The Messenger

by J. N. Chaney

  Dash had time to mutter, “I am such a moron.”

  And then existence itself came to a dead stop—

  —and started again, but in an entirely different place. The translation through unSpace was a bizarre combination of a long, tedious passage, and the passing of no time at all. Dash had done it many times and still didn’t quite get it. It meant he would arrive at the destination on time, while still having a leisurely spell to both shed his hangover and deeply regret making the journey at all.

  He glanced at the nav, watching its display confirm his approach to the forsaken volume of empty space where the handoff would happen. Then he looked at another panel, the one that controlled the Fade. It was his escape hatch, the one thing that stopped him from slumping completely into despair at what was no doubt a fool’s errand. Ships were normally either in real space, or in unSpace, with nothing in-between. The Fade, though, was just that, an in-between. The Slipwing could translate only partway between the two types of space, effectively straddling the boundary between both. Not only did it give the Slipwing a nifty sort of “cloaking effect”—something he’d so far used to get out of trouble exactly as often as he’d gotten into it—it also let Dash poke his nose back into real space, and then decide if he wanted to translate all the way. And, since the translation drive burned most of its fuel during the shift into unSpace, it meant he could take a look at the job, decide nah, screw it, then translate fully back into unSpace and still be able to carry on to Penumbra. Probably. Sure, he’d still be broke and out of fuel by the time he got there, of course, but at least he wouldn’t be stranded in between the stars.

  “Okay,” he said to the Slipwing, “we’re going to do this, sweetheart. You just keep yourself together.” The downside of the Fade was the stress it put on the ship, as well as the sheer piloting skill required to use it. A minor miscalculation, a tiny maneuver, and he and the Slipwing would be a cloud of molecular debris.

  The nav put them close now. Dash engaged the Fade, then braced himself for the weirdness of being in two realities at once.

  His perspective shifted, then split. Pain throbbed behind his eyes as everything went, not really double, but that was the only way to describe it. It was like being hungover again, but with none of the upsides.

  Nothing. The coordinates in dead space were just that—dead space.

  “Ah, shit.”

  So, a bust. Well, toe hell with whoever posted that job. He’d report them to the agency that ran the Needs Slate, make sure they never managed to leave some other bastard on his way to becoming a corpsicle.

  “Any ship! Any sh……attack! We……assistance! Any ship, please…”

  Dash stared at the comms. The message had been vox only, and even then only parts of it were intelligible, the rest lost in the spatial distortion around the reality-straddling Slipwing. That didn’t mean it came from nearby, of course. It could have come from light-days, light-weeks, even light-months away.

  But the sudden flare of energy discharges on the scanner immediately said no, the message came from close by. The discharges were weapons fire. Just like the frantic message had said, someone was under attack.

  Which meant a battle was raging across this empty piece of space, and if Dash dropped entirely out of unSpace, he’d be smack in the middle of it.

  “Any sh……attack! Please……

  “Sorry,” Dash said to the comm, “but I don’t think so.” He reached for the nav to get its unSpace course redirected to Penumbra. “Best of luck, whoever you—”

  “Pay……anything you want, just……

  Dash’s hand froze over the nav at the word pay but drew back at anything you want.

  He looked at the scanner. While he was using Fade, the Slipwing’s sensors had only a very coarse resolution when it came to seeing into real space. All he could tell was that two ships were exchanging energy-weapons fire. One of them seemed to mass a lot more than the other, but that was it.

  “Huh.”

  Someone was desperate—probably, but not necessarily, the smaller vessel. If he dropped out of Fade and fully back into real space, and was able to help them, the pay-off might be pretty good. If he was able to help them. If the other ship wasn’t vastly more powerful and, together, they were able to drive it off or destroy it. If they weren’t actually criminals, running from the magistrates, so aiding them would slap a warrant on Dash, too. If they weren’t stretched for resources themselves, had some fuel to spare…and if they weren’t just lying, and this was all some sort of set up.

  Dash had a hundred reasons to just punch back into unSpace and fly away. That was the smart thing to do. He had almost no reasons to get involved in…whatever this was. Just that someone needed help, and they were desperate.

  He heaved out a sigh. Smart keeps you alive. Sometimes, though, dumb makes you rich.

  Again, leaning on nothing but hunch and instinct, Dash dropped the Fade and plunged the Slipwing back into real space.

  The battle abruptly resolved in the scanner, in all its horrifying detail.

  A small, Raven-class scout ship raced ahead of…something. Something big. A massive ship, of a design Dash didn’t recognize. Neither did the scanner.

  Whatever it was, it was bad.

  Faint, bluish tendrils of Cherenkov radiation flickered where particle cannons blasted through wisps of interstellar gas and dust, reaching for the Raven like grasping fingers. Only some spectacular maneuvers kept them away from the Raven, corkscrewing gyrations and slamming turns and accelerations flinging the smaller ship through a mesh of ghostly beams. Even so, the Raven trailed an ionized wake of vaporized metal, the result of some hits. The scanners couldn’t resolve much detail about the Raven otherwise, like how damaged it actually was.

  “Well,” Dash muttered, “this was probably a mistake.”

  The comms erupted with a clipped woman’s voice. “You, new ship! We need your help!”

  Dash scowled at the comms. “Who, me? Hey, sorry, I’m just passing through.”

  “You signed on for our job! You have to help us!”

  Ah. Oh. So this was the mysterious employer whose job he’d taken. Technically, the voice was right, then—he was under a contractual obligation to fulfill the terms. But no adjudicator would ever suggest that meant committing suicide, because that was what this would be. The big ship had ignored the Slipwing—so far—but that would change fast, Dash suspected, if he stuck his nose into this. And the Slipwing’s two particle cannons wouldn’t be much of a response. He did have some missiles with translation drive, which could let them avoid detection from real space, but not many—and they were bloody expensive.

  Sue me, assuming you aren’t just a cloud of expanding vapor sometime in the new few minutes.

  What he said, though, was, “Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t see what I—"

  “Listen, we’re carrying something…let’s just say, it’s extremely valuable. That’s why they’re chasing us. Our translation drive is out, so we need you to pick us up and get us away from here!”

  Dash narrowed his eyes at the comms. “How valuable is extremely valuable?”

  “More valuable than you can imagine.”

  “I have a big imagination.”

  “Believe me, you won’t be disappointed.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that before.” Dash curled his lip. In the end, his reluctance didn’t really matter, did it? The Slipwing didn’t have enough fuel to translate, so there really wasn’t much choice here. “Look, I need fuel. Bring your valuable whatever-it-is and a tank of anti-deuterium, and—wait, how many of you are there?”

  “Two.”

  Two. Okay, that was something, at least. Given what he had in mind, trying to take aboard more than two or so was pretty much a non-starter.

  “Alright,” Dash said, “just keep yourselves in one piece until I’m in position. This is going to happen fast, and we’re only going to get one shot at
it.”

  And we probably won’t survive it anyway, but there was no need to actually say that.

  “We’ll do our best. Hurry!”

  “Believe me,” Dash muttered, fingers dancing over the Slipwing’s controls, “hurrying is the only way this is gonna work.”

  With a flare of fusion exhaust, the Slipwing spiraled toward the battle. As soon as she did, several particle beams lanced out from the massive ship chasing the Raven, aimed at Dash. He winced at the power levels displayed for those beams—big weapons, at full power, too—then punched commands into the magnetic drive, slewing the Slipwing sideways as he did to keep her ablative armor pointed at the looming mass of the attacking ship. He then slammed her through a series of accelerations so hard the inertia offsets couldn’t keep up. A low groan rattled her superstructure as his stomach alternately dropped into his gut, then shoved up against his lungs.

  “C’mon, sweetheart, you got this.”

  All but one of the particle beams missed. An alarm buzzed as one raked across the armor, spalling glowing, ablated chunks into the Slipwing’s wake. Each second, though, brought her closer to the Raven.

  Now he had to hold the Slipwing on a steady course, which meant the particle beams found their mark. More alarms sounded, and more armor vaporized. Dash gritted his teeth then spun the ship around.

  “Okay,” he shouted at the comms, “cut your engines!”

  “What? Are you crazy? We—”

  “Cut your engines or we’re both done!”

  He heard the sound of a heartbeat, then the exhaust flare trailing the Raven died. The Slipwing, still accelerating, immediately closed. As she zipped past, Dash activated the magnetic drive. It was a low-power system, intended for in-system use, letting a ship ride the magnetic fields of stars and planets as a fuel-saving measure. He’d reconfigured it, though, to—

  “OOF!”

  —to latch onto the Raven, whose mass yanked the Slipwing her sideways, and slowing her so much that it punched the air from Dash’s lungs. Both ships, locked together by the mag-drive, tumbled off on a new course, disrupting the attacker’s firing solutions. The particle beams tore through empty space, as the massive ship overtook its quarry.

  Dash ignored the massive ship sliding past the cockpit ports as they spun. His fingers tapped the maneuvering thrusters, bringing the Slipwing’s docking port into line with that of the Raven. There was a metallic clunk as they joined, then Dash shouted at the comms, “Now would be a good time to come aboard!”

  The lock indicator went red as the hatch opened. Dash gritted his teeth at the scanner. The mag-locked ships spun along the flank of their looming attacker, only a few thousand meters away. Thrusters flared along the massive hull, as it sought to shove itself back into a firing position. As he’d hoped, this close, the particle beams couldn’t get a firing solution, but that wouldn’t last.

  He scowled at the lock indicator. Still red.

  “C’mon, let’s go.”

  The scanner blared a warning. Something had just lit them up—a fire control system. A particle beam lanced past, accompanied by a crash of static on the comms. Way too close.

  He hit the thrusters, rotating the Slipwing and its temporary docking-mate. The particle beam fired again, slamming into the Raven with a dazzling flash, another crash of static, and a spray of vaporized hull. Yeah, that was a critical hit. He felt a little bad about using the Raven as what amounted to extra armor for the Slipwing, but you do what you gotta do.

  Another warning sounded. The Raven’s fusion drive was failing. In the rush, whoever had been piloting it hadn’t shut the reactor down. Now, still generating plasma as hot as the surface of a star, it was about to lose containment. The flash of stellar heat would vaporize them both.

  Dash said, “Shit!” and jammed a hand toward the mag-drive. Even if it decompressed the Slipwing through an open lock, he couldn’t wait any longer.

  The lock indicator went green. With one hand, Dash killed the mag drive, letting the stricken Raven spin away. With the other, he stabbed the thrusters, rotating the Slipwing onto the most awkward heading he could envision for their attacker to follow, then punched his own fusion drive. The Slipwing accelerated like a bullet from a slug-thrower. Particle beams reached out for her, converging like the fingers of a clenching fist. Several scoured the hull, while one raked across the rear armor protecting the fusion drive.

  Then the Raven exploded in a searing flash. Incandescent plasma washed over the Slipwing, but she’d gained enough distance that it was a tenuous cloud, just enough to singe the ablative armor. The EM pulse of the blast was more damaging, provoking overloads and showers of sparks from injured electronics. Dash scanned the status board. Fortunately, all the failures were secondary systems—or, at least, secondary to the immediate goal of staying alive.

  After a thump from behind him, Dash turned and found himself staring at a woman. She was of middling height, with dark blonde hair, green eyes—actually, very green eyes—and she was pretty good looking, actually.

  “Welcome aboard Dash spacelines,” he said, offering a grin. “Sole proprietor Dash Sawyer, at your service.”

  The woman’s lips curled. “What kind of name is Dash?”

  “Mine, for starters.”

  “Viktor has the fuel. He’s loading it now.”

  Dash glanced at the status. Sure enough, the anti-deuterium level was coming up from, well, pretty much zero. Whoever Viktor was, he knew his stuff. Tapping into the fuel system from inside the Slipwing was a complicated job, but this Viktor had managed it in just a few minutes.

  “You used the blast from my ship as a smokescreen,” the woman said, pointing at the scanner. “That was after you used it as a shield.”

  “Yeah, look, sorry about that, but—”

  “No, it was smart. Buys us time. You still owe me a ship, though.”

  “Uh, yeah, I don’t think so.”

  He saw her weary smile and grinned back. “Okay,” he said, “so between that cloud of plasma out there blinding them, and the time it will take them to turn that beast around, we should—”

  He was cut off by a warning buzz. Another fire control system had found them. No, wait. Two. No, now three.

  Dash spun back to the Slipwing’s controls. “Shit! Missiles!” They accelerated far faster than the Slipwing ever could, which meant they had thirty seconds, maybe, to detonation.

  Dash watched as the missiles raced in. Their trajectory was flawless; their speed, incredible.

  He grimaced at the screens.

  “Okay,” a gruff voice called from deeper inside the Slipwing. “You should have enough!”

  Dash didn’t wait for the voice to finish. The fuel level was low, but there was enough for him to activate the Fade. The Slipwing did her namesake thing and slipped from real space to unSpace. Energy bursts showed the missiles detonating, both right on top of the them and an entire reality away.

  Dash let the thrumming tension in his muscles relax and turned to the woman. As he did, a man as gruff as the voice he’d heard appeared behind her. He was older, kinda grizzled, and was that a pencil behind his ear?

  Dash turned his smile on the man. “Viktor, I take it?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Damned good work on that fuel thing.”

  “Damned good work is what I do.”

  Dash wheeled his smile back to the woman. “And I don’t think I caught your name.”

  The woman blinked. “My name, I’m…”

  That was all she managed before her eyes—her very green eyes—rolled back and she slumped into Viktor’s grasp, either unconscious or dead.

  3

  Dash eyed the man named Viktor sidelong. On closer inspection, he was even more grizzled than he appeared, with hair once brown, now greying, tossed in a wild tangle of curls and spikes that blended into a scruffy beard and moustache. He had puckered scars on his hands—probably plasma burns—and wore shabby blue coveralls with a blaze of orange splashed ac
ross the back with mag boots, and he had a plasma pistol and sundry tools hanging from a maintenance harness. Viktor had just explained how he’d managed to so quickly transfer anti-deuterium fuel from the containment tank he’d brought during their desperate scramble from the Raven. The tank, now empty, was still hooked by magnetic transfer conduit into the Slipwing’s unSpace drive cooling system.

  The cooling system. There was no way that should have worked; the only result should have been a colossal explosion as anti-deuterium contacted some component or other, each annihilating the other to raw energy. But here they were, entirely explosion-free.

  “I’d never even have considered that,” Dash said. He shook his head at the collection of compromises and workarounds that had allowed Viktor to co-opt a system meant to dump excess heat from the translation drive’s matter/anti-matter reactions and use it to put fuel into the system instead. “Not in a million years.” He looked at Viktor. “You could have vaporized us, and probably everything else within a few light-seconds.”

  Viktor shrugged. “Could have, but didn’t.” He scratched the ear not holding a pencil. “In any case, we wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

  “You’re kinda crazy, Viktor.”

  He gave a toothy grin. “The best engineers are. So are the best pilots. I’ve never seen flying like you did back there.”

  It was Dash’s turn to shrug. “I guess we’ve all got what we’re good at.”

  A tone chimed over the intercom. Dash had set it to alert them when the woman—whose name, apparently, was Leira—woke up. This hadn’t been the first chime, though. She’d been drifting in and out of unconsciousness for hours, now. Viktor described how she’d smashed her head into a panel during a hard acceleration burn, right before Dash had shown up. She’d seemed okay, but head wounds were notorious for being lethal, no matter how trivial.