The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6

by J. N. Chaney

  “Dash, are you well? There is clearly data being transmitted.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, and no, that’s not what I mean. I see what we would expect to see, all the natural background stuff, plus emissions from that Quarantine Station, and not much more. I don’t see anything to indicate there’s a large fleet lying in wait around here somewhere.”

  “I concur. Unless the Verity are themselves employing an inordinately effective stealth technology, there appear to be no hidden forces in or near this system.”

  Tybalt chimed in. “I would point out that that does not preclude Verity forces located outside the system that are close enough to intervene relatively quickly.”

  “Yeah, I hear you, Tybalt,” Dash replied. “But we can only control so much. I mean, yeah, there are definitely Verity forces out there somewhere, but they’re not here. At least, not right now. So—Leira, Benzel, Wei-Ping, we’re a go on this. Let’s move.”

  When the chorus of agreement died down, Dash powered up the Archetype’s drive and started in from where they’d been lurking among the comets and other debris in the system’s Oort Cloud. Wei-Ping, commanding the Retribution, fell into formation with him, while the Herald took station with the Swift.

  Dash glanced at the Retribution, now fully repaired, upgraded, and emblazoned with the Cygnus logo. He hoped the Verity saw her and recognized her for what had once been their own ship—and that now she was coming to earn her new name.

  Four Verity ships raced away from Quarantine Station to challenge them. They weren’t a surprise; their emissions had shown up in the stealth drone’s telemetry, even if their Dark Metal signatures had been too small to resolve without a much bigger detector. They were pretty unimpressive craft, essentially just a frigate and three corvettes. Still, Dash was reluctantly impressed by their dogged insistence in not just confronting the Cygnus flotilla, but doing it with a surprisingly aggressive panache.

  “These guys aren’t going to take no for an answer, are they?” Leira said, echoing Dash’s thought.

  “Nope, they sure aren’t,” Dash replied. “That’s good for them—well, right up until they die.”

  “I wonder why the Verity have such a small force here protecting what seems to be a pretty important installation,” Benzel said. “We’re starting to see a bunch of resource-extraction stuff going on in this system—remote miners on some of the asteroids, helium-3 collectors near the gas giants, all sorts of stuff.”

  “I don’t know,” Dash replied. “I’d actually been starting to wonder the same thing. Maybe the losses we’ve inflicted on the Verity are forcing them to spread out pretty thinly.”

  “It is more probable that this system, being located so far off the main trend of Verity activity in the galactic arm, was considered relatively safe from attack,” Sentinel put in.

  Dash gave a slow nod of agreement. “Good point. Seems they missed the part about how some of their slaves might end up being rescued, including a teenage girl who happened to have just the info we needed.” Then the threat indicator changed, and Dash felt his attention sharpen yet again as multiple launches from the Verity ships crowded the scans.

  “Missiles. And a lot of them,” Dash said.

  The ensuing battle was chaotic and brutal. The Verity ships landed a few hits, including one missile that managed to slip through the Herald’s point defense and punch a nasty gash in her hull. But it didn’t last long. The Verity ships faltered under the weight of fire from the Cygnus flotilla and then, one by one, died, shredded by missiles, pulse cannons, dark-lances, and nova guns.

  Dash watched the shattered carcass of the Verity frigate spin away from the battle, trailing a dissipating wake of vented atmosphere and drive plasma, and bits and pieces of debris. Ahead, Quarantine Station now hung alone against the starfield, orbiting the nearer gas giant.

  Point defense systems opened up at them as they approached. Dash cursed and raced forward with the Archetype, deployed the power-sword, and hacked the station’s point-defense batteries in scrap. The mech absorbed the pounding from the small, rapid-fire weapons, even taking some armor damage, but the fire from Quarantine Station fell silent. By the time he’d managed to maneuver the Archetype close to a docking port on the station, Benzel, Wei-Ping, and boarding parties from each of their ships had already breached and entered.

  Dash entered the airlock, which was secured by a pair of suited figures—one of the Gentle Friends, and a woman he recognized as one of the refugees. She stopped Dash as soon as he arrived.

  “Benzel told me to wait here for you,” she said. “I was held here for a while, so I know the layout—at least, most of it.”

  “What’s your name?” Dash asked.

  “Sera,” the woman replied.

  “Well, Sera, let’s go free these people.”

  Through her helmet’s faceplate, she gave a hard nod and a look that Dash figured could only be erased by Verity blood. Fitting, he thought, that she bore the logo for the Retribution on her vac suit.

  Sera led Dash along a series of corridors, pausing at each corner to peer around it before proceeding. After the fourth time she did this, Dash stopped her.

  “You have military experience, don’t you?”

  “I was trained up for our settlement’s militia, yeah. Didn’t do a damned bit of good against these Verity scum, though.” She said it with a vehemence that made Dash blink.

  “When we get back to the Forge, come and see me,” he said to her. “I think we can give you another shot at them on way more even terms.”

  She hefted a pulse-gun. “You’re giving me a shot at them now. And I intend to take it. Hope you weren’t planning on trying to take any of them alive.”

  “Nope, just the prisoners. They live at all costs, so if you’re going to kill Verity, make sure you only kill Verity.”

  “Don’t worry. I was top shot in our militia outfit. If I want to hit something, I’ll hit it.”

  Dash nodded and Sera carried on.

  They passed Verity corpses, dead with pulse-gun and snap-gun wounds, or deep gashes from blades, boarding axes, and cutlasses. They also passed wounded Gentle Friends being evacuated back to the Herald or Retribution. Only one of them seemed serious, fortunately.

  So far, what they hadn’t passed was any of the prisoners. An uncomfortable feeling began gnawing at Dash. Were there prisoners even here, or had they been moved?

  Or had something worse happened to them?

  Swallowing his dread, he carried on with Sera, following her to the station’s bridge. There, they found Benzel and Wei-Ping at the head of three squads of Cygnus attackers that were assembled outside a sealed blast door.

  “Believe it or not, the commander of this station is inside there, demanding to negotiate,” Benzel said.

  Dash stared at Benzel through his faceplate. “Negotiate about what?”

  “Surviving, I guess,” Wei-Ping said.

  Dash opened the channel the Verity commander had been using. “This is the Messenger. I’m in charge of the force that just kicked your ass. You want to negotiate? Fine. Surrender unconditionally, and I might let you live. There, negotiating done.”

  The voice that came back was so flat and mechanical it made even Custodian sound bubbly. “Unacceptable. If you do not negotiate in good faith, then I will blow the airlocks on this station and kill every single one of those you came here to save.”

  Dash muted the channel. “Sentinel, is that a real threat?”

  “It was, but no longer. The crews of the Herald and Retribution have secured portable docking adapters to the airlocks in the station’s hab section to facilitate the evacuation of prisoners.”

  “So even if he does blow the locks, he’ll just be opening them up on—well, more airlocks.”

  “Correct.”

  Dash turned to Benzel. “You ready to breach that door?”

  “As soon as you give the word.”

  “Consider it given.”

  Benzel grinned then turned
to a nearby Gentle Friend holding a detonator module.

  Dash switched back to the Verity commander’s channel. “Yeah, I’ve thought it over and, well, here’s my counteroffer.”

  A heavy blast shuddered the bulkheads and deck as the shaped charges cut the locking hardware on the blast door. Vac suited figures raced forward and wedged the door open with oversized pry bars, while others threw in dazzle charges.

  “Let’s go!” Benzel said, rising and running toward the opening. Inside, the dazzle charges flashed; at the same time, static crashed across the comm as the broad-spectrum pulses ripped through the bridge. The first squad through, from the Herald, went left through the door; Dash followed Benzel to the right, with Wei-Ping and one of her squads from the Retribution following.

  The resulting firefight was brief and bloody. By the time Dash was in a firing position, the only Verity left was the commander himself, screened behind a console.

  “You were warned,” Dash heard him say, and saw him operate a control on the console before anyone could get a shot lined up.

  Nothing seemed to happen.

  “Sentinel, did those airlocks blow?”

  “No. The command function failed, perhaps due to damage.”

  “Yeah, that would probably be me,” Leira suddenly cut in over the comm. “The squads I’m with seized engineering a few minutes ago and shut down every system they could find that wasn’t life support.”

  “Good work,” Dash said, then lifted his head and looked at the Verity commander. “Okay, you’ve got no—”

  The Verity raised a pulse-gun and fired. The shot missed Dash’s head by centimeters. Before he could fire again, though, a pulse-gun bolt flashed back at the commander, blowing his weapon out of his hands. He staggered back and slumped against a bulkhead.

  As crew from the Retribution dashed forward to secure the Verity commander as a prisoner, Dash turned to the vac-suited figure that had shot the pulse gun out of his hands. It was Sera.

  She shrugged. “Told you I was a good shot.”

  “I’m kind of surprised you didn’t just kill him.”

  “I thought you wanted him alive.”

  Benzel and Wei-Ping dragged the Verity commander before Dash. “You want to talk to this jerk before we throw him into custody?” Benzel asked.

  Dash glanced at Sera, then back to the commander. “Not really. And we’re not taking him into custody.”

  The Verity commander’s face switched from contempt to panic like a thrown switch. “What do you intend for me?”

  Dash answered by gesturing to a nearby airlock, one that hadn’t been rigged with a docking adapter. Benzel nodded, yanked out a combat blade, and sliced a gash into the commander’s suit.

  As he was dragged to the airlock, the commander began kicking and flailing. “No! No, you cannot do this! You claim to be civilized, but you’re—”

  “Just like you?” Dash said, then shook his head. “No, wait, we’re not like you at all. We don’t harvest innocent people like livestock for the bits we want to use to extend our own, miserable lives. We just kill our enemies and move on.”

  “I am a prisoner!”

  “Not for long, you’re not,” Benzel said, then he and Wei-Ping flung the commander into the airlock and sealed it. The Verity pounded on the inner door, terror twisting his face.

  Dash turned to Sera. “Benzel asked if I had anything I wanted to say to this guy. I don’t, but you might.”

  She stepped up to the viewport in the airlock. “Yeah, I do. That look on your face? You know, the pain, and fear, and panic? That’s exactly the same look I saw on the faces of my friends when you attacked us and took us prisoner.” She reached for the airlock cycle control. “The same look I saw on my mother’s face. So, yes, I have something to say to you.”

  Her eyes locked on those of the Verity, she said, “Screw you,” and hit the control.

  Sera didn’t look away, not even for an instant, as the Verity commander was blown into space, a trail of freezing blood and air trailing from the gash in his suit.

  They rounded up the throng of prisoners aboard Quarantine Station, Dash going from person to person, shaking hands, letting himself be seen, and quietly looking for Mircea.

  He pulled aside a tech, her tunic spattered in fluids of all colors, describing Mircea as a note of unease began to grow in his senses.

  “Haven’t seen anyone like him. Grey eyes? I’d remember that. Sorry,” the tech said, then moved off in a tired shamble toward a wounded man with most of his head wrapped in a stained bandage.

  When he was done searching the survivors, he combed the bodies.

  No Mircea.

  Standing, hands on hips, Dash let his eyes play over the scene, watching for what was there and what wasn’t. A pair of wounded people were strapped to the blast door of an escape pod, their suits torn into so much chaff, but they were alive—if unconscious. The blast doors made good stretchers, so Dash began to count—

  —And every door for the fifteen pods was accounted for, except number three.

  “Where’s pod three?” Dash bellowed, taking everyone near him by surprise. He got confused looks and the odd motion to keep his voice down, but an engineer named Hawley came over, pointing out of the ship.

  “It’s not in here, which means…it’s out there. We couldn’t get everyone, and I think the crews are all in,” Hawley said. He was a small, neat man, with a cropped beard and flash burns on one side of his face.

  “Sentinel. Meet me at the bay. I need to find something,” Dash said, his boots ringing on the floor as he pelted away.

  “What do you wish to find?” Sentinel asked.

  “Life pod. Beacon number three. It will be—”

  “I have it.”

  “Where?”

  “Cradle in, and we will depart. The pod is in a tumble and will strike debris in two minutes, nineteen seconds,” Sentinel said.

  Dash was gasping as he linked in, and the archetype sped away in a blur.

  “Let’s clear the field. I want a direct line to that pod,” he said, and the archetype became a blaze of fire as it shattered debris, asteroids, and the remains of a small comet. In seconds, they reached the tiny, silver speck as it spun ever closer to a mass of slag—the remains of an unfortunate enemy craft, stretched into a web-like shape from centrifugal forces.

  “Got him,” Dash said, clasping a massive mechanical hand around the pod, its surface a pitted, scorched mass of divots.

  “Scan indicates it is Mircea inside. He is wounded, but alive.”

  Dash opened up the comms as he kicked the engines hard, streaking back to the Quarantine Station. “All craft—get the hell out of my way. I want a med team inside the doors. Blow the outer lock early to let me in and stand down for ten seconds. Pressurize immediately. I’m cracking this pod open by force, and I don’t want anyone hurt when I do it.”

  There was a crackle of assent over the comms, and then the station loomed ahead. Dash got the pod inside one of the makeshift locks, then twisted the damaged door with a touch that was oddly delicate given the power of the Archetype.

  “Don’t want to let hard vacuum in. I’ll press the door into its seal. It’ll hold for a few seconds while the atmo rises,” Dash said.

  When he withdrew the massive arm from the airlock, the door closed behind him and medical staff swarmed out into the space. From outside, Dash saw Mircea pulled out, a smear of blood on his pale skin.

  “Alive?” Dash heard himself say.

  Sentinel answered. “Alive.”

  With a rush of relief, Dash let himself collapse in the cradle, adrenaline draining away in a sickening flurry. “Good. I hate breaking promises.”

  Moments later, inside the hab, Leira brought Dash to Mircea as he was being loaded onto a pallet for evacuation to the Herald. He was younger than Roxandra, a lean, wiry kid with the same olive skin and grey eyes as his sister. He looked up at Dash and nodded gratefully as he was carried away.

  “Broken bo
nes,” Leira said. “An arm, a leg, at least a couple of ribs.”

  “Not from falling down, I assume.”

  “Well, he probably did fall down, yeah, as he was being beaten.”

  “How did he get in the pod?” Dash asked.

  “He’s young, and strong, and quick-thinking. He’s a tough one,” Leira said.

  “Good.” Dash felt relief flood his veins all over again.

  A sudden cheer went up around them, echoing from through the dreary hab level of the station. Someone had put up an image of the Verity commander being blown into space onto view screens that were probably normally filled with menacing warnings and Verity propaganda.

  “I hope it took him a long time to die,” Mircea snapped.

  Dash clicked his tongue. “Now what would your sister say, hearing you say something like that?”

  “She’d probably say, yeah, that’s Mircea for you.” The young man winced as he shifted on the pallet. “She got all the smarts, and I got all the mouth.”

  Dash grinned and gestured for Mircea to be taken away and made comfortable on the Herald.

  He grinned even more when Sentinel recounted the spoils from the battle; between the wrecked Verity ships, this station, an even older and apparently disused station still orbiting the other gas giant, and the various smaller Verity resource-extraction operations in the system, they’d just scored one of their biggest hauls of Dark Metal and rare alloys yet. But the grin didn’t last. Benzel came to Dash, pulled him aside, and switched to a private comm channel.

  “We have a problem, Dash.”

  “A problem? Only one?”

  It was the look Benzel returned that made his grin finally die. “It’s a big problem, Dash. A serious one.”

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “Based on what Roxandra told us, we were expecting just over two hundred prisoners here. Based on that, we brought only the Herald and Retribution, which gave us enough room for two-fifty, if we really packed them in. But there are over three hundred here. Three hundred and thirteen, in fact. And that’s even taking into account casualties because, unfortunately, we had thirteen killed during the boarding action.”