The void he faced, the empty in the vast space of light-years between the core of human space and the colonies clustered around Xi Virginis, would be the most isolated he had ever been since his return to Procyon.
More than anything else, Mosasa dreaded uncertainty. Ever since he had abandoned his fleshy body to inhabit the remains of one of five salvaged Race AIs, he had inherited the AI’s desire to perceive all of its data environment.
There had been five of them, almost a single mind between them.
He was the only one left.
Two had been sacrificed long ago to help fulfill the military directive of the AI’s programming. The quintet Mosasa had been part of had managed to bring down the old Confederacy and break the human political hegemony.
The other two Mosasa had lost on the Race homeworld itself when they had finally returned. So long after the war, after the human quarantine of the Procyon system, the Race was dead.
What mankind had done, in trapping them on the surface, was to force them to revisit the racial reluctance toward direct physical violence. The taboo that rendered them so weak against mankind.
Unfortunately, they had developed that taboo for a reason. It had been the only thing that had allowed them to survive as long as they had. As soon as enough of them had cast aside such reservations, the results were devastating. Cities in ruins, the entire ecosystem devastated, a planet that was only marginally habitable to begin with had become sterile.
It was a devastating discovery, and possibly due to his imprinted human personality, Mosasa had been the only one mentally strong enough to survive seeing the pointlessness of their victory over the Confederacy.
For some reason, Mosasa had now started to see the void between the stars as the desert on the Race’s homeworld—absent of data, absent of people, absent of his creators . . .
Absent of God.
Mosasa dismissed that line of thought and shifted data streams. He had just noticed some local information movement that seemed to flow from the direction of the Caliphate. As expected, placing the destination Xi Virginis on a public database had begun to provoke a reaction.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Communion
It is harder to choose your friends than your enemies.
Shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
Mosasa’s briefing had lasted through the evening, and Nickolai walked outside into a darkened spacecraft graveyard. His new eyes saw every star and every ship with razor clarity. He looked up and allowed himself to feel his own smallness.
