The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “Well, it might prove damned useful now,” Dash replied. “What sort of mine is it?”

  “It is a smart mine, which incorporates a relatively basic AI to evaluate targets and, in cooperation with other mines, initiate an attack.”

  “Okay, so they’re basically like our missiles then.”

  “Not quite,” Sentinel said. “The mines are specifically designed to maximize stealth and explosive effect, at the expense of a drive unit. They do, however, possess a limited ability to maneuver using a quantum tractor effect that leaves no signature in real space.”

  “Well, that sounds like a hell of a good thing to have,” Leira said. “Can we power ships with those?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” Sentinel replied. “The technology proved problematic to scale up. It simply isn’t possible to move more than a few hundred kilograms using a quantum tractor, and even then, relatively slowly.”

  “It does, however, have the advantage of being essentially undetectable by any known scan,” Custodian said.

  Dash nodded along as they spoke, his glum thoughts about the Golden essentially holding all the cards giving way to growing enthusiasm about maybe being able to do something proactive. “Can we manufacture these mines on the Forge?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Custodian replied. “It will require revision of the fabrication priorities, but the Forge is quite capable of making them.”

  “Okay, and how much Dark Metal do they need?” Leira asked. She’d only just beaten Dash to the question, because the availability of Dark Metal seemed to be an implacable choke point for most of the things they wanted to do.

  Custodian’s answer therefore surprised him. “The mines require no Dark Metal in their fabrication, unless you want them to be able to communicate without any delay for distance.”

  “So we can basically begin manufacturing these mines right away?” Dash asked.

  “We can,” Custodian replied. “The wreckage of the Bright ships would provide sufficient raw material to fabricate twenty such mines alone.”

  “That doesn’t sound like very many mines. I mean, space is big, right?”

  “Space is big, yes,” Custodian said, with a hint of a tone that sounded to Dash to be—amused? “And that isn’t very many mines. Indeed, it is far short of what would reasonably be required to help to protect the Forge. However, since they use more commonly available materials, their production could be quickly scaled up.”

  “Okay, so let’s say we start churning out these mines,” Leira said. “Can they use that—what did you call it, a quantum tractor?”

  “Yes. It is a device that uses quantum effects—essentially, the fundamental properties of space itself—to provide motive power. It requires essentially no fuel in any conventional sense, merely a source of power.”

  “That’s really something,” Leira replied. “Anyway, can the mines use it to deploy themselves from the Forge?”

  “Not in any practical sense, no. The maximum speeds attainable are on the order of a few hundred kilometers per second.”

  “Well, then. I’d be a very old lady by the time the first ones were even in position.”

  “Actually, Leira, you would likely be dead,” Tybalt said. “Based on your physiology, and environmental factors, I would estimate that your expected lifespan—”

  “Is not important right now, thank you,” she cut in. “Let’s just stay on the subject of these mines, okay?”

  “In other words, we need to deploy them from a ship of some sort.” Dash gave the heads-up a thoughtful frown. The mechs and the Silent Fleet were too valuable to tie up in minelaying duties. The Rockhound was busy fetching Dark Metal from the crashed Golden ship on Gulch. That left the Slipwing and the Snow Leopard. Dash was no expert on minefields, but instinct told him that with just the two ships shuttling mines out from the Forge, laying them, and returning, it could take a long time to get any meaningful minefields established around the Forge. And that was probably time they didn’t have. If they were going to do this, they needed to do it soon.

  “Can we fabricate some sort of minelaying ships?” Dash asked. “Something unmanned that’s specifically made for ferrying out and laying mines?”

  “There are plans available in the Creators’ archives for autonomous service vessels that could be adapted, yes,” Custodian said.

  “Alright, then let’s do that. We’ll meet in the War Room with everyone else an hour after Leira and I get back to the Forge to work out the details.”

  “There is one other matter I should bring to your attention, Dash,” Custodian said. “Although the Death Call signals generated by the Bright ships that exploded were omnidirectional, they were also asymmetrical.”

  “Let’s pretend I don’t get what you’re talking about,” Dash replied. “Mainly because I don’t.”

  “There was an additional signal generated that contained additional, encrypted information. It was focused in a single direction, but it was embedded in the omnidirectional signal, presumably in an attempt to obscure it.”

  “Oh. Good work seeing that. So where was this additional signal aimed?”

  “It appears to have been directed out of the ecliptic plane of the galactic arm.”

  “Huh.” Shortly after first finding the Archetype, Dash’s pursuit of a Clan Shirna ship had taken him out of the ecliptic plane to a secretive Golden facility lurking among a field of rocks and ice in nearby intergalactic space. Ironically, he’d had to contend with Golden mines there. Looking at Custodian’s data, painted onto the heads-up by Sentinel, he saw these signals were aimed in a different direction. Another, similar Golden installation then?

  “It is quite possible,” Custodian said. “However, I can resolve nothing of significance in that direction, at least within any range in which scans would return reliable data. Nor am I detecting any other significant Golden activity within sensor range.”

  “Okay, so let’s assume there’s a Golden base of some sort just outside the galactic arm, at that location, but it’s just outside the range of your ability to scan. Knowing what we do about their tech, how long would it take a Golden ship to travel from there, to here, at its best possible speed?”

  “I would estimate a minimum of three days,” Sentinel said. “If we assume the Golden do not operate their drives continuously at maximum output, however, a four or five day minimum is more likely.”

  “Yeah, but as little as three days. Shit.” Dash scowled at the heads-up. “Okay. We need more Dark Metal, and we need it fast. Custodian, scan for Dark Metal, power cores, Golden, Unseen—anything. I don’t care what it is, as long as we can use it against these bastards. They’ll be taking their best shot at us, whatever that is, and we don’t have enough force in depth to stop them from getting to the Forge. And that cannot be allowed to happen.”

  17

  Dash scanned the faces of everyone assembled in the War Room. They all stared back, waiting for him to speak.

  For a moment, it once more left Dash more than a little bemused. The Saviors of All Life—and he was their leader.

  That made whatever he was going to say stick in his throat. Previously, he’d mused about being hailed as a hero, and celebrated across the galactic arm. Now, it just left him feeling small and terrified.

  Kai abruptly stood, walked up to Dash, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Have faith in the Unseen, Messenger. After all, they have faith in you.”

  Dash gave him a wide-eyed look. “What? How did—?”

  “I recognize moments of wavering faith,” Kai said, smiling. “I frequently see them in the mirror, in fact.” He patted Dash’s shoulder. “They pass.”

  Dash gave the monk a grateful smile as he returned to his place, then he turned to the rest of those gathered—his own Inner Circle, plus Harolyn and Benzel.

  “I think Kai’s advice is good for all of us,” Dash said, and he got a chorus of agreement. “All right, then. We have some decisions to make. I laid them out for you when I called this meeting,
so you’ve had an hour or so to think things through.”

  “Seems to me like you’ve already got a solid plan,” Ragsdale said. “The Rockhound just returned with more than a thousand kilos of Dark Metal—” He paused and looked at Harolyn. “Thanks to your people, incidentally.”

  She nodded. “They’re good at what they do.”

  “Yes, they are,” Ragsdale replied. “Anyway, we’ll send them back for more. In the meantime, we’re going to make these new mines you described, and Custodian is scanning for anything else we can use that’s reasonably accessible—” He shrugged. “What other decisions do we have to make?”

  “We need to decide if we want to take the fight to the Golden this time around,” Dash said.

  Ragsdale crossed his arms. “I’m as aggressive as the next guy, but didn’t you say Custodian didn’t actually see anything where those Bright signals were sent? All we know is that they were directed somewhere outside the galactic plane?”

  “It doesn’t mean there’s nothing there,” Amy said.

  Conover nodded. “Dash even encountered a Golden facility outside the boundary of the galaxy. It seems that that’s where the Golden might be hiding out.”

  “Which means that the Bright might know a lot more about the Golden than we’ve realized,” Leira said. “Maybe there’s even information aboard that ship the Gentle Friends captured.”

  “That would explain why they were so determined to blow it up,” Amy said.

  “Custodian already gave me an update and there was nothing useful. It looks like they managed to wipe a bunch of data before Benzel’s people secured the ship,” Dash said.

  “No chance of retrieving any of it?” Ragsdale asked.

  Conover answered. “No. Dash asked me to take a look at their systems and archives, and I did. They encode their data in the spin-state of electrons. It’s easy to completely disrupt that and wipe it clean. Whatever they deleted, it’s gone for good.”

  “I suspect the Bright actually do know where the Golden have been lying low,” Dash said. “But for now, anyway, we won’t be getting anything out of them about that.”

  “So that means we’d be striking out in the wake of that Bright signal and basically seeing what we find,” Leira said.

  Viktor, who’d been silently taking in the debate, sat up. “Going after the Golden with the information we have would be—well, stupid, is the only word I can think of.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Dash.

  “Because we can only count on the two mechs and the Silent Fleet to be able to reliably make the journey. You’re probably going to have to send all of those anyway to ensure you even have a chance of taking on whatever you find. Even then, it might not be enough, because we simply don’t know what you might end up facing.”

  Dash nodded. “Go on.”

  “That leaves the Forge to defend itself. The Slipwing and the Snow Leopard aren’t going to be able to contribute much to that.” Viktor looked at Benzel. “No offense. The Snow Leopard is a fine ship, but—”

  Benzel grinned and held up a hand. “No offense taken. Oh, if you’d have said that to me a week ago, I would have probably punched you in the face for badmouthing my ship, sure. But that was before I knew about…well, all of this.” He gestured expansively around, almost catching Harolyn in the face with a swinging hand. “So you’re right. Just my poor Snow Leopard and your Slipwing aren’t much of a defense for this place against—well, whatever’s probably coming for us.”

  “And they probably will be coming for us, Dash, sooner rather than later,” Viktor went on. “They’ll want to knock us out before we’ve had time to get ready for them. I’d say Sentinel’s timeline of three to five days is probably accurate. There really won’t be a decent minefield in place by that time. So, you go racing off after who-knows-what with our best and most capable forces, leaving the Forge mostly undefended. And the Golden destroying, or worse, capturing the Forge is exactly what you want to avoid.”

  Dash looked at Viktor, then sighed and nodded. “I want to disagree with you. But I really can’t. Much as I want to take this damned fight to those Golden bastards for a change, we really can’t afford to do it until we know this place is decently secure.”

  “Well, maybe we can help with that,” Harolyn said. “I’ve got my whole crew scavenging that crashed ship on Gulch—which, incidentally, I’m supposed to tell you is creepy as hell.”

  “You should’ve seen it before we wiped out all the Golden nasties lurking inside it,” Amy said.

  “Anyway,” Harolyn went on. “Now that we’ve got our operation there up and running, I don’t need to send the whole crew. We’ve got some damned fine metallurgists and engineers that might be able to help with fabricating things here, like those mines.”

  “Custodian, could you use the help?” Dash asked. He expected a dismissive no, we’ve got this covered and, anyway, what could they possibly do that my Unseen tech can’t, so the AI’s answer surprised him.

  “Yes. There are a number of areas in which their expertise could be of value, such as evaluating scrap and other raw fabrication feedstock for its metallurgical properties.”

  “Oh. Well. Okay then.” Dash looked at Harolyn. “There you go. Have your folks report to Custodian as soon as you can.”

  She gave firm nod and thumbs-up.

  “And all this talk about metal and raw materials and such takes us back to what’s turning out to be our most stubborn problem,” Dash said.

  “Dark Metal,” Conover put in. “It’s our supply of Dark Metal.”

  Dash nodded. “Took the words out of my mouth. We’ve scavenged whatever we could find as debris from the fights we’ve already had in this system. And Harolyn’s people are getting us more from the Golden wreck on Gulch. But it’s still not enough. We need to find a source of more Dark Metal—preferably lots of Dark Metal—and we need to do it, like, yesterday. Thoughts?”

  In the lingering silence, no one spoke. It dragged on, but everyone’s expression remained thoughtfully blank. Dash wasn’t surprised. They couldn’t just conjure Dark Metal out of thin air. He was about to say as much and try to direct the discussion about how to proceed with only the Dark Metal they knew they had, but Sentinel broke the quiet with an uncharacteristic sound. She spoke rarely enough, and the sound was so out of place for the AI that everyone stopped to listen.

  “Ah,” she began.

  “Ah? You’re an ancient, artificial super-intelligence, and you just said ah?” Dash asked, incredulous.

  “I said that because I hesitate to introduce my idea, knowing your tendencies. The ah sound was within my twelve-point-five percent leeway for, as you call it, sass.”

  “Then by all means, sass away. You have my undivided attention,” Dash said.

  “Actually, given your tendency to do things with reckless abandon, I hesitate to alert you to this, but—”

  Custodian cut in. “There is Dark Metal in this system, and it is accessible, under certain conditions.”

  Silence descended again, then Leira groaned. “Let me guess. It’s somewhere that requires dangerous maneuvers at great risk, or something like that, isn’t it?”

  “From a practical point of view, yes. But that risk could be mitigated with the right tools,” Sentinel said.

  Tybalt chimed in, “Tools which we can build, given the many tons of metal we now have at hand.”

  “What kind of tools?” Conover asked.

  “And where exactly is this Dark Metal?” Dash asked. He’d been wracking his brain, trying to recall something he’d obviously forgotten—although how the hell could he have forgotten about Dark Metal, here in the Forge’s system, that they hadn’t already retrieved?

  “Please don’t say it’s in the gas giant. Please don’t,” Amy said.

  “It is not,” Custodian said.

  “Oh, thank—” Leira said, but Sentinel cut her off.

  “There have been a number of engagements in and around this system since the Fo
rge was built. Over time, fragments of Dark Metal debris from those engagements has been pulled inward by the star’s gravity. Now, there is free-floating Dark Metal in circular orbits very close to the star. However, these very close orbits result in such a high velocity that collection would be a serious issue—again, unless certain tools are in place,” Sentinel said.

  “What sort of tools?” Amy asked.

  “And why didn’t we detect these instances of Dark Metal before?” Conover asked. “We should have seen them when we tested the new Dark Metal scanner.”

  “Dark Metal scans look for shadows in the neutrino flux, where neutrinos are being blocked,” Sentinel replied. “However, neutrino emissions from the star obscured these on your scanner. It is a limitation of Dark Metal detection, in that close proximity to a sufficiently strong source of nuclear fusion, such as a star, will prevent such scans from being reliable.”

  Conover was nodding by the time Sentinel had finished speaking. “Okay. Makes sense.” He pressed his lips together. “So we need a way of not just detecting neutrino shadows, but also discerning variations in the local neutrino flux.”

  “Which is a great problem for you to work out,” Dash said. “But not right this minute. Right now, I want to know more about all this Dark Metal that’s apparently floating around, pretty much right outside our door. Sentinel—or Custodian—or even Tybalt for that matter, when were you going to get around to telling us about this?”

  “The specific orbital mechanics involved make retrieving this Dark Metal impractical, so telling you about it seemed unproductive,” Sentinel said.

  Dash took a breath and held it for a second. These AIs. Sometimes, he just wanted to—

  He let the breath out. “Okay. So why tell us about it now, then, if we can’t retrieve the stuff?”

  “That would bring me back to my ah sound,” Sentinel replied. “Given the vital urgency for obtaining Dark Metal, I can offer two possible solutions. First, you could use the Lens in a manner similar to what you employed when rescuing Leira, and partially collapse the star. This would not change the orbital dynamics, but the greater distance from the star’s surface would allow easier access to the Dark Metal in question.”