Furious Gulf: A Mecha Scifi Epic (The Messenger Book 12) Read online

  Copyrighted Material

  Furious Gulf Copyright © 2020 by Variant Publications

  Book design and layout copyright © 2020 by JN Chaney

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing.

  1st Edition

  Book Description

  The war continues past the galaxy’s edge.

  Far out in the black, Dash and new captain Lomas encounter the next lethal version of Deeper technology. Huge, armored beings are attacking inward, wrecking humanity in each shattering conflict. The Battle Princes are more than robots, and less than human, and beyond their fearsome ability, they carry a secret that could change the nature of human warfare forever.

  In pursuit of a would-be tyrant, Adan Kitzbuell, the Realm will fight beyond the known stars, into territory that demands new tactics. New weapons.

  And upgrades to the very machines that carry humanity into battle. Mechs. But victory comes with a cost, and each successive fight leads Dash and Leira farther into a place that is neither known or unknown- a place between stars and galaxies, a place in need of peace, and power.

  Here, in the darkness beyond stars, Dash will fight to unlock the true secrets of Dark Metal, all while waging a running war against beings who have one mind, and one purpose—the end of humanity. Forever.

  Contents

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  The Messenger Universe Key Terms

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

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  The Messenger Universe Key Terms

  The Messenger: The chosen pilot of the Archetype.

  Archetype: A massive weapon system designed for both space battle, close combat, and planetary defense. Humanoid in shape, the Archetype is controlled by a pilot and the Sentinel, an artificial intelligence designed to work with an organic humanoid nervous systems. The Archetype is equipped with offensive weaponry beyond anything known to current galactic standards, and has the ability to self-repair, travel in unSpace, and link with other weapons systems to fight in a combined arms operation.

  Blobs: Amorphous alien race, famed for being traders. They manufacture nothing and are known as difficult employers.

  Clan Shirna: A vicious, hierarchical tribe of reptilian beings whose territory is in and around the Globe of Suns and the Pasture. Clan Shirna is wired at the genetic level to defend and protect their territory. Originally under the control of Nathis, they are space-based, with a powerful navy and the collective will to fight to the last soldier if necessary.

  Couriers: Independent starship pilots who deliver goods—legal, illegal, and everything in between—to customers. They find their jobs on a centralized posting system (See: Needs Slate) that is galaxy-wide, ranked by danger and pay, and constantly changing. Couriers supply their own craft, unless they’re part of a Shipping Conglom. Couriers are often ex-military or a product of hard worlds.

  Fade: A modification to the engine. It is a cutting edge shielding device that rotates through millions of subspace frequencies per second, rendering most scans ineffective. If the Fade is set to insertion, then the ship will translate into unSpace, where it can go faster than light. The Fade is rare, borderline illegal, and highly expensive. It works best on smaller masses, so Courier ships are optimal for installation of the Fade. One drawback is the echo left behind in regular space, an issue that other cloaking systems do not have. By using echoes as pathway markers, it is possible to track and destroy ships using the Fade.

  Golden: A transhumanist race of beings who are attempting to scour the galaxy of intelligent life. The Golden were once engaged in warfare with the Unseen. They are said to return every 200,000 years to enact a cycle of galactic genocide, wiping out all technologically advanced civilizations before disappearing back from which they came. They destroyed their creators at some unknown point in the distant past and are remaking themselves with each revolution of their eternal, cyclical war.

  Globe of Suns: A star cluster located in the far arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. It is an astronomical outlier. Dense with stars, it’s a hotbed of Unseen tech, warfare, and Clan Shirna activity. Highly dangerous, both as an obstacle and combat area.

  Kingsport: Located in the Dark Between, these are planetoid sized bases made of material that is resistant to detection, light-absorbing, and heavily armored. Oval in shape, the Kingsport is naval base and medical facility in one, intended as a deep space sleep/recovery facility for more than a thousand Unseen. The Kingsports maintain complete silence and do not communicate with other facilities, regardless of how dire the current military situation.

  Lens: Unseen tech; a weapon capable of sending stars into premature collapse at considerable distance. The Lens is not unique—the Unseen left many of them behind in the Pasture, indicating that they were willing to destroy stars in their fight with the Golden.

  Ribbon: Unseen tech that imparts a visual history of their engineering, left behind as a kind of beacon for spacefaring races.

  Sentinel: A machine intelligence designed by the Unseen, the Sentinel is a specific intellect within the Archetype. It meshes with the human nervous system, indicating some anticipation of spaceborne humans on the part of the Unseen. Sentinel is both combat system and advisor, and it has the ability to impart historical data when necessary to the fight at hand.

  Shadow Nebula: A massive nebula possibly resulting from simultaneous star explosions. The Shadow Nebula may be a lingering effect from the use of a Lens, but it is unknown at this time.

  Unseen: An extinct and ancient race who were among the progenitors of all advanced technology in the Milky Way, and possibly beyond. In appearance, they were slender, canine, and bipedal, with the forward-facing eyes of a predator. Their history is long and murky, but their engineering skills are nothing short of godlike. They commanded gravity, materials, space, and the ability to use all of these sciences in tandem to hold the Golden at bay during the last great war. The Unseen knew about humans, although their plans for humanity have since been lost to time.

  unSpace: Neither space nor an alternate reality, this is the mathematically generated location used to span massive distances between points in the galaxy. There are several ways to penetrate unSpace, but only two are known to humans.

  Pasture: Unseen tech in the form of an artificial Oort Cloud; a comet field of enormous size and complexity. Held in place by Unseen engineering, the Pasture is a repository for hidden items left by the Unseen. The Pasture remains stable despite having thousands of objects, a feat which is a demonstration of Unseen technical skills. The Lens and Archetype are just two of the items left behind for the next chapter in galactic warfare.

  Prelate: In Clan Shirna, the Prelate is both military commander and morale officer, imbued with religious authority over all events concerning defense of their holy territory.

  1

  “We’re not going to make it, are we?” Telas asked, keeping his voice low and quiet.

  Lomas pulled her attention away from the tactical situation portrayed on the view screen and gave her Sub-Consul a sharp glance. “Course we’re going to make it. Why would you think otherwise?”

  The Sub-Consul stared at her for a moment, then smiled. “Apologies, Consul. You’re right. I’m mistaken.”

  Lomas nodded and looked back at the display. Her confidence immediately
puffed away like the mist and cobwebs it was. The fact was that they probably weren’t going to make it. The pair of Deeper cruisers that had been dogging them had drawn closer with each translation hop. Unless she could think of something, some way out of this pursuit and its foregone conclusion, they would be close enough to attack after one, maybe two more hops.

  She cast a critical eye over her little formation of ships. There were seven altogether, the six high-performance fighters retrieved from their storage on Shatter, and her temporary flagship, the Rimworld League Navy’s corvette Corsair. A capable little formation with a decent amount of firepower, it could probably have offered some credible resistance to the Deeper cruisers relentlessly closing in. But the trip from Shatter was supposed to be just a routine ferrying mission. The Corsair had only brought enough fuel for the fighters, known as Ravagers, to get them flight-ready and escort them back from Shatter to Edge, the nearest League outpost. Even that wouldn’t have been quite as intractable a problem if it hadn’t been for the thing now starting to appear on the edge of the display.

  Gravitic Anomaly 10001-A was a middling-sized black hole at the heart of a small cluster of stars, all of which were spiraling in toward their eventual doom. GA 10001-A, better known as The Maw, had originated somewhere in deep space, perhaps even from outside the Milky Way. Its intense gravitation had remorselessly yanked stars toward it as it swept through the cluster, ripping them to incandescent shreds, pulling them into a dazzling accretion disk, and devouring the remnants. As terrifying as that sounded, though, it posed no threat to League or any other inhabited space and had really been little more than an astronomical curiosity.

  Until now.

  The Maw loomed ahead, directly in the flightpath of the Corsair and the Ravagers. That wasn’t a problem, either. The black hole was a known navigation hazard and was actually often used as a waypoint by ships traversing this region of space. Those ships had to stay well clear because any attempt to use a translation drive amid the storm of gravitational flux surrounding The Maw could be catastrophic. Their next translation hop would, therefore, require them to change their course, bypassing the black hole at a safe distance, and then angling back into League space. Again, not a big deal—usually. This time, though, it would give their Deeper pursuers the opportunity to cut across their upcoming course change and drop back out of unSpace virtually on top of them.

  The only other alternative was to fly into The Maw’s clutches. That would take the almost out of almost certain death.

  Lomas drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. Her self-assured rebuke of Telas had sounded confident, but the words were empty. They really had only a couple of choices, neither of them good. Fly into the black hole and die, or bypass the black hole and end up facing the far superior firepower of the Deeper ships.

  She sighed. There was a third option, of course. Just turn and fight now. The outcome would be the same, but at least it would be on their terms.

  She opened her mouth to start issuing orders to prepare for battle, but a familiar voice cut her off.

  “Yo, Lomas. Dash here. What’s your ETA at Edge?”

  Lomas punched at the comm. “Dash, where are you?”

  “On my way to Edge with a couple of rookie mech pilots in tow. I figured I can turn a training flight into a chance to pick up some of those awesome donuts you guys make in exchange for a new batch of Freya’s plum wine—”

  “Dash, I’ll make sure you get a lifetime supply of donuts if you can somehow help us out.”

  Dash narrowed his eyes at the Archetype’s operational display. That had been another recent upgrade to the mech, a bit of tech wizardry from Conover, Sentinel, and Custodian. Fusing the sensor data from all friendly ships, installations, and probes in range, it gave Dash an overarching view of the big picture. And it was, indeed, a big picture, spanning light-years of space and multiple star systems.

  The only trouble was that Dash was still working out exactly how best to use the cursed thing.

  “Okay, Sentinel, tell me if I’ve got this right. Lomas has to go around that damned black hole. That’s going to let the Deepers catch up, right?”

  “Essentially correct, yes,” the AI replied.

  “You sound impressed.”

  “You always impress me.”

  Dash lifted his eyebrows. “Really?”

  “No, not really. I just thought your ego could use a boost.”

  Dash grinned. “Feel free to do so at any time.” His smile faded, though. “Anyway, based on this, it doesn’t seem like we can intercept Lomas before the Deepers catch up to her.”

  “Also correct.”

  “Oh, for—where’d those bastards come from, anyway?”

  “Their trajectory suggests that they originated near, or beyond, the galactic margin,” Sentinel replied.

  “What, they were sitting out in the black and suddenly thought, hey, I know, let’s fly on this course because it’ll take us right up the butts of some League ships a hundred plus light-years away?”

  “I have no idea. What you asked me is where they came from, and I gave you the best answer I could.”

  Sentinel didn’t often sound like she was grumbling, but there was an unmistakable grumbling, almost petulant tone to her voice. She’d certainly come a long way from the clinically precise AI she’d started out as. Now, she could bitch and complain with the deft nuance of an ex-girlfriend

  “Fine, whatever. We can worry about that later. Right now, the question is, how do we get to Lomas in time to help her and not just recover the wreckage?”

  “The physics of the situation are straightforward,” Sentinel replied. “We can’t safely operate the translation drive within a given distance of the black hole’s event horizon. That distance depends on the mass of the black hole. In this case, that would be just over one light-year.”

  Dash just nodded, taking brief note of another change in Sentinel’s demeanor. At one time, she would have said one-point-something-something-something light-years, giving the distance to within a few meters, if she could. She’d apparently learned that just over one light-year was good enough for Dash.

  Not that it helped, he thought, his heart sinking. It was still enough to ensure they simply couldn’t make it to Lomas before the Deepers caught her. The grating distortion in her comm signal was an ominous reminder of the gravitational distortion between them.

  Space is just too—it’s too much, sometimes. Too big.

  Dash checked the tactical display, making sure that the two rookie Orion pilots were properly on station. They were good enough to take into battle, so he opened his mouth, about to tell Sentinel to shift their course anyway. Maybe they could arrive in time to save any of Lomas’s little flotilla, or at least exact vengeance on the Deepers. But something depicted on the sprawling operational display caught his eye.

  “Sentinel, where the gravity of two bodies overlaps, they’d tend to cancel out somewhere, wouldn’t they? Isn’t that the whole idea behind Lagrange points?” he asked.