‘For fuck’s sake, people!’ Alik bellowed the first time Jessika tested them. His virtual avatar ears were ringing, while he blinked simulated blotches from his vision. ‘This is turning into a gamer fetish bunker. We’re neurovirtual in here.’
‘Ambiance helps instil the right attitude,’ Yuri said.
Alik’s teeth ground together at the mockery in that voice.
‘Yeah,’ Kandara chipped in. ‘Live the experience, man.’
He glowered at her and saw Callum trying to suppress laughter. Despite being on a ship with people who could be reallyfucking annoying when they wanted to be, he did admit the new formation was a considerable improvement. It made it somehow easier for his mind to mesh with the Avenging Heretic’s network. The simulation was, after all, window dressing, but it was customized to accelerate response time during the drills. So he supposed – grudgingly – that it did generate the right level of alert tension. Their mission was tactical at heart; they needed clear commands and unrestricted target and threat intelligence. But still, edging that glowed . . .
In addition to all the precise information coming at him through the console displays, Alik had the Salvation onemind’s more prosaic thoughts at the back of his mind. He could understand them better now; years of the spectral presence lurking like a malign secondary subconscious every time he opened the neural interface had given him the practice to focus on individual routines. That and Jessika’s invaluable tuition meant it was easier for him to sort through the cascade of alien impulses, teasing out the relevant aspects without the onemind realizing.
Right now he was experiencing something that the onemind had never projected before: eagerness. The end of the wormhole was close. They would arrive at the enclave, where it would be welcomed and become accepted. That’s wrong, he thought. Embraced? Supported? Favoured? The sentiment didn’t really have a human equivalent.
‘I don’t get it,’ Alik said. ‘What kind of reception is it expecting?’ He looked over at Jessika, whose chair’s puffy safety cushioning had practically absorbed her, leaving only her head and arms visible.
‘It’s content about becoming established within the enclave. Its purpose will have been achieved; it has returned with over a billion people to deliver to the God at the End of Time. So now it’s going into – I think – a storage orbit or resting place of some kind inside the enclave, along with all the other arkships that have returned in success. It can take up its rightful place.’
‘It thinks this is a success?’ Alik asked. ‘It got its ass kicked on S-Day.’
‘Depends on perspective,’ Callum said. ‘Earth is uninhabitable now. There’ll be tens of millions evacuated, which is basically a token when you consider the global population is still probably around the six billion mark. That means the next wave of Olyix will scoop up everyone left. They won, the bastards. This round. Because us being here is a success, as well, isn’t it?’
‘Je-zus, you are getting fucking bleak, man.’
‘I felt it, too,’ Yuri said. ‘Salvation is not . . . happy, exactly, but content. Its active part in the Olyix crusade is over, and it’s anticipating the next phase of its existence.’
‘Until our descendants come knocking.’ Kandara smirked from behind a display that was mostly sculpted in blood-red graphics.
‘See,’ Callum said, grinning. ‘Optimism.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Alik muttered.
‘I wonder how many arkships are inside the enclave,’ Callum mused. ‘How many other species.’
‘We’ll know soon enough,’ Jessika said. ‘It’s going to be interesting. I don’t know how long the Olyix crusade has been going. We weren’t told.’
‘Why the hell did your abode cluster think that’s classified?’ Kandara asked.
‘I don’t know. My best guess would be that information will expose something about the Neána that increases their vulnerability to the Olyix.’
‘How long have they been around, that they were close enough to the Olyix to observe them?’
Jessika’s hands rose through her display icons in an elaborate shrug.
‘Is it even worth guessing how many species they’ve done this to?’ Callum asked.
‘Utterly pointless,’ Jessika said. ‘We have no idea of how many sentient species rise up to a technological level in the galaxy in – say – a five-thousand-year period.’
‘And how many fall of their own accord,’ Yuri said.
‘And those that are sentient but don’t go along the technology route,’ Callum added.
‘Je-zus, can we focus on some positives here, people?’ Alik said. ‘Please. This day deserves that, at least.’ He turned his attention to the sensor data.
As always, the sensor clusters that their creeperdrones had installed around the hangar entrance showed nothing. Alik couldn’t stand looking at the non-space of the wormhole fabric. So for actual flight progress, he had to rely on the onemind’s strange perception of the wormhole – a dull grey tunnel whose wavering walls were threaded with golden strands. Now at some implausible distance ahead, those glowing lines had knotted together, creating a dawn light glow.
The Salvation of Life was fixated on the end of the wormhole.
‘Not long,’ Jessika said. ‘Stand by.’
Alik wasn’t sure what he was expecting. After all, they’d exited a wormhole before, back when they reached the Olyix sensor station. He didn’t remember the onemind being tense about that.
He waited in silence as the arkship continued its stoic flight through nothingness. He was having trouble accepting that they were finally arriving at the enclave. Four years of flight – plenty of which had been spent in suspension – should have prepared him. Although, to be honest, he hadn’t really expected to get this far.
The end of the wormhole flight, when it came, was an instantaneous transition. Alik’s visual display flipped from the emptiness he was trying to ignore to images of normal space. The impact was bewildering. At first, half of space seemed to be
