Messiah by S. Andrew Swann

the good news of His works. The impressions He received were not as direct as His knowledge of things on the Voice ; this version of Himself had no direct connection to the surface. But His other selves, and the select ones among His chosen, broadcast their knowledge and their sensations to Him.
    Even here He could see the cities rebuilt into more organic, rounded forms. Adam found the destruction and homogenization of chaotic human architecture almost as comforting as the transformation of humanity itself. Even though there was a long journey ahead of Him, now that man’s cradle had accepted His salvation from the flesh, He knew that the final victory was His.
    His creators would not have died in vain. They were the architects of life’s final victory over entropy, over the Abyss. Adam’s chosen would endure for eternity, transcending the Race, transcending Humanity, transcending even the ancient Dolbrians.
    In the midst of the remade cities below, His chosen had built massive arrays of tach-receivers and transmitters, massive ears and eyes that saw deeply into the space around Him. Through them, He received news from other worlds that had accepted His word; Khamsin, Occisis, Cynos, Dakota, Haven, Acheron, Ecdemi, Paschal...
    He also could hear from the planets that had yet to receive His glory. He could hear the unfortunate chaos and panic that gripped the ignorant in the face of any great change.
    But there was something else. Something troubling.
    He had not thought of Bakunin since He had defeated His Nemesis, Mosasa. The planet was irrelevant. Even the dim eyes of His resurrected AIs could have seen that the planet would collapse into chaos as soon as Mosasa’s influence was removed. Bakunin couldn’t maintain stability for more than a month without intervention. The planet’s energy would be consumed by civil war and could be safely ignored in favor of planets with fleets and coherent states that might oppose Him.
    Even the mass of refugees taching into Bakunin’s system should only contribute to the chaos and confusion. By now, those ships should be cannibalizing themselves over too-limited resources . . .
    But now Adam focused His awareness upon what He saw and heard from Bakunin. The refugee fleet, denied the surface of the planet, was not consuming itself as it should. The fragments of data His tach-receivers pulled from the ether told Him that they were, in fact, stratifying, forming organizational structures.
    He now realized that the transmission from Khamsin had contaminated the social equation. A small variable that only slightly moved the stable planets of human space caused a major realignment in the shifting sands of Bakunin. It was an oversight He would have to deal with.
    He ordered all His chosen who remained in orbit to rally at the Voice, as the massive kilometer-long carrier prepared to make the tach-jump to Bakunin.

Date: 2526.8.7 (Standard) 350,000 km from Bakunin-BD+50°1725

    The more meetings he attended, the more disheartened Mallory became. He sat at a long table with a dozen other people in a conference room in one of the Wisconsin’s endless series of luxury hotels. The table itself was lit by an elaborate fixture dangling from the ceiling that doubled as a holo projector, though no one seemed to have bothered to put such a presentation together. The light from it bore down on the people seated here, the glare making it appear to Mallory that the participants at this table argued with each other while surrounded by an abyss.
    Mallory rubbed his eyes. Stress, lack of sleep, or his overdriving implants made him sensitive to the light. Even so, the metaphor was too apt.
    “We need as many ships as possible under our banner.” The speaker was a thin man named Eric Tito. He was the nominal leader of the Bakunin native fleet. He was an unrepentant pirate and looked the part, down to a prominent scar on his cheek and the habit of carrying three sidearms.
    Leaning across the table to shout