by J. N. Chaney
“Okay,” Dash said. “Let’s go bag this drone.”
The Archetype smoothly powered away from the big asteroid, translated and plunged into unSpace, then emerged just as quickly from an arbitrary point directly between the drone and the distant binary stars. Dash took only a moment to reorient himself, then charged at the Golden drone, driving the Archetype at its maximum acceleration.
Considering the relative dimness of the binary stars compared to the glare from Rayet-Carinae that had dazzled the Gentle Friends, along with the drone’s much more sophisticated tech, the Archetype managed to get surprisingly close. The drone still hadn’t seemed to react even by the time they reached their chosen attack position. Dash didn’t question it, though. As Sentinel tried to jam the drone’s transmissions, he fired a trio of missiles.
Now the drone did react, accelerating hard through evasive maneuvers. One of the missiles, programmed to bore straight in as fast as possible, was thrown off, missing the gyrating target. The other two adjusted their attacks, leaving the drone unable to dodge all three. One detonated close to the drone with a dazzling flash, searing off a chunk of it; the drone spun again, but the damage had been severe and it couldn’t avoid the second missile, which slammed into it dead-on and blasted it into scrap.
“Did it get off any transmissions?” Dash asked Sentinel.
“It attempted to, emitting a series of wide-band, high-power emissions. They were encoded, so the actual message was unclear. One would assume, however, it was some variation of, help, I am under attack.”
Dash smiled. “Probably safe to say. I’m sure it wasn’t, hey, everything’s fine, don’t bother coming to check up on me.”
“There is Dark Metal in the drone’s wreckage. Several kilograms of it.”
“Yeah, I see that,” Dash said. “And I’m tempted, but we don’t have time to go screwing around scooping up tiny pieces of material. We have to work on the assumption that the drone's message got through and something a lot worse is on the way. We’ve got a fleet to get underway.” He spun the Archetype around and raced back toward the binary stars.
Dash eased the Archetype as close to the Unseen ship, apparently known as a Shrike, as he dared. It loomed over the mech, an imposing cylinder four hundred meters long, rounded at the nose, blunt at the stern, and split only by occasional domed protuberances along its otherwise sleek hull. Sentinel had identified one of those protuberances to be an airlock, and it was through it that Dash intended to enter this first of the Silent Fleet’s ships. If that went well, then they’d work on getting the Gentle Friends dispatched from the Snow Leopard and aboard the rest of the Shrikes.
Vac suit sealed up, he exited the Archetype. Leira had already disembarked from the Swift, which hung just a couple of hundred meters away, and now used puffs of gas from a maneuvering harness to approach. Dash activated his own harness and started the short trip to the airlock.
It was only about a hundred meters, but making the trip without a tether made his teeth grind. Every experienced spacer knew that, if you could, you always used a tether. Of course, those spacers weren’t able to count on a giant, self-aware alien mech to rescue them if they got in trouble. Still, though, poised in empty space, caught between the Archetype behind him and the sweeping hull of the Shrike ahead, Dash couldn’t help feeling like he’d put his toes on the edge of a massive cliff and stood there, swaying slightly, leaning over the chasm—
“Dash?” Leira said. “You okay?”
“I—what? Oh, yeah. I’m fine.”
He saw her just ahead, waiting for him beside the airlock. And he was coming up on her fast—too fast. He fired thrusters to slow himself down, finally coming to rest about a meter away from her.
“You looked like you were just going to keep thrusting ahead,” she said. “At least until you crashed into this ship and bounced away, anyway. I thought I might have to catch you.”
“You were just looking for an excuse to get your arms around me.”
“Can you see my eyes rolling through this faceplate? Because, I assure you, my eyes are rolling.”
He laughed. “Anyway, let’s see if we can get this thing open then get her started up.”
With a puff of thrust, he pushed himself to the airlock. He stopped again and examined it, finding a small recess in the hull alongside it. It contained no buttons or levers, or any sort of control he could manipulate. It actually reminded him of the Unseen hand imprint on the door they couldn’t open in the archive back on Orsino. The thought made his stomach flutter; what if they couldn’t access these ships the same way, because the Unseen had either never intended them to—let alone envisioned them trying. The data about the Silent Fleet had been hidden away in a pretty obscure place, after all. What were the chances they’d actually have found it the way they did?
He pressed his lips into a thin line. To have gone through all this for nothing. . . He let the thought die, like his irritation.
“Sentinel,” he said. “I have no idea how to open this. Do you?”
“You should be able to access it by means of the Meld.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“I would suggest that physical contact would suffice to establish the link.”
Dash thought back to the crashed Golden ship on Gulch. That was how he’d Melded with it, but touching Dark Metal components. But that hadn’t been hard vacuum.
“I know I can expose my hand to space for a minute or two without lasting harm, sure. But doesn’t that sound like an awfully, I don’t know, clunky way of opening an airlock? I mean, the Slipwing has a keypad you can press with your gloved fingers.”
“I do not believe the Creators would have opted for so inelegant a solution. You are the Messenger. You are already attuned to the Creator’s technology.”
Dash looked at Leira and saw her shrug through the faceplate of her helmet.
He shrugged back and touched the indentation. “Fine.”
The domed extrusion from the hull split, the halves sliding smoothly apart. Beyond, a corridor led to another set of doors.
Dash stared for a moment. “Oh. Guess I overthought that.”
“It’s the problem with hanging out with super-intelligent alien AI,” Leira said. “You end up second guessing everything.”
“True,” Dash said. “Okay, Benzel, you there?”
“Yup.”
“Leira and I are going inside. If you run into any trouble out here—”
“Don’t you worry about us. First sign of trouble, we’ll run like hell.”
“I think he probably means it,” Leira said.
Dash nodded as he started into the airlock. “I’m sure he does.”
Dash had harbored something between hope and fear that they might actually encounter some Unseen aboard the Shrike, maybe held in some sort of suspended animation. Actually, it was both hope and fear. Having a live Unseen available could be enormously helpful. But it could also prove to be terrifying; they were aliens, after all. Or it could turn out exactly the opposite, and they proved to be hugely disappointing assholes. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.
But there were no Unseen—just a ship full of empty corridors connecting a multitude of compartments, the purposes of some they could guess at, but most of which were entirely inscrutable. At least there was breathable air and a livable environment aboard, although he suspected that had been generated right before they left the airlock. Otherwise, this ship had been pressurized for two hundred thousand years, with air that smelled of really nothing at all. The Slipwing leaked enough air that, without it being regenerated, she’d have lost her on-board atmosphere in a few months at most.
Mind you, these were the Unseen. That might not even be a tough engineering challenge for them.
They entered a larger compartment with a forward wall that was a large, curved screen. It resembled the Archetype’s heads-up, right down to the way data was being displayed. The Archetype was, in fact, visible, as was the Swift, and the Snow Leopard b
eyond. All were painted with relevant data about size, mass, emissions, and other useful facts.
“I’d assume this is the bridge,” Dash said, frowning as his helmet, which was hanging from his harness, clunked against a console.
Leira held up a data-pad. “So, assuming all of these ships are laid out much the same, I’ve got a map that should guide Benzel’s people from the entry airlock to the bridge.” She lowered the pad and frowned at the big viewscreen. “Although, I notice all of the data here is in the Unseen language. How are Benzel’s people going to read it?”
“The Creators were much more competent than you give them credit for,” Tybalt said. “The ships have a provision to provide data in whatever language is most appropriate for its user.”
“So how do we activate that?”
“You do not need to. Upon your entry into the ship, Sentinel and I were able to establish a link to it. We can ensure it is configured in whatever manner we deem most appropriate for whoever is crewing it.”
Dash narrowed his eyes. “Whatever manner you deem most appropriate?”
“My apologies,” Tybalt replied. “In whatever manner we, collectively, including you, deem most appropriate.”
Dash threw Leira a raised-eyebrow look. “That’s not quite what he said.”
She shrugged. “Welcome to my world.”
Dash turned back to the consoles ringing the central well of the bridge, where a single console marked what was probably the captain’s station. He walked to that, examined it for a moment, then tapped a control. The panel lit up with Unseen characters. He studied them, then selected one and touched it.
Without a flicker of hesitation—as though it had been powered down yesterday and not two thousand centuries ago—the ship came to life. Consoles lit up all around the bridge, while new data flooded across the Meld.
Leira winced and put out a hand, steadying herself with the edge of a console. “Wow. That is…a weird feeling.”
“What? Suddenly just knowing a bunch of new stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
Just like that, Dash knew that the Silent Fleet had been prepared for battle but was never used for it. Instead, shortly after being built, it had been brought here, hidden away in this remote and obscure system until the day it was needed again. Even more intriguing, though, were hints that there might be other such fleets out there, a fact he mentioned to Leira.
She nodded. “But nothing to suggest where they might be.”
“That’s deliberate, I’m sure,” Dash replied. “That information will be available somewhere, but probably not here. In case the Golden stumbled across one of these fleets, they didn’t want to end up compromising them all. Which is probably the first time I can buy the Unseen obsession with compartmentalizing everything.”
Leira looked around then lifted her data-pad and tapped at it. “I’m sending the ship schematics we’ve collected back to Benzel.” Her finger hovered above the pad. “Last chance to say no, you really don’t want to hand these ships over to a bunch of pirates.”
Dash grimaced. “I think that ship departed a long time ago.”
Leira nodded and tapped the data-pad.
One by one, the Shrikes came to life, powering up as the Gentle Friends who had boarded reached the bridge of each and followed the instructions given by Dash and Leira. There were a total of fourteen of them, along with four smaller support vessels.
“Okay,” Benzel said, over the comm. “This is pretty damned amazing. These ships are—well, amazing.”
“You said amazing twice,” Dash replied. He was making his way through the corridors of the Shrike they’d first boarded, looking for Leira. She’d apparently found something interesting while he was helping the Gentle Friends who’d come aboard get set up on the bridge.
“That’s how amazed I am,” Benzel replied. “Makes me repeat myself.”
“Dash,” Sentinel cut in. “Tybalt and I have established links to all of the ships. They are all networked and can be controlled collectively.”
He turned a corner, following the directions Leira had given him. “Wait—does that mean they don’t need crews after all?”
“Their networked capabilities are meant to augment the crews’ capabilities, not replace them. Without crews, it would be possible to collectively move the fleet to new locations, but combat would be far less than optimal.”
“Still, it means our Gentle Friends can’t really decide to just take off on their own, right?”
“That is correct,” Sentinel said. “We have retained the ability to override all command inputs to each ship until you deem otherwise.”
“Perfect.” Dash reached a curving ramp. At the bottom, he had to turn left and walk to the end of the corridor. “Incidentally, how much Dark Metal is here in this fleet?”
“A considerable amount. Tens of thousands of kilograms.”
Dash descended the ramp. “I’m surprised the Golden never detected it.”
“The Creators were wise to choose a system of little interest, and whose probability of containing useful resources was low,” Sentinel replied.
“They were indeed.” Dash reached the bottom of the ramp, turned left, and, sure enough, found Leira in a compartment at the end. She stood with her hands on her hips, examining something that looked disturbingly like a coffin. For a moment, he wondered if she actually had found an Unseen, or at least the corpse of one, similar to the Golden corpse they’d retrieved from the crashed ship on Gulch, that was now stored on the Forge, awaiting further study.
But it wasn’t actually a coffin. It was a crate, labeled with Unseen characters.
“What have you got?” Dash asked.
Leira curled her lip. “Not sure. Something dangerous, though, based on what’s written here.” She looked at Dash. “It’s a weapon of some sort.”
Dash studied it, reading what was written on the casing, then pointing at a particular character. “That says mine, right?”
“As in, a thing that blows up when other things get too close to it? Yeah, I think it does.”
“Well, this could be handy,” Dash said. “Maybe something that Custodian could make aboard the Forge. That’s what the place was made for, right?”
“Mines would be good,” Leira said. “Any weapons we can get our hands on would be good.”
Dash nodded. “Yeah. Now, we just have to get it, and the rest of the Silent Fleet, back to the Forge. Sentinel tells me it’s going to take about eighteen hours before everything’s fully powered up and all the ships’ systems are stable.”
“So we’ve got eighteen hours to kill.”
“Yeah, let’s not put it that way. Because, if the Golden are on the ball and get back here fast enough, time to kill might end up literally being true.”
13
Dash watched the last shuttle from the Silent Fleet drift into the docking bay then aimed the Archetype in that direction. He paused before applying thrust and gave himself a moment to take in the sight.
Fourteen ships now hung in space near the Forge, arrayed in a loose formation that looked as sloppy as hell. According to Sentinel, though, they’d arranged themselves to maximize the number of weapons that could immediately engage targets in any direction—a considerable feat of 3D geometric astrogation. What made it all the more remarkable was the fact that the ships had cooperated among themselves, fully autonomously, to configure the fleet this way. It had been their first test of the Silent Fleet’s ability to function in a tight network, and they’d passed it without a glitch.
Of course, it was Unseen tech, Dash thought. It didn’t really surprise him anymore that two hundred thousand year-old machines built by the enigmatic aliens still operated almost without flaw. He loved the Slipwing but couldn’t imagine her being much more than a single entry in some obscure, far-future database two thousand centuries from now.
Except…what if she was famous? What if she was remembered as the ship that belonged
to Newton “Dash” Sawyer, the Messenger, who was one of the people who saved everything from the menace of the evil Golden?
A thrill rippled through Dash at the thought. Somehow, this hadn’t occurred to him until now. He, Leira, Viktor, and all the others—even the Gentle Friends—might be responsible for preventing the extermination of all sentient life. If they succeeded, and if the story became known afterward, they’d be famous. Beyond famous. Beyond heroes. They’d be saviors. The Slipwing might be preserved, put into some sort of stasis, a permanent exhibit commemorating the saviors of all life, which would be a beautifully symmetric turn on Kai’s phrase for the Golden.
Dash suddenly saw it all marching through his imagination. Ceremonies. Interviews on news-webs. Parades. Parties. Dignitaries lining up to pay their respects to them. Parties. Holovids re-enacting their moments of near despair, like Leira almost crashing into this system’s star after the battle against the Golden Harbinger. Parties.
Dash sighed. He’d rather just fight. That was what he knew.
“Is there a problem?” Sentinel asked.
Dash blinked. “What?”
“You have aligned the Archetype for a final approach to the docking bay but appear to be hesitating. Are you unwell?”
“I’m fine.” He smiled ruefully and shook his head. “I was just indulging myself for a moment.”
“Was it the one about the throng of multi-species women in zero-G?”
“No,” Dash snapped, shaking his head. “And that was in confidence, you mechanical cretin.”
“Fantasy seems to be a fundamental aspect of your psyche.”
“I’m not that fixated on fantasizing about stuff, thank you very much.” He started the Archetype toward the docking bay, leaving the Silent Fleet behind.
“No, I mean your psyche in a collective sense. Humans such as yourself, at least, seem to use fantasy in a variety of ways—to pass the time, to reinforce your own egos, to engage in pleasurable activities, to assist in problem-solving—”