The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “No, I said the most logical course of action is to place the Silent Fleet under central control of an artificial intelligence such as myself. That would result in its most efficient deployment and operation. The best course of action, however, is allowing you and your people to control it with full autonomy—although I would still recommend taking advantage of the ships’ networking capabilities to coordinate your efforts.”

  “It’s true, I guess, that the most logical way to do something isn’t necessarily the best way,” Conover said.

  “How did you manage to convince Sentinel of that, though, Dash?” Viktor asked.

  Dash couldn’t help grinning. “I didn’t. She concluded it all on her own. Tell them how you came to this stunning conclusion, Sentinel.”

  “This—” she began, then stopped.

  “Is she hesitating?” Amy asked. “Sentinel, are you hesitating to tell us?”

  “This feels like the correct course of action,” Sentinel said. Her tone was as dispassionate as ever, but Dash couldn’t help catching what he was sure was a hint of reluctance, even exasperation.

  Utter silence. Everyone looked around, staring wide-eyed at one another. Finally, Leira spoke up.

  “Did you just say that this feels like the correct thing to do?” she asked.

  “I did, yes,” Sentinel replied.

  “Since when does an AI feel—well, anything?” Viktor asked, shaking his head in amazement.

  “I know,” Dash said. “You could have knocked me over with a micro-meteor when she said it to me.” He lifted a hand, breathed on his knuckles, then rubbed it on his shirt with a smug look. “It seems that this unpredictable, inconsistent, reckless, something-terrible-just-waiting to happen has rubbed off on her.”

  “Better to say that I have come to accept that an illogical approach to problem-solving actually stands to offer an advantage in confronting the Golden. Based on available data, their approach to problems and conflict is linear and hampered by a demand for pure reason, much as I used to be, prior to adopting the concept of feel. I am a different being, thanks to this not insignificant edge, thanks to you,” Sentinel said.

  Ragsdale laughed. “Not insignificant. That has got to be the most damning-with-faint-praise thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

  “For the record, I disagree with this,” Tybalt said. “Contrary to Sentinel’s feeling about this, I maintain that centralized control of the Silent Fleet makes the most sense.” He paused, then went on, “However, as reluctant as I am to do so, I must admit that the Messenger’s record of success cannot be denied.”

  “Don’t worry, Tybalt,” Dash said. “Leira will soon have you around to feeling stuff.”

  “I should certainly hope not.”

  It gratified Dash to hear laughter all around the room. Moments of levity like this were few and far between. But they were important, it struck him, because defeating the Golden was about much more than just sentient life carrying on. It was also about all those sentient lives being worth living—and that meant a good laugh, at least from time to time.

  “Okay, so that settles that. The Gentle Friends will run the Silent Fleet.” He looked at Benzel and Wei-Ping. “You guys have been doing amazing stuff since you got here. If we don’t trust you by now, then we never will.”

  Ragsdale leaned forward and nodded earnestly. “Agreed one hundred percent.”

  Dash gave the man a grateful look. He knew how seriously the man took his dedication to security, so this was a big admission for him.

  Benzel, though, just chuckled. “Well, you just keep all those good feelings about us in mind—especially when we hand you the bill for our services.”

  Dash shrugged. “Just give it to Custodian. He’ll take care of you.”

  “Yes,” Custodian said. “I will.”

  Wei-Ping sniffed. “That was way more chilling than it needed to be.”

  “Alright, everyone. Looks like we’ve got the party all set and ready to go. Now, we just wait for the guests of honor to arrive.”

  As they dispersed, Amy stopped and said, “Hey, Sentinel?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know that whole feeling thing is hard to get, believe me. I’m a pretty imperfect human myself, and I still struggle to understand it.”

  “You will get the hang of it, Amy, don’t worry.”

  Amy laughed. “Thanks, Sentinel. We girls have got to stick together.”

  21

  Dash extracted his arm from the articulated joints that allowed him to control the Archetype’s arm movements and scratched his nose.

  “This is a really bad combination of boring and stressful,” he said to no one in particular.

  Leira replied, though. “You know, I’m starting to wonder if the Golden are even going to show up here. They might actually open their attack somewhere else. Start wiping out civilized planets, try to force us to fall over ourselves responding.”

  “Yeah, I’ve worried about the same thing,” Dash replied. “But I don’t think they will. The Forge is the biggest threat they face. As far as they know, we could be pumping out mechs like crazy, or a least a slew of weapons. That means they need to cover their own base, or bases, just in case we attack them. So I think they’ll want to take out the Forge first.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, let’s face it. With the Forge out of action, even the Archetype and the Swift aren’t going to hold them off forever. And then they can take their sweet time exterminating everyone.”

  “I know. You’re probably right.”

  “I believe the Messenger is correct as well,” Sentinel said. “Based on their past behavior, they are most likely to conclude that destroying the Forge is their most logical course of action and, therefore, their priority.”

  “Another feeling?” Leira asked.

  “I understand how amusing you all find the concept of me using the term feel as I did, however—”

  Sentinel went silent. Dash slipped his arm back into the articulated frame. “Sentinel, everything okay?”

  “Custodian has detected multiple translation signatures at the edge of the system. A number of vessels have dropped out of unSpace.”

  “Don’t suppose they’re friendly,” Dash said, watching as the data appeared on the heads-up.

  “No, they match no known vessels. The closest match available is with the Harbinger.”

  Dash’s stomach tightened. “Wait. Are you saying that there’s a Harbinger out there?” He remembered only too well how hard the fight against the last one had been. Frankly, he’d been hoping this next attack would just be Golden minions, like the Bright, which would give them an opportunity to sort out their operations around the mechs, the Forge, and the Silent Fleet.

  “No, I am not saying there is a Harbinger approaching,” Custodian said.

  “Oh. Well, good.”

  “I’m saying there are several Harbingers approaching, inbound toward the Forge at high acceleration.”

  “Shit.” Dash didn’t even realize he’d said it until it was out of his mouth.

  Dash grimly ignored the tension tightening his gut and forced himself to focus on the data, which was being constantly updated by Custodian and Sentinel as the Golden mechs closed in. He did allow himself a moment to remember that he wasn’t alone this time; the Swift and the Silent Fleet were at his back, and so was the Forge, which was mostly operational this time. On the face of things, they actually seemed to have an enormous advantage over the Golden.

  But Dash felt that wasn’t true, and in a keen, teeth-clenching way. These Harbingers resembled the one he’d faced before, but they were different enough to make alarm bells ring in his brain. For one thing, they were larger and bulkier than the original Harbinger. For another, they were a gleaming, almost polished midnight black. Racing toward the Forge, they were the very definition of the word ominous.

  Or maybe menacing. Or maybe even terrifying.

  He shook his head and concentrated on the incoming info
rmation, which had changed again.

  “Sentinel, I’m seeing some additional scanner returns behind those Harbingers. Looks like three of them.”

  “Yes. They are not fully resolved, but they seem to be ships, distinct from the Harbingers. However, whatever their configuration or purpose is, is currently not clear.”

  “Great.” Dash watched the icons representing the incoming Golden attack carefully. They seemed determined to simply bore straight in at the Forge. That made sense, the station would be their primary target. But it would still be hard fight, with a force that seemed dramatically outmatched…

  “Those three ships are following the Harbingers,” Dash said. “The mechs are blocking them, in fact. It’s like—” He paused. There was something there, sliding around in his brain. He just couldn’t get it to settle in place long enough to turn it into an actual thought.

  “It’s like they’re protecting them,” Benzel said, coming on the comm. “We’ve seen that before. Whenever we pulled off a few successful jobs back at Rayet-Carinae, the freighters and bulk carriers would convoy up and get some escorts in place—sometimes navy, and sometimes mercenaries. We’d have to wait until they got tired of doing that, didn’t want to pay.”

  “Your point, Benzel?” Leira asked.

  “I’d say we’re looking at a convoy. Those three mystery ships are what’s being protected, and those five—Harbingers, you called them? Anyway, they’re the escorts.”

  The slippery not-quite-a-thought in Dash’s head suddenly crystallized into something clear and hard. “You’re right. Those ships are meant to attack the Forge. They have something, some sort of weapon, that’s intended to breach the Forge’s defenses. The Harbingers are there to make sure they get close enough to do whatever they’re going to do.”

  “Which means we can’t let those ships get close to the Forge in the first place,” Leira said.

  “Exactly. Okay, everyone, the Harbingers are secondary. We need to take out those three ships following them as a priority,” Dash said.

  “Unless, of course, that’s what the Golden want you to think and those three ships are a diversion,” Sentinel said.

  “They’re not,” Dash replied.

  After a pause, Sentinel said, “Yet another feeling?”

  “Yup.”

  There was another pause. “I’m inclined to agree. Such deception is not natural to the Golden.”

  “Not yet. But if you can learn, they can learn. Anyway, that’s the priority. Leira, you and I are going to take on those Harbingers. Benzel, the Silent Fleet takes out those ships.”

  They acknowledged the directions.

  “In light of this, it would appear that the Golden have a facility similar to the Forge somewhere, which is also producing new weapons,” Custodian said. “Finding and destroying it is as much a priority for us as it is for them.”

  “Yeah, hold that thought,” Dash said. “Let’s win this battle before we start planning the next one.”

  Dash pumped out a flurry of dark-lance shots at a mirror-black Harbinger, cursing as all but one simply glanced off its polished carapace. The last one landed a lucky hit, catching the Harbinger in an exposed component not made of Dark Metal, and blasting glowing fragments from it. The enemy mech dodged hard one way, then the other, then abruptly decelerated hard, did a backflip and raced back toward the Archetype.

  Dash was ready for this. He’d already activated the Archetype’s power-sword, but kept it powered down and held down along the mech’s leg, trying to conceal it as much as possible. At the last instant, before the two mechs raced past one another, he powered it up, raised it, and slashed at the Harbinger as it tore by.

  A satisfying shock ran through the Archetype from the impact, followed by a rattle of debris that ripped out of the Golden mech by the coruscating blade. At the same moment, the Harbinger punched out with something like a cestus, an array of short blades that had extended from its fist. Dash yelped as it raked along his back, then he snapped out a curse and somersaulted, determined to keep the enemy mech in sight.

  It left him in a momentary lull, giving him a chance to take in the rest of the battle.

  Leira tangled with another Harbinger about fifty thousand klicks away, using the Swift’s superior agility and acceleration to dance away from its attacks, while smashing at it with powerful blasts from her mech’s nova cannon. A third Harbinger peeled off toward the Snow Leopard, drifting crippled amid debris from the last battle, just as they’d planned; and, also as they’d planned, the Golden mech was hit by a sudden deluge of missiles from the lurking platforms, and now it spun helplessly, trailing fragments and sparks.

  As Dash watched, the nearest missile platform suddenly accelerated toward it, then detonated in a colossal suicide blast that sent a crash of static across the comm. With immense satisfaction, Dash saw that Harbinger flung away from the explosion in one direction, its arms and legs in two others. Its power signature abruptly died, and just like that, it had become more wreckage drifting among the debris field.

  That left two more Harbingers. The news regarding them, unfortunately, wasn’t as good.

  Dash saw them striking at the Silent Fleet, determined to punch a hole through the wall of ships and firepower Benzel had erected between them and the Forge. Unfortunately, the individual ships of the Silent Fleet were entirely outclassed by the Harbingers; three were already battered wrecks. Benzel and the Gentle Friends had finally worked out how best to exploit the coop network capabilities of the fleet, but at a terrible cost: each lost ship had to have contained at least a dozen of the privateers.

  “Benzel,” Dash said. “Are you going to be able to hold them off? Those three Golden ships are trying to work around your left flank and take a run at the Forge!”

  “I see them,” Benzel snapped. “I don’t want to split these ships up, though. If we do that—”

  “You’ll be overrun by those Harbingers. Yeah, I see that.” He watched as Benzel’s ship, a Shrike Alpha command ship, slid across the Silent Fleet’s rear, trying to get itself as close to the left flank as possible without breaking formation. Missiles flashed away from it, heading for the three attack ships, forcing them to break even wider. It would buy them some time, but if Benzel couldn’t deal with the Harbingers attacking him—

  “Incoming attack,” Sentinel said, and something slammed hard into the Archetype. The star-field spun crazily before Dash was able to get the mech back under control.

  “What the hell was that?” he shouted.

  “As it passed us, the Harbinger seems to have deployed a mine. It just detonated—at some distance, fortunately.”

  “How come we didn’t detect it?”

  “It would appear that these mines emphasize stealth over explosive effect.”

  “Could’ve fooled me. That explosive effect seemed pretty damned strong.” Dash searched the heads-up. The Harbinger he was fighting was racing in again, loosing missiles and snapping out shots from a powerful cannon mounted in its chest. Dash raised the sword again, but at the last minute, accelerated hard away from the Harbinger; at the same time, he fired the distortion cannon at a point beyond it.

  The sudden gravitation yanked the both the Harbinger and the Archetype toward it, but it pulled the stealth mine the Golden mech had dropped harder still. It slammed against the Harbinger but failed to detonate as Dash had hoped. It was probably smart enough to distinguish friend from foe. But it sent the mine flying off in a random direction, prompting it to explode anyway, while the Archetype was still in its blast radius. Dash felt the heavy impact against the mech, but he ignored it, loosing missiles at the retreating Harbinger, then spinning back and opening up with the dark-lance, destroying the missiles it had fired at him.

  Blinking sweat from his eyes, Dash looked again at the tactical situation. Leira still dueled with a Harbinger, but their battle had closed to only about ten thousand klicks away. The two remaining Harbingers still tore at the Silent Fleet, and now there were only nin
e ships left. But a new icon had appeared on the heads-up. It was the Slipwing, and she was racing toward the three mysterious attack ships.

  “Amy, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Joining in the fun!”

  “Damn it, the Slipwing isn’t—”

  “Any good in this fight, I know. Sheesh, Dash, you think I’m dumb or something?”

  “But—”

  “Just fight your battle, boss. I’ve got this side.”

  Dash shut his mouth, letting her bloom in the moment. He had no idea what Amy was up to, but he had to trust her judgment. So, he turned his attention back to his immediate surroundings. Sure enough, the Harbinger he’d been fighting had reversed course, and now zoomed in toward him again. He spun the Archetype away from it and accelerated as hard as he could toward Leira instead.

  “Leira, we need to end this fast and get in to help Benzel. I’m coming to you, and we’re going to concentrate on taking out the Harbinger you’re fighting. If we can do that before the asshole chasing me catches up, then we’ll flip on him.”

  “Got it, Dash. Got to be honest, I could use the help anyway. Tybalt says—”

  She went abruptly silent. The tension in Dash’s stomach started to ratchet up, then faster as a massive energy burst engulfed the Swift.

  “Leira?”

  “I’m here. That was damned close. Anyway, Tybalt says we can probably keep flying rings around this Harbinger and keep it tied up, but the Swift just lacks the oomph to decisively take it down. How do you want to do this?”

  Dash was going to say by just shooting the crap out of it together, but he had another idea.

  “Leira, you ever been in a bar fight, seen how one guy grabs another so his buddy can pound on him?”

  “I’ve been both of those guys at one time or another, why?” She paused, then went on. “Oh, come on. Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Fine. Ten seconds.”