AMP Messenger

Chapter 1

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A mysterious event saw the transport of every Human away from Earth to a distant galaxy. All references to our precious Earth’s name and location were wiped from our memories, the event itself forgotten. The first in our lineage tried to record all they could, but a brutal attack cut that endeavor short, further fragmenting our past.

For a thousand years, our home had been an immense space station called a Grid. One of five. They were globe-like structures, as large as the Earth’s moon, the builders unknown to us. Each could sustain a billion Human lives. Their ultrafast gravity drives were like none other in the galaxy, powered by hydrogen that we had to mine and store.

An alien species, the Milgari, bent on our annihilation, chased us with a relentless rage. Early battles destroyed three of our Grids, killing billions of our kind; a fourth had gone missing. For a decade we found peace in a new sector, but war was again coming. We were not ready. Our politicians had grown lazy and corrupt. Spies for the Milgari filled our halls.

We would fight to protect our Grid from harm, for our species to survive. We were Humans without a history, wandering through a galaxy we did not know, with hostiles pursuing us, threatening our very existence. The Grid was our home, our life, our only refuge. Our fate rested with our own actions...

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"Frig! Get that Bilson wrench over here!" He was a good engineer, but sometimes easily distracted, deep in his own thoughts.

Frig replied, I am bringing it now, sir. Just a moment.

It was one of those irritating qualities you had to put up with to have good, loyal help. Frigbimifier—I called him Frig—had a low forehead with bulgy eyes and a wide mouth. He was from a friendly species we called the Gambit, joining us from a swampy world we came across in our travels.

I couldn’t understand why he had left his people. The allure of space travel to a planet-bound species was one thing, but I had trouble with the thought of leaving everyone and everything you knew to explore the galaxy with a bunch of aliens. Especially when those aliens were constantly at war. The six other Gambits who had followed were aboard the Grid. Frig rarely socialized with them, seeming to prefer the company of Humans.

Here, sir, your Bilson wrench. I took the initiative to clean and oil it. You really should take better care of our tools, sir.

I looked up with a sarcastic scowl and then got down to the business at hand. The ionic power feed to the nav system was leaking. The ion emission, while of no danger to us or the ship itself, came with the problem of an automated computer shutdown. That meant we weren’t going anywhere at present. And if we weren’t moving, we were prime targets for the first pirate vessel that happened our way.

Pirates had been a plague on our existence for as long as we had been in this sector. I had lost two friends in the last four years alone; both Messengers like me, both attacked when they had ship trouble at just the wrong moment. And the pirate activity in the Mensa sector, our current location, was particularly bad. We had been in the sector for eleven years and, in my opinion, it had been eleven years too long.

We were Humans, drifters really, living on a space station called Grid-4. We were in search of a home, a planet where our children could play on firm ground, a place where we could build long-lasting defenses against the evil species that inhabited the galaxy.

Our history logs went back just over a thousand years. No record of our existence stood before that time. Rumors of our humble beginnings constantly circulated, but many were wild tales. Some said we came from a green planet, covered in buildings with spectacular white spires that reached to the heavens. Others believed we were from an ocean world, destroyed when our sun transitioned into its red giant phase. And still others believed we had taken to the stars to escape the wrath of an invading alien species, much like the one currently pursuing us. Often, discussions on the subject led to heated exchanges. I made an effort not to get involved in the politics of it all.

Frig had been my engineer for nearly a decade. I had struggled through seven others in a year before finding him. His ability to keep the Swift together and flying was nothing short of a miracle. It was a bucket of rusty bolts and was constantly on the verge of breaking down. Only Frig’s tenacious obsession with keeping anything mechanical running had kept us from being killed or sold into slavery at some back-world pirate auction, neither outcome of which held much appeal.

The Swift was an old Blevin-class Defender. It had been out of service for over a century before I acquired it from a junk dealer on the Grid. It took three years of scrounging parts from various sources, some not so reputable, before I had a ship worthy of taking into the Messenger Service.

The Messenger Service was a collective of private ships that were used to ferry everything from sensitive diplomatic information to parts needed for the Grid’s maintenance. Our destinations ranged from planets to colonies to the occasional hush-hush clandestine meeting with an unknown ship. I tried not to ask too many questions, as being nosy would only keep me from collecting a paycheck. The pay wasn’t great, but being your own boss had its appeal.

Over the near decade that followed, Frig and I added many improvements to the Swift. Those improvements saved our hides on more than one occasion. We had ramped up our ion drive with specialty alloy anodes, giving us a 15 percent boost in potential speed. Speed, in the dead of space, was your best defense.

The drawback to the alloy was that running in boost mode would occasionally cause an anode to fracture, giving you only a few minutes to change it out before the bad guys closed the distance. We had scrambled through one such fracturing instance with pirates in chase. After a narrow escape, I swore to never use boost again—unless death was imminent. The alloy anodes remained in place and always at the ready, but never used.

A second improvement, adapted from technology on Frig’s home world, was a signal inhibitor that made us undetectable by all standard sensors, except for optical. We were a small ship, which meant our visual signature was minimal already. Unless you were close enough that you could physically see us, you had no indication we were there. Ion leaks, however, were a signature we could not mask.

The Swift had very little in the way of weaponry, us having added a peashooter of a coil gun some years before, with the excuse of needing to blast menacing space debris. Something the size of a marble or less that happened to be in your path would bring nothing but quick death. Traveling at 132 times the speed of light meant a strike from a small stone could easily disable or destroy you. The thin layer of tantric armor on the ship’s nose and forward surfaces did well to deaden the impact of such a strike, but its effectiveness would only go so far.

During my years in the Service, I had encountered two such strikes that shook the ship to its core. Even though the armor had done its job of keeping the ship together, it rattled my confidence in our nav avoidance system. It took six months of pay to acquire a military-grade sensor and nav computer link that would keep us safe at that speed. It came from a nefarious source, and Frig had done an excellent job of disguising its appearance, should we ever happen to be searched by the SCore.

The SCore was the Grid Security Corps. They kept their nose in everything related to anything, particularly when it came to the business of Messengers. They always regarded our interactions with other species with suspicion, and rightly so. Twice there had been incursions on the Grid that corrupt Messengers had enabled, giving up information on our defenses. After lengthy trials, ejection into space was the summary judgment for both captains. It was a cruel death, and when given a helmet, it was less than instantaneous.

Our historical logs had references to four other Grid stations. Milgari encounters had destroyed three, while the remaining Grid, Grid-1, had gone missing. Grid-4 had been our home, Man’s home, for a thousand years. Life on the Grid was a constant struggle to survive.

The ion leak was coming from a coupler feed that was just at the far end of my reach. Frig had removed the deck plate closest to the problem coupler. I had my wide-shouldered upper torso stuffed through the deck opening, dangling upside down, with my right arm stretched out to its fullest. Every turn of the wrench was a painful exercise in space mechanics. It seemed the Blevin-class designers had made every effort to place the most-likely-to-fail parts just out of reach. On more than one occasion, I had cursed at Frig for having such short, stubby arms.

Stretching my reach in an attempt to make another turn with the wrench, Frig began to poke at my ribs with one of his bony fingers. Sir, we have a problem. Sir...

I reacted in a bad way, agitated to the point where I attempted to swat back at him with my left hand. The result was a loss of my balance, causing me to drop further into the deck hole, striking my forehead on a cross-member as I shifted. In anger, I writhed and pushed until I emerged from the hole with a scowl on my face. You better have a good reason for irritating me this morning. That leak already has me worked up. I am really tempted to just...

Frig cut in, Sir, we have an incoming ship alert. I thought you would want to know.

I picked myself up from the deck and sprinted the eighteen steps to the console. A lone craft, almost double our size, was almost upon us. I tried in vain to restart the nav computer. Each attempt was a failure. The ion leak continued to cause an immediate safety shutdown. With no propulsion, we were at the mercy of whoever approached.

Chapter 2

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I raced back to the cargo hold and pulled two blasters from my locker, tossing one to Frig as I made my way back to the console. Hope you remember how to use that. Whoever this is, they are coming in hot.

Frig tucked the blaster into his belt as he stepped up behind me to look at the proximity screen. I remain proficient with a blaster, sir. Just as I was the last time I outscored you at the target range.

Frig had a way of phrasing his responses where they were extremely polite and at the same time you had the feeling he had just smacked you in the face. I often found his delivery to be irritating, likening it to the sarcastic style humor I enjoyed and often used.

"5509... 5509. This is Captain Michael Felix of the Deveroe. Are you in need of assistance?"

I rolled my eyes. Of all the ships to come to my aid, it had to be Felix. He was my nemesis in the Messenger Service, always plying for the good contracts and usually talking his way into them. He was the one person standing in the way of me making a good living in the Service. And he was always smug about it.

Hello, Felix. What brings you to grid 144? I thought you would be out making baby-bottle runs to Amerex-6. Grid 144 is a bit of a tough place for a polished boot like you.

Felix was a stickler when it came to going by the book. Grid-4 protocol stated that Messenger Service pilots were obligated to assist stranded ships, so long as doing so did not compromise their own safety.

I was sure Felix found it irritating to offer a hand to the one Messenger who had kept him from unionizing the MS. He had plans of having access to all the information that came to and from the Grid, and of controlling that information in a way that would only work to increase his power and prosperity. If anyone on the station was bent on a conquest of their own, it was Felix. He lived to control.

Felix replied, Mr. Grange, are you in need of assistance or am I wasting my time here? By the way, I logged four Rythium Snatchers in grid 143. And as much as I don’t care for you, Mr. Grange, I would not want the Messenger Service to get a black eye from a Rythium encounter. It would be an embarrassment to us all.

Rythium pirates were particularly nasty if you happened to be unlucky enough to fall into their hands. Their ships were large. A ship the size of the Swift would easily fit into their cargo hold. They were also heavily armed, but slow. And the Rythium themselves were not very bright. They did, however, take immense pleasure in torturing other species. I had seen their cruelty firsthand, meted upon two of my close friends. One of them, Bert Geathers, had died a painful death as a result.

After numerous beatings and other abuses, a Rythium captain sold him to the owner of the ship’s lounge where they chained him to a wall. Patrons would pay a fee to fire a tiny needle at him from across the room. The needle had just enough velocity to penetrate the skin. The tail of the needle contained a coagulant; it would keep you from bleeding out. It was an assured death, but it could sometimes take weeks or longer.

The Rythium had captured Bert four years before. They had been so impressed with his ability to survive that after nine weeks of absorbing needles, they stuck him in a lifepod with a beacon and fired it into a sector where they knew we would find him. After doctors on the Grid removed twenty-six pounds of needles from his body, an infection planted by the Rythium finally took its toll.

I leaned toward my mic. Thanks for the heads-up, Felix. We just stopped to take a tea break. We will be on our way soon enough.

I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing we had broken down. It was sure to be thrown in my face back on the Grid when negotiating for a contract against him.

Felix replied, 5509, this is Captain Michael Felix; since you are not in need of our help today, we will be on our way. And good luck with that ion signature you are emitting. I hope it attracts the attention you deserve.

With that, the Deveroe turned and sped off toward its destination. When I turned toward Frig, he was frowning. It must be devastating for you to have that man come to your rescue, sir. He is the one man who continually bests you... sir.

I gritted my teeth as I restrained my fist from landing on Frig’s wide, flat nose, choosing instead to walk back to the opening in the deck plating to continue with the task at hand. Half an hour later, the ion meter read Clean.

The nav computer restarted without incident, and we were soon on our way to the second moon of Malcon. We had a contract to pick up a shipment of refined tantric ore for delivery to the Grid. The ore was very expensive and difficult to come by. I was a bit suspicious when given the contract without the promise of an armed escort. The pay was lucrative, and as always, I wasn’t the one to speak up if it meant losing out on the equivalent of four months’ pay for a three-week run.

When we arrived, they swept me through the colony’s customs area without so much as a look at my credentials. The buyer of the tantric ore was supposedly a private shipbuilder who had close ties to the Grid military. From the looks of it, he also had connections throughout the sector that would do his bidding. With the ore being loaded, I made my way to the local dive while Frig remained with the ship.

The Rubious Lounge was about as backwater as they came. The clientele were mostly deep-hole miners who had come from Malcon. They were anything but friendly. A quick DNA scan told the barkeep what liquors were compatible with a Human, and I soon had a Red Brivad ale in my hand. The taste and consistency were more like cough syrup than ale, but the effects were the same. If not for my large stature, and the years of practice consuming almost every known concoction of alcohol, I would have been stumbling out of the joint after my second serving.

I took a sip from my third glass. A Durian approached me at the bar. The Durians were a very secretive species. They wore dark gray cloaks, and it was rare to get a solid glimpse of their scaly blue faces. They moved quietly and never stayed in the same place for any length of time. The timing of his approach and the nature of my cargo had me on edge.

The Durian spoke. I understand you are a Messenger? If so, I may have something of interest to you; for a tidy fee, of course.

Any time a Durian was involved, there was always a fee. Normally, I was not a sucker for mysteries, but something told me that I wanted to hear what it was the Durian had to offer.

We moved from the bar to a dark booth in the corner. I sipped on my ale, while he rolled out a document with letters that translated to EID printed in bold on the front page.

He quickly flipped through the document to give me just a taste of its contents. EID stood for Enhanced Ion Derangement. He claimed the document was for a ship’s drive alteration and that whatever it was that I flew as a Messenger, the addition of a single EID to the ion recombination chamber could greatly enhance its speed, nearly doubling it. He had my full attention. The Durians operated outside of the law—it was something everyone knew—but they had the reputation of delivering on whatever was promised. That reputation was the reason why their products and services always came at a premium.

I began to haggle with the Durian. He became skittish when two Malcon guards passed the entrance to the lounge. I took it as a sign that someone was looking for him and he was eager to leave as soon as was physically possible. I leaned in close, and despite his bad breath and decrepit smell, I made a lowball offer of 2,500 credits, the equivalent of about two weeks’ pay. It was an attempt to get a base price out of him, so real negotiations could begin.

To my surprise, he pushed the document toward me and then held out a credit store in the palm of his hand. I punched the numbers into my own and then watched as the credits vanished from my account. The Durian quickly stood from the booth and moved over to the bar. Seconds later, he disappeared through a back door as the barkeep pressed a button behind the counter. I stuffed the document into a zippered pouch on my pant leg, downed the rest of my ale, and headed back to the Swift.

Frig had handled the placement and tie-down of the ore load in our hold and was prepping the Swift for departure. I asked for the copy of the manifest that came with every haul.

Sir, I think we need to be going. No manifest exists, and the port captain stopped the customs agent as he was coming over to check the cargo. He seemed irritated at first, but after a word from the captain, he walked away smiling. I think it’s in our best interest to leave quickly... sir.

I generally didn’t second-guess Frig’s judgment. I rechecked the tie-downs, and we soon departed from the colony spaceport, leaving before the city’s dawn. Just after liftoff, I dropped a snapshot transmitter onto the moon’s surface. It would relay a warning to us if any other ship left the port, heading in our direction. It was a trick I had picked up from a fellow Messenger who would often take on cargo of a less-than-reputable nature.

Privateers found you to be an easy mark if they could snatch a cargo that you would never report as stolen. I was transporting a load that was of more value than anything I had ever hauled. The contract paperwork looked legit; the job, however, appeared to be anything but that. And for our return trip, the contract directed us to travel through grid 279, an area well off any normally traveled path and at the edge of uncharted space.

Cruising toward the outlying grid, Frig called out an alert from his console. Sir, our snapshot shows that just over an hour after our departure from the colony, a second ship lifted off, heading in our direction. It has been shadowing our heading for the last six hours. Should I lay out decoys, sir?

I turned back to my console and brought up the transmission data from the snapshot beacon we had dropped. The ship was a new Delta Runner class that could travel at nearly thirty light-years over our top speed, making our boost mode upgrade useless. The follower had superior shielding and an armament of four particle streams that would normally rip through the archaic shielding of a Blevin Defender. Even with the enhanced coatings I had purchased and applied to the Swift, she would only be able to withstand a handful of hits from the Delta’s weapons. If the pilot of that ship wanted our cargo, the Swift would be no match in a fight.

Send out a passive probe. Let’s see if our signal jammer is having issues or not. We’ve made several course adjustments since we left the port. If we’re being followed, they’re following a signal.

Frig stepped back to the hold and placed a passive matrix probe into the side launch port. The matrix had top-of-the-line sensors that would detect a signal if our