Prophets

  It took a moment for Parvi to realize what was happening.

  “The lifeboats,” Parvi said to Wahid.

  “What?”

  “The drive failure caused enough damage to trigger the emergency systems to abandon ship.” Another distant hammer blow. “The Eclipse is launching the lifeboats. Everyone locked in the cabins is being evacuated.”

  That meant everyone except Bill and the people on the bridge.

  Tsoravitch sucked in a ragged breath and asked. “What could make that happen?”

  “A catastrophic failure,” Mosasa said quietly. “Complete loss of shipwide life support, imminent structural failure, fire, explosion—”

  Another hammer blow, and a slight lurch felt through the floor.

  Mosasa pushed away from the bridge console and pulled himself toward the wall. Once there, he began pulling open access panels.

  “What are you doing?” Tsoravitch asked.

  “A failure in the data lines to the main console,” Mosasa said, “We shouldn’t have lost the feed from the rest of the Eclipse.”

  He’s assuming there’s still something out there to get a feed from.

  “Tsoravitch,” he shouted, “get over here. I’m going to need your help.”

  Another hammer blow, and another lurch.

  Parvi could picture the lifeboats bursting from the skin of the Eclipse, like parasitic larvae burrowing out of the flesh of their host.

  Tsoravitch pulled herself over to Mosasa, and the two of them began digging into the guts of the bridge’s data network.

  Wahid turned to look at Parvi. “Think our boss saw this one coming in his AI crystal ball?”

  Parvi shook her head as another hammer blow echoed through the bridge. This one seemed farther away, and the lurch that followed weaker. “No,” she told him. “I don’t think he had any idea.”

  Parvi saw strands of optical cable and electronic components floating between Mosasa and Tsoravitch. She wondered if they did get the bridge reconnected to any external sensors whether she would want to know what it showed.

  The central holo fuzzed a moment, then came to life. She looked up and found herself staring down a surreal view of one of the Eclipse’s central corridors. For a moment it felt as if she were suddenly floating down somewhere else in the ship.

  “They got the security cameras on-line,” Wahid said. He slid over to the comm station and started trying to control the display. The view panned as Wahid manipulated the controls.

  The corridor appeared undamaged at first, just dully lit by the emergency lights. Then Parvi noticed the debris floating in the air, shiny flecks of silver. “Ice,” she whispered. Faint clouds of ice crystals floated in the corridor. Something bad had happened to the life-support systems.

  The camera panned past one of the emergency lamps and Parvi saw that some dull particulate matter floated alongside the ice crystals—soot, or ash. Then the camera panned to one of the cabin doors.

  “Holy fuck,” Wahid whispered.

  The cabins were all behind two doors sandwiched together. The outer door was supposed to remain sealed when the lifeboats ejected, but this one had failed, completely. Either the outer door had never closed at all, or the force of the lifeboat ejecting opened it again. The cabin door looked out on empty space.

  Wahid cycled through other security cameras, showing more empty corridors. He found the open cargo bay, and Parvi saw the Paralian in his massive life-support equipment, his manipulator arms buried deep in an open control panel.

  “Probably trying to do the same thing we are,” Wahid said.

  “Can you contact him?” Parvi asked.

  He shook his head. “All I got here are the cameras. I don’t even have the PA system yet.”

  He cycled though some more cameras until he found a view of the engines. Of what used to be the engines. It took several moments for Parvi to recognize what she saw, only partly because the camera itself was damaged and giving everything blurry rainbow halos and fuzzy unstable outlines.

  The tach-drive had torn itself apart. Parvi could only see the anchorages where the massive coils used to be. Nothing recognizable remained of the drive itself. Metal twisted in on itself and melted into odd, puttylike forms. The skin of the Eclipse had peeled back from the engine compartment, exposing everything to the stars.

  Parvi stared at the wreckage openmouthed. The tach-drive had completely consumed itself; it was miraculous that they were still alive.

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

  The bridge of the Voice had become less crowded in the past fifteen minutes. Shortly after seeing the Eclipse, Admiral Hussein had given the order, “Every command officer must return to his ship, and I want each vessel in the fleet crewed, powered, and ready to disengage within the next hour.”

  His staff had nodded, a few with widened eyes. Those were the younger men who had not held command long enough to take to heart the old truism, “Battle plans never survive contact with the enemy.”

  The more experienced staff had seen immediately what Admiral Hussein had seen. The presence of the Eclipse in the space around HD 101534 changed the entire tenor of their mission here. There was a good chance that they were not making first contact, and that they might face forces from Indi, or Centauri, or even Sirius. Only God Himself knew what might be waiting for them on this planet.

  They needed to be ready for it, whatever it was.

  The main display on the Prophet’s Voice was dominated by tactical holos. On the main holo, two million kilometers from the green triangle representing the Voice, glowed a dotted yellow line representing the orbital path of the inhabited planet that the Voice was supposed to bring into the Caliphate’s fold. On that yellow line was a small blue sphere representing the planet’s current location.

  A little past and above the midpoint between the green triangle and the blue sphere flashed a bright red triangle. Fortunately, there was no sign of any other craft in orbit.

  “Any contact with the Eclipse yet?” Captain Rasheed asked the NCO at the communications station.

  “No, just the transponder and six distress beacons leaving the ship.”

  “Lifeboats?” Hussein asked the captain. “Can we intercept them?”

  Captain Rasheed ordered the lifeboats highlighted on the main screen. Six red dotted trails sprang up between the Eclipse and the planet. He stared at the display a moment, as velocity and bearings started to appear next to the six contacts. “No, we can’t ready an intercept craft and get it there before they reach the planet.”

  Admiral Hussein rubbed his temple. “The ship itself, can we intercept it?”

  The captain nodded, “If we launch a salvage team within the next thirty minutes, we might reach them in two hours.”

  “Do it.”

  The captain ordered a pair of ships, the Jeddah and the Jizan, to launch on an intercept course. The Jizan was an engineering vessel, capable of repairs and salvage. The Jeddah was a fully-armed drop-ship capable of planetside engagements.

  Within half an hour, the tactical display showed a pair of green triangles departing from the Voice and speeding toward the new ship.

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

  In the hours since the engines failed, the bridge slowly filled with floating debris as Mosasa and Tsoravitch pulled out burned-out components from the panels around the bridge. Parvi wasn’t remotely technical, and until they resurrected something she could fly, she was relegated to watching the other three work on the electronics of the bridge in relative silence, retrieving any segments of cable, broken fragments of plastic insulation, or discolored circuits as they floated by. She stashed the debris in a mesh bag so they didn’t float into something important and cause them worse problems.

  As if things could get worse.

  Despite the best efforts from Mosasa and Tsoravitch to contain the stuff, every few minutes, Parvi had to grab some migrating fragment of flayed ele
ctronics. She was in the midst of bagging a fragment of optical cable that had gotten caught in her ponytail when Wahid shouted “I got contact with Bill!”

  Parvi pulled herself upright. “Is he okay?”

  Over the PA system, Bill’s synthetic human voice spoke. “I find myself and my support systems unharmed.”

  Mosasa turned around. His dragon tattoo seemed particularly sinister in the dim emergency lighting. “What the hell happened to my ship?”

  “An unprecedented surge in the engines,” Bill said. “It is unique in my experience, but the energy surge was exponentially higher than expected for normal tach-drive interference.”

  “Did you see what the fuck happened to that drive?” Wahid said.

  “I salvaged the data. And I have detected something I believe is important.”

  Mosasa floated up and grabbed the console next to the navigator’s station, bringing himself to a stop. “What?” he asked.

  “I have connected to an external camera array. I will patch the images up to you. Can you see the data?”

  “I’ve got it, Bill.” Wahid said.

  As Wahid connected Bill’s data to the main holo display, Tsoravitch floated up next to Parvi.

  The holo shimmered and stabilized into a view of a star field that, at first, looked unremarkable.

  “Well, what the hell? Look at that.” Wahid broke out in a grin. “Look at that!”

  In a moment, Parvi could tell why Wahid was grinning. Centered in the image, barely visible, was a pair of spacecraft. As she watched, they got noticeably larger.

  Tsoravitch grabbed Parvi’s arm and shouted, “Yes! Yes!”

  “Can we magnify this at all?” Mosasa asked.

  “Sure,” Wahid said, and the image zoomed in on the two vessels. One was clearly a drop-ship with a smooth skin and the profile of a lifting body that could provide some sort of maneuvering capability in an atmosphere. The other had the spidery appearance of a vessel never meant to descend into a gravity well.

  Parvi could also now see the green-and-white crescent markings of the Caliphate.

  “Apparently,” Wahid said, “we didn’t beat them here.”

  “Do we have any of our communications array up?” Parvi asked.

  “Not yet,” Tsoravitch whispered. Parvi could tell that she was remembering the holo of the attack on Mosasa’s salvage yard.

  Parvi hugged her shoulder. “Don’t worry. If they had evil intent, we’d know by now. We’re well within range of that ship’s missile battery.”

  Mosasa shook his head. “It’s wrong . . .”

  “What’s wrong?” Wahid asked. “You said yourself that they were going—”

  Mosasa slammed his hand against the console. “They didn’t have the time.”

  “Uh, should I point out the obvious,” Wahid said. “They are here. You know, maybe your crystal ball’s a little cloudy.”

  Mosasa looked at Wahid, and all the expression drained from his face. “Perhaps it is over,” he whispered.

  The flat way he said it chilled Parvi. It was as if he had given up.

  “Are you still there, Bill?”

  “Yes, Mr. Mosasa.”

  “They will probably come through the cargo bay. Prepare to greet our visitors.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Descent

  Know when to hang on, when to let go, and when not to get on the ride.

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  On the road to hell, seat belts are optional.

  —ROBERT Celine (1923-1996)

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

  Hours after they took Nickolai away, Mallory prayed for the wisdom to know what his purpose in this debacle was. Even as they approached a planet and relative safety, Nickolai’s words still burned in his ears, his accusations about Mosasa and his fatalistic belief that the Eclipse was doomed.

  Half of him wasn’t even surprised when the cabin started shaking.

  The klaxons and emergency lights announced a hull breach and Parvi’s panicked voice burst though the PA, “Everyone to the nearest lifeboat/cabin now! We’ve had a critical overlo—”

  A massive explosion threw Mallory out of his cot. When he pushed himself off the floor, he found himself floating upward. Something jerked, and the lights went out.

  After several moments, a dull red light came on above the doorway and began flashing rhythmically.

  The lifeboat’s going to launch.

  Mallory pulled himself to the wall so he could fold the cot shut, locking it against the wall. Then he pushed himself to the opposite wall as his cabin vibrated with the first shock of the bolts blowing free between the lifeboat and the rest of the ship. He unfolded the acceleration couch as the second shock hit. How many? he wondered as he wrapped himself into the safety harness. He counted the third shock, and the cabin felt as if it was half floating. Four. Five. Six.

  A giant invisible fist slammed into his gut as the lifeboat’s engine kicked in, blowing him away from the Eclipse. It only took a second or two for him to realize that the lifeboat was doing more than clearing the vicinity of the Eclipse. Even through the blast of two or three Gs of forward acceleration, he could feel the pitch and yaw of the boat maneuvering beyond the impulse to escape.

  The too-long acceleration must have nearly played out the small disposable drive attached to the boat. Once it cut out and Mallory was able to free himself from the acceleration couch, the nav computer spoke over the PA. “Three hours until atmospheric insertion.”

  Date: 2526.6.3 (Standard) 300,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

  All the lifeboats would have jettisoned, and the nav computers would attempt to put them down in a cluster close to population, if there were any obvious population centers. The computers would try to put the boats someplace survivable—no mountain ranges, deep oceans, desert, or tundra.

  The operative word there was try.

  If they were lucky, the beacons would be working and the survivors would be able to reach each other on foot. Mallory pulled out the emergency kit and found the comm beacon for his lifeboat. He pulled out the little handheld unit and scanned for the other lifeboats. The display showed six active beacons out there, but no sign which of them had survivors—no transmissions other than the standard emergency broadcasts.

  Someone has to be first, Mallory thought. He switched the unit to transmit.

  “This is Fitz—This is Mallory, from the Eclipse. Is anyone receiving this transmission?”

  He repeated himself a half dozen times before he heard a voice return, “Hello, hello, hello?”

  It was coming from beacon number five.

  “Yes, I can hear you.”

  “—bzzt—ron Dörner. I’m with Dr. Pak and Dr. Brody. Dr. Brody’s injured.”

  “What happened?”

  “—bzzt—during acceleration. His wrist is broken—bzzt—unconscious.”

  “Do you have the medkit out?”

  “Yes.”

  Mallory talked her through treating Brody. The doctor had a compound fracture and a head wound. Fortunately he was breathing okay and his pupils were responsive. Mallory spent a half hour talking Dr. Dörner through stabilizing the fracture and getting Brody strapped into one of the acceleration couches. If they were lucky, that would be enough to get him to ground safely.

  “Stow everything you can for reentry.” Mallory told her. “It isn’t going to be pleasant.”

  “Yes—”

  “When you land, don’t leave the vicinity of the lifeboat unless you’re in immediate danger. These things will try to cluster their landings, and if you stay by the beacon, I can probably reach you before anyone else.”

  He could hear the hesitation in her voice before she said, “Yes.”

  She is the one who ID’d me to Wahid and Mosasa . . .

  The air went dead for a moment, then he heard another voice. “Mallory?”

  He thought he recognized the voice. “Kugara?”

&
nbsp; “Yes. Had some issues to clean up here before I hunted down the radio.”

  “Everything all right with you?”

  “We’re alive here.”

  “Did you hear Dörner?”

  “The tail end. Rendezvous at boat five?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m shutting down to conserve power. See you on the ground.”

  “See you on the ground.” He shut down his own transmission.

  Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi Orbit-HD 101534

  When the PA gave him the ten-minute warning, he had already stowed everything in the cabin and strapped himself into an acceleration couch. Mallory felt the rotation of the cabin as it turned the bulkhead he was strapped to toward the direction of motion.

  The planet’s atmosphere announced itself with a vibration and the beginnings of pressure in his gut as the lifeboat began to decelerate. The vibration continued, intensifying. The fist in Mallory’s gut kept pressing, joined by invisible thumbs pressing into his eyes and a choking pressure in his throat. His pulse throbbed in his ears, vying with the sound of his cabin shaking apart.

  Another sound joined the vibration, a demonic wind. The sound of superheated atmosphere shredding past the shielding of the lifeboat. Mallory’s vision grayed, and the cabin plunged into darkness. He didn’t know if his eyesight failed or if the emergency lighting died.

  The vibration, the roaring of the atmosphere, and the pressure all increased until it felt as if the lifeboat was about to collapse into a crumpled ball and burn up.

  It didn’t, and after a short eternity the shaking stopped and the pressure eased. The boat had made it into the atmosphere, and the braking hadn’t incinerated it. He felt weightless again, but this time it was because he was in free fall.

  The lights flickered back on and he felt the drag of gravity as the lifeboat hit its terminal velocity.

  Mallory swallowed and waited for the jerk of the drag chute. For several long moments he imagined the chutes failing, and the lifeboat slamming into the ground at full speed. The wait was long enough for him to pray that the shock of the initial impact would kill him instantaneously, before the bulkhead above him slammed down like a boot crushing a cockroach.