“Okay. Whatever. Sorry I asked.”
“I never said this was going to be easy,” Yirella said. “And I don’t want to send anyone away on a half-assed ship.”
“Nobody could ever accuse the Actaeon of being that,” Falar said. “You’ve done a magnificent job.”
“Thank you.”
* * *
—
When they got back to the privacy of their quarters Dellian flopped onto the sofa directly in front of a broad black fusuma with a monochrome dragon print that stretched right across it; Yirella had been in a traditional Japanese phase for seven months now. The fusuma slid away to reveal a balcony that had a perfect view of Mount Fuji. Air from a garden full of blossoming cherry trees gusted in. “I’m not sure I can keep this farce up,” he admitted.
A smaller fusuma across the other side of the room was painted with a ukiyo-e style flying island. Yirella slid it aside and went into the bedroom. “I found Uret’s reversal interesting,” she said.
“No you didn’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“You were on the verge of braining the poor dumbass. I saw you.”
“All right. After busting a gut on the Actaeon design for two years I think I’m entitled to be a little peeved.”
“Leaving aside a little peeved as the understatement of the mission since we left Juloss, his change of attitude is actually quite complimentary.”
“You mean the whole subterfuge is working? The Leavers are reconsidering?”
“I thought that was the whole point.”
“It is, but I need to know if Uret is only folding thanks to peer pressure, or if the rest of the Leavers are having equal doubts.”
A remote rolled over to the sofa and proffered a chilled glass of beer for Dellian. “You’re going to make me go out there and schmooze again, aren’t you?”
“ ’Fraid so. Spread the pain. If the Actaeon project folds now, people will revert to being moody, and we’ll be right back where we started, watching for potential suicides. Kenelm was right when sie said we have to fully commit to it.”
“You know Uret was part of the biogreen faction?”
“What are you saying?”
“The majority of Leavers want to load the Actaeon with refineries and initiators so they can continue this life when they find a terraformed planet. But Uret’s faction wants to go superpastoral, so the land can provide them with everything. Trees that grow into houses, meat crops, metallic crystaloids, medicine tubers. All so they can live as one with the environment.”
“That’s dumb. Without a modern digital infrastructure, they’ll lose their knowledge base within three generations. The survivors will have to climb the industrial path again.”
“Survivors? Wow, you really don’t approve, do you? The biogreen goal is to have a balanced life so you don’t need to start building things. That way, keeping things simple, they get to avoid discovery by the Olyix.”
“If they’re going to be that sedentary, they’ll need to lower their IQs to make that culture stable and sustainable. Their ideology is worse than our Strike mission. It’s a prison.”
“Tolerant much? If that’s how they want to live their lives, especially ones that don’t interfere with us, then help them live it.”
“Ideologues are welcome to live with the values they admire, I have no problem with that, but you have to give the next generation the freedom and ability to go their own way. Anything else is fascism.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort, I don’t think there were many in Uret’s camp.”
Yirella came out of the bedroom, tying up the obi of a splendid scarlet-and-black kimono. “I still need to know numbers, Del.”
“Right,” he grumbled.
She sat beside him and grabbed a beer from the remote. “Beer shouldn’t be this cold. It reduces the flavor.”
“I’m not entirely sure it’s the flavor I drink it for.”
“Yeah, social rituals are strange when you think about them. It’s a retreat to the comfort of routine. Nursery food for the soul.”
“This has really upset you, hasn’t it?”
“Not really. We can build two Actaeons easily enough.”
“Saints! Please let me watch when you tell Kenelm that. Please, please, please.”
She grinned and kissed him. “Behave. It is a problem. The Actaeon is holding our disaffected together and giving them purpose. If they start to form factions and exclude one another, that just makes our job tougher.”
“We can’t build each of them their own Actaeon.”
“Actually—”
“All right, I get it. I’ll talk to Uret tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” She gave him a longer kiss. “Humans are so fascinating, aren’t we? If ten of us are each given our own piano, we’ll play eleven different tunes. I wonder if that makes us more or less attractive to the Olyix?”
“Right now I’m guessing the Olyix regret ever visiting Earth to start with. We must be the biggest disaster they’ve known. Who else has defied and fought them for so long like we have?”
“The Neána defy them in their own soft way. And the Saints alone know how many battles they’re currently fighting with other species across the galaxy.”
“Now there’s a cheerful thought.” He put his arm around her and snuggled in tighter.
“Do you suppose all the other human Strike warships experience the same issues as us?” she asked. “We have the weapons that are as good as anything the Olyix have, but not all of us have the psychology to fight them.”
“I think our solution is a good one. The Actaeon really is keeping morale high.”
“Maybe. But there must be other solutions, especially if it’s a common problem. Trouble is, none of the Strike warship captains will ever know, because the one thing we can’t do is broadcast the issue. And now I’ve started thinking about those tens of thousands of other Strike missions I just can’t stop. What has happened to them? Surely one of them managed to ambush an arkship successfully? Why didn’t they send their Signal? It was supposed to be our rallying cry, Del. A Signal, whether it was the Signal from the Saints or one from a Strike ship, would travel along the expansion wavefront and alert all of us. Then we all fly straight to whatever neutron star is closest to the gateway and form the final human armada. But we’ve had nothing. Ten thousand years!”
“The galaxy is big. Something like this was always going to take eons; the Saints knew that when they started it. And actually, the longer it does take, the more successful it will be.”
“Yeah, right,” she sighed. “Longer time equals improved weapons and more warships turning up at the neutron star.”
“Exactly! So stop worrying about this. You’ve done a good job.” Even as he said it, he wanted her to carry on. Listening to her ideas unfurling was part of the joy of being with her.
“Of course some Strike missions will have completely different social compositions from the Morgan,” she mused. “If every planet settled by a generation ship sends off two hundred new generation ships, and each of those finds a planet and does the same thing, the exponential numbers are colossal, especially now after so long. So you’re going to get a lot of societal variations building up, exactly like Uret and his ultrabiology doctrine.”
“Uh, maybe best not to give him the entire credit for that notion.”
“But think about it. Our omnia Utopial strand of culture is fairly conservative; you can trace the lineage all the way back to Delta Pavonis. But each generation ship is a chance for change when it reaches a new world, especially as Utopial ships weren’t even in the majority when we all fled the invasion. The terraformed worlds all had very different societies and ideologies from Earth, so I’m guessing there must be thousands of types of humans by now.”
“What, four arms? A tail? Three he
ads?”
“Maybe even five bodies sharing a linked mind. Why not? And they’ll each come at this a different way.”
“Come at what?”
“A method of attacking the Olyix.”
“I hope not. Capturing an arkship, or at least its wormhole’s data for the gateway, is fundamental to the plan.”
“If we’re all still sticking to the flight-then-fight plan. Big if, there.”
Dellian sat up so that he was able to look at her directly. “Saints! The F-and-F plan is what’s going to save us. Humans sacrificed everything to do this. Everything. Our homeworld, our interstellar settlements, those that were left behind, those that fought to give us this one chance. Don’t start to have doubts. If the rest of us have all been hunted down and elevated, if there’s only one free human left in the galaxy, the plan still stands.”
She stroked his cheeks admiringly. “That’s my Dellian. If it’s you, if you’re the last human standing in the galaxy, then it’ll work.”
“We just need the Signal.”
“Yeah. The Signal can only travel at light speed, you know. Suppose we got the bad statistic? Suppose the enclave is a thousand light-years on the other side of Earth from the human expansion wavefront? If that’s where the Olyix are hiding, then our flight from Sol has kept us ahead of the Signal. The Saints did trigger it all that time ago, but it hasn’t caught up with us yet because of the speed we’re expanding.”
“You know what?”
“What?”
“I’d give anything to have your brain for a day.”
Yirella chuckled and sipped some more beer. “Actually, it’s better than you know.”
“Oh, bragging now, are we!”
“Not quite, buuut…”
“Oh, Saints, what?”
“Guess why I built such a huge astrosensor system into the Actaeon?”
It took a moment for the enormity of what she had done to register. “Saints be damned!” He chuckled like a ten-year-old listening to a dirty joke. “You didn’t!”
“Uh huh.”
“And the Actaeon will fly away from the expansion wavefront, maybe all the way back to Earth. So if the Saints found the enclave, and it is behind us, the astrosensor system will detect the Signal. That’s fantastic, Yi! Oh, but…no good to us, because we still won’t know.”
Yirella gave him a smug smile. “Clever boy. Unless…”
“Shit!” he yelled, then clamped a hand over his mouth, shocked and delighted. “You’re going to put a portal inside the Actaeon.”
“A small one. Just so we can keep an eye on anything those astrosensors pick up.”
“But if the Actaeon gets captured, it’ll lead the Olyix right back to us.”
“Realistically, the Actaeon will be difficult—verging on impossible—for the Olyix to detect when it’s flying through interstellar space at a fabulous point nine whatever light speed. The only time the Olyix can ambush it is after it’s decelerated into a star system. If it’s captured intact, the Olyix will find out we are—or were—lurking here at Vayan. And the distance involved will mean it’ll take them years to reach us, by which time we’ll be long gone.”
“So we really are going to build the Actaeon? No matter what?”
“Kenelm agreed with me. We need to know about the Signal, because that will really tell us if we’re wasting our time here. So, yes, we build the Actaeon and send it back to Earth. The only thing that’ll stop the project now is if an arkship arrives and we find the gateway coordinates for ourselves.”
“Sweet Saints.” He slumped back again. “You see, this is why I don’t play chess with you anymore. All you have to do is move your first pawn forward and you’ve won.”
“Don’t be so self-deprecating. I just work my way through possibilities quickly, that’s all.”
“Why don’t you and Kenelm just send an automated ship back toward Sol?”
“Firstly, we genuinely needed to design a faster gravitonic propulsion unit. Our starship speed has been limited to point eight seven C for too long. The Actaeon mission gave us the perfect excuse for our engineers to work on the problem out in the open, and Saint Jessika always said that’s the best place to conceal something. Second, morale has been shaky for a while. If we started a project just to send a ship back toward Earth in a search for the Signal, more people will start to question the Morgan’s purpose.” Her face fell solemn. “Kenelm is worried that the Signal hasn’t come yet, a lot more than sie lets on. Yes, statistically we’re probably still heading straight for it. But…ten thousand years, Del. We’re only human.”
“You’re concerned, too, aren’t you?”
“Yes. All this: lure planets, warships like the Morgan. It’s happened thousands of times already. After we began the Leaver project, Kenelm told me that sie was given a new set of orders before the Morgan left Juloss. If we don’t receive the Signal within a reasonable timeframe, we’re to initiate the Neána option regardless, and create a civilization in hiding out between the stars.”
“How come you know this and I don’t?”
“Kenelm trusts me with big-picture stuff. You, on the other hand, need to keep focused on your command of the squad.”
“Okay, that hurt. But Juloss is probably about a couple of hundred light-years behind us. So even if the Signal arrived the day after we left, it won’t reach here for another two centuries.”
“Correct. What’s your point?”
“No point. Just curious how long we’re supposed to wait?”
“That’s within the captain’s discretion. If it was me, I’d wait until the Actaeon was halfway back to Earth. If the astrosensors haven’t picked up the Signal by then, I’d say time for something new.”
He sipped his beer in silence for a minute. “You’re right not to mention this part of the Actaeon mission, even to the Morgan’s command crew. It would amplify the morale problem beyond fixing. Frankly, I almost wish you hadn’t told me. I was happy just anticipating the Signal would reach us at some point.”
“Well, stay happy. The Actaeon should shift those statistics back in our favor.”
* * *
Command personnel to the bridge. The category one order came buzzing through Dellian’s databud at six o’clock the next morning, while he was still dozing.
“Now what?” he grumbled.
Yirella was wide awake beside him, staring intently at the ceiling as though it was revealing some profound truth. “There’re a lot of heavy security codes partitioning the network suddenly. Interesting.”
Dellian just knew. It had to be. It couldn’t be anything else. He tried to keep the smile from his face. Security was key here. Nobody would panic; they’d trained for this for so long. But excitement would hit the squads like an adrenaline rush. “I have to go.”
“Yes, me too.”
“Huh?” The momentary distraction meant he hit his knee on the black parquet floor as he scrambled off the bed. “Ow. This bed is too low. I mean, why even bother with a frame? Just leave the mattress on the floor.”
“Oh, dear. Wrong side this morning?”
“No. What instruction did you get?”
“Same as you. Report to the bridge.”
Her face might have been completely composed, but Dellian knew she was laughing at him. “But you’re not command level.” Out before he could stop it.
“Captain’s advisory council, thank you! That gives me a command rank.”
“But this is—”
She raised an eyebrow coyly. “A military action? The Strike?”
“I don’t know. Possibly.”
“Ha. You’ve already convinced yourself it is.”
“Either way, I’m glad you’ll be there. Okay? Are you going to rejoin Ellici and Tilliana in tactical?”
“Saints, no! That would be a di
saster. I haven’t done tactical since…you remember when.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, shamefaced. She’d risen from the bed to stand over him, but he couldn’t tip his head back to look up at her.
“You lot have had years training together since then. You’re as tight and perfect as you’re going to get. Putting me in there now would screw things up badly.”
“Sorry.”
Her long arm came down, fingers squeezing his shoulder. “I appreciate that was your first thought. It’s very sweet, if totally misplaced.”
“That just about sums me up.”
Laughing at his exaggerated misery, she gave him a quick hug. “Come on, Del, this is not the day for gloom and introspection. Get your uniform on, soldier. You know what they say.”
“No…”
A sigh. “You need to pay more attention to those old dramas I make you watch. Women love a man in uniform. Or they did back then. Allegedly.”
“Oh, yeah? Do they still?”
“Put it on and find out.”
So three minutes later he was in a freshly printed gray-and-blue dress uniform. As he sealed up the front of the tunic, he realized he hadn’t worn one since Rello’s funeral. Progress of sorts, I guess.
“Not half bad,” Yirella told him.
“I sense mockery.”
“Your senses are wise.”
Dellian always found the Morgan’s bridge a disappointment. Basically it was the captain’s main council room, with a broad screen wall at the far end of a truncated oval table that seated twenty. Eight squad leaders had reported for duty, as well as the Morgan’s senior officers and four people from the captain’s advisory council; Yirella was the only non-omnia in that group.
The bridge door closed and locked. Dellian’s databud told him the network access codes had been raised.
Kenelm sat at the head of the table, dressed in hir uniform, which somehow managed to look a lot smarter on hir than anyone else. “At oh-three-fifty-two hours ship time, our exo-heliosphere sensor network detected low-level gravity waves. Wim was duty officer; sie expanded the portal of the closest satellite and sent through eighteen mark seven sensor webs.”
Salvation Lost Page 26