Authors: S. Andrew Swann
Messiah (5 page)
Date: 2526.8.2 (Standard) Bakunin-BD+50°1725
The air was cold on the western slope of the Diderot Mountains. Brother Lazarus stood at a cavern entrance high up in the side of the only mountain range on Bakunin’s only continent. He faced the fading glow in the sky above, muzzle twitching in the frigid air. Then he looked down at the battle-scarred sprawl of Godwin illuminating itself below him.
The city, the planet itself, seemed unmoved, as if anything happening beyond its fuzzy anarchic borders was beyond its concern. There were more important things for the people on the ground here, political and military dramas that needed to play themselves out, regardless of what fiery apocalypse painted itself across the sky.
In that respect, Brother Lazarus thought Bakunin shared kinship with the Fifteen Worlds that held nominal authority over the planet.
As the last of the glowing fires disappeared from the sky, a voice came from behind him. “Brother Lazarus?” To a human ear, the novice’s voice would have been a series of inarticulate half-growls. To Lazarus’ canine ears, it was actually a fair approximation of his native language. He turned around and spoke in English. “You may use your own tongue, Brother Simon.”
The human Simon smiled, carefully avoiding any dominant show of teeth. “I prefer the practice,” he said in the canid language. “With your permission, of course.” He continued in English accompanied with a short bow.
“As you wish. You have news?” Brother Lazarus idly wondered if the canid voice irritated Simon’s human throat as much as human languages irritated his own.
“A courier from the north says there’s rumors of a tach-ship successfully running the PSDC blockade—plunging into the ocean north of Wilson.”
Brother Lazarus turned to face north, even though Wilson would be far beyond the horizon. “Known survivors?”
“The area’s still in open revolt. There’s no real telling.”
Brother Lazarus wondered if Brother Simon realized he had shifted from “resistance,” to “revolt.” It was a measure of how things had changed here, quite apart from any fires in the sky.
“Thank you,” he told Simon.
“Do you wish us to try and gather more news of this?”
“No. We have our own charge to protect.”
“But any survivors may have news of what is happening,” Simon gestured at the sky which had burned. “This may be a sign.”
Brother Lazarus shook his head. “There have been signs great and small. But if the time of the Ancients’ return is truly at hand, such knowledge will become apparent soon enough.”
PART SEVEN
Demons
“Our humanity were a poor thing were it not for the divinity which stirs within us.”
—FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)
CHAPTER FOUR
Testimony
“If you bring a knife to a gunfight, you better be good with a knife.”
—
The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
“Battles aren’t won by the best equipped. They are won by the least restrained.”
—DIMITRI OLMANOV
(2190-2350)
Date: 2526.8.2 (Standard) Bakunin-BD+50°1725(2190-2350)
Nickolai Rajasthan stood at the edge of a temporary camp about fifteen kilometers from the shoreline where the
Khalid
had gone down. They had been moving carefully on foot, cross-country toward the nearest visible city, and they had taken up residence in what seemed to be an evacuated commune. The emptiness of the place was ominous after seeing the pillars of smoke from the city to their south.
Khalid
had gone down. They had been moving carefully on foot, cross-country toward the nearest visible city, and they had taken up residence in what seemed to be an evacuated commune. The emptiness of the place was ominous after seeing the pillars of smoke from the city to their south.
More ominous were the occasional aircraft he saw with his enhanced Protean eyes. Heavy attack craft bearing the markings of the Proudhon Spaceport Development Corporation; hunter-killers designed to take out hardened ground defenses. The ugly machines floated low and slow on their contragravs, seemingly unconcerned about potential counterattack.
None came close enough to be a threat to their group, or—more accurately—none came close enough to consider their group a target of opportunity.
Most ominous, and what made Nickolai’s nose wrinkle, was the smell of fire and death that hung everywhere. The smell of battle was so pervasive that it became sourceless—a background sensation that strung his nerves tight but gave no direction for the threat. Just standing here was exhausting.
They had already wasted a day hiding in the commune, using food and shelter that the occupants had left behind. He understood the need to gain some intelligence about what was happening here before moving on, but the time weighed on him.
It gave him time to think . . .
He had fallen so far in the eyes of his faith that there should be no redemption for him. He had given himself, however unknowingly, over to the service of the Evil One. He had been spared, and he still couldn’t decide if his life from that point was a gift from God, or an added punishment for his transgressions.
Or both.
But he thought of Kugara and could no longer believe that he was irrevocably damned.
Then light washed across the bare earth perimeter of the commune, his ink-black shadow cutting a featureless hole in the ground before him. He turned around and looked up into a night sky that had become daylight-bright.
His Protean eyes painlessly accommodated the brightness of the new asymmetrical sun that had bloomed in the Bakunin sky. He could focus in deeply until he saw the roiling clouds of burning plasma that consumed the nanomachine cloud that Adam had bequeathed to Bakunin’s outer solar system.
“It has begun,” he whispered.
He heard a familiar voice next to him. “My God.”
Nickolai turned away from the fire in the sky and looked down at Kugara standing next to him. Her face was washed by the unnatural light as she stared upward, her eyes narrowed to slits. He reached out and touched her shoulder.
She turned to face him, wiping tears from her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have stared at that thing.”
“Why are you out here? It’s Parvi’s watch next. You should be getting sleep.”
“I’m finding it hard to sleep through the end of the world.”
She turned back toward the sky, and Nickolai pulled her back around to face him. “You shouldn’t stare at that.”
“No, I shouldn’t.” His hand still rested on her shoulder, and she reached up and placed her hand on top of it. Her hand was tiny against his, even though she was taller than most human women. “How can you be so calm?”
Nickolai snorted. “I am not calm.”
“No?”
“No.”
She squeezed his hand, and he felt a strength that rivaled his own. A strength inherited from the same place as his. For all that she appeared human, her ancestors had come from the same genetic labs as his. The same hubris that led to Mankind’s fall from grace, had led to both their births.
Around them the light faded.
“We can’t wait here much longer,” he said.
Nickolai talked to Parvi at dawn.
Captain Vijayanagara Parvi was a small woman, who barely stood past Nickolai’s waist, but she had no problem looking up at him and saying, “I’m not going to take a bunch of civilians into a war zone.”
The ruddy orb Kropotkin was pushing up over the eastern horizon haloed by a garish blaze of swirling color, making Nickolai wonder how much smoke was in the upper atmosphere.
“We came down here for a reason,” Kugara told her.
“I know that,” Parvi snapped back.
Nickolai smelled fear and frustration in the woman, thicker than the scent of old battle that had sunk into the grounds around the abandoned commune.
“I will scout out the situation in the city,” Nickolai told her.
“We only have the one gun,” Parvi said.
Nickolai handed over the laser carbine, the single piece of weaponry that made it out of the
Khalid
before it sank. “I don’t need it.”
Khalid
before it sank. “I don’t need it.”
Parvi took the laser and shook her head. “We only have the three of us trained to protect these people.”
“And one gun,” he told her. “I’ll return before nightfall. I will find some safe refuge for these people. Then we will do what we came here to do.”
In some sense Parvi was his commander; enough that, should she have ordered him otherwise, his vocation as a warrior might not have allowed him to leave. But she looked at him for a long time and finally said, “You’re right. This place is little better than camping out in the woods. I just wish we had some comm gear for you.”
Nickolai shook his head. “Any transmission source will attract unwanted attention.”
Parvi nodded and, almost hesitantly, said, “Good luck.”
For all the contempt Nickolai had felt for the Fallen before now, he knew that Parvi held the same contempt toward him and his genetically-engineered kin. It was a common enough sentiment, but with her it had always been rather close to the surface. Close enough for her words, and the obvious sincerity, to take him aback.
“Thank you.” If anything, his sincerity was more disconcerting.
When he left her to equip himself from the abandoned commune, Kugara followed him. No words passed between them as he found a modular utility shed that had been left wide open during whatever diaspora had claimed this place. He paused in the doorway and looked back at her.
“Are you going to object?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“You’re going to insist on coming with me?”
She smiled. “You’re a big boy, and I know that I’m the only person running around these woods that can take you in a fair fight. Besides, our short little Hindi needs some sort of backup.”
Nickolai tilted his head and looked at her and couldn’t fathom her amusement. “Even if I’m unarmed?”
She walked up and placed a hand on his chest. “We both know that even without a weapon you’re not unarmed.” She leaned forward on her tiptoes to whisper close to his tilted ear. “I still feel the scars on my back.”
Nickolai straightened up and felt a surge of embarrassment, followed by an inappropriate wave of desire. He took hold of her hand and lowered it. “I think—”
“Besides,” she told him, obviously enjoying his discomfort, “you’re getting a weapon now, aren’t you? Machete or staff?”
He let go of her hand and said, “Both.” The shed had held firearms at one point, but had been stripped of them, leaving only lonely piles of rounds and a couple of power cells. However, there were lockers of tools and other equipment, including sheathed machetes and utility knives, and several thin lengths of pipe that could be workable quarter-staffs. He buckled the largest machete he could find to his thigh, and took a length of pipe that seemed heavy enough to do real damage. After some thought, he also took a coil of rope and slung it around his shoulder.
Once he was ready to go, he looked at Kugara and said, “No arguments?”
“Are you planning to commit some sort of noble sacrifice in penance for your sins?”
“What? No, I—”
“Good.” She walked up to him and said. “You’re actually doing something proactive rather than moping over the fate of your soul.”
“Don’t mock me!”
She moved more quickly than he could follow, and she was pulling his head down for a punishing kiss before he realized what was happening. He felt her tongue brush his, then she let him go.
He stared at her.
“I like you angry,” she said.
“I have to go.”
“But you are coming back.” It wasn’t a question.
Nickolai slipped into the woods and headed south, toward the city. The city’s name was Wilson, judging by a few random bits of paperwork at the dead commune. It was a city small enough and far enough north, that Nickolai hadn’t ever heard of it in all the time he’d lived on Bakunin.
He moved quietly and carefully past tall, widely spaced trees. He used his enhanced eyes to their fullest; every few steps he stared hundreds of meters deep into the woods around him.
It was the eyes that warned him, better than his hearing or his sense of smell. Halfway to Wilson, he saw movement through the trees almost a klick away. He saw the hard-texture finished surface of something man-made, then a flash of something tree-colored but not a tree.
Nickolai ducked behind a tree, leaned his improvised staff against it, extended his claws, and pulled himself up the trunk.
He drew himself up against a branch as thick as he was, and lay flat against it, staring at the approaching figures. As they came closer, he studied them. Two men in powered armor. They had cheap active camouflage, the surface of their suits changing color and pattern dynamically to match their surroundings. If they were still, they would have been hard to perceive, but in motion—even at a slow walk—Nickolai’s eyes had no trouble making them out. As he thought, the spectral sensitivity of his eyes shifted until, camouflage or not, the two approaching figures stood out starkly against the surrounding woodland.
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