Behind him, the roof exploded. Fierce orange light flared as the fireball erupted, hurling slate fragments and splintered timbers across the garden. Every window shattered. Ollie knew this was his only chance, that he should be racing frantically across the neighbor’s garden. But he paused for a moment, dumb animal instinct making him watch the crazy scene play out.
A dark armored figure hurtled down out of the dull sky at a terrific velocity. Jetpack exhaust nozzles roared like a continuous thunderbolt as they fought to slow the descent. Even so, the suit crashed through the center of the broken roof, plunging into the house. A second later, multiple explosions inside smashed the upper floor apart, and the remnants of the roof beams shuddered before folding down in pained slow motion. Brickwork cracked and shivered as upper sections toppled inward to follow the roof down.
The blast wave shunted Ollie off the top of the wall to thud down hard into the rosebushes below. Bad landing.
More explosions produced a flickering phony dawn behind him. Some kind of combat was going on inside the wreckage. How can anybody still be alive in there? Drones skidded chaotically through the air. Intense electronic warfare was hammering against the suit’s processors, and his lens splash wobbled dangerously as icons dissolved into static. The animal fear that had betrayed him on top of the wall kicked in again and sent him running across the garden. He vaulted another wall somehow. Then a fence. Sirens were rushing along Lichfield Road, blue and red strobe auras clotting the air above the line of elegant homes. Claudette’s house was an inferno, casting uncanny shadows over patios and grass. He did his best to outrun them. Every alarm on the street that had survived the outbreak of electronic warfare was shrieking for attention now. Nobody was going to notice any additional sensors he tripped.
Finally he reached a short alley and shambled along it to Lichfield Road itself. He turned his back on the flames, police, and drone swarm at the other end, and walked on toward the junction with Kew Road ahead. Three police vehicles raced past him; each time he pressed up behind a thick old horse chestnut trunk, dodging their camera sensors.
The other side of Kew Road was lined with a brick wall at least four meters high that guarded the botanical gardens. But directly opposite the junction was a set of wrought iron gates. He slipped across the road to them. A small activeblade cut through the crude locked bolts in a fanspray of sparks. It was only while they bounced off his suit mask that he realized he couldn’t hear a thing, not even the unrelenting sobs inside his hood. The explosion had wrecked his eardrums or an em pulse had burnt out audio circuitry, he didn’t know. And as he stood motionless, he realized his left ankle was agony.
Finally the stubborn bolts gave way, and he pushed the big gate open. The sprawling parklands of Kew Gardens were spread out before him, as lightless and empty as a midnight desert. He limped off into the darkness.
The chamber at the end of passage SR b5 was as big as the first one Dellian’s squad had ventured into. Instead of cryogenic tanks, this one had three rows of big hemispherical vats. They were full of what everyone took to be proto-swamp muck that was bubbling away softly. Suit sensors reported heavy traces of sulfur in the air, along with other complex organic particulates.
Living pipes formed a buttress cradle holding each vat aloft, while underneath, glass spheres formed a nest around the base, with thick mustard-yellow fluid circulating inside. From there the pipes wound around each other in a three-dimensional grid along the center of the chamber before rearing up like serpents to feed into five big cylinders.
“Cellular conveners,” Fintox said. “This is one of their organism assembly centers.”
In the air above Dellian, his combat cores silently swung around so that their primary weapons were aligned on the cylinders. “You mean this is where the quint bodies are manufactured?”
“Among other things, yes.”
“Del,” Tilliana said. “Drop a drone into each of those vats and check they’re not hiding any huntspheres.”
“Roger that. Falar, Uret, take a look.”
Drones glided along the chamber, deep-scanning the aerated vats. Combat cores hovered above, ready for any sign of hostility.
“So what does a nexus look like?” Dellian asked.
“There will be one for each convener,” Fintox said. “I will locate one.” The metavayan walked over to the closest cylinder and balanced on top of a glass sphere to examine the various pipes and struts that supported it.
Dellian reviewed the chamber. So far it was clear of any Olyix presence, but that didn’t mean they were unobserved. He ordered the drones to spray out the aerosol that would close down the layer of external receptor cells that all Olyix biological systems incorporated. The chemical mist was a more sophisticated version of the one Connexion had developed for its spy missions on board the Salvation of Life. Using it made him feel nervous. Look what happened to Feriton Kayne when he used it.
More drones were spread out along passage SR b5, making sure nothing was creeping up on them. Xante had sent a whole batch of drones whirring off down the other corridors that led away from the chamber, checking for any activity.
“Two-hundred-meter perimeter is clean of Olyix activity,” Xante reported.
“Yeah. I wonder where they are?”
“Dunno. But not complaining. I’m expanding the scout drone perimeter.”
Dellian checked the tactical feed again. The squads were close to getting inside the first biosphere now. It wasn’t easy; the corridors were narrow, and strongly defended. Olyix huntspheres would burst out of cavities at random, attacking drones and combat cores, but never the armor-suited squad members.
Between the first and second biospheres, the squads heading for the wormhole generator moved cautiously forward through the maze of tunnels. Four of them had already reached the main passages below the second biosphere. Dellian watched keenly as their icons progressed deeper into the tactical map graphic. The huntspheres were no match for the squads. Human weapons and tactics were proving superior every time.
“Shouldn’t there be more of them?” he asked.
“We conclude the onemind may be regrouping quint units in the second and third chambers,” Ellici said. “The flood cloud impact was a highly disruptive calamity for them. So far you’ve only encountered wrong-place, wrong-time survivors. This would account for the sporadic resistance.”
“So we stay alert.”
“Yes. We’re watching every sensor input for you, don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Chamber’s clear,” Falar said.
“Thanks.” Dellian watched the drones and combat cores revert to a defensive formation, a constantly moving shoal circling around the big chamber. “Fintox, how are you doing?”
“I have it.”
Dellian stepped over to where the metavayan was standing below a convener cylinder. One of the support struts resembled a pillar carved from pale green polyp, with innumerable living pipes spiraling up it like ivy besieging a tree trunk. Fintox was standing next to it, upper limbs holding a gadget to the rough surface. A meter-wide circle of the polyp flowed apart, as if it had turned into liquid, revealing a mass of hair-thin cyan fibers underneath.
“Is that it?” Dellian asked. “The nexus?”
“A portion of the neural strata that leads to it, yes.”
“What now?”
“I will attempt to insert myself into the arkship neural network.”
Dellian had no idea what to say. Good luck seemed wholly inadequate given the circumstances, not to mention a little too human. “Okay. Just…be careful.”
“Yes. I will proceed with care.”
“Tilliana, Ellici, you getting this?”
“We’re monitoring,” Tilliana said.
Fintox adjusted his lower limbs and bent forward until the top of his suit helmet, which carried the i
nterface unit, was resting against the fibers. He became perfectly still.
“Uh, are you…in?” Dellian asked.
“I can identify the impulse flow,” the metavayan replied. “It is extremely complex. Pattern interpretation is beginning.”
“Right.” Dellian scanned around the chamber again, checked the tactical display, reviewed one of the attack cruisers’ images of the arkship to see the glowing haze of particle impacts on the forward end.
“Saints, this is dumb,” Janc declared. “We could be fighting the huntspheres.”
“We have fought the huntspheres,” Dellian replied, irritated. “What we’re doing here and now is tactical, and the most important part of the whole Strike mission.”
“Yeah, right.”
Trouble was, Dellian knew exactly how Janc was feeling. He had that same itchy frustration. Years—their whole life—training for this, and all they were doing was guarding a non-real alien biologic while he tried to perform a data heist that could have come from an old Hong Kong virtual game. Right now, Dellian would have welcomed a whole flotilla of huntspheres charging toward them. That way, he could blow shit up.
“I have discharged the neurovirus,” Fintox said. “It is spreading within the ship’s neuralstrata.”
Another scan around. The least Dellian expected was the cavern lights to flicker—something. Maybe the onemind would know its thoughts were being distorted. It would send huntspheres…
“Okay, Fintox is in,” he announced. “Let’s stay alert, people.” Now he wanted some updates from Fintox. How was it going? How long would it take? But he didn’t want to distract the metavayan.
“Falar, get some drones all the way back down the passages we traveled through,” he said. “Keep them scanning for any Olyix activity. I want a smooth withdrawal when we have what we came for.”
“Got it.”
“I am aware of the wormhole mechanism now,” Fintox said. “The knowledge the onemind contains is deep. Filtering through it for the gateway coordinates will be difficult while we remain in here. I think it would be best if we simply copied what I perceive. My colleagues and I will analyze it when we are back on board the Morgan.”
“Ellici?” Dellian asked automatically. “Do we go with that?”
“We know the wormhole generator will require a massive operating system, so if the neurovirus can extract it, then yes, tell Fintox to go ahead. We can transfer yottabytes of data to the Morgan if necessary.”
“Right. Uh, do we have that kind of bandwidth?”
“How long it takes depends on how much data there is. But Yirella built a high-bandwidth entanglement into Fintox’s suit for just this kind of event.”
“Of course she did,” he said, smiling inside his helmet. Saints, she really should be in the Morgan’s tactical center with Tilliana and Ellici.
His tactical display showed three squads entering the arkship’s first biosphere. Confused chatter filled the channels.
“Tilliana?” Dellian asked. “What’s happening?”
“The biosphere isn’t what we were expecting,” she replied in a strained voice.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not a single empty space like the Salvation of Life. This is…The drones are exploring.”
Dellian checked around the chamber they were in, then risked expanding drone images across his optik. The visuals from biosphere one were difficult to understand. He was looking directly out at a cliff face of silver and black hexagons, bound together by the woody pipes of Olyix biotechnology. The drone began to rotate. No—it was two cliff faces; the drone was hovering in a gigantic canyon with the squad members standing at the bottom, not even ant size on this scale. There was a base, but above the drone the cliffs extended upward forever, the stacked rows of hexagons blurring into radial lines then a solid haze.
“What the Saints…?”
“It’s like a hive structure,” Ellici said. “Tilliana, do we have—?”
“Wait,” Tilliana snapped. “Yirella is calling, she— What?”
“What’s happening?” Dellian demanded. The tactical display was reformatting as the Morgan’s gentens analyzed and mapped the surge of data from the drones in the first biosphere.
“One of our attack cruisers has just come under fire from a pair of weapons mounted on the arkship’s hull,” Ellici said. “They were camouflaged.”
“The transfer is beginning,” Fintox said. “I will show you.”
“Thanks,” Dellian said. “Ellici, what’s happening?” Fintox’s icons appeared in his optik, larger than usual. They didn’t make a lot of sense, and they were brighter than he was expecting. So much so he wanted to blink.
“Yirella says there’s a ship,” Tilliana said. “Inside Bennu!”
“What do you mean, a ship?” Dellian’s tactical icons flared scarlet, though they were just dim moons relative to Fintox’s strangely beautiful giant star.
“Bennu’s breached. Repeat, Bennu’s been breached!”
“Fucking Saints, how did they get inside Bennu?”
Fintox’s icon was now showing a complex flow of patterns that Dellian intuitively knew but couldn’t quite focus on. He resented how elusive they were, and expanded the icon to see if that would make them clearer.
“That doesn’t look Olyix to me,” Janc said in an uneasy voice.
“Deploying Bennu defense cruisers,” Tilliana said. “Yirella has command.”
“Oh, my Saints!” Ellici cried. “They’re hibernation chambers. All of them.”
“What are?” Dellian grunted.
“The first biosphere. It’s just a giant honeycomb of hibernation chambers.” She let out a sob. “Oh, Saints, no. No. They’ve got people in them.”
“People?” Dellian asked. He couldn’t quite make sense of this. It was important, he knew, but there was sound twittering into his brain now to accompany the bewitching flow of fluctuating shapes that were still expanding to fill his optik. A slow, gentle melody that brought back memories of the peaceful times back on Juloss, when he and his yearmates ran free through the estate’s parkland playing their games. The fun and laughter they’d shared.
“Cocoons,” Ellici said. “The drones have found some hibernation chambers with human cocoons inside. They’re alive.”
“This is Captain Kenelm. All squads, hold your current positions. Do not engage the enemy, repeat, do not engage. Use your weapons only if under attack. We cannot risk further damage to this arkship. It is carrying humans.”
“Dellian?”
He thought that was Tilliana calling, but couldn’t be sure. It was a loud voice, but somehow coming from a great distance.
“Dellian, are you all right? What’s happening?”
“Dellian!” Xante pleaded. “What are you doing with your cohort? Stop—”
The images and music were rushing past him now, swirling into a tunnel of memories that he began to fall through, faster and faster. Every memory he had, detonating into sharp focus. Forcing him to relive each moment of his life.
“Great Saints, what’s Fintox downloading to him? The data density in his optik has maxed. The genten can’t get a pattern lock.”
“What is it?”
“Fintox? Fintox, can you hear me? Withdraw from the neural strata. Now.”
Some of Dellian’s memories started to hurt. Every childhood tumble and fall. Every bruise and graze received. Every collision in a game. They jumped out at him, the pain from each one flashing down his nerves as before. Harder this time, more intense. They made him yell out in panic and fright. Alexandre wasn’t there to comfort him. No one was. He was on his own. Nobody loved him.
“Saints. Dellian, your med telemetry is hitting redlines. Del, what’s wrong?”
“Del, pull your cohort back. Power the weapons down. Shit! Tilliana, help!”<
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“I can’t do anything. Yirella! Yirella!”
But there was love. Love so strong. For him. For all of them. He raised his hands up in worshipful greeting. “They love us,” he declared. And there it was. The Message. Divine in nature. Coming from the future—a tachyon cascade pouring back through the eons where whole galaxies dwindled to embers and died. Pure as sunlight, clear as air. Calling him.
He welcomed it, opening himself to the angelic wonder. Letting it in. The Message from the God at the End of Time. Nothing else mattered. He let his thoughts dissolve in the glorious light that spoke directly to him.
“Del? Del, darling. It’s me. It’s Yirella. Del, power down the cohort. Let the dears rest so I can be with you. You and me. I love you. I want us to be together. Power them down, darling. Please.”
“Yirella?” He could hear her, but her image was somehow lost to him. She was draining into the light, slipping away into the future where they all belonged.
“Fuck, fuck, FUCK! What’s happening?”
“Del, for Saints’ sake stop fucking shooting at us!”
—
“What the Saints was—
“Are you okay? Answer! Anyone in the squad, are you receiving this?”
“We’re okay, Ellici. Big earthquake in here.”
“Fuck the Saints, they’ve blown whole sections of the arkship into space with nukes. Fucking nukes!”
“We won’t die,” Dellian told the crazy voices. “We’re going to the end of time. The God awaits us there.”
“Oh, crap! What is happening to Del?”
“Our attack cruiser sensors are showing big caverns below those explosions. They’ve exposed them to space.”
“Decompression! Here it comes. Hang on to something! Uret, for Saints’ sake, grab Del!”
“He’ll kill me.”
“Grab him! Yirella will stop him.”
Dellian seemed to be flying, twirling uncontrollably down the great storm of light and sensation that had engulfed him. It was growing chaotic now. And the noise in the background was building. A physical force came to rest on the surface of his brain. Shoving inward in a rhythm that matched his racing heartbeat. It began to hurt, and the light and sound was amplified with each blow.
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