Surprise at having her agree with him battled with Alik’s dismay. “They built one for this star? The circumference is over thirteen million kilometers!” But the display showed him she was telling the truth. A dark band was spinning above the corona, whipping up million-kilometer twisters of incandescent plasma that spun off huge, arching prominences.
“It would have to be,” Callum said. “I’ve been checking the number of wormhole termini in this orbit. Over a thousand so far. They are going to need the mother lode of energy to sustain them.”
The sensor clusters were showing faint purple glimmers following their own orbit ten million kilometers outside the ring. Some were brighter than others; those were open, with ships moving in and out of them.
“Fucking hell,” Yuri said. “Do all of them lead to sensor stations?”
“I hope so, because as sure as it rains in Glasgow, I don’t want there to be other enclaves.”
“Son of a bitch, what have we walked into?” Alik murmured.
“Exactly what we knew would be here,” Kandara said. “Come on, get a grip.”
He wanted to scowl at her, but she was right, of course. That didn’t help, either.
“Okay,” Callum said. “So we can see the wormholes. Where’s the gateway into the enclave?”
Alik checked the displays, seeing the indigo shimmer of the wormhole terminus shrinking behind the Salvation of Life. A stream of big pyramidal ships was flowing in a wide spiral around the arkship. The onemind was greeting them all, returning to that strange state of satisfaction it had displayed when they arrived at the sensor station. In return, the ships were sending their welcome and congratulations that mingled with a thirst for information. The response to their curiosity was a flood of memories so vast that Alik couldn’t begin to absorb it. Instead he caught flashes of Earth and humans and city shields glowing like half-buried suns and MHD asteroids shattering in nuclear fire, the gargantuan explosions leveling Theophilus crater.
“Motherfuckers,” Alik said, his mood darkening.
“The gateway has to be different, doesn’t it?” Kandara said. “The wormholes lead away from here. We want something that goes…inside space?”
“I’m going to see if I can find the location in the onemind’s thoughts,” Jessika said. “Hang on.”
Alik watched the flock of pyramid ships that had greeted them shoot away skittishly. Despite their rigid geometry, there was something unnerving about such avian behavior, as if they weren’t quite in control of their actions and were simply letting instinct guide them. Then he saw why they were departing. A whole flotilla of Resolution ships was approaching. Their size should have made them stately, moving with a ponderous surety, but instead they were fast and agile, an effortless show of power and precision that was intimidating all by itself. They twisted around the Salvation of Life—a salute to all it had achieved—then plunged on past, heading toward the wormhole’s intense Cherenkov gleam.
“They’re heading for Sol, aren’t they?” Kandara said.
“Yes,” Yuri agreed.
“It will take them a while, though,” Alik said. “Decades, you said.”
“Yeah,” Kandara agreed reluctantly. “So people will have some time to get ready. Exodus habitats will be built. They’ve probably already launched a dozen more by now.”
“And in a hundred and twenty thousand years, they’ll be here to liberate us.”
Kandara gave him the finger, backed up by an exasperated glare. He knew he’d be on the receiving end of more grief when they came off duty.
“I’ve found the gateway,” Jessika announced. “It’s a million kilometers inside the ring, about one and a quarter AUs from us.”
Alik watched the display as the sensors zoomed in on the area of space she’d designated. In the back of his head, he could feel the onemind determining the course it had to take to reach the gateway, the vectors it needed to fly. It was preparing to increase power from the main generators and feed it into the gravitonic drive, which had been idle while they were inside the wormhole.
There were other thoughts he caught, too. A small subsection of the onemind started to orchestrate the ships it was carrying, designating their destination. None of them would be required once they were through the gateway and began the long hiatus until they arrived at the era of the God at the End of Time. Damage assessments were being reviewed, discovering if the ships had deteriorated further during the voyage home. Those that could no longer fly would be removed, their oneminds transferred into the empty bioneural core of new ships, while the ships themselves would be released into the ring, where they would vacuum ablate to dust and gas over the next million years—dust that would ultimately merge with other particles that would go on to feed the industrial constructors.
Okay, now that’s what I call sustainable recycling, Alik thought in dark amusement. A kind of long-term planning that put the exodus habitats to shame.
“We need to deploy the Signal transmitters,” Yuri said. “If the ships in this hangar start to wake up, they might notice our activity. And from what I can understand out of the onemind’s thoughts, we haven’t got long now.”
* * *
—
Jessika increased the level of distortion infecting the neural strata that covered the hangar as much as she dared to shield their exit from the Avenging Heretic. Alik and Callum steered more than a dozen creeperdrone spiders along the passageways and corridors leading to their refuge cave, alert for any quint or larger creatures who might be coming their way. With a perimeter watch established, they got ready to leave.
The bridge simulation faded from Alik’s mind, and he opened his eyes to see the others sitting around the table in the main life support section. For some reason, they’d seated themselves in the same order they always used on the bridge. When he glanced around the cramped compartment with its little nests of dirt in acute corners and long-dried smears of food trodden into the floor, he was surprised to find how he’d grown accustomed to having just a few square meters of personal space.
“Okay then,” Yuri said dispassionately. “Let’s go.”
The environment suit the initiator had extruded was similar to the kind of gear Alik had worn on tactical raids back in his early days with the Bureau—a one-piece made from a gray fabric that had a weird blurred sheen, very hard for an eye to focus on. Presumably it would be equally difficult for the optically sensitive cells on the biological lattice of pipe trunks and leaves stretched across the hangar. The helmet was a lot more than the old tactical team gas masks, too. This was a simple hemisphere, with the same gray covering and no visor, so the optical fuzz was complete. He put it on, locking the collar, and his tarsus lens fed him the image from the helmet cameras, providing him with a sharp resolution and excellent zoom function. It had air recycler filters built in, so there was no breath exhaled for an infrared giveaway. Not quite a full space suit, but if they did suffer a depressurization event, it could protect them from the vacuum while they got to safety.
The one thing it lacked was armor reinforcement. That made him uneasy at some deep level; his instinct was to fight back if they were cornered by the Olyix. Intellectually, he agreed with Yuri that a firefight would accomplish nothing, but that didn’t make it easy.
As he pulled the suit’s front seal up, he saw Kandara—her back to Yuri—shoving a bulky pistol into her waistband before closing her suit up. They exchanged a knowing glance, smirking like kids putting one over on their parents.
The Avenging Heretic’s hatch opened. Alik saw Jessika pause for a second on the rim of the hatch before she sealed her helmet and stepped down onto the hangar floor. Yuri followed, carrying the small biological life support module that contained the nodule of Olyix neural cells entangled with the Salvation of Life’s onemind. Kandara stepped down next. Alik gestured to Callum, then took a quick look back with doubts filling
his mind—too late, of course. They were committed now.
The medical display splashing onto his tarsus lens showed his heart rate climbing. He dismissed it and followed Callum across the rocky floor, unable to shake the sensation of vulnerability. The bulk of the Avenging Heretic blocked them from the other damaged ships lined up in the hangar, and he could see through the various feeds from outlying creeperdrones and sensor clumps that there were no quint anywhere near. Still, his anxiety didn’t start to diminish until several minutes later when they reached the fissure in the wall that led to the cavern.
Somehow he’d misjudged the size of the fissure off the main passageway; the thick pipe trunks were taking up more space than he’d thought. Squeezing past them was something of a contortion act. Which means getting out fast just ain’t going to happen.
Thankfully, the cavern past the egg tanks of fluid did match expectations—a dark, irregular space that was another couple of degrees colder than the passage. Alik lifted off his helmet and straight away saw his breath misting in the arid air. For the first time he breathed in the arkship’s raw atmosphere, wrinkling his nose up at the sensation. It was surprisingly dry for something produced by biological systems, although he could smell mild, exotic scents that confirmed its alien origin. It was also several degrees cooler than the air in the Avenging Heretic.
Without really knowing why, he was ridiculously relieved by the pile of their equipment waiting on the uneven rock floor. Ten of the fake spider creeperdrones were standing beside it, along with a couple of the larger service creatures they’d used to deliver all their gear.
They took off their suits and pulled on thick tunics against the chill. Alik made a mental note to produce a pair of gloves in one of the three small initiators they’d brought to the cave.
“Are we ready?” Yuri asked. “Okay then, let’s go.”
Alik settled himself as comfortably as possible on one of the rock ledges and let his interface envelop his senses with the simulation. Once more, he was back on the fanciful bridge and watching Jessika activate the Avenging Heretic’s drive systems. The central display showed them the hangar with the array of damaged transport ships parked around them. A couple of larger Olyix maintenance creatures were clinging upside down from a thick pipe trunk on the ceiling, mandibles munching away at dead fronds. In the back of his mind, the Salvation onemind was a burble of impulses, like a distant waterfall—there, but without being directly present.
The Avenging Heretic lifted off the floor and swung around slowly, its nose a compass needle searching out the hangar entrance. There was nothing in the onemind’s flow of thoughts; the hangar’s perception simply didn’t register the movement.
“Do you think we might just actually get away with this?” Callum asked.
Alik had to bark a laugh at the almost childlike optimism. “Not a fucking chance, my friend.”
“The perception impediment in the hangar’s neuralstrata is holding up fine,” Jessika said. “The onemind doesn’t know we’re moving. The other ships do, but it’s not their concern. Ships are semi-independent. I doubt they even have the mental syntax for rogue behavior.”
“Maybe we should have stayed on board,” Alik muttered.
The Avenging Heretic began to move forward—at walking pace at first, then slowly increasing speed. Alik was mesmerized by the hangar entrance as the sublime light of the galactic core shone in through the tunnel, basting the rock with a rich solstice glow.
“Ready to launch the Signal transmitters,” Kandara announced.
“As soon as we’re outside,” Jessika replied. “I’m hoping there’ll be a moment when we’re clear of the rim and before Salvation notices we’re in flight.”
The Avenging Heretic’s nose pushed at the invisible pressure membrane over the entrance, and Alik could have sworn he felt the artificially combined air molecules slithering over the skin of his own torso like the stroke of an oily feather as the ship passed through. Then they were in space, with the massive rock wall of the arkship behind them.
“Now!” Jessika ordered.
The Signal transmitter vehicles were the best stealth technology Kruse Station could devise, combining human and Neána technology. The development team had utilized the concept employed by the Neána insertion ship to produce spheres four meters in diameter with a matte black body that was totally light absorbent. Internal heat sinks meant they maintained an ambient thermal profile, and their systems were shielded to prevent any electromagnetic emission. Instead of a gravitonic drive, they had an external layer of active molecular blocks, which meant the entire fuselage was a rocket motor with an exhaust of cold neutral atoms, which left only the faintest of traces. In theory, it should be no different from a gust of solar wind particles.
Alik caught a brief glimpse of the five covert transmitters as they left their silos—and that was only because the ship’s sensors tracked their black outlines against the rock as they dropped away. His display came alive with the feed from the transmitter he was remote piloting. He triggered its surface blocks, propelling it farther away from the arkship, quickly building distance and velocity. Then he cut the drive, allowing it to coast along inertly. The transmitter’s own sensors showed him the Salvation of Life receding quickly, its surface gleaming in the vivid silver light that ruled the star system.
“Explanation of your flight required.”
Alik’s limbs twitched with instinctive guilt as the Salvation of Life’s onemind queried the Avenging Heretic. Its thought came directly through the nodule of entangled cells. For now it was just a secondary level of consciousness; the arkship’s main routines weren’t even aware of the departure.
“On course for designated repair station,” Jessika replied, along with an identification code of a station in the ring that she’d picked up as the assessment of each damaged ship was being conducted.
“You did not receive that designation.”
Jessika increased the thrust of the Avenging Heretic’s gravitonic drive, allowing it to accelerate away at eight gees. The ship settled on a vector that aligned on the gateway. “Error,” she answered. “Designation received and confirmed. En route.”
“Incorrect. That course is not authorized. You are deviating. Return.”
Alik could feel the timbre of the Salvation’s thoughts change as higher levels of its consciousness began to focus on the errant cargo ship.
“It’s waking up to us,” Yuri said.
Alik thought he sounded amused, or maybe excited.
“Following original designated instruction,” Jessika insisted.
There was a pause for several seconds, then: “What are you?”
It was the Salvation of Life’s primary consciousness asking the question. Alik could feel the change, the enormous presence stacked up behind the query. Strange whispers began to slither out of its awareness, probing into the nodule…but Jessika blocked them easily.
“Neána,” the Salvation of Life declared.
“Close, but you don’t get to ride the unicorn,” she retorted.
Watching through the Signal transmitter’s sensors, Alik saw a dozen Deliverance ships abruptly break away from their escort formation around the arkship and accelerate hard in pursuit of the Avenging Heretic.
“You are one of the human constructs sent to Sol by an abode cluster,” the Salvation of Life pronounced. “Why are you here?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Yuri told it. “How dumb are you? In what universe do you think anyone is going to answer that?”
“A human. I feel your thoughts, the uncertainty behind your bravado. Your instinct is right; the Neána have lied to you. We are your friends; all we want is to bring you to the greatest gift life can achieve. You will know the God at the End of Time. We will carry you to that glory.”
“We’ve died in our millions fighting against our own Gods throughout
history, and they don’t even exist. What the fuck do you think we’ll do to your God if we ever come face-to-face with it?”
“I weep at your bewitchment by such dishonesty.”
“They’re closing,” Alik warned. The Deliverance ships were accelerating at fifteen gees, eating up the distance between them and the Avenging Heretic.
“My turn,” Kandara said gleefully.
The Avenging Heretic released a cluster of Calmines from their silos. They used the same principle as Calmissiles: a fuselage that was ninety percent portal, but without having a spatial entanglement to a portal inside a star’s corona, they didn’t have a plasma drive, denying them hypervelocity maneuvering ability. Instead, they were equipped with a small active molecule section protruding from the portal fuselage. That provided sufficient thrust to fly them into the course of the Deliverance ships.
Kandara didn’t have quite enough time to spread the Calmines wide enough. Only seven of the pursuing Deliverance ships struck them. Not that there was anything to strike. The holes in space sliced clean through the Deliverance ships in milliseconds. Seven violent explosions flared behind the Avenging Heretic.
Kandara’s fist punched the air.
“Oops,” Yuri mocked. “I thought you’d cleared all the debris out of this star system.”
“You achieve nothing by this,” the Salvation of Life said.
More Deliverance ships abandoned their escort duty around the Salvation of Life to chase after the Avenging Heretic.
Alik switched on the molecular block drive of his Signal transmitter, as did the other four. Undetected, the dark spheres began to fly farther away from the arkship, aligning themselves on the vast radio telescopes orbiting far outside the ring.
More Calmines dropped out of their silos. This time they only intersected one Deliverance ship.
“Shit. Sorry,” Kandara grunted. “Missed.”
“Come to us,” the Salvation of Life urged. “We understand your panic and confusion. Let us welcome you into our home.”
The Saints of Salvation Page 29
