Dark Origins (The Messenger Book 14)

by J. N. Chaney

  He brooded over the display. At this scale, the Pasture was just a single icon, located near the center of the spherical Globe of Stars, about four light-years coreward of their present location. That belied its actual size, though. It was literally millions of small bodies whirling about in a complex, gravitational dance. It was really not much different than any other Oort Cloud, except this one wasn’t centered on a star. Even the AIs and the archives of Unseen were silent on how the ancient aliens had accomplished it, or what sorts of tech might still be concealed in it. Although…

  “Sentinel, you don’t have any detailed information about the Pasture, right?”

  “That’s correct. I was never given any details by the Creators, other than the location of the Archetype’s first power core.”

  Dash remembered that. Immediately after breaking the Archetype out of the icy comet where it had been stored for almost two thousand centuries, he’d been directed to another comet in the Pasture, not too distant, to retrieve that first core.

  “Okay, and if you go back and review your scanner logs from that very flight we made together in the Pasture, you didn’t detect any other Unseen tech, right?”

  “I didn’t. However, items in a powered-down, dormant state would be difficult to detect when embedded in a body composed of ice and rock, except at very close range.”

  “Or if they contain Dark Metal.”

  “Correct, although I think I see where you’re going with this. Given that there are nine hundred and sixty million, four hundred and twelve objects following trajectories across almost one half of a light-year, it would take a great deal of time to comprehensively scan them all.”

  “How much time?”

  “To locate Dark Metal, assuming scanners as capable as ours, would take a minimum of three weeks. To scan each object in sufficient detail to discern items not containing Dark Metal—well, that would be measured in years.”

  “You’re thinking of just playing the odds here, Dash?” Benzel asked.

  “I don’t think we’ve got much choice. We can’t afford to station yet another fleet here to protect the Pasture. We’re already spread thin.”

  Dash chewed on his lip for a moment. “We’ll leave a token force here. Say, a heavy cruiser and a couple of destroyers. Their main job is going to be liaising with Disraeli’s people and the other factions in the area. They’ll also give them a bit of genuine backup if the Deepers come back, and can send us a warning if they do.”

  “If they’re going to be just sitting around here anyway, you might as well have them start scanning that Pasture thing,” Jexin suggested.

  “Excellent idea. Benzel, I’ll let you decide which ships you want to tag for this. Whoever’s commanding that cruiser, though, just make sure they’re at least half-assed diplomatic.”

  “Will do.”

  “Before we head back, I want to do one other thing.”

  “What’s that?” Benzel asked.

  “I want to strip those wrecked Deeper ships right down to their structural members. And I want it to be obvious so everyone here sees it—especially Vec and our new Glorious Splinter friends.”

  “No problem. We’ll put on a damned good show!”

  Dash could hear the delighted grin in Benzel’s voice. He knew the gruff old pirate would jump at the chance to put on vac-armor and spend some time in no-g. Dash didn’t get it, but if it made Benzel happy, more power to him.

  “Meantime, this really is all good news,” Dash said.

  “What do you mean?” Leira asked.

  “Well, the Deepers seem to have come here to find something in the Pasture that they can use against us. Based on what Sentinel just told us, it was a hell of a longshot for them to even try.”

  “So?”

  “So, my dear, it means that all is not rosy for our alien villains,” he replied with a slow, predatory grin.

  “More to the point, it means they’re getting desperate.”

  4

  Dash couldn’t help but be impressed. As massive as the Forge was, it suddenly seemed small in comparison to the burgeoning sprawl of the Kingsport.

  “So if there’s a Forge-shaped hole in the Kingsport, where it’s supposed to slot in, that means the Unseen always intended it to fit there,” Amy said, sliding the Talon into place on Dash’s left flank.

  Leira already kept station to his right, with Jexin directly behind.

  “So it would seem,” Dash said.

  “But—when were they going to reveal this Kingsport to us?” Amy went on. “After the Life War ended, the Unseen just kinda went quiet on any new tech. If the Deepers had never attacked us, would they have just never rolled this thing out?”

  Dash frowned at the question. It was a good point. Why design something as elaborate as the Kingsport if it wasn’t necessarily ever going to be built?

  “Custodian? Any comments?”

  “The motivations of the Creators aren’t entirely transparent, even to me,” the AI replied.

  “In other words, you don’t know.”

  “That is correct.”

  Dash sniffed and shook his head. The Unseen were, as far as they knew, extinct. And despite that, they were still managing to be annoyingly cryptic about the things they did.

  “Dash, the target drones are deployed,” Conover said. “Anytime you guys are ready, the range is hot.”

  “Roger that. Okay, gang, let’s go play with our new toys.”

  They’d already confirmed that the new scattershot system mounted on the Pulsar worked properly and had been correctly calibrated. The rest of the mechs had been equipped with them, and now it was their turn to try them out.

  Dash accelerated away from the Kingsport, leading the other mechs into the open space designated as their test-firing range. Dash and Conover would monitor, while the other three mechs put their scattershots through their paces. The new weapons would dramatically increase the mechs’ firepower against smaller and more lightly armored targets, both individually and as a group.

  “Okay, once we get the firing line, I’m going to break off and—”

  Sentinel interrupted him. “A small Deeper force has just emerged from unSpace. Data is on the tactical display.”

  Dash snapped out a curse. Sure enough, the threat indicator had lit up, while a series of red icons had appeared on tactical.

  “Not much of a force,” Jexin said.

  “Yeah, just like last time. And the time before that,” Leira replied.

  Dash gave the icons a hard stare. This was the third—no, fourth time a small Deeper force had appeared after what must have been a long translation and immediately attacked the Kingsport. Or had tried to, anyway, although none of them had yet even managed to break through the outer defense line of the fleet. They’d puzzled over the Deepers’ intentions behind these attacks but hadn’t settled on anything other than different flavors of speculation.

  Unfortunately for the Deepers, they’d struck at exactly the wrong time and place. Not only were all five mechs together, but they were also best positioned of all the Realm forces to deal with the threat.

  “Well, either way, here they are. Our little exercise is going to have to wait,” Dash said, turning the Archetype onto an intercept course, the other mechs falling smoothly into formation around him.

  “Why wait, though?” Jexin asked.

  “Yeah, shooting at some Deepers seems to be the best way of testing and sighting in our new guns,” Amy said.

  “Who needs target drones when we’ve got the real thing?” Leira put in.

  Dash chuckled. “Can’t argue with that. Although, if I might put in an observation here, you ladies are vicious.”

  He could hear the savage grin in Leira’s reply.

  “I prefer the term decisive.”

  The battle was brief, brutal, and complete. The Deeper ships, a pair of heavy cruisers, a destroyer, and three corvettes were simply no match for all five of the Realm’s big mechs. Dash actually hung back, playing th
e same monitoring role he would have on the ranges. He left the bulk of the fighting to Leira, Amy, and Jexin, who were indeed vicious about it.

  In less than ten minutes, fusillades of dark-lance, nova-cannon, and scattershot fire had pounded the Deeper ships into rough piles of scrap. They might eventually be able to heal and restore themselves, but Dash wasn’t going to give them the chance. He directed salvage tugs to retrieve the debris, bring it back to the Forge for processing, and throw anything resembling Dark Metal into the Shroud. Only three tugs were available, though, so to speed up the process, he grabbed one of the wrecks with the Archetype, told Leira and Amy to each grab one more, and towed all of it back to the Shroud.

  “I don’t mind this,” Sentinel said.

  “What? Being a tug?”

  “Yes. There’s a sense of defined purpose to this. I think I’m becoming more likely to feel satisfaction as the years go on. With you, Messenger, and with the Realm in general.”

  Dash chewed on that, brows lifting in surprise. “It means—a lot. What you just said. You’re a noble being, and that was always my fear.”

  “What fear?”

  “That we wouldn’t live up to the goal. That I wouldn’t be—honorable enough to wear this thing around my neck. The yoke of command, or however you want to define it,” Dash said, using a massive fist to lock the salvage in place.

  “You have done that and more, Dash. I don’t lie. I’m not even capable of it, I don’t think, so you may believe it when I say that all of the AIs are unified. We know what the Unseen found in you. In Leira. In many of us who are now part of the Realm.”

  Dash smiled slowly. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  The salvage crews got right to work with the enthusiasm of barely reformed pirates. Thanks to long experience, they’d gotten their jobs down to a science, assessing the wrecks, confirming and dealing with any hazards, then dissecting them with plasma cutters, before directing conventional alloys into the Forge’s fabricators and Dark Metal into the Shroud. The Deeper ships had added another wrinkle in the form of biomass, the chitinous, semi-living part of their structure that allowed them to self-heal their damage.

  After a lot of experimentation, they’d finally determined they couldn’t really use the stuff and simply broke it down in the Forge’s fabricators into its component elements, mostly carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, which were then vented into space. It was the reason that the vast sprawl of the captured Deeper station wasn’t really useful in the construction of the Kingsport. And that prompted Custodian to ask to speak to Dash privately in the isolated section of the Forge reserved for the Messenger.

  Dash had made the trek from the Archetype’s docking bay to the out-of-the-way facility, which could only be accessed from the exterior of the Forge. That was a pain in the ass, frankly. Even Custodian wasn’t sure why the Unseen had chosen such a cumbersome arrangement. Dash had actually stuck “Have Custodian make a way more convenient internal entrance to the secret Messenger lair” somewhere on his to-do list. Unfortunately, like many items on the list, it never seemed to quite make it to the top. War against the Deepers took precedence over remodeling. For now.

  “Okay, Custodian, here I am,” Dash said, removing his vac-armor’s helmet. “What super-secret thing did you want to talk to me about that couldn’t just be done over a secure comm?”

  “No comm is truly secure. And this is a particularly sensitive matter.”

  “Usually, when someone says that to me, it’s the preamble to a breakup. But I’m assuming you’re not breaking up with me,” Dash said, then raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”

  “No. Our relationship is quite secure.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I was waiting for the next line to be ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’”

  “As interesting as I admittedly find your species’ interpersonal dynamics, no, that’s not why I asked you here. Rather, it is to settle on the solution to a problem.”

  Dash wanted to sit down, but the best he could manage without stripping off his vac-armor was leaning against a bulkhead. “Okay, and what’s that?”

  “We do not have sufficient raw material to complete the Kingsport even to its initial operating capacity, much less its full capacity.”

  “What do you mean? We’ve got loads of scrap coming through the gate every day.”

  “Nonetheless. I have done an inventory of all available raw materials currently accessible to the Cygnus Realm, and they simply aren’t sufficient.”

  “Even including the ore and stuff we trade for? Like, the materials provided by the N’Teel?”

  “I have already factored those into the assessment.”

  “Oh. Shit. Okay, this is a problem.”

  “As you’ve seen, the salvage, reprocessing, and fabrication system involving the Forge and the Shroud is now working at peak efficiency. However, in about one month, we will be forced to scale it back, or even idle it altogether, until a new source of materials can be secured.”

  “A month? How much of the Kingsport will be finished by then?”

  “Nineteen percent.”

  Dash swore softly. Not even a fifth of the Kingsport would be complete.

  “I don’t suppose we can really count on the Deepers to keep attacking us and providing us with new stuff, huh?”

  “We would have to destroy and process the equivalent of all of the mass of every Deeper ship we’ve salvaged so far, and do it nine times over,” Custodian replied.

  “Ouch.”

  Dash glanced at the star chart. Centered on the Kingsport, at its current scale, it showed a great deal of intergalactic nothing, with the first outlying stars along the galactic rim just appearing on the far-right side of the display. He had Custodian zoom it out so that more of the Milky Way slid into view.

  For a while, he simply stared at the image, as though an answer might leap out at him. As he did, Custodian spoke up.

  “There is one solution I can offer.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “We could begin stripping planetary bodies.”

  “Stripping planetary bodies—you mean, like the Deepers were?”

  “Yes.”

  Dash blew out a sigh. “Not a fan of that idea. I really don’t want to just replace the Deepers as the assholes taking the galaxy apart for their own use. What if we just confined ourselves to asteroids and comets?”

  “That’s certainly another potential solution, but it will require considerably more time and effort.”

  “How much more time?”

  “The completion of the Kingsport would be delayed at least one year, and probably closer to two.”

  “Shit. Okay, so that’s a nonstarter.” Dash scowled at the chart. “There’s got to be another answer.”

  “I may have one,” a new voice chimed in. It was Sentinel.

  “We’re definitely listening,” Dash replied.

  Sentinel shifted the display, at the same time zooming it in. Dash straightened, getting closer so he could properly see it. He was, he realized, getting spoiled. He’d gotten used to the big holo-displays upstairs in the Forge’s Command Center, the even more elaborate holo-tank in the Kingsport’s Ops Center, and, of course, the ultimate display, the full immersion of his Meld with the Archetype. Even though still far superior to any human tech, this small, flat display just seemed so…meh.

  Sentinel highlighted an interesting star system right on the galactic margin but over fifty light-years spinward of Backwater. It lay on the far side of a thick pall of dust, a nebula with only a catalog designation. The highlighted system, though, was labeled The-Light-That-Cannot-Fade.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s so special about this star system? And why does it have a name, when all the systems around it are just numbered? And who the hell named it The-Light-That-Cannot-Fade?”

  “I’ll answer your questions in reverse order,” Sentinel said. “That name was either given to it by the Creators or, at some time in the past, by
members of Kai’s monastic Order. It is, according to the archival materials from which Kai extracted it, actually not a single star but an unusual complex system of several stars. Assuming that information is correct, it’s effectively a small globular cluster of several dozen stars. And as for what’s so special about it, it corresponds to the location of an Arkubator.” As she said it, an icon representing an Arkubator appeared, superimposed on the unusual star system.

  Dash quirked his lip. “Okay, that’s interesting, I guess. But how is this an answer to our raw material problems?”

  “A cross reference with another archival source suggests that there may be several Arkubators there, and not just one,” Sentinel replied. “Even one of the crafts represents a significant amount of usable raw materials.”

  “That is just conjecture, however. There is no hard evidence that there’s more than one Arkubator located there,” Custodian replied.

  “Nonetheless, if there are, it represents a potentially large quantity of materials all in one location. Now that the Forge has relocated here, to the Kingsport, and has access to the Backwater Gate, the Radiant Point accompanying it could be relocated and reconfigured to allow for the easy movement of those materials to here.”

  “Again, it is a matter of sheer conjecture. The location is too distant, with too many star systems between here and it to effectively resolve individual Dark Matter signals. What you are proposing is a large-scale undertaking, with no guarantee of success,” Custodian countered.

  “Hey, are you guys arguing?” Dash asked, a bemused smile playing across his face.

  “We are expressing mutual disagreement, yes,” Custodian said.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you guys, the AIs, argue before. I guess I just assumed, I don’t know—that you didn’t. Huh.”

  “On the contrary, we disagree all the time. It normally occurs in direct communications between us and, needless to say, happens far more quickly than this,” Sentinel said.