come across as a little shitty about it.” She sighed. “Have to admit, though, I was really starting to enjoy looking forward to a life that wasn’t about war. One where the most I’d have to bitch about was those mosquito things while you try to catch tout.”
“Trout. With an r.”
“Whatever.”
Dash took her hand. Leira let him, but it was a few seconds before she closed her fingers around his.
She turned to him with a rueful smile. “I’m sorry. I sound like I’m taking this out on you, and that’s not fair.”
“Hey, I’m still the Messenger, at least until the Archetype starts moving like an old man and needs a cane.”
“That will not happen. I prefer jets over a physical crutch. It looks more militaristic,” Sentinel said.
“Are . . . are you telling me you’ve got secret style?” Dash laughed.
“Possibly. I will let you know.” Sentinel sounded dignified as ever.
“Well then, I’ve got job security and an assurance of style. Don’t worry about any minor disagreements,” Dash said.
“Still doesn’t excuse me sounding like I’m blaming you for some new bad guys.”
Dash shrugged. “I’m a super-powered, nearly invincible mech at heart, sort of. Besides, we don’t know that these are bad guys. They destroyed a drone that kind of popped up right in their faces. For all we know, they might be very nice people who overreacted—or it might have been an automated point defense. Wars have been started for the wrong reasons, and we can afford to proceed with caution through this—ah, what are we calling it?”
“The Black Gate.”
Dash gave her a look. “The Black Gate?”
“That’s what I heard the Orion pilots have taken to calling it.”
“Huh. Kind of ominous, but I guess it fits.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence, each with their thoughts. Despite his hopeful words, Dash did not have a good feeling about this so-called Black Gate, or whatever lay beyond it. It seemed awfully coincidental that it appeared inside one of the systems that the Unseen had specifically designed for habitation by the Cygnus Realm—which had been responsible for the final defeat of the Golden.
In other words, maybe the final defeat of the Golden wasn’t as final as they thought. Maybe this Black Gate was a Golden failsafe, something designed to strike back despite them having been utterly destroyed. Or maybe they hadn’t defeated all of the Golden. Space was a big place, after all.
The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. Dash stepped out, Leira at his side.
“Messenger,” Custodian said. “There is an urgent message from the commander of the Orion mechs guarding the anomaly near Planet Fifteen.”
Dash cut his eyes to Leira. They’d stationed a flight of four of the Orion mechs—essentially, scaled-down, somewhat generic versions of the Archetype and the other mechs—near the Black Gate as a quick reaction force. The Orion mechs were nowhere near as capable as their bigger brethren, but they were still potent fighting machines in their own right. Four of them should be enough to handle anything likely to come their way—emphasis on should be.
“Go ahead.” Dash quickened his pace toward the docking bay that had become the Archetype’s home.
“Dash, Randal here. Look, we just had two objects emerge from this anomaly—we’ve been calling it the Black Gate—”
“The Black Gate’s a great name for it, sure. What sort of objects?”
“Not sure. Sleek, about ten meters long, so dark and stealthy that we almost missed them. We intercepted them, and one turned onto a trajectory straight for us. No comms, no signals, nothing. It was tracking, too—locked onto Orion Three, my wingman, so we finally said to hell with it and fired a warning shot.”
“And?”
“It accelerated. Came straight at us, banging away with a full suite of active sensors. We finally fired on it, tried to disable it, but it blew apart. Nothing left but fragments. This all happened over about thirty seconds, so we didn’t have time to check in, send a SITREP, anything.”
“That’s okay.” Dash waved at Leira as she peeled off, hurrying for the Swift, which had its own docking bay apart from the Archetype. “Sounds like you guys did everything right. Anyway, gather up as much of the wreckage as you can, and make sure you document it all—” Dash stopped. “Wait. You said two of these things came through the Gate. You’ve only mentioned destroying one of them. What happened to the other one?”
“That’s the thing. It went trans-light, but not in a way we were able to track. So it’s gone.”
“Shit.