Prophets

observatory feeding the image could pick out the rough patchwork of gray-and-brown repairs forming most of the ship’s skin.

Inset over the image was a transmission showing a red-haired young woman with an unmarked brow. The sound was muted, but Alexander could read the captions on the looped transmission,“This is the Bakunin-registered tach- ship Eclipse. Our drives are hot and we request a safe zone around our position for the next twelve hours at least. We need assistance in repairing our damping coils, and would also like clearance to land within the next forty-eight hours.”

Next to the young woman’s transmission was telemetry data gathered by the satellites when the Eclipse tached in, as well as transponder information from the ship itself that, predictably, corresponded with the woman’s assertion that the ship was registered on Bakunin and was named the Eclipse.

Most problematic was the telemetry data, which showed a point of origin corresponding to Xi Virginis.

Just like Flynn’s Protean artifact, Alexander thought.

“We cannot let this craft land,” someone contended for the dozenth time.

“And how do we prevent that?” someone else countered.

“They may have information about the alien craft,” a third person said. “We need to direct them to a site that can be contained, and sterilized if necessary.”

Alexander looked at the Eclipse on the monitor. Was this the prelude to an invasion? It was clearly not a military vessel, and the sensors they’d been able to train on it showed that the ship’s drives were hot. They were not trying to hide their presence, and they weren’t being subtle about their transmissions. It was only a matter of time before some civilian received the Eclipse’s transmissions.

And, worse, it wouldn’t be long before someone started a dialogue.

It would be bad enough to have unfiltered alien information leaking into the carefully balanced society of Salmagundi, but Alexander had faith in the ability of their culture to absorb such shocks. It might actually be a good thing if the Great Triad had to deal with some public discontent. It might improve their flexibility.

What concerned Alexander, and what made this a grave event, was the possibility that information from Salmagundi might leak out to the Confederacy. Salmagundi’s culture was based on technologies that the rest of humanity believed heretical, and history made it seem unlikely that the Confederacy, or its successor, would suffer the Hall of Minds to exist.

Of even more concern was the presence of the Protean artifact. That technology was even more antithetical to the Confederacy Alexander’s ancestors had fled. The Confederacy had rendered entire planets uninhabitable to destroy the kind of self-replicating nanotech that the Proteans represented. An attack might only focus on the alien artifact, but Alexander couldn’t count on that.

For all they knew, the Eclipse might only be the vanguard following the Protean artifact, determining how thoroughly they had been contaminated by its contents. In which case, simply destroying them might, in fact, provoke exactly the kind of devastating attack he wanted to avoid.

“We need to let them land,” Alexander said when one of the debating factions asked for his opinion. “If they put down in an isolated area, we can better control their contact with the population. More important, we can control the information they gather about us.”

Date: 2526.6.3 (Standard) 2,250,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

“Engage the tach-drive.”

A chorus of “Yes, sir!” came from the bridge. The Voice’s sisters may have preceded her by taking these huge leaps into the void, but the edge of excitement in the crew’s acknowledgment showed that, for the men here, they may as well have been the first.

For all the excitement in the air, the actual jump was anticlimactic. A short series of warning klaxons, a brief flicker as all the holo displays on the bridge reflected the instantaneous changes rendered in the universe outside and in the systems of the Voice. Even so, a subdued cheer went up on the bridge that was even shared by the command staff. The Prophet’s Voice had made it. It had tached a distance quadruple that of any prior drive design. Admiral Hussein didn’t join in the cheering, but he did smile. For a people whose history was tainted with humiliation and oppression, this vessel represented a high point. It was here when the Caliphate surpassed the rest of humanity.

The bridge crew moved quickly from congratulations back into routine. Things had gone smoothly. They were in orbit around the star HD 101534. During the nonevent of firing the tach-drive, the universe had moved on for a little over twenty-eight days standard.

A blue planet hung in the holo display, their destination.