S. Swann - Prophets

Fitzpatrick said, “I believe I saw you a few days ago, at the military exchange.”

“Perhaps you did.”

“Small world,” Wahid said. “That’s one hell of a coincidence.”

Kugara snorted. “God, aren’t you a paranoid shit, Jusuf?” She looked Nickolai up and down, her face changing to an inscrutable human expression. “Not like Nickolai here can blend into a crowd at ProMex. Don’t mind him,” she addressed Nickolai. “Jusuf thinks everyone is a spy.”

Wahid snorted. “Everyone can benefit from a little professional paranoia.”

Nickolai growled a little in discomfort that he hoped the humans didn’t perceive. He glared at Wahid and asked, “Who exactly would I be spying for?”

The odor of fear gratified Nickolai as Wahid backed up a few steps and held up his hands between them. “I wasn’t accusing anyone of anything.”

Good, he doesn’t actually know anything, Nickolai thought.

“I was with the Occisis Marines for ten years before they cut me loose,” Fitzpatrick said. “What outfit were you with?”

“I was with no ‘outfit.’ ” Nickolai shook his head. “I served my clan, House Rajasthan.”

“What does that mean?” Wahid asked.

“It means he’s a member of the royal family on a planet that chooses their leaders based on their prowess at hand-to-hand combat.” Kugara turned to look at Wahid. “So don’t piss him off.”

“How do you know so much about it?” Wahid asked.

“My father came from Dakota,” Kugara said, “so don’t piss me off.”

Nickolai caught his breath. With all the information Mr. Antonio provided about the nature of Mosasa, his business, and the type of people he might hire, never was the possibility broached that someone from Dakota might be present.

Dakota.

Dakota was one of the original Seven Worlds, founded when the men of Earth decided that they would no longer live with their damned creations. Having stolen the mantle of God, the naked devil chose to cast his handiwork into exile. It was an exodus of all the sapient products of their genetic engineers.

But more than the chosen were exiled. The Fallen hadn’t only raised lesser creatures to become their warriors. They had twisted themselves, re-creating their own flesh into something that was not chosen and was not fallen. And those of once-human ancestry had settled on only one of the old Seven Worlds.

Dakota.

Nickolai could now see the subtle differences that marked Kugara as not quite human. Her scent was different—fainter and less offensive. Her motions were more fluid—quicker, stronger.

He had never met one of the Angels of Dakota. Of all those here, Kugara was closest to God, someone whose flesh bore the mark of God’s own creation without being marred by the sin of arrogance that damned the rest of the Fallen.

He might have said something, but someone chose that time to announce, “So has everyone been introduced?”

The new voice came from the shadowed perimeter of the hangar. A male voice, which was disconcerting since he had not smelled the speaker, still couldn’t smell him. Nickolai turned his head, and his eyes shifted spectrum until he saw the newcomer in the darkness. A hairless human form, as tall as Kugara and darker than Wahid. The man wore a gray coverall that covered most of his body. His most distinct feature was a massive tattoo of a fantastic creature drawn with luminescent dye; the neck of the beast emerged from the collar of the coverall, wrapped around the man’s neck, and curled around his left ear, leaving the profile of the beast’s face drawn across the side of his own.

Mosasa , Nickolai thought, giving the apparition its proper name.

At first the lack of scent made him think he watched a holo projection, but when Mosasa moved, Nickolai heard the scrape of his— its —feet across the concrete. Mosasa had been waiting, soundless and motionless, in a corner of the hangar.

Mosasa walked out into the light.

“So this is your job?” Wahid asked Mosasa.

“I am Tjaele Mosasa,” it responded.

“Yeah,” Wahid said. “Your ad didn’t say anything about hiring his kind.” He didn’t point at Nickolai, but he still felt all the human and near-human attention shift toward him. Nickolai also noticed Kugara fold her arms and take a step toward him while still facing Wahid. She didn’t say anything, and Nickolai didn’t know quite what to make of the movement.

Mosasa chuckled. “Mr. Wahid, if you find yourself queasy about heretical technologies, you’d perhaps best leave us now.”

Wahid started to say something, but Fitzpatrick placed a hand on his shoulder. It was Fitzpatrick who asked, “What do you mean?”

“It means Mosasa is no more human than I am,” Nickolai said quietly. Mr. Antonio had told him what Mosasa was, and also told him that Mosasa did little or nothing to conceal his nature. Mosasa would expect his potential employees to research him. That meant that Nickolai didn’t have to hide the fact he knew that the thing standing before them was as much a machine as the floating sphere that had led him to the hangar.

Nickolai and his kin, extending to those like Kugara, represented the first of the three Great Sins of the Fallen—what Mosasa had called heretical technologies. Mosasa represented the second, the creation of nonliving machine intelligence. To the followers of the true faith, it was even more unforgivable. With genetic engineering, humanity had only twisted life that had existed beforehand. With artificial intelligence, the Fallen had the arrogance to create thought without life.

To serve Mr. Antonio was a disgrace. Mosasa was an abomination.

And yet, Nickolai still stood here. He wondered if it was because he had completely lost the faith of his mothers, or if he had fallen so far from grace that it no longer mattered what he did.

Nickolai didn’t know how the others might feel about Mosasa’s true nature, or if they had done enough research to uncover it. In either case, Nickolai couldn’t read their reactions to his comment, and Mosasa himself didn’t elaborate or explain.

Mosasa only glanced at Nickolai, then back at Wahid. “Mr. Rajasthan is here because the BMU has scored him better than any of you on just about every combat skill outside piloting and Information Warfare.”

Fitzpatrick shook his head and asked, “Are you expecting a war?”

“Mr. Fitzpatrick,” Mosasa said. “If I knew what to expect, this expedition would not be necessary.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Acolyte

Everyone worships the God that promises them what they want.

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

—VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)

Date: 2525.11.21 (Standard) 0.98 ly from BD+50°1725

The man Nickolai Rajasthan knew as Mr. Antonio had left the planet shortly after his last meeting with the tiger. Anyone who monitored his departure from Bakunin would have watched the small short-range craft and noted a trajectory that would take the ship toward Banlieue. Even the energy signature of the departure would have matched a small one-man craft taking the sixteen light-year journey. If the observer did the calculations based on energy expenditure and tach-drive capability, they would expect Mr. Antonio to arrive at the 355-year-old Sirius colony within about three months standard.

All of which was a carefully-engineered falsehood.

The craft Mr. Antonio piloted was a rather pedestrian scout ship, a one-hundred-year-old knockoff of a two-hundred-year-old design from the Centauri Trading Company. It had been built in one of the factories orbiting Angkor back when there was a cohesive Indi Protectorate expanding for the sake of expansion. Its construction was functional and ugly, a metallic sheath wrapping the tach-drive that comprised 80 percent of its mass and 98 percent of its volume. The whole ship formed a blocky truncated cone whose outline was defined by the construction of the scout’s drives.That outline was only broken by two protrusions; the command blister on top and the single parasitic drop ship attached to a docking ring underneath.