‘Good luck finding her.’
‘You haven’t even heard what I’m suggesting.’
Hating herself, she said: ‘Go on.’
‘A subgroup of my aspects could break away and become independent.’
‘Wait, what? I thought that was . . . not exactly illegal, but frowned upon. Corpus humans don’t divide up, do they?’
‘Not normally, no. But one way or another, we face the end of an era. We have done everything we can to ensure the survival of our species, and the egress faction has guaranteed that some humans will remain forever free. If this armada of ours fails to defeat the Olyix, then we will not survive the weapons that are being deployed in the last battle.’
Yirella took a shaky breath. ‘Okay, I wasn’t expecting you to be quite that blunt. But that’s not how we should venture into this. Pessimism never won any battle.’
‘Ah, yes, a Dwight D. Eisenhower quote, I believe.’
‘You believe right.’
‘I do not go into this with pessimism, Yirella. Objectivity is my creed. And given the odds, a fallback would be prudent. You could create a secondary version of yourself as well.’
‘Fuck! No way. Absolutely not.’
‘If FinalStrike is successful, we would simply remerge with our originals. If not, you live.’
Yirella squeezed their hands warmly. ‘Without anything to live for. No, Immanueel, I see you are kind and sweet, but no. Whatever fate has waiting for us at the enclave, I will embrace it with the people I have shared my life with. And I’m glad you’re now one of them.’ She stood on tiptoes and kissed them gently on the cheek. ‘Thank you.’
*
Ainsley’s android was waiting outside the deck thirty-three canteen like a forlorn statue. Yirella slowed as she saw him and produced a mournful smile. She knew why he was there.
‘Join us,’ she said. ‘The whole squad’s inside. Your friends.’
‘Your friends, you mean.’
‘Fire-forged friends, and all that. They’d be glad to see you. We’re watching the armada form up. It’s becoming something of a tradition.’
‘Another reason I can’t stay.’
‘Yeah, I accessed the formation plan. You’re taking point.’
‘Gotta have someone at the front who’ll shoot first and ask questions later.’
‘A later that’s never.’
‘That’d be me. You got an argument against it?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, studying his blank white face for any intimation of expression. ‘Immanueel told me there are some of your weapons they can’t replicate.’
‘Yeah, the part of my armamentarium that came from the Katos. I don’t remember much of them from the Factory era; I guess that was edited out of my memory for security. But they’ve taken the understanding of phase matter up to the celestial level. Trust me, these are the swords gods use to smite the unrighteous.’
‘Interesting. So why didn’t they ever go head-to-head with the Olyix?’
‘Same problem we have, I guess. If we lose, the Olyix gain the technology. Makes it a fuck of a lot harder for the next guys who come along.’
‘That makes no sense. Why give it to you, then?’
‘I’m supposed to be running a guerrilla campaign, remember. Factory ships like me were supposed to hassle the Olyix in this portion of the galaxy so the exodus descendants can finally catch a break. Out here in the big dark, they’d never be able to catch me, like they never caught the Katos mothership. I’ve got evasion techniques like you’ve never seen. See what I did there?’
‘Oh, dear.’ She grinned fondly even as she winced. ‘So we’re not likely to ever find Sanctuary?’
‘No.’
‘Well, thank the Saints for that. If we can’t, neither can the Olyix.’
‘Yeah.’ His white lips crinkled up, head nodding slightly, an imitation of awkward.
Yirella let the pause drag on until she shared the moment. ‘So . . . I’ll see you on the other side.’
‘That’s a date.’
‘You take care, point man.’
‘I will. Yirella, you know he’s crazy about you, right? The boyfriend.’
‘Yes.’
‘Just checking. Sometimes you start to take things like that for granted without even realizing what you’re doing. And I was married fifteen times, so I really do know what I’m talking about here.’
‘Saints, Ainsley Zangari – a romantic. That’s not in any history files I’ve ever accessed.’
‘Seeing high-school sweethearts always makes me happy. And there ain’t much happy in this galaxy right now. I’d hate to see another little bit die.’
‘I think I get the high-school reference, but it’s okay; you don’t need to worry about me and Del.’
‘Good. I’m going to go now. I’ll see you in a week or so. When this is all over.’
She fought the hardening muscles of her throat that were making talking so difficult. ‘I’ll see you in a week.’
*
‘You all right?’ Dellian asked when she walked into the cafe with its arched windows letting in the warm Parisian sunlight of late spring.
‘Sure.’ She gave him a reassuring smile, as real as the canteen’s textured environment, and sat at the table with the rest of the squad. ‘So what’s happening?’
Saints
Olyix Enclave
Kandara hadn’t made a list. Not exactly. But . . . if she had, then the way Callum made a gurgling, sucking sound every time he concentrated would be right up there at the top. Or the food. After twenty days of cold, bland food, her stomach ache was nearly constant. Then there was Alik’s slow-boiling anger. Yuri’s sullenness. Only Jessika seemed relatively unchanged.
So perhaps she is just a sophisticated AI after all.
It wasn’t just the crap food and the confined space and the boredom that was preying on everyone. The news from outside the enclave had been getting progressively worse – not helped by the slowtime inside the enclave, which meant that news from outside arrived in bursts, with centuries of activity compressed into dense updates.
They’d all been horrified when they learned how the Olyix had started to capture the ships and worlds humans had thought they were building in secret as they fled across the galaxy. Privately, Kandara started to suspect that it was over; that they’d lost. And after a few days it was obvious she wasn’t alone with that thought; everyone’s mood was darkening further, flames burning
