‘You know this isn’t goodbye-blues sex, don’t you?’ Yirella had said last night as they clung to each other in bed. ‘I mean, we’re both nervous about FinalStrike; that’s natural. But it’s not the ultimate battle.’
‘Huh?’ was all he could manage in a twilight created by the textured cabin in the Immerle estate woodland – the same one he’d been assigned in their senior year.
‘There is so much we have to do after we liberate the Salvation of Life and all the other humans in the enclave,’ she told him earnestly.
‘Yeah. We’ve got to get them home for a start.’
‘Maybe. But the corpus humans don’t need us for that. If we’re going to end this threat, we have to take down the God at the End of Time itself.’
He rolled around on the bed to stare at her in surprise. Does she ever inspire anything else? ‘Saints! What?’
‘It’s still out there, Del, lurking up in the future. There’s nothing to stop it sending messages to all the surviving Olyix, restarting the crusade all over again. Apart from us, of course. We can stop it.’
‘Us?’
‘Somebody has to. I don’t see the Neána stepping up, do you?’
‘But . . . how?’
Which was when she told him about the tachyon detector that the corpus humans had built for her. When she’d finished, he didn’t know if he was going to laugh or cry. ‘But if we kill the god’s home star now,’ he said slowly, his brain as always lightyears behind her, ‘that means it won’t be around to send the message back to the Olyix. So Earth won’t be invaded, the exodus will never happen. We won’t be born.’
‘Paradox. I know. It’s fascinating how many theories there are about this, isn’t it? But don’t worry. If it is a temporal loop spun off by a time machine creating an alternative universe, us breaking that cycle will stabilize our timeline. We just carry on, but in this reality the God at the End of Time doesn’t send a message back to the Olyix, so there’s no further split, no new alternative Earth that suffers the same fate yet again. At least, that’s what Immanueel and the other corpus humans postulate.’
He was horrified by how eager she sounded. Horrified that they would begin their own monomaniacal crusade. He’d committed his entire life to FinalStrike knowing that afterwards – if he survived – he and Yi could go and live an ordinary life on a new world, or maybe even on Earth itself. Now this.
FinalStrike isn’t going to be the end for Yirella. Saints, she’s never going to stop, not until she’s seen the last Olyix in the galaxy dead, and their god exterminated.
He’d sat up in bed and rested his head in his hands, feeling the same numbness and despair he’d known when he’d heard of Rello’s death.
Yirella’s arm went around his shoulders, and she hugged him. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ he barked. ‘Fuck the Saints, Yi, don’t you ever just stop? Don’t you ever think about what anyone else might want?’
‘But killing the god-entity before it’s born will make us safe, Del.’
‘You sure about that? Because I don’t know, Yi. I’m too dumb to figure out quantum timelines and which reality is real. And don’t try explaining, not tonight, okay?’
‘I just wanted you to know tomorrow that I’m always going to be there, trying to think up answers,’ she said meekly.
He nodded, not trusting himself to look directly at her. ‘Sure. Hey, I knew that anyway. You’re the one stable thing in my world.’
‘That’s my line, Del, I’m the one who relies on you.’
After that, of course, he hadn’t slept well. In the morning he did his best to make it up to her, eating a nice eggs Benedict breakfast together before leaving with plenty of hugs and kisses and a good show of reluctant yet glad to be finishing this. Except he wasn’t. Being scared shitless about the fight was one thing; despair at what came after was something else again.
Saints, but I am one screwed-up mess.
He came to a halt at the section of the racks that held his cohort. They were in new casings now, designed by the corpus humans. Still being stubborn about not using his neural interface – this morning of all mornings – he used his databud to activate the cohort. They were like flattened black eggs the same length as his own body, but made out of porcelain and inlaid with slim silver hieroglyphs. Smaller than before, then, yet managing to look even more efficiently deadly.
With drive systems powered up, they rose out of their cradles and eased forwards. Dellian reached out and gently ran an appreciative finger over the curving nose of the closest. They were all abruptly circling around him, nuzzling affectionately like metallic puppies. He was reliving the easier times when they were just muncs, sleeping with him in the estate dormitory, comforting and warm and adoring. Understanding him as he understood them, when knowledge was pure instinct.
Even now they could read his unhappiness; he could tell from the subtle angles they hovered at, the gentle pressure applied as they rubbed playfully against him, their little shakes of contentment as he stroked their cool casings while his hands felt only their short grey-and-chestnut pelt. His mind could hear the familiar soft hooting sounds they used to make.
‘Thanks, guys,’ he said. ‘We’ll get through this, okay?’ He stood up straighter and gave them one last pat each. ‘Okay then, let’s –’ he grinned – ‘lock and load.’
Further down the rack, the cohort’s exoarmour came alive. Another innovation courtesy of Immanueel and their friends. The corpus all swore they didn’t model the exoarmour suits on hellhounds, but Dellian was pretty sure they were
