Prophets

The woman, Kugara, did most of the talking. She told Tetsami and Flynn about their ship, the Eclipse, and the ill-fated expedition it made to Xi Virginis. The story uncomfortably synced with the Protean’s warnings, and Tetsami tightened the grip on her shotgun. Even more than when the nonhuman pair walked into the deserted outpost, she stared at them looking for some sign of infection, some wrongness, some symptom that these two had been touched by the same darkness that had consumed the Xi Virginis system.

Then Kugara mentioned his name.

Tetsami jumped backward, leveling the shotgun at the space between Kugara’s gut and Nickolai’s groin. “What was that name?” she yelled at them, finger aching against the cold metal of the shotgun’s trigger.

What the hell? Gram?

Shut up!

The tall woman backed up, stopping only when she bumped into the tiger. “Mosasa, Tjaele Mosasa.” Nickolai put his arm around her in a gesture that was almost protective.

“What the hell does that bastard have to do with this?” Tetsami screamed at them. The barrel of the shotgun shook, and she concentrated on steadying her aim.

What, you know this person?

Shut up!

It could just be someone with the same name . . .

“SHUT UP!” Kugara looked at her as if Tetsami had just lost her mind. I just said that out loud, fuck. “Mosasa,” Tetsami said. “Tjaele Mosasa.”

“Yes.”

“Bald, lots of earrings, dragon tattoo, looks like a pirate?”

“Yes.”

“Christ on the cross with his tap-dancing apostles!” Tetsami leveled the shotgun at Kugara’s head and yelled, “You work for that robotic bastard?”

Nickolai stepped in front of Kugara and it spooked Tetsami so much she almost shot him in the chest. “Yes,” Nickolai said. “We are members of the Bakunin Mercenaries’ Union, and we were hired by Mosasa. But Kugara wasn’t aware of what he was until I told her.”

“You know what that amoral Machiavellian machine actually is?”

“I did,” Nickolai said. “She didn’t.”

Tetsami raised the shotgun so it was centered on Nickolai’s face. The tiger didn’t even flinch.

Gram, what are you doing? She felt Flynn pushing to take control back, but she wouldn’t let go. “Then why shouldn’t I blow your head off for working for that thing?”

The tiger stared down the barrel of the shotgun and said, “If you wish to kill me, kill me.”

“Damn it,” Kugara’s voice came from behind the tiger as she tried to push past his arm. “Thanks to Nickolai here, that amoral Machiavellian machine is probably dead.”

The barrel lowered a fraction. “What?”

Kugara managed to step around the tiger’s bandaged arm. “This furry prick sabotaged the Eclipse. He’s the reason we were on a lifeboat landing on this godforsaken world.”

Tetsami lowered the shotgun and shook her head. She still couldn’t get her brain around the idea that Mosasa, of all things, had followed her nearly two hundred years and a hundred light-years from Bakunin. She had come out here, so far, just to get away from that thrice-damned planet.