Prophets (19 page)

The detail here, as usual, required something just short of prescience. It certainly required the efforts of an entire intelligence service with agents on multiple planets and connections with dozens of organizations. A major transplanetary corporation at the least, and more likely one of the Caliphate's rival governments—an entity served as much as the Caliphate by the passing of the information.

Whatever the case, “payment” was almost beside the point for both sides of the transaction.

“Is there something else you wished to discuss?”

“Are you aware of the nature of the packages you deliver?”

“On occasion.”

“This latest one?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea how troublesome this news is?”

“Would it be worth my while to bring you news that was not troublesome?”

“I suppose not.”

Al-Hamadi scanned the package and wondered what Caliphate government report detailed the actions of the Waldgrave Militia on Bakunin, and where in the Caliphate bureaucracy it was buried. He knew that the Militia wouldn't engage in an operation without at least the appearance of Caliphate authorization. There would be a report somewhere, approved by someone's cousin on a planetary council just far enough away from the core that the operation would be well underway before Khamsin or Al-Hamadi heard word of it.

If there were two foreign words beloved by the militant factions of the Caliphate, they would be
fait accompli
. This was how the Islamic Revolution on Rubai happened; just take the crumbling central government of Epsilon Indi, and a few dozen rogue militia cells, mix well.

The problem with the Militia was that they were an incredibly blunt instrument. Their idea of a covert operation was to not take credit for the aftermath. A private expedition toward Xi Virginis was troublesome, but only to persons who knew the significance of that area of space. For a dozen years standard, Al-Hamadi had managed to keep that significance a secret within the highest levels of the Caliphate, presumably far above the level of anyone directly involved with the Militia.

Now that significance had leaked. The expedition from Bakunin was bad enough, but if Al-Hamadi had intercepted that information, it could have been dealt with quietly and without drawing attention.

But the Militia had hired a small army of mercenaries to . . .

Al-Hamadi shook his head. He wasn't even going to try to second-guess their motivation at this point. He had a much bigger problem. The Militia's clumsy actions had done everything but tach-comm every intelligence service in human space with the message, “The Caliphate thinks the space around Xi Virginis is very important. Please allocate all your spare resources toward determining why.”

Do they even know?
Al-Hamadi wondered.

“Do you believe in God?” he asked Ms. Columbia.

“I doubt the same one as you.”

“
There is no God but God
,” Al-Hamadi whispered in Arabic, half reading part of the mosaic underneath the rippling waters. “Sometimes I wonder if that is the case for some of us in the Caliphate. After the fall of the Confederacy, you would think we would be the strongest, most stable transplanetary government in human space. The one government founded not by some accident of history or stellar geography, but a rule based on a common faith, a common law, a common language.” He looked at Ms. Columbia, who wore the same distant expression she always did. “It seems that the more common ground we share, the more intractable the differences.”

“That seems to be human nature.”

“Or God's will.” He turned around to start walking back to the consulate. “Please give my regards, and my thanks, to your employer.”

Whoever that is,
he thought.

He and Ms. Columbia parted ways at the main consulate building. She left the grounds while he went deep into the bowels of the complex, to the secure tach-comm station. He slipped ahead of fifteen diplomats waiting for transmit time because he had the rank to do so, and because the messages he needed to send were probably the most important to ever cross this particular tach-comm array.

The Eridani Caliphate was going to have to send its ships to Xi Virginis years ahead of schedule, and Al-Hamadi needed to get ahead of events before things spun out of control.

It took Al-Hamadi's tach-comm transmission four days to reach Epsilon Eridani and the capital of the Caliphate. The day after Ms. Columbia's revelations propagated through the Caliphate government, Muhammad Hussein al Khamsiti, one of sixteen active-duty admirals in the Caliphate Navy, was enjoying the third week of an extended leave.

He was on a nearly eight-month leave while the Caliphate orchestrated a high-level reorganization of the Caliphate armed forces. Admiral Hussein, along with about a half dozen other admirals, had some time off while their new commands were created.

Until a few months ago, Admiral Hussein had been in command of the defensive fleet around Paschal. It was a position he expected to retire from, until he received the orders to prepare for a reassignment of his command. At first he thought he had offended someone in the bureaucracy, and that he was being ordered back to Khamsin to fill some pointless office role until he could be forced to retire. However, when he had tached into his home system, he had been met by the Minister of the Navy himself, who had assured him otherwise.

“You have been chosen to head one of the Caliphate's newest fleets. Beyond that, all I can tell you is that it's a great honor—until we call you back, enjoy your leave, spend time with your family.”

So now he stood in the back garden of his third son's house in the suburbs of Al Meftah, playing catch with his youngest grandson. Little Rahman was barely a toddler and would run after the ball in a lurching gait that seemed always on the verge of toppling over.

Fortunately, the well-irrigated grass in the garden here was forgiving, and when Rahman did fall, which he did frequently, it was followed by a burst of laughter.

When he laughed with his grandson, Admiral Hussein believed that God had specially blessed him. Until two months ago he had not expected to spend any extended time with his family until he retired.

Rahman tossed the ball with a clumsy two-handed overhand throw that landed about a meter short of Admiral Hussein's feet. The boy fell backward, sitting in the grass, and started giggling.

Admiral Hussein took a step forward to retrieve the ball when he heard his daughter-in-law's voice from the back of the house. “Muhammad!”

He stood up, holding the ball in his hand, and saw the Minister of the Navy standing next to his son's wife. He tightened his grip on the ball in his hand.

“Forgive me, Admiral Hussein, but we've been forced to advance the schedule.”

“My leave's been cut short?”

The minister nodded. “We need you for a briefing within the hour.”

“I understand.” He turned toward Rahman, who was still giggling in the grass. “May I have a few minutes to finish playing with my grandson?”

“Of course, Admiral. Your aircar will be waiting out front.”

The minister's car took Admiral Hussein to the administrative center of the Caliphate in the center of the city of Al Meftah. The center of the city was formed by massive office buildings—trapezoids of mirrored glass reflecting the turquoise sky and the daytime stars of Khamsin's tiny moons. The aircar didn't land at the Naval Ministry, but at a smaller building at the fringes of the government center. Admiral Hussein didn't notice any obvious markings denoting the building's function, but the roof was dominated by a ground-based tach-comm array and there were very few agencies that would rate their own separate interstellar communications link.

One, of course, was the Ministry of External Relations.

The Naval Minister led him down from the roof, deep into the bowels of the building to a conference room behind several layers of human and automated security. After the third checkpoint, Admiral Hussein looked down at his grass-stained civilian clothes and said, “I probably should have changed.”

“It doesn't matter,” the minister told him, “Security has a full biometric profile on you.”

Waiting in the conference room, seated at a long table were three other men, all also in civilian dress. Two he didn't immediately recognize outside a uniform, but one man wore a traditional white cotton thawb. The ankle-length shirt contrasted with the more liberal dress of the other men, but also made the older man more immediately recognizable.

“Admiral Bitar, sir.” Admiral Hussein found himself standing at attention before the smiling, gray-bearded man.

He had met Admiral Naji Bitar several times. He was perhaps the most senior officer in the Caliphate Navy. Bitar had been an admiral before Hussein had even commanded his own supply ship, fifteen years ago.

Bitar stood, laughing, and clasped Hussein's shoulder. “Well, I'm glad they chose you for this skullduggery. Considering how impromptu this meeting is, I think we can dispense with the formality.” He gestured toward the two other men in the room. “I believe you know Admiral Nijab and Admiral Said?”

“By reputation. We've never met.”

Bitar nodded, “I suppose not. Until recently you were serving what, twenty light-years apart?”

The minister cleared his throat. When he had everyone's attention, he said, “I believe we are all here. If you'd all be seated, I think we should begin.”

The minister gestured and the lights in the room dimmed. As Hussein took his seat, a holo display lit up showing a schematic of some sort of spacecraft. It didn't seem remarkable at first, until he recognized one of the tiny bumps on the long body as a Scimitar III fighter attached to a docking ring.

“You are looking at the newest vessel constructed for the Caliphate Navy. It is an Ibrahim-class carrier. It is the largest tach-capable ship ever constructed. It can move itself along with a battle group of a hundred daughter vessels in a single jump.”

“Originally, a year from now, we intended to deploy six of these carriers. However, events have transpired that require us to cut that schedule by more than half. Each of you will be commanding one of the four carriers that will be operational within the next five months.”

“What events?” asked Admiral Bitar.

The holo display above the table changed to show a star map.

“These carriers were designed for a specific task, a long-range expedition to a cluster of stars near Xi Virginis.”

The woman named Ms. Columbia, who left the Saudi peninsula in a Pegasus V luxury transport named
Lillium,
currently walked across the ancient grounds of St. Peter's Square in Rome—in cosmic terms, only a few steps to the left from the Eridani consulate.

Her relationship with Cardinal Jacob Anderson was similar to her relationship with Al-Hamadi, for similar reasons. Her information was too valuable for such men to question her too closely.

Cardinal Anderson walked next to her as they moved on the fringes of the crowd filling the square. Unlike Al-Hamadi, he had not been expecting her arrival. Like all of her actions, whatever body she wore, that detail was carefully planned by Adam. Like most of Adam's machinations, the purpose for surprising Cardinal Anderson was murky to her, but as she had said, she had faith in him.

“This is alarming, to say the least,” the cardinal said, looking at the cyberplas display in his hand. Unlike the data that greeted Al-Hamadi, the information that greeted Cardinal Anderson was predominantly engineering data and specifications, telemetry data, and a few video feeds recorded from orbital construction platforms.

Not much else needed to be added. The details of an Ibrahim-class carrier betrayed their own significance without need of much analysis.

“My employer knew it would be of interest to you.”

“Your employer is a master of understatement.” The cardinal shook his head. “If these specs are accurate, this has just rendered a decade of strategic planning completely worthless. No one has ever suspected the Caliphate had this kind of technology. How close to operational is this?”

“At least one will be operational within two months, four in less than three months, all six should be completed within eight months.”

The cardinal shook his head. “Even if we take into account training a crew to operate these monsters, they'll effectively double the size of their fleet in six months.”

Ms. Columbia knew that the cardinal's worries extended beyond the size of the fleet. Numbers mattered much less at this point than range. One look at the size of the Ibrahim's tach-drives would be enough to shake even the pope's faith.

The cardinal shook his head. “And given the latest information from Bakunin, they're going to have no incentive to move cautiously.” He stopped and faced her. “You'll receive your usual payment. However, if you'll forgive me, I need to act on this information.”

The cardinal turned to leave her, walking back toward the Apostolic Palace in a stride just short of a run. She watched him until she lost sight of him in the crowd. Then she smiled.

Adam would be pleased.