“That would be nice. I don’t think there would be many of us, though.”
“Really? I bet most of the squad would come. Hell, maybe most of the Morgan. Where else could we go? This is home.”
She gave him a gentle kiss. “It’s where we were born. It’s where we trained. But home? I don’t think we have one. Not yet. That’s something we have to build for ourselves. Afterwards. Hey, who knows, perhaps the Sanctuary star legend will turn out to be real after all, and we can go and live there.”
He gazed up at the blue-and-white crescent, his mind filling in the continental coastlines on the nightside. “You know, back on Earth they said whole continents were lit up by city lights at night, that they were like miniature galaxies. Can you imagine that? There were so many of us on one world.”
“And look what happened to them. Human worlds can’t afford that kind of population again. Not until we win the war. We have to have enough traveler generation ships to lift everyone off a settled planet in an emergency. Nobody must ever be left behind. Not again.”
“But if we could’ve stayed here…what a world we would have built.”
Yirella rested her cheek on the top of his head. “You really are an old romantic at heart, aren’t you?”
“I just believe in us, that’s all. I mean, look at it!” Dellian gestured extravagantly at the planet. “We did that! It was a lump of naked rock when our ancestors arrived. Fifty years to terraform it. Fifty years—that’s how long it took us to give life to a whole planet! And it’s brilliant.”
“It’s tragic.”
“It’ll still be here when this is all over. We were careful; no signal ever escaped. They don’t know humans were here, and they never will, now.”
“I hope you’re right. All the worlds in this system have terrestrial life on them now—bacteria in the comets, lichen on the asteroids, weird frogs on Cathar’s moons.” She grinned at the memory.
“Damn right. Even if they pulverize Juloss, they can’t eliminate us from this system now. Terrestrial DNA is here to stay. We mutate. We adapt. We evolve every time. In a billion years, this will still belong to our life. Because we rock.” He tilted his head back to kiss her.
Beside them, the waterfall cascade slowly shrank away until only drips were falling from the stony lip. A loud chime sounded across the garden zone.
“Time to go,” Yirella said softly.
They both looked up at Juloss again for a long moment, then made their way along the path to the exit.
* * *
—
The Morgan was made up of seven principal structures, all contained in spherical grids fifteen hundred meters in diameter, with silver thorn thermo-dumps rising up out of the strut junctions like metallic porcupine spikes to radiate excess heat out into space. The rear globe contained the gravitonic drive, capable of accelerating the battleship up to point nine light speed. Next came the main aneutronic fusion generators and their ancillaries, along with tanks of boron-11 and hydrogen fuel. Ahead of that, the third globe was basically a warehouse, containing asteroid mining equipment, along with refineries and one-stage von Neumann replicators. It was the same payload every human traveler generation ship carried, giving them the ability to start an entire high-level civilization in whatever star system they arrived at. As long as there was solid matter available—in the form of planets, asteroids, or comets—human society could build habitats and thrive. Globe four was the main life-support section, housing a pair of counter-rotating toroids that offered a pleasant park-like environment and comfortable apartments for the Morgan’s five-thousand-strong crew. Ahead of that was the weapons level, packed with a long and frighteningly impressive inventory of munitions that could devastate entire star systems, let alone enemy ships. Then came the hangar, with fifty genten-controlled attack cruisers capable of hundred-gee acceleration, along with fifteen troop carriers designed for both deep space and atmospheric flight. Finally, the forward globe housed the main portal shield which would open out like an umbrella around the warship to swallow any interstellar dust and gas the Morgan encountered at its incredible velocity, shunting it harmlessly away through twinned portals trailing a light-second behind the ship.
Dellian and Yirella were among the last to arrive on board, which won them a knowing wink from Janc and smiles from the rest of the squad. The Morgan’s crew was assembled in the main auditorium. Dellian was still getting used to the relatively fast gravity spin of the toroid, so he had to hold the back of the seats as he made his way down the row to his squad. Captain Kenelm walked onto the stage just as Dellian sat down. Sie was tall, though not as tall as Yirella, wearing a smart gray-and-blue uniform that had a single star on its epaulet. Dellian gave the uniform a curious look as part of his brain categorized it as a sad and silly historical throwback. It wasn’t that the crew hadn’t worn their uniforms before, but seeing the captain standing there in the flesh ready to give hir departure speech was a hard reality strike. He’d been operating within a hierarchy for his whole life, but this—being on a warship about to launch into the galaxy—this made it suddenly very tangible. They were going out to fight, and there was a good chance they might actually die.
His hand fumbled for Yirella’s. Even the melancholic humor she’d shown a few minutes ago in the garden had now vanished. He knew she was just as nervous as he was.
The screen at the rear of the stage came on with a live feed showing a battleship accelerating slowly away from its skyfort berth. Dellian’s databud identified it as the Asher. Three advance seedships accompanied it.
“I wish Alexandre was here,” Yirella whispered. “I miss hir.”
“Me too. But sie did see you reunited with the rest of us before hir traveler generation ship left. I think that made hir happy at the end.”
Yirella nodded, a glint of moisture in her eyes. “I wanted hir to come with us.”
“Sie couldn’t. Sie was too old. Sie knew that right from the start, when sie left her own family behind to raise us.”
“I know. I’m being selfish.”
He squeezed her hand. “Me too.”
Up on the screen, the Asher and her escorts were closing on the clump of coiling fronds, barely a hundred meters across, that was an interstellar portal. The loops began to glow a dark blue. Then they were blossoming, expanding out as if a circle of the planet’s midnight-blue sky was spilling across space. The cerulean haze faded to black, and the portal was indistinguishable from the rest of the star field above Juloss. The Asher slipped through the hole first, quickly followed by the seedships. As soon as they were all through, the portal closed up behind them, its constituent fronds shrinking back to a seething clutch of insubstantial energy folds.
The auditorium burst into a round of applause, but Dellian carried on watching the screen. He knew people on the Asher. Now they were gone, lost to him forever in both space and time. The other side of that portal had been traveling at point nine-eight light speed away from Juloss for more than five hundred years, ever since the traveler generation ship had arrived, one of thousands of identical portals that had been sent out along random courses, providing an escape route should the enemy detect that Juloss was home to a human civilization.
Now another portal was expanding, glowing a hellish orange against the stars as it opened to its twin deep in Cathar’s atmosphere. The skyfort began to twist and buckle as it was captured by the pull of abnormally strong gravity. Chunks broke off, twirling away into the blaze, streaming ahead of the skyfort itself, which was now moving with increasing speed into the smoldering abyss.
There was no applause this time, just a wise, sober acknowledgment of the skyfort’s fall into the heart of the gas giant, where the hypervelocity storms and terrible gravity gradient would pull the detritus down and down until it became nothing but a smear of heavy atoms slithering atop the planet’s metallic hydrogen core. All of Juloss’s orbital
defenses were scheduled to follow it, then the portals themselves would surrender, and collapse. The Juloss system would be naked among the myriad stars once more, with teeming life and crumbling ruins the only legacy that humans had once visited.
“I would like us to take a moment,” Captain Kenelm said in a level voice. “We should thank this star and its planets for being a peerless haven to so many of our ancestors. Humans have lived a good life here. And now it is our turn to honor and repay that gift. We venture out into the galaxy to join the very Saints themselves. Somewhere out there, they are waiting for us. When they call—and they will—we will join them, no matter how far away they are in time and in space. Know this, Saints; we will not let you down.”
“We will not let you down,” Dellian intoned, along with the rest of the audience. He’d said it a thousand times in his life, but this time it finally meant something. We’re on our way!
Kenelm gestured with his palms, and everybody stood. “The Morgan is about to launch,” sie said. Behind hir, the screen was showing a view from the front of the Morgan. Up ahead, a twisting gray knot was churning amid the stars.
“We thank you, Saint Yuri Alster, for your fortitude,” Kenelm said respectfully.
“We thank you, Saint Yuri,” the auditorium responded.
The portal turned blue and began to swell out, its physical components undulating in a fast rhythm.
“We thank you, Saint Callum Hepburn, for your compassion.”
“We thank you, Saint Callum.”
The Morgan started to accelerate smoothly as the hole across interstellar space stabilized.
“We thank you, Saint Kandara Martinez, for your strength.”
“We thank you, Saint Kandara.”
Beautiful new stars were glimmering through the darkness at the center of the portal.
“We thank you, Saint Alik Monday, for your resolution.”
“We thank you, Saint Alik.”
Dellian smiled and held his breath as they traveled more than five hundred light-years in a single heartbeat.
“And lastly, we thank Saint Jessika Mye, for traveling out of darkness to guide us.”
“We thank you, Saint Jessika.”
Unknown constellations shone bright around the Morgan and its accompanying seedships. Behind it, the portal closed. Then the entanglement ended, and the mechanism died.
Dellian stared at the wondrous sweep of fresh stars outside. “The Olyix are out there, somewhere.” He said it loudly, as a raw challenge to the universe into which he was venturing. “Hiding like we used to. But we’re not hiding anymore now. We’re coming for you, fuckers!”
THE ASSESSMENT TEAM
NKYA, JUNE 26, 2204
Everyone in the lounge was perfectly still. Three targeting lasers produced small red dots on Jessika’s forehead. The only sound was the steady drip, drip, drip of blood from Feriton’s ruined skull.
Jessika kept hold of the fire axe handle, her gaze moving across the room, from Alik, to Kandara, to Callum, and finally to Yuri. In an astonishingly level voice she said: “Look at the brain.”
“What the FUCK?” Callum bellowed.
Eldlund began a high keening sound of distress, slapping hir hand across hir mouth. Loi turned his head away and threw up.
“What?” Yuri demanded. “What?”
“I said, look at the brain.”
“The…”
“Can I take my hands off the axe?”
“You move like a glacier is fast,” Alik growled at her. “You let go, and put your arms high, then link your fingers over your head. Take one step back. Understand?”
“I understand. Letting go now.” Very carefully, she released her grip on the handle. The axe sagged down as the blade pivoted around inside the skull, ripping more brain tissue. Feriton’s body began to slouch forward, only just staying in the chair.
Kandara’s face produced an expression of extreme distaste. “Mother Mary!”
Her arms in the air, fingers locked, Jessika took a step back. “Look at the brain.”
Alik and Kandara glanced at each other.
“You cover her,” Alik said.
Kandara nodded sharply, keeping her gaze on Jessika. “Got it.” Her left arm was held perfectly level, a slit of flesh along the forearm open to expose a small silver cylinder that never wavered from its lock on Jessika’s head. “Go see what the sweet fuck she’s talking about.”
The target laser shining from Alik’s upper wrist switched off. He took a cautious step forward. Even his forehead crinkled up as he peered at the slumped figure. He held his breath and reluctantly pulled the axe free. It made a horrible squelching sound as the blade came out. Alik leaned forward a fraction. Everyone heard him suck down a breath. He gave Jessika a confused stare. “What the fuck?”
“What is it?” Yuri asked.
“I…” Alik flinched. “I don’t know.”
Yuri took an impatient step over and examined the massive wound in Feriton’s skull. “Shit.” He gave Jessika an astonished look.
“What the bloody hell’s in there, man?” Callum demanded.
“It’s an Olyix brain,” Jessika told him.
“Bollocks!”
“See for yourself,” she said. “That’s not human gray matter. The Olyix scooped out Feriton’s brain and replaced it with one from a quint. Does that procedure sound familiar?”
Yuri scowled at her.
Callum walked over, grimacing against the carnage, forcing himself to look into the gore. He knew what a human brain looked like, and whatever the mass of tissue was inside Feriton’s skull, it wasn’t human. The structure was all wrong, long strands arranged neatly rather than the usual jumble of lobes, and beneath the thick splatter of blood, the surface was fish-belly white.
“No fucking way!”
“It is a brain of a quint unit,” Jessika said. “Which means the other four bodies in the union have seen and heard everything that Feriton heard and saw—including their damaged ship. They will also know every aspect of your Olyix Monitoring Office.”
“Fucking hell!” Yuri grunted in dismay.
“What do you mean, their damaged ship?” Kandara asked.
“That ship outside? It’s an Olyix midlevel transport. It was traveling back to their enclave when my colleague crashed it out of the wormhole.”
“The Olyix have a wormhole?” Callum asked numbly. “But…” He turned to Yuri. “Did you know all this?”
Yuri shook his head, his gaze never leaving Jessika.
“That’s how I knew Feriton was part of an Olyix quint,” Jessika said. “The fourth chamber in the Salvation of Life is not full of precious artifacts. It contains a wormhole terminus, which leads back to the enclave. They all do.”
“All?” Callum implored.
“The Olyix always arrive in vessels like the Salvation of Life. It is a subterfuge which allows them to observe the species they’ve discovered before they elevate them.”
“Elevate?” Eldlund asked weakly.
“Take them on their pilgrimage to the God at the End of Time. And, trust me, joining them isn’t voluntary. They seize every sentient race they find. They already have thousands imprisoned back in their enclave, maybe more.”
“I don’t believe a fucking word of this,” Alik snapped. “I mean, just how the fuck could you know all this shit?”
Jessika’s expression turned sorrowful. “Because I am Neána.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“Alien, but not an Olyix. We’re very different.”
“Oh, Je-zus wept!”
“Do you recall the Fermi paradox?” Jessika asked. “Fermi asked: Where are they? You always assumed life in the galaxy is rare, that because of its size you would never coexist with another species. That is only partly true. When sentience ar
ises, and begins to make itself known with radio emissions, the Olyix arrive—with their false friendship, and their religious greed. So, in truth, the answer to Fermi is: We have been hiding. And now you must join us, out in the silent darkness between the stars. That is where you will be safe.”
“Your colleague is Soćko, right?” Yuri said.
“Yes. He allowed himself to be captured by Baptiste Devroy’s people during the firefight on Althaea. We have been searching for an Olyix snatch operation since our arrival. Horatio Seymore was a stroke of good fortune. The Olyix proxies like Devroy would be instructed to snatch low-visibility humans, and that’s what Horatio was—apart from Gwendoline. She was a rogue factor that would elude even the most talented matcher.”
“Holy shit,” an ashen Loi muttered, looking like he might be sick again.
“So Soćko is the one who crashed that ship out of the wormhole,” Yuri said. “He flew it here. He switched on the beacon before he went back into hibernation.”
“Correct. Our bodies have the ability to resist contamination by Olyix biotechnology. They would have been unable to elevate him, though that would not have been apparent to them at first. It gave him time to infiltrate their operation. I have been waiting for a disabled Olyix ship to be detected ever since the firefight at the warehouse.”
“Sonofabitch,” Alik spat. “Then the others in the ship, they’ve been…elevated?”
“The Olyix truly believe the God at the End of Time to be real. It will coalesce out of the thoughts of every species left as the universe collapses. Because life is so rare, and so many civilizations are destined to fall long before the end of time, the Olyix see it as their duty to carry every sentient species to the apex of evolution. But the God only needs your thoughts, your personality, not your body. The Olyix have been stealing humans right from the start to experiment on. We were the ones who started the rumor about Kcells making brain transplants possible, because we knew that’s what they’d do—allowing a captured, cored-out body to move among you unseen. But their main focus, the reason they snatched so many people, was to research the best way to sustain a human brain on the pilgrimage. Their technology is far more advanced than they have revealed to you.”