Heretics

by S. Andrew Swann

  Mallory hadn’t studied the faith of St. Rajasthan in the seminary, but Dolbrian worship was covered extensively. He also knew of it, just as a logistical matter, from his graduate studies in xenoarchaeology. The Dolbrian star maps were politically important artifacts back in the days of the Confederacy, when political power was directly related to how many colony worlds a political faction had. The star maps showed the planets that the Dolbrians had terraformed, and that intelligence granted an advantage to whoever found and translated the maps first.

  That all ended with the fall of the Confederacy, which coincided with the discovery of a huge Dolbrian complex under the mountains on Bakunin containing a star map covering a swath of the galaxy larger than any human had ever traveled. The rights to the star map and the Dolbrian complex were granted to the Seven Worlds in return for a diplomatic shield against a Confederacy invasion of the planet.

  The Seven Worlds had since become the Fifteen Worlds, the Confederacy had collapsed, and what had been small pockets of cultish Dolbrian worship had become unified, organized, and established their holiest site on Bakunin with the tacit acceptance of the Fifteen Worlds.

  “Even if the Protean was talking about the Dolbrian cult on Bakunin, what makes you think this is helpful advice?” Mallory asked.

  “The Proteans were on Bakunin a century before there was ever any definitive evidence of a Dolbrian presence on the planet,” Brody said.

  “Given their advancement,” Dörner added, “it is likely that the Protean colony on Bakunin had knowledge of the Dolbrian presence beyond what we’ve ever had access to.”

  Mallory sighed. “This is a very tenuous chain of supposition you’ve built.”

  Brody said, “We’re not in a position to ignore any possibility.”

  “We’re also not in a position to waste any resources—”

  From the comm console Kugara said, “So is this what you were talking about?”

  Mallory looked over, and the main viewscreen now showed a holo image of the Khalid’s passenger compartment. The scene was a bloody mess, dead and wounded haphazardly secured to the walls, debris and globules of blood floating in the air.

  By the largest cluster of wounded he saw the unconscious figures of Parvi and Shane. Shane looked dead, pale parchment skin spattered with thin blood from the hastily patched hole in his chest. Parvi’s white hair was half crusted with blood, and the end of a long braid floated free.

  Shane coughed up blood and spittle, which floated free with the other debris in the compartment. The sound was distorted, amplified against the muffled sound of the chaos around him. Kugara manipulated a control, and the cockpit filled with Shane’s distorted wheezing.

  After another wet, wracking cough, his eyes flickered open.

  “I know what this is. I’ve heard all of it.”

  The holo still showed the view from the ceiling above the crew compartment. The sound from Shane’s lips was barely audible, but Kugara had managed to tease out his voice and have his whisper thunder from the comm console.

  “Somebody, listen to me! Please!”

  The crowd around Shane moved in their chaotic dance, not noticing the old man’s whispered plea. His head darted around and the barely conscious Parvi turned her head slightly toward him. The filters on the electronic ear were so tight on Shane that Parvi’s words were almost impossible to catch, but Shane obviously heard them. He turned his head toward her.

  “I know now. I’ve had time to think and put the pieces together. I have all these old threads of knowledge, and it took this to knock some sense into me. Now I’m probably dying, and all of them are running around. You’re the only one listening to me. And you probably don’t understand a word.”

  He coughed again. “I hear them say ‘Protean.’ The Protean was on Salmagundi. The Cult of Proteus would be the only beings who would fully understand what Adam is. What Adam is capable of. The Protean knew what could face Adam. Find those that came before it. Before us. On Bakunin. The ancient ones, relics, the only ones we know of that were as powerful as Adam. Do—” Shane broke off, violently coughing up blood, and his image was soon lost behind the group of people trying to stabilize him.

  “I didn’t dream it,” Parvi whispered.

  “This is still very tenuous,” Mallory said.

  “More tenuous than your phantom navy?” Dörner asked.

  “They’re not allowing landings on Bakunin,” Mallory said. “We can’t even communicate with the surface beyond PSDC traffic control.”

  Parvi kept staring at the holo. “There may be a way around that,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Apostates

  “Desperate plans are only reasonable in retrospect.”

  —The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

  “I will not do nothing.”

  —SYLVIA HARPER (2008-2081)

  Date: 2526.7.24 (Standard) 1,750,000 km from Bakunin-BD+50°1725

  An impromptu meeting of the equally impromptu command staff gathered in the same cargo bay where everyone had met earlier. It was less crowded now, with just Toni from the Daedalus, senior members of the surviving groups of Caliphate and Salmagundi military, Mallory, and Parvi.

  Parvi spoke slowly, laying out her plan to reach the surface of Bakunin. As she described the details, she wondered why she was even proposing following the lead of the two scientists. Even though Shane chose her to babble to, she didn’t have any particular connection to him. But there was one point where she agreed. She saw little chance of confronting Adam with conventional methods.

  She wondered if Mallory thought that if he stood before the gates of hell, God would intervene. In Parvi’s opinion, whoever cranked the wheel of the universe had larger concerns than theirs.

  When she finished, everyone was quiet for a moment. Finally, Toni said, “You want to do what?”

  “The PSDC can cordon off approaches to the planet because of the wide perimeter they set. Once a craft is in low orbit, the orbital platforms start having blind spots. The greatest coverage is over the one landmass, an approach across the ice caps and the ocean on the opposite side—”

  “That’s not the issue,” Toni snapped at her. “It’s getting to low orbit.”

  “I told you,” Parvi said, “the Khalid can tach in.”

  “If it was that easy,” said the ranking Caliphate tech, “half of these ships would be doing it.”

  “I never said it was easy,” Parvi said. “It’s dangerous as all hell.”

  “I don’t think it’s even possible,” Toni said. “Unless you got a magic tach-drive on that dropship, trying to get any accuracy that close to a planetary mass is suicide. You’re as likely to tach into the core as you are into low orbit.”

  “Actually,” Mallory said, “given the capabilities of that new Caliphate drive, the Khalid is probably the only tach-ship within light-years with a nav system advanced enough to do it.”

  Parvi nodded. “I think it’s better odds than trying to dodge an orbital linac.”

  The militiaman from Salmagundi asked, “Is that the real question?”

  “What is the question, then?” Parvi asked, even though she knew the answer.

  “We are trying to make some sort of stand here. I’m willing to do that, however hopeless, because I saw that thing take apart my home. But now we’re talking about throwing away the few assets we do have. At least a pilot and our single armed ship on something that seems even more desperate.”

  “We can offer a trade,” Parvi said.

  “What?”

  “After the people we need to take down to the surface, we’ll have space for twenty paying passengers.”

  Toni shook her head. “I don’t believe anyone’s going to be willing to take that risk.”

  Date: 2526.7.25 (Standard) 1,750,000 km from Bakunin-BD+50°1725

  It took less than a day to prove Captain Toni Valentine wrong. Just broadcasting an intent to run the PSDC blockade generated a significant interest even with
out broadcasting the specifics how. Even after establishing secure channels so that the details could be discussed without PSDC eavesdropping, there were several vessels in a desperate enough state to willing exchange their own ships for a possible ticket groundside.

  In the end, by taking eighteen people aboard the Khalid, they could get an older Centauri dropship, owned by native Bakuninites so it came more heavily armed than the Khalid, a scout vessel from the Protectorate, and a lonely SEC fighter whose AWOL pilot was on the edge of his life support.

  With those assets added to a quartet of new vessels converted to Mallory’s cause, their command was willing to allow Parvi to make her expedition down to the planet.

  Somehow, now it’s my expedition.

  All that was left was to select her people for the mission. People willing to take the same risk she was about to. The scientists, Dörner and Brody, were both coming. Parvi wanted to see some way around it. Even if this wasn’t strictly a military operation, she still felt uncomfortable shepherding civilians through it. But if they did make it down, they were the ones who had information on Dolbrians and the Dolbrian cult.

  Beyond them, she wanted some military support, and support that was familiar with the ground on Bakunin. The place was dangerous in the best of times, and they had no idea what the situation was like on the ground right now. That left her with only one choice for backup.

  She found Kugara in the galley of the Daedalus, a small shotgun cabin with a long table down its axis, reminding the crew that the ship was designed with artificial gravity in mind. Kugara added to the illusion by holding herself in place by wrapping her legs around the bench seat affixed to the alleged floor. The sight of her “sitting” at the table was disorienting, especially when Parvi floated in sideways.

  Parvi wondered about the woman. It had been Mosasa’s decision to recruit her. Anyone from Dakota made Parvi a little uneasy—though after working for an AI for so long, the feeling was probably a little disingenuous. Anyone who successfully led a charge on a Caliphate dropship deserved a little respect. Enough that Parvi wondered why she had ceded her initial control of the situation to Mallory.

  Kugara lowered the bag she was eating from as Parvi entered.

  “I was wondering when you were going to show up.”

  “You were?”

  “You’re planning a wild goose chase down to Bakunin, and if you actually get to the surface, you’re going to want some sort of backup. That’s me, right?”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “And you still have those two scientists going, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Kugara nodded. “I know why. Mallory has decided that his battle is going to be a military battle in orbit, angels storming heaven, sword in hand.” She smiled slightly when she said that, as if enjoying a private joke. “Not much role for an academic in that scenario, is there?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a deep psychic need for people to do something in a crisis, however pointless. They’ve been given that chance. Why do you want to do this?”

  Parvi looked at Kugara and found herself asking, “Why did you let Mallory take charge of this?”

  “I’m no great leader, Captain Parvi. The only reason people followed me is because I started killing people if they didn’t. I’ve never been one of the good guys. Mallory might be talking half bullshit, but any Jesuit that can take charge of a squad of Caliphate engineers, with their consent, has got to have some leadership qualities.”

  “You don’t agree with his assessment of Adam?”

  “Oh, come on. The Antichrist? There’s been more of them than there’ve been popes. You’re avoiding my question.”

  Because I don’t have an answer? “I think Shane may be right, that a direct confrontation may be pointless.”

  “You don’t believe Mallory’s going to recruit his navy?”

  “No. I think he is.”

  Kugara stared at her. After a while, Parvi said, “I don’t want to be part of an epic battle. I don’t want to be a foot soldier in humanity’s valiant last stand. I’ve seen enough war and enough people die. If there’s some other way I can fight this thing, I want to take that chance.”

  “How slim a chance, you think?”

  “I guess we have a two-in-five chance that we make it safely to the surface, if I’m right about the capabilities of the Khalid’s tach-drive navigational system. Once on the surface, I think the chance of Shane’s Dolbrian speculations panning out are the same order of magnitude as Mallory pulling off a military victory.”

  After a long pause, Kugara said, “So it doubles our chances. You can count me in.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But there are two other people you need to talk to.”

  “Who?”

  Flynn Jorgenson took his quarters with the other Salmagundi natives, but even so, Parvi got the sense the young man was not comfortable with them. When she approached him, his response was to wave her out of the cabin and away from his fellow countrymen. Once they were alone in an empty corridor, he asked her, “What exactly do you want from me?”

  “I’m planning a descent—”

  “I know.”

  “Kugara suggested I talk to you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you seem to have some knowledge about Bakunin.”

  He frowned. “About two hundred years more out of date than yours—” He tilted his head, as if he were listening to something. He nodded and rubbed his temple.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “We’re fine, chicky.” He pursed his lips and looked her up and down, as if assessing her. It was not a comfortable look; it was cold and judgmental. Not nearly as deferential as he had acted most of the times she had seen him. “Dolbrians, huh?”

  “There’s a chance—”

  “Do you know what’s down there?” Flynn asked. “Do you really have any idea what’s down there?”

  “Dr. Brody and—”

  “Was he ever down in those tunnels?” he asked. “I was. You know what you have there? Thousands of kilometers of rock, and a couple of kilometers of carvings by a culture that died out a hundred million years ago. A few marks on a rock. That’s what’s down there.”

  “You were down there?”

  “Christ in a clown suit, woman. I’m why you’re giving Flynn the time of day. I came from that hellhole you want to risk your life to get back to. The woman who discovered those Dolbrian ruins was a friend of mine. All that’s there is a big fancy tombstone.”

  “The Protean suggested otherwise.”

  “That thing was damaged goods the moment it ran into Mallory’s Antichrist. I’ll take everything it says with a whole planet of salt, not that it was particularly clear in the first place.”

  Parvi looked at Flynn and had the strangest sense of looking at someone wearing a mask. “I’m sorry I bothered you then.”

  Before she could turn to go, Flynn said, “I didn’t say we weren’t going with you.”

  “What?”

  “Flynn thinks it’s worth a chance, and . . .”

  “And what?”

  “Aside from Salmagundi, Bakunin’s the only home I’ve ever had. I would like to see it again before all hell breaks loose.”

  The ship had cycled to a nighttime schedule before Parvi had gathered herself enough to face the moreau. The thought of talking to Nickolai raised a combination of fear, disgust, and a deep- ingrained sense that the beings arising out of heretical technologies were wrong on some fundamental level she couldn’t quite articulate. She had been able to suppress it when dealing with Mosasa and Kugara because in both cases they appeared human.

  Human enough that Parvi’s prejudices weren’t engaged on the fundamental emotional level that they were when dealing with something that wasn’t anywhere near human. The way it was when she thought of Adam and his chosen, or when she thought of Nickolai.

  With the tiger, it was worse. Seeing him, the threat wasn’t abs
tract. Nickolai was a huge, muscular predator, clawed and fanged. He was a creature whose ancestors had been designed to rend flesh from bone before any genetic engineers had gotten hold of them. When they were done they had taken a primordial nightmare that had—in its natural state—fed off of the flesh of Parvi’s ancestors, and had given it a human intellect and the ability to use human weapons.

  Nickolai represented the ultimate failure of human sanity and self-preservation. So it took her a while to convince herself to enter a room alone with him. When she had, it was late enough that she expected to find the tiger asleep.

  Hoped to find him asleep, giving an excuse to herself to withdraw for the evening.

  However when she opened the door to the cargo compartment Nickolai used for his quarters, the tiger was very much awake. He occupied the center of the open space, the claws of his toes clutching a sheet of cargo netting tied tightly to the wall. He swung a large, long piece of steel around himself in an intricate pattern, stopping it suddenly with loud grunts that were half growls.

  She recognized some of the moves from her own martial arts training, though some would only be possible with Nickolai’s feline build. Parvi stayed by the door, watching his deadly zero-G dance. Even if the metal rod he carried was weightless, the way he wielded momentum and inertia required massive strength and control, and she could picture any blow he landed with that piece of scrap metal being deadly, even to someone in a hardsuit.

  He drew the weapon in with a circular flourish that just avoided his tail and brought it down so it was parallel to his body. When it came to rest, he raised his head to look at the door.

  His eyes froze her; black, barely reflective, they gave the appearance of being holes deep into his skull. As if she didn’t look at some physical presence, but some vengeful spirit.

  “You are frightened,” Nickolai said.

  “No.” Parvi shook her head.

  “Yes.” He wrinkled his nose. “I can smell it.” He released his feet from the cargo netting and pushed himself off, gracefully turning to face her, matching her orientation. “You fear and despise me. Why are you here?”