The aliens from Tau Puppis met them more than halfway.
There was a lot of diplomatic dancing, as it became very clear that the birdlike aliens were the rulers of an interstellar empire as large or larger than man’s, an empire that claimed much of the 120 light-years of space between Beta Pictoris and Tau Puppis, a volume as great as the whole of the Confederacy at the time.
The end result was to deform the yellow dumbbell of human colonization, pushing it away from the galactic center and away from the red-outlined systems of the Voleran Empire.
None of the other red-outlined systems represented such an interstellar empire. Procyon, within the core of human space, was highlighted red. Familiar to any Occisian as the home system of the Race, the losers of mankind’s first, and so far only, interstellar war with another species.
Two remaining systems were outlined red. One embedded in the other lobe of the dumbbell on the opposite side of Sol from the Volerans. That was Paralia, home of the aquatic creatures that designed humanity’s first tach-drives.
The last red outline other marked Helminth, home to an enigmatic wormlike race that had cities, and a civilization, but with whom human scientists were barely able to communicate.
Like the Volerans, Helminth marked the edge of the human expansion toward the galactic center. But for a different reason.
The Voleran side of human space had been expanding for two centuries, and the presence of Voleran colonies simply forced the drift of mankind off in a different direction.
Helminth marked the edge of human space by coincidence. That end of human space stopped expanding for political and economic reasons. A hundred and seventy-five years ago, when the Confederacy fell, the planets of the old Sirius-Eridani Economic Community had fared the worst. Where the other arms of the old Confederacy managed to hold on to some sort of political identity, the SEEC began a decades-long inward collapse along ancient fault lines. The dual capitals of Cynos and Khamsin were untenable without the Confederacy to support it, and what was left after the breakup didn’t have the resources to move outward.
However, on Cardinal Anderson’s map, there were blue-outlined stars flung out beyond Helminth in a pattern that had never appeared in any publicly available chart or catalog; a pattern of half a dozen stars over a hundred light-years from Sol and over seventy light-years beyond the edge of human space.
“A decade ago, a Jesuit observatory discovered those colonies you see there in blue.” He adjusted the display and the view zoomed in on the blue systems so names on the stars were visible.
89 Leonis, HD 98354, HD 101534, Xi Virginis . . .
Mallory stared at the cluster of blue-outlined systems.
It was bizarre. Lost colonies were the stuff of tabloid holocasts. Too much time, resources, and people went into establishing a colony—especially one so distant—for the history of it to be lost in the short time that man had been traveling among the stars.
Father Mallory looked up at Cardinal Anderson. “These are alien outposts, some new species?”
“No,” Cardinal Anderson said quietly. “These are human colonies, at least six of them, founded as the Confederacy was collapsing. A hundred and seventy-five years ago.”
“Six? Why hasn’t this been made public? Six established colonies . . .”
“Possibly more,” the cardinal said. “These colonies were founded in secret. We believe by people escaping the rise of the Eridani Caliphate. Can you see why we would keep this secret?”
Father Mallory nodded. The Eridani Caliphate, successor to something more than half of the old SEEC, had never had good relations with the Vatican. Often open warfare was only avoided by the fact that the Roman Catholic Church wasn’t a nation, as such. However, the pope had many allies in the secular world as the only part of the body of Christ with an interstellar reach. There had been dozens of proxy battles over the past century, fighting the reach of the Caliphate into the remains of the SEEC.
However, the Caliphate currently controlled the area between the rest of human space and these newly discovered colonies. The Caliphate’s official position on the ascension of the Islamic government was that it was the rise of an oppressed people into power. The revelation of secular—or worse, Christian or Jewish—refugees from that ascension forming breakaway colonies would be a diplomatic embarrassment to the Caliphate.
Both the location of these colonies, and their possible historical ties to the planets of the Caliphate, made it almost inevitable that the Eridani Caliphate would claim them as part of their sphere of influence, growing by 50 percent almost instantly; expanding into a space that would, given the limits of current tach-drives, have very limited access to the rest of human space. From the point of view of Mother Church, that would be unacceptable.
Father Mallory shook his head. “Forgive me, Your Eminence. I understand the Church’s interest in these worlds. What is the interest in me?”
“These worlds were discovered by accident,” said the cardinal. “A chance interception of a tach-comm transmission. We’ve been secretly monitoring ever since. Unfortunately, these are low power signals. Over such distances they degrade. We can only obtain a few hours’ worth of comprehensible intelligence over the course of a year. And, of course, a listening post by Helminth, or anywhere near there, risks alerting the Caliphate. We’ve been using Vatican property on Cynos.”
“You said ‘disturbing’ transmissions, Your Eminence.”
Cardinal Anderson thumbed a control on his holoprojector, and the air was filled with an awful static whine.
The holo’s picture became fluid and refused to stabilize. It seemed to be the view out of a tach-ship. Stars spun and blurred, and a blue orb filled the display.
“. . . with Xi Virginis . . . bzzt . . . have lost visual contact . . .”
Something blurred the view. The planet pixilated and reformed, and something clouded the space between the camera and the planet. At first the black specks seemed to be some digital artifact.
Suddenly, a very different voice was speaking. “. . . bzzt . . . coming toward . . . bzzt . . . behold a great . . . bzzt . . .”
It wasn’t an artifact. The cloud was real, the specks moving purposefully toward the planet.
“. . . seven heads . . . bzzt . . . crowns upon . . . bzzt . . . the third part of the stars . . . cast . . . bzzt . . .”
The transmission died.
“The last part?” Father Mallory asked.
“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,” quoted Cardinal Anderson, “Revelation, Chapter Twelve.” He switched off the holo projection. “We need someone to investigate.”
“What does it mean?”
“We do not know,” Cardinal Anderson said. “Analysis of the star field places that planet close to, if not in orbit around, Xi Virginis, on the far side of these colonies.”
“Why me?”
“The Church cannot move without attracting attention,” he said. “But one man can.”
Father Mallory nodded. “How am I to travel there without attracting the Caliphate’s attention?”
“Are you familiar with the planet Bakunin?” Cardinal Anderson asked.
CHAPTER THREE
Audience
Power is not the same as knowledge.
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
To know all things is not permitted.
—HORACE (65-8 Bce)
Date: 2525.09.22 (Standard) Earth-Sol