The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  Ragsdale leaned against a console. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I want to steal an idea from the Verity. I want to start knocking enemy ships out of unSpace in a way that would let us capture them intact. Conover, you did a bang-up job with the stealth mines and the Dark Metal detector, and you were a huge help with the scrambler mines. So I’d like you to take the lead in figuring out how we can adapt the scrambler mines into something like a buoy. Something reusable, over and over. Besides just pulling a ship out of translation, though, I also want to disable it, shut its critical systems down, especially drive and weapons.”

  Conover frowned. “Maybe a really strong EMP—”

  But Dash shook his head. “No. Or at least not unless you can figure out how to generate an EMP that will temporarily shut those systems down and not just fry them. The point of this is to take enemy ships intact, in working order, so we can study them. Take them apart. Reverse engineer them and see what we can steal, and even improve. That’s especially true for their AI.”

  “Okay, so you want permanent buoys—probably stealthy ones—that can knock selected enemy ships only out of unSpace with a temporary system interruption. Then, we can capture them without any permanent damage,” Conover said, ticking the points off on his fingers as he talked.

  “That’s right,” Dash replied.

  “Anything else while we’re at it, Dash?” Amy asked. “Maybe have them make coffee, too?”

  Laughter buzzed through the room—except for Conover, who just stared into space. Dash could already see his mind chewing on the admittedly difficult problem. “Anyway, Conover, I’ll leave you with that. Get anyone here who’s available to help you—besides Custodian, Sentinel, and Tybalt, of course.”

  Conover looked at him, stared for a second, then nodded. It reminded Dash of the somewhat disconnected kid who’d come aboard the Slipwing as a prepaid “tourist” so long ago. Like Dash himself, he’d come a long way.

  Dash turned to the rest. “Okay, as for everyone else, I want to talk about the Forge. While it was stationary, just orbiting that gas giant where we originally found it, it was easy to think of it as home base, and a factory to produce weapons. But now that it’s mobile and we’re starting to move it around, I think we need to talk about the role it’s going to play.”

  “Been wondering the same thing myself,” Leira said. “Like, are we going to attack with it? Take it into battle?”

  “It would definitely kick some ass,” Benzel said. “It’s pretty much a whole fleet all on its own.”

  Viktor frowned and crossed his arms. “That’s taking a terrible chance, though, with what’s basically the whole center of our war effort. We lose the Forge—”

  “Yeah, that happens, we’re screwed beyond recovery,” Dash said. “So the answer to that, Leira, is no—at least, not soon. Someday, when it’s truly decisive, then we might, sure. But for now the Forge has other purposes. And I see three main ones. First is gathering resources. That includes capturing things, like we just discussed, but also all the scavenging and salvaging we do, and things like mining that we might take up as our war effort grows.” He looked specifically at Harolyn and Al’Bijea when he said that, and both nodded.

  “Second is saving refugees.” He immediately turned to Ragsdale, who was already opening his mouth to speak, and held up a hand. “I know, there’s a cargo hold full of security issues that comes with that. However, we’re supposed to be about preserving life, unlike the Enemies of all Life, right, Kai?”

  The monk gave a grave, but firm nod.

  “Saving refugees, people displaced from the war, is part of that. The Forge can accommodate thousands, and we’ve got, what, not even a few hundred aboard right now? We also have to remember that refugees are potential allies and can help bolster our war effort. But, all that said, the security issues are a genuine worry. Ragsdale, I’m going to let you develop all the protocols and procedures you think we need to protect the Forge from spying and sabotage.”

  Ragsdale nodded. “We don’t need any more incidents like Temo.”

  Dash nodded back. Temo had been a supposed refugee who was actually a spy for the Verity. If he hadn’t provoked Ragsdale’s natural suspicions, prompting the Security Chief to keep an eye on him, he might have done serious, maybe even catastrophic damage to their war effort.

  “The third main focus of the Forge is advancing our tech,” Dash said. “I don’t mean just getting the Forge and the mechs fully powered up, although that’s part of it, sure. I mean improving our tech, refining the tech of the Unseen, back-engineering and incorporating Golden tech, whatever it takes. The more new technology we can bring to the battlefield, the better.”

  Discussion ensued, but no one particularly objected to the points Dash had raised. He let the conversation hum on for a while, then raised a hand and turned to Leira. “While all of this is going on, Leira, Benzel, Wei-Ping, and I are going back to that planet where the Harbinger crashed. I’m hoping there’s something useful we can salvage from it, other than Dark Metal. I also want to check out that satellite. Custodian can’t find any records of anyone ever settling in that system, so whose satellite that was, and what it was doing there, is a loose end. I don’t like loose ends.”

  After a little more discussion, they began to disperse, heading off to carry out whatever tasks they’d been assigned or simply needed to do. Dash gestured for Leira, Benzel, and Wei-Ping to join him, but Ragsdale stepped forward as well.

  “Before you get buried in preparing for your excursion back to that planet, we have a problem.”

  “A problem? Only one?” Dash said, waving for Ragsdale to continue.

  “This one we need to attend to right away,” Ragsdale said. “We have a—a disciplinary matter, for lack of a better word.”

  “Sturdivan,” Benzel said, scowling and crossing his arms.

  Ragsdale nodded. “Sturdivan indeed.”

  Dash looked from Ragsdale to Benzel. He’d heard the name Sturdivan and recalled he was one of the Gentle Friends. “What about him?”

  “Remember the incident from a week or so back? Our air-lock fatality?”

  “I do.” It had been a rare instance of Unseen tech failing, an airlock suddenly opening and venting, killing a refugee who’d come aboard among those fleeing from the Verity. Sturdivan had, Dash recalled, been involved in dealing with the aftermath. Custodian couldn’t find any reason for the failure and couldn’t replicate it. They’d chalked it up to an unfortunate tragedy and had Custodian run thorough tests on all of the Forge’s airlocks.

  “Well, it seems Sturdivan was responsible for it.”

  Dash blinked at that. “He was? How? I mean, I thought he helped out when the airlock failed.”

  “He made it fail,” Ragsdale said. “We caught him hotwiring an airlock last night, trying to bypass the Forge systems so he could work it manually without triggering any security alerts.”

  “He’s a ship’s systems engineer aboard the Snow Leopard,” Wei-Ping said. “So he’d certainly have the know-how to do something like this.”

  “Okay, but how did he manage to rewire an Unseen airlock?” Dash asked. “How could he manage to rewire an Unseen, well, anything? It’s not like there are tech manuals for it lying around.” Dash frowned. “Are there?”

  “Technical schematics and other specifications for the Forge are only available to those with authorized access,” Custodian put in. “However, upgrades to the Snow Leopard, using the Creator’s technology, were accompanied by uploads of relevant technical data for use by the ship’s crew.”

  Now Benzel frowned. “Well, sure, but we didn’t upgrade her airlocks. There was no reason to.”

  “Nonetheless, the airlocks were upgraded, at the request of the Chief Engineer.”

  Benzel looked at Wei-Ping, and they exchanged a nod that managed to convey both understanding—and anger.

  “What?” Dash asked.

  Benzel sighed. “The Snow Leopard’s Chief Engineer was
injured when the Verity attacked our Fleet and the Forge, right before we went and kicked their asses at that blue-dwarf system. Sturdivan took over as acting CE until she got back on her feet.”

  “So he requested the upgrades to the airlocks and got the technical specs that went with them,” Leira said, nodding. “That was all he needed.”

  “What the hell was he up to?” Wei-Ping asked.

  Ragsdale looked grim. “I think we have to assume he’s a spy.” He looked at Dash. “We need to re-vet everybody. In the meantime, we need to restrict access—”

  Dash held up a hand. He’d been watching the conversation bounce around and knew it would end up here: Sturdivan being labelled a spy and potential saboteur. But Dash didn’t think he was.

  “I have a sneaking suspicion this isn’t about spying, sabotage, or anything like that at all.”

  “What do you think it’s about, then?” Leira asked.

  “Same thing I could see myself doing if I was in his place,” Dash replied. “Have Sturdivan brought to my quarters and we’ll find out for sure.”

  Dash had been given a suite of three rooms for his own use, located on one of the upper hab decks. It seemed like an extravagant amount of space, especially to someone used to living in the cramped confines of a ship where every square centimeter was at a premium. Dash consoled himself with the fact that Custodian could have given him six rooms, or nine—hell, probably a dozen—without making an appreciable dent in the available living space on the Forge. The only downside was that they were buried deep in the station’s interior, well away from the hull.

  “It is protocol that commanders and other senior personnel are located in quarters deep inside the Forge, in order to ensure their safety and security in the event of a hull breach,” Custodian had said, and that had been that—no arguing with two-hundred-thousand year-old bureaucracy, it seemed.

  Dash had Sturdivan brought to the room he used as a lounge. The holo-image system allowed him to project a starfield if he wanted the illusion of having a view outside, but once he realized he could see the stars, he didn’t want to. He’d had it project a variety of other landscapes and things. Now, though, it just showed a stark grey backdrop behind Dash, who sat on a chair.

  As Ragsdale led Sturdivan in, accompanied by Benzel, Wei-Ping, and Leira, Dash studied him closely. The first thing he noticed was how Sturdivan tried to study him right back, but obliquely, as though just scanning his surroundings in curiosity. Right away, it began to fall into place for Dash—the way Sturdivan moved, his body language, expressions, the way he sat down and held himself when he did. It was like ticking off the boxes on a bunch of behaviors Dash knew intimately well, because he’d practiced them all himself at one time or another.

  The door closed as Freya entered. She’d been brought in because she was the one who had found the dead woman in the airlock.

  “Kai joining us?” Dash asked, just as the door opened again. The monk stepped into the room, his face an inscrutable mask. “Excellent. Freya, if you would. What did you see?”

  Freya and Kai took their time, describing what they’d seen in clinical detail, their voices clear but echoing with disgust and horror. When they were done, Dash turned to Sturdivan and said—nothing.

  The man curled his lip. “I gather this is the part where you stare at me silently until I can’t take it anymore and crack.” Sturdivan suddenly looked stricken. “You got me, Mister Dash, I did it all—I started this war, too, and I stole candy from some orphans on Penumbra, and—”

  A loud thunk cut him off as Benzel cuffed him across the back of the head.

  Dash held up a hand to Benzel. “That won’t be necessary, thanks.” He looked at Sturdivan and shrugged. “Anyway, nope, that’s not it. I’m just trying to figure out if everyone else here is right, and you’re a Golden spy. Because if you are, well, then we’re going to have to kill you, and that just rubs me the wrong way.”

  Dash had long ago perfected the art of looking at one part of a room while actually seeing another, a skill that had proven handy in a multitude of seedy bars and grubby docking bays. He saw Sturdivan react to the term Golden spy, but with a hint of alarm, not guilt. It only crystallized Dash’s suspicions.

  So he shook his head and went on, “But I don’t think you are a Golden spy. Tell me, how much did you expect to get?”

  Again, there was a flicker of reaction from Sturdivan. The man was good at this, keeping himself closed up and his thoughts concealed, but Dash was a master at it. That was the only reason, in fact, he’d hadn’t long ago been tossed out an airlock himself by some criminal or creditor. The flicker confirmed Dash’s belief.

  “What do you mean?” Sturdivan said.

  “You wired that airlock to give yourself a private little cargo bay where you could load some Unseen tech and send it off to sell. You’d have made—hell, a fortune, am I right?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do,” Dash said, laughing. “I’m not sure how you expected to get any ships to or away from the Forge without being detected, but you’re a smart guy, I’m sure you had something in mind.” Dash narrowed his eyes. “Probably something like using a regular cargo shuttle, carrying it out to—I’m going to guess the Snow Leopard. That’s your ship, so you know where you could stash stuff so it would never be found, as long as it was small enough. And there’s lots of stuff around here that’s small enough but would still make you that fortune.”

  Sturdivan said nothing, but he didn’t have to, because Dash knew he was right.

  Benzel scowled, hard. Wei-Ping fixed a glare on Sturdivan that would have vaporized ablative armor.

  “Is this true?” Benzel snapped. “You’re just a bloody thief?”

  “A thief and a black marketeer,” Dash said. “Don’t forget that part. He was going to sell this tech to whoever would buy it.” He glanced at Leira. “Imagine some of the things we’ve encountered since all this began, in the hands of some of the people you know.”

  Leira’s face was stone. “Only if I want to start having nightmares.”

  Benzel leaned in, looming over Sturdivan, his fists clenched. “This makes all the Gentle Friends look suspect, you bastard.”

  “Oh, like I care,” Sturdivan snapped back. “You really expect me to worry about a war between a couple of ancient alien races? I didn’t sign up with the Gentle Friends for that, I did it to make money.”

  “And to kill an innocent woman, apparently,” Freya said.

  Sturdivan looked at the floor. “That was an accident. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  Dash stomped across the room and stopped a pace in front of the man.

  “I’m sorry, but you put some of this tech into the hands of the sorts of scumbags you’re no doubt hooked up with, and lots of people are going to get hurt,” Dash said, dropping the casual air and letting his anger come through. “But you never thought about that, did you? You just wanted to make a few credits, and hey, it’s not your fault if an inhabited star system gets destroyed, right?”

  Sturdivan stared at the floor.

  “It gets worse,” Dash went on. “I have no doubt you arranged at least one buy already, probably through some contacts you made when the Snow Leopard was off on a mission. You sent out some encrypted traffic—I’ll bet you buried it in the carrier wave noise, made it sound like environmental static—and arranged a meetup. So that means there are people out there who you’ve told about this tech, and who are expecting to get their hands on it. Did you give away the location of the Forge, too?”

  Sturdivan said nothing.

  “Damn you,” Dash snapped. “You’ve risked compromising our whole operation here, you son of a bitch.”

  Wei-Ping grabbed her sidearm. “I’ve heard enough. You know how we deal with backstabbers in the Friends.”

  Sturdivan looked up. “Go ahead, then! Except I don’t think you will.” He looked at Benzel. “You used to be about doing what was best for the
Friends. Now you’re all, oh, we have to save everybody. So I don’t think you’ve got the guts to just space me. Not anymore.” He barked out a laugh. “You want to preserve all life, remember? Well, killing me isn’t going to bring that refugee back—and I really am sorry about that—but it’ll make you a whole lot like these Golden, won’t it? Killing someone to get them out of the way?”

  “Works for me,” Wei-Ping snapped, drawing her slug-pistol and aiming it a Sturdivan’s head.

  Dash put a hand over the gun’s muzzle. “He’s right, actually. We won’t execute this man. He’s what I used to be—completely self-serving. That’s not the way either of us started out in life, but it’s how we ended up.” He nudged the weapon aside and stared hard into Sturdivan’s face. “Trouble is, that’s as far as you got. It’s as far as you’re ever going to get. Your life is as good as it’s ever going to get. You could’ve done something bigger, something with real meaning to it—but, nope, you’re just a petty thief who happened to kill someone through sheer negligence.” Dash shook his head. “Hell, I wish you were a Golden spy, because then I’d happily blow your head off myself.”

  Dash gestured for Kai to join him and they walked to the other side of the room, speaking in whispered tones. After a moment, Dash turned back.

  “You’re banished,” Dash said. “We’re going to drop you on some remote place—liveable and inhabited, but really remote. I mean, it’ll take you months, maybe years, to figure out how to get anywhere else. Meantime, you’ll be on your own, not a credit to your name. You have fun with that.” He looked at Ragsdale. “Keep him locked up in the brig for now, under guard and constantly watched. I’ll make an announcement to everyone about what’s going on shortly.”

  His face caught somewhere between venomous glare and apprehensive as hell, Sturdivan was led away. When he was gone, Dash looked at Benzel and Wei-Ping.