Prophets

  The debate launched into a tangent about Xi Virginis, and Alexander was about to use his authority as the chair to rein in the arguments when the comm on the table in front of him began flashing. He picked up the device and hit the receive button. The device was muted, so the caller’s voice was translated to text that silently scrolled across the screen in front of an image of the woods southeast of Ashley.

  The text jerked, stuttered, and mistyped some words, and Alexander could almost hear the panicked excitement of the caller embedded in the fragmented text.

  “WE LOST THE MINGLASERS. OBJECT EMITTED SOME SORT WEAPON. DESTROY TWO OUTBUILDINGS MULTIPLE MISSLE HITS.”

  The text kept scrolling past an image of a ruddy translucent dome shedding the effects of multiple missiles.

  “Order!” Alexander snapped at the room before him. The arguments broke off instantly, and a sea of elderly tattooed faces turned toward him.

  “There has been a development,” Alexander said. He then piped the feed from his comm to the room’s main display screen and unmuted it. The flat, shaky images came from someone’s handheld comm. As the view of Mr. Sheldon’s camp filled the giant curving screen above the meeting table, another missile trail sliced the right side of the image in half, ending in the skin of the hemisphere. The hemisphere beyond the rolling explosion turned a deeper red, almost black, as smoke and flame lapped across the surface.

  The voice accompanying the image was shaky. “The thing has taken hits from every missile we have. I have no idea how, but it has a mass-capable Emerson field.”

  Alexander spoke to the comm in his hand, “Can you please repeat the damage?”

  The speaker took a deep breath and said, “We lost the mining lasers and crew. It . . . ate . . . two of our outbuildings closest to the impact site. The shield you see there is two hundred seventy-five meters in diameter.”

  “Has it grown? Moved?”

  “No.”

  “Then conserve your weapons. Let us consider it.”

  “Did you hear me? The mining crew is gone. We don’t even have bodies.”

  “Conserve your weapons.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alexander remuted the comm and looked out at the Grand Triad. “It seems,” he said, “we face a larger threat than we anticipated.”

  The debate erupted again. This time Alexander waited only until the first obvious lines of argument played themselves out. When he spoke, he was the first one to mention nukes.

  It was admittedly drastic, but he was protecting their whole way of life.

  PART THREE

  Prodigal Son

  More individuals are born than can possibly survive.

  —CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882)

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Test of Faith

  Sometimes you get a miracle. Don’t expect another one.

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  It is not necessary to hope in order to undertake, nor to succeed in order to persevere.

  —CHARLES the BOLD (1433-1477)

  Date: 2526.6.3 (Standard) 750,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

  For the first time in her life, Parvi physically felt when a ship fired its tach-drive. A very slight physical jerk as all the indicators on the console in front of her soared toward the red. None showed dangerous levels, but the drive came out of the jump hotter than it should have. The one damping coil that they’d gotten back up to 75 percent capacity was much too narrow an aperture to cool off the drives. The indicators were still edging upward.

  Parvi held her breath until, one by one, very slowly, the readouts started going back down.

  “Isn’t that a beautiful sight?” Wahid said, and Parvi silently agreed.

  Then she realized that he wasn’t talking about the fact that the Eclipse’s engines weren’t going to melt. She looked up and saw a blue-green planet filling most of the holo above the bridge console.

  “I have radio traffic all over the place,” Tsoravitch announced. “Video, audio, data traffic. Our sensors are completely saturated. I have commsats, and at least half a dozen major population centers on the coast of the main continent.”

  Parvi saw Mosasa smiling out of the corner of her eye.

  “We made it,” Wahid said over the PA system. “We fucking made it!”

  Parvi looked at the planet hanging in the holo as she asked, “How close are we?”

  Wahid was grinning, “A fucking bull’s-eye. Point-seven-five million klicks out.”

  “Shit,” Parvi stared at the meters on the console in front of her.

  “What’s the matter?” Wahid said.

  “We’re too close,” Mosasa said, the smile leaving his face. He turned toward Parvi. “How long before the drives cool to safe levels?”

  Parvi shook her head. “I don’t know. At the current rate, twelve hours, but we only have one damaged coil working. Venting continuously that long, it may start to degrade or fail entirely.”

  “How much of a problem are we talking about?”

  Parvi leaned back.“Worst case, if the coil fails completely, the drives will still go cold in about forty-eight hours all by themselves. Being hot that long increases the chance of an eventual failure. We’re also vulnerable if someone operates a tach-drive too close to us. That will cause the drives to heat up again.”

  “Damn.”

  Mosasa turned to Tsoravitch. “Our first priority, make contact with the surface. We can at least warn away outgoing tach-ships and request them to send someone up for repairs. Bill? Are you on-line here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you do anything to help cool the drives?” Parvi asked Bill.

  “We unfortunately lack the equipment. We did everything possible before the jump.”

  “What kind of danger are we in?” she asked. “What if someone does tach in on top of us?”

  “A high-efficiency twenty light-year jump arriving within a two-million-kilometer radius will severely damage the drives. The effect drops off exponentially as the jump distance and drive efficiency decreases.”

  “I just wish there was an AU or two between us and the planet,” Parvi said. “How the hell did we get that kind of navigational error?”

  “Most probably a significant concentration of dark matter directly between here and the former location of Xi Virginis which caused an unexpected space-time curvature. I will be able to give a more thorough analysis once I’ve been able to review the telemetry data from the jump.”

  “At this point,” Mosasa said, “Our main concern is contact. And once the drives are cold, I want preparations for landing.”

  Date: 2526.6.3 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534

  Alexander had never seen the Grand Triad gripped by such chaos. Only yesterday they had come to grips with the alien invader southeast of Ashley. Despite the objections of the Ashley Triad and the area lumber interests, Alexander had finally gotten consensus around the idea of using their limited nuclear arsenal to eliminate the threat from the invader. The site was far enough away from Ashley that they should be able to avoid dangerous levels of contamination.

  Even in a worst case scenario, moving the city’s population was preferable than allowing this alien infection to take root here.

  But even as they had begun discussing the logistics of the strike in their ponderous manner, they faced another invasion.

  On the massive holo screen facing the conference room an image showed a blunt-nosed tach-ship, a hundred meters long, hanging in space less than a million kilometers from Salmagundi. It was close enough that the satellite observatory feeding the image could pick out the rough patchwork of gray-and-brown repairs forming most of the ship’s skin.

  Inset over the image was a transmission showing a red-haired young woman with an unmarked brow. The sound was muted, but Alexander could read the captions on the looped transmission,“This is the Bakunin-registered tach-ship Eclipse. Our drives are hot and we request a safe zone around our position for the next twelve hours at least.
We need assistance in repairing our damping coils, and would also like clearance to land within the next forty-eight hours.”

  Next to the young woman’s transmission was telemetry data gathered by the satellites when the Eclipse tached in, as well as transponder information from the ship itself that, predictably, corresponded with the woman’s assertion that the ship was registered on Bakunin and was named the Eclipse.

  Most problematic was the telemetry data, which showed a point of origin corresponding to Xi Virginis.

  Just like Flynn’s Protean artifact, Alexander thought.

  “We cannot let this craft land,” someone contended for the dozenth time.

  “And how do we prevent that?” someone else countered.

  “They may have information about the alien craft,” a third person said. “We need to direct them to a site that can be contained, and sterilized if necessary.”

  Alexander looked at the Eclipse on the monitor. Was this the prelude to an invasion? It was clearly not a military vessel, and the sensors they’d been able to train on it showed that the ship’s drives were hot. They were not trying to hide their presence, and they weren’t being subtle about their transmissions. It was only a matter of time before some civilian received the Eclipse’s transmissions.

  And, worse, it wouldn’t be long before someone started a dialogue.

  It would be bad enough to have unfiltered alien information leaking into the carefully balanced society of Salmagundi, but Alexander had faith in the ability of their culture to absorb such shocks. It might actually be a good thing if the Great Triad had to deal with some public discontent. It might improve their flexibility.

  What concerned Alexander, and what made this a grave event, was the possibility that information from Salmagundi might leak out to the Confederacy. Salmagundi’s culture was based on technologies that the rest of humanity believed heretical, and history made it seem unlikely that the Confederacy, or its successor, would suffer the Hall of Minds to exist.

  Of even more concern was the presence of the Protean artifact. That technology was even more antithetical to the Confederacy Alexander’s ancestors had fled. The Confederacy had rendered entire planets uninhabitable to destroy the kind of self-replicating nanotech that the Proteans represented. An attack might only focus on the alien artifact, but Alexander couldn’t count on that.

  For all they knew, the Eclipse might only be the vanguard following the Protean artifact, determining how thoroughly they had been contaminated by its contents. In which case, simply destroying them might, in fact, provoke exactly the kind of devastating attack he wanted to avoid.

  “We need to let them land,” Alexander said when one of the debating factions asked for his opinion. “If they put down in an isolated area, we can better control their contact with the population. More important, we can control the information they gather about us.”

  Date: 2526.6.3 (Standard) 2,250,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

  “Engage the tach-drive.”

  A chorus of “Yes, sir!” came from the bridge. The Voice’s sisters may have preceded her by taking these huge leaps into the void, but the edge of excitement in the crew’s acknowledgment showed that, for the men here, they may as well have been the first.

  For all the excitement in the air, the actual jump was anticlimactic. A short series of warning klaxons, a brief flicker as all the holo displays on the bridge reflected the instantaneous changes rendered in the universe outside and in the systems of the Voice. Even so, a subdued cheer went up on the bridge that was even shared by the command staff. The Prophet’s Voice had made it. It had tached a distance quadruple that of any prior drive design. Admiral Hussein didn’t join in the cheering, but he did smile. For a people whose history was tainted with humiliation and oppression, this vessel represented a high point. It was here when the Caliphate surpassed the rest of humanity.

  The bridge crew moved quickly from congratulations back into routine. Things had gone smoothly. They were in orbit around the star HD 101534. During the nonevent of firing the tach-drive, the universe had moved on for a little over twenty-eight days standard.

  A blue planet hung in the holo display, their destination.

  Is that right? Admiral Hussein thought to himself, reviewing the ranging readout next to the planet’s display. It was the first sign that this mission was diverging seriously from the plan.

  “We are confirmed two-point-two-five million kilometers from target,” called an ensign from the nav station repeating what the numbers on the main display told them. That was a serious navigational error; the Voice was supposed to tach in at least two AU from their target. The Voice’s tach-drives were so powerful that they could be dangerously disruptive to any native tach-drives that might be active close to the planet. They had come in way too close.

  It was almost certain, at this range, that the residents of this planet had already detected their presence. If not simply by a visual contact, the Voice was close in enough for the energy spike of their arrival to be detectable on the surface of the planet.

  It took thirty seconds for the other shoe to drop. An NCO at the comm station announced, “We have a distress beacon at oh-point-seven-five million kilometers from target.”

  Admiral Hussein rubbed his temple. This was a worst case scenario, their arrival damaging some native vessel. At best, it was a horrifying diplomatic misstep; at worst, it could be interpreted as an act of war.

  Captain Rasheed ordered the communications officers to attempt contact with the distressed ship and assess its situation.

  The main holo changed from the planet to show a blocky cargo ship tumbling through space with ragged holes where much of the drive section should have been. Clouds of debris and venting atmosphere followed the craft. The ranging readout showed the craft at a little over a million kilometers from the Voice, almost directly between them and the planet.

  God help us all.

  “Sirs, I have a transponder signal. It’s standard encoding, and identifies the ship as the Eclipse, owned by the Mosasa Salvage Corporation, registered on Bakunin.”

  “Bakunin?” Hussein repeated along with Captain Rasheed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The crippled vessel was over ninety light-years away from anywhere it had a right to be. Everything had suddenly become a lot more complicated.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Seraphim

  Sometimes your allies are chosen for you.

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  Survive first, all else comes after.

  —MARBURY SHANE (2044-*2074)

  Date: 2526.6.3 (Standard) 750,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

  A little over thirty minutes after Kugara taped Nickolai to the wall, Wahid’s voice came over the PA system. “We made it! We fucking made it!”

  I guess that means the colony, not to mention the star, is still here. She allowed herself a small measure of relief and looked across at her prisoner.

  She hadn’t wanted to be the one to guard Nickolai, but her years as an enforcer for the DPS had given her the training to handle someone like him. She was probably the only one in seventy light-years who could. Mosasa was certainly aware of that.

  Mosasa’s voice followed Wahid. “We are currently approaching a planetary orbit, and we will commence landing procedures as soon as our drives are cold. That will be approximately twelve hours.”

  Twelve hours? The engines must have suffered a bigger hit than I thought.

  “As a precaution,” he continued, “anyone who is not bridge crew, please remain in your cabins unless absolutely necessary.”

  She was stuck here for twelve hours?

  Kugara shook her head. She stood in the corner of the room opposite the wall where she had secured Nickolai. If their situation hadn’t been so dire, it might have been comical. Kugara’s restraints on Nickolai looked almost like a DPS academy hazing.

  But not really.

  Nickolai hadn’t been beaten, dragged through the
slush, or taped to a freezing metal pole. She briefly remembered participating, dousing vodka on the skin of shivering plebes and igniting it, watching the blue flames ripple across naked skin before burning themselves out. The alcohol content was never quite enough to do permanent physical damage, but the poor bastards training to be part of the DPS didn’t know that, and with their heads taped to the pole, they couldn’t see the vodka burning, allowing them to imagine the worst.

  Kugara remembered laughing at the screams when the victims lost the ability to tell cold from heat, and felt the sting of ice on their arms as if it was a branding iron.

  She stared at Nickolai and thought, And you called me an Angel?

  Kugara didn’t like the universe’s sense of humor.

  The room was silent for a long time before Nickolai finally spoke. “Why haven’t you asked me?”

  Why didn’t I gag you? “Ask you what?”

  “Why?”

  Kugara shook her head. “I don’t care. I’m a hired gun, and I’m not paid to care about your motives. Not unless Mosasa orders me to do an interrogation. I don’t think you want that.”

  There was another long silence, and then Nickolai said, “I apologize for what happened on the observation deck.”

  “What?” For a moment Kugara was confused. Things had happened too quickly for her to fit Nickolai’s confession—the little Mosasa had passed along—into her memory of events on the Eclipse.

  It struck her much harder than it should have when she realized what his apology meant. “That’s when you rigged the tach-comm!”

  It was all crap, from their first meeting onward, a way to distract the one member of the crew that had any training to deal with him. He probably knew enough about her history with the DPS to know exactly how she was going to react when he brought up his damn furry theology.

  “I—” Nickolai started to say.

  “Shut up. Don’t say another word, or I ignore the fact Mosasa wants you in shape for questioning.” She could easily picture herself slowly tearing bits of flesh away from him, not even for the sake of gaining information, just to teach the tiger a lesson. She was no stranger to that kind of procedure; she had broken people with little more than a pocketknife.