‘So were you dying?’ Yirella asked.
‘Hell, no. I’d had plenty of full cellular rebuilds by then. My body was in good shape. Our rejuvenation techniques on the exodus habitats were pretty good. The early ones back in Sol not so much. My neurons got screwed over at the start. Nothing big time, but enough to change me. I had a couple of flaky centuries back then, let me tell you.’
Dellian gave the white figure a surprised glance. ‘You mean your original body – the actual you – is still alive somewhere?’
The android’s face managed a thoughtful frown. ‘I don’t remember. There’s a memory of me on a bed in some fancy clinic; Emilja was there, some of my family – Gwendoline, for sure. Then I reactivated in the ship. But, two of me? Fuck no, that would just be weird. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have done it. There’s only me, and this is it – the genuine Ainsley Zangari, accept no substitute. My core identity is running in an exact copy of my original neural structure, but most of my thinking takes place in quantum arrays; that’s what give me speed and ability in a fight.’
Dellian grinned. ‘And that’s the non-weird part?’
‘Hey, grab what the universe has to offer, kid.’
‘So your body’s dead? I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. It lived for thousands of years, and not in some goddamn domain-time cheat. I lived them all for real. And I can do it again.’
‘Wait. What?’
‘See, this way my personality is frozen, locked into what it was the instant my body passed. The ship’s neural core doesn’t have the kind of randomness that biological brains are subject to. I’m unchanging. So, when all this is over – and assuming I survive – I have a choice. I can carry on as the ship, or I can clone myself a new body and transfer my mind back into it. I’ll be me again, exactly the same as before.’
Dellian risked a glance at Yirella, knowing what he’d see: a face devoid of expression – except maybe a slight crinkling around her flat nose. It didn’t matter; he knew exactly what she was thinking. What about your soul?
‘Continuity seems to be a theme here,’ she said, ‘on quite a few levels. Did you know about this group of ultra-Utopials Emilja put together?’
‘Kind of. I knew she and some level-one Utopials had formed a political group, a loyalist movement. Again, the memories aren’t too firm. I know Emilja and I were concerned by the lack of success in the exodus habitats. When we fled from Sol, we believed we’d be laying siege to the enclave within a thousand years. Well, that never happened. By the time we put the Factory together we knew we had to change the whole aspect of the exodus. Our technology had plateaued, but it was good enough to allow humans to adopt the Neána approach to surviving the Olyix. I never knew who she’d recruited, but we agreed on a programme of soft influence with long-range objectives. We’d keep our civilization going, but slowly change the goal, turning the generation ships away from planetary life. Gotta admit, though, I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so soft and slow. People like your Kenelm . . . sie could’ve been a bit more proactive.’
‘That’s not the impression of you that I got at Vayan,’ Yirella said. ‘You’re focused on attacking the enclave, not fighting a protective campaign to keep the Olyix away from this part of the galaxy.’
The android’s plain face managed to approximate a pensive expression. ‘Yeah, well. I might not be able to change my mind, but I’m not a Turing with preset operational targets. All I ever wanted, from the day the Salvation of Life turned up at Sol, was to nuke those Olyix bastards into oblivion. This was my greatest chance.’
‘Did the Factory know that when they installed you in a ship?’
‘Emilja did. It doesn’t matter. There are plenty of other Factory ships in these parts that can dump a shitload of grief on the Olyix if they start sniffing around.’
‘How many ships?’ Dellian asked.
‘Dunno. That’s strategic information. But we know now that there are more than just me; that Signal from the Lolo Maude is proof of that. Lucky coincidence, huh?’
‘What? That the other Factory ship beat the Olyix?’
‘No.’ The android faced Yirella, his face unnervingly blank. ‘That you’d decelerated mid-flight. Those fleet ships weren’t built on a government contract, you know.’
Dellian started to open his mouth –
‘Every component built by the lowest bidder,’ Ainsley told him. ‘That’s how they used to build space rockets, back in the day. Made riding them kinda interesting. You just sat on top of a pillar of fire and fury wondering which part would fail first.’
‘I wanted to give the neutron star civilization as much time as possible to develop before we arrived,’ Yirella said. ‘Decelerating from relativistic speed, then accelerating back up again, added years to our flight here. A non-critical unit failure was a harmless way to achieve that.’
Dellian clenched his jaw. Saints! I should have worked that one out. He didn’t dare look at Yirella.
‘Got to love the irony,’ Ainsley said. ‘As soon as they cracked exotic matter manipulation, the corpus humans literally had as many centuries as they wanted to take.’
Yirella shrugged. ‘Hindsight.’
‘But we’re here now,’ Dellian said.
‘And so are the Olyix,’ Ainsley said cheerfully.
‘Immanueel has detected them?’
‘Yep. Eleven Resolution ships, two hundred and eighty AUs out and closing; they’re down to point two lightspeed. And they’re all carrying a wormhole terminus. There will be more Resolution ships backed up inside the wormholes, too.’
‘They got here fast,’ Yirella said.
‘We’re sixty-seven lightyears from the sensor station,’ Ainsley said. ‘They knew we’d
