The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “Maybe this is an older setup,” Conover suggested.

  “Or maybe it’s because of whoever, or whatever, they’re sending the signal to,” Amy said.

  There was silence as they all chewed on that. She had a good point, Dash thought. Clan Shirna had been a Golden ally—actually, a puppet, destined for extermination as much as anyone else, but they’d been rendered blind to that by greed. Their technology had been conventional, on par with that of things like the Slipwing. It stood to reason that the Golden had similar minions out there, didn’t it?

  “Well, it looks like we haven’t been detected yet,” Dash finally said. “So let’s hang around here a bit longer, learn as much as we can, and then head back to the Forge. Sentinel, can you record whatever that thing is transmitting?”

  “I already am. I would note that, since we are only detecting spillover from the transmission, the signal is relatively poor quality and the data is of questionable completeness.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll take whatever we can get.” Dash shook his head. “Hard to believe that Harolyn and her people were working right nearby and had no idea this thing was here.”

  A new voice came on. It took Dash a moment to realize it was Kai, because the monk rarely spoke over the comm.

  “Isn’t that odd, actually?” he asked. “That Harolyn’s people didn’t know about this facility of the Enemy so close by?”

  “What are you getting at?” Dash asked.

  “Well, this facility, whatever its purpose, is located on almost exactly the opposite side of Brahe, the larger planet, from its moon, Orsino. And Orsino is where Harolyn and her colleagues were based. It almost seems like the Enemy deliberately sought to avoid detection, doesn’t it?”

  “By keeping Brahe between them and Orsino.”

  “Yes. What reason would they have to avoid Orsino otherwise? Were it uninhabited, it would just be another uninteresting celestial body, wouldn’t it?”

  “Maybe it’s because they have to keep the antenna aligned for their signal?” Amy said.

  “They’re not in a synchronous orbit, though,” Viktor replied. “They’re orbiting around Brahe at exactly the same rate as Orsino, as though they want to keep out of sight of the moon, like Kai says. So if their signal is meant to go in one particular direction, then it will be eclipsed for a chunk of each orbit by the planet.”

  “Kai’s right,” Dash said. “They’re trying to keep all of this secret. When they detected the Rockhound first arriving in this system, they must have reconfigured things so this would forever sit on the other side of Brahe. And because Harolyn and her miners had no way to detect Dark Metal—”

  “They were blissfully unaware,” Viktor said.

  “Why wouldn’t the Golden have just destroyed the Rockhound when it first showed up?” Amy asked.

  “Because that might have brought more ships looking to find out what happened,” Viktor replied.

  Amy’s brow furrowed. “Okay, but what if they’d actually found a mine on Orsino and started—”

  “Hey, guys,” Dash put in. “This is all good stuff. But I think we might want to talk about it as we get the hell out of here.”

  “What are you talking about, Dash?”

  “Check your scanners. Something big just dropped out of unSpace.”

  Dash watched as the sudden, powerful scanner return began accelerating, heading in-system fast. Sentinel brought it into view then zoomed in.

  “That is one hell of a big ship,” Dash said.

  It was a huge, angular vessel, almost as large as the biggest of the Clan Shirna battlecruisers. It had an entirely unfamiliar design, though. Even Sentinel couldn’t identify it.

  Dash saw Amy spin the Slipwing and light her fusion drive, powering her away from the planet. As soon as she did, potent scanner emissions erupted from the big ship, bathing Brahe and the space around it. An instant later, four smaller vessels launched from the huge vessel and began streaking toward them.

  “They’re using fusion drives,” Dash said. “At least they look like fusion drives.”

  “They are. However, the properties of their plasma exhaust show them to be advanced forms of that technology. Considerably more advanced than the drive of the Slipwing.”

  “Why does my ship always get used as the benchmark for tech that’s better than it?”

  “Because you are presumably most familiar with it, so it gives you an immediate point of reference.”

  Dash wanted to push back at that but didn’t bother and just launched the Archetype in the Slipwing’s wake. The mystery ship and its smaller spawn powered after them at full thrust, but they had too much of a head start. The Slipwing reached translation distance from the system first and vanished into unSpace. Dash was about to follow, but Sentinel spoke first.

  “We are receiving a powerful broad-band transmission from the unknown vessel,” she said.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  The voice that rang in Dash’s ears sounded human but underlain by a strange, almost mechanical timbre.

  “Submit to the Bright and be elevated.”

  Dash scowled at the distant ship, muttered, “Not today, whoever you are,” and flung the Archetype into unSpace after the Slipwing.

  7

  Dash landed the Archetype in the Forge’s docking bay, settling it onto its feet in the slightly hunched posture that seemed to suit its particular center of gravity. It gave the mech, even at rest, an air of brooding menace, like it was about to explode into action. His attention this time, though, was on the other people already in the bay, watching them as the Archetype settled into place. Viktor, Amy, and the others from the Slipwing barely spared it a glance and were instead milling about near the Slipwing, gesturing in animated conversation. Leira and Ragsdale had joined them. But the bay also held the Rockhound, Harolyn’s ship, making the place seem packed tight in a way it never had been before. And those standing near the freighter’s lowered egress ramp weren’t gesturing or speaking, they were just staring—no, gaping—at the Archetype as it arrived.

  It did him good to see so many people here. The place didn’t feel quite so desolate. Dash gave a thin smile to Harolyn and her crew, though. “Probably had pretty much the same expression on my face when I first came aboard the Forge.”

  “If anything, you exhibited an even more stunned attitude,” Sentinel replied.

  “First of all, I was not stunned. And second—you were watching?”

  “You are the Messenger. I am specifically designed to understand and accommodate your particular idiosyncrasies.”

  Dash paused as he unlimbered himself from the cradle. Idiosyncrasies? He wondered what exactly Sentinel considered his idiosyncrasies. Dash considered just asking but decided that it could be one of those conversations that went on for a while in the manner of a teacher he’d disliked some years ago. If there was one thing these Unseen AIs seemed to lack, it was tact. Being almost brutally to the point might be efficient, but it sometimes stung. What made it worse was the fact that the AI’s themselves seemed entirely impervious to criticism, so it always ended up pretty one-sided.

  Dash dismounted from the Archetype and walked to join Harolyn and the dozen or so geologists, engineers, metallurgists, and other tech types standing with her. They simply gaped around at the docking bay, wide-eyed, their expressions caught somewhere between awe, fear, and sheer scientific wonder.

  “Wait until you get the full tour,” Dash said, grinning at their stunned amazement. “Custodian, please make sure our new guests have appropriate access to the rest of the Forge.”

  “Understood,” the AI replied.

  Ragsdale caught Dash’s eye and nodded. Ever the security officer, he’d already made this point with Dash—anyone who came aboard the Forge would be given appropriate access. Custodian knew this meant access to hab and medical sections, but no access to critical areas, like the engine room, control center, or the fabrication facilities themselves.

  “Based on what
you’ve told me about those Clan Shirna bastards you had to deal with, it sounds like the Golden are actively trying to recruit agents elsewhere,” Ragsdale had said. “That means we shouldn’t trust anyone, at least until they’ve proven themselves to us.”

  Dash couldn’t argue with that. After all, they’d met Harolyn and her team in a star system containing a secretive Golden facility of unknown purpose, about whose existence they were wholly unaware. And they’d been conducting a mining operation in close proximity to a hidden Unseen outpost. If Dash let himself get paranoid, he could easily imagine that Harolyn and her people were working for the Golden, trying to get access to the Unseen archive.

  For now, though, he just kept a friendly smile on his face. It was made easier by the fact that he didn’t really think Harolyn was a Golden spy.

  Of course, isn’t that exactly how a spy would want it?

  Harolyn shook her head at Dash. “This is…I mean, it’s—” She just stopped, shrugged, and shook her head again.

  “Who’s Custodian?” Preston asked. “An Unseen? Are there actually Unseen here?”

  “Nope, no Unseen here on the Forge,” Dash said. “At least none that we’ve found in the parts of it that are currently accessible, anyway. A few sections aren’t powered up yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t need them powered up,” Dash said, again tickled by a glimmer of suspicion. The Golden would probably love to know what parts of the Forge were working, and which weren’t, wouldn’t they?

  “All the important stuff is up and running at full capacity, though,” he went on. “Anyway, as for Custodian, he’s the custodian of this place. He’s the AI who runs the Forge.”

  “So you mean to say that all of this huge station is run by a single AI?” Harolyn asked.

  “More or less. Anyway, let’s get you guys settled into your quarters, and then we can start filling you in on what’s going on. From there, we can work with you to decide how you can help us out the most.”

  “Yeah, sounds good,” Harolyn said. “Just let me pick my jaw up off the floor here, and then we’re all yours.”

  Dash laughed, moved to join Leira and the others, and asked Kai to have his monks help Harolyn’s crew get settled in. In the meantime, he suggested to the rest of them that they all meet in the lounge they’d taken to calling their War Room to discuss what they’d learned and, more importantly, what their next steps were.

  As they dispersed, Dash paused and watched two of Kai’s monks leading Harolyn and her people out of the docking bay. He was glad for more allies but couldn’t silence Ragsdale’s ominous words that were still ringing in his ears.

  …we shouldn’t trust anyone, at least until they’ve proven themselves to us.

  Were any of Harolyn’s crew actually Golden agents? No, probably not.

  But that was the trouble. Probably not wasn’t the same as no.

  “So who exactly are the Bright?” Viktor asked.

  They’d reassembled in the War Room—everyone, that is, except for Harolyn’s people and the monks helping them get settled into quarters and giving them a tour of the parts of the Forge they most immediately needed to know. Dash had given Leira, Ragsdale, and Freya a brief recap of what had happened in the Brahe system, ending with the sinister mystery of the huge ship that had appeared and issued that cryptic message, Submit to the Bright and be elevated.

  “No idea who, or what, the Bright are,” Dash said. “You all saw the same thing I did. Big ship, launched smaller ships, told us to submit and be elevated, whatever that means. Ominous at best.”

  “Kind of reminds me of how Nathis used to talk,” Leira said. “All inscrutable and holier-than-you-are.”

  Dash nodded. Nathis, one of the leaders of Clan Shirna, had outwardly seemed to be your typical, fanatical religious nutcase. Dash could well imagine him saying something like submit and be elevated. As it turned out, Nathis had actually been a corrupt and greedy pawn of the Golden, motivated by the all-too-familiar drive to gather power and wealth, rather than any actual religious belief. The Bright might very well be the same.

  “So you’re thinking that the Bright are just another version of Clan Shirna?” he asked Leira.

  She shrugged. “Like you said, all we know is what we know. But it would fit, right? The Golden manipulating some race or other, so they come across all about enlightenment and purity and being elevated.”

  “Maybe the Bright are Clan Shirna, just rebranded,” Dash said.

  “That ship was entirely different from anything we saw Clan Shirna use, though,” Conover replied. “Unless, of course, they already had it mostly built when we encountered them and just put it into service. But the tech seemed entirely different from what we saw Clan Shirna using.”

  Viktor rubbed his chin with a rasp of stubble. “I have to agree with Conover. Who or whatever these Bright are, they just seemed…I don’t know, different from Clan Shirna. They had a different feel to them.”

  “There’s that feel thing again,” Amy said, grinning.

  “You have to admit, cuz, feeling things is a big part of how we ordinary mortals operate,” Leira said.

  “I think it’s actually our competitive advantage against the Golden,” Dash said. “We can do things they don’t expect. Of course, they do learn pretty fast—I saw that when I was fighting the Harbinger. Got some moves in that it didn’t anticipate. But when I tried them again, it was more ready for them. It adapted. And quickly.”

  “Which means we should save our newest and most unexpected stuff for when it really counts,” Viktor said.

  Dash nodded. “And that, I guess, brings us to the current question—where we go next given our lack of information.”

  There was a pause, the question hanging in the silence.

  Conover finally broke it. “I think we need to know more about what the Golden are up to in the Brahe system. It makes me nervous knowing that big facility, whatever it is, is there. Why? What’s it for? Who is it transmitting to? And what are those things that look like big drones for?”

  “All excellent questions,” Viktor said. “As to the questions, we can go back to who or what the hell are the Bright, and what’s their role in all of this?”

  “It’s too bad we couldn’t have hung around that system longer,” Amy said. “Maybe we could have figured out what was going on…what the Golden were up to.” She gave a resigned shrug. “They’ll probably be watching over that system pretty closely now.”

  “Will they? Or will they assume that’s what we’ll think, so we won’t go back there?”

  They all turned to the speaker who, it turned out, was Freya.

  She looked around at the stares directed her way. A skilled botanist, her main contributions to meetings in the War Room were updates on their food supply which, thanks to her particular talents, along with some stolen Golden technology, was burgeoning. She rarely spoke up about operational matters, though.

  In answer to the unspoken questions, she said, “Well, you just made the point about being unpredictable, right? So, if you think the Golden are going to be trying to keep that system locked down now, and they expect you to think that, then they probably won’t be expecting you to go back there any time soon, right?”

  Dash looked at Freya, then exchanged glances with the others. Finally, he said, “Yes, Freya. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  Freya sat up, looking uncomfortable. “Oh. Well, I was just thinking out loud. I mean, the Golden really might be expecting you, so they probably have a bunch of nasty things keeping an eye on that system now.

  “Oh, they might very well, sure,” Dash replied. “But you know what? Who cares? So far, we’ve been meeting the Golden on their terms. We’ve basically been waiting for them to come at the Forge so we can fight them off. It’s time to take a bit of the initiative here and strike back at them.”

  “So what are you proposing, Dash?” Viktor asked.

  “Well, I’m saying I take the Archetyp
e back to the Brahe system and get some hard information about what’s going on there.”

  Viktor rubbed his chin again. “You once asked me to play the devil’s advocate and point out the things that could go wrong with any plans we make. I’m not even sure where to really start with this one.”

  “I have to agree, Dash,” Leira said. “I’m hardly the most cautious person around, and even I’m thinking this might be a really risky idea—too risky, in fact.”

  “On the other hand, it’s hard to win a war by strictly playing it safe,” Ragsdale added. “From what you’ve told me, you really have been spending your time reacting to the Golden. If we’d done that aboard that crashed ship, instead of taking the initiative and going after those Golden weapons in their armory—and credit where due, that was Dash’s idea—I highly doubt we would have made it out of there.”

  “I’m with Ragsdale on this,” Amy said. “Not knowing what the Golden are doing in that system, what all that stuff is for—”

  “And what the Bright are,” Conover put in.

  “Yeah, and that,” Amy went on. “I don’t know, it makes me really nervous.”

  Dash nodded. “Me too. So I think we need to make this our priority. We need to know what’s up. To do that, we need to get back to Brahe and figure out what the Golden are doing there.”

  “If I may,” Kai said. “Perhaps there are answers in some of the archive data we brought back from Orsino. The Enemy’s purposes there might be related to whatever is contained in those records.”

  “Now that’s a good point. Kai, can you and your brethren get to work digging through that stuff and see what you can find out? Anything about Orsino and Brahe would be useful, but—really, anything at all that could help us out.”

  “I’ll help with that,” Conover said, looking at Kai and nodding.

  “Absolutely,” Kai replied. “We’ll begin this task immediately.”

  “And I am going to take some time here to rest and get cleaned up,” Dash said. “Then I’ll take the Archetype back to Brahe. All I need now is a plan for what to do when I get there. Leira, Viktor, along with Amy, Ragsdale, and Freya—all meet back here in a couple hours to finalize how this is going to work. Be ready to work. I recommend food and caffeine, but I want you at your best.”