by J. N. Chaney
The two power cores he’d retrieved and installed seemed to be more about extracting and distributing that power efficiently, which meant they could have just been built right into the thing, and not the subject of a galactic scavenger hunt.
“I do not presume to know the detailed motives of the Creators, Dash. However, they had a purpose for forcing you to search for the power cores.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, so that being the Messenger took a deliberate act, and isn’t just something you kind of flop into.”
“I believe it is also a safety measure, to ensure that the Archetype was not fully powered when it was found. Whoever found it would need to invest time and effort into achieving its full-power state.”
“Wait, do you mean whoever first found this thing would automatically be the Messenger? Isn’t that pretty, um, risky? What if Nathis had found it?”
“The Creators established criteria to define who and what an acceptable candidate for the Messenger would be.”
“And I met these criteria?” he asked.
“You are here,” said the AI. “And we are having this conversation.”
“Yeah, I get it,” said Dash. “Okay, so what were these criteria?”
“I cannot say.”
“Well, you must know them,” suggested Dash.
“I cannot say, because I am not permitted to do so.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“The Creators instituted the prohibition, but did not provide an explanation. Presumably, I was not entitled to one.”
“So you literally can’t say what made me suitable to be this so-called Messenger.”
“That is correct,” said Sentinel.
Probably to prevent anyone from gaming the system, making themselves seem like Messenger material. Are there more of these Archetypes around? Could there be more than one Messenger at a time?
“I am aware of no other constructs such as the Archetype,” replied the AI.
Dash nodded. “One other thing. Are you reading my mind? Because I never asked you about what your Creator’s motives and such are, I was just thinking about it.”
“I have access to your thoughts, yes,” the AI admitted.
Dash blinked. “Well, hell,” he muttered. “I’m not sure what I think about that.”
“You seem to be thinking that it is not preferable,” said Sentinel. “Rest assured, Messenger, that I exist only to assist you. Having access to your inner thoughts is essential for our work.”
Dash tried not to think of anything unbecoming of his new role, but in doing so, drew such thoughts to the surface.
“Please, think naturally,” said Sentinel. “There is no need to worry about whether your thoughts might offend me. I have no opinion on such things, though I must suggest that the two women you have just envisioned are unusually—”
Dash coughed. “How far are we from the Slipwing now?” he asked, quickly turning the conversation.
But Dash knew the answer. Still far enough that Leira, Viktor, and Conover might be in serious trouble. Trouble that Dash was still too far away to influence. If only the Archetype was faster.
Or if he could buy the Slipwing some time.
“Hey, Sentinel, can I communicate with the Slipwing?”
“I can attempt communication, but cannot guarantee it will be effective without returning to real space. Unlike the intergalactic region we recently left, there is far more matter around the Archetype, and its gravitational influence affects unSpace.”
“Okay, fine. We don’t have time for that, anyway. How about a simple communication, like just a few words?”
“The simpler the message, the more likely it is to successfully propagate,” Sentinel said.
“Good. So, I want you to establish a channel to the Slipwing.”
“Understood.”
Dash pictured a numerical code in his mind. “Then send the code I’m thinking about.”
“You will cause the Slipwing to almost completely power down, Dash,” said Sentinel. “Are you certain about that?”
Dash nodded. “Yeah. It’s a backdoor I installed in case anyone ever tried to steal her. In this case, though, it will make her a lot harder to track and find.”
“At the risk of leaving the vessel entirely helpless and unable to defend itself, if it is located,” Sentinel added. There seemed to be genuine concern in the AI’s voice.
“Desperate times and all that,” said Dash.
“Very well,” said Sentinel. “The code has been transmitted.”
Assuming it was successful, the Slipwing would now drop to minimal power use. Her emissions would almost completely cease. Most important, her fusion core would go cold and she’d no longer generate neutrinos, a byproduct of fusing hydrogen. Without even such neutrino “smoke” to give her away, it would be tough to find her without knowing exactly where to look.
Of course, it would also unexpectedly plunge Leira and the others into darkness, every system aboard the Slipwing going dark, except for minimal life support. Not the most ideal situation, but a necessary one, all the same.
“Clan Shirna has divided its forces,” the AI suddenly said.
It broke Dash’s concentration. He’d been examining the inner workings of one of the plasma pistols he’d liberated from the wrecked Clan Shirna ship, then making a few tweaks. The AI had expressed no interest, though—hadn’t actually expressed anything at all—until now.
Dash considered the incoming data. “I see that.”
It meant they were close enough, now, to start discriminating some details—not much, but far more than anything that wasn’t the Archetype would be able to discern from unSpace.
It seemed that the Shirna had left part of their force to continue hunting the Slipwing near where they’d last detected her; the rest seemed to be searching along an extrapolation of her trajectory. They probably assumed she’d used something to drop off their scanners, but continued racing away at speed.
That meant they had to search a volume of space that was an increasingly large cone extending away from her last known position, defined by how much she could maneuver away from the course they knew she was following. That was good—it meant half of the Clan Shirna flotilla was essentially wasting its time. The trouble was, the other half was still in her vicinity, meaning she could be detected any second.
Dash closed up the plasma pistol, put it aside again, and adjusted his course, aiming for the Shirna still close to the Slipwing. If he could defeat them, or at least drive them off, then he could save Leira and the others. And wouldn’t they be impressed when Dash showed up as the Archetype. He even imagined the look on Leira’s face.
“There is a problem,” Sentinel said.
“More than one problem, I’d say.”
“This is a specific problem that must be addressed. The Clan Shirna vessels continuing to search along the Slipwing’s trajectory are also approaching the location of a power core.”
“Okay, so? As long as they don’t know it’s there…”
“We do not know what they know, Dash. Exacerbating the risk is the fact that they are in league with the Golden. Even if they could not themselves locate the power core—except by random chance, which is exceedingly improbable—it is possible that the Golden have given them that information.”
“But they’re after the Slipwing, not a power core.”
“Again, that is an assumption. It may be that they have become aware of the Archetype, your role as the Messenger, and the need to gather the cores to bring the former to full power. The Golden may have imparted this information to them.”
“Sure, but seriously, it’s got to be a coincidence.”
But it was a profoundly unlikely coincidence, given just how big space was. Maybe the Golden had somehow manipulated all of this, fiddling with things so the Slipwing, the Archetype, and the power core were all under threat from Clan Shirna, all at once.
After all, whatever other purpose their strange, extra-galactic dark-ma
tter minefield may have had, it had still effectively become a trap.
Systems like the Slipwing’s own nav.
“Now you’ve got me paranoid about the Golden.”
“Which does not change the fact that Clan Shirna is getting closer to the power core. That must, at all costs, be prevented.”
“Yeah, but I can’t just leave the Slipwing hanging out there.”
“It is the welfare of your companions measured against that of potentially every sentient being in this galactic arm.”
“Sure, but I can’t.”
Dash had no argument to make. He wanted to save Leira and the others, but he needed to stop Clan Shirna from getting that power core.
Which might also have been the work of the Golden, forcing him to have to make this horrible choice.
“Know what, Sentinel? I hate those Golden guys.”
The AI said nothing and Dash just gave a frustrated sigh.
“Alright. We’ll go take care of the power core.” He looked in the direction of the Slipwing and the armada of Clan Shirna ships hunting her. “Just hang in there, guys. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
The Archetype dropped back into real space to find a quartet of Clan Shirna ships waiting for him. As soon as they appeared, they opened fire, loosing a volley of missiles and a barrage of particle beam fire.
The Archetype still hadn’t fully regenerated her power levels after the escape from the dark-matter mines; Dash’s demand for speed had itself drawn a huge amount of energy. Still, he was able to fling up the shield, though not quickly enough to prevent a pair of particle beams from tearing across his torso, right arm, and left leg.
He snapped out a string of curses and returned fire with the dark-lance, reducing one of the Clan Shirna frigates to glowing slag and debris. A few seconds later, her fusion core breached, creating a very small and temporary, but still fiercely bright star. The other three ships bore in behind their own missiles, particle beams stabbing out, flooding the Archetype’s shield with raw energy.
Screw this! Dash loosed a salvo of missiles—which had somehow also regenerated, as though the Archetype could manufacture them on the fly, albeit very slowly—then dove toward the oncoming ships, determined to take them head-on.
Particle beams flared against the shield, but Dash continued flying. He dodged some of the incoming missiles, while the point-defense system destroyed more; two detonated against the shield, bringing it down. He didn’t care. He drove onward, his own missiles finding one of the Clan Shirna ships despite its best efforts at countermeasures, blowing it apart. The other two closed, raking the Archetype with their particle cannons.
Dash gritted his teeth against the damage and just pressed on.
“You should break off—”
“Kind of busy, thanks!”
Dash had no time for caution. He had no time for any of this. He needed to protect the power core, yes, but he actually needed to save the Slipwing. He’d had enough of Clan Shirna, and of the Golden, and of Nathis who pretended to be some righteous religious zealot, but was really just another greedy power-monger.
As the two ships flashed past, Dash lunged at one, slamming a massive fist into it. It slewed sideways, trailing debris and sparks and atmosphere. He immediately somersaulted and raced after the other one, rapidly closing.
It lit its fusion drive, trying to use the incandescent exhaust as a weapon against him.
He dodged aside and zoomed up beside it, growling his sudden anger and frustration before smashing a fist into it and punching through the hull.
Holding onto whatever structural components he’d grabbed, he drove his other fist into the hull and let out a ferocious, almost bestial snarl.
He wrenched his arms apart, ripping the Clan Shirna frigate in two.
A blast of frozen atmosphere momentarily surrounded him, lit white by the fusion exhaust still pouring from the dismembered aft section. He dodged back, letting the fragments of the ship just continue on their trajectory. The fusion drive quickly smashed the rear section of the ship into the forward portion, locking them together in a ruined embrace that spun away, off into deep space.
Dash turned and looked for the ship he’d simply punched.
It was trying to power away but was mortally wounded, its fusion drive flaring and dying. A severely damaged ship, unable to maneuver, was in for a lingering and unpleasant fate.
Good.
“You can now retrieve the power core,” Sentinel said.
“How long will that take?”
“It will take approximately two hours of your subjective time to reach it. Then you must retrieve it.”
“I came here to stop Clan Shirna from getting their hands on it. I’ve done that. I can’t keep the Slipwing waiting any longer.” Dash oriented himself on the distant Slipwing and prepared to launch himself after it. “Again, shut down everything you don’t need to move fast or keep me alive.”
“Understood,” said the AI.
Dash should have marveled over the fact he’d just browbeaten an ancient and super-sophisticated alien AI into conforming to his wishes. But he simply didn’t have time for that. Despite possessing almost god-like powers, he suddenly craved the company of humans, and that meant Leira, Viktor, and Conover.
Dash flung himself into unSpace, his course firmly set on the Slipwing.
“Hang on a little longer, guys,” he said. “I’m on my way.”
19
Once more, Dash plunged out of unSpace to find Clan Shirna waiting for him. This flotilla was much larger—at least a dozen ships, including Nathis’s flagship. Dash considered what the Archetype had available. It had again regenerated much, but not all of its available power.
He had several shots each from the dark-lance and distortion cannon, and about a dozen missiles, that was it. However, the shield had fully recuperated, so he had that. And the Archetype had managed to repair away most of the damage it had suffered in that last battle—most, but not all. The way Sentinel explained it, the cores themselves provided the material, which was stored around them in a super dense layer and then expanded to help with repairs. There was a limit to this, of course, before the mech needed to refill its supply.
So despite the advantage of hyper-advanced alien tech, Nathis and Clan Shirna definitely had the edge here.
Whatever. Dash had never let improbable odds get in the way before. Why start now?
Still, the Clan Shirna ships hadn’t reacted to his arrival. Had they not detected him?
No. They had detected the Slipwing, which had been caught in the gravity well of a huge planet, a gas giant, and was now falling toward the banded cloud layers of its upper atmosphere.
“Transmit the same code you did before, same channel!”
Dash watched as the silent Slipwing continued its plunge toward the vast planet, then her emissions spiked as she came back to life. He waited for Leira to light the fusion drive and burn away from the gas giant. Instead, though, she turned and powered toward it, apparently deliberately diving for the roiling clouds.
For a moment, Dash just gaped. “Leira, what the hell are you…?”
But he got it. The Clan Shirna ships had opened fire, a salvo of missiles that left the Slipwing stuck between them and the planet, with nowhere to go. Dropping into the gas giant’s upper atmosphere was her least terrible option. If she could keep the ship under control in the chaotic, wind-whipped atmosphere, the missiles would almost certainly lose their lock, and she’d be able to pick and choose where and when she reemerged from the turbulent shell of gas.
Gas giants were truly hostile environments. Winds howled at a thousand kilometers per hour or more, and the gases themselves were toxic, corrosive, and ensured she’d be flying blind. If she didn’t keep control, and dropped too far into the thing, the increasing pressure would eventually crush the Slipwing to flattened scrap.
“You’re only borrowing my ship, Leira,” Dash said, “so don’t you break it. Or you’re paying for it.”
Orienting himself, he sped off in the direction of the Clan Shirna flotilla, his gaze fixed firmly on Nathis’s ship.
Dash swerved hard, pulled up from the looming moon at the last instant, and was now racing only a few hundred meters above the cracked, icy surface. Blasts of vapor and shattered ice erupted around him, near-hits from the particle cannons stabbing out from the Shirna corvette chasing him. He knew that another pair of ships had swept around the other side of the moon, determined to cut him off before he could break back into open space.
He glanced up. The gas giant was a vast wall of striped, swirling bands of cloud filling half the sky. Down was the surface of the moon. Sandwiched between was a strip of space, all of Dash’s maneuvering room.
The other pair of ships were about to rise over the onrushing horizon. Dash abruptly swerved again, then jackknifed himself, wrenching almost a hundred and eighty degrees. As he did, he fired the distortion cannon at a point above and behind the corvette on his tail. The sudden surge of gravity yanked both him and the ship up, away from the moon.
Dash knew it was coming and just went with it, but the corvette burned hard, trying to resist its sudden fall into a gravity well that hadn’t existed an instant before.
Wrong move. The distortion vanished as quickly as it had appeared and the corvette, now thrusting hard toward the moon, rocketed downward, slammed into the surface, and vanished into a spray of debris. Dash flew hard away and up, straight toward the gas giant, just as the corvette’s fusion core finally breached. He cringed as the blast of radiation and incandescent heat swept over him.
Another Clan Shirna ship, a frigate, hung overhead. He’d discharged the dark-lance twice now, taking out two more ships in the process, and it had only partly regenerated. He fired it anyway, the beam slashing through the frigate’s bow. He punched out at it as he sped by, driving a massive fist into its flank and ripping open a huge hole.