Prophets

  Membership served the dual purpose of giving Staff Sergeant Fitzpatrick a deeper level to his cover and preventing future incidents with Reggie and his ilk.

  He went through their whole system of testing over the course of a week. It was a comprehensive battery of exams; oral, written, and simulated. For Mallory, it was the most rigorous testing he had gone through since he had joined the Marine Special Forces back when he was only twenty standard years old. More so, because he had to keep in the front of his mind that they weren’t supposed to be testing a retired member of the most elite combat unit of the Occisis military, but someone who was both more prosaic and more recently employed. Mallory had to work to weight his efforts toward the more basic aspects of infantry skills, and to do more poorly on the more exotic skills like combat demolitions and long-distance marksmanship.

  Hardest was the psych evaluation. Mallory decided that he had to give up on Staff Sergeant Fitzpatrick for that. He wasn’t trained as a deep-cover agent, and he knew that he didn’t know enough to skew that kind of testing in a way that would be seamless. He had to hope that Father Mallory’s psych profile wouldn’t look too out of place in Fitzpatrick’s file.

  The psych profile was the last test. Staff Sergeant Fitzpatrick left the testing facility a fully vetted member of the Bakunin Mercenaries’ Union, with certified skills in small-unit ground combat, basic vehicle operation, and logistics. All of which matched the staff sergeant’s history with the Occisis Marines. All the other skills rated under 500, the lowest being his sniper rating, at just 150.

  The BMU testing facility was on the fringes of Proudhon, sprawling over an area that might have been a series of old landing strips resulting in a low black building that radiated long black rectangular wings at odd angles to itself. On one side the horizon was a humpbacked mountain range, the other was the metallic chaos of Proudhon.

  On the Proudhon side was a small private parking area where his rented aircar was waiting. Now that he was done with the BMU for the day, his mind returned to the real reason he was here. Unfortunately, he still had not been having any luck finding potential ships that could take him off in the direction of Xi Virginis.

  He was pondering the next place to find someone with an expertise in illicit long-distance travel when he saw Vijayanagara Parvi leaning against his aircar. Instead of a white jumpsuit she wore more civilian clothes. But she still had a BMU logo embroidered on her sky-blue windbreaker and a wicked looking needlegun peeked out from a barely covered shoulder holster.

  As he approached he asked, “So, tell me, do Reggie and his brother work for you?”

  She smiled. “Tell me if it matters.”

  “Slamming into that wall hurt.”

  “You can take it.”

  Mallory shook his head. “So, are you here to ‘save’ me from another attack by Bakunin’s lowlife?”

  “Actually, I’m here to congratulate you. Not many people pass though the exams this quickly.”

  Mallory’s expression didn’t change, but he winced inside. He had been making such an effort to have the test scores reflect Fitzpatrick’s expertise, he hadn’t thought about how much time Fitzpatrick would have spent on them. “I wanted to get it over with.”

  Parvi laughed. “I’d like to see some of your scores if you took some time at it.”

  “I don’t really see the point.” Mentally, Mallory scrambled for a new picture of Fitzpatrick that would be consistent with what Parvi had seen of him and the results of his exams. “My money’s running out and I need to be working, not being tested by some asshole officer.”

  “Oh, lord.” She was still smiling. “I can see why you never made it past staff sergeant.”

  Perfect. “You know, maybe I liked where I was.”

  “Yes. But people are going to hire you based on those scores.”

  Let’s change the subject now. “And how exactly do you go about getting hired?”

  “Welcome to ProMex,” Parvi said.

  It was a cross between an ancient Roman coliseum, a stock exchange, a casino, and hell’s own trade show. It was named the Proudhon Military Exchange. In terms of area, it was probably the largest nonaircraft-related structure in the city.

  Walking into the massive dome, they passed aisles where hundreds of merchants sold exotic military hardware. Above them, holo screens showed gladiatorial contests being held somewhere else in the complex. Everywhere kiosks gave scrolling displays of symbols that, Parvi explained, gave values of publicly owned paramilitary organizations as well as odds on various conflicts based on current wagering.

  It was a little disturbing, but not surprising, that the conflicts were not confined to Bakunin. It was more disturbing exactly how many of them there were. When he commented on it, Parvi said that, “Members of the BMU have seen action on every inhabited planet in human space.”

  He almost said, not Occisis, but he remembered the chaos of the Junta and its aftermath. It was quite possible some off-planet forces were involved at some point.

  She led him on a winding path across the floor to a large area clear of the arms dealers. The area was marked by a series of three-meter-high towers, all topped with the chromed spheres of Emerson field generators. Mallory didn’t need the red and yellow candy-striping on the towers to know that, while he couldn’t see it, the area was protected by an anti-personnel Emerson field.

  There was one obvious entry, a round portal mounted between two of the towers. Across the top it said, “BMU Members only.” On one side of it, a small open-ended metal cylinder emerged from the skin of the portal. Parvi placed her hand in the cylinder, waited a moment, then walked through.

  Well, I’m a member now—several kilograms lighter in the wallet to prove it.

  Mallory put his hand inside, waited for a count of three, then walked through after Parvi.

  “Genetic sequencer?” he asked.

  “Genes, fingerprints, blood pressure, serotonin and adrenaline levels, toxicology—you name it . . .” She led him down a few steps to a large area sunk into the floor enough to hide it from the public area without use of a solid wall. “To answer your question, this is how you get hired.”

  The floor was crowded with men and women, and to Mallory’s surprise, a few nonhumans. One of the two standout examples was the Rorschach-faced serpent-necked pseudo-avian form of a Voleran. Its eyeless, hard-beaked head bobbed above everyone, except the other nonhuman. Unlike the Voleran, the other obvious nonhuman wasn’t really “alien.” At least, its ancestors were of terrestrial origin, victims of morally questionable genetic engineers.

  In the twenty-first century, man had not yet established a moral framework around the Heretical Technologies: self-replicating nanotechnology, artificial intelligences, and the genetic engineering of sapient life-forms. The last of these was the most seriously abused before mankind gained control of itself. Thousands of new species, as intelligent as man but—for the most part—less well constructed, were built to fight the wars that ravaged the planet. The weapons outlived the war, and eventually, during the dark days before the rise of the Confederacy, faced exile to the worlds past Tau Ceti.

  Understandably, the survivors of that period of human history had very little to do with humanity anymore. Diplomatic communication between human governments and the Fifteen Worlds was practically nil. And even though Bakunin was technically part of the Fifteen Worlds’ sphere of influence, this was the first product of that history Mallory had seen here.

  The first he had ever seen.

  The creature was close to three meters tall, and if Mallory had to guess, he’d estimate mass at close to five hundred kilos, all muscle. It had a feline skull and striped fur and moved with a grace that reminded Mallory of a very well-trained martial artist. It wore only a gun belt.

  “Never seen a moreau before?” Parvi asked.

  Mallory realized he’d been staring and turned away from the giant cat. “No.”

  “Get used to it. If you stick around Bakunin, you’
ll see more.”

  Hearing the tone in Parvi’s voice, Mallory turned toward her. “You sound like you don’t approve.”

  Instead of answering him, she led him to one of the kiosks that dotted the floor here, on the opposite corner of the floor from the moreau.

  “This ties into the closed BMU database,” she told him. “You can see live queries entered by anyone in the system, on-planet or off.”

  “Off?”

  “We have tach-transmit updates on an hourly basis—with a transmission delay, of course.”

  “Of course.” It was disconcerting to think that a completely extra-legal entity like the BMU had outposts on other planets with enough resources to run a tach-transmitter. Mallory faced the kiosk and started running a few searches. The interface was familiar, like searching the want ads anywhere else—except the ads here were “team experienced with infiltration and underwater demolition,” “EVA-rated flight crew for Lancer-class drop ship, experience handling pulse cannon/ plasma weapon repair/maint a plus,” “IW hackers needed, good pay/benefits for low-risk industrial espionage . . .”

  For the sake of his cover story, Mallory really looked though the ads searching for positions that resembled anything that might interest Staff Sergeant Fitzpatrick. He’d gather a list of contacts that he could take back to the hotel. He hoped that his search for discreet off-planet transport would bear fruit before he ran into Parvi again and she asked him about his job search. With all the positions available, the longer he went without signing on with someone, the more obvious it would be that he was looking for something more then a source of income.

  He went though a series of random sorts when he caught his breath.

  Parvi had been staring at the tiger moreau, but she turned to face him. “Is something wrong?”

  Mallory shook his head. “No.”

  He didn’t even sound convincing to himself. The deceptions he had trained for with the Marines had involved not being seen by the enemy.

  “Just.” He stumbled for words as he composed himself. “It just struck me, looking at all these listings . . .” He turned to look at her and the distress on his face was honest, even if his words weren’t. “And it hit me that my old life’s over. I’m really no longer part of the Marines . . .”

  Parvi nodded. “I wish I could say you’d get over that.” She turned back to look at the crowd. The tiger moreau was gone now. “Everyone on Bakunin is running from something.”

  Mallory nodded, turning back to face the kiosk. It was hard not to breathe a sigh of relief that she had bought his little improvised speech.

  Please God, he silently prayed, let me understand what this means.

  On the display, floating near the top of the holo, was a small listing waiting for him to touch it to see greater detail. The current sort was by job location, so various place names glowed brightest, the most common—filling most of the holo—being “undisclosed location.”

  Of course that made sense. If you were preparing military action, where you were sending the mercenaries was a valuable piece of intel you wouldn’t release, even to an allegedly closed database run by the BMU. After all, the members of BMU only owed loyalty to you after they were hired.

  However, a few ads did give that sort of information, where it wasn’t obviously mission critical to keep it secret. Most of those were prosaic things like jobs as trainers, cargo escorts and security, some of the Information Warfare jobs where geography was irrelevant, jobs as bodyguards or security where the show of force was of more deterrence value, and the one listing that captured Mallory’s attention—

  “Team needed to protect scientific expedition to vicinity of Xi Virginis.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Heresies

  The one thing more corrosive to a culture than a taboo without purpose is having no taboos at all.

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.

  —DESIDERIUS ERASMUS (1465-1536)

  Date: 2525.11.21 (Standard) Bakunin-BD+50°1725

  Nickolai, now a fully vetted member of the BMU, walked out of a cab on the fringes of the city/spaceport of Proudhon. Dusk was advancing, and the city behind him was already shimmering with light. He had gone through all the union’s testing, and despite the degradation of using his skills for the employ of the Fallen, there had been something sweet about completely dropping his constant restraint and allowing himself to fully exercise his training. He couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that he had demolished the robotic sparring partner they had sent up against him in the armed hand-to-hand exercise.

  All the tests had felt less than serious to Nickolai. He didn’t understand how they could rely on tests that measured people when nothing was at stake. His coming-of-age trials on Grimalkin had been much more difficult—and conducted by priests who would maim without hesitation.

  If he hadn’t been wary about his new arm, he would have had a perfect score on hand-to-hand combat. With firearms, his score had been less than appropriate for a scion of House Rajasthan, but that had been largely due to new eyes—when he had fixed on a target, he was able to do better than he ever had with a gun, but if he was off, he was completely off. Still, when the bull’s-eyes were averaged with complete misses, his marksmanship greatly exceeded what the BMU considered average.

  Judging by the solicitations he had received before his testing was even completed, the Fallen considered him a desirable commodity.

  Then that is why we were born, was it not?

  The cab flew away behind him, leaving him on a desolate stretch of road that stabbed arrow straight into the desert around Proudhon. The road was stamped with the logo of a company that would have taken a toll from any travelers when this road had a destination in mind. However, the original destination of this highway had been reclaimed by the desert, and the company that built and maintained the way there had similarly vanished.

  The road was made of the same grainy ferrocrete that formed most of the landing strips and launchpads in the spaceport/city. Nickolai wasn’t used to walking on the material; the streets of Godwin were of cheaper construction and more prone to cracking. Like the temples of Grimalkin, the roads in Proudhon felt as if they were meant to endure an eternity. Solid, flat, and permanent under the pads of his feet . . .

  Though, Nickolai saw, like much of the world of the Fallen, that impression was an illusion. The edges of the hundred-meter-wide strip of ferrocrete no longer retained the sharp edges of the streets in the city. The abrasive black sand ground the edges away, advancing a dozen centimeters in a battle it would eventually win. It might take a century or two, Nickolai thought, but the sand had time.

  Flanking the ancient highway, ranks of spacecraft of every size and description marched off in all three directions away from the city. Many of the corpses in this aviation necropolis showed bare metal skin, blasted by wind and the volcanic sand. Most had holes in their fuselages showing where some vital component or other had been removed. The skins that still showed markings were graced by a babel of tongues, most of which Nickolai didn’t understand.

  One of the few he could read graced a small, ornate tach-ship that bore the markings of the Grimalkin royal house. The tach-ship appeared to have been shot down, which Nickolai found alarming. But the seal gracing a half-melted control surface was wrong. It wasn’t until he forced his too-new eyes to focus on the tail of the gutted tach-ship, and the illustration shot into headache-inducing relief, that he realized what was different about it. The seal bore the image of a tiger’s head holding a blue planet in its jaws, wearing a crown made of seven stars.

  Seven stars . . .

  The tach-ship was from the age when the chosen people ruled only the Seven Worlds, before the fall of the old Terran Confederacy. The ship was at least 175 years old. He spent a few moments wondering how the markings might have survived the blowing sand. He finally decided that it must have been salvaged fr
om orbit.

  “Homesick?”

  Nickolai spun around, because he hadn’t sensed anyone approach. He was immediately tensed and ready to strike out, but there wasn’t anyone behind him. Instead, a metallic sphere about the size of his closed fist floated in the air about two meters behind him.

  “What is this?” Nickolai growled in his native tongue.

  “Security for Mosasa Salvage,” the sphere responded in kind. More disturbing than the fact that the machine spoke his language was the fact that it did so without any trace of the soft accent of the Fallen. He could be talking to one of the temple priests.

  Of course, that was unlikely.

  “I am here to apply for an advertised position,” Nickolai said.

  The sphere orbited him like a tiny moon. “Yes, Mr. Rajasthan, we’ve received your data from the BMU. Rather impressive scores, especially for someone who’s recently recovered from such traumatic injuries.”

  Nickolai didn’t let his surprise become visible on his face. The surprise was only momentary. How many scions of Rajasthan were in the BMU database, how many were on Bakunin? Anyone with the resources would be able to get almost his entire history on this planet based on his appearance alone, and given the information he had from Mr. Antonio, the owner of Mosasa Salvage had resources to spare.

  “You should follow me,” the sphere said, finishing its orbit and floating off ahead of Nickolai.

  “Where?” Nickolai asked.

  “To the hangar,” it responded, “with the others.”

  Nickolai followed the floating sphere through a maze of grounded aircraft and aircraft parts, the pads on his feet warmed by sand that still retained the day’s burning heat even as the sun set behind the mountains. The air smelled cold and sterile: metal, oil, and the hint of something long burned.