S. Swann - Prophets

The crew functioned admirably under the gaze of so many command officers. He was proud of having his people perform so well after the bare-bones training they were forced through to fully man the Voice in such a short time frame. Checklists were completed, final broadcasts made through the ship, the last engineering details were triple-checked and the navigation team ran the final models on the massive computer cores that pondered the longest tach-jump in human history.

The complicated electronic ballet concluded with a chorus of “Ready” cascading across the bridge, starting at navigation, through communications, environmental and weapon systems, and finally ending with Captain Gamal Rasheed, the commander of the Voice and therefore the highest ranking member of the battle group under Admiral Hussein. The captain turned to him and said, “All stations report we are prepared to jump.”

The admiral nodded. “Give the order, Captain.”

“Engage the tach-drive.”

Date: 2526.5.10 (Standard) Earth-Sol

Sydney was probably about as far as one could get from Rome and still remain on the same planet—not only geographically, but in spirit. Where the Vatican, and most of Europe, seemed to embody the roots of mankind, its ties to Earth, the Australian city seemed the reverse, aggressively tying itself to the star-flung traces of humanity. It still wore its history as the capital of the old Confederacy.

Once the nominal seat of the last attempt at a universal human government, and more than 250 years old, the Confederacy Tower stabbed a kilometer-long finger into the Australian sky. It dominated this city the way it had once dominated all of known space.

To Cardinal Anderson, the building seemed to reach beyond the bounds of Earth, a modern Tower of Babel that was still, in a sense, caught in a slow motion collapse that began 175 years ago. The power still held by the building was represented by the extensive diplomatic compounds that clustered near it. The embassy and consulates here had remained in continual operation even through the collapse of the old Confederacy. No place else would anyone find representatives from more human colonized planets. Across all of human space, there were probably only a dozen planets that didn’t have a diplomat here. And that was including the cluster of colonies around the star Xi Virginis.

Cardinal Anderson stood on a balcony of one of those diplomatic compounds. The Vatican had had a token embassy here from the days of the Confederacy; it was a small structure on the fringes of the diplomatic hive surrounding the spire reflecting its unique status. Even before man had left the bounds of Earth, the Vatican had the strange distinction of having all the functions of a state without most of the secular trappings of that authority. It had been near a millennium since the Bishop of Rome had commanded a nonspiritual army.

However, in some ways, the Church was more powerful now than it had been then. He certainly doubted a request from any other entity would have sufficed to gather together the people meeting here tonight.

He stood and watched as the sun set behind the massive spire, backlighting it so that its silhouette parted the sky as if the clouds were a pair of theater curtains just beginning to open, revealing something dark behind them.

“Your Grace?” came a voice transmitted into the office behind him.

“Yes?” he responded without turning around.

“Mr. Xaing from the Indi Protectorate has just arrived.”

“Thank you. Let the representatives know I’m on my way down.”

He turned away from the shadowed spire caught between a sense of satisfaction at bringing this meeting to fruition and a sense of foreboding over what he had to impart.

Twelve people waited for him downstairs. He had called on representatives not just from the large states of the Indi Protectorate, the Centauri Alliance, and the Sirius Economic Community, but he also invited diplomats from the Union of Independent Worlds, and had even appealed to the nonhumans of the Fifteen Worlds.

When he walked into the conference room in the basement of the Vatican consulate, he faced representatives from every transplanetary government outside of the Caliphate itself. As he walked up to the head of the table, a holo of the Caliphate’s newest Ibrahim-class carrier was projected above the long axis of the table. It was sobering to think this ship was as massive as the Confederacy spire itself.

“Thank you all for coming. I know the logistics of this meeting were complex, but the willingness of your governments to meet here should illustrate the gravity of this situation.”

A dozen pairs of eyes focused on him with emotions that ranged from support from the Vatican’s nominal allies, Centauri and Sirius, to enigmatic disinterest coming from the inhuman eyes belonging to the canid from the Fifteen Worlds, to outright hostility coming from the camp of Indi and the Independent Worlds.

But all were here to hear him speak.

“It is the desire of His Holiness to share what we know about the Caliphate’s capabilities and intentions, because their implications affect every government represented in this room.”

With that, Cardinal Anderson made the same arguments that he had been making to the pope for the last decade. By the grace of God, these people would not take as long to convince.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Revelation

The more prepared the attack, the less expected the outcome.

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

—Helmuth von Moltke (1800-1891)

Date: 2526.05.22 (Standard) Xi Virginis

There wasn’t even a sound to mark the Eclipse ’s jump, just an abrupt shift in the star field shown in the holo.

Another twenty light-years, Nickolai thought. Here we are.

For the drama, and the plotting, and the hushed admonitions of Mr. Antonio, the Eclipse ’s arrival at the point of Mr. Mosasa’s anomaly was anticlimactic.

“We’re still nominal on all systems,” Parvi said. “Drives are cold.”

“Mass sensors negative for two AU.”

Wahid didn’t say anything. After a long pause, Mosasa said, “Navigation?”

“Hold on a minute.” Wahid shook his head, and for all the trouble Nickolai had in interpreting human expressions, even he could tell something was seriously wrong.

“What’s the problem?” Parvi asked. “Are we off course?”

Nickolai knew that the Eclipse was fueled for multiple jumps at this distance, but even so, the thought of taching twenty light-years in the wrong direction tightened something in his gut.

Could what I did have affected the engines? Nickolai began to realize that there was no particular motive for Mr. Antonio to keep him alive. Mr. Antonio wasn’t like Nickolai; he was a man and had no honor to keep, even to himself.

“No, we’re right where we’re supposed to be,” Wahid said slowly. It almost sounded as if he didn’t believe it himself. “All the landmarks check out . . .”

“What’s wrong, then?” Parvi asked.

“Look at the damn holo!” Wahid said, thrusting a hand at the display as if he wanted to bat it out of his face.

“What?” Parvi looked at the holo of stars between them, and her eyes widened, and she shook her head. “No . . .”

“Kugara?” Mosasa snapped.

“I’m ahead of you. Mass scans out to the full range of the sensors. No sign of anything bigger than an asteroid for a hundred AU. We got background radiation consistent with interstellar media—”

One of the scientists, the female with yellow hair, spoke up. “What happened? Is there some sort of problem?”