It occurred to him that this was the last time he would have to rely on the lifeboat for his survival. Outside the door, it would just be him and God.
He hit the control to open the door. It slid aside with a horrid scraping noise and stuck about halfway. Hot air blew in, carrying the scent of burned synthetics and woodsmoke. Though the open doorway he could see a slice of night sky, the purple tint and shimmering of the stars giving the reassuring feel of an atmosphere above him. The stars flickered in heat shimmers coming from the skin of the lifeboat.
He didn’t want to wait for the shielding to cool off, so he found an insulating blanket in the emergency stores and draped it over the bottom corner of the open doorway. With that, he was able to pull himself up enough to look at the landing site without burning himself.
The lifeboat had landed in a hardwood temperate forest. The tumbling Mallory had felt early was the boat crashing through the forest canopy and tumbling to the ground. The force had been enough to tear a hole in the canopy for him to see the stars. The chute from the lifeboat’s descent was tangled in the treetops, little more than a ragged shadow from where Mallory stood.
The lifeboat hadn’t put down in absolutely optimal conditions, but it was closer than Mallory had any right to expect. The terrain was relatively level, and the forest was old growth with wide-spaced trees and underbrush that wasn’t terribly dense. If lifeboat five was in a similar site, he could reach them on foot in a matter of hours.
He shouldered the medkit and the emergency pack from his lifeboat and set off in the direction of lifeboat five.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Hubris
Great power does not foster great flexibility.
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
The love of power is the love of ourselves.
—WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830)
Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) 1,800,000 km from Salmagundi-HD 101534
After an hour of chaos, the bridge on the Voice had settled down into a more normal operation. The battle group had disengaged and spread out into a close formation around the Voice. The Jeddah and the Jizan had established radio contact with the Eclipse, and the Jizan was in the process of docking. And Admiral Hussein had recorded a revised diplomatic message for the planet, one that the Voice’s communications officers were repeatedly beaming down to the surface. They still waited for a response.
And all the shipboard clocks turned over to mark a new day. As the timer on the main holo changed to read 00:00:00, one of the ensigns from navigation walked up to Captain Rasheed.
Admiral Hussein distinctly heard Captain Rasheed say, “That can’t be right.”
“What’s the problem, Captain?”
Captain Rasheed straightened up and said, “Give your report to Admiral Hussein, Ensign.”
“Yes, sir!” The ensign came to attention facing the admiral. “The observatory data we’re receiving is not syncing with our mapped projections, sir.”
Admiral Hussein frowned. “You’re not saying we’re not on course, Ensign?”
“No, sir. The map projection is only wrong for one star.”
Captain Rasheed called over to the nav station and said, “Put the anomaly up on the main holo.”
In response, the main display for the bridge changed to show a segment of a star field overlaid with the vector map generated by the navigational system. The actual stars fit in the overlay, none off by a fraction of a degree. However, in the center of the display, a single red circle was disconcertingly empty. There was no sign of the star that should have been contained within the marker, it wasn’t off by a degree here or there, it was just gone.
The text next to the empty circle read “Xi Virginis.”
Admiral Hussein’s first thought was of their sister ship, the Prophet’s Sword, which had tached to Xi Virginis barely a week before their own departure. Things had already gone far beyond the operational parameters of this mission; this did not feel good.
“Is some outer planet eclipsing the star?” he asked.
“We’ve been checking for something occluding our observations, sir. If anything is, it’s showing no detectable radiation of its own, inherent or reflected, and it is far enough away not to interfere with any other visible landmark.”
Coincidence? Something just happened to be eclipsing the destination of our sister ship so precisely?
Admiral Hussein leaned forward and said to Captain Rasheed, “I want every scrap of data you can get on Xi Virginis, and scan for any tach-transmissions from the Sword.”
“Yes, sir.”
Communications identified a signal almost instantaneously. They had a lock on a data transmission, a tach-burst specifically coded for the Voice, and the encryption wrapping it identified the Sword better than a fingerprint.
When the signal was decrypted, the main holo on the Voice’s bridge filled with the face of Admiral Naji Bitar, the commander of the Sword’s fleet. Hussein wondered if his discomfort over Bitar’s grinning expression was simply a matter of decorum.
“Greetings, Admiral Hussein,” said Bitar’s smiling face. “My communications officers have timed this to reach you upon your arrival. I wish to provide you with some good news. Our contact with the colony at Xi Virginis has been quite positive. Not only are they enthusiastic to ally with the Caliphate, but they have been willing to share technological advances that are . . . extraordinary.”
The star. What happened to the star?
“Your observations will have detected that the star Xi Virginis has ceased radiating. This shouldn’t alarm you. The colonists here have discovered a means to harness all the energy produced by the star. This technology is part of what they wish to share.”
A Dyson Sphere? Is that what he’s talking about?
“Needless to say, you must communicate home as discreetly as possible. The Caliphate has many enemies, and we cannot risk communicating this news back in any way that might alert them.”
Admiral Hussein heard Captain Rasheed pass some orders on to the communications officers, restricting physical access to the tach-comm.
“You will receive a more personal contact within eighteen hours standard after your arrival.You will have a more in-depth briefing on what we have discovered here. We are about to embark on a new age, Muhammad, my friend. God is great.”
The feed swapped Bitar’s face for the green-and-white crescent of the Caliphate, then ended. Admiral Hussein didn’t know what to make of the transmission. It felt inauthentic from the address all the way to his closing. There was an aggressive cheer pervading the message that was more than unprofessional. . . .
Creepy, Hussein thought. The word is “creepy.”
Captain Rasheed turned toward Hussein. A gulf of silence filled the bridge. All waiting for him.
Hussein had known the operation had changed as soon as he had seen the Eclipse. Now, after hearing Bitar’s message, he wondered if there would be anything of the original operation left. At the very least, Bitar’s short speech, bolstered by the missing Xi Virginis, completely revised Hussein’s risk assessment.