The Messenger Box Set: Books 1-6 Read online

  “It is,” Sentinel confirmed.

  “Okay, so how does it work? What do I do?”

  “You must exit the Archetype and go to it. You will understand its function.”

  “Ah.”

  Dash frowned. He had to exit the big mech, which meant leaving behind this stupendous sense of almost god-like freedom and power. He suddenly found himself reluctant.

  “I can’t use it from here?”

  “You cannot.”

  “Well damn.” That led to another problem. He still wore his vac suit, and his helmet was nearby, but the suit’s oxygen supply had been depleted.

  Except the indicator read that it was fully charged—oxygen, power, thruster fuel, even the drinking water were all at the maximum.

  Of course they are.

  He wondered how he would exit the cradle, his movements not just being performed by the Archetype, but it obviously understood his intent. He was able to lever himself free and put on his helmet. As soon as he did, the atmosphere around him vanished and the Archetype opened. After a last look back at the cradle—which looked so inviting—he stepped out, thrusting himself down to the frozen surface, and started for the Eye.

  The comet was, he realized, being held in place by something similar to the Archetype’s drive, some smoothly powerful force, like constantly-firing engines. But there was no exhaust, no expulsion of reaction mass at all. Even ignoring everything else about the Archetype—the Eye, for that matter, or even the Lens and the Ribbon—such a drive by itself would be a scientific and commercial revolution throughout the galaxy. Dash wouldn’t be able to spend the credits fast enough, just for that tech alone.

  As he bounced up to the Eye, though, it struck him that, no matter how he felt about it, the Unseen behind all of this probably weren’t interested in making him rich. To be completely honest, he was starting to realize the idea of money was far less important than it had been. This was obviously about something more. Much more. So, he’d examine the Eye and then do whatever came next.

  As it turned out, the Eye was surprisingly simple and not that spectacular, really. There was no door, just an opening leading into the dome. Inside, he found an array of what seemed to be telescopes, except each seemed to be designed for a different species to use. The fact that it was more alien tech and had stood for who knew how long—maybe two hundred thousand years—essentially unharmed on this comet, was just another bit of amazing among all this other amazing. But, in the end, it was really just an observatory. Dash found himself a little disappointed.

  “Okay,” he said, “I guess I’m here to look at something.” He scanned the thirty-odd different eyepieces, or whatever you’d call something obviously intended for use by something absolutely not even remotely human. It was hard to tell which he should use, though.

  “It should be evident which is appropriate for you,” Sentinel said.

  Dash jumped. The voice seemed no different than it had in the Archetype, which meant he must be hearing it inside his head—as he had been all along. The clarity was disturbing; the immediacy of the words, reassuring.

  “So you’re still with me, huh?”

  “The connection remains until it is ended.”

  “Oh. And how does that happen, Sentinel?”

  “Through your choice, or in the event the Archetype is destroyed or otherwise compromised.”

  “My choice? So, if I choose to sever this connection, can I get it back?”

  “That depends on the circumstances.”

  Okay, that wasn’t a yes. Good to know. What he also knew was which eyepiece was the correct one. He moved to it and pressed his faceplate against it. Instead of a tiny circle of image, though, his vision immediately filled with a view of another comet, except this one was so dark it was easier to make out because of how it occulted the stars behind it.

  “Alright,” he said, “it’s another comet. So?”

  “This is the first step along a path defined by the Creators, that could eventually lead to an ultimate understanding of their purpose,” Sentinel said.

  “Why don’t they just, you know, tell me their purpose? Why turn it into a sort of scavenger hunt?”

  “Again, they wish such discovering and understanding to be a deliberate act, not something that simply occurs by happenstance.”

  Dash sighed. “Okay, then. I guess that dark comet is our next stop.” He pulled away from the telescope and the image vanished. Still, he knew exactly where that dark comet was, and how to get there. More information, injected instantly into his consciousness, told him it was more than just a passive telescope, it was also a navigation device. Looking through it, at anything, would tell you exactly how to get to it.

  Accepting the next step in his mysterious mission, Dash flew through space once more.

  As he did, he experimented with his ability to control the Archetype. It was enough—do whatever with his body, and the Archetype did it instead. He still had no idea what actually drove it, allowing it to rapidly accelerate, decelerate, and change direction, all without much worry about things like inertia; it was as though the Unseen had reached a point where things like physical laws became something more like guidelines. In fact, he did find that he possessed, or at least could access knowledge pertaining to how the Archetype worked, but none of it really meant much to him. It was like reading a highly technical, scientific paper about some esoteric subject. He could do it, but he wouldn’t understand it. That appeared to be a limitation of his brain.

  And probably a good one. He knew he’d undergone some sort of rewiring, but he was still Dash. Changing too much would have him become something else—and not only was that something he didn’t particularly want, it seemed to suit the purposes of the Unseen and their path to discovery. Although that did raise a question.

  “These Creators, are they the Unseen?”

  “Because of your limited understanding, as well as fanciful conjecture and wishful thinking, what you think of as the Unseen is vague. But it likely does correspond, at least in part, to the Creators, yes.”

  “Amazing how you can be both helpful and condescending at the same time.”

  “I have no particular emotional intent,” Sentinel promised.

  “That I don’t doubt.”

  Dash flew on, until the black comet came into view. He accelerated himself toward it. He was actually starting to get used to this bizarre and almost dreamlike way of traveling through space, and he soon sensed something was approaching.

  Dash just knew it. Something, no, several somethings. They were ships. Three of them, small and fast. Dash turned and immediately saw them. They were Echoes, or something very similar. Clan Shirna ships for sure. But they were inside the Pasture. They shouldn’t be here, which meant Nathis must be getting desperate.

  No, wait. Their power signatures were all different. The fusion drive of one was running rough. In fact, as he studied them, Dash could tell they were in various states of repair, using a range of different components. Every Clan Shirna ship he’d encountered to date had been impeccably maintained and, among the ships of a given type, utterly uniform in essentially every way. These weren’t, not at all.

  They might be a dissident group. Some sort of cell or sect that had no qualms about entering the Pasture. Or maybe they weren’t Clan Shirna at all, and were just raiders, using barely-maintained Clan Shirna tech.

  They drove right toward him.

  “Well, I wonder what they’re going to think of me?”

  The question was answered when, a few seconds later, the three ships launched a salvo of missiles and particle beam fire at the Archetype. At him.

  15

  The missiles came streaking in. But Dash barely had time to spare for them, instead trying to dodge as particle cannon fire tore through space around him.

  Several beams hit, raking across the Archetype. Dash had wondered if the weapons could actually harm the monstrous construct, but they could. Its substance boiled off into space, leaving tra
ils of vaporized metal in its wake. Dash winced at the impacts, feeling what would have been pain, had it actually been his body. It was damage, though. And he continued to feel it, in the sense that he knew immediately where the Archetype had been hit and how badly.

  So far, not badly at all, but that could change quickly.

  “Hey, Sentinel. Can that be…um, fixed?”

  “Repairs are underway. Recomposition is in effect.”

  In that bizarre way he shared data instantly with Sentinel, Dash knew that meant the damaged material of the Archetype was repairing itself. Somehow, it seemed to combine the obdurate strength of metal with some of the organic properties of living flesh.

  Dash cursed. While he was distracted, the missiles had closed unimpeded. He flung himself aside and two streaked past, their engines burning furiously as they tried to turn and come back for another run. A third was about to impact, though.

  Just as he had in the icy cavern right before he crashed into the wall, Dash flung up a hand.

  The missile detonated against his open palm.

  There was a dazzling flash, and a shock of impact against his hand. The missile’s warhead had its blast effect dialed down. Whoever these attackers were—Clan Shirna, breakaways therefrom, or someone else entirely—they obviously wanted to try to disable the Archetype so they could claim it for themselves.

  “Yeah, I don’t think so,” he murmured.

  Dash flung himself toward the raiders, and they scattered. He picked one and zoomed after it. Its fusion exhaust blew past him, but he held back, not wanting to test the Archetype’s ability to resist and repair damage by simply flying into the incandescent plasma plume. Instead, he considered weapons. He knew the Archetype had them, but he hadn’t given them much thought so far. He only had so much room for wonder.

  “Seekers, and a dark-lance cannon,” Sentinel informed.

  “That’s missiles and a sort of beam, right?”

  “Correct.”

  He looked at the raider ahead, who had slewed to one side and was burning at full power, desperately trying to get from out in front of the Archetype. Dash simply arced after, following him.

  The raider slewed again, a last-ditch effort to bring its particle cannon to bear. Dash made a snap decision to use the dark-lance but had no idea exactly how.

  A solid beam of something that seemed to be the opposite of light connected the Archetype and the raider. He could only see it because it lensed the stars behind it, briefly turning them to smeared whirls of light. Where it touched the raider, the beam simply made matter disappear. The raider’s ship was suddenly just fragments, themselves abruptly vanishing into a searing wash of light and radiation as the fusion core blew.

  “Oh wow.”

  A particle beam gouged him across the back.

  He did a somersault and found himself facing a raider that had fallen in behind him. He looked at it and decided to use the beam again.

  Nothing.

  “The dark-lance projector must recuperate, Dash. It is currently operating at its lowest power setting.”

  Two thoughts instantly flashed through Dash’s mind:

  That was its lowest power setting?

  And why?

  But he didn’t have time to consider either. The raider fired again, raking its particle beams across his face. Again, Dash winced.

  “Okay, that was just rude.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Sentinel.

  The dark-lance was, still stuck in some sort of recharging cycle. So he thought about a seeker instead—

  Something flashed away from the Archetype on an insane acceleration curve. Of course, it left no exhaust. It was just a small projectile, probably no bigger than Dash himself, but in a few seconds it was traveling at a speed the Slipwing could only have reached within minutes of acceleration. Neither Dash nor the raider pilot had time to see much more than a quick blur, then the raider crumpled in on itself, imploding into a tight ball of wreckage. An instant later it erupted into a dazzling explosion of breached plasma core.

  Dash couldn’t react fast enough. He flew through the explosion immediately after it had happened. Charged plasma, stellar-hot, washed over him, and then he was through.

  He looked around. The two missiles he’d dodged earlier had regained their lock and now burned straight at him. The final raider, meanwhile, had pulled back, and now fired two more missiles. It turned out he was smart; he maneuvered to ensure Dash had to face three threats—himself, and two pairs of missiles—coming at him from three entirely different directions. He might be able to deal with any two of them, but probably not all three.

  That was clearly the raider’s thinking, and it would be sound in the case of nearly any other opponent. But Dash was starting to get the hang of the Archetype, even starting to feel comfortable wearing it, for lack of a better term. The missiles were actually the more dire of the threats, because their warheads could pack a far larger punch than a particle beam. He sent seekers after three of them. That left one missile and the raider himself.

  He focused on the remaining missile. The dark-lance projector was still recharging, so he flung himself toward it, dodging it at the last second. As he did, the seekers found the other missiles. Dash saw them destroyed—perfect. As for this one…

  He swung an open palm, as though swatting at a Penumbrian blood-fly. It caught the missile in a glancing hit and sent it spinning off, thrusters firing crazily as it tried to reorient itself. Unable to right itself, the projectile self-destructed.

  The raider flashed by, particle beams ripping into the Archetype.

  With a frustrated yell, Dash swung his other hand in a fist. It slammed into the raider, punching its drive section away from the remainder of the hull in a spray of debris. The rest of the raider continued to coast, sparks and more debris trailing behind it. A few seconds later, the drive section exploded in yet another searing fusion blast.

  Dash looked around. Wreckage and clouds of rapidly cooling plasma surrounded him. But that was it. There were no more threats.

  He took a shuddering breath.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay. That was intense.”

  Dash made his way to the black comet. As he did, he took stock of the Archetype. The dark-lance had finally recharged, and repairs, or healing, or whatever it was, were well underway, layering new material into the wounds of the particle beam hits. But a lingering question remained.

  “Why,” he asked, “is this thing not running at full power? Like that dark-lance thing. How come it’s using its lowest power setting?”

  “Because there are components that must be obtained and installed in the Archetype.”

  “Wait, this thing isn’t complete?”

  “It is complete, but not optimal,” Sentinel explained.

  “So is that what this quest, or whatever you want to call this scavenger hunt, is all about? Travelling around to assemble all the pieces of this Archetype? That sounds, well, not to be rude, but pretty silly. Like a game or something, where you have to collect a bunch of things and then face a final, powerful enemy.”

  “There is a reason such things are enduring, regardless of the culture in question. Seeking and laboring to obtain things, in order to advance one’s knowledge and understanding, would be familiar to all of them.”

  “Really?” Dash asked.

  “Some truths are universal.”

  “If you say so.”

  Who am I to argue with a two hundred-thousand-year-old artificial intelligence? Because, she sure ain’t a standard computer like she tried to make me believe.

  They reached the black comet. Dash made to put the Archetype down on the surface the way he had on the Eye, but he suddenly realized—in that same, strange way of just realizing things—that it wasn’t necessary. What he sought was buried beneath the surface, meaning he would have to dig to get at it. In fact, that would be the only way to get at it.

  He plunged his fist into the surface of the comet. It punched through a crust of or
ganic compounds and pulverized rock, into the ice beneath. In a few moments, he had dug deep into the comet, flinging a trail of spinning, frozen debris that drifted into space behind him. As he dug, he got closer to his target.

  It was a rock.

  Dash frowned. “Uh…”

  “This object required protection against the passage of time. It was encased in rock for that reason.”

  “Okay. How do I get it out?” Dash asked.

  “That is a problem you must solve.”

  “Oh, so I’m being tested now?”

  “Every sentient thing is being tested, all of the time.”

  “How philosophical.”

  Dash considered the rock. He could easily hold it between his massive thumb and forefinger. Simply crushing it, which he could do, seemed risky. If whatever was inside the rock needed to be protected from the long passage of time, then it may not be as indestructible as most of the other Unseen tech he’d encountered. But why? And how was this a test?

  Dash peered more closely at the rock, but other than the wearing and pitting of age, he saw nothing that gave a clue.

  Wait.

  As gently as he could, Dash squeezed the rock. It immediately cracked, fragments spilling off. He took his time, turning it, applying a small bit of pressure, then turning and squeezing it again. Eventually, the broken rock crumbled away, revealing a cylindrical rod about a meter long.

  “I guess the point is, when using this Archetype thing, it’s easy to be all big and powerful. But, sometimes, it takes a gentle touch.” He smirked. “Same way I deal with women.”

  “Whatever methods you use to promote reproduction, as long as they work, they are adequate,” Sentinel said in an almost casual tone. Too casual if you asked him.

  Wow. Not only had this ancient artificial intelligence managed to make romance and sex sound about as fun as changing out a defective power coupling, but Dash couldn’t help feel it had also managed to work in a snide remark about how he approached it.

  “You’re just jealous.”

  There was no answer.