Dark Origins (The Messenger Book 14) Read online

  Dash turned his attention back to the tactical display. Sentinel had already popped open a window, depicting the probe’s telemetry. Another by-product of their ongoing research into the gates, as well as the Radiant Points and the Gate Key, was that they’d figured out how to maintain solid comms through a gate. The probe should be able to continue transmitting good data for as long as it kept operating.

  The probe entered the gate. The telemetry briefly fuzzed over but quickly cleared.

  Dash found himself looking at Tangle, a star system simultaneously almost twelve-hundred light-years and just a few thousand klicks away.

  He saw the system’s star, an unremarkable yellow-white class-G, immediately. Sentinel opened a second window, painting a separate, new tactical display for the Tangle system, based on the probe’s incoming data. Two rocky planets, three gas giants, a twinned asteroid belt tilted at a high angle to the system’s ecliptic—

  And Deepers. The probe could distinguish ten capital ships, including a big battleship and a pair of slightly smaller battlecruisers, and at least a dozen escort-class ships. They’d arrayed themselves in the inner reaches of the Tangle system, which meant they were at least three hours flight time from the gate. That would mean the Deepers would have ample warning if and when the Cygnus Realm forces passed through. But it also meant that the Realm forces would have time to deploy and start shaping the battle before the Deepers could even begin to respond.

  Except—

  “Sentinel, what are those other ships, the ones way above the ecliptic plane there?”

  “They are warships of a wide range of designs, most of human manufacture. They’re closing on the Deeper fleet.”

  “Somebody’s mounting a counterattack on these Deeper assholes,” Benzel said.

  Spratley, who’d accompanied the Realm fleet aboard the Herald, spoke up. “While we were running, we caught wind of Deeper attacks on a bunch of systems on this side of the Shadow Nebula. It looks like they’ve banded together against these Deepers.” A pause, then he went on. “I see ships from the Tri-World Confederacy, the Tempestus Guild, a few from the Golden Alliance—”

  Dash cut in. “The Golden Alliance, huh? Those guys may or may not have an arrest warrant out for me.”

  “What’d you do?” Leira asked.

  “Hey, it was all a big misunderstanding. All those stim-chems I was carrying were supposed to be on my cargo manifest. I have no idea how they got left off because, as you know, I’m a complete enthusiast for paperwork.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I suspect that picking you up on some old outstanding warrant while facing a fleet of Deepers isn’t going to be high on their priority list.”

  “No. More to the point, though, they’re putting their tech against the Deepers. Sentinel, what are their chances?”

  “Not good. The Deepers outclass the fleet opposing them in essentially every way except sheer numbers.”

  “Okay, folks, that’s our cue. It’s go time,” Dash said, accelerating the Archetype toward the gate. The rest of the Realm fleet fell smoothly into formation behind him.

  “This is almost physically painful to watch,” Benzel said.

  Dash grunted agreement. The allied human fleet had only engaged the Deepers about half an hour ago, and they were already getting their asses thoroughly kicked.

  “Sentinel, how long until we’re in maximum effective range?”

  “Approximately forty minutes.”

  Dash hissed in frustration. The human fleet would be lucky to even last that long. He’d hoped that just appearing through the gate would draw the Deepers off, but they’d obviously decided to finish off their current opponents, while their new ones still tried to close the range.

  “Okay, change of plans. Leira and I are going to push ahead. Jexin, you stay with the N’Teel. Benzel, just keep doing what you’re doing.”

  “Roger that,” Benzel replied.

  Jexin, though, came on a private channel. She was their chief military liaison to the N’Teel, one of the alien races allied with the Realm. The N’Teel had proven themselves invaluable in combat over and over again, but they were also aggressive to the point of recklessness and eager to involve themselves in Realm affairs at every opportunity. Dash was still convinced that the N’Teel could be trouble in the future, on a clear trajectory to becoming a territorial, expansionistic problem if they weren’t properly managed now.

  The trouble was that it left Jexin tied to them, like a teacher trying to maintain order amongst a group of unruly kids.

  “Dash, I really think Benzel can handle the N’Teel. That way, it’s not just you and Leira facing the Deepers.”

  Dash knew what Jexin was getting at. The three mechs were, by far, the fastest craft they had. Operating on their own, they could accelerate at a much greater rate than the conventional ships, even those of Unseen design, like the Herald. Dash and Leira would be on their own until the rest of the fleet caught up. Her mech, the Polaris, could keep pace with the Archetype and the Swift.

  More to the point, she was getting tired of babysitting the restive, ornery N’Teel. For that, he couldn’t blame her. Every time the leader of their military mission to the Cygnus Realm, Steenowat, asked to speak with Dash about some bit of drama or other, he wanted to be ‘unavailable’. Sometimes, he relayed to Steenowat—through an appropriate cut out, of course- that he was busy doing arcane Messenger duties.

  “Jex, I’d like to keep one mech back and disengaged, just in case there’s more going on here than it seems. But I hear what you’re saying. Next op, we’ll cut you loose from the N’Teel and see how they perform without you watching over them.”

  “I appreciate that, Dash. Believe me, I appreciate that—especially because Steenowat’s on the comm for me now, no doubt to complain about something.”

  Dash chuckled. “Honestly, Jex, better you than me. Anyway, Dash out.”

  He switched back to the fleet comm channel. “Okay, Benzel, you’ve got command out here. Leira, let’s go take some pressure off our old human friends out there.”

  Dash fired the twinned dark-lances in a long burst that slashed along the hull of a Deeper cruiser, then followed up with a double-tap from the nova-cannon into the gaping rent. The shots detonated inside the hull, blowing a huge chunk out of the alien ship. But Dash had already snap-rolled the mech toward a pair of Deeper frigates closing in, pumping out burst-cannon salvos at him. He triggered the scattershot in fire-and-forget mode, letting it pour fire at the two light ships, even while lining up another dark-lance volley at the Deeper battlecruiser.

  Leira flashed past, veered through a high-speed turn, then ran parallel to the battlecruiser’s length, slamming nova-cannon shots into it as she went. Dash saw her take a couple of solid x-ray laser hits as she swept along, but most of the Deeper fire missed her, moving so fast at such a close range.

  The sustained scattershot fire took a toll on the Deeper frigates. One suddenly began tumbling out of control. The other veered aside, straight into the particle beam fire of a Tempestus Guild cruiser. As they had throughout the battle, the searing beam mostly splashed harmlessly against the Deeper ship’s shield. The motley collection of human vessels still in the fight just lacked tech powerful or sophisticated enough to really threaten the Deepers. Without Dash and Leira’s arrival, which had immediately drawn off most of the Deeper fleet, this battle would be over by now.

  Dash winced as an x-ray laser punched out of the Deeper battlecruiser and smacked squarely into the Archetype, pouring energy into the shield. He clenched his jaw and flew directly toward the weapons mount, jinking as hard as he could fling the mech from side to side. The x-ray laser lost its lock on the Archetype, and Dash used the brief pause in fire to blow the weapon apart with his dark-lances. He then followed Leira into a run along the big ship’s length, tearing open the hull with the dark-lances and throwing in fire from the mech’s wrist-mounted rail gun. When he pulled away, the big ship began slewing to one side, attitude control gone.


  For good measure, Dash lit his sword and slashed sixty meters of hull away with a casual flick, rolling the Archetype away with the grace of a low-g dancer.

  “Bastards,” Dash muttered, watching the spinning hull section get torched by a wayward Tempestus beam.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Sentinel agreed.

  Dash and Leira swept back out of the battlespace to take a breather and get themselves reoriented. As they did, the comm lit up with an incoming message from the Guild cruiser.

  “Unknown ships, didn’t want to interrupt you in the middle of kicking ass. Since you seem to be taking a break—who the hell are you people?”

  Dash wasn’t sure who the speaker was, but he instinctively liked her no-bullshit way of speaking. “Be happy to answer your questions, but let’s take care of these assholes first, shall we?”

  With that, Dash dove back into the battle.

  “Dash, we just entered maximum effective missile range,” Benzel said. “You want to tell our human friends there to clear the battlespace? They aren’t giving off IFF signals, and the missiles might decide they’re bad guys, too.”

  “Roger that,” Dash said, then switched back to the speaker on the Guild cruiser. He explained the situation, and she came right back.

  “Hey, you guys want to finish these—whatever they are—off, be our guests!”

  The remaining human ships began disengaging and pulling back. The Herald and her consorts, meantime, loosed a salvo of missiles, then followed them in, opening up with dark-lances and nova-cannons as soon as they were within range. Even at range, it was a storm of ordnance so thick that the battlespace seemed to glow. Impact after impact bloomed in silent glory, and the scans and comms were filled with the dying light of Deeper corpses.

  “Dash, those ships over there, at your ten o’clock high—they’re not pulling back,” Leira said.

  Dash looked where she’d indicated and saw the offending ships. He didn’t immediately recognize them, although they were familiar.

  No, he recognized them.

  “Clan Shirna,” he said, his voice flat.

  Leira sniffed. “Figures. Haven’t had to deal with them up close in years, and the first time we do, they’re gonna be a pain in the ass.”

  Dash indicated the Clan Shirna ships to Benzel, telling him to avoid firing at them if he could.

  “You sure about that?” Benzel asked, a wicked, almost mischievous tone in his voice. “I mean, they aren’t pulling back, they’re staying in our beaten zone. And accidents do happen.”

  “Believe me, I’ve got no objection to kicking Clan Shirna in the teeth. It was how I started out my career as Messenger, in fact. But they are fighting on the side of the humans here.”

  “Roger that. We’ll do our best.”

  Dash mostly watched the remainder of the battle unfold from a distance, only darting in to attack fleeting targets of opportunity. The massed firepower of the Herald and the rest of the fleet was more than enough to reduce what remained of the Deepers to bio-alloy scrap.

  He actually paid more attention to the Clan Shirna warships. There were five of them—a battlecruiser, a light cruiser, and three destroyers. They fought with a tenacious ferocity that immediately made him think of the N’Teel. There. That right there perfectly summed up his concerns about the N’Teel. Left to their own devices, they were a Clan Shirna in the making, minus the religious zealotry.

  The last Deeper ship, their battleship, slammed an exclamation point on the end of the battle by exploding in spectacular fashion. It must have lost fusion containment before the safeties could kick in. The bow and the stern tumbled off in different directions, while the cloud of glowing debris that had once been the rest of the hull whirled off into space.

  “All ships, check fire. I say again, check fire,” Benzel said over the general comm. A few seconds passed, then he came back on with a note of triumph in his voice.

  “I never get tired of saying that. Means it’s time for mopping up, and then drinks and medals—”

  He broke off as a new firefight erupted. The Clan Shirna ships had accelerated directly toward the Herald, rapid firing as they approached.

  Dash snapped out a curse. So did Benzel.

  “Really?” the ex-privateer said, his voice no longer cheerful and all menacing growl, like a bad-tempered bear. “These assholes are really going to turn on us?”

  The Clan Shirna ships pumped out particle shots and followed up with a missile barrage. The Herald’s shield absorbed the particle-beam hits without much effort, and her point-defenses alone were enough to shoot down the relatively cumbersome, dumb missiles. That wasn’t really the point, though.

  “Dash, permission to—”

  “Punch these assholes square in the face? Sure, go ahead,” Dash said, finishing Benzel’s request.

  “I’m gonna enjoy this,” Benzel said.

  The Herald immediately accelerated, her consorts, four more heavy cruisers, falling into station with her. They held their fire, though, waiting for the Clan Shirna ships to close. Dash got it. Benzel didn’t want to outright destroy them, which would be easy for the far, far greater firepower of the Realm ships. The Herald would probably have little difficulty taking out all five Clan Shirna ships on her own. He’d already anticipated Dash’s desire to disable them instead, so he wanted to get close to get solid firing solutions on weapon mounts and engine clusters.

  “The apparent leader of the human ships is back on the comm, wishing to speak to you,” Sentinel said.

  Dash kept his eyes on the brief and one-sided battle that was about to occur. “Put her on, please and thank you.”

  A window popped open, revealing a striking woman with a cascade of long red hair down one side of her head; the other side had been shaved bald and sported an intricate series of tattoos.

  “First of all, I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Lena Disraeli, Chief Proctor of the Tempestus Guild’s Enforcement Division. Second of all, I want to emphasize that those Glorious Splinter idiots are in no way affiliated with us, so please don’t start shooting at us. And third, who the hell are you?”

  Dash grinned. Yes, he liked this woman. “I’m Newton Sawyer, aka the Messenger, the leader of the Cygnus Realm. Everyone calls me Dash, though, so I’d be quite happy for you to do the same.”

  Disraeli smiled, but her eyes narrowed a fraction. “Cygnus Realm? We got news a few years back about some new alien nation, the Cygnus Empire, suddenly appearing and expanding a long way anti-spinward of here. Rumors were that it was the Unseen back to reclaim their former territory. Never did hear much after that, so we took it as just another conflated tale about something else.”

  “Well, that’s partly right. Our Realm—not empire, by the way—is based on Unseen tech, but it’s mostly humans, like yours truly. Anyway, more detailed explanations can wait. Rest assured that we’re not going to start shooting at you. We’ll reserve that for these—what did you call them?”

  “They call themselves the Glorious Splinter. They’re some offshoot of the old, defunct Clan Shirna. And again, just to be clear, they’re here as more of an enemy-of-my-enemy thing, not because we’re especially happy about having them as allies. But we’re desperate for any hulls on our side.” She paused, then went on, her voice a mix of anger and bitterness. “Not that it really mattered. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, I don’t think any number of our ships would have been enough to deal with these Unknowns.”

  Defunct Clan Shirna. Dash liked the sound of that. But he turned his attention back to Disraeli.

  “They’re actually called Deepers, and we’ve been fighting them for months now. Anyway, give us a chance to take care of these Glorious Splinter assholes, and we’ll be back in touch. Dash out.”

  In the brief time Dash had been talking, the Herald and her battle line had opened up with precision fire, knocking out weapons-mounts, fire-control scanners, and drives. All five of the Glorious Splinter ships had already been disabled, an impressiv
e and definitive display of Realm firepower.

  “Good shooting, Benzel,” Dash said, watching as what had once been proud Clan Shirna ships.

  “Thanks. I sure wish I’d had this sort of setup back in my privateering days. Would’ve made life a lot easier.”

  “No, you can’t borrow the Herald to do some freelance privateer work on the side.”

  “Aw, you’re no fun,” Benzel replied, chuckling. “Anyway, they’re disabled. What do you want to do about them now? Just leave them?”

  Dash glared at the incapacitated ships, now just coasting along on their last trajectories. He didn’t want to just destroy them out of hand. They had at least attempted to help against the Deepers. That also ruled out simply leaving them because they’d eventually die when whichever of their air, water, power, or food ran out first.

  “Have you tried hailing them on the comm?” Dash asked.

  “Yeah, repeatedly. We got a couple of replies that I won’t bother repeating, including one that actually kinda shocked me. Since then, nothing, no response at all.”

  Dash made a mental note to ask Benzel just what sort of language he, a grizzled spacer and former pirate, would have found shocking. But he pressed on with the problem at hand.

  “Okay, well, I don’t want to just leave them for our new human friends to have to deal with because that could get bloody. Fancy a little boarding excursion, my friend?”

  Benzel’s voice rang with eager delight. “I thought you’d never ask!”

  They worked out the details, deciding to board the Glorious Splinter battlecruiser and strike right at whoever was leading them. Dash left Leira in charge of the fleet, then accelerated to match course and velocity with the target ship. He couldn’t resist leaving it at that, though.

  “By the way, Leira, did you see that Lena Disraeli?”

  “I did. Why?”

  “I don’t know. Something about her. Maybe that haircut. You should consider trying something like that.”

  “Oh, I’ll cut something off, but it won’t be my hair.”