‘We don’t want to disable the arkship,’ Yuri reminded the FBI agent gently. ‘There’s a billion humans living on board.’
‘Call that living?’ Alik retorted.
‘Wait till we get close enough to see the buffer effect,’ Callum said happily.
They were eleven million kilometres out before they could see through the enhanced glow of the nebula surrounding the gas giant.
‘A super-Jovian,’ Jessika announced as the figures started to resolve. ‘Two hundred thousand kilometres in diameter. But only forty times the mass.’
‘Failed star,’ Callum said. ‘Not quite big and dense enough to ignite. But hot.’
‘So, is the nebula going to slow it down enough to crash into the star?’ Kandara asked.
‘Given time,’ Jessika said. ‘But the nebula is only technically not a vacuum. For all the resistance it puts up, the gas giant has the same inertia as god. That really would take a hundred billion years to brake it out of orbit.’
‘Maybe,’ Callum muttered quietly.
Yuri could see he was studying the astronomical data intently. As they drew closer, the image improved. The gas giant had acquired wings. Vast elliptical arcs of bright rose-gold plasma currents curled around its phenomenal bulk – the result of a potent planetary magnetic field interacting with the mist of elementary particles that it was slamming though.
‘It’s like a science text illustration,’ Callum said. ‘You can actually see the magnetic flux.’
‘The planet’s ring is wrong,’ Jessika announced.
Yuri checked the display. The gas giant had a single ring, two and a quarter million kilometres above its highly agitated cloudscape, which put it just outside the fringes of the magnetosphere’s illuminated bow wave. Normally gas giant rings orbited above the equator; this one was polar, and shepherded by a rosette of five small moons. The gaps between them were filled by thousands of individual light-grey motes. They were big – relatively – for a ring. There were none of the gravel-sized particles and dust grains that made up the rings of Saturn.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ Yuri asked.
Jessika just nodded.
‘Je-zus,’ Alik said. ‘They can’t all be arkships, can they?’
‘Looks like it,’ Callum said.
‘How many?’
‘The G8 is estimating fifteen thousand, assuming placement is constant. We’ll be able to get a more accurate count as we approach.’
‘Fifteen thousand!’
‘Yeah.’
‘That has to be a mistake.’
‘Why?’ Jessika said. ‘Because you think it’s too high?’
‘Well . . . I don’t fucking know. Fifteen thousand!’
‘The Olyix have been doing this for a long time,’ Jessika said. ‘Consider, the sensor outpost we came through is approximately fifty thousand lightyears from here. That means it took the Olyix at least that long to fly a wormhole-carrying ship to it. And that’s assuming they didn’t expand their outposts in stages. Then there’s the unknown of how long it’s been there. Do you really think it’s likely to have picked up Earth’s radio signals the first year they arrived?’
‘Holy shit. Fifteen thousand species taken captive?’
‘It won’t be that many,’ Yuri said.
‘How the hell do you know that?’
‘The human race wouldn’t fit into one arkship; there’s too many of us. And even a species as arrogant as the Olyix will need redundancy. So say they spread a captive race over two or three arkships . . .’
‘Why so low?’ Alik demanded. ‘Why not ten, or why not jam five species into one? Why—’
‘Hey, calm the hell down, okay? This is just a what if. Let me have five, okay? It’s a starting point is all I’m saying. So five ships per species, that gives us maybe three thousand different types of aliens.’
‘Three thousand evolutions cut short,’ Jessika said flatly. ‘Three thousand species denied their future. Three thousand destinies destroyed. It doesn’t matter what ethics you have; that ring is the greatest crime it’s possible to commit in this universe.’
‘Do you think your people will be in there?’ Kandara asked.
‘You’re my people,’ Jessika snapped with uncharacteristic anger. ‘But my creators, the Neána? Yes, one of those ships will be the prison for those of them that didn’t escape in time.’
Yuri almost smiled at Kandara’s little flush of awkwardness. ‘Jessika nailed it. The Olyix have been doing this a long time. Maybe a hundred thousand years, and maybe a lot longer than that. It would take them time to expand across the galaxy. They didn’t go from this one star all the way out to the rim in a single surge.’
‘So we should be grateful it’s not more than three thousand?’ Kandara asked.
‘I don’t think gratitude comes into this. I think this whole situation is too big for emotion. All we can do is deal in facts.’
‘Observe and move on, huh?’ Callum asked. ‘Don’t let it get to you.’
Maybe the others didn’t catch the edge, but Yuri did. He still hasn’t let go of Savi and Zagreus. A hundred years, for fuck’s sake. ‘Like Alik said, we have a job to do. A worthwhile one. We need to concentrate on that.’
‘Sure. Yeah, right.’
*
The Salvation of Life altered course over the next couple of hours, rising up out of the plane of the ecliptic so it could decelerate into polar orbit around the gas giant. As they drew closer, there was no mistaking the composition of the ring. Every one of its particles was another arkship, though the sizes did vary. Most of them had acquired their own protracted fluorescent halo from the magnetic bow wave effect, a more intense violet than the gas giant’s gilded shimmer below their orbit.
As they manoeuvred to rendezvous, sliding into a large gap in the ring, the Salvation of Life began to amass its own nimbus. Simultaneously, they lost the long tail of unquiet vapour they’d generated flying through the nebula.
Yuri was aware of the onemind’s contentment returning to enliven its thought routines, the same self-assurance it had possessed right up until the point they’d triggered the Signal. It was among its own now, exchanging welcome thoughts with the other successful arkships in their eternal storage orbit. A validation of a pilgrimage completed under extremely difficult circumstances. Arkships in the ring appreciated and understood what it
