Prophets

CHAPTER FORTY

Mysterious Ways

You are in more danger from the other person’s God than your own.

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch Him.

—Denis DIDEROT (1713-1784)

Date: 2526.6.4 (Standard) Salmagundi-HD 101534

The four of them were crowded in one end of an old-fashioned troop transport. Mallory sat with Dr. Dörner and Dr. Pak along one side of the large passenger compartment. Dr. Brody was strapped to a field stretcher along the wall opposite them. One of their black-uniformed captors was a medic and was crouched next to Brody’s head, monitoring him.

Mallory was thankful that Brody’s injuries were getting attention. His own training as a field medic had been perfunctory and decades in the past. About all he was sure he could do was keep someone from bleeding to death.

A light flashed by the windows, and Mallory looked up from Brody.

A few seconds later, out of a clear blue sky, turbulence rocked the craft, throwing Dörner against him and causing the medic to drape himself across Brody’s stretcher to keep him still.

Mallory’s first thought was that they flew through a storm, but the windows still showed a cloudless blue sky.

As the aircraft settled again, Dörner whispered, “Oh, my God.”

Mallory looked up at her and saw her peering out the window behind him. He looked out the window and shuddered.

The sky wasn’t completely cloudless.

In the distance, a mushroom cloud was rolling up into the stratosphere.

“What’s happened to our satellites?” Alexander yelled.

“We’ve lost contact,” replied the militia officer.

“I see that!”

In front of him, most of the holos showed graphics reading, “Acquiring signal.” It had been several minutes, and there was little sign of the signals being acquired. He had lost contact with half the planet, his view of the converging ships in orbit, and his overhead of the blast area. The only sign he had that the nuke had detonated was a camera in Ashley with line of sight on the blast. The mushroom cloud was framed in the image.

“Okay, if the sats are off-line, order our people to switch to shortwave frequency communication.” It wouldn’t be as reliable, but it would give them some over-the-horizon communication, though he wondered if any defensive measures were ultimately futile.

“Sir, a militia aircraft is requesting permission to land.”

“Which one?”

“Militia Transport 0523, piloted by Commander Huygens.”

That was the one carrying the surviving offworlders. “Yes. Have the ground crew secure the landing area. I don’t want anyone within a hundred meters of that aircraft. I’ll be down there momentarily.” He stood up and looked at the officer. “Pass down authorization to all the regional commanders to use their discretion in defending their areas. I have no idea how long we’ll still have centralized command and control.”

He turned to leave.

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“What about the rest of the Triad?”

Alexander paused. They were still locked in the conference room, out of contact, probably quite aware they were prisoners now. “Send a man in to brief them. And if, for any reason, you lose contact with me, let them go.”

“Yes, sir.”

Alexander left for the landing area.

“What did they nuke?” Dörner asked, her voice shaking.

“I don’t know,” Mallory told her. For all they knew, they had landed in the midst of some planetary conflict. It would explain the armed rescue.

What disturbed him was how close that blast seemed to be to where Kugara and Nickolai’s lifeboat had landed. Even if they weren’t in the immediate blast radius, the area was all wooded, primed for deadly firestorms.

If they were lucky, they’d have been rescued by another of these transports. But they were heading to rendezvous at lifeboat five . . . Mallory prayed that they weren’t hiking through the forest when the bomb went off.

Only partly comprehensible radio traffic leaked in from the cockpit.

“I think we’re landing,” Pak said.

Mallory looked back out the window and saw their aircraft maneuvering for landing at the outskirts of a small city.

From the segment of the city he saw, he’d guess population at around a hundred thousand. The city itself was laid out in a radial design around a park that surrounded a tower that loomed three times higher than any other building in the city.

Size and placement, more than architecture, made him think of a cathedral in a medieval European city.

The other thing he noted was there was no visible damage. The only outward sign that they might be in the midst of some sort of conflict was the fact the streets seemed almost empty.

The craft hovered, and after more indecipherable radio traffic, it descended. As soon as the machine rocked back on its landing gear, a soldier stepped up and drew the massive side door open, letting in wind and the painful whine of the transport’s fans as they powered down. One of the men stood in front of the three of them. Mallory didn’t need to see the man’s face behind the visor to know they weren’t supposed to move.

Behind their guard, the rest of the soldiers disembarked from the aircraft. From the small view Mallory had of the LZ, he could see that those soldiers were filing out to join a cordon around the whole landing area. A last soldier joined the medic in lifting Brody’s stretcher. The pair carried Brody out of the aircraft.

Dörner stood up. “We need to go with him!”

The last guard turned his weapon so its barrel was pointed at Dörner’s abdomen. Mallory took her arm and pulled her back to her seat. “He’s getting medical attention. There’s nothing you can do.”

She yanked her arm away. “Keep your hands off me.” However, she remained seated.

“Someone’s coming,” Pak said.

Mallory leaned a little to the side so they could see past their guardsman. There was someone coming though the cordon. The man wasn’t in uniform. Instead, he wore a white collarless shirt and black pants under a white topcoat that hung near to the ground and trailed behind him like a cape. The man was bald and was old enough that his age had become completely indeterminate. Somewhere over seventy years standard.

There was no hair on his head, and his brow and scalp were marked by a series of tattoos, each roughly about ten centimeters square. All were abstract designs, self-contained, and each apparently unique. He walked up to the doorway and said, “You’re dismissed.”

Their guard came to attention, turned to the newcomer, nodded, and marched out of the aircraft. The newcomer pulled himself up into the aircraft and faced the three of them.

“What have you done with Dr. Brody?” Dörner said.

“The injured man? He’s being tended to.”

“We need to see—” Dörner began.

The man cut her off with a gesture. “Please, some courtesy. This is my planet, at least for the moment. And you are trespassing.”

“Our ship suffered a catastrophic failure,” Mallory said. “We were coming here for help.”

“And the other ships?”

“Other ships?” Dörner and Pak exclaimed at the same time.

“I have at least one hundred fifty spacecraft confirmed, before they took out our satellites.” He looked at each of them in turn. “You are going to tell me their intentions.”

One hundred fifty ships?

Mosasa had said that the Caliphate would be massing whole fleets. They were here? Now?

“Why is the Confederacy here?” The man repeated.

“Not the Confederacy,” Mallory said. “The Confederacy doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Who, then? Who did you bring here?”

“I think those ships are from the Eridani Caliphate. They are going to want to stake a claim on this section of space.”

“You think,” the man faced Mallory. His mouth formed a hard line. “You think?”

“I’m as surprised by their presence as you are.”

“I find that hard to believe. You would have me believe you are not a party to an invasion fleet? The first offworlders to arrive in a century?”

Mallory shook his head. “You can debrief us separately. We can give you all the details you want.”

“I will.”

“They haven’t attempted contact with you?”

“They—”

The radio in the cabin squealed with static and started its incomprehensible babble again. Almost simultaneously, one of the guards stepped up to the doorway. He held a small comm unit.

“Sir, we’re getting an unauthorized transmission.”

The man took the comm; the volume was high enough that Mallory could hear it.

The voice was familiar. The last time he had heard it, it was quoting Revelation.

“I am Adam. I am the Alpha, the first in the next epoch of your evolution. I will hand you the universe. Follow me and you will become as gods.”

No, Mallory thought, it was not the Caliphate. It was something much, much worse. . . .