‘I’m with Alik,’ Jessika said. ‘I’ve just found the power ring. Check out the star’s equator.’
Surprise at having her agree with him battled with Alik’s dismay. ‘They built one for this star? The circumference is over thirteen million kilometres!’ But the display showed him she was telling the truth. A dark band was spinning above the corona, whipping up million-kilometre twisters of incandescent plasma that spun off huge, arching prominences.
‘It would have to be,’ Callum said. ‘I’ve been checking the number of wormhole termini in this orbit. Over a thousand so far. They are going to need the mother lode of energy to sustain them.’
The sensor clusters were showing faint purple glimmers following their own orbit ten million kilometres outside the ring. Some were brighter than others; those were open, with ships moving in and out of them.
‘Fucking hell,’ Yuri said. ‘Do all of them lead to sensor stations?’
‘I hope so, because as sure as it rains in Glasgow, I don’t want there to be other enclaves.’
‘Son of a bitch, what have we walked into?’ Alik murmured.
‘Exactly what we knew would be here,’ Kandara said. ‘Come on, get a grip.’
He wanted to scowl at her, but she was right, of course. That didn’t help, either.
‘Okay,’ Callum said. ‘So we can see the wormholes. Where’s the gateway into the enclave?’
Alik checked the displays, seeing the indigo shimmer of the wormhole terminus shrinking behind the Salvation of Life. A stream of big pyramidal ships was flowing in a wide spiral around the arkship. The onemind was greeting them all, returning to that strange state of satisfaction it had displayed when they arrived at the sensor station. In return, the ships were sending their welcome and congratulations that mingled with a thirst for information. The response to their curiosity was a flood of memories so vast that Alik couldn’t begin to absorb it. Instead he caught flashes of Earth and humans and city shields glowing like half-buried suns and MHD asteroids shattering in nuclear fire, the gargantuan explosions levelling Theophilus crater.
‘Motherfuckers,’ Alik said, his mood darkening.
‘The gateway has to be different, doesn’t it?’ Kandara said. ‘The wormholes lead away from here. We want something that goes . . . inside space?’
‘I’m going to see if I can find the location in the onemind’s thoughts,’ Jessika said. ‘Hang on.’
Alik watched the flock of pyramid ships that had greeted them shoot away skittishly. Despite their rigid geometry, there was something unnerving about such avian behaviour, as if they weren’t quite in control of their actions and were simply letting instinct guide them. Then he saw why they were departing. A whole flotilla of Resolution ships was approaching. Their size should have made them stately, moving with a ponderous surety, but instead they were fast and agile, an effortless show of power and precision that was intimidating all by itself. They twisted around the Salvation of Life – a salute to all it had achieved – then plunged on past, heading towards the wormhole’s intense Cherenkov gleam.
‘They’re heading for Sol, aren’t they?’ Kandara said.
‘Yes,’ Yuri agreed.
‘It will take them a while, though,’ Alik said. ‘Decades, you said.’
‘Yeah,’ Kandara agreed reluctantly. ‘So people will have some time to get ready. Exodus habitats will be built. They’ve probably already launched a dozen more by now.’
‘And in a hundred and twenty thousand years, they’ll be here to liberate us.’
Kandara gave him a finger, backed up by an exasperated glare. He knew he’d be on the receiving end of more grief when they came off duty.
‘I’ve found the gateway,’ Jessika announced. ‘It’s a million kilometres inside the ring, about one and a quarter AUs from us.’
Alik watched the display as the sensors zoomed in on the area of space she’d designated. In the back of his head, he could feel the onemind determining the course it had to take to reach the gateway, the vectors it needed to fly. It was preparing to increase power from the main generators and feed it into the gravitonic drive, which had been idle while they were inside the wormhole.
There were other thoughts he caught, too. A small subsection of the onemind started to orchestrate the ships it was carrying, designating their destination. None of them would be required once they were through the gateway and began the long hiatus until they arrived at the era of the God at the End of Time. Damage assessments were being reviewed, discovering if the ships had deteriorated further during the voyage home. Those that could no longer fly would be removed, their oneminds transferred into the empty bioneural core of new ships, while the ships themselves would be released into the ring, where they would vacuum ablate to dust and gas over the next million years – dust that would ultimately merge with other particles that would go on to feed the industrial constructors.
Okay, now that’s what I call sustainable recycling, Alik thought in dark amusement. A kind of long-term planning that put the exodus habitats to shame.
‘We need to deploy the Signal transmitters,’ Yuri said. ‘If the ships in this hangar start to wake up, they might notice our activity. And from what I can understand out of the onemind’s thoughts, we haven’t got long now.’
*
Jessika increased the level of distortion infecting the neuralstratum that covered the hangar as much as she dared to shield their exit from the Avenging Heretic. Alik and Callum steered more than a dozen creeperdrone spiders along the passageways and corridors leading to their refuge cave, alert for any quint or larger creatures who might be coming their way. With a perimeter watch established, they got ready to leave.
The bridge simulation faded from Alik’s mind, and he opened his eyes to see the others sitting around the table in the main life-support section. For some reason, they’d seated themselves in the same order they
