The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “Counting.”

  Dash raced in, aiming himself roughly at Leira. The heads-up showed he’d have about thirty seconds until the second Harbinger following him was in range. Not much time, but it was what he had.

  “Here we go,” Leira said.

  The Swift suddenly powered directly at the Harbinger. The Golden mech responded as aggressively as Dash had expected, driving straight back at her. Unlike the original Harbinger that he’d fought, these ones made almost no use of subterfuge, such as the cloaking system he’d had to contend with. These mirror-black versions seemed designed to simply attack as hard and fast as possible.

  The Swift and the Harbinger slammed together and grappled.

  Leira’s mech had the advantage of agility and acceleration. It was not meant for this, and it showed. She managed to keep herself away from the Harbinger’s terrifying chest-mounted cannon, but the Golden mech instantly had the advantage over her otherwise. He saw the thing’s massive fist slam into the Swift, saw debris spiral away—

  Saw it wrench the Swift’s arm off and send it tumbling away.

  Leira cried out as though it had been her arm torn off.

  Dash made himself ignore it and focused on what he had to do. The Golden mech wanted to do to Leira exactly what he wanted to do to it: take her out of the fight so it, and its onrushing companion, could gang up on him.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  Dash fired up the power sword and raised it to stab. The Harbinger grappling Leira spun to put her in front of his attack, using her as a shield. But Dash knew it would do that too, and he struck anyway, slamming the power sword point-first into the Swift.

  Words like reckless and irresponsible burst into Dash’s mind. Well, if anything qualified, this sure as hell did. Thanks to the Meld, though, he knew the architecture of the Swift intimately—and that included the structural components and actuators now rendered superfluous by its lost arm. The power-sword slammed through those, eliciting another shrill cry from Leira, but the blade kept going, sliding through the Swift’s ruined shoulder in a shower of sparks, before it emerged from the other side and punched directly into the Harbinger’s neck.

  “Sorry, Leira!” he said, then wrenched the sword to one side and up. It ripped through the remnants of the Swift’s shoulder, but the movement also tore the Harbinger’s head right off its body. He shoved the Swift aside, withdrew the sword, then slammed it home again, this time in the middle of the Harbinger’s chest. The Golden mech shuddered, then went dark, its emissions quickly falling to near background levels.

  One dead, one to go.

  Dash grabbed the Harbinger’s corpse and spun it around, at the same time moving to put himself directly between the second, oncoming Harbinger and the crippled Swift. An instant later, a ferocious energy blast from the approaching mech’s chest cannon erupted all around him, momentarily turning the universe a searing white.

  Full on, the blast would have badly damaged the Archetype, maybe even disabled it. But most of the blast effect dissipated off the gleaming carapace of the dead Harbinger he used as a shield, spilling into surrounding space in dazzling tendrils of plasma and quantum shockwaves. It still hurt—a lot—but the Archetype weathered the spillover. As soon as the heads-up cleared, Dash accelerated hard, driving the inert form of the lifeless Harbinger ahead of him, no longer a shield, but a battering ram.

  The approaching Harbinger had only seconds to respond. It accelerated hard to one side to avoid a collision. This part, Dash could only guess at; his quarry could have dodged in any direction and potentially avoided him, but he assumed it would do so in a way that would still maintain its most favorable attack posture, and that meant down, relative to the Archetype. That would keep its fists and their wicked, cestus-like blades immediately ready to strike. Dash had already kicked up a lateral acceleration to match, and he got it right. It was enough that he was able to keep himself mostly inside the attacking Harbinger’s possible maneuver envelope—the cone of space defined by how much it could accelerate off its current trajectory.

  Dash braced himself. This was going to hurt.

  Dash blinked, but his eyes closed themselves. He blinked again, kept blinking, trying to bring himself awake. Must have been a hell of a bender last night, he thought. He could barely open his eyes.

  Oh, and all that dreaming. Holy crap, who had dreams that detailed? Still, it had been a pretty good one, and vivid, about alien mechs and giant space stations and ancient wars—

  “Dash, you alive?”

  He smiled, remembering something he’d heard once. If someone has to ask if you’re alive, that’s bad. But if you can hear the question, that’s good.

  “Dash!”

  A sudden jolt of awareness crashed through him, bringing Dash fully awake. He hung limp in the Archetype’s cradle. Status data glowed across the heads-up; none of it was good. Still, he could hear the voice asking if he was alive. So that was good, right?

  “Messenger,” Sentinel said. “I have had to augment your awareness by temporarily boosting the carrier signal of the Meld. Do you understand?”

  “I—” Dash blinked a last time. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. What happened? Shit, where’s the Harbinger?”

  “Both it, and the Archetype, were disabled after the collision. Leira was able to deliver the finishing blow with the Swift before it could recover.”

  “So she destroyed it?”

  The Swift moved into the field of view, blocking the starfield. In its remaining hand, it gripped the head of a Harbinger.

  “I’m going to mount this on the Forge as a trophy,” Leira said.

  “So both Harbingers are down? Okay, then we have to go and help Benzel.”

  “Benzel, and what remains of the Silent Fleet, have their part of the battle under control as well,” Sentinel said. “They have been employing the Fleet’s ability to coordinate its actions to concentrate lethal effects on the Harbingers in an optimum way. One Harbinger is now destroyed, and the other is badly damaged.”

  Dash peered at the heads-up, trying to ignore the reams of data about the Archetype’s damage and focus on the tactical situation instead.

  His heart sank like a rock dropped into high-g. “There are only six ships still operational?”

  “That is correct.”

  Six ships left. Eight had been disabled or destroyed.

  How many of the Gentle Friends had been killed?

  Dash took a deep breath and shook the thought away. What about the three mysterious ships, the ones that had been racing in to attack the Forge?

  He found them drifting, each severely damaged. That left him staring for a moment. “What happened to them? They weren’t in range of the Forge’s weapons yet.”

  “You can thank Amy and Custodian for that.”

  “How? Amy, what’s going on?”

  “We kicked ass, that’s what’s going on!” she replied.

  “Yeah, okay, but—” Dash shook his head. “I don’t get it. How did the Slipwing take out three Golden ships?”

  “Custodian provided Amy with as many of the new mines, which are being manufactured concurrently with the mine-laying drones, as the Slipwing could carry. She then—”

  “I laid them right in front of those bastards,” Amy cut in. “Did a hard turn, dropped the mines right in their faces. Pretended to take some shots at them with the particle cannons, like I was being desperate. Those didn’t do much, but those mines sure did. You should have seen it. It was awesome!”

  “Outstanding,” Dash said, and that was that. All of their Golden attackers were disabled or destroyed.

  The battle was over.

  “And now, Messenger, I must deactivate the augmentation I’m providing to you through the Meld,” Sentinel said. “It is not intended to work as such and could do lasting harm to your central nervous system. It was, however, the only way to revive you from the shock of the collision with the Harbinger.”

  At once, Dash felt the energy drain away from
him, leaving him once more limp and groggy and barely able to keep his eyes open. Still, he opened his mouth to protest. There was still so much to do—

  “And it shall get done, Messenger,” Sentinel said, her voice seeming to come from far away. “But without you. I am placing you into a suspended state until you can be returned to the medical facilities of the Forge.”

  “But—”

  “There is no but about this,” Sentinel said, cutting him off. “Your part is done for now. You can trust the others to do what must be done.”

  Dash had to nod at that. He could, couldn’t he?

  They were a great team.

  A great team for sure.

  22

  Dash leaned back in his chair, just letting the buzz of conversation in the War Room wash over him. His thoughts went immediately fuzzy, though, so he made himself sit up and focus.

  “Dash, everyone’s here,” Leira said.

  He nodded, then stood. Little grey-green explosions filled the edges of his vision, threatening to blow his consciousness away entirely. Wobbling, he grimly fought to stay awake, aware and on his feet.

  Leira grabbed his arm. “You sure you’re up to this? Custodian said your brain rattled pretty hard in your skull. You probably need some more time in the medical tank.”

  “I’m fine,” Dash said, then forced a smile. “Okay, that’s a lie. I feel like shit. But I’ll manage.”

  “I’m surprised you survived that at all. When I saw that Harbinger plow into you, I—” She stopped and shook her head. “I know the Archetype’s tough, but I’m amazed you survived that.”

  “I’m amazed myself, given the amount of energy in that collision. That was just a fraction of what I could have been hammered with, too,” Dash said. Sentinel had told him the Archetype’s inertial dampers had eaten up most of the stress from the Archetype and two Harbingers coming together at high velocity.

  It had still been enough to slam Dash’s brain hard, back and forth inside his skull. That provoked a bunch of bruising and slow bleeds that would have quickly killed him if Sentinel hadn’t put him into a suspended state. Fortunately, the facilities aboard the Forge were enough to repair the damage and accelerate his healing, but he had a way to go yet. So, for the next while, it was to spend a lot of time lying down, and only stand up when he had to—and then, only very slowly.

  But it couldn’t get in the way of something he had to do. He gave Leira’s hand on his arm a reassuring pat, then he crossed the War Room to where Benzel stood staring out into the stars.

  “Benzel, I—” Dash began, then stopped.

  The privateer turned. Dash had braced himself for a face full of pain and outrage, fury even. And there was that. But underlying it was a grim, steel-hard determination.

  “I thought I knew what I was going to say here,” Dash said. “But I don’t. I get as far as I’m so sorry, and then I just can’t find anything else to say.”

  “There is nothing else to say.”

  Dash nodded. From the sudden silence around him, he realized that everyone else had stopped talking and now watched the two of them. He made himself keep his attention on Benzel, though. “I understand if you want to—”

  “What? Leave?”

  Dash shrugged. “You’ve done more than enough.”

  Benzel held up a hand. “Dash, you didn’t drag us here at gunpoint.”

  “Well, actually, I kind of did, as I recall.”

  “Would you seriously have tried to stop us from leaving right at the start if we’d wanted to? Could you even have?”

  “Well, no.”

  “So stop trying to take this on yourself. The Gentle Friends chose to be part of this. We chose to crew those ships. And now, we choose to stay and keep fighting.”

  “What’s the point in running away anyway?” Wei-Ping, standing nearby, asked. “If we do, and you guys can’t stop these Golden, then they’ll be coming for us eventually, won’t they?”

  “Yes, they will,” Dash said.

  “So we’d rather fight them here, now, with these ships and this tech. And that means we’re going to lose people, like we just did.”

  Dash nodded. All but twenty-two of the Gentle Friends had been rescued from the battered ships of the Silent Fleet. It could have been far worse. But twenty-two lives was still twenty-two too many.

  “So where do we go from here, Dash?” Benzel asked.

  “If I may,” Custodian said. “The Shrike Alpha, which Benzel used as his command ship, would benefit from a unique designation. That would facilitate referring to it in future discussions.”

  “You mean a name? A lot of power in a name,” Dash said, thinking. After a moment, he smiled. “The Herald, because she signifies the next step in this war. They send Harbingers, we send the Herald. And more.”

  Benzel gave a fierce grin and nodded. “The Herald. Yeah.”

  “Okay.” Dash turned to rest of the room. “Custodian tells me we can harvest thousands more kilograms of Dark Metal from the Golden mechs and ships. We can also retrieve a bunch of their missiles from those three wrecked mystery ships, and maybe reprogram them.”

  “Are you sure you’d trust them?” Ragsdale asked. “They’re enemy armaments. Who knows what sort of failsafe trickery they’ve got in them.”

  “Good point,” Dash said. He hoped they could be reprogrammed. The three ships had been essentially nothing but rapid-fire missile launchers with drives attached. It seemed their purpose was to simply saturate, and then overwhelm the Forge’s defenses. Custodian had admitted that, in its current state, it might have worked. Dash asked him to keep that to himself. Still, adding that many missiles to their inventory would be a huge boost—not to mention immensely satisfying, using the Golden’s own weapons against them.

  “If we can’t, then we’ll smelt them down, too,” Dash said. “Even though the Forge is just at a little more than twenty percent of its full potential, we’re now cranking out mines, minelaying drones, missiles, and a few other things I think the Golden will find to be nasty surprises.”

  “Still doesn’t answer the question,” Benzel said. “What do we do next?”

  “In the short term, we keep powering up the Forge and making weapons. Make it so the Forge can fully defend itself,” Dash said, then he turned to the window looking out on the stars. “And we find the Golden, maybe even a few more fleets. Hell, if we’re lucky, we find their version of the Forge, too. It’s out there somewhere, cranking out weapons as fast as it can.”

  He turned and put a hand on Benzel’s shoulder. “And then, my friend, we attack it. We destroy it. We take the war to them.”

  Benzel gave a single nod. “Then let’s not waste any time. Let’s get started now.”

  Around the War Room, there was only agreement.

  And hope.

  Continue reading for book 5, DAWN OF EMPIRE.

  1

  Dash narrowed his eyes at the star system into which he and Leira had just translated. The star itself wasn’t especially noteworthy—just an unremarkable, yellow-white G class, no different than millions scattered across the galactic arm. The rest of the system, though—

  “What the hell happened here?” Leira asked.

  “I have no idea,” Dash replied. “But whatever it was, it must have been pretty spectacular.”

  “And a little terrifying, too.”

  Dash grunted his assent. More than a little terrifying, in fact. Probably a lot terrifying.

  There were no planets here. At least, not anymore. The Archetype’s heads-up showed that anything planet-sized had been pulverized into rocky debris. Now, a vast cloud of it swirled around the star in countless orbits, some in a single plane, but many at oddly high angles to the ecliptic. Most were roughly circular, but again, many were strange, highly eccentric orbits that must have taken some fragments tens, or even hundreds of years to complete once. Three clumps of shattered debris had coalesced, their gravity now starting to pull in more chunks; eventually, Dash thought, they
’d form new planets. Eventually, of course, meaning hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years from now.

  “This smells like the Golden to me,” Leira said.

  Dash chuckled. “It smells like them?”

  “Figure of speech. Gimme a break.”

  “Just yanking your chain. It’s a fair point. Sentinel, does this fit with Golden tactics?”

  “This degree of destruction is recorded in a few instances of Golden incursions, yes,” Sentinel said. “However, their preferred tactic appears to be sterilizing the surface of a planet to divest it of life, but maintaining the planet itself intact.”

  “Well, this goes a little beyond sterilizing the surface, I think,” Dash said.

  A fussy voice came over the comm, that of Tybalt, the AI that controlled Leira’s mech, the Swift. “Regardless of the genesis of all of this destruction, I would remind you both that we are here to investigate a Dark Metal signal.”

  “And Tybalt cracks the whip,” Dash said. “But he’s right, this is no sightseeing trip. We’ve got work to do.”

  Two weeks before, several autonomous probes equipped with refined versions of their new Dark Metal scanner had been dispatched from The Forge. They’d been sent on trajectories designed to allow them to efficiently scan a series of star systems. Based on the historical archives of the Unseen, many of the systems were sites of ancient battles— and thus, good candidates for stray Dark Metal, which was crucial to their ongoing war effort against the Golden. One of the probes had detected Dark Metal signatures in a system known only by its primary star’s catalog number. With the Golden and their minions—including the aggressively puritanical Clan Shirna and the mysterious Bright—now as active as they’d become, they’d decided to send both the Archetype and the Swift to investigate.

  “And we’re sure this isn’t a Golden trap,” Leira said.

  “Sure, as in certain?” Tybalt said. “No, of course not. Assigning a one-hundred percent probability to almost any event is—”