The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “The dark-matter mines are continuing to reconfigure themselves,” Sentinel said. “They seem to be arranging into a pattern intended to prevent the Archetype from leaving this region without being attacked.”

  “Great. Are they coming any closer?”

  “No. But it is conceivable that once they’ve arrayed themselves, they could begin to close in, in order to attack the Archetype directly.”

  Dash looked over the hull of the crashed ship, selected a gap torn through it immediately behind what was probably its comms array, and began to climb.

  “Do you think that’s what they’re going to do?”

  “It would be a logical way of proceeding,” Sentinel said. “Accordingly, I would say yes, it is.

  Dash grabbed a buckled hull plate and pulled himself up. It was easy in the extremely low gravity; he actually had to work at not flinging himself into space. “Fantastic. So, how long do we have?”

  “Perhaps as much as an hour, although assuming half an hour is probably more realistic.”

  Dash reached the gap in the hull then stopped and cautiously peered into it. He could have simply thrusted up and then back down to enter it, but he didn’t want to find a pissed-off Shirna taking pot shots at him while he was soaring through space. But the gap, which was torn right through the double-hull, opened into an empty space, a corridor or compartment. A live power conduit sparked menacingly at the edge of it, meaning he’d have to be careful entering to avoid getting burned or fried.

  “Half an hour, eh, Sentinel? I’m always on a clock, it seems.”

  “Constraints in time and space are a fundamental aspect of the universe.”

  “You’ve obviously mistaken me for someone philosophical,” Dash said, swinging his legs over the gap and thrusting himself down, careful to avoid the exposed conduit.

  He landed in an empty compartment. Whatever had been in here had obviously been blown into space when it was opened to vacuum.

  Gripping the slugger, Dash followed his suit lamp’s glow to a heavy, round door. He had no idea how it normally opened, but it didn’t matter; like most ships, it had a manual operating system as a safety back up. There was no artificial grav working, so he had to brace himself on a structural member to crank it. As soon as the door cracked open, atmosphere vented in a rush and swirling cloud of vapor. He waited for it to clear, then cranked the door open the rest of the way.

  It was a corridor. To the left, sternward, it ended after a dozen paces or so in debris. To the right, forward, it carried on, past several other compartments, to another door. It was all canted down toward the stern, and to port.

  Unfortunately, even if there was more atmosphere on board, unless he found an internal airlock, he’d have to vent it to enter. He hoped any Shirna survivors—if there were any—had put on their own vac suits, or he wasn’t going to find anyone to talk to in here.

  The door at the forward end of the corridor started to open.

  Dash looked around. The best available cover was the door he’d just opened. He stepped back into it then crouched and peered around the corner.

  The other door slowly rolled open, revealing a humanoid figure in a vac suit, who immediately opened fire, a searing flash of energy scorching the bulkhead just in front of Dash.

  He ducked back, cursing. How had that guy even known he was here?

  Oh. His suit lamp. It splashed light all over the place.

  “Sometimes, I’m not very bright,” Dash groused, then fought a laugh. “Or too bright.”

  Then came another blast. The Shirna definitely wasn’t using a slugger. Dash popped around the corner and fired; the projectile popped out of the muzzle, then rocketed away. He immediately jumped into the middle of the corridor, fully exposed. His opponent, who had taken cover from Dash’s wild shot, reappeared and aimed.

  But Dash was already aiming at where he thought the figure would appear. He fired again, and the projectile shot away. It slammed into the other figure’s helmet, blowing fragments and gore out the back that immediately began to freeze.

  His suddenly rapid breath rasping inside his helmet, Dash kept the slugger trained on the open door, looking past the figure he’d just killed in case he wasn’t alone.

  There was nothing. The figure just slowly toppled backward, pushed by the kinetic energy of the slugger round.

  “Yeah,” Dash muttered, waiting for his pounding heart to slow, “that Archetype spoiled me. This fighting face-to-face crap is definitely no fun at all.”

  Gathering himself, Dash started forward, heading for the open door.

  Dash winced as another plasma bolt shot past him. He went to the right of the fallen beam this time, snapping off a bolt at one of the two Shirna firing at him from the plasma pistol he’d taken off the first one he’d killed. One Shirna had managed to wing him, a searing hot plasma charge just kissing Dash’s upper right arm.

  Thanks to the Archetype’s repairs, Dash’s suit had automatically sealed the breach with foam that instantly vacuum-hardened; it also acted as a bandage on the teeth-gritting-painful burn. His vac suit could maybe do that once more, then the sealing foam would be spent.

  Two more plasma bolts slammed into the beam he was using for shelter, throwing off showers of sparks and glowing droplets of liquid alloy.

  “You know, Sentinel,” he said, “I really am getting too old for this crap.”

  “You are also running out of time. You have perhaps fifteen minutes left.”

  “Ten minutes ago, you said I had at least thirty!”

  “New data has allowed me to refine the estimate.”

  Dash considered his options. One of them was to simply give up and retreat back to the Archetype. The trouble was, he’d be leaving here with some huge, unanswered questions, like why had this ship made a beeline for this strange little cluster of planetesimal bodies and dark-matter mines, that were apparently placed here by the Golden? There was a connection between all of it. The Golden were real, the universe was a helluva lot more complex than he could have imagined, and the Archetype was clearly being tracked.

  Two more bolts slammed into the beam. Dash looked around it, low and to the left, and saw that one of the Shirna was trying to advance and close on him, while the other gave covering fire.

  These guys were determined to kill him, which was itself a little strange, because he was, at least as far as Dash knew, their only way off this remote rock. So either they didn’t care if they lived or not, or they were expecting a ride from someone else.

  Dash raised the plasma pistol but changed his mind and snapped off a shot from the slugger instead. It gave off much less of a firing signature, so maybe he’d catch the Shirna coming at him flat-footed.

  But the man dodged and the shot clanged into the bulkhead behind him. It did make him take cover, but Dash just didn’t have the time for this.

  He looked at the plasma pistol. It had about half of its charge left. Maybe.

  The weapon theoretically had a safety to prevent its tiny plasma core from breaching, but Dash had long ago learned how to circumvent that on conventional plasma weapons, and this one wasn’t much different. He did the necessary tweaks, snapping off all but two of his remaining slugger rounds at the Shirna still blasting away at him, then he took a breath, pulled the trigger, and flung the plasma pistol over the beam.

  Nothing happened.

  The compartment turned white.

  Dash had curled himself tight behind the fallen beam; the wash of incandescent, ionized gas still scorched the toes of his boots. When it faded, he looked back around the beam, peering through the still-glowing, but rapidly cooling cloud of gas. One of the Shirnas had apparently picked the moment of detonation to line up another shot at Dash; his head and most of one shoulder were gone. The other one had fared better. He was obviously badly hurt, but started pumping out plasma shots, apparently determined to go down fighting. After his last shot, Dash raised himself over the beam, lined up, and fired his second-to-last slugger round, bl
owing the Shirna’s chest open.

  Quickly, Dash crossed to the fallen Shirna, looking for his plasma pistol. He found it, but it was discharged. The other Shirna’s weapon had been fused by the blast. That meant Dash had exactly two slugger-shots left, and that was it.

  He glanced back the way he’d come. Maybe just pulling out was the best option. But, Dash knew he couldn’t do that and pushed on, heading for the bow of the crashed ship and its bridge.

  One Shirna remained. He crouched over a console on the bridge, his fingers dancing rapidly over the controls.

  Dash raised the slugger, then grabbed a loose hunk of debris and heaved it at the Shirna. It struck him, and when he turned, Dash caught a glimpse of reptilian face through the faceplate, then a voice cracked in Dash’s earpieces.

  “You’re too late. This ship will not be yours.”

  “I don’t want your ship, which, I might point out, is kind of wrecked. I just want to talk.”

  “Talk with a blasphemer? That is itself blasphemy.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m a filthy heathen,” said Dash.

  “I will not sully my death with your words being the last sound I--”

  Dash fired the slugger. The round tore through the Shirna’s left arm and upper torso, leaving a shimmering trail of gore leading to its impact point in another console behind him. He fired a second round, this time into the Shirna’s forehead, killing him instantly.

  Crossing to the console, Dash saw what the Shirna had been about to do. He’d essentially been provoking a fusion core breach, a far, far larger-scale version of what Dash had done with the plasma pistol. He would have collapsed the ship’s fusion containment field, turning a good portion of this asteroid to vapor. And he’d been one connection away from doing it.

  “Okay,” Dash said. “Sure. Not close at all. Lots of time left.”

  His breath came in shuddering gasps. He carefully pulled two pieces of cabling away from one another to prevent triggering a breach, then pulled away the makeshift jumper the Shirna had rigged that would have made it possible in the first place. Then he turned to look around the bridge.

  As far as he could tell, he’d just killed the last Shirna aboard, so he wouldn’t be getting any answers after all.

  “Hey, Sentinel, if I bring you the computer core from this ship, can you, like, hack into it? Read it?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  Dash frowned at the various consoles, deciding which one was probably the master computer station. He hurried over to it, pulling himself over other consoles and seats in the virtually zero-G, then wedged himself partly under it so he could rip off the faceplate and get at the core nestled behind.

  “Your time is—”

  “Don’t tell me, I’ll just mess something up,” Dash said, cutting the AI off.

  Dash settled himself in the Archetype’s cradle and let the connection reestablish. As it did, he yanked free the pair of plasma pistols he’d found on the wreck’s bridge and put them aside. They seemed kind of pathetic, compared to the power of the Archetype, but they might just come in handy.

  As soon as the connection was stable, he launched himself off the dreary little asteroid. The Archetype was already at work knitting his burn, repairing him much the same way it seemed to repair itself.

  The computer core from the Clan Shirna ship sat on the floor before him. Several silver-blue cables, that disturbingly reminded him of tentacles, snaked out of the deck and fused with it. He wasn’t sure how long the AI would need.

  Information—more knowing—flooded Dash’s mind.

  Apparently not long.

  “Nathis isn’t really about all that fanatical religious stuff at all,” he mused, scanning the data.

  “So it would appear. He is in league with the Golden.”

  The Golden had surreptitiously approached Nathis several years ago, offering him wealth but, more importantly, power and control over a huge chunk of the galaxy, if he would only help them in the new cycle of death. It seemed that they’d been able to find Nathis’s price, because he eventually agreed, then slowly indoctrinated the rest of Clan Shirna into the Golden’s stealthy campaign.

  But it was actually more complicated than that. Nathis might have had his price, but he also seemed convinced that the Golden were the saviors of the galaxy, that their coming would herald a new age of enlightened order, with Nathis their chief emissary. All he had to do was pave the way for the return of the Golden.

  “Well, that explains why he was willing to put his sticky fingers into the Pasture, despite all that blasphemy-this and heresy-that talk,” Dash said. “He was well on his way to plundering the place. Explains why he apparently has a Lens, too.”

  “He is a willing, if misguided ally of the Golden,” Sentinel said.

  “Yeah. He actually believes their bullshit about order and enlightenment.”

  “He has failed to discern that the actual intent of the Golden is to eradicate all life in the galaxy, including his own.”

  “Think we’re way past being able to convince him otherwise,” Dash said, then frowned. “Although, how do I know you’re telling the truth? You know, it could be your Creators that are the xenophobic assholes, and the Golden who want to save everyone.”

  “Do you believe that, Dash?”

  “Eh, no. I think I’ve picked the right side, or it picked me.”

  “We are approaching the cordon of dark-matter mines.”

  Dash looked around. Sure enough, the mines had formed a sphere completely enclosing the Archetype. They could retreat back into the cloud of rocks and ice, but nothing stopped the mines from closing in behind them. In any case, ripping matter into its component quarks meant some icy rubble wasn’t going to be much of an obstacle.

  But going forward was going to be a serious problem, too. There was no way to penetrate the cordon of mines without having at least two, and as many as four detonating within lethal range of the Archetype. The now-regenerated shield could seemingly stop one blast, but no more than that. These mines also seemed smart, so he doubted that the distortion cannon trick would work again.

  “I have intercepted a general, omnidirectional transmission through unSpace that seems to be relevant to you,” Sentinel said. “It involves your ship, the Slipwing.”

  “What? Let me hear it!”

  A crackling voice sounded, faint, but still clear enough to make out most of what was being said.

  “Slipwing…any ship…chased…need help…anyone nearby, we need help…”

  Dash clenched his fists. “That’s Leira. Sentinel, we have to help her.”

  “First we must escape the mounting threat posed by the dark-matter mines.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Give me a sec.”

  The dark-lance didn’t seem to affect them. The missiles probably wouldn’t either. The distortion cannon worked once, but the mines were probably smart enough to work around a second try.

  “What next?” Dash hissed, looking around desperately for inspiration.

  As he did, his gaze fell on the tumbling swirl of rocks and ice just behind the Archetype.

  Okay, so maybe the distortion cannon wouldn’t likely affect the mines. But the mines weren’t the only thing out here.

  Dash slowed, turned, and fired the cannon at a point close to the nearest of the hunks of rock and dirty ice. They immediately “fell” in the resulting gravity well, which started them moving. He fired the cannon again, and they fell again, accelerating.

  He fired again.

  Again.

  The Archetype’s power level also fell with each shot, but now a cluster of the bodies were sailing directly toward the minefield. He zoomed in behind them, trailing them as they closed.

  “That is a clever approach, Dash. It does presuppose that the mines cannot discriminate such inert bodies from the Archetype.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m being optimistic.”

  Dash also hadn’t really thought of that. If it was true, then this would be a ve
ry short trip.

  The cluster of rocky debris reached the minefield and abruptly disappeared, ripped into subatomic oblivion as several mines detonated. The remaining mines immediately began moving to close the resulting gap, but Dash poured on the power and zoomed through the opening, into clear space.

  “Okay, let’s go find the Slipwing.”

  “Power levels are greatly diminished by your admittedly effective action to escape the mines,” Sentinel said. “A fast translation back to the location of your ship will diminish them further, probably to critical levels. The Archetype may be able to do little once it arrives.”

  “Sure, whatever. So turn off everything that doesn’t involve moving or keeping me alive, conserve whatever you can.”

  Systems shut down throughout the Archetype. At the same time, it shifted into unSpace and began to race back into the galaxy, and the beleaguered Slipwing.

  18

  Dash knew when he had reentered the Milky Way galaxy by the brightening glow ahead of him, illuminating unSpace with the radiance of tens of millions of stars. It was another bit of strangeness pertaining to unSpace, something that would probably keep the scientific types fascinated for years.

  If only they could fly through space like this, simply enjoying the sensation of boundless travel, of effortless movement through a realm whose physical laws were very different.

  At least, until reality came crashing back in, as it just had. This was no pleasure trip. Except for its drive and whatever counted as life support for him, the big mech was dark and dormant. He desperately needed it to power up as much as possible before reaching the Slipwing.

  Whatever the Unseen’s motives for hamstringing the Archetype, if the thing was fully powered-up now, he’d have ample ability to take on Clan Shirna. Even worse, the kugelblitz that served as its power source, the microscopic black hole, actually generated ample power for any demand the mech might place on it.