‘And those filaments you’re using? They suck the memories out?’
‘Essentially, yes. But we do have to allow them a level of consciousness to animate their minds. They try to resist.’
‘Does it . . . feel pain?’
‘No. They eradicated the whole concept from their bodies when they became quint. The nervous system is more like a data network. The body knows if it suffers damage, but it doesn’t interpret it the same way we do.’
‘Okay.’ He wasn’t sure if he was glad about that or not. Torturing an enemy combatant went against his principles, but this was an Olyix. It deserved punishment – not that he had the slightest idea what was appropriate for the cosmic-sized crime they were committing. ‘So what have you got? Actually, what are you looking for?’
Immanueel’s tail flicked languidly. ‘Information on the enclave star system is our primary objective. Firstly, confirmation it is where we believe it to be.’
‘Well, fuck you very much,’ Ainsley grunted.
‘Which it seems is correct – thank you.’
‘Forty thousand lightyears away,’ Yirella said wistfully.
Dellian exchanged a glance with her. He could see how daunted she was by the distance, but it didn’t bother him. It was just a number. They had the route there, and a method of reaching it through the captured Olyix wormhole. They could take as much or as little time as they wanted travelling. Numbers were irrelevant.
‘Yeah,’ Ainsley said. ‘Ten thousand years, and we finally have a target. Statistically, we shouldn’t be the first humans to take them on. But hey . . . those are the breaks.’
Yirella’s gaze hadn’t moved from the immobilized quint. ‘The Neána must have done something like this. Soćko and Saint Jessika had so much information on the Olyix.’
‘Out-of-date information,’ Ainsley said.
‘That was inevitable,’ Immanueel countered, ‘given the scale of events. But the basic facts are sound. Sadly, there is a hierarchy among the Olyix, with a quint created outside the enclave just about at the bottom. They don’t know much.’
‘I thought they had an egalitarian monoculture society,’ Dellian said.
‘You thought wrong, kid,’ Ainsley said. ‘Looks like evolution kicks up the same old shit no matter where in the galaxy you start off. The quint are the lowest of the low in the Olyix civilization – worker drones, basically. But they do have a degree of autonomy.’
‘Free will?’ Yirella asked sharply.
‘Nah, this is more like the ability to come to low-level decisions away from a onemind’s guidance. Just like every religion or ideology, you’re free to do what you want as long as it conforms to the governing commandments. But it does allow them to progress up the ladder – another leftover of natural selection. Darwin would be proud of these little shits.’
‘So they can start to question what they’re doing?’
‘I suppose. In theory. But for a quint to change its attitude and beliefs, it’d have to be exposed to different ways of thinking, something to make it challenge its indoctrination. That never happens. Like you said, they live in a monoculture.’
‘What the hell is the next rung for a quint, anyway?’ Dellian asked in fascination. ‘Six bodies?’
‘A onemind,’ Immanueel said. ‘They transplant you into something pretty basic like a transport ship where you toil away loyally, and if you do a good job you get another promotion. Deliverance ship maybe, then up to Resolution ship or an outpost habitation station, arkship, Welcome ship, a manufacturing base. But even those have different levels. If you begin your existence outside the enclave, you only get inside the enclave once you have fulfilled an invasion crusade and brought back the treasure of another species.’
‘Which is a problem for us,’ Immanueel said. ‘We have quint memories of the enclave star system, but none of these quints ever went through the gateway into the enclave itself. They have no first-hand knowledge.’
‘But you’ve found memories of the enclave star system?’ Yirella asked excitedly.
‘Yes. Recent ones, only a few years old.’
Dellian used his databud to call up the data Immanueel and Ainsley had extracted. The primary of the enclave system was a large white star devoid of any planets. Instead there was a single impossibly dense ring orbiting five AUs out, backdropped by the splendour of the galactic core.
‘The ring is rubble,’ Immanueel said. ‘Unnaturally large segments, too. They broke their planets apart to allow easy access to the available mass.’
‘Kardashev Type Two and a half, if you ask me,’ Ainsley said. ‘Re-engineering a star system, for Christ’s sake! And that’s just to prepare yourself for the crusade.’
‘We knew it would not be easy,’ Immanueel replied.
Dellian’s optik provided a picture of the gateway itself. In his mind he’d envisaged a great technological orb, maybe protected by fearsome energy cannons that could blast a minor planet apart. True, the number of Resolution ships circling around it was formidable, but the gateway itself was hard to distinguish, as if it was nothing more than a ball of dark water reflecting the blaze of corelight.
The sight of it chilled him. So much history. Humans have waited ten thousand years just to get this glimpse. Longer than the recorded history of humans on Earth, for Saints’ sake. The sheer effort and suffering it’s taken us to get to this point is humbling. I don’t think I’m worthy. ‘The gate to hell,’ he said softly. ‘Do you think we knew all along? That this was so big, so momentous, that it somehow wormed its way into our collective racial memory?’
‘Could be,’ Yirella said.
He knew she was just humouring him, which put a bite of anger in his voice. ‘Immanueel, do any of these quint memories confirm the Saints were killed? I . . . I want to know.’ To know it wasn’t just propaganda, a lie to break me as part
