The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  Viktor hurried Conover aboard the Slipwing and closed the ramp. Dash, in turn, clambered aboard the Archetype. As he settled into the cradle, he said to Sentinel, “We ready? Did everything get fixed?”

  “All of the Archetype’s systems are optimal—”

  Then there was silence again.

  Dash gave an inward groan. “Now what?”

  A searing blast of energy struck the force field across the entrance to the docking bay, leaving it scintillating with flickering discharges. Faint tremors ran through the Forge from what were probably incoming shots.

  Dash turned and flung himself from the bay, toward the starfield beyond it. “Holy hell, they’re already in shooting range?”

  “So it would appear,” Sentinel said.

  The last flares of discharging energy held by the force field washed over the Archetype as it raced out of the Forge. The Slipwing lifted, spun around, and zoomed out after him.

  As soon as he was clear of the bay, Dash could make out details of their attackers.

  He laughed. “Seriously? These things are tiny…like, what? A meter long?”

  “Dash, do you remember the Fangrats?” Leira said.

  “Ah. Yeah, good point.”

  The little ships—drones, actually, of a type close to something already held in the Archetype’s database of Golden tech—zoomed around the Forge like a swarm of angry gnats. Dash picked out two, which were racing through a high-G turn to come back for another pass at the Forge, and loosed missiles at them, targeting a third with the dark-lance. One of the missiles locked, but the other drone managed to emit some sort of modulated energy pulse that deflected the other. The dark-lance puffed its target into metallic dust.

  Dash saw the Slipwing open up with her particle cannons. The beams slammed into a drone, a solid hit that should have shredded it. But the Slipwing might as well have been shining a flashlight at the drone, since it just seemed to ignore the incoming fire. He heard someone—either Amy or Leira—curse.

  “Leira,” Dash said, wrenching the Archetype through severe-G turns of it own as he tried to chase down the drones, “much as I love my Slipwing, I don’t think she’s cut out for this fight.”

  “I agree, but I doubt we can outrun these things.”

  He watched a drone snap through a nearly ninety-degree turn, shedding almost no velocity as it did. “I doubt it, too. Your best bet is to get back aboard the Forge.”

  “Roger tha—”

  A drone hit the Slipwing squarely with another of those ferocious blasts of energy. Dash’s heart slammed to a stop—then started again as he saw his ship race away from the explosion, a glowing wake of vaporized ablative armor trailing behind her.

  Dash gaped. “Holy shit, are you guys okay?”

  “Shaken up,” Viktor replied, coming on the comm. “Leira somehow managed to anticipate that, so most of it missed.”

  “That’s because she’s a damned good pilot.”

  “I’ll remember you said that,” Leira said. “Okay, we’re almost back aboard the Forge. Dash?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Go get ‘em.”

  “Damn right.”

  Jackknifing like a diver, Dash snapped the Archetype through a fast turn, pulsing out shots from the dark-lance as he did. He pulverized two more drones that almost managed to dodge his shots—almost. As he did, another drone caught him squarely with an energy blast. Then another. Dash actually cried out at the injuries, but doggedly kept the Archetype zooming around the Forge—sometimes only a few meters above its surface—and focused on destroying the miserable little drones, one by one.

  At one point, three came tearing in at him in tight formation; somehow, they were able to combine their individual shots into a single, colossal discharge. He leapt aside, but the fringe of the blast still vaporized a large chunk of the Archetype’s left foot, sending a phantom pain that didn’t feel imaginary at all. Dash yelped, flipped onto his back, and fired the distortion cannon, causing all three drones to crash together, a single tangle of wreckage that plummeted toward the gas giant, streaming debris that began to spin wildly as it descended at meteoric speed.

  Time passed, a blur of thrusting hard, spinning, somersaulting, and dodging—snapping out shots and loosing missiles until they were spent. Dash jerked hard against the bounds of physics, picking off one drone with a shot to its underside, then streaking through the debris field like an avenging angel to hammer two more drones with his metallic fists. He seized the closest and used it as a missile, clashing the broken drone against a working model that was trying to evade him at a range of less than fifty meters.

  The drone he threw hammered its partner, sending fragments of bright metal whirling away as Dash closed the gap, seized the damaged drone, and crushed it like a bug, earning a flash of bright light as the shell imploded.

  By the time the last of the drones had been reduced to whirling fragments, Dash felt he’d been fighting for hours nonstop, so he slumped in the Archetype’s cradle. His body ached, as though he’d just spent a day driving it through a hard regimen of calisthenics. It wasn’t until there were no more targets that he realized the Forge hadn’t fired a shot. Anger flaring nova-hot, he focused it on Custodian.

  “A little help would have been pretty damned nice, since you’re supposed to exist to support the Messenger, right?”

  Custodian’s bland reply didn’t improve his mood. "The Forge lacks sufficient power to activate its weapon systems.”

  Dash opened his mouth to fire back a curse-laden reply. But what was the point? Custodian would just keep replying with the maddingly infinite patience of a machine. “Then we remedy that before another flock of those little bastards can find us.”

  He let the Archetype drift through the force field and prepared to land in the docking bay beyond it. At the last instant, Sentinel briefly took control, reorienting and rotating the mech to land on its hands and knees instead.

  “The damage to the Archetype’s left foot currently precludes a standing posture,” Sentinel said. Dash wasn’t inclined to argue. He just wanted to get out of this cradle, out of these sweaty clothes, into a shower, and then into his bunk.

  “Dash?” Conover’s voice hummed with anxious tension.

  He looked at the Slipwing. “I see you guys made it back in one piece. And it looks like I have too, so you don’t have to worry,” Dash said.

  “No, it’s not that. How many of those drones did you kill?” Conover asked.

  “Twenty-three,” Sentinel said. “Damned fine shooting, as your people are fond of saying.”

  “There were twenty-four,” Leira said.

  “Damn. One got away.” Dash sounded tired, and more than a little frustrated.

  “No,” Leira said, “it didn’t. We can see it right now. It’s stuck onto the back of the Archetype. You just brought it aboard the Forge.”

  Dash froze.

  He cursed viciously under his breath, then tensed, about to try to reach behind the Archetype’s back, but caught himself. “Okay, I’m going to leave the Forge again to attack from the exterior.” He made to push backward, shoving the mech back out into space, but damage to its thrusters precluded that, earning another curse. Dash swallowed hard. He’d have to do this the hard way—the really hard way, because the Archetype couldn’t stand up. Slowly, he lifted his arm, and lowered it, then the other, then one knee, ponderously rotating the mech back toward the docking bay’s opening on its hands and knees.

  He did it slowly, too, creeping around in a wide circle, each motion absent any kind of the elegance he’d come to associate with the Archetype. Not that it would likely make any difference. It wasn’t like some skittish critter clung to the Archetype, and he didn’t want to startle it. A single one of those energy blasts, in this confined space of the docking bay, would vaporize everything and everyone inside it. For that matter, he was surprised it hadn’t already happened.

  “Look,” Dash said, heart banging against his ribs, “you guys don’
t have time to get back aboard the Slipwing. Just get into the Forge, as far as you can, and—”

  “That will not be necessary,” Custodian said.

  “Why not? You have some alien trick up your sleeve?” He turned the Archetype faster now but was still only about halfway through rotating himself back toward the bay’s opening. “Please tell me you have an alien trick. Not up your sleeve, since you don’t have arms, but in reserve, let’s say.”

  “The drone has been neutralized,” Custodian replied. "The Forge’s internal security effects are sufficiently powerful to suppress its functions.”

  Dash stopped. “You mean you were able to turn it off?”

  “Essentially. I am now employing a series of virtual attacks against it, to gain access to its systems.”

  Dash waited. “Guys? Conover? Is anything happening out there?”

  Amy answered. “Nope. That thing’s just sitting on your back. Hasn’t turned us all to clouds of glowing mist, though.”

  “Yet,” Viktor replied.

  Dash looked at the others clustered near the Slipwing, watching the silent drama play out. “Viktor’s got a point. This could still go really wrong, really fast. Maybe you guys should go take cover.”

  “Custodian has breached the drone’s security system,” Sentinel announced. “I have assumed full control of it.”

  Dash blinked sweat from his eyes. “Really? Then shut it down!”

  “Done.”

  Dash let out a long, slow breath. “Okay, know what? I’m going for something to eat, a shower, and a few hours of sleep. If the Golden show up for another round, just tell them they’re going to have to wait.”

  “So that’s what Golden tech looks like,” Viktor said.

  They’d gathered around the dormant drone, which the Guardian had transported, by means of tractor fields, to another, smaller docking bay. Dash still worried that it might somehow manage to reactivate itself; after all, if this was Golden tech, then it was every bit as advanced as that of the Unseen. But the Guardian insisted that the sheer power of the Forge’s security systems—at least compared to those of the drone—were more than enough to prevent it from coming back to life.

  “I wonder what the point was then, if it was never going to be able to do anything once it got aboard,” Leira said. “Other than handing us an intact drone, that is.”

  Amy knelt beside the little device, peering at the smooth, carapace-like curves. “I was thinking that maybe it was to try and spy on us, but we noticed it right away.” She looked back at the others. “Can’t imagine these Golden, whoever they are, would be that careless?”

  Viktor crossed his arms. “My bet would be on something a lot more straightforward, like trying to blow the hell out of the Forge from the inside. Lot bigger boom if you’re on this side of the force fields.”

  Dash nodded. “I’m with Viktor. I don’t think this was intended to be anything subtle or clever, like spying.” He turned his attention to Sentinel and Custodian. “What do you guys think? A clumsy stab at spying on us, or a sneak attack?”

  “There is insufficient information to know for certain,” Sentinel said. “And with the drone completely powered down, I cannot determine anything further from it.”

  “Any answer would be purely speculative,” Custodian added. “However, the balance of probability suggests it was intended as an attack.”

  “So if we do want to learn more,” Leira said, “we need to power it back up—at least partially.”

  Dash shook his head. “Yeah, no. I don’t think we’ll be doing that. I’m quite happy just keeping it as a trophy, unless I have some solid assurance it can’t rearm itself as a killing blow.”

  “This is a pretty good opportunity to learn about the Golden, though,” Leira said, negotiating.

  “I get that, but the risk is just too great without more information, and I’m not going to crack that thing open without—what are you doing?” Dash said.

  Amy reached out and touched a finger to it. Dash tensed—but nothing happened.

  “What if we take it off the Forge to somewhere else? Examine it there?”

  “Then it probably will come back to life,” Dash said, more than a little bemused that he, of all people, suddenly seemed to be the voice of cautious reason. “The security systems here wouldn’t be able to keep it suppressed, or whatever.”

  “But doesn’t your Sentinel have control of it?”

  “Sure, for now.”

  “We don’t have to take if off the Forge to study it,” said Conover. “And we don’t have to power it up, either.”

  They all stared at him.

  Conover shrugged. “I’ve been looking at it.” He pointed at his eyes. “You know—looking at it.”

  That made Dash’s brow furrow. Conover had implants in his eyes that let him look at tech and discern a great deal about its inner workings. It worked exceptionally well with mundane tech, like the Slipwing’s systems. But when he’d tried it on Unseen tech, on the star-destroying device known simply as the Lens, it hadn’t gone nearly so smoothly.

  “The last time you used that on alien tech, it took you offline,” Viktor said, beating Dash to a voicing an objection. “You really shouldn’t be doing it now—at least, not without talking to the rest of us about it first.”

  “Especially,” Dash added, “since this tech belongs to the Golden, and they’re unquestionably the bad guys.”

  Conover peered around at the disapproving looks and drooped a bit. “Well, I’ve been experimenting with ways of examining this stuff more…well, carefully, so that isn’t as likely to happen. Dammit, I—I’m trying. I’m at the limits of my ability, but I’m being as safe as I can.”

  Amy shrugged. “Eh, you seem fine, so whatever you’re doing must be working. Anyway, now that you’ve done it, what can you tell us?”

  Her cheerful reply helped Conover’s mood. “Well, right about there, um—” He pointed to a spot on the drone. “There’s what I think is a data module. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t do any processing on its own, so it’s dumb. We should be able to remove it and access whatever data it’s holding. It’s a basic drive.”

  Amy grinned and gave a thumbs up. “See, that’s great. Exactly what we need.”

  “Okay, that is great,” Dash said. “How about you and Amy work together to get that module out and make it so we can read what’s on it.”

  Conover gave a sharp nod and knelt beside Amy, then launched into a discussion about how best to access the alien tech.

  Dash motioned for Leira and Viktor to join him. “You do realize what the attack by those drones means.”

  Leira gave a grim nod. “The Golden know about the Forge, and now also know about the Archetype.”

  “And us,” Viktor said, scratching his chin. “At least, that’s what we should assume.”

  “Yeah. Never underestimate the bad guys.” Dash rubbed his eyes. Despite the few hours of sleep he’d managed, a lingering fatigue dragged at him. “Anyway, we know what all of that means.”

  “The Golden will be back,” Leira said.

  “Yeah,” Dash said. “They will.”

  Accessing the drone’s data module proved both easier and more difficult than they’d anticipated. Easier, because it turned out to be relatively simple, with the help of Conover’s particular insight, to work out how to disassemble the thing. More difficult, because once they had, and got Sentinel to access the module, it turned out that it wasn’t as ‘dumb’ as Conover had thought.

  Golden technology seemed to distribute data storage and processing throughout their hardware, so damage couldn’t compromise any particular function. It was a principle that the designers of tech like the Slipwing had tried to incorporate, to make things more redundant and durable, but the Golden managed it to an extent that, again, contemporary engineers could only dream of.

  As Sentinel reported her slow progress, it struck Dash that he wasn’t even really that amazed or awed anymore. He’d been exposed to so
much unbelievably sophisticated tech lately that it was all just starting to blur together, one massive discovery after another making him realize that the universe was getting bigger, not smaller.

  Finally, Sentinel managed to bypass the systems that had been trying to keep her out. Now, they all stood in a remote compartment, on the very fringe of the part of the Forge that had been powered up. “It was a good decision to remove this module from the drone and put physical distance between the two,” she said. “The module persisted in its attempts to communicate with, and activate, other drone systems as I accessed it. Fortunately, Custodian was able to block those attempts from reaching the drone itself.”

  “Wait, you mean it was trying to talk to the drone remotely?” Dash said. “Even after we moved the module halfway across the Forge to prevent that very thing?”

  Viktor frowned at the module. “Like you said, Dash, don’t underestimate the bad guys.”

  “No shit. Okay, Sentinel, what can you tell us? And stick to the stuff that we need to know right away. Interesting technical details and historical info and the like can wait.”

  “There is a great deal of information, all of which may be of use. For instance, the reason the drone latched onto the Archetype to come aboard the Forge was so that it could self-destruct once inside. The resulting explosion would likely have done serious harm to the Forge.”

  “Not to mention us,” Leira muttered.

  “A blunt-force attack, like I thought,” Dash added.

  “But Custodian was able to suppress all of its functions once it came aboard,” Conover said. “The Golden must have known that.”

  “It was a last throw,” Dash said.

  Conover gave him a puzzled look. “A last throw?”

  “Yeah. If you ever decide to take up gambling, kid, you’ll eventually find yourself on the edge of losing everything you bet. That last throw of the dice really is the last one—you know, your last chance to pull out a win or blow it all.”

  “In other words, it was desperation.”

  “Sure,” Amy said. “There was nothing to lose. All the other drones were destroyed, so this was a final shot at getting in a solid hit. I’ll bet the tech aboard this drone isn’t even all that new.”