The Hidden Prophet

by Benjamin Douglas

  “Confirmed.” Cupid’s nose tipped up, and stars spun in the viewport. Ada swallowed against her gorge. Next time she was on a space station spending someone else’s money, she should also eat less.

  “Who’s in charge, here?” Lady Umbrador had peeked into the bridge, looking about with contempt, as if she had opened the door on a closet full of moth-eaten clothes.

  “I guess I am,” Ada said without turning.

  “Oh.” Umbrador cleared her throat. “In that case, I suppose we will just have to speak. Who is responsible for… this?” She waved her hand generally, encompassing the mess that had been made of Ceres space.

  “A surprisingly good question. Moses, do we know if the Rome Inc. ships were working for an outfit? Or for the Fleet, maybe?”

  Umbrador stiffened.

  “Unknown. But the Rome Inc. ID has been confirmed for all attacking vessels within scanning radius.”

  “Thank you.” She turned to Umbrador. “Now you know as much as I do.”

  “More,” Umbrador muttered.

  “Care to share?”

  “No, thank you. Where will we go to?”

  “A little quid pro quo would be nice, here.”

  “Fine. The ships ID’d as Rome Inc., didn’t they? Then I would say the only conclusion is that they all work for Rome Inc. A stunning leap of logic, I know. Now, where are you taking us?”

  Ada turned to look at Bone Crusher. “She’s sassy, Crush. I see why you like her.”

  “Wha—well, goodness!” Umbrador turned to go. “I expect to be briefed when you have plotted a destination!” She exited the cockpit.

  Ada pretended to shiver. “Aww, all that hot air was keeping me warm. Chilly now!”

  “Ada, be nice,” Bone Crusher rumbled. “She’s a Lady.”

  “Ohhh, I see.”

  “Where are we going, though?”

  Ada quirked her mouth to the side. “Moses, what’s the nearest hab with a public trading ground?”

  “With Ceres gone, Mars is the closest.”

  “Can we make it there with the power and provisions we’ve picked up?”

  “Affirmative.”

  She turned to Bone Crusher. “I guess that’s where.”

  Chapter 15

  Lucas watched the flames vent away into space, and the charred remains of the escape pod fly apart like flotsam. He went numb. Who would shoot an unarmed pod of civilians out of the sky? Only a monster.

  “Captain, we’re passing them! Back up, back up!” Mulligan was frantic over the comm.

  “Randall, bring us alongside!”

  Randall, too, had been transfixed by the horror onscreen. Now he snapped into action, slowing the Fairfax and rolling them to meet with the last remaining pod. By the time Mulligan confirmed the pod had been retrieved, the tactical field had changed dramatically. Fairfax was now surrounded.

  The small pale man appeared once more. “Freighter, surrender the pod or die. Or surrender the pod and die. Your choice.” He smiled.

  “You’re inhuman,” Lucas rasped, his throat tight and dry.

  “Thank you! So, just die, then, I take it?”

  Lucas was bewildered.

  “Right. See you on the other side.” The feed ended just as abruptly as it had appeared. As one, the surrounding ships began inching forward.

  “Caspar?”

  “I’m ready.” Her voice was grim as death, her thumbs hovering over her triggers.

  “Randall?”

  “Ready.”

  “Incoming transmission,” Jeffrey announced. This time they saw the bridge of the Empire Fleet battleship. The Captain sat, looking directly into the cam.

  “Alright, kiddos, that’s enough fun. Time to leave the kitty box. The Empire will take it from here.” The feed zapped off.

  “Um… was he talking to us?” Caspar asked.

  “Jeffrey,” Lucas said. “Any chance we intercepted the wrong feed?”

  “That message was a wide broadcast, meant for all ships in this area, I take it. You’ll notice the Rome Inc. vessels seem to be complying.”

  Lucas glanced at tactical, and saw it was true. The surrounding dots had begun to peel off and head out, away from Ceres and the Fairfax.

  “Never thought I’d say it,” he mumbled, “but three cheers for the Empire.”

  “Hear, hear,” Randall said, his voice cracking. There was a tense sputter of laughter across the bridge.

  “Easy to break up a fight you ordered in the first place,” Caspar said. Her voice hadn’t gained any levity. Lucas pondered her words.

  “I don’t think they would order this. If the Empire wanted to clean out Ceres for good, they’d use their own fleet, don’t you think? This has only served to strengthen and embolden Rome. But it seems obvious they at least allowed it.”

  “Same thing in my book,” Caspar said. She fiddled with her console.

  “Helm, let’s move out of here. Lay in a course for Mars, would you?”

  “Aye, Sir.”

  Lucas unstrapped and stood, rubbing his face. He had a band of refugees to greet.

  ---

  The hangar deck was chaos.

  Mulligan was surrounded by people—some demanding answers, others pleading that they go back to the tubes to retrieve loved ones. Lucas cleared his throat and stomped on the floor. “Attention!” he bellowed. All eyes turned to him.

  “You are aboard a freight-ship bound for the inner system. We took you on because your vessel was about to be destroyed by the same people who destroyed your home seconds before. If you don’t like being here, I’m sorry. You’re here now and you’re stuck until we get to Mars. At that time I’ll expect you to leave the ship and make arrangements for yourself. Until then you will be granted asylum here. Now please organize yourselves into two lines, one forming up to Private Mulligan there, and one forming up to me.”

  They began to separate into lines, mumbling.

  “Quiet, please. When your turn comes up, give your name and any other information asked for. You’ll be given quarters in a spare bunkhouse in the lower decks, and a dispensary ration. There will be no discussion of returning to Ceres at this time.” He made eye contact with those he had heard arguing loudest for this. “Understand that not only have the tubes been destroyed by substantial bombing, but that the weapons used pose a fallout threat. Furthermore, the hostile forces that attacked you are presumed to still be in the area.”

  He sighed.

  “I’m Captain Jack. I know this is difficult, and I’m sorry. We’ll do our best to make you comfortable while you’re onboard. That’s all.”

  He comm’ed for Private Tompkins to come take his place, but stayed to register the first few people in his line. A mother. A security guard. A miner. Lucas had no illusions about the character of the people he’d taken on. A number of them looked like the type he would assume had mafia or pirate affiliations, and even the most honest civilian among them had been hardened by life in the tubes. But they were homeless now, refugees of a brutal attack, and his charge. He made an effort to show them all equal respect and deference. He couldn’t imagine losing his entire home, and likely everyone he’d ever known, in a few seconds.

  Back on the bridge, he found he was rubbing his eyes every few seconds to stay focused. “Caspar, Randall, you both should take some rest.”

  Caspar turned, frowning. “What about you, Sir?”

  It was a sticky situation. They’d flown out from the Kuiper Belt in the first place with a skeleton crew, because there was a tenuous peace with the Empire at the time, and their mission was supposed to be a simple one of conveying Martian Ambassador Taurius to Pluto. When Captain Harris had been killed, Lucas had found himself thrust into command with a very small, and mostly junior, crew.

  “Let’s take it in shifts,” he said. “Four on, four off? For now, anyway. You can relieve me at o-nine-hundred.”

  She sighed, nodded, and left the bridge.

  “Well, Jeffrey, I think we’re alone now.�
�

  “Goody.”

  Lucas thumbed through screens on his console. “You don’t happen to have access to a game called called Battleworld Zeta?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” The screen flared to life with a gaming menu. With the ship on auto-guidance for now, and everyone else either resting or attending to the Ceres survivors, Lucas settled in for a little pirate research.

  First, he got to select which quadrant of the inner system he wanted to start in. He puckered his lips and selected the asteroid belt. Which outfit? Carmen’s Crews was one option, and it sounded familiar. He must have heard Jan say it. He picked it.

  The new few minutes involved the vainglory of designing an avatar, and he went through the motions absentmindedly. Sex? Male. Height? Average. Hair? Brown. No, blue. When in Rome, after all. He grimaced at the expression, now ruined forever. Name? Jack.

  Position? Only two options—freight worker or privateer hand. Huh. He selected freight worker, even though the privateer sounded more fun, since the Fairfax had been appropriated to haul freight.

  A loading icon washed over the screen, and then faded to a summary of his location, avatar, and position.

  “Congratulations, Jack,” a female voice said. “You have been assigned the position of freight worker for Carmen’s Crews. You are currently stationed on Geta-4.”

  “No way,” he murmured. Now things were getting interesting.

  The screen showed a small room with a conference table ringed by chairs. It looked familiar. He led his avatar in and sat down. A door at the other end opened, and a very familiar woman with wild blue hair frazzled out around her face entered and sat opposite him.

  “Jack,” she said. “I know you’re new, but I needed to meet you before you run a job for me. Head down to sublevel nine and ask for Harry, he’ll load you up. I just like to get a look at the new faces. I don’t like surprises popping up down the line.” She smiled and stood, extending her hand.

  Lucas cursed. Something was rotten in the pirate guilds.

  Chapter 16

  Ada woke in the cockpit, still groggy and sore all over. She raised her hands to her face and almost cried out in pain. Right. Her wrist.

  “You ok?” Joyce was sitting beside her, feet up on the console, sipping something from a metal canister.

  “No, I’m not ok! I’m fairly certain it’s broken.” With her right hand, she pinched her left forearm, trying to distract her body from the pain.

  Joyce nodded behind them. “Crush says one of those boys is a doc. Lady Dumbrador’s private physician.”

  “Lady Dumbrador?”

  Joyce shrugged. “It’s a work in progress. Anyway.” She opened the hatch behind them and banged on the wall. “Hey, pretty boys! Which one of you carries a stethoscope in his pocket?”

  The men were sitting on bunks, fiddling with their devices. They spared her a glance, and one of them cautiously raised a hand. Joyce nodded at Ada.

  “Our pilot’s broken. You want to survive the endless void of space and get back to civilization, I’d suggest you come up and fix her.”

  “Thanks,” Ada mumbled.

  “No problem. I’m a people person.” Joyce snapped in a pair of earphones and began to softly sing along with a retro cometpop song.

  “I’m Doctor Saran,” the man said. “Are you hurt?” He was standing behind them, leaning forward. His sandy blond hair swooped over his face a bit, and he brushed it back.

  “It’s my left wrist. Fell on it pretty bad back in the chaos, can’t put weight on it or hardly stand to touch it now.”

  He nodded, taking out a small device. “May I?” he asked, reaching out. She nodded. With one hand he gently took her left forearm, and with the device, began running scans.

  “So, Doc, will I live?”

  He smiled, eyes on the device. “That remains to be seen for all of us, I think. But if you’re asking about the wrist, yes, you’ll live.” He pulled out another device and swiped through a holoscreen. “Shouldn’t take the bots long to repair the tissue damage. We’ll get you a brace, and you’ll just have to baby it for a few days.”

  Ada furrowed her brow. “Nanobots? They’re real?”

  The doctor almost succeeded in suppressing his laugh. “You haven’t spent much time on the inner worlds, have you?” The device beeped, and he looked at her. “Pretty standard stuff now, for a situation like this. The break has been left alone too long to heal on its own. I could use force to snap it into place if you prefer, but it would be extremely unpleasant. For both of us. Or, if you consent, I shoot these little guys into your arm,” he held up the second device, and a tiny needle emerged, “they swim down to your wrist, take care of business, hang out for a few hours, die, and eventually you just pee them out.”

  “That easy?”

  “That easy.”

  “Well, shoot away.”

  She tried to relax as he stuck her in a vein inside the elbow, but the thought of a bunch of little automatons swarming around inside her body almost made her sick with nerves. Her dad had once told her he thought nanobot abuse was one more reason high-level AIs had been outlawed throughout the system decades ago. Taken in high enough quantities, he said nanobots with sufficient autonomous identity could cluster into a hive-mind and take over cognitive function of the host, like some kind of bodily possession. That had scared him far more than the stories about habs being destroyed by well-intending AIs with insufficient guidance. One of the reasons he had no problem with Ada tinkering so much with Moses was that there were no nanos anywhere on Cyron-2. No nanos, no possession. AI problem solved.

  “They’re not going to… you know… take over in there, are they?”

  “Of course they are,” Doctor Saran said. “They don’t just speed along the process; they actively engage in reducing inflammation, shifting anything that’s out of place, and healing tears and fractures.”

  “No, that’s fine. I mean”—she pointed at her skull—“in there.”

  Saran sighed, taking the needle out and letting it fold back into the device. “No. That’s a horror story told by reactionist medical conservatives who also don’t want you to get vaccinated or drink dairy milk.”

  She screwed up her face. Coming from the Kuiper Colonies, she’d never had real dairy. There just weren’t any cows.

  “I mean no offense,” he added quickly. “Only to say that the scientific consensus is that having a small shot of nanobots to heal a broken wrist is perfectly safe. Look.” He swiped a command, and a little holoscreen popped up over the device, depicting an insectoid-looking creature. Ada recoiled, then looked a little closer. It wasn’t a bug. It was a machine. Huh. So that’s what they looked like.

  Doctor Saran smiled, exited the cockpit, and came back with a 3D-printed wrist brace. “There,” he said, once it had sealed. “Feel any better?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  He nodded and left the bridge. Ada glanced over her shoulder to watch him go, and caught Joyce winking at her. Ada shook her head. Well, what could she say? Joyce was right. He was pretty.

  ---

  “Mars,” Ada said. “You can get off there, it’s as good as anything else.”

  Dianne huffed. “It most certainly is not. You know who lives on Mars?”

  “Educate me.”

  “Workers. That’s it! Do I look like a worker to you?”

  Ada shot Joyce a look that said ‘should I answer that?’ Joyce turned to the side, smirking.

  “Well, unless you have a preference that’s just as close—”

  “I do. I prefer Earth proper. I’m a Lady and a businesswoman, and I don’t see why I should be trafficked anywhere else. I have a wildly urgent job to keep track of, the likes of which would dwarf even your puny concept of your own self-importance, and the best chance I have of picking up the pieces are there.”

  “My own self-importance?” She was only deigning to even have this conversation as a gesture of goodwill to Saran, who seemed utterly loyal to his e
mployer. Or whatever she was to him.

  Dianne sneered and took a step forward. “Oh, you have no idea, little girl. You ever hear of Carmen’s Crews? You ever hear of Prophet? Or Rome? Do you even know the slightest thing about the balance of power in the system you’re so blithely crawling through in this rotten excuse for a ship?”

  “Wait, wait, wait. Back up. I’ve been running with Carmen’s Crews. Got to know the girl a bit myself, tagging along on a special project for her.”

  “Oh, know my sister do you? How’s she doing?”

  “Your sister?” That explained a few things. “Not well, I imagine, seeing as her hab was blown out of the sky the same day as your space station.”

  Dianne shut her mouth and glared.

  “As to Prophet, since it’s gone anyway and I am no longer in Carmen’s employ, I feel no compunction in telling you that the motherload was the target of that project I mentioned. But Rome, never heard of them.”

  Dianne’s mouth fell open.

  “Something I said?”

  Joyce chuckled out loud. Dianne’s face began to redden. She grew tense, and Ada started to worry she’d said something she shouldn’t have.

  “You were in charge of the Prophet? The fortune of Prophet that went missing? Do you have any idea the value, any idea the consequence, any… YOU?”

  Ada wouldn’t have predicted it in a million years. Before she knew what was happening, Dianne had socked her in the eye, and was raining her fists down on her like a cage fighter. Yes, she really was Carmen’s sister. Ada fended her off, arms over her head, and did her best to protect her healing wrist.

  “Baby, don’t do that!” Bone Crusher had squeezed his way into the cockpit and was pulling Dianne off of her. “C’mon, it can’t be that bad. What’s the matter?”

  “This street-kid almost got us all killed! Probably did kill my sister! And has made a pauper out of me. Worse, a target!” She lurched for Ada again. Again, Bone Crusher pulled her off.