‘All right, if it helps, forget thinking the Olyix have a religious component. But you can’t deny they’re fanatics, controlled by whatever hellspawned entity is lurking up there in the future. No, not controlled: conned. The message gave them purpose, which makes them weak.’
‘Weak? How so?’
‘They need a cause,’ Ainsley said. ‘An outside emperor to make them what they are. A tachyon beam message from a future god – that could so easily have been us. You know, when I was alive, there were cults and conspiracy theorists all over the world that predicted benign aliens would come and save us from ourselves.’
‘Do you think there were Neána on Earth back then, putting the theory out there?’
‘No. That’s not the point here. We don’t need saving from ourselves; we never did. We’ve always had catastrophe preachers walking among us, profiting off the fear they create – either to sell something or to keep the population in line. But if you look at the progress we’ve made as a species, from clunkheads who chased antelopes across the savannah up to a society that settled distant stars – hell, if I still had eyes I would weep with pride. Sure, whatever time you’re born into, that progress was never fast enough, and fuck knows enough personal injustices were never redeemed. But overall, we have nothing to be ashamed of. So I don’t care who sent that message to the Olyix or from when, because it doesn’t give any fucker the right to intervene in our evolution. So my belief is very simple: The Olyix have to be stopped. By whatever means possible.’
‘Yeah.’ She looked over at Del, lying beside her. Even when he’s sleeping he looks troubled. ‘That’s kind of ingrained in me, too.’
‘So how’s that grand strategy coming on?’
‘Same as always. It’s that Saints-damned sensor station that’s the problem; it screws up every attack route scenario. We always thought the wormholes the Olyix arkships brought with them led right back to the enclave gateway. That way we could get there in one easy flight.’
‘Well that’s not going to happen. The only place an Olyix arkship’s wormhole connects to is a sensor station; I pulled that inconvenient fact right out of the onemind. Not that we shouldn’t have figured it out before, given how much time we’ve had. There are thousands of those sensor stations scattered across the galaxy, so they’re junctions. Hey, just like Roman staging posts. As soon as a station detects a sentient species emerging, they let the enclave know, and the enclave dispatches an arkship. Once it gets to the sensor station, it carries a wormhole on to the new species.’
‘Yes, but it means we have to hit the sensor station that’s guarding our direct route to the enclave. Emphasis on guarding. Which means a fast and overwhelming engagement. We have to get it absolutely right, or they’ll shut down the wormhole to the enclave.’
‘Yeah. Well, on the plus side, we know the sensor station is thirty-seven lightyears from our present location.’
‘And now they know we beat the ships they sent to our Vayan lure. The wormhole collapsed the moment you took out their Welcome ship. That’s going to stir them up.’
‘No shit, Sherlock.’
‘Look, I’ve been talking to Wim’s physics team. We’re never going to retro-engineer all of your weapons. The real optimists claim we might crack nucleonic molecule theory in a couple of years, but the Saints alone know how to handle ultradense matter, let alone create some for ourselves.’
‘So what do you want to do?’
Yirella drew a deep breath. ‘We have to hit them with the unexpected.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Not helpful. This is going to be risky enough.’
‘But, kid, we have nothing to lose.’
‘So we have nothing to fear. I remember the aphorism.’
‘Uh, I think it’s more of a neologism, but carry on.’
‘Kenelm won’t like the risk. Hir job is to protect all of us – and especially the Calibar survivors. I even agree with that. Which makes another lure a tough sell.’
‘This is as bad as convincing the council to adopt the exodus habitat project and sacrifice Earth! I can just take control of your networks, you know. Remove Kenelm from the equation. That would make life a whole lot easier.’
‘Absolutely not! We steer, we don’t force.’ She flinched. ‘To start with.’
‘Now you’re talking.’
*
Dellian let go of Yirella’s hand as they walked into the Morgan’s bridge. She’d remind him of that later, he knew. Adults in a long-term relationship showing affection was hardly a social transgression; he just didn’t think it was appropriate for something as official as a full session of the captain’s expanded advisory council. She’d been silent when he put on a full dress uniform to attend, but he knew what she was thinking. Routine was important to him – especially now, providing the stability that enabled him to function at a level approximating his old self. If people knew that was a lie, they politely kept quiet about it.
The number of seats around the truncated table had been increased to thirty, allowing representatives from the Calibar to contribute. He smiled quickly at Alexandre, who was sitting almost opposite him.
Kenelm came in. Somehow the Strike mission’s neat grey-and-blue uniform looked a lot better on hir than on any of the squad leaders around the table. Wim accompanied the Captain, stubble marring hir haggard face, divulging every one of hir hundred and eighty-three years.
As they sat down, Ainsley appeared on the screen wall, an image of the ship that was currently drifting around the fringes of their little interstellar habitat cluster like an enigmatic guard dog.
‘Thank you all for coming,’ Kenelm said formally. ‘We have several presentations from our developmental tactician groups to get through, which I hope will provide some clarity on our future policy.’
Dellian didn’t risk glancing at Yirella; he knew what her group had been formulating. People weren’t going to like it. After the Strike and its fallout,
