“In what way?” the onemind asked.
“There are behavioral indicators that indicate excessive stress.”
“Ollie Heslop managed to intimidate and protest his way inside your heavily protected building. He went there with the express purpose of killing Gox-Nikolaj, knowing he was placing himself in considerable danger. That would cause any human to be stressed.”
“The London shields are about to be eliminated. I find the timing an uncomfortable coincidence.”
“You feel you are right?” the onemind inquired critically. “Do you suffer neurological distort? Have you been subject to a Neána neurovirus?”
“No! I remain pure now and always. Such a minor discourse fail is due to residual human emulation routines. I am the best infiltration asset on Earth. This has been proved to you over the multiple assignments I undertook on Earth and the other human star systems.”
“I concede your efficiency claim, despite Verby.”
“We now know our sabotage mission against the Delta Pavonis astroengineering facilities was exposed by the Neána metahuman, Jessika Mye. That was an external factor.”
“Agreed. However, such infiltration assignments are drawing to a close. Earth’s city shields are falling at an accelerated rate. Our final success draws close. You will be reallocated to shipboard duties. Together we will maintain the gift of humans in sanctified equilibrium until we present them to the God at the End of Time.”
“I am grateful for this chance to serve the God at the End of Time.”
“I will authorize a convener to form a replacement quint body for you. You will be whole again.”
“That will be welcome.”
“Ongoing: Ensure there are no further residual human emulation thoughts within your mindfunction.”
“There will be none.”
FINALSTRIKE MISSION
FLIGHT YEAR 7
When he woke, Dellian’s body was sluggish, his thoughts slow. He wanted to go back to the comfort of sleep with all its agreeable dreams—dreams that were now scudding away like clouds over the horizon. But no, that wasn’t allowed. His blood was speeding up as various umbilical tubes retracted from their abdominal sockets. Sensation of pressure draining from his skin. Individual muscles began to register their aches, tingling ferociously. And as for the taste in his mouth…
He grimaced and tried to sit up. The suspension chamber’s ribbed cushioning obediently rose to support his back. Nothing it could do about the churning sensation in his stomach—a churning that was rapidly growing in potency. Even now, with all their society’s knowledge of genetics and human biology, the body still remained obstinately idiosyncratic. You just couldn’t switch it on and off for convenience when you were on massive interstellar voyages.
“Saints!”
He vomited weakly, the liquid mixing with the slops of clear gel that still clung to his skin. A flock of beetle-sized remotes skittered over his chest and arms, cleaning him up. The sickness triggered a headache, which his boost glands responded to by releasing a mild sedative. That just turned his head fluffy.
The light on the outside of the transparent casing grew brighter. He saw Ovan looking down at him, a sympathetic expression on his face as the casing slid down. “Take it easy, remember?”
“Right,” he moaned and held up an arm. The beetle-things retreated from his skin.
Ovan grabbed his hand and helped ease him out.
The motion set his inner ears spinning. He sat on the edge of the chamber until his senses settled.
“Shower first?” Ovan asked.
“Pee!” He knew that was psychological; the waste tubes would have taken care of his bladder. But, still, when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go. Leaning on Ovan, he made his way across the compartment to the washrooms. He saw Yirella was still in her suspension chamber. All the monitor displays were in the green. That made him feel a whole lot better.
The shower finished his transformation into something living. He had to sit down for it, letting the soapy water soothe away imagined cold from his bones along with the last of the gel. He managed to walk over to the dryer hoop without help. The warm air jetted over him as the hoop tracked around, and he brought his databud out of standby mode. Reading the optik display made him slap the hoop’s off button. “What’s happened? We’re only seven years out. Our watch was scheduled for year nine.”
“The Mian’s drive efficiency was falling. Cinrea was watch captain when the problem started, so sie made the decision to decelerate the fleet. That was a year ago.”
“Decelerate? You mean we’re not relativistic?”
“No. We’re at effective rest velocity in interstellar space. Have been for five weeks.”
Dellian started the hoop again, taking his time. Ovan brought him a pack with newly printed clothes in it.
“So what are we doing, waiting for the repairs?”
“That’s almost finished now. The physicists traced the fault to a manufacturing problem in a component batch. Cinrea’s ordered every ship to run a complete check on their drive units.”
Dellian pulled his trousers up, disheartened to find the waist was too big.
“Sorry,” Ovan said. “I didn’t think; I just used your file. We all lost weight in suspension.”
“I probably needed to.”
“None of us did. At least I’ve put it back on now. It took me a few weeks, mind. And the suspension systems don’t completely halt muscle atrophy, either, so you need to watch for that. You’re not as strong as you were.”
“So how long have you been out?”
“Nearly two years. I was on the same watch detail as Cinrea. As you and I know each other, I was designated your recovery buddy.”
“Thanks.”
“So you can do the same for Yirella. Cinrea’s ordered Kenelm to be woken, too, along with all the advisory council.”
“Why? I thought you said the drive was repaired.”
“Because we detected a Signal.”
“No, you didn’t. You can’t have. The Saints are dead. And anyway, we’re too far from the enclave to pick up a Signal even if they broadcast it before the Olyix caught them.”
“Dellian, it didn’t come from the Olyix enclave.”
* * *
—
There was something about the Morgan simply hanging stationary between stars that unnerved Dellian at a fundamental level. Flying at close to light speed was the ship’s own protection, making it phenomenally difficult for the Olyix to even detect—let alone intercept—them. But this—floating inert in the near-absolute darkness of space with no emergency evacuation portal connecting them anywhere—was creepy. He felt extremely vulnerable.
Unsurprisingly, Yirella wasn’t terribly sympathetic.
“That makes no sense at all,” she told him their first night together, after she’d come out of suspension. “This location is completely random. Even if an Olyix sensor station was within five light-years and could detect us—and that’s close to impossible—it would be ten years until they could get here.”
“I know,” he said miserably. “It’s just…We’re really alone out here. I feel that.”
“Del! We are a thirty-strong fleet of warships, the most formidable humans have ever built. Come on, pull yourself together.”
He grinned weakly as he slipped out of his robe and lay on the bed, trying to ignore how skinny he’d become. “Yes, ma’am.”
She gave him a judgmental moue and got onto the bed with him. Her long t-shirt did nothing to disguise how thin her legs and arms had become in suspension. That just made them look even longer.
“And you needn’t think about that tonight,” she said smartly as she caught his blatant stare. “We both need to recuperate properly. That includes no unnecessary physical exertion.”
“Unnecessary?”
“Yes.”
He put his arms around her, enjoying the way she pressed against him. “I’m allowed a cuddle, though?”
“You are allowed precisely one cuddle.”
“Ah, who said romance was dead.”
Yirella giggled and snuggled up closer. “I’m glad they woke you up first. It was nice seeing your face when I opened my eyes. Reassuring.”
“Ha, all I got was Ovan.”
They lay in comfortable silence for a while.
“What do you think we’ll do about the Signal?” Dellian asked.
“I know what we need to do: nothing.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It’s intriguing, but ultimately not relevant to our mission. My problem is what Kenelm will do.”
“I’m sure you’ll steer hir right. You usually do.”
Yirella shifted around to put her face centimeters from his. “Del, I was thinking about something before we started this flight. Thinking about it a lot, actually. I really hope it’s not relevant.”
“Okay. What?”
“We know about Sanctuary, right?”
“Yes,” he agreed cautiously. “You more than anyone.”
“Right. And no one was more delighted than me when Ainsley told me it’s not just a myth. It’s real. Or at least it could be. Some rogue humans joined the Katos mothership and set out to establish a refuge the Olyix would never find. He even said one of his family went with them. A granddaughter, I think.”
“You think they didn’t make it?”
“Not the point. Ainsley said that when the Factory that made him finally broke up, all the factions went their separate ways—the Katos and some humans to build Sanctuary; the Neána back into hiding; the Angelis war fleet to another galaxy; and the human generation ship to found a new planet. And there is never any communication between worlds that humans settle, which means…” She gave him an expectant glance.
“The Factory is in our past! The generation ship that was part of the alliance went on to establish Juloss!”
“Maybe. Certainly not directly. In our lineage, we live on a generation world for five hundred years, then abandon it and move on. Ainsley said he was created about two thousand years ago, in a linear timeframe. That suggests the Factory probably existed three generation worlds ago, in our lineage.”
“Juloss was founded by a generation ship from Quiller, which in turn was founded by Sergiu,” he recited. “And before that, Falkon.”
“Yeah. So my guess is the Factory probably happened between Falkon and Sergiu.”
“Okay, makes sense.” He tried to see where she was going with this, but failed as usual. “So?”
“So if Sanctuary is in our lineage, how come we didn’t know about the Factory? And worse, why don’t we know about the Ainsley ship—or ships?”
“Oh. Saints. Yeah, why?”
“The answer has to be security. Kenelm has access to all sorts of classified protocols.”
“Yes! Like the order sie was given: If the Olyix didn’t respond to our Vayan lure, we should go full-on Neána and build a hidden interstellar society.”
Yirella nodded.
“So you’re saying sie knew about Ainsley-type ships?” he asked.
“Somebody had to know. And Kenelm was very quick to hand me command authority over Bennu’s network when Ainsley appeared. Think about that—an unknown threat emerging in the middle of a battle that’s going badly wrong, and you give the problem to me. Me! I’m smart, but I’m the first to admit I can’t handle stress well.”
“Saints, sie knew Ainsley wasn’t a threat!”
“There’s one other thing. We—you and me, the squads—didn’t know people on Juloss could life-extend with biologic initiator body-rebuild techniques. We were led to believe that technology existed to restore the cocooned into a new body, so recovering the Salvation of Life wouldn’t be fruitless. And it worked so well on the Calibar people it’s obviously a very mature technology.”
“They’re still with us!” Dellian exclaimed, glad to be keeping up. “The people from the Factory. Saints, they’re in control. They always have been. They’re immortal.”
She shrugged. “Possibly. We know nothing about the omnia who made up the Morgan ‘crew’ outside their official files and what they chose to tell us, same as we don’t really know much about Juloss society, because we lived there in its final days. We were brought up to fight, not to question. Our reward for living the life planned for us is freedom after we’ve won. That’s the deal we accepted.”
“I did,” he said quietly. “I’m not sure you ever have.”
“I’m living with it because I choose to. I chose you.”
“So you’re not infallible after all.”
She kissed him. “Oh, I think I made some good choices there.”
“I wasn’t complaining. So if these immortals exist, and knew about Ainsley, do you think they kept the technology to build more of him?”
“I don’t know, but I doubt it. If they had the ability to build more, then they’d build them. The Factory came about by a unique combination of alien technologies. It was a one-off. We don’t know how many Ainsley-type ships they built two thousand years ago, but we don’t have access to those technologies anymore. We can’t build new ones.”
“All right, so what do you want to do about this?” Somehow, he couldn’t envisage a mutiny. Though he was fairly sure the other squad leaders would stand with him if they found out about Kenelm. Or would they? Is this why Yi was so worried and guarded for all those months before we left?
“I don’t know,” she said. “I despise the lack of honesty. And if we do ask Kenelm what’s going on—why the secrecy—we’ll get the usual answers: for your protection, denying information to the Olyix in case of capture. All that politician crap. I doubt we’ll get a genuine explanation about their agenda.”
“Have you got any idea what that is?”
“It has to be connected to the original Strike operation. Occam’s razor says it’s something simple like not revealing how expendable they consider us binaries, or just ensuring each generation world does its duty at the end and produces a bunch of warships to send on Strike missions.”
“So they’re, like, orthodoxy enforcers?”
“Something along those lines, sure. I always did think it was extraordinary how our lineage stuck to a single political-cultural ideology so rigidly across every iteration at a generation world.”
“But the generation world model has failed, hasn’t it?” he said bitterly. “There’s never been a Signal from any Strike. By the time the generation ship from Quiller met the aliens and built the Factory, they must have been seriously concerned about that. So why did they stick with a failed strategy?”
“I’m not sure they did. The Factory built the Ainsley ship or ships. But you’re right, Ainsley is incredibly powerful, so why bother carrying on with the Strike missions?” She shook her head, as if there were too many thoughts cluttering her brain. “Consider what happened. Ainsley was in some kind of condensed mode while he lurked in the Vayan system. All he did was wait and watch. We were the ones who built the lure. And the Olyix knew nothing about Ainsley, which suggests Vayan was the first time they’d encountered a warship from the Factory.”
“So there is only the one?”
“I can’t believe that. But there probably aren’t many. And we’re now finally picking up a Signal, but not the Saints’ Signal. Someone else has defeated an Olyix ship. That can’t be a coincidence. After thousands of years, they’re defeated twice within eighty light-years. That’s close in galactic terms—practically neighbors. The Factory must have sent them here, to this section of space—a long way from where they originated, which gives everyone involved in the Factory a massive head start if it turns out the Olyix can defeat an Ainsley-cla
ss ship.”
“Sanctuary,” he said. “Even if the Olyix find out where the Factory was, they’ll never be able to find where the Katos mothership went. Not now.”
“So it is all about security, after all. That’s a hell of a secret to keep for two thousand years.”
“But…the whole Strike mission—ships like Morgan and all the squads—we’re just a cover so the Katos mothership could get away clean?”
“We always knew we were expendable,” she said slowly. “If this is all true, then we’re dealing with entities that we don’t really understand. Certainly I can’t imagine how superior an immortal human would consider themselves compared to us short-lived binaries. We’re probably just muncs to them.”
Dellian felt his fists clenching in anger. “We need to confront Kenelm. Force hir to tell us what’s going on. The squad leaders will back me, I know they would.”
“No, Del, absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“Firstly, this is all conjecture—a tower of hypotheticals. Secondly, the fleet is taking us to where I want us to be: the neutron star. If we expose an immortal clique that’s been maneuvering our mission to conform to their own agenda, the political fallout inside the fleet will be enormous. Saints knows what people will do! I can’t have that, not now that we’re so close. I’m happy for this delay to push our arrival date back even further. It’s fortuitous. But I can’t risk FinalStrike being compromised. And so far, I don’t believe Kenelm—with all hir secrets—has done that.”
Dellian wanted to punch the pillow in frustration. She was right, of course. That never changed. But that didn’t mean the situation was fair. Being used so insolently was totally humiliating. Needing to hit back was instinctive, not to mention justified. “All right,” he said. “But if I think Kenelm is manipulating us away from the FinalStrike, I will—”
“I know. And thank you for having faith in me.” She kissed him—a longer, warmer kiss than before. The cabin lights dimmed to a rose-pink glimmer.
“Is this a bribe?” he asked, smirking in the dusk. “We’re not supposed to, remember?”
The Saints of Salvation Page 13
