For several hours, Flynn radioed information back to Base. Despite the “seed’s” enigmatic nature, he was able to produce some information. The thing was a matte-black egg exactly 3.127 meters along its long axis. The mass readings, if they were accurate, showed it much denser than normal matter, about a kilogram per square centimeter, which meant that the thing, small as it was, massed more than most of the aircraft in Ashley combined. The thing had found its place on the planet’s surface, and Flynn doubted it was going to move.
However, he had a lot more information than the sensor data on the seed itself. For once, he had relevant ancestral information, and it was exhilarating. Flynn, the habitual singleton, actually had useful knowledge from his sole extra mind. For most of his life, he had felt as if he wasn’t quite in on the joke, that the people around him with two or three glyphs on their brow had access to a subtext he wasn’t quite aware of.
Finally he had something over everybody. It felt good. So good, in fact, that he completely missed the warning signs; the shift to encrypted protocols, the change in radio operators to people he wasn’t familiar with, the occasional and emphatic order for him not to leave the site of the impact, the repeated questions about who else might know this information, who he had discussed the Proteans with.
He couldn’t really blame Tetsami either. Normally, she was a little more paranoid than he was, but if he was caught up in the novelty of having something new to report on and having the expertise to analyze it, Tetsami was overtaken by her awe at seeing a remnant of Proteus showing up on Salmagundi. Enough so that, like Flynn, she hadn’t given herself the opportunity to think through exactly how the powers-that-be back at Ashley might react to their visitor or its history.
Ten hours after the impact, after the sun had set, the first security contragrav arrived. Flynn ran up to the craft as soon as it landed, waving his arms, still oblivious as the doors opened and two men stepped out. The name tags on their jumpsuits read Frank and Tony.
“Hey, it’s about five hundred meters that way—” Flynn pointed.
Frank stepped up to Flynn while Tony walked past him toward the flier. Flynn turned, finally realizing that something was wrong. “What are you doing—”
Frank grabbed him and, before Flynn could object, had him in handcuffs and a restraint collar.
“What the fuck?”
Frank hustled him into the back of the security contragrav and pushed him down into a seat. As the door closed, Flynn saw Tony pulling the comm unit and all the data recordings from his flier.
“No, Gram, it isn’t.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jihad
Right and wrong are defined by what you do, not what you serve.
A conqueror is always a lover of peace.
It had all been leading to this. Almost six months ago, Admiral Muhammad Hussein al Khamsiti had taken command of a battle group that barely existed. Now, after half a year of accelerated construction and the crash training of nearly ten thousand men, the
Attached to the kilometer-long vessel, over a hundred individual spacecraft docked, ranging from troop transports to fighters to heavy drop-ships—an entire fleet unto itself.
On the bridge, Admiral Hussein stood and waited for their last tach-jump. There was no technical reason for any of the command staff to be here during the jump, much less Admiral Hussein himself. However, it had been impressed upon the entire command staff of the Caliphate that this mission was as much about diplomacy as it was about military force. To that end, forms of ceremony were meticulously adhered to.
Admiral Hussein stood along with a senior officer from each of the larger vessels in the
