Prophets

the Prophet’s Voice. He had now been able to see a human ship that surpassed Paralian engineering efforts. He had already found the joy of discovering a half dozen potential solutions that fit the model of the Voice’s drive configuration, mass ratio, and an empirical estimate of its capabilities. None of the possible solutions was provable without some mechanical aid, but the idea that one might be was worth the effort he had taken to explore beyond his home and the crippling effects of staying immobile in this globe. Returning with these experiences would make up for the fact he might never be able to swim with his fathers again.

Bill took notice of the ship’s motion beyond the Voice.

Acceleration paths increased in magnitude, and vectors grew to point at the planet. Bill told the sensors to concentrate their entire battery of observational equipment out into the space between the Voice and the still-growing planet.

The hard data points that were the mass concentrations of the Voice’s fleet of attack ships had split into four clusters, focusing on four equally-spaced points in orbit around the planet. Bill saw other points, spread thinly about the planet, belatedly twisting their own acceleration vectors to meet the incoming fleets.

Across Bill’s mental landscape of mass, acceleration, and velocity, discharges of electromagnetic energy began to blossom. The points of mass around the planet, now clearly a similar fleet serving a ship with a profile matching that of the Voice, were erupting into diffuse clouds of radiance, mass spreading with the glow of energy.

I am witnessing a war.

Bill concentrated on the feedback from his sensors, trying to etch every detail into his prodigious memory. What he saw was unique in the history of his species. They had known of war from trading information with humans, but no Paralian had direct experience of it.

The battle had begun with two orderly formations, the fourfold clusters of the Voice’s fleet and the diffuse net of matching ships in orbit around the planet. As soon as a few ships vanished into radiant clouds, both formations disintegrated. The Voice’s ships descended en masse on smaller concentrations of opposing vessels like a horde of bloodfish feasting on a competing school, cannibalistic and soon indistinguishable from their prey. Soon the planet was orbited by clusters of mass and energy as ship after ship made the phase change from solid to plasma.

He had concentrated so hard on the data from the immediate vicinity of the planet that he did not pay any attention to masses vectoring toward the Voice itself until he felt the whole ship vibrate around him, briefly distorting the sounding he received from his sensors.

Bill widened his attention to encompass a quartet of ships with intense and violent acceleration vectors tearing by the skin of the Voice. He had barely realized they were there when the lead ship absorbed something that knocked it tumbling, flinging bits of itself in every direction.

Every direction, including Bill’s.

Bill ordered his robot to grab hold of anchor rings in the floor as a massive part of the ship’s drive section plowed through the safety grate and blew into Bill’s cargo hold with enough energy to briefly black out all Bill’s sensors.

For several seconds, all Bill could perceive was the vibration of his environment, his entire universe limited to the water that ended a meter in front of him.

The first thing to come back on-line was the robot’s diagnostic system. Everything seemed unharmed except for some IR sensors and one of the robot’s manipulator arms. The arm gave no feedback whatsoever.

As his sensors came back, Bill realized why. The arm was no longer attached to Bill’s robot. It was in the wreckage of the cargo hold, which was now about twenty meters away from Bill. Based on relative velocities, Bill’s vector pointed directly away from the impact at about two meters a second.

While the environment he sat in was capable of withstanding vacuum indefinitely, it was not intended to be an EVA suit. He had no means to maneuver once he lost contact with the ship. Not even a cable.

Given the model of his situation, he knew instantaneously that he was going to die, drifting away from the Voice until his suit’s resources were used up. About ten hours standard without access to external power. He set his suit to broadcast a distress signal, but it seemed unlikely that either side in this battle would extend the resources to rescue him again.

Bill didn’t despair for himself, but he began to mourn for the fact that he would not live to pass on his knowledge. Somehow, he had kept the hope that he would one day show his children what he had observed.

However, as he drifted away from the Voice, a hundred meters now, the universe had one remaining novelty to show him.

On the other side of the massive carrier, his sensors insisted the stars were going out. Diagnostics maintained that the sensors were functioning, and when he concentrated on the growing starless area, he could sense an edge.