matter, ma’am,” Tiberius interrupted defiantly.

  McKnight’s eyes narrowed slightly, “You most certainly did have a choice, Lieutenant. You could either continue to serve the citizens of the Spineward Sectors as best you are able—which meant signing on for this mission—or you could have hopped on the next freighter bound for a military penal colony. Once there, you and your people would have spent the rest of your lives scrubbing plasma conduits with your fingernails and praying for the days when what you did actually meant something.”

  “Like I said, ma’am,” Tiberius held firm, jutting his chin out as he reiterated, “we didn’t have any choice in the matter.” He had spent his entire life serving the people of his world, and the fact that his life—and the lives of his team—had been caught in the gears of politics did nothing to dissuade him from his lifelong belief that the most important thing in the cosmos was the preservation of democracy. Without the freedom and power to self-determine, humanity was nothing but a teeming mass of slightly-smarter-than-the-competition animals. He had learned enough of history in school to know that humans, if left to their own selfish devices, would just as soon eat each other as they would feed each other.

  “Your statement can be interpreted one of two ways from where I’m sitting,” McKnight said measuredly, “the first way would be unfortunate, because it would nece
ssitate my releasing you and your people from this mission as soon as we hit Capital.”

  Tiberius blinked in surprise. He and his crew had been functionally enslaved by this woman for her mission—whatever that mission entailed, aside from forcing his fellow Parliamentarian loyalists to essentially live inside stinky, sweaty work suits for so many weeks he could hardly remember what a normal work environment was like. And here she was, offhandedly suggesting that they might be released from their hellish bonds of subservience?!

  “Is this some kind of a trick?” Tiberius asked. “We wouldn’t have any trouble getting political asylum once we reach Capital,” he added stiffly. While he despised the Core World called Capital for more reasons than he could count at the moment, Tiberius and his people had concluded that their situation would likely be viewed favorably by Capital’s State Department. If for nothing but purely propagandist reasons, Capital had proven all too eager to embrace so-called ‘unfortunate victims of backward politics’—which, apparently, Capria’s Royalist traditions qualified it as such a place in the estimation of Capital’s citizenry.

  “This is no trick, Lieutenant,” McKnight said flatly. “I won’t use someone I can’t trust.”

  “Are you suggesting I’m untrustworthy, ma’am?” Tiberius asked hotly.

  “Not at all,” McKnight shook her head, “I’m suggesting that, if my first interpretation of your previous statement regarding your lack of choice in whether or not to serve your fellow citizens was accurate, you and your people would best serve my mission by being removed from it.”

  It was Tiberius’ turn to narrow his eyes. She had apparently plotted this conversation out beforehand, which suggested there was more to it than an upbraiding couched in a superior’s approval for a job well done—and it was, in fact, a job well done.

  “I’ll bite,” he eventually relented, “what’s the second interpretation…ma’am?” he added belatedly at seeing her muted look of disapproval when he failed to include the proper respect afforded a CO.

  McKnight’s visage remained firm as she searched his features, and just as he had felt upon first meeting the woman he saw that despite her years—she was roughly his same age—she had the countenance of someone who had endured twice as many trials and tribulations as the average person her age.

  “The second interpretation,” she continued coolly, “of your assertion that you and your people had no choice in whether or not to accompany us, is one which reveals your sense of honor, duty, and patriotism. Those are qualities and attributes which the citizens of the Spineward Sectors have found in short supply recently, and which I will greatly value in the weeks and months to come.”

  Tiberius felt his brow furrow incredulously, “How’s that, ma’am?” Is she really about to appeal to the boy scout in me? he wondered in disbelief.

  McKnight gestured to the stool to Tiberius’ left again and, in spite of himself, Tiberius felt like complying. But he was also feeling more than a little irritated at being led around by the nose so, while he did opt to take a seat as suggested, he did so in the stool to his right rather than the one she had indicated.

  A flash of something akin to amusement graced McKnight’s pale, blond features before disappearing, and before Tiberius could process what that look might have meant she seated herself and continued, “I tend to think that your reasoning was closer to the latter than the former. I’ve reviewed your file, Lieutenant, and it paints the picture of a man who is fiercely devoted to doing what he thinks is right—even if it costs him personally.”

  Tiberius knew she was appealing to his ego, but the truth was that it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to him in this fashion. Up until this meeting, his experiences after being kidnapped and pressed into MSP service had been much as he might have expected them to be. He hadn’t been mistreated, exactly, but he suspected that if his skills had been in significantly lower demand that he and his people would not have been as ‘fortunate’ as they had been thus far.

  “Moreover,” McKnight added, gesturing to a data slate on her desk, “the work that your people have done under your leadership here has been nothing short of exemplary.”

  “I’m just doing my job, ma’am,” he said stiffly, actively fighting against the urge to feel empathy for this woman. “Any serviceman worth his silica would do the same.”

  “My experience suggests otherwise,” she riposted, “but even granting you that, it is your combination of diligence, duty, and adherence to principles like honor that have led me to conclude you are the only reasonable choice to become this ship’s Executive Officer and second-in-command.”

  Tiberius opened his mouth to rebuke her continued appeals to his vanity, but his teeth clamped shut when he processed her last words. He replayed them in his mind with growing incredulity before finally asking, “What did you just say, ma’am?”

  “You heard me, Lieutenant,” McKnight said, handing the data slate to him, “effective immediately, you’re my XO.”

  Tiberius blinked in abject confusion. “I think there’s been a…a…a mistake somewhere—“ he stammered.

  “It’s no mistake,” McKnight shook her head firmly, cutting him off smartly, “this ship’s crew—of which your people comprise no less than sixty percent the total number—is in desperate need of principled leadership. Your record shows that you’re not afraid to speak your mind, and you’ve clearly got your peoples’ best interests at heart. That, coupled with the fact that you’ve worked so tirelessly these past weeks—under protest, I’ll grant you,” she added with a short-lived sour expression, “and never once caused any issues that couldn’t be solved by a quick adjudication by our Master at Arms, Mr. Sherman, is all the evidence I need to conclude that you’re the right man for the job.”

  “I’m not…” Tiberius began hesitantly before collecting his thoughts and continuing, “I’m not in support of this mission, ma’am.”

  “All the more reason for you to act as my second, wouldn’t you agree?” she retorted with an arched eyebrow.

  Tiberius knew she was, again, appealing to his ego but something in the last few minutes had seemingly clouded his judgment. He knew that his primary duty was to do right by his fellow Caprians who had been pressed into serving the MSP, but he also knew that she had a good point about maintaining a balance of ideological power aboard a warship.

  He narrowed his eyes as he slowly, but surely, came around to understand that she was more right than she was wrong. Regardless of who was pulling the strings, or what underhanded—even illegal!—measures taken by the MSP’s Fleet Command, the end result had been one where the interests of the Spineward Sectors were supported.

  The most striking thought which crystalized in his mind was the one which arrived via his own inner voice and asked, Do you want to tuck tail and run away at the first chance, just like the Imperials did?

  That thought took root in his mind and quickly morphed into bitter resentment at his father having effectively abandoned him during his youth. He found his hands balling into fists at the idea that he would do anything like his senile old man—and he was so repulsed by that train of thought that he found himself nodding in spite of his lingering reservations.

  “Is this some kind of test?” he asked guardedly. He had been caught so flat-footed by her offer that he had little hope of maintaining anything resembling a professional mask of disinterest.

  “It’s no test, Lieutenant,” she shook her head gravely. “Out here, where my crew and I have been—and where you’re about to go—the rules can change faster than you can blink your eye. That means snap judgments are the norm in combat conditions, and as the ship’s commanding officer—and the ultimate authority over this mission, at least for the time being—that means I need to surround myself with people who hold different views from my own. But,” she let the word hang between them emphatically for several seconds before finishing, “I also need those people to be willing to do what is best not only for the mission, but for the crew
that carries it out.”

  Tiberius again found himself nodding along as he realized that this was almost certainly a genuine offer. “And if we disagree on a command issue?” he asked archly.

  “Then you’ll be expected to carry out your duties as my Executive Officer,” she replied promptly. “If I make a decision you disagree with, you’ll have every right to make your case as to which alternative course of action should be taken. And if I decide to go against your advice, you’ll be well within your rights to consult the manual before filing a formal protest. And if you feel strongly enough about the decision, you’ll be invited to bring it up in a private meeting after I’ve made my decision—assuming, of course, that my decision is within the bounds of command authority. If it’s not, I’ll expect you to discharge your duty and remove me from command. That’s something you’ve also proven willing to do, correct?”

  Despite her blunt reply, Tiberius felt like objecting—or at least making a point of asking about what would happen if he actually did file such a report. But he had read McKnight’s file during the first few days of his assignment to her command, and he had learned that she had personally authored several such reports while acting as Lieutenant Commander Middleton’s XO. It seemed unlikely that she would hold a grudge against a fellow officer for formally filing an objection to a given course of action when she, herself, had done so on several occasion.

  “What about Engineering?” he asked, feeling his resolve wilt in the face of the chance to do precisely what he had silently dreamed of since being assigned to the Parliamentary Power. The ability to actually steer policy and directly inform the decisions made by his CO was something he had long thought would be beyond his reach—especially after being pressed into serving the MSP, and eventually being all but exiled from Capria.

  “You’ll be expected to oversee the break-in of your replacement,” McKnight explained, gesturing to the data slate which she had placed on his side of the makeshift desk. “During that break-in, you should probably split duties between Engineering and the bridge.”