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Authors: S. Andrew Swann

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BOOK: Messiah
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Nickolai turned to look at the monk, who was still smiling, though now Lazarus allowed just a hint of his teeth to show. Nickolai shook his head and said, “I don’t wish to fight you.”
“You have an interesting way of expressing that sentiment.” Lazarus let go of Nickolai’s arm. “And I think that is not the arm that you left here with.”
“How—”
“As I said, we are the official presence of the Fifteen Worlds here. When Proudhon decided to rationalize the political structure of this planet, they had a decision to make. Were they or were they not going to continue the
de jure
relationship between Bakunin and the Fifteen Worlds? They made a wise decision.”
“You are working with them?”
“We are in contact with them. Diplomatic relations are more preferable to both sides than an ongoing insurgency through these mountains.”
“Diplomatic relations?”
“Please don’t feign naïveté; it does not wear well on a scion of House Rajasthan. You, of anyone, should know the futility of divorcing spiritual concerns from the political. You still live because of a political compromise the priests of Grimalkin made on behalf of your family.”
Nickolai spat a one-syllable curse on the bodies of those priests.
Lazarus still smiled. “Perhaps it is a good thing I am not one of those priests, even if you follow the faith of St. Rajasthan.”
“Perhaps.”
“But again, I think, we face another compromise concerning your welfare.”
“What do you mean?”
“As I said, we have diplomatic relations with the PSDC. Our relationship has gone hot and cold throughout their conquest. Right now, things are particularly chilly. Until an hour ago, I was in a conference with General Alexi Lubikov, the gentleman now in charge of the western half of the continent. He was quite interested in you, and your friends from the
Eclipse
.”
The statement left Nickolai without any words.
Lazarus shook his head. “General Lubikov characterized your departure as ‘not particularly subtle.’ I suspect the same could be said of your return. He has quite a dossier on you. Now I am left with the question of what to do with you.”
“What do you intend to do?”
“Prudence would dictate that I maintain a working relationship with the new masters of this planet. What would it gain me to antagonize the PSDC?”
“So you intend to turn us over?”
“My last question wasn’t rhetorical, Nickolai. And I suggest you take your hand away from that chain.”
Nickolai lowered his hand. He hadn’t been quite aware that he had been reaching for the chain that still wrapped his torso. His thoughts were raging. They couldn’t be stopped this close to their goal.
“Why are you here, Nickolai?” Lazarus asked. “Why would a group of mercenaries that left over nine months ago voluntarily return to the middle of a civil war just to force their way down here? What is it you are attempting to accomplish?”
The monk watched him intently, head slightly cocked. His body language, even his scent, spoke more of inquisitiveness than of assertiveness. Nickolai wondered just exactly how much he knew.
“Do you know what’s out there?” he asked the monk.
“Having diplomatic relations with the new government does not free us from their signal jamming. We’re as isolated as anyone else on this planet. Perhaps you can tell me?”
“What is out there, Brother Lazarus, is the end of the world.”
 
Nickolai told the monk of the
Eclipse
’s ill-fated journey to Xi Virginis, the missing star. He told him of their trip to Salmagundi, the lost colony. He told him of the creature Adam, which had named itself God. He told him of the Protean, and of the flood of refugees filling Bakunin’s solar system. He told him of the fall of Khamsin, and he told him of Mallory’s resistance fleet.
“The plasma fire that shone in the sky a week ago. That was Mallory’s attack on Adam’s invasion. It may be the only reason why we are alive to stand here and discuss this.”
“I see.”
“Did your friend General Lubikov tell you any of this?”
“He is not my friend.” Lazarus turned away from him and walked up toward the wall with the giant Dolbrian carving. “And you haven’t told me why you are here. You seem to support this resistance, and it is unlike a member of your house to travel away from a battle.”
“The battle will follow me here,” Nickolai said. “And I will face it with both feet on the ground.”
“Why
this
ground, Nickolai?”
Would you understand if I said I don’t quite know?
“I believe that the Protean was directing us here.”
“You believe?”
“It is why we took a ship and landed here. The Protean came from here, and said to find those that came before it.”
“The Ancients.”
“The Dolbrians.”
Brother Lazarus shook his head and looked up at the massive carving before him. “I don’t suspect a scion of the line of St. Rajasthan has been schooled in the tenets of my faith. But what you speak of is the cornerstone of our belief, the knowledge that one day, when we are ready, we will once again find the Ancients.” He reached up and lightly touched the carvings in the wall. “They left us this. They did not abandon their creation. They’re only waiting.”
Lazarus’ hand dropped and he turned to face Nickolai, a look of sadness, almost melancholy across his face. “But, I’m afraid that there is nothing here for you. We have studied these tunnels for more than a century, and the Ancients left nothing here but the gift of this planet, and a few carvings to mark their achievement.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Congregation
“There are never only two sides to a conflict.”
—
The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
 
“From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you.”
—FRANZ KAFKA
(1883-1924)
Date: 2526.8.12 (Standard) Bakunin-BD+50°1725
General Alexi Lubikov stood in the corner of an executive suite in the residential part of Bleek Munitions’ mountain headquarters. Both his injured guests had recovered enough to give him withering stares. Parvi repeated herself for what seemed to be the tenth time, “If you’ve opened a channel to Mallory, let us speak to him. He may have information that will help.”
Lubikov shook his head and said, “I can’t allow that. You two are prisoners of the Proudhon Defense Corporation for good reason. There’s more than a fair share of casualties counting against both of you, and the only thing standing between you and a summary tribunal are my good graces.”
“You haven’t contacted him, have you?” Flynn asked, looking at him in a way that made Lubikov suspect it was the other personality, Tetsami, peering out at him from beneath the arcane tattoo on his head. If he hadn’t known firsthand about Adam’s talent for possession, he would have found the presence of another person in Flynn’s body hard to credit.
“Are you purposely trying to antagonize me?” Lubikov asked.
Flynn’s face broke into a sarcastic smile as Tetsami said, “I’ve known a lot of liars, and you’re not a particularly good one.”
Lubikov smiled and said, “And I’ve known a lot of prisoners, and it would take more than that kind of weak rhetorical prodding to prompt me into doing anything ... self-defeating.”
Flynn’s smile shifted in a remarkably steady attempt not to reveal that Lubikov had precisely identified exactly what Tetsami had been doing. It was why you never let amateurs interrogate prisoners. A bad one can take things personally and reveal more information than they got from the prisoner.
“So, since we can’t seem to more clearly identify what your friends are looking for in this mountain, and where they may be going, I’m afraid I have more productive tasks to attend to.” He walked over to the door, which opened as he approached.
“How’s it going,” Parvi asked, “the fight with Adam?”
Lubikov turned and looked at Parvi, and found the thread of hope in her eyes a bit disturbing. “Better than I would have expected. They’ve cut off the invasion into separate pockets, and are fighting to sterilize them.”
He let the door shut on her.
We’re all doomed.
Not that Lubikov had lied about how Mallory’s forces were doing. The only real falsehood he had provided them was the fact he had communicated anything with Mallory. Such a gambit, while possibly useful, was outweighed by the certainty that Adam would perceive it as a slight against his power, and Adam had agents on Bakunin waiting for his call.
He was perhaps the only one who found the absence of such a call disturbing.
There was a full-fledged war occurring though the system. He was one of the few within the PDC power structure high enough to see the intel reports from off-planet. Parvi’s resistance was remarkably holding its own against the onslaught of Adam’s forces.
But he knew, at best, Mallory’s “fleet” would have a pyrrhic victory.
He walked down a hallway toward Bleek Munitions’ communication center. The several Marines guarding the area snapped to attention for him. He told them to stand down and asked, “Is the meeting room ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lubikov nodded and walked past, into a plain-looking conference room. Seated around a table were twelve men and women from all parts of the Proudhon hierarchy: military, civilian, executive. He allowed the door to slide shut behind him with a hiss, sealing out most of the EM spectrum that wasn’t explicitly cabled into the room.
“I apologize for my tardiness. I had another meeting that ran a bit late.”
The room broke out into simultaneous chatter, though it was mostly the civilians. The military folks in attendance, even the two who outranked him, showed a little more deference. He let the questions hang in the air as he took a seat at the conference table.
Everyone’s here...
He continued, as if everyone wasn’t trying to talk over each other. “I also want to thank you all for coming. I suspect this is the first time most of you have met each other, in any context.”
“What exactly is this?” asked the loudest questioner. Geoff Talbot was an engineer and chief of PSDC’s air traffic control operations. He was well placed to control not only physical access to the planet, but off-planet communications as well. If Bakunin was locked in a box, he held the keys. “ATC Operations are not under military jurisdiction.”
“This is highly irregular,” said a dark woman named Kim Hyung. She was deputy CFO, and in charge of the day-to-day financing of the PSDC and its military machine.
Lubikov smiled and looked at the faces of the people staring at him. “You are all here because the situation we face is highly irregular.”
All of the people he faced were holo projections. They had all called in from various points around the planet, and none of them had been told who else would be attending. One of the military attendees, General Yolanda Davis, Eastern Division Command—roughly Lubikov’s peer, though she functionally outranked him by being in charge of the forces around the PSDC’s capital, the city of Proudhon—looked at him and said, “You said that this was an intelligence briefing, General Lubikov. What are civilians doing here?”
“The same thing you are, General Davis. Asking what could possibly bring this group of people together. This
particular
group.”
Lubikov wasn’t particularly surprised when he saw Talbot’s eyes widen slightly. The people in this room wouldn’t be here if they were stupid. And Lubikov suspected a few of them would actually understand as soon as they recognized who they were in the meeting with.
For the ones who hadn’t yet put the pieces together, Lubikov said, “If you look across this table, you’ll see representatives from every segment of the PSDC. The people here, in large part, run this planet now.” He folded his hands in front of him and leaned forward. “That is not all we have in common.”
The talking ceased. Everyone here had reached a point of actual power, where his or her decisions made a definitive impact on the PSDC and, by extension, the whole planet. They were perhaps the twelve most strategic people on Bakunin at the moment, and he had spent months quietly finding out who they were, ever since he realized that he could not have been the only person recruited by Mr. Antonio.
General Davis broke the silence by asking, “What, exactly, are you saying, General Lubikov?”
“That each of us here has given allegiance to someone other than the executives in Proudhon.” Objections began cascading across the table, and Lubikov added, “to someone calling himself Adam.”
The brief pause the name caused in the objections was all the confirmation he needed, had he needed any. The pause was followed predictably by loud denials. Of course, none of these people were willing to admit such a thing.
BOOK: Messiah
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