The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “Well,” Leira said as they crossed a shallow ravine, “there are some of your scary alien lifeforms.”

  Dash drew the pistol and crouched. “Where?”

  Leira chuckled. “Over there. Beside that tree, about ten meters away?”

  Dash peered at the spot she’d indicated. Sure enough, he saw something move—then the shape resolved into something living, and it wasn’t a plant.

  He relaxed and lowered the pistol. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t have quite reached his knees, and was covered with light brown fur. It resembled a large rat, but with a heavier, sturdier build, and big, dark eyes that reminded him of puppies and kittens. It watched them with apparent curiosity for a moment, then turned and scampered off, moving surprisingly fast for a creature on a relatively high gravity planet.

  “Well, that was an anti-climactic,” Dash said, holstering the pistol again.

  “Are you complaining?”

  “No, not at all. I’ve just come to expect the worst from alien planets. You know, fangs, tentacles, things like that. Usually all on the same creature.”

  They resumed their way. Soon, a large structure came into view through the trees. Its architecture was much like that he’d seen associated with the power cores he’d previously found; he assumed it was a standard building pattern used by the Unseen. This one looked as empty and desolate as the rest—maybe even more so, given how much it contrasted with the rampant life surrounding it. Crimson vines climbed the walls, the leaves hanging limp in the heavy gravity. Even the stems looked tired.

  “Hard to believe that’s two hundred thousand years or so old,” Leira said. “You’d think it would have been completely buried by now.”

  “Eh, depends on the local geology, I imagine. Plus, it might be able to keep itself unburied, like some self-correcting mechanism. And for that matter, maybe we’re just looking at the very top of some huge building, and most of it is below us. Like the top layer of a very tall cake.”

  “A cake? Are you hungry?”

  “Kind of. But that’s not important. The other cores were always accessible, no matter how old the site,” Dash said.

  “Really? Is that what you encountered before?”

  He shrugged. “No idea. I got in, got the core, got out. There could’ve been a whole city under my feet for all I knew. I tended to have more important things on my mind than exploring.” He recalled his racing back to the Archetype from the Unseen complex hosting the last core, while Clan Shirna’s flotilla of attack ships raced in for the kill. Even just the memory of that desperate run back to the Archetype, across the barren, airless asteroid—expecting to be suddenly vaporized with particle beam blasts with each frantic step—made Dash’s heart beat a little faster.

  “Seems pretty quiet around here,” Leira said.

  “Yeah. It does, doesn’t it?”

  “You sound like…what? You don’t want it to be quiet like this?”

  He started forward, aiming himself at a gaping entryway into the structure. “I like it quiet like this just fine. I just hope it’s not a calm before the storm sort of deal, you know?”

  Inside, the place loomed as empty and quiet as it appeared from the outside. The architecture looked like what he’d seen before, which was good—it meant this must be the right place. It was good to have what he knew from Sentinel confirmed.

  The only signs of life were what appeared to be nests constructed in various corners by…something. Dash couldn’t tell what, but they weren’t especially large, or full of bones picked clean, or anything else that seemed particularly menacing. And none of them seemed to be occupied, which meant their inhabitants had hidden themselves at their approach, or this was the nesting off-season. Either way, Dash took comfort in the fact that nothing in the place seemed to be immediately threatening.

  Except that was, itself, a cause for concern. Nature was never really on vacation, no matter what season it was. As they walked along corridors and through chambers, all empty and quiet, Dash steadily slowed his pace and spent more time looking around, along branching side passages, and even behind them.

  “You okay, Dash?” Leira finally asked.

  “Yeah. I’m just…”

  She stopped. “What?”

  “When was the last time anything we did was this easy? I mean, since I rescued you and Viktor from Clan Shirna that first time, we’ve been flying through pretty much a shit storm of one awful thing after another.”

  “So enjoy it.”

  “I can’t. It just doesn’t seem right.”

  Leira turned in a circle. “I don’t see anything to be concerned about.” She raised a gloved hand before he could speak. “Don’t worry, I’m not just blowing your worries off, Dash. I think we’ve just had a run of bad luck, combined with the fact we’ve been putting ourselves deliberately in harm’s way. This is an ancient place, on a remote planet that’s entirely untouched wilderness where the apex predators are the size of a sandwich. Or a small, dense, high-gravity cake, to put it in a perspective you might like. I’m thinking that, this time, there probably really is no actual threat.”

  Dash sighed. “You may be right. It’s just that old habits die hard—especially when they’ve been keeping you alive and in one piece.”

  Leira chuckled. “Believe me, I get it. We don’t have to let our guard down, but we don’t have to get paranoid, either.” She moved so she could look directly into his face. “Sometimes an empty and quiet ancient alien complex is just an empty and quiet ancient alien complex.”

  Dash paused, peering at the landscape with deepening curiosity. “Sentinel, something about this foliage doesn’t add up.”

  “Are you referring to the color, or the structure?” Sentinel asked.

  “Maybe both.” Dash ran a hand along a thick, fibrous leaf. “Even this leaf is almost a centimeter thick. It’s got some weight to it.”

  “That may be due to the gravity. It would take considerable energy to bring nutrients to any height. Does the color of the vegetation fade as you look up?”

  “Huh. It does,” Dash said.

  “Then gravity is at work. Life is tenacious, but gravity is hard to overcome,” Sentinel said.

  “Not too tenacious, I hope. Even when it’s vaguely adorable,” Dash said.

  Finally, they reached a chamber that contained a metallic pedestal about two meters tall. Upon it, somehow balanced on its tip, was a rod-like device Dash recognized as one of the Archetype’s power cores.

  “Okay, that’s it,” he said. “Let’s—”

  “Dash, do you hear that?”

  “What…” He trailed off, though, as a steady hum tickled his ears. He tried fiddling with his external audio, trying to localize it, but its low frequency made it impossible. It seemed to come from all around them.

  “Okay,” he said, “that’s something different.”

  They listened for a moment, but the hum didn’t seem to change.

  “It must be coming from this place,” Leira said. “Some sort of system, machine, or whatever.”

  Dash finally just nodded. “I suppose, yeah.” He looked at the core. “Anyway, let’s do what we came here to do, then get the hell out. The quiet was bad enough, but this hum…I can kind of feel it in my teeth.”

  They crossed the room to the pedestal. With each step, Dash expected something to happen—some sort of trap to trigger, weapons to start firing, or some ancient, automated guardian to come to life, appear, and attack them. But there was nothing.

  They stopped and studied the pedestal, and the core upon it. Aside from the fact that the core, a slender rod, stood oddly balanced on one end, there was nothing else remarkable about any of it.

  “What now?” Leira asked.

  Dash opened his mouth to speak, but on impulse, just reached out and grabbed the core, pulled it off of the pedestal, and that was it.

  Leira said, “Oh. Okay, I was going to suggest using a scanner, doing a bit of analysis, but I guess just going ahead and grabbing it works,
too.”

  Dash hefted the core and turned back toward the entrance. “Whatever works, right? Anyway, we got it, so let’s get out of here.”

  They started back the way they’d come. As they did, Leira slowed for a moment and looked around. Dash turned to her. “What? You hear something? See something?”

  “No, nothing like that. It’s just that…” Dash saw her shaking her head inside her helmet. “This place seems awfully big and complex to just be a glorified bracket to hold that thing.” She pointed at the core in Dash’s hand, then gestured around them. “There must be more to it than that.”

  Dash paused, pushed up his lower lip in thought, then said, “Huh. It occurred to me as well. A bit excessive.” He hadn’t found anything but rock and ice in the comet containing the first power core, but he’d used the Archetype to dig straight to it and hadn’t poked around. And the desolate complex holding the second power core had, like this place, been far, far larger than it needed to be, just to play host to a rod less than a meter long. It was all alien tech with alien motivation, but he could still extrapolate when purpose and function didn’t add up.

  “The Unseen don’t build for the short term, that much we know,” Dash said. “With that in mind, this entire facility doesn’t surprise me, even if we can’t fully understand it. But our mission is complete, and we got what we came for. It’s time to go back and let the Unseen mysteries solve themselves as we add to our data and/or experiences with things from the deep past.”

  “We did get the power core, though, didn’t we?” Leira asked as they started walking again. “And without anything terrible happening. See, I told you we were in for some good luck for a change.”

  “You never actually said we were in for good luck—and, I’d like to point out, we’re still way inside an ancient alien base and have a long way to go to get back. Let’s revisit this once we’re safely snug inside the Slipwing and the Archetype, okay?”

  “You worry too much.”

  “That’s just that natural wariness of mine that’s served me so well. I pay myself to worry,” Dash said, eyes scanning around them. He missed nothing, letting his gaze slide from wall to wall and back again.

  They exited the power core chamber, starting back along the corridor leading away from it. They reached a bend and turned, only for both to stop abruptly at a low chittering sound. Another of the furry creatures they’d seen from a distance squatted on the floor just a couple of meters away. This close, Dash could see it resembled a large guinea pig, more than a rat, but with a heavier build, probably a result of evolving in the higher gravity of this planet. This close, its enormous, black eyes seemed even more like those of a puppy or kitten, or any number of other incredibly cute critters Dash could think of.

  Leira obviously thought so, too, saying, “Aww. Kind of adorable.” She reached a hand toward it, but Dash put his hand on hers.

  “I wouldn’t,” Dash said, firmly. “It’s an alien creature. With teeth, and despite its size, muscles. You don’t just pet new life-forms, even if they are rather adorable.”

  “Right, sorry,” she said, pulling her hand back and twisting her lips to one side. “Heh. I’ve just been in space too long. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen other living things that aren’t…well, you.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment, given the critter’s overall, ah, cuteness. Never wanted to be cute. Ruggedly handsome, yes. Cute, well, not since school.”

  “You are,” Leira said.

  “I am?”

  “Ruggedly handsome. And you’ve got a lot better teeth.” She pulled her lips back and made a face like a rodent, then grinned.

  “Glad to hear it,” he said, but his gaze returned to the creature, who seemed to edge forward, muscles bunching under its pelt. They eased around the creature, which watched them, but didn’t otherwise move. Once clear of it, they pushed on, only to encounter two more of the furry aliens a few meters up a side passage. And then two more in a large chamber, one squatting atop a raised platform. Each time, the creatures just silently watched them pass by, unmoving.

  “Okay, this is turning from cute into a gauntlet. Let’s move it,” Dash said.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty much around to your way of thinking now,” Leira replied.

  They picked up their pace, rounding another corner, only to find a half dozen of the creatures scattered along the corridor ahead of them. Several more moved into place behind Dash and Leira, and with that, neatly created a moving trap. The creatures advanced a little slower than Dash and Leira could walk, but with what seemed like deliberate purpose.

  Like they were herding the visitors toward something.

  “And now I’ve got a bad feeling about where this is heading,” Dash said, loosening the plasma pistol on his waist. “Let’s really hurry.”

  As they threaded their way among the creatures, one suddenly opened its mouth, revealing matching rows of sharp, serrated teeth. It uttered a keening growl that was quickly picked up by the creatures around it. The growl spread, emanating from the darkness around them—including ahead. When it made Dash’s teeth start vibrating, he knew what it was; the odd hum they’d heard, that they’d taken to be some ancient tech doing whatever it did, had been these things, doing whatever it was they did, which probably involved all of those teeth.

  “Dammit to hell,” Dash mumbled, drawing his plasma pistol. Leira did likewise, their guns out and ready in a flash. The time for calm was past. “Sentinel, any input on these creatures?”

  “No record of them, but based on your input and their behavior, they’re intelligent pack hunters with ultrasonic communications. Speed is your ally, Messenger.” Sentinel paused after delivering the bad news.

  “Come on,” Dash said, gripping the rod in one hand, the pistol in the other. “Let’s move!”

  Leira said nothing, she just fell in alongside Dash as he started to run.

  It was like running in a bad dream, but populated with animals from a pet store in hell. The higher gravity dragged at them, making Dash feel as though he was running through syrup, the ground and air pulling at his burning lungs with each passing second. They dodged around the buzzing, growling Fangrats—Dash immediately called them—none of which had actually made an aggressive move toward them. Maybe, he thought, despite their wicked teeth, all they really did was emit this menacing growl. In fact, maybe they were happy, the sound something like the purr of a contented cat.

  As they rounded another corner, though, that idea puffed away like smoke in a strong wind, as one of the Fangrats decided to bite. It snapped at Dash’s leg as he passed it, the teeth scraping across the tough, supposedly rip-proof layered composite fabric of the exosuit. Dash barely felt it, which was good. The exosuit, though, now sported a series of furrowed gouges, which was bad. Behind him, the Fangrat clicked its teeth together in anger, unsure why Dash tasted like something other than dinner.

  “Bad news,” he said. “They can bite through our suits!” He kicked out at another creature that lunged at him, sending it tumbling backward. Another took its place, teeth bared and muscled chest expanded, stubby arms questing toward them.

  “Okay, know what?” Leira said in between gulps of air. “I take it back. This doesn’t look like good luck at all.”

  Dash said, “I agree,” and even that was an effort. The air was a pool, washing over them with punishing density now that their adrenaline was kicking into high gear.

  That was all he managed, though, before just concentrating on running, his breath passing through labored into something ragged. Running in an exosuit didn’t allow for much nimble quickness to begin with, and now that extra fifteen percent gravity was really starting to grind away at their speed and endurance.

  He kicked another Fangrat aside. Then another. But more appeared, spilling out of side corridors and, most alarmingly, from ahead. More jaws snapped at them, more ragged gouges appeared on their exosuits, and the teeth-rattling chorus of growls got louder and more insist
ent, rising into a tide of sound that threatened to overload their suit speakers.

  They reached another chamber, one Dash recognized as the last before the final corridor leading out. It seemed full, wall-to-wall Fangrats, all of which immediately began converging on them, a heaving swarm of fur, kitten-cute eyes, and glistening, jagged teeth.

  “We aren’t going to make it through that,” Leira said, pulling her plasma pistol. “We’re going to have to—”

  A dazzling flash and a tremendous crack cut her off. Dash was already well down the road she’d just started to travel, the plasma pistol in his hand recycling back to full charge. Dozens of Fangrats were now smoldering mounds of charred fur. Still, dozens more boiled into the room from the other exits, but even as they did, Dash stomped and kicked and whirled, turning every part of himself into a weapon that punished the relentless tide of fang and fur.

  Leira fired. Dash fired again. After a half dozen blasts of incandescent plasma the way was open—more or less. Another pair of blasts bought them some time from the swarm now closing behind them. Even so, by the time they reached the far side of the chamber, their boots squelching and crackling through the carnage, the legs of their exosuits were crisscrossed with scrapes and furrows, and both had pressure-loss warnings glowing in their heads-up displays.

  The mic channel between them was a constant roar of heavy breathing and wailing Fangrats, punctuated by Leira’s occasional shriek as they continued to punch through the remaining beasts.

  Dash fired again, clearing a path down the corridor ahead of them. “We’re going to…run out of…of charges before we run out of these bastards!” he gasped. “And we’ve still…got all that…forest to get through.”

  Leira panted back a simple, “Yeah,” then raised her plasma pistol and fired again, as the corridor had started to fill with gnashing beasts. Dash and Leira took off again, accelerating as best they could in the higher gravity. Now Dash’s breath burned in his lungs like a fire in the sky; he wondered if his exosuit had finally failed and he was sucking alien air—and who knew what else—into his lungs.