The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  Dash nodded. “Yes, it is.”

  Now it was Wallis’s turn to wince. “It is?” She looked from one to the next. “You’re actually threatening us?”

  “No, no, not at all,” Dash said, raising his hands. “We’re what you might call the easy way. But if that doesn’t work, then our employers will go back to the hard way.”

  “The hard way?”

  Dash gave a resigned nod. “Yeah, the hard way. We don’t like it, but we’re not paid to like it.” He turned to the door. “Anyway, Governor, we—”

  “Just a moment, Dash,” Wallis said. “I just want to be clear on this. This consortium you work for is actually prepared to use violence to stop us from getting at this crashed ship?”

  “Oh, yes. Violence and lots of it. It’s kind of what they do.”

  “Put it together, Governor,” Conover said. “Secret consortium, advanced stealth technology to be recovered at all costs…”

  Wallis pursed her lips. “Military?”

  This was the moment, Dash thought, where you said nothing and just let silence be your answer.

  The door opened and Ragsdale entered. He stopped as soon as he saw Dash and his companions halfway to the door and asked, “Did I miss something?”

  “Yes, you did,” Wallis replied. “I was just informing Dash and his companions that we would be happy to assist them in recovering their employer’s property, in any way we can. To that end, you’re going to act as Port Hannah’s liaison with them, and accompany them. Please make sure they get whatever help we can spare.”

  Ragsdale just stared for a moment, then nodded. “Alright, then. When did you want to leave?”

  Dash grinned. “The sooner the better. Oh, and Ragsdale? Welcome aboard.”

  Ragsdale arranged accommodations for them—a cargo pod divided into a sparse pair of rooms by an old hatch cover. He also gave them a rundown of Port Hannah’s layout, including where they could obtain anything they needed for the journey north. Now, they ambled through a small maze of stalls, kiosks, and more cargo pods converted into shops. Again, Dash was struck by how Port Hannah managed to neatly straddle a line between chaotic and shabby, and orderly and neat. They found themselves smiling and nodding a lot as they threaded their way through the small market zone. It indeed seemed that the colony didn’t get many visitors, making them a true curiosity.

  Dash and Leira stopped at a kiosk selling survival gear. The environment outside the settlement’s domes was quite hostile, Ragsdale had told them, so even brief forays were best done well-equipped. Dash picked up a water bottle with a built-in purifying unit and studied it. Leira examined a hand tool that seemed to combine hatchet, pick, hammer, and a few other things into one neat little implement.

  “So how many of these people do you think are undercover and keeping an eye on us?” Leira asked, giving the tool a close look.

  “Oh, I think everyone’s keeping an eye on us. We’re something new and different.”

  Conover sidled up beside them. “Caught two people at a textiles stall over there talking about us. The rumor, apparently, is that we’re here looking over the colony, to buy it out.”

  “I started that one about half an hour ago,” Dash said, unscrewing the water bottle’s cap and sniffing the spout. “A little surprised it’s already taken root.”

  “You started it?”

  “Along with four or five others,” Leira said, putting the tool down and picking up a small coil of monofilament cord. “Haven’t heard any of mine yet, though.”

  “You guys have done this sort of stuff before.”

  Dash glanced at him. “We might be new to all this alien tech stuff, but when it comes to scams…well, remember that Leira and I are couriers. Scams are a big chunk of how we make a living.”

  “Or made a living, at least,” Leira said.

  Dash nodded at that. “Oh, by the way,” he said to Conover, “haven’t had a chance to say it yet, but good job back there.”

  Conover shrugged. “I haven’t done this sort of stuff before. But I’m learning.”

  Dash looked at Leira. “They grow up so fast. Now, on that note, let me explain the magic of beer. . .”

  7

  They meandered on, wending their way among a scatter of wildly divergent market stalls into one of the tube-like pedways connecting two of Port Hannah’s domes. More kiosks lined the route, which shared the glassed-in path with a narrow road for whisper-silent electric trams.

  “Is that cake? Smells like cake,” Leira said.

  “I believe so,” Dash said. The air was rich with smells of baking.

  “Um, can we get some? It is cake,” Leira said, adding a winning smile.

  “One condition,” Dash said, his expression grave.

  “Yeah?”

  “A whole cake. We don’t do pieces. We’re not that kind of people,” Dash said.

  Leira laughed then approached the baker with a flourish and bought a cake that was large enough to require a bag, but the vendor needn’t have worried. Pre-cut, the cake was divvied up and eaten in less time than it took to negotiate the sale.

  They all stood looking at each other with a vague sense of guilt, until Leira spoke up.

  “I’m not proud of what just happened—”

  “But I’d do it again,” Dash finished. They gave the baker’s stall a lingering look and moved on, letting the throngs of people flow around them like rapids in a stream.

  Ragsdale had given them a list of items they should bring along when they trekked north into the desert, and they’d been able to find pretty much all of them amidst the bustle of the local markets. Dash noted that Ragsdale and the Governor offered modest support to their expedition, apparently content to leave them to their own devices—and expense.

  Something else Dash noted was the surprisingly diverse range of goods for sale, either for standard credits, a local scrip currency called “tags,” or even barter. It suggested a robust economy for such an isolated colony with a relatively small population. He’d heard mention of mining ores, but had seen little heavy equipment or evidence of mining activity. What he had seen was a lot of stuff obviously gathered from the diverse flora of Gulch—leaves, roots, seeds, bulbous stems, bark, flowers—and he wondered if some of it might be especially valuable, as luxury goods or maybe meds. And even this bounty seemed mundane in light of the amazing plants they’d seen on their arrival, the ones apparently curated by the woman named Freya.

  For now, Dash just made a mental note to dig a little deeper and find out what made the place tick. After all, when all of this save the universe crap was done, he still needed a fallback way of making a living—if selling off a little alien tech didn’t pan out, that is.

  And, of course, assuming he survived it all in the first place. At the very least, they’d found a bakery, so the day wasn’t a total loss.

  Dash slowed as a gaggle of kids jostled their way by him. After comparing various sizes of self-filtering water bottles with Leira and Conover, he tossed a look after the boisterous children, then relented because he’d been those kids, once. Dash turned back to Leira and opened his mouth to speak when Viktor and Amy, who’d gone off to do some shopping of their own, reappeared, waving. They’d scored a wheeled cart from somewhere, and had loaded it with supplies.

  “We’re going to take all of this back to our quarters and start getting it sorted out,” Viktor said. “In the meantime, you guys throw whatever you bought on the pile then go see that guy.” He pointed at a man waiting a discreet distance away. Dash recognized him as one of the Specials that had been in Ragsdale’s greeting committee. “Apparently, the Governor wants to see you.”

  Dash looked at Leira. “Round two.”

  “Probably.”

  “What’s round two?” Conover asked.

  “That’d where the Governor tells us she’s having second thoughts,” Dash replied, “or some new information has come to light, or an inconvenient bit of bureaucratic administrivia has suddenly gotten in t
he way. What’s she’s really going to be looking for is some sort of concession, something that sweetens the pot.”

  “I’m betting permits,” Leira said. “We’ll have to get some sort of permit, or license or something, because the crashed ship has some sort of archaeological value, or some similar bullshit.”

  “We could also have an environmental impact issue,” Dash said. “Never mind that it’s a crash site. What about the rare lizards that live there?”

  “There are lizards?” Conover asked. “Do they bite?”

  “Dunno, but it’s a good ploy, and one I’ve seen before. She’ll have a plan in place.”

  “You mean she’s let us build up our expectations,” Conover said, “even spend a bunch of money on supplies, and now she’s going to threaten to rescind her permission for us to go if we don’t make it more worth her while.”

  Leira made an impressed face and nodded.

  Dash glanced at her. “Like I said, they grow up so fast.”

  They loaded their haul onto the cart and set off, following the waiting Special back to meet with Khyber Wallis.

  Wallis pointed at the projected image of Gulch hovering over the conference table. A glowing spot pulsed in the desert region depicted north of Port Hannah. Its location matched that of the crashed Golden ship. A similar, wall-sized display of the planet’s surface repeated the same information.

  “When I asked our geoscience people to pull our surveys of the area, they didn’t find much. In fact, your “crashed ship” seems so stealthy our teams didn’t even register any metallic or magnetic responses. No radiation, nothing.” She moved her finger to indicate the pulsing spot. “That is, until they went ahead and accessed some telemetry from a geophysical station they’d set up in the desert. Now, they’re detecting this signal.” She stared through the translucent image of the planet, at Dash. “It wasn’t there before you showed up. It’s only started since the last time our people accessed that station, about a week ago.”

  “Are you asking me a question here, Governor?” Dash asked.

  “Yes. I’d like an explanation. What’s changed? Was it something you did?”

  Dash shook his head. “Nope. In fact, that signal is what brought us here.”

  Ragsdale, who again had been lurking in the back of the conference room, said, “You never told us there was something active up there.”

  “I think I said we used certain technologies to locate the crash site.” Dash nodded toward the image. “That’s what we used those certain technologies to detect.”

  Wallis again started tapping her finger on the table, but her eyes remained on Dash. Even through the blur of the planetary image, he could see the wary suspicion hardening them. But Dash didn’t blame her for being apprehensive or mistrustful. In her place, he would be too. In fact, he was starting to feel more than a little bad about all the half-truths and subterfuge. He knew their ignorance of what the signal really meant was for their own good, but he’d started to genuinely like these people as dedicated, resourceful frontier colonists.

  So he decided to blink first. Unfortunately, it meant more deception—this time, an outright lie.

  “If you’re worried about this posing some kind of danger to Port Hannah,” Dash said, “I can assure you, it doesn’t.”

  “No, the real threat is supposedly from your employers,” Ragsdale said, his voice flat.

  Leira turned to him and nodded. “Yes, it is.”

  Wallis’s attention stayed locked on Dash like a laser designator. “Dammit, Dash, I need some answers here. You’re obviously holding some things back from us.”

  “Lots, actually,” Dash said, nodding.

  “Well, now I think it’s time you share whatever those things are with us. What, exactly, is up in the desert?”

  “And what kind of risk does it pose to Port Hannah?” Ragsdale added.

  “Governor, look. I would love to be able to reveal everything to you. But our employers were adamant that most of it is need-to-know only, and, well…” He gave an apologetic smile and shrug. “I’m sorry, you just don’t really need to know.”

  “In fact, you really don’t even want to know,” Leira said. “There are good reasons for keeping things secret, and one of them is to protect the people who might be put at risk if they have too much information.”

  Wallis stood, but left her hands planted on the table and a glare on her face. “I’m the one who’s sorry, because this just isn’t acceptable. You need us to get to whatever is producing that signal—”

  “With all due respect, Governor, no, we don’t,” Dash said. “We could have just gone straight to the crash site and bypassed you entirely.” He took a breath, steeling himself to remain determined—or at least appear determined—while delivering harsh words he didn’t actually mean, and that weren’t necessarily even true. “We didn’t, because we wanted to be as up front with you about all of this as we could. We’ve done that. We’ve told you everything we can. If we reveal any more, then we actually will be putting you at risk.”

  “From your so-called employers,” Ragsdale said.

  “That’s right. They are…let’s call them very focused people. They really don’t like it when anything gets in the way of whatever they’re trying to accomplish.”

  Which really does describe the Golden, Dash thought.

  “We’re not in their way,” Wallis shot back. “This is our settlement. We’re the only ones developing this planet. Pretty much by definition, we can’t be in anyone’s way. Not here on Gulch anyway.”

  Dash’s thoughts stayed snagged on the Golden, which made his next line easy to deliver with both menace and regret.

  “Governor, the people we’re dealing with have their own definition for what getting in their way means. And believe me, it’s a lot wider and more open-ended that what you, or even I, would probably consider reasonable.”

  “So you’re working for violent psychopaths.”

  “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”

  Wallis’s eyes actually widened slightly at that answer. Dash decided to seal the deal.

  “That’s why we’re here, Governor. You deal with us, so you don’t have to deal with our employers. Trying to deal with them directly means something has gone terribly wrong. They are extremely possessive of their tech and, honestly, won’t stop at much—”

  “At anything,” Leira put in.

  Dash nodded. “Yeah. At anything. So, please…just let us do what we came here to do.”

  Wallis looked from Dash, to the signal, then back to Dash. As the weight of their words settled on her, he decided to press home with a final point, one that had only just occurred to him.

  “There’s one other thing,” he said. “The woman we met when we first got here. Freya, I think her name was.”

  Wallis nodded. “That’s right. What about her?”

  “She showed us some amazing plants that she’s growing, that she apparently retrieved from the edge of the jungle, where it gives way to the desert, north of here. In other words, near the crash site.”

  “So?”

  “So, there’s a chance that the peculiar properties of those plants might also have something to do with our employers’ tech. If so, then Port Hannah has already become involved with that tech, at least indirectly.”

  Leira picked up the thread. “Which means, not to put too fine a point on it, that helping us out is an even better idea than hindering us.”

  “Seriously, Governor,” Dash said, “We’re on your side, here.”

  Really, his thoughts went on—we’re on your side, as in, the side of sentient life that might otherwise get wiped out by the Golden.

  He said nothing else though, judging that it was time to let Wallis make up her mind.

  The Governor sat back down, stared at the pulsing image of the signal from the wreck, and sighed. “Alright. We’ll proceed as planned. Ragsdale will arrange for transport up to this crash site.” She turned to her Security Chief. “How long
will that take?”

  “We need about a day, Governor, to get a buggy ready and kitted out for the trip.”

  “A day. Fine. You have that long, Dash, to get you and your people ready.”

  Dash wanted to give long, relieved sigh, but didn’t. Instead, he nodded and said, “Thank you, Governor.”

  Dash had thanked a lot of people in his time, for a lot of things. Most of the time, he didn’t really mean it.

  This time, though, he really did.

  Amy pushed the cart laden with much of their gear along, helped by Conover, while Dash, Leira, and Viktor led the way. They all were weighed down with more equipment. As they threaded their way through the crowds, following the directions Ragsdale had given them, they caught a lot of curious stares—and a few that seemed more than a little hostile.

  “Newest rumor is apparently that we’re here representing one of the big criminal syndicates, come to take over,” Viktor said.

  Amy made a hmph sound. “I heard we’re from a big corporation, out to take over all the mining rights because there’s some super valuable mineral ores here.”

  Viktor smirked as he shrugged. “Criminal enterprise, large corporation…pretty much the same thing, no?”

  “Did you guys start these rumors?” Conover asked, eyeing Dash and Leira.

  Dash smiled and shook his head. “Nope. Rumors still start just fine all on their own.”

  They entered one of the pedways connecting the domes. One of the electric trams ghosted by, its passengers staring at them out of the cabin windows. A flat cart groaning with crates and bales trailed at the end of it.

  “I have to admit,” Viktor said, watching the tram enter the next dome, “that this settlement, Port Hannah, is one of the better ones I’ve seen. They’ve not just put a lot of work into these domes and the pedways connecting them, they’ve given a lot of thought to how it should all be laid out.” He stepped aside to let a man riding an electric scooter drift past. “The engineering is really well done, too.” He pointed through the transparent roof at the geodesic surface of the dome looming ahead. “They’ve maximized the structural strength while cutting the materials needed down to a minimum.”