They stood mere meters from the ultimate sin of the Fallen, the most dangerous and vile presumption of God’s power. The geometric crystals glinting in the light hid a hive of self-replicating machines whose sole purpose was to consume matter and remake it in its own image. This was the demon that tempted man into his final fall, that spoke the seductive whispers that a man could equal God Himself, symbol of the hubris that had cost a billion souls.
It was a sin that the Fallen could never erase, even with centuries of turning away from such heresies. Even the colonists here—who gave themselves over to a hideously intimate evil—even they had seen the wisdom of trying to destroy this.
Kugara stared at the crystal forms, and Nickolai felt her shudder against his arm. “What is that doing here?”
“It came from Xi Virginis.”
“What?”
“It ran into something en route to the other end of the galaxy and was severely damaged,” Flynn/Tetsami said. “It can’t hold much of a conversation, but it is worried that whatever damaged it is coming here.”
“What damaged it?” Kugara asked.
Flynn/Tetsami shook his head. “It isn’t quite clear on what it is. It called it ‘The Other,’ and it seems afraid of it—”
Nickolai found his voice. “How is it that you speak to it?” The words were almost a growl.
“It can form a—robot? cyborg?—something the size and shape of a human being. It talked to us a while, then it reabsorbed itself. I think it’s trying to fix some sort of damage. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, or anyone else for that matter.”
“It should be destroyed,” Nickolai whispered. He spoke in a register so low that the others didn’t seem to hear him.
“What did it say about this ‘Other’?” Kugara asked.
Flynn/Tetsami shook his head. “It described it as a cloud, sometimes as a virus, sometimes as a complete abstraction: ‘the change without consent.’ What I could understand is that what I talked to was the remains of the autopilot for the Protean probe. The probe actually changed course to investigate some spectral anomalies happening to Xi Virginis. By the time it got within a light-year or so, the whole solar system was gone.”
“It knows what happened?”
“The Other,” Flynn/Tetsami said. “The Other somehow consumed—”
Nickolai heard the aircraft first. He raised his head to look at the sky. In a few moments, the two others followed his lead, looking up.
“One aircraft,” Nickolai said.
“Mr. Shane? We need confirmation to detonate the nuke.”
Alexander looked at the security footage. Flynn and the offworlders were looking up.
“Mr. Shane, sir?”
The Confederacy, or what was left of it, was about to take Salmagundi. He saw no hope of resistance. Seventy-five ships now.
They sent that many this far. He looked at the security camera feed of the crystalline invader. He wondered if it was the invader they pursued. He knew human history before the founding of Salmagundi. He knew the taboos against heretical technologies that would condemn the Hall of Minds. He also knew that Flynn’s discovery would be an order of magnitude worse in the eyes of the fleet descending upon them.
The two offworlders he saw in the security footage, they were clearly an advance team. Diplomats or spies, it didn’t matter—they belonged to the fleet entering orbit. How would the newcomers accept their loss? Could he afford to provoke them?
“Sir?”
In the past, the Confederacy had blown the crust off of planets infected by the kind of nanotechnology that lived in the egg Flynn Jorgenson had found. Just its presence here was a provocation.
The Hall of Minds was taboo to them and might be destroyed by an invasion. But intelligent, self-replicating nanotech? That was an abomination that might cost the lives of everyone on this planet.
It wasn’t really a choice.
“Sir?”
Alexander rubbed his fingers across the tattoos on his brow and said, “Detonate the nuke.”
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) 620,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534
Admiral Hussein reached the bridge still wearing the jumpsuit that he had worn under his EVA suit. Even before he said “at ease” to the bridge crew, he saw that the situation had developed alarmingly. The main screen showed a magnified image of the planet, and just coming into visual range over the horizon was an Ibrahim-class carrier, the twin of the Voice.
There was no question it was Bitar’s ship.
There was also no question, given the enhanced visuals, that the Sword had deployed its own hundred-ship battle group.
What the hell does he think he’s doing?
“Captain,” Hussein asked, “Any communication with the ship?”
“No response yet, sir. They’re deploying in a defensive grid around the planet.”
Hussein shook his head. The Sword’s fleet was deploying between them and the planet, almost as if they intended to repel the Voice’s approach. The Voice and its fleet was still over half a million klicks; the Sword had tached in to within five thousand.
“Give me a secure transmission to the Sword,” Hussein said.
“Yes, sir,” responded Captain Rasheed.
Admiral Hussein straightened himself and stepped over to the square that marked the focus of the holo cameras. When the comm tech told him he was live, he spoke to the Sword.
“This is Admiral Hussein on the Prophet’s Voice. In the name of the Eridani Caliphate, the Prophet, and our God, respond and declare your intentions.”
A few seconds later, the comm tech responded, “We have a transmission back, sirs.”
“Put it on the main screen,” Admiral Hussein ordered.
The holo showing the Sword silhouetted against the blue-white horizon of the planet changed to show Hussein’s opposite number, Admiral Bitar.
“Greetings, Admiral Hussein, I trust this day finds you well.”
Hussein nodded slightly. “To what exactly do we owe the pleasure of your presence, Admiral Bitar?”
There was enough space between them that there was a noticeable lag before Bitar’s answer. “I am sorry, this all may seem a bit rude of me. As I told you earlier, we are about to embark upon a new age. I am simply ensuring that everything goes as planned.”
“Admiral, I know of no plans involving the Prophet’s Sword contacting this planet.”
After two seconds of waiting, Bitar laughed. “Forgive me, Muhammad. I wasn’t talking about the Caliphate’s plans.”
Hussein stared at Bitar’s image, shocked. Even though he suspected something odd on the basis of the prior transmission, he had not expected a bald-faced admission of treason. He gestured to the comm officer to mute the outbound transmission and turned toward Captain Rasheed.
“Immediate orders to the whole fleet. Treat any ship with a transponder signature from the Sword as a potentially hostile enemy vessel.”
“Admiral?”
“Do it.”
“Admiral Hussein,” Bitar said on the holo, “are you still receiving me?”
Hussein gestured to have his transmission come back on-line. “Yes, I am. Exactly whose plans are you referring to?”
“The natives of Xi Virginis, of course.”
“There is no Xi Virginis,” Hussein said. “Not anymore. There are no ‘colonists who have discovered a means to harness all the energy produced by the star.’ ”
“Ah. Adam said you would recover him.”
Hussein shook his head. “Who?”
“Tjaele Mosasa.”
Hussein stared at the holo, speechless. There was no way Bitar could know about Mosasa.
Bitar’s eyes seemed to deaden, and all the humor drained from his voice. “Now, Muhammad, I will warn you to not attempt landfall on this planet. If you interfere with what is about to happen, you and your fleet will be destroyed so thoroughly that not even your mass will remain.”
“Do not threaten me, Admiral Bitar.”
&
nbsp; “I do not threaten you, and I will not touch you or your ships. Accept what is about to happen, embrace it. You will be offered something wonderful, and you cannot reject it or turn it aside.”
The comm officer gestured, and the comm channel was muted.
Hussein turned on the man, “What are you doing?”
“Sir, we just detected a nuclear blast on the surface, in the ten-megaton range.”
“We aren’t going to let Bitar level a defenseless planet.” Admiral Hussein gestured to unmute the signal. “Admiral Bitar, I am relieving you of your command. I order you to stand down and surrender.”
“I can’t do that.”
He gestured to cut the outbound transmission and whipped around to face Captain Rasheed.“Engage the Sword’s fleet.”
“Sir?”
“Now!”
“Yes, sir!”
Klaxons sounded and lights began flashing. Around Bitar’s image, tactical displays began coming up showing the relative positions of the Voice’s fleet and the Sword’s. On the screen, Bitar had turned to face something offscreen, and his face registered surprise.
The tactical holos showed the Voice’s attack ships taking inhuman Gs to get into range of Bitar’s fleet. Hussein smiled grimly. The Sword’s fleet was deployed to cordon the planet, but it left the ships themselves thinly spread, allowing Hussein’s own ships to mass three on one at the edges of Bitar’s formation.
Admiral Bitar turned to face Hussein. “You are making a mistake.”
Even though he was no longer transmitting, Hussein answered, “You made the mistake, firing on a planet of the Eridani Caliphate.”
On the tactical screens, the red arcs of missiles began tracing between the fleets.
God help us, Hussein thought.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Götterdämmerung
The past is always waiting.
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
The urge to destroy is a creative urge.
—MIKHAIL A. BAKUNIN (1814-1876)
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) 600,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534
Bill floated, alone, in his artificial environment, the water inside his pressurized bubble comfortably mimicking the temperature and pressure of the inhabitable layer of ocean back home. The water around him resonated with sonic feedback from the sensors built around the robotic toroid on which his globe rested. The signals were abstract, but the combination of Bill’s training and his complex Paralian brain allowed him to reinterpret the signals as he received them. Human scientists called what he did a high-order visualization.
Bill did not think the term accurate, since his mental image of the data bore little analog to his other senses. It didn’t map to the vibrations he felt, the shapes he could sense through sounding the area before him, the chemicals he tasted in the water he breathed, or the textures of the material he touched. In his mind the data became something like all of those, and none of those. He could sense/feel/taste the cargo bay around him in every frequency his sensors could detect. Even beyond, through the grate, he had a mental model of the stars in the vacuum beyond his small space, the planet growing large in the distance, and of the vessels moving about between here and there.
He idly allowed his attention to follow those ships, the most dynamic element in the slice of the universe he could perceive.
Even though he was disappointed in how the Eclipse had failed, his desire for novelty had overwhelmed the disappointment. He had never thought he would ever come into contact with something like the Prophet’s Voice. He had now been able to see a human ship that surpassed Paralian engineering efforts. He had already found the joy of discovering a half dozen potential solutions that fit the model of the Voice’s drive configuration, mass ratio, and an empirical estimate of its capabilities. None of the possible solutions was provable without some mechanical aid, but the idea that one might be was worth the effort he had taken to explore beyond his home and the crippling effects of staying immobile in this globe. Returning with these experiences would make up for the fact he might never be able to swim with his fathers again.
Bill took notice of the ship’s motion beyond the Voice.
Acceleration paths increased in magnitude, and vectors grew to point at the planet. Bill told the sensors to concentrate their entire battery of observational equipment out into the space between the Voice and the still-growing planet.
The hard data points that were the mass concentrations of the Voice’s fleet of attack ships had split into four clusters, focusing on four equally-spaced points in orbit around the planet. Bill saw other points, spread thinly about the planet, belatedly twisting their own acceleration vectors to meet the incoming fleets.
Across Bill’s mental landscape of mass, acceleration, and velocity, discharges of electromagnetic energy began to blossom. The points of mass around the planet, now clearly a similar fleet serving a ship with a profile matching that of the Voice, were erupting into diffuse clouds of radiance, mass spreading with the glow of energy.
I am witnessing a war.
Bill concentrated on the feedback from his sensors, trying to etch every detail into his prodigious memory. What he saw was unique in the history of his species. They had known of war from trading information with humans, but no Paralian had direct experience of it.
The battle had begun with two orderly formations, the fourfold clusters of the Voice’s fleet and the diffuse net of matching ships in orbit around the planet. As soon as a few ships vanished into radiant clouds, both formations disintegrated. The Voice’s ships descended en masse on smaller concentrations of opposing vessels like a horde of bloodfish feasting on a competing school, cannibalistic and soon indistinguishable from their prey. Soon the planet was orbited by clusters of mass and energy as ship after ship made the phase change from solid to plasma.
He had concentrated so hard on the data from the immediate vicinity of the planet that he did not pay any attention to masses vectoring toward the Voice itself until he felt the whole ship vibrate around him, briefly distorting the sounding he received from his sensors.
Bill widened his attention to encompass a quartet of ships with intense and violent acceleration vectors tearing by the skin of the Voice. He had barely realized they were there when the lead ship absorbed something that knocked it tumbling, flinging bits of itself in every direction.
Every direction, including Bill’s.
Bill ordered his robot to grab hold of anchor rings in the floor as a massive part of the ship’s drive section plowed through the safety grate and blew into Bill’s cargo hold with enough energy to briefly black out all Bill’s sensors.
For several seconds, all Bill could perceive was the vibration of his environment, his entire universe limited to the water that ended a meter in front of him.
The first thing to come back on-line was the robot’s diagnostic system. Everything seemed unharmed except for some IR sensors and one of the robot’s manipulator arms. The arm gave no feedback whatsoever.
As his sensors came back, Bill realized why. The arm was no longer attached to Bill’s robot. It was in the wreckage of the cargo hold, which was now about twenty meters away from Bill. Based on relative velocities, Bill’s vector pointed directly away from the impact at about two meters a second.
While the environment he sat in was capable of withstanding vacuum indefinitely, it was not intended to be an EVA suit. He had no means to maneuver once he lost contact with the ship. Not even a cable.
Given the model of his situation, he knew instantaneously that he was going to die, drifting away from the Voice until his suit’s resources were used up. About ten hours standard without access to external power. He set his suit to broadcast a distress signal, but it seemed unlikely that either side in this battle would extend the resources to rescue him again.
Bill didn’t despair for himself, but he began to mourn for the fact that he would not live to pass on his knowledge. Somehow, he had kept the hope that he would on
e day show his children what he had observed.
However, as he drifted away from the Voice, a hundred meters now, the universe had one remaining novelty to show him.
On the other side of the massive carrier, his sensors insisted the stars were going out. Diagnostics maintained that the sensors were functioning, and when he concentrated on the growing starless area, he could sense an edge.
A circle of absence was obscuring the stars on the other side of the Voice, eclipsing them, and growing. In the disk was nothing, a deeper nothing than existed between the stars. It grew, and grew, until the Voice itself was eclipsed by it, absorbed by its flat nothingness.
Bill observed it, fascinated. No indictor of mass, or distance, or velocity, only of apparent size. As it shrank, he couldn’t tell if it was shrinking, or receding.
The Prophet’s Voice was no longer in front of him.
Bill thanked the universe for sharing one last mystery with him, and he resigned himself to ceasing to be.
The cloud that was Adam’s ship enveloped the Prophet’s Voice like a shroud, a cavernous dock forming out of the mass of the cloud to contain the huge carrier. An ovoid space coalesced, alive with writhing tendrils reaching for the Caliphate carrier even as the maneuvering engines fired, releasing gas and plasma that was silently vented outside the dock.
The tendrils fused with the body of the ship, integrating with its systems, possessing the kilometer-long tach-ship more thoroughly than a predator its prey or a virus its host. In moments, the struggles of the maneuvering jets ceased.
High above the imprisoned vessel stood the being known as Adam.
He stood, sculpted, hairless, naked, a perfect eidolon of human form, though he was far from human. He favored this form because it echoed the one with which he achieved enlightenment. It was the perfection of that form without the clumsy cybernetics implanted by human doctors and without the forced schism between biology and machine that existed before he last saw his homeworld.
Before he had last seen Mosasa.
Prophets Page 33
