Prophets

She turned to go, and Nickolai said, “Wait.”

She looked over her shoulder at him. “What?”

“There’s room by the portal, if you want . . .” Nickolai didn’t know why he was saying the words, and he trailed off in the middle of the sentence.

“To join you?”

“I understand if you want to be alone,” Nickolai said. He turned to face the empty stars. In reality, staring out the observation portal was the last thing he wanted to do, but it was the only explanation he had for being here, and now that Kugara had seen him, he didn’t have much choice but to face the void.

“Nickolai,” she said, “we’ve been alone since we boarded this ship.”

“Longer than that,” Nickolai whispered, pulling himself into the small circular room in front of the observation port. He pressed himself against the wall so he squatted on his haunches. If the Eclipse was pointed at their destination right now, then he was probably facing all of human space. The home of his own people, the Fifteen Worlds, he could probably cover with his hand.

To his surprise, Kugara joined him. She floated up behind him, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You know, it’s not as roomy as you think it is.”

Nickolai edged to the side, and Kugara squeezed through the top of the doorway. She pressed against his arm, grunting. Once past him, she twisted to hold herself against the wall on the other side of the door, facing out the portal toward the stars.

“Damn,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She looked down at the wall behind her. “The view would be better if I killed the lights. Here . . .”

She touched a control on the wall behind her, and the lights in the corridor dimmed until the only illumination came from the control readouts and the stars. Beyond the window, the star field erupted into painful clarity. Nickolai’s artificial eyes shifted frequencies and sensitivities, showing more and more stars, a view of the universe he had never experienced before. A vastness that was beautiful, stark, and completely disinterested in him.

“Damn,” Kugara repeated.

Why are we here? Nickolai thought. Staring out at the stars, the question took on an unintended depth beyond the simple self-doubt of inviting Kugara to share this view.

After a long silence, Kugara asked, “Do you trust Mosasa?”

“No.”

“But you agreed to work for him.”

“You say that as if I had a choice,” Nickolai quoted her words back at her.

“Touche.” She pulled her legs up until her knees were drawn up in front of her. She folded her arms across her knees, and rested her chin on her arms. “He’s so cold.”

“He’s a machine.”

“You told me that. But the idea he knew, about the ambush—ambushes—and that he might have triggered an interplanetary invasion. Don’t you feel you’re working for the Devil?”

Nickolai laughed for the first time in a long while. He only stopped when he realized that Kugara was staring at him.

“My apologies,” Nickolai said. “That was amusing.”

“What was amusing?”

Nickolai looked out at the stars. “Of course we’re working for the Devil. Mosasa is lifeless thought, the personification of the sins of the Fallen.”

“The Fallen?”