The Messenger

by J. N. Chaney

  “Well, nice to hear that, I guess. Good to know someone out there had our backs.”

  He continued along the corridor, his bubble of light the only thing breaking the vast darkness.

  The walls of the corridor abruptly vanished ahead. Dash’s light spilled across an expanse of floor beyond. He paused, then sidled up to the opening and looked around.

  His light barely penetrated far enough to dimly illuminate the side walls of the chamber, which must be huge. It didn’t even reach the far opposite wall or the ceiling above.

  “Well, this is intimidating.”

  Your reason for coming here is within that chamber.

  “I could have guessed that.” Taking a breath, Dash lifted a foot to step into the chamber, but he just put it back down again, not moving.

  “Something just occurred to me. There were defenses to stop people from getting here. Are there also defenses to stop people from, you know, getting inside? Or making their lives miserable while they are inside?”

  I do not know.

  “Oh, for—”

  However, it would be unusual for the Creators to have used active defense systems inside an installation such as this. In all instances that are recorded, they focused primarily on passive protection.

  “You mean, they locked stuff up.”

  Essentially, yes.

  “Unusual…primarily…essentially. You’re using a lot of words that make it sound like you’re not sure.”

  I’m not sure.

  “Great.”

  Dash breathed out a sigh that briefly fogged up his faceplate. It really didn’t make sense for the Unseen to coax him along this far, only to vaporize him as soon as he stepped into this chamber, did it. Did it?

  Dash stepped into the chamber.

  There was nothing.

  He carried on. His light touched on…things. He had no idea what they were. Massive machines, or devices, or structural components. Or maybe sculptures, for that matter. He simply got impressions of great, sweeping curves; gleaming things like beams and pipes colored deep bronze or mirror-bright silver; objects made of crystal that either seemed as clear as water, or tinted with colors he couldn’t quite make out. He had absolutely no idea what any of it was or was for. All that he suddenly did know, in his strange way of knowing things, was that what he sought was just ahead.

  “What was this place?” he asked, eyeing a massive—something, like a frozen fountain of quicksilver. “What was it for, besides holding a power core for the Archetype?”

  It wouldn’t have really surprised him if the AI had told him, no, that’s all this was for. But the reply was surprisingly direct and certain.

  This was intended as a reconnaissance post. It would monitor a volume of space, in order to alert the Creators to anything of concern.

  “Oh. Well, that’s makes sense. I gather they had these things all over the place.”

  There were thousands, yes.

  Dash made his way around a huge, iron-grey sphere propped on what looked like legs that were far too spindly for its bulk. “So now you’ve got me curious. Were there any of these watching us humans? Like, near Old Earth?”

  There is an installation in the Sol system, yes. It is located in the belt of asteroids between the fourth and fifth planets.

  “Well, shit.”

  So, somewhere in an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which was so vast and crowded, hiding a planet in there wouldn’t be unthinkable. Anyway, somewhere among all those rocks was a place like this one.

  “I guess it’s a good thing we never found it,” Dash said. “Once it turned a few ships to ionized gas, we never would have left it alone.”

  Installations such as this one are protected from discovery. Had you not had the resources of the Archetype assisting you, you simply would never have found this one. This prevents primitive races from inadvertently running afoul of them, as well as protecting them from the Golden.

  Dash curled his lip. So the Unseen had been watching over humans in their native star system for the past two hundred thousand years? Maybe even studying them? The thought made Dash’s skin prickle with the notion that a lethal unknown had been at humanity’s doorstep for uncounted years.

  He reached the other side of the massive sphere and knew that the power core was just ahead. He saw a short flight of steps—steps that were just a little too short for his human gait—and, at the top, a crystal cylinder resting on a slab of what looked like copper. Inside the cylinder was another rod, virtually identical to the one he’d dug out of the black comet.

  He climbed the steps and stopped, then he reached for the rod, but hesitated.

  If there were any traps or defenses, this would be the most likely moment they’d trigger.

  “Have I mentioned how nerve-racking this little expedition has been?”

  You have successfully communicated your discomfort, yes.

  “As long as we’re clear on that,” Dash muttered, then reached for the cylinder. As soon as his gloved fingers touched it, the cylinder winked out of existence, and Dash was able to grab the power core.

  Dash—

  Dash yelped and jumped. The AI has spoken the instant he grabbed the core, startling him. He wondered if it was deliberate.

  “What?”

  There has been a development. Several ships have just entered real space at the edge of this system and are inbound on a high thrust trajectory.

  Dash said, “Shit!” then turned and headed back the way he came. “How long until they’re a problem?”

  They are a problem now.

  “Yeah, no, what I mean is, how long until they become, you know, an actual threat?”

  Long enough for you to return to the Archetype, if you hurry.

  “Okay, then I’ll hurry.”

  As Dash wove his way among the enigmatic machines and constructs of the Unseen, it struck him that it was too bad he hadn’t been able to keep the place’s defense system operational—and on his side.

  Dash raced along the corridor until he reached the opening that led onto the asteroid’s surface. Without thinking, he plunged out of the installation at full speed and immediately launched himself into space.

  “SHIT!”

  He’d forgotten that the gravity inside the place was artificially one G, but only a tiny fraction of that outside of it. His momentum was carrying him into what would be, at best, a long, arcing fall back to the surface; at worst, he might end up in orbit, or even achieving escape velocity altogether.

  That was not good. The incoming ships that the AI had identified them as Clan Shirna vessels were only minutes away from reaching particle beam range of the asteroid. The Archetype may be able to shrug off a blast of highly energetic neutrons, but Dash would evaporate in an instant, like an Elysian eye-beetle in a fusion exhaust. In other words, POOF.

  He fired the suit’s thrusters, desperately trying to regain control, and ended up spinning, but he was able to work his way back down to the asteroid’s surface, about a hundred paces away from the towering bulk of the Archetype. Still clutching the power core, Dash started a low-grav shuffle, moving as fast as he could back to the giant mech without losing control again.

  I recommend that you board the Archetype within the next minute to avoid being caught on the surface unprepared.

  “Yeah, you think? In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s what I’m trying to do.” Dash reached the mech and was about to clamber aboard when he realized he really had no idea how to install the power core.

  No. Wait. Yes he did. Like the one he’d retrieved from the black comet, it slotted into the Archetype’s other thigh. It would be a lot of effort for him to do it himself, though, and he just didn’t have the time.

  Fine. Dash dropped the core onto the gravelly surface of the asteroid then re-entered the Archetype.

  And not a moment too soon. Particle beams swept across the surface of the asteroid, leaving glowing trails of melted rock and clouds of superheated plasma. One struck the
Archetype, plowing a furrow across its back and right shoulder. The Clan Shirna ships had opened fire as soon as they could, at extreme range, so they weren’t all that accurate, but that would change very quickly.

  Dash settled into the cradle and once more became the Archetype.

  Wincing at the wound across his back, he reached down, grabbed the core, and seated it in place. Again, power surged through the mech. It reached a peak of about a third of the big machine’s full power, and also activated several new systems, including a point-defense beam for close-in protection.

  “Holy shit.”

  A shield. An actual energy shield, something engineers had been trying, and failing to produce, for—well, forever. The best anyone had come up with, that was even half-decently stable, was a weak repulsor field that could seal off a breach in a ship and keep the atmosphere from venting. It was far too feeble to protect against weapons fire, and also incredibly expensive. But this was an actual force-screen, an invisible barrier against most types of attack.

  Dash raised it around him and launched himself into space, just as a salvo of missiles came thundering in, detonating across the asteroid’s surface. The searing flashes of energy washed over the Archetype, followed by showers of pulverized rock. The shield flickered and flared under the onslaught, but held.

  Dash emerged from the gaseous aftermath of the multiple explosions, soaring into space and aiming himself directly at the onrushing Clan Shirna squadron.

  Missiles and particle beams flared against the Archetype’s shield. It continued to hold, but Dash realized that enough energy delivered quickly enough could overwhelm it. When the mech was fully powered, it would be a different story, but the mech wasn’t fully powered, so Dash swerved and dodged and wove among the Clan Shirna ships, lashing out with the dark-lance, and a new spatial distortion cannon that created deep, instantaneous gravity wells wherever he aimed it. It pulled the Clan Shirna ships off their trajectories, making them tumble and spin as they fought to regain control. In a few moments, he’d managed to destroy about a third of the attackers; now, amid a whirling cloud of debris, the survivors abruptly pulled back and retreated, but not too far.

  Dash destroyed a single, incoming missile with the point defense system, then paused. He let his attackers disengage, because it gave the Archetype a respite to regenerate its own power, and him a chance to collect his wits. Flying through space as though he was a bird in the air was exhilarating, of course, and he was getting more and more used to it, but it still left him a little dazed in the wake of such a complex string of maneuvers. Fortunately, the Archetype seemed to be adapting to him, too, becoming ever more of a natural extension to…well, to him.

  There is a transmission from one of the enemy vessels.

  “Oh, really? I’ll bet I know who it is, too. Go ahead, put him on.”

  An inset window opened his field of view, holding the image of a familiar figure.

  “Hey, Nathis! We’ve really gotta stop meeting like this. I mean, people are going to start talking.”

  “Spare me your feeble wit,” Nathis shot back, his neck patches so red they almost seemed to glow. “Your crimes are now breathtaking in scope. You have stolen an artifact that is—”

  “Woah, hang on here. I didn’t steal anything.” He did a somersault. “See? I’m fully…um, integrated, or connected with this thing. Oh, and it’s called the Archetype. And it’s not exactly something I could just sneak into and fire up. It kinda—well, I guess you could say it chose me.”

  “Preposterous.”

  Dash grinned. “Jealous? Put out that you aren’t the one flying around in space? Oh, and is it ever sweet to do that—”

  “You may think you are invulnerable, undefeatable, but I can assure you, you are not.”

  Dash made a huh face and said, “Well, let’s test that, shall we?”

  He launched himself at the remaining Clan Shirna ships.

  He actually had to give Nathis credit; he learned fast. All of the ships fired the particle beams at once, striving to pour fire into the Archetype’s shield as it closed. Dash felt the shield reaching saturation, unable to radiate the incoming energy away as fast as it was pumped in. He started dodging, disrupting his opponents’ firing solution, but it also slowed his approach to them, so it wasn’t a net gain. He finally gave up and just bore in, loosing missiles, dark-lance blasts and spatial-distortions as he did.

  The dark-lance tore apart one ship. Two more were pulled into a sudden gravity well and collided. Missiles blew another to fragments. As he swept by the remainder, his shield failed and he took particle beam hits all over, making him yelp and cry out. He kept going, opening the distance again. But the surviving Clan Shirna ships didn’t follow. Instead, they scattered, heading back out-system.

  “Had enough, huh, guys?”

  One ship was leaving on a very different trajectory than the rest. Instead of departing along a conventional course, this one seemed to be launching itself along a path that would take it out of the galactic plane. Of course, that didn’t mean much unless it translated into unSpace, which it did. The other Clan Shirna ships did, too, but that one ship was now on its way out of the galaxy, along a course perpendicular to the spiral arm.

  “Where the hell are you going?”

  Was it Nathis? His transmissions had been generated from all of the Clan Shirna ships, a pretty standard ploy to avoid letting your opponent know which ship you were on. So it might be Nathis.

  Probably was Nathis. But where was he going?

  Dash took off after it, ignoring the other ships as they likewise entered unSpace. It struck him that this might be a ruse; maybe the ship he was chasing was entirely automated and was just a distraction. Or maybe it was a sacrifice, intended for Dash to chase so the others could get away.

  What convinced him to chase after it wasn’t anything rational or logical, though. Nor was it any deep wisdom or insight from the Archetype. No, it was just a good, old-fashioned gut feeling.

  Flinging himself into unSpace, Dash raced after the retreating ship. It should actually be tough to do that, at least without specialized equipment he could never afford. But the Archetype let him see the Clan Shirna ship ahead, racing through the dimensionless infinity of unSpace.

  For now, he could only follow, since the concept of closing in unSpace was meaningless. In the meantime, though, Dash and his quarry tore out of the galactic plane, eventually leaving the galaxy altogether. The soft glow of matter faded as they entered the absolute emptiness of intergalactic space.

  No one ever did this, Dash thought. There was no good reason to. No ship could carry even remotely enough anti-deuterium to cross the mind-numbingly vast gulf between galaxies. The Archetype might be able to do it, but even traversing unSpace, Dash simply wouldn’t live that long.

  “So where are you going?” he asked the distant ship. “Just what the hell are you up to?”

  Time passed. Dash began to think this was a fool’s chase, just a desperate attempt to lead him nowhere, to waste his time so Nathis could…do what, exactly? The answer to that was probably behind him, but his gut told him to stay the course, for at least a while longer.

  And his gut paid off. Without warning, his quarry translated back to real space. Dash did the same and found himself not in the middle of intergalactic nothing, as he expected. Instead, he was immersed in a whole lot of dangerous something.

  17

  Dash swerved to avoid a hurling mass of ice and rock, which shouldn’t be here. There should be nothing here. The galaxy sprawled across space, a vast pinwheel of glowing dust and uncountable stars, but here, outside it, there should be nothing at all. He dodged another massive chunk of rock. As he did, he saw something else drifting toward him, something he didn’t recognize at all, except that it was obviously artificial.

  What the—?

  Except he did know what it was. Even though he’d never seen anything like this before, or heard of it, or even imagined it could actually exist, he kn
ew that it was a dark matter mine. And it wasn’t another piece of Unseen tech. This had been built, and apparently put here, by the Golden.

  Oh shit.

  It was one thing to face the relatively clunky, primitive weapons of Clan Shirna and their ilk. It was quite another to deal with Golden technology, which was every bit as sophisticated and powerful as that of the Unseen.

  Dash zoomed away from the mine and found himself closing on another. They seemed to be mobile, if not fast. In fact, there was an array of them, and they were reconfiguring themselves to hem him in, make it so he couldn’t possibly escape without detonating at least one of them.

  In other words, this was a trap.

  He fired the dark-lance at a mine, trying to open a gap. It struck the sinister device but had no effect.

  Shit again.

  He doubted the Archetype’s missiles would be any more effective, but he picked a point and activated the distortion cannon. Three of the mines abruptly plunged into the resulting gravity well. An instant later, they erupted in an explosion of…nothing. But Dash knew it only seemed to be nothing; the blast effect was to essentially neutralize certain fundamental physical properties of reality for an instant, such as the strong nuclear force that held matter together. An icy rock caught in the affected region simply ceased to exist, its atoms ripped apart as protons and neutrons simply collapsed into their component quarks.

  Dash gaped for a moment. That had been awesome, in the truest sense of the word. Awesome, and utterly terrifying.

  He shook away his stunned awe. The gap in the encroaching mines was already closing. He zoomed through it, desperately hoping that he was far enough away from any of the mines to avoid detonating them.

  He was, but barely. One of the mines did explode, though that didn’t really seem to be the right term for it, and the distortion effect did brush against the Archetype’s shield, which had fully regenerated. The shield prevented any damage to the Archetype, but at the cost of effectively nullifying it, putting it back into a regeneration cycle. So Dash could take a hit from one mine, but certainly not from two.