Prophets

despite the fact that he was certain it all was a carefully engineered fraud.

However, it was a fraud perpetrated by someone with a historical interest in feeding him very accurate and timely information. This was why he was conversing here, and not having Ms. Columbia taken to one of the airless moonlets whipping around Khamsin where he could ask questions about her and her employer somewhat more aggressively.

“I’m glad your journey was uneventful,” Al-Hamadi responded to her non-answer. “I would find it unfortunate if you were delayed. Our meetings always seem so profitable.”

“I hope you find this one as profitable,” she said as she handed him a cyberplas chit somewhat larger than the one he had in his pocket. This one fit in his hand and had an integrated reader. He touched a finger to one corner and the surface displayed a message in Arabic confirming his identity. He scanned through the contents of the storage device and frowned.

He knew better than to ask where the information had come from.

“My payment?”

“Already done.” Al-Hamadi made a dismissive gesture, staring at the device in his hand. Her deliveries were always in person, never trusted to even an encrypted narrow-beam tach-transmission. Even so, the archive in his hand contained background info on events that only just hit his own intelligence feeds two weeks ago, and not in much detail.

The detail here, as usual, required something just short of prescience. It certainly required the efforts of an entire intelligence service with agents on multiple planets and connections with dozens of organizations. A major transplanetary corporation at the least, and more likely one of the Caliphate’s rival governments—an entity served as much as the Caliphate by the passing of the information.

Whatever the case, “payment” was almost beside the point for both sides of the transaction.

“Is there something else you wished to discuss?”

Yes. Who employs you? One of the Indi governments? The Centauri Trading Company? Maybe even Sirius?

“Are you aware of the nature of the packages you deliver?”

“On occasion.”

“This latest one?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea how troublesome this news is?”

“Would it be worth my while to bring you news that was not troublesome?”

“I suppose not.”

Al-Hamadi scanned the package and wondered what Caliphate government report detailed the actions of the Waldgrave Militia on Bakunin, and where in the Caliphate bureaucracy it was buried. He knew that the Militia wouldn’t engage in an operation without at least the appearance of Caliphate authorization. There would be a report somewhere, approved by someone’s cousin on a planetary council just far enough away from the core that the operation would be well underway before Khamsin or Al-Hamadi heard word of it.

If there were two foreign words beloved by the militant factions of the Caliphate, they would be fait accompli. This was how the Islamic Revolution on Rubai happened; just take the crumbling central government of Epsilon Indi, and a few dozen rogue militia cells, mix well.

Technically, they aren’t rogue when so many politicians support them . . .

The problem with the Militia was that they were an incredibly blunt instrument. Their idea of a covert operation was to not take credit for the aftermath. A private expedition toward Xi Virginis was troublesome, but only to persons who knew the significance of that area of space. For a dozen years standard, Al-Hamadi had managed to keep that significance a secret within the highest levels of the Caliphate, presumably far above the level of anyone directly involved with the Militia.

Now that significance had leaked. The expedition from Bakunin was bad enough, but if Al-Hamadi had intercepted that information, it could have been dealt with quietly and without drawing attention.

But the Militia had hired a small army of mercenaries to . . .

Al-Hamadi shook his head. He wasn’t even going to try to second-guess their motivation at this point. He had a