by J. N. Chaney
Kai moved up beside Dash.
Dash looked at him. The monk’s expression was unreadable.
“You okay, Kai?”
“Such a perversion of what it means to be alive,” Kai said. “The Enemy of All Life is a more accurate term than we knew. This is worse than simply exterminating life. This is corrupting it into something vile, something evil. Something that was never meant to be.”
The Verity reappeared, stepping down the docking bay’s deck. Five more followed. They all walked to within a couple of meters of Dash—pulse-guns trained on them the whole way—and stopped.
“Okay, let’s try this again. Welcome to the Forge,” Dash said.
One of the Verity replied. It might have been the one speaking before, but Dash couldn’t be sure. They all looked alike to a disturbing degree.
“Your Forge isn’t relevant. None of this is relevant. None of what you do is relevant. Since you have rejected elevation, the inevitable outcome for all of you can only be destruction at the hands of the Apotheists.”
“No glad to be here or anything like that, huh?” Dash replied. “Your manners leave a lot to be desired.”
“Who are the Apotheists?” Leira asked.
It was Kai who replied. “Those who have reached apotheosis, have become enlightened, and passed on to a higher plane of existence.” He stepped forward, staring hard at the Verity. “That is your name for the Enemy of All Life. For the Golden.”
“You do not understand, monk,” a Verity replied, shaking its head. “Your forebearers gave up the chance for apotheosis, so you cannot understand, of course. I pity you, having to view reality through such a narrow, clouded lens.”
“Okay, before we get into a religious debate, we have some more practical things to discuss,” Dash said. “Like everything you know about the Golden, your links to them, their bases, locations, strengths—oh, and the locations of any of your own installations or forces that still exist, those of the Bright.” He finally shrugged. “Basically, we want to know everything about your side of this war.”
Another of the Verity looked down an aquiline nose at Dash. “You cannot actually believe we’ll reveal any such information to you.”
“Not after the first try, no,” Dash replied. “Ragsdale?”
The security chief turned and nodded. Two more Aquarians entered, heaving a body bag between them. They tossed it onto the deck in front of the Verity with a heavy thud, then backed off.
“That was your spy, Temo,” Dash said. “Or what’s left of him, anyway. See, you guys aren’t very good at this whole war of extermination, or elevation, or whatever it is you want to call it. Your spies suck, your battle tactics suck, all of it—incompetent. Now, you might be able to salvage something in the end if you cooperate with us.” Dash gave the body bag a significant look, then grinned. “If not, well, I doubt the Golden are going to be too impressed with your performance, so you might end up being struck off their apothe-whatever list and put on their exterminate list. We’re giving you a way out.”
“After all, you obviously didn’t want to die, or you wouldn’t have climbed into your fancy escape pod there and tried to run,” Leira said.
“And you must be important members of the Verity,” Kai added. “Its leadership, probably, since Custodian tells me that this ship of yours uses a lot of Dark Metal and is probably one of a kind. Some of you might even be the founders of your people, though I hesitate to use the term. Who best to survive, then? Unlike your masters, we aren’t interested in exterminating anyone.”
The Verity once more stood still as statues. Finally, one spoke.
“This is all utterly irrelevant. You cannot hope to stand against the Apotheists.”
“We look forward to witnessing your destruction firsthand,” another said.
Dash sighed. “Fine.” He slung his pulse-gun then drew a slug-pistol. Stepping forward, he put it against the temple of one of the Verity.
For the first time, a flicker of emotion crossed the inhuman face, just a glimmer of fear. “You said you would not harm us. Are you such wretched, treacherous creatures that you would—”
“I don’t think you’re quite far enough up the moral high ground to be lecturing us about our ethics,” Dash snapped. “Now, we want information. Locations of bases, strength of forces, strategic plans, all of it.”
The Verity’s face tightened slightly.
Dash pulled the trigger.
Click.
Dash lowered the slug-pistol. The Verity turned to look at him, eyes wide.
“Custodian, did you get anything?” Dash asked.
“I did. The information is incomplete and somewhat jumbled, but it should be possible to extract a great deal of valuable intelligence from it.”
“What did you do?” the Verity asked.
Dash holstered the empty slug-pistol. “It was Custodian’s idea. He said if we could get you thinking about useful topics, the things we need to know, and combine it with some sort of powerful emotional response—”
“And I think almost being shot in the head would count for that,” Leira said, smiling.
“—he could lift it right from your brains,” Dash went on. “See, that’s another big flaw in you guys. You’re mostly tech, so you’re vulnerable to the things tech is, like hacking.” He shrugged. “This was way easier than trying to break the encryption you guys use. Believe me, we’ve tried, with your buddy Kinzin.”
A ripple of genuine emotion shivered through the Verity. Dash saw anger, frustration. And fear.
Good.
“So, through low animal cunning, you believe you have what you want,” one of them hissed at Dash.
“I’d point out, again, that it was Custodian’s idea. And he’s an AI. So you should actually be impressed, right? Isn’t becoming an AI basically what you assholes are all about?”
“And what now? Do you now raise a loaded weapon and kill us?”
Dash shook his head. “Nope. I said we wouldn’t kill you, and I meant it.” He turned and gestured, and everyone, with the exception of a trio of Aquarians still brandishing pulse-guns, turned and left. The only one who looked back was Kai, and it was with nothing but naked contempt.
“Not you in particular, anyway,” Dash said. “I mean, I’m going to obliterate your race, every last trace of it. And then I’m going to piss on the ashes. But I’m definitely not going to kill you.”
He gestured at a sealed door off to one side of the docking bay. “Now, whatever they choose to do is up to them.”
The door slid open. The refugees, who had so desperately fled the menace of the Verity, filed in. They had all manner of bladed and bludgeoning weapons in their hands, and nothing but seething hatred in their eyes.
Dash looked the nearest Verity squarely in the eyes. “Prepare to be elevated.”
He turned and walked away, the Aquarians following.
To their credit, the Verity didn’t scream. Not even once.
Epilogue
Dash poured plumato wine for Ragsdale, then took a seat across from him, off to one side of the War Room.
“So what tipped you off that Temo was a spy?” Dash asked.
Ragsdale picked up the glass, wincing as he did. “You’re the commander of a transfer station. A satellite link on a distant moon goes down. What do you do?”
“I send someone to—” Dash began, then nodded. “I send someone. I don’t go myself.”
Ragsdale sipped his wine. He winced again, but this time from the drink. “Freya’s really cranking up the alcohol content of this stuff, isn’t she?” He smiled. “Anyway, let’s say you do decide to go yourself. So there you are, on the far side of a distant moon. You learn the transfer station you command, and where your family is, is under attack. What do you do?”
“I fly like hell to get back.”
“But Temo ran away.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I’d call conclusive evidence,” Dash said.
“No, but in my business, smoking guns are rare.
Mostly, you’ve got this little thing that doesn’t add up, that little thing that doesn’t quite fit. It was enough to make me suspicious, so I decided to keep an eye on him.”
“Good thing you did. If he’d been able to warn the Verity we’d launched our offensive, they would have been ready for us—and we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation now.” Dash lifted his glass of wine in a salute. “You, my friend, probably saved the whole war effort. So don’t ever stop being suspicious.”
“Oh, I never will, trust me. I suspect everyone, all the time.”
“Huh. Hell of a way to view the world.”
“It’s worked for me so far,” Ragsdale said.
Dash smirked. “Does everyone include me?”
Ragsdale smiled and lifted his glass back. “To the Messenger, who is leading the war effort so well. Who hasn’t always been the Messenger, and definitely has a colorful past.”
“You’ve checked up on me?”
“Let’s just say that if you’d flown into Port Hannah in your courier days, I strongly suspect I’d have had you locked up within a few hours.”
Dash sipped wine. It did have one hell of a kick.
“A few hours? That would probably be a record.”
“For how quick we nabbed you?”
“No, for how long it took.”
They both laughed. The others started to arrive in the War Room then, but Dash just sat with Ragsdale until he’d finished his wine.
“—and the Archetype and the Swift are now running at forty-six and thirty-three percent respectively,” Custodian said. “As we upgrade them, and retrieve more power cores, those numbers will only increase.”
“Okay then,” Dash said to the assembly. “There you have it. The Forge is cranking out weapons, including planetary defense systems we can install on systems we’ve taken, so we don’t have to garrison them. Custodian, Sentinel, and Tybalt are working on how the Verity managed to make that spiffy Dark Metal armor of theirs. The Mako is being improved, and we’re going to be producing more of those. Right, Conover?”
Conover smiled and nodded. “Now that I can see who’s speaking again, sure.”
Laughter hummed through the gathering. When it subsided, Dash said, “Okay, Custodian, you had something else you wanted to show us.”
In answer, the holo image of the star map appeared, depicting the galactic arm. Three broken, blue lines were drawn across it.
“Those lines are vectors along which the Golden and their allies seem to be concentrating their efforts. This is based on information taken from the Verity before they were—eradicated.”
Dash studied the lines. They were, at best, broad trends, rather than seeming to follow any particular track or course of…well, anything.
“What the hell are they up to with this?” Dash asked.
“Unknown,” Custodian replied. “I am continuing to work on the problem, but the number of variables that must be analyzed is enormous, and exponentially increases as they are combined.”
“Okay, well, yeah, you keep working on it. Meantime, I want to keep taking the fight to them, the Golden, the Bright, and all their allies.” He glanced at Ragsdale. “And since someone has made it so clear how right we are to be suspicious of everyone, those allies could be almost anybody. The Verity might be all but gone, but I suspect there are going to be others.”
“So where do you want to start?” Leira asked.
Dash frowned at the map, then shrugged. “Hard to say. The big problem is distance. We’re so far from any of this,” he said, waving a hand at the blue lines.
“We do not have to be,” Custodian said.
Dash’s frown deepened then vanished. He saw understanding dawn on Leira’s face, then Viktor’s.
“You’ve been holding out on us, Custodian, haven’t you?” Dash said. “The Forge can move, can’t it?”
“I must admit, I have learned an appreciation for the dramatic reveal.”
Dash grinned, then looked back at the map. He studied for a moment, then picked a system at the edge of what used to be Verity controlled space. “Custodian, can you get us there in a month? Ship’s time?”
“I can.”
“Do it. And drop a pin on that map,” Dash said.
“What designation?” Custodian asked.
Dash thought for a minute, then glanced at Leira. Her expression, like that of the rest of them, looked nervous, but also excited. They wouldn’t wait for the Golden. They would attack. Point Vengeance. “Get us underway right now, if you can,” he said.
“Consider it done,” Custodian replied.
Under their feet, the Forge began to rumble.
Continue reading for book 6, WORLDS APART.
1
Dash threw the Archetype through a wrenching turn, a combo of hard acceleration by the mech and a shot from the distortion cannon. He’d gotten damned good at using the weapon to help the mech maneuver, the sudden, sharp pulses of gravitation giving it an extra pull and accentuating his maneuvers. It threw off the Harbinger’s firing solution enough that the massive blast of energy from its chest cannon missed him by at least a klick—close enough that it registered as a surge of heat and radiation against the Archetype’s feet and legs.
The enemy mech spun, trying to track Dash as he maneuvered, but he knew the chest cannon had a long recharge cycle, at least five seconds. He began to count in his head—one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand—
He somersaulted the Archetype and drove hard again in a random, lateral direction. Again, the Harbinger missed. If the enemy mech had had teeth, it would probably be gnashing them in raw frustration by now. Dash grinned and checked the range; each one of his unpredictable, random dodges was calculated to not just jink hard side-to-side, but to close slightly with each zig and zag. To improve its own aim, the Harbinger had slowed, letting Dash gain. He entered that sweet spot for the dark-lance, the range band where it fired with maximum effect—not far enough to attenuate its impact, and not so close that the beam hadn’t stabilized fully and wasted power as radiant heat.
He fired and was grimly satisfied to land a solid hit on the Harbinger. It staggered and spun around as the mech was shaken down to its quantum bones.
Dash streaked in for the kill while he had the chance. As he did, he checked on the second Harbinger—the one he’d already damaged. It raced on, well ahead, trailing a vaporous wake of gases and shimmering globules of fluids. It seemed to be aimed at a big, icy planet orbiting the nearby star, one marked as uninhabited on the stellar charts.
Fine. It wasn’t posing a threat, so Dash ignored it for the moment, concentrating on the Harbinger he’d just hit. Sentinel had tweaked the dark-lance to make it more effective against the enemy mech’s Dark Metal-infused armor, but Dash still aimed carefully, selecting the legs as his target. The Archetype’s fire-control system, now also upgraded, instantly turned his intent into a firing solution.
He fired the dark-lance, expecting another disabling hit, bringing the Harbinger incrementally closer to defeat.
Instead, it simply exploded.
Dash blinked. “Whoa. What the hell happened?”
“Uncertain,” Sentinel said. “The first hit must have done more damage than it appeared.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” Dash veered the Archetype, avoiding the expanding cloud of debris that had been the Harbinger. “I mean, compared to the first time we fought one of these things, this has been—and I probably shouldn’t even say this so I don’t jinx it—this has been easy.”
“Jinx it?”
Dash smiled. “Yeah. If you say something out loud about a situation that’s good, you might cause it to turn bad.”
“How is that possible? Is there some sort of telepathic influence involved, that can alter reality?”
Dash laughed. “Right on cue!”
“What do you mean?”
“I knew you were going to say something like that—wonder what the hell I was talking about and if I meant s
omething literal.”
“Ah, this was an idiom.”
“More like a bit of superstition. It’s along the lines of, if you manage to pay your bills and have some credits left over, don’t mention it in front of the fusion drive, because it’ll break down.”
“That does not follow known human logic.”
“Not one bit,” Dash agreed, but his laughter faded as he took in the second Harbinger’s trajectory. “Speaking of things that don’t follow, what the hell is he up to? He looks like he intends to just fall right into that planet’s atmosphere. Could there be a Golden outpost or something on the surface?”
“Very unlikely. There are no Dark Metal signatures—”
Sentinel cut off abruptly, a sign she’d noticed something else and was evaluating it. Dash just waited.
“There are, however, weak power emanations from the planet. They cycle at a constant frequency, suggesting they may not be natural.”
“Huh. Well, I don’t want to let that bastard get away anyway, so let’s kill two birds here, shall we?”
“Kill two—?”
“I’ll explain later,” Dash said, chuckling and shaking his head.
Dash decelerated the Archetype but kept it on the track that would bring it into the planet’s atmosphere. The loss of velocity meant the mech would steepen its angle of entry, which would have been a problem in the Slipwing or any other conventional ship. For the Archetype, though, it was barely an inconvenience.
“I’m seeing intermittent signals at best,” Dash said, frowning at the heads-up. “He’s down there, but whatever crap is in the atmosphere is getting in the way, isn’t it?”
“Yes. The planet is too cold to maintain water in liquid form, especially near the top of its atmosphere, so there is considerable wind-borne particulate ice attenuating the sensor returns.”
“I wonder if he learned that from us,” Dash said, thinking back, again, to his first battle against one of the enemy mechs called Harbingers. He’d used a brown dwarf in much the same way, exploiting its natural emissions of energy and radiation to conceal the Archetype while he recovered from a battle he was, at the time, losing.