by J. N. Chaney
“And even if they don’t, we already know that they’ve co-opted Clan Shirna into working as their agents,” Leira said. “There might be others. The Archetype was barely enough to deal with Nathis and his minions. Next time, it might not be enough, without being fully powered.”
“Then why did the Unseen make sure to include the location of the Forge in that latest data dump they provided Dash?” Conover asked. “They must have known that by doing that, they’d immediately attract attention to it.”
But Leira shook her head. “I don’t like it. Look how close we came to dying just retrieving this last core, Dash. And that was for a single one of the things, here in this—what did Sentinel call it? A remote outpost?” She shook her head again. “And the core before that? The way you described it, that asteroid was pretty damned well defended. And yet, another remote outpost.”
"The Forge isn’t a remote outpost, though,” Viktor said, picking up Leira’s line of argument. “It’s obviously an important facility. That means it’s likely to be much more heavily defended.”
“Why would their defenses try to stop the Archetype, though?” Amy asked. “They’re on the same side, right?”
“So were the defenses on that asteroid, and they attacked Dash and the Archetype. As for here, on this planet, we assumed that Dash’s Fangrats were just native wildlife, but we don’t know that for sure. For all we know, they could have been another genetically-engineered defense.”
“Maybe penetrating the defenses is part of what Dash and the Archetype need to do,” Viktor said. “He knows he has to go and retrieve these cores, so it stands to reason that he would at least have a chance of doing just that. As for this Forge, though—you didn’t learn anything that said you actually should be going there, did you, Dash?”
Dash shook his head. “Nope. I just know that the Forge exists, and, well, at least some of what it’s all about.”
“I vote we go to the Forge,” Amy said. Conover immediately nodded agreement.
Leira and Viktor, though, just frowned and shook their heads.
Dash leaned back and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Okay, so if we’re doing this democratically, it’s two votes for the Forge and two votes against.”
“Does Sentinel get a vote?” Amy asked.
“I do not believe it would be appropriate, unless I see a fatal flaw in your reasoning at some point,” Sentinel immediately replied. “My role is to support the choices made by the Messenger after I give him all the facts I can. This was always my mission, and it continues even as the Messenger grows into his purpose. I only suggest that it could be useful to explore the Forge, as there is much to see, and even more to use. However, I will defer to the Messenger’s decision.”
“Sounds like an abstention to me,” Dash said. “Okay, guess it comes down to me, huh?”
The air around them hummed with expectant energy, but Dash only let it linger for a second.
“You said it’s two to two,” Viktor replied. “You have the deciding vote.”
“Not to mention, you’re the Messenger,” Conover added. “The Archetype goes where you do, and that’s pretty much where we go, too.”
Dash rubbed his eyes. “I get that we need to gather those power cores. Each one gives the Archetype a little more power, a little more upgrade, and sometimes teaches us a little more about what’s going on.” He looked around at the others. “Got to be honest, though. I’m getting a little impatient, here. We don’t have any idea how pressing the threat is. Are the Golden going to show up tomorrow, or years from now? It isn’t known, and that’s really starting to eat at me.”
As he was speaking, Dash realized he really hadn’t even made up his own mind. The others had made good arguments for both going to the Forge, and not going there and just tracking down the cores. But by the time he stopped talking, he knew the decision was set.
“I want information, now. As much of it as we can get. That’s way more likely to happen at this Forge, and not in the next long-abandoned, critter-or-whatever infested outpost on some shithole planet or dinky little asteroid. So that’s my vote. We’re going to the Forge to see what’s what.”
Amy grinned with the satisfaction of a kid going to a candy store, and Conover nodded as he warmed to the idea. Leira and Viktor, however, both just looked doubtful.
“I know you guys aren’t entirely sold on this, but I hope you’ll commit to it,” Dash said to them.
“Of course,” Viktor said. “Hardly the first time I’ve thrown myself headlong into something I think is unwise.”
The way he said it made Dash think there were some stories there that he wanted to hear. Leira, though, just shrugged and said, “What else are we going to do?”
As they filed off to get ready to depart, Dash couldn’t help having second thoughts. Not that it mattered, though, because when it came to galaxy-spanning alien wars, how could you not have second thoughts?
The Archetype, in formation with the Slipwing, dropped back into real space at the margin of the star system known only as TC6573-896. Unlike Wisent’s Star, this particular star system had never attracted any particular attention from astro-cartographers, or anyone else interested enough to actually bother submitting a name for it for the charts. The star itself had no companion stars; it was just a lone, middling-sized bluish star that seemed entirely unremarkable.
Six planetary bodies swung around it, as did a pair of asteroid belts, one conforming to the orbital plane, the other oriented at a high angle to it. Now that was unusual, speaking to the break-up of some long-gone planet that was, itself, not orbiting like its fellows. Dash wondered if this was a natural phenomenon, or if it hinted at some enigmatic purpose of the Unseen.
In any case, TC6573-896 would now and hereafter be known as the Forge—at least to Dash.
“I see six planet-sized bodies,” Leira said over the comm, “and another—oh, roughly a hundred or so planetesimals, and a crap-ton of smaller stuff. Do you know where we have to go, Dash, or do we just start poking around?”
Dash considered the star system. As he did, he realized that they wanted to go to a moon orbiting the fourth planet, itself a gas giant. He said so, then launched himself toward it, the Slipwing lighting her fusion drive to stay in formation.
“Dash,” Viktor asked, “do you know—as in, you know, know, because of the Sentinel—anything else about this system?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty low key. Meh, is the word that comes to mind,” Amy put in. “I can think of half a dozen systems not too different than this one I’ve been to. It’s hard to even remember which was which.”
“That’s probably the point,” Conover offered. “If you have an important, even a crucial facility like this seems to be, you probably wouldn’t want it to stand out. It’s so ordinary as to be forgettable.”
“Good point,” Amy said. Dash could only imagine Conover’s smile at that.
“I know nothin’,” Dash said. “Or nothing more. Just that that moon is our destination.”
“I’m not scanning anything really significant about it,” Leira replied. “No evidence of structures, power signatures, even any returns suggesting refined metals or anything like that.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t mean much,” Dash replied. “Whatever’s there could be, I don’t know, cloaked somehow.”
“I am detecting nothing of significance, either,” Sentinel added. That made Dash frown. If the Archetype couldn’t detect other Unseen tech, then might it not even be there? They could, after all, be in the wrong place despite how important the Forge sounded, but after so much time and loss of data, a mistake wasn’t just possible—it was likely. After two hundred thousand years, a few corruptions and glitches were to be expected, no matter how godlike the engineering.
Except…no. Dash knew there was something important about that moon. It tickled at an awareness in his senses that went beyond a hunch.
They raced starward, on a course that would take them directly to the moon in ques
tion. The gas giant was now a looming, multicolored disk, their destination a tiny pinpoint of light near it.
Dash said, “Hey, guys? Let’s try not to dive down into that planet this time, okay? I don’t want to have to go through that again.”
“Way ahead of you, Dash,” Leira said. He could hear the tension in her voice, though, as the moon loomed closer, filling the sky with its mass.
Now the moon showed a disk, without any magnification required. It was just a moon. Spherical, rocky, with a surface mottled by some sort of sporadic volcanic activity. It had virtually no atmosphere, and only about a fifth of standard gravity. And that was it. Painfully dull and dead, the body hung before them, mute in the heavens.
They decelerated, braking to enter a high, wide orbit over the gas giant, one that would keep them close to the moon as it swung around its parent planet.
“Well, here we are,” Leira said. “Now what?”
Dash curled his lip. “Not really sure. I know this is the right place.”
“Yeah. Except there’s nothing here.”
“Can you detect anything at all?” Dash asked Sentinel.
“I am engaging an active scan, to determine—”
Silence. Huh. That was unlike Sentinel, to not finish a thought. Dash opened his mouth to ask if everything was okay, but Sentinel resumed speaking.
“The moon is starting to undergo change,” she said.
Dash peered at the image. He didn’t see anything—and then he did.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“The moon is starting to break apart,” Sentinel replied.
Sure enough, fragments spalled away from the central zone, while far larger chunks of rock began to separate. Something else was being revealed—something massive and apparently mechanical, more of which became visible as the moon continued its self-destruction.
Dash just stared. “Guys, that ain’t a moon.”
7
Fragments of rock ranging from small to massive slowly drifted apart, the occasional soundless clash adding bright spalls of debris to the expanding cloud. It was, Dash thought, like watching a slow-motion explosion. The casual destruction of an entire moon should have stunned him, but knowing what he’d come to know about the Unseen, it probably wouldn’t even make the top ten list of their most stunning achievements. What truly caught his attention was the thing that had been enclosed in the rocky shell, which came more fully into view with each passing moment. It was clearly an artificial construct, the surface smooth, orderly, and polished.
“A space station,” Dash said as he slowed the Archetype, giving the rocky debris time to disperse. “It’s a damned space station of some sort.”
“Almost as big as Passage,” Leira said, the awe in her voice evident even across the comm. “Or bigger,” she amended with an intake of breath.
“And hidden inside a moon,” Viktor added. “That’s quite the way to keep something secret.”
“Yeah,” Dash said. “It’s—well, it’s more or less what I expect from the Unseen. They don’t do small things.”
Now fully revealed, the station loomed against the backdrop of the gas giant, a massive cylinder more than a kilometer long, and almost as wide. Much of it seemed metallic, although some of it was clearly more crystalline, and some parts were…something else, but Dash couldn’t readily tell what, exactly, as the reflected light caromed around inside shadowed channels all over the structure. Unlike Passage, though, which bristled with docking piers, comms and sensor arrays, and miscellaneous other protrusions, this one seemed to be entirely smooth, with no protuberances at all except for a communications dish that lay nearly flat, down, and to their right.
“Sentinel, what are you getting from this? Is this in your database?” Dash asked.
“Currently, little information is available beyond what visual examination provides. There are a few instances of increased thermal response from various parts of the station, but no other emissions that I can detect.”
“So…is this the Forge?”
“It is likely, but there is no way to know for certain from the available information.”
“Wait, are you saying there might be something even bigger hidden away in this system?” Dash’s attention roved around the other planets, even the gas giant filling most of his view. Was there something concealed inside them? It sure didn’t seem out of the question, not for a race that could weaponize stars.
“I am explicitly not saying that,” Sentinel said. “I am simply saying it is an unfounded assumption to automatically—”
Then there was silence. Dash frowned at Sentinel’s sudden hesitation. “Sentinel?”
“Not all of the objects separating from the station are debris from the former moon. Some are artificial.”
“Pieces of the station, maybe? Parts that came off, maybe?”
“No. They are accelerating. They are missiles.”
“Dammit. Please tell me they’re aimed at something else.”
“They are tracking the Archetype and the Slipwing. And their speed is accelerating.”
Leira came on the comm, the awe in her voice shifting to alarm. “Dash? Do you see that? That station has fired something at us!”
“Yeah, I do.” He scowled at the incoming data. “You’d think by now the Unseen machines would call us friend.” His frown deepened at the telemetry of the missiles. “Guess not.”
For a tense moment, no one spoke as Sentinel continued to stream data while the incoming warheads picked up even more speed, their paths now clearly locked on the Slipwing first, and Archetype second.
“Leira, I’ll try to deal with them,” Dash said. “You just keep the Slipwing out here, evading, and shoot the particle cannons at anything that gets past me—which will be nothing, I hope.”
Dash flung himself forward, tracking the incoming missiles. They were Unseen tech, which meant the Archetype could probably match them. As for the Slipwing, though—no way. He thought back to his battles with Clan Shirna, when they’d faced the Archetype. It had been decidedly one-sided.
The Archetype surged toward the missiles. “I count twelve of them,” Dash said. “No, wait, make that lucky thirteen.”
“We only count six,” Viktor said, apparently taking the comm and letting Leira concentrate on piloting the Slipwing. “We don’t see any others on the scans.”
Some sort of stealth effect? Or was the Archetype being fed false echoes?
“I do not believe those returns are false,” Sentinel said. “Your ship simply lacks the sensor capability to track some of the inbound missiles.”
“That’s great. They can’t dodge what they can’t see. Means we better not miss any.”
The leading missiles raced into range of the Archetype’s dark-lance. Dash looked at one—actually, glared at one, because he was getting awfully sick of this ‘friendly’ fire—selected it as a target, and fired by thought, using the system integration to control his weapons. The flickering beam of light-that-wasn’t flashed out and touched the missile, blowing it to fragments.
The remaining missiles immediately started jinking, accelerating madly in a swirl of maneuvers so abrupt they would have shredded those carried by the Slipwing—if they’d even been remotely capable of such violent turns in the first place. Taken as a whole, the missiles resembled a school of fish diving wildly to avoid a predator, which was more or less what was happening. Dash was their destructor, but the missiles didn’t know it yet.
He waited for the dark-lance to recharge, which took some time, and switched to the distortion cannon. It generated momentary gravity wells, deep ones, that could rip things apart if they were close enough, and still deflect their trajectories even if they weren’t. But the dark-lance had already recuperated, the system giving a low thrum as its power came back to lethal levels. It must be another effect of that new power core, Dash thought, so that was something, anyway. More power was good. A faster dark-lance cycle was even better.
He fired the
dark-lance again—and again, the lethal beam flashing missiles to tumbling wreckage at the slightest contact. Ten were left and closing fast. Worse, the missiles were adapting, spreading apart, varying their speeds and evading hard, capable of pulling insane g’s as they were unmanned and powered by Unseen technology. He fired the dark-lance, earning one hit. There were nine incoming now, and then Dash fired the distortion cannon, the sudden gravity flux slamming two of the missiles into a collision and yanking all the rest toward the anomaly. Unfortunately, it also tugged the Archetype forward like a cranky beast of burden, eating away the time he had to stop the damned things.
Seven left.
He fired another dark-lance bolt, but it missed, the target nimbly dodging aside, almost as though anticipating his shot. It probably had some sort of AI controlling it, analyzing his attacks, getting inside his freaking mind.
Dammit to hell. What if the missiles could tap into the Meld and get inside his mind?
He flushed the doubt and just let impulse guide him. With his mind in a state of diamond focus, he fired the distortion cannon again, once more dragging everything toward the resulting anomaly, at the same time reaching out with both of the Archetype’s massive hands.
“Eat that.” He slammed one fist closed on a missile as it streaked in, then swatted another like a bug, smacking it off course to explode harmlessly. The missile in his fist detonated and he yelped, the bizarre phantom pain that came with damage to the Archetype flashing a shockwave through his body. The fist had contained most of the blast, but at the cost of turning that hand to wreckage. It would regenerate—he hoped—but not quickly, and that left him with limited combat ability in a bad situation.
Two more missiles raced in, too close and fast to do anything but curl the Archetype into a ball and take the hits. He reeled under the blasts, which ripped away at the big mech’s very substance. He vaguely knew the remaining three missiles had streaked by, heading for the Slipwing, so he couldn’t just wallow here. He had to keep moving, and he had had to fight smart.
