Prophets

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I’m going out the door now.” She added, almost in a whisper, “Pray for me.”

  Mallory did as she asked.

  Alexander had never seen the Grand Triad gripped by such chaos. Progress of the Salmagundi government was always slow and deliberative, filled as it was by minds self-selected for their caution and traditional nature. It was always annoying, but now it had verged on the dangerous.

  Alexander had, through debate, reason, cajoling, and very subtle threats, brought the Triad around to his position both on eliminating the Protean threat and allowing the Eclipse to land. For a few hours, things had gone smoothly, the Eclipse making no objections to their traffic control directions, maneuvering to approach and limiting their radio traffic as requested.

  And, despite the objections of the Ashley Triad and the area lumber interests, Alexander had gotten consensus around the idea of using their limited nuclear arsenal to eliminate the threat from the invader. Once the Eclipse was on the surface and under guard, a single attack would wipe the alien object from the face of the planet. The crew of the Eclipse, whoever they were, would have no need to know that the Proteans ever existed.

  Then the Eclipse had exploded.

  Alexander had watched the observatory footage as the engines of the ship had blown themselves into space, carrying a good part of the ship with them. Then the lifeboats burst from the skin of the craft, and suddenly their contact with the rest of the universe was less direct and controlled.

  Worse, the Eclipse was not alone.

  The display above the meeting room showed a schematic view of the space in orbit around Salmagundi. The location of the Eclipse highlighted in red, two other ships showing up blue, one of the two attached parasitically to the wreckage of the Eclipse. An inset showed a map of the area to the west of Ashley covering about a hundred thousand square kilometers. The inset was from a weather satellite, and if Alexander stared at it hard enough, he could see the scar from the alien’s impact about two hundred kilometers into the woods southwest of Ashley. The site was highlighted by a red circle.

  Six other circles now dotted the woods southwest of Ashley. One of the Eclipse’s lifeboats had made landfall within a dozen klicks of the city, and would have been in full view of the population if it had landed in daylight.

  “We need to secure these landing sites now; it’s been nearly six hours.”

  “Calling up a larger security detail will make it impossible to contain this news. There are already unacceptable rumors surrounding the existing incident—”

  “And when we detonate a nuclear weapon? Are you going to contain those rumors?”

  “We have a limited supply of militarily capable units. We should not risk them—”

  “If not on this, what? We’re being invaded. We need to focus on the craft approaching us. Did they see the damage to the Eclipse as an attack?”

  Alexander glanced up at the schematic. At the edge of the view, maybe a million kilometers from the planet, a spreading line of blue contacts were edging into view. He counted twelve. Fifteen minutes ago, there had been six.

  The Grand Triad had been debating for hours, and for once Alexander could see no hint of consensus coming. We will collapse under the weight of our own arguments. . . .

  With the eyes of his ancestors, he watched the room and saw the shape of the coming disaster. If the civilization they’d built on Salmagundi had a weakness, it was this hesitation in the face of the unknown. He knew that it was only going to worsen as the stakes increased. He had seen it growing as they debated the nuclear option, but even then it hadn’t reached the crisis point. Then, the Grand Triad had reached a conclusion.

  This was different.

  There was no way they could defend themselves if they vested power in the disparate parts of the Triad. As much as they wanted to, there was no way they could emulate the merger of minds and souls exemplified by the Hall of Minds outside of a single skull.

  Even knowing all this, the internal debate Alexander Shane underwent in coming to his own personal consensus was almost as long in coming as the nonexistent decision of the Triad. But when his own decision came, he welcomed it and started it into motion.

  He checked the chronometer on his comm and it showed 10:00, a third of the way into Salmagundi’s thirty-hour day. He stood up and formally excused himself. The debate around him barely rippled, acknowledging his departure. Harrison took over the chair and did less to rein in the chaos than Alexander had.

  Like Alexander, he had the experience of enough lives to know how pointless it was to attempt to force the Triad toward action at a time like this. Unlike Alexander, he was satisfied with the traditional inaction.

  Alexander stepped outside the meeting room and was met by a dozen men in full militia gear. Each of the men had been handpicked by Alexander. Every single one had two or three glyphs matching some of the fifteen across Alexander’s brow. So each one shared several lifetimes with him. Each one thought enough like Alexander that they could be trusted with what was about to happen.

  They all saluted him.

  Alexander saluted back.

  “It is time,” he told them. “Secure the building.”

  Several ran to seal the various entrances to the Hall of Minds. Others ran to take over the security control center.

  He picked up his handheld comm and transmitted a prerecorded message to the security chiefs of every city on Salmagundi.

  “This is Alexander Shane, Chairman of the Great Triad. Acting on behalf of the Triad, all security and militia members, active and reserve, are now under my command. All available personnel are to report for duty immediately and await further instructions.”

  Alexander suspected that it might be another hour or two before the rest of the Grand Triad realized that the doors to the meeting room were sealed and all external communication was cut.

  He met up with his own personal guard in the security office of the Ashley Hall of Minds. It wasn’t much space to run a whole government from but—outside the meeting room where the Grand Triad was imprisoned—it had the most bandwidth to handle the kind of multitiered communications he needed right now.

  The normal security detail had been ushered out, and Alexander had to remove a half-eaten sandwich from the console as he sat down. Two other men, the highest-ranking militia members in Ashley, joined him by taking the other two available seats.

  Alexander turned to one. “We’re going to need intel from everyone who’s got an eye on orbit. I’ll need to know anything coming into our space, and what it is. Coordinate that and get views up there.” He pointed to the ranks of security monitors. “And get the satellite imagery from around Ashley up on the main screen there.”

  He turned in the chair to face the other man, “I want six militia units ready to go to secure the lifeboat landing sites within the next fifteen minutes. If anyone gives you any problems, route them to me.”

  Both men began making calls. Alexander didn’t expect any problems. Authority was accepted on Salmagundi, and a challenge to his assumption of command would require as extraordinary a deviation from the norm as he had just committed. He was rather secure in the fact that kind of initiative was rare.

  The small sun rose higher above the forest canopy as Mallory closed on the location of lifeboat five. The trees closed in, but not closer than a few meters. It didn’t slow his progress too much.

  He was within two kilometers of them when he got a frantic voice on his comm unit.

  “We have aircraft!”

  “Dr. Dörner?”

  “Two aircraft just flew over. Can you hear?”

  “I—” Before he finished the statement, he heard them overhead. He looked up and saw two shadows shooting low over the forest canopy. The fans roared as they passed almost directly over him. The two craft were large cargo or personnel transports. Though their blocky forms and slow progress showed their lift to be from contragrav engines, their maneuvering fans were
oversized, and still vectored enough thrust that the downdraft shredded foliage. Fragments of spiky green leaves rained down on Mallory as the blocky vehicles passed over him.

  “Here! We’re over here!” He heard Dr. Dörner’s voice as the engine noise retreated with the aircraft. There was a pleading note in her voice.

  “They’ve seen you,” Mallory said. “If they didn’t see the drag chute, they picked up on the beacon. They’re probably looking for a landing site.”

  “We’re over here!” the comm continued.

  Mallory wondered if she heard him at all. He could hear Dr. Pak shouting something in the background.

  Mallory tried to raise them, but in their excitement over seeing the rescue craft, she must have set down their comm unit. He couldn’t really blame them. His own spirits had been raised just seeing it.

  It felt miraculous. Enough so that Mallory wondered if it was literally miraculous. It felt as if the hand of God had helped them safely to ground. The only thing that tempered that thought was his inability to contact the Eclipse or Kugara. He knew better than to try to interpret his survival as divine favor and others’ fate as divine punishment. That kind of simplistic thinking was spiritually wrongheaded, shown by Job onward.

  However, it was very human to wonder why God had spared them.

  Mallory broke into a jog toward the lifeboat, trying to get there in time for the rescue party. As he ran through the woods, he heard the aircraft returning.

  What? They need an LZ, don’t they?

  They returned, moving much more slowly. They passed above him again, vector fans roaring, and came to a stop about five hundred meters away from him. Right above where the lifeboat had to be. He broke into a run, and he was able to resolve details on the craft. Mallory recognized the design.

  It was two centuries out of date, but the design had been a popular version of an airborne troop carrier. It was the kind of ubiquitous vehicle that you’d find in the vehicle pool of every riot police force and planetary militia in the days of the Confederacy.

  As Mallory closed on the lifeboat, he saw the side doors slide open to reveal ranks of soldiers in full armor, one of whom was bent over a large plasma cannon aiming out the door on a pintle mount.

  Is this a rescue?

  Mallory came to a stop as soldiers started dropping out of the aircraft on zip lines. He backed up and crouched for some cover as two dozen men dropped to the ground.

  He knew enough tactics to realize that he was pinned. The aircraft would have the imaging gear to see if he ran. His only hope to avoid detection was to hug the base of this tree and hope they hadn’t bothered to sweep this area of the woods yet.

  He waited, hearing nothing but the massive roar of the hovering aircraft. If they hadn’t picked up his transmissions, if they hadn’t seen his IR signature running through the woods, if they hadn’t caught sight of him any of the times he was in LOS.

  Those were too many ifs.

  It only took the soldiers five minutes to have a trio of armed men surround him. Mallory took some comfort in the fact they didn’t shoot him out of hand.

  On some level then, it still counted as a rescue.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Hallowed Ground

  Sometimes the crazy person is right.

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  Never make the mistake of assuming the universe is sane.

  —August Benito GALIANI (2019-*2105)

  Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534

  Nickolai followed Kugara through the woods. It was mostly clear and downhill, meaning they made good time, probably doing better than eight kilometers in the first hour. That made it all the more annoying when a pair of aircraft passed within a klick of them, heading to their northeast, back to where their lifeboat landed.

  Kugara stated at the shadows visible through the canopy and said, “I don’t believe it.”

  “Should we go back?”

  Kugara stared after the aircraft and sighed. “No, we’re closer to the outpost you spotted.” She turned around. “Hand me the flare gun.”

  Nickolai reached into the emergency pack and retrieved the flare gun. It was the last in a long list of signaling devices stowed on the lifeboat and, being the one object not reliant on electronics, it was the one that had survived their lifeboat’s impact. Unfortunately most of their high-tech equipment had either taken too much of a beating or was burned by the same shielding breach that had fried the internal electronics of the lifeboat itself. Only the ship’s distress beacon survived all of it, and they couldn’t take that without taking the whole lifeboat. So they only had a single flare gun that was included in the sparse survival kit almost as an afterthought.

  He handed it, butt first, to Kugara.

  “Let’s hope they see this,” she said. “We have only, what, three more flares for this thing?”

  Nickolai nodded.

  She backed up, looking upward, as the sound of aircrafts’ maneuvering fans receded. She held the gun two-handed, pointing up and away from both of them while looking for a hole in the forest canopy. She smiled as she looked up to a ragged blue opening in the green above them.

  She aimed the gun upward and fired.

  Nickolai heard a click followed by a sharp snap. Nothing happened. Then the gun started hissing.

  Kugara screamed, “Shit!” and tossed the flare gun away from her, running toward Nickolai. Before the gun hit the ground, a horribly bright red flame shot out the barrel in a continuous stream. Even with his eyes auto-adjusting, the forest was briefly turned into a two-tone image in blazing red-white and ink black. The air filled with the smell of molten metal, burning leaves, and the toxic smell of melting synthetics. The hiss grew into an insistent low-level roaring, not quite as loud as the aircraft engines in the distance.

  Kugara, running blind, tripped on a dead branch. Nickolai stepped forward and caught her before she fell face-first into the dirt.

  “Damn Mosasa,” she shouted into his chest. “You’re supposed to check those things periodically!”

  The air choked with acrid smoke as the light died, finally sputtering out. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  She pushed away from him. “I’m fine.” She turned around and stepped over to the smoldering crater where the flare gun had landed. She stared at the remains of the gun. The barrel was still recognizable, but the mouth was black, fading to a series of rainbows back toward where the handgrip and the trigger used to be. Those parts had been synthetic, and were melted where they hadn’t burned away completely.

  The smell of it made his nose itch. His eyes watered, but while he expected his eyes to itch, he realized he didn’t feel anything at all. Like my arm . . .

  “Well, that’s a lost cause,” she said. She looked up at the wisps of smoke trailing up through the trees. “And if they see that, they’re better spotters than I’ve seen. Back to Plan A.”

  Kugara picked up the pack she dropped, looked at her compass, and resumed the walk to the outpost. He followed. If luck and the terrain was with them, they’d reach it within the hour.

  Forty-five minutes after leaving the smoldering remnants of the flare gun, they found the first sign of civilization. About five hundred meters from their destination, they faced a ten-meter-high fence. The fence was shiny new and dotted with signs saying, “Restricted/Warning/No Admittance.”

  Kugara looked at the signs and said, “I guess they speak English here. Dr. Pak will be disappointed.”

  Nickolai looked up at the top of the fence. Small black spheres topped fence posts, sign of either a stun field or surveillance devices. Probably both.

  Kugara stepped back from the fence and looked around. “Left or right?”

  “Most of the buildings were clustered on the eastern end.” He pointed.

  “Right it is, then.”

  After walking a minute or so, Nickolai said, “This is recent.”

  “I noticed. Those trees are still bleeding whatever they use for
sap where they cut the overhangs.”

  “What are they protecting?”

  “You know, I don’t really give a shit. We obey the signage and get the guards to call in the cavalry.”

  Nickolai looked through the fence as they walked, but the woods were still too dense for him to see much of anything on the other side. “Then what?”

  “What?”

  “What do we do then?”

  She spun around. “You know what I want? I want you to shut up.” She turned and marched off along the fence. Nickolai followed without asking any more questions.

  Not vocally, anyway.

  The fact was they were stranded nearly a hundred light-years away from Bakunin. The Eclipse was most likely destroyed, along with their nominal employer. Nickolai doubted that a far-flung colony like this would be willing to expend the time and resources to return them—if the Fallen here were even willing to deal with a nonhuman like him. . . .

  Dying would have been simpler.

  There was a gate only a few hundred meters farther along the fence. It opened to a rough road that was little more than a muddy track. There were signs of a couple of heavy tracked vehicles traveling this way not too long ago. The weight of them had left trenches six to ten centimeters deep in the earth. He saw some sign of foot traffic around the gate, but none that went more than ten meters away from the fence. All of the tracks were the club-shaped boots of the Fallen.

  A guard shack sat about five meters inside the fence, to their right. The gate itself was designed to slide aside for the large traffic on the road. Inside the sliding gate was a smaller human-sized doorway, hanging open.

  “Hello?” Kugara called out.

  Nothing stirred. The guard shack was apparently empty.

  She looked around. “I don’t get it.”

  Nickolai took a deep breath and shook his head. “No humans here, not for hours. But . . .”

  “But, what?”

  “I smell old fires, explosives. Human blood.”

  “Jesus. And they just leave the door open?”