‘What fucking backup?’ Yuri demanded.
‘There are nine ships on their way from the sensor station to the settled worlds. As far as I can make out, they left decades ago.’
‘Sweet fucking Mary,’ Kandara snarled. ‘How long until they get there?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe a few decades, still. But you can be sure one or more will be diverted to Earth now. It’s the key to their crusade – capturing as many humans as they can to make pilgrimage to their God at the End of Time. There are billions of people still on Earth, and once the Resolution ships arrive, there’s only going to be one outcome.’
‘So you’re saying don’t try and Signal Sol when we get to the observation base?’ Alik asked.
‘We can’t,’ she said regretfully. ‘It will expose us. If that happens, the chances of us getting to the enclave are going to be non-existent.’
‘Makes sense to me,’ Callum said.
‘I’m for trying to reach the enclave,’ Kandara said. It would have been nice to fire off a Signal transmitter, sure in the knowledge that people would receive it, but ultimately it was an empty gesture. That wasn’t why she was here. Besides, so much effort and sacrifice had gone into placing them on board the Salvation of Life; sending the Signal from here would be a betrayal.
‘This ain’t a half-measures mission,’ Alik said. ‘We aim for the enclave, and burn these motherfuckers.’
‘Question,’ Callum said. ‘What about the Neána? Jessika?’
‘What about them?’
‘If they detect our Signal coming from the sensor station, would they be able to use it?’
‘To do what?’ she asked.
‘To fight. To fly here and force their way down the wormhole to the enclave. Surely that’s your ultimate goal?’
‘I’m not Neána. I’m human, or try to be. I don’t know what the Neána endgame is.’
‘Sorry. I thought you might be able to guess.’
‘As much and as little as you.’
Kandara quashed a smile. She could see Callum’s cheeks were flushed. We’re really melding with the simulation – or it with us.
‘The Neána aren’t going to help us,’ Alik said. ‘They’ve done all they were ever going to do by sending you to warn us.’
‘How do you figure that?’ Jessika asked.
‘Because if they’d wanted to attack Olyix installations with warship versions of the insertion ship that brought you, they would have sent them to Sol and ambushed the Salvation of Life.’
‘Good point,’ Yuri said.
‘Face it,’ Alik said. ‘We’ve had entire teams of strategists, psychologists and scientists trying to work out the Neána ever since you put that axe through Feriton’s skull. Hell, there was one think tank even drafted some science fiction writers in to give a fresh perspective. And all they came up with was jack shit.’
‘All right then,’ Yuri said. ‘When we arrive at this sensor station, we stay quiet and hope the Salvation of Life flies straight into the wormhole that goes back to the enclave.’
*
The Salvation of Life emerged from the wormhole terminus into real space five weeks and one day after leaving the Sol star system. Finally, Alik had something to see. He hadn’t told the others, not even Kandara, but the anti-existence of the wormhole had started to get to him. Not claustrophobia exactly, but a sense of being nowhere, the ultimate lost child. After all he’d seen in his time with the FBI, after all he’d been through – the horrors and deaths – this was what got to him? Literally a nothing? Life really could be a complete bastard sometimes.
But now there was something real to see outside again. Over the last two days Jessika had walked the remote creature along the precarious edge of the hangar entrance, the top of a cliff with a fall to infinity, emplacing minute sensor clumps before withdrawing it back into the Avenging Heretic. The clumps revealed an ordinary-looking starscape surrounding them, a heliocentric panorama anchored by a red dwarf star. Alik was so deeply immersed in the visualization he was sure he could feel its radiance on his cheeks. He was no expert on constellations, but it didn’t look too alien.
‘Star correlation places us approximately a hundred and seven lightyears from Sol.’
‘Soćko got lucky,’ Callum said. ‘He must have just escaped the wormhole in time. Any longer and the ship would have fallen out of the wormhole here.’
The visualization showed them they were leaving a vast open hoop behind. Its silver-white surface had a violet aurora that was fading rapidly. Alik guessed that was the wormhole terminus.
‘Salvation is accelerating,’ Jessika said. ‘Here we go.’
‘Accelerating where?’ Callum asked.
‘Another wormhole terminus,’ Jessika said. ‘It’s dominating the onemind’s thoughts. Its only goal now is to return to the enclave star system.’
‘What about us?’ Kandara asked. ‘Is it going to take the transport ships with it?’
‘I think so. It certainly isn’t ordering any ships to disembark here.’
The visualization was expanding as the Salvation of Life rotated slowly, allowing the sensor clumps to gather a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree image. The terminus hoop was in an orbit seventy million kilometres out from the surface of the red dwarf. The sensors were showing several other objects sharing the orbit, all of them massive.
Given the minute size of the sensor clusters, and the extreme distances, resolution was sub-optimal. But it still revealed that the majority of the closest objects were pentagonal dodecahedrons with each flat surface measuring two thousand kilometres across.
‘They have to be radio telescopes,’ Callum said. ‘This is an Olyix sensor station, after all, so I can’t see what else they could be. Bloody hell, the scale of them! No wonder they picked up Earth’s radio broadcasts.’
‘This is where we’re heading,’ Jessika said.
The visualization refocused. Looking along their vector wasn’t a good angle, with the arkship’s rocky surface becoming a Mars-red crescent filling three-quarters of the image. Three million kilometres ahead of them was a nest of seven broad hoops, with the outermost an easy two hundred kilometres in diameter. Inside it, the other hoops were progressively
