Prophets

“Mosasa!”

He looked away from the holo and saw Parvi looking at him. He should be able to understand the emotion in her face, but right now he found himself unable to interpret it. “Yes?”

“Did you hear what I said?” Parvi snapped.

“What?”

“They’re ordering us onto the Jizan,” Parvi said. “That means losing contact with all our comm gear—God only knows what they’re intending to do to the planet. Our people are down there.”

“What do you want me to do?” Mosasa asked.

Parvi stared at him, and he thought he could understand her expression now. She was afraid.

Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) 1,200,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534

An hour later, Admiral Hussein sat in a briefing room with a group of engineers, scientists, and medical officers. On the table between them was a frozen image of Admiral Naji Bitar.

“We’ve done a comprehensive analysis of the transmission itself,” said Lieutenant Abdem, one of the Voice’s senior communications engineers. “It is unquestionably from the Sword’s tach-transmitter. The encryption protocol is embedded in the hardware, and every transmitter is imperfect enough to give a unique temporal distortion to any broadcast. No way to duplicate it precisely.”

Admiral Hussein nodded and looked toward the medical officers.

“We’ve checked every biometric marker we can given the data transmitted. Voice-print, facial structure, iris variegation, kinematics. All are consistent with Admiral Bitar’s medical profile.”

“What about his emotional and psychological state?”

“It seems unusual,” said Lieutenant Deshem, the psychologist. “The admiral is displaying no abnormal stress levels at all.”

“That is unusual?”

“Consider what he’s reporting to us. This represents a radical change—even if it’s a positive one, change always engenders a stress response.”

“Could he be lying?”

“There’s no indication of that from what we can analyze. It seems that he believes everything he’s saying in this transmission.”

“Any sign of external influences, drugs, hallucination . . .”

Deshem shook his head. “He is lucid to all appearances—”

“But?”

“His body language, at the end of the transmission, it seems to suggest that he is withholding something. As if he’s not telling the whole truth.”

Hussein shook his head. Aside from all the technical resources they had, he could tell the same thing just from the deliberate vagueness of how Bitar phrased things. “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.”

Before he could ask another question, his personal comm buzzed for his attention. The Jizan was returning with what was left of the Eclipse and her crew. He excused himself and listened to the briefing from the captain of the Jizan on what they had found, and what the Eclipse had been doing so far from human space.

What he heard was not reassuring.