McKnight's Mission

by Caleb Wachter

  “But MAN is different?” Shiyuan, the potato-faced technician piped in, a look of realization spreading across his face. “Data corruption became a higher concern than overlapping backup data within the separate modules, so…” his face went white as he looked nervously toward the Core Fragment, “so this is the only Core Fragment which contains its particular set of information?”

  “You got it,” Lynch nodded. “Since confining the data to a single unit creates a juicy target for its enemies to aim for, MAN came up with a flat-out brilliant defense mechanism—again, I ain’t gonna bore you with the details but this thing’s shell,” he tapped the surface of the bronze, mirror-finished sphere, “is nearly as tough as neutronium and contains more failsafe mechanisms inside it than even I know about. Droppin’ it in a star, black hole, or gas giant would just end up launching it across the cosmos, and pretty much every other method of penetrating the shell has proven as useless as trying to cut through duralloy with a wet egg noodle.”

  The two Tracto-ans seemed considerably less fanatical about hearing they presently stood in the presence of their cultural god’s arch-nemesis. They fixed the sphere with narrowed eyes, but none of the fanatical Tracto-an zeal she had seen—or heard of—seemed present. McKnight herself knew precious little about the AI Wars other than to know that they were fought between two large factions of AI’s, and that humanity had played a crucial role in freeing itself from the synthetic oppression of both.

  “Now, keepin’ all that in mind,” Lynch continued blithely, “y’all might have heard there’s a group out there that calls itself the ‘Empire of Man’ or the like. Do I need to connect the dots for anyone as to which side of this AI conflict they come down on, or can we save ourselves some time by skippin’ that part?”

  Silence hung in the room, prompting Lynch to nod and inhale before he was interrupted by McKnight’s XO.

  “Who conducted the destruction tests on the shell?” Tiberius asked, and McKnight nodded her approval of the question. She was as interested in hearing the proposal as she was in learning the Core Fragment’s nature.

  “That’d be the late Alice Schillinger of House Schillinger—with a little help from yours truly, of course,” Lynch replied promptly. “Trust me, we put more wattage on that thing in more forms than you and your best people could come up with in the next twenty years,” he added bitterly. “There ain’t nothin’ been made by humans—or by nature—that can penetrate that shell.”

  “How many of these MAN Core Fragments are there?” McKnight asked.

  “Could be as few as three, could be as many as six,” Lynch shrugged. “I’m bankin’ on the number bein’ four, but that’s just the result of nearly a century’s gathering and examination of evidence; the truth is that nobody knows. All we know for sure is that each one represents a catastrophic failure point for any effort to recombine Archie with his counterparts—and that’s all that matters to me.”

  “The Empire of Man seeks to resurrect their god,” the blond Tracto-an mused, his voice deep and rich enough to cause McKnight to double-take on him as he spoke.

  “You’re smarter than you look,” Lynch quipped with a nod. “That’s right. Jimmy—that’d be Senator Raubach to y’all—thought he’d build a key and use it to pop Archie’s shell open so he could parade him back to the Imperial Capitol to score points against the other Houses. A move like successfully recovering a Core Fragment would be enough to push his family more than a few rungs up the social ladder, which is all people like him ultimately care about.”

  “How did you know Senator Raubach?” Lu Bu asked.

  Lynch hesitated, looking around the room silently for a few seconds before sighing and giving Fisher a somewhat apologetic look. “I’ve only told one other person the answer to that question since comin’ to live in the Spineward Sectors…so I hope y’all can understand what it means that I’m about to put it out in the open like this,” he said heavily, shaking his head in what seemed like disbelief. “I…me and Jimmy shared a grandfather—a grandfather whose family name was Raubach, and who basically built House Raubach from the ground up by winning a Senatorial seat and usin’ it to build the family’s influence up to one of the top couple dozen Great Houses in the Empire.”

  “You are a Raubach?” Lu Bu scoffed, expressing a sentiment which McKnight was confident her fellow MSP crew shared.

  “Not a Raubach,” he retorted with a savage sneer, “now that Jimmy Two, Jimmy Three and Jimmy Four are out of the picture…I’m the Raubach. Even with them in the picture I had a winning claim to House primacy—which is why they tried to rub me out, and almost succeeded in doin’ so seventy years ago. I barely survived the proverbial knife in the back, and went underground as soon as I convinced them they’d succeeded in removin’ me from the picture. Since then I’ve been layin’ low, buildin’ up my resources and waitin’ for the right time to take my shot at them. Well,” he said, a devilish grin spreading across his lips, “I just took it. But I ain’t done there—not by a damned sight.”

  “How did your lineage grant you primacy?” the white-bearded Tracto-an asked, and McKnight saw that his eyes were alight with a hunter’s gleam as Lynch described his personal history.

  “My father, Jameson, was the rightful heir to House Raubach,” Lynch explained. “He married a woman from House Schillinger and they had three children together. Any one of them would have been fit to take the reins of the House, but Jameson wasn’t about to leave his legacy—and the legacy of his father, James—in the hands of fate, so he hatched the plan that brought me into the picture. See,” he continued, his voice hardening, “I’m tank-born. I ain’t got a mother; I’m not precisely a clone of Jameson, but he only included enough outside genetic material to qualify me as a sovereign individual under Imperial law. About 93% of me was copied straight outta my father’s genome, while the rest was selected from various sources which would validate my standing as a scion of House Raubach in the eyes of the Imperium. My role was simple: to act as a secret failsafe. He gave me a small fortune and told me that if everything went well, I could live my life however I saw fit. But if someone came after him and his line, he made me promise him that I’d take the reins of House Raubach—and that I’d punish whoever killed him and his real kids.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re very fond of your father,” Tiberius mused, and McKnight did not fail to recognize the potentially common ground her XO shared with the man they had come to know as Lynch.

  “He saw me as nothin’ more than a backup plan—one that needed to remain secret ‘til him and his real kids got axed,” Lynch spat angrily. “Just how chummy do you think I should have been with a guy who made me in a secret lab and then tucked me in a hole for safekeeping on the off-chance I might be useful later?”

  “What was your connection to Alice Schillinger?” McKnight asked.

  “She and I was…well, for lack of a better term, we were betrothed,” he said neutrally. “It was another secret deal my father made with House Schillinger: in addition to marrying into that family and mergin’ several of their interests, he negotiated for a conditional marriage between her and me since all claims of nobility are bolstered by marriage to an established noble House. The standing of the established House isn’t all that important,” he explained, “only the fact that they’re recognized nobility under Imperial law comes to bear during an assessment of noble patents—patents I would need to fully assume leadership of House Raubach.”

  “Yet another win for the parliamentary system of government,” Tiberius scowled.

  “Every system of human government’s got its good and bad points, son,” Lynch said unyieldingly. “Don’t ever mistake a beneficial tradeoff for a straight-up improvement—ain’t no free lunch in this ‘verse. But the nobility system’s warts are, I think we can agree, more obvious and conducive to abuse than most others.”

  “Did you ever consummate the marriage?” Shiyuan asked, prompting every set of eyes in the room to turn to him wi
theringly. He visibly shrank as the weight of the room’s gaze pressed down on him, and McKnight saw Lu Bu smirk at his side in open amusement at his plight.

  “That’s an awfully personal question,” Lynch chided with a lopsided grin. “But no, we never got the chance. So the marriage was never formally recognized as binding under Imperial law—I assume that’s the real question you wanted to ask. Which brings me to a question you asked me a few weeks back,” he said, turning to face McKnight and prompting the rest of the group to do likewise. “You once asked me what my aim was in all this, and now I’m ready to answer that question with one word: deicide.”

  Silence hung over the room as McKnight processed what he meant by his cryptic answer. As she slowly came to realize the scope of what he was proposing, she found her eyes narrowing in silent contemplation.

  “You heard me right,” he said, turning to sweep the group with his diamond-hard gaze, “I aim to crack Archie over there open, and after I do that I aim to kill him usin’ the only thing in this ‘verse that I know can do the job. But to do that I’m gonna need a team that can work under pressure without crackin’. I ain’t gonna lie; if my people hadn’t been taken out by Jimmy’s operatives, we wouldn’t be havin’ this little chat and I’d already be on my way to the fight that’s waitin’ for me on the other side of the galaxy. But I’ve got several openings in my organization at the moment, and I think y’all could fill those openings—along with anyone else you think might be interested in comin’ along.”

  “You will be leaving the Spineward Sectors?” the spud-faced Jarrett asked with unmitigated excitement.

  “I will,” Lynch nodded.

  “And you mean to slay a data god?” the blond Tracto-an asked.

  “I do,” the Raubach prince agreed with relish.

  “What are your plans for House Raubach once you regain control over it?” McKnight asked, her thoughts finally coalescing into a meaningful inquiry.

  “Good question,” Lynch said approvingly, “I mean it when I say that this patch of the galaxy is my home now. What I plan to do, which may end up different than what I’m forced to do, is refocus House Raubach’s energies on supporting the development of places like the old Confederation. But it’s a big galaxy and I’ve been out of the loop for a while; there might be places that need more help than here. Still, my current plan is to bring my House to heel and start sending Imperial tech and gear out into the Spineward Sectors in order to help develop this particular patch of humanity.”

  “That seems awfully benevolent of you,” Tiberius quipped. “What’s the catch?”

  “Like it or not, son, you happen to have grown up in one of this galaxy’s slums,” Lynch retorted evenly. “But it happens to be a slum that I’ve come to like, and I want to see it get developed a touch—running water, basic medical, food to eat, etc..” he added snidely. “Call me a generous philanthropist or a self-serving capitalist; it’s all the same as far as I can tell. I like it here and intend to set up shop full-time. Of course, as I said, things could change ‘tween now and go-time but that’s my current plan.”

  “And you will likely be less than welcome in the Empire if you succeed in killing their god,” the white-bearded Tracto-an observed diplomatically.

  “True enough,” Lynch shrugged. “But we’ll burn that bridge after we’ve crossed it. The only thing I know for sure is that I ain’t gonna plug into the Imperial system like old Jimmy boy did. I want out, period, and this is how I’m gonna make that happen.”

  “Why kill their god?” the blond Tracto-an asked bluntly. “Why leave here at all if you only intend to return?”

  “I’m leavin’ because it’s what I promised my father I’d do,” Lynch replied. “I promised him I’d set the House straight and get rid of the people who wronged his family, and I don’t back out of a promise. As to why I’m gonna kill their god…” he cast a baleful look at the ominous, floating Core Fragment, “that bit I’m doin’ for me. The reason Jimmy’s clan tried to kill me is because under Man’s dogma I ain’t genetically pure enough to be a proper House scion. The fact that I was born in a tank—and am, quite literally, a motherless bastard—means I’m in some way subhuman by their way of thinkin’. As far as I can tell, that’s a bunch of nonsense that stems from their blind worship of that thing,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder to the Core Fragment. “So if I kill it then I kill that particular brand of fanatical stupidity, which is a win in my book.”

  “Bigotry is part of human nature,” Jarrett said doubtfully.

  “Of course it is,” Lynch allowed, “but bringin’ people face to face with why they’re bigoted is the first step to solvin’ the problematic aspects of bigotry. When monkeys point at the sky and say ‘it was divine will,’ that’s pretty much the end of the conversation.” He cast another chilling look at the spherical Core Fragment, prompting most of the cabin’s occupants to do likewise and wait silently for him to continue, which he did after turning his back pointedly on the Fragment. “A wise man once said ‘fundamentalism is only a problem if the fundamentals are a problem,’ and as far as I’m concerned there ain’t nothin’ more problematic than a cult that wants to resurrect a being that would set us all marchin’ to a cost/benefit ratio,” he said with fiery determination. “I’m no fool; religion’s got its place in human society, but that thing,” he jabbed a finger toward the giant orb, “is just too dangerous to humanity for me to leave it alone. And it’s caused me enough personal suffering that I’ve committed to this plan. The question is whether or not y’all want to come along for the ride.”

  “We’re going to forget this meeting after its conclusion,” Tiberius said skeptically, but McKnight heard a note of genuine interest beneath the façade of doubt. “How are we supposed to pitch this to those who might want to accompany us—or, rather, who might want to accompany you?”

  “You can tell them it’s a deep cover mission that will take us outta this part of space for several years,” Lynch replied. “You can tell them that we’ll be goin’ to raise a ruckus in the Empire, that we’ll finish the job we started on Jimmy’s Raubachs, and that if we succeed we’ll be makin’ the Spineward Sectors a whole lot safer in the process. But it’s got to be vague,” he said when Tiberius looked ready to object, “at least until they come aboard this ship. Once they get here, they’ll receive the same treatment and choice y’all are bein’ given right now. If they choose to go, they come with us and we go completely dark—that means no contact with family, loved ones, or anything else from this part of space for at least two years. If they choose to stay, there’ll be no hard feelings and they can leave with my gratitude and a few hours’ gap in their memories. But we’ve got to do this now—we’re leavin’ this system in twelve hours, and when we’re gone you won’t see us ‘round here again for a long time. I suggest y’all take a break to think it over. McKnight,” he beckoned for her to approach, signaling that the meeting was apparently over, “let’s have a talk.”

  She exchanged glances with her XO—who seemed predictably preoccupied, presumably because he was contemplating Lynch’s offer—before crossing the deck and following Lynch toward the craft’s cockpit. She gestured for Lu Bu to follow, and the powerfully-built woman silently complied.

  “Ok,” Lynch said after reaching the cockpit and producing a data crystal from a pocket, “here’s my end of our previous agreement.” He flipped the crystal to her, and she trapped it against her chest before giving it a cursory glance before tucking it into her own pocket. “That’s got all the contact information, passphrases, and a list of resources I’ve scattered through the Spine to help take the heat off people who’ve agreed to be my informants.”

  “What kind of resources are we talking about?” McKnight asked, glad that the black marketeer-turned-Imperial-noble had apparently kept to his end of their bargain.

  “Mostly fake ID’s, hard currency or other liquid wealth, and access passkeys for hundreds of safe houses throughout the Spine,” he replied dism
issively. “All the stuff the operatives need to get out of trouble if they step in it. The contact information for those captains out there—along with some details they’d rather keep secret—along with the info on a few others that didn’t make it to this party is on that list as well. They’ve agreed to participate in one major stand for your Little Admiral in exchange for his lookin’ the other way on the past transgressions listed there,” he explained.

  “How many ships are we talking about in total?” McKnight pressed.

  “That’s hard to say, but the list has six Cutters, three Corvettes, three Destroyers and a Cruiser,” he shrugged. “Beyond that, I might have put in the good word with a few Star Systems whose best interests likely align with the MSP’s; they’ll be in touch with your Admiral soon enough. Now, onto new bidness,” he said, seating himself in the cockpit and gesturing for McKnight and Lu Bu to do likewise. “It should be obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: you both did great work back there. That trick with the combined shield grid was an especially nice touch,” he said approvingly. “I’d like to continue our association, and I’m willin’ to make an offer you ain’t likely to refuse in an effort to secure that association.”

  “Why do you need us?” Lu Bu asked archly. “You already used us for your ‘shot’.”

  “I know talent when I see it,” he said evenly as he produced a data slate and handed it to McKnight. “I’m offerin’ a whole host of technical specifications on the Imperial Fleet that’s already stirrin’ up trouble in your Admiral’s neck of the woods, along with a freighter full of hardware to help the cause. I’ve also got about five hundred of those slave-rigged fighters the MSP’s welcome to—if you think your Admiral might find a way to deploy ‘em.”