Andragna allowed the fur to bunch over his eyes. “The twins? What twins?”
The high priestess stood. “Follow me. I’ll show you.”
Bricana rose, led him across the open chamber, and entered a side tunnel. It was guarded by acolytes armed with blast rifles rather than ceremonial spears. Andragna registered surprise but kept the emotion to himself. What did the priesthood have that required such heavily armed sentries? It was difficult to imagine.
The tunnel turned left, ran for twenty units, turned right, ran for twenty units and turned left again. Each right angle turn represented a potential point of defense, each was monitored by a clutch of sensors, and each had been executed with machinelike precision. These walls appeared raw, as if only recently excavated, and still wore marks left by the tools used to make them. The odor of ozone mixed with some sort of sealant hung heavy on the air.
Bricana stopped before a blast-proof hatch. Andragna noticed that it still bore the number of the ship from which it had been salvaged, still another sign of the power that the priesthood continued to wield. She placed her forehead on a reader, lasers scanned her retinas, and a blue light appeared. Servos whined, the door swiveled open, and the visitors stepped through. A priest was waiting. He was armed and wore the black robes favored by the Brother/ISisterhood of Assassins. Andragna couldn’t see them—but felt sure that others lurked nearby. The priest bowed. “Welcome. How can I be of assistance?”
Bricana bowed in return. “Thank you. The admiral and I would tike to visit the twins.”
If the assassin was surprised by the request, he gave no sign of it. He bowed a second time. “Of course
... Please follow me.”
Thus began a second journey that was much like the first, a series of carefully planned rightangle turns that led to a second blastproof hatch. Andragna was more than intrigued ... he was angry and fearful. What terrible secret had the priesthood been keeping? And if they had one, did they have others as well?
The second door opened. Bricana went first, followed by the males. There was nothing especially attractive about the cavern that lay beyond. No worm glass, no special lighting, no effort to smooth the recently machined walls. It was perhaps fifty units across and twenty units high. A pair of what appeared to be golden cradles, each heavily decorated with scroll work, sat on a raised dais. The twins, if that’s what they were, consisted of bright metal tubes. They were approximately ten units in length. It appeared that each construct was protected by a force field, which, if not identical to those used by the Sheen, then were very, very similar. There was no need to tell Andragna what they were ... He knew. The twins were weapons.
The priestess waited for her military colleague to reach the obvious conclusion. He asked the same question she had asked so many years in the past. “How do they work?”
Bricana offered the Thraki equivalent of a shrug. “Given the nature of your responsibilities, I’m sure you are familiar with black holes.”
Andragna was. He knew that when gigantic stars explode, or go supernova, something remains. A
“hole,” or an object so dense that nothing could escape its gravitational field, not even light itself. Anything that ventured sufficiently close, including starships, asteroids, or planets risked being sucked in. What happened after that was unknown since there was no way for information to come back out. “Of course. It’s part of my job to avoid them.”
Bricana offered what amounted to a smite. “Yes, and we appreciate your efforts!” Her expression grew more serious. “Ask yourself this . . . what happens to all the matter captured by a black hole? It’s reduced to amorphous energy. Ships, asteroids, planets, whatever. All transformed into radiation. Maybe it stays there, trapped in time and space, or maybe it exits somewhere else. Were it to emerge, the exit point could be referred to as a ‘white hole.’ Imagine how much energy we’re talking about—imagine how destructive it could be.”
Andragna took a moment to do so. The results would be awesome. His eyes met hers. “So that’s what these are? White holes?”
“Artificial white holes,” the high priestess corrected him, “created and suspended within an antimatter container, and housed in a normal matter shell.”
Andragna eyed the twins. Here was something any military officer would appreciate. Power on an unparalleled scale. “How? How do they work?”
“I’m no expert on such matters,” Bricana said evenly, “but it’s my understanding that each tube can be launched like a missile. Once the weapon enters the target area a signal is sent, the magnetoelectric locks are released, and an atom-sized white hole pops into existence. It would last for no more than a millisecond, but the result would be devastating. If used against us, the entire armada would cease to exist.”
Andragna wasn’t sure which was more amazing, the fact that such weapons existed, or how they came to be. So long ago that they were mentioned in the Book of Tomorrows. “So the old ones foresaw our situation? Knew what would face us? How could that be?”
Bricana looked uncertain. “I honestly couldn’t say. They were given into our possession when the great journey began. That’s as much as we know.”
