S. Swann - Prophets

The camera down here was still blind as of three hours ago. Nickolai confirmed that by standing on the bridge where several monitors scanned through all the security feeds. It was unlikely that anyone had gotten around to fixing it in the past three hours.

He just wished there was some visual indication that the camera was nonoperational.

Nickolai reached up and tapped his artificial claw on the button to open the panel. It slid aside, revealing the coils on the meter-diameter cylinder that directed the FTL particles that would compose any transmission. The coils were cold, idle, hanging about ten centimeters above the open hatch.

From his belt, Nickolai removed one of the devices that Mr. Antonio had given him. Like everything else, it resembled something other than what it actually was. To even a thorough examination, the small palm-sized device was nothing more than a personal Emerson field generator, designed to detect and absorb the effects of energy weapons within a specific range of frequencies, and provide the wearer a measure of protection from everything short of a plasma cannon, at least until the batteries overloaded.

It would be completely unremarkable until someone opened up the computer and examined the source code in the small device. Then they might see some oddities, such as the frequency sensitivity, which was set to wavelengths that didn’t make sense in terms of energy weapons, or even in terms of normal massy particles. The settings only made sense when interpreted to involve the complex numbers associated with a stream of tachyons.

Nickolai slid the field generator under the emitter tube, back as close to the rear bulkhead as he could manage. According to Mr. Antonio, the generator would be completely passive and undetectable to any diagnostics. It would only switch on during a full-bore tach-transmission, and then cause a failure that would be nearly impossible to trace.

The important part wasn’t how it worked, the important part was this act would be another step in clearing his debt to Mr. Antonio. Honorless as this sabotage was, Nickolai told himself that he owed Mosasa and his hirelings no loyalty. A demonic machine and a crew of the Fallen—honor did not apply.

He slid the panel shut and flexed his mechanical hand.

He wondered if he would feel the same about serving Mr. Antonio if Mosasa was simply another damned human. He wondered if Mr. Antonio had only told him Mosasa’s nature because he anticipated the bad taste of doubt that would fill Nickolai’s mouth about now.

He stayed there, lost in thought, until he caught a faint near-human scent. He was aware of her only a few moments before he heard her voice. “Nickolai?”

Nickolai turned at Kugara’s voice. Somehow he retained enough composure to avoid looking startled or spinning his whole body in an awkward tumble. It helped that he was in a cramped human-sized space that prevented someone his size from moving quickly.

“Yes?” he said. She floated in the doorway of the maintenance corridor, staring at him. He couldn’t read her expression enough to see if she noticed his proximity to the tach-comm. She was in charge of the comm and the integrity of the data systems. Could she have somehow detected what he was doing?

He almost hoped she had.

“What are you doing back here?” she asked him. Nickolai was better at human tones of voice than he was at expression, but the way she addressed him was puzzling. It wasn’t aggressive or accusatory—if anything, her voice was borderline submissive. Worried? Maybe even embarrassed?

Maybe she didn’t realize what I was doing . “I came back here to look out the observation port.” He provided the explanation he had prepared. “I feel cramped in here.”

She smiled, and Nickolai wondered if she made a point of not showing her teeth to him. “That, I understand.” She massaged the neural interface on the back of her neck and shook her head. “Even the ship’s internal network feels closed in. Which makes no sense, but there you are.”

“Why are you down here?” Nickolai asked.

“Same reason.” She shook her head. “But you were here first. I can go back and jack into an observatory program. Get a better view that way.”

“Then why come down here?”

“Oh, just something about seeing it with my own eyes. Doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“I understand.”

She turned to go, and Nickolai said, “Wait.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”

“There’s room by the portal, if you want . . .” Nickolai didn’t know why he was saying the words, and he trailed off in the middle of the sentence.

“To join you?”

“I understand if you want to be alone,” Nickolai said. He turned to face the empty stars. In reality, staring out the observation portal was the last thing he wanted to do, but it was the only explanation he had for being here, and now that Kugara had seen him, he didn’t have much choice but to face the void.

“Nickolai,” she said, “we’ve been alone since we boarded this ship.”

“Longer than that,” Nickolai whispered, pulling himself into the small circular room in front of the observation port. He pressed himself against the wall so he squatted on his haunches. If the Eclipse was pointed at their destination right now, then he was probably facing all of human space. The home of his own people, the Fifteen Worlds, he could probably cover with his hand.

To his surprise, Kugara joined him. She floated up behind him, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You know, it’s not as roomy as you think it is.”

Nickolai edged to the side, and Kugara squeezed through the top of the doorway. She pressed against his arm, grunting. Once past him, she twisted to hold herself against the wall on the other side of the door, facing out the portal toward the stars.

“Damn,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She looked down at the wall behind her. “The view would be better if I killed the lights. Here . . .”

She touched a control on the wall behind her, and the lights in the corridor dimmed until the only illumination came from the control readouts and the stars. Beyond the window, the star field erupted into painful clarity. Nickolai’s artificial eyes shifted frequencies and sensitivities, showing more and more stars, a view of the universe he had never experienced before. A vastness that was beautiful, stark, and completely disinterested in him.

“Damn,” Kugara repeated.

Why are we here? Nickolai thought. Staring out at the stars, the question took on an unintended depth beyond the simple self-doubt of inviting Kugara to share this view.

After a long silence, Kugara asked, “Do you trust Mosasa?”

“No.”

“But you agreed to work for him.”

“You say that as if I had a choice,” Nickolai quoted her words back at her.

“Touché.” She pulled her legs up until her knees were drawn up in front of her. She folded her arms across her knees, and rested her chin on her arms. “He’s so cold.”

“He’s a machine.”

“You told me that. But the idea he knew, about the ambush— ambushes —and that he might have triggered an interplanetary invasion. Don’t you feel you’re working for the Devil?”

Nickolai laughed for the first time in a long while. He only stopped when he realized that Kugara was staring at him.

“My apologies,” Nickolai said. “That was amusing.”

“What was amusing?”

Nickolai looked out at the stars. “Of course we’re working for the Devil. Mosasa is lifeless thought, the personification of the sins of the Fallen.”

“The Fallen?”

“Humanity. Our creators.”

“Our creators?” She sucked in a breath. “Oh.”