Lu Bu was taken off-guard by the query, but after a few seconds she shook her head, “They are old, outdated weapons.”
Lynch tisked as Fish stood up and placed a fancy-looking data slate in some kind of armored case. “’Old?’ Yes,” Lynch said as Fish gave him an affirmative nod. “But ‘outdated’? C’mon,” he said disapprovingly, “only real reason they ain’t still in use is because they ain’t accurate against evasive targets past a range of a few thousand miles—which, in naval terms, is close enough for a proper shave.”
“What use is a weapon that cannot hit its target?” Lu Bu asked archly.
“Not much,” Lynch shrugged.
“Then why ask about them?” she asked witheringly.
“I reckon you’ll find out soon enough,” the enigmatic arms dealer said with an insufferable twinkle in his eye.
Lu Bu disliked being treated like a fool, so she stepped up to the man and found herself looking up into his eyes, which sat just a few inches above her own. “I do not like you, Mr. Lynch.”
He frowned with what seemed to be genuine dismay, “That’s a shame, because I happen to think pretty highly of you. But we don’t have to like each other,” he added as his eyes hardened like only those of a hardened commander’s eyes could, “we just have to work together. And please: just ‘Lynch’.”
“We will work together, Mr. Lynch,” Lu Bu said, not backing down an inch, “but that means cooperation, not unexplained orders. Am I clear?”
Lynch’s eyes flashed dangerously, but a grin slowly spread across his features, “You the one who killed Jimmy The Third, ain’t you?”
“I did,” Lu Bu nodded shortly.
“For that, you’ve got my gratitude,” he said with a slow nod. “All right, let’s start over,” he said, gesturing to the ship around them, “we’re gatherin’ tactical information which we hope to use to overcome the Beta Site’s primary and secondary defensive array. That would include their warships,” he added apologetically when Lu Bu began to grind her teeth at what seemed like an attempt to talk over her head, “but in order to use them, I can’t risk letting anyone know the true nature of how we’ll exploit those defenses until we actually take our shot. Does that work for you?”
Lu Bu considered his words and nodded, “That is acceptable.”
“Good,” Lynch said neutrally. “We was supposed to rendezvous with y’all a few jumps from here, but what say you about movin’ up our timeline a smidge?”
“You want us to insert earlier than the original plan called for?” Lu Bu reiterated, hoping she had taken his meaning after hearing his oddly accented, strangely broken Confederation Standard.
“Oh, sorry,” he said, switching to perfectly pronounced Qin, “we can speak like this if you prefer? Yes, I want to accelerate our part of the plan.”
“Will that not alter Captain McKnight’s involvement?” she asked skeptically in Standard, more than slightly wrong-footed by his fluency in her native tongue.
“No,” he replied in Qin. “She’ll rendezvous with the rest of the fleet and jump in with her ships precisely on schedule. Due to recent developments, our part in this operation just got a little bit more complicated and it’s in everyone’s best interests if we get in there quickly.”
“What developments do you mean?” she asked, finally relenting and switching to her native Qin.
“High-grade hardware just got moved into the Beta Site—Imperial hardware,” he added pointedly. “I thought we had a few more days before they arrived, but I was wrong. That means we need to get there as soon as possible so we can fling our wooden shoes into the gears, so to speak.”
“Wooden shoes?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Sabotage, Lu,” he said tersely.
“Then just say that,” she snapped in an equally short tone.
Lynch laughed and switched back to Confederation Standard, “So what do you say? Are you ready to drop behind enemy lines with us?”
Lu Bu snorted derisively, “You are coming?”
Lynch’s lips peeled back in a savage grin, revealing teeth made of seemingly every mineral she could readily identify—along with several others she could not—which were inlaid with precious gemstones. “You kiddin’? I wouldn’t miss this for a planet-sized diamond.”
Chapter XXIII: Dropping In Unannounced
Lu Bu’s team had stood in the airlock, each wearing a form-fitted suit of Storm Drake armor with accompanying helmet for nearly an hour in relative silence before their quarry finally arrived at their current star system.
“And there they are,” Lynch declared as a blip appeared on Lu Bu’s HUD, “right on schedule.”
The HUD’s displayed imagery transformed into a representation of the local space, which was in orbit of a cold, rocky, barren planet several billion kilometers from its parent star. It was the only planet in orbit of the relatively fast-moving star, and its orbit was elliptical—which, for reasons Lu Bu could not fathom, somehow meant that the vast majority of point transfers into this particular star system would cluster around the planet itself.
And that was precisely where the new ship’s signature had appeared.
“The Mode can get us close enough for an insertion without being detected,” Lynch said confidently. “The trip should only take a few minutes from where we are.”
“Can you do it in stealth, Yide?” Lu Bu asked of the ship’s owner and pilot.
“I can,” Yide acknowledged.
“Then do it,” she instructed as she performed a visual check of her team—which stood at five members, not counting Lynch and Fisher, who would accompany them on the mission. “We will go out to the sled,” she gestured to the airlock’s outer door.
The door cycled open when Traian input the command for it to do so, and the vast, blackness of space greeted Lu Bu just as it had done every other time she had performed a spacewalk. Even the stars themselves seemed cold and uncaring to her as she led her team to the gravity sled which Lynch had provided for the occasion.
“Now the trick here,” Lynch explained as each team member took up his or her position on the broad, five meter wide board, “is to keep a firm grip; we can’t use the board’s payload protection system without risking detection by their local sensors. All the board will do is bring us close enough for a jump to that freighter’s hull.”
“Understood,” Lu Bu acknowledged as she visually inspected each of her team members’ situation on the sled. A countdown timer appeared on her HUD which showed that they had two minutes until the board would need to be detached from the Mode’s hull, and a visual representation of the intercept trajectory soon appeared above that timer.
After securing her people, Lu Bu situated herself on the edge of the board and gripped the metal bars tightly while wedging her boots into notches cut into the board’s body.
“Thirty seconds,” Yide’s voice came over the com-link, “we will go silent as soon as you detach; good luck.”
“Copy that, Yide,” Lu Bu acknowledged. “Look after yourselves.”
“Will do,” Yide said before initiating a countdown, which eventually reached, “three…two…one…detach!”
Lynch, who straddled the control hump of the sled, perfectly synchronized his de-coupling of the sled to the hull with Yide’s count, and the board seemed to drift motionlessly through the cosmos for several seconds. Lu Bu turned to see the briefest, faintest flare of the Mode’s thrusters as Yide adjusted its course, but then the sleek vessel seemed to fade away into the black backdrop of the empty space between the stars.
Up ahead, the bulbous freighter which was their first target could be seen near the horizon of the planet above them. Lu Bu heard nothing but her own breathing as the sled drifted toward its quarry, and she looked to see that her team remained composed and focused on the task before them. She was proud to ride into battle with them, and it took a supreme exertion of willpower for her to refrain from reaching to her back so she might grip Glacier Splitter’s haft in h
er hands.
She had been on the sidelines for far too long—it was time to make a difference.
The vessel ahead of them grew ever larger, and it did so with alarming speed as the sled careened toward the seemingly stationary freighter, but soon Lu Bu felt a curious force begin to exert itself against her body. It was as though she was being pulled in three separate directions, which had the effect of twisting her body in an unnatural way as her legs seemed to be pulled up from the sled, her hips were pulled toward the sled’s edge, and her torso was flattened against the sled itself.
The gee-forces grew quickly as the sled’s leading edge pulled up, taking the freighter from their view, and soon Lu Bu was gritting her teeth as the strain of remaining on the sled required genuine effort on her part. She looked across to the far side of the sled, where Hutch appeared to be fighting against similar forces, but the rest of the team seemed less affected than the occupants of the outermost spots were.
The board began to vibrate in her hands and in a motion so fast she barely even registered it happening until it had already occurred, the newest member of the team, Mantis, somehow lost her grip with the hand nearest Lu Bu.
Lu Bu’s reactions were nearly superhuman, and she snared the woman’s wrist in her grip before the smaller—but by no means small—Mantis’s body flew from the board.
The gravity forces seemed to unify for a brief moment, during which time Mantis regained her grip on the board and nodded in Lu Bu’s direction—then the gee forces returned with a vengeance, and Lu Bu clenched every muscle in her body in an effort to fight against the increasing strain against her circulatory system.
A light affixed to the front edge of the sled flashed, indicating they were about to make their jump. Due to the extreme gee-forces, Lu Bu was genuinely uncertain if she could coordinate her efforts with those of her teammates. Still, she focused on the light, which turned from red to blue as she finally managed to gather her wits about her amid the crushing, twisting forces which threatened to tear her body in half.
When the light turned from blue to green, the gravity forces disappeared entirely and the lead edge of the sled dipped forward to reveal the hull of the freighter—which was no more than ten meters away!
Their sled continued its tumble, just as Lynch had said it would, and Lu Bu pushed off from the sled’s surface as soon as it became parallel to the hull of the ship above them.
The rest of the team did likewise, and before she realized she had landed against the metal hull of the freighter she found her arm hooked around a nearby strut of some kind. She saw the grav sled tumble end-over-end past the ship as it drifted away from the vessel and began its slow descent toward the system primary.
Lu Bus’ eyes snapped around quickly and found that Mantis’s boots had secured themselves to the hull of the ship, while Traian, Shiyuan, Lynch and Fisher also appeared to have touched down safely.
But Hutch was nowhere to be seen, and for an instant Lu Bu became panicked. Then she saw him tumbling down the hull toward the craft’s stern, and she gathered her feet beneath her before setting off as fast as she could run toward him while drawing Glacier Splitter from her back and looping a thin tether around its butt.
She activated her com-link and yelled, “Hutch, catch!” She then activated the smashball generators and threw the heavy weapon toward him. She only hoped he was conscious and could hear her as his body skidded dangerously near to the stern of the ship.
But he seemed aware of the incoming hammer, and the thin line of wire connected to both the hammer and to Lu Bu’s belt unspooled as the weapon sailed through the space between them. Just as it reached Hutch, his body tumbled off the stern of the ship—but he managed to grab its haft as Lu Bu planted her feet. She knew the tether would not survive excessive recoil, but she also knew that all she needed to do was slow his momentum—the hammer should let him do the rest.
The line tugged briefly against her belt and, predictably, snapped somewhere between where she stood and where Hutch now floated away from the ship. His body ceased its wayward motion, and using a series of slow, chopping motions with the gravity-driven warhammer, Hutch managed to ‘swim’ the last several meters to the hull of the freighter by powering the warhammer’s gravity generators in rhythm with the movements of his body.
The hammer struck the hull of the ship and Hutch reached out to grab a nearby lip of metal. He dragged himself back onto the hull and it was soon clear why he had failed to land alongside the rest of the team—his left boot had been severely damaged, which meant that its magnets would no longer function well enough to secure him to the ship. But his right boot seemed fine, and by using it and the hammer—like some sort of a reverse crutch, which actually held his body down rather than prop it up—he reached Lu Bu quickly.
She used hand signals to tell him he should keep the hammer until they were inside, and when she turned to face the rest of the team she saw that they were huddled near a garbage chute.
Shiyuan—who, unlike the rest of the team, wore a more traditional vacuum suit with bubble helmet—knelt beside the chute and was busying himself with unlocking the outer door electronically.
For a moment, Lu Bu remembered when Kongming had done likewise and she allowed herself a brief respite of nostalgia as she sought to calm her heart and breathing—both of which filled her suit with more noise than she cared for in what was supposed to be a stealthy operation.
Lynch—who wore a form-fitting suit of synthetic, rubbery material that she had never seen before—stood beside Shiyuan while Fisher appeared to be somehow helping the technician to open the door.
After a few minutes of combined effort, they succeeded in opening the door and Lynch immediately dropped himself headfirst into the chute, which was only large enough for a person to crawl through. Fisher soon followed, and Lu Bu then gestured for Shiyuan to do likewise. Mantis followed, then Hutch, then Traian, and finally after each of her team members had entered the narrow passage, Lu Bu herself entered.
The chute was short—no more than ten meters from end to end—and soon Lu Bu felt the ship’s internal gravity pull her body to one side of the cylindrical passageway. Shortly after that, she arrived to a chamber which could only have been the waste repository for the vessel.
She was grateful for her suit’s self-contained breathing gases as she looked at the various pieces of decaying organic material—much of it rotting food—mixed with puddles and piles of industrial waste products like spent grease or metal shavings.
Most military vessels, or even larger civilian craft, recycled all of their refuse products aboard the ship so as to maximize available materials, but smaller merchant vessels typically eschewed this practice for economic reasons. Generally these ships would dump their refuse into gas giants along their routes which were informally designated as waste disposal zones, and while the practice was generally frowned upon there was little that could be done about it unless a ship’s crew was caught in the act of doing so.
Activating her suit’s external vox, Lu Bu said, “Sound off.”
One by one, her team reported in as Fisher moved to the emergency entry hatch built into the far bulkhead. Lynch followed his operative, and Shiyuan did likewise as Lu Bu’s people spread as far out as they could reasonably do in the cramped quarters of what was essentially a giant dumpster.
A vent opened nearby and a short-lived geyser of viscous, orange fluid spurted dangerously near to Lu Bu’s arm, but thankfully it did not make contact with her as she stepped out of the way and looked around for other possible sources of refuse.
Hutch handed her Glacier Splitter, and when she accepted it she felt a soothing feeling come over her as she gripped its now-familiar haft in her hands. She ran a quick check of the weapon and found it was undamaged and fully operational, and after untying the cord from the weapon’s butt she made her way to the lone hatch which led to the ship’s interior through which they could pass.
The door slid open not long after she to
ok up a position opposite Lynch, and she performed a quick visual check of the adjoining maintenance passageway. The lighting was minimal and the compartment was barely wide enough for a person to move down without turning sideways, but she knew from Lynch’s briefing diagrams that they needed to take the right-hand path.
She led the way down the path as the team filed behind her, and they quickly came to the pressure door which would lead to the ship’s engine compartment.
The ship had a crew manifest of twelve, and Lynch’s information suggested there were another eight security personnel aboard. The engines required no fewer than two on-duty personnel at all times, so Lu Bu choked up her grip on Glacier Splitter with her left hand as she drew a high-powered sonic pistol in her right. Shiyuan squeezed beside her and attached a customized data slate to the door’s control panel. After only a few seconds he gave her the ‘go’ sign, and pointed to the flashing icon in the middle of the slate’s screen before squeezing his way to the back of the line.
She looked back and saw that her team was ready to enter the compartment with her, and after making a countdown gestured by bobbing her head and angling her right forearm, she touched the ‘open’ button Shiyuan had indicated with the barrel of her sonic pistol.
As soon as the door swung open, she moved through and quickly caught sight of an engineering worker just a few meters away—and she saw his eyes go wide in surprise as he drew a breath in alarm.
Before he could cry for help, she fired a max-power sonic wave from her pistol. The wave struck him squarely in the chest, knocking the air he had just inhaled completely out of his lungs and sending him reeling into a nearby coolant tank. She surged forward as he began to collapse and Lu Bu managed to place the emitter of her pistol to the side of his head before he could make a sound.
Hutch followed her into the compartment and quickly moved behind the bank of coolant tanks where she now knelt, and Traian took up position just beyond where Lu Bu knelt.
McKnight's Mission Page 29
