The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “I’m on my way, Leira!” Dash called out. “Just keep your ass in one piece for a few more minutes, okay?”

  “That’s the plan, yeah.” She paused. “Wait. It’s breaking off.” Relief flooded her voice, but only for an instant. “Dash, it’s heading straight back for you.”

  “Yeah, well, that was the plan, too.” He scanned the weapon systems. All were still offline—except, that is, for the stupid, useless sword. He turned his attention back to the Slipwing. “Leira, look, you’ve done all you can out here. You need to head back to the Forge.”

  “Dash, I’m not going to leave you.”

  “It’s not just about me, Leira. Yes, you’ll be safer back there. But if I can’t stop this Harbinger thing, and the Forge turns out to not be able to stop it either, then Conover, Amy, and the others are going to need a ride out of here. The Slipwing is all we’ve got.”

  “But—”

  “Plus, someone is going to need to sound the alarm about the Golden coming. Maybe everything that every planet across the arm can throw together won’t be enough. If everyone is also looking for more help from the Unseen, it still might give everyone a fighting chance. But if we all die here, without getting any word out—well, then it really is all over, isn’t it?”

  Silence.

  Finally, Leira said, “When did you start making so much sense?”

  “Probably about the time I found out I’m supposed to somehow save the universe. That has a way of making you see sense really fast, and to be honest, I like the way it feels on me.”

  “I think I’d like the old, live-for-the-moment Dash more.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe he’ll be back someday—but not today.”

  He saw the Slipwing start a long, arcing trajectory that would take her well away from the scene of battle and back towards the Forge. “Kick that thing’s ass, Dash,” Leira said, “and then come on home.”

  “I’ll say it again. That’s the plan.”

  Except, as he watched the Harbinger racing back toward him, Dash realized that it was a plan without teeth. Without weapons, this was going to be a very short fight.

  Conover finished snapping his vac-suit’s gloves in place, but kept his helmet slung on its harness. They’d brought the vac-suits along mainly because it seemed pointless to leave them aboard the Slipwing when they might be needed here. The fact that they only had four of them—one for him, Viktor, and Amy, plus one spare—and none for the rest for the monks remained unspoken among all of them. If it had bothered Kai and his followers, though, they gave no sign of it. Conover actually suspected it really didn’t faze them, and that their faith was sufficient to keep them going. He wondered how that was possible, but likewise marveled that it apparently was.

  “Hey, Custodian,” Amy said, cinching her own glove in place. “Is our ride ready?”

  “There are two maintenance remotes awaiting you in the docking bay.”

  “This is the part where I start complaining about all the things that could go wrong with this so-called plan,” Viktor said, following along behind them.

  Amy glanced back at him. “Well, you’d better hurry up. We’re almost at the docking bay.”

  But Viktor shook his head. “Not much point, really, is there? It’s not like we have any other choice.”

  “Not to mention that the fate of all sentient life might depend on this working,” she replied. Her grin had returned, which buoyed Conover’s spirits way more than it should. It seemed that, like him, if she could see even just a glimmer of possibility and a hint of something resembling a plan, she could cope—or at least not just slump into a heap of complete, abject surrender.

  They strode into the docking bay. Sure enough, a pair of spheres about two meters across hovered near the big opening into space.

  Conover didn’t break stride, and just kept going, aiming himself toward the remotes. As he did, he pulled his helmet off the suit’s harness. The plan was simple, which was good, because simple plans were always best. They would ride the remotes to the breach, then deal with the Golden drone when they got there.

  And that was it. They didn’t have the time or information to come up with anything more detailed. It all relied on them coming up with a way of deactivating, or otherwise neutralizing, the Golden drone, and doing it on the spot. They’d be relying on Conover’s special vision and Amy’s technical know-how.

  And about a gas-giant’s worth of luck.

  Once they had their helmets in place, Viktor helped them do their final checks. He’d stripped the other two vac-suits of their tool packs, and anything else even remotely useful, and had already stashed those in their various suit pockets and harness hard-points.

  He stepped back as their suits pressurized. “I should be coming with you.”

  “We need you here, Viktor,” Amy said. “Kai and his people might be able to read those displays, but you have the technical knowledge to at least try and make sense of it. Once we get that drone taken care of, we have to get that core working.”

  Viktor opened his mouth, but just closed it again and gave a solemn nod. “I expect you both to come back in one piece.”

  Conover grabbed onto one of the remotes, then unspooled a length of tether and clipped it to a ring that it had apparently extruded from its surface for that very purpose. Amy did the same.

  “One piece would be nice, yeah,” he said, then the remote smoothly began to move, aiming itself at the sprawling expanse of stars beyond the massive opening.

  As Conover clung to the remote, his last sight of Viktor was him standing there, alone, a tiny figure in the huge docking bay. He raised a hand in a wave, then vanished as the remotes turned and began racing across the surface of the Forge, heading for the hull-breach and the Golden drone lurking inside it.

  “Sentinel,” Dash said, “do we have any way of attacking the Harbinger? Can I spit at it? Something?”

  “The sword is functional.”

  “Great. Spitting at it, then.” He and the Harbinger were closing and would be in weapons-range in seconds. But none of the Archetype’s weapons were functioning yet. The big mech might be tough, but if it was only taking hits and not dishing them out, this battle could only go one way.

  And still nothing from the Forge.

  “Viktor? Amy? Conover? What’s going on back there?”

  “Dash!” It was Viktor. “Am I ever glad to hear from you.”

  “What you’re hearing might just be my last words. What’s happening with the Forge? Because I could really use some support out here.”

  “I know. We’re working on it.”

  “Plug in the damned core? How hard can that be?”

  In reply, Viktor rattled off a brief description of the interference by the crashed Golden drone. “…so Conover and Amy have gone to deactivate it. Once they do, Custodian says all of those systems should come online.”

  Dash just stared bleakly at the approaching Harbinger. “That’s unfortunate.”

  “We’re doing our best.”

  “I know you are, Viktor. Stay the course. I trust you to get it done.”

  “Of course we will.”

  “Thanks. I’ll keep trying to hold the fort out here while you—”

  There was a sudden, dazzling flash. Something had just exploded, the blast slamming into…the Harbinger.

  What the hell? Had somebody else joined the battle? Did Dash have a sudden, new ally?

  No, wait.

  Dash saw them, so small and unobtrusive they were lost amid the miscellaneous bits of debris you normally found in any star system. They were missiles. From the Slipwing. He could only see them now that he was looking for them.

  “I see that bastard found one of the little presents I left for him,” Leira said, unable to keep at least a little smug satisfaction out of her voice.

  “What did you do?” Dash asked. “Turn some of your missiles into mines?”

  “All of them, actually. They’re all programmed to detonate if something big
enough gets inside their blast radius.”

  “Including me?”

  “Um, afraid so, yeah. They’re not smart enough to really tell the difference.”

  Dash slowed the Archetype and slewed right to avoid a missile lurking among some rocky debris just ahead.

  “Then I’ll proceed accordingly. Good thinking, Leira.”

  “I didn’t want to risk that Harbinger thing eavesdropping. I knew it was a risk, but desperate times and all that, right?”

  Dash smiled. “I don’t think they’ll do much damage to the Harbinger, but…yeah, it seems to have slowed down and gotten a little more cautious. Next time we’re out drinking, I’m buying.”

  “I’ll remember that. Now, if I can just get as creative with the drive aboard this poor, old girl of yours.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m having trouble keeping the fusion containment stable. Looks like that last blast did more damage than I thought.” After a pause, she said, “I wish Viktor or Amy were here. This engineering stuff isn’t my strong suit. Kind of why I hooked up with Viktor in the first place.”

  “Do your best,” Dash said, frowning at saying the same thing he’d just said to Viktor. It was a dumb thing to say, actually; what, they weren’t going to do their best, unless he told them to? “Just try not to blow my ship up, especially since you’re on it. Understand?”

  “I’d prefer not blowing up the ship, yeah.” She paused. “And me with it.”

  Dash turned his focus back on the Harbinger. Leira’s cunning had bought him a little more time, but it wouldn’t matter if Sentinel couldn’t get weapons up and start dealing damage.

  He was sure she was trying, too, but in the meantime, it meant he had one path forward—brute strength and raw anger, both of which could go a long way in a brawl.

  Dash let the anger rise.

  “Your vitals are rising,” Sentinel said, implacable as ever.

  Dash smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Good.”

  22

  Once, back on Penumbra, his aunt had persuaded Conover to take a job with a prospector, acting as an assistant on his forays into the planet’s outback as he hunted for valuable mineral deposits. The man had travelled around in a battered old skimmer—basically, a ramshackle platform jammed atop some obviously scavenged grav repulsors, with a small pilot’s cabin built on top. Crammed in beside the man, tasting the reek of fresh sweat, stale booze, and an acrid strain of tobacco grown on a planet that obviously hated all other planets, Conover had experienced some of the terror he faced now.

  The prospector—whose name had been Jake or Jack or Joe, it didn’t matter—had raced the skimmer along just centimeters over the Penumbrian hardpan, swooping over crestlines, dodging crags and boulders, dropping into and zooming along dry river gulches. He still remembered the labored whine of the repulsors; Jake’s or Joe’s or whoever’s jarring laughter as he slammed the ramshackle thing through tight turns, climbs, and dives; the way his own heart pounded against his ribs.

  Riding the Forge’s maintenance remote was just like that, minus the wild laughter, but with the added fun of doing it in near total darkness, utter silence, and surrounded by hard vacuum. There was still a stink of sweat, though—Conover’s own, which reeked of pungent fear.

  Amy didn’t mind their proximity.

  She whooped again as the two remotes whipped around yet another towering protrusion from the Forge’s hull. If he risked glancing up from his own gloved hands cramped around some protuberances on the remote, he saw nothing but blackness—featureless and absolute beneath them, and extending out to a curved horizon, where the Forge ended and the starfield began. That actually made it worse than the terror of traveling with Jake or John back on Penumbra, too—he couldn’t see anything in the remote’s flight path, so he only knew they were dodging something when that curved, black horizon would suddenly tilt or spin. Whatever tech the remote used for propulsion seemed to dampen almost all of the extreme g’s, but a hint still leaked through, nudging Conover’s guts through small, but distinct wobbles.

  That was something else he’d only done once, and certainly never wanted to do again—throw up in a vacsuit.

  The horizon, and the stars beyond it, spun and whirled again. Conover swallowed, hard, as his stomach clenched in protest. How much longer?

  They were slowing down. A tall, slender tower extending from the Forge’s hull slid past, but nowhere near as fast as previous ones.

  Amy said, “Aww, that was fun.”

  Conover didn’t trust himself to speak. He still had stomach contents to keep where they belonged.

  A sudden, dazzling flare of light washed over them. Conover’s faceplate darkened in response, stepping down the glare. He winced at the panicked idea it might be an explosion—that the Harbinger had gotten past Dash, and now attacked the Forge, and here they were right out in the open. But the glare just went on and on, getting progressively brighter. It was the system’s star, Conover realized. They’d just witnessed dawn on the surface of the Forge.

  “Wow,” Amy whispered, and her tone was anything but that of an engineer. There was open wonder in the sound. “It’s beautiful.”

  It was. The sunrise illuminated the vast expanse that was the Forge, revealing it as an enormous plain of smooth hull, with that weird, metallic-crystalline-organic hybrid look common to a lot of Unseen tech Conover had seen. It was punctuated by dozens, maybe hundreds of tower-like structures, similar to the one they’d just passed, as well as a multitude of those polyhedral shapes the Unseen seemed to like so much. It all must have some purpose, he thought, but he couldn’t even begin to figure out what it might be.

  “And there’s our hole,” Amy said. “Just ahead.”

  Conover could see it, a jarring imperfection in the otherwise pristine sprawl of the station’s surface. A third maintenance remote hung in space not far away, keeping watch over it.

  “Viktor,” Conover started, but it came out as a rough croak. He had to stop, swallow, and lick his lips.

  “Conover, are you okay?” Amy asked, apparently caught by the obvious hitch in his voice.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Fine.” He swallowed again. Fortunately, his uneasy stomach seemed to be settling back into place. “Viktor, has anything changed since we left the docking bay?”

  “Nothing obvious. The drone’s just sitting inside there, doing nothing.”

  “Oh, I’d say it’s doing lots,” Amy said, as their own remotes smoothly slid to a stop.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Just that too much silence makes me nervous.”

  She stepped off the remote, onto the surface of the Forge. She kept her tether attached to her ride, but said, “Huh,” flexed her knees, then jumped. She rose a foot into the air, then immediately dropped back. “So we got gravity. Hey, Custodian, thanks for that. It’ll make life easier.”

  “Standard gravity for your physiology has been applied to the exterior portion of the Forge where you are located. It did necessitate powering down other systems, but it seemed a logical assistance to you.”

  Conover clambered off the remote. Sure enough, he could have been standing on nearly any roughly 1-g planet.

  “I would caution that the reliability of the gravitation is not certain, however, in close proximity to the Golden drone,” Custodian said. “Its effect on the Forge’s systems is unknown.”

  “Got it,” Conover said, some of his confidence returning. He didn’t have to be a helpless passenger anymore, terrified he was about to be splattered against some Unseen tower, or cube, or whatever. “Amy, maybe we should keep our tethers hooked up to these remotes, just in case.”

  She’d been reaching for hers, to unclip it, but stopped and withdrew her hand. “Good point. Hate to have that thing win by just booting us off into space. Let’s just make sure we don’t get them tangled, okay?”

  Together, they walked toward the breach, sidling the last few steps.

  “Let’s
just hope this thing doesn’t decide to just blow itself up, instead of letting itself be deactivated,” Amy said.

  “I hate to say it, but that might not be the worst outcome,” Conover replied. "The Forge could probably fix the damage then and get things properly powered up.”

  “Not a bad outcome for who? Not us, for sure!”

  “I think I mentioned that I hated to say it.”

  They stopped on the edge of the breach and peered inside.

  Barely two meters away, the Golden drone sat, silent and menacing.

  Conover looked at Amy. “Ready?”

  “Does it matter if I say no?”

  He made himself smile. She smiled back.

  Conover stepped over the edge of the breach and started inside.

  “The Harbinger has resumed closing at speed,” Sentinel said. “I estimate thirty seconds until it is in weapons range.”

  “Good. I’m ready to get my hands on that bastard,” Dash said.

  His mind had been racing for what felt like hours, desperately trying to cook up some sort of plan. Everything had come up a maddening blank, though. Without weapons, the Archetype was just a big, lumbering target, albeit tougher than hell. And there was nothing in space around him he could use to his advantage. They fought in what amounted to a vast, empty arena with only the stars to watch their struggle come to an inevitable, violent conclusion.

  Space. Nothing else. It definitely favored the Harbinger.

  Fine. He needed to not be here then. He needed to be somewhere else, that at least put them on something like an equal footing.

  “Sentinel, can we translate?” he said, mind still ripping along at light speed.

  “UnSpace translation is available. Do you intend to flee?”

  “Flee? No. Or…well, sort of, but not quite.” Dash looked at the Archetype’s nav display, doggedly ignoring the fact that the Harbinger would start shooting at him in about ten seconds. “Can we translate just a short distance? Like, just inside this system?”