The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “We need to keep a strict quarantine in place in the meantime,” she’d said. “I have no idea how safe those unknown plants are. And even if we keep them off the Forge, there might have been some genetic hybridization with the other species on board. We’ll just have to rely on the Forge to feed us until then.”

  Which wasn’t going to be a problem. They could all easily eat their body weight in food every day, and still not make an appreciable dent in what the Forge was producing now.

  Dash nodded to one of the liberated Verity captives from Burrow, a woman named Mila. She returned an enthusiastic smile. It reminded Dash that Al’Bijea and Freya might have their own reasons to be excited at the possibilities offered by the Greenbelt, but they paled in comparison to what these people had gained from them taking it from the Verity.

  Viktor had been talking about moving the Greenbelt, despite the nav and drive functions being locked down. He’d described how Custodian had determined the Forge could simply tow it for now, using a tractor field to tug it along as the station moved. Dash opened his mouth on a question, but Viktor went on, his voice lowered.

  “Do you really think we can trust these people, Dash?”

  “Who? The former Verity slaves?”

  “Yes. And I know they’ve been through some unimaginably terrible stuff, and we need the allies—but we really don’t know much about them, besides what they told us. It’s not like the Verity kept detailed records on their lives and backgrounds.”

  “You’ve been talking to Ragsdale.”

  Viktor nodded. “I have. And the man makes sense. Besides, you once told me to be your devil’s advocate, question what we do, look for flaws in it.”

  “I did, and I want you to keep doing that. I also absolutely value Ragsdale’s position on all this.” Dash stopped and looked back along the path they’d been following among a stand of what seemed to be ordinary apple trees. “Mila,” he called back. “Is Donner with you?”

  “He’s right here,” she said, pointing. Donner’s head popped around a tree.

  “Just working on an irrigation pump,” he said. “The Verity might know super-advanced tech, but when it comes to water pumps, they suck.”

  Dash laughed and walked back, Viktor falling in beside him, obviously bemused. “So, I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to you guys since we first met. How are you doing?”

  A cloud passed over Donner’s face, but he brightened—with effort. “About as well as can be expected. Still, far better than we were, thanks to you folks.”

  “Have to be honest,” Mila said. “I fully expected this was it. I’d even kind of made peace with it. Seems weird now to realize that wasn’t the end…at all.”

  “Well, we’re almost as glad that we could help,” Dash said. “So did the Verity raid Burrow? Is that where they—sorry, got you?”

  Donner nodded. “We were already hanging on by a thread there. We figured we had another ten years, maybe, before the ice drove us off the planet, made us refugees.”

  “Yeah, according to our AI, Sentinel, that’s about right.”

  “Until we met you folks, we assumed the Verity were only taking people for—other purposes, which I won’t bother going into,” Viktor said. “We didn’t know they also took people for labor.”

  “I don’t think that’s why they first came to Burrow,” Donner replied.

  Dash lifted his brow. “Oh? And what makes you say that?”

  “They seemed to be looking for something. They didn’t even pay much attention to us at all, in fact. When we saw their ship entered orbit, and then sent down drones, we just assumed they were some planetary survey, and that someone was going to eventually come along looking for taxes.”

  Mila nodded. “It was a few days before they even attacked us. It felt almost like an afterthought.”

  Dash glanced at Viktor. “They were looking for something, and not someone? Or someones?”

  “That’s sure what it seemed like,” Donner replied. “They kept at it for quite a while, too. They actually brought us back to Burrow a few weeks after they took us. Still had drones there, and they recovered them, then left again.”

  “I’m surprised they left any of your people—well, left them alone, once they’d found you on Burrow,” Viktor said. “But there still seem to be some there. In fact, we were about to send a diplomatic mission to go meet with them right before we met you folks.”

  “Which is why I was surprised to find out you were from Burrow,” Dash put in. “Small universe and all that. Anyway, what do you think the Verity were looking for?”

  Donner shrugged. “Not sure. We did detect some anomalous power emissions from time to time but could never pin them down. And they were erratic, sometimes there, sometimes not. Maybe it had something to do with that.”

  “Not much else on Burrow otherwise,” Mila said. “Besides water, more water, frozen water, and rock.”

  Dash glanced at Viktor again, then tapped his comm. “Custodian, I’ve got some people here I’d like you to talk to. They’re from Burrow, and they say there are some strange power emissions on the planet that might have attracted the Verity. How about you pick their brains, get as much info from them as you can, and see if we can figure out what’s going on.”

  “Very well. However, we are still unable to access many of the Greenbelt’s systems, and that includes the comm.”

  “No problem,” Dash said, pulling his comm off his belt and handing it to Donner. “Here you go. Custodian will debrief you.”

  Donner took the comm and looked at it. “He’s—it’s—an AI, right? That belongs to that alien race, the Unseen?”

  “He’s an AI, but he doesn’t belong to anyone. That’s not how we do things here.”

  Donner nodded. “Good to hear. Yeah, okay, um—Custodian, right? What would you like to know?”

  Dash and Viktor left them answering Custodian’s questions and headed back to the Forge.

  Dash stared at the image Custodian had put up on the big holo display in the Command Center. It showed—lines. Wavy lines, on a graph. Dash recognized them as some sort of waveform, but that’s about as far as he went before his knowledge of physics became limited.

  “What am I looking at?” he asked.

  Conover answered. “They’re waveforms.”

  Dash gave him a wry look. “Well, gee, thanks for that. I guess we’re done here.”

  “These are waveform comparisons between various power signatures,” Custodian said. “The five green wave functions are from various sources among our forces, such as the reactors aboard the Herald. The three orange ones are from power cores gathered and installed in the Archetype, the Swift, and the Forge. The green one is the power emission signature of the source on Burrow, as recorded by the Archetype.”

  Dash narrowed his eyes at that. “Sentinel recorded that while we were there but didn’t say anything?”

  “It was deeply buried in environmental background EM noise,” Sentinel said. “And I had no reason to apply the various transformations and data synthesis that were needed to extract it.”

  “Sorry, Sentinel, didn’t mean it to sound like a criticism,” Dash said, holding up a hand.

  “But it did,” Leira said, with playful accusation.

  Dash gave her an airy wave. “I was just surprised you’d missed it,” he said. “I consider you more or less infallible. Unlike…well, humans.”

  “Again, it required a complex series of—”

  “To clarify, that was both compliment and apology. We good now?”

  “We are, yes.”

  “Anyway, that green waveform doesn’t fit any of the orange ones at all,” Dash went on. “It’s pretty close to the green ones, though. So it’s—another power core? There’s a power core on Burrow?”

  “So it seems,” Viktor said. “But it’s also different. Custodian, get rid of the orange lines and rescale the graph.” He glanced at Dash. “The power output signature from the Herald is so high it distorts the g
raph, makes it look like the rest of the lines are very close together.” He looked back at the display. “See?”

  Dash did and nodded. “That power core on Burrow has a higher output than the others, and it’s noisier? The line is more jagged, while the others are smoother?”

  “That’s right,” Conover said. “Sentinel says it’s hard to tell how much of that jaggedness might really just be interference from the EM background on Burrow—there must be a lot of storms there or something.”

  Dash thought about the vast, towering thunderstorms he’d powered the Archetype through, the searing bolts of lightning, the strange, luminous phenomena like sprites and elves and fountains of charged particles erupting from their stratospheric tops. “Yeah, you might say that.” He crossed his arms. “So this core is similar to the ones we’ve collected so far, but also different.”

  “That is correct,” Custodian said. “However, with nothing to otherwise use for comparison with it, that is the only conclusion we can draw from these data alone.”

  “Looks like we’re going back to Burrow,” Leira said.

  Dash nodded. “Yeah, except we’re going to have to assume we’re going back there to fight. The Verity have already raided Burrow, and—” Dash broke off, a sudden, horrified wrench tightening his gut. “Oh, shit. Harolyn hasn’t set out for there yet on our diplomatic mission, has she?”

  “No, not yet,” Viktor said. “She’s planning on leaving in a few hours. I guess we can turn that particular plan off, though.”

  Dash sighed. “Damned right we can.” He looked around. “Where’s Benzel?”

  A moment later, the door slid open and Benzel came in with Wei-Ping. “Sorry for being late,” he said. “We had a glitch with some repairs to the Herald, so I wanted to get it sorted out. Custodian, can you put up that map we were working on?” He stopped. “That’s if you guys are done, of course.”

  Dash gave Benzel a bemused look. The bustling, purposeful man who’d just strode into the Command Center seemed a far cry from the gruffly casual privateer he’d met so long ago, surrounded by his brutish cadre of Gentle Friends.

  Many of whom were dead now, Dash reminded himself, and bemusement turned to respect—with a touch of sorrow. Those had been Benzel’s people.

  Dash made a go on gesture. “The floor is yours.”

  The big screen switched to the image of a star map, the galactic arm schematic Dash thought he was soon going to start seeing in his sleep. The location of the Forge was clearly marked, as were a number of other systems. In all, a dozen stars were highlighted.

  “Okay, I’ll say it again,” Dash said. “What am I looking at, exactly?”

  “These are what Custodian and I believe are the systems controlled by the Verity. There are sixteen of them. This is based on every data source we had available, including data we were able to extract from those two Verity ships we took as prizes,” Benzel said.

  “Our measure of confidence in the results is therefore high,” Custodian put in.

  Dash stared for a moment. “You’re saying that these are all the systems the Verity control? Like, this is all of them?”

  “Well, we can’t rule out some that might have slipped under the scanners,” Benzel replied. “We’re not sure every last outpost and installation is on here. But these are the main ones, what you could call their—I don’t know, empire, or whatever. At least within our capability to scan. For now.”

  “Not all of these are settled planets,” Wei-Ping said. “Some of them are orbital platforms, stations, and the like.”

  “What’s that one icon there,” Leira asked, pointing. “The one that’s different than the rest?”

  “Was just going to get to that one,” Wei-Ping went on. “That, it seems, is a big mobile station. It’s nowhere near as big as the Forge, but it carries a slew of long-range missiles, as well as the capability to launch and retrieve things like fighters. We’re calling it a carrier.”

  Dash nodded. There were a few of the big ships called carriers in the fleets of various powers in the arm. They were powerful, he knew, but also had a reputation for being expensive to build, and even more costly to maintain.

  “This carrier is sufficiently powerful that it could control a wide region of space,” Custodian said. “It could extend its influence across several systems.”

  “Okay, well, that is definitely a priority target,” Dash said. “I mean, damn—if we could capture that intact, still operational, and put it to use ourselves…”

  He trailed off, thinking about the possibilities. But Leira’s voice echoed in his head, speaking just behind his ambitious thoughts—saying that attacking this carrier with the intent of taking it as a prize would be a monumental, not to mention extremely dangerous, thing to take on.

  “Okay, let’s call that carrier—uh, Citadel. Yeah, Citadel works. Benzel, I’d like you to draw up an initial plan at how we might be able to go about attacking and capturing it.”

  Benzel scratched an ear. “Will do. That’s going to be a tall order, though.” He frowned in a thought for a moment. “I think, if we want to do this, we need to move the Forge in even closer so we’re closer to our support, supplies, repairs, and such when we try this.”

  “Agreed,” Dash said. “And while we’re at it, we’ll mine each system we pass through.” He walked up to the big display and pointed at star systems. “Like this one, and this one.” He pointed at the gleaming icons as he spoke. “These—and this one. Mine them, make sure they’re clear of Golden stuff, and declare them green, meaning we can look at them for our own future use.”

  “Sounds like you’re planning to carve out an empire of your own, Dash,” Viktor said.

  Dash shook his head. “Empires are run by emperors—and, before anyone who even hints at it, the last thing I want is to be an emperor. Let’s face it, emperors are generally assholes.” He shrugged. “I’m just trying to think of the time after this war is over, and we’ve won it, and—”

  A shrill alarm sounded, cutting him off. Custodian immediately spoke over it.

  “This is a security alert for the primary fabrication level. Intruders detected. Security protocols being initiated.”

  Dash and the others exchanged a momentary, stunned look. Leira mouthed the word, intruders?

  In the next breath, they were all running for the exit to grab weapons.

  “Arm up!” Dash bellowed, and as one, they raced to the fight, and the unknown invaders breaching the Forge.

  Dash stopped, knelt, and looked around a bulkhead. He saw a sealed blast door at the end of the corridor; it normally stood open, giving access to the main fabrication plant. But he also saw Ragsdale crouching beside the entrance to a cross corridor, one that led to the various peripheral fabricating systems fed by the main plant. Two others—a woman Dash recognized as one of the Gentle Friends, and a young man he knew to be a former refugee, now very much a dedicated member of the Forge’s growing crew—crouched on the other side of the corridor. Ragsdale leaned around the corner, fired a quick pulse-gun shot, then ducked back at a volley of return fire that struck the other side of the corridor behind him.

  Dash ran to Ragsdale’s side. Leira, Benzel, and Wei-Ping followed, with another dozen of the Gentle Friends and a few more of the ex refugees following.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Dash asked.

  “Verity,” Ragsdale said. “Seems they were sealed into a compartment, part of one of those wrecked Verity ships scavenged from the last battle. Custodian brought it on board to disassemble it, and these assholes popped out.”

  More pulse-gun fire ripped out of the corridor, followed by a plasma-blast that howled right down the opposite corridor and slammed into something further down it with a rolling boom. Dash winced. This was just—wrong. The Forge was their safe haven. To have intruders, and Verity, no less, infiltrated into it, armed and shooting—

  It just wasn’t right. And, more than that, it pissed him off.

  “Custodian,” Dash sna
pped. “How did you not detect these bastards?”

  “Unknown. At this point, I can only speculate that they somehow suppressed their characteristic biotech signals until they were somehow awake—”

  The last bit was cut off by another fusillade of fire. Ragsdale swore. “Here they come again!”

  The fire intensified. Ragsdale and the two with him snapped shots back down the corridor; Dash leaned in and fired over the Security Chief’s head, while Benzel went prone and fired around them both. Leira and Wei-Ping organized the Gentle Friends and others following them, readying them to either take up fire positions, or to prepare for attack.

  The added weight of fire from Dash and Benzel sent the Verity—Dash saw at least a half dozen of them, pale and nearly skeletal—scrambling back into cover. He also saw the one with the plasma-gun—although it looked more like a plasma-cannon, big enough to probably warrant a tripod—line up another shot.

  He snapped one shot back, then shouted, “Take cover!” A second later, the plasma bolt exploded against the corner of the corridor, sending both the Gentle Friend and the ex-refugee who’d been helping Ragsdale staggering backward, groaning from painful flash burns.

  “They keep trying to rush us!” Ragsdale said. “If you guys hadn’t showed up—”

  “But we did, here we are, so let’s deal with these assholes,” Dash said. “Custodian, can they get out of that compartment they’re in?”

  “Only through the corridor you are now guarding. They have jammed the blast door that would secure it into the open position.”

  Dash thought fast. Trying to charge the Verity would be suicide, unless they took time-consuming measures to protect themselves. That was time during which the Verity could potentially cause any number of problems. But they were otherwise trapped.