Prophets

  In this new faith, mankind became the Fallen, a new Satan. It was little wonder why the Fifteen Worlds had little contact with human space.

  It also made Nickolai’s presence in the midst of the Fallen all the more remarkable. He obviously held to these scriptures, so merely being in the presence of men would be threatening to his soul.

  The only ones with any hope of God’s grace were those poor instruments mankind had imperfectly molded from the clay. Untainted by man’s sin, they still had some chance to attain the Kingdom of Heaven. But mixing with the Fallen threatened to taint Nickolai as well.

  Nickolai explained to Mallory that he had been damned before he had ever set foot on Bakunin. He had been young and foolish, and had thought that his family was more powerful than the priests. He had thought that he could do what he wanted without fear of retribution.

  He had been wrong, and in payment for his sins the priests had burned out his eyes and severed his right arm and left him to live as a beggar on Bakunin.

  “Your eyes and arm?” Mallory asked.

  “Yes. This,” he said as he held out his right arm and extended his claws. Mallory could see a metallic glint from them. It was the only sign that the arm was artificial. “And my eyes are reconstructions, made for me on Bakunin. I am present here in order to repay the debt I incurred for them.”

  “But why did they punish you so harshly?”

  “Harsh?” Nickolai whispered. “They allowed me to live.”

  Nickolai’s sin was grave in the eyes of St. Rajasthan.

  Man had created many species before abandoning that kind of genetic engineering. Originally, there had been thousands. The simple act of reproduction was of grave concern. One of the first commandments of the nonhuman faith was “Mate only with your own kind.”

  The world Grimalkin was in many ways similar to the world Mallory knew. The more secular power someone had, the more they could bend the rules of the Church. Humanity might have fallen, but they had no monopoly on corruption and hypocrisy. As long as the transgressions of the royal family were kept private, the priests ignored them.

  So at first, when Nickolai was involved in a dalliance with a servant, a panther-black feline who was not only a different social class but a different species, no one overtly cared as long as the affair was discreet. Young royals often bedded servants before the family chose a mate for them. Such liberties never lasted long and were of little consequence.

  Both truisms proved false in Nickolai’s case. The affair lasted months, when weeks were more typical. It became obvious to everyone in House Rajasthan that things had passed beyond the venting of adolescent lust. Nickolai had entangled himself in an impossible romance, and his family had to intervene, taking his lover and sending her to an estate on the opposite end of the planet while they rushed him into a hastily arranged marriage.

  Nickolai’s family had acted too late. Cross-species fertility was very low, but hybrids were possible, and by the time his family relocated his panther lover, she was already heavy with his cubs. When his children were born, the public evidence of Nickolai’s sin was too great for the priests to ignore. In the Church’s eyes, the sterile crossbreed infants were abominations.

  Nickolai’s children were drowned before he knew they existed while their mother was flayed alive.

  “But you, they let live?”

  “I am a scion of House Rajasthan. Executing me would have been problematic, preferable as that might have been.”

  That, and allowing him to live with this on his memory. That was as much punishment as taking a limb. Mallory couldn’t help but think that St. Rajasthan was correct in the near-Gnostic interpretation of his species’ creation. Man had aped God and made creatures in Man’s image, and in so doing bequeathed the creatures the worst of human nature.

  God save Nickolai, and God forgive the men responsible for his existence.

  “I’ll pray for you, Nickolai.”

  Nickolai shook his head slowly. “Save your breath, priest. I am as damned as you are.”

  “You hold no hope for forgiveness?”

  “I have done worse. I’ve taken the instruments of the Devil into my own flesh. I have prostituted myself to the Fallen.”

  “What comfort can I give you, then?”

  “In my faith, it is a matter of honor to bear witness for your sins before a servant of God. We do this in anticipation of our final judgment. I wish to face that moment with dignity, and not as a frightened cub mewling for its mother.”

  “My faith has a similar ritual. Do you wish me to consider this your confession?”

  “If that is what you call it.”

  “Yes, I will do so, my son. And I will still pray for your soul.”

  Nickolai paused, but eventually he said, “Thank you.”

  “Is there anything more that you wish to confess?”

  Nickolai nodded. “Yes. And I need your forgiveness more than God’s.”

  Nickolai knew that he was going to die, and it would be sooner rather than later. He knew it as soon as the Eclipse shuddered in response to the aborted tach-comm signal. Even if the ship was still functional, they were cast into the void, alone in every possible sense of the word.

  All that was left was to make his testimony to the closest representative of God he had available, the falsely-accused priest. The fact that he was human might have been better than talking to his own kind. Testifying his sins to the Fallen was humbling, and damned as he was, God was still scourging him for his arrogance.

  St. Rajasthan had preached that pride was first among sins, the cause of Lucifer’s fall and likewise cause of Mankind’s fall. Nickolai had been guilty of more than his share.

  When he finished talking, he watched the man that until recently he had known as Staff Sergeant Fitzpatrick. He still was unable to read subtle human expressions, but Nickolai could tell from the long time that it took Father Mallory to respond that he had made an impression.

  “You sabotaged the tach-comm.” It wasn’t a question, or an accusation, just a flat statement.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I was paying a debt. Perhaps I owe too much.”

  “But you don’t know why this Mr. Antonio wanted you to do this?”

  “No. He told me many things, but never his own reasons.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  Nickolai told the priest what Mr. Antonio had told him, of how he knew that Nickolai would be selected for this mission, and what he knew of Mosasa’s nature and history. He told Mallory Mosasa’s story from the old pirate’s first life on the Nomad and his discovery of the AI cluster on the derelict Luxembourg to Mosasa’s final co-option by the AIs he kept. He told how Mosasa and the four other AIs were involved in the founding of Bakunin, and how their social engineering kept the anarchic planet stable in the face of the Confederacy, and how that same social engineering used Bakunin as a fulcrum to destabilize and ultimately destroy the old Terran Confederacy—the long deferred goal of the Race that had built the AIs, the last pyrrhic victory of the Genocide War.

  He also told the priest how the single Race AI forming Mosasa’s brain was the only one of the five to survive to the present. Two had been lost during the Confederacy’s collapse, two more when Mosasa returned to the home planet of the Race.

  Mallory shook his head. “This man who hired you knew all this?”

  “This is what he told me.”

  “Do you know if any of this is true?”

  “I cannot say—” Nickolai was interrupted by static over the PA system.

  Mosasa’s voice came from above. “I can.”

  Mallory looked up at the ceiling even though the speakers were invisible. “Mosasa? How dare you!” Nickolai was sensitive to the scent of human emotion, and the room was suddenly ripe with the smell of rage. Mallory’s fists clenched so hard that his forearms vibrated.

  “Father Mallory—”

  “This was a confession, you mechanical a
trocity. Do you have no respect—”

  “Stop testing me, priest.”

  “Mosasa!” Mallory yelled to the ceiling. Mosasa didn’t respond. “Mosasa!”

  “Father Mallory?”

  “Please forgive me, I didn’t realize—”

  “I did,” Nickolai told him.

  “You knew he would be watching?”

  “He is a creature of Satan. He lives in wires, not in flesh. He sees though every camera on this ship, hears through every microphone. I knew he would hear this.”

  “Why?”

  “We will die soon, and I needed to make my final testimony.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Apocrypha

  When you ask if you want to know, you don’t.

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  The trick to leadership is keep moving forward, even if you’re wrong.

  —Boris KALECSKY (2103-2200)

  Date: 2526.05.24 (Standard) Xi Virginis

  For the first time in a century, Mosasa felt as if he was floundering. The holes in the fabric of his world were growing with each passing moment, opening into unknowns vast, deep, and larger than the sparse data that surrounded them. For the first time in 175 years, he moved without any idea of what the consequences of his actions might be. The data flowing to him now was practically nonexistent, and he was fumbling blindly.

  Worse than the missing star, which was completely unexpected, was the sabotage. There was no way he had to make the act comprehensible. He had imprisoned the Vatican agent, Father Mallory, because he couldn’t propose any other logical alternative.

  But Mallory hadn’t destroyed the tach-comm. He couldn’t have. The purpose of having him here was as a data conduit back to the Vatican, and through them, to the non-Caliphate powers. Having a communication channel was primary to Mallory’s mission, and their situation now, with the loss of the comm and the power drain, was as dire for him as it was for Mosasa.

  But once the crew had discovered Fitzpatrick’s was an alias, Mosasa had to confine him. The dynamics of the crew allowed no other action if he desired to keep a stable equilibrium.

  But the very fact that the comm had been sabotaged meant that the equilibrium Mosasa perceived was illusory. And if he couldn’t truly understand the dynamics within the confines of the microscopic universe of the Eclipse, how could he trust what he saw of the universe outside it?

  Even if Kugara and Tsoravitch found EM signals leaking from the colony at HD 101534, those were eight years old. How could he be certain that, when they tached into the system, the world, the star, would still be there?

  His isolation from the data streams that fueled the awareness of his machine half allowed uncertainty to grow within him like a cancer. Before leaving Bakunin, he could see the turbulent flow of society, economics, politics as easily as ripples in a pond. . . .

  Now he was so blind that it was becoming hard to credit that he had ever seen at all. The longer he was isolated from the flow of information, the larger his blind spots became—infecting scenarios he had already plotted. He could no longer even be sure of decisions he had made before this point.

  Mosasa stood, locked inside his own cabin, funneling every data channel on the ship through his internal sensors. He obsessively watched every millimeter of the Eclipse trying to fill the void of not-knowing. The flow of data traveled through his mind like windblown leaves through an abandoned city.

  Included with the pathetic trickle of data were feeds from every security camera and microphone on the ship. A universe of information so small that even the shell of his human consciousness was aware of the content. He saw the crew working on making the Eclipse ready for the next jump. He saw the scientists at computers trying to make sense of the impossible absence of Xi Virginis. He saw Nickolai enter Mallory’s cabin.

  Nickolai?

  At first Mosasa was confused at the interaction. The nonhuman now formed the security detail with Kugara, so he was one of four people who could open the seal on Mallory’s cabin. But he didn’t have any reason to interact with the traitor priest. . . .

  Then he heard the talk and realized the ritual nature of the discussion. Nickolai had a legitimate fear that they wouldn’t survive the journey and had sought Mallory out because of his status as a priest. It all made sense.

  Except, in Mosasa’s analysis, Nickolai wouldn’t be driven toward such a ritual exercise unless he believed he carried some weight of guilt. Guilt beyond the circumstances of his exile, which was largely neutralized by a sense of pride and determination.

  Mosasa realized what that guilt had to be before Nickolai actually confirmed it.

  How did I not see it was him? Why did I not see?

  Mosasa realized why. Trying to see the tiger’s own personality next to the overwhelming force of belief, tradition, and ritual was like trying to see an asteroid whipping across the surface of a star. His own motives were practically invisible, and if Nickolai’s employer had the sense to use the forms of his culture to direct his action, manipulate him . . .

  The very things that made him a perfect candidate for Mosasa—the nonhuman perspective, the predictability of his indoctrination, his ingrained prejudices—those same things made Nickolai the perfect spy.

  Can someone have targeted me so well?

  When Nickolai told Mallory of Mosasa’s origin, Mosasa began to truly feel fear. He revealed the story he had told Tsoravitch, but he didn’t stop. He told of how the five AIs had helped stabilize Bakunin in the face of the Confederacy, and how they had helped lead to the Confederacy’s downfall, leaving three AIs surviving.

  Until then, the data was all what Mosasa would have considered discoverable by some human agency. But the tiger didn’t stop there.

  Nickolai’s employer, Mr. Antonio, had revealed things that no human should have known. Mr. Antonio had told Nickolai what had happened at Procyon, when Mosasa had returned to his homeworld.

  Long before there had been a Tjaele Mosasa, Race AIs had been used in the covert war the Race waged on Earth. When the intelligence agencies on Earth had discovered the Race’s social manipulation, they had managed to capture the Race’s own devices and had begun understanding how to use them.

  By the time the Genocide War with the Race had erupted in full force, the United Nations had intelligence ships like the Luxembourg equipped with ranks of alien AIs. Near the end of the war, the Luxembourg had been neutralized by a Race drone weapon that then guarded the captured ship for a Race salvage team that never came.

  The pirate Tjaele Mosasa had revived five of those AI units, including the brain from the drone weapon. Mosasa had used the devices to gain an insurmountable business advantage and amass a considerable fortune. Eventually, the living Mosasa had traded his fleshy body for a cybernetic one, gifting his thoughts and memories to one of those AIs.

  The AIs, however, never forgot their purpose. Autonomy alone was not enough to undo the directives the Race had programmed into their being. Free of human constraint, they had worked for their ultimate goal; the fall of the human political hegemony and freedom for the Race who had been confined to their planet by automated battle stations since the end of the Genocide War.

  The quintet of AIs had helped stabilize Bakunin, preventing a founding of a state, causing a weak point in the Terran Confederacy. The five of them could mimic humanity enough to interact, infiltrate, and directly implement the kind of social engineering the Race had designed them for. In the end, after centuries of work, they had achieved their goal. The Confederacy had collapsed.

  Of the original five, only three had survived to depart for Procyon and the Race homeworld; Mosasa of course; Random Walk, who had once been formed of two AIs and was now half himself and somewhat unstable; and Ambrose, a hybrid of flesh and cybernetics who had smuggled one of the five brains into the heart of the Confederacy.

  Only Mosasa survived to depart the Race homeworld and return to Bakunin, the only one to see the truth and remain willing to survive.


  The Race was dead.

  All of them.

  What mankind had done, in trapping them on the surface, was force them to revisit the racial reluctance toward direct physical violence. The taboo that had rendered them so weak against mankind.

  But that taboo had existed for a reason: it had been the only thing that had allowed the Race to survive as long as it had. As soon as enough of them had cast aside such reservations, the results had been catastrophic. Cities lay in ruins, entire ecosystems had been devastated, and a planet that had been only marginally habitable to begin with had become sterile.

  The surviving half of Random Walk had simply shut himself off. Either the sacrifice had been too much or he couldn’t accept the loss of what had been their reason for existence, their reason for acting at all. Without their creators, there was no purpose left to serve.

  Ambrose, on the other hand, went insane. He attacked Mosasa, accusing him of allowing this to happen. His attempt to strangle Mosasa proved fruitless—Mosasa’s neck was completely cybernetic, while Ambrose’s half-human body was still in large part flesh and bone. Failing the attempt to kill Mosasa, he ran off, screaming that he would find someone, some member of the Race still alive.

  But their creators no longer existed, and Mosasa returned alone.

  Mosasa was speaking though the PA system to Mallory, shouting, before he was quite aware of what he was doing. No, this is bad, I don’t act impulsively, I don’t act on fear . . .

  He sealed the door to Mallory’s cabin and cut his transmission even as Mallory responded to his interruption.

  Mosasa reined in his desperate emotions and contacted Kugara, the only security team he had left. She looked up from a console on the bridge, surprised at Mosasa’s disembodied voice. “Kugara, take Wahid and go to Fitzpatrick’s cabin. Take Nickolai into custody.”

  She looked around, as if searching for him. “Nickolai, why?”

  “He confessed to sabotaging the tach-comm—”