S. Swann - Prophets

Mosasa shook his head, hands clutching the console in front of him. At the moment he looked way too human.

Only one third power, Mallory thought. That’s less than two fully-powered jumps. That can’t even get us halfway back.

He could see that understanding sinking into the faces of the rest of the crew, except for Nickolai’s, who appeared as enigmatic as ever. Mosasa stared at the console in front of him, whispering, “Was this planned?”

“Sir?” Parvi asked.

Mosasa pushed himself upright. “We need to conserve power and get to a colony where we might be able to repower the ship and repair the damage. Everyone on maintenance duty, I want the drives checked out. Make sure they suffered no other damage.”

“What colony?” Wahid asked.

“The closest one is HD 101534. It is eight light-years away and leaves us with an acceptable margin in our remaining power reserves.”

If it is still there, Mallory thought.

Most of the crew had things to do, checking out the integrity of the tach-drive, doing what they could to fix the damping system, repairing the breach made by the failing tach-comm, plotting a course to the next nearest “lost” colony. Even the scientists finally had some work, trying to decipher exactly what happened to Xi Virginis.

That left Mallory alone in the common room, wondering exactly what the meaning of all of this was. Even if the tach-drives themselves were undamaged, they were effectively stranded, as isolated from the rest of humanity as these far-flung colonies themselves.

And, deep in his soul, he felt an approaching doom. It wasn’t a fear of death. The doom he felt coming was far from that personal.

Xi Virginis is missing . . .

And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth . . .

He was Catholic, and a Jesuit, so he had always had a pragmatic view of his own faith in the face of the observable universe. He was comfortable with a God that spoke to him in allegory and metaphor, the beauty of the natural world was enough to shore his faith in God, and the wickedness of his fellow man was enough for him to believe in Satan. He believed in the spiritual world, the presence of Christ at the Mass, and in the holiness of the saints. He believed in good and evil.

And, deep in his soul, he felt that the Eclipse had crossed into something whose evil was nearly beyond human comprehension. He could not objectify the feeling, give himself a rational basis for it. A missing star was strange, but across creation there were certainly things stranger. It would be the height of arrogance to presume that man had plumbed the depths of what was possible.

But, to Mallory, the absence of Xi Virginis was worse than unexplained, it was malignant. It represented something abhorrent in the universe: the snake in Eden, Satan tempting Christ in the desert, the Dragon from Revelation.

The more he thought of the magnitude of evil, the more he thought he was a poor instrument to face it. He could draw on his military experience to face the worldly issues posed by the Caliphate. But this? He was a professor. He didn’t even have a parish. When it came to spiritual matters, he was as weak and insignificant a priest as anyone could hope to find.

“God give me the strength to do your will,” he prayed. “And grant me the wisdom to know what that is . . .”

“Amen, brother,” came Wahid’s voice from the doorway.

Mallory turned, startled, to look at his fellow mercenary. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

Wahid shrugged. “Who’s expecting an enemy to jump them on their own ship?” He walked over and sat down on the couch across from Mallory. “Professional paranoia or not, it’s natural to let your guard down when you’re on your own ship.”

Mallory didn’t like where this was going, so he changed the subject. “So, you have the course to the next colony plotted in?”

“Yes, if the bastard’s still there.”

“Yeah . . .”

Wahid leaned forward. “You ever hear of a tach-comm failing like that?”

“No.”

“Neither has anyone else, you know. It’s one of those things that just doesn’t happen. Hell, it took Bill to come up with a model of exactly what happened.”

“What happened?”

“You want to take a guess?”

“Huh?”

“Go on Fitz, take a guess.”

“I have no idea what—”

“An Emerson field.”

“What?”

“Apparently, if you do the right math, you can tune an Emerson field to imaginary wavelengths that interact rather interestingly with a coherent beam of tachyons. According to Bill, exactly the massive power sink and overload that took out our comm array and half the drive sensors.”

Mallory looked at Wahid and the silence stretched for nearly a full minute before Mallory said, “That means someone sabotaged us.”

“Someone with access to disable the security cams in the maint tunnel.”

Such as someone whose nominal shipboard duty was security. Mallory started to stand up. “I think you might have the wrong—”

Wahid put a hand on Mallory’s chest and eased him back down into a sitting position. “That news got everyone on the bridge a little upset. The idea one of our colleagues shafted us, stranding us in the ass-end of nowhere without even the ability to call for help. Now figuring out who, that’s an issue. I mean we got four or five people who had access. Mosasa and Parvi can go anywhere, of course. The technical folks. Security, of course.” Wahid stared into Mallory’s eyes. Mallory didn’t say anything for fear of betraying himself. “You’re Catholic. Right, Fitz?”

“Yes.”

“I figured, since I had to fetch you out of a church of all places.”

“What are you—”

“You know, Dr. Dörner of all people, she remembered you when I mentioned that. Funny thing is, the guy she remembered wasn’t named Fitzpatrick.” Wahid leaned back and said, “Why the fuck did you screw us over like this, Mallory? ”

“I didn’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Hand me your gun, slowly.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

Wahid drew his own weapon and pointed it at Mallory. “You know, Mosasa doesn’t think so. Last I checked, he’s in charge. Hand it over. Now.”

Mallory didn’t have much choice, he pulled his sidearm out of its holster and held it out butt first. Wahid took it.

“I think we need to talk—” Mallory started to say. His words were cut short when Wahid struck the side of his face with his own gun, hitting him hard enough to knock him sideways out of his seat. Mallory landed on hands and knees, spitting up blood.

“Believe me,” Wahid told him, “we’re going to have a nice long talk. But right now, you’re going back to your cabin, locked up and out of the way.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Confession

We are defined by the secrets we choose to keep.

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

Every man must get to heaven in his own way.

—FREDERICK II “the GREAT” (1712-1786)

Date: 2526.05.24 (Standard) Xi Virginis

Mallory had been confined to his cabin for nearly twenty hours, isolated from the rest of the ship, having no idea if they had tached to a new colony yet or not. During that time, his mind was divided between the enormity of what was happening in the universe around them and the enormity of what was happening aboard the Eclipse .

Someone had sabotaged the tach-comm and had done so in a very sophisticated manner. Mallory immediately suspected a Caliphate agent, but he couldn’t force that scenario to make sense. Why would the Caliphate want to destroy the tach-comm? Did they know what happened to the star that used to be here?