“Mighty expensive,” Lynch chuckled darkly, “each of them babies costs a little over fifty million credits—and that’s before takin’ into account what we in the industry refer to as ‘logistical costs’.”
Lu Bu snorted, “You mean a smuggler’s fee.”
Lynch feigned a wounded look, “Y’all keep callin’ me things like that. ‘Smuggler,’ ‘arms dealer,’ or ‘motherless bastard.’ Keep throwin’ them words ‘round like wet pasta and you’re liable to get a noodle or two to stick to the wall by virtue of nothin’ but dumb luck,” he snickered, replacing the lid while Fisher did likewise with his own crate. “Let’s go take the bridge and purge this bird’s atmosphere so we can reassess our position.”
“Agreed,” Lu Bu nodded curtly, turning and making her way to the corridor where Traian and Mantis stood sentry at the doorway.
“Fisher’s gonna stay here and rig the backup back-up plan,” Lynch explained as he checked his twin blaster pistols, “by my count there be four more of these fools up in command. Whatever tricks and traps they got ‘tween here and there will be armed and ready to fire, so head-on probably ain’t the best approach.”
“We take detour,” Lu Bu said smartly, having gone over this contingency with Lynch at some length prior to embarking on the mission, “I take Traian through maintenance crawlspace; you take Mantis and burn through three bulkheads to reach bridge from beneath.”
“Sounds good,” Lynch nodded, holstering a pistol so he could draw a portable plasma torch, test-fire it, and replace it in his belt. “We’ll meet you in the middle.”
Lu Bu holstered Glacier Splitter and picked up a blaster pistol from the deck. After a quick appraisal, she holstered it in her belt via mag-lock and drew Walter Joneson’s refurbished knife—the same one which had slain Commodore Raubach.
Blade in hand, she met Traian’s eyes, “Let’s move.”
After nearly ten minutes of dragging herself through the cramped maintenance crawlspace, with Traian at her heels, Lu Bu finally arrived at the panel which would lead them to the bridge.
“Amateurs,” she muttered as Traian removed the control panel’s rear cover and quickly began to manipulate the switches and wires within. She had expected some measure of resistance, but during their ten minute trek from the cargo bay they had encountered nothing but a pair of decompressions, the flooding of the ship’s interior with nerve gases, and a pair of conduit overloads—one of which had scorched the left side of her helmet severely enough that she was essentially one-eyed due to her visor’s damage.
But they had made it all the way to one of the more obvious entry points they could take to the bridge, and neither of them had suffered anything resembling a serious injury.
Traian gave the ‘go’ sign, and Lu Bu gripped Walter Joneson’s knife in her right hand as she coiled her body into as much of a spring as she could in the cramped quarters. She counted down silently with her fingers, starting at five, and when she reached one she nodded her head just before slamming her forearm into the panel and sending it skittering several meters ahead onto the deck of the bridge.
She dove out with the knife in hand, quick-drawing the blaster pistol as she did so and finding herself face-to-face with what was obviously a fresh corpse.
Glancing around warily, she quickly caught sight of Lynch—who had seated himself in the captain’s chair and wore the world’s smuggest grin on his face.
“Good of you to join us,” he said with a triumphant laugh, and Lu Bu saw Mantis nod in acknowledgment of her arrival. “Looks like we’ve got a bit of a sitch,” Lynch continued, gesturing to the man lying motionless at his feet—a man whose throat was now a congealed hole of meat and blood.
Lu Bu looked at the man’s face and immediately recognized him, despite the ghastly expression which was on it: it was the same man Traian had encountered in the alleyway during his attempted meeting with Mr. Benedict.
But in what seemed like a stroke of incredible luck, Traian and the Three Stooges had managed to compile a significant amount of information on the captain of the vessel, whose name was Jasper. That information just might prove invaluable at this particular stage in the operation.
“Shiyuan,” she said into her com-link, “have Hutch bring you to bridge; we need your files on Mr. Jasper.”
“We’ll be right there,” Shiyuan acknowledged.
“You know him?” Lynch asked, his eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“We do,” Traian nodded, his head strangely cocked as he looked down at the dead man’s body. Traian briefly met Lu Bu’s eyes before saying, “I’ll go secure the engine room with Mantis.”
Before Lu Bu could ask after what had seemingly disturbed Traian, he disappeared through the doorway with Mantis close on his heels.
Chapter XXIV: Pirates, Pirates Everywhere
“Point transfer complete,” Helmsman Marcos reported after McKnight’s ship slid through the inertial sump from their latest jump through hyper space.
“What do you have, Sensors?” Lieutenant Tiberius Spalding asked. He had proven McKnight’s decision to make him her XO was a good one; where McKnight’s own strengths were in tactical thinking and actual command functions, her new XO thrived in problem-solving and innovatively dealing with seemingly insurmountable issues. Just two shifts earlier he had overseen a complete re-work of the ship’s data transfer system by installing several new buffers, a modification which would reduce data loss during sub-optimal conditions—such as combat—by nearly eighty percent without significantly impacting system performance.
“Multiple contacts, Lieutenant,” Sensors reported. “The Gate is through the sump, and I’m reading twenty two more distinct vessels spread throughout the system.”
McKnight felt her teeth clench at hearing the actual number of vessels, but she forced her tone to remain calm as she instructed, “Get me a breakdown on those ships, Tactical.”
“Aye, ma’am,” Ryan acknowledged, and the bridge’s main view screen displayed a tactical grid with the key star system features such as planets, asteroid belts, and binary stars populated first.
One by one, the twenty four ship signatures—including hers and Captain Archibald’s Heavy Cruiser—popped into being on that same display, and she scowled as the numbers came in.
“It looks like ten Cutters, eight Corvettes, two Destroyers, one Cruiser and one Bulk Freighter which is about half the size of the Halibut,” Ryan finally completed the tally.
McKnight recognized the Cruiser’s profile and narrowed her eyes, “That’s Colson’s ship.”
“It is,” Lieutenant Spalding agreed, having apparently gone to the Sensors station to verify that was the case. “But that freighter is what has me curious…”
“What’s wrong?” McKnight asked tightly.
“Something about its power signature isn’t right,” her XO explained as he punched up several different screens’ worth of information and perused them intently. “It’s got a shield grid that’s heavier than anything outside of a Battleship or Imperial Command Carrier, and it looks like its three standard fusion plants have been increased to ten.”
“What kind of weapons does it have?” she asked, wondering why someone would go to the effort of retrofitting a freighter with so much shielding when their hulls were relatively paper-thin, and their grav-plates were civilian rather than military grade. A single hard maneuver at combat speeds, or significant impact against the hull would quite possibly kill every crewmember on board, or tear the ship apart from the inside due to the torsional forces at work on the vessel’s comparatively frail hull.
“That’s the thing, Captain,” Tiberius said dubiously, “I’m not reading any. Aside from the power grid and shields, it looks like an ordinary Bulk Freighter. I’m seeing significant evidence of hull repairs,” he explained as he magnified a trio of images on the screens before him, which McKnight pulled up on her chair’s displays so she could peruse them as well, “and some of those repairs look more like modifications than
actual repairs, but other than that it looks like an ordinary freighter of its type—”
“Captain,” Fengxiao, the ship’s new Comm. officer interrupted urgently, “I have an incoming transmission from Mr. Colson.”
Grimacing at the thought of interacting with the man yet again, McKnight quickly schooled her features and nodded, “Put him on.”
The heavily-tattooed and extensively-pierced face of Mr. Colson appeared on the main viewer, and he grinned broadly as soon as his image appeared. “McKnight,” he said approvingly, “welcome to the party—we’ve got plenty of rum if you’re interested in a few cases?”
“We’re on duty, Colson,” she said neutrally. “Who is in charge here?”
Colson snorted, “Nobody’s ‘in charge’ here, Lieutenant Commander—we’re all here of our own volition because, frankly, it’s our best option.”
McKnight despised the idea of working alongside pirates-turned-mercenaries, but she no longer had any choice in the matter. With Lu Bu’s team presumably already behind enemy lines alongside Mr. Lynch, it was now her turn to associate with unsavory types in the hope of completing their mission—her mission.
“We should convene a meeting of the ship commanders,” McKnight suggested, hoping she would not encounter overly much resistance on this particular point.
“My place or yours?” Colson asked lasciviously, prompting McKnight to snort in disgust.
“Mr. Colson, if the human species depended on our conjugation, understand that I would probably consign humanity to the extinction record before debasing myself—and my forebears—by mingling with the likes of you,” she said icily.
Colson chuckled, holding up his hands in mock surrender, “Fine, fine; your place then. I’m not sure I can get all the others to show up, but we should be able to get most of them in one room. I won’t make any guarantees that they’ll behave themselves, though,” he added pointedly, “a lot of these people have grudges that aren’t likely to be settled any time soon.”
“I’m confident I can conduct a productive meeting,” McKnight said, smirking at the thought of her Tracto-an Lancers looming over the squabbling pirates. “We’ll take up position on the northern edge of the system; the meeting will begin in four hours.”
“We’ll be there,” Colson nodded before severing the link.
“Now that you’re all here, let’s get to business,” McKnight grated as the last of the ship commanders entered the lone space aboard her Destroyer that could be used as a conference room—the mess hall.
“Garak has one of these ships over in 25,” a thin, wiry-looking woman said with a disapproving look around the chamber before sniffing in apparent disgust, “but his smells better.”
The other commanders—nearly all of whom were pirates, judging by their lack of uniforms—snickered and guffawed, which served to highlight the obvious tension in the room.
“We’re here to discuss our battle plan; anyone not interested in doing that can return to the airlock,” McKnight said heavily, fixing the woman with a piercing look which her counterpart met and held.
The silent battle of wills went on for several seconds before someone on the other side of the mess hall’s main table piped in, “Is the rumor true about you?”
“You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” McKnight quipped without breaking eye contact with the rebellious woman who had done her best to derail the proceedings. “And remember that my Lancers don’t take kindly to insults directed at their commander,” she added, and she actually heard Bernice’s hand tighten around her blaster rifle’s grip.
Apparently several of the ship commanders had also heard it, because for a brief moment all attention was on the mammoth of a woman standing behind McKnight—and the recently-promoted Lieutenant Commander knew this would be her best chance to seize control of the meeting.
“If you’re referring to the events at the Cagnzyz System involving a fleet of Droid warships,” McKnight said as the other woman finally broke her gaze, “then the rumors probably are true.”
“Can’t be,” the wiry woman snorted. “Those Droids don’t work with others.”
“Some of them do,” one of the other captains said pointedly.
“Not these ones,” the wiry woman snapped, twirling her finger as though to indicate the ship around them. The woman then fixed McKnight with another look, though this one was equal parts sneer and incredulity, “Are you going to try to tell us you actually came to some sort of arrangement with them?”
“No,” McKnight said, sensing an opening she knew needed to be exploited quickly. “We tricked them,” she said simply.
“You tricked the Droids?” a baffled commander blurted from the far end of the table.
“Yes,” McKnight said simply. “I’m not going to go into details,” she said when several commanders leaned forward eagerly, “at least not until this current action is over. But the short version of events was that we were able to manipulate every Droid ship for a thousand light years into moving against the Cagnzyz System precisely when we wanted them to.”
“Creeper slime,” the wiry woman scoffed. “You’re not that smart.”
“I’m not?” McKnight asked coolly while cocking her brow with dramatic emphasis. The silence in the room hung for a few seconds, and then she sighed in resignation, “You’re right…I’m not. But neither was Captain Middleton.”
“Then why are we even here?” the wiry woman sneered as she stood from her seat. “Unless you’ve got another Droid Fleet at your beck and call, we’re done here—“
“Captain Middleton didn’t come up with the plan that saw the Cagnzyz System reduced to an expanding cloud of gas,” McKnight said loudly, “and neither did I. We did it together,” she added just as two other ship commanders began to get to their feet. “That’s why I called all of you here; there is no way in the Demon’s Pit that I’m going to be able to come up with a winning plan on my own,” she said when all eyes returned to her. “The only way we can do this is by working together.”
“You mean by making us do your dirty work,” the thin woman spat. “I know you military types; you’re only too eager to throw everyone else into the grinder while you watch from a safe distance.”
“I thought you might accuse me of that,” McKnight said, stepping toward the woman—who had thankfully stopped just a few steps short of the door, “which is why my ship will be jumping in alone in advance of the rest of the fleet.”
Eyebrows rose throughout the room, but Wiry was clearly intent on objecting to the entire affair as she too raised her voice and said, “Why isn’t Lynch here? The only reason any of us came to this forsaken system was because he asked us to.”
“I wouldn’t say Lynch asked anyone here,” one of the other captains said pointedly, causing a few snorts and heads to nod in approval in the room. “We each owe him something, and he called in his markers. The Beast is not a man with whom to f—“
“If he’s so formidable, why does he need us?” Wiry snapped. “I think this is all a trick,” she continued, looking around the table at the men gathered there, “and I, for one, am not going to listen to another word of it. I’m taking my ship and getting out of here; if Lynch thinks I owe him something, he’ll have to find me before he can try to collect.”
With that, Wiry left the room and one of the power-armored Lancers clomped after her as an escort back to the airlock.
McKnight was surprised, but far from stunned by the fact that she had already lost one member of the fleet. She turned to face the rest of the ship commanders, fixing each of them with a look in turn before saying, “If you want out, now’s the time to leave. I’ve already been down this road—as has my crew—and I know we can make this work.”
“Lynch gave us each a limited brief,” a nearby woman said, and McKnight turned to see one of the only other military officers present in the room—a strikingly beautiful, red-haired Lieutenant Commander in the Xanatos SDF, “and the truth is that we all know we�
�re up against long odds here. We’re outgunned somewhere between two to one and three to one; what have you got that could help level the field?”
“I have a plan,” McKnight said simply, knowing that a plan had been no small part of why Lynch had asked for her involvement—of course, her pair of warships had likely done nothing to discourage him from recruiting her. “Lynch shared more with me than I suspect he shared with you, but I can’t divulge any of it until I know you’re on board,” she said firmly, sweeping the room with a hard look. “Again: if you want to leave then now is the time.”
“I wouldn’t even have my command if not for Lynch,” a supremely fat man said, his jowls jiggling as he leaned forward and seemingly wheezed with every breath. “As if these Imperials didn’t do enough damage the last time they rolled in here and interfered with the Spine. My crew and I are ready to take a shot at stopping them from finishing the job they started fifty years ago.”
“Good,” McKnight said approvingly, “because that’s exactly what we’re here to do.”
“So,” the beautiful Lieutenant Commander said leadingly, “what have you got in mind?”
“First, we need to go over each ship’s tactical abilities,” McKnight said, causing several of the commanders to visibly tense as she gestured to the lone view screen in the galley, “starting with this one.”
At that, every head swiveled around to get a better look at the screen. As McKnight moved to the screen, she relaxed fractionally as she knew she had their attention.
And nearly six hours later when the meeting concluded, she knew she had a good battle plan.
Chapter XXV: Slipping In
“Are you sure this will work?” Lu Bu asked dubiously.
“We’re lucky y’all brought along the info on Jasper,” Lynch said with a shrug, “and I ain’t in the habit of turnin’ Lady Luck down—after all, she and I ain’t always been on the best of terms. After your boy Traian interrogated that prisoner down in the engine room, I think we got our facts straight enough to squeak in just beneath the wire.”
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