‘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
