Prophets

Another twenty light-years, Nickolai thought. Here we are.

For the drama, and the plotting, and the hushed admonitions of Mr. Antonio, the Eclipse’s arrival at the point of Mr. Mosasa’s anomaly was anticlimactic.

“We’re still nominal on all systems,” Parvi said. “Drives are cold.”

“Mass sensors negative for two AU.”

Wahid didn’t say anything. After a long pause, Mosasa said, “Navigation?”

“Hold on a minute.” Wahid shook his head, and for all the trouble Nickolai had in interpreting human expressions, even he could tell something was seriously wrong.

“What’s the problem?” Parvi asked. “Are we off course?”

Nickolai knew that the Eclipse was fueled for multiple jumps at this distance, but even so, the thought of taching twenty light-years in the wrong direction tightened something in his gut.

Could what I did have affected the engines? Nickolai began to realize that there was no particular motive for Mr. Antonio to keep him alive. Mr. Antonio wasn’t like Nickolai; he was a man and had no honor to keep, even to himself.

“No, we’re right where we’re supposed to be,” Wahid said slowly. It almost sounded as if he didn’t believe it himself. “All the landmarks check out . . .”

“What’s wrong, then?” Parvi asked.

“Look at the damn holo!” Wahid said, thrusting a hand at the display as if he wanted to bat it out of his face.

“What?” Parvi looked at the holo of stars between them, and her eyes widened, and she shook her head. “No . . .”

“Kugara?” Mosasa snapped.

“I’m ahead of you. Mass scans out to the full range of the sensors. No sign of anything bigger than an asteroid for a hundred AU. We got background radiation consistent with interstellar media—”

One of the scientists, the female with yellow hair, spoke up. “What happened? Is there some sort of problem?”

“Bet your ass there’s a problem.” Wahid spun around on his chair and faced the spectators, pointing a finger at the holo display. “We’re missing a whole star.”

“What?”

“Xi Virginis is gone, Dr. Dorner.”

Behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth. The words echoed in Mallory’s head, the transmission Cardinal Anderson had played for him, the voice quoting Revelation burning in his memory.

Mallory stood back and watched everyone react to the news that an A-spectrum main sequence dwarf star had ceased to exist. More than one member of the science team said, “A star can’t just disappear.”

Apparently that was wrong.

Bill’s synthetic Windsor monotone asked for sensor data, and told them to look for stellar remnants. Even without any affect, Mallory could sense a slight desperation just in the nature of the request. Kugara had already done a mass scan of the region and found nothing significant for one hundred AU; no dark stellar remnants, no remains of a planetary system. Just dust and some widely-spaced asteroids.

Perhaps most disturbing was Mosasa’s reaction. He seemed as shocked as everyone else, running duplicate scans at his own station, shouting orders at his trio of bridge officers.

You were looking for some sort of anomaly, Mallory thought. Here it is.

Wahid made several attempts to disprove their location. But all the other stars were right where they should be.