The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  11

  The Swift ghosted to a halt alongside the Archetype, both mechs keeping station about a klick away from the Snow Leopard. Dash sized up Benzel’s ship, a surplus corvette from somebody’s navy. He knew her class well; it was a common type of hull, but this one had obviously been upgraded. She now sported point-defense turrets, at least two additional missile batteries, and more extensive shielding—a formidable ship with a crew that probably knew how to use her.

  Perfect.

  The Snow Leopard’s shuttle was piloted by a surly woman with a nasty scar transecting her face. Dash introduced himself with a smile, but she merely grunted, then tapped the controls, wheeling the shuttle around and zooming toward the Swift.

  Dash watched as they glided past the two mechs. They were, indeed, an impressive sight, hanging still and silent, side by side against the starfield. He could almost feel Leira’s worried indignation radiating from the Swift; she’d offered more than a few choice words about Dash’s decision to meet Benzel not only in-person, but aboard his own ship, surrounded by his own crew.

  “What the hell?” she’d ranted. “This is insane! They’re pirates, Dash! Lying and taking people hostage is what they do!”

  “I know,” he’d replied.

  “But you’re going to do this anyway.”

  “I am. We’re going to need these people to help us, Leira. More than that, we’re going to be trying to get them to put their lives on the line, and not for their usual motivation of profit. We aren’t going to establish that kind of relationship with Benzel and his people over a comm link.”

  Her glare at Dash as she boarded the shuttle showed that she still had what might charitably be called misgivings, but she settled into place and just stared fixedly ahead as the shuttle returned to the Snow Leopard.

  The shuttle pilot deftly sidled them up to the old corvette and docked them with barely a thunk. Some damned good piloting, Dash thought—an encouraging sign. Even Leira looked at least a little impressed. They exited the shuttle, passed through an airlock, then stepped into a cargo bay.

  And into the collective glare of at least two dozen hard faces aimed at him from a throng gathered near the airlock, with more lurking on catwalks surrounding the upper level of the bay. Knuckles were whitened around the grips of slug guns, boarding shotguns, and sundry nasty-looking melee weapons.

  Benzel stood at the front of the crowd, arms crossed, a grin splitting his face. “I cannot believe that you actually came aboard my ship, just the two of you, and right into my hands.” He laughed. “I don’t know if you’re more brave than stupid, or the other way around.”

  Dash raised his hands in mock alarm. “Oh, no. Look, Leira. We’re being double-crossed after all.”

  She gave Dash a sidelong glance full of worry, but played along. “I see that. Oh, no. We are truly, ah, doomed.”

  Benzel’s grin hardened. “Tough words from a couple of hostages.”

  Dash sighed again. “Sentinel, the empty shuttle that just docked, any time you’re ready.”

  There was a pause, then a tremor rattled the Snow Leopard. An instant later, a voice sounded from a comm clipped to Benzel’s shoulder. Dash couldn’t make out the words, but he didn’t have to.

  “What your crew just told you is that the shuttle outside was just turned to dust,” Dash said. “Now, Sentinel had to step the power of that weapon down to almost its lowest possible setting. The next things to go will be your weapons. Of course, once that happens, I won’t have much use for this ship anymore.”

  Benzel put his hands behind his head and groaned. “Okay, fine. Let’s talk business.”

  The rest of the Gentle Friends likewise relaxed, lowering weapons, white knuckles becoming pink again. Their faces remained hard, but now Dash saw intrigued looks and could tell their owners wondering just what this was all about.

  Dash gave Leira a smug look. She cut her eyes at Benzel, offering him a wintry smile.

  “Okay, first off, this ship, the Snow Leopard,” Dash said. “I really do want it.”

  Benzel shrugged. “Fine by me. I’ll get the price worked out, including upgrades—”

  “Your payment is that I’m going to let you keep the rest of your fleet,” Dash said.

  Angry surprise rippled through the gathered Gentle Friends. Benzel stared for a moment, then said, “Wait, what? The rest of my fleet? You said you only wanted this one ship!”

  “So far.”

  “Okay, Dash whoever-you-are, you might have us totally outgunned, but we’re not going to just—”

  Dash cut him off by raising a hand and saying, “If you can just dial back the indignation for a minute, I’ll explain why, no matter how much I seem to be screwing you, you’ll come out ahead in the end. Like, way ahead.”

  Leira nodded. “Way ahead, as in, not exterminated. And I don’t mean just your ships. I mean every single one of you, dead.”

  “Threats, now?” Benzel snapped. “You’ve already basically won here. Why are you still threatening—?”

  “We’re not the ones doing the threatening,” Dash said. “It’s someone else. Someone called the Golden.”

  Benzel frowned. “Never heard of them.”

  “I know. So let’s just take a minute and I’ll tell you the real reason we’re here,” Dash replied. “And for that, well, I have to tell you a story.”

  “And that is the whole story,” Dash said. “Pretty unbelievable, I know. But there it is.”

  Silence.

  It dragged on, Benzel simply staring at Dash, the rest of the Gentle Friends present exchanging looks ranging from alarmed to disbelieving. Dash glanced at Leira, who just shrugged back. This was, Dash knew, a critical moment—far more critical even than all of his clashes with Benzel so far. He wasn’t really here, of course, to just extort a ship from these people; there were much easier ways of getting a ship. Dash needed the Gentle Friends, and his pitch to them was based on something pretty much as alien to them, as the Unseen had been to him—doing something dangerous, not for profit, but for a greater good.

  Benzel finally crossed his arms and scowled. “Yeah, that’s a good story. You should sell the rights to it to some vid producer. It’d make for great fiction.”

  Dash shook his head emphatically. “It’s not just a story. The Unseen, the Golden, their war, it’s all only way too true. Believe me, I wish it wasn’t. But there you go.”

  Benzel shook his head right back and opened his mouth, but Wei-Ping, who’d been patched into the meeting via comm line—she apparently really was Benzel’s chief lieutenant, and number two in the Gentle Friends—spoke up. “What sort of weapons, capabilities, are we talking about here?” she asked.

  “You’ve seen the Archetype and the Swift,” Leira replied. “You have to realize there’s no way they were built with conventional tech. If that’s not enough, the Forge has enough firepower to obliterate your entire fleet, without really putting much effort into it. And if that’s not enough—well, this all started, you might remember Dash saying, because my partner and I got our hands on a piece of Unseen tech. That tech, which you can hold in one hand, is called a Lens, and it can make a star explode.”

  “Come on,” Benzel said. “Alien wars and Silent Fleets and—” He paced a couple of steps to one side, then back again. “It’s all just bullshit! It can’t be real.”

  “What about that probe, Benzel?” Wei-Ping cut in.

  “That was nothing. Some new military tech or something.”

  “What probe?” Dash asked.

  Benzel just shrugged and tried to play dumb, but Wei-Ping spoke up. “About a month ago, one of our ships ran across some mysterious probe cutting chunks out of an asteroid. As soon as it detected them, it attacked. They survived it, but their ship got shot up pretty bad—and there wasn’t a damned thing they could do about it. They couldn’t even see the damned thing on their scanners, had to try targeting their own weapons by sight. It flew off without a scratch and disappeared.”

 
“Describe this probe,” Leira said. Wei-Ping did, then Leira looked at Dash.

  “That sounds like one of the drones we saw working from that station orbiting Brahe.”

  Dash nodded. “Yeah. It sure does.” He turned back to Benzel. “That was a Golden mining drone. It means the Golden have been here. They know all about this system. Eventually, they’ll be back, maybe for resources, but, in the end, to wipe out every living thing here.”

  “They won’t just be back here, either,” Leira said. “They’ll be checking out nearby systems, too.”

  “There’s nowhere to run, Benzel,” Dash said, taking a few paces closer to the pirate. “There’s nowhere to run for any of us. I’m really not just telling you a story here. You’ve seen the two mechs out there. You’ve encountered a Golden drone. This is serious, dangerous, absolutely terrifying stuff.”

  “So you’re really here to get our help to run this Silent Fleet of yours.”

  “I am. It’s going to put you in the first line of defense against the Golden.” He gave his head a regretful shake. “I’m not going to lie about that, either. I said it was dangerous and terrifying because it is. People are going to get hurt. People are going to die.”

  “You’re doing a terrible sales job here,” Benzel said, but Dash could see the man’s mind working. Finally, he said, “Let’s see what my crew thinks of it.” He turned and gathered his people around him at the other end of the bay to speak to them. Dash and Leira faded back, giving the Gentle Friends their space while they talked.

  “I have to admit, this has worked out a lot better than I thought it might,” Leira said. “You still took a terrible chance, though, Dash.”

  “I think I said something similar to Ragsdale. These days, terrible chances is what I do.”

  Eventually, the Gentle Friends broke up and turned back to Dash and Leira. Benzel walked toward Dash, stopping a couple of paces away.

  “What the hell,” he said. “If there’s a war coming, we’d all rather be combatants than victims.” A vestige of grin came back to his face. “Besides, from the way you describe it, if we survive and win this thing, there’s going to be an awful lot of sweet tech up for grabs. I think we’d sooner be in on the bottom deck of that than not.”

  Dash put out his hand, and Benzel shook it. “Welcome to our happy little world of insanity,” Dash said. “Good to have you aboard.”

  “So what’s first on the agenda?”

  “Well, we’re going to get you to round up all of your Gentle Friends that you can, load them aboard the Snow Leopard here, and go get that Silent Fleet up and running, then bring it back to the Forge.”

  “Okay, sounds like a good plan to start,” Benzel replied. “By the way, if some or all of us want out at some point…?””

  “Then you’re out. You go your own way. You’re part of a team, not slaves.

  “That said, I have enacted precautionary measures to ensure your compliance,” a new voice put in.

  Benzel looked up at the ship-wide address speaker. “Who the hell is that?”

  “Oh, that’s Sentinel. She’s the alien AI that runs the Archetype. Did I forget to mention her?”

  Benzel shrugged. “Truth be told, all I really remember from what you said is the extermination of all sentient life. The rest of it is kind of a blur.”

  “You got the important part then, anyway,” Dash said. “Sentinel, what sort of precautionary measures are you talking about?”

  “Having infiltrated the systems of this ship, the Snow Leopard, I have taken the liberty of slaving its helm, navigational, and propulsion controls to the Archetype. If there is any malfeasance on the part of these Gentle Friends, then you will be able to steer them into a star.”

  Dash looked at Benzel and smiled. “There you go. If you didn’t have enough incentive not to double-cross us—”

  “Yeah, I think we’re way past the double-crossing part,” Benzel said, and then looked genuinely a little hurt. “Besides, I shook your hand.”

  Dash met Benzel’s eyes and gave him a firm nod. “Yes, you did. And that’s good enough for me.”

  12

  “Okay, Dash,” Amy said. “We’re ready to head back to the Forge. Are you sure you don’t want us to come along with you to that Silent Fleet?”

  Dash glanced at the Slipwing, moving steadily away from the two mechs and the Snow Leopard on a high-g fusion burn. They’d all dropped out of unSpace near an unremarkable red dwarf star, a convenient and nondescript place to part ways.

  “I think the Gentle Friends will be more than enough to get the Silent Fleet underway,” Dash replied. “Honestly, I’d be a lot more comfortable having you guys back at the Forge, helping Ragsdale hold the fort there.”

  “Dash,” Viktor said, coming on the comm. “Are you sure about this? I’m not really that happy about you and Leira going off alone with a bunch of pirates. And I see nods from Conover and Kai.”

  “It’s me and Leira, and the Archetype and the Swift,” Dash said. “We’ll be fine.”

  “But they’re pirates.”

  “Like Harolyn said, piracy is something they do, not necessarily what they are. Right now, in fact, what they are is our best hope for getting that fleet powered up and ready for action against the Golden.”

  “Fine,” Viktor said, resigned, but still clearly not happy. “We’ll see you back at the Forge.”

  “You will.”

  The Slipwing abruptly vanished into unSpace. Dash turned his attention back to the heads-up. “Okay, let’s go get ourselves a fleet, shall we?”

  Leira and Benzel both acknowledged, then all three drove their own way into unSpace, leaving the unremarkable red dwarf once more alone.

  “See any sign of the Golden drone that was headed this way?” Dash asked Leira.

  While he waited for her to answer, he scanned the heads-up, taking in the binary star system which, for the past two thousand centuries, had been the home of the Silent Fleet.

  The two stars—one a main sequence yellow, and a smaller blue companion—were in a close orbit, a mutual dance with wildly fluctuating gravity that had long ago either flung any planets off into space, pulled them into the stars where they were vaporized, or else ripped them into the sporadic clouds of debris that surrounded them. The Silent Fleet itself orbited at a respectful distance, the cold and inert ships all but invisible to any scanners that weren’t looking for them specifically. Even then, with no emissions to speak of, they’d only be detected by their faint gravitational effects—or by whatever Dark Metal they might contain. And that brought them back to the Golden mining drone, which, as far as they knew, was still heading this way.

  “I have something, Dash. Tybalt’s sending the data now.”

  Dash watched the information appear on the Archetype’s heads-up. It was definitely the Golden drone—or, at least, a Golden drone. There was no way to know for certain it was the one they knew had been coming this way, since the drones were interchangeable. But it stood to reason it was; it wasn’t likely a second drone would have been dispatched this way. Moreover, it probably meant the Golden hadn’t detected the Silent Fleet yet, because if they had, they probably would have sent much more than a single mining drone to deal with it.

  “The Golden drone is emitting considerable scanning energy,” Sentinel said. “It would appear to be following a trajectory that will take it through the margins of systems along its flight path, scanning into each system as it passes.”

  “Makes sense,” Dash replied. “Gives the quickest coverage of the greatest number of systems possible.”

  “Yes. And in the event an anomaly of interest is detected, it is likely only then investigated further, or else marked for more detailed examination by follow-up probes.”

  “Well, this one doesn’t seem to have detected the Silent Fleet yet,” Dash said, studying the data. “It’s still a couple of hours from its closest approach to this system.”

  “I would point out that any Dark Metal in the Silent
Fleet may show up as a much stronger anomaly and may be detected sooner,” Sentinel replied.

  “Huh. Good point.” Dash considered that for a moment. “So if we assume this probe is as good at detecting Dark Metal as the Archetype is, how long will it be before it’s in range?”

  “Approximately one hour, with a margin of error of a quarter hour.”

  “That doesn’t give us much time. Leira, you stay here with the Snow Leopard and start getting the layout of this fleet. I’m going to go deal with that drone.”

  “As soon as it stops checking in, or the Golden or whoever might be monitoring it loses contact with it, they’re going to wonder why,” Leira said. “That might bring a lot more than a mining drone looking to find out.”

  “I’m sure it will, but I intend for us and the Silent Fleet to be long gone by then.”

  Dash, with Sentinel’s help, tried to come up with different ways of approaching the drone undetected so they could destroy it in a sudden, surprise attack. Trouble was, every idea either took too much time, or was too convoluted and likely to fail anyway. He finally decided to try a variation on the ambush they’d used against the Gentle Friends ships attacking the bulk carrier back in Rayet-Carinae. The Archetype would simply translate as close as it could to the drone’s path, then attack with the binary stars directly behind it, hopefully blinding it long enough to get within a decisive range. It probably wouldn’t work anywhere near as well as it did with the pirates, though—this wasn’t inferior human tech, after all.

  Still, it was quick and simple, and in Dash’s experience, quick and simple sooner was almost always better than complicated and time-consuming later.

  The Archetype translated twice to get in position. The first took it close to a large asteroid, a hunk of rock several hundred klicks across. From there, he studied the drone again; it remained on its relatively lazy trajectory, just coasting into the fringes of the Oort Cloud of comets and other debris that marked the edge of this star system. He didn’t linger, though; based on Sentinel’s assessment, the drone might detect the Silent Fleet in as little as fifteen minutes.