‘I know,’ he said miserably. ‘It’s just . . . We’re really alone out here. I feel that.’
‘Del! We are a thirty-strong fleet of warships, the most formidable humans have ever built. Come on, pull yourself together.’
He grinned weakly as he slipped out of his robe and lay on the bed, trying to ignore how skinny he’d become. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
She gave him a judgemental moue and got onto the bed with him. Her long T-shirt did nothing to disguise how thin her legs and arms had become in suspension. That just made them look even longer.
‘And you needn’t think about that tonight,’ she said smartly as she caught his blatant stare. ‘We both need to recuperate properly. That includes no unnecessary physical exertion.’
‘Unnecessary?’
‘Yes.’
He put his arms around her, enjoying the way she pressed against him. ‘I’m allowed a cuddle, though?’
‘You are allowed precisely one cuddle.’
‘Ah, who said romance was dead.’
Yirella giggled and snuggled up closer. ‘I’m glad they woke you up first. It was nice seeing your face when I opened my eyes. Reassuring.’
‘Ha, all I got was Ovan.’
They lay in comfortable silence for a while.
‘What do you think we’ll do about the Signal?’ Dellian asked.
‘I know what we need to do: nothing.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. It’s intriguing, but ultimately not relevant to our mission. My problem is what Kenelm will do.’
‘I’m sure you’ll steer hir right. You usually do.’
Yirella shifted around to put her face centimetres from his. ‘Del, I was thinking about something before we started this flight. Thinking about it a lot, actually. I really hope it’s not relevant.’
‘Okay. What?’
‘We know about Sanctuary, right?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed cautiously. ‘You more than anyone.’
‘Right. And no one was more delighted than me when Ainsley told me it’s not just a myth. It’s real. Or at least it could be. Some rogue humans joined the Katos mothership and set out to establish a refuge the Olyix would never find. He even said one of his family went with them. A granddaughter, I think.’
‘You think they didn’t make it?’
‘Not the point. Ainsley said that when the Factory that made him finally broke up, all the factions went their separate ways – the Katos and some humans to build Sanctuary; the Neána back into hiding; the Angelis war fleet to another galaxy; and the human generation ship to found a new planet. And there is never any communication between worlds that humans settle, which means . . .’ She gave him an expectant glance.
‘The Factory is in our past! The generation ship that was part of the alliance went on to establish Juloss!’
‘Maybe. Certainly not directly. In our lineage, we live on a generation world for five hundred years, then abandon it and move on. Ainsley said he was created about two thousand years ago, in a linear timeframe. That suggests the Factory probably existed three generation worlds ago, in our lineage.’
‘Juloss was founded by a generation ship from Quiller, which in turn was founded by Sergiu,’ he recited. ‘And before that, Falkon.’
‘Yeah. So my guess is The Factory probably happened between Falkon and Sergiu.’
‘Okay, makes sense.’ He tried to see where she was going with this, but failed as usual. ‘So?’
‘So if Sanctuary is in our lineage, how come we didn’t know about the Factory? And worse, why don’t we know about the Ainsley ship – or ships?’
‘Oh. Saints. Yeah, why?’
‘The answer has to be security. Kenelm has access to all sorts of classified protocols.’
‘Yes! Like the order sie was given: If the Olyix didn’t respond to our Vayan lure, we should go full-on Neána and build a hidden interstellar society.’
Yirella nodded.
‘So you’re saying sie knew about Ainsley-type ships?’ he asked.
‘Somebody had to know. And Kenelm was very quick to hand me command authority over Bennu’s network when Ainsley appeared. Think about that – an unknown threat emerging in the middle of a battle that’s going badly wrong, and you give the problem to me. Me! I’m smart, but I’m the first to admit I can’t handle stress well.’
‘Saints, sie knew Ainsley wasn’t a threat!’
‘There’s one other thing. We – you and me, the squads – didn’t know people on Juloss could life-extend with biologic initiator body-rebuild techniques. We were led to believe that technology existed to restore the cocooned into a new body, so recovering the Salvation of Life wouldn’t be fruitless. And it worked so well on the Calibar people it’s obviously a very mature technology.’
‘They’re still with us!’ Dellian exclaimed, glad to be keeping up. ‘The people from the Factory. Saints, they’re in control. They always have been. They’re immortal.’
She shrugged. ‘Possibly. We know nothing about the omnia who made up the Morgan “crew” outside their official files and what they chose to tell us, same as we don’t really know much about Juloss society, because we lived there in its final days. We were brought up to fight, not to question. Our reward for living the life planned for us is freedom after we’ve won. That’s the deal we accepted.’
‘I did,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m not sure you ever have.’
‘I’m living with it because I choose to. I chose you.’
‘So you’re not infallible after all.’
She kissed him. ‘Oh, I think I made some good choices there.’
‘I wasn’t complaining. So if these immortals exist, and knew about Ainsley, do you think they kept the technology to build more of him?’
‘I don’t know, but I doubt it. If they had the ability to build more, then they’d build them. The Factory came about by a unique combination of alien technologies. It was a one-off. We don’t know how many Ainsley-type ships they built two thousand years ago, but we don’t have access to those technologies any more. We can’t build new ones.’
‘All right, so what do you want to do about this?’ Somehow, he couldn’t envisage
