Farthest Shore: A Mecha Scifi Epic (The Messenger Book 13) Read online

  He stowed the object in one of the mech’s leg-compartments. It was a risk, of course. If it was a booby-trap, then it could potentially do serious damage. But, if it was as valuable to the Deepers as it seemed to be, the risk was worth it.

  His post-rage gloom eased. He’d gotten to kill some Deepers and recover what might prove to be something useful. It sure as hell didn’t make up for more than a hundred dead people, but it was a start.

  11

  “A Radiant Point? Why a Radiant Point?” Dash asked.

  “It’s a point-source that radiates a radio signal. Hence, Radiant Point. As a name, it’s both technically correct as a descriptor, and it sounds cool.”

  Dash grinned. “Did you just say it sounds cool?”

  “Is there a problem with my speech processor?”

  His grin became a laugh. They were still a few hours away from the Forge, fresh from the destruction of the three Deeper platforms orbiting the white dwarf. Sentinel had been making some cautious inspections of the device they’d recovered, now stowed inside the Archetype’s right leg. As a precaution, she hadn’t sealed the compartment’s doors, so they’d just blow open and off if the device—apparently now the Radiant Point—decided to blow up.

  “Okay, Radiant Point. You’re right. It does sound cool.”

  A short time passed, then Sentinel spoke up again. “I believe I’ve discerned how to access the Radiant Point.”

  “Access in what way?”

  “Since it appears to be a device for receiving, processing, and transmitting data, it stands to reason it must be possible to access it in some fashion. There are no data ports or other apparent physical means of doing so. However, I believe I can access it using a radio signal.”

  “Shouldn’t that wait until we get back to the Forge, and we can do it safely, under controlled conditions?”

  “That’s probably the wisest course of action, yes.”

  Again, they flew on in silence for a while.

  Dash finally broke it. “Can you firewall it off so it doesn’t do something to compromise the Archetype? Like squirt a virus into your systems or something like that?”

  “I can. I would also recommend returning to real space, removing the Radiant Point from storage, then obtaining some distance from it before attempting it.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Dash brought the Archetype back into real space amid an unremarkable interstellar void. He extracted the Radiant Point from the leg-compartment, then backed the Archetype about a hundred klicks away.

  “Sentinel, I’m curious. Were you actually going to ask to do this, or were you waiting for me to suggest it?”

  “You’re the Messenger. That sort of decision is yours.”

  “Admit it, you were curious. You were hoping I’d want to do this, weren’t you?”

  “I’m not capable of curiosity.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. I do admit to wanting to determine just what we had found.”

  Dash laughed. “Okay, well, over to you. Firewall yourself up, then try talking to this thing.”

  Time passed. Dash waited.

  More time passed.

  “Uh, Sentinel?”

  “One moment.”

  Dash sighed and kept waiting. The passing time sparked a worry. What if Sentinel had been compromised? What if she’d been disabled or even wiped? The Archetype absolutely relied on her to manage and oversee its systems. He couldn’t even translate without her.

  Yet more time passed, and now impatience joined the worry. Dash scowled, about to speak up. But Sentinel cut him off.

  “I have established secure contact with the Radiant Point. I am downloading all relevant data now.”

  “That took a while. I was getting worried.”

  “Apologies, but hacking into an alien artifact protected by its own suite of firewalls and countermeasures can be a time-consuming activity.”

  “Yeah, I guess it would. You definitely did it faster than I would. Anyway, what do we have?”

  Sentinel switched to the operational display, then zoomed out until most of the galactic arm was depicted, with the black gulf of intergalactic space filling almost half of the image. A series of icons appeared on it, some within the arm, others outside it.

  Dash just stared. “What the hell are those?”

  “Arkubators.”

  Dash kept staring. He could match the locations of some of the Arkubators to ones they knew about, or at least suspected. But others were entirely new to him—

  The enormity of what he was looking at hit him.

  “Holy shit. Did we just stumble into a trove of Deeper intel?”

  “It goes well beyond that. This Radiant Point is capable of communication with all of these Arkubators, and likely other Deeper vessels and installations as well.”

  “So it’s a comm device.”

  “Again, it’s much more than that. These communications are instantaneous, over any distance. With it, the Deepers could enable real-time comms with locations in the Magellanic Clouds, for example. Moreover, I see nothing that would limit the distance at all. For instance, it would be possible, using this system, to achieve real-time communications with a location in the Andromeda galaxy or anywhere else. It seems to employ properties of space-time that we have yet to discern, much less harness.”

  Dash’s stare turned into a gape. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “What do you think I’m saying?”

  “That this Radiant Point thing uses the same tech as a gate.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Dash deflated. Still, though, this was an—amazing find didn’t seem to begin to cover it.

  But Sentinel went on.

  “It’s not that this is similar to a gate or merely based on similar principles. What I’m saying is that the Radiant Point is a gate.”

  Dash almost tumbled out of the Archetype, his excitement over retrieving the Radiant Point overwriting any particular desire to remain cool, or even just calm.

  An entire group waited for him in the docking bay—Leira, Viktor, Amy, Conover, Harolyn, Elois, and about a dozen engineers from both the Cygnus Realm and the Rimworld League. Dash strode up to them, beaming with enthusiasm.

  “I gather word got around,” he said, stopping in front of the impromptu delegation.

  “That you found a miniature, portable gate and brought it back here?” Leira said

  Conover tried to shrug nonchalantly. “Yeah, Custodian mentioned something about it.” The glitter in his enhanced eyes belied his forced, casual manner, though.

  “Where is it?” Viktor asked.

  “Sentinel offloaded it. Custodian should have brought it into the fabrication bay by now.”

  “Oh, hell, what are we waiting for? We’re all dying to see this thing,” Amy said, waving her arms toward the exit from the docking bay. “Come on, let’s go!”

  As they strode along, Dash started snapping out instructions. He wanted the device studied, analyzed, their best people working on it. All other projects were to take second place to it. Determining exactly how the Radiant Point worked had become the absolute, number one priority for the Cygnus Realm.

  “Dash, we just commissioned the Absolute Zero, our new research ship,” Elois said. “It’s en route to the Backwater Gate. Do you want to bring it back here?”

  Dash paced on for a bit, then shook his head. “No. Let’s take the Radiant Point to it. I’d like to have the Backwater Gate handy while it’s being researched. It might be valuable to be able to get quick access to it.”

  “If we’re going to do that, then we need to ensure that the Absolute Zero is well-protected. Just like we’re making researching this Radiant Point a top priority, you can bet the Deepers are doing the same thing with getting it back from us,” Viktor said.

  “Or destroying it,” Harolyn offered. “The gates are their big advantage over us right now. I know if I were them, I’d spare nothing to make sure we don�
��t get to figure out how it works.”

  Dash nodded as they entered the elevator that would take them to the fabrication level. “Excellent point. Custodian, where’s Benzel?”

  “He is aboard the Herald, overseeing fleet redeployment,” Custodian replied.

  “I hope he hasn’t got too far into it,” Dash muttered, then activated his comm.

  “Benzel? Dash.”

  “Yo, Dash. I just read Wei-Ping’s SITREP about the battle at Eastern.”

  It was all he said. It didn’t matter, though, because his somber tone said it all.

  “Yeah. But that’s not why I’m calling. I need you to put together a force package. A strong one. It needs to go to Backwater.”

  “This have something to do with that whatchamacallit you found after you left Eastern?”

  “Yeah, it does. We’re taking it to Backwater and rendezvousing with the Absolute Zero there. If the Deepers find out, they’re going to be hell-bent on stopping us from researching it.”

  “Well, there goes the last hour of working out ship movements.”

  “Sorry.”

  Benzel laughed. “First, no, you’re not. Secondly, you shouldn’t be, anyway. I get what you’re saying. Look, gimme—another hour. We’ll get the fleet reconfigured. Meantime, I recommend that instead of keeping the Anchors apart in four locations, we pair them up. That’ll make protecting them a whole lot easier, especially since they can protect one another.”

  “Sounds good. Do it.”

  “Roger that, Benzel out.”

  “If we can pick this Radiant Point apart, we can find the secret of all the gates,” Conover said. “We could even build gates of our own.”

  “Which means we can—holy shit, we can go anywhere,” Amy added, her eyes gleaming at the possibilities.

  Dash turned. “Elois, you once said that you suspected the Deepers weren’t from our world, our—our sphere of existence,” Dash said.

  “I did.”

  “And neither are all the beings aboard the Arkubators?”

  She paused but gave a terse nod. “I don’t like to guess, but—yes. I’d say there are almost certainly life forms from outside this galaxy, and maybe even outside this thing we call reality. That’s if such a thing exists, of course.”

  Dash nodded as she spoke, slowly trying to reign in his racing thoughts and let the thread of idea he was following just unspool ahead of him.

  “We already know there are realities outside this one, though,” Viktor said. “That’s what unSpace is.”

  Elois pushed up her lower lip, then nodded. “True, that. Good point.”

  But Dash’s thoughts had moved on.

  “Okay, so if these gates are like, say, a radio, and they have a frequency—”

  Leira suddenly put a hand on his arm, her face split by a wide smile. “We could intercept it. Use it. Appear wherever they are. And, maybe, wherever they came from.”

  “But if that’s some weird, alternate dimension, it may not even be compatible with human life. Hell, it might not even be compatible with matter, as we understand it,” Viktor said.

  “But the Deepers are here, in this reality, very much made up of matter,” Harolyn replied.

  Elois nodded again. “So it’s possible to cross over one way, at least.”

  As the elevator stopped, Dash turned a wintry smile on the rest of them. “All good questions, but they rely on us cracking this code. So let’s do that, and then do what I’ve been saying I want to for a long time now.”

  “What’s that?” Amy asked.

  “Take the fight to the Deepers. And not just to their installations and fortresses and ships.” His smile became even colder. “I want to take the fight to wherever they’re from, into their home. A kind of knock knock, mother—”

  “Dash?” Amy asked again, smiling.

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s not bother knocking.”

  Before they could take the fight anywhere, though, they had to deal with an unexpected Deeper incursion—another attack on the N’Teel homeworld.

  They’d scrambled a hastily assembled force, the need to yet again shuffle around ships and assignments pushing Benzel to the brink of tearing his beard out. Dash told him to hold that, though, and focus his anger on the Deepers. At that, he’d grinned a grin that made Dash wince back a bit. Benzel had only said one thing.

  “With pleasure.”

  Benzel led the force this time, a powerful armada of ships that included the Herald, and their supercarrier, the Victory. Wei-Ping had wanted to mobilize her own force and throw the Stalwart back into the fray, but Dash had nixed that.

  “Your turn to stay back, stay in charge, and get your ship fixed.”

  “Again,” Benzel had injected into the conversation, then immediately hurried away, whistling. Wei-Ping had followed him with a gamma-ray-laser scowl.

  Now, Benzel’s force dropped out of unSpace a half-minute after Dash, Leira in the Swift, Jexin the Polaris, and Amy in the Talon. All three mechs had had some DM2 upgrades done, but neither came close to matching the Archetype—yet. Conover stayed back, working on picking apart the secrets of the Radiant Point with Viktor and Custodian.

  Dash studied the tactical situation as he led the relief force in toward the planet. As he did, he received a series of increasingly frantic messages from the N’Teel, each of which he tried to respond to as calmly and resolutely as possible. But the tactical situation was deteriorating quickly. The Deepers had once more seized their northern mining complex, and at the same time, were delivering punishing strikes on N’Teel communities and holdings across the planet.

  The burgeoning crisis needed an immediate response, but the fleet would need more than an hour just to get in firing range. Something else tickled at him, though. Why had the Deepers specifically retaken only the one mining complex? It had been producing—copper, Dash thought. Copper, and nickel, and platinum group metals, right. Were the Deepers in such desperate need of those metals that they’d try this? Surely they knew the Realm would pry them back off the planet again unless the N’Teel homeworld was the hill they’d decided to die on. But why? It just wasn’t that strategic a location.

  “Guys, I’m going to zip ahead here and try to disrupt the Deepers, keep them on their back foot while the rest of you show up. Leira, you, Amy, and Jex follow at best possible speed. Benzel, just keep the fleet together and make the best time you can.”

  “What are you thinking, Dash?” Leira asked.

  “Not sure. There’s just something odd about this whole attack and the way the Deepers are carrying it out.”

  He firewalled the Blur drive, and the Archetype shot forward, quickly leaving the other mechs and the fleet behind.

  Dash twisted and gyrated, flinging himself as hard around the battlespace as he ever had. He was facing a Deeper battleship, four heavy cruisers and sundry smaller ships in orbit above him, and a multitude of Deeper fighters, and even some ground-based weapons, around and below him. The big ships up above had poured fire at him as he’d approached the planet, but the aliens either still weren’t aware of the Archetype’s vastly improved performance, or they hadn’t yet figured out how to deal with it. He’d nimbly dodged the fire he could and took the small amount he couldn’t on the shield. As enhanced as the rest of the mech’s systems were, the shield could now absorb far more energy and radiate it away much faster in a powerful burst. It actually turned the shield into a sort of weapon. Dash learned to actually take hits on the shield, accumulating energy until the mech was wrapped in a coruscating halo of power, then getting close to an enemy and triggering the shield into radiate mode, releasing the stored power as a powerful, short-ranged burst.

  He’d ended up crippling three Deeper ships, two light cruisers, and a destroyer, and severely damaging a heavy cruiser, and that had all happened during a single pass, as he’d plunged down into the planet’s atmosphere.

  The Deeper capital ships had tried to keep up their fire on him, but now the Archety
pe had been locked into a swirling melee with a multitude of fighters. The orbital bombardment that had followed him down through atmo had actually done more friendly-fire damage to the Deepers than to him, so they’d backed off and readied themselves, instead, for the arrival of the other three mechs.

  Dash raced over the mining complex. His passage left an enormous shockwave in his wake, raising a colossal curtain of foaming water and spray as he passed. Sentinel had focused the scanners on the complex as they blasted past, then replayed the imagery as Dash pulled away. It wasn’t much, more like a snapshot than an actual video, but it showed the Deepers boiling over the platform like ants, intent on—something.

  “Sentinel, any ideas?”

  “Yes, many. They all start with not flying in a straight line like this.”

  Dash grimaced. A swarm of at least a dozen fighters had fallen in behind him and now poured fire at him. The Archetype wobbled under a rapid succession of hits before Dash could pull up and accelerate vertically, climbing at a rate even the agile Deeper fighters couldn’t match. At the apex of his climb, he started taking fire from a trio of light cruisers the attacking aliens had left in orbit, so he slammed full reverse thrust, bringing the mech to a virtual halt in just a few seconds, then did a hammerhead stall and fell back toward the battle below.

  “Okay, any ideas now? About what the Deepers are doing here?”

  “Again, yes. Something appears to be emerging from the water, just east of the mining platform.”

  Dash zoomed in on the place Sentinel had indicated. Sure enough, something bulbous and round rose from the depths adjacent to the mining platform, water cascading from it in sheets.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Unknown. I’m scanning it now,” Sentinel said.

  The whatever-it-was lifted itself out of the ocean. Streaming water, it rose, accelerating slowly as it climbed skyward. The Deeper fighters immediately formed a protective screen around it.

  Dash just stared for a moment, waiting for Sentinel to complete her scans and deliver the results. As he did, a stark truth hit him.