Prophets

Admiral Hussein questioned the creature over the comm link, watching the tentacled bullet-bodied thing for some clue to its emotional state. It was as hopeless as trying to read the mood of a jellyfish.

Even so, the history Bill provided him was congruent with the stories from the others and the Eclipse’s logs. All had been hired by Mosasa to uncover some sort of ill-defined anomaly originating from the direction of Xi Virginis.

It also confirmed the details of what they found there, or failed to find there. It provided a wealth of technical details especially on how the Eclipse ended up damaged and inbound to this system. Most of those details were completely opaque to Admiral Hussein, but they would help the engineers in going over the wreck of the Eclipse.

It was that technical discussion, opaque as it was, where Bill complicated the diplomatic issue.

“I am impressed with your ship,” Bill radioed from his electronic voice box. Even in Arabic, the words carried a Windsor accent.

“What do you mean?”

“I never would have thought human engineers would be able to build a tach-drive that worked beyond the asymptotic barrier.”

Admiral Hussein just stared at the creature in its glass globe.

“I apologize, was I unclear?”

“No, go on, please.”

“Even the highest acolytes of our universities within Paralia have failed in designing a stable generator that could manipulate a field complex enough to move the asymptotic barrier. In theory it was always possible, but the dimensions involved increase with the cube of the distance, so solving the equations for a three-dimensional reference frame—”

“Bill?”

“Yes, Admiral? Do I need to explain something?”

“Just tell me how you know the capabilities of this ship?”

“Simple observation; the data provided when the Eclipse’s own drive failed provided enough data to describe a boundary model of your drive capability. The mass/drive ratios visible on this ship speak to an unorthodox sixfold redundancy or a new drive design. Mosasa implied that his expedition would be the impetus driving the Caliphate outward, meaning you left after us, yet arrived before us, despite the necessity of supplying and outfitting a vessel this large for a hundred-light-year journey.”

“I see.” Admiral Hussein turned away from the Paralian and looked out the grate and toward the stars. The planet they were here for was a small blue-white disk, brighter than the stars behind it.

He had known that these capabilities would be known as soon as they were used, but it was discomforting to realize that even the Paralian considered them extraordinary. He was not in the habit of questioning his government, but for several moments he wondered where the expertise had come from.

“What is it you see?” asked the Paralian. It took a moment for Admiral Hussein to realize that it was in response to the last thing he had said. He turned to face his massive guest and was about to explain the figure of speech when his suit’s comm called for his attention on the command channel. He switched the comm from the closed channel he shared with the Paralian and immediately heard Captain Rasheed’s voice.

“Admiral Hussein?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“We just detected an energy spike on the other side of the planet. We don’t have visual contact yet, but it’s consistent with the Sword’s tach-drive signature.”

“Are you sure?”

“It has to be an Ibrahim-class carrier. No other drives leave as large a footprint.”

Instead of an envoy, Bitar comes in person?

“I’m coming to the bridge.”