Prophets (29 page)

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.”

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.

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.

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.

“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.

Nothing moves a State quicker than fear, and nothing a
State fears so much as change.

—
The Cynic's Book of Wisdom

What governs men is the fear of truth.

—Henri FrÉDÉric Amiel (1821-1881)

In the month since the egg landed, a small village of temporary buildings had sprung up around the egg. Most of the buildings had been moved from one of Robert Sheldon's mobile logging camps.

It wasn't long after Frank and Tony landed and took Flynn into custody before the first of the portable outbuildings arrived. They shoved him into one of the barracks buildings shortly after it landed. The building was little more than a large modular container that could mate with the bottom of a large cargo aircraft. The skin was heavy and well-insulated enough to survive a wildfire in the dry season. The people inside would survive, too, if they didn't run out of air.

The structure could house twenty or thirty people. But it also made a fairly good impromptu prison. Even without cuffs or a restraint collar, Flynn would have had an impossible time trying to get out of it without someone opening the armored, fireproof doors for him.

Fortunately, they removed the cuffs within the first forty-eight hours, and provided relatively decent food and clean clothing. But they wouldn't remove the restraint collar, and the comm units were completely isolated inside the new camp's network. He could call security, and that was about it.

At least it had something of an entertainment library, since it was designed to support a working camp, though about half was porn and 90 percent of the rest was thinly disguised work-safety tutorials. Flynn and Tetsami spent most of their time playing chess against each other, and replaying variants of the same conversation.