The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  Rounding a curve, Dash saw the dome looming just ahead. The path led to an entrance which, oddly, stood open. There were no guards, no obvious defenses at all—just an open door.

  “Okay, that’s weird,” he said, then froze as someone stepped into view.

  It was a woman with fair skin and long, coppery hair that was tied back in a ponytail. She tossed what looked like mucky water from a bucket through the fence, into the adjacent foliage, then turned and went back inside the dome. If she’d seen Dash and his companions, she’d given no sign of it at all.

  “You’d think they’d have seen us land,” Leira said. “Sent out a reception committee, a delegate…hell, a guy with some tourist brochures. Something, anyway.”

  “Well, maybe they have giant mechs landing here all the time,” Amy offered, grinning. “And it’s no big deal to them.”

  “Yeah, that would raise a few questions,” Dash said.

  They carried on and reached the open door. It opened into what looked like an airlock. And, in fact, it probably was, Dash thought. It wasn’t at all uncommon for colonies to partly, or even completely, disassemble whatever spacecraft had brought them to their destination and repurpose the parts for use in their settlements. Colonies understand how to recycle, as their early success depended on it.

  “Okay,” Dash said, “these people are, at worst, neutral to us, okay? If it looks like they’re going to get in our way, our priority is to just disengage and do what we came here to do. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  As they entered the airlock, Viktor added, “Hopefully, they’ll actually help us out.”

  “Yeah, that would be ideal. At the least, I could do with a cold beer and a map.”

  “You think they have beer?” Conover asked.

  “Are there humans?” Dash replied.

  “Um, yeah,” Conover said, sounding confused.

  “Then there’s beer,” Viktor said. “Humans always bring the essentials. Or the means to make them.”

  “I’d rather they brought tech,” Conover said.

  “They did. It’s just simple enough to make beer,” Dash said with a tight grin. “Look alive. We aren’t alone in here.”

  The air inside the dome was both cooler and drier than it had been outside but still muggy compared to what Dash was used to. They saw no immediate sign of the red-haired woman, just rows of planters lining the transparent walls of a tunnel leading from the airlock and into the dome beyond.

  They carried on, walking among the planters. Dash was immediately struck by the plants growing in them. He recognized some—beans, gourds, and a couple of varieties of corn—but others were wholly unfamiliar to him. What made them remarkable was their obvious robust vitality. They grew tall and straight, with brilliant green leaves, gleaming stems, and rich, saturated colors. A stew of smells, sweet and spicy, tickled his nose, but also made his stomach growl. Dash was no huge fan of vegetables, but he found he wanted to grab some of these and just gnaw on them.

  Leira stopped and peered at the base of a vine sporting what looked like oversized, bright yellow tomatoes. She pointed into the shade among the roots.

  “I think this plant is actually glowing,” Leira said.

  Dash bent down and looked. Sure enough, he caught a hint of a soft, bluish glow. His immediate thought was Cherenkov radiation, the glow given off by radioactive elements as they ionized the air around them. But, if it had been, the environmental monitors they all carried on them to warn about just such threats would be going off.

  Conover touched the waxy surface of a gourd like an oversized, purple pumpkin. “I wonder if all of the plants here grow all crazy like this.”

  “Not all of them,” a voice said. “Really, it’s just these.”

  Dash straightened and found himself facing the woman they’d seen earlier. She wore coveralls, over which she’d belted an apron festooned with the tools of a gardener. She was even more striking than she’d seemed from a distance, and she was smiling.

  “You must have just arrived in that bizarre spacecraft,” she said. “The one shaped like a giant man.”

  Dash nodded. “That one, and a shuttle. Our other ship is still in orbit.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Newton Sawyer. My friends call me Dash.”

  The woman wiped her hand on her apron and took the one Dash offered. Her palm was callused, her nails dark with dirt. “I’m Freya Dixon. My friends call me…well, Freya.” She released Dash’s hand, then added, “Oh, welcome to Port Hannah, by the way.” She gave a self-conscious shrug. “I guess I really should put more effort into being more of a greeting committee, since my planters here are pretty much the first thing a visitor here sees.”

  “These plants are amazing,” Conover said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like them.”

  “Yeah, you’re quite the gardener,” Amy said. “I tried growing some tomatoes once, on Passage, but my thumb isn’t just brown, it’s black. They all died.”

  “I am quite proud of my little project here,” Freya replied. “These plants all exceed normal standards for nutrient value, ease of growth, size, and growth rate. They’re supercharged, basically. I can’t take all the credit for it, though. I was able to start with some amazing seeds and cuttings.”

  “From here? On this planet?” Viktor asked.

  “That’s right.”

  Leira lifted a broad, luscious leaf. “So these are native plants? You got them from the jungle out there?”

  “If so,” Conover said, “you might have a really valuable trade commodity.”

  Freya’s smile remained, but Dash caught a wary gleam in her eyes. “They’re native, yes. I gathered most of them to the north of here”—she waved her arm in a vague gesture—“near the desert.”

  Dash heard Viktor mutter, “That’s where the signal’s coming from.”

  So Dash decided to shift the conversation away from the plants, at least for now. But before he could say anything, a group of people appeared at the other end of the tunnel, exiting the dome and approaching them. Dash immediately recognized the guarded officiousness that declared them to be security of some sort. He’d seen it many, many times before, often right before something beginning, Excuse me, sir, but we have some questions. . .

  The man leading them was squat, sturdy, and had bushy brows lifted above a smile meant to disarm them.

  “Friends,” he said, extending a hand. “My name is Ragsdale, Chief of Security and advisor to the Governor. My apologies for the delay in getting here to greet you. We don’t get many visitors, and since our space is currently uncontrolled, we tend to not even know when we have any until they actually land.”

  Dash smiled back and accepted the offered hand. As he did, he glanced at Freya. One of the best ways to tell what sort of role security played in a place was to look at the reactions of the people living there to having them show up. He’d seen everything from genuine pleasure to abject fear, which had given him a heads-up as to what to expect in his own dealings with the local authorities. Freya, though, seemed generally indifferent to them, giving Ragsdale a faint smile that smacked of casual politeness, rather than actually being happy to see him. On the other hand, she hadn’t averted her eyes or recoiled in terror, either.

  He shook Ragsdale’s hand, which was as calloused as Freya’s. Dash doubted it was from gardening, which meant that the man was probably a hands-on sort of guy. He kept his own wariness cranked up but found himself…if not liking these people, then not being put off by them either. Call it guarded optimism.

  After introductions, Ragsdale said, “Most of the population of Port Hannah watched you land. That one ship you have is—I hesitate to say unusual, because that means I’ve seen it before. I haven’t.”

  “The one shaped like a giant mechanical guy, you mean?” Amy asked, smiling sweetly.

  “That’s right. It’s an odd design for a spacecraft, you must admit.”

  “And I’d be more than happy to tell you all about it,” Dash said, “
but I’d rather do it once, rather than over and over. I assume you’re here to take us to meet someone?”

  “The Governor, yes.” Ragsdale offered a self-deprecating shrug toward his four companions, all obviously security staff. “And please don’t be put off by the Specials I brought with me. It’s just protocol.”

  “Well, you don’t have your guns drawn, so I’ll take that as a good thing.”

  Ragsdale laughed. “I honestly can’t remember the last time any of us ever drew our sidearms.” He gestured back into the dome. “Anyway, if you’d walk this way, I’ll take you to meet Governor Wallis. She’s very anxious to meet you.”

  “And we’re just as anxious to meet her,” Dash said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Ragsdale said, leading the way. Dash and his companions followed, while the four Specials, as Ragsdale had named them, fell in behind. It wasn’t lost on any of them that they effectively blocked the way back to the landing pad, and the waiting Archetype and Halfwing.

  Governor Wallis held court in an unobtrusive group of offices not far inside the dome. Traversing it gave them a broad overview of the place, a tidy sprawl of boxy, prefabricated modular habs of a type scattered across dozens of worlds. Interspersed among them were more organic looking constructs of what was probably local wood, ranging from snug cabins to tasteful, delicate A-frames. Port Hannah didn’t come across as particularly ostentatious or wealthy, but it also wasn’t ramshackle and grubby like a lot of frontier colonies Dash could name. It was somewhere in-between, which he found oddly comforting. People who romanticized grit and grime had never lived in either, and Port Hannah was light years away from the places Dash had known.

  The room where the Governor received them was sparse and functional, a place obviously meant for meetings, presentations, and similar official business. She was a rather severe older woman, with hair almost brush-cut short and an obvious data implant behind her right ear. She offered Dash and his companions a thin smile that switched on like a light, lingered a moment, then switched off. Everything about the woman was clipped and efficient.

  “Welcome to Port Hannah,” she said. “My name is Khyber Wallis. I have the privilege and honor of being the Governor of our little colony. And you are…?”

  Dash made introductions all around, then they settled into chairs set around the central table. They’d lost their escort of Specials somewhere along the way, but Dash suspected they weren’t far. Ragsdale stayed with them, though, and now took a discrete seat away from the table, against the back wall.

  “So,” Wallis said, “Mister Sawyer—”

  “Please, it’s Dash.”

  Wallis gave a curt nod. “Right. Dash. So, Dash, what brings you to Gulch, and particularly to Port Hannah? We’re kind of on the fringe of things here, so it’s not likely you’re on your way to somewhere else.”

  Getting the old ‘we’re just passing through’ excuse off the table right up front, Dash noticed. Straight to the point, with no nonsense along the way. He actually found himself liking this woman.

  “No, this was definitely our destination,” he said.

  “And you traveled in a spaceship shaped like a giant man.”

  “It’s called the Archetype. It’s experimental.”

  They’d already agreed on a general script for what they were going to say. Trying to explain the Unseen, and the Golden, and the Forge, and the Archetype and all of that would wait until they had no choice. It would just muddy what was already a delicate, and potentially complicated, situation.

  “Experimental,” Wallis said, as though tasting the word to see what flavor it gave her. It apparently tasted like skepticism. “So whose experiment is it?”

  “We represent a consortium. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much more than that, at least not right now. Non-disclosure agreements and all that. I’m sure you understand.”

  Wallis tapped a finger on the table. “I see. So, you represent an unnameable consortium of…somebody. Is it a consortium of people? Corporations? Not-for-profit aid organizations?”

  “Entertainers?” Ragsdale put in from the back. “Actors or comedians, maybe?”

  Dash gave a broad smile. “Let’s say some of all of those and leave it at that.” He shrugged. “That’s the thing about non-disclosure agreements, isn’t it? They kind of say, don’t disclose this.”

  The finger kept tapping. Wallis let the silence linger, her dark eyes fixed on Dash. He just kept smiling back. Leira, beside him, was just as cool; they’d both had to deal with any number of port officials, customs agents, cargo brokers and the like, all of whom used much the same techniques to try to get their “customers” to squirm and let something slip. The others, though, shifted uncomfortably in his peripheral vision—especially Conover, who just didn’t have much deception in him.

  Dash knew where that would end up. Wallis and Ragsdale would find some pretext to get Conover alone for a few minutes, by which time they’d probably have gotten him to start making detailed sketches of the Forge. So he leaned into Wallis’s penetrating gaze, his eyes still locked on hers.

  “Anyway,” he went on, starting to lift himself off the chair, “we’re all very busy here. So, if that’s all, we’ll be on our—”

  “Why?” Wallis asked.

  Dash held his starting-to-stand pose for a moment, then settled back down. “Why? Are we here?”

  “Yes. And with your consortium’s giant, shaped-like-a-human, experimental ship.”

  “We’re here to retrieve something.”

  “Something.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But your non-disclosure agreement won’t let you tell me what.”

  Dash shook his head. “Not at all. It’s not something we can really keep secret anyway. We’re here to retrieve a ship.”

  Wallis’s eyes narrowed slightly. She’d expected more obfuscation, so he’d put her off a bit. Dash decided to capitalize on it.

  “It was lost here quite some time ago. It crashed and is now buried in the desert north of here. Its owners want to retrieve it, or at least salvage what they can from it.”

  The finger stopped tapping for a moment, then resumed. “A crashed ship. Ragsdale, did we come across any crashed ships in our planetary surveys?”

  “Not that I’m aware. I’m sure the geologists would have mentioned something if we had. Especially if it was shaped like a giant man.”

  Wallis turned her hard gaze back on Dash. “Is it shaped like a man, Dash? Another of your consortium’s experimental ships?”

  “I’m afraid not. That one’s a prototype. This one is more…well, I’d say conventional, but it’s not. See, the reason you haven’t detected its crash site is because you can’t. That’s been the problem. It used stealth technologies that make it impossible to be detected—by normal means, at least. And that’s why we’re only here now. It took a long time to even figure out which system it had crashed in, before we could even begin using other, certain, technologies—”

  “Aboard your experimental prototype, no doubt,” Ragsdale cut in.

  Dash tossed him a smile, then went on, “But we have now narrowed the location of the crash site to down to a pretty small area north of here, like I said.”

  Wallis gave a slow nod, but the finger kept tapping. “So, what you’re saying is that there’s a crashed ship on this planet, full of lots of interesting tech.” She looked a Ragsdale. “Sounds like it could be worth salvaging. We might be able to make a lot of credits from stealth tech so good that we never detected it crashing.”

  “You’re right, Governor. I’ll get the geologists to pull their survey data for that area, see what we can see.” Ragsdale stood and left the room.

  Dash said nothing. He just let his smile fade a bit. He saw Conover shift and made himself not wince. Was the kid about to screw this up? But under the table, he caught Viktor’s foot moving and pressing down on Conover’s, making him settle back down.

  Wallis had
n’t missed it, though. “Your young companion over there seems somewhat concerned about the idea of us claiming salvage rights. So are you, Dash.”

  “I am concerned. I was hoping we could avoid getting your people involved in this mess.” He sighed and looked at Leira. “I told you we should just have gone right to the crash site. But, no, let’s engage with these people, see what they know.” He shook his head at her. “So now it’s going to get ugly.”

  She shrugged and said, “It was always going to get ugly, Dash. These people were going to see what we were up to.”

  “Yeah, but we might have spared them the worst of it.” He turned back to Wallis and started to stand again. “Governor, I’m sorry.”

  Dash headed for the door. Leira rose to follow him. He glanced back and saw Viktor looking bemused, Amy a little surprised, and Conover stunned.

  “Dash, are you really going to let this happen?” Conover asked.

  Dash turned back, ready to give the kid a glare that he hoped said, Just shut up, don’t blow this. Viktor looked like he was going to try something similar.

  But Conover winked.

  Dash had to work at keeping a smirk off his face.

  “You told us this would be easy,” he went on, giving Dash an accusing look. “That no one would get hurt.”

  “Conover, listen—”

  “No! You have to tell her!”

  Wallis’s finger had gone still. “Is there something I should know here?”

  Dash glared at Conover again, who snapped, “Either you tell her, or I will.”

  With a theatrical sigh, Dash let his shoulders slump a bit. “Fine. Governor, the consortium we’re working for will not take kindly to having their property taken from them—as in, they will not let it happen.”

  “Any means necessary is what they told us,” Leira added.

  Amy, apparently wanting in on the action, crossed her arms. “Yeah. So you’d better watch out.”

  That made Dash wince and Leira roll her eyes. But Wallis’s expression hardened. “Is that a threat?”