McKnight's Mission

by Caleb Wachter

  “Yes,” Lu Bu waved a hand irritably, “I made grammar mistake. But choices are good.”

  McKnight looked skeptical but, to Lu Bu’s surprise, she nodded, “Fine. We’ve got another six weeks minimum before our freighter arrives. We can’t engage on any active operations until then anyway. In the meantime, I want your people running drills around the clock.”

  Lu Bu nodded eagerly, “Of course, Captain.”

  “And their involvement needs to remain compartmentalized,” McKnight continued. “You, Hutch, and Yide should remain visible for the time being. But Traian, Maeda, and your technician will need to go dark. Which brings us to the last member of your team—which technician will you take?”

  Lu Bu grinned, “Too many big people on this team. We need someone who can fit in tight spaces.”

  McKnight seemed to understand, “Ok, but I want to sit down with each of these people in the next hour before we make it official. Once we scrub your team members from the rolls, they’ll strictly be black operatives. That means no contact with anyone else in the MSP.”

  “That will not be problem,” Lu Bu assured her. “I will get Shiyuan.”

  “You mean I’ll be, like…legally dead?” John William Jarrett, aka Shiyuan, asked with wide eyes.

  “Yes,” McKnight replied. “We will understand if you don’t want—“

  “Don’t want?!” Shiyuan blurted, his already grotesque face twisting repugnantly. “Why in the name of the Ancestors would I not want it? Do you realize what this means? It’s a fresh start—like something out of a holo-vid!”

  McKnight had expected the thirty three year old Shiyuan to be slightly more mature than this, but in truth she found his positive energy infectious.

  “I’ll actually be a spy,” Shiyuan continued, “with falsified documents, secret missions, and government backing!”

  “We don’t exactly have much in the way of government backing,” McKnight cautioned. “And the fact that your identity will be, for lack of a better term, ‘erased’ isn’t something to be taken lightly. You can never make contact with the people who know you, and you can’t—“

  “I have seen many spy vids,” Shiyuan said dismissively. “I know what it means, Captain McKnight. I only have one question,” he added seriously, his twisted, lumpy features taking on a serious cast to match his voice.

  “What is it?” McKnight asked.

  He leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered, “When do I get to die?” His lips peeled back to reveal a mouth full of horribly crooked teeth which were exposed in something between a grin and a sneer, and McKnight couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Tonight,” she explained, “there is a demolition scheduled for later this evening in a nearby industrial park. You’ll hack into the coroner’s reports, write in the three of your bodies as having been positively identified, and that will make it as official as it will ever get. I’ll conduct an official investigation which will conclude that you likely ran afoul of unsavory elements on Capital Prime, and they disposed of your remains in the demolished building.”

  “I get to kill myself?” he asked with glee, prompting Lu Bu to roll her eyes behind him. “That’s incredible!”

  “I assume you can do it?” McKnight pressed.

  He waved his hands dismissively, “Of course. It will only take a few minutes of access—access which Kongming’s network grants us.”

  “And your colleagues,” McKnight asked, “can you keep it secret from them?”

  “Honestly?” Jarrett cocked his head. “Not for long. We know each other too well…and it would only be a matter of time before they ran across my work and did the math.”

  “We’ll just have to cross that road when we come to it,” Captain McKnight said, having expected such a reply. “Remember: no one can know, so you can’t have any cryptic farewell speeches.”

  “I understand,” Shiyuan nodded eagerly. “In truth, I never did get along too well with those two. Without Kongming to keep us together…” he trailed off before shaking his head wryly. “We didn’t even know he was a twelve year old when we first interacted with him. We thought he was one of our ex-classmates. I’m sorry,” he said when McKnight’s attention began to drift to other matters, “I didn’t mean to wander off topic.”

  “It’s fine,” McKnight assured him. “Do you have everything you will need here on the Mode?”

  “I do,” he nodded quickly. “It should only take me a couple of days to centralize all of the equipment to a single workstation, and once that’s done we’ll have a fully-functional information suite.”

  “Ensuring secure communications will be of paramount importance,” McKnight explained. “We’ll use the ComStat network to remain in contact once you’re deployed aboard the Mode, but Lu already has your first mission’s brief. Since your deaths will take place at 2100 tonight, I’m going to need all of you to leave aboard the Mode at 2000. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Shiyuan nodded.

  “Good,” McKnight thrust a hand across the table, “good hunting, Mr. Jarrett.”

  Jarrett paused mid-motion before finally accepting her hand with his own short, stubby hand.

  “Dismissed,” she said, prompting Traian to escort the technician from the room. “Are you ready?” she asked of Lu.

  Lu Bu nodded, “I was born ready.”

  Chapter XX: The Replacements

  “Bad news,” Lynch declared as he entered the small office which Tremblay had taken to working out of aboard the yacht, “Team Two just got axed.”

  “What?! When?” Tremblay demanded, his attention torn from the seemingly endless streams of information surrounding their target Star System. “How could that happen?” he asked as Lynch turned a nearby chair around and seated himself in it, leaning his chest against the chair’s back.

  “The short version,” Lynch said matter-of-factly, “is that they were sniffed out by Raubach operatives before infiltrating the latest shipment at the Holdan System’s transfer station. Their ship was cooked before it made the hyper limit, and a ComStat message sent just a few minutes before they turned ghost said every member of the team was aboard.”

  Tremblay sank back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. It had been two weeks since he had read Lynch’s manifesto-slash-mission statement, and the former Intelligence Officer had barely slept two hours in twenty since then. The magnitude of what Lynch was trying to accomplish required—no, it demanded—his fullest attention, and he had been eager to provide it.

  “Team Two had all of our remaining tech experts who could execute the package post-insertion,” Tremblay said distantly as he recalled the depleted roster of Lynch’s specialist operatives, “DC, Tukuafu, Strong…all of them. Not to mention the fifty assault droids we’ll need once we make our move. And Team One got neutralized before you even recruited me for this mission.”

  “We still got this ship, we got Fisher, we got you, and we got me,” Lynch said dismissively, “we can plug the other holes.”

  “How?” Tremblay asked wearily, blinking away yet another wave of exhaustion which caused his attention to go fuzzy for a few seconds. “There’s only one more scheduled delivery headed for the Beta Site, and it departs Capital in twenty six days. How can we assemble a team that quickly—let alone find another ship with the stealth capabilities we’ll need to slip in undetected, and prep them for the mission in such a narrow window?”

  “I got me a line on some replacement operatives,” Lynch assured him, though Tremblay felt anything but assured. “In fact, if my sources are right,” Lynch said with a mischievous grin, “we might be able to do better than fifty assault droids—though we’ll need to divert some of my reserved new-old stock so they’ll be dressed for success when shootin’ time comes. But I’m gonna need your help to secure the replacements.”

  Tremblay tossed the slate from his hands in disgust, and it landed on the workbench with a clatter. “Of course,” he said perfunctorily, “what can I do?”

&n
bsp; Lynch produced a data crystal and slid it beside Tremblay’s hand. “I think, for what should be obvious reasons, that your contributions to this little recruitment effort should remain behind the curtain,” he explained as Tremblay took the crystal and connected it to a nearby standalone workstation. “But if you help me build a sales pitch for blondie,” he said as Tremblay’s workstation screen was populated with a crew roster—a roster that had one Lieutenant Commander McKnight at the very top, “I think we can proceed with Plan A.”

  Tremblay nodded slowly, finding the distasteful prospect of asking the MSP for help far less disconcerting than the prospect of executing Plan B. He shuddered to think of the consequences if they were forced to go to their ultimate backup plan, and knew that personal sacrifices were far preferable if they allowed them to avoid such an outcome.

  “She’s not going to be easy,” Tremblay said doubtfully. “Even back on the Clover, before she went off with Middleton, I knew she had the talent and determination to go places. Everyone else passed her off as just another Alpha girl with a penchant for snappy-looking uniforms and a single-minded focus on career advancement. But she was just two classes back from me in the Intelligence Academy, and she scored at the top of her class in several categories,” he continued as he tried to recall the latest details from her psych profile. “She decided the black gloves weren’t for her, however,” he snickered, recalling a particularly barbed interaction he’d once had with her where he had suggested, in no uncertain terms, that she hadn’t been made of ‘Intelligence material’, “and transferred over to a Command track where the competition was less fierce.”

  “Is she more patriot or pragmatist?” Lynch asked.

  Tremblay cocked his head and squinted, “I’d have to say she’s an odd mix of both. But whatever career ambitions she once had have either vanished or they’ve taken a backseat to her duty now that Middleton’s gone. If we know her current mission parameters then we can build a pitch that will have her eating out of our hand—but if she’s actually got the authority your report here suggests, it’s going to be costly. Still, it’s not like we’ll actually need to deliver on all of the promises—”

  “I don’t work like that,” Lynch shook his head severely. “If we bring her into the fold, we do it above board—and with both of her eyes open.”

  Tremblay blinked in confusion, “You would actually tell her about this mission…and about your identity?”

  “Yes I would. Well…” he corrected pointedly, “I’d tell her after we deal them Raubachs the blow to end all blows. But I’d only include her if you think she’d go all the way with us, otherwise we’re better off going with Plan B.”

  Tremblay exhaled slowly, nodding his head as he considered what Lynch was suggesting. “She’s seen enough to know how the already bad situation in the Spineward Sectors could get much, much worse,” he eventually said. “If we expose her to the truth and to what Plan A entails…it’s still sketchy. Getting her to agree to help wouldn’t be hard,” he explained when Lynch cocked an eyebrow, “but getting her to actually buy into the rest of the mission after we secure the package might be tough. We might have to…” he trailed off as he drummed his fingers on the workstation before ceasing the rhythmic, heartbeat-like sound.

  “I ain’t like that, Trembly,” Lynch said, standing from the chair and shaking his head. “I got no problem burnin’ those that deserve it, and I ain’t got no problem visitin’ vengeance by proxy on them that got it comin’ to ‘em. But if someone lines up on my side of the ball, and if they don’t break rank no matter how hot things get, I don’t turn on ‘em—ever.”

  In truth, Tremblay had been testing his new associate with that little bit of drama. It seemed impossible to him that a man as old, experienced, and successful as Lynch could actually hold to a position of ‘personal loyalty at all costs,’ but thus far the secretive arms dealer had done nothing to suggest that it was anything but a genuine creed by which he lived his entire life.

  “Fine,” Tremblay nodded, “I’ll go over this information and see what kind of pitch we can fashion. Given the timetable involved we’re out of options anyway—I’ll make it work.”

  “Good,” Lynch nodded. “Oh, and by the way,” he added just before turning to leave the room, “we’re comin’ up on our point transfer to the Rainbow. I thought you might want a look at her?”

  Tremblay nodded eagerly as the thought of seeing the ancient vessel had long since piqued his interests, “How long until we transfer?”

  The deck seemed to shiver beneath his feet, and Lynch’s grin returned in its broad, brilliant fashion as he gestured to the door, “We just did.”

  Standing from his workstation, Tremblay stretched briefly before following his employer to the small craft’s bridge. Once there, he looked out the primary viewing portal situation before the pilot’s station and shook his head in amazement.

  “Pretty little thing, ain’t she?” Lynch asked as he tapped out a series of commands—commands which Tremblay knew would transmit a series of security codes to the gargantuan vessel lurking in the void between the stars. Without those codes, Tremblay had little doubt that the ship’s semi-autonomous security measures would tear the little, lightly armed yacht to pieces in a matter of seconds.

  As Tremblay looked out at the pair of counter-rotating sections of hull sandwiched between the drive section and the command section of the huge ship, he was struck by the simple nature of the vessel.

  “I didn’t know any of these old things survived the AI Wars,” Tremblay whispered as the yacht’s floodlights stabbed out and began to dance along the hull of a warship which, by all rights, belonged in a museum rather than plying the space-ways.

  “The Jefferson class dreadnought…” Lynch said needlessly, as Tremblay was well aware of the ancient, simplistic, but frighteningly effective warships which had been deployed at the turn of the AI Wars so many centuries earlier. “Only three of ‘em were ever officially found intact after the wars ended, and all three of those were dismantled and put in museums. It’s a shame, really,” he noted as the searchlights wandered over a giant weapon assembly which could have only been an old-style slug rail gun, “in a lot of ways, humanity still has yet to improve on the design.”

  “It’s built out of brittle iron alloys,” Tremblay said with equal parts reverence and disdain, “and its fusion plants can only support minimal shielding—to say nothing of its lack of artificial gravity generators, which meant that any significant impact reduced the crew to gelatinous smears on the bulkheads literally before they knew what hit them.”

  “She needed a few upgrades, I’ll grant you,” Lynch allowed, “but this baby was never supposed to stand and trade with the big boys—she was designed to slip past sensor nets that were so technologically advanced they couldn’t see anything but a chunk of iron floating through space without directed scans. Then, once she got in range, she’d deliver an army of boots onto the ground which could give the machines a bad day. I sometimes wonder,” he said with uncharacteristic reverence, “just how many worlds this particular ship helped liberate…and how many humans rode it to their deaths. I suppose we’ll never know, given the lack of accurate records for the period.”

  Looking out on the massive, dark vessel—which could easily hold a hundred thousand soldiers in its counter-rotating hab sections—Tremblay found himself considering the warship’s possible history. For a brief moment, he even wondered if any of his direct ancestors had once served aboard it.

  “Given its size,” Tremblay shook himself from his ruminations as the yacht neared the end of the gargantuan craft, which was nearly as large as a bulk freighter, “it’s hard to believe anyone could miss it.”

  “Arrogance, boy,” Lynch said knowingly, his voice turning distant as he too gazed upon the massive vessel from a bygone era which humanity would prefer to have never experienced, “that’s how we got ‘em them, and it’s how we’ll get ‘em now. They always think they know what to look for,
and they always end up getting’ blindsided.”

  Tremblay looked out into the darkness as he pondered Lynch’s words. He knew that the vessel was, indeed, located in the vast vacuum which existed between the stars, but he also knew that Lynch had rather ingeniously triangulated the gravity wells of two relatively nearby neutron stars which had permitted him to effectively hide the ship at this spot for…well, for however long he had hid it there.

  “Every kid thinks his generation’s got the answers to all of life’s old problems,” Lynch continued, “which makes each generation think it’s smarter than the last. But you know, and I know, that the truth is we ain’t no different from those what got us where we are. It’s only by lookin’ back and seein’ how our ancestors dealt with their problems that we can see the path to dealin’ with our own.” Lynch sighed wistfully, and Tremblay was taken aback by the sentiment in the other man’s voice as he finished, “After all, ain’t no new problems in this ‘verse—only old ones comin’ back ‘round in their orbits to rain some pain down on us as they sail on by.”

  “Is it space worthy?” Tremblay asked after a respectful silence as the yacht slewed into docking position near one of the giant craft’s many docking rings.

  “She’ll fire right up,” Lynch assured him, “and her antimatter-fueled jump drives have longer range than anything gettin’ produced these days. But the startup will take us a little while. Meanwhile,” he gestured to the station beside Fisher’s, “you get crackin’ on that pitch for blondie. I want to see if she’ll come on board, and I want to make contact with her in twenty hours.”

  “Done,” Tremblay nodded as he slid into position beside Fisher. “I’ll have the packet for your review in an hour.”

  “Good man,” Lynch clapped him on the shoulder just as the yacht audibly made contact with the docking arm with the unique screech of duralloy grinding against iron.