“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.”
“I do not like this change in plan,” she said sourly, knowing that Lynch was probably right about the situation as it now stood.
“Ain’t a plan been made that survives contact with a worthy foe,” Lynch shrugged. “One could summarize life itself with three little words: adapt or die.”
“Can you pilot this ship, Traian?” Lu Bu asked as her second-in-command came to stand near the two.
“I can,” Traian nodded confidently. “The only question is how I’m going to get back into the fight after I leave the system.”
“Leave that to me,” Lynch said dismissively. “We’ll be behind their lines for two days before the fleet rolls in; you’ll have plenty of time to hook up with my people at the staging point—if you can calculate a void jump.”
“I can’t calculate a void jump,” Traian said, which was no surprise to Lu Bu—she understood that very few people could calculate void jumps, even with relatively small vessels like the freighter they were on.
“Then you’ll be hikin’ home,” Lynch shrugged. “Unless you’ve got a ship nearby that’s got ComStat access and can come collect you, looks like you’ll be sitting this one out.”
There was something in Lynch’s voice that suggested he knew that the Mode was, in fact, waiting out there to provide emergency backup should the team need it. But Lu Bu knew that being suspicious of allies while on a mission was dangerous, so she pushed the thought from her mind.
“We have two jumps until we reach rendezvous,” Lu Bu said. “We should prepare.”
Traian nodded, “Let’s get down to the hold and modify the container.”
“That’ll do it,” Fisher declared after nearly five hours of work on the relatively small crate.
“There’s barely enough room for us to cram inside,” Hutch observed with obvious chagrin.
“We’ll make do,” Lynch said confidently. “The space ain’t our biggest concern, though; that’d be heat loss. If they don’t pick us up in less than six hours, we’ll start turnin’ into popsicles.”
“And if we managed to survive the cold, our suits will run out of air in nine hours,” Shiyuan said with a sigh. “So this is what a secret agent’s life is like?”
Lu Bu chuckled as she wiped sweat from her brow. “We will succeed; this is not as difficult as spacewalk.”
“True that,” Lynch nodded knowingly as he ran his fingers over a fresh weld. “And at least everybody that squeezes into the box is reasonably attractive—‘cept me, of course.”
“We’re still going to need to convince the Raubach operatives not to board the ship, kill us all, and take the cargo for themselves,” Traian said pointedly. “If the former captain was to be believed, there’s still an outstanding bill he was looking to collect; what’s to keep the Raubachs from taking him out and erasing the debt?”
“Because even as slimy as them Raubachs are,” Lynch scowled, “they know somewhere in their snake brains that a House is only as good as its word. Double-crossin’ a provincial supplier is risky bidness; it’s cheaper in the long run to just pay up.”
“Then why did they delay payment?” Lu Bu asked.
“Probably because they needed this gear to make the other gear worth more than a pile of bricks, and they didn’t want to be bent over the barrel price-wise,” Lynch explained. “With unsavory types like Jasper, honesty ain’t exactly a given—more often than not, his type sees an agreement as nuthin’ but a floor for further negotiation. That ain’t how House Raubach does bidness, so they’re playin’ a little game of cat-and-mouse. Since the gear they’re buyin’ here is high-end, expensive, and in quantities that only a few organizations could make use of, they likely felt like they was in the driver’s seat when it came to payment schedules.”
“Even if that’s true,” Traian mused, “I’ll still need to sell them on the reason why I’m showing up instead of Jasper.”
Lynch shrugged, “That’s the easy part; you just make sure they understand you’re in charge of Jasper’s crew after a management dispute. You can probably work out the theatrical details on your own,” he said with a grin.
“It’s not exactly rocket surgery,” Traian allowed.
“Good,” Lynch turned to Lu Bu, “so let’s make them jumps and squeeze into the box.”
“Who is this?” the Rim Fleet officer on the other end of the line demanded as Traian did his best to not fidget in the freighter’s command chair. “Where’s Jasper?”
“My name’s Torre,” Traian said, following a script he had completed a few hours earlier with the help of his teammates. “Jasper’s out of the picture; you’re dealing with me now.”
“You’re not listed on the mission brief,” the officer said after a quick check of something off-pickup. “Heave to and prepare to be boarded on suspicion of piracy.”
“Piracy?” Traian snorted in genuine derision. “That’s rich, coming from you lot.”
“What did you say?” the officer asked dangerously.
“By my way of thinking, your outfit’s been responsible for more naval piracy in the last two years than every other offender put together in the previous decade,” Traian snapped. “That’s some nerve you’ve got there calling me a pirate.”
“Arm the forward batteries,” the officer turned and said to someone off-pickup. He then turned to face Traian with the smug, self-assured look that Traian had come to recognize as belonging to a lifelong, unchallenged bureaucrat, “Now heave to and prepare for inspection teams, or I’ll have my gunners lance you out of there like pus from a boil.”
“Your cheeky tongue aside,” Traian said dismissively, reaching beside the command chair to collect the prime piece of ‘theatrical detail,’ as Lynch had put it, “I’ve got a schedule to keep. So unless you want to tell your boss that you were responsible for all three thousand badly-needed items he ordered being destroyed when I overloaded my fusion reactor, I suggest you transfer the payment—all of it, including for the previous shipment—in the agreed-upon fashion before I turn this ship and its cargo into my very own funeral pyre.”
“You’re bluffing,” the officer narrowed his eyes.
“Buddy, even two weeks ago you’d have probably been right,” Traian said gravely, leaning forward and producing Jasper’s severed head which he held beside his own in what he hoped would be a sufficiently macabre display to regain control of the conversation. “But ever since I learned I won’t live long enough to see my daughter’s fifth birthday due to Sarkeesian Syndrome, I’ve decided the most important thing is providing for her future. If I don’t collect and send that money on to her, I might as well die right here, right now.”
The officer looked back and forth between Traian and Jasper’s head for several seconds. “Can you prove that you’re a part of Jasper’s organization?”
“Can you prove you’re not actually pirates operating on the sly for the Imperials?” Traian retorted, tossing Jasper’s head aside casually. “Pay me what you owe and I’ll hand over your merchandise. If you want to blow me out of the void afterward, be my guest.”
The Rim Fleet officer’s expression turned sour after a short-lived silence, “Drop your cargo and make for the hyper limit.”
“Not until you’ve paid me,” Traian growled.
“You’re not exactly in a position to make demands,” the officer sneered. “Consider yourself lucky I’m not sending my Marines over there—dump the cargo and get out of here. I’m not authorized to release payment to anyone but a representative of Mr. Jasper.”
“Jasper’s bank account—the one you failed to deposit into just a
few weeks ago—is C7305-DY-3-HHA-992,” Traian said severely. “Access number 0-0-1-D-0. Would I have that information if I wasn’t part of his crew?”
“If you were on his crew, why did you betray him?” the officer pressed.
“Because he didn’t cash me out like I asked him to do,” Traian said unflinchingly. “I’ve been what you’d call a ‘silent partner’ of his operation for years; after learning of my illness I told him I’d accept a buyout at 40% my stake’s value if he cashed me out in three months. The highest he agreed to go was 10%, so I killed him. I’ve done the math; when you pay me what you owe me, I’ll have gotten my entire stake back and it’ll be effectively tax-free.”
The officer’s reluctance persisted, but after a few moments he shook his head in resignation, “We’ll transfer the money now. It will hit Jasper’s account before our shuttles arrive to retrieve your cargo.”
“Assuming that goes through, I’ll drop the cargo,” Traian nodded, leaning back in his chair. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”
Without reply, the officer severed the connection and Traian activated the ship’s intercom and piped himself into the cargo bay.
“Have Shiyuan verify via the ComStat network that Jasper’s account receives the deposit,” Traian said, “then I’m going to have to drop you guys off.”
“Understood,” Lu replied. “Good work, Traian.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he acknowledged, though he felt as though he was letting his teammates down by not accompanying them in the crate.
However, it was also true that he didn’t exactly envy them the trip in said crate.
Lu Bu could barely breathe inside the cramped space, where she found herself wedged tightly between Hutch and Mantis—and thankfully about as far from Lynch as she could be, given the geometry of the tube-shaped crate.
Each team member—herself, Lynch, Hutch, Mantis, Fisher and Shiyuan—wore his or her vacuum gear and breathed independently of the others. Only Lynch had brought a pair of weapons—his blaster pistols—while the rest of the team had been forced to discard all but a single weapon of their own in order to fit into the cramped quarters.
“Snug as a bug,” Lynch snickered, his voice transmitted through his helmet’s external speaker. They had disabled their com-links to avoid detection by the enemy, who they hoped would see their crate as just one of nearly five hundred such containers bearing the precious cargo which the Raubachs had deemed important enough to risk exposing their precious Beta Site to acquire.
“This is not comfortable,” Shiyuan squeaked from beyond Lynch. The diminutive man’s body was contorted in a clearly painful fashion, but he had assured the team that he could—and had—slept in worse contortions during seventy hour gaming binges.
“We should be silent to conserve air,” Lu Bu chided.
“Y’all know that’s a myth, right?” Lynch said bemusedly. “Ain’t no more oxygen gets used up passin’ vibrating vocal cords compared to air passin’ resting ones.”
Before Lu Bu could argue, the crate shifted beneath them suddenly and then the odd sensation of confined weightlessness overcame her. It was the most curious feeling she had experienced in her short career as a Lancer; her insides—including her inner ear—seemed to tumble and roil within her, but her extremities were firmly restricted from moving in any way.
“And we’re off,” Lynch said eagerly, but to Lu Bu it seemed as if there was a note of something else in his tone…something akin to resignation, but somehow less defeated.
“With all the time you had to plan this,” Mantis said, in an uncharacteristic display of interjection, “this was the best entry you could devise?”
Hutch chuckled, as did Fish while Lynch rebutted, “This ain’t Plan A, B, C, D, or E—this is all improvised at the last minute, people. Do you think my original plan would have had me ridin’ along for this part?”
“Be quiet,” Lu Bu snapped, irrationally afraid that they might somehow be detected within the crate—which she knew was now floating in the void of space and awaiting pickup by the Raubach vessel.
“That’s probably wise,” Lynch agreed, and the team lay in cramped silence for the next few hours as the heat slowly bled into the dark of space.
Not long after the crate clanged from impact with something metallic, gravity returned to Lu Bu’s body and her heart began to quicken in anticipation of what was to come.
Everyone knew their assignments, and everyone’s attention was now on Mantis since she was the only one who could see outside of the crate by sliding a small plate of metal away from a two inch wide hole they had cleverly concealed in the crate’s end.
The crate moved, jostled, thunked and shook as it was presumably moved deeper within the vessel which had collected it, and Lu Bu felt her fingers tighten around Glacier Splitter’s haft in nervous anxiety.
After nearly five minutes of shaking, rattling, and rolling, the crate finally came to a stop and Lu Bu turned up her suit’s audio pickup sensitivity when she heard conversation just beyond the crate.
“Let’s go get the rest,” one man said.
“And after that, let’s go see about those petties down in Environmental,” the second agreed conspiratorially.
“I get the tall one,” the first insisted as their voices became distant.
“Creeper dung—you don’t even reach her collarbones!” the second blurted.
“I’ve yet to receive a height-based complaint…” the first trailed off as the sound of a heavy pressure door sliding shut thankfully drowned out their conversation.
Mantis flashed a red light affixed to the crate’s interior three times, signaling that the way was clear as far as she could see.
A quick check of her suit’s breath gas status showed that the team had four hours before their air supplies would fail, which was great news. It meant they could transfer from the ship in stealth if they preserved their remaining capacity by breathing the ship’s air rather than their individual suits’, so she tapped the inside of the crate with Glacier Splitter to signal that they should exit.
The lid popped up as Lynch and Hutch manually released the clamps which had secured the lid from the inside, and Mantis popped up with incredible grace as she brought her long rifle up and swept the cargo compartment with it. She completed her visual sweep in just three seconds, after which she leapt down from the crate to the deck below.
The rest of the team followed suit, and Lu Bu looked around to see that the dimensions of the cargo bay were surprisingly familiar—they appeared to be within a Hammerhead cruiser like the Pride of Prometheus! Hutch closed the lid and struck the hidden activation switch which saw a brief flash of light as the lid tack-welded itself shut. The weld was strong enough to resist a cursory attempt to open it, but a serious attempt with a pry bar would break the short bead of cooling metal.
Lynch quickly began flashing hand signals—Lancer hand signals which Lu Bu was shocked to see that he somehow knew—which suggested they should proceed to a maintenance crawlspace in the rear of the compartment.
Knowing that time was precious, Lu Bu grudgingly confirmed the order and the team quickly made its way to the rear of the compartment. No sooner hand they squeezed through the tightly packed crates and reached the rear of the compartment—a compartment that was almost completely stuffed full of crates that had previously been stacked inside the freighter’s cargo compartment—than the doors swished open and a pair of Rim Fleet crew entered with a hover cart between them.
“I’m telling you, Ross; you’ll have better luck with the brunette,” the second crewman said, a note of desperation in his voice as they brought the last stack of crates into the compartment and set them down on the deck.
“You mean you’ll have better luck with the blonde,” the first crewman, Ross, retorted triumphantly. “Sorry, Pearson; the die is cast.”
“You’re a prick, you know that?” Pearson grumbled as they spun the hover-cart around and exited into the corridor. The
door quickly slid shut and the lights inside the compartment went out almost as soon as the pair of crewmen had exited.
Working in the dark was no great issue for the team, who each had his or her own set of lightless vision gear built into his or her respective helmet. A few seconds of tinkering with the maintenance hatch’s control panel was all it took for Shiyuan to pop the hatch open, through which the team quickly filed into the crawlspace—which, while still barely more than two feet across, seemed infinitely more hospitable than the cargo crate had been.
After the team piled into the compartment, Lu Bu secured the hatch behind them and heard Lynch whisper, “We’re gonna need to wait for the ship to jump three times; after that, we’ll have to get back into the crate.”
“Understood,” Lu Bu replied in kind. They had been fortunate to get aboard the warships as quickly as they had, and wishing to make good use of that luck she reminded her teammates, “Switch to filtered external air. Repeat: keep your filters on.” The last thing she wanted at this point was for the team to be incapacitated by an intruder countermeasure as simplistic as sleeping gas.
“Good call,” Lynch said approvingly. “Now I suggest y’all get some shut-eye; nobody knows better than you people how long a Hydra takes to cycle her jump engines.”
“We call them ‘Hammerheads’,” Lu Bu reminded him coyly, and she was glad to hear a brief chorus of snickers from her teammates when she mentioned the oft-derided argument over this particular warship’s design moniker.
Even Lynch chuckled for a few seconds before the team went quiet and waited for the enemy to unwittingly bring them to the Beta Site.
Chapter XXVI: A Wizard’s Spell
“That went well,” Tiberius remarked after the last of the ship commanders had returned to her ship. He had been impressed at how well his CO had conducted the meeting, but now it seemed that he had a significant task before him.
McKnight's Mission: A House Divided, Book 1 (Spineward Sectors- Middleton's Pride 4) Page 32