‘What happens if the Olyix have a second wave of ships behind the ones you’ve just taken out?’ he asked. ‘Or a third – or more?’
‘We will remain alert for any further ships approaching,’ Immanueel said. ‘There will be an unknown number of Olyix ships materializing in real space between here and the sensor station as the wormhole collapses around them. Some might decide to travel here rather than return. We do not anticipate them being a problem.’
Yirella stared keenly at the fading explosions. ‘Good. We can start the real fightback now.’
*
Two hours later, Dellian walked through a portal back into the rebuilt Morgan. The ship was completely different from the one that had left Juloss. Where before it had been a stack of spherical grids, this iteration was a streamlined five-kilometre cone of the same protective copper mirror shell that encased all the other neutron star ring particles. Its base was a simple shallow hemisphere, fluoresced by the aquamarine light of an advanced gravitonic drive, with a rim that had sprouted long scarlet and black needles like a crown of bloodied thorns.
A layout unfolded across Dellian’s optik. The forward section was mostly hangar space holding a range of weapons and ancillary craft, while behind that were all fifty-two decks of the life-support section, with the engineering deck aft. That was it. The Morgan no longer had any of the complex asteroid mining and refining equipment, nor the von Neumann replicator systems to begin a new civilization. This was a purebred warship now. There was no compromise, no allowance for failure. He had to concede the logic was impeccable. If they lost at the Olyix enclave, there would be no running away and hiding to regroup somewhere safe amid the lonely stars. They’d be dead or worse. But if – when! – they won, there was an open future with the human race reunited in victory and rich in possibility.
That outcome was so close Dellian was practically living it as he walked along the circular main corridor of deck thirty-three to the cabin he and Yirella had been assigned. The floor was flat, which he wasn’t used to, but this version of the Morgan didn’t spin to provide gravity.
‘Artificial gravity is only one function of manipulating exotic matter,’ Yirella said approvingly. ‘It’ll provide time-flow control in here, too. They’ve really mastered this technology.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You know, I’m really not convinced they need us.’
‘They don’t. But I need to go.’
‘Sure. I’m with you on that, Yi.’ The decision hadn’t been that difficult, at least not for him. And thankfully the rest of the squad had chosen to face FinalStrike together – though a good portion of the warship crews who’d arrived at the neutron star had chosen to go their own way and build habitats adrift in the vast gulfs of interstellar space. Surprisingly, Kenelm had chosen to stay with the Morgan.
Dellian didn’t resent those who’d left, nor even the ex-captain for staying. When they did finally arrive at the Salvation of Life, he only wanted the truly dedicated to be storming it with him.
He sank down on their bed – bigger and softer than before. The walls were blank, awaiting Yirella to format their texture.
‘How long do you think you’ll need to adapt to all the armour upgrades?’ she asked.
‘A couple of months, at least. I’ve been reviewing the capabilities. They’ve gone micro and macro. Some of those weapons could take out a whole squadron of huntspheres, while the subtle ones can wipe whole sections of the neuralstratum.’
‘Saints, you be careful using anything that interfaces with a onemind again.’
He spread his arms wide. ‘I learned my lesson, trust me. There’s some kind of failsafe in these new systems.’
‘Riiiight.’
‘There is! A nuanimate routine analyses any impulse coming out of the neuralstratum. It’s like an independent corpus sub-aspect – smart but not self-aware.’
‘Well, listen to you: the coding master.’
‘I just read the instructions. But the tough part is going to be training the cohort to deal with all the new hardware we’ve got. That’s a whole fresh set of response reflexes we’ve got to build in. It’ll take time.’
‘Well, that’s the advantage of controlling time. You can have as much or as little as you want.’
Dellian propped himself up his elbows to look at her. ‘I can think of a few other things we could use all that extra time for.’
‘I’m sure you can,’ she said with a roguish grin.
‘No! Well – yes. But no, I meant we could do what all those neutron star people did, the . . . what did Immanueel call them, naturalists? They lived for thousands of years. They had a life where they were never burdened by the threat of the Olyix. We can have that life.’
‘Everyone can have that life, Del. Once we liberate them from the enclave.’
‘Yeah. I suppose so. Put it like that . . .’
‘But I do understand.’ She sat next to him and started rubbing his back between the shoulder blades.
‘Doesn’t it bother you how . . . different the corpus humans are?’ he asked.
‘Bother me? No. I’m a bit in awe of them, to be honest.’
‘Saints, really? So would you elaborate yourself? Become corpus? Like they’ve done?’
‘Not today.’ She flashed a flat smile, which did nothing to reassure him.
‘But you’ve thought about it?’
‘Haven’t you?’
‘Not really. But . . . Saints! In this place, with all their domain timeshift technology, you could walk out of here and come back an hour later my time, having spent fifty years a full corpus. I’d never know.’
‘Yeah. This timeshifting is hard to get your head around, isn’t it?’
‘Sure. Me. With my thick head.’
‘Don’t be like that. You have a beautiful head. I know. I’ve been inside it.’
‘Oh, crap. We really are going to do this, aren’t we?’
‘Well, the corpus weapons will do most of it for us, but yes.’ She inclined her head solemnly. ‘We’re going to do this. We’re going to face the enclave.’
‘We
