The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  Dash clenched his jaw in anger as he spotted the Mako, a miniscule shape slowly spinning in place. He immediately raced that way. “Leira, get everyone else away from here.”

  “Dash—”

  “Gonna say it again, that’s an order.” His tone brooked no argument.

  He decelerated hard so he could grab the Mako and—shield it with the Archetype’s mass? Would that even make any difference against such a powerful explosion so close?

  Just as he’d ordered Benzel to break off, he should do the same. It was the strategic thing to do.

  Something flashed into his vision, a tongue of glaring fusion plasma preceding it as burned a hard deceleration. It was the Slipwing.

  “Conover, hang on!” Amy shouted.

  Dash cursed again, then shouted over the channel. “Dammit, Amy, get out of there!”

  “That’s the plan, boss,” Amy answered.

  Dash figured they had about thirty seconds left, at most. He drove the Archetype in, ignoring shouts across the comm from Leira, from Wei-Ping, and even from Benzel. He saw Amy abruptly slam the Slipwing through a one-eighty, just in time to latch the disabled Mako with her magnetic drive; the little fighter lurched, then dragged along right beneath the Slipwing, perilously close to the stellar heat of her fusion exhaust plume. Just like that, Amy was accelerating away from the stricken battleship, the Mako in tow.

  But there wouldn’t be enough time. Maybe twenty seconds, although the thing could explode at any instant. Without thinking, Dash swept up to the Slipwing, grabbed her upper hull, and drove the Archetype’s drive up to full combat overpower.

  If it had been any other ship, he probably would have just wrenched chunks free under the sudden surge of acceleration. But Dash knew his ship, knew exactly where her structural keel was. The Archetype’s massive hands closed on the keel in a viselike hold, ripping through the hull plating, but still shoving the Slipwing along under a colossal burst of power.

  He had no idea if the magnetic drive had managed to keep gripping the Mako under the shearing forces. This might end up only saving Amy and the Slipwing, but that was—

  The universe turned white.

  Then black.

  Dash blinked.

  Blinked again.

  Nope, still pitch black.

  “Sentinel?”

  Nothing.

  And then came a flicker of light. The heads-up flickered like an old discount three-V, then stabilized.

  “Sentinel?”

  “I am back online. The EMP caused all of the Archetype’s systems to reboot. Basic functions will be restored shortly.”

  Dash nodded. Okay, so they’d made it through.

  Realization slammed into Dash like a pulse-gun blast.

  “Amy. Amy, talk to me.”

  “Sorry, Dash, all I can say right now is…owww.”

  “Oh, shit—Amy, you’re alive.”

  “More or less. I think we might have bent your ship a little. And there’s now an indentation in your helm console shaped like my face.”

  Dash swallowed. “What about Conover?”

  “I…don’t know. The Mako’s still there, caught up in the mag drive, but he’s not answering the comm.”

  Dash released the Slipwing once the Archetype’s limbs came back online. His poor ship was, indeed, worse for the wear, with two holes ripped into her, probably into the hab, where he’d grabbed her keel. Her aft end was scorched and pitted from debris impacts. Chunks and fragments of the Verity battleship were now on their way either into orbit around the star, or into deep space. As he rolled the Archetype around the Slipwing, he saw what remained of the battleship—essentially just her forward half, which was slowly tumbling. A vast cloud of luminous plasma enveloped her, fading as it cooled.

  But he spared it no more than a passing glance to make sure it was truly dead. His attention was fixed on the Mako. The little ship hung beneath the Slipwing, still caught in her mag drive, which somehow hadn’t failed during the blast. Amy actually seemed to have rotated the Slipwing at the last second, pitching the conjoined trio of ships up enough to shield the Mako with the bulk of the Archetype and the Slipwing. Still, the fighter’s power emissions had dropped to nearly zero.

  “Conover!”

  Nothing.

  “Sentinel, is Conover still”—Dash had to swallow before he could say it—“is he still alive?”

  “Yes. I am scanning biological activity in the cockpit. It is weak, but stable. I would suggest he needs medical attention urgently.”

  “Amy, is the Slipwing mobile?”

  She answered with a laugh.

  “Okay. Leira, you there?”

  “I am. And I’m coming to either kick your ass or hug you. Probably both. Just what the hell were you and Amy thinking?”

  “You can save the accolades for later. I’m taking Conover back to the Forge. I’ll leave you to organize things out here.”

  “Got it.”

  Dash grabbed the Mako as gently as he could, powered the Archetype through a turn, then drove hard back toward the Forge.

  “Hang on, kid,” he said, looking at the fighter’s cockpit. “We’ll get you fixed up, don’t you worry.”

  Let me worry instead.

  Dash watched the linked corvettes’ attack on the Forge replay across the holo image in the War Room. The nimble ships raced in, accelerating hard; they reached a point of no return—one that told Dash they weren’t planning on maneuvering, just crashing themselves into the Forge. They even arrayed themselves so that four would shield the other two, trying to gain enough time to ensure the remaining pair would live long enough to slam into the station.

  It looked like they were going to succeed.

  But the Forge erupted with so much outgoing fire that an onlooker would be forgiven for thinking it had exploded. Dark-lance, pulse-cannon, and point-defense rounds poured out in a torrent, filling the intervening space with howling energy. The corvettes tried to dodge and weave, their movements perfectly coordinated, but there was no evading the sheer volume of fire. The leading corvettes were quickly shredded; the remaining pair bored in, one exploding a few hundred kilometers from the Forge, becoming a debris cloud that eventually rattled against the Forge’s hull, doing minor damage.

  The sole, remaining corvette, through dumb luck, remained intact long enough to fire a salvo of pulse-cannon shots into the gaping opening of the docking bay they used for the mechs. Custodian raised the shimmering metallic shielding, cutting off the Forge’s own fire, but putting an impenetrable barrier up right into the corvette’s path. It slammed into the mirror-like shield and simply vanished. Just a searing flash as its vast kinetic energy was instantly converted to heat, its very substance to vapor. Then the metallic shield dropped—it drew enormous power and could only operate for a few seconds at a time, so it had to be employed judiciously—and the image froze on the damaged docking bay.

  “This imagery was collected by a maintenance drone,” Custodian said. “The drone was destroyed immediately after this by debris strikes.”

  Dash crossed his arms. “How badly damaged is the docking bay?” He’d wanted to see it for himself, but that section of the Forge was still depressurized. “Because it looks pretty bad from this,” he added, waving at the image.

  “It will take several days to restore it to full functionality.”

  Dash nodded but just stood, staring at the image. What it didn’t show was the six people who’d been killed by the attack, four refugees and two of the Gentle Friends. The latter had died trying to save the others.

  He’d never call the Gentle Friends pirates again.

  Leira and Viktor entered the War Room. “We just checked in on Conover,” Viktor said. “He’s doing a lot better. It looks like he took some kind of neural feedback through the Mako’s interface. Custodian’s going to modify it to prevent that from happening again. Meantime, though, his eye implants are offline and he’s still blind, but Custodian says it will pass in a few days.”
r />   A few days to fix the docking bay; a few days to fix Conover. It was much better than he’d feared, but he still didn’t want to wait.

  “How’s Amy?” he asked.

  Leira smiled. “She broke her nose when she face planted into your helm. I think it’s pissed her off more than actually injured her.”

  Dash nodded. “Okay, good. Sentinel, do we have a list of other casualties from the battle yet?”

  “A total of three dead—two aboard the Snow Leopard, and one aboard the Herald. Fifteen wounded, of which four are serious enough that they will require significant convalescence time.”

  Dash blew out a breath. “We’re losing way too many people. And this time, we lost them in sight of the Forge.” He rubbed his eyes. “I want to launch our attack on the Verity as soon as we can get ourselves sorted out again, but—yeah, I’m not sure we have the manpower to risk.”

  “Then you’ll love the news I’ve got,” Ragsdale said, entering with Benzel. “Just heard what you said. Well, we’ve got twenty volunteers coming from Port Hannah, all experienced spacers. No ships, though.”

  Dash shrugged. “Still, that’s something.”

  “Oh, it gets better,” Benzel said. “I had a chat with Al’Bijea. He and I got to be friends during the time I spent there. By the way, the man has a crazy capacity for booze. Do not get into a drinking contest with him.” He gave a tired grin. “Anyway, they’re sending two ships, fully crewed. They’re both way outgunned by the Verity, but I think Custodian can do something about that.”

  Dash nodded, his gloom starting to dissipate. “Okay then. The Aquarian ships will stay here and get upgraded, at the same time the Mako is being repaired.”

  “Stay here?” Leira asked. “That implies the rest of us are going somewhere.”

  “Damned right we are. As soon as we’re ready, we’re going after the Verity. It’s time to start killing them where they live.”

  23

  Dash studied the blue dwarf system, taking in every bit of data Sentinel could collect. He drifted high above the plane of the system’s ecliptic, all of the Archetype’s systems powered down except for life support and passive scanners. That meant the only information he could gather was whatever the mech could see across the electromagnetic spectrum, plus particulate emissions. There was definitely Verity activity here, so they had a target. The trouble was, they couldn’t tell how many Verity were in the system, or what types of ships or other installations they might have deployed. The blue dwarf star itself concealed too much, its own peculiar and remarkably intense emanations drowning the inner part of the system in impenetrable noise.

  “No way of cleaning that up, eh, Sentinel?” Dash asked.

  “Unfortunately, no. That would require powering up the active scanners, which would likely alert the Verity to our presence.”

  “So we can get information, or take them by surprise, choose one.”

  “Essentially correct.”

  Dash gave the heads-up a thoughtful frown. Even the Dark Metal detector was of limited use here; the neutrino emissions from the blue dwarf were simply too intense. They knew there was Dark Metal here, but not enough detail or resolution in the signal to know more than that.

  “Okay, to hell with it. Surprise it is. Sentinel, let’s call the fleet in.”

  “A comm link has been established to the drone.”

  Shielding their comms was another aspect of avoiding detection. Sentinel would transmit via a comm laser to a waiting drone even further out of the system, which would then relay his transmission by injecting it into unSpace, where the rest of the Cygnus fleet were in a holding pattern. Unless the Verity had a receiver somewhere along that chain, they wouldn’t detect the comms traffic.

  “Leira, we’re sending what data we’ve been able to gather now. It’s not much, I’m afraid.”

  A moment passed, then Leira’s voice came back, slightly muffled and distorted by the awkward comms chain. “That’s for sure. It basically comes down to the bad guys are there, and that’s about it.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “We attack,” Dash said. “At the very least, there’s something here that belongs to the Verity. Striking this close to their home world should put them on their back foot for a while. Or, at least I hope so.”

  They coordinated the details, Leira passing them on to the rest of the fleet while Dash translated back out of the system, leaving the comm relay drone where it was to give them eyes on the system while they were marshalling their forces.

  Dash watched as the ready reports came in.

  “Okay, here we go,” he said to the air, then translated back into the blue dwarf system, as deep into its gravity well as he dared.

  Once more, Dash flung the Archetype through a hard series of weaving jinks, pumping out dark-lance shots at every target that presented itself—and there were a lot of them.

  Temo had been right that the Verity were here, but he was wrong about their numbers. They found a large fleet scrambling to confront them when they arrived from unSpace, almost twice their strength. Their only advantage was surprise; their precautions had, at least, borne fruit that way. The Verity forces made the initial mistake of launching themselves into battle piecemeal, as ships were able to power up and break orbit around the star or launch from the two dwarf planets. The first few firefights were short and sharp, and they ended with the single ship that engaged, or maybe two, smashed into drifting hulks.

  Someone on the Verity side got control, though, and resistance stiffened. Now, watching his latest target, a missile frigate, tumble away in an uncontrolled spin, Dash could see their remaining forces forming an imposing line of battle. Even with their losses so far, the Verity still had them badly outgunned.

  One of those strange, spontaneous lulls fell over the battle. Dash took advantage of it to scan his own fleet while taking a breather.

  The Herald and her remaining consorts from the Silent Fleet had taken hits, but none were serious. The Snow Leopard had fared worse. Benzel’s poor ship, having been badly battered several times, now decompressed through her amidships from gaping battle damage. The Slipwing, on the other hand, hadn’t been touched, Amy handling her with such deft skill that Dash had to grudgingly admit she was probably a better pilot than he was.

  They’d also brought along one of the Aquarian ships, a light cruiser with the unsurprising—and unimaginative—name, the Comet. Custodian had been able to upgrade her enough in the little time they’d had available to make her combat capable against the Verity; her sister ship, the Gaseous, remained at the Forge, still a work in progress. The Comet wasn’t cut out for front-line duty yet but was still a valuable addition, keeping away from direct engagements and focusing on bringing down missiles threatening the rest of the Cygnus ships.

  “That is a whole lot of missile launches,” Dash said, watching the threat indicator. “Looks like the Verity are just going to sit there, gunline it, and pump missiles at us, daring us to attack.”

  “A not unreasonable strategy. The most prudent action at this point, given the losses we have inflicted, is to withdraw.”

  “Yeah, slink back to the Forge so they can come right after us and launch another attack there? I don’t think so. I’m tired of fighting these assholes, especially within sight of where I live.” Dash frowned at the Verity fleet for a moment. The Cygnus ships were already engaging the missiles, but some would get through, there’d be damage, and then another wave of missiles would launch. Followed by more.

  “Sentinel, how many gun- and missile-drones do we still have operational?”

  “Eleven of the former, fourteen of the latter.”

  Drones had been the one thing the Forge had been able to pump out in quantity. They were simple, essentially just a weapons platform that could maneuver and translate, run by identical copies of the same, rudimentary tactical AI.

  They were also, by their nature, disposable. And now it was tim
e to dispose of them.

  “Sentinel, how easy is it to overcharge and blow the reactors on those drones? I mean, they’re Unseen tech, so I assume their reactors are a lot more stable than our primitive human ones.”

  “Your technology is primitive compared to that of the Creators. However, when it comes to reactors, their fundamental design is the same. If fusion containment is lost, the fusing plasma will rapidly expand as a powerful explosion.”

  “Good to hear,” Dash said. “Okay, all ships, Sentinel is going to take control of all of our drones, arrange them into a single, tight wedge, and throw it at the Verity line. They’ll shoot as long as they can, then whatever survives will suicide into the Verity ships and blow their reactor containment. All of us will crowd in behind, so we can focus everything we have on breaking through their line and hitting the installations on those two dwarf planets.”

  Dash waited for the acknowledgements—warily eyeing the remaining, oncoming missiles, another wave of which had just been launched by the Verity—then prepared to give the go signal. Before he could, though, a new voice came on the comm.

  “Messenger,” Custodian said. “I realize this is an inopportune time, but I have asked Sentinel to put me through.”

  “That’s okay, Custodian. What’s up? And make it quick, please.”

  “The refugee leader, Temo, was a Verity spy. His prosthetic arm apparently contained a remora relay, a device which, if installed on the Forge, would burst-transmit data to his Verity handlers. Ragsdale became suspicious of the man and confronted him. It turned out he also had an explosive device incorporated into his arm.”

  Dash blinked. Shit. “Is Ragsdale okay? Is he—”

  “He was injured by the blast but will survive. Unfortunately, two others—one of the monks of the Order of the Unseen and another refugee—were killed.”

  “Damn it!” Dash glared at the distant Verity fleet. “Those bastards are everywhere. So this was meant to be a trap.”