The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “Okay, that next hull plate is finished and on its way,” Viktor said, stepping into the repair bay with Conover in tow. “It should be here—well, right about now.” He gestured at another drone, a bigger version called a tug, maneuvering a curved slab of composite plating into view and easing it toward the Slipwing. “I think we’ve got the 3D printing down pat now, no small thanks to Conover here. He even improved the process.”

  “I just noticed two of the composite layers could be printed at once with a minor tweak to the printer’s controller,” Conover said, waving a dismissive hand. “Saves about an hour for each.”

  Amy gave him an appreciative look. “That’s a pretty big deal. Cutting an hour off per plate is a big saving. Good on you.”

  Conover opened his mouth but closed it again and turned a little red at Amy’s effusive praise. Dash, despite feeling like a loose component amid all of this engineering competence, found the kid’s discomfort rather charming. He’d been young once and knew that the attention of a woman could bring out the blush in almost anyone.

  Viktor stepped closer to Amy, his gaze flicking from her hands—still grubby—tapping at the drone controller, to the drone itself. “You’ve come a long way from the young engineering apprentice I once showed how to properly hold a torque wrench, my dear.”

  “Like I said to Dash, I owe a lot of what I know to you, my dear.” She tossed Viktor a look that made him laugh. Watching them, Dash was reminded of a grandfather with a favored grandchild—or what he imagined that would look like, since he’d barely known his own parents, much less his grandparents.

  “Oh crap.” Leira tapped at the controller. “Amy, we have a problem.”

  “What? Ah. I see it.”

  “What is it?” Dash asked.

  Leira bit her lip. “The tug hauling that new hull plate isn’t responding to inputs. Amy, can you take control of it?”

  “Just a sec,” Amy said, stabbing at the controller. “I just have to—oh, shoot.”

  Dash opened his mouth to ask again what was going on, but then closed it and stepped back, knowing a moment when he needed to let the experts do their thing and just stay out of the way. He’d stick to combat, piloting, and general derring-do.

  “Maybe try changing to a different control channel,” Viktor offered. “Something might be interfering with this one.”

  “I thought of that,” Amy replied, her face uncharacteristically serious, her gaze locked on the controller. “It’s still not responding, though.”

  “How about a telemetry channel?” Conover asked. “The drones must transmit data about their own status, right?”

  Amy shot him a quick glance. “That’s a brilliant idea. Let’s see if I can do that.”

  “Uh, Amy?” Leira said. “That drone is getting awfully close to the Slipwing.”

  “I know. Just another second.”

  Tense silence fell over the maintenance bay. Dash wondered how much damage this might do to his ship. And how much more it would cost to repair it. And who, exactly, would be paying for it.

  “There,” Amy said, banging on the controller. “Now, if I can just reroute it—”

  The drone fired its thrusters, slewing away from the Slipwing. But the inertia of the hull plate it carried was too much, slowing the maneuver. The drone banged into the Slipwing’s port quarter and bounced off, spinning slowly back toward the station. One of the drone’s thrusters went offline with a warning buzz from the controller as Amy cursed.

  Dash put a hand on her shoulder, his face calm. “It’s fine. She’s already got a few dings, and you’re doing excellent work. Seriously, don’t sweat it. Just bring it home, and we’re good to go.”

  Slowly, using the remaining thrusters, she was able to get the rogue drone back under control and bring it to a stop. Using a second drone, she scanned it, shaking her head at the damaged thruster. “I am going to get chewed out for that,” she muttered.

  Viktor put a hand on her shoulder. “Accidents happen.”

  “They do. But when it happens to a drone working off the books, it tends to get messy.”

  The damaged drone now hung motionless a short distance away from the Slipwing—but close to the Archetype, which still snuggled against the station’s hull, out of sight to anyone not specifically examining this remote part of Passage.

  “You know what would make it up to me, though?” Amy said, turning to face the others. “Telling me the story of that thing.” She waved a hand at the Archetype, which was mostly in shadow. “I mean, I’ve been pretty patient, but, come on, guys, you can’t expect me to just keep pretending it’s not there.”

  Dash gave her a level look, then flicked his eyes toward the crew. No one spoke.

  Finally, Dash said the only thing he could think of.

  “It’s really not that interesting.” He waved a hand. “It’s rather ordinary, when you get right down to it.”

  Dash was impressed he could say it with a straight face.

  2

  Amy looked at Dash with a curled lip. “Don’t ever try to become a spy or anything—you couldn’t lie.”

  “Hey, I’ve lied my way out of some predicaments that would curl your hair. One time—and I know this will surprise no one, given my obvious charms—I convinced a redhead named Teah, emphasis on the T, that I actually was a spy.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but you’re not pulling it off now.” She gestured at the huge mech. “That’s obviously not nothing. And, anyway, I’ll point out you guys promised to tell me all about it.”

  “But we’ve still got work left to do on the Slipwing—”

  “No more stalling,” Amy said, plunking the drone controller down with a sound like an exclamation mark. “What’s going on? What is that thing?”

  “It’s called the Archetype,” Conover said. Dash shot him a glare but caught a glimpse of a dreamy, smitten look on the kid’s face. Viktor cuffed Conover on the shoulder, but obviously caught the same look and his scowl softened. He looked back at Dash and they exchanged an, oh, yeah, Conover’s got it bad for this girl look. Neither could resist a hint of a smile.

  Conover, who looked a little startled, turned to Viktor and said, “What?” He wasn’t dense, though; as realization dawned on him, he abruptly looked somewhere other than Amy, stuck his hands in his pockets, and went on. “Oh, yeah. Like Dash says, it’s, you know, nothing, um . . . special.”

  Amy stared at Conover for a few seconds, then turned to Leira. “Cuz? How about you? You going to tell me that giant robot, that Architect thing—”

  “Archetype,” Conover said, but quickly glanced away again.

  “Fine,” Amy said. “Archetype. Are you going to tell me it’s nothing? I mean, seriously—what are you doing way out here with what’s obviously a damned fine piece of machinery?”

  Dash looked out the port. He wasn’t sure why he’d even tried to blow off the Archetype as nothing, beyond a vague sense that the fewer people who knew the truth of it, the better. The massive mech floated just a few meters from the hull of Passage, out of sight of anyone not in certain parts of E-ring, and then only if they were looking for it, and that assumed someone could identify the alien tech from a passing glance in a ship that was moving at some speed. The same was true during their approach to Passage in the first place.

  Dash, piloting the Archetype, had kept it perilously close to the Slipwing, all of its emissions—radio, radiation, even heat—minimized and, where possible, completely suppressed. Since traffic control around Passage relied on pings from transponders aboard ships, all the controllers saw on their scanners was the Slipwing electronically announcing herself as it closed to dock. As far as they could tell, no one had actually taken a visual look as they’d approached, so—again, as far as they knew—no one else knew about it.

  Other than Amy, of course.

  It was a little silly trying to pretend it was nothing special, though. From the vast wings folded upon the back of its multifaceted torso, to its long, slender li
mbs of enmeshed and articulated prismatic shapes and sleek head tapering to a pointed chin, it was obviously not a human construct. It was a weapon, designed to fight in the latest campaign of an ancient war against an intractable enemy—one who sought to destroy all sentient life, everywhere. Every angle on the Archetype screamed of a lethality born in the stars, and Dash took a moment to admire the raw beauty before turning back to Amy.

  He considered how to explain that to a bouncy mechanic who seemed to consider grease and coolant a sort of make-up, and faltered. There was no easy solution other than the truth.

  Leira had apparently decided to try, turning to Dash and saying, “Amy’s doing a lot of work for us for free. I think she deserves some explanation.”

  Conover nodded. “It’s actually pretty disingenuous to try and claim the Archetype is nothing special, Dash.”

  As Conover spoke, his eyes flicked to Amy in a way that again said, I am so into this girl.

  Dash finally just sighed and shrugged.

  “Fine,” Dash said. “You just have to understand, Amy, that this really cannot go outside the room. I need you to promise that. It’s not just for our security. It’s not even for yours. The reason that thing exists is far beyond your scope of understanding right now, and you’re pretty damned smart.”

  Amy looked back out at the Archetype, taking a moment to consider the tone and meaning behind Dash and his warning. “I can see how that thing could make for some awkward explanations. Sure, I promise.” To seal it, she spit in her hand and offered it to Dash. “This is how we seal deals here in the docks.”

  Dash didn’t hesitate. He spit in his own hand and shook hers, never taking his eyes away as they pumped hands three times.

  Leira looked around at the others, then launched into their backstory, and how Dash had come into possession of the Archetype. She then handed the tale over to him. He picked it up, trying not to embellish it too much, pausing while Viktor and Conover added pertinent details and comments, especially about the advanced technology of the race called the Unseen, the builders of the Archetype. With each passing sentence, Amy’s eyes went rounder, until Dash thought she might keel over from the sheer enormity of the facts. The universe was a big place. In moments, it had gotten a lot bigger for Amy.

  And a lot more dangerous.

  “So,” Dash said, “it’s basically a weapon. It’s designed to fight this other alien race called the Golden, who want to wipe out all life in the galactic arm, and probably beyond that.”

  “And it chose you to be this…Messenger,” Amy said. “Out of everyone in the arm, it picked you.” She grinned and shook her head as she said it.

  Dash waggled a finger. “You don’t need to make it sound quite so hard to believe. I’d like to point out that I’ve done pretty damned good with it so far.”

  “It might be that it was just random chance,” Viktor said. “Dash just happened to be the one who found it in that comet inside the Pasture.”

  Amy’s grin widened. “Sorry, Dash. I wasn’t trying to be an ass about it. It just seems, you know, kind of improbable.”

  “Hey, the odds were fifty-fifty it would be Dash,” Leira said.

  They all stared at her. Conover blinked and asked, “How could you possibly figure that?”

  Amy was the one who answered. “The probability of everything is fifty-fifty. It either

  “—happens or it doesn’t,” she finished, in unison with Leira. They both grinned.

  “Old, inside joke,” Leira said. “Sorry.”

  Amy looked back at Dash. “Seriously, though. The odds of it just happening to be you who crash landed on that particular comet, found your way inside it, and then discovered this Archetype right before you died are—well, they’re not zero, but they’re pretty damned close.”

  “And yet,” Dash said, gesturing grandly at the Archetype, “here we are.”

  “Yeah. Here we are. That’s what makes me think it wasn’t random chance at all,” Amy said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, maybe you were meant to find it, Dash. You were…I don’t know, guided to it, somehow.”

  Dash frowned uncomfortably. This had come up in conversation with Leira, Viktor, and Conover during the journey back here to Passage. Conover had flatly dismissed the idea. Leira and Viktor, though, hadn’t, leaving the possibility open. Dash tended more to Conover’s view, simply because the idea that an ancient, hyper-advanced alien race had somehow chosen him, of all people, as their Messenger—the title apparently bestowed on whoever found and activated the Archetype—was rather unsettling.

  “Of course that raises the question, why you, doesn’t it?” Amy went on, pretty much echoing Dash’s thoughts.

  “Yeah, it sure does.”

  “And then there’s whole war thing. That sounds beyond scary—”

  A sharp beep cut Amy off. She looked at her comm, grimaced, and shook her head. “I was afraid of that.”

  “What?” Leira asked.

  “I have to get the drones back, which means I won’t have time to fix the one that got damaged.” She sighed. “Well, all of this amazing stuff, for lack of a better word, about the Archetype aside, there’s still work to do on your ship. The mysteries of the galaxy will mean nothing if I’m in the brig on theft charges.” She picked up the drone controller. “Let’s get this last hull plate installed before we send the drones back home.”

  Dash watched her focus her attention back on the drones, working with Leira to get the hull plate moved into place. He noticed both Viktor and Conover watching Amy, while trying to not be too obvious about it—Viktor, in a fatherly sort of way, obviously deeply impressed with her engineering skills; Conover because he was so clearly smitten with the bright, sunny, and somewhat goofy young girl.

  Dash had a different, less charitable take on her. She seemed great, sure, and was even Leira’s cousin—but she was also now a new and, from his perspective, largely unknown addition to the circle who knew about the Archetype, and the mind-boggling implications of everything associated with the big mech.

  Dash just hoped they didn’t come to regret that.

  “That was irresponsible,” the officious man snapped at Amy, “and just all around unacceptable. Those drones aren’t just free for the taking, first-come-first-served. You have to book them, and pay for them.”

  “I know this, sir,” Amy said, her customary breezy grin replaced by a suitably grave look. Dash didn’t buy it, though. There was too much sparkle in her eyes for someone feeling truly chastened. Her lips twitched with suppressed mirth, but she stood at attention, the rest of her body held in a pose of apology.

  The Passage Operations Commander, a stiff, humorless man named Jameson, just shook his head. “Do you? Do you really? Because if that was the case, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, now would we?” He turned toward the viewport. “I am so tired of you rogue mechanics, pilots—the whole miserable lot of you. I swear I spend at least half my time dealing with petty, stupid bullshit like this.”

  Dash glanced nervously across Amy’s workshop, past the glowering Operations Commander, at the viewport beyond him. Someone looking through it wouldn’t be able to see the Archetype from here, unless they peered intently at a particular spot far off along the station’s hull. Still, he preferred that the man just didn’t look at all, and that he stayed away from the repair bay where they’d been working on the Slipwing.

  Jameson turned back. “I should just throw you off Passage. But we’re always short of qualified engineers so, instead, I’m hitting you with a fine. Two hundred and fifty credits, plus you either repair the drone you damaged at your own expense or cough up another two-fifty for that. Maybe that will be enough to make you think about it next time, before you do something irresponsible and…and just plain stupid.”

  Amy nodded sharply. “I understand, sir.”

  The man looked from her to each of the others, scowling at Dash in particular, who recalled getting embroiled in some dust
up over docking fees with Jameson a couple of years prior. In a flash, the Ops Commander remembered Dash’s face, and Jameson’s face clouded over in frosty anger. He spun on his heel and stalked away, but not before a final, officious sniff of disdain.

  As soon as he was gone, Amy’s grin returned. “Well, isn’t he the grumpy one?”

  Leira, though, just shook her head sadly. “I’m so sorry we got you in trouble, Amy.”

  “Bah, don’t worry about it. If it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else. Jameson simply has no sense of humor. Anyway, it really just helps me finish making up my mind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been wanting to get off this hunk of metal for a while now. I’m tired of fixing the same things over and over. I want to do something new and exciting.”

  Dash had to frown. He knew where the conversation was going, and it gave him pause.

  So did Conover, whose face lit up. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, if you guys take me with you, and let me have access to that Archetype—you know, start learning what it’s all about—I’ll finish fixing your ship for free. That’s labor, parts, and fuel—all of it without charge.”

  Dash took a step forward. “Wait, you mean you could have done all of your repairs for free the whole time?”

  “Sure. As long as I left Passage right after completing them. For, ah, safety purposes,” Amy said.

  “You’re going to steal what we need, in other words,” Viktor said, his tone caught somewhere between amused and disapproving.

  “Which is why I need you guys to take me with you. If you’re willing, of course. So, how about it?”

  Dash looked at Leira, trying to catch her eye so they could talk this over, but before he got the chance, everyone began to chime in their enthusiasm for adding Amy.

  Leira said, “Why sure, okay.”

  Viktor said, “We’d be pleased to have you come along, certainly.”

  And Conover said, “Hell yeah!”