The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  Dash tried to smile as he said it, but his gut clenched hard at the thought he might have just done something far worse than anything the Golden had planned. They wanted to wipe out all life; he may have unzipped space and time.

  “The effect is decaying logarithmically and has almost returned to a normal relationship between space and time.”

  “Okay, let me amend what I said earlier,” Leira put in. “That was damned effective. But maybe we should think hard before using those things again.”

  Dash nodded. “It sounded like a good idea at the time, but yeah.”

  Still, Dash noted, the gravity bombs had turned the battle. The Harbinger remained out of action. The Bright ship that had been decelerating like mad to stay away from the epicenters and the debris cloud around them had kept decelerating and now spun about and fled.

  “Benzel,” Dash said. “What’s your status? I can see all your ships are still in the fight.”

  “We’re holding our own,” Benzel replied. “If we can get some help, though, we can probably end this a lot faster.”

  Dash opened his mouth to say, on our way, but hesitated. The second Bright ship, the one that had lost control and collided with the Harbinger, drove on, its drive still powered. It snapped out sporadic pulse-cannon shots, so it wasn’t entirely out of the fight.

  “Leira, you go help Benzel. I’ll mop up here.”

  Without hesitation, the Swift spun and darted away. “Benzel, I’m about ten minutes out,” Leira said. “Keep some targets alive and kicking for me, okay?”

  Benzel laughed. “Oh, there’ll still be lots to shoot at when you get here, believe me.”

  Dash took a moment and a few breaths. Leira’s lack of hesitation showed she was now fully confident with the Swift and, for all her bitching about it, she and Tybalt were working like a well-oiled machine. She didn’t really need him playing big brother when they were in combat.

  A pulse-cannon shot slammed into the Archetype’s shields. Dash swore and turned his attention back to his battle, which hadn’t quite ended. He launched himself toward the Harbinger, whose emissions were starting to climb back the scale as it self repaired and powered back up. First, he wanted to take it out and make sure it stayed out.

  He looked at the Bright ship, which was battered and still mostly disabled, but also largely intact.

  He gave it a thin smile.

  Yeah, I’ve got other plans for you.

  12

  Wei-Ping grinned through her helmet’s faceplate. “Okay, now comes the fun part.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Dash said, glancing around. Twenty of the Gentle Friends were gathered on the hull of the disabled Bright ship, arranged in squads of five. The Archetype, the Swift, and two of the Silent Fleet ships hung against the star field, having backed a few klicks off; somewhere beyond them, out of sight, was Benzel’s flagship, the Herald, and the other Silent Fleet ship. They were acting as cover in case any other threats popped up elsewhere in the system.

  “You sure you don’t want me down there?” Benzel said. “Wei-Ping’s good at this boarding action stuff, but seriously, I’m better.”

  “Like hell you are,” Wei-Ping snapped back. “This is a job for younger people.”

  “Are you calling me old?”

  “Hey, if the tired, worn-out old vac-boot fits.”

  “Okay, guys,” Dash said “You can pick up this pissing contest right where you left it when we’re done.”

  Wei-Ping moved, clunking her helmet against Dash’s. “He hates it when I call him old,” she said, her voice buzzing through the helmets. “Don’t you dare ever tell him I said this, but truth is, he’s still our best boarding leader. You sure you don’t want him leading this?”

  “Are we going to just sit out here on the side of this ship, or are you going to let us inside?”

  Wei-Ping pulled back, grinned again, then said, “Okay, breaching charges in ten…nine…eight…”

  Dash looked around the hull as she counted down. He could see the whole length of the ship, almost two hundred meters, but the horizon formed by the curve of its hull only gave twenty meters or so of line-of-sight across it. That made him nervous; he didn’t know how much the Bright were into this close quarters sort of fighting, but if they were aggressive enough to come outside, they might catch the boarding party clumped together. Dash gripped his pulse-gun and tried to keep turning, watching one direction, then the other.

  “…two…one…fire!”

  A series of flashes rippled along the length of the hull, as breaching charges blew a half-dozen openings; at the same time, Dash felt the blasts through his magnetized boots. They were only using the two closest breaches, though. The others were just meant to confuse the Bright, keeping them guessing as to where they were being boarded. That depended on them not being able to scan the outside of their ship, of course, and Sentinel couldn’t confirm whether they could or not.

  But the Gentle Friends were prepared for this, too. Just in case the Bright weren’t fooled and knew where the real breaches were, Wei-Ping’s people flung charges into the blasted gaps. More flashes, more thumps under Dash’s feet, then clouds of vapor shot out of the holes. Micro-drones immediately followed, letting them see what awaited them.

  Nothing, inside either opening.

  Wei-Ping launched herself into the gap, her squad following. A second squad vanished into the nearby breach. Dash waited for both squads to enter, then made to follow. As he did, he saw Leira about to enter the other breach. She waved, and he waved back. It actually grated on both of them to bring up the rear, but Wei-Ping had been insistent—the Gentle Friends were used to this sort of thing and had a whole bunch of tactics and procedures they used, which all relied on not having strangers bumbling about in their midst.

  Dash pushed himself through the breach.

  An instant of disorientation hit him as he crossed into the ship’s internal gravity; there was suddenly an up, and he wasn’t aligned properly with it, making him stumble against a bulkhead. He recovered, raised his pulse-gun, and followed the last of the Gentle Friends along a short corridor and into a compartment.

  The Gentle Friends stalked ahead of him, a motley collection of weapons at the ready. Most wielded slug-guns, but a few, like Wei-Ping, carried the bizarre snap-guns, weapons that fired two relatively harmless beams that could be made to intersect; at the point where they crossed, they were ferociously deadly. All of the Gentle Friends also sported an array of melee weapons, such as boarding cutlasses, axes, and even wicked, short-hafted spears. It was all intended to suit fighting in the tight confines of a ship, while minimizing damage to ships’ systems, components, and structural members. That was important if you wanted to take the ship as a prize—but also valuable for not blasting holes into things that might blast right back at you, like plasma conduits or fusion bottles.

  Not blowing themselves up would be good, Dash thought. Keeping the ship from blowing up was even better.

  Gunfire rattled from ahead. Dash crouched against the wall, pulse-gun at the ready. He had a bad moment when he caught movement behind him, but it was just the second boarding party. They passed by, supporting Wei-Ping’s detachment.

  Leira appeared and crouched next to Dash. “The way back is blocked off,” she said. “Blast doors are down, and the radiation on the other side of them is, as the Gentle Friends put it, crazy high. Reactor leak, I’m thinking.”

  “Well, that makes our job easier, if we only have to work our way forward.” But Dash stopped, eyes narrowed.

  Leira frowned through her faceplate. “What?”

  “I’m trying to figure out how the reactor breached. It hadn’t when I closed on this ship with the Archetype, and I only disabled the weapons.” Still crouching, he moved forward and slapped the rear-most of the Gentle Friends on the shoulder. The woman turned and Dash put his helmet against hers.

  “Tell Wei-Ping I’m taking the rest of your squad back, but don’t use the comm.”

>   The woman scowled. “It’s all closed off back there.”

  “Maybe. Regardless, indulge me.”

  The woman dashed forward, spoke helmet-to-helmet with her squad leader, then carried on, looking for Wei-Ping. The rest of her squad fell in behind Dash. Leira joined them as they passed, heading back the way the second boarding party had come.

  They traversed about ten meters of gloomy corridor, sporadically lit by flickering lights. Around a corner, sure enough, five meters ahead a massive blast door blocked their way.

  Dash put his helmet against the squad leader’s, a young woman Dash thought was named Mira. Or maybe Miriam. “Okay, set your people up at this corner, then back into that compartment there and wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For that blast door to open.”

  “Uh, that happens and everything from here forward will be flooded with hard rads.”

  “Again, indulge me.”

  Mira—yes, Dash was pretty sure it was Mira—shrugged. “I’ve got no other plans.” She moved among her remaining squad members, going helmet-to-helmet and getting them deployed.

  There was a clunk against his helmet, then Leira’s voice buzzed in Dash’s ears. “Dash, what do you think is going to happen here?”

  “I have a feeling.”

  “Have you got a feeling about these assholes blowing their reactor, like that last Bright ship we faced did?”

  “Sentinel says all of this ship’s reactors are offline.” He glanced at the flickering lights. “That looks like emergency power to me.”

  Leira shifted. “And how sure is Sentinel about that?”

  “Sure enough for me.”

  “Dash, what if—”

  Dash tapped her, cutting her off, then pointed at the door.

  “See? A feeling,” Dash said. “That.”

  The blast door had started opening, sliding up, revealing—

  Bright. A half-dozen of them, all armed with what looked like pulse-guns. The pale, inhuman creatures had faked the radiation warnings and lowered the blast doors, just so they could slip out once the boarding party was fully engaged forward and take them in the rear.

  Instead, the leading Bright barely had time to duck under the rising door before being hit by pulse-gun shots from both Dash and Leira. He—or she, there really seemed to be no way to tell—toppled backward. A flurry of slug- and snap-gun shots slammed into the others. They managed a few hasty shots back, and then it was done. The Gentle Friends ran forward, cutlasses and axes at the ready. But all of the Bright were down and unmoving, leaving them with nothing else to kill.

  “Good call,” Mira said, grinning at Dash. “You ever been a privateer?”

  “I’ve been lots of things, but never that, no.”

  “Well, consider yourself at least an honorary one, now.”

  Dash gave her a thumbs up, then said, “Okay, you guys stay here, make sure we don’t get any more surprises coming at us from behind. Leira and I are going forward.”

  “Roger that!”

  Dash gave the Gentle Friends a last, appreciative look. Then, with Leira right behind him, he started forward again.

  Dash crouched beside Wei-Ping, watching the Gentle Friends fastening breaching charges to the blast door ahead of them. This one blocked their way onto what seemed to be the Bright ship’s bridge, and probably wouldn’t open quite as easily or conveniently as the one to the rear when the crew tried to launch their failed ambush.

  “No casualties so far,” Wei-Ping said. “But that might change if we have to fight our way onto that bridge. That door is pretty narrow.” She glanced at Dash. “You sure we can’t just heave a bunch of charges in there once we breach it and call it a day?”

  “Can you make sure you keep at least one of these bastards alive? Kai was really insistent that we bring back a living prisoner, if we can,” Dash said.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  Wei-Ping nodded. “So we’re doing this the hard way. Got it.”

  The Gentle Friends pulled back from the door. One of them gave Wei-Ping a thumbs-up; she returned it. The man raised a hand, showing five gloved fingers, then crooked one, a second—

  When he pulled down his thumb, the charges blew.

  The blast door was strong, designed to ward off this very sort of attack, but it was still the original, of human design. The Gentle Friends had long ago developed tandem, shaped charges that blew in rapid succession, each gouging deeper into the tough alloy. In a second, a rectangular section of the door was gone, toppled inward with a heavy clang, leaving only a few ragged centimeters protruding from the frame.

  Something came flying out of the breach—a charge, thrown at them. Exactly the thing Dash hadn’t wanted to do to the Bright

  But the Gentle Friends were ready for this, too. One of them immediately flung a heavy blast mat over the charge; when it detonated, the shock made the blast mat go rigid, absorbing much of its energy. It shot up, slammed into the ceiling, then fell back in a billow of swirling smoke. Enough of the blast leaked out that Dash felt it in his chest. The lead Gentle Friends were already moving, lunging through the opening, firing slug pistols and wielding cutlasses. Wei-Ping followed, Dash right behind, Leira right behind him.

  They leapt through the breach. Inside, Dash saw a confusing swirl of melee already underway. He looked for a target and saw something come racing around a console. It was a robot, compact and sturdy; it stopped and erupted with a barrage of shotgun blasts that knocked one of the Gentle Friends back in a spray of blood. Dash fired the pulse gun from the hip, shots hitting the deck and then smacking into the robot, blasting its hull open. It shuddered to a stop, flaring with sparks.

  A second robot appeared, its automatic shotgun banging away. Leira pulse-gunned it to wreckage, but not before it clipped Wei-Ping. Dash heard her curse, but she didn’t break the rhythm of her strikes, cutting down a Bright. A second Bright lunged at her, hitting with a baton that momentarily surrounded her in a crackling aura of searing blue discharge, and she fell.

  Now it was Dash’s turn to curse. He raised the pulse-gun, aiming at the baton-wielding Bright, who charged another of the Gentle Friends. His shot hit almost simultaneously with Leira’s, blasting the pale face apart. Slug-pistols banged, blades swung, consoles erupted in showers of sparks. For the next thirty seconds, chaos reigned as Dash fought savagely with gun and fist and even a thrown viewscreen, accompanied by a stream of curses as he rode a Bright to the floor, beating it into submission. When he rose, he had no idea who was alive or dead, so he fired again, and again, until there were no enemies left moving in the tumultuous space.

  And then, in the way of close-quarters fights, it was over. In the sudden silence, the Gentle Friends moved quickly around the bridge, checking their fallen enemies. Dash saw that one of the Bright was still alive, to his shock, and struggling to stand. Two Gentle Friends tackled it, driving it back to the floor and struggling to snap restraints on the slender, flailing limbs.

  Dash headed for Wei-Ping. He braced himself for the worst—

  —but saw she was sitting up. He looked into her faceplate, and she stared back at him, blinking slowly.

  “Wei-Ping? You okay?”

  She frowned, seemed to think about it, then nodded. “I will be in the morning,” she said, her words slurring together. “Meantime, help me to bed, will you?”

  Dash looked into her eyes. “Wei-Ping? Who am I?”

  She gave a slow smile. “The man of my dreams.”

  “Uh—”

  Leira appeared beside him. “How is she?”

  “Stunned,” Dash said. “Oh, and very discerning.”

  “What?”

  He waggled his eyebrows, then smiled. “Never mind. Is the ship secure?”

  “Seems to be.”

  They helped Wei-Ping to her feet. Her arm bled through a rip in her suit, torn by the robot’s shotgun, but it was a superficial wound, already mostly stopped by her vac suit’s seal
ing foam. The same couldn’t be said of the other Gentle Friend, the one shot by the other robot, unfortunately.

  “One casualty,” Leira said as they passed the fallen man. “That’s not too bad.”

  Dash, though, shook his head, his momentary amusement at Wei-Ping’s complementary confusion gone. “Bad enough.”

  “Yeah,” Leira answered.

  The Gentle Friends dragged their prisoner toward the breached door. The creature gave him a venomous look as it stumbled by. Dash just stared back.

  “Up yours too, if you even have—never mind,” he said. The Bright wouldn’t hear it, of course, not being on the comm net.

  Dash hoped it could read lips.

  “Dash,” Sentinel said, as Dash settled back into the Archetype’s cradle. “The Bright ship contains several hundred tons of potentially usable materials, including significant amounts of Dark Metal. Three of its four reactors also appear to be intact, albeit non-functional. It could be brought back to the Forge, given time and effort.”

  “Huh. Yeah, good point. Trouble is, I don’t think that ship is going far under its own power. I mean, we don’t even know if its translation drive works. So we’d have to tow it, and we aren’t really rigged for towing, especially through unSpace.” Dash sighed as he looked at the battered Bright ship on the heads-up. It was too bad, too, because Sentinel was right. There was a lot of raw materials there, all in one package. But towing through unSpace was tricky. Salvagers put a lot of time, thought, and effort into it.

  Tybalt spoke up. “Sentinel and I have conferred. We believe that the translation drive on the Herald can be adapted to accommodate the increased mass of the Bright ship as long as the two could be kept within a specified distance of one another.”

  “And how would we do that? Benzel’s people checked out the Bright reactors and drives and said it would take days to make them operational again. The thing’s got, what, thrusters? I don’t think that’s going to cut it,” Dash said.