The words slammed into her thought stream, stirring her mind into a frenzy of confusion so that San glanced at Wilson to see if he shared her opinion; he nodded back, his face going pale when he mouthed this is real. San closed her eyes. Mathematics is truth; evaluate reality against the backdrop of its immobility. Everything had been a myth. Fables. The Proelian teachings, the material stuffed into her mind when a toddler, she had doubted all of it and the realization that it might all be true—or even partially true—made her dizzy with implications.
The priest waited at first and then shifted its head to look at Wilson.
“I sense the confusion. I see its origin but cannot understand it.”
“I didn’t believe the Sommen religious texts,” said San, “or the human ones—not really. Not until now, anyway. We can’t see our predecessors’ memories, not in the Sommen way; most on Earth don’t believe because we have no evidence. Our texts can often instill faith, but not always belief. Faith is different.”
“And now you have evidence.”
San nodded. “Mathematics is truth. I compared your stories to what I know from our texts and it fits. I don’t believe. Not yet. But you gave us more: information that is consistent with what the Proelians taught about the connection between Sommen faith and ours. The story of the machinists was never in your texts. Nor ours. But it fits.”
“That is not why I brought you both here; why we entered human space in violation of the treaty. There is one more thing to accomplish before I let you go.”
The priest reached with both arms toward the top of his tank, manipulating something out of sight; the stone lid began to slide. A hiss from escaping ammonia filled the room and the lid opened all the way, the tank boiling with the release of its pressure.
Both warriors rested their blades against it and then arranged themselves so that one stood on either side. They reached in. The priest emerged from the fluid, splattering the deck with droplets, and the group shuffled down the dais stairs to stand in front of San.
“Do you have material to seal your suit in case of breach?” the priest asked.
“Yes. But why would . . .”
The priest slammed its thin arm forward, extending his fingers so that sharp narrow claws penetrated San’s suit fabric and plunged into her arm. She screamed. It lasted a second, until the priest yanked its hand away and pressed the claws against its forehead, smearing traces of San’s blood against its flesh. While San floated, rotating while spraying foam sealant over her suit, she coughed at the influx of ammonia and did her best to hold her breath. The priest then did the same thing to Wilson. By the time it was over, both of them coughed in their suits, and San watched the warriors place their priest back in his tank, sealing the lid while fresh fluid bubbled up from below.
“Why?” San asked.
“It was needed. Your kind has breached the treaty, but not in a way that requires a full response. By creating an abomination, your brother, we needed to test you and the other human priests to make sure of your purity. It is good.”
“Now what?”
“Leave my ship and go with a warning: I sense in you a desire to enter Sommen space. Do not. If Earth ships are caught one more time in our domain, it will mean war. Tell your priesthood this.”
“We will,” San said.
“And find the prophecies of your people, especially the third—the one granted in a place called Portugal. I sense that you do not know them.”
San was about to ask for more information when the tank’s glass turned opaque, blocking her view of the priest. The warriors lifted their blades. One pointed toward the hall’s rear, and San and Wilson turned, venting gas to move from the dais. On the way out they passed the body of their original escort, the insectile creature. It was dead, San decided.
“Wilson, do you remember the way out?”
“I think so. But we’ve got to change our plans; there’s no way we can go into Sommen space after this.”
“You’re wrong. After what we learned of the machinists and their fight against the Sommen, we have to complete this mission more than ever—including getting rid of my brother and exploring the space near the Sommen home world. The abbess will see it that way, too. She must hear all of this. Who else but the machinists could have forced the Sommen from their home world?”
“San . . .”
“It’s always been about the machinists, Wilson; I see that now. The abbess wants their technology.”
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“They are overdue,” said Zhelnikov.
Win nodded. “They will arrive.” He glanced out the ashram at alien star patterns, jealous that the Proelian telesthetics could make sense of it all and use Sommen balls of fire to chart a course. Even the empty space threatened the Higgins and its crew; since the transit into enemy territory, they’d been running at minimal electronics and two years of hibernation sleep hadn’t reduced Win’s fear that they’d be detected. He scanned the stars again, reaching out with his thoughts to probe the dark places where his vision failed.
“Relax, Win. We are adrift with only life support and gas maneuvering active. The weapon capacitors are charged. We cannot be detected by the Sommen.”
“No, but my sister can find us. Your crew’s thoughts create ripples that travel far, and which she can detect. And have you tested the weapon?”
“Our men worked the whole time we slept. They tested while we were still outside Sommen space, and now we are close enough to the wormhole that its emissions should scramble at least some of our crew’s leakage. Even if it doesn’t, our enemies first have to transit. We will get the first shot.”
“You assume they haven’t already come through.”
“How?” Zhelnikov slammed his helmet on, locking the neck ring in place so that his voice now rang through speakers. “Why would they deviate from their course and transit schedule? We arrived well before the earliest possible time the group could have gotten here. To get here any faster, both their ships would have had to undergo minimum gas and water collection—a low-fuel risk that they wouldn’t take. Not when they were about to enter Sommen territory. They will come from the transit; you can stop scanning.”
Win ignored the suggestion. This wormhole had been placed at the edge of a star system, a cold red giant so distant that its light barely reached them, but just enough that its glow filled the ashram with a faint orange tint. The light reminded Win of fireplaces on Earth, in wintertime, where wealthy Fleet officers could afford the magnificent older homes and the cost associated with burning cellulose. What a waste. But at least fire would provide warmth and a feeling of quiet exhaustion; light from the red giant was just strange enough that it increased Win’s anxiety, making his skin crawl with the sensation that something was out there, getting ready to attack the Higgins. Once more he reached out, this time in the direction of the star.
Waves of weak energy, magnetic currents and particle winds, drifted around his consciousness and billowed the fabric of his mind. They clouded his vision. He saw the system as if it hid behind a thin veil and Win puzzled at the phenomenon; this was new. He’d never had trouble seeing into systems and there had never been this kind of interference except when in the presence of Sommen priests, so he traced the currents—imagining himself a kind of sniffer, moving along a gradient in the direction of increasing perturbations. The source appeared to be a tremendous planet, a gas giant so large that it must, he thought, have come close to collapsing into a star when it first formed. Its surface swirled in green and light blue, reminding him of a jade marble. Win moved in. By now the interference was so intense that he felt his body break into sweat with the effort. His vision cleared and he went still, transfixed by the sight of a pair of ships hidden in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere.
Win snapped back into his body. “Bangkok and Jerusalem spotted.”
“What?” asked Zhelnikov. “I don’t see them.”
“In the damn gas giant! They�
��ve been here the whole time, interfering with my sight.”
Zhelnikov flew toward the ashram’s hatch, spinning its wheel and then calling over his shoulder. “Stay here. I’m headed to the combat center. Report everything noteworthy.”
“They detected me, old man. They’re headed out of orbit now, coming this way.”
“Then they miscalculated.” Zhelnikov’s voice came via radio, structural interference making it crackle. “That gas giant’s gravity well must be impressive and even if they’ve been scooping gas this whole time, they’ll burn a lot getting distance from the planet. We’ll make them burn it all.”
The Jerusalem and Bangkok were too far to see, even if he tied into the ship’s sensor network, and they were still outside the Higgins’s active sensors—if Zhelnikov had been willing to risk activating them. Active wouldn’t work anyway, Win reminded himself. The very construction of Proelian ships rendered radar and other electronic detection means unreliable at best; as if reading his mind, the Higgins’s captain ordered the launching of targeting drones. Win watched their engines burn. The flames formed tiny dots of light that rocketed away into the blackness until one by one they winked out, the small vessels coasting their way in a spread pattern toward the oncoming ships.
A burst of light caught his attention. Win spun his head just in time to see the fires of a ship’s engine off the starboard side of the Higgins, and he watched, hypnotized while trying to figure out what it was. He clicked into the ship’s network.
“Captain, unidentified vessel off our rear starboard quarter; it’s on a collision course with us.”
Win had been strapped to the ashram deck so he wouldn’t bounce away, but he hadn’t secured himself into its acceleration couch. The captain fired ship’s engines. At the same time the Higgins vented maneuvering gas, sending Win downward against the deck so he couldn’t breathe, and his vision narrowed with every second until he blacked out. When he came to, the acceleration had stopped. Win crawled into the acceleration couch and strapped in, only then glancing at the rear of the ship where he thought the enemy vessel had targeted for its suicide run.
At first, the Higgins’s aft section looked normal and Win wondered if the captain had successfully evaded. Then a wisp of vapor jetted outward. The wisp grew into a torrent of gas mixed with debris and white flickers of detonations, extinguished by vacuum where white-hot flame met space. A series of rumbling thuds shook the deck underneath the acceleration couch and Win reminded himself to stay calm, willing his heart rate to slow despite the communications traffic that erupted in his helmet. He gave up trying to follow the identities; instead, Win closed his eyes and let the words roll past.
“One main engine disabled. Engineering section two venting.”
“Emergency bulkheads now shut.”
“Thirty crew dead, fifteen unaccounted.”
Win recognized Zhelnikov’s voice. “Main weapon status?”
“Functional.”
“Active detection; thirty-seven of our targeting drones are painting the Jerusalem and Bangkok. Coordinates entered into computer.”
“These aren’t clean readings. They’re almost useless. Whatever those things are made of, it’s absorbing all energy.”
“Captain.” The ship’s semi-aware computer sounded flat; it unnerved Win—to not read any emotion in combination with the words. “Sensors indicate that these are Fleet ships targeting and attacking us. Why are we being attacked by Fleet? I recommend . . .”
“Who the hell activated our semi-aware? Someone shut it down; keep it shut down.”
“Main weapon in range . . . five minutes.”
They’re after me, Win realized. Not the Higgins; me.
As soon as his thumb hit his forearm control, the needle jabbed into his neck, sending Win into immediate convulsions with such a large dose. He broke free. Win moved from the Higgins in a streak of light to land in a corridor of the Jerusalem, its cramped space empty while the ship slammed back and forth during evasive maneuvers. The movement would have turned his bones into jelly had his body been there. Red emergency lights filled the ship’s vacant spaces and before long Win gave up on searching, his mind filled with anger at having failed to find her—the one person who could answer his question.
I am here, she said.
I cannot see you, San.
I am so happy you finally came.
Win felt her hatred and basked in it, the sensation like a radiative heat that threatened to bake his intellect, but which made him smile at its purity. She, whom he had never met. What stories had this girl, his sister, been told in order to conjure an anger such that Win saw her eagerness for murder in a gleaming jewel—a beacon at the foreground of a dream? Who had told her these stories in such a fashion that she believed them, despite that they’d never met? Win had looked forward to this day. But now that it had come, he felt overwhelming disappointment at its lack of importance, her blind hatred so basic and devoid of calculus that Win almost pitied all of them, even his sister.
You, Win sent, are only a servant.
And yet the Higgins burns.
You think you win, San? You knew that the sisters sent you into a trap, and now you believe you’ve mastered it but soon you will burn too—so brightly.
Our targeting drones have your position. In a few minutes we launch. The Higgins’s drones have a guess at our position, but nothing more; and what will you use? Missiles? At best we lose an engine. You are finished. Nobody wants you alive, brother, least of all me.
Win laughed at her words, the blindness in them—a total failure to understand her situation and that of her ships—but his laughter soon faded, leaving behind a sensation of emptiness. San and the Proelians weren’t the adversaries he’d imagined. Confidence had inebriated them. They did not know of the new weapon and would be unprepared when it fired, the Sommen portion of his brain repulsed by a sensation that this fight would be without honor, his targets little more than village idiots who had completely let their guard down, sure in their victory. Win detected no mental interference and the clarity of his vision rendered everything so crisply he could read the smallest ship’s markings from a distance; it gave him an idea.
Win sped through the ship.
Where are you going, Win?
I’m afraid, San, he lied. I don’t want to die. Spare us.
They made you in vacuum, without a context. It twisted you. Neither human nor Sommen, you soar through the horror of daily life, existing for no purpose that you know of except to murder. It is our show of mercy: ending your and Zhelnikov’s lives. Today.
You would have made an excellent nun. Perhaps there’s still time.
The bridge looked different from the Higgins’s; Win felt claustrophobic within its confines and he stared at the flesh of its crew members, whose faces flattened under intense g-forces of acceleration. Their stations cocooned them within banks of mechanical and hydraulic actuators; dials, he thought. The ship had actual analog dials that flickered back and forth and the things so entranced him that Win almost forgot why he’d gone there. He sped to the navigator’s station and surveyed the array of digits that clicked up and down, rows of white squares with tiny black numbers that danced to the tune of ship’s maneuvers and referenced the ship’s position against the red dwarf and its planets. After he’d watched for a while, he left. Win ignored his sister’s laugher as it faded behind him, disappearing once he’d re-merged with the Higgins.
He clicked onto ship’s coms. “Zhelnikov. I have readings from the Bangkok. They’ve engaged in evasive maneuvers but I have a general heading and I’m sending it to the targeting computers now.”
“How?” Zhelnikov asked. “Where did you get this?”
“The Proelians failed to keep their interference up. They grow too confident. So I visited their bridge.”
“One minute to firing range,” someone announced.
She will die today, not me. I am a weapon, perfected in the fire of Sommen vision drugs, my body’s w
ithering a map of the cost of sight. This is the way of warfare. This is how I will conquer everything and everyone, with the tissue of a dedicated machine, tuned and optimized for death and its accompaniment. I deserve a better enemy than this . . .
“One of their drones,” someone announced. “Incoming.”
“Missile detected. Launch, launch, launch.”
Win was so lost in meditation that he almost missed it. A Proelian drone had been adrift, invisible against the backdrop of space and the red giant, but now that it had fired he tracked the blue spark, watching as the weapon rocketed in a spiral path, locking onto the Higgins. He froze. The missile’s rocket flame intensified as it approached and once it stopped maneuvering the thing flared with a last burst of acceleration, sending its warhead straight toward the ashram. No maneuvering could change things now, he realized; the warhead was too close. Perhaps she was a worthy adversary after all.
Someone whispered over coms. “Impact will be midship, top side.”
“Affirmative. Ashram impact, three seconds.”
“Lead ship is now within range of main weapon, Captain. Our best guess at its coordinates are locked.”
“Begin the firing sequence; power main weapon.”
Win’s jaw slammed shut with the force of the missile’s impact, making him see stars. He hyperventilated. His suit systems lit with yellow warning lights but none of the damage appeared catastrophic and his servo harness’s combat carapace remained pressurized, its motors whining as he tested arms and legs. This was impossible; his mind swirled with the comprehension that he’d just survived a direct missile hit, and with no damage to himself or his suit.
A piece of debris appeared nearby; the ship fragment spun, its edges going from a bright red glow of molten metal to a dull orange and then black when it cooled. Win noticed a cloud of it. Cooling debris surrounded him on all sides along with flickering ice crystals, glinting in orange light so that he imagined being put in the middle of an exploding firework, trapped within a blossom of ship’s wreckage and frozen water vapor that kept pace with him at a similar velocity; eventually, Win knew, the cloud would dissipate into nothing and his heart raced with the fear of realizing what had happened: The blast had thrown him into space.
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