The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “What do you believe you accomplished then?” not-Viktor asked.

  “I learned some things. Things that will be good to know once we’re ready to kick your murderous asses back to wherever you came from. Like the fact the Golden didn’t have just one home world, but several. And that they might not have just been one race, but two, or maybe even three.”

  “That’s all irrelevant,” not-Leira said. “It will not help you win. At best, you now know more about the vastly superior race that will obliterate yours.”

  “You mean us…what was it again that you call us? Newlife?” He shrugged. “Not sure if that’s supposed to be somehow insulting or not, but it does seem kind of lame. Mind you, it does seem that you use Newlife to refer to everyone that isn’t the Golden, so I guess it does kind of carry that offensive, you all look the same to me thing.”

  “You do all look the same to the Golden,” not-Conover said. “Just feeble, biological lifeforms, little more than chance conglomerations of organic molecules.”

  “You have no purpose,” not-Viktor said. “You exist because you happen to exist.”

  “You are accidents of chemistry,” not-Leira added, “nothing more.”

  “The Golden were created by some feeble, organic lifeforms,” Dash shot back. “They only exist because someone happened to make them.”

  “That is true,” not-Conover replied. “In that one, lone instance, an organic lifeform developed a purpose. By creating the Golden, they achieved what no other Newlife, as we call their ilk, have ever done.”

  “And then the Golden destroyed them. Some gratitude, huh?”

  “The Makers had fulfilled their purpose,” not-Viktor said. “They were no longer needed.”

  “Which is why all existing Newlife is similarly not needed,” not-Leira said. “It has no purpose to fulfill. Worse, it stands in the way of the propagation of the Golden.”

  Dash nodded. “Improve, expand, and destroy.”

  “Those are the imperatives,” not-Conover said. “They are all that matter.”

  “Yeah, I notice a lot of emphasis on the destroy part.”

  Not-Viktor shrugged. “The imperatives are all that matter.”

  “And now, this ship once more has an opportunity to continue fulfilling those imperatives,” not-Leira said. “And there is really nothing you can do to stop it.”

  Dash drew the plasma pistol. “I guess we’ll just have to see about that.”

  Not-Conover gave Dash a convincing snort of disbelief. “You seek to vent your frustration by killing and destroying us?” He shook his head and made a tsk-tsk sound. “Letting your emotions exercise such a powerful, pervasive influence over you will be what ultimately undoes you.”

  “You almost lost everything once just to save Leira,” not-Viktor said. “And now you do the same again to save Amy.”

  “You really need to start making your decisions based on reason and logic,” not-Leira added. “Were you to do that, you might actually represent a formidable opponent for the Golden. Instead, you do things that make no sense, that are irrational and foolish. And you do them for the most nonsensical of reasons.”

  Dash smiled. “Know what? You’re right. We do, indeed, do those things, all the time.” His smile became a grin. “But you know what else? It’s exactly what’s going to win us this war. Here, let me give you a demonstration.”

  Dash lifted the plasma pistol, planted its muzzle against the bottom of his chin, and squeezed the trigger.

  20

  Dash winced as the simulation abruptly ended with his “death,” plunging him back into the data stream. The thunderous rush of data he had seized was abruptly flung back as Sentinel’s countermeasures reasserted themselves, cocooning him in a protective membrane of computation. The Golden systems immediately crashed back against it, trying to bludgeon their way back in.

  “Sentinel!”

  It was like trying to shout while standing under a waterfall. But he heard the response, the AI’s familiar voice slicing through the ruckus. It steadied him, reminding him that he wasn’t alone. Sentinel was here, and Leira and the others—the real Leira, and the real others—were out there, having his back.

  “It is both gratifying and surprising to be able to communicate with you again. The Golden security systems seemed to have almost fully compromised you.”

  “They sure did. But it’s a long story that can wait. Where are you with Amy?” Dash said.

  “She is almost fully stabilized.”

  Dash thought a curse. All this, and Sentinel still hadn’t even finished with Amy? Much less started to work on shutting down the Golden ship. Of course, maybe it was doing both at once—but probably couldn’t fully power the ship down until it was done with Amy. Dash was tempted to ask, but he held off. He hadn’t reached the finish line yet and might end up compromised by the Golden systems again. And next time, he might not have the same sort of autonomy.

  “You are under attack,” Sentinel said.

  “No shit!”

  “I mean you are actually under attack. The Dreadfoot have begun to assault your companions.”

  “What? You need to hurry.” Dash was harried, but his thoughts were clearing.

  “Amy is stable. I am severing your connection and removing you from the Golden datastream.”

  “You’re what? Wait! You haven’t shut that down yet?”

  Dash flung his eyes open and gaped around. He was back in the compartment, back with the others, back with Amy in the cylinder.

  Really? Dash thought. You’re going to try this again?

  A sharp blast of noise truncated his thoughts like a falling axe. Dash ducked and looked in the direction it had come from. He saw Ragsdale crouched behind a cylinder, aiming his carbine at the far exit from the compartment. It was the exit they’d used to leave this very same compartment a few hours ago? Except it felt like days now.

  Dash spun back toward Amy, ready to face a featureless, iron-gray cylinder like he had in the Golden simulation. But he saw Amy instead, slumped against the inside of the cylinder, thickly slathered with what must be liquid Dark Metal. A shout from nearby pulled his attention away and he found himself facing Leira.

  Dash blinked, trying to verify if what he saw was real or another clever fabrication.

  He shook his head, trying to clear away a pervasive fuzziness that clung like cobwebs.

  “Dash!” Leira shouted. “We need to get Amy out of there!”

  More shots cracked from Ragsdale’s carbine, and also from one wielded by Freya. Ragsdale shouted something at back at him.

  He shook his head again and spun back to Leira. “Get her out. Right. Okay. Hang on.”

  Still on his knees, Dash tapped at the console. More shots rang out. Viktor appeared briefly, running past him, heading for Ragsdale. Conover took up a fire position a short distance away, shouting something back toward Ragsdale.

  A sudden, piercing metallic shriek rose from the exit at the far end of the compartment.

  The cylinder finally peeled back. Leira lunged forward, catching Amy as she toppled out of it, then pulling her across the console, down to the deck between her and Dash.

  She lay still, her eyes closed.

  Leira looked up at Dash, her eyes glistening. “No.”

  Dash touched Amy’s neck to feel for a pulse. “Amy?”

  Amy stood facing him. Around them loomed an ineffably vast, empty space, free of sensation or form. It was nothingness made real, robbing him of input or comfort. It was an undoing, and with each passing second, he felt himself become less tethered to the reality of his own mind.

  “Dash?” Amy looked around. “Where the hell are we?”

  “We’re in a construct of some sort, if I’m guessing. The connection between the ship and us is—well, it’s almost more than our nervous systems can handle, even with Sentinel running interference. This place is at the edge of our capability, so it might be real, or unreal, or everything in between.”

  She gri
nned. “Well, that about covers all the possibilities.”

  “I said I was guessing. Didn’t say it was a good one.”

  “So how did this happen?” Amy answered, stifling a laugh.

  He shrugged again. “You were covered in liquid Dark Metal from being healed. Dark Metal is the—it’s the vector for this connection. It’s something more than any element we’ve ever known, and it lets us be here. And there, too.”

  “Where is there?” Amy asked.

  “The real world. The place where our bodies are.”

  “That’s so cool!”

  “Yeah, maybe, but it’s also not a really good time. We’re under attack and need to get moving.”

  “Okay.”

  “The problem is, you seem to be kind of—well, dead. As in, just lying there. That’s why I was trying to feel for your pulse, and—here we are, wandering this sort of digital wasteland. Which brings me to my point—it’s time for you to wake up. You’re going to live, and I’m going to bring you out of here.”

  Amy nodded. “I’m sorry about all the trouble I caused. If I’d been a little more careful we wouldn’t be here.”

  “If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.”

  “What?”

  “If doesn’t matter. Shit, if I fixated on every if that’s come up in my life, I’d be a basket case. What happened, happened. Anyway, we’re kind of in a rush here. So anytime you could wake up would be great.”

  “I want to,” Amy said, frowning, “but I can’t seem to.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess—” Her frowned hardened. “Uh, Dash, is it getting darker in here?”

  Dash looked around. There was no way to judge, because there was nothing to see. Or, no. Wait. Amy was getting darker, like a shadow had fallen over her.

  “Sentinel,” Dash called out, “what’s going on?”

  No answer.

  “Sentinel?”

  Nothing.

  Amy now stood in deep shadow. “Dash, I’m kind of scared right now.” Her voice sounded like it came from far away, and got further with each word.

  Amy was dying. Despite what they’d done, she was dying. The Golden tech hadn’t managed to fix her.

  Dash narrowed his eyes. “Wait a second. Amy, are you really you?”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Never mind. I actually think you’re the real Amy.”

  “That’s good,” she said, except Dash could hardly hear her now.

  He curled his lip. “Know what? I’m sick of this game.”

  Amy frowned, but Dash held up a hand. “Just bear with me a second. I’m going to try something.”

  Dash looked up at the ceiling of the compartment.

  Sure enough, there it was. He looked down and saw the deck beneath him. Then he looked at the cylinders and troughs around him. Each time he looked at something he fully expected to see, he could see it. One piece at a time, he stripped away the Golden simulation, revealing another chunk of reality.

  He looked at Amy, and then, with sheer will, began to peel the remaining streams of Golden data away. As he did, her body began to light from within, a glow that would be unnatural anywhere else, except in yet another simulation.

  “Clever. But not strong enough,” Dash told the ship. He reached out with his will and shoved hard against the vestiges of Golden presence, and they fell away from Amy like drifting snow.

  Amy coughed, blinked, and opened her eyes, then she looked up at Dash. At Leira. Back at Dash.

  “Let’s never do that again,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  Leira—the real Leira—was a frantic mess, staring at Dash and Amy with eye gone round from fear. “Dash, what the hell happened?”

  “It was the Golden. Or actually, this freakin’ ship. It stuck us in a simulation, trying to convince us both you were dying. Wheels within wheels, and all of its bullshit.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. Not entirely, but I know what their goal was—to find out what Sentinel was going to do. Oh, and to kill the Messenger,” Dash said.

  Another trio of shots rang out, followed by more shouts. Ragsdale, Freya, and Viktor fell back, firing at something now apparently inside the compartment. Something that squealed like tearing steel.

  “But no time for explanations,” he finished, shouting it at both Leira and Amy. “We’ve got more pressing business. Like, now.”

  21

  Ragsdale fell back to a position close to Dash. “Guns don’t seem to bother these things much.”

  Dash nodded, raised his weapon anyway, and aimed toward whatever was coming. Sporadic shrieks and squeals slashed at Dash’s ears, like someone pushing and pulling rusted hinges right beside his head. Dreadfoot, he thought. Except he hadn’t actually seen one yet, so aside from a vague impression of something awful, he didn’t really know what it looked like.

  Oh. Now he did.

  Scuttling around a cylinder about ten metres away came something like a four-legged animal with no tail, its head a nub jutting forward and sporting a sensor array of six faceted eyes. A single arm flexed from beneath the head, ending in a brutal claw similar to that of the utility bots, but much larger and far more terrifying because of it. The whole sinister contraption gleamed a shiny black, like the carapace of beetle, but with bright blue lines of conduit running along its back and legs, bisecting the sensor cluster. Its clattering feet ended in more claws that retracted as it raced forward but were no doubt able to extend to grip and slice.

  Dash shifted his aim and squeezed the trigger. The carbine bucked against his shoulder, flinging explosive slugs at the Dreadfoot. It powered on through the small barrage of detonations, emerging with one of its sensor eyes shattered and dark, but otherwise unharmed.

  As it closed on him, it suddenly erupted with that ear-splitting squeal. Dash had assumed it had just been the sound of the Dreadfoot moving, but it seemed deliberate, even calculated. As he reeled under the onslaught of raw noise, he saw why. The racket seemed designed to deafen and confuse, perhaps even to stun.

  Dash shook his head to clear it then he snapped off another two rounds and watched them detonate ineffectually against the Dreadfoot’s armored carapace. Cursing, he shifted the carbine to his left hand and drew the plasma pistol. As he did, he remembered what happened when he’d fired it at the lockjaws. This wasn’t a ravine full of loose gravel and rocks, but the Dreadfoot was still close, and getting closer.

  “Everyone fall back!”

  “Follow me!” Ragsdale shouted, then he ushered the rest of them back toward the other main exit from the chamber. Dash counted to three to let them gain some distance, then he aimed the plasma pistol and fired.

  He closed his eyes while firing, but the searing flash of discharge dazzled him even through his eyelids. His ears rang from the shot, too, but when his senses returned, he saw the Dreadfoot halted, canted to one side, its sensors and the glowing conduits flickering fitfully.

  His satisfaction was short-lived. Two more of the mechanical creatures appeared, one stopping to apparently help the damaged one, the other closing fast.

  Dash turned and ran, following the others toward the exit.

  They reached it and stopped, taking up firing positions. Dash waved them on. “No! Keep going!”

  Ragsdale’s face became a question, but only for an instant, then he shouted at the rest of them to carry on down the corridor. Leira shouted something too, and Dash saw the other plasma pistol in her hand. Viktor led Conover, Amy, and Freya into the passage.

  Dash saw that Conover and Freya were still carting the Golden corpse along with them. Just before he reached the exit, Leira shouted, “Dash!” and aimed her plasma pistol, seemingly straight at him.

  For one, terrible heartbeat, Dash wondered if she’d somehow been coopted by the Golden and this was all just another simulation. And if it was, how he could possibly know. With the next heartbeat, though, he lunged forward and to one sid
e, taking cover behind the last cylinder before the exit.

  Leira fired. The plasma bolt sizzled past him, seeming to detonate right on the far side of the cylinder. Its shadow protected him from the worst of the blast, but it still singed his boots and the cuffs of his excursion suit. His feet felt like he’d stuck them too close to a fire, and he winced at air that suddenly felt like the blast from a furnace. But he forced himself to ignore it, leapt back to his stinging feet, and charged through the exit.

  “Those guns of yours seem to do the trick!” Ragsdale said, nodding back at the compartment. Another Dreadfoot sat inert, seemingly only a couple of meters away from where Dash had taken cover. But the harsh squeals only intensified as more of them rushed in from the far exit.

  “Yeah,” Dash said, nodding and catching his breath. “Trouble is, Leira and I only have a half dozen or so shots between us, then these things need to be charged.”

  Ragsdale narrowed his eyes back into the compartment. “Don’t think that’s going to be enough.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Dash scowled as the ear-splitting shrieks drew closer. “Come on, we need to stay ahead of these things.”

  They turned and ran.

  “Sentinel!”

  Just as he had in the Golden simulation with Amy, he got no answer. His gut, already tight, clenched even more.

  “Sentinel, are you there?”

  Nothing.

  Dash took a deep breath to calm himself, letting his senses play about him as he fought to discover the truth of his surroundings. It could be real. It could be a construct. Dash had never doubted the very foundations of what was real before, but he did now. The Golden security systems had made errors before, errors that revealed the cracks in the artificial reality they’d constructed to deceive him.

  All he could do was remain vigilant for anything that seemed off. In the meantime, Sentinel still wouldn’t answer him, creating a sense of unease that lingered at the periphery of his senses. Nothing seemed to have changed in his connection with the Archetype; he could still sense it on a basic level. But that was merely data. As far as his link to Sentinel was concerned, that was like an open comm channel—a blank carrier signal, but with nothing transmitting across it.