‘We are on schedule,’ Immanueel said calmly.
‘Assuming nothing goes wrong. Don’t fall into the hubris trap. We’re not the Olyix. We need to leave now; you can finish fixing conduits to the arkships later.’
‘Very well. We concede your point, genesis human.’
Yirella didn’t quite know what to make of that. Immanueel only used that honorific when they were being formal. ‘Did I just annoy you?’
‘No. The opinion of the genesis human is always treated with respect – even more so now you have chosen to elaborate.’
‘It’s not a full elaboration. I’m not ready for that.’
‘We understand. We remember when we began the process. It takes considerable mental adjustment.’
‘Yeah.’
‘We are flying the portals into place now.’
Yirella concentrated the majority of her aspects on the feeds from across the armada. Another advantage of being many: you could really appreciate the bigger picture.
Far away, the wormhole terminus was englobed by more than a thousand corpus attack cruisers. Unable to match its initial acceleration, the Resolution ships chasing it had fallen a long way behind. Most of them seemed to be decelerating. It was hard to tell; they only just registered on the billions of sensor fronds the wormhole had scattered in its wake. She read the distance in surprise. ‘How long were we in the enclave?’
‘A relativity question that has no correct answer – especially given how the Olyix fullmind manipulated the enclave time flow.’
‘The wormhole terminus is three-quarters of a lightyear away,’ she said. ‘We must have been in there for months.’
‘Yes, but it means that the closest Resolution ships are nearly seven thousand AUs behind the wormhole. That is to our advantage.’
‘It certainly is.’
‘The evacuation is starting.’
Expansion portals opened in front of every arkship, bathing them in a lush sapphire light. Yirella’s personality was still operating within the Salvation of Life neuralstratum – albeit with a great many protective routines and cutoffs in case the onemind had left behind any darkvirals. She had given up trying to activate its gravitonic drive. Whole sections had been decommissioned, with components fed into the Olyix equivalent of disassembly reactors, ready for the mass to be recycled. Some of the older arkships didn’t even have the chambers that housed the drive any more; they’d all been repurposed to help support the cocoons.
All she could do now was ensure the power supply to the massive cocoon vaults was maintained, keeping over a billion human brains alive. As responsibilities went, she hated it.
An attack cruiser positioned itself a kilometre in front of the arkship and established a wide distortion boundary. The portal itself began to move backwards, swallowing the Salvation of Life.
I’ll never see the neutron star hit. We’re going to outrun the nova light all the way back to Earth. Shame. It should be pretty spectacular.
The remaining attack cruisers and the Morgan followed the Salvation of Life through the portal. Yirella took a last look at the elegant nebula clouds framed by a thin blue rim. Once the ships were all through, Immanueel deactivated the portal.
Yirella rearranged the feed from the Morgan’s sensors. A coma of flaring interstellar dust was forming around the Salvation of Life as the lonely molecules collided with the attack cruiser’s protective boundary and disintegrated into their elementary particles. A hundred thousand kilometres ahead, the wormhole was open and waiting.
‘So now you have one decision left,’ Immanueel said. ‘Do you tell him?’
Yirella rose to her feet, her original body and her new clone standing facing each other. ‘I can’t. He deserves the life we were promised. I refuse to deny him that. I love him.’
Twenty-seven decks below, in one of the Morgan’s cargo chambers, she’d gathered all her android aspects together. She withdrew from them now, feeling them turn quiescent, their functions shutting down. Immanueel took over the Morgan’s network as she left that, then she handed over control of the Salvation of Life to them.
And then there were two.
Double vision – both images of herself, both aspects utterly identical, even wearing the same clothes. Because I cannot afford to be honest with him. Out of all the eeriness that came from being a host of corpus aspects, this was the most poignant.
A portal expanded at the end of the reception room. Immanueel’s biophysical body came through, ducking down sharply, their tail quivering to maintain balance. ‘We’re ready,’ they told her.
‘Thank you.’ She gave their dark, mottled body a gentle hug.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘Yes. I have to. He will never understand. Nor forgive.’
‘He might. He loves you.’
‘No. I know my Del. His war is over now. After everything he’s done, everything that’s happened to him, I cannot ask him to do more.’
‘What about you? Is this what you deserve?’
‘Deserve? That simplicity no longer applies. As I learned long ago, if you are in a position to make the choice, you have the right to make it.’
‘You are the true genesis human.’
Yirella in her original body straightened her back and accompanied Immanueel into their centrex ship. Her mind twinned and separated. She looked back at her clone through the glowing rim of the portal and lifted a hand in parting. ‘Take care of him.’
*
It was quite a party that had developed by the time Yirella got back to the cafe. Nobody could resist just dropping by to meet the Saints, who after an almost believable show of reluctance had bravely settled into accepting their idol status. Talk was loud, and the Latin music louder.
Yuri was still at the table, facing down Janc and Xante; a pile of sticky shot glasses had piled up between them, along with two empty bottles of vodka so cold they were still covered in frost. Yuri poured a fresh trio of shots from a new bottle as he explained some heroic mission he and Kohei had run once upon a time to save the world from terrorists or revolutionaries or mad ideologues. Yirella was seriously impressed how steady his hand was, while Xante could barely see his shot glass, let alone pick it up.
Callum was having a terribly earnest conversation with Ovan about the Dons’ last amazing season in the Scottish first division before he’d left Earth, while Kandara was teaching Uret and Falar how to samba – really samba – much to their audience’s whooping approval.
Dellian was chatting enthusiastically to Jessika, the pair of them looking up at a window’s tactical display. Yirella slid her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder where it belonged. ‘Hello, you.’
‘Finally!’ he exclaimed and kissed her happily. ‘I wondered where you’d got to.’
‘It’s been a busy time.’
‘Yeah!’ His smile faded. ‘Tilliana and Ellici?’
‘Alive. We can rejuvenate their bodies, the same way we recovered everyone on the Calibar.’
‘Great!’
‘Their bodies, Del. Their bodies will recover. But there’s not much of them left.’
He nodded despondently. ‘Right.’
Yirella smiled at Jessika, who was giving her a calculating look. Almost as if she knows. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Likewise. And thank you.’
‘I have to ask: Did you know, when you arrived on Earth? Did you think we’d be the ones who beat the Olyix?’
‘Nothing is certain. But I had confidence.’
‘Right. Well, and here we are.’
‘So what happens next?’
Yirella gestured at the window and brought up a visual image of the wormhole terminus. Arkships were sliding into its open throat one after the other. ‘In about three minutes we go into there, and four years later we come out at a small star that used to be an Olyix sensor station. It’s not any more; the armada saw to that. Then it’s a ten-thousand-lightyear trip to Earth the long way around.�
�
‘So easy – if you say it quickly.’
‘You’ve been there – to Earth, I mean. We haven’t.’
‘It was in quite a state by the time I left. It’s going to take some rebuilding.’
‘We can do that,’ Yirella blurted. ‘We’ve had practice terraforming so many worlds. We can rebuild it. Ainsley used to laugh at me when I said things like that.’
Jessika raised a tall cocktail glass. ‘Sounds like him.’
‘Yeah.’
‘There are a lot of Olyix still alive out there. You know that, don’t you? Their ships and industrial stations here; all their outposts across the galaxy. This isn’t over. I talked to the Salvation of Life onemind briefly once, back when we arrived at this star and it thought I was inside the Avenging Heretic, just before the Deliverance ships blew it up. I felt its fanaticism.’
‘I know. But destroying the enclave is the beginning of the end. For them.’
‘I hope so,’ Jessika said.
‘Starting now. All those armada ships on protection duty around the wormhole terminus? They’re about to go dark.’
‘Dark?’
‘Once the last arkship is safe inside the wormhole, the corpus humans will close it, just like the Salvation of Life did when you forced it to flee from Earth. Then all these dark warships will quietly circle back around and start tracking the Resolution ships. The Olyix can’t stay here now. Their stars will go nova, maybe even supernova – then who knows, a black hole? They have to leave in order to live. And they’ll travel to their outposts. Our warships will follow them. And – when they’re lightyears from anywhere – strike.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Jessika muttered. ‘The corpus humans will do that?’
‘Yes. Their aspects will separate and multiply; they’re prepared for it. We have a duty to protect the innocents in this galaxy, to make sure they have a history.’
‘Is that what humans are going to do now?’
‘You did. Passively, when you came to Earth. We’re not passive.’
‘I’m human,’ Jessika said sorrowfully. ‘As I always say: just like you.’
Yirella studied her though narrowed eyes. ‘Of course.’
‘It could be quite something, having a galaxy with thousands of different species in contact with each other. So different from the isolation and loneliness we’ve had to endure for the last two and a half million years.’
‘Yes! We can establish wormholes and portals to link all the stars again like Connexion did, but on a huge scale. A loop of stations right around the galaxy, so we can travel among all the species and cultures, and just . . . live.’
‘You’re a dreamer, Yirella.’
She hugged Dellian tight and smiled down at him. ‘I’ve been accused of that before.’
Dellian kissed her. ‘Come on. It’s almost time.’
The party paused. Everyone crowded around the windows, watching as the Morgan flew towards the wormhole. Drinks were clasped to chests in anticipation.
‘Like Hogmanay,’ Callum said happily.
Yirella frowned and turned back to look at Jessika. How did she know the Olyix crusade started two and a half million years ago?
Someone started a countdown. Yirella put the question to one side and hurriedly grabbed a glass to join in. Ahead of them, the Salvation of Life slipped into the wormhole, swallowed by extrinsic darkness. Negative energy conduits rose up out of the Morgan’s fuselage.
‘Three. Two. One!’
The wormhole enveloped them, and the windows went blank. The cheering was ecstatic; the drinking epic. Yirella made sure she kissed everyone in the cafe, then started dancing, laughing at Dellian, whose enthusiasm outranked his grace. Finally they wound up just holding each other tight, swaying gently amid the riotous dancing queens and disco jivers.
At the end of it all, when the music was slow, and glutted bodies were sprawled everywhere, she bent down and kissed him properly. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘I never want to live without you.’ Then she started crying.
Her beautiful Dellian smiled up at her, his face as adoring as it had been ever since they were five years old. ‘Silly thing,’ he said as a finger caressed her tears away. ‘Nothing can separate us. And what a life we’re going to live in a galaxy you made happen.’
Her thoughts slipped oh-so-briefly to her other aspect – the one she’d left behind to accompany Immanueel, the one who would finish her quest. Because if you can’t trust yourself, then who can you trust? ‘We’re together now,’ she told her love. ‘And we always will be.’
Return Flight
Morgan
The Morgan didn’t have actual viewports, not ones you could look through. Of course it didn’t; it was a warship, designed to withstand nuclear blasts, hypervelocity impacts and intense energy beam assaults. But during the voyage home, everyone realized they wanted to see the world that was legend, not just watch a projection of it, however excellent the resolution. So during the hiatus when the armada emerged from the wormhole at the L-class star that used to be the Olyix sensor station, a slight redesign was instigated. A curving transparent blister now rose out of the smooth hull, as if it was beset with a tumour.
Kandara waited until the first rush of sightseers had all had their fill of the system’s eerie blue ice giant before she ventured a look. The observation lounge was spartan compared to the rest of the starship’s quarters with their texture surfaces. She couldn’t really even tell she was inside. The dome was optically perfect, invisible unless a star’s glimmer caught it at an acute angle to create a minute diffraction halo. As far as her natural senses could make out, she was standing on the hull, naked to space.
The armada ships and their appropriated Olyix arkships were orbiting the star’s solitary ice giant – thousands of light points forming a slender ring a million kilometres above the frigid cloudscape. She watched the dull, slow-moving hurricanes of ammonia crystals swirling gently so far over her head, occasionally harassed by the flicker of lightning blasts. That was when she started working out the scale. Some of those storm swirls were the same size as South America, which meant the speed they were spinning wasn’t so sluggish after all. And as for the power in each lightning bolt . . .
She heard footsteps approaching, someone deliberately making their presence known. So someone who knew not to creep up on her. ‘Hello, Yuri.’ She hadn’t seen much of her fellow Saints during the trip back down the wormhole; not that they’d sought her out, either. A welcome break.
Thanks to the slow time flow within the Morgan, it had only taken a week to get here. She’d spent most of it with Dellian’s squad – nice kids who were starting to relax properly for the first time in their lives. Like her, they didn’t know what the hell they were going to do now, which made them all kindred souls.
‘Quite a view,’ Yuri said as he stood beside her.
‘Not really, but it’s the first time I’ve actually seen the outside in ten thousand years. We were in Kruse Station for so long before the flight, then everything since we left has been a sensor feed into my neural interface. This viewing dome is an anachronism; sensors provide a much better view, and in higher resolution. But, Mary, this, this is real. It helps to ground me.’
‘Yeah, that many ships does put everything into perspective, doesn’t it?’
Kandara nodded as she shifted her gaze to the long loop of glowing dots that arched sedately around the ice giant. The closest was a large one: the Salvation of Life itself. She had very mixed feelings about that. ‘Yeah. Here we are, back in a parking orbit right beside that bastard. Some rescue, huh?’
‘A necessary step in the journey. I’ve been talking to Immanueel and Yirella. There is some debate as to what we should do next.’
‘I thought that was settled. We’re going back to Earth, aren’t we?’
‘We are. Before the armada left, the corpus people dispatched several wormhole-carrying ships back there. More are now on their way to the original settled stars.’
>
‘There’s an unspoken but in there somewhere, Yuri.’
‘The corpus humans have catalogued the arkships and Welcome ships we brought with us. There are six thousand four hundred and twenty-three alien species in various kinds of stasis.’
‘Various kinds?’
‘Yes. There’s one that is entirely unhatched eggs – millions of them. Their world was in an elliptical orbit that lasts forty-five terrestrial years; so every generation lived for about thirty years then died off at the onset of winter after they laid their eggs. All the Olyix had to do was drop in after winter started and scoop them up.’
‘That sounds . . . bizarre. How did they ever discover radio in thirty years?’
‘Nature, it turns out, is quite neat. Apparently the egg yolk is some kind of chemical memory extruded by a gland in the adult brain. The embryos absorb it as they grow. So once they hatch, they simply move into the buildings their ancestors left behind, and have all the knowledge to make everything work. They understand science, too, and carry on the research.’
‘Okay, I’ll give you that one: It is neat.’
‘Another one is a cold-blooded race that the Olyix have literally frozen in liquid nitrogen under extreme pressure. Then there’s one that—’
‘Yuri, I don’t need a rundown of all six thousand species, thanks. What’s the debate?’
‘We have to decide where to send them.’
‘Ah.’
‘It’s going to take ten thousand years for the starships to reach Earth, so we certainly have time to decide.’
‘Now I get it. We need to evaluate each species and decree which ones we want living near human worlds. Oh, and I’m guessing what level of technology we provide, too?’
‘Right. Some may be hostile. We have to be careful. In which case, we don’t bring them out of stasis before we re-establish human society.’
‘Because they’d have ten thousand years to advance their own technology . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I appreciate the thinking behind that. After all, another century and Earth would probably have been able to take on the Olyix. So who is going to make all these evaluations?’
The Saints of Salvation [British Ed.] Page 50
