The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  That left all of them staring at Conover, who looked down at his feet, stuck his hands back in his pockets, and added, “Because, you know, having another engineer along would be really useful.” His cheeks went crimson as he studied the floor, suddenly fascinated.

  But Amy turned to Dash, an expectant, uncertain look on her face. “I didn’t hear a yes or a no from you. The Slipwing is your ship, though. And the Archetype is—well, I guess it counts as yours as well.”

  Now they all stared at Dash.

  “Sure,” Dash said. “Why not. The more the merrier.”

  “Alrighty then!” Amy said, clapping her hands. “This is—well, it’s change, and it’s great, and I’m totally going to make you not regret this adventure. Not that I’m an adventure. I mean we’ll have an adventure. But not because of the ship. No sir, the ship will run like a clock. I just—”

  Everyone started talking, but Dash just stared at the viewport. He couldn’t help feeling that things were starting to slip ever more slightly out of his control.

  He hated the feeling, but he knew that the universe wasn’t the same. Not since the Archetype. Not since the ancient war. With a wry grin, he reassured Amy she was welcome, thinking that one more engineer could only help them in the fight.

  If they lived long enough for her to fix anything. With a final glance, he waved toward the ship. They were in this together now, for better or for worse.

  3

  Dash looked at the Slipwing, which filled almost half of the expansive vision given to him by the Archetype. He hugged the mech so close to her as to be almost touching, again trying to present a single echo to the traffic control scanners aboard Passage, now barely visible behind them. It amazed him, frankly, that they had managed to get the Archetype so close it was essentially touching the hull of Passage, and then were able to depart with it again—and no one seemed the wiser.

  It represented a big flaw in the situational awareness of the authorities who ran the big station. The smuggler in him filed that away as an interesting fact that could be useful someday. You could give the smuggler a legitimate cause, but it would never stop him from figuring angles. It was in his blood.

  Right now, though, he felt mostly frustrated. It was taking a long time to get the Slipwing ready to translate to unSpace. Every minute they spent in the station’s traffic control zone was another minute of opportunity for someone to see through their thin deception. He finally asked, “How’s it going over there, guys? We any closer to actually leaving this system?”

  It was Viktor who answered him. “Closer? Yes. Close? Not so much. We’ve got lots of power and fuel, but the translation drive needs to be completely reset. It takes time for it to stabilize.”

  He folded his arms, considering their options. “Let’s just translate as soon as we can, okay? Otherwise, I might have to arrange to meet you somewhere.” He didn’t really want to leave the Slipwing behind, but—

  “Might I remind you that we still have considerable work to do before you are in a position to use the Archetype to its full potential?” a pleasant voice said.

  “I’m well aware of that, believe me.”

  Sentinel, the AI that effectively ran the Archetype, had been oddly quiet for a bit, which was unusual given their connection.

  “Hey, is something bothering you?” Dash asked.

  “I do not understand the question.”

  “Bothering you, as in, is there something you don’t like?”

  “I know what you mean. I am uncertain how to proceed in this line of questioning, as you are the first human to whom I have been mentally bonded, and your tendencies are not entirely known to me.”

  “We’re getting to know each other. Some humans used to call that a honeymoon.”

  “This has nothing to do with astronomy or insects, I can assure you,” Sentinel said.

  “It was a tradition among humans who—actually, nevermind. Do you think I’m lollygagging?”

  “Lollygagging is not a term I know. Is it related to candy?”

  “No. The use of time. Like dawdling.”

  “Dawdling is a term I know. It is—"

  “Wasting time,” Dash said. “In other words, you’re getting impatient, or at least as impatient as a machine presence can be. You have a purpose, and it’s not being fulfilled when the tools—like me—are finally in place.” Which was ironic for a two hundred thousand year old AI. “Look, I know this is urgent. But I need the people aboard my ship to help me do this, so I need my ship to be working properly. That just took some time.”

  Thanks to Sentinel and the Meld—the process Dash used to understand Unseen tech and communication—he knew where the next power core for the mech was. The Unseen had, it seemed, scattered the power cores for the Archetype across space, their plan designed to ensure access to energy and fuel at all times, regardless of the Archetype’s location.

  The Unseen thought in the long term regarding the coming war. The next core, which would allow the mech to further power itself up and likely add some new capability, was several days away via unSpace, in the direction of the Galactic Core. The remaining cores—assuming he was getting complete information from the Meld and there weren’t some still hidden away somewhere—were scattered across the spiral sweep of the galactic arm beyond it, their pattern undecipherable, if there was a pattern at all.

  “Leira,” he said, automatically transmitting to the Slipwing, “we should come up with a course to minimize our travel time from one power core to the next. You know, just like you do courier deliveries in an order that makes sense, so you don’t have to unload cargo to get at other cargo, then load it again.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Leira said. “I just need to know where we need to go.”

  “Okay, the first system, the closest, is on the charts—it’s called Wisent’s Star, after someone named Wisent, I guess,” Dash said.

  “It is a small variant of bison, actually. I believe you might also know them as buffalo,” Sentinel said.

  “A star named after a small buffalo? Huh. Guess they were running out of names,” Dash said. “Regardless, we can hit Wisent’s first, then—"

  Leira cut in. “Dash?”

  “Hang on, I have to think about this. Just give me a second here.”

  “I can assist with this process, of course. A loop will most certainly work, if you are willing to venture outside the galactic plane, even beginning with Wisent’s Star,” Sentinel said.

  “Sure. All that matters is the cores. As to our route, efficiency has to take a back seat to results,” Dash said.

  Thanks to Sentinel, Dash knew where the various power cores were, the information more a part of his mind than something he’d acquired. That was how the Meld worked—one moment, you didn’t know something, and the next, you did. It was seamless, and the connection with Sentinel meant Dash had instant access to data, as well as the ability to ask questions about it.

  “Okay, the next one is located around a blue giant, in the—"

  “Dash, I get that you know this, because of that Meld-thing you have going on with that AI, Sentinel. But you’re not exactly an astro-cartographer. And we don’t want to be making errors when we translate to a far-off place and find ourselves popping back into real space close to a neutron star or black hole, or in the middle of a really energetic nebula.”

  “Correction. I wasn’t, but I am. Sentinel has forgotten more about galactic travel than we can ever know, and I’m a conduit for that data. I’ll offer this—Sentinel, can you upload data directly to the Slipwing?” Dash said.

  “If you are willing to allow a direct data connection, then yes.”

  “What do you mean allow?” Dash asked.

  “Your ship presumably has safeguards built in to prevent unauthorized remote access of its systems,” Sentinel said.

  “Well, yeah. Of course it does.” He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Would that really make a difference, though, if you wanted to connect to it anyway?”

>   “No, but it is in my protocols to obey your protocols, as you are the Messenger and we share a common goal,” Sentinel said.

  “Okay, thanks for asking first. Go ahead, do it. Leira?”

  “Here,” Leira answered.

  “You should be receiving—”

  “Already have. We’re loading it into the nav now.” A moment passed, then Leira went on, “Yeah, Wisent’s Star looks like a good first step. And then we should go in this order…”

  Between them, Dash and Leira settled on a succession of power core locations that minimized their distance and travel time. Shortly after that, Amy came on, announcing the Slipwing was ready to translate.

  “Alrighty, then,” Dash said. “Wisent, you furry little beast, let’s go see why they named a star after you.”

  As soon as they dropped out of unSpace, Dash saw why Wisent’s Star actually had a name, and not just a bland star-chart catalog number like the vast majority of star systems. It was a trinary star system—three stars, including two white dwarf stars and a larger, yellow star not unlike the one around which Old Earth orbited—embraced in a complex gravitational dance.

  Stable trinary systems were rare, and ones with habitable planets far more so. Wisent’s Star—or stars, Dash thought—had ten planets, eight of which had such distorted orbits around the three suns that there was no way they could support life. A ninth was a gas giant, but the tenth was a rocky world with a breathable atmosphere and decent surface temperatures, swinging around the triple stars in a circular orbit. Dash knew it was that tenth planet that was their destination.

  “I detect no power emissions or other readings that would suggest the presence of advanced technology,” Sentinel said. “If there are intelligent lifeforms, they must be in a pre-industrial state of development.”

  “So,” Dash said, “we might run into”—he thought about what a pre-industrial society meant to him—“knights and peasants and savages and the like?”

  Conover came on the comm. “A social evolution so closely parallel to that of Old Earth is pretty unlikely, Dash—”

  “Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean. There might be relatively primitive people down there. They could still be dangerous. You can die from a crushed skull as easily as a laser wound.”

  “There’s also the conventions about cultural contamination,” Conover said. “Technically, we—”

  “Again, sure,” Dash cut in. “I mean, I guess there are some people out there that actually adhere to those. But I think our situation kind of trumps that. We need that power core, it’s down there, so we have to go get it. We’ll leave the implications to later generations of anthropologists. For now, we’re going to get that juice, and that’s that.”

  “Actually,” Sentinel said, “we are close enough now that the scan resolution is conclusive. There is native flora and fauna, but none of it appears to have any level of technological achievement at all.”

  “In other words,” Conover said, “it’s just plants and animals.”

  “Correct. And not especially large ones. Gravity is about fifteen percent above standard, so the lifeforms on the surface are probably relatively small.”

  “And also probably rather muscular, compared to us,” Dash said. “That means they can still be pretty dangerous.”

  “You sound unduly concerned,” Sentinel said.

  “Look, teeth and claws might not be a big deal for you, but they can be pretty good at harming my tender flesh. That’s kind of what they’re designed for,” Dash said, this time with mild annoyance.

  “Are you saying you are overly wary of creatures barely one quarter your size?” Sentinel asked.

  Somebody aboard the Slipwing laughed over the comm. Someone else said, “Ooooh…shots fired.”

  Dash glared at an arbitrary spot on the Archetype’s interior, since Sentinel didn’t seem to be in any particular part of the mech. “Yes, I am. Being wary of things is how you stay alive, but I have an additional concern regarding your tone.”

  “Is there an issue with my sound quality?” Sentinel asked. “And your personal history seems to be one of rather reckless endeavors that show little tendency toward wariness."

  “Yeah, let’s not get into thrashing out history,” Dash said, noting that Sentinel seemed to be edging ever closer to actual sass. “And your sound quality is fine. I’m merely pointing out that you seem to be getting dangerously close to being sarcastic.”

  “I have a twelve point five percent variance rate available to me regarding my ability to banter. I have chosen to utilize almost all of it when speaking to you,” Sentinel said. That meant there was more sarcasm available at hand, but at least it had an upper limit.

  “So you have some sass in reserve?” Dash said.

  “Yes,” Sentinel answered with mechanical dignity.

  “I’ll keep that in mind as our friendship blooms. Now, onto the matter at hand—hungry creatures and my delicious flesh. Who else is going with me to my inevitable doom?” Dash asked.

  The silence from the Slipwing was thunderous.

  Dash shook his head. “And I’m the one being called unduly concerned.”

  4

  Dash looked around the group crammed into the Slipwing’s crew hab. “Okay, now that you can’t all pretend we had a bad comm connection, who’s going down there with me? I’d like to have someone covering my back.”

  Amy wiped a smear of dirt off her cheek and shrugged. “I’ll go. Be nice to breathe some unfiltered air for a change.”

  “All due respect, but we’ve still got a long checklist of things that need to be fixed around here,” Viktor said. “I can do it, but it goes a lot faster with two of us.”

  Conover gave an eager nod. “I think Amy should stay aboard. She’s an engineer, not a bodyguard.”

  “Hey!” Amy snapped, glaring at Conover. “I’ve done my share of the rough-and-tumble stuff. Back on Passage, last time there was a brawl in The Supernova Club, I was the last one still standing, I’ll have you know.”

  Conover blinked quickly, opening his mouth, closing it again, then said, “No, I…what I mean is, I think you’re perfectly—”

  Viktor put a finger to Conover’s lips, stopping him. “This is one of those times when you just apologize.”

  Conover glanced at him, then turned a sheepish look on Amy and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Amy held her scowl for a moment, then let it morph back into her ready grin. “No problem. This time.”

  Dash kept his grin at bay, but still looked from Viktor to Amy. “Viktor’s right. Your priority should be finishing repairs to the Slipwing.”

  “Well, Conover is probably better here, monitoring the ship and the comms,” Leira said. “So I guess that leaves me.” She smiled at Dash. “Trust me to have your back?”

  Dash didn’t hesitate, because he did trust her. “Yeah, I do. You don’t spend as long being a courier as you have, if you don’t know your way around trouble.”

  “Okay, then,” she said, “sounds like that’s settled. Let’s get down there and find your power core.”

  “While avoiding the muscular beasties, of course,” Viktor added.

  “I don’t know if we’re going to intentionally avoid them,” Dash said, his lips curling up.

  “Why? Now you wanna fight them?” Amy asked, alarmed.

  Dash made a slashing gesture with his hand. “Not fight. But if they’re dense and small, who knows, they might be just what we need for dinner.”

  “Um, eww,” Amy said.

  “Your loss.” Dash shrugged, but he was smiling as they broke apart for the landing.

  Dash and Leira wore exosuits as they dismounted from the Archetype and the Slipwing respectively. They landed close together on a broad beach adjacent to a good-sized sea, which was the closest open ground to the power core’s location. He found the slightly higher gravity a bit of a drag on him, but not enough to really be a problem. The air was probably close to breathable, but a little under the lower limit for a s
afe oxygen content; moreover, it might contain any number of alien vapors, spores, or germs, so they decided the exosuits would stay on.

  He joined up with Leira, who was staring at the Archetype towering above the Slipwing. “I haven’t had a chance to see it quite so clearly, and right here, standing in broad daylight like this. That is…” She paused, then shrugged.

  “I know. Took me a while to find words that really fit, too.”

  She let her gaze linger on the Archetype a moment longer, then turned toward the wall of lush foliage confronting them. “So, where to? Do you have a map?”

  “Don’t need one,” Dash said, pointing at his head inside his helmet. “Got the location up here. It’s”—he paused, turned, then pointed at a spot in the greenery—“ that way. Probably, well, I’d say a ten-minute walk, but that bush looks pretty thick.”

  They set off, pushing their way into the red and green foliage. It wasn’t as dense as it had appeared, the thicker brush along the beach giving way to more open forest. The trees were squat and broad, their trunks looking hard and solid, all products of the higher gravity, while the undergrowth beneath them was mostly low bush, little more than knee-height. It gave them a decent view for at least a hundred meters in any direction, which meant they should be able to see anything coming at them well before it arrived.

  They saw nothing more imposing than small, flying creatures that flitted about, apparently this planet’s version of insects. None of them showed any interest in, or even awareness of, these strange interlopers into their world, though they gave clicks of alarm whenever one of their own kind came too close.

  “Cannibals, maybe,” Dash said.

  “Lovely. Bet family dinners are awkward,” Leira said, batting at one of the insects as they pushed through a thicket with leaves the color of blood.

  Dash kept his hand near the plasma pistol slung at his waist anyway. The weapon was a souvenir, of sorts, from his confrontation with Nathis of Clan Shirna. It packed a powerful wallop in a small, portable weapon, so Dash had decided to keep it as his favored sidearm.