The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  Dash looked at Leira. “You ever run a big machine like that one?” He nodded at the excavator. Leira’s eyes rolled, but then she realized he was serious.

  “Do I look like someone who’d have ever driven something like that? I do spaceships and giant mechs, thanks. Not really a dirt girl.”

  Dash gave her a wintry smile. “True. You’re more of a space hooligan.”

  “Hey—” Leira tried to protest, but Dash grinned to take the sting away, then looked at Benzel, who shook his head.

  “I see where you’re going with this. Just a sec—Tabor, where are you?” Benzel said.

  A woman’s voice came over the comm. “Still up top where you left us. Why?”

  “Get your butt down here, got a job for you. The three of us are at the base of the ramp, to the right, behind some cargo cases.”

  A moment passed, then a figure came running down the ice ramp in a crouch. She dove behind the cargo cases covering Dash, Leira, and Benzel, just as another salvo of pulse-gun fire smashed into the ramp less than a meter behind her feet.

  She slid to a stop. “What’s up?”

  Benzel jabbed a thumb at the excavator. “You used to run those, right?”

  “Been a while, but yeah.”

  Benzel nodded to Dash, who knelt and began sketching a plan in the snow. With broad strokes, he watched as the dawn of understanding came over Benzel and Tabor’s faces.

  “Ah,” Tabor said.

  “That’s a good thing, right?” Dash asked.

  “Very. Good plan, boss. I’m ready,” Tabor said.

  “Same,” Benzel added, a hungry look on his face. He then gave orders to the two squads now engaged with the Verity. With a final thumbs up, he trotted away with purpose.

  “Okay, let’s dish it out,” Dash said.

  As one, the Gentle Friends rose and opened fire, pouring shots into the excavation. At the same time, Dash leapt over the cargo cases, Tabor and Leira right behind him. A few shots snapped at their heels as they ran for the excavator, but the sheer weight of shooting from the Gentle Friends gave them the few seconds they needed to reach the big machine.

  “It’s time,” Dash said to Tabor. “Up you go, and let’s hope it’s actually running.”

  “Only one way to find out,” the woman said, clambering into the cab. A moment passed. Okay, maybe this thing didn’t run, which means they’d need a plan B—

  The big machine hummed, then sparked to life with a shrill, rising whine. Tabor gave a thumbs up of her own and raised the dozer blade, obscuring the cab from the Verity. It was just in time; pulse-gun fire that would have ripped through the cab flared and sparked against the blade, a massive slab of thick, high-strength composite alloys.

  “Okay, here we go,” Dash said into the comm as Tabor began maneuvering the excavator, its chunky tracks squealing. As she turned and started down the excavation, Dash and Leira followed behind; the Gentle Friends closed in until an entire squad was crowded in behind the rumbling machine.

  They advanced, a hail of pulse-gun fire hammering desperately at the excavator. Glowing chunks of alloy began spalling off the blade and the tracks, but both were meant to grind against rock; it would take far longer than the trip along the tunnel for the Verity to disable the big machine.

  Leira and Benzel crowded against him, and Dash tried to count his paces, taking each as about a meter. Fifty. Now sixty. Seventy—

  “Get ready!” Benzel shouted.

  Seventy-five. Eighty-five—

  “Now!” Dash shouted.

  Two of the Gentle Friends dodged around the sides of the excavator and threw concussion grenades. A pulse-gun blast hit one of them squarely, knocking him flat on his back. Dash glanced at him and saw him wave, and a scorched pit in his body armor showed he’d survived.

  The grenades detonated with a double WHAM WHAM that thundered up the tunnel. An instant later, Benzel shouted “Go!” and the Gentle Friends leapt from behind the excavator, pulse-guns, snap-guns, and sluggers firing. Dash had reminded them there might very well be hostages among the Verity, and to watch their shooting; frankly, they all knew there was no way to really guarantee the safety of any captives.

  Behind them, the second squad of Gentle Friends came running up the tunnel to join the fray. Dash ran around the excavator going right; Leira went left. Tabor jumped down beside Dash and opened up with her pulse-gun. The next few moments were a blur of running, taking cover, shooting, running again, and dodging. Dash shot a Verity who popped up in front of him at point-blank range.

  It fell back and another appeared, slamming a shock-baton into him. It hit his armor and discharged, mostly harmlessly, but there was a sudden, tingling jolt, a fraction of what would have ripped through his body if it had connected somewhere not armored. He struck back with the butt of his pulse-gun, catching the Verity in the throat. It staggered back but lashed out with the baton again. Dash dodged it by millimeters, then kicked the Verity’s knee, buckling it. A follow-up pistol whip across its face dropped it, and a double tap of shots into it kept it down.

  Someone slammed into Dash, knocking him sideways. He tried to stop his fall, but whoever had attacked him had him pinned against the alloy frame of a drill. Dash shoved desperately back, trying to get some leverage, but saw a keen, curved blade rising—

  Before it vanished, the pale hand holding it blew to ragged shreds. Leira yanked the Verity off Dash and finished it with another shot into its throat. Dash gave her a nod and readied himself for his next attacker.

  But there was none. Only the Gentle Friends remained on their feet and in possession of the tunnel. All of the Verity were down.

  “Dash, we’ve got some hostages over here,” Benzel called.

  Limping due to a leg wound he hadn’t even felt, Dash moved to where he could see Benzel waving at him. Along the way, he saw a few of the Gentle Friends were down, but all seemed to be alive. More to the point, he saw many instances of seared and pitted body armor. It might be a pain to wear, he thought, but it sure seemed to do the job.

  He stopped beside Benzel. There were indeed hostages locked in a contraption made of metal mesh platforms repurposed into a cage. Dash scowled at that. “Let’s get them the hell out of there.”

  Benzel nodded and shot off the lock. The hostages, now survivors, immediately pushed their way out. Dash counted fourteen, including three who had to be no more than twelve or thirteen years old. All were grubby and malnourished. One of them, an older man with a riot of greying hair and whiskers, pointed at the back of the excavation.

  “They were after what’s back there, some sort of alien tech,” he said, then stopped and looked stricken. “Did you rescue anyone from the settlement? They’ve had us down here for days, using us to dig—” He broke off with a sobbing breath.

  Dash shook his head. “We haven’t been to the settlement yet. It looks completely abandoned, but we’ll check it out.”

  “Dash,” Leira said over the comm. “You’ve got to come and look at this.”

  Dash left Benzel and the Gentle Friends to get things under control, then found Leira crouching over something protruding from the ice wall at the very back of the excavation.

  “That looks like Golden tech,” Dash said, kneeling beside her.

  She nodded. “Yeah, it does have that look to it, doesn’t it? I’ve sent an image to Tybalt, and he and Sentinel are—”

  “Now able to offer some insight,” Tybalt said over the comm. “This indeed appears to be a cache of Golden technology. However, the ring-like object you see protruding from the top of it is consistent with the technology of the Creators.”

  “The Unseen?” Dash focused his attention on the specific piece Tybalt had described. One ring stuck out of the ice. Another was completely entombed, with about a meter separating the two. Both seemed to be attached to a cylindrical object Dash could just make out deeper inside the ice. “Is this—is this the power core?”

  “So it would appear,” Sentinel said. “The presence
of the two rings suggests that another power core can be stacked in tandem with it.”

  “A dual power core? What would that be used for?”

  “Unfortunately, we do not have that information.”

  “Yeah, of course we don’t.” Dash went to scratch his nose but realized it was enclosed in the enviro-mask, so he’d just have to live with the itch. He looked at the ice wall. “Looks like they were close to getting this stuff out of here.” He glanced at a fallen Verity. “Good for them to do the heavy lifting. Might’ve tipped them, if they’d survived.”

  Leira opened her mouth to answer, but a tremendous explosion shook the tunnel. Chunks of ice came loose from the ceiling and sent them crashing down among those inside.

  Dash, Leira, and Benzel once more stopped just inside the excavation, only this time they were facing out into the blizzard. Driving snow limited visibility to a couple of hundred meters at best—far enough to show one of the shuttles that had carried the Gentle Friends down from orbit was now a smouldering wreck. Something rushed overhead with a roar.

  “Sentinel, what the hell’s going on? Verity reinforcements?” Dash shouted.

  “If they are, then how’d they get here without the Herald detecting them,” Leira said. “And down from orbit, too.”

  Another brilliant flash cut through the storm, followed by a colossal WHUMP that Dash felt in his chest. Something big had just exploded in the direction of the Archetype.

  “Sentinel!”

  “We are under attack,” came her unruffled reply.

  “No shit,” Dash snapped. “Who is it? Where are they?”

  “Unknown, and generally approaching from the direction of the settlement,” Sentinel said. “I would suggest you and Leira remount the Archetype and Swift in order to deal with this new threat.”

  “Again, no shit! But there are a couple hundred meters of deep snow and blizzard between you and us!”

  Something else rushed overhead, a thunderous roar rolling along behind it. Dash caught a glimpse of something delta winged. It was an atmospheric fighter, but not one Dash had ever seen before.

  Who the hell was this, now? Who was attacking them?

  Something huge came plunging out of the sky. Dash gasped as they all made to throw themselves back into the excavation—but it was the Archetype, landing about ten meters from the tunnel opening.

  “This should make it easier for you to remount,” Sentinel said.

  Dash glanced at Leira. “Can’t argue with that—”

  Another roar thundered overhead. An instant later, a searing flash punctuated the blizzard. Something exploded high above them, showering the field of wind-blowing snow with smoking debris.

  “The pilots of these craft appear to be flying what amount to suicide missions,” Tybalt said. “The Swift has been struck twice now, with moderate damage.”

  Dash braced himself to run to the Archetype, but hesitated. He couldn’t see the fighters but could hear them maneuvering overhead. It was only ten meters to the Archetype, but then he had to mount and get inside.

  “Sentinel,” he said. “How about a hand getting aboard?”

  The Archetype crouched and lowered a massive hand. Dash threw a quick salute to Benzel, who nodded back. To Leira, he said, “Mount up.” Then he ran and leapt into the Archetype’s huge palm.

  He and Sentinel had practiced this, an emergency mount using the Archetype itself to lift Dash. It was much faster than the usual way of having the Archetype crouch until it was almost prone, but not as safe; he’d be fully exposed as he was lifted, and any explosion might knock him off his perch. Dash gritted his teeth as the mighty hand raised him smoothly toward the open cockpit. Wind gusted around him, buffeting him as he rose further and further from the ground.

  Another atmo-fighter streaked overhead. This one loosed a trail of a small objects in its wake. It took Dash a second to realize they were bombs.

  And one was plummeting straight toward him.

  “Dash, get down,” Sentinel boomed.

  Cried. She’d cried his name. She’d sounded—emotional. Human.

  Dash was still thinking this when instinct made him drop prone against the cold alloy of the Archetype’s hand. Its other hand enclosed him in a metal cocoon. Something clanged against the hand above him; an instant later, something else slammed through his brain like a missile impact.

  Dash.

  He heard it. Heard a series of sounds, anyway. Da-a-ssshhh. It was familiar. Meant something—

  Dash.

  That has something to do with me, he thought.

  “You must wake up—”

  Wait. That’s Sentinel, Dash thought. She’s talking to me.

  “Dash!”

  He opened his mouth—

  “Ow!”

  “Dash, I am using the Meld to amplify our communications. It is essential that you mount the cradle and assume control of the Archetype.”

  Dash sat up. He’d been sprawled on the cockpit floor; Sentinel must have managed to get him inside, but there was no way she could install him in the control cradle. A shrill whine filled his head; pain blasted behind his eyes like lightning bolts every time he moved.

  Groaning, he dragged himself to the cradle and clambered into it. “Crap, my head hurts. What happened?”

  “A bomb detonated against the Archetype’s hand. It did only superficial damage—”

  “Felt more than superficial to me,” Dash said, wincing as he settled into the cradle. At once, his physical hurts receded into a distant background—pain he was aware of but didn’t really feel. Instead, he felt the solid form of the Archetype embrace him. The heads-up flared to life, showing him the situation.

  “Leira, you online?”

  “Just waiting for you to get out of the way so Tybalt can bring in the Swift. Are you okay? It looked like you had a bomb go off pretty close to you.”

  “Pretty close doesn’t begin to describe it,” Dash said, applying power to the graviters and lifting the Archetype skyward. “Join me as soon as you get mounted up. Benzel, keep your people under cover in that tunnel until we can get this sorted out.”

  They both acknowledged, and Dash turned his focus to the threat indicator. A trio of atmospheric fighters were racing toward him, flying nap-of-the-earth, hugging the rugged, snowy terrain as they closed. “They’re coming in awfully fast,” he said to Sentinel. Awfully fast, and accelerating. They went transonic and accelerated some more.

  Realization hit him. “Suicide attacks.”

  “So it would appear,” Sentinel replied.

  Dash did some accelerating of his own, powering the Archetype straight up. The three fighters pulled into a steep climb—at least two of them did. One of them just shattered, apparently ripped apart by the aerodynamic shock of trying to maneuver hard at such high speed. Firing solutions came up; Dash fired the dark-lance, vaporizing one fighter, but the second closed even faster than the few seconds it took the dark-lance to recuperate. Point defense opened up, ripping chunks off the fighter, but the bulk of it slammed into the Archetype and exploded.

  Dash yelped as the shockwave tore through the Archetype. The fighters must be loaded with some sort of explosive payload; the blast flung the Archetype backward, momentarily out of control. At the same time, a missile fired by yet another fighter struck the Archetype’s back. Dash swore and snapped out a dark-lance shot, blowing that fighter apart in a shower of glittering sparks.

  “Moderate damage,” Sentinel reported, though Dash already knew it through the Meld. “The left hip actuator is offline.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t plan to walk,” Dash growled, and flung himself toward another group of fighters starting an attack run.

  “Dash,” Leira said. “We’ve got ground forces coming through the settlement. Infantry—and crap, some tanks or something. I don’t think Benzel has the firepower to deal with it.”

  “I’ll take care of the air battle,” Dash said. “You help Benzel.”

  “Will do.”r />
  Dash scanned the heads-up and the threat indicator. Flights of fighters raced and wheeled through the air, surprisingly hard targets for the Archetype to engage. The mech was optimized for space combat, and spacecraft couldn’t turn, climb, dive, and sideslip the way atmo-fighters did. Worse, he had to be careful with his shots because their enemies were wisely trying to keep the battle as close to the settlement and excavation as possible; otherwise, he’d just fire the distortion cannon a few times and swat the fighters from the sky.

  “Looks like we have to do this the hard way, then,” he muttered, and flung the Archetype through a wrenching series of evasive maneuvers. Fighters raced past the Archetype, banking hard, desperate to not stray too far. Dash fired the dark-lance, keeping the shots away from the settlement below. The blasts of energy from wounded atoms ripped the clouds apart, and wrecked fighters plummeted earthward. He launched missiles, which relentlessly tracked and blasted apart more of the nimble little ships.

  But it didn’t go entirely his way. Three more times, fighters managed to slam into the Archetype with heavy, explosive impacts. The mech shuddered under the blows but shrugged off most of the blast effects. Still, the damage piled up.

  “Right arm and wrist actuator are offline. Waist actuator is operating at—”

  “Yeah, I can feel all of it, Sentinel. That’s fine,” Dash said, taking a momentary breather. Three more fighters wheeled through a hard turn and burned in fast. But they weren’t heading for the Archetype. They were aimed at the settlement, where Benzel’s people and the Swift fought against the ground troops attacking out of the cover of the buildings. The Swift would likely be okay, but Benzel and the Gentle Friends had taken up firing positions outside the excavation and were fully exposed.

  “Oh, for—cowardly bastards.”

  Dash targeted the fighters, fired the dark-lance, and missed. Then he missed again. The fighters jinked desperately. Seconds to impact.

  “Benzel, Leira, hang on!” he shouted.

  “Dash, what are you—” Leira began, but he didn’t have time to answer. He targeted the distortion cannon on a mountain peak that seemed far away but was as close as he dared shoot.