He tensed, fists clenched, eyes closed, expecting the fatal impact at any moment. His implants drove adrenaline through his system enhancing his perception and reaction times to absolutely no effect except to distort his time sense to the point he had no idea how long he had been falling.
When he felt the sudden deceleration pressing into his gut, it took him a few seconds past the panicked shock to realize that he hadn’t slammed into the ground. The chute had deployed.
Thank you, Lord, Mallory thought. He stared up at the bulkhead above him with watering eyes and whispered, “If it isn’t too much to ask, after all this, please grant me a soft landing.”
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534
The boat slammed into something, rolling forward until something snapped, resonating through the cabin. The whole lifeboat slid forward, shaking and tumbling. The cabin flipped over completely four times before coming to a rocking, unsteady rest.
It took five seconds after the boat stopped moving for Mallory to get his bearings. The lifeboat had rolled so that the original floor was at a forty-five-degree angle sloping down from his feet toward the ground. He dangled from his acceleration couch, facing down.
He undid the straps, one by one, feeling the whole descent in every joint. That combined with the crashing fatigue that was the aftereffect of his implants hyping his metabolism. Climbing out of the couch was a complicated maneuver, disengaging himself from the acceleration couch without falling the three meters into the bulkhead below him. He had to hold onto the crash webbing while he undid the buckles. Even though he was prepared for the drop, he released the last buckle too fast and almost dislocated his shoulder rolling out.
He hung on, half standing on the sloped floor, half dangling from the harness. Standing there, it struck him full force.
I’m still alive.
If he had made it, the others had a good chance, too. And Brody was going to need some help. He let himself go, falling to lean against the bulkhead where the cot was still stowed. He pulled out all the emergency gear.
He took out the comm unit and tried raising the Eclipse, but got no response. But he didn’t expect one.
He tried to call the two occupied lifeboats, but didn’t get a response there either. While he could see the beacons for the lifeboats with Brody and Kugara, both stationary, he couldn’t raise them.
He clipped the unit to his belt. He could try periodically once he got moving. Until they were in contact again, the plan was to rendezvous at lifeboat number five.
Thankfully the range given by the beacon put all the lifeboats within a fifty-klick radius. Lifeboat five, fortunately, landed close to the center of the cluster. So while Mallory was about thirty kilometers from Kugara’s lifeboat, he was about fifteen kilometers from lifeboat five. Nickolai and Kugara had ten more klicks than he did to get to the rendezvous, but that was still closer to them than Mallory’s lifeboat.
Though it still remained to be seen where it was they had landed. All kilometers were not created equal. Despite the lifeboat’s best efforts, it was still quite possible that they had made landfall someplace impassable.
Mallory edged up to the door to the lifeboat. Like the floor, it was canted at a forty-five-degree angle. Next to the controls, a line of lights flashed green. So according to the lifeboat, not only did the mechanism work, but the environment on the other side of the door was in the acceptable range of temperature, pressure, and oxygen content.
If he believed the sensors, it was safe to open the door.
It occurred to him that this was the last time he would have to rely on the lifeboat for his survival. Outside the door, it would just be him and God.
He hit the control to open the door. It slid aside with a horrid scraping noise and stuck about halfway. Hot air blew in, carrying the scent of burned synthetics and woodsmoke. Though the open doorway he could see a slice of night sky, the purple tint and shimmering of the stars giving the reassuring feel of an atmosphere above him. The stars flickered in heat shimmers coming from the skin of the lifeboat.
He didn’t want to wait for the shielding to cool off, so he found an insulating blanket in the emergency stores and draped it over the bottom corner of the open doorway. With that, he was able to pull himself up enough to look at the landing site without burning himself.
The lifeboat had landed in a hardwood temperate forest. The tumbling Mallory had felt early was the boat crashing through the forest canopy and tumbling to the ground. The force had been enough to tear a hole in the canopy for him to see the stars. The chute from the lifeboat’s descent was tangled in the treetops, little more than a ragged shadow from where Mallory stood.
The lifeboat hadn’t put down in absolutely optimal conditions, but it was closer than Mallory had any right to expect. The terrain was relatively level, and the forest was old growth with wide-spaced trees and underbrush that wasn’t terribly dense. If lifeboat five was in a similar site, he could reach them on foot in a matter of hours.
He shouldered the medkit and the emergency pack from his lifeboat and set off in the direction of lifeboat five.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Hubris
Great power does not foster great flexibility.
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
The love of power is the love of ourselves.
—WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830)
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) 1,800,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534
After an hour of chaos, the bridge on the Voice had settled down into a more normal operation. The battle group had disengaged and spread out into a close formation around the Voice. The Jeddah and the Jizan had established radio contact with the Eclipse, and the Jizan was in the process of docking. And Admiral Hussein had recorded a revised diplomatic message for the planet, one that the Voice’s communications officers were repeatedly beaming down to the surface. They still waited for a response.
And all the shipboard clocks turned over to mark a new day. As the timer on the main holo changed to read 00:00:00, one of the ensigns from navigation walked up to Captain Rasheed.
Admiral Hussein distinctly heard Captain Rasheed say, “That can’t be right.”
“What’s the problem, Captain?”
Captain Rasheed straightened up and said, “Give your report to Admiral Hussein, Ensign.”
“Yes, sir!” The ensign came to attention facing the admiral. “The observatory data we’re receiving is not syncing with our mapped projections, sir.”
Admiral Hussein frowned. “You’re not saying we’re not on course, Ensign?”
“No, sir. The map projection is only wrong for one star.”
Captain Rasheed called over to the nav station and said, “Put the anomaly up on the main holo.”
In response, the main display for the bridge changed to show a segment of a star field overlaid with the vector map generated by the navigational system. The actual stars fit in the overlay, none off by a fraction of a degree. However, in the center of the display, a single red circle was disconcertingly empty. There was no sign of the star that should have been contained within the marker, it wasn’t off by a degree here or there, it was just gone.
The text next to the empty circle read “Xi Virginis.”
Admiral Hussein’s first thought was of their sister ship, the Prophet’s Sword, which had tached to Xi Virginis barely a week before their own departure. Things had already gone far beyond the operational parameters of this mission; this did not feel good.
“Is some outer planet eclipsing the star?” he asked.
“We’ve been checking for something occluding our observations, sir. If anything is, it’s showing no detectable radiation of its own, inherent or reflected, and it is far enough away not to interfere with any other visible landmark.”
Coincidence? Something just happened to be eclipsing the destination of our sister ship so precisely?
Admiral Hussein leaned forward and said to Captain Rasheed, “I want every scrap of
data you can get on Xi Virginis, and scan for any tach-transmissions from the Sword.”
“Yes, sir.”
Communications identified a signal almost instantaneously. They had a lock on a data transmission, a tach-burst specifically coded for the Voice, and the encryption wrapping it identified the Sword better than a fingerprint.
When the signal was decrypted, the main holo on the Voice’s bridge filled with the face of Admiral Naji Bitar, the commander of the Sword’s fleet. Hussein wondered if his discomfort over Bitar’s grinning expression was simply a matter of decorum.
“Greetings, Admiral Hussein,” said Bitar’s smiling face. “My communications officers have timed this to reach you upon your arrival. I wish to provide you with some good news. Our contact with the colony at Xi Virginis has been quite positive. Not only are they enthusiastic to ally with the Caliphate, but they have been willing to share technological advances that are . . . extraordinary.”
The star. What happened to the star?
“Your observations will have detected that the star Xi Virginis has ceased radiating. This shouldn’t alarm you. The colonists here have discovered a means to harness all the energy produced by the star. This technology is part of what they wish to share.”
A Dyson Sphere? Is that what he’s talking about?
“Needless to say, you must communicate home as discreetly as possible. The Caliphate has many enemies, and we cannot risk communicating this news back in any way that might alert them.”
Admiral Hussein heard Captain Rasheed pass some orders on to the communications officers, restricting physical access to the tach-comm.
“You will receive a more personal contact within eighteen hours standard after your arrival.You will have a more in-depth briefing on what we have discovered here. We are about to embark on a new age, Muhammad, my friend. God is great.”
The feed swapped Bitar’s face for the green-and-white crescent of the Caliphate, then ended. Admiral Hussein didn’t know what to make of the transmission. It felt inauthentic from the address all the way to his closing. There was an aggressive cheer pervading the message that was more than unprofessional. . . .
Creepy, Hussein thought. The word is “creepy.”
Captain Rasheed turned toward Hussein. A gulf of silence filled the bridge. All waiting for him.
Hussein had known the operation had changed as soon as he had seen the Eclipse. Now, after hearing Bitar’s message, he wondered if there would be anything of the original operation left. At the very least, Bitar’s short speech, bolstered by the missing Xi Virginis, completely revised Hussein’s risk assessment.
He looked up to the bridge at large. “No mention of Admiral Bitar’s speech or Xi Virginis is to occur beyond the people present here. You are not to discuss it among yourselves unless a superior officer is present and has given permission. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” from the bridge crew.
“If anyone mentions the disappearance of Xi Virginis to any of you, you will only confirm that command is aware of the situation. That is the only statement permitted. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked down at Captain Rasheed. “I want you to detail a science officer and someone from the medical staff to analyze that tach-broadcast. Now.”
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) 750,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534
Mosasa stared at the holo, where the security cameras showed the spidery form of the Jizan drawing the wreckage of the Eclipse into itself. A dozen robots, and a half dozen men in hardshell EVA suits, crawled through the wreckage by the drive section like fat white aphids invading a rotten log. The invaders connected cables, secured debris, and attached umbilicals from the Caliphate ship to what remained of the Eclipse’s power and life support . . .
And data . . .
He barely listened to Parvi as she talked to the crew of the Jizan, guiding them through the heavily modified and severely damaged systems. For all the activity, movement, the babble around him, he felt as alone as he had ever been at any point in his ersatz life. His world had shrunk from the universe to the claustrophobic prison of the Eclipse. For the first time in hundreds of years, he felt trapped inside his own skin.
He had built his identity on being aware. Unknowns were solidly delineated areas to explore, not this vast all-encompassing darkness.
The Caliphate should not be here. Not yet. Not with this kind of force. They had no political or economic impetus to launch their reclamation of the colonies out here so soon. Travel time and the limits of tach-drives made it impractical for them to take physical possession. Of course they’d come out here eventually, but only after the forces impelling the various states out here had reached a political equilibrium and they put in place the infrastructure to support the journey out here.
It should have taken years.
But the Caliphate was here, with a whole fleet of ships.
Mosasa knew his view of the future was imperfect, and the smaller the scale of the projection, the less accurate it was. But this wasn’t a simple error or a slight divergence. This was a wholesale failure to see a major shift in resources on a planetary scale.
It was enough of a failure to completely shatter his faith in his understanding of the universe. Seeing the patterns of political, social, and economic energy had been as basic to his worldview as the ability to perceive color.
He looked at his hands and had difficulty being fully convinced that they were actually there.
I am Mosasa, he thought, but I am also a machine. Can I be sure that I ever left the Luxembourg? Can I know that I’ve not just suffered a prolonged hallucinatory systems failure?
“Mosasa!”
He looked away from the holo and saw Parvi looking at him. He should be able to understand the emotion in her face, but right now he found himself unable to interpret it. “Yes?”
“Did you hear what I said?” Parvi snapped.
“What?”
“They’re ordering us onto the Jizan,” Parvi said. “That means losing contact with all our comm gear—God only knows what they’re intending to do to the planet. Our people are down there.”
“What do you want me to do?” Mosasa asked.
Parvi stared at him, and he thought he could understand her expression now. She was afraid.
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) 1,200,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534
An hour later, Admiral Hussein sat in a briefing room with a group of engineers, scientists, and medical officers. On the table between them was a frozen image of Admiral Naji Bitar.
“We’ve done a comprehensive analysis of the transmission itself,” said Lieutenant Abdem, one of the Voice’s senior communications engineers. “It is unquestionably from the Sword’s tach-transmitter. The encryption protocol is embedded in the hardware, and every transmitter is imperfect enough to give a unique temporal distortion to any broadcast. No way to duplicate it precisely.”
Admiral Hussein nodded and looked toward the medical officers.
“We’ve checked every biometric marker we can given the data transmitted. Voice-print, facial structure, iris variegation, kinematics. All are consistent with Admiral Bitar’s medical profile.”
“What about his emotional and psychological state?”
“It seems unusual,” said Lieutenant Deshem, the psychologist. “The admiral is displaying no abnormal stress levels at all.”
“That is unusual?”
“Consider what he’s reporting to us. This represents a radical change—even if it’s a positive one, change always engenders a stress response.”
“Could he be lying?”
“There’s no indication of that from what we can analyze. It seems that he believes everything he’s saying in this transmission.”
“Any sign of external influences, drugs, hallucination . . .”
Deshem shook his head. “He is lucid to all appearances—”
“But?”
“His body language, at the end of the transmi
ssion, it seems to suggest that he is withholding something. As if he’s not telling the whole truth.”
Hussein shook his head. Aside from all the technical resources they had, he could tell the same thing just from the deliberate vagueness of how Bitar phrased things. “You will receive a more personal contact within eighteen hours standard after your arrival. You will have a more in-depth briefing on what we have discovered here.”
Before he could ask another question, his personal comm buzzed for his attention. The Jizan was returning with what was left of the Eclipse and her crew. He excused himself and listened to the briefing from the captain of the Jizan on what they had found, and what the Eclipse had been doing so far from human space.
What he heard was not reassuring.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
My Brother’s Keeper
Never discount the possibility you might live through it.
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
Those who are prepared to die are unprepared to live.
—SYLVIA HARPER (2008-2081)
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534
Nickolai had mentally and spiritually prepared to die. Because of that, he found it disconcerting to open his eyes in the dark confines of the lifeboat and realize he still drew breath. He lay there, strapped to the jury-rigged acceleration couch, staring up into complete darkness, wondering if he was being rewarded or punished.
His last memory had been the slam into atmosphere. He had thought the shielding had failed the way the boat had shuddered.
He smelled blood.
Blinking, he adjusted the photoreceptors in his new eyes and the interior of the cabin came into focus. He saw the monochrome cabin in sharper relief than he’d ever be able to with his natural eyes, despite his species’ excellent night vision. His sight edged into the infrared, and he could see the form of Kugara radiating heat next to him. He heard her breathe and found himself grateful.