However, a few ads did give that sort of information, where it wasn’t obviously mission critical to keep it secret. Most of those were prosaic things like jobs as trainers, cargo escorts and security, some of the Information Warfare jobs where geography was irrelevant, jobs as bodyguards or security where the show of force was of more deterrence value, and the one listing that captured Mallory’s attention—
“Team needed to protect scientific expedition to vicinity of Xi Virginis.”
CHAPTER TEN
Heresies
The one thing more corrosive to a culture than a taboo without purpose is having no taboos at all.
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.
—DESIDERIUS ERASMUS (1465-1536)
Date: 2525.11.21 (Standard) Bakunin-BD+50°1725
Nickolai, now a fully vetted member of the BMU, walked out of a cab on the fringes of the city/spaceport of Proudhon. Dusk was advancing, and the city behind him was already shimmering with light. He had gone through all the union’s testing, and despite the degradation of using his skills for the employ of the Fallen, there had been something sweet about completely dropping his constant restraint and allowing himself to fully exercise his training. He couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that he had demolished the robotic sparring partner they had sent up against him in the armed hand-to-hand exercise.
All the tests had felt less than serious to Nickolai. He didn’t understand how they could rely on tests that measured people when nothing was at stake. His coming-of-age trials on Grimalkin had been much more difficult—and conducted by priests who would maim without hesitation.
If he hadn’t been wary about his new arm, he would have had a perfect score on hand-to-hand combat. With firearms, his score had been less than appropriate for a scion of House Rajasthan, but that had been largely due to new eyes—when he had fixed on a target, he was able to do better than he ever had with a gun, but if he was off, he was completely off. Still, when the bull’s-eyes were averaged with complete misses, his marksmanship greatly exceeded what the BMU considered average.
Judging by the solicitations he had received before his testing was even completed, the Fallen considered him a desirable commodity.
Then that is why we were born, was it not?
The cab flew away behind him, leaving him on a desolate stretch of road that stabbed arrow straight into the desert around Proudhon. The road was stamped with the logo of a company that would have taken a toll from any travelers when this road had a destination in mind. However, the original destination of this highway had been reclaimed by the desert, and the company that built and maintained the way there had similarly vanished.
The road was made of the same grainy ferrocrete that formed most of the landing strips and launchpads in the spaceport/city. Nickolai wasn’t used to walking on the material; the streets of Godwin were of cheaper construction and more prone to cracking. Like the temples of Grimalkin, the roads in Proudhon felt as if they were meant to endure an eternity. Solid, flat, and permanent under the pads of his feet . . .
Though, Nickolai saw, like much of the world of the Fallen, that impression was an illusion. The edges of the hundred-meter-wide strip of ferrocrete no longer retained the sharp edges of the streets in the city. The abrasive black sand ground the edges away, advancing a dozen centimeters in a battle it would eventually win. It might take a century or two, Nickolai thought, but the sand had time.
Flanking the ancient highway, ranks of spacecraft of every size and description marched off in all three directions away from the city. Many of the corpses in this aviation necropolis showed bare metal skin, blasted by wind and the volcanic sand. Most had holes in their fuselages showing where some vital component or other had been removed. The skins that still showed markings were graced by a babel of tongues, most of which Nickolai didn’t understand.
One of the few he could read graced a small, ornate tach-ship that bore the markings of the Grimalkin royal house. The tach-ship appeared to have been shot down, which Nickolai found alarming. But the seal gracing a half-melted control surface was wrong. It wasn’t until he forced his too-new eyes to focus on the tail of the gutted tach-ship, and the illustration shot into headache-inducing relief, that he realized what was different about it. The seal bore the image of a tiger’s head holding a blue planet in its jaws, wearing a crown made of seven stars.
Seven stars . . .
The tach-ship was from the age when the chosen people ruled only the Seven Worlds, before the fall of the old Terran Confederacy. The ship was at least 175 years old. He spent a few moments wondering how the markings might have survived the blowing sand. He finally decided that it must have been salvaged from orbit.
“Homesick?”
Nickolai spun around, because he hadn’t sensed anyone approach. He was immediately tensed and ready to strike out, but there wasn’t anyone behind him. Instead, a metallic sphere about the size of his closed fist floated in the air about two meters behind him.
“What is this?” Nickolai growled in his native tongue.
“Security for Mosasa Salvage,” the sphere responded in kind. More disturbing than the fact that the machine spoke his language was the fact that it did so without any trace of the soft accent of the Fallen. He could be talking to one of the temple priests.
Of course, that was unlikely.
“I am here to apply for an advertised position,” Nickolai said.
The sphere orbited him like a tiny moon. “Yes, Mr. Rajasthan, we’ve received your data from the BMU. Rather impressive scores, especially for someone who’s recently recovered from such traumatic injuries.”
Nickolai didn’t let his surprise become visible on his face. The surprise was only momentary. How many scions of Rajasthan were in the BMU database, how many were on Bakunin? Anyone with the resources would be able to get almost his entire history on this planet based on his appearance alone, and given the information he had from Mr. Antonio, the owner of Mosasa Salvage had resources to spare.
“You should follow me,” the sphere said, finishing its orbit and floating off ahead of Nickolai.
“Where?” Nickolai asked.
“To the hangar,” it responded, “with the others.”
Nickolai followed the floating sphere through a maze of grounded aircraft and aircraft parts, the pads on his feet warmed by sand that still retained the day’s burning heat even as the sun set behind the mountains. The air smelled cold and sterile: metal, oil, and the hint of something long burned.
The ground here felt unnervingly empty of even the soul of the Fallen. The presence of blood and flesh was out of place in the midst of these metallic beasts. For once, on this planet, Nickolai felt out of place not because he was not human, but because he breathed.
The sphere led him to a building that, despite its size, seemed lost in the midst of hundreds of square kilometers of decomposing aviation history. The hangar was a trapezoidal prism of gray, pitted metal. A massive rolling door, close to two hundred meters in width, dominated the side of the building that faced Nickolai. A ferrocrete landing pad sat in front of the hangar, blown clear of sand for about three hundred meters in every direction.
Even with the huge empty space, the wreckage that surrounded this place seemed to loom over Nickolai.
If not for a small red light glowing above a small, human-sized entrance off to the side of the huge rolling hangar door, the cleared surface of the landing pad, and the faint scent of the Fallen drifting on the air, it would have given every appearance of being long abandoned