The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

“Custodian, put up that plan we put together, please,” Conover said, and another holo image appeared. This one showed the Forge’s star system as a schematic, with its scale compressed to get it all into the window in a readable way.

  “Custodian and I have been trying to figure out a way of making our Dark Metal scans more efficient, while also extending their range. We’ve come up with this.”

  He touched the image, and an icon appeared. Dash saw it was well away from the Forge, about halfway between the gas giant the station orbited and the brown dwarf that was probably an interstellar rogue just passing through the system.

  “That’s our new Dark Metal scanner,” Conover said. “Or, rather, a modified version of it. This shows it being located on a particular asteroid we’ve been tracking, but really, there are lots of places it could go. The important thing is that it maintains the maximum possible distance from the Forge.”

  “Why?” Leira asked.

  “It’s called interferometry. Basically, we combine the incoming signals from the two detectors and end up with a virtual Dark Metal detector. The working diameter is equal to the distance between them. In this case, that’s the Forge, and this detector.” He pointed at the icon.

  “It gives us far greater resolution,” Viktor said. “Not only will we be able to resolve weaker signals, we’ll be able to fix their locations at lot more accurately.”

  “If this works, then we can deploy more of them around the system,” Conover put in. “Each one adds more data, giving us even better resolution.”

  “So we end up with a Dark Metal detector that’s basically two hundred million kilometers across?” Leira asked.

  “That’s right,” Conover replied.

  “What makes it possible is the Dark Metal we use to construct it,” Amy said. “It makes the data transmission back to the Forge basically instantaneous, so we can scan pretty much in real time.” She patted Conover’s shoulder. “It’s a really cool idea, and all thanks to Conover here.”

  Conover blushed a bit, but looked smugly pleased. Custodian, however, made a sound that sounded uncannily like someone clearing their throat.

  “And you too, Custodian,” Amy quickly added. “Sorry, I didn’t think you really cared about getting credit for things.”

  “I do not.”

  They all exchanged a look, and some wry smiles.

  “Okay, this is fantastic,” Dash said. “If it means we can detect Dark Metal more accurately and further away, that’ll be a huge help. So what do we need to do next?”

  “Custodian’s fabricating the modified detector now,” Viktor said. “When it’s finished, we need to take it to wherever we’re going to mount it and—well, mount it there.”

  Dash studied the holo image, tapping his chin. “That’s going to be pretty detailed work. The mechs aren’t really suited for it. So we’ll carry it out there with the Slipwing and get the Gentle Friends to set it up. They like getting suited up and playing around in hard vacuum, so they’ll be all over this.”

  Amy nodded. “The Slipwing’s all fueled up and ready to fly. I’ve made a few improvements to her, too.” She gave Dash a disapproving look. “When was the last time you aligned the anti-deuterium injectors, Dash? They were about five millimeters from a nasty boom that would have wrecked your whole fuel system.”

  Dash gave her a comically puzzled frown. “Anto…anti…doo-tear-ee-um…?”

  “I know you’re probably joking,” Amy shot back. “But only probably.”

  Dash grinned. “The Slipwing has needed someone like you to give her a good overhaul for a long time, Amy. I could never have afforded you, though.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing we’ve got this galaxy-spanning war threatening to exterminate all life then, so you can get free maintenance done on your ship.”

  “Hey, whatever works.” Dash chuckled, then looked back at the holo image. “I’ll go with you guys in the Archetype. We’ve had too many instances of sudden attacks on the Forge to have you guys that far out with your butts hanging in empty space.”

  Amy tossed Dash a salute. “You got it, boss.”

  Dash chuckled again, but he couldn’t help thinking that Leira had saluted him, too. Even as a joke, it was something that made him decidedly uncomfortable.

  “How you guys doing?” Dash asked, keeping his attention flicking back and forth between the threat display and the magnified image of the Slipwing on the heads-up. He could see Wei-Ping, along with three other Gentle Friends, floating around the Dark Metal scanner now landed on the asteroid. It wasn’t a big rock, only about thirty meters long, which meant it had no gravity to speak of. But the Gentle Friends still eschewed tethers, being quite content to freeball it, as Wei-Ping called it. Dash had only ever heard that term used for something else, and very different, but somehow it fit. They drifted around the scanner without any regard for the fact that they were loose in zero-g. Dash thought about the few times he’d gone freeballing like that, and it made his toes reflexively press into his boots.

  “We’ve only got one bolt left,” Wei-Ping said. “Have to admit, I’ve seen a lot of crazy amazing tech since we hooked up with you guys, but these self-drilling bolts are awesome.”

  Dash had to nod at that, thinking about the number of times he could have used a device that would securely drill itself into solid rock, penetrating a full meter in a few seconds. As Unseen tech went, it was pretty prosaic, but not all tech had to be spectacular to be impressive. These self-drilling rock bolts were themselves easily worth a fortune—which made them good candidates to actually sell off when the war was done, because they were useful without being especially dangerous.

  Dash caught himself. There’d be time to worry about after the war, after the war. Until then, focus.

  “Okay, we’re done here,” Wei-Ping said.

  Amy had backed the Slipwing up to about a klick away from the asteroid, giving a safety buffer in case she had to fire up the thrusters while the Gentle Friends were still freeballing it. “All right, I’m coming back in for you guys,” she said.

  “Don’t bother,” Wei-Ping replied. “We’ll come to you.” Then she and the Gentle Friends with her pushed off from the asteroid and began drifting toward the Slipwing.

  “Okay, Wei-Ping? You’re absolutely crazy,” Amy said.

  “Oh, you don’t know the half of it, girl.”

  Dash just sighed and shook his head. Absolutely crazy was right.

  The threat display lit up with a single reading. “Sentinel,” Dash said. “What’s going on?”

  “There are several small, rocky bodies on a collision course with the Gentle Friends,” she replied. “The largest is just under a meter; the average size is ten centimeters.”

  “How long?”

  “Twenty-two seconds.”

  “Shit.” Dash applied thrust, driving the Archetype toward the Gentle Friends.

  “This is an asteroid belt,” Sentinel said. “So the presence of such bodies, on chaotic trajectories, is—”

  “Yeah, I get it. Wei-Ping, you’ve got some rocks incoming.” Dash read off the bearing.

  “No visual,” Wei-Ping replied. “Damn it. How long?”

  “About fifteen seconds.”

  He saw puffs of vapor as the Gentle Friends applied thrust from their suit jets, trying to accelerate their approach to the Slipwing. Amy likewise jolted the thrusters, moving the ship toward them. The trouble was that none of them were going to make it before the rocks flashed among the Gentle Friends faster than projectiles from a slug rifle.

  “Wei-Ping, you guys hang on. You too, Amy.”

  “What are you going to do, Dash?” Amy asked.

  “This,” he replied, and fired the distortion cannon.

  The sudden surge of gravitational pull yanked at everything—the Archetype, the Slipwing, the Gentle Friends, and the speeding rocks. Wei-Ping snapped out a curse; Amy did likewise a second later. But it worked; the new trajectory of the rocks and the Gentle Friends no longer interse
cted.

  “Okay, Wei-Ping? From now on, let’s just do this the old-fashioned way and bring the ship to you,” Dash said.

  “That’s no fun.”

  “Fun isn’t very high on the agenda.”

  “Okay, fine.”

  A new voice came on the comm. It was Conover.

  “Dash, I’m not sure what you just did, but Custodian says the orbit of that asteroid suddenly changed. Can you put it back the way it was? Otherwise, the detector won’t work the way we want it to.”

  “Sure.”

  Set up machines to detect alien substances light years away, save lives by creating artificial gravity wells, move asteroids around—it was all just in a day’s work for the Messenger.

  Dash walked into the War Room but stopped and just hung back. Conover and Viktor stared at a holo image, frowns creasing their faces, exchanging muttered comments.

  After a moment, he cleared his throat. “Uh, guys? You’re not acting like you’ve got a shiny new Dark Metal detector the size of a star system to play with.”

  Conover pointed at the display. “That’s the system where you and Leira found those Dark Metal ingots. Custodian suggested using it to calibrate the interferometric detector.”

  “First off, let’s just call it the detector, so I don’t have to try saying interfero-whatever,” Dash said. “Second, I don’t see anything.”

  “That’s the problem,” Viktor said. “Tybalt and Sentinel used the data collected from your visit with Leira to calculate the amount of the Dark Matter in the system then subtracted the amount the two of you brought back. And from that, Custodian calculated the expected strength of the Dark Matter signal we should be seeing.”

  “But we’re seeing, well, nothing,” Conover said. “Even if the data weren’t accurate, or the calculations were off—”

  “The calculations were most certainly not off,” Custodian put in.

  “Sorry, Custodian, didn’t mean to imply you’d made any mistakes,” Conover said. “Anyway, even if the strength we estimated for the signal was wrong, there should still be a signal, because we know there’s still Dark Matter there. But, as you can see, there’s—” He shrugged. “Well, nothing at all.”

  “Is the detector faulty, maybe?” Dash asked.

  Viktor shook his head. “No, the detector checks out. Custodian sent a mine-laying drone out to the edge of the system, and we can see its Dark Metal signal just fine.”

  Dash frowned at the image. “Okay. Well, how about pointing at Gulch? We know there’s still Dark Metal there, whatever we haven’t yet been able to scavenge out of that crashed Golden ship.”

  “We could, but we’d have to move the detector you, Amy, and the Gentle Friends just deployed,” Conover said.

  “How come?”

  “Because it, and the Forge, can only act as an interfere—sorry, a really big, high-res detector for specific chunks of the galactic arm, depending on their relative locations.”

  “Basically draw a line between the detector and the Forge,” Viktor said. “We can scan regions perpendicular to that line. As the two move relative to one another, the section of sky we can scan changes.”

  “That sounds pretty clunky,” Dash said.

  “It is. That’s why we want to put a few more detectors out there and give ourselves what amounts to three-hundred-and-sixty-degree coverage.”

  Dash stepped closer to the holo image. The system he and Leira had recently visited contained no Dark Metal whatsoever, if this was all correct. And between the three AIs, Conover, and Viktor, he was pretty sure it was.

  “So we have a mystery on our hands,” he said. “Well, I don’t want to tie up the mechs for another visit there. We’ve got more important things to do. Let’s send a probe and use it to find out what’s going on.”

  “I am redirecting one of our survey drones that is currently in that general area to the system in question,” Custodian said. “It should be in a position to return data within a day.”

  Dash nodded. “Great. Okay, so if we put that bit of strangeness aside for now, what other Dark Metal signals do we have?” He stepped back and looked across the image. “I actually see a few.”

  “Some of them, the ones colored blue, are our own probes,” Conover said, then pointed at a green icon. “That’s the Unseen outpost where you and Leira almost got eaten by those—” He frowned. “You had a cute name for them.”

  “Fangrats,” Dash said. “And there was nothing cute about them. At least, not when they opened their toothy little mouths.” He indicated three more returns, all colored red. “What about these? What are they?”

  “Those are signals of unknown origin,” Viktor said. “We don’t have their strength tied to any particular amount of Dark Metal, since we haven’t calibrated the detector yet.”

  Dash pointed at one. “That one’s the strongest.”

  “It is,” Conover said, then tapped it, popping open a window with data describing the system in question. “We don’t know much. Class A blue-white star, one planet, a gas supergiant in tight orbit. And that’s about it.”

  “Okay, then,” Dash said, nodding. “Looks like Leira and I are going for another trip.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a planet that big before,” Leira said, her voice muted with awe.

  Dash, staring at it on the Archetype’s heads-up, could only nod and say, “Yeah, no shit.”

  The planet was indeed huge—about eight times the size of the gas giant around which the Forge orbited. But for all its overwhelming mass, it circled the blue-white star in a tight, whirling frenzy, completing an entire revolution in just a few days. It orbited so close, in fact, that a tenuous trail of vapor trailed behind it, atmospheric gases torn away from it by the star’s gravitational pull. The wispy plume had spiraled into a flattened disk girdling the star. For all of its mind-boggling size, this planet was on a tight clock; in just a few million years, Sentinel had calculated, nothing would be left but its core, the rest of it having been stripped away and consumed by the star.

  “Okay, I’m counting—holy crap, ninety-seven moons?” Dash said.

  “There are also several hundred thousand smaller pieces of rocky debris,” Sentinel said. “If there were other rocky planets in this system, the gravitational pull of the gas supergiant has shattered them, the remnants coming to orbit it as moons or asteroids.”

  “Asteroids again,” Dash said. “The Golden sure do love their asteroids.”

  “They do offer good concealment for Dark Metal caches,” Sentinel replied. “Without appropriate detection technology, the chances of such caches being found are vanishingly remote.”

  “Yeah, they wanted to keep their precious Dark Metal out of the hands of primitive monkeys like us.”

  “That is not all asteroids are effective at concealing,” Tybalt said. “There are two weapons installations located at the indicated points.”

  The threat display lit up with targeting data, and two red icons appeared on the heads-up.

  “How come you could detect these, and not the ones that gave us so much grief the last time?” Leira asked.

  “That is because we now have hard data to work with and know what to look for,” Sentinel said.

  “It’s okay, guys, we’re not criticizing you,” Dash said. “Anyway, Leira, I’m feeling sneaky.”

  “It’d be nice to avoid an outright fight,” she said.

  “Sneaky it is.” Dash pondered for a moment, then said, “Okay, I’ve got an idea.”

  Dash applied thrust, slowly moving the Archetype along the trajectory Sentinel had designed. The gas supergiant was a sheer wall of darkness to his right, swallowing almost half of the starfield. Here, on its dark side, fitful lightning flickered, individual bolts thousands of kilometers long.

  Dash couldn’t spare time for the view, though. He and Leira were focused on coordinating their stealthy approach to the weapons platforms, each mounted on an asteroid orbiting as part of a narrow ring encircling the supe
rgiant. Their trajectories had them slowly zigzagging their way through the ring, using other asteroids as cover, until they were close enough to strike.

  “I’m ready, Dash,” Leira said.

  “I’m not quite there. If we lose comms again, just go ahead and take out your platform in one minute.”

  To maintain maximum stealth, the two mechs communicated only by comm lasers, which required line of sight—and that was sporadic, at best, here among the ring debris. Dash saw his target ahead now, a nondescript asteroid about a hundred meters long. Their circuitous approach put the Golden weapons array on the other side, facing outward from the planet. Now, he applied gentle thrust, edged out from behind the asteroid he’d been using as cover, then slid into place behind the target.

  He checked the chrono on the heads-up. Leira should be launching her attack in about fifteen seconds.

  Dash waited, his attention now glued to the threat display. Both Tybalt and Sentinel had insisted there were no other Golden weapons, but that meant there were no other Golden weapons they could detect, so he needed to be ready for things to go completely to shit, as they always seemed to.

  Time.

  Dash hurled the Archetype around the asteroid, grabbing a ridgeline along the way to reorient himself. Just ahead, something metallic came to life, a multi-barreled weapon rising from long slumber and traversing around to aim at him. He never gave it a chance, racing directly at it, slamming one massive fist into the mount, following up with the other, then grabbing it with both and yanking hard. The weapon array tore free in a shower of sparks and bits of metallic flotsam; Dash flung it away and looked for Leira.

  He saw that the Swift had also grabbed its target mount, but being less massive than the Archetype, Leira struggled to finish it off. It erupted with a torrent of fire. Most of the bolts streaked harmlessly into the supergiant’s atmosphere, provoking a spectacular eruption of lightning, but a few struck asteroids and other rocky chunks, smashing them to bits.

  One burst open, though, revealing something else metallic—but not a Dark Metal ingot.