The Veiled Prophet

A One Shot for Scifi Spring 2024

Photo by Kevin Crosby on Unsplash

Koran brought the carrier out of Lightspeed. A wash of tenebrous rays assailed him, flipping colours to their opposites. Ulrik held a hand over his eyes, shirking back from the black sun at the heart of the Obsidian system. Bloodvein, a sleek carrier accustomed to senators, exarchs, and crisis diplomats, sailed through the ink, its wide winged moth-like structure shimmering white in a system of black planets, black moons, and a black sun. A quarter halo of silver shone from their destination. The atmosphere of Hulom, a planet easily mistaken for dark matter or a micro black hole. Specks of white glistened on the dark side of the planet from the few scant settlements dotting the surface.

Jewels clattered behind Koran. Strings of jet, jade, and tourmaline, diamonds, moonstone, and obsidian, all black and polished to a glossy shine hung from the woman's ebony muslin and silks layered and embroidered with patterns barely visible. A veil hung from her mianguan obscuring her face and head, jewels hung from strings in the vague shape of a feminine face, two oval stones imitating eyes. Koran wondered how she saw through the fabric even though she navigated the ship without issue. She had never spoke yet communicated with the skeletal crew simply with a movement of her hand or a rattle of jewels. Her hands were gloved too, in black, naturally.

'Carrier Bloodvein requesting landing on the south pole of Hulom,' Koran's voice broke. He coughed in a vain attempt to shift his nerves. There had been no clear instructions beyond “Bring the Veiled Prophet to Hulom. Fulfil the prophecy.” He'd never heard of her, nor had Ulrik, nor had anyone he knew for that matter, yet this prophet, or someone close to her, had requisitioned Bloodvein, a vessel reserved for high stakes diplomatic missions across the galaxy by a small cabal of Core systems. Nor had he heard of any prophecy, at least not one taken seriously, there were thousands of prophecies all over the galaxy but none were ever fulfilled, and few, if any, had believers in the Core. Koran had never left the Core worlds before but an order was an order and now he found himself in a system beyond the limits of the galaxy. Off the known routes, in unchartable territory, for the stray suns that danced on the edge of galaxies could be caught by other gravitational forces.

A digital screech tore through the ship. Koran cowered from the sound even as the navcomputer was uploaded with coordinates. He set the ship to auto-pilot, 'Was that language?'

'Nothing in our database suggests so,' Ulrik wormed his finger in his ear to rid himself of the ringing.

Jewels clinked in a triplet of high notes. It was a language, but not a human one. The information planted itself in his mind, as if it had always been there.

Bloodvein dipped towards the southern pole of Hulom. The planet obscured the sun and distant stars in a totalising mask of shadow. A silver shimmer tore over the horizon as the carrier pierced the stratosphere and rolled one hundred and eighty degrees to align its underside with the surface. Koran's stomach churned and he wished the auto-pilot had performed the manoeuvre in space. Hulom's southern pole crawled towards morning. The unending charcoal surface of craters and mountains illuminated inch by inch with tenebrous light. Within a shadowed crater stood a landing platform of pristine white erected beside a domed building carved from obsidian blocks. Bloodvein thundered toward the lone building and landed.

An ear-shattering shriek sounded over the radio, the loading ramp lowered itself and all the doors on the ship flew open. New coordinates were loaded onto the navcomputer. 'Ulrik?'

'I didn't do anything.'

There was a single clack of jewels. A silken voice echoed in the men's mind, 'You will be well rewarded for playing your parts, gentlemen,' the Veiled Prophet assuaged Koran and Ulrik, soothing their worries and calming their nerves. Then she was gone.

The ship rumbled into action and piloted itself into orbit around the southern pole. 'Koran, how are they controlling our ship?'

'I have no idea. Our security systems are perfect,' the words lethargic, his tone nonplussed.

The Veiled Prophet glided off the ship, the layers of robes billowing about her but never catching her figure as if she floated instead of walked. Ansang bowed along with the others, the black jade adornments to their mitres singing with joy. The Prophet passed between them all without a glance, without a word, without a gesture. Ansang followed her, along with the others, in silence.

They entered the shrine illuminated in a soft blue light. In the centre of the shrine was a large rotund room with black marble flooring and a pool of brilliant white sand in the centre directly beneath the dome. The Veiled Prophet skirted the edge of the sand, the edge of her cassocks daring to graze the loose surface grains, though it never did. She stepped onto the sand.

Ansang and the others, in their habits and jewels, gasped. Jade jingled. The Prophet reached down and ran her hand along the surface of the sand, the leather gloves scratched along and then she snatched a handful of the pristine white and threw it upwards. The grains of sand flew up and floated higher and higher to rest on the dome. The stone turned transparent, the glare of the black sun casting the Prophet and the circle of sand in a cone of darklight.

She danced. Wide gliding movements, her arms extending so her sleeves billowed and caught the air. Her feet peeked from beneath her robes, clad in slim black velvet slippers, to carve long arcs in the sand. The sand undulated and turned black where the tip of her slipper arced. Within minutes an unending pattern of semi-circles, archways, and crescents marked the sand. She reached out with a leg and marked one final arc through the middle of the sand, her slipper reached the edge of the black marble and the blue lights turned white, the cone of darklight ensconcing her from above to a deep red.

Ansang quibbled and fell to his knees, 'It is fulfilled!' he exclaimed, touching his forehead to the cold black marble. The others prostrated themselves too.

The Veiled Prophet stepped into the centre of the white sand, now scorched with the pattern, and burst into a thick, black fog. Her robes, mianguan, and veils wilted to the floor, covering the circle of sand. The precious stones chimed.

Koran fought with Bloodvein's computer. The machine refused to relinquish control so he was forced to bypass the navcomputer, the auto-pilot, and other systems and return to full-manual control. Cables were strewn about the cockpit, across his legs, and over his head. Ulrik's seat had been stacked with corrupted drives, coils of cable, and flight modules, the co-pilot perched over Koran.

As Koran stripped a cable as thick as his thumb and struggled to fit the right connector to the end the sun began to bleed. Deep waves of burgundy washed over the black sun from the north and south poles. The three-pin connector slipped from his fingers, 'Ulrik is the Lightspeed Drive online?'

'Yeah,' Ulrik whimpered, he turned to the sensor readout on the port side. 'There's some weird EM readings coming off that star.'

Koran entered a string of coordinates, the only ones he knew off by heart, and grabbed the lever. The mission was done, whatever reward he was happy to leave behind.

'The star is going supernova,' Ulrik said.

Koran stared at bleeding sun, the rivers of blood met at the equator and pillars of sunfire rose from the surface. The edge of the star rippled, light was drawn inwards only to burst outward bathing the moons and planets in blinding crimson. The sun began to crack. The radiation crashed into Bloodvein and shunted the ship out of orbit and out to the edge of the system. Koran leaned hard on the lever and felt the ship groan as it fought to enter Lightspeed.

Silence followed, the blinding white expanse of faster-than-light travel along with it. Koran sank into his chair, a faint sense of dread clawing the back of his mind.

---

Thanks for reading! Make sure to check out the latest chapter of HUNTED if you haven’t already.