Prophets

access to the tach-comm.

“You will receive a more personal contact within eighteen hours standard after your arrival.You will have a more in-depth briefing on what we have discovered here. We are about to embark on a new age, Muhammad, my friend. God is great.”

The feed swapped Bitar’s face for the green-and-white crescent of the Caliphate, then ended. Admiral Hussein didn’t know what to make of the transmission. It felt inauthentic from the address all the way to his closing. There was an aggressive cheer pervading the message that was more than unprofessional. . . .

Creepy, Hussein thought. The word is “creepy.”

Captain Rasheed turned toward Hussein. A gulf of silence filled the bridge. All waiting for him.

Hussein had known the operation had changed as soon as he had seen the Eclipse. Now, after hearing Bitar’s message, he wondered if there would be anything of the original operation left. At the very least, Bitar’s short speech, bolstered by the missing Xi Virginis, completely revised Hussein’s risk assessment.

He looked up to the bridge at large. “No mention of Admiral Bitar’s speech or Xi Virginis is to occur beyond the people present here. You are not to discuss it among yourselves unless a superior officer is present and has given permission. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” from the bridge crew.

“If anyone mentions the disappearance of Xi Virginis to any of you, you will only confirm that command is aware of the situation. That is the only statement permitted. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked down at Captain Rasheed. “I want you to detail a science officer and someone from the medical staff to analyze that tach-broadcast. Now.”

Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) 750,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

Mosasa stared at the holo, where the security cameras showed the spidery form of the Jizan drawing the wreckage of the Eclipse into itself. A dozen robots, and a half dozen men in hardshell EVA suits, crawled through the wreckage by the drive section like fat white aphids invading a rotten log. The invaders connected cables, secured debris, and attached umbilicals from the Caliphate ship to what remained of the Eclipse’s power and life support . . .

And data . . .

He barely listened to Parvi as she talked to the crew of the Jizan, guiding them through the heavily modified and severely damaged systems. For all the activity, movement, the babble around him, he felt as alone as he had ever been at any point in his ersatz life. His world had shrunk from the universe to the claustrophobic prison of the Eclipse. For the first time in hundreds of years, he felt trapped inside his own skin.

He had built his identity on being aware. Unknowns were solidly delineated areas to explore, not this vast all- encompassing darkness.

The Caliphate should not be here. Not yet. Not with this kind of force. They had no political or economic impetus to launch their reclamation of the colonies out here so soon. Travel time and the limits of tach-drives made it impractical for them to take physical possession. Of course they’d come out here eventually, but only after the forces impelling the various states out here had reached a political equilibrium and they put in place the infrastructure to support the journey out here.

It should have taken years.

But the Caliphate was here, with a whole fleet of ships.

Mosasa knew his view of the future was imperfect, and the smaller the scale of the projection, the less accurate it was. But this wasn’t a simple error or a slight divergence. This was a wholesale failure to see a major shift in resources on a planetary scale.

It was enough of a failure to completely shatter his faith in his understanding of the universe. Seeing the patterns of political, social, and economic energy had been as basic to his worldview as the ability to perceive color.

He looked at his hands and had difficulty being fully convinced that they were actually there.

I am Mosasa, he thought, but I am also a machine. Can I be sure that I ever left the Luxembourg? Can I know that I’ve not just suffered a prolonged hallucinatory systems failure?