Farthest Shore
Author: J. N. Chaney; Terry Maggert
Date: 2021-05-09 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: Victory begins with an idea, and that idea forms in the place between galaxies. Drifting in the intergalactic deep, Dash begins the final push towards peace. From the depths of Realm lore, the Kingsport takes shape, one component at a time. But the war is not over, and the Deepers aren’t done. The space beyond our galaxy is far from empty, and the Arkubators, Deeper worlds, and other secrets begin to reveal themselves as the Realm forces fight their way, gate to gate, into areas never seen by humans. Dash will journey farther than any other human has ever gone—or so he thinks. What awaits him
Publisher: Variant Publications

Copyrighted Material

Farthest Shore Copyright © 2021 by Variant Publications

Book design and layout copyright © 2021 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.

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Book Description

Victory begins with an idea, and that idea forms in the place between galaxies.

Drifting in the intergalactic deep, Dash begins the final push towards peace. From the depths of Realm lore, the Kingsport takes shape, one component at a time.

But the war is not over, and the Deepers aren’t done.

The space beyond our galaxy is far from empty, and the Arkubators, Deeper worlds, and other secrets begin to reveal themselves as the Realm forces fight their way, gate to gate, into areas never seen by humans.

Dash will journey farther than any other human has ever gone—or so he thinks.

What awaits him is a secret that will change everything humans know about their origins.

Only two questions will remain: Can humanity win?

And at what cost?

Contents

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

Epilogue

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About the Authors

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

Wei-Ping leaned forward in her new command seat, rested her elbows on the arms, and planted her chin on her interlaced fingers.

“You’ve got that suspicious for no reason look,” Sukovic said. He stood at her side, arms crossed.

She turned from the tactical display and looked at him, one of the few original members of the Gentle Friends still alive. She’d been through hell, blood, and more than a little inebriation with the man. So if anyone knew what she was thinking, it would be him. Or Benzel, of course. But especially Sukovic.

She scowled. “Putting aside the fact that we’re literally thousands of light-years from anything, no, I don’t. We’ve got that bastard out there dead in our sights, outgunned as shit, and with nowhere to run. Every Deeper we’ve run into so far has turned that kind of situation into a last hurrah, suiciding or at least scuttling their ship. These assholes, though—” She waved a hand at the display. “They just keep throwing missiles and torps at us, then running.”

She narrowed her eyes. “It’s like they think they’re going somewhere. But there’s nothing out here. Closest star system is almost twenty-three hundred light-years behind us. So just what the hell are they up to?”

They’d encountered the lone Deeper cruiser as it plied along on some mission of its own, a fantastically unlucky meeting for the aliens. Wei-Ping had brought the Stalwart, the newest ship to come rolling out of the Forge’s fabricators, out in the big black of intergalactic space on an operational trial. Part battlecruiser, part carrier, she was the first truly original design the Realm had developed. Until now, every new ship they’d deployed had either been obtained from one of the Silent Fleets secretly mothballed away by the Unseen in remote, lonely star systems, or based on an existing template stashed in the Forge’s archives. The Stalwart was a new class, based on lessons learned during the wars against the Golden and the Deepers. Although smaller than supercarriers like the Victory, she was still a massive ship, as well-protected and heavily armed as a battleship, yet faster than a heavy cruiser. She also carried two wings of fighters, one of Denkillers, and one of new, upgraded Super Makos. A slew of other design innovations combined to make her the single deadliest ship in the fleet, not counting the mechs.

She’d already seen numerous flight trials inside the galactic margin and had been declared operational just two weeks ago. This was her first foray into the Big Black, the Great Empty, the gaping void of intergalactic space, though. Dash was beginning to think that a lot of the war against the Deepers would be fought out here, and Wei-Ping agreed. And that was the main reason Custodian and the other AIs, along with Dash’s Inner Circle and the shipbuilding wizards of the Local Group, had collaborated on the Stalwart. They needed a powerful ship with the flexibility and endurance to operate a long way from any support. And there wasn’t much longer away than this, twenty-three hundred light years from what they’d defined as the very edge of the Milky Way galaxy.

She grimaced as the Deeper ship coughed out another cluster of torps. Avoiding or destroying the powerful anti-matter weapons required them to maneuver. This, in turn, prevented them from capitalizing on their speed advantage and finally getting their foe within range of the Stalwart’s formidable main batteries.

“How many of those damned torps have they got, anyway?” Sukovic snapped.

“As far as we know, they can make them right on the spot, bud and grow them out of the substance of their own ship,” Wei-Ping replied. “That’s the theory, anyway.”

“So eventually they’ll have no ship left.”

“You wanna wait that long?”

Sukovic grimaced. “Hell, no. Do it quick, right?”

Wei-Ping laughed. Whatever you do, do it quick, was the unofficial motto of the Gentle Friends. Most often, it got shortened to Do it quick. It was a good credo for pirates—or privateers, as Benzel insisted they be called. Attack fast, win fast, grab the spoils fast, and get the hell out even faster. It was how pirates survived to enjoy the fruits of their admittedly shady labors. But it was just a damned good principle for war-fighting, too.

“Do it quick,” Wei-Ping agreed, sitting up. “FIGHTCON, status on our fighter wings?”

“Ready to launch. Still. Some of the pilots are complaining they’re going to have to dismount and go for a pee soon.”

“Let’s put ’em out of their misery. Launch both wings. I want them to range ahead of us, clear any more torps or missiles, and let us finally get into freakin’ range.”

FIGHTCON, the fighter wing controller, nodded enthusiastically. “Roger that, ma’am!”

Wei-Ping turned her attention to the other asset she had available, a flight of six of the small, nimble scout mechs known as Perseids. They flew in company with the Stalwart to give their pilots experience flying in the Big Black. Wei-Ping could attest to the fact that it was a very different experience from flying inside what was accepted as the galaxy, both practically and psychologically. Practically, it was much harder to navigate when your nearest reference points were hundreds, or even thousands of light-years away. Psychologically, it was even more problematic. Humans simply hadn’t evolved to be so far away from—well, anything. From everything. Some developed an acute sense of vertigo, the yawning emptiness surrounding them pulling at their senses until they toppled into disoriented panic, a state the pilots called Lonesome Fever. Fighter and mech pilots, given the solitary nature of their duties, were particularly susceptible.

The Perseids flight commander was no newb, though. Lori Gallant was a veteran of many battles, both inside and outside the galaxy—a rising star who’d certainly caught the attention of Dash and everyone else in his Inner Circle. There were even hints she might be asked to join it, adding her keen tactical and operational insight to the collaborative planning Dash tended to favor.

“Lori, Wei-Ping. We’re going to launch our fighters, get them to clean out the way ahead so we can come to grips with these bastards. I’d like your flight to back them up.”

“Roger that. I’ll liaise directly with the wing commanders,” Lori replied, and that was it. She knew what to do and would do it. It let Wei-Ping concentrate on running and fighting the Stalwart.

She watched as the Denkillers and Super Makos were flung into space by the electromagnetic catapults, where they quickly and smartly formed up into squadrons and flights, then raced off ahead of the Stalwart. They immediately began to engage torps and missiles, blasting them apart in spectacular shots that momentarily stepped down the brightness on the tactical display. The Perseids closed behind them, adding the weight of their pulse-cannons and nova-guns to the effort. Within minutes, the way ahead was clear enough that Wei-Ping decided to finally increase the Stalwart’s velocity enough to start gaining on the Deeper ship. She snapped out an order to the Helm and felt the barely perceptible thrum of the ship’s powerful Blur drives spool up.

“Looks like those Super Makos are working out okay,” Sukovic noted.

Wei-Ping grunted agreement. The Makos had been the backbone of their fighter fleet since the beginning. Armed with a potent blast-cannon, they punched well above their weight. But the blast-cannon’s destructive power was a trade-off for increased mass and power consumption, which had meant the Makos always strained at the edge of their capabilities. More than a few had been lost not to enemy action, but to systems failures and component breakdowns. The Super Makos were intended to address that, by replacing the original blast-cannon with a newer, smaller, and less powerful version. They made up for it with a pair of light rail guns, more hardpoints for missiles, other ordnance, and mission-specific loadouts like electronic warfare pods. They’d only seen a few skirmish-type actions so far but had acquitted themselves well.

“Looks like that’s it,” Wei-Ping said, nodding at the display. “No more torps or missiles.”

“Okay, maybe this is the part where that bastard goes gloryhound on us,” Sukovic replied.

Wei-Ping had to nod again. “Yeah, good point.” She turned to the comm. “Lori, you and the wing commanders watch that asshole in case he decides to go all crazy like a hero.”

A moment passed, then Lori came back on the comm. “Understood. That said, I’ve talked to the fighter commanders out here, and we’d like your leave to press home our own attack. More experience for the pilots and all.”

Wei-Ping pursed her lips. Despite the Deeper ship having given up on offensive action, something still didn’t seem quite right about all of this. The Deeper ship still raced on, accelerating as hard as it could, but the Stalwart would inevitably catch up. In fact, glancing at the tactical display, she saw that they’d have solid firing solutions for the nova-cannons and missiles in only a few minutes, and the pulse-cannon and graser batteries just a few minutes after that. The grasers—gamma-ray lasers—were another new and still experimental piece of tech. They’d been inspired by the Deepers’ x-ray lasers, but they delivered even more high-frequency energy per unit of time. They were also ferocious energy hogs, so the Stalwart currently only mounted two batteries of the largely unproven weapons.

Her instinct was to deny Lori’s request, have the fighters and mechs back off, and leave the inevitable destruction of the Deeper ship to the Stalwart. But she really had nothing to base that flicker of instinct on, other than her own unease at the whole situation. And she couldn’t discount that just being her own mild case of Lonesome Fever. She actually hated it out here and would be glad to get back among the stars, where she and every other human belonged.

Her long delay in answering attracted a frown from Sukovic. He leaned in.

“Wei-Ping, you okay?”

She glanced at him, then gave a quick nod and a smile. “Yeah. I’m fine.” She went back to the comm. “Lori, you and the fighter wing commanders are cleared to attack. You have fun, now.”

“Oh, we will.”

Wei-Ping watched on the tactical display as the fighters and mechs accelerated and rapidly gained on the fleeing Deeper ship. She had to take a moment to marvel at the clarity and succinctness of the display, a vast improvement over previous versions, which she always found cluttered. It had been a lot easier when she was with the Gentle Friends because they rarely attacked more than one ship at a time. Even then, it was barrel in, shoot, board the prize, loot it, sometimes even seize it, and then scoot away. This waging war, complicated-battles-between-fleets thing had been entirely new to her.

Fortunately, she hadn’t only proven to be good at it, but she also loved it. It gave her a sense of purpose, of doing something important, that privateering never had.

“The fighters and mechs are engaging,” the Tactical Officer said—unnecessarily, because Wei-Ping could see that for herself. She glanced at the young officer.

“Tactical, let’s get firing solutions cranked up on all batteries anyway, just in case.”

“Roger that, ma’am,” he replied, turning to his console. An eyepiece hung in front of his face, projecting a HUD that repeated the tactical display in simplified format. That way, he’d never have to take his eyes off the situation. Wei-Ping had one too, but the damned thing kept pinching her ear, and—

“Shit. What just happened?” Sukovic asked.

It took Wei-Ping a second to see whatever he had. There—one of their Denkillers had just vanished.

She spun around, facing FIGHTCON. “Transponder drop?”

The Fighter Controller shook her head. “Don’t think so, ma’am. We should still be getting primary scanner returns. Denkillers just aren’t that stealthy.”

Wei-Ping spun back to the tactical display, just in time to see another fighter, a Super Mako, also abruptly disappear.

“Stalwart, mech leader here,” Lori said over the comm. “The Deepers are shooting—I don’t know what the hell it is. Some sort of beam weapon, purplish, barely visible when it shoots. Reminds me of the Archetype’s dark-lance, but—”

A sudden streak of what was almost but not quite light lanced out of the Deeper ship and stuck one of the Perseids. Wei-Ping had the brief impression of purple, but a purple so deep and dark it barely stood out even against the black void. The beam skewered the mech, punching right through it as though it wasn’t even there.

Lori snapped out a curse. “Whatever that is, it’s going through shields and armor like pissing through tissue paper!”

Wei-Ping gaped for a second at a phrase she’d only ever heard Benzel use, then shook her head. “Lori, break off,” she said. “You, and both fighter wings.”

A pause before she answered. Wei-Ping knew just how she felt.

“Roger that,” she finally replied, bitterness hardening her voice.

“Are we just going to let them go?” Sukovic asked.

Wei-Ping felt all eyes in the CIC watching her, waiting. Breaking off the chase meant letting the Deeper ship, and whatever new and deadly weapons tech it mounted, get away. It also meant no payback for the fighters or the mechs.

This time, her instincts argued against giving up. She, like the fighter and mech pilots, and the rest of the Stalwart’s crew, had gotten the scent of battle. They didn’t want to turn aside now.

But.

Wei-Ping leaned back in her chair. “Tactical, fire a spread of missiles at that sonofabitchin’ Deeper. Lori, you and the fighters do the same. Then everyone cut their engines, and we’ll recover the fighter wings and rescue anyone who’s still alive to need it.”

Sukovic just stared, hard. “So we are just going to let them go.”

“Yeah, we are. They obviously have some sort of weapon we haven’t seen before that seems to just ignore our defenses. It’s more important we get that, and all the data we’ve collected, back to the Forge.” She glanced at Sukovic. “That okay with you?”

She waited for him to object any further, but they’d known each other for too long. He knew she wouldn’t break off the chase unless she genuinely believed it was the right call. He just shook his head.

“Probably a good decision, considering.” He rubbed his chin. “What the hell was that, anyway? What could do—this? And to our mech armor, at that?”

Wei-Ping studied the scorched slag that had once been a Perseid, a frontline Unseen weapon of the highest order. “I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”

She puffed out a long breath as the recovery and rescue ops began. The Deeper ship, still being pursued by a barrage of missiles, just kept accelerating away. She watched it with a hard, cold gaze.

It seemed that the Cygnus Realm hadn’t been the only ones doing some innovating.

2

Dash scowled at the big display in the Forge’s Command Center. He had it replaying the fatal attack on the Perseid, as captured by the Stalwart’s sensors, for the fourth time.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, his question directed at no one in particular.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have sufficient data to draw any firm conclusions,” Custodian replied. “And yes, that’s a convoluted way of saying I don’t know.”

Despite the tension, Dash smiled. It didn’t last, though. There was nothing to smile about. They’d lost two fighter pilots outright when their small craft was almost vaporized by the new Deeper weapon. The pilot of the stricken Perseid, a young woman named Dunham, had also died right in the midst of being extracted from the wreckage. They’d lost the mech, too. It had been too damaged to get underway, so they scavenged whatever useful materials from it they could, then scuttled it.

“Well, we’re going to have to find out,” Leira said.

Viktor nodded. “We can’t risk any close engagements until we do. Whatever it was, it seems to be able to defeat our shields and our armor in a single shot.”

Dash crossed his arms. “Yeah. Which is a serious problem because we’ve got a major op coming up. Custodian?”

The display changed to depict a star chart centered on the Forge. They’d moved the station, and essentially the entire Realm with it, to rimward of League space. They now occupied a region about ten light-years long, with the Forge in the center, orbiting a red giant bereft of planets. The four Anchors were deployed spinward and anti-spinward in two pairs, each in, or close to, another star system.

But Dash had Custodian move the display back toward the galactic core. A highlighted system appeared just outside the spinward boundary of League space.

“That system is called GX followed by about nine digits, but the League calls it the Leaping Star,” he said.

Amy gave a huh? look. “Why the Leaping Star?”

“An early stellar survey contained an error, placing the system about two light-years from its actual location. That was corrected in a later survey,” Custodian said.

“So the star leapt, you see? From one place to another?” Dash said. “As jokes go, it’s . . . thin, but the third planet there is terrestrial class, inhabited by an arboreal race called the N’Teel. They’re trying hard to fight off a Deeper incursion, another of the bastards’ resource harvesting ops.”

As he spoke, an image of a N’Teel came up on the display. Dash was reminded again of a creature much like a large, furry rodent about five feet tall with vestigial wings. He couldn’t decide if they looked more like squirrels with small, bat-like wings, or a bat with facial features similar to a squirrel.

He shook himself out of his brief reverie. “Anyway, the N’Teel have done a pretty good job of holding their own, considering that they, like everyone else in this part of the galaxy, are outclassed by the Deepers across the board. They’ve appealed to us for help through the Hriki, their closest ally. That’s been echoed by a corporate interest, a gas-mining guild from the Rimward League. They’ve got a deuterium and helium-3 harvesting operation in the system, as well, under an agreement with the N’Teel. We want to protect that, too.”

“Why didn’t the N’Teel just get hold of us directly?” Leira asked.

“Because they’re apparently only just dabbling in spaceflight and don’t have reliable long-range comms.” Dash turned back to the gathering in the Command Center. “I also kinda get the impression they’re a little xenophobic.”

Harolyn, standing near the back, rolled her eyes. “More xenophobes? The galaxy’s lousy with them.”

“Maybe because the galaxy has things like the Golden and the Deeper in it. When it comes to them, at least, I’m pretty xenophobic too,” Viktor replied.

Dash went on. “Fair, and not without some merit. Anyway, we’re deploying to help them. You’ll find the op plan uploaded to your ships and mechs when you board them. We’ll conference about it on the way. Try to save some time.”

“Dash, what about that new Deeper weapon?” Wei-Ping asked.

“Yeah, that. Well, since we don’t know much about it, we can’t do much about it. And the only way we’re going to be able to know anything about it is to face it, right?”

An uncomfortable ripple of reluctant nods and muttering followed, but no one objected in the face of what, after all, was cold, hard reasoning.

The Inner Circle broke up, and everyone hurried off to their ships, mechs, or other duties. Leira lingered, waiting for Dash to finish a quick conversation with the Command Center’s Duty Ops Officer.

She joined him as he came down from the dais. “You want to do the pre-op briefing on the way to the op? In a hurry?” Her face took on a more serious note. “Something we should know about?”

Dash walked on in silence for a bit, then looked at Leira. “If you mean, am I holding anything back, the answer is no, I’m not. I’m just—”

He broke off, still walking, trying to decide exactly what was nibbling away at him. Leira waited.

“There’s just so much we don’t know about the Deepers. Hell, we’re still not even really sure what they are, exactly, or where they originally came from. Right now, all we can do is try to out-think them and get inside whatever sort of decision-making loop they use,” he finally said.

Leira thought about that, then nodded. “Yeah, okay. I get it. I just hope we don’t start rushing. Because when you rush, you start missing things, making mistakes.”

“And that, my dear, is why I’ve surrounded myself with all you smart people. If I screw up, someone’s bound to notice and let me know about it.”

Leira grinned. “Oh, you can count on that.”

* * *

Dash leaned more toward bat-like squirrels than squirrel-like bats. At least, that’s what he saw in this particular N’Teel named Garciss, who was a Cloud Leader, which seemed to roughly equate to General among her people.

“I have commanded all of our defense forces to stand ready to assist you,” Garciss said from the comm window Sentinel had opened in the Archetype’s tactical display. “However, we have little we can do outside our planet’s atmosphere. Our only spaceflight-capable ships are research and survey vessels, test beds for new technology, and prototypes.”

“That’s no problem. We’ve got the space battle side of this covered.” Dash glanced at tactical. “A space battle that should be getting underway in about ten minutes, in fact. Where we could really use your help is dealing with the Deepers in the atmosphere and on the surface. A great start to that would be some decent maps. Is your planet always that cloudy?”

“Aside from Sun Return, yes, it essentially is.”

“Sun Return?”

“A brief period in mid-summer in the southern hemisphere when atmospheric phenomena cause the clouds to disperse at mid-latitudes. It’s a time of festivals. Many N’Teel are born not long thereafter.” Garciss chittered softly, presumably laughing.

Dash smiled, understanding. “Ahh. That kind of celebration. We have a couple of our own.”

As Garciss arranged for a detailed terrain model of their homeworld’s surface to be uploaded to the Realm task force, Dash took one final look over its deployment. Unlike their last major engagement with the Deepers, when they seized the Backwater Gate, the plan here was simple.

Benzel would lead the bulk of their force directly into battle against the Deeper fleet that was defending their resource thievery on the N’Teel world. At the same time, Dash would lead Leira in the Swift and Jexin in the Polaris, along with six Orions and six Perseids led by Lori, and both fighter wings from the Stalwart. They’d go down into the atmosphere to take on the Deepers there. Once they cleared away any problematic defenses, two battalions of Realm ground troops would drop in their assault shuttles to seize two Deeper mining operations that were encroaching directly on N’Teel territory. In the meantime, the mechs and fighters would turn their attention to three towering constructs known as Beanstalks, Skyhooks, or, in this case, Water Hooks. All three were being used to bring water up from the planet for loading aboard tankers at the top terminus of each Water Hook.

“The Deepers have a real thing for water, don’t they?” Jexin had said. “It’s almost like they don’t have enough of their own.”

Dash had just acknowledged it at the time, but maybe Jex was onto something. Was there some connection between the Deepers and water? A weakness or vulnerability they could exploit?

He shelved the thought again and focused on the imminent battle. Benzel, once more aboard the Herald, led the rest of the capital ships in a headlong charge directly at the Deeper defensive force. The aliens had apparently learned their lesson from Backwater and the other planets they’d lost to the Cygnus Realm, and stationed a reasonably powerful fleet here. Benzel still had a significant edge in numbers and firepower, but if the Deepers had that new and terrifying weapon of theirs in play, that might not be the advantage it seemed. As a hedge against the weapon, he’d deployed a screen of light ships, frigates, and corvettes forward. A third of them were actually uncrewed, operated by AIs similar to those that controlled their Red Baron fighter drones. The remainder had been stripped down to the barest-bones crews possible. It was a quick and dirty countermeasure to the new Deeper weapon. In theory, if they could provoke the Deepers into using it on an aggressive attack by these smaller ships, they could minimize their losses.

Of course, that meant the crews that were aboard those little ships were flying straight into a good chance of dying. The fact that they had to actually turn away volunteers to man them made Dash’s chest swell a little with pride.

“The fleet has entered engagement range. They are launching missiles now, and the Deepers are responding in kind,” Sentinel reported.

“Okay, folks. Once more into the breach and all that,” Dash said, accelerating the Archetype and veering it away from Benzel’s task force. The other mechs, the Stalwart, and the assault carriers smoothly followed, plunging toward the cloud tops of the N’Teel homeworld.

* * *

Dash blinked as the Archetype plummeted out of the clouds only a few thousand meters above the surface. The N’Teel terrain map had them over relatively flat ground but offered little detail other than elevations and relief. He saw thick forest rushing under the mech in a blur the color of old pine trees. Rain washed across the mech, streaming into its wake in long, vaporous trails. He glanced back and saw Leira and Jexin right behind him, right and left. Further back, the Stalwart’s fighters punched through the clouds and fell into formation. He saw the individual Super Makos and Denkillers surging ahead slightly, falling back, then surging again. Their pilots were champing at the bit, eager to get to grips with the Deepers and earn some payback for their comrades lost to the new weapon.

Out of the mists ahead, a long, slender tower rose. It was more like a thick cable with enormous tensile strength, its base anchored here on the surface at the planet’s equator, its top attached to a platform in geosynchronous orbit some thirty thousand klicks overhead. The whole system therefore rotated in sync with the planet, making a permanent, stable construct up and down that could carry loads to and from space. In this case, it funneled water from a chain of large lakes sprawling ahead of them and off to the leftward distance. A stark rim of bare rock and soil around the nearest showed how much the water level had already dropped.

That was all Dash had time to take in before defensive batteries opened fire, bathing the Archetype in scintillating glare as the shield absorbed the hits.

“Burst-cannons,” he muttered. “Not their new weapon, at least.”

“Not yet,” Sentinel said.

“Gloomy of you, but I understand. They’re just warming up.”

Dash threw the Archetype into a tight, climbing turn, at the same time firing the dark-lance at the closest burst-cannon battery, mounted on a rocky promontory overlooking the lake. A magnetic shield enclosed it, which made Dash go hmm. Magnetic shielding made no difference to the dark-lance, which just ignored it and turned the battery to a cloud of vapor and elementary particles. He wheeled up and away, gaining altitude again. Behind him, Leira and Jexin stuck close, pounding out fire from their mechs at anything resembling a Deeper target. He was about to raise the odd magnetic shield when Jexin spoke.

“Ten o’clock, what’s that?”

Dash looked to his left. A trail of shattered, scorched trees snaked off toward the horizon and vanished into the mist of distance. It was as though something had torn through the forest on a slightly meandering path, shredding and burning trees as it went.

“That is a fallen orbital tower,” Tybalt, Leira’s AI, replied.

Dash nodded. Orbital towers, such as the Deeper Water Hooks, were an efficient, relatively low-energy way of lifting stuff off the planet. The nearby Water Hook sported a bulge every hundred meters or so, which Sentinel had deduced were reservoirs. Rather than trying to lift their stolen water directly to orbit, which would require enormous energy, they lifted it in one-hundred-meter steps. It still ultimately required the same amount of energy to lift the same amount of mass, but doing it a bit at time meant they weren’t ever trying to lift water, which was heavy, more than a hundred meters.

But orbital towers were also finicky, requiring constant attention to make sure their top ends didn’t drift. If one failed, it would tend to break at its mid-point, with the upper half flying off into space, and the lower half plunging back to the surface. That was apparently exactly what had happened here. Some fifteen thousand klicks of cable had slammed down across the landscape, wreaking havoc across almost half of the planet.

Sentinel spoke up. “The anchor point for the existing Water Hook had been used previously as the base of the one that has now fallen. There are blast marks and other indications of catastrophic damage to it that have only recently been repaired.”

“I would add that there are at least two more fallen Water Hooks elsewhere on the planet,” Tybalt put in.

Dash gave a fierce grin. “That’ll be the work of the N’Teel. Well done, you aggressive little fuzzballs.”

He wheeled the Archetype over the foothills of a rugged mountain range, clearing the airspace for Lori’s Orions and Perseids to do their own attack run. Once they’d knocked out the defensive batteries around the Water Hook, it would open a path for the ground force’s assault shuttles to make a run into the gaping scar of the Deeper mining complex some hundred klicks to the east.

The last Perseid cleared the airspace. The Stalwart’s fighter wings raced overhead toward the mining complex, preparing to soften it up for the ground assault. As they did, though, Dash saw a squadron of Denkillers suddenly detach and come racing directly toward him.

He gaped for a second, then saw why. A swarm of Deeper fighters had come pouring over the nearby mountains, loosing volleys of missiles as they appeared.

Kicking his drive, Dash settled in to fight. “Here we go.”

* * *

Benzel winced as another missile impacted against the Herald’s shield. The big ship struggled to disperse the blast, but it couldn’t do it fast enough. Another hit, maybe two, and it would have to cycle into full discharge mode, leaving the Herald with only her armor, her speed, and her ability to maneuver to protect her.

“Tactical, any sign of that Deeper super weapon?” he snapped.

The reply was immediate. “No, sir. None of the screening ships have encountered it. Either they’re holding it back to use on our capital ships, or they just don’t have it deployed here.”

“It might be experimental, maybe just a prototype,” the Navigation Officer put in. He sounded unduly hopeful. Benzel had long ago learned that hope was often just delayed disappointment.

Still, he had a point. They needed to know what they faced.

He leaned forward. “Helm, plot a course for our squadron to close with the Deeper battleline. Tactical, send orders to the rest of the fleet to hold back. And let the Commander of the Victory know that he’s in command if something happens to us.”

Benzel’s XO, an exchange officer from the Rimworld League’s fleet named Teegan, raised an eyebrow. “I take it we’re about to do something dangerous,” she said.

“Depends. Do you consider charging in close to an enemy to find out if they have a devastating super weapon against which we apparently have no defense dangerous?”

The woman smiled. “I do. But damned if it ain’t exciting.”

Benzel smiled back. He’d probably once have considered it exciting, too.

3

Dash snapped the Archetype through a hard, banking turn, but the Deeper fighter was able to keep inside it, sending out burst-cannon shots that flared against the mech’s shield. He hated to admit it, but the nimble little Deeper fighters had the advantage over the mechs. They could use aerodynamic forces, the effects of their wings and control surfaces, to maneuver in ways that mechs, which relied solely on drive power and thrusters, simply couldn’t.

He cursed in frustration. The fighter wasn’t doing much harm to him with any given shot, but it was slowly piling up. A guy with a hammer could eventually reduce a boulder to sand, given enough time.

“Screw this,” Dash snapped, then pulled the Archetype into a vertical climb. The Deeper fighter tried to follow, but in terms of sheer speed and power, it couldn’t hope to keep up with the mech. Dash saw it try, then give up and hammerhead-stall back into a dive and race back into the fight raging below.

Dash scowled. Okay, he’d managed to break off. But unless he just wanted to sit up here in the cloud bases, watching as the battle unfolded, he’d have to drop back down into the fray. The Deeper fighters were just too small and agile for the targeting scanners to manage reliable locks against the ground clutter. The Archetype really wasn’t meant for this sort of combat, and it showed.

He dove anyway. As he did, he got a flicker of solid targeting solution on a Deeper fighter that was pulling an Immelmann turn as it tried to dodge rail gun fire from a Denkiller. The Stalwart’s fighters were doing most of the heavy lifting here. But they were outnumbered, and the strain of combat was starting to show.

He triggered the dark-lance and watched with satisfaction as the Deeper fighter vanished in a flash, debris raining back down into the forest below.

That was one.

He swept the Archetype past the Water Hook and tried to line up another attack. He saw Leira and Jexin, still together, duking it out against a quartet of Deeper fighters that danced around them like gnats. Dash rolled the Archetype to help them, but another pair of Deeper ships dropped onto his six and opened up, slamming more energy into the mech’s shield.

Dash hissed a line of curses, then checked his status. Green, but under the strain of atmospheric combat—and that, he could endure.

He prepared to pull the Archetype into another power climb and see if he could figure out a different way to do this. Before he could though, a fighter of unknown design whipped past him in a blur. Another, about to pass him on the other side, let loose with a solid, incandescent beam of energy. It wasn’t directed at him, though. It slammed into one of the Deeper fighters and blew it apart. The first unknown fighter scrubbed the other Deeper off his tail.

“Sentinel, who the hell are these guys?”

“I would venture they are N’Teel ships coming to our assistance.”

Dash grinned. “Well, Garciss did say she’d help us out inside the atmosphere.” He blinked as more of the solid energy beams lanced out from the N’Teel fighters, each hit blasting their Deeper target from the sky. In just a few seconds, the battle turned, the remaining Deepers either trying suicide runs at both the Realm and N’Teel ships or withdrawing to the east.

“Okay, Sentinel, what happens if we blast apart the anchor point of this Water Hook? Does it fall the same way the other one did?”

“More or less. Assuming it breaks at its mid-point, then the unbalanced forces will likely cause it to topple in the opposite direction to the planet’s rotation.”

“I just don’t want to bring it down on top of any N’Teel.”

“I’d point out that they were quite happy to destroy the one that was here previously.”

“Good point,” Dash replied, yanking the Archetype through a tight turn and opening fire on the Water Hook’s anchor point at its base. His dark-lance and nova-cannon shots slammed into the structure, blasting chunks of it apart with a ferocity that sent debris whirling through the air. He pulled up and rushed past, just as the entire edifice broke free and began to slowly drag itself across the landscape, water cascading from it, plowing an enormous furrow through the rock, soil, and marshland around it as it did. It was as though some great hand had grabbed the broken water hook somewhere far above the clouds and now pulled it along behind it as it ponderously strode away. After a moment, though, the broken tower rose free of the surface and, trailing dirt and debris, began to lift from the surface, as though heading spaceward.

“Thought it would just fall over,” Dash said, giving the stray water hook a wide berth as he circled it.

“It depends upon where else it fails. Some or all of it may crash back to the surface, or enter orbit, or even escape the planet’s gravitational effects completely,” Sentinel replied.

“Ah.”

The Swift and Polaris zoomed back into formation behind Dash. “Well, that was fun. Nice little dogfight to start the day,” Leira said.

“On the other hand, that is not something you see very often,” Jexin added, apparently watching in awe as the severed tower rose into the clouds—faster, now, as the orbital energy of its upper length pulled it spaceward.

“It isn’t, is it?” Dash said. “Anyway, that’s one of these things down, two to go. Sentinel, send orders to the Stalwart’s fighters to form up on us and then invite our new N’Teel allies to do the same.”

“Will do. Something tells me they’ll be . . . enthusiasts.”

* * *

Wei-Ping had found herself gritting her teeth so hard during Benzel’s charge at the Deeper guns that her jaw ached. With each passing heartbeat, she dreaded seeing the dim, purplish flicker of their new weapon, lashing out and tearing the Herald to shreds, followed by the rest of her squadron.

But while the Herald and her consorts took the brunt of fire from the Deeper battleline, the new weapon didn’t put in an appearance. As soon as Benzel’s flagship was engaged, the rest of the fleet pressed in. Wei-Ping still worried that the Deepers might be holding back, waiting for the moment when they could savage the whole fleet with their terrifying beam weapon. But they probably wouldn’t. The Herald and her squadron had already wrought enormous damage in their charge. It wasn’t likely they were that stoical, waiting to the bitter end before unleashing it. At that point, it would just be for dramatic effect.

Besides, the Stalwart had her own worries, like the three heavy cruisers and four frigates that had detached themselves from the main battleline and now raced headlong toward her. The Stalwart, the heavy cruiser Tsunami, and three destroyers had been tagged to protect the assault carriers in low orbit around the N’Teel planet. The carriers had almost finished launching their assault shuttles, the little craft streaking into the atmosphere like meteorites to their assigned objectives. The assault carriers could fight, but despite their size, only had the main battery weight of a destroyer, backed up by a plethora of point-defense mounts. By themselves, they couldn’t hope to take on a trio of heavy cruisers.

But they wouldn’t have to.

“Helm, start raising our orbit but keep us between the Deepers and those carriers. Tactical, I want the destroyers to follow us, standard formation—uh, let’s use alpha-two. The Tsunami is going to stay behind as backstop in case anything gets past us.”

She got acknowledgements, then turned to Sukovic. “Any ideas?”

“Besides kicking ass? Nope. Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be in auxiliary.”

Wei-Ping waved him away. The Stalwart incorporated a new design philosophy, burying not just one but two CICs deep inside the ship. If one were compromised, the other could immediately take over and keep fighting the ship. The bridge, located on the upper hull, was used only for routine navigation and was evacuated and sealed off during combat.

She glanced once at Sukovic as he departed, heading for his battle station in the auxiliary CIC. She’d rather have had him at her side, but she got it in the same way she got the value of a CIC, where all of the incoming data could be fused and displayed. Long gone were the days of fighting like a privateer, crammed onto an exposed bridge and trying to make sense out of what she could see with her feeble human eyes. This was a sophisticated war, and it needed heightened command and control.

Huh. All of a sudden, I’m a soldier, Wei-Ping suddenly thought. From a grubby corridor-rat scrabbling out a bleak, day-to-day existence on Passage, to sitting in this chair, colossal power at her beck and call.

She should write her memoirs someday.

But not today. “Tactical, time to engage?”

“Three minutes.”

Wei-Ping watched the planet’s surface fall away beneath the Stalwart as she flew straight into the jaws of her enemies.

* * *

Dash watched the third Water Hook start its slow, cumbersome collapse with dark satisfaction. Neither this nor the previous one had been anywhere near as vigorously defended as the first. That had been good, making their job easier, but it also made Dash a little nervous. Were the Deepers holding back? Was their priority actually their mining complexes, the very places to which the ground assault was inbound?

“Dash, the Stalwart’s fighters are reporting that they’re near the limit of their endurance. They’ve got twenty minutes of atmospheric flight time left, and then they’ll have to break off and return to the Stalwart to refuel and rearm.”

Dash swept his attention across the tactical display. The ground assault was five minutes out from their first objective, the mining complex to the east of the first Water Hook. Atmospheric drag shortened the endurance of the fighters, and if they had to fight, that would cut in half. So he had to assume they had no more than fifteen minutes left. They were about five minutes flight time from the mining complex themselves—

Dash compared the rough numbers in his head, then made a decision. “Let’s send the fighters back now. Otherwise, they’re only going to have about five minutes of useful fight time.”

“Understood,” Sentinel replied.

“Leira, Jex, Lori, it looks like it’s just us mechs to cover the ground assault. That should still be more—”

Sentinel cut him off. “Dash, we have a problem.”

* * *

Wei-Ping clenched her jaw, making it ache again. The Stalwart shuddered under another missile impact. It ripped and gouged at her armor but failed to penetrate. X-ray laser beams slashed at her, but it was now that one of her most clever design features came into play. It had been Conover’s idea, which bugged Wei-Ping because he was just the sort of bookish, myopic intellectual sort she found irritating. Or he had been, anyway, but he had proved himself a brave and capable fighter, earning her grudging respect. This latest innovation might just be enough to remove the grudging part.

One of the side effects of their experiments with Dark Metal Two had been the development of a stunningly effective superconductor. None of their tech really needed it, though. The Unseen already used superconductive materials in their tech that didn’t need the scarce DM-Two, and there were just better uses for the stuff. But Conover had figured out that even a small amount of DM-Two could produce a superconductive laminate sufficient to layer over the exterior of a ship. The Stalwart had been their test bed for the experiment.

An experiment that had thoroughly sold Wei-Ping on the concept. She intended to make that clear when—and if—she got back to the Forge. When the Deepers’ x-ray lasers struck the ship, their effect was almost instantly diffused across the entire surface area of its hull. What should have been a powerful, concentrated beam tearing through the armor was instead an almost gentle warming of the entire hull. It had effectively neutered one of the Deepers’ primary weapons, which would have been great if she hadn’t been so badly outnumbered.

She studied the situation for a few seconds. “Helm, take us to two o’clock, down pitch thirty-five degrees. That’ll put our less damaged flank toward the bad guys and should also head off the bastard trying to flank—”

Another heavy blow.

“—us.”

Another hit. And another. Each time, the Stalwart shuddered deep in her bones. And each time, Wei-Ping almost yelped, convinced it was the new Deeper weapon, finally coming into play. Whether the new superconductive armor would stop it, she had no idea. But, no, they had been missile impacts. The ship’s point defenses were concentrating on any of the far deadlier torps that were flung their way, so missiles kept getting through.

The Stalwart was being beaten up the old-fashioned way—one hit at a time. No single hit did a lot of damage, but it was piling up. Still, she was living up to her name, standing firmly in the line of fire and dishing out almost as good as she got. The gamma-ray lasers had been particularly effective for the brief time they’d actually been working, severely damaging one of the Deeper cruisers. But the finicky weapons weren’t quite ready for action yet, both batteries having packed it in after only a few shots.

“Tactical, concentrate fire on that right-hand cruiser. And find out if our two remaining destroyers can take some of this heat off us.”

“Stalwart, Tsunami here. You’re starting to look a little beaten up. Want some help?”

Wei-Ping curled her lip. If she pulled the Tsunami away from the assault carriers, they’d be left to fend for themselves. But if she didn’t, the Stalwart was certainly going to suffer severe damage—or worse.

She hovered on the brink of indecision, before finally taking the leap. The assault carriers were too valuable, the cold calculus of war too clear. It would take more time and effort to replace them than it would the Stalwart.

“Tsunami, hold your position. Don’t—”

That was all that Wei-Ping was able to say before a sudden burst of information from the tactical display yanked her attention away. Two of the Deeper corvettes had started a hard burn, their prows aimed directly at the Stalwart.

“Shit—impact in sixty seconds!” the Tactical Officer shouted.

Wei-Ping forgot about the Tsunami. “All batteries, those corvettes are priority targets!”

Even as she said it, though, Wei-Ping knew it was too late. The Deepers had pushed her into the most newb of newb mistakes. She’d got target-fixed on their capital ships and their potential to let loose with the new beam weapon. The small ships had taken advantage of it to cleverly position themselves for a suicide attack on the Stalwart. Even if they hammered both of them into scrap, the debris was going to impact the ship and no amount of nifty superconducting armor was going to do anything about it.

* * *

The Archetype burst out of the cloud tops into the hard glare of The Leaping Star. Dash powered on, Jexin and Leira right behind him, rushing through the thinning atmosphere and back into space.

“Wei-Ping, SITREP?” he snapped.

Silence.

“Wei-Ping, what the hell’s going on?”

Nothing.

“Shit. Anyone aboard the Stalwart, this is Dash. Talk to me!”

He waited but got no reply. All that Sentinel knew was that the Stalwart’s primary AI reported that something catastrophic had happened, and then gone quiet.

Dash hunted for the Stalwart’s IFF transponder signal but couldn’t find it. His heart sank even further. For the IFF signal to be lost entirely, the ship must have been completely destroyed—

“There, just rising over the sunward limb of the planet,” Sentinel said.

Dash let out a breath of relief at the sudden appearance of the Stalwart’s icon, near that of the Tsunami and the assault carriers. Red icons representing Deeper ships surrounded her in a way that would have told him she was in trouble even without the truncated comms.

Dash flung the Archetype through a hard turn and accelerated as hard as the mech’s Blur drive would allow. His ETA to firing range was only two minutes. But a hell of a lot could happen in two minutes.

“Hang on, Wei-Ping, we’re nearly there.”

* * *

Wei-Ping winced. Something had smacked her in the head. She looked around, blinking, momentarily disoriented. Where the hell was she? This wasn’t the Forge.

No. Wait.

Realization came flooding back. The Stalwart had taken a solid hit from the remnants of one of the Deeper corvettes and a glancing blow from the other. Fortunately, neither had exploded. Why, she didn’t know, but that was probably all that had saved the Stalwart.

Even more surprising, most of the displays around the CIC were still active, and those that had failed were flicking back to life as the AIs routed data around damaged systems. Despite two hard, punishing hits, she was still in the fight.

For the moment, anyway. Tactical showed that two of the Deeper heavy cruisers were closing in, apparently intent on finishing the Stalwart off at point-blank range. Just a few torps would do it.

“Tactical, shoot at those bastards!”

As soon as she said it, the Stalwart’s main batteries opened up. That made Wei-Ping gape, since the Tactical Officer was still heaving himself back into his seat.

Who the hell was giving the firing orders?

The answer came in the form of Sukovic’s sardonic drawl. “Hey, Wei-Ping, while you and the rest of your gang decided to take a break, we kept up the fight. You ready to take over again?”

Wei-Ping grinned, despite the throbbing pain in her head. “Yeah, we have control—again.”

But not for long, it seemed. Six torps were sailing relentlessly toward them. The point-defense batteries had opened up, but the projectiles were smart, jinking and dodging. One got taken out, but the other five raced on toward impact. The Tactical Officer frantically retargeted the main batteries, but it was, again, clearly too late.

“Shit.”

Wei-Ping braced herself. What was this going to be like, dying in a space battle?

One of the torps abruptly exploded. Then another. Then two more, in rapid succession. An instant later, the Archetype flashed by, followed by the Swift and the Polaris. The three mechs poured fire into the Deeper ships, rapidly cutting them into glowing chunks of slag and vaporized organics.

“Wei-Ping, Dash. Please tell me you’re alive.”

Comms were back, it seemed. She smiled and flopped back into her command seat. It felt ridiculously comfortable in the middle of the shitstorm of battle.

“Not sure yet, Dash. Ask me that again when I’m good and drunk back on the Forge.

She could hear the relief in Dash’s laughter.

“Will do. And the first round’s on me.”

4

Dash exited from the Archetype into what felt like a steam bath.

“Holy—this is like a sauna. Gonna lose the creases in my uniform,” he said.

Leira waited as he finished dismounting. “Like they say, it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”

“Actually, I think it’s both.”

He looked around. The N’Teel spaceport sat on a rocky highland, overlooking a sea as calm and flat as a mirror. A few hundred meters past its perimeter, a rainforest loomed, dark and somewhat ominous. Except for a raised mag-lev monorail and a paved road, it completely enclosed the port.

“They’ve certainly protected this place pretty well,” Jexin said, joining them in the shadow of the three mechs—or what would be their shadow if the sunlight was more than just a diffuse, dull grey filtering through the clouds.

Dash made a noise of agreement. All around the spaceport, batteries of wicked-looking beam weapons squatted, their muzzles pointed skyward. They were all what Sentinel had dubbed plasma-lasers, the same potent weapons carried by the N’Teel fighters, but much bigger versions. Plasma-laser wasn’t really correct, though, because the weapon collimated its ferocious plasma-blast effect in a second annular beam, like a tube of magnetic force. They were innovative and extremely powerful but relatively short-ranged and could be defeated by sufficiently strong electromagnetic fields. Still, Dash hoped they could convince the N’Teel to let them have one to study.

“I think this is our ride,” Leira said, nodding toward a small ground car heading toward them. The N’Teel driver greeted them, then chauffeured them back to a squat bunker hunkered alongside the spaceport’s main terminal building. As they dismounted and made their way inside, a quartet of N’Teel fighters came shrieking in over the ocean at low level and rushed overhead with a thunderous roar.

Dash offered them a silent salute. The N’Teel fighters had turned a hard battle into a much, much easier one. Clearly, they were tough and competent warriors, and damn could they fly.

Once inside the bunker, his first face-to-face meeting with Cloud Leader Garciss confirmed it. She greeted them with a brusque, efficient friendliness, then gestured for them to sit at a conference table that barely cleared Dash’s knees. She immediately turned to a flatscreen display of the planet’s surface and got right to business.

“It doesn’t look like any of those three Water Hooks you took down are going to impact any inhabited areas, which is good. And your ground forces have seized the nearest”—the translator skipped over the next word—“mining complex to us here, which is even better. However, it seems they’re getting bogged down in the more northerly one.”

Dash felt his brows lift, impressed by her quick summary. The N’Teel seemed to be excellent at collecting tactical information, at least on their own planet.

“Yeah, we’re going to redeploy two companies from the first complex to reinforce the attack on the second,” Dash replied, a little bemused and actually rather pleased at the utter lack of small talk. “Oh, and by the way, we took out the Water Hooks, as in, your people and ours. It would have been a lot harder without them.

Garciss flashed what he could have taken as a furious glare, but her steady, even tone belied that. “Redeploying your forces won’t be necessary. We’ve already got two battalions of our own ready to attack from the southeast and east. We’re just holding them back so we can coordinate with you and avoid having our troops shooting at each other.”

Dash stared for a second. He felt Leira and Jexin sitting to his left and right at the uncomfortably low conference table. Dash thought back to the Archetype’s tactical display. He did not recall any indication of N’Teel ground forces in such close proximity to their own.

He switched to his comm. “Sentinel, have the ground commander at the northern mining complex stand by. He’s got some N’Teel reinforcements about to join in the battle, but we need to do some coordination first.”

“Actually, I’m already speaking to the N’Teel headquarters commanding their forces and have initiated a liaison between them and our own assault force.”

Dash looked at Leira, then Jexin, and made a Huh sound. “Don’t know about you guys, but I’m starting to feel a little unneeded.”

Leira reached out and took his hand. “I’ll probably always need you, Dash.”

“Probably?”

“Hey, a girl’s gotta keep her options open.”

Garciss surprised them with the acidic hiss that apparently was N’Teel laughter. “Your reputation for a casual nature precedes you. I see that it is well earned.”

“My reputation? Really?”

“There is much discussion among the various races about the Messenger and his Cygnus Realm, and now they have arrived to save us from the evil of the—” The translator cut out again.

“Sorry, but our translator keeps cutting out on your word for the aliens we call the Deepers,” Dash said.

“That would be because we don’t deign to recognize them by that name. To us, they are the—” untranslated word.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

The meaning for the word Garciss described made both Dash and Leira raise their eyebrows. “Wow, that’s harsh,” Leira said.

Jexin leaned toward her. “I still don’t understand. Why is it so egregious for someone to—”

“I’ll tell you later, Jex,” Leira said quickly.

“At least we can agree that the Deepers are bad news,” Dash said, tugging the conversation back on track.

“Indeed they are,” Garciss replied. “And after today, we would consider the reputation you are building across the galactic arm to be good news. So much so, in fact, that the N’Teel are prepared to enter into a formal alliance with your Cygnus Realm.”

Leira grinned. So did Dash. But a flicker of suspicion lurked behind it—small, but present. He didn’t think the N’Teel were in league with the Deepers. He’d personally seen N’Teel fighter pilots fight and die in battle against them. What tickled Dash’s senses was something more pragmatic. The N’Teel were on the cusp of achieving a sustained presence in space. Garciss undoubtedly saw an alliance with the Realm as a way of accelerating that, obtaining tech, and assistance in using it, that would advance their efforts by decades. Harolyn and Kai had done some background research on them. She’d already told Dash that the N’Teel were bristling at the fact that nearby races were already reaching out to the stars, and they were lagging behind.

Which meant that Garciss and the N’Teel were ambitious. They saw an alliance with the Realm as an opportunity. Dash wondered if, assuming they won this war, the N’Teel would be the new aggressors in this part of the galaxy.

For now, he simply thanked Garciss warmly and then, as he always did with prospective allies, invited her to visit the Forge. She eagerly accepted.

“I look forward to planning our upcoming campaigns against the—I will use your term for them, the Deepers,” she said.

Dash and Leira exchanged a glance at that. So far, the races they’d helped throw off Deeper incursions in the arm had remained mostly focused on consolidating and rebuilding their own planets and systems. Each did maintain a small contingent on the Forge, but for liaison and diplomatic purposes. At most, Dash kept them generally informed of the Realm’s plans, but only as they impacted on each race directly. The fewer parties that knew the details, the less likely there were to be leaks. But Garciss was planning on getting involved directly in their strategic planning.

“And we look forward to having you as allies,” Dash said, standing. Garciss did as well, then accompanied them back to the Archetype and the other mechs. She seemed surprisingly sanguine about the giant mechs, regarding them with only a mild interest. Dash narrowed his eyes at that. It wasn’t like she was seeing something remarkable for the first time. Instead, it seemed more like something remarkable she’d seen before and was now seeing again.

Even so, when they disembarked from the ground car, Garciss walked directly to the Archetype and stared up at its towering bulk.

Dash moved beside her. “I’ll make arrangements for you to be taken aboard the flagship of our task force, the Herald, and accompany us back. That’s assuming this is a convenient time for you, of course.”

“It is. However, there’s something I’d like to show you on the way,” Garciss replied.

“Oh? Mind if I ask what?”

“Better if you see it. All I can tell you is that it’s an old thing. Older than your magnificent friend here.” Garciss gave the Archetype an affectionate pat with one small hand, peering up at the gleaming expanse of armor.

“Is it—ruins?” Dash asked, his curiosity suddenly tingling, along with a hint of alarm.

Garciss turned to him but kept her hand resting on the mech.

“I don’t think it’s ruined at all. And that’s the problem.”

* * *

Conover studied the remains Custodian had just tractored into the Forge. He still had misgivings about this. Dash had made it clear that he didn’t want to bring potentially hazardous things aboard the Forge if it could be avoided, hence their rigging up a former mine layer, the Iron Gate, as a sort of a remote, combined storage and research vessel. The idea was that things that might be dangerous to the Forge could be kept and examined there. The trouble was that there was simply no substitute for the Forge’s potent analytical resources and scanning systems. They simply couldn’t be duplicated aboard an old mine layer.

But Lomas and Elois had insisted that a detailed examination of what had just been brought aboard was crucial. So Conover had discussed it with Custodian, Ragsdale, and Harolyn, and they’d all reluctantly agreed that the risk was worth it. So, they’d decided to use their initiative and bring this potentially dangerous thing aboard.

Because the remains of a Deeper Battle Prince definitely fit the definition of potentially dangerous.

“It’s pretty clear that the Deepers don’t want us learning anything about these Battle Princes,” Elois said.

“Which is why they put so much effort into attacking and trying to destroy the first one we stashed aboard the Iron Gate,” Harolyn added.

Conover nodded but kept his eyes on the shattered, scorched and partly melted remains. They sat in a grav-cradle just a few meters from one of the big docking ports opening into the Forge’s fabrication bay. Conover and the others present all wore vac-armor and were tethered to hardpoints further inside the bay. Their fail-safe, if anything went wrong, was for Custodian to drop the force field closing off the docking port, blow everything into space, then sort everything out afterward.

That was also why it was only him, Harolyn, Lomas, and Elois in the bay. Ragsdale and Kai monitored the proceedings remotely.

“I assume that we didn’t find it like this. Do we know what happened to it to leave it in this state?” Harolyn asked.

Lomas nodded. “We do. Dash happened to it. This is one he knocked out in a skirmish about a week ago, near Fulcrum.”

Conover knelt down and examined a section of the Battle Prince’s armor that gleamed almost mirror bright. “This damage was done by the Archetype’s power-sword. Nothing else leaves such a smooth, clean cut.”

“Dash loves that thing,” Harolyn replied, grinning and shaking her head. “If it were me, I’d want to kill my enemies from as far away as possible. He just loves making it up-close and personal, though.”

“Probably because he’s been in about a thousand bar brawls,” Conover said, letting his gaze roam away from the polished gleam of the power-sword cut and over other parts of the wreckage.

“Man after my own heart,” Lomas said, chuckling.

Elois shot her a raised-eyebrow glance. “Really?”

“Hey, I had a life before I became a stodgy senior officer.”

“We need a couple of glasses of some of that amazing plumato wine they make here, and some time for you to tell me some stories.”

“You’re on.”

Conover barely heard the chatter. He’d let his tech-enhanced vision settle on a section of undamaged armor on the Battle Prince. Slowly, he tilted his head one way, then the other, ensuring that he was actually seeing what he thought he was.

“Custodian, tell me everything you can about this section here,” he said, pointing.

The AI replied immediately. “Understood.”

Elois turned back to him, her face a question. “I thought we were going to focus on the Dark Metal network inside this thing.”

“We are,” Conover said. “But I want Custodian’s analysis of that piece of armor, too.”

Now it was Harolyn’s turn to look quizzical. “What about the Dark Metal network? I thought we were mostly just interested in salvaging it.”

Elois glanced her way. “That’s why I asked to have this thing brought aboard and scanned properly. We picked up some hints that there was more going on with the Dark Metal in this thing than we first thought. Our systems aren’t even close to the capabilities of yours, though.”

“Elois thinks that the Dark Metal network might have a, let’s call it a memory,” Conover put in. He’d focused his tech gaze on it and indeed saw flickers of data that hinted at ongoing quantum-level processing of some sort. It reminded him of the way the Golden stored data in their data-modules, which had also been infused with Dark Metal. And that reminded him of the time he’d almost died trying to deactivate a Golden probe that had crashed into the Forge. The memory gave him a shiver—but also a bit of a warm thrill because it had been the moment that he and Amy had genuinely started to bond.

Elois picked up where Conover left off. “If this Dark Metal does retain information, then maybe we can read it, like any other storage device. That might give us some insights into the Deepers, or this Battle Prince, or even other stuff that might prove really useful.”

“Which is why we want to at least give it a good look, before we toss it into that big furnace upstairs in your fabrication plant,” Lomas added.

“Conover, I have the results of my initial scans of the armor you indicated,” Custodian said.

Conover stood. “Let me guess. It’s really old.”

“Indeed. Based on radioisotope decay and micrometeorite scarring, I would estimate thirty thousand years, plus or minus one thousand.”

Lomas whistled. “Thirty thousand years? Pardon my language, but holy shit.”

“Custodian, what age determination did we get from the remains of that League traitor. Uh, Rishi was his name, I think.”

Harolyn caught Conover’s eye. “Conover, maybe a little more discretion, huh?” she hissed, flicking her eyes toward Lomas and Elois. Rishi had been a senior member of the League government before he sold out to the Deepers and was turned into a Battle Prince.

Conover glanced at his feet. “Sometimes I get a little too wrapped up in stuff. Sorry.”

But Lomas gave her head an emphatic shake. “Don’t be. Rishi was a treacherous bastard who deserved what he got.”

“Which was Dash’s power-sword again. He really does like using that thing, doesn’t he?” Harolyn noted.

Custodian spoke up. “The Deeper tech comprising what had once been your treacherous bastard, Rishi, was essentially new, certainly no more than one or two years old.”

Silence hung in the air. The only sound was the distant mutter and rumble of the Forge’s fabrication plant, one deck above them.

Conover pursed his lips. “So we’ve got one Battle Prince that’s thirty thousand years old, and another with that new Battle Prince smell.”

Harolyn gaped at him, laughing. “What?”

“Oh. Sorry. It just sounds like something Dash would say, if he were here.” He knelt again and stared at the sinister debris. “The Deepers have been building this tech for at least thirty-five or forty thousand years, since we have to assume it took them time to develop it to the point where they could make something like a Battle Prince in the first place.”

Lomas held up a hand. “Wait. If what you’re saying is true, then we really aren’t sure what we’re facing, are we?”

Conover’s tone was grim. “No, we aren’t. We probably haven’t seen everything they’ve got, which means they’re holding back on us.”

“Or we’re just now getting into their defenses,” Lomas finished, her voice as taut as Conover’s.

Conover stood again. “Custodian?”

“Yes?”

“When Dash gets back, tell him we need to talk about making things that go bang. As in, a really, really big bang.”

“I’ll be sure to. He’s a big fan.”

* * *

Benzel considered himself many things—privateer, smuggler, sometimes gun-runner, sometimes tramp-freighter crewman, and lately, admiral of a kick-ass fleet. One thing he didn’t consider himself to be was a diplomat. The extent of his negotiating skills amounted to issuing an ultimatum, then starting to shoot if it wasn’t met.

Standing on the Backwater hardpan, under the glare of the star called Fulcrum, he found himself in that very position.

And he hated it.

He stood on a crate, overlooking a cluster of diverse aliens. The ramshackle community that had been called Backwater was long gone. It had been largely flattened by the prodigious shockwave from Dash’s blast-cannon, unleashed at the pivotal moment of what had become known as the Battle of Backwater. In its place, a sort of neutral space had been created, assembled from prefabricated components brought from the Forge. What had once been a disheveled collection of shacks and huts was now an enclosed compound lined with sleek, gleaming buildings the size of standard cargo-pods. They’d called it Forum, which was apparently an ancient terrestrial word that meant meeting place. Dash, and the various alien delegates, had agreed that they needed such a place as Forum, where they could meet as a collective, since the Deepers were a threat to everyone. Benzel questioned the wisdom of it being only twenty klicks from the Backwater Gate, even if the Realm now did hold both sides of it.

But here they were.

He raised his hands. “Okay, everyone, please. One at a time.”

A tall, slender alien with grey skin, spindly arms, and a bulbous head set with enormous black eyes stepped forward. “I advocate for my race to be the next freed from Deeper tyranny.”

Another spoke up, a humanoid slathered with something pale blue and gelatinous. Apparently, it was actually a symbiotic race, the gelatinous stuff and the humanoid beneath it being separate entities. “Why? So you can resume sneaking onto other planets and probing whoever you find there?”

“What is up with that probing thing, anyway?” another alien, this one resembling an oversized seal with a spectacularly iridescent, ribbed sail down its back asked. “Your people seem obsessed with it.”

The grey alien ignored them. “Our people are still holding their own against the Deepers. By your own words, that makes us ideal candidates for liberation.”

Benzel scratched his beard. The grey alien was right. But so were at least three other races, all of them with solid cases for assistance from the Cygnus Realm and its growing alliance. He wished Dash were here. First, Dash would be doing this instead of him. Second, even if Dash weren’t managing this unruly crowd himself, he could at least offer Benzel his thoughts on who they should help.

He opened his mouth, just as a thunderclap tore apart the hot, dry air. A second followed, then a pair of massive shadows swept overhead. Two of the Realm’s mechs had just arrived, which prompted Benzel to turn whatever he’d been going to say into a sigh of relief. Dash was—

Shit. Not here. Conover’s Pulsar and Amy’s Talon both touched down a short distance away. Benzel called a recess to give himself a breather and give Conover and Amy time to dismount and make their way to Forum.

Benzel beamed a grin at the new arrivals. “Am I ever glad to see you guys! Now, please tell me that one of you is going to take over babysitting this mob, so I can get back to my nice, cozy CIC aboard the Herald.”

Amy and Conover glanced at one another, then turned back and both shrugged. “Not that I know of. I’m just on my way back to the Forge from the N’Teel homeworld. My mech’s got some damage that needs to be fixed.”

Benzel glanced at the Talon. Blast marks scarred its armor, but it otherwise seemed intact.

“And I’m on my way to meet Dash. I’ve got something important to talk to him about, that I’d rather not do over a comm,” Conover said.

“Anyway, we met up here to take a break from the flight,” Amy said, and Benzel gave her a sly grin.

“Taking a break, huh? The kind where you don’t want to be disturbed for, oh, say, an hour or so, right?”

Conover and Amy both stared, then spoke in unison. “Only an hour?”

Benzel waved them off. “Well, before you take your break, how about helping me sort this mess out?” He filled them in on what had transpired so far, then led them back into the courtyard in the middle of Forum and called the meeting back to order.

Before he could start speaking, though, two of the aliens present pushed a third forward. One of them hissed something. The third alien, a pale, lithe humanoid with big, angled eyes and a crest of knobs along her skull and spine hissed something back, but the first alien seemed insistent.

Benzel sighed. “Okay, let’s try this again. We just don’t have the resources to help everyone. We have to prioritize, pick our battles. That means the best candidates are ones that are still themselves fighting back, holding the Deepers off.” He looked at the crested humanoid, who seemed to be from a semi-aquatic race. It struck him that this dry, barren world must suck for her.

“So, does your race fit that description, too?” he asked her, hoping the answer was no because that would be a fifth race he’d have to juggle.

“No, we don’t.”

Benzel opened his mouth, closed it again. Tried very hard not to sigh. “In that case, and as I’ve explained, that doesn’t make you a good candidate right now.”

“I realize that. In fact, my world is dead. Or so close to it as to not matter.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that. I really am. But we can’t undo that, so I’m afraid that it just doesn’t make your people a good candidate for our assistance,” he said, glancing at Amy and Conover and hoping that one of them would chime in on what was becoming a profoundly awkward moment.

“I realize that.”

“Then—and don’t take this wrong way—why the hell did you step forward?”

She glanced back at the two aliens who had pushed her forward. “I was convinced that there is good reason for you to at least travel to what remains of my homeworld.”

Conover perked up.

“Okay, and what reason is that?”

“In the last major battle, my people managed to bring down two of what I believe you call Battle Princes. The Deepers have largely moved on now and recovered the remains of one of them that we wholly destroyed.”

This time, Conover stepped forward. “What about the other one?”

“It is mostly whole, except for half of its head, which was shot away by what I am proud to say was a flawless rail gun shot, fired by a dedicated gun-crew who, sadly, perished shortly thereafter. It remains on our planet.”

Benzel raised a hand. “We’re definitely interested in looking at that, yeah. But that still doesn’t really make your people a great candidate for an entire fleet action.”

The alien stared at him. “I don’t think you understand. Its head is carved in two, yes. But this Battle Prince…it is still alive.”

5

They were called the Oksa, and their spokesperson at Forum was named Avek. Or was it the other way around, and Oksa was an Avek? Dash frowned. He’d lately been bombarded with alien names and was starting to lose track of them.

“Sentinel, is—”

“The race is the Oksa, and Avek is their representative,” Sentinel said.

“Ah. Thanks.” She apparently caught a sense of his confusion over the Meld that linked him to the Archetype, which effectively let her read his mind, at least in a way. Sometimes he found it disconcerting, but at least Sentinel was discrete in how she used it.

The incandescent air roaring around the Archetype’s shield like a blast furnace died away as the mech slowed. The murky surface of the Oksa homeworld raced by below. He glanced at tactical, and saw that Leira, Conover, and Amy were neatly tucked in behind him. Behind them came three assault shuttles laden with a company of ground troops, and two more shuttles carrying various scientific and research types from both the Realm and the League. Elois would oversee that part of the recovery effort. Meanwhile, the Herald and its task force hung back from the planet, keeping a wary eye out for any Deeper forces that might try to intervene.

Dash watched as the location marked by Avek loomed ahead. The planet had once been a pristine terrestrial planet that almost made the cut of a hydro world, nearly eighty-five percent of its surface being water. But the Deepers had thoroughly ravaged it, carting away enough water to drop the sea level by at least twenty meters, and leaving the land scarred by vast strip-mining operations.

Dash grimaced. Avek had been right. The Deepers had all but killed their homeworld.

They reached the location of the fallen Battle Prince. According to Avek, the creature had fallen and become wedged in a narrow ravine atop a cliff at least twenty-three hundred meters high. The Deepers had apparently managed to miss recovering it when they left—or, as Elois had suggested, maybe it had been left behind deliberately. Perhaps they were meant to find it, for some nefarious purpose. Hence the abundance of caution in bringing down four mechs and a company of assault troops, with a fleet overhead flying cover over the planet.

Dash circled the clifftop. He could see the ravine, a deep, narrow gash cut into the side of the cliff, and the plateau at its top, as though it had been struck by some titanic axe. He couldn’t see anything in the ravine’s depths, though, which were lost in shadow.

“Sentinel, anything?”

“There is a Dark Metal signal, but I am detecting nothing else of note.”

“Okay. So is it realistic to think that the Deepers missed one of their own Battle Princes, because it was stuck in a hole?”

“Given that I know little more about the Deepers and their Battle Princes than you do, you can probably answer that question as well as I can.”

“So you—”

“Don’t know, that’s right.”

“Gotcha.” Dash had the shuttles take up a holding pattern about fifty klicks away, with Amy and Conover flying protective top cover, then he and Leira landed their mechs on the plateau at the edge of the ravine.

Dash looked along its length. It started at the base of a mesa about two klicks away, a zig-zag crack in the ground from a few meters wide in some places, to more than ten in others. It stood to reason that the Battle Prince could only have fallen into a portion of the ravine wide enough for it to fit, so he slowly walked along its length, toward the edge of the cliff.

“Dash, down there,” Leira said, pointing with one of the Swift’s huge fingers. He followed it to a section of the ravine about twelve meters wide. Sure enough, about ten meters down, he saw a dull glint of something metallic in the shaded gloom of the fracture. Low-light vision confirmed that it was, indeed, a Battle Prince, lying sideways in the crevasse, its feet elevated slightly above its head.

“Okay, we found our prize. Now, what do we do about it?” Leira asked.

Dash bit his lip as he considered it. They could try lifting it out, but despite the size and reach of their own mechs, it wouldn’t be easy. They’d probably have to do some digging—potentially, a lot of digging. Moreover, they had no idea how deep into this rocky promontory the crevasse extended. Anything they did might inadvertently dislodge it, and send it plunging even further into the depths.

“We’re going to have to leave this thing where it is, at least for now,” he finally said.

Leira made a surprised sound. “We’re just going to give up? Leave it here?”

“I didn’t say that. Leira, I’d like you to switch places with Conover. He’s become the closest thing we have to an expert on these Battle Princes, so I’d like him to glean as much as he can from it before we decide if and how we’re going to recover it.”

Leira acknowledged and lifted the Swift smoothly away. Dash and Sentinel spent the next minutes trying to make contact with the Battle Prince, scanning across the comm spectrum for any hint of a response. Sentinel finally found a response, but it was little more than a brief burst of transmission, consisting mostly of noise. Dash thought he could make out a word or two, like down and go, but that was all.

The Pulsar swept overhead, then came back about and landed. Conover spent a few moments studying the fallen Deeper construct, working with Kristin to leverage his mech’s formidable suite of electronic warfare systems for any new information. He didn’t learn much more, though.

“How about your tech vision? That’s what you used on the Battle Prince back at the Forge, right?” Dash asked.

“I did, yeah. But I have to dismount from the Pulsar to use it. It doesn’t work on just imagery.”

Dash could hear the sudden nervous tension in his voice. Conover had come a long way and was a veteran of many fights. But he really wasn’t a warrior at heart. That was part of what made him who he was, so Dash didn’t resent it or fault him for it. So he switched to a private channel.

“Conover, if you don’t want to dismount, that’s fine—”

“No, I will. Has to be done, right?”

“I’ll be right here.”

“That actually helps a lot. Thanks, Dash.”

Dash kept a careful eye out as Conover dismounted from the Pulsar. He didn’t try to climb down the treacherous ten meters of jagged and broken rock, though. Instead, he wisely clambered into one of the mech’s massive hands. Kristin then knelt the Pulsar, bent it forward at the waist, and reached down and lowered Conover quickly, smoothly, and above all, safely into the crevasse.

Time passed in silence.

“Conover, everything alright?” Dash asked. He was mindful of the very first time Conover used his tech-vision in his presence. He’d peered into the Lens, an Unseen device with the power to collapse stars. The experience had knocked him unconscious.

But Conover’s reply was immediate. “Yeah, fine. I’m just trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.”

“Okay. What are you seeing?”

“Well, the Oksa weren’t kidding when they said they’d blown its head apart. And there’s more damage to its body, probably from when it came to rest down here. But it is largely intact and is still kinda functional.”

“What does kinda functional mean?”

“It means that there’s still power moving through its systems, but only in sporadic trickles.”

Kristin cut in. “It’s probably in some kind of low power survival mode. Maybe if we hooked up a power core to it, we could bring it back online.”

“And then potentially have to fight it? Thanks, but I’d rather not give our enemies the means of killing us,” Dash said.

But Conover spoke up. “I don’t think this thing is going to be doing much fighting anytime soon. It’s not just wedged in here tightly, but its weapons are also badly damaged.”

“Okay, so let me ask this. Can you hook up a power core to it using just the Pulsar’s manipulators?”

A paused, then Conover replied. “No. I can see where I can connect a core, but it’s going to require more delicate work than the mechs can manage.”

Dash scowled. The mechs had fine manipulators which could be deployed from one finger on each hand. But fine was a subjective thing. They were still pretty crude compared to human fingers, anyway. But he did not like the idea of Conover powering up a Battle Prince he was close enough to touch, whether it was wedged in a crevasse or not.

“Okay, collect some imagery of the connection point, and then you can explain to me what has to be done,” Dash finally said.

Another pause. “Dash, it makes more sense for me to do it.”

“Conover, I’m not going to risk—”

“Not going to risk what, me? Doing something that might teach us new things about these Battle Princes? Stuff that might help us win this war? Dash, I’m not that kid you picked up as a reluctant passenger on Penumbra anymore.”

“Oh, for—I know that, Conover, and wasn’t suggesting otherwise. I just—”

“Dash, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. It’s what you always do, put yourself out in front of the most dangerous stuff. But you’re the Messenger. You’re supposed to be running the war, not hooking up power cores to some alien tech.”

Dash closed his mouth. As much as it grated on him to admit it, Conover was right. It didn’t really make any sense for Dash to do something Conover could do better and more quickly. Plus, they would see immediate results. It would be like Benzel suddenly deciding to leave the Herald’s CIC in the middle of a battle to man a nova-cannon battery or fix a broken conduit. This really was Conover’s job, not his.

“You know what? You’re absolutely right, Conover, and I’m sorry for not accepting that right away.” Dash switched to a general comm channel. “Elois, do you have any standard power cores with you?”

“I don’t, but your shuttle pilot’s nodding at me that he does. I guess they’re meant to be spares or replacements for your mechs.”

Dash almost laughed. It was an excellent precaution—and one about which he’d been completely oblivious until now. Someone somewhere had decided they should pack spare power cores when the mechs were deployed, and Dash had had nothing to do with it. It perfectly captured what he and Conover had just thrashed out.

He instructed Elois to arrange to deliver a power core to Conover, and then withdraw again. She’d receive the same data he did via a repeater signal from the Pulsar and could participate virtually in examining the Battle Prince.

The shuttle swept in, slowing, then landing alongside the Pulsar. Elois got out, a power core in her hand, and placed it into the fine manipulators of the mech’s other hand. As the shuttle lifted again, Kristin lowered the core down to Conover.

Again, time passed. Dash just waited.

Conover finally spoke. “Okay, Dash, I’m ready to do this.”

* * *

Conover lay on the Pulsar’s enormous hand, his head, shoulders, and arms hanging in space. He’d had Kristin lower him as far as the depth of the crevasse and the mech’s reach would allow. It left him straining a little bit to reach down to the Battle Prince, but he could manage it.

The connection on the Battle Prince wasn’t actually compatible with their core, but Conover had brought a tool-pack down with him. He was able to open an access plate that surrounded the connection like a collar, exposing the conduit connections behind it. It took surprisingly little effort to disconnect the main bus, then cable it into a standard Unseen connector. He wasn’t sure if that was a testimony to the flexibility of Unseen tech, Deeper tech, or both.

Conover reached back, felt around for the core that Kristin had placed beside him, then paused to wipe his forehead. Ten meters deep in the crevasse, it was as dark as twilight. Even out of direct sunlight, though, the air hung warm, still and dank around him.

“Okay, Dash, I’m ready to do it,” he said.

“Right, just wait one, though.”

Conover waited. As he did, he kept a wary eye on the Deeper Battle Prince, less than a meter away.

This was very different than examining the remains of a Battle Prince in the safe and controlled confines of the Forge. Even then, that Battle Prince had been spectacularly dead. But he was a long way from the orderly cleanliness of the station and the formidable protection its security and other systems offered under Custodian’s eternal vigilance. This was him, a Battle Prince that was definitely not dead, and rock. Yes, he literally lay in the outstretched hand of the Pulsar, but that was not the same as being safely enclosed in its stout armor. The mech’s cockpit suddenly seemed very far away.

“Okay, Conover, we’re all set up here. You can go ahead and hook it up. But if you get even a glimmer of things turning bad—”

“Dash, I know what to do.”

“Yeah. Of course you do. Alrighty, then. This is your show.”

Conover wiped his forehead again with his free arm, then reached down with the power core. As he did, his brave words to Dash came echoing back to him. They’d sounded great.

Now, if only he actually believed them himself.

Taking a deep breath, Conover plugged the power core into his jury-rigged receptacle, wincing and even flinching back a bit as he did. If it triggered an explosion, he’d probably be vapor before his nervous system could even register it.

He scowled at himself. Was that supposed to make him feel better?

Nothing happened.

“I’m not seeing any changes in, well, anything,” Elois said.

Conover swallowed hard and studied his makeshift core connection. One thing that was pretty much a universal constant, whether you were talking about Deeper, Unseen, human, or any other tech was that power was delivered by the movement of electrons through some sort of conductor. Amperage, voltage, resistance, it didn’t matter. The specific conductors used might be different, but the principle was the same.

He puffed out a breath. Sweat dripped from his nose. His tech eyes let him see the electrical potential as a sort of dammed-up pressure, anxiously trying to make the trip from one terminal of the core to the other. But part of the bus must be broken somewhere, a conductor damaged and not letting that circuit close and that potential become useful power.

Shit. That’s right. Not only was he face-to-face with potentially deadly alien tech, but he was also fiddling around with conductors that would, if he accidentally bridged them, incinerate at least bits of him, and maybe the whole thing.

“Conover, how’re you doing?” Dash asked.

“Still working on it.”

The longer he spent lying down here, screwing around with this dangerous alien tech, the tighter his stomach knotted up. Did this happen to Dash, too? Did he have to put up with incipient nausea, things clenching up, his heart pounding, and feeling short of breath? The last time he felt like this was while trying to deactivate the Golden probe that had buried itself in the Forge. But this was—

Something he did seemed to close a connection. Power suddenly flooded the bus, bringing a whole series of the Battle Prince’s enigmatic systems online. He let out a relieved breath, only to suck it in again. That wasn’t the end of it. In fact, it was just the beginning of it, since now he had a multitude of systems to study to figure out what was happening, and hopefully do it before the Battle Prince did something destructive.

“Conover, Sentinel says we’re getting all sorts of power emanations now. That your doing?”

“Yeah, I guess so, anyway. It looks like—”

Conover cut himself off. Current flowed through the Battle Prince’s systems, lighting them up in his tech sight like fine tendrils of light. Several systems were now rebooting.

He clenched his jaw and waited, still hanging onto the power core, ready to yank it free.

Every instinct screamed at Conover to just get the hell out of there. But he pressed himself against the reassuring solidity of the Pulsar’s immense hand and stayed put.

“It looks like the Battle Prince is coming back online.”

* * *

“I have established a comm channel to the Deeper Battle Prince,” Sentinel said.

Dash stared for a moment, trying to think of what to say, now that he had the attention—after a fashion, anyway—of one of these things.

“Um, hello?”

He snapped a curse at himself. Um, hello? That was the best he could do?

“Who?”

The voice was clipped, flat, and mechanical. “I’m the Messenger. I’m the leader of the Cygnus Realm. We’re currently at war with you, but we’d really rather not be. We’d really like to talk—”

“Where?”

Dash twisted his mouth into a grimace. Okay, it was awake, sort of. But it was either having difficulty communicating, or it just wasn’t going to be capable of forming more than one-word responses. He sighed and tried again.

“You were severely damaged in a battle against the inhabitants of this planet. You crashed. We’ve powered you back up, and—”

“Who?”

Dash cursed. “Sentinel, this guy seems really out of it. Any ideas about where to go from here?”

“I could attempt to interface directly with the Battle Prince’s computational systems, but it would entail risk.”

Dash considered it. Sentinel might be able to learn a lot more by making a direct connection. But they had no idea what sort of risks that entailed to Sentinel herself, or whether her firewalls would even be enough to keep out some malicious connections right back.

“Let’s hold off on that, at least for now. Conover—”

“Enemy.”

Dash stopped. He chose his next words carefully.

“There’s no need for us to be enemies. All we want is to live our lives, let you live yours.”

“Enemy.”

A pause. Then, one more word.

“Attack.”

Dash snapped out another curse. “Conover, get the hell out of there!”

* * *

Conover studied the flow of data through the Battle Prince as Dash spoke to it. Many of its systems were still offline, and what was operating was doing so slowly, with a huge amount of error-correction going on, bogging things down. What caught his attention, though, was a persistent attempt to activate a particular system, one that defied its efforts because the stream of data kept being corrupted. But it kept trying.

“Who?”

As he monitored the exchange between Dash and the Battle Prince, Conover’s gut wrenched down even tighter.

His gut. Dash often talked about going by his gut. By the feel of a situation. There was nothing quantifiable or analytical about it. It wasn’t rational. And Conover had always prided himself on being rational.

But going by his gut, by the feel, was something that set Dash apart from the AIs. As good as they were, they simply couldn’t replicate that irrational, human tendency to do things that didn’t make overt sense but just felt right.

And putting a stop to this suddenly just felt right.

Conover pulled at the power core, meaning to unplug it. But the connection was tighter than he’d anticipated, and the core stuck fast in the receptacle. All he managed to do instead was yank it out of his own sweaty grip. It fell onto the Battle Prince’s armor with a dull clunk and rolled about a half-meter away. He grabbed for it, but it sat just a few centimeters beyond his reach. No problem, all he had to do was have Kristin lower him and move him to his right, just a bit.

“Enemy.”

“Attack.”

“Kristin, get me out of here!” is what he shouted instead. Dash’s warning started before his ended, but the Pulsar was already lifting him away.

* * *

Dash saw Conover rise into view as the Pulsar raised him out of the ravine. But all he could do was watch, desperately hoping that he got back inside the protection of his mech before whatever was going to happen, happened. It would probably involve a large explosion, which would hit both mechs at point-blank range.

“The Deeper Battle Prince is attempting to cascade a failure into its own power cores. If it succeeds, a multi-megaton explosion will result,” Sentinel said.

“Can you stop it?”

“No. I strongly recommend we withdraw to a safe distance.”

Dash kept his eyes locked on Conover. The Pulsar’s cockpit had opened, and he’d heaved himself inside. Twenty, maybe thirty seconds for him to get back into the cradle—too long.

“Kristin, lift off, straight up, as fast as you can go!” Dash shouted. As he said it, he did exactly that with the Archetype, rocketing it straight up, while veering aside to minimize his chances of inadvertently colliding with the Pulsar. The mech quickly gained altitude, punching through scattered clouds and heading skyward.

Dash glanced back down, then swore yet again.

The Pulsar remained grounded, on the edge of the ravine.

* * *

“The Messenger instructed me to lift off!” Kristin said.

“And I countermanded it,” Conover shot back, levering himself into the cradle. As soon as the Meld connected and he merged with the mech, he reached back down into the crevasse. He wasn’t going to let this happen. He’d come here to dig the secrets out of the Battle Prince, and that was exactly what he’d do.

“Conover, what the ever-living hell are you doing?” Dash shouted over the comm.

Fortunately, he’d studied the thing long enough to know exactly what he wanted to do. He ignored the power core, which might take him several tries with the Pulsar’s fine manipulators to grab, and instead focused on levering open the armor around the access port. Viscous fluids spurted as he dug the manipulators into the Deeper construct, then grabbed and tore out a portion of the Dark Metal mesh that seemed to function as data storage and processor in one. It came free in a sloppy spray of clotted gore.

“Yes! Screw you!” Conover shouted, then launched the Pulsar straight up. Strings of organic goo streamed from the mesh as the mech accelerated, gaining altitude fast. He’d still only gained about a thousand meters before the Battle Prince exploded.

* * *

Dash stopped breathing when the ground beneath him vanished in a dazzling flash. The Pulsar vanished into the fireball that rapidly expanded outward from the Battle Prince at its epicenter. He kept holding his breath as the fireball rose. The Archetype shuddered when the shockwave finally caught up to him. The fireball, a roiling cloud of plasma nearly as hot as a star, soared upwards.

No sign of the Pulsar.

Dash was running out of curses and started recycling them as he jackknifed the Archetype and dove back down, toward the soaring glare of the fireball. He heard Leira shouting at Amy, who was apparently intent on doing the same thing. Dash got it, but he wasn’t sure what either of them could do.

Something popped out of the top of the fireball, trailing a glowing wake of vaporized armor.

Dash let out a groan of relief. The Pulsar kept gaining altitude, now rapidly outpacing the rising column of destructive energy.

“Conover, talk to me!” he said.

“I’m here.”

“Your ass is as good as kicked, kid,” Dash blazed.

“You can take your turn after me!” Amy cut in.

Conover stunned Dash by laughing. “You know what? I got to see a nuclear explosion from the inside. Somehow, getting my ass kicked doesn’t seem like much of a threat. Besides, I was able to retrieve most of the Battle Prince’s Dark Metal neural net before he went boom.”

Dash slid into formation with the battered but still functional Pulsar. Amy closed in from the other side. Dash almost expected the two mechs to hug, which would be profoundly weird.

Also, he had to admit, kind of sweet.

But mostly weird.

6

Dash had only been in this part of the Forge twice. Once, when Custodian had revealed this remote and isolated section to him, and again just after the Golden were finally defeated and the Life War ended. The only way of accessing it was from outside the station, through a small hatch lost in the vast expanse and clutter of the Forge’s vast hull.

No one else had ever been here. Literally no one else. This small cluster of compartments was for the Messenger only. He’d only told Leira about their existence so that she knew to ask Custodian about them if he fell, and she became the Messenger.

Although, as he unfastened and pulled off the helmet of his vac-armor, it struck him that that had just been an assumption, that he’d name his own successor. The Unseen had, in a way he still didn’t really understand, chosen him. Would they choose who came after him, as well? Had they already set that in motion? Or was it up to him?

“Custodian,” he asked, as he entered the first and largest of the secret compartments, “who becomes Messenger after I’m gone?”

“I believe you have named Leira as your successor. Have you changed your mind?”

“What? No. It just hit me that I wasn’t sure if it was up to me or not.”

“If the Creators have included imperatives in my programming that would dictate otherwise, I’m not currently aware of them.”

Dash groaned. Leave it to Custodian to answer both yes, it’s up to you and actually, I don’t know for sure.

He set his helmet down on the deck. “Eventually, I am going to die. Even if I don’t get myself blown to bits in a space battle, I’m eventually going to get too old for this shit. What happens then? Who takes over? Am I supposed to have kids, to create, like, a line of Messengers?”

“Again, the Creators have not provided any insight or guidance that I can currently access.”

Dash scowled. It had been a while since he’d slammed headlong into the wall of ambiguity and vague half-answers that seemed to be the Unseens’ modus operandi. But it wouldn’t be right to take it out on Custodian, who was just doing what he was programmed to do. So he took a deep breath and let it out.

“Fine. Let’s just table that question for now. You brought me here for a reason.”

“I did. There is a matter of profound importance that I must discuss with you. It is based on what the Creators saw as an unlikely contingency or, perhaps, as a future endeavor for the Messenger.”

“Okay. This is sounding pretty heavy. Should I sit down?”

“I’m not sure how configuring your body makes any difference to the discussion.”

Dash laughed. “Custodian, your humor gives me life.”

“My understanding was that you had selected Leira as your social and sexual mate. If you want me to fulfill that role, I suppose I could engineer some form of anatomically appropriate construct—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! I meant that in the respectful, really good friends sort of way, not—the anatomically appropriate construct way!”

“I know.”

“You—wait. Custodian,” Dash sighed, a grin breaking over his features. “Well done.”

“Did you find it amusing?”

Dash laughed in a way he hadn’t in a long time. “Yeah, I did. Very much so.” He actually had to wipe a laughter tear from his face. “Anyway, back to business.”

“Indeed. The Creators did not, I believe, envision the Deepers. At the time they established the concept of the Messenger, they appear to have been wholly unaware of their existence.”

“Since there was absolutely nothing in the archives about them, that makes sense.”

“However, the Creators were canny enough to realize that they could not possibly envision every threat the Messenger and their followers might face. Accordingly, they did take steps to provide the Messenger with the means to face such unknowns.”

“Like the Deepers.”

“Like the Deepers. Every race in the known galaxy shares certain physiological and genetic characteristics. There are similarities between your DNA and that of the Kosan, and the Rin-Ti, and the Hriki, and all of the others we have encountered. Even the Creators didn’t know how this came to be the case or, if they did, they never recorded it. The Deepers, however, are a race apart. Their biology does not use DNA as its foundation. They are, therefore, a challenge in terms of their fundamental nature, as well as in terms of distance.”

“Coming from out in the Big Black like that? Yeah, they sure are. But with the gates—”

“Then distance is irrelevant. However, that begs the question if you are, as the Messenger and commander of the Cygnus Realm, truly comfortable using the technology of the gates without us truly understanding it. We aren’t even sure of its origin, as even the Deepers seem to have simply adapted it.”

“Maybe the gates belong to who or whatever spread DNA biology all over the place,” Dash offered.

“Perhaps. But the important point is that we are coming to rely on gate technology to prosecute this war. Our only viable access to the Big Black, you call it, is through the Backwater Gate, to the Deeper platform that we have seized. Again, are you comfortable with this?”

Dash rubbed his chin. It was a dodgy basis for a star-spanning entity like the Cygnus Realm, tech they didn’t understand and couldn’t even really control. But their only other way of reaching out into the intergalactic void and taking the war to the Deepers was by translating through a black hole, like The Maw. And that was just far too dangerous to rely on. So for now, Dash had to think that the gates were a tool, an opportunity, as well as a threat. “Am I comfortable with it? Hell, no. I’m not comfortable doing anything but building a life with Leira. And fishing. But what choice do we have? I mean, someday, I hope, we’ll have a better understanding of it. But until then—"

“But what if the Deepers did borrow the technology? There is precedent for such things. The Golden derived essentially all of their tech from the race that preceded them and that they destroyed. Even the Creators acknowledge basing some of their technological achievement on forerunner races.”

“Well, sure. But that’s a big maybe. For all we know, the Deepers are the ones who created gate technology.”

“If so, then why are they not using it to attack us more aggressively? To avoid our defenses completely? Why would they have placed the near end of the Backwater Gate on the planet’s surface, inside its atmosphere, when it would make far more sense, from a practical, spaceflight point of view, to keep it well away? And why are they allowing us to make use of the gates, essentially unimpeded?”

Dash did sit down. It was awkward in his vac armor. “All good questions.” He rubbed his chin again. “Okay, so assuming the gates belonged originally to someone else, then we find them. Find the source, anyway, whatever it is. No matter who, no matter where.”

“Which is exactly what I expected you to say.” The wall flickered to life, depicting a massive structure. Truly massive, in fact, Dash realized as he studied it. Far larger than the Forge, with dozens of levels and no fewer than five spaceports arrayed around its perimeter. It was on a scale that Dash found almost impossible to comprehend for something that was constructed rather than a naturally occurring body, like a planet or moon.

He finally found some words. “What the hell is that?”

“It is called the Kingsport. If humanity must leave its galactic home behind, then there are things that can be done to bring that home into intergalactic space. This is the realization of that.”

“Okay, first of all, holy shit. Secondly, holy shit. Thirdly, did the Unseen ever mean for us to build this thing, this Kingsport?”

“As I said, it has, until now, only been a contingency. It hasn’t been necessary to consider undertaking what, as you can well imagine, is a colossal task. But if you truly intend to lead the Realm outside of the galaxy, and seek the source of the gates, then I believe we must give serious consideration to constructing it.”

Dash stood, head tipped back as he surveyed the image. For a moment, that was all he could do, just stare. “How many Forges can fit in that?” he finally asked.

“In terms of mass, ninety-three. In terms of space, the Kingsport is the equivalent of a dwarf planet.”

Dash inhaled, then let the breath out slowly, thinking through the implications. “And we would build this out in the Big Black?”

“Yes, and—”

“Between the Milky Way and, I’d assume, a dwarf galaxy, right? The closest Magellanic Cloud?”

“Exactly. It will be a safe harbor and essentially unassailable, but it will require an effort beyond anything you have ever attempted, Messenger.”

“No shit.” Dash couldn’t even begin to wrap his mind around the logistics, the construction effort, the volume of materials—

“What about you, Custodian? Where would you fit into this?” Dash asked.

Inside the image, a small blue outline appeared near the center of the vast construct. It was the Forge. It was also minuscule compared to the complete structure. The already nearly impossible to understand scale of the Kingsport became even more surreal. “With your approval, I would continue my work supporting you from a new location, at the heart of the Kingsport.”

For a while, Dash just sat and let the idea sit in his mind. He deliberately avoided trying to start thinking through the practical implications, the titanic amount of effort this was going to require. Instead, he focused on the feel of the idea.

Eventually, he smiled.

“Okay, Custodian, I’m in. Where do we start?”

* * *

Without a word, Leira walked up to the big screen in the Command Center and kicked it.

Dash blinked in surprise. “What was that for?”

She turned to him. “There’s something wrong with this thing. Nothing that big can be, you know, constructed, so the scale must be off or something.”

“I can assure you that all of the display’s functions are operating correctly,” Custodian said, sounding a little peeved.

Leira crossed her arms, her skepticism matched by that of the rest of the Inner Circle assembled in the Command Center. “Okay, so let’s see if I’ve got this straight. We are somehow going to move all this material—literally millions, probably tens and maybe even hundreds of millions of tons—”

“More like billions,” Conover cut in, his attention raptly fixed on the image.

“Okay, sure. Billions. Hell, trillions. It doesn’t matter. We’re somehow going to move all that stuff thousands of light-years out into the Big Black and build this thing out there,” she went on.

“Something like that,” Dash replied.

“If we use every ship we’ve got, loaded to the bulkhead with materials, how many trips would that take? How long would it take?”

Custodian spoke up. “Assuming the cargo capacity of the existing fleet, with each ship maximized for cargo, it would take a minimum—”

“Custodian, that’s okay,” Leira said, cutting him off. “The actual numbers don’t matter. The fact is that this thing is completely impractical, a complete fantasy.”

She watched Dash as she said it, then glanced back at the image. Back to him.

“So, when do we start?” she asked.

Again, Dash couldn’t help being surprised. “You mean, you do agree we should do this?”

“Oh, shit no. Not at all. But I can tell you intend to try, so I might as well do my part,” Leira replied.

Dash put his hands on his hips and smiled a thin smile. “Glad to hear it. But we’re not going to lug all of these materials out there by ship, obviously. Or we are, but we’re going to have to use the gate technology to do it.”

Leira uncrossed her arms. “Okay. But that means we need gates we can control.”

“And that means finding their builders, or whatever legacy those builders left behind,” Conover said.

Dash pointed at him. “Give the man a medal. Yeah, that’s exactly what we need to do.”

It was Viktor’s turn to scowl. “I love me a good engineering project, but I’ll echo Leira here. Holy shit, Dash. Isn’t it likely that the answer to all of this, the origins and operation of the gates, is in the custody of the Deepers? And they’re trying to unravel it, which is what has got them this far?”

“If that’s true, the Deepers are going to be guarding that knowledge especially well,” Harolyn put in.

Dash had Custodian put up a star-chart, zoomed far out, so it encompassed the rimward expanse of the galactic arm, and the intergalactic void beyond it.

“Custodian, show us where the gates are. The ones that we know of.”

A number of points appeared. Dash immediately recognized the Black Gate, which had led them into this part of the Milky Way to begin with. Further spinward was the Backwater Gate, with its terminus far outside the galaxy. The few other gates they knew about, or suspected, speckled the map.

“Now show me where the Arkubators are—again, that we know of. As close as you can, please, with projected orbits,” Dash said.

This time, several long, curving red lines appeared. One lay within only a few light-years of the Forge’s current location and was considerably shorter, that particular Arkubator apparently traveling more slowly than all the others.

“Now, extend them backward in time until they meet,” Dash went on.

Only two of the Arkubator trajectories met in both time and space, 23,300 light-years outside of the galaxy.

“Custodian, can we see anything at all at the point where those two Arkubator tracks converge?”

Custodian answered by placing another image on the display in its own window. It was utterly black, except for a single, white point. It could have been a mote of light-colored dust that had landed on the display.

“This is the best image the Forge’s scanners can obtain in telescopic mode,” Custodian said. The image changed, the point of light becoming a slightly larger, fuzzy spot.

“That doesn’t make it much better,” Benzel said, his tone sardonic.

“Nonetheless, this image is sufficient to draw some conclusions about what you are seeing,” Custodian replied.

“Such as?” Leira asked.

“Based on changes in the object’s apparent brightness and minor perturbations in its location, it would seem to be a white dwarf star, with two planetary companions in close, almost circular orbits.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the loneliest place in the known universe,” Harolyn said.

“How long a trip to get there?” Dash asked, breaking the lingering silence.

“Too long to represent a practical journey, Messenger. Between six and ten months, assuming the best translation drive is operating continuously at peak efficiency.”

This time, Sentinel interrupted. “And before you suggest using the wormhole method of traveling that distance, through a black hole such as The Maw, don’t bother. The probability of successfully making such a transit is less than five percent, and quite likely less than one.”

“Well, since you’re the one that would have to do all the number-crunching, I’ll take your word for that, Sentinel,” Dash said.

Conover stepped forward. “We need to find a way to do this. It means we need to figure out that gate technology.”

But Amy stepped forward with him. “Really? Even if the Deepers aren’t sitting on it, it could be anywhere. Hell, it might not even exist at all. The answers you want may very well have died with whoever figured them out in the first place. We’d be chasing ghosts, nothing more.”

Dash gave Amy a cheery smile. “You know what? You’re right, Amy.”

She stared for a moment, then turned suspicious. “I am? But it was your idea in the first place, Dash.”

“Kinda makes me wonder why you even suggested it, if that’s the case,” Viktor said.

But Dash raised a hand to cut off debate before it got fully derailed. “I’m not saying we won’t pursue the gate tech. Going back to Leira’s observations about what it’s going to take to build the Kingsport, we have to find out its secrets and learn how to use it. In the meantime, though, there’s only one thing to do.”

“Which is?” Leira asked.

“I’ve gotta get faster.”

“And by that, I assume you mean the Archetype, as the neural net that enables your Meld, as well as your body, are at the very limit of human achievement.”

Dash grinned. “Hear that, everyone? I’m the pinnacle of human achievement!”

“That isn’t quite what I said, Messenger. But that aside, how would you propose to make the Archetype significantly faster?” Custodian asked.

“I have a simple solution, and it goes sort of like this—if one is good, then two are better.”

Silence. Everyone just stared at him. If Custodian had a face, it would be staring at Dash, too.

“I’m talking about power cores,” Dash finally said.

“A quad core is the current limit of Shroud technology and has not been superseded by anything in my records,” Custodian said.

“Your records. Not Kai’s,” Dash said.

“I confess that he has access to information that seems lost to the Creator’s main database here on the Forge. This is a matter he and I have been working to rectify, but it is a slow process.”

Dash nodded. “Ask him to meet me in the main bay. We need to take a trip.”

“Certainly. Where shall I say you’re going?” Custodian asked.

Dash smiled. “Home.”

7

Dash let out a long, theatrical sigh. “Nothing like being back in the warm, cozy space of the Orion Arm, is there?”

“Is there really any difference between this region of space and the one we just left Messenger?” Kai asked.

Dash rolled his eyes. “You’re spending too much time with Custodian, Kai. You’re starting to sound just like him.”

“You do realize that’s a compliment, being favorably compared to one of the Creators’ greatest achievements,” the monk replied.

Dash surrendered and just returned a non-committal uh-huh. As he did, he scanned the region around the Black Gate. They wondered if the Deepers might have actually used it to launch an incursion into the Realm’s home space, in the Orion arm.

But there was no sign of them. The nearby planet, the one created by the Unseen for use of the Realm following the Life War, seemed as pristine as ever. If the Deepers had decided to launch an invasion through the Black Gate, they’d almost certainly have started stripping the planet for its considerable resources.

He turned his attention to the ship accompanying the Archetype, the light cruiser Daring. She was an upgraded version of the Unseen’s standard light cruiser template, with an enhanced Blur drive. It made her one of the few Realm ships that could keep up with the Archetype when Dash amped the mech up to its maximum acceleration.

“I have determined a course to our destination, the Procyon star system,” Sentinel said.

“Okay, let’s get this show on the road. Daring, you ready to translate?”

“Whenever you are, Dash,” her pilot replied.

Dash engaged the translation drive, flinging the Archetype into unSpace and on the way to Procyon, or, more correctly, its strange companion planet, which Kai called The Stranger.

“So, Kai, I never did get a chance to ask you—why does your Order call this place The Stranger? It’s an odd name for a planet.”

“Truthfully, I’m not sure. All my Order’s archives recorded is that a monastery was established there early in our history, but only for a short time. It was soon abandoned.”

“Why?”

“Again, I’m not sure. Apologies for being obtuse. It is against my nature to be so.”

“Understood, and thank you for the apology. It’s unwarranted, friend. You’ve never held back the truth. Or your pursuit of it, for that matter,” Dash said.

Kai’s response rang with pride—an unusual emotion for the steady monk. “Ah—thank you . . . Dash.”

They flew on, making the translation to Procyon in just a few hours. When they returned from unSpace, Dash took in a white, main-sequence star with a dim white-dwarf companion. Only a single planet orbited the binary pair, a roughly Earth-sized, dark world. The only other solid material in the system amounted to nothing more than a few rocks up to a few hundred meters across.

“Well, isn’t this a cheery place,” Dash said.

“The planet’s geochemistry and general make-up don’t conform to an origin in this star system. I’d suggest it formed in another system entirely, was gravitationally ejected from it, then traveled on a ballistic trajectory as a rogue planet before being captured by Procyon,” Sentinel said.

“Huh. So how long has it been here?”

“Propagating the orbits of several small, rocky objects backward in time, there are several that would have collided with it as recently as five hundred thousand years ago. That they didn’t suggests the planet has been in this orbit for less time than that.”

“Again, huh. Kai, what the hell prompted your order to set up an outpost here? It doesn’t exactly shout out come settle me! does it?”

“Throughout the history of my Order, there have been a number of schisms and heresies. The most prominent was, of course, the one that led to the origin of the Bright, as allies of the Enemy of all Life. But there have been many disputes and disagreements over interpretations of ancient writings or the dogma derived from them. Some led groups to break off and find their own path,” the monk replied.

“Okay, so what led to the schism that brought your people here?”

“I’ve researched it as best as I could, but the records are scant. All I can say is that this group departed peacefully, established themselves here, and remained in communication with the rest of the Order for some time. Eventually, though, they abandoned this place and dispersed.”

Sentinel cut in. “The planet was captured in a close orbit to the Procyon binary pair. The gravitational effects of the two orbiting stars result in complex tidal forces on the planet. It has become very unstable tectonically and will eventually break apart and become just more rocky debris.”

“So they picked a real winner to settle on,” Dash said. It wasn’t an uncommon story by any means. Lots of planets had been enthusiastically settled, only to be hastily abandoned not long after for reasons ranging from unexpected solar storms to dangerous alien life to the problem here—a planet in the process of being slowly ripped apart.

Dash sighed. “Oh, what the hell. I don’t think I’ve checked visit planet tearing itself to pieces off my bucket list yet.”

* * *

The planet made its unstable nature apparent as the Archetype descended, a shuttle from the Daring in company. As they passed over a jagged, saw-toothed mountain range, one of the peaks suddenly toppled and slumped into ruin. Almost a thousand meters of rock just collapsed into a colossal landslide and thundered into an adjacent valley, raising a cloud of dust like the aftermath of a nuclear blast.

“Well, that was spectacular,” Dash said, his voice quiet.

“An earthquake of about magnitude eight-point-eight is continuing to affect that region,” Sentinel said.

“That sounds big.”

“It depends on what you mean by big. If, for instance—”

“That’s okay, Sentinel. It was enough to make a mountain collapse. That’s all I really need to know,” Dash replied.

The monastery, or what would be left of it, rose on the horizon, marked by an icon in the Archetype’s display. Dash angled the mech toward it, the shuttle smoothly following. The location turned out to be a plateau about ten klicks across. One side of it plunged into a gorge at least a thousand meters deep, while the others were hemmed in by more mountains. A cluster of buildings squatted near the precipice.

“Your people just couldn’t have settled out in the middle of one of those nice, flat plains off to the west of here, huh? They had to build right on the edge of a long fall into oblivion,” Dash said, circling the Archetype overhead.

“You have to admit, the view from here would be spectacular,” Kai replied.

“I thought you guys didn’t indulge in the sorts of pleasures the rest of us mortals enjoyed.”

“Our vows don’t preclude having some nice scenery to look at while we go about our daily labors.”

Dash smiled. “Okay, Sentinel, I guess we’ll just settle near those buildings, on their side away from the cliff. We’ll get as close as we can, so we don’t have to walk too far.”

“There is a problem.”

Dash puffed out a breath. “Of course there is. There’s always a problem, and it usually puts us on some ridiculous clock. Let me guess. Some big-assed earthquake is about to hit, so we’ve only got a short time to explore before this whole plateau falls apart.”

“No. Or, rather, I don’t know that won’t happen, but I don’t have any indication of it. The problem in question is an abundance of insect life.”

“Bugs? How are bugs a problem?” Dash asked, realizing as soon as he said it was the sort of question he probably wasn’t going to want to know the answer to. It would inevitably be something horrifying, like spiders-with-wings.

“One of the reasons the breakaway faction of Kai’s Order settled here is that there is a series of hydrothermal springs flowing from fractures in the rock of the plateau. These hot springs are laden with mineral nutrients, which support the rapid growth of large colonies of bacteria. These, in turn, have become a food source for a vast swarm of insects.”

“So? If they’ve got all those yummy bacteria to eat, why would they bother us?”

“When I say a vast swarm, I mean a vast swarm,” Sentinel replied, zooming the image in on the nearest building.

At first, Dash thought that the earthquake he’d mused about had actually hit, making the ground move. But as he studied the imagery, he realized, with mounting revulsion, that the apparent movement of the ground was actually bugs. Trillions of them, it seemed.

A vast swarm indeed.

“I think we’ve found another reason why heretical brethren decided to flee this place,” Kai said.

Dash grunted assent. “Excuse me for saying this but—no shit.”

Dash landed the Archetype in the midst of the swarm so that Sentinel could do a closer examination. The mech’s enormous feet must have crushed thousands of the insects, each as long as his hand, but thousands upon thousands more immediately began boiling up the Archetype’s legs in a glittering torrent.

Dash had to grit his teeth and doggedly force himself to keep the mech on the ground. Thanks to the Meld, it seemed like the bugs were crawling up his legs. They were no threat to the mech, of course, but it wasn’t the mech he was worried about. It was his own sanity.

“Okay, Sentinel. You’ve got ten seconds, and then we’re out of here.”

“It would be useful if—”

“Ten seconds. Actually, seven, now. No debates.”

“Understood.”

The last second ticked away, and Dash hurled the Archetype back in the air. A brief burst of supersonic climb scrubbed the bugs from the mech, and he was able to breathe again.

“You know, I’ve fought in a lot of battles, I’ve seen a lot of death and destruction aboard this mech, but that was one of the most unpleasant things I’ve ever done aboard this thing,” Dash said.

“Then you’ll be especially revolted to know that those insects would also be carnivorous with respect to humans, treating your cells no differently than the bacteria that’s their primary food source.”

“Even better. An endless swarm of man-eating bugs as long as my hand. Kai, your people probably couldn’t have picked a worse place to set up shop if they’d tried.”

“Perhaps it was their punishment for their heretical ways.”

“It was a good one, then.”

Dash discussed the matter with Sentinel. Their vac-armor would protect them from being eaten, but the insects carpeted the area so thickly they might actually make moving around difficult. And, if someone got stuck or trapped somewhere, they’d face the truly horrible choice between running out of air inside their armor while surrounded by a perfectly breathable atmosphere, or breathing and being eaten alive.

They finally settled on firing a salvo of missiles, their warheads set to the lowest-possible yield, detonating about two thousand meters over the settlement. It should be enough to flash fry the bugs without doing significant damage to the monastery itself and, more important, the archival trove they hoped to find here. The searing bursts of plasma instantly reduced most of the swarm to foul vapor and a thick carpet of charred organic matter. Sentinel estimated that enough insects remained to necessitate vac-armor, but it should be days before they recovered to their former numbers.

Should be.

* * *

Dash scowled at the black dust he kicked up in a billowing cloud. The stuff had already coated his and Kai’s vac-armor, clinging to every bit of it that wasn’t the visor or the sensor clusters on the sides of the helmet. These had been designed specifically to repel any foreign matter, to keep them clean and usable.

Of course, it meant he maintained a clear view of the knee-deep pile of charred insect corpses through which he and Kai had to wade to get to the former settlement.

“This is absolutely disgusting,” Kai muttered.

“I think we’re past that, friend. This is in a territory of revulsion I can’t imagine, and I’ve slept in a tavern toilet on Barnath’s World.”

“The place where the people—”

“Yes, and let’s not discuss it. Took a hundred minutes of hot water to get me clean enough to feel like I wasn’t a walking petri dish,” Dash said, suppressing a shudder.

Sentinel had detected no threats aside from the insect swarm or the lurking tectonic instability, so Dash had decided that only he and Kai would disembark and enter the old monastery. A detachment of Realm assault troops stayed ready in the shuttle, grounded about a hundred meters away from the buildings furthest from the cliff-edge.

They peered into the first few buildings they passed, standard, self-erecting prefabs of the sort you might find in a hundred different colonies and settlements. A few had been improved upon, and there were even a couple made of local stone. Apparently, Kai’s departed heretics had been here long enough to put some effort into their new home.

“It is standard practice for my Order to use tunnels and subsurface chambers to house important archives and documents. We should therefore find a path that leads us down into the plateau,” Kai said.

“Actually, seismic data indicates that a number of subterranean spaces exist under the monastery, adjacent to the cliff-face. There appears to be a means of accessing them in the building directly ahead of you, fifty meters away,” Sentinel put in.

Dash knew that Kai would like to enter and examine all the buildings to see what insights they may offer to his Order regarding its history. However, despite the several days they had before the insect swarm would resurge, Dash was in no mood to idly poke around.

“So that’s our destination,” he said, slogging on that way amid a persistent cloud of incinerated insects.

They found a set of stairs within, leading down. The tunnel had been thickly fouled by insects, some of which were still alive. They resembled a praying mantis but mottled brown and black, and with forelegs more like the claws of a scorpion. They were, on average, as long as his hand.

He winced as one smacked into his visor and bounced away. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Dash saw that most of the insects down here were still alive, having been protected from the flash of the detonating missiles. There were fewer of them, but still enough to make his skin crawl.

Kai switched his helmet lamp on, which was a mistake. Insects immediately began hurling themselves at him, bouncing off his vac-armor with chilling, chitinous clacks.

“Kai, no lights! We’ll stick with low-light!”

The lamp flicked off. “Forgive me, Messenger.”

“You’re forgiven. Now, let’s just find what we came here to find, then get the hell out.”

As they followed the tunnel, the number of bugs diminished. There was no food for them down here. They passed by several side-chambers, but all were empty aside from some furnishings, including tables, document cabinets, and chairs. Everything, it seemed, had been evacuated when the monastery was abandoned.

Dash’s heart sank at that. If the monks had been this thorough throughout these catacombs, there’d be nothing left, and the trip would have been a waste.

They pushed on, finding nothing. Dash was just resigning himself to giving up and slinking away in defeat when they rounded a corner and found a sealed door ahead. Some seismic upheaval had collapsed a portion of the tunnel’s ceiling in front of it, blocking it.

“There may still be items of interest beyond that door,” Kai said.

Dash glared at it. “Sure, but we’re facing the same problem these monks did. It’s blocked by rubble.”

“Perhaps a breaching charge would work,” Sentinel offered.

Dash kept scowling at the door. A breaching charge might be able to crack open the door, which was made of alloy plates and probably came close to being a true blast door. Two breaching charges would be more certain to open the way. Dash was mindful, though, of the fact the tunnel had already partly collapsed, so the blast might open the door, only to cause the rest of the tunnel, and the space behind it, to collapse entirely.

Still, that wouldn’t put them in any different a situation than they faced now, and it might open the way for them. “Yeah, have our folks waiting out there in the shuttle bring a couple of breaching charges to us, and we’ll give it a try.”

They waited for the charges to arrive. A pair of ground troops, a Sergeant and a Corporal, eventually appeared, picking their way along the tunnel.

“Sir, that is the single most disgusting thing I’ve ever done,” the Corporal said, sounding like he was on the brink of gagging.

The Sergeant nodded. “Same, and I’ve had to inspect the feet of an entire platoon after a route march.”

They placed the charges, then backed off all the way to the top of the first stairwell. At Dash’s nod, the Sergeant triggered the detonator. Dash felt a flat thud through the armored soles of his boots. A moment later, a cloud of dust billowed up the stairwell.

“Okay, let’s go see how much of a mess we’ve made,” he said.

Dash left the two soldiers at the top of the stairs and then, with Kai, descended and returned along the tunnels to the sealed door.

The good news, Dash thought, was the way had, indeed, been opened.

The bad news—because there was always bad news—was that the shattered rock around the blast-site now trembled slightly, then went still. Trembled again and went still again.

“Sentinel, talk to me. Is this all about to come crashing down on top of us?” Dash asked.

“All I can tell you is that the fracture system in the rock surrounding your current location has been rendered unstable by the blast. The seismic data just aren’t good enough to say more than that it will, eventually, find a new and more stable configuration.”

“By crashing down on top of us.”

“That would do it, yes.”

Dash looked at Kai, gave a rueful smile, and shook his head. “Have you ever noticed that nothing is ever easy, Kai?”

“Life is facing challenges and overcoming them, Messenger.”

“Yeah, it sure is.” Dash looked into the chamber beyond the shattered door. Surprisingly, he caught a hint of daylight.

“Well, we’ve gone through all this trouble, might as well see what we’ve found.”

* * *

It was, indeed, a treasure trove.

A series of connected chambers, six in total, opened behind the door. The furthest actually opened onto the daylight Dash had seen. It poured through an opening the size of a large window that revealed a breathtaking panorama. The opening was, they realized, set in the face of the cliff beneath the monastery itself. If Dash stepped out of it, he’d immediately plunge a thousand meters to the canyon floor. The far side of the canyon faced him from about five hundred meters away, and beyond that, mountains towered to snow-capped peaks.

“Okay, that is one hell of a view,” he said.

But he didn’t linger on it. He turned back to the archives they’d found, all still apparently intact. The collapsed tunnel had prevented the monks from being able to remove any of it, which must have been heartbreaking for them. Not as heartbreaking as being crushed by more falling stone or eaten by a sea of bugs, but still heartbreaking.

The place was a muddled mess, though. Past tremors had knocked over and flung things around, while the blast of their breaching charges had only added to the chaos. They began picking through the ruin, retrieving data cores, loose documents, and even a few bound stacks of documents Dash recognized as books. He’d only ever seen them displayed as historical curiosities, although at one time, they were the most sophisticated means of storing information.

Dash picked one up and opened it. A smooth, whitish expanse of what was apparently compressed cellulose polymers gleamed back at him, holding a multitude of characters imprinted in some sort of black pigment. They meant nothing to him—

The chamber trembled, and dust and bits of rock fell from overhead. Dash shoved the book into his backpack, then turned to Kai.

“We’d better get moving. I’m not sure how long this place is going to stay intact—”

A sudden, thunderous roar cut him off. A thick cloud of dust engulfed him, and Dash lost sight of Kai entirely.

* * *

“Kai! Are you okay?”

A worried pause, then a response. “I’m fine!”

They waited for the swirling dust to thin before returning to what had been their way in and out. Now, it was just a pile of broken rock. If it spilled as far back into the corridor as it did into his chamber, Dash figured it must be at least ten meters thick.

“We are not digging our way through this. Or even blasting through it, for that matter,” he said.

“I imagine it would take days,” Kai agreed.

The rock around them trembled again. More bits of rock spalled off the ceiling, a few clacking against their vac-armor.

“I guess this is the rock finding a new point of stability, as Sentinel described,” Kai said.

“Yeah, if it all collapses, it’ll finally be stable.”

Dash looked around, peering through the dusty air. The suite of chambers containing the remaining archives seemed intact and still sturdy. But that might actually be an illusion because this first chamber had seemed intact, too, until a chunk of its roof fell in. And now ominous cracks radiated away from where it had broken. To underscore the danger, the chamber trembled yet again.

“Yeah, I don’t think waiting days to get dug or blasted out is going to be an option. If this whole place doesn’t collapse and crush us, the carnivorous bugs will,” Dash said.

“I quite agree.” Kai turned to the wan daylight filtering through the dust. “That would seem to be our only way out, however.”

“Yup. Sentinel, you there?”

“I am, Dash. I’ve just recorded a seismic event in your immediate area.”

“No kidding. We’ve kind of recorded it, too.”

“The ground troops accompanying you have reported that your egress is now blocked.”

“It is, but we do have another option,” Dash said, then went on to explain the small window set somewhere into the cliff-face under the monastery. Sentinel lifted the Archetype, bringing it over and then into the canyon.

As the mech slowly dropped into view from above, Dash saw another problem—of course. The cliff above them overhung enough to prevent the mech from getting close enough to easily mount it. The best Sentinel could do was reach out with one of the mech’s hands and get it to a point about five meters below the window.

“Shit. That’s still a hell of a drop,” Dash said, leaning out. “And if you don’t land just right, you might flop off and, well, let’s just say you’d get a few seconds to really take in that spectacular view as it flies past.”

And when you hit the bottom, all the vac-armor would do is keep the gooey remains more or less intact, his inner voice went remorselessly on.

“We will have to climb down, I think, Messenger,” Kai said.

As soon as he’d said it, the rock trembled again, hard. Another fall of rock, deeper into the suite of chambers, raised another cloud of dust.

“Okay, Kai, go.”

“Messenger, your survival is—”

“Really important to me, believe me. Now go!”

Kai looked like he was about to protest again, but the rock shuddered, more fell, and he just nodded and clambered out of the window. Then, as nimbly as a mountain goat, he climbed down and dropped into the Archetype’s hand with a clunk.

Dash had to chuckle at himself. Kai had at least ten years on him and belonged to an ascetic, scholarly order of monks. Dash kept tending to think of him as being somewhat—sedentary, was the word. That is, until a moment like this when Kai reminded him he was as sharp of body as he was of mind.

A tremendous crack split the dusty air, following by a long, rumbling crash. More dust billowed in waves. The entire first chamber had collapsed, and the failure was spreading to the remainder, faster and faster. Dash moved to climb out the window when something caught his eye a few meters away, just visible through the dust, partly fallen behind a bookcase. It was a shape he recognized immediately.

He crossed the room as both Kai and Sentinel urged him to hurry. It took only a moment to dislodge the small object, a model, from where it had stuck in place.

It was a model of the Kingsport, or something virtually identical to it.

Another crack, like an explosion, but much closer. Dash saw the next chamber in fall to ruin, leaving only this one, and one adjacent to it, still intact. He jammed the model into his satchel, then hurried back to the window and swung out a leg. His booted foot found purchase on the rock, and he started to climb down.

He almost made it. With less than three meters to go, the entire cliff-face shuddered. Dash’s footholds broke away, and he plunged into the void—

—only to be stopped short as something grabbed him and yanked him down onto the flat expansion of armored alloy that was the Archetype’s hand.

“Sentinel, go!” Kai shouted.

The mech smoothly backed away from the cliff, just as a blast of dust erupted from the window, announcing the final collapse of the chambers inside. To increase the drama, the entire overhang broke free. A few seconds later, thousands of tons of shattered rock starting the long fall to the canyon floor far below.

As the Archetype rose skyward, heading back to the plateau, Dash sat up. Kai stared back down at the soaring plume of dust that marked the ruined archives.

“We shall never return here, I think,” he said.

“No need. We have what we came for,” Dash said, patting his dusty satchel.

“Perhaps not entirely,” Kai replied, flipping open his own pack and touching one of the old tomes inside it with armored fingers. “But we have a long trip back. I will use it well.”

“Hey, Kai, thanks for catching me down there. I guess I owe you one, huh?”

“Not at all. I am privileged to have been able to preserve the life of the Messenger, the envoy of the Unseen.”

Dash nodded gratefully, just as Kai gave him a sudden and uncharacteristically mischievous look, before adding one more word.

“Again.”

8

A tense silence hung over Command Center as everyone watched the big display. It held an image of an experimental power core, one based on a design found among the records he and Kai had retrieved from the now-lost archives. It consisted of six sub-cores arranged in a flattened hexagon, an odd geometry that Custodian explained as being necessary for it to operate properly. The hexacore, as they’d dubbed it, had been mounted in a remote receptacle aboard their test bed, the Iron Gate, now parked ten thousand klicks away from the Forge. The AIs had no idea how much power the thing could potentially deliver, which also meant they had no idea how large an explosion might result if it failed.

“Is ten thousand klicks enough?” Dash had asked Custodian.

“If that distance and the Forges defenses are not sufficient protection, then we probably don’t wish to pursue developing this technology in the first place,” Custodian had replied.

“Good point.”

Their first attempt had failed, the core simply melting down to slag. Custodian, in consultation with Kai, Viktor, and Conover, had made some adjustments to the design. The document they’d retrieved had been vague in some key details, forcing them to infer them from other parameters. If it worked, though, it stood to revolutionize their tech, using Dark Metal not merely as a moderator, as in conventional cores, but actually incorporating it into the power source itself. It was yet another property of Dark Metal they hadn’t yet realized.

“The core is running at ten percent capacity. Its absolute power output has increased by an order of magnitude from its five-percent value.”

“Double the demand on it, and it produces ten times as much power? Pardon my indelicate language, but holy shit,” Viktor said.

Amy sniffed and shook her head. “Is there anything this Dark Metal stuff can’t do?”

“It can’t be as pretty as you are,” Conover said, flashing Amy a sappy smile. In response, he got a barrage of eye-rolls, snorts, and a few exaggerated gagging sounds.

Conover looked around. “What?”

In answer, Leira leaned toward Dash and batted her eyes at him. “Oh, Dash, no matter how strong this Dark Metal turns out to be, it will never be as strong as my love for you.” She then shot Conover a sardonic, sidelong glance. “That’s how you sound, you know.”

“I do not!” Conover looked around, turning red. “Do I?”

Everyone, even Amy, nodded in unison.

“I hate to interrupt this artificially tender moment, but the core is now operating at twenty percent demand. Output has increased by three orders of magnitude.”

“Wait, so another doubling multiplies the output by a thousand?” Viktor said, a look of sheer wonder on his face.

“I wonder how far we can go with this?” Amy asked but just got shrugs and headshakes in reply.

Dash watched intently. The demand was nearly at thirty percent—

The core suddenly flared from red to yellow to searing white in just a few seconds, then the automatic safety system ejected it from the Iron Gate. The whole receptacle-core assembly had been mounted in place of the warhead of a missile, which now streaked away. A single, dazzling point of light washed out the stars for a moment, then died away.

“Well, that was spectacular,” Dash finally said, his voice flat.

Viktor and Conover, standing at a console studying the telemetry of the hexacore up to the point of failure, both made tsk sounds.

“The problem isn’t the sub-cores. The problem is the connections between them, the moderators. Even being Dark Metal-infused alloy, they just can’t handle the amount of power being produced,” Viktor said.

“How about if we just used pure Dark Metal for them, instead?” Leira asked.

Amy, who’d joined Viktor and Conover and leaned in between them, shook her head. “I wondered if there was anything Dark Metal couldn’t do. I think this might be one of the things it can’t,” she said.

Both Viktor and Conover nodded their glum agreement.

Dash looked back at the big screen, now just showing an empty starfield. “Well, unless that schematic in the archive was just meant as a prank, this hexacore thing must somehow actually work, right?”

Conover suddenly straightened. “Why don’t we try using Dark Metal Two? The Battle Princes use it in their neural nets, which they also seem to use for power distribution. The fact they use it for both seems to suggest it’s pretty durable.”

“Custodian, what do you think?” Dash asked.

“We still haven’t finished determining the properties of DM2, so there’s no way to quantify the likelihood of success. However, the resulting degree of certainty doesn’t preclude it working,” the AI said.

Dash curled his lip. “By which you mean—”

“It’s worth a try.”

Dash smiled, then turned to Kai. “How explicit is that old document you and Custodian have been translating about this? Does it mention anything about using DM2?”

The monk studied an image of the retrieved schematic for a moment, tracing his finger along spidery lines of text. Finally, he shook his head. “Just as Custodian acknowledges a degree of uncertainty, so must I.” He pointed at the text. “This paragraph is the one of interest, but its translation is problematic. This was a transcription of a schematic that was clearly Unseen in origin, but we have no way of knowing how many intermediate steps there may have been in translating it.”

“In other words, you don’t know if it’s a copy of the original, or a copy of a translation, that might have been based on a translation, and so on,” Harolyn, who’d been watching from the back of the Command Center, said.

“That’s correct. All I can confirm is that this paragraph refers to the use of the Dark Metal substance. Whether that means Dark Metal, or DM2, or something else entirely, though?” Kai just ended on a shrug.

Dash clapped his hands together. “Well, like Custodian said, let’s give it a try. Conover, Viktor, I’ll leave it to you guys to work with Custodian to rig up another attempt.”

“They do say third time’s the charm,” Harolyn offered.

But Leira spoke up. “They also say accidents happen in threes, though, don’t they?”

Dash glanced back at the empty starfield. “Well, let’s hope the first they are right, and the second they aren’t.”

* * *

“We are at sixty percent capacity. The power output has now reached the limits of the automated safeties. Do you want to continue with the experiment, Messenger?” Custodian asked.

“Damn right I do. I want to know what one hundred percent looks like,” Dash replied.

Everyone had clustered around the big display. Again, it showed the hexacore in its receptacle aboard the Iron Gate. Despite the ferocious amount of power flowing from it, it hadn’t produced as much as a spark.

“The Iron Gate’s power distribution system is nearing failure. I will have to vent excess power before we proceed any further,” Custodian said.

Dash nodded. “Do it.”

They’d mounted three of the new gamma-ray lasers on the ex-minelayer, just for this reason. The weapons were enormously energy intensive and should be able to draw excess power away from the core and divert it harmlessly into space.

“The first graser is firing now. I am increasing the hexacore’s capacity.”

Aside from an understandable spike in the flux of gamma rays, none of the other indicators changed.

“I am continuing to increase the output. The second graser is firing.”

Dash and the others were all leaning forward, toward the image, their weight on their toes. “Keep going, Custodian.”

“Ninety percent. The third graser is now firing.”

Dash gritted his teeth. Even if it blew now, this had been a success. They might have to install some sort of limiter to prevent it from rising above a certain power threshold, but even so—

“One hundred percent. All grasers are firing at maximum output,” Custodian intoned.

Dash just gaped. They’d redlined three grasers with the power coming out of the hexacore and brought the Iron Gate’s entire power distribution system to the brink of failure. Custodian ramped the test ship's drive up to full power, activated every system aboard, and pumped out continuous rapid-fire from its single nova-cannon, and it still wasn’t enough.

“I am shutting the hexacore down,” Custodian finally said. At once, the power levels dropped to zero. The Iron Gate nonetheless coasted along, accelerated to a fearsome velocity in the few seconds its drive had been maxed out.

Dash turned to Benzel. “Can you get someone to recover that ship and our spiffy new hexacore before it flies off to parts unknown?”

Benzel looked up from his comm. “Already on it, boss.”

Custodian spoke up. “Preliminary data indicates that the hexacore experienced no thermal degradation from the test. In fact, it barely exceeded ambient temperature.”

“I’d call that a success,” Amy said, grinning.

But Leira turned a concerned frown to Dash. “The only input to that hexacore was whatever the fusion powerplant of an ex-minelayer could produce. What happens when we hook that up to the Archetype’s kugelblitz powerplant?”

Dash stared at the data on the big screen and bit his lip. It was a good question. The power cores didn’t actually produce power on their own. Rather, they took an input power and magnified—many, many, many times in the case of the hexacore. The thought of putting the sort of power the Archetype could produce into the hexacore was, he had to admit, a pretty frightening proposition.

On the other hand, it would overcome the Archetype’s biggest remaining limitation. The kugelblitz, essentially a miniature black hole, could produce far more power than the mech could actually use. It seemed like a gross design oversight by the Unseen. It would be like putting a high-end fusion plant into a rickety tramp freighter. It would work, but a huge amount of potential would be wasted. So what would be the point—?

Dash’s eyes went wide. “Oh.”

Leira’s eyes, in turn, narrowed. “Uh-oh.”

“What’s wrong?” Amy asked.

“It’s Dash. He has that look, the one he gets when he has an idea, one so bizarre it’s got a good chance of getting him killed,” Leira said.

“Yeah, I recognize it, too. If it doesn’t get him killed, it’ll be brilliant,” Benzel said.

“Well, he hasn’t been killed so far,” Amy offered.

But Leira just crossed her arms. “So far.” She scowled. “Dash, what are you thinking?”

He’d ignored the banter and concentrated on the data on the viewscreen. But he wasn’t even really seeing it, either. Instead, he was thinking through just where this new gut feeling had come from and its implications. He glanced at Leira.

“What? Oh. Yeah. I think this hexacore was meant for the Archetype. I mean, I’ve always wondered why the mech’s powerplant was able to produce way more energy than the mech could ever use. Now I know. It was because, eventually, these hexacores would be plugged in.”

A thoughtful silence fell over the Command Center. Finally, Viktor cleared his throat. Doubt clouded his expression. “Why, though? Why would the Unseen have left the only record of a crucial component for the Archetype in an obscure monastery, on a dying planet back on the other side of the Black Gate?”

“It really doesn’t seem to make sense,” Amy added.

But Dash shook his head. “I don’t think the Unseen ever imagined that the Deepers would come along and open up that gate. They expected we’d just stay in our original arm of the galaxy once the Golden were defeated. And as for why they stashed it on that planet, well, they didn’t, did they? We just found a copy, made by Kai’s Order.”

“So where’s the original?” Benzel asked.

Custodian spoke up. “I have examined all available archives, including those of the Forge, and the additional information that has been brought here since the Forge was reactivated. There is no record of a hexacore or of Dark Metal Two. However, there are indications that there are additional, hidden stores of data back on the other side of the Black Gate. As Kai and the members of his Order continue to pore through all available archive material, they would likely make connections similar to those that led to the Procyon expedition.”

“But Kai’s order has only been around for, what, a couple of hundred years? The Unseen go back at least a thousand times further in history than that. How could they have known that Kai’s Order would even be, well, a thing?” Leira asked.

“Presumably, in the same way they apparently knew that Dash would become the Messenger. We think of the Creators as having ceased to exist two hundred thousand years ago, but their influence continues.”

“I did meet the last living member of their race at the end of the Life War,” Dash said. “So they’ve been influencing, meddling, whatever you want to call it, all along.”

He looked back at the data, crossed his arms, and chewed his lip for a moment. “Yeah, I’m sold on this. This hexacore is a vital, missing piece of the Archetype. We may never find the original. Hell, it may not even exist anymore. But the Unseen were smart enough to have some backups, and I think this is one of them.”

“So what’s the plan, Dash?” Benzel asked.

Dash raised a finger. “Custodian, Sentinel, how long would it take to run some simulations? Make sure that, you know, the Archetype just doesn’t go poof when we plug this thing into it?”

“We would estimate one day to design the simulations and another to run them.”

Dash turned to Benzel. “To answer your question, the plan is two days of R-and-R, while the AIs do their thing. So how about we start with a round of Freya’s latest batch of plumato wine for everyone?”

Benzel grinned. “You buying?”

Dash grinned right back. “First round only. After that, you’re on your own!”

* * *

The first simulation saw the Archetype’s power distribution system melt down to slag. Changing the core geometry, adjusting the receptacle connections, and trying a multitude of other tweaks only bought the simulated Archetype a few more minutes of a titanic increase in available power. Each time it then went, as Dash had worried, poof.

Custodian’s assessment was simple. “The Archetype’s existing power distribution architecture is simply not able to handle this much energy. Thermal degradation can be delayed, but that’s all.”

Dash scowled. Had they hit a dead end?

“So what can we do about it?”

“We can do this,” Sentinel said, showing Dash the last of a series of simulations that had the Archetype quite happily turning the vast potential of the kugelblitz into usable energy.

Dash studied the schematic detailing this version of the simulated Archetype. He finally whistled.

“You want to replace the whole distribution system, and major parts of the Blur drive, and, holy crap, even key bits of the weapons all with DM2-infused components?”

“It isn’t a case of wanting to. It’s that we have to. It’s the only viable way of making use of the hexacore.”

“How long is this going to take? And do we even have enough DM2 to do it?”

“If made a fabricating priority, it would take one week to refit the Archetype. And it will require essentially all of our available stocks of DM2,” Custodian replied.

Dash stared at the schematic. The idea of taking the Archetype not just offline but also mostly disassembling it didn’t thrill him. But if the result was a far stronger, more capable mech . . .

“Okay, go ahead. I do have one question, though.”

“What’s that, Messenger?”

“If this works for the Archetype, will we be able to retrofit all of the mechs to this standard?”

“The Swift, Talon, Pulsar, and Polaris are all at least theoretically compatible, yes. Tests and simulations will confirm it. The smaller mechs, the Orions and Perseids, aren’t suited for it, however.”

“Good enough. So, what we need now is more DM2.”

“The Shroud is capable of producing it,” Sentinel said.

“Yeah, but nowhere near fast enough. That means we’re going to have to gather DM2 the old-fashioned way.”

“By killing Deepers and scavenging it from their broken corpses?”

Dash laughed. “Sounds like something I’d say, Sentinel. You and I are really starting to think alike.”

“There’s no need for insults, Dash.”

* * *

Fortunately, the Deepers decided to take the week off, allowing the Archetype’s refit to proceed unhindered. Now, Dash made himself relax in the cradle as the mech was towed by a small armada of maintenance remotes out of the docking bay and into clear space.

He took in the mech’s status. Everything was the same cheery green it had been when they’d first tried powering up the retrofitted mech. Custodian hadn’t wanted to take chances, and engage its drive anywhere near the Forge though. Hence, the stately and, Dash had to admit, slightly embarrassing spectacle of one of the most powerful war machines ever known being hauled out of its docking bay like so much cargo.

“Everything looks good here, Dash,” Viktor said. He’d slid the Slipwing onto the mech’s starboard rear quarter, acting as a safety ship for its first test flight. A salvage tug, the Heracles, followed.

Dash acknowledged. Eventually, they reached the departure point for the flight. The remotes released the mech and withdrew while the Slipwing and Heracles pulled away, giving Dash a wide berth.

“We’re ready whenever you are, Dash,” Viktor said.

Dash gave the status a last check—still all green—then replied. “Okay, I’m going to spool up the Blur drive really slowly, starting in three, two . . . and one.”

He activated the drive and applied thrust. The Archetype shot away from the Forge so fast Dash could watch it slowly shrink behind him. He couldn’t normally see the station dwindling in size until he’d done a lot more accelerating than this.

“And that’s barely cracked the throttle open,” he muttered.

He spooled the drive back to idle, and coasted for a moment.

“Okay, let’s get a little more aggressive.”

Dash kicked the drive harder. Again, the Archetype streaked ahead. He applied more and more power, and the acceleration kept climbing. At only twenty percent thrust, he was already accelerating as much as the mech ever could.

“Well, let’s see what fifty is like.”

What fifty percent thrust was like was what a missile must experience when launched. Since they didn’t carry squishy organic bits, missiles could normally accelerate far faster than crewed ships did.

Not anymore.

Dash grinned fiercely. “Okay, Sentinel, let’s see what this baby can do!”

“I do advise caution—”

Dash spooled the Blur drive up to eighty percent. Everything still showed green. Dash outright laughed, like a kid with a new toy. But Sentinel’s tone was grave.

“Dash, accelerating in a straight line is one thing. You haven’t tried maneuvering.”

“Ah, right. Okay, let’s do that.”

As soon as he did, Dash’s delight faltered and faded. At such colossal velocity, just turning took vast amounts of both time and space. If this were a space battle, he’d be doing a single attack run once every ten minutes—maybe.

“Now try firing a missile,” Sentinel suggested.

Dash did, making sure it wasn’t armed. It streaked away from the Archetype, then slowed, then stopped. And then the Archetype began overtaking it, eventually passing and leaving it behind.

“Shit, we can outrun our missiles?”

“The Archetype can now accelerate much faster than a standard missile can, yes.”

“Okay, point taken. Let’s try slowing things down.”

He did, which helped. But the Archetype’s drive had become so powerful that even small changes in thrust produced huge accelerations. What had once been the mech’s entire performance envelope now occupied a small bit at the very bottom of its new capabilities.

He set a course back to the Forge. “Well, that was fun. Now we just have to figure out how to turn fun into useful.”

* * *

Bedlam filled the Command Center as everyone tried talking at once.

“What’s the point of so much speed when you can’t fight properly?”

“Maybe we can put on some sort of limiter.”

“Then what’s the point of upgrading?”

“Is this even necessary?”

“Are we just wasting time and resources?’

“Imagine all the mechs being capable of that…”

Dash let the animated chatter carry on for a moment, then stuck his forefingers in his mouth and uttered a piercing whistle. Everyone went silent.

“Yes, all this performance is pointless if I can’t control it. But I have a solution,” Dash said.

“What’s that, boss?” Benzel asked. Wei-Ping, standing beside him, looked suspicious. She’d been one of the more vocal doubters but, to her credit, was at least willing to listen.

“I need to relearn how to fight at higher speeds. That means none of you can be around me.” Dash pointed to the big screen where the entire, contested region of the galactic arm was depicted. Threats, friends, and everything in-between glowed in a rainbow array of icons.

“Custodian, zoom in on that icon right…there.”

The image swelled, centered on a single, red icon, a Deeper cruiser. It was one of several nibbling around the edges of Realm territory, a picket ship, maybe, to give early warning about any incoming attack.

“Right there. I’m gonna pick a fight with that bastard while you all watch. At a safe distance, of course.”

“You mean safe enough so we can come save your Messenger ass?” Wei-Ping asked, a sardonic half-smile on her lips.

Dash returned a smile that could crack ice. “Nope. Close enough so you can see that Deeper ship die—and how fast I make it happen.”

9

“It is a Deeper heavy cruiser of standard design,” Sentinel said, as Dash eyed the enhanced imagery. He kept the Archetype at a distance, wanting the Deepers to see him and then see how they reacted. So far, the enemy ship had illuminated the mech with fire-control scanners, but that was all. It otherwise stayed in a wide, slow orbit around a nearby blue giant star.

“Any sign of that scary new beam weapon of theirs?” he asked. That was one concern he did have. They still knew nothing about the new weapon or its capabilities. Dash itched to fight, but he didn’t want to lose the Archetype just because he’d gotten dumb and cocky.

“None. Of course, the weapons could be retracted into their hull in some way,” Sentinel replied.

“Hmm. Good point. Okay, keep a close watch over them. If anything starts poking out of their hull that wasn’t there before, let me know.”

“Will do.”

Dash applied thrust. They’d recalibrated the mech’s controls to its new performance envelope, so its only acceleration settings weren’t nothing, and holy shit. The Archetype still accelerated hard, though. To the Deepers, who probably had their own portfolio of performance stats on the mech compiled from facing it, it must look as though Dash had decided to come at them as hard he could.

“The Deepers are launching missiles and torps,” Sentinel intoned.

Dash grunted, watching as the projectiles came streaking toward him. He could imagine the sweaty brows and tense mutters aboard the Stalwart, leading the task force supporting him from nearly a light-year away.

Just before the first of the missiles hit, Dash kicked the drive up to twenty percent. The Archetype shot forward like a slug from a rail gun, racing out of the Deeper missiles’ possible maneuver envelopes in an instant.

“Yes!”

He decelerated again, a little awkwardly, as he tried to rein the mech back in for an attack run. When he was lined up, he spurred the Blur drive again.

Then yelped, as the Deeper cruiser was just suddenly there, seeming to fill his field of view. He veered hard and shot past the Deeper ship without managing to even fire a shot.

Wei-Ping’s voice came on the comm, tinged with laughter. “That the plan, Dash? Just wow the Deepers into submission with your incredible performance?”

Dash decelerated, hard. “Hey, Leira can vouch for my performance.”

“I can. It’s fine,” she replied from aboard the Swift, which was embedded with the task force.

“Fine? What does fine mean—?”

“Later, sweetie. You’ve got a battle to win, remember?”

“Oh yeah, right.”

Dash wheeled the Archetype around. He vectored the Blur drive and used the thrusters in concert, making the turn as hard as he could. It still took him hundreds of thousands of klicks to do a one-eighty.

The Deeper cruiser, apparently deciding it was outmatched, suddenly made a run for the closest possible translation point. Ordinarily, Dash would have had no choice but to let it go. Even the Archetype wouldn’t have been able to catch it.

Ordinarily.

Dash slammed the drive up to seventy percent, and now rail gun slug fell short of describing the acceleration. For an instant, Dash wondered how the inertial dampers were handling all of this. If they failed, he’d instantly be reduced to red mist, faster than his nervous system could even feel it. But, like the mech’s other key systems, the dampers had been upgraded as well and hummed happily green.

This time, he cut the drive, then tried to decelerate to line up an attack. He was still going too fast, though, managing only a single dark-lance shot. The weapon, like the drive, had been dramatically increased in power and destructive potential, but only if the beam hit something. It didn’t. Then Dash once more zipped past the Deeper cruiser. Embarrassingly, it managed to land an x-ray laser on him, the burst flaring against the Archetype’s shield.

Wei-Ping laughed. “Awkward.”

“Lucky shot,” Dash grouched back.

He lined up another attack run but hesitated with the drive. If he wanted to catch the Deeper cruiser before it just translated away, he needed to accelerate hard. But that would give him one fantastically high-speed pass. He’d have to make it count.

“Here we go.”

Dash slammed the drive to the proverbial firewall. The mech left rail gun projectile far, far in its wake. In only moments, the mech had accelerated to such an appreciable fraction of light-speed that relativistic effects began to take hold. The stars ahead of Dash started shifting toward blue, the ones behind fading red-ward. A tiny but measurable time dilation took hold. Dash snapped out a curse and cut the drive, then flung into a hard deceleration. Sentinel had recalibrated the mech’s fire control system, though, so his single dark-lance shot landed, punching clean through the Deeper ship, then blasting out most of its starboard side.

Wreckage spun toward him.

“Shit!”

Dash flung the mech as hard aside as he could. He missed the nearest piece of debris, a massive chunk of the Deepers’ hull, by meters.

Dash hadn’t even realized that he’d jammed his eyes closed until he opened them again. His heart thundered in his chest, shoving blood through his ears in a relentless, pounding whine.

“Are we still in one piece?”

“You’re able to ask the question,” Sentinel replied.

“That’s a good sign, yeah.” His heart kept rushing, though, and he had to just take a moment to let it slow.

“Sentinel?”

“Yes?”

“Let’s not do that again. And if I try to, just give me a kick in the ass.”

“That, Dash, is a promise.”

* * *

Dash dismounted from the Archetype to an unusual sight. Viktor and Jexin stood with a group of N’Teel, watching as the mech landed.

He walked toward them but spared a glance back at the mech. Sentinel had used the performance and other data from their fight against the Deeper cruiser to further recalibrate the mech’s systems. She assured him that, in its next foray out, the Archetype should be much easier to handle. He hoped so. The raw potential offered by the new hexacore and DM2-upgraded systems made Dash almost giddy. If he could harness it and get back to the point where the mech was just an extension of himself and not something he specifically had to control, he felt he’d almost be unbeatable.

The trick was hanging onto that almost. It was too easy to fall in love with the tech and forget that the bad guys were trying just as hard to innovate. The new Deeper beam weapon was proof of that, and something Dash was determined not to forget.

“Dash, I’d like to introduce Steenowat. She’s commanding the N’Teel detachment her people have sent to us.”

Dash greeted Steenowat warmly. She came up to his shoulder and, for whatever reason, seemed more bat-like, than squirrel-like. He assumed it had something to do with N’Teel, genetics, but it didn’t seem to otherwise affect them.

“I saw your ship parked outside,” Dash said. “Looks like a fine ship.”

“The Tuvanit? Yes, we’re very proud of her. She is our first translation-capable warship, built with much-appreciated assistance from your engineers.”

Dash nodded. They were in the midst of doing some technology transfer to the N’Teel, helping them to build warships able to translate. Custodian estimated that it advanced N’Teel efforts at space-flight by at least two decades. And the N’Teel were grateful for this.

But, again, Dash couldn’t help sensing a sharp, even slightly ominous edge to their gratitude. The N’Teel had again struck him as a race that had territorial ambitions and was quite pleased to start getting the means to expand outside of their home system and start realizing them. Every destructive, xenophobic enemy they’d encountered along the way—Clan Shirna, the Verity, the Bright, the Golden, the Deepers—had gotten their start somewhere. And Dash didn’t want future historical archives to recognize this as the moment the aggressive, expansionistic N’Teel assholes making everyone’s lives miserable had gotten their start. So Custodian had quietly inserted a kill switch into all of the tech they were providing to the N’Teel, a fact known only to him and Leira.

Today, though, the N’Teel were motivated, inquisitive, and valuable allies, and Dash was determined to treat them as such. Moreover, of all the various people and races they’d brought aboard the Forge, they were probably the least impressed. Not in a negative way—they just didn’t seem as awed and overwhelmed by the sudden tsunami of Unseen tech as they were fascinated by it and constantly wanting to know more. Ragsdale and Custodian had again worked out how much access they should have and what limits should be clamped on what information they were given. This particular group of N’Teel, the eighty-eight led by Steenowat, were here for a specific purpose, anyway. Not content to wait for the slow build-up of larger ships, like the Tuvanit, they’d decided to focus their efforts into getting N’Teel fighter pilots kitted out with Realm ships.

“I had the pleasure of flying and doing battle alongside some of your fighter pilots back on your homeworld when we helped liberate it from the Deepers. Very impressive,” Dash said.

Steenowat offered a nod of gratitude. “Long ago, the N’Teel used to be naturally capable of flight. Our distant ancestors moved among the thick rainforests that cover much of our world by gliding from tree to tree.” She lifted an arm, revealing the prehensible, wing-like membrane that extended from her elbow to just above her knee. “We’ve mostly lost the ability to do that, but it does live in our love of flight.”

“Well, that being the case, then perhaps we can get you rigged up to fly our Denkillers or Super Makos,” Viktor said.

“Rigged up?” Steenowat asked.

“Our fighters make use of a neural integration between the pilot and his craft to assist in maneuvering and fighting. When doing battle in space, timing can often come down to fractions of a second, and no humanoid being has the reaction time,” Jexin replied.

“Ah. So their pilots are . . . modified?” Steenowat’s tone carried a hint of horror. Of course, she’d encountered the Deepers and was probably well aware of their gruesome amalgamation of the organic with the inorganic. Viktor chuckled and raised a hand.

“The only modification is a small chip implanted in the back of the head, at the base of the brain stem. The whole process takes about an hour, including time to rest afterward.”

“And we will all be required to do this?” Steenowat asked.

“No. Or, rather, we’re not sure. What we’re proposing is a test, using two of your pilots, to ensure that your central nervous systems are compatible with the process and with our technology generally,” Custodian said.

Steenowat looked up, something everyone tended to do when Custodian spoke. The Forge’s intercom system made his voice omnidirectional, seeming to come from everywhere, but it never failed. Even Dash still did it. It said something about disembodied voices, he thought.

“That was your artificial intelligence speaking, correct? Named Guardian?”

“Custodian, actually,” Jexin said.

“Although I do rather like Guardian. It has more panache than Custodian, which makes me sound like a glorified housekeeper. What do you think, Messenger?”

“Custodian, I think you can call yourself Fred, or Suzy, or whatever the hell else you’d like. You’ve earned it,” Dash replied, grinning.

“I’ll remain Custodian, at least for the time being. It saves changing all the database entries.”

Steenowat looked back at Jexin. “Just to be clear, you wish for two of our pilots to undergo this procedure in order to test whether it works with your fighters?”

“We’re proposing that. It’s your decision.”

Steenowat turned to her people, all of whom began to crowd forward, obviously wanting to be one of the selectees. After a brief conversation with several, though, she turned back.

“My people wish to know what the other eighty-six will be doing in the meantime. And, more to the point, what will happen if we are not compatible with your technology.”

Dash, who’d been leaning against one of the Slipwing’s landing-struts near the discussion, but keeping apart from it, straightened.

“You know what? This is a great chance to go see our friends at the shipyard. They must be getting tired of cranking out the same designs over and over. I’m willing to bet they’re in the mood to build something new.”

* * *

The Forge was massive and could build and sustain a formidable fleet all on its own. But their experience during the Life War had shown Dash that even the station’s enormous capacity couldn’t support the numbers and different types of ships they’d needed to fight the Golden while also delivering on the multitude of other fabricating and support tasks that came up. Their solution, in conjunction with the Local Group, a premier ship-building consortium back on the other side of the Black Gate, had been mobile shipyards.

They’d already brought two of the massive structures through the gate and deployed them into the small constellation of support vessels that surrounded the Forge, like the Greenbelt, their huge farming ship. The shipyards were modular, so they could be transported in sections and then assembled into any configuration desired. They could be reconfigured, their modules being moved around, to accommodate new projects. They’d even contemplated deploying a third but ran headlong into their biggest construction bottleneck—they only had so many raw materials and resources available. There was no point building a third if it was mostly going to sit idle.

Dash stepped out of the shuttle from the Forge, hanging in space just a few thousand klicks away. The shuttle had docked at one of the sprawling shipyard’s control modules, an enclosed habitat some hundred meters on a side and six decks high. Most of the crew who worked in the shipyard lived here or in a second control module on the opposite side of the expansive structure. Through an overhead-to-deck viewport, the N’Teel had a magnificent view. The massive bulk of the Stalwart dominated the foreground, enclosed in gantries and surrounded by construction remotes and tiny, suited figures. Bright points of welding-glare flared and faded across her hull. Wei-Ping’s ship was undergoing the finishing touches to the repairs she’d needed after the battle for the N’Teel homeworld. Off to the left, two destroyers and a light cruiser sat hunkered in their own berths, undergoing repairs and upgrades of their own. More ships kept station nearby, either awaiting their turn to enter or just in the process of departing. Backdropping all of it was the looming bulk of the Forge.

“Pretty impressive, isn’t it?” Dash said, ambling up beside Steenowat.

“It is. It certainly makes our efforts at transluminal space flight seem almost laughable in comparison.” She glanced at Dash sidelong. “Even my pride in the Tuvanit has been—let’s say it’s been put into a new context.”

Dash smiled. “Do you remember that ship I was leaning against back in the Forge while you guys were talking to Viktor and Jexin?”

“Yes. The—Wingslip? “

“Slipwing.”

“Yes. Right. It stood out as a unique and somewhat cumbersome design compared to the rest of your fleet. I gather it was a failed prototype?”

“No, it was actually my own ship. Not that long ago, all of this”—he gestured out the viewport—“would have just been a fantasy story to me. It was just me and the Slipwing, and a perpetual struggle to scratch out a life as a courier. That’s a sort of combined merchant, mercenary, and delivery guy.”

“Oh. My apologies, I didn’t mean to insult your vessel.”

“No, no, that’s okay. I’m still really fond of the old girl, but yeah, even as upgraded as she is, she’s still a long way from being as capable as even our smallest corvettes. But the point is, that’s where I started. One guy, one ship. And now…”

He gestured out the viewport again.

“You’re saying we have to start somewhere.”

Dash nodded. “And this is that start. We’ll get your people outfitted with a new fighter design and give the Tuvanit some sister-ships.”

“I find it difficult to properly express my own appreciation for what you’ve done and are doing, much less that of my people. The whole arrangement seems rather one-sided, though. We benefit from all of this new technology and capability, and I believe we’re providing you with food.”

“Hey, don’t discount the importance of food.”

“Still, for someone who just described himself as a mercenary, it seems awfully altruistic.” Steenowat turned to face Dash squarely as she spoke.

Dash smiled and nodded. “You think I’ve got an angle.”

“An angle?”

“Sorry. You think I’m in this for something, the same way you are.”

“I do.”

“Well, you’re right. I am. I’m after something you’ve got. But it’s got nothing to do with this shipyard, or those ships out there, or new fighters or raw materials or anything like that. What I’m after is the most important resource there is, the one that will ultimately win us this war.”

“And that would be?”

“People,” Dash said, turning and gesturing this time at the gathered N’Teel. “People are our most critical resource, our biggest force-multiplier, and the most mission-critical thing we’ve got. I can build more ships. I can’t build new, capable and motivated crews for them.”

“Your AIs seem more than capable. Surely you can just make copies of them.”

“Essentially all of our ships have AIs aboard. But they exist only to support the crew. They’re great at doing routine tasks, nav calculations, overseeing engine and powerplant operation, that sort of thing. But to fight and win? That takes some things AIs just don’t have, like instincts and gut feelings.”

Steenowat nodded her understanding and turned back to the panorama. She seemed about to say something else but was interrupted by the arrival of Elois and a stern woman Dash recognized as the shipyard’s chief design engineer. His mind attached the name Bailey to her, but he couldn’t recall if that was her first name or her last.

They eased through the assembled throng of N’Teel and stopped near Dash and Steenowat.

“Good news,” Elois said. “We’ve been running some tests and simulations on the N’Teel, to determine how compatible they are with neural interfacing. Of the ten N’Teel we’ve tested now, all have been compatible.”

“We’ll have to make some changes to our existing interface architecture to accommodate them, but I think it’s doable. More to the point, it shouldn’t be too hard to configure a new architecture that’s designed specifically for them,” the engineer said. Dash noted that the name-tape on her coveralls said BAILEY, so it had to be her last name.

“So are we sticking with the plan of trying to get two of the N’Teel plugged into our fighters while you guys work on the rest?” Dash asked.

Elois nodded. “I think it would be good to know what we have to do to make sure they’re compatible. I’m thinking some sort of adapter we can plug into the fighter.”

“It’s for redundancy. If we’ve got an N’Teel pilot without a ship because theirs was damaged or destroyed, it would be nice if they were plug-and-play with our Denkillers and Super Makos. That way, we don’t have a perfectly good pilot sitting around,” Bailey added.

“Good point, yeah. Steenowat, what do you think?” Dash asked.

“How soon can we start?”

Dash chuckled. “Well, I’m going to hand this over to you guys. I hear you’ve got some preliminary ideas for a new fighter—”

“Messenger, apologies for interrupting, but the Deepers have launched a significant attack,” Custodian put in.

“Shit. Where?”

“They are attacking the Eastern Anchor. Twelve capital ships and a number of smaller craft.”

Dash thought for a moment. They’d been rotating people in and out as Anchor commanders, the theory being to give as many people as possible both tactical and administrative experience. The current commander of Eastern was Ragsdale.

“Custodian, do you have contact with Ragsdale?”

“I do. He is on this channel.”

“Hey, Dash,” Ragsdale said.

“What’s your SITREP?”

“Mine? Well, I’m sitting in a freakin’ corvette, hiding out in an asteroid belt about an hour’s flight from the Anchor. I was on my way to visit the Eastern Task Force commander aboard her flagship when the Deepers came calling. And now I’m kinda stuck because the bad guys are effectively between me and Eastern.”

Dash started to frown, but it struck him that even their corvettes had the comm capacity to plug him right back into the Anchor’s command and control. The bigger problem was the Deepers detecting his transmissions, understanding their significance.

Wait.

“Shit, Ragsdale, you should be radio-silent! You’re going to bring the Deepers right down on top of you!”

“Way ahead of you, Dash. We’ve got a tight-beam comm link back to Eastern, so this transmission’s being relayed from there.”

Dash let out a breath. He was so used to working with people like Conover, Harolyn, and Amy, who had no military background before joining the Realm. Ragsdale, though, was an old soldier with a military past he either wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about.

“Okay, I’ll leave the battle in your hands.” He nodded and waved to Elois, Bailey, and Steenowat, then started to walk back to the airlock, gesturing for Jexin to follow him. “Just hold tight. The cavalry’s on the way.”

10

Dash watched as the Stalwart dropped out of unSpace in the star system Eastern currently occupied. She had three full squadrons with her, two of four heavy cruisers, and one of three heavy cruisers lead by the battlecruiser Resolute, the Stalwart’s brand new sister ship. Two squadrons of light cruisers and destroyers rounded out the relief force. Dash wondered how Wei-Ping had been able to get the Stalwart underway so quickly, considering she’d been laid up in the shipyard. But she clearly wanted payback for the beating her ship took at the N’Teel homeworld and wasn’t going to let being stuck among a bunch of gantries get in her way.

Dash and Jexin were already en route toward Eastern, which was locked in a vicious firefight with a half-dozen Deeper heavy cruisers. The station had ample defensive systems and some heavy-hitting firepower, but it wasn’t the Forge. Dash could see that the station had taken hits, at least one of which had penetrated both its outer and inner hulls, judging from a shimmering veil of venting atmosphere.

But at least the Anchor was holding its own. The same couldn’t be said for the task force based at Eastern. The carrier Relentless, Wei-Ping’s old flagship, led six heavy cruisers and two squadrons of lightships. But the Relentless was a repurposed enemy ship captured during the Life War and didn’t have the same capabilities as, say, the supercarrier Victory. Worse, two of her accompanying heavy cruisers had already been battered into submission, one of them likely beyond repair, while all of the other four had taken some sort of damage. And the Relentless herself was struggling. She was primarily a carrier and had launched her own wings of Denkillers and older, original Makos but otherwise had no more firepower than a cruiser.

Overall, the situation wasn’t good.

Still, Dash held back. He could have kicked the Archetype up to some fearsome speed and pulled away from Jexin and the Stalwart’s force, but he gritted his teeth and waited. He wanted to hit the Deepers hard, with as much force as possible, all at once. So he kept the mech on an acceleration curve that matched Jexin’s and grimly watched the range tick down.

“We will be at maximum effective missile range in seventeen minutes,” Sentinel said.

Dash could see that on the tactical display. The only reason Sentinel was telling him something he already knew was because she was obviously trying to give him a nudge, get him to speed up. Instead, though, he switched to the operational display and took in the big picture. His worry was that this attack might be a diversion, with the Deepers hitting somewhere even harder. But there wasn’t even a hint of Deeper activity anywhere else.

Except here. Or, more to the point, just beyond the volume of space covered by the tactical display. Three Deeper ships were inbound from almost directly above the system’s ecliptic plane and would appear on their tactical display any moment now. They were trying to outflank the Anchor and split its fire.

“Jex, you and Wei-Ping lead the charge. Get in there and relieve Eastern as soon as you can. I’m going, um, up.”

“Up? What? Dash, what are you talking about?”

Dash threw the Archetype through a hard turn, reorienting upwards relative to the ecliptic. “There’s three of the bastards trying to sneak attack from this system’s up direction. I’m going to head them off.”

“What? I don’t see—”

Three new icons popped onto the tactical display.

“Dash, have you added some psychic abilities to your repertoire that you haven’t told us about?” Jexin asked.

“No, just a kick-ass operational display. Remind me to talk to the AIs about getting it installed in all the mechs.”

“I’m right here, remember?” Sentinel said. “And I don’t forget things.”

“Ah. Good point. Anyway, Jex, you and Wei-Ping do your thing.” With that, Dash finally gave the Archetype its head, once more making a rail gun slug look less like a slug and more like a sluggard.

Dash chuckled. He’d have to remember that line. It was pretty clever.

* * *

The three Deeper ships slammed headlong into a rude surprise. Far from outflanking the Anchor, they found themselves confronting the upgraded Archetype, flown by a pilot who’d actually started getting the hang of the mech’s new capabilities. Moreover, the intercept happened well outside their effective range of Eastern. In fact, despite the extra distance he had to cover, Dash still caught the three Deeper ships before Jexin and Wei-Ping had even engaged.

He applied a bit of reverse thrust, slowing the Archetype, while randomly weaving through a wide range of pitch and yaw angles enabled by the mech’s fearsome power. The Deepers struggled to gain, much less maintain, a weapons lock on him. He flew straight into a barrage of missiles, then firewalled the drive, blasted through a tight turn, and left the Deeper projectiles wondering where he’d even gone. The Deeper ships themselves only managed to land a pair of x-ray laser hits, both blocked by the shield.

Then it was his turn.

He powered up the blast-cannon, which essentially squirted a boosted antimatter charge through the Darkness Between, the netherworld border between real space and unSpace. The blast-cannon had always been tricky to use. It was slow to accumulate a charge, stressed the Archetype’s power systems as it did, and sometimes knocked the mech offline when it fired.

But that had been before. Now, the wing-like energy accumulators unfurled with almost a snap and immediately surged with crackling power. He fired, catching a light cruiser with the full impact of the blast. The colossal explosion flashed the Deeper ship to vapor and glowing chunks.

And then the blast-cannon itself went offline. Dash cursed. Now the Archetype could handle the weapon easily, but firing it knocked it out of action. That was definitely something that needed to be fixed.

But he still had the mech’s other weapons. Dash had gotten greedy and had Custodian install a second dark-lance, as powerful as the first. He fired both, slashing into a second Deeper ship as he raced past it. The two surviving Deeper ships apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valor and veered hard, accelerating back out of the system.

“You can run, but you can’t hide,” Dash muttered and set off in pursuit.

He gained fast, grinning, as he imagined how the Deepers must feel watching him racing toward them like an avatar of destruction. That is, of course, if the Deepers felt anything resembling an emotion to begin with. The two Deeper ships opened up with more missiles, torps, and x-ray laser shots, but Dash nimbly dodged, wove, took a few hits on the shield, let his point defenses take down a few of the projectiles, and simply avoided the rest.

He selected one of the Deeper ships, got a solid firing solution, and triggered both dark-lances. The twin beams lashed out, slamming into his target’s stern quarter, blasting its engines to scrap and leaving it coasting. He had to decelerate to avoid overtaking it too quickly, deploying the power-sword as he did. Like the other weapons, it had been upgraded. But it had internal limits to how much power it could handle because the Archetype could now deliver far more. He swept along the flank of the Deeper ship, plunging the sword deep into its guts and laying open its hull from stern to bow. Then he spun around and pumped a burst of rail gun fire into it as he pulled away. The ship swung violently to one side, then exploded.

One to go. Dash took a moment, though, to look back at the tactical situation. He didn’t want to target-lock on this one Deeper ship if Ragsdale, Wei-Ping, and Jexin needed his help. They seemed to be gaining the upper hand on the main Deeper attack, though, so he refocused on the ship ahead. Again, he accelerated and quickly gained on it.

This time, he used the nova-cannon. Essentially a much scaled-down version of the blast-cannon, it used a fusion charge instead of anti-matter. It now cycled fast enough that it punched out a staccato burst of shots, bam-bam-bam-bam, before the overheat safeties kicked in. All four shots slammed into the Deeper ship, and it, like its unfortunate predecessor, began to slow.

Then it vanished in a dazzling white burst of light.

Bingo.

Dash grinned, but it didn’t last. As the display brightened after the flash, he could see the Deeper ship was still very much intact. It was still badly damaged but in one piece. Dash rectified that with more nova-cannon and dark-lance shots, quickly reducing it to tumbling debris.

He swept his attention over the mech’s status. Everything was still green. In fact, the weapons had taken more stress than the mech had. It could have been parked in the docking bay back on the Forge for all the strain it showed after the battle.

“Dash, that flash of visible light was a torp detonation, whose epicenter was about halfway between us and the Deeper ship at the time,” Sentinel suddenly said.

“Okay. And?”

“And, given that the torps are, in some fashion, self-aware, it struck me as odd that it would detonate so far away from us.”

“Confused, maybe? Where are you going with this, Sentinel?”

“I’ve reviewed the scanner logs for the ten seconds before and following the time index of the explosion. The Deeper ship transmitted a tight-beam, encoded signal at the instant of detonation. It passed close to the Archetype, so I believe the torp detonation was an attempt to obscure it from us.”

“Huh. Okay, where were they sending a message?”

“The nearest object along that path is a very small, very dim white dwarf star. It is barely detectable from this range. Indeed, I only know it’s there from its star chart entry.”

“Huh again.”

“There’s one other issue,” Sentinel went on. A looping course extended from their present location, in the direction of the nearly invisible white dwarf.

“That is the continuation of the Deeper ships’ trajectory as they fled,” Sentinel said.

“There’s something out there.”

“So it would appear.”

Dash pondered the shattered remains of the Deeper ship for a moment. They’d had experience with mysterious alien signals being sent to remote locations before. One of those had ultimately led them to the battered remnants of a stellar confederacy based around Old Earth, a handful of humans in cryo-sleep. Their know-how and weapons tech had been invaluable in fighting the Golden, and their leader, Mikells Armagost, remained a key part of the Cygnus Realm’s residual presence on the other side of the Black Gate.

“Wei-Ping, Jexin, SITREP, if you would.”

“A few dents and scratches here, nothing major,” Jexin said. “We’ve pretty much got this battle wrapped up.”

“Wei-Ping here. Not sure what it is about this new ship of mine, but we’ve taken a lot more than dents and scratches. The Stalwart’s going to need more time in the yards—again. And I just got her painted, too.”

Wei-Ping went on to update Dash on the rest of her force, which had generally fared better than the Stalwart. “Wei-Ping, did it ever occur to you that maybe it’s not the ship, but her commander? That maybe she’s being a little too, uh, forthright in her attacks on the enemy?”

“You calling me aggressive, Dash?”

“Hey, if the ass-kicking boot fits.”

Ragsdale’s update brought everyone back to grim earth, though. The Eastern Task Force had been badly mauled. The Relentless would be out of action for days, maybe weeks. Two heavy cruisers, a destroyer, and two frigates were all complete write-offs, destined for scrapping and recycling. All of the ships had taken moderate to heavy damage. They were definitely going to have to do some quick reshuffling of fleet assets to get a working task force back in place around Eastern.

Even the Anchor had suffered what could be called moderate damage. One hit, in particular, had the AIs concerned. A Deeper missile had, immediately before impact, generated a power particle-beam burst that had flooded the shield covering that section of the station, punching through it, then drilling into the station’s armor. The warhead had impacted an instant later, detonating between Eastern’s inner and outer hulls. The damage had been confined by the station’s design to only one section, but within that section, it had been catastrophic. That hit had been the plume of venting atmosphere Dash had seen emanating from the Anchor.

“We can assume that such a tandem warhead was likely experimental since only one of them was used,” Sentinel offered.

“Yeah, but a successful experiment, which means we might see more of them,” Dash replied. Sentinel could only agree.

Worse by far than all of the physical damage, though, was the cost in lives. The tandem warhead alone had killed thirty-eight on the Anchor. Another seventy-one had died aboard the various ships of the Eastern Task Force. In total, they’d had one hundred and nine killed, and almost that many again wounded. By the time the SITREPS were done, Dash seethed with rage.

“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. You guys are going to rally and reorganize the fleet and start cleaning things up. Priority on figuring out how that tandem warhead thing works and how to defend against it. For now, Wei-Ping, you stay on station here,” Dash said, his voice hard and flat.

“What about you, Dash?” Jexin asked.

“Me? I’m going to chase down the destination of that Deeper signal and turn whatever I find there into slag.”

* * *

Dash flung himself through the void, pushing the Archetype to its vastly increased limits. Freed of the need to keep pace with other ships, he could drive the mech to the edge of a performance envelope nothing else in the Realm could yet hope to match.

He needed to kill something. Kill Deepers. Kill them, and keep killing them until they were all dead. Just like the Golden, he was going to exterminate them. If it meant turning over every rock in the galaxy, or beyond, to see the last one of them die, he would make it happen.

Unlike the Golden, though, he had no problem with the ethics of what amounted to a campaign of genocide. It didn’t bother his conscience at all. They still really had no idea why the Deepers were so innately hostile, but Dash didn’t care. They were vermin, an infestation from outside the galaxy that needed to be cleansed away.

Now, an avenging angel of alloy and power, of armor and cold, implacable intent, the Archetype raced through unSpace, its relentless course fixed on a dim, almost invisible white dwarf.

“We are returning to real space in thirty seconds,” Sentinel said.

Dash just grunted his understanding and readied himself to unleash hell on whatever he found there.

The star field flicked back into existence, centered on a white dot small enough that Dash could easily cover it with a fingertip at arm’s length.

Aside from a few icy rocks, there was nothing else here.

Dash hissed in frustrated rage. “Sentinel, could there be something stealthed up here?”

“There’s nothing to indicate it. However, now we have a firm fix on the white dwarf’s precise location, it’s clear that the Deeper transmission was directed past it, into a distant orbit at the very edge of the star’s gravity well.”

“Show me.”

A red line tracing the path of the Deepers’ directional transmission suddenly slashed through the system—if a tiny, almost invisible star and a handful of rocks could be considered a system, that is. It bypassed the star and intersected a small cluster of rocky debris on the far side of the system, at the very edge of its Oort Cloud.

Dash slammed the Archetype to its maximum acceleration, launching the mech at that distant place like a piece of ordnance.

“We are being illuminated by surveillance scanners,” Sentinel said.

Again, Dash just grunted, having already seen the threat board light up. So there was something here, something he could kill.

Good.

They flew on, racing through the system at ever-increasing speed. The surveillance scanners kept Dash lit up the entire way. He didn’t care.

And when the surveillance scanners switched to targeting mode, he grinned a predatory grin.

“Bring it, you bastards.”

He closed on whatever was lurking in the Oort Cloud. The Archetype’s own scanners couldn’t resolve anything firm yet, beyond some sort of return that flickered and danced in and out of existence, like a ghost.

“I am detecting multiple missile launches. There appear to be two distinct sources of launch signatures, probably weapons platforms,” Sentinel said.

“Yeah, I see them. That’s a lot of missiles coming our way.”

It was. In just under thirty seconds, the two platforms had spewed out almost one hundred projectiles. Dash didn’t hesitate, flying into the teeth of a gale of ordnance. In fact, he slowed the Archetype to improve his ability to maneuver.

“The combined closing speed will see the missiles impacting in just over thirty seconds,” Sentinel said.

Dash started jinking the mech, left and right, up and down. He made each leg of the jink a little longer than he normally would, watching intently as the missiles changed trajectories to accommodate his turns. Ten seconds before the first missiles would impact, he firewalled the mech’s Blur drive, using it and thrusters in tandem to sweep the Archetype through a hard banking turn that would have given an atmospheric fighter a run for its credits.

All but about a dozen of the missiles lost their lock, the Archetype suddenly well outside their possible cones of maneuver. He snapped out dark-lance shots at the rest, blasting one after another to fragments. The point defense batteries took down several more. Of all the missiles launched at him, only two detonated, one square against the shield, the other a proximity blast. The mech’s shield flared with trapped energy, then quickly radiated it away.

Eventually, Dash thought, the Deepers were going to start adapting to the Archetype’s vastly increased capabilities. Until then, though, he intended to drain every bit of advantage out of them he could.

He rolled the Archetype back, just as a long-ranged beam weapon opened fire from a third location. It had opened at a much greater range than the typical Deeper x-ray laser.

“Sentinel, what the hell is that?”

“A high-band ultraviolet laser. The Deepers have apparently traded power for increased range, since intervening dust and gas is transparent to the longer-wavelength energy.”

Dash watched as the beam lanced out, reaching for the Archetype. “Still seems plenty powerful to me.”

“It is, likely because it is installed in a static installation, with its own dedicated power source.”

Dash nodded. It made sense. They’d made the weapon more efficient, then made up for its diminished energy by just pouring in raw power. That made it good for fixed defenses but more cumbersome for a ship.

So there was a third platform of some sort out here, along with two missile platforms. Why? What was so special about this tiny dwarf star?

Dash realized the answer as he swung the Archetype onto an attack run. There was nothing special about the white dwarf. This installation, whatever it was, had some other purpose. And whatever that was, it was better served by staying hidden in this remote, utterly unremarkable place than it did from strong defensive systems.

And that just made it even more interesting.

Dash angled his course slightly, slowing even further, so he could bypass a trio of comets that tumbled along in a tight orbit around one another. He caught the first missile platform with dark-lance shots, blowing it apart before it could launch more than a few missiles. The second one unloaded a full volley, while the third platform kept pounding out shots from its UV laser. Dash wove back and forth, opening up rapid fire with the nova-cannon and the dark-lances at the onrushing projectiles while firing a missile barrage of his own at the laser platform. A moment later, a spasm of violence flashed through the Oort Cloud as missiles impacted and detonated. Fire from the Archetype blasted the second missile platform apart, and Dash’s missiles slammed into the laser platform, the staccato series of explosions leaving nothing but an expanding cloud of debris.

Just like that, it was over.

Dash cursed, at himself, this time. He’d let his rage get the better of him. Destroying all three of the Deeper platforms had been satisfying as hell, but it also destroyed any indication of what they’d been doing here.

Some post-fury depression set in. He felt spent, burned out, like a missile that had exhausted its fuel. He wheeled the Archetype around the remnants of the Deeper platforms, hoping that Sentinel might find something useful, still intact.

“There’s an unusual signal emanating from one of the pieces of wreckage, of the laser platform,” she said. That perked Dash up. Maybe he hadn’t screwed up entirely.

“Can you make out what it is?”

“A small piece of wreckage, about two meters on a side. It is broadcasting an unusual, high-frequency signal which is modulated, suggesting it’s transmitting information.”

“To where?”

“To nowhere. It is a conventional radio signal. From this location, it would take almost seven hours to reach even the white dwarf star. Even then, it is far too weak to be detected from much further away from that before being lost in background noise.”

Dash narrowed his eyes at the icon Sentinel had used to highlight the source of the signal. What was the point of broadcasting a weak radio signal out here, in the middle of nowhere? Nothing would be able to detect it from more than a short distance away—

“Ah, I get it. It’s a beacon. Like a distress call,” he said.

“That would make sense. It may be an escape pod.”

Dash turned the Archetype and eased it toward the signal. Eventually, he got a visual fix on a small cube, just under two meters on each side. If it was an escape pod, it was an awfully small one.

“Any signs of life?”

“This is Deeper technology. There are always signs of life since it’s partly organic.”

“Fair point.”

Dash stopped the mech about a klick away. The little cube slowly tumbled, broadcasting its encoded radio signal, and that was it.

“Could it be a weapon? A booby trap, maybe, intended to lure someone in and then explode?” he asked.

“It certainly could be. But it seems unlikely. The Deepers are notably efficient, and installing such a device in an installation obviously never intended to be found in the first place seems . . . inefficient.”

“Okay, then.” Dash nudged the Archetype forward until the cube was within the mech’s reach.

“I don’t believe it’s a weapon. I believe it has some other purpose. The beacon was likely meant to aid in its recovery.”

“So it’s the something the Deepers don’t want to lose. If this platform of theirs was destroyed, they wanted to be able to come and get this thing, whatever it is. That would seem to make it something important.”

“I don’t disagree.”

On impulse, Dash reached out and grabbed the cube, taking it gently into one of the mech’s massive hands.

Nothing changed.

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 Archetype 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.

This was why the Deepers had struck the N’Teel homeworld again. Whatever this thing was, they wanted it, desperately enough that they were prepared to risk a fleet to retrieve it.

“I’ve finished scanning. This is—”

Sentinel abruptly cut off, then did something she’d never done before. She took control of the Archetype, redlined the drive, and slammed the mech through a wild gyration. As she did, the threat board lit up with a distinct and terrifying annunciation.

A purplish beam, not too different than their own dark-lances, punched past the Archetype. It was the new Deeper beam weapon, the one that had killed a mech with a single shot. If Sentinel hadn’t seized control, it would have struck the Archetype.

“Apologies, Dash. However, danger was imminent—”

“We’re a team, Sentinel. You do whatever you have to do to keep us both alive and kicking,” Dash said. Now that he knew what they were facing, he could deal with it. And he did, taking advantage of the Archetype’s fearsome performance to maneuver in ways that even the much smaller fighters found hard to match.

The beam weapon fired again. Dash avoided the shot, then punched out dark-lance shots, taking down fighters. The beam-ship, as he’d come to think of it, presented a problem, though. If he destroyed it, the wreckage would just plunge back into the ocean depths. But if he didn’t destroy it, that damned weapon was going to reach orbit, its threat effectively holding the entire Realm fleet at bay.

He slammed the Archetype into a vertical climb, followed by an Immelmann turn and a sudden dive. The beam fired again, and again missed. Sweat beaded Dash’s brow. Every instinct screamed at him to pull back. The Archetype might be able to resist a hit, but it might not.

Was it worth risking the mech’s very existence?

Dash dodged another shot. That was something, at least. The weapon had a cycle time of about thirty seconds. Such a slow rate of fire made it easier to avoid.

He bit his lip for a few seconds, then puffed out a sigh. “Screw it,” he muttered and threw the Archetype back into the fracas. They couldn’t just let the Deepers cart this new weapon away. They had an intact and working example of it, and Dash was determined to capitalize on it.

For that, though, he needed a plan.

And he had one.

* * *

“Dash, why the hell did you let that thing get into orbit?” Leira asked. Her tone was taut, even a little angry, but she held back, giving Dash the benefit of the doubt.

He made to reply, but the weapon fired, skewering the Realm heavy cruiser Implacable. Benzel cursed over the comm.

“Well, it’s in orbit now, and taking shots we can’t avoid the way you can, Dash. The Implacable is out of action, and we’ve probably lost the Destiny, whose crew is abandoning ship. I’m pulling the rest of the fleet back before it can do any more damage.”

Benzel didn’t sound like he was giving Dash the benefit of the doubt at all.

But Dash just dug in mental heels. “I’ve been waiting for it to get into a stable orbit.”

“But why?” Leira asked.

“Yeah, they’ve got their big ships around it, now. They’re just going to scram out of here with it,” Amy snapped.

Dash didn’t get a chance to answer, though. Jexin did it for him.

“Dash wanted it to make stable orbit so that when we destroy it, the debris stays in orbit,” she said.

“Drinks on me, Jex. In fact, I want them to raise the orbit a little more, so we have less risk of pieces deorbiting,” Dash put in.

“Okay, well, we need to get to the destroying it part, and soon,” Benzel said.

“Well aware of that. Just hang on,” Dash said. He turned his attention back to the display.

“Sentinel, how much longer until we aren’t risking anything deorbiting when we blow that damned thing apart?”

“Technically, until it breaks orbit completely, there is always a chance that debris will be propelled by an explosion into a decaying orbit.”

Dash opened his mouth to snap out something about an answer that was good enough, but Sentinel went on.

“However, I understand what you’re asking. The probability of losing fragments in the atmosphere is now as low as it will be, as long as it remains in orbit.”

He nodded once. “Okay, now it’s time to destroy it.”

Dash snapped out instructions. Benzel was to pull the fleet back, disperse the ships and generate as much noise as he could to degrade the Deeper targeting scanners. The other three mechs would likewise hang back, keeping up erratic evasive maneuvers until he called them in.

“Dash, you’re going in alone?” Leira asked.

Dash stared at the fearsome array of Deeper ships clustered protectively around the beam-ship as they prepared to break orbit.

“It’s the only way this is going to work. Wait for my command, got it?”

“Dash—”

“Got it?”

A pause, then Leira replied, a touch guilty. “I—I do.”

Dash sent her a private message. “Thanks. You’ll see.” To everyone else, he called out, “Let’s do it.”

Dash accelerated the Archetype and aimed himself directly at the beam ship.

A hurricane of fire lashed out at the onrushing Archetype. Missiles, x-ray lasers, torps, a multitude of them. Dash grunted and strained as he threw the mech through the hardest gyrations he could manage. The Blur drive and thrusters hummed with power that, just a few weeks before, he could only have dreamt of. With the hexacore installed, the Archetype was living up to its vast potential.

Now, if he could just avoid getting it blown to bits by this new beam weapon.

Which fired, missing Dash by less than a klick. He accelerated again, fixed his eyes on a point in space—the beam weapon itself. He swiveled his attention up and down, left and right, keeping it locked on that point while dodging the ever-intensifying typhoon of fire pouring at him. The Archetype rocked and shuddered as more and more weapons landed hits. The shield absorbed all it could, then blasted the energy away in a dazzling pulse. During that brief window, though, more hits slammed into the mech’s armor. Dash grimly ignored it. There was only one weapon he had to avoid, and he was almost there.

The beam fired again. It just clipped the Archetype’s right leg, vaporizing the foot and part of the shin just above it. Dash groaned at the shock. If there’d been any doubt that the beam could savage the Archetype the way it had anything else, that dispelled it.

Thirty second cycle time, give or take. Thirty second flight time to his target, give or take. This was going to be awfully damned close.

Fifteen seconds. Ten.

Dash deployed the power sword.

Five. The Archetype staggered under more hits from the other ships. He forced himself to ignore them.

Either he was going to take out this weapon, or it was going to slam into him at point-blank range, with no hope of avoiding it.

One.

Dash swung the power sword, neatly slashing the beam weapon’s emitter apart. It exploded with a burst of accumulated power, the very energy it was about to shoot into his face.

Now he slammed the Archetype to full acceleration, pulling away from the battle so fast that missiles fired after him couldn’t keep up.

He let out a long, slow breath. “Okay, I’ve done my bit. Benzel, Leira, you guys can take care of the rest of them. I’m just going to fly top cover for a while.”

“You have to change your shorts after that, don’t you?” Benzel asked.

“I can neither confirm nor deny the state of my underwear,” Dash said, easing the Archetype into a long, arcing turn. Of course he wasn’t just going to fly top cover. He was going to rejoin the battle.

Soon. But he was going to take a break first because he’d freakin’ earned it.

* * *

With their fearsome beam weapon out of action, the Deepers suddenly faced a much superior force, bent on vengeance. The Herald bore back in, leading the attack, while Leira, Jexin, and Amy pincered them from the opposite direction. In apparent desperation, the Deepers turned their own weapons on the disabled beam-ship, a frustrating turn of events that they couldn’t avoid. So they demolished the Deeper ships as fast as they could to try and limit the damage to their prize.

“It got pretty slagged, unfortunately,” Benzel said after he’d ordered the fleet to cease fire. All of the Deeper ships had been destroyed, and the N’Teel, aided by the Victory’s fighter wings, were mopping up the aliens left behind in atmo.

Dash nodded glumly. The beam-ship was mostly intact but had been severely damaged by the Deepers’ attempts to scuttle it. It would truly suck if, after all of that, they found themselves in possession of nothing more than wreckage.

Jexin closed in and secured what was left of the beam ship. As soon as she did, though, she called over the comm, her voice edged with excitement.

“I’m not sure about the rest of this thing, but something seems to have survived that I think is going to make you happy, Dash. Our scans are showing there’s there another of those Radiant Point things aboard.”

Dash perked up. “Sentinel, can you confirm that?”

A moment, then she spoke. “Not directly. The beam ship was heavily armored, which is why the Deepers weren’t able to destroy it. The armor is also obscuring scans that aren’t conducted at close range. But the Polaris’s data seems clear. There is another Radiant Point aboard the Deeper wreck.”

“Okay. Benzel, that is the absolute priority for recovery. That Radiant Point needs to be secured and taken back to the Forge asap. Aside from doing whatever we have to, to save our people’s lives, nothing else matters. As soon as that’s done, I want whatever’s left of that beam weapon to be recovered.”

“Could they be related? The Radiant Point and that beam-thing?” Amy asked.

“That’s a really good question, Amy. Right now, we’ve got no idea. But it’s definitely something we have to answer.”

“It explains why the Deepers were so hell-bent on coming back here, though, and attacking the N’Teel again,” Leira said.

“Yes, they were desperate to recover this thing. That’s what the whole attack was about,” Jexin replied.

“Yeah. And the damned thing was sitting there, on the bottom of the ocean, the whole time. How the hell did we miss that?” Dash snapped.

“We weren’t looking for it,” Sentinel offered.

Leira barked out a humorless laugh. “True, that. Kind of hard to find something if you’re not even aware you should be looking for it.”

* * *

Benzel’s salvager’s eye had been correct. Both the Destiny and the Implacable had been damaged beyond repair. Both would be hauled back to the Forge, scrapped, and recycled. But the loss of the two heavy cruisers, along with a frigate and two corvettes, only aggravated the situation facing the Realm. Worse, they’d lost another sixteen dead and twenty wounded, most of them experienced spacers. Benzel and Wei-Ping were both starting to make noises about how thinly the fleet was being stretched.

Benzel turned from the big screen in the Command Center, hands on hips, and puffed out an irritated sigh at the Inner Circle. “The real problem is that we still don’t know what we’re facing. Yeah, we keep managing to kick the Deepers’ slimy guts every time they poke their noses, or beaks, or whatever into our business. And, yeah, we’ve given a lot better than we’ve gotten when it comes to inflicting losses. But, for all we know, they could be building ships at twice the rate we are. Or five times. Or a hundred times. We just don’t know.”

Wei-Ping, who’d backed up Benzel during his somber presentation, nodded. “The fact is, we can’t properly cover the Forge, the Anchors, help the League protect their territory, and help the N’Teel and the Hriki and the others protect theirs. If we try, the Deepers might just overwhelm and pick off each piece of our fleet in turn.”

“Defeat in detail,” Conover said.

Wei-Ping glanced at him. “Huh?”

Conover suddenly startled and glanced around, turning a shade redder when he realized everyone was staring at him. “Oh. Um, sorry. It’s called being defeated in detail when one side deploys itself in small pieces, so the other can defeat each one in turn. There’s a whole principle of war intended to prevent just that—concentration of force.”

Dash gave Conover a quizzical look. “Wait, have you been a secret military genius this whole time?”

“Would’ve been good to know we had a Soo-Sun in our midst, like, back during the Life War,” Leira said.

“I think you mean Sun Tzu, the ancient military philosopher who wrote The Art of War,” Amy put in.

Silence again. This time, everyone just stared at Amy.

“What? Sometimes I read over Conover’s shoulder.”

Leira smirked. “That’s what you two do when you’re alone in your quarters? Read stuff?”

Amy gave her eyebrows a suggestive lift. “Hey, you haven’t really read Von Clausewitz’s On War until you’ve done it naked.”

Dash raised his hands. “Alright, before you ruin Jomini and Marcus Aurelius for me as well, let’s move past the nude strategy sessions, shall we?”

Conover had, of course, gone bright red by now, but he just shot Amy a glare, making her giggle, then turned back to Dash. “I figured that reading up on military history, the conduct of battles, and stuff like that might be useful.”

“Makes sense. So, is it useful? Does it offer anything that might help us out?”

“Well, I know you want to show our new allies, like the N’Teel, the Hriki, and the Oksa, that we’re going to look out for them, right? So why don’t we centralize most of the fleet and deploy it forward, close to their home systems, so that we could react to any Deeper incursion with overwhelming force of our own?” Conover said.

Benzel crossed his arms and scowled. “Unless we move the Forge and the Anchors, that’s going to leave them without much fleet back-up.”

“It’s also going to pull us even further away from the League,” Viktor put in.

But Conover persisted. “We’ve armed the League with a lot of new tech. They’re pretty capable of taking on the Deepers themselves, now, and that only gets truer every day. And as for the Forge and the Anchors, if we group them up, they’re as powerful as the whole fleet themselves.”

Custodian cut in. “Technically, more powerful. If the Forge and all four Anchors are deployed together, firing in mutual support, the absolute destructive force they could deliver as measured in exawatts exceeds that of the current fleet by almost fifteen percent. In other words, they can kick ass.”

Grins all around, and a few chuckles. Dash wondered if the Unseen had ever envisioned the AI running the Forge, the pinnacle of their technological achievement, saying that he could kick ass.

Benzel still looked doubtful, but, surprisingly, it was Wei-Ping who spoke up in sudden support. “This might work, you know. If we deploy enough of an early-warning screen of lightships and scanner-buoys, we could centralize the rest of the fleet roughly here.” She pointed at a star system roughly equidistant from Backwater, the N’Teel, Hriki, and Oksa home systems, and the most spinward of the League systems. “And if we put the stations together about here, to cover our rimward flank, I think we’d still be covering everything we want to cover, more or less, anyway.”

Dash let the discussion ramble on for a few minutes to see if it headed toward consensus or division. It turned out to be the first, so he interrupted and took center stage.

“This isn’t a perfect plan. For one, it relies heavily on us having the earliest warning we can get of any Deeper attacks. If we miss one, we could be screwed. It’s also going to require some vigorous diplomacy with our new allies, so they don’t feel like we’re pulling back and abandoning them.” He looked at Harolyn, who nodded and gave a thumbs-up.

Dash went on. “But, it’s better than what we’re trying to do now. It also has the advantage of having the fleet together, in case we get a chance to strike a killer blow of our own. And that is where the Radiant Points come in. Teasing out the secrets of those things is still our absolute top priority, so we can start attacking the Deepers where they live.”

* * *

The Iron Gate was still their test bed, but she’d been assigned to the new League research ship, the Absolute Zero, as a full-time consort. With a direct uplink to Custodian, they’d effectively managed to replicate the full capabilities of the Forge, doubling their research capacity.

Dash glanced out the Absolute Zero’s viewport, at the dreary, grey-tan surface of Backwater below. He could just see the Archetype’s legs and feet protruding into view from where he’d docked it with the science ship. The mech was, once more, fully repaired and green across the board.

“So we’re geosynchronous with the gate down on the surface? Is that important?” he asked.

Elois smiled and shrugged. “No idea. It just seems, though, that if we’re going to try and understand how these Radiant Points work, and how they might relate to that gate down there, that keeping them all as close together as we can makes sense.”

“Yeah, fair point. Anyway, you came up with something about the Radiant Points important enough to bring me here in-person, instead of just using the comm.”

Elois nodded. “With the help of Conover and his mech—and, by the way, Kristin is an absolute delight, but also a master when it comes to unraveling how tech works—we’ve figured out something about them, yes. Or, at least, about the one seized on the N’Teel homeworld. I’m not sure of the significance of it, but I thought that for security’s sake, this should stay off the comm, at least for now.”

Dash chuckled. “I see we’re carrying on the time-honored tradition of scientists revealing their findings in the slowest, most dramatic way possible. What did you find out, Elois?”

“That the second Radiant Point, the one from the N’Teel homeworld, can sequence DNA and transmit or receive it.”

Dash stared. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“That the Deepers can transmit genetic information through these Radiant Points. Or, at least, they can do it through this one. We think it might even be able to reassemble an organism based on its DNA, but we’re not sure about that yet.” She pointed at the Iron Gate through the viewport, keeping station about ten klicks away. “That’s why I wanted to keep this off the comm. We really don’t know the significance of this. But if word gets out . . .”

Dash had to nod. “Yeah. As soon as you start saying things like the Deepers are fiddling with DNA, people get creeped out. That’s especially true for anyone who came through the Life War. The Golden and their minions were really into some DNA-based horror shows.”

Dash stared at the Iron Gate. “Do we have any idea where they’re transmitting this encoded DNA stuff?”

“No. And if the Radiant Points keep a comm log or something similar, we haven’t found it yet.”

“Okay, keep at it. And your instinct was right. For now, we’ll keep the circle of knowledge about this DNA thing as small as we can.”

Dash lingered for a while after Elois had left to resume her work on the Radiant Points. He stared out the viewport, brooding.

What the hell were the Deepers doing with genetic information, anyway?

As soon as the question occurred to him, his gut reaction was that he didn’t really want to know. And when he did eventually learn the answer, he was pretty sure that he was going to not want to know even more.

12

The threat board lit up as soon as Dash dropped back into real space. The Archetype immediately came under attack from three directions, prompting Dash to take off in the fourth. He kept the mech’s acceleration to no more than it was capable of prior to installing the hexacore. At the same time, he rolled, lined up a dark-lance shot, and fired.

“Miss,” Sentinel said.

Dash’s eyes widened a touch. The target, a small, nimble fighter, had dodged his shot and now returned fire with a pair of missiles. He rolled the Archetype again, decelerated, and snapped out shots at the other two fighters attacking him.

“One miss, one hit,” Sentinel intoned.

Dash grunted. He could see the results on the display, but Sentinel’s audible feedback was still useful. The stricken fighter immediately went dark, its power dropping to zero and leaving it coasting. He turned his attention back to the first fighter that had attacked him. The Archetype’s point-defenses took down both missiles, but the opposing craft did manage to land a couple of solid rail-gun shots. Unfortunately, its pilot got target-locked, so intent on shooting up the mech that they forgot to keep up their wild, gyrating evasive maneuvers. Just a few seconds of straight flight was enough to take it out of action.

“Thank . . . you,” Dash muttered, keying the kill shot. That left the Archetype facing a lone fighter, a battle whose outcome was a foregone conclusion. The pilot tried valiantly to drive home an attack anyway but was unable to dodge the nova-cannon shot that ultimately took them down.

Dash settled the Archetype back into steady flight, watching as the three fighters powered back up and fell into station with the mech.

“I must admit, I don’t enjoy facing these mechs of yours,” Steenowat said, piloting her fighter on Dash’s starboard flank. “I’ve fought the Pulsar, the Polaris, the Swift, and now yours, Dash, the Archetype. I’ve yet to land more than the occasional hit.”

Dash caught the frustration in Steenowat’s voice, even over the comm. “Honestly, that’s the way it’s supposed to be, Steenowat. These mechs are the biggest, meanest war machines we’ve got. Frankly, if I’d been bounced by three fighters and lost, well, then we’d have bigger problems to work on. Besides, you guys did well anyway. You did land a few hits. You’ve got to learn not to get so target-locked, though.”

“Our instructor says the same thing. Hopefully, we’ll learn to avoid that with practice.”

“And you will, which is why we train in the first place. Make your mistakes and learn your lessons when the weapons aren’t hot, instead of doing it when they are.”

They flew on, closing back on the Forge. Along the way, they discussed the battle, dissecting it in minute detail. Dash had to admit that the N’Teel were dedicated. Their new fighter, called the Moonbane, had better performance than either the Super Makos or Denkillers, albeit with a much lighter construction and reduced durability. Steenowat had been insistent, though. The N’Teel wanted to emphasize speed and maneuverability over everything except firepower—hence the name, Moonbane. Apparently, the moonbane was an actual predator on their homeworld, a nocturnal, pterodactyl-looking creature that flew quickly and silently, swooping on its prey out of the darkness without warning. Steenowat said that their unfortunate victims only realized their danger when the moon disappeared, an instant before they were struck and killed with silent, deadly efficiency.

As they neared the Forge, Dash saw more Moonbane fighters swirling in a dogfight with a flight of Super Makos. The Polaris hung nearby, Jexin casting a critical eye over the performance of both groups of pilots. He waved off Steenowat to return for refueling and rearming, then veered onto a new course, sliding smoothly into place on Jexin’s port quarter.

“How are they doing, Jex?”

“Our own pilots? As good as ever. The N’Teel? Surprisingly well. They’re fast learners. I’d say we could declare them operationally ready in another ten days, maybe two weeks, at the most.”

“That soon? You sure?”

“Like I said, our pilots are as good as ever. But they’d already lost six Super Makos to only three Moonbane.”

Dash watched the vicious dogfight rage. Sure enough, the spindly little N’Teel fighters zipped, wove, and spun around the heavier Super Makos, killing at least two for every one of their own losses. Eventually, Jexin called time on the battle, and both groups of fighters formed back up, getting themselves organized for a return to their base. For both, that was the Forge, since the N’Teel had no carrier to work from, and the Super Makos were likewise refugees until the Relentless was repaired. Dash suspected both groups of pilots would find a way to rendezvous, then debate their dogfight to death. It was just how the fighter pilots rolled.

“Dash? Benzel here. We’ve got a big contact on the early-warning system, scanner buoys eight through eleven. You should be getting the data now.”

Dash switched to the operational display. Sure enough, a large, hard contact had popped up, triggering four of their early-warning buoys. Something big had just appeared, probably dropping out of unSpace. Four smaller contacts accompanied it.

“Any idea what it is?”

“I’ve dispatched the nearest frigate, the Luther Albrecht, to take a closer look, ideally get a visual.”

Dash pursed his lips. The Luther Albrecht was a new class of frigate, one whose members decided to name after citizens of the Cygnus Realm who’d fallen in battle. Meant as a tribute, they obviously had far more fallen than they could honor that way, so the names were picked randomly from the lists of the dead. Everyone agreed, though, that each represented all of those lost, not just their namesake.

“Okay, but tell the Albrecht’s captain not to try and be a hero. They get in, take a look, then shadow whatever this thing is if they can, and immediately bug out if they can’t.”

“Understood. Benzel out.”

* * *

Dash studied the imagery that had come back from the Luther Albrecht. It was a big Deeper ship of an entirely unknown design. Four of their much more familiar light cruisers escorted it. The Albrecht had managed to maintain contact at a discrete distance and only a few button pushes away from translating the hell out of there. But the Deepers didn’t seem to care. They just flew on in stately silence, paralleling the Cygnus Realm’s current spinward frontier.

“It must be a show of force,” Leira said.

Dash curled his lip. “It’s definitely that, yeah. But why? Do they just want to show off their spiffy new ship?”

“It is pretty impressive, and by impressive, I mean ominous,” Amy said.

Dash sighed. “Yeah, it is. Carrier-sized and well-armed.”

“It’s actually even better armed than it appears,” Custodian put in. “Based on the latest data transmitted by the Luther Albrecht, that ship mounts three of the new Deeper beam-weapon systems.”

“Oh. Excellent. I was thinking we needed a challenge,” Leira said, her voice flat.

Dash planted his hands on his hips. “They’re trying to bait us out.”

Viktor, who’d been leaning against a console, straightened and walked closer to the image of the big ship. “To what end, though? They parade a new, obviously powerful ship in front of us, lightly escorted.” He stopped, his brow furrowed in thought. Then it cleared, and he nodded.

“You’re right. They know we’ve reorganized our defenses, but they aren’t sure exactly how. So they dangle a prize in front of us that we can’t resist and watch to see how we respond to it,” Viktor said, nodding at his own words.

“It’s probably part of a trap, on top of that,” Amy offered.

Dash gave a quick nod of his own. “Probably. So, if we do nothing to it, they fly away, leaving us knowing they’ve got something new and big and frightening to throw at us. Or, we attack it, risk part of our fleet, and give them some intel on our new defensive arrangement.”

“So, lose-lose for us,” Leira said glumly.

“That’s definitely what the Deepers think, yeah.”

Leira looked at him sidelong. “You don’t?”

Dash smiled a slow, sinister smile. “No. In fact, I think we should give the Deepers exactly what they want.”

* * *

It was, Dash thought, probably about the smallest gathering of ships you could get away with calling a task force. Besides the Archetype, it comprised the Pulsar, the Polaris, the Talon, and two of the small escort carriers, the Canopus and the Rigel. The first carried a wing of Denkillers and another of Super Makos. The second was home to another wing of Super Makos and a wing of N’Teel Moonbane.

Dash had gone back and forth about bringing the N’Teel. Jex had told him ten days to two weeks to get them operational. Only five had passed, though, since the big Deeper ship had appeared and started its implacable trek along the Realm’s frontier. It translated from the system and spent about a day traversing each before moving on to the next. The Luther Albrecht had maintained contact the whole time, watching from a discreet distance and withdrawing quickly whenever one of the aliens’ light cruisers suddenly turned for a confrontation.

Throughout that time, the N’Teel had trained hard, making enough progress that Jexin had declared them ready for operational status. Dash had to agree that they certainly looked ready, but he still had his doubts. But N’Teel leadership was pressuring him to get their forces into action, so he’d finally given in and grudgingly agreed.

Now, in another day, two at most, Custodian, Sentinel, and the other AIs had agreed that the new Deeper ship was likely to withdraw. It would have paralleled almost the entire length of the Cygnus Realm’s border by then. And Custodian had gained some insight into the probable reason why.

“Based on ongoing analysis of the data being collected by the Luther Albrecht, the Deeper ship appears to be equipped with an unusually extensive suite of scanners. We believe it is conducting a reconnaissance of our defenses,” he said.

“Why use such a big ship, though? Why not a bunch of smaller ones that can scan basically our whole frontier at once?” Dash had asked.

“That the Deepers are taking advantage of the opportunity to conduct detailed reconnaissance doesn’t preclude your previous assumptions about it being a show of force or bait for a trap. It could still be all of those things.”

That had finally solidified the final, still-mushy parts of the plan that had come to Dash when he first saw the ship. The fact that rumors were filtering around the Realm about a new Deeper super-weapon sailing along their border with impunity only hardened his determination. Dash didn’t have to study old military texts to know that morale was every bit as important a commodity in warfare as missiles, mines, and anti-deuterium fuel.

So here they were, four mechs and two escort carriers, hanging in space close to the massive and very hot blue-white star that would be the Deeper ship’s next stop if it kept to the pattern. And its last one before vanishing back into the black, if the AIs were right.

“Dash, the carriers are complaining that their rad counts are on the high side, this close to the star. They’re asking if we can put another few million klicks between us and it,” Jexin said, her signal carried by a directional comm beam.

Dash glanced at the operational status, then switched back to tactical. The radiation counts were, indeed, a little on the high side but were still well short of any sort of safety threat. If they spent another day here, piling up the rads, then sure. But for what should hopefully be only a few hours, they should—

“Dash, the Deeper ships have just translated in-system,” Sentinel announced, cutting off his thoughts and rendering the whole question moot.

Sure enough, one big, hard contact, and four smaller ones. Dash watched them powering casually into the system, their projected course taking them no closer to the star than a hundred million klicks. That would bring them within only ten million of the tiny Realm task force, which was too far. The carriers were going to get their wish anyway.

“Okay, folks, we’re going to make our slow and easy way another five million klicks from the star. Sentinel and the other AIs will make sure we maneuver to keep it right at our backs with respect to the Deepers. Everyone knows the plan from there.”

Terse acknowledgements. All they could do now was wait.

The Deepers swept closer. There was still no reaction from them. The tidal wave of emissions from the fierce blue star would be overwhelming their scanners, a glaring blind spot shared by humans, Golden, Deepers, and everyone else, as far as they knew. Even the characteristic shadows cast by Dark Metal would be washed out by the sheer flood of neutrinos pouring from the star.

Time passed. An hour after the Deepers’ arrival, the Luther Albrecht translated into the system, still shadowing the aliens at a safe distance. By then, Dash found himself second-guessing their assumptions, the decision to bring along the relatively untested N’Teel, the whole freakin’ plan to begin with. It all relied on doing something they’d never tried before, at least not in actual battle. It was all just so risky, in so many different ways.

He latched onto one bit of uncertainty over which he did have some control —the N’Teel. He could hold them back as a reserve instead of committing them to battle. “Jex, are you sure the N’Teel are clear on the plan? That they’re ready for this?” he asked.

She replied, her tone one of strained but indulgent patience. “Yes, Dash. I’m sure. They’re as ready as they’re ever going to be. Unless you have reason to doubt my judgment, that is.”

Ouch. Dash winced. “Jex, I trust your judgment. I’m just cautious.”

“I understand. For what it’s worth, Steenowat is pestering me as much as you are. In her case, though, it’s because she wants to launch and fight something.”

Dash smiled, but in a restrained way. Again, it struck him just how aggressive the N’Teel were, apparently by nature.

“Dash, the Deeper ships will reach the no-go point in five minutes,” Sentinel put in.

Dash put his attention back on the tactical display. The no-go point was an arbitrary line in space. Once the Deepers crossed it, the Realm ships were no longer assured of being able to withdraw without being engaged. At that point, Dash had to decide to abort the op or commit to it.

He was tempted to abort. The whole thing was just so risky, so reliant on things that had to work perfectly. But then the rumors that would spread their tendrils through the Cygnus Realm would be about running away from this new Deeper super-weapon, and that would not be good at all.

“We go,” he said.

The Deepers drew closer. They still hadn’t reacted, which either meant they knew the Realm was here, waiting for them, and was playing it cool, or they didn’t know. Dash fervently hoped it was the latter.

They’d almost reached the next critical line on the tactical display—the attack line.

“Sentinel, are you linked up with Kristin and the Pulsar?”

“I am—”

“She sure is! Hi, Dash, Kristin here!”

“Hello, Kristin,” Dash replied, unable to resist a smile. The AI that ran Conover’s mech always made him think of an especially manic version of Amy.

“Sorry, Dash. I think Kristin is anxious to try this out,” Conover said.

“You’re damned right I am! If this works, it could change the way we fight.”

That was true, Dash thought. If it worked.

“I am linked to Kristin and the Pulsar, yes,” Sentinel said, finally able to get a word in. “I am giving her control in thirty seconds.”

“Roger that.”

That was something else that made Dash a little nervous. For this to work, he had to let Kristin take full control of some of the Archetype’s functions. He’d still be able to fly and fight, but he’d have to do it with only the immediate, tactical picture.

“Kristin, you have control,” Sentinel said.

A barrage of data sluiced across the comm beam from the Pulsar. The Archetype’s long-range scanners, now repurposed into instruments of electronic warfare, immediately began to radiate energy, specifically tuned and modulated. Like the rest of the mech’s systems, they’d been upgraded with DM2. The Archetype had effectively become a transmitter for the Pulsar’s EW effects, albeit one far more powerful than the Pulsar itself.

“Luther Albrecht, Dash. You’re a go.”

“Roger that.”

The light cruiser suddenly accelerated, rapidly gaining on the Deepers.

This was the critical moment. If this wasn’t going to work, then the Deepers should react to the cruiser’s approach.

Dash waited.

Nothing.

Minutes passed.

Still nothing.

Dash found himself nodding. It was working. Thanks to the Archetype’s vastly improved performance, Kristin had been able to saturate the Deepers’ scanners with blank returns, making it appear to them as though nothing in the system had changed.

For the moment, they were blind.

Dash gave the go signal, and the task force shot forward, racing toward the Deepers as fast as they could.

* * *

The run in to attack the Deepers had seemed to last forever. With each passing second, Dash expected the horrific beam weapons to open fire and shred the Realm task force. But the Deepers remained silent, the Pulsar’s EW attack, amplified through the Archetype’s upgraded systems, painting nothing but empty space on their scanners. Dash had to keep reminding himself that the chances of them being seen visually were vanishingly small. As large and imposing as the Archetype and the other mechs were, in a celestial sense, they were smaller than motes of dust.

“We are in maximum effective weapons range,” Sentinel announced.

Dash immediately rattled commands into the comm. The two escort carriers launched their fighters, then decelerated, drawing back to stay clear of the action. The mechs and the fighters charged on, the latter slipping smoothly into their formations on the fly.

Still no response from the Deepers.

“Dash, Kristin says we’ve probably got about thirty seconds of effective jamming, and then we’ll just be too close to conceal all of our emissions,” Conover said, his voice tense.

It was tension Dash understood. He had to grit his teeth against it, too. “Okay, everyone, you know your jobs. The absolute priority is taking out those three beam weapons on the big ship. Everything else can wait.”

Another round of terse acknowledgements. They’d rehearsed this attack a half-a-dozen times in simulation. Every pilot of mech and fighter knew their precise job on the first pass. After that, the fight would inevitably collapse into a free-for-all.

“We are being illuminated by surveillance scanners. The jamming is no longer effective,” Sentinel said.

For an instant, Dash wondered what was happening on the Deeper ships. From their perspective, four mechs and nearly fifty fighters had just suddenly appeared out of nowhere, at what would be point-blank range in just a few seconds.

“Okay, everyone, show’s starting,” Dash said, lining up the twin dark-lances and firing at the most forward of the Deeper beam-weapon mounts. The shielding protecting it flared, staving off the paired beams of quantum destruction. Dash grimaced. If the Deepers had also improved their shielding, so they couldn’t even damage these weapons—

Then this would be a very short battle.

As soon as he’d thought the gut-wrenching thought, though, the Deeper shield flickered and died. The beam weapon, traversing to lock onto the attacking ships, exploded in a shower of debris.

The Archetype raced past the ruined weapon, skimming over the big ship’s hull close enough that Dash was able to take a swipe with the power-sword. He cut down an antenna, or some protrusion from the organo-metallic hull, anyway. Once clear of the massive Deeper ship, he slammed the Archetype through at least a sixty-g turn, racing back in for another pass. He saw that another of the beam weapons had been destroyed. The third one, though, had survived their initial pass and now opened fire. The shot missed the Pulsar by what looked like meters.

Dash cursed. The N’Teel had been assigned the task of destroying the third beam weapon, a task they’d failed to complete. Now, it threatened the entire force.

He veered toward the weapon, jinking as hard as he could to avoid a hit. The weapon spun, locking onto the Archetype. The threat indicator lit with the deluge of energy from the targeting scanners, and Dash braced himself. Just as he had at Backwater, he faced a split-second showdown with this damned Deeper weapon. What were the chances he could win this particular lottery twice?

Something whipped into view ahead. It was an N’Teel Moonbane fighter. Dash saw the craft open fire, then follow its own rail gun projectiles straight into the beam-weapon, slamming into it and destroying it.

The unexpected sacrifice left him stunned, flying straight on for a few seconds. He immediately found himself at the apex of Deeper fire. It was all conventional weapons, x-ray lasers, particle beams, and missiles, though. The Archetype’s shield flooded with energy, then Dash shook himself out of his moment of appalled distraction and pitched straight up, rolled, then slammed hard over and broke the Deepers’ targeting locks.

The next few minutes felt like hours. Even without their fearsome beam weapon, the Deepers proved a potent and determined enemy. All of the mechs took damage, especially the Polaris. Jexin was acting as effective wing commander for the N’Teel, so their aggressive, almost reckless nature pulled her into ever more brazen attacks. She’d actually suffered from the same problem, her raw hatred of the Golden, and now the Deepers, goading her into taking horrific risks and fighting with wild, almost uncaring abandon. To her credit, though, she did her best to keep reining the N’Teel in, but it made her more of a target for Deeper fire as a result.

Eventually, though, the mechs and fighters proved too much for the Deeper force. By the time the Luther Albrecht had caught up and added the weight of her fire to the battle, it was winding down. The big Deeper ship had been pounded into submission, and three of the light cruisers outright destroyed. The fourth had made a run for it and would have escaped if not for the Archetype’s fearsome acceleration. Dash overtook it, disabled it with dark-lance shots, then blasted it apart with rapid-fire from the nova-cannon.

He wheeled back toward the Realm forces, now rallying back toward the escort carriers. The tactical display showed that they’d lost eleven fighters. Six of them were N’Teel, half of their complement.

He resolved to have a heart-to-heart with Steenowat. He was glad to have the N’Teel as allies, but they were going to have to learn to curb their aggressive instincts. Fifty percent losses simply weren’t sustainable.

“Dash, there’s a lot of salvage here. Are you sure we just want to bug out?” Amy asked.

“Do I want to? No. That big Deeper ship alone is enough scrap to build three heavy cruisers. But remember the whole, it’s a trap thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, here’s the trap.” Dash had Sentinel repeat the Archetype’s operational display to the other mechs. Sure enough, a strong Deeper force was inbound. They had time to recover their fighters, and that was about it.

Still, N’Teel losses notwithstanding, it had been a success. They’d spanked the Deepers, given them some new electronic warfare capabilities to worry about, and made it clear that the Cygnus Realm would not be toyed with. More to the point, the rumors about the new Deeper super-weapon would be that it wasn’t that super at all.

In fact, Dash would start a few of those himself.

13

Dash had to wend his way among a throng of aliens, all of them Oksa. These were the refugees from a ravaged homeworld, a planet devastated by the Deepers. Less than a hundred thousand of the unfortunate aliens remained, all of them now aboard the Eastern anchor, or almost two dozen ships ranging from a single battlecruiser to a motley collection of tramp freighters.

He tripped over an Oksa’s foot and apologized but cursed inwardly. The Anchor was big, but even it strained to hold this many people. Ragsdale, the current commander of Eastern, must be blowing a circuit over the security nightmare.

“Dash!”

He turned to the voice. As though thinking about him had summoned him, Ragsdale strode—or, more correctly, picked his way—toward him.

“Well, isn’t this fun,” Dash said, as Ragsdale stopped a few paces away. The air hung thick between, with a slightly acidic tinge that must be the natural odor of the Oksa.

“Fun isn’t the first word that comes to mind, although another word beginning with f and u is,” Ragsdale replied, then gestured for Dash to follow him.

He led Dash along a packed corridor into an elevator. Dash let out a breath of relief as the doors sealed and quiet descended.

“When you said you had a situation here, you really meant it,” Dash said.

Ragsdale gave him a wry look. “Why yes, I did. In case it escaped your attention, we’re a little overcrowded here. Western isn’t in much better shape.”

Dash nodded. Per the Conover Plan, their more centralized approach to defense, Eastern and Western had been paired up, the two Anchors able to cover one another while coordinating and combining their enormous firepower. The Northern and Southern Anchors were likewise paired and, moreover, co-located with the Forge.

It meant, though, that the Oksa refugees had arrived en masse at Eastern and Western, the closest Realm outposts to their ruined homeworld. Only about fifty thousand remained on the planet, all that it was now able to support.

The elevator stopped, and Ragsdale led Dash into a small conference room reminiscent of the War Room, the repurposed crew lounge on the Forge that had once been the focus of their planning meetings. Avek, the only Oksa Dash knew by name, was there, along with a second Oksa. Avek introduced him as Orelet, her father.

Dash greeted them, then offered an acknowledgement of their plight. “I only wish we could be meeting under more pleasant circumstances.”

“As do we,” Avek said.

“Indeed. The crisis that has engulfed our people is simply more than we’re able to deal with,” Orelet put in.

“It’s kind of pushing us, too. We just aren’t equipped to handle this many people,” Ragsdale said.

Dash shot him a narrow-eyed look at his undiplomatic comment, but the fact was, Ragsdale was right. As imposing as the two Anchors were, Eastern and Western simply couldn’t handle almost one hundred thousand refugees. Worse, their rag-tag fleet of ships filled the space around the Anchors, potentially compromising their ability to defend themselves without inflicting serious collateral damage. If the Deepers attacked now, the Realm might be forced to choose between saving the Anchors while thousands of refugees died around them or losing everything. Dash could see the agony at even possibly facing that decision in Ragsdale’s eyes.

Dash turned back to Avek and Orelet. “I can’t deny that Ragsdale is right. We want to do everything we can to help your people, but we can’t just assume that the Deepers are going to cooperate and leave us alone while we do.”

“What you’re saying is that we should just move on,” Avek said. Despite being an alien, Dash could hear the bitterness in her tone. He held up a hand.

“I didn’t say that. But no, you really can’t stay here. We need to find a solution for your people, and we need to do it fast. Custodian?”

Although the Forge was almost three light-years away, the AIs that ran the Anchors maintained seamless comms with Custodian. All five of the AIs were essentially the same program, but each had different experiences that made Dash feel closer to Custodian than any of the others.

“Yes, Messenger?”

“Is there a habitable planet suitable for the Oksa within reach of their fleet?”

“There are three. One is Backwater, one is the N’Teel homeworld, and the third is an uninhabited planet on the outer edge of its system’s Goldilocks zone. Unfortunately, its mean surface temperature rarely exceeds minus forty degrees Celsius.”

Dash looked at the two Oksa. “You guys okay with cold weather?”

“Not that cold,” Orelet replied.

Dash tapped his chin. Backwater was largely barren and also a strategic asset. It would put the Oksa in the unenviable position of trying to establish themselves on a desolate, unfamiliar world that also happened to be the front-line of battle. As for the N’Teel, their planet was more than suitable, but they’d already proven themselves more than a little aggressive and xenophobic. Dash figured he could probably lean on them enough to convince them to let the Oksa settle there, but it wouldn’t be a happy relationship. He couldn’t help feeling he’d just be setting up future conflict and bloodshed.

“Custodian, there’s got to be more candidate planets than just those three,” Dash finally said.

“You asked for those within reach of the Oksa fleet. In the absence of a specific definition for reach, I assumed you meant within their current fleet’s capability to carry essentially their entire refugee population in one lift. There are certainly many other planets available, but all will require either multiple trips or assistance from another fleet.”

Dash had a holo-image of the regional star chart brought up, with available, habitable planets highlighted. After excluding those whose conditions were just too extreme for easy settlement, they were left with seven. Moving the Oksa en masse to even the closest of them was going to be a difficult, cumbersome process, fraught with risk. The vast majority of their ships were never designed to haul large numbers of warm bodies, all breathing and eating and excreting, for extended journeys. They already lost several hundred refugees to catastrophic accidents just on their way here.

Dash felt Ragsdale and the two Oksa staring at him. He finally made up his mind.

“In the short term, the only viable place for you to settle is on Backwater. We’d put you on the far side of the planet from the Gate, and it would only be temporary, anyway.”

“Temporary? What would the long-term solution be?” Orelet asked.

“For that, I need to talk to an old friend,” Dash replied.

* * *

Al’Bijea was just as dapper and fussy as Dash remembered him. The leader of the Aquarian Collective, a comet and asteroid mining conglomerate on the far side of the Black Gate, Al’Bijea had been a friend and trusted confidant since early in the Life War. In fact, Al’Bijea and his people had been one of the just-formed Cygnus Realm’s first allies against the Golden. He hadn’t hesitated to make the long trip here at Dash’s request and now disembarked from his sleek ship, a combination of frigate and yacht, with a broad grin on his face.

“Dash! I understand that you’ve been having adventures without me!”

Dash greeted Al’Bijea warmly. The Aquarian looked around the Forge’s docking bay, hands on his hips, and shook his head. “I’d forgotten just how impressive this Forge of yours is. What I wouldn’t give to be able to build something similar.”

Dash led Al’Bijea toward the exit. His ubiquitous personal assistant, Aliya, followed like a shadow. As Al’Bijea talked, he would occasionally nod to her, indicating a particular point of importance or needed action, and she would dutifully make note of it.

“Yeah, well, it turns out the Unseen had even bigger ideas than the Forge. Wait’ll I show you the Kingsport.”

Al’Bijea lifted his eyebrows. “Bigger than the Forge?”

“Much bigger. And by that, I mean much, much bigger.”

“You must show me.”

“I will, over a glass of plumato wine and some dinner. Right now, though, I have a problem that I think you can help me out with.”

He led Al’Bijea to the Command Center. Leira, Ragsdale, and Harolyn were already there, and all greeted Al’Bijea fondly. Dash had Custodian put up the star chart, briefed Al’Bijea on the overall strategic and operational situation, then outlined the problem with the Oksa. Al’Bijea listened intently, occasionally nodding toward Aliya.

When he was done speaking, Dash just waited. Al’Bijea studied the chart, his dark eyes darting about. Dash could feel the man thinking, sizing up, calculating. Finally, he sighed.

“It would be possible to construct a habitat for so many people, certainly, particularly with access to the technology of the Unseen. It certainly isn’t an unsurmountable engineering challenge. What the problem is, is the substrate.”

“The, er, substrate?”

“Yes. The structure. The hull, as it were. The vast majority of time, effort, and materials involved in the construction of the Forge, and later your Anchors, was invested in the hull and internal structures—the substrate. Installing all of the necessary systems for power, life support, and so on is a relatively easy task.”

“How long would it take to build something to house the Oksa?” Leira asked.

“We are assuming at least one hundred thousand, and as many as one hundred and fifty thousand humanoids? I would estimate that would require something the size of Passage.”

Dash hadn’t thought about Passage in a long time. An enormous space station, commercial hub, and space-borne city back in their home space, it was where Dash had first met Amy. He’d actually been there many times prior, sometimes openly doing business, sometimes incognito and avoiding people he owed money.

That seemed like an entirely different life, now. One lived by someone else.

He shook himself out of his moment of reverie. “Didn’t it take years to build Passage?” he asked.

“It did, but I was not the builder,” Al’Bijea said with a sniff. “If we are adequately resourced, I’d offer a rough estimate of one year to construct the substrate and several months to make it operational and habitable. Of course, those several months will overlap with the completion of the structure, so—” He pursed his lips. “So fourteen months, and perhaps as many as sixteen? I would have to do more detailed calculations to give you a more certain timeline.”

Dash felt the room deflate a bit. Ragsdale particularly radiated a frustrated worry. But Dash had a kernel of an idea, one that had come to him while he’d been pondering the strategic situation facing them. It had just seemed like a curiosity at the time, but now, it offered what might be an opportunity to solve the problem they and the Oksa faced.

“Zoom out so we can see all of the Arkubators inside the galaxy and show their motion compared to the Forge,” Dash said.

He noted Al’Bijea giving him a quizzical look at the inside the galaxy part, but the man obviously bit off his questions. Dash kept his eyes on the display, now holding a series of blue icons representing the current location of known Arkubators.

“Okay, Custodian, now speed up the Arkubators by a factor of one hundred. Assume they all stay on their present courses and keep their current velocities,” Dash went on.

The display didn’t noticeably change.

Dash gave a wry smile. “Space is really, really big, isn’t it? Let’s try a factor of a thousand.”

The blue icons started to creep across the display, millimeter by millimeter.

“Make it one hundred thousand.”

The Arkubators now crawled across the display, a few centimeters every second.

“Dash, what are we supposed to be looking at?” Harolyn asked.

“Take a look at these Arkubators, then you tell me,” he said, still smiling.

Harolyn gave him a puzzled look but crossed her arms and studied the big display. The duty ops personnel working the Command Center had all paused in what they were doing and were watching now, too.

Ragsdale suddenly pointed. “There, that Arkubator. It’s not like the others.

“It’s not moving. Or, it barely is, anyway,” Leira said, stepping close to the display.

“More to the point, it’s barely moving relative to us, here, at the Forge. That suggests it’s basically parked,” Dash replied.

“Okay, so what does that mean?” Leira asked, tracing Arkubator’s path with her finger. The map rippled like a pond touched by a summer breeze, then settled, the blue line still once more. It had lengthened to about two centimeters in the time it had taken the other Arkubators to move tens and, in some cases, hundreds of centimeters across the display.

“I think it’s empty, basically just a hull.”

Harolyn gave the display a doubtful look. “That could just mean it’s a wreck.”

“That’s true. But it could also mean it’s unfinished.” Dash turned to Al’Bijea. “Either way, it could be the basis for your substrate since these Arkubators are easily the size of Passage. But there’s only one way to find out.”

Leira gave Dash a thin smile. “My dear, I say this only because of your natural, ah, enthusiasm, and with the deepest affection. But, are you batshit crazy? It’s more than a thousand light-years away and might be full of, I don’t know, spiders with wings and other beasties and things with fifty-eight eyes. And fangs. Don’t forget the fangs.”

“Fifty-eight is really specific,” Dash said, chuckling.

“You know what I mean. Remember what was aboard the first Ark? And the second?” Leira’s face scrunched and tightened in distaste at the memories.

“Fair points, but hear me out. We only have to get there. We don’t have to bring it all the way back, even if we could take it in tow, which we probably can’t. We have the Stalwart and a few other ships follow, packed to the overheads with engineers and equipment, and they start work on the trip back. We save time, salvage a mass of material, and set the Oksa on their path to home.”

Ragsdale looked at Al’Bijea. “What do you think? You’re the one who’d be doing all the building and engineering.”

Al’Bijea gave a delicate shrug. “There are too many variables to be able to say. However, I would say it’s certainly worth considering, and that means it’s worth taking a look.” He turned to Dash. “However, a thousand light-years is an awfully long way.”

Dash sniffed and waved a hand. “Considering some of the distances we’re having to deal with when it comes to these Deepers, one thousand light-years really isn’t much at all.”

“Ah. I will take your word for that.”

Dash put his arm around Leira’s waist and flashed her a grin. “See? It’s nowhere near as bad as you thought. The Oksa have far fewer than fifty-eight eyes. And they’re way friendlier.”

* * *

War, Dash thought, really wasn’t that exciting. It mostly consisted of long periods of doing nothing, or doing nothing interesting, anyway. That definitely included one thousand light-year trips to a mystery ship floating out in the middle of nowhere.

The trip had been uneventful, as in, utterly, entirely without any notable events at all. It had been long hours of translating through the void of unSpace, punctuated by occasional returns to real space to allow the AIs to get navigational fixes. Then do it again. And again.

And again.

This time, though, there was something to see. The Archetype, accompanied by the Conover’s Pulsar and Amy’s Talon, had dropped back into real space and immediately registered a solid contact. The star system itself was as unremarkable as anything else about this little exercise, a yellow-white G-class star with four planets, one vaguely terrestrial, but whose atmosphere was rendered unbreathable by sulfur compounds. The others were a gas giant and a couple of airless rocks.

“This is the sort of place the Unseen would have stashed one of their Silent Fleets,” Amy said.

Dash muttered agreement. The mothballed fleets of Unseen ships known as the Silent Fleets still made up the backbone of Realm forces. They’d been placed, cold and dark, in orbit around distant, uninteresting stars and had remained there for thousands of years, waiting to be reactivated. Dash wondered if that was why this Arkubator was here, if it was unfinished, or otherwise not operational, and had just been stashed in this out-of-the-way place.

“The Arkubator is giving off no emissions and has an ambient temperature essentially the same as that of the space around it,” Sentinel reported.

Dash studied the enhanced imagery of it while accelerating to lead the three mechs to rendezvous with it. “So it’s completely dead.”

“Kinda spooky, actually. Big ship like that, way out here, dark, cold,” Amy said, then made a shivering sound. “Gave myself goosebumps there.”

The Arkubator showed utterly no signs of life as they approached. The three mechs halted a few klicks short of its massive flank, scanning it warily. It just remained big, silent, and inscrutable.

“It’s about as big as Passage, isn’t it?” Amy asked.

“Yeah, it is. And it looks intact,” Dash replied, leading Amy in a slow circle around the enormous ship. Conover hung back in overwatch while probing at the Arkubator with the Pulsar’s more extensive suite of sensors. “Sentinel, are you detecting any damage at all?”

“Other than minor impacts that have scored the hull and micrometeorite abrasion, no.”

“So it’s intact and apparently utterly lifeless.”

“I’d agree with that, Dash. Kristin and I have scanned the hell out of this thing, and there’s not a hint of life, power, or anything else anywhere aboard,” Conover said.

They continued a slow examination and conducted more scans, then passed all their data on to the follow-up force when it translated into the system. The Stalwart led two heavy cruisers and three assault carriers. All of them were packed with engineers, construction crews, structural components, powerplants, air and water reclamators—essentially everything that would be required to make at least a portion of the Arkubator habitable.

About ten minutes after the Stalwart’s arrival, Al’Bijea’s voice came over the comm.

“Unless we’re missing something here, this seems ideal for your intended purpose, Dash,” he said.

“Sounds good to me. Once you guys get here, Al’Bijea, I’ll let you take charge. Wei-Ping, you and I are going to lead a boarding party, just to make sure there aren’t any nasty surprises waiting inside, like things with fifty-eight eyes.”

Wei-Ping’s reply was a puzzled one. “Fifty-eight eyes? What? What the hell are you talking about, Dash?”

Dash laughed. “Never mind. You had to be there.”

* * *

The Arkubator continued the theme of creepy but ultimately boring.

The boarding party, a thirty-strong contingent from the Stalwart led by Wei-Ping and accompanied by Dash, wended its way through the cavernous interior. They found nothing but a lot of nothing. Which was good, Dash had to keep reminding himself. The alternative to boring was exciting, and exciting in wartime was by no means necessarily a good thing.

After four hours of poking about, Dash stopped and compared notes with Wei-Ping. He peered at her through the visors of their vac-armor helmets, making a huh face.

“Don’t know about you, but I’m satisfied there’s nothing here,” he said.

“Agree. And I mean nothing. It’s just an empty hull.”

“So it’s perfect for what we want. But you still somehow sound disappointed.”

“It’s the privateer in me, Dash. When I board a ship, I expect to get something in return for it—”

A comm transmission cut her off. “Wei-Ping, we found something interesting. Based on IFF transponders, we’re about forty meters ahead of you, to your right.”

“Yeah, I see you. Do you mean interesting-interesting or interesting-dangerous?” she asked.

“More like interesting-valuable.”

Wei-Ping grinned. “Ooh, I like the sound of that.”

They moved to join the search team that had discovered the interesting-valuable whatever. As soon as they saw it, both Dash and Wei-Ping instantly knew the team had been understating it.

“Is that what I think it is?” Wei-Ping asked.

Dash leaned in for a closer look. Spools wrapped with thin cable were stacked in an otherwise empty compartment. Okay, that was the interesting part. What was the valuable part?

Oh.

“If what you think it is, is Dark Metal, then yeah, it’s what you think it is, Wei-Ping,” he said, his voice quiet.

They looked around. There were at least twenty of the spools.

“There must be thousands of kilos of Dark Metal here!” Wei-Ping said, laughing, her teeth bright behind her visor in the bay’s gloom. “Jackpot! Just like the old days!”

Dash gave her a wry look. “You mean salvage? The sort that you found on other peoples’ ships?”

Wei-Ping winked. “Yeah. Let’s call it that. Salvage. But this is the best kind.”

“Oh? And why’s that?”

“Because it doesn’t fight back.”

14

“Once this is done, Dash, you won’t be the only one with a souped-up mech,” Amy said, a smug grin on her face. She stuck out her tongue. “So there!”

“Yeah, I’m tired of looking at Dash’s butt,” Conover put in, which brought the conversation slamming to a sudden halt. Even some of the techs working nearby in the Forge’s fabrication bay stopped and looked, slow grins spreading across their faces.

Dash turned to Conover, who’d just stood, stammering. “I’m mildly hurt, but I’ll carry on, kid.”

“Thanks, boss,” Conover sputtered.

Amy and Leira laughed, then drained away in the face of what filled their view.

Four of the five big mechs—the Swift, Talon, Polaris, and Pulsar—stood in the fabrication bay, in the midst of receiving Dark Metal Two upgrades, so they could eventually be fitted with hexacores. The Dark Metal they’d retrieved from the Arkubator had given them enough feedstock that they could run the Shroud at full output. And they could do it continuously, not in the fits and starts they were used to, as their Dark Metal supply waxed and waned.

“It is quite a sight, isn’t it?” Jexin said, pride brightening her voice.

Dash put his hands on his hips, allowing himself some pride of his own. “Well, considering that the Cygnus Realm started out as me, Viktor, and Leira aboard the Slipwing, yeah, it’s one hell of a sight.”

Conover sidled up beside Dash. “You said you weren’t going to call me kid anymore.”

“What?”

“You just called me kid a minute ago. You said you wouldn’t do that anymore.”

Dash turned to look at Conover. Gone was the young, awkward man he’d picked up on Penumbra, making him the fourth effective citizen of the Cygnus Realm. This Conover had gained a couple of inches in height, lost a few pounds, and gained a cargo hold's worth of self-confidence. Yes, he was still awkward, in a goofy, charming way. But Dash could also see the toll the Life War and now their conflict with the Deepers had taken. For such a young guy, his eyes held a glimmer of the sort of sad inevitability normally reserved for older men who’d seen too much, like Ragsdale.

And probably like Dash himself.

Dash put his hand on Conover’s shoulder, but in an earnest way, this time. “Conover, these days, if I call you kid, it’s out of genuine respect. It’s a title I reserve for you alone. You’re the only one entitled to it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

Conover smiled, the redness receding from his face. He looked about to say something, but one of the senior techs interrupted.

“Conover, wonder if you could take a look at something for us. We’re having trouble working out why the Pulsar’s auxiliary stabilizers are showing green on the board but are refusing to power up.”

“Did you ask Kristin?”

“Yeah, but she’s not hooked into that system yet.” He shrugged. “Orders from on high. The AIs weren’t to be connected back into upgraded mech systems until they were deemed stable and signed off.”

“Orders from on high?” Conover asked, shooting Dash a glance.

“Hey, don’t look at me,” Dash said. “I just fly ’em. I don’t fix ’em. Probably Custodian’s doing.”

As soon as he said it, Custodian inserted himself into the conversation. “It was. It’s standard protocol whenever any of a mech’s systems are changed in a way or to an extent that meets established criteria.”

Dash crossed his arms and gave a sudden nod of understanding. “You know, it strikes me that Custodian’s been holding back on us.”

“How so?” Custodian asked.

“You’ve got the owners manuals for these mechs stashed away in your archives, don’t you?”

“If, by owner’s manuals, you mean the schematics for the various mechs, then of course. You’re free to consult them anytime you wish. The owner’s manual for the Archetype comes to just under twelve thousand standard pages. I could produce a hardcopy for you, but my understanding is that you just fly ’em, you don’t fix ’em.”

Dash laughed and turned back to Conover. “I know these techs like taking advantage of your fancy tech-enhanced eyes. Go ahead, see if you can help them out.”

Leira sidled up beside Dash as Conover walked away.

“I think he’s the one,” she said.

“The one? The one what?”

“Your successor as Messenger.”

Dash turned a surprised look on her. “Uh, no, that would be you.”

Leira smiled. “I’m your second-in-command, ready to take over if I have to. But I think Conover’s the future Messenger.”

“Why?”

“Because you and he have a lot in common. In fact, if you think back to when you were a boy, I’m willing to bet you were a lot like Conover—awkward and kinda dumb but also really, really smart.”

Dash looked back at Conover, walking with the tech across the vast expanse of the fabrication bay. He tried to imagine Conover doing the things the Messenger—that he—had to do. He couldn’t.

But, when Dash was that age, could he have done those things, either?

It made him think back to the first time Custodian had introduced Dash to the remote, isolated part of the Forge intended only for the Messenger. It had struck him even then that Conover had potential he was only just beginning to show. In the time since, he’d proven himself again and again across a spectrum of abilities, from nerdy science wonk to hardened warrior.

“You might be right,” Dash finally said, but his voice didn’t carry any pleasure at the idea. Being the Messenger wasn’t a job he would wish on anyone.

* * *

Dash watched as the Pulsar slid clear of the fabrication bay and was cleared by the Forge’s traffic controllers to navigate. He kept the Archetype well clear of the other mech, which now had a hexacore installed. They’d done hours of static testing on the Pulsar and its upgraded systems, and now Conover would take it for its first flight test. Dash wanted it well away from the Forge, though, before even attempting any powered flight. So, despite the clearance to maneuver, Dash insisted on keeping the maintenance remotes, acting as tugs, in place.

“How does the mech feel, Conover?” Dash asked.

“Uh, like it’s being towed at a walking pace?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, everything’s green, and all systems are running at full standard power. No blips, no harmonics, nothing seems to be doing anything but running perfectly,” Conover replied.

Dash boosted the Archetype away from the Forge into clear space. They’d outlined a test range about ten million klicks from the Forge, which meant they had some flying ahead of them. But given the subtlety of the fault that had been plaguing the techs and their work, Dash wanted to be sure the Pulsar was truly flight-worthy before clearing it for ops.

It made him worry a bit about the Archetype, as well.

“Conover, tell me again just what was wrong with that DM2 circuit you helped the techs with. Something about a gap?”

“Yeah. The way the upgraded power-buses are made for the mechs didn’t account for a slight discrepancy in the DM2 metallurgy we’re getting from the Shroud and the theoretical value. The Forge’s fabricators didn’t account for it, so micro-fractures formed in the DM2-infused alloy. One had grown wide enough that a charge trickled across the gap to make it look like the diagnostics were green. But it was really a choke point, preventing the bus from conducting a full charge—”

“Okay, gotcha, and let me stop you there. How big a problem is this? Will it affect all the mechs? Could it affect the Archetype?”

“Well, now that Custodian knows about the variance, he can accommodate it. And as for the Archetype, we mostly used existing DM2, not stuff we manufactured ourselves. So it should be fine.”

“I am keeping vigilant for discrepancies between the reported status of the Archetype’s systems and their actual performance,” Sentinel put in.

“Me too!” Kristin added.

The tugs finally released the Pulsar, the maintenance remotes hurrying back toward the Forge. Dash had Conover apply the minimum thrust possible, nudging the mech into motion under its own power.

“Okay, Conover, nice and easy. We’re going to take our sweet-assed time flying out to the test range, got it?”

“I do. And, wow, I barely applied any power at all and started moving.”

“Yeah, we’re going to need to recalibrate all of your flight controls and stuff, like we did with the Archetype. Until then, though, just pretend you’re carrying a glass full to the brim with that really good batch of plumato wine Freya made a couple of months back—you know, the one everyone raved about. Pretend it’s the very last glass, it’s on a tray you’re holding in one hand, and you don’t want to spill any of it.”

“As I recall, you drank the very last glass of that stuff.”

“Hey, there’s got to be some perks to being the Messenger, right?”

They flew on. Conover tried a few gentle maneuvers, yawing the Pulsar from side-to-side, pitching it up-and-down, doing a slow roll.

Conover came back on the comm. “Okay, I think I’m getting a grip on it now. It’s just way more sensitive than it used to be.”

“That’s what she said.”

“What? I—oh.”

Dash grinned, then checked their location. They were just entering the test flight range. A robotic cargo shuttle carrying food from the Greenbelt to the Forge was traversing it, the last traffic before the range was cleared.

“Okay, Conover, we’re entering the test range. You can get a little more assertive in your maneuvers. Just watch out for that shuttle. It should be clear in a moment.”

“Roger that,” Conover said, then applied thrust to the Pulsar—

And shot forward like a missile from a rail.

“Shit! Conover, whoa, there!”

All that came back over the comm was a strangled gasp. The Pulsar began to gyrate wildly, seesawing through all three axes seemingly at random. Worse, Conover’s course was taking him directly toward the Greenbelt’s shuttle.

“Conover, emergency all stop!”

“I—!”

The Pulsar did a cartwheel, spinning through almost a complete circle before Conover applied a hard burst of thrust. He’d probably meant it to decelerate him, but the timing of the mech’s spin meant it only accelerated him even more.

“Dammit, he’s lost control,” Dash snapped. “Kristin, take control!”

“I’m, like, trying, but Conover keeps overriding my command inputs. It’s so rude.”

“Oh, for—Sentinel, can you do something here?”

“I can watch. That’s about it.”

“Conover! Lock it down!”

Dash accelerated the Archetype after the flailing, tumbling Pulsar. Conover snapped out curses Dash had never heard him use before, and one he’d never even heard before. He fired the drive and thrusters desperately, trying to get the mech back under control, but everything he did just seemed to make matters worse. He’d become completely flustered and disoriented, and the Greenbelt’s shuttle was looming close.

“Conover, let Kristin take control! Conover!”

It was no use. The shuttle tried to evade, but it had all the performance of a rock. Dash could only watch in horror as the Pulsar slammed into the smaller craft.

It wasn’t much of a contest. The shuttle, made out of sheet alloy and good intentions, weighed in at maybe a thousand tons. The Pulsar was an armored behemoth in comparison. The impact smashed the shuttle, sending fragments of it and its shredded cargo sailing in all directions.

Dash blew out an exasperated sigh. At least that was as much damage as he could manage. There was nothing but open space ahead of him.

“Sentinel, can I put on my Messenger hat and just order the Pulsar to shut down?”

“Yes, you can.”

“Kristin, this is the Messenger. Shut all systems down except comms and life support.”

“Complying.”

The Pulsar abruptly stopped its wild accelerations and now just tumbled in the direction of empty space. Dash eased the Archetype into place a few klicks away and matched velocity.

“Hey, Conover.”

“Dash, I—I’m sorry about that.”

“Uh-huh. Why didn’t you just let Kristin take over? Or at least stop slamming in control inputs like a drunk toddler?”

“A drunk toddler?”

“First thing that came to me.”

“I don’t know, I guess I thought—” Conover cut himself off.

“You thought you could get the Pulsar back under control,” Dash replied, watching bemused as the Pulsar just continued to tumble lifelessly in the general direction of the galactic core. “Guess what? You were wrong.”

“I know.”

Dash contemplated just letting Conover keep rolling slowly, end-over-end, but he remembered his first flight with the upgraded Archetype. It had gone better than this; he hadn’t destroyed a shuttle full of what looked like cabbages. But not much better.

“Kristin, restore power. Conover, don’t do a damned thing until I’m well clear. Running the Pulsar into that shuttle was one thing. I really don’t want to see what happens if we slam two of these mechs together.”

* * *

“Did you hear Freya, when she found out what happened to her shuttle?” Leira asked as Dash stepped through the airlock. He shook his head.

“She was all, my cabbages! I learned that Freya has really strong feelings about cabbage. And vegetables in general.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Dash glanced around. The research ship Absolute Zero was state-of-the-art, a true fusion of human and Unseen tech. It belonged to the Rimward League, but most of the research conducted aboard it transcended anything the League themselves could have carried out. The ship had become the focus of investigation of the Radiant Points, and the gates, and also into the properties of DM2. The latter was the reason for Dash’s stop here, to check on their progress.

He and Leira found Viktor, Elois, and Kai poring over some intricate schematics depicted on a workstation. Behind a thick, transparent panel, a hexacore sat in a test receptacle.

“How’s it going, guys?”

“Kai unearthed some more documents related to these hexacores, so we’re looking them over,” Viktor said.

Dash nodded, then turned to Kai. “Did you find this in the stuff we retrieved from Procyon?”

“No, actually. We cross-referenced some documents from there with some we had in our original archives. We had no context to those, so we had no way of determining what they were about.”

“But now you do.”

“Indeed. In fact, the Procyon documents are giving us a number of insights into data we already possessed and just didn’t understand. That might very well lead to more useful discoveries.”

Dash nodded again. “That’s excellent—”

“There he is!” Viktor exclaimed.

Dash turned to see Conover entering the lab. He shuffled in, eyes downcast, face almost brick-red. “Alright, everyone just go ahead. Take your shots at me, and get it out of your system,” he said, his voice quietly flat.

Dash exchanged glances with the others. Conover had definitely given everyone fodder for poking fun at him for—well, forever, probably. But right now, he looked nothing but miserable. Dash opened his mouth, but surprisingly, Kai beat him to it.

“Conover, when I was a young initiate, there was a gruff old monk in my Order, a miserable bastard named Yalin. He was my instructor in martial arts. He trained me, along with a half-a-dozen other young monks. I was actually very good. I quickly rose to the top of the class. I could defeat any of the others, and did so, repeatedly.”

Conover had looked up from his feet while Kai was talking. “Okay, and?”

“And, I was convinced that I was the best in my class. The other initiates were determined to best me, but they just couldn’t. So I went from considering myself the best in my class to the best there was. I became prideful and arrogant. Brother Yalin let me. And then, one day, he walked up to me and said, “I’m going to defeat you now.” I took my stance, prepared myself, certain that this old man was no match for me. In fact, I looked forward to confronting and defeating him, the miserable wretch.”

“And he kicked your ass.”

“Oh, he certainly did, within a few seconds. And then he did it again. I had gone from believing myself the best to knowing that I wasn’t. It was a lesson in humility that I have carried with me ever since.” Kai smiled at Conover. “You have learned a similar lesson today. Don’t squander it.”

Conover stared at Kai a moment, then smiled back. “Thank you, Kai. I won’t.”

Dash gave Kai an impressed nod. The monk might not be on the front lines of the war himself, but he helped make it possible for those who were to triumph. He was as heroic as anyone in the Cygnus Realm and completely unsung for it. And that, Dash thought, was exactly how Kai wanted it.

Kai raised a finger, hesitated, then adopted a look so serious, Conver took a half step back.

“Y-yes?” Conover asked.

Kai bowed slightly, then locked eyes with Conover. “I would note that even in defeat—even when I was at my lowest point, awash in broken arrogance—”

“Um, yes?” Conover prompted.

Kai’s lips twitched. “I never destroyed innocent cabbages.”

Dash snorted as the room fell apart, and Conover’s shoulders lifted with relief.

“Thank you, Brother Kai,” Conover said with a small bow.

“You are most welcome. You were saying, Dash?” Kai asked, his face placid.

Sentinel came on the comm, breaking the moment of good humor with data. “Dash, we’ve worked out the nav parameters for the location where those two extrapolated Arkubator trajectories meet. The other AIs and I are confident that we can navigate to within approximately three light-years of that point.”

Dash had Sentinel plug in to the Absolute Zero’s data net and project her information onto a screen in the lab. The point was twenty-three thousand, three hundred light-years beyond the recognized galactic ring, putting it more than halfway to the closest of the two Magellanic Clouds.

“Considering how far that is, I’d say three light-years off is pretty damned good,” Leira said.

Dash crossed his arms and made an affirmative sound. The display showed a series of waypoints along the course proposed by Sentinel, where the mechs would have to return to real space for a nav fix. Again, the only usable reference points available were pulsars located in different parts of the Milky Way. Each spun at a unique but consistent rate. It would give the AIs something upon which to base their course corrections since the Milky Way itself would just be a glowing mass of stars, dust, and gas.

“How long is this flight going to take?” he asked.

“For the upgraded mechs, a total of seventy-one hours of flight time from the Forge’s current location, plus another seven hours total to conduct nav checks at each waypoint.”

Leira sighed. “So that’s, what, seventy-eight hours? Each way?”

Dash flashed her a grin. “Hope you didn’t have anything planned.”

“Wouldn’t matter if I did. That’s fast.”

“We’ll be cooking. That’s for damn sure,” Dash said, then turned to Viktor and Elois. “Do you guys need more time with this new data for the hexacores?”

Viktor shook his head. “No, this new stuff is mostly fine-tuning. It might improve them by three or four percent. That’s not bad, but it’s also not worth waiting for.”

“Okay then, as soon as we’re finished the upgrades and flight tests on the mechs, we’ll launch,” Dash said. The others fell into discussion among themselves, but Dash moved back to the display, focusing on the point where the two Arkubator trajectories had crossed.

Just a coincidence?

As soon as he thought it, though, he rejected the idea. Trajectories didn’t just randomly intersect like that. Consider the volume of space involved, the odds of that happening were beyond astronomical.

No, there was something there. That nondescript place twenty-odd-thousand light-years away was important.

And they were going to find out why.

15

“I spy, with my little eye, something starting with an n,” Amy said.

Dash sighed. “Is it the infinite, existential nothingness that is unSpace, the very existence of which makes me question the fundamental nature of reality?”

“It is! You got it right, way to go, Dash!”

Dash shook his head. They’d set up a schedule with two pilots awake and three asleep at any given time. One of the advantages of the Meld was it could be used to put any of them to sleep instantly and awaken them fully refreshed after just a few hours. They’d instituted a rotating system of waking pilots, though, since there were five of them. It meant they weren’t repeatedly paired up with the same person, which was good because much more of Amy’s unrelenting, good cheer was going to drive Dash space-happy. And it was only a short hop from there to murder.

Sentinel blessedly interrupted, either by intent or chance, Dash didn’t care. “Dash, we’re one hour flight time from our final nav fix. Once there, we’ll be able to calculate the distance to our theoretical destination.”

“Theoretical? Uh, no, I think there’s an actual point in space we’re going to visit, not a theoretical one. Or did I miss something?”

“No. However, this whole operation is predicated on there being something of interest at an arbitrary point just over twenty-three thousand light-years from the galactic edge, where the trajectories of two Arkubators intersected far in the distant past. That makes it theoretical to me.”

Dash smiled at Sentinel’s slightly aggrieved tone. The AIs had made it clear that sending all five of their upgraded first-line mechs to what amounted to a random point far, far in the middle of nowhere was, as Tybalt had put it, an unwarranted shot in the dark.

“You know what your problem is, Sentinel? You have no sense of adventure.”

“I wasn’t constructed with one.”

“Yeah, see, I’m not really buying that excuse anymore. You’ve changed a lot since we first met. You’ve loosened up. I’m glad. Now we need to work on making you a little more adventurous.”

“The Creators chose to rely on you, on humans, to add the daring, adventurous spirit to our endeavors. I’m just a drudge, keeping the lights on and the motor running. And I’m content with that. Also, I never have to wear pants, which, according to several of you, is an irritation.”

Dash laughed. All the pilots were awake now and chattering back and forth about the fact they were about to become the furthest-traveled humans ever. As the hour ticked down and the excitement grew, it struck Dash that Sentinel had been right. They’d already done half-a-dozen nav fixes since clearing the galactic edge, and each one had been the same, the five of them surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. The only thing that did change was the Milky Way, the vast, luminous sprawl of the galaxy shrinking a little bit with each hop.

There really wasn’t any reason to be excited. And, yet, here they were. That was something else Sentinel had gotten right. They were here because humans, impulsive, flighty, and irrational creatures that they were, had decided to make the trip based on two intersecting lines and a hunch. The AIs wouldn’t have.

Well, they’d soon find out which came out on top—gut-feeling or cold logic.

Thirty seconds before the translation drive cut out, an alert chimed. Dash braced himself. They should still be some distance short of their objective, whatever it was. But there was enough uncertainty that they could come out right on top of it, or even past it.

The translation drive shut down. The five mechs, led by the Archetype, plunged back into the four-dimensional solidity of real space.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrill and excitement of intergalactic space, twenty-three thousand light-years out. We are now the furthest traveled humans in history. Please keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times,” Dash said.

“It’s—pretty underwhelming, actually,” Leira replied.

It was. The Milky Way galaxy had receded a little bit more, the nearest of the Magellanic Clouds had become a slightly larger spot of fuzzy glow, and a few points of light otherwise speckled the vast nothingness. They were other galaxies, although only Andromeda, the closest, was recognizable as a tiny, whimsical spiral.

They waited as the AIs confirmed their location. It turned out they’d come out of translation within three light-years of their calculated destination, which was phenomenal navigation.

“Okay, so, the big, red-giant-sized question. Is there anything out here?” Leira asked.

“I’m going to put my money on no, there’s nothing except a whole lot of nothing,” Amy replied.

Dash swept his attention through the emptiness around them. Unfortunately, he couldn’t disagree. With a sinking feeling, he began to realize that this daring, adventurous flight had been a complete waste of—

He stopped in mid-thought. “Sentinel, I’m seeing a tiny sensor return at our current two o’clock high. Is that a glitch, or some type of sensor ghost, or is there actually something out there?”

“You’re correct. There is a signal suggestive of something metallic. It falls only just above the threshold of the system’s sensitivity, though, meaning it could be a false return.”

“Although, with no background noise to speak of, it is distinct, and therefore probably real,” Tybalt added.

Dash oriented the Archetype toward it and started to accelerate. But there was no need to make a tedious, real-space flight of several hours. There just wasn’t enough gravitation out here in the Big Black for them to translate there. Dash instructed the AIs to run the numbers, input the parameters, and make the hop.

They dropped back into real space and immediately found the sensor echo. Another hour of flying brought them to it.

“It’s a flattened cylinder, approximately two meters long, made of a ceramic-composite alloy,” Sentinel said.

Dash frowned at it from about two klicks away. “Is it on some sort of trajectory? Is it going somewhere?”

“Outside of the galaxy, concepts like going somewhere become problematic. It is almost stationary with respect to some objects and moving at extremely high velocity with respect to others.”

“There’s the pedantic old Sentinel I’d come to know and love. Okay, is it heading toward the Milky Way, or away from it?”

“Its trajectory is generally toward the Milky Way.”

“So it came from somewhere—well, out there, is what you’re saying,” Dash said.

“Correct.”

Dash studied the tiny object a moment longer. “Okay, everyone else hang back and stay alert. For all we know, this is some kind of trap, like, maybe the Deepers have this set up as some sort of nav beacon, and they’re going to drop right on top of us.”

The other pilots acknowledged and pulled away from the object, dispersing the mechs, but keeping them close enough for mutual support. Dash nudged the thrusters and slowly drifted toward whatever this thing was.

“It is at ambient temperature, less than one degree above absolute zero,” Sentinel said.

“Any emissions, power signatures, anything like that?”

“None detectable.”

“Huh. Okay…”

Dash eased the Archetype to within reach of the little object. Still no reaction. He reached for it, bringing the Archetype’s fingertip almost close enough to touch it. The object was smaller, Dash noted, than even just the last joint of the mech’s finger.

Still nothing.

He edged closer and gently grasped the object. As he did, he noticed a slight, round indentation in its surface. It had a slightly crystalline sheen but had been rimed with frost. He used the fine manipulators on the mech’s finger to carefully scrape the frost away, then magnified the imagery of what it revealed.

For a moment, Dash just stared.

“Dash? Anything you care to share?” Leira said.

“Yeah, way to keep us in suspense,” Amy added.

Dash let out a slow breath. “Well, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, guys.”

“What? What is it?” Leira snapped.

Dash stared at the very human face, that of a woman, revealed behind the faceplate.

“Turns out we are not the first people to make it this far out into space.”

* * *

“We’ve completed facial recognition analysis and have a ninety-one percent match,” Sentinel said.

Dash’s eyes widened in surprise. He’d been staring at the woman in the tube, taking note of her strong features, framed by black hair. He couldn’t make out anything else. She was, apparently, alive, after a fashion, at least. Sentinel had been able to detect trace signatures of ongoing metabolic processes expected in a living human, albeit at a vastly slower rate than someone fully aware and awake.

“Ninety-one percent? Really? I thought you weren’t even sure you could get a match from the databases you have available. What gives?” Dash asked.

Sentinel had already tempered expectations because this far from the Forge, anything resembling real-time comms wasn’t even possible. They’d been stuck to reviewing the archival databases loaded into the mechs’ memory cores, which were enormous, but certainly didn’t include details of every human being who’d ever lived.

“We do have access to archival data for all humans directly involved in spaceflight since they’re the ones most likely to be encountered. She matches an identity in them.”

“Okay, so who is she?”

“Accepting this match as correct, her name is Sabina Lavarovna. She was a member of the first manned human mission to pass the orbit of Jupiter in the Sol System. She, and two other personnel, were tasked with testing new flight technology intended to make travel to and exploration of the outer Solar System possible.”

“Let me guess. They disappeared.”

“Without a trace. It was assumed that their vessel had suffered a catastrophic failure while conducting a gravitational slingshot maneuver around Jupiter, and that the wreckage had fallen into the planet’s atmosphere and been lost.”

“Apparently not.”

The other mech pilots had been listening. Leira finally spoke up. “I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but we’re an awfully long way from Jupiter.”

“I doubt that the technology available to humans at the time would have been able to bring her out this far,” Amy said.

Hathaway, her mech’s somber and sardonic AI, cut in. “It could have if she began this journey approximately eighty million years ago.”

“Yeah, she just doesn’t look that old,” Dash said.

“Not only that, but she’s traveling the opposite way, toward the galaxy, not away from it,” Conover added.

“Which brings us to the next question—”

“Which I have already anticipated,” Sentinel said. “You are going to ask if there is anything whatsoever located along the course she has been following. Yes, there is—a single, lone white dwarf star whose luminescence barely crosses the visible threshold. And, yes, that dwarf star approximately corresponds to the intersection of the two Arkubator trajectories.”

“Again, do you really need me out here for this?” Dash asked.

“Were it not for you, we wouldn’t even be here, so yes.”

“It’s nice to feel wanted.” Dash studied the lonely dwarf star, which Sentinel had centered in his field of view. Even at maximum intensification, he could only make out a tiny, pale point of light, only slightly brighter than the utter blackness behind it.

“Is there anything else out here?” he asked.

“Not that we have detected. That dwarf star is, as far as we can tell, the only matter within detection range that isn’t just dust or gas.”

“So there’s something more than just her presence out here,” Dash said.

“What could be more—I mean, nothing makes less sense than finding one of the first space travelers from old Earth this far out,” Conover muttered.

Dash turned the Archetype to face a circle of the most lethal weapons known to humanity. “Well, unless anyone has any better ideas, I’m going to stash our new friend Sabina here in one of the Archetype’s leg compartments, and then we’ll go see what we’ve found.”

Leira gave a dry laugh. “Well, we’ve come all this way, so we might as well, right?”

Amy chuckled back. “Hey, I’ve got nothing better to do.”

* * *

Dash scrutinized the tiny star system. It didn’t take long. The white dwarf itself hovered on the very edge of what could even be considered a star, its surface temperature and luminosity so low that it, in astronomical terms, would soon be just a black dwarf, a burned-out cinder. After that, it would simply go on existing, quite possibly to the literal end of the universe, when proton decay would finally make it vanish.

Sentinel listed off its stellar characteristics. “It is a class DX white dwarf. Its spectral signature is entirely uncertain, as is its origin. It’s quite possible, in fact, that it originated in another galaxy entirely and long predates the Milky Way.”

“I get the shivers just looking at it,” Amy said.

“It is an awfully lonely place, isn’t it?” Jexin put in, her voice quiet.

“Lonely doesn’t even scratch the surface,” Dash replied, then turned his attention to the two objects orbiting the feeble little dwarf star. Both were airless rocks, scoured bare and in lockstep as they orbited their companion. Interestingly, both were in the same orbital track but on exactly opposite sides of the star. Sentinel speculated that they had once been a single mass that had been split apart. How or why, she couldn’t even begin to speculate.

“Dash, Kristin says she’s detecting a slightly different signal from the nearer of the two—uh, planets? Are we calling these two little rocks planets?”

“Planets will do, sure. Sentinel, can you confirm that?” Dash asked.

“I can. Signal resolution is very poor, but it’s enough to indicate a slight difference in the composition of the surface. I recommend we move in closer to obtain better imaging.”

“Sounds good,” Dash replied and accelerated the Archetype, the other four mechs following.

A moment later, the threat board lit up.

“We’ve got company,” Leira said.

Dash turned his attention to the tactical display. Six objects had just accelerated away from the dwarf star, toward them. They’d likely been lurking on the far side of the dwarf, waiting to see what the Realm mechs were going to do. It only took a few seconds to identify them as Deeper ships.

“Well, if we were going to run into anyone out here, it stands to reason it would be the Deepers,” Jexin offered.

“Yeah, it does,” Dash replied, but he didn’t move to close for battle. There was something about the Deeper ships. Something off.

Amy apparently noticed it, too. “Do they seem sluggish? Like we, uh, woke them up from a nap?”

“Now that you mention it, they do,” Jexin replied. “They’re not showing anything even close to the performance we’ve seen in typical Deepers ships.”

“Maybe they’re sick,” Leira suggested. Amy immediately picked up on that.

“You think so? The Deepers technology is partly organic. Do you think it might be susceptible to things like disease? Like maybe these ships have the flu?”

“No idea. All I know is that they’re coming out for a fight. Once we’ve kicked their butts, we can give them a medical check-up and see if they’re sick.”

As he spoke, Dash accelerated the Archetype directly toward the Deeper ships. The other four mechs fell into a wedge formation behind and to his sides, Leira and Conover to his right, Amy and Jexin to his left. It was a vanguard of fearsome power, and they were accelerating into the teeth of the enemy advance.

As soon as they reached missile range, the Deepers opened fire. Like the ships themselves, their projectiles were sluggish, accelerating and making course changes with, by the standards of space battles, glacial slowness. Dash easily dodged, using the Archetype’s fearsome acceleration to weave among the missiles, the point-defenses smacking one after another out of space. The few that leaked through were blasted to fragments by the other mechs.

“Everyone listen up—let’s not expend any of our own missiles. I’m not convinced this isn’t some sort of diversionary force or something,” Dash said. Acknowledgments rattled in, and Dash flung himself into combat.

Despite their ponderous approach, the Deeper ships put up a spirited fight. Dash took two solid x-ray laser hits in rapid succession. He’d been worried about the new Deeper beam weapon showing up, but there was no sign of it. That was good because Custodian and the other AIs were still struggling to make sense of it, based on the severely damaged examples they’d been able to retrieve. Until they understood it well enough to enact effective countermeasures, it was going to remain a sinister, looming threat over every engagement.

Dash whipped the Archetype through a hard turn and poured dark-lance fire into the lead Deeper ship. It tried to maneuver but to no avail. He closed in, delivering the killing blow with the Archetype’s wrist-mounted rail gun, followed by a flurry of blows from the power-sword, every brilliant slash of his weapon rending the enemy hull with ruthless efficiency. As the Deeper ship tumbled on in its death throes, he turned to look for a new target, but there were none. The other mechs had smashed the remaining Deeper vessels into derelicts surrounded by clouds of debris.

“Was that it?” Jexin asked.

“Yeah, that didn’t seem like much of a defense,” Conover added.

Dash took in the threat indicator, now dark, then scanned the space around the lonesome dwarf star. Short of some pretty sophisticated stealth tech, the only place a Deeper fleet could be hiding was on the far side of the star itself, tucked in close and radio silent. Dash led the mechs up and over the little star’s north pole to check and confirmed there was nothing there.

“So I guess that was it,” Jexin said. “Six decrepit old ships.”

“Yeah, but how much of a threat would the Deepers expect out here? We are twenty-three-thousand-odd light-years from known space, after all,” Leira replied.

“We’re also assuming this place is important to the Deepers, but it might not be,” Conover put in.

“Only one way to find out,” Dash said, flipping the Archetype end-over-end and accelerating toward the planet—actually, planetesimal was probably more correct, as Tybalt noted—that had displayed the odd signal.

* * *

“It looks like black goo,” Amy said.

Leira chuckled. “That’s because it is black goo.”

Dash had landed the Archetype near the extraneous signal, which was located on the far side of the planetesimal from the star. That technically made it the cold side of the planet, but the ancient stellar remnant generated about as much heat as one of Freya’s ovens, so every part of the rocky little world was cold, just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

Now, he stood staring at a small lake of what was, indeed, best described as black goo. Amy and Leira had landed with him, while Jexin and Conover stayed in space, keeping watch. They might be surrounded by thousands of light-years of absolutely nothing, but when it came to the Deepers, Dash didn’t want to take any chances.

“Sentinel, can we do better than just calling this stuff black goo? Like, what is it, exactly?”

“And how could it possibly still be liquid at these temperatures?” Amy asked.

“To answer Amy’s question first, I have no answer. There are only a few materials that can remain in a liquid state at extreme cryogenic temperatures, but even they become solid under these conditions,” Sentinel said.

“Okay, what about the first question? What the hell is this stuff?” Dash asked.

“It’s a complex mixture of organic materials, with Dark Metal held in suspension. I suspect it’s some property of the Dark Metal that allows this material to remain liquid.”

“So, it’s what? Some sort of primordial ooze?” Leira asked.

“For lack of a better term, yes,” Sentinel agreed.

Amy bent the Polaris over the pond, one of three pooled in low spots amid the barren, rocky terrain. She reached out a finger, touched the ooze, then drew it back. A long, gooey string of what looked like thick tar stretched, finally breaking and slowly falling in globules under the low gravity.

Amy made a disgusted sound. “Gross!”

“Okay, so let’s recap. We’ve got three ponds of primordial ooze, on a barren little rock, orbiting the tiny corpse of some ancient star, thousands of light-years from anywhere,” Dash said.

“That about sums it up,” Leira agreed.

Dash opened his mouth to say some variation of what the hell, but Amy cut him off.

“Dash, there are—things in this ooze.”

“Things?”

“Yeah, things. Like, I don’t know, blobs.”

Dash moved closer to the pond. Closer inspection revealed that there were humped shapes, almost completely submerged in the ooze. “Sentinel, any ideas?”

“Their closest analog are Deeper warriors. These ones seem to be in some sort of dormant chrysalis-like state, however.”

“They might also be immature specimens,” Tybalt added.

Dash narrowed his eyes at the motionless humps. Was this the real threat? Would they fiddle with this ooze and provoke some sort of massed attack by suddenly awakened Deepers?

He prodded one with the Archetype’s finger. It rocked slightly in response, but that was all.

“Tybalt’s convinced that they’re immature Deepers, some sort of larval or pupal state or something. So it’s a nursery, I think,” Leira said.

Jexin clicked her tongue. “What a terrible fate, even for Deepers. Out there, all alone, no community, just, well, this. Just cold, empty space.”

“Do you actually feel sorry for them, Jex?” Dash asked.

“In a way, I do. In a bigger way, though, I’d be quite happy to put them out of their misery.”

“It’s almost like they were meant to keep watch over something. But what? What are they watching?” Conover asked.

“The answer to that, I think, is in this pond. Sentinel, can you configure the shield to protect the Archetype from being coated with this icky black sludge?” Dash asked.

“I can.”

Dash sniffed. “Well, then, here’s something I never imagined I’d be saying twenty-three-odd-thousand light-years from home, in the depths of intergalactic space.”

“What’s that?” Leira asked.

“I’m going for a swim.”

* * *

The primordial muck turned out to be so viscous that Dash actually had to apply some downward thrust to get the Archetype to sink at a decent rate. Once the goo closed over the mech, he was submerged in utter darkness.

“Uh, Sentinel? Can we do any better with these sensors? I can’t see a damned thing.”

“The Dark Metal suspended in this fluid is severely degrading sensor operation. However, I have an idea. One moment.”

Dash waited as the Archetype continued to sink. The mech passed through one hundred meters of depth and just kept going.

A series of ghostly, greyish images suddenly materialized around Dash. He could make out the roughness of a rock wall about twenty meters to his left, slowly scrolling upwards.

“I’ve caused a harmonic in the auxiliary main power coupling. The result is acoustic energy, which is reflecting back from any solid surfaces. It’s similar to an ancient method submersible craft once used, called sonar.”

“Now that’s what I like, thinking outside the box,” Dash said, grinning.

The mech continued to sink. As it passed through two hundred and fifty meters of depth, a new sonar return bounced up from below. It was the bottom of the pool.

“Well, this turned out to be not very interesting,” Dash said, his grin fading.

He nudged the Archetype laterally, drifting about ten meters above the rocky bottom. He didn’t really expect to find much and didn’t—

Until he did.

The grin returned, spreading across his face. “Ah, there’s something, just ahead of us. I even think I even know what it is. And if I’m right, then this whole trip just became totally worth it.”

16

Dash couldn’t fault his people for their ingenuity.

In the weeks since he and the others had returned from their trip out into the big black, the Deepers had been silent. There’d been no incursions, no planets threatened for their resources, no attacks whatsoever. The only Deeper activity they’d recorded were brief forays by lone ships. They’d appear on the margins of current Realm space, lurk for a while, and then vanish at the first hint of any pursuit. It all just felt too quiet, to Dash and everyone else.

That didn’t mean that the Realm had been inert. Since the moment Dash saw the Radiant Points adrift in a muck nearly old as the universe, he knew—along with his officers—that the game had changed. Amy and Conover couldn’t fathom something as important as gate tech being left somewhere at the end of space, but Dash, and in particular Viktor, could. Many of his officers understood the Deepers were, in a sense, a navy, and no one was better than the armed forces at putting important things in places where they could be miscounted by an overworked logistics staffer.

“Do the Deepers even count?” Sash asked Sentinel.

“If they do, they’re just incompetent enough to give us the keys to the galaxy.”

“Good point.”

Still, the lull gave them the chance to get to work on what would be the largest and most complex engineering work ever undertaken by humans—construction of the Kingsport.

The problem, though, had been the Backwater Gate. Stuck on the surface of the barren planet, there’d been only one way for any ship not designed for atmospheric flight to make it through—the terrifying dive from orbit that the crews had come to call the Death Plunge. It was, as Benzel observed, like trying to thread a needle, if the thread was traveling at hypersonic speed and embedded in a cloud of incandescent plasma, and one in three people on the bridge was screaming or praying or both. Even then, ships had to pass through only during certain windows of opportunity, when the League laser ships could fire from geosynchronous orbit and thin the atmosphere. Not only did it play hell with Backwater’s climate and environment, but Dash also doubted someone could have made a more inefficient means of travel if they’d set out to try.

Even before he and the others had made their long trek out to the lonely dwarf star, he’d asked Custodian how long it would take to construct the Kingsport, assuming most of their ships had to keep braving the Death Plunge. The answer had been even more discouraging than Dash had expected.

“Considering that only vessels with sufficiently strong shielding can undertake the maneuver, and only when the atmosphere is adequately thinned, and setting aside the significant probability of accidents resulting in damage to ships and—”

“Custodian—just, how long?”

“Approximately two hundred years.”

“Great. Guess I’d better get to work on my will, then, since I’m going to be leaving the next four or five generations of my descendants an incomplete mega-station.”

It was then that the ingenuity of their people kicked in, chewing on the problem. They had to find a way to get the gate into orbit while keeping it intact and operating. The AIs and engineers working on the problem had concluded that the gate should remain stable as long as the cradle containing it remained intact. Still, it meant trying to lift thousands of tons into orbit, a daunting, risky task even with the tech they had available.

But Al’Bijea hadn’t seen it that way.

The leader of the Aquarian Collective was an expert in moving large masses from where they were to where he wanted them to be. Normally, that was comets and asteroids, but he’d taken only a brief look at the Backwater situation, then proclaimed it was by no means an insurmountable problem.

Apparently, he’d been right. Dash and the others had returned from their long trek into intergalactic space to find that the Backwater Gate had already been lifted off the surface and now revolved around the planet in a rock-stable orbit.

Al’Bijea had been dismissive of the barrage of praise aimed his way. “It was a challenge, yes, but as I said, not an insurmountable one. Once the gate’s mechanism had been excavated free of the bedrock, what remained was a problem similar to moving a small asteroidal mass from a region of relatively high gravity, to a considerably lower one. Your—distortion cannons, you call them, I believe? Anyway, they proved absolutely invaluable in making the task possible.” He’d turned to Dash. “By the way, I would like to speak with you about procuring some of those devices. They would make our jobs in the Collective so very much easier.”

“And profitable,” Dash replied, grinning.

Al’Bijea offered a wily look, then smiled broadly. “Perhaps.”

Watching ships beginning to pass sedately through the orbiting gate, Dash had resolved to give Al’Bijea all the distortion cannons he wanted.

Now, standing aboard the construction ship Great Wall, that resolve only firmed up. A few thousand klicks away, the very first components of the Kingsport were in place, the two self-assemblers built aboard the Forge busily turning feedstock—scrap, salvage, and even just rock—into a monumental space station.

Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near monumental yet. All that had been assembled so far amounted to little more than the mass of a heavy cruiser. But it was a start.

“Have to admit, Dash. I’m still a little worried about that thing sitting off our port side. You guys are sure there aren’t any of the damned Deepers lurking aboard it somewhere?” Bercale asked.

Dash turned to the man who headed up the Local Group, the ship-building consortium that now assembled and maintained almost half of the Cygnus Realm’s fleet. It had been the devastating loss in a surprise attack of one of the Local Group’s shipyards, along with nearly three hundred of their people, that had opened the war against the Deepers. Bercale still felt the sting of loss and had become one of the most dedicated foes of the Deepers as a result.

In Bercale, the Deepers created a lifelong enemy. It was a mistake they would learn to regret.

“We’ve swept that Deeper platform from end-to-end, repeatedly. And we have patrols constantly watching its entire length. So we’re pretty sure, yeah. But, just in case—” Dash waved a hand off to starboard, where a powerful task force of mixed Realm and League warships, commanded by the Sabertooth, maintained vigilant station.

Bercale gave a long-suffering sigh. “Good enough for me, at least, until the next time I start worrying about it.” He shot Dash a brief grin.

Dash waved grandly, smiling. “Look at this way. We might not be able to repurpose much of it for the Kingsport, but, hell, what we can use has gotta be another few hundred thousand tons of stuff we don’t have to haul through that gate.”

Bercale nodded. Custodian had been clear about that. They couldn’t employ any materials that incorporated Deeper organic components in the construction of the Kingsport. The risk of using an alien substance that could heal itself and was therefore at least somewhat alive, was just too great. It unfortunately meant that the vast majority of the huge Deeper station, almost a thousand klicks long, was hands-off.

Still, with the Backwater Gate now properly usable, Bercale could dig into the enormous task of constructing the Kingsport. Dash hadn’t hesitated to hand oversight of the project over to the man. His field of expertise was, after all, building ships and space stations. This just happened to be a particularly big space station. More to the point, though, he’d been a reliable and invaluable ally since partway through the Life War. Then, he’d hated the Golden; now, he hated the Deepers just as much.

Bercale put his hands on hips and glanced around the bridge of the Great Wall. When her keel had been laid down, she’d been meant to be another Sabertooth-class command cruiser. Bercale had repurposed her, though, into the nerve-center of the massive construction effort of the Kingsport.

“You know, that day you popped into our system in your mech and claimed to be fighting the Golden, if you’d told me I’d end up standing here, doing this . . .”

Dash smiled wryly. “Tell me about it. I was crashed on a comet, alone, running out of air and assuming that was it. Then I found the Archetype and, well, here we are.”

“You used up a few lifetimes-worth of luck there, my friend. I mean, what were the chances you’d end up on that particular comet?”

“Well, if the Unseen are to be believed, one hundred percent. As in, they’d been planning it all along.”

“Do you believe them?”

“Does it matter?”

Bercale sniffed and smiled. “Guess it really doesn’t, no.”

* * *

Dash left the Great Wall but didn’t immediately return to the Archetype, which was on station nearby. Instead, he had the shuttle take him to the Absolute Zero. The research ship had been moved through the Backwater Gate and into the Big Black, and now hung a few thousand klicks away from the Great Wall. Custodian and the other AIs wanted to remove the Radiant Points away from gravitational influences as much as possible while they were being studied. It removed another variable for which they had to account, and taking advantage of the Backwater Gate’s now easy access to intergalactic space seemed the logical way to do it. More to the point, the Kingsport construction site was now far more secure than any location inside the Milky Way. The Realm held both ends of the gate, and nothing would be approaching from further out in the Big Black anytime soon.

Dash found Conover, Amy, and Elois in one of the Absolute Zero’s research bays, puzzling over the two Radiant Points dash had retrieved from the lonely dwarf star system. He was surprised to see Al’Bijea was also here. Dash hadn’t even heard he’d come through the gate.

“How could I not? A chance to visit intergalactic space?” the Aquarian leader asked.

Dash smiled at that. “Maybe that’s the way to go. Space tourism, we run tours out here to the Big Black.”

“Actually, once all this unpleasantness of war is behind us, ideas such as that may not seem so silly,” Al’Bijea replied.

Dash’s smile turned thoughtful. He hadn’t really thought much about what might come after the war against the Deepers. In fact, he found himself reluctant to walk too far down that path. He’d done that once already, after the Life War, and just been pulled back into strife and bloodshed. Would he even be able to enjoy life after the Deepers, or would he always be looking up at the stars, wondering where the next threat might come from and when?

He shook himself out of his gloomy reverie. “Good point. Anyway, we’ve got a way to go before we get there.”

Conover barked out a curse. Amy patted him on the back, while Elois, and the engineers with her, just looked frustrated. Dash exchanged a glance with Al’Bijea, then they both wandered over to find out what was going on.

Or not going on, as it turned out.

“By every measure we’ve got, these two Radiant Points should be communicating with each other, but they’re not,” Conover snapped.

Amy patted his shoulder again. “With Custodian’s help, we think we’ve worked out most of the details of how the individual Radiant Points work. The next step is linking two of them since, duh, you need an entrance and an exit.”

“I gather that’s not happening,” Dash said.

Conover and Amy both shook their heads.

Al’Bijea raised a manicured finger. “You say that you’ve worked out most of the details of how they work. That implies there are some you have not. In my experience, it’s in those last few, remnant details where the answers tend to be.”

“And we’ll keep digging into them, sure,” Conover said, stepping back from the Radiant Point. “But, based on what we know right now, these two Radiant Points should be connecting, forming a link, and then operating together like a gate. Custodian has even confirmed it.”

“That’s correct,” Custodian said.

Dash blinked in surprise. “Custodian? You’re here? I thought we couldn’t maintain a reliable enough high-capacity comm link through the Backwater Gate to make it work.”

“That remains true. Technically, I am not Custodian. I am a copy of him. However, as ships pass through the gate, I am periodically uploading any new data to them, so they can transmit it back to the Forge and Custodian there can effect updates. He is doing the same for me, in reverse.”

“This is weird,” Amy said.

Dash, though, just made a huh expression. “Hey, whatever works. Should I still call you Custodian? Or Custodian Prime? Custodian 2.0? Or maybe something totally new, like Roger or Myron?”

“Custodian will suffice.”

“I kind of like Myron,” Al’Bijea said.

Dash started to turn away, to leave them working away at the Radiant Points, but Amy caught his attention. She’d suddenly gone still, her face far away.

“Amy? You okay?”

“Just a sec,” she said, holding up a hand.

They all exchanged glances and waited.

Finally, she nodded. “Yeah. That’s it. It’s just like Custodian. There’s two of him, but they’re really one. You can call him Custodian because he is, even though he’s here, and the other him is over there.”

“Amy, what the hell are you talking about?” Dash asked.

“These Radiant Points. We’ve been treating them as two separate things that have to be linked together. So we’ve been trying to get one of them to communicate with the other. But what if it’s just like Custodian? What if we just treat them as one thing?”

Dash could tell, from the sudden earnest attentiveness of everyone, including the engineers, that she’d at least gotten them intrigued.

“How would we do that, exactly?” Elois asked.

Amy scowled. “See, that’s the part I don’t know—wait.” Her face got that far-off look again. It only lasted a moment, then she perked back up.

“What if we treat them like the power cores? We know that we can get individual cores to work in twos, fours, and sixes, but combined, so they basically just become bigger cores. Why don’t we approach these things the same way?”

“Amy, I must admit that I have never considered you the most intelligent or insightful of Dash’s advisors, but I might have to reassess that conclusion,” Custodian said.

Amy’s face pinched up. “Was that a compliment?”

“I think so,” Conover replied.

Dash waved a hand. “It’s probably as close as you’re likely to get. Anyway, this gives you guys something to pursue—”

“Actually, we can pursue it right now,” Custodian put in.

“Oh? How?”

“I have full access to both Radiant Points. Rather than attempting to link them in-sequence, I will amalgamate the control programs we’ve created for each and attempt to link them simultaneously, as though they are a single device.”

Dash lifted his eyebrows. “Oh. Okay, well, go ahead. Although—is there any danger to doing that, like, right here? Or are we risking creating a black hole or something?”

“The physics of the situation precludes the formation of a singularity. Otherwise, risk remains within acceptable parameters.”

“Acceptable to whom?” Al’Bijea asked.

“To the guy who’s just admitted to being a cloned version of exactly the same guy, who’s sitting about a billion trillion klicks away,” Elois said, her tone sardonic.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Nope, not at all.”

Dash gave an elaborate shrug. “What the hell. If you guys are okay with these parameters, then so am I. Custodian, go ahead.”

For a while, nothing happened. The two Radiant Points simply sat where they were, about two meters apart, silent and motionless.

“Looks like another bust— “Elois started, but Conover cut her off.

“No, it’s not. I’m seeing new activity in both Radiant Points. Something is definitely happening.”

As soon as he’d said it, the two alien artifacts suddenly began to hum, lifted slightly off the deck, then slid away from each other until they clunked against bulkheads at the opposite ends of the research bay.

“Well, that was different,” Elois said.

Dash gave an enthusiastic nod. “I was going to head back to the Archetype, but just like Al’Bijea’s trip out here to the Big Black, this is just too good to pass up. So, if you guys don’t mind, I’m going to play with these things, too.”

* * *

They moved the two Radiant Points to the Absolute Zero’s docking bay, the largest space on the ship. Everyone was curious to see just how far they’d move and if they could get them to do anything else.

Except blow up or spawn a black hole, the physics of it notwithstanding.

By now, Viktor and Harolyn, who’d had business with Bercale, had caught wind of what was going on and had diverted to the Absolute Zero to check it out. Now they all stood, watching as Custodian once more activated the Radiant Points.

Again, they hummed, lifted, and drifted directly away from each other. This time, though, they stopped when they were about thirty meters apart.

“Well, that’s good, anyway. I was afraid that that was just how they worked, and we were going to have to wait for them to each slowly make their way to their planned gate location,” Dash said.

“Well, since I can walk faster than they were moving, that would have taken a little longer than I think we’re prepared to wait,” Viktor replied.

Dash wandered over to one of the Radiant Points. It simply sat there, humming softly. It gave off no dangerous emissions, no significant radiation at all.

He glanced back at the others. “Okay, now what?”

Conover pointed. “I’m not sure what it means, but there’s a spot right there, on the far side of it, where power seems to be concentrated.”

Dash took in where Conover had pointed, then looked at the other Radiant Point in the distance. A sudden flash of inspiration caught him. He looked around, and saw a small maintenance drone, about the size of two closed fists, mounted on its storage rack nearby. He grabbed it and, then, without further ceremony, pushed it into the apparent solid surface of the Radiant Point, where Conover had indicated.

It vanished.

Something clattered to the deck beside the other Radiant Point. It was the maintenance drone.

Viktor whistled. “I’d call that a gate.”

Dash nodded. “Yeah. Let’s try taking these things further apart from one another and try it again.”

Subsequent testing showed that it worked along the length of the Absolute Zero’s docking bay. It worked if the Radiant Points were at the opposite ends of the ship. They loaded one of the Radiant Points onto a shuttle and moved it progressively farther and farther away. The little maintenance drone quite happily clattered back and forth between the two devices and kept working afterward.

“Okay, let’s try something. Let’s load one aboard a ship, translate it away, and make sure it still works,” Dash said.

They did, loading one of the Radiant Points aboard a destroyer, whose Captain translated a light-year away.

It made no difference. The drone disappeared from one end and reappeared at the other, each time. Moreover, Custodian confirmed that the transit time was so small as to effectively be zero.

Dash watched as the drone once more clattered to the Absolute Zero’s deck by his feet. Only an instant before, it had been almost ten light-years away.

He picked up the drone. “Well, little fellow, you’re quite the pioneer. You’re the first thing to pass through a gate made by the Cygnus Realm,” he said.

“Technically, Dash, we just figured out how to make this alien technology work like a gate,” Conover replied.

Dash shot him a glance. “Details. It’s our gate, the product of your hard work. So I’ll happily take the credit for it, on behalf of the Realm, thank you very much. I’m magnanimous that way.”

“Fancy word,” Conover said.

“I’m a fancy guy,” Dash preened.

“Well, this is fine if we want to send maintenance drones across the universe, but can we make it handle anything bigger?” Viktor asked.

Elois looked up from a data pad she’d been studying with two of her engineers. “We can. We can scale the gates up simply by providing more power to them.”

“Okay, how big can we make them?”

“As big as we want, it seems. Big enough for ships to pass through, anyway. I’m sure there’s a practical upper limit because there’s nothing in the math to suggest a gate couldn’t be, ah, infinitely big.”

“Except for the infinite power thing to feed,” Dash noted.

Elois smirked. “There is that. I think big enough for our biggest ships to pass through is probably sufficient.”

“Which brings us to the true, burning question,” Harolyn said.

They all turned to look at her.

She shrugged as though it were obvious. “Where do we put the other end?”

Dash paused. “One end will be here. The Forge. Home, anyway.”

“And the other?”

He swept a hand at the nearby bulkhead. “Out there, across the Big Black.”

“Sure, but across is pretty vague. How far across?” Harolyn persisted, one brow now lifted in curiosity.

Dash said nothing for a moment before answering.

“Why, all the way, of course.”

17

“I look at it as a chance to finally get caught up on all the sleep these two wars have cost me,” Dash said, then turned to the Inner Circle, gathered in the Forge’s Command Center.

“Dash, it’s cryosleep, or something much like it. It’s risky as hell,” Leira said, hands planted stubbornly on her hips.

“There’s a reason we haven’t used cryosleep in, well, what? At least a couple of centuries, now?” Amy put in.

Dash raised his hands. “I know all this. But, first, this isn’t really cryosleep. Right, Custodian?”

“Strictly speaking, no. Dash’s body would be reduced to a much lower-than-normal temperature, to slow down metabolic processes. Most of the suspended-animation effect comes from temporal stasis, though. In its area of effect, it can’t stop time, but it can slow it.”

“Custodian, we use that for storing things like biological samples. We’ve never used it on a full-grown, living human. Has anyone? Do we even know what effects it will have?” Leira asked.

“One of the results of long-term exposure to temporally adjusted cryosleep is abnormal hair growth.”

Silence descended on the Command Center, sudden and surprised. Someone giggled. Leira looked at Dash.

“You’re trying to imagine me with a mullet right now, aren’t you?” Dash asked.

“Actually, I’m trying not to do that. Custodian, are you serious?”

“No, of course not. However, I do wish to thank you for providing me with another datapoint,” Custodian replied.

“A datapoint? What are you talking about?” Leira shot back.

“The other AIs and I have noted that, when we state something as fact, you tend to automatically believe it possible, even when it’s obviously silly. We decided to conduct an experiment to confirm this.”

Amy planted her hands on her hips. “So that explains why Hathaway told me the Talon would fly faster if I painted it red!”

“And why Kristin announced that taking up dancing would enhance my movements when I was in the Pulsar’s cradle!” Conover put in.

Dash grinned. “Sentinel, you were in on this?”

“I have no knowledge of this supposed experiment and question its very ethical foundation.”

Dash narrowed his eyes. “Really?”

“And we have another datapoint,” Custodian said, sounding a little smug.

“So these AIs have been running an experiment on us?” Leira said, her tone a mix of disbelief, anger, and more than a little amusement.

“You humanoids frequently use false proclamations of things as fact as a form of good-natured, interpersonal humor. It is an interesting social mechanism that we are trying to understand,” Custodian replied.

“But—they’re AIs, just machines. They shouldn’t be experimenting on anyone,” Wei-Ping, lounging against a console, put in.

But Dash firmly shook his head. “No, they’re not. They’re crucial members of our Inner Circle and valued citizens of the Cygnus Realm. They’re also our friends.”

Everyone agreed, especially from the mech pilots. Even Wei-Ping, after a moment of lingering doubt, shrugged and joined in.

A pause before Custodian replied.

“We appreciate that, Messenger.”

“But, to bring us back on course, you still didn’t answer the question about the long-term effects of cryosleep,” Leira said.

“For the relatively short duration of Dash’s flight, there should be little or no residual effects.”

“Seven weeks is a long time.”

But Dash sniffed. “Go talk to Armagost. Ask him how many years he and his people were in cryosleep. And they didn’t have the benefit of Unseen tech.”

Leira stubbornly crossed her arms and sighed. “I just don’t like the idea of you being gone so long, and no, not just for personal reasons, before anyone unwisely suggests that. You’re going to be alone that whole time, Dash. You should at least take another mech with you.”

“Or even just send one of us, instead,” Conover said.

Dash stuck his hands in his pockets. “I get it, guys. But we need to get that second Radiant Point out to where it’s going to help us take this war to the Deepers where they live. The Archetype is still the biggest, most capable mech we’ve got. You’re just as capable as I am of running things here. But there is one thing I need to do.”

Dash walked up to Conover, stopped in front him, and gave the young man a grave look.

“While I’m gone, you’re going to be in command of the Cygnus Realm. Leira will act as your number two and chief advisor.” Dash glanced at Leira, who nodded. This was actually the one part of the plan she did agree with.

Conover rocked back a step, as though Dash had walked up and punched him.

“I—what?”

“You’re going to be the Acting Messenger.”

“Dash, I—I can’t!”

Dash put his hands on Conover’s shoulders, smiled, and nodded. “Yes, you can. Believe me. If I didn’t think you could, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

Conover’s head swiveled around the Command Center. Dash had already quietly briefed almost all of the Inner Circle. And those few he hadn’t yet managed to get to, like Wei-Ping, were just nodding their appreciation.

Benzel walked up to Conover and whacked him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, boss. You have any trouble with anyone, just tell old Benzel, and he’ll sort ’em out.”

Wei-Ping snorted. “And what if the trouble’s with old Benzel?”

Leira smiled sweetly. “Then old Leira will take care of it.”

* * *

Dash wasn’t used to sharing the Archetype’s cockpit with anyone. In fact, he’d always considered it quite spacious, even needlessly so, considering that he spent virtually all of his time here stuck in the cradle anyway. But having Elois pushed in on one side of him and Viktor on the other, it felt about as spacious as a suit of vac-armor.

“So those are all the changes and modifications the AIs said were necessary,” Elois said, wrapping up her briefing.

“And they’ve all checked out. Sentinel’s declared them all green, so you’re good to launch any time,” Viktor added.

“What about the remotes?”

“Already loaded into the leg compartments.”

“And the Radiant Point?”

“Thanks to all the upgrades to the Archetype, Sentinel was able to free up space in the mech’s belly. It’s been turned into a heavily shielded cargo compartment just big enough for the Radiant Point. That puts the thing under the mech’s thickest armor and should block any sort of emissions that might give away the fact you’re carrying it,” Viktor replied.

Dash nodded. Outwardly, not much had changed. Emitters for the temporal stasis system had been installed surrounding the cradle, mounted on the deck and the overhead, and that was about it.

So he was ready to fly, undertaking a journey that, by any stretch of the imagination, strained belief.

One hundred and sixty thousand light-years. That’s how far he was going to travel. At that point, just shy of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a meticulous stellar survey had revealed another ancient white dwarf star. It was the furthest discernible point the AIs could use as a fixed destination. Even then, while Dash cryo-slept, Sentinel was going to have to make repeated and lengthy stays in intergalactic real-space to get navigational fixes and stay on course to it. Of the roughly seven weeks of flight-time, the mech would spend only a little less than six actually translating through unSpace.

“You okay with it, Dash? Maybe want to add cupholders? A vanity mirror?” Elois asked, smirking.

“Nah, I think this’ll do just fine. Now, if you folks will kindly get the hell out of my cockpit, I’ll do some pre-flight checks.”

“Getting the hell out now, sir,” Viktor said, giving Dash a wink.

When they were gone, Dash sat cross-legged on the deck of the Archetype’s cockpit. He’d never done that before, it struck him. He’d only clambered across it to enter and exit the cradle. For a while, he just enjoyed the moment of solitude. The quiet let memories come sifting back in. All the time he’d spent here, fighting, destroying, almost dying. But the memory that came rushing back the strongest was his very first one of this place, when the Archetype had still been buried in the icy depths of a comet, and he’d been sucking on his last dregs of air in his vac-suit.

You are safe, Messenger.

It wasn’t actually the first thing Sentinel had ever said to him—that had been something about initializing a power core. But it was the first thing he remembered clearly.

“Dash, is something wrong?” Sentinel asked.

He glanced up from his reverie. “Huh? Oh. No. I was just thinking. Remembering.”

“Our first encounter?”

“Hey, have you been eavesdropping on my thoughts?”

“A general, superficial impression of your current thoughts always permeates the Meld. Unless, of course, you specifically wish to cancel it, as you do when you wish to get intimate with Leira.”

“That’s enough of that line of discussion, thanks.”

“It is interesting that, for a shared experience you both obviously find so fulfilling, you are reluctant in the extreme to discuss it.”

“It’s called privacy. It’s—” Dash hesitated, then decided he really wasn’t up to a lengthy discussion about love and sex and human behavior related to them; that level of nuance could be dealt with at another time. “It’s just not something we talk about, outside the relationship—or at least I don’t. Humans are—varied.”

“Very well. Then allow me to return to my first point. You are recalling the first time we interacted when you first discovered the Archetype. May I ask why?”

“Eh, no particular reason, really. I guess I’m just a little, I don’t know, nervous about this trip. I just can’t wrap my mind around the distances we’re talking here. It’s—”

Dash stopped and just shook his head. The whole thing was just too big to fit inside his brain.

Well, except for one aspect of it. He was about to put his life into Sentinel’s care in a way he never had before.

You are safe, Messenger.

Dash smiled. “I believe you, Sentinel.”

“You believe what, exactly?”

“One of the very first things you said to me. You are safe, Messenger. It might be a little late saying it, but I believe you, Sentinel. I really do.”

* * *

Dash looked back, watching the Forge recede behind him. When he arrived at his destination in about seven weeks—about the time it took Freya to properly age a batch of her plumato wine—the light leaving here now would take one hundred and sixty thousand years to catch up to him. Dash had checked to see what happened about one hundred and sixty thousand years ago in human history.

It was about then that early versions of humans first started wearing clothing.

“Okay, Dash, your Radiant Point seems to be staying linked to the one we’ve got here just fine. From our end, everything’s green,” Leira said over the comm.

Dash checked the status of the Radiant Point stashed in the Archetype’s belly. As far as it was concerned, it happily remained an indivisible whole with its fellow, back on the Forge. They’d already tested them at full power, opening gates large enough to push ships through. As soon as Dash arrived at his far-off destination, he’d deploy it and, assuming all went according to plan, the Cygnus Realm should begin pouring through it.

One lingering question bothered him, though.

Who had built the Radiant Points? If it had been the Deepers, they were wholly unlike any of their other tech. And if it was someone else, someone even older, were they still out there? Could Dash unknowingly be on his way to meet them? And, if so, would they be new friends, new enemies, or something else altogether?

He shoved the thoughts aside and returned his attention to the comm—to the here and now, where it belonged.

“Roger that, Leira. See you in a few months,” he said.

“Dash?”

“Yo.”

A long moment passed before she spoke again.

“Be safe. Leira out.”

* * *

“I’ve prepared a summary of the various tests and potential in-flight upgrades I’ll be conducting while you’re in cryo-sleep,” Sentinel said. “Do you wish to review it?”

“Is there anything that really requires my approval?”

“Not really. I believe that, given the duration of the flight, I will be able to collect ample data upon which to base these improvements. I’m essentially planning to use the time as a long-term experiment regarding the efficiency of the drive and perhaps gain some insights into the nature of Dark Metal in its various forms.”

“I have every confidence you’ll do just fine, Sentinel. You really only need to wake me if there’s an emergency.”

“Understood.”

They flew on for a while in silence. It would be almost a day, yet, before Sentinel activated the cryosleep system. However, Dash had wanted to remain awake until they’d cleared the galactic margin, and the chances of unexpected Deeper encounters had fallen behind them.

“Do you think I’ll dream, Sentinel?” Dash asked.

“I have no idea. The fundamental nature of, and reasons for the phenomena known as sleep and dreaming in humanoids remains largely a mystery.”

“Even to the Unseen?”

“The Creators weren’t omniscient.”

“Fair point.”

“Regardless, it doesn’t matter whether you dream or not,” Sentinel said after a moment.

“Oh? How come?”

“Because you are safe, Dash.”

Dash smiled. The long, dark journey ahead of him, the most epic ever undertaken by a human being, now seemed a little less uncertain.

18

Dash stretched out his legs and looked up into the sky. He pushed his gaze as far as he could into the vast, purplish blue, but there was nothing to see—it was just a sky, with no clouds or depth. His eyes had no traction. There was nothing to grab or focus on. It felt as if he was suspended in a void, deepened purple and unending, without any markers or detail.

Except it wasn’t. Somewhere, high above him, the color deepened to black, and then beyond that—

Dash gasped. He was falling. Falling up. His body was being taken, hurtling upward at the behest of an unseen force, powerful and unseen. He wanted to scream, but thunderous wind just ripped the air from his lungs, a tornadic howl that overwhelmed his senses. He caught a glimpse of the ground racing away between his feet, and now the air thinned around him, forcing him to gasp, to fight for even enough air to breathe. Soon, even that wouldn’t be enough. He’d fall into that blackness and keep falling forever.

He clawed at ice. Still gasping, still fighting for air, he dug at the ice with his bare hands, rocky crystals that shattered under his scrabbling—he had to get through it, had to scrape it away to get at what was inside it, and he had to do it before he ran out of air.

His lungs burned.

He saw a face, an enormous one of metal and implacable strength, buried only an arm’s reach away. He scratched frantically at the diamond-hard ice, but it was no good. His air was gone, the last breath sucked out of him, and now he choked, nothing to breathe, nothing to breathe—

The face smiled. Dash smiled back. Warm, soft eyes, a cascade of long hair. Behind her, a lake lapped against the shore just beyond his feet. Above, the purpling sky loomed, full of possibilities, full of danger. But here, he was safe. There was air to breathe and this woman to watch over him.

“You fell asleep, Newt,” she said. “You’re always falling asleep.”

“I’m sorry, mom,” he replied, but a pair of feet walked past him, and his mother began to weep softly. Dash sat up from where he’d fallen asleep by the lake. The feet belonged to a man in combat armor, carrying a brutal, boxy auto-slugger. He turned as he walked past Dash, grinning back at him, but then his face grew—softer. Filled with a touch of wan sadness and affection, all vying for ground on the strong planes of his face.

“Dad?”

“Pay attention, son.”

His dad turned, walked, and knelt before his mom, full battle rattle creaking like trees in the wind. He took his wife’s hand, and she stared down at him, a half-smile on her face.

She was lit from within. She was beautiful.

“Some women deserve gifts, and some deserve to have stories written about them. Then there are women like you, who deserve both.”

She smiled, and her light grew brighter. “Tell me my story before you go.”

His dad shook his head once, then looked over at Dash. “He will be our story.”

Dash watched his mother smile, a brilliant thing of purest joy. She took her husband’s big hands and kissed them, then they parted, both looking at Dash with—

—pride.

“I’ll be around,” he said. “Take care of her like she does for you. Then, as long as you live, do what you say. Take blame when it’s yours. And give when you can.”

Dash nodded with the certainty of boyhood. “I will, dad.”

His father turned and resumed walking, splashing into the lake and vanishing, feet first, then legs, his torso, head, gone. His mother cried.

“He’s gone,” she said, her words awash in desolation.

Dash reached for his mom. He had to take care of her, but then he was—flying, in a flitter he’d built from stolen parts, the stink of used oil and electrical fires in his nose, ground streaking below him as his home rolled underneath.

“He’s never coming back,” he told the wind.

He was on the ground again, and his mother was there, patient. Waiting. Like she’d never left that spot.

“He’s never coming back!” Dash bawled at the water, only to see his father’s hand break the surface and slide back under. It was empty armor. His father was gone.

“War takes them all, son. You’ll take many. Look,” she said, pointing back to a low hill.

It was crowded with gravestones, leering like broken teeth. There were . . . thousands.

“Did I do this?”

His mother made to answer, but there was no sound. Only the wind, and the hum of guilt in Dash’s mind as he counted the stones—every grave a weight on his chest, and no answer other than making more to save his people.

“Dash.”

Dash thrashed, flailed, desperate to chase after them. He was losing them both, just like he’d lost everyone else, and he couldn’t—

“Dash, wake up.”

He yanked and thrashed.

“Dash, your cerebral activity indicates that you’re awake. Can you respond to me?”

“Mom?”

“No, despite thinking I was just a moment ago. I am Sentinel, and you’re aboard the Archetype.”

Dash blinked fast, trying to clear away the stubborn cobwebs that still clung to his thoughts. “Sentinel?”

“Yes.”

He glanced quickly around. He’d been disconnected from the Meld, so he hung in the cradle, only able to see the interior of the Archetype’s cockpit. The quiet solidity, the soft, purposeful hum of the mech’s systems, Sentinel’s voice—all of it finally brought his feet back onto firm mental ground.

“Are you rational now?”

Dash took a long, shuddering breath. “I think so, yeah. Just give me a minute, though.”

Dash just spent a moment breathing in, breathing out. Without the Meld active, his body was merely his own, not the vast extended form of the Archetype, so he could concentrate on his inner workings. Aside from that persistent fuzz that seemed to drag at his thoughts, nothing seemed especially amiss. He could feel his fingers, his toes, his pulse thumping away inside his ears. He eased out one more breath, and the last bits and pieces of his perceptions fell into place.

“Okay, Sentinel, where are we?”

“We are one hundred and sixty thousand, seven hundred light-years from the Forge.”

Dash blinked. “We’re—really? We’ve arrived?”

“Technically, we are in a continuous state of arriving somewhere, at all times.”

“Sentinel—!”

“Apologies. That was the longest period we’ve gone without communicating since you first discovered the Archetype, so some old habits may have crept back in.”

“So seven weeks have passed?”

“Seven weeks and two days, plus a few hours, yes.”

“And I take it there are no immediate threats?”

“None indicated, no.”

“Okay, then. Switch the Meld back on and let me see.”

A rush, as Dash’s senses suddenly swelled, his body becoming alloy and raw power, his senses powerful scanners able to see across spectra and into vast reaches of distance. The feeling rang inside him like a drug, like the warmth that washed through him after a good, strong drink. This hadn’t been just his longest separation from Sentinel. It had been his longest separation from the Meld. He’d started taking it for granted, had gotten used to switching his own body with the Archetype’s, the way he changed his clothes. Because of it, he’d forgotten just how remarkable an experience it was—

He froze. His mind had just tuned into what the Archetype’s optical scanners were seeing.

The Milky Way galaxy. All of it, from rim to rim. It hung at a shallow angle, the mech far enough above the galactic ecliptic that it formed a foreshortened pinwheel, glowing arms mottled darkly with dust and gas, swelling to a bulge of dazzling white radiance at its core. It still filled his field of view, but only just.

Dash just stared.

“No one has ever seen this before,” Sentinel said.

Dash didn’t answer right away. When he did, he managed a bit of a sardonic tone.

“The Deepers probably have. Any other species originating outside the galaxy probably has.”

Sentinel responded with something Dash had never heard from her before. It was laughter.

“I believe that counts as being hoisted by my own petard,” she replied.

Dash smiled, but he couldn’t tear his attention away from the epic splendor of his home galaxy. He could make out few individual stars, only the very brightest and most rimward ones. The rest, including humanity’s birthplace, Earth, were just a diffuse glow, a cloud of undifferentiated light.

But, he hadn’t come all this way just to sightsee. He spun the Archetype around, taking in the rest of his surroundings. He gasped in wonder as an even larger cloud of stars slid into view. It sprawled across his entire view, forcing him to look left and right, up and down, to take it all in. This close, the Large Magellanic Cloud lost its vaguely offset spiral form and was just a mass of stars, dust, and gas. The closest shone brightly as distinct points, and one truly massive one showed a visible disk.

Close by hung another star, another dim, white dwarf. Their destination. Custodian and the AIs believe it had been ejected in some ancient, unknown cataclysm from the LMC. Dash immediately scanned it for anything suggesting the presence of Deepers, but Sentinel already had. There were none. Just this lonely star, still almost a thousand light-years away from the recognizable boundary of the LMC.

Dash had to take another moment. The sudden transition from the intimate, inward world of his mind, his dreams, to the unthinkably vast expanse of space between him and home had left him reeling a bit. He felt sick, disoriented, and maudlin, without knowing the reason why. With an effort, he stilled his mind.

He had a purpose here, and he would fulfill it.

“Sentinel, let’s deploy the Radiant Point and see if this works—or if we’ve got another long flight home.”

The mech’s leg compartments opened, releasing the four remotes. They were hybrids, based on the semi-autonomous Red Barons that flew and fought along with their Denkillers and Super Makos. They could still do that, each still mounting a tandem dark-lance and rail gun, but they’d also been outfitted with the manipulators of a standard maintenance remote. Dash waited as they extracted the Radiant Point from the Archetype’s belly, then slowly eased it away.

He kept his attention fixed on the threat indicator. If there were Deepers nearby, they’d no doubt have reasoned that he’d made the unimaginably long journey here for only one rational reason, to deploy a Radiant Point. If they were going to attack, they’d do it now before they could use it to open a gate.

But the threat board stayed dark.

The remotes now hooked eight cables to the Radiant Point, spooled them out, then set the whole thing spinning. Centrifugal force slowly pulled the cables taut. Each was connected to the next at its far end, forming an octagonal loop that extended a klick across, with the Radiant Point as its hub. Custodian, Elois, and the other engineers who’d worked on the artifact weren’t sure that the cable loop was actually needed. But it would act to constrain the Radiant Point’s gate, giving it clearly defined margins, which would make controlling traffic through it easier.

That is, of course, if it worked at all.

The remotes backed away until they were well clear of the construct they’d built. The Radiant Point returned a green status to the Archetype.

“We’re ready to activate the gate,” Sentinel said.

“Okay then.” Dash braced himself. “Go ahead. Switch it on.”

The Radiant Point came to life, the plane of space outlined by the cables shimmering with a deep, purplish iridescence that reminded him of the phenomenon that outlined the Black Gate.

It also reminded him of the sky from the world he’d grown up on.

“The gate is activated,” Sentinel said.

“Alright.” He triggered the comm, transmitting a high-powered beam straight into the throat of the gate.

“This is the Messenger. If you can hear this, it’s done. The gate is active.”

He waited. The backup was to send one of the remotes through to broadcast the same message in case something blocked the comm beam. But they had to allow some time for those at the other end to react.

Dash took in a long, slow breath. “I wonder who’ll be first—”

Something bulbous suddenly poked out of the gate, more and more of it sliding into view, swelling into a massive shape, and a familiar one.

It was the Herald.

“Hey, sleeping beauty, you awake?” Benzel asked.

Dash let the breath back out as a laugh. The gate worked. The Cygnus Realm was now intergalactic.

* * *

A steady stream of ships followed the Herald through the gate and immediately began to deploy. The Polaris followed right behind the Victory, which immediately launched her fighter wings, including one of N’Teel Moonbanes. Jexin quickly organized them into a defensive screen, thickening the burgeoning defenses around the gate.

Dash just watched, listening in on the comm as pilots and crews caught their first glimpses of the new and awe-inspiring surroundings.

“Holy. Shit. That is all.”

“Herald, I’ve got a request from the squadron commander. You’re blocking the best view of the Milky Way. Can you move about a klick to your right?”

“That is un-freakin-believable.”

“Wow. I mean, just—wow.”

The chatter went on and on. The fighter pilots were particularly vocal about the wonder and splendor, being able to spin their nimble little craft around in place and take in whatever view they pleased—at least until their flight and squadron commanders corralled them back to their duties.

It was almost an hour before Leira came through in the Swift, accompanied by Viktor in the Slipwing. By then, what had been a lonely and profoundly empty volume of space bustled with activity. Automated defense platforms quickly deployed, while minelayers, led by the Horse Nebula, began sowing their deadly ordnance around the gate, adding another layer of protection.

Dash swelled with pride. Everything was happening with smooth efficiency, everyone throwing themselves into their job with deft, quiet confidence. Even so, every ship that came through the gate did the same thing—spending a moment just taking in the view. They’d expected that and even accounted for it in their timetable.

“Now that is a picture worth putting up on the wall,” Leira said, bringing the Swift to a stop facing the Milky Way.

Dash chuckled. “Ain’t it, though?”

She switched to a private channel. “How are you doing, Dash?”

“Fine, actually. Oh, except for all the abnormal hair growth.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll shave you.” She paused a moment, then went on.

“I missed you, Dash.”

“I missed you, too.”

“Oh, you did not. You were asleep.”

“Okay, I would have missed you if I’d been conscious.”

She chuckled. “Okay, I believe you.” But her tone turned serious.

“How was the flight? Did you experience, well, anything?”

“You mean did I dream?”

“Yes. Or anything else noteworthy, for that matter.”

Dash paused, sifting the memory with care. “Closed my eyes, then opened them here, a hundred and sixty-odd thousand light-years later. Only one, ah, blip, along the way, really. From when I was a kid. I’ll tell you about it when we have time.”

“You okay?” There was enormous generosity and caring in those two words.

“I am, and thanks. Time to work?”

“Work it is. We’ll talk as soon as we can. It’s been a busy time. Glad you’re here.”

“Same,” Dash said.

She zipped off, taking the Swift to her assigned section of the defensive sphere now taking shape around the gate. Whatever interesting meant, it couldn’t be something especially dire. Even Leira, despite her wicked sense of humor, knew when it was okay to be coy and when it was time for business.

Dash applied power and moved to join in the burgeoning swell of activity around the new gate. Freighters laden with construction materials were already lumbering through, now that a firm defensive perimeter surrounded them.

As he wended his way among the Realm ships, Dash stretched and felt the hum of purpose return to his body—and his mind.

“Sentinel, make a note. I’m not allowed to take naps ever again.’

“Why?”

Dash kicked the drive up, veering around a pair of supply barges in a graceful arc as he drank in the entire scene. Everywhere, the realm fizzed with energy.

19

Dash gave Elois and Kai a doubtful glance, then leaned in to the vial and sniffed.

He winced and pulled back. “Okay, I’m getting hints of an unwashed bunk on a long haul, the essence of dirty socks, and maybe just a soupçon of wet dog.”

Dash straightened and looked around the lab, one of the Forge’s most spacious. Elois had moved most of her detailed work here, aboard the Forge, reserving the Absolute Zero for the more preliminary, on-site sorts of investigation. Privately, Dash wondered if there might be another reason for it. She and Kai had turned out to be kindred spirits, two people whose identities were built around seeking and studying lore and gaining knowledge. They spent a lot of time together when off-duty, wandering among Freya’s park-like gardens that now sprawled through three full cargo bays of the Forge. Dash realized he didn’t know if Kai’s Order enforced a vow of chastity. It was certainly one of those things it was awkward to bring up in casual conversation.

He gave Elois a quizzical look. “So what is this foul-smelling stuff, anyway?”

“It’s the—I guess the best name for it is primordial ooze, the stuff that contained the Radiant Points, although ooze isn’t really correct. Compared to this stuff, the actual primordial ooze, the stuff that spawned life four and a half billion years ago was, chemically speaking, dead simple.”

“Which is saying quite a bit, considering that was an extremely complex mixture of organic compounds, most of which we can still only guess at,” Kai put in.

“So it’s not ooze, at least,” Elois went added.

Dash lifted his brows. “I noticed you didn’t say it’s not primordial.”

“Good catch, because it is. In fact, as near as we can tell, it’s as old as the universe, or pretty damned close to it. We’ve been able to get it to something between twelve and fourteen billion years old, which corresponds to not that long after the Big Bang.”

Dash looked back at the vial of blackish sludge sitting on the lab bench and whistled. “Okay, I guess that counts as primordial. So if it’s not ooze, what is it?”

Elois crossed her arms and stared at the vial. “Not natural, for a start. Some of it might be, but most of it isn’t. It seems to be the by-products of machines, mixed with genetic material, prions, what we think might be a whole suite of viral life, and some truly terrifying monocellular, ah—things—with rare elements inside their cellular walls. Oh, and the cells are made out of helium, and we don’t know why they aren’t melting right before our eyes.”

“And it’s open, and you’re encouraging people to smell it because?”

“Because it’s not infectious. At least, not in any way that pertains to us. We’re just too weird and too alien for it to use us as a host or even a travel vector. We’re—” She paused and shrugged. “We’re too new. Our biochemistry is barely pushing four billion years old.”

Dash held up a hand. “Okay, let’s back up a bit. Machine by-products? What does that even mean?”

Elois nodded and called up an image on the viewscreen mounted above the bench. It depicted writhing, eddying streams of pulsing blue and silver, reminding Dash of the churning atmosphere of a gas giant. Angry red points were swept along in the swirling currents.

“We’ve applied a red dye to highlight the bits that appear to be derived from tech, from machine sources. In essence, these seem to be skins shed from nanobots, or something damned close to it. There are also proteins, and crystalline structures, and things that remind me of primitive semiconductor chip technology.”

Kai stepped closer and studied its languid, mesmerizing display. “Of course, this sample is billions—again, that’s with a b—of years old. Which makes us wonder—what if the Deepers aren’t evolving? What if they’re—”

“Dying out,” Dash finished. “The end of a race older than the stars.”

“It might explain why they’re so vicious,” Elois said.

Dash nodded. “Yeah, it would. They’re desperate, in the way anything that’s dying, and knows it, can be desperate. They’re trying to stave off the end.”

Dash was surprised to find a hint of sadness creeping into his words. The Deepers had been nothing but remorseless, vicious killers. Unlike the Golden, though, who had just wanted to eliminate sentient life because they despised and mistrusted it, the Deepers were desperately clinging to the last vestiges of their very existence.

Kai, his eyes still on the display, nodded. “At one time, they were a noble, progressive race, at least in their own minds. Now, they’re just the savage remnants.”

Dash puffed out a weary sigh. “Yeah. And somewhere, in wherever their collective consciousness is, they know it.”

* * *

Everyone, Dash remembered an old spacer saying, has that one place, that one bed, that’s home. For him, it had once been the cramped bunk in the crew hab aboard the Slipwing. Now, it was this one, in his quarters aboard the Forge. He sometimes shared it with Leira but still considered it his.

And now, after long weeks away, he was back. He was taking a whole day off, rewarding himself with an opportunity to unwind and let the Cygnus Realm chug along without him for a while.

Dash spent a moment just enjoying the smooth, cool sheets, his head softly cradled in the pillow. He let out a slow breath, taking one last look out the viewport. He could see the Greenbelt, and beyond it, Eastern. Assisted by the Forge, the Anchor had almost completed repairs to the damage inflicted on it by the Deeper attack. He just took in the serene view for a moment, then closed his eyes.

A few seconds later, the battle-stations alarm erupted, shredding his rare moment of relaxation and casting aside the pieces in a flail of arms, legs, and feet. Dash finally flung the covers aside and sat up.

“Custodian, talk to me!”

“A force of Deeper ships has just translated in-system. They have attacked and destroyed an outbound freighter that had just departed for Backwater and are currently engaged with the destroyer Tenacious and two accompanying corvettes that were on early-warning patrol.”

Dash began yanking on his clothes. “Dammit. How many of them are there?”

“Sixteen capital ships, and ten smaller vessels of frigate to destroyer size.”

Dash paused in the midst of pulling on his shirt. “That’s it? That’s not much of a force.”

“Nonetheless, the Deepers appear to be making a determined effort to strike at the Forge.”

Dash grabbed his boots. He’d stuff his feet into them in the elevator down to the Archetype’s docking bay.

Twenty-six ships, and ten of them were escort-class. It wasn’t a pushover, by any means, but if they got within range of the Forge, they wouldn’t last long.

Dash caught himself. That assumed the Deepers didn’t have some other trick up their sleeve. He only had to remember the nasty surprise of that beam weapon of theirs. Twenty-odd ships didn’t sound like much, but a relatively small number of viruses could infect and kill a human being. If the Deepers had some sort of secret payload and only needed to get close enough to the Forge to deliver it, then there could definitely be trouble. The Golden almost managed it with a single, tiny drone, which only the heroic efforts of Conover and Amy had stopped.

And then, of course, there was the Radiant Point, the near-end of the gate that led to the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was well within the Forge’s protective envelope, but still, it was another potential vulnerability. It would make sense that the Deepers would try to interdict their use of it.

He strode to the door, pausing only briefly to look back at his warm and inviting bed.

“Don’t go anywhere, sweetheart. I’ll be home soon.”

Dash turned and raced off, heading for the Archetype.

* * *

As soon as he was clear to navigate, Dash accelerated the Archetype hard. Now that their mechs had been upgraded, Leira and Conover were able to keep pace, flying to his left and right. Jexin and the Polaris were still at the far end of the Radiant Point gate, near the Large Magellanic Cloud, while Amy had gone to Backwater to run an errand to the Kingsport.

“Wei-Ping, how long do you need to get your force sorted out?” Dash asked.

“Fifteen minutes, and we’re getting underway with at least the Stalwart, a squadron of heavy cruisers, and a dozen smaller ships. We’ve got two more squadrons of heavy cruisers in the system, but one’s on the far side from the Deepers, inbound from Backwater, and the second had been stood-down for maintenance and refits.”

Dash studied the tactical display. The three mechs, along with the Stalwart and her task force, were certainly enough to take on the Deepers. It wasn’t exactly overwhelming force, though. The other two heavy cruiser squadrons would definitely help to tip the balance, but they were both at least a couple of hours away from being able to engage.”

“Okay, have those two squadrons of heavies take up a back-stop station, closer to the Forge, as soon as they can. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the Deepers are going to try something unexpected here, so I want to be able to stop any of their ships that break through and make a run for the Forge.”

“Roger that. Wei-Ping out.”

Leira came on the comm. “What’s this sneaking suspicion of yours?”

“If I knew that, it’d be more than a sneaking suspicion.” He scowled at tactical for a moment. “I don’t know. There’s just something not right about this. This Deeper force is too big to ignore but too small to beat up both our forces here and the Forge.”

“Dash, not sure if this helps, but Kristin’s noticed some unusual signals coming from the Deeper ships,” Conover said.

“Unusual how?”

Kristin replied. “Unusual in the sense that they’re particulate emissions of a type we haven’t seen before. High energy neutrons, to be exact.”

“Okay. And what do you think that means?”

“I dunno. New weapon, maybe? A strong neutron beam could be pretty destructive at short range.”

“Anything we can’t handle?”

“Nah, not really. The emissions could also be some sort of new power source.”

Dash curled his lip. He hated this. Had it been a massive Deeper force, he could easily understand it. And if it had been just a handful of Deeper ships, even just two or three, he could get it being a reconnaissance force of some sort. This attack, though, sat smack in the zone between, Oh shit, we’re screwed, and Hey, not really a big deal.

“Sentinel, what do you think?” Dash asked.

“There are too many unknowns to say for certain. Clearly, this Deeper incursion has a purpose behind it. Their most logical target is the Radiant Point, followed by the Forge. At the moment, however, we can only work from what we know. And what we know is that the Deepers are obviously intent on pressing home their attack on one or both of those targets.”

“Maybe this was the biggest force they could muster,” Leira put in. “We assume they have a nearly inexhaustible supply of ships and ordnance, but maybe not. Maybe they’ve been as stretched as we have.”

“Good point,” Dash replied, but he still had his doubts. Were the Deepers really that desperate? Was it the Radiant Point, the gate to the LMC, that had forced their hand? What was out there that they’d be so anxious to prevent the Cygnus Realm from discovering that they’d attack only with whatever they could scrape together?

Of course, hadn’t they launched a similarly lopsided attack against the big Deeper battlewagon that had been skirting Realm space? And that had been Dash’s idea, trading sheer mass and firepower for a surgically precise strike at a critical target?

He grimaced. Sentinel was right. There were just too many unknowns. For now, all they could do was take the Deeper attack at face value. At the same time, they had to assume there was something more to this, some specific intent behind it they just hadn’t yet discerned.

Dash yanked his thoughts back from the morass of uncertainty and second-guessing that were starting to bog them down. He just pressed grimly on, watching the range to the Deeper ships tick down.

Here we go again.

* * *

“We will be at maximum effective range for missiles in one minute. Dark-lance range will follow four minutes later,” Sentinel announced.

Dash grunted his acknowledgment, but the Deepers maneuvering kept his attention glued to tactical. After driving off the Tenacious and her consorts, they’d split their forces, with about half suddenly accelerating upwards, relative to the system’s ecliptic, and the rest continuing their implacable advance, boring straight-in toward the Forge.

“Wei-Ping, can you take care of that Deeper force going high?” Dash asked.

“Sure can. Oh, and Benzel’s on his way. He’ll have the Herald, the Victory, and four heavy cruiser squadrons translating in about an hour from now.”

“Roger that,” Dash replied. He’d already seen Benzel’s approach on the operational display. Benzel himself had just come back through the Backwater Gate from the burgeoning Kingsport. He was redeploying his force to their centralized battle position, roughly equidistant from each of the Anchors, the Forge, and Backwater. It meant he was already effectively on his way to the Forge.

The icons highlighting the Deepers on the tactical display changed. They were now within missile range. As if to underscore it, the Deepers themselves loosed a barrage of missiles straight at the oncoming mechs.

Dash watched them approach.

“Dash, are we weapons-free?” Leira asked.

He just kept studying the tracks of the onrushing Deeper projectiles.

“Dash?”

“No, not yet. Let’s hang onto our missiles. We’ll engage with dark-lances and nova-cannons once we’re in range.”

Leira switched to a private channel. “Mind if I ask why?”

“A hunch.”

“Go on.”

“That’s it. A hunch. Until these Deepers commit to whatever they’re going to do, I want to keep our options open. And every missile we fire now is one we can’t fire later.”

“You’re the boss.”

Dash grinned. “Music to my ears.”

“Don’t get sassy, big guy,” she said with a laugh.

He switched back to the mechs’ general comm channel. “Like I said, weapons-tight on the missiles. Weapons-free on everything else—”

“Dash, the Deepers have begun to maneuver,” Sentinel cut in.

He frowned at the tactical display. After loosing their missiles, the Deeper force ahead had started a slow dive beneath the ecliptic, so slight as to be almost imperceptible.

“It’s like they’re trying to split our forces, as much as they can,” Dash said, more to himself than anyone else.

“That would follow,” Sentinel replied.

“But why? Unless . . .”

Dash turned his attention back out to the translation zone, the roughly spherical array of points surrounding the star system where translation could be safely started or ended. Was there another Deeper force out there somewhere? Was that what this was about? This force would pull away the defenders, potentially leaving the Forge and the Radiant Point without any protection but the station’s weapons?

Dash growled in frustration. He couldn’t help feeling that he was missing something here.

“Screw it. Let’s finish these bastards off as fast as we can, but keep a careful watch out for other surprises,” he said.

The first missiles entered dark-lance range. The three mechs opened up, blasting missile after missile to clouds of glowing dust and scrap. At the same time, Dash adjusted their course to keep them on an intercept with the Deeper ships themselves.

You could do two things with a distraction, he thought. Ignore it, or make it go away. He chose the latter because, at least for a time, anyway, the Forge could take care of itself.

* * *

Dash spat a curse as the eight Deeper ships, a battlecruiser and seven heavy cruisers, veered to open up the range even more. They were now on track to just sail right back out of the system without coming anywhere near the Forge.

Dash glared at the cluster of icons. “What the hell are you up to?”

He glanced at the other group of Deeper ships, the ones being engaged at long range by Wei-Ping. The Stalwart and the heavy cruisers accompanying her had already fired three full salvos of missiles and were readying a fourth. Wei-Ping wanted to deploy the Stalwart’s fighter wings, but there wasn’t much point until they got the range down by at least another twenty percent. Otherwise, the fighters would have a long, straight-line chase just to get into a position to attack. And fighters did not like long, straight-line runs at targets. It just wasn’t good for their health. They much preferred being launched as close as possible to their quarry—right on top of it, if possible.

“It looks like they’re trying to set up a wide pincer attack,” Conover said. “Like they want to take the Forge from above and below the ecliptic simultaneously.

Dash blew out a frustrated sigh. “Yeah, but why? What can they accomplish doing that, that they couldn’t just by barreling straight in? And why split up their forces like this? It makes no sense.”

Dash took a moment to vent his frustration in the form of a series of dark-lance shots. He landed hits with half of them, finally knocking one of the Deeper cruisers out of formation. He’d held off just burning as hard as he could and overtaking the Deepers, wanting to see how their plan developed.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? They didn’t seem to have an obvious plan. It was as though they were just trying to keep the Realm forces here tied up . . .

Dash stopped, staring at the red icons of the Deepers but not really seeing them. He’d been sure he was missing something. Was sure that the Deepers were after the Radiant Point, or the Forge itself. And that’s why they were playing such an elusive, indirect game. They were setting up their actual, ultimate attack.

His eyes went wide. They were. But their target wasn’t the Forge or the Radiant Point. Their target wasn’t here at all.

“Shit. Sentinel, where’s Benzel?”

“His task force should be returning to real space sometime in the next ten minutes—”

“Custodian, get me someone at Backwater, anyone.”

“Your request is fortuitous. I have just received an urgent transmission from the Relentless. Backwater is under attack.”

“I knew i—dammit, as soon as Benzel gets here, tell him to turn right around and haul ass back to Backwater. Wei-Ping, I’m leaving you here to cover the Forge and the Radiant Point, in case the Deepers try to get tricky. Leira, Conover, we are heading to Backwater as fast as these new drives will take us, now.”

As he swung the Archetype toward the closest translation point and firewalled the Blur drive, Dash cursed again and again at his tunnel vision. He’d become target-locked, a rookie mistake. The Deepers had only attacked the Forge to draw and fix his attention here, drawing out their apparent attack for as long as they could. Their high-energy neutron emissions were probably just part of the deception, making them think that they had some cunning trick or unknown tech ready to unleash.

And Dash had played right into their hands.

20

The instant the Archetype plunged back into real space, the bad news started sluicing in.

The Relentless, only just put back into service and the epicenter of the task force protecting this end of the gate, had been pummeled into a near-lifeless wreck. What remained of her battered consorts had rallied around the Sabertooth, which hadn’t even been part of the task force and had just happened to come back through the gate, right into the midst of the firefight. The command cruiser’s arrival was probably all that had saved the planet and the gate, but even she had begun to stagger under the punishing weight of Deeper fire. Sentinel’s assessment was bleak.

“The Relentless is out of action, and her crew is abandoning ship. The Sabertooth has suffered moderate to severe damage, as has every other vessel in the task force. Deeper forces have landed on Backwater’s surface and are clearly determined to take and hold the planet.”

“They want this friggin’ gate.”

“So it would appear.”

Dash had already accelerated the Archetype into the Blur drive’s overspeed range, driving the mech along at almost eighty g’s. Leira and Conover were keeping up, but barely, and Tybalt was already fussing about the stability parameters of the Swift’s drive.

They could fall back if they had to, Dash thought. He had only one purpose, a grim one—to destroy these Deepers. Dying race or not, they would not triumph here today. Because, if they did, the embryonic Kingsport, an array of Cygnus Realm ships, and hundreds of their people would be trapped in the cold emptiness of the Big Black.

And that was not going to happen.

“Dash, Tybalt says the Swift’s drive is starting to develop a bad harmonic. We’re going to have to back off—”

“Then back off and be safe,” Dash ordered. “Conover, you still with me?”

“So far, yeah.”

Dash checked the range, then queried Sentinel. She confirmed that, at this blistering acceleration, his velocity had already reached almost two percent of light speed and would only go up from here. It left him facing a stark choice. He could either accept a single, extremely high-speed pass sooner or back off to fight a more protracted battle later.

Dash gritted his teeth and cut the drive. It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. But there really was such a thing as too much speed.

Conover matched his acceleration, and Leira was able to catch up and fall back into formation, so there was that, at least.

Dash glared at the mess of icons swarming around Backwater. He especially focused on the tight knot of blue ones, the embattled Cygnus Realm forces fighting desperately to hold the Backwater gate.

“Hang on, guys, just a little bit longer.”

* * *

The Archetype raced into battle like an avenging angel.

He’d charged up the blast-cannon, so the winglike accumulators had unfurled and now flared with coruscating energy. He lined up a Deeper cruiser pounding away at the Sabertooth with an x-ray laser and fired. The colossal blast tore the Deeper ship in two.

A ragged burst of exclamations and even a few cheers flashed across the comm from the crews of the embattled Cygnus Realm ships. Dash ignored them and concentrated, selecting targets, snapping out dark-lance and nova-cannon shots. He rolled the Archetype through a storm of fire, more and more bursts of fire impacting the mech’s shield. The shots included bursts from the Deepers’ skimmer beam, several of which were deployed across their fleet. A brief moment of horrifying what-if? smacked Dash. What if they hadn’t managed to capture and back-engineer one of the skimmer beams? But the answer to that was painfully clear. This battle would have already been long over.

But they had, so the Archetype was able to shrug off the harm as he slashed through the Deeper formation. And then he’d swept right past them, leaving the battle dwindling behind him, his velocity still far too high to start a realistic turn using thrust alone.

It didn’t matter. He didn’t have to. Sentinel had already anticipated his intent. She’d calculated the Archetype’s precise trajectory, falling into Backwater’s gravity well and skimming the top of the atmosphere to aerobrake away some of his ferocious speed. Leira followed him, but Conover had already decelerated hard, slowing the Pulsar and getting his mech’s powerful suite of electronic countermeasures into play.

“Dash, that Deeper attack force,” Leira said, but that was all. She just left silence hanging off the end of her words.

It didn’t matter, though. He knew exactly what she meant. The Deeper force had been enormous. That the Realm was still putting up as stiff a fight as they were, while so badly outnumbered and outgunned, was a testament to their commitment, their courage, and the tenacity of the crews and their ships.

Worse, an already fearsome array of capital ships had been reinforced by several Battle Princes and even a trio of the bizarre and truly disgusting creature-mech hybrid they’d taken to calling mag-mechs. They’d only encountered them directly once before, during their first sortie against the Deepers in the Big Black. Essentially enormous, larva-like creatures the size of destroyers, they’d been embedded and merged with tech, including weapons, drives, and armor. They were, Dash thought with a shudder, one of the most truly disgusting things he’d ever encountered in space—and that included the time he’d woken up on the floor in one of Passage’s most notorious bars, looking up at the underside of one of the tables, where what little cleaning the place got never reached.

Okay, that memory still made him shudder, too.

But Leira wasn’t done.

“Dash, we might have to consider withdrawing.”

“We do that, and we’ve effectively lost the Kingsport and everyone on the other side of the gate.”

“Only until we’re able to capture the gate back—”

“Sure, assuming the Deepers don’t destroy it or switch it to another destination. Oh, say, like one of their bases somewhere else out there in the universe, and start pouring reinforcements through.”

“Dash, I know—”

“No, I know what you’re going to say.” Dash watched as the surface of Backwater blurred past beneath him, just visible through flickering plasma dancing around the mech as it aero-braked. They were now almost exactly on the far side of the planet from the gate, which would rise over Backwater’s limb in a little less than ten minutes.

“You’re going to say that I’m blaming myself for letting this happen, and that’s making me stubborn, even if it means I’m risking everything just because of my ego.”

“Okay . . . that’s a little harsher than I’d planned, but that about sums it up.”

“Do I blame myself? Yes. Is it making me stubborn, making me dig in my heels here? Sure. But is it about my ego? No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Leira, if we withdraw, it’s going to take us weeks, maybe even months, to rebuild enough force to stand a realistic chance of retaking this gate. Seriously, do you really think the Deepers are going to let that happen? What would you do if you were them?”

Leira gave an exasperated sigh. “I’d deactivate the gate. Or even destroy it. Or, if I could, I’d switch it to another destination. Look, I know you’re right, but—”

“But?”

A pause. “I don’t know. It just seems that we’re going all-in here. That if we lose this, we lose it all.”

“That would be because that’s exactly what we’re doing. We’ve pushed all our winnings into the middle of the table, and we’re about to draw our last card.”

“Not a good analogy, Dash. You’re a terrible poker player.”

“I am not!”

“I beat you virtually every game.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t adjusted to your play style yet. Just gimme time.”

“Dash, you suck at poker. Face it.”

“I might remind you that I won the Slipwing in a game of poker.”

“See? That proves my point!” Leira said, ending on a chuckle. But it died off into silence.

Dash watched the tactical display. Four minutes.

Three.

“Be—just be careful here, Dash. You’re important. To me.”

He paused because he knew she meant it. “Same, and I will, and we’ll pick this up at another time. I’ve got more to say.”

“Good—I do too. Leira out.”

* * *

A squadron of Deeper ships rose over the Backwater horizon and immediately opened fire. It hadn’t been hard for the Deepers to predict not only what Dash and Leira intended to do but, thanks to the implacable nature of orbital mechanics, have a good idea where and when they’d reappear. Dash had considered maneuvering while making their brief orbit, but anything fancy would just cost time they couldn’t afford. Every second that went by was another Deeper x-ray laser shot, another missile, another damaged or destroyed Realm ship, more injured or dead crew.

He decided to rely, instead, on the raw power of the mechs. They’d been built for one purpose—to wage war. So that was exactly what he was going to do.

Again, he’d already charged the blast-cannon. He drove through the hurricane of fire the Deepers poured at the mechs, closing to the weapon’s optimum range—the distance where its damage and area of effect were both maximized. The instant he reached it, he fired.

The boosted antimatter charge ripped through the Deeper battle line, engulfing two heavy cruisers and a destroyer. The blast reduced all three ships to glowing wreckage. Another cruiser and a pair of frigates were caught on the margins of the detonation. They staggered under the impact of plasma so energetic it swamped space with x-rays so intense they made a solar flare seem like a spotlight.

Dash immediately started the blast-cannon cycling again, accumulating another charge. As he did, he lashed out with dark-lances and nova-cannons, gouging hulls open, blasting entire chunks off of Deeper capital ships, and reducing smaller ones to spinning wreckage. Leira stayed tucked in close, her weapons blazing away in rapid fire, Tybalt and Sentinel coordinating their targeting to do the maximum damage as quickly as possible.

The Archetype and Swift were a blazing spear thrusting deep into the enemy’s formation. They seared and smashed ship after ship, and it seemed nothing could stop them.

But Dash knew better. The mechs certainly weren’t remaining untouched themselves. More Deeper ships switched their fire to the Archetype and Swift every passing instant until they were the focus of fire for virtually an entire fleet. Had they not been upgraded with hexacores and Dark Metal Two, the Archetype would be nearing its limits, and the Swift would have already been crippled. Even so, the mechs were by no means invulnerable. The AIs cycled the shields as fast as possible, but every discharge cycle left them briefly exposed to the full fury of the Deeper broadsides. Armor glowed, then boiled to vapor that streamed behind them like the tails of comets. Dash winced, grunting and cursing as the damage piled up. Systems flicked from nominal green to cautionary orange. Sentinel smoothly rerouted power flows and data streams around damaged components, but even she could only work with the resources she had.

“Leira, time to bug out!” Dash snapped, pitching the Archetype into a steep climb directly away from Backwater.

“I was wondering if you—ouch! —were ever going to pull back,” Leira shot back, her mech following the Archetype out of the battle.

The Deeper fire started to die, then abruptly cut off entirely. Glancing back, Dash saw the aliens pumping torrents of fire into empty space behind them.

Huh?

“Dash, Conover. Kristin and I have pretty much used up all of our tricks. The Deepers have managed work-arounds and countermeasures a lot faster this time.”

“Thanks anyway for the breather,” Dash replied, taking a moment to just enjoy the lack of incoming fire. “Any idea why they’re so on the ball today, EW-wise?”

“We think it’s one of those Battle Princes. If you look at your, um, five o’clock level, you’ll see it, just starting another run at the Sabertooth.”

Dash glanced along the vector Conover had indicated. Sure enough, he saw the Battle Prince, a big son-of-a-bitch compared to its fellows. It was definitely something different. But Dash didn’t have time to dwell on it. The Battle Prince, followed by two of the mag-mechs, closed on the Sabertooth fast. They took advantage of a blind spot in her defenses opened by battle damage. In horror, Dash watched as the Battle Prince slammed something like a giant hammer into the command cruiser’s bow, crushing an entire section of hull. One of the mag-mechs latched onto the buckled plating, ripping it away and starting to dig inside the Realm ship. The other followed the Battle Prince, repeating the same sort of attack on the heavy cruiser Vespa.

“Leira, Conover, on me, let’s go!”

Dash powered the Archetype through a blistering turn, orienting the mech straight at the Sabertooth. As he raced in, he deployed the power-sword. Leira and Conover covered him, scissoring back-and-forth in his wake, snapping out shots at targets as they zipped by.

Again, the Archetype became the focus for more and more fire. Dash made himself ignore it and just focused on the mag-mech, which had now burrowed a third of itself in the Sabertooth’s hull. He didn’t even want to contemplate what horror the massive creature was wreaking inside the command cruiser. Instead, he risked a point-blank dark-lance volley that ripped across pallid, fleshy matter, spilling globules of something green and viscous. The creature shuddered, its multitude of jointed legs scrabbling on the Sabertooth’s hull as it sought to back out. Dash slammed the Archetype into full reverse thrust, sliding to a near halt relative to the mag-mech and striking out with the power-sword.

The colossal creatures were, it turned out, even more disgusting on the inside. Gelatinous goo oozed from its wounds, blobs of it swirling around the Archetype. Where they splatted against armor, they clung, a potent acidic effect etching even the tough, Dark Metal-infused alloy.

The creature spun around. For an instant, Dash looked straight into clashing mandibles and a multitude of dead, crystalline eyes. Then it lunged forward, clamped its flailing legs around the mech, and grappled it.

Dash flexed the Archetype’s joints, power pouring into the servo-actuators. He was able to push the jointed legs apart, but only barely. As he did, fire again began to slam into both of them, x-ray laser shots smacking into the Archetype’s shield and blasting chunks out of the mag-mech. The Deepers apparently had no qualms about destroying their own foul construct, as long they took out the Archetype at the same time.

Dash struggled to break from the monstrosity grappling him. But the Archetype’s fists just sank into pale, doughy flesh, more sludgy ichor bubbling out of the wounds and engulfing his own mech’s limbs.

“Sentinel, any ideas?”

“One. A creature this large couldn’t exist in a gravity well. It would collapse under its own weight.”

“The distortion cannon?”

“It’s worth a try.”

Dash yanked his attention away from the vile creature that squirmed and writhed right in his face and targeted the distortion cannon at a point just a few klicks away. He spooled the weapon up to full power, ramped it into overcharged mode, and fired.

The mag-mech wobbled obscenely, writhing, as it was suddenly yanked in the direction of the powerful gravitational pulse. An instant later, it exploded.

The blast of gore splattered the Archetype from head to feet. Some gooey fragments smacked against the armor, but most just plunged into the temporary gravity well. The Archetype followed the gruesome mess in its abrupt fall, then space-time reasserted itself. The gravity well vanished, leaving the mech hanging amid drifting blobs and fragments of ghastly carnage.

“Okay, that was disgusting,” Leira said.

Dash sniffed. “You think it looks bad from out there? Try coming into the freakin’ middle of this mess.”

As he spoke, he applied thrust, flung the Archetype away from what remained of the mag-mech. He spun around, found the second one, mostly buried in the Vespa’s hull. A second distortion cannon shot literally ripped the guts out, leaving nothing but a flabby shell of flesh and mechanical components hanging out of the gaping rent in the cruiser’s hull. He spun again, dumping more power into the shield, giving himself a brief respite as he took in the battlespace.

It wasn’t good. In fact, it was downright awful.

Not a single Realm ship remained undamaged. Several, like the Relentless, were just drifting, lifeless hulks. Their biggest ships, the Sabertooth and the heavy cruisers, weren’t far from the same fate. Their arrival had brought a bit of relief and had reoriented the battle, but Dash’s heart sank as he realized they were only delaying the outcome. Even Benzel’s arrival, expected anytime, might not be enough to change that.

He had to think of something, and fast.

Time. He needed more time—!

“Hey Dash, got room for us to play?”

He instantly recognized the voice. Jexin’s Polaris had just flashed out of the gate, leading a swarm of fighters, Denkillers and Super Makos, led by the N’Teel in their Moonbanes.

* * *

Jexin’s AI dumped the tactical situation on the other side of the gate into the Archetype’s display. The Deepers had apparently activated a fail-safe aboard their enormous platform, now nominally in the Realm’s possession. The fact was that there just hadn’t been sufficient time to thoroughly investigate the Deeper facility. The Realm had assumed some risk, proceeding with construction of the Kingsport before the huge alien construct had been fully cleared. But, as Dash had said many times, war is risk.

And, now, that risk had suddenly come back to bite them. The Deepers had been able to trigger the fail-safe, a dormant mechanism for reconfiguring sections of the platform’s vast hull into what amounted to missiles. The platform had launched several hundred, all at once, and would have quickly swamped the Realm’s defenses were it not for the vigilant suspicion of the N’Teel. A flight of their fighters patrolling near the platform had seen the missiles in the process of forming and sounded the alarm. The Deeper projectiles had no warheads, doing damage by kinetic impact alone. The N’Teel warning had allowed the ships protecting the Kingsport to take defensive measures, so few actually found their targets. But they had tied up the Realm forces on the other side of the gate, which, Dash thought, had obviously been the point.

The arrival of the Jexin and the fighters swung the tides of battle once more, forcing the Deepers onto the defensive. Dash watched as the nimble little ships wove among the Deepers, snapping out rail gun and blast-cannon shots, loosing missiles, and generally causing mayhem. It took the pressure off the beleaguered Sabertooth and her battered consorts, but Dash knew it wouldn’t last. The fighters had limited endurance and stocks of ordnance and would soon have to withdraw. To where was another question entirely, since the only carrier on this side of the gate, the Relentless, had been reduced to a drifting hulk.

“Jexin, how long until we get some capital ships coming through that gate to help us?” Dash asked.

“Right before I came through, I saw the Dauntless heading for the gate, with three more heavy cruisers behind her. The rest of the task force over there is maneuvering to get in line, but it’s going to take them some time to get sorted out.”

“Roger that, out.”

Dash blew out a frustrated breath. The Dauntless, a Silent Fleet heavy cruiser that had recently been upgraded, would add some badly needed firepower, as would the heavies accompanying her. But now they faced the same problem they had when they’d attacked through the Backwater Gate from this side, except reversed. Thanks to the work Elois and her people had been doing, they’d been able to expand the cross-section of the gate, so two heavy cruisers should be able to pass through together if they were careful. But they’d be exposed to the full weight of fire of at least ten Deeper ships as soon as they tried it.

Dash snapped to the operational display. Benzel’s force should be translating into the Backwater system at almost any time, but it would take at least an hour, and maybe as much as two, before they’d be close enough to influence the battle. Dash doubted that the Realm forces were going to last that long.

“Sentinel, any suggestions? Have to be honest, I’m running out of ideas here,” he said.

“I wish I could offer some dramatic means of turning the battle, but I’m afraid that the resources we have available just aren’t sufficient for the task. Perhaps Leira is correct. Withdrawal may be the only viable option.”

Dash said nothing. He just clenched his jaw and switched back to tactical, scanning the multitude of icons, desperately seeking inspiration. As he did, he saw the icon representing the Sabertooth suddenly change.

Her captain had given the order to abandon ship.

Dash’s stomach reefed down to a tight knot. With the Sabertooth out of action, the fleet had lost its largest remaining ship. What was left would be able to hold off the Deepers for—another half-hour. Maybe. After that, there’d just be the four mechs left to face the Deeper fleet. And even as powerful as they were, that battle would have only one outcome.

Dash looked up from tactical, gazing across the scene of carnage playing out high above Backwater. Fighters and missiles darted among lumbering capital ships, beam weapons fired, plasma blasts flashed and died, debris spun and tumbled about. His attention caught on something, though. It was the Deeper Battle Prince, the big one that had led the maggot-mechs in their attack on the Sabertooth. Maybe, if Dash could take him out, it would—

Would what? The idea that simply taking out its leader would cause an enemy force to collapse into chaos was the stuff of fiction. Dash might satisfy his thirst for revenge by destroying the Battle Prince, but whoever was next down their chain of command would just take over, and the battle would still grind out to its awful, inevitable conclusion.

“Leira, Conover, Jexin, let’s try and clear as many of the Deeper ships from near the gate as we can. If we can give the Dauntless and the rest of the ships on the other side of the gate time to get through, we might be able to turn this thing around yet.”

While he was talking, new icons appeared on tactical. Benzel’s task force had finally arrived.

Leira came on a private channel. “Dash, why don’t we pull back, join up with Benzel, and then counterattack? If we try to hold here until Benzel gets here, we’ll—”

“Probably all end up dead, yeah, I know. But we can’t let the Deepers get possession of the gate. Even if we counterattack and take it right back, that’ll give them enough time to deactivate it, or destroy it, or link it to some other destination.”

“But this is crazy! We risk losing all the remaining ships here, and the mechs!”

Dash didn’t yell. He spoke in an even tone because he could see the battle unfolding like math—and the answer was in question. It wasn’t the time for anger or shouting. He needed to lead. “I know that. I’m the Messenger, and what we will do is this—we expend every weapon. We melt down every capacitor, fire every shot, and then we fight until our blades go dim. Understand? We fight. This is my call.”

“It’s your call, but not your fault,” Leira said.

“Fault is irrelevant here. Victory is. I’m the one who should have seen this coming and not gotten target-locked on what was happening back at the Forge. Now, we clean up what’s left, and we do it with everything we have.”

“Dash—”

“Here’s the part where I say I’m the Messenger again, except I’m saying it to give an order. We’re going to fight for this gate, Leira. Like I said. Until my armor melts and the sword snaps. We fight.”

He waited for her inevitable objection and the argument to follow, and he resolved to tell her not to bother. There wasn’t any point. When she did reply, though, her voice had the same tone of weary inevitability his did.

“Roger that.”

That’s it, Dash thought. Leira’s accepted that this is the end. Because that’s what it really is, isn’t it? The end?

He readied his drive. “Sentinel, give me an inventory.”

“Of what, Dash?”

“Everything we have to fight with. Now.”

With that, he kicked the Blur and took the fight to them.

* * *

Dash loosed a salvo of missiles, followed-up with a dark-lance barrage, then slammed a burst of rail gun fire into the Deeper cruiser, just for good measure. The alien ship shuddered under the impacts but kept firing, landing hit after hit on the Archetype. Sentinel fought mightily to keep the shield intact, but it was a losing battle.

“Dash, several systems have gone critical. The blast-cannon has cycled into automatic shutdown. Now is the time I recommend that we withdraw, but I’m assuming that’s not an option, so—”

Dash slammed the Archetype hard aside, dodging a missile. “So?”

“So, I have nothing else to say. I will do my utmost to keep the Archetype capable of fighting for as long as possible.”

Dash swallowed hard. Even Sentinel had now accepted the implacable certainty of how this was going to end.

“I know you will, Sentinel. Thank you. For everything.”

She didn’t respond. Dash was glad because he couldn’t think of anything else that wasn’t too painful to say.

The Archetype’s shield died. X-ray laser and burst-cannon shots began to tear into the armor. More alarms sounded. The left elbow actuator went offline and stayed there.

Dash wheeled the Archetype hard, checking Benzel’s progress as he did. Still at least thirty minutes away.

At the rate the Archetype was taking damage, this would probably be his last pass at the Deeper fleet, or second-to-last, at best. He took a breath, lining up on a Deeper battlecruiser that was attempting to bludgeon its way through the tattered remnants of the Realm battleline and reach the gate. A few fighters still hung in the battle, and three N’Teel Moonbanes, along with a solitary Denkiller—had already started attack runs on the big Deeper ship. Dash saw one of the Moonbanes hit by a missile, sending it tumbling out of control. The Denkiller just exploded, impacted by something Dash hadn’t even seen.

He glanced back. Leira doggedly hung on his right rear quarter, his wing to the bitter end. Conover and Jexin had paired up on the other side of the battle and seemed to position themselves for their own final run.

Dash punched the drive and accelerated directly toward the battlecruiser.

As he did, something began pushing through the gate. But it wasn’t the bulbous bow of the Dauntless. It was something larger. Much larger. It quickly filled almost the entire width of the expanded gate, a massive, curving wall of black.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t one of their ships. So it had to belong to the Deepers. They’d somehow managed to seize the other end of the gate and now pushed through some enormous vessel to take this end, too. That meant the Kingsport was lost, along with all the ships and people who’d been building and supporting it.

So this, Dash thought, is how a war ends.

It struck him that this must be how the very last Golden felt at the end of the Life War, right before Dash killed it. He felt a strange moment of kinship with that Golden, in this moment of its utter failure and final defeat.

The vast shape continued pushing through the gate. Before it was even clear, it opened fire.

Except its target wasn’t the Realm fleet. It unleashed a colossal torrent of dark-lance and blast-cannon fire on the Deeper battlecruiser that had been making a run at the gate. The big ship staggered, then simply started to break apart under the sustained barrage.

Dash stared. He’d been right. It wasn’t a Realm ship coming through the gate.

It was an Anchor. It was Eastern.

“Dash, Ragsdale here. Unless you have some other preference, I’m just going to start killing Deepers, okay?”

* * *

Dash just stared. The sight of Eastern nudging its way through the gate, and right into the thick of the battle, left him stunned. Dumbfounded. Whatever word you used, anyway, to describe seeing something so familiar, in a place where it so doesn’t belong.

“Dash, do you intend to fly the Archetype directly into that Deeper ship?” Sentinel asked.

Dash shook himself free of his fixation on Eastern, slamming his situational awareness back where it belonged—on the battle. He’d been aligned for an attack on the battlecruiser charging for the gate, but Eastern had taken care of it for him. He pitched the Archetype up, zooming free of the battlespace again, then spinning around to take in the admittedly awesome sight of Eastern plowing directly into the Deeper fleet.

As soon as the Anchor had cleared the gate, something far, far smaller zipped through. Dash had no trouble immediately recognizing it as the Slipwing.

“Hello, Dash. Sorry we’re late,” Viktor said. Dash couldn’t miss the slightly smug tone in his voice.

He cleared his throat. “Uh, Viktor—”

He stopped as his brain got stuck on the sight of Eastern again. The Anchor sailed with an almost imperious grace into the Deeper battleline, its massed batteries of missile launchers, dark-lances, nova-guns, and blast-cannons spewing out a colossal deluge of firepower. The Deepers, taken as completely by surprise as Dash, had fallen into chaos. Ships burned hard, frantically maneuvering to avoid the Anchor, spitting desultory fire back at it as they scattered. A few tried to accelerate directly into Eastern’s hull, apparently intent on venting their frustration at the battle’s sudden and decisive turn by suicide attack. But the Anchor’s fire control systems were ready for it, immediately prioritizing any Deeper ship whose trajectory became a collision course and blasting it to scrap before it could even get close.

Dash found his voice again. “Uh, Viktor, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the last place I saw you, Ragsdale and Eastern, the Forge? Like, just a few hours ago?”

“Uh-huh.”

A smile crept onto Dash’s face at Viktor’s tone. The man was enjoying this.

“And now you’re coming through a gate that leads to a place over a thousand light-years away?”

“You see it with your own eyes, don’t you?”

“Viktor—”

Laughter cut Dash off. It rang with the relief of something desperate that had worked out, of a near-disaster averted. Dash would have laughed the same laugh if it weren’t for the fact Ragsdale and Viktor had just pulled off something—well, impossible.

“They managed to re-link the Radiant Point at the Forge,” someone else said. It was Conover. “You guys managed to link it to this gate, didn’t you?”

“Aw, Conover, you stole my thunder,” Viktor groused.

Dash went back to staring. “Wait. You linked the Radiant Point to this gate? What about the other Radiant Point, you know, the one about a hundred and sixty thousand light-years out? And the other gate, the one connecting us to the Kingsport?”

“And just how the hell did you manage to do it?” Leira asked, easing the Swift to a halt near the Archetype.

Dash wanted an answer to that, too. Surely they hadn’t just consigned the Kingsport, and the Realm forces at the other Radiant Point, to oblivion? That would render this whole stunning turnaround to victory worse than just having lost the Backwater Gate.

“How we did it is complicated, something we can explain when we don’t have a Deeper fleet to finish off,” Viktor said. “For now, enough to say that all the research Elois and her team, and the AIs, and the rest of us working on these gates have done has paid off.”

“All I really care about right now is that we can dial it back to the way it was,” Dash put in. “Viktor, please tell me that we can.”

Viktor suddenly sounded a little peeved. “Of course we can. We wouldn’t have even tried it if we didn’t think we could.”

Dash let out the last bit of tense breath he’d been holding. “Okay, then. This is the part where I say, good work, guys. But this is more than even reaching the freakin’ Large Magellanic Cloud levels of good work.”

It was. Across the tactical display, Deeper ships were either fleeing or dying. The unexpected arrival of the massive Anchor had split the alien fleet apart while bringing as much firepower to bear as all of Benzel’s task force, and doing it all at once—and at point-blank range. Dash saw that the Anchor was taking hits, but none inflicted more than superficial damage.

But something else caught his eye. One of the Deeper icons had fallen into a trajectory that would take it directly toward the gate while using what remained of the spinward half of their fleet for cover.

It was the Battle Prince. The big one.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Dash muttered and kicked the Blur drive to full thrust. “Leira, I’m going after that asshole.”

“After which asshole?” Leira asked, then added, “Ah, I see him.”

“Looks like he’s planning on flying into the gate,” Conover said.

“Yeah, he is. Ragsdale, any chance you can stop that bastard before he does?”

“We’ve got him targeted, Dash, but between the ships and wreckage and crap between him and us, and the way he’s jinking around, I wouldn’t count on it,” Ragsdale replied.

“No problem, I’ll take care of him myself,” Dash replied, angling his trajectory onto a converging course with the Battle Prince.

Dash glanced at the derelict remains of the Relentless as he sailed past.

And I will enjoy every second of making this bastard pay.

* * *

Dash shoved the Blur drive past its redline, so intent he was on catching the Deeper Battle Prince. Even the Archetype’s vast acceleration wouldn’t let him catch up before the alien leader passed through the gate, though. Dash could only grit his teeth and hope that the Battle Prince wasn’t able to deactivate the gate as he passed through it, or once he had. Although, if they could now switch the linkages among the gates, it meant they at least had some redundancy to fall back on.

The Archetype swept over the expansive hull of Eastern. The Anchor continued firing, simply checking fire on batteries as he flashed past, then opening fire again when he was clear. Then the colossal hull fell away from him, and Dash raced across the clear space between Eastern and the gate. The fleeing Battle Prince now lay directly ahead of Dash, and he was gaining quickly.

But the Deeper leader still reached the gate first. He flashed through it and vanished.

Dash didn’t quite get what the Battle Prince was up to. He’d just popped back into real space within point-blank range of the Forge, whose formidable shields should be able to protect the Radiant Point until Dash arrived. It must be, he thought, a last, desperate attempt to win some measure of victory from what had abruptly become a sound defeat. Again, Dash felt a momentary—and unwelcome—instant of kinship with the Battle Prince. Literally only minutes ago, Dash had been the one staring certain defeat in the face. Again, he understood exactly what the Deeper leader was feeling right now.

That is, of course, if it even had emotions as Dash understood them. He hoped it did, though, because that flicker of empathy quickly darkened as the Archetype swept past a smashed Realm frigate. He hoped the Battle Prince had the same emotions he did and was now wallowing in every one of them.

The gate loomed ahead. Dash aligned himself into the center of it and raced through. He expected to find the Battle Prince already under fire from the Forge and hoped he’d have a chance to get at least a couple of shots in—

Wait.

What?

Dash gaped around him. There was no sign of the Forge at all.

* * *

The Archetype swept across a barren wasteland, jagged ridges of shattered rock soaring up in towering spires. A pale, purplish-tan orb hung overhead, casting a wan light that barely illuminated whatever, wherever, this desolate place was. Dash immediately recognized the orb as a brown dwarf, a strange beast caught somewhere between gas giant and actual star. A little more mass and it would ignite, nuclear fusion turning it into a fierce, hot young star. A little less, and it would settle into a long and relatively sedate life as a planet. As it was, it still gave off more energy than it absorbed, the radiation streaming from it scouring this bleak moon down to its bedrock.

For what seemed like the hundredth time today, Dash marveled at a situation that had abruptly and dramatically changed from what he’d expected into something entirely different. Somehow, the Battle Prince had changed the far side of the Backwater Gate yet again, so instead of leading to the Radiant Point located at the Forge, it led—

Here, wherever the hell here was.

And, yet one more time today, Dash’s preoccupation with trying to make sense of sudden nonsense almost cost him dearly. Instinct made him roll the Archetype on its back, just in time to see the Battle Prince swooping down from above, brandishing a mace-like power-maul sizzling with energy.

Dash yelped and flung the Archetype into a nearly right-angle turn. He felt it, the colossal g-forces leaking through even the enhanced inertial dampers and squeezing him hard against the cradle. The maneuver proved too much for the Archetype’s already damaged left arm. Centrifugal force ripped it free, sending it slamming across the rock landscape like a battering ram.

If he’d been flying the pre-upgrade Archetype, he never would have avoided the Battle Prince’s attack. As it was, he just barely missed the sweep of the power-maul. Instead, it smashed into the peak of one of the rocky spires, shattering it into a hail of shrapnel. The Battle Prince raced through its own turn, desperately trying to follow the Archetype. Dash had the edge, though, maintaining the crushing turn until his opponent slid outside of their tightly arcing course. Realizing it couldn’t out-turn the Archetype, the Battle Prince instead pitched up and raced away from the planet, opening up with a burst-cannon barrage that saturated the Realm mech and the stony barrens beneath it.

Geysers of shattered rock erupted around the Archetype, showering the mech with splinters and debris. The blasts exposed something metallic beneath the surface, but Dash had no time to think about it. He pitched up hard, climbing away from the surface, yawing as he did and firing the dark-lance. The Battle Prince dodged one of the twin beams, but the other struck, flaring against a shield. The Deeper returned fire, likewise slamming a burst of energy into the Archetype’s shield, which Sentinel had managed to regenerate.

The Battle Prince abruptly reversed course and came boring straight in for Dash again. He pumped out nova-cannon and dark-lance shots and prepared to fire the wrist-mounted rail gun before remembering that it was just shattered fragments littering the dreary landscape below. The instant of confused hesitation cost him his focus. The Battle Prince flashed past, landing a punishing blow with its power-maul that spun the Archetype completely around.

Dash yelled out loud at the impact, accompanied by a tremendous bang, as the power-maul smashed into his shoulder armor. Once more, it hit Dash that, had the mech not been upgraded, the blow would almost certainly have ripped off his remaining arm. As it was, the force of the hit bent and distorted one of the shoulder actuators, giving the arm a slight lag behind Dash’s movements.

“Can’t fight this way,” he snapped. “Sentinel, I’m gonna deploy the power-sword. As soon as I do, lock that shoulder, would you?”

“You will lose a large portion of the arm’s mobility. That will reduce your potential strike zone for the sword by—”

“A lot, yeah, I know. Just humor me.”

“Will do.”

Dash activated the power-sword, then Sentinel froze the actuators in place. He could still move the arm at the elbow, but his shoulder had been locked into rigidity.

He resumed climbing, spinning the Archetype as he did. The Deeper Battle Prince had already started another run at him and was only seconds from impact.

Dash made himself forget about trying to carefully judge or calculate his moves and instead thought back to his dream when he’d been piloting the air-cycle over the lake.

Every move he made was by instinct, by the feel of what just seemed right in that instant.

And what felt right was this.

Dash rolled the Archetype, at the same time firewalling the Blur drive. What the thrusters started as simple rotation, the Blur drive turned into nearly one hundred g’s of spin.

The power-sword connected with the Battle Prince, just as its maul smashed into the Archetype. The same ferocious snap-roll that drove the sword caused the maul to glance away, although not without knocking a chunk of chest armor off the Archetype with a shower of sparks.

Dash bellowed a string of curses at the impact, even while trying desperately to corral the Archetype back into some semblance of control. Frantically, he searched the tactical display for his foe.

There. The Battle Prince raced away from him, trailing bits of debris. Dash had hurt the thing, but the Archetype was reaching the limits of what it could take, even in its much-improved form.

Sentinel spoke up, confirming it. “We’ve now experienced multiple, permanent system failures. I’ve rerouted power and data where I can, but the Archetype has no further capacity for self-repair.”

“What you’re saying is that any further damage is going to stick.”

“Correct.”

“Then I guess it’s time to end this,” Dash said, and once more ramped up the Blur drive, chasing after the Battle Prince.

* * *

The Deeper leader had pitched up, accelerating away from the radiation-scoured surface of the moon. Its trajectory was aimed directly at the brown dwarf. Dash wasn’t sure why. Tactical showed a few more small rocks orbiting in-close to the would-be star, but nothing of consequence.

“I believe that the Battle Prince is, likewise, badly damaged,” Sentinel offered.

“Good. But so are we. So where does he think he’s going?”

“Do you remember the first time you fought one of the Golden Harbingers?” Sentinel asked.

Dash did. The Archetype had been nowhere close to its full capabilities at the time, so the Golden mech had been its match. Dash had taken advantage of a brown dwarf star caught in a loose orbit in the Forge’s origin system, using the blizzard of radiation to confuse the Harbinger’s scanners. He’d been able to hide in more or less plain sight while taking time to do some damage control and catch his breath.

Oh. He got it.

“This bastard’s going to try and hide from us, the same way we did from the Harbinger.”

“Quite likely. Moreover, I’d point out that the bio-mechanical hybrid material used by the Deepers is capable of self-repair, literally healing, in a way that the substance of the Archetype is not.”

“Shit. So if he’s able to lose us, then all he has to do is wait. His damage repairs itself, and he comes back at us, but fresh.”

“I know that you’re reluctant to concede defeat, but perhaps it’s the best option in this case. Accepting a tactical defeat in the aftermath of a strategic victory isn’t really failure, is it?”

Dash bit his lip. Sentinel was right. He could just break off the pursuit, race back to the safety of the gate, and return to Backwater.

But.

“There’s only one problem with that. This damned Battle Prince gets away.”

“Again, the survival of one Battle Prince is unlikely to greatly affect the course of the war—”

“Yeah, except we’re not at the Forge, are we? Viktor described how they were able to switch the link from the Radiant Point near there to the Backwater Gate and let Eastern do that arriving in the nick of time thing. But this Battle Prince was somehow able to change the gate again, linking it to here. And he did it on the fly, too.”

“That is, admittedly, a good point.”

“Hey, don’t sound so surprised.”

“So what do you intend to do?”

“How long until we lose a scanner fix on him?” Dash asked, still focused on the icon highlighting the Battle Prince directly ahead.

“At this rate of degradation, in a minimum of five and a maximum of fifteen minutes.”

Dash bit his lip again. This time, he was doing calculations in his head. Even as damaged as it was, the Blur drive was still working, so he still had the edge in acceleration. He was closing the gap but not fast enough to catch the Battle Prince before they lost it in the sea of high-energy radiation filling space around the brown dwarf. He could try to keep chasing it using visual contact only, but that was iffy, at best. It was just damned hard to see things in space unless they were some combination of big, bright, and close.

What it all boiled down to was an immutable fact. Dash had, at most, about ten minutes to come up with some decisive way of defeating the Battle Prince and hopefully retrieve or otherwise figure out the tech it had used to switch the gate. Failing that, he’d have to withdraw because he wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in a fusion blast against it if it were able to heal all of its damage and return to battle fresh.

He needed to further accelerate the Archetype. Or slow down the Battle Prince. Or, ideally, both.

“Sentinel, how powerful would a distortion-cannon shot have to be to ensure we’re able to catch this bastard before he gets away?”

“If the distortion-cannon were overcharged, a single shot should be sufficient. However, that would render the weapon incapable of further use. Moreover, I would have to route power through the dark-lance and nova-cannon systems to effect the overcharge. That would also take those weapons offline until repaired.”

“So we can do it, but we’re only going to have one chance at it, and even if it succeeds, we’ll have no weapons left but the power-sword.” As he spoke, Dash reflexively checked the ammo supply for the superluminal missile-launcher mounted on the Archetype’s right wrist. He’d already known the answer, though. He’d expended all of its ordnance during the desperate fight on the other side of the gate.

“Correct.”

“So, an all-or-nothing gamble that could have disastrous consequences if it fails.”

“Again, correct.”

“Well, you’ve got as much skin in this game as I do, Sentinel. What do you think we should do?”

“Logically? We should break off and withdraw.”

“Is that your answer?”

“No. I think we should go for it and run this son of a bitch down.”

Dash laughed. It was a genuine, deep, belly laugh that washed through him like cleansing rain. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Alrighty, then. Sentinel, route whatever you have to route, wherever you have to route it, to make this work. And then we’ll run this son of a bitch down.”

A moment passed as Sentinel reconfigured power and data streams. The dark-lances dropped offline, followed by the nova-cannon as she cannibalized their supporting circuitry to feed more power to the distortion cannon. Dash watched as the last systems flicked from yellow to red.

“We’re ready,” Sentinel said.

Dash gave a wintry smile. “Not much left. Distortion cannon, power-sword, drive and life-support, and that’s it, huh?”

“I could turn the seat warmers back on for you.”

“First, there’s no seat. Second, Sentinel, where do you keep coming up with this stuff? Is Leira coaching you?”

“I believe you have a Battle Prince to kill and very little time left to do it.”

Dash smiled. “Roger that.”

The one advantage to the distortion-cannon, he thought, was that it didn’t require a solid targeting solution, like the mech’s other weapons. All he had to do was—

This.

Dash hit the trigger. Warnings flared and died across the board as systems carried a sudden flood of power from the hexacore, then died under the strain. Showers of sparks and gouts of flame erupted throughout the mech.

A massive hand reached out, grabbed the Archetype, and yanked it forward so hard Dash was shoved almost painfully backward in the harness. Just as it had the left forearm, the sudden surge of g’s tore off the mech’s right lower leg.

Dash groaned as he momentarily greyed out, the sudden acceleration dragging the blood out of his brain. He fought desperately not to fade from grey to black as it would truly suck to lose and die because he’d passed out. But the grey fireworks popping around the edges of his vision died away, and he was able to refocus on the situation.

The Battle Prince hung not far ahead of him. It had lost an entire leg that slowly spun off in one direction while the rest of the Deeper leader spun through two of three axes. Dash saw it firing thrusters desperately, trying to reorient itself and open the range back up.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Dash growled, kicked the Blur drive, and zoomed forward, power-sword raised.

The Battle Prince turned to face him just in time. A single burst of noise came across what remained of the comm.

“We are the Corrupted, and we will have your life.”

“The hell you will,” Dash snapped, swinging the sword.

The Battle Prince lashed out with its power-maul at the same time, connecting hard with the Archetype’s sword. Both weapons snapped in a dazzling burst of discharged energy. Dash didn’t hesitate. All that was left was a brawl, and in a brawl, you had to put your opponent down and win fast. The longer it went on, the more chance you might lose.

Dash flung the Archetype forward, slamming into the Battle Prince. He punched, slamming his fist into his opponent again and again. He kicked at the same time, following up with a knee to a part of the Battle Prince that would have left its eyes crossed and doubled over in pain if it had been a guy. The Deeper reeled under the sudden blitz of kicks and punches, then began to strike back. For a moment, Dash’s world was reduced to the thunderous slam of heavy impacts, alloy on alloy, as he struck out, and his opponent struck back.

The Archetype’s fist struck again, but this time found purchase in damaged armor. He pulled and tore the chunk of armor away. He struck again, buckling exposed structural components, then tearing those free and flinging them away after the broken armor.

The Battle Prince went still and silent.

Dash stared at what he’d exposed, a grotesque amalgam of organic life-form and machine. Once, he thought, it might have been humanoid, but now it was little more than knobs and tendrils of flesh and bone merged with pipes, cables, and the structure of the Battle Prince itself. Conduits hung from where its eyes should have been, one pulling free as Dash gaped at the monstrosity. Shimmering globules of murky fluid spilled from the empty socket.

“Dash? Meld connectivity is down to less than forty percent, which forces me to ask you—are you okay?”

He yanked himself out of his stunned moment of fascinated horror. “Yeah, I’m fine. Beaten up and totally grossed out, but yes, I’m okay.”

“I believe the tech you were seeking is implanted in the middle of the Deeper’s abdomen. A component there is radiating a periodic handshake-signal similar to that used by the gates.”

As she spoke, Sentinel highlighted a particular part of the Battle Prince. Dash retrieved it, a boxy component slathered in gore.

“If this is what I think it is, and we can replicate it, then we can tune these gates to wherever we want them to go on the fly. That’s huge, Sentinel.”

“It is. But I’ve got something to rival it.”

“Really. And what’s that?”

“Do you recall that the Battle Prince’s fire exposed a metallic structure on the rocky moon we first encountered?”

Dash thought back through the whirlwind blur that had been the fight against the Battle Prince. “Oh, yeah, right. What was that?”

“I will show you.”

The image flicked to the characteristic greyish fuzz of the neutrino display. The detector system apparently still worked. It showed a solid black shape, roughly spherical, amid the soupy grey of the neutrino background.

“What the hell am I looking at?”

“That rocky moon.”

“Huh. Okay, well, that’s interesting, but—”

The implication of it hit him like a rail gun shot.

“That’s no moon.”

“Correct. It is, except for a thin shell of rock, Dark Metal.”

Dash stared. There had to be tens, hundreds of thousands of tons of Dark Metal there. Millions, maybe.

His next words came out as a soft whisper.

“Holy shit.”

“Holy shit indeed.”

Epilogue

Dash crossed his arms and watched the bustle of activity around the newly finished hub of the Kingsport, the Atrium. With it complete, work could now proceed on the successive layers of the enormous, ring-within-ring structure.

He let his mind cast forward to a time when the Kingsport was fully operational. That was still at least a year away, but it would be up to its initial operating capability within the next week or so. It would be able to function effectively as a base for the fleet at that point, but only while supported by Bercale’s modular shipyards and a multitude of other ancillary and logistics vessels. Once complete, it would be capable of supporting not just their entire current fleet, but one twice as large, entirely from its own resources.

“There you are,” Leira said, exiting an elevator and crossing to join Dash at the expansive viewports. “I thought you said to meet you on level twelve, section A.”

“This is level twelve, section A.”

Leira curled her lip and pointed at the elevator. A prominent eleven emblazoned the bulkhead alongside it. “You sure about that?”

“Um, oops?”

Leira put her hands on her hips. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

“Right? And we thought the Forge was big.”

“The Forge is big,” Leira replied, then gave a thin smile. “Although, I have to admit, in comparison to this place, it’s homey, almost cozy.”

“Yeah, it is.”

They stood in silence for a while, watching as another freighter laden with rough slabs of Dark Metal slid out of the gate anchored by the Radiant Point. It was the most recent arrival from the Dark Metal planetoid they’d named Jackpot. Dash would probably never know why the Deeper Battle Prince had led him there. They might likewise never learn the truth behind Jackpot—who or what was responsible for it and what its purpose was, if any. Given the nature of Dark Metal, Custodian and the other AIs doubted it was a natural formation, but they couldn’t even be sure of that. Dark Metal came from somewhere, after all. They’d assumed it had originated with the Golden, but the Deepers were far, far older. Maybe, Conover had speculated, it had formed in the peculiar conditions of the Big Bang, and the Deepers had just discovered it.

The science of it was beyond Dash, but one essential fact wasn’t. His gut told him that, before this war was over, they’d need to answer that question and figure out the truth behind Dark Metal.

“Oh, by the way, the Archetype looks a lot better than when you dragged your big metallic butt back through that gate at Backwater,” Leira noted, still watching as the freighter cleared the gate.

“Yeah, it does. Tough old mech, isn’t it?”

“I think you’ve probably voided the warranty on it by now.”

“Probably, but she’s still not as tough as that old Earthtech,” Dash said.

“Or the . . . cosmonaut? Inside?” Leira asked.

“Astronaut, cosmonaut. Either way, they built to last back then. We’re more like the Unseen than we want to admit, and we’ve got a deep-frozen cosmonaut to prove it.” He shook his head. “Wonder if she’ll ever wake up?”

“If she does, what will she think about all this? And how would she adjust, knowing her world is gone? I think the Deepers stole more than just Sabina’s life. They—they forced her through time. They robbed her of everything, and now she’s just—”

“Asleep. And if she ever wakes, then we’ll take care of her. But we’ll never stop trying, and she’ll never drift again. Not while we’re around. Too many old dangers out there, let alone new ones,” Dash said with some force.

“I’m all for scorching every bubble of that primordial crap from wherever we find it. I don’t like it, and I don’t like—"

“Ooze?”

Leira looked sheepish, then a brilliant smile crossed her face. “Bleh.”

Dash glanced at her and grinned, but it didn’t last. His thoughts drifted back to the Second Battle of Backwater, as it was now called. It had been so close. The Realm had never been quite so near disaster as it had that day.

But it had been worth it. Elois, Custodian, and the others working on the Radiant Points had figured out how to reconnect the gates, but it was a laborious and uncertain process. That hard-won knowledge had allowed them to quickly unravel the operation of the Gate Key, the device that Dash had retrieved from the dead Battle Prince. And now, thanks to that, they could switch gate destinations at will. Despite spanning multiple locations across the better part of two hundred thousand light-years, the Cygnus Realm was suddenly and effectively smaller than a typical star system. And the more gates they captured, the more the Realm grew.

As if to underscore it, the next ship to pass through the Radiant Point, following the freighter from Jackpot, was a courier ship from the Forge. Just like that, two ships had arrived within a few minutes of each other, from places thousands of light-years apart.

Dash’s gaze caught on a distant smudge of light, prominent in the intergalactic blackness. It was Andromeda, another entire galaxy rivaling the Milky Way in size. At its best possible speed, Sentinel figured that the Archetype could make the trip in about two years. He imagined making the flight, taking a Radiant Point along, and then seeing that far-off smudge of light, two million light-years away, just a few hours flight from where he now stood.

“Do you think they’re on the run?” Leira asked, breaking his reverie.

“The Deepers?”

“Yeah.”

Dash didn’t answer immediately. Instead, his attention caught on a brilliant pinpoint of light, the glare of an arc-welder where a construction remote fastened yet another component to the Kingsport.

The war was changing. It had begun with destruction but, more and more, was about creation. Death had become purpose. With every flare of that welder, the Realm grew. And as it did, the Deepers would have fewer places to go.

A bitter smile touched Dash’s lips. “Maybe we do have them on the run. But that doesn’t make things easier for us. The opposite, in fact. After all, animals are more dangerous when they’re cornered.”

“And the Deepers are cornered? Really? it’s a big universe, after all.”

But Dash shook his head and waved a hand at the gate.

“Not anymore, it’s not.”

* * *

DASH, SENTINEL, LEIRA, VIKTOR, and CONOVER will return in DARK ORIGINS available to preorder now on Amazon.

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About the Authors

J. N. Chaney is a USA Today Bestselling author and has a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. He fancies himself quite the Super Mario Bros. fan. When he isn’t writing or gaming, you can find him online at www.jnchaney.com.

He migrates often, but was last seen in Las Vegas, NV. Any sightings should be reported, as they are rare.

* * *

Terry Maggert is left-handed, likes dragons, coffee, waffles, running, and giraffes; order unimportant. He’s also half of author Daniel Pierce, and half of the humor team at Cledus du Drizzle.

With thirty-one titles, he has something to thrill, entertain, or make you cringe in horror. Guaranteed.

Note: He doesn’t sleep. But you sort of guessed that already.