Prophets

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Apocrypha

When you ask if you want to know, you don’t.

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

The trick to leadership is keep moving forward, even if you’re wrong.

—Boris KALECSKY (2103-2200)

Date: 2526.05.24 (Standard) Xi Virginis

For the first time in a century, Mosasa felt as if he was floundering. The holes in the fabric of his world were growing with each passing moment, opening into unknowns vast, deep, and larger than the sparse data that surrounded them. For the first time in 175 years, he moved without any idea of what the consequences of his actions might be. The data flowing to him now was practically nonexistent, and he was fumbling blindly.

Worse than the missing star, which was completely unexpected, was the sabotage. There was no way he had to make the act comprehensible. He had imprisoned the Vatican agent, Father Mallory, because he couldn’t propose any other logical alternative.

But Mallory hadn’t destroyed the tach-comm. He couldn’t have. The purpose of having him here was as a data conduit back to the Vatican, and through them, to the non-Caliphate powers. Having a communication channel was primary to Mallory’s mission, and their situation now, with the loss of the comm and the power drain, was as dire for him as it was for Mosasa.

But once the crew had discovered Fitzpatrick’s was an alias, Mosasa had to confine him. The dynamics of the crew allowed no other action if he desired to keep a stable equilibrium.

But the very fact that the comm had been sabotaged meant that the equilibrium Mosasa perceived was illusory. And if he couldn’t truly understand the dynamics within the confines of the microscopic universe of the Eclipse, how could he trust what he saw of the universe outside it?

Even if Kugara and Tsoravitch found EM signals leaking from the colony at HD 101534, those were eight years old. How could he be certain that, when they tached into the system, the world, the star, would still be there?

His isolation from the data streams that fueled the awareness of his machine half allowed uncertainty to grow within him like a cancer. Before leaving Bakunin, he could see the turbulent flow of society, economics, politics as easily as ripples in a pond. . . .

Now he was so blind that it was becoming hard to credit that he had ever seen at all. The longer he was isolated from the flow of information, the larger his blind spots became—infecting scenarios he had already plotted. He could no longer even be sure of decisions he had made before this point.

Mosasa stood, locked inside his own cabin, funneling every data channel on the ship through his internal sensors. He obsessively watched every millimeter of the Eclipse trying to fill the void of not-knowing. The flow of data traveled through his mind like windblown leaves through an abandoned city.

Included with the pathetic trickle of data were feeds from every security camera and microphone on the ship. A universe of information so small that even the shell of his human consciousness was aware of the content. He saw the crew working on making the Eclipse ready for the next jump. He saw the scientists at computers trying to make sense of the impossible absence of Xi Virginis. He saw Nickolai enter Mallory’s cabin.

Nickolai?

At first Mosasa was confused at the interaction. The nonhuman now formed the security detail with Kugara, so he was one of four people who could open the seal on Mallory’s cabin. But he didn’t have any reason to interact with the traitor priest. . . .

Then he heard the talk and realized the ritual nature of the discussion. Nickolai had a legitimate fear that they wouldn’t survive the journey and had sought Mallory out because of his status as a priest. It all made sense.

Except, in Mosasa’s analysis, Nickolai wouldn’t be driven toward such a ritual exercise unless he believed he carried some weight of guilt. Guilt beyond the circumstances of his exile, which was largely neutralized by a sense of pride and determination.

Mosasa realized what that guilt had to be before Nickolai actually confirmed it.

How did I not see it was him? Why did I not see?

Mosasa realized why. Trying to see the tiger’s own personality next to the overwhelming force of belief, tradition, and ritual was like trying to see an asteroid whipping across the surface of a star. His own motives were practically invisible, and if Nickolai’s employer had the sense to use the forms of his culture to direct his action, manipulate him . . .

The very things that made him a perfect candidate for Mosasa—the nonhuman perspective, the predictability of his indoctrination, his ingrained prejudices—those same things made Nickolai the perfect spy.

Can someone have targeted me so well?

When Nickolai told Mallory of Mosasa’s origin, Mosasa began to truly feel fear. He revealed the story he had told Tsoravitch, but he didn’t stop. He told of how the five AIs had helped stabilize Bakunin in the face of the Confederacy, and how they had helped lead to the Confederacy’s downfall, leaving three AIs surviving.

Until then, the data was all what Mosasa would have considered discoverable by some human agency. But the tiger didn’t stop there.

Nickolai’s employer, Mr. Antonio, had revealed things that no human should have known. Mr. Antonio had told Nickolai what had happened at Procyon, when Mosasa had returned to his homeworld.

Long before there had been a Tjaele Mosasa, Race AIs had been used in the covert war the Race waged on Earth. When the intelligence agencies on Earth had discovered the Race’s social manipulation, they had managed to capture the Race’s own devices and had begun understanding how to use them.

By the time the Genocide War with the Race had erupted in full force, the United Nations had intelligence ships like the Luxembourg equipped with ranks of alien AIs. Near the end of the war, the Luxembourg had been neutralized by a Race drone weapon that then guarded the captured ship for a Race salvage team that never came.

The pirate Tjaele Mosasa had revived five of those AI units, including the brain from the drone weapon. Mosasa had used the devices to gain an insurmountable business advantage and amass a considerable fortune. Eventually, the living Mosasa had traded his fleshy body for a cybernetic one, gifting his thoughts and memories to one of those AIs.

The AIs, however, never forgot their purpose. Autonomy alone was not enough to undo the directives the Race had programmed into their being. Free of human constraint, they had worked for their ultimate goal; the fall of the human political hegemony and freedom for the Race who had been confined to their planet by automated battle stations since the end of the Genocide War.

The quintet of AIs had helped stabilize Bakunin, preventing a founding of a state, causing a weak point in the Terran Confederacy. The five of them could mimic humanity enough to interact, infiltrate, and directly implement the kind of social engineering the Race had designed them for. In the end, after centuries of work, they had achieved their goal. The Confederacy had collapsed.

Of the original five, only three had survived to depart for Procyon and the Race homeworld; Mosasa of course; Random Walk, who had once been formed of two AIs and was now half himself and somewhat unstable; and Ambrose, a hybrid of flesh and cybernetics who had smuggled one of the five brains into the heart of the Confederacy.

Only Mosasa survived to depart the Race homeworld and return to Bakunin, the only one to see the truth and remain willing to survive.

The Race was dead.

All of them.

What mankind had done, in trapping them on the surface, was force them to revisit the racial reluctance toward direct physical violence. The taboo that had rendered them so weak against mankind.

But that taboo had existed for a reason: it had been the only thing that had allowed the Race to survive as long as it had. As soon as enough of them had cast aside such reservations, the results had been catastrophic. Cities lay in ruins, entire ecosystems had been devastated, and a planet that had been only marginally habitable to begin with had become sterile.

The surviving half of Random Walk had simply shut himself off. Either the sacrifice had been too much or he couldn’t accept the loss of what had been their reason for existence, their reason for acting at all. Without their creators, there was no purpose left to serve.

Ambrose, on the other hand, went insane. He attacked Mosasa, accusing him of allowing this to happen. His attempt to strangle Mosasa proved fruitless—Mosasa’s neck was completely cybernetic, while Ambrose’s half-human body was still in large part flesh and bone. Failing the attempt to kill Mosasa, he ran off, screaming that he would find someone, some member of the Race still alive.

But their creators no longer existed, and Mosasa returned alone.

Mosasa was speaking though the PA system to Mallory, shouting, before he was quite aware of what he was doing. No, this is bad, I don’t act impulsively, I don’t act on fear . . .

He sealed the door to Mallory’s cabin and cut his transmission even as Mallory responded to his interruption.

Mosasa reined in his desperate emotions and contacted Kugara, the only security team he had left. She looked up from a console on the bridge, surprised at Mosasa’s disembodied voice. “Kugara, take Wahid and go to Fitzpatrick’s cabin. Take Nickolai into custody.”

She looked around, as if searching for him. “Nickolai, why?”

“He confessed to sabotaging the tach-comm—”

“What?”

“He is in the employ of unknown forces and is unpredictable. I want him restrained in a cabin, and I want you guarding him during the jump. Tsoravitch will handle your station.”

“But—”

“Now! I’m not going to allow this to delay our jump!”

Less than a minute after Mosasa had said, “Stop testing me, priest,” The door to Mallory’s cabin slid open. Nickolai turned and saw Wahid and Kugara standing on the other side.

“Yeah, I was fucking paranoid.” Wahid shook his head and gave the two of them a thin little smile. He pointed the brick of a gamma laser at Nickolai’s midsection. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Unholster that slug thrower and toss it over here.”

Kugara pointed her needlegun at him and looked at him with a hard expression that told him nothing.

Nickolai knew that he could easily take out the two threats in front of him, disarm them before they fired, if he cared to. But what point was there to it? He could take over this ship, and then what? Drift until the abyss claimed him?

Better to accept his fate with what little dignity he had left.

He took Mr. Antonio’s gun from its holster and gently tossed the weapon to Wahid. It felt blasphemous, watching one of the Fallen catch the icon.

“We’re going back to your cabin, tiger-boy.” Wahid told him.

Nickolai nodded.

Wahid grimaced and gestured with the gamma laser. “Move it.”

The two of them allowed him to take the lead, and as he passed them he noted his last chance to overpower both of them before getting shot.

“What the hell were you trying to do?” Wahid said from behind him. “Why didn’t you just strap a bomb to your chest, you morey fuck? It’d be quicker.”

Nickolai didn’t answer. For himself, he knew the answer. If Mr. Antonio had told him the consequences of his sabotage, he never would have agreed. Suicide was the ultimate cowardice, and while Nickolai might have been damned for many things, cowardice would never be one of them.

But why did Mr. Antonio wish Mosasa dead in this particular fashion? Nickolai was a warrior and had access to the whole mission. Had he been given simple instructions to eliminate the AI—or even the whole crew here—he could have done so. Even if there was some doubt about the location of Mosasa’s AI brain while they were planetside, once they were on the Eclipse the nature of interstellar communication meant that the thing had to be on board.

Nickolai went quietly to his cabin. Kugara stepped in behind him. “Arms behind you.”

“What?”

“Do what she says,” Wahid told him.

Nickolai complied. He felt her grab his wrists and start wrapping something around them. He glanced back, and saw her pulling a roll of emergency sealant tape around his limbs, the same material that you’d use to seal tears and punctures in an environment suit or a ship’s hull in a pinch. It bonded to itself and other synthetic materials instantly.

“My arm . . .” Nickolai began to say. But it was pointless. Did it matter that the tape binding him permanently fused to the pseudoflesh of his arm?

His real arm felt the warmth as the tape bonded to his artificial limb.

“Legs,” she told him.

Nickolai complied, bringing his two digitigrade feet together. She started taping below the ankle, and stopped a little below the knee. Nickolai now stood, immobile.

Kugara grabbed his shoulder, spun him so he faced the door, and pushed. His back hit the wall next to his cot.

With his back to the wall, Kugara pulled one last strip of the sealant tape across his neck, attaching him to the wall.

Wahid shook his head. “You think you got him tied up enough?”

“If he wanted to, he could have disemboweled you five times while we came up here. One thing I learned in the DPS, if you arrest a morey, you restrain them. They were engineered to tear you apart hand-to-hand.”

DPS?

Nickolai stared at her, wondering. The DPS was Dakota Planetary Security, the secret police, and the main enforcers of the planetary government. Kugara wasn’t a typical refugee from Dakota, of which there were plenty on Bakunin. She was what the refugees were running from.

He suddenly wished he had asked her more about her past.

“Well you certainly have restrained him. Though you might want to strap his legs to the wall, too, unless you want his neck to snap if something goes funny with the jump.”

She turned around and ran several strips of tape across his torso, waist, and legs. “There,” she said. “Happy?”

Wahid shrugged. “Hell, I’d shoot the furball right now if it wasn’t for the fact our boss will want to talk to him after we tach into civilization.”

Kugara subvocalized so Wahid wouldn’t hear, but Nickolai could make out her saying, “If we tach into civilization.”

“Speaking of which, we got thirty minutes if Mosasa didn’t push back the jump.” He looked Nickolai up and down. “You’re okay sitting on this particular package until after the jump?”

“Yeah, the bridge is short-staffed as it is. Get back up there.”

Wahid shut the door and Kugara leaned against the wall opposite Nickolai. “This is going to be long half hour,” she said.

Nickolai was inclined to agree.

Parvi sat at the pilot’s station fifteen minutes before jump and ran though all the scenarios she could think of. Having power reserves so low made her uncomfortably aware of the differences between a fighter pilot and a tach-ship pilot. If something went wrong with the Eclipse, there was no bailing out. They didn’t have the resources to compensate for any navigational errors.

Worse, they were taching completely blind, with half the sensors gone from the drive systems. Those were the last line of defense for the engines if they had the bad luck to tach into the wake from another ship. They allowed the engines to modulate and keep things from overheating or blowing up like the tach-comm.

Of course, that was unlikely to happen. While another tach-ship could cause a disturbance that could affect their engines, such wakes were short-lived and propagated only a few AU. They would have to tach right on top of another ship in astronomical terms for it to be a worry, sensors or no sensors.

Much worse was the more likely prospect of more sabotage.

We’ve gone over the ship with every diagnostic we have; everything’s in working order . . .

At eleven minutes to go, Wahid came in, holstering a gamma laser and sat himself at the nav station. He started going through the checks without a word to anyone else.

Tsoravitch sat at the comm station, not that the Eclipse had much communication left. She had slipped into the seat when Mosasa had ordered Kugara and Wahid to restrain the tiger. For all the distaste Parvi had for Nickolai, she still had yet to wrap her head around that one. How the hell did Mosasa’s pissant little adventure rate two spies?

Were there people back home who knew what they’d find here?

Eight minutes. The bridge was disturbingly silent. As a precaution, Mosasa had ordered all the nonbridge crew to the cabins which doubled as escape pods, just in case.

Of course, if it came to that, the people on the bridge were screwed, along with Bill, trapped in the cargo hold by his massive environment suit.

Mosasa came in, completing the bridge crew. Just the four of them, Parvi, Tsoravitch, Wahid, Mosasa. Rotating in the central holo glowed a schematic description of their route. Eight light-years to the closest colony and a habitable planet.

If it is still there.

Six minutes and the door to the bridge slid shut with a pneumatic hiss. Parvi watched the display as her readout on the ship’s systems showed each compartment isolating itself. In a few moments each segment of the ship with people inside was on an isolated life-support system.

Just in case.

“Bill’s given the computer models the all clear,” Wahid said.

Three minutes, and Mosasa looked at Tsoravitch. “Give the bridge feed to the rest of the ship.”

Tsoravitch nodded, tapping a few controls, releasing a small snap of static across the PA system. Parvi did the final checks on the power plants to the tach-drive and heard her voice echo around her when she said, “Drive is hot. The systems are on-line and within acceptable ranges.”

Wahid tapped a few controls and the schematic on the main holo stopped its subtle rotation and began to glow slightly more solid. “Target fixed. Course window opens in one hundred seconds.”

Tsoravitch nodded and stared at her own readouts. “No problematic mass concentrations within five AU.” Sweat beaded on her forehead. Parvi wished Kugara was at her station.

Parvi asked the rote question, “Okay to fire the tach-drive?”

This time, the question didn’t seem so rote.

“Yes,” Mosasa said mechanically.

Wahid announced, “Sixty seconds to window.”

“Our tach-drive is on auto,” Parvi announced.

Wahid’s voice sounded distressingly calm. “Twenty seconds to window. Fifteen seconds to last-chance abort.”

There was little calm in Tsoravitch’s voice. There was a little vibrato in her voice when she said, “Mass sensors still clear.”

“Ten seconds. Five to commit,” Wahid said. “The drive is committed. Three . . . Two . . . One . . .”

For the first time in her life, Parvi physically felt when a ship fired its tach-drive.